CHAPTER XLIV
LOVE STRONGER THAN FATE
“Oh, Abel! what did you think of me all that time?”
“I thought that you were the loveliest, yet the most morbid, woman, upon one point, on the face of the earth. Often when I looked at you and saw you preoccupied and very sorrowful, I wished that you would be brave enough to tell me your trouble and so relieve your heart and find rest in my sympathy. But you never took courage to speak of it, and I was bound by my promise to the late earl never to reveal my knowledge unless you should first trust me with your secret. You have done so at last, and enabled me to make my confession also.”
“And oh! Abel, you educated my son!”
“Our son. I adopted him when I married his mother.”
“Oh, Abel! Noble heart!”
“Hush, dear, I am but an honest and well-meaning man. At least I hope I am that much. As soon as we heard of the earl’s death I sent for the child, whom he had cared for while he lived. The boy was brought over in a Baltimore clipper and I went to the city to meet him. I found the boy thriving, and I sent him down to Port Tobacco by sea while I came home by land. I intended that he should be reared in Port Tobacco, where I could go to see him often and watch over his training. It was a stormy season, and I, traveling by the shorter land route, reached home fully a week before the tempest-tossed and battered _Carrier Pigeon_ was driven upon our shores and wrecked with the loss of all on board, except the child alone, who was strangely saved. I should have taken him at once to our own home but for consideration of you. I gave him in charge of Miss Bayard. In a day or two I knew that you had seen and recognized the boy. Then I noticed that any mention of the wrecked child distressed you. So I did all that I could for the little lad without forcing him upon your notice.”
“My noble Abel! I have never deserved such a heart!”
“No more of that, love. I think now that I have made ‘a clean breast of it.’ I think I have told you all.”
“Except this: You said that my first marriage was not a fraud, but a legal act. Oh! is that true? And if true, how came you to know it?” inquired the lady.
“Oh, yes, I must explain that. And then, Elfrida, you must neither talk nor listen longer. You are exhausted.”
“But tell me, first, how do you know my first marriage was legal?”
“Do you remember the discovery we made the day before you were taken ill?—the discovery that the villain who attempted to blackmail you and marry our heiress, under the name of Angus Anglesea, was not that gallant officer at all, but an impostor, taking advantage of the closest possible resemblance to Anglesea to carry out his own nefarious purposes?”
“Yes; a relative of Anglesea—Byrne Stukely.”
“The same. Well, twenty years ago Anglesea and Stukely—I hate to connect their names—were exact counterparts, as you have heard. Well, this same Stukely was in Paris at the time that Saviola was there, and was taking the name and character of his benefactor. Saviola, deceived by the name and resemblance, mistook him for Anglesea, and asked him to act as his second. Stukely consented, and when Saviola fell, mortally wounded, the dying man intrusted the impostor with important papers and confidential messages, to be delivered to you at Geneva. Now do you understand?”
“Yes, I see. But he took his time in coming to Geneva; did not make his appearance there, indeed, until weeks after Saviola’s death, when he came, I suppose, in the course of his own business.”
“Well, my dear Elfrida, it must have been the sight of your beautiful face that tempted him to his subtle villainies; to use the papers and the information he really possessed in the manufacturing of false evidence, to convince you that your true and lawful marriage had been a fraud, in order to get you in his power.”
“Yes, yes. But when and how did you discover that the marriage was really lawful, and that the evidence produced by Stukely was fabricated?”
“By the appearance, yesterday, of the bona-fide Angus Anglesea, who went with you and Saviola to Scotland, saw you married, and, for your better security, took an attested copy of your marriage certificate, which I have now in my possession.”
“My brother’s friend here! My brother’s friend all that we first believed him to be! The vow he made to see me scathless through my mad marriage kept to the letter! The shadow lifted from my life! Oh! I am so glad—so glad, and so grateful! Thank Heaven!—oh, thank Heaven!”
“Do not excite yourself, Elfrida. You promised to be quiet.”
“Well, I will. I will be quiet. But I am so happy—happier than I have been for twenty-five years! What brought Gen. Anglesea here?”
“He came in search of you. He brought with him some papers that belong to you,” said the squire; and then, while the lady listened with breathless interest, he told her of his accidental meeting with her brother’s old friend on the avenue the night before, and of the long interview they had had in the apartments of the general, in which the latter had told of his visit to Naples, his chance encounter with the Prince Saviola, and all that had transpired on the occasion, which was followed a few weeks later by the death of the prince, who had left all his devisable estate to his grandnephew, Rolando, only son of Luigi Saviola, and his wife, Elfrida Glennon.
“And our dear friend took all the trouble to go to Geneva and hunt up the baptismal register of my son, and then to come across the ocean to find me out?”
“And to bring you the copies of your marriage certificate, the register of your son’s birth and baptism, and of your greatuncle’s will.”
“But my son, Abel!—my son!” she cried.
“Our son’s release is the question of a few hours only. He has been a voluntary prisoner because he has been grossly deceived by Stukely into the belief that he is Stukely’s son——”
The lady gave a cry of horror.
“And he refused to testify against his supposed father. This morning, Grandiere, Anglesea and myself will go to see him together and tell him the truth. He will no longer refuse to testify. We will then go to the commissioner of prisoners and ask for him an early hearing. If there should be any delay, we will go to the President. I think I can promise that he will be released before sunset.”
“Heaven grant it!” breathed the lady.
“And now, Elfrida, I must summon your nurse and leave you to repose. You had better not try to see any one else to-day, not even the children. Anglesea will wait until to-morrow for an interview.”
“One more word before you leave me, Abel.”
“What is it?”
“How came I back here in this bed? Where did you find me? I know I was crazed with trouble when I left that statement on the table and started on my journey. I have no distinct memory of that journey until I lost myself in a wild, dark, desert place, infested with wild beasts and birds of prey, and then oblivion, until I awoke to find myself in this bed. How did I get back? Who brought me home?”
“You have never been away, dear Elfrida. Your ‘howling wilderness’ was but a delirious dream. In your distraction you prepared to leave me, no doubt, but you never left the room. You were found by little Elva, dressed as for a journey, but lying in a swoon upon the carpet. You were put to bed and skilfully treated, and you have got better.”
“Is—it—possible?” murmured the lady, passing her hand dreamily over her forehead.
“It is true. And now, dearest, though I would much rather pass the whole day beside your bed, I must call your nurse and let you rest. You must not be disturbed again to-day,” said Abel Force, as he stooped and kissed her.
She put out her arms and drew his head down again and returned his kiss, murmuring:
“Bless you, Abel! Bless you! Bless you!”
Then she released him, and he went softly to the door and opened it.
Mrs. Winder, the sick nurse, was sitting on a chair a few feet off. She arose and met the squire, saying, reproachfully:
“You have stayed too long, sir! The doctor expressly said that no one must talk to my patient for more than five minutes, and you have stayed half an hour, at least. It is very wrong, sir, indeed, very wrong—and I should not like to be responsible for the consequences!”
“You must pardon me on this occasion, nurse,” said the squire, good-humoredly. “I hope I have done your patient no harm, and I promise that no one else shall disturb her to-day.”
“No, sir, that they shan’t! I will see to that!” answered the woman, with the despotism of her class.
Mr. Force was too happy to be resentful.
He went downstairs to the ladies’ parlor, where he found a large party waiting for him—Odalite, Elva, Wynnette, Mrs. Hedge, Miss Grandiere, Miss Bayard, Rosemary, Capt. Gideon and young Sam.
He bowed as he entered the room, where he was promptly met by Wynnette, who at once flew at him and pecked him with the words:
“Papa, you are a perfect outlaw. You were not given permission to stay more than five minutes in mamma’s room, and you have stayed—about five hours, it seems to me.”
“Oh! tut, tut, tut! What reckless exaggeration! Not half an hour, my dear,” said the squire.
“And we are all just famishing. Here are our friends from the country, too. They have got furnished apartments on E Street, but they have to come here for their meals, and they are just fainting with hunger.”
The squire thought they need not have waited for him, but might have gone down to breakfast under the escort of the old skipper, but he was too kind-hearted to say so.
“She is only teasing you, Mr. Force. She has no respect for the fourth commandment. We have but just arrived, and though we have excellent appetites for our breakfast, we are not suffering from hunger,” said Mrs. Hedge.
“I know, Wynnette,” said the chick-pecked papa. “But now we will go downstairs at once. Where is Enderby, then?”
“He went out to breakfast with a friend who has just arrived from England, but I didn’t catch his name,” replied the skipper.
“Oh, I know. Miss Sibby, will you take my arm?”
“Now, what do I want with your arm, Abel Force? Them as has arms and legs of their own, sez I, don’t need to be toted along on other people’s, sez I,” replied the old lady, trotting on before the party.