son _has_ gravely wronged Miss Silvester? And suppose I followed
that up by telling him that his son has made atonement by
marrying her?"
"After the feeling that he has shown in the matter, I believe he
would sign the codicil."
"Then, for God's sake, let me see him!"
"I must speak to the doctor."
"Do it instantly!"
With the will in his hand, Mr. Marchwood advanced to the bedroom
door. It was opened from within before he could get to it. The
doctor appeared on the threshold. He held up his hand warningly
when Mr. Marchwood attempted to speak to him.
"Go to Lady Holchester," he said. "It's all over."
"Dead?"
"Dead."
SIXTEENTH SCENE.--SALT PATCH.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH.
THE PLACE.
EARLY in the present century it was generally reported among the
neighbors of one Reuben Limbrick that he was in a fair way to
make a comfortable little fortune by dealing in Salt.
His place of abode was in Staffordshire, on a morsel of freehold
land of his own--appropriately called Salt Patch. Without being
absolutely a miser, he lived in the humblest manner, saw very
little company; skillfully invested his money; and persisted in
remaining a single man.
Toward eighteen hundred and forty he first felt the approach of
the chronic malady which ultimately terminated his life. After
trying what the medical men of his own locality could do for him,
with very poor success, he met by accident with a doctor living
in the western suburbs of London, who thoroughly understood his
complaint. After some journeying backward and forward to consult
this gentleman, he decided on retiring from business, and on
taking up his abode within an easy distance of his medical man.
Finding a piece of freehold land to be sold in the neighborhood
of Fulham, he bought it, and had a cottage residence built on it,
under his own directions. He surrounded the whole--being a man
singularly jealous of any intrusion on his retirement, or of any
chance observation of his ways and habits--with a high wall,
which cost a large sum of money, and which was rightly considered
a dismal and hideous object by the neighbors. When the new
residence was completed, he called it after the name of the place
in Staffordshire where he had made his money, and where he had
lived during the happiest period of his life. His relatives,
failing to understand that a question of sentiment was involved
in this proceeding, appealed to hard facts, and reminded him that
there were no salt mines in the neighborhood. Reuben Limbrick
answered, "So much the worse for the neighborhood"--and persisted
in calling his property, "Salt Patch."
The cottage was so small that it looked quite lost in the large
garden all round it. There was a ground-floor and a floor above
it--and that was all.
On either side of the passage, on the lower floor, were two
rooms. At the right-hand side, on entering by the front-door,
there was a kitchen, with its outhouses attached. The room next
to the kitchen looked into the garden. In Reuben Limbrick's time
it was called the study and contained a small collection of books
and a large store of fishing-tackle. On the left-hand side of the
passage there was a drawing-room situated at the back of the
house, and communicating with a dining-room in the front. On the
upper floor there were five bedrooms--two on one side of the
passage, corresponding in size with the dining-room and the
drawing-room below, but not opening into each other; three on the
other side of the passage, consisting of one larger room in
front, and of two small rooms at the back. All these were solidly
and completely furnished. Money had not been spared, and
workmanship had not been stinted. It was all substantial--and, up
stairs and down stairs, it was all ugly.
The situation of Salt Patch was lonely. The lands of the
market-gardeners separated it from other houses. Jealously
surrounded by its own high walls, the cottage suggested, even to
the most unimaginative persons, the idea of an asylum or a
prison. Reuben Limbrick's relatives, occasionally coming to stay
with him, found the place prey on their spirits, and rejoiced
when the time came for going home again. They were never pressed
to stay against their will. Reuben Limbrick was not a hospitable
or a sociable man. He set very little value on human sympathy, in
his attacks of illness; and he bore congratulations impatiently,
he used to say. "I find my dog very good company. And I am quite
happy as long as I am free from pain."
On his death-bed, he divided his money justly enough among his
relations. The only part of his Will which exposed itself to
unfavorable criticism, was a clause conferring a legacy on one of
his sisters (then a widow) who had estranged herself from her
family by marrying beneath her. The family agreed in considering
this unhappy person as undeserving of notice or benefit. Her name
was Hester Dethridge. It proved to be a great aggravation of
Hester's offenses, in the eyes of Hester's relatives, when it was
discovered that she possessed a life-interest in Salt Patch, and
an income of two hundred a year.
Not visited by the surviving members of her family, living,
literally, by herself in the world, Hester decided, in spite of
her comfortable little income, on letting lodgings. The
explanation of this strange conduct which she had written on her
slate, in reply to an inquiry from Anne, was the true one. "I
have not got a friend in the world: I dare not live alone." In
that desolate situation, and with that melancholy motive, she put
the house into an agent's hands. The first person in want of
lodgings whom the agent sent to see the place was Perry the
trainer; and Hester's first tenant was Geoffrey Delamayn.
The rooms which the landlady reserved for herself were the
kitchen, the room next to it, which had once been her brother's
"study," and the two small back bedrooms up stairs--one for
herself, the other for the servant-girl whom she employed to help
her. The whole of the rest of the cottage was to let. It was more
than the trainer wanted; but Hester Dethridge refused to dispose
of her lodgings--either as to the rooms occupied, or as to the
period for which they were to be taken--on other than her own
terms. Perry had no alternative but to lose the advantage of the
garden as a private training-ground, or to submit.
Being only two in number, the lodgers had three bedrooms to
choose from. Geoffrey established himself in the back-room, over
the drawing-room. Perry chose the front-room, placed on the other
side of the cottage, next to the two smaller apartments occupied
by Hester and her maid. Under this arrangement, the front
bedroom, on the opposite side of the passage--next to the room in
which Geoffrey slept--was left
empty, and was called, for the
time being, the spare room. As for the lower floor, the athlete
and his trainer ate their meals in the dining-room; and left the
drawing-room, as a needless luxury, to take care of itself.
The Foot-Race once over, Perry's business at the cottage was at
an end. His empty bedroom became a second spare room. The term
for which the lodgings had been taken was then still unexpired.
On the day after the race Geoffrey had to choose between
sacrificing the money, or remaining in the lodgings by himself,
with two spare bedrooms on his hands, and with a drawing-room for
the reception of his visitors--who called with pipes in their
mouths, and whose idea of hospitality was a pot of beer in the
garden.
To use his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggish
reluctance to face change of any kind possessed him. He decided
on staying at Salt Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm
(which he then looked upon as a certainty) obliged him to alter
his habits completely, once for all. From Fulham he had gone, the
next day, to attend the inquiry in Portland Place. And to Fulham
he returned, when he brought the wife who had been forced upon
him to her "home."
Such was the position of the tenant, and such were the
arrangements of the interior of the cottage, on the memorable
evening when Anne Silvester entered it as Geoffrey's wife.
CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.
THE NIGHT.
ON leaving Lady Lundie's house, Geoffrey called the first empty
cab that passed him. He opened the door, and signed to Anne to
enter the vehicle. She obeyed him mechanically. He placed himself
on the seat opposite to her, and told the man to drive to Fulham.
The cab started on its journey; husband and wife preserving
absolute silence. Anne laid her head back wearily, and closed her
eyes. Her strength had broken down under the effort which had
sustained her from the beginning to the end of the inquiry. Her
power of thinking was gone. She felt nothing, knew nothing,
feared nothing. Half in faintness, half in slumber, she had lost
all sense of her own terrible position before the first five
minutes of the journey to Fulham had come to an end.
thoughts, Geoffrey roused himself on a sudden. An idea had sprung
to life in his sluggish brain. He put his head out of the window
of the cab, and directed the driver to turn back, and go to an
hotel near the Great Northern Railway.
Resuming his seat, he looked furtively at Anne. She neither moved
nor opened her eyes--she was, to all appearance, unconscious of
what had happened. He observed her attentively. Was she really
ill? Was the time coming when he would be freed from her? He
pondered over that question--watching her closely. Little by
little the vile hope in him slowly died away, and a vile
suspicion took its place. What, if this appearance of illness was
a pretense? What, if she was waiting to throw him off his guard,
and escape from him at the first opportunity? He put his head out
of the window again, and gave another order to the driver. The
cab diverged from the direct route, and stopped at a public house
in Holborn, kept (under an assumed name) by Perry the trainer.
Geoffrey wrote a line in pencil on his card, and sent it into the
house by the driver. After waiting some minutes, a lad appeared
and touched his hat. Geoffrey spoke to him, out of the window, in
an under-tone. The lad took his place on the box by the driver.
The cab turned back, and took the road to the hotel near the
Great Northern Railway.
Arrived at the place, Geoffrey posted the lad close at the door
of the. cab, and pointed to Anne, still reclining with closed
eyes; still, as it seemed, too weary to lift her head, too faint
to notice any thing that happened. "If she attempts to get out,
stop her, and send for me." With those parting directions he
entered the hotel, and asked for Mr. Moy.
Mr. Moy was in the house; he had just returned from Portland
Place. He rose, and bowed coldly, when Geoffrey was shown into
his sitting-room.
"What is your business with me?" he asked.
"I've had a notion come into my head," said Geoffrey. "And I want
to speak to you about it directly."
"I must request you to consult some one else. Consider me, if you
please, as having withdrawn from all further connection with your
affairs."
Geoffrey looked at him in stolid surprise.
"Do you mean to say you're going to leave me in the lurch?" he
asked.
"I mean to say that I will take no fresh step in any business of
yours," answered Mr. Moy, firmly. "As to the future, I have
ceased to be your legal adviser. As to the past, I shall
carefully complete the formal duties toward you which remain to
be done. Mrs. Inchbare and Bishopriggs are coming here by
appointment, at six this evening, to receive the money due to
them before they go back. I shall return to Scotland myself by
the night mail. The persons referred to, in the matter of the
promise of marriage, by Sir Patrick, are all in Scotland. I will
take their evidence as to the handwriting, and as to the question
of residence in the North--and I will send it to you in written
form. That done, I shall have done all. I decline to advise you
in any future step which you propose to take."
After reflecting for a moment, Geoffrey put a last question.
"You said Bishopriggs and the woman would be here at six this
evening."
"Yes."
"Where are they to be found before that?"
Mr. Moy wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and handed it to
Geoffrey. "At their lodgings," he said. "There is the address."
Geoffrey took the address, and left the room. Lawyer and client
parted without a word on either side.
Returning to the cab, Geoffrey found the lad steadily waiting at
his post.
"Has any thing happened?"
"The lady hasn't moved, Sir, since you left her."
"Is Perry at the public house?"
"Not at this time, Sir."
"I want a lawyer. Do you know who Perry's lawyer is?"
"Yes, Sir."
"And where he is to be found?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Get up on the box, and tell the man where to drive to."
The cab went on again along the Euston Road, and stopped at a
house in a side-street, with a professional brass plate on the
door. The lad got down, and came to the window.
"Here it is, Sir."
"Knock at the door, and see if he is at home."
He prove d to be at home. Geoffrey entered the house, leaving his
emissary once more on the watch. The lad noticed that the lady
moved this time. She shivered as if she felt cold--opened her
eyes for a moment wearily, and looked out through the
window--sighed, and sank back again in the corner of the cab.
After an absence of more than half an hour Geoffrey came out
again. His interview
with Perry's lawyer appeared to have
relieved his mind of something that had oppressed it. He once
more ordered the driver to go to Fulham--opened the door to get
into the cab--then, as it seemed, suddenly recollected
himself--and, calling the lad down from the box, ordered him to
get inside, and took his place by the driver.
As the cab started he looked over his shoulder at Anne through
the front window. "Well worth trying," he said to himself. "It's
the way to be even with her. And it's the way to be free."
They arrived at the cottage. Possibly, repose had restored Anne's
strength. Possibly, the sight of the place had roused the
instinct of self-preservation in her at last. To Geoffrey's
surprise, she left the cab without assistance. When he opened the
wooden gate, with his own key, she recoiled from it, and looked
at him for the first time.
He pointed to the entrance.
"Go in," he said.
"On what terms?" she asked, without stirring a step.
Geoffrey dismissed the cab; and sent the lad in, to wait for
further orders. These things done, he answered her loudly and
brutally the moment they were alone:
"On any terms I please."
"Nothing will induce me," she said, firmly, "to live with you as
your wife. You may kill me--but you will never bend me to that."
He advanced a step--opened his lips--and suddenly checked
himself. He waited a while, turning something over in his mind.
When he spoke again, it was with marked deliberation and
constraint--with the air of a man who was repeating words put
into his lips, or words prepared beforehand.
"I have something to tell you in the presence of witnesses," he
said. "I don't ask you, or wish you, to see me in the cottage
alone."
She started at the change in him. His sudden composure, and his
sudden nicety in the choice of words, tried her courage far more
severely than it had been tried by his violence of the moment
before.
He waited her decision, still pointing through the gate. She
trembled a little--steadied herself again--and went in. The lad,
waiting in the front garden, followed her.
He threw open the drawing-room door, on the left-hand side of the
passage. She entered the room. The servant-girl appeared. He said
to her, "Fetch Mrs. Dethridge; and come back with her yourself."
Then he went into the room; the lad, by his own directions,
following him in; and the door being left wide open.
Hester Dethridge came out from the kitchen with the girl behind
her. At the sight of Anne, a faint and momentary change passed
over the stony stillness of her face. A dull light glimmered in
her eyes. She slowly nodded her head. A dumb sound, vaguely
expressive of something like exultation or relief, escaped her
lips.
Geoffrey spoke--once more, with marked deliberation and
constraint; once more, with the air of repeating something which
had been prepared beforehand. He pointed to Anne.
"This woman is my wife," he said. "In the presence of you three,
as witnesses, I tell her that I don't forgive her. I have brought
her here--having no other place in which I can trust her to
be--to wait the issue of proceedings, undertaken in defense of my
own honor and good name. While she stays here, she will live
separate from me, in a room of her own. If it is necessary for me
to communicate with her, I shall only see her in the presence of
a third person. Do you all understand me?"
Hester Dethridge bowed her head. The other two answered,
"Yes"--and turned to go out.
Anne rose. At a sign from Geoffrey, the servant and the lad
waited in the room to hear what she had to say.
"I know nothing in my conduct," she said, addressing herself to
Geoffrey, "which justifies you in telling these people that you
don't forgive me. Those words applied by you to me are an insult.