“When I pass you--” He stopped, and surveyed her with a good-humored
masculine pity. “How the devil am I to make you understand it?” he went
on. “Look here! when I pass you, it will be at what you would call (if
I was a horse) full gallop. Hold your tongue--I haven’t done yet. You’re
to look on after me as I leave you, to where the edge of the cottage
wall cuts the trees. When you have lost sight of me behind the wall,
you’ll have seen me run my three hundred yards from this flag. You’re
in luck’s way! Perry tries me at the long Sprint to-day. You understand
you’re to stop here? Very well then--let me go and get my toggery on.”
“Sha’n’t I see you again, Geoffrey?”
“Haven’t I just told you that you’ll see me run?”
“Yes--but after that?”
“After that, I’m sponged and rubbed down--and rest in the cottage.”
“You’ll come to us this evening?”
He nodded, and left her. The face of Perry looked unutterable things
when he and Geoffrey met at the door of the cottage.
“I’ve got a question to ask you, Mr. Delamayn,” said the trainer. “Do
you want me? or don’t you?”
“Of course I want you.”
“What did I say when I first come here?” proceeded Perry, sternly. “I
said, ‘I won’t have nobody a looking on at a man I’m training. These
here ladies and gentlemen may all have made up their minds to see you.
I’ve made up my mind not to have no lookers-on. I won’t have you timed
at your work by nobody but me. I won’t have every blessed yard of ground
you cover put in the noospapers. I won’t have a living soul in
the secret of what you can do, and what you can’t, except our two
selves.’--Did I say that, Mr. Delamayn? or didn’t I?”
“All right!”
“Did I say it? or didn’t I?”
“Of course you did!”
“Then don’t you bring no more women here. It’s clean against rules. And
I won’t have it.”
Any other living creature adopting this tone of remonstrance would
probably have had reason to repent it. But Geoffrey himself was afraid
to show his temper in the presence of Perry. In view of the coming race,
the first and foremost of British trainers was not to be trifled with,
even by the first and foremost of British athletes.
“She won’t come again,” said Geoffrey. “She’s going away from Swanhaven
in two days’ time.”
“I’ve put every shilling I’m worth in the world on you,” pursued Perry,
relapsing into tenderness. “And I tell you I felt it! It cut me to the
heart when I see you coming along with a woman at your heels. It’s a
fraud on his backers, I says to myself--that’s what it is, a fraud on
his backers!”
“Shut up!” said Geoffrey. “And come and help me to win your money.” He
kicked open the door of the cottage--and athlete and trainer disappeared
from view.
After waiting a few minutes by the little flag, Mrs. Glenarm saw the
two men approaching her from the cottage. Dressed in a close-fitting
costume, light and elastic, adapting itself to every movement, and made
to answer every purpose required by the exercise in which he was abo
ut to engage, Geoffrey’s physical advantages showed themselves in their
best and bravest aspect. His head sat proud and easy on his firm, white
throat, bared to the air. The rising of his mighty chest, as he drew in
deep draughts of the fragrant summer breeze; the play of his lithe and
supple loins; the easy, elastic stride of his straight and shapely
legs, presented a triumph of physical manhood in its highest type. Mrs.
Glenarm’s eyes devoured him in silent admiration. He looked like a
young god of mythology--like a statue animated with color and life. “Oh,
Geoffrey!” she exclaimed, softly, as he went by. He neither answered,
nor looked: he had other business on hand than listening to soft
nonsense. He was gathering himself up for the effort; his lips were set;
his fists were lightly clenched. Perry posted himself at his place, grim
and silent, with the watch in his hand. Geoffrey walked on beyond the
flag, so as to give himself start enough to reach his full speed as he
passed it. “Now then!” said Perry. In an instant more, he flew by (to
Mrs. Glenarm’s excited imagination) like an arrow from a bow. His action
was perfect. His speed, at its utmost rate of exertion, preserved its
rare underlying elements of strength and steadiness. Less and less and
less he grew to the eyes that followed his course; still lightly flying
over the ground, still firmly keeping the straight line. A moment
more, and the runner vanished behind the wall of the cottage, and the
stop-watch of the trainer returned to its place in his pocket.
In her eagerness to know the result, Mrs. Glenarm forget her jealousy of
Perry.
“How long has he been?” she asked.
“There’s a good many besides you would be glad to know that,” said
Perry.
“Mr. Delamayn will tell me, you rude man!”
“That depends, ma’am, on whether _I_ tell _him._”
With this reply, Perry hurried back to the cottage.
Not a word passed while the trainer was attending to his man, and while
the man was recovering his breath. When Geoffrey had been carefully
rubbed down, and clothed again in his ordinary garments, Perry pulled
a comfortable easy-chair out of a corner. Geoffrey fell into the
chair, rather than sat down in it. Perry started, and looked at him
attentively.
“Well?” said Geoffrey. “How about the time? Long? short? or middling?”
“Very good time,” said Perry.
“How long?”
“When did you say the lady was going, Mr. Delamayn?”
“In two days.”
“Very well, Sir. I’ll tell you ‘how long’ when the lady’s gone.”
Geoffrey made no attempt to insist on an immediate reply. He smiled
faintly. After an interval of less than ten minutes he stretched out his
legs and closed his eyes.
“Going to sleep?” said Perry.
Geoffrey opened his eyes with an effort. “No,” he said. The word had
hardly passed his lips before his eyes closed again.
“Hullo!” said Perry, watching him. “I don’t like that.”
He went closer to the chair. There was no doubt about it. The man was
asleep.
Perry emitted a long whistle under his breath. He stooped and laid two
of his fingers softly on Geoffrey’s pulse. The beat was slow, heavy, and
labored. It was unmistakably the pulse of an exhausted man.
The trainer changed color, and took a turn in the room. He opened a
cupboard, and produced from it his diary of the preceding year. The
entries relating to the last occasion on which he had prepared Geoffrey
for a foot-race included the fullest details. He turned to the report
of the first trial, at three hundred yards, full speed. The time was,
by one or two seconds, not so good as the time on this occasion. But the
result, afterward, was utterly different. There it was, in Perry’s own
words: “Pulse good. Man in high spirits. Ready, if I would have let him,
to run it over again.”
Perry looked round at the same man, a year afterward--utterly worn out,
and fast asleep in the chair.
He fetched pen, ink, and paper out of the cupboard, and wrote two
letters--both marked “Private.” The first was to a medical man, a great
authority among trainers. The second was to Perry’s own agent in
London, whom he knew he could trust. The letter pledged the agent to the
strictest secrecy, and directed him to back Geoffrey’s opponent in the
Foot-Race for a sum equal to the sum which Perry had betted on Geoffrey
himself. “If you have got any money of your own on him,” the letter
concluded, “do as I do. ‘Hedge’--and hold your tongue.”
“Another of ‘em gone stale!” said the trainer, looking round again at
the sleeping man. “He’ll lose the race.”
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SECOND.
SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (SECOND SOWING).
AND what did the visitors say of the Swans?
They said, “Oh, what a number of them!”--which was all that was to be
said by persons ignorant of the natural history of aquatic birds.
And what did the visitors say of the lake?
Some of them said, “How solemn!” Some of them said, “How romantic!” Some
of them said nothing--but privately thought it a dismal scene.
Here again the popular sentiment struck the right note at starting. The
lake was hidden in the centre of a fir wood. Except in the middle, where
the sunlight reached them, the waters lay black under the sombre shadow
of the trees. The one break in the plantation was at the farther end of
the lake. The one sign of movement and life to be seen was the ghostly
gliding of the swans on the dead-still surface of the water. It was
solemn--as they said; it was romantic--as they said. It was dismal--as
they thought. Pages of description could express no more. Let pages of
description be absent, therefore, in this place.
Having satiated itself with the swans, having exhausted the lake, the
general curiosity reverted to the break in the trees at the farther
end--remarked a startlingly artificial object, intruding itself on the
scene, in the shape of a large red curtain, which hung between two of
the tallest firs, and closed the prospect beyond from view--requested an
explanation of the curtain from Julius Delamayn--and received for answer
that the mystery should be revealed on the arrival of his wife with the
tardy remainder of the guests who had loitered about the house.
On the appearance of Mrs. Delamayn and the stragglers, the united party
coasted the shore of the lake, and stood assembled in front of the
curtain. Pointing to the silken cords hanging at either side of it,
Julius Delamayn picked out two little girls (children of his wife’s
sister), and sent them to the cords, with instructions to pull, and
see what happened. The nieces of Julius pulled with the eager hands
of children in the presence of a mystery--the curtains parted in the
middle, and a cry of universal astonishment and delight saluted the
scene revealed to view.
At the end of a broad avenue of firs a cool green glade spread its
grassy carpet in the midst of the surrounding plantation. The ground
at the farther end of the glade rose; and here, on the lower slopes,
a bright little spring of water bubbled out between gray old granite
rocks.
Along the right-hand edge of the turf ran a row of tables, arrayed in
spotless white, and covered with refreshments waiting for the guests. On
the opposite side was a band of music, which burst into harmony at the
moment when the curtains were drawn. Looking back through the avenue,
the eye caught a distant glimpse of the lake, where the sunlight played
on the water, and the plumage of the gliding swans flashed softly in
brilliant white. Such was the charming surprise which Julius Delamayn
had arranged for his friends. It was only at moments like these--or when
he and his wife were playing Sonatas in the modest little music-room
at Swanhaven--that Lord Holchester’s eldest son was really happy.
He secretly groaned over the duties which his position as a landed
gentleman imposed upon him; and he suffered under some of the highest
privileges of his rank and station as under social martyrdom in its
cruelest form.
“We’ll dine first,” said Julius, “and dance afterward. There is the
programme!”
He led the way to the tables, with the two ladies nearest to
him--utterly careless whether they were or were not among the ladies of
the highest rank then present. To Lady Lundie’s astonishment he took the
first seat he came to, without appearing to care what place he occupied
at his own feast. The guests, following his example, sat where they
pleased, reckless of precedents and dignities. Mrs. Delamayn, feeling
a special interest in a young lady who was shortly to be a bride, took
Blanche’s arm. Lady Lundie attached herself resolutely to her hostess
on the other side. The three sat together. Mrs. Delamayn did her best to
encourage Blanche to talk, and Blanche did her best to meet the advances
made to her. The experiment succeeded but poorly on either side. Mrs.
Delamayn gave it up in despair, and turned to Lady Lundie, with a
strong suspicion that some unpleasant subject of reflection was preying
privately on the bride’s mind. The conclusion was soundly drawn.
Blanche’s little outbreak of temper with her friend on the terrace, and
Blanche’s present deficiency of gayety and spirit, were attributable to
the same cause. She hid it from her uncle, she hid it from Arnold--but
she was as anxious as ever, and as wretched as ever, about Anne; and she
was still on the watch (no matter what Sir Patrick might say or do) to
seize the first opportunity of renewing the search for her lost friend.
Meanwhile the eating, the drinking, and the talking went merrily on.
The band played its liveliest melodies; the servants kept the glasses
constantly filled: round all the tables gayety and freedom reigned
supreme. The one conversation in progress, in which the talkers were
not in social harmony with each other, was the conversation at Blanche’s
side, between her step-mother and Mrs. Delamayn.
Among Lady Lundie’s other accomplishments the power of making
disagreeable discoveries ranked high. At the dinner in the glade she had
not failed to notice--what every body else had passed over--the absence
at the festival of the hostess’s brother-in-law; and more remarkable
still, the disappearance of a lady who was actually one of the guests
staying in the house: in plainer words, the disappearance of Mrs.
Glenarm.
“Am I mistaken?” said her ladyship, lifting her eye-glass, and looking
round the tables. “Surely there is a member of our party missing? I
don’t see Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn.”
“Geoffrey promised to be here. But he is not particularly attentive, as
you may have noticed, to keeping engagements of this sort. Every thing
is sacrificed to his training. We only see him at rare intervals now.”
With that reply Mrs. Delamayn attempted to change the subject. Lady
Lundie lifted her eye-glass, and looked round the tables for the second
time.
“Pardon me,” persisted her ladyship--“but is it possible that I have
discovered another absentee? I don’t see Mrs. Glenarm. Yet surely she
must be here! Mrs. Glenarm is not training for a foot-race. Do you see
her? _I_ don’t.”
“I missed her when we went out on the terrace, and I have not seen her
since.”
“Isn’t it very odd, dear Mrs. Delamayn?”
“Our guests at Swanhaven, Lady Lundie, have perfect liberty to do as
they please.”
In those words Mrs. Delamayn (as she fondly imagined) dismissed the
subject. But Lady Lundie’s robust curiosity proved unassailable by even
the broadest hint. Carried away, in all probability, by the infection
of merriment about her, her ladyship displayed unexpected reserves of
vivacity. The mind declines to realize it; but it is not the less true
that this majestic woman actually simpered!
“Shall we put two and two together?” said Lady Lundie, with a ponderous
playfulness wonderful to see. “Here, on the one hand, is Mr. Geoffrey
Delamayn--a young single man. And here, on the other, is Mrs. Glenarm--a
young widow. Rank on the side of the young single man; riches on the
side of the young widow. And both mysteriously absent at the same time,
from the same pleasant party. Ha, Mrs. Delamayn! should I guess wrong,
if I guessed that _you_ will have a marriage in the family, too, before
long?”
Mrs. Delamayn looked a little annoyed. She had entered, with all her
heart, into the conspiracy for making a match between Geoffrey and Mrs.
Glenarm. But she was not prepared to own that the lady’s facility
had (in spite of all attempts to conceal it from discovery) made the
conspiracy obviously successful in ten days’ time.
“I am not in the secrets of the lady and gentleman whom you mention,”
she replied, dryly.
A heavy body is slow to acquire movement--and slow to abandon movement,
when once acquired. The playfulness of Lady Lundie, being essentially
heavy, followed the same rule. She still persisted in being as lively as
ever.
“Oh, what a diplomatic answer!” exclaimed her ladyship. “I think I can
interpret it, though, for all that. A little bird tells me that I shall
see a Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn in London, next season. And I, for one,
shall not be surprised to find myself congratulating Mrs. Glenarm.”
“If you persist in letting your imagination run away with you, Lady
Lundie, I can’t possibly help it. I can only request permission to keep
the bridle on _mine._”
This time, even Lady Lundie understood that it would be wise to say
no more. She smiled and nodded, in high private approval of her own
extraordinary cleverness. If she had been asked at that moment who was
the most brilliant Englishwoman living, she would have looked inward on
herself--and would have seen, as in a glass brightly, Lady Lundie, of
Windygates.
From the moment when the talk at her side entered on the subject of
Geoffrey Delamayn and Mrs. Glenarm--and throughout the brief period
during which it remained occupied with that topic--Blanche became
conscious of a strong smell of some spirituous liquor wafted down on
her, as she fancied, from behind and from above. Finding the odor grow
stronger and stronger, she looked round to see whether any special
manufacture of grog was proceeding inexplicably at the back of her
chair. The moment she moved her head, her attention was claimed by a
pair of tremulous gouty old hands, offering her a grouse pie, profusely
sprinkled with truffles.
“Eh, my bonny Miss!” whispered a persuasive voice at her ear, “ye’re
joost stairving in a land o’ plenty. Tak’ my advice, and ye’ll tak’ the
best thing at tebble--groose-poy, and trufflers.”
Blanche looked up.
There he was--the man of the canny eye, the fatherly manner, and the
mighty nose--Bishopriggs--preserved in spirits and ministering at the
festival at Swanhaven Lodge!
Blanche had only seen him for a moment on the memorable night of the
storm, when she had surprised Anne at the inn. But instants passed in
the society of Bishopriggs were as good as hours spent in the company of
inferior men. Blanche instantly recognized him; instantly called to
mind Sir Patrick’s conviction that he was in possession of Anne’s
lost letter; instantly rushed to the conclusion that, in discovering
Bishopriggs, she had discovered a chance of tracing Anne. Her first
impulse was to claim acquaintance with him on the spot. But the eyes of
her neighbors were on her, warning her to wait. She took a little of the
pie, and looked hard at Bishopriggs. That discreet man, showing no sign
of recognition on his side, bowed respectfully, and went on round the
table.
“I wonder whether he has got the letter about him?” thought Blanche.
He had not only got the letter about him--but, more than that, he was
actually then on the look-out for the means of turning the letter to
profitable pecuniary account.
The domestic establishment of Swanhaven Lodge included no formidable
array of servants. When Mrs. Delamayn gave a large party, she depended
for such additional assistance as was needed partly on the contributions
of her friends, partly on the resources of the principal inn at
Kirkandrew. Mr. Bishopriggs, serving at the time (in the absence of any
better employment) as a supernumerary at the inn, made one among the
waiters who could be spared to assist at the garden-party. The name of
the gentleman by whom he was to be employed for the day had struck him,
when he first heard it, as having a familiar sound. He had made his
inquiries; and had then betaken himself for additional information, to
the letter which he had picked up from the parlor floor at Craig Fernie.
The sheet of note-paper, lost by Anne, contained, it may be remembered,
two letters--one signed by herself; the other signed by Geoffrey--and
both suggestive, to a stranger’s eye, of relations between the writers
which they were interested in concealing from the public view.
Thinking it just possible--if he kept his eyes and ears well open at
Swanhaven--that he might improve his prospect of making a marketable
commodity of the stolen correspondence, Mr. Bishopriggs had put the
letter in his pocket when he left Kirkandrew. He had recognized Blanche,
as a friend of the lady at the inn--and as a person who might perhaps be
turned to account, in that capacity. And he had, moreover, heard every
word of the conversation between Lady Lundie and Mrs. Delamayn on the
subject of Geoffrey and Mrs. Glenarm. There were hours to be passed
before the guests would retire, and before the waiters would be
dismissed. The conviction was strong in the mind of Mr. Bishopriggs that
he might find good reason yet for congratulating himself on the chance
which had associated him with the festivities at Swanhaven Lodge.
It was still early in the afternoon when the gayety at the dinner-table
began, in certain quarters, to show signs of wearing out.
The younger members of the party--especially the ladies--grew restless
with the appearance of the dessert. One after another they looked
longingly at the smooth level of elastic turf in the middle of the
glade. One after another they beat time absently with their fingers
to the waltz which the musicians happened to be playing at the moment.
Noticing these symptoms, Mrs. Delamayn set the example of rising; and
her husband sent a message to the band. In ten minutes more the
first quadrille was in progress on the grass; the spectators were
picturesquely grouped round, looking on; and the servants and waiters,
no longer wanted, had retired out of sight, to a picnic of their own.
The last person to leave the deserted tables was the venerable
Bishopriggs. He alone, of the men in attendance, had contrived to
combine a sufficient appearance of waiting on the company with a
clandestine attention to his own personal need of refreshment. Instead
of hurrying away to the servants’ dinner with the rest, he made the
round of the tables, apparently clearing away the crumbs--actually,
emptying the wine-glasses. Immersed in this occupation, he was startled
by a lady’s voice behind him, and, turning as quickly as he could, found
himself face to face with Miss Lundie.
“I want some cold water,” said Blanche. “Be so good as to get me some
from the spring.”
She pointed to the bubbling rivulet at the farther end of the glade.
Bishopriggs looked unaffectedly shocked.
“Lord’s sake, miss,” he exclaimed “d’ye relly mean to offend yer stomach
wi’ cauld water--when there’s wine to be had for the asking!”
Blanche gave him a look. Slowness of perception was not on the list of
the failings of Bishopriggs. He took up a tumbler, winked with his
one available eye, and led the way to the rivulet. There was nothing
remarkable in the spectacle of a young lady who wanted a glass of
spring-water, or of a waiter who was getting it for her. Nobody was
surprised; and (with the band playing) nobody could by any chance
overhear what might be said at the spring-side.
“Do you remember me at the inn on the night of the storm?” asked
Blanche.
Mr. Bishopriggs had his reasons (carefully inclosed in his pocketbook)
for not being too ready to commit himself with Blanche at starting.
“I’m no’ saying I canna remember ye, miss. Whar’s the man would mak’ sic
an answer as that to a bonny young leddy like you?”
By way of assisting his memory Blanche took out her purse. Bishopriggs
became absorbed in the scenery. He looked at the running water with the
eye of a man who thoroughly distrusted it, viewed as a beverage.
“There ye go,” he said, addressing himself to the rivulet, “bubblin’ to
yer ain annihilation in the loch yonder! It’s little I know that’s gude
aboot ye, in yer unconvairted state. Ye’re a type o’ human life, they
say. I tak’ up my testimony against _that._ Ye’re a type o’ naething
at all till ye’re heated wi’ fire, and sweetened wi’ sugar, and
strengthened wi’ whusky; and then ye’re a type o’ toddy--and human life
(I grant it) has got something to say to ye in that capacity!”
“I have heard more about you, since I was at the inn,” proceeded
Blanche, “than you may suppose.” (She opened her purse: Mr. Bishopriggs
became the picture of attention.) “You were very, very kind to a lady
who was staying at Craig Fernie,” she went on, earnestly. “I know that
you have lost your place at the inn, because you gave all your attention
to that lady. She is my dearest friend, Mr. Bishopriggs. I want to thank
you. I do thank you. Please accept what I have got here?”
All the girl’s heart was in her eyes and in her voice as she emptied her
purse into the gouty (and greedy) old hand of Bishopriggs.