Randal"s face brightened. "You parted company, of course," he said; "and you disguised Kitty! How did you manage it?"
"Didn"t I say just now that we looked at the shops, and that I made a purchase in the town? A boy"s ready-made suit--not at all a bad fit for Kitty! Mrs. Linley put on the suit, and tucked up the child"s hair under a straw hat, in an empty yard--no idlers about in that bad weather. We said good-by, and parted, with grievous misgivings on my side, which proved (thank G.o.d!) to have been quite needless. Kitty and her mother went to the station, and Mrs. Presty and I hired a carriage, and drove away to the head of the lake, to catch the train to London. Do you know, Randal, I have altered my opinion of Mrs. Presty?"
Randal smiled. "You too have found something in that old woman," he said, "which doesn"t appear on the surface."
"The occasion seems to bring that something out," the lawyer remarked.
"When I proposed the separation, and mentioned my reasons, I expected to find some difficulty in persuading Mrs. Presty to give up the adventurous journey with her daughter and her grandchild. I reminded her that she had friends in London who would receive her, and got snubbed for taking the liberty. "I know that as well as you do. Come along--I"m ready to go with you." It isn"t agreeable to my self-esteem to own it, but I expected to hear her say that she would consent to any sacrifice for the sake of her dear daughter. No such clap-trap as that pa.s.sed her lips. She owned the true motive with a superiority to cant which won my sincerest respect. "I"ll do anything," she said, "to baffle Herbert Linley and the spies he has set to watch us." I can"t tell you how glad I was that she had her reward on the same day. We were too late at the station, and we had to wait for the next train. And what do you think happened? The two scoundrels followed us instead of following Mrs.
Linley! They had inquired no doubt at the livery stables where we hired the carriage--had recognized the description of us--and had taken the long journey to London for nothing. Mrs. Presty and I shook hands at the terminus the best friends that ever traveled together with the best of motives. After that, I think I deserve another gla.s.s of wine."
"Go on with your story, and you shall have another bottle!" cried Randal. "What did Catherine and the child do after they left you?"
"They did the safest thing--they left England. Mrs. Linley distinguished herself on this occasion. It was her excellent idea to avoid popular ports of departure, like Folkestone and Dover, which were sure to be watched, and to get away (if the thing could be done) from some place on the east coast. We consulted our guide and found that a line of steamers sailed from Hull to Bremen once a week. A tedious journey from our part of c.u.mberland, with some troublesome changing of trains, but they got there in time to embark. My first news of them reached me in a telegram from Bremen. There they waited for further instructions. I sent the instructions by a thoroughly capable and trustworthy man--an Italian courier, known to me by an experience of twenty years. Shall I confess it? I thought I had done rather a clever thing in providing Mrs. Linley with a friend in need while I was away from her."
"I think so, too," said Randal.
"Wrong, completely wrong. I had made a mistake--I had been too clever, and I got my reward accordingly. You know how I advised Mrs. Linley?"
"Yes. You persuaded her, with the greatest difficulty, to apply for a Divorce."
"Very well. I had made all the necessary arrangements for the trial, when I received a letter from Germany. My charming client had changed her mind, and declined to apply for the Divorce. There was my reward for having been too clever!"
"I don"t understand you."
"My dear fellow, you are dull to-night. I had been so successful in protecting Mrs. Linley and the child, and my excellent courier had found such a charming place of retreat for them in one of the suburbs of Hanover, that "she saw no reason now for taking the shocking course that I had recommended to her--so repugnant to all her most cherished convictions; so sinful and so shameful in its doing of evil that good might come. Experience had convinced her that (thanks to me) there was no fear of Kitty being discovered and taken from her. She therefore begged me to write to my agent in Edinburgh, and tell him that her application to the court was withdrawn." Ah, you understand my position at last. The headstrong woman was running a risk which renewed all my anxieties. By every day"s post I expected to hear that she had paid the penalty of her folly, and that your brother had succeeded in getting possession of the child. Wait a little before you laugh at me. But for the courier, the thing would have really happened a week since."
Randal looked astonished. "Months must have pa.s.sed," he objected.
"Surely, after that lapse of time, Mrs. Linley must have been safe from discovery."
"Take your own positive view of it! I only know that the thing happened.
And why not? The luck had begun by being on one side--why shouldn"t the other side have had its turn next?"
"Do you really believe in luck?"
"Devoutly. A lawyer must believe in something. He knows the law too well to put any faith in that: and his clients present to him (if he is a man of any feeling) a hideous view of human nature. The poor devil believes in luck--rather than believe in nothing. I think it quite likely that accident helped the person employed by the husband to discover the wife and child. Anyhow, Mrs. Linley and Kitty were seen in the streets of Hanover; seen, recognized, and followed. The courier happened to be with them--luck again! For thirty years and more, he had been traveling in every part of Europe; there was not a landlord of the smallest pretensions anywhere who didn"t know him and like him. "I pretended not to see that anybody was following us," he said (writing from Hanover to relieve my anxiety); "and I took the ladies to a hotel. The hotel possessed two merits from our point of view--it had a way out at the back, through the stables, and it was kept by a landlord who was an excellent good friend of mine. I arranged with him what he was to say when inquiries were made; and I kept my poor ladies prisoners in their lodgings for three days. The end of it is that Mr. Linley"s policeman has gone away to watch the Channel steam-service, while we return quietly by way of Bremen and Hull." There is the courier"s account of it. I have only to add that poor Mrs. Linley has been fairly frightened into submission. She changes her mind again, and pledges herself once more to apply for the Divorce. If we are only lucky enough to get our case heard without any very serious delay, I am not afraid of my client slipping through my fingers for the second time. When will the courts of session be open to us? You have lived in Scotland, Randal--"
"But I haven"t lived in the courts of law. I wish I could give you the information you want."
Mr. Sarrazin looked at his watch. "For all I know to the contrary," he said, "we may be wasting precious time while we are talking here. Will you excuse me if I go away to my club?"
"Are you going in search of information?"
"Yes. We have some inveterate old whist-players who are always to be found in the card-room. One of them formerly practiced, I believe, in the Scotch courts. It has just occurred to me that the chance is worth trying."
"Will you let me know if you succeed?" Randal asked.
The lawyer took his hand at parting. "You seem to be almost as anxious about it as I am," he said.
"To tell you the truth, I am a little alarmed when I think of Catherine.
If there is another long delay, how do we know what may happen before the law has confirmed the mother"s claim to the child? Let me send one of the servants here to wait at your club. Will you give him a line telling me when the trial is likely to take place?"
"With the greatest pleasure. Good-night."
Left alone, Randal sat by the fireside for a while, thinking of the future. The prospect, as he saw it, disheartened him. As a means of employing his mind on a more agreeable subject for reflection, he opened his traveling desk and took out two or three letters. They had been addressed to him, while he was in America, by Captain Bennydeck.
The captain had committed an error of which most of us have been guilty in our time. He had been too exclusively devoted to work that interested him to remember what was due to the care of his health. The doctor"s warnings had been neglected; his over-strained nerves had given way; and the man whose strong const.i.tution had resisted cold and starvation in the Arctic wastes, had broken down under stress of brain-work in London.
This was the news which the first of the letters contained.
The second, written under dictation, alluded briefly to the remedies suggested. In the captain"s case, the fresh air recommended was the air of the sea. At the same time he was forbidden to receive either letters or telegrams, during his absence from town, until the doctor had seen him again. These instructions pointed, in Captain Bennydeck"s estimation, to sailing for pleasure"s sake, and therefore to hiring a yacht.
The third and last letter announced that the yacht had been found, and described the captain"s plans when the vessel was ready for sea.
He proposed to sail here and there about the Channel, wherever it might please the wind to take him. Friends would accompany him, but not in any number. The yacht was not large enough to accommodate comfortably more than one or two guests at a time. Every now and then, the vessel would come to an anchor in the bay of the little coast town of Sandyseal, to accommodate friends going and coming and (in spite of medical advice) to receive letters. "You may have heard of Sandyseal," the Captain wrote, "as one of the places which have lately been found out by the doctors.
They are recommending the air to patients suffering from nervous disorders all over England. The one hotel in the place, and the few cottages which let lodgings, are crammed, as I hear, and the speculative builder is beginning his operations at such a rate that Sandyseal will be no longer recognizable in a few months more. Before the crescents and terraces and grand hotels turn the town into a fashionable watering-place, I want to take a last look at scenes familiar to me under their old aspect. If you are inclined to wonder at my feeling such a wish as this, I can easily explain myself. Two miles inland from Sandyseal, there is a lonely old moated house. In that house I was born.
When you return from America, write to me at the post-office, or at the hotel (I am equally well known in both places), and let us arrange for a speedy meeting. I wish I could ask you to come and see me in my birth-place. It was sold, years since, under instructions in my father"s will, and was purchased for the use of a community of nuns. We may look at the outside, and we can do no more. In the meantime, don"t despair of my recovery; the sea is my old friend, and my trust is in G.o.d"s mercy."
These last lines were added in a postscript:
"Have you heard any more of that poor girl, the daughter of my old friend Roderick Westerfield--whose sad story would never have been known to me but for you? I feel sure that you have good reasons for not telling me the name of the man who has misled her, or the address at which she may be found. But you may one day be at liberty to break your silence. In that case, don"t hesitate to do so because there may happen to be obstacles in my way. No difficulties discourage me, when my end in view is the saving of a soul in peril."
Randal returned to his desk to write to the Captain. He had only got as far as the first sentences, when the servant returned with the lawyer"s promised message. Mr. Sarrazin"s news was communicated in these cheering terms:
"I am a firmer believer in luck than ever. If we only make haste--and won"t I make haste!--we may get the Divorce, as I calculate, in three weeks" time."
Chapter x.x.x. The Lord President.
Mrs. Linley"s application for a Divorce was heard in the first division of the Court of Session at Edinburgh, the Lord President being the judge.
To the disappointment of the large audience a.s.sembled, no defense was attempted on the part of the husband--a wise decision, seeing that the evidence of the wife and her witnesses was beyond dispute. But one exciting incident occurred toward the close of the proceedings. Sudden illness made Mrs. Linley"s removal necessary, at the moment of all others most interesting to herself--the moment before the judge"s decision was announced.
But, as the event proved, the poor lady"s withdrawal was the most fortunate circ.u.mstance that could have occurred, in her own interests.
After condemning the husband"s conduct with unsparing severity, the Lord President surprised most of the persons present by speaking of the wife in these terms:
"Grievously as Mrs. Linley has been injured, the evidence shows that she was herself by no means free from blame. She has been guilty, to say the least of it, of acts of indiscretion. When the criminal attachment which had grown up between Mr. Herbert Linley and Miss Westerfield had been confessed to her, she appears to have most unreasonably overrated whatever merit there might have been in their resistance to the final temptation. She was indeed so impulsively ready to forgive (without waiting to see if the event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person"s shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and grat.i.tude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more deserving of censure. She herself appears to have placed the temptation under which he fell in her husband"s way, and so (in some degree at least) to have provoked the catastrophe which has brought her before this court. I allude, it is needless to say, to her having invited the governess--then out of harm"s way; then employed elsewhere--to return to her house, and to risk (what actually occurred) a meeting with Mr. Herbert Linley when no third person happened to be present. I know that the maternal motive which animated Mrs. Linley is considered, by many persons, to excuse and even to justify that most regrettable act; and I have myself allowed (I fear weakly allowed) more than due weight to this consideration in p.r.o.nouncing for the Divorce.
Let me express the earnest hope that Mrs. Linley will take warning by what has happened; and, if she finds herself hereafter placed in other circ.u.mstances of difficulty, let me advise her to exercise more control over impulses which one might expect perhaps to find in a young girl, but which are neither natural nor excusable in a woman of her age."
His lordship then decreed the Divorce in the customary form, giving the custody of the child to the mother.
As fast as a hired carriage could take him, Mr. Sarrazin drove from the court to Mrs. Linley"s lodgings, to tell her that the one great object of securing her right to her child had been achieved.
At the door he was met by Mrs. Presty. She was accompanied by a stranger, whose medical services had been required. Interested professionally in hearing the result of the trial, this gentleman volunteered to communicate the good news to his patient. He had been waiting to administer a composing draught, until the suspense from which Mrs. Linley was suffering might be relieved, and a reasonable hope be entertained that the medicine would produce the right effect. With that explanation he left the room.