CHAPTER X.

THE TRUTH AT LAST.

It was a lovely January morning sunny but cold, as the ladies sat around the breakfast-table at Heron Dyke. Miss Winter scarcely spoke a word during the meal, and scarcely touched a mouthful; she seemed buried in thought.

"What is the matter with you, Ella?" asked Mrs. Carlyon, noticing this. "Surely you are not going to be ill!"

"I was never better in all my life, Aunt Gertrude, than I am this morning," answered Ella, with her sweet, serious smile. "Only I do not seem to be in the humour for talking."

"Nor for eating either, apparently," said Mrs. Carlyon with a shake of her cap-strings. "I don't like the symptoms; and if you have not recovered your appetite at luncheon I shall think it time to send for Dr. Spreckley." At which Ella laughed.

By-and-by, Ella put on her hat and shawl and went out, strolling across the garden towards the way in which she might expect the approach of her lover. He was already in sight. Drawing her hand within his arm when they met, he and she paced about for the best part of an hour, talking eagerly. It was the day subsequent to the gipsy's visit to the kitchen, when she had told the fortunes of the maids and--perhaps--of Dorothy Stone, and this conversation ran on that event. The reader will very probably have divined that the gipsy's visit had been a ruse; a thing planned by Conroy, to get some information out of Dorothy.

Going indoors, Ella and Mr. Conroy proceeded to the old Squire's sitting-room, which had not been used since his death. A fire, ordered in it this morning, burnt brightly on the hearth. Ella paused for a moment on the threshold. There was her uncle's big leathern high-backed chair, with the screen behind it, as in the days that were gone. There was the little old-fashioned table with the twisted legs that used to stand at his elbow. It needed but a slight stretch of imagination to fancy that presently the Squire's heavy footstep would be heard, that he would come in with his curt "good-morrow," and begin at once to poke the fire, which was a thing that he believed no one could do as well as himself. Ella's eyes filled with tears.

"Courage, my dear," whispered Conroy. "Think of the present just now, not of the past."

She brushed away her tears and nodded, as she rang the bell. It was answered by one of the maids, Phemie; who was desired to inform Aaron Stone that his mistress waited for him in the Squire's old room.

Aaron received the message with an incredulous stare.

"You must be dreaming," he said wrathfully. "The missus in that cold room--and wanting to see me in it! Be off with your tales."

"Is it cold!" retorted Phemie. "There's a wood fire blazing in it up to the top of the chimney. And the mistress is there, sir, with Mr. Conroy, and she is waiting for you."

Aaron obeyed slowly, fuming a little. He did not like being sent for by Miss Winter and talked to before Mr. Conroy. With all his heart he wished Mr. Conroy well away from Heron Dyke; he was the only man whom Aaron feared. His look of cold, dark, grave scrutiny always disconcerted the old man. What he and Dorothy should do when Mr. Conroy married the mistress and became master of Heron Dyke, which would undoubtedly be the case before long, was a thought that had troubled him a good deal of late.

Aaron paused when he opened the door, and shivered as he looked in. What could he be wanted for in that room, of all others? Had anything been found out?

"Come in, Aaron," said Miss Winter. "Shut the door, and sit down."

She was leaning back in one of the smaller chairs. Mr. Conroy stood against the old-fashioned mantelpiece. The old man took a chair near the door with a sinking heart.

"Some considerable time ago, Aaron," began his mistress in a grave but not unkindly voice, "I put certain questions to you bearing reference to my uncle's illness and death. I had been led to suppose that some mystery attached to that time, and that, whatever it was, it had been kept, and was intended to be kept, from me. You denied it; you told me I was mistaken."

"No, no, Miss Ella, I kept nothing back from you; I didn't indeed," answered the old man, in a trembling, beseeching voice, his agitation pitiable to see.

"But I now know that you did, Aaron. I know that while my uncle was said to have died in the middle of May, he really died weeks and weeks before that date! Will you tell me why you induced me to believe that it was my uncle whom John Tilney and the choristers from Nullington saw on the evening of his birthday, and whom Mr. Plackett, the lawyer from London, saw a day or two later, and whom Mr. Daventry's partner saw--when you knew quite well that it was you yourself, dressed up so as to personate your master, whom each and all of them beheld?"

Aaron's teeth began to chatter.

"The truth is known to me at last," continued Ella. "Do not make any further attempts to deceive me; they will be useless."

"Quite useless," struck in Conroy, a sternness in his tone that Miss Winter's had lacked. "We know all."

What little tinge of colour had been in Aaron's rugged face fled from it; he looked like a man suddenly stricken with some mortal sickness. He turned his affrighted eyes from his mistress to Conroy, and from Conroy to her again.

"Better make a clean breast of it," said Conroy, quietly.

"I will," at length spoke Aaron, in a husky whisper, probably seeing that no other course remained to him. "The Squire did die afore May; long afore his birthday too, the twenty-fourth of April."

"It was a dreadful fraud!" gasped Ella.

"Ay, 'twas a fraud," assented Aaron. "It was not me, though, that set it agate; I only helped to carry it out."

"Who did set it agate?" asked Conroy.

"Hubert: my grandson Hubert. Him and the Squire between them."

"The Squire!" cried Ella, reproachfully. "Aaron!"

"It's true, ma'am. He couldn't rest for fear of dying before his birthday; old Spreckley let him know that he'd not live to see it, except by a miracle, and it a'most killed him. Hubert thought of something. He had been reading just then in one of his French books of a gentleman in France who died and was kept alive for months afterwards--leastways was said to be kept alive, to deceive the world. He told the Squire of this, and the Squire caught at it eagerly; and they spoke to Jago, and he helped to carry it out."

"And you helped too," said Conroy.

"I did it for the best--for the best," sighed Aaron, the tears starting to his eyes as he slightly lifted his wrinkled hands. "Moreover, the Squire ordered me: and when did I ever disobey him? 'Twas in this very room, Miss Ella"--looking across at her--"that he first spoke to me. I had come in to get him ready for bed, and he told me about it. At the first blush I felt frightened to death; I said to him, 'Master, it can't be done.' 'It can be done, and shall be done; how dare you dissent!' he answered me angrily, and I didn't dare to say more."

What could Ella answer?

"'Twas all for you, Miss Ella; all for you," shivered the faithful old servant--for faithful he was, despite this wrong-doing. "How could you have inherited Heron Dyke had the master not lived over his birthday? 'Twould have gone right away to the other people. A nice thing for that other Denison to have come in to the old place! Swindlers and spies, all the lot of 'em! If----"

"Be silent!" sternly struck in Conroy. "How dare you presume so to speak of your master's kinsman?"

Aaron looked up with a gasp.

"Mr. Denison of Nunham Priors is every whit as honourable as the late Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke. Take care how you speak of him in future. And remember that he is Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke now--and would have been so ever since last April but for your plotting."

Never had Conroy been so moved--so stern.

Ella, though assenting in her heart to every word, looked at him in surprise. Aaron felt checked and mortified; he thought this was pretty assumption for a man who was but a newspaper reporter, and would have liked to say so.

"Mistress," he stammered in a husky voice, "how did you come to know about the Squire?"

"That I must decline to tell you," spoke Miss Winter. "It is enough that I do know it. Had you but told me the truth when I first questioned you, what annoyance it would have saved both myself and you!"

But the aged retainer could only reiterate, "I did it for the best."

Mr. Conroy spoke.

"I want you to tell me, Aaron, the real date of the Squire's death."

Aaron threw a quick, sour, suspicious look at his interlocutor.

"Am I to answer that question, Miss Ella? he asked, in an aggrieved tone.

"Certainly."

"Well, then, if you must know, sir, he died on the 19th of February," was the answer, grudgingly given.

"The 19th of February. What did you do then?"

"Why, what should we do but put the body into a coffin that had been ordered from London two months before by the Squire's own directions. Hubert ordered it, and it was sent down in a packing-case, and the servants were told that it was a new sort of invalid-chair for the master."

"Oh. And this coffin, nailed down, I suppose, was kept in the room?"

"In the lumber-room off the bed-room; nobody had ever thought o' going in there. We kept the room locked mostly after that."

"Just one moment," interposed Ella. "Was the account you gave me of my uncle's death--what happened the evening it took place--a true one?"

"Every word," answered the old man. "Save that it was in February 'stead o' May, ma'am."

"Whose idea was it that you should personate your master after his death?" resumed Conroy.

Aaron did not answer at once. His eyes had taken a dull far-away expression, as though he were lost in the past.

"Such a lot o' things had to be done that wasn't at first thought of," he presently said. "Nobody can foresee what ins and outs a matter will take when it be first planned. Hubert saw that it might not be enough to say the Squire lived over his birthday; people might clamour to see him and convince theirselves of it; and Jago, he saw it also."

"Yes. Go on."

"They thought there was nothing for it but that I must be dressed up to personate him. I fought against it; I did indeed, Miss Ella," lifting his eyes to his mistress, "but 'twas o' no manner o' use my holding out; for, as they pointed out to me, all might have been discovered unless I gave in."

"So they dressed you up!" cried Conroy.

"Hubert did it--the whole scheme was carried out by Hubert. Oh, but he was a clever lad; an amazing clever lad! Jago was deep and cunning, but he had not the talent of Hubert. Who but he got me a wig to imitate the Squire's long white hair, and a velvet skull-cap? I had to put them and the dressing-gown on every day and be drilled for an hour, till I used sometimes to half fancy that I had been transmogrified into the Squire himself. It took in Daventry's partner, and them lawyer rascals from London, finely!--and the band from Nullington and John Tilney and his wife! I had on the cat's-eye ring that the Squire had worn for thirty years."

"Dr. Jago was in the secret from the first.

"Of course he was, sir. He was just the man for a job of that sort, and it couldn't have been done without a doctor."

Mr. Conroy had been jotting down a few notes in his pocket-book.

"I think that is all for the present," he said to Aaron. "If any other questions should occur to me, I can ask them later."

Aaron rose stiffly from his chair. To his ears there seemed an assumption of authority, of power in Conroy, excessively distasteful to him. But the cloud vanished from his countenance and his rugged features softened as his eyes rested on his mistress. No anger, no haughty condemnation sat on that fair young face; only a sort of sweet, patient sadness.

"Miss Ella, you know everything now," he whispered, moving a step or two nearer to her. "But what of that? The world's none the wiser and never need be. The secret's as safe now as ever it was."

"Yes, Aaron, I know everything," answered Ella, a little wearily. "I know that I am no longer the mistress of Heron Dyke. I know that the dear old home no longer belongs to me but to another! But I also know that he will be a worthy inheritor."

Aaron gasped--as if demented.

"But, Miss Ella, you have only to hold your tongue and nobody will ever be a bit the wiser. The Squire bound us all not to tell you, but now that you've found it out for yourself, there's no harm done. You surely would not tell--no, no! not that--not that!"

"I have no alternative, Aaron. I would do that which is right. This home is not mine: it must be given up to him to whom it rightly belongs."

"Oh, ma'am!--Miss Ella! My master would turn in his grave if he could hear your words. Give up the old place? No--no! And not a soul who knows the secret but ourselves and Jago--and the nurse: and their mouths are sealed!"

"If my uncle, out of that larger knowledge which I doubt not is now his, were permitted to counsel me, do you not think he would urge me to do that which is just and honourable?" said Ella, condescending to reason with him, in pity for his evident wretchedness. "Your master sees now with other eyes than those he saw with when on earth; he would not ask me to keep what is not, and never has been, mine; that which he would have me do, could he speak to me, is the thing I must do, and no other."

Aaron listened, but he was not convinced.

"To think of the estate going to them that the master hated so! Sneaks and spies----"

"Not another word!" severely spoke Miss Winter. "You forget yourself, Aaron."

The old man bowed his head and let his arms fall by his side with a gesture of despair. Turning, he hobbled slowly from the room.

"Poor, faithful old soul!" cried Ella, as she gazed after him. "Wrongly though he has acted, it was done in loyalty to my uncle and me. And so, Edward," she added, bravely smiling through her tears, "you see that you will not have a well-dowered bride."

"So much the better, sweet one," answered Conroy, stealing his arm round her. "You will then owe something to me, instead of my owing so much to you. Nobody can now call me a fortune-hunter."

"They have not called you one."

"Have they not! Ask that old man, now gone out, what he thinks of me in his private thoughts. Ask your Aunt Gertrude; ask Mrs. Toynbee--ask the world."

"I am sure you have never been _that_."

"I don't think I have. But, Ella, it will be a sore parting--this of yours from Heron Dyke."

"I try not to think of it yet. When the day shall come I shall try to bear it as I best may."

"Who knows but that old gentleman at Nunham Priors will give it up to you to live in?" suggested Conroy. "Has he not said something of the kind to you?"

"And do you think I would impose upon his generosity by staying? No, no. This is the place of his ancestors, and it must be his--his entirely; and his son's after him. You forget he has a son, Edward."

"One Master Frank, I believe. A graceless young fellow, by all accounts."

"That may be; but he is still a Denison, and the heir after his father. Besides--you have indeed been speaking without thought, Edward!--how could poor people, such as we shall be, speaking comparatively, live at a grand old place like this? It requires a grand income to keep it up."

"Dear me! So it does."

"You had better give me up, perhaps, Edward, now things have turned out for the worse," she suggested, her voice slightly trembling. "I shall only be a clog upon your ambition, and keep you down."

"Do you think so?" he rejoined gravely. "You will be afraid to venture on marriage with a man so poor as I? Well, there's little doubt you might marry a rich one. Many a man high in the world's favour might be glad to woo and win you. Young ladies with only a tithe of your good looks make rich marriages every season; why should not you? You have always be enused to the luxuries and refinements of life; it would be a misery to me not to be able to afford you them still. Had we not better part?"

Ella was looking at him with a startled expression in her eyes, as if she were half afraid he might be in earnest, and was taking her at her word. Edward Conroy's pleasant laugh rang out. He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly.

"Why, what a great goose you are to-day!" he said. "As if you did not know that our love was altogether independent of either poverty or riches, and that neither one nor the other of them could affect it in any way. You are mine and I am yours, and no caprices of worldly fortune can come between us. And now let us fling our cares to the wind for a little while, and forget everything except that we do love each other, and that the sun is shining, and that Rover and Caprice are waiting to be saddled. Put on your riding-habit and let us go for a long gallop in the sweet January sunshine. If we are not to have many more rides together, it were wise to enjoy them while we may."

When Aaron Stone quitted the presence of his mistress he was like a man utterly dazed and confounded. It was not merely the shock of finding that the elaborate house of cards which he and others had helped to build had tumbled to pieces so suddenly about his ears that dismayed him: it was the fact of Miss Winter's having succeeded in unravelling a plot which had been so patiently planned and so carefully guarded from discovery, that nonplussed the old retainer. So far as he was aware, the secret of the Squire's death could be known to three people alone: to himself, to Dr. Jago, and to Mrs. Dexter: Hubert was no longer living. Both Jago and Mrs. Dexter had been well paid for their share in the affair, and neither of them would be likely to speak of what would render themselves liable to a criminal prosecution. From what unknown source, then, could Miss Winter have obtained her information? Aaron could not answer: and the oftener he asked himself the question, the more puzzled and bewildered he became. As to that bumptious Conroy--one might think the whole place belonged to him to see him and hear his tones!

"There's witchcraft in it, altogether; that's what there is," concluded the dazed old man.

And witchcraft there was in it, but of a kind different from that imagined by Aaron Stone.

Convinced that Dorothy Stone knew more than she dared tell, that the clue to the secret might be got from her by stratagem, though perhaps never by a straightforward examination, Edward Conroy set his wits to work. She was so full of superstitious fancies and beliefs, it seemed to him something might be effected by playing upon them. At first Miss Winter objected, but she grew to see that if the means used were not perfectly legitimate, the end to be obtained certainly was. In fact there seemed to be no other way, and they could not go on living in their present state of uncertainty.

During a recent visit of Conroy to London, he had witnessed a representation of the play of "Guy Mannering," and had been much struck by the powerful way in which the character of Meg Merrilies was portrayed. The actress who played the part was known to the public under the name of Miss Murcott. She was a lady of irreproachable character; and Mr. Conroy had been introduced to her, after the play was over, by one of his newspaper friends. In furtherance of the object he had now in view, he went up to London again, sought an interview with the actress, and enlisted her sympathy. The result was that Miss Murcott went down to Nullington, and took up her abode for a night at Mrs. Keen's, who had been prepared to receive her by Mr. Conroy. In the disguise of a gipsy, and under pretence of telling the maids of Heron Dyke their fortunes, she obtained access to Dorothy Stone, Aaron's absence having been secured by his mistress. Using the information confidentially given her by Conroy, she whispered words into Dorothy's ear that so startled her, as to render her pliable as a lamb.

"Give me your hand," said the sham gipsy: and the dazed and trembling woman held it out without a dissenting word.

Holding the withered palm in her own, the gipsy proceeded to scan it closely, tracing the different lines with her forefinger.

"This indicates a coffin," she said; and Dorothy groaned. "And this--why what _is_ this? It seems to point to a hale old man with long white hair, who wears something dark on his head, and is put into the coffin before----"

"Oh, don't, don't!" shrieked Dorothy, trying in vain to withdraw her hand from the gipsy's firm grasp.

"What have we here?" continued the fortune-teller. "A darkened room where people walk with hushed footsteps; green doors that open and shut without noise; a little white-faced man with a black moustache and evil eyes!----And this dark line must be a secret--a secret with a crime in it that might drive you forth from your grave at midnight had you committed it----"

"I didn't commit it," moaned Dorothy. "They never let me know of it."

"No, but you found it out; you hold the secret; this line shows me that. You must disclose it. Tell it at once before it be too late--too late!"

"What shall I do?" sobbed Dorothy: "What shall I do?"

"What I bid you," said the woman, sternly. "Tell me all you know--or there will be no peace for you living or dead."

It needed no more to induce Dorothy to do as she was bidden. With many sighs, and groans, and hesitations, her story came out little by little. It appeared that in those past days the housekeeper's curiosity was aroused, and to a certain extent her anger also, at being kept in ignorance of what was going on behind the green baize doors, and at not being allowed to penetrate beyond them herself. "They treat me as if I was a common pantry-maid," she would say with bitterness. The position also that Mrs. Dexter took up in the household by no means tended to soothe these ruffled feelings. "I've helped to nurse the master for the last twenty years when he has been ill, and now I've got to make room for a strange woman!" she said to Aaron; and all the answer Dorothy got from him was an order to concern herself with her own business. "There's something going on behind those doors that they are afeard to be let known," concluded the shrewd old woman in her mind.

Dorothy determined to go beyond the doors, if she could get a chance of it, and tell her wrongs to the Squire himself; and she watched for an opportunity. It came at last. One afternoon when Aaron had gone to Nullington, he came home all the worse for the pints of strong ale he had taken. Not often did he transgress in this way; and, with the view of hiding it from the household, he went straight to bed, saying the sun had given him a headache, and fell asleep. Dorothy filched the key of the green baize doors from his pocket. Mrs. Dexter, who rarely left the house, had gone this afternoon to the railway-station, to send off some private telegram that she would not trust to anybody else; and Hubert Stone was out riding. In a perfect flutter of excitement, Dorothy took the key to the green baize doors; she ventured to open them both, and went on. Knocking at the door of the Squire's sitting-room, she waited for the answering "Come in." It did not reach her ears. She thought he might be dozing, and opened the door, all in a twitter of eagerness to ask and hear from her master why she was excluded. The room was empty. He is in bed, thought Dorothy, and went to the chamber. That also was empty. She stood bewildered; what could be the meaning of it? Perhaps the Squire had stepped into the lumber-room for something--she opened its door gently, and gave one glance around. That one brief look was quite enough. A low scream broke from her lips; then, hardly knowing what she was about, she closed the door, and fled back by the way she had come. What she saw in the third room was a closed coffin--the very coffin which she saw carried out of the Hall some two months later on the day of Mr. Denison's funeral.

The Squire must be dead; she saw that: but why were they concealing it? Watching and prying about after this, Dorothy, without seeming to see anything, saw enough to convince her that, after the death was really announced to the world, it was no other than her own husband who personated the dead Squire. She stole into the garden the night the musicians were playing, and distinguished Aaron's features in his master's clothes. The day Mr. Charles Plackett was expected from London, Dorothy watched and saw her husband turn back privately, and go stealing into the Squire's rooms, instead of proceeding on his pretended walk to Nullington. All this was confessed to the gipsy woman, who in her turn related it to Miss Winter and Mr. Conroy.