Cast Adrift

“LLOYD FREELING.”

Twice Edith read this letter through before a sign of emotion was visible. She looked about the room, down at herself, and again at the letter.

“Am I really awake?” she said, beginning to tremble. Then the glad but terrible truth grappled with her convictions, and through the wild struggle and antagonism, of feeling that shook her soul there shone into her face a joy so great that the pale features grew almost radiant.

“Innocent! innocent!” fell from her lips, over which crept a smile of ineffable love. But it faded out quickly, and left in its place a shadow of ineffable pain.

“Innocent! innocent!” she repeated, now clasping her hands and lifting her eyes heavenward. “Dear Lord and Saviour! My heart is full of thankfulness! Innocent! Oh, let it be made as clear as noonday! And my baby, Lord—oh, my baby, my baby! Give him back to me!”

She fell forward upon her bed, kneeling, her face hidden among the pillows, trembling and sobbing.

“Edith! Edith!” came the agitated voice of her father from without. She rose quickly, and opening the door, saw his pale, convulsed countenance.

“Quick! quick! Your mother!” and Mr. Dinneford turned and ran down stairs, she following. On reaching the dining-room, Edith found her mother lying on a sofa, with the servants about her in great excitement. Better than any one did she comprehend what she saw.

“Dead,” fell almost coldly from her lips.

“I have sent for Dr. Radcliffe. It may only be a fainting fit,” answered Mr. Dinneford.

Edith stood a little way off from her mother, as if held from personal contact by an invisible barrier, and looked upon her ashen face without any sign of emotion.

“Dead, and better so,” she said, in an undertone heard only by her father.

“My child! don’t, don’t!” exclaimed Mr. Dinneford in a deprecating whisper.

“Dead, and better so,” she repeated, firmly.

While the servants chafed the hands and feet of Mrs. Dinneford, and did what they could in their confused way to bring her back to life, Edith stood a little way off, apparently undisturbed by what she saw, and not once touching her mother’s body or offering a suggestion to the bewildered attendants.

When Dr. Radcliffe came and looked at Mrs. Dinneford, all saw by his countenance that he believed her dead. A careful examination proved the truth of his first impression. She was done with life in this world.

As to the cause of her death, the doctor, gathering what he could from her husband, pronounced it heart disease. The story told outside was this—so the doctor gave it, and so it was understood: Mrs. Dinneford was sitting at the table when her head was seen to sink forward, and before any one could get to her she was dead. It was not so stated to him by either Mr. Dinneford or Edith, but he was a prudent man, and careful of the good fame of his patients. Family affairs he held as sacred trusts. We’ll he knew that there had been a tragedy in this home—a tragedy for which he was in part, he feared, responsible; and he did not care to look into it too closely. But of all that was involved in this tragedy he really knew little. Social gossip had its guesses at the truth, often not very remote, and he was familiar with these, believing little or much as it suited him.

It is not surprising that Edith’s father, on seeing the letter of Lloyd Freeling, echoed his daughter’s words, “Better so!”

Not a tear was shed on the grave of Mrs. Dinneford. Husband and daughter saw her body carried forth and buried out of sight with a feeling of rejection and a sense of relief. Death had no power to soften their hearts toward her. Charity had no mantle broad enough to cover her wickedness; filial love was dead, and the good heart of her husband turned away at remembrance with a shudder of horror.

Yes, it was “better so!” They had no grief, but thankfulness, that she was dead.

On the morning after the funeral there came a letter from Havana addressed to Mr. Dinneford. It was from the man Freeling. In it he related circumstantially all the reader knows about the conspiracy to destroy Granger. The letter enclosed an affidavit made by Freeling, and duly attested by the American consul, in which he stated explicitly that all the forgeries were made by himself, and that George Granger was entirely ignorant of the character of the paper he had endorsed with the name of the firm.

Since the revelation made to Edith by Freeling’s letter to her mother, all the repressed love of years, never dead nor diminished, but only chained, held down, covered over, shook itself free from bonds and the wrecks and debris of crushed hopes. It filled her heart with an agony of fullness. Her first passionate impulse was to go to him and throw herself into his arms. But a chilling thought came with the impulse, and sent all the outgoing heart-beats back. She was no longer the wife of George Granger. In a weak hour she had yielded to the importunities of her father, and consented to an application for divorce. No, she was no longer the wife of George Granger. She had no right to go to him. If it were true that reason had been in part or wholly restored, would he not reject her with scorn? The very thought made her heart stand still. It would be more than she could bear.

CHAPTER XXIV

NO other result than the one that followed could have been hoped for. The strain upon Edith was too great. After the funeral of her mother mind and body gave way, and she passed several weeks in a half-unconscious state.

Two women, leading actors in this tragedy of life, met for the first time in over two years—Mrs. Hoyt, alias Bray, and Pinky Swett. It had not gone very well with either of them during that period. Pinky, as the reader knows, had spent the time in prison, and Mrs. Bray, who had also gone a step too far in her evil ways, was now hiding from the police under a different name from any heretofore assumed. They met, by what seemed an accident, on the street.

“Pinky!”

“Fan!”

Dropped from their lips in mutual surprise and pleasure. A little while they held each other’s hands, and looked into each other’s faces with keenly-searching, sinister eyes, one thought coming uppermost in the minds of both—the thought of that long-time-lost capital in trade, the cast-adrift baby.

From the street they went to Mrs. Bray’s hiding-place a small ill-furnished room in one of the suburbs of the city—and there took counsel together.

“What became of that baby?” was one of Mrs. Bray’s first questions.

“It’s all right,” answered Pinky.

“Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“And can you put your hand on it?”

“At any moment.”

“Not worth the trouble of looking after now,” said Mrs. Bray, assuming an indifferent manner.

“Why?” Pinky turned on her quickly.

“Oh, because the old lady is dead.”

“What old lady?”

“The grandmother.”

“When did she die?”

“Three or four weeks ago.”

“What was her name?” asked Pinky.

Mrs. Bray closed her lips tightly and shook her head.

“Can’t betray thatt secret,” she replied.

“Oh, just as you like;” and Pinky gave her head an impatient toss. “High sense of honor! Respect for the memory of a departed friend! But it won’t go down with me, Fan. We know each other too well. As for the baby—a pretty big one now, by the way, and as handsome a boy as you’ll find in all this city—he’s worth something to somebody, and I’m on that somebody’s track. There’s mother as well as a grandmother in the case, Fan.”

Mrs. Bray’s eyes flashed, and her face grew red with an excitement she could not hold back. Pinky watched her keenly.

“There’s somebody in this town to-day who would give thousands to get him,” she added, still keeping her eyes on her companion. “And as I was saying, I’m on that somebody’s track. You thought no one but you and Sal Long knew anything, and that when she died you had the secret all to yourself. But Sal didn’t keep mum about it.”

“Did she tell you anything?” demanded Mrs. Bray, thrown off her guard by Pinky’s last assertion.

“Enough for me to put this and that together and make it nearly all out,” answered Pinky, with great coolness. “I was close after the game when I got caught myself. But I’m on the track once more, and don’t mean to be thrown off. A link or two in the chain of evidence touching the parentage of this child, and I am all right. You have these missing links, and can furnish them if you will. If not, I am bound to find them. You know me, Fan. If I once set my heart on doing a thing, heaven and earth can’t stop me.”