"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 she _is_ married?" said Blanche.
"I don't go as far as that."
"You mean that she is _not_ married?"
"I don't go so far as _that._"
"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.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.
FORWARD.
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 effec
t 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 on _them,_
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? Am _I_ in 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 if _that_
wouldn'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 into _his_ mind. "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 kept _her_ from the truth.
"I happen to know," she replied "that Miss Silvester left the
place at which she had been staying about the time when y
ou 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 co nsulted 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?"
Man and Wife Page 33
