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FINDING MARCH
THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTERS
BOOK 3
CHASHIREE M.
M.K. MOORE
BREEDING NATION PUBLISHING
Copyright © 2024 by ChaShiree M. & M.K. Moore
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written
permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
 CONTENTS

Blurb

Prologue
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Epilogue

About the Authors

 BLURB

March
My life has been one big question. One huge merry-go-round of why’s and questions. Does my mom love me? Why does she
hate me? Why doesn’t she want me to be happy? Who am I?
The only time I ever knew the answer to anything, it was when I met the love of my life in high school. Yeah, that is when
everything became clear. I am going to finish school, marry him and be happy. Sounds simple right? Especially because he felt
the same. Then, everything changed, my world was turned upside down and the questions came back.
Now here I am, five years later, living in a different state, taking care of the only certain thing in my life. I am about to embark
on the biggest adventure of my life, thus far. Just when I think I am ready and have everything under control, my world is turned
upside down once again, but the difference is now, he has questions. I just don’t know if I will ever be ready to answer them.
But ready or not, he is not going away and everything is coming full circle. I just hope when it is all over, some things remain
the same.

Joshua
I met my love in high school. She was everything to me. She was the light showing me everything I thought I knew and that was
just the beginning. From the moment I met her every decision I made after was with her and our future in mind. When i left to go
to college, i thought i left her with enough reassurances to know, she is it for me and I will be back.
I came back and she was gone. Vanished like I had conjured her from the most wonderful dream. But she was real and she was
mine. My future. No matter what I did, who I asked and how much I searched, I couldn’t find her.
I was lost. Unsure. Asking myself the fundamental questions. Then, the light came back and she was found. I wasted no time in
tracking her down, my heart soaring, my head angry. Only, what I find is not my beautiful girl, but a gorgeous woman who
wants nothing to do with me. Or so she says.
I ask her everything I have been dying to know, including the biggest one, slated to change my life, but she thwarts me and
stalls. She thinks she can ignore me, ignore this love between us that distance could not change. But she can’t. First, she has to
talk to me, tell me the truth, and then, both of us will get what we are searching for. Forever. Now that I have found March, I am
never letting her go.
PROLOGUE
MARCH
ONE MONTH AGO
“Mommy, look what Auntie January and Auntie February got me.” Excitedly, Juniper holds up three Barbie’s, and I see a
Barbie house to the side of the couch. Rolling my eyes so my daughter can’t see, I give my sister the death stare before smiling
at my sweet girl.
“Oh my gosh. That is awesome. I had Barbie’s, too, when I was your age. I loved them. What do you say to your auntie’s?”
She runs to each of them and gives them hugs before running off to play, giving us time to talk. “You two are too much.
Seriously, how am I supposed to get this behemoth home?” Definitely not by mail.
“Oh I thought of that. Oliver has a reunion with some service buddies in Arizona in a month and a half which is perfect
because you should be back by then.”
“Ah. Well, tell him thank you for me. So, how is the pregnancy?” January is now two months pregnant, and Feb is four
weeks.”
“So far no nausea. Maybe I will be lucky.” Jan says. “Did you have morning sickness?” Ugh. I hate thinking about my
pregnancy. It was definitely not the best time of my life. It would have been worse if it weren’t for my grandpa.
“I did in my third month. But seeing as how I was in high school; I was under a lot of stress as well.” I was alone, so I was
under a lot of stress.
“Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. You always allude to it but never talk about it. What happened?” Damn it. I don’t
want to talk about this, but they are my sisters, and I know they won’t judge.
“Okay, I will give you the short version. I was in high school and so was he. The summer I got pregnant was the best time
of my life. I had stars in my eyes. All I could think about was how we were going to be married after graduation and have a
family of our own. His family was rich, and he never introduced me, mostly at my own request which I now know was because
of the brainwashing my mom did, but they knew about us. Before I could even tell him I was pregnant he had left for college. I
managed to hide it from my mom for quite some time with baggy clothes and such but one day she came into my room while I
was showering, and she realized. Before I knew it she was telling me his family would either try to take my baby or spread
rumors about me that make me the town pariah. So, she shipped me off to my grandpa in Arizona and that was that.” They both
look appalled for a second before recovering.
“What a bitch,” Feb says, turning up her nose.
“My thoughts exactly.” Jan says. “But the one thing I don’t get is why you didn’t go look for him?” I chuckle and turn my
head before answering that.
“I don’t need to look for him. I have always known where he would be,” I say in my snarkiest tone. “He is probably living
his most wealthy life with bimbos and such. No, my daughter is better off not knowing. Plus, she doesn’t need to know a family
that doesn’t want her. At least until she is a bit older. Besides, she never asks about him. So maybe when she starts too, I will
tell her some things and not the others.”
“That makes sense,” Jan says. Yeah, I thought so, too. So why does it still hurt?
PROLOGUE
JOSHUA
PRESENT DAY
When I was seventeen years old and just starting my senior year of high school at Nixon High in Seattle, Washington, I met the
love of my life. She was sixteen and starting tenth grade. Her locker was right next to mine. On day one, I knew she was
something special. She ran up to her locker, and the scent of her signature perfume surrounded me. I’ll never forget that scent.
Miss Dior. It’s been over five years, but even to this day, when I smell it on another woman, I get sick to my stomach. It doesn’t
belong on anyone but her. I asked her to the Twisty Freeze after school and she said yes. The rest was history.
We were together every waking moment for the entire year, through the summer. I went on to college with the expectation
that we’d do the long-distance thing until she could join me. We had the rest of our lives planned out. Everything changed when
I came home for Christmas, and she had disappeared. I begged her mother to tell me where she was, but she wouldn’t tell me a
damn thing. She refused to meet my parents, so I couldn’t even have my parents keep an eye on her while I was gone. The day I
left for Georgia; I knew I should have deferred college until she could join me. Something felt off, but she told me to go. I had a
football scholarship, but I also had a trust fund. I could have waited. I should have waited. What was two years when I didn’t
have her?
My life ended the day I found out she left me, but I couldn’t move on. How do you move on from the woman who owns
your heart? Your soul? Your every fucking breath? You don’t. I finished college, but I never ever forgot about her. In my mind,
she’s still my girl. We didn’t officially end a damn thing. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been with or ever will be with. Why
mess with perfection?
If only I could fucking find her. All through college, I searched for her as best I could, Social media, her bitchy mother, but I
knew I needed help.
I graduated from college last year and started working in my preferred field of IT. I work for a virtual company doing what
I love. I set my own hours and make decent money, but I definitely don’t need it. I’ve grown my trust fund over the years and am
sitting pretty. For the last year, I’ve been looking for my girl. I hired Jack, no last name. Despite his lack of name, he’s a highly
recommended private investigator.
I’m finishing up an IT emergency when my cell rings. The caller ID says unknown, but that happens a lot in my line of
work.
“Josh Kingsley,” I say as a way of greeting.
“Josh, it’s Jack.”
“Hey, Jack. I wasn’t expecting your weekly update until Monday.”
“I’ve found her.” I drop the pen in my hand and freeze. Silence. Absolute silence. I can’t say a fucking thing. The three
words that I’ve longed to hear for years, and I can’t say a damn thing. “Josh?”
“I’m here,” I say after swallowing thickly. “Where is she?”
“I found her in Phoenix, Arizona, going by the name March Johnston. Would you like to know about her social life?”
“No. Give me the address,” I say, ready to fly there right now.
“I’ve already emailed it to you.
Looks like I’m going to Phoenix…
CHAPTER
ONE
 MARCH

“Come on, Mom. I’m ready to go!” Juniper yells for the fifth time from her room. Right now, I am trying to pack to go to my
grandpa's ranch in Wyoming, where he retired to three years ago. She has been going there since she was three years old. He
adores this girl. When I gave birth to her, she was his everything, like I was when I was little.
On top of that, I am also packing for my trip around the U.S. to search for Donor #Pl18956. It sounds so strange to say. I
have always known my mom went this route. She was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of sixteen, and her doctors
weren’t sure she would be able to have a baby after the age of twenty-five. So, she told herself if she hadn’t found her husband
by twenty-three, she would go to a sperm bank. Shortly after she had me, she had to have a hysterectomy.
“Mommy!” she yells once again. That girl is going crazy, as she has been since she found out she was going to Wyoming.
She loves it there. She once asked me if we could move there. She cried for five days when I told her no. It broke my heart. My
grandfather left me his house when he retired. He transferred it into my name and everything, and if we moved, we would have
to sell, and I cannot bring myself to do it.
My phone rings, letting me know I have an incoming video chat. I smile because I know it is my sister's. “Hey guys,” I tell
them, holding it under my chin while I put the last few things in the suitcase.
“Hey. Are you packed?” Jan asks, chomping on pickles and vinegar. God, do I remember my pregnancy cravings?
“Yep. Just putting the last few things in the luggage.”
“I really wish you had someone to take with you,” Feb says, frowning.
“Well you two fell in love with your partners and we know that is not going to happen so..”
“How would you know? Maybe if you gave it a shot. I mean, who, Todd?” Of course, she would bring up Juniper's Karate
teacher. He has been asking me out since she started that class. I am not saying he is not nice-looking because he is. And, of
course, I have thought about saying yes; I mean, who wouldn’t? He is built like Patrick Swayze, but I don’t want to confuse
Junie and would hate for her to get used to someone and then have her heartbroken. I shake my head at these two.
“You know I can’t. It is not good for Junie. Besides, he has classes to teach. He can’t cancel them for the entire month and a
half.” Sounds like a reasonable reason to me. They both give me reprimanding looks, which make me put my head down.
“You should have at least asked him, March. He has an assistant who could have led his class while he was gone.” Shoot. I
hate it when they are right. I never thought of that.
Just then, Connall walks up to her and says hello to us in the video. “Hi, ladies.”
“Hi, Connall!” Jan and I answer.
“It is time for my wife and I to go and get out of the house.” She frowns like she always does when he gets bossy. When he
walks away, she smiles. I am sometimes envious of their marriages, but then I remember I have Juniper, and everything seems
like it happened for a reason. Speaking of the wild one.
“Hi, Auntie January. Hi Auntie February.”
“I, sweetie. Are you excited to go to your great-grandpa's house?”
“Yes. You have no idea. But mom is taking forever,” she says, being very dramatic. The three of us giggle.
“Well, that is not okay,” Jan says, feeding into her hysteria. Rolling my eyes at her, I ask Juniper if she has, Floppy and
Floopy, her favorite stuffed animals, and when she gasps, I assume that means she forgot. She runs out of the room like her
pants are on fire.
“As you can see that girl is going crazy.” They both giggle and nod their heads.
“Well obviously you need to finish so you get out of there before her head starts spinning around. So call us after every stop
and update us. We are going to be worried about you being alone.” Smiling, I nod my head and promise I will.
Pulling up the hand of my suitcase, I begin rolling it to the front door. “Junie, I am ready.”
She literally zooms into the room, holding her tiny bag. She doesn’t need a suitcase because my grandfather always takes
her clothes shopping when she gets there. Not to mention shopping for anything else she needs. Did I mention he spoils her
rotten?
Making sure I have my keys and wallet; I open the front door to a man about to knock on it. I open my mouth to ask him if I
can help him because surely this sexy God has the wrong house. But then he looks right at me; there is no mistaking those eyes.
I look into them every single day. “Joshua.”
Holy Shit!
CHAPTER
TWO
 JOSHUA

“Hey, Peaches,” I say, calling her the nickname I always called her. The name I’ve called her, even in my dreams. I give an air
of nonchalance, but all I want to do is pull her into my arms and kiss the ever-loving shit out of her.
“Don’t call me that, Joshua.” She looks even more beautiful when she’s angry. I want to put her over my damn knee. She
has no fucking right to be angry.
“That’s pretty formal,” I say, feeling like I am finally able to breathe after so long without seeing her. A weight has been
lifted off of my chest, but at the same time, another one drops on me. Why did she do it? Why did she destroy us?
“What do you mean?”
“What happened to Joshie?” She always called me Joshie, never Joshua. It was us against the world until it wasn’t.
“He grew up.”
“Aww, Peaches, you grew up real good too.” She’s even more beautiful than she was in high school. She’s thicker, her
boobs are bigger. The weight looks good on her.
“You have no right to call me that anymore.”
“I have every fucking right to call you that, March. You’re the one who left me.”
“Mommy! I’m ready to go!”
I look down and see an adorable little girl clinging to March’s shirt.
“Mommy?” I question.
“Yes. Mommy. Go make sure you have everything, baby. We aren’t coming back if you forget something.”
“Okay, Mommy.” The little girl flits off, leaving March standing in the doorway and me on the porch, my stupid fucking
heart broken. Without thinking, I take a step toward her.
“You fucked another man?” I ask, harsher than I intend to. I see red. My blood boils, and I can’t believe it. When we were
together, we made promises. I guess those were promises only I intended to keep. My mind reels as I picture her under
someone else, moaning so prettily for him, giving him what was supposed to be only mine. My fist clenches involuntarily at my
side. I want to punch something. The wall or something inanimate. Not her; I could never hurt her.
“What?” She seems appalled that I’d even ask that question, but I’m the wronged party here.
“I can’t fucking believe that you fucked someone else,” I say, my voice deathly quiet, but I don’t stop there. I can’t. “Jesus,
March, I thought you were fucking dead. You disappeared without a trace. I grieved the loss of you in my life. You were my
whole life, and then you were gone. Do you have any idea what that was like for me? I never got over you; I never stopped
loving you but not you. You…” I can’t even finish the sentence. It doesn’t matter what she thinks she’s got going on here.
Despite this soul-crushing revelation, she’s still mine. I’d die for her. We can get past this; I know we can.
We stare at each other. This is one staring contest I won’t lose.
Fighting for us is the only thing I can do.
CHAPTER
THREE
 MARCH

Is that what he thinks? I mean it is obvious she is about the age where she would have been conceived in high school. Is he
saying he thinks I was cheating on him? Not to mention, she looks just like his mom. I imagine, though, that it must be so easy
for him to think that of me when he has been doing it since college. “Look, we have nothing to talk about, and my daughter and I
are going out of town. So, if you would kindly leave, I would appreciate it.”
“Well I just found you after years of looking for you, so there is no way I am letting you out of my sight.” I know I am
looking at him like he is crazy because he is.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I suppose it means I am coming with you.” Alright, yeah, it is official: he has gone crazy since I saw him last.
“That will absolutely not be happening. I am not letting you come anywhere with me and my daughter. I don’t know who
you think you are, but out here in Arizona, your family name means nothing. So why don’t get back in that fancy car and go the
way you came.” I cannot believe I said all of that.
“It’s cute that you think I am going anywhere without you.” Then, my phone rings. I don’t look and see who is before
answering.
“Hello.”
“Hi, March.” Oh crap, it’s Todd.
“Hi, Todd, what's up?” Joshua’s face turns dark at the mention of another man’s name. His fists begin to ball up and I can
see him getting that possessive look in his eye, like he used to when we were in school. It shouldn’t make me ache for him, but
it does. Hell, I should be immune to him by now.
“Juniper is not in class, and I was worried. Is everything alright or are you running late?” I turn my back to Josh. My life is
none of his business.
“No. I forgot we are going out of town. I’m sorry.”
“Oh. How long are you going to be gone?” I can hear the disappointment in his voice, and I tell myself as soon as we come
home, I am going to finally say yes to his date.
“About six weeks.”
“Wow. That is a long time.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
“Well we are certainly going to miss both of you around here.”
“Junie is going to miss you too.” She loves that class, and Todd is her favorite.
“Alright, well, call me if you need anything.” Suddenly, I hear growling behind me. Before I can turn around I hear Joshua.
“She is not going to need anything from you.” Holy shit, that was hot. My panties are literally on fire right now, but I am
also pissed he was listening to my conversation.
“Who was that?”
“No one. Listen, we have to go. Talk to you later.” I hang up fast and spin around with my hand on my hip. “Are you
serious? What were you doing listening to my phone call? That had nothing to do with you.” He gets right in my face, so close I
could pucker my lips and kiss him.
“Everything about you is my business. Now, if we are going to get going, we should put everything in your truck.” Just then,
Junie chooses to come back outside right now. Could this get any worse?
CHAPTER
FOUR
 JOSHUA

“I have everything, Mommy,” the little girl says, causing March to turn away first and me to smirk. I never lose a staring
contest.
“Run on out to the and buckle yourself into your booster seat. I’ll be right there.”
I step out of the way, but not entirely off of the porch. I just found her; there’s no way in hell I’m going to let her out of my
sight ever again.
I grab my singular bag from my rental car and put it in the truck along with her things. I didn’t plan on being gone long, but
plans change. I open the driver-side door for her, and if looks could kill, I’d be dead. What the hell did I do?
“No, really. What the hell are you doing?” March asks me.
“Oooh, you said a cuss word, Mommy.” Silence fills the air for long minutes. Then laughter. Both March and I burst out
laughing. Damn, this kid is hilarious. Her delivery was amazing.
“I did, baby. I’m sorry. When we get home, I’ll put a dollar in the swear jar. Seatbelt, now.” She closes the back seat door,
leaving us outside the car. “Now, as for you, what are you doing?” she asks, crossing her arms over her ample chest.
“I said I was coming with you, and you, of all people, know that I do exactly what I say that I’m going to do. I’m not leaving
until I get some answers. You owe me an explanation.”
“I really don’t owe you anything.”
“You really do. Get in the truck, March.” She looks at me and then into the back window at her daughter.
“Fine. Whatever.” She rolls her eyes and gets in the truck. I move around the hood and get into the passenger seat. I buckle
my seatbelt.
We pull out onto the street and on the interstate. I look back at the little girl, who smiles and waves at me.
“Mommy? Who is this?” she asks. March doesn’t say anything at all. I shake my head. She’s not going to answer her, so I
do.
“I’m Josh. What’s your name?”
“I’m not really supposed to talk to strangers, but since Mommy let you in the car, I guess it’s okay. I’m Juniper Kingsleigh
Graham, but everybody calls me Junie.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Junie.” I reach into the backseat and shake her little outstretched hand. Then I look at her little face.
Really look at it. Her vivid blue eyes look familiar. Very fucking familiar. “How old are you?”
“I’m five years old. My birthday was just last week.”
“Well, happy birthday, Miss Junie,” I say, turning around to face the road again. Then it dawns on me. This is my child.
Junie is my child. March had my fucking baby and hid it from me. We talked about this. We knew it could happen. Hell, I never
once used a condom with her. I thought we wanted this. I thought we wanted a future together. Why the fuck did she keep this
huge, life-altering thing from me? I need answers from her, and I need them now.
But I know that I’m not going to get anywhere at the moment. I have to bide my time. I don’t think I’ve ever been this upset
or hurt in my life. Only she has the ability to do this to me. No one else matters to me like she does.
“Where are we going?” I ask instead of what I really want to ask.
March sighs loudly and I know this trip is going to be long as hell.
CHAPTER
FIVE
 MARCH

Now he wants to know where we are going? Typical man. Jumping in head first before knowing all the facts. “We are going to
Wyoming, to drop Juniper off first.”
“With whom?” he asks, his voice suddenly hard and concerned. For what?
“None of your business.” There, take that.
“We are going to my great grandpa’s house.” Of course, she chose this moment to be paying attention.
“That girl talks too much,” I grumble. I hear Josh chuckle beside me, and it takes a lot for me to hide my smile. “Before we
get there however, we are stopping in Page, Arizona.”
“What’s there?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Well, I figured I should know what is going on.” Well, he figured wrong, and I say as much.
“Well, you figured wrong. You are the one who insisted on coming with me. But that doesn’t make you privy to my life, so
just sit back in the passenger seat and say nothing.”
“For now,” he says quietly enough for only me to hear. Goosebumps break out on my skin at the finality of his words
because if there is one thing I know, it is that he always does what he says—well, he did when we were in high school.
The next four hours are a test of my patience. He fusses with the radio, talks too much with Junie, and tries to converse with
me. I ignore him, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.
Finally, we pull up to Elijah Morton’s house—man number one. I take a deep breath and get out of the car. Opening the
door for Junie, I let her out of the car. “You can leave her here with me,” Joshua says. Once again, I look at him like he has lost
his mind.
“I don’t think so. My daughter doesn’t know you, and for that matter, neither do I. "With that, I shut the door, and the two of
us walk up to the door. I ring that bell and wait.
“Mommy, where are we?”
“At a man’s house. Mommy needs to ask him a few questions.”
“Is this going to take long?” Smiling, I promise her it won’t. Right when I am ready to give up, a little girl about the age of
Junie opens the door.
“Hi. Who are you?”
“My name is Juniper.” I have got to remind this girl about strangers.
Hi Juniper. My name is Corazon, but my dad calls me Cora. Are you looking for my dad?” I look at her so confused. I am
not sure.
“I am looking for Elijah.”
“Yep. That’s my daddy. Hold on. Daaaddddy. A lady and a little girl are here to see you.” This is making my head spin.
According to what I know, Elijah should be about forty-five.
“How can I help you?” A nice-looking, six-foot gentleman asks. He looks at Juniper and smiles. “Hi to you as well, young
lady.”
“Yes. My name is March.” I stop there for a second,, seeing if it sparks something, but so far, nothing. “I came here because
I am looking for a man who donated before he enlisted. He left a specific set of instructions, and my sisters and I are trying to
find him.” He gives me a pity look, and right away, I know he is not the guy.
“Lo siento, preciosa. I am sorry. I am not him.” I smile at him, calling me beautiful. I smile and walk back to the car.
“Mommy, what's a sample?” Geez, nothing gets past her.
“Not something you need to know right now or talk about. Got it?”
“Got it.” I get back in the car and start it up. The good news is the next place we have to go is not that far, but Juniper is
getting hungry and tired, and it is getting dark. I researched this entire trip, and I know we are entering a town known as Ogden,
Utah. They have a little B&B that has a late dinner, and if my research is correct, two rooms are available, although I was only
looking for one at the time.
 “It's getting late. Right up the street is a little Bed and Breakfast. We are going to sleep there for the night and eat.
“Sounds good,” Josh says, stretching his arms. I try not to look at the muscles that definitely weren’t that defined when I
knew him, but now, holy hell.
I pull into the parking lot, grab my sleeping girl, and pick her up. Holding her in my arms with one hand, I pop the trunk and
struggle to grab our luggage out, but it is not like I have not done it a million times. But man, is she heavier this time?
“Let me.” Before I can protest, he lifts the bag out of his car. I notice for the first time that he has a suitcase as well. He was
really planning on staying with me.
“Thank you,” I say to him, trying to be civil. We walk into the place and the lady at the desk is so nice. Well, until she opens
her mouth.
“Oh my. Aren’t you a beautiful family?” Well, she is not exactly mean, but come on.
“Oh no. We are not a family. He is just an old acquaintance. Anyway, we are going to need two rooms.” She looks at me
quizzically, before looking through the book.
“Well, it just so happens we have only two left. Let me get you the keys.” Thank God. I don’t bother looking at Joshua.
“Here you are. You young ladies are upstairs in the rose room, and you young man, are down here in the birch room.”
“Oh is your kitchen still open?”
“Actually it is for another forty minutes.”
“Great. My daughter and I will be right down. She is a bear when she is hungry.”
“I will be joining them, ” Josh chimes. He is driving me crazy.
“You know what, on second thought, can I come and get it and take it to my room?” Once again, she looks at me like I am
crazy but nods her head.
“Sure. Tonight is meatloaf, mashed potatoes, vegetable medley, and apple pie for dessert.”
“Perfect.” When she walks away, Joshua whispers in my ear.
“You won’t be able to avoid me forever.” God, why does that make me shiver?
“It’s working so far.” I have to find a way to get rid of him. For the sake of my heart.
CHAPTER
SIX
 JOSHUA

I lie awake in bed in the creepiest room I’ve ever been in, given the clown wallpaper, and wonder about all the things I’ve
missed out on.
I lost out on five years of firsts with my daughter. The more time I spend with the little girl, the more I know she’s mine. I
feel it in my bones, in my soul. I still can’t get over the fact that March kept her from me. Was I such a bad boyfriend that she
felt she needed to protect herself and our baby from me?
It’s killing me, the not knowing, that is. I need to know why. Why did she do this to us? I need her to look me in the eyes and
tell me what I did that was so wrong that she had to leave me the way she did. There has to be something going on, or that went
on five years ago that I don’t know about, something that she felt she couldn’t tell me.
I also need to know why the fuck we went to some random ass house in Page, Arizona?
I want to get out of bed and go knock on her door and make her talk to me, but I don’t want to wake the kid.
Once we drop Junie off in Wyoming, and it’s just us, she’ll have no choice but to tell me what I need to know. It’ll only be a
matter of time before she’s in love with me again. She fell once; she’ll fall again. Besides, I know just wants she likes.

“Good morning, ladies,” I say, coming into the dining room. My girls are already sitting down at a table. March has a coffee,
and Junie has apple juice in front of her. Their bags are sitting next to the table on the floor. “I’ll take the bags out to the truck.”
“Morning, Josh,” Junie says. “I’m having bacon.”
“Sounds good,” I say, smiling at her.
“Thank you,” March says, sliding me her keys. “Coffee?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be right back.”
I get back to the table and order pancakes and bacon. When I’m finished, my phone rings. “I’ve got to take this,” I say.
“Of course, can’t let your girlfriend wait on you,” she quips. I just shake my head in disgust, unable to dignify that with an
answer. How could she possibly think I’d ever put my dick anywhere but inside her? The idea of that just makes me fucking
sick.
I have just hung up the phone when I feel a tiny hand slip into mine. I look down and see Juniper. I smile. Today, she has
little butterfly clips in her blonde hair and a pair of overalls on. Have I mentioned that she’s literally the most adorable child
I’ve ever seen? The more I look at her, the more I know that she’s mine.
“Hi, Josh,” she says.
“Hi, Junie.”
“Mommy is turning her key in.”
“Okay.”
“She said I could stand by you and wait and that I should be good.”
“Okay that’s probably a good idea.”
“My mom doesn’t like you very much, Josh. Do you know that?”
“I know that.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“You ready, baby?”
“Yes,” Junie and I say at the same time, and then we laugh. March smiles at Junie and glares at me. It's worth it.
We drive to another random house. This time in Salt Lake City.
Really? What the hell is this all about?
I need answers, and I need them now.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
 MARCH

“Mommy, are we going to another house?” Junie asks, slouching her shoulders like she does when she is not getting her way.
We are currently in Salt Lake, Utah, on our way to Wyoming.
“Not after this one, baby. But I promise this is the last stop before we get your Grandpa. Okay?” That makes her perk right
up, which is a little insulting. Just a little.
I reach out and ring that bell. Within seconds, a beautiful woman answers. “Hello. Can I help you?” she asks, fluffing her
hair.
“Yes. I am looking for Phillip Turner.” I see sadness flit across her eyes, and just as quick as it comes, it is gone.
“I’m sorry darling. Phillip is currently deployed.” The shock on my face must show because she chuckles and nods her
head. “I know. Men his age are usually retired but my husband is a career man. May I ask what you are looking for him about?”
“Yes, of course. I was wondering if maybe he donated… right before he enlisted.” She looks at me quizzically before
smiling and nodding her head knowingly.
“Ah, I see. Well, darling, unfortunately, my husband is sterile. He found out long before he met me. Some genetic thing or
another. We tried everything, but in the end, no babies. It is just him and I. Well, when he is home.” Well, now I feel horrible.
“I am so sorry to have bothered you,” I say before grabbing Junie and walking back to the car.
“Mom what’s ster..stera?” I almost giggle at her attempt to say sterile but I am more concerned about her mentioning it in
front of Josh.
“Nothing for you to worry about right now, baby. Just…”
“I know. Don't say anything in front of Josh.” She cuts me off like I am being ridiculous, and for a moment, I feel like she
cut me off and threw my words back at me.
We get back to the car and I can see the question lingering on his tongue, among other things, but I ignore his inquisitive
gaze, especially since it reminds me of Junie’s when she is like that. “Alright baby girl. Are you ready to go see great
grandpa?” I ask, hyping her up.
“Yes!” she says, squealing. Starting up the car, I begin driving when Junie speaks. “Mom, I want my playlist.” Shit. Looking
at Joshua, I squint my eyes and give him a pitiful face.
“I apologize,” I say before I hit play, and “Let It Go” blares through my car radio. I watch out of the corner of my eye when
his hand goes to his mouth so he can hide his laugh, which makes me smile.
“Mommy, aren’t you going to sing it with me?” This damn girl.
“Double sorry,” I tell him before I start screaming about how the cold doesn’t bother me anyway. This goes on for about an
hour when I realize she fell asleep somewhere between Moana and Trolls. Thank God.
Josh looks in the backseat for a second too long, and I allow myself the thought that maybe he knows, but then I squash that.
I mean, how could he? especially given what he said to me at the door. “So, are you going to tell me what is with all of the
stops?” he asks, turning down the music I turned on to get her playlist out of my head.
“No,” I answer simply. “As a matter of fact, is there somewhere I can drop you on our way to my grandfathers?” Is it crazy
that a part of me wants him to say yes, but the rest of me wants him with me on this journey, even though I am not willing to
share it with him right now?
“Nice try, Peaches. I am going nowhere until we talk. Like really talk.” Dang it. Yay! See what I mean? I can’t decide.
“Well, a girl has to give it a shot, right?” I ask, shrugging my shoulders. I am so smirking on the inside only because I know
how much he hates it when I tell him no. Well, get used to it, buddy. God, we can’t get out of this car fast enough.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
 JOSHUA

We get to Wyoming and the sprawling ranch is about an hour in. Junie jumps out of the truck as soon as March comes to a
complete stop. The front door of the ranch house opens, and an old man steps out onto the porch. Junie is up in his arms so
damn fast you’d think she was getting a gold medal.
“Hey, Gramps,” March says, giving him a hug once he lets Junie go. Junie has run into the house and is already on the couch
watching the big screen TV.
“Hi, baby. How is the daddy search going?” he asks, and that gives me pause. She doesn’t know who the daddy is? Is that
what she’s doing? Going to random men’s houses and asking them if they are the father? “Is this him?” He points at me. What
the fucking fuck is going on? My mind can’t deal with the thought of there being so many baby daddy options that she has no
idea who it is.
“Gramps, please,” she says, turning red. Is he asking if I’m Junie’s daddy? “Don’t start. Here’s Junie’s bag. I’ll put her
booster seat in your truck. I’ll be back in a few weeks.” She sets Junie’s bag down inside the door and kisses his cheek. “I love
you.”
“I love you too, girlie. Are you going to introduce me?”
“No,” she says, sullenly. God, why is she so fucking sexy when she pouts? Ah, fuck it, she’s sexy when she breathes.
“I’m Joshua Kingsley, sir.”
“Robert Graham.” We shake hands.
“I should go.”
“Are you sure I can’t tempt you two with some chili? I’ve been making it all day.”
“The three-alarm chili?” March asks, excitedly.
“Hell, yeah. Come on. It’s ready now. Both of you. Shoes off. You know the drill.”
I follow the pair inside and kick my shoes off. The ranch looks exactly like I imagine it to be. It looks like it’s straight out
of a magazine. Everything is perfect. Nothing is out of place, but I imagine that five-year-old can do a lot of damage rather
quickly.
We sit down at a large dining room table, and a matronly housekeeper named Diane serves us chili, cornbread, and sweet
tea.
Two hours later, March is ready to go. “We’ve got to get going,”
“Of course. Be safe out there.”
“We will be,” I assure him, shaking his hand. I have so many questions about why she’s doing this, but whatever her
reasons, I can keep her safe in the process.
“Junie, I’m leaving.” March kneels down and opens her arms.
“Bye, Mommy,” she says, running over and hugging her tightly. Junie moves over to me. “Bye, Josh.”
“Bye, Junie. It was nice to meet you.”
“You too.” She’s off playing before the last word is out. I chuckle. “She’s going to be a handful.”
“She’s already a handful,” March says.
She hugs her grandfather again, and we head outside. She moves the booster seat to his truck and then yawns. I can tell
she’s exhausted.
“Let me drive, Peaches,” I say, extending my hands for the keys. She thinks about if for a second and then hands over the
keys. I open the door for her. “Your chariot awaits, my passenger princess.”
“Don’t go being all charming, Josh. I don’t have time for all that.”
“There’s always time for that, babe.” I shut the door and move to get in. I start the truck and put it in drive. “Now, where
are we going?”
“A hotel.”
“I’m gonna need a bit more information than that,” I say chuckling.
“Missoula, Montana,” she says, yawning again.
“You rest now, Peaches. I’ll get you there.”
CHAPTER
NINE
 MARCH

God, I am exhausted. I think of pulling when I feel some arms pull me from my sleep. “Come on, Peaches.” All I want to do is
snuggle into that voice that is familiar and warm, like home. I feel myself moving, but right now, all I want to do is keep my
eyes closed and be…wait a minute.
My eyes pop open, and I take a second to look around before I realize we are in a hotel room; my bags are on the floor, and
I am in his arms. I wiggle and try to get him to let me down. “Okay, well, thank you for getting me to my room.” I attempt to
move once again, but his grip on me only tightens. “Uh, Josh, can I get down now?” I glance up to look at his eyes and the heat
that I remember fondly is there but then blanketed by anger.
“Yes. I guess I should do that, huh?” He lowers me slowly but doesn’t step back.
“Well, I guess I should be getting to bed then. See you in the morning.” When he smirks, I know I am missing something.
“Joshua?” He looks at me and then sits on the bed.
“No problem, babe. Go get ready for bed.” Suddenly, it clicks. I see his bag on the side of the bed, and I am pissed.
“Did you get only one room?” I ask him with my hands on my hips. He walks over to me and leans into my face. His nose
and mine are touching and it takes everything in me not to stick my tongue out and lick his lips, familiarizing myself with the
taste I was so obsessed with in high school. Instead, I pinch my mouth together and look him in his eyes.
“You bet your ass I did, Peaches. You have dropped off Junie and now there is no buffer.” My heart jumps when I hear him
call our daughter by her nickname.
“I can’t believe you did this!” I shout, needing to express my frustration in some way.
“Me? You can’t believe I did this? Are you serious? I am the one who should be angry.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask him, totally clueless.
“I know she is my daughter, March. She has my fucking eyes.” I stumble back, hand on my chest, my head spinning with his
revelation. But I manage to compose myself enough to give him a zing.
“What makes you think she is yours? For all you know, her father could be Taftkan.” He steps towards me, growling my
name.
“Peaches.” God. Why is it even when I am pissed, the minute he says my nickname all growly and possessive-like, my
panties melt, and I go soft and gooey on the inside? “Don’t ever fucking say that to me again. He was never good enough to lick
your boots, baby. You know, and I know it. So why the hell would you dangle him in front of me like that? To hurt me?” The
minute he says it, I feel like shit.
Taft was a guy on the football team like Josh. He has always had some sort of rivalry with him, trying to best Josh. One up
him. When he found out I was Josh’s girlfriend, it became his mission to try to take me from him. He made me miss my bus by
holding me up in the hallway. He knew that Josh was not there. So he offered me a ride home, saying he was sorry. I didn’t
know he recorded me getting into his car. By the time we made it to my house, Josh had pulled up and was so pissed he
practically ripped me from his car and pulled me behind him before he went after Taft like a challenged lion.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize to him, feeling like a bitch because I know that was a low blow.
“So I want to know why the hell we are going all over the world looking for other men as a candidate? How many guys did
you fuck after me? Was I that replaceable that now you are not sure whose daughter she is even though we both know the
truth?” I am so stunned by his accusation that I fall to the bed, giving myself a chance to process his words.
How dare he? Doesn’t he know he was my entire world? I would die before I let another man touch me. Even now, I am
having a hard time realizing I need to move on. But then again, I am sure he has been sleeping with anything that moves, so… “I
don’t have to tell you anything, Joshua.”
“You damn well do. So please tell me. How many of them are there?” Slap. My hand shoots out and makes contact with his
gorgeous face before I decide to let loose on him. I am feeling all sorts of things right now, and to be honest, I am not sure
either of us is going to get to make it out of tonight the same.
CHAPTER
TEN
 JOSHUA

Did she just fucking slap me? She moves to slap me again, and I reach out and grab her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. Why is
that so hot? My cock hardens and weeps for the woman I love. There’s no turning back now my cheek stings. But it doesn’t
matter; all that matters is here and now, her and I.
“How many, March? How many men have you fucked?” I’m close to shouting but I keep it in check.
“How many girls, Josh?” she counters, surprising me.
“What? Don’t fucking turn this around on me.”
“How many?” she whispers. “While we were together?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I say, pulling her closer to me. Without thinking, I drop my lips down to hers. She
resists at first, but then she moans and moves closer to me. That’s all the invitation that I need. I don’t waste any time at all. I
rip her clothes from her body and do the same to mine. I throw her down on the bed, and she reaches for me. I kiss her again.
I’m so fucking angry at her. For everything. For all the years I’ve been without her. This isn’t about making love right now. We
both know that.
She’s guiding me to her, and every muscle in my body tightens as I sink into her. Slowly, I inch into her until I’m fully
seated within her. Her wet heat is every-fucking-thing. I thrust in and out of her over and over until she wraps her legs around
my waist. Her tiny, juicy pussy contracts around my cock. I can hear the squelching sound it makes with every hard thrust, and it
turns me on even more. She can’t keep still, meeting my every move. I reach between us and pinch her clit.
“Oh, my God, Joshie. Please. Please. Please,” she begs.
“Fuck you feel so fucking good, Peaches,” I grunt, my hips still pistoning. Fuck, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted
anything in my life.
“That’s it, this is what I need,” she cries out. “Please, please,” She continues to beg for me. My orgasm comes out of
nowhere. It’s so fucking hard; I think I might pass out because I’ve forgotten to breathe. My cock swells as I explode within her.
Dropping down to my elbows, I kiss her deeply; her pussy clenches with my cock still buried inside of her. Shit, I’ve unleashed
a huge load already. My dick shouldn’t be hard again, but it is. She’s the only woman who could do this to me. Her tight cunt
calls to me on a primal level that I didn’t know existed. I’m so fucking desperate for her. She squeezes her pussy muscles
around me, and I just about die.
"Peaches," I groan as I make several hard, shallow thrusts.
“Again?” she asks.
“We are just getting started,” I groan as I lift her leg into the air and put it on my shoulder. I can’t stop fucking her. She takes
every thrust. I literally feel like I’ve come home. I stay inside of her, my cock still hard. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s been five
fucking years. I’ve got loads saved up for her.
“ Are you going to answer my question,” I ask, flexing my hips.
“ Which question was that?” she moans.
“How many men have been inside this perfect little cunt?”
“What difference does it make?” It shouldn’t make a bit of difference, but I find that I’m a jealous man. Anger like I’ve
known sears my blood and fuels my rage.
“Tell me,” I demand.
“None,” she says, resigned. I breathe a sigh of relief. The dread I have felt since I saw her eases into nothing. “How many
girls did you make come with this massive cock?” She squeezes me with her inner muscles. My eyes roll back in my head.
“There has never been anyone, but you. The thought of being with anyone else is repulsive. You can’t know your soulmate
is out there and fuck someone else it’s impossible to do. You know don’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“It’s why neither one of us sought out pleasure in the last five years, besides the fact, we were never officially over. We
made promises. The miles between us didn’t change anything for me. She nods and begins to move her hips. I flip over onto my
back, letting her take control of her pleasure.
What began in anger ended like it always did. Extreme satisfaction and love.
Time couldn’t change that. Nothing can.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
 MARCH

God, he is too good-looking, and that is the problem. I am sitting beside him while he drives my truck to the next location,
sneaking peeks at his muscles and that face I have always loved, and I know these are the reasons I am so damn careless once
again. I slept with him again with no protection. What the hell was I thinking? Ha, that's funny. That's just it. I wasn't thinking. “I
can hear you thinking, Peaches.” Joshua puts his hand on my thigh and smiles at me before looking back at the road. “Just go
with it, Peaches. Just feel and follow your heart. See where it takes us.”
My mind keeps conjuring up the angry sex we had last night and how freaking hot it was. I mean, when we were first
together, he was always gentle and soft. But last night, last night was a grown man, fucking the woman who pissed him off,
showing her whose boss. Hell, my pussy is still sore from how many times he took me last night. “I remember when there was
a time when I lived to hear you call me that,” I confess to him, leaning my head back against the seat headrest.
“Then why the hell did you leave, March? I don’t get it. I thought we loved each other. Was I wrong? Was I in it alone?” I
can hear the anguish in his heart, and my own is bleeding yet clogged up, thinking of the time we missed. “Did you really love
me?” The car has stopped because we are in the driveway of the next place, so I look at him and shake my head.
“Not now, Josh. Okay?” Right when I finish saying that, my video chat call goes. “Shit,” I mumble under my breath.
Everything wants to come out in the open today. I know it is my sisters; I video chat no one else. I should ignore it, but I also
don’t want them to worry since I haven't talked to them and told them I have someone with me. So, I answer it.
“It's about time. How are you? Are you okay? You haven’t been kidnapped?” I am trying to keep a straight face, but
between the confused face Joshua has beside me, and the ridiculous questions from them, I can’t help myself. I burst out
laughing before January gets the upset look on her face and then I stop. She cries at the drop of a hat, and I don't want to be one
of the reasons she is sad.
“Hey ladies. I am fine. I dropped Junie off, remind me to give you my grandfather's number so you can call and talk to her.
She would love to hear from her aunties.”
“Oh yeah. I love talking to that girl. She is a riot.” February says, smiling fondly. Beside me, I hear Joshua whisper,
aunties?
“Whose that?” January asks with her supersonic ears. She looks ridiculous cocking her head to the side like she is peeking
around a corner or something. Sighing, I roll my eyes and turn the phone toward Joshua.
“January, February, this is Joshua. Joshua, these are my sisters.” His eyebrows raise to the top of his head, and I get it. But
right now is not the time.
“Wait, is he thee Josh? How did this happen?” Oh, brother. I need to end this.
“All in due time, ladies. Listen, we just pulled up to Mr. Clifton’s in Missoula. I promise I will call you later.” They both
look at me like they don’t believe me, but we hang up. I can hear the questions in his head, but I just get out of the car. I hear the
other door close and toward him.
“I am coming this time, baby.” He holds his hand out for me to take, and without thinking about it, as natural as being in his
arms, I put my hand in his and walk to the door. There is no doorbell, so I knock, and we step back. I look at Josh and drop my
eyes in sadness before looking back at him.
“Well, now you get to see.” He opens his mouth to speak, but the door begins to open. An older gentleman with obvious
sight issues walks to the door.
“Hello?!”
“Mr. Clifton. Hi. My name is March. I was wondering if you had a second to talk?” he chuckles and shakes his head.
“Child I have nothing but minutes, nowadays. You have to excuse me not inviting you in, but due to the non-capacity to see,
I don’t let people I don't know into my home.”
“Oh, I understand. This won’t take long. I was just wondering if you donated a sample before you enlisted?”
“Oh, my dear, I wish I had. Not too long after I enlisted I lost my sight due to a bomb. I never had a chance to have a family
after that.” My heart breaks for him.
“Well, I am so sorry to have bothered you. You have a great day.” When we make it back to the truck, Josh takes a deep
breath.
“What the hell is going on, March. Do you think I have a right to know now?”
“Yeah. I think it is time I tell you everything.” I just hope he still wants me after I tell him what I allowed my mom to
convince me of. I am done fighting what I feel. God and everyone knows I am still in love with him, and now that he is back in
my life and has been back inside of me, I don’t think I could live through him leaving again. I take a deep breath and tell him my
story.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
 JOSHUA

Her story shocks the hell out of me. She’s the product of artificial insemination and has been searching for her birth father this
whole time. She also has two sisters she didn’t know she had. If I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d bet that there are more
siblings out there. The letter her donor left as the world’s vaguest clue is a trip. Having all these potential mothers names their
daughters after months is interesting as hell. I hate to say this but it kind of makes since that her mom had to go this route, she’s
a dumpster fire.
“I’m going to help you with this list. How many more are on it?” I ask, interested in knowing more about this.
“What? Oh, two. Why?” she asks looking at me like I’m crazy.
“There’s no way in hell I’m going to let you continue to go stranger’s door’s alone.”
“What do you mean let me?” she asks haughtily.
“You know what I mean. I have to protect you. You are mine to protect, surely you know that by now.”
“You say the sweetest things, Josh,” she says, fumbling with her hands in her lap. I reach over and put my hand on top of
hers to quiet hers. I interlace my fingers with hers. God, how I’ve missed holding her hand.
“Now, tell me the rest, please.” I need to know the whole story. I need to know what made her leave me the way she did
five years ago. Why she broke us, why I have to fix us now.
“You want me to tell you why I left you? Like right now?”
“Yes. That. Why did you leave me and keep me from my child?” I can’t get over the fact that I missed out on so much.
“My mom made me think that you wouldn’t want me anymore. With you in college, you’d start sowing your wild oats, being
the rich playboy that you are. I didn’t want to believe it, but then I’d lie in bed at night and think about you being with some hot
college girl and I lost it. Then I started thinking that your family would then try and take my baby. I was so lost without you,
Josh. I had no choice. Then she just sent me away, for my grandfather to deal with, like I embarrassed her by getting pregnant or
something.”
“I’m sorry that she made you believe that, Peaches, but that’s absolutely not what would have happened. I would have come
home, made you my wife, and we would have raised Junie with love. My parent’s would have helped.” I guess I can see why
she’d think that. Not many college guys would want to give all that up to raise a kid, but no other college guy would have had
her by their side. It’s like she didn’t know me at all. I have to rein in my anger at this. I hate that I’m mad at all. I don’t even
know how to handle this information. I don’t want to be mad at her, but I am. I’m mad at her mom, at the situation, at myself for
putting her in the situation in the first damn place.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, baby. I really do.”
She doesn’t say anything, she just stares out of the window as I put the truck in reverse and back out of the driveway. My
heart breaks for her and for myself. Frankly, I’m hurt that she didn’t trust me enough to love her through this.
I get that I should let the past go, but I can’t. I know she couldn’t have done anything about it the first two years because of
her age, but what about the last three years? She could have told me at any time, and I would have dropped everything in my
life and run to her.
Why didn’t she let me?
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
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people in my husband’s lifetime, and I think he was a bit too hard on
the boy. It turned Emmanuel’s stomach against religion. And now
he’s got hold of all sorts of queer ideas, and he puts ’em into poetry.
It’s beautiful poetry to listen to, full of book learning. My son reads it
to me of an evening; but it soars too high for me sometimes, I can’t
quite follow the ideas.’
‘I should like to have a little talk with your son,’ said Cyril.
‘Ah, sir, if you could but bring him to think better of his Maker, and
his Maker’s way of managing this world, it would be a blessed thing,’
exclaimed the widow. ‘That’s all my son needs to make him as
perfect as any human creature ever was upon this earth. He’s the
best of sons, he’s the honestest, soberest, industriousest of young
men. But it makes me shudder sometimes to hear him talk; that bold,
as if he’d been up among the stars, and knew the way they’re
worked. I believe it all comes of too much learning.’
‘Or too little,’ suggested Cyril.
‘Oh, sir, you wouldn’t say that if you was to see the books he
devours. He belongs to the Mechanics’ Institute, and there isn’t a
learned book they’ve got that he hasn’t gone right through. He don’t
care for stories and such like. He calls them fiddle-faddle. But he’ll sit
up half the night over a learned book, and then he puts his ideas into
poetry.’
Cyril was warmly interested. To begin with, a cobbler who read
Keats and Shelley stood out prominently from the ruck of cobblers. It
has been said that cobblers, as men whose habits are sedentary and
meditative, have a natural leaning to infidel opinions; but Cyril did not
believe this. He did not believe that meditation must needs engender
doubt. He who wrote the divinest work ever penned by an uninspired
writer, ‘The Imitation of Christ,’ must have been of all men the most
meditative. And did not Bunyan’s twelve years of imprisonment in
Bedford gaol bear fruit in ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress?’ a book that has
done more to popularize Christianity than all the writings of all the
bishops who ever wore lawn. Cyril could not see any reason why
cobbling and Christian belief should be incompatible.
 ‘I will call and see your son,’ he said, Emmanuel happening to be
out of the way on his first visit.
He called the following evening, a dismal rainy evening, when he
thought the cobbler, as a man not given to spend his time in tap-
rooms, likely to be at home. Nor was he disappointed. Emmanuel
Joyce was sitting at a little table, drawn close to the bank of flowers
in the window, poring over a page of Carlyle’s ‘Latter Day
Pamphlets,’ his elbow on the table, his thin hand entangled in his
long hair, and with far from a comfortable expression of
countenance.
That Thomas Carlyle is a grand and noble writer, no one who has
ever read his ‘French Revolution,’ his ‘Life of John Sterling,’ and his
‘Hero Worship,’ could have the insolence to deny; but he is a writer
demanding a considerable expenditure of brain power on the part of
his readers; and for a worker who has been sitting in a cramped
position all day mending shoes, to find himself lost among the
Immensities, or vainly endeavouring to grapple with Phantasmal
Captains, Ineptitudes, and other strange creatures, is hardly the
most refreshing form of mental solace after physical labour.
Mrs. Joyce was sewing on the other side of the little table, wasting
her eyesight in order to economize her candle. Mother and son rose
at Cyril’s entrance, and the widow brought forward the best chair, a
battered old easy chair, which her son had neatly covered with
bright-looking chintz, for the visitor.
Emmanuel was tall, thin, and pale, with hollow cheeks and a
projecting forehead, under which shone darkly bright eyes, large and
bulbous. His lips were thin, his chin indicated a firmness of character
verging upon obstinacy. It was an interesting face, but not altogether
a pleasant one, save when the young man spoke to his mother, and
then his countenance was lighted by a smile which made it beautiful.
‘Mother told me you’d been to see her, sir,’ he said. ‘She took it
very kindly that you should spare time to sit down and chat a bit with
her, especially as you didn’t leave a tract behind you.’
 ‘You don’t like tracts,’ said Cyril, smiling at the energy with which
the last sentence was spoken.
‘I detest them.’
‘Yet I think the book you are reading is something in the form of a
tract,’ speculated Cyril, whose quick eye had caught the title of
Carlyle’s book.
‘It is not a religious tract, sir. It appeals to man’s highest faculties—
it kindles all that is best and greatest in his soul—but it does not pelt
him with Scripture texts, or tell him that he is by nature a reprobate
and castaway, judged and doomed before he was born.’
‘Do you think the Bible tells a man that?’
‘Yes, sir, it does. The Bible texts that were flung at my head in my
childhood and boyhood were all to one purpose. They told me that I
was a vessel of wrath, and that I was doomed to the burning. When I
was eighteen years of age I began to think for myself.’
‘You began to work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling.’
‘No, sir. I had read Shelley’s “Queen Mab,” by that time, and I had
my own ideas of the justice of my Creator. If He were just He would
not create me for misery either here or hereafter. And then I looked
round me and saw a world that reeked with human misery and divine
injustice.’
‘Stop!’ cried Cyril. ‘Were this world the end of our life the
differences in the fortunes of mankind might imply injustice in the
Ruler of this world; but the balance is to be struck elsewhere—the
day of reckoning is to come, when each man shall reap the reward of
his works, whether they be good or evil.’
‘Am I to take your word for all that?’ asked Emmanuel, his
projecting eyes shining with a fierce light. ‘You are like the rest of
them. One after another they have come to me—Church of England,
Wesleyans, Baptists, Ranters—all with the same dogmatic
assertions. My own senses tell me that this world teems with
suffering and wrong. Am I to take the other story on hearsay?’
 ‘Have you not seen something more than suffering and wrong?’
argued Cyril ‘Have you not seen that even in this brief mortal life—
which true believers regard as but a troubled passage to eternal
peace—have you not seen that even here men reap as they have
sown? To the sober man health and tranquillity; to the drunkard
disease and early death. To the honest man the world’s respect; to
the reprobate the bitter cup of shame. This little room we sit in bears
the evidence of your sober, industrious life. Where is the injustice
here? Now and then we see a good man struggling with calamity—
tried as Job was tried—chastened as David was chastened—but his
struggles are an education for heaven; and could we but see rightly
we might regard him as a chosen servant of God.’
‘And what of your hospitals for incurables, filled with beings
created only to suffer?’
‘You have never visited one of those hospitals, or you would know
that among those sufferers there are many whom heaven has gifted
with a patience that makes life almost happy, and a faith that fills
even their hours of pain with hope.’
‘Dreamers and enthusiasts all,’ said Emmanuel.
‘Amongst them are some who have talents that make life
interesting—or even genius that lifts them up above the common
earth and creates for them a world of their own. We cannot measure
our fellow-men’s misery or happiness, any more than we can
measure the goodness and justice of God. Some of the most
unhappy of men are those to whom fortune has given all good
things.’
‘What do you deduce from this?’
‘That if we could know the hearts and minds of all men as God
knows them we should not accuse our Maker of injustice. He has
given us the highest of all gifts, understanding and free will. It is for
us to work out our redemption with these.’
‘You believe in free will?’ asked Emmanuel.
‘As I believe in God’s justice.’
 ‘My father was a Calvinist. He believed himself one of the elect,
and his fellow-men, mostly, outside the pale.’
‘You were brought up in that gloomy faith—the faith of that hard
good man who had love and mercy neither for himself nor his fellow-
men—who put an honest woman in jail for dancing at her kinsman’s
wedding—and condemned a brother theologian to the stake for
differing in opinion with him. Well, I can hardly wonder that your mind
has taken a distorted view of Christianity, for though a Calvinist may
be a very good man, I doubt his being a pleasant man, or being able
to make his faith sweet and pleasant to others. But if you will accept
Christ’s Christianity for your guide—if you will look to Christ’s heaven
as your goal—you will find no thorns in your path.’
And then, warming with his subject, Cyril spoke strongly and
earnestly of gospel truth as he believed it—the unsophisticated
teaching of Christ. Emmanuel Joyce listened, and liked to hear, but
his opinions were not to be shaken in an evening. He had too long
cherished and cosseted the demon of infidelity, to be able to thrust
the foul fiend out of doors at a moment’s warning.
‘Come whenever you can spare an hour,’ he said, when Cyril was
going away. ‘I like to hear you talk.’
‘I will come as often as I can; but on one condition.’
‘Name it.’
‘That you come to church.’
‘I’ll come to hear you preach. I’m never above hearing a good
preacher.’
‘Come, that you may learn to pray,’ answered Cyril. ‘Life is a
barren waste without that link between earth and heaven—the
Jacob’s ladder of prayer, upon which angels are continually
ascending and descending.’
 CHAPTER XVII.
the only son of his mother.
After that first interview Cyril saw Emmanuel Joyce often. His duty
took him nearly every day to that fœtid alley where the cobbler
contrived to grow his flowers, and to maintain a semblance of
prettiness in his narrow dwelling. Whenever the curate had half an
hour to spare in his daily round he spent it with Emmanuel, and their
talk was generally of spiritual things; for, like most unbelievers, Joyce
loved to discuss the religion he pretended to abjure.
One day when Emmanuel had quoted one of the most appalling
passages in ‘Queen Mab,’ Cyril startled him by asking,—
‘Do you know that Shelley was a lad of eighteen when he wrote
those lines, and that the poem was published without his consent?
You quote it to sustain your arguments with as much confidence as if
it were the work of wisdom as mature as Bacon’s or Pascal’s.’
Emmanuel blushed.
‘He was a boy in years, perhaps, but a man in genius,’ he said.
‘Granted. Shelley was a marvellous boy, with all Chatterton’s
precocity, and much more than Chatterton’s spirituality. If the light of
his genius led him astray, it was not the less light from heaven. I
doubt not if Shelley had lived to be old he would have learned to
believe in much that seemed foolishness to his young imagination.
Do you ever read Tennyson?’
‘Tennyson is too tame for me.’
‘Take my advice and read him. He is not so great a poet as
Shelley, but he is a greater teacher. He and Victor Hugo are the two
great moralists of the age; and I would put Tennyson higher than
Hugo, because his ethics are of a graver and calmer cast. I will bring
you my Tennyson to-morrow.’
 ‘You are too good,’ said Emmanuel, touched by the curate’s tone
of equal friendship.
He went to hear Cyril preach, and listened with delight. He was
willing to accept his new friend as a great moral teacher, but he was
not willing to surrender his infidel opinions. He had hugged them too
long. They were his hobby, as dear to him as a gallery of pictures to
a wealthy connoisseur, or a cabinet of old china to a fine lady. But
although the citadel had not yet yielded, its foundations were
considerably weakened. After a fortnight’s acquaintance with Cyril,
the cobbler took his mother to church regularly every Sunday, much
to the widow’s delight. It was the only happiness that had been
wanting in her simple laborious life, to go to church leaning on her
son’s arm.
So things went on till the middle of the summer. Emmanuel had
left off reading infidel books, won altogether by the curate’s
sympathy. He stuck to his opinions, but he read the books Cyril
chose for him, and enlarged the range of his ideas. Hitherto he had
devoured books ravenously, but had not digested or absorbed their
contents. Now he read in a methodic manner, and grouped his
subjects, under Cyril’s advice. He had supposed that all hard reading
meant useful reading, but Cyril showed him that the best books were
generally the easiest to read and remember.
One day when Emmanuel began a theological discussion the
curate abruptly stopped him.
‘I am not going to talk to you about religion any more,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it is useless and unprofitable, harmful even, for both of
us. I have said all I have to say about sacred things, and I have
failed to convince you. I will not talk of the gospel for the sake of
argument, and with a man who has made up his mind to reject
gospel truth. Let us talk of literature, politics, anything you like,
except religion. I am warmly interested in the growth of your mind.’
‘And you do not refuse to hold any communication with me
because I am an infidel. You do not thrust me from you with
loathing?’
‘Assuredly not. I pity you too much.’
‘You must be a man of very liberal opinions.’
‘My Master was a Man of liberal opinions.’
‘Yes, He sat at meat with publicans and sinners, the despised and
the oppressed. He was the greatest, noblest, purest Man that ever
lived, the wisest Teacher. If you claimed no more for Him than that
——’
‘We claim a great deal more than that; but I am not going to
discuss these things. Tell me how you like Tennyson.’
‘Better and better the more I read him.’
‘Just so. I don’t think anybody ever thoroughly likes Tennyson at
the first reading.’
They went on to talk of the Laureate, and Cyril was surprised and
pleased by the justice of the cobbler’s criticism. Emmanuel was
touched by the curate’s forbearance. He expressed himself warmly
when Cyril was taking leave of him.
‘You are a man in a thousand,’ he said. ‘You are not liberal in
words only, but in acts. One would suppose that in your eyes I
should be an outcast—a Pariah—Anathema Maranatha.’
‘You are a man,’ answered Cyril, ‘and your soul is precious in my
esteem.’
Now came dark days for the pestiferous slums and putrescent
lanes which surrounded and hemmed in the high street and market-
place of Bridford, like a foul network of brick and mortar, shutting out
the fresh sweet breezes that sweep over wood and pasture, moor
and corn-field, and all the spicy summer odours of wild herbs and
flowers. Mysteriously, scarce anyone knowing where the rumour first
began, there arose the cry that cholera was in Bridford. People stood
at the street corners, and on the door-steps, telling one another of
this fatal visitant, with awe-stricken faces and hushed voices. They
were accustomed to small-pox, they were but too familiar with typhus
and typhoid, which two fatal diseases the great Jenner was just then
seeking to differentiate. But cholera was a foe that came but seldom,
and when he came was scathing as that dark angel of the Lord
before whose burning breath the host of Sennacherib melted like
snow. They had had cholera in the fatal year of ’32. It had revisited
them in ’47—and now, stricken with an awful dread, they clustered in
little groups at the street corners, at the baker’s, at the close little
dingy shops that sold everything, and in which the atmosphere was
pervaded with subtly blended odours of cheese, blacking, pickled
onions, chicory, lucifer matches, candles, bacon, firewood, and red
herrings. There was a general exodus of all the well-to-do people of
Bridford. They packed their trunks in a feverish hurry, and carried
their children off to the sea, whereby all the accessible watering-
places were sorely overcrowded, and a fertile crop of typhus and
scarlatina was grown in close lodgings and sewer-scented
bedchambers; so much so that it was afterwards asserted that those
who stayed at home, and faced the perils of cholera, and did a good
deal to help their poorer neighbours, fared better than those more
cautious spirits who fled before the face of the foe.
Cyril worked day and night. He had studied surgery in Paris in one
of his long vacations, and had gone about among the London
hospitals in order to be of use in cases of emergency. He was now a
valuable aid to the overworked parish doctor and his pallid assistant.
The disease had spread fast among the crowded tenements under
the shadow of the great chemical factory. Those fumes of sulphur
and oxalic acid which poisoned the air of heaven in this locality
proved no antidote to the cholera poison. There had been a good
many deaths already. Cyril hunted the parish officers to accomplish
such sanitary improvements as might be effected on the spur of the
moment; but the whole neighbourhood was a nest of rottenness.
There was not a drain that did its duty, or a sewer that did not
breathe forth pollution by day and night. The funeral bell sounded all
day long, and the faces of the people were pale and worn with an
ever-present fear.
Emmanuel Joyce went on with his daily work, and his nightly
studies. He wrote dismal verses about the cholera fiend and his
victims, and was more than ever inclined to question the justice and
benevolence of his Creator.
‘It isn’t for myself I’m afraid,’ he said to Cyril, who had scanty
leisure now for literary discussions, but who looked in at Mrs. Joyce’s
parlour once a day for five minutes’ friendly chat. ‘A man can die but
once. I’m no more afraid of sudden death than a soldier is when he
stands in his place in the ranks and knows that the next shot may be
for him. But I can’t help feeling for the poor creatures round about—
the mothers taken from their young children—the hard-working
fathers carried off, and their little ones left to starve.’
‘It is hard, I grant,’ said Cyril. ‘But there is some good in all evil
things. This dreadful outbreak may arouse the corporation of Bridford
from their wicked apathy. We shall have sanitary reform, perhaps,
after this awful warning.’
‘Ay, they’ll shut the stable door when the steed’s stolen,’ retorted
Emmanuel, bitterly.
A few days later a death occurred in the house in which the
Joyces lived. Cyril found the widow sitting with her work in her lap—
she whose needle was rarely idle—pale, and crying silently.
‘Oh, sir,’ she sighed, ‘my poor Emmanuel, my blessed, well-
beloved son!’
‘Dear Mrs. Joyce, is anything amiss with him? Is he ill?’ asked
Cyril, alarmed.
‘No, sir—not yet. But oh, I am full of fear! The poor woman on the
third floor—the young mother with the two children—you know—you
were with her last night. She’s gone, sir. Only taken yesterday
morning, and gone this afternoon. A clear case of Asiatic cholera,
the doctor says. Who can tell if my boy may not be the next?’
‘My good soul, you will be the next if you fret and frighten yourself
like this. Does not God take care of us all? Those who are taken are
in His keeping as truly as those He leaves behind. In life or death we
are with Him. Why should Emmanuel be the next? He is sober and
cleanly. He is better cared for in every way than his neighbours.’
 ‘Oh, Mr. Culverhouse, I love him so, he is all the world to me. I
could not live without him. I have watched him grow up, as a child
watches the one flower in his little garden. Every day and hour of his
life has been precious to me. My only grief has been that he should
set his face against the Bible. And now perhaps God is angry with
him—God must be angry at unbelief—and will snatch him away from
me.’
‘That would be to punish you. God is all just. He will give your son
time to grow wiser.’
‘Oh, sir, it is not always so. The wicked man is cut off in the day of
his iniquity. My son has denied God, and may be smitten in his pride.
The poor young mother taken away from her babies, one that can
only just crawl, and the other six weeks old! Why should Heaven pity
me more than those babies?’
‘Because the loss must be harder for you. Some kind soul will care
for the babies.’
‘True, sir, one of them was laughing and crowing an hour ago.
They don’t know what death means. But Emmanuel is my all. At
night when he lays down his book and talks to me for a little bit, I sit
and drink in his words as if they were wine, warming and
strengthening me. His poetry seems grander to me than any other
poet’s. Yes, grander than Milton or Shakespeare. I think God meant
him to be great.’
‘I believe God meant him to be good.’
‘Oh, Mr. Culverhouse, my mind is full of care when I think of him.
My husband believed that some were chosen vessels of wrath. I
have sometimes fancied that Emmanuel must be such a one. To be
so gifted, and yet to deny God! To be so good to me—the best and
kindest of sons—and yet to be stubborn against his God. I cannot
understand it.’
‘Can you not understand the case of a man to whom Heaven has
given a searching and inquiring spirit—a mind not satisfied to be
taught by others—wanting to find out everything for itself? Such a
man, not having searched deep enough, may be still in the dark; but
when he has lived longer, and thought more, the light will come. Be
sure of that.’
‘Do you believe that, Mr. Culverhouse?’
‘Honestly. I give Emmanuel another year for his infidel opinions,
and at the end of that time I expect to see him testifying to his belief
in Christianity, like the apostle Paul, as ardent in faith as he has been
ardent in disbelief.’
‘What comfort you have given me!’ sighed the widow.
Cyril went away touched by the mother’s intense love, deeply
anxious for the safety of both mother and son in that infected house.
If he had been rich enough he would have sent both off to some
inland village, far from the smoke of cities and the fumes of factory
chimneys. But he had drained his purse in giving a little help in cases
where help was most bitterly needed. For one moment there flashed
across his mind the thought of what he might have done to help
these people, if Beatrix Harefield’s fortune had been his. What
sunshine he could have carried into dark places—what comfort,
relief, ease of mind, sanitary improvements—blessings of education
and moral enlightenment—better dwellings, hopefulness
everywhere. Money would have done all this, and the woman he
loved would have given him her wealth freely for these things. And
now the wealth was useless and idle, and he and the woman he
loved were unlike unhappy. His purse was empty; he could give
Emmanuel and his mother nothing but friendship and pity. He saw
them every day, though the continual calls upon his time made every
moment precious.
Unhappily Mrs. Joyce had not the firmness of soul that can face a
danger near at hand. She was nervous and full of fear. She had all
manner of petty devices for keeping the enemy at bay. She, who had
never been given to gossip, now lingered at the chandler’s shop, to
talk to her neighbours, to hear the latest evil tidings, or to get the last
specific which quackery had invented against the disease.
Emmanuel’s life was made a burden to him by his mother’s care.
She wanted him to take half a dozen different concoctions in a day.
His affection yielded, while his common sense revolted.
 ‘I haven’t the least belief in these messes, but I’ll take anything to
oblige you, mother,’ he said.
By and by the widow wondered to see her son’s appetite begin to
languish.
‘I think those concoctions you give me are the cause of it,’ he said,
when his mother bewailed this alarming symptom. ‘They sicken my
stomach.’
‘Oh, Emmanuel, everybody knows that sarsaparilla is
strengthening, and ought to give you an appetite; and then there’s
the iron and the bark I got from the chemist’s for you.’
‘Yes, and the dandelion tea, and the ground-ivy.’
‘That was to sweeten your blood, Emmanuel.’
‘Mother, there was nothing the matter with me, and if you want me
to take preventives against cholera, why can’t you be contented with
simple things? Mr. Culverhouse says that a tea-spoonful of common
salt taken daily with one’s food is the best preventive ever
discovered, and that wouldn’t make me turn against my dinner, as
your ground-ivy and such like rubbish does.’
Hereupon the widow began to cry.
‘I’m so anxious about you, Emmanuel,’ she said.
‘And so am I anxious about you, mother, but I don’t worry you nor
myself. What’s the use? Here we are, rank and file, like soldiers, and
the shells are exploding round us on every side. We may get hit, or
we may not. There are survivors after all great battles. Think of those
old fellows we have seen who were all through the Peninsular war.
How many times must they and death have been within an inch of
each other! We are no worse off than they were.’
The tolling of the funeral bell came like a full stop at the end of
Emmanuel’s speech.
One of Mrs. Joyce’s ideas for the preservation of her son’s health
—of herself she thought no more than if she had been invulnerable
—was to get him as much as possible out of the tainted
neighbourhood he lived in. She urged him to abandon his evening
studies, and to take long walks into the country, she going with him.
The young man humoured this fancy as he would have humoured
any wish of his mother’s, and the two used to set out after working
hours on a rural tramp. The country, or anything pretty in the way of
rustic scenery, was not easily reached from Bridford. Long dusty high
roads, bounded by uninteresting fields of mangel, or turnips, had to
be traversed before the weary pedestrian arrived at anything rural or
refreshing to the senses. Emmanuel and his mother had both a keen
love of the beautiful, and they overwalked themselves nightly in the
endeavour to reach some green hill-side or wooded dell they knew
of. The evenings were sultry and oppressive. More than once the
wayfarers were caught in a thunder-shower, and went home wet to
the skin. Altogether this precautionary measure of Mrs. Joyce’s was
about the worst thing she and her son could have done. The end
was fatal. One night Emmanuel was seized with racking pain, and
the usual symptoms of Asiatic cholera.
The parish doctor came early in the morning. Yes, there was no
room for doubt, it was another case. The widow heard his opinion
with a stony calmness. All her fussy anxiety seemed gone. Her pale
set face betokened a despair too deep for words. She sat by her
son’s pillow. She wiped the drops of agony from his drawn face. She
obeyed to the letter every direction the doctor had given her.
‘How good you are!’ she said once, when she had seen the
struggle between fortitude and pain, ‘how patient! Oh, my dear one,
surely this is Christian patience. I know it. I feel it. At heart you are a
Christian.’
‘I have tried to live an honest life,’ the sick man answered, feebly. ‘I
have tried to keep my name fair in the sight of men—and to do as
much good as I was able to my neighbours.’
‘That is Christianity, my dear. If you would but acknowledge——
But no, I won’t talk to you now. God will have mercy. He will spare
you—for me—for me. And then your heart will be melted and you will
turn to Him.’
 ‘Mother, if I should be taken away,’ Emmanuel said later, ‘I know
Mr. Culverhouse will be good to you. You will not be friendless.’
‘Not friendless! I have no friend but you. The earth would be empty
for me if you were gone. Oh, my boy, my boy, do you think that I
could go on living without you?’
Cyril overheard these two speeches. He had knocked gently, and,
receiving no answer, had softly opened the door. The neighbours, a
family of nine, in the front room, had told him of Emmanuel’s state.
‘Oh, sir,’ cried the widow, turning to him with streaming eyes, ‘it
has come. You know how I dreaded it—how I have prayed against it.
I thought God would have mercy, that the scourge would pass by this
door, as the angel of death passed by the doors that were sprinkled
with the blood of the Lamb. But He has been deaf to my prayers.’
‘He is never deaf to prayer, though He may not give us the answer
we desire,’ said Cyril, gently. ‘Do not give way to despair. With God’s
grace your son will recover, as so many have done.’
‘But how many have died!’ said the widow, sadly, as she resumed
her seat by her son’s pillow.
Cyril stayed for more than an hour, comforting both the sick man
and his mother by his presence. He said very little to Emmanuel, for
the sufferer was in no state to talk or to be talked to. It was one of
those cases in which a death-bed repentance—a calm survey of
past errors and sins—a deliberate act of allegiance to God—was not
to be expected. The sinking soul might clutch at the cross held aloft
before those dim eyes, as a drowning man catches at the rope flung
out to him at his last extremity; but any act involving thought, any
calm reception of divine truth, was impossible. To Cyril’s eye the
young man seemed already sinking. He opened his book by and by
without a word of preface, and read those chapters of St. John’s
gospel which contain Christ’s parting address to His disciples—
words whose pathetic minor seems to breathe sad sweetness into
dying ears. Emmanuel’s face brightened as he heard. He
remembered how he had loved those chapters long ago, when he
had read them at his mother’s knee, before his father’s severity and
the hard ascetic life had made all religions reading hateful to him.
‘Yes,’ he murmured presently, in an interval of pain. ‘That is a
lovely farewell. Those used to be your favourite chapters, mother.’
‘They are so still, dear. I have never tired of them.’
Cyril left with a heavy heart, promising to call in the evening, at the
hour when he would be likely to meet the doctor. That anguish-wrung
countenance of the widow’s haunted him all day long. In the places
where he went there was little else but sorrow, but there seemed to
him to be no burthen like unto this burthen of hers—a grief and a
desolation beyond speech.
‘He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.’ Those
words were continually in his mind. For that one widow—blessed
and chosen above all other afflicted women—God upon earth
worked one of His greatest miracles. Thrice only in His earthly
pilgrimage did He exercise that ineffable power—and on this
occasion it seemed exercised on the impulse of the moment. God’s
human heart had been touched by this entirely human grief. He did
not say to the widow—as His servants now say—‘Rejoice, for your
son is in heaven.’ He gave her back her son upon earth.
Cyril was heavy at heart, for he had seen every cause for fear in
Emmanuel Joyce’s condition.
‘If it were my life, now, that was in jeopardy, it would matter very
little,’ he said to himself. ‘Who is there to be sorry for me? My cousin
Kenrick would be grieved, perhaps, in a mild degree, to hear of my
death; but it would make very little difference in his life. This poor
woman’s existence will be desolate if she loses her son. There will
be nothing left her. Hard to break the chain of love when poverty and
loneliness have made each link so strong.’
The twilight was closing in when Cyril went back to the room
where Emmanuel Joyce was lying, in an agony that looked like the
throes of death. The widow’s ashen face indicated a knowledge of
her son’s peril. She tried to speak, but could not. She could only hold
out her cold tremulous hand to the human friend of whose pity she
felt assured, and look at him with wild despairing eyes. He pressed
her hand gently, and sat down by the bedside to watch the struggle,
while he waited for the doctor’s coming.
‘You have done everything?’ he inquired. ‘Yes, I am sure of that.’
The room had a stifling odour of laudanum and brandy. The sick
man’s pinched and livid face, hollow sunken eye sand brow
bedewed with death-like dampness made Cyril apprehend the worst.
The hands grasping the coverlet were shrunken and wrinkled, the
skin shrivelled like a washerwoman’s after her day’s labour. The
oppressed respiration, the cold breath which chilled the curate’s
cheek as he bent over his dying friend, alike inspired fear. Yet the
brain remained unclouded all the while, and the hollow voice
hoarsely whispered grateful acknowledgment of Cyril’s kindness.
Never had Emmanuel Joyce been calmer in mind than in this dark
hour. He waited with resignation for recovery or death.
It was more than an hour before the parish doctor appeared.
‘There are so many cases,’ he said, apologetically.
And then he looked at the patient with a calm business-like air that
tortured the mother’s heart. He felt the pulse, put his hard hand upon
the clammy brow.
‘He’s very bad to-night.’
‘Worse than he was this morning?’ asked the widow, hoarsely.
‘Ever so much worse.’
‘And you said this morning that he was in danger.’
‘My good woman, I’m very sorry for you,’ said the doctor,
shrugging his shoulders, ‘but it’s a very bad case. Frankly, it’s
hopeless. There’s no use in deceiving you. The young man is dying.’
No cry of despair came from the mother’s parched lips. She made
no moan, but only crouched by her son’s bed, clasping him in her
arms, as if she would have held him back from death by the sheer
force of maternal love. She never turned to look at the doctor as he
moved slowly towards the door.
 ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad case. The drainage of this place
is shameful. We positively invite disease. I can’t do anything more.
You can go on with the laudanum and the brandy; but I’m afraid it’s
useless. And you might put a mustard plaster to the soles of his feet.’
Mrs. Joyce sprang up and ran to the cupboard, as if awakened to
new life. There was a ray of hope for her in being told to do
something, even though in the same breath the doctor said that it
was useless.
Cyril followed the doctor into the dusky alley. Summer stars were
shining down upon them, through the dim gray night. Blotches of
yellow light gleamed in wretched windows, where there were more
rags than glass, and more paper than rags. Every door-step was
occupied by squatting forms of slipshod matrons, or men in shirt
sleeves, smoking their clay pipes. The fumes of rank tobacco
contested for mastery with sulphuric acid and asafœtida. A horrible
place to live in—a worse place to die in.
‘Dr. Saunders, I would give a great deal to save that young man,’
said Cyril, putting his arm through the doctor’s. They had met
continually during the troublous summer, and had grown very
friendly.
‘So would I, my dear sir,’ answered Dr. Saunders. ‘You don’t
suppose I’m adamant, do you? That woman’s face has hit me harder
than anything I’ve met with in the last miserable six weeks. But I
can’t help her. The young man is sinking.’
‘Is not cholera more or less a disorganization of the blood?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Have you ever tried the effect of transfusion upon a patient in a
state of collapse?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When I was in Paris I heard a good deal about the transmission of
blood from the veins of a healthy patient to those of a sinking one. I
saw the operation performed at the Hôtel Dieu, and the result was
successful.’
 ‘That’s an old idea,’ said the parish doctor, ‘but I’ve never gone
into it. It was tried in the seventeenth century in France by Denis, the
anatomist, and at Oxford by Dr. Richard Lower, who performed
transfusion on animals. Dr. Blundell was the first English physician
who performed experiments of that kind on the human subject. I’ve
never done such a thing myself, and I can’t say I should like to
attempt it.’
‘It’s the simplest process imaginable,’ said Cyril, ‘almost as easy
as bleeding.’
And then he described the operation, as he had seen it performed
in Paris.
‘It may be easy enough, but I shouldn’t care to try it.’
‘Not to snatch a man from the jaws of death, not to achieve a
triumph in medical science, not to prove how far this nineteenth
century of ours is ahead of the learned Middle Ages, when the best
cure surgery could invent for a sick emperor was to wrap him in the
skin of an ape, flayed alive?’
‘Science is a grand thing,’ admitted Dr. Saunders, ‘but I am no
friend to rash experiments. And even if I were willing to try the
operation upon that poor fellow yonder—who is bound to die, so
there’s not much risk for him—where am I to find the benevolent
subject willing to part with sufficient blood?’
‘Here,’ answered Cyril. ‘I am ready for your lancet.’
 CHAPTER XVIII.
‘sick, sick to the heart of life am i.’
‘Have you thought of the danger to yourself?’ asked the doctor,
startled by Cyril’s proposition.
‘I do not care about the danger—if there be any.’
‘There may be danger. You have been working night and day. You
are by no means a patient I should consider able to lose several
ounces of blood with impunity. You had better abandon the idea, Mr.
Culverhouse. Your life is more valuable than that poor fellow’s
yonder.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Cyril. ‘That young man is all the world to
his widowed mother. I am all the world to nobody.’
‘But you are valuable to a great number of people. Think how
much good you have already done in this heathenish town. And you
may go on being useful to your fellow-men for the next fifty years, if
you do not waste your strength and health upon some benevolent
folly. Joyce is in the hands of Providence. Medicine has done all that
it can for him.’
‘Medicine. Yes—meaning drugs. But science has done nothing. I
believe that science can save him. Will you perform this operation,
Mr. Saunders, yes or no?’
‘What if I say no?’
‘I shall go to every doctor in Bridford—down to the cattle doctors—
till I find the man who will do it.’
‘By the time you get to the end of your journey poor Joyce will
have started for the other world. But come, if you are absolutely bent
upon this—stay, let me feel your pulse. So strong and full. Yes, I
think we might risk it. But you must have a cab ready at the end of