Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (776 page)

Looking toward Anne, when Sir Patrick pronounced Geoffrey’s name, Mr. Moy saw a change in her. She withdrew her hands from her face, and turned suddenly toward her legal adviser. Was she in the secret of the carefully concealed object at which his opponent had been aiming from the first? Mr. Moy decided to put that doubt to the test. He invited Sir Patrick, by a gesture, to proceed. Sir Patrick addressed himself to Geoffrey.

“You are seriously interested in this inquiry,” he said; “and you have taken no part in it yet. Take a part in it now. Look at this lady.”

Geoffrey never moved.

“I’ve seen enough of her already,” he said, brutally.

“You may well be ashamed to look at her,” said Sir Patrick, quietly. “But you might have acknowledged it in fitter words. Carry your memory back to the fourteenth of August. Do you deny that you promised to many Miss Silvester privately at the Craig Fernie inn?”

“I object to that question,” said Mr. Moy. “My client is under no sort of obligation to answer it.”

Geoffrey’s rising temper — ready to resent any thing — resented his adviser’s interference. “I shall answer if I like,” he retorted, insolently. He looked up for a moment at Sir Patrick, without moving his chin from the hook of his stick. Then he looked down again. “I do deny it,” he said.

“You deny that you have promised to marry Miss Silvester?”

“Yes.”

“I asked you just now to look at her — ”

“And I told you I had seen enough of her already.”

“Look at
me.
In my presence, and in the presence of the other persons here, do you deny that you owe this lady, by your own solemn engagement, the reparation of marriage?”

He suddenly lifted his head. His eyes, after resting for an instant only on Sir Patrick, turned, little by little; and, brightening slowly, fixed themselves with a hideous, tigerish glare on Anne’s face. “I know what I owe her,” he said.

The devouring hatred of his look was matched by the ferocious vindictiveness of his tone, as he spoke those words. It was horrible to see him; it was horrible to hear him. Mr. Moy said to him, in a whisper, “Control yourself, or I will throw up your case.”

Without answering — without even listening — he lifted one of his hands, and looked at it vacantly. He whispered something to himself; and counted out what he was whispering slowly; in divisions of his own, on three of his fingers in succession. He fixed his eyes again on Anne with the same devouring hatred in their look, and spoke (this time directly addressing himself to her) with the same ferocious vindictiveness in his tone. “But for you, I should be married to Mrs. Glenarm. But for you, I should be friends with my father. But for you, I should have won the race. I know what I owe you.” His loosely hanging hands stealthily clenched themselves. His head sank again on his broad breast. He said no more.

Not a soul moved — not a word was spoken. The same common horror held them all speechless. Anne’s eyes turned once more on Blanche. Anne’s courage upheld her, even at that moment.

Sir Patrick rose. The strong emotion which he had suppressed thus far, showed itself plainly in his face — uttered itself plainly in his voice.

“Come into the next room,” he said to Anne. “I must speak to you instantly!”

Without noticing the astonishment that he caused; without paying the smallest attention to the remonstrances addressed to him by his sister-in-law and by the Scotch lawyer, he took Anne by the arm, opened the folding-doors at one end of the room — entered the room beyond with her — and closed the doors again.

Lady Lundie appealed to her legal adviser. Blanche rose — advanced a few steps — and stood in breathless suspense, looking at the folding-doors. Arnold advanced a step, to speak to his wife. The captain approached Mr. Moy.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

Mr. Moy answered, in strong agitation on his side.

“It means that I have not been properly instructed. Sir Patrick Lundie has some evidence in his possession that seriously compromises Mr. Delamayn’s case. He has shrunk from producing it hitherto — he finds himself forced to produce it now. How is it,” asked the lawyer, turning sternly on his client, “that you have left me in the dark?”

“I know nothing about it,” answered Geoffrey, without lifting his head.

Lady Lundie signed to Blanche to stand aside, and advanced toward the folding-doors. Mr. Moy stopped her.

“I advise your ladyship to be patient. Interference is useless there.”

“Am I not to interfere, Sir, in my own house?”

“Unless I am entirely mistaken, madam, the end of the proceedings in your house is at hand. You will damage your own interests by interfering. Let us know what we are about at last. Let the end come.”

Lady Lundie yielded, and returned to her place. They all waited in silence for the opening of the doors.

Sir Patrick Lundie and Anne Silvester were alone in the room.

He took from the breast-pocket of his coat the sheet of note-paper which contained Anne’s letter, and Geoffrey’s reply. His hand trembled as he held it; his voice faltered as he spoke.

“I have done all that can be done,” he said. “I have left nothing untried, to prevent the necessity of producing this.”

“I feel your kindness gratefully, Sir Patrick. You must produce it now.”

The woman’s calmness presented a strange and touching contrast to the man’s emotion. There was no shrinking in her face, there was no unsteadiness in her voice as she answered him. He took her hand. Twice he attempted to speak; and twice his own agitation overpowered him. He offered the letter to her in silence.

In silence, on her side, she put the letter away from her, wondering what he meant.

“Take it back,” he said. “I can’t produce it! I daren’t produce it! After what my own eyes have seen, after what my own ears have heard, in the next room — as God is my witness, I daren’t ask you to declare yourself Geoffrey Delamayn’s wife!”

She answered him in one word.

“Blanche!”

He shook his head impatiently. “Not even in Blanche’s interests! Not even for Blanche’s sake! If there is any risk, it is a risk I am ready to run. I hold to my own opinion. I believe my own view to be right. Let it come to an appeal to the law! I will fight the case, and win it.”

“Are you
sure
of winning it, Sir Patrick?”

Instead of replying, he pressed the letter on her. “Destroy it,” he whispered. “And rely on my silence.”

She took the letter from him.

“Destroy it,” he repeated. “They may open the doors. They may come in at any moment, and see it in your hand.”

“I have something to ask you, Sir Patrick, before I destroy it. Blanche refuses to go back to her husband, unless she returns with the certain assurance of being really his wife. If I produce this letter, she may go back to him to-day. If I declare myself Geoffrey Delamayn’s wife, I clear Arnold Brinkworth, at once and forever of all suspicion of being married to me. Can you as certainly and effectually clear him in any other way? Answer me that, as a man of honour speaking to a woman who implicitly trusts him!”

She looked him full in the face. His eyes dropped before hers — he made no reply.

“I am answered,” she said.

With those words, she passed him, and laid her hand on the door.

He checked her. The tears rose in his eyes as he drew her gently back into the room.

“Why should we wait?” she asked.

“Wait,” he answered, “as a favor to
me.
”

She seated herself calmly in the nearest chair, and rested her head on her hand, thinking.

He bent over her, and roused her, impatiently, almost angrily. The steady resolution in her face was terrible to him, when he thought of the man in the next room.

“Take time to consider,” he pleaded. “Don’t be led away by your own impulse. Don’t act under a false excitement. Nothing binds you to this dreadful sacrifice of yourself.”

“Excitement! Sacrifice!” She smiled sadly as she repeated the words. “Do you know, Sir Patrick, what I was thinking of a moment since? Only of old times, when I was a little girl. I saw the sad side of life sooner than most children see it. My mother was cruelly deserted. The hard marriage laws of this country were harder on her than on me. She died broken-hearted. But one friend comforted her at the last moment, and promised to be a mother to her child. I can’t remember one unhappy day in all the after-time when I lived with that faithful woman and her little daughter — till the day that parted us. She went away with her husband; and I and the little daughter were left behind. She said her last words to me. Her heart was sinking under the dread of coming death. ‘I promised your mother that you should be like my own child to me, and it quieted her mind. Quiet
my
mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever happens in years to come — promise me to be always what you are now, a sister to Blanche.’ Where is the false excitement, Sir Patrick, in old remembrances like these? And how can there be a sacrifice in any thing that I do for Blanche?”

She rose, and offered him her hand. Sir Patrick lifted it to his lips in silence.

“Come!” she said. “For both our sakes, let us not prolong this.”

He turned aside his head. It was no moment to let her see that she had completely unmanned him. She waited for him, with her hand on the lock. He rallied his courage — he forced himself to face the horror of the situation calmly. She opened the door, and led the way back into the other room.

Not a word was spoken by any of the persons present, as the two returned to their places. The noise of a carriage passing in the street was painfully audible. The chance banging of a door in the lower regions of the house made every one start.

Anne’s sweet voice broke the dreary silence.

“Must I speak for myself, Sir Patrick? Or will you (I ask it as a last and greatest favor) speak for me?”

“You insist on appealing to the letter in your hand?”

“I am resolved to appeal to it.”

“Will nothing induce you to defer the close of this inquiry — so far as you are concerned — for four-and-twenty hours?”

“Either you or I, Sir Patrick, must say what is to be said, and do what is to be done, before we leave this room.”

“Give me the letter.”

She gave it to him. Mr. Moy whispered to his client, “Do you know what that is?” Geoffrey shook his head. “Do you really remember nothing about it?” Geoffrey answered in one surly word, “Nothing!”

Sir Patrick addressed himself to the assembled company.

“I have to ask your pardon,” he said, “for abruptly leaving the room, and for obliging Miss Silvester to leave it with me. Every body present, except that man” (he pointed to Geoffrey), “will, I believe, understand and forgive me, now that I am forced to make my conduct the subject of the plainest and the fullest explanation. I shall address that explanation, for reasons which will presently appear, to my niece.”

Blanche started. “To me!” she exclaimed.

“To you,” Sir Patrick answered.

Blanche turned toward Arnold, daunted by a vague sense of something serious to come. The letter that she had received from her husband on her departure from Ham Farm had necessarily alluded to relations between Geoffrey and Anne, of which Blanche had been previously ignorant. Was any reference coming to those relations? Was there something yet to be disclosed which Arnold’s letter had not prepared her to hear?

Sir Patrick resumed.

“A short time since,” he said to Blanche, “I proposed to you to return to your husband’s protection — and to leave the termination of this matter in my hands. You have refused to go back to him until you are first certainly assured that you are his wife. Thanks to a sacrifice to your interests and your happiness, on Miss Silvester’s part — which I tell you frankly I have done my utmost to prevent — I am in a position to prove positively that Arnold Brinkworth was a single man when he married you from my house in Kent.”