CHAPTER XXIV.

ESTWICKE stepped into the room in the midst of an expectant silence.

The touch of a strong, coercive hand upon the impostor’s arm roused him to a realization of the situation.

“In the name of Heaven,” he gasped faintly, “who are you?”

“I,” said Estwicke tremulously, “I am--his son.”

“His son!” The adventurer echoed the words in a passion of despair.

Only five minutes ago he had been assuring his fears of the caution of his intention. And yet he had wrested from Miss St. Pierre no promise of immunity. He had pulled down no temple of fancied security upon Maurice Brennett. He had betrayed himself, himself only, to a dozen witnesses, and among them this man, John Fortescue’s son, of whose existence he had never before heard.

Instinctively, perhaps with no idea of flight, he turned toward the door. A moment earlier he might have seen more beyond it than the great, dimly-lighted, bare hall. He might have seen, lurking in the gloom, a hesitating shadow, with cruelly brilliant eyes, all their rapacious suggestions sharpening and intensifying as they looked upon the group within. But when those words, “his son,” and their despairing echo, struck Maurice Brennett’s intent ear, he slipped out softly into that night of changeful mood. And as he rode swiftly through the misty uncertainty of the moonlit battle-field he remembered the strong premonition that had beset him when first he saw John Estwicke’s face, and again and again he cursed that fine and subtle sense which gave him so much and yet gave him no more.

There was no need for General Vayne to tighten his grasp upon the detected impostor’s arm. The man was incapable of flight. He stretched out his hand to the table for support, or he might have fallen. He was white and shivering, his breath was failing. The faces bent upon him, each expressive of a righteous aloofness, seemed reeling fantastically about the room. And he looked at them, as they went in that giddy whirl, with a piteous deprecation of which he was unconscious. The group stood motionless, silent, watching him askance as if every human feeling and endowment were merged in that coldly accusing gaze.

Marcia never knew how it happened; her heart was suddenly all pierced with compassion; the sympathetic tears sprang into her eyes. The most potent instinct of her nature--to help, to comfort--was strongly constraining her. She made no question. She had no thought of the others, or of what they would think of her. She found herself putting a glass of wine into his trembling hand. “Drink it,” she said, “you are faint. Oh, papa, papa, can’t you even give him a chair in _your own house_!”

It broke the spell. There was a change of attitude in the circle, a breath of relief. He turned toward her with the glass untasted in his hand.

“I cannot thank you,” he said brokenly. “I am not worthy to speak a word to you. You don’t know me, or you couldn’t pity me. I am too low for pity.”

Her eyes were filling again, but she replied with prosaic little words, “You will be better after this.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, looking hard at her, “I will be better after this; I promise you that.”

He placed the brimming glass upon the table. Once he had been a gentleman. Even now, far down as he had sunk, he could not drink wine in the house of a man who gazed at him with stern, condemning eyes.

“You understand it now,” he said, addressing Estwicke. “It was a conspiracy to obtain money. The imposture was part of the scheme.”

“How did you dare--?” Estwicke began angrily.

“It was no question of courage. Nothing was easier. I had known that man--John Fortescue--all my life. He had not been in New Orleans in thirty years before my little game. I had reason to believe that he was the last of his family. I had heard him say, a thousand times, he had no near relatives. He used to complain that there was not a soul upon earth to care if he were living or dead. The last ten years of his life we spent abroad together. We came back on account of the war. We took part in a few skirmishes, but in his first battle he was killed; the report said, ‘missing.’ I was captured, and remained in prison till the surrender, when I went at once to France. These circumstances came to serve my turn afterward. We were on the staff of General Crespeau, who was killed on the same day. There were not ten men who knew us well enough, during the short time we were together in the army, to have recognized either Fortescue or me a year afterward. Everything played into my hand, you see. I knew him thoroughly, through and through. I could imitate his voice, and gesture, and manner, without a chance of detection. I have a knack at that kind of thing. A casual resemblance in height and build and complexion helped to carry it off. I passed easily enough as John Fortescue among men who had not seen him for twenty odd years.”

He recited this in a hard voice and an off-hand manner; he had mustered his effrontery to face it out. General Vayne’s grasp was relaxing, for his attention had concentrated itself upon a phase of the story which touched him nearly.

“Captain Estwicke,--if that is your name,” he said severely, “I think I am justified in demanding an explanation from you.”

Estwicke turned, with sudden color flaring in his face, and his eyes flashing. His quick intuition had met General Vayne’s covert suspicion, and he was tremulous with the shock of the collision.

“You shall have it!” he exclaimed. “My name--John Fortescue--was changed by law. When my mother died, within a year after her marriage, it became the scheme of my grandfather, Judge Estwicke, to effect a separation, permanent and complete, between my father and me, so that I might grow up to be ‘correct,’ like the Estwickes. A promise was obtained from my father never to interfere with me; never to see me; to keep his distance; because he was no fit custodian and exemplar for his own son. All the long heads of the family were put together, to make out a showing that might rid me even of his too notorious name; for his extravagant escapades, and gaming ventures, and wild courses had rendered the very words a stumbling-block and an offence to good men, like the Estwickes. My father’s consent was forthcoming when Judge Estwicke pledged himself to make the change of name advance my pecuniary interests. And so it was done. The connection was cut like a thread. He left me forever, because I was little, and troublesome, and expensive--so the Estwickes afterwards gave me to understand.”

It was all beginning to be plain enough to Edward Keevor. He listened with as intent an interest to the points touching upon his imposture, as if he could still serve a purpose by comparing the facts to the ingenious status which he had constructed and fitted to those circumstances that he had believed constituted an exhaustive knowledge of his friend’s life. So the roystering John Fortescue had had a hidden heart-history, with some cruel suggestions in it, which he buried under years of revelry, and from which he separated himself by leagues of water and foreign lands. It was not strange that so proud a man should never have spoken to his boon companion of his dead wife, and her “correct” relatives, who held themselves better than he. But there was something curiously uncharacteristic in this voluntary alienation from his child,--he, so generous and hot-blooded, with his deep feelings and enthusiastic attachments. And the son, so like his father, was strangely unlike in this critical, censorious attitude.

The fire was dying out of Estwicke’s eyes; he seemed dallying with some resolve. Twice he checked himself as he was about to speak, but his desire suddenly pulled away from his control and he broke forth impetuously, the tragedy of his feelings expressed, incongruously enough, in the hap-hazard phrasings of the day.

“I can’t talk about this thing--it kills me! I thought I had no part in it. But it was settled at last by my own choice; and I never knew I had a choice to make. And he is dead. And I am here. He can never understand. It will always seem that I went back on him. I thought he had thrown me off; and it was all the other way, for they would never let me know. He had stipulated--he had stood firmly on that--he had stipulated that if ever my heart should turn to him, they must let me go. He looked for it, he said, for blood is thicker than water. And my heart did turn to him. He was my father; as I grew older, I wanted to know him--to be with him. _I_ didn’t care if he did live as all gamblers live--like a prince one day, and a beggar the next. _I_ didn’t care if he had left his reputation in every city on this continent! That’s the account the Estwickes gave of him. And when I declared I would go to him, they made me think--for they would not tell me otherwise--that he cared nothing for me; that in all these years he had shown no interest in me,--never a line, or word, or sign. It was sharp; it cut me. And that idea that he had given me away because I was so little, and troublesome, and expensive--I couldn’t forgive him for that.”

He paused for an instant and laughed sarcastically.

“Well, I cherished that idea, and after a time it possessed me. Only once it let go--only once, for a little while. It was just before this battle,”--he made a gesture toward the black plain without. “I was aghast one day to realize that now and here I was nearer to him than ever before. I used to climb up on the parapet of Fort Despair at night, and watch the rebels’ camp fires, and wonder which might be his, and whether he knew that I was here, and a terrible fear of meeting him as a stranger and an enemy laid hold upon me. A flag of truce went out one day and I wrote to him, and when the letter was finished I thought it all over again, and that idea that he had given me away lightly--_lightly_--as if I had been a choice puppy, beset me once more. It was too much like a choice puppy to go fawning around now without a word of encouragement. So I flung the letter into the fire. If I had stood up for him, if I had believed in him against all the world as I was bound--_bound_ by every instinct of my blood to do, that letter would have reached him the day before he was killed. We should have understood each other then. He would have read it here where the battle was fought.”

With an agitated gesture, as if he would clasp his missing right hand, General Vayne sought to interpose a word of deprecation. “Let me beg of you--say no more, my dear sir.”

But Estwicke hastily interrupted.

“I saw him at last!” he cried, bitterly. “Oh, yes, I saw him at last. It was after an assault on Fort Despair, one of many attacks that day. They had charged again and again, with picked men. When it was all over I saw _him_ lying on the ground--dead--_dead_! I knew him by my own likeness to him--by my repudiated sonship. It was as a prevision of my own end--it was like looking on my own dead face. It’s a fine thing--oh, I tell you it’s a fine thing for a man’s conscience to acquit him of the crime of parricide on the plea of a lucky accident, to have to thank a gracious God that a minie ball from the infantry was charged with his father’s death rather than the shells which were bursting everywhere from his own battery.”

He leaned against the window-frame, and turned his eyes out upon the night. The fire-flies flickered. A bird sang. Far, far to the vague horizon stretched the stern, savage old battle-field, indelibly marked with its own irrevocable history--the seal of woe set upon the country. And still, even in the haunted thickets, the very outgrowth of carnage, the bird sang, the fire-flies flickered.

After a moment he recommenced scornfully. “I suppose it was in the joint character of a victorious plunderer and an heir-at-law that I felt myself privileged to ransack John Fortescue’s belongings in the captured train. And I found among them an old budget of letters from my grandfather and uncles, evidently carefully treasured, friendly, delightfully cordial letters, teeming with bits of news about _me_,--my health, my talents, my progress at school, as if these trifles were of deep interest to him. Now and then there was an allusion, in response to letters of his own, to those objectionable habits which used to grind the rigid and intolerant Judge Estwicke when John Fortescue was brought near to him as his daughter’s husband,--invariably it was couched, not as one might speak to a coldly depraved man, but to a noble creature with fantastic generosities of character, and elastic impulses that carried him away, and sometimes astray. And these letters made a mystery--they began to poison my life. At last I wrote to my grandfather demanding the full correspondence that had gone on over my head while I knew nothing of it. And then I discovered that, from the first, my father’s heart went out to me; that he kept himself posted, and was familiar with every detail of my life; that he consented to this ‘cruel separation’ only for my good, as he thought; that he relied implicitly on Judge Estwicke, and revered his ‘great sagacity,’ and humbly submitted his own judgment; that he was hard on his own faults, and was always trying to reform, on my account; that he patiently awaited and expected some sign from me, when the agreement would be broken and he could take me back; that the years brought him only disappointment, and he bore it meekly, and said he deserved nothing, and that I was doubtless far better off, growing up ‘steady,’ with studious habits, and among such good influences. And I thought he never wrote. And he thought his own son never cared. And the end was that we met here, where the battle was fought, when he had lain down with his tragic, empty heart, and did not rise again.”

He paused. His voice was faltering.

“I cannot sufficiently regret,” said General Vayne, with grave constraint, “that I forced this explanation upon you.”

Estwicke turned sharply.

“I don’t know what I have told you!” he exclaimed. “I am misleading you! I am misrepresenting the good man who did everything for me--who had no motives but his self-sacrificing interest in my welfare, and his fear that my father’s influence and example would ruin me. I was a burden--a dead weight from first to last. My grandfather in his old age worked early and late, and took from his dutiful sons to give to me, for my mother’s share of his little property had been advanced during her married life, and had slipped through John Fortescue’s hands at the card-table. And here, in the presence of these people who never knew Judge Estwicke, I am maligning him and holding him up as cruel, and treacherous, and hard, when the only sin of his long life--if it were a sin--was to save me. Don’t you see what a traitor I am? Don’t you see I can’t justify myself without aspersing him. I went back on my father, or if I try to persuade myself that I did not, I go back on the man who deprived his own children to give to me. Do you wonder that I don’t talk of these things--that I can hardly bring myself even to think of the chaotic sarcasm of John Fortescue’s fate. The most honorable man that ever lived systematically deceived him. ‘The best friend a man ever had,’”--he quoted the words with a sneer,--“has robbed him of his identity, and is masquerading around the world with his name. And here is his own son, masquerading around the world--without it!”

He laughed harshly as he turned away. He was resolving to say no more. He wondered now that he had spoken at all, except to give the curt explanation required. Why should he have bared his heart with all its long-rankling wounds, for these strangers to gaze upon.

He scarcely listened as Keevor addressed him. The man, panoplied in vice though he was, had yet one vulnerable point. He had been honestly fond of his friend. Even after so many years the feeling hampered his imposture, it stirred unaccustomed chords of remorse and repentance, it hung round him with strange superstitions, at last it betrayed him.

There was genuine emotion in his voice and an eager appeal in his manner. “I can’t attempt any extenuation,” he said. “There is none to make. But at first it did not seem the gross sacrilege that it does now. It was rather a relapse into an old habit. I had often imitated him to his face. He used to laugh. He thought it was clever. The realization of what I have been doing only came upon me by degrees. And I was kept in ignorance of what a swindling job it is until I had been plunged deep into it.”

Estwicke made no answer and not a sign of attention until Keevor was about to recommence, when he raised his hand with a gesture of contemptuous expostulation, stepped out of the window, and walked off down the portico.

As Keevor turned away, crushed and cowed, his eye fell upon Miss St. Pierre. She was still standing beside the table, and still turning his card nervously in her hands. The sight of her suggested the reflection that now she would hold her property secure--after his father’s death the law allowed Estwicke only three years from January, 1867, in which to bring suit, but he had evidently been in ignorance of his rights, and by the lapse of the prescribed term the remedy was barred forever. So thoroughly had the impostor identified himself with the part that he had played, that with a strange doubleness he experienced a vicarious disappointment because at last the Fortescue heir would receive nothing.

And it was Maurice Brennett who would profit by this! He would marry her; he would gain the fortune he coveted, and around which he had woven the fine web of his schemes. With sudden anger in his face and voice, Keevor spoke to her, resolved to frustrate Brennett yet, if it were possible.

“I was not the originator of the plot to rob you,” he said. “It was a device of Maurice Brennett’s; I acted under his instructions throughout. I came here to tell you that, to warn you how you place confidence in him. I can give you proofs of what I say; I can put papers into your hands. It was a conspiracy to obtain money.”

She was pale and agitated, and a little frightened. “I suspected that all the time,” she said simply.

She could not analyze the look he bent upon her. A pang shot through his heart. He had for his fancied wrongs causelessly ruined Brennett; he had defeated the scheme in which they had both lavished a world of ingenuity; and he had indeed given himself away. “A friend of Horace Percy’s,” the countryman had said, and he must infer no friend save one. He stood silent, feeling thwarted and beaten and bruised.

She had seemed on the point of speaking again. But at first she was only conscious of a painful bewilderment, of mentally fumbling for something, she greatly desired to say. Then she realized that she was no longer at the mercy of that dastardly lie with which Brennett had threatened her.

“If you will prove his complicity,” she cried impetuously, “if you will give testimony that will convict that man, you shall go free! I will fix it upon him! I will pursue him to the ends of the earth!”

She became suddenly aware that the others were gazing at her with astonished eyes--she hastily averted her own. As she turned slightly she caught sight of a great, swift light that had sprung up on the horizon. It incomprehensibly paused for a moment, but she gave it no heed. Then it glided on as before. It was the head-light of the up-train for Marston. Her caution had held her anger and revenge in leash too long. At that instant Maurice Brennett had signalled the train, and now it was bearing him far away into the darkness. The thorough search made for him afterward was futile.

Keevor received with stolid composure the promise of immunity for which he had hardly dared to hope. “I shall wait in Chattalla until I hear from you. If I am permitted,” he turned to General Vayne, “I shall go.”

He bowed at the door with courtesy as elaborate as if he were an honored guest taking leave. He went out from the dim hall into the moonlight. The wind was high, and the haunted thickets tossed in wild commotion. A great wave of martial music rolled over the plain. It broke into weird shouts and cries, and the earth shook with a strong tremor. The outline of Fort Despair defined itself aggressively against the western horizon. The gusts passed, the sounds fainted, his foot-fall was dying in the distance. And then, Estwicke, still standing on the portico, could hear only the tumultuous beating of his own passionate heart, which had wrought with its exacting sensitiveness such cruel havoc in its lot. He did not see that the light curtains were suddenly a-flutter, and a girl’s slender white-robed figure glided out. But under the touch of her hand upon his arm his whole nature softened like the rock that the prophet smote. He looked down at her through gathering tears that came few and painfully and stood burning in his eyes and did not fall.

“You see what you have escaped, Marcia,” he said gently. “I am a man whom no woman might safely trust”--she lifted her face, eloquent with an indignant protest--“a recreant to natural affection. There are not many such. I am a man whose life must be made up of remorse and self-reproach, his best alternation a callous forgetfulness.”

“I ask no greater happiness than to share his life,” she declared suddenly.

He turned and caught her in his arms.

“Oh, if I could only take the great joy and comfort that you are to me, without grudging it for his sake, remembering what his life was, and what I helped to make it. If he could only know how it all happened, and how I feel, and”--

“He must--he does!” she cried solemnly, like one inspired.

Estwicke looked hard at her. Light opaline clouds were sweeping across the sky; pallid mists shifted about the battle-field and caught the glimmer of the moon, and through its mystery and through its glamour her face shone as the face of an angel.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, his credulity half-constrained by the force of her conviction.

“Oh, God is so good!” she exclaimed.

He slipped her hand through his arm, and together they turned toward the east and the future.

C. J. PETERS & SON, STEREOTYPERS, BOSTON.

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Inconsistent hyphens left as printed. For convenience, a table of contents have been added.