A Secret Inheritance. Volume 1 of 3

"Did she send you for me?"

"Yes, or I should not be here."

"She is very ill?"

"She is not well."

The grudging words angered me, and I motioned the woman to precede me to the house. She led me to my mother's bedside.

I had never been allowed so free an intercourse with my mother as upon this occasion. Mrs. Fortress did not leave the room, but she retired behind the curtains of the bed, and did not interrupt our conversation.

"You are ill, mother?"

"I am dying, Gabriel."

I was prepared for it, and I had expected to see in her some sign of the shadow of death. When the dread visitant stands by the side of a mortal, there should be some indication of its presence. Here there was none. My mother's face retained the wild beauty which had ever distinguished it. All that I noted was that her eyes occasionally wandered around, with a look in them which expressed a kind of fear and pity for herself.

"You speak of dying, mother," I said. "I hope you will live for many years yet."

"Why do you hope it?" she asked. "Has my life given you joy-has it sweetened the currents of yours?"

There was a strange wistfulness in her voice, a note of wailing against an inexorable fate. Her words brought before me again the picture of the mother and her child I had seen that day in the woods. Joy! Sweetness! No, my mother had given me but little of these. It was so dim as to be scarcely a memory that when I was a little babe she would press me tenderly to her bosom, would sing to me, would coo over me, as must surely be the fashion of loving mothers with their offspring. It is with no idea of casting reproach upon her that I say she bequeathed to me no legacy of motherly tenderness.

We conversed for nearly an hour. Our conversation was intermittent; there were long pauses in it, and wanderings from one subject to another. This was occasioned by my mother's condition; it was not possible for her to keep her mind upon one theme, and to exhaust it.

"You looked among your father's papers, Gabriel?"

"Yes, mother."

"What did you find?" She seemed to shrink from me as she asked this question.

"Only his Will, and a few unimportant papers."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"Gabriel," she said, presently, "I wish you to promise me that you will make, in years to come, a faithful record of the circumstances of your life, and of your secret thoughts and promptings." She paused, and when she spoke again appeared to lose sight of the promise she wished to exact from me. "You are sure your father left no special papers for you to read after his death?"

"I found none," I said, much moved at this iteration of a mystery which was evidently weighing heavily upon her.

"Perhaps," she murmured, "he thought silence kindest and wisest."

I strove to keep her mind upon this theme, for I was profoundly agitated by her strange words, but I found it impossible. Her hands moved feebly about the coverlet, her eyes wandered still more restlessly around. My cunningest endeavours failed to woo her back to the subject; her speech became so wild and whirling that I was not ungrateful to Mrs. Fortress when she emerged from behind the curtains, and led me firmly out of the room. I turned on the threshold to look at my mother; her face was towards me, but she did not recognise me.

On the evening of the following day I was walking moodily about the grounds between the house and the cottage, thinking of the interview, and reproaching myself for want of feeling. Was it that I was deficient in humanity that I did not find myself overwhelmed with grief by the conviction that my mother was dying? No thought but of her critical condition should have held place in my mind, and the weight of my genuine sorrow should have impressed itself upon surrounding nature. It was not so; my grief was trivial, artificial, and I bitterly accused myself. But if natural love would not come from the prompting of my heart, I could at least perform a duty. My mother should not be left to draw her last breath with not one of her kin by her bedside.

I entered the house. In the passage which led to my mother's room I was confronted by Mrs. Fortress. She had heard my footsteps, and came out to meet me.

"What do you want, Mr. Gabriel?"

"I must see my mother."

"You cannot; It would hasten her end."

"Has she not asked for me?"

"No; if she wished to see you she would have sent for you."

It was a truthful indication of the position; I had never gone unbidden to my mother's room.

We spoke in low tones. My voice was tremulous, Mrs. Fortress's was cold and firm.

"If not now," I said, "I must see her to-morrow."

"You shall see her," said Mrs. Fortress, "within the next twenty-four hours."

I passed the evening in my cottage, trying to read. I could not fix my mind upon the page. I indulged in weird fancies, and once, putting out the lights, cried:

"If the Angel of Death is near, let him appear!"

There was no sign, and I sat in the dark till I heard a tapping at my door. I opened it, and heard Mrs. Fortress's voice.

"You can see your mother," she said.

I accompanied her to the sick room, the bedside of my mother. She was dead.

"It is a happy release," Mrs. Fortress said.

CHAPTER V

This event, which set me completely free, caused a repetition of certain formalities. The doctor visited me, and regaled me with doleful words and sighs. In the course of conversation I endeavoured to extract from him some information as to the peculiar form of illness from which my mother had been so long a sufferer, but all the satisfaction I could obtain from him was that she had always been "weak, very weak," and always "low, very low," and that she had for years been "gradually wasting away." She suffered from "sleeplessness," she suffered from "nerves," her pulse was too quick, her heart was too slow, and so on, and so on. His speech was full of feeble medical platitudes, and threw no light whatever upon the subject.

"In such cases," he said, "all we can do is to sustain, to prescribe strengthening things, to stimulate, to invigorate, to give tone to the constitution. I have remarked many times that the poor lady might go off at any moment. She had the best of nurses, the best of nurses! Mrs. Fortress is a most exemplary woman. Between you and me she understood your mother's ailments almost as well as I did."

"If she did not understand them a great deal better," I thought, "she must have known very little indeed."

In my conversations with the lawyer Mrs. Fortress's name also cropped up.

"A most remarkable woman," he said, "strong-minded, self-willed, with iron nerves, and at the same time exceedingly conscientious and attentive to her duties. Your lamented father entertained the highest opinion of her, and always mentioned her name with respect. The kind of woman that ought to have been born a man. Very tenacious, very reserved-a very rare specimen indeed. Altogether an exception. By the way, I saw her a few minutes ago, and she asked me to inform you that she did not consider she had any longer authority in the house, and that she would soon be leaving."

At my desire the lawyer undertook for a while the supervision of affairs, and sent a married couple to Rosemullion to attend to domestic matters.

Three days after my mother's funeral Mrs. Fortress came to wish me good-bye. Although there had ever been a barrier between us I could not fail to recognise that she had faithfully performed her duties, and I invited her to sit down. She took a seat, and waited for me to speak. She was wonderfully composed and self-possessed, and had such perfect control over herself that I believe she would have sat there in silence for hours had I not been the first to speak.

"You are going away for good, Mrs. Fortress?" I said.

"Yes, sir," she answered, "for good."