CHAPTER X.
THE CONFESSION.
Miss Holme, Father Spiridion, and Major Strickland were seated together in the little parlour of the latter on a certain morning a few weeks after the death of Sister Agnes. The major had been over to Dupley Walls to beg a holiday for Janet, and had brought her back with him. This was the day appointed for the opening of the box that had been left in the father's charge.
Janet in her black dress looked pale and worn, but very lovely. She had been obliged in some measure to conceal the outward tokens of her grief for fear of exciting the suspicions of Lady Pollexfen, and the effort had lent a touch of sternness to her face such as it had never worn before. The wound in her heart was as deep as ever it had been, but she had learned already to control her emotions, and her demeanour this morning was marked by a gravity and self-restraint that made her seem older than her years.
When they were all seated at table Father Spiridion produced the box, a very small affair, made of cedar and hooped with silver. Janet handed him the key and he proceeded to open it.
"Before making an examination of the contents," he said, turning to Janet, "it is requisite that I should enlighten you on one or two points. At the request of Sister Agnes I have informed our friend, Major Strickland, of the relationship that existed between you and her; I have told him also that you are the granddaughter of Lady Pollexfen--two facts with which he was previously unacquainted and which are a source of great surprise to him. I have further informed him as to the particular request of Sister Agnes that he should act with me in this case as trustee or executor for the furtherance of your interests in whatsoever direction those interests may seem to lie. Of the contents of this box I have only a general knowledge. I believe the chief article in it will be found to be a statement, written out by Sister Agnes, in which will be given such details of her early life as she has deemed needful for the complete elucidation of the facts that she was desirous of submitting for our consideration. Of those details I myself have no knowledge, but with her relations towards you and Lady Pollexfen I was made acquainted several years ago under the seal of confession. With your permission we will now proceed to an examination of the contents of the box."
Father Spiridion opened the box slowly and reverently as though he could not forget that it had been last closed by the fingers of the dead. Of the contending emotions by which Janet was agitated it would be vain to attempt any analysis. She sat with one hand clasped rigidly in the other, her large luminous eyes fixed steadfastly on Father Spiridion, her bosom rising and falling rather faster than common, but looking in other respects as cold and statuesque as though she had been cut out of some beautiful stone.
The first article produced by Father Spiridion from the box was a miniature painted on ivory of an exceedingly handsome young man, with initials in filigree silver at the back. The next article was a large old-fashioned gold locket containing hair of two different colours worked into the form of a true-lover's knot. Then came a worn wedding-ring. Then a marriage-certificate the writing of which was faded and yellow with age. Next two or three love-letters signed with the same initials, E.F., as were on the back of the miniature. Last of all came several sheets of paper stitched together, and folded across, and endorsed:
"A Confession.
"To be read by my daughter, Janet Holme; by my old and faithful friend, Major Strickland; and by my father-confessor, Father Spiridion; by them and by no one else."
Each article as it was produced from the box was, after a cursory examination, handed over to Janet. She gazed at the portrait and the locket with no other sign of outward emotion than a closer knitting of her brows. The wedding-ring she kissed passionately. The certificate she read carefully twice over, and her face flushed as she read. Then she refolded it and put it calmly down in its place on the table. The love-letters were merely glanced at, and were then left for future consideration. The Confession itself Janet took into her hands for a moment. She recognised the writing at once. With a deep sigh she gave it back to the priest.
"Read it aloud, dear Father Spiridion, if you please," she said.
The old man rubbed his spectacles slowly and solemnly, as befitted the occasion, placed them carefully astride his nose, and after a preliminary cough, took up the paper and read what follows,--
"My darling Janet,--It is not intended that these lines shall meet your eye till the hand that writes them is mingled with the dust from which it came. I have been driven to write what is here set down by some inward influence--by some occult power working through me, and giving me no rest till I promised myself that it should be done. For myself, I have done with the world and its active duties long ago. I have no longer any interest in it except in so far as I may be permitted to watch over your fortunes, to love you with the secret love of a mother who dare not acknowledge her child, and to perform such small works of charity among the sick and poor as my humble means may allow of. But as regards you, the case is altogether different. You are on the verge of womanhood, and life, with all its struggles and temptations, is still before you. To lift up and clear away the mystery that has enveloped your childhood and youth, to inform you what your real position is in that great world into which you are about to enter, is therefore an act of the simplest justice, and one which ought no longer to be delayed. Unfortunately the revelation is one which I am forbidden to make while I am alive, but I am advised that in the form of a written confession it may be received by you after my death. These remarks will be better understood by you when you shall have read the whole of what I am now about to set down.
"I was born at Dupley Walls, the youngest of three children. My brother Charles, who died in India at the age of twenty, was two years older, and my sister Eudoxia, who died when she was fourteen, was six years older than me. When I was three years old I was sent for by my father's half-sister, a rich maiden lady who lived at Beckley in Cumberland. It was understood that I was to be regarded as her adopted child, and that some day the great bulk of her fortune would come to me. Of my father I remember next to nothing. I never saw him again after going to live at Beckley. I have been told, and I have reason to believe it true, that he disliked me, and was glad to be rid of me for ever. In this respect my sister fared worse than I did. My father disliked her almost as much as he disliked me, but poor Eudoxia had no rich aunt to release her from a tyranny that was driving her slowly into the grave.
"My father, Sir John Pollexfen, was a man of strong passions; cruel and unbending to a degree where he could be so with impunity. He and my mother were ill-matched. Knowing as you do, what Lady Pollexfen is now, how proud, stern, and unyielding, with yet occasional capricious fits of kindness and generous feeling, you will readily understand how her married life was one of perpetual discord and soul-fretting unhappiness. At length she and my father separated in consequence of a disagreement respecting my brother, and they never saw each other again till my father lay dying. He carried his dislike of my mother beyond the grave, in ordering that his body should be kept unburied for twenty years; that it should remain under whatever roof my mother might choose to make her permanent residence during that time; and that my mother should visit it in person at least once a week during the whole period of twenty years, should her life be spared for so long a time.
"In the seclusion of Beckley the items of news that reached us from Dupley Walls were few and far between. I had never been encouraged to write to either of my parents, and neither of them ever thought of writing to me. A coldly-worded letter once every six months from my aunt to her brother, and an equally cold reply a month or two afterwards, were the sole links that bound me to those I would fain have loved but could not. At the age of seventeen I knew or remembered little more of my parents than I should have done had they died on the day I left Dupley Walls. Had they really been dead I should have cherished their memory, and thought tenderly of them; but since they were alive, their cold neglect chilled me to the heart, and withered every flower of love that ought to have flourished there.
"But I was not unhappy. Although my life at Beckley was one of almost conventual seclusion, and although my aunt was a woman of unsympathetic nature and ascetic disposition, the springs of youth were fresh within me, and who could tell what happiness the future might not have in store? The situation of the house was a very lonely one, and there being so little that was attractive to me within doors, it cannot be wondered at that nearly the whole of my spare time was spent among the glorious moors and fells by which we were shut in on every side. My aunt never made any objection to my long solitary rambles: solitude was congenial to herself, she loved best to be alone, and to her it seemed only natural and proper that my disposition in such things should bear some resemblance to her own.
"It was on the occasion of one of these lonely rambles that I first encountered Mr. Fairfax. He had been out fishing, and was crossing the moor a little way behind me on his road to the nearest village, when a sudden thunderstorm came on. In three minutes I should have been drenched to the skin. Mr. Fairfax saw the emergency, hurried up, apologized, introduced himself, and insisted on my acceptance of his waterproof till the rain should have ceased. I loved him from that first time of seeing him. We met again and again. If a man's oaths may ever be trusted, he loved me in return. I listened and believed. He asked me to elope with him, and I told him that if he would make me his wife I would follow him to the end of the world. He said: 'It will be my dearest happiness to make you my wife, only you must give me your solemn promise never to reveal your marriage without having first obtained my permission to do so. Family reasons compel me to ask this sacrifice.' To make such a promise implied no sacrifice on my part; it was not his family but him that I was about to marry, and to my mind there was something very delicious in the thought of being a participant in so important a secret.
"But why go into details?--although I could linger over this part of my story for years. It is sufficient to say that we eloped, and that we were married the same day at Whitehaven, a few miles away. A friend of Mr. Fairfax, named Captain Lant, gave me away. The only other witness to our marriage was the old pew-opener. Immediately after the marriage we bade farewell to Captain Lant, and went northward into Scotland. After a happy month spent in the Highlands we came south. I would fain have stopped to see the wonders of London, of which I had heard so much at different times, but Mr. Fairfax would only agree to pass one night there, after which we at once set out for the Continent. Avoiding Paris and all the large towns, but lingering here and there in some sweet country nook, we came at length to the borders of the Lake of Lucerne. Half a mile inland, but overlooking the lake, and out of the ordinary track of tourists, we found a tiny villa that was in want of a tenant. Mr. Fairfax took it for a term of six months, and there we settled down.
"Before leaving Scotland my husband had allowed me to write to my father and also to my aunt, informing them of my marriage, but mentioning neither my husband's name nor the place where we were then living. If any answers were sent, they were to be addressed to me under my maiden name at one of the London district post-offices. When we reached town my husband sent to the office in question. There was only one letter for me. It was from my father, and contained, as enclosures, my letters to himself and to my aunt. His reply was a cruel one. In it he told me that he had disowned me for ever. That to him and to my mother I was as though I had never lived; or rather, as though I had died on my wedding morn. That they had put on mourning for me, and looked upon me in all respects as one dead. Finally, he forbade me ever to communicate with him again either by letter or in any other way.
"This letter cut me to the quick. In what way it affected my husband I was unable to judge. He read it through in silence, and then tossed it contemptuously on one side; nor did he ever allude to it in any way again.
"I had been so accustomed from childhood upward to exist on such a very small modicum of love that the sting implanted by my father's letter would have made no enduring wound had the great compensation of a husband's enduring love been granted me in place of that which I had lost. It is true that I was married, and that I had a husband who loved me; but his love was not of that kind on which my heart could rest as on a rock against which all the storms of life would beat in vain. Mr. Fairfax, when he married me, meant that his love should be of the strong and enduring kind; but by what magic at our command shall we change freestone into granite, or chalk into marble? How could I blame Mr. Fairfax for the non-possession of a quality which Nature had utterly denied him? Constancy was a virtue that he might dimly comprehend, but which he altogether failed to reduce into the practice of his daily life.
"The pretty castle I had built on my wedding-day proved to be of the veriest mushroom growth. The enchanted prince who was to have dwelt happily in it his whole life long, refused to be confined within such narrow limits, and razed its golden walls to the ground with a sneer.
"However much I might repine in secret for the loss of that which could never be mine again, I made no complaint in words. I bore all in proud silence: my husband never heard a single murmur from my lips. The decay of his love was not a matter of a day or a week. It was slow, gradual, sure. I sometimes found myself morbidly trying to calculate how long a time would elapse before its last grains would vanish as the million that had gone before had vanished, leaving nothing but cold indifference behind. There was some slight touch of comfort in after days in knowing that those few last grains were still mine on that morning when I saw him for the last time.
"We had lived nearly twelve months on the banks of Lucerne. During that time my husband had made two journeys to London, on both occasions going alone, and on both occasions being away from me exactly fourteen days. He never said a word to me as to the nature of the business which called him away, and I was too proud to ask him. Although his wife, I knew absolutely nothing respecting his antecedents, his actual position in society, or what relatives he had and who they were. I had married him without asking to be enlightened on such matters, and he took care afterwards that my ignorance should remain undisturbed. I knew that there was some mystery in the case. He had told me as much as that when asking me to swear not to reveal the fact of our marriage to any one without his express sanction. More than that I did not seek to know. What did it matter to me who or what this man's relations were, when the love with which he had bound me to himself was slowly breaking link by link? But what I did secretly resent was the fact that all letters addressed to him were fetched by himself personally from the nearest post-office; and that all letters written by him were written furtively, as it were, so that not a line of their contents should be seen by me, and were likewise posted by himself so that no second pair of eyes should see how they were addressed.
"At length there came a day when Mr. Fairfax received a letter which seemed to trouble him more than any he had ever received before during the brief time I had been his wife. I had no means of judging by whom it was written. He read it over at least twenty times, and each time its perusal seemed to leave him more puzzled than he had been before. Then he put it away, and I did not see it again. But during the two days that followed before he answered it there was something in his manner which told me how deeply that letter was centred in his thoughts. Two or three days still later he announced to me that he was going on a sketching expedition, and that he might be away for a couple of weeks. It was not the first time he had made a similar excuse for leaving me, but he had never before been away for so long a time. Whenever Mr. Fairfax was absent, a certain Signora Trachini, the widow of a poor Italian gentleman, came and kept me company at the villa till his return. This time also she came with her needles, and her immense balls of cotton, and her well-thumbed breviary. Then my husband, having packed up all things requisite for his expedition, bade me a more than ordinarily affectionate farewell, and left me. I watched him down the winding road that leads to the lake, a peasant trudging behind with his luggage. At the corner where the large orange tree grows, he turned and waved his hand. And that was the last that I ever saw of Edmund Fairfax."
CHAPTER XI.
THE CONFESSION CONTINUED.
"My husband had been about three days gone when bad weather set in. For several hours the lake was lashed by a wild storm of wind and rain. Then the rain ceased, and fitful gleams of sunshine lighted up the landscape, but the wind still blew in fierce troubled gusts, and so continued for several days. On the sixth day after my husband's departure I was surprised by a visit from Captain Lant, whom I had not seen since my wedding-day. He was very grave, but there was nothing in his looks from which I could augur that he was the bearer of ill news. He was not a man whom I could ever have liked, but I bade him welcome for my husband's sake. His first words told me that I had lost that husband for ever. Mr. Fairfax had been drowned during the storm three days before, while out sketching in a small boat on the Lake of Zurich. His body had been recovered; had been recognised by Captain Lant, in whose company my husband was making the excursion, but who had not been on the lake; and had been buried the following morning in the churchyard nearest the scene of the accident. In corroboration of his story, Captain Lant brought me my husband's vest, his purse, his ring, his watch, his pencil-case, and a small pocket-book, the whole of which articles had the appearance of having been in the water for several hours. I could not doubt the truth of his tale.
"Captain Lant stayed with me, and did all that could be done to facilitate my arrangements for leaving the villa and returning to England. Among the luggage which my husband had not taken with him, was found a pocket-book containing bank-notes to the value of two hundred pounds. The notes were sealed up in an envelope that was endorsed with my name, and had these words written below: 'In case of any accident happening to myself.' This proof of my husband's affectionate forethought touched me to the quick. He might have had a presentiment of the terrible ending that was so soon to befall him.
"Before Captain Lant and I parted we had a long conversation together. I told him that I knew nothing whatever of my late husband's social position, nor whether he had a single relative in the world. On these two points I was desirous that Captain Lant should afford me some information, but he professed to be as ignorant in the matter as I was. Although Mr. Fairfax and he had been very good friends, their friendship was only a thing of three years' growth, and of my husband's antecedents he could say nothing with certainty. He himself believed him to have been the son of a small farmer in the south of England, and that his money had come to him from a rich uncle. Further than that he professed to know nothing, and with this scanty information I was obliged to rest satisfied. Captain Lant and I parted at the diligence office. He was going forward to Rome, while all my desire was to get back to England.
"On feeling for my notes a few minutes after landing from the steamer, I found that they had been stolen. I had omitted to take the numbers of them, and the police could do nothing to assist me. Four sovereigns and some loose silver was all the money I had in the world. After a couple of days spent at a quiet boarding-house in London, I set out for Dupley Walls. It was late in autumn, and the weather was excessively cold. There was no railway in those days, and the coach by which I had to travel was full inside. I travelled outside, and had to be lifted down at Tydsbury, so benumbed was I with the intense cold. No news from home had reached me during the time of my sojourn on the continent, and now, at the Tydsbury hotel, I heard for the first time that my father was dead. I heard it to all outward seeming as a stranger might have heard it; none there knew who I was.
"I parted with my last half-crown at the hotel, and then I set out to walk the three miles to Dupley Walls. You must bear in mind that I had not been at the hall since I was four years old, and that, consequently, the way was entirely strange to me. I did not leave the little town till dusk, and the snow was falling fast by the time I got fairly out into the country lanes. I inquired at one or two cottages by the way, but I must have wandered far out of the direct road, for when I at length reached Dupley Walls, wet through and half dead with cold and fatigue, the turret clock was just striking twelve. The house loomed vast and dark before me, with nowhere a single ray of light to bid me welcome. My heart grew faint within me. I lay down under the portico and prayed that I might die. How long I had lain thus I cannot tell, when I was roused to partial consciousness by hearing a sound as if some metallic substance had fallen on to the flagged floor of the hall inside. Then I heard faint sounds as if some one were moving about in the darkness, and presently a dim thread of light shone from under the door. As I afterwards learned, my mother had been to pay her customary visit to the Black Room upstairs, and in returning across the hall had dropped her lamp to the ground. On seeing the thread of light I staggered to my feet, and beat with both my hands against the door. Then a voice cried out, 'Who are you? and what do you want?'
"'My name is Helen Fairfax,' I replied, 'and I want to see Lady Pollexfen.'
"There was a dead silence for full two minutes, then I heard the rustle of a silk dress, and presently the great bolts were drawn one by one, and then the door of my lost home was flung wide open, but not for me to enter. On the threshold stood a tall figure, dark and threatening, dark except for the white hands, gemmed with rings, one of which held on high a small antique lamp, and the white face full of wrath and menace.
"'I am Lady Pollexfen,' said this phantom, in a cold, passionless voice. 'Once more I ask, Who are you?'
"'Your daughter, madam. Helena, your unhappy child.'
"'My daughter Helena died and was buried long ago. You may be her ghost for aught I know or care. In any case, this is no place for you: within this door you can never enter: under this roof you can never come. Go! I have no daughter. I am childless and a widow.'
"'But, madam--mother, hear me! I am your daughter--I----'
"'I tell you that I have no daughter,' she interrupted, in her cold, imperative way. 'My daughter fell into shame, and then to me she became as utterly dead as if the ocean were rolling over her bones: dead in heart and dead in memory. You are an impostor. Go!'
"'Oh! mother, listen to me. I am not an impostor. I am your own daughter Helena. No shame clings to my name. My husband is dead, and this is the only place in the wide world where I can ask for shelter or a crust of bread.'
"'Not so much as a crust of bread shall you ever have from me. You know my will. Go at once and never darken this door again. When you die, may you die uncared for and unknown! May your eyes be closed by the hands of strangers, and may the hands of strangers lay you in your grave! Go!'
"Speaking thus, Lady Pollexfen faded back into the darkness. Slowly and resistlessly the door was closed: slowly and deliberately the great bolts were pushed into their sockets: the silk dress rustled; the ribbon of light shone for a moment under the door; then all was darkness and silence, and I was alone.
"I crept away from the cruel door into the less cruel night. The night and the snow seemed like friends that would wrap me round, and tend me, and hush me into a sleep that should know no waking in this bitter world. I was like one on whose soul sits some awful nightmare which makes him seem, even in his own eyes, something other than himself. I knew that the woman who had smitten me with those cruel words was my mother, but I was past wondering at that, or at anything else. All that had befallen me was only in the common course of events, and it was quite right and proper that I should be walking there alone at that hour, with my back turned to the roof that should have sheltered me, and with no spot in all the wide world on which I could claim to lay my head. In my heart there was no bitterness; only a dull, vague longing for peace and rest and a deep winding-sheet of snow. There was something within me that would allow me neither pause nor rest till I had left the park of Dupley Walls behind. I had shunned the ordinary lodge-entrance, and had gained access to the grounds through a stile in a bye-lane, connected with which is a right of footpath across one corner of the estate. I went back by the same road, and at length recognised in a bewildered sort of way that I was out of the park and had all the world before me where to choose. A light snow was still falling, but the wind had died down, and with it had gone that intensity of cold from which I had suffered before. I dragged myself slowly onward, but more by a sort of instinct than by any exertion of will. But beyond this point I have no clear recollection of anything. I only know that when I woke up I found myself in the Home of the Sisterhood of Good Works, to which place I had been conveyed by a charitable carrier who had found me lying insensible in the snow.
"There I lay very ill for a long time. During one part of my illness my mind wandered, and from certain words I let drop at that time, the Sisterhood were induced to write to Lady Pollexfen. She--my mother--came. She saw me when I was unconscious of her presence, and she saw me afterwards when I was slowly coming hack to life and health. Then was the unwritten compact entered into by which it was agreed that when sufficiently recovered I should go and live at Dupley Walls, not as the daughter of its mistress, but, under the assumed name of Sister Agnes, as Lady Pollexfen's paid companion and very humble friend.
"In the meantime you, my darling Janet, had been born. I nursed you myself till you were six months old. Then Lady Pollexfen insisted on your being put out, and on my going to live at Dupley Walls. But previously to doing this her ladyship extorted from me a double promise. First, never by word, look, or deed to reveal to any one the fact of the relationship between herself and me. Secondly, never till my dying day to reveal either to you or to any one else the fact that you and I were mother and daughter. This double promise was not made by me without first consulting those whose opinions I was bound to revere. At that time I looked upon the promise as a penalty in part for the errors of my life. Since that time I have often felt inclined to doubt the wisdom of having made it. The penalty has been a far heavier one than I thought it would be. To see you, my daughter, the one sweet flower that has blossomed out of my withered life, to see you and know you as my own, and yet not to dare to claim you as such, surely that was too great a penance for one weak mortal to bear!
"My narrative is nearly at a close. By the time you have read thus far you will understand why you were brought up at Miss Chinfeather's academy, and why you were sent from that place to Dupley Walls. Lady Pollexfen's strange treatment will also in part be understood by you. You were a disturbing element in that fossilized life to which she had become accustomed. Still, if I have read her character aright, you, her granddaughter, are far more precious in her sight than I, her daughter, ever was. I am very very happy to think that such is the case; and I have sometimes ventured to hope that after I shall be gone, you and she may be drawn still more closely together. That the withered ashes of her affections may yet derive some vital heat from the generous impulses of your heart. That her pride may give way sufficiently to induce her to place you in your proper position in the world, and to allow your hands, as being those of the one nearest and dearest to her, to tend her lovingly on that downward path which she and I are alike treading; and of which the end can be no great distance away.
"I have necessarily left one of the most important points of my narrative till the last.
"When Captain Lant told me that he knew nothing positive as to the antecedents of your father, but that he believed him to have been the son of a small farmer in the south of England, and that his money had been left him by a rich uncle, I believed him implicitly. But during the long solitary years by which my life has been marked since that time I have gone back in thought a thousand times to those few brief wedded months, and have brooded over all the circumstances by which they were surrounded. One result of this perpetual brooding has been that I have learned in my own mind to distrust the statement made by Captain Lant. I cannot believe that Mr. Fairfax was the son of a small farmer. He was a gentleman, and had about him all the signs of one who had been brought up among gentlefolks. From hints and odd words dropped by him at different times and afterwards recalled by me in memory, I gathered that he had travelled extensively, that he had been at college, that he was a member of one or two West-end clubs, that he had at one time kept his own hunters, and that he was personally known to several people of rank. In all this there was nothing that betrayed the farmer's son.
"From this conviction--not arrived at in a day or a month--of Captain Lant's untruthfulness, a suspicion has gradually forced itself upon me--and at the present moment it is nothing more than a suspicion--that the entire story of Mr. Fairfax's sudden death was neither more nor less than a clever fabrication to get rid of a woman for whom he no longer cared. It may seem cruel to you, my dear Janet, even to hint at such a thing in connexion with a man whose memory you ought to revere, especially as I have not the slightest atom of positive proof on which to base such a suspicion. But now, if ever, the whole truth must be told you. About all Captain Lant's statements there was an air of unreality which did not strike me so forcibly at the time as it did afterwards, when I went back in recollection over the events of that terrible time. Sometimes the suspicion that I was nothing more than the victim of a clever lie would deepen in my mind till it almost assumed the proportions of a certainty. At other times it would wither and lose all its vivid colouring, and seem nothing more than the dream of a distempered brain. It might have been nothing more than such a dream for any action I have taken in it to prove either its truth or its falsity. My love for Mr. Fairfax died out long ago, and nothing could revivify the cold ashes. If he were not really dead, but merely wished to cast me off, he had attained his end, and so enough. Had it been possible to lure him back to my side, the wish to do so had long passed away. I coveted neither riches nor position: my life had aims that were directed otherwhere.
"But with you, my daughter, the case is entirely different. You hold your position at Dupley Walls by a precarious tenure. Lady Pollexfen is a woman of capricious temper and inflexible will. She might choose to turn you adrift to-morrow: to cast you on the world, helpless and alone. On the other hand, she may have made adequate provision for you in the case of anything happening to herself. But this is a matter respecting which I am entirely ignorant, and were I to speak to her ladyship respecting it I should only be scouted for my pains. It is true that you are nearer to her in blood than any one now living (I am writing of myself as though I were already dead), but a woman of Lady Pollexfen's peculiar disposition is just as likely as not to repudiate any claim which might have its origin in that fact; and it must be borne in mind that the absolute disposal of Dupley Walls, and any other property she may be possessed of, is vested entirely in her own hands.
"Under these perplexing circumstances, and with a future on which your foothold is so insecure, it has sometimes seemed to me that the wisest plan with regard to your interests would be to endeavour to unravel the mystery by which the antecedents and social position of your father are surrounded. Behind the cloud with which Mr. Fairfax chose to enshroud his life previously to our marriage, friends, relatives, fortune, happiness, may all await you, his child. So at least my dreams have run at times; and dreams at times come true.
"The terms of my oath to Lady Pollexfen forbade me from making any such inquiry on my own account, but in this matter you are entirely unfettered. If, therefore, your friends and counsellors, Major Strickland and Father Spiridion, think it desirable that such an investigation should be made in your interests, place the matter unreservedly into their hands, and leave them to deal with it in whatever way they may think best. That its issue may prove to be for your welfare and happiness is your dying mother's fervent prayer.
"Further, should my vague suspicion that Mr. Fairfax did not meet his death at the time and under the circumstances as told me by Captain Lant, prove to have some foundation in fact, and should the story turn out to have been merely an invention to get rid of a wife who had become burdensome to him, in such a case your father is probably still among the living. Should such prove to be the fact it is by no means unlikely that the daughter of his discarded wife might be cherished and welcomed by him as even the child of a happier marriage might not be. Should the future give you a father--one who will welcome you with open hand and open heart--go to him and be to him as a daughter. Forget your mother's wrongs: on this point I solemnly charge you: let the dead past bury its dead. Be dutiful and loving as a daughter ought to be, and leave it for a Higher Power to set straight that which is crooked, and to weigh the human heart aright.
"You have been known all these years as Janet Holme, but your real name, the one by which you were baptized, is Janet Fairfax. When you were sent away to Miss Chinfeather's seminary it was necessary that your name should be enrolled in the books of that establishment. My mother would not allow you to go either by the name of Miss Fairfax or Miss Pollexfen. My own name being Helena Holme Pollexfen, my mother chose that you should be designated and known as Janet Holme, and in this, as in every other matter, her wishes were acceded to.
"I need hardly tell you that the miniature contained in the box in which I shall deposit this paper is that of your father, nor that the wedding-ring which you will find near it is the one he placed on my finger the day he took me for his wife. The relics brought me by Captain Lant as proofs of your father's death I was unfortunate enough to lose during my journey back to England.
"And now, dear Janet, my story is told."
[The few remaining pages of Sister Agnes's confession are omitted as having no bearing on the history of the Great Mogul Diamond. They consisted of tender confidences and loving advice, and as such are sacred to the eyes of her for whom they were written.]
CHAPTER XII.
MADGIN JUNIOR'S SECOND REPORT.
"My dear Dad,--Your letter in reply to my first report reached my hands a week ago. It had been lying three days at the post-office before I had an opportunity of fetching it. I am glad to find that you approve of my proceedings, and think, all things considered, that I have not made bad use of my time. That you are sanguine as to the ultimate result of my mission here shows a buoyancy of disposition on your part that would not discredit any dashing young blade of twenty. I hope that your opinion will be still further confirmed when you shall have read that which I have now to put down.
"I may just remind you that I have now been at Bon Repos a month all but two days, and but for a fortunate accident the object for which I was sent here would still be as far from its accomplishment as on the day of my arrival. Even now it will rest with you to decide whether what I have to communicate is of any real value, or advances even by a single step the great end we have in view. Privately, I may tell you that I think the same great end all fudge. My faith is very lukewarm indeed as to the existence of the diamond. But even granting its existence, the present possessor, whoever he may be, were he aware of our petty machinations, would laugh them utterly to scorn.
"Your reply to this would probably be that since the unknown possessor of the diamond is not cognizant of our machinations, we have an incalculable advantage on our side. To which I venture to observe that we are tilting at shadows--that both the diamond and its owner are myths, and have no foundation in fact. And now that I have made my protest, and so eased my mind, I will proceed with my narration of what has happened at Bon Repos since the date of my last report.
"The fortunate accident of which I made mention a few lines above is neither more nor less than the serious illness of Cleon. As a consequence of this event I have been brought into closer relations with M. Platzoff. Before entering into particulars, I may just add that the stranger, Captain Ducie, is still here; but his visit, so Cleon informs me, is now drawing to a close. As I informed you before, Cleon, for some reason best known to himself, has contracted an intense dislike for the captain, and before I had been a week at Bon Repos he had set me to act as a spy on his actions. I have watched him as far as it has been possible to do so with safety. What little I have discovered is not worth setting down here; in fact, I may say that I have discovered nothing more singular in the captain's mode of life than would appear upon the surface of any ordinary life that was closely watched by some one who lacked the key to the motives with which its purposes were animated. I have, then, made no actual discovery of facts as regards Captain Ducie. But for all that, a dim suspicion has grown up in my mind, having birth I cannot tell how or when, that the captain is not without certain private designs of his own on M. Platzoff, although of what those designs may consist I have not the remotest idea. Gentlemanly man as the captain is, there is about him a certain faint soupçon of the adventurer, and my first suspicion of some design on Platzoff may have had its rise in that fact. At all events, I have no better based facts to go upon,--nothing that I can set down in black and white. For my own sake more than for Cleon's, I have determined to still retain my watch on the captain. Time only can tell whether or no my doing so will in any way advance our interests.
"Cleon had been ailing for some days, but kept going about his duties as usual. One morning, however, he sent for me, and told me that he was too ill to rise, and that such portion of his duties for the day as could not be postponed must be gone through by me in his stead. Such duties would chiefly be those arising from personal attendance on M. Platzoff. I could see that he was terribly put about.
"'My master is such a particular man,' he said. 'I have never missed waiting on him a single day these twenty years. How he will like a stranger to go through the little indispensable offices of the toilet for him is more than I dare think of. However, in the present case there is no help for it, and you may take it as a proof of the confidence I have in you that I have selected you, a comparative stranger, to act as my deputy for the time being.'
"He then gave me a silver pass-key, which he told me would open the whole suite of private rooms occupied by M. Platzoff. He then impressed certain instructions on my mind, a minute observance of which, he said, would go some way towards reconciling M. Platzoff to the temporary loss of his, Cleon's, services. 'The private apartments,' he finished up by saying, 'consist of four rooms en suite. The first of them is the smoking-room; the second the dressing and bath room; the third the bedroom; lastly comes a small private library or sanctum, the walls lined with books, which there will be no need for you to enter. Take the pass-key and open the doors of the smoking and dressing-rooms. When you reach the bedroom give three separate taps at the door with the handle of the key. M. Platzoff will then bid you enter. But before going in you must speak to him, and tell him that I am ill, and that I have deputed you, with his permission, to act in my stead. Even then do not go in till he bids you enter. Were you to enter unannounced you might come to grief. M. Platzoff always keeps a loaded revolver close by his pillow. In the sudden excitement of seeing a strange face near him, he might unfortunately make use of it. If he bid you not to enter, come back to me, and I will consider what further must be done. On second thoughts, I will write a line of explanation for you to take with you. It may serve to allay any doubts M. Platzoff might feel as to the acceptance of your services.'
"I gave him pen and ink. Not without difficulty he wrote the following words, which he read to me after they were written:--"
"'I am too ill this morning to rise from my bed. Unless this were really the case, you may be sure that my customary services would not be foregone. I am obliged to send you a stranger--that is, a person wtext-ho is a stranger to you. You may place implicit confidence in him. I hope to be with you again to-morrow.'
"'Cleon.'"
"The style seemed to me a strangely familiar one in which to address his employer. But Cleon was not a man to do anything without a motive. In the present case he doubtless knew thoroughly what he was about.
"I took the pass-key, opened and went through the first and second rooms, and knocked at the door of the third. 'Enter,' said the voice of M. Platzoff from within. Then in the most respectful tone I could summon for the occasion I repeated the formula composed for me by Cleon. There was complete silence for full two minutes. Then M. Platzoff spoke. 'Come in,' he said, 'and let me see who you are.' I unlocked and opened the door, and then stood for a few moments on the threshold. The room was nearly in total darkness. The venetians were down and thick curtains drawn in front of them. A faint sickly odour came through the doorway like that of some strongly aromatic drug. 'Come forward and open the blinds,' said a peremptory voice from the bed. I obeyed, and let in the cheerful daylight. 'I have a line from Mr. Cleon for you, sir,' I said, 'if you will kindly read it.' 'Give it me here,' he said. 'Cleon ill! The world must be coming to an end. I thought that fellow was made of cast-iron and could never get out of order.'
"I gave him the note. He opened it and read it with the assistance of his eyeglass. I seized the opportunity for a quiet glance round. If I were an upholsterer, my dear dad, which, thank goodness, I am not, I would draw you up a brief inventory of the contents of M. Platzoff's bedroom. As circumstances are, I can only say that it was by far the most elegantly-fitted sleeping room which it had ever been my fortune to enter. In parenthesis I may remark, that in passing through the smoke-room I had been much struck with the richness and elegance of its decorations. It is fitted up in a semi-Oriental fashion, and except that everything in it is real and of the best quality, it looks more like a theatrical apartment fitted up for stage purposes than a real room in a country gentleman's house. Since that time I have become familiarized with the entire suite, and have picked up one or two ideas for interiors which may prove of service to my friend Davis of the Tabard.
"With an impatient 'Pish!' M. Platzoff tossed the note from him as soon as he had mastered its contents. He cut quite a comical figure as he lay there, his yellow skin looking yellower than ordinary in contrast with the white bed-furniture. His wizened face puckered into a scowl of perplexity. His blue-black chin-tuft rough and out of shape, and his cheeks and upper lip grimy for want of a razor. A conical nightcap like an extinguisher on his head, and his robe-de-nuit fal-lal'd with lace, as though he were some dainty bride of twenty. I could have laughed outright, but I took care to do nothing of the kind.
"'What is your name, sir? and how long have you been at Bon Repos?' he demanded, with a sort of contemptuous anger in his voice.
"'My name is James Jasmin, sir, at your service; and I have been here just one month.'
"'One month! one month!' he shrieked. 'Then what, in the fiend's name, does Cleon mean by writing that he has implicit confidence in you? Who are you? and where do you come from? How can one have implicit confidence in a man whom one has only known for four weeks? Cleon must take me for a fool.'
"'My name I have already told you, sir. Before coming here, I was in service with Mr. Madgin, of Dupley Walls.'
"M. Platzoff's face turned from yellow to green as I uttered these words. 'From Dupley Walls, did you say?' he gasped; 'from Dupley Walls in Midlandshire?'
"'That is the place, sir.' He evidently knew something about Dupley Walls, but how much or how little, was the question. I felt myself on the brink of an abyss. Was I about to be kicked out of Bon Repos as an impostor?
"'But--but I have always understood that a certain Lady Pollexfen was the owner of Dupley Walls?'
"'Lady Pollexfen is the owner, sir, but she does not live at the hall, but at a cottage in the park; the house has been let for several years back to Mr. Madgin.'
"'And how long have you been in the employ of this Mr. Madgin?'
"'Since I was quite a boy, sir.'
"'Then why have you left him?'
"'Because he is about to reside on the Continent, and is about to break up his English establishment.'
"'Then you are acquainted with Lady Pollexfen?'
"'Only from seeing her frequently, sir. I have never spoken to her. She is very old now, and lives a very secluded life.'
"'Has she any of her children living with her?'
"'I am not aware that her ladyship has any children. I have heard speak of one son who died in India many years ago.'
"'Ah!' Then after a pause, 'Well, Mr. James Jasmin, I will accept your services for the present, but I hope to goodness that Cleon is not going to be laid up for any length of time. Ring the bell for my shaving-water, and reach me that dressing-gown.'
"Congratulate me, my dear dad, on the dexterity with which I extricated myself from a difficulty that in more awkward hands might readily have proved fatal.
"It is not requisite that I should enter into any details of the minor duties I had to perform for M. Platzoff. They were the ordinary duties of a body servant, and it is sufficient to say that I got through them without making any very egregious blunder. That I am still engaged in the same capacity is a tolerable proof that M. Platzoff is not dissatisfied with my services, for Cleon has not yet recovered, and although somewhat better, is still confined to his bed. Platzoff is not a difficult man to serve under. He does not treat his people like dogs, as I have heard of many so-called gentlemen doing. Only attend well to his minor comforts, and do not keep him waiting for anything, and you will never hear a wrong word from him.
"Midnight is, with certain exceptions, M. Platzoff's fixed hour for going to bed. My instructions are to go every night at twelve precisely; to give a low treble knock on the door of the smoke-room, and then with the aid of the pass-key to go in. I then relieve M. Platzoff of his pipe, generally a large Turkish hookah; accompany him to his dressing-room, and take his instructions for the morning. After that I put out the lights, and then my duties for the day are over.
"But once, sometimes twice a week, M. Platzoff is in the habit of smoking opium, or some drug so much like it that I cannot tell the difference. Whatever it may be, he smokes it till he falls into a sort of trance in which he is unconscious of everything going on around him. My instructions are that when, on entering the smoke-room at midnight, I find him in such a trance, not to disturb him, but to watch by him till I see certain signs that the trance is abating. As soon as these signs show themselves, I lift M. Platzoff bodily up and carry him to bed, and so leave him till morning. One of Cleon's most important duties was the charging of M. Platzoff's pipe when the latter was going to have one of his opium séances; but that is too nice an operation to be entrusted to my unskilled hands, and in the absence of Cleon is, I presume, gone through by the Russian himself.
"My bedroom adjoins that of Cleon, and on two or three occasions it has happened that I have been summoned by him in the middle of the night to answer M. Platzoff's private bell which rings in his room. On answering this bell as Cleon's deputy, I have found that M. Platzoff, not being able to sleep, has summoned me to read to him, or to assist him on with his dressing-gown, and to light his pipe for him.
"'But,' you will perhaps observe, 'what has all this rigmarole to do with the question of the Great Mogul Diamond?'
"I reply that, in all probability, it has nothing whatever to do with it. But I think it requisite that you should know the details of my life at Bon Repos. Secondly, you must let me say what I have to say after my own fashion. And thirdly, the curious incident I have now to record would hardly be comprehensible to you without the preliminary details here given.
"Last night, or rather about two o'clock this morning, came one of those untimely summonses of which I have made mention above. I was aroused by Cleon's tapping on the wall that divides our bedrooms. I shuffled into a few clothes, anathematizing M. Platzoff and the whole business as I did so, and then hurried into Cleon's room. As I expected, M. Platzoff's bell had just rung, and it was requisite that I should go and ascertain what was wanted. I took my pass-key and went. I passed first through the smoking-room, next through the dressing-room, and so into the bedroom, which, to my intense astonishment, I found lighted up with a pair of wax candles, although I had left it in utter darkness barely a couple of hours before. What added to my surprise was the fact that the door between the bedroom and the library was open, and that the latter apartment was also lighted up. Having noted these things with a first intuitive glance round, my second glance went to the bed in search of M. Platzoff. He was not on it. On passing round the foot of the bed, I found him lying with his face on the floor. I lifted him up and saw at once that he was in some sort of a fit. I was frightened, but did not lose my presence of mind. I had several times carried him out of the smoking-room when he was in one of his opium trances, and I had no difficulty now in lifting him up, and laying him on the bed. As I turned round with the body in my arms I saw something reflected in a large mirror opposite that nearly caused me to drop M. Platzoff to the ground. What I saw was the reflection from the lighted-up library of an oblong opening like a doorway in the bookshelves with which its walls were lined--an opening which, had it been there, I should hardly have missed noticing before, although I had not been above three or four times in the room. As soon as I had laid the unconscious Russian on his bed, I stole on tip-toe into the library. I had not been mistaken. There was an opening in the wall formed by the sinking into a deep recess of a portion of the bookcase. In the recess thus formed was an iron door, now shut. As I looked, this question, without any consciousness on my own part, was put to me: Can this be the entrance to some secret room in which the Diamond is hidden?
"I had no time to consider the probability or otherwise of this question. Certain sounds from the other room drew me back at once to the side of M. Platzoff. Signs of returning consciousness were visible. I propped him up with the pillows, and sprinkled water on his face, and chafed his hands. Slowly he came back to life. 'Better--better--all right now,' were his first words; then turning his lack-lustre eyes on me, 'Who are you?' he said. 'Ah, I remember--Jasmin,' he continued before I could reply. Then all of a sudden a frightened look came into his face, and he began to fumble nervously in the pocket of his velvet dressing-gown. 'What have you lost, sir? Is it anything I can find for you?' I asked. 'No, no,' he replied excitedly; 'only my key--only my key. Ah! here it is,' he cried a moment later, as he brought into view from one of his pockets a curiously-shaped key, the like of which I had never seen before. With a great sigh of relief he sank back on his pillows.
"'Go and wake up Wrigley, and tell him to give you some cognac,' he said next minute. 'A little brandy is all I need at present.'
"I left the room to carry out his request, and was not away more than five minutes. As I handed him the cognac I glanced stealthily at the mirror. The opening in the library wall was no longer visible. The mirror reflected an unbroken array of shelves closely packed with books. M. Platzoff had evidently felt himself strong enough to get out of bed and fasten the secret door during my absence.
"He drank a little of the brandy and then told me that I might go back to bed. I proffered to sit up in the next room during the remainder of the night. But he would not hear of it: only, he said, he would have the lights kept burning. I had got my hand on the door when he called me back. 'Look here, Jasmin,' he said. 'It is my particular wish that not to any one shall you say a single word respecting what has happened to-night. Not even to Cleon must you mention it. Obey me in this, and you will find that I shall not forget you. Disobey me, and I shall be sure to hear of it. What say you?'
"Of course I promised all he asked, and he seemed tolerably easy in his mind when I left him. I satisfied Cleon's curiosity with a passable excuse, and then went back to bed.
"M. Platzoff is lying later than usual this morning. Consequently I have an hour or two to myself, which I now employ in finishing this report. Write to me as soon as possible after receipt of it, and let me have your opinion as to what my next step ought to be. Cleon will be able to resume his duties in two or three days, and when that event takes place I shall be relegated to my old position, and shall have little or no personal communication with M. Platzoff.
"Your affectionate Son,
"J.M."