Chapter XIX: Mutual Confidences

One may be sure there was no failure of appointment next day on the part of either of our young people.

After Nell had informed Dare that the letter to Mr. Piljoy had been duly written and dispatched, and he had given her a brief account of his visit to Bow Street--where he had left a full description of the missing child, compiled with information furnished by Mrs. Mardin--there seemed little more to say or do. Of a certain task he had set before himself, and of a certain journey he meant to undertake, Dare deemed it best not to enter into any details. All he gave Miss Baynard to understand was, that nothing should be left undone on his part in his endeavor to trace the abducted heir.

But Nell felt strongly that the time had come for a clear understanding on both sides. Their masks had been seen through, their disguise penetrated. Each of them had played a double part within the other's knowledge, and yet each had pretended to ignore the fact. The day of make-believe was at an end.

She saw clearly that if any reference was to be made to their first meeting, it must come from herself. Dare, she felt sure, would never as much as hint at a circumstance, her silence about which could only lead him to conclude that she was determined to ignore it. Further than that, she wanted to set herself straight with him--to explain the motives which led to her assumption for one night only of the _rôle_ of a "gentleman of the road." She could no longer rest satisfied with the consciousness that any action of hers should remain in his eyes under the shadow of ambiguity or suspicion.

That she had managed so far not to betray her other and far sweeter secret she felt pretty well assured, and the knowledge comforted her exceedingly; for, while determined to brush aside all the cobwebs that had hitherto existed between them, she was equally as determined that of that hidden flower which perfumed and made beautiful the garden of her heart he should know nothing whatever.

"You and I, Mr. Dare, had met on one occasion before our first meeting under this roof," began Nell, turning her large hazel eyes, with a sort of grave questioning in them, full upon him.

It was not often that Dare was taken by surprise, but he certainly was just now. His swarthy cheeks flushed with a color that was rare to them; but it did not take him longer than half a dozen seconds to recover himself. With a low bow, he said, "It is not for me to dispute any statement Miss Baynard may choose to make."

"My reason for referring to the occasion in question is because I am desirous of explaining under what circumstances I was led to embark on that hare-brained adventure."

"Pardon me, but is any such explanation needed? Certainly it is not by me. Such an impertinence is what I never dreamed of. Why go into a matter which now belongs wholly to the past?"

"For my own satisfaction, if for nothing else."

Again Dare gravely inclined his head. It was evident Miss Baynard was determined to have her own way, although probably she had nothing more to tell him than he either knew or guessed already.

"On the occasion of our first meeting of all," resumed Nell, "I believe I remarked to you that the object of my escapade was, not to despoil some innocent traveller of his purse, but to obtain possession of a will which I knew to be in the keeping of a certain person who, on his way home, travelling by post-chaise, was bound to pass the place where I was lying in wait for him."

"So much I gathered from what you told me."

"The will in question was the one I spoke to you about yesterday, by the provisions of which my uncle disinherited his grandson in favor of the son of the woman between whom and himself there was no relationship whatever. I thought then, as I think still, that the will was a most unjust and iniquitous one and I determined, if it were anyhow possible to do so, to get possession of it and destroy it. How ignominiously I failed in the attempt you know already."

"All this I understood from what you were good enough to tell me yesterday. That served to throw a clear light on whatever had seemed dark before."

"When I ventured on my rash attempt, which, so fortunately for all concerned, proved unsuccessful, my uncle had been given up by his doctors, and I had every reason for believing that he could not possibly live to make another will. As for the moral aspect of the affair, I think perhaps that the less I say on that score the better. I was carried away by a flame of indignation, which, so to speak, swept me off my feet, thrusting all considerations of prudence, as well as of right or wrong, into the background, blinding my moral sense for the time being, and leaving room in my mind for nothing save a burning desire, at whatever cost, to get the will into my hands. But Fate defeated my purpose, and the end I aimed at was brought about by far different means."

Miss Baynard had relieved her mind, and one usually derives a sense of comfort from being able to do that. She had put herself straight with Dare; there was no longer any question between them of a dual personality. He knew that in him she had recognized the Captain Nightshade of her adventure, and he had heard from her own lips, if there was any satisfaction in that, what he most likely knew or guessed before, that she was the masquerader in male attire who had played such an unheroic part on that occasion.

But one confidence often tends to beget another, and now, strange to say. Geoffrey Dare felt strongly impelled to crave Miss Baynard's patience for a little while in order that he might make clear to her under what stress of circumstances he had been driven to take to the King's highway.

Miss Baynard raised no objections to listening to anything he might have to tell her. Did not Desdemona "seriously incline" to the Moor of Venice, the while he told the tale of his adventures by sea and land, and why should not she do the same?

"What I have to tell you is in the main a record of faults and follies," began Dare when leave had been given him, "but I will make my narrative as brief as possible. Let me start by remarking that I have good blood in my veins, and can trace back my ancestry in a direct line for upwards of two hundred years. It was my misfortune to lose both my parents long before I was out of my teens. On coming of age I succeeded to a fortune of forty thousand pounds, the accumulated income of my minority. Thereupon I at once plunged into all the gayeties and temptations of town life, showering my guineas right and left with lavish hands, as if they could never come to an end. Cards, dice, and the turf helped me in turn on the downward road. I had no one to counsel or warn me. The person who had filled the post of guardian to me from the date of my father's death was himself a broken man of pleasure, who encouraged rather than restrained me in the road I was treading, and had no scruple about dipping his hand into my purse whenever he had been more than usually unlucky at the tables.

"Then by and by I fell in love, or what at that time I believed to be love. But I know now, and have long known, that I was drawn to Miss Tighe as in the fable we read how hapless mariners were drawn to the sirens of the deep--because they had not enough will-power to resist their wiles. However, I was infatuated, and--which was all she cared about, for she was a compound of greed and selfishness--I lavished jewelry and presents upon her as if I could not do enough to make patent my folly. Thus it came to pass that my twenty-fourth birthday found my fortune reduced to a very few thousands. The end came shortly after with the elopement of Miss Tighe with the man whom (next to Dick Cortelyon) I had accounted my dearest friend.

"I was still staggering from this blow when another of my 'dear friends,' by means of a forged cheque, contrived to defraud me of the poor wreck of my fortune, save a few paltry hundreds, before putting the Atlantic between himself and me.

"It was not till ruin stared me in the face, and I knew not which way to turn, that I took to the 'road'--as many a broken-down spendthrift of as good birth as I has done before me. But it is some slight salve to my conscience to know that I have never eased any man of his purse who was not well able to bear the loss, that I have never despoiled one of the opposite sex, and that I have never failed to distribute among the poor more than half of all I have taken from the rich."

He ceased, and for some moments neither of them broke the silence. His eyes had been fixed on the window as he told his tale, and he still kept them turned away from his companion. He was now softly tapping his teeth with the nails of one hand.

It was wrong, it was very wrong, and Nell admitted it to be such, but, do what she would, she could not blame him. The man, by his own admission, was a highwayman, a "minion of the moon"; of course the fact had long been known to her, but it had never been so clearly brought home to her before to-day, and yet all she could do was to pity him! Oh, it was shameful! And besides, we all know how close pity is akin to something else. She tried to despise herself, and to feel enraged with herself, but could not.

But they could not sit mum forever. It was her turn to speak. Something she must say--but what?

"The dangers and perils of the kind of life you have been speaking of are many and great." Her words faltered a little in her own despite. "Why not give it up, Mr. Dare? Why not try to find some other and more reputable way of making a living? How I wish you would! How I wish----"

"Pardon me, Miss Baynard, but I _have_ given it up." He spoke with a certain abruptness, and as he did so he turned his black eyes full upon her. "Captain Nightshade's last adventure on the road was the one in which you yourself were so singularly mixed up. From that night he resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. For one short hour he had come under an influence powerful enough and sweet enough to make a new man of him. The resolve then made has never been broken."

He spoke with an emphasis which left no room for mistake as to his meaning. Nell's eyes sank before the half-veiled passion which had suddenly leapt to life in his. Face and throat flushed a lovely color. It was all she could do not to betray that she was a-tremble in every limb.

"I am very, very glad, Mr. Dare, to hear that you have seen your way to a changed mode of life." Was it Miss Baynard who spoke or some one else? What was this strange new feeling of timidity, almost of shrinking, which had seized upon her? She might have been the veriest bread-and-butter miss fresh from school. Never had she despised herself more heartily than at that moment.

"I have told you, Miss Baynard, that I left London a broken man," resumed Dare after a pause. "I had, however, my mother's jewelry still untouched, but, no other resource being now left me, I was compelled to let it go. A little later the sum of four hundred pounds reached me anonymously, with a letter stating that it was 'conscience money' returned by a dying man, it having been won from my father twenty years before by cheating at cards. That it came as a veritable godsend I need hardly tell you."

"And yet, if I would have let you, you would still have gone on paying for Evan's maintenance."

"I had promised my dead friend that I would care for the boy as if he were my own, and, had you not come between me and him, it was a promise I was resolved to keep at every cost. I had already decided on my plans for the future, and when I left England I should have taken the boy with me."

"When you left England, Mr. Dare?"

"I have some relations settled in Virginia who have more than once pressed me to go out to them. It was, and remains, my intention to settle there, and there to lay the foundations of a new life, very different from the old one. Now I shall have to go alone. But first I shall see this business through of my missing godson."

Why did Nell's heart sink so unaccountably at this statement of Dare's intentions? What did it matter where he might choose to make his future home? Whatever he might secretly be to her, she was nothing to him, and it was out of the question that she ever could be. She knew, and she made no attempt to disguise the fact from herself, that when he sailed away from England he would take her heart with him. But what then? Of how many women was it not the lot to give away their hearts in secret, and to go through life hopeless of a return? nay, in many cases without the man to whom it was given knowing that he had such a thing in his keeping? Her case would be merely one more added to the number.

Nell was to return to Stanbrook on the morrow, and before she and Dare parted it was arranged that he should communicate with her there as soon as he had any tidings of the missing child, and that the Bow Street authorities on their part should do the same.

There was one point with regard to which Nell wished that Dare had seen fit to enlighten her, and that was as to the nature of the relationship between himself and the mysterious Mr. Ellerslie of Rockmount, for that a relationship of some sort existed between them she now felt more convinced than ever. She had seen Mr. Ellerslie but once, and that merely for an hour by candlelight, and, while conscious of a strange illusive likeness on his part to some one, more especially about the eyes, she had been unable to recall to mind who that some one was. She knew now, and had known for some time, that the original of the shadowy likeness was none other than Geoffrey Dare. But no mention of Mr. Ellerslie's name had escaped the latter's lips, and it was certainly not her place to question him.

There was one more point as to which her curiosity seemed doomed to remain equally unsatisfied. She was still ignorant whether she was indebted for the return of her mask to Mr. Ellerslie or to Geoffrey Dare.