It was true. The happiness or misery of this young creature hung upon my decision. A glance at her husband's face made this evident. He would love her while he could be proud of her; he would hate her the moment her presence suggested shame or opprobrium.
My wily antagonist evidently saw I was impressed, for her face grew still softer and her tone more insinuating.
"She was her father's darling," she whispered. "He could never bear to see a frown upon her face or a tear in her eye. Could he know now what threatened her do you think he would wish you to drag disgrace upon her head for the sake of justice to a being who is dead?"
I did not reply. The truth was I felt staggered.
"See what an exquisite creature she is," the mother now murmured in my ear. "Look at her well—she can bear it—and tell me where in the world you will find beauty more entrancing or a nature lovelier and more enticing?"
"Madam," said I, turning upon her with a severity the moment seemed to deserve, "In a den of contamination, amid surroundings such as it will not do for me to mention even before her who could make use of them to destroy the innocence that trusted in her, there lies the dead body of one as pure, as lovely, and as attractive as this; indeed her beauty is more winning for it has not the stamp of worldliness upon it."
The mother before me grew livid. Her brows contracted and she advanced upon me with a menacing gesture almost as if she would strike me. In all my experience of the world and of her I had never seen such rage; it was all but appalling. Involuntarily I raised my hand, in defence.
But she had already remembered her position and by a violent change now stood before me calm and collected as of old.
"You have been injured by me and have acquired the right to insult me," cried she. Then as I made no move, said: "It is not of the dead we were speaking. It was of her, Samuel Pollard's child. Do you intend to ruin her happiness or do you not? Speak, for it is a question I naturally desire to have settled."
"Madam," I now returned, edging away from that window with its seductive picture of youthful joy, "before I can settle it I must know certain facts. Not till I understand how you succeeded in enticing her from her home, and by what means you transferred her into the care of the vile woman who took your place, will I undertake to consider the possibility of withholding the denunciation which it is in my power to make."
"And you expect me to tell—" she began.
"Every thing," I finished, firmly.
She smiled with a drawing in of her lips that was feline. Then she glared; then she looked about her and approached nearer to me by another step.
"I wish I could kill you," her look said. "I wish by the lifting of my finger you would fall dead." But her lips made use of no such language. She was caught in the toils, and lioness as she was, found herself forced to obey the will that ensnared her.
"You want facts; well, you shall have them. You want to know how I managed to induce Miss Merriam to leave the house where my husband had put her. It is a simple question. Was I not her grandfather's wife, and could I not be supposed to know what his desires were concerning her?"
"And the second fact?"
She looked at me darkly.
"You are very curious," said she.
"I am," said I.
Her baleful smile repeated itself.
"You think that by these confessions I will place myself in a position which will make it impossible for me, to press my request. You do not understand me, sir. Had I committed ten times the evil I have done, that would not justify you in wantonly destroying the happiness of the innocent."
"I wish to know the facts," I said.
"She went with me to a respectable eating house," Mrs. Pollard at once explained. "Leave her to eat her lunch, I went to a place near by, where the woman you saw, met me by appointment, and putting on the clothes I had worn, went back for the girl in my stead. As I had taken pains not to raise my veil except just at the moment when I wanted to convince her I was her natural guardian, the woman had only to hold her tongue to make the deception successful. That she did this is evident from the result. Is there any thing more you would like to know?"
"Yes," I replied, inwardly quaking before this revelation of an inconceivable wickedness, yet steadily resolved to probe it to the very depths. "What did you hope to gain by this deliberate plan of destruction? The girl's death, or simply her degradation?"
The passion in this woman's soul found its vent at last.
"I hoped to lose her; to blot her out of my path—and hers," she more gently added, pointing with a finger that trembled with more than one fierce emotion, at the daughter for whom she had sacrificed so much. "I did not think the girl would die; I am no murderess whatever intimation you may make to that effect. I am simply a mother."
A mother! O horrible! I looked at her and recoiled. That such a one as this should have the right to lay claim to so holy a title and asperse it thus!
She viewed my emotion but made no sign of understanding it. Her words poured forth like a stream of burning liquid.
"Do you realize what this girl's living meant? It meant recognition, and consequently disgrace and a division of our property, the loss of my daughter's dowry, and of all the hopes she had built on it. Was I, who had given to Samuel Pollard the very money by means of which he had made his wealth, to stand this? Not if a hundred daughters of convicts must perish."
"And your sons?"
"What of them?"
"Had they no claim upon your consideration. When you plunged them into this abyss of greed and deceit did no phantom of their lost manhood rise and confront you with an unanswerable reproach?"
But she remained unmoved.
"My sons are men; they can take care of themselves."
"But Dwight—"
Her self-possession vanished.
"Hush!" she whispered with a quick look around her. "Do not mention him. I have sent him away an hour ago but he may have come back. I do not trust him."
This last clause she uttered beneath her breath and with a spasmodic clutch of her hand which showed she spoke involuntarily. I was moved at this. I began to hope that Dwight at least, was not all that his mother would have him.
"And yet I must speak of him," said I, taking out the letter he had written to Miss Merriam. "This letter addressed to one you have so successfully destroyed seems to show that he returns your mistrust."
She almost tore it out of my hands.
"When was this letter received?" she asked, reading it with burning eyes and writhing lips.
"The day after Miss Grace left her home."
"Then she never saw it?"
"No."
"Who has seen it?"
"Myself and you."
"No one else?"
"No one but the writer."
She laughed.
"We will destroy it," she said; and deliberately tore it up.
I stooped and picked up the fragments.
"You forget," said I, "this letter may be called for by the coroner. It is known that I took it in charge."
"I might better have burnt it," she hissed.
"Not so, I should then have had to explain its loss."
Her old fear came back into her eyes.
"Now I have merely to give it up and leave it to Mr. Dwight Pollard to explain it. He doubtless can."
"My son will never betray his mother."
"Yet he could write this letter."
She frowned.
"Dwight has his weakness," said she.
"It is a pity his weakness did not lead him to send this letter a few hours sooner."
"That is where his very weakness fails. He struggles because he knows his mother partly, and fails because he does not know her wholly."
"And Guy?"
"He knows me better."
The smile with which this was said was the culminating point in a display of depravity such as I had never beheld, even in hovels of acknowledged vice. Feeling that I could not endure much more, I hastened to finish the interview.