The Solitary Farm Part 31

There was silence for a few moments, and then Bella, who was looking along the path, spoke to her lover in a frightened whisper. "Here is Durgo!"

And indeed it was. The negro swung along bluff, heavy and ponderous. He was in dark clothes, and these, with his black face, made him look like a blot on the sunshiny beauty of the summer world. At once, with his keen eyesight, he caught a glimpse of the lovers and strode towards them, smiling and bland. Cyril nodded coldly. He could not forgive the black man's impertinence in speaking to Bella, quite forgetting that Bella was to blame and had sought the interview. Bella herself, remembering Cyril's warning and her own promise, did not dare to welcome the man.

"I went to see you," said Durgo, addressing Cyril, "and your landlady told me that you had gone to the common with Miss Huxham. I followed. I am glad to find you both together. I have much to say."

Bella could not contain her curiosity. "Did you----"

"Yes," said Durgo coolly, "I did. He would have made a noise, so I had to dash him to the ground. He hit his head against the fender. Mrs.

Giles," he added with a grim laugh, "tells me that he accounts for the knock on his head by saying that he had a fit."

"What do you make out of that?" asked Cyril, casting a glance at Bella warning her to hold her tongue.

"Oh"--Durgo glanced from one to the other--"so Miss Huxham has told you?"

"About her interview? Yes! I am sorry you took her advice and saw Pence, for I knew that ill would come of it."

Durgo leisurely took a bundle of papers from his pocket. "Much good has come of it, as I am here to explain," said he quietly. "You were right, Miss Huxham. Pence had certain papers stolen from Captain Huxham's safe."

"Then he is guilty of the----"

"I can't be certain of that," interrupted the negro sharply. "I had no time to question Pence. As soon as I got the papers which he carried in his breast-coat pocket I slipped through the window. Lucky that I did so, for his landlady came in almost immediately in answer to the ring of the handbell. If he hadn't sounded it I should not have rendered him insensible, but I had to do so for my own safety."

"Well, well, well!" said Cyril impatiently, and looking at the papers, "we can talk of this later. You say that Miss Huxham's guess is correct?"

"It is. And I congratulate Miss Huxham on her clever brain. Pence was certainly a fool to say as much as he did, and especially to so talented a lady who guessed----"

"There! there! No more compliments. Tell us both at once. Did he speak truly when he stated that Miss Huxham was not the captain's daughter?"

"He spoke absolutely truly, as you will find when you read this," and Durgo placed a bulky roll of paper in Bella's hands.

"Oh!" she said, flushing a bright pink, "how glad I am. But whose daughter am I?" and she made to open the paper.

Cyril laid his hand on the bundle. "We haven't time to read all that now," he said gruffly. "Tell us shortly what you have discovered, Durgo?"

The negro nodded, and addressed himself to the girl. "Your name is Isabella Faith," he stated, "and you are the daughter of Maxwell Faith, who was my father Kawal's firm friend."

The lovers looked at one another. "But how did I come to pa.s.s as Captain Huxham's daughter?" she asked breathlessly.

Durgo shrugged his shoulders. "So far as I can read the story, which Captain Huxham has set down in that bundle you hold, he was smitten with compunction for having murdered your father and so adopted you."

Bella shuddered. "How terrible to have lived with such a wicked old man," she said. "I never liked Captain Huxham, but thinking him my father I tried my best to do my duty. No wonder he would not leave the property to me!"

"I think he intended to leave you the jewels, though," said Durgo, thoughtfully. "He mentions in those papers that he intended to make a will leaving them to you, since his sister, Mrs. Vand, claimed Bleacres and his income. It's my opinion that Mrs. Vand learned how her brother had murdered Maxwell Faith, and so forced him to make that will."

"Then the jewels really belong to you, Bella?"

"Yes," said Durgo, rising and making a courteous bow. "And when we find Edwin Lister, my master, he shall restore the jewels."

"But your expedition?" asked Bella in surprise.

The negro looked at the lovers humorously. "I fear that there will be no expedition," he said seriously. "I cannot rob you of your fortune, Miss Faith. Marry our friend here and be happy."

"But what will you do?" asked Cyril, touched by this self-abnegation.

Durgo shrugged his shoulders again. "I shall search out Edwin Lister and return to Africa. In one way or another I daresay we can manage to get back to my tribe. Then I shall measure my strength and education against my cousin, who is wrongfully chief. For the rest, there is no more to be said. The papers you have, Miss Faith, will prove your birth and reveal all the doings of Huxham. There is no more for me to do, so I shall bid you both good-day and wish you all good luck."

The lovers stared to one another and then at the retreating form of Durgo, who had so delicately left them together. It was Cyril who spoke first.

"He is a good fellow, after all," he said. "That black skin covers a white heart. Oh! Bella, how strange it all is."

"Take me home," said the girl faintly, and with white cheeks. "I can bear no more at present. Isabella Faith is my name now----"

"Until you change it to that of Isabella Lister," said Cyril, kissing her.

But she only wept the more, broken down by the unexpected revelation.

CHAPTER XVII

A CONFESSION

On the way home from the common, Cyril and Bella agreed that it would be wise to say nothing about her true parentage. In the first place, it would benefit no one to be thus candid, and in the second, such a statement would lead to questions being asked which might get Durgo into trouble. After all, the lovers argued, since Pence, as the chief party, did not move in the matter, it was useless for them to fight his battles. The more particularly when Durgo had acted so generously in surrendering the jewels. The black man had behaved in a way for which Cyril would not have given him credit. Few members of the boasting white race would have done as much.

According to the arrangement which the lovers came to, Bella was to remain Miss Huxham to the world until such time as Edwin Lister could be found, and the truth of Huxham's death became known. Of course, with jewels valued at forty thousand pounds, the girl was quite an heiress, and she proceeded to build castles in the air for the advancement of Cyril, when he became her husband. The young man did not say much, as he did not wish to damp her ardour, but he privately thought that if his father were in possession of the jewels he would not surrender them easily. If Durgo was generous, Edwin Lister, as his son knew, was not, and since he had risked his neck to get the treasure he would certainly not hand it over to a girl whom he did not know, for a mere sentimental whim. That the girl was to be his son's wife, and that the son would benefit by the sale of the jewels, would make no difference.

On the way back to the cottage, Bella recovered her self-control and her spirits. It was a wonderful relief to her to learn that she was not the daughter of the gruff old mariner, whom she had never liked. Looking back on her life at Bleacres, Bella no longer wondered that her supposed father had never shown her any affection, and she shuddered when she recalled the terrible fact that his hands were red with blood. On consideration, however, she gave Huxham full credit for the way in which he had acted towards her. He had come to England a thief and a murderer, it is true, but he could easily have left her in the care of the people who looked after her in a little Croydon house. Bella could scarcely remember that house or the woman who stood to her in the place of a mother, her own being dead.

Almost her earliest recollection was being taken from Croydon by Captain Huxham and placed with some friends of his at Shepherd's Bush until she was nine years old. Then she lived with Huxham for a few years, and ultimately was sent to the Hampstead boarding-school, whence she returned to Bleacres at the age of twenty. Thus the captain had educated her and had looked after her, and in his own coa.r.s.e way had proved himself to be generous to a certain extent. Badly as he had acted in robbing her of her heritage, he might have behaved infinitely worse. And by her heritage Bella meant the jewels. With the property and the income left to Mrs. Coppersley, now Mrs. Vand, she had nothing to do, and she no longer grudged the woman what she had schemed to get. But it was probable that had Mrs. Vand not so schemed, Huxham, for very shame, might have given his adopted daughter his nefarious earnings.

"I must not be hard on Captain Huxham," said Bella, when Cyril brought her to the gate, "for, in his own strange way, he acted kindly. But I am glad that he did not leave me anything, as I am certain he earned his money in some shady manner."

"A kind of Captain Kidd," a.s.sented Lister gravely. "I agree with you.

But the old ruffian had a soft spot in his heart for you, my dear."

"No," said Bella, shaking her head, "I would not say that exactly. He suffered from remorse and therefore looked me out when he came to England. I did not find him an affectionate father by any means. But he was just, in a grim way, and even generous. He grudged me nothing save ready money. I wonder if Mrs. Vand knows the truth."

"You said yourself that she did not," replied Lister quietly, "and I am inclined to think so too. A tyrant like Mrs. Vand would have been only too glad to tell you the unpleasant truth."

"Unpleasant? Why, it is a delightful truth!"

"Unpleasant from Mrs. Vand's point of view, since, had she known that you were not her brother's daughter, in no way could you claim the money."

Bella shrugged her shoulders. "I am very, very glad that she has got the money, and much good may it do her. But I am thankful that Captain Huxham did not reveal the truth about me to her. Now she need never know."

"It matters very little whether she knows or not," retorted Cyril. "She cannot gain possession of the jewels. Those are clearly yours."