"Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets on the bed. Say there's a live lord in the house--she's to send in something devilish good for supper!" He burst fiercely into a forced laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the room. "I shall not be here when you return," she said. "Let me bid you good-night."
She shook hands with Anne--giving her Sir Patrick's note, unseen, at the same moment. Anne left the room. Without addressing another word to her second son, Lady Holchester beckoned to Julius to give her his arm. "You have acted nobly toward your brother," she said to him. "My one comfort and my one hope, Julius, are in you." They went out together to the gate, Geoffrey following them with the key in his hand. "Don't be too anxious," Julius whispered to his mother. "I will keep the drink out of his way to-night--and I will bring you a better account of him to-morrow. Explain every thing to Sir Patrick as you go home."
He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother--but he was seriously uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius. For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey's mind. They went back into the drawing-room. "What will you have to drink?" said Geoffrey.
"Nothing."
"You won't keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?"
"No. You have had enough brandy-and-water."
After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey abruptly agreed with Julius "I look like it," he said. "I'll soon put that right." He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round his head. "What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready? Liberty Hall here. I've taken to cultivating my mind---I'm a reformed character, you know, now I'm a married man. You do what you like. I shall read."
He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.
"You won't cultivate your mind," he said, "with such a book as that. Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in every sense of the word."
"It will do for me. I don't know good English when I see it."
With that frank acknowledgment--to which the great majority of his companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the slightest injustice to the present state of English education--Geoffrey drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record of crime.
The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise, that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book. Instead of beginning at the first page, he ran the leaves through his fingers, and turned them down at certain places, before he entered on his reading. If Julius had looked over his brother's shoulder, instead of only looking at him across the table, he would have seen that Geoffrey passed by all the lighter crimes reported in the Calendar, and marked for his own private reading the cases of murder only.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SECOND.
THE APPARITION.
THE night had advanced. It was close on twelve o'clock when Anne heard the servant's voice, outside her bedroom door, asking leave to speak with her for a moment.
"What is it?"
"The gentleman down stairs wishes to see you, ma'am."
"Do you mean Mr. Delamayn's brother?"
"Yes."
"Where is Mr. Delamayn?"
"Out in the garden, ma'am."
Anne went down stairs, and found Julius alone in the drawing-room.
"I am sorry to disturb you," he said. "I am afraid Geoffrey is ill. The landlady has gone to bed, I am told--and I don't know where to apply for medical assistance. Do you know of any doctor in the neighborhood?"
Anne, like Julius, was a perfect stranger to the neighborhood. She suggested making inquiry of the servant. On speaking to the girl, it turned out that she knew of a medical man, living within ten minutes' walk of the cottage. She could give plain directions enabling any person to find the place--but she was afraid, at that hour of the night and in that lonely neighborhood, to go out by herself.
"Is he seriously ill?" Anne asked.
"He is in such a state of nervous irritability," said Julius, "that he can't remain still for two moments together in the same place. It began with incessant restlessness while he was reading here. I persuaded him to go to bed. He couldn't lie still for an instant--he came down again, burning with fever, and more restless than ever. He is out in the garden in spite of every thing I could do to prevent him; trying, as he says, to 'run it off.' It appears to be serious to me.. Come and judge for yourself."
He led Anne into the next room; and, opening the shutter, pointed to the garden.
The clouds had cleared off; the night was fine. The clear starlight showed Geoffrey, stripped to his shirt and drawers, running round and round the garden. He apparently believed himself to be contending at the Fulham foot-race. At times, as the white figure circled round and round in the star-light, they heard him cheering for "the South." The slackening thump of his feet on the ground, the heavier and heavier gasps in which he drew his breath, as he passed the window, gave warning that his strength was failing him. Exhaustion, if it led to no worse consequences, would force him to return to the house. In the state of his brain at that moment who could say what the result might be, if medical help was not called in?
"I will go for the doctor," said Julius, "if you don't mind my leaving you."
It was impossible for Anne to set any apprehensions of her own against the plain necessity for summoning assistance. They found the key of the gate in the pocket of Geoffrey's coat up stairs. Anne went with Julius to let him out. "How can I thank you!" she said, gratefully. "What should I have done without you!"
"I won't be a moment longer than I can help," he answered, and left her.
She secured the gate again, and went back to the cottage. The servant met her at the door, and proposed calling up Hester Dethridge.
"We don't know what the master may do while his brother's away," said the girl. "And one more of us isn't one too many, when we are only women in the house."
"You are quite right," said Anne. "Wake your mistress."
After ascending the stairs, they looked out into the garden, through the window at the end of the passage on the upper floor. He was still going round and round, but very slowly: his pace was fast slackening to a walk.
Anne went back to her room, and waited near the open door--ready to close and fasten it instantly if any thing occurred to alarm her. "How changed I am!" she thought to herself. "Every thing frightens me, now."
The inference was the natural one--but not the true one. The change was not in herself, but in the situation in which she was placed. Her position during the investigation at Lady Lundie's house had tried her moral courage only. It had exacted from her one of those noble efforts of self-sacrifice which the hidden forces in a woman's nature are essentially capable of making. Her position at the cottage tried her physical courage: it called on her to rise superior to the sense of actual bodily danger--while that danger was lurking in the dark. There, the woman's nature sank under the stress laid on it--there, her courage could strike no root in the strength of her love--there, the animal instincts were the instincts appealed to; and the firmness wanted was the firmness of a man.