I am equally ignorant of what you mean when you speak of
defending your good name. All I understand is, that we are
separate persons in this house, and that I am to have a room of
my own. I am grateful, whatever your motives may be, for the
arrangement that you have proposed. Direct one of these two women
to show me my room."
Geoffrey turned to Hester Dethridge.
"Take her up stairs," he said; "and let her pick which room she
pleases. Give her what she wants to eat or drink. Bring down the
address of the place where her luggage is. The lad here will go
back by railway, and fetch it. That's all. Be off."
Hester went out. Anne followed her up the stairs. In the passage
on the upper floor she stopped. The dull light flickered again
for a moment in her eyes. She wrote on her slate, and held it up
to Anne, with these words on it: "I knew you would come back.
It's not over yet between you and him." Anne made no reply. She
went on writing, with something faintly like a smile on her thin,
colorless lips. "I know something of bad husbands. Yours is as
bad a one as ever stood in shoes. He'll try you." Anne made an
effort to stop her. "Don't you see how tired I am?" she said,
gently. Hester Dethridge dropped the slate--looked with a steady
and uncompassionate attention in Anne's face--nodded her head, as
much as to say, "I see it now"--and led the way into one of the
empty rooms.
It was the front bedroom, over the drawing-room. The first glance
round showed it to be scrupulously clean, and solidly and
tastelessly furnished. The hideous paper on the walls, the
hideous carpet on the floor, were both of the best quality. The
great heavy mahogany bedstead, with its curtains hanging from a
hook in the ceiling, and with its clumsily carved head and foot
on the same level, offered to the view the anomalous spectacle of
French design overwhelmed by English execution. The most
noticeable thing in the room was the extraordinary attention
which had been given to the defense of the door. Besides the
usual lock and key, it possessed two solid bolts, fastening
inside at the top and the bottom. It had been one among the many
eccentric sides of Reuben Limbrick's character to live in
perpetual dread of thieves breaking into his cottage at night.
All the outer doors and all the window shutters were solidly
sheathed with iron, and had alarm-bells attached to them on a new
principle. Every one of the bedrooms possessed its two bolts on
the inner side of the door. And, to crown all, on the roof of the
cottage was a little belfry, containing a bell large enough to
make itself heard at the Fulham police station. In Reuben
Limbrick's time the rope had communicated with his bedroom. It
hung now against the wall, in the passage outside.
Looking from one to the other of the objects around her, Anne's
eyes rested on the partition wall which divided the room from the
room next to it. The wall was not broken by a door of
communication, it had nothing placed against it but a
wash-hand-stand and two chairs.
"Who sleeps in the next room?" said Anne.
Hester Dethridge pointed down to the drawing-room in which they
had left Geoffrey, Geoffrey slept in the room.
Anne led the way out again into the passage.
"Show me the second room," she said.
The second room was also in front of the house. More ugliness (of
first-rate quality) in the paper and the carpet. Another heavy
mahogany bedstead; but, this time, a bedstead with a canopy
attached to the head of it--supporting its own curtains.
Anticipating Anne's inquiry, on this occasion, Hester looked
toward the next room, at the back of the cottage, and pointed to
herself. Anne at once decided on choosing the second room; it was
the farthest from Geoffrey. Hester waited while she wrote the
address at which her luggage would be found (at the house of the
musical agent), and then, having applied for, and received her
directions as to the evening meal which she should send up
stairs, quitted the room.
Left alone, Anne secured the door, and threw herself on the bed.
Still too weary to exert her mind, still physically incapable of
realizing the helplessness and the peril of her position, she
opened a locket that hung from her neck, kissed the portrait of
her mother and the portrait of Blanche placed opposite to each
other inside it, and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Meanwhile Geoffrey repeated his final orders to the lad, at the
cottage gate.
"When you have got the luggage, you are to go to the lawyer. If
he can come here to-night, you will show him the way. If he can't
come, you will bring me a letter from him. Make any mistake in
this, and it will be the worst day's work you ever did in your
life. Away with you, and don't lose the train."
The lad ran off. Geoffrey waited, looking after him, and turning
over in his mind what had been done up to that time.
"All right, so far," he said to himself. "I didn't ride in the
cab with her. I told her before witnesses I didn't forgive her,
and why I had her in the house. I've put her in a room by
herself. And if I _must_ see her, I see her with Hester Dethridge
for a witness. My part's done--let the lawyer do his."
He strolled round into the back garden, and lit his pipe. After a
while, as the twilight faded, he saw a light in Hester's
sitting-room on the ground-floor. He went to the window. Hester
and the servant-girl were both there at work. "Well?" he asked.
"How about the woman up stairs?" Hester's slate, aided by the
girl's tongue, told him all about "the woman" that was to be
told. They had taken up to her room tea and an omelet; and they
had been obliged to wake her from a sleep. She had eaten a little
of the omelet, and had drunk eagerly of the tea. They had gone up
again to take the tray down. She had returned to the bed. She was
not asleep--only dull and heavy. Made no remark. Looked clean
worn out. We left her a light; and we let her be. Such was the
report. After listening to it, without making any remark,
Geoffrey filled a second pipe, and resumed his walk. The time
wore on. It began to feel chilly in the garden. The rising wind
swept audibly over the open lands round the cottage; the stars
twinkled their last; nothing was to be seen overhead but the
black void of night. More rain coming. Geoffrey went indoors.
An evening newspaper was on the dining-room table. The candles
were lit. He sat down, and tried to read. No! There was nothing
in the newspaper that he cared about. The time for hearing from
the lawyer was drawing nearer and nearer. Reading was of no use.
Sitting still was of no use. He got up, and went out in the front
of the cottage--strolled to the gate--opened it--and looked idly
up and down the road.
But one living creature was visible by the light of the gas-lamp
over the gate. The creature came nearer, and proved to be the
&nbs
p; postman going his last round, with the last delivery for the
night. He came up to the gate with a letter in his hand.
"The Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn?"
"All right."
He took the letter from the postman, and went back into the
dining-room. Looking at the address by the light of the candles,
he recognized the handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. "To congratulate
me on my marriage!" he said to himself, bitterly, and opened the
letter.
Mrs. Glenarm's congratulations were expressed in these terms:
MY ADORED GEOFFREY,--I have heard all. My beloved one! my own!
you are sacrificed to the vilest wretch that walks the earth, and
I have lost you! How is it that I live after hearing it? How is
it that I can think, and write, with my brain on fire, and my
heart broken! Oh, my angel, there is a purpose that supports
me--pure, beautiful, worthy of us both. I live, Geoffrey--I live
to dedicate myself to the adored idea of You. My hero! my first,
last, love! I will marry no other man. I will live and die--I vow
it solemnly on my bended knees--I will live and die true to You.
I am your Spiritual Wife. My beloved Geoffrey! _she_ can't come
between us, there--_she_ can never rob you of my heart's
unalterable fidelity, of my soul's unearthly devotion. I am your
Spiritual Wife! Oh, the blameless luxury of writing those words!
Write back to me, beloved one, and say you feel it too. Vow it,
idol of my heart, as I have vowed it. Unalterable fidelity!
unearthly devotion! Never, never will I be the wife of any other
man! Never, never will I forgive the woman who has come between
us! Yours ever and only; yours with the stainless passion that
burns on the altar of the heart; yours, yours, yours--E. G."
This outbreak of hysterical nonsense--in itself simply
ridiculous--assumed a serious importance in its effect on
Geoffrey. It associated the direct attainment of his own
interests with the gratification of his vengeance on Anne. Ten
thousand a year self-dedicated to him--and nothing to prevent his
putting out his hand and taking it but the woman who had caught
him in her trap, the woman up stairs who had fastened herself on
him for life!
lawyer," he said to himself. "The easiest way out of it is _that_
way. And it's the law."
He looked impatiently at his watch. As he put it back again in
his pocket there was a ring at the bell. Was it the lad bringing
the luggage? Yes. And, with it, the lawyer's report? No. Better
than that--the lawyer himself.
"Come in!" cried Geoffrey, meeting his visitor at the door.
The lawyer entered the dining-room. The candle-light revealed to
view a corpulent, full-lipped, bright-eyed man--with a strain of
negro blood in his yellow face, and with unmistakable traces in
his look and manner of walking habitually in the dirtiest
professional by-ways of the law.
"I've got a little place of my own in your neighborhood," he
said. "And I thought I would look in myself, Mr. Delamayn, on my
way home."
"Have you seen the witnesses?"
"I have examined them both, Sir. First, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr.
Bishopriggs together. Next, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr. Bishopriggs
separately."
"Well?"
"Well, Sir, the result is unfavorable, I am sorry to say."
"What do you mean?"
"Neither the one nor the other of them, Mr. Delamayn, can give
the evidence we want. I have made sure of that."
"Made sure of that? You have made an infernal mess of it! You
don't understand the case!"
The mulatto lawyer smiled. The rudeness of his client appeared
only to amuse him.
"Don't I?" he said. "Suppose you tell me where I am wrong about
it? Here it is in outline only. On the fourteenth of August last
your wife was at an inn in Scotland. A gentleman named Arnold
Brinkworth joined her there. He represented himself to be her
husband, and he staid with her till the next morning. Starting
from those facts, the object you have in view is to sue for a
Divorce from your wife. You make Mr. Arnold Brinkworth the
co-respondent. And you produce in evidence the waiter and the
landlady of the inn. Any thing wrong, Sir, so far?"
Nothing wrong. At one cowardly stroke to cast Anne disgraced on
the world, and to set himself free--there, plainly and truly
stated, was the scheme which he had devised, when he had turned
back on the way to Fulham to consult Mr. Moy.
"So much for the case," resumed the lawyer. "Now for what I have
done on receiving your instructions. I have examined the
witnesses; and I have had an interview (not a very pleasant one)
with Mr. Moy. The result of those two proceedings is briefly
this. First discovery: In assuming the character of the lady's
husband Mr. Brinkworth was acting under your directions--which
tells dead against _you._ Second discovery: Not the slightest
impropriety of conduct, not an approach even to harmless
familiarity, was detected by either of the witnesses, while the
lady and gentleman were together at the inn. There is literally
no evidence to produce against them, except that they _were_
together--in two rooms. How are you to assume a guilty purpose,
when you can't prove an approach to a guilty act? You can no more
take such a case as that into Court than you can jump over the
roof of this cottage."
He looked hard at his client, expecting to receive a violent
reply. His client agreeably disappointed him. A very strange
impression appeared to have been produced on th is reckless and
headstrong man. He got up quietly; he spoke with perfect outward
composure of face and manner when he said his next words.
"Have you given up the case?"
"As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case."
"And no hope of my getting divorced from her?"
"Wait a moment. Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere
since they were together at the Scotch inn?"
"Nowhere."
"As to the future, of course I can't say. As to the past, there
is no hope of your getting divorced from her."
"Thank you. Good-night."
"Good-night, Mr. Delamayn."
Fastened to her for life--and the law powerless to cut the knot.
He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it
and fixed it in his mind. Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm's letter,
and read it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.
to marry another man. There she was--in her own words--dedicated
to him: waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his
wife. There also was his father, waiting (so far as _he_ knew, in
the absence of any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs.
Glenarm as a daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm's husband
an income of his own. As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man
could desire. And nothing in the way of it but the woman
who had
caught him in her trap--the woman up stairs who had fastened
herself on him for life.
He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.
There was open communication, on all sides, between the back
garden and the front. He walked round and round the cottage--now
appearing in a stream of light from a window; now disappearing
again in the darkness. The wind blew refreshingly over his bare
head. For some minutes he went round and round, faster and
faster, without a pause. When he stopped at last, it was in front
of the cottage. He lifted his head slowly, and looked up at the
dim light in the window of Anne's room.
"How?" he said to himself. "That's the question. How?"
He went indoors again, and rang the bell. The servant-girl who
answered it started back at the sight of him. His florid color
was all gone. His eyes looked at her without appearing to see
her. The perspiration was standing on his forehead in great heavy
drops.
"Are you ill, Sir?" said the girl.
He told her, with an oath, to hold her tongue and bring the
brandy. When she entered the room for the second time, he was
standing with his back to her, looking out at the night. He never
moved when she put the bottle on the table. She heard him
muttering as if he was talking to himself.
The same difficulty which had been present to his mind in secret
under Anne's window was present to his mind still.
How? That was the problem to solve. How?
He turned to the brandy, and took counsel of that.
CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH.
THE MORNING.
WHEN does the vain regret find its keenest sting? When is the
doubtful future blackened by its darkest cloud? When is life
least worth having. and death oftenest at the bedside? In the
terrible morning hours, when the sun is rising in its glory, and
the birds are singing in the stillness of the new-born day.
Anne woke in the strange bed, and looked round her, by the light
of the new morning, at the strange room.
The rain had all fallen in the night. The sun was master in the
clear autumn sky. She rose, and opened the window. The fresh
morning air, keen and fragrant, filled the room. Far and near,
the same bright stillness possessed the view. She stood at the
window looking out. Her mind was clear again--she could think,
she could feel; she could face the one last question which the
merciless morning now forced on her--How will it end?
Was there any hope?--hope for instance, in what she might do for
herself. What can a married woman do for herself? She can make
her misery public--provided it be misery of a certain kind--and
can reckon single-handed with Society when she has done it.
Nothing more.
Was there hope in what others might do for her? Blanche might
write to her--might even come and see her--if her husband allowed
it; and that was all. Sir Patrick had pressed her hand at
parting, and had told her to rely on him. He was the firmest, the
truest of friends. But what could he do? There were outrages
which her husband was privileged to commit, under the sanction of
marriage, at the bare thought of which her blood ran cold. Could
Sir Patrick protect her? Absurd! Law and Society armed her
husband with his conjugal rights. Law and Society had but one
answer to give, if she appealed to them--You are his wife.
No hope in herself; no hope in her friends; no hope any where on
earth. Nothing to be done but to wait for the end--with faith in
the Divine Mercy; with faith in the better world.
She took out of her trunk a little book of Prayers and
Meditations--worn with much use--which had once belonged to her
mother. She sat by the window reading it. Now and then she looked
up from it--thinking. The parallel between her mother's position
and her own position was now complete. Both married to husbands