Cast Adrift

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"Worse than sick," he replied as they passed into the house
together. "George has been forging my name."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford.

"I wish it were," replied Mr. Dinneford, sadly; "but, alas! it is
too true. I have just returned from the Fourth National Bank. They
have a note for three thousand dollars, bearing my signature. It is
drawn to the order of George Granger, and endorsed by him. The note
is a forgery."

Mrs. Dinneford became almost wild with excitement. Her fair face
grew purple. Her eyes shone with a fierce light.

"Have you had him arrested?" she asked.

"Oh no, no, no!" Mr. Dinneford answered. "For poor Edith's sake, if
for nothing else, this dreadful business must be kept secret. I will
take up the note when due, and the public need be none the wiser."

"If," said Mrs. Dinneford, "he has forged your name once, he has, in
all probability, done it again and again. No, no; the thing can't be
hushed up, and it must not be. Is he less a thief and a robber
because he is our son-in-law? My daughter the wife of a forger!
Great heavens! has it come to this Mr. Dinneford?" she added, after
a pause, and with intense bitterness and rejection in her voice.
"The die is cast! Never again, if I can prevent it, shall that
scoundrel cross our threshold. Let the law have its course. It is a
crime to conceal crime."

"It will kill our poor child!" answered Mr. Dinneford in a broken
voice.

"Death is better than the degradation 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 baby is in
heaven!"--sent the feeble life-currents back again upon her heart.
There was another long period of oblivion, out of which she came
very slowly, her mind almost as much a blank as the mind of a child.

She had to learn again the names of things, and to be taught their
use. It was touching to see the untiring devotion of her father, and
the pleasure he took in every new evidence of mental growth. He went
over the alphabet with her, letter by letter, many times each day,
encouraging her and holding her thought down to the unintelligible
signs with a patient tenderness sad yet beautiful to see; and when
she began to combine letters into words, and at last to put words
together, his delight was unbounded.

Very slowly went on the new process of mental growth, and it was
months before thought began to reach out beyond the little world
that lay just around her.

Meanwhile, Edith's husband had been brought to trial for forgery,
convicted and sentenced to the State's prison for a term of years.
His partner came forward as the chief witness, swearing that he had
believed the notes genuine, the firm having several times had the
use of Mr. Dinneford's paper, drawn to the order of Granger.

Ere the day of trial came the poor young man was nearly
broken-hearted. Public disgrace like this, added to the terrible
private wrongs he was suffering, was more than he had the moral
strength to bear. Utterly repudiated by his wife's family, and not
even permitted to see Edith, he only knew that she was very ill. Of
the birth of his baby he had but a vague intimation. A rumor was
abroad that it had died, but he could learn nothing certain. In his
distress and uncertainty he called on Dr. Radcliffe, who replied to
his questions with a cold evasion. "It was put out to nurse," said
the doctor, "and that is all I know about it." Beyond this he would
say nothing.

Granger was not taken to the State's prison after his sentence, but
to an insane asylum. Reason gave way under the terrible ordeal
through which he had been made to pass.

"Mother," said Edith, one day, in a tone that caused Mrs.
Dinneford's heart to leap. She was reading a child's simple
story-book, and looked up as she spoke. Her eyes were wide open and
full of questions.

"What, my dear?" asked Mrs. Dinneford, repressing her feelings and
trying to keep her voice calm.

"There's something I can't understand, mother." She looked down at
herself, then about the room. Her manner was becoming nervous.

"What can't you understand?"

Edith shut her hands over her eyes and remained very still. When she
removed them, and her mother looked into her face the childlike
sweetness and content were all gone, and a conscious woman was
before her. The transformation was as sudden as it was marvelous.

Both remained silent for the space of nearly a minute. Mrs.
Dinneford knew not what to say, and waited for some sign from her
daughter.

"Where is my baby, mother?" Edith said this in a low, tremulous
whisper, leaning forward as she spoke, repressed and eager.

"Have you forgotten?" asked Mrs. Dinneford, with regained composure.

"Forgotten what?"

"You were very ill after your baby was born; no one thought you
could live; you were ill for a long time. And the baby--"

"What of the baby, mother?" asked Edith, beginning to tremble
violently. Her mother, perceiving her agitation, held back the word
that was on her lips.

"What of the baby, mother?" Edith repeated the question.

"It died," said Mrs. Dinneford, turning partly away. She could not
look at her child and utter this cruel falsehood.

"Dead! Oh, mother, don't say that! The baby can't be dead!"

A swift flash of suspicion came into her eyes.

"I have said it, my child," was the almost stern response of Mrs.
Dinneford. "The baby is dead."

A weight seemed to fall on Edith. She bent forward, crouching down
until her elbows rested on her knees and her hands supported her
head. Thus she sat, rocking her body with a slight motion. Mrs.
Dinneford watched her without speaking.

"And what of George?" asked Edith, checking her nervous movement at
last.

Her mother did not reply. Edith waited a moment, and then lifted
herself erect.

"What of George?" she demanded.

"My poor child!" exclaimed Mrs. Dinneford, with a gush of genuine
pity, putting her arms about Edith and drawing her head against her
bosom. "It is more than you have strength to bear."

"You must tell me," the daughter said, disengaging herself. "I have
asked for my husband."

"Hush! You must not utter that word again;" and Mrs. Dinneford put
her fingers on Edith's lips. "The wretched man you once called by
that name is a disgraced criminal. It is better that you know the
worst."

When Mr. Dinneford came home, instead of the quiet, happy child he
had left in the morning, he found a sad, almost broken-hearted
woman, refusing to be comforted. The wonder was that under the shock
of this terrible awakening, reason had not been again and hopelessly
dethroned.

After a period of intense suffering, pain seemed to deaden
sensibility. She grew calm and passive. And now Mrs. Dinneford set
herself to the completion of the work she had begun. She had
compassed the ruin of Granger in order to make a divorce possible;
she had cast the baby adrift that no sign of the social disgrace
might remain as an impediment to her first ambition. She would yet
see her daughter in the position to which she had from the beginning
resolved to lift her, cost what it might. But the task was not to be
an easy one.

After a period of intense suffering, as we have said, Edith grew
calm and passive. But she was never at ease with her mother, and
seemed to be afraid of her. To her father she was tender and
confiding. Mrs. Dinneford soon saw that if Edith's consent to a
divorce from her husband was to be obtained, it must come through
her father's influence; for if she but hinted at the subject, it was
met with a flash of almost indignant rejection. So her first work
was to bring her husband over to her side. This was not difficult,
for Mr. Dinneford felt the disgrace of having for a son-in-law a
condemned criminal, who was only saved from the State's prison by
insanity. An insane criminal was not worthy to hold the relation of
husband to his pure and lovely child.

After a feeble opposition to her father's arguments and persuasions,
Edith yielded her consent. An application for a divorce was made,
and speedily granted.

CHAPTER IV.

_OUT_ of this furnace Edith came with a new and purer spirit. She
had been thrust in a shrinking and frightened girl; she came out a
woman in mental stature, in feeling and self-consciousness.

The river of her life, which had cut for itself a deeper channel,
lay now so far down that it was out of the sight of common
observation. Even her mother failed to apprehend its drift and
strength. Her father knew her better. To her mother she was reserved
and distant; to her father, warm and confiding. With the former she
would sit for hours without speaking unless addressed; with the
latter she was pleased and social, and grew to be interested in what
interested him. As mentioned, Mr. Dinneford was a man of wealth and
leisure, and active in many public charities. He had come to be much
concerned for the neglected and cast-off children of poor and
vicious parents, thousands upon thousands of whom were going to
hopeless ruin, unthought of and uncared for by Church or State, and
their condition often formed the subject of his conversation as well
at home as elsewhere.

Mrs. Dinneford had no sympathy with her husband in this direction. A
dirty, vicious child was an offence to her, not an object of pity,
and she felt more like, spurning it with her foot than touching it
with her hand. But it was not so with Edith; she listened to her
father, and became deeply interested in the poor, suffering,
neglected little ones whose sad condition he could so vividly
portray, for the public duties of charity to which he was giving a
large part of his time made him familiar with much that was sad and
terrible in human suffering and degradation.

One day Edith said to her father,

"I saw a sight this morning that made me sick. It has haunted me
ever since. Oh, it was dreadful!"

"What was it?" asked Mr. Dinneford.

"A sick baby in the arms of a half-drunken woman. It made me shiver
to look at its poor little face, wasted by hunger and sickness and
purple with cold. The woman sat at the street corner begging, and
the people went by, no one seeming to care for the helpless,
starving baby in her arms. I saw a police-officer almost touch the
woman as he passed. Why did he not arrest her?"

"That was not his business," replied Mr. Dinneford. "So long as she
did not disturb the peace, the officer had nothing to do with her."

"Who, then, has?"

"Nobody."

"Why, father!" exclaimed Edith. "Nobody?"

"The woman was engaged in business. She was a beggar, and the sick,
half-starved baby was her capital in trade," replied Mr. Dinneford.
"That policeman had no more authority to arrest her than he had to
arrest the organ-man or the peanut-vender."

"But somebody should see after a poor baby like that. Is there no
law to meet such cases?"

"The poor baby has no vote," replied Mr. Dinneford, "and law-makers
don't concern themselves much about that sort of constituency; and
even if they did, the executors of law would be found indifferent.
They are much more careful to protect those whose business it is to
make drunken beggars like the one you saw, who, if men, can vote and
give them place and power. The poor baby is far beneath their
consideration."

"But not of Him," said Edith, with eyes full of tears, "who took
little children in his arms and blessed them, and said, Suffer them
to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven."

"Our law-makers are not, I fear, of his kingdom," answered Mr.
Dinneford, gravely, "but of the kingdom of this world."

A little while after, Edith, who had remained silent and thoughtful,
said, with a tremor in her voice,

"Father, did you see my baby?"

Mr. Dinneford started at so unexpected a question, surprised and
disturbed. He did not reply, and Edith put the question again.

"No, my dear," he answered, with a hesitation of manner that was
almost painful.

After looking into his face steadily for some moments, Edith dropped
her eyes to the floor, and there was a constrained silence between
them for a good while.

"You never saw it?" she queried, again lifting her eyes to her
father's face. Her own was much paler than when she first put the
question.

"Never."

"Why?" asked Edith.

She waited for a little while, and then said,

"Why don't you answer me, father?"

"It was never brought to me."

"Oh, father!"

"You were very ill, and a nurse was procured immediately."

"I was not too sick to see my baby," said Edith, with white,
quivering lips. "If they had laid it in my bosom as soon as it was
born, I would never have been so ill, and the baby would not have
died. If--if--"

She held back what she was about saying, shutting her lips tightly.
Her face remained very pale and strangely agitated. Nothing more was
then said.

A day or two afterward, Edith asked her mother, with an abruptness
that sent the color to her face, "Where was my baby buried?"

"In our lot at Fairview," was replied, after a moment's pause.

Edith said no more, but on that very day, regardless of a heavy rain
that was falling, went out to the cemetery alone and searched in the
family lot for the little mound that covered her baby--searched, but
did not find it. She came back so changed in appearance that when
her mother saw her she exclaimed,

"Why, Edith! Are you sick?"

"I have been looking for my baby's grave and cannot find it," she
answered. "There is something wrong, mother. What was done with my
baby? I must know." And she caught her mother's wrists with both of
her hands in a tight grip, and sent searching glances down through
her eyes.

"Your baby is dead," returned Mrs. Dinneford, speaking slowly and
with a hard deliberation. "As for its grave--well, if you will drag
up the miserable past, know that in my anger at your wretched
_mesalliance_ I rejected even the dead body of your miserable
husband's child, and would not even suffer it to lie in our family
ground. You know how bitterly I was disappointed, and I am not one
of the kind that forgets or forgives easily. I may have been wrong,
but it is too late now, and the past may as well be covered out of
sight."

"Where, then, was my baby buried?" asked Edith, with a calm
resolution of manner that was not to be denied.

"I do not know. I did not care at the time, and never asked."

"Who can tell me?"

"I don't know."

"Who took my baby to nurse?"

"I have forgotten the woman's name. All I know is that she is dead.
When the child died, I sent her money, and told her to bury it
decently."

"Where did she live?"

"I never knew precisely. Somewhere down town."

"Who brought her here? who recommended her?" said Edith, pushing her
inquiries rapidly.

"I have forgotten that also," replied Mrs. Dinneford, maintaining
her coldness of manner.

"My nurse, I presume," said Edith. "I have a faint recollection of
her--a dark little woman with black eyes whom I had never seen
before. What was her name?"

"Bodine," answered Mrs. Dinneford, without a moment's hesitation.

"Where does she live?"

"She went to Havana with a Cuban lady several months ago."

"Do you know the lady's name?"

"It was Casteline, I think."

Edith questioned no further. The mother and daughter were still
sitting together, both deeply absorbed in thought, when a servant
opened the door and said to Mrs. Dinneford,

"A lady wishes to see you."

"Didn't she give you her card?"

"No ma'am."

"Nor send up her name?"

"No, ma'am."

"Go down and ask her name."

The servant left the room. On returning, she said,

"Her name is Mrs. Bray."

Mrs. Dinneford turned her face quickly, but not in time to prevent
Edith from seeing by its expression that she knew her visitor, and
that her call was felt to be an unwelcome one. She went from the
room without speaking. On entering the parlor, Mrs. Dinneford said,
in a low, hurried voice,

"I don't want you to come here, Mrs. Bray. If you wish to see me
send me word, and I will call on you, but you must on no account
come here."

"Why? Is anything wrong?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Edith isn't satisfied about the baby, has been out to Fairview
looking for its grave, wants to know who her nurse was."

"What did you tell her?"

"I said that your name was Mrs. Bodine, and that you had gone to
Cuba."

"Do you think she would know me?"

"Can't tell; wouldn't like to run the risk of her seeing you here.
Pull down your veil. There! close. She said, a little while ago,
that she had a faint recollection of you as a dark little woman with
black eyes whom she had never seen before."

"Indeed!" and Mrs. Bray gathered her veil close about her face.

"The baby isn't living?" Mrs. Dinneford asked the question in a
whisper.

"Yes."

"Oh, it can't be! Are you sure?"

"Yes; I saw it day before yesterday."

"You did! Where?"

"On the street, in the arms of a beggar-woman."

"You are deceiving me!" Mrs. Dinneford spoke with a throb of anger
in her voice.

"As I live, no! Poor little thing! half starved and half frozen. It
'most made me sick."

"It's impossible! You could not know that it was Edith's baby."

"I do know," replied Mrs. Bray, in a voice that left no doubt on
Mrs. Dinneford's mind.

"Was the woman the same to whom we gave the baby?"

"No; she got rid of it in less than a month."

"What did she do with it?"

"Sold it for five dollars, after she had spent all the money she
received from you in drink and lottery-policies."

"Sold it for five dollars!"

"Yes, to two beggar-women, who use it every day, one in the morning
and the other in the afternoon, and get drunk on the money they
receive, lying all night in some miserable den."

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