CHAPTER XXV.

THE HIDDEN WOMAN

Olwen had started to her feet in amazement and perplexity. Bayre led the fainting lady to a sofa and made her sit down. Both were too much occupied with her to pay much attention to old Mr Bayre, who, on meeting the visitor’s eyes and hearing her scream, had promptly relapsed into his former huddled-up condition in the armchair.

Olwen went down on her knees beside Miss Merriman, took off her travelling cloak and loosened her dress. Bayre, looking round for something that might prove helpful in the emergency, saw a bottle of strong smelling-salts on the dressing-table at the far end of the room, and bringing it back with him, gave it to Olwen.

“It’s all right,” cried the girl, “she’ll be herself in a minute. Fetch a little water.”

Bayre looked round him once more, and an exclamation broke from his lips. The armchair in front of the fire, in which his uncle had sat huddled up, was empty.

Olwen looked round too and noted this fact, And her eyes met those of the young man.

“What is it? What does it mean?”

“Hush! she’ll be able to tell us in a minute. There’s something very strange under all this,” said he.

They could hear the noise of someone moving about in the small adjoining room where old Mr Bayre kept some of the most valuable of his curiosities, and they guessed that the old man himself was there, within hearing. So they said nothing more for a few minutes, until, indeed, the colour began to return to Miss Merriman’s face and she sat upright. Then she brushed them aside and looked towards the armchair.

“Where has she gone?” asked she in a hoarse voice.

Olwen and Bayre looked at each other, the girl growing suddenly paler, the young man too much mystified to speak.

“Where is she?” repeated Miss Merriman in a whisper.

“She!” stammered Olwen.

The visitor nodded.

“Do you mean my uncle?” said Bayre, in impressive, deliberate tones, thinking that the shock of the meeting had affected her to the point of making her hysterical.

But Miss Merriman sprang to her feet, and searching every corner of the room with her eyes, said, in a low voice indeed, but quite distinctly, quite sanely,--

“No, I don’t mean your uncle. I mean your uncle’s cousin--Miss Ford.”

Olwen started to her feet.

“I thought you were going to say that,” she said.

“What?”

She turned to him with excitement. Miss Merriman seemed still too much agitated to be talked to.

“Yes. The idea only came into my head a moment ago. I think I understand now the mystery of the woman hidden in the house.”

Bayre could not yet understand.

“What is all this about a woman?” said he. “I see no woman, I see no Miss Ford. Can’t you speak more plainly?”

Before she could answer they were all startled by a mocking, harsh laugh, and turning towards the spot whence it came, they saw, standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the small apartment adjoining, a quaint, weird figure. While the short, sparse grey hair, the hatchet face, pale, lined and wrinkled, were those of the old man they had seen huddled up in the armchair a few moments previously, the rest of the figure, now clad in a woman’s bodice and skirt of rusty black alpaca, drove home to them all with startling distinctness the fact of the fraud which had been played upon them.

“Miss Ford! It’s Miss Ford!” cried Miss Merriman, almost in a scream. “Where is my husband?”

“He’s been dead for a good many months now,” was the cool reply of the queer figure in rusty black, in the same hard, masculine tones which had so effectually helped her in her long imposture. “You’ve been a widow, my dear, ever since the early summer, ever since the night when _I_, his cousin and your devoted friend, was supposed to die.”

The cynical effrontery with which the old woman thus confessed the imposture she had practised had such an effect upon them all that it was some moments before they could speak. Miss Ford, meanwhile, with her faded eyes, her cadaverous hatchet face, and her attitude of callous defiance, was the only self-possessed person in the room.

“Ha! ha!” laughed she again. “To think what a pack of fools you all were, to be outwitted so easily by an old woman! Why, it’s only a chance that has found me out now; neither you,” and she looked scornfully at Bayre, “nor you,” and she looked still more scornfully at Olwen, “would have found me out but for this accident of Mrs Bayre’s turning up! Well, it doesn’t matter now; I’ve played out the game. I made up my mind I’d never be turned out of the _château_ while I lived, and I’ve kept my word, in spite of my cousin’s intentions, in spite of everything and everybody.”

It was a shocking and pitiable spectacle, that of the fierce old woman struggling between her determined will and her physical weakness. For even as she finished speaking, her voice broke and she staggered rather than walked back to the old armchair which she had quitted in male attire a quarter of an hour before.

A glimmering of the truth as to the reason of this most singular fraud had by this time reached the minds of two out of the three persons present. Mistress of Creux Miss Ford had been during her cousin’s bachelorhood; mistress she had continued to be, at some cost of personal cruelty, during the unhappy reign of her cousin’s young wife; mistress she had contrived to be, through gross imposture, up to the end. For that the end was not very far off for her was clearly apparent to those who looked at the ash-coloured face and the sunken eyes, and who heard the broken voice and laboured breathing of the indomitable woman.

“Blaise knew you then!” cried young Bayre, suddenly. “That’s what he must have found out when he came here with me!”

Miss Ford smiled feebly.

“Well, I believe he did find me out on the day he came here with you,” she admitted. “Recognised me, I fancy, by the mark I have here on my forehead.” And she indicated with one of her lean fingers a mole that grew almost under the hair over her right temple. “I could pass well enough for my cousin with my cap on; but in a room it’s more difficult. Still, it didn’t much matter, for Monsieur Blaise didn’t dare to ‘give me away.’”

“And the Vazons knew you, of course?”

“Yes, the rogues! They knew it and made me pay for it. But after all, in spite of their threats, what good have they done themselves by their knowledge? I’ve no doubt they have tried to make capital out of the truth over in Guernsey; but who’d believe it?”

Bayre was amazed, almost to the point of admiration, at the old woman’s audacious cunning. As she said, the story was too inconceivable to be readily believed, especially after this lapse of time. She took a pride in her deception, and the silence which followed her speech was presently broken by herself with a quiet chuckle of pride at her own cleverness.

“Yes,” she said, nodding her head two or three times towards the fire, at which she was warming her thin yellow hands, “there was no fear of my being discovered by anybody about here when they had once got used to the sight of poor old Monsieur Bayre, so broken down with grief at the loss of his cousin and of his beautiful young wife”--and she looked round to throw a vixenish glance at Miss Merriman, who was sitting in a state of stupefaction beside Olwen on the sofa--“that he seemed ‘quite a different man!’ Ha, ha, ha!”

Bayre remembered his first impressions of the shambling figure which he had taken for that of his uncle, and he realised the improbability that anyone should descry feminine attributes in that creature with the large masculine features, the masculine walk, with the pipe between its teeth and the peaked cap drawn over its eyes.

The silence was broken by Olwen, who suddenly cried,--

“Then the woman shut up here, hidden away, the woman whose knitting-needles I used to hear, was--”

“Eliza Ford,” croaked the impostor with grim enjoyment. “I couldn’t give up my knitting, and I was not above certain little feminine vanities.” She suddenly burst into another grim laugh, and turning round to Olwen, said, “You saw something one day, didn’t you? You saw a hand covered with rings at the window of the old powdering-room. Well, that was mine. I used to vary the monotony of being a shabby old man by hunting about in the old wardrobes and decking myself out in what I found there and in the jewel-cases! Strange freak at my time of life, eh?”

And she suddenly turned upon them with an air and tone so masculine that Bayre found himself shivering at the uncanny sight and sound.

“And you, young sir,” she went on, turning to him, “you remember the surprise visit you paid me one night, and the pleasant promenade we had through the rooms?”

“I remember,” said Bayre, with a strange feeling of sickness from the shock and the memories combined.

“And I’m sure you can’t have forgotten how we came to a room, the old powdering-room it was, where feminine finery lay strewed about in all directions, and where you found that one of the dresses was warm, as if it had just been taken off?”

Bayre nodded.

“Well, _I_ had just taken it off, I, Eliza Ford; and it was I who had been amusing myself with all the trumpery you saw about--high-heeled shoes, fans, false hair, and the rest. Oh! it was a splendid farce to watch your face, and to linger and speak loud, and try to trick you into thinking that there was some young beauty in hiding about the place! Oh, I enjoyed the fun amazingly!”

“You didn’t show yourself very grateful,” said Bayre, drily, “to judge by the act Miss Eden surprised you in!”

The old woman grew suddenly grave, and from mocking her tone grew malicious.

“Grateful? No. I hated you. I would have killed you if I could,” she said spitefully.

“But why?” asked he, astonished at what looked like the outburst of a malignant old witch.

But to this question she made no answer. And yet, after all, the aversion she had shown him was the most surprising part of the whole matter.

He tried another question.

“What was it I saw you hunting for that day in the great hall,” asked he, “when you appeared to be tearing up the boards of the floor?”

Her face grew sombre again.

“Oh,” said she, after a pause, “I was looking for something, something that had been hidden from me, something I wanted to find.”

A light came into Bayre’s mind.

“Was it your cousin’s will?” asked he, sharply.

By the convulsive movement which passed through her he knew that he had made a good guess.

“If so,” he went on very quietly, “you didn’t succeed in finding it, I know.”

Into the wicked old leathern face there came a look of malicious anxiety, and Bayre began to understand things more clearly.

“I suppose,” said he, “that my uncle made a will which did not please you, and that he would not let you know where he kept it, and that it was because you knew its provisions that you determined to carry out this fraud. You were alone with him when he died--”

“Do you mean to insinuate?--” she began fiercely.

“No, of course not. I only insinuate that you took advantage of his sudden death, and of the fact that communication with Guernsey was cut off at that time, to work this deceit. The story runs that Miss Ford’s body in its coffin was carried away at the upsetting of the boat which was to take it across to Guernsey. Is it of any use to ask you the truth underlying that fiction?”

“Your uncle lies buried in the wood outside the _château_,” said Miss Ford, simply. “I did all the work myself; the Vazons may know where he lies, but nobody else does. I cut a cross in the bark of a beech tree near the head of the grave.”

Cunning as the woman was, adept at deceit as she was, Bayre saw no reason to doubt the truth of this account, which he indeed subsequently verified. There remained the matter of the will.

“I suppose,” he said, “that if my uncle had left the _château_ to you for life you would never have done this extraordinary thing?”

She shot at him a suspicious look.

“We need not discuss that,” she said. “I _have_ enjoyed the _château_ for my life, and it will belong to his son when he is of age. The matter, after all, does not interest you.”

“Supposing,” suggested Bayre, “that I had been mentioned in the will? Supposing I had been appointed guardian of the child and custodian of my uncle’s collection?”

The old face looked livid in the shadow.

“We needn’t waste time supposing things,” she said presently. “The will has been destroyed.”

“Ah!” said Bayre.

“Not by me,” retorted the old woman, quickly. “What I should have done with it if I had found it doesn’t concern you or anybody now. As a matter of fact, it was hidden away by old Bartlett Bayre in a garret among some lumber, and was enclosed in an iron box. The Vazons stole the box with other things, and it was found broken open in their cottage by Jean, who found also the ashes of the papers that had been locked inside.”

“Not all of them, I think,” said Bayre, in a low voice.

He was beginning to feel rather afraid of the effect which the discovery of the will in his possession might have upon the old woman. Wicked, grasping, malicious and deceitful as she was, he was not anxious for the occurrence of another tragedy before his eyes.

But his words were enough to wake all her suspicions. Half-rising in her chair, leaning on the arm of it, she hissed out at him,--

“Let me see it! Let me see it!”

“Not now,” said he, gently but firmly; “you shall see it another time, in the presence of your solicitors and mine.”

One more doubt she had to satisfy, and only one.

“What was the date of it?” she asked sharply.

“April the 30th of last year,” answered he at once.

She asked no more questions; she was satisfied. Passing one thin hand restlessly over her face she sank back almost lifeless in her chair.