CHAPTER XVI.

DACIA EXPLAINS.

Not much sleep visited the pillow of Burgo Brabazon that night. The mere thought that a possibility of escape seemed to be opening itself out before him would alone have been enough to break his rest. Supposing that when he saw her next Miss Roylance should ask him in what way she could help him best, ought he not to be ready with an answer to her question? And what ought that answer to be? But at this point he was confronted by a puzzle of which no solution was forthcoming. If Miss Roylance was so far mistress of the situation that neither bolts nor bars sufficed to hinder her from penetrating as far as the outside of his prison door, what was there to prevent her from opening the door itself and so setting him at liberty? It was a perplexing question, and as futile as perplexing, which was just the reason why it kept putting itself to him again and again. And yet he had only to wait patiently to have both this and other things made plain to him; but that is what most of us find it so hard to do.

The spell which Dacia Roylance had unwittingly thrown over him was not broken with her own evanishment. It possessed him and would not let him go. Some magnetic chord of his being had been struck which no one had ever sounded before, and of the existence of which he had been wholly ignorant, and its subtle vibrations thrilled him as he had never been thrilled before. It was not love, it had no touch of passion in it, it was an experience altogether fresh and strange. "I am bewitched, and that's the simple fact," he said to himself. "I never believed in 'possession' before; I do now." And yet he seemed in no way put about, but probably in a process of that sort everything depends upon the sorceress. In any case, Burgo found himself longing, as he had rarely longed for anything, for the time when he should see Dacia Roylance again.

From the first day of Burgo's imprisonment till now there had been no break in the weather. The sun had shone in an all but unclouded sky, the nights had been soft and balmy, the winds hushed. Hour after hour had Burgo spent at the window of his prison watching the tide as it seethed creamily up the sands and broke in softest foam or else its slow recession as wave by wave it was drawn backward by a force it was powerless to resist. To-night, however, had brought a change. The sun had set in a gorgeous cloud-pageant, like some conqueror with torn ensigns and blood-stained banners marching through tottering battlements and ruined towers into some great city's flaming heart. Later the wind had begun to rise, and by midnight it was blowing half a gale. At high-water every minute or two some thunderous pulsation of the tide would smite the face of the cliff with such terrific impact as for a time to almost deafen Burgo. More than once the old tower seemed to quiver to its foundations. Even if Burgo had had nothing out of the ordinary to occupy his thoughts, it would have been next to impossible for him to sleep.

Forming, as it were, a separate note of the elemental diapason outside, while yet being in full accord with it, was a sound which Burgo long lay listening to without being able to satisfy himself whence or how it originated. It was something between a rush and roar and a sort of Titanic gurgle, and seemed to reach his ear, not from without, but as if it ascended through the floor of his room. Then all at once he said to himself, "Can it be that the tower is undermined, and that what I hear is the noise of the tide as it is being alternately forced into and sucked out of some natural hollow or opening in the face of the cliff?" The longer he pondered this explanation the more satisfied he became that it was the real one.

But when at length sleep came to him he was not thinking of any weird cavern in the cliff, haunted by mermaid or siren, but of the young witch with her red-gold hair and wonderful eyes who had cast a spell over him, the potency of which was already beginning to make itself felt.

In the course of the forenoon the wind went down, but there was a heavy sea running for hours to come.

Breakfast and dinner came in due course, but with the latter meal a letter was handed to Burgo, the address of which--simply his own name--he at once recognised as being in the calligraphy of Miss Roylance. He opened it with a sinking of the heart. Had she written to say that something had intervened, and that she would not be able to visit him as promised? He motioned to Mrs. Sprowle to remain till he had read it. There might be something in it which would necessitate an answer.

"I was about to explain to you yesterday, when interrupted," it began abruptly, "the reasons by which I was actuated in seeking an interview in the way I did, with one who was a complete stranger to me. To you, I have no doubt, it seemed a bold and unmaidenly thing to do, and only under very special circumstances could such a step be at all excusable. That the circumstances in this case are of a very special kind you will, I trust, be ready to admit by the time you have read to the end of what is here written.

"For various reasons I have deemed it best to put my explanation in writing, the chief one being that at present I am far from sure I shall be able to see you again this evening; indeed, it is by no means unlikely that I may be unable to do so at all. You will understand why when you have read further.

"I must ask you to bear with me while I jot down, as briefly as may be, a few details of my early history which are needful for the due understanding of what follows. I will try not to weary you over-much.

"I was born in India, where my father was in the Civil Service, and was sent to Lausanne at an early age to be educated. My mother died when I was too young to remember her, and I lost my father when I was about twelve years old. Of the two guardians appointed by my father, one is a London solicitor whom I have never seen, the other being Colonel Innes, my mother's brother. To finish this part of my explanation, I may add that when I am twenty-one I shall come into a fortune of ten thousand pounds, and that I am debarred from marrying before that age (I am now just turned twenty) without the consent of my guardians--or rather, of the one who is still living, for my uncle, Colonel Innes, died a year and a half ago.

"When my uncle Innes retired from the army he came to Europe, and, after spending some months in England, he settled down for the winter at Nice. It was there I joined him on leaving school, for his home, he said, was henceforth to be my home; and it was there he met La Signora Offredi, whom he shortly afterwards married, and who is now known to the world as the wife of Sir Everard Clinton.

"The courtship was a very brief one, for my uncle was simply infatuated. His marriage was to make no difference to me; my home was to be still with him--an arrangement which his wife most cordially seconded. Indeed, from the hour I was introduced to her, Lady Clinton--to give her the title by which she is now known--accorded me an amount of affection which my more frigid temperament made it impossible for me to reciprocate in anything like an equivalent degree. On two occasions she took me with her on her visits to her son, a boy of twelve, who was at school also at Lausanne.

"When my uncle had been married about eighteen months a great misfortune befell him. He lost nearly the whole of his fortune by a bank failure. No doubt it preyed deeply on his mind, and a few weeks after the news came he broke down completely. He never rallied, but lingered on for three months, growing gradually weaker, and then died, his wife having scarcely left his side during the whole of his illness. On his deathbed he exacted from me a promise to remain with her, and to be guided by her in everything, in any case till I should come of age. I gave the promise without a thought of any possible consequences which it might entail.

"Very shortly after my uncle's death I went to stay for a time with some relatives, who, having settled some years before in New Zealand, were now over in England on a visit. Circumstances kept them in this country for more than a year, and when they finally went back, and I--having no other home--returned to the shelter of Lady Clinton's roof, for she had been married again in the interim, it was to Garion Keep that I came.

"Although I had heard of the existence of such a person, it was not till then that I made the acquaintance of Signor Sperani, her ladyship's brother, who had arrived at the Keep two or three days later than I.

"The first knowledge I had of your existence, Mr. Brabazon, was when your insensible body was brought into the house late one night by Signor Sperani and Jared Sprowle, the latter being the son of the old woman who waits on you, and the man, as I learnt afterwards, who had been employed to dog your footsteps for days before. I happened to be crossing the gallery at the moment when they brought your body in and laid it on the hall table. A single lamp was burning below, the gallery was in gloom, and from where I stood I could look down on all that passed, myself unseen.

"Apparently the first thing Sperani did was to satisfy himself that you were not dead (I have learnt since that he was brought up to the medical profession, as was his father before him), after which he went in search of her ladyship, who came back with him two minutes later. Then a hurried consultation was held between the two, Sprowle standing somewhat apart meanwhile, but they spoke so guardedly that not a word of what they said reached me. Then her ladyship went, and the two men, carrying the body between them--your body, please bear in mind, Mr. Brabazon--disappeared with it down one of the corridors which diverge from the hall, but not down the one which leads to her ladyship's and Sir Everard's rooms, which, I may here remark, are on the ground floor, in order that the latter may be spared the necessity of going up and down stairs.

"To what place they had taken you, Mr. Brabazon, I could not in the least imagine, but from the air of hurried secrecy with which the affair seemed to be invested, I concluded that it would most likely be to some part of the house with which the servants have little or nothing to do, for in the north wing alone there are several rooms which are always kept locked, and which nobody ever seems to enter. At that time I had no knowledge of the underground passage which leads from the house to the tower.

"I need scarcely tell you that the scene I had witnessed from the gallery took a powerful hold of my imagination. I could not get it out of my thoughts; but I felt that I durst not ask a question of any one about it--indeed, there was no one but her ladyship to ask, and I was quite sure the affair was one I was supposed to know nothing about. In the house everything went on as usual; there was nothing in the demeanour of the servants to indicate that they were aware of anything unusual having occurred; the shut-up rooms in the north wing were still shut up; what then had become of the insensible body of the young man which I had seen carried away by Sperani and his accomplice? That he was not dead I had seen enough to satisfy myself, and yet it seemed impossible that he should be hidden away in the house without the servants being cognisant of the fact; for, when all is said, the Keep has only a limited number of rooms, and the servants are passing backward and forward almost continually.

"But you know already, Mr. Brabazon, how it was that, as far as I was concerned, you had so unaccountably vanished. It was either on the third or fourth evening after the scene in the hall that, as I chanced to be passing a certain door on what may be called the cellar floor of the house, to which I had never ventured to penetrate before, it was opened from the other side, and I found myself face to face with Mrs. Sprowle. The woman was evidently far more disconcerted than I, indeed, it is not too much to say that she looked thoroughly terrified. I was about to pass on, but she took a couple of strides forward and clutched me by the sleeve. 'Not a word to anybody, miss, that you have seen me here, she said in my ear, or it will be worse for both of us.' I nodded and passed on, asking myself what hidden meaning lay behind her words. Could it be that I had lighted on the clue for which during the last three days I had been so anxiously searching?

"In the course of next forenoon I made it my business to secure a private interview with Mrs. Sprowle. As you are doubtless aware, she is stone deaf--at least, she passes for such, but I think it just possible that her affliction may not be quite so extreme as it is her policy to make people believe. But be that as it may, my intercourse with her is carried on through the medium of the finger alphabet, an accomplishment which I picked up while at school I had had little or nothing to do with Mrs. Sprowle before. She and her son had lived at the Keep in the office of caretakers previously to the arrival of Sir Everard and her ladyship. Now that I had got her to myself it did not take me long to discover that her one great passion or failing, or whatever one chooses to term it, is greed--the love of money--and that if I would only pay her sufficiently, and, as she termed it, pass her my word never to 'split' on her, she would answer all my questions truthfully and to the best of her ability. She had a further incentive to do so, had any been needed, in her hatred of Sperani, who had nearly frightened her into a fit one day by making believe to egg on one of his big brutes to worry her. It was a piece of sport for which she never forgave him.

"Well, you may be sure that the old lady and I were not long in coming to terms. And in such fashion it was, Mr. Brabazon, that I learnt you were Sir Everard Clinton's nephew; that, for some reason unknown, her ladyship had a great spite against you; that as soon as it was known you had made your appearance at Crag End, a watch was set upon your movements; that you were murderously attacked in the dark; and that, finally, you were now a prisoner in the old tower on the cliff, to which place your meals were taken you by the woman who told me all this. From that moment I made up my mind to help you to escape should it anyhow be possible for me to do so.

"But the more I thought over the affair, the more beset with difficulties it seemed. Sperani was ever on the watch--he and his dogs. I was helpless; I could do nothing. But there is no need to trouble you with all I thought and felt. It is enough to say that I was beginning to despair, and that I had said to myself more than once: 'It is useless; I can do nothing,' when chance--if there be such a thing--came to my aid in a way the most surprising. Yesterday morning Signor Sperani was called away to London on some business of importance, the nature of which I am ignorant of. The time of his return was uncertain; he might be back within thirty-six hours, or he might be detained considerably longer; that part of the affair was discussed between him and her ladyship over breakfast, and in my presence. Before starting for the station, he interviewed both Sprowle and his mother (so Mrs. S. informed me later), and gave them their instructions. The key of the room--your room--he took with him; he would not entrust it to anybody; but the key which opens the two doors of the underground passage, one at either end, he was compelled to leave, otherwise you would have had to starve till his return. The latter key he gave into the custody of Sprowle, who was to let his mother have it for the time being as often as your meal times came round, with strict injunctions not to quit the Keep end of the passage till he had received it from her again on her return from the tower.

"All this Mrs. Sprowle took an early opportunity of telling me. Now, if ever--that is to say, while Sperani was away--was my chance of communicating with you. But with Sprowle constantly on the watch, how was it to be managed? I laid my difficulty before the old woman, who had already proffered to do anything for me which did not tend to implicate herself, and before long she found the means of solving it for me. It appears that her son, whenever money and opportunity combine, is in the habit of taking more to drink than is good for him. Sperani's presence had compelled him to be abstemious for a considerably longer time than he was used to, and his mother felt absolutely sure that 'her boy' would take advantage of the Italian's temporary absence to indulge in his favourite weakness. It was in consequence of what she said that my preliminary note to you was written. She was fully justified by the event. In the course of the afternoon her son drank himself stupid, and wound up by falling fast asleep. Then the astute old woman picked his pocket and brought me the key.

"His mother assures me that he will repeat the process to-day should news come to hand that Sperani need not be expected back till to-morrow or later.

"You will doubtless have asked yourself long before you have read thus far, why I have been at the trouble of writing all this, and imposing on you the wearisome task of its perusal. My answer is very simple. I felt the need of justifying myself for what I have done in thrusting my presence upon you unsought and unasked. If I have succeeded in doing so, nothing more need be said on the point; if I have not succeeded, you have only to return these lines by the bearer, and I shall know what to do.

"When I had written thus far I went downstairs to luncheon. While the meal was in progress a messenger from Oakbarrow station arrived with a telegram. It was from Signor Sperani to his sister, announcing that the business which has taken him to London will detain him there till to-morrow or next day.

"Should I, therefore, receive no message from you to the contrary, and should Sprowle, with his mother's connivance, indulge to-day after the same fashion that he did yesterday--as to which there seems no reasonable doubt--then may you look to see me outside your door in the course of the evening.

"Let me impress upon you once more that in acting as I am, one desire alone has influenced me throughout--that of being able to help you to escape; but it rests with you to determine, now that you know what the difficulties are which stand in your way, whether that desire is capable of being worked out to a practical issue.

"Devise the means, and if you need the help of Dacia Roylance it will be most ungrudgingly given.

"Do not forget to burn this as soon as read.

"D. R."

The first thing Burgo did after a rapid perusal of the foregoing was to scribble a line in reply, for it was not desirable that Mrs. Sprowle should be detained longer than was absolutely necessary.

"A thousand thanks. You are indeed kind. I shall look to see you this evening without fail--B. B."

Then he read Miss Roylance's communication again, and at his leisure. Then, in accordance with the writer's express request, but not without a certain amount of regret on his part, he set light to the paper and watched it slowly consume to ashes.