“have you any message to give?”
Sir Patrick produced a little note.
“May I appeal to your ladyship’s kindness to give her this?” The gate
was opened by the servant-girl, as Lady Holchester took the note.
“Remember,” reiterated Sir Patrick, earnestly “if I can be of the
smallest service to her--don’t think of my position with Mr. Delamayn.
Send for me at once.”
Julius and his mother were conducted into the drawing-room. The girl
informed them that her master had gone up stairs to lie down, and that
he would be with them immediately.
Both mother and son were too anxious to speak. Julius wandered uneasily
about the room. Some books attracted his notice on a table in the
corner--four dirty, greasy volumes, with a slip of paper projecting from
the leaves of one of them, and containing this inscription, “With Mr.
Perry’s respects.” Julius opened the volume. It was the ghastly popular
record of Criminal Trials in England, called the Newgate Calendar.
Julius showed it to his mother.
“Geoffrey’s taste in literature!” he said, with a faint smile.
Lady Holchester signed to him to put the book back.
“You have seen Geoffrey’s wife already--have you not?” she asked.
There was no contempt now in her tone when she referred to Anne. The
impression produced on her by her visit to the cottage, earlier in the
day, associated Geoffrey’s wife with family anxieties of no trivial
kind. She might still (for Mrs. Glenarm’s sake) be a woman to be
disliked--but she was no longer a woman to be despised.
“I saw her when she came to Swanhaven,” said Julius. “I agree with Sir
Patrick in thinking her a very interesting person.”
“What did Sir Patrick say to you about Geoffrey this afternoon--while I
was out of the room?”
“Only what he said to _you._ He thought their position toward each other
here a very deplorable one. He considered that the reasons were serious
for our interfering immediately.”
“Sir Patrick’s own opinion, Julius, goes farther than that.”
“He has not acknowledged it, that I know of.”
“How _can_ he acknowledge it--to us?”
The door opened, and Geoffrey entered the room.
Julius eyed him closely as they shook hands. His eyes were bloodshot;
his face was flushed; his utterance was thick--the look of him was the
look of a man who had been drinking hard.
“Well?” he said to his mother. “What brings you back?”
“Julius has a proposal to make to you,” Lady Holchester answered. “I
approve of it; and I have come with him.”
Geoffrey turned to his brother.
“What can a rich man like you want with a poor devil like me?” he asked.
“I want to do you justice, Geoffrey--if you will help me, by meeting me
half-way. Our mother has told you about the will?”
“I’m not down for a half-penny in the will. I expected as much. Go on.”
“You are wrong--you _are_ down in it. There is liberal provision made
for you in a codicil. Unhappily, my father died without signing it. It
is needless to say that I consider it binding on me for all that. I am
ready to do for you what your father would have done for you. And I only
ask for one concession in return.”
“What may that be?”
“You are living here very unhappily, Geoffrey, with your wife.”
“Who says so? I don’t, for one.”
Julius laid his hand kindly on his brother’s arm.
“Don’t trifle with such a serious matter as this,” he said. “Your
marriage is, in every sense of the word, a misfortune--not only to you
but to your wife. It is impossible that you can live together. I have
come here to ask you to consent to a separation. Do that--and the
provision made for you in the unsigned codicil is yours. What do you
say?”
Geoffrey shook his brother’s hand off his arm.
“I say--No!” he answered.
Lady Holchester interfered for the first time.
“Your brother’s generous offer deserves a better answer than that,” she
said.
“My answer,” reiterated Geoffrey, “is--No!”
He sat between them with his clenched fists resting on his
knees--absolutely impenetrable to any thing that either of them could
say.
“In your situation,” said Julius, “a refusal is sheer madness. I won’t
accept it.”
“Do as you like about that. My mind’s made up. I won’t let my wife be
taken away from me. Here she stays.”
The brutal tone in which he had made that reply roused Lady Holchester’s
indignation.
“Take care!” she said. “You are not only behaving with the grossest
ingratitude toward your brother--you are forcing a suspicion into your
mother’s mind. You have some motive that you are hiding from us.”
He turned on his mother with a sudden ferocity which made Julius spring
to his feet. The next instant his eyes were on the ground, and the devil
that possessed him was quiet again.
“Some motive I’m hiding from you?” he repeated, with his head down, and
his utterance thicker than ever. “I’m ready to have my motive posted all
over London, if you like. I’m fond of her.”
He looked up as he said the last words. Lady Holchester turned away
her head--recoiling from her own son. So overwhelming was the shock
inflicted on her that even the strongly rooted prejudice which Mrs.
Glenarm had implanted in her mind yielded to it. At that moment she
absolutely pitied Anne!
“Poor creature!” said Lady Holchester.
He took instant offense at those two words. “I won’t have my wife pitied
by any body.” With that reply, he dashed into the passage; and called
out, “Anne! come down!”
Her soft voice answered; her light footfall was heard on the stairs. She
came into the room. Julius advanced, took her hand, and held it kindly
in his. “We are having a little family discussion,” he said, trying to
give her confidence. “And Geoffrey is getting hot over it, as usual.”
Geoffrey appealed sternly to his mother.
“Look at her!” he said. “Is she starved? Is she in rags? Is she covered
with bruises?” He turned to Anne. “They have come here to propose a
separation. They both believe I hate you. I don’t hate you. I’m a good
Christian. I owe it to you that I’m cut out of my father’s will. I
forgive you that. I owe it to you that I’ve lost the chance of marrying
a woman with ten thousand a year. I forgive you _that._ I’m not a man
who does things by halves. I said it should be my endeavor to make you a
good husband. I said it was my wish to make it up. Well! I am as good
as my word. And what’s the consequence? I am insulted. My mother comes
here, and my brother comes here--and they offer me money to part from
you. Money be hanged! I’ll be beholden to nobody. I’ll get my own
living. Shame on the people who interfere between man and wife!
Shame!--that’s what I say--shame!”
Anne looked, for an explanation, from her husband to her husband’s
mother.
“Have you proposed a separation between us?” she asked.
“Yes--on terms of the utmost advantage to my son; arranged with every
possible consideration toward you. Is there any objection on your side?”
“Oh, Lady Holchester! is it necessary to ask me? What does he say?”
“He has refused.”
“Refused!”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t go back from my word; I stick to what I
said this morning. It’s my endeavor to make you a good husband. It’s
my wish to make it up.” He paused, and then added his last reason: “I’m
fond of you.”
Their eyes met as he said it to her. Julius felt Anne’s hand suddenly
tighten round his. The desperate grasp of the frail cold fingers, the
imploring terror in the gentle sensitive face as it slowly turned his
way, said to him as if in words, “Don’t leave me friendless to-night!”
“If you both stop here till domesday,” said Geoffrey, “you’ll get
nothing more out of me. You have had my reply.”
With that, he seated himself doggedly in a corner of the room;
waiting--ostentatiously waiting--for his mother and his brother to take
their leave. The position was serious. To argue the matter with him that
night was hopeless. To invite Sir Patrick’s interference would only be
to provoke his savage temper to a new outbreak. On the other hand, to
leave the helpless woman, after what had passed, without another effort
to befriend her, was, in her situation, an act of downright inhumanity,
and nothing less. Julius took the one way out of the difficulty that was
left--the one way worthy of him as a compassionate and an honorable man.
“We will drop it for to-night, Geoffrey,” he said. “But I am not the
less resolved, in spite of all that you have said, to return to the
subject to-morrow. It would save me some inconvenience--a second journey
here from town, and then going back again to my engagements--if I staid
with you to-night. Can you give me a bed?”
A look flashed on him from Anne, which thanked him as no words could
have thanked him.
“Give you a bed?” repeated Geoffrey. He checked himself, on the point
of refusing. His mother was watching him; his wife was watching him--and
his wife knew that the room above them was a room to spare. “All right!”
he resumed, in another tone, with his eye on his mother. “There’s my
empty room up stairs. Have it, if you like. You won’t find I’ve changed
my mind to-morrow--but that’s your look-out. Stop here, if the fancy
takes you. I’ve no objection. It don’t matter to Me.--Will you trust his
lordship under my roof?” he added, addressing his mother. “I might have
some motive that I’m hiding from you, you know!” Without waiting for an
answer, he turned to Anne. “Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets
on the bed. Say there’s a live lord in the house--she’s to send in
something devilish good for supper!” He burst fiercely into a forced
laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the
room. “I shall not be here when you return,” she said. “Let me bid you
good-night.”
She shook hands with Anne--giving her Sir Patrick’s note, unseen, at the
same moment. Anne left the room. Without addressing another word to her
second son, Lady Holchester beckoned to Julius to give her his arm. “You
have acted nobly toward your brother,” she said to him. “My one comfort
and my one hope, Julius, are in you.” They went out together to the
gate, Geoffrey following them with the key in his hand. “Don’t be too
anxious,” Julius whispered to his mother. “I will keep the drink out
of his way to-night--and I will bring you a better account of him
to-morrow. Explain every thing to Sir Patrick as you go home.”
He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving
Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the
cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother--but he was seriously
uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their
brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey
had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately
acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some
abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius.
For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary
consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey’s mind.
They went back into the drawing-room. “What will you have to drink?”
said Geoffrey.
“Nothing.”
“You won’t keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?”
“No. You have had enough brandy-and-water.”
After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey
abruptly agreed with Julius “I look like it,” he said. “I’ll soon put
that right.” He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round
his head. “What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready?
Liberty Hall here. I’ve taken to cultivating my mind---I’m a reformed
character, you know, now I’m a married man. You do what you like. I
shall read.”
He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate
Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.
“You won’t cultivate your mind,” he said, “with such a book as that.
Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in
every sense of the word.”
“It will do for me. I don’t know good English when I see it.”
With that frank acknowledgment--to which the great majority of his
companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the
slightest injustice to the present state of English education--Geoffrey
drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record
of crime.
The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and
seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise,
that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book.
Instead of beginning at the first page, he ran the leaves through his
fingers, and turned them down at certain places, before he entered on
his reading. If Julius had looked over his brother’s shoulder, instead
of only looking at him across the table, he would have seen that
Geoffrey passed by all the lighter crimes reported in the Calendar, and
marked for his own private reading the cases of murder only.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SECOND.
THE APPARITION.
THE night had advanced. It was close on twelve o’clock when Anne heard
the servant’s voice, outside her bedroom door, asking leave to speak
with her for a moment.
“What is it?”
“The gentleman down stairs wishes to see you, ma’am.”
“Do you mean Mr. Delamayn’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“Where is Mr. Delamayn?”
“Out in the garden, ma’am.”
Anne went down stairs, and found Julius alone in the drawing-room.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I am afraid Geoffrey is ill. The
landlady has gone to bed, I am told--and I don’t know where to apply for
medical assistance. Do you know of any doctor in the neighborhood?”
Anne, like Julius, was a perfect stranger to the neighborhood. She
suggested making inquiry of the servant. On speaking to the girl, it
turned out that she knew of a medical man, living within ten minutes’
walk of the cottage. She could give plain directions enabling any person
to find the place--but she was afraid, at that hour of the night and in
that lonely neighborhood, to go out by herself.
“Is he seriously ill?” Anne asked.
“He is in such a state of nervous irritability,” said Julius, “that he
can’t remain still for two moments together in the same place. It began
with incessant restlessness while he was reading here. I persuaded him
to go to bed. He couldn’t lie still for an instant--he came down again,
burning with fever, and more restless than ever. He is out in the garden
in spite of every thing I could do to prevent him; trying, as he says,
to ‘run it off.’ It appears to be serious to _me._. Come and judge for
yourself.”
He led Anne into the next room; and, opening the shutter, pointed to the
garden.
The clouds had cleared off; the night was fine. The clear starlight
showed Geoffrey, stripped to his shirt and drawers, running round and
round the garden. He apparently believed himself to be contending at the
Fulham foot-race. At times, as the white figure circled round and
round in the star-light, they heard him cheering for “the South.” The
slackening thump of his feet on the ground, the heavier and heavier
gasps in which he drew his breath, as he passed the window, gave warning
that his strength was failing him. Exhaustion, if it led to no worse
consequences, would force him to return to the house. In the state of
his brain at that moment who could say what the result might be, if
medical help was not called in?
“I will go for the doctor,” said Julius, “if you don’t mind my leaving
you.”
It was impossible for Anne to set any apprehensions of her own against
the plain necessity for summoning assistance. They found the key of the
gate in the pocket of Geoffrey’s coat up stairs. Anne went with Julius
to let him out. “How can I thank you!” she said, gratefully. “What
should I have done without _you!_”
“I won’t be a moment longer than I can help,” he answered, and left her.
She secured the gate again, and went back to the cottage. The servant
met her at the door, and proposed calling up Hester Dethridge.
“We don’t know what the master may do while his brother’s away,” said
the girl. “And one more of us isn’t one too many, when we are only women
in the house.”
“You are quite right,” said Anne. “Wake your mistress.”
After ascending the stairs, they looked out into the garden, through the
window at the end of the passage on the upper floor. He was still going
round and round, but very slowly: his pace was fast slackening to a
walk.
Anne went back to her room, and waited near the open door--ready to
close and fasten it instantly if any thing occurred to alarm her. “How
changed I am!” she thought to herself. “Every thing frightens me, now.”
The inference was the natural one--but not the true one. The change
was not in herself, but in the situation in which she was placed. Her
position during the investigation at Lady Lundie’s house had tried her
moral courage only. It had exacted from her one of those noble efforts
of self-sacrifice which the hidden forces in a woman’s nature are
essentially capable of making. Her position at the cottage tried her
physical courage: it called on her to rise superior to the sense of
actual bodily danger--while that danger was lurking in the dark. There,
the woman’s nature sank under the stress laid on it--there, her courage
could strike no root in the strength of her love--there, the animal
instincts were the instincts appealed to; and the firmness wanted was
the firmness of a man.
Hester Dethridge’s door opened. She walked straight into Anne’s room.
The yellow clay-cold color of her face showed a faint flush of warmth;
its deathlike stillness was stirred by a touch of life. The stony eyes,
fixed as ever in their gaze, shone strangely with a dim inner lustre.
Her gray hair, so neatly arranged at other times, was in disorder under
her cap. All her movements were quicker than usual. Something had roused
the stagnant vitality in the woman--it was working in her mind; it was
forcing itself outward into her face. The servants at Windygates, in
past times, had seen these signs, and had known them for a warning to
leave Hester Dethridge to herself.
Anne asked her if she had heard what had happened.
She bowed her head.
“I hope you don’t mind being disturbed?”
She wrote on her slate: “I’m glad to be disturbed. I have been dreaming
bad dreams. It’s good for me to be wakened, when sleep takes me backward
in my life. What’s wrong with you? Frightened?”
“Yes.”
She wrote again, and pointed toward the garden with one hand, while she
held the slate up with the other: “Frightened of _him?_”
“Terribly frightened.”
She wrote for the third time, and offered the slate to Anne with a
ghastly smile: “I have been through it all. I know. You’re only at the
beginning now. He’ll put the wrinkles in your face, and the gray in your
hair. There will come a time when you’ll wish yourself dead and buried.
You will live through it, for all that. Look at Me.”
As she read the last three words, Anne heard the garden door below
opened and banged to again. She caught Hester Dethridge by the arm,
and listened. The tramp of Geoffrey’s feet, staggering heavily in the
passage, gave token of his approach to the stairs. He was talking to
himself, still possessed by the delusion that he was at the foot-race.
“Five to four on Delamayn. Delamayn’s won. Three cheers for the South,
and one cheer more. Devilish long race. Night already! Perry! where’s
Perry?”
He advanced, staggering from side to side of the passage. The stairs
below creaked as he set his foot on them. Hester Dethridge dragged
herself free from Anne, advanced, with her candle in her hand, and threw
open Geoffrey’s bedroom door; returned to the head of the stairs; and
stood there, firm as a rock, waiting for him. He looked up, as he set
his foot on the next stair, and met the view of Hester’s face, brightly
illuminated by the candle, looking down at him. On the instant he
stopped, rooted to the place on which he stood. “Ghost! witch! devil!”
he cried out, “take your eyes off me!” He shook his fist at her
furiously, with an oath--sprang back into the hall--and shut himself
into the dining-room from the sight of her. The panic which had seized
him once already in the kitchen-garden at Windygates, under the eyes
of the dumb cook, had fastened its hold on him once more.
Frightened--absolutely frightened--of Hester Dethridge!
The gate bell rang. Julius had returned with the doctor.
Anne gave the key to the girl to let them in. Hester wrote on her
slate, as composedly as if nothing had happened: “They’ll find me in the
kitchen, if they want me. I sha’n’t go back to my bedroom. My bedroom’s
full of bad dreams.” She descended the stairs. Anne waited in the upper
passage, looking over into the hall below. “Your brother is in the
drawing-room,” she called down to Julius. “The landlady is in the
kitchen, if you want her.” She returned to her room, and waited for what
might happen next.
After a brief interval she heard the drawing-room door open, and the
voices of the men out side. There seemed to be some difficulty in
persuading Geoffrey to ascend the stairs; he persisted in declaring that
Hester Dethridge was waiting for him at the top of them. After a little
they persuaded him that the way was free. Anne heard them ascend the
stairs and close his bedroom door.
Another and a longer interval passed before the door opened again.
The doctor was going away. He said his parting words to Julius in the
passage. “Look in at him from time to time through the night, and give
him another dose of the sedative mixture if he wakes. There is nothing
to b e alarmed about in the restlessness and the fever. They are only
the outward manifestations of some serious mischief hidden under them.
Send for the medical man who has last attended him. Knowledge of the
patient’s constitution is very important knowledge in this case.”
As Julius returned from letting the doctor out, Anne met him in the
hall. She was at once struck by the worn look in his face, and by the
fatigue which expressed itself in all his movements.
“You want rest,” she said. “Pray go to your room. I have heard what the
doctor said to you. Leave it to the landlady and to me to sit up.”
Julius owned that he had been traveling from Scotland during the
previous night. But he was unwilling to abandon the responsibility of
watching his brother. “You are not strong enough, I am sure, to take my
place,” he said, kindly. “And Geoffrey has some unreasoning horror of
the landlady which makes it very undesirable that he should see her
again, in his present state. I will go up to my room, and rest on the
bed. If you hear any thing you have only to come and call me.”
An hour more passed.
Anne went to Geoffrey’s door and listened. He was stirring in his bed,
and muttering to himself. She went on to the door of the next room,
which Julius had left partly open. Fatigue had overpowered him; she
heard, within, the quiet breathing of a man in a sound sleep. Anne
turned back again resolved not to disturb him.
At the head of the stairs she hesitated--not knowing what to do. Her
horror of entering Geoffrey’s room, by herself, was insurmountable.
But who else was to do it? The girl had gone to bed. The reason which
Julius had given for not employing the assistance of Hester Dethridge
was unanswerable. She listened again at Geoffrey’s door. No sound was
now audible in the room to a person in the passage outside. Would it be
well to look in, and make sure that he had only fallen asleep again?
She hesitated once more--she was still hesitating, when Hester Dethridge
appeared from the kitchen.
She joined Anne at the top of the stairs--looked at her--and wrote a
line on her slate: “Frightened to go in? Leave it to Me.”
The silence in the room justified the inference that he was asleep.
If Hester looked in, Hester could do no harm now. Anne accepted the
proposal.
“If you find any thing wrong,” she said, “don’t disturb his brother.
Come to me first.”
With that caution she withdrew. It was then nearly two in the morning.
She, like Julius, was sinking from fatigue. After waiting a little, and
hearing nothing, she threw herself on the sofa in her room. If any thing
happened, a knock at the door would rouse her instantly.
In the mean while Hester Dethridge opened Geoffrey’s bedroom door and
went in.
The movements and the mutterings which Anne had heard, had been
movements and mutterings in his sleep. The doctor’s composing draught,
partially disturbed in its operation for the moment only, had recovered
its sedative influence on his brain. Geoffrey was in a deep and quiet
sleep.