Jim heaved a sigh as he resumed his trudge. Life would not be long enough for him, if Eunice…if I—
He shook the thought from him and climbed steadily to his destination.
Hill Farm was a small house standing in about three acres of land, devoted mainly to market garden. There was no Mr. Weatherwale. He had been dead for twelve years, Jim learnt at the inn, but the old lady had a son who assisted in the management of the farm.
Jim strode out to what was to prove a pleasant walk through the glories of a Somerset countryside, and he found Mrs. Weatherwale in the act of butter-making. She had a pasture and a dozen cows, as she informed him later.
“I don’t want to talk about Jane Groat,” she said decisively, when he broached the object of his visit. “I’ll never forgive that boy of hers for the trouble he gave me, apart from the insult. I gave up my work and had to hire a woman to take charge here and look after the boy—there’s my fare to London—”
“I dare say all that could be arranged, Mrs. Weatherwale,” said Jim with a laugh. “Mr. Digby Groat will certainly repay you.”
“Are you a friend of his?” she asked suspiciously, “because if you are—”
“I am not a friend of his,” said Jim. “On the contrary, I dislike him probably as much as you do.”
“That is not possible,” she said, “for I would as soon see the devil as that yellow-faced monkey.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and led the way to the sunny little parlour.
“Sit ye down, Mr. What-you-may-call-it,” she said briskly.
“Steele,” murmured Jim.
“Mr. Steele, is it? Just sit down there, will you?” She indicated a window-seat covered with bright chintz. “Now tell me just what you want to know.”
“I want to know something about Jane Groat’s youth, who were her friends, and what you know about Digby Groat?”
Mrs. Weatherwale shook her head.
“I can’t tell you much about that, sir,” she said. “Her father was old Danton who owned Kennett Hall. You can see it from here “—she pointed across the country to a grey mass of buildings that showed above the hill-crest.
“Jane frequently came over to the farm. My father had a bigger one in those days. All Hollyhock Hill belonged to him, but he lost his money through horses, drat them!” she said good-humouredly, and apparently had no particular grievance against the thoroughbred race-horse.
“And we got quite friendly. It was unusual, I admit, she being a lady of quality and me being a farmer’s daughter; but lord! I’ve got stacks of letters from her, or rather, I had. I burnt them this morning.”
“You’ve burnt them?” said Jim in dismay. “I was hoping that I should find something I wanted to know from those.”
She shook her head.
“There’s nothing there you would find, except a lot of silly nonsense about a man she fell in love with, a Spanish man.”
“The Marquis of Estremeda?” suggested Jim.
She closed her lips.
“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,” she said. “I’m not going to scandalize at my time of life, and at her time of life too. We’ve all made mistakes in our time, and I dare say you’ll make yours, if you haven’t made them already. Which reminds me, Mr.—I don’t remember your name?”
“Steele,” said Jim patiently.
“Well, that reminds me there’s a duck of a girl in that house. How Jane can allow a beautiful creature like that to come into contact with a beast like Digby, I don’t know. But that is all by the way. No, I burnt the letters, except a few. I kept one or two to prove that a boy doesn’t change his character when he grows up. Why, it may be,” she said that good-humouredly, “when Digby is hanged the newspaper reporters would like to see these, and they will be worth money to me!”
Jim laughed. Her good-humour was infectious, and when after an absence of five minutes she returned to the room with a small box covered with faded green plush, he asked; “You know nothing of Digby Groat’s recent life?”
She shook her head.
“I only knew him as a boy, and a wicked little devil he was, the sort of boy who would pull a fly’s wings off for the sport of it. I used to think those stories about boys were lies, but it was true about him. Do you know what his chief delight was as a boy?”
“No, I don’t,” smiled Jim. “It was something unpleasant, I am sure.”
“To come on a Friday afternoon to Fanner Johnson’s and see the pigs killed for market,” she said grimly. “That’s the sort of boy he was.”
She took out a bundle of faded letters and fixing her large steel-rimmed spectacles, read them over.
“Here’s one,” she said; “that will show you the kind of kid he was.”
“I flogged Digby to-day. He tied a bunch of crackers round the kitten’s neck and let them off. The poor little creature had to be killed.”
“That’s Digby,” said Mrs. Weatherwale, looking over her glasses. “There isn’t a letter here which doesn’t say that she had to beat him for something or other,” she read on, reading half to herself, and Jim heard the word “baby.”
“What baby was that?”
She looked at him.
“It wasn’t her baby,” she said.
“But whose was it?” insisted Jim.
“It was a baby she was looking after.”
“Her sister-in-law’s?” demanded Jim.
The woman nodded.
“Yes, Lady Mary Danton’s, poor little soul—he did a cruel thing to her too.”
Jim dare not speak, and without encouragement Mrs. Weatherwale said: “Listen to this, if you want to understand the kind of little devil Digby was.”
“I had to give Digby a severe flogging to-day. Really, the child is naturally cruel. What do you imagine he did? He took a sixpence, heated it in the fire and put it on the poor baby’s wrist. It left a circular burn.”
“Great God!”-said Jim, springing to his feet, his face white. “A circular burn on the wrist?”
She looked at him in astonishment.
“Yes, why?”
So that was the explanation, and the heiress to the Danton millions was not Digby Groat or his mother, but the girl who was called Eunice Weldon, or, as the world would know her, Dorothy Danton!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EUNICE was Lady Mary’s daughter! There was no doubt of it, no possible doubt. His instinct had proved to be right. How had she got to South Africa? He had yet to find a solution to the mystery.
Mrs. Weatherwale’s rosy face was a picture of astonishment. For a moment she thought her visitor had gone mad.
“Will you read that piece again about Digby Groat burning the baby’s wrist,” said Jim slowly, and after a troubled glance at him, she complied.
“The little baby was lost soon after,” she explained. “It went out with a nurse; one of Jane’s girls took it out in a boat, and the boat must have been run down by some ship.”
And then a light dawned upon Jim.
What ships passed to the east of the Goodwins (for it was near there that the disaster must have occurred) on the day of the tragedy? He must find it out immediately and he must take the letter from Jane to her friend in order to place it before Septimus Salter. Here, however, the woman demurred, and Jim, sitting down again, told her plainly and frankly all his fears and suspicions.
“What, that beautiful girl I saw in Jane’s house?” said Mrs. Weatherwale in amazement. “You don’t tell me!”
“I do,” said Jim. “She has the mark on her wrist, a burn, and now I remember! Mrs. Groat knows she is the daughter of Lady Mary, too! It was the sight of that scar which brought about her stroke.”
“I don’t want any harm to happen to Jane, she hasn’t been a bad friend of mine, but it seems to me only justice to the young lady that she should have the letter. As a matter of fact, I nearly burnt it.”