In the Yard of the Marlowe Arms.
The Bishop looked at his watch, and smiled, shaking his head.
"Time flies. I must, I fear, take my leave."
"Before you go," said Sir Jekyl, "I must tell you I've been thinking
over my promise about that odious green chamber, and I'll pledge you my
honour I'll fulfil it. I'll not leave a stone of it standing; I won't, I
assure you. To the letter I'll fulfil it."
"I never doubted it, my dear Sir Jekyl."
"And must you really leave me to-day?"
"No choice, I regret."
"It's very unlucky. You can't think how your going affects me. It seems
so odd and unlucky, so depressing just now. I'd have liked to talk to
you, though I'm in no danger, and know it. I'd like to hear what's to be
said, clergymen are generally so pompous and weak; and to be sure," he
said, suddenly recollecting his brother, "there's Dives, who is
neither--who is a good clergyman, and learned. I say so, of course, my
lord, with submission to you; but still it isn't quite the same--you
know the early association; and it makes me uncomfortable and out of
spirits your going away. You don't think you could possibly postpone?"
"No, my dear friend, quite impossible; but I leave you--tell him I said
so--in excellent hands; and I'm glad to add, that so far as I can learn
you're by no means in a dying state."
The Bishop smiled.
"Oh! I know that," said Sir Jekyl, returning that cheerful expansion; "I
know that very well, my Lord: a fellow always knows pretty well when
he's in anything of a fix--I mean his life at all in question; it is not
the least that, but a sort of feeling or fancy. What does Doctor Pratt
say it _is_?"
"Oh! gout, as _I_ understand."
"Ah! yes, I have had a good deal in my day. Do you think I could tempt
you to return, maybe, when your business--this particular business, I
mean--is over?"
The Bishop smiled and shook his head.
"I find business--mine at least--a very tropical plant; as fast as I
head it down, it throws up a new growth. I was not half so hard worked,
I do assure you, when I was better able to work, at the school, long
ago. You haven't a notion what it is."
"Well, but you'll come back some time, not very far away?"
"Who knows?" smiled the Bishop. "It is always a temptation. I can say
that truly. In the meantime, I shall expect to hear that you are much
better. Young Marlowe--I mean Dives," and the Bishop laughed gently at
the tenacity of his old school habits, "will let me hear; and so for the
present, my dear Sir Jekyl, with many, many thanks for a very pleasant
sojourn, and with all good wishes, I bid you farewell, and may God bless
you."
So having shaken his hand, and kissing his own as he smiled another
farewell at the door, the dignified and good prelate disappeared mildly
from the room, Jekyl following him with his eyes, and sighing as the
door closed on him.
As Sir Jekyl leaned back against his pillows, there arrived a little
note, in a tall hand; some of the slim l's, b's, and so on, were a
little spiral with the tremor of age.
"Lady Halice Redcliffe, Sir Jekyl, please sir, sends her compliments and
hopes you may be able to read it, and will not leave for Warlock earlier
than half-past one o'clock."
"Very well. Get away and wait in the outer room," said Sir Jekyl,
flushing a little, and looking somehow annoyed.
"I hate the sight of her hand. It's sealed, too. I wish that cursed old
woman was where she ought to be; and she chooses _now_ because she knows
I'm ill, and can't bear worry."
Sir Jekyl twirled the little note round in his fingers and thumb with a
pinch. The feverish pain he was suffering did not improve his temper,
and he was intemperately disposed to write across the back of the
unopened note something to this effect:--"Ill and suffering; the
pleasure of your note might be too much for me; pray keep it till
to-morrow."
But curiosity and something of a dread that discovery had occurred
prompted him to open it, and he read--
"Having had a most painful interview with unhappy General Lennox,
and endured mental agitation and excitement which are too much for
my miserable health and nerves, I mean to return to Wardlock as
early to-day as my strength will permit, taking with me, at his
earnest request, _your victim_."
"D--n her!" interposed Sir Jekyl through his set teeth.
"I think you will see," he read on, "that this house is no longer a
befitting residence for your poor innocent girl. As I am charged
for a time with the care of the ruined wife of your friend and
guest, you will equally see that it is quite impossible to offer my
darling Beatrix an asylum at Wardlock. The Fentons, however, will,
I am sure, be happy to receive her. She must leave Marlowe, of
course, before I do. While here, she is under _my care_; but this
house is no home for her; and you can hardly wish that _she_ should
be _sacrificed_ in the ruin of the poor wife whom you have made an
_outcast_."
"Egad! it's the devil sent that fiend to torture me so. It's all about,
I suppose," exclaimed Sir Jekyl, with a gasp. "Unlucky! The stupid old
fribble, to think of his going off with his story to that Pharisaical
old tattler!"
The remainder of the letter was brief.
"I do not say, Jekyl Marlowe, that I regret your illness. You have
to thank a merciful Providence that it is unattended with danger;
and it affords an opportunity for reflection, which may, if
properly improved, lead to some awakening of conscience--to a
proper estimate of your past life, and an amendment of the space
that remains. I need hardly add, that an amended life involves
reparation, so far as practicable, to _all_ whom you or, in your
interest, _yours_ may have injured.
"In deep humiliation and sorrow,
"Alice Redcliffe."
"I wish you were in a deep pond, you plaguy old witch. That fellow,
Herbert Strangways--Varbarriere--he's been talking to her. I know
what she means by all that cant."
Then he read over again the passages about "your victim," and "General
Lennox," your "friend and guest." And he knocked on the table, and
called as well as he could--"Tomlinson," who entered.
"Where's General Lennox?"
"Can't say, Sir Jekyl, please, sir--'avn't saw him to-day."
"Just see, please, if he's in the house, and let him know that I'm ill,
but very anxious to see him. You may say _very_ ill, do you mind, and
only wish a word or two."
Tomlinson bowed and disappeared.
"Don't care if he strikes me again. I've a word to say, and he _must_
hear it," thought Sir Jekyl.
But Tomlinson returned with the intelligence that General Lennox had
gone down to the town, and was going to Slowton station; and his man,
with some of his things, followed him to the Marlowe Arms, in the town
close by.
In a little while he called for paper, pen, and ink, and with some
trouble wrote an odd note to old General Lennox.
"GENERAL LENNOX,
"You must hear me. By ----," and here followed an oath and an
imprecation quite unnecessary to transcribe. "Your wife is innocent
as an angel! I have been the fiend who would, if he could, have
ruined her peace and yours. From your hand I have met my deserts. I
lie now, I believe, on my death-bed. I wish you knew the whole
story. The truth would deify her and make you happy. I am past the
age of romance, though not of vice. I speak now as a dying man. I
would not go out of the world with a perjury on my soul; and,
by ----, I swear your wife is as guiltless as an angel. I am ill
able to speak, but will see and satisfy you. Bring a Bible and a
pistol with you--let me swear to every answer I make you; and if I
have not convinced you before you leave, I promise to shoot myself
through the head, and save you from all further trouble on account
of
"JEKYL MARLOWE."
"Now see, Tomlinson, don't lose a moment. Send a fellow running, do you
mind, and let him tell General Lennox I'm in pain--_very_ ill--mind
and--and all that; and get me an answer; and he'll put this in _his_
hand."
Sir Jekyl was the sort of master who is obeyed. The town was hardly
three-quarters of a mile away. His messenger accomplished the distance
as if for a wager.
The waiter flourished his napkin in the hall of the Marlowe Arms, and
told him--
"No General, _nothing_ was there, as he heerd."
"Who do you want?" said the fat proprietress, with a red face and small
eyes and a cap and satin bow, emerging from a side door, and superseding
the waiter, who said--"A hofficer, isn't it?" as he went aside.
"Oh! from the Manor," continued the proprietress in a conciliatory
strain, recognising the Marlowe button, though she did not know the man.
"Can I do anything?"
And she instinctively dropped a courtesy--a deference to the far-off
Baronet; and then indemnifying herself by a loftier tone to the menial.
"A note for General Lennox, ma'am."
"General Lennox?--I know, I think, a millentery man, white-'aired and
spare?"
"I must give it 'im myself, ma'am, thankee," said he, declining the fat
finger and thumb of the curious hostess, who tossed her false ringlets
with a little fat frown, and whiffled--
"Here, tell him where's the tall, thin gemm'n, with white mistashes,
that's ordered the hosses--that'll be him, I dessay," she said to the
waiter, reinstated, and waddled away with a jingle of keys in her great
pocket. So to the back yard they went, the thin, little, elderly waiter
skipping in front, with a jerk or two of his napkin.
"Thankee, that's him," said the messenger.