MRS. SOMERVILLE retired from the breakfast-room in the height of ill-humour: it was not often that her husband spoke to her in so plain a manner and she was full of resentment. She was conscious that she had behaved badly in listening at the door, and, though the act did not seem to her such a heinous offence as it might have done to many others, her conscience aggravated her discomfort.
But curiosity was a tough element in her, and she was stayed up through its faint attacks by the interesting things she had overheard. Though her ears were not sharp, and the pair on the other side of the door had been sometimes indistinct, she had learned enough to gather what was afoot. Evidently, Cecilia Raeburn was now breaking her heart for Gilbert Speid, whom she had refused, and the Inspector and Mrs. Stirk had agreed that he should be told of it; so that, if he were still wearing the willow for the young woman, he might return in time to snatch her from her lawful bridegroom.
She had heard a good deal from Barclay of the checkered progress of Fordyce’s wooing and she saw Speid through the lawyer’s spectacles; also, the drastic rebuke she had suffered from Miss Hersey Robertson on his account had not modified her view. To add to this, he was extremely friendly with Captain Somerville, and she was of a class which is liable to resent its husband’s friends. She was jealous with the dreadful jealousy of women of her breeding; not from love of the person who is its object, but from an unsleeping fear for personal prerogative. She determined to tell Barclay of her discoveries, though she had no intention of telling him how she had come by them; and the thought of this little secret revenge on the Inspector was sweet to her.
Throughout the morning she maintained an injured silence which he was too much preoccupied to observe, and when, in the afternoon, he took his hat and the stick he used for such journeys as were short enough for him to attempt on foot, she watched him with a sour smile. He had not told her where he was going, but she knew and felt superior in consequence. She wondered when Barclay would come to see her; if he did not arrive in the course of a day or two she must send him a note. He was accustomed to pay her a visit at least once every week, and it was now ten days since he had been inside her doors.
Captain Somerville, though he returned with his object attained, had not found that attainment easy. The Miss Robertsons had always looked favourably on him as an individual, but Miss Hersey could not forget that he was the husband of his wife; and, since the moment when she had risen in wrath and left the party at his house, there had been a change in her feelings towards him. Well did she know that such a speech as the one which had offended her could never have been uttered by the sailor; the knowledge made no difference; Miss Hersey was strictly and fundamentally illogical.
Gilbert had given his address to his cousins with the request that it should not be passed on to anyone. He wanted to have as little communication as possible with the life he had left behind, and the news of Cecilia, for which he had begged, was the only news he cared to receive; business letters passing between himself and Barclay were written and read from necessity. He wished to give himself every chance of forgetting, though, in his attempts to do so, he was nearly as illogical as Miss Hersey.
The Inspector’s request for his direction was, therefore, in the old ladies’ eyes, almost part and parcel of his wife’s effrontery, and it was met by a stiff refusal and a silence which made it hard for him to go further. The red chintz sofa bristled. It was only his emphatic assurance that what he wished to tell Gilbert would affect him very nearly which gained his point. Even then he could not get the address and had to content himself with Miss Hersey’s promise, that, if he would write his letter, seal it and deliver it to her, she would direct and send it with all despatch. He returned, conscious of having strained relations almost to breaking point, but he did not care; his object was gained and that was what concerned him. He had become almost as earnest as Granny. The florid lady who watched his return from behind her drawing-room window-curtains observed the satisfaction in his look.
He was a slow scribe, as a rule, and it took him some time to put the whole sum of what Granny had told him before Speid; it was only when he came to the end of his letter that his pen warmed to the work and he gave him a plain slice from his opinion. ‘If your feelings are the same,’ he wrote, ‘then your place is here; for, if you stay away a day longer than you need, you are leaving a woman in the lurch. I do not understand this matter but I understand that much.’ Then he added the date of the wedding, underlined it, and assured Gilbert that he was ‘his sincere friend, Wm. Somerville.’ A few minutes later, his lady, still at the window, saw the individual who was at once coachman, errand-boy, and gardener disappear in the direction of Miss Robertson’s house with a sealed packet in his hand.
It was not until evening that he sat down to think what he should say to Cecilia. The need for haste was not so great in this case, but every hour was of value with respect to the letter Miss Hersey was forwarding to Gilbert. There was no knowing where he might be, nor how long it might take in reaching him, nor how many obstacles might rise upon the road home, even should he start the very day he received it. But, here, it was different. The sailor bit the top of his pen as he mused; many things had puzzled him and many things puzzled him still. He had received a shock on hearing of Cecilia’s intended marriage. In his own mind he had never doubted that she loved Speid, and this new placing of her affections was the last thing he expected; if there were no question of affection, then, so much the worse, in his eyes. He thought little of Fordyce and imagined that she thought little of him too. He had never supposed that money would so influence her, and his conclusion—a reluctant one—was that the extreme poverty which must be her portion, now Lady Eliza was gone, had driven her to the step.
Granny Stirk’s news had opened his eyes to the probability that there were influences at work of which he knew nothing, and he was uncommon enough to admit such a possibility. When most people know how easily they could manage everybody else’s business, the astonishing thing is that they should ever be in straits on their own account. But it never astonishes them. Captain Somerville had the capacity for being astonished, both at himself and at other people; the world, social and geographical, had taught him that there is no royal road to the solution of anyone’s difficulties. The man who walks about with little contemptuous panaceas in his pocket for his friends’ troubles is generally the man whose hair turns prematurely gray with his own. What had Cecilia meant when she told the old woman, weeping, that she could not help herself? He would, at least, give her the chance of helping herself now, and she could take it or leave it as she chose. He was not going to advise her nor to make suggestions; he would merely tell her what he had done. He had no difficulty in justifying his act to his conscience; he justified it to his prudence by reflecting on what she had given the Queen of the Cadgers to understand; namely, that, if the exile should return, she would throw all to the winds for him.