"Do you know whether she succeeded in obtaining milk for the child?"
"It's hardly likely, I should say. Charity begins at home, doctor."
"It is natural and just that it should; but it is terrible, terrible! Where can Mrs. Turner have gone to?"
"Heaven knows. One thing I do know, doctor, she's got no friends; she wouldn't make any, kept herself to herself, gave herself airs, some said, though I don't go as far as that. I dare say she has her reasons, only when a woman sets herself up like that it turns people against her. Are you sure she ain't in her room?"
"The room is empty."
"It's enough to be the death of a baby to take it out such a night as this. Listen to the wind."
A furious gust shook the house, and made every window rattle. To Dr. Spenlove's agitated senses it seemed to be alive with ominous voices, proclaiming death and destruction to every weak and helpless creature that dared to brave it. He passed his hand across his forehead in distress.
"I must find her. I suppose you cannot tell me of any place she may have gone to for assistance?"
"I can't, sir. There's a bare chance that as she had no coals and no money to buy 'em with, some one in the house has taken her in for the night. I'll inquire, if you like."
"I shall be obliged to you if you will," said Dr. Spenlove, catching eagerly at the suggestion; "and I pray that you may be right."
"You won't mind waiting in the passage, sir, till I've dressed myself. I sha'n't be a minute."
She was very soon ready and she went about the house making inquiries; and, returning, said that none of the lodgers could give her any information concerning Mrs. Turner.
"I am sorry to have disturbed you," said Dr. Spenlove; and, wishing her good-night, he once more faced the storm. The fear by which he was oppressed was that the offer of succour had come too late, and that Mrs. Turner had been driven by despair to the execution of some desperate design to put an end to her misery. Instinctively, and with a sinking heart, he took the direction of the sea, hurrying eagerly after every person he saw ahead of him, in the hope that it might be the woman of whom he was in search. The snow was many inches thick on the roads, and was falling fast; the wind tore through the now almost deserted streets, moaning, sobbing, shrieking, with an appalling human suggestion in its tones created by Dr. Spenlove's fears. Now and then he met a policeman, and stopped to exchange a few words with him, the intention of which was to ascertain if the man had seen any person answering to the description of Mrs. Turner. He did not mention her by name, for he had an idea--supposing his search to be happily successful--that Mr. Gordon would withdraw his offer if any publicity were attracted to the woman he was ready to marry. The policemen could not assist him; they had seen no woman with a baby in her arms tramping the streets on this wild night.
"Anything special, sir?" they asked.
"No," he replied, "nothing special;" and so went on his way.
CHAPTER V.
DEATH BETTER THAN LIFE.
When Dr. Spenlove left Mrs. Turner she sat for some time in a state of dull lethargy. No tear came into her eyes, no sigh escaped from her bosom. During the past few months she had exhausted the entire range of remorseful and despairing emotion. The only comfort she had received through all those dreary months sprang from the helpful sympathy of Dr. Spenlove; apart from, that she had never been buoyed up by a ray of light, had never been cheered by the hope of a brighter day. Her one prevailing thought was that she would be better dead than alive. She did not court death; she waited for it, and silently prayed that it would come soon. It was not from the strength of inward moral support that she had the courage to live on; it was simply that she had schooled herself into the belief that before or when her child was born death would release her from the horrors of life. Young as she was she so fostered this hope that it became a conviction, and she looked forward to the end with dull resignation. "If I live till my baby is born," she thought, "I pray that it may die with me."
Here was the case of a woman without the moral support which springs from faith in any kind of religion. In some few mortals such faith is intuitive, but in most instances it requires guidance and wise direction in childhood. Often it degenerates into bigotry and intolerance, and assumes the hateful narrow form of condemning to perdition all who do not subscribe to its own particular creed. Pagans are as worthy of esteem as the bigots who arrogate to themselves the monopoly of heavenly rewards.
Mrs. Turner was neither pagan nor bigot; she was a nullity. Her religious convictions had not yet taken shape, and though, if she had been asked "Are you a Christian?" she would have replied, "Oh yes, I am a Christian," she would have been unable to demonstrate in what way she was a Christian, or what she understood by the term. In this respect many thousands of human beings resemble her.
Faith is strength, mightier than the sword, mightier than the pen, mightier than all the world's store of gold and precious stones; and when this strength is displayed in the sweetness of resignation, and in submission to the Divine will which chastens human life with sorrow, its influence upon the passions is sustaining, and purifying, and sublime. If Mrs. Turner had been blessed with faith which displayed itself in this direction, she would have been the happier for it, and hard as were her trials, she would to the last have looked forward with hope instead of despair.
The story related by Mr. Gordon to Dr. Spenlove was true in every particular. There was no distortion or exaggeration; he had done for Mrs. Turner and her father all that he said he had done. He had not mentioned the word "love" in connection with the woman he had asked to be his wife. She, on her part, had no such love for him as that which should bind a man and a woman in a life-long tie; she held him in respect and esteem--that was all. But she had accepted him, and had contemplated the future with satisfaction until, until----
Until a man crossed her path who wooed her in different fashion, and who lavished upon her flatteries and endearments which made her false to the promise she had given. For this man she had deserted the home which Mr. Gordon had provided for her, and had deserted it in such a fashion that she could never return to it, could never again be received in it, and this without a word of explanation to the man she had deceived. She was in her turn deceived, and she awoke from her dream to find herself a lost and abandoned woman. In horror she fled from him, and cast her lot among strangers, knowing full well that she would meet with unbearable contumely among those to whom she was known. Hot words had passed between her and her betrayer, and in her anger she had written letters to him which in the eyes of the law would have released him from any obligation it might otherwise have imposed upon him. He was well pleased with this, and he smiled as he put those letters in a place of safety--to be brought forward only in case she annoyed him. She did nothing of the kind; her scorn for him was so profound that she was content to release him unconditionally. So she passed out of his life as he passed out of hers. Neither of these beings, the betrayed or the betrayer, reckoned with the future; neither of them gave a thought to the probability that the skeins of Fate, which to-day separated them as surely as if they had lived at opposite poles of the earth, might at some future time bring them together again, and that the pages of the book which they believed was closed for ever might be reopened for weal or woe.
The child's moans aroused the mother from her lethargy. She had no milk to give the babe; nature's founts were dry, and she went from door to door in the house in which she lived to beg for food. She returned as she went, empty-handed, and the child continued to moan.
Dr. Spenlove, her only friend, had bidden her farewell. She had not a penny in her pocket; there was not a crust of bread in the cupboard, not an ounce of coal, not a stick of wood to kindle a fire. She was thinly clad, and she did not possess a single article upon which she could