very awkward secret. I may be wrong--I never was mixed up in such a
matter before--but to present myself to this lady as your messenger
seems exposing her to a dreadful humiliation. Am I to go and tell her
to her face: ‘I know what you are hiding from the knowledge of all the
world;’ and is she to be expected to endure it?”
“Bosh!” said Geoffrey. “They can endure a deal more than you think.
I wish you had heard how she bullied me, in this very place. My good
fellow, you don’t understand women. The grand secret, in dealing with a
woman, is to take her as you take a cat, by the scruff of the neck--”
“I can’t face her--unless you will help me by breaking the thing to
her first. I’ll stick at no sacrifice to serve you; but--hang it!--make
allowances, Geoffrey, for the difficulty you are putting me in. I am
almost a stranger; I don’t know how Miss Silvester may receive me,
before I can open my lips.”
Those last words touched the question on its practical side. The
matter-of-fact view of the difficulty was a view which Geoffrey
instantly recognized and understood.
“She has the devil’s own temper,” he said. “There’s no denying that.
Perhaps I’d better write. Have we time to go into the house?”
“No. The house is full of people, and we haven’t a minute to spare.
Write at once, and write here. I have got a pencil.”
“What am I to write on?”
“Any thing--your brother’s card.”
Geoffrey took the pencil which Arnold offered to him, and looked at the
card. The lines his brother had written covered it. There was no room
left. He felt in his pocket, and produced a letter--the letter which
Anne had referred to at the interview between them--the letter which she
had written to insist on his attending the lawn-party at Windygates.
“This will do,” he said. “It’s one of Anne’s own letters to me. There’s
room on the fourth page. If I write,” he added, turning suddenly on
Arnold, “you promise to take it to her? Your hand on the bargain!”
He held out the hand which had saved Arnold’s life in Lisbon Harbor, and
received Arnold’s promise, in remembrance of that time.
“All right, old fellow. I can tell you how to find the place as we go
along in the gig. By-the-by, there’s one thing that’s rather important.
I’d better mention it while I think of it.”
“What is that?”
“You mustn’t present yourself at the inn in your own name; and you
mustn’t ask for her by _her_ name.”
“Who am I to ask for?”
“It’s a little awkward. She has gone there as a married woman, in case
they’re particular about taking her in--”
“I understand. Go on.”
“And she has planned to tell them (by way of making it all right and
straight for both of us, you know) that she expects her husband to join
her. If I had been able to go I should have asked at the door for ‘my
wife.’ You are going in my place--”
“And I must ask at the door for ‘my wife,’ or I shall expose Miss
Silvester to unpleasant consequences?”
“You don’t object?”
“Not I! I don’t care what I say to the people of the inn. It’s the
meeting with Miss Silvester that I’m afraid of.”
“I’ll put that right for you--never fear!”
He went at once to the table and rapidly scribbled a few lines--then
stopped and considered. “Will that do?” he asked himself. “No; I’d
better say something spooney to quiet her.” He considered again, added a
line, and brought his hand down on the table with a cheery smack.
“That will do the business! Read it yourself, Arnold--it’s not so badly
written.”
Arnold read the note without appearing to share his friend’s favorable
opinion of it.
“This is rather short,” he said.
“Have I time to make it longer?”
“Perhaps not. But let Miss Silvester see for herself that you have no
time to make it longer. The train starts in less than half an hour. Put
the time.”
“Oh, all right! and the date too, if you like.”
He had just added the desired words and figures, and had given the
revised letter to Arnold, when Sir Patrick returned to announce that the
gig was waiting.
“Come!” he said. “You haven’t a moment to lose!”
Geoffrey started to his feet. Arnold hesitated.
“I must see Blanche!” he pleaded. “I can’t leave Blanche without saying
good-by. Where is she?”
Sir Patrick pointed to the steps, with a smile. Blanche had followed him
from the house. Arnold ran out to her instantly.
“Going?” she said, a little sadly.
“I shall be back in two days,” Arnold whispered. “It’s all right! Sir
Patrick consents.”
She held him fast by the arm. The hurried parting before other people
seemed to be not a parting to Blanche’s taste.
“You will lose the train!” cried Sir Patrick.
Geoffrey seized Arnold by the arm which Blanche was holding, and
tore him--literally tore him--away. The two were out of sight, in the
shrubbery, before Blanche’s indignation found words, and addressed
itself to her uncle.
“Why is that brute going away with Mr. Brinkworth?” she asked.
“Mr. Delamayn is called to London by his father’s illness,” replied Sir
Patrick. “You don’t like him?”
“I hate him!”
Sir Patrick reflected a little.
“She is a young girl of eighteen,” he thought to himself. “And I am an
old man of seventy. Curious, that we should agree about any thing. More
than curious that we should agree in disliking Mr. Delamayn.”
He roused himself, and looked again at Blanche. She was seated at the
table, with her head on her hand; absent, and out of spirits--thinking
of Arnold, and set, with the future all smooth before them, not thinking
happily.
“Why, Blanche! Blanche!” cried Sir Patrick, “one would think he had gone
for a voyage round the world. You silly child! he will be back again the
day after to-morrow.”
“I wish he hadn’t gone with that man!” said Blanche. “I wish he hadn’t
got that man for a friend!”
“There! there! the man was rude enough I own. Never mind! he will leave
the man at the second station. Come back to the ball-room with me. Dance
it off, my dear--dance it off!”
“No,” returned Blanche. “I’m in no humor for dancing. I shall go up
stairs, and talk about it to Anne.”
“You will do nothing of the sort!” said a third voice, suddenly joining
in the conversation.
Both uncle and niece looked up, and found Lady Lundie at the top of the
summer-house steps.
“I forbid you to mention that woman’s name again in my hearing,” pursued
her ladyship. “Sir Patrick! I warned you (if you remember?) that the
matter of the governess was not a matter to be trifled with. My worst
anticipations are realized. Miss Silvester has left the house!”
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE SCANDAL.
IT was still early in the afternoon when the guests at Lady Lundie’s
lawn-party began to compare notes together in corners, and to agree in
arriving at a general conviction that “some thing was wrong.”
Blanche had mysteriously disappeared from her partners in the dance.
Lady Lundie had mysteriously abandoned her guests. Blanche had not
come back. Lady Lundie had returned with an artificial smile, and a
preoccupied manner. She acknowledged that she was “not very well.” The
same excuse had been given to account for Blanche’s absence--and, again
(some time previously), to explain Miss Silvester’s withdrawal from the
croquet! A wit among the gentlemen declared it reminded him of declining
a verb. “I am not very well; thou art not very well; she is not very
well”--and so on. Sir Patrick too! Only think of the sociable Sir
Patrick being in a state of seclusion--pacing up and down by himself in
the loneliest part of the garden. And the servants again! it had even
spread to the servants! _They_ were presuming to whisper in corners,
like their betters. The house-maids appeared, spasmodically, where house
maids had no business to be. Doors banged and petticoats whisked in the
upper regions. Something wrong--depend upon it, something wrong! “We
had much better go away. My dear, order the carriage”--“Louisa, love,
no more dancing; your papa is going.”--“_Good_-afternoon, Lady
Lundie!”--“Haw! thanks very much!”--“_So_ sorry for dear Blanche!”--“Oh,
it’s been _too_ charming!” So Society jabbered its poor, nonsensical
little jargon, and got itself politely out of the way before the storm
came.
This was exactly the consummation of events for which Sir Patrick had
been waiting in the seclusion of the garden.
There was no evading the responsibility which was now thrust upon him.
Lady Lundie had announced it as a settled resolution, on her part, to
trace Anne to the place in which she had taken refuge, and discover
(purely in the interests of virtue) whether she actually was married
or not. Blanche (already overwrought by the excitement of the day) had
broken into an hysterical passion of tears on hearing the news, and had
then, on recovering, taken a view of her own of Anne’s flight from the
house. Anne would never have kept her marriage a secret from Blanche;
Anne would never have written such a formal farewell letter as she had
written to Blanche--if things were going as smoothly with her as she
was trying to make them believe at Windygates. Some dreadful trouble
had fallen on Anne and Blanche was determined (as Lady Lundie was
determined) to find out where she had gone, and to follow, and help her.
It was plain to Sir Patrick (to whom both ladies had opened their
hearts, at separate interviews) that his sister-in-law, in one way, and
his niece in another, were equally likely--if not duly restrained--to
plunge headlong into acts of indiscretion which might lead to very
undesirable results. A man in authority was sorely needed at Windygates
that afternoon--and Sir Patrick was fain to acknowledge that he was the
man.
“Much is to be said for, and much is to be said against a single
life,” thought the old gentleman, walking up and down the sequestered
garden-path to which he had retired, and applying himself at shorter
intervals than usual to the knob of his ivory cane. “This, however,
is, I take it, certain. A man’s married friends can’t prevent him from
leading the life of a bachelor, if he pleases. But they can, and do,
take devilish good care that he sha’n’t enjoy it!”
Sir Patrick’s meditations were interrupted by the appearance of a
servant, previously instructed to keep him informed of the progress of
events at the house.
“They’re all gone, Sir Patrick,” said the man.
“That’s a comfort, Simpson. We have no visitors to deal with now, except
the visitors who are staying in the house?”
“None, Sir Patrick.”
“They’re all gentlemen, are they not?”
“Yes, Sir Patrick.”
“That’s another comfort, Simpson. Very good. I’ll see Lady Lundie
first.”
Does any other form of human resolution approach the firmness of a
woman who is bent on discovering the frailties of another woman whom she
hates? You may move rocks, under a given set of circumstances. But here
is a delicate being in petticoats, who shrieks if a spider drops on her
neck, and shudders if you approach her after having eaten an onion. Can
you move _her,_ under a given set of circumstances, as set forth above?
Not you!
Sir Patrick found her ladyship instituting her inquiries on the same
admirably exhaustive system which is pursued, in cases of disappearance,
by the police. Who was the last witness who had seen the missing person?
Who was the last servant who had seen Anne Silvester? Begin with the
men-servants, from the butler at the top to the stable boy at the
bottom. Go on with the women-servants, from the cook in all her glory
to the small female child who weeds the garden. Lady Lundie had
cross-examined her way downward as far as the page, when Sir Patrick
joined her.
“My dear lady! pardon me for reminding you again, that this is a
free country, and that you have no claim whatever to investigate Miss
Silvester’s proceedings after she has left your house.”
Lady Lundie raised her eyes, devotionally, to the ceiling. She looked
like a martyr to duty. If you had seen her ladyship at that moment, you
would have said yourself, “A martyr to duty.”
“No, Sir Patrick! As a Christian woman, that is not _my_ way of looking
at it. This unhappy person has lived under my roof. This unhappy person
has been the companion of Blanche. I am responsible--I am, in a manner,
morally responsible. I would give the world to be able to dismiss it
as you do. But no! I must be satisfied that she _is_ married. In the
interests of propriety. For the quieting of my own conscience. Before I
lay my head on my pillow to-night, Sir Patrick--before I lay my head on
my pillow to-night!”
“One word, Lady Lundie--”
“No!” repeated her ladyship, with the most pathetic gentleness. “You
are right, I dare say, from the worldly point of view. I can’t take the
worldly point of view. The worldly point of view hurts me.” She turned,
with impressive gravity, to the page. “You know where you will go,
Jonathan, if you tell lies!”
Jonathan was lazy, Jonathan was pimply, Jonathan was fat--_but_ Jonathan
was orthodox. He answered that he did know; and, what is more, he
mentioned the place.
Sir Patrick saw that further opposition on his part, at that moment,
would be worse than useless. He wisely determined to wait, before he
interfered again, until Lady Lundie had thoroughly exhausted herself and
her inquiries. At the same time--as it was impossible, in the present
state of her ladyship’s temper, to provide against what might happen
if the inquiries after Anne unluckily proved successful--he decided on
taking measures to clear the house of the guests (in the interests of
all parties) for the next four-and-twenty hours.
“I only want to ask you a question, Lady Lundie,” he resumed. “The
position of the gentlemen who are staying here is not a very pleasant
one while all this is going on. If you had been content to let the
matter pass without notice, we should have done very well. As things
are, don’t you think it will be more convenient to every body if I
relieve you of the responsibility of entertaining your guests?”
“As head of the family?” stipulated Lady Lundie.
“As head of the family!” answered Sir Patrick.
“I gratefully accept the proposal,” said Lady Lundie.
“I beg you won’t mention it,” rejoined Sir Patrick.
He quitted the room, leaving Jonathan under examination. He and his
brother (the late Sir Thomas) had chosen widely different paths in life,
and had seen but little of each other since the time when they had been
boys. Sir Patrick’s recollections (on leaving Lady Lundie) appeared
to have taken him back to that time, and to have inspired him with a
certain tenderness for his brother’s memory. He shook his head, and
sighed a sad little sigh. “Poor Tom!” he said to himself, softly, after
he had shut the door on his brother’s widow. “Poor Tom!”
On crossing the hall, he stopped the first servant he met, to inquire
after Blanche. Miss Blanche was quiet, up stairs, closeted with her maid
in her own room. “Quiet?” thought Sir Patrick. “That’s a bad sign. I
shall hear more of my niece.”
Pending that event, the next thing to do was to find the guests.
Unerring instinct led Sir Patrick to the billiard-room. There he found
them, in solemn conclave assembled, wondering what they had better do.
Sir Patrick put them all at their ease in two minutes.
“What do you say to a day’s shooting to-morrow?” he asked.
Every man present--sportsman or not--said yes.
“You can start from this house,” pursued Sir Patrick; “or you can start
from a shooting-cottage which is on the Windygates property--among the
woods, on the other side of the moor. The weather looks pretty well
settled (for Scotland), and there are plenty of horses in the stables.
It is useless to conceal from you, gentlemen, that events have taken a
certain unexpected turn in my sister-in-law’s family circle. You will
be equally Lady Lundie’s guests, whether you choose the cottage or the
house. For the next twenty-four hours (let us say)--which shall it be?”
Every body--with or without rheumatism--answered “the cottage.”
“Very good,” pursued Sir Patrick, “It is arranged to ride over to the
shooting-cottage this evening, and to try the moor, on that side, the
first thing in the morning. If events here will allow me, I shall be
delighted to accompany you, and do the honors as well as I can. If not,
I am sure you will accept my apologies for to-night, and permit Lady
Lundie’s steward to see to your comfort in my place.”
Adopted unanimously. Sir Patrick left the guests to their billiards, and
went out to give the necessary orders at the stables.
In the mean time Blanche remained portentously quiet in the upper
regions of the house; while Lady Lundie steadily pursued her inquiries
down stairs. She got on from Jonathan (last of the males, indoors) to
the coachman (first of the males, out-of-doors), and dug down, man by
man, through that new stratum, until she struck the stable-boy at the
bottom. Not an atom of information having been extracted in the house
or out of the house, from man or boy, her ladyship fell back on
the women next. She pulled the bell, and summoned the cook--Hester
Dethridge.
A very remarkable-looking person entered the room.
Elderly and quiet; scrupulously clean; eminently respectable; her gray
hair neat and smooth under her modest white cap; her eyes, set deep in
their orbits, looking straight at any person who spoke to her--here,
at a first view, was a steady, trust-worthy woman. Here also on closer
inspection, was a woman with the seal of some terrible past suffering
set on her for the rest of her life. You felt it, rather than saw it, in
the look of immovable endurance which underlain her expression--in the
deathlike tranquillity which never disappeared from her manner. Her
story was a sad one--so far as it was known. She had entered Lady
Lundie’s service at the period of Lady Lundie’s marriage to Sir Thomas.
Her character (given by the clergyman of her parish) described her as
having been married to an inveterate drunkard, and as having suffered
unutterably during her husband’s lifetime. There were drawbacks to
engaging her, now that she was a widow. On one of the many occasions on
which her husband had personally ill-treated her, he had struck her a
blow which had produced very remarkable nervous results. She had lain
insensible many days together, and had recovered with the total loss of
her speech. In addition to this objection, she was odd, at times, in her
manner; and she made it a condition of accepting any situation, that she
should be privileged to sleep in a room by herself As a set-off against
all this, it was to be said, on the other side of the question, that she
was sober; rigidly honest in all her dealings; and one of the best cooks
in England. In consideration of this last merit, the late Sir Thomas
had decided on giving her a trial, and had discovered that he had never
dined in his life as he dined when Hester Dethridge was at the head of
his kitchen. She remained after his death in his widow’s service. Lady
Lundie was far from liking her. An unpleasant suspicion attached to the
cook, which Sir Thomas had over-looked, but which persons less sensible
of the immense importance of dining well could not fail to regard as
a serious objection to her. Medical men, consulted about her case
discovered certain physiological anomalies in it which led them to
suspect the woman of feigning dumbness, for some reason best known
to herself. She obstinately declined to learn the deaf and dumb
alphabet--on the ground that dumbness was not associated with deafness
in her case. Stratagems were invented (seeing that she really did
possess the use of her ears) to entrap her into also using her speech,
and failed. Efforts were made to induce her to answer questions relating
to her past life in her husband’s time. She flatly declined to reply
to them, one and all. At certain intervals, strange impulses to get a
holiday away from the house appeared to seize her. If she was resisted,
she passively declined to do her work. If she was threatened with
dismissal, she impenetrably bowed her head, as much as to say, “Give
me the word, and I go.” Over and over again, Lady Lundie had decided,
naturally enough, on no longer keeping such a servant as this; but she
had never yet carried the decision to execution. A cook who is a perfect
mistress of her art, who asks for no perquisites, who allows no waste,
who never quarrels with the other servants, who drinks nothing stronger
than tea, who is to be trusted with untold gold--is not a cook easily
replaced. In this mortal life we put up with many persons and things,
as Lady Lundie put up with her cook. The woman lived, as it were, on the
brink of dismissal--but thus far the woman kept her place--getting her
holidays when she asked for them (which, to do her justice, was not
often) and sleeping always (go where she might with the family) with a
locked door, in a room by herself.
Hester Dethridge advanced slowly to the table at which Lady Lundie was
sitting. A slate and pencil hung at her side, which she used for making
such replies as were not to be expressed by a gesture or by a motion
of the head. She took up the slate and pencil, and waited with stony
submission for her mistress to begin.
Lady Lundie opened the proceedings with the regular formula of inquiry
which she had used with all the other servants,
“Do you know that Miss Silvester has left the house?”
The cook nodded her head affirmatively.
“Do you know at what time she left it?”
Another affirmative reply. The first which Lady Lundie had received to
that question yet. She eagerly went on to the next inquiry.
“Have you seen her since she left the house?”
A third affirmative reply.
“Where?”
Hester Dethridge wrote slowly on the slate, in singularly firm upright
characters for a woman in her position of life, these words:
“On the road that leads to the railway. Nigh to Mistress Chew’s Farm.”
“What did you want at Chew’s Farm?”
Hester Dethridge wrote: “I wanted eggs for the kitchen, and a breath of
fresh air for myself.”
“Did Miss Silvester see you?”
A negative shake of the head.
“Did she take the turning that leads to the railway?”
Another negative shake of the head.
“She went on, toward the moor?”
An affirmative reply.
“What did she do when she got to the moor?”
Hester Dethridge wrote: “She took the footpath which leads to Craig
Fernie.”
Lady Lundie rose excitedly to her feet. There was but one place that a
stranger could go to at Craig Fernie. “The inn!” exclaimed her ladyship.
“She has gone to the inn!”
Hester Dethridge waited immovably. Lady Lundie put a last precautionary
question, in these words:
“Have you reported what you have seen to any body else?”
An affirmative reply. Lady Lundie had not bargained for that. Hester
Dethridge (she thought) must surely have misunderstood her.
“Do you mean that you have told somebody else what you have just told
me?”
Another affirmative reply.
“A person who questioned you, as I have done?”
A third affirmative reply.
“Who was it?”
Hester Dethridge wrote on her slate: “Miss Blanche.”
Lady Lundie stepped back, staggered by the discovery that Blanche’s
resolution to trace Anne Silvester was, to all appearance, as firmly
settled as her own. Her step-daughter was keeping her own counsel, and
acting on her own responsibility--her step-daughter might be an awkward
obstacle in the way. The manner in which Anne had left the house had
mortally offended Lady Lundie. An inveterately vindictive woman, she had
resolved to discover whatever compromising elements might exist in the
governess’s secret, and to make them public property (from a paramount
sense of duty, of course) among her own circle of friends. But to do
this--with Blanche acting (as might certainly be anticipated) in direct
opposition to her, and openly espousing Miss Silvester’s interests--was
manifestly impossible.
The first thing to be done--and that instantly--was to inform Blanche
that she was discovered, and to forbid her to stir in the matter.
Lady Lundie rang the bell twice--thus intimating, according to the laws
of the household, that she required the attendance of her own maid.
She then turned to the cook--still waiting her pleasure, with stony
composure, slate in hand.
“You have done wrong,” said her ladyship, severely. “I am your mistress.
You are bound to answer your mistress--”
Hester Dethridge bowed her head, in icy acknowledgment of the principle
laid down--so far.
The bow was an interruption. Lady Lundie resented it.