interests by her own headlong act. Sir Patrick’s warning words came
back reproachfully to her now when it was too late. “We commit a serious
mistake if we put him on his guard at starting.”
There was but one course to take now. “Yes,” she said. “I have done.”
“My turn now,” rejoined Geoffrey. “You want to know where Miss Silvester
is. Why do you ask Me?”
Blanche did all that could be done toward repairing the error that she
had committed. She kept Geoffrey as far away as Geoffrey had kept _her_
from the truth.
“I happen to know,” she replied “that Miss Silvester left the place
at which she had been staying about the time when you went out walking
yesterday. And I thought you might have seen her.”
“Oh? That’s the reason--is it?” said Geoffrey, with a smile.
The smile stung Blanche’s sensitive temper to the quick. She made a
final effort to control herself, before her indignation got the better
of her.
“I have no more to say, Mr. Delamayn.” With that reply she turned her
back on him, and closed the door of the morning-room between them.
Geoffrey descended the house steps and lit his pipe. He was not at the
slightest loss, on this occasion, to account for what had happened. He
assumed at once that Arnold had taken a mean revenge on him after his
conduct of the day before, and had told the whole secret of his errand
at Craig Fernie to Blanche. The thing would get next, no doubt, to Sir
Patrick’s ears; and Sir Patrick would thereupon be probably the first
person who revealed to Arnold the position in which he had placed
himself with Anne. All right! Sir Patrick would be an excellent witness
to appeal to, when the scandal broke out, and when the time came for
repudiating Anne’s claim on him as the barefaced imposture of a woman
who was married already to another man. He puffed away unconcernedly at
his pipe, and started, at his swinging, steady pace, for his brother’s
house.
Blanche remained alone in the morning-room. The prospect of getting at
the truth, by means of what Geoffrey might say on the next occasion when
he consulted Sir Patrick, was a prospect that she herself had closed
from that moment. She sat down in despair by the window. It commanded a
view of the little side-terrace which had been Anne’s favorite walk at
Windygates. With weary eyes and aching heart the poor child looked at
the familiar place; and asked herself, with the bitter repentance that
comes too late, if she had destroyed the last chance of finding Anne!
She sat passively at the window, while the hours of the morning wore on,
until the postman came. Before the servant could take the letter bag she
was in the hall to receive it. Was it possible to hope that the bag had
brought tidings of Anne? She sorted the letters; and lighted suddenly
on a letter to herself. It bore the Kirkandrew postmark, and It was
addressed to her in Anne’s handwriting.
She tore the letter open, and read these lines:
“I have left you forever, Blanche. God bless and reward you! God make
you a happy woman in all your life to come! Cruel as you will think me,
love, I have never been so truly your sister as I am now. I can only
tell you this--I can never tell you more. Forgive me, and forget me, our
lives are parted lives from this day.”
Going down to breakfast about his usual hour, Sir Patrick missed
Blanche, whom he was accustomed to see waiting for him at the table at
that time. The room was empty; the other members of the household having
all finished their morning meal. Sir Patrick disliked breakfasting
alone. He sent Duncan with a message, to be given to Blanche’s maid.
The maid appeared in due time Miss Lundie was unable to leave her room.
She sent a letter to her uncle, with her love--and begged he would read
it.
Sir Patrick opened the letter and saw what Anne had written to Blanche.
He waited a little, reflecting, with evident pain and anxiety, on what
he had read--then opened his own letters, and hurriedly looked at the
signatures. There was nothing for him from his friend, the sheriff,
at Edinburgh, and no communication from the railway, in the shape of a
telegram. He had decided, overnight, on waiting till the end of the week
before he interfered in the matter of Blanche’s marriage. The events of
the morning determined him on not waiting another day. Duncan returned
to the breakfast-room to pour out his master’s coffee. Sir Patrick sent
him away again with a second message,
“Do you know where Lady Lundie is, Duncan?”
“Yes, Sir Patrick.”
“My compliments to her ladyship. If she is not otherwise engaged, I
shall be glad to speak to her privately in an hour’s time.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.
DROPPED.
SIR PATRICK made a bad breakfast. Blanche’s absence fretted him, and
Anne Silvester’s letter puzzled him.
He read it, short as it was, a second time, and a third. If it meant any
thing, it meant that the motive at the bottom of Anne’s flight was to
accomplish the sacrifice of herself to the happiness of Blanche. She had
parted for life from his niece for his niece’s sake! What did this mean?
And how was it to be reconciled with Anne’s position--as described to
him by Mrs. Inchbare during his visit to Craig Fernie?
All Sir Patrick’s ingenuity, and all Sir Patrick’s experience, failed to
find so much as the shadow of an answer to that question.
While he was still pondering over the letter, Arnold and the surgeon
entered the breakfast-room together.
“Have you heard about Blanche?” asked Arnold, excitedly. “She is in no
danger, Sir Patrick--the worst of it is over now.”
The surgeon interposed before Sir Patrick could appeal to him.
“Mr. Brinkworth’s interest in the young lady a little exaggerates the
state of the case,” he said. “I have seen her, at Lady Lundie’s request;
and I can assure you that there is not the slightest reason for any
present alarm. Miss Lundie has had a nervous attack, which has yielded
to the simplest domestic remedies. The only anxiety you need feel is
connected with the management of her in the future. She is suffering
from some mental distress, which it is not for me, but for her friends,
to alleviate and remove. If you can turn her thoughts from the painful
subject--whatever it may be--on which they are dwelling now, you will do
all that needs to be done.” He took up a newspaper from the table, and
strolled out into the garden, leaving Sir Patrick and Arnold together.
“You heard that?” said Sir Patrick.
“Is he right, do you think?” asked Arnold.
“Right? Do you suppose a man gets _his_ reputation by making mistakes?
You’re one of the new generation, Master Arnold. You can all of you
stare at a famous man; but you haven’t an atom of respect for his fame.
If Shakspeare came to life again, and talked of playwriting, the first
pretentious nobody who sat opposite at dinner would differ with him as
composedly as he might differ with you and me. Veneration is dead among
us; the present age has buried it, without a stone to mark the place. So
much for that! Let’s get back to Blanche. I suppose you can guess what
the painful subject is that’s dwelling on her mind? Miss Silvester has
baffled me, and baffled the Edinburgh police. Blanche discovered that we
had failed last night and Blanche received that letter this morning.”
He pushed Anne’s letter across the breakfast-table.
Arnold read it, and handed it back without a word. Viewed by the new
light in which he saw Geoffrey’s character after the quarrel on the
heath, the letter conveyed but one conclusion to his mind. Geoffrey had
deserted her.
“Well?” said Sir Patrick. “Do you understand what it means?”
“I understand Blanche’s wretchedness when she read it.”
He said no more than that. It was plain that no information which he
could afford--even if he had considered himself at liberty to give
it--would be of the slightest use in assisting Sir Patrick to trace
Miss Silvester, under present circumstances, There was--unhappily--no
temptation to induce him to break the honorable silence which he
had maintained thus far. And--more unfortunately still--assuming the
temptation to present itself, Arnold’s capacity to resist it had never
been so strong a capacity as it was now.
To the two powerful motives which had hitherto tied his tongue--respect
for Anne’s reputation, and reluctance to reveal to Blanche the deception
which he had been compelled to practice on her at the inn--to these
two motives there was now added a third. The meanness of betraying the
confidence which Geoffrey had reposed in him would be doubled meanness
if he proved false to his trust after Geoffrey had personally insulted
him. The paltry revenge which that false friend had unhesitatingly
suspected him of taking was a revenge of which Arnold’s nature was
simply incapable. Never had his lips been more effectually sealed
than at this moment--when his whole future depended on Sir Patrick’s
discovering the part that he had played in past events at Craig Fernie.
“Yes! yes!” resumed Sir Patrick, impatiently. “Blanche’s distress is
intelligible enough. But here is my niece apparently answerable for this
unhappy woman’s disappearance. Can you explain what my niece has got to
do with it?”
“I! Blanche herself is completely mystified. How should _I_ know?”
Answering in those terms, he spoke with perfect sincerity. Anne’s vague
distrust of the position in which they had innocently placed themselves
at the inn had produced no corresponding effect on Arnold at the time.
He had not regarded it; he had not even understood it. As a necessary
result, not the faintest suspicion of the motive under which Anne was
acting existed in his mind now.
Sir Patrick put the letter into his pocket-book, and abandoned all
further attempt at interpreting the meaning of it in despair.
“Enough, and more than enough, of groping in the dark,” he said. “One
point is clear to me after what has happened up stairs this morning. We
must accept the position in which Miss Silvester has placed us. I shall
give up all further effort to trace her from this moment.”
“Surely that will be a dreadful disappointment to Blanche, Sir Patrick?”
“I don’t deny it. We must face that result.”
“If you are sure there is nothing else to be done, I suppose we must.”
“I am not sure of anything of the sort, Master Arnold! There are two
chances still left of throwing light on this matter, which are both of
them independent of any thing that Miss Silvester can do to keep it in
the dark.”
“Then why not try them, Sir? It seems hard to drop Miss Silvester when
she is in trouble.”
“We can’t help her against her own will,” rejoined Sir Patrick. “And
we can’t run the risk, after that nervous attack this morning, of
subjecting Blanche to any further suspense. I have thought of my niece’s
interests throughout this business; and if I now change my mind, and
decline to agitate her by more experiments, ending (quite possibly) in
more failures, it is because I am thinking of her interests still. I
have no other motive. However numerous my weaknesses may be, ambition
to distinguish myself as a detective policeman is not one of them. The
case, from the police point of view, is by no means a lost case. I
drop it, nevertheless, for Blanche’s sake. Instead of encouraging her
thoughts to dwell on this melancholy business, we must apply the remedy
suggested by our medical friend.”
“How is that to be done?” asked Arnold.
The sly twist of humor began to show itself in Sir Patrick’s face.
“Has she nothing to think of in the future, which is a pleasanter
subject of reflection than the loss of her friend?” he asked. “You are
interested, my young gentleman, in the remedy that is to cure Blanche.
You are one of the drugs in the moral prescription. Can you guess what
it is?”
Arnold started to his feet, and brightened into a new being.
“Perhaps you object to be hurried?” said Sir Patrick.
“Object! If Blanche will only consent, I’ll take her to church as soon
as she comes down stairs!”
“Thank you!” said Sir Patrick, dryly. “Mr. Arnold Brinkworth, may you
always be as ready to take Time by the forelock as you are now! Sit down
again; and don’t talk nonsense. It is just possible--if Blanche consents
(as you say), and if we can hurry the lawyers--that you may be married
in three weeks’ or a month’s time.”
“What have the lawyers got to do with it?”
“My good fellow, this is not a marriage in a novel! This is the most
unromantic affair of the sort that ever happened. Here are a young
gentleman and a young lady, both rich people; both well matched in birth
and character; one of age, and the other marrying with the full consent
and approval of her guardian. What is the consequence of this purely
prosaic state of things? Lawyers and settlements, of course!”
“Come into the library, Sir Patrick; and I’ll soon settle the
settlements! A bit of paper, and a dip of ink. ‘I hereby give every
blessed farthing I have got in the world to my dear Blanche.’ Sign that;
stick a wafer on at the side; clap your finger on the wafer; ‘I deliver
this as my act and deed;’ and there it is--done!”
“Is it, really? You are a born legislator. You create and codify your
own system all in a breath. Moses-Justinian-Mahomet, give me your arm!
There is one atom of sense in what you have just said. ‘Come into the
library’--is a suggestion worth attending to. Do you happen, among your
other superfluities, to have such a thing as a lawyer about you?”
“I have got two. One in London, and one in Edinburgh.”
“We will take the nearest of the two, because we are in a hurry. Who is
the Edinburgh lawyer? Pringle of Pitt Street? Couldn’t be a better man.
Come and write to him. You have given me your abstract of a marriage
settlement with the brevity of an ancient Roman. I scorn to be outdone
by an amateur lawyer. Here is _my_ abstract: You are just and generous
to Blanche; Blanche is just and generous to you; and you both combine
to be just and generous together to your children. There is a model
settlement! and there are your instructions to Pringle of Pitt Street!
Can you do it by yourself? No; of course you can’t. Now don’t be
slovenly-minded! See the points in their order as they come. You are
going to be married; you state to whom, you add that I am the lady’s
guardian; you give the name and address of my lawyer in Edinburgh; you
write your instructions plainly in the fewest words, and leave details
to your legal adviser; you refer the lawyers to each other; you request
that the draft settlements be prepared as speedily as possible, and you
give your address at this house. There are the heads. Can’t you do it
now? Oh, the rising generation! Oh, the progress we are making in these
enlightened modern times! There! there! you can marry Blanche, and make
her happy, and increase the population--and all without knowing how
to write the English language. One can only say with the learned
Bevorskius, looking out of his window at the illimitable loves of the
sparrows, ‘How merciful is Heaven to its creatures!’ Take up the pen.
I’ll dictate! I’ll dictate!”
Sir Patrick read the letter over, approved of it, and saw it safe in the
box for the post. This done, he peremptorily forbade Arnold to speak to
his niece on the subject of the marriage without his express permission.
“There’s somebody else’s consent to be got,” he said, “besides Blanche’s
consent and mine.”
“Lady Lundie?”
“Lady Lundie. Strictly speaking, I am the only authority. But my
sister-in-law is Blanche’s step-mother, and she is appointed guardian in
the event of my death. She has a right to be consulted--in courtesy, if
not in law. Would you like to do it?”
Arnold’s face fell. He looked at Sir Patrick in silent dismay.
“What! you can’t even speak to such a perfectly pliable person as Lady
Lundie? You may have been a very useful fellow at sea. A more helpless
young man I never met with on shore. Get out with you into the garden
among the other sparrows! Somebody must confront her ladyship. And if
you won’t--I must.”
He pushed Arnold out of the library, and applied meditatively to the
knob of his cane. His gayety disappeared, now that he was alone. His
experience of Lady Lundie’s character told him that, in attempting to
win her approval to any scheme for hurrying Blanche’s marriage, he was
undertaking no easy task. “I suppose,” mused Sir Patrick, thinking of
his late brother--“I suppose poor Tom had some way of managing her. How
did he do it, I wonder? If she had been the wife of a bricklayer, she
is the sort of woman who would have been kept in perfect order by a
vigorous and regular application of her husband’s fist. But Tom wasn’t
a bricklayer. I wonder how Tom did it?” After a little hard thinking on
this point Sir Patrick gave up the problem as beyond human solution. “It
must be done,” he concluded. “And my own mother-wit must help me to do
it.”
In that resigned frame of mind he knocked at the door of Lady Lundie’s
boudoir.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.
OUTWITTED.
SIR PATRICK found his sister-in-law immersed in domestic business. Her
ladyship’s correspondence and visiting list, her ladyship’s household
bills and ledgers; her ladyship’s Diary and Memorandum-book (bound in
scarlet morocco); her ladyship’s desk, envelope-case, match-box, and
taper candlestick (all in ebony and silver); her ladyship herself,
presiding over her responsibilities, and wielding her materials, equal
to any calls of emergency, beautifully dressed in correct morning
costume, blessed with perfect health both of the secretions and the
principles; absolutely void of vice, and formidably full of virtue,
presented, to every properly-constituted mind, the most imposing
spectacle known to humanity--the British Matron on her throne, asking
the world in general, When will you produce the like of Me?
“I am afraid I disturb you,” said Sir Patrick. “I am a perfectly idle
person. Shall I look in a little later?”
Lady Lundie put her hand to her head, and smiled faintly.
“A little pressure _here,_ Sir Patrick. Pray sit down. Duty finds me
earnest; Duty finds me cheerful; Duty finds me accessible. From a poor,
weak woman, Duty must expect no more. Now what is it?” (Her ladyship
consulted her scarlet memorandum-book.) “I have got it here, under
its proper head, distinguished by initial letters. P.--the poor.
No. H.M.--heathen missions. No. V.T.A.--Visitors to arrive. No. P. I.
P.--Here it is: private interview with Patrick. Will you forgive me the
little harmless familiarity of omitting your title? Thank you! You are
always so good. I am quite at your service when you like to begin. If
it’s any thing painful, pray don’t hesitate. I am quite prepared.”
With that intimation her ladyship threw herself back in her chair, with
her elbows on the arms, and her fingers joined at the tips, as if
she was receiving a deputation. “Yes?” she said, interrogatively. Sir
Patrick paid a private tribute of pity to his late brother’s memory, and
entered on his business.
“We won’t call it a painful matter,” he began. “Let us say it’s a matter
of domestic anxiety. Blanche--”
Lady Lundie emitted a faint scream, and put her hand over her eyes.
“_Must_ you?” cried her ladyship, in a tone of touching remonstrance.
“Oh, Sir Patrick, _must_ you?”
“Yes. I must.”
Lady Lundie’s magnificent eyes looked up at that hidden court of human
appeal which is lodged in the ceiling. The hidden court looked down at
Lady Lundie, and saw--Duty advertising itself in the largest capital
letters.
“Go on, Sir Patrick. The motto of woman is Self-sacrifice. You sha’n’t
see how you distress me. Go on.”
Sir Patrick went on impenetrably--without betraying the slightest
expression of sympathy or surprise.
“I was about to refer to the nervous attack from which Blanche has
suffered this morning,” he said. “May I ask whether you have been
informed of the cause to which the attack is attributable?”
“There!” exclaimed Lady Lundie with a sudden bound in her chair, and a
sudden development of vocal power to correspond. “The one thing I shrank
from speaking of! the cruel, cruel, cruel behavior I was prepared to
pass over! And Sir Patrick hints on it! Innocently--don’t let me do an
injustice--innocently hints on it!”
“Hints on what, my dear Madam?”
“Blanche’s conduct to me this morning. Blanche’s heartless secrecy.
Blanche’s undutiful silence. I repeat the words: Heartless secrecy.
Undutiful silence.”
“Allow me for one moment, Lady Lundie--”
“Allow _me,_ Sir Patrick! Heaven knows how unwilling I am to speak of
it. Heaven knows that not a word of reference to it escaped _my_ lips.
But you leave me no choice now. As mistress of the household, as a
Christian woman, as the widow of your dear brother, as a mother to this
misguided girl, I must state the facts. I know you mean well; I know you
wish to spare me. Quite useless! I must state the facts.”
Sir Patrick bowed, and submitted. (If he had only been a bricklayer! and
if Lady Lundie had not been, what her ladyship unquestionably was, the
strongest person of the two!)
“Permit me to draw a veil, for your sake,” said Lady Lundie, “over the
horrors--I can not, with the best wish to spare you, conscientiously
call them by any other name--the horrors that took place up stairs. The
moment I heard that Blanche was ill I was at my post. Duty will always
find me ready, Sir Patrick, to my dying day. Shocking as the whole thing
was, I presided calmly over the screams and sobs of my step-daughter.
I closed my ears to the profane violence of her language. I set
the necessary example, as an English gentlewoman at the head of her
household. It was only when I distinctly heard the name of a person,
never to be mentioned again in my family circle, issue (if I may use
the expression) from Blanche’s lips that I began to be really alarmed. I
said to my maid: ‘Hopkins, this is not Hysteria. This is a possession of
the devil. Fetch the chloroform.’”
Chloroform, applied in the capacity of an exorcism, was entirely new to
Sir Patrick. He preserved his gravity with considerable difficulty. Lady
Lundie went on:
“Hopkins is an excellent person--but Hopkins has a tongue. She met our
distinguished medical guest in the corridor, and told him. He was so
good as to come to the door. I was shocked to trouble him to act in his
professional capacity while he was a visitor, an honored visitor, in my
house. Besides, I considered it more a case for a clergyman than for a
medical man. However, there was no help for it after Hopkins’s tongue.
I requested our eminent friend to favor us with--I think the exact
scientific term is--a Prognosis. He took the purely material view
which was only to be expected from a person in his profession. He
prognosed--_am_ I right? Did he prognose? or did he diagnose? A habit of
speaking correctly is _so_ important, Sir Patrick! and I should be _so_
grieved to mislead you!”
“Never mind, Lady Lundie! I have heard the medical report. Don’t trouble
yourself to repeat it.”
“Don’t trouble myself to repeat it?” echoed Lady Lundie--with her
dignity up in arms at the bare prospect of finding her remarks abridged.
“Ah, Sir Patrick! that little constitutional impatience of yours!--Oh,
dear me! how often you must have given way to it, and how often you must
have regretted it, in your time!”
“My dear lady! if you wish to repeat the report, why not say so, in
plain words? Don’t let me hurry you. Let us have the prognosis, by all
means.”
Lady Lundie shook her head compassionately, and smiled with angelic
sadness. “Our little besetting sins!” she said. “What slaves we are to
our little besetting sins! Take a turn in the room--do!”
Any ordinary man would have lost his temper. But the law (as Sir Patrick
had told his niece) has a special temper of its own. Without
exhibiting the smallest irritation, Sir Patrick dextrously applied his
sister-in-law’s blister to his sister-in-law herself.
“What an eye you have!” he said. “I was impatient. I _am_ impatient. I
am dying to know what Blanche said to you when she got better?”
The British Matron froze up into a matron of stone on the spot.
“Nothing!” answered her ladyship, with a vicious snap of her teeth, as
if she had tried to bite the word before it escaped her.
“Nothing!” exclaimed Sir Patrick.