CHAPTER VI.
VAN DUREN IN WALES.
In the dusk of a sweet May evening a man slipped quietly out of the back door of the "Ring of Bells" tavern--a low public-house, frequented chiefly by fishermen and labourers, in the village of Marhyddoc, and shunning the more frequented neighbourhoods, found himself presently in a pretty winding lane that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and was quite given over to solitude. Here the man sat down for a while on the trunk of a fallen tree. The house had become intolerable to him: he could stay in it no longer; so he had strolled out to this quiet nook, there to wait till dusk had deepened into dark. Not without difficulty would even Jonas Pringle have recognized in this man Max Van Duren. Hands and face had been stained till they were the colour of a gipsy's, and his hair had been dyed jet black. He had only been twelve hours in Marhyddoc, but he had already found out a great deal that it behoved him to know. Fortunately for Van Duren, the landlord of the "Ring of Bells" spoke English fluently, and was very fond of airing his accomplishment, besides being naturally of a garrulous turn of mind. As a consequence, Van Duren had very soon extracted from him all that he had to tell--more than enough to confirm his worst fears.
In the portraits which the landlord drew of two of the strangers who were staying at the big hotel on the cliff, he had no difficulty in recognizing Byrne and Miriam. He could no longer doubt that he had been duped by these two; that they had only hired his rooms, and wormed themselves into his confidence, in order to extract from him a secret which, up to that time, he could have sworn would never be whispered by him in mortal ears. And they had succeeded but too well. What a weak fool he had been! How easily that girl had twined him round her finger! How well he could see the sneer that would curve her beautiful lips when she spoke of him to her father! He hated her now with as much intensity as he had loved her before. Had Miriam Byrne come walking down that lane in the May twilight--had she and Max Van Duren met face to face with no third person by, the chances that her father would ever have seen his daughter alive again would have been very problematical indeed.
But with Byrne and his daughter at the hotel was another individual, according to the landlord's account--an elderly gentleman, whom Van Duren altogether failed to recognize. Not that he was greatly troubled thereby: he had far more important matters to occupy his thoughts.
For the landlord had other news--news that he was in no wise loth to impart, that for Van Duren was full of intense significance. He knew all about the divers and their strange apparatus and dresses. He told his hearer how, in the first place, someone had come down to Marhyddoc, and, after some difficulty, had found out the exact spot where the schooner Albatross had foundered twenty years before. The place was then marked with a buoy, and soon after that the divers had come. Everybody in the village had asked themselves what there was in the cargo of the Albatross that could be worth the trouble and expense of recovery after having been for twenty years at the bottom of the sea: and for a long time the question asked by everybody had remained unanswered. But at last it had oozed out, nobody seemed to know exactly how, that the particular object for which the divers were instructed to search was a small oaken box, clamped with silver. The box was said by some to contain certain documents and title-deeds of immense value, for lack of which the rightful heir to a great property had been kept out of his own for years. Others knew for a fact that the box was full of sovereigns which were being sent out to America to buy slaves with. Others there were who averred that inside the silver-clamped box would be found the evidence of a terrible murder that had remained undetected all this long time.
"But of course they have not succeeded in finding the box?" Van Duren had said to the landlord, burning with a terrible anxiety to know the worst.
"But they have. Yes, indeed," said the man with a chuckle. Van Duren, on hearing this, got up abruptly and went to the window. His face was ghastly; his mouth twitched nervously in a way that he could not control; his staring eyes saw nothing that was before them. "The divers had been down three times without success," continued the man. "They went down again very early this morning, and in less than an hour they found the box. I saw it with my own eyes when they came ashore:--a small oak box, clamped at the corners, and with two letters on the lid."
Van Duren tried to speak, but he was like a man under the influence of a nightmare. The words died away in his parched-up throat. Happily the landlord took his listener's silence as a sign that his narrative was interesting, and went on without noticing him.
"When the box was brought ashore it was given into the custody of John Williams, the policeman. Yes, indeed. John took it up to the hotel on the cliff where the gentlemen are staying, and there he waited with the box on his knees till Mr. Davies of St. Owens, who is a magistrate, came, three hours later, and then they all went into a room together, the divers and the gentlemen, and the door was locked, and there the box was opened."
Van Duren would have liked to say, "And what did they find in the box when they opened it?" but not for the life of him could he have put the question. He knew quite well--no one better--what would be found in the box; but none the less did he hunger to hear every detail from the landlord's lips. However, he had only to wait and say nothing; his host's natural garrulity would do the rest.
"Whether they found title-deeds in the box, or whether they found sovereigns, or whether they found anything at all is more than I can exactly say. John Williams, the policeman, for all he's my own cousin's nephew, and I treated him to three glasses of brandy after he came down from the hotel, only shook his head and wouldn't say a word, though he knew very well that I wouldn't have whispered it to a soul. No, indeed. But John Williams will have no more of my brandy without paying for it like any other man."
Such was the story told Max Van Duren in the little Welsh inn. His worst fears were realized. The sea had given up its secret. Everything was known. He was stunned by the blow, and seemed for the time being to have lost all power of cool thought, all possibility of looking his position steadily in the face and of deciding as to what steps it behoved him to take next.
But even through the midst of the vague, unreasoning terror that now possessed him, through the ghastly dread that now held him as with a hand of iron, he could not help wondering by what means, through what special agencies, this unlooked for and terrible result had been brought about. Who forged the first link of evidence tending to implicate him in a crime committed so long ago that at times it almost seemed as if no such deed had ever really been done--as if it were nothing more than a distempered dream of his own imagining? What first induced Byrne and Miriam to come to his house and worm themselves into his confidence on purpose to elicit from him the particulars of the shipwreck of the Albatross? How did Byrne first come to connect him, Max Van Duren, with the murder of Paul Stilling? And, which was more mysterious still, whence and how did he derive the knowledge which enabled him to connect the story of the shipwreck with that crime? Never once during all the intervening years had Van Duren troubled himself to make any inquiry after Ambrose Murray. He had never cared to ascertain whether the man he had so foully wronged were alive or dead, whether he had been pardoned and set at liberty, or whether he was still shut up in his living tomb. But now, to-day, it did occur to him to ask himself whether it was in anyway possible that it was the hand of Ambrose Murray which had linked together the fatal chain of evidence--a chain that would prove strong enough to hang him unless he took particular care what he was about. But he scouted the idea almost as soon as it came to him. If Ambrose Murray were still alive, it was merely as a harmless lunatic--as a melancholy madman whom one might perhaps afford to pity, but could certainly have no cause to fear.
But it was certainly not the hand of a harmless lunatic that was at the bottom of this plot to bring his long-hidden guilt home to him. It was the hand, rather, of a man as strong, cunning, and unscrupulous as himself--a hand that, so far, had won every point of the game against him--a hand that would succeed in tying a halter firmly round his neck, unless--unless what? he asked himself, with a mixture of terror and despair. He did not know who his enemy was, where to look for him, or how best to confront him. He had got a sort of vague notion in his mind that Byrne was merely the puppet of a firmer will and a stronger hand; that his real enemy was lurking out of sight in the background, weaving round him, thread by thread, the meshes of a net from which in the end he would find it impossible to escape.
Not till dusk had fairly set in did Van Duren venture outside the inn door. He seemed to have lost his appetite entirely; but he kept up his strength, and in some small way his courage also, by repeated doses of the inn's fiery spirits. When, at last, he did leave the house, he had no settled intention in doing so. The place for hours had been full of noisy, half-drunken company, all of whom, as he could not help hearing through the thin lath-and-plaster wall that divided his room from the tap-room, were loudly discussing some important topic in their native Welsh. That topic, as the landlord took care to inform him more than once, was neither more nor less than the finding of the long-sought-for box by the divers. At last he felt that he must either leave the house or go mad. So he wandered out into a quiet lane at the back of the village, and there sat down on the trunk of a felled tree.
What should he do? What ought his next step to be? His mind was all in amaze of doubt and terror and perplexity. Should he hurry off to London by the first train, secure all his available property, shut up his house in Spur Alley, and drop quietly out of sight where no possible search for him could be made? Or should he stay and brave out everything?
Presently he began to feel very lonely among the dim shadows of the silent lane. He fancied that he heard voices whispering, and the faint rustle of garments, as if someone were watching him stealthily through the foliage at his back. He looked round with a shudder, and then he rose and walked swiftly forward. In a little while the lane took him to a rising ground that overlooked the village and the sea. On his right, and no great distance away, rose the cliff on the summit of which was built the hotel where Byrne and Miriam were staying. Several of the windows were lighted up. Which were the windows of Miriam's room, he wondered? In the midst of all his doubts and fears for his own safety, he could not help thinking about the girl who had played such a short but important part in the strange drama of his life. He had no bitterer thought, even at this bitter hour, than the knowledge that this girl, whom he had learnt to love so passionately, had not only never cared for him, but had duped him from the very first; that all her smiles and looks and words had been utterly false; that it was her hand, and hers alone, that had struck him down; that but for her no harm could have happened to him; that but for her, the silver-clamped box, with its damning evidence, would have rested till doomsday at the bottom of the sea.
Without knowing or caring whither it might lead him, he had unconsciously taken a footpath which brought him presently to a little side wicket that opened into the grounds of the hotel. From the wicket a winding path led upward through thick clumps of evergreens and brushwood to the house. There was for him, in his present mood, a sort of fascination, a grim satisfaction, in the thought of being so near these cunning enemies of his, who seemed so thoroughly bent on hunting him down, while all the time they believed him to be hundreds of miles away. He had little or no sense of present fear upon him. His dread lay in the unknown future. The next blow that would be struck at him would not be struck here, but in London. So long as these people stayed in Wales, he was safe. They had done their worst for a little time to come.
He passed through the wicket, but as soon as he found himself in the grounds of the hotel, he diverged from the pathway on to the grass, where his footsteps were inaudible, and where the evergreens would shelter him from the view of any passer-by. But perfect quiet reigned around; not a sign of life was anywhere visible. No portion of the hotel could be seen from where he was now, but he knew in which direction it lay; and without knowing or caring to think why he did so, he kept pressing slowly forward and upward, till at length he emerged from the shrubbery into a more open part of the grounds, and therein the starlight he could see the big white building straight before him.
On one side, the hotel was built close up to the edge of the cliff, which here sloped down to the beach, and the base of which was washed by every tide. Huge boulders and jagged pieces of rock protruded here and there from the face of the cliff; but these rugged features were softened and harmonized by the numerous tufts of broom and dwarf brushwood that grew among and around them, and by the soft, green mosses and many-coloured lichens that nestled between them, and crept lovingly over them, and made them beautiful with a beauty that was other than their own. Up the face of this cliff a goat or a chamois might probably have climbed by leaping from rock to rock, or from one clump of brushwood to another; but no human foot had ever been known to venture up or down it.
It was now dark, and these more minute features of the scene were invisible to Max Van Duren. All that he could discern was, that the hotel was built close to the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which cliff the tide was now washing heavily in with the noise of low thunder.
Having satisfied himself that there was no one about, Van Duren left the shelter of the shrubbery through which he had hitherto crept, and swiftly crossing the intervening open space, he sought the shelter of another fringe of shrubbery which grew between the gradually rising edge of the cliff and the carriage-drive that led up to the main entrance of the hotel. Keeping well within the shade of the evergreens, and climbing higher step by step, a few minutes more brought him close up to one corner of the house. It was now requisite to move with extreme caution. Suddenly he heard the sound of voices, and two or three loud goodnights. Some one was evidently leaving the hotel, and would pass close by him in a few moments. It would never do to be found there; so he plunged deeper into the shrubbery, and presently found himself close to one of the lighted windows that he had seen from the valley below. He hardly knew whether to advance or retire. The question was. Who were the occupants of the room? If strangers only, he would go quietly back by the way he had come; but if there was a chance of seeing Miriam--well, to see her again, he was prepared to risk much. He hated her, or fancied that he did, and yet there was still a strange fascination for him in the thought that he was close to her, that he was only separated from her by the thickness of a wall. Had he met her there alone in the shrubbery, he would have strangled her, but after that he would have kissed her and wept over her, and would probably have ended all by jumping over the cliff.
He crept close up to the window and peered through the Venetians. Fortunately for his purpose, they were not very closely drawn, and he could see into the room without difficulty. It was a large room, and was lighted by another window opposite to that through which Van Duren was now looking. This second window--a French one, by the way--was wide open, for the evening was somewhat sultry. Beyond it was a small balcony, and then the cliff, and, a hundred feet below, the white-lipped waves. Round a table in the middle of the room, four gentlemen were seated in earnest conversation. Three of them Van Duren had never seen before, but in the fourth he had no difficulty in recognizing his quondam lodger, Mr. Peter Byrne. It is true that the white locks, the hump, and the general air of feebleness and decrepitude had all disappeared; but Byrne's strongly-marked features could not be mistaken for those of any other man. But hardly had Van Duren time to notice all this, before his eyes were drawn to and concentrated on an object that was standing in the middle of the table. He shuddered from head to foot, and turned suddenly sick as he looked. He had recognized the object in a moment. It was the silver-clamped box which the divers had brought up from the bottom of the sea: it was the box for the sake of which Paul Stilling had been stabbed in his sleep.
Was the box full or empty? The lid was open, but Van Duren could not see inside. Anyhow, there was the box. What a host of terrible memories the sight of it called up in his mind! Trifling circumstances, all but forgotten, and that he had thrust persistently from his memory years ago, came back now with the vivid clearness of a photograph. Stilling's drunken laugh, the peculiar nervous twitching of his left eye, the broken nail on one of his fingers, the very patch on one of his boots, quizzically commented on by him as he was pulling on his slippers in front of the fire--how they all came back to Van Duren! As he stood there, it seemed to him but a few yesterdays, instead of twenty long years, since----
He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, and shut out the sight for a moment. When he looked again, Miriam was there. She was bending over the back of her father's chair and saying something in his ear. She had never looked sweeter, in Van Duren's eyes, than she looked to-night, with her soft flowing grenadine dress, and her bows of ribbon here and there, and a tea-rose in her hair.
He would have given all he had in the world, everything save life itself, to have called this girl his own and have won one smile of real love from her beautiful lips. Presently she lifted up a face that was radiant with smiles, then she pinched her father's ear playfully, and turned and left the room. And that was the last time that Max Van Duren ever set eyes on Miriam Byrne.
A few minutes later the four gentlemen rose and left the room. They left the box behind them, still standing wide open in the middle of the table. From this Van Duren at once concluded that it must have been emptied of its contents. Had it not, they would hardly have left it there unguarded. Then all at once the thought struck Van Duren that if he could only obtain possession of the box, if he could only steal it away unknown to anyone, then would his enemies be deprived of the strongest link in their evidence against him--perhaps the only link of any value in a court of justice. The box could undoubtedly be sworn to as being that which had at one time belonged to Paul Stilling; but could the contents of the box, after twenty years' immersion in the sea, be sworn to with equal certainty? To him that seemed very doubtful indeed. In any case the chain of evidence against him would certainly be weakened in a material degree should the box not be producible by the prosecution. It would be worth risking much to obtain it. There it was within a few yards of him, in an empty room; why should he not take possession of it again, as he had done once before, long years ago? Not a sound could anywhere be heard save the low thunder of the incoming tide. But how was it possible for him to get into the room, unseen and unheard? He tried the sash of the window against which he was standing. Fortunately for his purpose, it proved to be unfastened. All that he had to do was to push up the sash sufficiently high, climb over the low windowsill, thrust aside the Venetians, and the box would be within reach of his hand. Five minutes would suffice for everything. If only he could make sure that no one would enter the room for five short minutes! But of that he could by no means make sure; he must run the risk of it. But even while these thoughts were in his mind, his hands had been busy with the window, and almost before he knew what had happened, he found that he had pushed up the sash high enough to admit of his ingress to the room.
A minute later, and his hand was on the box. Even at such a moment as that it thrilled him strangely to touch it. He glanced into it: it was empty, as he had felt sure that it would be. Then he shut down the lid, and taking up the box, he placed it under his arm and turned to go. But at this instant the door was quickly opened, and some one came into the room. Van Duren turned instinctively, and as his eyes met those of the man who had entered, he gave utterance to a low cry of terror and surprise.
There before him stood the man whom he had so terribly wronged--whom he had consigned without remorse to a living tomb--who would have become the hangman's prey had not his brain been too weak to bear the burden of his doom. This man, then, it was--who he had fondly believed in his heart must have died long ago--this man it was, who, like a sleuth hound, was now on his track, determined to hunt him down without mercy and without ruth. Ambrose Murray was but a wreck of his former self, but Max Van Duren knew him again the moment his eyes fell on him.
Murray, in his turn, did not fail to recognise Van Duren. "Wretch! what do you here?" he exclaimed, as he advanced into the room. His right hand was buried in the breast of his frock-coat--an habitual action with him; but Van Duren took it at once that his fingers were grasping some hidden weapon, and as Murray advanced he fell back step by step.
He did not answer Murray's question. He seemed, indeed, as though he had not heard it. His face worked with emotion. Surprise, and terror, and anger seemed to glare out of his eyes in turn; but still he did not speak.
On first entering the room Murray had not missed the box; but now his eyes travelled from Van Duren to the table, and then back again, and he understood everything.
"Villain! bloodthirsty villain!" he cried. "Would you steal that box a second time?" and with that he took two or three rapid strides towards Van Duren.
But the other, still without answering, and still facing his enemy, fell quickly back. Murray was now between him and the window by which he had entered; but he seemed to remember that there was another window behind him, and it was towards this that he was now making his way. He still evidently suspected that Murray's hand held a pistol, and that he might be fired at any moment.
The latter continued to advance. "Max Jacoby, I have you at last, and this time you shall not escape me!" he exclaimed, and therewith he strode swiftly to the bell-rope and pulled it violently.
But at the first sound of the bell, Van Duren turned quickly and made for the open French window. Before Murray had time to utter a single word of warning, he was on the balcony. Next moment his hand grasped the railing, and with a loud, mocking laugh he vaulted over and disappeared in the darkness below. He had either not known, or had forgotten, that the balcony was built immediately over the edge of the cliff.
A few moments later Peter Byrne and two or three others hurried into the room in response to the bell's imperative summons. Ambrose Murray was lying senseless on the floor, and the silver-clamped box was no longer there.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MESSAGE TO STAMMARS.
It was on the forenoon of a certain Saturday in May that Olive Deane found herself jogging slowly along the road that leads from Pembridge to Stammars. The morning was sunny and the road pleasant, but Olive had no eyes for anything: her own tortuous thoughts occupied her fully. Should she break as gently as possible the news she had to tell, and then give Eleanor the letter after having thus paved the way? Should she put the letter into her hand without a word, and simply wait to be questioned as to anything further that she might be supposed to know? Or--and this was the course that approved itself more fully to her--should she say nothing about the letter, but tell the news her own way, with sting and venom, and before whatever audience chance might give her an opportunity of assembling to hear it? Over and over in her mind she kept revolving these different courses, as the ramshackle old fly in which she was seated jolted and creaked its way slowly along the quiet country roads.
Lady Dudgeon, released at length from further attendance on her sick sister, was panting to get back to London for the remainder of the season. Sir Thomas, accompanied by his faithful Gerald, had come down on the Friday to fetch her ladyship. They were to stay at Stammars over the week end, but on the Monday morning the whole family would go up to town.
In due course. Miss Deane arrived at Stammars, only to find that Lady Dudgeon, accompanied by Miss Lloyd, had gone shopping to Pembridge, and that she must have passed them somewhere on the road. They would, however, so she was assured, be back in time for luncheon, so she made up her mind to await their return. Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were somewhere about, so the servant told her; but them, at present, she did not want to see. The young ladies, Sophy and Carry, had gone with their mamma, so that Miss Deane was left perforce to the evil company of her own thoughts. "Miss Lloyd, indeed!" muttered Olive, when the servant had left the room. "This is the last day that she will have a right to call herself by that name. What will her name be to-morrow? Should her ladyship have occasion to go shopping to-morrow, will she take this nameless pauper with her in her carriage? Not if Lady Dudgeon is the woman I take her to be."
After all, she had not long to wait--but little over an hour--before she saw the Dudgeon equipage rolling solemnly up the main avenue of the park. Her colourless cheeks flushed while she looked. Her heart beat painfully. The moment so long looked forward to was close at hand.
She was still undecided as to the precise mode in which her communication should be made to Eleanor. She found it impossible to make up her mind. Circumstances at the last moment would probably decide for her.
From the place where she was standing she could see the entire length of the avenue. She could see the two fat greys and the fat coachman, as they came every moment, but not yet could she see who was in the carriage behind--the carriage respecting which her ladyship had spoken in such disparaging terms to her husband, but which was still deemed good enough for country wear. Presently she saw Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy emerge from the shrubbery and go to meet the carriage. Then it stopped, and Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd alighted, and all four walked slowly towards the house. Gerald and Eleanor lingered a little behind the baronet and his wife, and to Olive's jaundiced eyes they seemed to be deep in earnest and loving conversation. In fancy she heard Pomeroy's low and tender tones and Eleanor's half-breathed replies. She set her teeth, and her lips tightened as she looked. "Before they are two hours older," she murmured under her breath, "he shall know that she is a beggar, and she shall know that her hero is nothing better than a vulgar adventurer!" And in the heat of her passion she took Matthew Kelvin's letter out of her pocket and tore it in two. "What has to be told I will tell in my own way. I have been a fool to hesitate so long."
But Olive was altogether mistaken in imagining that Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd were whispering love's sweet nothings to each other as they walked across the park. Gerald was merely giving, in animated terms, a description of the last new opera, which he had been to see a few nights previously. Eleanor hungered, but hungered in vain, for one tone of affection, for one whispered word of love. He knew that she was going away--going to leave Stammars, probably for ever--and yet he made no sign. She had long ago forgiven the deception that he had practised on her; he could hardly help seeing that she had forgiven him; and yet he still maintained the reserved and impassive demeanour that had marked him from the day of his confession in the library. Perhaps, after all, his love for her had been nothing more than a passing fancy. If such were indeed the case, if he felt that he had been mistaken, if his affection for her was not of a texture sufficiently strong to stand the wear and tear of a lifetime, then he was right to draw back while there was yet time to do so. His doing so proved one thing: that although, in the first instance, he had sought her for her wealth, and although his confession had led her to believe that he now loved her purely for herself, yet when he discovered that he had over-rated the strength of his feelings, he had retired honourably from the field, instead of staying to win her, as he might so easily have done, and with her that money which had first tempted him to follow her. To know this was only a poor sort of consolation, but it was better than none. How strange it seemed to her that she should have given her heart away to this man, given it beyond all power of recall, and yet that he should have nothing to give her in return! Was the romance of her life to have this poor and ignoble ending? It seemed so, indeed, just now. She only knew that, despite all the arguments urged by her pride, her love was still his as thoroughly as ever it had been. He was chatting to her now, as they walked up the avenue together, as any ordinary acquaintance might have done, of the new opera and the new prima donna, and yet how happy she felt to be walking by his side, how she had thrilled from head to foot when she first caught sight of him standing there with Sir Thomas! Yes, whether he loved her, or whether he hated her--her heart was still his beyond all possibility of recall.
If Eleanor had but known how much it cost Gerald to maintain this cold and reserved demeanour towards her! If she had but known how he longed to clasp her to his heart, and whisper in her ear how fondly he loved her! He often felt that not much longer would his tongue keep silence; that some moment, perhaps when he himself least intended it, the pent-up words would burst from his lips, his arms would stretch themselves forth and draw her to him, and in a few brief moments everything would be told. The task he had imposed on himself was fast becoming unbearable--would have become altogether unbearable, but that happily there seemed at last a prospect of its coming to a speedy end. He had had a letter from Marhyddoc, in which Ambrose Murray held out strong hopes of his search being brought to a successful issue. Should such really prove to be the case, then would Murray's first task be, with the proofs of his innocence in his hands, to seek the daughter whom he had hitherto refused to claim. Then would the necessity for this odious concealment come to an end; then would everything be told to Eleanor. Therefore did Gerald school himself to keep silence for a little while longer, hoping and believing that the future would compensate for everything.
Miss Deane's eager eyes watched the party of four come slowly up the avenue, and saw them at length ascend the steps and enter the house. Inside the hall Sir Thomas and Pomeroy went off together to the library, while Eleanor accompanied Lady Dudgeon to her sitting-room. Five minutes later a servant came to tell Olive that her ladyship would see her. The moment so intensely longed for had come at last. Olive's pale face grew a shade paler as she followed the servant along the passage.
Lady Dudgeon was seated at her davenport as usual. Miss Lloyd was sitting close by, finishing a sketch in water-colours. "Good morning. Miss Deane; I am pleased to see you. I hope Mr. Kelvin is no worse," said her ladyship, offering Olive two frigid fingers.
"Mr. Kelvin is no worse, madam, than he has been all along. He is still very ill--too ill to leave his room; and having something of importance to communicate, and being still too weak to write down the particulars, he has deputed me to come in his stead."
"Something of importance to communicate to me or to Sir Thomas?" asked her ladyship. Eleanor rose and was about to leave the room.
"My errand is to Miss Lloyd. It concerns her more nearly than anyone else."
"Eleanor, my love, had you not better take Miss Deane to your own room?"
Eleanor flushed a little. In her heart she had never liked Olive. She had always had a vague distrust and dread of her. How such a feeling had originated she could not have told: none the less it was there. "I have no secrets from you, Lady Dudgeon," said Eleanor. "Whatever Miss Deane may have to communicate can just as well be told here as elsewhere."
"Are you sure that you would not prefer to see her alone?"
"Quite sure."
"Then Miss Deane may as well be seated." And her ladyship dipped her pen in her inkstand, and made believe that she was about to go on with her correspondence.
Miss Deane drew a chair quietly forward and sat down. Eleanor, looking distrustfully at her, caught a momentary glance out of her black eyes, so full of malignant triumph that her heart sank within her, and a presage of coming misfortune chilled her suddenly from head to foot.
"When Mr. Jacob Lloyd died," began Olive in a low voice, ignoring Eleanor, and addressing her remarks directly to Lady Dudgeon, "he left behind him a large quantity of miscellaneous papers. Those papers were taken possession of by my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, whose intention it was to go through them, arrange them, and indorse them at his leisure. This process was interrupted by his sudden illness. During the last few days, however, feeling somewhat stronger, he has endeavoured to occupy himself with them for an hour or two now and then. Yesterday he came across a document in Mr. Lloyd's own writing of a very singular nature indeed."
She paused for a moment, as if to gather breath. Then she went on, speaking more slowly and deliberately than before, so that each word might go home to her hearers, and with her eyes still fixed on Lady Dudgeon.
"It is a document which would seem to prove conclusively that the young lady hitherto known as Miss Eleanor Lloyd was not the daughter of the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd--nor indeed any relative of his whatever, but simply the child of some unknown parents, adopted by Mr. Lloyd and his wife out of charity or compassion."
Eleanor's face by this time was whiter than Olive's. She did not speak, but sat staring "with wide-open eyes, as in a picture," and with one hand grasping the back of a chair, as if to keep herself from falling.
"Good gracious me! whatever is the woman talking about?" cried her ladyship, taking off her double eye-glass, as if to make sure that it was really Olive Deane who was sitting there.
"Mr. Lloyd, as your ladyship may remember," resumed Olive, without heeding the interruption, "died very suddenly, and without making a will. This young lady,"--indicating Eleanor by a slight inclination of the head--"has, consequently, no claim whatever to a single sixpence of Mr. Lloyd's property. She is, in fact, neither more nor less than a pauper."
At this word a little cry burst involuntarily from Eleanor. She ran to Lady Dudgeon, and sinking on one knee, buried her face in the elder lady's lap.
"Miss Deane, you forget yourself!" said Lady Dudgeon, with severity. "You forget that Miss Lloyd is my guest."
"I ask your ladyship's pardon if I have committed any offence. I was but making a simple statement of fact."
"That has yet to be proved. But, in any case, the statement was most offensively made." Then she patted Eleanor's cheek affectionately. "Keep up your spirits, my dear. Don't get downhearted. There must be a mistake somewhere. Miss Deane's story sounds far too romantic to be true."
"I believe your ladyship is sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Kelvin," said Olive, not without a touch of sternness, "to be quite aware that he is not a man who would be likely to send me to Stammars on such an errand as this unless he were perfectly sure of the facts he had to go upon. Had there been any doubt in the matter, I should not have been here to-day."
"Oh, Lady Dudgeon, it is not that I fear poverty!" cried Eleanor. "Don't think that. You know that I have never really valued the riches that were said to be mine."
"That's true enough," murmured her ladyship.
"It is the thought of having lost the dearest and kindest man that ever breathed that wrings my heart. I have lost--my father!"
"Hush, my dear--hush! Even if it should turn out that you are not Mr. Lloyd's daughter in reality, you will always have the consolation of knowing that he loved you as such. Nothing can deprive you of that." Then turning to Olive, she added: "Since Mr. Kelvin has made this very clever discovery--which, mind you, as I said before, has yet got to be proved--he is, doubtless, clever enough to have found out the person to whom Mr. Lloyd's property really does belong?"
"The heir-at-law is a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton, a nephew of Mr. Lloyd, but a person whom Mr. Kelvin has never seen."
"But a person with whom he will at once place himself in communication?"
"Undoubtedly, madam."
"Miss Lloyd's interests in this matter must not be allowed to suffer. The case appears to be one that requires the most minute and strict investigation, and I shall at once place it in the hands of Mr. Barclay."
Olive bowed.
"Mr. Kelvin will no doubt either seek an interview with Miss Lloyd, or write her full particulars, as soon as he is strong enough to do so."
"I decline to let Miss Lloyd be troubled in the affair. She is going up to town with me on Monday next. Mr. Kelvin had better communicate direct with Mr. Barclay."
Again Olive bowed.
"I will not fail to deliver your ladyship's message."
"Perhaps, after all, it's quite as well that you did not marry Captain Dayrell," said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor. "He would hardly have liked having to give up your dowry."
Eleanor rose to her feet, and stood for a few moments with her hands pressed to her temples, as though striving to realize to herself the strange tidings that had just been told her. "I have no name--no home," she said, in a dreamy way, as if communing with herself. "I can work for my living; I am not afraid of that. But--but I have lost my father, and I have no name!"
At this instant the door was opened, and in walked Sir Thomas.
"Eh--what's this?--what's this?" he said, cheerfully. "Hope I'm not intruding, as what's-his-name says in the play. Rehearsing a little comedietta, or what?"
"Run away to your room now, my dear," said Lady Dudgeon, as she rose and kissed Eleanor. "Every cloud has its silver lining. Keep up your spirits, and remember that you shall never want for a home as long as Sir Thomas and I are on this side of the grave."
Eleanor did not wait for another word, but hurried out by the opposite door as Sir Thomas came forward. Then the baronet had to be told everything, and it is needless to say how great was his surprise, which he expressed in far more voluble terms than his wife had done.
"If our Nelly ain't Jacob Lloyd's daughter, whose child is she?" he said, after he had had time to calm down a little. "Kelvin found that out, I suppose, at the same time that he found out the other."
"At present he has no clue whatever to the parentage of Miss Lloyd."
"Why, it's quite a romance! I must call and see Kelvin to-morrow, and talk it over with him myself."
"To-morrow is Sunday, Sir Thomas," said her ladyship, severely. "And on Monday morning we start for town."
"Ah, so we do," said the baronet, scratching his chin with an air of perplexity.
"I have decided to place Eleanor's interests in the hands of Mr. Barclay, so that the less you interfere personally in the matter the better."
"Quite right, my dear, quite right. But what's to become of the poor girl meanwhile?"
"For the present she will stay with us, as usual. It is too early yet to legislate for her future."
Her ladyship said this with an air that seemed to forbid further discussion. Her husband took the hint, and remarking that he had several important letters to write, he trotted back to the library.
"I am going to have a cup of chocolate in my dressing-room," said her ladyship to Olive. "Unless you are in a hurry to get back home, you may come and keep me company."
Olive was in no hurry to get back; in fact, she had something for her ladyship's private ear, and was glad of such an opportunity for telling it.
Lady Dudgeon, on her side, was actuated by a very natural desire to elicit from Miss Deane some further particulars of the strange story which she had just heard. She felt sure that there must be several interesting details, which it might not be advisable that Eleanor should be made acquainted with, but which Miss Deane could have no object in keeping from her. It was certainly not her intention to cross-question Olive--she was above doing that--a delicate hint to Miss Deane that her ladyship was willing to listen to anything she might feel disposed to tell her, ought to be sufficient to elicit any details that might hitherto have been kept in the background.
Notwithstanding the kind way in which she had spoken to Eleanor, Lady Dudgeon felt very considerably annoyed in her own mind at the thought that her pet protégée, whom she had taken everywhere and introduced to everybody, lauding her to the skies as everything that was good and beautiful, and who had, in a certain sense, as the presumed heiress of twenty thousand pounds, shed a reflected lustre on her chaperon, should turn out to be nobody knew whom, and without a sixpence to call her own. Nothing could have been more mortifying. She had liked the girl from a child, and would no doubt have continued to like her just as much had Jacob Lloyd died a bankrupt, and would probably have made a sort of humble companion of her, or would, in any case, have seen that she was properly provided for; but to have introduced the girl to all her fine friends and acquaintances on a footing of equality, and now to discover that she had no claim to the status so given her--that was indeed a bitter pill for her ladyship to swallow.
She knew well--no one better--how censorious is that Society of which she herself formed a component atom; how one of the chief conditions of its existence is that it shall revenge itself without mercy on every faux pas of its votaries in which they may be found out. She knew quite well the sort of remarks that people would make. They would say that she had wilfully allowed herself to become a party to a fraud. They would say that she had done her best to pass off a portionless girl as an heiress, and, in the eyes of Society, what crime could well be more heinous than that?
It was very, very mortifying, and she could not help, in her secret heart, visiting upon Eleanor some portion of blame for what had happened. It seemed well-nigh incredible to her that the girl could have lived all these years in utter ignorance that she was not Jacob Lloyd's daughter. Of course, all these minor points would have to be inquired into and thoroughly sifted later on. Much bitterness was yet to come, but the foretaste she had of it already was very far from being to her liking.
Not a shadow of all this was discernible in her ladyship's manner as Miss Deane followed her upstairs; but Olive had a poisoned arrow in her quiver of which Lady Dudgeon knew nothing.
A cup of chocolate was brought for each of them, and Lady Dudgeon, as she sipped at hers, chatted away to her companion about Sophy and Carry, and what girls they were for wearing out their boots; about the late flower show; about Mrs. Diplock's last baby, and the state of Mr. Kelvin's health--while waiting for an opportunity to work the conversation round to the desired point. But Olive was in no mood for such manœuvring. She had something to say, and she was determined to say it. A break in the flow of her ladyship's small-talk was caused by the intrusion of a servant to ask a question, and Olive seized the opportunity.
"There is one circumstance that took place while I was at Stammars," she began, "which I have sometimes thought since I ought to have mentioned to your ladyship at the time. To-day I regret more than ever that I omitted to do so."
"To what circumstance do you allude, Miss Deane?"
"Your ladyship must please to pardon the question, but did it never strike you, did you never notice, that there was some hidden understanding between Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy?"
"Good gracious. Miss Deane, whatever do you mean?"
Lady Dudgeon was surprised for the moment out of her assumed equability.
"To put the case in plain language, and it will perhaps be best to do so," said Olive, "has your ladyship never had reason to suspect that Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy were engaged to each other?"
"Impossible! such a thing is utterly impossible!" was Lady Dudgeon's emphatic reply. "I know Miss Lloyd too well to believe anything of the kind. For once, Miss Deane, your surmises have led you altogether astray."
"Possibly so; I hope so," said Olive, resignedly.
There was an awkward silence. Her ladyship fidgeted, but said nothing. Singular to say, she seemed far more put out by what Olive had just said to her than by the far more important disclosure that had been made to her half an hour previously.
"You--you mentioned some circumstance," she said at last, not without a touch of irritation. She felt as though Olive were doing her a personal injury.
"Yes; a little circumstance of which I was the accidental witness. But probably your ladyship will not think it worth while to listen to it."
"Probably it is not worth listening to, but still there can be no harm in your telling me."
"One evening, some two or three weeks before my cousin was taken ill," began Olive, "I was sitting in the bow-window of the back drawing-room. The curtains were partly drawn, and when Miss Lloyd came into the room she did not see me. She sat down at the piano and began to play: and as there was no third person present, I saw no reason for making my presence known. But after a time Mr. Pomeroy came in. He had just returned from a journey, and was evidently in search of Miss Lloyd. He hurried up to her, and, before I had time to say a word, he had folded her in his arms. Then he called her his darling, and kissed her several times."
"How dreadful--how very dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Dudgeon, with a sort of terror.
"And then----Miss Lloyd kissed him back."
Lady Dudgeon could only put down her cup of chocolate and groan.
In saying that Eleanor kissed Gerald back, Olive told a lie, a weakness that she was never guilty of unless she had some particular end to serve.
"And do you really mean to affirm, Miss Deane, that you saw these--these shocking things with your own eyes?" Lady Dudgeon contrived to say at last.
"Certainly; exactly as I have told your ladyship."
It was indeed dreadful. She had been hoodwinked and bamboozled under her own roof, and by this girl for whom she had done and sacrificed so much. Her feelings had been outraged in their tenderest point. Eleanor Lloyd was deposed from her throne for ever. What could anyone do for a person who could so far forget what was due both to herself and others?
Lady Dudgeon strove her hardest to hide from Olive the effect which her words had upon her. "Well, well, young people will be young people till the end of the chapter," she said at last, with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness.
"Mr. Pomeroy will now have an opportunity of proving the disinterestedness of his affection," said Olive, in her slow, incisive way. "He can now let the world see that it was not Miss Lloyd's money, but Miss Lloyd herself, that he fell in love with."
"What a strange person you are, Miss Deane!" her ladyship could not help saying.
Olive smiled coldly, and then rose to go.