It was not in the nature of things that Sir Thomas Dudgeon should long keep to himself the news which had just been told him. He was bursting to tell somebody, and as Gerald was to a certain extent one of the family, it seemed only right that Gerald should know all. So into the sympathetic ear of his secretary the whole story was volubly poured, with many a comment, and many an expression of sympathy for poor unfortunate Eleanor. "I feel as if I loved her better now than ever I did before," the baronet finished up by saying. "She shall never want for a home as long as I'm master at Stammars."
"It has come at last, and I'm glad of it," said Gerald to himself, "and has thereby saved me the necessity of telling a very disagreeable story. I can't at all understand why Kelvin should have kept this knowledge to himself for so long a time. There seems to me something strangely underhand in his way of dealing with the affair. However, better late than never--better that she should hear it from him than from me. I must go and find her at once."
Fortunately, Sir Thomas did not detain him long. The old gentleman was anxious to have an hour or two with Cozzard, and to go round the farm on Grey Dapple once again. He sighed to think that it would be his last opportunity for doing so before his return to that hateful London. On Monday morning they were all to go up to town, and then farewell to the dear delights of the country for at least two months to come.
Gerald's puzzle was how to contrive an interview with Eleanor without the knowledge of Lady Dudgeon. As it happened, he was on pretty good terms with Tipper, the young person who, among her other duties, acted as maid to Miss Lloyd. Her he now contrived to capture, and putting half-a-crown into one of her hands, and a note into the other, he found no difficulty in inducing her to do his bidding. All he said in the note was--
"Pray do me the favour of meeting me for five minutes in the conservatory as soon as possible."
Ten minutes later Eleanor was there.
A faint blush suffused her face as she came towards Gerald, but it was easy to see that she had been crying. She took Gerald's extended hand frankly, and then, before she knew how it happened, he had possession of the other one also.
"I have heard everything," he said, "and I could not rest till I had seen you."
She did not answer for a moment, but her eyes flushed with tears, and Gerald felt her hands tremble within his like two frightened birds.
"It is a very strange story," she said, "and I feel at present that I cannot altogether realize it."
"It is indeed a strange story--far too strange for Kelvin to lend himself to unless he had satisfied himself that it was true."
"The hardest--the bitterest part is to discover that he whom I loved so dearly while he lived, and whose memory I have cherished so fondly since I lost him, was not my father--was nothing but my benefactor. It makes me feel as if there were no such thing as reality in the world, as if life itself were nothing more substantial than a dream." She sighed, and releasing her hands from Love's sweet custody, she went and sat down on a garden-chair, and Gerald seated himself close by her.
"Nothing can change my love for him, or cause it to diminish by one iota," she said. "If he was not my father in reality, he acted a father's part by me, and he was my father in the sight of Heaven. God bless him! God bless him for ever!" she said passionately, and then she burst into sobs.
Gerald thought it best to say nothing for a little while; but he took her hand and pressed it softly to his lips, and was not repulsed.
In four or five minutes Eleanor had recovered her calmness. "You asked me to meet you here, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "having something, I presume, that you wish to say to me, and here am I monopolising your time with my own selfish troubles. But you must forgive me this once, and I will not offend again."
"You are right. I have something to say to you," said Gerald, earnestly. "Sir Thomas has told me everything. You are no longer the heiress people believed you to be. You are poor like myself. Pray pardon my frankness; but that very poverty it is that gives me courage to speak." He paused for a moment, and in the pause they both heard the plashing of a tiny fountain in the distance, and the crabbed voice of old Sanderson crooning some old-world ballad to himself as he bent over his work.
"Several weeks ago, in a moment of forgetfulness," resumed Gerald, "I said certain words to you which, bearing in mind the reason that first brought me to Stammars, ought never to have been said by me. I confessed my fault, and you forgave me. Since that time, whatever my feelings may have been, I have so far schooled myself as not to offend again. Now the case is different. No one can say now that I seek you for your money. The reason which has kept me silent so long exists no longer. To-day--here--now--I can tell you how dearly I love you--how dearly I have loved you from the moment I first saw you! Here, to-day, I ask you whether you can give me back love for love, heart for heart--whether you can learn to care for me sufficiently to share your poverty with my poverty and to become my wife?"
Again he stooped and kissed her hand, but she would not let him keep it. Her eyes were wet, her bosom heaving. Her colour came and went, then left her altogether. Twice she tried to speak, but could not.
"Oh, Mr. Pomeroy," she said at last, "your words have come upon me so suddenly that indeed I know not how to answer them! Your pride would not let you seek me when you believed me to be rich: my pride will not let me give myself to you now that I am poor."
"But supposing," said Gerald, "that I had come to you at eleven o'clock this morning--supposing I had come to you five minutes before Miss Deane delivered her message, and had asked you then to become my wife, what would your answer have been?"
This was a question that seemed to require consideration.
"When you asked me to meet you here, I thought you had something to tell me. I did not know that I was coming here to be catechised."
"What I had to tell you I have told. To you, perhaps, it seems hardly worth the hearing. To me it means everything."
She turned her eyes for a moment on his. Their glance seemed to say, "Pity my embarrassment, and don't say cruel things to me."
"I must repeat my question," said Gerald. "If you were as rich to-day as you believed yourself to be yesterday, and I were what I am, would you in that case reject my suit as positively as you are doing now?"
"I hardly know. Perhaps not," was the whispered answer.
"Those words are enough. They tell me everything--they tell me all that I want to know!" cried Gerald. "If you would not have rejected me yesterday, you shall not reject me to-day!" and before Eleanor knew what had happened, she was folded tightly in his arms, and a rain of sweet kisses was falling on her forehead, her eyes, and her lips.
It was fully half a minute before she could free herself. "You are the most impetuous person I ever met with," she said. "And see how you have crushed my collar, and disarranged my hair. It's--it's really disgraceful." And with that she turned of her own accord, and shyly hid her face on Gerald's shoulder.
When Max Van Duren came to his senses he found himself in darkness and alone. A low damp wind was blowing in from the sea, sighing and groaning as if burdened with messages from the dying to loved ones at home. The tide had come to its height, and was now flowing out again, with deep muttered undertones that lent solemnity to the darkness. Van Duren's first thought was that he had died and was coming to life again in another world. Presently he felt something trickling slowly and softly down his face, and his finger, following the tiny stream to its source, found that it proceeded from a huge gash in the side of his head. Then in a flash the whole circumstances of the evening came back to him--the scene in the room at the hotel, his attempt to steal the casket, the sudden apparition of Ambrose Murray, the scene in the balcony, and his own wild leap out into the darkness. Whither had that leap landed him? He was now lying on his side, and he contrived to raise himself on one elbow and look round, but only to fall back next minute with a groan. He could see the sky and he could hear the sea, and he could make out that his body seemed to be lying among some large stones or pieces of rock, but beyond that he could tell nothing. He lay very quiet for a little while, thinking with all his might. What troubled him most of all--far more than his own present condition--was the doubt as to whether the vision of Ambrose Murray, which he had seen in the room was that of a real man or was merely a spectre. He was no believer in ghosts--or he told himself that he was not, despite his strange experience of the face in the glass--but for all that, he was inclined to doubt the bodily existence of Murray. "I was weak and ill and excited," he said to himself "I had eaten nothing for four-and-twenty hours. My nerves were in a state of tension that had become almost unbearable. I was just in a condition to see or imagine anything. I had been thinking of Murray, and I imagined that I saw him there bodily before me. If my brain had only been as cool then as it is now, I should never have seen him. With the daylight these silly fancies will vanish--but will it ever be daylight again?"
Even while he was reasoning with himself, a thin streak of pallid grey was beginning to lighten in the east, though he saw it not for a little while. He was weak with long fasting and loss of blood. The calmness of despair had settled down upon him. He neither knew where he was nor cared greatly to know. Had anyone been there to whom he could have given himself up, he would have yielded himself willingly. "The game's played out and I have lost it," he muttered to himself again and again.
But little by little the dawn broadened, and the stars paled one by one, and with the slow coming of the daylight there grew upon Van Duren a restless desire to know what it was that had really befallen him. His mood changed. The wish to live, to escape, began to grow again within him. But first to ascertain where he was and what had happened to him. Bit by bit, as the daylight deepened, and first one object and then another shaped itself faintly out of the darkness, he began to realize his position. There below him was the sea, there above shone the white buildings of the hotel--there, in fact, was the very balcony over which, in his fright, he had so madly leaped. He had come down on his head and had at once been rendered insensible, and his senseless body had begun to turn over and over in its rapid progress down the steep face of the cliff to the wild waves lapping at its feet, for at that time it was nearly high water. But about two-thirds of the way down his body had been caught by two projecting boulders, and there held, and there it was now. The box for which he had risked so much had been dashed from his arms in the fall, and, rolling down the cliff, had doubtless been carried far out to sea by the refluent tide.
Van Duren did not know--he never knew--that the people of the hotel, urged on by Ambrose Murray after his return to consciousness, had come out with lanterns to search for him, but without much expectation of being able to find him. They knew well what a little chance of life anyone would have who leaped over that balcony, either by day or night. Had the tide been out, they would have gone down to the sands, in the full expectation of finding the stranger's body at the foot of the cliff. But the tide was up at the time, and, if not killed by the fall, Van Duren would undoubtedly be drowned and his body carried out to sea. It seemed useless to make any prolonged search, and they quickly took themselves and their lanterns indoors.
As daylight advanced, the necessity of getting away from so dangerously prominent a position to some place of shelter and security impressed itself with increasing force on Van Duren's attention. Besides which, he was the prey to a burning thirst. When he began to move, it seemed as if every bone in his body were bruised--but move he must. There was now a broad stretch of brown sand at the foot of the cliff. If he could only reach that, he could manage to crawl along it, and so, in time, reach the inn where he had taken shelter yesterday. He was dreadfully weak and ill, but the effort must be made. He got down to the sands at last, but how he could not have told anyone--he hardly knew himself; and so, by about half-past six, he found himself once more in the shelter of the little inn.
To the landlord, his statement that while walking in the dark he had slipped over the edge of the cliff seemed by no means improbable. Such slips had happened before to strangers, and in more cases than one with fatal results. So his head was washed and strapped up, his clothes well brushed, and some breakfast put before him. He tried to eat but could not; he could only drink. But while thus left alone for awhile he had to consider what his next step ought to be. It seemed by no means improbable that his enemies might come to the conclusion that he had lost his life through his mad leap from the balcony. In that case they would probably trouble themselves no further about him. But in so serious an affair it would not do to leave anything to chance. Now that their business at Marhyddoc was at an end, they would hasten back to London; and it was just as likely as not that one of the first things they would do would be to obtain a warrant for his arrest, and send some one to Spur Alley in search of him. In such a case his only chance of safety lay in being beforehand with his enemies. If he could only reach Spur Alley before them, he could possess himself of the money in the safe, and then, leaving Pringle in charge of the premises, seek some secure hiding place, and there await the progress of events. Even with a start of one or two days only, there were a good many things that he could turn into cash; and, if the worst came to the worst, why there was that other world across the Atlantic, where energy and talent never fail to attain their meed of reward. To catch the next train back to London was evidently the first step that it behoved him to take. An hour later he was at the station.
As a slight measure of precaution, in case there should be any inquiry made after him at Marhyddoc, he took a ticket as far as Crewe only. Arrived at that station, it would be an easy matter for him to book to any point he liked. He had not been in the train more than five minutes before he fell into a deep sleep, and remembered nothing more till he was roused to give up his ticket at Crewe. He got out of the carriage giddy, dazed--staggering like a man the worse for drink. He had evidently-lost a great quantity of blood while lying-exposed on the cliff. A cup of coffee and cognac revived him in some degree. He was determined to get forward to London at all risks, and he now rebooked to Euston. He was fortunate enough this time to get a compartment to himself. The giddiness in his head still continued, and to this was now added a strange, surging noise in his ears. When travelling in former days he had often amused himself by fancying that, underlying the roar and rattle of the train, there was a kind of rude articulate voice, and by trying to find out the words that the voice said to him. To-day he heard this voice clearly enough, and clearly enough he understood the two words that it said to him--that it kept on repeating with a kind of rhythmic iteration, hundreds, nay, thousands of times--two words only without change or variation: "Stop, murderer!" At first it was a relief when the train halted for a minute or two at a station; for a minute or two the voice ceased to stab him with a repetition of its dull, passionless cry. But by-and-by, to his previous torment there was added this other, that the moment the train came to a standstill at a station he heard voices, at first far away in the distance, then gradually coming nearer, the voices of men in pursuit, eager, full of menace, always crying aloud the same two words, "Stop, murderer!" He knew quite well, and it was a fact that he kept repeating to himself as earnestly as though he were striving to impress it upon some second person, that these voices were altogether imaginary--a delusion of his own weakened brain. But that did not prevent the illusion from growing on him to such an extent that, after a time, he found himself getting quite excited lest the train should not start again before the pursuing voices, growing momentarily louder, should come yelling on to the platform itself, and proclaim his terrible secret to the world at large.
What an everlasting journey it seemed to the poor, haunted wretch! At length Willesden was reached, and there Van Duren alighted. There was some sort of vague idea floating in his brain that at every London terminus there might already be some one on the look-out for him, and he would not venture into Euston. He chose rather to make his way on foot through the starlit lanes--for it was dark again by this time--as far as Cricklewood. There he found a return cab, and into that he got and was driven to town.
In the streets of London, busy even at that late hour, there seemed shelter and protection for him. Here he was only one atom among four million others. What place could there be to hide in like London itself? He still heard the voices in the distance, but the roar and rattle of the streets partially drowned them. He discharged his cab at the corner of Eastcheap, and made his way towards Spur Alley on foot.
It was necessary to use most extreme caution in approaching his house. For aught he knew to the contrary, there might have been some one set to watch it already. For fully half an hour he lingered about it, without daring to go too near to it. There was no light in it visible from the street, except in Bakewell's underground kitchen. Everything looked as quiet, dark, and secure as usual. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. He knew the tavern that Pringle was in the habit of frequenting. Perhaps Pringle was there now. It was worth while to go and see. From his clerk he could at once learn whether any particular inquiries had been made after him during his absence.
Jonas Pringle, in the act of conveying a glass of hot rum-and-water to his mouth, had never been more startled in his life than he was when his eyes met those of Max Van Duren staring fixedly at him through the glass door of the tavern. He put down his glass untasted, and for a moment or two he thought that his master was dead, and that he had seen his ghost. But presently the face appeared again, and beckoned him to go out into the street. Then, when he had got outside under the gaslight, he saw that it was indeed his master, but terribly changed. Half a dozen eager questions satisfied Van Duren that no particular inquiry had been made after him, and that Pringle knew nothing. It was hardly likely, at so late an hour of the night, that anyone would come and ask for him. He might utilise the next few hours in making his preparations and getting clear away. So Pringle was sent first to open the door, and then, two minutes later. Van Duren slid in like a shadow, and heard, with a sigh of relief, the heavy door locked and bolted behind him. For a few hours to come there would be rest and safety.
He said nothing to Pringle explanatory of his sudden appearance, or of the condition in which he was--unshaven, haggard, and with a great wound on one side of his head. He flung himself on to a couch, and told Pringle to lower the gas and order some coffee. He hardly seemed to hear his clerk's explanation that the Bakewells had gone out for a holiday, but that he, Pringle, would make him some coffee. Five minutes later, when Pringle came to ask him whether he would not like some toast with his coffee, he was fast asleep on the sofa.
Pringle went back to his coffee-making, chuckling to himself, "What a fool he was to come in search of me, if he only knew! What a fool he is to let me make his coffee for him! Why shouldn't I put a dose of poison in it? That wouldn't be such a bad sort of revenge; and if I hadn't decided on something different, I might perhaps have adopted it. He looks half crazy to-night. Something queer has happened to him while he's been away. How did he come by that gash in his head? But all that matters nothing to me. It only matters to me that he's here, under this roof, in my power. Better, far better for him had he never set foot across this threshold again!"
He was wide awake when Pringle took in the coffee. "This is kind of you, Pringle," he said, and he began to drink it eagerly.
"I find that I shall have to leave home again the first thing in the morning," he said. "I shall sit up a great part of the night arranging matters, as I may have to go away for some considerable time. You, however, may go to bed. I will call you about six, and will then give you all needful instructions before going away."
Pringle nodded his usual careless goodnight, and went. But instead of going upstairs to the room he usually occupied, he took off his shoes and stole down to the basement floor. He had put out the kitchen gas before taking up the coffee, but a few embers still glowed in the grate.
In the passage that led from the foot of the stairs to the strong-room there was still a faint glimmer of gas, as there was in the strong-room itself, in which the gas was seldom turned entirely off. The safe was locked as usual, and seemed never to have been touched since Van Duren left home.
"He's nearly sure to come down here some time in the night, and here I'll wait for him," muttered Pringle to himself.
He groped about in the dark till he had found Bakewell's easy-chair, in which he established himself comfortably in front of the fire, with his feet on another chair, and there in the dark he waited. He could hear Van Duren moving about occasionally, and two or three times he seemed to pace the room for several minutes. The fire slowly burnt itself out, the crickets chirped loudly in the silence, the city clocks clanged out the hours one after one, some lightly and carelessly as it seemed, others solemnly and slowly, as though warning all who might hear them that they were another hour nearer eternity. Still Jonas Pringle sat waiting, nor ever closed an eye.
At length, about three o'clock of the early summer morning, he heard footsteps slowly descending the stone stairs, and he knew that the occasion for which he had waited so long had come at last. The kitchen door was shut, but not latched, so that he could hear but not see anything that might happen outside. The footsteps came slowly and deliberately downstairs, and then went along the passage towards the strong-room. Then Pringle, listening intently, heard the bolts of the great iron door shoot back as the key was turned, and next moment he knew that Max Van Duren had entered the strong-room. He was still without his shoes, and rising from his seat he stepped noiselessly across the floor, and opening the door a little way, looked out. There was still the same faint glimmer of light in the passage, but the brighter glare that issued through the open door of the strong-room showed that Van Duren had turned up the gas inside. As quietly and stealthily as a tiger creeps on its prey, Pringle stole along the passage, and only paused when he reached the fringe of stronger light that issued from the room.
There, with his back towards him, stood Max Van Duren, peering into the open safe, some of the contents of which were already scattered on the floor. For a few seconds--while a clock might tick twenty times--he stood watching him with a devilish sneer on his face. Suddenly Van Duren turned, and his eyes met the eyes of Pringle. An exclamation of surprise burst from his lips; but before he had time to stir from the place where he was standing, Pringle had dashed forward, had seized the handle of the door, had pulled it to with all his might, and had turned the key. Max Van Duren was locked up in his own strong-room, ten feet below the surface of the earth.
"Caged at last!" muttered Pringle to himself, as he drew out the key and put it in his pocket. "Past three o'clock: it will be broad daylight soon. I think I could relish some breakfast. Pity old Mother Bakewell isn't here to get it ready for me." Whistling a tune under his breath, he went back into the kitchen, flung open the shutters, and began to set about lighting a fire. "Shall I have those two eggs boiled or poached?" he asked himself, as he prepared a foundation of firewood and paper. "I think I'll have 'em poached, just for variety. I'm sick of boiled eggs."
Van Duren had not been silent all this time. "Pringle! what devil's trick is this?" were his first words as he sprang at the closing door. "Pringle, Pringle, I say, you have fastened me in! Open the door, you fool, or it will be worse for you!" But Pringle was in the kitchen, cutting the string of a bundle of firewood.
"Come, now, Pringle, my good fellow, a joke's a joke, as everybody knows, but I've had enough of this. If you only knew how important is the business I've got to attend to, you wouldn't keep me here, I know." Pringle by this time was down on his knees, blowing away at the blaze like a pair of wheezy bellows.
"What do you want of me? What's your grudge against me?" cried Van Duren, behind the iron door. "Do you want an advance of salary? You shall have it. Twenty pounds a year advance. Do you hear that? Twenty pounds a year. If that's not enough--thirty. Only open the door, and I promise you fifty. Think of that--fifty pounds a year advance!" Still no answer, though he could plainly hear the rattle of crockery, as Pringle proceeded to set out the breakfast-tray. "Come, now, Pringle, we've had enough of this tomfoolery. I'd like to join you over breakfast. I want to tell you my plans. I want to talk things over with you before I go. Open the door, there's a good fellow."
The only notice Pringle took of this appeal was to turn the gas three parts off at the meter, the effect of which was to reduce the jet in the strong-room to a mere point of flame, and so leave Van Duren in almost total darkness. "One had need be economical in these days," muttered Pringle to himself. "Gas is very expensive."
For a few moments Van Duren was silent. It might be that he began to despair, that he began to see how useless any further appeals would be, that it began to dawn on his mind what Pringle's purpose really was. But in a little while he spoke again. "Pringle, Pringle, I say, where are you? What have I done to you that you should serve me like this? Fiend--monster--bloodthirsty villain! If you want to get rid of me, knock me on the head and have done with it. Don't leave me here to starve. That is too horrible!"
"These eggs are hardly as fresh as they might be, for all I gave twopence each for 'em," muttered Pringle! "But that's the worst of London eggs--you never can depend on 'em." Then he made himself some toast, taking care not to spare the butter, and presently everything was ready for him to begin. "I like my coffee made ally Frongsey," he said, contemplatively. "It's certainly an improvement on the old English style. Those Frenchmen don't know a great deal, but they do know how to make coffee."
When everything was ready for him to sit down to, he walked along the passage to the iron door and rapped at it with his knuckles. "Max Van Duren, are you there?" he said, simply and sternly.
Van Duren, who had been silent for some little while, responded eagerly. "Yes, yes, Pringle, I am here! I knew it was only one of your queer practical jokes."
"I am now going to get my breakfast, after which I shall smoke a pipe. When I have finished my pipe, I will come and have some talk with you. Till then you may as well be silent, and behave like a reasonable being." With that he turned on his heel.
"Pringle, my good fellow, don't leave me here all that time; don't leave me here in the dark in this horrible den!" But Pringle was gone already, and this time he shut behind him the wooden door at the foot of the stairs that opened into the passage, and then he shut the kitchen door, so as to ensure himself still further against being disturbed; then he rubbed his hands with an air of enjoyment, and proceeded to pour out his coffee.
He took half an hour for his breakfast, and another half-hour for the pipe that followed, and then he told himself that he was ready for business. All this time the prisoner in the strong-room had maintained the most perfect silence.
Opening the outer door, Pringle traversed the passage, and, as before, rapped with his knuckles on the inner door. As before, he said, "Max Van Duren, are you there?"
"I am here."
"Then listen; come closer to the door and listen. You would doubtless like to know why I have shut you up here. That is what I am going to tell you. But first you must answer me one or two questions. Do you know the village of Dunhope, in Berkshire?"
No answer.
Pringle repeated the question with more emphasis. "If you won't answer my questions, I can't tell you what you are so anxious to know."
"I did know a place of that name some years ago."
"Just so. You knew it some years ago. If we were to say seven or eight years ago, we should not be very wide of the mark. Knowing Dunhope so well, you perhaps knew a young girl who lived there once on a time--a girl whose name was Jessie Ember. Eh! am I right or wrong?"
"You are right; I did know a girl of that name."
"We are getting on famously. A little bird has whispered to me that you made love to this girl, that you persuaded her to leave her situation, and that, relying on your solemn promise to make her your wife, you brought her to London; but that when you had once got her here, you quite forgot your promise to marry her. Are these things true, or are they not?"
There was a long pause. Then came the answer, with a sort of groan--
"They are true."
"Soon tiring of the girl, you turned her adrift to starve or die, or--or to become one of earth's forlornest creatures; it mattered not to you."
He paused, overcome by an emotion that, despite all his efforts, would not be wholly suppressed.
"Am I not right?" he asked, a moment or two later. "Have you ever, from that day to this, troubled yourself to make one single inquiry after the girl whom you once swore that you loved better than life itself? Do you even know whether she is dead or alive?"
"Who are you that you talk to me in this way? By what right do you ask me these questions?"
"Who am I? I will tell you who I am. I am Jessie Ember's father! Who has more right to question you than I?"
"You her father! Oh, Heaven!"
It was little more than a whisper, that seemed instinct with surprise, terror, and anguish.
"Scoundrel! unmitigated scoundrel!" began Pringle. Then he paused. "But I only demean myself by calling you names. You are where you are--and I am satisfied."
"What do you want of me? I am rich, and----"
"Singular, isn't it, that I should have been with you all this time, and never have discovered till the other day that you are the man I have been looking for for years? But things do come about strangely in this world."
"Unlock the door, and I will make you rich for life."
"Ha! ha! I can be rich for life without unlocking the door."
"How?"
"By waiting till you are dead, and then constituting myself your heir. No will required. No legacy duty to pay. Funeral expenses next to nothing. I saw such a splendid grey rat leap from behind the old ledgers the other day."
"Villain! you would not murder me?"
"Murder you! Ha! ha! Certainly not. What put that idea into your head."
"Then why don't you open the door?"
"Now you are asking a leetle too much--just a leetle. I would do anything in the world for you except open this door. You know you robbed me of my child--you ruined her and deserted her. It was only one of your little practical jokes. It's my turn now. This is one of _my_ jokes. You don't object, I hope?"
"Then you are going to leave me hereto starve--to die?"
"Oh no, I'm not going to leave you. There you are mistaken. I shall come a dozen times a day to see you. These little dialogues are interesting. I'll bring my pipe after awhile, and come and keep you company; but on this side the door, you know--on this side the door."
"Have you no pity? Will nothing move you?"
"It will be quite a little holiday for you. Nothing to do--absolutely nothing to do. I will do all the business, attend to the letters, and answer all inquiries. 'Has Mr. Van Duren got back home yet?' 'No, sir, he is still in France, but I am expecting him every day.' Ha! ha! and you here all the time! Won't it be a lark, Van, my boy, eh?"
A deep groan was the only reply.
"And now I'm just going round the corner in search of an early nip to digest my breakfast. Don't get downhearted, because I shan't be long away. No, no, I value you too much to stay away from you for very long."
And, turning on his heel, Jonas Pringle walked leisurely away, whistling to himself as he went.
Olive Deane had taken her leave of Lady Dudgeon and was crossing the hall towards the side door, close to which the fly that had brought her from Pembridge was still waiting, when suddenly the doors at the opposite side of the hall were opened, and, as they swung back on their hinges, a sight met her eyes that for a moment or two seemed to turn her to stone.
Supported on one side by Dr. Whitaker, and resting his other arm on the shoulder of Pod Piper, like a man newly risen from the tomb, Matthew Kelvin stepped slowly and painfully across the threshold. His thin, bent form, his long, bony fingers, the worn, hollow face, the pinched nostrils, the deep-sunk eyes, and the grave-like pallor that overspread his features, made up a figure that looked far more weird and startling when seen thus in the full glare of day than in the semi-obscurity and amid the appropriate surroundings of a sickroom.
A strange, fierce light sprang to the sick man's eyes the moment he saw who was standing there. Olive's cheek whitened as she looked, her breath came more quickly, she pressed her hand involuntarily to her heart, as though she were in pain; then she went two or three steps nearer, and then she halted again, as though in doubt or fear.
"Matthew! You here!" she said at last.
"So you are not gone yet!" was the answer. "It is well. I have something to say to you. Follow me."
Then the ghastly procession began to move slowly forward again, and, preceded by one of the baronet's servants, it crossed the hall and went in the direction of the library.
Olive stood aside to let it pass--stood aside with clasped hands, and with her heart on her lips, as it were, longing, yearning for one word, one look of kindness or recognition from her cousin, but in vain. Matthew Kelvin's eyes were set straight before him, and he looked neither to the right hand nor the left, till he reached the library, where the servant at once wheeled forward a large easy chair, into which he sank, breathless and exhausted.
Olive, following silently behind, was the last to enter the room. She shut the door behind her, and stood quietly in the background, unheeded for the time by everyone. Vague, dark forebodings were at work in her heart. What did it all mean? she asked herself again and again. That strange look in her cousin's eyes, the way he spoke to her, the presence of Dr. Whitaker--all signs and tokens of something that boded no good to her. Had everything been discovered? She shivered from head to foot as this question put itself to her.
As soon as Mr. Kelvin was seated, the servant and Pod Piper left the room.
"Why, bless my heart! is that you or your ghost?" cried Sir Thomas, starting up from his chair and rubbing his eyes.
He had been taking forty winks surreptitiously--a little weakness in which he indulged three or four times a day, without ever permitting himself to acknowledge that he had been asleep.
Gerald, in the act of reaching a book from one of the upper shelves, turned with the volume in his hand as Kelvin and the others came into the room.
"He will be better in a little while," said Dr. Whitaker to the baronet, who had crossed the room, and was now standing, with his hands under his coat-tails and pursed-up lips, gazing down with compassionate eyes at the half-conscious man before him.
"What a wreck! What a terrible wreck!" murmured the baronet. "I--I never dreamt that he was half as bad as this."
Dr. Whitaker put something to the sick man's nostrils, which he inhaled eagerly, and presently he began to revive.
"I trust. Sir Thomas, that you will pardon my intrusion," he said, at last, speaking in a strange, husky voice, that was little more than a whisper, and was totally unlike the well-remembered voice--clear and confident--of Matthew Kelvin. "That my business here is of a very pressing kind you may well believe, when you see me thus and so attended."
"Whatever your business may be, Kelvin," said the baronet, kindly, "it is almost a pity that you did not put it off till you were a little stronger, or else that you did not send for me. I would have gone to see you willingly. You know that."
"Yes, yes; I know all you can say," said Kelvin, a little querulously. "But it was necessary that I should come here in person, and without an hour's delay."
"You don't mean to say that there's going to be a dissolution of Parliament?" cried Sir Thomas, eagerly.
Kelvin, smiling faintly, shook his head.
"Ah! I was afraid there was no such luck," said the baronet.
"I am here on the same errand that brought Miss Deane here this morning."
"But Miss Deane has told us everything, and a queer story it is."
"She has not told you everything, Sir Thomas."
"Well, I hope there's not much more to tell. I hardly know already whether I'm topsy-turvey or how."
"You have, I presume, read the letter that I sent by Miss Deane?"
"Miss Deane gave me no letter. She told me a long rigmarole about----"
"Oh, Matthew! I lost the letter!" cried Olive, coming a step or two nearer. "I lost the letter; but I knew what you had written, and I delivered your message just the same."
"You could not know what I had written, unless you had read my letter," said Kelvin, coldly and sternly.
"Oh, Matthew! Why do you say such cruel things of me?" cried Olive, imploringly. "You know how I knew what the contents of your letter would necessarily be."
"Has the message which Miss Deane gave you been given also to Lady Dudgeon and to Miss Lloyd?" asked Kelvin of the baronet.
"Certainly--to both of them. They were told first of all."
"I hope you will not think that I am asking too much if I ask you to be kind enough to request the favour of Lady Dudgeon's and Miss Lloyd's presence here for a few minutes."
"We'll have them here in a brace of jiffeys," said Sir Thomas, heartily.
Gerald rang the bell, a servant came in, and a message was sent to Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd.
"I felt sure there was some mistake in that queer story which Miss Deane told us a couple of hours ago," said the baronet, cheerfully. "Such things never happen in real life, you know. One sees them on the stage sometimes, and laughs at them."
Nobody answered him, and he began to whistle under his breath.
Dr. Whitaker was busy giving his patient a cordial, which he had taken the precaution to bring with him in his pocket.
A minute later, Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd entered the room.
"I suppose I ought to make myself scarce, but I shan't," said Gerald to himself. "I shall not leave the room unless they tell me to go. The climax is on us at last, and I think it will be found presently that I've as much right here as anybody. Besides, my darling may want me to back her up."
He dropped quietly into a chair in the background. Only one person there seemed to be aware of his presence. Who that person was need hardly be said.
Lady Dudgeon was genuinely shocked to see Mr. Kelvin looking so ill, and chided him gently for venturing so far from home. Eleanor went up to him, and shook hands with him. He saw the tears standing in her eyes, and his own eyes fell before her. Love and remorse were busy in his heart.
"How bitterly I have wronged her!" he groaned to himself "What a confession is this which I am here to make?"
"The letter which I wrote this morning," began Mr. Kelvin, struggling manfully with his weakness, "and which, by some strange mischance, appears to have been lost, was addressed to Miss Lloyd. It would appear, however, that my cousin, Olive Deane, who was certainly cognisant of most of the circumstances of the case, has told you what were the contents of the letter. There are certain other circumstances, however, of which as yet you know nothing, and it is of these that I am now here to speak."
He paused for a moment or two to gather breath, and to moisten his lips again with the cordial.
"I presume Miss Deane has told you," he went on, "that while recently wading through some of the late Mr. Lloyd's papers, I came across certain documents which prove conclusively that Miss Lloyd is only that gentleman's adopted daughter, and that, consequently, there being no will, she is not the heiress to his property. Is not that, may I ask, what Miss Deane has told you?"
"That is precisely what Miss Deane told us," said Lady Dudgeon; "and I hope, with all my heart, that you are now come to tell us that it's all a mistake, and that our dear Eleanor is Miss Lloyd after all."
"Hear, hear!" cried Sir Thomas, as if from the back benches of the House.
"I am sorry to say that what Miss Deane told you is perfectly true," said Kelvin. "There is no possibility of mistake as to the main facts of the case."
"Dear, dear! what a pity--what a very great pity!" interposed the baronet.
"You may remember, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "that some little time after Mr. Lloyd's death, I once or twice mentioned to you that amongst his papers I had not been able to find any clue as to where Miss Lloyd was either born or baptized. It was requisite, before taking out letters of administration, that I should have some trustworthy information on this point; but there being no particular hurry in the matter, and I being busy at the time with other important work, one week went on after another without my making any serious effort to supply the necessary link. Still, when the discovery did come, it was as great a surprise to me as it can possibly have been to any of you."
"Then you think there is not the slightest possibility of there being any mistake in the matter?" said her ladyship.
"I have in my possession a document, written and signed by Jacob Lloyd himself, in which he states that the young lady, supposed to be his daughter, was merely adopted by himself and his wife in her infancy."
"Is no clue given as to her real parentage?"
"None whatever. But I have also in my possession a sealed packet which I will presently give to Miss Lloyd--a packet addressed to her by Mr. Lloyd himself, but with instructions that it should not be given to her till after his death. Inside this packet I think it quite possible that Miss Lloyd may find all the particulars she would like to know."
"Does it not seem somewhat strange, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon, "that after bringing up Eleanor as his own child, Mr. Lloyd should have left her totally unprovided for?"
"I think there can be no doubt, madam, as to Mr. Lloyd's intentions. That he intended to provide handsomely for his adopted daughter, no one who knew him could doubt. But he was a very dilatory man in many ways, and he put off making his will from day to day and year to year, till at length death surprised him suddenly, and no time was given him to repair his fatal omission."
There was a pause. Dr. Whitaker whispered something in his patient's ear, but Kelvin only shook his head impatiently.
"You remarked just now, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon, "that there were some other circumstances connected with this remarkable case which you thought it desirable that we should become acquainted with."
"Precisely so, madam. It is for that purpose that I am here. The revelation I am about to make is a very painful one--very painful and humiliating to me. But I have made up my mind to make it, and I will not shrink from doing so whatever may be the consequences to myself."
Once more he paused and put the cordial to his lips. That he was deeply moved, all there could plainly see, but Olive Deane alone was in a position to guess the cause.
"This is the confession that I have to make," he began at last. "The news you have heard to-day respecting Miss Lloyd, has been in my possession not for a few days only, as you probably imagine, but for five long months."
"Oh, Mr. Kelvin!" cried Eleanor.
"Dear me, Mr. Kelvin, what a very strange person you must be!" cried her ladyship. "Are we to understand that this secret has been in your possession for five months, and that you have never spoken of it till now?"
"That is what I wish your ladyship to understand."
"But what could your motive possibly be for keeping a piece of information of that kind to yourself for so long a time?"
"I will tell you what my motive was--tell you all. Eighteen months ago I made Miss Lloyd an offer of marriage."
"Bless my heart! now who would have thought that?" cried Sir Thomas.
"Miss Lloyd rejected me. Six months later I tried my fortune again, but with no better result. It seemed to me--but I may have been mistaken--that in the second rejection there was an amount of disdain, of--of contempt almost--that stung me to the quick, and I vowed that if the opportunity were ever given me I would be revenged."
"Oh, Mr. Kelvin, how you misunderstood me--misread me!"
"To seek revenge on a woman because she rejected you! That was very despicable, Mr. Kelvin." This from her ladyship.
"I know it and feel it now. I did not know it or feel it at the time. My mind must have been warped by its own bitterness. So when an opportunity came, as I thought it had come when this secret respecting Miss Lloyd found its way into my keeping, I did not fail to seize it."
"And I certainly fail to see in what way the keeping to yourself of this information respecting Miss Lloyd could avenge a fancied slight in times gone by."
"There stands the temptress"--pointing to Olive Deane--"who first suggested the idea to me. She--she it was who said to me, 'By keeping back the information that has come into your possession so strangely, till Miss Lloyd has become accustomed to her new position, till a life of ease and self-indulgence shall have become, as it were, a second nature to her, till she has learned to love--perhaps till her wedding morn itself--then will her fall from wealth to poverty seem infinitely greater than it would do now: then will yours be a revenge worthy of the name!'"
All eyes were turned on Olive Deane, who was still standing in the background not far from the door. Her eyes were bent on the carpet and her face was deathly pale. Suddenly she lifted her eyes and flashed back a look of scorn, that took in every one there except her cousin; a bitter smile curled her thin lips for a moment, then she drew a chair forward and sat down without a word. No one spoke.
"I am telling you this," resumed Kelvin, "not as blaming my cousin for her suggestion, but as a confession of my own weakness and wretched folly. That my feelings were very bitter against Miss Lloyd, I need hardly tell you, and yet how I despised myself for doing as I was doing, no one but myself can ever know. Not once, but a hundred times, did I vow to myself that I would write to Miss Lloyd and tell her everything, and a hundred times the recollection of her look and her words when she rejected me, came to my mind and held me back. Then came my illness, which lasted so long that I began to fancy I should never get better again, but all through it the wrong that I had done Miss Lloyd lay with a terrible weight on my conscience, and the first day that I was strong enough to hold a pen I wrote to her that letter which she ought to have received this morning."
"All this was very, very wrong of you, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon. "Unfortunately, however, none of us can undo the past, and I am quite sure that in this case your own conscience will be your severest punishment. Miss Deane said something about a nephew of the late Mr. Lloyd being the real heir."
"Yes, a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton. Now that I have broken the news to Miss Lloyd, it will be my duty at once to communicate with Mr. Warburton--though, strange to say, I discovered for the first time this morning that he had already written to me during my illness, but that the letter had been purposely withheld from me." He looked steadily at Olive as he said these words, but whatever her feelings might be at learning that he had somehow discovered her treachery with regard to Warburton's letters, she still kept her eyes fixed stedfastly on the carpet, and gave him no answering look.
"And now, Miss Lloyd," resumed the lawyer, "I will give into your hands that packet which I ought to have placed there five months ago. I dare not ask you to forgive me for the wrong I have done you. Such forgiveness would be an excess of generosity such as I have no right to expect."
He took a small sealed packet from his pocket. Then he stood up and, weak as he was, would have walked across the room to Eleanor, but she crossed the floor hurriedly and took the packet from his hands.
"Oh, Mr. Kelvin, I forgive you fully and willingly!" she said with emotion. "Pray, pray do not let the thought of what is past ever distress you again!"
Then, when she saw that the packet was addressed to her in the handwriting that she remembered so well, she kissed it with tears in her eyes and went slowly back to her seat by Lady Dudgeon.
"Unfortunately, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "my confessions are not yet at an end, and I must crave your attention for a few minutes longer."
"No apologies are needed, Kelvin--none whatever," said Sir Thomas. "I am entirely at your service."
Kelvin bowed.
"At my recommendation, Sir Thomas," he said, "you, a little while ago, took into your service the gentleman who is now sitting there."
"Pomeroy, you mean. To be sure--to be sure. And a very useful fellow I've found him. I'm your debtor for recommending him to me, Kelvin."
"When I asked you to take him into your service, sir, I did not know one thing about him that I know now."
"Ay--ay--what is that? Can't know anything bad of Pomeroy. Good fellow, very."
"My dear! such remarks may be a little premature," interposed her ladyship gently.
"From something that came to my knowledge only a few hours ago, I have discovered that Mr. Pomeroy's chief motive in desiring to enter your service, was that he might have an opportunity of being near Miss Lloyd, and of thereby winning her affections and inducing her to become his wife."
"Bless my heart! I would never have believed that of Pomeroy--never!"
Again Kelvin looked fixedly at Olive but she still kept her eyes turned persistently from him. She was stupefied. How had all this knowledge come to him--first the knowledge of Gerald Warburton's letter, and now of the secret arrangement between Pomeroy and herself? Had that still darker secret come to his knowledge likewise?
"I can only apologise, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "for having inadvertently been the means of introducing, under your roof, a person whose designs were such as I have mentioned, and I trust----"
"You are not to blame, Kelvin--not in the least," said the baronet. "But this is very sad--very sad indeed. What have you to say, Pomeroy, to all this?"
"Only that what Mr. Kelvin has just stated is, to a certain extent, true," said Gerald coolly. "My inducement in seeking to enter your service was certainly the hope of being thereby brought into daily contact with Miss Lloyd, with whom I was specially desirous of becoming acquainted."
"That is easily understood," said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd at that time was supposed to be worth twenty thousand pounds. Mr. Pomeroy's audacious candour is quite refreshing."
"I will be candid," said Gerald with an amused smile. "For me to see and become acquainted with Miss Lloyd was to love her, and when that fact became patent to me, it would not do to sail any longer under false colours. I told Miss Lloyd that I loved her--the confession slipped out one evening unawares--but the first time I met her afterwards I confessed to her what my reasons had been for entering this house, asking her at the same time to forgive the wrong I had done her, and to forget the words I had said. From that day to this Miss Lloyd and I have been good friends: nothing more."
"Bless us all! what goings on under ones very nose, and I to know nothing about them!" cried Sir Thomas.
"But this morning altered the position of affairs entirely," went on Gerald. "You, sir, a little while ago told me what Miss Deane had just told you--that Miss Lloyd was Miss Lloyd no longer, and had nothing in the world but her own sweet self that she could call her own. This being the case, I at once sought Miss Lloyd--found her--told her that my love was still unchanged, and would not leave her till I had won from her a promise to become my wife. That promise I hold, and I shall claim its fulfilment from her before she and I are many weeks older."
"Well done, Pomeroy! That's manly--that's as it should be!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "I knew you would turn out a decent fellow at bottom."
Her ladyship was slightly scandalised. "My dear!" she pleaded, "you are too enthusiastic. You let your heart run away with your head."
She drew her skirts round her, pushed back her chair a little, and perching her double eye-glass on the bridge of her high nose, she stared curiously at Eleanor.
Lady Dudgeon's feelings just now were of a very mixed kind. Her affection for the girl, the growth of long years, struggled with her very natural vexation at finding how thoroughly she had been hoodwinked, how completely she had been ignored in the matter by everybody. On the other hand, there was a spice of romance about the affair that appealed to some hidden feeling, of whose existence she herself was hardly aware.
"Child! child!" she said in an aside to Eleanor, "if you had but given me your confidence! Two paupers! What are you to do? How are you to live? It's dreadful to contemplate!"
Kelvin's cheeks flushed as he listened to Gerald's words. He set his teeth and glared savagely out of his hollow eyes at his successful rival. Was it for this that he had humiliated himself by his recent confession? What a fool he had been to acknowledge so much before all these people! This mere adventurer had carried away the prize for which he had striven so boldly and sacrificed so much. Bitter indeed were his thoughts just then. The emotion was too much for his strength, and he fainted.
Olive was by his side in a moment, but Dr. Whitaker spoke sternly to her.
"Stand back, if you please," he said. "I will attend to Mr. Kelvin."
She flashed a look of hate and defiance at him. Her overwrought feelings could contain themselves no longer.
"I will not stand back," she said, speaking in her clear incisive way. "Who has more right by my cousin's side than I, who have nursed him through his long illness?"
Dr. Whitaker did not answer. He was trying to bring back his patient to consciousness. Olive sank down at her cousin's knees, and took his cold hand in hers and pressed it to her lips.
In a little while Matthew Kelvin opened his eyes and looked feebly round, as if striving to bring to memory where he was, and whose were the faces that were bent over him. Last of all, his eyes met those of Olive Deane, and with a flash, as it were, everything came back to him. Then he saw whose hand it was that was holding his. With a look of loathing and hate that almost killed the soul within her, he flung Olive's hand from him, and, trembling in every limb, he staggered to his feet.
"Poisoner!--begone! Quit my sight for ever!" he cried; and then he fell back into his chair.
As it were an echo, came the word "Poisoner!" from the lips of every one in the room. Olive, who had risen to her feet when her cousin flung away her hand, staggered back as if suddenly smitten.
Lady Dudgeon was the first to speak. "Surely, sir," she said, addressing herself to Dr. Whitaker, "there must be some terrible mistake in all this! The accusation just made by your patient can hardly be that of a man in his proper senses."
"I am afraid, madam," said Dr. Whitaker, very gravely, "that the accusation made by Mr. Kelvin is but too well founded. We have it on evidence which cannot be disputed that my patient has been the victim of an elaborate system of slow poisoning. Suspicion points in one direction, and in one only: in the direction indicated by my patient himself."
"It seems altogether incredible," urged her ladyship. "What possible motive could Miss Deane have for attempting so dreadful a crime?"
"Let Miss Deane answer you herself," said Olive.
She was standing as she had stood from the moment when her cousin hurled at her that terrible word. Everything was lost: she knew it but too well, and she nerved herself for one last supreme effort.
"Lady Dudgeon is curious to know my motive for doing that which I am said to have done. Her curiosity shall be satisfied. My motive was my love for Matthew Kelvin. He loved me once, or I dreamt that he did. A passing fancy on his part, perhaps--soon forgotten by him, but never by me. I have never ceased to love him, I would give my life for him at this moment. When I found how persistently his heart was set on Miss Lloyd, I thought--foolishly enough, no doubt--that if I could have him all to myself--if I could see him daily, hourly--if he were ill and I could nurse him--I might perhaps succeed in winning back the love which I could not believe had ever been wholly lost to me. He was taken ill, and I nursed him. But to think that I would have let him die--the man whom I loved with my whole heart and soul--is utterly absurd! I understood too well what I was about to fear any such catastrophe. I could bear to see him suffer, simply because I loved him so much, and wanted him so wholly and entirely to myself. But I would not have let him die. Your ladyship looks horrified. Be thankful, madam, that your affections move in a less erratic orbit--that yours is a heart whose equable pulsations could never be quickened as mine have been. But I--I was not born in the frigid zone. Love to me is existence itself--for what is life without love?"
"What a dreadful person! We might all have been murdered in our beds!" said Lady Dudgeon in a loud aside, as she felt in her pocket for her smelling-salts.
"Matthew!" said Olive, passionately, advancing a step nearer her cousin, "you have bid me begone, and I know that there is nothing left for me but to obey. All is over between us. I played for a heavy stake, and I have lost it. I leave you now, never to see you again. I go forth into the world--whither, I neither know nor care. Listen to these my last words--listen, and believe. I would shed my heart's blood for you. Had you died through me, I would have killed myself an hour afterwards. I never loved you more than at this moment. That love I shall carry with me. Nothing can deprive me of it. Time will soften the hardness of your judgment. Then sometimes you may think of me with a touch of the old kindness, and say to yourself, 'Her greatest fault was that she loved me not wisely, but too well.'"
Still keeping her eyes fixed on her cousin, but vouchsafing no glance to any one else, she moved slowly towards the door. She reached the threshold, and there for a moment she paused.
"Farewell, Matthew! farewell for ever!" she said; and her voice had a ring of pathos and despair in it that her hearers never forgot. Then she drew her veil over her face, and the next moment she was gone.