CHAPTER VIIITHE KISS
In coming to Gissing, Thomas Alvin had not had the remotest idea that the Barrimores lived at Hastings. It had been in London that his brother and Eweretta had met Philip, and it had been to the Savage Club that the communication of Eweretta’s supposed death and burial had been sent. Thomas Alvin had heard his brother say that Philip was a member of that club.
Gissing had been fixed upon as a residence because of its loneliness, and because it was within reach of Hastings, and Thomas Alvin had years ago visited that watering-place (when in partnership with a man who afterwards threw him over) and taken a great liking to it.
His plot to possess himself of his niece’s fortune had succeeded admirably up to now.
Kept under the influence of drugs, Eweretta had been very little trouble.
But lately she had refused her food, and had had terrifying sane moments in which she had outbursts of denunciation.
Thomas Alvin regretted the occasions when he had exercised physical cruelty; strange to say, from pity for the defrauded and outraged girl, but also because he was superstitious. To his curiously constructed conscience, it had seemed only a clever business transaction to get hold of Eweretta’s fortune. Moreover, did he not permit her to share it? Butto treat the girl with cruelty was monstrous, and might bring disaster on him. He had never treated her badly when sober. Ill-luck had followed him all his life, as being the thirteenth child of his father, and he was ever watching for some new calamity to befall him.
On each occasion on which he had inflicted cruelty on his niece he had been seized with terror, and had flown to the brandy bottle again. He was not a drunkard, but at these times he got drunk.
Drink is not a Canadian vice, and Thomas Alvin had passed most of his life in Canada.
The thing he feared most, after a glass or two of the fiery fluid, was the spirit of his brother John, Eweretta’s father—the one member of the large family who had succeeded in making a fortune.
Thomas devoutly believed in ghosts. He never forgot a scene at Klondyke, where a murdered man had shown himself in the light of the camp fire. There had been men there who, though terrified enough at the time, had declared that the ghost was the man himself—alive, though he had been left for dead. But Thomas had always been convinced it was a spirit they had seen.
When Mrs. Le Breton returned from Hastings, she found Thomas just awake from his drunken sleep, and shivering in the dark dining-room, where supper had been laid while he slept.
She put down a parcel and lit the lamp.
Then she saw him and understood.
“I am glad you have come,” he whimpered. “I saw John. I am sure I saw John—”
“Drink,” interrupted Mrs. Le Breton. “If you are going to take tothat, we are lost.”
“I don’t mean to,” the man answered penitently.(He was in that foolish state which exists when a man is recovering, but not yet recovered, from an alcoholic excess.)
“And don’t ill-use the poor girl again either,” went on Mrs. Le Breton virtuously.
Mrs. Le Breton’s cruelty was of a more refined description, and covered up by kind words and attempted caresses—attempted only, because always repulsed.
“I swear I won’t strike her again,” whimpered Alvin. “I hate myself for it.”
“And don’t swear, lest you add the breaking of your oath to your other sins. What we’ve got to do is to stick to our story, stick to the girl, and stick to the money. We must have no scandals. That would be to court inquiries. Do you know that Pickett’s man who gave me a lift in the trap to Hastings asked me if we kept a wild animal in the enclosed wood. He said his master had heard strange, unearthly sounds from our place. You know what that was. There must be no more of it.”
This piece of information went far towards thoroughly sobering Thomas Alvin.
“What a fool I am!” he muttered. “What a fool I have always been! I was born cursed! I shall die a violent death.”
Mrs. Le Breton jeered.
“Then it won’t be by your own hand,” she told him. “You are too much of a coward.”
He looked at her with fierce eyes in which hate shone.
“It was for calling methatthat Istruckthe girl,” he said.
“But you daren’t strikeme,” she reminded him. “You only dare attack what can’t defend itself.”
From which conversation the reader will gather that there was not much affection between the plotters.
Mrs. Le Breton, however, was not a creature to be cowed by a bully. Misery had taught her courage, while it had made her cruel. She had not always been what she was now.
She had been a gentle, loving woman once, before John Alvin had come across her path.
A pretty young widow, earning her living by hard work, her heart had responded only too readily to the charm of John Alvin. She had fallen a victim to him and was ruined before she discovered that he had a wife.
John Alvin’s legitimate and illegitimate daughters had been born near about the same time.
John Alvin had forsaken the woman he had wronged, and left her to her fate.
Aimée had been born a beautiful child, but weak-minded.
For eighteen years Mrs. Le Breton had supported herself and her afflicted child by mending shoes! She had found that so she could best make a living, and at the same time remain at home. Home? It had merely been a two-roomed “shack.”
For eighteen years she had nursed her hatred against John Alvin—John Alvin, who had grown rich, and had a house in Montreal, and could send his daughter Eweretta to a fine school, and could take her to visit London.
Mrs. Le Breton kept herself informed of the movements of John Alvin. She rejoiced when his wife died. She also nursed for a brief space the hope that then he would remember the mother of his other child and do her justice.
With infinite difficulty she journeyed with herdaughter to Montreal to be spurned by John Alvin, and sent back to her boot-mending.
It was then she had seen Eweretta and been struck by the appalling likeness she bore to Aimée.
It was at the death of John Alvin that Mrs. Le Breton’s hopes once more rose.
Surely he would leave something out of his riches for his afflicted daughter!
She sought Thomas Alvin, who was at that time at Regina. He, too, had had hopes of getting something under his brother’s will, and was furious because all was left to Eweretta.
But at her death it was all to come to him.
Aimée was at that time dying, and Thomas Alvin conceived the idea of inducing Eweretta (an easy matter with the tender-hearted girl) to come and visit her half-sister, and befriend her, and then substitute one sister for the other, and claim the money.
It had been so easy!
The dead girl was dressed in Eweretta’s fine clothes, while Eweretta herself was heavily drugged, and dressed in her half-sister’s poor garments. No one doubted that it was indeed Eweretta who was buried at Qu’Appelle.
So Philip Barrimore heard of the death of John Alvin and of Eweretta at the same time. As we know, he journeyed to Canada and saw the grave where his beloved one was supposed to lie.
But no one could tell him what had become of Aimée and her mother.
And now, within a year, Philip had by the merest chance come to be a near neighbor of those he sought! But little did he dream that the girl who passed for Mrs. Le Breton’s daughter was his own lost Eweretta.
After supper Mrs. Le Breton left Thomas Alvin to himself and went to look at Eweretta. She discovered that the girl was asleep upon her bed, fully dressed. She imagined that Thomas Alvin had left the door of the room unlocked.
Eweretta was apparently dreaming a pleasant dream, for a smile played about her lips.
So pale was she, that she looked like a waxen figure more than a living girl.
Mrs. Le Breton stooped the candle over her, and looked earnestly at her. Then her mouth quivered; tears chased each other down her cheeks.
She was so like Aimée!
The old dead womanliness woke in her at that moment, and with an irresistible impulse she leaned over and softly kissed the pale face.