The following afternoon, as the London evening papers were publishing
what they were pleased to call "A Romance in High Life," Derrick and his
father made their way through an excited crowd, which had gathered about
the Court House. Affairs there had proceeded as Mr. Jacobs had
prophesied; the magistrates had listened with amazement, not only to Mr.
Jacobs' statement, but to the announcement which Mr. Clendon had made of
his identity and his relationship to Derrick; and the worthy chairman,
Sir Courtenay Comber, using almost the identical words Mr. Jacobs had
attributed to him, had congratulated Derrick and informed him that he
left the Court "without a stain on his character." Notwithstanding its
satisfactory conclusion, the ordeal had been a trying one for father and
son, and Derrick looked pale and somewhat worn as he grasped the hand of
Reggie, who had been in Court, and had hurried after him to congratulate
him.
"I've got a carriage here for you, round the corner," he said; "and I've
succeeded in stopping them ringing the bells."
"I'm glad," said Derrick; "but why should they want to ring the bells?"
"Well, you see," explained Reggie, as he led them to the carriage,
"Lord Heyton--I mean the other man--is not a great favourite; whereas,
somehow or other, you have caught the popular imagination; besides,
it has leaked out that you are going to marry Miss Grant; and
she is tremendously popular. She has been very kind, in the
do-good-and-blush-to-find-it-known way, to the poor people about her;
and Susie has told a good many of Miss Grant's angelic kindnesses to
her. Hence these tears," he added, as the people crowded about them and
cheered heartily. "Where shall I tell the man to drive, my lord?"
"To the Hall," replied Mr. Clendon gravely. "Yes," he said to Derrick,
as the carriage drove off, "the Marquess--I mean your uncle, Talbot,
wants to see you, naturally."
"You have told him?" said Derrick. "Poor man!"
"Yes, I have told him; and, strangely enough, he welcomed the news. And
yet it is not strange; for, alas! he knew the character of his son, knew
that he was not worthy to bear the title. There is something more on my
brother's mind than I am cognisant of. Some secret which worries him,"
he added.
Derrick remained silent. He dared not probe the mystery of the hidden
jewel-case, of Heyton's sudden flight; but it was evident to him that
Mr. Jacobs intended to conceal any knowledge he might have, and Derrick
was only too thankful to concur in that concealment.
On their way to the Hall, Derrick and his father spoke of many things of
the past and the future; and presently the old man said in a low voice,
"You will be married soon, Derrick?"
"The first moment Celia will have me," replied Derrick, promptly.
"I would like you to spend your honeymoon in South America," said his
father.
Derrick understood, and he nodded and laid his hand on the old man's.
"And you, sir? Shall you go there--soon?"
Mr. Clendon shook his head. "No," he responded. "The chasm between us is
too wide, has divided us for too long a time. But it shall be as your
mother wishes. You will talk to her----We will leave her future and mine
on the knees of the gods. But yours, thank God! is assured. How
strangely Fate works! How little I thought, when I helped Celia to come
to the Hall, that I was lending a guiding hand to the future of my son's
wife. Derrick, that same fate has been very good to you."
"Don't I know it, sir!" said Derrick in a low voice.
They reached the Hall; and as they entered, they could not but be
conscious of the stir of excitement there; the old butler and the other
servants looked at them with an intense interest. As the two men stood
in the hall, waiting the summons to the sick-room, Derrick looked round
him eagerly; but it was not at the subdued splendour surrounding him; he
scarcely noted the indications of luxury and wealth, the wealth and
state to which he was heir; he was looking and listening for some sign
of Celia; and he was so absorbed that he started when his father touched
his arm and directed his gaze to a portrait.
"That is mine, Derrick," he said. "Do you see any resemblance to
yourself?"
"Yes; I think--yes, I do," replied Derrick.
"I noticed it yesterday, directly I entered the hall, for the first time
for many years."
The footman came down to say that they might go up, and they ascended
the broad stairs, Derrick still looking about him and listening; but
Celia did not appear. They were ushered into the sick-room, and the door
closed on them; and they remained there for nearly half an hour; for the
injured man had recovered something of his old strength, as if a burden
had been lifted from his shoulders, and he was able to hear the story of
Derrick's identity and to speak a few words of relief and satisfaction.
When they left the room both Derrick and his father were much moved, and
they went down the stairs in silence. Derrick stopped as they reached
the hall, and again looked round him.
"You will find her in there," said his father, nodding towards the
library; and Derrick, with a sudden flush and a brightening of the eyes,
knocked at the door.
The voice that said, "Come in," made his heart leap. He turned the
handle of the door and entered. Celia had heard his voice in the hall,
was expecting him; she was standing by the table, her hand pressed on
it, her face pale but her eyes glowing with the ineffable light of love.
"Sydney!" she murmured, all her heart in her voice.
He took her in his arms and, for a moment, there was silence; then she
raised her head and whispered,
"It is all right, Sydney?"
"It is all right," he responded. "I am here, as you see; I am acquitted;
all is well. But, dearest," he hesitated apologetically, "you must not
call me 'Sydney.'"
She looked up at him, her brows knit slightly; and he gathered her to
him still more closely, as he went on.
"I've got the strangest news to tell you, Celia. You will think that you
are dreaming, as I have been dreaming ever since I myself heard it."
"They have been talking, saying strange things--the servants, I
mean--and Mrs. Dexter came in just now and tried to tell me--something;
but she was too excited and checked herself; she said I should hear it
from you! What is it, Syd----But I'm not to call you that? What am I to
call you?"
"Derrick," he said; "it is the name that you shall always call me by;
but the world will know me as Lord Heyton."
She started in his arms and, drawing back her head, gazed up at him in
amazement; and she listened as he told her the wonderful news; at first
with bewilderment and then with a gravity and a lack of enthusiasm which
surprised him.
"You are glad, dearest?" he asked. "You are surprised, astonished, of
course? It takes some time to realize. You are glad?"
"Are you?" she asked in a low voice.
Derrick shrugged his shoulders; then, as if he were ashamed of the
gesture, he said quickly,
"That I have found a father--and such a father--yes. And I have found a
mother too. Have you guessed that it is the Donna Elvira I have told you
so much about? You are surprised; and no wonder. It is part of the
strange story. I will tell you all about her presently. Of course, I am
glad. I was all alone in the world--but for you--but for you, Celia! and
the loneliness was hard sometimes to bear. But for the rest, the title
and the estates and the other things, I welcome them only because you
will share them with me. Celia, I'm not such an idiot as not to realize
that I am coming to you as something more than a penniless adventurer,
well-nigh nameless, a man of no account. If I had all the world at my
command, the highest title a man could bear, I should only value them
because I could lay them at your feet."
The tears welled to her eyes and, of her own accord, she drew his head
down to her and laid her sweet lips on his.
"You are too good to me; I am not worth it," she said, brokenly. Then,
with something like a start, she whispered, with a dawning fear and
horror in her eyes, "And the other--Lord Heyton? And his wife! Oh, poor,
poor woman! And she has borne so much already! She is lying there,
upstairs, prostrated. Who is to tell her? Oh, Derrick, dearest, who is
to tell her?"
"You," he said, gently. "No one can break it to her better than you
can."
"Oh, must I? Oh, it will be hard for her."
"It will be hard, Celia; but no one can do it better than you. You will
soften the blow. She will realise her debt to you, through me. Tell her
that her future shall be cared for--but you know that I shall look after
that. Celia, you, who are so quick, so acute, have divined the truth. It
was for Miriam that I took on myself the forged cheque. I--cared for her
once; I thought I was in love with her. I thought so until that night
you came to me and stood like an angel of rescue between me and a
shameful death. As to Miriam's husband----"
Derrick paused and, looking down at her steadily, laid his hand on her
shoulder with an almost masterful pressure.
"--There must be nothing more said about him between us two, Celia," he
continued, with solemnity in his voice and manner. "He is gone; let him
go and take the past with him. But one word: Celia, it was Heyton who
wronged Susie, it was Heyton who forged the cheque; it was because Lady
Gridborough thought me guilty of wrecking Susie's life, that she cut me
that morning when she passed us at the gate by the wood. She knows the
truth now; for Reggie has got Susie to reveal it----"
"Reggie!" murmured Celia.
"Yes; he fell in love with Susie the first time he saw her; he has been
telling me all about it."
"And Susie yielded! I can scarcely believe it," said Celia, with a note
of delight in her voice.
"She yielded," said Derrick, with a smile. "Reggie is a wonderful young
man; and has a way with him, as the saying is. He must have laid hard
siege to Susie's heart--perhaps he won her through the child. Anyway, he
has done so; and, in doing so, has cleared my name."
"I am glad, glad!" Celia murmured, giving him a little hug. "Yes; he is
a wonderful young man; I saw that the first time I met him." She told
him of that meeting in the British Museum Reading Room. "Oh, I can quite
understand, now I come to think of it; with all her seeming coldness,
Susie has a tender heart. I've found that out----"
"By the surest way, the revelation of your own," said Derrick. He looked
round the room, as if everything in it were precious to him. "And this
is where you have worked," he said.
"Yes," she nodded, also looking round; "and I have been very happy
here--or should have been," she went on softly, her eyes on his, "if I
had been able to keep a certain man out of my thoughts. But he was there
all the time; I could close my eyes and be back at 'The Jail,' looking
over the rails at his upturned face and hearing his voice. What a
wonderful thing love is!"
"And yet so easy to understand," he said with a smile, as he caught her
to him again. There was silence for a while; then he said, "We'll be
married soon, Celia?"
She blushed and her eyes fell for a moment; then she raised them to his
and whispered,
"Yes."
"My father wants us to spend our honeymoon in South America; wants us to
go to my mother. You will go; you will not mind the long journey?"
She was silent for a moment; then, almost solemnly, but with an infinite
love in her eyes and her voice, she murmured,
"'Whither thou goest, I will go ... thy people shall be my people.'"
* * * * *
As Celia went to Miriam's room, can it be wondered that her step grew
slower and, notwithstanding her own happiness, that her heart waxed
heavy with sorrow for the wretched young wife? She found Miriam lying
back in her chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her face almost
vacant of any expression; she seemed weighed down by the apathy
resulting from utter hopelessness, from a knowledge of some evil from
which she could not escape. She turned her eyes to Celia, and Celia's
heart was made to ache by the look of dumb suffering in them, that look
which the weak always wear when the world is going wrong with them.
Celia knelt down beside the chair, and took one of the nerveless hands.
"Are you better, getting stronger, Lady Heyton?" she asked, gently.
Miriam shook her head listlessly, and gazed out of the window; then she
turned her eyes again slowly to Celia, and said, in a toneless voice,
"Is it true, what the servants are saying, that the Marquess's elder
brother has been discovered, and that the Marquess, our Marquess, is no
longer the master here? Marie came and told me something about it; but
she was confused and rambled, and I could make very little of it."
"It is true," said Celia. "The elder brother is alive, is here in the
house. He had been living in seclusion for years; the Marquess
discovered a little while ago that his brother was alive; but the real
Marquess did not wish to displace his younger brother. He was living in
poverty, working for his living. I knew him at that time."
Miriam looked only slightly interested. "You knew him? That's strange."
"Yes; it is all very strange," Celia agreed. "It was Mr. Clendon--we
still call him that; it is so difficult to remember that he is the
Marquess--and I lived in the same building; we called it 'The Jail'; it
was so prison-like." Her voice grew dreamy, as she spoke. "He played the
violin in the orchestra of a theatre; I used to hear him practising; the
music floated up to my room; how long ago it seems! It was he who
persuaded Lord Sutcombe to engage me as librarian, here at the Hall."
"It sounds like a novel," commented Miriam, absently.
"Yes," assented Celia; "but it isn't any more wonderful and astounding
than the occurrences one reads of in the newspapers almost every day."
"And there is no doubt? I mean, it is all settled; he _is_ the
Marquess?" said Miriam, still apathetically, as if no change, however
revolutionary, could affect her.
"Yes, it is all settled, or will be very soon," said Celia. "The lawyers
are coming down to-morrow; the evidence is quite complete." There was
silence for a minute or two; then Celia, with her heart beating fast and
heavily, said, in a still lower voice, "There is something else I must
tell you, Lady Heyton. Mr. Clendon, the real Marquess, has--has a son."
She stopped to let this sink in, and Miriam's brows knit slightly; then
she said, almost inaudibly,
"You mean that--that Heyton, my husband, is not the heir, is not Lord
Heyton?"
"Yes," said Celia in a whisper. It seemed to her that Miriam drew a long
breath of relief; but she made no comment and Celia went on, with still
greater difficulty, "I must tell you who he is, Lady Heyton. I want to
prepare you for a shock, and I don't know how to do it. You--you know
him."
"I know him?" repeated Miriam, with dull surprise. "You mean I have met
him. What is his name? Heyton, of course."
"That is his name, his title," said Celia; "but he has borne several
names, has had a strange history. You knew him by the name of Derrick
Dene."
Miriam did not start; but the pallor of her face increased, and her
tear-swollen eyes fixed themselves with a kind of wan wonder and shame
on Celia.
"Derrick Dene!" she echoed, faintly.
"Yes," murmured Celia; and, as briefly and gently as she could, she told
Miriam of Derrick's recent experiences. Miriam's hands went up to her
face; but they dropped into her lap again and she looked before her and
said, in a stricken voice,
"I see you know everything. Yes, it was Heyton, my husband, who forged
the cheque; I know it now: he is capable of--anything." She shuddered.
"It was to save me from the shame and unhappiness of being a felon's
wife that Derrick sacrificed himself. Yes; it was just what he would
do." She glanced at Celia. "You know, of course, that I--I once cared
for him; that we were to be married; I jilted him for a title, for
money----"
"Don't say any more," pleaded Celia; but Miriam went on ruthlessly.
"I was a weak fool; I might have known that no good would come of such
treachery--oh, yes, I knew in my heart; I knew that Derrick was worth a
hundred of _him_. I sinned with my eyes open; no, I shut them; I was
blinded by the thought, the prospect of being--what I am," she added
bitterly; then, suddenly, she fixed her eyes on Celia's downcast face.
"Derrick told you this? Then he knows you very well; you are a close
friend of his; you are----?"
"Yes," murmured Celia. "I am going to be his wife--very soon. We met in
'The Jail.'" She did not, she could not tell how that meeting had been
brought about; she wanted to spare Miriam all she could; but,
notwithstanding her resolution, the next words slipped out
unconsciously. "He was accused of the robbery of the jewels----" She bit
her lip; but it was too late for remorse.
Miriam dropped back in the chair, her eyes closed and her lips became
livid.
"He did not do it!" she gasped.
"No, no!" said Celia, quickly; "he has been proved innocent."
There was silence for a moment; while Miriam evidently made an effort to
control her agitation.
"Who--who----? Have they found out who did it?"
"No," broke in Celia, swiftly and tremulously. "No one has been
discovered. Mr. Jacobs, the detective, said that no one will be
discovered. The jewels have been found."
"I know," murmured Miriam.
"There will be no more trouble," whispered Celia, soothingly.
Again there was a pause, then Miriam asked brokenly,
"Heyton--my husband?"
"He has gone abroad," said Celia, hanging her head; "he will be away
some time."
Miriam's lips moved; she whispered, at last,
"I understand!--I must leave here--at once. I will go back to my people
or hide myself somewhere in London."
"Oh, go back to your people," said Celia. "I--I want to tell you how
sorry the Marquess, all of us, are for you, how deeply we sympathise
with your loss; it weighs upon us all."
"It need not do," said Miriam, with a touch of bitterness. "I have
always been a stranger and an alien here. Strangely enough, Celia, I
have felt as if I--I have been walking on quicksand that might swallow
me up at any moment. Oh, I have been as unhappy as I deserve. All the
time, I have felt a sense of--of--oh, I can't explain; but it seemed to
me as if my treachery to Derrick would come back on me. And it has! If
you knew"--she shuddered--"but I can't tell you. I shall never open my
lips--I want to go at once. Yes; I am quite strong enough. I want to go
away from here--from you all. I want to be at rest, somewhere where I
can try to forget. What a downfall! What a downfall!"
Celia, with the tears in her eyes, put her arm round the trembling form.
"Dear Lady Heyton," she murmured, "you must not give way. It may not be
all as black as you think. And--and Derrick wishes me to tell you that
your future--oh, how am I to put it!--that you will be well cared for;
that you will have no need for anxiety about the future."
"Derrick!" breathed Miriam, ashamedly. "Yes, it is what he would do. It
is like him to think of me, even in the moment of his own happiness. Oh,
God, how ashamed I am!"
"You will not refuse--to let them help you, to let them look after you?"
pleaded Celia.
"No," replied Miriam, with a bitter laugh. "I'll take their charity
thankfully enough. It's part of my punishment, I suppose. But I want to
go at once. You seem to pity me----"
"Oh, Lady Heyton!"
"Then help me to get away. Send a telegram to my people to say that I am
coming; tell Marie to pack----"
"Yes," said Celia, feeling that Miriam had decided on the best course.
"I will see to everything. Will you lie down and rest, while I get
everything ready?"
"Rest!" echoed Miriam, bitterly. "There cannot be a moment's rest
for me while I am in this house. I have lain awake listening,
listening----" She shuddered. "Go now. I'd try to thank you, if I could.
You've been kind to me--Derrick's wife!" She pushed Celia from her and
rose unsteadily. "Oh, go; I'm grateful, but the sight of you reminds
me----"
With the tears running down her cheeks, Celia left her, to find Marie
and send off the telegram.