“Alive!—why shouldn’t they be alive, like I am, and like he is?” she cried, with feverish irritability. “Folks of our ages don’t die!—what are you thinking of? And if they were dead, what would it matter?—there’s their names as good as themselves. Ah! I didn’t botch my business any more than he botched his. You’ll find it’s all right.”
“I hope you are better,” Edgar said, with a compassion that was all the more profound because the object of it neither deserved, nor would have accepted it.
“Better—oh! thank you, I am quite well,” she said lightly—“only a bit of a cold. Perhaps on the whole it’s as well I’m not going to sing to-night; a cold is so bad for one’s voice. Good-bye, Mr. Earnshaw. We’ll meet at the old gentleman’s turnout to-night.”
And she waved her hand, dismissing poor Edgar, who left her with a warmer sense of disgust, and dislike than had ever moved his friendly bosom before. And yet it was in this creature’s interests he was working, and against Clare! Mr. Tottenham caught him on his way out, to hand him a number of letters which had arrived for him, and to call for his advice in the final preparations. The public had been shut out of the hall in which the Entertainment was to be, on pretence of alterations.
“Three more resignations,” Mr. Tottenham said, who was feverish and harassed, and looked like a man at the end of his patience. “Heaven be praised, it will be over to-night? Come early, Earnshaw, if you can spare the time, and stand by me. If any of the performers get cross, and refuse to perform, what shall I do?”
“Let them!” cried Edgar; “ungrateful fools, after all your kindness.”
Edgar was too much harassed and annoyed himself to be perfectly rational in his judgments.
“Don’t let us be uncharitable,” said Mr. Tottenham; “have they perhaps, after all, much reason for gratitude? Is it not my own crotchet I am carrying out, in spite of all obstacles? But it will be a lesson—I think it will be a lesson,” he added. “And, Earnshaw, don’t fail me to-night.”
Edgar went straight from the shop to Mr. Parchemin’s, to receive the opinion of the eminent Scotch law authority in respect to the marriage certificate. He had written to Robert Campbell, at Loch Arroch Head, suggesting that inquiries might be made about the persons who signed it, and had heard from him that morning that the landlady of the inn was certainly to be found, and that she perfectly remembered having put her name to the paper. The waiter was no longer there, but could be easily laid hands upon. There was accordingly no hope except in the Scotch lawyer, who might still make waste paper of the certificate. Edgar found Mr. Parchemin hot and red, after a controversy with this functionary.
“He laughs at my indignation,” said the old lawyer. “Well, I suppose if one did not heat one’s self in argument, what he says might have some justice in it. He says innocent men that let women alone, and innocent women that behave as they ought to do, will never get any harm from the Scotch marriage law; and that it’s always a safeguard for a poor girl that may have been led astray without meaning it. He says—well, I see you’re impatient—though how such an anomaly can ever be suffered so near to civilization! Well, he says it’s as good a marriage as if it had been done in Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s all the comfort I’ve got to give you. I hope it hasn’t got anything directly to say to you.”