The weather had been unusually warm. Of all oppressive summers a hot
summer in London is the hardest to endure. The little exercise that
Sydney could take was, as Randal knew, deferred until the evening. On
asking for her, he was surprised to hear that she had gone out.
“Is she walking?” he asked, “on a day such as this?”
No: she was too much overcome by the heat to be able to walk. The
landlady’s boy had been sent to fetch a cab, and he had heard Miss
Westerfield tell the driver to go to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
The address at once reminded Randal of Mr. Sarrazin. On the chance of
making a discovery, he went to the lawyer’s office. It had struck him as
being just possible that Sydney might have called there for the second
time; and, on making inquiry, he found that his surmise was correct.
Miss Westerfield had called, and had gone away again more than an hour
since.
Having mentioned this circumstance, good Mr. Sarrazin rather abruptly
changed the subject.
He began to talk of the weather, and, like everybody else, he complained
of the heat. Receiving no encouragement so far, he selected politics as
his next topic. Randal was unapproachably indifferent to the state of
parties, and the urgent necessity for reform. Still bent, as it
seemed, on preventing his visitor from taking a leading part in the
conversation, Mr. Sarrazin tried the exercise of hospitality next.
He opened his cigar-case, and entered eagerly into the merits of his
cigars; he proposed a cool drink, and described the right method of
making it as distinguished from the wrong. Randal was not thirsty, and
was not inclined to smoke. Would the pertinacious lawyer give way
at last? In appearance, at least, he submitted to defeat. “You want
something of me, my friend,” he said, with a patient smile. “What is
it?”
“I want to know why Miss Westerfield called on you?”
Randal flattered himself that he had made a prevaricating reply simply
impossible. Nothing of the sort! Mr. Sarrazin slipped through his
fingers once more. The unwritten laws of gallantry afforded him a refuge
now.
“The most inviolate respect,” he solemnly declared, “is due to a lady’s
confidence--and, what is more, to a young lady’s confidence--and, what
is more yet, to a pretty young lady’s confidence. The sex, my dear
fellow! Must I recall your attention to what is due to the sex?”
This little outbreak of the foreign side of his friend’s character was
no novelty to Randal. He remained as indifferent to the inviolate claims
of the sex as if he had been an old man of ninety.
“Did Miss Westerfield say anything about me?” was his next question.
Slippery Mr. Sarrazin slid into another refuge: he entered a protest.
“Here is a change of persons and places!” he exclaimed. “Am I a witness
of the court of justice--and are you the lawyer who examines me? My
memory is defective, my learned friend. _Non mi ricordo._ I know nothing
about it.”
Randal changed his tone. “We have amused ourselves long enough,” he
said. “I have serious reasons, Sarrazin, for wishing to know what passed
between Miss Westerfield and you--and I trust my old friend to relieve
my anxiety.”
The lawyer was accustomed to say of himself that he never did things by
halves. His answer to Randal offered a proof of his accurate estimate of
his own character.
“Your old friend will deserve your confidence in him,” he answered. “You
want to know why Miss Westerfield called here. Her object in view was
to twist me round her finger--and I beg to inform you that she has
completely succeeded. My dear Randal, this pretty creature’s cunning is
remarkable even for a woman. I am an old lawyer, skilled in the ways
of the world--and a young girl has completely overreached me. She
asked--oh, heavens, how innocently!--if Mrs. Norman was likely to make a
long stay at her present place of residence.”
Randal interrupted him. “You don’t mean to tell me you have given her
Catherine’s address?”
“Buck’s Hotel, Sydenham,” Mr. Sarrazin answered. “She has got the
address down in her nice little pocketbook.”
“What amazing weakness!” Randal exclaimed.
Mr. Sarrazin cordially agreed with him. “Amazing weakness, as you say.
Pretty Miss Sydney has extracted more things, besides the address. She
knows that Mrs. Norman is here on business relating to new investments
of her money. She knows besides that one of the trustees is keeping us
waiting. She also made sensible remarks. She mentioned having heard Mrs.
Norman say that the air of London never agreed with her; and she hoped
that a comparatively healthy neighborhood had been chosen for Mrs.
Norman’s place of residence. This, you see, was leading up to the
discovery of the address. The spirit of mischief possessed me; I allowed
Miss Westerfield to take a little peep at the truth. ‘Mrs. Norman is not
actually in London,’ I said; ‘she is only in the neighborhood.’ For what
followed on this, my experience of ladies ought to have prepared me. I
am ashamed to say _this_ lady took me completely by surprise.”
“What did she do?”
“Fell on her knees, poor dear--and said: ‘Oh, Mr. Sarrazin, be kinder
to me than you have ever been yet; tell me where Mrs. Norman is!’--I put
her back in her chair, and I took her handkerchief out of her pocket and
I wiped her eyes.”
“And then you told her the address?”
“I was near it, but I didn’t do it yet. I asked what you had done in the
matter. Alas, your kind heart has led you to promise more than you could
perform. She had waited to hear from you if Mrs. Norman consented to see
her, and had waited in vain. Hard on her, wasn’t it? I was sorry, but I
was still obdurate. I only felt the symptoms which warned me that I was
going to make a fool of myself, when she let me into her secret for the
first time, and said plainly what she wanted with Mrs. Norman. Her
tears and her entreaties I had resisted. The confession of her motives
overpowered me. It is right,” cried Mr. Sarrazin, suddenly warming into
enthusiasm, “that these two women should meet. Remember how that poor
girl has proved that her repentance is no sham. I say, she has a right
to tell, and the lady whom she has injured has a right to hear, what she
has done to atone for the past, what confession she is willing to make
to the one woman in the world (though she _is_ a divorced woman) who is
most interested in hearing what Miss Westerfield’s life has been with
that wretched brother of yours. Ah, yes, I know what the English cant
might say. Away with the English cant! it is the worst obstacle to the
progress of the English nation!”
Randal listened absently: he was thinking.
There could be little doubt to what destination Sydney Westerfield had
betaken herself, when she left the lawyer’s office. At that moment,
perhaps, she and Catherine were together--and together alone.
Mr. Sarrazin had noticed his friend’s silence. “Is it possible you don’t
agree with me?” he asked.
“I don’t feel as hopefully as you do, if these two ladies meet.”
“Ah, my friend, you are not a sanguine man by nature. If Mrs. Norman
treats our poor Sydney just as a commonplace ill-tempered woman would
treat her, I shall be surprised indeed. Say, if you like, that she will
be insulted--of this I am sure, she will not return it; there is no
expiation that is too bitter to be endured by that resolute little
creature. Her fine nature has been tempered by adversity. A hard life
has been Sydney’s, depend upon it, in the years before you and I met
with her. Good heavens! What would my wife say if she heard me?
The women are nice, but they have their drawbacks. Let us wait till
tomorrow, my dear boy; and let us believe in Sydney without allowing our
wives--I beg your pardon, I mean _my_ wife--to suspect in what forbidden
directions our sympathies are leading us. Oh, for shame!”
Who could persist in feeling depressed in the company of such a man as
this? Randal went home with the influence of Mr. Sarrazin’s sanguine
nature in undisturbed possession of him, until his old servant’s gloomy
face confronted him at the door.
“Anything gone wrong, Malcolm?”
“I’m sorry to say, sir, Mr. Herbert has left us.”
“Left us! Why?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Where has he gone?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Is there no letter? No message?”
“There’s a message, sir. Mr. Herbert came back--”
“Stop! Where had he been when he came back?”
“He said he felt a little lonely after you went out, and he thought it
might cheer him up if he went to the club. I was to tell you where he
had gone if you asked what had become of him. He said it kindly and
pleasantly--quite like himself, sir. But, when he came back--if you’ll
excuse my saying so--I never saw a man in a worse temper. ‘Tell my
brother I am obliged to him for his hospitality, and I won’t take
advantage of it any longer.’ That was Mr. Herbert’s message. I tried to
say a word. He banged the door, and away he went.”
Even Randal’s patient and gentle nature rose in revolt against his
brother’s treatment of him. He entered his sitting-room in silence.
Malcolm followed, and pointed to a letter on the table. “I think you
must have thrown it away by mistake, sir,” the old man explained; “I
found it in the waste-paper basket.” He bowed with the unfailing respect
of the old school, and withdrew.
Randal’s first resolve was to dismiss his brother from further
consideration. “Kindness is thrown away on Herbert,” he thought; “I
shall treat him for the future as he has treated me.”
But his brother was still in his mind. He opened Mrs. Presty’s
letter--on the chance that it might turn the current of his thoughts in
a new direction.
In spite of Mrs. Presty, in spite of himself, his heart softened toward
the man who had behaved so badly to him. Instead of reading the letter,
he was now trying to discover a connection between his brother’s visit
to the club and his brother’s angry message. Had Herbert heard something
said, among gossiping members in the smoking-room, which might account
for his conduct? If Randal had belonged to the club he would have
gone there to make inquiries. How could he get the information that he
wanted, in some other way?
After considering it for a while, he remembered the dinner that he had
given to his friend Sarrazin on his return from the United States, and
the departure of the lawyer to his club, with a purpose in view which
interested them both. It was the same club to which Herbert belonged.
Randal wrote at once to Mr. Sarrazin, mentioning what had happened, and
acknowledging the anxiety that weighed on his mind.
Having instructed Malcolm to take the letter to the lawyer’s house,
and, if he was not at home, to inquire where he might be found, Randal
adopted the readiest means of composing himself, in the servant’s
absence, by lighting his pipe.
He was enveloped in clouds of tobacco-smoke--the only clouds which we
can trust never to prove unworthy of our confidence in them--when Mrs.
Presty’s letter caught his attention. If the month had been January
instead of July, he would have thrown it into the fire. Under present
circumstances, he took it up and read it:
“I bear no malice, dear Randal, and I write to you as affectionately as
if you had kept your temper on the occasion when we last met.
“You will be pleased to hear that Catherine was as thoroughly distressed
as you could wish her to be, when it became my disagreeable duty to
mention what had passed between us, by way of accounting for your
absence. She was quite unable to rally her spirits, even with dear
Captain Bennydeck present to encourage her.
“‘I am not receiving you as I ought,’ she said to him, when we began
dinner, ‘but there is perhaps some excuse for me. I have lost the regard
and esteem of an old friend, who has cruelly wronged me.’ From motives
of delicacy (which I don’t expect you to understand) she refrained from
mentioning your name. The prettiest answer that I ever heard was the
answer that the Captain returned. ‘Let the true friend,’ he said, ‘take
the place in your heart which the false friend has lost.’
“He kissed her hand. If you had seen how he did it, and how she looked
at him, you would have felt that you had done more toward persuading my
daughter to marry the Captain than any other person about her, myself
included. You had deserted her; you had thrown her back on the one true
friend left. Thank you, Randal. In our best interests, thank you.
“It is needless to add that I got out of the way, and took Kitty with
me, at the earliest opportunity--and left them by themselves.
“At bed-time I went into Catherine’s room. Our interview began and ended
in less than a minute. It was useless to ask if the Captain had proposed
marriage; her agitation sufficiently informed me of what had happened.
My one question was: ‘Dearest Catherine, have you said Yes?’ She turned
shockingly pale, and answered: ‘I have not said No.’ Could anything be
more encouraging? God bless you; we shall meet at the wedding.”
Randal laid down the letter and filled his pipe again. He was not in
the least exasperated; he was only anxious to hear from Mr. Sarrazin. If
Mrs. Presty had seen him at that moment, she would have said to herself:
“I forgot the wretch was a smoker.”
In half an hour more the door was opened by Malcolm, and Mr. Sarrazin in
person answered his friend.
“There are no such incorrigible gossips,” he said, “as men in the
smoking-room of a club. Those popular newspapers began the mischief, and
the editor of one of them completed it. How he got his information I am
not able to say. The small-talk turned on that report about the charming
widow; and the editor congratulated himself on the delicacy of his
conduct. ‘When the paragraph reached me,’ he said, ‘the writer mentioned
that Mrs. Norman was that well-known lady, the divorced Mrs. Herbert
Linley. I thought this rather too bad, and I cut it out.’ Your brother
appears to have been present--but he seldom goes to the club, and none
of the members knew him even by sight. Shall I give you a light? Your
pipe’s out.”
Randal’s feelings, at that moment, were not within reach of the
comforting influence of tobacco.
“Do you think your brother has gone to Sydenham?” Mr. Sarrazin asked.
Randal answered: “I haven’t a doubt of it now.”