the paper which caused james dugdale such painful emotion was a certificate of the identification and burial of the body of godfrey hungerford, and was dated rather more than a year after the marriage of his supposed widow with fitzwilliam meriton baldwin, and two years and five months later than the period at which his death in the bush had been reported to margaret.
in reply to the eager questions which james asked him, when he had somewhat recovered his composure, hayes meredith told his companion that he had the best of all confirmation of the truth of the statement which that document set forth--that of his own eyes. there was not the faintest hope of error, not the slightest chance that in this matter any trick, any design to extort money was concerned. that such might be the case had been hayes meredith's first idea, when, as he told james dugdale, he had received a mysterious communication from a "pal" of hungerford's, who was anything but favourably known to the melbourne police, to the effect that the supposed murdered man was alive, and might be found, under an assumed name, in a wretched hovel in one of the poorest and least reputable quarters of the town.
"it was necessary to satisfy myself about the thing without delay," said meredith; "and i did not lose an hour. i met the messenger at the place appointed in the note, and told him, if any one had formed the goodly scheme of deceiving me by personating hungerford, it would signally fail. i could not be deceived on such a point, and should simply expose the fraud at once. on the other hand, if this man, who appeared, from the other fellow's report, to be in a rapidly dying state, should really prove to be hungerford, i could not understand his applying to me, on whom he had no claim whatever, and should certainly not get the chance of establishing one. the man, a seedy gambler, whom i remembered having seen with hungerford,--his name was oakley,--said he had no intention to deceive me. they were 'pals' in misfortune and misery, hungerford and himself, and wanted nothing but a little help from me. hungerford had been saved from murder by a black woman, and had wandered for months, enduring an amazing amount of suffering. how so self-indulgent a dog as he was ever bore it, i can't understand; but he had a love of life in him i have never seen equalled; he clung to life, and fought for it madly, when his agonies in the hospital were perfectly unbearable to see. after some time, they struck the trail of such civilisation as is going in the remoter districts of our part of the world; and hungerford got away, and one of the first persons he fell in with was this oakley. he did not give me a very clear account of what they did, and, as you may suppose, i was not very anxious to know; it was very likely all the harm in their power, at all events; they both made cause for themselves to be chary of recognition, and afraid of the strong arm of the law."
"did this oakley mention margaret?"
"only cursorily. he said they had been forced to venture into melbourne, and he had 'asked about' and discovered that mrs. hungerford had lived quietly and respectably, presumably by my assistance, after her husband left her, and had sailed for england when the news of his death was spread in melbourne. he said hungerford was glad when he found his wife had got away safely; he could never hope to rise in this world any more, and he did not wish her to suffer any farther."
"the ruffian acknowledged his wickedness, then?" said james.
"well, yes, he did; i must say he did. i went on to the hospital with oakley, and saw in a moment there was no mistake about it. the man lying there, in the last stage of destitution, and of that peculiar depth of loathsome disease which only comes from drink, was certainly godfrey hungerford. i need not tell you what i felt, as i looked at him and thought of his unconscious wife. i had your letter, telling me about her being at chayleigh, in my pocket-book at the time."
"no, you need not tell me," said james; "it must have been most horrible."
"it was just that," said meredith, with a rueful look and a shake of the head; "such a miserable creature as he was to see, i hope i never may have to look at again. i said very little to him--nothing about margaret. he did thank me in a rough kind of way, and said he knew if he could get me communicated with i would help him."
"did he not ask you if you knew anything of margaret after she left melbourne? did he show no anxiety for her fate?"
"no; i think in addition to his natural heartlessness and selfishness his mind was much enfeebled by disease at this time, and he was sinking fast. he had no friend, no acquaintance, he told me, but oakley; and i was careful to ask him whether oakley was the only person who knew that he was still alive, and then in melbourne. he declared to me that such was the case. i told him i asked in case he should recover, when, if he knew any other persons, i might try to interest them in his case. but i am certain that in this instance he told the truth. he was entered on the books of the hospital as john perry, and had not borne his own name during all the months of his wandering life. he went off into a short slumber while i sat by him, and strange thoughts came into my mind as i looked at his wretched, vice-worn, poverty-stricken face, and thought of what he must have been when he first came across that fine young creature's path, and even what he was when i went to see them at your request. i assure you he had even then good looks and a pleasant manner, and scoundrel as i knew him to be, greater scoundrel as i afterwards found him, i could not altogether wonder that that woman had cared for him once."
"poor girl, poor girl," said james. his elbows were on the table, and his face rested on his clasped hands. his hollow eyes looked out eagerly at hayes meredith, whose strength and composure formed a touching contrast to his nervous weakness.
"to go on with my story," meredith continued; "i told hungerford i should see him again, and left money for his use; oakley was to let me know how he was; and when i left him i took a long walk, as my way is when i am puzzled, so as to get time to think it out. my first impulse was to write to you at once, but i discarded the suggestion on more mature consideration. everything must, of course, depend on whether the man lived or died. the one was almost too bad to fear, the other was almost too good to hope for. among your letters there was one in which i recollected you had told me all the particulars of margaret's marriage, and the peculiar circumstances of mr. baldwin's property. i went home, after a long and anxious cogitation, during which i made up my mind, at all events, not to write; and read this letter. here are the memoranda i made from it."
he laid a long slip of paper on the table before james, who glanced anxiously at it, but did not take it up.
"you see, dugdale," continued meredith, after he had mended the fire, and thrown himself back in his chair, with his hands extended, and the finger tips joined in an attitude of demonstration, "this matter has more than one side to it; more than the side i can see you are dwelling on, very painfully, and very naturally--margaret's feelings. as for that part of it, it is dreadful, of course; but then she need never know any of the particulars."
"i hope not--i trust not," said dugdale in a low constrained voice. "if i know anything of her, the idea of the scene you describe taking place while she was in the midst of happiness and luxury would make her wretched for many a day. think of her having to endure that, after having already lived through the horror of believing that the man she had loved, and sacrificed herself for, was murdered."
meredith looked at james, closely and inquiringly, for a moment. this intense comprehension, this almost painful, truth and excess of sympathy, puzzled him. while the external consequences of the discovery which had been made, the results to mrs. baldwin herself, her husband, and her child pressed upon his own attention, james was lost in the sentimental bearing of the matter, in the retrospective personal grief which it must cause to margaret, estimating her feelings at a high degree of refinement and intensity. meredith could not make this out very clearly, but thinking "it is just like him; he always was a strange dreamy creature, who never looked at anything like other people," he went on to discuss the subject from his own point of view.
"that is all very true, dugdale," he continued, "and, as i said before, i really do not see that she need ever know more than the fact stated in that paper. but what you and i have got to consider, without unnecessary delay, and to act upon with all possible promptitude, is this fact: at the present moment margaret is not mr. baldwin's wife, and her daughter, who, if i understand your statement aright, is heiress to all her father's property, is illegitimate."
"the child would inherit all if there were no son," said james.
"precisely so. now, you see, dugdale, this is the great question. if we can contrive to inform mr. baldwin of what has happened, and get him to break it as gently as possible to margaret, and then have them married privately, of course there need not be any difficulty about that; and without an hour's unnecessary delay things may be all right, and no one in the world but ourselves and themselves a bit the wiser. if the first child had been a son, it would indeed have been a bad, a hopeless business; but the little girl will be no worse off if her mother has a son, and i daresay she will have half-a-dozen. cheer up, dugdale; you see it is not so black as it looked at first; there is some unpleasantness to be gone through, and then you will see all will come right."
"perhaps," said dugdale dubiously. the expression of pain and foreboding deepened in his face with every moment. "but it is a dreadful misfortune. margaret lives for that child; she loves it wonderfully; she will break her heart over the knowledge that little gerty is illegitimate, though no one in the world but herself should ever know it."
"nonsense," said meredith, "she will do nothing of the kind; or, if she does, she must be a very different woman from the mrs. hungerford i knew; she must be much softer both of head and of heart."
"she is a very different woman," said james, "and her heart is softer. i never saw anything like the influence happiness has had upon her, and i dread, more than i can express, the change which such a blow as this falling upon her in the midst of her joy, and when her health is delicate too, may produce."
"her health delicate, is it?" said meredith. "ah, by the bye, you said so when you mentioned her being abroad. another child expected?"
"i believe so."
"by jove, that's good news! why, don't you see, dugdale, that sets it all right. ten chances to one this will be a boy, and there's the rightful heir to the deane for you! look here"--he took the memorandum from the table--"all landed property entailed--just so--provision for younger children to be made out of funded property, and the very large savings of baldwin's minority and also the savings from their income, which are likely to be considerable, as the estates are rising rapidly in value--a coal-mine having been discovered on the deane"--he laid the paper down, rose, and walked briskly about the room. "the little girl's position will not be in the least altered. baldwin must settle the money upon her in some special way; whatever her share of the provision made for younger children may be, the boy would naturally succeed, and all the difficulty be thus gotten over."
"how would it be if there were no other child?" said james.
"ah! that would, indeed, be difficult," replied meredith; "i don't know what could be done then. mr. baldwin is not the sort of man to do a thing which certainly would be wrong in the abstract, though i cannot see the practical injustice of it; in the case of there being no other child, of course the rightful heir is the individual who would inherit in case baldwin should die without heirs."
"lady davyntry then," said james.
"baldwin's sister? yes--then she is the heir. she is not likely to marry, is she?
"quite certain not to do so, i should say."
"i fancy she would consent to anything that should be proposed in her brother's interests--if any proposal on the subject should ever become necessary. and after her?
"i don't know. it must be some very distant relative, for i never heard the name mentioned, or the contingency alluded to."
"well, well, we need not think about it. in fact we are wandering away altogether from the only subjects we have to discuss: the best means of getting the baldwins home without alarming them, and the most expeditious way of having them married privately, but with all legal security, so that if ever any clue to this unfortunate occurrence should be obtained by any one interested, the rights of the heir may be secured beyond the possibility of injury."
"yes; we must be careful of that," said james; but his tone was absent, and he was evidently unable to take any comfort from meredith's cheerful view of the circumstances. then, after a short pause, he said, "i am very ignorant of law, but i have a kind of notion that we may be tormenting ourselves unnecessarily. i have heard that in scotland the marriage of parents subsequent to the birth of children renders them legitimate. would not this marriage legitimatise little gerty?"
"certainly not," said meredith, and he almost smiled; "this is a very different case. the truth is, margaret has unconsciously committed bigamy, and when gertrude baldwin was born, not only was margaret not mr. baldwin's wife, but she actually was godfrey hungerford's."
james dugdale shrunk from the words as though they had been blows. what was this but the truth which he had known from the moment he cast his eyes upon the paper which meredith had put into his hands? and yet, set thus broadly before him, it seemed far more awful. what had become of all the arguments he had addressed to himself now? where was the assurance he had felt that fate could not harm margaret? that evil or calumny, or the dead and gone disgraces of her dark days, could not touch mrs. baldwin, in her pride of place, and in her perfect happiness? where were the plausibilities with which he had striven to lull his fears to rest? all gone, vanished, as dead as the exultant pleasure with which he had read margaret's letter on that bright morning, which might have been a hundred years ago, so distant, so out of his sight, did it now appear. he covered his face with his hands, and kept silence for some time.
during the interval meredith paced the room thoughtfully. when at length james spoke, it was not in continuation of the last subject.
"how long did he--hungerford, i mean--live after you saw him?"
"only a few days. oakley came to me one morning, and told me he was dying, and wished to see me. i went, but he was not sensible, and he never rallied again. then i had him buried, rather more decently than in hospital style, under his assumed name. oakley signed this paper, as you see. he had no notion i attached any specific value or interest to its contents--i believe he thought it an oddity of mine, one of my business-like ways, to have everything in black and white. but i considered that i might not live to tell you this by word of mouth, and in that case i should have forwarded the evidence to you, or you might not live to hear from me, and in that case i must have proof to put before mr. baldwin."
"you did quite right," said james. "where is oakley?"
"i gave him a trifle to get up a decent appearance, and he was trying to get employment as a clerk or bookkeeper in some of the third-rate places of business, when i left," said meredith; "he was rather a clever fellow, though a great scamp. perhaps poverty has steadied him, and he may get on. at all events, i have seen too much of successful blackguardism, i suppose--one sees a deal of it in colonial life, to be sure--to condemn unsuccessful blackguardism to starving."
"he is positively the only person in possession of this lamentable secret on your side of the world?"
"positively the only person, and as he knows nothing whatever concerning margaret--not whether she is still alive, indeed--and, i presume, never heard her maiden name or her father's place of abode, i should not think the slightest danger is ever to be, at any time, apprehended from him. and now, dugdale, let us be practical. i am getting tired, and yet i don't want to leave you to-night until we have finally arranged what is to be done. mrs. baldwin would have good reason to complain of us, if we left her in her present position an hour longer than we can possibly avoid."
at this most true observation james winced. his heart and his fancy were alike busy, realising every element of pain in margaret's position.
after some more discussion, it was arranged between the friends that a letter should be written to mr. baldwin of a strictly confidential nature, in which he should be urged to bring his wife to england without delay--the pretext being left to him to assign--and that james and meredith should meet mr. and mrs. baldwin in london. no explanation of their movements would be required by mr. carteret, and the whole affair of the revelation and the marriage could then be quietly managed without exciting suspicion in any quarter.
"well, that's settled, old fellow," said meredith, as he shook dugdale's hand heartily, "and we will bring margaret back here as surely baldwin's wife as she now believes herself to be, and nothing more will ever come out of this business. it looked much uglier at a distance than it does near, i assure you."
but james made no reply to his friend's cheery speech. he went sadly to his room, and sat before the fire pondering. the flames flickered and danced, and sent odd reflections over his face, but the thoughtful, painful gaze never relaxed, the abstraction of the hollow eyes never lessened, and the slow coming dawn of the wintry day found him still there, and still thinking, sadly and painfully.
