Part 65 (1/2)
”I _am_ helping you. Let Blanche alone. Don't speak of the marriage again, the next time you see her. If she mentions it, beg her pardon, and tell her you won't press the question any more. I shall see her in an hour or two, and I shall take exactly the same tone myself. You have put the idea into her mind--leave it there to ripen. Give her distress about Miss Silvester nothing to feed on. Don't stimulate it by contradiction; don't rouse it to defend itself by disparagement of her lost friend. Leave Time to edge her gently nearer and nearer to the husband who is waiting for her--and take my word for it, Time will have her ready when the settlements are ready.”
Toward the luncheon hour Sir Patrick saw Blanche, and put in practice the principle which he had laid down. She was perfectly tranquil before her uncle left her. A little later, Arnold was forgiven. A little later still, the old gentleman's sharp observation noted that his niece was unusually thoughtful, and that she looked at Arnold, from time to time, with an interest of a new kind--an interest which shyly hid itself from Arnold's view. Sir Patrick went up to dress for dinner, with a comfortable inner conviction that the difficulties which had beset him were settled at last. Sir Patrick had never been more mistaken in his life.
The business of the toilet was far advanced. Duncan had just placed the gla.s.s in a good light; and Duncan's master was at that turning point in his daily life which consisted in attaining, or not attaining, absolute perfection in the tying of his white cravat--when some outer barbarian, ignorant of the first principles of dressing a gentleman's throat, presumed to knock at the bedroom door. Neither master nor servant moved or breathed until the integrity of the cravat was placed beyond the reach of accident. Then Sir Patrick cast the look of final criticism in the gla.s.s, and breathed again when he saw that it was done.
”A little labored in style, Duncan. But not bad, considering the interruption?”
”By no means, Sir Patrick.”
”See who it is.”
Duncan went to the door; and returned, to his master, with an excuse for the interruption, in the shape of a telegram!
Sir Patrick started at the sight of that unwelcome message. ”Sign the receipt, Duncan,” he said--and opened the envelope. Yes! Exactly as he had antic.i.p.ated! News of Miss Silvester, on the very day when he had decided to abandon all further attempt at discovering her. The telegram ran thus:
”Message received from Falkirk this morning. Lady, as described, left the train at Falkirk last night. Went on, by the first train this morning, to Glasgow. Wait further instructions.”
”Is the messenger to take any thing back, Sir Patrick?”
”No. I must consider what I am to do. If I find it necessary I will send to the station. Here is news of Miss Silvester, Duncan,” continued Sir Patrick, when the messenger had gone. ”She has been traced to Glasgow.”
”Glasgow is a large place, Sir Patrick.”
”Yes. Even if they have telegraphed on and had her watched (which doesn't appear), she may escape us again at Glasgow. I am the last man in the world, I hope, to shrink from accepting my fair share of any responsibility. But I own I would have given something to have kept this telegram out of the house. It raises the most awkward question I have had to decide on for many a long day past. Help me on with my coat. I must think of it! I must think of it!”
Sir Patrick went down to dinner in no agreeable frame of mind. The unexpected recovery of the lost trace of Miss Silvester--there is no disguising it--seriously annoyed him.
The dinner-party that day, a.s.sembling punctually at the stroke of the bell, had to wait a quarter of an hour before the hostess came down stairs.
Lady Lundie's apology, when she entered the library, informed her guests that she had been detained by some neighbors who had called at an unusually late hour. Mr. and Mrs. Julius Delamayn, finding themselves near Windygates, had favored her with a visit, on their way home, and had left cards of invitation for a garden-party at their house.
Lady Lundie was charmed with her new acquaintances. They had included every body who was staying at Windygates in their invitation. They had been as pleasant and easy as old friends. Mrs. Delamayn had brought the kindest message from one of her guests--Mrs. Glenarm--to say that she remembered meeting Lady Lundie in London, in the time of the late Sir Thomas, and was anxious to improve the acquaintance. Mr. Julius Delamayn had given a most amusing account of his brother. Geoffrey had sent to London for a trainer; and the whole household was on the tip-toe of expectation to witness the magnificent spectacle of an athlete preparing himself for a foot-race. The ladies, with Mrs. Glenarm at their head, were hard at work, studying the profound and complicated question of human running--the muscles employed in it, the preparation required for it, the heroes eminent in it. The men had been all occupied that morning in a.s.sisting Geoffrey to measure a mile, for his exercising-ground, in a remote part of the park--where there was an empty cottage, which was to be fitted with all the necessary appliances for the reception of Geoffrey and his trainer. ”You will see the last of my brother,” Julius had said, ”at the garden-party. After that he retires into athletic privacy, and has but one interest in life--the interest of watching the disappearance of his own superfluous flesh.” Throughout the dinner Lady Lundie was in oppressively good spirits, singing the praises of her new friends. Sir Patrick, on the other hand, had never been so silent within the memory of mortal man. He talked with an effort; and he listened with a greater effort still. To answer or not to answer the telegram in his pocket? To persist or not to persist in his resolution to leave Miss Silvester to go her own way? Those were the questions which insisted on coming round to him as regularly as the dishes themselves came round in the orderly progression of the dinner.
Blanche---who had not felt equal to taking her place at the table--appeared in the drawing-room afterward.
Sir Patrick came in to tea, with the gentlemen, still uncertain as to the right course to take in the matter of the telegram. One look at Blanche's sad face and Blanche's altered manner decided him. What would be the result if he roused new hopes by resuming the effort to trace Miss Silvester, and if he lost the trace a second time? He had only to look at his niece and to see. Could any consideration justify him in turning her mind back on the memory of the friend who had left her at the moment when it was just beginning to look forward for relief to the prospect of her marriage? Nothing could justify him; and nothing should induce him to do it.
Reasoning--soundly enough, from his own point of view--on that basis, Sir Patrick determined on sending no further instructions to his friend at Edinburgh. That night he warned Duncan to preserve the strictest silence as to the arrival of the telegram. He burned it, in case of accidents, with his own hand, in his own room.
Rising the next day and looking out of his window, Sir Patrick saw the two young people taking their morning walk at a moment when they happened to cross the open gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce which separated the two shrubberies at Windygates. Arnold's arm was round Blanche's waist, and they were talking confidentially with their heads close together.
”She is coming round already!” thought the old gentleman, as the two disappeared again in the second shrubbery from view. ”Thank Heaven!
things are running smoothly at last!”
Among the ornaments of Sir Patrick's bed room there was a view (taken from above) of one of the Highland waterfalls. If he had looked at the picture when he turned away from his window, he might have remarked that a river which is running with its utmost smoothness at one moment may be a river which plunges into its most violent agitation at another; and he might have remembered, with certain misgivings, that the progress of a stream of water has been long since likened, with the universal consent of humanity, to the progress of the stream of life.
FIFTH SCENE.--GLASGOW.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-NINTH.
ANNE AMONG THE LAWYERS.