Cast Adrift. Arthur Timothy Shay
of living with a criminal,” replied his wife. “I say it solemnly, and I mean it; the die is cast! Come what will, George Granger stands now and for ever on the outside! Go at once and give information to the bank officers. If you do not, I will.”
With a heavy heart Mr. Dinneford returned to the bank and informed the president that the note in question was a forgery. He had been gone from home a little over half an hour, when Granger, who had come to ask him about the three notes given him that morning by Freeling, put his key in the door, and found, a little to his surprise, that the latch was down. He rang the bell, and in a few moments the servant appeared. Granger was about passing in, when the man said, respectfully but firmly, as he held the door partly closed,
“My orders are not to let you come in.”
“Who gave you those orders?” demanded Granger, turning white.
“Mrs. Dinneford.”
“I wish to see Mr. Dinneford, and I must see him immediately.”
“Mr. Dinneford is not at home,” answered the servant.
“Shut that door instantly!”
It was the voice of Mrs. Dinneford, speaking from within. Granger heard it; in the next moment the door was shut in his face.
The young man hardly knew how he got back to the store. On his arrival he found himself under arrest, charged with forgery, and with fresh evidence of the crime on his person in the three notes received that morning from his partner, who denied all knowledge of their existence, and appeared as a witness against him at the hearing before a magistrate. Granger was held to bail to answer the charge at the next term of court.
It would have been impossible to keep all this from Edith, even if there had been a purpose to do so. Mrs. Dinneford chose to break the dreadful news at her own time and in her own way. The shock was fearful. On the night that followed her baby was born.
CHAPTER III
“IT is a splendid boy,” said the nurse as she came in with the new-born baby in her arms, “and perfect as a bit of sculpture. Just look at that hand.”
“Faugh!” ejaculated Mrs. Dinneford, to whom this was addressed. Her countenance expressed disgust. She turned her head away. “Hide the thing from my sight!” she added, angrily. “Cover it up! smother it if you will!”
“You are still determined?” said the nurse.
“Determined, Mrs. Bray; I am not the woman to look back when I have once resolved. You know me.” Mrs. Dinneford said this passionately.
The two women were silent for a little while. Mrs. Bray, the nurse, kept her face partly turned from Mrs. Dinneford. She was a short, dry, wiry little woman, with French features, a sallow complexion and very black eyes.
The doctor looked in. Mrs. Dinneford went quickly to the door, and putting her hand on his arm, pressed him back, going out into the entry with him and closing the door behind them. They talked for a short time very earnestly.
“The whole thing is wrong,” said the doctor as he turned to go, “and I will not be answerable for the consequences.”
“No one will require them at your hand, Doctor Radcliffe,” replied Mrs. Dinneford. “Do the best you can for Edith. As for the rest, know nothing, say nothing. You understand.”
Doctor Burt Radcliffe had a large practice among rich and fashionable people. He had learned to be very considerate of their weaknesses, peculiarities and moral obliquities. His business was to doctor them when sick, to humor them when they only thought themselves sick, and to get the largest possible fees for his, services. A great deal came under his observation that he did not care to see, and of which he saw as little as possible. From policy he had learned to be reticent. He held family secrets enough to make, in the hands of a skillful writer, more than a dozen romances of the saddest and most exciting character.
Mrs. Dinneford knew him thoroughly, and just how far to trust him. “Know nothing, say nothing” was a good maxim in the case, and so she divulged only the fact that the baby was to be cast adrift. His weak remonstrance might as well not have been spoken, and he knew it.
While this brief interview was in progress, Nurse Bray sat with the baby on her lap. She had taken the soft little hands into her own; and evil and cruel though she was, an impulse of tenderness flowed into her heart from the angels who were present with the innocent child. It grew lovely in her eyes. Its helplessness stirred in her a latent instinct of protection. “No no, it must not be,” she was saying to herself, when the door opened and Mrs. Dinneford came back.
Mrs. Bray did not lift her head, but sat looking down at the baby and toying with its hands.
“Pshaw!” ejaculated Mrs. Dinneford, in angry disgust, as she noticed this manifestation of interest. “Bundle the thing up and throw into that basket. Is the woman down stairs?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Bray as she slowly drew a light blanket over the baby.
“Very well. Put it in the basket, and let her take it away.”
“She is not a good woman,” said the nurse, whose heart was failing her at the last moment.
“She may be the devil for all I care,” returned Mrs. Dinneford.
Mrs. Bray did as she was ordered, but with an evident reluctance that irritated Mrs. Dinneford.
“Go now and bring up the woman,” she said, sharply.
The woman was brought. She was past the prime of life, and had an evil face. You read in it the record of bad passions indulged and the signs of a cruel nature. She was poorly clad, and her garments unclean.
“You will take this child?” said Mrs. Dinneford abruptly, as the woman came into her presence.
“I have agreed to do so,” she replied, looking toward Mrs. Bray.
“She is to have fifty dollars,” said the nurse.
“And that is to be the last of it!” Mrs. Dinneford’s face was pale, and she spoke in a hard, husky voice.
Opening her purse, she took from it a small roll of bills, and as she held out the money said, slowly and with a hard emphasis,
“You understand the terms. I do not know you—not even your name. I don’t wish to know you. For this consideration you take the child away. That is the end of it between you and me. The child is your own as much as if he were born to you, and you can do with him as you please. And now go.” Mrs. Dinneford waved her hand.
“His name?” queried the woman.
“He has no name!” Mrs. Dinneford stamped her foot in angry impatience.
The woman stooped down, and taking up the basket, tucked the covering that had been laid over the baby close about its head, so that no one could see what she carried, and went off without uttering another word.
It was some moments before either Mrs. Dinneford or the nurse spoke. Mrs. Bray was first to break silence.
“All this means a great deal more than you have counted on,” she said, in a voice that betrayed some little feeling. “To throw a tender baby out like that is a hard thing. I am afraid—”
“There, there! no more of that,” returned Mrs. Dinneford, impatiently. “It’s ugly work, I own, but it had to be done—like cutting off a diseased limb. He will die, of course, and the sooner it is over, the better for him and every one else.”
“He will have a hard struggle for life, poor little thing!” said the nurse. “I would rather see him dead.”
Mrs. Dinneford, now that this wicked and cruel deed was done, felt ill at ease. She pushed the subject away, and tried to bury it out of sight as we bury the dead, but did not find the task an easy one.
What followed the birth and removal of Edith’s baby up to the time of her return to reason after long struggle for life, has already been told. Her demand to have her baby—“Oh, mother, bring me my baby! I shall die if you do not!” and the answer, “Your