“Will it be necessary, do you think, to draw further upon Lady Skene’s parent?”
“I hope not; I think not; family feelings must be respected. At the same time it must depend very largely upon the attitude which Lord Skene shall elect to adopt.”
“Well, sir, when is it to be Italy, and for which of us?”
“There must be a delay, I think, of a few days, while Scotland Yard communicates with Turin. Mr Dando insists upon accompanying us; so there will be for the venture he, you, I, Jannaway, and your witness—quite a little regiment—I trust not a forlorn hope. But it all turns upon the question of that marriage—its proof and legitimacy. A lot may come to perish in twenty years. That may stand for a text out of the criminal’s Vade-mecum. I daresay Mr Dalston nowadays is not troubled much with nightmare.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
CORRESPONDENCE
I pause in the chase to jot down a note or two. It is when the quarry lies close, and the hounds are drawing cover, and a little breathing space is mine for rest and sentiment. A moment, and we shall be on again.
On the day of our visit to Mother Carey I wrote to Lord Skene, giving him the full particulars of that interview, of the circumstances which had led to, and of the conclusions to be drawn from it. How he might choose to regard those conclusions, whether in his former sceptical spirit, or in one more accommodating, could only now, I said, affect the temper of my resolution, not its inexorableness. He might make my purpose a dutiful or a rebellious one; he could not turn me from it. The inference to be drawn from that confession, I insisted, was too plain to be mistaken by any not wilfully blind; and the friends who had taken up my cause for me were at least sufficiently convinced of its justice to be determined to spare no trouble nor expense in the effort to secure me its last essential confirmation. I put the whole case to him in a frank, unimpassioned, and perfectly respectful manner; but I expressed through all an insistence on my right to act independently in my own behalf, should he still see fit to refuse me his countenance in the venture. And with that I ended.
His answer, when it came, was courteous, unconvinced, entêté. He was obliged to me, he said, for my information regarding a certain unscrupulous transaction, inasmuch as it furnished him with an effective retort upon the insolence of a scoundrel, should that scoundrel ever have the effrontery to attempt a new move in what was virtually a lost game to him. For the rest, he had not changed in his opinion that it would be the best wisdom to let sleeping dogs lie, and, for me, to reconsider his suggestion of a compromise, lest “aiming at all, I lost all.” In the meantime, he had to inform me that Mr Dalston—aware somehow, no doubt, of a threatening turn in events—had disappeared from the neighbourhood, leaving his lady in sole possession of the Lone Farm; and, consequently, that Lady Skene, induced by circumstances and fortified by my revelation, had been persuaded into reconsidering her resolve to renounce the world, and was now in actual fact returned to her duties as wife and mother at Evercreech, which was after all the end of all ends, so far as he was concerned.
I said to myself, with a bitter laugh, as I put the letter into the fire, that I could quite believe it. It was the end of all ends to him—had always been, and would always be. And then I broke the seal of another letter which represented the end of all ends to me. Perhaps I was inconsistent in blaming him. Was I less infatuated myself? I would have disputed fifty successions that seemed to bar me from that one peaceful possession.
She wanted me, my love—how she wanted me! It was the first letter I had ever received from her—a little sweet pleasance of her soul, crossed with shadow and sunshine. Had I ever guessed, she asked, how love could fly? By so much the greater speed than an express train, that, though she had herself seen me off from Footover Station, she had been waiting on the platform at Waterloo for two hours—scheduled time—when I had reached it. And I had never even noticed her waiting and holding out her arms among the throng; but had jumped into a hansom (there she was wrong; it was an omnibus), and had sped away into the shadows, leaving love forlorn. Should she ever find me again? Lord Skene, she told me, had come to the sudden resolution to take his whole family up to town—they were going to start in a day or two—herself included; and that had given her at first a wild thrill of joy. But then she had remembered that London was farther than Evercreech from the Continent, and her spirits had fallen again. Still, it would be sweet to tread the stones—or thereabouts—which my feet had lately trodden.