"DEAR SIR,
"I regret that your courtesy to me that stormy night should have
led to misapprehension. I the more regret it that I am not able
to comply with your request to come forward. At present that is
impossible. The truth is, I am, and have been for some months now,
lying under a cloud, partly through my own credulous fault, chiefly
through the designing faults of another man, and I dare not show
myself. It may be many more months yet before I am cleared: that I
shall be, in time, there exists no doubt, and I shall then gladly
bear personal testimony to the fact that it was I myself who was
with you. Meanwhile, perhaps the following statement will suffice:
which I declare upon my honour to be true.
"I was hiding at Crewe, when I received a letter from a friend at
Evesham, bidding me go to him without delay. I had no scruple in
complying, not being known at all in Worcestershire, and I started
by one of the Liverpool trains. I had a portmanteau with me
containing papers principally, and this I missed on arriving at
Birmingham. The looking for it caused me to lose the Worcester
train, but I went on by the next. Upon getting out there, I
addressed the first person I saw after crossing the line--yourself.
I inquired of you when the next train would start for Evesham. Not
for two hours, you told me: so I set off to walk, after getting
some light refreshment. Barely had I left Worcester when, through
the dusk of evening, I thought I saw that the road before me
branched off two ways. I did not know which to take, and ventured
to stop a gig, then bowling up behind me, to ask. As you answered
me I recognized you for the gentleman to whom I had spoken at the
station. You offered to take me a few miles on my road, and I got
into the gig. I found that you would have to go out of your way to
do this, and I expressed concern; you laughed my apologies off,
saying you should probably have chosen the way in any case, as it
was more sheltered. You drove me as far as your road lay, told me
that after I got out of the cross-lanes my way would be a straight
one, and I left you with hearty thanks--which I repeat now. I may
as well tell you that I reached Evesham without mishap--in process
of time. The storm was so bad, the wind so fierce, that I was fain
to turn out of the lane close upon leaving you, and shelter myself
for an hour or two under a hay-rick, hoping it would abate. How it
was possible for mortal man to see enough of me that night in your
gig to mistake me for some one else, I am at a loss to understand.
I remember that carriage passing us in the narrow line, the people
in it shouted out to you: it must have been they, I conclude, who
mistook me, for I do not think we saw another soul. You are at full
liberty to show them this letter: but I must ask you not to make it
absolutely public. I have purposely elaborated its details. I
repeat my sacred declaration that every word of it is true--and I
heartily regret that I cannot yet testify to it personally.
"R. W."
This letter set the matter at rest. We never doubted that it was
genuine, or anything but a plain narrative of absolute facts. But the
one great question remained--where was William Brook?
It was not answered. The disappearance, which had been a mystery at the
beginning, seemed likely to remain a mystery to the end.
* * * * *
Another autumn had come round. Ellin Delorane, feeble now, sat in the
church-porch, the graveyard lying around her under the hot September
sun, soon herself to be laid there. Chancing to take that way round from
buying some figs at Salmon's for Hugh and Lena, I saw her, and dashed up
the churchyard path.
"You seem to have set up a love for this lively spot, Ellin! You were
sitting here the last time I passed by."
"The sun is hot yet, and I get tired, so I come across here for a rest
when out this way," she answered, a sweet smile on her wan face and a
hectic on her thin cheeks. "Won't you stay with me for a little while,
Johnny?"
"Are you better, Ellin?" I asked, taking my place on the opposite bench,
which brought my knees near to hers, for the porch was not much more
than big enough for a coffin to pass through.
She gently shook her head as she glanced across at me, a steadfast look
in her sad brown eyes. "Don't you see how it is, Johnny? That I shall
never be better in this world?"
"Your weakness may take a turn, Ellin; it may indeed. And--_he_ may come
back yet."
"He will never come back: rely upon that," she quietly said. "He is
waiting for me on the Eternal shores."
Her gaze went out afar, over the gravestones and the green meadows
beyond, almost (one might fancy) into the blue skies, as if she could
see those shores in the distant horizon.
"Is it well to lose hope, Eileen mavourneen?"
"The hope of his returning died out long ago," she answered. "Those
dreams that visited me so strangely last year, night after night, night
after night, seemed to take _that_ from me. Perhaps they came to do it.
You remember them, Johnny?"
"I cannot think, Ellin, how you could put faith in a parcel of dreams!"
"It was not in the dreams I put faith--exactly. It was in the mysterious
influence--I hope I don't speak profanely--which caused me to have the
dreams. A silent, undetected influence that I understood not and never
grasped--but it was there. Curious dreams they were," she added, after
a pause; "curious that they should have come to me. William was always
lost, and I, with others, was always searching for him--and never, never
found him. They lasted, Johnny, for weeks and months; and almost from
the time of their first setting-in, the impression, that I should never
see him again, lay latent in my heart."
"Do they visit you still?"
"No. At least, they have changed in character. Ever since the night that
he seems to have been really lost, the 19th of October. How you look at
me, Johnny!"
"You speak so strangely."
"The subject is strange. I was at Worcester, you know, at Mary West's,
and we thought he had come. That night I had the pleasantest dream. We
were no longer seeking for him; all the anxiety, the distress of that
was gone. We saw him; he seemed to be with us--though yet at a distance.
When I awoke, I said in my happiness, 'Ah, those sad dreams will visit
me no more, now he is found.' I thought he was, you see. Since then,
though the dreams continue, he is never lost in them. I see him always;
we are often talking, though we are never very close together. I will be
indoors, perhaps, and he outside in the garden; or maybe I am toiling up
a steep hill and he stands higher up. I seem to be _always going towards
him_ and he to be waiting for me. And though I never quite reach him,
they are happy dreams. It will not be very long first now."