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  

 

 
II.
 
 

 
          
I
was told that a lady in deep mourning wanted to see me on urgent business, and
I looked out of my private den at the Paris Consulate into the room hung with
maps and Presidents, where visitors were sifted out before being passed on to
the Vice-Consul or the Chief.

 
          
The
lady was Mrs. Stephen Glenn.

 
          
Six
or seven months had passed since our meeting on the
Scythian
, and I had again forgotten her very existence. She was not
a person who stuck in one’s mind; and once more I wondered why, for in her
statuesque weeds she looked nobler, more striking than ever. She glanced at the
people awaiting their turn under the maps and the Presidents, and asked in a
low tone if she could see me privately.

 
          
I
was free at the moment, and I led her into my office and banished the typist.

 
          
Mrs.
Glenn seemed disturbed by the signs of activity about me. “I’m afraid we shall
be interrupted. I wanted to speak to you alone,” she said.

 
          
I
assured her we were not likely to be disturbed if she could put what she had to
say in a few words—

 
          
“Ah,
but that’s just what I can’t do. What I have to say can’t be put in a few
words.” She fixed her splendid nocturnal eyes on me, and I read in them a
distress so deep that I dared not suggest postponement.

 
          
I
said I would do all I could to prevent our being interrupted, and in reply she
just sat silent, and looked at me, as if after all she had nothing farther to
communicate. The telephone clicked, and I rang for my secretary to take the
message; then one of the clerks came in with papers for my signature. I said:
“I’d better sign and get it over,” and she sat motionless, her head slightly
bent, as if secretly relieved by the delay. The clerk went off, I shut the door
again, and when we were alone she lifted her head and spoke. “Mr. Norcutt,” she
asked, “have you ever had a child?”

 
          
I
replied with a smile that I was not married. She murmured: “I’m sorry—excuse
me,” and looked down again at her black-gloved hands, which were clasped about
a black bag richly embroidered with dull jet. Everything about her was as
finished, as costly, as studied, as if she were a young beauty going forth in
her joy; yet she looked like a heart-broken woman.

 
          
She
began again: “My reason for coming is that I’ve promised to help a friend, a
poor woman who’s lost all trace of her son—her only surviving son—and is
hunting for him.” She paused, though my expectant silence seemed to encourage
her to continue. “It’s a very sad case: I must try to explain. Long ago, as a
girl, my friend fell in love with a married man—a man unhappily married.” She
moistened her lips, which had become parched and colourless. “You mustn’t judge
them too severely…. He had great nobility of character—the highest
standards—but the situation was too cruel. His wife was insane; at that time
there was no legal release in such cases. If you were married to a lunatic only
death could free you. It was a most unhappy affair—the poor girl pitied her
friend profoundly. Their little boy …” Suddenly she stood up with a proud and
noble movement and leaned to me across the desk. “I am that woman,” she said.

 
          
She
straightened herself and stood there, trembling, erect, like a swathed figure
of woe on an illustrious grave. I thought: “What this inexpressive woman was
meant to express is grief—” and marvelled at the wastefulness of Nature. But
suddenly she dropped back into her chair, bowed her face against the desk, and
burst into sobs. Her sobs were not violent; they were soft, low,
almost
rhythmical, with lengthening intervals between, like
the last drops of rain after a long down-pour; and I said to myself: “She’s
cried so much that this must be the very end.”

 
          
She
opened the jet bag, took out a delicate handkerchief, and dried her eyes. Then
she turned to me again. “It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken of this … to any
human being except one.”

 
          
I
laid my hand on hers. “It was no use—my pretending,” she went on, as if
appealing to me for justification.

 
          
“Is
it ever? And why should you, with an old friend?” I rejoined, attempting to
comfort her.

 
          
“Ah, but I’ve had to—for so many years; to be silent has become my
second nature.”
She paused, and then continued in a softer tone: “My
baby was so beautiful … do you know, Mr. Norcutt, I’m sure I should know him
anywhere…. Just two years and one month older than my second boy, Philip … the
one you knew.” Again she hesitated, and then, in a warmer burst of confidence,
and scarcely above a whisper: “We christened the eldest Stephen. We knew it was
dangerous: it might give a clue—but I felt I must give him his father’s name,
the name I loved best. … It was all I could keep of my baby. And Stephen
understood; he consented. …”

 
          
I
sat and stared at her. What! This child of hers that she was telling me of was
the child of Stephen Glenn? The two had had a child two years before the birth
of their lawful son Philip?
And consequently nearly a year
before their marriage?
I listened in a stupor, trying to reconstruct in
my mind the image of a new, of another, Stephen Glenn, of the suffering
reckless man behind the varnished image familiar to me. Now and then I
murmured: “Yes … yes …” just to help her to go on.

 
          
“Of
course it was impossible to keep the baby with me. Think—at my uncle’s! My poor
uncle … he would have died of it….”

 
          
“And
so you died instead?”

 
          
I
had found the right word; her eyes filled again, and she stretched her hands to
mine. “Ah, you’ve understood! Thank you. Yes; I died,” She added: “Even when
Philip was born I didn’t come to life again—not wholly. Because there was
always Stevie … part of me belonged to Stevie forever.”

 
          
“But
when you and Glenn were able to marry, why—?”

 
          
She
hung her head, and the blood rose to her worn temples.
“Ah,
why?
… Listen; you mustn’t blame my husband. Try to remember what life
was thirty years ago in
New York
. He had his professional standing to consider. A woman with a shadow on
her was damned. … I couldn’t discredit Stephen…. We knew
positively
that our baby was in the best of hands. …”

 
          
“You
never saw him again?”

 
          
She
shook her head. “It was part of the agreement—with the persons who took him.
They wanted to imagine he was their own. We knew we were fortunate … to find
such a safe home, so entirely beyond suspicion … we had to accept the
conditions.” She looked up with a faint flicker of reassurance in her eyes. “In
a way it no longer makes any difference to me—the interval. It seems like
yesterday. I know he’s been well cared for, and I should recognise him
anywhere. No child ever had such eyes….” She fumbled in her bag, drew out a
small morocco case, opened it, and showed me the miniature of a baby a few
months old. “I managed, with the greatest difficulty, to get a photograph of
him—and this was done from it.
Beautiful?
Yes. I shall
be able to identify him anywhere…. It’s only twenty-seven years….”

 
          
  

 

 
III.
 
 

 
          
Our
talk was prolonged, the next day, at the quiet hotel where Mrs. Glenn was
staying; but it led—it could lead—to nothing definite.

 
          
The
unhappy woman could only repeat and amplify the strange confession stammered
out at the Consulate. As soon as her child was born it had been entrusted with
the utmost secrecy to a rich childless couple, who at once adopted it, and
disappeared forever. Disappeared, that is, in the sense that (as I guessed)
Stephen Glenn was as determined as they were that the child’s parents should
never hear of them again. Poor Catherine had been very ill at her baby’s birth.
Tortured by the need of concealment, of taking up her usual life at her uncle’s
as quickly as possible, of explaining her brief absence in such a way as to
avert suspicion, she had lived in a blur of fear and suffering, and by the time
she was herself again the child was gone, and the adoption irrevocable.
Thereafter, I gathered, Glenn made it clear that he wished to avoid the
subject, and she learned very little about the couple who had taken her child
except that they were of good standing, and came from somewhere in
Pennsylvania
. They had gone to
Europe
almost immediately, it appeared, and no
more was heard of them. Mrs. Glenn understood that Mr. Brown (their name was
Brown) was a painter, and that they went first to
Italy
, then to
Spain
—unless it was the other way round. Stephen
Glenn, it seemed, had heard of them through an old governess of his sister’s, a
family confidante, who was the sole recipient of poor Catherine’s secret. Soon
afterward the governess died, and with her disappeared the last trace of the
mysterious couple; for it was not going to be easy to wander about Europe
looking for a Mr. and Mrs. Brown who had gone to Italy or Spain with a baby
twenty-seven years ago. But that was what Mrs. Glenn meant to do. She had a
fair amount of money, she was desperately lonely, she had no aim or interest or
occupation or duty—except to find the child she had lost.

 
          
What
she wanted was some sort of official recommendation to our consuls in
Italy
and
Spain
, accompanied by a private letter hinting at
the nature of her errand. I took these papers to her and when I did so I tried
to point out the difficulties and risks of her quest, and suggested that she
ought to be accompanied by some one who could advise her—hadn’t she a man of
business, or a relation, a cousin, a nephew? No, she said; there was no one;
but for that matter she needed no one. If necessary she could apply to the
police, or employ private detectives; and any American consul to whom she
appealed would know how to advise her. “In any case,” she added, “I couldn’t be
mistaken—I should always recognise him. He was the very image of his father.
And if there were any possibility of my being in doubt, I have the miniature,
and photographs of his father as a young man.”

 
          
She
drew out the little morocco case and offered it again for my contemplation. The
vague presentment of a child a few months old—and by its help she expected to
identify a man of nearly thirty!

 
          
Apparently
she had no clue beyond the fact that, all those years ago, the adoptive parents
were rumoured to have sojourned in
Europe
. She
was starting for
Italy
because she thought she remembered that they were said to have gone
there first—in itself a curious argument. Wherever there was an American consul
she meant to apply to him.
First at
Genoa
; then
Milan
; then
Florence
,
Rome
and
Naples
.
In one or the other of these cities she
would surely discover some one who could remember the passage there of an
American couple named Brown with the most beautiful baby boy in the world. Even
the long arm of coincidence could not have scattered so widely over southern
Europe American couples of the name of Brown, with a matchlessly beautiful baby
called Stephen.

 
          
Mrs.
Glenn set forth in a mood of almost mystical exaltation. She promised that I
should hear from her as soon as she had anything definite to communicate:
“which means that you
will
hear—and
soon!” she concluded with a happy laugh. But six months passed without my
receiving any direct news, though I was kept on her track by a succession of
letters addressed to my chief by various consuls who wrote to say that a Mrs.
Stephen Glenn had called with a letter of recommendation, but that unluckily it
had been impossible to give her any assistance “as she had absolutely no data
to go upon.” Alas poor lady—

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