"Would you have exposed yourself to be humiliated again in the same way?" she asked. "And would you have seen your child made to suffer as well as yourself?"
"I should have kept in retirement for the future," he answered, "and not have trusted my child and myself among strangers in hotels."
"Ah, indeed? And you would have condemned your poor little daughter to solitude? You would have seen her pining for the company of other children, and would have had no mercy on her? I wonder what you would have done when Captain Bennydeck paid us a visit at the seaside? He was introduced to Mrs. Norman, and to Mrs. Norman's little girl, and we were all charmed with him. When he and I happened to be left together he naturally wondered, after having seen the beautiful wife, where the lucky husband might be. If he had asked you about Mr. Norman, how would you have answered him?"
"I should have told the truth."
"You would have said there was no Mr. Norman?"
"Yes."
"Exactly what I did! And the Captain of course concluded (after having been introduced to Kitty) that Mrs. Norman was a widow. If I had set him right, what would have become of my daughter's reputation? If I had told the truth at this hotel, when everybody wanted to know what Mrs. Norman, that handsome lady, was--what would the consequences have been to Catherine and her little girl? No! no! I have made the best of a miserable situation; I have consulted the tranquillity of a cruelly injured woman and an innocent child--with this inevitable result; I have been obliged to treat your brother like a character in a novel. I have ship-wrecked Herbert as the shortest way of answering inconvenient questions. Vessel found bottom upward in the middle of the Atlantic, and everybody on board drowned, of course. Worse stories have been printed; I do assure you, worse stories have been printed."
Randal decided on leaving her. "Have you done all this with Catherine's consent?" he asked as he got up from his chair.
"Catherine submits to circumstances, like a sensible woman."
"Does she submit to your telling Kitty that her father is dead?"
For the first time Mrs. Presty became serious.
"Wait a minute," she answered. "Before I consented to answer the child's inquiries, I came to an understanding with her mother. I said, 'Will you let Kitty see her father again?'"
The very question which Randal had promised to ask in his brother's interests! "And how did Catherine answer you?" he inquired.
"Honestly. She said: 'I daren't!' After that, I had her mother's authority for telling Kitty that she would never see her father again. She asked directly if her father was dead--"
"That will do, Mrs. Presty. Your defense is thoroughly worthy of your conduct in all other respects."
"Say thoroughly worthy of the course forced upon me and my daughter by your brother's infamous conduct--and you will be nearer the mark!"
Randal passed this over without notice. "Be so good," he said, "as to tell Catherine that I try to make every possible allowance for her, but that I cannot consent to sit at her dinner-table, and that I dare not face my poor little niece, after what I have heard."
Mrs. Presty recovered all her audacity. "A very wise decision," she remarked. "Your sour face would spoil the best dinner that ever was put on the table. Have you any message for Captain Bennydeck?"
Randal asked if his friend was then at the hotel.
Mrs. Presty smiled significantly. "Not at the hotel, just now."
"Where is he?"
"Where he is every day, about this time--out driving with Catherine and Kitty."
It was a relief to Randal--in the present state of Catherine's relations toward Bennydeck--to return to London without having seen his friend.
He took leave of Mrs. Presty with the formality due to a stranger--he merely bowed. That incorrigible old woman treated him with affectionate familiarity in return.
"Good-by, dear Randal. One moment before you go! Will it be of any use if we invite you to the marriage?"
Arrived at the station, Randal found that he must wait for the train. While he was walking up and down the platform with a mind doubly distressed by anxiety about his brother and anxiety about Sydney, the train from London came in. He stood, looking absently at the passengers leaving the carriage on the opposite side of the platform. Suddenly, a voice that he knew was audible, asking the way to Buck's Hotel. He crossed the line in an instant, and found himself face to face with Herbert.
Chapter XLI.
Make the Best of It.
For a moment the two men looked at each other without speaking. Herbert's wondering eyes accurately reflected his brother's astonishment.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. Suspicion overclouded his face as he put the question. "You have been to the hotel?" he burst out; "you have seen Catherine?"
Randal could deny that he had seen Catherine, with perfect truth--and did deny it in the plainest terms. Herbert was satisfied. "In all my remembrance of you," he said, you have never told me a lie. We have both seen the same newspaper, of course--and you have been the first to clear the thing up. That's it, isn't it?"
"I wonder who this other Mrs. Norman is; did you find out?"
"No."
"She's not Catherine, at any rate; I, for one, shall go home with a lighter heart." He took his brother's arm, to return to the other platform. "Do you know, Randal, I was almost afraid that Catherine was the woman. The devil take the thing, and the people who write in it!"
He snatched a newspaper out of his pocket as he spoke--tore it in half--and threw it away. "Malcolm meant well, poor fellow," he said, referring to the old servant, "but he made a miserable man of me for all that."
Not satisfied with gossip in private, the greedy public appetite devours gossip in print, and wants more of it than any one editor can supply. Randal picked up the torn newspaper. It was not the newspaper which he had bought at the station. Herbert had been reading a rival journal, devoted to the interests of Society--in which the report of Mrs. Norman's marriage was repeated, with this difference, that it boldly alluded to Captain Bennydeck by name. "Did Malcolm give you this?" Randal asked.
"Yes; he and the servant next door subscribe to take it in; and Malcolm thought it might amuse me. It drove me out of the house and into the railway. If it had driven me out of mind, I shouldn't have been surprised."
"Gently, Herbert! Supposing the report had been true--?"
"After what you have told me, wh y should I suppose anything of the sort?"
"Don't be angry; and do pray remember that the Divorce allows you and Catherine to marry again, if you like."
Herbert became more unreasonable than ever. "If Catherine does think of marrying again," he said, "the man will have to reckon first with me. But that is not the point. You seem to have forgotten that the woman at Buck's Hotel is described as a Widow. The bare doubt that my divorced wife might be the woman was bad enough--but what I wanted to find out was how she had passed off her false pretense on our child. That was what maddened me! No more of it now. Have you seen Catherine lately?"
"Not lately."
"I suppose she is as handsome as ever. When will you ask her to let me see Kitty?"
"Leave that to me," was the one reply which Randal could venture to make at the moment.
The serious embarrassments that surrounded him were thickening fast. His natural frank nature urged him to undeceive Herbert. If he followed his inclinations, in the near neighborhood of the hotel, who could say what disasters might not ensue, in his brother's present frame of mind? If he made the disclosure on their return to the house, he would be only running the same risk of consequences, after an interval of delay; and, if he remained silent, the march of events might, at any moment, lead to the discovery of what he had concealed. Add to this, that his confidence in Catherine had been rudely shaken. Having allowed herself to be entrapped into the deception proposed by her mother, and having thus far persevered in that deception, were the chances in favor of her revealing her true position--especially if she was disposed to encourage Bennydeck's suit? Randal's loyalty to Catherine hesitated to decide that serious question against the woman whom he had known, trusted, and admired for so many years.