Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (709 page)

Hester Dethridge advanced slowly to the table at which Lady Lundie was sitting. A slate and pencil hung at her side, which she used for making such replies as were not to be expressed by a gesture or by a motion of the head. She took up the slate and pencil, and waited with stony submission for her mistress to begin.

Lady Lundie opened the proceedings with the regular formula of inquiry which she had used with all the other servants,

“Do you know that Miss Silvester has left the house?”

The cook nodded her head affirmatively.

“Do you know at what time she left it?”

Another affirmative reply. The first which Lady Lundie had received to that question yet. She eagerly went on to the next inquiry.

“Have you seen her since she left the house?”

A third affirmative reply.

“Where?”

Hester Dethridge wrote slowly on the slate, in singularly firm upright characters for a woman in her position of life, these words:

“On the road that leads to the railway. Nigh to Mistress Chew’s Farm.”

“What did you want at Chew’s Farm?”

Hester Dethridge wrote: “I wanted eggs for the kitchen, and a breath of fresh air for myself.”

“Did Miss Silvester see you?”

A negative shake of the head.

“Did she take the turning that leads to the railway?”

Another negative shake of the head.

“She went on, toward the moor?”

An affirmative reply.

“What did she do when she got to the moor?”

Hester Dethridge wrote: “She took the footpath which leads to Craig Fernie.”

Lady Lundie rose excitedly to her feet. There was but one place that a stranger could go to at Craig Fernie. “The inn!” exclaimed her ladyship. “She has gone to the inn!”

Hester Dethridge waited immovably. Lady Lundie put a last precautionary question, in these words:

“Have you reported what you have seen to any body else?”

An affirmative reply. Lady Lundie had not bargained for that. Hester Dethridge (she thought) must surely have misunderstood her.

“Do you mean that you have told somebody else what you have just told me?”

Another affirmative reply.

“A person who questioned you, as I have done?”

A third affirmative reply.

“Who was it?”

Hester Dethridge wrote on her slate: “Miss Blanche.”

Lady Lundie stepped back, staggered by the discovery that Blanche’s resolution to trace Anne Silvester was, to all appearance, as firmly settled as her own. Her step-daughter was keeping her own counsel, and acting on her own responsibility — her step-daughter might be an awkward obstacle in the way. The manner in which Anne had left the house had mortally offended Lady Lundie. An inveterately vindictive woman, she had resolved to discover whatever compromising elements might exist in the governess’s secret, and to make them public property (from a paramount sense of duty, of course) among her own circle of friends. But to do this — with Blanche acting (as might certainly be anticipated) in direct opposition to her, and openly espousing Miss Silvester’s interests — was manifestly impossible.

The first thing to be done — and that instantly — was to inform Blanche that she was discovered, and to forbid her to stir in the matter.

Lady Lundie rang the bell twice — thus intimating, according to the laws of the household, that she required the attendance of her own maid. She then turned to the cook — still waiting her pleasure, with stony composure, slate in hand.

“You have done wrong,” said her ladyship, severely. “I am your mistress. You are bound to answer your mistress — ”

Hester Dethridge bowed her head, in icy acknowledgment of the principle laid down — so far.

The bow was an interruption. Lady Lundie resented it.

“But Miss Blanche is
not
your mistress,” she went on, sternly. “You are very much to blame for answering Miss Blanche’s inquiries about Miss Silvester.”

Hester Dethridge, perfectly unmoved, wrote her justification on her slate, in two stiff sentences: “I had no orders
not
to answer. I keep nobody’s secrets but my own.”

That reply settled the question of the cook’s dismissal — the question which had been pending for months past.

“You are an insolent woman! I have borne with you long enough — I will bear with you no longer. When your month is up, you go!”

In those words Lady Lundie dismissed Hester Dethridge from her service.

Not the slightest change passed over the sinister tranquillity of the cook. She bowed her head again, in acknowledgment of the sentence pronounced on her — dropped her slate at her side — turned about — and left the room. The woman was alive in the world, and working in the world; and yet (so far as all human interests were concerned) she was as completely out of the world as if she had been screwed down in her coffin, and laid in her grave.

Lady Lundie’s maid came into the room as Hester left it.

“Go up stairs to Miss Blanche,” said her mistress, “and say I want her here. Wait a minute!” She paused, and considered. Blanche might decline to submit to her step-mother’s interference with her. It might be necessary to appeal to the higher authority of her guardian. “Do you know where Sir Patrick is?” asked Lady Lundie.

“I heard Simpson say, my lady, that Sir Patrick was at the stables.”

“Send Simpson with a message. My compliments to Sir Patrick — and I wish to see him immediately.”

The preparations for the departure to the shooting-cottage were just completed; and the one question that remained to be settled was, whether Sir Patrick could accompany the party — when the man-servant appeared with the message from his mistress.

“Will you give me a quarter of an hour, gentlemen?” asked Sir Patrick. “In that time I shall know for certain whether I can go with you or not.”

As a matter of course, the guests decided to wait. The younger men among them (being Englishmen) naturally occupied their leisure time in betting. Would Sir Patrick get the better of the domestic crisis? or would the domestic crisis get the better of Sir Patrick? The domestic crisis was backed, at two to one, to win.

Punctually at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, Sir Patrick reappeared. The domestic crisis had betrayed the blind confidence which youth and inexperience had placed in it. Sir Patrick had won the day.

“Things are settled and quiet, gentlemen; and I am able to accompany you,” he said. “There are two ways to the shooting-cottage. One — the longest — passes by the inn at Craig Fernie. I am compelled to ask you to go with me by that way. While you push on to the cottage, I must drop behind, and say a word to a person who is staying at the inn.”

He had quieted Lady Lundie — he had even quieted Blanche. But it was evidently on the condition that he was to go to Craig Fernie in their places, and to see Anne Silvester himself. Without a word more of explanation he mounted his horse, and led the way out. The shooting-party left Windygates.

SECOND SCENE. — THE INN.

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

ANNE.

“YE’LL just permit me to remind ye again, young leddy, that the hottle’s full — exceptin’ only this settin’-room, and the bedchamber yonder belonging to it.”

So spoke “Mistress Inchbare,” landlady of the Craig Fernie Inn, to Anne Silvester, standing in the parlor, purse in hand, and offering the price of the two rooms before she claimed permission to occupy them.

The time of the afternoon was about the time when Geoffrey Delamayn had started in the train, on his journey to London. About the time also, when Arnold Brinkworth had crossed the moor, and was mounting the first rising ground which led to the inn.

Mistress Inchbare was tall and thin, and decent and dry. Mistress Inchbare’s unlovable hair clung fast round her head in wiry little yellow curls. Mistress Inchbare’s hard bones showed themselves, like Mistress Inchbare’s hard Presbyterianism, without any concealment or compromise. In short, a savagely-respectable woman who plumed herself on presiding over a savagely-respectable inn.

There was no competition to interfere with Mistress Inchbare. She regulated her own prices, and made her own rules. If you objected to her prices, and revolted from her rules, you were free to go. In other words, you were free to cast yourself, in the capacity of houseless wanderer, on the scanty mercy of a Scotch wilderness. The village of Craig Fernie was a collection of hovels. The country about Craig Fernie, mountain on one side and moor on the other, held no second house of public entertainment, for miles and miles round, at any point of the compass. No rambling individual but the helpless British Tourist wanted food and shelter from strangers in that part of Scotland; and nobody but Mistress Inchbare had food and shelter to sell. A more thoroughly independent person than this was not to be found on the face of the hotel-keeping earth. The most universal of all civilized terrors — the terror of appearing unfavorably in the newspapers — was a sensation absolutely unknown to the Empress of the Inn. You lost your temper, and threatened to send her bill for exhibition in the public journals. Mistress Inchbare raised no objection to your taking any course you pleased with it. “Eh, man! send the bill whar’ ye like, as long as ye pay it first. There’s nae such thing as a newspaper ever darkens my doors. Ye’ve got the Auld and New Testaments in your bedchambers, and the natural history o’ Pairthshire on the coffee-room table — and if that’s no’ reading eneugh for ye, ye may een gae back South again, and get the rest of it there.”

This was the inn at which Anne Silvester had appeared alone, with nothing but a little bag in her hand. This was the woman whose reluctance to receive her she innocently expected to overcome by showing her purse.

“Mention your charge for the rooms,” she said. “I am willing to pay for them beforehand.”

Her majesty, Mrs. Inchbare, never even looked at her subject’s poor little purse.

“It just comes to this, mistress,” she answered. “I’m no’ free to tak’ your money, if I’m no’ free to let ye the last rooms left in the hoose. The Craig Fernie hottle is a faimily hottle — and has its ain gude name to keep up. Ye’re ower-well-looking, my young leddy, to be traveling alone.”

The time had been when Anne would have answered sharply enough. The hard necessities of her position made her patient now.

“I have already told you,” she said, “my husband is coming here to join me.” She sighed wearily as she repeated her ready-made story — and dropped into the nearest chair, from sheer inability to stand any longer.

Mistress Inchbare looked at her, with the exact measure of compassionate interest which she might have shown if she had been looking at a stray dog who had fallen footsore at the door of the inn.

“Weel! weel! sae let it be. Bide awhile, and rest ye. We’ll no’ chairge ye for that — and we’ll see if your husband comes. I’ll just let the rooms, mistress, to
him,
, instead o’ lettin’ them to
you.
And, sae, good-morrow t’ ye.” With that final announcement of her royal will and pleasure, the Empress of the Inn withdrew.

Anne made no reply. She watched the landlady out of the room — and then struggled to control herself no longer. In her position, suspicion was doubly insult. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes; and the heart-ache wrung her, poor soul — wrung her without mercy.

A trifling noise in the room startled her. She looked up, and detected a man in a corner, dusting the furniture, and apparently acting in the capacity of attendant at the inn. He had shown her into the parlor on her arrival; but he had remained so quietly in the room that she had never noticed him since, until that moment.