"Married—my mother married—" I repeated. I drew away from the woman's restraining arms and slipping to my knees beside her, buried my face in her lap and began to sob. I could not help it. I was broken for the time both physically and mentally by the force of my unpent emotion.
The woman laid her hand protectingly, tenderly on my quivering shoulders, and waited. She must have seen spring freshets before, many a one during the past thirty years, and have known both their benefit and injury to the human soul. Gradually I regained my control.
"Oh, you don't know what this means to me!" I exclaimed, lifting my face swollen with weeping to the kindly one that looked down into mine. "You don't know what this means to me—it has lifted so much, so much—has let in so much light just at a time when I needed it so—when everything looked so black. Sometime I will tell you; but now I want to know when, where, how I can get hold of that marriage certificate. It belongs to me—to me."
I rose with an energy that surprised the woman and, stooping, took her face between my hands and kissed her. I smiled down into that face. She sat speechless. I smiled again. She passed her hand over her eyes as if trying to clear her mind of confusing ideas. I spoke again to her:
"The tempest is over; why should n't we look for a bright to-morrow?" I could hear the vibrant note of a new hope in my voice. The woman heard it too. She continued to stare at me. I drew up my chair to hers and, laying my hand on her knee, said persuasively:
"Now, let's talk; and let me ask some questions."
"To be sure; to be sure," the woman replied. I know she was wondering what would be the next move on the part of her applicant.
"Don't you want to know my name?" I said. "That's rather an important matter when you take a new position; and you said the place was mine, didn't you?"
The woman smiled indulgently. "To be sure it's yours; and what is your name?" she asked, frankly curious at last.
"Marcia Farrell, but I took my great-grandmother's maiden name. There are none of the family left; I 'm the last."
"What was you christened?"
"I never was christened. And what is your name?"
"Delia Beaseley."
"And your daughter's?"
"Jane."
"And when does Doctor Rugvie return?"
"The last of November. You want that certificate?"
"I must have it; it is mine by right." I spoke with decision.
"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.—I can't for the life of me think of that name."
"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are the people? Or is there only one—it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'. Do you know her?"
"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and whom she 's going to live with?"
"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't. You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without asking questions."
"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my next question.
"Doctor Rugvie! You think he pays? Good gracious, child, you are on the wrong track."
"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard roughened one.
"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance. Delia Beaseley smiled.
"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new hope of a new life in me.
"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she was married to according to the certificate.—I can't think of that name!
"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I s'pose you 'll go for that?"
"Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't understand—how am I to accept the place without notification? And you don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?"
"I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral', whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here with the passage money."
I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew, moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help.
III
Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to one's own?
Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a stranger on this earth?
If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret something of yourself to yourself.
Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car.
When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved another woman, "one who had missed her footing"—those words seem to ring constantly in my ears—in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well; that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's developments, I had been able to obtain