The Two Mrs. Scudamores/Part 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

 

THE TWO MRS. SCUDAMORES.

(Continued from page 208.)

"I don't know, indeed," she said, and then suddenly started like one awakened. The words were true when she said them, but by the time he had heard them they were untrue. She gave a great start, and her heart began to beat. She confronted him as she might have confronted her enemy; but she did not say another word; she left it to him to speak.

"Is it so?" he said, with surprise and a shade of regret. "How stupid I must have been, then! How little I must have made myself understood! Mrs. Scudamore, I want to ask you for Amy. I have loved her ever since she was a child. She is the only one I have ever dreamt of as my wife. You know all about me as well as I do myself; there are no explanations to make, except that I love her dearly, dearly, and she says she loves me. I am so happy I cannot talk about it. Why should you turn away? I will not carry her away to the other end of the world. She will always be near you—here—next house as it were. Mother! don't turn away from me. I want a mother as well as a wife. Are you angry? Have I taken you by surprise?"

Mrs. Scudamore kept her face averted. She drew from his the hand he had taken, and with the other put him away from her. "No more—no more," she said. "Yes, I am taken by surprise. I am—angry—no, I am not angry. Sir Reginald, you do my daughter a great honor, but it cannot be—it can never be."

He stood amazed when she had left him, while she went to the table and sat down, leaning her head on her hand. He stood there in the center of the room, petrified. "Sir Reginald!—a great honor!" he said to himself, with an amazement which no words were able to express; and for the first moment he thought she was mad—nothing else seemed possible to explain it. He thought that this must be the explanation of all that had troubled his Amy. Her mother must be mad. God help her! it was a terrible calamity, but yet it was not despair, as this would be could he believe her to be in her senses. He hurried after her when she had seated herself. He laid his hand softly upon her arm.

"Dear Mrs. Scudamore," he said.

She shook him off, she waved him away from her, she made as though she would have risen again and left him, and then suddenly turning round caught his hand in her own and wrung it with a passionate, painful clasp. "Rex," she cried, two hot tears dropping out of her eyes. "Rex, don't torture me, don't ask me any more; I would give her to you sooner than to any one in the world, but I cannot, I cannot! Don't ask me again, for the love of God! Go away, and think of Amy no more."

She was so profoundly agitated that he dared not answer her. He stood by her, softly touching her shoulder, trying to soothe her, half distracted, yet not without hope still. Something was the matter with her—with her brain or her health. She could not mean this in sober earnest. The very passion of her words showed that something excited her, and what was there to excite her in his most natural love for her child? So he stood by her, soothing her, waiting till she was calm. When Mrs. Scudamore perceived this, she made an effort to command herself.

"Dear Rex," she said, as calmly as she could, "you think that I am excited, and that I do not mean this. You must think I am mad even, to turn so from my friend's son—from you, whom I have loved all your life; but I am not mad—oh, would to God that I were! Something has happened that makes your marriage with Amy impossible, impossible! You must understand me. It is not with my will I say it—it breaks my heart. But it must be said. Impossible either now or at any other time; whatever you may suffer, or even she—impossible! Rex, it is not with my will."

"But why?" he cried, still unbelieving. "This is mere madness, folly; in Heaven's name, why?"

"I cannot tell you," she said. And now it was his turn to be angry. He dropped her hand which he had been holding. "You must tell me," he cried. "I will never agree to such a mysterious dismissal. I have a right to know what it is."

"And I say, if it should cost me my life, you shall not know."

She had risen to irritation again. It was easier to be angry than to yield to any other feeling. In the depths of her soul there lay a soured irritation with everything and with all the world.

"I refuse to accept your decision," he cried. "What! I am to be made miserable, and my darling's heart broken without a reason. You tell me calmly we are to be separated, and forever—"

"Do I tell you calmly?" she said, with a miserable smile. "But there has been enough of this. Go away, if you have any respect left for me; leave me, and leave the house as soon as you can; there is nothing but misery here."

But he would not leave her. He stayed and implored, and upbraided, and implored again, till her brain was burning and her heart breaking. When he went away at last in a passion of rage and misery, he was so wild in his disappointment and pain that—though he had struggled with her for leave to see Amy again—he rushed out of the house without asking for her, not trusting himself to such an interview. Mrs. Scudamore went back to the drawing-room alone. She had been a long time away, and the miserable look in poor Amy's eyes, when she lifted them at her mother's entrance, and saw there was no one else coming, went to the distracted woman's heart. The other terrible candidate for Amy's favor was standing in front of the girl, talking to her, trying to make himself agreeable, with a pertinacity which made Mrs. Scudamore sick with anger, but which fell dully upon Amy's abstracted senses. She was wholly absorbed in the strain of listening for sounds outside the room, and though she made wild answers, yes and no, and tried to keep a smile upon her face, she scarcely heard what Tom Furness was saying. He was horrible to her from the fact that he was there, but not from any other cause. Aunt Thomas was looking on with very vivid attention, watching, seeing in some degree what it meant; but Aunt Thomas did not know how Mrs. Scudamore had been occupied, and consequently was not aware of the worst complication of all.

"Amy, I am very tired. If Mrs. Thomas will excuse me, I will go to bed," said Mrs. Scudamore. "Come with me; I have something to say to you now."

"Has Sir Reginald gone?" asked Aunt Thomas, half frightened, and beginning to perceive the possibility of further trouble.

"Yes, he has gone," said Mrs. Scudamore with a deep sigh.

Common sight seemed to be failing her—she saw the others dimly, but without looking at Amy she saw the misery, the wonder, the despair in her eyes. She held out her hand, and they went out of the room together. They were both beyond the reach of ordinary civilities—too much agitated—too unhappy to think of good-nights. This was a want of decorum which their guest was very quick to note. He called out after them, "Good-night, ladies," half angry, half contemptuous. "They don't stand upon ceremony," he said, when the door closed upon them, "they and their Sir Reginalds." And he began to walk about the room fuming. Mrs. Thomas came up to him from her corner. The poor woman was keeping a very hard command over herself.

"Tom," she said, "oh, Tom, you thought I was good to you once."

"Bah!" said he.

"But it is not bah," she said. "Your mother and all of them were very hard on me. They thought I had disgraced the family, and then when you found out all this—Tom, look into your own heart and tell me, since we began struggling for my rights, as you call them, have you been happy since?"

"Auntie, you're a fool. Who was talking of being happy?" he replied.

"I have not," she said, simply. "Do you think it is nice for me to be here, an interloper, poisoning the very air that poor woman breathes?"

"Then why the deuce do you do it?" cried the man. "It's your own fault. Turn them out and be done with it. You can if you like."

"And ruin the children? Tom, oh, Tom! listen to me—like this we shall never have a blessing on anything that we do. Let us take money and go away, and leave them at peace. She'll give money—enough to set you up—enough to make you comfortable; oh, Tom, if I was less good to you in my life——"

"Auntie, you're a fool," he said again, sharply. "Go to bed. Leave them in peace! a likely thing! Take money! Oh, yes, I'll take money and more than money. She knows what I will take. Auntie, hold your tongue and go to bed."

That was the end of one appeal. Another was being made in Mrs. Scudamore's room, with the door locked, and Amy at her mother's knee listening to her fate. It was as fate that the sentence was pronounced. Rex was sent away, never to return. It was impossible, impossible! Mrs. Scudamore said—neither now nor ever could he be allowed to come back. Amy had been kneeling, anxious and unhappy, by her mother's side. At this she sank down softly in her despair—which yet was more consternation than despair—and she, too, with her white lips, with her eyes hollowed out, and shining as from two white caves, demanded why?

"I cannot tell you why," her mother answered. "Amy, listen to me. That has come to you which comes to few people in this world. Oh, my darling, listen, listen! Would God that it was to me instead! but I can do nothing—only you can do it. Don't you think Mary would have died a thousand times, if she could, rather than her Son——"

"Oh, mother, what do you mean?"

"Amy, Amy," cried the miserable woman, with her lips at the child's ear, "you are one of those that must be a sacrifice—a whole sacrifice—what they called a burnt-offering, my best child, my dearest. Amy, I am going to kill you, and I love you best."

"Mother!"

She thought her mother had gone mad. Nothing else could explain it. She thought she was about to be killed there, where she sat, at the feet of her natural protector. The last supreme passion of love and valor came into Amy's heart. She did not stir a hair's-breadth, but held up her white face ready to endure all things. She looked up like Isaac, without a thought of self-defense.

"You think I am mad," said Mrs. Scudamore. "Oh, if I were but mad! Amy, there is only one that can do it—you can save us all from disgrace and ruin—his living to Charlie, my honor to me, an honest name to yourself and the rest. Without you we are outcasts—nameless, homeless. Amy, nothing we have is ours, unless you will buy them back. Amy, everything rests with you."

"Nameless! homeless! our honor! all we have! Oh, what do you mean? what do you mean?" said Amy. "Mother, if I am to do this, I ought to know at least."

"That is the worst—that is the worst," she said. "You must do it and you must not know. Oh, if I could die and spare you—but my dying would do no good. It is only you—only you. Amy, this is what I have to ask of you, my own—to sacrifice yourself for your family—to serve us at the cost of yourself, without knowing why. Oh, my child, can you do it? will you do it, without knowing why?"

Amy was little more than a child; she had all the child's sublime confidence in her natural guides. She had not begun to think of any rights of her own, and she was full of that intense submission of innocence which makes a child's death-bed, a child's martyrdom, so rapturous and so wonderful. She said with her white lips, "I have always obeyed you, mamma. I will do whatever you say now."

But she had to be carried to her room insensible, and laid on her bed like a marble figure, like one dead, when she heard what the nature of the sacrifice was.

CHAPTER VIII.

Things went on badly enough at Scudamore that autumn. Amy had consented, as her mother knew she would. And Mr. Tom Furness became a constant guest. It was an arrangement over which Mrs. Thomas shook her head, and against which she had protested in vain to both the mother and the lover. He and she were both steadfast. Mrs. Scudamore was almost more feverishly anxious than he to conclude the matter. But Charlie had not yet come home, and the whole household regarded his arrival with a vague apprehension. He would soon be twenty-one. He knew nothing of the mystery which oppressed all the rest of the house, and the chances were that Mr. Furness would be very far from gaining his approbation. Neither had Mrs. Scudamore been able to screw her courage to the point of consulting the lawyer on the subject. She had asked Mr. Pilgrim to come to Scudamore at Christmas, when Charlie would be at home, and then she had said to herself the struggle would be made once for all. She lived in a fearful state of excitement, able to settle to nothing, trying to shut her eyes to the look of misery in Amy's white face, trying to be unconscious of her failing health and patient suffering. The girl had been crushed all at once by the sudden weight thrown upon her. She had yielded. What could she do else? but it had crushed her altogether. She had no training in suffering, no preparation to bear it, and she succumbed. She felt sure she was going to die. A certain solemnity of feeling came over her. She thought of herself as the bride of the grave. What did it matter for a few weeks, or a few months, if she was happy or miserable? She would be happy in heaven when the end came, and would have done her duty—and that end could not be far off.

Perhaps Amy was not entirely miserable in these thoughts. To die young, when your life has been cut short as hers had been, is not terrible—it is rather sweet to the imagination. She thought of it, and of the grave covered with violets, which would soon be hers, with a youthful exaltation of feeling which was as much joy as grief. And she would have saved her family. She would be as Iphigenia; nay, almost as Christ himself. She would die, thus getting rid of all misery, and they would be saved. She wrote tender, sweet, religious letters to all her friends, telling them "it was borne in upon her" that she was to die young. She wrote one heart-rending letter to poor Rex. She was kind to Tom Furness even, and very gentle, though she shrank from him; and she had made up her mind how she was to meet Charlie—how she was to say it was her own choice—how she was to refuse all release from her engagement. It was all settled. The only thing that grieved her in her resigned and, as it were, dying state was, that her mother avoided her, and could not bear to behold the sacrifice she had exacted. This was a little hard on poor Amy, but she accepted it like the rest. She made pictures to herself of how her mother would steal out to weep over her grave—of how they would miss her in the house—of how they would say, Amy liked this and that, and hold trifles sacred for her sake. All this was a pleasure to her, though it is strange to say so; and on account of the gentle, early death that was coming, she felt it possible to put up with her fate.

Charlie, for his part, had been absorbed in his college life, and had thought little of home. He had received an indignant, amazed letter from Rex Bayard, which half astonished, half annoyed him. In it Rex informed him that he had been accepted by Amy, but sent away by her mother. "You must be dreaming or she must be out of her mind," Charlie had written back cheerfully, in return; "but never mind, old fellow, have patience only till I get home again." He had no doubt whatever of being able to set everything right when he got home. Evidently things were at sixes and sevens there for want of him—so the young man thought—but when he got back— And then Charlie forgot all about home, and made himself quite happy with his friends.

These three months were very dreary to all in the house. Furness went and came continually, and when he thought Amy repelled him ever so little, he went and threatened her mother, and declared that it would all come to nothing, and that she never meant her daughter to marry him. The whole house began to fear these visits; the servants complained, and Jasper gave warning. Even Woods would have done so, but he was, he said, attached to the family and meant to see this business out. Mrs. Thomas wept and shook her head from the time Tom Furness entered the house till he left it. The children avoided him, for he teased them; and poor Amy tried to be kind to him, and would not allow herself to hate.

All this went on till Christmas; but it is impossible to tell with what sinking, yet swelling, hearts the women of the household looked forward to the arrivals which they expected. Charlie came one day, and Mr. Pilgrim the next. Mr. Tom Furness was there, to Charlie's immense astonishment. He sought his mother out the very first evening, and remonstrated: "Why do you have that fellow here? Aunt Thomas is well enough, but I don't see that we are bound to be complaisant to her friends."

"Don't let us speak of him now—to-morrow," said Mrs. Scudamore. "To-morrow I have something to tell you about him; but for heaven's sake be civil to-night."

"If I do it will he a hard struggle, I can tell you," said Charlie; but yet he did restrain himself as well as he knew how, though the fellow's familiarity, his evident acquaintance with the house, and especially his tone to Amy, made her brother furious. And Amy looked like a ghost and kept out of his way. He was very uncomfortable, for he could not make it out. "Scudamore does not look a bit like itself; everything seems at sixes and sevens," he said to Aunt Thomas. She was the only one who was not changed, and the chief comfort he had.

Next day Mrs. Scudamore led her son and the newly arrived lawyer to the library, and told them her intentions about her daughter. If she had thrown a bombshell between them they could not have been more surprised. There was a terrible scene; Charlie and his mother defying each other mutually. "I will not allow it," he cried. "And I have settled it all," she answered, with an appearance of calm. The lawyer tried to remonstrate, but in vain; and Amy was sent for, and with a face like death solemnly announced that it was of her own choice that she was going to marry Mr. Furness. "It is my own wish," she said, crossing her hands on her breast. The men gazed at her with mingled awe and doubt. Her aspect was that of a martyr, but she smiled as she spoke. She would not give any one an excuse for interfering; no tears came to her eyes, no quiver to her voice. "I shall die soon, and what will it matter?" she was saying to herself.

After this scene it may be supposed that life was not more pleasant at Scudamore. Charlie and his mother did not exchange a word for two or three days, and Furness obtruded his hateful presence upon her, asking for continued interviews, pressing for the marriage. Mrs. Scudamore herself had been anxious to hasten it till now, but a sudden languor seemed to creep upon her, she could not tell how. For the first time she began to hesitate and seek delay. Her child was so young. She was ailing and wanted care. Summer surely was soon enough. She resisted the last decision with feverish force. She would not fix the day. Amy, when appealed to, grew paler yet, but said, "When they pleased." Her mother alone hesitated, and she had not an easy antagonist to meet. He had grown careless in his power over her. He began to address her roughly, even in the presence of others—to warn her that she had better not provoke him—that the consequences might be such as she would not care to face. Her life became a burden to her in those dreadful days. She dared not order him to leave her house, as she often had it on her lips to do. She dared not appeal to Charlie, or even permit him to suspect that this man, whom she had chosen for her son-in-law, was already her tyrant. She even—heaven help her!—kept up the quarrel with her son, that he might not find out the persecution to which she was exposed.

But one day this state of affairs came to an end. There had been a stormy discussion in the morning, and Mrs. Scudamore, driven to her last resources, had promised her final decision in the afternoon. She was in the library, and her persecutor came in and joined her through the window, which was open. It was one of those mild, warm, languid days which sometimes come in the middle of winter, which people call unseasonable, yet enjoy. There was an enormous fire, as usual, in the library, and the window had been opened in consequence. Tom Furness came in by it, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on his head. If he condescended to remove the latter, it was more out of regard to his own comfort than from any respect to her. He began to speak almost before he had got into the room. "Now, look here," he said; "old lady, I hope you have made up your mind. I am not going to be kept hanging on like this month after month. I've told you so. By Jove, I believe you want to leave me in the lurch after all."

"You have my word," said Mrs. Scudamore.

"Your word! Oh, a great deal of good that will do me. I want Amy's word; do you understand? I want no more vague general promises. If your part of the bargain is not to be kept, neither shall mine. Would you like to hear once more, just to leave no manner of doubt, what I can do?"

"You will drive me mad," said Mrs. Scudamore. "How dare you stand and threaten me at the open window? How can you tell who may hear you? And do you know that if you are overheard, if this slander is once spoken in anybody's ears but mine, you lose all your power?"

He turned his back to the window with a careless laugh. "Not much fear of any one hearing," he said. "We are not such agreeable society that people should follow us about to listen. But just look here; you know what will happen if I choose to speak. You know you have no more right to be mistress here than your housekeeper has. You know you're not fit company for decent folks; and your children ain't Scudamores any more than I am. You may thank an honest man for taking a girl without a name into his house. You know as well as I——"

He had gone so far as this without looking at her. Now, quite suddenly, she caught his eye and made him start. She was standing with her lips apart, the breath, as it were, frozen between them, as if she had tried to cry out, and could not; her eyes dilated, fixed on something behind him, and deep lines of anguish about her mouth. Her hands were half uplifted in wonder or appeal to some one, he could not tell which. In that attitude of agony, with pain written deep all over her, she stood as if petrified, an image of ice or stone.

He was frightened by her aspect, though at the moment he did not understand it, and at the same time he became aware that something had darkened the air behind him. He turned round to see what it meant.

This was what it meant. He had scarcely begun to speak when Mrs. Scudamore, lifting up her eyes, saw a shadow behind him; then, dumb with horror, she had seen Charlie appear at the window. He stood still, and she in her misery could not move. She could not cry out. She stood and gazed wildly at him, paralyzed by boundless and hopeless despair.

"You have been listening, have you?" said Tom Furness with a sharp laugh. "Well, you've been wondering what attraction I had. Now you know."

He had not time to say another word. Before he knew that he was threatened he flew out of the window, doubled together like a piece of cloth.

"There's for insulting my mother," the young fellow shouted at the top of his voice, "and there's for Amy, and there's for myself Did you think you would frighten me?"

"Oh, Charlie!" cried Mrs. Scudamore, wildly. But Charlie paid no heed. He took up Furness's hat, and tossed it after him. He closed the window loudly with a certain violence. He was trembling with excitement and the thrill of this discovery, and he had not spoken to his mother for three days before.

"Now tell me what it is!" he said, peremptorily. "This fellow has bullied and frightened you. I suppose there must be something to build upon. What is it? You must tell me now."

Mrs. Scudamore wavered for a moment. She had been almost glad to see her persecutor flung thus out of her sight. She had been proud of her boy, and of his young vehemence and indignation; but now once more she was struck dumb—a great blinding horror came over her. Tell him her own shame and his! She could not do it. It would be better, she felt, that he should hear it from Furness, from any one, than from herself.

"I cannot, I cannot!" she said, covering her face with her hands. Was it indeed all over now? or could she make an effort still—one mad attempt to gain the friendship of her persecutor? "You don't know what you have done," she said, wildly. "He is the best friend we have. Let me speak to him, Charlie. Say you are sorry. For the love of God!"

"I think it must be for the love of the devil," he said sadly, "who alone could make divisions among us like this. Mother, can you trust me so little? With my will you shall never speak to the miserable rascal again. Tell me, your son."

"I cannot, I cannot!" she repeated, raising a ghastly face to him, in which supplication and defiance were blended. Charlie was half-crazed with the obstinate mystery that wrapped her round. He did not stop to think, he rushed out of the room to solve it his own way. Even this was a relief to his mother. She sat supporting her death-like face on her hands, with her eyes fixed on the door by which he had disappeared. It was over. He would know all. But at least not from her. There was a pause in which the whole world seemed to stand still. She did not breathe. Silence, awful as fate, was in her miserable heart, and in the house which was hers no longer—which she must leave in ruin and shame.

But she kept her senses. When the door opened, though the figures which came in were as ghosts to her, even then, in her stupor, it gave her a pang to see her boy leading in the woman—that woman—through whom (she said to herself) it had all come. Mrs. Thomas was crying as usual. Crying! Children cry, and it relieves them; but as for Mrs. Scudamore, she was beyond the possibility of such relief.

"I will say nothing till she gives me leave," said Mrs. Thomas among her sobs. "If I was wronged once, it's she that is wronged now. Oh, she's bitterly wronged! cruelly wronged! If my dying would have saved her, I think I would have killed myself; but it wouldn't, for Tom Furness knew. Oh, you poor dear, you are nearly dead of it. Give me leave to speak before it kills you."

There were other people in the room beside. Amy, who came to her mother like a ghost and put her wan arms round her—Amy, who was dying of it too, but without knowing what it was. Mrs. Scudamore turned her white face toward the little assembly, whom she saw but vaguely through the mist that was gathering over her brain. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. She looked like death embodied, but she resisted still. The excitement of the moment, however, rose too high for further silence. Either Mrs. Thomas took her unspoken words for a permission, or she was swept out of herself by the emotion surrounding her.

"This is what it is," she said, "and I wish I had been dead—I wish my tongue had been torn out before I said it. Oh, children, curse me, or kill me, if you will. I was your father's wife years before he ever saw her face."

"My father's wife!" It was Charlie who spoke, with white lips—and then he looked round with a gaze of bewildered despair. He did not know what he had feared, but never this. Then his eyes fell upon his mother, whose face was fixed upon his—not her eyes only, for those were hollow and strained and almost sightless. He threw from him the hand of the other woman, which he had been unconsciously holding, and, rushing forward, supported his mother in his arms. Then the other Mrs. Scudamore, the legal possessor of all, the woman whose presence filled this house with shame, threw herself down at her rival's feet and took her hand and wept over it. "Now the worst is over," she cried, "oh, try to take a little comfort. You have the children on your side—and God——"

At this moment the attention of all was momentarily drawn from the chief sufferer by the entrance of Mr. Tom Furness, who, having picked himself up, swaggered in, meaning to have his revenge of all who had injured him.

He was struck dumb by the sight he now saw. "Oh, here you all are," he said.

At the sound of his voice everybody started. Amy, who was standing behind her mother, clasped her close and burst into a flood of blessed tears.

For she was free: that shadow was gone which had blighted her life. The cost might be terrible; but not so terrible, not so hideous as the cost of silence. "Mother, we will help you to bear it," she said in her mother's ear. Charlie, too, had come behind her chair to support her. Mrs. Scudamore's head was leaning upon his breast. "We will help you to bear it," said Amy in her joy, with her lips upon her mother's cheek. The next moment she cried out wildly, "Mother! mother! Charlie! look!"

She sat there, almost erect, leaning slightly back upon her son, with her daughter's arms round her, and the woman at her feet who had brought her to shame. Her face of marble looked out awfully from the center of this group upon the frightened crowd of servants who had come in, no one knew how. Even Tom Furness gave a cry of horror. The look of those great, open, sightless eyes of anguish never went out of his soul. She was dead. She had died in harness, fighting to the last for her children and her honor. Henceforward thought of shame or fear of ruin would reach her nevermore.

My space is exhausted, and I cannot dwell longer on this scene, though it moved the entire county, and never, so long as any of the spectators lived, could be forgotten by them. The young people left Scudamore that very night, carrying their dead mother to a little house which had belonged to her in her maiden right. It was a half-ruinous, neglected place, but not too dreary for them in their sorrow. There they buried her, half the county following in wrath and grief and terrible indignation in the funeral train. And then they began a strange, new life, with minds too much confused to realize fully how changed it was.

But the news brought Rex Bayard back with lightning speed from Italy, where he had been trying to learn resignation. And by the time the violets began to bloom on her mother's grave. Amy married him in her sorrow, and the little sisters thus gained a new home. "As for me, it does not matter," said Charlie. He wanted to go away to the end of the world, anywhere, only to forget and be forgotten. His heart he thought was broken; his head he could never hold up again—so he believed; but he had the broken remnants of his mother's property to gather together, and he was but twenty: his old friends stood by him warmly, and Rex Bayard was his brother. So by degrees he reconciled himself to the bitterness of his fate.

Poor Mrs. Scudamore, now legally acknowledged, and abandoned by everybody in her undesired grandeur, made overtures to the young people, which, I am sorry to say, they did not respond to. But at her death she too had justice done her, even by those she had unwillingly dispossessed. She left Scudamore Park and all the property over which she had any control (only one-third of it was entailed, and the will, which Charlie's mother had supposed to be made as a tardy acknowledgment of her own patience, gave power to the other) to Charlie. Tom Furness brought a law-suit against him, propounded another will, and spent a great deal of money, but fortunately in vain. And thus the just heir recovered at last a portion of his inheritance.

It was all that his friends could do, however, to induce Charlie to assume, even now, his father's name. His mother's, he declared, was an honor to him; the other a disgrace. But expediency and appearances carried the day, as they generally do. And this story has fallen into the obscurity of tradition among the Scudamores, who naturally do not care to perpetuate any memory of illegitimacy, however innocent. But the portrait which holds the place of honor in the house is still that of the wife who was no wife, the woman who died with head erect, and eyes open, defying dishonor with her last breath. There is no one in all the line of whom her descendants are more proud.

THE END.