MRS. INCHBARE was the first person who acted in the emergency. She called for lights; and sternly rebuked the house-maid, who brought them, for not having closed the house door. “Ye feckless ne’er-do-weel!” cried the landlady; “the wind’s blawn the candles oot.”
The woman declared (with perfect truth) that the door had been closed. An awkward dispute might have ensued if Blanche had not diverted Mrs. Inchbare’s attention to herself. The appearance of the lights disclosed her, wet through with her arms round Anne’s neck. Mrs. Inchbare digressed at once to the pressing question of changing the young lady’s clothes, and gave Anne the opportunity of looking round her, unobserved. Arnold had made his escape before the candles had been brought in.
In the mean time Blanche’s attention was absorbed in her own dripping skirts.
“Good gracious! I’m absolutely distilling rain from every part of me. And I’m making you, Anne, as wet as I am! Lend me some dry things. You can’t? Mrs. Inchbare, what does your experience suggest? Which had I better do? Go to bed while my clothes are being dried? or borrow from your wardrobe—though youarea head and shoulders taller than I am?”
Mrs. Inchbare instantly bustled out to fetch the choicest garments that her wardrobe could produce. The moment the door had closed on her Blanche looked round the room in her turn.
The rights of affection having been already asserted, the claims of curiosity naturally pressed for satisfaction next.
“Somebody passed me in the dark,” she whispered. “Was it your husband? I’m dying to be introduced to him. And, oh my dear! whatisyour married name?”
Anne answered, coldly, “Wait a little. I can’t speak about it yet.”
“Are you ill?” asked Blanche.
“I am a little nervous.”
“Has any thing unpleasant happened between you and my uncle? You have seen him, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you my message?”
“He gave me your message.—Blanche! you promised him to stay at Windygates. Why, in the name of heaven, did you come here to-night?”
“If you were half as fond of me as I am of you,” returned Blanche, “you wouldn’t ask that. I tried hard to keep my promise, but I couldn’t do it. It was all very well, while my uncle was laying down the law—with Lady Lundie in a rage, and the dogs barking, and the doors banging, and all that. The excitement kept me up. But when my uncle had gone, and the dreadful gray, quiet, rainy evening came, and it had all calmed down again, there was no bearing it. The house—without you—was like a tomb. If I had had Arnold with me I might have done very well. But I was all by myself. Think of that! Not a soul to speak to! There wasn’t a horrible thing that could possibly happen to you that I didn’t fancy was going to happen. I went into your empty room and looked at your things.Thatsettled it, my darling! I rushed down stairs—carried away, positively carried away, by an Impulse beyond human resistance. How could I help it? I ask any reasonable person how could I help it? I ran to the stables and found Jacob. Impulse—all impulse! I said, ‘Get the pony-chaise—I must have a drive—I don’t care if it rains—you come with me.’ All in a breath, and all impulse! Jacob behaved like an angel. He said, ‘All right, miss.’ I am perfectly certain Jacob would die for me if I asked him. He is drinking hot grog at this moment, to prevent him from catching cold, by my express orders. He had the pony-chaise out in two minutes; and off we went. Lady Lundie, my dear, prostrate in her own room—too much sal volatile. I hate her. The rain got worse. I didn’t mind it. Jacob didn’t mind it. The pony didn’t mind it. They had both caught my impulse—especially the pony. It didn’t come on to thunder till some time afterward; and then we were nearer Craig Fernie than Windygates—to say nothing of your being at one place and not at the other. The lightning was quite awful on the moor. If I had had one of the horses, he would have been frightened. The pony shook his darling little head, and dashed through it. He is to have beer. A mash with beer in it—by my express orders. When he has done we’ll borrow a lantern, and go into the stable, and kiss him. In the mean time, my dear, here I am—wet through in a thunderstorm, which doesn’t in the least matter—and determined to satisfy my own mind about you, which matters a great deal, and must and shall be done before I rest to-night!”
She turned Anne, by main force, as she spoke, toward the light of the candles.
Her tone changed the moment she looked at Anne’s face.
“I knew it!” she said. “You would never have kept the most interesting event in your life a secret fromme—you would never have written me such a cold formal letter as the letter you left in your room—if there had not been something wrong. I said so at the time. I know it now! Why has your husband forced you to leave Windygates at a moment’s notice? Why does he slip out of the room in the dark, as if he was afraid of being seen? Anne! Anne! what has come to you? Why do you receive me in this way?”
At that critical moment Mrs. Inchbare reappeared, with the choicest selection of wearing apparel which her wardrobe could furnish. Anne hailed the welcome interruption. She took the candles, and led the way into the bedroom immediately.
“Change your wet clothes first,” she said. “We can talk after that.”
The bedroom door had hardly been closed a minute before there was a tap at it. Signing to Mrs. Inchbare not to interrupt the services she was rendering to Blanche, Anne passed quickly into the sitting-room, and closed the door behind her. To her infinite relief, she only found herself face to face with the discreet Mr. Bishopriggs.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The eye of Mr. Bishopriggs announced, by a wink, that his mission was of a confidential nature. The hand of Mr. Bishopriggs wavered; the breath of Mr. Bishopriggs exhaled a spirituous fume. He slowly produced a slip of paper, with some lines of writing on it.
“From ye ken who,” he explained, jocosely. “A bit love-letter, I trow, from him that’s dear to ye. Eh! he’s an awfu’ reprobate is him that’s dear to ye. Miss, in the bedchamber there, will nae doot be the one he’s jilted foryou?I see it all—ye can’t blind Me—I ha’ been a frail person my ain self, in my time. Hech! he’s safe and sound, is the reprobate. I ha’ lookit after a’ his little creature-comforts—I’m joost a fether to him, as well as a fether to you. Trust Bishopriggs—when puir human nature wants a bit pat on the back, trust Bishopriggs.”
While the sage was speaking these comfortable words, Anne was reading the lines traced on the paper. They were signed by Arnold; and they ran thus:
“I am in the smoking-room of the inn. It rests with you to say whether I must stop there. I don’t believe Blanche would be jealous. If I knew how to explain my being at the inn without betraying the confidence which you and Geoffrey have placed in me, I wouldn’t be away from her another moment. It does grate on me so! At the same time, I don’t want to make your position harder than it is. Think of yourself first. I leave it in your hands. You have only to say, Wait, by the bearer—and I shall understand that I am to stay where I am till I hear from you again.”
Anne looked up from the message.
“Ask him to wait,” she said; “and I will send word to him again.”
“Wi’ mony loves and kisses,” suggested Mr. Bishopriggs, as a necessary supplement to the message. “Eh! it comes as easy as A. B. C. to a man o’ my experience. Ye can ha’ nae better gae-between than yer puir servant to command, Sawmuel Bishopriggs. I understand ye baith pairfeckly.” He laid his forefinger along his flaming nose, and withdrew.
Without allowing herself to hesitate for an instant, Anne opened the bedroom door—with the resolution of relieving Arnold from the new sacrifice imposed on him by owning the truth.
“Is that you?” asked Blanche.
At the sound of her voice, Anne started back guiltily. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” she answered, and closed the door again between them.
No! it was not to be done. Something in Blanche’s trivial question—or something, perhaps, in the sight of Blanche’s face—roused the warning instinct in Anne, which silenced her on the very brink of the disclosure. At the last moment the iron chain of circumstances made itself felt, binding her without mercy to the hateful, the degrading deceit. Could she own the truth, about Geoffrey and herself, to Blanche? and, without owning it, could she explain and justify Arnold’s conduct in joining her privately at Craig Fernie? A shameful confession made to an innocent girl; a risk of fatally shaking Arnold’s place in Blanche’s estimation; a scandal at the inn, in the disgrace of which the others would be involved with herself—this was the price at which she must speak, if she followed her first impulse, and said, in so many words, “Arnold is here.”
It was not to be thought of. Cost what it might in present wretchedness—end how it might, if the deception was discovered in the future—Blanche must be kept in ignorance of the truth, Arnold must be kept in hiding until she had gone.
Anne opened the door for the second time, and went in.
The business of the toilet was standing still. Blanche was in confidential communication with Mrs. Inchbare. At the moment when Anne entered the room she was eagerly questioning the landlady about her friend’s “invisible husband”—she was just saying, “Do tell me! what is he like?”
The capacity for accurate observation is a capacity so uncommon, and is so seldom associated, even where it does exist, with the equally rare gift of accurately describing the thing or the person observed, that Anne’s dread of the consequences if Mrs. Inchbare was allowed time to comply with Blanches request, was, in all probability, a dread misplaced. Right or wrong, however, the alarm that she felt hurried her into taking measures for dismissing the landlady on the spot. “We mustn’t keep you from your occupations any longer,” she said to Mrs. Inchbare. “I will give Miss Lundie all the help she needs.”
Barred from advancing in one direction, Blanche’s curiosity turned back, and tried in another. She boldly addressed herself to Anne.
“Imustknow something about him,” she said. “Is he shy before strangers? I heard you whispering with him on the other side of the door. Are you jealous, Anne? Are you afraid I shall fascinate him in this dress?”
Blanche, in Mrs. Inchbare’s best gown—an ancient and high-waisted silk garment, of the hue called “bottle-green,” pinned up in front, and trailing far behind her—with a short, orange-colored shawl over her shoulders, and a towel tied turban fashion round her head, to dry her wet hair, looked at once the strangest and the prettiest human anomaly that ever was seen. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, gayly, “don’t tell your husband I am in Mrs. Inchbare’s clothes! I want to appear suddenly, without a word to warn him of what a figure I am! I should have nothing left to wish for in this world,” she added, “if Arnold could only see me now!”
Looking in the glass, she noticed Anne’s face reflected behind her, and started at the sight of it.
“Whatisthe matter?” she asked. “Your face frightens me.”
It was useless to prolong the pain of the inevitable misunderstanding between them. The one course to take was to silence all further inquiries then and there. Strongly as she felt this, Anne’s inbred loyalty to Blanche still shrank from deceiving her to her face. “I might write it,” she thought. “I can’t say it, with Arnold Brinkworth in the same house with her!” Write it? As she reconsidered the word, a sudden idea struck her. She opened the bedroom door, and led the way back into the sitting-room.
“Gone again!” exclaimed Blanche, looking uneasily round the empty room. “Anne! there’s something so strange in all this, that I neither can, nor will, put up with your silence any longer. It’s not just, it’s not kind, to shut me out of your confidence, after we have lived together like sisters all our lives!”
Anne sighed bitterly, and kissed her on the forehead. “You shall know all I can tell you—all Idaretell you,” she said, gently. “Don’t reproach me. It hurts me more than you think.”
She turned away to the side table, and came back with a letter in her hand. “Read that,” she said, and handed it to Blanche.
Blanche saw her own name, on the address, in the handwriting of Anne.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“I wrote to you, after Sir Patrick had left me,” Anne replied. “I meant you to have received my letter to-morrow, in time to prevent any little imprudence into which your anxiety might hurry you. All that Icansay to you is said there. Spare me the distress of speaking. Read it, Blanche.”
Blanche still held the letter, unopened.
“A letter from you to me! when we are both together, and both alone in the same room! It’s worse than formal, Anne! It’s as if there was a quarrel between us. Why should it distress you to speak to me?”
Anne’s eyes dropped to the ground. She pointed to the letter for the second time.
Blanche broke the seal.
She passed rapidly over the opening sentences, and devoted all her attention to the second paragraph.
“And now, my love, you will expect me to atone for the surprise and distress that I have caused you, by explaining what my situation really is, and by telling you all my plans for the future. Dearest Blanche! don’t think me untrue to the affection we bear toward each other—don’t think there is any change in my heart toward you—believe only that I am a very unhappy woman, and that I am in a position which forces me, against my own will, to be silent about myself. Silent even to you, the sister of my love—the one person in the world who is dearest to me! A time may come when I shall be able to open my heart to you. Oh, what good it will do me! what a relief it will be! For the present, I must be silent. For the present, we must be parted. God knows what it costs me to write this. I think of the dear old days that are gone; I remember how I promised your mother to be a sister to you, when her kind eyes looked at me, for the last time—yourmother, who was an angel from heaven tomine!All this comes back on me now, and breaks my heart. But it must be! my own Blanche, for the present, it must be! I will write often—I will think of you, my darling, night and day, till a happier future unites us again. God blessyou,my dear one! And God helpme!”
Blanche silently crossed the room to the sofa on which Anne was sitting, and stood there for a moment, looking at her. She sat down, and laid her head on Anne’s shoulder. Sorrowfully and quietly, she put the letter into her bosom—and took Anne’s hand, and kissed it.
“All my questions are answered, dear. I will wait your time.”
It was simply, sweetly, generously said.
Anne burst into tears.
The rain still fell, but the storm was dying away.
Blanche left the sofa, and, going to the window, opened the shutters to look out at the night. She suddenly came back to Anne.
“I see lights,” she said—“the lights of a carriage coming up out of the darkness of the moor. They are sending after me, from Windygates. Go into t he bedroom. It’s just possible Lady Lundie may have come for me herself.”
The ordinary relations of the two toward each other were completely reversed. Anne was like a child in Blanche’s hands. She rose, and withdrew.
Left alone, Blanche took the letter out of her bosom, and read it again, in the interval of waiting for the carriage.
The second reading confirmed her in a resolution which she had privately taken, while she had been sitting by Anne on the sofa—a resolution destined to lead to far more serious results in the future than any previsions of hers could anticipate. Sir Patrick was the one person she knew on whose discretion and experience she could implicitly rely. She determined, in Anne’s own interests, to take her uncle into her confidence, and to tell him all that had happened at the inn “I’ll first make him forgive me,” thought Blanche. “And then I’ll see if he thinks as I do, when I tell him about Anne.”
The carriage drew up at the door; and Mrs. Inchbare showed in—not Lady Lundie, but Lady Lundie’s maid.
The woman’s account of what had happened at Windygates was simple enough. Lady Lundie had, as a matter of course, placed the right interpretation on Blanche’s abrupt departure in the pony-chaise, and had ordered the carriage, with the firm determination of following her step-daughter herself. But the agitations and anxieties of the day had proved too much for her. She had been seized by one of the attacks of giddiness to which she was always subject after excessive mental irritation; and, eager as she was (on more accounts than one) to go to the inn herself, she had been compelled, in Sir Patrick’s absence, to commit the pursuit of Blanche to her own maid, in whose age and good sense she could place every confidence. The woman seeing the state of the weather—had thoughtfully brought a box with her, containing a change of wearing apparel. In offering it to Blanche, she added, with all due respect, that she had full powers from her mistress to go on, if necessary, to the shooting-cottage, and to place the matter in Sir Patrick’s hands. This said, she left it to her young lady to decide for herself, whether she would return to Windygates, under present circumstances, or not.
Blanche took the box from the woman’s hands, and joined Anne in the bedroom, to dress herself for the drive home.
“I am going back to a good scolding,” she said. “But a scolding is no novelty in my experience of Lady Lundie. I’m not uneasy about that, Anne—I’m uneasy about you. Can I be sure of one thing—do you stay here for the present?”
The worst that could happen at the innhadhappened. Nothing was to be gained now—and every thing might be lost—by leaving the place at which Geoffrey had promised to write to her. Anne answered that she proposed remaining at the inn for the present.
“You promise to write to me?”
“Yes.”
“If there is any thing I can do for you—?”
“There is nothing, my love.”
“There may be. If you want to see me, we can meet at Windygates without being discovered. Come at luncheon-time—go around by the shrubbery—and step in at the library window. You know as well as I do there is nobody in the library at that hour. Don’t say it’s impossible—you don’t know what may happen. I shall wait ten minutes every day on the chance of seeing you. That’s settled—and it’s settled that you write. Before I go, darling, is there any thing else we can think of for the future?”
At those words Anne suddenly shook off the depression that weighed on her. She caught Blanche in her arms, she held Blanche to her bosom with a fierce energy. “Will you always be to me, in the future, what you are now?” she asked, abruptly. “Or is the time coming when you will hate me?” She prevented any reply by a kiss—and pushed Blanche toward the door. “We have had a happy time together in the years that are gone,” she said, with a farewell wave of her hand. “Thank God for that! And never mind the rest.”
She threw open the bedroom door, and called to the maid, in the sitting-room. “Miss Lundie is waiting for you.” Blanche pressed her hand, and left her.
Anne waited a while in the bedroom, listening to the sound made by the departure of the carriage from the inn door. Little by little, the tramp of the horses and the noise of the rolling wheels lessened and lessened. When the last faint sounds were lost in silence she stood for a moment thinking—then, rousing on a sudden, hurried into the sitting-room, and rang the bell.
“I shall go mad,” she said to herself, “if I stay here alone.”
Even Mr. Bishopriggs felt the necessity of being silent when he stood face to face with her on answering the bell.
“I want to speak to him. Send him here instantly.”
Mr. Bishopriggs understood her, and withdrew.
Arnold came in.
“Has she gone?” were the first words he said.
“She has gone. She won’t suspect you when you see her again. I have told her nothing. Don’t ask me for my reasons!”
“I have no wish to ask you.”
“Be angry with me, if you like!”
“I have no wish to be angry with you.”
He spoke and looked like an altered man. Quietly seating himself at the table, he rested his head on his hand—and so remained silent. Anne was taken completely by surprise. She drew near, and looked at him curiously. Let a woman’s mood be what it may, it is certain to feel the influence of any change for which she is unprepared in the manner of a man—when that man interests her. The cause of this is not to be found in the variableness of her humor. It is far more probably to be traced to the noble abnegation of Self, which is one of the grandest—and to the credit of woman be it said—one of the commonest virtues of the sex. Little by little, the sweet feminine charm of Anne’s face came softly and sadly back. The inbred nobility of the woman’s nature answered the call which the man had unconsciously made on it. She touched Arnold on the shoulder.
“This has been hard onyou,” she said. “And I am to blame for it. Try and forgive me, Mr. Brinkworth. I am sincerely sorry. I wish with all my heart I could comfort you!”
“Thank you, Miss Silvester. It was not a very pleasant feeling, to be hiding from Blanche as if I was afraid of her—and it’s set me thinking, I suppose, for the first time in my life. Never mind. It’s all over now. Can I do any thing for you?”
“What do you propose doing to-night?”
“What I have proposed doing all along—my duty by Geoffrey. I have promised him to see you through your difficulties here, and to provide for your safety till he comes back. I can only make sure of doing that by keeping up appearances, and staying in the sitting-room to-night. When we next meet it will be under pleasanter circumstances, I hope. I shall always be glad to think that I was of some service to you. In the mean time I shall be most likely away to-morrow morning before you are up.”
Anne held out her hand to take leave. Nothing could undo what had been done. The time for warning and remonstrance had passed away.
“You have not befriended an ungrateful woman,” she said. “The day may yet come, Mr. Brinkworth, when I shall prove it.”
“I hope not, Miss Silvester. Good-by, and good luck!”
She withdrew into her own room. Arnold locked the sitting-room door, and stretched himself on the sofa for the night.
The morning was bright, the air was delicious after the storm.
Arnold had gone, as he had promised, before Anne was out of her room. It was understood at the inn that important business had unexpectedly called him south. Mr. Bishopriggs had been presented with a handsome gratuity; and Mrs. Inchbare had been informed that the rooms were taken for a week certain.
In every quarter but one the march of events had now, to all appearance, fallen back into a quiet course. Arnold was on his way to his estate; Blanche was safe at Windygates; Anne’s residence at the inn was assured for a week to come. The one present doubt was the doubt which hung over Geoffrey’s movements. The one event still involved in darkness turned on the question of life or death waiting for solution in London—otherwise, the question of Lord Holchester’s health. Taken by itself, the alternative, either way, was plain enough. If my lord lived—Geoffrey would be free to come back, and marry her privately in Scotland. If my lord died—Geoffrey would be free to send for her, and marry her publicly in London. But could Geoffrey be relied on?
Anne went out on to the terrace-ground in front of the inn. The cool morning breeze blew steadily. Towering white clouds sailed in grand procession over the heavens, now obscuring, and now revealing the sun. Yellow light and purple shadow chased each other over the broad brown surface of the moor—even as hope and fear chased each other over Anne’s mind, brooding on what might come to her with the coming time.
She turned away, weary of questioning the impenetrable future, and went back to the inn.
Crossing the hall she looked at the clock. It was past the hour when the train from Perthshire was due in London. Geoffrey and his brother were, at that moment, on their way to Lord Holchester’s house.
LORD HOLCHESTER’S servants—with the butler at their head—were on the look-out for Mr. Julius Delamayn’s arrival from Scotland. The appearance of the two brothers together took the whole domestic establishment by surprise. Inquiries were addressed to the butler by Julius; Geoffrey standing by, and taking no other than a listener’s part in the proceedings.
“Is my father alive?”
“His lordship, I am rejoiced to say, has astonished the doctors, Sir. He rallied last night in the most wonderful way. If things go on for the next eight-and-forty hours as they are going now, my lord’s recovery is considered certain.”
“What was the illness?”
“A paralytic stroke, Sir. When her ladyship telegraphed to you in Scotland the doctors had given his lordship up.”
“Is my mother at home?”
“Her ladyship is at home toyou,, Sir.”’
The butler laid a special emphasis on the personal pronoun. Julius turned to his brother. The change for the better in the state of Lord Holchester’s health made Geoffrey’s position, at that moment, an embarrassing one. He had been positively forbidden to enter the house. His one excuse for setting that prohibitory sentence at defiance rested on the assumption that his father was actually dying. As matters now stood, Lord Holchester’s order remained in full force. The under-servants in the hall (charged to obey that order as they valued their places) looked from “Mr. Geoffrey” to the butler, The butler looked from “Mr. Geoffrey” to “Mr. Julius.” Julius looked at his brother. There was an awkward pause. The position of the second son was the position of a wild beast in the house—a creature to be got rid of, without risk to yourself, if you only knew how.
Geoffrey spoke, and solved the problem
“Open the door, one of you fellows,” he said to the footmen. “I’m off.”
“Wait a minute,” interposed his brother. “It will be a sad disappointment to my mother to know that you have been here, and gone away again without seeing her. These are no ordinary circumstances, Geoffrey. Come up stairs with me—I’ll take it on myself.”
“I’m blessed if I take it onmyself!” returned Geoffrey. “Open the door!”
“Wait here, at any rate,” pleaded Julius, “till I can send you down a message.”
“Send your message to Nagle’s Hotel. I’m at home at Nagle’s—I’m not at home here.”
At that point the discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a little terrier in the hall. Seeing strangers, the dog began to bark. Perfect tranquillity in the house had been absolutely insisted on by the doctors; and the servants, all trying together to catch the animal and quiet him, simply aggravated the noise he was making. Geoffrey solved this problem also in his own decisive way. He swung round as the dog was passing him, and kicked it with his heavy boot. The little creature fell on the spot, whining piteously. “My lady’s pet dog!” exclaimed the butler. “You’ve broken its ribs, Sir.” “I’ve broken it of barking, you mean,” retorted Geoffrey. “Ribs be hanged!” He turned to his brother. “That settles it,” he said, jocosely. “I’d better defer the pleasure of calling on dear mamma till the next opportunity. Ta-ta, Julius. You know where to find me. Come, and dine. We’ll give you a steak at Nagle’s that will make a man of you.”
He went out. The tall footmen eyed his lordship’s second son with unaffected respect. They had seen him, in public, at the annual festival of the Christian-Pugilistic-Association, with “the gloves” on. He could have beaten the biggest man in the hall within an inch of his life in three minutes. The porter bowed as he threw open the door. The whole interest and attention of the domestic establishment then present was concentrated on Geoffrey. Julius went up stairs to his mother without attracting the slightest notice.
The month was August. The streets were empty. The vilest breeze that blows—a hot east wind in London—was the breeze abroad on that day. Even Geoffrey appeared to feel the influence of the weather as the cab carried him from his father’s door to the hotel. He took off his hat, and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and lit his everlasting pipe, and growled and grumbled between his teeth in the intervals of smoking. Was it only the hot wind that wrung from him these demonstrations of discomfort? Or was there some secret anxiety in his mind which assisted the depressing influences of the day? There was a secret anxiety in his mind. And the name of it was—Anne.
As things actually were at that moment, what course was he to take with the unhappy woman who was waiting to hear from him at the Scotch inn?
To write? or not to write? That was the question with Geoffrey.
The preliminary difficulty, relating to addressing a letter to Anne at the inn, had been already provided for. She had decided—if it proved necessary to give her name, before Geoffrey joined her—to call herself Mrs., instead of Miss, Silvester. A letter addressed to “Mrs. Silvester” might be trusted to find its way to her without causing any embarrassment. The doubt was not here. The doubt lay, as usual, between two alternatives. Which course would it be wisest to take?—to inform Anne, by that day’s post, that an interval of forty-eight hours must elapse before his father’s recovery could be considered certain? Or to wait till the interval was over, and be guided by the result? Considering the alternatives in the cab, he decided that the wise course was to temporize with Anne, by reporting matters as they then stood.
Arrived at the hotel, he sat down to write the letter—doubted—and tore it up—doubted again—and began again—doubted once more—and tore up the second letter—rose to his feet—and owned to himself (in unprintable language) that he couldn’t for the life of him decide which was safest—to write or to wait.
In this difficulty, his healthy physical instincts sent him to healthy physical remedies for relief. “My mind’s in a muddle,” said Geoffrey. “I’ll try a bath.”
It was an elaborate bath, proceeding through many rooms, and combining many postures and applications. He steamed. He plunged. He simmered. He stood under a pipe, and received a cataract of cold water on his head. He was laid on his back; he was laid on his stomach; he was respectfully pounded and kneaded, from head to foot, by the knuckles of accomplished practitioners. He came out of it all, sleek, clear rosy, beautiful. He returned to the hotel, and took up the writing materials—and behold the intolerable indecision seized him again, declining to be washed out! This time he laid it all to Anne. “That infernal woman will be the ruin of me,” said Geoffrey, taking up his hat. “I must try the dumb-bells.”
The pursuit of the new remedy for stimulating a sluggish brain took him to a public house, kept by the professional pedestrian who had the honor of training him when he contended at Athletic Sports.
“A private room and the dumb-bells!” cried Geoffrey. “The heaviest you have got.”
He stripped himself of his upper clothing, and set to work, with the heavy weights in each hand, waving them up and down, and backward and forward, in every attainable variety o f movement, till his magnificent muscles seemed on the point of starting through his sleek skin. Little by little his animal spirits roused themselves. The strong exertion intoxicated the strong man. In sheer excitement he swore cheerfully—invoking thunder and lightning, explosion and blood, in return for the compliments profusely paid to him by the pedestrian and the pedestrian’s son. “Pen, ink, and paper!” he roared, when he could use the dumb-bells no longer. “My mind’s made up; I’ll write, and have done with it!” He sat down to his writing on the spot; actually finished the letter; another minute would have dispatched it to the post—and, in that minute, the maddening indecision took possession of him once more. He opened the letter again, read it over again, and tore it up again. “I’m out of my mind!” cried Geoffrey, fixing his big bewildered blue eyes fiercely on the professor who trained him. “Thunder and lightning! Explosion and blood! Send for Crouch.”
Crouch (known and respected wherever English manhood is known and respected) was a retired prize-fighter. He appeared with the third and last remedy for clearing the mind known to the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn—namely, two pair of boxing-gloves in a carpet-bag.
The gentleman and the prize-fighter put on the gloves, and faced each other in the classically correct posture of pugilistic defense. “None of your play, mind!” growled Geoffrey. “Fight, you beggar, as if you were in the Ring again with orders to win.” No man knew better than the great and terrible Crouch what real fighting meant, and what heavy blows might be given even with such apparently harmless weapons as stuffed and padded gloves. He pretended, and only pretended, to comply with his patron’s request. Geoffrey rewarded him for his polite forbearance by knocking him down. The great and terrible rose with unruffled composure. “Well hit, Sir!” he said. “Try it with the other hand now.” Geoffrey’s temper was not under similar control. Invoking everlasting destruction on the frequently-blackened eyes of Crouch, he threatened instant withdrawal of his patronage and support unless the polite pugilist hit, then and there, as hard as he could. The hero of a hundred fights quailed at the dreadful prospect. “I’ve got a family to support,” remarked Crouch. “If youwillhave it, Sir—there it is!” The fall of Geoffrey followed, and shook the house. He was on his legs again in an instant—not satisfied even yet. “None of your body-hitting!” he roared. “Stick to my head. Thunder and lightning! explosion and blood! Knock it out of me! Stick to the head!” Obedient Crouch stuck to the head. The two gave and took blows which would have stunned—possibly have killed—any civilized member of the community. Now on one side of his patron’s iron skull, and now on the other, the hammering of the prize-fighter’s gloves fell, thump upon thump, horrible to hear—until even Geoffrey himself had had enough of it. “Thank you, Crouch,” he said, speaking civilly to the man for the first time. “That will do. I feel nice and clear again.” He shook his head two or three times, he was rubbed down like a horse by the professional runner; he drank a mighty draught of malt liquor; he recovered his good-humor as if by magic. “Want the pen and ink, Sir?” inquired his pedestrian host. “Not I!” answered Geoffrey. “The muddle’s out of me now. Pen and ink be hanged! I shall look up some of our fellows, and go to the play.” He left the public house in the happiest condition of mental calm. Inspired by the stimulant application of Crouch’s gloves, his torpid cunning had been shaken up into excellent working order at last. Write to Anne? Who but a fool would write to such a woman as that until he was forced to it? Wait and see what the chances of the next eight-and-forty hours might bring forth, and then write to her, or desert her, as the event might decide. It lay in a nut-shell, if you could only see it. Thanks to Crouch, he did see it—and so away in a pleasant temper for a dinner with “our fellows” and an evening at the play!
THE interval of eight-and-forty hours passed—without the occurrence of any personal communication between the two brothers in that time.
Julius, remaining at his father’s house, sent brief written bulletins of Lord Holchester’s health to his brother at the hotel. The first bulletin said, “Going on well. Doctors satisfied.” The second was firmer in tone. “Going on excellently. Doctors very sanguine.” The third was the most explicit of all. “I am to see my father in an hour from this. The doctors answer for his recovery. Depend on my putting in a good word for you, if I can; and wait to hear from me further at the hotel.”
Geoffrey’s face darkened as he read the third bulletin. He called once more for the hated writing materials. There could be no doubt now as to the necessity of communicating with Anne. Lord Holchester’s recovery had put him back again in the same critical position which he had occupied at Windygates. To keep Anne from committing some final act of despair, which would connect him with a public scandal, and ruin him so far as his expectations from his father were concerned, was, once more, the only safe policy that Geoffrey could pursue. His letter began and ended in twenty words:
“DEAR ANNE,—Have only just heard that my father is turning the corner. Stay where you are. Will write again.”
Having dispatched this Spartan composition by the post, Geoffrey lit his pipe, and waited the event of the interview between Lord Holchester and his eldest son.
Julius found his father alarmingly altered in personal appearance, but in full possession of his faculties nevertheless. Unable to return the pressure of his son’s hand—unable even to turn in the bed without help—the hard eye of the old lawyer was as keen, the hard mind of the old lawyer was as clear, as ever. His grand ambition was to see Julius in Parliament. Julius was offering himself for election in Perthshire, by his father’s express desire, at that moment. Lord Holchester entered eagerly into politics before his eldest son had been two minutes by his bedside.
“Much obliged, Julius, for your congratulations. Men of my sort are not easily killed. (Look at Brougham and Lyndhurst!) You won’t be called to the Upper House yet. You will begin in the House of Commons—precisely as I wished. What are your prospects with the constituency? Tell me exactly how you stand, and where I can be of use to you.”
“Surely, Sir, you are hardly recovered enough to enter on matters of business yet?”
“I am quite recovered enough. I want some present interest to occupy me. My thoughts are beginning to drift back to past times, and to things which are better forgotten.” A sudden contraction crossed his livid face. He looked hard at his son, and entered abruptly on a new question. “Julius!” he resumed, “have you ever heard of a young woman named Anne Silvester?”
Julius answered in the negative. He and his wife had exchanged cards with Lady Lundie, and had excused themselves from accepting her invitation to the lawn-party. With the exception of Blanche, they were both quite ignorant of the persons who composed the family circle at Windygates.
“Make a memorandum of the name,” Lord Holchester went on. “Anne Silvester. Her father and mother are dead. I knew her father in former times. Her mother was ill-used. It was a bad business. I have been thinking of it again, for the first time for many years. If the girl is alive and about the world she may remember our family name. Help her, Julius, if she ever wants help, and applies to you.” The painful contraction passed across his face once more. Were his thoughts taking him back to the memorable summer evening at the Hampstead villa? Did he see the deserted woman swooning at his feet again? “About your election?” he asked, impatiently. “My mind is not used to be idle. Give it something to do.”
Julius stated his position as plainly and as briefly as he could. The father found nothing to object to in the report—except the son’s absence from the field of action. He blamed Lady Holchester for summoning Julius to London. He was annoyed at his son’s being there, at the bedside, when he ought to have been addressing the electors. “It’s inconvenient, Julius,” he said, petulantly. “Don’t you see it yourself?”
Having previously arranged with his mother to take the first opportunity that offered of risking a reference to Geoffrey, Julius decided to “see it” in a light for which his father was not prepared. The opportunity was before him. He took it on the spot.
“It is no inconvenience to me, Sir,” he replied, “and it is no inconvenience to my brother either. Geoffrey was anxious about you too. Geoffrey has come to London with me.”
Lord Holchester looked at his eldest son with a grimly-satirical expression of surprise.
“Have I not already told you,” he rejoined, “that my mind is not affected by my illness? Geoffrey anxious about me! Anxiety is one of the civilized emotions. Man in his savage state is incapable of feeling it.”
“My brother is not a savage, Sir.”
“His stomach is generally full, and his skin is covered with linen and cloth, instead of red ochre and oil. So far, certainly, your brother is civilized. In all other respects your brother is a savage.”
“I know what you mean, Sir. But there is something to be said for Geoffrey’s way of life. He cultivates his courage and his strength. Courage and strength are fine qualities, surely, in their way?”
“Excellent qualities, as far as they go. If you want to know how far that is, challenge Geoffrey to write a sentence of decent English, and see if his courage doesn’t fail him there. Give him his books to read for his degree, and, strong as he is, he will be taken ill at the sight of them. You wish me to see your brother. Nothing will induce me to see him, until his way of life (as you call it) is altered altogether. I have but one hope of its ever being altered now. It is barely possible that the influence of a sensible woman—possessed of such advantages of birth and fortune as may compel respect, even from a savage—might produce its effect on Geoffrey. If he wishes to find his way back into this house, let him find his way back into good society first, and bring me a daughter-in-law to plead his cause for him—whom his mother and I can respect and receive. When that happens, I shall begin to have some belief in Geoffrey. Until it does happen, don’t introduce your brother into any future conversations which you may have with Me. To return to your election. I have some advice to give you before you go back. You will do well to go back to-night. Lift me up on the pillow. I shall speak more easily with my head high.”
His son lifted him on the pillows, and once more entreated him to spare himself.
It was useless. No remonstrances shook the iron resolution of the man who had hewed his way through the rank and file of political humanity to his own high place apart from the rest. Helpless, ghastly, snatched out of the very jaws of death, there he lay, steadily distilling the clear common-sense which had won him all his worldly rewards into the mind of his son. Not a hint was missed, not a caution was forgotten, that could guide Julius safely through the miry political ways which he had trodden so safely and so dextrously himself. An hour more had passed before the impenetrable old man closed his weary eyes, and consented to take his nourishment and compose himself to rest. His last words, rendered barely articulate by exhaustion, still sang the praises of party manoeuvres and political strife. “It’s a grand career! I miss the House of Commons, Julius, as I miss nothing else!”
Left free to pursue his own thoughts, and to guide his own movements, Julius went straight from Lord Holchester’s bedside to Lady Holchester’s boudoir.
“Has your father said any thing about Geoffrey?” was his mother’s first question as soon as he entered the room.
“My father gives Geoffrey a last chance, if Geoffrey will only take it.”
Lady Holchester’s face clouded. “I know,” she said, with a look of disappointment. “His last chance is to read for his degree. Hopeless, my dear. Quite hopeless! If it had only been something easier than that; something that rested with me—”
“It does rest with you,” interposed Julius. “My dear mother!—can you believe it?—Geoffrey’s last chance is (in one word) Marriage!”
“Oh, Julius! it’s too good to be true!”
Julius repeated his father’s own words. Lady Holchester looked twenty years younger as she listened. When he had done she rang the bell.
“No matter who calls,” she said to the servant, “I am not at home.” She turned to Julius, kissed him, and made a place for him on the sofa by her side. “Geoffrey shall takethatchance,” she said, gayly—“I will answer for it! I have three women in my mind, any one of whom would suit him. Sit down, my dear, and let us consider carefully which of the three will be most likely to attract Geoffrey, and to come up to your father’s standard of what his daughter-in-law ought to be. When we have decided, don’t trust to writing. Go yourself and see Geoffrey at his hotel.”
Mother and son entered on their consultation—and innocently sowed the seeds of a terrible harvest to come.