CHAPTER XXV.

THE TEST OF LOVE.

Mightier far Than strength of nerve, or sinew, or the sway Of magic, potent over sun and star, Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favorite seat be feeble woman’s breast. WORDSWORTH.

Has she not set at naught her noble birth, The high won fame of an historic race, Peace of retirement and pride of woman? Her prodigality has given him all. ROWE.

When Lord Beaudevere and Lady Arielle returned to the drawing-room, where they had left Mrs. Fleming and Miss Desparde alone together, they discovered at a glance that Vivienne had put Net in possession of the whole truth in regard to the detention of Valdimir—the tragic fate of poor Kit Ken, and the accusation of her murder resting on Mr. Desparde.

They had scarcely resumed their seats before Net spoke up suddenly, impulsively:

“This is the most shocking event I have ever heard of in my life! But there is not the slightest doubt in the world as to the identity of the murderer! Have you caused Brandon Coyle to be looked up?” she finished by inquiring.

“Certainly, my dear! My suspicion fell upon that gentleman from the first, and it is supported by the opinion of poor Kit Ken’s father. I have employed detectives to search for Coyle and watch him. _You_ do not happen to have heard anything of him very lately?”

“Nothing whatever since he left Montjoie, after the discovery of his evil deeds.”

“It is very strange the skilled detectives I have employed have not yet struck his trail, as the North American Indians would say. But I expect almost hourly to hear from them on the subject.”

“In the meantime the trial draws ominously near!” sighed Vivienne.

Lady Arielle grew pale.

“Nonsense! Nonsense, my dears! You must not take a dark view of this subject! There was scarcely evidence enough before the magistrate to justify him in committing Valdimir for trial! Even if nothing should be heard of the real criminal, there is certainly not evidence enough to convict Desparde in the opinion of any judge or jury that ever existed! But I am convinced that we shall get news before the trial. Have _some_ faith in the protection of Divine Providence over the innocent.”

“Sometimes the innocent are permitted to suffer,” thought Net, but she said nothing.

“And now, my obstinate dears, about your visit to our Valdimir,” began the baron. “As I explained before, it is now too late to catch any train by which we could reach Yockley before six o’clock this evening—the hour at which the prison doors are closed for the night. And in order that we may start early enough to-morrow, to get home again the same day, you will have to be up and get your breakfast by five o’clock. Do you hear _that_, young ladies? You will never do it unless I am on hand to ring the alarm-bell in the morning. I will wake up the butler, who will wake up the page, who will wake up the ladies’ maids, who will wake up their ladies—and so on and so on—like the people in ‘_The House that Jack built_,’ or in the story of ‘_The Little Old Woman and her Pig_.’”

“You know that we will be very glad to have you, Baron,” said Lady Arielle.

“And now, my dears, if I have not time to return to Cloudland, I have enough to run down and see my old neighbor Coyle—poor old fellow! how I feel for him! But he has turned off his scamp of a nephew, that is one comfort. I know Brandon is not there; but I _may_ hear something that will give me a clew. Plague take it. I feel deucedly like a _spy_, going on such an errand to an old neighbor’s house; but I cannot help it! ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ and I must do the best I can for my kinsman, who is suffering now for his nephew’s crimes!” said the baron, as he rang the bell.

“Will you not take lunch first?” inquired Arielle.

“No, my dear—don’t want any! I will be back to dine with you, and will bring a splendid appetite with me,” replied the baron.

Adams entered in answer to the bell.

“You will lend me a saddle-horse, Arielle?”

“Certainly, Lord Beaudevere. You need scarcely have asked the question. You know the horses. Pray give your own orders,” replied the young lady.

“Adams, tell one of the grooms to saddle Muff for me, and some other steady horse for himself, and bring them around to the door,” said the baron.

His orders were promptly complied with, and the groom and horses were announced as waiting.

“I shall return in time for your dinner, my dear,” said the baron to Lady Arielle as he took leave of the young party and left the room.

In ten more minutes he was mounted on horseback and going on at a brisk, steady trot towards Caveland.

In little more than an hour’s time, by taking all the narrow bridle paths through the short cuts, he reached his destination, and drew up before the dark, old mansion house.

He alighted, threw his reins to the groom, and hurried up the steps to the principal entrance, which was in one of the towers.

A porter opened to him.

“Is Mr. Coyle at home?” he inquired.

“Yes, my lord.—Here, Tomkins! Show his lordship into the library,” replied the porter, who belonged to a household that never had stood upon ceremony with their neighbors, and who, therefore, neither asked for nor expected a card.

The footman bowed, and walking down the hall, opened a side door and announced:

“His lordship, Baron Beaudevere.”

The baron entered the library, and the footman closed the door upon him and retired.

Lord Beaudevere found old Mr. Coyle, wrapped in a blue cloth dressing-gown, wearing a black velvet skull-cap, seated in his leathern arm-chair and bending over his writing-table, which seemed laden with papers, documents, and account books.

He arose to meet his visitor, took off his skull-cap with his left hand, and bowed as he held out his right.

“Pray replace your cap, neighbor. I hope I find you quite well,” said Lord Beaudevere, though with little confidence, as he noticed how thin, worn and aged the once rotund and rubicund old gentleman looked.

“I am not well, my lord—shall never be well again, probably—do not wish to get well, in point of fact. But never mind me. Take this easy-chair, if you please, my lord,” he said, drawing forward a large, well-cushioned “sleepy-hollow.”

“Do not say that, my dear old friend! Many would deeply regret your departure from among us,” said the baron, as he sank down into the luxurious depths of the offered seat.

“Why should I wish to live—why should I wish to live—or why should any friend desire me to live, when my gray hairs are dishonored, my heart broken, and my spirit bowed by the misconduct of my nephew—my nephew, whom I brought up even as a son, and meant to have made my heir?” bitterly exclaimed the old man.

The baron would willingly have demanded, “Where is that nephew now?” but his conscience would not allow him to ask the question he was burning, for his own kinsman’s sake, to have answered, yet which he thought would be treacherous, under the circumstances. So he said nothing, while his looks expressed the sympathy he felt for the afflicted old gentleman.

“Oh, my lord, I do not hesitate to speak to you freely. You are the oldest living friend I have in the world, and you know already of that unfortunate boy’s evil doings! You will know still more, as all the world must know more in a very few days or hours,” continued old Mr. Coyle, with a deep sigh.

Lord Beaudevere had started and then given deep attention to the last few words of the stricken old man. He would “know still more, as all the world would know still more, in a few days or hours?” What might this mean but that Brandon Coyle’s last worst crime had been traced in some providential way to him and he was known as the assassin of Kit Ken?

To this conclusion the baron arrived at once, and then he spoke:

“I am truly sorry that _you_ should suffer so severely for the fault of one whom you have nourished in your house,” he said, in sympathetic tones.

“And this last dishonor,” continued the old man—“this last dishonor! You will know it all through to-morrow’s papers!” sighed Mr. Coyle.

“How came this to your knowledge?” the baron felt justified in asking, for he was thinking only about the murder in the railway carriage.

“Through my bankers, of course!” answered the old man, raising his eyes in some astonishment to the face of the questioner.

“Through your _bankers_, my dear sir? I—I don’t quite understand,” said the baron.

“Ah,—ah, yes! I was talking as if you knew something of the matter, whereas as yet you know nothing; but my head is sadly shaken by this trouble. Yes, my lord, it was through my bankers! You must know that towards the last days in December I always draw out of my bank account enough and more than enough cash to meet all demands upon me for the remainder of the year, and at the same time I send for my bank-book and cancelled checks that I may see to my balance. I did this a few days ago, and to my utter amazement I found among my checks one for five thousand pounds, dated the fifteenth of December. It was apparently filled out by my own handwriting, and signed by my own autograph. I could almost have sworn to it all as my own work! Yet I knew it was a foul forgery! I had not drawn a check for five thousand pounds for many years. My checks seldom run over a hundred at a time.”

“And this was a forgery, you say?” inquired the baron, wondering how this could be connected with the murder of poor Kit Ken, yet persuaded that it was.

“Yes, sir, a rank, rank forgery! I inclosed it in a letter to the bankers, telling them that it was a forgery, and demanding to know who had presented it to be cashed. Ah, my lord! little did I suspect _who_ was the guilty party, though indeed I might easily have done so; and _if_ I had, I should never have written to the bankers, never have made a sign, or given a hint, that it was a forgery, but should have let it go with the rest! Ah! if we could but know some of the results of our actions beforehand! Well, my lord, the bankers did not wait to answer my letter; they telegraphed to me that the man who presented my check for five thousand pounds, on the fifteenth of December, was Mr. Brandon Coyle.”

“It must have been a great shock to you. I am very sorry,” said Lord Beaudevere, earnestly; for the first time it struck him that the murder was committed on the fifteenth of December, and if Mr. Brandon Coyle was uttering forgeries in London, he could not at the same date be committing murder in the North of England, and that young Coyle might be able to prove an _alibi_ more easily than could Valdimir Desparde. The thought was not an encouraging one, and Lord Beaudevere sighed deeply.

Poor old Mr. Coyle took it as a sigh of deepest sympathy for him, and he continued:

“Yes, sir, it was a great shock! a very great shock! As soon, however, as I could recover from it far enough to collect and use my faculties, I only thought of the family credit, and I telegraphed the bank to take no proceedings against the presenter of that check, but let it stand to my account. I was willing to acknowledge it and pay it.”

“And did the bankers consent to this?” slowly inquired the baron.

“No, sir! No, sir! They telegraphed back to me that they would _not_ let it stand to my account; that they would lose it; that they would rather lose ten times the amount than compound a felony and allow a forger to escape; that the financial and commercial safety of the commonwealth depended on the strictness and severity with which justice should be meted out to the forger—and ever so much of the same sort of banker’s slang. Yes, sir, they are resolved to prosecute my nephew. All that I have told you they telegraphed to me—by the yard! but they also wrote a letter, which I have just received, and in which they have gone somewhat in detail—”

“Ah, they gave you further particulars as to the hour, perhaps!” exclaimed the baron, much interested.

“Oh, yes, they told me that he—my nephew, Brandon—presented himself to the paying teller’s window as soon as the bank doors were open—”

“Oh! as early as ten o’clock, then, I suppose,” interrupted the baron, with a feeling of great relief: for if Brandon Coyle uttered his forged check at ten o’clock A. M. in London, he would have ample time to reach the Grand Junction or any other North of England station to do any deed of evil there before midnight.

“Oh, yes, it was about that hour the bank opened, I presume. Well, they wrote that he appeared to be in a great hurry, and told them that I had sent _him_ down for the money for safety and dispatch, as I was about to purchase that portion of Squire Honeythorn’s estate which joins my own land—a very plausible story, especially as I _had_ often expressed a wish to buy that same property, and also as I always sent my nephew, when I could not go myself, to cash a check for a large sum. They further warned me that they had procured a warrant for the arrest of the forger, and sent officers with it in search of him, expressing much regret that a sense of duty should compel them to this course.”

“I am _very_ sorry to hear that you have this trouble, Mr. Coyle,” said the baron.

“It _is_ hard,” replied the old man. “I abjured matrimony myself! But my brother had to marry and give me a niece, and that niece had to dishonor the family by the lowest marriage she could have fallen into, and bestowed upon me this grand-nephew with his inherited vileness. Yes, it is hard!”

“It is a pity that in adopting him you should have given him your own name,” observed Lord Beaudevere.

“It is a thousand pities! But do you suppose I would have done it if I could have foreseen this result? I did hope by good training to bring the lad up to be an honest and honorable man! But there! All the cultivation in the world will not turn a poisonous weed into a wholesome vegetable! Men never have been able to gather ‘figs of thorns’ yet,” concluded the squire.

“I hope your niece, Miss Coyle, has not yet heard of this trouble,” said the baron.

“No, no, I have not told her. I shall keep it from the poor girl as long as I can, for she is devoted to her brother with that strong love that binds twins, you know. Why she is scarcely on speaking terms with me since I turned the scamp off!”

“I regret to hear it,” said the baron.

“But my dear lord,” said the old squire, with some change of tone and look, “while I am so absorbed in my own woes, I have not altogether forgotten yours! Ah! our young people are giving us a great deal of trouble in our old days! I have seen the newspaper accounts of that tragedy in the railway carriage.”

“You never for an instant believed that my kinsman was guilty?” tartly inquired Lord Beaudevere.

“I did not know _what_ to believe. After discovering my own nephew, in whom I had had so _much_ confidence, to be such an unscrupulous villain, my faith was shaken in Valdimir, especially when I remembered his extraordinary and unexplained flight from the country on his wedding-day last spring,” said the old squire, deprecatingly.

Lord Beaudevere could have explained that extraordinary flight, not very much to the credit of the squire’s nephew; but not for the world would he have added _that_ weight to the burden of the worthy old man’s troubles. He thought also that Mr. Coyle, remembering the relations that had existed between his evil nephew and the poor victim of the railway tragedy, might have reasonably suspected Mr. Brandon Coyle of having had a hand in the death of Kit Ken. But he forebore also to express this thought.

“I do not see that there was much evidence against him. Any man might have been caught in such a trap by getting into a railway compartment where there was no other passenger but the body of a murdered woman cunningly arranged to look like a sleeping one. Yes, any man might. _I_ might, or you might. No, I do not think there was evidence enough to commit him. But as there was no one else to lay hold of, I suppose the magistrates felt bound to commit somebody; so they committed him. Of course, you have engaged good counsel for his defense?” asked the squire.

“The very best that could be obtained—Mr. Stair and Mr. Turner,” replied Lord Beaudevere.

“Ah! indeed, strong heads, both of them. Why, either of them would be acute enough to secure an acquittal, even if his client were ever so guilty, and every one of the jury knew it for a fact! You may safely trust your kinsman’s case to them. Why, they’d talk the judges out of their senses and the jury into a state of idiotic complacency in no time at all!”

“We do not want that sort of thing. We want clearheaded, intelligent justice, in an honorable acquittal,” said the baron.

“Well, and you will be sure to get it. Ah! I wish there were the smallest chance of an acquittal for my scamp of a nephew. But my only hope for him is in his flight. I do really suppose he has secured that, by putting the sea between himself and the English law. It must be so, for neither I nor his sister have heard from him since the night of his—his—his exposure at Castle Montjoie,” concluded the old squire.

Lord Beaudevere had now gathered all the news that he could get—not very satisfactory on the whole—and so arose to take leave.

“I thank you for this visit, my lord. It has really done me good,” said the poor old squire, cordially, rising and taking the offered hand of his departing visitor.

“I am glad it has been so, and if I can in any manner be of use to you in your trouble, my dear old friend, pray command me,” replied the baron, feeling very much like a hypocrite and a traitor when he remembered the motive of that visit for which the stricken old man had thanked him so warmly.

“You are very kind, and I am truly grateful. But I doubt if you or any one under heaven can help me. The best news that could come to me would be that Brandon Coyle had been lost at sea!” sighed the poor squire, as he shook and pressed the hand of his old neighbor.

[Illustration: [Fleuron]]