The Story is Told
Elsie Banks had a small and select audience in Mrs. Bonner's room
upstairs. She had come from New York--or from California, strictly
speaking--to furnish the narrative which was to set Rosalie Gray's mind
at rest forever-more. It was not a pleasant task; it was not an easy
sacrifice for this spirited girl who had known luxury all her life. Her
spellbound hearers were Mrs. Bonner and Edith, Wicker Bonner, Anderson
Crow, Rosalie, and John E. Barnes, who, far from being a captive of the
law, was now Miss Gray's attorney, retained some hours before by his
former captor.
"I discharge you, sir," Anderson had said, after hearing Miss Bank's
statement in the roadway. "You are no longer a prisoner. Have you
anything to say, sir?"
"Nothing, Mr. Crow, except to offer my legal services to you and your
ward in this extraordinary matter. Put the matter in my hands, sir, and
she shall soon come into her own, thanks to this young lady. I may add
that, as I am not in the habit of soliciting clients, it is not my
intention in this instance to exact a fee from your ward. My services
are quite free, given in return, Mr. Crow, for the magnanimous way in
which you have taken me into your confidence ever since I have known
you. It is an honour to have been arrested by you; truthfully it is no
disgrace."
In the privacy of Mrs. Bonner's sitting-room, Elsie Banks, dry-eyed and
bitter, told the story of her life. I cannot tell it as she did, for she
was able to bring tears to the eyes of her listeners. It is only for me
to relate the bare facts, putting them into her words as closely as
possible. Rosalie Gray, faint with astonishment and incredulity, a lump
in her throat that would not go down, and tears in her eyes, leaned back
in an easy-chair and watched her unhappy friend.
"I shall provide Mr. Barnes with proof of everything I say," said Miss
Banks. "There can be no difficulty, Rosalie dear, in confirming all that
I have to tell. If you will permit me to relate the story without
interruption and afterward let me go my way without either pity or
contempt, I shall be, oh, so grateful to you all--especially to you,
dear Rosalie. Believe me I love you with my whole soul.
"I have come to you voluntarily, and my mother, who is in Tinkletown, in
resigning herself to the calls of conscience, is now happier than she
has ever been before. A more powerful influence than her own will or her
own honour, an influence that was evil to the core, inspired her to
countenance this awful wrong. It also checkmated every good impulse she
may have had to undo it in after years. That influence came from Oswald
Banks, a base monster to whom my mother was married when I was a year
old. My mother was the daughter of Lord Abbott Brace, but married my own
father, George Stuart, who was a brilliant but radical newspaper writer
in London, against her father's wish. For this he cast her off and
disinherited her. Grandfather hated him and his views, and he could not
forgive my mother even after my father died, which was two years after
their marriage.
"Lord Richard Brace, my mother's only brother, married the daughter of
the Duchess of B----. You, Rosalie, are Lady Rosalie Brace of Brace
Hall, W--shire, England, the true granddaughter of General Lord Abbott
Brace, one of the noblest and richest men of his day. Please let me go
on; I cannot endure the interruptions. The absolute, unalterable proof
of what I say shall be established through the confession of my own
mother, in whose possession lies every document necessary to give back
to you that which she would have given to me.
"Your mother died a few weeks after you were born, and Sir Richard, who
loved my mother in the face of his father's displeasure, placed you in
her care, while he rushed off, heart-broken, to find solace in Egypt. It
is said that he hated you because you were the cause of her death. On
the day after your birth, old Lord Brace changed his will and bequeathed
a vast amount of unentailed property to you, to be held in trust by your
father until you were twenty-one years of age. I was almost two years
old at the time, and the old man, unexpectedly compassionate, inserted a
provision which, in the event that you were to die before that time,
gave all this money to me on my twenty-first birthday. The interest on
this money, amounting to five thousand pounds annually, was to go to
you regularly, in one case, or to me, in the other. Oswald Banks was an
American, whom my mother had met in London several years prior to her
first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania
manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond
conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward.
"Well, it was he who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get
possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into
acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured
wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, the house
in which we lived was burned to the ground, the inmates narrowly
escaping. So narrow was the escape, in fact, that you were said to have
been left behind in the confusion, and the world was told, the next day,
that the granddaughter of Lord Brace had been destroyed by the flames.
"The truth, however, was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so
far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you
removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier,
secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid. My mother was
responsible for this. She would not listen to his awful plan to leave
you in the house. But you might just as well have died. No one was the
wiser and you were given up as lost. A week later, my mother and Mr.
Banks started for America. You and I were with them, but you went as the
daughter of a maid-servant--Ellen Hayes.
"This is the story as my mother has told it to me after all these years.
My stepfather's plan, of course, was to place you where you could never
be found, and then to see to it that our grandfather did not succeed in
changing his will. Moreover, he was bound and determined that he himself
should be named as trustee--when the fortune came over at Lord Brace's
death. That part of it turned out precisely as he had calculated. Let me
go on a few months in advance of my story. Lord Brace died, and the will
was properly probated and the provisions carried out. Brace Hall and the
estates went to your father and the bequest came to me, for you were
considered dead. My stepfather was made trustee. He gave bond in England
and America, I believe. In any event, the fortune was to be mine when I
reached the age of twenty-one, but each year the income, nearly
twenty-five thousand dollars, was to be paid to my stepfather as
trustee, to be safely invested by him. My mother's name was not
mentioned in the document, except once, to identify me as the
beneficiary. I can only add to this phase of the hateful conspiracy,
that for nineteen years my stepfather received this income, and that he
used it to establish his own fortune. By investing what was supposed to
be my money, he has won his own way to wealth.
"Mr. Banks decided that the operations were safest from this side of the
Atlantic. He and my mother took up their residence in New York, and it
has been their home ever since. He spent the first half year after your
suspected death in London, solely for the purpose of establishing
himself in Lord Brace's favour. Within a year after the death of Lord
Brace your father was killed by a poacher on the estate. He had but
lately returned from Egypt, and was in full control of the lands and
property attached to Brace Hall. If my stepfather had designs upon Brace
Hall, they failed, for the lands and the title went at once to your
father's cousin, Sir Harry Brace, the present lord.
"So much for the conditions in England then and now. I now return to
that part of the story which most interests and concerns you. My poor
mother was compelled, within a fortnight after we landed in New York, to
give up the dangerous infant who was always to hang like a cloud between
fortune and honour. The maid-servant was paid well for her silence. By
the way, she died mysteriously soon after coming to America, but not
before giving to my mother a signed paper setting forth clearly every
detail in so far as it bore upon her connection with the hateful
transaction. Conscience was forever at work in my mother's heart; honour
was constantly struggling to the surface, only to be held back by fear
of and loyalty to the man she loved.
"It was decided that the most humane way to put you out of existence was
to leave you on the doorstep of some kindly disposed person, far from
New York. My stepfather and my mother deliberately set forth on this
so-called mission of mercy. They came north, and by chance, fell in with
a resident of Boggs City while in the station at Albany. They were
debating which way to turn for the next step. My mother was firm in the
resolve that you should be left in the care of honest, reliable,
tender-hearted people, who would not abuse the trust she was to impose.
The Boggs City man said he had been in Albany to see about a bill in the
legislature, which was to provide for the erection of a monument in
Tinkletown--where a Revolutionary battle had been fought. It was he who
spoke of Anderson Crow, and it was his stories of your goodness and
generosity, Mr. Crow, that caused them to select you as the man who was
to have Rosalie, and, with her, the sum of one thousand dollars a year
for your trouble and her needs.
"My mother's description of that stormy night in February, more than
twenty-one years ago, is the most pitiful thing I have ever listened to.
Together they made their way to Tinkletown, hiring a vehicle in Boggs
City for the purpose. Mr. Banks left the basket on your porch while
mother stood far down the street and waited for him, half frozen and
heartsick. Then they hurried out of town and were soon safely on their
way to New York. It was while my stepfather was in London, later on,
that mother came up to see Rosalie and make that memorable first payment
to Mr. Crow. How it went on for years, you all know. It was my
stepfather's cleverness that made it so impossible to learn the source
from which the mysterious money came.
"We travelled constantly, always finding new places of interest in which
my mother's conscience could be eased by contact with beauty and
excitement. Gradually she became hardened to the conditions, for, after
all, was it not her own child who was to be enriched by the theft and
the deception? Mr. Banks constantly forced that fact in upon her
mother-love and her vanity. Through it all, however, you were never
neglected nor forgotten. My mother had your welfare always in mind. It
was she who saw that you and I were placed at the same school in New
York, and it was she who saw that your training in a way was as good as
it could possibly be without exciting risk.
"Of course, I knew nothing of all this. I was rolling in wealth and
luxury, but not in happiness. Instinctively I loathed my stepfather. He
was hard, cruel, unreasonable. It was because of him that I left school
and afterward sought to earn my own living. You know, Rosalie, how Tom
Reddon came into my life. He was the son of William Reddon, my
stepfather's business partner, who had charge of the Western branch of
the concern in Chicago. We lived in Chicago for several years,
establishing the business. Mr. Banks was until recently president of the
Banks & Reddon Iron Works. Last year, you doubtless know, the plant was
sold to the great combine and the old company passed out of existence.
This act was the result of a demand from England that the trust under
which he served be closed and struck from the records. It was his plan
to settle the matter, turn the inheritance over to me according to law,
and then impose upon my inexperience for all time to come. The money,
while mine literally, was to be his in point of possession.
"But he had reckoned without the son of his partner. Tom Reddon in some
way learned the secret, and he was compelled to admit the young man into
all of his plans. This came about some three years ago, while I was in
school. I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago. He won my love. I cannot deny
it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate
again. He was even more despicable than my stepfather. Without the
faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance Rosalie
could have had for restitution. Time began to prove to me that he was
not the man I thought him to be. His nature revealed itself; and I found
I could not marry him. Besides, my mother was beginning to repent. She
awoke from her stupor of indifference and strove in every way to
circumvent the plot of the two conspirators, so far as I was concerned.
The strain told on her at last, and we went to California soon after my
ridiculous flight from Tinkletown last winter. It was not until after
that adventure that I began to see deep into the wretched soul of Tom
Reddon.
"Then came the most villainous part of the whole conspiracy. Reddon,
knowing full well that exposure was possible at any time, urged my
stepfather to have you kidnaped and hurried off to some part of the
world where you could never be found. Even Reddon did not have the
courage to kill you. Neither had the heart to commit actual murder. It
was while we were at Colonel Randall's place that the abduction took
place, you remember. Mr. Banks and Tom Reddon had engaged their men in
New York. These desperadoes came to Boggs City while Tom was here to
watch their operations. All the time Mr. Crow was chasing us down
Reddon was laughing in his sleeve, for he knew what was to happen during
the marshal's absence. You know how successfully he managed the job. It
was my stepfather's fault that it did not succeed.
"My mother, down in New York, driven to the last extreme, had finally
turned on him and demanded that he make restitution to Rosalie Gray, as
we had come to know her. Of course, there was a scene and almost a
catastrophe. He was so worried over the position she was taking, that he
failed to carry out his part of the plans, which were to banish Rosalie
forever from this country. You were to have been taken to Paris, dear,
and kept forever in one of those awful sanitoriums. They are worse than
the grave. In the meantime, the delay gave Mr. Bonner a chance to rescue
you from the kidnapers.
"Shortly after reaching New York I quarrelled with Thomas Reddon, and my
mother and I fled to California. He followed us and sought a
reconciliation. I loathed him so much by this time, that I appealed to
my mother. It was then that she told me this miserable story, and that
is why we are in Tinkletown to-day. We learned in some way of the plot
to kidnap you and to place you where you could not be found. The inhuman
scheme of my stepfather and his adviser was to have my mother declared
insane and confined in an asylum, where her truthful utterances could
never be heard by the world, or if they were, as the ravings of a mad
woman.
"The day that we reached New York my mother _placed_ the documents and
every particle of proof in her possession in the hands of the British
Consul. The story was told to him and also to certain attorneys. A
member of his firm visited my stepfather and confronted him with the
charges. That very night Mr. Banks disappeared, leaving behind him a
note, in which he said we should never see his face again. Tom Reddon
has gone to Europe. My mother and I expect to sail this week for
England, and I have come to ask Rosalie to accompany us. I want her to
stand at last on the soil which knows her to be Rosalie Brace. The
fortune which was mine last week is hers to-day. We are not poor,
Rosalie dear, but we are not as rich as we were when we had all that
belonged to you."