Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (easy novels to read txt) 📕

“Here it is,” she said, recovering the lost remembrance. “Not the gardener, but the gardener’s wife. A memorandum to speak to her about Mrs. Inchbare. Observe, Hopkins, the association of ideas. Mrs. Inchbare is associated with the poultry; the poultry are associated with the gardener’s wife; the gardener’s wife is associated with the gardener—and so the gardener gets into my head. Do you see it? I am always trying to improve your mind. You do see it? Very well. Now about Mrs. Inchbare? Has she been here again?”

“No, my lady.”

“I am not at all sure, Hopkins, that I was right in declining to consider the message Mrs. Inchbare sent to me about the poultry. Why shouldn’t she offer to take any fowls that I can spare off my hands? She is a respectable woman; and it is important to me to live on good terms with al my neighbors, great and small. Has she got a poultry-yard of her own at Craig Fernie?”

“Yes, my lady. And beautifully kept, I am told.”

“I really don’t see—on reflection, Hopkins—why I should hesitate to deal with Mrs. Inchbare. (I don’t think it beneath me to sell the game killed on my estate to the poulterer.) What was it she wanted to buy? Some of my black Spanish fowls?”

“Yes, my lady. Your ladyship’s black Spaniards are famous all round the neighborhood. Nobody has got the breed. And Mrs. Inchbare—”

“Wants to share the distinction of having the breed with me,” said Lady Lundie. “I won’t appear ungracious. I will see her myself, as soon as I am a little better, and tell her that I have changed my mind. Send one of the men to Craig Fernie with a message. I can’t keep a trifling matter of this sort in my memory—send him at once, or I may forget it. He is to say I am willing to see Mrs. Inchbare, about the fowls, the first time she finds it convenient to come this way.”

“I am afraid, my lady—Mrs. Inchbare’s heart is so set on the black Spaniards—she will find it convenient to come this way at once as fast as her feet can carry her.”

“In that case, you must take her to the gardener’s wife. Say she is to have some eggs—on condition, of course, of paying the price for them. If she does come, mind I hear of it.”

Hopkins withdrew. Hopkins’s mistress reclined on her comfortable pillows and fanned herself gently. The vindictive smile reappeared on her face. “I fancy I shall be well enough to see Mrs. Inchbare,” she thought to herself. “And it is just possible that the conversation may get beyond the relative merits of her poultry-yard and mine.”

A lapse of little more than two hours proved Hopkins’s estimate of the latent enthusiasm in Mrs. Inchbare’s character to have been correctly formed. The eager landlady appeared at Windygates on the heels of the returning servant. Among the long list of human weaknesses, a passion for poultry seems to have its practical advantages (in the shape of eggs) as compared with the more occult frenzies for collecting snuff-boxes and fiddles, and amassing autographs and old postage-stamps. When the mistress of Craig Fernie was duly announced to the mistress of Windygates, Lady Lundie developed a sense of humor for the first time in her life. Her ladyship was feebly merry (the result, no doubt, of the exhilarating properties of the red lavender draught) on the subject of Mrs. Inchbare and the Spanish fowls.

“Most ridiculous, Hopkins! This poor woman must be suffering from a determination of poultry to the brain. Ill as I am, I should have thought that nothing could amuse me. But, really, this good creature starting up, and rushing here, as you say, as fast as her feet can carry her—it’s impossible to resist it! I positively think I must see Mrs. Inchbare. With my active habits, this imprisonment to my room is dreadful. I can neither sleep nor read. Any thing, Hopkins, to divert my mind from myself: It’s easy to get rid of her if she is too much for me. Send her up.”

Mrs. Inchbare made her appearance, courtesying deferentially; amazed at the condescension which admitted her within the hallowed precincts of Lady Lundie’s room.

“Take a chair,” said her ladyship, graciously. “I am suffering from illness, as you perceive.”

“My certie! sick or well, yer leddyship’s a braw sight to see!” returned Mrs. Inchbare profoundly impressed by the elegant costume which illness assumes when illness appears in the regions of high life.

“I am far from being in a fit state to receive any body,” proceeded Lady Lundie. “But I had a motive for wishing to speak to you when you next came to my house. I failed to treat a proposal you made to me, a short time since, in a friendly and neighborly way. I beg you to understand that I regret having forgotten the consideration due from a person in my position to a person in yours. I am obliged to say this under very unusual circumstances,” added her ladyship, with a glance round her magnificent bedroom, “through your unexpected promptitude in favoring me with a call. You have lost no time, Mrs. Inchbare, in profiting by the message which I had the pleasure of sending to you.”

“Eh, my leddy, I wasna’ that sure (yer leddyship having ance changed yer mind) but that ye might e’en change again if I failed to strike, as they say, while the iron’s het. I crave yer pardon, I’m sure, if I ha’ been ower hasty. The pride o’ my hairt’s in my powltry—and the black Spaniards’ (as they ca’ them) are a sair temptation to me to break the tenth commandment, sae lang as they’re a’ in yer leddyship’s possession, and nane o’ them in mine.”

“I am shocked to hear that I have been the innocent cause of your falling into temptation, Mrs. Inchbare! Make your proposal—and I shall be happy to meet it, if I can.”

“I must e’en be content wi’ what yer leddyship will condescend on. A haitch o’ eggs if I can come by naething else.”

“There is something else you would prefer to a hatch of eggs?”

“I wad prefer,” said Mrs. Inchbare, modestly, “a cock and twa pullets.”

“Open the case on the table behind you,” said Lady Lundie, “and you will find some writing paper inside. Give me a sheet of it—and the pencil out of the tray.”

Eagerly watched by Mrs. Inchbare, she wrote an order to the poultry-woman, and held it out with a gracious smile.

“Take that to the gardener’s wife. If you agree with her about the price, you can have the cock and the two pullets.”

Mrs. Inchbare opened her lips—no doubt to express the utmost extremity of human gratitude. Before she had said three words, Lady Lundie’s impatience to reach the end which she had kept in view from the time when Mrs. Glenarm had left the house burst the bounds which had successfully restrained it thus far. Stopping the landlady without ceremony, she fairly forced the conversation to the subject of Anne Silvester’s proceedings at the Craig Fernie inn.

“How are you getting on at the hotel, Mrs. Inchbare? Plenty of tourists, I suppose, at this time of year?”

“Full, my leddy (praise Providence), frae the basement to the ceiling.”

“You had a visitor, I think, some time since of whom I know something? A person—” She paused, and put a strong constraint on herself. There was no alternative but to yield to the hard necessity of making her inquiry intelligible. “A lady,” she added, “who came to you about the middle of last month.”

“Could yer leddyship condescend on her name?”

Lady Lundie put a still stronger constraint on herself. “Silvester,” she said, sharply.

“Presairve us a’!” cried Mrs. Inchbare. “It will never be the same that cam’ driftin’ in by hersel’—wi’ a bit bag in her hand, and a husband left daidling an hour or mair on the road behind her?”

“I have no doubt it is the same.”

“Will she be a freend o’ yer leddyship’s?” asked Mrs. Inchbare, feeling her ground cautiously.

“Certainly not!” said Lady Lundie. “I felt a passing curiosity about her—nothing more.”

Mrs. Inchbare looked relieved. “To tell ye truth, my leddy, there was nae love lost between us. She had a maisterfu’ temper o’ her ain—and I was weel pleased when I’d seen the last of her.”

“I can quite understand that, Mrs. Inchbare—I know something of her temper myself. Did I understand you to say that she came to your hotel alone, and that her husband joined her shortly afterward?”

“E’en sae, yer leddyship. I was no’ free to gi’ her house-room in the hottle till her husband daidled in at her heels and answered for her.”

“I fancy I must have seen her husband,” said Lady Lundie. “What sort of a man was he?”

Mrs. Inchbare replied in much the same words which she had used in answering the similar question put by Sir Patrick.

“Eh! he was ower young for the like o’ her. A pratty man, my leddy—betwixt tall and short; wi’ bonny brown eyes and cheeks, and fine coal-blaik hair. A nice douce-spoken lad. I hae naething to say against him—except that he cam’ late one day, and took leg-bail betimes the next morning, and left madam behind, a load on my hands.”

The answer produced precisely the same effect on Lady Lundie which it had produced on Sir Patrick. She, also, felt that it was too vaguely like too many young men of no uncommon humor and complexion to be relied on. But her ladyship possessed one immense advantage over her brother-in-law in attempting to arrive at the truth. She suspected Arnold—and it was possible, in her case, to assist Mrs. Inchbare’s memory by hints contributed from her own superior resources of experience and observation.

“Had he any thing about him of the look and way of a sailor?” she asked. “And did you notice, when you spoke to him, that he had a habit of playing with a locket on his watch-chain?”

There he is, het aff to a T!” cried Mrs. Inchbare. “Yer leddyship’s weel acquented wi’ him—there’s nae doot o’ that.”

“I thought I had seen him,” said Lady Lundie. “A modest, well-behaved young man, Mrs. Inchbare, as you say. Don’t let me keep you any longer from the poultry-yard. I am transgressing the doctor’s orders in seeing any body. We quite understand each other now, don’t we? Very glad to have seen you. Good-evening.”

So she dismissed Mrs. Inchbare, when Mrs. Inchbare had served her purpose.

Most women, in her position, would have been content with the information which she had now obtained. But Lady Lundie—having a man like Sir Patrick to deal with—determined to be doubly sure of her facts before she ventured on interfering at Ham Farm. She had learned from Mrs. Inchbare that the so-called husband of Anne Silvester had joined her at Craig Fernie on the day when she arrived at the inn, and had left her again the next morning. Anne had made her escape from Windygates on the occasion of the lawn-party—that is to say, on the fourteenth of August. On the same day Arnold Brinkworth had taken his departure for the purpose of visiting the Scotch property left to him by his aunt. If Mrs. Inchbare was to be depended on, he must have gone to Craig Fernie instead of going to his appointed destination—and must, therefore, have arrived to visit his