Evereld was touched too by a very kindly but sad letter from Lady Mactavish. It contained one sentence which puzzled her not a little.
“What does Lady Mactavish mean by speaking of the help you gave Sir Matthew?” she enquired, a week before their wedding day, as she and Ralph sat together in the library where in December they had had that first “business interview.”
“What does she say about it?” asked Ralph.
“Here is her letter, it is a message to you;—‘Tell Ralph that I shall never cease to be grateful to him for the help he gave my husband. It saved his life.”
“Well,” said Ralph, “I suppose I am free to speak of it since she mentioned it to you. He came to me at Southampton, indeed I met him on my way back from Whinhaven,” and going through the whole story he made her understand exactly what had taken place. “To this day I don’t know whether I did right. But if the same thing were to happen again I should still probably help him. It was the dread of letting one’s private hatred and resentment bias one against helping a desperate man. As a matter of fact he has by no means escaped punishment by escaping from England. I don’t believe there is a corner of the earth where he will long remain unmolested. He will lead a miserable, hunted life far worse than the life Bruce Wylie leads in gaol, and with nothing really to look forward to. But I think he was in earnest when he said that night he would put an end to himself if they arrested him. And I have never regretted the little I did to shield him from discovery.”
“You wouldn’t have been yourself if you had acted differently,” said Evereld. “But it must have been hard work to decide.”
“I hope I may never again have such a decision to make,” said Ralph. “And all the time there was the maddening remembrance of what he had made you suffer. What a strange, complex character he had: there was a sort of greatness about him all the time. I suppose that was how he deceived people in such an extraordinary way,—he managed to deceive himself. Even now a sort of panic seizes me lest he should somehow interfere between us. I shall never feel at rest about you till we are safely married.”
“Next Sunday,” she whispered. “Where shall you be all this week?”
“At Manchester,” he replied “and as ill luck will have it there is a matinée of the new play and an evening performance of ‘Much Ado’ next Saturday. However there will be plenty of time to sleep in the train, and I will meet you somewhere for the early service.”
“Let it be at the Abbey then, that seems specially to belong to us. Bride and I often go there and we can meet you just by the Baptistry at the west end.”