After he had dined and refreshed himself, he set to work with, I think,—notwithstanding his anxiety, the first shock of which was now over,—a thrill of conscious energy, and almost pleasure in something to do, which was so much more important than those vague lessons to Phil, or vaguer studies in experimental philosophy, to which his mind had been lately turned. To be here on the spot, ready to work for Clare when she was assailed, was something to be glad of, deeply as the idea of such an assault upon her had excited and pained him. And at the same time as his weariness wore off, and the first excitement cooled down, he began to feel himself more able to realize the matter in all its particulars, and see the safer possibilities. It began to appear to him likely enough that all that could be proved was Arthur Arden’s villainy, a subject which did not much concern him, which had no novelty in it, and which, though Clare was Arthur Arden’s wife, could not affect her more now than it had done ever since she married him. Indeed, if it was but this, there need be no necessity for communicating it to Clare at all. It was more probable, when he came to think of it, that an educated and clever man should be able to outwit a dressmaker girl, however deeply instructed in the laws of marriage by novels and causes célèbres, than that she should outwit him; and in this case there was nothing that need ever be made known to Clare.
Edgar was glad, and yet I don’t know that a certain disappointment, quite involuntary and unawares, did not steal into his mind with this thought; for he had begun to cherish an idea of seeing his sister, of perhaps resuming something of his old intercourse with her, and at least of being known to have worked for and defended her. These thoughts, however, were but the secondary current in his mind, while the working part of it was planning a further enterprise for the morrow. He got the directory, and, after considerable trouble, found out from it the names and addresses of certain officials of the Wesleyan body, to whom he could go in search of the missing registers of the Hart Street Chapel—if registers there were—or who could give him definite and reliable information, in face of the conflicting testimony he had already received, as to whether marriages had ever been celebrated in it.
Edgar knew, I suppose, as much as other men generally do about the ordinary machinery of society, but he did not know where to lay his hand on any conclusive official information about the Hart Street Chapel, whether it had ever been licenced, or had any legal existence as a place of worship, any more than—you or I would, dear reader, were we in a similar difficulty. Who knows anything about such matters? He had lost a day already in the merest A B C of preliminary inquiry, and no doubt would lose several more.
Then he took out the most important of Miss Lockwood’s papers, which he had only glanced at as yet. It was dated from a small village in the Western Highlands, within reach, as he knew, of Loch Arroch, and was a certificate, signed by Helen Campbell and John Mactaggart, that Arthur Arden and Emma Lockwood had that day, in their presence, declared themselves to be man and wife. Edgar’s knowledge of such matters had, I fear, been derived entirely from novels and newspaper reports, and he read over the document, which was alarmingly explicit and straightforward, with a certain panic. He said to himself that there were no doubt ways in law by which to lessen the weight of such an attestation, or means of shaking its importance; but it frightened him just as he was escaping from his first fright, and brought back all his excitement and alarm.
He did not go to Berkeley Square, as Mr. Tottenham had recommended, but to his old lodgings, where he found a bed with difficulty, and where once more his two lives seemed to meet in sharp encounter. But his head by this time was too full of schemes for to-morrow to permit of any personal speculation; he was far, as yet, from seeing any end to his undertaking, and it was impossible to tell what journeys, what researches might be still before him.
CHAPTER XI.
In the Depths.
Next morning he went first to his old lawyer, in whom he had confidence, and having copied the certificate, carefully changing the names, submitted it to him. Mr. Parchemin declared that he knew nothing of Scotch law, but shook his head, and hoped there was nothing very unpleasant in the circumstances, declaring vehemently that it was a shame and disgrace that such snares should be spread for the unwary on the other side of the border. Was it a disgrace that Arthur Arden should not have been protected in Scotland, as in England, from the quick-wittedness of the girl whom he had already cheated and meant to betray? Edgar felt that there might be something to be said on both sides of the question, as he left his copy in Mr. Parchemin’s hands, who undertook to consult a Scotch legal authority on the question; then he went upon his other business. I need not follow him through his manifold and perplexing inquiries, or inform the reader how he was sent from office to office, and from secretary to secretary, or with what loss of time and patience his quest was accompanied. After several days’ work, however, he ascertained that the chapel in Hart Street had indeed been licensed, but only used once or twice for marriages, and that no record of any such marriage as that which he was in search of could be found anywhere. A stray record of a class-meeting which Emma Lockwood had been admonished for levity of demeanour, was the sole mention of her to be found; and though the officials admitted a certain carelessness in the preservation of books belonging to an extinct chapel, they declared it to be impossible that such a fact could have been absolutely ignored. There was, indeed, a rumour in the denomination that a local preacher had been found to have taken upon himself to perform a marriage, for which he had been severely reprimanded; but as he had been possessed of no authority to make such a proceeding legal, no register had been made of the fact, and only the reprimanded was inscribed on the books of the community. This was the only opening for even a conjecture as to the truth of Miss Lockwood’s first story. If the second could only have been dissipated as easily!
Edgar’s inquiries among the Wesleyan authorities lasted, as I have said, several days, and caused him more fatigue of limb and of mind than it is easy to express. He went to Tottenham’s—where, indeed, he showed himself every day, getting more and more irritated with the Entertainment, and all its preparations—as soon as he had ascertained beyond doubt that the marriage at Hart Street Chapel was fictitious. Miss Lockwood, he was informed, was an invalid, but would see him in the young ladies’ dining-room, where, accordingly, he found her, looking sharper, and whiter, and more worn than ever. He told her his news quietly, with a natural pity for the woman deceived; a gleam of sudden light shone in her eyes.
“I told you so,” she said, triumphantly; “now didn’t I tell you so? He wanted to take me in—I felt it from the very first; but he hadn’t got to do with a fool, as he thought. I was even with him for that.”
“I have written to find out if your Scotch witnesses are alive,” said Edgar.