MORE DISCOVERIES.
Though looks and words
By the strong mastery of his practiced will
Are overruled, the mounting blood betrays
An impulse in its secret spring, too deep
For his control.
SOUTHEY.
Joy? That word does not express it. No guiltless martyr of
circumstantial evidence, unjustly convicted and condemned to death, ever
felt such deep rapture on being at once vindicated and released as did
Valdimir Desparde on being delivered from the imputed dishonor, worse to
him than any other fate.
Yet through this deep rapture, suddenly sped a shaft of pain. This was
the thought of his lost love. The discovery had come too late to effect
a reconciliation and reunion with her! He would go back to England, and
vindicate himself to the satisfaction of every one, but—he could not
recover his lost bride! He had forsaken her on her wedding morning, and
without giving any explanation of his act! And she had naturally and
properly resented his conduct by casting him forth from her thoughts and
accepting the attentions of a worthier man, approved by her
grandparents. Thus she was lost to him forever!
As he thought of this, how much he deplored his fatal reticence with his
friends as to the cause of his flight!
But it was too late now for such regrets!
He had kept the secret from them for _their_ sakes! He had even allowed
his betrothed bride to think evil of him, that she might the sooner
forget him and recover her peace of mind.
This he had supposed to be the generous and noble course of conduct. And
in this course he had been encouraged by his only confidant, Brandon
Coyle!
Brandon Coyle?
At the recollection of that name a new difficulty occurred to the mind
of Desparde. Had Brandon Coyle—had that cherished and trusted friend of
many years consciously deceived and betrayed him? Or—had Coyle, being in
ignorance of his own and his sister’s early history, been also misled by
the strong circumstantial evidence that seemed to fix the shame on
Desparde and which had even convinced the last-mentioned unhappy man of
the fact?
He could not tell.
That Brandon and Aspirita Coyle were the children of that debasing
marriage between the quadroon and the English girl was now reduced to a
certainty; but how much Brandon knew or suspected of the fact was an
uncertainty. If he, Brandon, knew the secret of his own origin,
and—favored by the strong circumstantial evidence—had sought to shift
the shame upon the shoulders of his stainless friend, to deprive the
latter of home, country, friends, bride, honor, everything that man
holds dear—then was Brandon Coyle a villain of the basest order, worthy
of his degraded parentage.
But if he was _not_? If he had been kept in the same ignorance of his
early life as Valdimir Desparde had been kept in concerning his own? If
he had been really deceived by the strong circumstantial evidence into
believing the apparent facts, as he had represented them to Desparde?
Then indeed was Coyle to be deeply compassionated.
And then and there the magnanimous man, the true gentleman, resolved
upon one course—that in vindicating himself, he would guard, if
possible, the secret of Brandon Coyle, at least until he should have
proof that Coyle knew the truth, yet consciously and intentionally
deceived him.
That same night when his patient was asleep, Desparde wrote the first
letter to England under his real name since his flight. It was addressed
to Lord Beaudevere and announced the young man’s intended return by an
early steamer, to vindicate his own course and to re-establish himself
in the esteem of his friends.
Two days after this he left his now recovered patient in the care of the
landlady, drew his balance out of bank and left for New York, _en route_
for London.
He was leaving the breakfast-room of his hotel, on the morning after his
arrival, and was approaching the hat-stand in the hall to recover his
hat, gloves, and so forth, before walking out, when he perceived at the
news-stand beside it, a gentleman whose form and air seemed familiar to
him. The gentleman had his back turned, however, and was bending down
turning over the leaves of a newspaper.
Valdimir Desparde stopped suddenly and gazed at the stranger, who
presently lifted up his head and looked around.
There was an instantaneous mutual recognition, and the two men sprang
eagerly towards each other with outstretched hands and delighted eyes,
like friends meeting on a foreign shore, as they simultaneously
exclaimed:
“Fleming!”
“Desparde!”
“_You_ over here!”
“Deuced glad to see you, old fellow!”
“When did you leave the old country, Fleming?”
“Oh, dear, ages ago! or it seems ages to me! I left England about the
middle of last August! This is the middle of November! Only three months
since after all! Yet it seems to me three years! I have ‘done’ the great
Western world in this time, don’t you know? Seen the Rocky Mountains,
the vast prairies, the Father of Waters, the great lakes, Niagara Falls,
the St. Lawrence, the Thousand Islands, Tammany Hall, the State House in
Philadelphia, the Capitol in Washington, and—there, I think that
completes the list; but, then, one has to go over so much ground to see
so little in this new country.”
“The middle of August! Then it is some time since you left home; but you
have heard, in the interval?” inquired Desparde.
“Oh, yes, I hear every week. They are all well, I think—at least all
except the two in whom I feel a particular interest.”
“And who are they?” inquired Desparde. “But stop!” he exclaimed. “We are
in rather a public place for a conversation. Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, just left the table.”
“Are you disengaged?”
“Quite at your service, or at that of anybody else who has more business
with me than I have with all the world.”
“Then perhaps you will come with me to my room, where we can talk
freely.”
“Certainly! Lead the way!” said Fleming.
The two young men left the hall and ascended to the bachelor’s den on
the fourth floor, where the clerk of the house had thrust the future
peer of “England’s realm.”
“Well, Desparde,” began Adrian Fleming, as soon as they were seated,
“how is it with yourself? You have been in this country nearly six
months! How is it with you and with the wife and bairns?”
“Wife and bairns!” echoed Desparde, elevating his eyebrows.
“Yes, certainly! You are married, are you not?” demanded Adrian,
“Married? No, no more than _yourself_!” promptly replied Valdimir.
Adrian Fleming laughed harshly at the comparison Desparde had ignorantly
made.
“If you are married no more than _myself_—well, no matter. But come now,
old fellow, between friends, what have you done with the bonny Scotch
lassie and bairnie who accompanied you in your flight?” inquired Fleming
in a chaffing tone.
“Scotch lassie? Bairnie?” repeated Desparde, in perplexity. “Upon my
honor, Fleming, I do not know to what you refer?”
“Oh! then,” replied Adrian, in a more serious tone, “I refer, of course,
to the rumor of your marriage to a young woman of humble parentage as
the true cause of your leaving England so suddenly.”
“WHAT!” exclaimed the young exile. “Was such a rumor as THAT current in
England?”
“Most certainly it was circulated and accepted there as the truth. But I
infer from your tone and manner that it was false?”
“As false as anything ever invented by the father of lies! _Who_ set
this report in circulation, may I ask?” demanded Desparde.
“I—_think_ it was your friend, Mr. Brandon Coyle,” replied Fleming after
some hesitation.
“Brandon Coyle!” exclaimed Valdimir Desparde. “Impossible! He was in my
confidence. He knew the true reason of my flight. He knew it from the
first. He knew it was _not_ the reason that you say rumor has assigned.”
“_Indeed!_ Then I must have been mistaken in supposing it to have been
Coyle,” answered Fleming, slowly and thoughtfully.
“But,” gravely inquired Desparde, “what could have suggested to you the
idea that Brandon Coyle started this false report?”
“Now that is just what I am trying to remember. But it was three months
ago, you see. Ah! now I have it! I had heard the rumor without having
heard its origin, until I reached London on my way to Southampton to
take the steamer. I stopped a few days in London, and while there called
on the Coyles, who were then in town. I also invited Miss Coyle to ride
with me in the Park. And in the course of that ride the subject of your
absence came up, and Miss Coyle told me that her brother had received a
letter from you, confessing your marriage to a lassie of low degree, and
giving _that_ as a reason for your sudden self-expatriation.”
“Aspirita Coyle told you _that_?” fiercely demanded Valdimir.
“She did indeed. Moreover, she added that she had coaxed the letter from
her brother’s possession and inclosed it in one from herself to Lady
Arielle Montjoie, who was then at Skol. She said that she had done this
from a sense of duty.”
Valdimir Desparde uttered a fierce, half suppressed oath, and made a
gesture of desperation.
“I must infer, then, that you never wrote such a letter?”
“Never! If such a letter as you describe was inclosed to Lady Arielle,
it was a base forgery!”
“Who could have been the forger?” mused Fleming.
“_Ah, who?_” bitterly inquired Desparde, as the conviction of his false
friend’s duplicity settled on his mind. “I tell you, Fleming, that I
have been not only the victim of overwhelming circumstantial evidence,
but of villainous machinations by those who have attempted to turn that
evidence to their own profit by my ruin.”
“‘Circumstantial evidence?’ _What_ circumstantial evidence, for Heaven’s
sake?” demanded Fleming, slowly, and with great perplexity.
“If you have time to listen I will tell you. My story will explain my
sudden and seemingly inexcusable departure from England on the very eve
of my marriage; but I warn you that it is not a short one. Have you time
for it?”
“‘Time for it!’” echoed Fleming. “Certainly I have. If I had not I would
make time. Go on.”
As briefly as was practicable, however, Valdimir Desparde told the story
of the cruel deception that had been practiced upon him, with all the
circumstantial evidence that had supported the imposition, and that had
driven him a fugitive from his native land.
“By Jove, Desparde! What I wonder at the most, in all this wonderful
story, is just _yourself_!” exclaimed Adrian Fleming, staring at his
companion.
“But why at me?” inquired the latter, in perplexity.
“Ah, Desparde! You have been the victim of your own easy credulity, no
less than of circumstantial evidence manipulated by designing villainy.”
“Yet there _is_ something mysterious, and therefore suspicious, in the
guarded secrecy that surrounds the early life of my sister and myself,”
said Valdimir, sadly.
“Well! but old Beaudevere, who is the very soul of honor and chivalry—a
very Don Quixote of England in the nineteenth century—told you himself
that no reproach to any of you lurked in this secrecy—and therefore, of
course, there cannot be.”
“No, I trust and believe that there cannot be any reproach, since he
declares that there is not.”
“But for all that I should insist upon having that secret out of the old
gentleman before effecting a reconciliation with Lady Arielle,” added
Fleming.
“‘A reconciliation with Lady Arielle?’” mournfully echoed Valdimir.
“Have I not told you that she is lost to me forever?”
“Stuff and nonsense! I don’t believe it!” roughly replied Fleming.
“But—but she is on the very brink of marriage with a gentleman—”
“‘Every way worthy of her ladyship and highly approved by her
grandparents!’ Is not that the formula?”
“Yes, or something like it,” sighed Valdimir.
“What is your authority for that story?” abruptly demanded Fleming.
Desparde started. Brandon Coyle was his authority for that story, and
after a short hesitation he said so.
“Stuff and nonsense. Arielle will forgive you as soon as she hears your
explanation, if she has not forgiven you already, which is the more
likely! Why, man! when I left England three months ago she was reported
to be in a decline—”
Here Valdimir started and changed color.
“Do not be alarmed! _You_ are the fortunate physician destined to
restore her to health! She was actually pining away and dying for love,
like an old-fashioned maiden in an old-fashioned ballad! You can soon
cure her of that malady,” laughed young Fleming.
“Is that true? Oh, Heaven, can that be true?” muttered Valdimir, in low,
earnest tones.
“_I_ tell you that it is true, and I hope I am better authority than Mr.
Brandon Coyle! Desparde, when do you sail for England?”
“To-morrow, by the _Colorado_. And you, Fleming?”
“To England? Ah, Heaven knows! I sail by the first Southern Pacific
steamer for Rio Janeiro. I shall not probably see the ‘cliffs of Albion’
for many years to come,” answered Adrian.
“But the fair Antoinette? How will she like this long absence?” inquired
Desparde, who, at the time of his own flight from England, believed as
many others did, that Adrian was the accepted suitor of Miss Deloraine,
of Deloraine Park.
The face of young Fleming suddenly clouded over.
“Ah! do not mention her!” he said, with a deep sigh.
“How, is the engagement broken off?” Valdimir impulsively inquired, and
then he immediately regretted his hasty question.
“The engagement never existed, except in the imagination of gossips. It
is worse than that, Desparde! Antoinette Deloraine, the young and
beautiful heiress of an estate worth fifty thousand pounds a year, with
everything to make this life delightful and attractive, is dying—”
“Dying! Gracious Heaven, Fleming, how you shock me! Dying!”
“Yes; slowly, but _surely_!”
“Of what malady, for mercy’s sake?”
“Of that hereditary decline that carried off her mother and her father!
How could she escape? It is a painful subject, Desparde! But you may
remember that when you asked me if all our friends in England were in
good health when I last heard from home, I told you that all were well
except two in whom I felt the greatest interest, meaning Lady Arielle
Montjoie and Miss Deloraine. But you can be consoled in knowing that
Lady Arielle’s malady is not of the fatal type of her friend’s illness.”
After this the friends walked out together and spent the forenoon in
visiting various public places of interest about the metropolis.
The next morning Valdimir embarked on board the steamship _Colorado_,
bound for Liverpool.
Adrian Fleming went with his friend to see him off, and secured a
promise from him that at an early day after his arrival in England he
would go down to Fleming Chase and call upon Sir Adrian and Lady
Fleming.
“For you know, dear old boy, that no amount of letters from their
good-for-nothing son will give them half so much satisfaction, as a
visit from a friend who has lately interviewed him,” added the young
man.
Valdimir Desparde gave the required promise, and the friends parted five
minutes before the ship sailed.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]