Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (706 page)

“I’ll take my oath to every inch of it!”

“Shop?”

“Nature!”

Sir Patrick rose to his feet; his satirical humour was silenced at last.

“If ever I have a son,” he thought to himself, “that son shall go to sea!” He took Arnold’s arm, as a preliminary to putting an end to Arnold’s suspense. “If I
can
be serious about any thing,” he resumed, “it’s time to be serious with you. I am convinced of the sincerity of your attachment. All I know of you is in your favor, and your birth and position are beyond dispute. If you have Blanche’s consent, you have mine.” Arnold attempted to express his gratitude. Sir Patrick, declining to hear him, went on. “And remember this, in the future. When you next want any thing that I can give you, ask for it plainly. Don’t attempt to mystify
me
on the next occasion, and I will promise, on my side, not to mystify
you.
There, that’s understood. Now about this journey of yours to see your estate. Property has its duties, Master Arnold, as well as its rights. The time is fast coming when its rights will be disputed, if its duties are not performed. I have got a new interest in you, and I mean to see that you do your duty. It’s settled you are to leave Windygates to-day. Is it arranged how you are to go?”

“Yes, Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie has kindly ordered the gig to take me to the station, in time for the next train.”

“When are you to be ready?”

Arnold looked at his watch. “In a quarter of an hour.”

“Very good. Mind you
are
ready. Stop a minute! you will have plenty of time to speak to Blanche when I have done with you. You don’t appear to me to be sufficiently anxious about seeing your own property.”

“I am not very anxious to leave Blanche, Sir — that’s the truth of it.”

“Never mind Blanche. Blanche is not business. They both begin with a B — and that’s the only connection between them. I hear you have got one of the finest houses in this part of Scotland. How long are you going to stay in Scotland? How long are you going to stay in it?”

“I have arranged (as I have already told you, Sir) to return to Windygates the day after to-morrow.”

“What! Here is a man with a palace waiting to receive him — and he is only going to stop one clear day in it!”

“I am not going to stop in it at all, Sir Patrick — I am going to stay with the steward. I’m only wanted to be present to-morrow at a dinner to my tenants — and, when that’s over, there’s nothing in the world to prevent my coming back here. The steward himself told me so in his last letter.”

“Oh, if the steward told you so, of course there is nothing more to be said!”

“Don’t object to my coming back! pray don’t, Sir Patrick! I’ll promise to live in my new house when I have got Blanche to live in it with me. If you won’t mind, I’ll go and tell her at once that it all belongs to her as well as to me.”

“Gently! gently! you talk as if you were married to her already!”

“It’s as good as done, Sir! Where’s the difficulty in the way now?”

As he asked the question the shadow of some third person, advancing from the side of the summer-house, was thrown forward on the open sunlit space at the top of the steps. In a moment more the shadow was followed by the substance — in the shape of a groom in his riding livery. The man was plainly a stranger to the place. He started, and touched his hat, when he saw the two gentlemen in the summer-house.

“What do you want?” asked Sir Patrick

“I beg your pardon, Sir; I was sent by my master — ”

“Who is your master?”

“The Honourable Mr. Delamayn, Sir.”

“Do you mean Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn?” asked Arnold.

“No, Sir. Mr. Geoffrey’s brother — Mr. Julius. I have ridden over from the house, Sir, with a message from my master to Mr. Geoffrey.”

“Can’t you find him?”

“They told me I should find him hereabouts, Sir. But I’m a stranger, and don’t rightly know where to look.” He stopped, and took a card out of his pocket. “My master said it was very important I should deliver this immediately. Would you be pleased to tell me, gentlemen, if you happen to know where Mr. Geoffrey is?”

Arnold turned to Sir Patrick. “I haven’t seen him. Have you?”

“I have smelt him,” answered Sir Patrick, “ever since I have been in the summer-house. There is a detestable taint of tobacco in the air — suggestive (disagreeably suggestive to
my
mind) of your friend, Mr. Delamayn.”

Arnold laughed, and stepped outside the summer-house.

“If you are right, Sir Patrick, we will find him at once.” He looked around, and shouted, “Geoffrey!”

A voice from the rose-garden shouted back, “Hullo!”

“You’re wanted. Come here!”

Geoffrey appeared, sauntering doggedly, with his pipe in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets.

“Who wants me?”

“A groom — from your brother.”

That answer appeared to electrify the lounging and lazy athlete. Geoffrey hurried, with eager steps, to the summer-house. He addressed the groom before the man had time to speak With horror and dismay in his face, he exclaimed:

“By Jupiter! Ratcatcher has relapsed!”

Sir Patrick and Arnold looked at each other in blank amazement.

“The best horse in my brother’s stables!” cried Geoffrey, explaining, and appealing to them, in a breath. “I left written directions with the coachman, I measured out his physic for three days; I bled him,” said Geoffrey, in a voice broken by emotion — ”I bled him myself, last night.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir — ” began the groom.

“What’s the use of begging my pardon? You’re a pack of infernal fools! Where’s your horse? I’ll ride back, and break every bone in the coachman’s skin! Where’s your horse?”

“If you please, Sir, it isn’t Ratcatcher. Ratcatcher’s all right.”

“Ratcatcher’s all right? Then what the devil is it?”

“It’s a message, Sir.”

“About what?”

“About my lord.”

“Oh! About my father?” He took out his handkerchief, and passed it over his forehead, with a deep gasp of relief. “I thought it was Ratcatcher,” he said, looking at Arnold, with a smile. He put his pipe into his mouth, and rekindled the dying ashes of the tobacco. “Well?” he went on, when the pipe was in working order, and his voice was composed again: “What’s up with my father?”

“A telegram from London, Sir. Bad news of my lord.”

The man produced his master’s card.

Geoffrey read on it (written in his brother’s handwriting) these words:

“I have only a moment to scribble a line on my card. Our father is dangerously ill — his lawyer has been sent for. Come with me to London by the first train. Meet at the junction.”

Without a word to any one of the three persons present, all silently looking at him, Geoffrey consulted his watch. Anne had told him to wait half an hour, and to assume that she had gone if he failed to hear from her in that time. The interval had passed — and no communication of any sort had reached him. The flight from the house had been safely accomplished. Anne Silvester was, at that moment, on her way to the mountain inn.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

THE DEBT.

ARNOLD was the first who broke the silence. “Is your father seriously ill?” he asked.

Geoffrey answered by handing him the card.

Sir Patrick, who had stood apart (while the question of Ratcatcher’s relapse was under discussion) sardonically studying the manners and customs of modern English youth, now came forward, and took his part in the proceedings. Lady Lundie herself must have acknowledged that he spoke and acted as became the head of the family, on t his occasion.

“Am I right in supposing that Mr. Delamayn’s father is dangerously ill?” he asked, addressing himself to Arnold.

“Dangerously ill, in London,” Arnold answered. “Geoffrey must leave Windygates with me. The train I am traveling by meets the train his brother is traveling by, at the junction. I shall leave him at the second station from here.”

“Didn’t you tell me that Lady Lundie was going to send you to the railway in a gig?”

“Yes.”

“If the servant drives, there will be three of you — and there will be no room.”

“We had better ask for some other vehicle,” suggested Arnold.

Sir Patrick looked at his watch. There was no time to change the carriage. He turned to Geoffrey. “Can you drive, Mr. Delamayn?”

Still impenetrably silent, Geoffrey replied by a nod of the head.

Without noticing the unceremonious manner in which he had been answered, Sir Patrick went on:

“In that case, you can leave the gig in charge of the station-master. I’ll tell the servant that he will not be wanted to drive.”

“Let me save you the trouble, Sir Patrick,” said Arnold.

Sir Patrick declined, by a gesture. He turned again, with undiminished courtesy, to Geoffrey. “It is one of the duties of hospitality, Mr. Delamayn, to hasten your departure, under these sad circumstances. Lady Lundie is engaged with her guests. I will see myself that there is no unnecessary delay in sending you to the station.” He bowed — and left the summer-house.

Arnold said a word of sympathy to his friend, when they were alone.

“I am sorry for this, Geoffrey. I hope and trust you will get to London in time.”

He stopped. There was something in Geoffrey’s face — a strange mixture of doubt and bewilderment, of annoyance and hesitation — which was not to be accounted for as the natural result of the news that he had received. His colour shifted and changed; he picked fretfully at his finger-nails; he looked at Arnold as if he was going to speak — and then looked away again, in silence.

“Is there something amiss, Geoffrey, besides this bad news about your father?” asked Arnold.

“I’m in the devil’s own mess,” was the answer.

“Can I do any thing to help you?”

Instead of making a direct reply, Geoffrey lifted his mighty hand, and gave Arnold a friendly slap on the shoulder which shook him from head to foot. Arnold steadied himself, and waited — wondering what was coming next.

“I say, old fellow!” said Geoffrey.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember when the boat turned keel upward in Lisbon Harbor?”

Arnold started. If he could have called to mind his first interview in the summer-house with his father’s old friend he might have remembered Sir Patrick’s prediction that he would sooner or later pay, with interest, the debt he owed to the man who had saved his life. As it was his memory reverted at a bound to the time of the boat-accident. In the ardor of his gratitude and the innocence of his heart, he almost resented his friend’s question as a reproach which he had not deserved.

“Do you think I can ever forget,” he cried, warmly, “that you swam ashore with me and saved my life?”

Geoffrey ventured a step nearer to the object that he had in view.

“One good turn deserves another,” he said, “don’t it?”

Arnold took his hand. “Only tell me!” he eagerly rejoined — ”only tell me what I can do!”