CHAPTER LXIII.
This was the reason why Kate heard no more from Mr. Sugden. He knew, and yet he did not know. That which had been told him was very different from what he had expected to hear. He had gone to seek a deserted maiden, and he had found a wife. He had gone with some wild hope of being able to interpose on her behalf, ‘as her brother would have done,’ and bring her false lover back to her—when, lo! he found that he was intruding upon sacred domestic ground, upon the retreat of a wife whose husband was somewhere ready, no doubt, to defend her from all intrusion. This confounded him for the first moment. He went away, as we have said, without a word, asking no explanation. What right had he to any explanation? Probably Ombra herself, had she known what his mission and what his thoughts were, would have been furious at the impertinence. But her mother judged him more gently, and he, poor fellow, knew in his own soul how different his motives were from those of intrusion or impertinence.
When he came to the homely, lonely little house, where he found shelter in the midst of the night, he stopped there in utter languor, still confused by his discovery and his failure. But when he came to himself he was not satisfied. Next day, in the silence and loneliness of the mountains, he mused and pondered on this subject, which was never absent from his mind ten minutes together. He walked on and on upon the road he had traversed in the dark the night before, till he came to the point where it commanded the glen below, and where the descent to Loch Arroch began. He saw at his feet the silvery water gleaming, the loch, the far lines of the withdrawing village roofs, and that one under which she was. At the sight the Curate’s mournful heart yearned over the woman he loved. Why was she there alone, with only her mother, and she a wife? What was there that was not ‘exactly comfortable,’ as Mrs. Anderson had said?
The result of his musing was that he stayed in the little mountain change-house for some time. There was a desolate little loch near, lying, as in a nook, up at the foot of great Schehallion. And there he pretended to fish, and in the intervals of his sport, which was dreary enough, took long walks about the country, and, without being seen by them, found out a great deal about the two ladies. They were alone. The young lady’s husband was said to be ‘in foreign pairts.’ The good people had not heard what he was, but that business detained him somewhere, though it was hoped he would be back before the Autumn. ‘And I wish he may, for yon bonnie young creature’s sake!’ the friendly wife added, who told him this tale.
The name they told him she was called by was not a name he knew, which perplexed him. But when he remembered his own observations, and Kate’s story, he could not believe that any other lover could have come in. When Mr. Sugden had fully satisfied himself, and discovered all that was discoverable, he went back to England with the heat of a sudden purpose. He went to London, and he sought out Bertie Hardwick’s rooms. Bertie himself was whistling audibly as Mr. Sugden knocked at his door. He was packing his portmanteau, and stopped now and then to utter a mild oath over the things which would not pack in as they ought. He was going on a journey. Perhaps to her, Mr. Sugden thought; and, as he heard his whistle, and saw his levity, his blood boiled in his veins.
‘What, Sugden!’ cried Bertie. ‘Come in, old fellow, I am glad to see you. Why, you’ve been and left Shanklin! What did you do that for? The old place will not look like itself without you.’
‘There are other vacant places that will be felt more than mine,’ said the Curate, in a funereal voice, putting himself sadly on the nearest chair.
‘Oh! the ladies at the Cottage! To be sure, you are quite right. They must be a dreadful loss,’ said Bertie.
Mr. Sugden felt that he flushed and faltered, and these signs of guilt made it doubly clear.
‘It is odd enough,’ he said, with double meaning, ‘that we should talk of that, for I have just come from Scotland, from the Highlands, where, of all people in the world, I met suddenly with Miss Anderson and her mother.’