I can promise to try -- and that's all.'
'It's all that I have a right to expect.' Saying that, Mira turned away to the window.
Miss Urban consulted her watch. A deep-toned bell was rung at the same time in the lower part of the house. The schoolmistress begged me to excuse her. 'Our young ladies,' she explained, 'are returning to their studies; my duties are waiting for me.' Passing her niece, on her way out of the room, she whispered something. I could only hear Mira's reply: 'I can't do it! I won't do it!' Her aunt considered a little, and came back to me.
'Mr Fencote,' she said, 'do you like little boys?'
I had got so distrustful of both of them, that I made another cautious reply to this effect:
'Suppose I say Yes, or suppose I say No, what difference does it make?'
'Ask my niece.'
Only three words! Having spoken them, Miss Urban attempted to leave the room. I stopped her; my dull mind was beginning to be enlightened by something like a gleam of truth.
'You began it,' I told her: 'I shall not ask your niece to explain what you mean -- I shall ask you. What am I to understand by your talking of little boys?'
'I ought to have mentioned one little boy, Mr Fencote.'
'Who is he?'
She pointed to Mira, still standing at the window.
'Mrs Motherwell's little boy,' she answered; 'the sweetest child I ever met with.'
I had been holding the schoolmistress by the arm, to prevent her from leaving me. My hand dropped. She must have made her way out; I neither saw her, nor heard her.
Having already suffered the shock of discovering that Mira had been a married woman, it would seem likely to most people that I might have been prepared to hear next of the existence of her child. I was not prepared; I felt the revelation of the child -- why, God only knows -- more keenly than I had felt the revelation of her husband. At that horrid moment, not a word would pass my lips. In the silence that had now fallen on us, Mira confronted me once more. Something in my face -- I am afraid, something cruel -- appeared to strike her with terror. She burst, poor soul, into wild entreaties:
'Evan! don't look at me like that. Try, dear, to do me justice. If you only knew what my position is! Believe me you are wrong to trust to appearances. I love you, my darling. I love you with all my heart and soul. Oh, he doesn't believe me! There's no enduring this. Come what may of it, I don't care; I'll tell you --'
'Tell me nothing more,' I said, 'I have heard enough.'
It was beyond what I could bear, to see what I saw at that moment; I made for the door. She called me back with a cry of misery:
'You're not going to leave me?'
When I look back now at that miserable time, I thank God that my heart was moved with pity for her, and that I gave her my promise to return. I could do no more. My head was in a whirl; my longing for solitude and quiet was not to be told in words. I ran down the stairs. At one end of the hall, a glass door led into the garden; not a creature was to be seen there. The bright flowers, the fine old trees looked like glimpses of Heaven after what I had gone through. In a minute more, I was breathing the fresh air: I was sheltered under the peaceful shade.
V As for the state of my mind, I can say no more about it than I have said already.
If I can trust my memory I may, however, mention that my thoughts were now more busy with Miss Urban than with her niece. I had turned a deaf ear to Mira's entreaties at the time; but they had their own irresistible influence when I found myself alone; and they led me to the conviction that the schoolmistress must be answerable for what had befallen me since I entered her house. How was she answerable? To find the right reply to this, was the one obstacle that no effort of mine could overcome. There was a provocation in constantly trying, and constantly failing, to hit on a reasonable interpretation of what Mira had said, which ended in making me too restless to remain in my place of repose. I left the pleasant shade, and wandered away; still battling with my difficulties, and neither knowing nor caring whither I went.
On a sudden, I found myself called back to present things, oddly enough, by a pull at my coat-tail.
Looking around, I discovered a little boy who seemed to be about five or six years of age -- a really pretty child, with bright merry eyes and beautiful dark red hair. Here no doubt was the fatal creature who had caused me such suffering when I heard who his mother was. If he had not spoken first, I am afraid I should have gone on without taking any notice of him.
'Do come, sir, and see my garden.'
He took hold of my hand as he preferred that request, and he looked up in my face with a smile, so innocent and so pretty, that Herod himself must have felt the charm of it.
We took the way to his garden, 'My little man,' I said, 'suppose you tell me your name?'
'The boys call me Blazes -- because of my red hair.'
'Have you no other name besides that?'
'Yes; I'm Kit.'
'Well, Kit, and who do you belong to?'
'I belong to Aunt Urban.'
'Have you got no father and mother?'
'I don't know that I've got a father.