THE TRUTH AT LAST.
It was a lovely January morning sunny but cold, as the ladies sat
around the breakfast-table at Heron Dyke. Miss Winter scarcely spoke a
word during the meal, and scarcely touched a mouthful; she seemed
buried in thought.
"What is the matter with you, Ella?" asked Mrs. Carlyon, noticing
this. "Surely you are not going to be ill!"
"I was never better in all my life, Aunt Gertrude, than I am this
morning," answered Ella, with her sweet, serious smile. "Only I do not
seem to be in the humour for talking."
"Nor for eating either, apparently," said Mrs. Carlyon with a shake of
her cap-strings. "I don't like the symptoms; and if you have not
recovered your appetite at luncheon I shall think it time to send for
Dr. Spreckley." At which Ella laughed.
By-and-by, Ella put on her hat and shawl and went out, strolling
across the garden towards the way in which she might expect the
approach of her lover. He was already in sight. Drawing her hand
within his arm when they met, he and she paced about for the best part
of an hour, talking eagerly. It was the day subsequent to the gipsy's
visit to the kitchen, when she had told the fortunes of the maids
and--perhaps--of Dorothy Stone, and this conversation ran on that
event. The reader will very probably have divined that the gipsy's
visit had been a ruse; a thing planned by Conroy, to get some
information out of Dorothy.
Going indoors, Ella and Mr. Conroy proceeded to the old Squire's
sitting-room, which had not been used since his death. A fire,
ordered in it this morning, burnt brightly on the hearth. Ella paused
for a moment on the threshold. There was her uncle's big leathern
high-backed chair, with the screen behind it, as in the days that were
gone. There was the little old-fashioned table with the twisted legs
that used to stand at his elbow. It needed but a slight stretch of
imagination to fancy that presently the Squire's heavy footstep would
be heard, that he would come in with his curt "good-morrow," and begin
at once to poke the fire, which was a thing that he believed no one
could do as well as himself. Ella's eyes filled with tears.
"Courage, my dear," whispered Conroy. "Think of the present just now,
not of the past."
She brushed away her tears and nodded, as she rang the bell. It was
answered by one of the maids, Phemie; who was desired to inform Aaron
Stone that his mistress waited for him in the Squire's old room.
Aaron received the message with an incredulous stare.
"You must be dreaming," he said wrathfully. "The missus in that cold
room--and wanting to see me in it! Be off with your tales."
"Is it cold!" retorted Phemie. "There's a wood fire blazing in it up
to the top of the chimney. And the mistress is there, sir, with Mr.
Conroy, and she is waiting for you."
Aaron obeyed slowly, fuming a little. He did not like being sent for
by Miss Winter and talked to before Mr. Conroy. With all his heart he
wished Mr. Conroy well away from Heron Dyke; he was the only man whom
Aaron feared. His look of cold, dark, grave scrutiny always
disconcerted the old man. What he and Dorothy should do when Mr.
Conroy married the mistress and became master of Heron Dyke, which
would undoubtedly be the case before long, was a thought that had
troubled him a good deal of late.
Aaron paused when he opened the door, and shivered as he looked in.
What could he be wanted for in that room, of all others? Had anything
been found out?
"Come in, Aaron," said Miss Winter. "Shut the door, and sit down."
She was leaning back in one of the smaller chairs. Mr. Conroy stood
against the old-fashioned mantelpiece. The old man took a chair near
the door with a sinking heart.
"Some considerable time ago, Aaron," began his mistress in a grave but
not unkindly voice, "I put certain questions to you bearing reference
to my uncle's illness and death. I had been led to suppose that some
mystery attached to that time, and that, whatever it was, it had been
kept, and was intended to be kept, from me. You denied it; you told me
I was mistaken."
"No, no, Miss Ella, I kept nothing back from you; I didn't indeed,"
answered the old man, in a trembling, beseeching voice, his agitation
pitiable to see.
"But I now know that you did, Aaron. I know that while my uncle was
said to have died in the middle of May, he really died weeks and weeks
before that date! Will you tell me why you induced me to believe that
it was my uncle whom John Tilney and the choristers from Nullington
saw on the evening of his birthday, and whom Mr. Plackett, the lawyer
from London, saw a day or two later, and whom Mr. Daventry's partner
saw--when you knew quite well that it was you yourself, dressed up so
as to personate your master, whom each and all of them beheld?"
Aaron's teeth began to chatter.
"The truth is known to me at last," continued Ella. "Do not make any
further attempts to deceive me; they will be useless."
"Quite useless," struck in Conroy, a sternness in his tone that Miss
Winter's had lacked. "We know all."
What little tinge of colour had been in Aaron's rugged face fled from
it; he looked like a man suddenly stricken with some mortal sickness.
He turned his affrighted eyes from his mistress to Conroy, and from
Conroy to her again.
"Better make a clean breast of it," said Conroy, quietly.
"I will," at length spoke Aaron, in a husky whisper, probably seeing
that no other course remained to him. "The Squire did die afore May;
long afore his birthday too, the twenty-fourth of April."
"It was a dreadful fraud!" gasped Ella.
"Ay, 'twas a fraud," assented Aaron. "It was not me, though, that set
it agate; I only helped to carry it out."
"Who did set it agate?" asked Conroy.
"Hubert: my grandson Hubert. Him and the Squire between them."
"The Squire!" cried Ella, reproachfully. "Aaron!"
"It's true, ma'am. He couldn't rest for fear of dying before his
birthday; old Spreckley let him know that he'd not live to see it,
except by a miracle, and it a'most killed him. Hubert thought of
something. He had been reading just then in one of his French books of
a gentleman in France who died and was kept alive for months
afterwards--leastways was said to be kept alive, to deceive the world.
He told the Squire of this, and the Squire caught at it eagerly; and
they spoke to Jago, and he helped to carry it out."
"And you helped too," said Conroy.
"I did it for the best--for the best," sighed Aaron, the tears
starting to his eyes as he slightly lifted his wrinkled hands.
"Moreover, the Squire ordered me: and when did I ever disobey him?
'Twas in this very room, Miss Ella"--looking across at her--"that he
first spoke to me. I had come in to get him ready for bed, and he told
me about it. At the first blush I felt frightened to death; I said to
him, 'Master, it can't be done.' 'It can be done, and shall be done;
how dare you dissent!' he answered me angrily, and I didn't dare to
say more."
What could Ella answer?
"'Twas all for you, Miss Ella; all for you," shivered the faithful old
servant--for faithful he was, despite this wrong-doing. "How could you
have inherited Heron Dyke had the master not lived over his birthday?
'Twould have gone right away to the other people. A nice thing for
that other Denison to have come in to the old place! Swindlers and
spies, all the lot of 'em! If----"
"Be silent!" sternly struck in Conroy. "How dare you presume so to
speak of your master's kinsman?"
Aaron looked up with a gasp.
"Mr. Denison of Nunham Priors is every whit as honourable as the late
Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke. Take care how you speak of him in future.
And remember that he is Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke now--and would have
been so ever since last April but for your plotting."
Never had Conroy been so moved--so stern.
Ella, though assenting in her heart to every word, looked at him in
surprise. Aaron felt checked and mortified; he thought this was pretty
assumption for a man who was but a newspaper reporter, and would have
liked to say so.
"Mistress," he stammered in a husky voice, "how did you come to know
about the Squire?"
"That I must decline to tell you," spoke Miss Winter. "It is enough
that I do know it. Had you but told me the truth when I first
questioned you, what annoyance it would have saved both myself and
you!"
But the aged retainer could only reiterate, "I did it for the best."
Mr. Conroy spoke.
"I want you to tell me, Aaron, the real date of the Squire's death."
Aaron threw a quick, sour, suspicious look at his interlocutor.
"Am I to answer that question, Miss Ella? he asked, in an aggrieved
tone.
"Certainly."
"Well, then, if you must know, sir, he died on the 19th of February,"
was the answer, grudgingly given.
"The 19th of February. What did you do then?"
"Why, what should we do but put the body into a coffin that had been
ordered from London two months before by the Squire's own directions.
Hubert ordered it, and it was sent down in a packing-case, and the
servants were told that it was a new sort of invalid-chair for the
master."
"Oh. And this coffin, nailed down, I suppose, was kept in the room?"
"In the lumber-room off the bed-room; nobody had ever thought o' going
in there. We kept the room locked mostly after that."
"Just one moment," interposed Ella. "Was the account you gave me of my
uncle's death--what happened the evening it took place--a true one?"
"Every word," answered the old man. "Save that it was in February
'stead o' May, ma'am."
"Whose idea was it that you should personate your master after his
death?" resumed Conroy.
Aaron did not answer at once. His eyes had taken a dull far-away
expression, as though he were lost in the past.
"Such a lot o' things had to be done that wasn't at first thought of,"
he presently said. "Nobody can foresee what ins and outs a matter will
take when it be first planned. Hubert saw that it might not be enough
to say the Squire lived over his birthday; people might clamour to see
him and convince theirselves of it; and Jago, he saw it also."
"Yes. Go on."
"They thought there was nothing for it but that I must be dressed up
to personate him. I fought against it; I did indeed, Miss Ella,"
lifting his eyes to his mistress, "but 'twas o' no manner o' use my
holding out; for, as they pointed out to me, all might have been
discovered unless I gave in."
"So they dressed you up!" cried Conroy.
"Hubert did it--the whole scheme was carried out by Hubert. Oh, but he
was a clever lad; an amazing clever lad! Jago was deep and cunning,
but he had not the talent of Hubert. Who but he got me a wig to
imitate the Squire's long white hair, and a velvet skull-cap? I had to
put them and the dressing-gown on every day and be drilled for an
hour, till I used sometimes to half fancy that I had been
transmogrified into the Squire himself. It took in Daventry's partner,
and them lawyer rascals from London, finely!--and the band from
Nullington and John Tilney and his wife! I had on the cat's-eye ring
that the Squire had worn for thirty years."
"Dr. Jago was in the secret from the first.
"Of course he was, sir. He was just the man for a job of that sort,
and it couldn't have been done without a doctor."
Mr. Conroy had been jotting down a few notes in his pocket-book.
"I think that is all for the present," he said to Aaron. "If any other
questions should occur to me, I can ask them later."
Aaron rose stiffly from his chair. To his ears there seemed an
assumption of authority, of power in Conroy, excessively distasteful
to him. But the cloud vanished from his countenance and his rugged
features softened as his eyes rested on his mistress. No anger, no
haughty condemnation sat on that fair young face; only a sort of
sweet, patient sadness.
"Miss Ella, you know everything now," he whispered, moving a step or
two nearer to her. "But what of that? The world's none the wiser and
never need be. The secret's as safe now as ever it was."
"Yes, Aaron, I know everything," answered Ella, a little wearily. "I
know that I am no longer the mistress of Heron Dyke. I know that the
dear old home no longer belongs to me but to another! But I also know
that he will be a worthy inheritor."
Aaron gasped--as if demented.
"But, Miss Ella, you have only to hold your tongue and nobody will
ever be a bit the wiser. The Squire bound us all not to tell you, but
now that you've found it out for yourself, there's no harm done. You
surely would not tell--no, no! not that--not that!"
"I have no alternative, Aaron. I would do that which is right. This
home is not mine: it must be given up to him to whom it rightly
belongs."
"Oh, ma'am!--Miss Ella! My master would turn in his grave if he could
hear your words. Give up the old place? No--no! And not a soul who
knows the secret but ourselves and Jago--and the nurse: and their
mouths are sealed!"
"If my uncle, out of that larger knowledge which I doubt not is now
his, were permitted to counsel me, do you not think he would urge me
to do that which is just and honourable?" said Ella, condescending to
reason with him, in pity for his evident wretchedness. "Your master
sees now with other eyes than those he saw with when on earth; he
would not ask me to keep what is not, and never has been, mine; that
which he would have me do, could he speak to me, is the thing I must
do, and no other."
Aaron listened, but he was not convinced.
"To think of the estate going to them that the master hated so! Sneaks
and spies----"
"Not another word!" severely spoke Miss Winter. "You forget yourself,
Aaron."
The old man bowed his head and let his arms fall by his side with a
gesture of despair. Turning, he hobbled slowly from the room.
"Poor, faithful old soul!" cried Ella, as she gazed after him.
"Wrongly though he has acted, it was done in loyalty to my uncle and
me. And so, Edward," she added, bravely smiling through her tears,
"you see that you will not have a well-dowered bride."
"So much the better, sweet one," answered Conroy, stealing his arm
round her. "You will then owe something to me, instead of my owing so
much to you. Nobody can now call me a fortune-hunter."
"They have not called you one."
"Have they not! Ask that old man, now gone out, what he thinks of me
in his private thoughts. Ask your Aunt Gertrude; ask Mrs. Toynbee--ask
the world."
"I am sure you have never been _that_."
"I don't think I have. But, Ella, it will be a sore parting--this of
yours from Heron Dyke."
"I try not to think of it yet. When the day shall come I shall try to
bear it as I best may."
"Who knows but that old gentleman at Nunham Priors will give it up to
you to live in?" suggested Conroy. "Has he not said something of the
kind to you?"
"And do you think I would impose upon his generosity by staying? No,
no. This is the place of his ancestors, and it must be his--his
entirely; and his son's after him. You forget he has a son, Edward."
"One Master Frank, I believe. A graceless young fellow, by all
accounts."
"That may be; but he is still a Denison, and the heir after his
father. Besides--you have indeed been speaking without thought,
Edward!--how could poor people, such as we shall be, speaking
comparatively, live at a grand old place like this? It requires a
grand income to keep it up."
"Dear me! So it does."
"You had better give me up, perhaps, Edward, now things have turned
out for the worse," she suggested, her voice slightly trembling. "I
shall only be a clog upon your ambition, and keep you down."
"Do you think so?" he rejoined gravely. "You will be afraid to venture
on marriage with a man so poor as I? Well, there's little doubt you
might marry a rich one. Many a man high in the world's favour might be
glad to woo and win you. Young ladies with only a tithe of your good
looks make rich marriages every season; why should not you? You have
always be enused to the luxuries and refinements of life; it would be
a misery to me not to be able to afford you them still. Had we not
better part?"
Ella was looking at him with a startled expression in her eyes, as if
she were half afraid he might be in earnest, and was taking her at her
word. Edward Conroy's pleasant laugh rang out. He drew her to him and
kissed her tenderly.
"Why, what a great goose you are to-day!" he said. "As if you did not
know that our love was altogether independent of either poverty or
riches, and that neither one nor the other of them could affect it in
any way. You are mine and I am yours, and no caprices of worldly
fortune can come between us. And now let us fling our cares to the
wind for a little while, and forget everything except that we do love
each other, and that the sun is shining, and that Rover and Caprice
are waiting to be saddled. Put on your riding-habit and let us go for
a long gallop in the sweet January sunshine. If we are not to have
many more rides together, it were wise to enjoy them while we may."
When Aaron Stone quitted the presence of his mistress he was like a
man utterly dazed and confounded. It was not merely the shock of
finding that the elaborate house of cards which he and others had
helped to build had tumbled to pieces so suddenly about his ears that
dismayed him: it was the fact of Miss Winter's having succeeded in
unravelling a plot which had been so patiently planned and so
carefully guarded from discovery, that nonplussed the old retainer. So
far as he was aware, the secret of the Squire's death could be known
to three people alone: to himself, to Dr. Jago, and to Mrs. Dexter:
Hubert was no longer living. Both Jago and Mrs. Dexter had been well
paid for their share in the affair, and neither of them would be
likely to speak of what would render themselves liable to a criminal
prosecution. From what unknown source, then, could Miss Winter have
obtained her information? Aaron could not answer: and the oftener he
asked himself the question, the more puzzled and bewildered he became.
As to that bumptious Conroy--one might think the whole place belonged
to him to see him and hear his tones!
"There's witchcraft in it, altogether; that's what there is,"
concluded the dazed old man.
And witchcraft there was in it, but of a kind different from that
imagined by Aaron Stone.
Convinced that Dorothy Stone knew more than she dared tell, that the
clue to the secret might be got from her by stratagem, though perhaps
never by a straightforward examination, Edward Conroy set his wits to
work. She was so full of superstitious fancies and beliefs, it seemed
to him something might be effected by playing upon them. At first Miss
Winter objected, but she grew to see that if the means used were not
perfectly legitimate, the end to be obtained certainly was. In fact
there seemed to be no other way, and they could not go on living in
their present state of uncertainty.
During a recent visit of Conroy to London, he had witnessed a
representation of the play of "Guy Mannering," and had been much
struck by the powerful way in which the character of Meg Merrilies was
portrayed. The actress who played the part was known to the public
under the name of Miss Murcott. She was a lady of irreproachable
character; and Mr. Conroy had been introduced to her, after the play
was over, by one of his newspaper friends. In furtherance of the
object he had now in view, he went up to London again, sought an
interview with the actress, and enlisted her sympathy. The result was
that Miss Murcott went down to Nullington, and took up her abode for a
night at Mrs. Keen's, who had been prepared to receive her by Mr.
Conroy. In the disguise of a gipsy, and under pretence of telling the
maids of Heron Dyke their fortunes, she obtained access to Dorothy
Stone, Aaron's absence having been secured by his mistress. Using the
information confidentially given her by Conroy, she whispered words
into Dorothy's ear that so startled her, as to render her pliable as a
lamb.
"Give me your hand," said the sham gipsy: and the dazed and trembling
woman held it out without a dissenting word.
Holding the withered palm in her own, the gipsy proceeded to scan it
closely, tracing the different lines with her forefinger.
"This indicates a coffin," she said; and Dorothy groaned. "And
this--why what _is_ this? It seems to point to a hale old man with
long white hair, who wears something dark on his head, and is put into
the coffin before----"
"Oh, don't, don't!" shrieked Dorothy, trying in vain to withdraw her
hand from the gipsy's firm grasp.
"What have we here?" continued the fortune-teller. "A darkened room
where people walk with hushed footsteps; green doors that open and
shut without noise; a little white-faced man with a black moustache
and evil eyes!----And this dark line must be a secret--a secret with a
crime in it that might drive you forth from your grave at midnight had
you committed it----"
"I didn't commit it," moaned Dorothy. "They never let me know of it."
"No, but you found it out; you hold the secret; this line shows me
that. You must disclose it. Tell it at once before it be too late--too
late!"
"What shall I do?" sobbed Dorothy: "What shall I do?"
"What I bid you," said the woman, sternly. "Tell me all you know--or
there will be no peace for you living or dead."
It needed no more to induce Dorothy to do as she was bidden. With many
sighs, and groans, and hesitations, her story came out little by
little. It appeared that in those past days the housekeeper's
curiosity was aroused, and to a certain extent her anger also, at
being kept in ignorance of what was going on behind the green baize
doors, and at not being allowed to penetrate beyond them herself.
"They treat me as if I was a common pantry-maid," she would say with
bitterness. The position also that Mrs. Dexter took up in the
household by no means tended to soothe these ruffled feelings. "I've
helped to nurse the master for the last twenty years when he has been
ill, and now I've got to make room for a strange woman!" she said to
Aaron; and all the answer Dorothy got from him was an order to concern
herself with her own business. "There's something going on behind
those doors that they are afeard to be let known," concluded the
shrewd old woman in her mind.
Dorothy determined to go beyond the doors, if she could get a chance
of it, and tell her wrongs to the Squire himself; and she watched for
an opportunity. It came at last. One afternoon when Aaron had gone to
Nullington, he came home all the worse for the pints of strong ale he
had taken. Not often did he transgress in this way; and, with the view
of hiding it from the household, he went straight to bed, saying the
sun had given him a headache, and fell asleep. Dorothy filched the key
of the green baize doors from his pocket. Mrs. Dexter, who rarely left
the house, had gone this afternoon to the railway-station, to send off
some private telegram that she would not trust to anybody else; and
Hubert Stone was out riding. In a perfect flutter of excitement,
Dorothy took the key to the green baize doors; she ventured to open
them both, and went on. Knocking at the door of the Squire's
sitting-room, she waited for the answering "Come in." It did not reach
her ears. She thought he might be dozing, and opened the door, all in
a twitter of eagerness to ask and hear from her master why she was
excluded. The room was empty. He is in bed, thought Dorothy, and went
to the chamber. That also was empty. She stood bewildered; what could
be the meaning of it? Perhaps the Squire had stepped into the
lumber-room for something--she opened its door gently, and gave one
glance around. That one brief look was quite enough. A low scream
broke from her lips; then, hardly knowing what she was about, she
closed the door, and fled back by the way she had come. What she saw
in the third room was a closed coffin--the very coffin which she saw
carried out of the Hall some two months later on the day of Mr.
Denison's funeral.
The Squire must be dead; she saw that: but why were they concealing
it? Watching and prying about after this, Dorothy, without seeming to
see anything, saw enough to convince her that, after the death was
really announced to the world, it was no other than her own husband
who personated the dead Squire. She stole into the garden the night
the musicians were playing, and distinguished Aaron's features in his
master's clothes. The day Mr. Charles Plackett was expected from
London, Dorothy watched and saw her husband turn back privately, and
go stealing into the Squire's rooms, instead of proceeding on his
pretended walk to Nullington. All this was confessed to the gipsy
woman, who in her turn related it to Miss Winter and Mr. Conroy.