“Then he has met with—” began Alice, and the idea at that moment flashing across her mind that he had encountered D’Almayne, and been wounded, perhaps killed, in a duel, she shrieked out, “Oh! I see it all; he is dead or dying, and I have been his murderess!” and sank back in a fainting fit.
The groom, frightened at the effect of his tidings, summoned the female servants, and Alice was carried to her room, undressed, and placed in bed, before she had by any means recovered from her swoon; and even when, after one or two relapses, she did regain her consciousness, her burning hand, flushed cheeks, and unnaturally brilliant eyes, together with an incoherence of expression and an excitability of manner occasionally verging on delirium, so alarmed the stately housekeeper, that she, on her own responsibility, sent off for that eminent medical practitioner, Gouger; the result of his visit was, that Harry, bruised and sore from head to foot, having lain awake half the night from the pain of his broken arm, was aroused from an uneasy slumber, into which, towards morning, he had fallen, by the following telegraphic message:—“H. Coverdale, Esq., from Scalpel Gouger, M.D.—Was called in to Mrs. C. last night, at nine, P.M..—symptoms acute, febrile, threatening the brain! state critical—if Mr. C. can travel without danger, let him come at once!”
In less than half an hour, Harry Coverdale was up, dressed, and in the first railway train which left London. As he had lain sleepless through the weary hours of the night, he had thought the pain of his broken limb all but unbearable; during his journey home he never even felt it, so deep and absorbing was his mental agony.
CHAPTER LVII.—AN ANONYMOUS LETTER.
While Harry Coverdale, with the best possible intentions, had been breaking his wife’s heart and his own bones, the world had not stood still, nor had the ordinary course of events been in the slightest degree retarded. On the contrary, the unsympathizing globe we inhabit had revolved on its axis with its accustomed perseverance, and men had been born into it in their first childhood, and died out of it in their second; and the sons and daughters of men had married and given in marriage, and the many had gone on sinning and the few repenting, very much as it all happened in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-building, and the long suffering of God waited to allow the evil-doers to perceive the error of their way, and to turn from it ere the day of mercy should be over, and the destroyer should be let loose upon them. The world was then a profligate young world, sowing its wild oats broadcast, with a frank and careless disregard of appearances, which involved at least the one virtue of sincerity—the world is now a crafty old world, in its dotage, one is sometimes tempted to imagine; but even the Flood only whitewashed its outside, for it still clings to its darling sins, though no longer openly—the world has grown too cunning for that, it knows the value of a good name, and has set up a gilded idol of clay, yclept Respectability, to resemble the refined gold of which virtue’s image is composed; and because it worships this idol zealously, short-sighted optimists mistake hypocrisy for true religion, and deem the world has grown pious in its old age; but there are those who fear that if, once again, the waters should overspread the earth, sin would weigh so heavily on the inhabitants thereof, that not very many of them would swim.
Be this as, it may, certain it is that while Harry was riding Don Pasquale across the country at the risk of his neck, and Alice was fretting herself into a brain fever on the chance of his being shot by Horace D’Almayne, that talented young gentleman was labouring most industriously, with the assistance of his cousin, the avocat, at Brussels, to obtain the sum of money due to Mr. Crane, on the cargo of the unfortunate Bundelcundah East Indiaman. When men exert their utmost energies to attain an object, success nine times out of ten is the result; consequently, very few days had elapsed after Horace’s departure before Mr. Crane had the pleasure of learning that the mere threat of energetic law proceedings had brought his adversary to reason, and that the money had been actually paid into D’Almayne’s hands. But somehow this announcement did not appear to afford the worthy ex-cotton-spinner such satisfaction as might have been expected; on the contrary, when he closed the letter which conveyed the intelligence, he, to his wife’s surprise, muttered something very like an oath; whereupon, after the laudable fashion of her sex, that lady appeared deeply scandalized, and exclaimed, “My dear Mr. Crane!” in a tone of voice which metamorphosed that affectionate address into “You wicked old man, where do you expect to go to?” Replying rather to her tone than her words, her husband, exalting his peevish treble, began:—
“Yes, it’s all very well for you, Mrs. Crane, who have nothing to do but sit here and spend the money I pour into your lap, to keep your temper, and look horrified if one utters a hasty expression; but if you had to toil and moil all your days to scrape it together, and then be defrauded out of your hard-earned gains by creeping serpents, whom you have warmed and cherished in—if I may be allowed the expression—in your breeches pocket, and who have availed themselves of their position to—yes! I may say—to pick that pocket, I wonder what expressions you would indulge in then, Mrs. Crane!” And having worked himself up almost into a fit of crying, Mr. Crane once more turned to his letter.
“Ah! coming home, is he? I’ve a great mind to have him arrested as soon as he places his foot on British soil; I wonder at his impudence, that I do!”