CHAPTER XXIX

BEARDING THE LION IN HIS DEN

By hope I see the landscape bathed in light; And where the golden vapor vails the gaze, Guess out the spot and mark the site of happy days. BULWER.

It was a glorious autumn day. The sky, of a deep and brilliant hue, was without a single cloud. The moss-covered mountain rocks on the right hand and the wooded hills on the left glowed and burned in all the most gorgeous hues—scarlet, golden, purple, green, crimson and orange—all reflected as by a clear mirror in the calm deep waters of the river.

“Oh, surely this glowing day is a happy augury!” said the Lady of Edengarden, as the boat skimmed the water.

“Let us believe that it is so. Faith works miracles,” replied the doctor.

The young officer turned a grateful glance on his good fairy, but said nothing.

In a few more minutes they caught sight of the low, broad, gray front of the old mountain manor-house, roosted on its natural plateau of rock, half way up the precipice, and known to the country round by the name given it by its nautical proprietor—The Breezes.

In a few more minutes the boat touched the sands on the lower landing, and Lieutenant Bruce sprang out and assisted his lady passenger to do the same.

The ascent of the steep was difficult and wearisome, but not dangerous.

Dr. Willet and Lieutenant Bruce each proffered strong arms to assist the lady in climbing, but she, who in the course of her travels had ascended more than one celebrated mountain, smilingly declined their aid, and with the help of her long-handled parasol, folded and used as a walking-stick, she went up the precipitous path as safely as a kid could have done.

When they reached the plateau on which the house was built, they entered a gate in the stone wall upon the very brink of the precipice, and passing through the enclosed space went up to the front entrance.

Lieutenant Bruce being at home, did not wait to knock, but opened the door and admitted the party.

Dr. Willet led Mrs. Lynn at once into a little study, which had been placed at his disposal by the commodore on his first arrival at The Breezes.

He placed a chair for his companion, and said:

“Remain here, dear Emolyn, where you will be entirely free from interruption, while I go and find my old friend and break to him the news of your visit—indeed of your existence, which will seem to him like a resurrection from the dead,” added the doctor, as he pressed her hand and left the room.

The lady sat back in her chair, trying to gain courage for the dreaded interview. And with the strange double consciousness which we have all at times experienced, while bending all her powers of mind to prepare for the approaching ordeal, she also observed the smallest detail in the dingy little corner nook in which she waited—the faded green carpet and curtains, the old walnut table and chairs, the quaint old-fashioned escritoire, half bureau as to its lower division, and half bookcase as to its upper, whose shelves, seen through the glass doors, displayed a queer collection of old, moldy folios.

Meanwhile Dr. Willet went on to the handsome and well-appointed library where Commodore Bruce usually passed his days in reading, writing, smoking and dozing.

He found the old sailor, wrapped in his wadded silk dressing-gown and reclining back in his luxurious easy-chair, engaged in looking over a newspaper that had just been brought to him by his mail messenger.

“Ah, doctor! Back so soon? I am glad of it! There is nothing at all worth reading in the papers nowadays, and I feel as dull as a ship becalmed at sea! Well, how is your patient, sir?” demanded the old sailor. Then without waiting for reply, he burst out with: “It is disgusting to think you left your practice in the city and came here for a good rest——”

“I came here for the pleasure of your company, my dear friend, and for nothing else under the sun!” interrupted the doctor.

“Well, then, you came here for the pleasure of my company, which, by the by, is a very great and undeserved compliment to my powers of entertaining. But let that pass. You came for my company, and the rest, you know, is thrown in. But instead of a rest, you have found a free patient, whose condition requires you to ride about twelve miles a day—counting both ways!”

“No more exercise than is required for my own health. Besides, I take an interest in the old woman. She is a very old acquaintance of mine, and in former days was often my co-laborer, being a professional sick-nurse,” said the doctor.

“Well, well, as you please, but I think it would be pleasanter now for you to take an occasional ride behind the hounds with my nephew instead of that dreary daily sick call! However, be it as you will; only I hope the old crone will get well or go to heaven before long. Is she likely to do either?”

“Can’t say. She is in the very same condition as we have seen an old patient of hers and mine, and an old friend of yours. I refer to the late Captain Wyndeworth. This woman was his sick-nurse at the time that I attended him in his last illness, during that dreadful winter preceding the trial of Emolyn Wyndeworth. Ah, I have often thought what a mercy it was that the old gentleman was taken away before that disaster fell upon his house,” murmured the doctor, purposely dragging in the subject.

“Ah, so have I! That fatal year was full of disaster! First came the death of my good old friend, the—the loss of my dear boy at sea,” muttered the old commodore in a breaking voice—“then, worse than all, the terrible calamities that befell Emolyn! Ah, that poor girl!”

“Did you ever ascertain her fate?” pointedly inquired the doctor.

“Oh, no; but of course she is dead; of course she has been dead for many years. Emolyn Wyndeworth never could have survived the shame of a public trial—and such a trial!”

“But when it ended in her triumphant acquittal!”

“It was not triumphant for her. It was dishonor heaped upon dishonor from beginning to end. Her defense was based upon the theory of paroxysmal insanity. Bah! the verdict of acquittal was rendered upon the same ground. Bah! bah! It killed her, sir!”

“Perhaps not; she certainly had the consciousness of innocence to support her.”

“A very much overrated support, sir.”

“You believe her to have been innocent?”

“‘_Believe_,’ Dr. Willet! I know it, sir! I knew that child from her babyhood up. So did you. And I know her to have been as innocent as an infant angel. She said that she had been married. I don’t _believe_ she had ever been married! but I KNOW she was married because she said so! she who never dreamed it possible to lie! She said her young husband was dead, and therefore, of course, I knew he was dead because she said so, she whose soul was truth! She would not give up the name of her husband even to help her own defense. She would not drag down the name of an honorable family into the mire into which her pure name had been hurled by wicked hands! How well I understood her motive! She was a Wyndeworth! She came of a race whose men were all honest, whose women were all pure! She could not be otherwise. Divine lips have told us that ‘men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.’ Emolyn Wyndeworth was a true daughter of her noble line! When put to the test, that gentle, sensitive, shrinking girl became heroic! Yes, I repeat it, Emolyn Wyndeworth was innocent, and not only innocent, but heroic! I would to Heaven that _I_ were as guiltless of offense toward her as she was toward all the world!” concluded Commodore Bruce, with a deep sigh.

“I am sure that you can have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard to that most unhappy lady,” said Dr. Willet.

“You don’t know anything about it, sir! You don’t know anything about it! Why, the very last night before my poor boy, Lonny, sailed on that fatal voyage, from which he was destined never to return—on that very last night, I say, in the most earnest, tender, manly way, perfectly wonderful in a mere boy like Lonny, he commended Emolyn Wyndeworth to my care. There were tears in the lad’s eyes, sir, as he spoke of her orphaned and desolate condition, and told me how he had loved her all his life long and hoped some time or other to claim her as his wife. At that time, although he was about to leave me for a long voyage, I could scarcely forbear smiling at the earnestness of the lad in speaking of a prospective wife, and commending the waiting bride-elect to my fatherly care. Of course, I promised to look after the girl, but equally, of course, I forgot my promise—forgot it—ah, yes! until the catastrophe brought it to my mind too late! too late!”

All this the old commodore had told the doctor several times before, yet with the fatuity of approaching dotage he told it again.

“Forgive me for saying that I think you exaggerate your responsibility in this matter and torture yourself needlessly.”

“No, I don’t! No, I don’t! I will prove to you that I don’t by mentioning—that which I never breathed to any human being before—that Emolyn Wyndeworth had been privately married to my son—that her child was his legitimate daughter! There, it is out! Now you know the secret of what you call my morbid self-reproach! It was my poor, shipwrecked and drowned boy who was the lost husband of whom she spoke. It was _our_ name she refused to bring down to dishonor when the false accusation of child-murder had branded her pure name!”

“Father in heaven, can this be true?” exclaimed the doctor in much agitation.

“I firmly believe it to be as I have said. She was the wife of my son by a private marriage. But when unmerited dishonor fell upon her name she resolved, by her silence, to shield us from any share in it. She died and made no sign.”

“Commodore Bruce, for Heaven’s sake, declare to me what reason you have for believing this!”

“Every reason that ought to have opened my eyes before the catastrophe came! My son’s solemn charge. Her deep dejection after his departure. The fact that they had been the most intimate friends and playmates from their infancy to youth, so that he had no other girl playmate, she no other boy acquaintance. This should have enlightened us all if we had not been as blind as bats! Then again her declaration that her young husband had belonged to a good family and that he was dead. All this pointed to Leonidas Bruce.

“Again, in those last, sad months, when her uncle lay slowly dying and I was accustomed to visit him every morning, I recall her wistful looks into my face—the looks of a poor, hunted fawn—the pleading gaze of a poor, helpless, frightened creature that mutely prays for mercy!—the looks she would raise to my face as she stood in the front hall waiting for me to pass! Why, sir, I tell you, hundreds of times I was on the point of speaking to the poor child and asking her what her trouble was, but that Malvina Warde—may the foul fiend fire her!—was always in the way, rattling with her tongue and hurrying me along, so that beyond a nod or a word I could get no conversation with the girl. And shortly after I went to sea, and did not return until the trial of Emolyn Wyndeworth was on. It was very short, you know, and after she was acquitted she suddenly vanished from sight, nor could all my effort to trace her be successful. So many years have passed since then that I have quite given her up for dead,” sadly concluded the old man.

“And yet, for aught you know to the contrary, she may be living,” murmured the doctor.

“Bah!” exclaimed the commodore. “Julius Cæsar may be also living, but it must be in another sphere of existence. No, the opportunity of saving or helping Emolyn Wyndeworth passed out of my hands because I was, in her case, too dull of perception, too slow of action. But understand this: Even at the time of the trial I did not suspect that Emolyn Wyndeworth had been the wife of my son. I suspected it afterward, upon reflection, and then, as I recalled all the circumstances of the case, I saw them in a new light, and my suspicion became conviction and filled me with regret, that grew into remorse, for my previous dulness and blindness, which had resulted so fatally for that poor, forlorn child. Thus, you see, sir, I mourn the early and tragic fate of Emolyn Wyndeworth in a sorrow that is without hope,” said the old man, dropping his gray head upon his chest.

“But, as we have never had any proof of her death, she may be still living!” the doctor ventured again to suggest.

The commodore made a movement of disgust and impatience, demanding:

“If she is _not_ dead, why has no one ever heard anything of her in all these years?”

“Perhaps some one has heard of her,” quietly suggested the doctor.

“Bah!” exclaimed the old sailor.

“I think—I am sure that some one has heard of her.”

“I should like to know who it is, then!” exclaimed the commodore incredulously.

“It is I!”

“EH?”

“I!”

“You!”

“Yes!”

“Heard of Emolyn Wyndeworth!”

“I have!”

“Good Heaven! You don’t say so!”

“Yes, I do!”

“When? Where? How? Speak, sir! Where is she? Living? Well?” demanded the excited old man, pouring question upon question with impetuous rapidity.

“She is living, and well, and not very far off,” quietly answered the doctor, as he arose, poured out a glass of water and made the commodore drink it.

“It seems incredible!” exclaimed the old man, as he returned the empty goblet to his friend.

“I knew you would be agitated by such news, and I tried to prepare you for it,” said the doctor.

“It fills me with joy, and joy does not hurt any one. It moves me with gratitude, and that blesses every one. Thank Heaven! Oh, thank Heaven! But where is this lady now? If she should be within five hundred miles of me, I will seek her within a week,” said Commodore Bruce, more firmly and calmly than he had yet spoken.

“She is much nearer than that. She is quite within your reach,” calmly replied Dr. Willet.

“Where? Where? Speak, friend! There is no need of farther preparation. If you were to tell me she was in the next room, it could not startle me _now_!” exclaimed the commodore, unconsciously touching the very truth.

Still the doctor deemed it best to be cautious.

“Have you never suspected her possible identity with that of the recluse Lady of Edengarden?” significantly inquired the doctor.

“Never! What? The Lady of Edengarden? You don’t mean to tell me——” The old man paused and gazed with amazement on the doctor.

“Yes, I do. I mean to tell you that Emolyn Wyndeworth and the Lady of Edengarden are one and the same,” the latter assured him.

The commodore dropped his head upon his chest and stroked his full gray beard.

“Is she living there at present?” he at length inquired.

“Yes; though usually she does not live there in the winter.”

“Then I will go to see her before twenty-four hours are over my head.”

“There will be no need. Emolyn Wyndeworth has come to see you!”

“EH!”

“Emolyn Wyndeworth has come to see Commodore Bruce, her father’s old friend. She only waits your pleasure to receive her.”

“Where? Where? Where does she wait?”

“In the little green study at the end of the hall,” replied the doctor composedly.

The veteran of seventy-six sprang up with the agility of a youth of sixteen and dashed out of the library, exclaiming:

“Emolyn Wyndeworth here! In this house! Oh, how I thank Heaven to have lived for this happiness!”