On the next day but one, Randal arranged his departure for Sydenham, so as to arrive at the hotel an hour before the time appointed for the dinner. His prospects of success, in pleading for a favorable reception of his brother’s message, were so uncertain that he refrained — in fear of raising hopes which he might not be able to justify — from taking Herbert into his confidence. No one knew on what errand he was bent, when he left the house. As he took his place in the carriage, the newspaper boy appeared at the window as usual. The new number of a popular weekly journal had that day been published. Randal bought it.
After reading one or two of the political articles, he arrived at the columns specially devoted to “Fashionable Intelligence.” Caring nothing for that sort of news, he was turning over the pages in search of the literary and dramatic articles, when a name not unfamiliar to him caught his eye. He read the paragraph in which it appeared.
“The charming widow, Mrs. Norman, is, we hear, among the distinguished guests staying at Buck’s Hotel. It is whispered that the lady is to be shortly united to a retired naval officer of Arctic fame; now better known, perhaps, as one of our leading philanthropists.”
The allusion to Bennydeck was too plain to be mistaken. Randal looked again at the first words in the paragraph. “The charming widow!” Was it possible that this last word referred to Catherine? To suppose her capable of assuming to be a widow, and — if the child asked questions — of telling Kitty that her father was dead, was, in Randal’s estimation, to wrong her cruelly. With his own suspicions steadily contradicting him, he arrived at the hotel, obstinately believing that “the charming widow” would prove to be a stranger.
A first disappointment was in store for him when he entered the house. Mrs. Norman and her little daughter were out driving with a friend, and were expected to return in good time for dinner. Mrs. Presty was at home; she was reported to be in the garden of the hotel.
Randal found her comfortably established in a summerhouse, with her knitting in her hands, and a newspaper on her lap. She advanced to meet him, all smiles and amiability. “How nice of you to come so soon!” she began. Her keen penetration discovered something in his face which checked the gayety of her welcome. “You don’t mean to say that you are going to spoil our pleasant little dinner by bringing bad news!” she added, looking at him suspiciously.
“It depends on you to decide that,” Randal replied.
“How very complimentary to a poor useless old woman! Don’t be mysterious, my dear. I don’t belong to the generation which raises storms in tea-cups, and calls skirmishes with savages battles. Out with it!”
Randal handed his paper to her, open at the right place. “There is my news,” he said.
Mrs. Presty looked at the paragraph, and handed her newspaper to Randal.
“I am indeed sorry to spoil your dramatic effect,” she said. “But you ought to have known that we are only half an hour behind you, at Sydenham, in the matter of news. The report is premature, my good friend. But if these newspaper people waited to find out whether a report is true or false, how much gossip would society get in its favorite newspapers? Besides, if it isn’t true now, it will be true next week. The author only says, ‘It’s whispered.’ How delicate of him! What a perfect gentleman!”
“Am I really to understand, Mrs. Presty, that Catherine —”
“You are to understand that Catherine is a widow. I say it with pride, a widow of my making!”
“If this is one of your jokes, ma’am —”
“Nothing of the sort, sir.”
“Are you aware, Mrs. Presty, that my brother —”
“Oh, don’t talk of your brother! He’s an obstacle in our way, and we have been compelled to get rid of him.”
Randal drew back a step. Mrs. Presty’s audacity was something more than he could understand. “Is this woman mad?” he said to himself.
“Sit down,” said Mrs. Presty. “If you are determined to make a serious business of it — if you insist on my justifying myself — you are to be pitied for not possessing a sense of humor, but you shall have your own way. I am put on my defense. Very well. You shall hear how my divorced daughter and my poor little grandchild were treated at Sandyseal, after you left us.”
Having related the circumstances, she suggested that Randal should put himself in Catherine’s place, before he ventured on expressing an opinion. “Would you have exposed yourself to be humiliated again in the same way?” she asked. “And would you have seen your child made to suffer as well as yourself?”
“I should have kept in retirement for the future,” he answered, “and not have trusted my child and myself among strangers in hotels.”
“Ah, indeed? And you would have condemned your poor little daughter to solitude? You would have seen her pining for the company of other children, and would have had no mercy on her? I wonder what you would have done when Captain Bennydeck paid us a visit at the seaside? He was introduced to Mrs. Norman, and to Mrs. Norman’s little girl, and we were all charmed with him. When he and I happened to be left together he naturally wondered, after having seen the beautiful wife, where the lucky husband might be. If he had asked you about Mr. Norman, how would you have answered him?”
“I should have told the truth.”
“You would have said there was no Mr. Norman?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly what I did! And the Captain of course concluded (after having been introduced to Kitty) that Mrs. Norman was a widow. If I had set him right, what would have become of my daughter’s reputation? If I had told the truth at this hotel, when everybody wanted to know what Mrs. Norman, that handsome lady, was — what would the consequences have been to Catherine and her little girl? No! no! I have made the best of a miserable situation; I have consulted the tranquillity of a cruelly injured woman and an innocent child — with this inevitable result; I have been obliged to treat your brother like a character in a novel. I have ship-wrecked Herbert as the shortest way of answering inconvenient questions. Vessel found bottom upward in the middle of the Atlantic, and everybody on board drowned, of course. Worse stories have been printed; I do assure you, worse stories have been printed.”
Randal decided on leaving her. “Have you done all this with Catherine’s consent?” he asked as he got up from his chair.
“Catherine submits to circumstances, like a sensible woman.”
“Does she submit to your telling Kitty that her father is dead?”
For the first time Mrs. Presty became serious.
“Wait a minute,” she answered. “Before I consented to answer the child’s inquiries, I came to an understanding with her mother. I said, ‘Will you let Kitty see her father again?’”
The very question which Randal had promised to ask in his brother’s interests! “And how did Catherine answer you?” he inquired.
“Honestly. She said: ‘I daren’t!’ After that, I had her mother’s authority for telling Kitty that she would never see her father again. She asked directly if her father was dead —”
“That will do, Mrs. Presty. Your defense is thoroughly worthy of your conduct in all other respects.”
“Say thoroughly worthy of the course forced upon me and my daughter by your brother’s infamous conduct — and you will be nearer the mark!”
Randal passed this over without notice. “Be so good,” he said, “as to tell Catherine that I try to make every possible allowance for her, but that I cannot consent to sit at her dinner-table, and that I dare not face my poor little niece, after what I have heard.”
Mrs. Presty recovered all her audacity. “A very wise decision,” she remarked. “Your sour face would spoil the best dinner that ever was put on the table. Have you any message for Captain Bennydeck?”
Randal asked if his friend was then at the hotel.
Mrs. Presty smiled significantly. “Not at the hotel, just now.”
“Where is he?”
“Where he is every day, about this time — out driving with Catherine and Kitty.”
It was a relief to Randal — in the present state of Catherine’s relations toward Bennydeck — to return to London without having seen his friend.
He took leave of Mrs. Presty with the formality due to a stranger — he merely bowed. That incorrigible old woman treated him with affectionate familiarity in return.
“Good-by, dear Randal. One moment before you go! Will it be of any use if we invite you to the marriage?”
Arrived at the station, Randal found that he must wait for the train. While he was walking up and down the platform with a mind doubly distressed by anxiety about his brother and anxiety about Sydney, the train from London came in. He stood, looking absently at the passengers leaving the carriage on the opposite side of the platform. Suddenly, a voice that he knew was audible, asking the way to Buck’s Hotel. He crossed the line in an instant, and found himself face to face with Herbert.
For a moment the two men looked at each other without speaking. Herbert’s wondering eyes accurately reflected his brother’s astonishment.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. Suspicion overclouded his face as he put the question. “You have been to the hotel?” he burst out; “you have seen Catherine?”
Randal could deny that he had seen Catherine, with perfect truth — and did deny it in the plainest terms. Herbert was satisfied. “In all my remembrance of you,” he said, “you have never told me a lie. We have both seen the same newspaper, of course — and you have been the first to clear the thing up. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I wonder who this other Mrs. Norman is; did you find out?”
“No.”
“She’s not Catherine, at any rate; I, for one, shall go home with a lighter heart.” He took his brother’s arm, to return to the other platform. “Do you know, Randal, I was almost afraid that Catherine was the woman. The devil take the thing, and the people who write in it!”
He snatched a newspaper out of his pocket as he spoke — tore it in half — and threw it away. “Malcolm meant well, poor fellow,” he said, referring to the old servant, “but he made a miserable man of me for all that.”
Not satisfied with gossip in private, the greedy public appetite devours gossip in print, and wants more of it than any one editor can supply. Randal picked up the torn newspaper. It was not the newspaper which he had bought at the station. Herbert had been reading a rival journal, devoted to the interests of Society — in which the report of Mrs. Norman’s marriage was repeated, with this difference, that it boldly alluded to Captain Bennydeck by name. “Did Malcolm give you this?” Randal asked.
“Yes; he and the servant next door subscribe to take it in; and Malcolm thought it might amuse me. It drove me out of the house and into the railway. If it had driven me out of mind, I shouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Gently, Herbert! Supposing the report had been true —?”
“After what you have told me, why should I suppose anything of the sort?”
“Don’t be angry; and do pray remember that the Divorce allows you and Catherine to marry again, if you like.”
Herbert became more unreasonable than ever. “If Catherine does think of marrying again,” he said, “the man will have to reckon first with me. But that is not the point. You seem to have forgotten that the woman at Buck’s Hotel is described as a Widow. The bare doubt that my divorced wife might be the woman was bad enough — but what I wanted to find out was how she had passed off her false pretense on our child. That was what maddened me! No more of it now. Have you seen Catherine lately?”
“Not lately.”
“I suppose she is as handsome as ever. When will you ask her to let me see Kitty?”
“Leave that to me,” was the one reply which Randal could venture to make at the moment.
The serious embarrassments that surrounded him were thickening fast. His natural frank nature urged him to undeceive Herbert. If he followed his inclinations, in the near neighborhood of the hotel, who could say what disasters might not ensue, in his brother’s present frame of mind? If he made the disclosure on their return to the house, he would be only running the same risk of consequences, after an interval of delay; and, if he remained silent, the march of events might, at any moment, lead to the discovery of what he had concealed. Add to this, that his confidence in Catherine had been rudely shaken. Having allowed herself to be entrapped into the deception proposed by her mother, and having thus far persevered in that deception, were the chances in favor of her revealing her true position — especially if she was disposed to encourage Bennydeck’s suit? Randal’s loyalty to Catherine hesitated to decide that serious question against the woman whom he had known, trusted, and admired for so many years. In any event, her second marriage would lead to one disastrous result. It would sooner or later come to Herbert’s ears. In the meantime, after what Mrs. Presty had confessed, the cruel falsehood which had checked poor Kitty’s natural inquiries raised an insuperable obstacle to a meeting between father and child.
If Randal shrank from the prospect which thus presented itself to him, in his relations with his brother, and if his thoughts reverted to Sydney Westerfield, other reasons for apprehension found their way into his mind.
He had promised to do his best toward persuading Catherine to grant Sydney an interview. To perform that promise appeared to be now simply impossible. Under the exasperating influence of a disappointment for which she was not prepared, it was hard to say what act of imprudence Sydney might not commit. Even the chance of successfully confiding her to Bennydeck’s protection had lost something of its fair promise, since Randal’s visit to Sydenham. That the Captain would welcome his friend’s daughter as affectionately as if she had been his own child, was not to be doubted for a moment. But that she would receive the same unremitting attention, while he was courting Catherine, which would have been offered to her under other circumstances, was not to be hoped. Be the results, however, what they might, Randal could see but one plain course before him now. He decided on hastening Sydney’s introduction to Bennydeck, and on writing at once to prepare the Captain for that event.
Even this apparently simple proceeding required examination in its different bearings, before he could begin his letter.
Would he be justified in alluding to the report which associated Bennydeck with Catherine? Considerations of delicacy seemed to forbid taking this liberty, even with an intimate friend. It was for the Captain to confirm what Mrs. Presty had said of him, if he thought it desirable to touch on the subject in his reply. Besides, looking to Catherine’s interest — and not forgetting how she had suffered — had Randal any right to regard with other than friendly feelings a second marriage, which united her to a man morally and intellectually the superior of her first husband? What happier future could await her — especially if she justified Randal’s past experience of all that was candid and truthful in her character — than to become his friend’s wife?
Written under the modifying influence of these conclusions, his letter contained the few words that follow:
“I have news for you which I am sure you will be glad to hear. Your old friend’s daughter has abandoned her sinful way of life, and has made sacrifices which prove the sincerity of her repentance. Without entering into particulars which may be mercifully dismissed from notice, let me only assure you that I answer for Sydney Westerfield as being worthy of the fatherly interest which you feel in her. Shall I say that she may expect an early visit from you, when I see her to-morrow? I don’t doubt that I am free already to do this; but it will encourage the poor girl, if I can speak with your authority.”
He added Sydney’s address in a postscript, and dispatched his letter that evening.
On the afternoon of the next day two letters were delivered to Randal, bearing the Sydenham postmark.
The first which he happened to take up was addressed to him in Mrs. Presty’s handwriting. His opinion of this correspondent was expressed in prompt action — he threw the letter, unopened, into the waste-paper basket.
The next letter was from Bennydeck, written in the kindest terms, but containing no allusion to any contemplated change in his life. He would not be able (he wrote) to leave Sydenham for a day or two. No explanation of the cause of this delay followed. But it might, perhaps, be excusable to infer that the marriage had not yet been decided on, and that the Captain’s proposals were still waiting for Catherine’s reply.
Randal put the letter in his pocket and went at once to Sydney’s lodgings.
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.”
The garden of the hotel at Sydenham had originally belonged to a private house. Of great extent, it had been laid out in excellent taste. Flower-beds and lawns, a handsome fountain, seats shaded by groups of fine trees at their full growth, completed the pastoral charm of the place. A winding path led across the garden from the back of the house. It had been continued by the speculator who purchased the property, until it reached a road at the extremity of the grounds which communicated with the Crystal Palace. Visitors to the hotel had such pleasant associations with the garden that many of them returned at future opportunities instead of trying the attraction of some other place. Various tastes and different ages found their wishes equally consulted here. Children rejoiced in the finest playground they had ever seen. Remote walks, secluded among shrubberies, invited persons of reserved disposition who came as strangers, and as strangers desired to remain. The fountain and the lawn collected sociable visitors, who were always ready to make acquaintance with each other. Even the amateur artist could take liberties with Nature, and find the accommodating limits of the garden sufficient for his purpose. Trees in the foreground sat to him for likenesses that were never recognized; and hills submitted to unprovoked familiarities, on behalf of brushes which were not daunted by distance.
On the day after the dinner which had so deplorably failed, in respect of one of the guests invited, to fulfill Catherine’s anticipations, there was a festival at the Palace. It had proved so generally attractive to the guests at the hotel that the grounds were almost deserted.
As the sun declined, on a lovely summer evening, the few invalids feebly wandering about the flower-beds, or resting under the trees, began to return to the house in dread of the dew. Catherine and her child, with the nursemaid in attendance, were left alone in the garden. Kitty found her mother, as she openly declared, “not such good company as usual.” Since the day when her grandmother had said the fatal words which checked all further allusion to her father, the child had shown a disposition to complain, if she was not constantly amused. She complained of Mrs. Presty now.
“I think grandmamma might have taken me to the Crystal Palace,” she said.
“My dear, your grandmamma has friends with her — ladies and gentlemen who don’t care to be troubled with a child.”
Kitty received this information in a very unamiable spirit. “I hate ladies and gentlemen!” she said.
“Even Captain Bennydeck?” her mother asked.
“No; I like my nice Captain. And I like the waiters. They would take me to the Crystal Palace — only they’re always busy. I wish it was bedtime; I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Take a little walk with Susan.”
“Where shall I go?”
Catherine looked toward the gate which opened on the road, and proposed a visit to the old man who kept the lodge.
Kitty shook her head. There was an objection to the old man. “He asks questions; he wants to know how I get on with my sums. He’s proud of his summing; and he finds me out when I’m wrong. I don’t like the lodge-keeper.”
Catherine looked the other way, toward the house. The pleasant fall of water in the basin of the distant fountain was just audible. “Go and feed the gold-fishes,” she suggested.
This was a prospect of amusement which at once raised Kitty’s spirits. “That’s the thing!” she cried, and ran off to the fountain, with the nursemaid after her.
Catherine seated herself under the trees, and watched in solitude the decline of the sun in a cloudless sky. The memory of the happy years of her marriage had never been so sadly and persistently present to her mind as at this time, when the choice of another married life waited her decision to become an accomplished fact. Remembrances of the past, which she had such bitter reason to regret, and forebodings of the future, in which she was more than half inclined to believe, oppressed her at one and the same moment. She thought of the different circumstances, so widely separated by time, under which Herbert (years ago) and Bennydeck (twenty-four hours since) had each owned his love, and pleaded for an indulgent hearing. Her mind contrasted the dissimilar results.
Pressed by the faithless man who had so cruelly wronged her in after-years, she only wondered why he had waited so long before he asked her to marry him. Addressed with equal ardor by that other man, whose age, whose character, whose modest devotion offered her every assurance of happiness that a woman could desire, she had struggled against herself, and had begged him to give her a day to consider. That day was now drawing to an end. As she watched the setting sun, the phantom of her guilty husband darkened the heavenly light; imbittered the distrust of herself which made her afraid to say Yes; and left her helpless before the hesitation which prevented her from saying No.
The figure of a man appeared on the lonely path that led to the lodge gate.
Impulsively she rose from her seat as he advanced. She sat down again. After that first act of indecision, the flutter of her spirits abated; she was able to think.
To avoid him, after he had spared her at her own request, would have been an act of ingratitude: to receive him was to place herself once more in the false position of a woman too undecided to know her own mind. Forced to choose between these alternatives, her true regard for Bennydeck forbade her to think of herself, and encouraged her to wait for him. As he came nearer, she saw anxiety in his face and observed an open letter in his hand. He smiled as he approached her, and asked leave to take a chair at her side. At the same time, when he perceived that she had noticed his letter, he put it away hurriedly in his pocket.
“I hope nothing has happened to annoy you,” she said.
He smiled again; and asked if she was thinking of his letter. “It is only a report,” he added, “from my second in command, whom I have left in charge of my Home. He is an excellent man; but I am afraid his temper is not proof against the ingratitude which we sometimes meet with. He doesn’t yet make allowances for what even the best natures suffer, under the deteriorating influence of self-distrust and despair. No, I am not anxious about the results of this case. I forget all my anxieties (except one) when I am with you.”
His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject that she dreaded. She tried — as women will try, in the little emergencies of their lives — to gain time.
“I am interested about your Home,” she said: “I want to know what sort of place it is. Is the discipline very severe?”
“There is no discipline,” he answered warmly. “My one object is to be a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures; and my one way of governing them is to follow the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. Whatever else I may remind them of, when they come to me, I am determined not to remind them of a prison. For this reason — though I pity the hardened wanderers of the streets, I don’t open my doors to them. Many a refuge, in which discipline is inevitable, is open to these poor sinners already. My welcome is offered to penitents and sufferers of another kind — who have fallen from positions in life, in which the sense of honor has been cultivated; whose despair is associated with remembrances which I may so encourage, with the New Testament to help me, as to lead them back to the religious influences under which their purer and happier lives may have been passed. Here and there I meet with disappointments. But I persist in my system of trusting them as freely as if they were my own children; and, for the most part, they justify my confidence in them. On the day — if it ever comes — when I find discipline necessary, I shall suffer my disappointment and close my doors.”
“Is your house open,” Catherine asked, “to men and women alike?”
He was eager to speak with her on a subject more interesting to him even than his Home. Answering her question, in this frame of mind, his thoughts wandered; he drew lines absently with his walking-stick on the soft earth under the trees.
“The means at my disposal,” he said, “are limited. I have been obliged to choose between the men and the women.”
“And you have chosen women?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because a lost woman is a more friendless creature than a lost man.”
“Do they come to you? or do you look for them?”
“They mostly come to me. There is one young woman, however, now waiting to see me, whom I have been looking for. I am deeply interested in her.”
“Is it her beauty that interests you?”
“I have not seen her since she was a child. She is the daughter of an old friend of mine, who died many years ago.”
“And with that claim on you, you keep her waiting?”
“Yes.”
He let his stick drop on the ground and looked at Catherine; but he offered no explanation of his strange conduct. She was a little disappointed. “You have been some time away from your Home,” she said; still searching for his reasons. “When do you go back?”
“I go back,” he answered, “when I know whether I may thank God for being the happiest man living.”
They were both silent.
Catherine listened to the fall of water in the basin of the fountain. She was conscious of a faint hope — a hope unworthy of her — that Kitty might get weary of the gold-fishes, and might interrupt them. No such thing happened; no stranger appeared on the path which wound through the garden. She was alone with him. The influences of the still and fragrant summer evening were influences which breathed of love.
“Have you thought of me since yesterday?” he asked gently.
She owned that she had thought of him.
“Is there no hope that your heart will ever incline toward me?”
“I daren’t consult my heart. If I had only to consider my own feelings —” She stopped.
“What else have you to consider?”
“My past life — how I have suffered, and what I have to repent of.”
“Has your married life not been a happy one?” he asked.
“Not a happy one — in the end,” she answered.
“Through no fault of yours, I am sure?”
“Through no fault of mine, certainly.”
“And yet you said just now that you had something to repent of?”
“I was not thinking of my husband, Captain Bennydeck, when I said that. If I have injured any person, the person is myself.”
She was thinking of that fatal concession to the advice of her mother, and to the interests of her child, which placed her in a false position toward the honest man who loved her and trusted her. If he had been less innocent in the ways of the world, and not so devotedly fond of her, he might, little by little, have persuaded Catherine to run the risk of shocking him by a confession of the truth. As it was, his confidence in her raised him high above the reach of suspicions which might have occurred to other men. He saw her turn pale; he saw distress in her face, which he interpreted as a silent reproach to him for the questions he had asked.
“I hope you will forgive me?” he said simply.
She was astonished. “What have I to forgive?”
“My want of delicacy.”
“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you speak of one of your great merits as if it were a fault! Over and over again I have noticed your delicacy, and admired it.”
He was too deeply in earnest to abandon his doubts of himself.
“I have ignorantly led you to think of your sorrows,” he said; “sorrows that I cannot console. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. May I make the one excuse in my power? May I speak of myself?”
She told him by a gesture that he had made a needless request.
“The life I have led,” he resumed, “accounts, perhaps, in some degree, for what is deficient in me. At school, I was not a popular boy; I only made one friend, and he has long since been numbered with the dead. Of my life at college, and afterward in London, I dare not speak to you; I look back at it with horror. My school-friend decided my choice of a profession; he went into the navy. After a while, not knowing what else to do, I followed his example. I liked the life — I may say the sea saved me. For years, I was never on shore for more than a few weeks at a time. I saw nothing of society; I was hardly ever in the company of ladies. The next change in my life associated me with an Arctic expedition. God forbid I should tell you of what men go through who are lost in the regions of eternal ice! Let me only say I was preserved — miraculously preserved — to profit by that dreadful experience. It made a new man of me; it altered me ( I hope for the better) into what I am now. Oh, I feel that I ought to have kept my secret yesterday — I mean my daring to love you. I should have waited till you knew more of me; till my conduct pleased you perhaps, and spoke for me. You won’t laugh, I am sure, if I confess (at my age!) that I am inexperienced. Never till I met you have I known what true love is — and this at forty years old. How some people would laugh! I own it seems melancholy to me.”
“No; not melancholy.”
Her voice trembled. Agitation, which it was not a pain but a luxury to feel, was gently taking possession of her. Where another man might have seen that her tenderness was getting the better of her discretion, and might have presumed on the discovery, this man, innocently blind to his own interests, never even attempted to take advantage of her. No more certain way could have been devised, by the most artful lover, of touching the heart of a generous woman, and making it his own. The influence exerted over Catherine by the virtues of Bennydeck’s character — his unaffected kindness, his manly sympathy, his religious convictions so deeply felt, so modestly restrained from claiming notice — had been steadily increasing in the intimacy of daily intercourse. Catherine had never felt his ascendancy over her as strongly as she felt it now. By fine degrees, the warning remembrances which had hitherto made her hesitate lost their hold on her memory. Hardly conscious herself of what she was doing, she began to search his feelings in his own presence. Such love as his had been unknown in her experience; the luxury of looking into it, and sounding it to its inmost depths, was more than the woman’s nature could resist.
“I think you hardly do yourself justice,” she said. “Surely you don’t regret having felt for me so truly, when I told you yesterday that my old friend had deserted me?”
“No, indeed!”
“Do you like to remember that you showed no jealous curiosity to know who my friend was?”
“I should have been ashamed of myself if I had asked the question.”
“And did you believe that I had a good motive — a motive which you might yourself have appreciated — for not telling you the name of that friend?”
“Is he some one whom I know?”
“Ought you to ask me that, after what I have just said?”
“Pray forgive me! I spoke without thinking.”
“I can hardly believe it, when I remember how you spoke to me yesterday. I could never have supposed, before we became acquainted with each other, that it was in the nature of a man to understand me so perfectly, to be so gentle and so considerate in feeling for my distress. You confused me a little, I must own, by what you said afterward. But I am not sure that ought to be severe in blaming you. Sympathy — I mean such sympathy as yours — sometimes says more than discretion can always approve. Have you not found it so yourself?”
“I have found it so with you.”
“And perhaps I have shown a little too plainly how dependent I am on you — how dreadful it would be to me if I lost you too as a friend?”
She blushed as she said it. When the words had escaped her, she felt that they might bear another meaning than the simple meaning which she had attached to them. He took her hand; his doubts of himself, his needless fear of offending her, restrained him no longer.
“You can never lose me,” he said, “if you will only let me be the nearest friend that a woman can have. Bear with me, dearest! I ask for so much; I have so little to offer in return. I dream of a life with you which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be enjoyed on earth. And yet, I cannot resign my delusion. Must my poor heart always long for happiness which is beyond my reach? If an overruling Providence guides our course through this world, may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our mortal eyes can see?”
He waited a moment — and sighed — and dropped her hand. She hid her face; she knew what it would tell him: she was ashamed to let him see it.
“I didn’t mean to distress you,” he said sadly.
She let him see her face. For a moment only, she looked at him — and then let silence tell him the rest.
His arms closed round her. Slowly, the glory of the sun faded from the heavens, and the soft summer twilight fell over the earth. “I can’t speak,” he whispered; “my happiness is too much for me.”
“Are you sure of your happiness?” she asked.
“Could I think as I am thinking now, if I were not sure of it?”
“Are you thinking of me?”
“Of you — and of all that you will be to me in the future. Oh, my angel, if God grants us many years to come, what a perfect life I see!”
“Tell me — what do you see?”
“I see a husband and wife who are all in all to each other. If friends come to us, we are glad to bid them welcome; but we are always happiest by ourselves.”
“Do we live in retirement?”
“We live where you like best to live. Shall it be in the country?”
“Yes! yes! You have spoken of the sea as you might have spoken of your best friend — we will be near the sea. But I must not keep you selfishly all to myself. I must remember how good you have been to poor creatures who don’t feel our happiness, and who need your kindness. Perhaps I might help you? Do you doubt it?”
“I only doubt whether I ought to let you see what I have seen; I am only afraid of the risk of making you unhappy. You tempt me to run the risk. The help of a woman — and of such a woman as you are — is the one thing I have wanted. Your influence would succeed where my influence has often failed. How good, how thoughtful you would be!”
“I only want to be worthy of you,” she said, humbly. “When may I see your Home?”
He drew her closer to him: tenderly and timidly he kissed her for the first time. “It rests with you,” he answered. “When will you be my wife?”
She hesitated; he felt her trembling. “Is there any obstacle?” he asked.
Before she could reply, Kitty’s voice was heard calling to her mother — Kitty ran up to them.
Catherine turned cold as the child caught her by the hand, eagerly claiming her attention. All that she should have remembered, all that she had forgotten in a few bright moments of illusion, rose in judgment against her, and struck her mind prostrate in an instant, when she felt Kitty’s touch.
Bennydeck saw the change. Was it possible that the child’s sudden appearance had startled her? Kitty had something to say, and said it before he could speak.
“Mamma, I want to go where the other children are going. Susan’s gone to her supper. You take me.”
Her mother was not even listening. Kitty turned impatiently to Bennydeck. “Why won’t mamma speak to me?” she asked. He quieted her by a word. “You shall go with me.” His anxiety about Catherine was more than he could endure. “Pray let me take you back to the house,” he said. “I am afraid you are not well.”
“I shall be better directly. Do me a kindness — take the child!”
She spoke faintly and vacantly. Bennydeck hesitated. She lifted her trembling hands in entreaty. “I beg you will leave me!” Her voice, her manner, made it impossible to disobey. He turned resignedly to Kitty and asked which way she wanted to go. The child pointed down the path to one of the towers of the Crystal Palace, visible in the distance. “The governess has taken the others to see the company go away,” she said; “I want to go too.”
Bennydeck looked back before he lost sight of Catherine.
She remained seated, in the attitude in which he had left her. At the further end of the path which led to the hotel, he thought he saw a figure in the twilight, approaching from the house. There would be help near, if Catherine wanted it.
His uneasy mind was in some degree relieved, as he and Kitty left the garden together.
She tried to think of Bennydeck.
Her eyes followed him as long as he was in sight, but her thoughts wandered. To look at him now was to look at the little companion walking by his side. Still, the child reminded her of the living father; still, the child innocently tortured her with the consciousness of deceit. The faithless man from whom the law had released her, possessed himself of her thoughts, in spite of the law. He, and he only, was the visionary companion of her solitude when she was left by herself.
Did he remind her of the sin that he had committed?— of the insult that he had inflicted on the woman whom he had vowed to love and cherish? No! he recalled to her the years of love that she had passed by his side; he upbraided her with the happiness which she had owed to him, in the prime and glory of her life. Woman! set that against the wrong which I have done to you. You have the right to condemn me, and Society has the right to condemn me — but I am your child’s father still. Forget me if you can!
All thought will bear the test of solitude, excepting only the thought that finds its origin in hopeless self-reproach. The soft mystery of twilight, the solemn silence of the slowly-coming night, daunted Catherine in that lonely place. She rose to return to light and human beings. As she set her face toward the house, a discovery confronted her. She was not alone.
A woman was standing on the path, apparently looking at her.
In the dim light, and at the distance between them, recognition of the woman was impossible. She neither moved nor spoke. Strained to their utmost point of tension, Catherine’s nerves quivered at the sight of that shadowy solitary figure. She dropped back on the seat. In tones that trembled she said: “Who are you? What do you want?”
The voice that answered was, like her own voice, faint with fear. It said: “I want a word with you.”
Moving slowly forward — stopping — moving onward again — hesitating again — the woman at last approached. There was light enough left to reveal her face, now that she was near. It was the face of Sydney Westerfield.
The survival of childhood, in the mature human being, betrays itself most readily in the sex that bears children. The chances and changes of life show the child’s mobility of emotion constantly associating itself with the passions of the woman. At the moment of recognition the troubled mind of Catherine was instantly steadied, under the influence of that coarsest sense which levels us with the animals — the sense of anger.
“I am amazed at your audacity,” she said.
There was no resentment — there was only patient submission in Sydney’s reply.
“Twice I have approached the house in which you are living; and twice my courage has failed me. I have gone away again — I have walked, I don’t know where, I don’t know how far. Shame and fear seemed to be insensible to fatigue. This is my third attempt. If I was a little nearer to you, I think you would see what the effort has cost me. I have not much to say. May I ask you to hear me?”
“You have taken me by surprise, Miss Westerfield. You have no right to do that; I refuse to hear you.”
“Try, madam, to bear in mind that no unhappy creature, in my place, would expose herself to your anger and contempt without a serious reason. Will you think again?”
“No!”
Sydney turned to go away — and suddenly stopped.
Another person was advancing from the hotel; an interruption, a trivial domestic interruption, presented itself. The nursemaid had missed the child, and had come into the garden to see if she was with her mother.
“Where is Miss Kitty, ma’am?” the girl asked.
Her mistress told her what had happened, and sent her to the Palace to relieve Captain Bennydeck of the charge that he had undertaken. Susan listened, looking at Sydney and recognizing the familiar face. As the girl moved away, Sydney spoke to her.
“I hope little Kitty is well and happy?”
The mother does not live who could have resisted the tone in which that question was put. The broken heart, the love for the child that still lived in it, spoke in accents that even touched the servant. She came back; remembering the happy days when the governess had won their hearts at Mount Morven, and, for a moment at least, remembering nothing else.
“Quite well and happy, miss, thank you,” Susan said.
As she hurried away on her errand, she saw her mistress beckon to Sydney to return, and place a chair for her. The nursemaid was not near enough to hear what followed.
“Miss Westerfield, will you forget what I said just now?” With those words, Catherine pointed to the chair. “I am ready to hear you,” she resumed —“but I have something to ask first. Does what you wish to say to me relate only to yourself?”
“It relates to another person, as well as to myself.”
That reply, and the inference to which it led, tried Catherine’s resolution to preserve her self-control, as nothing had tried it yet.
“If that other person,” she began, “means Mr. Herbert Linley —”
Sydney interrupted her, in words which she was entirely unprepared to hear.
“I shall never see Mr. Herbert Linley again.”
“Has he deserted you?”
“No. It is I who have left him.”
“You!”
The emphasis laid on that one word forced Sydney to assert herself for the first time.
“If I had not left him of my own free will,” she said, “what else would excuse me for venturing to come here?”
Catherine’s sense of justice felt the force of that reply. At the same time her sense of injury set its own construction on Sydney’s motive. “Has his cruelty driven you away from him?” she asked.
“If he has been cruel to me,” Sydney answered, “do you think I should have come here to complain of it to You? Do me the justice to believe that I am not capable of such self-degradation as that. I have nothing to complain of.”
“And yet you have left him?”
“He has been all that is kind and considerate: he has done everything that a man in his unhappy position could do to set my mind at ease. And yet I have left him. Oh, I claim no merit for my repentance, bitterly as I feel it! I might not have had the courage to leave him — if he had loved me as he once loved you.”
“Miss Westerfield, you are the last person living who ought to allude to my married life.”
“You may perhaps pardon the allusion, madam, when you have heard what I have still to say. I owe it to Mr. Herbert Linley, if not to you, to confess that his life with me has not been a life of happiness. He has tried, compassionately tried, to keep his secret sorrow from discovery, and he has failed. I had long suspected the truth; but I only saw it in his face when he found the book you left behind you at the hotel. Your image has, from first to last, been the one living image in his guilty heart. I am the miserable victim of a man’s passing fancy. You have been, you are still, the one object of a husband’s love. Ask your own heart if the woman lives who can say to you what I have said — unless she knew it to be true.”
Catherine’s head sank on her bosom; her helpless hands lay trembling on her lap. Overpowered by the confession which she had just heard — a confession which had followed closely on the thoughts inspired by the appearance of the child — her agitation was beyond control; her mind was unequal to the effort of decision. The woman who had been wronged — who had the right to judge for herself, and to speak for herself — was the silent woman of the two!
It was not quite dark yet. Sydney could see as well as hear.
For the first time since the beginning of the interview, she allowed the impulse of the moment to lead her astray. In her eagerness to complete the act of atonement, she failed to appreciate the severity of the struggle that was passing in Catherine’s mind. She alluded again to Herbert Linley, and she spoke too soon.
“Will you let him ask your pardon?” she said. “He expects no more.”
Catherine’s spirit was roused in an instant. “He expects too much!” she answered, sternly. “Is he here by your connivance? Is he, too, waiting to take me by surprise?”
“I am incapable, madam, of taking such a liberty with you as that; I may perhaps have hoped to be able to tell him, by writing, of a different reception —” She checked herself. “I beg your pardon, if I have ventured to hope. I dare not ask you to alter your opinion —”
“Do you dare to look the truth in the face?” Catherine interposed. “Do you remember what sacred ties that man has broken? what memories he has profaned? what years of faithful love he has cast from him? Must I tell you how he poisoned his wife’s mind with doubts of his truth and despair of his honor, when he basely deserted her? You talk of your repentance. Does your repentance forget that he would still have been my blameless husband but for you?”
Sydney silently submitted to reproach, silently endured the shame that finds no excuse for itself.
Catherine looked at her and relented. The noble nature which could stoop to anger, but never sink to the lower depths of malice and persecution, restrained itself and made amends. “I say it in no unkindness to you,” she resumed. “But when you ask me to forgive, consider what you ask me to forget. It will only distress us both if we remain longer together,” she continued, rising as she spoke. “Perhaps you will believe that I mean well, when I ask if there is anything I can do for you?”
“Nothing!”
All the desolation of the lost woman told its terrible tale in that one word. Invited to rest herself in the hotel, she asked leave to remain where she was; the mere effort of rising was too much for her now. Catherine said the parting words kindly. “I believe in your good intentions; I believe in your repentance.”
“Believe in my punishment!” After that reply, no more was said.
Behind the trees that closed the view at the further extremity of the lawn the moon was rising. As the two women lost sight of each other, the new light, pure and beautiful, began to dawn over the garden.
No horror of her solitude, no melancholy recollections, no dread of the future disturbed Sydney’s mind. The one sense left in her was the sense of fatigue. Vacantly, mechanically, the girl rested as a tired animal might have rested. She saw nothing, heard nothing; the one feeling of which she was conscious was a dull aching in every limb. The moon climbed the heavens, brightened the topmost leaves of the trees, found the gloom in which Sydney was hidden, and cheered it tenderly with radiant light. She was too weary to sleep, too weary even to shade her face when the moonbeams touched it. While the light still strengthened, while the slow minutes still followed each other unheeded, the one influence that could rouse Sydney found her at last — set her faint heart throbbing — called her prostrate spirit to life again. She heard a glad cry of recognition in a child’s voice:
“Oh, Sydney, dear, is it you?”
In another instant her little pupil and playfellow of former days was in her arms.
“My darling, how did you come here?”
Susan answered the question. “We are on our way back from the Palace, miss. I am afraid,” she said, timidly, “that we ought to go in.”
Silently resigned, Sydney tried to release the child. Kitty clung to her and kissed her; Kitty set the nurse at defiance. “Do you think I am going to leave Syd now I have found her? Susan, I am astonished at you!”
Susan gave way. Where the nature is gentle, kindness and delicacy go hand-in-hand together, undisturbed by the social irregularities which beset the roadway of life. The nursemaid drew back out of hearing. Kitty’s first questions followed each other in breathless succession. Some of them proved to be hard, indeed, to answer truly, and without reserve. She inquired if Sydney had seen her mother, and then she was eager to know why Sydney had been left in the garden alone.
“Why haven’t you gone back to the house with mamma?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me, dear,” was all that Sydney could say. Kitty drew the inevitable conclusion: “Have you and mamma quarreled?”
“Oh, no!”
“Then come indoors with me.”
“Wait a little, Kitty, and tell me something about yourself. How do you get on with your lessons?”
“You dear foolish governess, do you expect me to learn my lessons, when I haven’t got you to teach me? Where have you been all this long while? I wouldn’t have gone away and left you!” She paused; her eager eyes studied Sydney’s face with the unrestrained curiosity of a child. “Is it the moonlight that makes you look pale and wretched?” she said. “Or are you really unhappy? Tell me, Syd, do you ever sing any of those songs that I taught you, when you first came to us?”
“Never, dear!”
“Have you anybody to go out walking with you and running races with you, as I did?”
“No, my sweet! Those days have gone by forever.”
Kitty laid her head sadly on Sydney’s bosom. “It’s not the moonlight,” she said; “shall I tell you a secret? Sometimes I am not happy either. Poor papa is dead. He always liked you — I’m sure you are sorry for him.”
Astonishment held Sydney speechless. Before she could ask who had so cruelly deceived the child, and for what purpose, the nursemaid, standing behind the chair, warned her to be silent by a touch.
“I think we are all unhappy now,” Kitty went on, still following her own little train of thought. “Mamma isn’t like what she used to be. And even my nice Captain hasn’t a word to say to me. He wouldn’t come back with us; he said he would go back by himself.”
Another allusion which took Sydney by surprise! She asked who the Captain was. Kitty started as if the question shocked her. “Oh dear, dear, this is what comes of your going away and leaving us! You don’t know Captain Bennydeck.”
The name of her father’s correspondent! The name which she vaguely remembered to have heard in her childhood! “Where did you first meet with him?” she inquired.
“At the seaside, dear!”
“Do you mean at Sandyseal?”
“Yes. Mamma liked him — and grandmamma liked him (which is wonderful)— and I gave him a kiss. Promise me not to tell! My nice Captain is going to be my new papa.”
Was there any possible connection between what Kitty had just said, and what the poor child had been deluded into believing when she spoke of her father? Even Susan seemed to be in the secret of this strange second marriage! She interfered with a sharp reproof. “You mustn’t talk in that way, Miss Kitty. Please put her off your lap, Miss Westerfield; we have been here too long already.”
Kitty proposed a compromise; “I’ll go,” she said, “if Syd will come with me.”
“I’m sorry, my darling, to disappoint you.”
Kitty refused to believe it. “You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried,” she said boldly.
“Indeed, indeed, I must go away. Oh, Kitty, try to bear it as I do!”
Entreaties were useless; the child refused to hear of another parting. “I want to make you and mamma friends again. Don’t break my heart, Sydney! Come home with me, and teach me, and play with me, and love me!”
She pulled desperately at Sydney’s dress; she called to Susan to help her. With tears in her eyes, the girl did her best to help them both. “Miss Westerfield will wait here,” she said to Kitty, “while you speak to your mamma.— Say Yes!” she whispered to Sydney; “it’s our only chance.”
The child instantly exacted a promise. In the earnestness of her love she even dictated the words. “Say it after me, as I used to say my lessons,” she insisted. “Say, ‘Kitty, I promise to wait for you.’”
Who that loved her could have refused to say it! In one form or another, the horrid necessity for deceit had followed, and was still following, that first, worst act of falsehood — the elopement from Mount Morven.
Kitty was now as eager to go as she had been hitherto resolute to remain. She called for Susan to follow her, and ran to the hotel.
“My mistress won’t let her come back — you can leave the garden that way.” The maid pointed along the path to the left and hurried after the child.
They were gone — and Sydney was alone again.
At the parting with Kitty, the measure of her endurance was full. Not even the farewell at Mount Morven had tried her by an ordeal so cruel as this. No kind woman was willing to receive her and employ her, now. The one creature left who loved her was the faithful little friend whom she must never see again. “I am still innocent to that child,” she thought —“and I am parted from her forever!”
She rose to leave the garden.
A farewell look at the last place in which she had seen Kitty tempted her to indulge in a moment of delay. Her eyes rested on the turn in the path at which she had lost sight of the active little figure hastening away to plead her cause. Even in absence, the child was Sydney’s good angel still. As she turned away to follow the path that had been shown to her, the relief of tears came at last. It cooled her burning head; it comforted her aching heart. She tried to walk on. The tears blinded her — she strayed from the path — she would have fallen but for a hand that caught her, and held her up. A man’s voice, firm and deep and kind, quieted her first wild feeling of terror. “My child, you are not fit to be by yourself. Let me take care of you — let me comfort you, if I can.”
He carried her back to the seat that she had left, and waited by her in merciful silence.
“You are very young to feel such bitter sorrow,” he said, when she was composed again. “I don’t ask what your sorrow is; I only want to know how I can help you.”
“Nobody can help me.”
“Can I take you back to your friends?”
“I have no friends.”
“Pardon me, you have one friend at least — you have me.”
“You? A stranger?”
“No human creature who needs my sympathy is a stranger.”
She turned toward him for the first time. In her new position, she was clearly visible in the light. He looked at her attentively. “I have seen you somewhere,” he said, “before now.”
She had not noticed him when they had passed each other at Sandyseal. “I think you must be mistaken,” she answered. “May I thank you for your kindness? and may I hope to be excused if I say good-night?”
He detained her. “Are you sure that you are well enough to go away by yourself?” he asked anxiously.
“I am quite sure!”
He still detained her. His memory of that first meeting at the seaside hotel reminded him that he had seen her in the company of a man. At their second meeting, she was alone, and in tears. Sad experience led him to form his own conclusions. “If you won’t let me take care of you,” he said, “will you consider if I can be of any use to you, and will you call at that address?” He gave her his card. She took it without looking at it; she was confused; she hardly knew what to say. “Do you doubt me?” he asked — sadly, not angrily.
“Oh, how can I do that! I doubt myself; I am not worthy of the interest you feel in me.”
“That is a sad thing to say,” he answered. “Let me try to give you confidence in yourself. Do you go to London when you leave this place?”
“Yes.”
“To-morrow,” he resumed, “I am going to see another poor girl who is alone in the world like you. If I tell you where she lives, will you ask her if I am a person to be trusted?”
He had taken a letter from his pocket, while he was speaking; and he now tore off a part of the second leaf, and gave it to her. “I have only lately,” he said, “received the address from a friend.”
As he offered that explanation, the shrill sound of a child’s voice, raised in anger and entreaty, reached their ears from the neighborhood of the hotel. Faithful little Kitty had made her escape, determined to return to Sydney had been overtaken by the maid — and had been carried back in Susan’s arms to the house. Sydney imagined that she was not perhaps alone in recognizing the voice. The stranger who had been so kind to her did certainly start and look round.
The stillness of the night was disturbed no more. The man turned again to the person who had so strongly interested him. The person was gone.
In fear of being followed, Sydney hurried to the railway station. By the light in the carriage she looked for the first time at the fragment of the letter and the card.
The stranger had presented her with her own address! And, when she looked at the card, the name was Bennydeck!
More than once, on one and the same day, the Captain had been guilty of a weakness which would have taken his oldest friends by surprise, if they had seen him at the moment. He hesitated.
A man who has commanded ships and has risked his life in the regions of the frozen deep, is a man formed by nature and taught by habit to meet emergency face to face, to see his course straight before him, and to take it, lead him where it may. But nature and habit, formidable forces as they are, find their master when they encounter the passion of Love.
At once perplexed and distressed by that startling change in Catherine which he had observed when her child approached her, Bennydeck’s customary firmness failed him, when the course of conduct toward his betrothed wife which it might be most becoming to follow presented itself to him as a problem to be solved. When Kitty asked him to accompany her nursemaid and herself on their return to the hotel, he had refused because he felt reluctant to intrude himself on Catherine’s notice, until she was ready to admit him to her confidence of her own free will. Left alone, he began to doubt whether delicacy did really require him to make the sacrifice which he had contemplated not five minutes since. It was surely possible that Catherine might be waiting to see him, and might then offer the explanation which would prove to be equally a relief on both sides. He was on his way to the hotel when he met with Sydney Westerfield.
To see a woman in the sorest need of all that kindness and consideration could offer, and to leave her as helpless as he had found her, would have been an act of brutal indifference revolting to any man possessed of even ordinary sensibility. The Captain had only followed his natural impulses, and had only said and done what, in nearly similar cases, he had said and done on other occasions.
Left by himself, he advanced a few steps mechanically on the way by which Sydney had escaped him — and then stopped. Was there any sufficient reason for his following her, and intruding himself on her notice? She had recovered, she was in possession of his address, she had been referred to a person who could answer for his good intentions; all that it was his duty to do, had been done already. He turned back again, in the direction of the hotel.
Hesitating once more, he paused half-way along the corridor which led to Catherine’s sitting-room. Voices reached him from persons who had entered the house by the front door. He recognized Mrs. Presty’s loud confident tones. She was taking leave of friends, and was standing with her back toward him. Bennydeck waited, unobserved, until he saw her enter the sitting-room. No such explanation as he was in search of could possibly take place in the presence of Catherine’s mother. He returned to the garden.
Mrs. Presty was in high spirits. She had enjoyed the Festival; she had taken the lead among the friends who accompanied her to the Palace; she had ordered everything, and paid for nothing, at that worst of all bad public dinners in England, the dinner which pretends to be French. In a buoyant frame of mind, ready for more enjoyment if she could only find it, what did she see on opening the sitting-room door? To use the expressive language of the stage, Catherine was “discovered alone”— with her elbows on the table, and her face hidden in her hands — the picture of despair.
Mrs. Presty surveyed the spectacle before her with righteous indignation visible in every line of her face. The arrangement which bound her daughter to give Bennydeck his final reply on that day had been well known to her when she left the hotel in the morning. The conclusion at which she arrived, on returning at night, was expressed with Roman brevity and Roman eloquence in four words:
“Oh, the poor Captain!”
Catherine suddenly looked up.
“I knew it,” Mrs. Presty continued, with her sternest emphasis; “I see what you have done, in your face. You have refused Bennydeck.”
“God forgive me, I have been wicked enough to accept him!”
Hearing this, some mothers might have made apologies; and other mothers might have asked what that penitential reply could possibly mean. Mrs. Presty was no matron of the ordinary type. She welcomed the good news, without taking the smallest notice of the expression of self-reproach which had accompanied it.
“My dear child, accept the congratulations of your fond old mother. I have never been one of the kissing sort (I mean of course where women are concerned); but this is an occasion which justifies something quite out of the common way. Come and kiss me.”
Catherine took no notice of that outburst of maternal love.
“I have forgotten everything that I ought to have remembered,” she said. “In my vanity, in my weakness, in my selfish enjoyment of the passing moment, I have been too supremely happy even to think of the trials of my past life, and of the false position in which they have placed me toward a man, whom I ought to be ashamed to deceive. I have only been recalled to a sense of duty, I might almost say to a sense of decency, by my poor little child. If Kitty had not reminded me of her father —”
Mrs. Presty dropped into a chair: she was really frightened. Her fat cheeks trembled like a jelly on a dish that is suddenly moved.
“Has that man been here?” she asked.
“What man?”
“The man who may break off your marriage if he meets with the Captain. Has Herbert Linley been here?”
“Certainly not. The one person associated with my troubles whom I have seen to-day is Sydney Westerfield.”
Mrs. Presty bounced out of her chair. “You — have seen — Sydney Westerfield?” she repeated with emphatic pauses which expressed amazement tempered by unbelief.
“Yes; I have seen her.”
“Where?”
“In the garden.”
“And spoken to her?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Presty raised her eyes to the ceiling. Whether she expected our old friend “the recording angel” to take down the questions and answers that had just passed, or whether she was only waiting to see the hotel that held her daughter collapse under a sense of moral responsibility, it is not possible to decide. After an awful pause, the old lady remembered that she had something more to say — and said it.
“I make no remark, Catherine; I don’t even want to know what you and Miss Westerfield said to each other. At the same time, as a matter of convenience to myself, I wish to ascertain whether I must leave this hotel or not. The same house doesn’t hold that woman and ME. Has she gone?”
“She has gone.”
Mrs. Presty looked round the room. “And taken Kitty with her?” she asked.
“Don’t speak of Kitty!” Catherine cried in the greatest distress. “I have had to keep the poor innocent affectionate child apart from Miss Westerfield by force. My heart aches when I think of it.”
“I’m not surprised, Catherine. My granddaughter has been brought up on the modern system. Children are all little angels — no punishments — only gentle remonstrance —‘Don’t be naughty, dear, because you will make poor mamma unhappy.’ And then, mamma grieves over it and wonders over it, when she finds her little angel disobedient. What a fatal system of education! All my success in life; every quality that endeared me to your father and Mr. Presty; every social charm that has made me the idol of society, I attribute entirely to judicious correction in early life, applied freely with the open hand. We will change the subject. Where is dear Bennydeck? I want to congratulate him on his approaching marriage.” She looked hard at her daughter, and mentally added: “He’ll live to regret it!”
Catherine knew nothing of the Captain’s movements. “Like you,” she told her mother, “I have something to say to him, and I don’t know where he is.”
Mrs. Presty still kept her eyes fixed on her daughter. Nobody, observing Catherine’s face, and judging also by the tone of her voice, would have supposed that she was alluding to the man whose irresistible attractions had won her. She looked ill at ease, and she spoke sadly.
“You don’t seem to be in good spirits, my dear,” Mrs. Presty gently suggested. “No lovers’ quarrel already, I hope?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Can I be of any use to you?”
“You might be of the greatest use. But I know only too well, you would refuse.”
Thus far, Mrs. Presty had been animated by curiosity. She began now to feel vaguely alarmed. “After all that I have done for you,” she answered, “I don’t think you ought to say that. Why should I refuse?”
Catherine hesitated.
Her mother persisted in pressing her. “Has it anything to do with Captain Bennydeck?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
Catherine roused her courage.
“You know what it is as well as I do,” she said. “Captain Bennydeck believes that I am free to marry him because I am a widow. You might help me to tell him the truth.”
“What!!!”
That exclamation of horror and astonishment was loud enough to have been heard in the garden. If Mrs. Presty’s hair had been all her own, it must have been hair that stood on end.
Catherine quietly rose. “We won’t discuss it,” she said, with resignation. “I knew you would refuse me.” She approached the door. Her mother got up and resolutely stood in the way. “Before you commit an act of downright madness,” Mrs. Presty said, “I mean to try if I can stop you. Go back to your chair.”
Catherine refused.
“I know how it will end,” she answered; “and the sooner it ends the better. You will find that I am quite as determined as you are. A man who loves me as he loves me, is a man whom I refuse to deceive.”
“Let’s have it out plainly,” Mrs. Presty insisted. “He believes your first marriage has been dissolved by death. Do you mean to tell him that it has been dissolved by Divorce?”
“I do.”
“What right has he to know it?”
“A right that is not to be denied. A wife must have no secrets from her husband.”
Mrs. Presty hit back smartly.
“You’re not his wife yet. Wait till you are married.”
“Never! Who but a wretch would marry an honest man under false pretenses?”
“I deny the false pretenses! You talk as if you were an impostor. Are you, or are you not, the accomplished lady who has charmed him? Are you, or are you not, the beautiful woman whom he loves? There isn’t a stain on your reputation. In every respect you are the wife he wants and the wife who is worthy of him. And you are cruel enough to disturb the poor man about a matter that doesn’t concern him! you are fool enough to raise doubts of you in his mind, and give him a reproach to cast in your teeth the first time you do anything that happens to offend him! Any woman — I don’t care who she may be — might envy the home that’s waiting for you and your child, if you’re wise enough to hold your tongue. Upon my word, Catherine, I am ashamed of you. Have you no principles?”
She really meant it! The purely selfish considerations which she urged on her daughter were so many undeniable virtues in Mrs. Presty’s estimation. She took the highest moral ground, and stood up and crowed on it, with a pride in her own principles which the Primate of all England might have envied.
But Catherine’s rare resolution held as firm as ever. She got a little nearer to the door. “Good-night, mamma,” was the only reply she made.
“Is that all you have to say to me?”
“I am tired, and I must rest. Please let me go.”
Mrs. Presty threw open the door with a bang.
“You refuse to take my advice?” she said. “Oh, very well, have your own way! You are sure to prosper in the end. These are the days of exhibitions and gold medals. If there is ever an exhibition of idiots at large, I know who might win the prize.”
Catherine was accustomed to preserve her respect for her mother under difficulties; but this was far more than her sense of filial duty could successfully endure.
“I only wish I had never taken your advice,” she answered. “Many a miserable moment would have been spared me, if I had always done what I am doing now. You have been the evil genius of my life since Miss Westerfield first came into our house.”
She passed through the open doorway — stopped — and came back again. “I didn’t mean to offend you, mamma — but you do say such irritating things. Good-night.”
Not a word of reply acknowledged that kindly-meant apology. Mrs. Presty — vivacious Mrs. Presty of the indomitable spirit and the ready tongue — was petrified. She, the guardian angel of the family, whose experience, devotion, and sound sense had steered Catherine through difficulties and dangers which must have otherwise ended in utter domestic shipwreck — she, the model mother — had been stigmatized as the evil genius of her daughter’s life by no less a person than that daughter herself! What was to be said? What was to be done? What terrible and unexampled course of action should be taken after such an insult as this? Mrs. Presty stood helpless in the middle of the room, and asked herself these questions, and waited and wondered and found no answer.
An interval passed. There was a knock at the door. A waiter appeared. He said: “A gentleman to see Mrs. Norman.”
The gentleman entered the room and revealed himself.
Herbert Linley!
The divorced husband looked at his mother-in-law without making the slightest sacrifice to the claims of politeness. He neither offered his hand nor made his bow. His frowning eyebrows, his flushed face, betrayed the anger that was consuming him.
“I want to see Catherine,” he said.
This deliberate rudeness proved to be the very stimulant that was required to restore Mrs. Presty to herself. The smile that always meant mischief made its threatening appearance on the old lady’s face.
“What sort of company have you been keeping since I last saw you?” she began.
“What have you got to do with the company I keep?”
“Nothing whatever, I am happy to say. I was merely wondering whether you have been traveling lately in the south part of Africa, and have lived exclusively in the society of Hottentots. The only other explanation of your behavior is that I have been so unfortunate as to offend you. But it seems improbable — I am not your wife.”
“Thank God for that!”
“Thank God, as you say. But I should really be glad (as a mere matter of curiosity) to know what your extraordinary conduct means. You present yourself in this room uninvited, you find a lady here, and you behave as if you had come into a shop and wanted to ask the price of something. Let me give you a lesson in good manners. Observe: I receive you with a bow, and I say: How do you do, Mr. Linley? Do you understand me?”
“I don’t want to understand you — I want to see Catherine.”
“Who is Catherine?”
“You know as well as I do — your daughter.”
“My daughter, sir, is a stranger to you. We will speak of her, if you please, by the name — the illustrious name — which she inherited at her birth. You wish to see Mrs. Norman?”
“Call her what you like. I have a word to say to her, and I mean to say it.”
“No, Mr. Linley, you won’t say it.”
“We’ll see about that! Where is she?”
“My daughter is not well.”
“Well or ill, I shan’t keep her long.”
“My daughter has retired to her room.”
“Where is her room?”
Mrs. Presty moved to the fireplace, and laid her hand on the bell.
“Are you aware that this house is a hotel?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter to me what it is.”
“Oh yes, it does. A hotel keeps waiters. A hotel, when it is as large as this, has a policeman in attendance. Must I ring?”
The choice between giving way to Mrs. Presty, or being disgracefully dismissed, was placed plainly before him. Herbert’s life had been the life of a gentleman; he knew that he had forgotten himself; it was impossible that he could hesitate.
“I won’t trouble you to ring,” he said; “and I will beg your pardon for having allowed my temper to get the better of me. At the same time it ought to be remembered, I think, in my favor, that I have had some provocation.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Mrs. Presty answered. She was deaf to any appeal for mercy from Herbert Linley. “As to provocation,” she added, returning to her chair without asking him to be seated, “when you apply that word to yourself, you insult my daughter and me. You provoked? Oh, heavens!”
“You wouldn’t say that,” he urged, speaking with marked restraint of tone and manner, “if you knew what I have had to endure —”
Mrs. Presty suddenly looked toward the door. “Wait a minute,” she said; “I think I hear somebody coming in.”
In the silence that followed, footsteps were audible outside — not approaching the door, however, but retiring from it. Mrs. Presty had apparently been mistaken. “Yes?” she said resignedly, permitting Herbert to proceed.
He really had something to say for himself, and he said it with sufficient moderation. That he had been guilty of serious offenses he made no attempt to deny; but he pleaded that he had not escaped without justly suffering for what he had done. He had been entirely in the wrong when he threatened to take the child away from her mother by force of law; but had he not been punished when his wife obtained her Divorce, and separated him from his little daughter as well as from herself? (No: Mrs. Presty failed to see it; if anybody had suffered by the Divorce, the victim was her injured daughter.) Still patient, Herbert did not deny the injury; he only submitted once more that he had suffered his punishment. Whether his life with Sydney Westerfield had or had not been a happy one, he must decline to say; he would only declare that it had come to an end. She had left him. Yes! she had left him forever. He had no wish to persuade her to return to their guilty life; they were both penitent, they were both ashamed of it. But she had gone away without the provision which he was bound in honor to offer to her.
“She is friendless; she may be in a state of poverty that I tremble to think of,” Herbert declared. “Is there nothing to plead for me in such anxiety as I am suffering now?” Mrs. Presty stopped him there; she had heard enough of Sydney already.
“I see nothing to be gained,” she said, “by dwelling on the past; and I should be glad to know why you have come to this place to-night.”
“I have come to see Kitty.”
“Quite out of the question.”
“Don’t tell me that, Mrs. Presty! I’m one of the wretchedest men living, and I ask for the consolation of seeing my child. Kitty hasn’t forgotten me yet, I know. Her mother can’t be so cruel as to refuse. She shall fix her own time, and send me away when she likes; I’ll submit to anything. Will you ask Catherine to let me see Kitty?”
“I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“For private reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“For reasons into which you have no right to inquire.”
He got up from his chair. His face presented the same expression which Mrs. Presty had seen on it when he first entered the room.
“When I came in here,” he said, “I wished to be certain of one thing. Your prevarication has told me what I wanted to know. The newspapers had Catherine’s own authority for it, Mrs. Presty, when they called her widow. I know now why my brother, who never deceived me before, has deceived me about this. I understand the part that your daughter has been playing — and I am as certain as if I had heard it, of the devilish lie that one of you — perhaps both of you — must have told my poor child. No, no; I had better not see Catherine. Many a man has killed his wife, and has not had such good reason for doing it as I have. You are quite right to keep me away from her.”
He stopped — and looked suddenly toward the door. “I hear her,” he cried, “She’s coming in!”
The footsteps outside were audible once more. This time, they were approaching; they were close to the door. Herbert drew back from it. Looking round to see that he was out of the way, Mrs. Presty rushed forward — tore open the door in terror of what might happen — and admitted Captain Bennydeck.
The Captain’s attention was first attracted by the visitor whom he found in the room. He bowed to the stranger; but the first impression produced on him did not appear to have been of the favorable kind, when he turned next to Mrs. Presty.
Observing that she was agitated, he made the customary apologies, expressing his regret if he had been so unfortunate as to commit an intrusion. Trusting in the good sense and good breeding which distinguished him on other occasions, Mrs. Presty anticipated that he would see the propriety of leaving her alone again with the person whom he had found in her company. To her dismay he remained in the room; and, worse still, he noticed her daughter’s absence, and asked if there was any serious cause for it.
For the moment, Mrs. Presty was unable to reply. Her presence of mind — or, to put it more correctly, her ready audacity — deserted her, when she saw Catherine’s husband that had been, and Catherine’s husband that was to be, meeting as strangers, and but too likely to discover each other.
In all her experience she had never been placed in such a position of embarrassment as the position in which she found herself now. The sense of honor which had prompted Catherine’s resolution to make Bennydeck acquainted with the catastrophe of married life, might plead her excuse in the estimation of a man devotedly attached to her. But if the Captain was first informed that he had been deceived by a person who was a perfect stranger to him, what hope could be entertained of his still holding himself bound by his marriage engagement? It was even possible that distrust had been already excited in his mind. He must certainly have heard a man’s voice raised in anger when he approached the door — and he was now observing that man with an air of curiosity which was already assuming the appearance of distrust. That Herbert, on his side, resented the Captain’s critical examination of him was plainly visible in his face. After a glance at Bennydeck, he asked Mrs. Presty “who that gentleman was.”
“I may be mistaken,” he added; “but I thought your friend looked at me just now as if he knew me.”
“I have met you, sir, before this.” The Captain made the reply with a courteous composure of tone and manner which apparently reminded Herbert of the claims of politeness.
“May I ask where I had the honor of seeing you?” he inquired.
“We passed each other in the hall of the hotel at Sandyseal. You had a young woman with you.”
“Your memory is a better one than mine, sir. I fail to remember the circumstance to which you refer.”
Bennydeck let the matter rest there. Struck by the remarkable appearance of embarrassment in Mrs. Presty’s manner — and feeling (in spite of Herbert’s politeness of language) increased distrust of the man whom he had found visiting her — he thought it might not be amiss to hint that she could rely on him in case of necessity. “I am afraid I have interrupted a confidential interview,” he began; “and I ought perhaps to explain —”
Mrs. Presty listened absently; preoccupied by the fear that Herbert would provoke a dangerous disclosure, and by the difficulty of discovering a means of preventing it. She interrupted the Captain.
“Excuse me for one moment; I have a word to say to this gentleman.” Bennydeck immediately drew back, and Mrs. Presty lowered her voice. “If you wish to see Kitty,” she resumed, attacking Herbert on his weak side, “it depends entirely on your discretion.”
“What do you mean by discretion?”
“Be careful not to speak of our family troubles — and I promise you shall see Kitty. That is what I mean.”
Herbert declined to say whether he would be careful or not. He was determined to find out, first, with what purpose Bennydeck had entered the room. “The gentleman was about to explain himself to you,” he said to Mrs. Presty. “Why don’t you give him the opportunity?”
She had no choice but to submit — in appearance at least. Never had she hated Herbert as she hated him at that moment. The Captain went on with his explanation. He had his reasons (he said) for hesitating, in the first instance, to present himself uninvited, and he accordingly retired. On second thoughts, however, he had returned, in the hope —
“In the hope,” Herbert interposed, “of seeing Mrs. Presty’s daughter?”
“That was one of my motives,” Bennydeck answered.
“Is it indiscreet to inquire what the other motive was?”
“Not at all. I heard a stranger’s voice, speaking in a tone which, to say the least of it, is not customary in a lady’s room and I thought —”
Herbert interrupted him again. “And you thought your interference might be welcome to the lady! Am I right?”
“Quite right.”
“Am I making another lucky guess if I suppose myself to be speaking to Captain Bennydeck?”
“I shall be glad to hear, sir, how you have arrived at the knowledge of my name.”
“Shall we say, Captain, that I have arrived at it by instinct?”
His face, as he made that reply, alarmed Mrs. Presty. She cast a look at him, partly of entreaty, partly of warning. No effect was produced by the look. He continued, in a tone of ironical compliment: “You must pay the penalty of being a public character. Your marriage is announced in the newspapers.”
“I seldom read the newspapers.”
“Ah, indeed? Perhaps the report is not true? As you don’t read the newspapers, allow me to repeat it. You are engaged to marry the ‘beautiful widow, Mrs. Norman.’ I think I quote those last words correctly?”
Mrs. Presty suddenly got up. With an inscrutable face that told no tales, she advanced to the door. Herbert’s insane jealousy of the man who was about to become Catherine’s husband had led him into a serious error; he had driven Catherine’s mother to desperation. In that state of mind she recovered her lost audacity, as a matter of course. Opening the door, she turned round to the two men, with a magnificent impudence of manner which in her happiest moments she had never surpassed.
“I am sorry to interrupt this interesting conversation,” she said; “but I have stupidly forgotten one of my domestic duties. You will allow me to return, and listen with renewed pleasure, when my household business is off my mind. I shall hope to find you both more polite to each other than ever when I come back.” She was in such a frenzy of suppressed rage that she actually kissed her hand to them as she left the room!
Bennydeck looked after her, convinced that some sinister purpose was concealed under Mrs. Presty’s false excuses, and wholly unable to imagine what that purpose might be. Herbert still persisted in trying to force a quarrel on the Captain.
“As I remarked just now,” he proceeded, “newspaper reports are not always to be trusted. Do you seriously mean, my dear sir, to marry Mrs. Norman?”
“I look forward to that honor and that happiness. But I am at a loss to know how it interests you.”
“In that case allow me to enlighten you. My name is Herbert Linley.”
He had held his name in reserve, feeling certain of the effect which he would produce when he pronounced it. The result took him completely by surprise. Not the slightest appearance of agitation showed itself in Bennydeck’s manner. On the contrary, he looked as if there was something that interested him in the discovery of the name.
“You are probably related to a friend of mine?” he said, quietly.
“Who is your friend?”
“Mr. Randal Linley.”
Herbert was entirely unprepared for this discovery. Once more, the Captain had got the best of it.
“Are you and Randal Linley intimate friends?” he inquired, as soon as he had recovered himself.
“Most intimate.”
“It’s strange that he should never have mentioned me, on any occasion when you and he were together.”
“It does indeed seem strange.”
Herbert paused. His brother’s keen sense of the disgrace that he had inflicted on the family recurred to his memory. He began to understand Randal’s otherwise unaccountable silence.
“Are you nearly related to Mr. Randal Linley?” the Captain asked.
“I am his elder brother.”
Ignorant on his part of the family disgrace, Bennydeck heard that reply with amazement. From his point of view, it was impossible to account for Randal’s silence.
“Will you think me very inquisitive,” Herbert resumed, “if I ask whether my brother approves of your marriage?”
There was a change in his tone, as he put that question which warned Bennydeck to be on his guard. “I have not yet consulted my friend’s opinion,” he answered, shortly.
Herbert threw off the mask. “In the meantime, you shall have my opinion,” he said. “Your marriage is a crime — and I mean to prevent it.”
The Captain left his chair, and sternly faced the man who had spoken those insolent words.
“Are you mad?” he asked.
Herbert was on the point of declaring himself to have been Catherine’s husband, until the law dissolved their marriage — when a waiter came in and approached him with a message. “You are wanted immediately, sir.”
“Who wants me?”
“A person outside, sir. It’s a serious matter — there is not a moment to lose.”
Herbert turned to the Captain. “I must have your promise to wait for me,” he said, “or I don’t leave the room.”
“Make your mind easy. I shall not stir from this place till you have explained yourself,” was the firm reply.
The servant led the way out. He crossed the passage, and opened the door of a waiting-room. Herbert passed in — and found himself face to face with his divorced wife.