Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (722 page)

“From Craig Fernie?” asked Arnold, pointing to the letter in his friend’s hand.

Geoffrey looked up with a frown. He had just opened his lips to answer that ill-timed reference to Anne, in no very friendly terms, when a voice, calling to Arnold from the lawn outside, announced the appearance of a third person in the library, and warned the two gentlemen that their private interview was at an end.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

NEARER STILL.

BLANCHE stepped lightly into the room, through one of the open French windows.

“What are you doing here?” she said to Arnold.

“Nothing. I was just going to look for you in the garden.”

“The garden is insufferable, this morning.” Saying those words, she fanned herself with her handkerchief, and noticed Geoffrey’s presence in the room with a look of very thinly-concealed annoyance at the discovery. “Wait till I am married!” she thought. “Mr. Delamayn will be cleverer than I take him to be, if he gets much of his friend’s company
then!
”

“A trifle too hot — eh?” said Geoffrey, seeing her eyes fixed on him, and supposing that he was expected to say something.

Having performed that duty he walked away without waiting for a reply; and seated himself with his letter, at one of the writing-tables in the library.

“Sir Patrick is quite right about the young men of the present day,” said Blanche, turning to Arnold. “Here is this one asks me a question, and doesn’t wait for an answer. There are three more of them, out in the garden, who have been talking of nothing, for the last hour, but the pedigrees of horses and the muscles of men. When we are married, Arnold, don’t present any of your male friends to me, unless they have turned fifty. What shall we do till luncheon-time? It’s cool and quiet in here among the books. I want a mild excitement — and I have got absolutely nothing to do. Suppose you read me some poetry?”

“While
he
is here?” asked Arnold, pointing to the personified antithesis of poetry — otherwise to Geoffrey, seated with his back to them at the farther end of the library.

“Pooh!” said Blanche. “There’s only an animal in the room. We needn’t mind
him!
”

“I say!” exclaimed Arnold. “You’re as bitter, this morning, as Sir Patrick himself. What will you say to Me when we are married if you talk in that way of my friend?”

Blanche stole her hand into Arnold’s hand and gave it a little significant squeeze. “I shall always be nice to
you,
” she whispered — with a look that contained a host of pretty promises in itself. Arnold returned the look (Geoffrey was unquestionably in the way!). Their eyes met tenderly (why couldn’t the great awkward brute write his letters somewhere else?). With a faint little sigh, Blanche dropped resignedly into one of the comfortable arm-chairs — and asked once more for “some poetry,” in a voice that faltered softly, and with a colour that was brighter than usual.

“Whose poetry am I to read?” inquired Arnold.

“Any body’s,” said Blanche. “This is another of my impulses. I am dying for some poetry. I don’t know whose poetry. And I don’t know why.”

Arnold went straight to the nearest book-shelf, and took down the first volume that his hand lighted on — a solid quarto, bound in sober brown.

“Well?” asked Blanche. “What have you found?”

Arnold opened the volume, and conscientiously read the title exactly as it stood:

“Paradise Lost. A Poem. By John Milton.”

“I have never read Milton,” said Blanche. “Have you?”

“No.”

“Another instance of sympathy between us. No educated person ought to be ignorant of Milton. Let us be educated persons. Please begin.”

“At the beginning?”

“Of course! Stop! You musn’t sit all that way off — you must sit where I can look at you. My attention wanders if I don’t look at people while they read.”

Arnold took a stool at Blanche’s feet, and opened the “First Book” of Paradise Lost. His “system” as a reader of blank verse was simplicity itself. In poetry we are some of us (as many living poets can testify) all for sound; and some of us (as few living poets can testify) all for sense. Arnold was for sound. He ended every line inexorably with a full stop; and he got on to his full stop as fast as the inevitable impediment of the words would let him. He began:

    
“Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit.

    
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste.

    
Brought death into the world and all our woe.

    
With loss of Eden till one greater Man.

    
Restore us and regain the blissful seat.

    
Sing heavenly Muse — ”

“Beautiful!” said Blanche. “What a shame it seems to have had Milton all this time in the library and never to have read him yet! We will have Mornings with Milton, Arnold. He seems long; but we are both young, and we
may
live to get to the end of him. Do you know dear, now I look at you again, you don’t seem to have come back to Windygates in good spirits.”

“Don’t I? I can’t account for it.”

“I can. It’s sympathy with Me. I am out of spirits too.”

“You!”

“Yes. After what I saw at Craig Fernie, I grow more and more uneasy about Anne. You will understand that, I am sure, after what I told you this morning?”

Arnold looked back, in a violent hurry, from Blanche to Milton. That renewed reference to events at Craig Fernie was a renewed reproach to him for his conduct at the inn. He attempted to silence her by pointing to Geoffrey.

“Don’t forget,” he whispered, “that there is somebody in the room besides ourselves.”

Blanche shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.

“What does
he
matter?” she asked. “What does
he
know or care about Anne?”

There was only one other chance of diverting her from the delicate subject. Arnold went on reading headlong, two lines in advance of the place at which he had left off, with more sound and less sense than ever:

 
   
“In the beginning how the heavens and earth.

    
Rose out of Chaos or if Sion hill — ”

At “Sion hill,” Blanche interrupted him again.

“Do wait a little, Arnold. I can’t have Milton crammed down my throat in that way. Besides I had something to say. Did I tell you that I consulted my uncle about Anne? I don’t think I did. I caught him alone in this very room. I told him all I have told you. I showed him Anne’s letter. And I said, ‘What do you think?’ He took a little time (and a great deal of snuff) before he would say what he thought. When he did speak, he told me I might quite possibly be right in suspecting Anne’s husband to be a very abominable person. His keeping himself out of my way was (just as I thought) a suspicious circumstance, to begin with. And then there was the sudden extinguishing of the candles, when I first went in. I thought (and Mrs. Inchbare thought) it was done by the wind. Sir Patrick suspects it was done by the horrid man himself, to prevent me from seeing him when I entered the room. I am firmly persuaded Sir Patrick is right. What do
you
think?”

“I think we had better go on,” said Arnold, with his head down over his book. “We seem to be forgetting Milton.”

“How you do worry about Milton! That last bit wasn’t as interesting as the other. Is there any love in Paradise Lost?”

“Perhaps we may find some if we go on.”

“Very well, then. Go on. And be quick about it.”

Arnold was
so
quick about it that he lost his place. Instead of going on he went back. He read once more:

    
“In the beginning how the heavens and earth.

    
Rose out of
 
Chaos or if Sion hill — ”

“You read that before,” said Blanche.

“I think not.”

“I’m sure you did. When you said ‘Sion hill’ I recollect I thought of the Methodists directly. I couldn’t have thought of the Methodists, if you hadn’t said ‘Sion hill.’ It stands to reason.”

“I’ll try the next page,” said Arnold. “I can’t have read that before — for I haven’t turned over yet.”

Blanche threw herself back in her chair, and flung her handkerchief resignedly over her face. “The flies,” she explained. “I’m not going to sleep. Try the next page. Oh, dear me, try the next page!”

Arnold proceeded:

    
“Say first for heaven hides nothing from thy view.

    
Nor the deep tract of hell say first what cause.

 
   
Moved our grand parents in that happy state — ”

Blanche suddenly threw the handkerchief off again, and sat bolt upright in her chair. “Shut it up,” she cried. “I can’t bear any more. Leave off, Arnold — leave off!”

“What’s, the matter now?”

“‘That happy state,’“ said Blanche. “What does ‘that happy state’ mean? Marriage, of course! And marriage reminds me of Anne. I won’t have any more. Paradise Lost is painful. Shut it up. Well, my next question to Sir Patrick was, of course, to know what he thought Anne’s husband had done. The wretch had behaved infamously to her in some way. In what way? Was it any thing to do with her marriage? My uncle considered again. He thought it quite possible. Private marriages were dangerous things (he said) — especially in Scotland. He asked me if they had been married in Scotland. I couldn’t tell him — I only said, ‘Suppose they were? What then?’ ‘It’s barely possible, in that case,’ says Sir Patrick, ‘that Miss Silvester may be feeling uneasy about her marriage. She may even have reason — or may think she has reason — to doubt whether it is a marriage at all.’“

Arnold started, and looked round at Geoffrey still sitting at the writing-table with his back turned on them. Utterly as Blanche and Sir Patrick were mistaken in their estimate of Anne’s position at Craig Fernie, they had drifted, nevertheless, into discussing the very question in which Geoffrey and Miss Silvester were interested — the question of marriage in Scotland. It was impossible in Blanche’s presence to tell Geoffrey that he might do well to listen to Sir Patrick’s opinion, even at second-hand. Perhaps the words had found their way to him? perhaps he was listening already, of his own accord?

(He
was
listening. Blanche’s last words had found their way to him, while he was pondering over his half-finished letter to his brother. He waited to hear more — without moving, and with the pen suspended in his hand.)

Blanche proceeded, absently winding her fingers in and out of Arnold’s hair as he sat at her feet:

“It flashed on me instantly that Sir Patrick had discovered the truth. Of course I told him so. He laughed, and said I mustn’t jump at conclusions We were guessing quite in the dark; and all the distressing things I had noticed at the inn might admit of some totally different explanation. He would have gone on splitting straws in that provoking way the whole morning if I hadn’t stopped him. I was strictly logical. I said
I
had seen Anne, and
he
hadn’t — and that made all the difference. I said, ‘Every thing that puzzled and frightened me in the poor darling is accounted for now. The law must, and shall, reach that man, uncle — and I’ll pay for it!’ I was so much in earnest that I believe I cried a little. What do you think the dear old man did? He took me on his knee and gave me a kiss; and he said, in the nicest way, that he would adopt my view, for the present, if I would promise not to cry any more; and — wait! the cream of it is to come! — that he would put the view in quite a new light to me as soon as I was composed again. You may imagine how soon I dried my eyes, and what a picture of composure I presented in the course of half a minute. ‘Let us take it for granted,’ says Sir Patrick, ‘that this man unknown has really tried to deceive Miss Silvester, as you and I suppose. I can tell you one thing: it’s as likely as not that, in trying to overreach
her,
he may (without in the least suspecting it) have ended in overreaching himself.’“