Man and Wife, Wilkie Collins [best ebook reader android .TXT] 📗

“I am not suspected, am I?”

“Thank heaven⁠—no. But there is no knowing what may happen if you stay here. Ring the bell at once, and ask the waiter about the trains.”

Struck by the unusual obscurity of the sky at that hour of the evening, Arnold went to the window. The rain had come⁠—and was falling heavily. The view on the moor was fast disappearing in mist and darkness.

“Pleasant weather to travel in!” he said.

“The railway!” Anne exclaimed, impatiently. “It’s getting late. See about the railway!”

Arnold walked to the fireplace to ring the bell. The railway timetable hanging over it met his eye.

“Here’s the information I want,” he said to Anne; “if I only knew how to get at it. ‘Down’⁠—‘Up’⁠—‘a.m.’⁠—p.m.’ What a cursed confusion! I believe they do it on purpose.”

Anne joined him at the fireplace.

“I understand it⁠—I’ll help you. Did you say it was the up train you wanted?”

“What is the name of the station you stop at?”

Arnold told her. She followed the intricate network of lines and figures with her finger⁠—suddenly stopped⁠—looked again to make sure⁠—and turned from the timetable with a face of blank despair. The last train for the day had gone an hour since.

In the silence which followed that discovery, a first flash of lightning passed across the window and the low roll of thunder sounded the outbreak of the storm.

“What’s to be done now?” asked Arnold.

In the face of the storm, Anne answered without hesitation, “You must take a carriage, and drive.”

“Drive? They told me it was three-and-twenty miles, by railway, from the station to my place⁠—let alone the distance from this inn to the station.”

“What does the distance matter? Mr. Brinkworth, you can’t possibly stay here!”

A second flash of lightning crossed the window; the roll of the thunder came nearer. Even Arnold’s good temper began to be a little ruffled by Anne’s determination to get rid of him. He sat down with the air of a man who had made up his mind not to leave the house.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, as the sound of the thunder died away grandly, and the hard pattering of the rain on the window became audible once more. “If I ordered horses, do you think they would let me have them, in such weather as this? And, if they did, do you suppose the horses could face it on the moor? No, no, Miss Silvester⁠—I am sorry to be in the way, but the train has gone, and the night and the storm have come. I have no choice but to stay here!”

Anne still maintained her own view, but less resolutely than before. “After what you have told the landlady,” she said, “think of the embarrassment, the cruel embarrassment of our position, if you stop at the inn till tomorrow morning!”

“Is that all?” returned Arnold.

Anne looked up at him, quickly and angrily. No! he was quite unconscious of having said anything that could offend her. His rough masculine sense broke its way unconsciously through all the little feminine subtleties and delicacies of his companion, and looked the position practically in the face for what it was worth, and no more. “Where’s the embarrassment?” he asked, pointing to the bedroom door. “There’s your room, all ready for you. And here’s the sofa, in this room, all ready for me. If you had seen the places I have slept in at sea⁠—!”

She interrupted him, without ceremony. The places he had slept in, at sea, were of no earthly importance. The one question to consider, was the place he was to sleep in that night.

“If you must stay,” she rejoined, “can’t you get a room in some other part of the house?”

But one last mistake in dealing with her, in her present nervous condition, was left to make⁠—and the innocent Arnold made it. “In some other part of the house?” he repeated, jestingly. “The landlady would be scandalized. Mr. Bishopriggs would never allow it!”

She rose, and stamped her foot impatiently on the floor. “Don’t joke!” she exclaimed. “This is no laughing matter.” She paced the room excitedly. “I don’t like it! I don’t like it!”

Arnold looked after her, with a stare of boyish wonder.

“What puts you out so?” he asked. “Is it the storm?”

She threw herself on the sofa again. “Yes,” she said, shortly. “It’s the storm.”

Arnold’s inexhaustible good-nature was at once roused to activity again.

“Shall we have the candles,” he suggested, “and shut the weather out?” She turned irritably on the sofa, without replying. “I’ll promise to go away the first thing in the morning!” he went on. “Do try and take it easy⁠—and don’t be angry with me. Come! come! you wouldn’t turn a dog out, Miss Silvester, on such a night as this!”

He was irresistible. The most sensitive woman breathing could not have accused him of failing toward her in any single essential of consideration and respect. He wanted tact, poor fellow⁠—but who could expect him to have learned that always superficial (and sometimes dangerous) accomplishment, in the life he had led at sea? At the sight of his honest, pleading face, Anne recovered possession of her gentler and sweeter self. She made her excuses for her irritability with a grace that enchanted him. “We’ll have a pleasant evening of it yet!” cried Arnold, in his hearty way⁠—and rang the bell.

The bell was hung outside the door of that Patmos in the wilderness⁠—otherwise known as the headwaiter’s pantry. Mr. Bishopriggs (employing his brief leisure in the seclusion of his own apartment) had just mixed a glass of the hot and comforting liquor called “toddy” in the language of North Britain, and was just lifting it to his lips, when the summons from Arnold invited him to leave his grog.

“Haud yer screechin’ tongue!” cried Mr. Bishopriggs, addressing the bell through the door. “Ye’re waur than a woman when ye aince begin!”

The bell⁠—like the woman⁠—went on again. Mr. Bishopriggs, equally pertinacious, went on with his toddy.

“Ay! ay! ye may e’en ring yer heart out⁠—but ye won’t part