my wife with me, with the greatest pleasure. Do you hear that? With the
greatest pleasure.” He stopped to observe the effect of his reply. Sir
Patrick waited impenetrably to hear more--if he had more to say. “I’m
sorry I lost my temper just now,” he resumed “I am badly treated--I’m
distrusted without a cause. I ask you to bear witness,” he added, his
voice getting louder again, while his eyes moved uneasily backward and
forward between Sir Patrick and Anne, “that I treat my wife as becomes a
lady. Her friend calls on her--and she’s free to receive her friend. My
mother wants to see her--and I promise to take her to my mother’s. At
two o’clock to-morrow. Where am I to blame? You stand there looking at
me, and saying nothing. Where am I to blame?”
“If a man’s own conscience justifies him, Mr. Delamayn,” said Sir
Patrick, “the opinions of others are of very little importance. My
errand here is performed.”
As he turned to bid Anne farewell, the uneasiness that he felt at
leaving her forced its way to view. The color faded out of his face. His
hand trembled as it closed tenderly and firmly on hers. “I shall see you
to-morrow, at Holchester House,” he said; giving his arm while he spoke
to Blanche. He took leave of Geoffrey, without looking at him again, and
without seeing his offered hand. In another minute they were gone.
Anne waited on the lower floor of the cottage while Geoffrey closed
and locked the gate. She had no wish to appear to avoid him, after the
answer that he had sent to his mother’s message. He returned slowly
half-way across the front garden, looked toward the passage in which she
was standing, passed before the door, and disappeared round the corner
of the cottage on his way to the back garden. The inference was not to
be mistaken. It was Geoffrey who was avoiding _her._ Had he lied to Sir
Patrick? When the next day came would he find reasons of his own for
refusing to take her to Holchester House?
She went up stairs. At the same moment Hester Dethridge opened her
bedroom door to come out. Observing Anne, she closed it again and
remained invisible in her room. Once more the inference was not to be
mistaken. Hester Dethridge, also, had her reasons for avoiding Anne.
What did it mean? What object could there be in common between Hester
and Geoffrey?
There was no fathoming the meaning of it. Anne’s thoughts reverted to
the communication which had been secretly made to her by Blanche. It
was not in womanhood to be insensible to such devotion as Sir Patrick’s
conduct implied. Terrible as her position had become in its ever-growing
uncertainty, in its never-ending suspense, the oppression of it yielded
for the moment to the glow of pride and gratitude which warmed her
heart, as she thought of the sacrifices that had been made, of the
perils that were still to be encountered, solely for her sake. To
shorten the period of suspense seemed to be a duty which she owed to Sir
Patrick, as well as to herself. Why, in her situation, wait for what the
next day might bring forth? If the opportunity offered, she determined
to put the signal in the window that night.
Toward evening she heard once more the noises which appeared to indicate
that repairs of some sort were going on in the house. This time the
sounds were fainter; and they came, as she fancied, not from the spare
room, as before, but from Geoffrey’s room, next to it.
The dinner was later than usual that day. Hester Dethridge did not
appear with the tray till dusk. Anne spoke to her, and received a mute
sign in answer. Determined to see the woman’s face plainly, she put
a question which required a written answer on the slate; and, telling
Hester to wait, went to the mantle-piece to light her candle. When she
turned round with the lighted candle in her hand, Hester was gone.
Night came. She rang her bell to have the tray taken away. The fall of
a strange footstep startled her outside her door. She called out, “Who’s
there?” The voice of the lad whom Geoffrey employed to go on errands for
him answered her.
“What do you want here?” she asked, through the door.
“Mr. Delamayn sent me up, ma’am. He wishes to speak to you directly.”
Anne found Geoffrey in the dining-room. His object in wishing to speak
to her was, on the surface of it, trivial enough. He wanted to know
how she would prefer going to Holchester House on the next day--by the
railway, or in a carriage. “If you prefer driving,” he said, “the boy
has come here for orders, and he can tell them to send a carriage from
the livery-stables, as he goes home.”
“The railway will do perfectly well for me,” Anne replied.
Instead of accepting the answer, and dropping the subject, he asked her
to reconsider her decision. There was an absent, uneasy expression in
his eye as he begged her not to consult economy at the expense of her
own comfort. He appeared to have some reason of his own for preventing
her from leaving the room. “Sit d own a minute, and think before you
decide,” he said. Having forced her to take a chair, he put his head
outside the door and directed the lad to go up stairs, and see if he had
left his pipe in his bedroom. “I want you to go in comfort, as a lady
should,” he repeated, with the uneasy look more marked than ever. Before
Anne could reply, the lad’s voice reached them from the bedroom floor,
raised in shrill alarm, and screaming “Fire!”
Geoffrey ran up stairs. Anne followed him. The lad met them at the
top of the stairs. He pointed to the open door of Anne’s room. She was
absolutely certain of having left her lighted candle, when she went down
to Geoffrey, at a safe distance from the bed-curtains. The bed-curtains,
nevertheless, were in a blaze of fire.
There was a supply of water to the cottage, on the upper floor. The
bedroom jugs and cans usually in their places at an earlier hour, were
standing that night at the cistern. An empty pail was left near them.
Directing the lad to bring him water from these resources, Geoffrey tore
down the curtains in a flaming heap, partly on the bed and partly on the
sofa near it. Using the can and the pail alternately, as the boy brought
them, he drenched the bed and the sofa. It was all over in little
more than a minute. The cottage was saved. But the bed-furniture
was destroyed; and the room, as a matter of course, was rendered
uninhabitable, for that night at least, and probably for more nights to
come.
Geoffrey set down the empty pail; and, turning to Anne, pointed across
the passage.
“You won’t be much inconvenienced by this,” he said. “You have only to
shift your quarters to the spare room.”
With the assistance of the lad, he moved Anne’s boxes, and the chest of
drawers, which had escaped damage, into the opposite room. This done,
he cautioned her to be careful with her candles for the future--and went
down stairs, without waiting to hear what she said in reply. The lad
followed him, and was dismissed for the night.
Even in the confusion which attended the extinguishing of the fire, the
conduct of Hester Dethridge had been remarkable enough to force itself
on the attention of Anne.
She had come out from her bedroom, when the alarm was given; had looked
at the flaming curtains; and had drawn back, stolidly submissive, into
a corner to wait the event. There she had stood--to all appearance,
utterly indifferent to the possible destruction of her own cottage. The
fire extinguished, she still waited impenetrably in her corner, while
the chest of drawers and the boxes were being moved--then locked the
door, without even a passing glance at the scorched ceiling and the
burned bed-furniture--put the key into her pocket--and went back to her
room.
Anne had hitherto not shared the conviction felt by most other persons
who were brought into contact with Hester Dethridge, that the woman’s
mind was deranged. After what she had just seen, however, the general
impression became her impression too. She had thought of putting certain
questions to Hester, when they were left together, as to the origin of
the fire. Reflection decided her on saying nothing, for that night at
least. She crossed the passage, and entered the spare room--the room
which she had declined to occupy on her arrival at the cottage, and
which she was obliged to sleep in now.
She was instantly struck by a change in the disposition of the furniture
of the room.
The bed had been moved. The head--set, when she had last seen it,
against the side wall of the cottage--was placed now against the
partition wall which separated the room from Geoffrey’s room. This new
arrangement had evidently been effected with a settled purpose of some
sort. The hook in the ceiling which supported the curtains (the bed,
unlike the bed in the other room, having no canopy attached to it) had
been moved so as to adapt itself to the change that had been made. The
chairs and the washhand-stand, formerly placed against the partition
wall, were now, as a matter of necessity, shifted over to the vacant
space against the side wall of the cottage. For the rest, no other
alteration was visible in any part of the room.
In Anne’s situation, any event not immediately intelligible on the face
of it, was an event to be distrusted. Was there a motive for the change
in the position of the bed? And was it, by any chance, a motive in which
she was concerned?
The doubt had barely occurred to her, before a startling suspicion
succeeded it. Was there some secret purpose to be answered by making her
sleep in the spare room? Did the question which the servant had heard
Geoffrey put to Hester, on the previous night, refer to this? Had the
fire which had so unaccountably caught the curtains in her own room,
been, by any possibility, a fire purposely kindled, to force her out?
She dropped into the nearest chair, faint with horror, as those three
questions forced themselves in rapid succession on her mind.
After waiting a little, she recovered self-possession enough to
recognize the first plain necessity of putting her suspicions to the
test. It was possible that her excited fancy had filled her with a
purely visionary alarm. For all she knew to the contrary, there might be
some undeniably sufficient reason for changing the position of the bed.
She went out, and knocked at the door of Hester Dethridge’s room.
“I want to speak to you,” she said.
Hester came out. Anne pointed to the spare room, and led the way to it.
Hester followed her.
“Why have you changed the place of the bed,” she asked, “from the wall
there, to the wall here?”
Stolidly submissive to the question, as she had been stolidly submissive
to the fire, Hester Dethridge wrote her reply. On all other occasions
she was accustomed to look the persons to whom she offered her slate
steadily in the face. Now, for the first time, she handed it to Anne
with her eyes on the floor. The one line written contained no direct
answer: the words were these:
“I have meant to move it, for some time past.”
“I ask you why you have moved it.”
She wrote these four words on the slate: “The wall is damp.”
Anne looked at the wall. There was no sign of damp on the paper. She
passed her hand over it. Feel where she might, the wall was dry.
“That is not your reason,” she said.
Hester stood immovable.
“There is no dampness in the wall.”
Hester pointed persistently with her pencil to the four words, still
without looking up--waited a moment for Anne to read them again--and
left the room.
It was plainly useless to call her back. Anne’s first impulse when she
was alone again was to secure the door. She not only locked it, but
bolted it at top and bottom. The mortise of the lock and the staples
of the bolts, when she tried them, were firm. The lurking
treachery--wherever else it might be--was not in the fastenings of the
door.
She looked all round the room; examining the fire place, the window and
its shutters, the interior of the wardrobe, the hidden space under the
bed. Nothing was any where to be discovered which could justify the most
timid person living in feeling suspicion or alarm.
Appearances, fair as they were, failed to convince her. The presentiment
of some hidden treachery, steadily getting nearer and nearer to her in
the dark, had rooted itself firmly in her mind. She sat down, and tried
to trace her way back to the clew, through the earlier events of the
day.
The effort was fruitless: nothing definite, nothing tangible, rewarded
it. Worse still, a new doubt grew out of it--a doubt whether the motive
which Sir Patrick had avowed (through Blanche) was the motive for
helping her which was really in his mind.
Did he sincerely believe Geoffrey’s conduct to be animated by no worse
object than a mercenary object? and was his only purpose in planning to
remove her out of her husband’s reach, to force Geoffrey’s consent to
their separation on the terms which Julius had proposed? Was this really
the sole end that he had in view? or was he secretly convinced (knowing
Anne’s position as he knew it) that she was in personal danger at the
cottage? and had he considerately kept that conviction concealed, in
the fear that he might otherwise encourage her to feel alarmed about
herself? She looked round the strange room, in the silence of the
night, and she felt that the latter interpretation was the likeliest
interpretation of the two.
The sounds caused by the closing of the doors and windows reached her
from the ground-floor. What was to be done?
It was impossible, to show the signal which had been agreed on to Sir
Patrick and Arnold. The window in which they expected to see it was
the window of the room in which the fire had broken out--the room which
Hester Dethridge had locked up for the night.
It was equally hopeless to wait until the policeman passed on his beat,
and to call for help. Even if she could prevail upon herself to make
that open acknowledgment of distrust under her husband’s roof, and even
if help was near, what valid reason could she give for raising an alarm?
There was not the shadow of a reason to justify any one in placing her
under the protection of the law.
As a last resource, impelled by her blind distrust of the change in the
position of the bed, she attempted to move it. The utmost exertion of
her strength did not suffice to stir the heavy piece of furniture out of
its place, by so much as a hair’s breadth.
There was no alternative but to trust to the security of the locked
and bolted door, and to keep watch through the night--certain that Sir
Patrick and Arnold were, on their part, also keeping watch in the near
neighborhood of the cottage. She took out her work and her books; and
returned to her chair, placing it near the table, in the middle of the
room.
The last noises which told of life and movement about her died away. The
breathless stillness of the night closed round her.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SIXTH.
THE MEANS.
THE new day dawned; the sun rose; the household was astir again. Inside
the spare room, and outside the spare room, nothing had happened.
At the hour appointed for leaving the cottage to pay the promised visit
to Holchester House, Hester Dethridge and Geoffrey were alone together
in the bedroom in which Anne had passed the night.
“She’s dressed, and waiting for me in the front garden,” said Geoffrey.
“You wanted to see me here alone. What is it?”
Hester pointed to the bed.
“You want it moved from the wall?”
Hester nodded her head.
They moved the bed some feet away from the partition wall. After a
momentary pause, Geoffrey spoke again.
“It must be done to-night,” he said. “Her friends may interfere; the
girl may come back. It must be done to-night.”
Hester bowed her head slowly.
“How long do you want to be left by yourself in the house?”
She held up three of her fingers.
“Does that mean three hours?”
She nodded her head.
“Will it be done in that time?”
She made the affirmative sign once more.
Thus far, she had never lifted her eyes to his. In her manner of
listening to him when he spoke, in the slightest movement that she made
when necessity required it, the same lifeless submission to him, the
same mute horror of him, was expressed. He had, thus far, silently
resented this, on his side. On the point of leaving the room the
restraint which he had laid on himself gave way. For the first time, he
resented it in words.
“Why the devil can’t you look at me?” he asked
She let the question pass, without a sign to show that she had heard
him. He angrily repeated it. She wrote on her slate, and held it out to
him--still without raising her eyes to his face.
“You know you can speak,” he said. “You know I have found you out.
What’s the use of playing the fool with _me?_”
She persisted in holding the slate before him. He read these words:
“I am dumb to you, and blind to you. Let me be.”
“Let you be!” he repeated. “It’s a little late in the day to be
scrupulous, after what you have done. Do you want your Confession back,
or not?”
As the reference to the Confession passed his lips, she raised her head.
A faint tinge of color showed itself on her livid cheeks; a momentary
spasm of pain stirred her deathlike face. The one last interest left in
the woman’s life was the interest of recovering the manuscript which
had been taken from her. To _that_ appeal the stunned intelligence still
faintly answered--and to no other.
“Remember the bargain on your side,” Geoffrey went on, “and I’ll
remember the bargain on mine. This is how it stands, you know. I have
read your Confession; and I find one thing wanting. You don’t tell how
it was done. I know you smothered him--but I don’t know how. I want to
know. You’re dumb; and you can’t tell me. You must do to the wall here
what you did in the other house. You run no risks. There isn’t a soul
to see you. You have got the place to yourself. When I come back let me
find this wall like the other wall--at that small hour of the morning
you know, when you were waiting, with the towel in your hand, for the
first stroke of the clock. Let me find that; and to-morrow you shall
have your Confession back again.”
As the reference to the Confession passed his lips for the second time,
the sinking energy in the woman leaped up in her once more. She snatched
her slate from her side; and, writing on it rapidly, held it, with both
hands, close under his eyes. He read these words:
“I won’t wait. I must have it to-night.”
“Do you think I keep your Confession about me?” said Geoffrey. “I
haven’t even got it in the house.”
She staggered back; and looked up for the first time.
“Don’t alarm yourself,” he went on. “It’s sealed up with my seal; and
it’s safe in my bankers’ keeping. I posted it to them myself. You don’t
stick at a trifle, Mrs. Dethridge. If I had kept it locked up in the
house, you might have forced the lock when my back was turned. If I had
kept it about me--I might have had that towel over my face, in the
small hours of the morning! The bankers will give you back your
Confession--just as they have received it from me--on receipt of an
order in my handwriting. Do what I have told you; and you shall have the
order to-night.”
She passed her apron over her face, and drew a long breath of relief.
Geoffrey turned to the door.
“I will be back at six this evening,” he said. “Shall I find it done?”
She bowed her head.
His first condition accepted, he proceeded to the second.
“When the opportunity offers,” he resumed, “I shall go up to my room. I
shall ring the dining room bell first. You will go up before me when you
hear that--and you will show me how you did it in the empty house?”
She made the affirmative sign once more.
At the same moment the door in the passage below was opened and closed
again. Geoffrey instantly went down stairs. It was possible that Anne
might have forgotten something; and it was necessary to prevent her from
returning to her own room.
They met in the passage.
“Tired of waiting in the garden?” he asked, abruptly.
She pointed to the dining-room.
“The postman has just given me a letter for you, through the grating in
the gate,” she answered. “I have put it on the table in there.”
He went in. The handwriting on the address of the letter was the
handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. He put it unread into his pocket, and went
back to Anne.
“Step out!” he said. “We shall lose the train.”
They started for their visit to Holchester House.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SEVENTH.
THE END.
AT a few minutes before six o’clock that evening, Lord Holchester’s
carriage brought Geoffrey and Anne back to the cottage.
Geoffrey prevented the servant from ringing at the gate. He had taken
the key with him, when he left home earlier in the day. Having admitted
Anne, and having closed the gate again, he went on before her to the
kitchen window, and called to Hester Dethridge.
“Take some cold water into the drawing-room and fill the vase on the
chimney-piece,” he said. “The sooner you put those flowers into water,”
he added, turning to his wife, “the longer they will last.”
He pointed, as he spoke, to a nosegay in Anne’s hand, which Julius had
gathered for her from the conservatory at Holchester House. Leaving her
to arrange the flowers in the vase, he went up stairs. After waiting for
a moment, he was joined by Hester Dethridge.
“Done?” he asked, in a whisper.
Hester made the affirmative sign. Geoffrey took off his boots and led
the way into the spare room. They noiselessly moved the bed back to its
place against the partition wall--and left the room again. When Anne
entered it, some minutes afterward, not the slightest change of any kind
was visible since she had last seen it in the middle of the day.
She removed her bonnet and mantle, and sat down to rest.
The whole course of events, since the previous night, had tended one
way, and had exerted the same delusive influence over her mind. It was
impossible for her any longer to resist the conviction that she had
distrusted appearances without the slightest reason, and that she had
permitted purely visionary suspicions to fill her with purely causeless
alarm. In the firm belief that she was in danger, she had watched
through the night--and nothing had happened. In the confident
anticipation that Geoffrey had promised what he was resolved not to
perform, she had waited to see what excuse he would find for keeping
her at the cottage. And, when the time came for the visit, she found him
ready to fulfill the engagement which he had made. At Holchester House,
not the slightest interference had been attempted with her perfect
liberty of action and speech. Resolved to inform Sir Patrick that she
had changed her room, she had described the alarm of fire and the events
which had succeeded it, in the fullest detail--and had not been once
checked by Geoffrey from beginning to end. She had spoken in confidence
to Blanche, and had never been interrupted. Walking round the
conservatory, she had dropped behind the others with perfect impunity,
to say a grateful word to Sir Patrick, and to ask if the interpretation
that he placed on Geoffrey’s conduct was really the interpretation which
had been hinted at by Blanche. They had talked together for ten
minutes or more. Sir Patrick had assured her that Blanche had correctly
represented his opinion. He had declared his conviction that the rash
way was, in her case, the right way; and that she would do well (with
his assistance) to take the initiative, in the matter of the separation,
on herself. “As long as he can keep you under the same roof with
him”--Sir Patrick had said--“so long he will speculate on our anxiety to
release you from the oppression of living with him; and so long he will
hold out with his brother (in the character of a penitent husband)
for higher terms. Put the signal in the window, and try the experiment
to-night. Once find your way to the garden door, and I answer for
keeping you safely out of his reach until he has submitted to the
separation, and has signed the deed.” In those words he had urged Anne
to prompt action. He had received, in return, her promise to be guided
by his advice. She had gone back to the drawing-room; and Geoffrey had
made no remark on her absence. She had returned to Fulham, alone with
him in his brother’s carriage; and he had asked no questions. What was
it natural, with her means of judging, to infer from all this? Could
she see into Sir Patrick’s mind and detect that he was deliberately
concealing his own conviction, in the fear that he might paralyze her
energies if he acknowledged the alarm for her that he really felt? No.
She could only accept the false appearances that surrounded her in the
disguise of truth. She could only adopt, in good faith, Sir Patrick’s
assumed point of view, and believe, on the evidence of her own
observation, that Sir Patrick was right.
Toward dusk, Anne began to feel the exhaustion which was the necessary
result of a night passed without sleep. She rang her bell, and asked for
some tea.
Hester Dethridge answered the bell. Instead of making the usual sign,
she stood considering--and then wrote on her slate. These were the
words: “I have all the work to do, now the girl has gone. If you would
have your tea in the drawing-room, you would save me another journey up
stairs.”