The Living Link Part 55

There were tears in his eyes now, and there was on his face a look of unutterable love and unspeakable pity and forgiveness. He reached out his hand and placed it tenderly upon her head.

"Edith," he said again, "my child, you will never say these things again. I--I do not deserve them. I--am your--your father, Edith!"

At these words a convulsive shudder pa.s.sed through Edith. He felt her frail form tremble, he saw her head fall, and heard a low sob that seemed torn from her.

She needed no more words than these. In an instant she saw it all; and though bewildered, she did not for a moment doubt his words. But her whole being was overwhelmed by a sudden and a sharp agony of remorse; for she had accustomed herself to hate this man, and the irrepressible tokens of a father's love she had regarded as hypocrisy. She had never failed to heap upon that reverend head the deepest scorn, contumely, and insult. But a moment before she had hurled at him a terrible accusation.

At him! At whom? At the man whose mournful destiny it had been all along to suffer for the sins of others; and she it was who had flung upon him an additional burden of grief.

But with all her remorse there were other feelings--a shrinking sense of terror, a recoil from this sudden discovery as from something abhorrent.

This her father! That father's face and form had been stamped in her memory. For years, as she had lived in the hope of seeing him, she had quickened her love for him and fed her hopes from his portrait. But how different was this one! What a frightful change from the father that lived in her memory! The one was a young man in the flush and pride of life and strength--the other a woe-worn, grief-stricken sufferer, with reverend head, bowed form, and trembling limbs. Besides, she had long regarded him as dead; and to see this man was like looking on one who had risen from the dead.

In an instant, however, all was plain, and together with the discovery there came the pangs of remorse and terror and anguish. She could understand all. He, the escaped convict, had come to England, and was supposed to be dead. He had lived, under a false name, a life of constant and vigilant terror. He kept his secret from all the world. Oh, if he had only told her! Now the letter of Miss Plympton was all plain, and she wondered how she had been so blind.

"Oh!" she moaned, in a scarce audible voice, "why did you not tell me?"

"Oh, Edith darling! my child! my only love!" murmured Frederick Dalton, bending low over her, and infolding her trembling frame in his own trembling arms; "my sweet daughter, if you could only have known how I yearned over you! But I delayed to tell you. It was the one sweet hope of my life to redeem my name from its foul stain, and then declare myself. I wanted you to get your father back as he had left you, without this abhorrent crime laid to his charge. I did wrong not to trust you.

It was a bitter, bitter error. But I had so set my heart on it. It was all for your sake, Edith--all, darling, for your sake!"

Edith could bear no more. Every one of these words was a fresh stab to her remorseful heart--every tone showed to her the depth of love that lay in that father's heart, and revealed to her the suffering that she must have caused. It was too much; and with a deep groan she sank away from his arms upon the floor. She clasped his knees--she did not dare to look up. She wished only to be a suppliant. He himself had prophesied this. His terrible warnings sounded even now in her ears. She had only one thought--to humble herself in the dust before that injured father.

Dalton tried to raise her up.

"My darling!" he cried, "my child! you must not--you will break my heart!" "Oh," moaned Edith, "if it is not already broken, how can you ever forgive me?--how can you call me your child?"

"My child! my child!" said Dalton. "It was for you that I lived. If it had not been for the thought of you, I should have died long since. It was for your sake that I came home. It is for you only that I live now.

There is nothing for me to forgive. Look up at me. Let me see your darling face. Let me hear you say one word--only one word--the word that I have hungered and thirsted to hear. Call me father."

"Father! oh, father! dear father!" burst forth Edith, clinging to him with convulsive energy, and weeping bitterly.

"Oh, my darling!" said Dalton, "I was to blame. How could you have borne what I expected you to bear, when I would not give you my confidence? Do not let us speak of forgiveness. You loved your father all the time, and you thought that I was his enemy and yours."

Gradually Edith became calmer, and her calmness was increased by the discovery that her father was painfully weak and exhausted. He had been overwhelmed by the emotions which this interview had called forth. He now sat gazing at her with speechless love, holding her hands in his, but his breath came and went rapidly, and there was a feverish tremulousness in his voice and a flush on his pale cheeks which alarmed her. She tried to lessen his agitation by talking about her own prospects, but Dalton did not wish to.

"Not now, daughter," he said. "I will hear it all some other time. I am too weary, Let me only look at your dear face, and hear you call me by that sweet name, and feel my child's hands in mine. That will be bliss enough for this day. Another time we will speak about the--the situation that you are in."

As he was thus agitated, Edith was forced to refrain from asking him a thousand things which she was longing to know. She wished to learn how he had escaped, how he had made it to be believed that he was dead, and whether he was in any present danger. But all this she had to postpone.

She had also to postpone her knowledge of that great secret--the secret that had baffled her, and which he had preserved inviolable through all these years. She now saw that her suspicions of the man "John Wiggins"

must have been unfounded, and indeed the personality of "Wiggins" became a complete puzzle to her.

He bade her a tender adieu, promising to come early on the following day.

But on the following day there were no signs of him. Edith waited in terrible impatience, which finally deepened into alarm as his coming was still delayed. She had known so much of sorrow that she had learned to look for it, and began to expect some new calamity. Here, where she had found her father, where she had received his forgiveness for that which would never cease to cause remorse to herself, here, in this moment of respite from despair, she saw the black prospect of renewed misery. It was as though she had found him for a moment, only to lose him forever.

Toward evening a note was sent to her. She tore it open. It was from Mrs. Dunbar, and informed her that her father was quite ill, and was unable to visit her, but hoped that he might recover.

After that several days pa.s.sed, and she heard nothing. At length another note came informing her that her father had been dangerously ill, but was now convalescent.

Other days pa.s.sed, and Edith heard regularly. Her father was growing steadily better. On one of these notes he had written his name with a trembling hand.

And so amidst these fresh sorrows, and with her feelings ever alternating between hope and despair, Edith lingered on through the time that intervened until the day of the trial.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE TRIAL.

At length the day for the trial arrived, and the place was crowded. At the appearance of Edith there arose a murmur of universal sympathy and pity. All the impressions which had been formed of her were falsified.

Some had expected to see a coa.r.s.e masculine woman; others a crafty, sinister face; others an awkward, ill-bred rustic, neglected since her father's trial by designing guardians. Instead of this there appeared before them a slender, graceful, youthful form, with high refinement and perfect breeding in every outline and movement. The heavy ma.s.ses of her dark hair were folded across her brow, and wreathed in voluminous folds behind. Her pallid face bore traces of many griefs through which she had pa.s.sed, and her large spiritual eyes had a piteous look as they wandered for a moment over the crowd.

No one was prepared to see any thing like this, and all hearts were at once touched. It seemed preposterous to suppose that one like her could be otherwise than innocent.

The usual formulas took place, and the trial began. The witnesses were those who had already been examined. It was rumored that Sir Lionel Dudleigh was to be brought forward, and "Wiggins," and Mrs. Dunbar, but not till the following day.

At the end of that day the opinion of the public was strongly in favor of Edith; but still there was great uncertainty as to her guilt or innocence. It was generally believed that she had been subject to too much restraint, and in a foolish desire to escape had been induced to marry Dudleigh. But she had found him a worse master than the other, and had hated him from the first, so that they had many quarrels, in which she had freely threatened his life. Finally both had disappeared on the same night. He was dead; she survived.

The deceased could not have committed suicide, for the head was missing.

Had it not been for that missing head, the theory of suicide would have been plausible.

The second day of the trial came. Edith had seen her father on the previous evening, and had learned something from him which had produced a beneficial effect, for there was less terror and dejection in her face. This was the first time that she had seen him since his illness.

There was one in the hall that day who looked at her with an earnest glance of scrutiny as he took his place among the witnesses.

It was Sir Lionel Dudleigh, who had come here to give what testimony he could about his son. His face was as serene as usual; there was no sadness upon it, such as might have been expected in the aspect of a father so terribly bereaved; but the broad content and placid bonhomie appeared to be invincible.

The proceedings of this day were begun by an announcement on the part of the counsel for the defense, which fell like a thunder-clap upon the court. Sir Lionel started, and all in the court involuntarily stretched forward their heads as though to see better the approach of the astonishing occurrence which had been announced.

The announcement was simply this, that any further proceedings were useless, since the missing man himself had been found, and was to be produced forthwith. There had been no murder, and the body that had been found must be that of some person unknown.

Shortly after a group entered the hall. First came Frederick Dalton, known to the court as "John Wiggins." He still bore traces of his recent illness, and, indeed, was not fit to be out of his bed, but he had dragged himself here to be present at this momentous scene. He was terribly emaciated, and moved with difficulty, supported by Mrs.

Dunbar, who herself showed marks of suffering and exhaustion almost equal to his.

But after these came another, upon whom all eyes were fastened, and even Edith's gaze was drawn away from her father, to whom she had longed to fly so as to sustain his dear form, and fixed upon this new-comer.

Dudleigh! The one whom she had known as Mowbray. Dudleigh!

Yes, there he stood.

Edith's eyes were fixed upon him in speechless amazement. It was Dudleigh, and yet it seemed as though it could not be Dudleigh.

There was that form and there was that face which had haunted her for so long a time, and had been a.s.sociated with so many dark and terrible memories--the form and the face which were so hateful, which never were absent from her thoughts, and intruded even upon her dreams.

Yet upon that face there was now something which was not repulsive even to her. It was a n.o.ble, spiritual face. Dudleigh's features were remarkable for their faultless outline and symmetry, and now the expression was in perfect keeping with the beauty of physical form, for the old hardness had departed, and the deep stamp of sensuality and selfishness was gone, and the sinister look which had once marred those features could be traced there no more.

It was thinner than the face which Edith remembered, and it seemed to her as if it had been worn down by some illness. If so, it must have been the same cause which had imparted to those features the refinement and high bearing which were now visible there. There was the same broad brow covered with its cl.u.s.tering locks, the same penetrating eyes, the same square, strong chin, the same firm, resolute month, but here it was as though a finer touch had added a subtle grace to all these; for about that mouth there lingered the traces of gentleness and kindliness, like the remnant of sweet smiles; the glance of the eye was warmer and more human; there was also an air of melancholy, and over all a grandeur of bearing which spoke of high breeding and conscious dignity.