ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
Richard Dyson went out to luncheon at his usual time, but failed to
return. About five o'clock Mr. Melray asked for him, but no one knew
what had become of him, nor did any authentic tidings of him come to
hand till the following day. It was then discovered that he and Miss
Glyn had gone off together, after having been married at an early hour
by special license. Neither of them was ever seen in Merehampton
again. It may be that Robert Melray was not ill-pleased to have the
hard problem which circumstances would otherwise have compelled him to
solve taken out of his hands and done with, as far as he was
concerned, for ever.
Mrs. Melray the elder was never told that it was to the hand of her
nephew that James Melray owed his death-blow. To her, as to the world
at large, the Loudwater Tragedy remained an unsolved mystery. Neither
was she ever enlightened as to that secondary crime of forgery and
fraud of which her nephew had been guilty. To have told her would have
answered no good purpose, but might, indeed, have had a serious effect
upon her health, already hardly tried by that which had gone before.
It was a quite sufficient shock to her to learn of the elopement of
Dyson and Miss Glyn. Womanlike, she laid the whole blame of the affair
on the girl. Doubtless she was one of those double-faced, scheming
hussies who seem sent into the world purposely to spoil the lives and
ruin the careers of whatever young men may not be strong-minded enough
to resist their siren-like blandishments. That poor dear Richard had
been both weak and foolish she could not deny; still, he was to be
pitied far more than blamed. He was not the first man by many, nor
would he be the last, to fall a victim to the arts of a designing
woman. As long as she lived Mrs. Melray continued to think and speak
of Dyson with mingled pity and tenderness, and at her death it was
found that she had bequeathed him half of all she had to leave.
Long before that event took place Robert Melray had paid over to
Dyson, or rather to the solicitor who represented him, the three
thousand pounds willed him by the man whose death lay at his door. Had
it not been for those two legacies falling in one after another,
Dyson, in all probability, would have lived several years longer than
he did. But for them--his wife's fortune having been quickly
dissipated--he would not have been able to continue in that course of
fast living, combined with hard drinking, which gradually shattered
his constitution and consigned him to a premature grave while he ought
still to have been in the prime of life.
The Erinyes have many ways of avenging their misdeeds on the children
of men.
Within twenty-four hours of Dyson's disappearance Denia had quitted
Loudwater House, never to return. She announced her intention of
taking up her abode, for a time at least, with certain friends in
London whom she had known during her uncle's lifetime. About a year
later, she married again, by which time she had received her share of
the property left by her husband. Her second husband (a blackleg with
the manners and education of a gentleman) was a very different type of
man from James Melray, as, later on, Denia found to her cost.
It was about the time of Denia's marriage that the final mystery in
connection with the Loudwater Tragedy found its solution.
One day a young American arrived at Merehampton in search of his
brother, who had been missing for upwards of a year. After some
difficulty he had succeeded in tracing him as far as the little
seaport, but at that point he came, for the time being, to a deadlock.
Like so many of his countrymen, the missing man had been fond of
adventure and change of scene. For many months he had been touring
about England, chiefly on foot, and, with a view of eking out his
slender means, had been in the habit of writing sketches of English
life and character for one or more American newspapers, as well as
occasional short stories for sundry magazines.
It would be beyond the scope of this narrative to recount how Gavin
Pryce, having succeeded in picking up the missing clue, was led onward
step by step till at length a shred of doubt was no longer left him
that the unidentified victim of the Eastwich accident was none other
than his brother Evan.
The way in which the latter had acquired his intimate knowledge of the
details of the Loudwater Tragedy, as set forth by him in the MS. which
fell into the hands of Mr. Timmins, was as peculiar as it was simple.
It may be remembered that the alarm raised by the housemaid Charlotte,
which followed immediately on her discovery of her master's body, was
responded to by a constable and a couple of strangers who happened to
be passing at the time. One of the strangers in question was the young
American, Evan Pryce. He it was who helped the constable to examine
the body with the view of ascertaining whether life was extinct, and,
a little later, assisted in carrying it upstairs. At the inquest he
was called as a witness, and, being a newspaper man, the case had an
exceptional interest for him in so far as it furnished him with an
ample supply of "copy" for some time to come. Having used it up as far
as the newspapers were concerned, the idea would appear to have
occurred to him that the main incidents of the affair, if worked up
into a magazine story, would not prove ineffective. Hence, in order to
supply the crime with a _raison d'être_, his invention of a lover for
the young wife, who finding on his return from abroad that she is
married, picks a quarrel with the husband; at which point, as the
reader may remember, the manuscript broke off abruptly. Whether the
author had written no further when he came by his untimely end, or
whether only a part of the manuscript was recovered from the _débris_
of the accident, is a question which must remain for ever unanswered.
It will not have been forgotten that it was Mr. Timmins who furnished
the story with an ending after a fashion of his own.
That it was as gall and wormwood to Mrs. Sudlow to have to be beholden
to a woman she disliked more than anyone, and whom she had contemned
and turned her back upon as the widow of a notorious felon, for the
pecuniary help which had been forthcoming from no other source, may be
taken for granted. But for Mrs. Winslade the Vicar would have been a
ruined man. It was bitter, very bitter, to have to acknowledge that
such was the indisputable fact. And then, what likelihood was there of
her husband ever being in a position to pay back the sum which had
been thus generously and unconditionally advanced? None at all as far
as Mrs. Sudlow could see. A few pounds might be spared now and
again--mere driblets, as it were--but, in the face of family expenses
which could not but help growing for several years to come, it would
not be possible to do more. In those days Mrs. Sudlow was a very
unhappy woman.
No one, not even her husband, ever heard her mention Mrs. Winslade's
name. When, half a year later, Philip and Fanny were married, no word
of opposition fell from her lips; but, on the other hand, she
resolutely declined to be present at the ceremony. Neither when, later
on, Philip offered to find a situation for her eldest son in the
counting-house of Mr. Layland did she raise the slightest objection to
his doing so. It was as though her life was burdened with the weight
of an obligation from which she found it impossible to rid herself.
Finally, it may be said of the "Vicaress" that, if from the date of a
certain transaction Mrs. Winslade's name found no mention at her lips,
neither did that of her kinsman, the Earl of Beaumaris. One seemed to
have passed out of the sphere of her mental retina as absolutely as
the other.
Once and once only did Fanny and Denia see each other again after the
latter's abrupt departure from Loudwater House.
Late one autumn evening about a year and a half after Fanny's
marriage, as she was sitting alone in the drawing-room, she was
informed that a lady was waiting in the entrance-hall who wished
particularly to see her, but who refused to send in her name. The
untimely visitor proved to be none other than Denia Melray, now Mrs.
Ferdinand Gascoigne. The two years which had elapsed since Fanny had
seen her last had wrought a great change in her appearance, but not
for the better. She had fallen away both in face and figure; there
were dark half-circles under her eyes; while that expression of
mingled candour and ingenuousness which had been one of her greatest
charms in days gone by had given place to the anxious careworn look of
one whose days and nights were full of trouble.
That Fanny was surprised to see her goes without saying. She did not
know then, nor does she to this day, by what means Denia had
discovered her address. When greetings were over and they were
together in the drawing-room, Mrs. Gascoigne said: "I am here this
evening, my dear, on purpose to ask you a very great favour. But where
is Mr. Winslade?"
Fanny explained that her husband had gone for a couple of days'
shooting to the house of a bachelor friend in the shires.
"So much the better," observed Denia in her old quick way. "Pleased as
on many accounts I should have been to see Mr. Winslade again, I am
more pleased that he is not here to-night. But your eyes are asking
what the favour is that I want you to grant me. It is simply this: I
have left my husband, without his knowledge or consent, and I want you
to give me shelter till morning."
"You have left your husband!" exclaimed Fanny. "Oh, Mrs. Gascoigne!"
"Yes, I have left him, never to go back," replied Dania with a hard
cold glitter in her blue-grey eyes. Then with deft fingers she
unfastened a portion of her dress, and baring her left shoulder,
exposed to Fanny's shocked gaze a great livid bruise. "That is where
he struck me last night with his clenched fist and felled me to the
ground. It is not the first occasion by many that he has struck me.
But last night was the climax. Then and there I swore an oath to leave
him. He did not believe me, but when he gets home from his club at
midnight he will not find me there. To-day I have been making certain
arrangements which to-morrow will see completed. At ten o'clock my
cousin, William Champneys--the son of my late uncle--will call here
for me (you see, dear, I have taken the liberty of assuming that you
won't turn me into the street), and will take me down into the country
to some relatives of my mother, whom I have not seen since I was quite
a child."
It is almost needless to state that Mrs. Gascoigne was accorded the
shelter she craved.
At ten o'clock next morning a hired brougham drove up at the door, and
Mr. William Champneys was announced. Denia had already breakfasted
(her troubles seemed in no wise to have impaired her appetite), and
two minutes sufficed her to put on her outdoor things. Having
introduced her cousin to Fanny, she seemed in a hurry to be gone. Her
last words as she touched Fanny's cheek with her lips were: "I shall
be sure to write to you, dear, and let you know how I am getting on."
But she never did.
Two months later Mr. Ferdinand Gascoigne fell down a flight of stairs
and broke his neck.
Half a year later still came an Australian newspaper, addressed to
Winslade, containing an announcement of the marriage of "Evan Wildash,
Esq., formerly of Solchester, England, to Denia (_née_ Lidington),
widow of Ferdinand Gascoigne, Esq., of London."
When Phil read the announcement aloud he and his wife could only stare
at one another in blank bewilderment.
"Evan Wildash alive!" gasped Phil.
"And married to Denia at last!" exclaimed Fanny. "Of all the strange
developments brought about by the Loudwater case this last one is the
strangest of all."
"By the way," remarked Phil a little later, "you never told me, or
else I omitted to ask, what kind of looking man was the cousin in
whose charge Mrs. Gascoigne left here."
Thereupon Fanny proceeded to describe Mr. William Champneys to the
best of her ability.
"Your description tallies exactly with that of Evan Wildash, as given
me at Solchester. And now that I begin to call things to mind, I am
nearly sure I was told by somebody that Mr. Champneys, Denia's uncle,
was a bachelor. Can it be possible that the man she introduced to you
as her cousin was none other than Evan Wildash himself? It would be
just like one of Denia's _supercheries_ if it were so."
It was a question to which no answer was ever forthcoming.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON