Looking at the address by the light of the candles, he recognized the
handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. “To congratulate me on my marriage!” he
said to himself, bitterly, and opened the letter.
Mrs. Glenarm’s congratulations were expressed in these terms:
“MY ADORED GEOFFREY,--I have heard all. My beloved one! my own! you are
sacrificed to the vilest wretch that walks the earth, and I have lost
you! How is it that I live after hearing it? How is it that I can think,
and write, with my brain on fire, and my heart broken! Oh, my angel,
there is a purpose that supports me--pure, beautiful, worthy of us both.
I live, Geoffrey--I live to dedicate myself to the adored idea of You.
My hero! my first, last, love! I will marry no other man. I will live
and die--I vow it solemnly on my bended knees--I will live and die true
to You. I am your Spiritual Wife. My beloved Geoffrey! _she_ can’t come
between us, there--_she_ can never rob you of my heart’s unalterable
fidelity, of my soul’s unearthly devotion. I am your Spiritual Wife! Oh,
the blameless luxury of writing those words! Write back to me, beloved
one, and say you feel it too. Vow it, idol of my heart, as I have vowed
it. Unalterable fidelity! unearthly devotion! Never, never will I be
the wife of any other man! Never, never will I forgive the woman who has
come between us! Yours ever and only; yours with the stainless passion
that burns on the altar of the heart; yours, yours, yours--E. G.”
This outbreak of hysterical nonsense--in itself simply
ridiculous--assumed a serious importance in its effect on Geoffrey.
It associated the direct attainment of his own interests with
the gratification of his vengeance on Anne. Ten thousand a year
self-dedicated to him--and nothing to prevent his putting out his hand
and taking it but the woman who had caught him in her trap, the woman up
stairs who had fastened herself on him for life!
He put the letter into his pocket. “Wait till I hear from the lawyer,”
he said to himself. “The easiest way out of it is _that_ way. And it’s
the law.”
He looked impatiently at his watch. As he put it back again in his
pocket there was a ring at the bell. Was it the lad bringing the
luggage? Yes. And, with it, the lawyer’s report? No. Better than
that--the lawyer himself.
“Come in!” cried Geoffrey, meeting his visitor at the door.
The lawyer entered the dining-room. The candle-light revealed to view a
corpulent, full-lipped, bright-eyed man--with a strain of negro blood in
his yellow face, and with unmistakable traces in his look and manner of
walking habitually in the dirtiest professional by-ways of the law.
“I’ve got a little place of my own in your neighborhood,” he said. “And
I thought I would look in myself, Mr. Delamayn, on my way home.”
“Have you seen the witnesses?”
“I have examined them both, Sir. First, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr.
Bishopriggs together. Next, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr. Bishopriggs
separately.”
“Well?”
“Well, Sir, the result is unfavorable, I am sorry to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“Neither the one nor the other of them, Mr. Delamayn, can give the
evidence we want. I have made sure of that.”
“Made sure of that? You have made an infernal mess of it! You don’t
understand the case!”
The mulatto lawyer smiled. The rudeness of his client appeared only to
amuse him.
“Don’t I?” he said. “Suppose you tell me where I am wrong about it? Here
it is in outline only. On the fourteenth of August last your wife was
at an inn in Scotland. A gentleman named Arnold Brinkworth joined her
there. He represented himself to be her husband, and he staid with her
till the next morning. Starting from those facts, the object you have
in view is to sue for a Divorce from your wife. You make Mr. Arnold
Brinkworth the co-respondent. And you produce in evidence the waiter and
the landlady of the inn. Any thing wrong, Sir, so far?”
Nothing wrong. At one cowardly stroke to cast Anne disgraced on the
world, and to set himself free--there, plainly and truly stated, was
the scheme which he had devised, when he had turned back on the way to
Fulham to consult Mr. Moy.
“So much for the case,” resumed the lawyer. “Now for what I have done on
receiving your instructions. I have examined the witnesses; and I have
had an interview (not a very pleasant one) with Mr. Moy. The result of
those two proceedings is briefly this. First discovery: In assuming the
character of the lady’s husband Mr. Brinkworth was acting under your
directions--which tells dead against _you._ Second discovery: Not the
slightest impropriety of conduct, not an approach even to harmless
familiarity, was detected by either of the witnesses, while the lady and
gentleman were together at the inn. There is literally no evidence to
produce against them, except that they _were_ together--in two rooms.
How are you to assume a guilty purpose, when you can’t prove an approach
to a guilty act? You can no more take such a case as that into Court
than you can jump over the roof of this cottage.”
He looked hard at his client, expecting to receive a violent reply. His
client agreeably disappointed him. A very strange impression appeared
to have been produced on this reckless and headstrong man. He got up
quietly; he spoke with perfect outward composure of face and manner when
he said his next words.
“Have you given up the case?”
“As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case.”
“And no hope of my getting divorced from her?”
“Wait a moment. Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere since they
were together at the Scotch inn?”
“Nowhere.”
“As to the future, of course I can’t say. As to the past, there is no
hope of your getting divorced from her.”
“Thank you. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Mr. Delamayn.”
Fastened to her for life--and the law powerless to cut the knot.
He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it and
fixed it in his mind. Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm’s letter, and read
it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.
Nothing could shake her devotion to him. Nothing would induce her to
marry another man. There she was--in her own words--dedicated to him:
waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his wife. There
also was his father, waiting (so far as _he_ knew, in the absence of
any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs. Glenarm as a
daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm’s husband an income of his
own. As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man could desire. And nothing
in the way of it but the woman who had caught him in her trap--the woman
up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life.
He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.
There was open communication, on all sides, between the back garden and
the front. He walked round and round the cottage--now appearing in a
stream of light from a window; now disappearing again in the darkness.
The wind blew refreshingly over his bare head. For some minutes he went
round and round, faster and faster, without a pause. When he stopped
at last, it was in front of the cottage. He lifted his head slowly, and
looked up at the dim light in the window of Anne’s room.
“How?” he said to himself. “That’s the question. How?”
He went indoors again, and rang the bell. The servant-girl who answered
it started back at the sight of him. His florid color was all gone. His
eyes looked at her without appearing to see her. The perspiration was
standing on his forehead in great heavy drops.
“Are you ill, Sir?” said the girl.
He told her, with an oath, to hold her tongue and bring the brandy. When
she entered the room for the second time, he was standing with his back
to her, looking out at the night. He never moved when she put the bottle
on the table. She heard him muttering as if he was talking to himself.
The same difficulty which had been present to his mind in secret under
Anne’s window was present to his mind still.
How? That was the problem to solve. How?
He turned to the brandy, and took counsel of that.
CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH.
THE MORNING.
WHEN does the vain regret find its keenest sting? When is the doubtful
future blackened by its darkest cloud? When is life least worth having,
and death oftenest at the bedside? In the terrible morning hours,
when the sun is rising in its glory, and the birds are singing in the
stillness of the new-born day.
Anne woke in the strange bed, and looked round her, by the light of the
new morning, at the strange room.
The rain had all fallen in the night. The sun was master in the clear
autumn sky. She rose, and opened the window. The fresh morning air, keen
and fragrant, filled the room. Far and near, the same bright stillness
possessed the view. She stood at the window looking out. Her mind was
clear again--she could think, she could feel; she could face the one
last question which the merciless morning now forced on her--How will it
end?
Was there any hope?--hope for instance, in what she might do for
herself. What can a married woman do for herself? She can make her
misery public--provided it be misery of a certain kind--and can reckon
single-handed with Society when she has done it. Nothing more.
Was there hope in what others might do for her? Blanche might write to
her--might even come and see her--if her husband allowed it; and that
was all. Sir Patrick had pressed her hand at parting, and had told her
to rely on him. He was the firmest, the truest of friends. But what
could he do? There were outrages which her husband was privileged to
commit, under the sanction of marriage, at the bare thought of which her
blood ran cold. Could Sir Patrick protect her? Absurd! Law and Society
armed her husband with his conjugal rights. Law and Society had but one
answer to give, if she appealed to them--You are his wife.
No hope in herself; no hope in her friends; no hope any where on earth.
Nothing to be done but to wait for the end--with faith in the Divine
Mercy; with faith in the better world.
She took out of her trunk a little book of Prayers and Meditations--worn
with much use--which had once belonged to her mother. She sat by the
window reading it. Now and then she looked up from it--thinking. The
parallel between her mother’s position and her own position was now
complete. Both married to husbands who hated them; to husbands whose
interests pointed to mercenary alliances with other women; to husbands
whose one want and one purpose was to be free from their wives. Strange,
what different ways had led mother and daughter both to the same
fate! Would the parallel hold to the end? “Shall I die,” she wondered,
thinking of her mother’s last moments, “in Blanche’s arms?”
The time had passed unheeded. The morning movement in the house had
failed to catch her ear. She was first called out of herself to the
sense of the present and passing events by the voice of the servant-girl
outside the door.
“The master wants you, ma’am, down stairs.”
She rose instantly and put away the little book.
“Is that all the message?” she asked, opening the door.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She followed the girl down stairs; recalling to her memory the strange
words addressed to her by Geoffrey, in the presence of the servants, on
the evening before. Was she now to know what those words really meant?
The doubt would soon be set at rest. “Be the trial what it may,” she
thought to herself, “let me bear it as my mother would have borne it.”
The servant opened the door of the dining-room. Breakfast was on
the table. Geoffrey was standing at the window. Hester Dethridge
was waiting, posted near the door. He came forward--with the nearest
approach to gentleness in his manner which she had ever yet seen in
it--he came forward, with a set smile on his lips, and offered her his
hand!
She had entered the room, prepared (as she believed) for any thing
that could happen. She was not prepared for this. She stood speechless,
looking at him.
After one glance at her, when she came in, Hester Dethridge looked at
him, too--and from that moment never looked away again, as long as Anne
remained in the room.
He broke the silence--in a voice that was not like his own; with a
furtive restraint in his manner which she had never noticed in it
before.
“Won’t you shake hands with your husband,” he asked, “when your husband
asks you?”
She mechanically put her hand in his. He dropped it instantly, with a
start. “God! how cold!” he exclaimed. His own hand was burning hot, and
shook incessantly.
He pointed to a chair at the head of the table.
“Will you make the tea?” he asked.
She had given him her hand mechanically; she advanced a step
mechanically--and then stopped.
“Would you prefer breakfasting by yourself?” he said.
“If you please,” she answered, faintly.
“Wait a minute. I have something to say before you go.”
She waited. He considered with himself; consulting his memory--visibly,
unmistakably, consulting it before he spoke again.
“I have had the night to think in,” he said. “The night has made a new
man of me. I beg your pardon for what I said yesterday. I was not myself
yesterday. I talked nonsense yesterday. Please to forget it, and forgive
it. I wish to turn over a new leaf and make amends--make amends for
my past conduct. It shall be my endeavor to be a good husband. In the
presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I request you to give me a chance. I won’t
force your inclinations. We are married--what’s the use of regretting
it? Stay here, as you said yesterday, on your own terms. I wish to make
it up. In the presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I say I wish to make it up. I
won’t detain you. I request you to think of it. Good-morning.”
He said those extraordinary words like a slow boy saying a hard
lesson--his eyes on the ground, his fingers restlessly fastening and
unfastening a button on his waistcoat.
Anne left the room. In the passage she was obliged to wait, and support
herself against the wall. His unnatural politeness was horrible; his
carefully asserted repentance chilled her to the soul with dread.
She had never felt--in the time of his fiercest anger and his foulest
language--the unutterable horror of him that she felt now.
Hester Dethridge came out, closing the door behind her. She looked
attentively at Anne--then wrote on her slate, and held it out, with
these words on it:
“Do you believe him?”
Anne pushed the slate away, and ran up stairs. She fastened the
door--and sank into a chair.
“He is plotting something against me,” she said to herself. “What?”
A sickening, physical sense of dread--entirely new in her experience of
herself--made her shrink from pursuing the question. The sinking at her
heart turned her faint. She went to get the air at the open window.
At the same moment there was a ring at the gate bell. Suspicious of any
thing and every thing, she felt a sudden distrust of letting herself be
seen. She drew back behind the curtain and looked out.
A man-servant, in livery, was let in. He had a letter in his hand.
He said to the girl as he passed Anne’s window, “I come from Lady
Holchester; I must see Mr. Delamayn instantly.”
They went in. There was an interval. The footman reappeared, leaving the
place. There was another interval. Then there came a knock at the door.
Anne hesitated. The knock was repeated, and the dumb murmuring of Hester
Dethridge was heard outside. Anne opened the door.
Hester came in with the breakfast. She pointed to a letter among other
things on the tray. It was addressed to Anne, in Geoffrey’s handwriting,
and it contained these words:
“My father died yesterday. Write your orders for your mourning. The
boy will take them. You are not to trouble yourself to go to London.
Somebody is to come here to you from the shop.”
Anne dropped the paper on her lap without looking up. At the same moment
Hester Dethridge’s slate was passed stealthily between her eyes and the
note--with these words traced on it. “His mother is coming to-day. His
brother has been telegraphed from Scotland. He was drunk last night.
He’s drinking again. I know what that means. Look out, missus--look
out.”
Anne signed to her to leave the room. She went out, pulling the door to,
but not closing it behind her.
There was another ring at the gate bell. Once more Anne went to the
window. Only the lad, this time; arriving to take his orders for the
day. He had barely entered the garden when he was followed by the
postman with letters. In a minute more Geoffrey’s voice was heard in
the passage, and Geoffrey’s heavy step ascended the wooden stairs. Anne
hurried across the room to draw the bolts. Geoffrey met her before she
could close the door.
“A letter for you,” he said, keeping scrupulously out of the room. “I
don’t wish to force your inclinations--I only request you to tell me who
it’s from.”
His manner was as carefully subdued as ever. But the unacknowledged
distrust in him (when he looked at her) betrayed itself in his eye.
She glanced at the handwriting on the address.
“From Blanche,” she answered.
He softly put his foot between the door and the post--and waited until
she had opened and read Blanche’s letter.
“May I see it?” he asked--and put in his hand for it through the door.
The spirit in Anne which would once have resisted him was dead in her
now. She handed him the open letter.
It was very short. Excepting some brief expressions of fondness, it
was studiously confined to stating the purpose for which it had been
written. Blanche proposed to visit Anne that afternoon, accompanied by
her uncle, she sent word beforehand, to make sure of finding Anne at
home. That was all. The letter had evidently been written under Sir
Patrick’s advice.
Geoffrey handed it back, after first waiting a moment to think.
“My father died yesterday,” he said. “My wife can’t receive visitors
before he is buried. I don’t wish to force your inclinations. I only say
I can’t let visitors in here before the funeral--except my own family.
Send a note down stairs. The lad will take it to your friend when he
goes to London.” With those words he left.
An appeal to the proprieties of life, in the mouth of Geoffrey Delamayn,
could only mean one of two things. Either he had spoken in brutal
mockery--or he had spoken with some ulterior object in view. Had he
seized on the event of his father’s death as a pretext for isolating his
wife from all communication with the outer world? Were there reasons,
which had not yet asserted themselves, for his dreading the result, if
he allowed Anne to communicate with her friends?
The hour wore on, and Hester Dethridge appeared again. The lad was
waiting for Anne’s orders for her mourning, and for her note to Mrs.
Arnold Brinkworth.
Anne wrote the orders and the note. Once more the horrible slate
appeared when she had done, between the writing paper and her eyes, with
the hard lines of warning pitilessly traced on it. “He has locked the
gate. When there’s a ring we are to come to him for the key. He has
written to a woman. Name outside the letter, Mrs. Glenarm. He has had
more brandy. Like my husband. Mind yourself.”
The one way out of the high walls all round the cottage locked. Friends
forbidden to see her. Solitary imprisonment, with her husband for a
jailer. Before she had been four-and-twenty hours in the cottage it had
come to that. And what was to follow?
She went back mechanically to the window. The sight of the outer world,
the occasional view of a passing vehicle, helped to sustain her.
The lad appeared in the front garden departing to perform his errand to
London. Geoffrey went with him to open the gate, and called after him,
as he passed through it, “Don’t forget the books!”
The “books?” What “books?” Who wanted them? The slightest thing now
roused Anne’s suspicion. For hours afterward the books haunted her mind.
He secured the gate and came back again. He stopped under Anne’s window
and called to her. She showed herself. “When you want air and exercise,”
he said, “the back garden is at your own disposal.” He put the key of
the gate in his pocket and returned to the house.
After some hesitation Anne decided on taking him at his word. In her
state of suspense, to remain within the four walls of the bedroom was
unendurable. If some lurking snare lay hid under the fair-sounding
proposal which Geoffrey had made, it was less repellent to her boldly to
prove what it might be than to wait pondering over it with her mind
in the dark. She put on her hat and went down into the garden. Nothing
happened out of the common. Wherever he was he never showed himself.
She wandered up and down, keeping on the side of the garden which was
farthest from the dining-room window. To a woman, escape from the place
was simply impossible. Setting out of the question the height of the
walls, they were armed at the top with a thick setting of jagged broken
glass. A small back-door in the end wall (intended probably for the
gardener’s use) was bolted and locked--the key having been taken out.
There was not a house near. The lands of the local growers of vegetables
surrounded the garden on all sides. In the nineteenth century, and in
the immediate neighborhood of a great metropolis, Anne was as absolutely
isolated from all contact with the humanity around her as if she lay in
her grave.
After the lapse of half an hour the silence was broken by a noise of
carriage wheels on the public road in front, and a ring at the bell.
Anne kept close to the cottage, at the back; determined, if a chance
offered, on speaking to the visitor, whoever the visitor might be.
She heard voices in the dining-room through the open window--Geoffrey’s
voice and the voice of a woman. Who was the woman? Not Mrs. Glenarm,
surely? After a while the visitor’s voice was suddenly raised. “Where
is she?” it said. “I wish to see her.” Anne instantly advanced to the
back-door of the house--and found herself face to face with a lady who
was a total stranger to her.
“Are you my son’s wife?” asked the lady.
“I am your son’s prisoner,” Anne answered.
Lady Holchester’s pale face turned paler still. It was plain that Anne’s
reply had confirmed some doubt in the mother s mind which had been
already suggested to it by the son.
“What do you mean?” she asked, in a whisper.
Geoffrey’s heavy footsteps crossed the dining-room. There was no time to
explain. Anne whispered back,
“Tell my friends what I have told you.”
Geoffrey appeared at the dining-room door.
“Name one of your friends,” said Lady Holchester.
“Sir Patrick Lundie.”
Geoffrey heard the answer. “What about Sir Patrick Lundie?” he asked.
“I wish to see Sir Patrick Lundie,” said his mother. “And your wife can
tell me where to find him.”
Anne instantly understood that Lady Holchester would communicate with
Sir Patrick. She mentioned his London address. Lady Holchester turned to
leave the cottage. Her son stopped her.
“Let’s set things straight,” he said, “before you go. My mother,” he
went on, addressing himself to Anne, “don’t think there’s much
chance for us two of living comfortably together. Bear witness to the
truth--will you? What did I tell you at breakfast-time? Didn’t I say it
should be my endeavor to make you a good husband? Didn’t I say--in Mrs.
Dethridge’s presence--I wanted to make it up?” He waited until Anne had
answered in the affirmative, and then appealed to his mother. “Well?
what do you think now?”
Lady Holchester declined to reveal what she thought. “You shall see me,
or hear from me, this evening,” she said to Anne. Geoffrey attempted
to repeat his unanswered question. His mother looked at him. His eyes
instantly dropped before hers. She gravely bent her head to Anne, and
drew her veil. Her son followed her out in silence to the gate.
Anne returned to her room, sustained by the first sense of relief which
she had felt since the morning. “His mother is alarmed,” she said to
herself. “A change will come.”
A change _was_ to come--with the coming night.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIRST.
THE PROPOSAL.
TOWARD sunset, Lady Holchester’s carriage drew up before the gate of the
cottage.
Three persons occupied the carriage: Lady Holchester, her eldest son
(now Lord Holchester), and Sir Patrick Lundie.
“Will you wait in the carriage, Sir Patrick?” said Julius. “Or will
you come in?”
“I will wait. If I can be of the least use to _her,_, send for me
instantly. In the mean time don’t forget to make the stipulation which I
have suggested. It is the one certain way of putting your brother’s real
feeling in this matter to the test.”
The servant had rung the bell without producing any result. He rang
again. Lady Holchester put a question to Sir Patrick.