Having read Mrs. Linley’s answer, Mr. Sarrazin looked out of the breakfast-room window, and saw that the fog had reached the cottage. Before Mrs. Presty could make any remark on the change in the weather, he surprised her by an extraordinary question.
“Is there an upper room here, ma’am, which has a view of the road before your front gate?”
“Certainly!”
“And can I go into it without disturbing anybody?”
Mrs. Presty said, “Of course!” with an uplifting of her eye brows which expressed astonishment not unmixed with suspicion. “Do you want to go up now?” she added, “or will you wait till you have had your breakfast?”
“I want to go up, if you please, before the fog thickens. Oh, Mrs. Presty, I am ashamed to trouble you! Let the servant show me the room.”
No. For the first time in her life Mrs. Presty insisted on doing servant’s duty. If she had been crippled in both legs her curiosity would have helped her to get up the stairs on her hands. “There!” she said, opening the door of the upper room, and placing herself exactly in the middle of it, so that she could see all round her: “Will that do for you?”
Mr. Sarrazin went to the window; hid himself behind the curtain; and cautiously peeped out. In half a minute he turned his back on the misty view of the road, and said to himself: “Just what I expected.”
Other women might have asked what this mysterious proceeding meant. Mrs. Presty’s sense of her own dignity adopted a system of independent discovery. To Mr. Sarrazin’s amusement, she imitated him to his face. Advancing to the window, she, too, hid herself behind the curtain, and she, too, peeped out. Still following her model, she next turned her back on the view—and then she became herself again. “Now we have both looked out of window,” she said to the lawyer, in her own inimitably impudent way, “suppose we compare our impressions.”
This was easily done. They had both seen the same two men walking backward and forward, opposite the front gate of the cottage. Before the advancing fog made it impossible to identify him, Mr. Sarrazin had recognized in one of the men his agreeable fellow-traveler on the journey from London. The other man—a stranger—was in all probability an assistant spy obtained in the neighborhood. This discovery suggested serious embarrassment in the future. Mrs. Presty asked what was to be done next. Mr. Sarrazin answered: “Let us have our breakfast.”
In another quarter of an hour they were both in Mrs. Linley’s room.
Her agitated manner, her reddened eyes, showed that she was still suffering under the emotions of the past night. The moment the lawyer approached her, she crossed the room with hurried steps, and took both his hands in her trembling grasp. “You are a good man, you are a kind man,” she said to him wildly; “you have my truest respect and regard. Tell me, are you—really—really—really sure that the one way in which I can keep my child with me is the way you mentioned last night?”
Mr. Sarrazin led her gently back to her chair.
The sad change in her startled and distressed him. Sincerely, solemnly even, he declared that the one alternative before her was the alternative that he had mentioned. He entreated her to control herself. It was useless, she still held him as if she was holding to her last hope.
“Listen to me!” she cried. “There’s something more; there’s another chance for me. I must, and will, know what you think of it.”
“Wait a little. Pray wait a little!”
“No! not a moment. Is there any hope in appealing to the lawyer whom Mr. Linley has employed? Let me go back with you to London. I will persuade him to exert his influence—I will go down on my knees to him—I will never leave him till I have won him over to my side—I will take Kitty with me; he shall see us both, and pity us, and help us!”
“Hopeless. Quite hopeless, Mrs. Linley.”
“Oh, don’t say that!”
“My dear lady, my poor dear lady, I must say it. The man you are talking of is the last man in the world to be influenced as you suppose. He is notoriously a lawyer, and nothing but a lawyer. If you tried to move him to pity you, he would say, ‘Madam, I am doing my duty to my client’; and he would ring his bell and have you shown out. Yes! even if he saw you crushed and crying at his feet.”
Mrs. Presty interfered for the first time.
“In your place, Catherine,” she said, “I would put my foot down on that man and crushhim. Consent to the Divorce, and you may do it.”
Mrs. Linley lay prostrate in her chair. The excitement which had sustained her thus far seemed to have sunk with the sinking of her last hope. Pale, exhausted, yielding to hard necessity, she looked up when her mother said, “Consent to the Divorce,” and answered, “I have consented.”
“And trust me,” Mr. Sarrazin said fervently, “to see that Justice is done, and to protect you in the meanwhile.”
Mrs. Presty added her tribute of consolation.
“After all,” she asked, “what is there to terrify you in the prospect of a Divorce? You won’t hear what people say about it—for we see no society now. And, as for the newspapers, keep them out of the house.”
Mrs. Linley answered with a momentary revival of energy:
“It is not the fear of exposure that has tortured me,” she said. “When I was left in the solitude of the night, my heart turned to Kitty; I felt that any sacrifice of myself might be endured for her sake. It’s the remembrance of my marriage, Mr. Sarrazin, that is the terrible trial to me. Those whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder. Is there nothing to terrify me in setting that solemn command at defiance? I do it—oh, I do it—in consenting to the Divorce! I renounce the vows which I bound myself to respect in the presence of God; I profane the remembrance of eight happy years, hallowed by true love. Ah, you needn’t remind me of what my husband has done. I don’t forget how cruelly he has wronged me; I don’t forget that his own act has cast me from him. But whose act destroys our marriage? Mine, mine! Forgive me, mamma; forgive me, my kind friend—the horror that I have of myself forces its way to my lips. No more of it! My child is my one treasure left. What must I do next? What must I sign? What must I sacrifice? Tell me—and it shall be done. I submit! I submit!”
Delicately and mercifully Mr. Sarrazin answered that sad appeal.
All that his knowledge, experience and resolution could suggest he addressed to Mrs. Presty. Mrs. Linley could listen or not listen, as her own wishes inclined. In the one case or in the other, her interests would be equally well served. The good lawyer kissed her hand. “Rest, and recover,” he whispered. And then he turned to her mother—and became a man of business once more.
“The first thing I shall do, ma’am, is to telegraph to my agent in Edinburgh. He will arrange for the speediest possible hearing of our case in the Court of Session. Make your mind easy so far.”
Mrs. Presty’s mind was by this time equally inaccessible to information and advice. “I want to know what is to be done with those two men who are watching the gate,” was all she said in the way of reply.
Mrs. Linley raised her head in alarm.
“Two!” she exclaimed—and looked at Mr. Sarrazin. “You only spoke of one last night.”
“And I add another this morning. Rest your poor head, Mrs. Linley, I know how it aches; I know how it burns.” He still persisted in speaking to Mrs. Presty. “One of those two men will follow me to the station, and see me off on my way to London. The other will look after you, or your daughter, or the maid, or any other person who may try to get away into hiding with Kitty. And they are both keeping close to the gate, in the fear of losing sight of us in the fog.”
“I wish we lived in the Middle Ages!” said Mrs. Presty.
“What would be the use of that, ma’am?”
“Good heavens, Mr. Sarrazin, don’t you see? In those grand old days you would have taken a dagger, and the gardener would have taken a dagger, and you would have stolen out, and stabbed those two villains as a matter of course. And this is the age of progress! The vilest rogue in existence is a sacred person whose life we are bound to respect. Ah, what good that national hero would have done who put his barrels of gunpowder in the right place on the Fifth of November! I have always said it, and I stick to it, Guy Fawkes was a great statesman.”
In the meanwhile Mrs. Linley was not resting, and not listening to the expression of her mother’s political sentiments. She was intently watching Mr. Sarrazin’s face.
“There is danger threatening us,” she said. “Do you see a way out of it?”
To persist in trying to spare her was plainly useless; Mr. Sarrazin answered her directly.
“The danger of legal proceedings to obtain possession of the child,” he said, “is more near and more serious than I thought it right to acknowledge, while you were in doubt which way to decide. I was careful—too careful, perhaps—not to unduly influence you in a matter of the utmost importance to your future life. But you have made up your mind. I don’t scruple now to remind you that an interval of time must pass before the decree for your Divorce can be pronounced, and the care of the child be legally secured to the mother. The only doubt and the only danger are there. If you are not frightened by the prospect of a desperate venture which some women would shrink from, I believe I see a way of baffling the spies.”
Mrs. Linley started to her feet. “Say what I am to do,” she cried, “and judge for yourself if I am as easily frightened as some women.”
The lawyer pointed with a persuasive smile to her empty chair. “If you allow yourself to be excited,” he said, “you will frighten me. Please—oh, please sit down again!”
Mrs. Linley felt the strong will, asserting itself in terms of courteous entreaty. She obeyed. Mrs. Presty had never admired the lawyer as she admired him now. “Is that how you manage your wife?” she asked.
Mr. Sarrazin was equal to the occasion, whatever it might be. “In your time, ma’am,” he said, “did you reveal the mysteries of conjugal life?” He turned to Mrs. Linley. “I have something to ask first,” he resumed, “and then you shall hear what I propose. How many people serve you in this cottage?”
“Three. Our landlady, who is housekeeper and cook. Our own maid. And the landlady’s daughter, who does the housework.”
“Any out-of-door servants?”
“Only the gardener.”
“Can you trust these people?”
“In what way, Mr. Sarrazin?”
“Can you trust them with a secret which only concerns yourself?”
“Certainly! The maid has been with us for years; no truer woman ever lived. The good old landlady often drinks tea with us. Her daughter is going to be married; and I have given the wedding-dress. As for the gardener, let Kitty settle the matter with him, and I answer for the rest. Why are you pointing to the window?”
“Look out, and tell me what you see.”
“I see the fog.”
“And I, Mrs. Linley, have seen the boathouse. While the spies are watching your gate, what do you say to crossing the lake, under cover of the fog?”
Winter had come and gone; spring was nearing its end, and London still suffered under the rigid regularity of easterly winds. Although in less than a week summer would begin with the first of June, Mr. Sarrazin was glad to find his office warmed by a fire, when he arrived to open the letters of the day.
The correspondence in general related exclusively to proceedings connected with the law. Two letters only presented an exception to the general rule. The first was addressed in Mrs. Linley’s handwriting, and bore the postmark of Hanover. Kitty’s mother had not only succeeded in getting to the safe side of the lake—she and her child had crossed the German Ocean as well. In one respect her letter was a remarkable composition. Although it was written by a lady, it was short enough to be read in less than a minute:
“MY DEAR MR. SARRAZIN—I have just time to write by this evening’s post. Our excellent courier has satisfied himself that the danger of discovery has passed away. The wretches have been so completely deceived that they are already on their way back to England, to lie in wait for us at Folkestone and Dover. To-morrow morning we leave this charming place—oh, how unwillingly!—for Bremen, to catch the steamer to Hull. You shall hear from me again on our arrival. Gratefully yours,
“CATHERINE LINLEY.”
Mr. Sarrazin put this letter into a private drawer and smiled as he turned the key. “Has she made up her mind at last?” he asked himself. “But for the courier, I shouldn’t feel sure of her even now.”
The second letter agreeably surprised him. It was announced that the writer had just returned from the United States; it invited him to dinner that evening; and it was signed “Randal Linley.” In Mr. Sarrazin’s estimation, Randal had always occupied a higher place than his brother. The lawyer had known Mrs. Linley before her marriage, and had been inclined to think that she would have done wisely if she had given her hand to the younger brother instead of the elder. His acquaintance with Randal ripened rapidly into friendship. But his relations with Herbert made no advance toward intimacy: there was a gentlemanlike cordiality between them, and nothing more.
At seven o’clock the two friends sat at a snug little table, in the private room of a hotel, with an infinite number of questions to ask of each other, and with nothing to interrupt them but a dinner of such extraordinary merit that it insisted on being noticed, from the first course to the last.
Randal began. “Before we talk of anything else,” he said, “tell me about Catherine and the child. Where are they?”
“On their way to England, after a residence in Germany.”
“And the old lady?”
“Mrs. Presty has been staying with friends in London.”
“What! have they parted company? Has there been a quarrel?”
“Nothing of the sort; a friendly separation, in the strictest sense of the word. Oh, Randal, what are you about? Don’t put pepper into this perfect soup. It’s as good as thegras doubleat the Cafe Anglais in Paris.”
“So it is; I wasn’t paying proper attention to it. But I am anxious about Catherine. Why did she go abroad?”
“Haven’t you heard from her?”
“Not for six months or more. I innocently vexed her by writing a little too hopefully about Herbert. Mrs. Presty answered my letter, and recommended me not to write again. It isn’t like Catherine to bear malice.”
“Don’t even think such a thing possible!” the lawyer answered, earnestly. “Attribute her silence to the right cause. Terrible anxieties have been weighing on her mind since you went to America.”
“Anxieties caused by my brother? Oh, I hope not!”
“Caused entirely by your brother—if I must tell the truth. Can’t you guess how?”
“Is it the child? You don’t mean to tell me that Herbert has taken Kitty away from her mother!”
“While I am her mother’s lawyer, my friend, your brother won’t do that. Welcome back to England in the first glass of sherry; good wine, but a little too dry for my taste. No, we won’t talk of domestic troubles just yet. You shall hear all about it after dinner. What made you go to America? You haven’t been delivering lectures, have you?”
“I have been enjoying myself among the most hospitable people in the world.”
Mr. Sarrazin shook his head; he had a case of copyright in hand just then. “A people to be pitied,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because their Government forgets what is due to the honor of the nation.”
“How?”
“In this way. The honor of a nation which confers right of property in works of art, produced by its own citizens, is surely concerned in protecting from theft works of art produced by other citizens.”
“That’s not the fault of the people.”
“Certainly not. I have already said it’s the fault of the Government. Let’s attend to the fish now.”
Randal took his friend’s advice. “Good sauce, isn’t it?” he said.
The epicure entered a protest. “Good?” he repeated. “My dear fellow, it’s absolute perfection. I don’t like to cast a slur on English cookery. But think of melted butter, and tell me if anybody but a foreigner (I don’t like foreigners, but I give them their due) could have produced this white wine sauce? So you really had no particular motive in going to America?”
“On the contrary, I had a very particular motive. Just remember what my life used to be when I was in Scotland—and look at my life now! No Mount Morven; no model farm to look after; no pleasant Highland neighbors; I can’t go to my brother while he is leading his present life; I have hurt Catherine’s feelings; I have lost dear little Kitty; I am not obliged to earn my living (more’s the pity); I don’t care about politics; I have a pleasure in eating harmless creatures, but no pleasure in shooting them. What is there left for me to do, but to try change of scene, and go roaming around the world, a restless creature without an object in life? Have I done something wrong again? It isn’t the pepper this time—and yet you’re looking at me as if I was trying your temper.”
The French side of Mr. Sarrazin’s nature had got the better of him once more. He pointed indignantly to a supreme preparation of fowl on his friend’s plate. “Do I actually see you picking out your truffles, and putting them on one side?” he asked.
“Well,” Randal acknowledged, “I don’t care about truffles.”
Mr. Sarrazin rose, with his plate in his hand and his fork ready for action. He walked round the table to his friend’s side, and reverently transferred the neglected truffles to his own plate. “Randal, you will live to repent this,” he said solemnly. “In the meantime, I am the gainer.” Until he had finished the truffles, no word fell from his lips. “I think I should have enjoyed them more,” he remarked, “if I had concentrated my attention by closing my eyes; but you would have thought I was going to sleep.” He recovered his English nationality, after this, until the dessert had been placed on the table, and the waiter was ready to leave the room. At that auspicious moment, he underwent another relapse. He insisted on sending his compliments and thanks to the cook.
“At last,” said Randal, “we are by ourselves—and now I want to know why Catherine went to Germany.”
As a lawyer, Randal’s guest understood that a narrative of events can only produce the right effect, on one condition: it must begin at the beginning. Having related all that had been said and done during his visit to the cottage, including his first efforts in the character of an angler under Kitty’s supervision, he stopped to fill his glass again—and then astonished Randal by describing the plan that he had devised for escaping from the spies by crossing the lake in the fog.
“What did the ladies say to it?” Randal inquired. “Who spoke first?”
“Mrs. Presty, of course! She objected to risk her life on the water, in a fog. Mrs. Linley showed a resolution for which I was not prepared. She thought of Kitty, saw the value of my suggestion, and went away at once to consult with the landlady. In the meantime I sent for the gardener, and told him what I was thinking of. He was one of those stolid Englishmen, who possess resources which don’t express themselves outwardly. Judging by his face, you would have said he was subsiding into a slumber under the infliction of a sermon, instead of listening to a lawyer proposing a stratagem. When I had done, the man showed the metal he was made of. In plain English, he put three questions which gave me the highest opinion of his intelligence. ‘How much luggage, sir?’ ‘As little as they can conveniently take with them,’ I said. ‘How many persons?’ ‘The two ladies, the child, and myself.’ ‘Can you row, sir?’ ‘In any water you like, Mr. Gardener, fresh or salt’. Think of asking Me, an athletic Englishman, if I could row! In an hour more we were ready to embark, and the blessed fog was thicker than ever. Mrs. Presty yielded under protest; Kitty was wild with delight; her mother was quiet and resigned. But one circumstance occurred that I didn’t quite understand—the presence of a stranger on the pier with a gun in his hand.”
“You don’t mean one of the spies?”
“Nothing of the sort; I mean an idea of the gardener’s. He had been a sailor in his time—and that’s a trade which teaches a man (if he’s good for anything) to think, and act on his thought, at one and the same moment. He had taken a peep at the blackguards in front of the house, and had recognized the shortest of the two as a native of the place, perfectly well aware that one of the features attached to the cottage was a boathouse. ‘That chap is not such a fool as he looks,’ says the gardener. ‘If he mentions the boat-house, the other fellow from London may have his suspicions. I thought I would post my son on the pier—that quiet young man there with the gun—to keep a lookout. If he sees another boat (there are half a dozen on this side of the lake) putting off after us, he has orders to fire, on the chance of our hearing him. A little notion of mine, sir, to prevent our being surprised in the fog. Do you see any objection to it?’ Objection! In the days when diplomacy was something more than a solemn pretense, what a member of Congress that gardener would have made! Well, we shipped our oars, and away we went. Not quite haphazard—for we had a compass with us. Our course was as straight as we could go, to a village on the opposite side of the lake, called Brightfold. Nothing happened for the first quarter of an hour—and then, by the living Jingo (excuse my vulgarity), we heard the gun!”
“What did you do?”
“Went on rowing, and held a council. This time I came out as the clever one of the party. The men were following us in the dark; they would have to guess at the direction we had taken, and they would most likely assume (in such weather as we had) that we should choose the shortest way across the lake. At my suggestion we changed our course, and made for a large town, higher up on the shore, called Tawley. We landed, and waited for events, and made no discovery of another boat behind us. The fools had justified my confidence in them—they had gone to Brightfold. There was half-an-hour to spare before the next train came to Tawley; and the fog was beginning to lift on that side of the lake. We looked at the shops; and I made a purchase in the town.”
“Stop a minute,” said Randal. “Is Brightfold on the railway?”
“No.”
“Is there an electric telegraph at the place?”
“Yes.”
“That was awkward, wasn’t it? The first thing those men would do would be to telegraph to Tawley.”
“Not a doubt of it. How would they describe us, do you think?”
Randal answered. “A middle-aged gentleman—two ladies, one of them elderly—and a little girl. Quite enough to identify you at Tawley, if the station-master understood the message.”
“Shall I tell you what the station-master discovered, with the message in his hand? No elderly lady, no middle-aged gentleman; nothing more remarkable thanonelady—and a little boy.”
Randal’s face brightened. “You parted company, of course,” he said; “and you disguised Kitty! How did you manage it?”
“Didn’t I say just now that we looked at the shops, and that I made a purchase in the town? A boy’s ready-made suit—not at all a bad fit for Kitty! Mrs. Linley put on the suit, and tucked up the child’s hair under a straw hat, in an empty yard—no idlers about in that bad weather. We said good-by, and parted, with grievous misgivings on my side, which proved (thank God!) to have been quite needless. Kitty and her mother went to the station, and Mrs. Presty and I hired a carriage, and drove away to the head of the lake, to catch the train to London. Do you know, Randal, I have altered my opinion of Mrs. Presty?”
Randal smiled. “You too have found something in that old woman,” he said, “which doesn’t appear on the surface.”
“The occasion seems to bring that something out,” the lawyer remarked. “When I proposed the separation, and mentioned my reasons, I expected to find some difficulty in persuading Mrs. Presty to give up the adventurous journey with her daughter and her grandchild. I reminded her that she had friends in London who would receive her, and got snubbed for taking the liberty. ‘I know that as well as you do. Come along—I’m ready to go with you.’ It isn’t agreeable to my self-esteem to own it, but I expected to hear her say that she would consent to any sacrifice for the sake of her dear daughter. No such clap-trap as that passed her lips. She owned the true motive with a superiority to cant which won my sincerest respect. ‘I’ll do anything,’ she said, ‘to baffle Herbert Linley and the spies he has set to watch us.’ I can’t tell you how glad I was that she had her reward on the same day. We were too late at the station, and we had to wait for the next train. And what do you think happened? The two scoundrels followed us instead of following Mrs. Linley! They had inquired no doubt at the livery stables where we hired the carriage—had recognized the description of us—and had taken the long journey to London for nothing. Mrs. Presty and I shook hands at the terminus the best friends that ever traveled together with the best of motives. After that, I think I deserve another glass of wine.”
“Go on with your story, and you shall have another bottle!” cried Randal. “What did Catherine and the child do after they left you?”
“They did the safest thing—they left England. Mrs. Linley distinguished herself on this occasion. It was her excellent idea to avoid popular ports of departure, like Folkestone and Dover, which were sure to be watched, and to get away (if the thing could be done) from some place on the east coast. We consulted our guide and found that a line of steamers sailed from Hull to Bremen once a week. A tedious journey from our part of Cumberland, with some troublesome changing of trains, but they got there in time to embark. My first news of them reached me in a telegram from Bremen. There they waited for further instructions. I sent the instructions by a thoroughly capable and trustworthy man—an Italian courier, known to me by an experience of twenty years. Shall I confess it? I thought I had done rather a clever thing in providing Mrs. Linley with a friend in need while I was away from her.”
“I think so, too,” said Randal.
“Wrong, completely wrong. I had made a mistake—I had been too clever, and I got my reward accordingly. You know how I advised Mrs. Linley?”
“Yes. You persuaded her, with the greatest difficulty, to apply for a Divorce.”
“Very well. I had made all the necessary arrangements for the trial, when I received a letter from Germany. My charming client had changed her mind, and declined to apply for the Divorce. There was my reward for having been too clever!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“My dear fellow, you are dull to-night. I had been so successful in protecting Mrs. Linley and the child, and my excellent courier had found such a charming place of retreat for them in one of the suburbs of Hanover, that ‘she saw no reason now for taking the shocking course that I had recommended to her—so repugnant to all her most cherished convictions; so sinful and so shameful in its doing of evil that good might come. Experience had convinced her that (thanks to me) there was no fear of Kitty being discovered and taken from her. She therefore begged me to write to my agent in Edinburgh, and tell him that her application to the court was withdrawn.’ Ah, you understand my position at last. The headstrong woman was running a risk which renewed all my anxieties. By every day’s post I expected to hear that she had paid the penalty of her folly, and that your brother had succeeded in getting possession of the child. Wait a little before you laugh at me. But for the courier, the thing would have really happened a week since.”
Randal looked astonished. “Months must have passed,” he objected. “Surely, after that lapse of time, Mrs. Linley must have been safe from discovery.”
“Take your own positive view of it! I only know that the thing happened. And why not? The luck had begun by being on one side—why shouldn’t the other side have had its turn next?”
“Do you really believe in luck?”
“Devoutly. A lawyer must believe in something. He knows the law too well to put any faith in that: and his clients present to him (if he is a man of any feeling) a hideous view of human nature. The poor devil believes in luck—rather than believe in nothing. I think it quite likely that accident helped the person employed by the husband to discover the wife and child. Anyhow, Mrs. Linley and Kitty were seen in the streets of Hanover; seen, recognized, and followed. The courier happened to be with them—luck again! For thirty years and more, he had been traveling in every part of Europe; there was not a landlord of the smallest pretensions anywhere who didn’t know him and like him. ‘I pretended not to see that anybody was following us,’ he said (writing from Hanover to relieve my anxiety); ‘and I took the ladies to a hotel. The hotel possessed two merits from our point of view—it had a way out at the back, through the stables, and it was kept by a landlord who was an excellent good friend of mine. I arranged with him what he was to say when inquiries were made; and I kept my poor ladies prisoners in their lodgings for three days. The end of it is that Mr. Linley’s policeman has gone away to watch the Channel steam-service, while we return quietly by way of Bremen and Hull.’ There is the courier’s account of it. I have only to add that poor Mrs. Linley has been fairly frightened into submission. She changes her mind again, and pledges herself once more to apply for the Divorce. If we are only lucky enough to get our case heard without any very serious delay, I am not afraid of my client slipping through my fingers for the second time. When will the courts of session be open to us? You have lived in Scotland, Randal—”
“But I haven’t lived in the courts of law. I wish I could give you the information you want.”
Mr. Sarrazin looked at his watch. “For all I know to the contrary,” he said, “we may be wasting precious time while we are talking here. Will you excuse me if I go away to my club?”
“Are you going in search of information?”
“Yes. We have some inveterate old whist-players who are always to be found in the card-room. One of them formerly practiced, I believe, in the Scotch courts. It has just occurred to me that the chance is worth trying.”
“Will you let me know if you succeed?” Randal asked.
The lawyer took his hand at parting. “You seem to be almost as anxious about it as I am,” he said.
“To tell you the truth, I am a little alarmed when I think of Catherine. If there is another long delay, how do we know what may happen before the law has confirmed the mother’s claim to the child? Let me send one of the servants here to wait at your club. Will you give him a line telling me when the trial is likely to take place?”
“With the greatest pleasure. Good-night.”
Left alone, Randal sat by the fireside for a while, thinking of the future. The prospect, as he saw it, disheartened him. As a means of employing his mind on a more agreeable subject for reflection, he opened his traveling desk and took out two or three letters. They had been addressed to him, while he was in America, by Captain Bennydeck.
The captain had committed an error of which most of us have been guilty in our time. He had been too exclusively devoted to work that interested him to remember what was due to the care of his health. The doctor’s warnings had been neglected; his over-strained nerves had given way; and the man whose strong constitution had resisted cold and starvation in the Arctic wastes, had broken down under stress of brain-work in London.
This was the news which the first of the letters contained.
The second, written under dictation, alluded briefly to the remedies suggested. In the captain’s case, the fresh air recommended was the air of the sea. At the same time he was forbidden to receive either letters or telegrams, during his absence from town, until the doctor had seen him again. These instructions pointed, in Captain Bennydeck’s estimation, to sailing for pleasure’s sake, and therefore to hiring a yacht.
The third and last letter announced that the yacht had been found, and described the captain’s plans when the vessel was ready for sea.
He proposed to sail here and there about the Channel, wherever it might please the wind to take him. Friends would accompany him, but not in any number. The yacht was not large enough to accommodate comfortably more than one or two guests at a time. Every now and then, the vessel would come to an anchor in the bay of the little coast town of Sandyseal, to accommodate friends going and coming and (in spite of medical advice) to receive letters. “You may have heard of Sandyseal,” the Captain wrote, “as one of the places which have lately been found out by the doctors. They are recommending the air to patients suffering from nervous disorders all over England. The one hotel in the place, and the few cottages which let lodgings, are crammed, as I hear, and the speculative builder is beginning his operations at such a rate that Sandyseal will be no longer recognizable in a few months more. Before the crescents and terraces and grand hotels turn the town into a fashionable watering-place, I want to take a last look at scenes familiar to me under their old aspect. If you are inclined to wonder at my feeling such a wish as this, I can easily explain myself. Two miles inland from Sandyseal, there is a lonely old moated house. In that house I was born. When you return from America, write to me at the post-office, or at the hotel (I am equally well known in both places), and let us arrange for a speedy meeting. I wish I could ask you to come and see me in my birth-place. It was sold, years since, under instructions in my father’s will, and was purchased for the use of a community of nuns. We may look at the outside, and we can do no more. In the meantime, don’t despair of my recovery; the sea is my old friend, and my trust is in God’s mercy.”
These last lines were added in a postscript:
“Have you heard any more of that poor girl, the daughter of my old friend Roderick Westerfield—whose sad story would never have been known to me but for you? I feel sure that you have good reasons for not telling me the name of the man who has misled her, or the address at which she may be found. But you may one day be at liberty to break your silence. In that case, don’t hesitate to do so because there may happen to be obstacles in my way. No difficulties discourage me, when my end in view is the saving of a soul in peril.”
Randal returned to his desk to write to the Captain. He had only got as far as the first sentences, when the servant returned with the lawyer’s promised message. Mr. Sarrazin’s news was communicated in these cheering terms:
“I am a firmer believer in luck than ever. If we only make haste—and won’t I make haste!—we may get the Divorce, as I calculate, in three weeks’ time.”
Mrs. Linley’s application for a Divorce was heard in the first division of the Court of Session at Edinburgh, the Lord President being the judge.
To the disappointment of the large audience assembled, no defense was attempted on the part of the husband—a wise decision, seeing that the evidence of the wife and her witnesses was beyond dispute. But one exciting incident occurred toward the close of the proceedings. Sudden illness made Mrs. Linley’s removal necessary, at the moment of all others most interesting to herself—the moment before the judge’s decision was announced.
But, as the event proved, the poor lady’s withdrawal was the most fortunate circumstance that could have occurred, in her own interests. After condemning the husband’s conduct with unsparing severity, the Lord President surprised most of the persons present by speaking of the wife in these terms:
“Grievously as Mrs. Linley has been injured, the evidence shows that she was herself by no means free from blame. She has been guilty, to say the least of it, of acts of indiscretion. When the criminal attachment which had grown up between Mr. Herbert Linley and Miss Westerfield had been confessed to her, she appears to have most unreasonably overrated whatever merit there might have been in their resistance to the final temptation. She was indeed so impulsively ready to forgive (without waiting to see if the event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person’s shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more deserving of censure. She herself appears to have placed the temptation under which he fell in her husband’s way, and so (in some degree at least) to have provoked the catastrophe which has brought her before this court. I allude, it is needless to say, to her having invited the governess—then out of harm’s way; then employed elsewhere—to return to her house, and to risk (what actually occurred) a meeting with Mr. Herbert Linley when no third person happened to be present. I know that the maternal motive which animated Mrs. Linley is considered, by many persons, to excuse and even to justify that most regrettable act; and I have myself allowed (I fear weakly allowed) more than due weight to this consideration in pronouncing for the Divorce. Let me express the earnest hope that Mrs. Linley will take warning by what has happened; and, if she finds herself hereafter placed in other circumstances of difficulty, let me advise her to exercise more control over impulses which one might expect perhaps to find in a young girl, but which are neither natural nor excusable in a woman of her age.”
His lordship then decreed the Divorce in the customary form, giving the custody of the child to the mother.
As fast as a hired carriage could take him, Mr. Sarrazin drove from the court to Mrs. Linley’s lodgings, to tell her that the one great object of securing her right to her child had been achieved.
At the door he was met by Mrs. Presty. She was accompanied by a stranger, whose medical services had been required. Interested professionally in hearing the result of the trial, this gentleman volunteered to communicate the good news to his patient. He had been waiting to administer a composing draught, until the suspense from which Mrs. Linley was suffering might be relieved, and a reasonable hope be entertained that the medicine would produce the right effect. With that explanation he left the room.
While the doctor was speaking, Mrs. Presty was drawing her own conclusions from a close scrutiny of Mr. Sarrazin’s face.
“I am going to make a disagreeable remark,” she announced. “You look ten years older, sir, than you did when you left us this morning to go to the Court. Do me a favor—come to the sideboard.” The lawyer having obeyed, she poured out a glass of wine. “There is the remedy,” she resumed, “when something has happened to worry you.”
“‘Worry’ isn’t the right word,” Mr. Sarrazin declared. “I’m furious! It’s a most improper thing for a person in my position to say of a person in the Lord President’s position; but I do say it—he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“After giving us our Divorce!” Mrs. Presty exclaimed. “What has he done?”
Mr. Sarrazin repeated what the judge had said of Mrs. Linley. “In my opinion,” he added, “such language as that is an insult to your daughter.”
“And yet,” Mrs. Presty repeated, “he has given us our Divorce.” She returned to the sideboard, poured out a second dose of the remedy against worry, and took it herself. “What sort of character does the Lord President bear?” she asked when she had emptied her glass.
This seemed to be an extraordinary question to put, under the circumstances. Mr. Sarrazin answered it, however, to the best of his ability. “An excellent character,” he said—"that’s the unaccountable part of it. I hear that he is one of the most careful and considerate men who ever sat on the bench. Excuse me, Mrs. Presty, I didn’t intend to produce that impression on you.”
“What impression, Mr. Sarrazin?”
“You look as if you thought there was some excuse for the judge.”
“That’s exactly what I do think.”
“You find an excuse for him?”
“I do.”
“What is it, ma’am?”
“Constitutional infirmity, sir.”
“May I ask of what nature?”
“You may. Gout.”
Mr. Sarrazin thought he understood her at last. “You know the Lord President,” he said.
Mrs. Presty denied it positively. “No, Mr. Sarrazin, I don’t get at it in that way. I merely consult my experience of another official person of high rank, and apply it to the Lord President. You know that my first husband was a Cabinet Minister?”
“I have heard you say so, Mrs. Presty, on more than one occasion.”
“Very well. You may also have heard that the late Mr. Norman was a remarkably well-bred man. In and out of the House of Commons, courteous almost to a fault. One day I happened to interrupt him when he was absorbed over an Act of Parliament. Before I could apologize—I tell you this in the strictest confidence—he threw the Act of Parliament at my head. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have thrown it back again. Knowing his constitution, I decided on waiting a day or two. On the second day, my anticipations were realized. Mr. Norman’s great toe was as big as my fist and as red as a lobster; he apologized for the Act of Parliament with tears in his eyes. Suppressed gout in Mr. Norman’s temper; suppressed gout in the Lord President’s temper.Hewill have a toe; and, if I can prevail upon my daughter to call upon him, I have not the least doubt he will apologize to her with tears inhiseyes.”
This interesting experiment was never destined to be tried. Right or wrong, Mrs. Presty’s theory remained the only explanation of the judge’s severity. Mr. Sarrazin attempted to change the subject. Mrs. Presty had not quite done with it yet. “There is one more thing I want to say,” she proceeded. “Will his lordship’s remarks appear in the newspapers?”
“Not a doubt of it.”
“In that case I will take care (for my daughter’s sake) that no newspapers enter the house to-morrow. As for visitors, we needn’t be afraid of them. Catherine is not likely to be able to leave her room; the worry of this miserable business has quite broken her down.”
The doctor returned at that moment.
Without taking the old lady’s gloomy view of his patient, he admitted that she was in a low nervous condition, and he had reason to suppose, judging by her reply to a question which he had ventured to put, that she had associations with Scotland which made a visit to that country far from agreeable to her. His advice was that she should leave Edinburgh as soon as possible, and go South. If the change of climate led to no improvement, she would at least be in a position to consult the best physicians in London. In a day or two more it would be safe to remove her—provided she was not permitted to exhaust her strength by taking long railway journeys.
Having given his advice, the doctor took leave. Soon after he had gone, Kitty made her appearance, charged with a message from Mrs. Linley’s room.
“Hasn’t the physic sent your mother to sleep yet?” Mrs. Presty inquired.
Kitty shook her head. “Mamma wants to go away tomorrow, and no physic will make her sleep till she has seen you, and settled about it. That’s what she told me to say. IfIbehaved in that way about my physic, I should catch it.”
Mrs. Presty left the room; watched by her granddaughter with an appearance of anxiety which it was not easy to understand.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Sarrazin asked. “You look very serious to-day.”
Kitty held up a warning hand. “Grandmamma sometimes listens at doors,” she whispered; “I don’t want her to hear me.” She waited a little longer, and then approached Mr. Sarrazin, frowning mysteriously. “Take me up on your knee,” she said. “There’s something wrong going on in this house.”
Mr. Sarrazin took her on his knee, and rashly asked what had gone wrong. Kitty’s reply puzzled him.
“I go to mamma’s room every morning when I wake,” the child began. “I get into her bed, and I give her a kiss, and I say ‘Good-morning—and sometimes, if she isn’t in a hurry to get up, I stop in her bed, and go to sleep again. Mamma thought I was asleep this morning. I wasn’t asleep—I was only quiet. I don’t know why I was quiet.”
Mr. Sarrazin’s kindness still encouraged her. “Well,” he said, “and what happened after that?”
“Grandmamma came in. She told mamma to keep up her spirits. She says, ‘It will all be over in a few hours more.’ She says, ‘What a burden it will be off your mind!’ She says, ‘Is that child asleep?’ And mamma says, ‘Yes.’ And grandmamma took one of mamma’s towels. And I thought she was going to wash herself. What wouldyouhave thought?”
Mr. Sarrazin began to doubt whether he would do well to discuss Mrs. Presty’s object in taking the towel. He only said, “Go on.”
“Grandmamma dipped it into the water-jug,” Kitty continued, with a grave face; “but she didn’t wash herself. She went to one of mamma’s boxes. Though she’s so old, she’s awfully strong, I can tell you. She rubbed off the luggage-label in no time. Mamma says, ‘What are you doing that for?’ And grandmamma says—this is the dreadful thing that I want you to explain; oh, I can remember it all; it’s like learning lessons, only much nicer—grandmamma says, ‘Before the day’s over, the name on your boxes will be your name no longer.’”
Mr. Sarrazin now became aware of the labyrinth into which his young friend had innocently led him. The Divorce, and the wife’s inevitable return (when the husband was no longer the husband) to her maiden name—these were the subjects on which Kitty’s desire for enlightenment applied to the wisest person within her reach, her mother’s legal adviser.
Mr. Sarrazin tried to put her off his knee. She held him round the neck. He thought of the railway as a promising excuse, and told her he must go back to London. She held him a little tighter. “I really can’t wait, my dear;” he got up as he said it. Kitty hung on to him with her legs as well as her arms, and finding the position uncomfortable, lost her temper. “Mamma’s going to have a new name,” she shouted, as if the lawyer had suddenly become deaf. “Grandmamma says she must be Mrs. Norman. And I must be Miss Norman. I won’t! Where’s papa? I want to write to him; I know he won’t allow it. Do you hear? Where’s papa?”
She fastened her little hands on Mr. Sarrazin’s coat collar and tried to shake him, in a fury of resolution to know what it all meant. At that critical moment Mrs. Presty opened the door, and stood petrified on the threshold.
“Hanging on to Mr. Sarrazin with her armsandher legs!” exclaimed the old lady. “You little wretch, which are you, a monkey or a child?”
The lawyer gently deposited Kitty on the floor.
“Mind this, Samuel,” she whispered, as he set her down on her feet, “I won’t be Miss Norman.”
Mrs. Presty pointed sternly at the open door. “You were screaming just now, when quiet in the house is of the utmost importance to your mother. If I hear you again, bread and water and no doll for the rest of the week.”
Kitty retired in disgrace, and Mrs. Presty sharpened her tongue on Mr. Sarrazin next. “I’m astonished, sir, at your allowing that impudent grandchild of mine to take such liberties with you. Who would suppose that you were a married man, with children of your own?”
“That’s just the reason, my dear madam,” Mr. Sarrazin smartly replied. “I romp with my own children—why not with Kitty? Can I do anything for you in London?” he went on, getting a little nearer to the door; “I leave Edinburgh by the next train. And I promise you,” he added, with the spirit of mischief twinkling in his eyes, “this shall be my last confidential interview with your grandchild. When she wants to ask any more questions, I transfer her to you.”
Mrs. Presty looked after the retreating lawyer thoroughly mystified. What “confidential interview”? What “questions”? After some consideration, her experience of her granddaughter suggested that a little exercise of mercy might be attended with the right result. She looked at a cake on the sideboard. “I have only to forgive Kitty,” she decided, “and the child will talk about it of her own accord.”