Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (727 page)

“You’re a couple of infernal cads — and you haven’t got a hundred pound between you!”

“Come! come!” said Arnold, interfering for the first time. “This is shameful, Geoffrey!”

“Why the” — (never mind what!) — ”won’t they any of them take the bet?”

“If you must be a fool,” returned Arnold, a little irritably on his side, “and if nothing else will keep you quiet,
I’ll
take the bet.”

“An even hundred on the doctor!” cried Geoffrey. “Done with you!”

His highest aspirations were satisfied; his temper was in perfect order again. He entered the bet in his book; and made his excuses to Smith and Jones in the heartiest way. “No offense, old chaps! Shake hands!” The two choral gentlemen were enchanted with him. “The English aristocracy — eh, Smith?” “Blood and breeding — ah, Jones!”

As soon as he had spoken, Arnold’s conscience reproached him: not for betting (who is ashamed of
that
form of gambling in England?) but for “backing the doctor.” With the best intention toward his friend, he was speculating on the failure of his friend’s health. He anxiously assured Geoffrey that no man in the room could be more heartily persuaded that the surgeon was wrong than himself. “I don’t cry off from the bet,” he said. “But, my dear fellow, pray understand that I only take it to please
you.
”

“Bother all that!” answered Geoffrey, with the steady eye to business, which was one of the choicest virtues in his character. “A bet’s a bet — and hang your sentiment!” He drew Arnold by the arm out of ear-shot of the others. “I say!” he asked, anxiously. “Do you think I’ve set the old fogy’s back up?”

“Do you mean Sir Patrick?”

Geoffrey nodded, and went on.

“I haven’t put that little matter to him yet — about marrying in Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?” His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken down.

“Make an apology,” suggested Arnold. “Sir Patrick may be a little irritable and bitter; but he’s a just man and a kind man. Say you were not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him — and you will say enough.”

“All right!”

Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn.

“What do you want?” he asked, coldly.

“I want to make an apology,” said Geoffrey. “Let by-gones be by-gones — and that sort of thing. I wasn’t guilty of any intentional disrespect toward you. Forgive and forget. Not half a bad motto, Sir — eh?”

It was clumsily expressed — but still it was an apology. Not even Geoffrey could appeal to Sir Patrick’s courtesy and Sir Patrick’s consideration in vain.

“Not a word more, Mr. Delamayn!” said the polite old man. “Accept my excuses for any thing which I may have said too sharply, on my side; and let us by all means forget the rest.”

Having met the advance made to him, in those terms, he paused, expecting Geoffrey to leave him free to return to the Decameron. To his unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey suddenly stooped over him, and whispered in his ear, “I want a word in private with you.”

Sir Patrick started back, as if Geoffrey had tried to bite him.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Delamayn — what did you say?”

“Could you give me a word in private?”

Sir Patrick put back the Decameron; and bowed in freezing silence. The confidence of the Honourable Geoffrey Delamayn was the last confidence in the world into which he desired to be drawn. “This is the secret of the apology!” he thought. “What can he possibly want with Me?”

“It’s about a friend of mine,” pursued Geoffrey; leading the way toward one of the windows. “He’s in a scrape, my friend is. And I want to ask your advice. It’s strictly private, you know.” There he came to a full stop — and looked to see what impression he had produced, so far.

Sir Patrick declined, either by word or gesture, to exhibit the slightest anxiety to hear a word more.

“Would you mind taking a turn in the garden?” asked Geoffrey.

Sir Patrick pointed to his lame foot. “I have had my allowance of walking this morning,” he said. “Let my infirmity excuse me.”

Geoffrey looked about him for a substitute for the garden, and led the way back again toward one of the convenient curtained recesses opening out of the inner wall of the library. “We shall be private enough here,” he said.

Sir Patrick made a final effort to escape the proposed conference — an undisguised effort, this time.

“Pray forgive me, Mr. Delamayn. Are you quite sure that you apply to the right person, in applying to
me?
”

“You’re a Scotch lawyer, ain’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“And you understand about Scotch marriages — eh?”

Sir Patrick’s manner suddenly altered.

“Is
that
the subject you wish to consult me on?” he asked.

“It’s not me. It’s my friend.”

“Your friend, then?”

“Yes. It’s a scrape with a woman. Here in Scotland. My friend don’t know whether he’s married to her or not.”

“I am at your service, Mr. Delamayn.”

To Geoffrey’s relief — by no means unmixed with surprise — Sir Patrick not only showed no further reluctance to be consulted by him, but actually advanced to meet his wishes, by leading the way to the recess that was nearest to them. The quick brain of the old lawyer had put Geoffrey’s application to him for assistance, and Blanche’s application to him for assistance, together; and had built its own theory on the basis thus obtained. “Do I see a connection between the present position of Blanche’s governess, and the present position of Mr. Delamayn’s ‘friend?’“ thought Sir Patrick. “Stranger extremes than
that
have met me in my experience. Something may come out of this.”

The two strangely-assorted companions seated themselves, one on each side of a little table in the recess. Arnold and the other guests had idled out again on to the lawn. The surgeon with his prints, and the ladies with their invitations, were safely absorbed in a distant part of the library. The conference between the two men, so trifling in appearance, so terrible in its destined influence, not over Anne’s future only, but over the future of Arnold and Blanche, was, to all practical purposes, a conference with closed doors.

“Now,” said Sir Patrick, “what is the question?”

“The question,” said Geoffrey, “is whether my friend is married to her or not?”

“Did he mean to marry her?”

“No.”

“He being a single man, and she being a single woman, at the time? And both in Scotland?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Now tell me the circumstances.”

Geoffrey hesitated. The art of stating circumstances implies the cultivation of a very rare gift — the gift of arranging ideas. No one was better acquainted with this truth than Sir Patrick. He was purposely puzzling Geoffrey at starting, under the firm conviction that his client had something to conceal from him. The one process that could be depended on for extracting the truth, under those circumstances, was the process of interrogation. If Geoffrey was submitted to it, at the outset, his cunning might take the alarm. Sir Patrick’s object was to make the man himself invite interrogation. Geoffrey invited it forthwith, by attempting to state the circumstances, and by involving them in the usual confusion. Sir Patrick waited until he had thoroughly lost the thread of his narrative — and then played for the winning trick.

“Would it be easier to you if I asked a few questions?” he inquired, innocently.

“Much easier.”

“I am quite at your service. Suppose we clear the ground to begin with? Are you at liberty to mention names?”

“No.”

“Places?”

“No.”

“Dates?”

“Do you want me to be particular?”

“Be as particular as you can.”

“Will it do, if I say the present year?”

“Yes. Were your friend and the lady — at some time in the present year — traveling together in Scotland?”

“No.”

“Living together in Scotland?”

“No.”

“What
were
they doing together in Scotland?”

“Well — they were meeting each other at an inn.”

“Oh? They were meeting each other at an inn. Which was first at the rendezvous?”

“The woman was first. Stop a bit! We are getting to it now.” He produced from his pocket the written memorandum of Arnold’s proceedings at Craig Fernie, which he had taken down from Arnold’s own lips. “I’ve got a bit of note here,” he went on. “Perhaps you’d like to have a look at it?”

Sir Patrick took the note — read it rapidly through to himself — then re-read it, sentence by sentence, to Geoffrey; using it as a text to speak from, in making further inquiries.

“‘He asked for her by the name of his wife, at the door,’“ read Sir Patrick. “Meaning, I presume, the door of the inn? Had the lady previously given herself out as a married woman to the people of the inn?”

“Yes.”

“How long had she been at the inn before the gentleman joined her?”

“Only an hour or so.”

“Did she give a name?”

“I can’t be quite sure — I should say not.”

“Did the gentleman give a name?”

“No. I’m certain
he
didn’t.”

Sir Patrick returned to the memorandum.

“‘He said at dinner, before the landlady and the waiter, I take these rooms for my wife. He made
her
say he was her husband, at the same time.’ Was that done jocosely, Mr. Delamayn — either by the lady or the gentleman?”

“No. It was done in downright earnest.”

“You mean it was done to look like earnest, and so to deceive the landlady and the waiter?”

“Yes.”

Sir Patrick returned to the memorandum.

“‘After that, he stopped all night.’ Stopped in the rooms he had taken for himself and his wife?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened the next day?”

“He went away. Wait a bit! Said he had business for an excuse.”

“That is to say, he kept up the deception with the people of the inn? and left the lady behind him, in the character of his wife?”

“That’s it.”

“Did he go back to the inn?”

“No.”

“How long did the lady stay there, after he had gone?”

“She staid — well, she staid a few days.”

“And your friend has not seen her since?”

“No.”

“Are your friend and the lady English or Scotch?”