the two young people taking their morning walk at a moment when
they happened to cross the open grassy space which separated the two
shrubberies at Windygates. Arnold’s arm was round Blanche’s waist, and
they were talking confidentially with their heads close together.
“She is coming round already!” thought the old gentleman, as the two
disappeared again in the second shrubbery from view. “Thank Heaven!
things are running smoothly at last!”
Among the ornaments of Sir Patrick’s bed room there was a view (taken
from above) of one of the Highland waterfalls. If he had looked at the
picture when he turned away from his window, he might have remarked that
a river which is running with its utmost smoothness at one moment may be
a river which plunges into its most violent agitation at another; and he
might have remembered, with certain misgivings, that the progress of a
stream of water has been long since likened, with the universal consent
of humanity, to the progress of the stream of life.
FIFTH SCENE.--GLASGOW.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
ANNE AMONG THE LAWYERS.
ON the day when Sir Patrick received the second of the two telegrams
sent to him from Edinburgh, four respectable inhabitants of the City of
Glasgow were startled by the appearance of an object of interest on the
monotonous horizon of their daily lives.
The persons receiving this wholesome shock were--Mr. and Mrs. Karnegie
of the Sheep’s Head Hotel--and Mr. Camp, and Mr. Crum, attached as
“Writers” to the honorable profession of the Law.
It was still early in the day when a lady arrived, in a cab from the
railway, at the Sheep’s Head Hotel. Her luggage consisted of a black
box, and of a well-worn leather bag which she carried in her hand. The
name on the box (recently written on a new luggage label, as the color
of the ink and paper showed) was a very good name in its way, common
to a very great number of ladies, both in Scotland and England. It was
“Mrs. Graham.”
Encountering the landlord at the entrance to the hotel, “Mrs. Graham”
asked to be accommodated with a bedroom, and was transferred in due
course to the chamber-maid on duty at the time. Returning to the little
room behind the bar, in which the accounts were kept, Mr. Karnegie
surprised his wife by moving more briskly, and looking much brighter
than usual. Being questioned, Mr. Karnegie (who had cast the eye of
a landlord on the black box in the passage) announced that one “Mrs.
Graham” had just arrived, and was then and there to be booked as
inhabiting Room Number Seventeen. Being informed (with considerable
asperity of tone and manner) that this answer failed to account for
the interest which appeared to have been inspired in him by a total
stranger, Mr. Karnegie came to the point, and confessed that “Mrs.
Graham” was one of the sweetest-looking women he had seen for many a
long day, and that he feared she was very seriously out of health.
Upon that reply the eyes of Mrs. Karnegie developed in size, and the
color of Mrs. Karnegie deepened in tint. She got up from her chair and
said that it might be just as well if she personally superintended the
installation of “Mrs. Graham” in her room, and personally satisfied
herself that “Mrs. Graham” was a fit inmate to be received at the
Sheep’s Head Hotel. Mr. Karnegie thereupon did what he always did--he
agreed with his wife.
Mrs. Karnegie was absent for some little time. On her return her eyes
had a certain tigerish cast in them when they rested on Mr. Karnegie.
She ordered tea and some light refreshment to be taken to Number
Seventeen. This done--without any visible provocation to account for the
remark--she turned upon her husband, and said, “Mr. Karnegie you are
a fool.” Mr. Karnegie asked, “Why, my dear?” Mrs. Karnegie snapped
her fingers, and said, “_That_ for her good looks! You don’t know a
good-looking woman when you see her.” Mr. Karnegie agreed with his wife.
Nothing more was said until the waiter appeared at the bar with
his tray. Mrs. Karnegie, having first waived the tray off, without
instituting her customary investigation, sat down suddenly with a thump,
and said to her husband (who had not uttered a word in the interval),
“Don’t talk to Me about her being out of health! _That_ for her health!
It’s trouble on her mind.” Mr. Karnegie said, “Is it now?” Mrs. Karnegie
replied, “When I have said, It is, I consider myself insulted if another
person says, Is it?” Mr. Karnegie agreed with his wife.
There was another interval. Mrs. Karnegie added up a bill, with a
face of disgust. Mr. Karnegie looked at her with a face of wonder. Mrs.
Karnegie suddenly asked him why he wasted his looks on _her_, when he
would have “Mrs. Graham” to look at before long. Mr. Karnegie, upon
that, attempted to compromise the matter by looking, in the interim, at
his own boots. Mrs. Karnegie wished to know whether after twenty years
of married life, she was considered to be not worth answering by her own
husband. Treated with bare civility (she expected no more), she might
have gone on to explain that “Mrs. Graham” was going out. She might also
have been prevailed on to mention that “Mrs. Graham” had asked her a
very remarkable question of a business nature, at the interview between
them up stairs. As it was, Mrs. Karnegie’s lips were sealed, and let
Mr. Karnegie deny if he dared, that he richly deserved it. Mr. Karnegie
agreed with his wife.
In half an hour more, “Mrs. Graham” came down stairs; and a cab was sent
for. Mr. Karnegie, in fear of the consequences if he did otherwise, kept
in a corner. Mrs. Karnegie followed him into the corner, and asked him
how he dared act in that way? Did he presume to think, after twenty
years of married life, that his wife was jealous? “Go, you brute, and
hand Mrs. Graham into the cab!”
Mr. Karnegie obeyed. He asked, at the cab window, to what part of
Glasgow he should tell the driver to go. The reply informed him that the
driver was to take “Mrs. Graham” to the office of Mr. Camp, the lawyer.
Assuming “Mrs. Graham” to be a stranger in Glasgow, and remembering that
Mr. Camp was Mr. Karnegie’s lawyer, the inference appeared to be, that
“Mrs. Graham’s” remarkable question, addressed to the landlady, had
related to legal business, and to the discovery of a trust-worthy person
capable of transacting it for her.
Returning to the bar, Mr. Karnegie found his eldest daughter in charge
of the books, the bills, and the waiters. Mrs. Karnegie had retired to
her own room, justly indignant with her husband for his infamous conduct
in handing “Mrs. Graham” into the cab before her own eyes. “It’s the old
story, Pa,” remarked Miss Karnegie, with the most perfect composure.
“Ma told you to do it, of course; and then Ma says you’ve insulted her
before all the servants. I wonder how you bear it?” Mr. Karnegie looked
at his boots, and answered, “I wonder, too, my dear.” Miss Karnegie
said, “You’re not going to Ma, are you?” Mr. Karnegie looked up from his
boots, and answered, “I must, my dear.”
Mr. Camp sat in his private room, absorbed over his papers.
Multitudinous as those documents were, they appeared to be not
sufficiently numerous to satisfy Mr. Camp. He rang his bell, and ordered
more.
The clerk appearing with a new pile of papers, appeared also with a
message. A lady, recommended by Mrs. Karnegie, of the Sheep’s Head,
wished to consult Mr. Camp professionally. Mr. Camp looked at his watch,
counting out precious time before him, in a little stand on the table,
and said, “Show the lady in, in ten minutes.”
In ten minutes the lady appeared. She took the client’s chair and lifted
her veil. The same effect which had been produced on Mr. Karnegie was
once more produced on Mr. Camp. For the first time, for many a long year
past, he felt personally interested in a total stranger. It might have
been something in her eyes, or it might have been something in her
manner. Whatever it was, it took softly hold of him, and made him, to
his own exceeding surprise, unmistakably anxious to hear what she had to
say!
The lady announced--in a low sweet voice touched with a quiet
sadness--that her business related to a question of marriage (as
marriage is understood by Scottish law), and that her own peace of mind,
and the happiness of a person very dear to her, were concerned alike
in the opinion which Mr. Camp might give when he had been placed in
possession of the facts.
She then proceeded to state the facts, without mentioning names:
relating in every particular precisely the same succession of events
which Geoffrey Delamayn had already related to Sir Patrick Lundie--with
this one difference, that she acknowledged herself to be the woman who
was personally concerned in knowing whether, by Scottish law, she was
now held to be a married woman or not.
Mr. Camp’s opinion given upon this, after certain questions had been
asked and answered, differed from Sir Patrick’s opinion, as given at
Windygates. He too quoted the language used by the eminent judge--Lord
Deas--but he drew an inference of his own from it. “In Scotland, consent
makes marriage,” he said; “and consent may be proved by inference. I see
a plain inference of matrimonial consent in the circumstances which you
have related to me and I say you are a married woman.”
The effect produced on the lady, when sentence was pronounced on her in
those terms, was so distressing that Mr. Camp sent a message up stairs
to his wife; and Mrs. Camp appeared in her husband’s private room,
in business hours, for the first time in her life. When Mrs. Camp’s
services had in some degree restored the lady to herself, Mr. Camp
followed with a word of professional comfort. He, like Sir Patrick,
acknowledged the scandalous divergence of opinions produced by the
confusion and uncertainty of the marriage-law of Scotland. He, like
Sir Patrick, declared it to be quite possible that another lawyer might
arrive at another conclusion. “Go,” he said, giving her his card, with a
line of writing on it, “to my colleague, Mr. Crum; and say I sent you.”
The lady gratefully thanked Mr. Camp and his wife, and went next to the
office of Mr. Crum.
Mr. Crum was the older lawyer of the two, and the harder lawyer of the
two; but he, too, felt the influence which the charm that there was in
this woman exercised, more or less, over every man who came in contact
with her. He listened with a patience which was rare with him: he put
his questions with a gentleness which was rarer still; and when _he_
was in possession of the circumstances---behold, _his_ opinion flatly
contradicted the opinion of Mr. Camp!
“No marriage, ma’am,” he said, positively. “Evidence in favor of perhaps
establishing a marriage, if you propose to claim the man. But that, as I
understand it, is exactly what you don’t wish to do.”
The relief to the lady, on hearing this, almost overpowered her. For
some minutes she was unable to speak. Mr. Crum did, what he had never
done yet in all his experience as a lawyer. He patted a client on the
shoulder, and, more extraordinary still, he gave a client permission
to waste his time. “Wait, and compose yourself,” said Mr.
Crum--administering the law of humanity. The lady composed herself. “I
must ask you some questions, ma’am,” said Mr. Crum--administering the
law of the land. The lady bowed, and waited for him to begin.
“I know, thus far, that you decline to claim the gentleman,” said Mr.
Cram. “I want to know now whether the gentleman is likely to claim
_you._”
The answer to this was given in the most positive terms. The gentleman
was not even aware of the position in which he stood. And, more yet, he
was engaged to be married to the dearest friend whom the lady had in the
world.
Mr. Crum opened his eyes--considered--and put another question as
delicately as he could. “Would it be painful to you to tell me how the
gentleman came to occupy the awkward position in which he stands now?”
The lady acknowledged that it would be indescribably painful to her to
answer that question.
Mr. Crum offered a suggestion under the form of an inquiry:
“Would it be painful to you to reveal the circumstances--in the
interests of the gentleman’s future prospects--to some discreet person
(a legal person would be best) who is not, what I am, a stranger to you
both?”
The lady declared herself willing to make any sacrifice, on those
conditions--no matter how painful it might be--for her friend’s sake.
Mr. Crum considered a little longer, and then delivered his word of
advice:
“At the present stage of the affair,” he said, “I need only tell you
what is the first step that you ought to take under the circumstances.
Inform the gentleman at once--either by word of mouth or by writing--of
the position in which he stands: and authorize him to place the case in
the hands of a person known to you both, who is competent to decide on
what you are to do next. Do I understand that you know of such a person
so qualified?”
The lady answered that she knew of such a person.
Mr. Crum asked if a day had been fixed for the gentleman’s marriage.
The lady answered that she had made this inquiry herself on the last
occasion when she had seen the gentleman’s betrothed wife. The marriage
was to take place, on a day to be hereafter chosen, at the end of the
autumn.
“That,” said Mr. Crum, “is a fortunate circumstance. You have time
before you. Time is, here, of very great importance. Be careful not to
waste it.”
The lady said she would return to her hotel and write by that night’s
post, to warn the gentleman of the position in which he stood, and to
authorize him to refer the matter to a competent and trust-worthy friend
known to them both.
On rising to leave the room she was seized with giddiness, and with some
sudden pang of pain, which turned her deadly pale and forced her to
drop back into her chair. Mr. Crum had no wife; but he possessed a
housekeeper--and he offered to send for her. The lady made a sign in the
negative. She drank a little water, and conquered the pain. “I am sorry
to have alarmed you,” she said. “It’s nothing--I am better now.” Mr.
Crum gave her his arm, and put her into the cab. She looked so pale and
faint that he proposed sending his housekeeper with her. No: it was only
five minutes’ drive to the hotel. The lady thanked him--and went her way
back by herself.
“The letter!” she said, when she was alone. “If I can only live long
enough to write the letter!”
CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH.
ANNE IN THE NEWSPAPERS.
MRS. KARNEGIE was a woman of feeble intelligence and violent temper;
prompt to take offense, and not, for the most part, easy to appease. But
Mrs. Karnegie being--as we all are in our various degrees--a compound of
many opposite qualities, possessed a character with more than one side
to it, and had her human merits as well as her human faults. Seeds of
sound good feeling were scattered away in the remoter corners of her
nature, and only waited for the fertilizing occasion that was to help
them to spring up. The occasion exerted that benign influence when the
cab brought Mr. Crum’s client back to the hotel. The face of the weary,
heart-sick woman, as she slowly crossed the hall, roused all that was
heartiest and best in Mrs. Karnegie’s nature, and said to her, as if in
words, “Jealous of this broken creature? Oh, wife and mother is there no
appeal to your common womanhood _here?_”
“I am afraid you have overtired yourself, ma’am. Let me send you
something up stairs?”
“Send me pen, ink, and paper,” was the answer. “I must write a letter. I
must do it at once.”
It was useless to remonstrate with her. She was ready to accept any
thing proposed, provided the writing materials were supplied first. Mrs.
Karnegie sent them up, and then compounded a certain mixture of eggs and
hot wine for which The Sheep’s Head was famous, with her own hands. In
five minutes or so it was ready--and Miss Karnegie was dispatched by
her mother (who had other business on hand at the time) to take it up
stairs.
After the lapse of a few moments a cry of alarm was heard from the upper
landing. Mrs. Karnegie recognized her daughter’s voice, and hastened to
the bedroom floor.
“Oh, mamma! Look at her! look at her!”
The letter was on the table with the first lines written. The woman was
on the sofa with her handkerchief twisted between her set teeth, and her
tortured face terrible to look at. Mrs. Karnegie raised her a little,
examined her closely--then suddenly changed color, and sent her daughter
out of the room with directions to dispatch a messenger instantly for
medical help.
Left alone with the sufferer, Mrs. Karnegie carried her to her bed. As
she was laid down her left hand fell helpless over the side of the bed.
Mrs. Karnegie suddenly checked the word of sympathy as it rose to her
lips--suddenly lifted the hand, and looked, with a momentary sternness
of scrutiny, at the third finger. There was a ring on it. Mrs.
Karnegie’s face softened on the instant: the word of pity that had been
suspended the moment before passed her lips freely now. “Poor soul!”
said the respectable landlady, taking appearances for granted. “Where’s
your husband, dear? Try and tell me.”
The doctor made his appearance, and went up to the patient.
Time passed, and Mr. Karnegie and his daughter, carrying on the business
of the hotel, received a message from up stairs which was ominous of
something out of the common. The message gave the name and address of an
experienced nurse--with the doctor’s compliments, and would Mr. Karnegie
have the kindness to send for her immediately.
The nurse was found and sent up stairs.
Time went on, and the business of the hotel went on, and it was getting
to be late in the evening, when Mrs. Karnegie appeared at last in the
parlor behind the bar. The landlady’s face was grave, the landlady’s
manner was subdued. “Very, very ill,” was the only reply she made to her
daughter’s inquiries. When she and her husband were together, a little
later, she told the news from up stairs in greater detail. “A child born
dead,” said Mrs. Karnegie, in gentler tones than were customary with
her. “And the mother dying, poor thing, so far as _I_ can see.”
A little later the doctor came down. Dead? No.--Likely to live?
Impossible to say. The doctor returned twice in the course of the night.
Both times he had but one answer. “Wait till to-morrow.”
The next day came. She rallied a little. Toward the afternoon she began
to speak. She expressed no surprise at seeing strangers by her bedside:
her mind wandered. She passed again into insensibility. Then back to
delirium once more. The doctor said, “This may last for weeks. Or it may
end suddenly in death. It’s time you did something toward finding her
friends.”
(Her friends! She had left the one friend she had forever!)
Mr. Camp was summoned to give his advice. The first thing he asked for
was the unfinished letter.
It was blotted, it was illegible in more places than one. With pains and
care they made out the address at the beginning, and here and there some
fragments of the lines that followed. It began: “Dear Mr. Brinkworth.”
Then the writing got, little by little, worse and worse. To the eyes of
the strangers who looked at it, it ran thus: “I should ill requite * *
* Blanche’s interests * * * For God’s sake! * * * don’t think of _me_ *
* *” There was a little more, but not so much as one word, in those last
lines, was legible.
The names mentioned in the letter were reported by the doctor and the
nurse to be also the names on her lips when she spoke in her wanderings.
“Mr. Brinkworth” and “Blanche”--her mind ran incessantly on those two
persons. The one intelligible thing that she mentioned in connection
with them was the letter. She was perpetually trying, trying, trying to
take that unfinished letter to the post; and she could never get there.
Sometimes the post was across the sea. Sometimes it was at the top of an
inaccessible mountain. Sometimes it was built in by prodigious walls all
round it. Sometimes a man stopped her cruelly at the moment when she was
close at the post, and forced her back thousands of miles away from it.
She once or twice mentioned this visionary man by his name. They made it
out to be “Geoffrey.”
Finding no clew to her identity either in the letter that she had tried
to write or in the wild words that escaped her from time to time, it was
decided to search her luggage, and to look at the clothes which she had
worn when she arrived at the hotel.
Her black box sufficiently proclaimed itself as recently purchased. On
opening it the address of a Glasgow trunk-maker was discovered inside.
The linen was also new, and unmarked. The receipted shop-bill was found
with it. The tradesmen, sent for in each case and questioned, referred
to their books. It was proved that the box and the linen had both been
purchased on the day when she appeared at the hotel.
Her black bag was opened next. A sum of between eighty and ninety pounds
in Bank of England notes; a few simple articles belonging to the toilet;
materials for needle-work; and a photographic portrait of a young
lady, inscribed, “To Anne, from Blanche,” were found in the bag--but no
letters, and nothing whatever that could afford the slightest clew by
which the owner could be traced. The pocket in her dress was searched
next. It contained a purse, an empty card-case, and a new handkerchief
unmarked.
Mr. Camp shook his head.
“A woman’s luggage without any letters in it,” he said, “suggests to
my mind a woman who has a motive of her own for keeping her movements
a secret. I suspect she has destroyed her letters, and emptied her
card-case, with that view.” Mrs. Karnegie’s report, after examining the
linen which the so-called “Mrs. Graham” had worn when she arrived at
the inn, proved the soundness of the lawyer’s opinion. In every case the
marks had been cut out. Mrs. Karnegie began to doubt whether the ring
which she had seen on the third finger of the lady’s left hand had been
placed there with the sanction of the law.
There was but one chance left of discovering--or rather of attempting to
discover--her friends. Mr. Camp drew out an advertisement to be inserted
in the Glasgow newspapers. If those newspapers happened to be seen by
any member of her family, she would, in all probability, be claimed.
In the contrary event there would be nothing for it but to wait for her
recovery or her death--with the money belonging to her sealed up, and
deposited in the landlord’s strongbox.
The advertisement appeared. They waited for three days afterward, and
nothing came of it. No change of importance occurred, during the same
period, in the condition of the suffering woman. Mr. Camp looked in,
toward evening, and said, “We have done our best. There is no help for
it but to wait.”
Far away in Perthshire that third evening was marked as a joyful
occasion at Windygates House. Blanche had consented at last to listen
to Arnold’s entreaties, and had sanctioned the writing of a letter to
London to order her wedding-dress.
SIXTH SCENE.--SWANHAVEN LODGE.
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST
SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (FIRST SOWING).
“NOT SO large as Windygates. But--shall we say snug, Jones?”
“And comfortable, Smith. I quite agree with you.”
Such was the judgment pronounced by the two choral gentlemen on Julius
Delamayn’s house in Scotland. It was, as usual with Smith and Jones, a
sound judgment--as far as it went. Swanhaven Lodge was not half the
size of Windygates; but it had been inhabited for two centuries when
the foundations of Windygates were first laid--and it possessed the
advantages, without inheriting the drawbacks, of its age. There is in an
old house a friendly adaptation to the human character, as there is in
an old hat a friendly adaptation to the human head. The visitor who left
Swanhaven quitted it with something like a sense of leaving home. Among
the few houses not our own which take a strong hold on our sympathies
this was one. The ornamental grounds were far inferior in size and
splendor to the grounds at Windygates. But the park was beautiful--less
carefully laid out, but also less monotonous than an English park. The
lake on the northern boundary of the estate, famous for its breed of
swans, was one of the curiosities of the neighborhood; and the house had
a history, associating it with more than one celebrated Scottish name,
which had been written and illustrated by Julius Delamayn. Visitors
to Swanhaven Lodge were invariably presented with a copy of the volume
(privately printed). One in twenty read it. The rest were “charmed,” and
looked at the pictures.
The day was the last day of August, and the occasion was the
garden-party given by Mr. and Mrs. Delamayn.