"Sir Lionel!" said Miss Fortescue, in surprise. "Oh, I had forgotten.
Miss Dalton, that, I grieve to say, was all a fiction. He was never out of the country."
"Did you ever speak a word of truth to me?" asked Edith, indignantly.
Miss Fortescue was silent.
"At any rate, it is of no consequence now," said Edith. "Sir Lionel is nothing to me; for he must look with horror on one whom he believes to be the slayer of his son."
"Oh, Miss Dalton!" burst forth Miss Fortescue, "do not despair; he will be found yet."
"Found! He has been found. Did you not hear?"
"Oh, I don"t mean that. I do not believe that it was him. I believe that he is alive. This is all a mistake. I will search for him. I do not believe that this is him. I believe he is alive. Oh, Miss Dalton, if I could only do this for you, I should be willing to die. But I will try; I know how to get on his track; I know where to go; I must hear of him, if he is alive. Try to have hope; do not despair."
Edith shook her head mournfully.
Miss Fortescue tried still further to lessen Edith"s despair, and a.s.sured her that she had hopes herself of finding him before it was too late, but her words produced no effect.
"I do not ask you to forgive me," said Miss Fortescue; "that would be almost insolence; but I entreat you to believe that I will devote myself to you, and that you have one whose only purpose in life now is to save you from this fearful fate. Thus far you have known me only as a speaker of lies; but remember, I pray you, what my position was. I was playing a part--as Mrs. Mowbray--as Lieutenant Dudleigh--as Barber the lawyer--"
"Barber!" exclaimed Edith. "What! Barber too?"
"Yes," said Miss Fortescue, sadly; "all those parts were mine. It was easy to play them before one so honest and so unsuspecting; but oh, Miss Dalton, believe me, it is in playing a part only that I have deceived you. Now, when I no longer play a part, but come to you in my own person, I will be true. I will devote myself to the work of saving you from this terrible position in which I have done so much to place you."
Edith made no reply, and soon after Miss Fortescue departed, leaving her to her own reflections.
CHAPTER XLI.
A REVELATION.
If any thing could have added to the misery of Edith and her general despondency, it would have been the revelations of Miss Fortescue. It had certainly been bad enough to recall the treachery of a false friend; but the facts as just revealed went far beyond what she had imagined.
They revealed such a long course of persistent deceit, and showed that she had been subject to such manifold, long-sustained, and comprehensive lying, that she began to lose faith in human nature. Whom now could she believe? Could she venture to put confidence in this confession of Miss Fortescue? Was that her real name, and was this her real story, or was it all some new piece of acting, contrived by this all-accomplished actor for the sake of dragging her down to deeper abysses of woe? She felt herself to be surrounded by remorseless enemies, all of whom were plotting against her, and in whose hearts there was no possibility of pity or remorse. Wiggins, the archenemy, was acting a part which was mysterious just now, but which nevertheless, she felt sure, was aimed at her very life. Mrs. Dunbar, she knew, was more open in the manifestation of her feelings, for she had taken up the cause of the murdered man with a warmth and vindictive zeal that showed Edith plainly what she might expect from her. Her only friend, Miss Plympton, was still lost to her; and her illness seemed probable, since, if it were not so, she would not keep aloof from her at such a moment as this. Hopeless as she had been of late, she now found that there were depths of despair below those in which she had thus far been--"in the lowest deep, a lower deep."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE SAW HER HEAD FALL"]
Such were her thoughts and feelings through the remainder of that day and through the following night. But little sleep came to her. The future stood before her without one ray of light to shine through its appalling gloom. On the next day her despair seemed even greater; her faculties seemed benumbed, and a dull apathy began to settle down over her soul.
From this state of mind she was roused by the opening of the door and the entrance of a visitor. Turning round, she saw Wiggins.
This was the first time that she had seen him since she left Dalton Hall, and in spite of that stolid and apathetic indifference which had come to her, she could not help being struck by the change which had come over him. His face seemed whiter, his hair grayer, his form more bent; his footsteps were feeble and uncertain; he leaned heavily upon his walking-stick; and in the glance that he turned toward her there was untold sympathy and compa.s.sion, together with a timid supplication that was unlike any thing which she had seen in him before.
Edith neither said any thing nor did any thing. She looked at him with dull indifference. She did not move. The thought came to her that this was merely another move in that great game of treachery and fraud to which she had been a victim; that here was the archtraitor, the instigator of all the lesser movements, who was coming to her in order to carry out some necessary part.
Wiggins sat down wearily upon one of the rude chairs of the scantily furnished room, and after a brief silence, looking at her sadly, began.
"I know," said he, "how yon misunderstand me, and how unwelcome I must be; but I had to come, so as to a.s.sure you that I hope to find this man who is missing. I--I hope to do so before the--the trial. I have been searching all along, but without success--thus far. I wish to a.s.sure you that I have found out a way by which you--will be saved. And if you believe me, I trust that you will--try--to--cherish more hope than you appear to be doing."
He paused.
Edith said nothing at all. She was silent partly out of apathy, and partly from a determination to give him no satisfaction, for she felt that any words of hers, no matter how simple, might be distorted and used against her.
Wiggins looked at her with imploring earnestness, and seemed to wait for her to say something. But finding her silent, he went on:
"Will yon let me ask you one question? and forgive me for asking it; but it is of some importance to--to me--and to you. It is this: Did--did you see him at all--that night?"
"I have been warned," replied Edith, in a dull, cold tone, "to say nothing, and I intend to say nothing."
Wiggins sighed.
"To say nothing," said he, "is not always wise. I once knew a man who was charged with terrible crimes--crimes of which he was incapable. He was innocent, utterly. Not only innocent, indeed, but he had fallen under this suspicion, and had become the object of this charge, simply on account of his active efforts to save a guilty friend from ruin. His friend was the guilty one, and his friend was also his sister"s husband; and this man had gone to try and save his friend, when he himself was arrested for that friend"s crimes."
Wiggins did not look at Edith; his eyes were downcast. He spoke in a tone that seemed more like a soliloquy than any thing else. It was a tone, however, which, though low, was yet tremulous with ill-suppressed agitation.
"He was accused," continued Wiggins, "and if he had spoken and told what he knew, he might have saved his life. But if he had done this he would have had to become a witness, and stood up in court and say that which would ruin his friend. And so he could not speak. His lips were sealed.
To speak would have been to inform against his friend. How could he do that? It was impossible. Yet some may think--you may think--that this man did wrong in allowing himself to be put in this false position. You may say that he had more than himself to consider--he had his family, his name, his--his wife, his child!
"Yes," resumed Wiggins, after a long pause, "this is all true, and he did consider them, all--all--all! He did not trifle with his family name and honor, but it was rather on account of the pride which he took in these that he kept his silence. He was conscious of his perfect innocence. He could not think it possible that such charges could be carried out against one like himself. He believed implicitly in the justice of the courts of his country. He thought that in a fair trial the innocent could not possibly be proclaimed guilty. More than all, he thought that his proud name, his stainless character, and even his wealth and position, would have shown the world that the charges were simply impossible. He thought that all men would have seen that for him to have done such things would involve insanity."
As Wiggins said this his voice grew more earnest and animated. He looked at Edith with his solemn eyes, and seemed as though he was pleading with her the cause of his friend--as though he was trying to show her how it had happened that the father had dishonored the name which the child must bear--as though he was justifying to the daughter, Edith Dalton, the acts of the father, Frederick Dalton.
"So he bore it all with perfect calmness," continued Wiggins, "and had no doubt that he would be acquitted, and thought that thus he would at least be able, without much suffering, to save his friend from ruin most terrific--from the condemnation of the courts and the fate of a felon."
Wiggins paused once more for some time. He was looking at Edith. He had expected some remark, but she had made none. In fact, she had regarded all this as a new trick of Wiggins--a transparent one too--the aim of which was to win her confidence by thus pretending to vindicate her father. He had already tried to work on her in that way, and had failed; and on this occasion he met with the same failure.
"There is no occasion for you to be silent, I think," said Wiggins, turning from the subject to the situation of Edith. "You have no friend at stake; you will endanger no one, and save yourself, by telling whether you are innocent or not."
These last words roused Edith. It was an allusion to her possible guilt.
She determined to bring the interview to a close. She was tired of this man and his attempts to deceive her. It was painful to see through all this hypocrisy and perfidy at the very moment when they were being used against herself.
She looked at him with a stony gaze, and spoke in low, cold tones as she addressed him. "This is all useless. I am on my guard. Why you come here I do not know. Of course you wish to entrap me into saying something, so that you may use my words against me at the trial. You ask me if I saw this man on that night. You ask me if I am innocent. You well know that I am innocent. You, and you only, know who saw him last on that night; for as I believe in my own existence, so I believe, and affirm to your face, that this Leon Dudleigh was murdered by you, and you only!"
He looked at her fixedly as she said this, returning her stony gaze with a mournful look--a pitying look, full of infinite sadness and tenderness. He raised his hand deprecatingly, but said nothing until she had uttered those last words.
"Stop!" he said, in a low voice--"stay! I can not bear it."
He rose from his seat and came close to her. He leaned upon his stick heavily, and looked at her with eyes full of that same strange, inexplicable tenderness and compa.s.sion. Her eyes seemed fascinated by his, and in her mind there arose a strange bewilderment, an expectation of something she knew not what.
"Edith," said he, in a sweet and gentle voice, full of tender melancholy--"Edith, it would be sin in me to let you any longer heap up matter for future remorse; and even though I go against the bright hope of my life in saying this now, yet I must. Edith--"
He paused, looking at her, while she regarded him with awful eyes.
"Edith!" he said again--"my--my--child!"