For she alone knew what this gentle-voiced, white-haired man had endured during those June days two years ago.
Even the tender-hearted Marguérite could never realize the exquisite torture which her father had suffered voluntarily. Perhaps the presence of her lover, combined with the reaction of the discovery that her father had committed no actual crime, rendered her temporarily incapable of appreciating the motives which accounted for his actions.
Be that as it may, this is his story:
"To make clear the reason which led me to deceive my friends in Elmdale in such an extraordinary way, I must go back twenty-four years in my life. I was then thirty-five years of age, and Professor of Philology in a recently-formed University in the Midlands. I was married, but, as some of you know, my first and only child was not born until the events happened which drove me into retirement, and led my dear wife and myself to seek the peace and seclusion of Elmdale."
It is not to be wondered at if Dalrymple and Marguérite exchanged smiling glances at those words; but the Professor's strange narrative should not be interrupted by lovers' confidences.
"I am a man of highly sensitive nature," he went on, "and my mind almost gave way under the shock when my brother James, somewhat older than myself, who occupied a prominent position in Birmingham as manager of an important private bank, was reported missing from his office under circumstances which pointed to a serious and systematic embezzlement of the bank's funds. Day by day the scandal enlarged its bounds. The bank closed its doors; hundreds of people were ruined; there were several cases of suicide among the robbed depositors; and, at last, my brother, James Ogilvey, was arrested in France, owing to a chance meeting with a man who knew him. He was brought to trial, sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, and passed into seeming oblivion accompanied by the curses of thousands. My wife and I literally could not hold up our heads among our friends in the Midlands, and, as we were not wholly dependent on my earnings, we resolved to change our name and start life anew. At that crisis, my mother died. Undoubtedly her death was hastened by my brother's wrong-doing, and it is probable that she destroyed a will already in existence, meaning to make another, but was stricken down by apoplexy before she could carry out her intention. At any rate, no will was found, so her property became intestate. This house and ground belonged to her, but she was unknown locally, as she left Elmdale more than half a century ago, so, after settling some legal matters, my wife and I determined to live here, and adopt my wife's maiden name. There was no great difficulty. I still continued to do my work, which was mainly of a specialist nature, under my own name, but in Elmdale I was always 'Stephen Garth,' and the catastrophe in the Midlands soon passed into the mists when our child was born.
"We reasoned that by the time she grew to womanhood, the memory of James Ogilvey's crime would have died away. At any rate, there was nothing to be gained by letting her know that such a person had ever existed, and you can take it from me that she was ignorant of the fact until a late hour yesterday. Some eight years ago, my unfortunate brother was released. I met him in London, supplied him with ample funds, and sent him to the Colonies, taking good care that he should know neither my altered name nor my address. I heard no more of him until the beginning of June, two years since, when he wrote to me as 'Stephen Garth,' said he was coming to live in my house, being tired of a roving life, and threatened to take lodgings in the village if I did not receive him. Now, my wife and I were determined that he should never cross our daughter's path if we could help it, so a journey to France was resolved on hastily and the two took their departure. For my own part, I decided to await my brother's coming, and try to reason with him. If he proved obdurate, I meant to join my wife and daughter abroad, and, to that end, as Mr. Dobb is aware, I made over all my property to my wife in trust for my daughter. This step was necessary, I believe, to save them from persecution at my brother's hands, because he had hinted at some grievance with regard to the disposition of my mother's estate, a grievance quite unfounded, since I had dealt with him most generously on his release from prison. In order to conceal his presence from the villagers until I had tried every argument to prevail on him to leave me and my family in peace, I arranged to meet him at Leyburn, and drive to the edge of the moor. I brought him to the house without anyone being the wiser, but I soon found I was a child in his hands. He played on my fear of publicity by agreeing to lie perdu if I would supply him with drink. I bore with the infliction for some days until, driven to despair, I refused to purchase any more alcohol. There was a furious scene between us, and he threatened not merely exposure, but legal proceedings to force me to 'disgorge,' as he put it, his share of the property left by our mother, whose maiden name, by the way, Faulkner, is well known here. I realize now that James was in a state verging on dementia, but I may sum up a distressing period of four days and nights of suffering by saying that, in a final paroxysm of rage, he was seized with apoplexy, and died almost instantaneously.
"Though convinced that he was dead, I hoped against hope for some hours. Then rigor mortis set in, and I knew that the only man who had ever inflicted an injury on my good name had struck his last and shrewdest blow by dying in my house. I want you to consider the position I was in. A man, a stranger, was lying there dead, in circumstances that demanded an inquest. I had not called for a doctor, or obtained any assistance locally. I had sent my wife and daughter to a foreign country, obviously to get them out of the way. A post-mortem examination would show that death had taken place nearly a day before I made any stir. If I destroyed certain documents in my brother's possession—such, for instance, as a ticket of leave, which he had retained long after its expiry for the mere purpose, I firmly believe, of bringing pressure to bear on me—there would be nothing to show his identity. In a word, there was a prima facie case of murder ready to be established against me. Of course, the medical evidence would go to prove my innocence, but all the world—all of my small world, at any rate—would gape and gossip because of the scandal which my wife and I had given more than twenty years of our life to escape. For the sake of my wife and daughter I resolved upon a daring expedient. The 'Ogilvey fraud' of a previous generation was forgotten. Why should I not resume my own name, and let my brother die and be buried as Stephen Garth? I saw that my own behavior during the past week would help the assumption that I had committed suicide, while a rather marked resemblance between my brother and myself, together with the fact that he had died from apoplexy, would complete the illusion. Moreover, there exists, in connection with this very house, a curious legend which condemned seven generations of its owners to die by violence, either self-inflicted, or caused by others. James Ogilvey's death was the seventh, and I trusted to this alleged prophecy of a Spanish priest put to death by a sea-rover named Faulkner in the seventeenth century being sufficiently well known in connection with a shadow, or manifestation, cast on the wall by a stained-glass window in the staircase.
"At any rate, I steeled my heart to a dreadful undertaking, dressed my brother in my own clothes, tied his body to a hook in the hall where the shadow I have spoken of is seen at this time of the year, and stole away across the moor after writing a letter to the coroner.
"Gentlemen, I believe I have broken the law in some respects, and I am prepared to suffer for my misdeeds. Perhaps, a long and blameless and not wholly useless life may plead for me now. I acted as I did because of a certain pride in my work, and because of my love for a dear wife and daughter. I dreamed that the dead past had indeed buried its dead but, by a most unusual combination of simple circumstances, the whole strange story has been brought to light. I have nothing more to say. Now that a long ordeal of silence is ended, I am happier to-day than I ever thought to be again in my existence. I can produce a certain number of documents to prove what I may term the historical part of my confession. The really vital part of it—the manner of my brother's death—can receive no other testimony than my own, eked out by such statement as my friend, Dr. Scaife, may find himself able to make after hearing my version of the tragedy."