CHAPTER XIA RAY OF HOPE
When Mrs. Le Breton kissed Eweretta, it had been for her dead child’s sake, the child she had loved with all the passion of her soul, but with that spontaneous action a flood of repentance had surged up within her. She recalled with what sweetness Eweretta had begged to share what she had with her half-sister. She remembered, too, how she had hated Eweretta for being in a position to patronize her poor, defrauded child—hated her for her health, her education, her mental vigor.
But now, seated on the edge of the bed, she looked upon the sleeping face with pity and something like tenderness.
Why had she in the bitterness of her sorrow and resentment consented to be a party to this vile plot against an innocent girl?
What was done could not be undone! But could it?
She shuddered as she thought of Thomas Alvin.
He was an outcast, a pariah. He had been like Jonah, thrown overboard because of the ill fortune that dogged his steps. Nothing he touched ever prospered.
Possibly the idea gained in childhood that he was born unlucky had helped to make him what he was. His hand was against everyone and everyone’s hand was against him. He had led her, Andrée Le Breton, into crime.
She wept as she thought of the little shack where she had laboriously mended shoes. She wished herself back there, if only she could wipe the stain from her soul!
Eweretta moved, and presently opened her eyes.
It was not a hard face she saw now.
“I have been very cruel to you, Eweretta,” Mrs. Le Breton whispered. “I am going to be kind now. Forgive me!”
Eweretta, startled, chiefly because she was called by her own name, believed herself dreaming. She sat up, and stared at the woman seated upon her bed. At last she realized that Mrs. Le Breton was friendly.
“Oh!” cried Eweretta, “thank God! you will help me!”
“All I can, child,” answered the woman sadly. “But you know what your uncle is! Eweretta, I am afraid of him!”
Eweretta slipped from the bed and placed an arm about her companion. “I am so sorry for you too,” she said softly. “You have suffered too.”
“I have made you suffer,” answered the woman, her tears flowing afresh. “My child was your father’s child as well as you. He left us in poverty, while you had everything. I hated you for it. To-night I don’t hate you.”
There was a sound of heavy steps upon the stairs.
Both women shuddered. The steps passed along the landing; a door was opened and shut.
Both women breathed again.
“You won’t betray me;” whispered Mrs. Le Breton. “Ifheknew of what I have been saying to you to-nighthe would kill me!”
“Can’t we go away together?” whispered Eweretta excitedly. “Philip would take you too. I know he would. He is so near! Oh, Mrs. Le Breton, let us go—go now! Let Uncle Thomas keep the money. What does money matter?”
Mrs. Le Breton shook her head.
“Hewould find us. He would kill us,” she said, fear distorting her face. “And if you go alone, he will take vengeance onme! Oh! Eweretta! remember the rough life he has led! He has been where there is no law, where taking human life was just no more than killing a wolf!”
Eweretta recognized the truth of her companion’s statement. Awful stories had reached her from time to time, when she was at home, of murder unredressed among the lawless lot her uncle had at one time been with. She remembered her father saying after one of these tragedies, “I only hope your Uncle Thomas has not murder on his soul!” An Englishman whom Thomas Alvin had induced to take up land with him had mysteriously disappeared. The two men lived together during one summer in a shack they had built in the prairie twenty miles from Broadview. There was no other habitation within nine miles.
The Englishman disappeared. Thomas Alvin sold the land and the stock and went to Chicago for a year afterwards.
“Our only hope is that your uncle may die, Eweretta,” said Mrs. Le Breton, “then I would speak and tell the truth, and you would come into your own.”
“Butmustwe wait till then!” gasped poor Eweretta. “Am I to go on here a prisoner for years, within reach of my dear Philip! Ah, Mrs. Le Breton, Philip might marry someone else—while I—oh!surelywe need not wait for Uncle Thomas to die! He may live for years and years!”
“He won’t,” answered Mrs. Le Breton enigmatically.
“But he is so strong and well,” persisted Eweretta. “He will go on living.”
“He won’t,” repeated Mrs. Le Breton, and the wicked look came back to her face. “He has begun to drink.”
The candle had burnt down unobserved and now, with one leap of brighter light, sank and went out.
“Get to bed,” said Mrs. Le Breton, “I will go now. From this time your life shall be made bearable. My last word to you is, Hope!”
Eweretta looked once more from her window towards the bungalow. The lights were out. Then she undressed briskly in the dark.
She felt herself now that she was not drugged, and could think clearly. Hope had at last come to her, though the outlook was still so dark. Mrs. Le Breton had become her friend, which to the poor girl seemed nothing short of a miracle. Mattie was her friend. Surely help would come now!
But what had Mrs. Le Breton meant by saying that Uncle Thomas would not live long?
Had he some mysterious disease that did not show itself outwardly? or would drink kill him? He only drank heavily occasionally.
Eweretta did not meditate escaping now. It was true that did she do so her uncle might revenge himself on Mrs. Le Breton. This woman had wronged her deeply, but she was repentant. Eweretta could not bring her to a tragic end. Her life since she had known John Alvin had been a tragedy.
Oh, why had her father so sinned? He had beena loving father to her. He had been so different from Uncle Thomas. How could he have so cruelly wronged a woman as he had wronged Mrs. Le Breton? How could he have turned his back on Aimée?
All this Eweretta felt she would never understand.
What she did understand was that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.
She lay upon her bed, trying to gather up the lost threads of a lost year, a year in which she seemed to have always lived a dream existence, but the dream had been troubled always.
She remembered some incidents with extraordinary vividness, but others were vague and unreliable. All were disconnected.
Of the voyage to Liverpool from Montreal she could recall nothing except the boom of the water against the berth where she lay.
One of the things she remembered most distinctly was seeing a girl exactly like herself lying in a coffin, and being told that it was Eweretta, and that she was Aimée.
She remembered, too, that her uncle had struck her once, because she would not call Mrs. Le Breton “mother.”
It was during the last days when she had starved herself that her reasoning faculties had once more asserted themselves, and she had come to the conclusion that she was constantly drugged.
She knew that always, whether dazed or not, she had known that she was Eweretta, and not Aimée, and had persistently asserted the fact. Only within the last days, when the action of the drug had been stopped, had she understood fully the wrong that had been done her, and the reason for it.
Now, thinking hard in the darkness, she saw thatshe must act warily if she was ever to reinstate herself.
Uncle Thomas must not find out she knew.
She had made a mistake in the appeal she had made to him. But he had been under the influence of drink at the time and to-morrow would probably know nothing about it.
To-morrow she would go about in a dazed fashion and mislead him.
Philip was near. There was at once joy and pain in the knowledge of that.
It might be that without any action of hers he would find out.
With this thought she fell asleep.