"My poor girl, Captain. You know."
"_His_ girl--not _mine_! Mary Morgan--not Gwendoline Wynn!" reflects Ryecroft within himself, dropping back upon his chair as one stunned by a blow.
"I"m almost sure she be still livin"," continues the waterman, in wonder at the emotion his words have called up, though little suspecting why.
Controlling it, the other asks, with diminished interest, still earnestly,--
"What leads you to think that way, Wingate? Have you a reason?"
"Yes, have I; more"n one. It"s about that I ha" come to consult ye."
"You"ve come to astonish me! But proceed!"
"Well, sir, as I ha" sayed, it"ll take a good bit o" tellin", and a lot o" explanation beside. But since ye"ve signified I"m free to your time, I"ll try and make the story short"s I can."
"Don"t curtail it in any way. I wish to hear all!"
The waterman thus allowed lat.i.tude, launches forth into a full account of his own life--those chapters of it relating to his courtship of, and betrothal to, Mary Morgan. He tells of the opposition made by her mother, the rivalry of Coracle d.i.c.k, and the sinister interference of Father Rogier. In addition, the details of that meeting of the lovers under the elm--their last--and the sad episode soon after succeeding.
Something of all this Ryecroft has heard before, and part of it suspected. What he now hears new to him is the account of a scene in the farmhouse of Abergann, while Mary Morgan lay in the chamber of death, with a series of incidents that came under the observation of her sorrowing lover. The first, his seeing a shroud being made by the girl"s mother, white, with a red cross, and the initial letters of her name braided over the breast: the same soon afterwards appearing upon the corpse. Then the strange behaviour of Father Rogier on the day of the funeral; the look with which he stood regarding the girl"s face as she lay in her coffin; his abrupt exit out of the room; as afterwards his hurried departure from the side of the grave before it was finally closed up--a haste noticed by others as well as Jack Wingate.
"But what do you make of all that?" asks Ryecroft, the narrator having paused to gather himself for other and still stranger revelations. "How can it give you a belief in the girl being still alive? Quite its contrary, I should say."
"Stay, Captain! There be more to come."
The Captain does stay, listening on. To hear the story of the planted and plucked up flower; of another and later visit made by Wingate to the cemetery in daylight, then seeing what led him to suspect, that not only had the plant been destroyed, but all the turf on the grave disturbed!
He speaks of his astonishment at this, with his perplexity. Then goes on to give account of the evening spent with Joseph Preece in his new home; of the waifs and strays there shown him; the counterfeit coins, burglars" tools, and finally the shroud--that grim remembrancer, which he recognised at sight!
His narrative concludes with his action taken after, a.s.sisted by the old boatman.
"Last night," he says, proceeding with the relation, "or I ought to say the same mornin"--for "twar after midnight hour--Joe an" myself took the skiff, an" stole up to the chapel graveyard, where we opened her grave, an" foun" the coffin empty! Now, Captain, what do ye think o" the whole thing?"
"On my word, I hardly know what to think of it. Mystery seems the measure of the time! This you tell me of is strange--if not stranger than any! What are your own thoughts about it, Jack?"
"Well, as I"ve already sayed, my thoughts be, an" my hopes, that Mary"s still in the land o" the livin"."
"I hope she is."
The tone of Ryecroft"s rejoinder tells of his incredulity, further manifested by his questions following.
"But you saw her in her coffin? Waked for two days, as I understood you; then laid in her grave? How could she have lived throughout all that?
Surely she was dead!"
"So I thought at the time, but don"t now."
"My good fellow, I fear you are deceiving yourself. I"m sorry having to think so. Why the body has been taken up again is of itself a sufficient puzzle; but alive--that seems physically impossible!"
"Well, Captain, it"s just about the possibility of the thing I come to ask your opinion; thinkin" ye"d be acquainted wi" the article itself."
"What article?"
"The new medicine; it as go by the name o" chloryform."
"Ha! you have a suspicion----"
"That she ha" been chloryformed, an" so kep" asleep--to be waked up when they wanted her. I"ve heerd say they can do such things."
"But then she was drowned also? Fell from a foot plank, you told me? And was in the water some time?"
"I don"t believe it, a bit. It be true enough she got somehow into the water, an" wor took out insensible, or rather drifted out o" herself, on the bank just below, at the mouth o" the brook. But that wor short after, an" she might still ha" ben alive notwithstandin". My notion be, that the priest had first put the chloryform into her, or did it then, an" knew all along she warn"t dead, nohow."
"My dear Jack, the thing cannot be possible. Even if it were, you seem to forget that her mother, father--all of them--must have been cognizant of these facts--if facts?"
"I don"t forget it, Captain. "Stead, I believe they all wor cognizant o"
them--leastways, the mother."
"But why should she a.s.sist in such a dangerous deception--at risk of her daughter"s life?"
"That"s easy answered. She did it partly o" herself; but more at the biddin" o" the priest, whom she daren"t disobey--the weak-minded creature, most o" her time given up to sayin" prayers and paternosters.
They all knowed the girl loved me, and wor sure to be my wife, whatever they might say or do against it. Wi" her willin", I could a" defied the whole lot o" them. Bein" aware o" that, their only chance wor to get her out o" my way by some trick--as they ha" indeed got her. Ye may think it strange their takin" all that trouble; but if ye"d seen her, ye wouldn"t. There worn"t on all Wyeside so good-lookin" a girl!"
Ryecroft again looks incredulous; not smilingly, but with a sad cast of countenance.
Despite its improbability, however, he begins to think there may be some truth in what the waterman says--Jack"s earnest convictions sympathetically impressing him.
"And supposing her to be alive," he asks, "where do you think she is now? Have you any idea?"
"I have--leastways, a notion."
"Where?"
"Over the water--in France--the town o" Bolone."
"Boulogne!" exclaims the Captain, with a start. "What makes you suppose she is there?"
"Something, sir, I han"t yet spoke to ye about. I"d a"most forgot the thing, an" might never ha" thought o"t again, but for what ha" happened since. Ye"ll remember the night we come up from the ball, my tellin" ye I had an engagement the next day to take the young Powells down the river?"
"I remember it perfectly."
"Well, I took them, as agreed; an" that day we went down"s fur"s Chepstow. But they wor bound for the Severn side a duck-shootin"; and next mornin" we started early, afore daybreak. As we were pa.s.sin" the wharf below Chepstow Bridge, where there wor several craft lyin" in, I noticed one sloop-rigged ridin" at anchor a bit out from the rest, as if about clearin" to put to sea. By the light o" a lamp as hung over the taffrail, I read the name on her starn, showin" she wor French, an"
belonged to Bolone. I shouldn"t ha" thought than anythin" odd, as there be many foreign craft o" the smaller kind puts in at Chepstow. But what did appear odd, an" gied me a start too, wor my seein" a boat by the sloop"s side wi" a man in it, who I could a"most sweared wor the Rogue"s Ferry priest. There wor others in the boat besides, an" they appeared to be gettin" some sort o" bundle out o" it, an" takin" it up the man-ropes, aboard o" the sloop. But I didn"t see anymore, as we soon pa.s.sed out o" sight, goin" on down. Now, Captain, it"s my firm belief that man must ha" been the priest, and that thing I supposed to be a bundle o" marchandise, neyther more nor less than the body o" Mary Morgan--not dead, but livin"!"
"You astound me, Wingate! Certainly a most singular circ.u.mstance!
Coincidence too! Boulogne--Boulogne!"
"Yes, Captain; by the letterin" on her starn the sloop must ha" belonged there; an" _I"m goin" there myself_."
"I too, Jack! We shall go together!"