Chapter XXI: In Quest of the Missing Heir

Mr. Geoffrey Dare alighted from the London coach at Tuxford, a small market-town some half dozen miles from Uplands.

Next morning he set about making certain inquiries, which resulted in his ascertaining that Uplands was now empty and to let, and that Mrs. Bullivant had transferred herself and her belongings to a much smaller house, known as Homecroft, about twenty miles away on the other side of the country. The nearest town to Homecroft was Broxham, a place of some twelve thousand inhabitants, and thither Dare lost no time in betaking himself.

After breakfast next morning he hired a horse and started for a long ride. When he got back in the early evening he had learnt a good deal more about Homecroft than he knew when he set out. Whether the particulars thus gathered by him would prove of any after use it was too early to determine: in point of fact, he had not yet decided upon his course of action. The subject was one which needed careful consideration if a fiasco were to be avoided, and just then he was turning it over and over in his mind.

Next day was Broxham horse and cattle fair, and from early morn till late at night the little town was a busy scene in which business and pleasure were strangely commingled. Dare was a lover of horseflesh, and he found much to interest him in a casual way as he strolled idly about the fair, mentally chewing over the question of what his next step ought to be in the undertaking to which he had bound himself.

In those days even more than now a horse fair acted as a sure magnet for bringing together a small crowd of gypsies, and certainly there was no lack of them on this occasion at Broxham.

Dare had come across a couple of their encampments while riding out the day before, but it was not till to-day when, as he stood on the fringe of the crowd, listening to the chaffering and bargaining, but thinking of other things, a smiling, black-eyed, ruddy-lipped _chi_ sidled up to him and asked him to cross her hand with a bit of silver, that of a sudden an idea came to him which seemed to open up a way out of the difficulty with which he had been perplexing his brain ever since he left London.

If Dare crossed the girl's hand with a piece of silver, it was not with the view of having his fortune told. Drawing her further apart from the crowd, he stood in earnest talk with her for several minutes, nor did they part till they had come to a mutual understanding. Dare's last words to the girl were, "Tell your father that he may expect to see me at dusk to-morrow."

Dare was not unacquainted with Romany life and Romany ways. As a lad of seventeen he had once spent a month of _vie intime_ at one of their encampments, and the knowledge then acquired by him he hoped to be able to turn to good account on the present occasion.

Not till the sun had dipped below the horizon did he set out next afternoon to walk the couple of miles or more which would bring him to a certain furze-lined hollow among the moors, where a number of gypsies whom the fair had brought into the neighborhood had made their temporary home. He had got about halfway, and was on the point of turning off the high-road--which was here unfenced and open to the moors on both sides--at a place previously described to him, when he was suddenly confronted by a man who started up from behind a thick clump of brambles. Dare came to a halt, and for a few moments the two stood measuring each other in silence.

The stranger, an unmistakable gypsy, was the first to speak: "You are the _gorgio_ that had something to say to my daughter yesterday at the fair?"

"I am."

"And you want her, with my leave, to do something for you for which you are willing to pay us in good red gold?"

"You could not have put the case in fewer words."

"Well, here we are, with only the rising moon and our own shadows for company. We could not have a better chance for saying what is to be said."

Nothing could have suited Dare's purpose better.

The _gryengro_, or horse-dealer, proceeded to charge and light his pipe, while Dare refreshed himself with a copious pinch of snuff. Then, by the light of the young moon, as they slowly paced the soft turf to and fro, the latter went on to unfold his wishes:

"About a mile on the other side of Broxham there stands in its own grounds a small country house, the name of which is Homecroft. After remaining empty for a long time, it has now found a tenant in the person of Mrs. Bullivant, whose husband died a few years ago, and whose one child, a boy of five or six, is at present from home, most probably on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Cossington. Now, although her own child is away, I have strong reasons for believing that Mrs. Bullivant has another child, who has been stolen away from his friends, hidden in the house, whose presence there is only known to the _rawni_ herself and two or three of her domestics. So, what I want to have found out for me is, whether there is, or is not, such a child as the one I speak of under the roof of Homecroft, and the first question is, whether your daughter can obtain that information for me without arousing any suspicion on the part of Mrs. Bullivant or any of her people."

To this the gypsy, whose name was Enoch Bosworth, replied that he had very little doubt his daughter Rosilla could manage to obtain the required information if time were allowed her, and she was allowed to go to work in her own way in the affair. Dare did not care how she went to work, so long as she got him the needed particulars. It then became a question of terms between the two men, and these having been satisfactorily arranged, they parted, with an agreement to meet again at the same hour and place four evenings later.

Although Dare kept his appointment to the minute, he found the _gryengro_ and his daughter waiting for him, and it soon appeared that Rosilla had indeed made good use of her time. She was already in a position to assure him that his belief in the presence of a strange child at Homecroft was amply justified. Such a child was there, a boy, with regard to whom none of the domestics knew anything--neither his name, where he came from, the connection between him and the mistress of Homecroft, or, in point of fact, why he was there at all. A middle-aged woman who had been in Mrs. Bullivant's service for a number of years, was his sole attendant, and none of the other servants were ever allowed to speak to him--not that much chance of doing so was given them, a couple of rooms having been set apart for the boy and the woman, into which they were forbidden to penetrate.

All this information the artful Rosilla, in the exercise of her calling as a fortune-teller, had succeeded in worming out of Mrs. Bullivant's maid, a girl of the name of Moggy Dredge, who, for some reason or other, had conceived a violent dislike for her mistress--an admission of which Dare did not fail to see the importance.

He must contrive an interview with the girl Dredge, and this Rosilla was commissioned to arrange for. If Mrs. Bullivant's maid would name her own time and place for meeting a certain gentleman, name unknown, and there answer a few questions he would put to her having no reference to herself or her own business, she would find her pocket the richer by a couple of guineas.

Rosilla at once undertook to do her best to arrange the meeting in question, which took place a couple evenings later at a solitary spot a little way outside the palings of the Homecroft grounds.

The gypsy-girl, of her own accord, went a little way apart out of hearing while the _gorgio_ and the lady's-maid said what they had to say to each other.

Even before she quite comprehended what it was Dare wanted her to do, Moggy did not hesitate to confess that, in her own words, she hated her mistress "worse than poison," and that because of the latter's treatment of her, and of the insults she saw fit to heap upon her. In reply to this, Dare very naturally asked her why she did not leave Mrs. Bullivant and go into service elsewhere. Thereupon Moggy burst out crying, and, after sobbing quietly for a little while, confided to Dare that she had had a "misfortune," and had thereby forfeited her character, and that it was Mrs. Bullivant's knowledge of this fact which enabled her to trample on the unhappy girl in the way she did.

Moggy could tell Dare little more about the strange child than he had already learnt from Rosilla. Nor had he expected that she would be able to do so. What he had now to arrange for was the future, and he did not part from the girl till she had given him her promise to furnish him daily with a written report of everything she could hear or gather having reference to the child. This report she was to place each day after nightfall in the hollow of a certain tree, whence it would be fetched by Rosilla, who would play the part of messenger between her and Dare. Later, there would be three more guineas for her, and she confessed that she was badly in need of money to help to pay for the keep of her child.

Moggy kept her promise, and night after night Dare received at the hands of the gypsy-girl her brief and half-illegible reports, the writing of which caused her many groans, and was the cause of much perturbation of spirit. But it was not till ten days had gone by that she found anything of consequence to communicate. Then, indeed, her news was of a sufficiently startling kind.

It had been arranged, Moggy wrote, that Mrs. Balchin, the child's attendant, together with her husband, who was Mrs. Bullivant's coachman, were to start next evening for Liverpool on their way to America, the report being that, by the death of a relative in the States, they had come in for a small fortune, which, however, could not be paid over to them without their presence on the spot. But it was not till Dare had got nearly to the end of Moggy's ill-spelt effusion--he was painfully deciphering it in his room at the inn by the light of a solitary candle--that of a sudden he sat up and gave vent to a low whistle. The child, the mysterious child, about whom none of the servants at Homecraft knew anything, was to accompany the Balchins on their long journey--a journey, in those days, infinitely more formidable than it is now.

The little party of three were to leave Homecraft in Mrs. Bullivant's carriage at half-past eight p.m., so as to reach Tuxford in time to catch the night coach bound for the south.

Dare sat for some time staring at the letter, but without seeing it, when he had succeeded in mastering its contents. What step ought he to take next? was the question he was revolving in his brain, and for some time no satisfactory answer was forthcoming.

Of course, all along he had been without any absolute certainty that the child in question was young Evan Cortelyon. Morally sure he might be, but that was hardly foundation enough on which to base any action of a definite kind. If he were to go to Piljoy and state his conviction in the matter, what could the lawyer do? At present no evidence was available conclusive enough to justify an application for a warrant, especially against a person of the social standing of the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant. And yet, if the child were really Evan (as to which he felt no sort of doubt in his own mind), then must he be rescued at every cost.

For a full hour he sat with bent brows, excogitating one scheme after another, only to reject each in turn, till he had worked round to the notion which had struck him first of all, but which he had put temporarily aside till he had satisfied himself that no other plan was equally feasible.

At length he rose abruptly and pushed back his chair, "'Tis the only way," he said aloud. "'Twas the first notion that came to me, and if I had only had the sense to embrace it there and then, I might have saved myself all this useless muddling of my brains. A year ago--nay, far later than that--I should not have hesitated a moment; but now----! What has come over me? What strange change has been at work within me? Is that a conundrum very hard to crack, Geoff, my boy? It may be true, after all, that the moon is made of green cheese."