‘A singular thing has happened, I hear. The man is not insane, I
suppose?’
‘Not he--he’s sensible enough,’ said the dairyman, and paused. He was a
man noisy with his associates--stolid and taciturn with strangers.
‘Is it true that he is Chinney, the railway-porter?’
‘That’s the man, sir.’ The maids and men sitting under the cows were all
attentively listening to this discourse, milking irregularly, and softly
directing the jets against the sides of the pail.
Owen could contain himself no longer, much as his mind dreaded anything
of the nature of ridicule. ‘The people all seem to look at me, as if
something seriously concerned me; is it this stupid matter, or what is
it?’
‘Surely, sir, you know better than anybody else if such a strange thing
concerns you.’
‘What strange thing?’
‘Don’t you know! His confessing to Parson Raunham.’
‘What did he confess? Tell me.’
‘If you really ha’n’t heard, ‘tis this. He was as usual on duty at the
station on the night of the fire last year, otherwise he wouldn’t ha’
known it.’
‘Known what? For God’s sake tell, man!’
But at this instant the two opposite gates of the dairy-yard, one on the
east, the other on the west side, slammed almost simultaneously.
The rector from one, Springrove from the other, came striding across the
barton.
Edward was nearest, and spoke first. He said in a low voice: ‘Your
sister is not legally married! His first wife is still living! How it
comes out I don’t know!’
‘O, here you are at last, Mr. Graye, thank Heaven!’ said the rector
breathlessly. ‘I have been to the Old House, and then to Miss
Aldclyffe’s looking for you--something very extraordinary.’ He beckoned
to Owen, afterwards included Springrove in his glance, and the three
stepped aside together.
‘A porter at the station. He was a curious nervous man. He had been in a
strange state all day, but he wouldn’t go home. Your sister was kind
to him, it seems, this afternoon. When she and her husband had gone, he
went on with his work, shifting luggage-vans. Well, he got in the way,
as if he were quite lost to what was going on, and they sent him home at
last. Then he wished to see me. I went directly. There was something
on his mind, he said, and told it. About the time when the fire of last
November twelvemonth was got under, whilst he was by himself in the
porter’s room, almost asleep, somebody came to the station and tried to
open the door. He went out and found the person to be the lady he had
accompanied to Carriford earlier in the evening, Mrs. Manston. She
asked, when would be another train to London? The first the next
morning, he told her, was at a quarter-past six o’clock from Budmouth,
but that it was express, and didn’t stop at Carriford Road--it didn’t
stop till it got to Anglebury. “How far is it to Anglebury?” she said.
He told her, and she thanked him, and went away up the line. In a short
time she ran back and took out her purse. “Don’t on any account say
a word in the village or anywhere that I have been here, or a single
breath about me--I’m ashamed ever to have come.” He promised; she took
out two sovereigns. “Swear it on the Testament in the waiting-room,” she
said, “and I’ll pay you these.” He got the book, took an oath upon it,
received the money, and she left him. He was off duty at half-past
five. He has kept silence all through the intervening time till now, but
lately the knowledge he possessed weighed heavily upon his conscience
and weak mind. Yet the nearer came the wedding-day, the more he feared
to tell. The actual marriage filled him with remorse. He says your
sister’s kindness afterwards was like a knife going through his heart.
He thought he had ruined her.’
‘But whatever can be done? Why didn’t he speak sooner?’ cried Owen.
‘He actually called at my house twice yesterday,’ the rector continued,
‘resolved, it seems, to unburden his mind. I was out both times--he
left no message, and, they say, he looked relieved that his object was
defeated. Then he says he resolved to come to you at the Old House last
night--started, reached the door, and dreaded to knock--and then went
home again.’
‘Here will be a tale for the newsmongers of the county,’ said Owen
bitterly. ‘The idea of his not opening his mouth sooner--the criminality
of the thing!’
‘Ah, that’s the inconsistency of a weak nature. But now that it is put
to us in this way, how much more probable it seems that she should have
escaped than have been burnt--’
‘You will, of course, go straight to Mr. Manston, and ask him what it
all means?’ Edward interrupted.
‘Of course I shall! Manston has no right to carry off my sister unless
he’s her husband,’ said Owen. ‘I shall go and separate them.’
‘Certainly you will,’ said the rector.
‘Where’s the man?’
‘In his cottage.’
‘’Tis no use going to him, either. I must go off at once and overtake
them--lay the case before Manston, and ask him for additional and
certain proofs of his first wife’s death. An up-train passes soon, I
think.’
‘Where have they gone?’ said Edward.
‘To Paris--as far as Southampton this afternoon, to proceed to-morrow
morning.’
‘Where in Southampton?’
‘I really don’t know--some hotel. I only have their Paris address. But I
shall find them by making a few inquiries.’
The rector had in the meantime been taking out his pocket-book, and now
opened it at the first page, whereon it was his custom every month to
gum a small railway time-table--cut from the local newspaper.
‘The afternoon express is just gone,’ he said, holding open the page,
‘and the next train to Southampton passes at ten minutes to six o’clock.
Now it wants--let me see--five-and-forty minutes to that time. Mr.
Graye, my advice is that you come with me to the porter’s cottage, where
I will shortly write out the substance of what he has said, and get
him to sign it. You will then have far better grounds for interfering
between Mr. and Mrs. Manston than if you went to them with a mere
hearsay story.’
The suggestion seemed a good one. ‘Yes, there will be time before the
train starts,’ said Owen.
Edward had been musing restlessly.
‘Let me go to Southampton in your place, on account of your lameness?’
he said suddenly to Graye.
‘I am much obliged to you, but I think I can scarcely accept the offer,’
returned Owen coldly. ‘Mr. Manston is an honourable man, and I had much
better see him myself.’
‘There is no doubt,’ said Mr. Raunham, ‘that the death of his wife was
fully believed in by himself.’
‘None whatever,’ said Owen; ‘and the news must be broken to him, and the
question of other proofs asked, in a friendly way. It would not do for
Mr. Springrove to appear in the case at all.’ He still spoke rather
coldly; the recollection of the attachment between his sister and Edward
was not a pleasant one to him.
‘You will never find them,’ said Edward. ‘You have never been to
Southampton, and I know every house there.’
‘That makes little difference,’ said the rector; ‘he will have a cab.
Certainly Mr. Graye is the proper man to go on the errand.’
‘Stay; I’ll telegraph to ask them to meet me when I arrive at the
terminus,’ said Owen; ‘that is, if their train has not already arrived.’
Mr. Raunham pulled out his pocket-book again. ‘The two-thirty train
reached Southampton a quarter of an hour ago,’ he said.
It was too late to catch them at the station. Nevertheless, the rector
suggested that it would be worth while to direct a message to ‘all the
respectable hotels in Southampton,’ on the chance of its finding them,
and thus saving a deal of personal labour to Owen in searching about the
place.
‘I’ll go and telegraph, whilst you return to the man,’ said Edward--an
offer which was accepted. Graye and the rector then turned off in the
direction of the porter’s cottage.
Edward, to despatch the message at once, hurriedly followed the road
towards the station, still restlessly thinking. All Owen’s proceedings
were based on the assumption, natural under the circumstances, of
Manston’s good faith, and that he would readily acquiesce in any
arrangement which should clear up the mystery. ‘But,’ thought Edward,
‘suppose--and Heaven forgive me, I cannot help supposing it--that
Manston is not that honourable man, what will a young and inexperienced
fellow like Owen do? Will he not be hoodwinked by some specious story
or another, framed to last till Manston gets tired of poor Cytherea?
And then the disclosure of the truth will ruin and blacken both their
futures irremediably.’
However, he proceeded to execute his commission. This he put in the form
of a simple request from Owen to Manston, that Manston would come to
the Southampton platform, and wait for Owen’s arrival, as he valued his
reputation. The message was directed as the rector had suggested, Edward
guaranteeing to the clerk who sent it off that every expense connected
with the search would be paid.
No sooner had the telegram been despatched than his heart sank within
him at the want of foresight shown in sending it. Had Manston, all the
time, a knowledge that his first wife lived, the telegram would be a
forewarning which might enable him to defeat Owen still more signally.
Whilst the machine was still giving off its multitudinous series of
raps, Edward heard a powerful rush under the shed outside, followed by
a long sonorous creak. It was a train of some sort, stealing softly into
the station, and it was an up-train. There was the ring of a bell. It
was certainly a passenger train.
Yet the booking-office window was closed.
‘Ho, ho, John, seventeen minutes after time and only three stations up
the line. The incline again?’ The voice was the stationmaster’s, and the
reply seemed to come from the guard.
‘Yes, the other side of the cutting. The thaw has made it all in a
perfect cloud of fog, and the rails are as slippery as glass. We had to
bring them through the cutting at twice.’
‘Anybody else for the four-forty-five express?’ the voice continued. The
few passengers, having crossed over to the other side long before this
time, had taken their places at once.
A conviction suddenly broke in upon Edward’s mind; then a wish
overwhelmed him. The conviction--as startling as it was sudden--was that
Manston was a villain, who at some earlier time had discovered that
his wife lived, and had bribed her to keep out of sight, that he might
possess Cytherea. The wish was--to proceed at once by this very train
that was starting, find Manston before he would expect from the words
of the telegram (if he got it) that anybody from Carriford could be
with him--charge him boldly with the crime, and trust to his consequent
confusion (if he were guilty) for a solution of the extraordinary
riddle, and the release of Cytherea!
The ticket-office had been locked up at the expiration of the time at
which the train was due. Rushing out as the guard blew his whistle,
Edward opened the door of a carriage and leapt in. The train moved
along, and he was soon out of sight.
Springrove had long since passed that peculiar line which lies across
the course of falling in love--if, indeed, it may not be called the
initial itself of the complete passion--a longing to cherish; when the
woman is shifted in a man’s mind from the region of mere admiration to
the region of warm fellowship. At this assumption of her nature, she
changes to him in tone, hue, and expression. All about the loved one
that said ‘She’ before, says ‘We’ now. Eyes that were to be subdued
become eyes to be feared for: a brain that was to be probed by cynicism
becomes a brain that is to be tenderly assisted; feet that were to
be tested in the dance become feet that are not to be distressed; the
once-criticized accent, manner, and dress, become the clients of a
special pleader.