"DEAR JEAN—It cannot be helped now, and of course we were never really married. It was only a joke.—DOUGLAS."
"And that was all?" said the youth.
"That was all, God helping me, that was all."
"And you have heard nothing from him since?"
"Never a word since the morning he bid me good-bye at the station, and told me to go back to my father, saying he would write to me at once, and come to me soon. No, I have never seen nor heard of him since."
The eyes of the youth became red with anger. His hands clenched and unclenched themselves passionately, but he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not. Then an oath escaped him, and his voice was hoarse.
"But, mother," he cried presently, "tell me more. There must be more than this. What about this marriage? Were there no witnesses? Have you no marriage lines?"
"Things are different in Scotland, my boy," was her answer. "There many people just take each other as man and wife, and that is all, and the marriage is legal. Do you know"—and her voice trembled with passion—"that on the afternoon when he took me as his wife we knelt down by the roadside, and he prayed with me that God would help us to be true man and wife to each other?"
"But, but——" he cried, and he was trembling with emotion, "and he treated you like that?"
The woman did not reply, but looked away across the moors with a hard, stony stare.
"My mother, my poor, poor mother!" He seemed incapable of saying more, and for two or three minutes there was a silence between them.
"And then, mother?" he went on presently.
"Months later," she went on, "I was driven from home. I had no friends, no relatives, no one to whom I could go, and I thought I should go mad!"
"And what did you do?" he asked.
"There seemed to me only one thing I could do," she said. "I could not stay near my old home, I was ashamed—besides, my father and stepmother drove me away with a curse. They said I had disgraced the name of Lindsay. I always hated Scotland, and as my heart turned to my mother's home, I determined I would go to Cornwall. I had just three pounds, and with that I commenced my journey."
"You came by train?" he asked.
"No, I walked. I wanted to hoard my money. You see it was very little."
"You walked all the way to Cornwall from Scotland?"
"Every step," she said. "It was winter time, too, and it often rained, but somehow I felt as though Cornwall would give me a home, a welcome. It took me weeks to do it, but I got there at last. Often I slept in a farmer's barn; more than once I walked all through the night." And into her eyes came a far-away look, while her lips quivered as if with pain.
"And did you find a home and welcome?" he asked.
She shook her head. "How could I? I went straight to St. Ives, but everyone had forgotten my mother, and her people were dead. You see, I looked like a vagrant, my clothes were weather-stained, my boots were worn out, I had no money, and no one wanted me. More than once I thought I should have died of starvation."
"And what did you do?" he asked.
"I did not know what to do. I went from place to place. Here and there I got a day's work, but I never begged. I would rather have died than have done that."
A kind of grim satisfaction settled in the youth's face as he heard this, but it was easy to see that the pain which lay in his mother's heart also passed into his. He was not pleasant to look at at that moment, and if murder can ever be seen in a man's eyes, it could be seen in his at that moment.
"Well, mother?" he said at length, "and what afterwards?"
"I began to tramp northward again," she said. "I hoped that surely, surely, someone would help me. And then one day I fell down by the roadside. It was spring time now but terribly cold, and I thought, 'Now I shall die, and all will be over.' I think I went to sleep, because I knew nothing of what happened. A great darkness fell upon everything, and then, when I woke again, I found myself in a workhouse. I knew it was a workhouse by the clothes the people wore and by the way they talked; but I did not care much—I had got beyond that." She hesitated, like one who did not know how to continue her story. Her teeth became set, her lips quivered, her eyes were hard. "Oh, my boy, my boy!" she said, "I could not help it, I thought I did what was right!"
The youth took hold of her hand almost awkwardly. He wanted to try and comfort her, but knew not how. Perhaps the affectionate action, even although accompanied by no words, was the best thing he could have done to ease her aching heart. She laid her head upon his chest as though she were tired. And then she sobbed convulsively. "There you were born, my boy."
"They always called me a workhouse brat," he said; "but never mind, mother, never mind; what then?"
"They never thought I would live, I suppose," she replied. "For weeks I lay between life and death. I believe I should have died, but presently I came to know that you were alive, and that you were a great, strong, handsome boy. But you are not like him, thank God! He had blue eyes and light hair, but your eyes are black, your hair is black, and you are like me. They christened you in the workhouse, unknown to me. The chaplain gave you a name. If I had had the choosing of it, I should have called you Ishmael or Esau, but they called you Paul. They wanted me to tell them my surname, but I would not—I could not—so they called you Stepaside, the name of the little hamlet where I fell down, as I thought, to die."
"Well, I know everything after that," he replied.
"Very nearly," was her answer. "You were brought up in the workhouse, while I, as soon as I was strong enough, had to go away into service. On the whole, I suppose, they did as well as one could expect for you. They gave you good schooling, and taught you a trade, and now you are beginning to earn your own living."
"Yes, mother," he replied. "I have got a job as a blacksmith in the Pencarrow Mines. Soon I shall be getting a pound a week, and later on you must come and live with me."
She shook her head. "No, Paul. While I am not with you, people will not insult you. Now that you are away from the place where you were born and reared, no one knows your history. No one knows that you were born in a workhouse and that your mother does not know where your father is."
"But you were married, mother?"
"Yes," she cried eagerly, "and that is why I have told you everything to-day. When you were seventeen, I said to myself, 'Directly I can get to him we will meet, and I will tell him, tell him with my own lips.' Paul, that man has covered your mother with black shame. If he is alive you must find him. The day he wrote me that letter he killed all the love I had for him. The last feeling I had, when I lay down and thought I was going to die on the roadside, was a feeling of hatred for him. When I first saw you, although my heart went out to you with a great love, I hated your father. For seventeen long years I have hated him, and I hate him still."
She looked like a savage, and there was a snarl in her voice as she spoke. "But for him, but for him——" And then she stopped. "Paul, find him out, wherever he is. Find him out!"
The passion which burned in the mother's eyes passed into those of the youth. She need not have told him what was in her heart. Paul Stepaside hated his father from that day.
"Yes, I will," he said grimly. "I will find him. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; disgrace for disgrace; misery for misery. Mother, all you have suffered he shall suffer, and a thousand times more. Wherever he is, whatever he is, I will find him." His eyes turned away towards the dreary moors. Router and Brown Willy stood like grim sentinels watching over the scene. A slight wind had arisen, which soughed its way across the great silent spaces, dispelling the mists. The black tors in the near distance became visible again; frogs croaked in the marshes near by.
"But tell me more, mother. I know nothing yet. Who is