A REVELATION.
If any thing could have added to the misery of Edith and her general
despondency, it would have been the revelations of Miss Fortescue. It
had certainly been bad enough to recall the treachery of a false friend;
but the facts as just revealed went far beyond what she had imagined.
They revealed such a long course of persistent deceit, and showed that
she had been subject to such manifold, long-sustained, and comprehensive
lying, that she began to lose faith in human nature. Whom now could she
believe? Could she venture to put confidence in this confession of Miss
Fortescue? Was that her real name, and was this her real story, or was
it all some new piece of acting, contrived by this all-accomplished
actor for the sake of dragging her down to deeper abysses of woe? She
felt herself to be surrounded by remorseless enemies, all of whom were
plotting against her, and in whose hearts there was no possibility of
pity or remorse. Wiggins, the archenemy, was acting a part which was
mysterious just now, but which nevertheless, she felt sure, was aimed at
her very life. Mrs. Dunbar, she knew, was more open in the manifestation
of her feelings, for she had taken up the cause of the murdered man with
a warmth and vindictive zeal that showed Edith plainly what she might
expect from her. Her only friend, Miss Plympton, was still lost to her;
and her illness seemed probable, since, if it were not so, she would not
keep aloof from her at such a moment as this. Hopeless as she had been
of late, she now found that there were depths of despair below those in
which she had thus far been--“in the lowest deep, a lower deep.”
[Illustration: “HE SAW HER HEAD FALL”]
Such were her thoughts and feelings through the remainder of that day
and through the following night. But little sleep came to her. The
future stood before her without one ray of light to shine through its
appalling gloom. On the next day her despair seemed even greater; her
faculties seemed benumbed, and a dull apathy began to settle down over
her soul.
From this state of mind she was roused by the opening of the door and
the entrance of a visitor. Turning round, she saw Wiggins.
This was the first time that she had seen him since she left Dalton
Hall, and in spite of that stolid and apathetic indifference which had
come to her, she could not help being struck by the change which had
come over him. His face seemed whiter, his hair grayer, his form more
bent; his footsteps were feeble and uncertain; he leaned heavily upon
his walking-stick; and in the glance that he turned toward her there was
untold sympathy and compassion, together with a timid supplication that
was unlike any thing which she had seen in him before.
Edith neither said any thing nor did any thing. She looked at him with
dull indifference. She did not move. The thought came to her that this
was merely another move in that great game of treachery and fraud to
which she had been a victim; that here was the archtraitor, the
instigator of all the lesser movements, who was coming to her in order
to carry out some necessary part.
Wiggins sat down wearily upon one of the rude chairs of the scantily
furnished room, and after a brief silence, looking at her sadly, began.
“I know,” said he, “how you misunderstand me, and how unwelcome I must
be; but I had to come, so as to assure you that I hope to find this man
who is missing. I--I hope to do so before the--the trial. I have been
searching all along, but without success--thus far. I wish to assure you
that I have found out a way by which you--will be saved. And if you
believe me, I trust that you will--try--to--cherish more hope than you
appear to be doing.”
He paused.
Edith said nothing at all. She was silent partly out of apathy, and
partly from a determination to give him no satisfaction, for she felt
that any words of hers, no matter how simple, might be distorted and
used against her.
Wiggins looked at her with imploring earnestness, and seemed to wait for
her to say something. But finding her silent, he went on:
“Will you let me ask you one question? and forgive me for asking it;
but it is of some importance to--to me--and to you. It is this:
Did--did you see him at all--that night?”
“I have been warned,” replied Edith, in a dull, cold tone, “to say
nothing, and I intend to say nothing.”
Wiggins sighed.
“To say nothing,” said he, “is not always wise. I once knew a man who
was charged with terrible crimes--crimes of which he was incapable. He
was innocent, utterly. Not only innocent, indeed, but he had fallen
under this suspicion, and had become the object of this charge, simply
on account of his active efforts to save a guilty friend from ruin. His
friend was the guilty one, and his friend was also his sister's husband;
and this man had gone to try and save his friend, when he himself was
arrested for that friend's crimes.”
Wiggins did not look at Edith; his eyes were downcast. He spoke in a
tone that seemed more like a soliloquy than any thing else. It was a
tone, however, which, though low, was yet tremulous with ill-suppressed
agitation.
“He was accused,” continued Wiggins, “and if he had spoken and told what
he knew, he might have saved his life. But if he had done this he would
have had to become a witness, and stood up in court and say that which
would ruin his friend. And so he could not speak. His lips were sealed.
To speak would have been to inform against his friend. How could he do
that? It was impossible. Yet some may think--you may think--that this
man did wrong in allowing himself to be put in this false position. You
may say that he had more than himself to consider--he had his family,
his name, his--his wife, his child!
“Yes,” resumed Wiggins, after a long pause, “this is all true, and he
did consider them, all--all--all! He did not trifle with his family name
and honor, but it was rather on account of the pride which he took in
these that he kept his silence. He was conscious of his perfect
innocence. He could not think it possible that such charges could be
carried out against one like himself. He believed implicitly in the
justice of the courts of his country. He thought that in a fair trial
the innocent could not possibly be proclaimed guilty. More than all, he
thought that his proud name, his stainless character, and even his
wealth and position, would have shown the world that the charges were
simply impossible. He thought that all men would have seen that for him
to have done such things would involve insanity.”
As Wiggins said this his voice grew more earnest and animated. He looked
at Edith with his solemn eyes, and seemed as though he was pleading with
her the cause of his friend--as though he was trying to show her how it
had happened that the father had dishonored the name which the child
must bear--as though he was justifying to the daughter, Edith Dalton,
the acts of the father, Frederick Dalton.
“So he bore it all with perfect calmness,” continued Wiggins, “and had
no doubt that he would be acquitted, and thought that thus he would at
least be able, without much suffering, to save his friend from ruin most
terrific--from the condemnation of the courts and the fate of a felon.”
Wiggins paused once more for some time. He was looking at Edith. He had
expected some remark, but she had made none. In fact, she had regarded
all this as a new trick of Wiggins--a transparent one too--the aim of
which was to win her confidence by thus pretending to vindicate her
father. He had already tried to work on her in that way, and had failed;
and on this occasion he met with the same failure.
“There is no occasion for you to be silent, I think,” said Wiggins,
turning from the subject to the situation of Edith. “You have no friend
at stake; you will endanger no one, and save yourself, by telling
whether you are innocent or not.”
These last words roused Edith. It was an allusion to her possible guilt.
She determined to bring the interview to a close. She was tired of this
man and his attempts to deceive her. It was painful to see through all
this hypocrisy and perfidy at the very moment when they were being used
against herself.
She looked at him with a stony gaze, and spoke in low, cold tones as she
addressed him. “This is all useless. I am on my guard. Why you come here
I do not know. Of course you wish to entrap me into saying something,
so that you may use my words against me at the trial. You ask me if I
saw this man on that night. You ask me if I am innocent. You well know
that I am innocent. You, and you only, know who saw him last on that
night; for as I believe in my own existence, so I believe, and affirm to
your face, that this Leon Dudleigh was murdered by you, and you only!”
He looked at her fixedly as she said this, returning her stony gaze with
a mournful look--a pitying look, full of infinite sadness and
tenderness. He raised his hand deprecatingly, but said nothing until she
had uttered those last words.
“Stop!” he said, in a low voice--“stay! I can not bear it.”
He rose from his seat and came close to her. He leaned upon his stick
heavily, and looked at her with eyes full of that same strange,
inexplicable tenderness and compassion. Her eyes seemed fascinated by
his, and in her mind there arose a strange bewilderment, an expectation
of something she knew not what.
“Edith,” said he, in a sweet and gentle voice, full of tender
melancholy--“Edith, it would be sin in me to let you any longer heap up
matter for future remorse; and even though I go against the bright hope
of my life in saying this now, yet I must. Edith--”
He paused, looking at her, while she regarded him with awful eyes.
“Edith!” he said again--“my--my--child!”
There were tears in his eyes now, and there was on his face a look of
unutterable love and unspeakable pity and forgiveness. He reached out
his hand and placed it tenderly upon her head.
“Edith,” he said again, “my child, you will never say these things
again. I--I do not deserve them. I--am your--your father, Edith!”
At these words a convulsive shudder passed through Edith. He felt her
frail form tremble, he saw her head fall, and heard a low sob that
seemed torn from her.
She needed no more words than these. In an instant she saw it all; and
though bewildered, she did not for a moment doubt his words. But her
whole being was overwhelmed by a sudden and a sharp agony of remorse;
for she had accustomed herself to hate this man, and the irrepressible
tokens of a father's love she had regarded as hypocrisy. She had never
failed to heap upon that reverend head the deepest scorn, contumely, and
insult. But a moment before she had hurled at him a terrible accusation.
At him! At whom? At the man whose mournful destiny it had been all along
to suffer for the sins of others; and she it was who had flung upon him
an additional burden of grief.
But with all her remorse there were other feelings--a shrinking sense of
terror, a recoil from this sudden discovery as from something abhorrent.
This her father! That father's face and form had been stamped in her
memory. For years, as she had lived in the hope of seeing him, she had
quickened her love for him and fed her hopes from his portrait. But how
different was this one! What a frightful change from the father that
lived in her memory! The one was a young man in the flush and pride of
life and strength--the other a woe-worn, grief-stricken sufferer, with
reverend head, bowed form, and trembling limbs. Besides, she had long
regarded him as dead; and to see this man was like looking on one who
had risen from the dead.
In an instant, however, all was plain, and together with the discovery
there came the pangs of remorse and terror and anguish. She could
understand all. He, the escaped convict, had come to England, and was
supposed to be dead. He had lived, under a false name, a life of
constant and vigilant terror. He kept his secret from all the world. Oh,
if he had only told her! Now the letter of Miss Plympton was all plain,
and she wondered how she had been so blind.
“Oh!” she moaned, in a scarce audible voice, “why did you not tell me?”
“Oh, Edith darling! my child! my only love!” murmured Frederick Dalton,
bending low over her, and infolding her trembling frame in his own
trembling arms; “my sweet daughter, if you could only have known how I
yearned over you! But I delayed to tell you. It was the one sweet hope
of my life to redeem my name from its foul stain, and then declare
myself. I wanted you to get your father back as he had left you, without
this abhorrent crime laid to his charge. I did wrong not to trust you.
It was a bitter, bitter error. But I had so set my heart on it. It was
all for your sake, Edith--all, darling, for your sake!”
Edith could bear no more. Every one of these words was a fresh stab to
her remorseful heart--every tone showed to her the depth of love that
lay in that father's heart, and revealed to her the suffering that she
must have caused. It was too much; and with a deep groan she sank away
from his arms upon the floor. She clasped his knees--she did not dare to
look up. She wished only to be a suppliant. He himself had prophesied
this. His terrible warnings sounded even now in her ears. She had only
one thought--to humble herself in the dust before that injured father.
Dalton tried to raise her up.
“My darling!” he cried, “my child! you must not--you will break my
heart!”
“Oh,” moaned Edith, “if it is not already broken, how can you ever
forgive me?--how can you call me your child?”
“My child! my child!” said Dalton. “It was for you that I lived. If it
had not been for the thought of you, I should have died long since. It
was for your sake that I came home. It is for you only that I live now.
There is nothing for me to forgive. Look up at me. Let me see your
darling face. Let me hear you say one word--only one word--the word that
I have hungered and thirsted to hear. Call me father.”
“Father! oh, father! dear father!” burst forth Edith, clinging to him
with convulsive energy, and weeping bitterly.
“Oh, my darling!” said Dalton, “I was to blame. How could you have borne
what I expected you to bear, when I would not give you my confidence? Do
not let us speak of forgiveness. You loved your father all the time, and
you thought that I was his enemy and yours.”
Gradually Edith became calmer, and her calmness was increased by the
discovery that her father was painfully weak and exhausted. He had been
overwhelmed by the emotions which this interview had called forth. He
now sat gazing at her with speechless love, holding her hands in his,
but his breath came and went rapidly, and there was a feverish
tremulousness in his voice and a flush on his pale cheeks which alarmed
her. She tried to lessen his agitation by talking about her own
prospects, but Dalton did not wish to.
“Not now, daughter,” he said. “I will hear it all some other time. I am
too weary, Let me only look at your dear face, and hear you call me by
that sweet name, and feel my child's hands in mine. That will be bliss
enough for this day. Another time we will speak about the--the situation
that you are in.”
As he was thus agitated, Edith was forced to refrain from asking him a
thousand things which she was longing to know. She wished to learn how
he had escaped, how he had made it to be believed that he was dead, and
whether he was in any present danger. But all this she had to postpone.
She had also to postpone her knowledge of that great secret--the secret
that had baffled her, and which he had preserved inviolable through all
these years. She now saw that her suspicions of the man “John Wiggins”
must have been unfounded, and indeed the personality of “Wiggins” became
a complete puzzle to her.
He bade her a tender adieu, promising to come early on the following
day.
But on the following day there were no signs of him. Edith waited in
terrible impatience, which finally deepened into alarm as his coming was
still delayed. She had known so much of sorrow that she had learned to
look for it, and began to expect some new calamity. Here, where she had
found her father, where she had received his forgiveness for that which
would never cease to cause remorse to herself, here, in this moment of
respite from despair, she saw the black prospect of renewed misery. It
was as though she had found him for a moment, only to lose him forever.
Toward evening a note was sent to her. She tore it open. It was from
Mrs. Dunbar, and informed her that her father was quite ill, and was
unable to visit her, but hoped that he might recover.
After that several days passed, and she heard nothing. At length another
note came informing her that her father had been dangerously ill, but
was now convalescent.
Other days passed, and Edith heard regularly. Her father was growing
steadily better. On one of these notes he had written his name with a
trembling hand.
And so amidst these fresh sorrows, and with her feelings ever
alternating between hope and despair, Edith lingered on through the time
that intervened until the day of the trial.
* * * * *