In fact they were all paralysed and absorbed by the strangeness of this revelation.
'The proofs of what I say were sent to me, and thereby hangs another curious story,' continued John Balderstone. 'A woman of indomitable spirit and pride, this Cecilia Falconer (or Montgomerie) resolved that never in your lifetime, Sir Piers, would she seek your friendship or alliance, nor until your death make known the rank and claims of her son; but she died suddenly and unexpectedly, and the secret of who her husband was died with her, so far as Cecil was concerned, for indeed he knows it not even unto this hour.'
'Then how the devil do you——' began Hew, impetuously; but Balderstone silenced him by a wave of his hand.
'Her great musical talents won her powerful and titled patrons, and through one of them she got her son a cadetship, and by a singular chance he was gazetted to the Cameronians, the regiment of his father and grandfather.'
'I believe the whole affair a d——d tarra-diddle, from beginning to end!' exclaimed Hew, while a kind of gasp escaped the general.
'You have not yet heard the end,' said John Balderstone with a quiet laugh, as he drew from his breast-pocket a large envelope or packet, soiled by the dust of many years, and covered with old and foreign postal marks and stamps. 'In this envelope, addressed to me, as her husband's friend, the widow, when her last fatal illness came upon her, sent for safety three papers: the marriage certificate of herself and Piers, performed at Rome; the certified register of the child's birth, endorsed by herself and Piers, and the register of the latter's death at Rome. But the packet on which such interests depended had fallen behind a bookcase in my office; there it has lain for fifteen years, and I never knew of its existence till yesterday. And here is your son's writing, Sir Piers, which I never expected to see again in this world, and it comes to me like a message from the dead,' added Balderstone, with a tremulous voice.
'From the dead, indeed!' added the general, more tremulously still, as he took the documents and strove to read them through glasses that became moist and dim.
On the back of the marriage-register was written in a feminine hand:
'Nov. 5.—He died to-night, speaking of his stern father and not of me who loved him so! Oh Piers! my husband, my husband! how shall I live without you—live on alone in the long years to come, unless it is for our boy! In losing you I lose my all. For me you gave up home, friends, fortune, rank and position—all the world for me—yet, oh my husband, all the wealth of my love was yours!'
The date corresponded with the general's dream or vision! Could Piers' spirit have flashed home at the instant of his departure? Can such things be, and may men see them and live! thought he.