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Page 70
"But--she was not my mother."
"No, dear."
"Who am I?"
"You are the daughter of Doctor Gordon's youngest sister, who died when
you were born."
Clemency sat reflecting, her forehead knit, a keen look in her blue
eyes. "I knew my father was dead," she said after a little. "Uncle Tom
has always told me that he passed away three months before I was born,
but--" She raised a puzzled, shocked, grieved face to James. "What is my
name?" she asked. "My real name?"
James hesitated. Then his mind reverted to the tale which he had told at
the store. He could see no other way out of the difficulty. "Did you
never hear of two brothers marrying two sisters, dear?" he asked.
Clemency gazed at him with a puzzled, almost suspicious, look. "I knew I
had an aunt and cousin in England named Ewing," she said, "but I always
supposed that my English aunt was not my real aunt, only my aunt by
marriage, that she had married my father's brother."
"Your English aunt is your uncle's own sister," said James.
"I see: my own mother and my aunt were sisters, and they married
brothers," Clemency said slowly.
"That is unusual, but not unprecedented," said James. He had never been
involved in such a web of fabrication. He felt his cheeks burning. He
was sure that he looked guilty, but Clemency did not seem to notice it.
She was reflecting, still with that puzzled knitting of her forehead and
that introspective look in her blue eyes. "I wonder if I look in the
least like my own mother?" she said in a curious voice, as of one who
feels her way.
"Once your uncle said to me that you were your own mother's very image,"
replied James eagerly. He was glad to have the chance to say anything
truthful.
Clemency's face lightened. She spoke with that fatuous innocence and
romance of young girls, and often of older women, to whom romance and
sentiment are in the place of reason. "Then I know who that man was,"
she announced in a delighted voice. "You and Uncle Tom thought I would
never know, but I do know. I have found out my own self."
"Who was he, dear?"
"Oh, I don't know who he was really, and I don't know who that woman
was. She does mix up things a good deal, but this much I do know--why
Uncle Tom passed off my aunt for my mother, and why we were always
hiding from that man. He was in love with my mother, and he was in love
with me, because I am so much like her. Now, tell me honest, dear,
didn't Uncle Tom ever tell you that that man was in love with my mother
before I was born?"
"Yes, dear," James answered, fairly bewildered over the fashion in which
truth was lending itself to the need of falsehood.
Clemency nodded her head triumphantly. "There, I told you I knew," said
she. "Poor man, it was dreadful of him to pursue me so, and make us all
so unhappy, and of course I never could have married him, even if it had
not been for you. I do think he looked like a wicked man, and of course
I never could have endured the thought of marrying a man who had been in
love with my mother, even if he had been ever so good. But I can't help
being sorry for him; he must have loved my mother so much, and he must
have wasted his whole life; and then to die among strangers so suddenly,
poor man."
James felt a sort of pleasure at hearing the girl express, all
unknowingly, sympathy for her dead father. The tears actually stood in
her eyes. "The queerest thing to me is that woman," she added musingly,
after a minute. Then again her face lightened. "Why, I do believe she
was his sister," she cried, "and that was the reason she wanted to get
me, and the reason why she was so dreadfully upset when she heard he was
dead, poor thing. Well, of course, I can't help feeling glad that I am
not in danger any more; but I am sorry for that poor man, even if he
wasn't good." A tear rolled visibly down Clemency's cheeks. Then she got
out her handkerchief and sobbed violently. "Oh, I haven't realized," she
moaned, "I haven't realized until this minute, how terrible it is that
she wasn't my mother."
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