CHAPTER XLA STARTLING ENCOUNTER
When Abel Force had finished reading this manuscript he sat with it in his hand, thoughtfully gazing at the paper and almost involuntarily listening for any sound from the adjoining bedroom, where his wife lay in a very precarious condition.
At last he folded up the parcel and put it into his breast pocket, muttering to himself that he must keep it out of sight until he could get an opportunity to burn it.
Then he softly left the room and went and tapped gently at the door of his wife’s chamber.
The nurse opened the door.
“How is Mrs. Force?” he inquired.
“She is sleeping under the influence of an opiate. The doctor thinks that if she sleeps well through the night she will be very much better to-morrow morning.”
“Thank Heaven!”
The nurse softly closed the door, and Mr. Force returned to the little room, where he lighted the gas, for it was growing dark, made some little improvement in his toilet, for it was dinner time, and then hurried downstairs, for he had eaten nothing since breakfast.
He opened the parlor door, and was surprised to find a group of many people gathered around his own party.
Wynnette sprang out from them all to meet him.
“Oh! papa, I have not seen you since early this morning. Where have you been? We had all begun to fear that you were a ‘mysterious disappearance’!”
“My dear, I have been closely engaged all day. Who are those with you?” inquired Mr. Force.
“Who? Who but your old friends and neighbors, Mrs. Dorothy Hedge, Miss Susannah Grandiere and Mr. Samuel Grandiere. Come! Come and speak to them.”
“They here! Why, how did they find us out?”
“Joshua found them and brought them here, else they never would have found us out. And yet people say that dogs have no souls!”
Mr. Force hurried to meet the friends from St. Mary’s, and warmly shook hands with them all.
“We are so sorry to hear that Mrs. Force is indisposed,” said Mrs. Hedge, when these greetings were over.
“She has had a severe nervous shock. Such strokes must be epidemic among those who live amid ‘war’s alarms,’ you know, Mrs. Hedge.”
“Yes, of course. But all war’s alarms are not disastrous. What a glorious deed young Leonidas Force has done! I congratulate you on your nephew, Mr. Force.”
“Thank you, madam. Will you take my arm down to dinner? There is the gong.”
The whole party arose and went down into the dining room and took their places at the table; the party filled up a large one.
After dinner they returned to the drawing room for a little while, and then the visitors from St. Mary’s bade good-night, and—accompanied by Capt. Grandiere and Rosemary Hedge—went away to take possession of their rooms at a boarding house that had been found for them in E Street.
Mr. Force and Lord Enderby lighted a couple of cigars and walked out on the bright and busy avenue to smoke and stroll. Between the gas lamps and the illuminated shop windows the scene was almost as light as day, and, with its crowd of pedestrians, as noisy as a fair.
Up and down they strolled and smoked until, tired of being jolted, or, as the earl put it, “walked over,” they turned up the west side of Fifteenth Street, where the sidewalk was brilliantly lighted, yet almost vacant of passengers.
Here they walked and talked in the cool of the evening, unconscious of a dark figure approaching them from the north end of the street, whose advent was to have the most important effect on the destinies of several of our friends. They were going to meet the form that was approaching them.
Both looked up carelessly and saw a tall, soldiery looking man, who, coming up, held out his hand with an exclamation of surprise and pleasure:
“Enderby!”
The earl stared for a second and then seized the offered hand, crying with delight:
“Anglesea!”
“When did you arrive?”
This question was put, in the same words, at the same time by both.
“But three days since,” answered Lord Enderby.
“Only this afternoon,” replied Gen. Anglesea. “I have come to America to see your sister.”
“Let me present you to my brother-in-law—Mr. Force, of Mondreer, Maryland. Mr. Force—Gen. Anglesea, late of the East Indian service—the real Simon Pure, you understand, Abel!”
The two gentlemen, thus introduced, bowed deeply.
“You say you have come over to see my sister?” inquired the earl.
“Yes! On very important business! You may judge how important when I tell you that it has brought me across the ocean at such a time as this.”
“My sister is at this time indisposed. I think it will be a day or two before she is capable of attending to any business. But here is her husband.”
“Of course. I am very happy to meet Mr. Force, and shall be ready, at his convenience, to enter upon this business. It concerns Lady Elfrida’s first marriage.”
Now, if Mr. Force had not already learned the truth concerning that first marriage, I know not what might have been the consequences of this sudden announcement. As it was, Lady Elfrida’s second husband, with great presence of mind, replied:
“Precisely. I shall be ready to attend to you as soon as you please.”
As for Lord Enderby—who had never heard a word about his sister’s first marriage—he was considerably startled, but, with equal presence of mind, recovered himself, and said:
“If it is necessary that this matter should be entered upon this evening, we had better withdraw into apartments. We can scarcely discuss important business in the street.”
“You are quite right. And I am at your service,” assented the general.
“But where shall we go? Privacy is hardly to be had at any price in this overcrowded city. We have not a private sitting room at our hotel.”
“Come with me, then,” said Anglesea. “I have, by a fortunate chance, been able to secure a comfortable bedroom, with a little box of a sitting room adjoining.”
“A box of a sitting room! What a boon! What a blessing in these times!” said the earl, as he turned with the squire and the general to walk to the last-mentioned gentleman’s hotel.
Ten minutes later they were all three seated around a small table, on which stood a bottle of sherry, some wineglasses, and cigars.
“My business with Lady Elfrida,” began Anglesea, “is to restore to her some documents that have been too long, indeed, in my possession, though I did not really anticipate they would ever be called for, as they now appear to be, to confirm her son’s claim to the estate of his uncle—Antonio Saviola.”
“‘Her son?’” thought the earl to himself; but he said nothing; he only looked at Abel Force, whose face was quite impenetrable.
“I hope the young gentleman is living and is quite well.”
“Yes, thank you, my stepson is quite well, and a very fine young man altogether.”
The earl looked from one to the other. Here was a revelation! His sister had been twice married, and she had a living son by her first marriage! And Abel Force knew this! And he himself had never even suspected such a thing! Why had not he—her brother—her only living relative besides her husband and children—been told of this first marriage? Did his father know it, and conspire to keep the secret from him, too? Did Anglesea also know it from the first, and confederate with all the other conspirators to keep the secret from him—the son, the brother, the bosom friend? It was very hard on him, the injured earl reflected.
In the meantime the general had taken out from arolled morocco case a few parchments, which he spread upon the little table—pushing all the glasses together to make room. Then, missing some papers from among the others, he arose and went into the adjoining chamber to look for it.
Lord Enderby seized the opportunity afforded by his temporary absence to stoop and whisper to the squire:
“This sudden news of my sister’s first marriage has fallen like a thunderbolt upon me!”
“Has it?” inquired the squire, with forced calmness.
“I should think so! I had never dreamed of such a thing! Why was it kept a secret from me? Did my father know it?”
“Certainly.”
“My father knew it! Anglesea knew it! You knew it! Why was it kept secret from me?”
“My dear Enderby—because it seemed to your father necessary that it should be kept so,” soothingly replied the squire.
“Was the marriage a discreditable one, then?”
“No, it was not.”
“Then why, in the name of Heaven, could it not have been announced?”
“My dear Enderby—secrecy is not always wrong and foolish; it is sometimes wise and right. It was so in this instance. And I may further promise to satisfy you of this in a few hours.”
“When you married my sister, did you know that she had been married before, and that she had a living son by that first marriage?”
“Most certainly I did!” said Mr. Force, with emphasis.
“And yet I remember—I swear that I remember—she signed her name to her marriage register with you, Elfrida Glennon.”
“Hush! here comes Anglesea,” said the squire, as the general entered the room.