Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (770 page)

“We have not wasted our time,” he said, “in dwelling on what happened during your visit to Fulham. The possibility of this man’s death suggests to my mind serious matter for consideration. It is very desirable, in the interests of my niece and her husband, that I should be able to foresee, if I can, how a fatal result of the race might affect the inquiry which is to be held on Saturday next. I believe you may be able to help me in this.”

“You have only to tell me how, Sir Patrick.”

“I may count on your being present on Saturday?”

“Certainly.”

“You thoroughly understand that, in meeting Blanche, you will meet a person estranged from you, for the present — a friend and sister who has ceased (under Lady Lundie’s influence mainly) to feel as a friend and sister toward you now?”

“I was not quite unprepared, Sir Patrick, to hear that Blanche had misjudged me. When I wrote my letter to Mr. Brinkworth, I warned him as delicately as I could, that his wife’s jealousy might be very easily roused. You may rely on my self-restraint, no matter how hardly it may be tried. Nothing that Blanche can say or do will alter my grateful remembrance of the past. While I live, I love her. Let that assurance quiet any little anxiety that you may have felt as to my conduct — and tell me how I can serve those interests which I have at heart as well as you.”

“You can serve them, Miss Silvester, in this way. You can make me acquainted with the position in which you stood toward Delamayn at the time when you went to the Craig Fernie inn.”

“Put any questions to me that you think right, Sir Patrick.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean it.”

“I will begin by recalling something which you have already told me. Delamayn has promised you marriage — ”

“Over and over again!”

“In words?”

“Yes.”

“In writing?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see what I am coming to?”

“Hardly yet.”

“You referred, when we first met in this room, to a letter which you recovered from Bishopriggs, at Perth. I have ascertained from Arnold Brinkworth that the sheet of note-paper stolen from you contained two letters. One was written by you to Delamayn — the other was written by Delamayn to you. The substance of this last Arnold remembered. Your letter he had not read. It is of the utmost importance, Miss Silvester, to let me see that correspondence before we part to-day.”

Anne made no answer. She sat with her clasped hands on her lap. Her eyes looked uneasily away from Sir Patrick’s face, for the first time.

“Will it not be enough,” she asked, after an interval, “if I tell you the substance of my letter, without showing it?”

“It will
not
be enough,” returned Sir Patrick, in the plainest manner. “I hinted — if you remember — at the propriety of my seeing the letter, when you first mentioned it, and I observed that you purposely abstained from understanding me, I am grieved to put you, on this occasion, to a painful test. But if you
are
to help me at this serious crisis, I have shown you the way.”

Anne rose from her chair, and answered by putting the letter into Sir Patrick’s hands. “Remember what he has done, since I wrote that,” she said. “And try to excuse me, if I own that I am ashamed to show it to you now.”

With those words she walked aside to the window. She stood there, with her hand pressed on her breast, looking out absently on the murky London view of house roof and chimney, while Sir Patrick opened the letter.

It is necessary to the right appreciation of events, that other eyes besides Sir Patrick’s should follow the brief course of the correspondence in this place.

1.
From Anne Silvester to Geoffrey Delamayn.

WINDYGATES HOUSE.
August
19, 1868.

“GEOFFREY DELAMAYN, — I have waited in the hope that you would ride over from your brother’s place, and see me — and I have waited in vain. Your conduct to me is cruelty itself; I will bear it no longer. Consider! in your own interests, consider — before you drive the miserable woman who has trusted you to despair. You have promised me marriage by all that is sacred. I claim your promise. I insist on nothing less than to be what you vowed I should be — what I have waited all this weary time to be — what I
am,
in the sight of Heaven, your wedded wife. Lady Lundie gives a lawn-party here on the 14th. I know you have been asked. I expect you to accept her invitation. If I don’t see you, I won’t answer for what may happen. My mind is made up to endure this suspense no longer. Oh, Geoffrey, remember the past! Be faithful — be just — to your loving wife,

“ANNE SILVESTER.”

2.
From Geoffrey Delamayn to Anne Silvester.

“DEAR ANNE, — Just called to London to my father. They have telegraphed him in a bad way. Stop where you are, and I will write you. Trust the bearer. Upon my soul, I’ll keep my promise. Your loving husband that is to be,

“GEOFFREY DELAMAYN.

“WINDYGATES HOUSE
Augt.
14, 4 P. M.

“In a mortal hurry. The train starts 4.30.”

Sir Patrick read the correspondence with breathless attention to the end. At the last lines of the last letter he did what he had not done for twenty years past — he sprang to his feet at a bound, and he crossed a room without the help of his ivory cane.

Anne started; and turning round from the window, looked at him in silent surprise. He was under the influence of strong emotion; his face, his voice, his manner, all showed it.

“How long had you been in Scotland, when you wrote this?” He pointed to Anne’s letter as he asked the question, put ting it so eagerly that he stammered over the first words. “More than three weeks?” he added, with his bright black eyes fixed in absorbing interest on her face.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I am certain of it.”

“You can refer to persons who have seen you?”

“Easily.”

He turned the sheet of note-paper, and pointed to Geoffrey’s penciled letter on the fourth page.

“How long had
he
been in Scotland, when
he
wrote this? More than three weeks, too?”

Anne considered for a moment.

“For God’s sake, be careful!” said Sir Patrick. “You don’t know what depends on this, If your memory is not clear about it, say so.”

“My memory was confused for a moment. It is clear again now. He had been at his brother’s in Perthshire three weeks before he wrote that. And before he went to Swanhaven, he spent three or four days in the valley of the Esk.”

“Are you sure again?”

“Quite sure!”

“Do you know of any one who saw him in the valley of the Esk?”

“I know of a person who took a note to him, from me.”

“A person easily found?”

“Quite easily.”

Sir Patrick laid aside the letter, and seized in ungovernable agitation on both her hands.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The whole conspiracy against Arnold Brinkworth and you falls to the ground before that correspondence. When you and he met at the inn — ”

He paused, and looked at her. Her hands were beginning to tremble in his.

“When you and Arnold Brinkworth met at the inn,” he resumed, “the law of Scotland had made you a married woman. On the day, and at the hour, when he wrote those lines at the back of your letter to him, you were
Geoffrey Delamayn’s wedded wife!
”

He stopped, and looked at her again.

Without a word in reply, without the slightest movement in her from head to foot, she looked back at him. The blank stillness of horror was in her face. The deadly cold of horror was in her hands.

In silence, on his side, Sir Patrick drew back a step, with a faint reflection of
her
dismay in his face. Married — to the villain who had not hesitated to calumniate the woman whom he had ruined, and then to cast her helpless on the world. Married — to the traitor who had not shrunk from betraying Arnold’s trust in him, and desolating Arnold’s home. Married — to the ruffian who would have struck her that morning, if the hands of his own friends had not held him back. And Sir Patrick had never thought of it! Absorbed in the one idea of Blanche’s future, he had never thought of it, till that horror-stricken face looked at him, and said, Think of
my
future, too!

He came back to her. He took her cold hand once more in his.

“Forgive me,” he said, “for thinking first of Blanche.”

Blanche’s name seemed to rouse her. The life came back to her face; the tender brightness began to shine again in her eyes. He saw that he might venture to speak more plainly still: he went on.

“I see the dreadful sacrifice as
you
see it. I ask myself, have I any right, has Blanche any right — ”

She stopped him by a faint pressure of his hand.

“Yes,” she said, softly, “if Blanche’s happiness depends on it.”

THIRTEENTH SCENE. — FULHAM.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.

THE FOOT-RACE.

A SOLITARY foreigner, drifting about London, drifted toward Fulham on the day of the Foot-Race.

Little by little, he found himself involved in the current of a throng of impetuous English people, all flowing together toward one given point, and all decorated alike with colours of two prevailing hues — pink and yellow. He drifted along with the stream of passengers on the pavement (accompanied by a stream of carriages in the road) until they stopped with one accord at a gate — and paid admission money to a man in office — and poured into a great open space of ground which looked like an uncultivated garden.

Arrived here, the foreign visitor opened his eyes in wonder at the scene revealed to view. He observed thousands of people assembled, composed almost exclusively of the middle and upper classes of society. They were congregated round a vast inclosure; they were elevated on amphitheatrical wooden stands, and they were perched on the roofs of horseless carriages, drawn up in rows. From this congregation there rose such a roar of eager voices as he had never heard yet from any assembled multitude in these islands. Predominating among the cries, he detected one everlasting question. It began with, “Who backs — ?” and it ended in the alternate pronouncing of two British names unintelligible to foreign ears. Seeing these extraordinary sights, and hearing these stirring sounds, he applied to a policeman on duty; and said, in his best producible English, “If you please, Sir, what is this?”

The policeman answered, “North against South — Sports.”

The foreigner was informed, but not satisfied. He pointed all round the assembly with a circular sweep of his hand; and said, “Why?”

The policeman declined to waste words on a man who could ask such a question as that. He lifted a large purple forefinger, with a broad white nail at the end of it, and pointed gravely to a printed Bill, posted on the wall behind him. The drifting foreigner drifted to the Bill.

After reading it carefully, from top to bottom, he consulted a polite private individual near at hand, who proved to be far more communicative than the policeman. The result on his mind, as a person not thoroughly awakened to the enormous national importance of Athletic Sports, was much as follows:

The colour of North is pink. The colour of South is yellow. North produces fourteen pink men, and South produces thirteen yellow men. The meeting of pink and yellow is a solemnity. The solemnity takes its rise in an indomitable national passion for hardening the arms and legs, by throwing hammers and cricket-balls with the first, and running and jumping with the second. The object in view is to do this in public rivalry. The ends arrived at are (physically) an excessive development of the muscles, purchased at the expense of an excessive strain on the heart and the lungs — (morally), glory; conferred at the moment by the public applause; confirmed the next day by a report in the newspapers. Any person who presumes to see any physical evil involved in these exercises to the men who practice them, or any moral obstruction in the exhibition itself to those civilizing influences on which the true greatness of all nations depends, is a person without a biceps, who is simply incomprehensible. Muscular England develops itself, and takes no notice of him.