Chapter XII: It Seems Incredible

Both Arley and Miss McAllister regarded the retreating girl with amazement so profound that, for the moment, they were rendered speechless.

Could it be possible that the girl had only come to them, as she said, to establish her identity, and was now willing to return to the toil and obscurity of the life which she had been leading? Had she no thoughts of her rights or heritage? of the position she might occupy as the granddaughter of Dr. McAllister and the heiress to his property?

“Stop!” Arley cried, as soon as she could collect her scattered wits, and just as the young girl was going to pass out of the room.

Ina turned, with a half-frightened look, at the authoritative command.

“Where are you going?” Arley asked.

“Back to Mrs. Alden. They have been very kind to me, and I have been happier with them than I ever was in my life before; and they will be glad to keep me with them as long as I like to stay,” Ina answered.

“But--but--it seems incredible! Was your only object in coming here just to establish your identity? Had you nothing else in view?” And Arley studied the fair face earnestly as she put these questions.

“No, that was all; I could not rest until I was satisfied as to who I was. I wanted to be sure that there had been an Evelyn Wentworth--to hear her friends acknowledge her and confess that I must be her child. At first,” she continued, her sweet lips trembling, “or until I saw Mr. Holley, I had a faint hope that one or both of my parents might be living and would gladly claim their long-lost child. Oh! how happy I should have been to have found them, and to have been sheltered by their care and love, but since that cannot be I am content with the knowledge that I have gained from you to-day. Perhaps----”

She hesitated and cast a wistful look at Miss McAllister, which touched her deeply.

“Perhaps what?” Arley questioned, still regarding her closely.

“Perhaps,” and her eyes were still fixed appealingly on the old lady’s face; “you might be willing, since you believe me to be the child of your niece, that I should come to see you once in a while to learn something about my father and mother. Oh! you can never know how meagre my life has been, and how I have yearned for love like theirs,” and a little sob choked her utterance.

Without giving her aunt time to reply to this appeal, Arley got up from her chair and crossed the room to where the girl stood, with her hand still resting upon the knob of the door.

She laid her two hands upon her shoulders and looked searchingly down into her clear, earnest eyes.

“Did you not expect to come here to live? This would have been your home--all these luxuries yours, you know, if you had been brought here, instead of me. Did you have no thought of the fortune which my grandfather--your grandfather--left to his grandchild? Tell me,” she added, almost fiercely, “you who have the face, and eyes, and voice of the woman whom I have always revered as my mother, did you not come here to wrest all these things from me, together with my name and birthright?”

The gentle girl shrank just a little from her questioner, with her intense gaze and tones, but she answered with exceeding sweetness, yet with a sort of impressive dignity:

“No; believe me, I did not; all that I wished for was the right to bear my father’s name--to be acknowledged as his child. I wish to take nothing from you of all the comforts that you have been led to believe your own. I have made you unhappy enough by proving my claim to the name which you have always borne, and I will not make an enemy of you. Now I have told you why I came; let me go, and I will never annoy you again.”

“But, child, I never heard of such a thing. All these things are yours--this beautiful home--alas! I believe I never realized until this moment how very beautiful and dear it is!” Arley said, in trembling tones, looking around upon all the luxuries which lay about her, “and the fortune which Dr. McAllister left--a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. It is yours by right of heritage.”

“I know; Mr. Alden said something of this to me,” Ina returned, with a troubled, uneasy glance at her companion, “but I could not think of taking them away from you, who, all your life, have regarded them as belonging to you. Dr. McAllister always looked upon you as his grandchild; you grew up under his love and care; to you, the child of his affection, he gave this lovely home and his fortune, and not to me, of whose existence he was wholly ignorant.”

“But the law will give it all to you. It will decree that it all belongs to you, the real heiress,” Arley persisted.

“The law need have nothing to do about it,” Ina answered, quickly. “And, oh! I do not wish to deprive you of one single thing. I should feel mean, degraded to take from you what has become a necessity to you from the force of habit and expectation. You have been very tenderly reared, and led to believe that all your future would be like the past, since ample provision was made for you in Dr. McAllister’s will. It would be cruel for me to wrest it from you and consign you to such poverty as I have known. You could never work for your living, while I have been brought up to take care of, and depend upon myself.”

“You are the strangest, most unselfish girl that I ever met in my life!” Arley exclaimed, regarding her wonderingly, with a sort of reverence; and then, actuated by an impulse which she could not resist, she bent forward and kissed the fair, upturned forehead.

Ina caught her breath quickly at the act.

“I thought you would almost hate me,” she said, with a little sob; “and, oh! you never can know how I dreaded to come to you.”

“Hate you! It would be impossible to hate such a sweet spirit as you have shown yourself to be,” Arley answered, earnestly. “But you must not be allowed to wrong yourself; right is right. You are the child of this house. I am simply a usurper--an unintentional one, ’tis true, yet a usurper none the less. Good Heaven!” she cried, wildly, as if suddenly overpowered by the thought; “if you are the real Arley Wentworth, who and what am I? Where, in all this wide world, are my kindred, and how am I ever to find them?

“But wait,” she added, more calmly. “I must not think of that now; justice must be done first.”

She moved with a quick, firm step across the room and rang her bell again.

“Mary, send Mr. Paxton here immediately,” she commanded of the girl when she came.

“Yes’m; he were inquiring about you a minute ago,” she answered, gazing curiously from one agitated face to another, and then disappearing to do her mistress’ bidding.

Then, for a moment, Arley’s forced composure gave way.

“Oh, auntie, auntie!” she sobbed; “can it be possible that I do not belong to you at all?--that all your care and affection for so many years have been given to an impostor?”

“Hush, hush, my darling!” the old lady said, brokenly, while she fondly smoothed the bright head upon her shoulder with her trembling hand. “Do not call yourself such hard, such unnecessary names. Whoever you may prove to be, you will still be my dear child just the same. It cannot alter the fact that I have always loved you and shall love you just as long as I live.”

“But I must give up everything to her. I must go away and surrender all that has been so dear to me,” said stricken Arley.

With a sudden rain of tears, she turned to Miss McAllister and threw herself into her arms.

“You must, and will, of course, do what is right,” Miss McAllister returned, gravely; “but it does not follow that our affection for each other will ever be any the less. You were going away from me anyway. Your husband has claimed you; and so, perhaps, God has sent me this other child, so that I need not be quite so lonely in my old age without you.”

“What a comforter you are, auntie, and how selfish of me not to have thought of you in this connection. She will be a comfort to you, I know,” the young wife said, looking up, and trying to smile through her tears; and just then Philip Paxton entered the room.

“What does this mean?” he asked, stopping short as he observed his wife’s tear-stained face, and regarding the young stranger with questioning surprise.

“I have some strange news for you, Philip,” Arley said, going to him and laying her hand upon his shoulder.

“It must be both strange and sad to make you weep like this on your wedding day,” he replied, tenderly, as he encircled her slight waist with his arm and regarded her anxiously. “What is it, dear?”

She told him in as few words as possible all the strange story, and her heart sank within her as she noted how the tender, anxious light died out of his eyes as he listened; how his face grew pale and stern, and a dogged, resolute expression settled about his lips. Instinctively she knew that he did not mean to acknowledge this stranger’s claim, that he meant to contend for the name, position and fortune which rightly belonged to her by the ties of consanguinity.

But she omitted no point of proof. She explained everything, showing him the pretty little garments, together with the chain and ring which Miss McAllister had recognized as the very ones which she and her brother had sent to Evelyn’s child in far-away India.

“You see, Philip,” she said, sadly, in conclusion, “that you have not married Arley Wentworth after all, but some poor, nameless waif who was cast up by the sea and brought here by mistake, to occupy the position and appropriate all the love and care which belonged to another. All my life I have been usurping this poor girl’s place and privileges, while she has endured only hardships and poverty.”

Had Philip Paxton been a man, loyal and true, he would at once have taken his wife in his arms, and told her that though he might not have married the “real Arley Wentworth,” yet having won the woman whom alone he loved, he would be content, and the stranger might have all else, and welcome.

But he appeared to pay no heed to the appeal contained in her words.

He turned, almost fiercely, upon Ina, and said, with scornfully curling lips, and in tones that were cold and stern:

“Surely you can expect no one to believe a trumped-up story like this--a mere fabrication, cunningly woven, I am bound to confess--which will not bear investigation, and must--let me assure you--fail of its object.”

“But, Philip,” Arley interposed, and shrinking to hear him speak so severely, “here are the very clothes that she wore when she was found, and this little chain and ring, which Aunt Angeline recognized at once.”

“Yes,” said Miss McAllister, “I bought that ring and had it marked, and I must confess I was a trifle hurt when Arley was brought to us and it was not upon her hand, while she wore, instead, a fine and costly emerald. It was, of course, a more expensive ornament, but whoever presented it could not have done so with more love than I experienced when I sent my simple offering to Evelyn’s child. I tried to think, however, that her finger might have outgrown my ring; but I see now that I was wrong, and its absence is fully explained.”

Philip scowled at the inoffensive little trinkets and the garments which his wife and Miss McAllister asserted, proved so much.

“They prove nothing,” he insisted; “they may have been washed ashore after the wreck, and picked up by some fisherman, who now sends his child forth with this story in order to secure your fortune and position.”

“But she was dressed in these things when she was found,” persisted Arley, while she flushed a deep crimson at his rude implication of falsehood and intrigue on the part of the stranger.

“How do you know that?” he demanded. “You have nothing but her word to prove it; it does not follow that it was really the fact, simply because she says so. Then just think, Arley, it is not at all likely that a sailor, who had been on the same vessel with you when he came from India, could have mistaken you for some other child; if he had not known who you were, he would never have sent you to Dr. McAllister.”

“I think the sailor might very easily have mistaken me in all the confusion and terror of that wreck, particularly if, as it now seems, there was another child about my own age on the same vessel,” Arley replied, gravely:

“Nonsense; it is all mere fiction--a plot to secure your money,” he retorted, irritably.

Ina, who had not yet spoken since his entrance, now advanced and stood before him. Her eyes glowed and her cheeks burned hotly at his words, while her graceful form was drawn proudly erect.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, with something of hauteur, “but the gentleman is mistaken; I have spoken only truth--everything is exactly as I have stated.”

“But, my dear young lady, that is merely an assertion, without anything to corroborate it, and you would find it very difficult to prove it before a jury,” Philip said, more politely than he had yet spoken, for her manner impressed him in spite of his skepticism.

“I shall never try to prove it before a jury,” she returned, with dignity. “I am satisfied in my own mind that I am the child of Captain and Mrs. Wentworth, and that is sufficient.”

“Then you do not intend to take any legal steps to secure your so-called rights?” Philip said, eagerly.

“No, sir,” she returned, but there was a little quiver of scorn in her voice which nettled him, and made him wonder, as Arley had done, how it was possible for any one brought up as she had been, to acquire so much refinement and self-possession; “no, sir; as I have already told Mrs. Paxton, I came here with no intention of depriving her of anything; I simply wish to assume my own name, and since she has to-day taken yours, that cannot possibly harm her in any way.”

He looked intensely relieved at this assurance, and remarked to his wife:

“Then you are all right, Arley, there will be no trouble.”

“I do not understand you,” she returned, with a troubled look.

“Why, if she takes no legal steps against you, you can still retain your fortune, and it would be a great pity, after having been led to expect it all your life, for you to be deprived of it in this way.”

She turned upon him with blazing eyes.

“Philip!” she cried, in indignant astonishment.

“Well?”

“I did not expect anything like this from you,” she said. “Would it be just--would it be honorable, to keep it?”

“Why not? Dr. McAllister left you twenty thousand pounds, and of course he expected that you would keep it and use it for your own benefit.”

“He left it to ‘Arley Wentworth, his beloved grandchild.’ I am not ‘Arley Wentworth;’ I am not his ‘grandchild,’ as has been proven to my satisfaction to-day, and, therefore, I have no right to a single pound of his money. Just think,” she went on, excitedly, “of all that I have spent since I came into possession of this wealth. I have appropriated all the income, year after year, spending it for my own selfish gratification, while she,” with a swift motion of her hand toward Ina, “the real Arley, and rightful heiress, has been in poverty and want! Think of all that I have flittered away upon this wedding finery to make myself attractive in your eyes! I feel condemned, guilty, like a thief! Look at her there, in her cheap, simple garments, and then at me, in my rich traveling attire, while all my life I have been sheltered by the tender care and love which should have been hers. It makes me almost hate myself to think that I have deprived her of all this, and yet I would not, willfully, have wronged her of a single shilling had I known of this before. No, Philip, if you would retain my respect, you must not so much as suggest to me that I keep this fortune; she must have it all, to the last farthing,” she concluded, with a positiveness which left him in no doubt as to her purpose.

He frowned darkly, and muttered something under his breath.

“What did you say?” she asked, while she searched his face anxiously.

“Nothing--never mind now,” he said, hastily, then added, more calmly: “You are too impulsive, Arley; it is not right that you should impoverish yourself so recklessly. If you are convinced, I am not, and I, with my better judgment regarding worldly affairs, am not going to allow you to do yourself this wrong--at least without incontestable proof that this young woman is what she claims to be. But,” looking at his watch somewhat nervously, “it is almost time for us to leave, and our friends below will wonder what is detaining you so long. I presume you can be excused,” he added, sarcastically, and flashing a look at the stranger, “and this matter can be looked into further upon our return.”

But Arley sank down upon a chair and covered her face with her hands.

“Oh, I cannot meet any one now,” she said, in a voice of distress. “I cannot go away, Philip, until this matter is settled. Go down and tell our friends that I am ill--for, indeed, I feel wretchedly--tell them that our journey must be postponed for to-day, and ask them to excuse me.”

“Nonsense, Arley! this will never do at all,” Philip returned, impatiently; “you must come. Our tickets are purchased and everything arranged for the trip.”

But she shook her head resolutely and repeated:

“I cannot go until this question is proved and settled.”

“It will never be proved,” he cried, hotly; “for there is no truth in this story. We have not the slightest real proof that this girl is what she claims.”

Miss McAllister had listened to him throughout with a grave face; now she approached him, and said:

“Wait, Mr. Paxton, for a few moments. I want to go downstairs, and perhaps I can help you a little about this matter when I return.”

“Very well,” he answered, gloomily, and walking to a window, looked moodily out upon the street, while she quickly left the room.