Chapter XXVII: Three Years After

_From Mrs. Dare to Lady Carradine_.

"My Dear Godmother,--Your last letter, to hand five days ago, brought me a large measure of happiness. In it you tell me that you have at length forgiven me in full for what heretofore you have always designated as my 'rash and ill-considered marriage.' It does indeed make me glad to learn that I am once more to be taken back, fully and freely, into your affections, the loss of which has been the bitterest drop in the cup of my married felicity.

"In your letter you put several questions to me having reference to the events of the last few weeks prior to my departure from England. These I will now endeavor to answer to the best of my ability.

"Thanks to the interest brought to bear by your ladyship in a certain high quarter, your scapegrace goddaughter, after having made three appearances before the Lanchester bench of magistrates, was unceremoniously set at liberty. This, of course, is ancient history to you, but it is the point from which, for your information, I purpose narrating as briefly as may be what befell me afterwards up to the date of my departure for America.

"I had only been a couple of days back at Stanbrook when a note reached me which had been brought by a man on horseback. The writer of it was Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, of Rockmount, whose acquaintance I had made some time before under rather peculiar circumstances, asking me to go back with his messenger, as the writer had some news of importance to communicate. This I had no hesitation about doing, seeing that Mr. Ellerslie was known to me as the uncle of Geoffrey Dare.

"A couple of hours later I alighted from my mare at the door of Rockmount.

"A man between sixty and seventy, tall and bowed, habited in a monkish robe, with a moustache and a short peaked beard, long grizzled hair parted down the middle, and a singular waxen pallor of complexion--such was the Mr. Ellerslie known to me, and such was the man who now received me. I had assumed that it was in order to be favored with some tidings of, or to receive some message from, his nephew (who had been utterly lost to me from the moment the cell door was shut between us), that I had been summoned to Rockmount. Nor was I mistaken.

"After having referred to the Lanchester affair in terms which I would not recapitulate even if I could, Mr. Ellerslie went on to mark that his nephew had not yet left the country, but was in safe hiding no great distance away. Proceeding, he went on to observe that he was the bearer of a certain message from Geoffrey, but that he found himself somewhat at a loss for terms in which to convey it. Stripped, however, of all verbiage it came to this: Geoffrey would not hold me to my word or promise, given him in the cell at Lanchester, if, since then, and after further consideration, I in the slightest degree regretted, or wished, to recall, anything which had passed between us on that occasion.

"Then, before I had time to frame into words the answer which leapt from my heart, Mr. Ellerslie proceeded to address me on his own account. I was young and parentless, he remarked, and, so far as he could judge, somewhat liable to be led away by generous but undisciplined impulses. He begged of me to pause, to reflect coolly and dispassionately, before linking my lot with that of a man who, should no worse fate befall him, must henceforth be an outcast from his native land. And so on, and so on, till I begged of him to cease.

"Need I tell you, my dear godmother, in what terms I answered him? No, I am sure I need not. You know your Nelly too well not to have guessed already.

"The pith of all I had to say was comprised in less than a score words: 'Geoffrey Dare is my chosen husband, and, come weal or woe, I will wed none but him.'

"Mr. Ellerslie threw up his hands. 'If you will persist, my dear young lady, in your headstrong course, then have I nothing more to urge. My ambassadorial functions are at an end, and the sooner my nephew comes and does his own talking the better for all concerned.'

"Without a word more he rose and left the room, and five minutes later Geoffrey entered it.

"To relate what passed between him and me would not entertain you in the least. It will be enough to state that if we had not been betrothed lovers before, we became so from that hour.

"It was to Rockmount that Geoffrey had directed his steps on the night of his escape, and there he had been in hiding ever since.

"When the time had come for me to take my departure in order that I might get back to Stanbrook before dark, I said to him, 'But shall I not see Mr. Ellerslie again before I go?'

"'That you certainly will not,' he replied with one of his puzzling smiles. 'Mr. Cope-Ellerslie is no longer in existence. He died about an hour ago. His life was brief but necessary. Peace to his remains!' Then, seeing my look of amazement, he added, 'Have you not yet found out, or even suspected, that Mr. Ellerslie and Geoffrey Dare were one and the same person?"

"No, that I certainly had not. Nevertheless, I was now assured that such was the fact, and I had to delay my departure for another half hour while the mystery was cleared up for me.

"When Geoffrey Dare left London a ruined man, bankrupt in love, in friendship, in means (I long ago explained to you under what peculiar circumstances he was induced to take to the King's highway), he came to Rockmount, which was his own property, and which, owing doubtless to its isolated situation in the midst of a wide stretch of desolate moorland, had been untenanted for years. With him he brought three old family servants, whom not even the rack or the thumbscrew would have forced into betraying him. But it was Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, the scholar and the recluse, who had become the tenant of Rockmount, and no faintest suspicion ever got abroad that there was, or could be, any connection between him and Captain Nightshade.

"So far so good; but I still failed to comprehend the nature of a disguise which so completely changed Geoffrey's identity that only an hour before my eyes had failed to penetrate it. To take one point alone: in Mr. Ellerslie's face, leaving out of account the difference in the complexions, there bad been a thousand fine lines and creases, whereas in Geoffrey's it would have puzzled one to find a dozen.

"Then was I enlightened. Mr. Cope-Ellerslie's face was a mask, of which moustache, beard, eyebrows, and hair formed component parts. The foundation of the mask consisted of the skin of a newly-born kid, pared or scraped to an exceeding fineness, and moulded to the features while still plastic. Geoffrey had brought it with him from Italy several years before, where such disguises seem to be not unknown, and where it had been made for him in order that he might take part in a certain carnival frolic. So simple sometimes is the explanation of an apparently inscrutable mystery!

"But my letter is dragging itself out to an unconscionable length, and I must hurry on.

"Of a certain quiet wedding in Holland, and of the after-sailing of the two people concerned for the United States, I have no particulars worth recounting beyond those already known to you. Here they have lived happily ever since, and here--whatever home-sickness they may have felt in secret--they had made up their minds to pass the rest of their days, when a passage in your last letter set their hearts dancing with a happiness so unlooked-for that since it burst into their life like a flash of sunlight they have hardly been able to talk about anything else.

"You write, my dear godmother, that you have fair hopes of being able, by and by, through bringing your influence to bear in the same all-powerful quarter in which you brought it to bear once before, to secure for Geoffrey a free pardon. What two happy and grateful beings you would, in that case, make of my husband and me, I should fail to tell you in any words.

"You are kind enough to say, further, that you miss your Nelly's face and long to see it again, as also that there is a big corner for her in your will. We will say nothing about the latter, but, as regards the former, let me whisper in your ear that you need not be very much surprised if you see me in London in the course of next season. If Geoffrey should be free to come with me, what happiness that would be! But, in any case, I think you may look forward pretty confidently to seeing your vagrant goddaughter.

"You will readily believe me when I tell you that I am also very desirous of setting eyes again on my young kinsman, Evan Cortelyon, the account of whose abduction and recovery had for you such a special interest. (Don't forget, please, that his recovery was wholly due to my dear husband.) He has been made a ward in Chancery, and although I have frequent news of him, and am assured that he is well and happy, yet that is not like seeing him and feeling his dear arms about my neck.

"What you had to tell me in your last letter anent the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant took me by surprise, as you said it would; but I'm afraid my disposition is not of a sufficiently forgiving kind to allow of my stating, with any regard for truth, that I feel sorry for her, because I certainly do nothing of the kind.

"My surprise arises from the fact that she--of all women I have ever known the most unlikely--should have allowed herself to be so thoroughly hoodwinked as she seems to have been over her marriage with the Earl of Mortlake. Of course she was dazzled by the prospect of becoming a countess, and by the likelihood--you say she regarded it as a certainty--that in less than a twelvemonth she would be left a widow (a titled widow with a handsome jointure), such a mere wreck of humanity was his lordship, to all seeming, when she accepted him, besides being more than double her age.

"If this latter consideration was--and you appear to have no doubt on the point--her chief reason for becoming his wife, then, indeed, must her awakening have been anything but a pleasant one when she found that the man who had been carried into the church by four of his tenants, so feeble did he seem, was able, as soon as the ceremony was over, not merely to walk unassisted out of the sacred edifice, but to offer his bride the support of his arm. What a genuine comedy scene it must have been for everybody there, save and except her newly-made ladyship!

"And now you tell me that his lordship is likely to live for a dozen years to come. I know that he has been married twice before, and that he has the reputation of being one of the most brutal and unfeeling of husbands, a reputation with which it is hard to believe his present wife can have been unacquainted.

"Yes, on consideration I think I can afford to forget bygones, and to spare a little pity for my lady countess. Hers is indeed an unhappy fate; nor will she derive much consolation from the knowledge that she owes it wholly to herself.

"I have kept a very singular bit of news till the last.

"You may remember that when we came here we brought with us the dumb man, Andry Luce, who had been my Uncle Cortelyon's secretary and factotum, and about whom you have often heard me speak. Notwithstanding his infirmity, Geoffrey found him very useful in keeping the books and accounts of the large property of which my husband has the management. He was deeply attached to me, and I had a very warm regard for him.

"Well, I am grieved to have to relate that the poor fellow has come to a sad end. About a fortnight ago he was fatally injured while trying to stop a runaway horse and vehicle. Some days passed before he succumbed to his injuries, and it was while he lay dying (I am thankful to say he did not suffer much) that he confessed something to me which perhaps I might otherwise have gone to the grave without knowing.

"You and I, my dear godmother, in days gone by, more than once bewildered our brains in trying to solve the mystery of my uncle's unsigned will, for if he had not believed it to be signed, why should he have been so anxious in his last moments, as he certainly was, to have it destroyed?

"This was the puzzle which Andry's confession--spelled out to me word by word on his fingers after the manner of dumb people--solved once for all.

"Andry was in the habit of dabbling in chemicals in his spare moments, and it was with a chemically prepared ink, manufactured by him specially for the purpose, that the will was signed by the testator and the witnesses. The special property of the ink in question was that, within forty-eight hours of its having been used, anything written with it would fade out of existence, leaving nothing but the blank, unsullied paper where it had been.

"Of course it was a very wicked thing of Andry to do, but he had somehow learnt the contents of the will, and his indignation at the iniquity of its provisions seems to have utterly confused his sense of right and wrong, as, I verily believe, it would have done mine had I been in his place.

"If you ask me what notice I intend taking of the information which has thus strangely come into my keeping, I answer, none at all. And it is a view in which my husband bears me out. I hold myself to be wholly absolved from taking any action whatever in the affair, because my uncle's last wish--nay, his positive command--was that the will in question should be destroyed.

"And thus, after all, his dying wish was carried out, but in a way certainly never contemplated by him."

THE END