No Name - Wilkie Collins (free e books to read online .TXT) 📗

Keeping her hand on Louisa’s shoulder, Magdalen seated herself again, and looked with unutterable bitterness of sorrow into the dying fire. “Oh,” she thought, “what happy women there are in the world! Wives who love their husbands! Mothers who are not ashamed to own their children! Are you quieter?” she asked, gently addressing Louisa once more. “Can you answer me, if I ask you something else? Where is the child?”

“The child is out at nurse.”

“Does the father help to support it?”

“He does all he can, ma’am.”

“What is he? Is he in service? Is he in a trade?”

“His father is a master-carpenter⁠—he works in his father’s yard.”

“If he has got work, why has he not married you?”

“It is his father’s fault, ma’am⁠—not his. His father has no pity on us. He would be turned out of house and home if he married me.”

“Can he get no work elsewhere?”

“It’s hard to get good work in London, ma’am. There are so many in London⁠—they take the bread out of each other’s mouths. If we had only had the money to emigrate, he would have married me long since.”

“Would he marry you if you had the money now?”

“I am sure he would, ma’am. He could get plenty of work in Australia, and double and treble the wages he gets here. He is trying hard, and I am trying hard, to save a little toward it⁠—I put by all I can spare from my child. But it is so little! If we live for years to come, there seems no hope for us. I know I have done wrong every way⁠—I know I don’t deserve to be happy. But how could I let my child suffer?⁠—I was obliged to go to service. My mistress was hard on me, and my health broke down in trying to live by my needle. I would never have deceived anybody by a false character, if there had been another chance for me. I was alone and helpless, ma’am; and I can only ask you to forgive me.”

“Ask better women than I am,” said Magdalen, sadly. “I am only fit to feel for you, and I do feel for you with all my heart. In your place I should have gone into service with a false character, too. Say no more of the past⁠—you don’t know how you hurt me in speaking of it. Talk of the future. I think I can help you, and do you no harm. I think you can help me, and do me the greatest of all services in return. Wait, and you shall hear what I mean. Suppose you were married⁠—how much would it cost for you and your husband to emigrate?”

Louisa mentioned the cost of a steerage passage to Australia for a man and his wife. She spoke in low, hopeless tones. Moderate as the sum was, it looked like unattainable wealth in her eyes.

Magdalen started in her chair, and took the girl’s hand once more.

“Louisa!” she said, earnestly; “if I gave you the money, what would you do for me in return?”

The proposal seemed to strike Louisa speechless with astonishment. She trembled violently, and said nothing. Magdalen repeated her words.

“Oh, ma’am, do you mean it?” said the girl. “Do you really mean it?”

“Yes,” replied Magdalen; “I really mean it. What would you do for me in return?”

“Do?” repeated Louisa. “Oh what is there I would not do!” She tried to kiss her mistress’s hand; but Magdalen would not permit it. She resolutely, almost roughly, drew her hand away.

“I am laying you under no obligation,” she said. “We are serving each other⁠—that is all. Sit quiet, and let me think.”

For the next ten minutes there was silence in the room. At the end of that time Magdalen took out her watch and held it close to the grate. There was just firelight enough to show her the hour. It was close on six o’clock.

“Are you composed enough to go downstairs and deliver a message?” she asked, rising from her chair as she spoke to Louisa again. “It is a very simple message⁠—it is only to tell the boy that I want a cab as soon as he can get me one. I must go out immediately. You shall know why later in the evening. I have much more to say to you; but there is no time to say it now. When I am gone, bring your work up here, and wait for my return. I shall be back before bedtime.”

Without another word of explanation, she hurriedly lit a candle and withdrew into the bedroom to put on her bonnet and shawl.

II

Between nine and ten o’clock the same evening, Louisa, waiting anxiously, heard the long-expected knock at the house door. She ran downstairs at once and let her mistress in.

Magdalen’s face was flushed. She showed far more agitation on returning to the house than she had shown on leaving it. “Keep your place at the table,” she said to Louisa, impatiently; “but lay aside your work. I want you to attend carefully to what I am going to say.”

Louisa obeyed. Magdalen seated herself at the opposite side of the table, and moved the candles, so as to obtain a clear and uninterrupted view of her servant’s face.

“Have you noticed a respectable elderly woman,” she began, abruptly, “who has been here once or twice in the last fortnight to pay me a visit?”

“Yes, ma’am; I think I let her in the second time she came. An elderly person named Mrs. Attwood?”

“That is the person I mean. Mrs. Attwood is Mr. Loscombe’s housekeeper; not the housekeeper at his private residence, but the housekeeper at his offices in Lincoln’s Inn. I promised to go and drink tea with her some evening this week, and I have been tonight. It is strange of me, is it not, to be on these familiar terms with a woman in Mrs. Attwood’s situation?”

Louisa made no answer in words. Her face spoke for her: she could hardly avoid thinking it strange.

“I