SHE took his hand, and began with all the art of persuasion that she possessed.
“One question, Geoffrey, before I say what I want to say. Lady Lundie has invited you to stay at Windygates. Do you accept her invitation? or do you go back to your brother’s in the evening?”
“I can’t go back in the evening—they’ve put a visitor into my room. I’m obliged to stay here. My brother has done it on purpose. Julius helps me when I’m hard up—and bullies me afterward. He has sent me here, on duty for the family. Somebody must be civil to Lady Lundie—and I’m the sacrifice.”
She took him up at his last word. “Don’t make the sacrifice,” she said. “Apologize to Lady Lundie, and say you are obliged to go back.”
“Why?”
“Because we must both leave this place to-day.”
There was a double objection to that. If he left Lady Lundie’s, he would fail to establish a future pecuniary claim on his brother’s indulgence. And if he left with Anne, the eyes of the world would see them, and the whispers of the world might come to his father’s ears.
“If we go away together,” he said, “good-by to my prospects, and yours too.”
“I don’t mean that we shall leave together,” she explained. “We will leave separately—and I will go first.”
“There will be a hue and cry after you, when you are missed.”
“There will be a dance when the croquet is over. I don’t dance—and I shall not be missed. There will be time, and opportunity to get to my own room. I shall leave a letter there for Lady Lundie, and a letter”—her voice trembled for a moment—“and a letter for Blanche. Don’t interrupt me! I have thought of this, as I have thought of every thing else. The confession I shall make will be the truth in a few hours, if it’s not the truth now. My letters will say I am privately married, and called away unexpectedly to join my husband. There will be a scandal in the house, I know. But there will be no excuse for sending after me, when I am under my husband’s protection. So far as you are personally concerned there are no discoveries to fear—and nothing which it is not perfectly safe and perfectly easy to do. Wait here an hour after I have gone to save appearances; and then follow me.”
“Follow you?” interposed Geoffrey. “Where?” She drew her chair nearer to him, and whispered the next words in his ear.
“To a lonely little mountain inn—four miles from this.”
“An inn!”
“Why not?”
“An inn is a public place.”
A movement of natural impatience escaped her—but she controlled herself, and went on as quietly as before:
“The place I mean is the loneliest place in the neighborhood. You have no prying eyes to dread there. I have picked it out expressly for that reason. It’s away from the railway; it’s away from the high-road: it’s kept by a decent, respectable Scotchwoman—”
“Decent, respectable Scotchwomen who keep inns,” interposed Geoffrey, “don’t cotton to young ladies who are traveling alone. The landlady won’t receive you.”
It was a well-aimed objection—but it missed the mark. A woman bent on her marriage is a woman who can meet the objections of the whole world, single-handed, and refute them all.
“I have provided for every thing,” she said, “and I have provided for that. I shall tell the landlady I am on my wedding-trip. I shall say my husband is sight-seeing, on foot, among the mountains in the neighborhood—”
“She is sure to believe that!” said Geoffrey.
“She is sure todisbelieve it, if you like. Let her! You have only to appear, and to ask for your wife—and there is my story proved to be true! She may be the most suspicious woman living, as long as I am alone with her. The moment you join me, you set her suspicions at rest. Leave me to do my part. My part is the hard one. Will you do yours?”
It was impossible to say No: she had fairly cut the ground from under his feet. He shifted his ground. Any thing rather than say Yes!
“I supposeyouknow how we are to be married?” he asked. “All I can say is—Idon’t.”
“You do!” she retorted. “You know that we are in Scotland. You know that there are neither forms, ceremonies, nor delays in marriage, here. The plan I have proposed to you secures my being received at the inn, and makes it easy and natural for you to join me there afterward. The rest is in our own hands. A man and a woman who wish to be married (in Scotland) have only to secure the necessary witnesses and the thing is done. If the landlady chooses to resent the deception practiced on her, after that, the landlady may do as she pleases. We shall have gained our object in spite of her—and, what is more, we shall have gained it without risk toyou.”
“Don’t lay it all on my shoulders,” Geoffrey rejoined. “You women go headlong at every thing. Say we are married. We must separate afterward—or how are we to keep it a secret?”
“Certainly. You will go back, of course, to your brother’s house, as if nothing had happened.”
“And what is to become ofyou?”
“I shall go to London.”
“What are you to do in London?”
“Haven’t I already told you that I have thought of every thing? When I get to London I shall apply to some of my mother’s old friends—friends of hers in the time when she was a musician. Every body tells me I have a voice—if I had only cultivated it. Iwillcultivate it! I can live, and live respectably, as a concert singer. I have saved money enough to support me, while I am learning—and my mother’s friends will help me, for her sake.”
So, in the new life that she was marking out, was she now unconsciously reflecting in herself the life of her mother before her. Here was the mother’s career as a public singer, chosen (in spite of all efforts to prevent it) by the child! Here (though with other motives, and under other circumstances) was the mother’s irregular marriage in Ireland, on the point of being followed by the daughter’s irregular marriage in Scotland! And here, stranger still, was the man who was answerable for it—the son of the man who had found the flaw in the Irish marriage, and had shown the way by which her mother was thrown on the world! “My Anne is my second self. She is not called by her father’s name; she is called by mine. She is Anne Silvester as I was. Will she end like Me?”—The answer to those words—the last words that had trembled on the dying mother’s lips—was coming fast. Through the chances and changes of many years, the future was pressing near—and Anne Silvester stood on the brink of it.
“Well?” she resumed. “Are you at the end of your objections? Can you give me a plain answer at last?”
No! He had another objection ready as the words passed her lips.
“Suppose the witnesses at the inn happen to know me?” he said. “Suppose it comes to my father’s ears in that way?”
“Suppose you drive me to my death?” she retorted, starting to her feet. “Your father shall know the truth, in that case—I swear it!”
He rose, on his side, and drew back from her. She followed him up. There was a clapping of hands, at the same moment, on the lawn. Somebody had evidently made a brilliant stroke which promised to decide the game. There was no security now that Blanche might not return again. There was every prospect, the game being over, that Lady Lundie would be free. Anne brought the interview to its crisis, without wasting a moment more.
“Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn,” she said. “You have bargained for a private marriage, and I have consented. Are you, or are you not, ready to marry me on your own terms?”
“Give me a minute to think!”
“Not an instant. Once for all, is it Yes, or No?”
He couldn’t say “Yes,” even then. But he said what was equivalent to it. He asked, savagely, “Where is the inn?”
She put her arm in his, and whispered, rapidly, “Pass the road on the right that leads to the railway. Follow the path over the moor, and the sheep-track up the hill. The first house you come to after that is the inn. You understand!”
He nodded his head, with a sullen frown, and took his pipe out of his pocket again.
“Let it alone this time,” he said, meeting her eye. “My mind’s upset. When a man’s mind’s upset, a man can’t smoke. What’s the name of the place?”
“Craig Fernie.”
“Who am I to ask for at the door?”
“For your wife.”
“Suppose they want you to give your name when you get there?”
“If I must give a name, I shall call myself Mrs., instead of Miss, Silvester. But I shall do my best to avoid giving any name. And you will do your best to avoid making a mistake, by only asking for me as your wife. Is there any thing else you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Be quick about it! What is it?”
“How am I to know you have got away from here?”
“If you don’t hear from me in half an hour from the time when I have left you, you may be sure I have got away. Hush!”
Two voices, in conversation, were audible at the bottom of the steps—Lady Lundie’s voice and Sir Patrick’s. Anne pointed to the door in the back wall of the summer-house. She had just pulled it to again, after Geoffrey had passed through it, when Lady Lundie and Sir Patrick appeared at the top of the steps.
LADY LUNDIE pointed significantly to the door, and addressed herself to Sir Patrick’s private ear.
“Observe!” she said. “Miss Silvester has just got rid of somebody.”
Sir Patrick deliberately looked in the wrong direction, and (in the politest possible manner) observed—nothing.
Lady Lundie advanced into the summer-house. Suspicious hatred of the governess was written legibly in every line of her face. Suspicious distrust of the governess’s illness spoke plainly in every tone of her voice.
“May I inquire, Miss Silvester, if your sufferings are relieved?”
“I am no better, Lady Lundie.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said I was no better.”
“You appear to be able to stand up. WhenIam ill, I am not so fortunate. I am obliged to lie down.”’
“I will follow your example, Lady Lundie. If you will be so good as to excuse me, I will leave you, and lie down in my own room.”
She could say no more. The interview with Geoffrey had worn her out; there was no spirit left in her to resist the petty malice of the woman, after bearing, as she had borne it, the brutish indifference of the man. In another moment the hysterical suffering which she was keeping down would have forced its way outward in tears. Without waiting to know whether she was excused or not, without stopping to hear a word more, she left the summer-house.
Lady Lundie’s magnificent black eyes opened to their utmost width, and blazed with their most dazzling brightness. She appealed to Sir Patrick, poised easily on his ivory cane, and looking out at the lawn-party, the picture of venerable innocence.
“After what I have already told you, Sir Patrick, of Miss Silvester’s conduct, may I ask whether you considerthatproceeding at all extraordinary?”
The old gentleman touched the spring in the knob of his cane, and answered, in the courtly manner of the old school:
“I consider no proceeding extraordinary Lady Lundie, which emanates from your enchanting sex.”
He bowed, and took his pinch. With a little jaunty flourish of the hand, he dusted the stray grains of snuff off his finger and thumb, and looked back again at the lawn-party, and became more absorbed in the diversions of his young friends than ever.
Lady Lundie stood her ground, plainly determined to force a serious expression of opinion from her brother-in-law. Before she could speak again, Arnold and Blanche appeared together at the bottom of the steps. “And when does the dancing begin?” inquired Sir Patrick, advancing to meet them, and looking as if he felt the deepest interest in a speedy settlement of the question.
“The very thing I was going to ask mamma,” returned Blanche. “Is she in there with Anne? Is Anne better?”
Lady Lundie forthwith appeared, and took the answer to that inquiry on herself.
“Miss Silvester has retired to her room. Miss Silvester persists in being ill. Have you noticed, Sir Patrick, that these half-bred sort of people are almost invariably rude when they are ill?”
Blanche’s bright face flushed up. “If you think Anne a half-bred person, Lady Lundie, you stand alone in your opinion. My uncle doesn’t agree with you, I’m sure.”
Sir Patrick’s interest in the first quadrille became almost painful to see. “Dotell me, my dear, whenisthe dancing going to begin?”
“The sooner the better,” interposed Lady Lundie; “before Blanche picks another quarrel with me on the subject of Miss Silvester.”
Blanche looked at her uncle. “Begin! begin! Don’t lose time!” cried the ardent Sir Patrick, pointing toward the house with his cane. “Certainly, uncle! Any thing thatyouwish!” With that parting shot at her step-mother, Blanche withdrew. Arnold, who had thus far waited in silence at the foot of the steps, looked appealingly at Sir Patrick. The train which was to take him to his newly inherited property would start in less than an hour; and he had not presented himself to Blanche’s guardian in the character of Blanche’s suitor yet! Sir Patrick’s indifference to all domestic claims on him—claims of persons who loved, and claims of persons who hated, it didn’t matter which—remained perfectly unassailable. There he stood, poised on his cane, humming an old Scotch air. And there was Lady Lundie, resolute not to leave him till he had seen the governess withhereyes and judged the governess withhermind. She returned to the charge—in spite of Sir Patrick, humming at the top of the steps, and of Arnold, waiting at the bottom. (Her enemies said, “No wonder poor Sir Thomas died in a few months after his marriage!” And, oh dear me, our enemiesaresometimes right!)
“I must once more remind you, Sir Patrick, that I have serious reason to doubt whether Miss Silvester is a fit companion for Blanche. My governess has something on her mind. She has fits of crying in private. She is up and walking about her room when she ought to be asleep. She posts her own letters—and,she has lately been excessively insolent to Me. There is something wrong. I must take some steps in the matter—and it is only proper that I should do so with your sanction, as head of the family.”
“Consider me as abdicating my position, Lady Lundie, in your favor.”
“Sir Patrick, I beg you to observe that I am speaking seriously, and that I expect a serious reply.”
“My good lady, ask me for any thing else and it is at your service. I have not made a serious reply since I gave up practice at the Scottish Bar. At my age,” added Sir Patrick, cunningly drifting into generalities, “nothing is serious—except Indigestion. I say, with the philosopher, ‘Life is a comedy to those who think, and tragedy to those who feel.’” He took his sister-in-law’s hand, and kissed it. “Dear Lady Lundie, why feel?”
Lady Lundie, who had never “felt” in her life, appeared perversely determined to feel, on this occasion. She was offended—and she showed it plainly.
“When you are next called on, Sir Patrick, to judge of Miss Silvester’s conduct,” she said, “unless I am entirely mistaken, you will find yourselfcompelledto consider it as something beyond a joke.” With those words, she walked out of the summer-house—and so forwarded Arnold’s interests by leaving Blanche’s guardian alone at last.
It was an excellent opportunity. The guests were safe in the house—there was no interruption to be feared, Arnold showed himself. Sir Patrick (perfectly undisturbed by Lady Lundie’s parting speech) sat down in the summer-house, without noticing his young friend, and asked himself a question founded on profound observation of the female sex. “Were there ever two women yet with a quarrel between them,” thought the old gentleman, “who didn’t want to drag a man into it? Let them dragmein, if they can!”
Arnold advanced a step, and modestly announced himself. “I hope I am not in the way, Sir Patrick?”
“In the way? of course not! Bless my soul, how serious the boy looks! Areyougoing to appeal to me as the head of the family next?”
It was exactly what Arnold was about to do. But it was plain that if he admitted it just then Sir Patrick (for some unintelligible reason) would decline to listen to him. He answered cautiously, “I asked leave to consult you in private, Sir; and you kindly said you would give me the opportunity before I left Windygates?”
“Ay! ay! to be sure. I remember. We were both engaged in the serious business of croquet at the time—and it was doubtful which of us did that business most clumsily. Well, here is the opportunity; and here am I, with all my worldly experience, at your service. I have only one caution to give you. Don’t appeal to me as ‘the head of the family.’ My resignation is in Lady Lundie’s hands.”
He was, as usual, half in jest, half in earnest. The wry twist of humor showed itself at the corners of his lips. Arnold was at a loss how to approach Sir Patrick on the subject of his niece without reminding him of his domestic responsibilities on the one hand, and without setting himself up as a target for the shafts of Sir Patrick’s wit on the other. In this difficulty, he committed a mistake at the outset. He hesitated.
“Don’t hurry yourself,” said Sir Patrick. “Collect your ideas. I can wait! I can wait!”
Arnold collected his ideas—and committed a second mistake. He determined on feeling his way cautiously at first. Under the circumstances (and with such a man as he had now to deal with), it was perhaps the rashest resolution at which he could possibly have arrived—it was the mouse attempting to outmanoeuvre the cat.
“You have been very kind, Sir, in offering me the benefit of your experience,” he began. “I want a word of advice.”
“Suppose you take it sitting?” suggested Sir Patrick. “Get a chair.” His sharp eyes followed Arnold with an expression of malicious enjoyment. “Wants my advice?” he thought. “The young humbug wants nothing of the sort—he wants my niece.”
Arnold sat down under Sir Patrick’s eye, with a well-founded suspicion that he was destined to suffer, before he got up again, under Sir Patrick’s tongue.
“I am only a young man,” he went on, moving uneasily in his chair, “and I am beginning a new life—”
“Any thing wrong with the chair?” asked Sir Patrick. “Begin your new life comfortably, and get another.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the chair, Sir. Would you—”
“Would I keep the chair, in that case? Certainly.”
“I mean, would you advise me—”
“My good fellow, I’m waiting to advise you. (I’m sure there’s something wrong with that chair. Why be obstinate about it? Why not get another?)”
“Please don’t notice the chair, Sir Patrick—you put me out. I want—in short—perhaps it’s a curious question—”
“I can’t say till I have heard it,” remarked Sir Patrick. “However, we will admit it, for form’s sake, if you like. Say it’s a curious question. Or let us express it more strongly, if that will help you. Say it’s the most extraordinary question that ever was put, since the beginning of the world, from one human being to another.”
“It’s this!” Arnold burst out, desperately. “I want to be married!”
“That isn’t a question,” objected Sir Patrick. “It’s an assertion. You say, I want to be married. And I say, Just so! And there’s an end of it.”
Arnold’s head began to whirl. “Would you advise me to get married, Sir?” he said, piteously. “That’s what I meant.”
“Oh! That’s the object of the present interview, is it? Would I advise you to marry, eh?”
(Having caught the mouse by this time, the cat lifted his paw and let the luckless little creature breathe again. Sir Patrick’s manner suddenly freed itself from any slight signs of impatience which it might have hitherto shown, and became as pleasantly easy and confidential as a manner could be. He touched the knob of his cane, and helped himself, with infinite zest and enjoyment, to a pinch of snuff.)
“Would I advise you to marry?” repeated Sir Patrick. “Two courses are open to us, Mr. Arnold, in treating that question. We may put it briefly, or we may put it at great length. I am for putting it briefly. What do you say?”
“What you say, Sir Patrick.”
“Very good. May I begin by making an inquiry relating to your past life?”
“Certainly!”
“Very good again. When you were in the merchant service, did you ever have any experience in buying provisions ashore?”
Arnold stared. If any relation existed between that question and the subject in hand it was an impenetrable relation tohim. He answered, in unconcealed bewilderment, “Plenty of experience, Sir.”
“I’m coming to the point,” pursued Sir Patrick. “Don’t be astonished. I’m coming to the point. What did you think of your moist sugar when you bought it at the grocer’s?”
“Think?” repeated Arnold. “Why, I thought it was moist sugar, to be sure!”
“Marry, by all means!” cried Sir Patrick. “You are one of the few men who can try that experiment with a fair chance of success.”
The suddenness of the answer fairly took away Arnold’s breath. There was something perfectly electric in the brevity of his venerable friend. He stared harder than ever.
“Don’t you understand me?” asked Sir Patrick.
“I don’t understand what the moist sugar has got to do with it, Sir.”
“You don’t see that?”
“Not a bit!”
“Then I’ll show you,” said Sir Patrick, crossing his legs, and setting in comfortably for a good talk “You go to the tea-shop, and get your moist sugar. You take it on the understanding that it is moist sugar. But it isn’t any thing of the sort. It’s a compound of adulterations made up to look like sugar. You shut your eyes to that awkward fact, and swallow your adulterated mess in various articles of food; and you and your sugar get on together in that way as well as you can. Do you follow me, so far?”
Yes. Arnold (quite in the dark) followed, so far.
“Very good,” pursued Sir Patrick. “You go to the marriage-shop, and get a wife. You take her on the understanding—let us say—that she has lovely yellow hair, that she has an exquisite complexion, that her figure is the perfection of plumpness, and that she is just tall enough to carry the plumpness off. You bring her home, and you discover that it’s the old story of the sugar over again. Your wife is an adulterated article. Her lovely yellow hair is—dye. Her exquisite skin is—pearl powder. Her plumpness is—padding. And three inches of her height are—in the boot-maker’s heels. Shut your eyes, and swallow your adulterated wife as you swallow your adulterated sugar—and, I tell you again, you are one of the few men who can try the marriage experiment with a fair chance of success.”
With that he uncrossed his legs again, and looked hard at Arnold. Arnold read the lesson, at last, in the right way. He gave up the hopeless attempt to circumvent Sir Patrick, and—come what might of it—dashed at a direct allusion to Sir Patrick’s niece.
“That may be all very true, Sir, of some young ladies,” he said. “There is one I know of, who is nearly related to you, and who doesn’t deserve what you have said of the rest of them.”
This was coming to the point. Sir Patrick showed his approval of Arnold’s frankness by coming to the point himself, as readily as his own whimsical humor would let him.
“Is this female phenomenon my niece?” he inquired.
“Yes, Sir Patrick.”
“May I ask how you know that my niece is not an adulterated article, like the rest of them?”
Arnold’s indignation loosened the last restraints that tied Arnold’s tongue. He exploded in the three words which mean three volumes in every circulating library in the kingdom.
“I love her.”
Sir Patrick sat back in his chair, and stretched out his legs luxuriously.
“That’s the most convincing answer I ever heard in my life,” he said.
“I’m in earnest!” cried Arnold, reckless by this time of every consideration but one. “Put me to the test, Sir! put me to the test!”
“Oh, very well. The test is easily put.” He looked at Arnold, with the irrepressible humor twinkling merrily in his eyes, and twitching sharply at the corners of his lips. “My niece has a beautiful complexion. Do you believe in her complexion?”
“There’s a beautiful sky above our heads,” returned Arnold. “I believe in the sky.”
“Do you?” retorted Sir Patrick. “You were evidently never caught in a shower. My niece has an immense quantity of hair. Are you convinced that it all grows on her head?”
“I defy any other woman’s head to produce the like of it!”
“My dear Arnold, you greatly underrate the existing resources of the trade in hair! Look into the shop-windows. When you next go to London pray look into the show-windows. In the mean time, what do you think of my niece’s figure?”
“Oh, come! there can’t be any doubt aboutthat!Any man, with eyes in his head, can see it’s the loveliest figure in the world.”
Sir Patrick laughed softly, and crossed his legs again.
“My good fellow, of course it is! The loveliest figure in the world is the commonest thing in the world. At a rough guess, there are forty ladies at this lawn-party. Every one of them possesses a beautiful figure. It varies in price; and when it’s particularly seductive you may swear it comes from Paris. Why, how you stare! When I asked you what you thought of my niece’s figure, I meant—how much of it comes from Nature, and how much of it comes from the Shop? I don’t know, mind! Do you?”
“I’ll take my oath to every inch of it!”
“Shop?”
“Nature!”
Sir Patrick rose to his feet; his satirical humor was silenced at last.
“If ever I have a son,” he thought to himself, “that son shall go to sea!” He took Arnold’s arm, as a preliminary to putting an end to Arnold’s suspense. “If Icanbe serious about any thing,” he resumed, “it’s time to be serious with you. I am convinced of the sincerity of your attachment. All I know of you is in your favor, and your birth and position are beyond dispute. If you have Blanche’s consent, you have mine.” Arnold attempted to express his gratitude. Sir Patrick, declining to hear him, went on. “And remember this, in the future. When you next want any thing that I can give you, ask for it plainly. Don’t attempt to mystifymeon the next occasion, and I will promise, on my side, not to mystifyyou.There, that’s understood. Now about this journey of yours to see your estate. Property has its duties, Master Arnold, as well as its rights. The time is fast coming when its rights will be disputed, if its duties are not performed. I have got a new interest in you, and I mean to see that you do your duty. It’s settled you are to leave Windygates to-day. Is it arranged how you are to go?”
“Yes, Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie has kindly ordered the gig to take me to the station, in time for the next train.”
“When are you to be ready?”
Arnold looked at his watch. “In a quarter of an hour.”
“Very good. Mind youareready. Stop a minute! you will have plenty of time to speak to Blanche when I have done with you. You don’t appear to me to be sufficiently anxious about seeing your own property.”
“I am not very anxious to leave Blanche, Sir—that’s the truth of it.”
“Never mind Blanche. Blanche is not business. They both begin with a B—and that’s the only connection between them. I hear you have got one of the finest houses in this part of Scotland. How long are you going to stay in Scotland? How long are you going to stay in it?”
“I have arranged (as I have already told you, Sir) to return to Windygates the day after to-morrow.”
“What! Here is a man with a palace waiting to receive him—and he is only going to stop one clear day in it!”
“I am not going to stop in it at all, Sir Patrick—I am going to stay with the steward. I’m only wanted to be present to-morrow at a dinner to my tenants—and, when that’s over, there’s nothing in the world to prevent my coming back here. The steward himself told me so in his last letter.”
“Oh, if the steward told you so, of course there is nothing more to be said!”
“Don’t object to my coming back! pray don’t, Sir Patrick! I’ll promise to live in my new house when I have got Blanche to live in it with me. If you won’t mind, I’ll go and tell her at once that it all belongs to her as well as to me.”
“Gently! gently! you talk as if you were married to her already!”
“It’s as good as done, Sir! Where’s the difficulty in the way now?”
As he asked the question the shadow of some third person, advancing from the side of the summer-house, was thrown forward on the open sunlit space at the top of the steps. In a moment more the shadow was followed by the substance—in the shape of a groom in his riding livery. The man was plainly a stranger to the place. He started, and touched his hat, when he saw the two gentlemen in the summer-house.
“What do you want?” asked Sir Patrick
“I beg your pardon, Sir; I was sent by my master—”
“Who is your master?”
“The Honorable Mr. Delamayn, Sir.”
“Do you mean Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?” asked Arnold.
“No, Sir. Mr. Geoffrey’s brother—Mr. Julius. I have ridden over from the house, Sir, with a message from my master to Mr. Geoffrey.”
“Can’t you find him?”
“They told me I should find him hereabouts, Sir. But I’m a stranger, and don’t rightly know where to look.” He stopped, and took a card out of his pocket. “My master said it was very important I should deliver this immediately. Would you be pleased to tell me, gentlemen, if you happen to know where Mr. Geoffrey is?”
Arnold turned to Sir Patrick. “I haven’t seen him. Have you?”
“I have smelt him,” answered Sir Patrick, “ever since I have been in the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the air—suggestive (disagreeably suggestive tomymind) of your friend, Mr. Delamayn.”
Arnold laughed, and stepped outside the summer-house.
“If you are right, Sir Patrick, we will find him at once.” He looked around, and shouted, “Geoffrey!”
A voice from the rose-garden shouted back, “Hullo!”
“You’re wanted. Come here!”
Geoffrey appeared, sauntering doggedly, with his pipe in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets.
“Who wants me?”
“A groom—from your brother.”
That answer appeared to electrify the lounging and lazy athlete. Geoffrey hurried, with eager steps, to the summer-house. He addressed the groom before the man had time to speak With horror and dismay in his face, he exclaimed:
“By Jupiter! Ratcatcher has relapsed!”
Sir Patrick and Arnold looked at each other in blank amazement.
“The best horse in my brother’s stables!” cried Geoffrey, explaining, and appealing to them, in a breath. “I left written directions with the coachman, I measured out his physic for three days; I bled him,” said Geoffrey, in a voice broken by emotion—“I bled him myself, last night.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir—” began the groom.
“What’s the use of begging my pardon? You’re a pack of infernal fools! Where’s your horse? I’ll ride back, and break every bone in the coachman’s skin! Where’s your horse?”
“If you please, Sir, it isn’t Ratcatcher. Ratcatcher’s all right.”
“Ratcatcher’s all right? Then what the devil is it?”
“It’s a message, Sir.”
“About what?”
“About my lord.”
“Oh! About my father?” He took out his handkerchief, and passed it over his forehead, with a deep gasp of relief. “I thought it was Ratcatcher,” he said, looking at Arnold, with a smile. He put his pipe into his mouth, and rekindled the dying ashes of the tobacco. “Well?” he went on, when the pipe was in working order, and his voice was composed again: “What’s up with my father?”
“A telegram from London, Sir. Bad news of my lord.”
The man produced his master’s card.
Geoffrey read on it (written in his brother’s handwriting) these words:
“I have only a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill—his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at the junction.”
Without a word to any one of the three persons present, all silently looking at him, Geoffrey consulted his watch. Anne had told him to wait half an hour, and to assume that she had gone if he failed to hear from her in that time. The interval had passed—and no communication of any sort had reached him. The flight from the house had been safely accomplished. Anne Silvester was, at that moment, on her way to the mountain inn.
ARNOLD was the first who broke the silence. “Is your father seriously ill?” he asked.
Geoffrey answered by handing him the card.
Sir Patrick, who had stood apart (while the question of Ratcatcher’s relapse was under discussion) sardonically studying the manners and customs of modern English youth, now came forward, and took his part in the proceedings. Lady Lundie herself must have acknowledged that he spoke and acted as became the head of the family, on t his occasion.
“Am I right in supposing that Mr. Delamayn’s father is dangerously ill?” he asked, addressing himself to Arnold.
“Dangerously ill, in London,” Arnold answered. “Geoffrey must leave Windygates with me. The train I am traveling by meets the train his brother is traveling by, at the junction. I shall leave him at the second station from here.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Lady Lundie was going to send you to the railway in a gig?”
“Yes.”
“If the servant drives, there will be three of you—and there will be no room.”
“We had better ask for some other vehicle,” suggested Arnold.
Sir Patrick looked at his watch. There was no time to change the carriage. He turned to Geoffrey. “Can you drive, Mr. Delamayn?”
Still impenetrably silent, Geoffrey replied by a nod of the head.
Without noticing the unceremonious manner in which he had been answered, Sir Patrick went on:
“In that case, you can leave the gig in charge of the station-master. I’ll tell the servant that he will not be wanted to drive.”
“Let me save you the trouble, Sir Patrick,” said Arnold.
Sir Patrick declined, by a gesture. He turned again, with undiminished courtesy, to Geoffrey. “It is one of the duties of hospitality, Mr. Delamayn, to hasten your departure, under these sad circumstances. Lady Lundie is engaged with her guests. I will see myself that there is no unnecessary delay in sending you to the station.” He bowed—and left the summer-house.
Arnold said a word of sympathy to his friend, when they were alone.
“I am sorry for this, Geoffrey. I hope and trust you will get to London in time.”
He stopped. There was something in Geoffrey’s face—a strange mixture of doubt and bewilderment, of annoyance and hesitation—which was not to be accounted for as the natural result of the news that he had received. His color shifted and changed; he picked fretfully at his finger-nails; he looked at Arnold as if he was going to speak—and then looked away again, in silence.
“Is there something amiss, Geoffrey, besides this bad news about your father?” asked Arnold.
“I’m in the devil’s own mess,” was the answer.
“Can I do any thing to help you?”
Instead of making a direct reply, Geoffrey lifted his mighty hand, and gave Arnold a friendly slap on the shoulder which shook him from head to foot. Arnold steadied himself, and waited—wondering what was coming next.
“I say, old fellow!” said Geoffrey.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when the boat turned keel upward in Lisbon Harbor?”
Arnold started. If he could have called to mind his first interview in the summer-house with his father’s old friend he might have remembered Sir Patrick’s prediction that he would sooner or later pay, with interest, the debt he owed to the man who had saved his life. As it was his memory reverted at a bound to the time of the boat-accident. In the ardor of his gratitude and the innocence of his heart, he almost resented his friend’s question as a reproach which he had not deserved.
“Do you think I can ever forget,” he cried, warmly, “that you swam ashore with me and saved my life?”
Geoffrey ventured a step nearer to the object that he had in view.
“One good turn deserves another,” he said, “don’t it?”
Arnold took his hand. “Only tell me!” he eagerly rejoined—“only tell me what I can do!”
“You are going to-day to see your new place, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you put off going till to-morrow?”
“If it’s any thing serious—of course I can!”
Geoffrey looked round at the entrance to the summer-house, to make sure that they were alone.
“You know the governess here, don’t you?” he said, in a whisper.
“Miss Silvester?”
“Yes. I’ve got into a little difficulty with Miss Silvester. And there isn’t a living soul I can ask to help me butyou.”
“You know I will help you. What is it?”
“It isn’t so easy to say. Never mind—you’re no saint either, are you? You’ll keep it a secret, of course? Look here! I’ve acted like an infernal fool. I’ve gone and got the girl into a scrape—”
Arnold drew back, suddenly understanding him.
“Good heavens, Geoffrey! You don’t mean—”
“I do! Wait a bit—that’s not the worst of it. She has left the house.”
“Left the house?”
“Left, for good and all. She can’t come back again.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s written to her missus. Women (hang ‘em!) never do these things by halves. She’s left a letter to say she’s privately married, and gone off to her husband. Her husband is—Me. Not that I’m married to her yet, you understand. I have only promised to marry her. She has gone on first (on the sly) to a place four miles from this. And we settled I was to follow, and marry her privately this afternoon. That’s out of the question now. While she’s expecting me at the inn I shall be bowling along to London. Somebody must tell her what has happened—or she’ll play the devil, and the whole business will burst up. I can’t trust any of the people here. I’m done for, old chap, unless you help me.”
Arnold lifted his hands in dismay. “It’s the most dreadful situation, Geoffrey, I ever heard of in my life!”
Geoffrey thoroughly agreed with him. “Enough to knock a man over,” he said, “isn’t it? I’d give something for a drink of beer.” He produced his everlasting pipe, from sheer force of habit. “Got a match?” he asked.
Arnold’s mind was too preoccupied to notice the question.
“I hope you won’t think I’m making light of your father’s illness,” he said, earnestly. “But it seems to me—I must say it—it seems to me that the poor girl has the first claim on you.”
Geoffrey looked at him in surly amazement.
“The first claim on me? Do you think I’m going to risk being cut out of my father’s will? Not for the best woman that ever put on a petticoat!”
Arnold’s admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle, jump—above all, who could swim—as few other men could perform those exercises in contemporary England. But that answer shook his faith. Only for the moment—unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.
“You know best,” he returned, a little coldly. “What can I do?”
Geoffrey took his arm—roughly as he took every thing; but in a companionable and confidential way.
“Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened. We’ll start from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I’ll drop you at the foot-path, in the gig. You can get on to your own place afterward by the evening train. It puts you to no inconvenience, and it’s doing the kind thing by an old friend. There’s no risk of being found out. I’m to drive, remember! There’s no servant with us, old boy, to notice, and tell tales.”
Even Arnold began to see dimly by this time that he was likely to pay his debt of obligation with interest—as Sir Patrick had foretold.
“What am I to say to her?” he asked. “I’m bound to do all I can do to help you, and I will. But what am I to say?”
It was a natural question to put. It was not an easy question to answer. What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn. Of what a man, under given social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.
“Say?” he repeated. “Look here! say I’m half distracted, and all that. And—wait a bit—tell her to stop where she is till I write to her.”
Arnold hesitated. Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of knowledge which is called “knowledge of the world,” his inbred delicacy of mind revealed to him the serious difficulty of the position which his friend was asking him to occupy as plainly as if he was looking at it through the warily-gathered experience of society of a man of twice his age.
“Can’t you write to her now, Geoffrey?” he asked.
“What’s the good of that?”
“Consider for a minute, and you will see. You have trusted me with a very awkward secret. I may be wrong—I never was mixed up in such a matter before—but to present myself to this lady as your messenger seems exposing her to a dreadful humiliation. Am I to go and tell her to her face: ‘I know what you are hiding from the knowledge of all the world;’ and is she to be expected to endure it?”
“Bosh!” said Geoffrey. “They can endure a deal more than you think. I wish you had heard how she bullied me, in this very place. My good fellow, you don’t understand women. The grand secret, in dealing with a woman, is to take her as you take a cat, by the scruff of the neck—”
“I can’t face her—unless you will help me by breaking the thing to her first. I’ll stick at no sacrifice to serve you; but—hang it!—make allowances, Geoffrey, for the difficulty you are putting me in. I am almost a stranger; I don’t know how Miss Silvester may receive me, before I can open my lips.”
Those last words touched the question on its practical side. The matter-of-fact view of the difficulty was a view which Geoffrey instantly recognized and understood.
“She has the devil’s own temper,” he said. “There’s no denying that. Perhaps I’d better write. Have we time to go into the house?”
“No. The house is full of people, and we haven’t a minute to spare. Write at once, and write here. I have got a pencil.”
“What am I to write on?”
“Any thing—your brother’s card.”
Geoffrey took the pencil which Arnold offered to him, and looked at the card. The lines his brother had written covered it. There was no room left. He felt in his pocket, and produced a letter—the letter which Anne had referred to at the interview between them—the letter which she had written to insist on his attending the lawn-party at Windygates.
“This will do,” he said. “It’s one of Anne’s own letters to me. There’s room on the fourth page. If I write,” he added, turning suddenly on Arnold, “you promise to take it to her? Your hand on the bargain!”
He held out the hand which had saved Arnold’s life in Lisbon Harbor, and received Arnold’s promise, in remembrance of that time.
“All right, old fellow. I can tell you how to find the place as we go along in the gig. By-the-by, there’s one thing that’s rather important. I’d better mention it while I think of it.”
“What is that?”
“You mustn’t present yourself at the inn in your own name; and you mustn’t ask for her byhername.”
“Who am I to ask for?”
“It’s a little awkward. She has gone there as a married woman, in case they’re particular about taking her in—”
“I understand. Go on.”
“And she has planned to tell them (by way of making it all right and straight for both of us, you know) that she expects her husband to join her. If I had been able to go I should have asked at the door for ‘my wife.’ You are going in my place—”
“And I must ask at the door for ‘my wife,’ or I shall expose Miss Silvester to unpleasant consequences?”
“You don’t object?”
“Not I! I don’t care what I say to the people of the inn. It’s the meeting with Miss Silvester that I’m afraid of.”
“I’ll put that right for you—never fear!”
He went at once to the table and rapidly scribbled a few lines—then stopped and considered. “Will that do?” he asked himself. “No; I’d better say something spooney to quiet her.” He considered again, added a line, and brought his hand down on the table with a cheery smack. “That will do the business! Read it yourself, Arnold—it’s not so badly written.”
Arnold read the note without appearing to share his friend’s favorable opinion of it.
“This is rather short,” he said.
“Have I time to make it longer?”
“Perhaps not. But let Miss Silvester see for herself that you have no time to make it longer. The train starts in less than half an hour. Put the time.”
“Oh, all right! and the date too, if you like.”
He had just added the desired words and figures, and had given the revised letter to Arnold, when Sir Patrick returned to announce that the gig was waiting.
“Come!” he said. “You haven’t a moment to lose!”
Geoffrey started to his feet. Arnold hesitated.
“I must see Blanche!” he pleaded. “I can’t leave Blanche without saying good-by. Where is she?”
Sir Patrick pointed to the steps, with a smile. Blanche had followed him from the house. Arnold ran out to her instantly.
“Going?” she said, a little sadly.
“I shall be back in two days,” Arnold whispered. “It’s all right! Sir Patrick consents.”
She held him fast by the arm. The hurried parting before other people seemed to be not a parting to Blanche’s taste.
“You will lose the train!” cried Sir Patrick.
Geoffrey seized Arnold by the arm which Blanche was holding, and tore him—literally tore him—away. The two were out of sight, in the shrubbery, before Blanche’s indignation found words, and addressed itself to her uncle.
“Why is that brute going away with Mr. Brinkworth?” she asked.
“Mr. Delamayn is called to London by his father’s illness,” replied Sir Patrick. “You don’t like him?”
“I hate him!”
Sir Patrick reflected a little.
“She is a young girl of eighteen,” he thought to himself. “And I am an old man of seventy. Curious, that we should agree about any thing. More than curious that we should agree in disliking Mr. Delamayn.”
He roused himself, and looked again at Blanche. She was seated at the table, with her head on her hand; absent, and out of spirits—thinking of Arnold, and set, with the future all smooth before them, not thinking happily.
“Why, Blanche! Blanche!” cried Sir Patrick, “one would think he had gone for a voyage round the world. You silly child! he will be back again the day after to-morrow.”
“I wish he hadn’t gone with that man!” said Blanche. “I wish he hadn’t got that man for a friend!”
“There! there! the man was rude enough I own. Never mind! he will leave the man at the second station. Come back to the ball-room with me. Dance it off, my dear—dance it off!”
“No,” returned Blanche. “I’m in no humor for dancing. I shall go up stairs, and talk about it to Anne.”
“You will do nothing of the sort!” said a third voice, suddenly joining in the conversation.
Both uncle and niece looked up, and found Lady Lundie at the top of the summer-house steps.
“I forbid you to mention that woman’s name again in my hearing,” pursued her ladyship. “Sir Patrick! I warned you (if you remember?) that the matter of the governess was not a matter to be trifled with. My worst anticipations are realized. Miss Silvester has left the house!”