The Dash for Khartoum Part 7

"There will be no occasion to say anything for a day or two beyond the fact that you are obliged to go home suddenly. I shall only say Clinton, but it will naturally be supposed that I mean both of you. If it gets out that you have gone alone, which it may do, although I shall give strict orders to the contrary, I shall of course mention that we fear that your brother got his head hurt in that football match, and that he has taken up some strange ideas and has gone off. But it is hardly likely that the matter will leak out in any way until you return, or I hear from you. I think you can make yourself quite easy on that score."

It was half-past eleven when Rupert Clinton reached home. On the way he had thought over how he had best break the news quietly to his father, and he got out of the trap that had driven him from the station at the lodge, and made a long circuit so as to reach the stable without being seen from the front windows of the house. He went at once to the old coachman, who was a great ally of the boys. The man uttered an exclamation of astonishment at seeing him.

"Why, Master Rupert, I thought that you were not coming home for another fortnight. Well, you have given me a start!"

"Look here, Fellows, I have come to see my father about a serious matter, and I want to see him before I see my mother."

"Nothing the matter with Master Edgar, I hope, sir?"

"Yes, it is about him; but I will tell you presently, Fellows, I don't want to lose a minute now. Please go into the house and get my father to come out at once to the stables. Make any excuse you like to bring him out, and as you come along you can tell him I am here."

In five minutes Captain Clinton hurried into the saddle-room, where Rupert was standing. He was pale and agitated.

"What is the matter, Rupert,--has anything happened to Edgar? I know that it must be something very serious or you would never come like this."

"It is serious, father, very serious;" and he told him what had happened, and handed him the letter that Edgar had left. "You see he has evidently gone out of his mind, father."

Captain Clinton ran his eye over the letter and gave an exclamation of surprise and grief, then he stood for a minute covering his face with his hand. When he removed it Rupert saw that his eyes were filled with tears. "Poor boy!" he murmured, "I see that we have made a terrible mistake, although we did it for the best."

"A mistake, father! Why, is it possible, can it be true that--"

"That Edgar is not your brother, my boy? Yes, it is certain that he is not your brother, though whether he or you is our son we know not."

Rupert stood speechless with astonishment. "One of us not your son!" he said at last in a broken voice. "Oh, father, how can that be?"

"It happened thus, Rupert," Captain Clinton said, and then told him the story of the confusion that had arisen between the children. He then went on: "You see, Rupert, we hoped, your mother and I, at first that we should find out as you grew up, by the likeness one of you might develop to your mother or myself, which was our child; but for some years now, my boy, I have feared rather than hoped to discover a likeness, and have been glad that neither of you took after either of us, as far as we could see. We loved you equally, and could not bear the thought of losing either of you. We had two sons instead of one, that was all; and had one been proved to be ours, we should have lost the other. We intended to tell you in a short time how the matter stood, and that while one was our adopted son and the other our own, we neither knew nor cared which was which, loving you both equally and regarding you both as our own. Indeed we should never have told you about it, had it not been that as the story of the confusion at your birth was known to a great many men who were at that time in India, it was almost sure to come to your ears sooner or later. Had we ever dreamt that it would come like this, of course we should have told you long ago. But how can Edgar have learnt it? Still more, how can anyone have been able to tell him--what even we do not know--that he is not our son?"

"You will know when the letter arrives by the next post, father. But now I have heard the story, I think it must have been told him by a woman;"

and he related how they had been watched by a woman who was a stranger to them.

"What was she like, Rupert?"

Rupert described her as well as he was able.

"I have no doubt that it was Mrs. Humphreys, Rupert; she would be about the age you describe, and, allowing for the seventeen years that have pa.s.sed since I have seen her, like her in appearance. But we had better go in to your mother now, she must be told. I will go in first and break it to her. Of course there is nothing else that can be done until we get Edgar's letter. I will send a man off on horseback to the post-office, we shall get it an hour earlier than if we wait for the postman to bring it."

It was half an hour before Captain Clinton came out from the drawing-room and called Rupert in. The boy had been telling the news to Madge, having asked his father if he should do so. She had been terribly distressed, and Rupert himself had completely broken down.

"You can come in now, both of you," Captain Clinton said. "Of course, your mother is dreadfully upset, so try and keep up for her sake."

Mrs. Clinton embraced Rupert in silence, she was too affected for speech.

"Do you think," she said after a time in broken tones, "Edgar can have gone with this woman?"

"I don't know, mother; I have not been able to think about it. I should not think he could. I know if it had been me I should have hated her even if she was my mother, for coming after all this time to rob me of your love and father's. I should run away as he has done, I daresay, though I don't know about that; but I would not have gone with her."

"I cannot make out how she could have known which was which," Captain Clinton said, walking up and down the room; "we have never seen any likeness in either of you to ourselves, but it is possible she may have seen a likeness in Edgar to her husband. By the way," he said suddenly, "I must send off a telegram to River-Smith; he, of course, will be most anxious." He took a telegram form from his desk, and after a minute's hesitation wrote: "No anxiety as to Edgar's mind can account for his conduct--will write fully to-morrow after I have received his letter--shall keep Rupert here some days." Then putting it in an envelope, he rang the bell and directed the servant to give it to one of the grooms with orders to ride with it at once to the nearest telegraph station.

"Now, Rupert, the best thing you and Madge can do is to go out for a walk. You can know nothing more until the letter arrives, and it will be better for you to be moving about than to be sitting here quietly. Your mother had best lie down until the letter comes; it cannot be here until five o'clock."

Madge and Rupert as they walked talked the matter over in every possible light, the only conclusion at which they arrived being that whoever might be Edgar's father and mother they would always regard him as their brother, and should love him just the same as before.

"I cannot think why he ran away!" Madge exclaimed over and over again.

"I am sure I should not run away if I found that I wasn't father and mother's real daughter. They have been everything to me, and I could not love them a bit less if I did know that I was their adopted child instead of being their real one."

"No, certainly not," Rupert agreed; "but then, you see, Madge, Edgar may have thought that he had been adopted, not as childless people sometimes adopt children, but because they could not help adopting him."

"But that wasn't his fault, Rupert."

"No, that wasn't his fault; but I can understand him feeling that it made a great difference. Oh, I wonder what he is doing! I expect he went up to London by the night mail; he would have caught that at Glo'ster.

But what could he do when he got there?"

"Oh, I am not thinking about that!" the girl said. "I am thinking what he must feel when he knows father and mother are not his father and mother, and that you and I are not his brother and sister. It must be awful, Rupert."

"It must be awful," Rupert agreed. "I do not know what I should have done had it been me, and you know it might just as well have been me as Edgar. I wish it were five o'clock!"

The afternoon seemed indeed endless to them all. For the last half-hour Rupert and Madge sat at the window gazing across the park for the first sight of the horseman, and at last they exclaimed simultaneously, "There he comes!"

Captain Clinton, who had been sitting by the sofa holding his wife's hand in his, rose. "I will go and meet him," he said. "Rupert and Madge, you had better go into the library until I call you. I must read it over first to your mother."

Without a word they went into the other room, and from the window watched Captain Clinton as he walked quickly down the drive to meet the groom. They saw him take the letter, and, as the man rode on towards the stables, open it and stand reading it.

"It is very bad," Madge said almost in a whisper, as she saw her father drop his hand despondently to his side, and then with bent head walk towards the house. Not another word was spoken until Captain Clinton opened the door and called them. Madge had been crying silently, and the tears were running fast down Rupert's cheeks as he sat looking out on to the park.

"You had better read the letter here," Captain Clinton said. "I may tell you what I did not mention before, that there was a strong opinion among many at the time, that the confusion between the children arose, not from accident, as was said, but was deliberate, and this letter confirms that view. This is what has. .h.i.t Edgar so hard."

The letter was as follows:--

"My dearest father, for I cannot call you anything else, I have just heard about my birth from a woman who calls herself my mother, and who, I suppose, has a right to do so, though certainly I shall never call her or think of her so. She has told me about her child and yours getting mixed, and how you brought both up in hopes of finding out some day which was which.

"Rupert and I had noticed for some days a woman looking at us, and she met me this afternoon and said she had some thing of extreme importance to tell me. I went with her and she told me the story, and said that I was her son and not yours. I asked her how she knew me from Rupert, and she said that one of us had a small mole on the shoulder. I knew that Rupert had a tiny mole there, and she said that that was the mark by which she knew your son from hers.

"Then, father, she told me that she had done it all on purpose, and had sacrificed herself in order that I might benefit from it. This was all horrible! And then she actually proposed that I should not only keep silent about this, but offered to come forward and declare that it was her son who had the mole on his shoulder, so that I might get the whole and Rupert none. I don't want to say what I felt. I only told her I would think it over. I have been thinking it over, and I am going away.

My dear father and mother, for I shall always think of you so, I thank you for all your love and kindness, which I have received through a horrible fraud. If it had all been an accident, and you had found out for yourselves by the likeness that Rupert was your son, I do not think that I should have minded, at least nothing like so much. I should, of course, have been very grieved that you were not my father and mother, and that Rupert and Madge were not my brother and sister; but it would have been n.o.body's fault, and I am sure that you would all still have loved me. But to know that it has been a wicked fraud, that I have been an impostor palmed upon you, that there has been a plot and conspiracy to rob you, and that I have a mother who not only did this, but who could propose to me to go on deceiving you, and even to join in a fresh fraud and to swindle Rupert, is so awful that there is nothing for me to do but to go away.

"I feel sure you will all be sorry, and that though I am not your son you would go on treating me as if I were a younger brother of Rupert's.

But I could not bear it, father. I could not accept anything from you, for I should feel that it was the result of this wicked fraud, that it was what this woman, I cannot call her mother, had schemed for me to get. Some day when I have made my way, and when all this may not hurt me so horribly as it seems to do now, I will come and see you all if you will let me, to thank you all for the love and kindness that should never have been mine. But that will not be till I am in a position when I can want nothing, for I feel now that were I dying of hunger I could not accept a crust from your hands, for if I did so I should feel I was a party to this abominable fraud. G.o.d bless you, dearest father and mother and Rupert and Madge!--Your unhappy Edgar."

CHAPTER IV.

BACK AT SCHOOL.

It was a long time after they had, with many breaks, read Edgar's letter to the end before Rupert and Madge could compose themselves sufficiently to accompany their father into the drawing-room. They again broke down when they met their mother; and it was not until Captain Clinton said, "Come, we must all pull ourselves together and see what is to be done, and talk the whole matter over calmly," that by a great effort they recovered their composure. "Now, in the first place, we must try to find Edgar. He has got twenty-four hours' start of us, but that is not very much. I suppose you think, Rupert, that there is no doubt that he went up to town by the night train."

"I have no doubt that he got away in time to do so, father; but of course he might have gone by the down train, which pa.s.ses through Gloucester somewhere about the same time."