Miss Marrable, after reading this note, refolded it as usual, and
took care that it reached Amy. Then, with the consciousness that she
was about to perpetrate a great and good action, she sat down in her
own room, and waited for Amy’s reply to be brought to her by the
treacherous maid. The note, which was very brief, came to Miss Marrable
in less than half an hour. ‘DEAR VIV,’ wrote Amy, ‘I will be ready, and
will look out for the white choker.—Your loving A.’
In spite of the ordeal which was before her, the good old spinster was
perfectly calm and unflurried. At one o’clock she made a very hearty
luncheon; at half-past two she took her nieces for a walk, and talked
to them with extraordinary affability about the emancipation of women;
and at half-past six she appeared at the _table d’hôte_, and, just as
if the occasion were an ordinary one, complained of the soup being too
peppery, the fish too cold, and the mutton too underdone. Her coolness
was admirable. Lucy and Amy, on the other hand, could scarcely conceal
their excitement and agitation. They each looked at least a hundred
times during dinner at the clock upon the mantel-piece; and they each
started and turned red whenever the noise of carriage-wheels without
was heard. After dinner, Miss Marrable went again to her room and began
to make her preparations.
‘How sad it will be,’ she thought to herself, ‘for poor young Jellicoe
when I discover myself and overwhelm him with reproaches. Men are
but poor creatures. Perhaps he will faint. Yes; I will take my
salts-bottle.’ She wrapped herself in an ulster belonging to Amy, and
having shrouded her face in a thick veil, took a seat at her window,
which happened to be immediately above the front-door of the hotel.
Meantime, Edward Griffiths the billiard-marker was ill at ease. He knew
Miss Marrable by sight, and looked forward with terror to the prospect
of an encounter with her at close quarters. Nevertheless, he had Vivian
Jellicoe’s five-pound note in his pocket, and he was determined to
see the affair bravely through. He felt, however, that his natural
bravery would not be sufficient to support him; and he therefore,
at about six o’clock, began to swallow a succession of potent doses
of whisky-and-water, with the object of laying in a stock of Dutch
courage. Whether the whisky was bad or the water was too powerful, I
cannot say; but at ten minutes to nine, when Vivian Jellicoe arrived to
give final directions and counsel to his substitute, he found Edward
Griffiths decidedly the worse for liquor. Fortunately the young fellow
was neither quarrelsome nor noisy in his cups. His main ambition
seemed to be to go to sleep in peace; and no sooner had Vivian bundled
him into one corner of the carriage, which was in waiting in the
stable-yard, than Mr Griffiths incontinently slumbered. The carriage
was then driven round to the front-door of the hotel. Miss Marrable,
from her post of vantage, saw it, and, remarking that the coachman wore
a white choker, descended at once, and listened, as she went, outside
Amy’s room, to satisfy herself that that young lady had not forestalled
her. The porter with alacrity opened the carriage-door. In the dark
shadows of the interior, Miss Marrable caught sight of the figure of
a man; and making sure that all was right, she entered at once. An
instant later she was being whirled northward along the lonely Harlech
Road.
Half an hour afterwards, two other carriages left the hotel, but in
the opposite direction. In one of them were Lucy and Mr Rhodes; and in
the other, Amy and Mr Jellicoe. It was nearly midnight ere they arrived
at the Browns’ house at Llanyltid; but the Browns were all up and
waiting for them, and the two runaway couples were warmly welcomed, and
hospitably taken care of.
Miss Marrable was less fortunate. As soon as the carriage in which she
sat had been driven beyond the lights of the town, she threw aside her
veil, and gazed with magnificent scorn towards the dim form upon the
seat in front of her. The look eliciting no response of any kind, Miss
Marrable ventured to cough, at first gently, and then with considerable
violence; but still the figure took no notice.
‘This is exceedingly strange,’ thought the spinster lady. ‘I must
adopt more active measures.’ And with great tenderness, she prodded Mr
Griffiths with the point of her umbrella. The billiard-marker groaned
in his sleep. ‘Mr Jellicoe!’ she exclaimed in her deepest and most
threatening tones. She had counted upon this exclamation producing an
instantaneous and astonishing effect upon her companion; and she was
wofully disappointed when he merely groaned again.
‘Gracious!’ she said to herself: ‘he is ill. He would never go on like
that, if he were not ill. The fright has been too much for him. Oh,
how sorry I am! These men are such weak creatures. I must stop the
carriage!’ And, throwing down the sash of the window, she put out her
head and cried to the driver to pull up his horses. But the driver,
like the billiard-marker, had been very liberally feed; and he was
determined that nothing should stop him until he reached Harlech; he
therefore cracked his whip, to drown Miss Marrable’s voice, and drove
down the next hill at a pace which threatened to shake the carriage to
pieces.
‘Stop, stop! For goodness’ sake, stop!’ shouted Miss Marrable; but
finding that her words were not listened to, she drew in her head,
and strove to revive the wretched man in front of her. She held her
salts-bottle to his nose; she chafed his hands; she fanned his brow;
and she allowed his feverish head to rest upon her shoulder; but she
could not awaken him.
‘If he should die!’ she thought. ‘I intended to frighten him; but not
so much as this. Oh! this is terrible!’ And once more she tried to
prevail upon the driver to stop; but in vain. The sight of distant
lights, however, gave her at length some satisfaction. The carriage
entered a long avenue, the gate of which lay ready opened for it; and
about an hour and a quarter after leaving Abermaw, it drew up before
the Joneses’ house near Harlech.
With a sigh of relief, Miss Marrable threw open the door and sprang
out, to find herself in the presence of half-a-dozen people who were
congregated upon the steps.
‘Quick!’ she cried; ‘don’t ask questions! He is ill; he is dying. Take
him out!’
The Joneses, who had not been prepared for the apparition of a
middle-aged spinster, and who were expecting Mr Jellicoe and Miss
Allerton, were somewhat astonished.
‘Who is inside?’ asked Mr Tom Jones, the son and heir of the family.
‘Oh! Mr Jellicoe! Be quick! For mercy’s sake, be quick!’
‘You don’t mean it!’ cried Tom, rushing to the carriage to succour his
friend. But an instant later he burst into a violent fit of laughter.
‘Why, it’s not Jellicoe at all!’ he said. ‘It’s Griffiths, the
billiard-marker from the _Cors-y-Gedol_; and he is hopelessly drunk.
Nice companion, indeed!’
Miss Marrable is, as I have already said, a woman without weaknesses.
On hearing this announcement, however, she fainted away. When, thanks
to the kind attentions of the female members of the Joneses’ family,
she revived, she indignantly charged those estimable people with having
deliberately plotted her discomfiture; and she insisted upon at once
returning to Abermaw; but the carriage (and Griffiths) had gone; so Mr
Jones, senior, who grasped the situation, volunteered to drive Miss
Marrable back to the _Cors-y-Gedol Hotel_; and by twelve o’clock, or
shortly afterwards, she was again in her own room. It was then that
she learned of the desertion of Lucy and Amy. I need not describe how
she received the news, and how she declared that her abandoned nieces
should never again behold her face; nor that, although she is a woman
without weaknesses, she passed the greater part of the remainder of the
night in violent hysterics. She telegraphed next day to Mr Larkspur and
Mr Allerton; and repairing to the _Red Cow_, furiously denounced Sir
Thomas Jellicoe as the basest and most heartless of men!
Three weeks afterwards, however, the edge of her anger had worn off.
Lucy and Amy were married. It was foolish, but, perhaps, it was not
wholly inexcusable; and thus reasoning, Miss Marrable, in the goodness
of her heart, determined to gradually receive them back into her
favour. But she has never wholly forgiven Lucy for suggesting the
substitution of the billiard-marker for Vivian Jellicoe.
‘My dear,’ she says, when she retells the story of her drive to
Harlech, ‘the wretched man was perfectly saturated with whisky, and I
really don’t know what he might not have done if I hadn’t kept my eye
steadily on him. But beneath my gaze he cowered, my dear, positively
cowered! I never saw a savage brute so completely tamed.’
And to this day Miss Marrable believes that but for her Eye, the
billiard-marker might—horrid thought!—have run away with her too.