Part 18

Quite suddenly Marion burst into tears.

'It is horrible,' she said. 'Horrible! Have I been all these years playing and sleeping and eating with some one called Suzanne Marie, and the real Elise starving in London? Simone,'--she threw her arms round the girl's neck,--'forgive me, forgive us.'

Mistress Keziah's old eyes watered as she looked at the girl who had always been so self-controlled. 'My darling,' she said, 'it was not your fault.'

'I cannot bear it!' cried Marion. 'And I care not who sees me weep. Romaine says she found Simone in a fearful state in a gutter in Crutched Friars. She had been so dreadfully treated that she nearly died. Then when Romaine had nursed her back to health she could not remember anything.'

'No,' broke in Simone's toneless voice. 'No. But I remember now. Dear Marion, do not be unhappy.'

'I cannot help but be unhappy,' said Marion, drying her eyes. 'We ought to have found out. Somebody ought to have done something. Think of it, Aunt Keziah, Simone working in London, stitching all day for a bit of food. I cannot bear it.' Marion sat down and buried her face in her hands.

'My lamb,' said Mrs. Curnow gently, 'doan't 'ee take on so, doan't 'ee now.'

'Poor Simone,' said Marion in a strangled voice as she wrestled for composure, 'and left in a gutter to die! And that hard life! And she would have been so happy at Garth.'

Simone's low voice here broke in; Simone had grown curiously still. One would have said she was a detached spectator of affairs that concerned other people.

'Why did you do it, Victoire?'

Victoire's mouth tightened to a still harder line.

'Why did you do it?' repeated Simone. 'Were you not well treated as my nurse?'

'I can tell you that,' said Sampson. 'Victoire wanted the estates for her own child.'

Simone turned round in her chair.

'What estates, M. le Colonel? It is all quite clear to me now--my memory, I mean. My father told me when he was very ill, just before he died, that I was to go to England with Victoire and live with a very dear friend of his until I was grown up. He said nothing of estates. In fact, I always thought we were poor. But then, I was only a child of eight.'

'Your mother inherited lands from her father's family, my dear. Your grandfather's direct heir died. You are the inheritor of his estate. Victoire knew that.'

'I see,' said Simone. 'I can see it all. So that was why my nurse, to my great delight, brought little Suzanne Marie with us. I was so pleased. She was my playmate. I remember how nice it was to have Suzanne Marie going with me to the strange place. I remember the ship and the sea. I remember the queer English voices when we landed and got into the coach to go to London.' Simone spoke slowly as she called up the minute details of the distant day. 'There was a place Victoire took us to, to lodge until my guardian came. We had queer sort of meat for dinner, and a pudding with plums in it. Then we went out into the street to find a shop. Victoire was going to buy me a new ribbon for my hair. Probably you remember too, Victoire. "A nice black ribbon," you said. Then you--you left me in the street. I walked and walked and cried until I was sick. And then----' Simone stopped. 'I don't think I want to remember any more, M. le Colonel,' she said, in that quiet composed voice which drew from Mistress Keziah and Sampson cross-glances of admiration. 'That is all. And so Suzanne Marie came here and was the kind Admiral's ward.'

'But was there no one all these years who saw Victoire or Elise?' asked Colonel Sampson, his voice breaking in on the silence that had followed Simone's speech. 'No one of the family?'

The figure by the door stirred, and was still again. Marion raised her head. There was something uncanny in this trying of a silent prisoner.

'Do you know, Marion?' continued the Colonel

'I remember my father told me,' said Marion in a low voice, 'that the only person left was M. Lebrun the lawyer.'

'Ah!' The exclamation came from Mrs. Curnow. 'So now us do be knowing. Mistress Penrock and you, Sir, I can tell 'ee. Victoire here have had as you might say a secret messenger all these years, a man as do be known for the vilest wretch in the waters. Her's gone to France and come back, many a time a year, putting into Haunted Cove down along and making a signal. A foul place that, Sir, such as no God-fearing man would step into. And they two Victoire and Mademoiselle, have gone down secret-like, to talk to un and leave messages belike. Always when there was rough weather or a thick mist, so as they thought, I suppose, no one would know. But the village knew. The village have known for years there was something tur'ble wrong. I see it now, plain as my hand. The only danger for they two was the old lawyer. And when at last the Admiral arranges for the old gentleman to be a-coming over, Victoire finds out, and her suddenly learns her dear mother be sick unto death, and needs a daughter's care.'

'Why?' queried Mistress Keziah. 'Having done all this, why should she fear meeting the lawyer? In ten years a child alters out of recognition. Elise and Simone are of the same complexion.'

Simone was watching the face by the door. 'She was afraid,' she said.

'Oh yes,' remarked Sampson. 'She was afraid of the old lawyer, afraid that in spite of her care a whisper of her secret might have been heard. It was very clever of her to go away. A lawyer is of an inquiring turn of mind, as a rule, given to asking questions. And this old gentleman who, I fear, must be dead, or Victoire would not be with us (I remember now your talking of him in London, Marion--he was ailing, and his journey had to be postponed), this old gentleman might have had the wit to question the two, Victoire and Elise, separately. There might not have been an exact correspondence in replies. And so Victoire goes out of the way and leaves Elise to manage the old gentleman herself.'

'And now us do be knowing another thing,' burst out the old housekeeper. 'Us knows why Mademoiselle swore away dear Master Roger's life. Master Roger had found out about the doings in Haunted Cove.'

Victoire made a sudden movement. At last she spoke.

'Lies!' she snapped out. 'All lies. Mademoiselle did nothing of the sort. 'Tis all nothing but lies and hatred. You have hated us all the time, you and you'--nodding from Mrs. Curnow to Marion. She fixed her beady eyes on Simone. 'You know as well as I know that yonder poor girl lying upstairs is Elise de Delauret, and you are a playmate of hers whom I brought over in the kindness of my heart. How could I help it if you strayed away in London? Did I not seek and seek----'

Colonel Sampson stepped forward. 'If I were you I should say nothing more.'

'Would you? But I've more to say. Who is there to believe what that upstart'--she pointed to Simone--'chooses to say? There is no one living but myself who knows who is Elise de Delauret. I have proof. Where is yours?'

'This is really very fine,' said Mistress Keziah, her eyes gleaming. 'But quite wasted. Curnow--take----'

'Your proof!' cried Victoire again. 'Her word against mine and Mademoiselle's upstairs.'

Colonel Sampson was fumbling in his pocket, and drew out a miniature portrait, a pretty thing, framed in pearls. He handed it to Mistress Keziah with a significant glance towards Simone, who, apparently unconcerned, but with a strained look growing on her face, was watching Victoire. Mistress Keziah looked from the face in the portrait to the face opposite her. Victoire darted forward and peered over the lady's shoulder. She caught a quick breath. Just as Victoire's hand clutched at the miniature Sampson cried out a word of warning. Mrs. Curnow swung her heavy weight on the woman and bore her aside.

'Take her out,' said Mistress Keziah to the housekeeper. 'Put her in a chamber by herself and have door and window guarded.'

'I'll put her in the kitchen, if it please you, Mistress,' said Mrs. Curnow grimly. 'There be plenty there glad and willing to watch what her does.'

Colonel Sampson opened the door and himself watched Victoire firmly escorted into the kitchen by Mrs. Curnow.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*A FAMILY PARTY*

'She will be quite safe there,' said Colonel Sampson, returning. 'From the looks of yonder maids I'll warrant they'll make excellent jailors.'

Simone was still sitting staring at the door by which Victoire had stood. Her face had grown white, and Marion's arm was around her. Mistress Keziah held a glass to her lips, and Colonel Sampson opened the outer door, letting in a breath of sweet air from the Channel. Presently Marion drew her outside on to the terrace, and the two began to walk slowly up and down. The sunlight was breaking through the mist, falling gently on the black and gold heads as the girls passed and repassed the window of the hall.

'They will be best left alone,' said Mistress Keziah. 'It has been terrible for them both. Marion has only just found out how much she is attached to Simone, and she has had over much strain of late. What a warm heart beats under that quiet exterior of hers! As for Simone! Well, if I know my brother and my niece, they will endeavour to atone for the past.' She looked at Sampson. 'What are we to do?' she asked abruptly.

Sampson strolled over to the hearth, his hands under the lapels of his coat.

'I am afraid,' said the old woman suddenly.

'Lest Victoire might seek for vengeance?'

'Just that.'

'It is your brother's affair, really, you know,' said Sampson after a pause.

'Tush! My brother! Has he not been hopelessly blind? Oh!'--a flash of anger dyed the old woman's cheek. Her eyes gleamed. She looked at the moment curiously like the old Salt Eagle. 'I told him,' she said quietly, 'a woman would have known at once that there was something wrong. He chose his own course. I came back to Garth too late. I am not going to be too late a second time.'

Sampson paced the hall in silence for a while.

'What do you suggest?' he asked, stopping in his walk.

'I should suggest sending the two at once under escort to Plymouth. There are plenty of men to spare--my servants and my brother's. The men must not lose sight of them till they are safely embarked.'

'It is really a case for the law. They should be imprisoned.'

Mistress Keziah shook her head. 'My brother would never do that--for Marion's sake--for Simone's sake. Once he has got over his wrath, he will only have one desire, and that to end the whole contemptible story. If I thought he was coming back to-morrow, I would counsel waiting. But I know he can only just have left London. I will take the risk of his displeasure,' continued the old woman, 'but I am too much afraid of that terrible woman to let her stay under the same roof with Simone and my niece. Let us send them away, Colonel. And the whole thing will be done with.'

For some time the two talked together. Colonel Sampson, who had a man's dislike of meddling with another man's affairs, presently was convinced that Mistress Keziah was right.

'I will see them safely embarked myself, I think, or lodge them somewhere in Plymouth until the Admiral returns. Perhaps that will be the best.'

'I care not,' said Mistress Keziah, 'so long as they leave Garth this day.'

After a time Mistress Keziah picked up the miniature again, and looked at Sampson. 'I am an old woman,' she said, 'and a mighty curious one.'

Sampson made a low bow. 'To gratify your curiosity is a pleasure. Elise d'Artois was the most beautiful woman in France. For a spell she did me the honour to accept me among her acquaintance. Then de Delauret came along.... Years passed--more than I care to remember. Then, at Lady Fairfax's house, I was confronted by Simone. Her face began to haunt me. One afternoon, in the coach with Marion she suddenly turned on me with her mother's smile, and I vow I thought the years had turned back, and I was speaking to the peerless Elise d'Artois. Not dreaming that that very night our dear Marion and Elise's daughter would have sore need of me, I took horse and rode into Hertfordshire to my house there. In a secret drawer in my cabinet was the miniature. My plan was to show it to Sir John, and then confer as to what steps should be taken. When I got back after two days, I found the Fairfax house deserted, a letter awaiting me. The rest you know.'

'It is a vastly strange world,' commented Mistress Keziah. She sat musing, turning over the miniature.

'Why do you smile?' queried Sampson.

'I was thinking of my sister Constance, and many things. She has a way of saying that Garth is a wigwam in a forest, where nothing happens save that the sun rises and sets; a desert island where the tide comes in and the tide goes out. I'll wager she will consider attendance on Her Majesty a poor exchange for this day's work.'

Mistress Keziah rose as she spoke, and passed out on to the terrace, while Sampson sought the stables, to arrange details of the unpleasant journey that awaited him.

It happened that at that moment Lady Fairfax was sitting at the dinner-table of the same inn at Postbridge where Marion and Roger had halted in the course of their ride. Captain Beckenham faced her across the board, and the two were listening to mine host's recital of events which had, in his eyes, lent the same importance to the Cornwall Road that marks a field of battle on the morrow of the fight. The fact that the innkeeper had been unaware at the time of the significance of the appearance of the headlong riders, the pursuing soldiers, the chariots and horsemen stopping at his door, and was thus distinctly a day behind the fair, did not in the least take from his powers as a story teller.

The lady and gentleman hearkened as they ate, and forbore to explain that they themselves were, in a manner of speaking, a belated rearguard of the procession, the epilogue to the play. Lady Fairfax listened with a grave expression thoroughly appreciated by her companion across the table. For a considerable distance now, at each inn where they had stopped for food or sleep, they had been regaled with the story which was at heart the same, but disguised according to the particular fancy of each succeeding narrator. The entertainment afforded them was thus akin to an air with variations, each variation a little more tortured than the last, so that it was a matter for considerable skill on the hearers' part to beat out the original tune.

Until she had heard at Exeter from the Governor himself that the prisoner was safe from the reach of justice, Lady Fairfax had been too anxious to pay much heed to the rumours that had run to meet her on her way. Once that assurance gained, however, she gave herself up to a more leisurely journey, and failed not to profit by its diversions.

Mine host, having at length satisfied himself that he had done his duty as a story teller: shown the prisoner bearing marks of severe punishment, with bandaged head and broken arm, scarcely able to sit in the saddle; the lady accompanying him so unearthly pale and wrung with anguish that one might have thought she had got out of her coffin that morning, instead of out of her bed; after these two unfortunates a whole regiment, bloodthirsty and hot for vengeance, riding upon the wings of the wind; a broken-hearted father dead on the way beyond Salisbury; and innumerable relatives wearing the track into ditches in their haste to hear the reading of the will: after all this, I say, mine host retired to the kitchen with the bottle of his own wine to which Lady Fairfax had invited him, and left his travellers to sup in peace. As he closed the door, the eyes of the two guests met in undisguised merriment.

'I vow I am beginning to be sorry,' said Lady Fairfax, 'that to-morrow we arrive at Garth. 'Twill be an end of these Iliads. Had my brother only lived fifty miles farther west, why, my niece might have finished the journey with the dead body of the prisoner strapped across her saddle-bow. There is still one mystery,' she added, 'and with time we might have solved it. No one has told us anything about Colonel Sampson.'

'He is part of the pursuing army, I should imagine,' said Beckenham.

'That is but the outside of the affair, of course,' retorted the lady. 'The inmost heart thereof is the reason for his mysterious riding into the country just when my husband was away, and he had promised a father's care to my niece. Men are a faithless breed.'

'There will doubtless be some reason,' Beckenham replied.

'Doubtless! Doubtless!' mocked Lady Fairfax. 'He may have gone to count the milestones on the Oxford Road, or write a sonnet to the moon.' She yawned behind her pretty hand as she spoke, and presently rising, bade her companion good-night.

Lady Fairfax's curiosity was not destined to consume her outright. The travellers being early on their way in the morning, it happened that the coach had covered most of the distance to Garth, and its fair occupant was looking with secret exultation for old landmarks, when Captain Beckenham rode up to announce the approach of another vehicle just a little distance behind.

Lady Fairfax put her head out of the coach door.

'It cannot be the heart-broken father of our host's story,' she said, 'for I see my own servant, Reuben, on the box. Let us wait, Captain Beckenham. It would appear that at last something is going to happen. I am weary of riding ever on the morrow of the event.'

The vehicle proved to be the Penrock coach, returning from Plymouth. There, on the previous evening, Colonel Sampson had escorted Victoire and Elise, leaving them with a bodyguard of Mistress Keziah's providing until her brother should return. Nothing loth, Mr. Sampson accepted Lady Fairfax's invitation to enter her own coach, and Beckenham, suddenly finding he was weary of the saddle, gave his horse to Reuben and followed the Colonel.

'Tell them to drive more slowly,' ordered Lady Fairfax. 'My ears have of late been shaken into my boots. Now, Sir, and what have you to say?'

The Colonel, it appeared, had much to say. The story so absorbed his fair hearer's attention that the landmarks of the homecoming journey were left ungreeted. Lady Fairfax listened to the history of Roger's escape in growing amazement.

'My little niece!' she exclaimed from time to time. 'Who would have thought it possible?'

Before she had realised the extent of her wonder at Marion's activities, she found herself out of her depth, speechless, confounded, at Sampson's revelations concerning Madame Romaine's little sempstress.

From Simone back to Marion, from Marion and the unknown Roger back to Simone, Lady Fairfax's thoughts ran when at last Sampson paused in his recital. The Colonel, watching her face, was secretly amused. The anger which had been stored up for him on account of his 'desertion' of Marion never even found voice; the dismay and disappointment Lady Fairfax had felt in the manner of her niece's departure from Kensington was entirely swallowed up in the thought of this new, strange Marion. 'My little niece,' she murmured again.

While she was still pondering, the two coaches drove into Garth. A minute later, Marion's arms were round her, Marion's lips on her cheek. 'Dear, dear Aunt Constance,' she cried, 'I never dreamed you would come all this way to Cornwall.'

'I suppose you thought I should be content to sit in Tunbridge playing "I love my Love with an A,"' retorted the lady, her eyes nevertheless suspiciously moist as she kissed her niece. She held the girl at arm's length. 'Dear heart,' she said gently, 'I have feared for you greatly, all these days.'

'There was no other way,' said Marion, in tremulous tones. 'Do not be angered with me, Aunt Constance.'

'And a fine story you have left behind,' grumbled Lady Fairfax, recovering her old manner. 'Rumours of runaway marriages flying round Kensington, and the Court not quite certain whether it can any longer tolerate the aunt of such a niece.'

Marion's smiling eyes ran beyond the lady to two figures just emerging from the courtyard.

'Why, there is Captain Beckenham,' she cried. 'Welcome to Garth, Sir.' Then as she rose from her curtsey, 'Simone is on the terrace,' she added gravely.

'Oho!' said Lady Fairfax softly, with a quick look at her niece as, followed by Sampson and Beckenham, the two walked round into the garden. 'Blows the wind from that quarter? Faith! 'Tis an uncertain world. And not a stone of this old place altered,' she mused as she went on. 'But how it has shrunk! It seemed to me, when I was a child playing in this garden, to be as big as the Tower of London.' She stopped and looked at the grey gabled house. 'Not a stone altered,' she repeated. 'And I declare if that isn't my elder sister Keziah sitting yonder. Dear, dear, I hope I'm not going to be whipped. And where is---- Ah! Simone, come here at once!'

Simone, glancing from Lady Fairfax to the gentleman behind her, was very glad to hide her sudden confusion under cover of a curtsey directed to both new comers at once. Lady Fairfax passed her arm affectionately round the girl, and with Marion on the other side walked across to the terrace.

'I was always terrified of your Aunt Keziah,' she murmured. 'I shall look to you two for protection. Ten years since we met.'

She nevertheless gently disengaged her arms as the three crossed the stone flags, and by mutual consent, while the sisters greeted each other, the two girls turned to talk to Sampson and Beckenham.

'It is over,' called Lady Fairfax presently. 'You may approach. Come and sit down. I want to hear the whole story again.'

Marion gently placed Simone in the spare seat of the stone bench and herself stood with one hand gently resting on Mistress Keziah's shoulder. The bond between herself and her Aunt Constance was a very tender one, but there was now another presence in her little shrine of loved ones. Mistress Keziah's face was wearing a hard look which Marion rightly guessed was only a mask. And the old lady was tired. The marks of the vigils she had kept on Marion's account could not at once be effaced.

'Have you not already heard it all, Aunt Constance?' asked Marion.

'A repetition would be good for one's pride, my dear,'

'How so?' queried Marion.

'How so? Thus. Here I come, after sleepless nights, after completely undoing the peace and quiet of the Court and setting Her Majesty at her wits' end by reason of the loss of her waiting woman and the most important officer in her suite; here I come, I say, with a Royal Pardon in my pocket. And it is of no consequence whatever. All I do is to sit and hear what happened the day before. I feel as if I simply were not here. I might just as well have stayed in Tunbridge and--ah! there is that dear soul Curnow. I must go and speak to her. Would the Admiral but arrive now, we should feel like Moses and all the prophets.'

'Constance, Constance!' remonstrated her sister.

Lady Fairfax shot a glance at the two girls as she went towards the door. 'I told you,' she said, 'just what...' The rest of her sentence was drowned in Mrs. Curnow's greeting.

The household of Garth now gave itself up to an unaccustomed hilarity: a joy that was all the more heartfelt because of the secure, quiet happiness that underlay the merriment. Lady Fairfax's presence successfully bridged the gap between the old and the new; she made Simone feel that her place must always have been at Garth, made Marion look away from the uneasy yesterdays to the ever-brightening morrows. Mistress Keziah, it is true, wore still her old severity, but at times there were hints of the gentleness and love underlying her hard exterior. Even the Admiral, arriving weary and shaken, was fain to throw off with the dusty apparel of his journey the sorrow and grief of the last few weeks.