Are _you_ going to appeal to me as the head of the family next?”
It was exactly what Arnold was about to do. But it was plain that if he
admitted it just then Sir Patrick (for some unintelligible reason) would
decline to listen to him. He answered cautiously, “I asked leave to
consult you in private, Sir; and you kindly said you would give me the
opportunity before I left Windygates?”
“Ay! ay! to be sure. I remember. We were both engaged in the serious
business of croquet at the time--and it was doubtful which of us did
that business most clumsily. Well, here is the opportunity; and here
am I, with all my worldly experience, at your service. I have only one
caution to give you. Don’t appeal to me as ‘the head of the family.’ My
resignation is in Lady Lundie’s hands.”
He was, as usual, half in jest, half in earnest. The wry twist of humor
showed itself at the corners of his lips. Arnold was at a loss how to
approach Sir Patrick on the subject of his niece without reminding him
of his domestic responsibilities on the one hand, and without setting
himself up as a target for the shafts of Sir Patrick’s wit on the other.
In this difficulty, he committed a mistake at the outset. He hesitated.
“Don’t hurry yourself,” said Sir Patrick. “Collect your ideas. I can
wait! I can wait!”
Arnold collected his ideas--and committed a second mistake. He
determined on feeling his way cautiously at first. Under the
circumstances (and with such a man as he had now to deal with), it
was perhaps the rashest resolution at which he could possibly have
arrived--it was the mouse attempting to outmanoeuvre the cat.
“You have been very kind, Sir, in offering me the benefit of your
experience,” he began. “I want a word of advice.”
“Suppose you take it sitting?” suggested Sir Patrick. “Get a chair.” His
sharp eyes followed Arnold with an expression of malicious enjoyment.
“Wants my advice?” he thought. “The young humbug wants nothing of the
sort--he wants my niece.”
Arnold sat down under Sir Patrick’s eye, with a well-founded suspicion
that he was destined to suffer, before he got up again, under Sir
Patrick’s tongue.
“I am only a young man,” he went on, moving uneasily in his chair, “and
I am beginning a new life--”
“Any thing wrong with the chair?” asked Sir Patrick. “Begin your new
life comfortably, and get another.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the chair, Sir. Would you--”
“Would I keep the chair, in that case? Certainly.”
“I mean, would you advise me--”
“My good fellow, I’m waiting to advise you. (I’m sure there’s something
wrong with that chair. Why be obstinate about it? Why not get another?)”
“Please don’t notice the chair, Sir Patrick--you put me out. I want--in
short--perhaps it’s a curious question--”
“I can’t say till I have heard it,” remarked Sir Patrick. “However,
we will admit it, for form’s sake, if you like. Say it’s a curious
question. Or let us express it more strongly, if that will help you.
Say it’s the most extraordinary question that ever was put, since the
beginning of the world, from one human being to another.”
“It’s this!” Arnold burst out, desperately. “I want to be married!”
“That isn’t a question,” objected Sir Patrick. “It’s an assertion. You
say, I want to be married. And I say, Just so! And there’s an end of
it.”
Arnold’s head began to whirl. “Would you advise me to get married, Sir?”
he said, piteously. “That’s what I meant.”
“Oh! That’s the object of the present interview, is it? Would I advise
you to marry, eh?”
(Having caught the mouse by this time, the cat lifted his paw and
let the luckless little creature breathe again. Sir Patrick’s manner
suddenly freed itself from any slight signs of impatience which it might
have hitherto shown, and became as pleasantly easy and confidential as
a manner could be. He touched the knob of his cane, and helped himself,
with infinite zest and enjoyment, to a pinch of snuff.)
“Would I advise you to marry?” repeated Sir Patrick. “Two courses
are open to us, Mr. Arnold, in treating that question. We may put it
briefly, or we may put it at great length. I am for putting it briefly.
What do you say?”
“What you say, Sir Patrick.”
“Very good. May I begin by making an inquiry relating to your past
life?”
“Certainly!”
“Very good again. When you were in the merchant service, did you ever
have any experience in buying provisions ashore?”
Arnold stared. If any relation existed between that question and the
subject in hand it was an impenetrable relation to _him_. He answered,
in unconcealed bewilderment, “Plenty of experience, Sir.”
“I’m coming to the point,” pursued Sir Patrick. “Don’t be astonished.
I’m coming to the point. What did you think of your moist sugar when you
bought it at the grocer’s?”
“Think?” repeated Arnold. “Why, I thought it was moist sugar, to be
sure!”
“Marry, by all means!” cried Sir Patrick. “You are one of the few men
who can try that experiment with a fair chance of success.”
The suddenness of the answer fairly took away Arnold’s breath. There was
something perfectly electric in the brevity of his venerable friend. He
stared harder than ever.
“Don’t you understand me?” asked Sir Patrick.
“I don’t understand what the moist sugar has got to do with it, Sir.”
“You don’t see that?”
“Not a bit!”
“Then I’ll show you,” said Sir Patrick, crossing his legs, and setting
in comfortably for a good talk “You go to the tea-shop, and get your
moist sugar. You take it on the understanding that it is moist sugar.
But it isn’t any thing of the sort. It’s a compound of adulterations
made up to look like sugar. You shut your eyes to that awkward fact, and
swallow your adulterated mess in various articles of food; and you and
your sugar get on together in that way as well as you can. Do you follow
me, so far?”
Yes. Arnold (quite in the dark) followed, so far.
“Very good,” pursued Sir Patrick. “You go to the marriage-shop, and
get a wife. You take her on the understanding--let us say--that she
has lovely yellow hair, that she has an exquisite complexion, that her
figure is the perfection of plumpness, and that she is just tall enough
to carry the plumpness off. You bring her home, and you discover that
it’s the old story of the sugar over again. Your wife is an adulterated
article. Her lovely yellow hair is--dye. Her exquisite skin is--pearl
powder. Her plumpness is--padding. And three inches of her height
are--in the boot-maker’s heels. Shut your eyes, and swallow your
adulterated wife as you swallow your adulterated sugar--and, I tell you
again, you are one of the few men who can try the marriage experiment
with a fair chance of success.”
With that he uncrossed his legs again, and looked hard at Arnold. Arnold
read the lesson, at last, in the right way. He gave up the hopeless
attempt to circumvent Sir Patrick, and--come what might of it--dashed at
a direct allusion to Sir Patrick’s niece.
“That may be all very true, Sir, of some young ladies,” he said. “There
is one I know of, who is nearly related to you, and who doesn’t deserve
what you have said of the rest of them.”
This was coming to the point. Sir Patrick showed his approval of
Arnold’s frankness by coming to the point himself, as readily as his own
whimsical humor would let him.
“Is this female phenomenon my niece?” he inquired.
“Yes, Sir Patrick.”
“May I ask how you know that my niece is not an adulterated article,
like the rest of them?”
Arnold’s indignation loosened the last restraints that tied Arnold’s
tongue. He exploded in the three words which mean three volumes in every
circulating library in the kingdom.
“I love her.”
Sir Patrick sat back in his chair, and stretched out his legs
luxuriously.
“That’s the most convincing answer I ever heard in my life,” he said.
“I’m in earnest!” cried Arnold, reckless by this time of every
consideration but one. “Put me to the test, Sir! put me to the test!”
“Oh, very well. The test is easily put.” He looked at Arnold, with the
irrepressible humor twinkling merrily in his eyes, and twitching sharply
at the corners of his lips. “My niece has a beautiful complexion. Do you
believe in her complexion?”
“There’s a beautiful sky above our heads,” returned Arnold. “I believe
in the sky.”
“Do you?” retorted Sir Patrick. “You were evidently never caught in a
shower. My niece has an immense quantity of hair. Are you convinced that
it all grows on her head?”
“I defy any other woman’s head to produce the like of it!”
“My dear Arnold, you greatly underrate the existing resources of the
trade in hair! Look into the shop-windows. When you next go to London
pray look into the show-windows. In the mean time, what do you think of
my niece’s figure?”
“Oh, come! there can’t be any doubt about _that!_ Any man, with eyes in
his head, can see it’s the loveliest figure in the world.”
Sir Patrick laughed softly, and crossed his legs again.
“My good fellow, of course it is! The loveliest figure in the world
is the commonest thing in the world. At a rough guess, there are forty
ladies at this lawn-party. Every one of them possesses a beautiful
figure. It varies in price; and when it’s particularly seductive you may
swear it comes from Paris. Why, how you stare! When I asked you what you
thought of my niece’s figure, I meant--how much of it comes from Nature,
and how much of it comes from the Shop? I don’t know, mind! Do you?”
“I’ll take my oath to every inch of it!”
“Shop?”
“Nature!”
Sir Patrick rose to his feet; his satirical humor was silenced at last.
“If ever I have a son,” he thought to himself, “that son shall go
to sea!” He took Arnold’s arm, as a preliminary to putting an end to
Arnold’s suspense. “If I _can_ be serious about any thing,” he resumed,
“it’s time to be serious with you. I am convinced of the sincerity of
your attachment. All I know of you is in your favor, and your birth and
position are beyond dispute. If you have Blanche’s consent, you have
mine.” Arnold attempted to express his gratitude. Sir Patrick, declining
to hear him, went on. “And remember this, in the future. When you next
want any thing that I can give you, ask for it plainly. Don’t attempt to
mystify _me_ on the next occasion, and I will promise, on my side, not
to mystify _you._ There, that’s understood. Now about this journey of
yours to see your estate. Property has its duties, Master Arnold, as
well as its rights. The time is fast coming when its rights will be
disputed, if its duties are not performed. I have got a new interest in
you, and I mean to see that you do your duty. It’s settled you are to
leave Windygates to-day. Is it arranged how you are to go?”
“Yes, Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie has kindly ordered the gig to take me to
the station, in time for the next train.”
“When are you to be ready?”
Arnold looked at his watch. “In a quarter of an hour.”
“Very good. Mind you _are_ ready. Stop a minute! you will have plenty of
time to speak to Blanche when I have done with you. You don’t appear to
me to be sufficiently anxious about seeing your own property.”
“I am not very anxious to leave Blanche, Sir--that’s the truth of it.”
“Never mind Blanche. Blanche is not business. They both begin with a
B--and that’s the only connection between them. I hear you have got one
of the finest houses in this part of Scotland. How long are you going to
stay in Scotland? How long are you going to stay in it?”
“I have arranged (as I have already told you, Sir) to return to
Windygates the day after to-morrow.”
“What! Here is a man with a palace waiting to receive him--and he is
only going to stop one clear day in it!”
“I am not going to stop in it at all, Sir Patrick--I am going to stay
with the steward. I’m only wanted to be present to-morrow at a dinner
to my tenants--and, when that’s over, there’s nothing in the world to
prevent my coming back here. The steward himself told me so in his last
letter.”
“Oh, if the steward told you so, of course there is nothing more to be
said!”
“Don’t object to my coming back! pray don’t, Sir Patrick! I’ll promise
to live in my new house when I have got Blanche to live in it with me.
If you won’t mind, I’ll go and tell her at once that it all belongs to
her as well as to me.”
“Gently! gently! you talk as if you were married to her already!”
“It’s as good as done, Sir! Where’s the difficulty in the way now?”
As he asked the question the shadow of some third person, advancing
from the side of the summer-house, was thrown forward on the open sunlit
space at the top of the steps. In a moment more the shadow was followed
by the substance--in the shape of a groom in his riding livery. The man
was plainly a stranger to the place. He started, and touched his hat,
when he saw the two gentlemen in the summer-house.
“What do you want?” asked Sir Patrick
“I beg your pardon, Sir; I was sent by my master--”
“Who is your master?”
“The Honorable Mr. Delamayn, Sir.”
“Do you mean Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?” asked Arnold.
“No, Sir. Mr. Geoffrey’s brother--Mr. Julius. I have ridden over from
the house, Sir, with a message from my master to Mr. Geoffrey.”
“Can’t you find him?”
“They told me I should find him hereabouts, Sir. But I’m a stranger, and
don’t rightly know where to look.” He stopped, and took a card out of
his pocket. “My master said it was very important I should deliver this
immediately. Would you be pleased to tell me, gentlemen, if you happen
to know where Mr. Geoffrey is?”
Arnold turned to Sir Patrick. “I haven’t seen him. Have you?”
“I have smelt him,” answered Sir Patrick, “ever since I have been in
the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the
air--suggestive (disagreeably suggestive to _my_ mind) of your friend,
Mr. Delamayn.”
Arnold laughed, and stepped outside the summer-house.
“If you are right, Sir Patrick, we will find him at once.” He looked
around, and shouted, “Geoffrey!”
A voice from the rose-garden shouted back, “Hullo!”
“You’re wanted. Come here!”
Geoffrey appeared, sauntering doggedly, with his pipe in his mouth, and
his hands in his pockets.
“Who wants me?”
“A groom--from your brother.”
That answer appeared to electrify the lounging and lazy athlete.
Geoffrey hurried, with eager steps, to the summer-house. He addressed
the groom before the man had time to speak With horror and dismay in his
face, he exclaimed:
“By Jupiter! Ratcatcher has relapsed!”
Sir Patrick and Arnold looked at each other in blank amazement.
“The best horse in my brother’s stables!” cried Geoffrey, explaining,
and appealing to them, in a breath. “I left written directions with the
coachman, I measured out his physic for three days; I bled him,” said
Geoffrey, in a voice broken by emotion--“I bled him myself, last night.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir--” began the groom.
“What’s the use of begging my pardon? You’re a pack of infernal
fools! Where’s your horse? I’ll ride back, and break every bone in the
coachman’s skin! Where’s your horse?”
“If you please, Sir, it isn’t Ratcatcher. Ratcatcher’s all right.”
“Ratcatcher’s all right? Then what the devil is it?”
“It’s a message, Sir.”
“About what?”
“About my lord.”
“Oh! About my father?” He took out his handkerchief, and passed it over
his forehead, with a deep gasp of relief. “I thought it was Ratcatcher,”
he said, looking at Arnold, with a smile. He put his pipe into his
mouth, and rekindled the dying ashes of the tobacco. “Well?” he went on,
when the pipe was in working order, and his voice was composed again:
“What’s up with my father?”
“A telegram from London, Sir. Bad news of my lord.”
The man produced his master’s card.
Geoffrey read on it (written in his brother’s handwriting) these words:
“I have only a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is
dangerously ill--his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by
the first train. Meet at the junction.”
Without a word to any one of the three persons present, all silently
looking at him, Geoffrey consulted his watch. Anne had told him to wait
half an hour, and to assume that she had gone if he failed to hear from
her in that time. The interval had passed--and no communication of
any sort had reached him. The flight from the house had been safely
accomplished. Anne Silvester was, at that moment, on her way to the
mountain inn.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
THE DEBT.
ARNOLD was the first who broke the silence. “Is your father seriously
ill?” he asked.
Geoffrey answered by handing him the card.
Sir Patrick, who had stood apart (while the question of Ratcatcher’s
relapse was under discussion) sardonically studying the manners and
customs of modern English youth, now came forward, and took his part
in the proceedings. Lady Lundie herself must have acknowledged that he
spoke and acted as became the head of the family, on t his occasion.
“Am I right in supposing that Mr. Delamayn’s father is dangerously ill?”
he asked, addressing himself to Arnold.
“Dangerously ill, in London,” Arnold answered. “Geoffrey must leave
Windygates with me. The train I am traveling by meets the train his
brother is traveling by, at the junction. I shall leave him at the
second station from here.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Lady Lundie was going to send you to the
railway in a gig?”
“Yes.”
“If the servant drives, there will be three of you--and there will be no
room.”
“We had better ask for some other vehicle,” suggested Arnold.
Sir Patrick looked at his watch. There was no time to change the
carriage. He turned to Geoffrey. “Can you drive, Mr. Delamayn?”
Still impenetrably silent, Geoffrey replied by a nod of the head.
Without noticing the unceremonious manner in which he had been answered,
Sir Patrick went on:
“In that case, you can leave the gig in charge of the station-master.
I’ll tell the servant that he will not be wanted to drive.”
“Let me save you the trouble, Sir Patrick,” said Arnold.
Sir Patrick declined, by a gesture. He turned again, with undiminished
courtesy, to Geoffrey. “It is one of the duties of hospitality, Mr.
Delamayn, to hasten your departure, under these sad circumstances. Lady
Lundie is engaged with her guests. I will see myself that there is no
unnecessary delay in sending you to the station.” He bowed--and left the
summer-house.
Arnold said a word of sympathy to his friend, when they were alone.
“I am sorry for this, Geoffrey. I hope and trust you will get to London
in time.”
He stopped. There was something in Geoffrey’s face--a strange mixture of
doubt and bewilderment, of annoyance and hesitation--which was not to
be accounted for as the natural result of the news that he had received.
His color shifted and changed; he picked fretfully at his finger-nails;
he looked at Arnold as if he was going to speak--and then looked away
again, in silence.
“Is there something amiss, Geoffrey, besides this bad news about your
father?” asked Arnold.
“I’m in the devil’s own mess,” was the answer.
“Can I do any thing to help you?”
Instead of making a direct reply, Geoffrey lifted his mighty hand, and
gave Arnold a friendly slap on the shoulder which shook him from head
to foot. Arnold steadied himself, and waited--wondering what was coming
next.
“I say, old fellow!” said Geoffrey.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when the boat turned keel upward in Lisbon Harbor?”
Arnold started. If he could have called to mind his first interview in
the summer-house with his father’s old friend he might have remembered
Sir Patrick’s prediction that he would sooner or later pay, with
interest, the debt he owed to the man who had saved his life. As it was
his memory reverted at a bound to the time of the boat-accident. In
the ardor of his gratitude and the innocence of his heart, he almost
resented his friend’s question as a reproach which he had not deserved.
“Do you think I can ever forget,” he cried, warmly, “that you swam
ashore with me and saved my life?”
Geoffrey ventured a step nearer to the object that he had in view.
“One good turn deserves another,” he said, “don’t it?”
Arnold took his hand. “Only tell me!” he eagerly rejoined--“only tell me
what I can do!”
“You are going to-day to see your new place, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you put off going till to-morrow?”
“If it’s any thing serious--of course I can!”
Geoffrey looked round at the entrance to the summer-house, to make sure
that they were alone.
“You know the governess here, don’t you?” he said, in a whisper.
“Miss Silvester?”
“Yes. I’ve got into a little difficulty with Miss Silvester. And there
isn’t a living soul I can ask to help me but _you._”
“You know I will help you. What is it?”
“It isn’t so easy to say. Never mind--you’re no saint either, are
you? You’ll keep it a secret, of course? Look here! I’ve acted like an
infernal fool. I’ve gone and got the girl into a scrape--”
Arnold drew back, suddenly understanding him.
“Good heavens, Geoffrey! You don’t mean--”
“I do! Wait a bit--that’s not the worst of it. She has left the house.”
“Left the house?”
“Left, for good and all. She can’t come back again.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s written to her missus. Women (hang ‘em!) never do these
things by halves. She’s left a letter to say she’s privately married,
and gone off to her husband. Her husband is--Me. Not that I’m married to
her yet, you understand. I have only promised to marry her. She has gone
on first (on the sly) to a place four miles from this. And we settled I
was to follow, and marry her privately this afternoon. That’s out of
the question now. While she’s expecting me at the inn I shall be bowling
along to London. Somebody must tell her what has happened--or she’ll
play the devil, and the whole business will burst up. I can’t trust any
of the people here. I’m done for, old chap, unless you help me.”
Arnold lifted his hands in dismay. “It’s the most dreadful situation,
Geoffrey, I ever heard of in my life!”
Geoffrey thoroughly agreed with him. “Enough to knock a man over,” he
said, “isn’t it? I’d give something for a drink of beer.” He produced
his everlasting pipe, from sheer force of habit. “Got a match?” he
asked.
Arnold’s mind was too preoccupied to notice the question.
“I hope you won’t think I’m making light of your father’s illness,” he
said, earnestly. “But it seems to me--I must say it--it seems to me that
the poor girl has the first claim on you.”
Geoffrey looked at him in surly amazement.
“The first claim on me? Do you think I’m going to risk being cut out of
my father’s will? Not for the best woman that ever put on a petticoat!”
Arnold’s admiration of his friend was the solidly-founded admiration
of many years; admiration for a man who could row, box, wrestle,
jump--above all, who could swim--as few other men could perform those
exercises in contemporary England. But that answer shook his faith. Only
for the moment--unhappily for Arnold, only for the moment.
“You know best,” he returned, a little coldly. “What can I do?”
Geoffrey took his arm--roughly as he took every thing; but in a
companionable and confidential way.
“Go, like a good fellow, and tell her what has happened. We’ll start
from here as if we were both going to the railway; and I’ll drop you at
the foot-path, in the gig. You can get on to your own place afterward by
the evening train. It puts you to no inconvenience, and it’s doing the
kind thing by an old friend. There’s no risk of being found out. I’m
to drive, remember! There’s no servant with us, old boy, to notice, and
tell tales.”
Even Arnold began to see dimly by this time that he was likely to pay
his debt of obligation with interest--as Sir Patrick had foretold.
“What am I to say to her?” he asked. “I’m bound to do all I can do to
help you, and I will. But what am I to say?”
It was a natural question to put. It was not an easy question to answer.
What a man, under given muscular circumstances, could do, no person
living knew better than Geoffrey Delamayn. Of what a man, under given
social circumstances, could say, no person living knew less.
“Say?” he repeated. “Look here! say I’m half distracted, and all that.
And--wait a bit--tell her to stop where she is till I write to her.”
Arnold hesitated. Absolutely ignorant of that low and limited form of
knowledge which is called “knowledge of the world,” his inbred delicacy
of mind revealed to him the serious difficulty of the position which his
friend was asking him to occupy as plainly as if he was looking at it
through the warily-gathered experience of society of a man of twice his
age.
“Can’t you write to her now, Geoffrey?” he asked.
“What’s the good of that?”