Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California

CHAPTER XX.

A MESSAGE FROM ABROAD

"I LIKE this, grandfather. I think I like it better than anything I have seen. In the sunlight the cathedral is too dazzling and white, and the eye does not seem to find any rest; but in the moonlight it is perfectly lovely. And then the music of that Austrian band is just right from here; it is not too loud, and yet we can hear every note. Somehow, I always like better not to see the players, but just to have the benefit of the music as we do now, and to sit taking it in, and looking at that glorious cathedral, all silver and black, in the moonlight. It is glorious!" Harry murmured, "I could not have believed there was anything so lovely."

"Yes, yes," Captain Bayley said absently, "the ices are good."

"I am not talking of the ices, grandfather, though no doubt they are good. I am talking about the cathedral."

"Are you, my boy?" Captain Bayley said, rousing himself. "Yes, there are cathedrals which beat Milan when seen in broad daylight, but in the moonlight there is no building in the world to compare with it, unless it be the Taj Mahal at Agra. Of course they differ wholly and entirely in style, and no comparison can be made between them; the only resemblance is that both are built of white marble; but of the two, I own that I prefer the Taj."

"I am afraid I shall never see that," Alice Hardy said, "but I am quite content with Milan; I could stop here for a month."

"A month, my dear!" Captain Bayley exclaimed, in consternation, "three days will be ample. You know we agreed to stop here till Friday, and then to go on to Como."

"Well, perhaps we will let you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a long rest there, you know."

"Yes, I suppose so," the old officer said reluctantly; "but I like to be on the move."

Captain Bayley had, indeed, somewhat tried his two young companions by his eagerness to be ever on the move. They had now been nearly two years absent from England; they had visited all the principal towns of Germany and Austria, had gone down the Danube and stopped at Constantinople, had spent a fortnight in the Holy Land, and had then gone to Egypt and ascended the Nile as far as the First Cataract, then they had taken a steamer to Naples, and thence made their way up through Italy to Milan, and now were about to cross over into Switzerland, and were, after spending a month there, to go on to Paris, and thence home.

The highest surgical advice, and the most skilful appliances, aided by the benefit he had derived from the German baths, had done much for Harry, and he had for months passed many hours a day in the hands of a skilful shampooer, who travelled with him as valet. He had, to a great extent, recovered the use of his legs, and now walked with the assistance of two sticks, and there was every hope that in time he would be able to dispense with these aids, although he would always walk somewhat stiffly. Captain Bayley was delighted at this improvement in his grandson, and would have been perfectly happy had it not been for the continual worry caused him by the failure of his advertisements to elicit any news whatever of Frank.

It was this uncertainty that caused his restlessness, and he was for ever pressing forward to the next town to which he had directed letters to be sent, constantly suffering disappointments when he found the usual announcement from his solicitor that no news had been obtained of his missing nephew.

Alice and Harry shared his anxiety; but their pleasure in the new scenes they were visiting prevented their being so entirely engrossed in the subject as he was; and although scarcely a day passed without some talk as to Frank's whereabouts, and the probability of his discovery, they were able to put the subject aside and to enter with full zest into the scenes they were visiting. But in Captain Bayley's mind the question was always uppermost; sincerely attached as he had always been to Frank, the thought that his favourite might have suffered a cruel and dastardly wrong, and might now be slaving for his living in some unknown part of the world, worried and troubled him incessantly, and he felt that, happy as he was at the discovery of his grandson, he could never be contented and tranquil until this matter was cleared up. Besides, in his will Fred Barkley was still standing as heir to one-third of his fortune, and the thought that he might die before the mystery was cleared up, and that possibly this property might go to the man he suspected of so foul a crime, was absolutely intolerable to the old officer. He had, indeed, been engaged in a correspondence with his lawyer, Mr. Griffith, in reference to his will, which he wanted worded so that Fred Barkley should not take the fortune left him until the question of the theft of the ten pounds should be cleared up. Mr. Griffith pointed out that it was scarcely possible to frame a will in such a way.

"Had your nephew been publicly accused of the crime, doubtless a clause might be framed by which the money would remain in the hands of trustees until he had cleared himself to their satisfaction; but in this case there is no shadow of suspicion against him. Another person has, in the eyes of those who know the circumstances of the affair, been adjudged guilty. No one has breathed a word against the honour of your nephew; and therefore to say that he shall not touch the legacy until his honour is cleared would be to take a most extraordinary, and, I think, unprecedented course. In fact I don't see how it could be done."

Captain Bayley had replied hotly that it must be done, and, owing to his frequent changes of address, and the time occupied in the letters passing to and fro, the correspondence had already lasted for some months. What enraged Captain Bayley most of all was that Mr. Griffith would not admit that any doubt whatever existed as to Frank Norris's guilt, nor that there was a shadow of reasonable suspicion against his cousin; and each time the evidence was marshalled up, Captain Bayley had to acknowledge to himself that the lawyer's arguments were unanswerable, and that the only grounds that he himself had for his doubts were his affection for Frank, and the fixed, passionate belief of Alice Hardy in his innocence. That day Captain Bayley was exceptionally out of temper and irascible, for he had that morning received a letter from Mr. Griffith positively declining to draw up a clause for insertion in the will of the nature he desired, and saying that if Captain Bayley insisted upon its insertion, much as he should regret it after so long a connection had existed between them, he should prefer that his client should place himself in other hands.

"I trust," he said, "that this will cause no interruption in the personal friendship which has for years existed between us, but I would risk even that rather than draft a clause which I consider would be in the highest degree unjust, and which, I tell you fairly, would, I believe, be upset in any court of law. Nothing would, in my opinion, be more unfair, I may say more monstrous, than that a hand should be stretched from the grave to strike a blow at the honour of a young man of stainless reputation."

Captain Bayley at all times disliked opposition; he disliked it especially when, as in the present instance, he felt that he was in the wrong.

When they returned to their hotel the waiter informed Alice that a gentleman had called twice, while they were out, to see her. He had not left a card, saying that Miss Hardy would not know his name, but that he had a message to give her, and that he would not occupy her time more than a few minutes if she would be good enough to see him.

"It sounds quite mysterious," Alice said, smiling to her uncle.

"Was it a young gentleman or an old?" she asked the waiter in French.

"An elderly gentleman, Signora."

"Some elderly millionaire, Alice," Captain Bayley growled sarcastically, as they ascended the stairs, "who has seen you in the streets, and wishes to lay himself and his fortune at your feet."

"That must be it," Alice laughed. "But perhaps he has brought me a message from some of the many ladies we have met in our travels. I suppose I had better see him if he comes again."

"I suppose so," Captain Bayley said. "He is not likely to eat you, and as my room opens off the sitting-room, you have only to scream and I can come in to your rescue."

"Very well, I will scream, uncle, if necessary. But do you think he wants to see me alone?"

"As he has only asked for you, and no one else, I suppose he does. At any rate I have no lively curiosity as to his visit, and I don't suppose Harry has either. Most likely it's some man who wants to sell you jewellery or cameos, or to ask you for a subscription for the chaplain, or to beg of you on some pretext or other; they are always at it. He saw your name on the hotel list standing without any male protector of the same name. No doubt he thinks you are an elderly spinster with money."

"I expect it's something of that sort, Alice," Harry laughed.

But Alice insisted that she was convinced that the mysterious stranger had something important to communicate to her. As she was taking her things off there was a knock at the door, and the waiter said —

"The gentleman who before called is below."

"Show him up into our sitting-room," she said, and at once went in to receive him. "He's just coming up, uncle," she said, tapping at Captain Bayley's door. He opened it a few inches.

"I have got my pistol handy, Alice, in case you scream."

Alice laughed, and as she turned round there was a knock at the door. The waiter announced Monsieur Adams, and an elderly gentleman entered.

"You must be surprised at the intrusion of a stranger at this hour of the evening, Miss Hardy; but my excuse must be that I have for nearly two months been following your footsteps, and I was afraid that if I put off calling upon you until the morning I might find that you had gone."

"Following me for two months!" Alice repeated, in great surprise. "I do not understand, sir."

"Naturally, Miss Hardy, the statement appears a strange one to you; but the fact is I made a promise to deliver a message to you. I found upon reaching England that you had left; I obtained your address at Cairo, and went there only to find you had left a fortnight before my arrival; then I followed you to Naples, and was a week too late. At Rome I missed you by a day, and as I could not learn there, at your hotel, where you were going next, beyond the fact that you had gone North, I have been hunting for you ever since."

"But, sir," Alice said, more and more surprised, "what message could possibly be of sufficient importance for you to undertake so long a journey to deliver it?"

"I did not know how long you might be before you returned to England, Miss Hardy, and as I knew how anxiously the answer to my message would be expected, I preferred to follow you, in order that there might be no more delay than necessary."

Suddenly a thought flashed across Alice Hardy's brain. She advanced a step nearer to her visitor, and exclaimed —

"Do you come from my cousin Frank?"

"You have guessed rightly. I met him abroad; I am not at liberty at present to say where. He rendered me one of the greatest services one man can render to another – he saved my life, and did much more; but upon that it is not now necessary to enter."

"But the message, sir," Alice interrupted, "you cannot know how we have been longing for a word from him all this time."

"I do not know yet, Miss Hardy, whether I have any message to deliver; it depends upon what you say in answer to what I tell you. I think I can give you his very words as we sat together the night before I left for England: 'I have a little cousin, a girl, she was like my sister; I think, I hope, that in spite of everything she may still have believed me innocent. Will you see her, and tell her you have seen me? Say no more until you see by her manner whether she believes me to be a rascal or not.'"

"No, no," Alice broke in, with a cry, "not for one moment; surely Frank never doubted me. Never for a single instant did I believe one word against him."

"Is anything the matter, my dear?" Captain Bayley asked, opening his door, for the sound of her raised voice had reached him.

"No, uncle," she cried, hurrying to him, "it is a message from Frank. Go away a minute, or – No," and she turned again to Mr. Adams, "surely my uncle can hear too, he is as interested as I am."

"My message was to you alone, Miss Hardy," Mr. Adams said gravely; "I must deliver it as it was delivered to me. It will be for you to decide whether, after hearing it, you think it right to observe the injunction it contains for your absolute silence."

"At least tell me, sir," Captain Bayley exclaimed, as much agitated as Alice, "whether he is alive and well."

"He is alive and well, sir – at least he was when I saw him last, now nearly four months ago."

"Thank God for that, at least," Captain Bayley said fervently. "Do not be long, Alice; you know what I shall be feeling." He went back into his room again, and closed the door, and Mr. Adams continued —

"'If she thinks me a rascal, give her no clue to the part of the world where you have come across me, simply say that I wished her to know that I am alive and well.' There, Miss Hardy, my message would have ended had you not declared your faith in his innocence; I can now go on: 'If you see that she still, in spite of everything, believes that I am innocent, then tell her that I affirm on my honour and word that I am so' – Alice gave a cry of joy – 'though I see no way of proving it. Tell her that I do not wish her to tell my uncle that she has heard of me; that I do not wish her to say one word to him, for, much as I value his affection, I would not for the world seem to be trying to gain the place he thinks I have forfeited, until I can appear before him as a rich man whom nothing could induce to touch one penny of his money, and who values only his good-will and esteem.'

"That is all the message, Miss Hardy. But now that I see you have never believed him guilty, I am at liberty to tell you that we met in California, and to give you an address to which you can write at Sacramento, and I can tell you the story of our acquaintance; but as the story is a long one, and it is now late, I will, with your permission, call in the morning again."

Tears were streaming down the girl's face as she lifted her head.

"Thank you, sir! oh, thank you so much! You cannot tell how happy your message has made me – how happy it will make us all, for I am sure that Frank will not blame me for breaking his injunction. He cannot tell the circumstances; he does not know that my uncle has fretted as much as myself. He evidently thinks that he believes him guilty, though why he should do so I don't know, for at first he was just as much convinced as I was of Frank's innocence, and it was only Frank's silence and his going away without saying one word in defence of himself that made him doubt him. Would you mind sitting here for a minute or two while I go in to him? We want to hear so much, if you are not in a hurry."

"I am in no hurry," Mr. Adams said, smiling. "After travelling for two months to deliver a message, one would not mind sitting up for a few hours to deliver it thoroughly; and let me tell you that if my message has made you happy, your reception of it has given me almost equal satisfaction. I should have been grieved beyond expression to have had to write to him that you doubted him, for my dear friend said, 'If your commission fails, I shall lose my last pleasant thought of home.'"

"Poor Frank!" Alice murmured, as she turned to go to her uncle's room, "how could he have ever doubted us?"

"Uncle," she said, as she entered, "I feel quite justified in telling you Frank's message to me. Why it was sent to me instead of to you I do not know, except that it seems as if he thought that I might believe him innocent, while somehow he had an idea that you thought he was guilty."

"Does he say he is innocent, Alice?" Captain Bayley broke in.

"He does, uncle; he declares on his honour and word that he is innocent."

"Thank God!" the old officer said, dropping into a chair and covering his face with his hands. For a minute he sat silent, but Alice could see how deeply he was affected.

"Don't say any more, my dear," he said, in a low, shaken voice. "I have heard quite enough; it was only Frank's assurance that I have been wanting all this time. I am content now. Thank God that this burden is lifted off one's mind. Go in and tell Harry; I should like to be alone for a few minutes."

"Yes, uncle; and Frank's friend is in the next room, and will tell us all about him when you are ready to hear it."

Harry was greatly delighted at the news, and after a few minutes Alice returned with him to the sitting-room. She knocked at her uncle's door, and called out, "We are here, uncle, when you are ready to come in." In another minute Captain Bayley entered. He went up to Mr. Adams.

"You have brought me the best news I have ever heard, sir; you cannot tell what a weight you have lifted from my shoulders, and how I feel indebted to you."

"Yes, uncle, and do you know that Mr. Adams has been travelling nearly two months to deliver the message, knowing how anxious Frank will be to hear how it was received. He went to Egypt after us, and finding we had left has been following us ever since."

"God bless you, sir!" Captain Bayley said, seizing Mr. Adams's hand and shaking it violently, "you are a friend indeed. Now in the first place, please tell me the message you have given my niece, for so far I have only heard that Frank declared that he is innocent; that was quite enough for me at first. I want to know why I was to be kept in the dark."

"The message will explain that," Mr. Adams replied, and he again repeated the message he had given Alice.

"Yes, that explains it," Captain Bayley said, when he had finished; "that's just like the boy of old. I like him for that. But why on earth did he not say he was innocent at first?"

"That I cannot tell you; I know no more of the past than the message I have given you, except he said that he had been wrongfully suspected of committing a crime, and that, although he was innocent, the case appeared absolutely conclusive against him, and that he saw no chance whatever of his being cleared, save by the confession of the person who had committed the offence."

"But why on earth didn't he say he was innocent?" Captain Bayley repeated, with something of his old irritation. "What possessed him to run away as if he were guilty without making one protest to us that he was innocent?"

"I cannot tell you, sir. As I said, I know nothing whatever of the circumstance; I do not even know the nature of the accusation against him. I only know, from my knowledge of his character, that he is a noble and generous young man, and that he never could have been guilty of any dishonourable action."

"Nobody would ever have thought he would," Captain Bayley said sharply, "unless he had as much as said so himself by running away when this ridiculous accusation was brought forward. I should as soon have doubted my own existence as supposed he had stolen a ten-pound note had he not run away instead of facing it like a man. Until he bolted without sending me a word of denial or explanation. I would have knocked any man down who had said he believed him guilty. The evidence had no more weight in my mind than the whistling of the wind; my doubts are of his own creation. Thank God they are at an end now that he has declared he is innocent. He has behaved like a fool, but there are so many fools about that there is nothing out of the way in that. Still it was one of the follies I should not have expected of Frank. That he should get into a foolish scrape from thoughtlessness, or high spirits, or devilry, or that sort of thing, I could imagine; but I am astonished that he should have committed an act of folly due to cowardice."

"I won't hear you, uncle, any more," Alice exclaimed; "I know that you don't mean anything you say, and that you are one of the happiest men in the world this evening; but of course Mr. Adams does not know you as we do, and does not understand that all this means that you are so relieved from the anxiety that you have felt for the last two years that you are obliged to give vent to your feelings somehow. Please, Mr. Adams, don't regard what my uncle says in the slightest, but tell us all about Frank. As to his going away, we know nothing about his motives, or why he went, or anything else, and I am quite sure he will be able to explain it when we see him; as to running away from cowardice, uncle knows as well as we do that the idea is simply ridiculous. So please go on, and if uncle interrupts we will go down to another sitting-room and he shall hear nothing about it."

Mr. Adams then told the story of his acquaintance with Frank; how, when all seemed dark, when he was lying prostrate with fever brought on by overexertion and insufficient food, Frank had come to his son and had insisted on helping him; how he had helped to nurse him, and how, finally, Frank and his companions had worked the claim and realised a fortune for him. He told how popular Frank was among his companions, how ready he was to do a kindly action to any one needing it, and finally repeated the conversation they had had together the last evening, and Frank's determination not to return to England until he had gained such a fortune that he could not be suspected of desiring to gain anything but his uncle's esteem when he presented himself before him and declared he was innocent.