Lady Carradine's letter, figuratively speaking, smote poor Nell, like a bolt from the blue. She had imagined several things, any one of which might have delayed Dare's coming--he had given her to understand that his business in London would not take up more than a fortnight at the most--but no faintest dread or suspicion that, after so long a time, he would be arrested and cast for trial on a charge connected with his past career had ever entered her mind. It was like a stab in the dark by an unseen hand, and she reeled under it, and felt for a while as if she were hurt in a vital part past hope of recovery.
She did not sleep a wink during the whole of the night after her receipt of the news. Now and then she lay down for a little while on a couch, but for the most part she spent the long dark hours in pacing her room restlessly from end to end. No sooner, however, had the first streak of daylight appeared in the sky than she quitted the house, and, making her way down to the banks of the little river which ran past the foot of the park, she followed its solitary windings for some miles, till it drew near the village of Mosscrags, where the early housewives were now astir, and the laborers going forth to their work; then she turned and retraced the way she had come. It had seemed to her that she could think more clearly and coherently under the free air of heaven than in the confined space of her own chamber.
All her thinking had for its intent the answering of one question: "What can I do to help him?" But so bitterly did the sense of her powerlessness weigh upon her that she could have beaten her head against the wall in a tempest of rage and impotent passion. She could do nothing--nothing; a month-old babe would be as competent to help him as she was. The four walls of a jail held him, and there was no door of escape open to him save that last one of all which led to the gallows. Several times in the course of the night the shadows that seem to lurk so thickly around one at such times had shaped themselves into the ghastly semblance of a cross-tree with its dangling rope, which, all imaginary though it was, had caused her soul to shudder and grow sick within her.
In the days to which our narrative refers the old barbarous and inhuman penal code was still in full operation, and crimes which a short term of imprisonment with hard labor would now expiate had the last dread sentence of the law pronounced on them without hope of reprieve. At the Lanchester spring assizes of that year, as Miss Baynard did not fail to call to mind, a couple of men had been condemned to death, one of them for sheep-stealing and the other for shop-lifting. In the eye of the law the crime for which Geoffrey Dare stood committed was of a much more heinous kind than either of those, and should the charge be proved against him, as there seemed every likelihood of its being, then would the gallows seen by Nell with the eyes of her imagination develop into a very real erection on the roof of Lanchester jail. In such a case as Dare's--whether or no they succeeded in identifying him with "Captain Nightshade"--the death penalty would indubitably be exacted. Justice would demand her victim, while Mercy wept with her face turned to the wall.
And still Nell's heart echoed persistently with the cry, "What can I do to help him?" But it was a cry which both earth and heaven flung back, and to which no answer was vouchsafed her. All that day and all the next night she was like a distracted creature, but distracted after the quiet fashion of one who craves for absolute solitude, and to whom even the society of those nearest and dearest is distasteful, if not positively unbearable.
Kind-hearted Mrs. Budd was greatly put about, being altogether at a loss to divine what was the matter with Nell, and whether the strangeness of her manner was due to a mental or bodily cause. Never before had she developed such peculiar symptoms, for no more sane and healthy being ever existed. She had never swooned in her life, although swooning, at proper times and season, was regarded rather as a fashionable accomplishment than otherwise. She never fancied that she was ill when nothing ailed her, or pretended that she had lost her appetite; she was never troubled with qualms, or spasms, or "the vertigo"; and as for being dyspeptic, she did not know the meaning of the word. She had been rendered very anxious and unhappy by the abduction of Evan, and proportionately happy by his recovery, but there had been nothing in the way she bore herself at that time which at all resembled the peculiar and inexplicable mood of which she had been the victim for the last four-and-twenty hours.
It was in a certain measure due to Mrs. Budd's instinctive tact, which taught her when it was advisable to speak and when to keep silent, that she and Miss Baynard had got on so well together. On the present occasion her instinct told her that Nell was in no mood to bear questioning, and she kept a guard on her tongue accordingly. But by the afternoon of the second day her uneasiness had grown to such an extent that she felt she should be lacking in her duty to one so much younger than herself if she refrained any longer from endeavoring to discover what it was that had changed Miss Baynard so unaccountably in so short a space of time.
"My dear Elinor, what is it that ails you? Whatever is the matter with you?" she at length summoned up courage to ask. "You are not like the same girl that you were at breakfast-time yesterday."
"Am I not? And yet I am the same," replied Nell with a smile which had more of tears than mirth in it. "What is't that ails me, do you ask! Nothing more serious than a fit of the megrims, I assure you. But I am apt to be dangerous at such times. You had better not come too near me; I might grow worse and bite you."
Then, before the astonished lady had time to collect her faculties, she found herself hugged and kissed, and left alone. Half a minute later she heard Miss Baynard singing as she went upstairs to her room. Then a door clashed somewhere in the distance, and all was still.
Some time in the dead of night Nell lay down on the couch in her bedroom, and presently sank into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion. In that sleep she had a very vivid dream, from which, at the end of a couple of hours, she suddenly awoke. So strongly had the particulars of her dream impressed themselves upon her that she lay for another hour without stirring, turning them over and over in her mind till she had mastered every detail of the scheme which, as she firmly believed, had been revealed to her by some supernatural influence in her sleep.
She had scarcely eaten a mouthful of anything since her receipt of her godmother's letter, but this morning she appeared at the breakfast-table as usual, and looking as if the last two days had been blotted out of her existence. She was still a little pale, and dark round the eyes, but the eyes themselves had lost that look of almost fierce despair, as of a creature driven to bay and not knowing which way to turn, which had been their dominant expression for the last eight-and-forty hours. Now they shone with a serene and steadfast lustre, which yet had in it a something of fixed resolution, as if bent on carrying out some hidden purpose, which the busy brain behind was brooding remotely over, even while its outward attention was occupied and given with seeming abandonment to far other things.
Mrs. Budd saw and was satisfied, and was far too wise to put any further questions with reference to a state of affairs which was so evidently over and done with.
Nell followed Mrs. Budd's lead over breakfast-table-talk wherever that good lady chose to let it wander, and her divagations were many and various. She seemed in the best of spirits, and when the meal was over she indulged herself and Evan with a wild romp.
The boy had been much put about in his childish way because for the last two nights he had been banished from his Aunt Nell's chamber to that of Mrs. Budd (in those first days after his recovery Nell would not entrust him at night to the care of any of the servants), but this glorious romp made amends for everything.
After that Nell disappeared for some hours, and was engaged upstairs in her own rooms; but she joined Mrs. Budd and Evan at dinner, and in the afternoon they all drove out together and watched the sunset from the summit of Goat Scar. Then followed a long and happy evening. Never had Mrs. Budd seen the girl more seemingly merry and light-hearted than she was that day; she and the Nell of the day before were two different beings. And yet at times there would come a pause in her gayety, and for a few seconds the light in her eyes would deepen and darken, and a look would come into them as if something had suddenly crossed her vision, seen by herself alone. But, whatever it might be, it went as quickly as it had come, and with one sharp-drawn breath she was herself again.
Next day at breakfast her mood was unaltered; but again, in the course of the forenoon, she was invisible for a couple of hours. That there was some secret business afoot Mrs. Budd felt satisfied, but, being the most discreet of matrons, she would rather have tied a handkerchief over her eyes than have allowed them to see what it was evidently not intended they should see. Still, it was not without a little shock of surprise that she heard the news which Nell broke abruptly to her as soon as their two o'clock dinner had come to an end.
"I am about to leave you for a little while," said the girl, smiling bravely. "At present I can tell you neither the object of my journey nor my destination, but that you will know everything in good time I do not doubt. Neither can I fix the date of my return, because that is a point about which I am not quite clear. I leave Evan in your hands with every confidence. That you will look well after him I feel assured. He loves you and will be happy with you."
After this followed a few directions with regard to household and other matters; then Miss Baynard went to get ready for her journey.
An hour later Mrs. Budd and Evan were waiting on the steps of the main entrance to see her start. Presently, mounted on her mare Peggy, and followed by John Dyce, also on horseback, she came riding round from the stables, and a very fair and gracious picture she made in her long dark-blue riding habit, over which she wore a short gray cloak lined with black and tied with black ribbons, being in mourning for Mr. Cortelyon. Her hat was of black beaver, broad-brimmed and ornamented with two sweeping ostrich plumes of the same color.
The afternoon sun, shining upon three or four heavy ringlets of chestnut hair which had escaped from under her hat, made a golden glory of them. The late pallor of her complexion had given place to a lovely flush of color. Her eyes, while more than ordinarily brilliant, did not smile as her lips did; rather did it seem as if they were charged with the light of some great resolution which might need all her courage to carry it through.
Evan was held aloft for the sake of a last kiss. There was a fervent "Heaven keep you, darling!" a flickering smile, the glisten of a tear, a last wave of the hand, and Nell was gone. The widow and child stood hand in hand till the trees of the avenue hid her from view and the sound of hoofbeats had died into silence. Then they went back indoors, but for both the light and gladness of the house had vanished. There was a chill upon everything, their spirits included.
An hour-and-a-half's good riding brought Miss Baynard and her escort to the quaint old town of Lanchester, with its narrow streets and narrower alleyways, with its many overhanging, lopsided houses, and its grim old county jail, built of ragged graystone, which frowns blankly down from the upper end of its wide, irregularly-shaped market-place, as if in mute warning to all and sundry. Miss Baynard, whose road led her past one corner of it, shuddered involuntarily as she glanced at it out of a corner of her eye. For her just then that gray old pile was the most vitally interesting spot in the whole world.
She was bound, first of all, for Langrig, the seat of Sir James Dalrymple, which was situated in the suburbs of Lanchester. Sir James, it may be remembered, was one of the trustees appointed under Mr. Cortelyon's unsigned will, and very glad he was, when he came to learn the contents of that document, to find that it was so much waste paper, and that he would not be called upon to help in the carrying out of what he regarded as its most wicked and unjust provisions. He had a warm regard for Nell, not only for her own sake, but for that of her father, whom he had known and liked, and with whom he had spent many a roystering evening when they were young blades together about London town. Finally, it may be mentioned that Sir James was chairman of the Lanchester bench of magistrates.
"I have come to you, Sir James, on rather a singular errand," began Miss Baynard, when she had been shown into the library, where she found the baronet sitting with one leg in a gout-rest, and after the usual greetings had passed between them.
"My dear young lady, my humble services are at your command in any and every way."
"At the present time there is a certain prisoner, Mr. Geoffrey Dare by name, in Lanchester jail, awaiting his trial at the next assizes."
"Which open in three weeks from now. To be sure--to be sure. The rascal who is said to have waylaid Sir Peter Warrendale and robbed him of his watch and snuffbox, and who is shrewdly suspected of being none other than the notorious Captain Nightshade. But what about him?"
"Merely this, Sir James, that I want you to give me an order of admission--I know you have ample power to do so--to see him privately in prison. When I say privately in prison, I of course mean without witnesses."
Sir James gave vent to a low whistle. "My dear Miss Baynard, do you know that this is really a somewhat extraordinary request of yours?"
"I am quite aware of it. But let me explain why I have preferred it." She drew a long breath. Without she was prepared to tell a lie--nay, more than one--she felt sure that her request would run the risk of a refusal. Lies to her had ever been an abomination, but the aim she had set before herself was such as to leave her no option in the matter. When a man's life is at stake, and that the life of the person you love best in the world, the ordinary rules of conduct are apt to get mixed and blurred, and much may be forgiven. In such extreme cases black is liable to be regarded as white, and white as any color you please.
Miss Baynard had come prepared to answer objections, and she went on after a hardly observable pause.
"The fact of the matter is, Sir James, that Mr. Dare, in his more prosperous days, was the bosom friend of my late cousin, Dick Cortelyon, whose young son, as you are aware, has just inherited his grandfather's property. Well, it so happens that a couple of days ago, in turning over some letters and other effects which had belonged to my cousin, I came across a sort of rough diary which had been kept by him during the last year of his life. In it there is a passage in which he makes mention of a batch of rather important family papers which, after he had fallen into disgrace at home, he had entrusted to the keeping of Mr. Dare. Now, although I have sought for them high and low, I have failed to find any trace of the papers in question, and am consequently most anxious to ascertain from Mr. Dare what has become of them; indeed, I think it most likely that they are still somewhere in his keeping. Such is my reason, Sir James, for desiring an interview with him. If it could be arranged for to-day I should esteem it a great favor, as some very special business will take me from home to-morrow, and the date of my return is altogether uncertain."
"My dear Miss Baynard, not a word more is needed. I will at once write and give you a note, addressed to Captain Jeffs, the governor of the jail, authorizing him to permit you to have a private interview with the prisoner Dare. What a pity, what a damnable pity it is (begging your pardon) that a young fellow with good family and with the brilliant prospects which, I am given to understand, were once his, should have brought his kettle of fish to such a market as he seems to have done! But, as we make our bed, so must we lie on it. And now---- But, dear me! dear me! here am I running on without ever thinking to ask you what you will take in the way of refreshment. That's one of the fruits of being an old bachelor, and of having no womenfolk to keep me up to the mark and teach me not to forget the minor courtesies of life."
In the result, Nell agreed to accept a glass of the baronet's "particular old Madeira" and a biscuit. Not to have done as much as that would have been to infringe the unwritten laws of north-country hospitality.
Then said Sir James: "I had Lawyer Piljoy here t'other day. His purpose in coming was to tell me all about the lost child and its recovery, and a most amazing story it is; and, further, to consult with me as to what steps, if any, it is advisable to take in the affair. The first thing I did was to send for Staniforth, who was to have been your uncle's other trustee, and then we three laid our heads together. I need not bother you with reciting any of our arguments pro and con, but in the end we agreed that it would not, for various reasons, be advisable that any further proceedings should be taken in the matter. The child has been restored, which is the main thing to be borne in mind, and we felt pretty sure that no attempt would be made to abduct him a second time."
"You say, Sir James, that the child has been restored, which is quite true, but do you know whom we have to thank for it?"
"Haven't the remotest notion. I asked Piljoy how it came about, but he couldn't tell me. He said that if anybody knew, you did, but that beyond telling him it was the Honorable Mrs. B. who had abducted the youngster (what a she-cat that woman must be!) you had favored him with no particulars."
"It is to Mr. Geoffrey Dare, now a prisoner in Lanchester jail, that the child's recovery is due. It had been arranged that he--the boy--should be secretly transported to America, where we should never have heard of him more, when Mr. Dare, having discovered what was afoot, in the guise of a highwayman stopped the carriage in which he was being carried off, and rescued him from the wretches to whose charge he had been committed."
"Never heard of such a thing in my life, damme if I did! Um--um! I crave your pardon, my dear, but strong feelings have a way of finding their vent in strong language. And young Dare did that, did he? Well, well, we must see what can be done for him when his trial comes on. Such stuff as he seems made of is too good for the gallows. And now I will write you the promised note. I'm afraid you'll be a little later than the regulation hour for seeing prisoners, but maybe Jeffs will strain a point for once in a way. At any rate, I'll ask him to do so."
The late September afternoon was closing rapidly in when John Dyce helped his mistress to alight from her mare, which had been reined up close to the great, black, bolt-studded gates of Lanchester jail. It was a rare thing for those gates to be opened except for the admission of prisoners, the usual means of entrance and exit being by a postern in the wall no great distance away.
On this door Miss Baynard now proceeded to give three resounding blows with the huge iron knocker. Half a minute later a small wicket was opened, and a hirsute face peered out into the glowing darkness.
"Be good enough to have this note given to Captain Jeffs without a minute's delay," said Miss Baynard in her clear, imperious tones. "It is of the utmost importance. I will wait here while you obtain an answer." With that she handed in Sir James's note at the wicket, but on the top of it lay a shining guinea.
There was a grunt, and the wicket was shut.
While awaiting an answer, Nell drew from one of her pockets a long diaphanous black veil, which she proceeded to fix round the brim of her hat and to fasten in a knot behind in such a fashion that it came halfway down her face, leaving nothing of it exposed save her upper lip, her mouth, and her chin.
The wait seemed an intolerably long one, and her nerve was beginning to give way a little, when the wicket was opened for the second time, and the same hirsute face made its appearance. "The governor says it's beyont the hour for visitors, and that ye should have come earlier; but as ye're a friend o' Sir James Dalrymple's he'll admit ye. He sends word that he's sorry not to come and speak to ye hisself, but he's got company at dinner, and can't leave th' table." Such, in the gruffest of tones, was the doorkeeper's welcome message.
Then the wicket was closed again, and half a minute later the narrow black door had opened to admit Nell. She slipped in like a shadow, the postern was shut with a clash, and she found herself in a bare, flagged ante-room or entrance-hall, with three or four doors opening out of it, and dimly lighted with a couple of guttering candles. Here was a second man, like the first, in uniform, who carried in one hand a jingling bunch of keys, and to whom the doorkeeper introduced her with the remark, "This is Willyam, mum, who will show ye the way if ye will please to follow him."
"Then perhaps William will oblige me by accepting this trifle," said Miss Baynard; and before the turnkey knew what had happened there was a guinea nestling in his palm.
Then from some mysterious pocket Miss Baynard produced a large, flat bottle containing a quart of the most potent brandy in the Stanbrook cellars. "And here is something to share between you and to drink my health in," she added, as she proffered the bottle for the doorkeeper's acceptance, who took it as tenderly as if it had been a month-old baby.
"Eh, mum, but it's agen the rules to accept anything o' this sort," he remarked, with a wag of his head. "We'll not engage to drink it. No, no. Rules isn't made in order that they may be broke. We'll just hide it away where nobody but ourselves can find it, so as not to put temptation in the way of any other poor body." And with that the rascal favored his fellow-officer with a portentous wink.
The latter functionary now lighted a small lantern, and, having unlocked one of the inner doors, he said, "If you will be pleased to follow me, mum."
By this time Nell's nerves were worked up to a point of tension that was almost unendurable. She set her teeth hard and clenched her hands as if she intended never to open them again.
Success had attended her so far; would it desert her now? What she had already achieved was as nothing in comparison with that which was still before her. For a few moments it seemed as if the courage which had hitherto sustained her were about to give way.
As she followed the man she had merely a vague impression of a gloomy, flagged, earth-smelling corridor, lighted only by the turnkey's lantern; of a heavy iron door which had to be unlocked to allow of their further advance; of another corridor the counterpart of the first, save that on one side of it some half-dozen doors were ranged at intervals. At one of these her conductor came to a halt, and, having selected a key from his bunch, proceeded to unlock it. Then, flinging wide the door, he said in deep, gruff tones which seemed to fill the corridor, "Prisoner, a lady to see you," and with that he moved aside to allow Miss Baynard to enter.
At the words Dare sprang to his feet. He had been reading, stretched at full length on the pallet which served him for a bed by night and a couch by day. A wooden sconce, fixed against the wall, held a solitary candle of the coarsest tallow, which diffused a dim, sickly light through the cell. It was an indulgence his own pocket had to pay for. Had not the volume on which he was engaged been in large print he could not have seen to read it.
At sight of him all Nell's failing courage came back to her with a rush, mingled with a great wave of love and compassion. Hardly could she command her voice while she whispered to the turnkey, "Leave us for half-an-hour; don't come before."
"All right, mum," whispered the man back.
Then Nell stepped across the threshold of the cell, and the door was locked behind her. Dare, his book fallen unheeded to the floor, stood staring at her with wide-lidded eyes as though she were some visitant from the tomb. Nell responded to his amazement with a strangely-wistful smile, and eyes that no longer strove to hide a secret which, she flattered herself, they had never revealed before. She could not have spoken at that moment to save her life. She felt as if a spell were upon her; everything about her was unreal. Dare himself was not a creature of flesh and blood, but merely a projection of her own imagination. Some sorceress had thrown an enchantment over her which----
"Is it you, Miss Baynard, whom I see? and here, of all places in the universe!"
Dare's voice broke the spell that was upon her, and recalled to her, as in a flash, the very real business--the matter of life and death--which had taken her there, and which must be entered on without a minute's unnecessary delay.
"Yes, it is I, Mr. Dare," she answered in accents that were slightly tremulous. "You did me and mine a great, nay, an inestimable service; and I am here to see whether I cannot do something for you in return."
A bitter smile lit up his sallow features for a moment. "It is indeed good of you to have put yourself to so much trouble about such a worthless wretch as I. But, were I a hundred-fold more worthy than I am, neither you, Miss Baynard, nor any power on earth (save and except the King's clemency, which is altogether out of the question) could do aught to help me out of the coil of trouble which I have brought upon myself."
"Do not be too sure on that point, Mr. Dare. It is the humblest instruments which sometimes avail for the most difficult tasks. We have all read the fable of the lion and the mouse, and cases might arise in which even such an inconsiderable person as I, owing to my very insignificance might be able to do things which would be impossible in any one of greater importance." Her voice was firm enough by now, and her eyes confronted his unwaveringly. She had pushed up her veil till only an edge of it was visible across her forehead at the moment the turnkey had locked the door behind her.
Dare bowed, but looked slightly puzzled. To what was all this the prelude? That she had not come there without having some very special purpose in view he could no longer doubt. But merely to see her face again was to him what the sight of water is to some poor wretch dying of thirst in the desert. To himself he always spoke of her as the Lady of his Dreams.
"Will you not be seated, Miss Baynard?" he now said, as he brought forward a substantial three-legged stool, the only thing, except his pallet, he had to sit on. "My accommodation is of the simplest, as you can see for yourself. That, however, is not my fault, but an oversight (shall we call it?) on the part of my custodians, whose affection for me is so extreme that they cannot bear to part from me."
So Nell sat down on the three-legged stool, while Dare stood a little apart, with folded arms, resting a shoulder against the whitewashed wall of his cell.
Miss Baynard cleared her voice; the crucial moment had come at last.
"I am not here this evening, Mr. Dare, merely to sympathize with you," she resumed, "although that my most heartfelt sympathy is yours needs no assurance on my part, but to put before you a certain definite proposition, which has been carefully thought out in all its details, and the carrying out of which seems to me perfectly feasible. Here, in the fewest words possible--necessarily few because half an hour at the outside must bring my visit to an end--is my proposition. It is simply that you and I shall change places. In half a hour from now you shall quit this cell in the guise of Elinor Baynard, and I shall stay where I am, having, for the nonce, exchanged my personality for that of Mr. Geoffrey Dare."
Dare had sprung to "attention" long before Nell had come to an end. A wave of dark crimson swept across his lean face, leaving it sallower than before. His eyes lighted up with an intense glow. Would any woman, he asked himself, any woman who was young and beautiful, put such a proposition to a man if she did not love him? It was a question he did not wait to answer. He would have time enough to consider it later on.
"Never had an undeserving man a more noble offer made him than you have just made me. But, putting aside the insuperable difficulties in the way of carrying it out, there are other reasons which----"
"There are no insuperable difficulties in the way of carrying it out," broke in Nell. "Every arrangement has been made, as you shall presently hear. But remember this, that we have no time to waste in explanations or idle objections."
Dare bowed as accepting a correction. "Then permit me to say as briefly as may be, Miss Baynard, that it cannot be, that on no account whatever could I, or would I accept such a sacrifice at your hands."
"A sacrifice! Oh, the mockery of the phrase!" Although she spoke aloud, the words seemed addressed to herself rather than to Dare. She had removed her riding gloves, and the long, slender fingers of one hand now gripped those of the other convulsively. Her sharp, white teeth bit into her under-lip and left their mark there. She seemed to be bracing herself for a final effort.
"You are no doubt aware," she resumed, "that your trial will come on in about three weeks from now."
"That is a circumstance I am not likely to forget."
"And have you considered, have you allowed your imagination to paint for you what the consequence will be should the verdict at your trial go against you?"
"As, considering the evidence which will be brought against me, it is nearly sure to do. Yes, I have fully considered the consequence, and may be said to be on pretty familiar terms with it by this time. But as for my imagination, I trust it is too well-bred to allow itself to dwell unnecessarily on details which are best kept in the background till the latest possible moment."
"And the prospect does not appall you?"
"Appall me? No. 'Tis not a pleasant one, I admit. But what would you? I played a game with Fate, the dice went against me, and I have lost. That, however, is no reason why I should bewail myself like a puling child, or why my cheek should blanch at the prospect which I shall presently be called upon to confront."
"But will you not see, cannot you comprehend, that a door of escape is open for you?" Her voice had in it a ring of almost passionate impatience. The precious minutes were drifting away one by one.
"Possibly so, but only at an expense which I do not choose to incur."
"Oh, what headstrong folly! Did the world ever see its like? And you would rather face your--your doom than accept this sacrifice, as you choose to call it, at my hands?"
"Even so. I have said it, and nothing will avail to move me from it."
For a moment or two she beat her hands together in an agony of helplessness. Then she stood up. Her face was colorless, and her forehead contracted as if with a spasm of intense pain.
"You do not know how cruel you are," she said in low, concentrated tones. "You drag from me things which I thought never to reveal to a living soul." She paused for a space of half-a-dozen heart-beats, as though fighting against some hidden emotion. Then she went on. "Should it be your fate to die, Geoffrey Dare, the same day that ends your life shall end mine! I swear it." She lifted up her hands and let her face sink into them.
An inarticulate cry broke from Dare, a great light leapt into his eyes, he drew a step nearer and held out both his arms. Then he half drew back, with his arms extended in mid-air. "Such words, unless I am a bad interpreter, can have but one meaning." He seemed to breathe the syllables rather than to speak them.
For a few seconds there was no reply, and when it did come he had to strain his ears or he would have lost it.
"Your death-day shall be mine. I have said it. Is not that enough?"
A moment later his arms were about her, and he was straining her passionately to his heart. "And you love me!--me!!" he ejaculated. "Oh, miracle of miracles!"
Sweet to him as a breath from Paradise was the whispered answer: "I have loved you ever since the night you were so kind to Jack Prentice."
It was three minutes later. With what passed in the interim we are in no way concerned.
"But consider, my darling, think and consider before it is too late," urged Dare. "That Miss Baynard of Stanbrook should stoop to love Captain Nightshade--a highwayman--a minion of the moon! No, it must not be! And I--I should be a scoundrel to accept so great a gift, unless----"
A hand was laid on his lips. "Oh, hush! I will not listen to such words. You steal away a poor girl's heart, and then you bid her think and consider! Too late, too late. But never, never will I forgive you for having wrung my secret from me! Yet, what am I saying? On one condition I will forgive you fully and freely."
"And that is----?"
"That without a word more of demur you do your share in helping me to carry out the scheme which brought me here. What that scheme is I have already told you."
"But, my dearest----"
For the second time a hand was laid on his lips. "Not a word! I will not listen. You will do it, if not for your own sake, then for mine. Do you hear? For mine."
"For yours, then, let it be," he assented, but for the life of him he could not see by what means she purposed carrying out her extraordinary proposition.
The prison clock began to boom the hour. Miss Baynard started. "Heavens! Our little slice of time more than half gone, and nothing done!"
Then, without a word more, she untied her short gray cloak and laid it aside. Under it she had on a loosely fitting bodice and her long riding skirt, both of which garments a couple a minutes later lay in a heap on the floor; and then to Dare's astonished eyes there stood revealed the seeming figure of a young man, wearing a ruffled shirt and cravat, a pair of dark small clothes and Hessian boots--all at one time the property of unfortunate Dick Cortelyon. Only the plumed hat, the veil, and the heavy chestnut curls still remained to bespeak their owner's sex. But Nell's hands went quickly up to her head, there were a few deft movements of her fingers, and the whole paraphernalia--hat, veil, and ringlets came bodily away. Well might Dare's eyes open themselves still wider. Before leaving home she had shorn off her wealth of tresses, and then, by means of some feminine sleight-of-hand, had contrived to secure them to the inner side of her hat in such a way that when the hat was worn the curls lay in quite natural fashion round the nape of the neck.
Nor was Dare's wonder yet to end. From a pocket in her small-clothes Nell now drew forth a black wig, a masquerade relic of poor Dick's, and proceeded to draw it on over her close-cropped chestnut locks. Then turning to her companion, who had been regarding her all this time without a word, she said in mock-serious tones, "Your coat and vest, sir, or your life!"
At once Dare divested himself of the articles in question, and when Nell had inducted herself into them her transformation was complete, and a very dashing and debonair young buck she looked.
"And now it is high time for Miss Baynard to makehertoilet," she remarked; "but such an awkward young woman is she that it may be as well I should lend her a helping hand."
Dare, who recognized the futility of any further opposition, yielded himself into her hands and did exactly as she bade him. Although Nell was tall, he was three inches taller than she, but the riding skirt admitted of ample allowance for the difference. When, however, it came to the bodice, that garment cracked ominously, and the hooks and eyes wholly refused to come together. But, happily, the gray cloak was ample enough to hide all shortcomings.
222"Your coat and vest sir--or your life."
Lastly, the elaborate headdress--hat, veil, and curls--had to be adjusted. This was a matter of some nicety, but presently it was accomplished to Miss Baynard's satisfaction. Then, stepping back a pace, she took a general survey of her handiwork. "Yes, I think you'll do," she said, "although you do look so preternaturally tall. On no account must you either speak or cough, and do for goodness' sake try to mitigate that seven-league stride of yours. I suppose that, try as you might, you couldn't mince or bridle a little, as all young ladies are supposed to do?"
Although she spoke with such seeming levity, her nerves were all a-tingle with mingled apprehension and excitement. She felt as if she were strapped down on the operating table, and waiting for the coming of the surgeon with his terrible knife.
The only remark made by Dare during the process of his transformation was when Nell was on the point of crowning him with the hat and curls. With a caressing touch on one of the tresses, he said: "Oh, my dear one, to think you should have done this for me! What a sacrifice! Can I ever forgive you?"
"Of course you can," she answered lightly. "Am I not making you a present of the rubbish, to do what you like with? Some lovers think themselves well off if they can secure a tiny tress of their mistress' hair, but so great ismygenerosity that I freely present you with enough to stuff a sofa cushion."
He caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately.
But now was heard a faint sound as of the unlocking and opening of a door in the distance, and then, heralded by a cough, the noise of approaching footsteps on the flagged floor of the corridor. Instead of a bare thirty minutes, our young people had been nearly an hour together. Whether the guineas and the brandy were in any way concerned with such a liberal measurement of time is more than one would undertake to decide.
"The time to part has come," said Nell in a hurried whisper. "Listen. My man John Dyce is waiting outside, in charge of my mare. He may be trusted implicitly. He has had his instructions, and will ask no questions. The future I leave wholly in your hands."
More was impossible. The turnkey was at the door. After a preliminary rap on it, he called out, "Time's up long since, mum. Are you ready?"
"Quite ready, William, thank you," was Miss Baynard's clear response.
So William unlocked the door, and drew it back on its hinges. What he saw when he had done so was his prisoner, as it seemed to him, seated on his pallet in a dejected attitude, with bowed head, and his elbows resting on his knees; nor did he so much as look up at the opening of the door.
Just inside, waiting apparently for the opening of the door, and with her back to the candle, was the young lady visitor, whose face was now wholly hidden by her veil. As soon as the door was opened she passed out without a word, and then stood aside for a moment, while it was shut and relocked. That done, William, swinging his hand-lantern, and not, it must sorrowfully be confessed, quite so steady on his feet as he had been earlier in the evening, led the way, in happy ignorance of the peck of trouble he was brewing for himself.
Hardly was the cell door shut before Nell was kneeling by it with one ear pressed to its cold iron surface. The footsteps died into silence, then as before, was heard the clash of a distant door, and after that all was still with a stillness as of the tomb.
Then Nell stood up, a great calm, a great happiness almost, shining out of her eyes. "If only I have succeeded in saving him," she said aloud, "nothing else matters!"
But next moment her overwrought nerves gave way. Staggering across the floor and flinging herself face downward on the pallet, she burst into a tempest of tears.
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."