The youth obeyed; and then turning to his visiter, the gipsy said, "You are Captain de Vaux, I suppose--nay, I see you are."

"You are right," replied De Vaux; "though I am not aware that you ever saw me before; at least, I am certain that I never saw you."

"I saw you on the day before yesterday," replied the gipsy, "though it was but for a moment, and you did not see me. But it is not alone from that I know you. You are very like your father, as I remember him; but still more like your grandfather and your uncle, in the times when I can recall as happy a set of faces in Dimden Hall as ever shone in the palace or the cottage."

The gipsy sighed as he spoke, and De Vaux sighed too, for he had never seen such faces in his father's house; and there was also, in the picture thus presented, a sad sample of how happy things and scenes of joy can, in a few short years, pa.s.s away and be forgotten, which, linking itself by the chain of a.s.sociation to the present, carried on his mind to the time when he and his might be as those of whom the gipsy spoke, and all the happiness which he now so fondly antic.i.p.ated with her he loved become a memory for some old remaining servant, or poor dependant, to sigh over in their age.

"Then I am to suppose," rejoined De Vaux, after pausing for a moment on thoughts which, perhaps, might be called gloomy--"then I am to suppose that I am speaking with the person signing himself Pharold; and I may also conclude," he added, "that he is the same whom I have heard of, as having been taken, when a boy, by my grandfather, in order to educate him with my father and uncle; but who could not bear the restraints of that kind of life, and at the end of two years fled back to his own race and his native pursuits."

"In less time, in less time than that," said the gipsy; "but I often went back, and was ever kindly met, and used to please myself by enacting one day the young gentleman at the hall, and the next the gipsy on the common. But after a time," he continued, carried away by his subject, "I strayed farther, and forgot what I might have been, to give myself more up to what I was to be--but there is no use of talking of such things now, it makes me sad! And so you have heard all that. Yet who would tell you? Your father never did, I am sure; and your aunt was then but a child of two or three years old; and your uncle--but you remember not him."

"No," replied De Vaux, "any knowledge of the facts that I do possess was derived, I believe, from the tales of an excellent old housekeeper, who died not many years ago, and who seemed to speak of Pharold with no small regard."

"And is she dead?" cried Pharold. "Poor good old Mrs. d.i.c.kinson--I knew not that she was dead--she was ever kind to me, good soul: and now she is dust and ashes! Well, well, the fairest, and the strongest, and the best, go down to the sand with the leaves of the tree!--but will the kindly affections, and the n.o.ble feelings, and the generous nature, die too and rot? Can you tell me that, young gentleman?--I think not."

"Nor I either," answered De Vaux. "G.o.d forbid that we should think so!

But, as I said, it was from that good old person, as I now recollect, that I heard all I know of your former history."

De Vaux recurred to the subject of the old housekeeper purposely, for he was not at all sorry that--instead of having to meet the gipsy as an opponent, where every word was to be examined, and nothing admitted without proof--their conversation had taken such a turn as to draw forth the man's true character, and to show the deeper motives upon which he acted. Anxious, as he might naturally be, to ascertain whether there was any hidden pa.s.sion which might tempt the other to deceive him, or to seek to injure either himself or those connected with him, De Vaux would fain have led the gipsy on to speak more fully of the past; but Pharold's mind, following always its own particular train, rested but for a moment longer upon the idea suggested, and then returned abruptly to the cause of their meeting.

"Since you know so much of me, Captain de Vaux," he said, "you must also know that I possess knowledge in regard to your family which few other persons now living do possess; and you must know, likewise, that I am not one to say to you a word that is false, or to seek to wrong you by even a thought. That you have given some credence to my letter I see by your having come here, and that you put some confidence in me I see by your having come alone, and at this hour. Both deserve that I should be as explicit with you as possible; and, therefore, before you quit me, I will leave not a doubt upon your mind in regard to the truth of what I affirm."

"By so doing," replied De Vaux, "you will at least ent.i.tle yourself to my grat.i.tude and thanks, though I conceal not from you that it is difficult to feel grateful or to offer sincere thanks to one who, willingly or unwillingly, overturns our hopes and our happiness for ever."

"It is difficult!" replied the gipsy; "I know it is difficult; but yet you must believe me when I tell you that I feel deeply and bitterly every pang that I inflict on you; that but for a duty and a promise registered in my own heart and beyond the stars--but for your own ultimate happiness--I would not pour upon you now all that I must bid you bear. You must believe all this, Captain de Vaux, for it is true."

And De Vaux did believe it, in part, if not entirely; for there was a solemn earnestness about the man's manner, a sort of eager deprecation in his tone, that would have been very difficult to a.s.sume unfelt.

Although his opinion of mankind in general, and of the gipsy race in particular, was not very high, still the barrier of distrust was not strong enough to shut out conviction when De Vaux heard the tones of real sincerity; and he spake truly when he replied, "I will believe that you do feel what you say, both because I have never, to my knowledge, injured you or yours, so that it would be gratuitous baseness to injure or afflict me; and because the little I have ever heard of your character in youth, as well as your tone and manner at present, convinces me that you are incapable of such a proceeding.

Nevertheless, you must remember, that before I can yield belief to any part of a story which, in some way, must throw dark imputations upon my family, I am bound to exact proof, and must be permitted to question every a.s.sertion that is not supported by the fullest evidence."

"Proof and evidence you shall have," replied the gipsy; "and you shall not only be permitted to question any thing that seems doubtful, but to be angry and indignant till you are convinced. Only, for your own sake, command yourself as much as possible. Remember that you have to hear a tale that will give you great pain; and, in order to enable yourself to judge rationally of its truth, you must govern your pa.s.sions, and, as far as may be, subdue your feelings. You must promise, too, Captain de Vaux, to forgive him who inflicts the truth upon you. Will you promise me," he asked, laying his hand solemnly on De Vaux's arm, "to forgive whatever pain I may inflict, when you shall be satisfied both that my tale is true, and that I have no motive of earthly interest in relating it?"

"Most certainly," replied De Vaux, "though you proved my illegitimacy ever so clearly. Of course I must forgive you, if disinterestedly you speak but the truth."

"Worse, worse, far worse than that have I to tell," replied the gipsy; "but I cannot tell it here. The wind blows cold, and I saw you shudder, but your blood will run colder still before my tale is done.

Besides, my people have long hearing and cunning ways. They are too near; and I would not that any other ear than yours in the whole world should listen to the words I am going to speak. You have trusted yourself so far to-night that you will not fear to trust yourself alone with me still farther. Come, then, with me to the edge of the wood that you see lying there about half a mile off. There we can shelter ourselves from the wind beneath the part of the bank just where it looks down upon the road. You are nearer home there, too."

"I know I am," answered De Vaux, turning, and gazing somewhat fixedly upon him; "but do you know that the road which it does overhang is within a hundred yards of the spot where my uncle was murdered?"

"I know it well," replied the gipsy; "but you will never be murdered like him, Captain de Vaux."

"And why not?" said De Vaux, quickly. "What happened to him may happen to me."

"My story must explain my words," rejoined Pharold; "I am unarmed--you are armed. All my comrades are there behind us: I go farther from them, and lead you nearer to your home. Were I willing to injure you, here were the place."

"Lead on, lead on!" said De Vaux; "I will trust you, and follow you!"

"Without reply, the gipsy led the way across the common, with every step of which he seemed so well acquainted as to be able to shape his course amid all the breaks, and bushes, and irregularities of the ground, without ever giving a glance to the right or the left. He said not a word either, and De Vaux followed equally in silence, with his interest and anxiety still more excited than they had been even by his strange companion's letter. In less than a quarter of an hour they had crossed that part of the common which lay between the sand-pit and the edge of the wood, exactly at that point where the hill, of which Morley Down formed the table land, joined on to the general chain of hills, from which it appeared as a kind of offset or promontory, and which, as we have said, were generally covered with forest. The neck of the promontory here overhung the turn of the road and the river, at about a couple of hundred yards nearer to Morley House than the spot where De Vaux had told Manners, on their first arrival in the country, that his uncle had been murdered some years before; and the track that lay between the place where he now stood and the highway was a steep precipitous bank of two or three hundred feet in height, covered with loose stones, scattered bushes, and one or two larger trees, thrown forward beyond the ma.s.s of wood on the left. The moon was shining bright on the road and the river, and though she had pa.s.sed her meridian, promised yet several hours of light.

"Come down this little path, sir," said the gipsy. "Under that bank, with those bushes round us, about thirty yards down, we can find shelter, and can see every thing around, so that there will be no fear of interruption."

De Vaux followed as he desired, and in a few minutes reached the spot to which he had pointed. There, upon a felled oak, which only remained to be rolled down the hill, he seated himself on a little piece of level ground, where some one had endeavoured ineffectually to establish a quarry, and whence he could behold the village near his aunt's dwelling and the top of Morley House itself, though the view up the valley on the other side was interrupted by the sweep of the woody hill. The gipsy stood beside him, and De Vaux anxiously besought him to produce at once the proofs of the very painful a.s.sertions which his letter had contained.

"I brought you not here without an object, Edward de Vaux," said the gipsy, still standing; "for here I can relate my tale better than anywhere else. Now, tell me what you remember of your early years, and what you have heard of your father's history--of his history and that of his family."

"I did not seek you," answered De Vaux, "to tell you what I myself know, but to learn from you facts with which I am unacquainted. You have made a.s.sertions, and you must either support them by proof, or let them fall to the ground."

"Well, well," said the gipsy, "be as cautious as you will! If you hesitate to tell the story you have heard, I will tell it for you, Captain de Vaux, as I know you have heard it, and stop me if I speak a word that is false. Your grandfather, the twelfth Lord Dewry, left two sons and one daughter, then nearly seventeen. His eldest son, who was about six-and-twenty, succeeded to his t.i.tle; and his second son, Edward, your father, who was then at college, went soon after to London to study for the bar. They were both as handsome men as you could look upon; and of your father's life and conduct in the great capital, as I know nothing with much certainty, so shall I say but little--"

"But it appears to me," interrupted De Vaux, "that such is the very matter on which you are called to speak. I was born in London; and if you can tell me nothing certain of my father's conduct in London, you can tell me nothing to the purpose."

"Patience! patience, sir, I pray you!" replied the gipsy; "I can tell you much, though on your father's conduct in London I will spare you as far as may be. William Lord Dewry, your uncle, was one of those men such as the world seldom sees; full of fine and generous feelings, kind, forgiving, n.o.ble, with enthusiasm such as the cold call folly, and humanity such as the unfeeling term weakness, though the rect.i.tude of his own conduct was as unbending as yonder oak, and his enthusiasm never led him to aught but what was just and good. For some years after he succeeded to the t.i.tle, he remained unmarried, and it was generally supposed that he would continue to live as a single man.

Those who knew him better, however, felt sure that if ever chance should throw in his way a woman who deserved his love, whose heart was full of such feelings as his own, and whose mind was stored with thoughts and wishes as high and n.o.ble as those which filled his own bosom, he would not only offer to join his fate to hers, but would love her as woman has seldom been loved on earth; that such a woman, so loved, would become the great object of his being and his life, and would concentrate on herself all those deep and ardent affections which from his boyhood he had shown that his heart possessed. He did at length, as you well know, find such a woman--full of all those qualities which were so bright in himself--beautiful, accomplished, and his equal in rank and fortune. He addressed himself at once to a heart that was free and unengaged; and the same fine properties that had won his love were sure to win her love for him. He was married, and was happy beyond all that he had ever dreamed. He was happy; nay, more, he was content! for the angel of his home was more than all he had expected, and he sought and wished for nothing more. Every feeling, every thought turned towards her; and though his kindness, his benevolence, his philanthropy, were doubled rather than diminished, yet no joy was any thing to the joy of his love. For a year and six months he was as happy as any human thing can be--happier, perhaps, than any human thing ever was before. I saw his happiness; and, oh! how it made my heart expand to behold it! But then suddenly came a change. His wife had given him a child--beautiful, I hear she is, as her mother and good as her father; but ere the opening of her infant mind could add anything to the happiness of her parents, or afford even a momentary consolation to her father when distress came, her mother was seized with sudden illness, and ere five days were over she was dead."

The gipsy paused, and seemed to sigh bitterly over the memories of the past; while De Vaux, whose interest in all that concerned his beloved Marian was hardly less than he felt for those things that affected himself, waited anxiously to hear more; for though the story was not unfamiliar to him, yet it was put in a new light, and told in a mild and feeling tone, that gave it a thousand times more force than ever.

After a moment or two of silence the gipsy went on:--"What a change,"

he continued, "came upon him then! The world seemed all forgotten. He appeared as one struck with sudden blindness; and where he had beheld nothing but beauty around him before, he now beheld nothing but a blank. For hours and hours he would ride in solitude through the country, unaccompanied even by a servant. He would pa.s.s his friends when he met them as strangers, and when they spoke, would seem long ere he remembered them. He forgot all enjoyment and all occupation, and lived in the world as if it were not his proper place. Thus pa.s.sed the days for near two months, when, at the end of that time, he one morning rode forth as usual alone; but he chanced--though it was seldom he mentioned whither he went--he chanced to say that he was going to the county town. He was known, too, to have a large sum of money on his person; and as he pa.s.sed by the house of Mrs. Falkland, his sister, for it was at Dimden he always lived, he stopped for a few minutes."

"You seem to know the whole facts as minutely as if you had followed him," said De Vaux, when the gipsy paused for a moment.

"I do," said the gipsy; "and, if you will listen, you shall hear how.

When he left Mrs. Falkland's, her husband, who was then living, and a n.o.ble, frank-hearted man, walked by his brother-in-law's horse as far as the village, but there he left him, and Lord Dewry rode on. He was seen by some boys who were playing in that field--can you see it? half a mile nearer than the village, with a red barn at the side. But none of the country people saw him after, and he never returned to the hall. His servants, who all loved him, were alarmed, and sent over to Mr. Falkland, and he despatched messengers to the county town, with orders to inquire at the villages on the road; but no Lord Dewry was to be heard of anywhere. The evening pa.s.sed over in terror; night had come on, and the family of Morley House were retiring late to rest, when a messenger arrived from Mr. Arden the magistrate, to inform Mr.

Falkland that a gipsy--do you remark--a gipsy had just been taken up upon the charge of beating a young peasant almost to death the day before, and now made a voluntary declaration that he had seen the Lord Dewry murdered at the elm-point, there down below, that very morning at ten o'clock. Mr. Falkland instantly got upon horseback, and rode over to see Mr. Arden; and it was agreed between them that the news should instantly be sent to the Honourable Edward de Vaux, your father, and that till he arrived nothing further should be asked of the gipsy, except if he knew where the body of Lord Dewry might in any likelihood be found. He said yes: it might be found at the sea; but that if they would search in the reeds by the bank, they would find the baron's hat, and that in some of the woods or meadows his horse would be met with. Search was instantly made, and some of his words proved true; for the hat, pierced through and through with a shot, was found b.l.o.o.d.y among the reeds, and his horse was discovered grazing in the meadows, four miles down, on the other side of the water. In the mean time, the courier rode night and day to London, and when he arrived, found the dead lord's brother at the playhouse. He was very much shocked at the news, and instantly came down hither with one Sir William Ryder, a good enough man, they said, at heart, but one who had been fond of play, and had lost a fine fortune by that foolish pa.s.sion. When the new lord arrived, the gipsy was again brought up and placed before him. A great many questions were asked, and he told this story:--The young man he had beaten had foully ill-used a gipsy woman, and he, the gipsy, had punished him, scarcely as he deserved. He had left him for dead, however, on the ground; and thinking that if he were dead the offence might bring trouble on his people, if he went back to them, he hid himself in these woods, and on the morning of the murder was lying down yonder, in the sweep of trees there, just at the head of the point. He had been there all the morning, he said; and, as the country people generally take the short way over the hill, he had seen no one pa.s.s, till, about half-past nine o'clock, a man on horseback came and backed in his horse between the two old elm-trees that lie about five hundred yards farther up in the bite of the river.

He lay very still there to see what would come of it; and in about half an hour he heard another horse's feet coming quickly up, and Lord Dewry turned the point. The gipsy said that he thought to have sprung out, and told him what he had seen; for his heart misgave him as to the purpose of the other horseman; but just at the moment the other came forth, and, riding quietly up, spoke with Lord Dewry calmly enough for some minutes. They then seemed to get into high dispute, and Lord Dewry pushed his horse on upon the road a little, while following, and speaking at his side, the other suddenly drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired right into the baron's head. At the same moment, as he was falling from the saddle, the horse, taking fright, plunged into the river, dragging him by the stirrup, and his hat fell into the rushes. The other horseman looked after him for a moment; but ere the swimming horse reached the opposite bank, he set spurs to his own beast, and was galloping away, when at the turn he was met by another. The gipsy could see them grasp each other's hands; but they stopped not a moment to speak: the second turned his horse with the first, and both galloped away like lightning. The gipsy plunged into the water, he said, to see if he could bring out the body, as soon as he saw that it had become disentangled from the stirrup; but it had sunk to rise no more; and when he was tired with swimming he returned to the woods.

"Mr. Arden, the magistrate, said it was a very improbable story; but asked the gipsy if he could recognise the man who had committed the murder. The gipsy replied that he could, if he saw him, and could swear to him whenever he was placed before him. Mr. Arden then said that it would be better, under all circ.u.mstances, to commit the gipsy at once for his other offences, when he would be always forthcoming to give evidence if required; but as it was proved that the young man he had beaten was hourly getting better, and acknowledged that he had deserved the treatment he had received, the kind magistrate had no other excuse to propose for committing the gipsy but that of his being a rogue and a vagabond. In this, however, he was overruled by Lord Dewry, the new Lord Dewry, after some private consultations with Sir William Ryder. His lordship said, with a kind look to the gipsy, that it would be cruel, he thought, to commit a man to prison for having given voluntary evidence where it was much needed; and besides, that he had reason to think very well of that gipsy, who had, in a degree, been brought up by his father. Mr. Arden, however, suggested that the gipsy himself might have been the murderer; and though Lord Dewry treated the idea with contempt, yet the st.u.r.dy magistrate kept him in custody, till, by the marks of the horse's feet, and many other things, it was proved that his story must be true. In the mean time Lord Dewry and Sir William Ryder were very kind to him, and took care that he should want for nothing while he was detained. At length he was liberated, and went to join his own people, promising to return whenever he should be called upon, which every one felt sure he would do, as he had been educated with the dead man, and loved him as a brother. I need not tell you that I was that gipsy!

"In the mean time," continued Pharold, "Mr. Edward de Vaux took the t.i.tles and entered into possession of the estates held by his late brother. The will of the last lord was found, and no one wondered that in it he never mentioned his brother's name; for it was known to all the world that they had had many a bitter dispute, and had long been, not as brothers should be. His daughter, Miss De Vaux, and the care of the splendid fortune which she inherited from her mother, were intrusted to his sister, Mrs. Falkland, to Mrs. Falkland's husband, and to a distant relation.

"All his servants and friends were remembered by the dead n.o.bleman, and almost every one that he knew was named except his own brother.

The world did wonder, then, that that brother, with a singular generosity, resigned in favour of his niece many things that he might have claimed as belonging to the male heir, and treated all questions between them, in regard to property, with unexampled liberality. When he had settled all things, and retained a number of his brother's domestics, he ordered the hall at Dewry to be put in order; not loving the part of the country where his brother had been murdered. Thither, then, he went, after he had arranged his affairs in London, bringing down with him a young gentleman of seven years' old, his only son, and supposed heir to all the property."

"And my mother!" cried De Vaux, raising his head from his hands, in which position he had been sitting while listening to the gipsy's story; for during its course he had been agitated by many a strange, but ill-defined, emotion. The story of his uncle's murder had always been one on which his mind had rested with awe and pain from his very childhood; but though he had heard it often told, both as a whole and in detached fragments, yet he had never listened to such minute details as were now given by an eye-witness of the horrible event, who seemed prepared to connect it, too, by some vague and unexplained link, with the painful a.s.sertions which had been made in regard to his own doubtful situation. The very expectation, or rather apprehension, of some horrible disclosure to follow at every word the gipsy uttered, had troubled and shaken him greatly; and the name of Sir William Ryder--a person who, it appeared, was then most intimate with his father, but who, it was clear, had since become the object of his most determined hatred--had added deeper feeling of mysterious dread to all those thoughts by which he was already perturbed. What could be the meaning of all this? whither would it lead? how was it to end? were the questions which continually pressed upon him as the gipsy proceeded; and it appeared even a relief, when Pharold's last words seemed to bring his ideas back from the new and dreadful topics on which they had been engaged, to the subject of his former doubts and suspicions.

"And my mother!" he cried, as the gipsy paused, "what of her?"

"Nothing, that I know," replied Pharold, apparently with some surprise; "nothing but that she was a Spanish lady, who married your father privately, after breaking her vows in a convent."

"Then they were married?" cried De Vaux, eagerly.

"Certainly!" answered the gipsy: "I never heard it doubted; though he kept her from all his family, and used her ill; which was one of the causes of his quarrels with his brother. But she was dead before he came down here to take possession of his brother's lands. But let me tell my tale."

De Vaux again leaned his head upon his hands; every thing once more becoming dark and misty around him. "Go on! go on!" he said; "go on, and keep me not in suspense, for Heaven's sake!"

"I have now told you," continued Pharold, "the story of your family as it went forth to the world, and as you most likely have heard it yourself. It is a goodly tale, and just such as could be desired under such circ.u.mstances! The picture is, indeed, a dark and painful one: but it has another side more dark and painful still; and ere you look at it, nerve your mind firmly, young gentleman; for if you be such as I believe you are, filled with honourable feelings and kindly affections, your very soul will writhe under all you have to hear."

De Vaux waved his hand for him to go on; and the gipsy continued:--"You have heard the world's version of the story; you must now hear the gipsy's. My early history you know; for a year and nine months I was brought up with your uncle and your father. Your uncle ever loved me--your father never: but he was too proud to seek to injure me; and when I left the false restraints of what you call society, to go back to my own race and my native freedom, he and I were friends, as far as we could be.