are very much to blame for answering Miss Blanche’s inquiries about Miss
Silvester.”
Hester Dethridge, perfectly unmoved, wrote her justification on her
slate, in two stiff sentences: “I had no orders _not_ to answer. I keep
nobody’s secrets but my own.”
That reply settled the question of the cook’s dismissal--the question
which had been pending for months past.
“You are an insolent woman! I have borne with you long enough--I will
bear with you no longer. When your month is up, you go!”
In those words Lady Lundie dismissed Hester Dethridge from her service.
Not the slightest change passed over the sinister tranquillity of
the cook. She bowed her head again, in acknowledgment of the sentence
pronounced on her--dropped her slate at her side--turned about--and left
the room. The woman was alive in the world, and working in the world;
and yet (so far as all human interests were concerned) she was as
completely out of the world as if she had been screwed down in her
coffin, and laid in her grave.
Lady Lundie’s maid came into the room as Hester left it.
“Go up stairs to Miss Blanche,” said her mistress, “and say I want her
here. Wait a minute!” She paused, and considered. Blanche might decline
to submit to her step-mother’s interference with her. It might be
necessary to appeal to the higher authority of her guardian. “Do you
know where Sir Patrick is?” asked Lady Lundie.
“I heard Simpson say, my lady, that Sir Patrick was at the stables.”
“Send Simpson with a message. My compliments to Sir Patrick--and I wish
to see him immediately.”
* * * * *
The preparations for the departure to the shooting-cottage were just
completed; and the one question that remained to be settled was, whether
Sir Patrick could accompany the party--when the man-servant appeared
with the message from his mistress.
“Will you give me a quarter of an hour, gentlemen?” asked Sir Patrick.
“In that time I shall know for certain whether I can go with you or
not.”
As a matter of course, the guests decided to wait. The younger men
among them (being Englishmen) naturally occupied their leisure time in
betting. Would Sir Patrick get the better of the domestic crisis? or
would the domestic crisis get the better of Sir Patrick? The domestic
crisis was backed, at two to one, to win.
Punctually at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, Sir Patrick
reappeared. The domestic crisis had betrayed the blind confidence which
youth and inexperience had placed in it. Sir Patrick had won the day.
“Things are settled and quiet, gentlemen; and I am able to accompany
you,” he said. “There are two ways to the shooting-cottage. One--the
longest--passes by the inn at Craig Fernie. I am compelled to ask you
to go with me by that way. While you push on to the cottage, I must drop
behind, and say a word to a person who is staying at the inn.”
He had quieted Lady Lundie--he had even quieted Blanche. But it was
evidently on the condition that he was to go to Craig Fernie in their
places, and to see Anne Silvester himself. Without a word more
of explanation he mounted his horse, and led the way out. The
shooting-party left Windygates.
SECOND SCENE.--THE INN.
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
ANNE.
“YE’LL just permit me to remind ye again, young leddy, that the hottle’s
full--exceptin’ only this settin’-room, and the bedchamber yonder
belonging to it.”
So spoke “Mistress Inchbare,” landlady of the Craig Fernie Inn, to Anne
Silvester, standing in the parlor, purse in hand, and offering the price
of the two rooms before she claimed permission to occupy them.
The time of the afternoon was about the time when Geoffrey Delamayn had
started in the train, on his journey to London. About the time also,
when Arnold Brinkworth had crossed the moor, and was mounting the first
rising ground which led to the inn.
Mistress Inchbare was tall and thin, and decent and dry. Mistress
Inchbare’s unlovable hair clung fast round her head in wiry little
yellow curls. Mistress Inchbare’s hard bones showed themselves, like
Mistress Inchbare’s hard Presbyterianism, without any concealment or
compromise. In short, a savagely-respectable woman who plumed herself on
presiding over a savagely-respectable inn.
There was no competition to interfere with Mistress Inchbare. She
regulated her own prices, and made her own rules. If you objected to
her prices, and revolted from her rules, you were free to go. In other
words, you were free to cast yourself, in the capacity of houseless
wanderer, on the scanty mercy of a Scotch wilderness. The village of
Craig Fernie was a collection of hovels. The country about Craig Fernie,
mountain on one side and moor on the other, held no second house of
public entertainment, for miles and miles round, at any point of the
compass. No rambling individual but the helpless British Tourist wanted
food and shelter from strangers in that part of Scotland; and nobody
but Mistress Inchbare had food and shelter to sell. A more thoroughly
independent person than this was not to be found on the face of the
hotel-keeping earth. The most universal of all civilized terrors--the
terror of appearing unfavorably in the newspapers--was a sensation
absolutely unknown to the Empress of the Inn. You lost your temper,
and threatened to send her bill for exhibition in the public journals.
Mistress Inchbare raised no objection to your taking any course you
pleased with it. “Eh, man! send the bill whar’ ye like, as long as ye
pay it first. There’s nae such thing as a newspaper ever darkens my
doors. Ye’ve got the Auld and New Testaments in your bedchambers, and
the natural history o’ Pairthshire on the coffee-room table--and if
that’s no’ reading eneugh for ye, ye may een gae back South again, and
get the rest of it there.”
This was the inn at which Anne Silvester had appeared alone, with
nothing but a little bag in her hand. This was the woman whose
reluctance to receive her she innocently expected to overcome by showing
her purse.
“Mention your charge for the rooms,” she said. “I am willing to pay for
them beforehand.”
Her majesty, Mrs. Inchbare, never even looked at her subject’s poor
little purse.
“It just comes to this, mistress,” she answered. “I’m no’ free to tak’
your money, if I’m no’ free to let ye the last rooms left in the hoose.
The Craig Fernie hottle is a faimily hottle--and has its ain gude name
to keep up. Ye’re ower-well-looking, my young leddy, to be traveling
alone.”
The time had been when Anne would have answered sharply enough. The hard
necessities of her position made her patient now.
“I have already told you,” she said, “my husband is coming here to
join me.” She sighed wearily as she repeated her ready-made story--and
dropped into the nearest chair, from sheer inability to stand any
longer.
Mistress Inchbare looked at her, with the exact measure of compassionate
interest which she might have shown if she had been looking at a stray
dog who had fallen footsore at the door of the inn.
“Weel! weel! sae let it be. Bide awhile, and rest ye. We’ll no’ chairge
ye for that--and we’ll see if your husband comes. I’ll just let the
rooms, mistress, to _him,_, instead o’ lettin’ them to _you._ And, sae,
good-morrow t’ ye.” With that final announcement of her royal will and
pleasure, the Empress of the Inn withdrew.
Anne made no reply. She watched the landlady out of the room--and then
struggled to control herself no longer. In her position, suspicion was
doubly insult. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes; and the
heart-ache wrung her, poor soul--wrung her without mercy.
A trifling noise in the room startled her. She looked up, and detected
a man in a corner, dusting the furniture, and apparently acting in the
capacity of attendant at the inn. He had shown her into the parlor on
her arrival; but he had remained so quietly in the room that she had
never noticed him since, until that moment.
He was an ancient man--with one eye filmy and blind, and one eye moist
and merry. His head was bald; his feet were gouty; his nose was justly
celebrated as the largest nose and the reddest nose in that part of
Scotland. The mild wisdom of years was expressed mysteriously in his
mellow smile. In contact with this wicked world, his manner revealed
that happy mixture of two extremes--the servility which just
touches independence, and the independence which just touches
servility--attained by no men in existence but Scotchmen. Enormous
native impudence, which amused but never offended; immeasurable cunning,
masquerading habitually under the double disguise of quaint prejudice
and dry humor, were the solid moral foundations on which the character
of this elderly person was built. No amount of whisky ever made him
drunk; and no violence of bell-ringing ever hurried his movements. Such
was the headwaiter at the Craig Fernie Inn; known, far and wide, to
local fame, as “Maister Bishopriggs, Mistress Inchbare’s right-hand
man.”
“What are you doing there?” Anne asked, sharply.
Mr. Bishopriggs turned himself about on his gouty feet; waved his duster
gently in the air; and looked at Anne, with a mild, paternal smile.
“Eh! Am just doostin’ the things; and setin’ the room in decent order
for ye.”
“For _me?_ Did you hear what the landlady said?”
Mr. Bishopriggs advanced confidentially, and pointed with a very
unsteady forefinger to the purse which Anne still held in her hand.
“Never fash yoursel’ aboot the landleddy!” said the sage chief of the
Craig Fernie waiters. “Your purse speaks for you, my lassie. Pet it up!”
cried Mr. Bishopriggs, waving temptation away from him with the duster.
“In wi’ it into yer pocket! Sae long as the warld’s the warld, I’ll
uphaud it any where--while there’s siller in the purse, there’s gude in
the woman!”
Anne’s patience, which had resisted harder trials, gave way at this.
“What do you mean by speaking to me in that familiar manner?” she asked,
rising angrily to her feet again.
Mr. Bishopriggs tucked his duster under his arm, and proceeded to
satisfy Anne that he shared the landlady’s view of her position, without
sharing the severity of the landlady’s principles. “There’s nae man
livin’,” said Mr. Bishopriggs, “looks with mair indulgence at human
frailty than my ain sel’. Am I no’ to be familiar wi’ ye--when I’m auld
eneugh to be a fether to ye, and ready to be a fether to ye till further
notice? Hech! hech! Order your bit dinner lassie. Husband or no husband,
ye’ve got a stomach, and ye must een eat. There’s fesh and there’s
fowl--or, maybe, ye’ll be for the sheep’s head singit, when they’ve done
with it at the tabble dot?”
There was but one way of getting rid of him: “Order what you like,” Anne
said, “and leave the room.” Mr. Bishopriggs highly approved of the first
half of the sentence, and totally overlooked the second.
“Ay, ay--just pet a’ yer little interests in my hands; it’s the wisest
thing ye can do. Ask for Maister Bishopriggs (that’s me) when ye want a
decent ‘sponsible man to gi’ ye a word of advice. Set ye doon again--set
ye doon. And don’t tak’ the arm-chair. Hech! hech! yer husband will
be coming, ye know, and he’s sure to want it!” With that seasonable
pleasantry the venerable Bishopriggs winked, and went out.
Anne looked at her watch. By her calculation it was not far from the
hour when Geoffrey might be expected to arrive at the inn, assuming
Geoffrey to have left Windygates at the time agreed on. A little more
patience, and the landlady’s scruples would be satisfied, and the ordeal
would be at an end.
Could she have met him nowhere else than at this barbarous house, and
among these barbarous people?
No. Outside the doors of Windygates she had not a friend to help her in
all Scotland. There was no place at her disposal but the inn; and she
had only to be thankful that it occupied a sequestered situation, and
was not likely to be visited by any of Lady Lundie’s friends. Whatever
the risk might be, the end in view justified her in confronting it. Her
whole future depended on Geoffrey’s making an honest woman of her. Not
her future with _him_--that way there was no hope; that way her life was
wasted. Her future with Blanche--she looked forward to nothing now but
her future with Blanche.
Her spirits sank lower and lower. The tears rose again. It would only
irritate him if he came and found her crying. She tried to divert her
mind by looking about the room.
There was very little to see. Except that it was solidly built of good
sound stone, the Craig Fernie hotel differed in no other important
respect from the average of second-rate English inns. There was the
usual slippery black sofa--constructed to let you slide when you wanted
to rest. There was the usual highly-varnished arm-chair, expressly
manufactured to test the endurance of the human spine. There was the
usual paper on the walls, of the pattern designed to make your eyes ache
and your head giddy. There were the usual engravings, which humanity
never tires of contemplating. The Royal Portrait, in the first place of
honor. The next greatest of all human beings--the Duke of Wellington--in
the second place of honor. The third greatest of all human beings--the
local member of parliament--in the third place of honor; and a hunting
scene, in the dark. A door opposite the door of admission from the
passage opened into the bedroom; and a window at the side looked out on
the open space in front of the hotel, and commanded a view of the vast
expanse of the Craig Fernie moor, stretching away below the rising
ground on which the house was built.
Anne turned in despair from the view in the room to the view from the
window. Within the last half hour it had changed for the worse. The
clouds had gathered; the sun was hidden; the light on the landscape was
gray and dull. Anne turned from the window, as she had turned from the
room. She was just making the hopeless attempt to rest her weary limbs
on the sofa, when the sound of voices and footsteps in the passage
caught her ear.
Was Geoffrey’s voice among them? No.
Were the strangers coming in?
The landlady had declined to let her have the rooms: it was quite
possible that the strangers might be coming to look at them. There was
no knowing who they might be. In the impulse of the moment she flew to
the bedchamber and locked herself in.
The door from the passage opened, and Arnold Brinkworth--shown in by Mr.
Bishopriggs--entered the sitting-room.
“Nobody here!” exclaimed Arnold, looking round. “Where is she?”
Mr. Bishopriggs pointed to the bedroom door. “Eh! yer good leddy’s joost
in the bedchamber, nae doot!”
Arnold started. He had felt no difficulty (when he and Geoffrey had
discussed the question at Windygates) about presenting himself at
the inn in the assumed character of Anne’s husband. But the result of
putting the deception in practice was, to say the least of it, a little
embarrassing at first. Here was the waiter describing Miss Silvester
as his “good lady;” and leaving it (most naturally and properly) to the
“good lady’s” husband to knock at her bedroom door, and tell her that he
was there. In despair of knowing what else to do at the moment, Arnold
asked for the landlady, whom he had not seen on arriving at the inn.
“The landleddy’s just tottin’ up the ledgers o’ the hottle in her ain
room,” answered Mr. Bishopriggs. “She’ll be here anon--the wearyful
woman!--speerin’ who ye are and what ye are, and takin’ a’ the business
o’ the hoose on her ain pair o’ shouthers.” He dropped the subject of
the landlady, and put in a plea for himself. “I ha’ lookit after a’ the
leddy’s little comforts, Sir,” he whispered. “Trust in me! trust in me!”
Arnold’s attention was absorbed in the very serious difficulty of
announcing his arrival to Anne. “How am I to get her out?” he said to
himself, with a look of perplexity directed at the bedroom door.
He had spoken loud enough for the waiter to hear him. Arnold’s look of
perplexity was instantly reflected on the face of Mr. Bishopriggs.
The head-waiter at Craig Fernie possessed an immense experience of the
manners and customs of newly-married people on their honeymoon trip.
He had been a second father (with excellent pecuniary results) to
innumerable brides and bridegrooms. He knew young married couples in
all their varieties:--The couples who try to behave as if they had been
married for many years; the couples who attempt no concealment, and
take advice from competent authorities about them. The couples who are
bashfully talkative before third persons; the couples who are bashfully
silent under similar circumstances. The couples who don’t know what
to do, the couples who wish it was over; the couples who must never
be intruded upon without careful preliminary knocking at the door; the
couples who _can_ eat and drink in the intervals of “bliss,” and the
other couples who _can’t._ But the bridegroom who stood helpless on
one side of the door, and the bride who remained locked in on the other,
were new varieties of the nuptial species, even in the vast experience
of Mr. Bishopriggs himself.
“Hoo are ye to get her oot?” he repeated. “I’ll show ye hoo!” He
advanced as rapidly as his gouty feet would let him, and knocked at
the bedroom door. “Eh, my leddy! here he is in flesh and bluid.
Mercy preserve us! do ye lock the door of the nuptial chamber in your
husband’s face?”
At that unanswerable appeal the lock was heard turning in the door. Mr.
Bishopriggs winked at Arnold with his one available eye, and laid his
forefinger knowingly along his enormous nose. “I’m away before she
falls into your arms! Rely on it I’ll no come in again without knocking
first!”
He left Arnold alone in the room. The bedroom door opened slowly by a
few inches at a time. Anne’s voice was just audible speaking cautiously
behind it.
“Is that you, Geoffrey?”
Arnold’s heart began to beat fast, in anticipation of the disclosure
which was now close at hand. He knew neither what to say or do--he
remained silent.
Anne repeated the question in louder tones:
“Is that you?”
There was the certain prospect of alarming her, if some reply was not
given. There was no help for it. Come what come might, Arnold answered,
in a whisper:
“Yes.”
The door was flung wide open. Anne Silvester appeared on the threshold,
confronting him.
“Mr. Brinkworth!!!” she exclaimed, standing petrified with astonishment.
For a moment more neither of them spoke. Anne advanced one step into
the sitting-room, and put the next inevitable question, with an
instantaneous change from surprise to suspicion.
“What do you want here?”
Geoffrey’s letter represented the only possible excuse for Arnold’s
appearance in that place, and at that time.
“I have got a letter for you,” he said--and offered it to her.
She was instantly on her guard. They were little better than strangers
to each other, as Arnold had said. A sickening presentiment of some
treachery on Geoffrey’s part struck cold to her heart. She refused to
take the letter.
“I expect no letter,” she said. “Who told you I was here?” She put
the question, not only with a tone of suspicion, but with a look of
contempt. The look was not an easy one for a man to bear. It required
a momentary exertion of self-control on Arnold’s part, before he could
trust himself to answer with due consideration for her. “Is there a
watch set on my actions?” she went on, with rising anger. “And are _you_
the spy?”
“You haven’t known me very long, Miss Silvester,” Arnold answered,
quietly. “But you ought to know me better than to say that. I am the
bearer of a letter from Geoffrey.”
She was an the point of following his example, and of speaking of
Geoffrey by his Christian name, on her side. But she checked herself,
before the word had passed her lips.
“Do you mean Mr. Delamayn?” she asked, coldly.
“Yes.”
“What occasion have _I_ for a letter from Mr. Delamayn?”
She was determined to acknowledge nothing--she kept him obstinately at
arm’s-length. Arnold did, as a matter of instinct, what a man of larger
experience would have done, as a matter of calculation--he closed with
her boldly, then and there.
“Miss Silvester! it’s no use beating about the bush. If you won’t take
the letter, you force me to speak out. I am here on a very unpleasant
errand. I begin to wish, from the bottom of my heart, I had never
undertaken it.”
A quick spasm of pain passed across her face. She was beginning, dimly
beginning, to understand him. He hesitated. His generous nature shrank
from hurting her.
“Go on,” she said, with an effort.
“Try not to be angry with me, Miss Silvester. Geoffrey and I are old
friends. Geoffrey knows he can trust me--”
“Trust you?” she interposed. “Stop!”
Arnold waited. She went on, speaking to herself, not to him.
“When I was in the other room I asked if Geoffrey was there. And this
man answered for him.” She sprang forward with a cry of horror.
“Has he told you--”
“For God’s sake, read his letter!”
She violently pushed back the hand with which Arnold once more offered
the letter. “You don’t look at me! He _has_ told you!”
“Read his letter,” persisted Arnold. “In justice to him, if you won’t in
justice to me.”
The situation was too painful to be endured. Arnold looked at her, this
time, with a man’s resolution in his eyes--spoke to her, this time, with
a man’s resolution in his voice. She took the letter.
“I beg your pardon, Sir,” she said, with a sudden humiliation of tone
and manner, inexpressibly shocking, inexpressibly pitiable to see. “I
understand my position at last. I am a woman doubly betrayed. Please to
excuse what I said to you just now, when I supposed myself to have some
claim on your respect. Perhaps you will grant me your pity? I can ask
for nothing more.”
Arnold was silent. Words were useless in the face of such utter
self-abandonment as this. Any man living--even Geoffrey himself--must
have felt for her at that moment.
She looked for the first time at the letter. She opened it on the wrong
side. “My own letter!” she said to herself. “In the hands of another
man!”
“Look at the last page,” said Arnold.
She turned to the last page, and read the hurried penciled lines.
“Villain! villain! villain!” At the third repetition of the word, she
crushed the letter in the palm of her hand, and flung it from her to the
other end of the room. The instant after, the fire that had flamed up in
her died out. Feebly and slowly she reached out her hand to the nearest
chair, and sat down in it with her back to Arnold. “He has deserted me!”
was all she said. The words fell low and quiet on the silence: they were
the utterance of an immeasurable despair.
“You are wrong!” exclaimed Arnold. “Indeed, indeed you are wrong! It’s
no excuse--it’s the truth. I was present when the message came about his
father.”
She never heeded him, and never moved. She only repeated the words
“He has deserted me!”
“Don’t take it in that way!” pleaded Arnold--“pray don’t! It’s dreadful
to hear you; it is indeed. I am sure he has _not_ deserted you.” There
was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to
stone. It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as
this. In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair
to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder. “Come!” he said, in
his single-hearted, boyish way. “Cheer up a little!”
She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.
“Didn’t you say he had told you every thing?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you despise a woman like me?”
Arnold’s heart went back, at that dreadful question, to the one woman
who was eternally sacred to him--to the woman from whose bosom he had
drawn the breath of life.
“Does the man live,” he said, “who can think of his mother--and despise
women?”
That answer set the prisoned misery in her free. She gave him her
hand--she faintly thanked him. The merciful tears came to her at last.
Arnold rose, and turned away to the window in despair. “I mean well,” he
said. “And yet I only distress her!”