The Curse of Carne's Hold Part 44

"But why not have come and told me at once when you made up your mind to do so?" Mr. Volkes asked. "Why delay it?"

"I was waiting, sir; I was waiting--but----" and she paused, "that secret is not my own; but I think, sir, that if you will go to Mr.

Armstrong, he will be able to tell you something you will be glad to know."

"Who is Mr. Armstrong?" Mr. Volkes asked, in some surprise.

"He is a gentleman who has been living in the village for the last four or five months, sir. I do not think there can be any harm in my telling you that he knows where Captain Mervyn is to be found."

"That is the very information we want at present. We must get Ronald Mervyn back among us as soon as we can; he has indeed been very hardly treated in the matter. I think, Miss Powlett, we will get you to put your story into the form of a sworn information. We may as well draw it up at once, and that will save you the trouble of coming up here again."

This was accordingly done, and Ruth Powlett walked back to the village, leaving Mr. Volkes and the two other gentlemen to draw up a formal report of the confession made by Reginald Carne.

Ruth Powlett went straight to the cottage occupied by the Armstrongs.

"What is your news, Ruth?" Mary said, as she entered. "I can see by your face that you have something important to tell us."

"I have, indeed," Ruth replied. "I have just been up to Mr. Volkes, the magistrate, and have told him all I knew."

"What induced you to do that, Ruth?" Mary asked, in surprise. "I thought you had quite settled to say nothing about it until we heard from Captain Mervyn."

"They knew all about it before I told them, and only sent for me to confirm the story. Mr. Carne, before he died last night, made a full confession before Mr. Volkes, Dr. Arrowsmith, and Mr. Vickery. It was he who in his madness killed his sister, and who placed George Forester's knife by the bedside, and Captain Mervyn's glove on the gra.s.s, to throw suspicion on them. Captain Mervyn and George Forester are both innocent."

The news was so sudden and unexpected that it was some time before Mary Armstrong could sufficiently recover herself to ask questions. The news that Ronald was proved to be innocent was not so startling as it would have been had she not previously believed that they were already in a position to clear him; but the knowledge that his innocence would now be publicly proclaimed in a day or two, filled her with happiness. She was glad, too, for Ruth's sake that George Forester had not committed this terrible crime; and yet there was a slight feeling of disappointment that she herself had had no hand in clearing her lover, and that this had come about in an entirely different way to what she had expected.

Mr. Volkes and the clergyman called that afternoon, and had a long talk with Mr. Armstrong, and the following day a thrill of excitement was caused throughout the country by the publication in the papers of the confession of Reginald Carne. Dr. Arrowsmith certified that, although Reginald Carne was unquestionably insane, and probably had been so for some years, he had no hesitation in saying that he was perfectly conscious at the time he made the confession, and that the statement might be believed as implicitly as if made by a wholly sane man. In addition to this certificate and the confession, the three gentlemen signed a joint declaration to the effect that the narrative was absolutely confirmed by other facts, especially by the statement made by Miss Powlett, without her being in any way aware of the confession of Reginald Carne. This, they pointed out, fully confirmed his story on all points, and could leave no shadow of doubt in the minds of any one that Reginald Carne had, under the influence of madness, taken his sister's life, and had then, with the cunning so commonly present in insanity, thrown suspicion upon two wholly innocent persons.

The newspapers, commenting on the story, remarked strongly upon the cruel injustice that had been inflicted upon Captain Mervyn, and expressed the hope that he would soon return to take his place again in the county, uniting in his person the estate of the Mervyns and the Carnes. There were some expressions of strong reprobation at the concealment by Ruth Powlett of the knife she had found in Miss Carne's room. One of the papers, however, admitted that "Perhaps altogether it is fortunate now that the girl concealed them. Had the facts now published in her statement been given, they would at once have convinced every one that Captain Mervyn did not commit the crime with which he was charged, but at the same time they might have brought another innocent man to the scaffold. Upon the whole, then, although her conduct in concealing this important news is most reprehensible, it must be admitted that, in the interests of justice, it is fortunate she kept silent."

The sensation caused in Carnesford by the publication of this news was tremendous. Fortunately, Ruth Powlett was not there to become the centre of talk, for she had that morning been carried off by Mr. Armstrong and Mary to stay with them for a while in London. The cottage was shut up, and upon the following day a cart arrived from Plymouth to carry off the furniture, which had been only hired by the month. The evening before leaving, Mr. Armstrong had intercepted Hiram Powlett on his way to the snuggery, and taking him up to the cottage, where Ruth was spending the evening with Mary, informed him on the way of the strange discovery that had been made, and Ruth's share in it.

"I trust, Mr. Powlett," he said, "that you will not be angry with your daughter. She was placed in a terrible position, having the option of either denouncing as a murderer a man she had loved, or permitting another to lie under the imputation of guilt. And you must remember that she was prepared to come forward at the trial and tell the truth about the matter had Captain Mervyn been found guilty. No doubt she acted wrongly; but she has suffered terribly, and I think that as my daughter has forgiven her for allowing Captain Mervyn to suffer for her silence, you may also do so."

Hiram Powlett had uttered many expressions of surprise and concern as he listened to the story. It seemed to him very terrible that his girl should have all the time been keeping a secret of such vital importance.

He now said in a tone of surprise:

"I don't understand you, Mr. Armstrong, about your daughter. What has Miss Mary to do with forgiving? How has she been injured?"

"I don't know that upon the whole she has been injured," Mr. Armstrong said. "At least, I am sure she does not consider so. Still, I think she has something to forgive, for the fact is she is engaged to be married to Captain Mervyn, and would have been his wife a year ago had he not been resolved never to marry so long as this cloud remained over him."

Hiram Powlett was so greatly surprised at this news that his thoughts were for a moment diverted from Ruth's misdemeanours. Captain Mervyn, the owner of the Hall, and now of the Carne estate also, was a very great man in the eyes of the people of Carnesford, and the news that he was engaged to be married to the girl who was a friend of his daughter's, and who had several times taken tea at the mill, was almost bewildering to him.

"I dare say you are surprised," Mr. Armstrong said, quietly, "but you see we are not exactly what we appear. We came here somewhat under false colours, to try and find out about this murder, and in the hope we might discover some proofs of Captain Mervyn's innocence. Now we have been successful we shall go up to London and there await Captain Mervyn's return. I have been talking it over with my daughter, and if you and Mrs. Powlett offer no opposition, we propose to take Ruth away to stay with us for two or three months. It will be pleasant for all parties.

Your girl and mine are fond of each other, and Ruth will be a nice companion for Mary. The change will do your daughter good. She has for a long time been suffering greatly, and fresh scenes and objects of interest will take her mind off the past, and lastly, by the time she returns here, the gossip and talk that will arise when all this is known, will have died away."

"It is very good of you to think of it, Mr. Armstrong," Hiram Powlett said, "and it will be a fine thing for Ruth. Of course, she has been wrong, very wrong; but she must have suffered very much all these months. I told you I thought she had something on her mind, but I never thought it was like this. Well, well, I shan't say anything to her. I never was good at scolding her when she was a child, and I think she has been severely punished for this already."

"I think so too," Mr. Armstrong agreed; "and now let us go in. I told her that I should speak to you this evening, and she must be waiting anxiously for you."

When they entered, Ruth rose timidly.

"Oh! father"--she began.

"There, don't say any more about it, Ruth," Hiram interrupted, taking her tenderly in his arms. "My poor girl, you have had a hard time of it.

Why didn't you tell me all at first?"

"I could not, father," she sobbed. "You know--you know--how you were set against him."

"Well, that is so, Ruth, and I should have been still more set against him if I had known the rights of that fall of yours upon the hill; but there, we won't say anything more about it. You have been punished for your fault, child, and I hope that when you come back again to us from the jaunt that Mr. Armstrong is going to be good enough to take you, you will be just as you were before all this trouble came upon you."

And so the next morning Mr. Armstrong, his daughter, and Ruth went up to London.

Two months later, Mary received Ronald's letter, telling of George Forester's death, and of his own disappointment at finding his hopes of clearing himself dashed to the ground. Mary broke the news of Forester's death to Ruth; she received it quietly.

"I am sorry," she said, "but he has been nothing to me for a long time now, and he could never have been anything to me again. I am sorry," she repeated, wiping her eyes, "that the boy I played with is gone, but for the man, I think it is, perhaps, better so. He died fighting bravely, and as a soldier should. I fear he would never have made a good man had he lived."

A month later, Ronald himself returned. The war was virtually over when he received the letters from Mary Armstrong and Mr. Volkes, telling him that he was cleared at last, and he had no trouble in obtaining his discharge at once. He received the heartiest congratulations from his former officers, and a perfect ovation from the men, as he said good-bye to them. At Plymouth he received letters telling him where Mary and her father were staying in London, and on landing he at once proceeded to town by train, after telegraphing to his sisters to meet him there.

A fortnight later a quiet wedding took place, Ronald's sisters and Ruth Powlett acting as bridesmaids, an honour that, when Ruth returned home immediately after the ceremony, effectually silenced the tongues of the village gossips. Ronald Mervyn and his wife went for a month's tour on the Continent, Mr. Armstrong joining them in Paris a few days after the marriage; while the Miss Mervyns went down to Devons.h.i.+re to prepare the Hall for the reception of its owner. Colonel Somerset had not forgotten his promise, and two or three days after Ronald's return, the letter stating how Captain Mervyn had distinguished himself during the Kaffir War under the name of Sergeant Blunt went the round of the papers.

The skeleton walls of Carne's Hold were at once pulled down, the garden was rooted up, and the whole site planted with trees, and this was by Ronald's orders carried out so expeditiously that when he returned with his bride all trace of The Hold had vanished.

Never in the memory of South Devons.h.i.+re had there been such rejoicings as those that greeted Ronald Mervyn and his wife on their return home.

The tenantry of his two estates, now joined, all a.s.sembled at the station, and scarce a man from Carnesford was absent. Triumphal arches had been erected, and the gentry for many miles round drove in to receive them, as an expression at once of their satisfaction that Ronald Mervyn had been cleared from the cloud that hung over him, and, to some extent, of their regret that they should ever for a moment have believed him guilty.

Reuben Claphurst's prediction was verified. With the destruction of Carne's Hold the curse of the Spanish lady ceased to work, and no trace of the family scourge has ever shown itself in the blood of the somewhat numerous family of Ronald Mervyn. The tragic story is now almost forgotten, and it is only among the inhabitants of the village at the foot of the hill that the story of the curse of Carne's Hold is sometimes related.

THE END.