Chapter XIX: Ancillon’s Revelations

Doubt is the effect of fear or jealousy,
Two passions which to reason give the lie;
For fear torments and never doth assist;
And jealousy is love lost in a mist.
Both hoodwink truth and play at blind man’s buff,
Cry “Here” and “There,” seem quite direct enough;
But all the while shift place, making the mind,
As it gets out of breath, despair to find;
Or if at last something it stumbles on,
Perhaps it calls it false, and then ’tis gone.
If true, what’s gained? Only just time to see
A breathless play—a game of fantasy
That has no other end than this: that men
Run to be tired, just to sit down again.
_Anon._

Aunt Sophie, left to herself, got up with a childish curiosity to look around on the elegant chamber to which she had been introduced—the furniture all made of some wood that looked like ivory, and upholstered in rose satin and white lace.

“Too fine to live in,” she said to herself, as she stood before the beautifully draped dressing-table, with its broad and tall mirror filling up all the space between the two front windows, and curtained, like them, with rose silk and white lace, and with its toilet service of Bohemian glass and gold.

She turned from this to the richly festooned alcove, in which stood the luxurious bedstead, and from that view to the inviting chairs and lounges, her wonder and admiration growing with all that she saw.

She was still moving around, when the door opened, and Lilith appeared, ushering in the baroness—Lilith in her simple black silk dress, and Madame Von Bruyin in an elegant negligée of pale mauve velvet, edged with swan’s-down.

She advanced to Aunt Sophie with smiling eyes and outstretched hands, exclaiming brightly:

“My dear Mrs. Downie! I am so rejoiced to see you! You have come to us so opportunely! How opportunely you shall soon know. Why, only to-day we were to write to you and ask you to come. You have only anticipated our very great desire to see you.”

“Indeed you are very good to say so, ma’am, I’m sure. It was the sinner who made me come, whether or no; and I was so awful ’fraid I was intruding,” said the child-like old lady, in simple truth, as she placed both her plump little hands in the warm, welcoming clasp of her hostess.

“You are looking so well; and Lilith tells me you had a fine voyage.”

“Yes, thank you, ma’am; I had an awful fine voyage, considering the season of the year; and it done me a heap of good.”

“I can see that it has. Sit down now and let us be comfortable,” said the baroness, drawing one of the luxurious chairs nearer to Aunt Sophie, who smiled and bowed in a deprecating little way before she took it.

When they were all seated near what seemed to be a beautiful vase, but what was in reality the porcelain stove that heated the room, Aunt Sophie broke out in child-like admiration:

“I never seen a stove like this in all my life before. I didn’t think as they could make stoves out’n anything but iron.”

“We don’t have them in our own country,” said Lilith. “At least I never saw one.”

The baroness smiled, and then changed the subject by asking Aunt Sophie about the health and welfare of her inmates, and the prosperity of her house. And the old lady answered with simple truth, relating all about the poor young theological student whose only pair of Sunday trousers she had inadvertently brought away; and all about the coming marriage of her favorite boarder, Mrs. Farquier, and Elder Perkins, of their church.

The baroness listened with sympathetic attention, and after a few more cordial words of congratulation or of inquiry, the lady said:

“Now, Mrs. Downie, you will please tell me the name of the hotel you stopped at, so that I may send and have your effects brought hither.”

“The hotel where I stopped, ma’am?” said Aunt Sophie, with a slightly puzzled air.

“Yes, Mrs. Downie; I wish to know so that I may send for your trunk.”

“Why, it was the same place where the sinner is stopping!”

“But where is that, my dear friend? What is its name?” smilingly inquired Madame Von Bruyin.

“The hotel—le’ me see, now—what was the name of that hotel ag’in? The sinner did tell me; but there! my poor head has been in that whirl ever since I was snatched away so suddenly and fetched over here that I declare to man I haven’t got no memory left! I ought to remember that name, too, ’cause it sounded for all the world like a name in a ballad or a fairy story, and as if it might ’a’ been the palace of the fairy queen or the enchanted princess. What was it, ag’in? Oh! I know. It was the Hotel of Love, on the Rue River. That’s what it was. Now ain’t that just like a place in a ballad or a fairy story?” inquired Aunt Sophie, with a smile. “Just fancy it! The Hotel of Love on the Rue River!”

The baroness looked helplessly and hopelessly perplexed.

“The Hotel du Louvre, Rue de Rivoli,” suggested Lilith, in a low tone.

“Oh, certainly! I see! Touch the bell, if you please, my dear,” said Madame Von Bruyin.

Lilith complied, and the baroness gave her instructions to the servant that answered the summons.

“And now, my dear,” said the lady, rising to leave the room, “I have some papers to sign, and Monsieur Le Grange is waiting for me. Make our dear guest as comfortable as you can, and here, my dear, give her the choice of the vacant chambers on the other side.”

And with a smile and a bow the beautiful hostess left the room.

“Come, Aunt Sophie, and select your bower!” said Lilith, playfully, as she arose.

The simple-hearted widow gathered her belongings and prepared to follow her guide.

Lilith led the old lady across the hall and opened the door of a chamber opposite the one they had just left, and introduced her into the most elegant apartment she had ever seen.

It was upholstered in satin-wood, pale blue velvet embroidered with silver and white lace.

Aunt Sophie hesitated to sit down in her black alpaca gown on any of the elegantly covered chairs, and feared to lay down her black shawl and mashed bonnet anywhere, lest they should soil the delicate draperies.

At length Lilith relieved her funny embarrassment by taking those articles from her hands and hanging them in a handsome armoire, the door of which was one sheet of crystal mirror.

And then the simple old lady looked at the dressing-table with its draperies of pale blue velvet and fine white lace, and its accessories of pearl combs and pearl-handled brushes, and gold vases, and flaçons, and thence to the bed with its costly hangings of the same velvet and lace, in such distressing embarrassment that Lilith said to her at length:

“Madame Von Bruyin wished me to give you your choice of all the vacant chambers. If you do not like this one, I can show you a plainer.”

“Oh, yes, please do, honey! This is so awful grand! I wouldn’t dare to sit down on one of these chairs, and as to lying down in that grand bed—I couldn’t dream of such a thing! And that sounds so ungrateful of me, too, when the baroness is giving me the best of everything! But, honey, I ain’t used to it, and I couldn’t get used to it, and that is the solemn truth, so I hope you’ll excuse me,” said the old lady, in her soft, slow, deprecating tones.

“There is nothing in this world too good for you, dear Aunt Sophie! There is indeed scarcely anything good enough for you, we think,” said Lilith, as she took the little black bonnet and shawl from the armoire in which she had hung them, and led the way down the corridor to the rear of the building and opened a door at its extremity, and ushering the guest into a pretty, bright, fresh chamber, furnished in curled maple and gay chintz.

“How do you like this room?” inquired Lilith.

“Oh! ever so much better than t’other one! I ain’t afraid of hurting anything here!”

“And you can make yourself quite comfortable?”

“Oh, yes, awful comfortable, honey.”

“Your trunks will be here very soon,” said Lilith, as, still acting in her rôle of lady’s maid to the visitor, she hung up Aunt Sophie’s bonnet, shawl and hand-bag in the maple-wood wardrobe.

Then she sat down to “keep company” with the old lady until her boxes should arrive to give her some employment.

“I hope you will tell the baroness that I ralely didn’t expect this! I ralely didn’t mean to intrude. I only come this morning with the sinner to call and pay my respects to the baroness and see you, honey, and then go back to the Hotel of Love. I never would have presumed to come and set down on you all without an invitation,” said Aunt Sophie, in a soft, slow, deprecating tone.

Lilith went and kissed her gently before replying:

“You did not come without an invitation, and a very pressing one. You cannot doubt how pleased Madame Von Bruyin is to see you, or how happy I am to have you here.”

“I know you are all awful good to me. I know that,” said Aunt Sophie.

A little later on her trunk arrived and was brought up into her room, and Aunt Sophie made the best of her limited wardrobe to dress for dinner.

Simple as any child, she accepted all the aid that Lilith could give her, even obediently submitting to have her unruly hair “fixed,” and to wear the pretty little lace cap, fichu and cuffs that Lilith’s deft fingers constructed from her own materials.

Aunt Sophie liked herself in this new dress, and did not hesitate to say so.

The dinner that followed soon was served in what was known in the maison as the petit salon. There was no one present but Madame Von Bruyin, Lilith, Mrs. Downie and Monsieur Le Grange, whom Aunt Sophie mistook for a preacher of the gospel, and ever after referred to as the old minister.

Lilith saw no more of Mr. Alfred Ancillon, or Señor Zuniga, during that day.

The next morning, after breakfast, the baroness went out shopping as usual, but excused Lilith from attending her, and took Aunt Sophie instead, “to show her the shops,” as she said.

They had not left the house more than half an hour, when a card was brought to Lilith bearing the name, SEÑOR ZUNIGA.

And Lilith went down into the small drawing-room to receive him alone.

“Madame Von Bruyin has gone out and has taken Mrs. Downie with her,” said Lilith, when their mutual greetings had passed.

“Ah! I am glad! Well as I like the beautiful baroness and the good Aunt Sophie, I can dispense with their society this morning, for I wish to talk with you alone,” he said, seating himself by her side on the sofa. “I told you yesterday that I had much to say to you.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Hereward, you say, is still at the Court of ——?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you have never heard from him?”

“No.”

“He does not know that you are living?”

“No.”

“Well, neither did I until an accident revealed your continued existence to me. I will tell you all about that by and by. Now I tell you, Lilith, that he must learn the truth.”

“Oh, no! no! Do not bring me in any way to his notice,” she pleaded, clasping her hands and fixing her eyes upon him in the earnestness of her entreaty.

“But why not, now that you are able to clear up the mystery that separated you?” demanded Zuniga, in astonishment.

“Oh, because he does not love me. He never loved me! He told me so with his own lips,” moaned Lilith, wringing her hands.

“No heroics, if you please, child. I get quite enough of them on the stage. I hate them off it. But tell me, in a matter of fact way, did you really believe him when he said that?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! For he spoke in the most bitter, scornful, insulting manner. He said that he should leave the house, never to return while I desecrated it with my presence. Desecrated it, mind. That was what drove me away, and what will keep me away from him,” she wailed, twisting her hands together.

“Pray don’t be melodramatic, Lilith, my dear. I am so tired of that sort of thing that I have left the stage forever, I hope. But tell me quietly and sensibly when and under what circumstances Hereward talked such very objectionable nonsense.”

“It was on that fatal twenty-first of March when——”

“There you go again. There was nothing fatal about it. However, proceed.”

“It was on the twenty-first of March, then, that he came down suddenly to Cloud Cliffs. That letter which you had written to me had fallen into his hands, and he rushed down to Cloud Cliffs, just as I feared he would, in a——”

“Deuce of a rage. Quite natural under the circumstances. Well?”

“He came in just after I had read your last letter, which was even more compromising than your first, and as I was about to drop it into the fire he seized it from me——”

“Very rude of him.”

“And he read it.”

“Quite so. It was what we should have expected of him. Proceed.”

“And then—— But, oh, indeed, I cannot describe the scene that followed.”

“You needn’t. I can see it all. The fat was in the fire. There was a fiz, a blaze, a conflagration!”

“I cannot blame him for his anger then. The circumstances were so criminating. He demanded an explanation, but I could give him none without betraying your secret, which I was sworn to keep. It ended, as I told you, in his declaring that he did not love me, congratulating himself that he had never fallen into the deep degradation of loving me, and saying that he would leave the house, never to return while I should desecrate it with my presence.”

“Very melodramatic, and consequently very nonsensical, as all heroics are off the stage. And you believed him?”

“Yes; for I left the house that night.”

“And you still believe him, eh?”

“Yes; for I will never make known my existence to him.”

“What a baby you must be, Lilith, to believe all the ravings of a man maddened by jealousy. Why, child! you were no sooner gone than he ‘sought you sorrowing’ all over the country. A month later the body of a poor, unfortunate young woman who once belonged to our troupe, and was the wife of a man who sometimes acted under my name, was found in the woods in such a state of decomposition that it could not be recognized; but it was dressed in a suit of your clothes, which were readily enough identified by all your servants, so that the sapient coroner’s jury who sat upon the remains brought in a verdict that—‘Lilith Hereward came to her death by a blow on the back of her head from some blunt instrument held in the hand of some person unknown to the jury.’ When Hereward learned this verdict he fell like a slaughtered ox; and he knew no more of life for weeks——”

“Oh!” cried Lilith, involuntarily.

“In the meantime, I, out in California, knew nothing of what was going on in West Virginia until a month after that coroner’s inquest—until one day I met with an old copy of the _Pursuivant_, in which I read a full account of your supposed fate. Then, my child, I understood, or thought I understood, what had happened—that your death had been caused, directly or indirectly, by the jealous rage of your husband; and I threw up my engagement and traveled as fast as steam could take me to West Virginia and to the presence of Tudor Hereward. I found him the mere shadow of his former self.”

Lilith moaned.

“But I did not pity him in the least! I bitterly upbraided him for having been the cause of your death, as I fully believed him to have been. I am afraid I even became melodramatic over it all, which was very unprofessional off the stage, you know. He never sought to excuse or defend himself. Still I had no mercy on him. I rubbed it into him. To deepen his remorse for his wrong to you, I gave him the secret! What cared I then for any consequences to myself? I gave him the secret!”

“What! You told—you told him—who you were!” exclaimed Lilith.

“No, I did better than that. He might not have believed my word. I told him nothing. But I directed him to the papers in the old trunk for all information and all proof. And then I left him and went to the village hotel and waited for events. But nothing happened, and at last I heard that he had gone to Washington to accept some foreign mission that had been offered him. Then I also left the neighborhood and went to the Southwest. I took no further pains to conceal my identity; yet no evil happened to me. No requisition under the extradition treaty was made for me. But, Lilith, my child, you are cleared from suspicion in the eyes of your husband. He has the secret!”

“Oh, no, he has not!” exclaimed Lilith. “He has not! For those papers to which you referred him for information were not in the house! I brought them away with me when I left Cloud Cliffs.”

“You brought them away with you!”

“Yes, for I would not leave them there to endanger you. So, you see, he does not yet know that I am innocent.”

“I am sorry that he did not find the papers. But, Lilith, my darling, he does know that you are innocent. He came to his senses from the very day in which he lost you. All that I heard about him in his own neighborhood proved his profound sorrow at your loss and his faith in your integrity.”

“And yet he told me——”

“Never mind what he told you. He was mad with jealousy then, and his words must not be remembered. He loves you, I am sure. He always loved you. I tell you this—I who know something of human nature.”

“Oh, if I thought so! Oh, if I thought so!”

“Now, now, now, now, don’t be stagey! Hereward loves you devotedly. I was sure of it when I talked with him of you. It was not only remorse for his cruel suspicions, but sorrow for your loss, that was almost driving him mad!”

“He had but little cause for remorse about his suspicions. The circumstances were so criminating.”

“And your life and character so vindicating.”

“Was it accident that led you to Aunt Sophie’s house?” inquired Lilith at last.

“Yes and no. I will explain. After I had made a short theatrical tour in the Territories I came East and to New York. I was so reckless that I did not care what might become of me. I was on Broadway one day, when I saw your picture in a photographer’s show-case. I did not then connect it with any idea that you were still in the land of the living, but fancied that it was a photograph that might have been taken for your foster-father, the summer before your marriage when you were on your last trip with him.”

“No, it was taken just before I sailed from New York, for Aunt Sophie. She wanted a picture of me, and she took me to a photographer who was a member of her church and for whom one of her lady boarders colored the photographs,” Lilith explained.

“So I learned later. Having no picture of you, my darling, and wishing to possess one, I went in to the artist and asked to buy a copy. He told me that he could not sell one without permission from the customer who had had the photograph taken. I told him that the customer and the original of the picture were both dead. At this he stared and said that he guessed not, unless they had died very recently. And then the artist told me that the pictures had been taken by the order of an old lady friend of his own, and of a young girl boarding in her house then, but now away to Europe. Still I had no suspicion that they represented my living Lilith, but believed the likeness to be an accidental one, though so good that I wished to possess a copy. So I requested the artist to give me the address of the customer for whom they had been taken. He very readily obliged me. I went to Mrs. Downie’s house the same day. Seeing her sign out, I requested the girl who answered my ring to take my card to her mistress. While I was waiting in the parlor I saw your photograph on the mantelpiece. I took it down and examined it minutely, a faint suspicion coming like hope into my heart that it might be yours after all. I turned to the back and read the inscription, ‘To Aunt Sophie, with the love of Lilith,’ or something to that effect. My child, I am not given to wild emotion—off the stage—and yet I was so overcome with joy and fear that I dropped upon a chair, and had some trouble to compose myself before the landlady came in. But in that short space of time I had resolved to take board in the house, if possible, in order to find out all about you. So when Aunt Sophie came in I broached the subject of board and lodging, and the good creature consented to receive me.”

“Yes, she wrote to me about that,” said Lilith.

“But I governed my strong anxiety and refrained from asking her questions about the original of that photograph for a few hours, and then began cautiously to examine her. It is needless to say that I learned all she knew of you.”

“Did you return the confidence, and supplement her small knowledge of my antecedents by telling her all you knew of me?” inquired Lilith.

“Only by saying that you were a very near and dear relative of mine.”

“So much she herself wrote to me; but she wrote of you as Mr. Ancillon, and yet she speaks of you as Señor Zuniga——”

“Yes. I took board with her as Alfred Ancillon. I did not wish, in the case of my arrest under the extradition treaty, to bring an old and proud name into that connection. And so it was not until after I had seen your advertisement, and searched the files of the _Pursuivant_ and discovered my full vindication from that imputed crime, that I determined to resume my own name. When we were once on board the steamer, I told Mrs. Downie that Ancillon was only my professional name, by which I think she understood that I was a literary man writing under that nomme de plume, but that my true name was Zuniga. You look very much astonished, Lilith.”

“I am astonished. I have been wondering in a state of the deepest perplexity over that whole matter!” exclaimed Lilith.

“Wondering why I called myself Zuniga?”

“Yes.”

“Why, my dear, because of all my names, professional or otherwise, that is the one to which I have the best right.”

“Were you—were you, then—were you——”

“The Señor Zuniga of Washington society?”

“Yes.”

“Of course I was. You recognized me at first sight, and so also did Hereward, as I saw by your amazed looks, although afterwards you were both persuaded that you were only deceived by a very striking likeness.”

“Yes, we were. For we knew you as Mr. Ancillon, and believed the professional announcement that you had gone to California——”

“When my stage name loaned to another member of the troupe alone had gone.”

“But believing as we did, how could we imagine you to be identical with Señor Zuniga, the nephew of the P—— minister? Even now I cannot understand it.”

“But you will when I tell you the whole of my story, Lilith.”

“And you acted your part so well! When you were introduced to us you looked so sublimely indifferent and unconscious of ever having seen us before. And, besides, though you looked so nearly identical with Alfred Ancillon, there were really striking points of dissimilarity.”

Señor Zuniga broke into one of his wild laughs, and then said:

“Exactly! Precisely! There were striking points of dissimilarity. When I dropped my stage name and character, and took up my real ones, I made no coarse disguise of other colored hair or complexion. Not at all. I just gave the ends of my very peculiar and characteristic eyebrows a quarter of an inch’s twist upward instead of downward, with the aid of a camel’s hair brush and a little Indian ink, and the ends of my mustache a corresponding droop downward instead of upward, and the character of my countenance and expression was changed. This, with my ‘sublime unconsciousness’ of which you spoke, your prepossessed idea that I had gone to California, en route for Australia, together with the utter improbability that Alfred Ancillon, the strolling player, should have anything in common with Señor Zuniga, the nephew of the P—— minister, completed the illusion.”

“It did, indeed.”

“And so, my child, as Señor Zuniga, I enjoyed opportunities of conversing with you such as I should never have been permitted to do as Alfred Ancillon.”

“But now you are forever Zuniga?”

“Yes, forever Zuniga.”

“And as the baroness may return before you leave, I must present you to her—by what name?”

“By my true name, of course. By the only name—now that my character is cleared from the faintest shadow of reproach—by which I shall henceforth be known—Zuniga.”

They talked on for an hour longer, asking and answering questions, but Zuniga was reticent about one matter—his right to the name he claimed.

“I will tell you later, Lilith,” was all the explanation that he would give of his reserve.

While they were still talking, the door of the drawing-room swung open and the baroness, accompanied by Aunt Sophie, entered the room.

Lilith and her visitor arose to receive them.

“Madame Von Bruyin,” said Lilith, addressing her patroness with a slight gesture of her hand towards her visitor, “please permit me to present to you the Señor Zuniga, my father.”

The gentleman bowed profoundly; the lady graciously, saying:

“I am glad to see you, señor. Your daughter is a dear young friend of mine. Pray resume your seat. I hope that you will favor us with your company at luncheon.”

“I thank you, madame, I shall be very happy,” replied the señor, with another bow.

But there was one figure in the group that stood transfixed, staring with eyes and mouth wide open, then muttering:

“Why—why—why—I didn’t know—why—why—why——”

But she could get no further.

Lilith went and put her arms around the old lady’s neck, and murmured, softly:

“Yes, Aunt Sophie, he is my dear father. I will tell you all about it by and by.”

“But—how come he, the sinner, to be your father?” inquired the dazed old lady.

Lilith laughed, and answered:

“I suppose because he married my mother.”

The luncheon bell rang, and the baroness requested Señor Zuniga to give his arm to Mrs. Downie.

At this moment Monsieur Le Grange joined the group and was informally introduced to the Señor Zuniga.

The whole party then moved to the small salon, where the luncheon table was spread, and where Madame Von Bruyin’s liveried servants were in attendance.

The light meal passed off very pleasantly—the señor being more than usually brilliant in sparkling wit and anecdote.

Soon after their return to the drawing-room Zuniga took leave, pleading that he had to run down to Calais that night to catch the earliest boat to Dover, but that he hoped to be in Paris again within a few days.

As soon as he was gone the baroness was eloquent in his praise. She commended his dark beauty, grace, elegance of person, his brilliancy in conversation and so forth.