the words with a strong emphasis on them, took his brother’s letter from
the table, snatched up his hat, and went out.
His friends, idling on the lawn, hailed him. He passed by them quickly
without answering, without so much as a glance at them over his
shoulder. Arriving at the rose-garden, he stopped and took out his pipe;
then suddenly changed his mind, and turned back again by another path.
There was no certainty, at that hour of the day, of his being left alone
in the rose-garden. He had a fierce and hungry longing to be by himself;
he felt as if he could have been the death of any body who came and
spoke to him at that moment. With his head down and his brows knit
heavily, he followed the path to see what it ended in. It ended in a
wicket-gate which led into a kitchen-garden. Here he was well out of
the way of interruption: there was nothing to attract visitors in the
kitchen-garden. He went on to a walnut-tree planted in the middle of the
inclosure, with a wooden bench and a broad strip of turf running round
it. After first looking about him, he seated himself and lit his pipe.
“I wish it was done!” he said.
He sat, with his elbows on his knees, smoking and thinking. Before long
the restlessness that had got possession of him forced him to his feet
again. He rose, and paced round and round the strip of greensward under
the walnut-tree, like a wild beast in a cage.
What was the meaning of this disturbance in the inner man? Now that he
had committed himself to the betrayal of the friend who had trusted and
served him, was he torn by remorse?
He was no more torn by remorse than you are while your eye is passing
over this sentence. He was simply in a raging fever of impatience to see
himself safely la nded at the end which he had in view.
Why should he feel remorse? All remorse springs, more or less directly,
from the action of two sentiments, which are neither of them inbred in
the natural man. The first of these sentiments is the product of the
respect which we learn to feel for ourselves. The second is the product
of the respect which we learn to feel for others. In their highest
manifestations, these two feelings exalt themselves, until the first he
comes the love of God, and the second the love of Man. I have injured
you, and I repent of it when it is done. Why should I repent of it if
I have gained something by it for my own self and if you can’t make me
feel it by injuring Me? I repent of it because there has been a sense
put into me which tells me that I have sinned against Myself, and sinned
against You. No such sense as that exists among the instincts of the
natural man. And no such feelings as these troubled Geoffrey Delamayn;
for Geoffrey Delamayn was the natural man.
When the idea of his scheme had sprung to life in his mind, the
novelty of it had startled him--the enormous daring of it, suddenly
self-revealed, had daunted him. The signs of emotion which he had
betrayed at the writing-table in the library were the signs of mere
mental perturbation, and of nothing more.
That first vivid impression past, the idea had made itself familiar
to him. He had become composed enough to see such difficulties as it
involved, and such consequences as it implied. These had fretted him
with a passing trouble; for these he plainly discerned. As for the
cruelty and the treachery of the thing he meditated doing--that
consideration never crossed the limits of his mental view. His position
toward the man whose life he had preserved was the position of a dog.
The “noble animal” who has saved you or me from drowning will fly at
your throat or mine, under certain conditions, ten minutes afterward.
Add to the dog’s unreasoning instinct the calculating cunning of a man;
suppose yourself to be in a position to say of some trifling thing,
“Curious! at such and such a time I happened to pick up such and such
an object; and now it turns out to be of some use to me!”--and there you
have an index to the state of Geoffrey’s feeling toward his friend when
he recalled the past or when he contemplated the future. When Arnold
had spoken to him at the critical moment, Arnold had violently irritated
him; and that was all.
The same impenetrable insensibility, the same primitively natural
condition of the moral being, prevented him from being troubled by the
slightest sense of pity for Anne. “She’s out of my way!” was his first
thought. “She’s provided for, without any trouble to Me!” was his second.
He was not in the least uneasy about her. Not the slightest doubt
crossed his mind that, when once she had realized her own situation,
when once she saw herself placed between the two alternatives of facing
her own ruin or of claiming Arnold as a last resource, she would claim
Arnold. She would do it as a matter of course; because _he_ would have
done it in her place.
But he wanted it over. He was wild, as he paced round and round the
walnut-tree, to hurry on the crisis and be done with it. Give me my
freedom to go to the other woman, and to train for the foot-race--that’s
what I want. _They_ injured? Confusion to them both! It’s I who am
injured by them. They are the worst enemies I have! They stand in my
way.
How to be rid of them? There was the difficulty. He had made up his mind
to be rid of them that day. How was he to begin?
There was no picking a quarrel with Arnold, and so beginning with _him._
This course of proceeding, in Arnold’s position toward Blanche, would
lead to a scandal at the outset--a scandal which would stand in the way
of his making the right impression on Mrs. Glenarm. The woman--lonely
and friendless, with her sex and her position both against her if _she_
tried to make a scandal of it--the woman was the one to begin with.
Settle it at once and forever with Anne; and leave Arnold to hear of it
and deal with it, sooner or later, no matter which.
How was he to break it to her before the day was out?
By going to the inn and openly addressing her to her face as Mrs. Arnold
Brinkworth? No! He had had enough, at Windygates, of meeting her face
to face. The easy way was to write to her, and send the letter, by the
first messenger he could find, to the inn. She might appear afterward at
Windygates; she might follow him to his brother’s; she might appeal to
his father. It didn’t matter; he had got the whip-hand of her now. “You
are a married woman.” There was the one sufficient answer, which was
strong enough to back him in denying any thing!
He made out the letter in his own mind. “Something like this would do,”
he thought, as he went round and round the walnut-tree: “You may be
surprised not to have seen me. You have only yourself to thank for it.
I know what took place between you and him at the inn. I have had a
lawyer’s advice. You are Arnold Brinkworth’s wife. I wish you joy, and
good-by forever.” Address those lines: “To Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;”
instruct the messenger to leave the letter late that night, without
waiting for an answer; start the first thing the next morning for his
brother’s house; and behold, it was done!
But even here there was an obstacle--one last exasperating
obstacle--still in the way.
If she was known at the inn by any name at all, it was by the name of
Mrs. Silvester. A letter addressed to “Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth” would
probably not be taken in at the door; or if it was admitted and if
it was actually offered to her, she might decline to receive it, as a
letter not addressed to herself. A man of readier mental resources would
have seen that the name on the outside of the letter mattered little or
nothing, so long as the contents were read by the person to whom they
were addressed. But Geoffrey’s was the order of mind which expresses
disturbance by attaching importance to trifles. He attached an absurd
importance to preserving absolute consistency in his letter, outside and
in. If he declared her to be Arnold Brinkworth’s wife, he must direct
to her as Arnold Brinkworth’s wife; or who could tell what the law might
say, or what scrape he might not get himself into by a mere scratch of
the pen! The more he thought of it, the more persuaded he felt of his
own cleverness here, and the hotter and the angrier he grew.
There is a way out of every thing. And there was surely a way out of
this, if he could only see it.
He failed to see it. After dealing with all the great difficulties, the
small difficulty proved too much for him. It struck him that he might
have been thinking too long about it--considering that he was not
accustomed to thinking long about any thing. Besides, his head was
getting giddy, with going mechanically round and round the tree. He
irritably turned his back on the tree and struck into another path:
resolved to think of something else, and then to return to his
difficulty, and see it with a new eye.
Leaving his thoughts free to wander where they liked, his thoughts
naturally busied themselves with the next subject that was uppermost
in his mind, the subject of the Foot-Race. In a week’s time his
arrangements ought to be made. Now, as to the training, first.
He decided on employing two trainers this time. One to travel to
Scotland, and begin with him at his brother’s house. The other to take
him up, with a fresh eye to him, on his return to London. He turned over
in his mind the performances of the formidable rival against whom he was
to be matched. That other man was the swiftest runner of the two.
The betting in Geoffrey’s favor was betting which calculated on the
unparalleled length of the race, and on Geoffrey’s prodigious powers of
endurance. How long he should “wait on” the man? Whereabouts it would
be safe to “pick the man up?” How near the end to calculate the man’s
exhaustion to a nicety, and “put on the spurt,” and pass him? These were
nice points to decide. The deliberations of a pedestrian-privy-council
would be required to help him under this heavy responsibility. What men
could he trust? He could trust A. and B.--both of them authorities:
both of them stanch. Query about C.? As an authority, unexceptionable;
as a man, doubtful. The problem relating to C. brought him to a
standstill--and declined to be solved, even then. Never mind! he could
always take the advice of A. and B. In the mean time devote C. to the
infernal regions; and, thus dismissing him, try and think of something
else. What else? Mrs. Glenarm? Oh, bother the women! one of them is the
same as another. They all waddle when they run; and they all fill their
stomachs before dinner with sloppy tea. That’s the only difference
between women and men--the rest is nothing but a weak imitation of Us.
Devote the women to the infernal regions; and, so dismissing _them,_ try
and think of something else. Of what? Of something worth thinking of,
this time--of filling another pipe.
He took out his tobacco-pouch; and suddenly suspended operations at the
moment of opening it.
What was the object he saw, on the other side of a row of dwarf
pear-trees, away to the right? A woman--evidently a servant by her
dress--stooping down with her back to him, gathering something: herbs
they looked like, as well as he could make them out at the distance.
What was that thing hanging by a string at the woman’s side? A slate?
Yes. What the deuce did she want with a slate at her side? He was in
search of something to divert his mind--and here it was found. “Any
thing will do for me,” he thought. “Suppose I ‘chaff’ her a little about
her slate?”
He called to the woman across the pear-trees. “Hullo!”
The woman raised herself, and advanced toward him slowly--looking at
him, as she came on, with the sunken eyes, the sorrow-stricken face, the
stony tranquillity of Hester Dethridge.
Geoffrey was staggered. He had not bargained for exchanging the dullest
producible vulgarities of human speech (called in the language of slang,
“Chaff”) with such a woman as this.
“What’s that slate for?” he asked, not knowing what else to say, to
begin with.
The woman lifted her hand to her lips--touched them--and shook her head.
“Dumb?”
The woman bowed her head.
“Who are you?”
The woman wrote on her slate, and handed it to him over the pear-trees.
He read:--“I am the cook.”
“Well, cook, were you born dumb?”
The woman shook her head.
“What struck you dumb?”
The woman wrote on her slate:--“A blow.”
“Who gave you the blow?”
She shook her head.
“Won’t you tell me?”
She shook her head again.
Her eyes had rested on his face while he was questioning her; staring
at him, cold, dull, and changeless as the eyes of a corpse. Firm as his
nerves were--dense as he was, on all ordinary occasions, to any thing in
the shape of an imaginative impression--the eyes of the dumb cook slowly
penetrated him with a stealthy inner chill. Something crept at the
marrow of his back, and shuddered under the roots of his hair. He felt
a sudden impulse to get away from her. It was simple enough; he had only
to say good-morning, and go on. He did say good-morning--but he never
moved. He put his hand into his pocket, and offered her some money, as a
way of making _her_ go. She stretched out her hand across the pear-trees
to take it--and stopped abruptly, with her arm suspended in the air. A
sinister change passed over the deathlike tranquillity of her face. Her
closed lips slowly dropped apart. Her dull eyes slowly dilated; looked
away, sideways, from _his_ eyes; stopped again; and stared, rigid and
glittering, over his shoulder--stared as if they saw a sight of horror
behind him. “What the devil are you looking at?” he asked--and turned
round quickly, with a start. There was neither person nor thing to be
seen behind him. He turned back again to the woman. The woman had left
him, under the influence of some sudden panic. She was hurrying away
from him--running, old as she was--flying the sight of him, as if the
sight of him was the pestilence.
“Mad!” he thought--and turned his back on the sight of her.
He found himself (hardly knowing how he had got there) under the
walnut-tree once more. In a few minutes his hardy nerves had recovered
themselves--he could laugh over the remembrance of the strange
impression that had been produced on him. “Frightened for the first time
in my life,” he thought--“and that by an old woman! It’s time I went
into training again, when things have come to this!”
He looked at his watch. It was close on the luncheon hour up at the
house; and he had not decided yet what to do about his letter to Anne.
He resolved to decide, then and there.
The woman--the dumb woman, with the stony face and the horrid
eyes--reappeared in his thoughts, and got in the way of his decision.
Pooh! some crazed old servant, who might once have been cook; who was
kept out of charity now. Nothing more important than that. No more of
her! no more of her!
He laid himself down on the grass, and gave his mind to the serious
question. How to address Anne as “Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth?” and how to
make sure of her receiving the letter?
The dumb old woman got in his way again.
He closed his eyes impatiently, and tried to shut her out in a darkness
of his own making.
The woman showed herself through the darkness. He saw her, as if he
had just asked her a question, writing on her slate. What she wrote he
failed to make out. It was all over in an instant. He started up, with
a feeling of astonishment at himself--and, at the same moment his brain
cleared with the suddenness of a flash of light. He saw his way, without
a conscious effort on his own part, through the difficulty that had
troubled him. Two envelopes, of course: an inner one, unsealed, and
addressed to “Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;” an outer one, sealed, and
addressed to “Mrs. Silvester:” and there was the problem solved! Surely
the simplest problem that had ever puzzled a stupid head.
Why had he not seen it before? Impossible to say.
How came he to have seen it now?
The dumb old woman reappeared in his thoughts--as if the answer to the
question lay in something connected with _her._
He became alarmed about himself, for the first time in his life. Had
this persistent impression, produced by nothing but a crazy old woman,
any thing to do with the broken health which the surgeon had talked
about? Was his head on the turn? Or had he smoked too much on an empty
stomach, and gone too long (after traveling all night) without his
customary drink of ale?
He left the garden to put that latter theory to the test forthwith. The
betting would have gone dead against him if the public had seen him at
that moment. He looked haggard and anxious--and with good reason too.
His nervous system had suddenly forced itself on his notice, without the
slightest previous introduction, and was saying (in an unknown tongue),
Here I am!
Returning to the purely ornamental part of the grounds, Geoffrey
encountered one of the footmen giving a message to one of the gardeners.
He at once asked for the butler--as the only safe authority to consult
in the present emergency.
Conducted to the butler’s pantry, Geoffrey requested that functionary to
produce a jug of his oldest ale, with appropriate solid nourishment in
the shape of “a hunk of bread and cheese.”
The butler stared. As a form of condescension among the upper classes
this was quite new to him.
“Luncheon will be ready directly, Sir.”
“What is there for lunch?”
The butler ran over an appetizing list of good dishes and rare wines.
“The devil take your kickshaws!” said Geoffrey. “Give me my old ale, and
my hunk of bread and cheese.”
“Where will you take them, Sir?”
“Here, to be sure! And the sooner the better.”
The butler issued the necessary orders with all needful alacrity. He
spread the simple refreshment demanded, before his distinguished guest,
in a state of blank bewilderment. Here was a nobleman’s son, and a
public celebrity into the bargain, filling himself with bread and cheese
and ale, in at once the most voracious and the most unpretending
manner, at _his_ table! The butler ventured on a little complimentary
familiarity. He smiled, and touched the betting-book in his
breast-pocket. “I’ve put six pound on you, Sir, for the Race.” “All
right, old boy! you shall win your money!” With those noble words the
honorable gentleman clapped him on the back, and held out his tumbler
for some more ale. The butler felt trebly an Englishman as he filled the
foaming glass. Ah! foreign nations may have their revolutions! foreign
aristocracies may tumble down! The British aristocracy lives in the
hearts of the people, and lives forever!
“Another!” said Geoffrey, presenting his empty glass. “Here’s luck!” He
tossed off his liquor at a draught, and nodded to the butler, and went
out.
Had the experiment succeeded? Had he proved his own theory about himself
to be right? Not a doubt of it! An empty stomach, and a determination of
tobacco to the head--these were the true causes of that strange state of
mind into which he had fallen in the kitchen-garden. The dumb woman
with the stony face vanished as if in a mist. He felt nothing now but
a comfortable buzzing in his head, a genial warmth all over him, and an
unlimited capacity for carrying any responsibility that could rest on
mortal shoulders. Geoffrey was himself again.
He went round toward the library, to write his letter to Anne--and so
have done with that, to begin with. The company had collected in the
library waiting for the luncheon-bell. All were idly talking; and some
would be certain, if he showed himself, to fasten on _him._ He turned
back again, without showing himself. The only way of writing in peace
and quietness would be to wait until they were all at luncheon, and then
return to the library. The same opportunity would serve also for finding
a messenger to take the letter, without exciting attention, and for
going away afterward, unseen, on a long walk by himself. An absence of
two or three hours would cast the necessary dust in Arnold’s eyes;
for it would be certainly interpreted by him as meaning absence at an
interview with Anne.
He strolled idly through the grounds, farther and farther away from the
house.
The talk in the library--aimless and empty enough, for the most
part--was talk to the purpose, in one corner of the room, in which Sir
Patrick and Blanche were sitting together.
“Uncle! I have been watching you for the last minute or two.”
“At my age, Blanche? that is paying me a very pretty compliment.”
“Do you know what I have seen?”
“You have seen an old gentleman in want of his lunch.”
“I have seen an old gentleman with something on his mind. What is it?”
“Suppressed gout, my dear.”
“That won’t do! I am not to be put off in that way. Uncle! I want to
know--”
“Stop there, Blanche! A young lady who says she ‘wants to know,’
expresses very dangerous sentiments. Eve ‘wanted to know’--and see what
it led to. Faust ‘wanted to know’--and got into bad company, as the
necessary result.”
“You are feeling anxious about something,” persisted Blanche. “And,
what is more, Sir Patrick, you behaved in a most unaccountable manner a
little while since.”
“When?”
“When you went and hid yourself with Mr. Delamayn in that snug corner
there. I saw you lead the way in, while I was at work on Lady Lundie’s
odious dinner-invitations.”
“Oh! you call that being at work, do you? I wonder whether there was
ever a woman yet who could give the whole of her mind to any earthly
thing that she had to do?”
“Never mind the women! What subject in common could you and Mr. Delamayn
possibly have to talk about? And why do I see a wrinkle between your
eyebrows, now you have done with him?--a wrinkle which certainly wasn’t
there before you had that private conference together?”
Before answering, Sir Patrick considered whether he should take Blanche
into his confidence or not. The attempt to identify Geoffrey’s unnamed
“lady,” which he was determined to make, would lead him to Craig Fernie,
and would no doubt end in obliging him to address himself to Anne.
Blanche’s intimate knowledge of her friend might unquestionably be made
useful to him under these circumstances; and Blanche’s discretion was
to be trusted in any matter in which Miss Silvester’s interests were
concerned. On the other hand, caution was imperatively necessary, in
the present imperfect state of his information--and caution, in Sir
Patrick’s mind, carried the day. He decided to wait and see what came
first of his investigation at the inn.
“Mr. Delamayn consulted me on a dry point of law, in which a friend of
his was interested,” said Sir Patrick. “You have wasted your curiosity,
my dear, on a subject totally unworthy of a lady’s notice.”
Blanche’s penetration was not to be deceived on such easy terms as
these. “Why not say at once that you won’t tell me?” she rejoined.
“_You_ shutting yourself up with Mr. Delamayn to talk law! _You_ looking
absent and anxious about it afterward! I am a very unhappy girl!” said
Blanche, with a little, bitter sigh. “There is something in me that
seems to repel the people I love. Not a word in confidence can I get
from Anne. And not a word in confidence can I get from you. And I do so
long to sympathize! It’s very hard. I think I shall go to Arnold.”
Sir Patrick took his niece’s hand.
“Stop a minute, Blanche. About Miss Silvester? Have you heard from her
to-day?”
“No. I am more unhappy about her than words can say.”
“Suppose somebody went to Craig Fernie and tried to find out the cause
of Miss Silvester’s silence? Would you believe that somebody sympathized
with you then?”
Blanche’s face flushed brightly with pleasure and surprise. She raised
Sir Patrick’s hand gratefully to her lips.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You don’t mean that _you_ would do that?”
“I am certainly the last person who ought to do it--seeing that you went
to the inn in flat rebellion against my orders, and that I only forgave
you, on your own promise of amendment, the other day. It is a miserably
weak proceeding on the part of ‘the head of the family’ to be turning
his back on his own principles, because his niece happens to be anxious
and unhappy. Still (if you could lend me your little carriage), I
_might_ take a surly drive toward Craig Fernie, all by myself, and I
_might_ stumble against Miss Silvester--in case you have any thing to
say.”