"Come with me," I said.
So she wrapped herself in a long cloak – not of pink silk – and she put on a domino and I led her to Mr. Redman's office. And here I begged her to let me set down in writing what she had told me but in fewer words, while Mr. Redman stood over me and read what I wrote and as I wrote it.
"The story, your ladyship," he said, "is the most remarkable that I have ever heard. You will now, in the presence of witnesses – my clerk and one whom he will bring from the customhouse will serve. So – they will sign without knowing what the paper contains."
So she signed in the same bold running hand that we had seen in the registers.
"What next?" she asked.
"Why, madam, we have to consider the next step. It is obvious that the confession removes the whole of the difficulty, and explains what has hitherto seemed inexplicable. How, it was asked, could the place of the bride be filled at the last moment, and without previous knowledge that it would have to be filled? And who was the woman thus duly married and actually, though under a false name, made Countess of Fylingdale, who did not step forward and claim her rights? Now, madam, the question is answered. You knew, but my lord did not know, that the bride could not come to the church. You were there, therefore, to take her place. You joined in this conspiracy, and kept silence for the reasons contained in this document."
"Quite so. And now, sir. What next? Will you bring my lord to justice? Shall I have to give evidence against him?"
"Madam, I know not. You have done your best, not so much to repair a great wrong as to stop further wrong. If I understand matters aright it will be impossible to recover anything that has been taken."
"You might as well hope to recover a sack of coals that have been burned."
"Therefore, what we have to do first, is to stop further pillage. Next, I apprehend, we must make it clear that your signature in the register was false."
Lady Anastasia rose and put on her domino again.
"I am going back to London, sir. Mr. Pentecrosse knows my house where I am to be heard of for the present. It was a bad day's work when I was married in that pink silk cloak. It may prove a worse day's work when I confessed."
"Nay, madam," I said quietly, "can it be a bad day's work to stop a cruel and unfeeling robbery?"
"I have done my part, gentlemen, for good or for ill. In a few weeks or months the man would have beggared himself as well as that poor girl. Now he is beggared already. I know not what he will do, nor whither he will turn."
So I led her back to the Crown and that same day she took her departure and I have never seen her since. One letter, it is true, I had from her of which I will tell you in due course.
Then I returned to Mr. Redman.
"Jack," he said, "I am going without further discussion to warn the manager not to send any more money to these attorneys and to disregard their orders. I shall write at once warning them that we have now in our hands clear proof that my client is not married to Lord Fylingdale, and that we are considering in what manner we should proceed with regard to the large sums that have been remitted to his orders. This, Jack, is the way of lawyers. We write such a letter knowing that we shall not proceed further in this direction, for the scandal would be very great and the profit would be very small. Besides, there is the awkward fact that we made no protest, but submitted. Yet sure and certain I am that the other side will not dare to go into court, being conscious of guilt, yet not knowing how much we have learned."
"It seems a tame ending that villainy should get off unpunished."
"Not unpunished, Jack. You young men look to see the lightning strike the wicked man. That is not the way, believe me. He never goes unpunished, though he may be forgiven. I look not for the flash of lightning to strike this man dead, but I look for the vengeance of the Lord – perhaps to-day, perhaps to-morrow."
He read over again the paper signed by Lady Anastasia. "It is a strange confession," he said. "There is the wrath of a jealous woman in it. He might have beaten her and cuffed her; he might have robbed her; and she would have forgiven him. But he has followed after strange goddesses. She spoke about the jewels. I suppose that he has long since given them to these strange goddesses. Hence her repentance. Hence her revenge. Jack, I think we ought to have the other confederate's confession – that of the man Purdon. He wanted £12,000 for it at first. He then came down to £6,000; he now offers it for relief of his present necessities. I will send my attorney to see him. The vicar refuses to have any dealings with scoundrels. In this case, however, it might be politic to traffic with him. We will offer him £100 for a full confession. I will instruct my attorney what particulars to expect."
My story is nearly finished. Molly recovered her freedom with the loss of by far the greater part of her fortune. She had, indeed, nothing left except her fleet and the trade carried on by the firm in which she was sole partner. Still she remained the richest woman in the town.
There was no difficulty in procuring from the Reverend Mr. Purdon a full statement of the conspiracy. It was, of course, to be expected that he should represent Lord Fylingdale as the contriver and the proposer of the abominable design. However, he gave under safeguards of witness and signature a plain recital of what had happened, in which he was borne out by the other confession in our hands.
And here follows the letter from the Lady Anastasia.
"My dear Jack," she said, "news reaches Lynn slowly if it gets there at all. Therefore I hasten to inform you that an end has come – perhaps the end that you would desire. My lord is no more. I am a widow. Yet I mourn not. My husband in name during the last twelve months has acted as one no longer in command of himself. I cannot think, indeed, that he has been in his right mind since he entered upon that great crime of which you know. He would have gone from bad to worse, and I should have suffered more and still more. He killed himself. He placed the muzzle of a pistol within his mouth and so killed himself.
"It was yesterday. I went to see him. I had to tell him what I had done. I expected he would kill me. Perhaps it would have been better had he done so.
"I found him with his attorney, a man named Bisse, whom I have seen with him frequently.
"'Pray, madam, take a chair. I am your humble servant. You can go, Mr. Bisse,' said my lord. 'You have my instructions. Order the manager to proceed with the sale of the ships.'
"'With submission, my lord. We can send him orders, but we can only make him obey by proceeding according to law. He finds excuses. He makes delays. He talks of sacrificing the ships to a forced sale.'
"'You will not proceed according to law, my lord,' I told him.
"'Why, madam?'
"'Because I have been to Lynn myself, and have explained certain points in connection with the marriage service in St. Nicholas church.'
"My lord looked at me in his cold way, as if neither surprised nor moved.
"'Mr. Bisse,' he said, 'I will communicate again with you.' So the attorney left us. Then he turned again to me.
"'My lord,' I repeated, 'I have made a statement of all the facts.'
"'I thank you, madam. I thank you with all my heart. Let me not detain you.'
"He said no more, and I rose. But the door was thrown open, and Mr. Purdon walked in without being announced.
"'Ha!' he said, seeing me, 'we are all three, then, together again. My lord, I will not waste your time. I have come to explain that since you have refused to perform your compact, you cannot complain if I have broken up the whole business.'
"'I thought I had ordered you out of my presence, sir.'
"'So you did. So you did. I have only come to say that I have this day drawn up a full confession of the conspiracy into which I was drawn by your lordship, deceived against my better judgment by the promise of a large sum of money.'
"Lord Fylingdale pointed to the door. 'You can go, sir,' he said. So the man Purdon obeyed and went away.
"Then he turned to me. 'Anastasia, we were friends once. I treated you shamefully in the matter of the jewels. Things have gone badly with me of late. I seem to have no luck. Perhaps I have, somehow, lost my judgment. That money has done me no good. Curse that scoundrel, Sam Semple! It is all over now. The game has been played. I have lost, I suppose. But every game comes to an end at last.' He talked unlike himself. 'You can go, Anastasia. You had better leave me. You have had your revenge. Let that consideration console you.'
"I said no more, but left him. It was in the afternoon. An hour later his people heard an explosion – they ran to find the cause. Lord Fylingdale was lying dead on the floor.
"So, Jack, we are all punished, and none of us can complain. For my own part I am going into the country where I have a small dower house. The solitude and the dullness will, I dare say, kill me, but I do not care about living any longer. – Anastasia."
She did, however, pass into a better mind. For I heard some time after that she had married the dean of the neighbouring cathedral, not under the name of Lady Fylingdale, which she never assumed, but that of her first husband.
As to the other confederates, the poet, the colonel, and the parson, I never heard anything more about them. Nor do I expect now that I ever shall.
The rest of Molly's history, dear reader, belongs to me and not to the world.