neck, and whispered in his ear one of the most interminable messages
that ever was sent from one human being to another. Sir Patrick
listened, with a growing interest in the inquiry on which he was
secretly bent. “The woman must have some noble qualities,” he thought,
“who can inspire such devotion as this.”
While Blanche was whispering to her uncle, a second private
conference--of the purely domestic sort--was taking place between Lady
Lundie and the butler, in the hall outside the library door.
“I am sorry to say, my lady, Hester Dethridge has broken out again.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was all right, my lady, when she went into the kitchen-garden, some
time since. She’s taken strange again, now she has come back. Wants the
rest of the day to herself, your ladyship. Says she’s overworked, with
all the company in the house--and, I must say, does look like a person
troubled and worn out in body and mind.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Roberts! The woman is obstinate and idle and
insolent. She is now in the house, as you know, under a month’s notice
to leave. If she doesn’t choose to do her duty for that month I shall
refuse to give her a character. Who is to cook the dinner to-day if I
give Hester Dethridge leave to go out?”
“Any way, my lady, I am afraid the kitchen-maid will have to do her
best to-day. Hester is very obstinate, when the fit takes her--as your
ladyship says.”
“If Hester Dethridge leaves the kitchen-maid to cook the dinner,
Roberts, Hester Dethridge leaves my service to-day. I want no more words
about it. If she persists in setting my orders at defiance, let her
bring her account-book into the library, while we are at lunch, and lay
it out my desk. I shall be back in the library after luncheon--and if I
see the account-book I shall know what it means. In that case, you will
receive my directions to settle with her and send her away. Ring the
luncheon-bell.”
The luncheon-bell rang. The guests all took the direction of the dining
-room; Sir Patrick following, from the far end of the library, with
Blanche on his arm. Arrived at the dining-room door, Blanche stopped,
and asked her uncle to excuse her if she left him to go in by himself.
“I will be back directly,” she said. “I have forgotten something up
stairs.”
Sir Patrick went in. The dining-room door closed; and Blanche returned
alone to the library. Now on one pretense, and now on another, she had,
for three days past, faithfully fulfilled the engagement she had made at
Craig Fernie to wait ten minutes after luncheon-time in the library, on
the chance of seeing Anne. On this, the fourth occasion, the faithful
girl sat down alone in the great room, and waited with her eyes fixed on
the lawn outside.
Five minutes passed, and nothing living appeared but the birds hopping
about the grass.
In less than a minute more Blanche’s quick ear caught the faint sound of
a woman’s dress brushing over the lawn. She ran to the nearest window,
looked out, and clapped her hands with a cry of delight. There was
the well-known figure, rapidly approaching her! Anne was true to their
friendship--Anne had kept her engagement at last!
Blanche hurried out, and drew her into the library in triumph. “This
makes amends, love for every thing! You answer my letter in the best of
all ways--you bring me your own dear self.”
She placed Anne in a chair, and, lifting her veil, saw her plainly in
the brilliant mid-day light.
The change in the whole woman was nothing less than dreadful to the
loving eyes that rested on her. She looked years older than her real
age. There was a dull calm in her face, a stagnant, stupefied submission
to any thing, pitiable to see. Three days and nights of solitude and
grief, three days and nights of unresting and unpartaken suspense, had
crushed that sensitive nature, had frozen that warm heart. The animating
spirit was gone--the mere shell of the woman lived and moved, a mockery
of her former self.
“Oh, Anne! Anne! What _can_ have happened to you? Are you frightened?
There’s not the least fear of any body disturbing us. They are all at
luncheon, and the servants are at dinner. We have the room entirely to
ourselves. My darling! you look so faint and strange! Let me get you
something.”
Anne drew Blanche’s head down and kissed her. It was done in a dull,
slow way--without a word, without a tear, without a sigh.
“You’re tired--I’m sure you’re tired. Have you walked here? You sha’n’t
go back on foot; I’ll take care of that!”
Anne roused herself at those words. She spoke for the first time. The
tone was lower than was natural to her; sadder than was natural to
her--but the charm of her voice, the native gentleness and beauty of it,
seemed to have survived the wreck of all besides.
“I don’t go back, Blanche. I have left the inn.”
“Left the inn? With your husband?”
She answered the first question--not the second.
“I can’t go back,” she said. “The inn is no place for me. A curse seems
to follow me, Blanche, wherever I go. I am the cause of quarreling
and wretchedness, without meaning it, God knows. The old man who is
head-waiter at the inn has been kind to me, my dear, in his way, and
he and the landlady had hard words together about it. A quarrel, a
shocking, violent quarrel. He has lost his place in consequence. The
woman, his mistress, lays all the blame of it to my door. She is a hard
woman; and she has been harder than ever since Bishopriggs went away. I
have missed a letter at the inn--I must have thrown it aside, I suppose,
and forgotten it. I only know that I remembered about it, and couldn’t
find it last night. I told the landlady, and she fastened a quarrel on
me almost before the words were out of my mouth. Asked me if I charged
her with stealing my letter. Said things to me--I can’t repeat them.
I am not very well, and not able to deal with people of that sort. I
thought it best to leave Craig Fernie this morning. I hope and pray I
shall never see Craig Fernie again.”
She told her little story with a total absence of emotion of any sort,
and laid her head back wearily on the chair when it was done.
Blanche’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of her.
“I won’t tease you with questions, Anne,” she said, gently. “Come up
stairs and rest in my room. You’re not fit to travel, love. I’ll take
care that nobody comes near us.”
The stable-clock at Windygates struck the quarter to two. Anne raised
herself in the chair with a start.
“What time was that?” she asked.
Blanche told her.
“I can’t stay,” she said. “I have come here to find something out if I
can. You won’t ask me questions? Don’t, Blanche, don’t! for the sake of
old times.”
Blanche turned aside, heart-sick. “I will do nothing, dear, to annoy
you,” she said, and took Anne’s hand, and hid the tears that were
beginning to fall over her cheeks.
“I want to know something, Blanche. Will you tell me?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Who are the gentlemen staying in the house?”
Blanche looked round at her again, in sudden astonishment and alarm.
A vague fear seized her that Anne’s mind had given way under the heavy
weight of trouble laid on it. Anne persisted in pressing her strange
request.
“Run over their names, Blanche. I have a reason for wishing to know who
the gentlemen are who are staying in the house.”
Blanche repeated the names of Lady Lundie’s guests, leaving to the last
the guests who had arrived last.
“Two more came back this morning,” she went on. “Arnold Brinkworth and
that hateful friend of his, Mr. Delamayn.”
Anne’s head sank back once more on the chair. She had found her way
without exciting suspicion of the truth, to the one discovery which she
had come to Windygates to make. He was in Scotland again, and he had
only arrived from London that morning. There was barely time for him to
have communicated with Craig Fernie before she left the inn--he, too,
who hated letter-writing! The circumstances were all in his favor: there
was no reason, there was really and truly no reason, so far, to believe
that he had deserted her. The heart of the unhappy woman bounded in
her bosom, under the first ray of hope that had warmed it for four days
past. Under that sudden revulsion of feeling, her weakened frame shook
from head to foot. Her face flushed deep for a moment--then turned
deadly pale again. Blanche, anxiously watching her, saw the serious
necessity for giving some restorative to her instantly.
“I am going to get you some wine--you will faint, Anne, if you don’t
take something. I shall be back in a moment; and I can manage it without
any body being the wiser.”
She pushed Anne’s chair close to the nearest open window--a window at
the upper end of the library--and ran out.
Blanche had barely left the room, by the door that led into the hall,
when Geoffrey entered it by one of the lower windows opening from the
lawn.
With his mind absorbed in the letter that he was about to write, he
slowly advanced up the room toward the nearest table. Anne, hearing
the sound of footsteps, started, and looked round. Her failing strength
rallied in an instant, under the sudden relief of seeing him again. She
rose and advanced eagerly, with a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. He
looked up. The two stood face to face together--alone.
“Geoffrey!”
He looked at her without answering--without advancing a step, on his
side. There was an evil light in his eyes; his silence was the brute
silence that threatens dumbly. He had made up his mind never to see her
again, and she had entrapped him into an interview. He had made up his
mind to write, and there she stood forcing him to speak. The sum of
her offenses against him was now complete. If there had ever been the
faintest hope of her raising even a passing pity in his heart, that hope
would have been annihilated now.
She failed to understand the full meaning of his silence. She made her
excuses, poor soul, for venturing back to Windygates--her excuses to the
man whose purpose at that moment was to throw her helpless on the world.
“Pray forgive me for coming here,” she said. “I have done nothing to
compromise you, Geoffrey. Nobody but Blanche knows I am at Windygates.
And I have contrived to make my inquiries about you without allowing
her to suspect our secret.” She stopped, and began to tremble. She saw
something more in his face than she had read in it at first. “I got your
letter,” she went on, rallying her sinking courage. “I don’t complain
of its being so short: you don’t like letter-writing, I know. But you
promised I should hear from you again. And I have never heard. And oh,
Geoffrey, it was so lonely at the inn!”
She stopped again, and supported herself by resting her hand on the
table. The faintness was stealing back on her. She tried to go on again.
It was useless--she could only look at him now.
“What do you want?” he asked, in the tone of a man who was putting an
unimportant question to a total stranger.
A last gleam of her old energy flickered up in her face, like a dying
flame.
“I am broken by what I have gone through,” she said. “Don’t insult me by
making me remind you of your promise.”
“What promise?”’
“For shame, Geoffrey! for shame! Your promise to marry me.”
“You claim my promise after what you have done at the inn?”
She steadied herself against the table with one hand, and put the other
hand to her head. Her brain was giddy. The effort to think was too much
for her. She said to herself, vacantly, “The inn? What did I do at the
inn?”
“I have had a lawyer’s advice, mind! I know what I am talking about.”
She appeared not to have heard him. She repeated the words, “What did
I do at the inn?” and gave it up in despair. Holding by the table, she
came close to him and laid her hand on his arm.
“Do you refuse to marry me?” she asked.
He saw the vile opportunity, and said the vile words.
“You’re married already to Arnold Brinkworth.”
Without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself, she
dropped senseless at his feet; as her mother had dropped at his father’s
feet in the by-gone time.
He disentangled himself from the folds of her dress. “Done!” he said,
looking down at her as she lay on the floor.
As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner
part of the house. One of the library doors had not been completely
closed. Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.
He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the
open window at the lower end of the room.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.
GONE.
BLANCHE came in, with a glass of wine in her hand, and saw the swooning
woman on the floor.
She was alarmed, but not surprised, as she knelt by Anne, and raised her
head. Her own previous observation of her friend necessarily prevented
her from being at any loss to account for the fainting fit. The
inevitable delay in getting the wine was--naturally to her mind--alone
to blame for the result which now met her view.
If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause,
she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened,
out-of-doors, to frighten Anne--might have seen Geoffrey before he had
time to turn the corner of the house--and, making that one discovery,
might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming
life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own
destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness
at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which
persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of
creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited,
because other planets are not surrounded by an atmosphere which _we_ can
breathe!
After trying such simple remedies as were within her reach, and trying
them without success, Blanche became seriously alarmed. Anne lay, to all
outward appearance, dead in her arms. She was on the point of calling
for help--come what might of the discovery which would ensue--when the
door from the hall opened once more, and Hester Dethridge entered the
room.
The cook had accepted the alternative which her mistress’s message had
placed before her, if she insisted on having her own time at her own
sole disposal for the rest of that day. Exactly as Lady Lundie had
desired, she intimated her resolution to carry her point by placing her
account-book on the desk in the library. It was only when this had been
done that Blanche received any answer to her entreaties for help. Slowly
and deliberately Hester Dethridge walked up to the spot where the young
girl knelt with Anne’s head on her bosom, and looked at the two without
a trace of human emotion in her stern and stony face.
“Don’t you see what’s happened?” cried Blanche. “Are you alive or dead?
Oh, Hester, I can’t bring her to! Look at her! look at her!”
Hester Dethridge looked at her, and shook her head. Looked again,
thought for a while and wrote on her slate. Held out the slate over
Anne’s body, and showed what she had written:
“Who has done it?”
“You stupid creature!” said Blanche. “Nobody has done it.”
The eyes of Hester Dethridge steadily read the worn white face, telling
its own tale of sorrow mutely on Blanche’s breast. The mind of Hester
Dethridge steadily looked back at her own knowledge of her own miserable
married life. She again returned to writing on her slate--again showed
the written words to Blanche.
“Brought to it by a man. Let her be--and God will take her.”
“You horrid unfeeling woman! how dare you write such an abominable
thing!” With this natural outburst of indignation, Blanche looked
back at Anne; and, daunted by the death-like persistency of the swoon,
appealed again to the mercy of the immovable woman who was looking down
at her. “Oh, Hester! for Heaven’s sake help me!”
The cook dropped her slate at her side and bent her head gravely in
sign that she submitted. She motioned to Blanche to loosen Anne’s dress,
and then--kneeling on one knee--took Anne to support her while it was
being done.
The instant Hester Dethridge touched her, the swooning woman gave signs
of life.
A faint shudder ran through her from head to foot--her eyelids
trembled--half opened for a moment--and closed again. As they closed, a
low sigh fluttered feebly from her lips.
Hester Dethridge put her back in Blanche’s arms--considered a little
with herself--returned to writing on her slate--and held out the written
words once more:
“Shivered when I touched her. That means I have been walking over her
grave.”
Blanche turned from the sight of the slate, and from the sight of the
woman, in horror. “You frighten me!” she said. “You will frighten _her_
if she sees you. I don’t mean to offend you; but--leave us, please leave
us.”
Hester Dethridge accepted her dismissal, as she accepted every thing
else. She bowed her head in sign that she understood--looked for the
last time at Anne--dropped a stiff courtesy to her young mistress--and
left the room.
An hour later the butler had paid her, and she had left the house.
Blanche breathed more freely when she found herself alone. She could
feel the relief now of seeing Anne revive.
“Can you hear me, darling?” she whispered. “Can you let me leave you for
a moment?”
Anne’s eyes slowly opened and looked round her--in that torment and
terror of reviving life which marks the awful protest of humanity
against its recall to existence when mortal mercy has dared to wake it
in the arms of Death.
Blanche rested Anne’s head against the nearest chair, and ran to the
table upon which she had placed the wine on entering the room.
After swallowing the first few drops Anne begun to feel the effect of
the stimulant. Blanche persisted in making her empty the glass, and
refrained from asking or answering questions until her recovery under
the influence of the wine was complete.
“You have overexerted yourself this morning,” she said, as soon as
it seemed safe to speak. “Nobody has seen you, darling--nothing has
happened. Do you feel like yourself again?”
Anne made an attempt to rise and leave the library; Blanche placed her
gently in the chair, and went on:
“There is not the least need to stir. We have another quarter of an
hour to ourselves before any body is at all likely to disturb us. I have
something to say, Anne--a little proposal to make. Will you listen to
me?”
Anne took Blanche’s hand, and p ressed it gratefully to her lips. She
made no other reply. Blanche proceeded:
“I won’t ask any questions, my dear--I won’t attempt to keep you here
against your will--I won’t even remind you of my letter yesterday. But
I can’t let you go, Anne, without having my mind made easy about you in
some way. You will relieve all my anxiety, if you will do one thing--one
easy thing for my sake.”
“What is it, Blanche?”
She put that question with her mind far away from the subject before
her. Blanche was too eager in pursuit of her object to notice the absent
tone, the purely mechanical manner, in which Anne had spoken to her.
“I want you to consult my uncle,” she answered. “Sir Patrick is
interested in you; Sir Patrick proposed to me this very day to go and
see you at the inn. He is the wisest, the kindest, the dearest old man
living--and you can trust him as you could trust nobody else. Will you
take my uncle into your confidence, and be guided by his advice?”
With her mind still far away from the subject, Anne looked out absently
at the lawn, and made no answer.
“Come!” said Blanche. “One word isn’t much to say. Is it Yes or No?”
Still looking out on the lawn--still thinking of something else--Anne
yielded, and said “Yes.”
Blanche was enchanted. “How well I must have managed it!” she thought.
“This is what my uncle means, when my uncle talks of ‘putting it
strongly.’”
She bent down over Anne, and gayly patted her on the shoulder.
“That’s the wisest ‘Yes,’ darling, you ever said in your life. Wait
here--and I’ll go in to luncheon, or they will be sending to know what
has become of me. Sir Patrick has kept my place for me, next to himself.
I shall contrive to tell him what I want; and _he_ will contrive (oh,
the blessing of having to do with a clever man; these are so few of
them!)--he will contrive to leave the table before the rest, without
exciting any body’s suspicions. Go away with him at once to the
summer-house (we have been at the summer-house all the morning; nobody
will go back to it now), and I will follow you as soon as I have
satisfied Lady Lundie by eating some lunch. Nobody will be any the
wiser but our three selves. In five minutes or less you may expect Sir
Patrick. Let me go! We haven’t a moment to lose!”
Anne held her back. Anne’s attention was concentrated on her now.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Are you going on happily with Arnold, Blanche?”
“Arnold is nicer than ever, my dear.”
“Is the day fixed for your marriage?”
“The day will be ages hence. Not till we are back in town, at the end of
the autumn. Let me go, Anne!”
“Give me a kiss, Blanche.”
Blanche kissed her, and tried to release her hand. Anne held it as if
she was drowning, as if her life depended on not letting it go.
“Will you always love me, Blanche, as you love me now?”
“How can you ask me!”
“_I_ said Yes just now. _You_ say Yes too.”
Blanche said it. Anne’s eyes fastened on her face, with one long,
yearning look, and then Anne’s hand suddenly dropped hers.
She ran out of the room, more agitated, more uneasy, than she liked
to confess to herself. Never had she felt so certain of the urgent
necessity of appealing to Sir Patrick’s advice as she felt at that
moment.
The guests were still safe at the luncheon-table when Blanche entered
the dining-room.
Lady Lundie expressed the necessary surprise, in the properly graduated
tone of reproof, at her step-daughter’s want of punctuality. Blanche
made her apologies with the most exemplary humility. She glided into her
chair by her uncle’s side, and took the first thing that was offered to
her. Sir Patrick looked at his niece, and found himself in the company
of a model young English Miss--and marveled inwardly what it might mean.
The talk, interrupted for the moment (topics, Politics and Sport--and
then, when a change was wanted, Sport and Politics), was resumed
again all round the table. Under cover of the conversation, and in
the intervals of receiving the attentions of the gentlemen, Blanche
whispered to Sir Patrick, “Don’t start, uncle. Anne is in the library.”
(Polite Mr. Smith offered some ham. Gratefully declined.) “Pray, pray,
pray go to her; she is waiting to see you--she is in dreadful trouble.”
(Gallant Mr. Jones proposed fruit tart and cream. Accepted with thanks.)
“Take her to the summer-house: I’ll follow you when I get the chance.
And manage it at once, uncle, if you love me, or you will be too late.”
Before Sir Patrick could whisper back a word in reply, Lady Lundie,
cutting a cake of the richest Scottish composition, at the other end of
the table, publicly proclaimed it to be her “own cake,” and, as such,
offered her brother-in-law a slice. The slice exhibited an eruption of
plums and sweetmeats, overlaid by a perspiration of butter. It has been
said that Sir Patrick had reached the age of seventy--it is, therefore,
needless to add that he politely declined to commit an unprovoked
outrage on his own stomach.
“MY cake!” persisted Lady Lundie, elevating the horrible composition on
a fork. “Won’t that tempt you?”
Sir Patrick saw his way to slipping out of the room under cover of a
compliment to his sister-in-law. He summoned his courtly smile, and laid
his hand on his heart.
“A fallible mortal,” he said, “is met by a temptation which he can not
possibly resist. If he is a wise mortal, also, what does he do?”
“He eats some of My cake,” said the prosaic Lady Lundie.
“No!” said Sir Patrick, with a look of unutterable devotion directed at
his sister-in-law.
“He flies temptation, dear lady--as I do now.” He bowed, and escaped,
unsuspected, from the room.
Lady Lundie cast down her eyes, with an expression of virtuous
indulgence for human frailty, and divided Sir Patrick’s compliment
modestly between herself and her cake.
Well aware that his own departure from the table would be followed in a
few minutes by the rising of the lady of the house, Sir Patrick hurried
to the library as fast as his lame foot would let him. Now that he was
alone, his manner became anxious, and his face looked grave. He entered
the room.
Not a sign of Anne Silvester was to be seen any where. The library was a
perfect solitude.
“Gone!” said Sir Patrick. “This looks bad.”
After a moment’s reflection he went back into the hall to get his hat.
It was possible that she might have been afraid of discovery if
she staid in the library, and that she might have gone on to the
summer-house by herself.