The Curse of Carne's Hold Part 39

When Ronald recovered his senses he was lying in the ambulance waggon, and the surgeon was dressing his wounds.

"That's right, sergeant," he said, cheeringly, "I think you will do. You have three nasty wounds, but by good luck I don't think any of them are vital."

"How is Forester?" Ronald asked.

"Forester?" the surgeon repeated in surprise, "Whom do you mean, Blunt?"

"I mean Jim Smith, sir; his real name was Forester."

"There is nothing to be done for him," the surgeon said. "Nothing can save him; he is riddled with spears."

"Is he conscious?" Ronald asked.

"No, not at present."

"Will he become conscious before he dies, sir?"

"I don't know," the surgeon replied, somewhat puzzled at Ronald's question. "He may be, but I cannot say."

"It is everything to me, sir," Ronald said. "I have been accused of a great crime of which he is the author. He can clear me if he will. All my future life depends upon his speaking."

"Then I hope he may be able to speak, Blunt, but at present I can't say whether he will recover consciousness or not. He is in the waggon here, and I will let you know directly if there is any change."

Ronald lay quiet, listening to the firing that gradually became more distant, showing that the infantry were driving the Kaffirs back into the bush. Wounded men were brought in fast, and the surgeon and his a.s.sistant were fully occupied. The waggon was halted now, and at Ronald's request the stretchers upon which he and Forester were lying were taken out and laid on the gra.s.s under the shade of a tree.

Towards evening, the surgeon, having finished his pressing work, came to them. He felt George Forester's pulse.

"He is sinking fast," he said, in reply to Ronald's anxious look. "But I will see what I can do."

He poured some brandy between George Forester's lips, and held a bottle of ammonia to his nose. Presently there was a deep sigh, and then Forester opened his eyes. For a minute he looked round vaguely, and then his eye fell upon Ronald.

"So you got me out of the hands of the Kaffirs, Captain Mervyn," he said, in a faint voice. "I caught sight of you among them as I went down. I know they have done for me, but I would rather be buried whole than hacked into pieces."

"I did my best for you, Forester," Mervyn said. "I am sorry I was not up a minute sooner. Now, Forester, you see I have been hit pretty hard, too; will you do one thing for me? I want you to confess about what I was speaking to you: it will make all the difference to other people."

"I may as well tell the truth as not," Forester said; "though I don't see how it makes much difference."

"Doctor," Ronald said, "could you kindly send and ask Captain Twentyman and Lieutenant Daniels to come here at once? I want them to hear."

George Forester's eyes were closed, and he was breathing faintly when the two officers, who had ridden up a few minutes before with their corps, came up to the spot.

The surgeon again gave the wounded man some strong cordial.

"Will you write down what he says?" Ronald asked Captain Twentyman.

The latter took out a note-book and pencil.

"I make this confession," Forester said, faintly, "at the request of Captain Mervyn, who risked his life in getting me out from among the Kaffirs. My real name is George Forester, and at home I live near Carnesford, in Devons.h.i.+re. I was one night poaching in Mr. Carne's woods, with some men from Dareport, when we came upon the keepers. There was a fight. One of the keepers knocked my gun out of my hand, and as he raised his stick to knock me on the head, I whipped out my knife, opened it, and stuck it into him. I didn't mean to kill him, it was just done in a moment; but he died from it. We ran away. Afterwards I found that I had lost my knife. I suppose I dropped it. That's all I have to say."

"Not all, Forester, not all," said Ronald, who had listened with impatience to the slowly-uttered words of the wounded man; "not all. It isn't that, but about the murder of Miss Carne I want you to tell."

"The murder of Miss Carne," George Forester repeated, slowly. "I know nothing about that. She made Ruth break it off with me, and I nearly killed Ruth, and would have killed her if I had had the chance, but I never had. I was glad when I heard she was killed, but I don't know who did it."

"But your knife was found by her body," Ronald said. "You must have done it, Forester."

"Murdered Miss Carne!" the man said, half raising himself on his elbow in surprise. "Never. I swear I had nothing to do with it."

A rush of blood poured from his mouth, for one of the spears had pierced his lung, and a moment later George Forester fell back dead. The disappointment and revulsion of feeling were too great for Ronald Mervyn, and he fainted. When he recovered, the surgeon was leaning over him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _George Forester's death._]

"You mustn't talk, lad; you must keep yourself quite quiet, or we shall have fever setting in, and all sorts of trouble."

Ronald closed his eyes, and lay back quietly. How could this be? He thought of Mary Armstrong's letter, of the chain of proofs that had acc.u.mulated against George Forester. They seemed absolutely convincing, and yet there was no doubting the ring of truth in the last words of the dying man. His surprise at the accusation was genuine; his a.s.sertion of his innocence absolutely convincing; he had no motive for lying; he was dying, and he knew it. Besides, the thing had come so suddenly upon him there could have been no time for him to frame a lie, even if he had been in a mental condition to do so. Whoever killed Margaret Carne, Ronald Mervyn was at once convinced that it was not George Forester.

There he lay, thinking for hours over the disappointment that the news would be to Mary Armstrong, and how it seemed more unlikely than ever that the mystery would ever be cleared up now. Gradually his thoughts became more vague, until at last he fell asleep.

Upon the following day the wounded were sent down under an escort to King Williamstown, and there for a month Ronald Mervyn lay in hospital.

He had written a few lines to Mary Armstrong, saying that he had been wounded, but not dangerously, and that she need not be anxious about him any more, for the Kaffirs were now almost driven from their last stronghold, and that the fighting would almost certainly be over before he was fit to mount his horse again. "George Forester is dead," he said.

"He was mortally wounded when fighting bravely against the Kaffirs. I fear, dear, that your ideas about him were mistaken, and that he, like myself, has been the victim of circ.u.mstantial evidence; but I will tell you more about this when I write to you next."

While lying there, Ronald thought over the evidence that had been collected against George Forester, and debated with himself whether it should be published, as Mary had proposed. It would, doubtless, be accepted by the world as proof of Forester's guilt and of his own innocence; and even the fact that the man, when dying, had denied it, would weigh for very little with the public, for men proved indisputably to be guilty often go to the scaffold a.s.serting their innocence to the last. But would it be right to throw this crime upon the dead man when he was sure that he was innocent? For Ronald did not doubt for a moment the truth of the denial. Had he a right, even for the sake of Mary's happiness and his own, to charge the memory of the dead man with the burden of this foul crime? Ronald felt that it could not be. The temptation was strong, but he fought long against it, and at last his mind was made up.

"No," he said at last, "I will not do it. George Forester was no doubt a bad man, but he was not so bad as this. It would be worse to charge his memory with it than to accuse him if he were alive. In the one case he might clear himself; in the other he cannot. I cannot clear my name by fouling that of a dead man."

And so Ronald at last sat down to write a long letter to Mary Armstrong, telling her the whole circ.u.mstances; the joy with which he received her news; his conversation with George Forester, which seemed wholly to confirm her views; the pang of agony he had felt when he saw the man who he believed could alone clear him, in the hands of the Kaffirs, and his desperate charge to rescue him; and then he gave the words of the confession, and expressed his absolute conviction that the dying man had spoken the truth, and that he was really innocent of Margaret Carne's murder.

He then discussed the question of still publis.h.i.+ng Ruth Powlett's statement, giving first the cause of George Forester's enmity against Margaret Carne, and the threat he had uttered, and then the discovery of the knife.

"I fear you will be ashamed of me, Mary, when I tell you that, for a time, I almost yielded to the temptation of clearing myself at his expense. But you must make allowance for the strength of the temptation: on the one side was the thought of my honour restored, and of you won; on the other, the thought that, now George Forester was dead, this could not harm him. But, of course, I finally put the temptation aside; honour purchased at the expense of a dead man's reputation would be dishonour indeed. Now I can face disgrace, because I know I am innocent. I could not bear honour when I knew that I had done a dishonourable action; and I know that I should utterly forfeit your love and esteem did I do so. I can look you straight in the face now; I could never look you straight in the face then. Do not grieve too much over the disappointment. We are now only as we were when I said good-bye to you. I had no hope then that you would ever succeed in clearing me, and I have no hope now. I have not got up my strength again yet, and am therefore perhaps just at present a little more disposed to repine over the disappointment than I ought to do; but this will wear off when I get in the saddle again.

There will, I think, be no more fighting--at any rate with the Sandilli Kaffirs--for we hear this morning that they have sent in to beg for peace, and I am certain we shall be glad enough to grant it, for we have not much to boast about in the campaign. Of course they will have to pay a very heavy fine in cattle, and will have to move across to the other side of the Kei. Equally of course there will be trouble again with them after a time, when the memory of their losses has somewhat abated. I fancy a portion of our force will march against the Basutos, whose att.i.tude has lately been very hostile; but now that the Gaikas have given in, and we are free to use our whole force against them, it is scarcely probable they will venture to try conclusions with us. If they settle down peaceably I shall probably apply for my discharge, and perhaps go in for farming, or carry out my first idea of joining a party of traders going up the country, and getting some shooting among the big game.

"I know that, disappointed as you will be with the news contained in this letter, it will be a pleasure to you to tell the girl you have made your friend, that after all the man she once loved is innocent of this terrible crime. She must have suffered horribly while she was hiding what she thought was the most important part of the evidence; now she will see that she has really done no harm; and as you seem to be really fond of her, it will, I am sure, be a great pleasure to you to be able to restore her peace of mind in both these respects. I should think now that you and your father will not remain any longer at Carnesford, where neither of you has any fitting society of any sort, but will go and settle somewhere in your proper position. I would much rather that you did, for now it seems absolutely certain that nothing further is to be learned, it would trouble me to think of you wasting your lives at Carnesford.

"You said in your last letter that the discovery you had made had brought you four years nearer to happiness, but I have never said a word to admit that I should change my mind at the end of the five years that your father spoke of. Still, I don't know, Mary. I think my position is stronger by a great deal than it was six months ago. I told my captain who I was, and all the other officers now know. Most of them came up and spoke very kindly to me before I started on my way down here, and I am sure that when I leave the corps they will give me a testimonial, saying that they are convinced by my behaviour while in the corps that I could not have been guilty of this crime. I own that I myself am less sensitive on the subject than I was. One has no time to be morbid while leading such a life as I have been for the last nine months.

Perhaps----but I will not say any more now. But I think somehow, that, at the end of the five years, I shall leave the decision in your hands.

It has taken me two or three days to write this letter, for I am not strong enough to stick to it for more than half an hour at a time; but as the post goes out this afternoon I must close it now. We have been expecting a mail from England for some days. It is considerably overdue, and I need not say how I am longing for another letter from you. I hear the regiment will be back from the front to-night; men and horses want a few days' rest before starting on this long march to Basutoland. I shall be very glad to see them back again. Of course, the invalids who, like myself, are somewhat pulled down by their wounds, are disgusted at being kept here. The weather is frightfully hot, and even in our s.h.i.+rt sleeves we shall be hardly able to enjoy Christmas day."

The Cape Rifles arrived at King Williamstown an hour after the post had left, and in the evening the colonel and several of the officers paid a visit to the hospital to see how their wounded were getting on. Ronald, who was sitting reading by his bedside, and the other invalids who were strong enough to be on their feet, at once got up and stood at attention. Stopping and speaking a few words to each of the men of his own corps, the colonel came on. "Mervyn," he said, as he and the officers came up to Ronald, "I want to shake your hand. I have heard your story from Captain Twentyman, and I wish to tell you, in my own name and in that of the other officers of the regiment, that we are sure you have been the victim of some horrible mistake. All of us are absolutely convinced that a man who has shown such extreme gallantry as you have, and whose conduct has been so excellent from the day he joined, is wholly incapable of such a crime as that with which you were charged. You were, of course, acquitted, but at the same time I think that it cannot but be a satisfaction for you to know that you have won the esteem of your officers and your comrades, and that in their eyes you are free from the slightest taint of that black business. Give me your hand."

Ronald was unable to speak; the colonel and all the officers shook him by the hand, and the former said: "I must have another long talk with you when we get back from the Basuto business. I have mentioned you very strongly in regimental orders upon two occasions for extreme gallantry, and I cannot but think that it would do you some good in the eyes of the public were a letter signed by me to appear in the English papers, saying that the Sergeant Blunt of my regiment, who has so signally distinguished himself, is really Captain Mervyn, who in my opinion and that of my officers is a cruelly injured man. But we can talk over that when I see you again."

After the officer left the room, Ronald Mervyn sat for some time with his face buried in his hands. The colonel's words had greatly moved him.

Surely such a letter as that which Colonel Somerset had proposed to write would do much to clear him. He should never think of taking his own name again or re-entering any society in which he would be likely to be recognised, but with such a testimonial as that in his favour he might hope in some quiet place to live down the past, and should he again be recognised, could still hold up his head with such an honourable record as this to produce in his favour. Then his thoughts went back to England. What would Mary and her father say when they read such a letter in the paper? It would be no proof of his innocence, yet he felt sure that Mary would insist upon regarding it as such, and would hold that he had no right to keep her waiting for another four years.

Indeed he acknowledged to himself that if she did so he would have no right to refuse any longer to permit her to be mistress of her own fate.