"He won"t consent to the separation as long as he has got you here. He is trying for higher terms. Leave him, and he must submit. Put a candle in your window, if you can get into the garden to-night. If not, any other night. Make for the back gate in the wall. Sir Patrick and Arnold will manage the rest."
She slipped those words into Anne"s ears--swinging her parasol to and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her lips--with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called on to a.s.sist a deception in which her own interests are concerned.
Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey"s inveterate distrust was stirred into action by it. Blanche had got to her last sentence before he was able to turn his attention from what Sir Patrick was saying to what his niece was saying. A quicker man would have heard more. Geoffrey had only distinctly heard the first half of the last sentence.
"What"s that," he asked, "about Sir Patrick and Arnold?"
"Nothing very interesting to you," Blanche answered, readily. "I will repeat it if you like. I was telling Anne about my step-mother, Lady Lundie. After what happened that day in Portland Place, she has requested Sir Patrick and Arnold to consider themselves, for the future, as total strangers to her. That"s all."
"Oh!" said Geoffrey, eying her narrowly.
"Ask my uncle," returned Blanche, "if you don"t believe that I have reported her correctly. She gave us all our dismissal, in her most magnificent manner, and in those very words. Didn"t she, Sir Patrick?"
It was perfectly true. Blanche"s readiness of resource had met the emergency of the moment by describing something, in connection with Sir Patrick and Arnold, which had really happened. Silenced on one side, in spite of himself, Geoffrey was at the same moment pressed on the other for an answer to his mother"s message.
"I must take your reply to Lady Holchester," said Sir Patrick. "What is it to be?"
Geoffrey looked hard at him, without making any reply.
Sir Patrick repeated the message--with a special emphasis on that part of it which related to Anne. The emphasis roused Geoffrey"s temper.
"You and my mother have made that message up between you, to try me!" he burst out. "d.a.m.n all underhand work is what _I_ say!"
"I am waiting for your answer," persisted Sir Patrick, steadily ignoring the words which had just been addressed to him.
Geoffrey glanced at Anne, and suddenly recovered himself.
"My love to my mother," he said. "I"ll go to her to-morrow--and take my wife with me, with the greatest pleasure. Do you hear that? With the greatest pleasure." He stopped to observe the effect of his reply. Sir Patrick waited impenetrably to hear more--if he had more to say. "I"m sorry I lost my temper just now," he resumed "I am badly treated--I"m distrusted without a cause. I ask you to bear witness," he added, his voice getting louder again, while his eyes moved uneasily backward and forward between Sir Patrick and Anne, "that I treat my wife as becomes a lady. Her friend calls on her--and she"s free to receive her friend. My mother wants to see her--and I promise to take her to my mother"s. At two o"clock to-morrow. Where am I to blame? You stand there looking at me, and saying nothing. Where am I to blame?"
"If a man"s own conscience justifies him, Mr. Delamayn," said Sir Patrick, "the opinions of others are of very little importance. My errand here is performed."
As he turned to bid Anne farewell, the uneasiness that he felt at leaving her forced its way to view. The color faded out of his face. His hand trembled as it closed tenderly and firmly on hers. "I shall see you to-morrow, at Holchester House," he said; giving his arm while he spoke to Blanche. He took leave of Geoffrey, without looking at him again, and without seeing his offered hand. In another minute they were gone.
Anne waited on the lower floor of the cottage while Geoffrey closed and locked the gate. She had no wish to appear to avoid him, after the answer that he had sent to his mother"s message. He returned slowly half-way across the front garden, looked toward the pa.s.sage in which she was standing, pa.s.sed before the door, and disappeared round the corner of the cottage on his way to the back garden. The inference was not to be mistaken. It was Geoffrey who was avoiding _her._ Had he lied to Sir Patrick? When the next day came would he find reasons of his own for refusing to take her to Holchester House?
She went up stairs. At the same moment Hester Dethridge opened her bedroom door to come out. Observing Anne, she closed it again and remained invisible in her room. Once more the inference was not to be mistaken. Hester Dethridge, also, had her reasons for avoiding Anne.
What did it mean? What object could there be in common between Hester and Geoffrey?
There was no fathoming the meaning of it. Anne"s thoughts reverted to the communication which had been secretly made to her by Blanche. It was not in womanhood to be insensible to such devotion as Sir Patrick"s conduct implied. Terrible as her position had become in its ever-growing uncertainty, in its never-ending suspense, the oppression of it yielded for the moment to the glow of pride and grat.i.tude which warmed her heart, as she thought of the sacrifices that had been made, of the perils that were still to be encountered, solely for her sake. To shorten the period of suspense seemed to be a duty which she owed to Sir Patrick, as well as to herself. Why, in her situation, wait for what the next day might bring forth? If the opportunity offered, she determined to put the signal in the window that night.
Toward evening she heard once more the noises which appeared to indicate that repairs of some sort were going on in the house. This time the sounds were fainter; and they came, as she fancied, not from the spare room, as before, but from Geoffrey"s room, next to it.
The dinner was later than usual that day. Hester Dethridge did not appear with the tray till dusk. Anne spoke to her, and received a mute sign in answer. Determined to see the woman"s face plainly, she put a question which required a written answer on the slate; and, telling Hester to wait, went to the mantle-piece to light her candle. When she turned round with the lighted candle in her hand, Hester was gone.
Night came. She rang her bell to have the tray taken away. The fall of a strange footstep startled her outside her door. She called out, "Who"s there?" The voice of the lad whom Geoffrey employed to go on errands for him answered her.
"What do you want here?" she asked, through the door.
"Mr. Delamayn sent me up, ma"am. He wishes to speak to you directly."
Anne found Geoffrey in the dining-room. His object in wishing to speak to her was, on the surface of it, trivial enough. He wanted to know how she would prefer going to Holchester House on the next day--by the railway, or in a carriage. "If you prefer driving," he said, "the boy has come here for orders, and he can tell them to send a carriage from the livery-stables, as he goes home."
"The railway will do perfectly well for me," Anne replied.
Instead of accepting the answer, and dropping the subject, he asked her to reconsider her decision. There was an absent, uneasy expression in his eye as he begged her not to consult economy at the expense of her own comfort. He appeared to have some reason of his own for preventing her from leaving the room. "Sit d own a minute, and think before you decide," he said. Having forced her to take a chair, he put his head outside the door and directed the lad to go up stairs, and see if he had left his pipe in his bedroom. "I want you to go in comfort, as a lady should," he repeated, with the uneasy look more marked than ever. Before Anne could reply, the lad"s voice reached them from the bedroom floor, raised in shrill alarm, and screaming "Fire!"
Geoffrey ran up stairs. Anne followed him. The lad met them at the top of the stairs. He pointed to the open door of Anne"s room. She was absolutely certain of having left her lighted candle, when she went down to Geoffrey, at a safe distance from the bed-curtains. The bed-curtains, nevertheless, were in a blaze of fire.
There was a supply of water to the cottage, on the upper floor. The bedroom jugs and cans usually in their places at an earlier hour, were standing that night at the cistern. An empty pail was left near them.
Directing the lad to bring him water from these resources, Geoffrey tore down the curtains in a flaming heap, partly on the bed and partly on the sofa near it. Using the can and the pail alternately, as the boy brought them, he drenched the bed and the sofa. It was all over in little more than a minute. The cottage was saved. But the bed-furniture was destroyed; and the room, as a matter of course, was rendered uninhabitable, for that night at least, and probably for more nights to come.
Geoffrey set down the empty pail; and, turning to Anne, pointed across the pa.s.sage.
"You won"t be much inconvenienced by this," he said. "You have only to shift your quarters to the spare room."
With the a.s.sistance of the lad, he moved Anne"s boxes, and the chest of drawers, which had escaped damage, into the opposite room. This done, he cautioned her to be careful with her candles for the future--and went down stairs, without waiting to hear what she said in reply. The lad followed him, and was dismissed for the night.
Even in the confusion which attended the extinguishing of the fire, the conduct of Hester Dethridge had been remarkable enough to force itself on the attention of Anne.
She had come out from her bedroom, when the alarm was given; had looked at the flaming curtains; and had drawn back, stolidly submissive, into a corner to wait the event. There she had stood--to all appearance, utterly indifferent to the possible destruction of her own cottage. The fire extinguished, she still waited impenetrably in her corner, while the chest of drawers and the boxes were being moved--then locked the door, without even a pa.s.sing glance at the scorched ceiling and the burned bed-furniture--put the key into her pocket--and went back to her room.
Anne had hitherto not shared the conviction felt by most other persons who were brought into contact with Hester Dethridge, that the woman"s mind was deranged. After what she had just seen, however, the general impression became her impression too. She had thought of putting certain questions to Hester, when they were left together, as to the origin of the fire. Reflection decided her on saying nothing, for that night at least. She crossed the pa.s.sage, and entered the spare room--the room which she had declined to occupy on her arrival at the cottage, and which she was obliged to sleep in now.
She was instantly struck by a change in the disposition of the furniture of the room.
The bed had been moved. The head--set, when she had last seen it, against the side wall of the cottage--was placed now against the part.i.tion wall which separated the room from Geoffrey"s room. This new arrangement had evidently been effected with a settled purpose of some sort. The hook in the ceiling which supported the curtains (the bed, unlike the bed in the other room, having no canopy attached to it) had been moved so as to adapt itself to the change that had been made. The chairs and the washhand-stand, formerly placed against the part.i.tion wall, were now, as a matter of necessity, shifted over to the vacant s.p.a.ce against the side wall of the cottage. For the rest, no other alteration was visible in any part of the room.
In Anne"s situation, any event not immediately intelligible on the face of it, was an event to be distrusted. Was there a motive for the change in the position of the bed? And was it, by any chance, a motive in which she was concerned?
The doubt had barely occurred to her, before a startling suspicion succeeded it. Was there some secret purpose to be answered by making her sleep in the spare room? Did the question which the servant had heard Geoffrey put to Hester, on the previous night, refer to this? Had the fire which had so unaccountably caught the curtains in her own room, been, by any possibility, a fire purposely kindled, to force her out?
She dropped into the nearest chair, faint with horror, as those three questions forced themselves in rapid succession on her mind.
After waiting a little, she recovered self-possession enough to recognize the first plain necessity of putting her suspicions to the test. It was possible that her excited fancy had filled her with a purely visionary alarm. For all she knew to the contrary, there might be some undeniably sufficient reason for changing the position of the bed.
She went out, and knocked at the door of Hester Dethridge"s room.
"I want to speak to you," she said.
Hester came out. Anne pointed to the spare room, and led the way to it.
Hester followed her.
"Why have you changed the place of the bed," she asked, "from the wall there, to the wall here?"
Stolidly submissive to the question, as she had been stolidly submissive to the fire, Hester Dethridge wrote her reply. On all other occasions she was accustomed to look the persons to whom she offered her slate steadily in the face. Now, for the first time, she handed it to Anne with her eyes on the floor. The one line written contained no direct answer: the words were these:
"I have meant to move it, for some time past."
"I ask you why you have moved it."