Wife in Name Only by Charlotte Mary Brame (best color ebook reader .txt) 📖

misfortune any drawback to you? Tell me the truth; I have a reason for asking you."

But Lady Arleigh would not pain her mother--her quiet, simple heart had ached bitterly enough. She would not add one pang.

"Tell me, dear," continued Margaret, earnestly; "you do not know how important it is for me to understand."

"My dear mother," said Lady Arleigh, gently clasping her arms round her mother's neck; "do not let that idea make you uneasy. All minor lights cease to shine, you know, in the presence of greater ones. The world bows down to Lord Arleigh; very few, I think, know what his wife's name was. Be quite happy about me, mother. I am sure that no one who has seen me since my marriage knows anything about my father."

"I shall be quite happy, now that I know that," she observed.

More than once during that visit Margaret debated within herself whether she would tell Lady Arleigh her story or not; but the same weak fear that had caused her to run away with the child, lest she should lose her now, made her refrain from speaking, lest Madaline, on knowing the truth, should be angry with her and forsake her.

If Mrs. Dornham had known the harm that her silence was doing she would quickly have broken it.

Lady Arleigh returned home, taking her silent sorrow with her. If possible, she was kinder then ever afterward to her mother, sending her constantly baskets of fruit and game--presents of every kind. If it had not been for the memory of her convict husband, Mrs. Dornham would for the first time in her life have been quite happy.

Then it was that Lady Arleigh began slowly to droop, then it was that her desolate life became utterly intolerable--that her sorrow became greater than she could bear. She must have some one near her, she felt--some one with whom she could speak--or she should go mad. She longed for her mother. It was true Margaret Dornham was not an educated woman, but in her way she was refined. She was gentle, tender-hearted, thoughtful, patient, above all, Madaline believed she was her mother--and she had never longed for her mother's love and care as she did now, when health, strength, and life seemed to be failing her.

By good fortune she happened to see in the daily papers that Lord Arleigh was staying at Meurice's Hotel, in Paris. She wrote to him there, and told him that she had a great longing to have her mother with her. She told him that she had desired this for a long time, but that she had refrained[6] from expressing the wish lest it should be displeasing to him.

"Do not scruple to refuse me," she said, "if you do not approve. I hardly venture to hope that you will give your consent. If you do, I will thank you for it. If you should think it best to refuse it, I submit humbly as I submit now. Let me add that I would not ask the favor but that my health and strength are failing fast."

Lord Arleigh mused long and anxiously over this letter. He hardly cared that her mother should go to Dower House; it would perhaps be the means of his unhappy secret becoming known. Nor did he like to refuse Madaline, unhappy, lonely, and ill. Dear Heaven, if he could but go to her himself and comfort her.


Chapter XXXVI.


Long and anxiously did Lord Arleigh muse over his wife's letter. What was he to do? If her mother was like the generality of her class, then he was quite sure that the secret he had kept would be a secret no longer--there was no doubt of that. She would naturally talk, and the servants would prove the truth of the story, and there would be a terrible _exposé_. Yet, lonely and sorrowful as Madaline declared herself to be, how could he refuse her? It was an anxious question for him, and one that caused him much serious thought. Had he known how ill she was he would not have hesitated a moment.

He wrote to Madaline--how the letter was received and cherished no one but herself knew--and told her that he would be in England in a day or two, and would then give her a decided answer. The letter was kind and affectionate; it came to her hungry heart like dew to a thirsty flower.

A sudden idea occurred to Lord Arleigh. He would go to England and find out all about the unfortunate man Dornham. Justice had many victims; it was within the bounds of possibility that the man might have been innocent--might have been unjustly accused. If such--and oh, how he hoped it might be!--should prove to be the case, then Lord Arleigh felt that he could take his wife home. It was the real degradation of the crime that he dreaded so utterly--dreaded more than all that could ever be said about it. He thought to himself more than once that, if by any unexpected means he discovered that Henry Dornham was innocent of the crime attributed to him, he would in that same hour ask Madaline to forgive him, and to be the mistress of his house. That was the only real solution of the difficulty that ever occurred to him. If the man were but innocent he--Lord Arleigh--would never heed the poverty, the obscurity the humble name--all that was nothing. By comparison it seemed so little that he could have smiled at it. People might say it was a low marriage, but he had his own idea of what was low. If only the man could be proved innocent of crime, then he might go to his sweet, innocent wife, and clasping her in his arms, take her to his heart.

The idea seemed to haunt him--it seemed to have a fatal attraction for him. He resolved to go to London at once and see if anything could be done in the matter. How he prayed and longed and hoped! He passed through well-nigh every stage of feeling--from the bright rapture of hope to the lowest depths of despair. He went first to Scotland Yard, and had a long interview with the detective who had given evidence against Henry Dornham. The detective's idea was that he was emphatically "a bad lot."

He smiled benignly when Lord Arleigh suggested that possibly the man was innocent, remarking that it was very kind of the gentleman to think so; for his own part he did not see a shadow of a chance of it.

"He was caught, you see, with her grace's jewels in his pocket, and gold and silver plate ready packed by his side--that did not look much like innocence."

"No, certainly not," Lord Arleigh admitted; "but then there have been cases in which circumstances looked even worse against an innocent man."

"Yes"--the detective admitted it, seeing that for some reason or other his lordship had a great desire to make the man out innocent.

"He will have a task," the detective told himself, grimly.

To the inquiry as to whether the man had been sent out of England the answer was "No; he is at Chatham."

To Chatham Lord Arleigh resolved to go. For one in his position there would not be much difficulty in obtaining an interview with the convict. And before long[7] Lord Arleigh, one of the proudest men in England, and Henry Dornham, poacher and thief, stood face to face.

Lord Arleigh's first feeling was one of great surprise--Henry Dornham was so different from what he had expected to find him; he had not thought that he would be fair like Madaline, but he was unprepared for the dark, swarthy, gypsy-like type of the man before him.

The two looked steadily at each other; the poacher did not seem in the least to stand in awe of his visitor. Lord Arleigh tried to read the secret of the man's guilt or innocence in his face. Henry Dornham returned the gaze fearlessly.

"What do you want with me?" he asked. "You are what we call a swell. I know by the look of you. What do you want with me?"

The voice, like the face, was peculiar, not unpleasant--deep, rich, with a clear tone, yet not in the least like Madaline's voice.

"I want," said Lord Arleigh, steadily, "to be your friend, if you will let me."

"My friend!" a cynical smile curled the handsome lips. "Well, that is indeed a novelty. I should like to ask, if it would not seem rude, what kind of a friend can a gentleman like you be to me?"

"You will soon find out," said Lord Arleigh.

"I have never known a friendship between a rich man and a ne'er-do-well like myself which did not end in harm for the poorer man. You seek us only when you want us--and then it is for no good."

"I should not be very likely to seek you from any motive but the desire to help you," observed Lord Arleigh.

"It is not quite clear to me how I am to be helped," returned the convict with a cynical smile; "but if you can do anything to get me out of this wretched place, please do."

"I want you to answer me a few questions," said Lord Arleigh--"and very much depends on them. To begin, tell me, were you innocent or guilty of the crime for which you are suffering? Is your punishment deserved or not?"

"Well," replied Henry Dornham, with a sullen frown, "I can just say this--it is well there are strong bars between us; if there were not you would not live to ask such another question."

"Will you answer me?" said Lord Arleigh, gently.

"No, I will not--why should I? You belong to a class I hate and detest--a class of tyrants and oppressors."

"Why should you? I will tell you in a few words. I am interested in the fate of your wife and daughter."

"My what?" cried the convict, with a look of wonder.

"Your wife and daughter," said Lord Arleigh.

"My daughter!" exclaimed the man. "Good Heaven! Oh, I see! Well, go on. You are interested in my wife and daughter--what else?"

"There is one thing I can do which would not only be of material benefit to them, but would make your daughter very happy. It cannot be done unless we can prove your innocence."

"Poor little Madaline," said the convict, quietly--"poor, pretty little girl!"

Lord Arleigh's whole soul revolted on hearing this man speak so of his fair, young wife. That this man, with heavy iron bars separating him, as though he were a wild animal, from the rest of the world, should call his wife "poor, pretty little Madaline."

"I would give," said Lord Arleigh, "a great deal to find that your conviction had been a mistake. I know circumstances of that kind will and do happen. Tell me honestly, is there any, even the least probability, of finding out anything to your advantage?"

"Well," replied Henry Dornham, "I am a ne'er-do-well by nature. I was an idle boy, an idle youth, and an idle man. I poached when I had a chance. I lived on my wife's earnings. I went to the bad as deliberately as any one in the world did, but I do not remember that I ever told a willful lie."

There passed through Lord Arleigh's mind a wish that the Duchess of Hazlewood might have heard this avowal.

"I do not remember," the man said again, "that I have ever