“Will you put in writing, an obligation to pay me one thousand dollars in case I bring the child and prove its identity?”
“No; but I will give you my word of honor that this sum shall be placed in your hands whenever you produce the child.”
Mrs. Bray remained silent for a considerable time, then, as if satisfied, arose, saying,
“You will hear from me by to-morrow or the day after, at farthest. Good-morning.”
As she was moving toward the door Mr. Dinneford said,
“Let me have your name and residence, madam.”
The woman quickened her steps, partly turning her head as she did so, and said, with a sinister curl of the lip,
“No, I thank you, sir.”
In the next moment she was gone.
CHAPTER XXV
NOTHING of all this was communicated to Edith. After a few weeks of prostration strength came slowly back to mind and body, and with returning strength her interest in her old work revived. Her feet went down again into lowly ways, and her hands took hold of suffering.
Immediately on receipt of Freeling’s letter and affidavit, Mr. Dinneford had taken steps to procure a pardon for George Granger. It came within a few days after the application was made, and the young man was taken from the asylum where he had been for three years.
Mr. Dinneford went to him with Freeling’s affidavit and the pardon, and placing them in his hands, watched him closely to see the effect they would produce. He found him greatly changed in appearance, looking older by many years. His manner was quiet, as that of one who had learned submission after long suffering. But his eyes were clear and steady, and without sign of mental aberration. He read Freeling’s affidavit first, folded it in an absent kind of way, as if he were dreaming, reopened and read it through again. Then Mr. Dinneford saw a strong shiver pass over him; he became pale and slightly convulsed. His face sunk in his hands, and he sat for a while struggling with emotions that he found it almost impossible to hold back.
When he looked up, the wild struggle was over.
“It is too late,” he said.
“No, George, it is never too late,” replied Mr. Dinneford. “You have suffered a cruel wrong, but in the future there are for you, I doubt not, many compensations.”
He shook his head in a dreary way, murmuring,
“I have lost too much.”
“Nothing that may not be restored. And in all you have not lost a good conscience.”
“No, thank God!” answered the young man, with a sudden flush in his face. “But for that anchor to my soul, I should have long ago drifted out to sea a helpless wreck. No thank God! I have not lost a good conscience.”
“You have not yet read the other paper,” said Mr. Dinneford. “It is your pardon.”
“Pardon!” An indignant flash came into Granger’s eyes. “Oh, sir, that hurts too deeply. Pardon! I am not a criminal.”
“Falsely so regarded in the eyes of the law, but now proved to be innocent, and so expressed by the governor. It is not a pardon in any sense of remission, but a declaration of innocence and sorrow for the undeserved wrongs you have suffered.”
“It is well,” he answered, gloomily—“the best that can be done; and I should be thankful.”
“You cannot be more deeply thankful than I am, George.” Mr. Dinneford spoke with much feeling. “Let us bury this dreadful past out of our sight, and trust in God for a better future. You are free again, and your innocence shall, so far as I have power to do it, be made as clear as noonday. You are at liberty to depart from here at once. Will you go with me now?”
Granger lifted a half-surprised look to Mr. Dinneford’s face.
“Thank you,” he replied, after a few moments’ thought. “I shall never forget your kindness, but I prefer remaining here for a few days, until I can confer with my friends and make some decision as to the future.”
Granger’s manner grew reserved, almost embarrassed. Mr. Dinneford was not wrong in his impression of the cause. How could he help thinking of Edith, who, turning against him with the rest, had accepted the theory of guilt and pronounced her sentence upon him, hardest of all to bear? So it appeared to him, for he had nothing but the hard fact before him that she had applied for and obtained a divorce.
Yes, it was the thought of Edith that drew Granger back and covered him with reserve. What more could Mr. Dinneford say? He had not considered all the hearings of this unhappy case; but now that he remembered the divorce, he began to see, how full of embarrassment it was, and how delicate the relation he bore to this unhappy victim of his wife’s dreadful crime.
What could he say for Edith? Nothing! He knew that her heart had never turned itself away from this man, though she had, under a pressure she was not strong enough to resist, turned her back upon him and cast aside his dishonored name, thus testifying to the world that she believed him base and criminal. If he should speak of her, would not the young man answer with indignant scorn?
“Give me the address of your friends, and I will call upon them immediately,” said Mr. Dinneford, replying, after a long silence, to Granger’s last remark. “I am here to repair, to any extent that in me lies the frightful wrongs you have suffered. I shall make your cause my own, and never rest until every false tarnish shall be wiped from your name. In honor and conscience I am bound to this.”
Looking at the young man intently, he saw a grateful response in the warmer color that broke into his face and in the moisture that filled his eyes.
“I would be base if I were not thankful, Mr. Dinneford,” Granger replied. “But you cannot put yourself in my place, cannot know what I have suffered, cannot comprehend the sense of wrong and cruel rejection that has filled my soul with the very gall of bitterness. To be cast out utterly, suddenly and without warning from heaven into hell, and for no evil thought or act! Ah, sir! you do not understand.”
“It was a frightful ordeal, George,” answered Mr. Dinneford, laying his hand on Granger with the tenderness of a father. “But, thank God! it is over. You have stood the terrible heat, and now, coming out of the furnace, I shall see to it that not even the smell of fire remain upon your garments.”
Still the young man could not be moved from his purpose to remain at the asylum until he had seen and conferred with his friends, in whose hands Mr. Dinneford placed the governor’s pardon and the affidavit of Lloyd Freeling setting forth his innocence.
Mrs. Bray did not call on Mr. Dinneford, as she had promised. She had quarreled with Pinky Swett, as the reader will remember, and in a fit of blind anger thrust her from the room. But in the next moment she remembered that she did not know where the girl lived, and if she lost sight of her now, might not again come across her for weeks or months. So putting on her hat and cloak hurriedly, she waited until she heard Pinky going down stairs, and then came out noiselessly, and followed her into the street. She had to be quick in her movements, for Pinky, hot with anger, was dashing off at a rapid speed. For three or four blocks Mrs. Bray kept her in view; but there being only a few persons in the street, she had to remain at a considerable distance behind, so as not to attract her attention. Suddenly, she lost sight of Pinky. She had looked back on hearing a noise in the street; turning again, she could see nothing of the girl. Hurrying forward to the corner which Pinky had in all probability turned, Mrs. Bray looked eagerly up and down, but to her disappointment Pinky was not in sight.
“Somewhere here. I thought it was farther off,” said Mrs. Bray to herself. “It’s too bad that I should have lost sight of her.”
She stood irresolute for a little while, then walked down one of the blocks and back on the other side. Halfway down, a small street or alley divided the block.
“It’s in there, no doubt,” said Mrs. Bray, speaking to herself again. On the corner was a small shop in which notions and trimmings were sold. Going into this, she asked for some trifling articles, and while looking over them drew the woman who kept the shop into conversation.
“What kind of people live in this little street?” she inquired, in a half-careless tone.
The woman smiled as she answered, with a slight toss of the head,
“Oh, all kinds.”
“Good, bad and indifferent?”
“Yes, white sheep and black.”
“So I thought. The black sheep will get in. You can’t keep ‘em out.”
“No, and ‘tisn’t much use trying,” answered the shop-keeper, with a levity of manner not unmarked by Mrs. Bray, who said,
“The black sheep have to live as well as the white ones.”
“Just so. You hit the nail there.”
“And I suppose you find their money as good as that of the whitest?”
“Oh yes.”
“And quite as freely spent?”
“As to that,” answered the woman, who was inclined to be talkative and gossipy, “we make more out of the black sheep than out of the white ones. They don’t higgle so about prices. Not that we have two prices, but you see they don’t try to beat us down, and never stop to worry about the cost of a thing if they happen to fancy it. They look and buy, and there’s the end of it.”
“I understand,” remarked Mrs. Bray, with a familiar nod. “It may be wicked to say so; but if I kept a store like this, I’d rather have the sinners for customers than the saints.”
She had taken a seat at the counter; and now, leaning forward upon her arms and looking at the shop-woman in a pleasant, half-confidential way, said,
“You know everybody about here?”
“Pretty much.”
“The black sheep as well as the white?”
“As customers.”
“Of course; that’s all I mean,” was returned. “I’d be sorry if you knew them in any other way—some of them, at least.” Then, after a pause, “Do you know a girl they call Pinky?”
“I may know her, but not by that name. What kind of a looking person is she?”
“A tall, bold-faced, dashing, dare-devil sort of a girl, with a snaky look in her eyes. She wears a pink hat with a white feather.”
“Yes, I think I have seen some one like that, but she’s not been around here long.”
“When did you see her last?”
“If it’s the same one you mean, I saw her go by here not ten minutes ago. She lives somewhere down the alley.”
“Do you know the house?”
“I do not; but it can be found, no doubt. You called her Pinky.”
“Yes. Her name is Pinky Swett.”
“O-h! o-h!” ejaculated the shop-woman, lifting her eyebrows in a surprised way. “Why, that’s the girl the police were after. They said she’d run off with somebody’s child.”
“Did they arrest her?” asked Mrs. Bray, repressing, as far as possible, all excitement.
“They took her off once or twice, I believe, but didn’t make anything out of her. At any rate, the child was not found. It belonged, they said, to a rich up-town family that the girl was trying to black-mail. But I don’t see how that could be.”
“The child isn’t about here?”
“Oh dear, no! If it was, it would have been found long before this, for the police are hunting around sharp. If it’s all as they say, she’s got it hid somewhere else.”
While Mrs. Bray talked with the shop-woman, Pinky, who had made a hurried call at her room, only a hundred yards away, was going as fast as a street-car could take her to a distant part of the city. On leaving the car at the corner of a narrow, half-deserted street, in which the only sign of life was a child or two at play in the snow and a couple of goats lying on a cellar-door, she walked for half the distance of a block, and then turned into a court lined on both sides with small, ill-conditioned houses, not half of them tenanted. Snow and ice blocked the little road-way, except where a narrow path had been cut along close to the houses.
Without knocking, Pinky entered one of these poor tenements. As she pushed open the door, a woman who was crouching down before a small stove, on which something was cooking, started up with a look of surprise that changed to one of anxiety and fear the moment she recognized her visitor.
“Is Andy all right?” cried Pinky, alarm in her face.
The woman tried to stammer out something, but did not make herself understood. At this, Pinky, into whose eyes flashed a fierce light, caught her by the wrists in a grip that almost crushed the bones.
“Out with it! where is Andy?”
Still the frightened woman could not speak.
“If that child isn’t here, I’ll murder you!” said Pinky, now white with anger, tightening her grasp.
At this, with a desperate effort, the woman flung her off, and catching up a long wooden bench, raised it over her head.
“If there’s to be any murder going on,” she said, recovering her powers of speech, “I’ll take the first hand! As for the troublesome brat, he’s gone. Got out of the window and climbed down the spout. Wonder he wasn’t killed. Did fall—I don’t know how far—and must have hurt himself, for I heard a noise as if something heavy had dropped in the yard, but thought it was next door. Half an hour afterward, in going up stairs and opening the door of the room where I kept him locked in, I found it empty and the window open. That’s the whole story. I ran out and looked everywhere, but he was off. And now, if the murder is to come, I’m going to be in first.”
And she still kept the long wooden bench poised above her head.
Pinky saw a dangerous look in the woman’s eyes.
“Put that thing down,” she cried, “and don’t be a fool. Let me see;” and she darted past the woman and ran up stairs. She found the window of Andy’s prison open and the print of his little fingers on the snow-covered sill outside, where he had held on before dropping to the ground, a distance of many feet. There was no doubt now in her mind as to the truth of the woman’s story. The child had made his escape.
“Have you been into all the neighbors’ houses?” asked Pinky as she came down hastily.
“Into some, but not all,” she replied.
“How long is it since he got away?”
“More than two hours.”
“And you’ve been sticking down here, instead of ransacking every hole and corner in the neighborhood. I can hardly keep my hands off of you.”
The woman was on the alert. Pinky saw this, and did not attempt to put her threat into execution. After pouring out her wrath in a flood of angry invectives, she went out and began a thorough search of the neighborhood, going into every house for a distance of three or four blocks in all directions. But she could neither find the child nor get the smallest trace of him. He had dropped out of sight, so far as she was concerned, as completely as if he had fallen into the sea.
CHAPTER XXVI
DAY after day Mr. Dinneford waited for the woman who was to restore the child of Edith, but she did not come. Over a week elapsed, but she neither called nor sent him a sign or a word. He dared not speak about this to Edith. She was too weak in body and mind for any further suspense or strain.
Drew Hall had been nearly thrown down again by the events of that Christmas day. The hand of a little child was holding him fast to a better life; but when that hand was torn suddenly away from his grasp, he felt the pull of evil habits, the downward drift of old currents. His steps grew weak, his knees trembled. But God did not mean that he should be left alone. He had reached down to him through the hand of a little child, had lifted him up and led him into a way of safety; and now that this small hand, the soft, touch of which had gone to his heart and stirred him with old memories, sad and sweet and holy, had dropped away from him, and he seemed to be losing his hold of heaven, God sent him, in Mr. Dinneford, an angel with a stronger hand. There were old associations that held these men together. They had been early and attached friends, and this meeting, after many years of separation, under such strange circumstances, and with a common fear and anxiety at heart, could not but have the effect of arousing in the mind of Mr. Dinneford the deepest concern for the unhappy man. He saw the new peril into which he was thrown by the loss of Andy, and made it his first business to surround him with all possible good and strengthening influences. So the old memories awakened by the coming of Andy did not fade out and lose their power over the man. He had taken hold of the good past again, and still held to it with the tight grasp of one conscious of danger.
“We shall find the child—no fear of that,” Mr. Dinneford would say to him over and over again, trying to comfort his own heart as well, as the days went by and no little Andy could be found. “The police have the girl under the sharpest surveillance, and she cannot baffle them much longer.”
George Granger left the asylum with his friends, and dropped out of sight. He did not show himself in the old places nor renew old associations. He was too deeply hurt. The disaster had been too great for any attempt on his part at repairing the old dwelling-places of his life. His was not what we call a strong nature, but he was susceptible of very deep impressions. He was fine and sensitive, rather than strong. Rejected by his wife and family without a single interview with her or even an opportunity to assert his innocence, he felt the wrong so deeply that he could not get over it. His love for his wife had been profound and tender, and when it became known to him that she had accepted the appearances of guilt as conclusive, and broken with her own hands the tie that bound them, it was more than he had strength to bear, and a long time passed before he rallied from this hardest blow of all.
Edith knew that her father had seen Granger after securing his pardon, and she had learned from him only, particulars of the interview. Beyond this nothing came to her. She stilled her heart, aching with the old love that crowded all its chambers, and tried to be patient and submissive. It was very hard. But she was helpless. Sometimes, in the anguish and wild agitation of soul that seized her, she would resolve to put in a letter all she thought and felt, and have it conveyed to Granger; but fear and womanly delicacy drove her back from this. What hope had she that he would not reject her with hatred and scorn? It was a venture she dared not make, for she felt that such a rejection would kill her. But for her work among the destitute and the neglected, Edith would have shut herself up at home. Christian charity drew her forth daily, and in offices of kindness and mercy she found a peace and rest to which she would otherwise have been stranger.
She was on her way home one afternoon from a visit to the mission-school where she had first heard of the poor baby in Grubb’s court. All that day thoughts of little Andy kept crowding into her mind. She could not push aside his image as she saw it on Christmas, when he sat among the children, his large eyes resting in such a wistful look upon her face. Her eyes often grew dim and her heart full as she looked upon that tender face, pictured for her as distinctly as if photographed to natural sight.
“Oh my baby, my baby!” came almost audibly from her lips, in a burst of irrepressible feeling, for ever since she had seen this child, the thought of him linked itself with that of her lost baby.
Up to this time her father had carefully concealed his interview with Mrs. Bray. He was in so much doubt as to the effect that woman’s communication might produce while yet the child was missing that he deemed it best to maintain the strictest silence until it could be found.
Walking along with heart and thought where they dwelt for so large a part of her time, Edith, in turning a corner, came upon a woman who stopped at sight of her as if suddenly fastened to the ground—stopped only for an instant, like one surprised by an unexpected and unwelcome encounter, and then made a motion to pass on. But Edith, partly from memory and partly from intuition, recognized her nurse, and catching fast hold of her, said in a low imperative voice, while a look of wild excitement spread over her face,
“Where is my baby?”
The woman tried to shake her off, but Edith held her with a grasp that could not be broken.
“For Heaven’s sake,” exclaimed the woman “let go of me! This is the public street, and you’ll have a crowd about us in a moment, and the police with them.”
But Edith kept fast hold of her.
“First tell me where I can find my baby,” she answered.
“Come along,” said the woman, moving as she spoke in the direction Edith was going when they met. “If you want a row with the police, I don’t.”
Edith was close to her side, with her hand yet upon her and her voice in her ears.
“My baby! Quick! Say! Where can I find my baby?”
“What do I know of your baby? You are a fool, or mad!” answered the woman, trying to throw her off. “I don’t know you.”
“But I know you, Mrs. Bray,” said Edith, speaking the name at a venture as the one she remembered hearing the servant give to her mother.
At this the woman’s whole manner changed, and Edith saw that she was right—that this was, indeed, the accomplice of her mother.
“And now,” she added, in voice grown calm and resolute, “I do not mean to let you escape until I get sure knowledge of my child. If you fly from me, I will follow and call for the police. If you have any of the instincts of a woman left, you will know that I am desperately in earnest. What is a street excitement or a temporary arrest by the police, or even a station-house exposure, to me, in comparison with the recovery of my child? Where is he?”
“I do not know,” replied Mrs. Bray. “After seeing your father—”
“My father! When did you see him?” exclaimed Edith, betraying in her surprised voice the fact that Mr. Dinneford had kept so far, even from her, the secret of that brief interview to which she now referred.
“Oh, he hasn’t told you! But it’s no matter—he will do that in good time. After seeing your father, I made an effort to get possession of your child and restore him as I promised to do. But the woman who had him hidden somewhere managed to keep out of my way until this morning. And now she says he got off from her, climbed out of a second-story window and disappeared, no one knows where.”
“This woman’s name is Pinky Swett?” said Edith.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Bray felt the hand that was still upon her arm shake as if from a violent chill.
“Do you believe what she says?—that the child has really escaped from her?”
“Yes.”
“Where does she live?”
Mrs. Bray gave the true directions, and without hesitation.
“Is this child the one she stole from the Briar-street mission on Christmas day?” asked Edith.
“He is,” answered Mrs. Bray.
“How shall I know he is mine? What proof is there that little Andy, as he is called, and my baby are the same?”
“I know him to be your child, for I have never lost sight of him,” replied the woman, emphatically. “You may know him by his eyes and mouth and chin, for they are yours. Nobody can mistake the likeness. But there is another proof. When I nursed you, I saw on your arm, just above the elbow, a small raised mark of a red color, and noticed a similar one on the baby’s arm. You will see it there whenever you find the child that Pinky Swett stole from the mission-house on Christmas day. Good-bye!”
And the woman, seeing that her companion was off of her guard, sprang away, and was out of sight in the crowd before Edith could rally herself and make an attempt to follow. How she got home she could hardly tell.