CHAPTER VII

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AN AMAZING CONFESSION.

Within a month of the events recorded in the preceding chapter, Mrs. Jenwyn and her charge had left Combe Fenton. Anna had conceived a violent dislike to the place, and was restless till she got away from it. After her receipt of Guy Ormsby's letter, which Mrs. Jenwyn had arranged to have mailed from London, she never set foot on the sands of Carthew Bay. It is almost needless to state that the girl Fanny was left behind. She had heard of John Clisby's visit to Rosemount, and she needed no one to tell her why Mrs. Jenwyn had chosen to dispense with her services.

A few days before Anna's departure she received the news of her half brother's marriage. The ceremony had been solemnized at the British embassy at Naples, the bride being a Miss Madeline Fenwicke, whose name Anna seemed to remember as that of a visitor at Denham Lodge some three years previously.

In the course of the next four years, at the end of which period we take up their history afresh, Mrs. Jenwyn and her charge found a temporary home in three or four widely different places.

Anna's coming of age, and with it her command of the fortune left her by her father, had made no difference in her simple and inexpensive mode of life. She had had more than enough before for all her needs, and except that she now set aside a considerably larger sum for charitable purposes, the major portion of her income was never drawn upon, but allowed to accumulate untouched in her banker's coffers.

Anna and her brother had met but once since the latter's marriage, and then he brought with him the news of the birth of a daughter.

It was during the time of Anna's sojourn at Dieppe that Drelincourt, when on his way back from London, whither some law business had taken him, made a detour on purpose to see his sister and spend a week with her. He had exiled himself from England, preferring to live abroad, chiefly in Italy, the climate of which seemed to suit both him and his wife, but now and then wintering in Egypt or elsewhere.

But although he and Anna saw so little of each other, he wrote to her regularly once a month, and his letters, chatty, vivacious, and stuffed with news and gossip of one kind or another, made one of the chief pleasures of her quiet existence.

They were the sole link between her and that great, restless, seething world outside her about which she knew so little, and from any closer contact with which she was kept by her constitutional timidity and that distaste for mixing in general society which she found it quite impossible to overcome.

But latterly--that is to say, within the last twelve months or so--the dread shadow which for so long a time had brooded over her life had been penetrated by a ray of sunlight which was gradually broadening and brightening, so that it seemed as if, at no very distant date, Dr. Pounceby's prediction that, in the course of time, Anna would outgrow her mental malady, was on the eve of fulfilment.

For some time past each recurrent attack had been of shorter duration than the preceding one, so that now, instead of extending over twelve days or a fortnight, as used to be the case, they lasted for two or three days only; and there was every reason for hoping that in the course of another year or two they would leave her altogether.

Mrs. Jenwyn had few living relatives, and only one with whom she kept up anything like a regular correspondence. The person in question was a first cousin, Martin Soanes by name, whose position in life was that of managing clerk to a London solicitor in a large way of business.

From Mr. Soanes, when she had been about six months at Guernsey, she one day received a letter, the contents of which proved to be of a sufficiently startling kind.

In it her cousin informed her that, in consequence of an advertisement he had come across in the _Times_, he had called upon a certain firm in his own line of business, and, on making himself known to them, was told that the person advertised for had, through the death of an uncle in Australia, become entitled to a bequest of twenty two thousand pounds.

That fortunate person was none other than herself, Henrietta Jenwyn, _née_ Henrietta Wynter, daughter of so and so. Finally, Mr. Soanes wrote, her presence was desired in London as speedily as possible, with the view of enabling her to prove her identity.

For a little while after reading the letter Mrs. Jenwyn felt like a stunned person. Some time was needed to enable her to realize her good fortune--if such it should prove to be; and, indeed, at first she hardly knew whether to feel glad or sorry, not being able just yet to discern to what extent it might affect the relations between herself and Anna.

But presently she took comfort. Why need it affect them in any way--this legacy by a man she had never set eyes on, even if it should prove to be hers? Why should not matters go on as they had hitherto done? It certainly would not be her fault if they did not.

The legacy proved to be no myth, but a very pleasant and substantial reality. The sum total was invested in certain railway scrip which for the last half dozen years had never paid a less dividend than five per cent per annum, and there the fortunate legatee decided to let it remain.

It would not have been easy to find a safer or more profitable investment, and the income derivable therefrom seemed to her amply sufficient to meet all needful requirements on her part, even should she finally decide on carrying out a certain project which had been simmering in her brain from within a few hours of her receipt of her cousin's letter.

But it was a project not to be decided upon in a hurry. It was rife with certain consequences from which there would be no escape, and some of them might, perhaps, prove to be of a far more serious kind than was apparent on the surface.

She turned it over in her mind, not once, but a thousand times, considering it from every conceivable point of view; indeed, during those few days all other subjects, including the arrangements connected with her legacy, were subordinated to it. The temptation to carry it into effect appealed to her with an all but irresistible force, and at length she yielded to it so far as to say to herself:

"I will sound Anna. I will put certain questions to her, and from her answers I shall be enabled to judge whether it will be safe to venture any farther, or wiser to draw back, and keep silence for evermore."

When her cab stopped at the garden gate, Anna came flying down the pathway to greet her.

"Well, you dear old thing, what luck have you had?" she cried, as soon as she had given her an affectionate hug. "Has the legacy taken to itself wings and vanished into thin air, or have you brought back a portmanteau stuffed with bank notes?"

"Neither one nor the other. The legacy has not taken to itself wings, but I have not brought so much as a slice of it back with me. It is all safely invested, and I think I can't do better than let if remain where it is."

"And you come back just the same as you went--not even an inch taller than you were five days ago! The same dowdy gown and old-fashioned bonnet. Where's the good of having twenty thousand pounds left you if you have nothing to show for it?"

"That is a question easier to ask than answer. I was quite content, and as happy as I ever expect to be, before this money came. What more can I hope to be now?"

"And you say that you never even saw this uncle of yours who has remembered you so handsomely in his will?" queried Anna, as soon as they were indoors.

"Not so far as my memory serves me, although I believe he saw me when I was an infant. He emigrated when I was about three years old. My mother, who was his favorite sister, heard from him at long intervals for a period of seven or eight years. Then followed a silence which, so far as I am aware, was never broken, and at home the belief gradually grew up among us that he was dead."

"Possibly, if your cousin had not seen the advertisement in the _Times_, you would never have known anything about your legacy?"

"I think that very probable indeed. I was advertised for under my maiden name, and except my cousin (who, I believe, prides himself on the fact that nothing in the _Times_ escapes him), few, if any, of those now living who knew me before my marriage would be likely to see it, or, if they should see it, would know where to find me."

Although Mrs. Jenwyn had made up her mind to a certain course, she seemed in no special hurry to carry her purpose into effect. Indeed, she was one of those women who never appear to hurry; she could always afford to bide her time.

Besides, in the present case, a few days--or, for that matter, a few weeks or a few months--would make no difference. She told herself that she would not make an opportunity, but wait till one should come to her. Perhaps she was not without a lingering doubt as to the spirit in which Anna might receive her communication, and was not disinclined to let matters go on as they were for a little while longer.

Of one thing she felt sure--that nothing could ever be quite the same as it had been when once her lips should have been unsealed and her secret have passed from her own keeping.

Her opportunity, or what seemed such, came on a certain afternoon when the weather, would not admit of their going out, and she and Anna were seated by the window, one busy with her sewing, the other with her knitting.

The maid had just been in to ask leave to go and visit her mother, who was said to be dying. The girl had been in deep distress.

"I have sometimes wondered, Tetta," said Anna presently, "whether it is harder for a mother to lose her child or for a child to lose its mother. I am not referring to cases like Charlotte's, where the child is grown up; although, if tears are anything to go by, she seems extremely attached to her mother."

"A great deal depends on circumstances. When a mother loses her only child, or one of two, it may reasonably be assumed that she feels the loss far more than she would do if she had other children left to comfort her. Again, where a child loses its mother while still at a tender age, it is not to be expected that the loss can seem such an irreparable one as it would do at a later period, when it is old enough not only to appreciate her love, but to reciprocate it in full measure."

"It was my misfortune to lose my mother when I was at a very tender age," said Anna presently, in a low voice.

"It was. You were barely five years old when she died. I suppose you remember very little about her?"

"Not a great deal. I seem to see her nearly always as an invalid, lying either on a couch or in bed. I have an impression that she was very fond of me, but that I was told I must not make a noise when in her room, nor stay with her too long at a time."

"I suppose it has been a source of never ending regret to you that you lost her at such an early age?" She was watching Anna keenly from between her narrowed lids.

"Of never ending regret?"--with a little surprise in her tone. "No, Tetta, scarcely that, I think. How could it be? At that age our regrets are nearly as fleeting as our joys. I was too young to sound the depths of sorrow, or to allow of any loss touching me very deeply for longer than a few passing hours."

"Still, you often thought of her--often do now, perhaps--and have felt that by her death a void was left in your life which nothing else could fill; and have longed to have her with you, that you might pour your troubles and confidences into her sympathetic ear, for, to a daughter, whose ear is like her mother's?"

For a little while Anna went on stitching in silence. Her brows were knitted, her face wore an expression of dubiety.

Presently she said: "Yes, I have often thought about my poor dead mother, and have sometimes wondered, if she had lived, how she and I would have got on together; perhaps not so well as you and I have, Tetta. But I can't say that I have ever felt about her as you seem to think I ought to have done. Was it wrong and wicked of me not to have those feelings? If it was, I cannot help it. I did not make myself."

Again there was a space of silence which Mrs. Jenwyn did not break. All her attention was apparently being given to her work, but a close observer might have seen that her hands were trembling slightly, and that more than once she dropped her stitches.

Presently Anna spoke again.

"I think, Tetta, it must have been because I have had you by my side to love and cling to almost ever since I can remember, that I have missed my mother as little as I seem to have. You have filled her place to me. I have grown up under your hands, molded by you so far as it was possible for any one to mold me. You have been to me a warm and living reality; she nothing but a dim, sweet memory. How was it possible that she should be anything more to me?"

Mrs. Jenwyn lifted her eyes from her knitting and looked fixedly at Anna. On her face was an expression which seemed to transfigure it.

"Suppose, my dear one," she said, and the words came brokenly and with difficulty, as though she were feeling her way like one in doubt--"mind, I only say suppose--that things had so fallen out that not Mrs. Drelincourt, but I--I--were your mother--what would you have said and thought in that case?"

Anna's eyes met hers with a great wonder shining in them, not unmingled with perplexity. She drew a long breath before she spoke.

"What should I have said and thought in that case--or, rather, what should I say and think now? I should thank Heaven on my knees for having given me a living mother in the place of a dead one, and one whom I could love from the bottom of my heart, as I have loved you from childhood."

Here she rose impulsively from her chair, and making three steps forward, she went down on her knees before Mrs. Jenwyn and laid her clasped hands on the other's lap.

"But, oh, Tetta, what do you mean--what _do_ you mean by asking me such a question?" On her face was the radiance of a dawning hope. Expectation sat on her parted lips; her bosom rose and fell quickly.

Mrs. Jenwyn bent forward and touched Anna's sunny hair with her lips. "Oh, my darling, cannot you guess?" she said, in a voice shaken with emotion. "I am your mother--I, and not another!"

It was a quarter of an hour later when Mrs. Jenwyn began her confession--for nothing less than that could it be called. As a matter of course, certain things--not necessarily everything--must be told Anna in satisfaction of her legitimate curiosity, and there seemed no reason why the telling of them should not be got over and done with as speedily as possible.

The two were seated side by side on a couch, and Anna held one of her mother's hands in hers as the latter proceeded with her narrative.

"My father, the Rev. George Wynter, was a poor curate in a rural district, with little or no hope of preferment, and when, at the age of sixteen, I was offered the post of companion to Miss Lemoine, of Waterend, he was only too pleased that I should accept it, and so lighten the burden at home.

"For me the next three years were very happy ones, I was not merely Clara Lemoine's companion, but her bosom friend. She was a warm-hearted girl of strong attachments, and I soon learned to love her very dearly. At the end of that time Mrs. Lemoine, who had been an invalid for years, died. The home was broken up, and Clara went out to Calcutta to join her father, who held a position in the Indian Civil Service. There, after a time, she met Colonel Drelincourt and married him, becoming his second wife.

"After about a year the colonel, together with his regiment, returned to England, his wife, of course, accompanying him. Some three or four years later he was ordered out to Egypt at a few days' notice, and was under the necessity of leaving his young wife, to whom he was passionately attached, behind him. He had not been gone a month when she was prematurely confined at a London hotel, but the child, a girl, only lived three weeks.

"By this time I had been a couple of years married, and you, my dear one, were born a fortnight before Mrs. Drelincourt's child. Clara, while in India, had written to me from time to time, and I had duly replied to her letters, so that the link between us had never been broken. She knew of my marriage, and of many, but not the whole, of the circumstances connected with it. She had called upon me at my house in the suburbs of London only a few days before the birth of her daughter. Within an hour of the child's death she sent me a telegram, asking me to go and see her without delay. This I did, and then it was that she went on her knees to me and implored me, with the most passionate entreaties, to give up my child to her, so that she might be enabled to pass it off to her husband in the place of the one that was dead.

"It was a proposition to which, much as I loved Clara Lemoine, and willing though I was to make almost any sacrifice for her, I could not for some time persuade myself to accede. But she bore down my opposition by degrees. Colonel Drelincourt, who was not on good terms with his only son, was extremely desirous of having another child--a boy preferably, but better, far better, a girl than none at all.

"He had been informed in due course of the birth of his daughter, and Clara dreaded the effect which the tidings of the child's death would have upon him--dreaded, or so she made out, that his love for her (there being no likelihood of her having any more children) might gradually fade into indifference, or even turn into positive dislike. 'I will not face my husband without his child, or one he believes to be his, in my arms,' she said. 'If you refuse to give me yours, I will drown myself.' And in the mood in which she then was she was quite capable of doing so.

"But, over and above all this, there were circumstances in my own life which, when I called them to mind, compelled me in my own despite to lend a more favorable ear to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. My husband was a bad and cruel man. (It is better you should know the truth, however painful it may be.) He was both a drunkard and a spendthrift, and something worse than either. He had deserted me months before you were born, leaving me all but penniless.

"I neither knew where he was nor when to expect him back; and it was his return I dreaded more than anything else in the world. Could I have been sure that I should never see him again, I should have felt comparatively happy. But I might hear his knock at the door at any hour of the day or night, and the fear of it turned my life into a perpetual nightmare. Oh, I had good cause for being afraid of him!

"Not to weary you, it will be enough to say that I finally gave way and yielded to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. Of what it cost me to do so I will say nothing.

"When Mrs. Drelincourt was well enough to leave the London hotel, at which she was an entire stranger, it was to go down to Wyvern Towers. It was at a little country station, at which she made a stoppage for the purpose, that you were given over into her charge. Our faithful servant; since dead, with whose services it was impossible to dispense, was our sole confidant in the affair.

"For the next four years I lived as companion to an invalid lady, to whom some portion of my history was known, and who did not object to my passing under a fictitious name--the one by which I have ever since been known. At the end of that time Mrs. Drelincourt sent for me.

"She was in a consumption, and was quite aware that her recovery was hopeless. She had grown to care for you as if you were her own child, and her object in sending for me was not merely that I might nurse her through her last illness, but that after she was gone I might have the permanent charge of you, at any rate for several years to come; nor did she rest satisfied till she had extracted a promise from her husband that her wishes in this respect should be faithfully observed by him. Me, two days before she died, she bound by a solemn promise that only under the most extreme circumstances would I ever reveal the true story of your parentage."

In view of the amazing confession just made by the elder woman, mother and daughter found no lack of subjects to talk about, but it was not till an hour later that a new and, to her, very surprising thought struck Anna.

"If you are my mother," she said, "and of course you are, then Felix cannot be my half brother?"

"That is very true," replied Mrs. Jenwyn, with a faint smile. She had been waiting for Anna to make the discovery.

"Nor any relation at all. Oh, dear! I am very, very sorry for that. I always loved Felix--although, all the same, I used to stand a little bit in awe of him. And now, I suppose I've no right to love him any more. But perhaps you don't intend to tell him even a part of that which you have just told me. In that case, matters would go on as they have always done, and he would continue to think of me and to treat me as his sister."

"And, knowing what you know now, would you be content to go on living on money to which you have no right?"

Anna looked dumfounded.

"I had not thought of that," she said. "No, I suppose I should not be content--indeed, I am quite sure I should not be. But what is to be done?"

"There is only one way out of the difficulty, and that is, for Anna Drelincourt to die."

"Good gracious, Tetta--I mean, mother dearest--you frighten me!"

"I have thought it all out. Listen! In the course of a few days you shall write to Mr. Drelincourt, informing him that you purpose taking a voyage to Madeira for the good of your health, which has been anything but satisfactory of late. We will go and stay there a month; but while on the return voyage Anna Drelincourt shall die, and shall be buried at sea, and on landing it will be my painful duty to inform Mr. Drelincourt of her demise. I think you said that his last letter to you was dated from Bordighera."

Her voice and manner were as dry and matter of fact as if she were explaining some detail of housekeeping, but when she had come to an end Anna sat and stared at her like one doubtful whether she had heard aright.

"Why do you look at me so strangely?" asked her mother, after a minute's silence. "There is no other way open to us that I can see. Can you discern any other?"

Anna shook her head. "No," she said faintly, "I cannot."

"You do not know, you cannot comprehend," resumed Mrs. Jenwyn--and now there was a ring of genuine emotion in her voice--"what I have gone through in the course of the last few days, since I knew that this money was coming to me. On the one hand was my promise to Mrs. Drelincourt not to reveal the secret of your birth, except under very exceptional circumstances; on the other was a mother's heart hungering and crying out for her child. There is no one left alive to whom the death of Anna Drelincourt will be a matter of much moment. Mr. Felix Drelincourt will grieve about her for a little while, but her fortune will make a handsome addition to his income, and he may perhaps derive some consolation from that.

"And so--and so at length I came to the determination to tell you everything. I wanted to claim you as my own--my very own. I wanted to break down the invisible barrier which has kept us apart for too many years. Oh, my darling, do not tell me that I have done wrong!"

"Wrong, mother! How can you imagine such a thing?" cried Anna, as she burst into tears and flung her arms round Mrs. Jenwyn's neck. "In gaining you I have gained everything. All else is as nothing compared with that."

The audacious scheme conceived by Mrs. Jenwyn was carried to a successful issue. To Felix Drelincourt in his Italian home came the tidings of his half sister's death on shipboard while on her way back from Madeira. He grieved sincerely for her loss, and wrote Mrs. Jenwyn a letter full of sympathy, regrets, and grateful acknowledgment of her services to the dead girl. Before leaving England Anna had made a will, in which she bequeathed all she possessed, with the exception of a few trinkets, to Drelincourt. This step was rendered necessary by the peculiar circumstances of the case.

The money which thus accrued to him made a very welcome addition to Drelincourt's somewhat limited income. After the reading of the will he wrote to Mrs. Jenwyn, expressing his surprise and regret that, except so far as regarded the aforesaid trinkets, her name found no mention in it, and offering to continue to her for life the income his father had set aside for her so long as she and Anna should remain together. In reply, Mrs. Jenwyn informed him, with many thanks, that, by the death of a relative, she had recently succeeded to a legacy which would amply suffice to meet all her simple needs in time to come.

And there matters between them came to an end forever, as they probably thought, neither of them foreseeing where and under what peculiar circumstances they should meet again, nor having any prevision of the underlying purpose for which fate had interwoven the threads of their destiny.

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