"Thanks be to you," he said. Then he scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and took up his hat and cloak and vanished.
EPILOGUE.
John Dundas was as good as his word, and within a fortnight of his visit to Brampton the unhappy Farren was on board an Oriental liner bound for Melbourne.
As the Major read his name in the passenger list, he breathed a sigh of relief. For with him disappeared all record of the past. He felt convinced the creature—queer in the head as he undoubtedly was—had told him nothing but the truth. His life story was indeed a pitiful one, and the Major would not but admit that there was something of retributory justice about the fate which had overtaken his old uncle. For that he had met his death by Shorty's hand there was not a doubt. Miriam had been shown the signature appended to those three lines of confession—confession absolute and unqualified—and she had recognised it instantly.
There remained no doubt in the Major's mind. As he had told Miriam, the whole affair was horribly repellent to him. The remotest connection with such men as Jabez, Shorty, and Farren ran counter to every instinct he possessed. He alone among his contaminated stock recoiled from the merest contact with the morbid. Gerald, in his bouts of alcoholism, had always shown that he was attracted in that direction. Even when most himself that side of him had been plainly apparent to any keen observer.
And so the Major thanked his stars that things were as they were. His hundred pounds had been well spent, indeed if it had purchased in the future complete immunity from all reference to the terrible past. So far as Farren was concerned he felt perfectly safe. It was not difficult to foretell his end. It would be speedy. And the Major knew enough of Melbourne even to localise it with some degree of accuracy. That fair city of the south possesses in its heart the foulest opium dens outside of China. It would be in one of them—in that fœtid artery named Little Bourke Street—that Farren would die; and with him would disappear the last of what the Major was wont to refer to in his own mind always as the Lambeth gang.
From time to time he caught a glimpse of Miriam; anything from an hour to two hours constituting merely a glimpse in the eyes of the Major. Each time he told himself she was more beautiful than before; and for the first time in his life a year seemed to contain at least twenty-four calendar months; and all the rifle practice or tactical manœuvres in the world were of no avail to shorten it. Slowly, wearily, it dragged itself along, with now and then a spurt on such days as could furnish him with reasonable excuse for a run up to town—town being bounded on the east by Addison Road and on the west by Hammersmith.
In Mrs. Parsley, had he only known it, he possessed the strongest of allies. If he had needed anyone to plead his cause, he could not have chosen a better.
"My dear, I am just waiting for the day that shall see you Mistress of the Manor House. Won't that be a knock-me-down-staggerer for her?" Such was Mrs. Parsley's leit-motive now, the "her" having, it is scarcely necessary to say, reference to Mrs. Darrow.