“WELL?” whispered Blanche, taking her uncle confidentially by the arm.
“Well,” said Sir Patrick, with a spark of his satirical humor flashing out at his niece, “I am going to do a very rash thing. I am going to place a serious trust in the hands of a girl of eighteen.”
“The girl’s hands will keep it, uncle—though sheisonly eighteen.”
“I must run the risk, my dear; your intimate knowledge of Miss Silvester may be of the greatest assistance to me in the next step I take. You shall know all that I can tell you, but I must warn you first. I can only admit you into my confidence by startling you with a great surprise. Do you follow me, so far?”
“Yes! yes!”
“If you fail to control yourself, you place an obstacle in the way of my being of some future use to Miss Silvester. Remember that, and now prepare for the surprise. What did I tell you before dinner?”
“You said you had made discoveries at Craig Fernie. What have you found out?”
“I have found out that there is a certain person who is in full possession of the information which Miss Silvester has concealed from you and from me. The person is within our reach. The person is in this neighborhood. The person is in this room!”
He caught up Blanche’s hand, resting on his arm, and pressed it significantly. She looked at him with the cry of surprise suspended on her lips—waited a little with her eyes fixed on Fir Patrick’s face—struggled resolutely, and composed herself.
“Point the person out.” She said the words with a self-possession which won her uncle’s hearty approval. Blanche had done wonders for a girl in her teens.
“Look!” said Sir Patrick; “and tell me what you see.”
“I see Lady Lundie, at the other end of the room, with the map of Perthshire and the Baronial Antiquities of Scotland on the table. And I see every body but you and me obliged to listen to her.”
“Every body?”
Blanche looked carefully round the room, and noticed Geoffrey in the opposite corner; fast asleep by this time in his arm-chair.
“Uncle! you don’t mean—?”
“There is the man.”
“Mr. Delamayn—!”
“Mr. Delamayn knows every thing.”
Blanche held mechanically by her uncle’s arm, and looked at the sleeping man as if her eyes could never see enough of him.
“You saw me in the library in private consultation with Mr. Delamayn,” resumed Sir Patrick. “I have to acknowledge, my dear, that you were quite right in thinking this a suspicious circumstance, And I am now to justify myself for having purposely kept you in the dark up to the present time.”
With those introductory words, he briefly reverted to the earlier occurrences of the day, and then added, by way of commentary, a statement of the conclusions which events had suggested to his own mind.
The events, it may be remembered, were three in number. First, Geoffrey’s private conference with Sir Patrick on the subject of Irregular Marriages in Scotland. Secondly, Anne Silvester’s appearance at Windygates. Thirdly, Anne’s flight.
The conclusions which had thereupon suggested themselves to Sir Patrick’s mind were six in number.
First, that a connection of some sort might possibly exist between Geoffrey’s acknowledged difficulty about his friend, and Miss Silvester’s presumed difficulty about herself. Secondly, that Geoffrey had really put to Sir Patrick—not his own case—but the case of a friend. Thirdly, that Geoffrey had some interest (of no harmless kind) in establishing the fact of his friend’s marriage. Fourthly, that Anne’s anxiety (as described by Blanche) to hear the names of the gentlemen who were staying at Windygates, pointed, in all probability, to Geoffrey. Fifthly, that this last inference disturbed the second conclusion, and reopened the doubt whether Geoffrey had not been stating his own case, after all, under pretense of stating the case of a friend. Sixthly, that the one way of obtaining any enlightenment on this point, and on all the other points involved in mystery, was to go to Craig Fernie, and consult Mrs. Inchbare’s experience during the period of Anne’s residence at the inn. Sir Patrick’s apology for keeping all this a secret from his niece followed. He had shrunk from agitating her on the subject until he could be sure of proving his conclusions to be true. The proof had been obtained; and he was now, therefore, ready to open his mind to Blanche without reserve.
“So much, my dear,” proceeded Sir Patrick, “for those necessary explanations which are also the necessary nuisances of human intercourse. You now know as much as I did when I arrived at Craig Fernie—and you are, therefore, in a position to appreciate the value of my discoveries at the inn. Do you understand every thing, so far?”
“Perfectly!”
“Very good. I drove up to the inn; and—behold me closeted with Mrs. Inchbare in her own private parlor! (My reputation may or may not suffer, but Mrs. Inchbare’s bones are above suspicion!) It was a long business, Blanche. A more sour-tempered, cunning, and distrustful witness I never examined in all my experience at the Bar. She would have upset the temper of any mortal man but a lawyer. We have such wonderful tempers in our profession; and we can be so aggravating when we like! In short, my dear, Mrs. Inchbare was a she-cat, and I was a he-cat—and I clawed the truth out of her at last. The result was well worth arriving at, as you shall see. Mr. Delamayn had described to me certain remarkable circumstances as taking place between a lady and a gentleman at an inn: the object of the parties being to pass themselves off at the time as man and wife. Every one of those circumstances, Blanche, occurred at Craig Fernie, between a lady and a gentleman, on the day when Miss Silvester disappeared from this house And—wait!—being pressed for her name, after the gentleman had left her behind him at the inn, the name the lady gave was, ‘Mrs. Silvester.’ What do you think of that?”
“Think! I’m bewildered—I can’t realize it.”
“It’s a startling discovery, my dear child—there is no denying that. Shall I wait a little, and let you recover yourself?”
“No! no! Go on! The gentleman, uncle? The gentleman who was with Anne? Who is he? Not Mr. Delamayn?”
“Not Mr. Delamayn,” said Sir Patrick. “If I have proved nothing else, I have proved that.”
“What need was there to prove it? Mr. Delamayn went to London on the day of the lawn-party. And Arnold—”
“And Arnold went with him as far as the second station from this. Quite true! But how was I to know what Mr. Delamayn might have done after Arnold had left him? I could only make sure that he had not gone back privately to the inn, by getting the proof from Mrs. Inchbare.”
“How did you get it?”
“I asked her to describe the gentleman who was with Miss Silvester. Mrs. Inchbare’s description (vague as you will presently find it to be) completely exonerates that man,” said Sir Patrick, pointing to Geoffrey still asleep in his chair. “Heis not the person who passed Miss Silvester off as his wife at Craig Fernie. He spoke the truth when he described the case to me as the case of a friend.”
“But who is the friend?” persisted Blanche. “That’s what I want to know.”
“That’s what I want to know, too.”
“Tell me exactly, uncle, what Mrs. Inchbare said. I have lived with Anne all my life. Imusthave seen the man somewhere.”
“If you can identify him by Mrs. Inchbare’s description,” returned Sir Patrick, “you will be a great deal cleverer than I am. Here is the picture of the man, as painted by the landlady: Young; middle-sized; dark hair, eyes, and complexion; nice temper, pleasant way of speaking. Leave out ‘young,’ and the rest is the exact contrary of Mr. Delamayn. So far, Mrs. Inchbare guides us plainly enough. But how are we to apply her description to the right person? There must be, at the lowest computation, five hundred thousand men in England who are young, middle-sized, dark, nice-tempered, and pleasant spoken. One of the footmen here answers that description in every particular.”
“And Arnold answers it,” said Blanche—as a still stronger instance of the provoking vagueness of the description.
“And Arnold answers it,” repeated Sir Patrick, quite agreeing with her.
They had barely said those words when Arnold himself appeared, approaching Sir Patrick with a pack of cards in his hand.
There—at the very moment when they had both guessed the truth, without feeling the slightest suspicion of it in their own minds—there stood Discovery, presenting itself unconsciously to eyes incapable of seeing it, in the person of the man who had passed Anne Silvester off as his wife at the Craig Fernie inn! The terrible caprice of Chance, the merciless irony of Circumstance, could go no further than this. The three had their feet on the brink of the precipice at that moment. And two of them were smiling at an odd coincidence; and one of them was shuffling a pack of cards!
“We have done with the Antiquities at last!” said Arnold; “and we are going to play at Whist. Sir Patrick, will you choose a card?”
“Too soon after dinner, my good fellow, forme. Play the first rubber, and then give me another chance. By-the-way,” he added “Miss Silvester has been traced to Kirkandrew. How is it that you never saw her go by?”
“She can’t have gone my way, Sir Patrick, or I must have seen her.”
Having justified himself in those terms, he was recalled to the other end of the room by the whist-party, impatient for the cards which he had in his hand.
“What were we talking of when he interrupted us?” said Sir Patrick to Blanche.
“Of the man, uncle, who was with Miss Silvester at the inn.”
“It’s useless to pursue that inquiry, my dear, with nothing better than Mrs. Inchbare’s description to help us.”
Blanche looked round at the sleeping Geoffrey.
“Andheknows!” she said. “It’s maddening, uncle, to look at the brute snoring in his chair!”
Sir Patrick held up a warning hand. Before a word more could be said between them they were silenced again by another interruption.
The whist-party comprised Lady Lundie and the surgeon, playing as partners against Smith and Jones. Arnold sat behind the surgeon, taking a lesson in the game. One, Two, and Three, thus left to their own devices, naturally thought of the billiard-table; and, detecting Geoffrey asleep in his corner, advanced to disturb his slumbers, under the all-sufficing apology of “Pool.” Geoffrey roused himself, and rubbed his eyes, and said, drowsily, “All right.” As he rose, he looked at the opposite corner in which Sir Patrick and his niece were sitting. Blanche’s self-possession, resolutely as she struggled to preserve it, was not strong enough to keep her eyes from turning toward Geoffrey with an expression which betrayed the reluctant interest that she now felt in him. He stopped, noticing something entirely new in the look with which the young lady was regarding him.
“Beg your pardon,” said Geoffrey. “Do you wish to speak to me?”
Blanche’s face flushed all over. Her uncle came to the rescue.
“Miss Lundie and I hope you have slept well Mr. Delamayn,” said Sir Patrick, jocosely. “That’s all.”
“Oh? That’s all?” said Geoffrey still looking at Blanche. “Beg your pardon again. Deuced long walk, and deuced heavy dinner. Natural consequence—a nap.”
Sir Patrick eyed him closely. It was plain that he had been honestly puzzled at finding himself an object of special attention on Blanche’s part. “See you in the billiard-room?” he said, carelessly, and followed his companions out of the room—as usual, without waiting for an answer.
“Mind what you are about,” said Sir Patrick to his niece. “That man is quicker than he looks. We commit a serious mistake if we put him on his guard at starting.”
“It sha’n’t happen again, uncle,” said Blanche. “But think ofhisbeing in Anne’s confidence, and ofmybeing shut out of it!”
“In his friend’s confidence, you mean, my dear; and (if we only avoid awakening his suspicion) there is no knowing how soon he may say or do something which may show us who his friend is.”
“But he is going back to his brother’s to-morrow—he said so at dinner-time.”
“So much the better. He will be out of the way of seeing strange things in a certain young lady’s face. His brother’s house is within easy reach of this; and I am his legal adviser. My experience tells me that he has not done consulting me yet—and that he will let out something more next time. So much for our chance of seeing the light through Mr. Delamayn—if we can’t see it in any other way. And that is not our only chance, remember. I have something to tell you about Bishopriggs and the lost letter.”
“Is it found?”
“No. I satisfied myself about that—I had it searched for, under my own eye. The letter is stolen, Blanche; and Bishopriggs has got it. I have left a line for him, in Mrs. Inchbare’s care. The old rascal is missed already by the visitors at the inn, just as I told you he would be. His mistress is feeling the penalty of having been fool enough to vent her ill temper on her head-waiter. She lays the whole blame of the quarrel on Miss Silvester, of course. Bishopriggs neglected every body at the inn to wait on Miss Silvester. Bishopriggs was insolent on being remonstrated with, and Miss Silvester encouraged him—and so on. The result will be—now Miss Silvester has gone—that Bishopriggs will return to Craig Fernie before the autumn is over. We are sailing with wind and tide, my dear. Come, and learn to play whist.”
He rose to join the card-players. Blanche detained him.
“You haven’t told me one thing yet,” she said. “Whoever the man may be, is Anne married to him?”
“Whoever the man may be,” returned Sir Patrick, “he had better not attempt to marry any body else.”
So the niece unconsciously put the question, and so the uncle unconsciously gave the answer on which depended the whole happiness of Blanche’s life to come, The “man!” How lightly they both talked of the “man!” Would nothing happen to rouse the faintest suspicion—in their minds or in Arnold’s mind—that Arnold was the “man” himself?
“You mean that sheismarried?” said Blanche.
“I don’t go as far as that.”
“You mean that she isnotmarried?”
“I don’t go so far asthat.”
“Oh! the law!”
“Provoking, isn’t it, my dear? I can tell you, professionally, that (in my opinion) she has grounds to go on if she claims to be the man’s wife. That is what I meant by my answer; and, until we know more, that is all I can say.”
“When shall we know more? When shall we get the telegram?”
“Not for some hours yet. Come, and learn to play whist.”
“I think I would rather talk to Arnold, uncle, if you don’t mind.”
“By all means! But don’t talk to him about what I have been telling you to-night. He and Mr. Delamayn are old associates, remember; and he might blunder into telling his friend what his friend had better not know. Sad (isn’t it?) for me to be instilling these lessons of duplicity into the youthful mind. A wise person once said, ‘The older a man gets the worse he gets.’ That wise person, my dear, had me in his eye, and was perfectly right.”
He mitigated the pain of that confession with a pinch of snuff, and went to the whist table to wait until the end of the rubber gave him a place at the game.
BLANCHE found her lover as attentive as usual to her slightest wish, but not in his customary good spirits. He pleaded fatigue, after his long watch at the cross-roads, as an excuse for his depression. As long as there was any hope of a reconciliation with Geoffrey, he was unwilling to tell Blanche what had happened that afternoon. The hope grew fainter and fainter as the evening advanced. Arnold purposely suggested a visit to the billiard-room, and joined the game, with Blanche, to give Geoffrey an opportunity of saying the few gracious words which would have made them friends again. Geoffrey never spoke the words; he obstinately ignored Arnold’s presence in the room.
At the card-table the whist went on interminably. Lady Lundie, Sir Patrick, and the surgeon, were all inveterate players, evenly matched. Smith and Jones (joining the game alternately) were aids to whist, exactly as they were aids to conversation. The same safe and modest mediocrity of style distinguished the proceedings of these two gentlemen in all the affairs of life.
The time wore on to midnight. They went to bed late and they rose late at Windygates House. Under that hospitable roof, no intrusive hints, in the shape of flat candlesticks exhibiting themselves with ostentatious virtue on side-tables, hurried the guest to his room; no vile bell rang him ruthlessly out of bed the next morning, and insisted on his breakfasting at a given hour. Life has surely hardships enough that are inevitable without gratuitously adding the hardship of absolute government, administered by a clock?
It was a quarter past twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of going to bed. Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a last rubber. Blanche vanished while her stepmother’s eye was on her; and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the hands of her maid. Nobody followed the example of the mistress of the house but Arnold. He left the billiard-room with the certainty that it was all over now between Geoffrey and himself. Not even the attraction of Blanche proved strong enough to detain him that night. He went his way to bed.
It was past one o’clock. The final rubber was at an end, the accounts were settled at the card-table; the surgeon had strolled into the billiard-room, and Smith and Jones had followed him, when Duncan came in, at last, with the telegram in his hand.
Blanche turned from the broad, calm autumn moonlight which had drawn her to the window, and looked over her uncle’s shoulder while he opened the telegram.
She read the first line—and that was enough. The whole scaffolding of hope built round that morsel of paper fell to the ground in an instant. The train from Kirkandrew had reached Edinburgh at the usual time. Every passenger in it had passed under the eyes of the police, and nothing had been seen of any person who answered the description given of Anne!
Sir Patrick pointed to the two last sentences in the telegram: “Inquiries telegraphed to Falkirk. If with any result, you shall know.”
“We must hope for the best, Blanche. They evidently suspect her of having got out at the junction of the two railways for the purpose of giving the telegraph the slip. There is no help for it. Go to bed, child—go to bed.”
Blanche kissed her uncle in silence and went away. The bright young face was sad with the first hopeless sorrow which the old man had yet seen in it. His niece’s parting look dwelt painfully on his mind when he was up in his room, with the faithful Duncan getting him ready for his bed.
“This is a bad business, Duncan. I don’t like to say so to Miss Lundie; but I greatly fear the governess has baffled us.”
“It seems likely, Sir Patrick. The poor young lady looks quite heart-broken about it.”
“You noticed that too, did you? She has lived all her life, you see, with Miss Silvester; and there is a very strong attachment between them. I am uneasy about my niece, Duncan. I am afraid this disappointment will have a serious effect on her.”
“She’s young, Sir Patrick.”
“Yes, my friend, she’s young; but the young (when they are good for any thing) have warm hearts. Winter hasn’t stolen onthem,Duncan! And they feel keenly.”
“I think there’s reason to hope, Sir, that Miss Lundie may get over it more easily than you suppose.”
“What reason, pray?”
“A person in my position can hardly venture to speak freely, Sir, on a delicate matter of this kind.”
Sir Patrick’s temper flashed out, half-seriously, half-whimsically, as usual.
“Is that a snap at Me, you old dog? If I am not your friend, as well as your master, who is? AmIin the habit of keeping any of my harmless fellow-creatures at a distance? I despise the cant of modern Liberalism; but it’s not the less true that I have, all my life, protested against the inhuman separation of classes in England. We are, in that respect, brag as we may of our national virtue, the most unchristian people in the civilized world.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir Patrick—”
“God help me! I’m talking polities at this time of night! It’s your fault, Duncan. What do you mean by casting my station in my teeth, because I can’t put my night-cap on comfortably till you have brushed my hair? I have a good mind to get up and brush yours. There! there! I’m uneasy about my niece—nervous irritability, my good fellow, that’s all. Let’s hear what you have to say about Miss Lundie. And go on with my hair. And don’t be a humbug.”
“I was about to remind you, Sir Patrick, that Miss Lundie has another interest in her life to turn to. If this matter of Miss Silvester ends badly—and I own it begins to look as if it would—I should hurry my niece’s marriage, Sir, and see ifthatwouldn’t console her.”
Sir Patrick started under the gentle discipline of the hair-brush in Duncan’s hand.
“That’s very sensibly put,” said the old gentleman. “Duncan! you are, what I call, a clear-minded man. Well worth thinking of, old Truepenny! If the worst comes to the worst, well worth thinking of!”
It was not the first time that Duncan’s steady good sense had struck light, under the form of a new thought, in his master’s mind. But never yet had he wrought such mischief as the mischief which he had innocently done now. He had sent Sir Patrick to bed with the fatal idea of hastening the marriage of Arnold and Blanche.
The situation of affairs at Windygates—now that Anne had apparently obliterated all trace of herself—was becoming serious. The one chance on which the discovery of Arnold’s position depended, was the chance that accident might reveal the truth in the lapse of time. In this posture of circumstances, Sir Patrick now resolved—if nothing happened to relieve Blanche’s anxiety in the course of the week—to advance the celebration of the marriage from the end of the autumn (as originally contemplated) to the first fortnight of the ensuing month. As dates then stood, the change led (so far as free scope for the development of accident was concerned) to this serious result. It abridged a lapse of three months into an interval of three weeks.
The next morning came; and Blanche marked it as a memorable morning, by committing an act of imprudence, which struck away one more of the chances of discovery that had existed, before the arrival of the Edinburgh telegram on the previous day.
She had passed a sleepless night; fevered in mind and body; thinking, hour after hour, of nothing but Anne. At sunrise she could endure it no longer. Her power to control herself was completely exhausted; her own impulses led her as they pleased. She got up, determined not to let Geoffrey leave the house without risking an effort to make him reveal what he knew about Anne. It was nothing less than downright treason to Sir Patrick to act on her own responsibility in this way. She knew it was wrong; she was heartily ashamed of herself for doing it. But the demon that possesses women with a recklessness all their own, at the critical moments of their lives, had got her—and she did it.
Geoffrey had arranged overnight, to breakfast early, by himself, and to walk the ten miles to his brother’s house; sending a servant to fetch his luggage later in the day.
He had got on his hat; he was standing in the hall, searching his pocket for his second self, the pipe—when Blanche suddenly appeared from the morning-room, and placed herself between him and the house door.
“Up early—eh?” said Geoffrey. “I’m off to my brother’s.”
She made no reply. He looked at her closer. The girl’s eyes were trying to read his face, with an utter carelessness of concealment, which forbade (even to his mind) all unworthy interpretation of her motive for stopping him on his way out.
“Any commands for me?” he inquired
This time she answered him. “I have something to ask you,” she said.
He smiled graciously, and opened his tobacco-pouch. He was fresh and strong after his night’s sleep—healthy and handsome and good-humored. The house-maids had had a peep at him that morning, and had wished—like Desdemona, with a difference—that “Heaven had made all three of them such a man.”
“Well,” he said, “what is it?”
She put her question, without a single word of preface—purposely to surprise him.
“Mr. Delamayn,” she said, “do you know where Anne Silvester is this morning?”
He was filling his pipe as she spoke, and he dropped some of the tobacco on the floor. Instead of answering before he picked up the tobacco he answered after—in surly self-possession, and in one word—“No.”
“Do you know nothing about her?”
He devoted himself doggedly to the filling of his pipe. “Nothing.”
“On your word of honor, as a gentleman?”
“On my word of honor, as a gentleman.”
He put back his tobacco-pouch in his pocket. His handsome face was as hard as stone. His clear blue eyes defied all the girls in England put together to see intohismind. “Have you done, Miss Lundie?” he asked, suddenly changing to a bantering politeness of tone and manner.
Blanche saw that it was hopeless—saw that she had compromised her own interests by her own headlong act. Sir Patrick’s warning words came back reproachfully to her now when it was too late. “We commit a serious mistake if we put him on his guard at starting.”
There was but one course to take now. “Yes,” she said. “I have done.”
“My turn now,” rejoined Geoffrey. “You want to know where Miss Silvester is. Why do you ask Me?”
Blanche did all that could be done toward repairing the error that she had committed. She kept Geoffrey as far away as Geoffrey had keptherfrom the truth.
“I happen to know,” she replied “that Miss Silvester left the place at which she had been staying about the time when you went out walking yesterday. And I thought you might have seen her.”
“Oh? That’s the reason—is it?” said Geoffrey, with a smile.
The smile stung Blanche’s sensitive temper to the quick. She made a final effort to control herself, before her indignation got the better of her.
“I have no more to say, Mr. Delamayn.” With that reply she turned her back on him, and closed the door of the morning-room between them.
Geoffrey descended the house steps and lit his pipe. He was not at the slightest loss, on this occasion, to account for what had happened. He assumed at once that Arnold had taken a mean revenge on him after his conduct of the day before, and had told the whole secret of his errand at Craig Fernie to Blanche. The thing would get next, no doubt, to Sir Patrick’s ears; and Sir Patrick would thereupon be probably the first person who revealed to Arnold the position in which he had placed himself with Anne. All right! Sir Patrick would be an excellent witness to appeal to, when the scandal broke out, and when the time came for repudiating Anne’s claim on him as the barefaced imposture of a woman who was married already to another man. He puffed away unconcernedly at his pipe, and started, at his swinging, steady pace, for his brother’s house.
Blanche remained alone in the morning-room. The prospect of getting at the truth, by means of what Geoffrey might say on the next occasion when he consulted Sir Patrick, was a prospect that she herself had closed from that moment. She sat down in despair by the window. It commanded a view of the little side-terrace which had been Anne’s favorite walk at Windygates. With weary eyes and aching heart the poor child looked at the familiar place; and asked herself, with the bitter repentance that comes too late, if she had destroyed the last chance of finding Anne!
She sat passively at the window, while the hours of the morning wore on, until the postman came. Before the servant could take the letter bag she was in the hall to receive it. Was it possible to hope that the bag had brought tidings of Anne? She sorted the letters; and lighted suddenly on a letter to herself. It bore the Kirkandrew postmark, and It was addressed to her in Anne’s handwriting.
She tore the letter open, and read these lines:
“I have left you forever, Blanche. God bless and reward you! God make you a happy woman in all your life to come! Cruel as you will think me, love, I have never been so truly your sister as I am now. I can only tell you this—I can never tell you more. Forgive me, and forget me, our lives are parted lives from this day.”
Going down to breakfast about his usual hour, Sir Patrick missed Blanche, whom he was accustomed to see waiting for him at the table at that time. The room was empty; the other members of the household having all finished their morning meal. Sir Patrick disliked breakfasting alone. He sent Duncan with a message, to be given to Blanche’s maid.
The maid appeared in due time Miss Lundie was unable to leave her room. She sent a letter to her uncle, with her love—and begged he would read it.
Sir Patrick opened the letter and saw what Anne had written to Blanche.
He waited a little, reflecting, with evident pain and anxiety, on what he had read—then opened his own letters, and hurriedly looked at the signatures. There was nothing for him from his friend, the sheriff, at Edinburgh, and no communication from the railway, in the shape of a telegram. He had decided, overnight, on waiting till the end of the week before he interfered in the matter of Blanche’s marriage. The events of the morning determined him on not waiting another day. Duncan returned to the breakfast-room to pour out his master’s coffee. Sir Patrick sent him away again with a second message,
“Do you know where Lady Lundie is, Duncan?”
“Yes, Sir Patrick.”
“My compliments to her ladyship. If she is not otherwise engaged, I shall be glad to speak to her privately in an hour’s time.”
SIR PATRICK made a bad breakfast. Blanche’s absence fretted him, and Anne Silvester’s letter puzzled him.
He read it, short as it was, a second time, and a third. If it meant any thing, it meant that the motive at the bottom of Anne’s flight was to accomplish the sacrifice of herself to the happiness of Blanche. She had parted for life from his niece for his niece’s sake! What did this mean? And how was it to be reconciled with Anne’s position—as described to him by Mrs. Inchbare during his visit to Craig Fernie?
All Sir Patrick’s ingenuity, and all Sir Patrick’s experience, failed to find so much as the shadow of an answer to that question.
While he was still pondering over the letter, Arnold and the surgeon entered the breakfast-room together.
“Have you heard about Blanche?” asked Arnold, excitedly. “She is in no danger, Sir Patrick—the worst of it is over now.”
The surgeon interposed before Sir Patrick could appeal to him.
“Mr. Brinkworth’s interest in the young lady a little exaggerates the state of the case,” he said. “I have seen her, at Lady Lundie’s request; and I can assure you that there is not the slightest reason for any present alarm. Miss Lundie has had a nervous attack, which has yielded to the simplest domestic remedies. The only anxiety you need feel is connected with the management of her in the future. She is suffering from some mental distress, which it is not for me, but for her friends, to alleviate and remove. If you can turn her thoughts from the painful subject—whatever it may be—on which they are dwelling now, you will do all that needs to be done.” He took up a newspaper from the table, and strolled out into the garden, leaving Sir Patrick and Arnold together.
“You heard that?” said Sir Patrick.
“Is he right, do you think?” asked Arnold.
“Right? Do you suppose a man getshisreputation by making mistakes? You’re one of the new generation, Master Arnold. You can all of you stare at a famous man; but you haven’t an atom of respect for his fame. If Shakspeare came to life again, and talked of playwriting, the first pretentious nobody who sat opposite at dinner would differ with him as composedly as he might differ with you and me. Veneration is dead among us; the present age has buried it, without a stone to mark the place. So much for that! Let’s get back to Blanche. I suppose you can guess what the painful subject is that’s dwelling on her mind? Miss Silvester has baffled me, and baffled the Edinburgh police. Blanche discovered that we had failed last night and Blanche received that letter this morning.”
He pushed Anne’s letter across the breakfast-table.
Arnold read it, and handed it back without a word. Viewed by the new light in which he saw Geoffrey’s character after the quarrel on the heath, the letter conveyed but one conclusion to his mind. Geoffrey had deserted her.
“Well?” said Sir Patrick. “Do you understand what it means?”
“I understand Blanche’s wretchedness when she read it.”
He said no more than that. It was plain that no information which he could afford—even if he had considered himself at liberty to give it—would be of the slightest use in assisting Sir Patrick to trace Miss Silvester, under present circumstances, There was—unhappily—no temptation to induce him to break the honorable silence which he had maintained thus far. And—more unfortunately still—assuming the temptation to present itself, Arnold’s capacity to resist it had never been so strong a capacity as it was now.
To the two powerful motives which had hitherto tied his tongue—respect for Anne’s reputation, and reluctance to reveal to Blanche the deception which he had been compelled to practice on her at the inn—to these two motives there was now added a third. The meanness of betraying the confidence which Geoffrey had reposed in him would be doubled meanness if he proved false to his trust after Geoffrey had personally insulted him. The paltry revenge which that false friend had unhesitatingly suspected him of taking was a revenge of which Arnold’s nature was simply incapable. Never had his lips been more effectually sealed than at this moment—when his whole future depended on Sir Patrick’s discovering the part that he had played in past events at Craig Fernie.
“Yes! yes!” resumed Sir Patrick, impatiently. “Blanche’s distress is intelligible enough. But here is my niece apparently answerable for this unhappy woman’s disappearance. Can you explain what my niece has got to do with it?”
“I! Blanche herself is completely mystified. How shouldIknow?”
Answering in those terms, he spoke with perfect sincerity. Anne’s vague distrust of the position in which they had innocently placed themselves at the inn had produced no corresponding effect on Arnold at the time. He had not regarded it; he had not even understood it. As a necessary result, not the faintest suspicion of the motive under which Anne was acting existed in his mind now.
Sir Patrick put the letter into his pocket-book, and abandoned all further attempt at interpreting the meaning of it in despair.
“Enough, and more than enough, of groping in the dark,” he said. “One point is clear to me after what has happened up stairs this morning. We must accept the position in which Miss Silvester has placed us. I shall give up all further effort to trace her from this moment.”
“Surely that will be a dreadful disappointment to Blanche, Sir Patrick?”
“I don’t deny it. We must face that result.”
“If you are sure there is nothing else to be done, I suppose we must.”
“I am not sure of anything of the sort, Master Arnold! There are two chances still left of throwing light on this matter, which are both of them independent of any thing that Miss Silvester can do to keep it in the dark.”
“Then why not try them, Sir? It seems hard to drop Miss Silvester when she is in trouble.”
“We can’t help her against her own will,” rejoined Sir Patrick. “And we can’t run the risk, after that nervous attack this morning, of subjecting Blanche to any further suspense. I have thought of my niece’s interests throughout this business; and if I now change my mind, and decline to agitate her by more experiments, ending (quite possibly) in more failures, it is because I am thinking of her interests still. I have no other motive. However numerous my weaknesses may be, ambition to distinguish myself as a detective policeman is not one of them. The case, from the police point of view, is by no means a lost case. I drop it, nevertheless, for Blanche’s sake. Instead of encouraging her thoughts to dwell on this melancholy business, we must apply the remedy suggested by our medical friend.”
“How is that to be done?” asked Arnold.
The sly twist of humor began to show itself in Sir Patrick’s face.
“Has she nothing to think of in the future, which is a pleasanter subject of reflection than the loss of her friend?” he asked. “You are interested, my young gentleman, in the remedy that is to cure Blanche. You are one of the drugs in the moral prescription. Can you guess what it is?”
Arnold started to his feet, and brightened into a new being.
“Perhaps you object to be hurried?” said Sir Patrick.
“Object! If Blanche will only consent, I’ll take her to church as soon as she comes down stairs!”
“Thank you!” said Sir Patrick, dryly. “Mr. Arnold Brinkworth, may you always be as ready to take Time by the forelock as you are now! Sit down again; and don’t talk nonsense. It is just possible—if Blanche consents (as you say), and if we can hurry the lawyers—that you may be married in three weeks’ or a month’s time.”
“What have the lawyers got to do with it?”
“My good fellow, this is not a marriage in a novel! This is the most unromantic affair of the sort that ever happened. Here are a young gentleman and a young lady, both rich people; both well matched in birth and character; one of age, and the other marrying with the full consent and approval of her guardian. What is the consequence of this purely prosaic state of things? Lawyers and settlements, of course!”
“Come into the library, Sir Patrick; and I’ll soon settle the settlements! A bit of paper, and a dip of ink. ‘I hereby give every blessed farthing I have got in the world to my dear Blanche.’ Sign that; stick a wafer on at the side; clap your finger on the wafer; ‘I deliver this as my act and deed;’ and there it is—done!”
“Is it, really? You are a born legislator. You create and codify your own system all in a breath. Moses-Justinian-Mahomet, give me your arm! There is one atom of sense in what you have just said. ‘Come into the library’—is a suggestion worth attending to. Do you happen, among your other superfluities, to have such a thing as a lawyer about you?”
“I have got two. One in London, and one in Edinburgh.”
“We will take the nearest of the two, because we are in a hurry. Who is the Edinburgh lawyer? Pringle of Pitt Street? Couldn’t be a better man. Come and write to him. You have given me your abstract of a marriage settlement with the brevity of an ancient Roman. I scorn to be outdone by an amateur lawyer. Here ismyabstract: You are just and generous to Blanche; Blanche is just and generous to you; and you both combine to be just and generous together to your children. There is a model settlement! and there are your instructions to Pringle of Pitt Street! Can you do it by yourself? No; of course you can’t. Now don’t be slovenly-minded! See the points in their order as they come. You are going to be married; you state to whom, you add that I am the lady’s guardian; you give the name and address of my lawyer in Edinburgh; you write your instructions plainly in the fewest words, and leave details to your legal adviser; you refer the lawyers to each other; you request that the draft settlements be prepared as speedily as possible, and you give your address at this house. There are the heads. Can’t you do it now? Oh, the rising generation! Oh, the progress we are making in these enlightened modern times! There! there! you can marry Blanche, and make her happy, and increase the population—and all without knowing how to write the English language. One can only say with the learned Bevorskius, looking out of his window at the illimitable loves of the sparrows, ‘How merciful is Heaven to its creatures!’ Take up the pen. I’ll dictate! I’ll dictate!”
Sir Patrick read the letter over, approved of it, and saw it safe in the box for the post. This done, he peremptorily forbade Arnold to speak to his niece on the subject of the marriage without his express permission. “There’s somebody else’s consent to be got,” he said, “besides Blanche’s consent and mine.”
“Lady Lundie?”
“Lady Lundie. Strictly speaking, I am the only authority. But my sister-in-law is Blanche’s step-mother, and she is appointed guardian in the event of my death. She has a right to be consulted—in courtesy, if not in law. Would you like to do it?”
Arnold’s face fell. He looked at Sir Patrick in silent dismay.
“What! you can’t even speak to such a perfectly pliable person as Lady Lundie? You may have been a very useful fellow at sea. A more helpless young man I never met with on shore. Get out with you into the garden among the other sparrows! Somebody must confront her ladyship. And if you won’t—I must.”
He pushed Arnold out of the library, and applied meditatively to the knob of his cane. His gayety disappeared, now that he was alone. His experience of Lady Lundie’s character told him that, in attempting to win her approval to any scheme for hurrying Blanche’s marriage, he was undertaking no easy task. “I suppose,” mused Sir Patrick, thinking of his late brother—“I suppose poor Tom had some way of managing her. How did he do it, I wonder? If she had been the wife of a bricklayer, she is the sort of woman who would have been kept in perfect order by a vigorous and regular application of her husband’s fist. But Tom wasn’t a bricklayer. I wonder how Tom did it?” After a little hard thinking on this point Sir Patrick gave up the problem as beyond human solution. “It must be done,” he concluded. “And my own mother-wit must help me to do it.”
In that resigned frame of mind he knocked at the door of Lady Lundie’s boudoir.