CHAPTER IX.
IN THE DUSK OF EVENING
Never had the good people of Nullington had more food for gossip, wonder, and surmise--never had they been so startled out of the ordinary quietude of their lives, as during the Christmastide to which events have now brought us. The marriage, under somewhat romantic circumstances, of Philip Cleeve, and the coming home of himself and his bride, would, in ordinary times, have served as the chief topic of conversation for a month to come. But this comparatively tame episode was completely overshadowed by the startling revelations in connection with Captain Lennox.
Both Captain Lennox and his sister had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. They had been traced to London, but there the trail was lost, and it had not hitherto been found again. Lennox had never come back to complete the arrangements respecting the letting of the cottage to Mr. Norris. Something must have aroused his suspicions, and some one, probably one of his own servants, must have sent him timely information respecting the execution of the search-warrant. In any case, he was nowhere to be found after that day. Mr. Meath was at fault; the general police were at fault; and meanwhile the cottage remained in charge of the police local constabulary.
Christmas at Heron Dyke could not well have been spent more quietly. Conroy was away for a few days about this time. Mrs. Carlyon and Ella went into the town occasionally to see Maria and Philip, and that was about their only dissipation.
"It must have been Captain Lennox who took the jewel-case out of my dressing-room that night at Bayswater," remarked Mrs. Carlyon one day. "And to think I could not get rid of an uneasy suspicion that it might have been poor Philip Cleeve who had taken it!"
Ella looked up in surprise.
"Philip Cleeve!" she exclaimed.
"Well, yes; I am ashamed to say so, Ella."
"But what could possibly have led you to such a suspicion as that, Aunt Gertrude?"
"Captain Lennox led me. Otherwise I should no more have thought of Philip in the matter than I should have thought of you."
Ella felt bewildered.
"Surely Captain Lennox did not dare to accuse Philip!"
"Oh dear, no. One day, a few weeks after the loss, when Captain Lennox was in town and calling upon me, he inquired whether the jewels had been found. In talking of the affair, he dropped a word--it was little more than one--which somehow turned my thoughts to Philip. The Captain caught it up again--as if he had let it drop inadvertently, and I did not pursue it. Since then, when I have heard at times how fast Philip was supposed to be spending money at cards, billiards, and such like, that inadvertent word has returned to my mind doubtfully and most disagreeably."
"Do you suppose Captain Lennox wished you to think he accused Philip?"
"No," replied Mrs. Carlyon. "I think he wanted to instil a slight doubt of his possible guilt into my mind, so as to more completely throw any possible suspicion off himself. That is how I fancy it must have been."
"Aunt Gertrude," said Ella, musingly, "I wonder whether it was Captain Lennox who stole Freddy Bootle's watch and chain that same night--and then made out that his own purse was likewise stolen?"
"Little need to wonder! nothing was ever much more sure than that," said Mrs. Carlyon. "The man must have lived by these peculations. And to think what a gentleman he was through it all!"
Conroy came back. And whatever minor elements of disquietude might make themselves felt now and again, there was a certain sweet fulness of content about Ella's life just now, that nothing could seriously affect. She had won the sweetest guerdon a woman can win, and all things else, whether pleasing or displeasing, seemed dwarfed in comparison with that one supreme fact. The more she saw of Conroy, the more she seemed to find in him to love and appreciate. Day by day the choice she had made approved itself more fully to her heart. Even Mrs. Carlyon, now that she was domesticated daily with Conroy, no longer wondered at what she called Ella's infatuation.
It had been arranged that the marriage should take place early in spring. Ella wished to delay the event until the doubt as to the date of her uncle's death, and her own rightful inheritance of the property, should be cleared up; but Mr. Conroy urged that that was no good cause for delay.
"Suppose," she said to him one day, "that after we are married it should be discovered that I am not the true heiress, and Heron Dyke goes from me?"
"What then?" he answered. "We should still have enough for comfort. You possess some income that is indisputably your own; and I dare say I could match it, in one way or another."
"By your newspaper work?"
"By that or other things. I have given up the newspapers for the present: am not sure that I shall take to them again. Be at rest, my dear, and trust to me. We shall be able to keep up a modest home, and a cow, and a pony-carriage. What more can we want?"
"You are laughing at me, Edward."
"No, indeed. I only wish you not to be troubled about this property. It may be yours, or it may not be."
"I fancy you think it is not mine?"
"I fancy that if everybody possessed their legal rights, it would turn out to be at this moment Mr. Denison's. But we have yet no proof of that, and it may be that I am mistaken."
"The shortest way would be to give it up to him at once."
"My dear, Mr. Denison would not take it; he is one of the last men in the world to do so."
"Do you know Mr. Denison?"
"I have seen him. I know that he is a straightforward, honourable man."
Ella sighed.. She wished the doubt could be solved.
Mr. Conroy wished the same, though perhaps in a less ardent way. It did not trouble him as it did her; he was more patient, more reconciled to let time work out its own ends. He held a secret conviction that Aaron was at the bottom of the plot, if there had been a plot; but Conroy kept that impression to himself.
Harsh, crabbed and unsympathetic as was Aaron Stone, both by nature and training, the shock of his grandson's sudden death, following so soon after that of the Squire, had not failed to leave its traces behind. In a few short months Aaron seemed to have grown a dozen years older. His hair was thinner and whiter, he had become more feeble in his gait, and he claimed the assistance of a stick in walking more frequently than before. He maundered in an undertone to himself as he walked about the Hall with his keys--his chief duty now was to shut up the old house at night and to open it in the morning; he did little else; and he would often speak out aloud as in answer to some question when nobody had asked him one. He would have liked to follow his mistress about much as a faithful old mastiff might have done, gazing from the doors when she was in the grounds, moving restlessly about her chair at dinner. To Conroy he had taken umbrage, and would mutter to himself that a strange man had no business at Heron Dyke; the best of 'em were but spies.
"What do he do up in that north wing so much?" soliloquised the old man in the homely speech he was pleased to indulge in when off duty. "I see him, evening after evening, a-creeping softly up and a-creeping down again. What do he do it for? What's he looking after? Do the young mistress know of it, I wonder? Who can answer for't that he warn't in that theft o' the jewels? Yah! Spies!"
Of all the inmates of the Hall, the one least tolerant of his crotchets and his failings was Mrs. Carlyon. On occasion she spoke of them to Ella.
"It is partly your fault, child; you give in to him so."
"I don't think I do, aunt. In what way do I?"
"In many ways. Look at that senseless fancy he has taken up of having no men-servants in the house but himself! And you fall in with it."
"We have enough maids for the work, Aunt Gertrude."
"I am aware of that--I suppose we have not much less than half-a-score here, including your maid and mine. That is not the question. In your position, mistress of this grand old place, it behoves you to keep men-servants as other people do. But because Aaron sets his face against it, you----"
"It is not that, aunt," interrupted Ella. "What I thought right to do I should do, in spite of Aaron; believe that. It is the uncertainty in which things are, that causes me to live quietly. Once I hear--if I ever do--that I am the rightful owner of Heron Dyke, you will find me make all changes that are suitable."
Mrs. Carlyon said no more then. She heartily wished her sojourn at Heron Dyke was at an end, that she might return to her own more comfortable home. For, in her opinion, the atmosphere of the Hall was not comfortable. Of that dark north wing she had a wholesome dread, as well as of the lost girl's spirit which was supposed to haunt it. To her niece she did not speak of this: but she and Mrs. Toynbee--who was very poorly at this time and kept much to her own chamber--talked confidentially together, and agreed that matters altogether were more doubtful than they ought to be.
"This is a queer thing, Miss Ella, that folks down at Nullington are whispering to one another," exclaimed Aaron, overtaking his mistress one afternoon in the new conservatory.
"What is it that they are whispering?" she turned to ask.
"About that Captain Lennox. If 'twas him that robbed the Hall, then he must have been the villain who destroyed my poor boy. Ah, ma'am, but it's a terrible world!"
"I fear some of us find it so, Aaron."
"To think of it! Captain Lennox! But I never liked him, ma'am. I never liked that sharp, foxy face of his."
Ella mentally wondered whom the old man had liked.
"I mistrusted him, Miss Ella, from the first time I saw him. When a man talks to you so soft and silky-like, as the Captain did, and at the same time fixes you with such a pair of cruel, hungry-looking eyes, it is best to have nothing to do with him. I set such a man down as dangerous."
Miss Winter had herself always felt a secret distrust of Lennox, without knowing the reason why. Perhaps, as Aaron had said, it was the contrast between his smooth, dulcet tones, and the expression in his cold, hard-set glances: any way, she had never taken cordially to Captain Lennox.
"Your wife seems but poorly to-day, Aaron," resumed Miss Winter, purposely quitting the other subject.
"She's a bigger ninny than ever," retorted Aaron, in an explosive tone. "I beg pardon ma'am; but the old woman be enough to wear one's patience out."
Dorothy Stone seemed to live in a chronic state of fear. What was it that she was afraid of, her husband would angrily ask her--and the most he could make of her trembling answers was, that she was afraid of the "ghosts." Heron Dyke had become a fearsome place, she would say: any night she might meet Katherine Keen in the passages; or, maybe, the dead Squire. Aaron, quite beside himself with wrath at all this, threatened to shake her: but the threat made no visible impression. Miss Winter would reason with her now and again; but the old woman's life had become a trouble to herself.
What little pleasure (a sadly negative one) she ever found in it, was when she recalled all her grandson's perfections, and her past love for him. To this she found sympathising listeners in the maids.
"Where was there another like him?" she would say, from the easy-chair before the fire in her own sitting-room, a huge black bow on her muslin cap. "So bold, and handsome, and high-spirited--he was fit to match with any gentleman in the land."
"And so he was, ma'am," would make answer to her Phemie or Eliza.
"When was that vision of the hearse and headless horses ever known to show its warning for the likes of you and me?" she would continue; "but it appeared for him!"
For it was generally believed that not often was that dire portent visible to mortal eye except when the scion of some great family was about to be summoned hence; thus, as Dorothy looked upon it, the vision must be regarded as a species of honour. It was for Macbeth alone that the witches worked their spells and brewed their potions; their business lay not with the rabble rout that called him captain.
But there came an hour when, pondering upon these matters, it occurred to Edward Conroy, a shrewd reasoner, that more might be in this nervous terror of Dorothy's than she allowed to meet the eye. What was it that she was afraid of? He asked himself the question. Sitting by the blazing fire in her own parlour, or in the kitchen bright with sunlight, people around her within beck and call, it could not be that she feared to see a ghost there--that poor Katherine Keen in the spirit would walk in to confront her. Yet, that Dorothy would, and did, sit there often in the day-time in unmistakable terror could not be disputed.
"How much does Dorothy know about the circumstances of your uncle's death?" Mr. Conroy took an opportunity of inquiring of Ella.
"Indeed, I cannot tell," replied Ella. "I have not liked to question her. I dare say she knows no more than we know."
"Um--that's as it may be. She was here during all the time."
"Oh yes, she was here."
"Rather a queer notion that of hers, which I hear she has taken up," continued Conroy after a long pause; "that she may meet the Squire's ghost if she goes near his old rooms at night."
"Dorothy was always so silly in that way. You have some motive, Edward, in saying this."
"Yes, I have been watching Dorothy--waylaying her when she steals out to that little patch of herbs which she calls her own garden, and turning in at other times to her sitting-room, ostensibly to hold with her a bit of chat--and she gives me the impression of a woman who has something on her mind; something that will not allow her to rest.
"She has her superstitious fancies."
"I don't mean her fancies. It is a more tangible fear--unless I am mistaken."
"A few days ago I found her crying and trembling," said Miss Winter. "She told me she had dozed off in her chair over her work, and had had a dream which frightened her.
"Did she tell you what the dream was about?"
"No. Except that she thought she saw my uncle in it."
"Ah! It strikes me he is on her mind too much. I wish, Ella, you would put a few questions to her about the Squire, and let me be present."
"Not questions to alarm her, I suppose?"
"My dear, if she knows of nothing wrong in connection with that time, how could they alarm her?"
"True. I will ask her to-morrow morning. She shall come in to take my orders instead of my going to her."
The next morning, Dorothy, full of her cares for dinner, for she was still the housekeeper, and bustling enough in the early part of the day, was summoned to Miss Winter's presence. Mr. Conroy had come to the Hall betimes that day, and sat at the back of the room reading a newspaper.
Ella quietly gave her orders; and Dorothy received them intelligently as usual. In her own department as housekeeper, the woman was capable yet.
"Is that all, Miss Ella?" she asked.
"All for the present. I think of having a few friends to dinner soon; Mr. Philip Cleeve and his wife, and the Vicar; and Lady Cleeve, if she is able to come. Just half-a-dozen or so, besides ourselves--but I will talk to you of that to-morrow."
"Yes, ma'am," assented Dorothy, about to move away.
"Wait a moment," said her mistress. "I wish to ask you a question or two, Dorothy, about that Mrs. Dexter: the woman who nursed my uncle, as I hear, during his last illness. I wish to see Mrs. Dexter. Can you tell me where to find her?"
Dorothy's hands began to tremble as though she had been suddenly smitten with ague. She threw a look at her mistress so frightened and imploring, that the latter almost regretted she had spoken, and then she glanced beyond her at Mr. Conroy: but he seemed to see nothing but his newspaper.
"Do you know where I could find Mrs. Dexter?" repeated Miss Winter.
"I don't know anything about Mrs. Dexter, ma'am," Dorothy whispered forth in a twittering voice. "Nor do I ever wish to know."
"You did not like her, then, Dorothy?"
"I did not like her, ma'am."
Miss Winter rose. "Sit down, Dorothy," she said kindly; "you need not be put out. There, sit in that chair. And now tell me why you did not like Mrs. Dexter."
The trembling woman wiped her lips. "I can't tell why, ma'am. I didn't, and that's all I know. When she first come here with Dr. Jago, I was finely put out; hurt, if one may put it so. My nursing had been good enough for my master up to then, and I thought it might have been good enough still. I told the Doctor my mind."
"Dorothy," continued Miss Winter, after a pause of thought, "I have never questioned you about my uncle's death. The subject was a painful one, and I was more deeply grieved than I can express that I was not allowed to be here at the time. Did you see him up to the day of his death?"
"No," gasped Dorothy.
"When did you see him last? How long before he died?"
Again that same imploring look: but no answer.
"You must tell me, Dorothy."
"Not for weeks and weeks, ma'am," spoke the woman then, but with evident reluctance.
"That was strange, was it not? considering that you were always so great a favourite with Uncle Gilbert."
Dorothy lifted the corner of her clean white linen apron, and wiped her face with trembling fingers. She seemed to gather a little courage. "When he had that Mrs. Dexter, ma'am, he didn't want me, I take it. She was the nurse, and she didn't let anybody go near the master."
"She kept him shut up behind the green baize doors, and would not let him be seen by anyone: that is what you mean?"
"That was just it, ma'am," assented Dorothy, more eagerly.
"But they let you see him after he was dead--you who had been his faithful servant for so many years? Surely they let you look for the last time on that dear face so soon to be hidden for ever?"
"Not even then did they let me see him," she cried. "No, ma'am, not even then. It was cruel--cruel."
"Cruel indeed. I did not think Aaron could have been so unkind to you. He had one of the keys of the green doors, and could have let you through at any time."
Dorothy sighed, and let fall her apron. All this was beginning to frighten her. Miss Winter advanced and stood in front of her.
"There was nothing going on behind those green baize doors, was there, Dorothy?" she asked in expressive tones, her eyes gazing straight into the woman's; "nothing that they wanted to keep from you and from everyone?"
Dorothy flung up her arms with a sudden gesture of dismay.
"Oh, mistress, ask me no more for heaven's sake!" she cried. "I know nothing; I have nothing to tell."
"Nothing?" repeated Miss Winter.
"No, ma'am, nothing."
And the poor shaking woman looked so distressed as she crept to the door, that Miss Winter let her escape.
"Ella," cried her lover quietly, rising from behind his newspaper, "it is from that woman we must get the clue. She knows more than she dares to tell. I am right; it is this trouble that is preying upon her mind."
"Certainly her manner is suggestive," assented Ella. "But look at her distress: how shall we get anything more from her?"
"That is just the point we have to consider," said Conroy.
"Of one thing I am persuaded--that she would never tell me what is not true."
"Under ordinary circumstances, no; I believe that. But she may be forced into it by Aaron and the rest of the conspirators."
"Oh, Edward! Conspirators! Poor old Aaron!"
"Well, my dear, time will show. If that old man has not a weighty secret on his back, tell me that my name is not Conroy."
For a few days, after this, things went on at the Hall in their usual state of quiet monotony: perhaps we might say dis-quiet, could the minds of some of its inmates have been read. Old Dorothy went about her duties in a dazed manner: but nothing more was said to her.
Gradually, finding herself let alone, the scare, which seemed to have taken up its abode permanently on her face, began to leave it.
"The young mistress must see that I can tell nothing," she told herself, "and she won't frighten me again by asking me to. Why should innocent folks suffer for the guilty? If that Dexter woman and that horrid Jago had but never come anigh this miserable house!"
Late one afternoon, when the sun had set and the dusk of the January evening was drawing on, there was heard a soft knock at the outer door, which opened from the kitchen corridor into the shrubbery at the back of the Hall.
Dorothy was in her own room, adjoining the kitchen, the door between them standing partly open. She had put down the grey stocking of her husband, which she had been mending, and sat in the firelight, doing nothing, save idly watching Phemie, who was preparing her tea in the kitchen, and wondering whether Aaron would be very late. For Aaron and the coachman had driven off to Nullington in the dog-cart, to despatch some matter of business for Miss Winter.
"Wasn't that a knock at the shrubbery-door, Phemie?" asked Dorothy, raising her voice.
"Well, I thought I heard something," replied Phemie, the only servant at the moment in the kitchen. "I'll see directly, ma'am. It's only Jem."
Before Phemie could finish buttering the muffin she had been toasting, the gentle knock was heard at the door a second time. Phemie ran along the short passage and opened it. Expecting to see only the gardener's boy, she started back in some alarm at sight of the strange figure confronting her. Standing between the two lights, one ruddy and homelike that streamed out of the kitchen doorway, the other pallid and ghastly that was dying slowly in the western sky, Phemie saw a tall and fierce-looking woman, tawny-skinned, and with bright black eyes. A scarlet kerchief was bound round the tangle of her black hair; a faded scarlet shawl was draped round her figure and knotted behind. Thick hoops of gold were in her ears; rings glittered on her yellow fingers. A gipsy fortune-teller without any doubt, as Phemie, after the first moment of surprise, at once felt assured. She had seen women attired somewhat like her in the country lanes round about. In her astonishment she did not speak. But the stranger did.
"Don't be afeard, honey. I am only an honest gipsy woman who has lost her way. I want to get to Nullington: being uncertain o' the road, I thought I'd make bold to turn aside here and ask it."
"The road's as straight as you can go," answered Phemie.
"Ah, but it's you that have a pair of wicked bright brown eyes, my lass," whispered the gipsy; "it's you that will make some fine young man's heart ache. Cross the poor gipsy's hand with a bit o' silver, and she'll tell you your fortune true and fair."
Phemie would have liked her fortune told very well indeed: but she glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Stone's parlour beyond the kitchen.
"I daren't do it," she whispered, and tried to shut the door.
By this time two or three of the other girls had come up, and were gathering round. There ensued some laughing and giggling.
"I want to tell your fortunes," said the gipsy, touching one and another in a persuasive, friendly manner. "I heard there was some pretty young women at this place, and I came to it o' purpose. Take me into your bright kitchen there."
"The old missis, she do be in the way," whispered the buxom kitchen-maid, who was from Sussex.
"Sure and the missus wouldn't want to deprive you of hearing o' the future--and the sort o' looks o' the man that's waiting for ye, my lass," returned the gipsy, walking boldly of her own accord into the kitchen. The giggling servants followed her, and one of them dexterously drew to the door of Mrs. Stone's parlour. Phemie hurried in with the tea-tray, which she arranged on the round table; and in going out shut the door.
Bright sixpences were brought forth, hands were crossed with the silver, and the credulous girls listened to "their fortunes." Presently Dorothy Stone, sipping her tea and eating her muffin in quietness, became aware of some unusual sounds, as of murmurings, in the kitchen, interspersed with smothered bursts of laughter.
"What can it be?" thought Dorothy. "They be always up to some nonsense when Aaron's away."
Opening the door, she looked out upon the scene; the wild, formidable gipsy woman seated in her scarlet trappings; and half-a-dozen of the girls standing round her. Dorothy, very much startled at the moment, shrieked out, and the girls looked round.
"What be you all at there?" she called out in a tremor. "Who is that? Sally, this kitchen is not your place; what do you do in it?"
The Sussex girl, who may have been addressed because she was the tallest and biggest, turned her laughing face to her mistress and went into the parlour. Dorothy, not feeling herself very competent to cope with this, was sitting down again.
"Oh, missus, do ye not be angry now," said the girl in her good-humoured way. "We be only having our fortins told; she'll be gone directly. She do be and say as my man'll be a soldier, and I'll have to ride on the baggige-waggin."
Dorothy took heart and courage--what would Miss Winter say if she knew that she had allowed this? "I order you to be gone," she said, her quavering voice marring the implied authority in no small degree. "Go out of the house at once; how dared you to come into it?"
"Who is that?" cried the gipsy.
"Hush! It be Mrs. Stone, the housekeeper," whispered Phemie. "You had better go."
The gipsy woman rose, showing her large white teeth, and strode to the door of the inner room. "Let the poor gipsy tell your fortune, good mistress," she said, with smiling lips and a curtsey.
For once Dorothy was roused to anger. "Go away, you bold woman!" she cried shrilly. "Don't attempt to tell your lies to me. You have told enough to those silly girls."
The gipsy's face darkened; she strode a pace or two into the room. "I have been telling lies, have I? Well, then, let me tell the truth to you:" and, bending her tall form, she whispered a few words rapidly in the old woman's ear.
Dorothy's face turned ashy white as she heard them. She sank back in her chair with a low cry.
"Is that the truth, or is it not?" asked the gipsy.
But Dorothy could not answer. She could only stare tremblingly and helplessly at the fortune-teller.
The gipsy turned to the wondering maids. "Shut that door and leave us together," she said in an imperious tone. "This good mistress here and I have something to say to each other."
The door was closed immediately, and the two women were left alone. The servants waited long enough to grow uncomfortable. What could that strange gipsy woman be doing with the old missis?
"We had better go in and see that all's right," at length spoke Phemie, who had perhaps a shade more thought than the rest, "She may have frighted her into a fit."
At that moment the parlour door was opened, and the gipsy came out. Shutting the door behind her, she strode through the kitchen without a word to the frightened group standing there, let herself out of the house, and departed by the shrubbery, as she had come.
The servants gazed into each other's faces in silence. Then, as with one accord, they opened the parlour door, and peeped in.
Dorothy Stone had her head bent on the table beside the tea-tray, and was sobbing tears, dreadful to hear, of fright, distress, and pain.
CHAPTER X.
THE TRUTH AT LAST
It was a lovely January morning sunny but cold, as the ladies sat around the breakfast-table at Heron Dyke. Miss Winter scarcely spoke a word during the meal, and scarcely touched a mouthful; she seemed buried in thought.
"What is the matter with you, Ella?" asked Mrs. Carlyon, noticing this. "Surely you are not going to be ill!"
"I was never better in all my life, Aunt Gertrude, than I am this morning," answered Ella, with her sweet, serious smile. "Only I do not seem to be in the humour for talking."
"Nor for eating either, apparently," said Mrs. Carlyon with a shake of her cap-strings. "I don't like the symptoms; and if you have not recovered your appetite at luncheon I shall think it time to send for Dr. Spreckley." At which Ella laughed.
By-and-by, Ella put on her hat and shawl and went out, strolling across the garden towards the way in which she might expect the approach of her lover. He was already in sight. Drawing her hand within his arm when they met, he and she paced about for the best part of an hour, talking eagerly. It was the day subsequent to the gipsy's visit to the kitchen, when she had told the fortunes of the maids and--perhaps--of Dorothy Stone, and this conversation ran on that event. The reader will very probably have divined that the gipsy's visit had been a ruse; a thing planned by Conroy, to get some information out of Dorothy.
Going indoors, Ella and Mr. Conroy proceeded to the old Squire's sitting-room, which had not been used since his death. A fire, ordered in it this morning, burnt brightly on the hearth. Ella paused for a moment on the threshold. There was her uncle's big leathern high-backed chair, with the screen behind it, as in the days that were gone. There was the little old-fashioned table with the twisted legs that used to stand at his elbow. It needed but a slight stretch of imagination to fancy that presently the Squire's heavy footstep would be heard, that he would come in with his curt "good-morrow," and begin at once to poke the fire, which was a thing that he believed no one could do as well as himself. Ella's eyes filled with tears.
"Courage, my dear," whispered Conroy. "Think of the present just now, not of the past."
She brushed away her tears and nodded, as she rang the bell. It was answered by one of the maids, Phemie; who was desired to inform Aaron Stone that his mistress waited for him in the Squire's old room.
Aaron received the message with an incredulous stare.
"You must be dreaming," he said wrathfully. "The missus in that cold room--and wanting to see me in it! Be off with your tales."
"Is it cold!" retorted Phemie. "There's a wood fire blazing in it up to the top of the chimney. And the mistress is there, sir, with Mr. Conroy, and she is waiting for you."
Aaron obeyed slowly, fuming a little. He did not like being sent for by Miss Winter and talked to before Mr. Conroy. With all his heart he wished Mr. Conroy well away from Heron Dyke; he was the only man whom Aaron feared. His look of cold, dark, grave scrutiny always disconcerted the old man. What he and Dorothy should do when Mr. Conroy married the mistress and became master of Heron Dyke, which would undoubtedly be the case before long, was a thought that had troubled him a good deal of late.
Aaron paused when he opened the door, and shivered as he looked in. What could he be wanted for in that room, of all others? Had anything been found out?
"Come in, Aaron," said Miss Winter. "Shut the door, and sit down."
She was leaning back in one of the smaller chairs. Mr. Conroy stood against the old-fashioned mantelpiece. The old man took a chair near the door with a sinking heart.
"Some considerable time ago, Aaron," began his mistress in a grave but not unkindly voice, "I put certain questions to you bearing reference to my uncle's illness and death. I had been led to suppose that some mystery attached to that time, and that, whatever it was, it had been kept, and was intended to be kept, from me. You denied it; you told me I was mistaken."
"No, no, Miss Ella, I kept nothing back from you; I didn't indeed," answered the old man, in a trembling, beseeching voice, his agitation pitiable to see.
"But I now know that you did, Aaron. I know that while my uncle was said to have died in the middle of May, he really died weeks and weeks before that date! Will you tell me why you induced me to believe that it was my uncle whom John Tilney and the choristers from Nullington saw on the evening of his birthday, and whom Mr. Plackett, the lawyer from London, saw a day or two later, and whom Mr. Daventry's partner saw--when you knew quite well that it was you yourself, dressed up so as to personate your master, whom each and all of them beheld?"
Aaron's teeth began to chatter.
"The truth is known to me at last," continued Ella. "Do not make any further attempts to deceive me; they will be useless."
"Quite useless," struck in Conroy, a sternness in his tone that Miss Winter's had lacked. "We know all."
What little tinge of colour had been in Aaron's rugged face fled from it; he looked like a man suddenly stricken with some mortal sickness. He turned his affrighted eyes from his mistress to Conroy, and from Conroy to her again.
"Better make a clean breast of it," said Conroy, quietly.
"I will," at length spoke Aaron, in a husky whisper, probably seeing that no other course remained to him. "The Squire did die afore May; long afore his birthday too, the twenty-fourth of April."
"It was a dreadful fraud!" gasped Ella.
"Ay, 'twas a fraud," assented Aaron. "It was not me, though, that set it agate; I only helped to carry it out."
"Who did set it agate?" asked Conroy.
"Hubert: my grandson Hubert. Him and the Squire between them."
"The Squire!" cried Ella, reproachfully. "Aaron!"
"It's true, ma'am. He couldn't rest for fear of dying before his birthday; old Spreckley let him know that he'd not live to see it, except by a miracle, and it a'most killed him. Hubert thought of something. He had been reading just then in one of his French books of a gentleman in France who died and was kept alive for months afterwards--leastways was said to be kept alive, to deceive the world. He told the Squire of this, and the Squire caught at it eagerly; and they spoke to Jago, and he helped to carry it out."
"And you helped too," said Conroy.
"I did it for the best--for the best," sighed Aaron, the tears starting to his eyes as he slightly lifted his wrinkled hands. "Moreover, the Squire ordered me: and when did I ever disobey him? 'Twas in this very room, Miss Ella"--looking across at her--"that he first spoke to me. I had come in to get him ready for bed, and he told me about it. At the first blush I felt frightened to death; I said to him, 'Master, it can't be done.' 'It can be done, and shall be done; how dare you dissent!' he answered me angrily, and I didn't dare to say more."
What could Ella answer?
"'Twas all for you, Miss Ella; all for you," shivered the faithful old servant--for faithful he was, despite this wrong-doing. "How could you have inherited Heron Dyke had the master not lived over his birthday? 'Twould have gone right away to the other people. A nice thing for that other Denison to have come in to the old place! Swindlers and spies, all the lot of 'em! If----"
"Be silent!" sternly struck in Conroy. "How dare you presume so to speak of your master's kinsman?"
Aaron looked up with a gasp.
"Mr. Denison of Nunham Priors is every whit as honourable as the late Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke. Take care how you speak of him in future. And remember that he is Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke now--and would have been so ever since last April but for your plotting."
Never had Conroy been so moved--so stern.
Ella, though assenting in her heart to every word, looked at him in surprise. Aaron felt checked and mortified; he thought this was pretty assumption for a man who was but a newspaper reporter, and would have liked to say so.
"Mistress," he stammered in a husky voice, "how did you come to know about the Squire?"
"That I must decline to tell you," spoke Miss Winter. "It is enough that I do know it. Had you but told me the truth when I first questioned you, what annoyance it would have saved both myself and you!"
But the aged retainer could only reiterate, "I did it for the best."
Mr. Conroy spoke.
"I want you to tell me, Aaron, the real date of the Squire's death."
Aaron threw a quick, sour, suspicious look at his interlocutor.
"Am I to answer that question, Miss Ella? he asked, in an aggrieved tone.
"Certainly."
"Well, then, if you must know, sir, he died on the 19th of February," was the answer, grudgingly given.
"The 19th of February. What did you do then?"
"Why, what should we do but put the body into a coffin that had been ordered from London two months before by the Squire's own directions. Hubert ordered it, and it was sent down in a packing-case, and the servants were told that it was a new sort of invalid-chair for the master."
"Oh. And this coffin, nailed down, I suppose, was kept in the room?"
"In the lumber-room off the bed-room; nobody had ever thought o' going in there. We kept the room locked mostly after that."
"Just one moment," interposed Ella. "Was the account you gave me of my uncle's death--what happened the evening it took place--a true one?"
"Every word," answered the old man. "Save that it was in February 'stead o' May, ma'am."
"Whose idea was it that you should personate your master after his death?" resumed Conroy.
Aaron did not answer at once. His eyes had taken a dull far-away expression, as though he were lost in the past.
"Such a lot o' things had to be done that wasn't at first thought of," he presently said. "Nobody can foresee what ins and outs a matter will take when it be first planned. Hubert saw that it might not be enough to say the Squire lived over his birthday; people might clamour to see him and convince theirselves of it; and Jago, he saw it also."
"Yes. Go on."
"They thought there was nothing for it but that I must be dressed up to personate him. I fought against it; I did indeed, Miss Ella," lifting his eyes to his mistress, "but 'twas o' no manner o' use my holding out; for, as they pointed out to me, all might have been discovered unless I gave in."
"So they dressed you up!" cried Conroy.
"Hubert did it--the whole scheme was carried out by Hubert. Oh, but he was a clever lad; an amazing clever lad! Jago was deep and cunning, but he had not the talent of Hubert. Who but he got me a wig to imitate the Squire's long white hair, and a velvet skull-cap? I had to put them and the dressing-gown on every day and be drilled for an hour, till I used sometimes to half fancy that I had been transmogrified into the Squire himself. It took in Daventry's partner, and them lawyer rascals from London, finely!--and the band from Nullington and John Tilney and his wife! I had on the cat's-eye ring that the Squire had worn for thirty years."
"Dr. Jago was in the secret from the first.
"Of course he was, sir. He was just the man for a job of that sort, and it couldn't have been done without a doctor."
Mr. Conroy had been jotting down a few notes in his pocket-book.
"I think that is all for the present," he said to Aaron. "If any other questions should occur to me, I can ask them later."
Aaron rose stiffly from his chair. To his ears there seemed an assumption of authority, of power in Conroy, excessively distasteful to him. But the cloud vanished from his countenance and his rugged features softened as his eyes rested on his mistress. No anger, no haughty condemnation sat on that fair young face; only a sort of sweet, patient sadness.
"Miss Ella, you know everything now," he whispered, moving a step or two nearer to her. "But what of that? The world's none the wiser and never need be. The secret's as safe now as ever it was."
"Yes, Aaron, I know everything," answered Ella, a little wearily. "I know that I am no longer the mistress of Heron Dyke. I know that the dear old home no longer belongs to me but to another! But I also know that he will be a worthy inheritor."
Aaron gasped--as if demented.
"But, Miss Ella, you have only to hold your tongue and nobody will ever be a bit the wiser. The Squire bound us all not to tell you, but now that you've found it out for yourself, there's no harm done. You surely would not tell--no, no! not that--not that!"
"I have no alternative, Aaron. I would do that which is right. This home is not mine: it must be given up to him to whom it rightly belongs."
"Oh, ma'am!--Miss Ella! My master would turn in his grave if he could hear your words. Give up the old place? No--no! And not a soul who knows the secret but ourselves and Jago--and the nurse: and their mouths are sealed!"
"If my uncle, out of that larger knowledge which I doubt not is now his, were permitted to counsel me, do you not think he would urge me to do that which is just and honourable?" said Ella, condescending to reason with him, in pity for his evident wretchedness. "Your master sees now with other eyes than those he saw with when on earth; he would not ask me to keep what is not, and never has been, mine; that which he would have me do, could he speak to me, is the thing I must do, and no other."
Aaron listened, but he was not convinced.
"To think of the estate going to them that the master hated so! Sneaks and spies----"
"Not another word!" severely spoke Miss Winter. "You forget yourself, Aaron."
The old man bowed his head and let his arms fall by his side with a gesture of despair. Turning, he hobbled slowly from the room.
"Poor, faithful old soul!" cried Ella, as she gazed after him. "Wrongly though he has acted, it was done in loyalty to my uncle and me. And so, Edward," she added, bravely smiling through her tears, "you see that you will not have a well-dowered bride."
"So much the better, sweet one," answered Conroy, stealing his arm round her. "You will then owe something to me, instead of my owing so much to you. Nobody can now call me a fortune-hunter."
"They have not called you one."
"Have they not! Ask that old man, now gone out, what he thinks of me in his private thoughts. Ask your Aunt Gertrude; ask Mrs. Toynbee--ask the world."
"I am sure you have never been that."
"I don't think I have. But, Ella, it will be a sore parting--this of yours from Heron Dyke."
"I try not to think of it yet. When the day shall come I shall try to bear it as I best may."
"Who knows but that old gentleman at Nunham Priors will give it up to you to live in?" suggested Conroy. "Has he not said something of the kind to you?"
"And do you think I would impose upon his generosity by staying? No, no. This is the place of his ancestors, and it must be his--his entirely; and his son's after him. You forget he has a son, Edward."
"One Master Frank, I believe. A graceless young fellow, by all accounts."
"That may be; but he is still a Denison, and the heir after his father. Besides--you have indeed been speaking without thought, Edward!--how could poor people, such as we shall be, speaking comparatively, live at a grand old place like this? It requires a grand income to keep it up."
"Dear me! So it does."
"You had better give me up, perhaps, Edward, now things have turned out for the worse," she suggested, her voice slightly trembling. "I shall only be a clog upon your ambition, and keep you down."
"Do you think so?" he rejoined gravely. "You will be afraid to venture on marriage with a man so poor as I? Well, there's little doubt you might marry a rich one. Many a man high in the world's favour might be glad to woo and win you. Young ladies with only a tithe of your good looks make rich marriages every season; why should not you? You have always be enused to the luxuries and refinements of life; it would be a misery to me not to be able to afford you them still. Had we not better part?"
Ella was looking at him with a startled expression in her eyes, as if she were half afraid he might be in earnest, and was taking her at her word. Edward Conroy's pleasant laugh rang out. He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly.
"Why, what a great goose you are to-day!" he said. "As if you did not know that our love was altogether independent of either poverty or riches, and that neither one nor the other of them could affect it in any way. You are mine and I am yours, and no caprices of worldly fortune can come between us. And now let us fling our cares to the wind for a little while, and forget everything except that we do love each other, and that the sun is shining, and that Rover and Caprice are waiting to be saddled. Put on your riding-habit and let us go for a long gallop in the sweet January sunshine. If we are not to have many more rides together, it were wise to enjoy them while we may."
When Aaron Stone quitted the presence of his mistress he was like a man utterly dazed and confounded. It was not merely the shock of finding that the elaborate house of cards which he and others had helped to build had tumbled to pieces so suddenly about his ears that dismayed him: it was the fact of Miss Winter's having succeeded in unravelling a plot which had been so patiently planned and so carefully guarded from discovery, that nonplussed the old retainer. So far as he was aware, the secret of the Squire's death could be known to three people alone: to himself, to Dr. Jago, and to Mrs. Dexter: Hubert was no longer living. Both Jago and Mrs. Dexter had been well paid for their share in the affair, and neither of them would be likely to speak of what would render themselves liable to a criminal prosecution. From what unknown source, then, could Miss Winter have obtained her information? Aaron could not answer: and the oftener he asked himself the question, the more puzzled and bewildered he became. As to that bumptious Conroy--one might think the whole place belonged to him to see him and hear his tones!
"There's witchcraft in it, altogether; that's what there is," concluded the dazed old man.
And witchcraft there was in it, but of a kind different from that imagined by Aaron Stone.
Convinced that Dorothy Stone knew more than she dared tell, that the clue to the secret might be got from her by stratagem, though perhaps never by a straightforward examination, Edward Conroy set his wits to work. She was so full of superstitious fancies and beliefs, it seemed to him something might be effected by playing upon them. At first Miss Winter objected, but she grew to see that if the means used were not perfectly legitimate, the end to be obtained certainly was. In fact there seemed to be no other way, and they could not go on living in their present state of uncertainty.
During a recent visit of Conroy to London, he had witnessed a representation of the play of "Guy Mannering," and had been much struck by the powerful way in which the character of Meg Merrilies was portrayed. The actress who played the part was known to the public under the name of Miss Murcott. She was a lady of irreproachable character; and Mr. Conroy had been introduced to her, after the play was over, by one of his newspaper friends. In furtherance of the object he had now in view, he went up to London again, sought an interview with the actress, and enlisted her sympathy. The result was that Miss Murcott went down to Nullington, and took up her abode for a night at Mrs. Keen's, who had been prepared to receive her by Mr. Conroy. In the disguise of a gipsy, and under pretence of telling the maids of Heron Dyke their fortunes, she obtained access to Dorothy Stone, Aaron's absence having been secured by his mistress. Using the information confidentially given her by Conroy, she whispered words into Dorothy's ear that so startled her, as to render her pliable as a lamb.
"Give me your hand," said the sham gipsy: and the dazed and trembling woman held it out without a dissenting word.
Holding the withered palm in her own, the gipsy proceeded to scan it closely, tracing the different lines with her forefinger.
"This indicates a coffin," she said; and Dorothy groaned. "And this--why what is this? It seems to point to a hale old man with long white hair, who wears something dark on his head, and is put into the coffin before----"
"Oh, don't, don't!" shrieked Dorothy, trying in vain to withdraw her hand from the gipsy's firm grasp.
"What have we here?" continued the fortune-teller. "A darkened room where people walk with hushed footsteps; green doors that open and shut without noise; a little white-faced man with a black moustache and evil eyes!----And this dark line must be a secret--a secret with a crime in it that might drive you forth from your grave at midnight had you committed it----"
"I didn't commit it," moaned Dorothy. "They never let me know of it."
"No, but you found it out; you hold the secret; this line shows me that. You must disclose it. Tell it at once before it be too late--too late!"
"What shall I do?" sobbed Dorothy: "What shall I do?"
"What I bid you," said the woman, sternly. "Tell me all you know--or there will be no peace for you living or dead."
It needed no more to induce Dorothy to do as she was bidden. With many sighs, and groans, and hesitations, her story came out little by little. It appeared that in those past days the housekeeper's curiosity was aroused, and to a certain extent her anger also, at being kept in ignorance of what was going on behind the green baize doors, and at not being allowed to penetrate beyond them herself. "They treat me as if I was a common pantry-maid," she would say with bitterness. The position also that Mrs. Dexter took up in the household by no means tended to soothe these ruffled feelings. "I've helped to nurse the master for the last twenty years when he has been ill, and now I've got to make room for a strange woman!" she said to Aaron; and all the answer Dorothy got from him was an order to concern herself with her own business. "There's something going on behind those doors that they are afeard to be let known," concluded the shrewd old woman in her mind.
Dorothy determined to go beyond the doors, if she could get a chance of it, and tell her wrongs to the Squire himself; and she watched for an opportunity. It came at last. One afternoon when Aaron had gone to Nullington, he came home all the worse for the pints of strong ale he had taken. Not often did he transgress in this way; and, with the view of hiding it from the household, he went straight to bed, saying the sun had given him a headache, and fell asleep. Dorothy filched the key of the green baize doors from his pocket. Mrs. Dexter, who rarely left the house, had gone this afternoon to the railway-station, to send off some private telegram that she would not trust to anybody else; and Hubert Stone was out riding. In a perfect flutter of excitement, Dorothy took the key to the green baize doors; she ventured to open them both, and went on. Knocking at the door of the Squire's sitting-room, she waited for the answering "Come in." It did not reach her ears. She thought he might be dozing, and opened the door, all in a twitter of eagerness to ask and hear from her master why she was excluded. The room was empty. He is in bed, thought Dorothy, and went to the chamber. That also was empty. She stood bewildered; what could be the meaning of it? Perhaps the Squire had stepped into the lumber-room for something--she opened its door gently, and gave one glance around. That one brief look was quite enough. A low scream broke from her lips; then, hardly knowing what she was about, she closed the door, and fled back by the way she had come. What she saw in the third room was a closed coffin--the very coffin which she saw carried out of the Hall some two months later on the day of Mr. Denison's funeral.
The Squire must be dead; she saw that: but why were they concealing it? Watching and prying about after this, Dorothy, without seeming to see anything, saw enough to convince her that, after the death was really announced to the world, it was no other than her own husband who personated the dead Squire. She stole into the garden the night the musicians were playing, and distinguished Aaron's features in his master's clothes. The day Mr. Charles Plackett was expected from London, Dorothy watched and saw her husband turn back privately, and go stealing into the Squire's rooms, instead of proceeding on his pretended walk to Nullington. All this was confessed to the gipsy woman, who in her turn related it to Miss Winter and Mr. Conroy.