In the Depths.
Next morning he went first to his old lawyer, in whom he had confidence,
and having copied the certificate, carefully changing the names,
submitted it to him. Mr. Parchemin declared that he knew nothing of
Scotch law, but shook his head, and hoped there was nothing very
unpleasant in the circumstances, declaring vehemently that it was a
shame and disgrace that such snares should be spread for the unwary on
the other side of the border. Was it a disgrace that Arthur Arden should
not have been protected in Scotland, as in England, from the
quick-wittedness of the girl whom he had already cheated and meant to
betray? Edgar felt that there might be something to be said on both
sides of the question, as he left his copy in Mr. Parchemin’s hands, who
undertook to consult a Scotch legal authority on the question; then he
went upon his other business. I need not follow him through his manifold
and perplexing inquiries, or inform the reader how he was sent from
office to office, and from secretary to secretary, or with what loss of
time and patience his quest was accompanied. After several days’ work,
however, he ascertained that the chapel in Hart Street had indeed been
licensed, but only used once or twice for marriages, and that no record
of any such marriage as that which he was in search of could be found
anywhere. A stray record of a class-meeting which Emma Lockwood had been
admonished for levity of demeanour, was the sole mention of her to be
found; and though the officials admitted a certain carelessness in the
preservation of books belonging to an extinct chapel, they declared it
to be impossible that such a fact could have been absolutely ignored.
There was, indeed, a rumour in the denomination that a local preacher
had been found to have taken upon himself to perform a marriage, for
which he had been severely reprimanded; but as he had been possessed of
no authority to make such a proceeding legal, no register had been made
of the fact, and only the reprimanded was inscribed on the books of the
community. This was the only opening for even a conjecture as to the
truth of Miss Lockwood’s first story. If the second could only have been
dissipated as easily!
Edgar’s inquiries among the Wesleyan authorities lasted, as I have said,
several days, and caused him more fatigue of limb and of mind than it is
easy to express. He went to Tottenham’s--where, indeed, he showed
himself every day, getting more and more irritated with the
Entertainment, and all its preparations--as soon as he had ascertained
beyond doubt that the marriage at Hart Street Chapel was fictitious.
Miss Lockwood, he was informed, was an invalid, but would see him in the
young ladies’ dining-room, where, accordingly, he found her, looking
sharper, and whiter, and more worn than ever. He told her his news
quietly, with a natural pity for the woman deceived; a gleam of sudden
light shone in her eyes.
“I told you so,” she said, triumphantly; “now didn’t I tell you so? He
wanted to take me in--I felt it from the very first; but he hadn’t got
to do with a fool, as he thought. I was even with him for that.”
“I have written to find out if your Scotch witnesses are alive,” said
Edgar.
“Alive!--why shouldn’t they be alive, like I am, and like he is?” she
cried, with feverish irritability. “Folks of our ages don’t die!--what
are you thinking of? And if they were dead, what would it
matter?--there’s their names as good as themselves. Ah! I didn’t botch
my business any more than he botched his. You’ll find it’s all right.”
“I hope you are better,” Edgar said, with a compassion that was all the
more profound because the object of it neither deserved, nor would have
accepted it.
“Better--oh! thank you, I am quite well,” she said lightly--“only a bit
of a cold. Perhaps on the whole it’s as well I’m not going to sing
to-night; a cold is so bad for one’s voice. Good-bye, Mr. Earnshaw.
We’ll meet at the old gentleman’s turnout to-night.”
And she waved her hand, dismissing poor Edgar, who left her with a
warmer sense of disgust, and dislike than had ever moved his friendly
bosom before. And yet it was in this creature’s interests he was
working, and against Clare! Mr. Tottenham caught him on his way out, to
hand him a number of letters which had arrived for him, and to call for
his advice in the final preparations. The public had been shut out of
the hall in which the Entertainment was to be, on pretence of
alterations.
“Three more resignations,” Mr. Tottenham said, who was feverish and
harassed, and looked like a man at the end of his patience. “Heaven be
praised, it will be over to-night? Come early, Earnshaw, if you can
spare the time, and stand by me. If any of the performers get cross, and
refuse to perform, what shall I do?”
“Let them!” cried Edgar; “ungrateful fools, after all your kindness.”
Edgar was too much harassed and annoyed himself to be perfectly rational
in his judgments.
“Don’t let us be uncharitable,” said Mr. Tottenham; “have they perhaps,
after all, much reason for gratitude? Is it not my own crotchet I am
carrying out, in spite of all obstacles? But it will be a lesson--I
think it will be a lesson,” he added. “And, Earnshaw, don’t fail me
to-night.”
Edgar went straight from the shop to Mr. Parchemin’s, to receive the
opinion of the eminent Scotch law authority in respect to the marriage
certificate. He had written to Robert Campbell, at Loch Arroch Head,
suggesting that inquiries might be made about the persons who signed it,
and had heard from him that morning that the landlady of the inn was
certainly to be found, and that she perfectly remembered having put her
name to the paper. The waiter was no longer there, but could be easily
laid hands upon. There was accordingly no hope except in the Scotch
lawyer, who might still make waste paper of the certificate. Edgar found
Mr. Parchemin hot and red, after a controversy with this functionary.
“He laughs at my indignation,” said the old lawyer. “Well, I suppose if
one did not heat one’s self in argument, what he says might have some
justice in it. He says innocent men that let women alone, and innocent
women that behave as they ought to do, will never get any harm from the
Scotch marriage law; and that it’s always a safeguard for a poor girl
that may have been led astray without meaning it. He says--well, I see
you’re impatient--though how such an anomaly can ever be suffered so
near to civilization! Well, he says it’s as good a marriage as if it had
been done in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s
all the comfort I’ve got to give you. I hope it hasn’t got anything
directly to say to you.”
“Thanks,” said Edgar, faintly; “it has to do with some--very dear
friends of mine. I could scarcely feel it more deeply if it concerned
myself.”
“It is a disgrace to civilization!” cried the lawyer--“it is a
subversion of every honest principle. You young men ought to take
warning--”
“--To do a villainy of this kind, when we mean to do it, out of
Scotland?” said Edgar, “or we may find ourselves the victims instead of
the victors? Heaven forbid that I should do anything to save a
scoundrel from his just deserts!”
“But I thought you were interested--deeply interested----”
“Not for him, the cowardly blackguard!” cried Edgar, excited beyond
self-control.
He turned away from the place, holding the lawyer’s opinion, for which
he had spent a large part of his little remaining stock of money,
clutched in his hand. A feverish, momentary sense, almost of
gratification, that Arden should have been thus punished, possessed
him--only for a moment. He hastened to the club, where he could sit
quiet and think it over. He had not been able even to consider his own
business, but had thrust his letters into his pocket without looking at
them.
When he found himself alone, or almost alone, in a corner of the
library, he covered his face with his hands, and yielded to the crushing
influence of this last certainty. Clare was no longer an honoured
matron, the possessor of a well-recognized position, the mother of
children of whom she was proud, the wife of a man whom at least she had
once loved, and who, presumably, had done nothing to make her hate and
scorn him. God help her! What was she now? What was her position to be?
She had no relations to fall back upon, or to stand by her in her
trouble, except himself, who was no relation--only poor Edgar, her
loving brother, bound to her by everything but blood; but, alas! he knew
that in such emergencies blood is everything, and other ties count for
so little. The thought made his heart sick; and he could not be silent,
could not hide it from her, dared not shut up this secret in his own
mind, as he might have done almost anything else that affected her
painfully. There was but one way, but one step before him now.
His letters tumbled out of his pocket as he drew out Miss Lockwood’s
original paper, and he tried to look at them, by way of giving his
overworn mind a pause, and that he might be the better able to choose
the best way of carrying out the duty now before him. These letters
were--some of them, at least--answers to those which he had written in
the excitement and happy tumult of his mind, after Lady Mary’s
unintentional revelation. He read them as through a mist; their very
meaning came dimly upon him, and he could with difficulty realize the
state of his feelings when, all glowing with the prospect of personal
happiness, and the profound and tender exultation with which he found
himself to be still beloved, he had written these confident appeals to
the kindness of his friends. Most likely, had he read the replies with a
disengaged mind, they would have disappointed him bitterly, with a
dreariness of downfall proportioned to his warmth of hope. But in his
present state of mind every sound around him was muffled, every blow
softened. One nail strikes out another, say the astute Italians. The
mind is not capable of two profound and passionate preoccupations at
once. He read them with subdued consciousness, with a veil before his
eyes. They were all friendly, and some were warmly cordial. “What can we
do for you?” they all said. “If you could take a mastership, I have
interest at more than one public school; but, alas! I suppose you did
not even take your degree in England,” one wrote to him. “If you knew
anything about land, or had been trained to the law,” said another, “I
might have got you a land agency in Ireland, a capital thing for a man
of energy and courage; but then I fear you are no lawyer, and not much
of an agriculturist.” “What can you do, my dear fellow?” said a third,
more cautiously. “Think what you are most fit for--you must know best
yourself--and let me know, and I will try all I can do.”
Edgar laughed as he bundled them all back into his pocket. What was he
most fit for? To be an amateur detective, and find out secrets that
broke his heart. A dull ache for his own disappointment (though his mind
was not lively enough to feel disappointed) seemed to add to the general
despondency, the lowered life and oppressed heart of which he had been
conscious without this. But then what had he to do with personal comfort
or happiness? In the first place there lay this tremendous passage
before him--this revelation to be made to Clare.
It was late in the afternoon before he could nerve himself to write the
indispensable letter, from which he felt it was cowardly to shrink. It
was not a model of composition, though it gave him a great deal of
trouble. This is what he said:--
“SIR,
“It is deeply against my will that I address you, so long after
all communication has ended between us; and it is possible that you
may not remember even the new name with which I sign this. By a
singular and unhappy chance, facts in your past life, affecting the
honour and credit of the family, have been brought to my knowledge,
of all people in the world. If I could have avoided the confidence,
I should have done so; but it was out of my power. When I say that
these facts concern a person called Lockwood (or so called, at
least, before her pretended marriage), you will, I have no doubt,
understand what I mean. Will you meet me, at any place you may
choose to appoint, for the purpose of discussing this most
momentous and fatal business? I have examined it minutely, with the
help of the best legal authority, from whom the real names of the
parties have been concealed, and I cannot hold out to you any hope
that it will be easily arranged. In order, however, to save it from
being thrown at once into professional hands, and exposed to the
public, will you communicate with me, or appoint a time and place
to meet me? I entreat you to do this, for the sake of your children
and family. I cannot trust myself to appeal to any other sacred
claim upon you. For God’s sake, let me see you, and tell me if you
have any plea to raise!
“EDGAR EARNSHAW.”
He felt that the outburst at the end was injudicious, but could not
restrain the ebullition of feeling. If he could but be allowed to manage
it quietly, to have her misery broken to Clare without any
interposition of the world’s scorn or pity. She was the one utterly
guiltless, but it was she who would be most exposed to animadversion; he
felt this, with his heart bleeding for his sister. If he had but had the
privilege of a brother--if he could have gone to her, and drawn her
gently away, and provided home and sympathy for her, before the blow had
fallen! But neither he nor anyone could do this, for Clare was not the
kind of being to make close friends. She reserved her love for the few
who belonged to her, and had little or none to expend on strangers. Did
she still think of him as one belonging to her, or was his recollection
altogether eclipsed, blotted out from her mind? He began half a dozen
letters to Clare herself, asking if she still thought of him, if she
would allow him to remember that he was once her brother, with a
humility which he could not have shown had she been as happy and
prosperous as all the world believed her to be. But after he had written
these letters, one after another, retouching a phrase here, and an
epithet there, which was too weak or too strong for his excited fancy,
and lingering over her name with tears in his eyes, he destroyed them
all. Until he heard from her husband, he did not feel that he could
venture to write to his sister. His sister!--his poor, forlorn, ruined,
solitary sister, rich as she was, and surrounded by all things
advantageous! a wife, and yet no wife; the mother of children whose
birth would be their shame! Edgar rose up from where he was writing in
the intolerable pang of this thought--he could not keep still while it
flashed through his mind. Clara, the proudest, the purest, the most
fastidious of women--how could she bear it? He said to himself that it
was impossible--impossible--that she must die of it! There was no way of
escape for her. It would kill her, and his was the hand which had to
give the blow.
In this condition, with such thoughts running over in his vexed brain,
to go back to the shop, and find poor Mr. Tottenham wrestling among the
difficulties which, poor man, were overwhelming him, with dark lines of
care under his eyes, and his face haggard with anxiety--imagine, dear
reader, what it was! He could have laughed at the petty trouble; yet no
one could laugh at the pained face, the kind heart wounded, the manifest
and quite overwhelming trouble of the philanthropist.
“I don’t even know yet whether they will keep to their engagements; and
we are all at sixes and sevens, and the company will begin to arrive in
an hour or two!” cried poor Mr. Tottenham. Edgar’s anxieties were so
much more engrossing and terrible that to have a share in these small
ones did him good; and he was so indifferent that he calmed everybody,
brought the unruly performers back to their senses, and thrust all the
arrangements on by the sheer carelessness he felt as to whether they
were ready or not. “Who cares about your play?” he said to Watson, who
came to pour out his grievances. “Do you think the Duchess of
Middlemarch is so anxious to hear you? They will enjoy themselves a
great deal better chatting to each other.”
This brought Mr. Watson and his troupe to their senses, as all Mr.
Tottenham’s agitated remonstrances had not brought them. Edgar did not
care to be in the way of the fine people when they arrived. He got a
kind word from Lady Mary, who whispered to him, “How ill you are
looking! You must tell us what it is, and let us help you;” for this
kind woman found it hard to realise that there were things in which the
support of herself and her husband would be but little efficacious; and
he had approached Lady Augusta, as has been recorded, with some wistful,
hopeless intention of recommending Clare to her, in case of anything
that might happen. But Lady Augusta had grown so pale at the sight of
him, and had thrown so many uneasy glances round her, that Edgar
withdrew, with his heart somewhat heavy, feeling his burden rather more
than he could conveniently bear. He had gone and hid himself in the
library, trying to read, and hearing far off the din of applause--the
distant sound of voices. The noise of the visitors’ feet approaching had
driven him from that refuge, when Mr. Tottenham, in high triumph, led
his guests through his huge establishment. Edgar, dislodged, and not
caring to put himself in the way of further discouragement, chose this
moment to give his message to Phil, and strayed away from sound and
light into the retired passages, when that happened to him in his time
of extremity which it is now my business to record.