Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (749 page)

Mr. Bishopriggs had his reasons (carefully inclosed in his pocketbook) for not being too ready to commit himself with Blanche at starting.

“I’m no’ saying I canna remember ye, miss. Whar’s the man would mak’ sic an answer as that to a bonny young leddy like you?”

By way of assisting his memory Blanche took out her purse. Bishopriggs became absorbed in the scenery. He looked at the running water with the eye of a man who thoroughly distrusted it, viewed as a beverage.

“There ye go,” he said, addressing himself to the rivulet, “bubblin’ to yer ain annihilation in the loch yonder! It’s little I know that’s gude aboot ye, in yer unconvairted state. Ye’re a type o’ human life, they say. I tak’ up my testimony against
that.
Ye’re a type o’ naething at all till ye’re heated wi’ fire, and sweetened wi’ sugar, and strengthened wi’ whusky; and then ye’re a type o’ toddy — and human life (I grant it) has got something to say to ye in that capacity!”

“I have heard more about you, since I was at the inn,” proceeded Blanche, “than you may suppose.” (She opened her purse: Mr. Bishopriggs became the picture of attention.) “You were very, very kind to a lady who was staying at Craig Fernie,” she went on, earnestly. “I know that you have lost your place at the inn, because you gave all your attention to that lady. She is my dearest friend, Mr. Bishopriggs. I want to thank you. I do thank you. Please accept what I have got here?”

All the girl’s heart was in her eyes and in her voice as she emptied her purse into the gouty (and greedy) old hand of Bishopriggs.

A young lady with a well-filled purse (no matter how rich the young lady may be) is a combination not often witnessed in any country on the civilized earth. Either the money is always spent, or the money has been forgotten on the toilet-table at home. Blanche’s purse contained a sovereign and some six or seven shillings in silver. As pocket-money for an heiress it was contemptible. But as a gratuity to Bishopriggs it was magnificent. The old rascal put the money into his pocket with one hand, and dashed away the tears of sensibility, which he had
not
shed, with the other.

“Cast yer bread on the waters,” cried Mr. Bishopriggs, with his one eye raised devotionally to the sky, “and ye sall find it again after monny days! Heeh! hech! didna I say when I first set eyes on that puir leddy, ‘I feel like a fether to ye?’ It’s seemply mairvelous to see hoo a man’s ain gude deeds find him oot in this lower warld o’ ours. If ever I heard the voice o’ naitural affection speaking in my ain breast,” pursued Mr. Bishopriggs, with his eye fixed in uneasy expectation on Blanche, “it joost spak’ trumpet-tongued when that winsome creature first lookit at me. Will it be she now that told ye of the wee bit sairvice I rendered to her in the time when I was in bondage at the hottle?”

“Yes — she told me herself.”

“Might I mak’ sae bauld as to ask whar’ she may be at the present time?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Bishopriggs. I am more miserable about it than I can say. She has gone away — and I don’t know where.”

“Ow! ow! that’s bad. And the bit husband-creature danglin’ at her petticoat’s tail one day, and awa’ wi’ the sunrise next mornin’ — have they baith taken leg-bail together?”

“I know nothing of him; I never saw him. You saw him. Tell me — what was he like?”

“Eh! he was joost a puir weak creature. Didn’t know a glass o’ good sherry-wine when he’d got it. Free wi’ the siller — that’s a’ ye can say for him — free wi’ the siller!”

Finding it impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this, Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the delicate and doubtful subject of the lost letter.

“There is something else that I want to say to you,” she resumed. “My friend had a loss while she was staying at the inn.”

The clouds of doubt rolled off the mind of Mr. Bishopriggs. The lady’s friend knew of the lost letter. And, better still, the lady’s friend looked as if she wanted it!

“Ay! ay!” he said, with all due appearance of carelessness. “Like eneugh. From the mistress downward, they’re a’ kittle cattle at the inn since I’ve left ‘em. What may it ha’ been that she lost?”

“She lost a letter.”

The look of uneasy expectation reappeared in the eye of Mr. Bishopriggs. It was a question — and a serious question, from his point of view — whether any suspicion of theft was attached to the disappearance of the letter.

“When ye say ‘lost,’“ he asked, “d’ye mean stolen?”

Blanche was quite quick enough to see the necessity of quieting his mind on this point.

“Oh no!” she answered. “Not stolen. Only lost. Did you hear about it?”

“Wherefore suld
I
ha’ heard aboot it?” He looked hard at Blanche — and detected a momentary hesitation in her face. “Tell me this, my young leddy,” he went on, advancing warily near to the point. “When ye’re speering for news o’ your friend’s lost letter — what sets ye on comin’ to
me?
”

Those words were decisive. It is hardly too much to say that Blanche’s future depended on Blanche’s answer to that question.

If she could have produced the money; and if she had said, boldly, “You have got the letter, Mr. Bishopriggs: I pledge my word that no questions shall be asked, and I offer you ten pounds for it” — in all probability the bargain would have been struck; and the whole course of coming events would, in that case, have been altered. But she had no money left; and there were no friends, in the circle at Swanhaven, to whom she could apply, without being misinterpreted, for a loan of ten pounds, to be privately intrusted to her on the spot. Under stress of sheer necessity Blanche abandoned all hope of making any present appeal of a pecuniary nature to the confidence of Bishopriggs.

The one other way of attaining her object that she could see was to arm herself with the influence of Sir Patrick’s name. A man, placed in her position, would have thought it mere madness to venture on such a risk as this. But Blanche — with one act of rashness already on her conscience — rushed, woman-like, straight to the commission of another. The same headlong eagerness to reach her end, which had hurried her into questioning Geoffrey before he left Windygates, now drove her, just as recklessly, into taking the management of Bishopriggs out of Sir Patrick’s skilled and practiced hands. The starving sisterly love in her hungered for a trace of Anne. Her heart whispered, Risk it! And Blanche risked it on the spot.

“Sir Patrick set me on coming to you,” she said.

The opening hand of Mr. Bishopriggs — ready to deliver the letter, and receive the reward — closed again instantly as she spoke those words.

“Sir Paitrick?” he repeated “Ow! ow! ye’ve een tauld Sir Paitrick aboot it, have ye? There’s a chiel wi’ a lang head on his shouthers, if ever there was ane yet! What might Sir Paitrick ha’ said?”

Blanche noticed a change in his tone. Blanche was rigidly careful (when it was too late) to answer him in guarded terms.

“Sir Patrick thought you might have found the letter,” she said, “and might not have remembered about it again until after you had left the inn.”

Bishopriggs looked back into his own personal experience of his old master — and drew the correct conclusion that Sir Patrick’s view of his connection with the disappearance of the letter was not the purely unsuspicious view reported by Blanche. “The dour auld deevil,” he thought to himself, “knows me better than
that!
”

“Well?” asked Blanche, impatiently. “Is Sir Patrick right?”

“Richt?” rejoined Bishopriggs, briskly. “He’s as far awa’ from the truth as John o’ Groat’s House is from Jericho.”

“You know nothing of the letter?”

“Deil a bit I know o’ the letter. The first I ha’ heard o’ it is what I hear noo.”

Blanche’s heart sank within her. Had she defeated her own object, and cut the ground from under Sir Patrick’s feet, for the second time? Surely not! There was unquestionably a chance, on this occasion, that the man might be prevailed upon to place the trust in her uncle which he was too cautious to confide to a stranger like herself. The one wise thing to do now was to pave the way for the exertion of Sir Patrick’s superior influence, and Sir Patrick’s superior skill. She resumed the conversation with that object in view.

“I am sorry to hear that Sir Patrick has guessed wrong,” she resumed. “My friend was anxious to recover the letter when I last saw her; and I hoped to hear news of it from you. However, right or wrong, Sir Patrick has some reasons for wishing to see you — and I take the opportunity of telling you so. He has left a letter to wait for you at the Craig Fernie inn.”

“I’m thinking the letter will ha’ lang eneugh to wait, if it waits till I gae back for it to the hottle,” remarked Bishopriggs.

“In that case,” said Blanche, promptly, “you had better give me an address at which Sir Patrick can write to you. You wouldn’t, I suppose, wish me to say that I had seen you here, and that you refused to communicate with him?”

“Never think it!” cried Bishopriggs, fervently. “If there’s ain thing mair than anither that I’m carefu’ to presairve intact, it’s joost the respectful attention that I owe to Sir Paitrick. I’ll make sae bauld, miss, au to chairge ye wi’ that bit caird. I’m no’ settled in ony place yet (mair’s the pity at my time o’ life!), but Sir Paitrick may hear o’ me, when Sir Paitrick has need o’ me, there.” He handed a dirty little card to Blanche containing the name and address of a butcher in Edinburgh. “Sawmuel Bishopriggs,” he went on, glibly. “Care o’ Davie Dow, flesher; Cowgate; Embro. My Patmos in the weelderness, miss, for the time being.”

Blanche received the address with a sense of unspeakable relief. If she had once more ventured on taking Sir Patrick’s place, and once more failed in justifying her rashness by the results, she had at least gained some atoning advantage, this time, by opening a means of communication between her uncle and Bishopriggs. “You will hear from Sir Patrick,” she said, and nodded kindly, and returned to her place among the guests.

“I’ll hear from Sir Paitrick, wull I?” repeated Bishopriggs when he was left by himself. “Sir Paitrick will wark naething less than a meeracle if he finds Sawmuel Bishopriggs at the Cowgate, Embro!”

He laughed softly over his own cleverness; and withdrew to a lonely place in the plantation, in which he could consult the stolen correspondence without fear of being observed by any living creature. Once more the truth had tried to struggle into light, before the day of the marriage, and once more Blanche had innocently helped the darkness to keep it from view.

CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.

SEEDS OF THE FUTURE (THIRD SOWING).

AFTER a new and attentive reading of Anne’s letter to Geoffrey, and of Geoffrey’s letter to Anne, Bishopriggs laid down comfortably under a tree, and set himself the task of seeing his position plainly as it was at that moment.

The profitable disposal of the correspondence to Blanche was no longer among the possibilities involved in the case. As for treating with Sir Patrick, Bishopriggs determined to keep equally dear of the Cowgate, Edinburgh, and of Mrs. Inchbare’s inn, so long as there was the faintest chance of his pushing his own interests in any other quarter. No person living would be capable of so certainly extracting the correspondence from him, on such ruinously cheap terms as his old master. “I’ll no’ put myself under Sir Paitrick’s thumb,” thought Bishopriggs, “till I’ve gane my ain rounds among the lave o’ them first.”

Rendered into intelligible English, this resolution pledged him to hold no communication with Sir Patrick — until he had first tested his success in negotiating with other persons, who might be equally interested in getting possession of the correspondence, and more liberal in giving hush-money to the thief who had stolen it.

Who were the “other persons” at his disposal, under these circumstances?

He had only to recall the conversation which he had overheard between Lady Lundie and Mrs. Delamayn to arrive at the discovery of one person, to begin with, who was directly interested in getting possession of his own letter. Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn was in a fair way of being married to a lady named Mrs. Glenarm. And here was this same Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn in matrimonial correspondence, little more than a fortnight since, with another lady — who signed herself “Anne Silvester.”