East Lynne Part 38

"My lady has been asking for you," said Joyce.

"Tell her I will be up the moment these gentlemen leave, Joyce," he added, "find an excuse to come into the room presently; you can bring something or other in; I want you to look at this stranger who is with young Mr. Herbert. Notice him well; I fancy you may have seen him before."

Mr. Carlyle returned to the room, leaving Joyce surprised. However, she presently followed, taking in some water, and lingered a few minutes, apparently placing the things on the table in better order.

When the two departed Mr. Carlyle called Joyce, before proceeding to his wife's room. "Well," he questioned, "did you recognize him?"

"Not at all, sir. He seemed quite strange to me."

"Cast your thoughts back, Joyce. Did you never see him in days gone by?"

Joyce looked puzzled, and she replied in the negative.

"Is he the man, think you, who used to ride from Swainson to see Afy?"

Joyce's face flushed crimson. "Oh, sir!" was all she uttered.

"The name is the same--Thorn; I thought it possible the men might be,"

observed Mr. Carlyle.

"Sir, I cannot say. I never saw that Captain Thorn but once, and I don't know, I don't know--" Joyce spoke slowly and with consideration--"that I should at all know him again. I did not think of him when I looked at this gentleman; but, at any rate, no appearance in this one struck upon my memory as being familiar."

So from Joyce Mr. Carlyle obtained no clue, one way or the other. The following day he sought out Otway Bethel.

"Are you intimate with that Captain Thorn who is staying with the Herberts?" asked he.

"Yes," answered Bethel, decisively, "if pa.s.sing a couple of hours in his company can const.i.tute intimacy. That's all I have seen of Thorn."

"Are you sure," pursued Mr. Carlyle.

"Sure!" returned Bethel; "why, what are you driving at now? I called in at Herbert's the night before last, and Tom asked me to stay the evening. Thorn had just come. A jolly bout we had; cigars and cold punch."

"Bethel," said Mr. Carlyle, das.h.i.+ng to the point, "is it the Thorn who used to go after Afy Hallijohn? Come, you can tell if you like."

Bethel remained dumb for a moment, apparently with amazement. "What a confounded lie!" uttered he at length. "Why it's no more that than--What Thorn?" he broke off abruptly.

"You are equivocating, Bethel. The Thorn who is mixed up--or said to be- -in the Hallijohn affair. Is this the same man?"

"You are a fool, Carlyle, which is what I never took you to be yet," was Mr. Bethel's rejoinder, spoken in a savage tone. "I have told you that I never knew there was any Thorn mixed up with Afy, and I should like to know why my word is not to be believed? I never saw Thorn in my life till I saw him the other night at the Herberts', and that I would take my oath to, if put to it."

Bethel quitted Mr. Carlyle with the last word, and the latter gazed after him, revolving points in his brain. The mention of Thorn's name, the one spoken of by Richard Hare, appeared to excite some feeling in Bethel's mind, arousing it to irritation. Mr. Carlyle remembered that it had done so previously and now it had done so again, and yet Bethel was an easy-natured man in general, far better tempered than principled.

That there was something hidden, some mystery connected with the affair, Mr. Carlyle felt sure; but he could not attempt so much as a guess at what it might be. And this interview with Bethel brought him no nearer the point he wished to find out--whether this Thorn was the same man. In walking back to his office he met Mr. Tom Herbert.

"Does Captain Thorn purpose making a long stay with you?" he stopped him to inquire.

"He's gone; I have just seen him off by the train," was the reply of Tom Herbert. "It seemed rather slow with him without Jack, so he docked his visit, and says he'll pay us one when Jack's to the fore."

As Mr. Carlyle went home to dinner that evening, he entered the grove, ostensibly to make a short call on Mrs. Hare. Barbara, on the tenterhooks of impatience, accompanied him outside when he departed, and walked down the path.

"What have you learnt?" she eagerly asked.

"Nothing satisfactory," was the reply of Mr. Carlyle. "And the man has left again."

"Left?" uttered Barbara.

Mr. Carlyle explained. He told her how they had come to his house the previous evening after Barbara's departure, and his encounter with Tom Herbert that day; he mentioned, also, his interview with Bethel.

"Can he have gone on purpose, fearing consequences?" wondered Barbara.

"Scarcely; or why should he have come?"

"You did not suffer any word to escape you last night causing him to suspect for a moment that he was hounded?"

"Not any. You would make a bad lawyer, Barbara."

"Who or what is he?"

"An officer in her majesty's service, in John Herbert's regiment. I ascertained no more. Tom said he was of good family. But I cannot help suspecting it is the same man."

"Can nothing more be done?"

"Nothing in the present stage of the affair," continued Mr. Carlyle, as he pa.s.sed through the gate to continue his way. "We can only wait on again with what patience we may, hoping that time will bring about its own elucidation."

Barbara pressed her forehead down on the cold iron of the gate as his footsteps died away. "Aye, to wait on," she murmured, "to wait on in dreary pain; to wait on, perhaps, for years, perhaps forever! And poor Richard--wearing out his days in poverty and exile!"

CHAPTER XX.

GOING FROM HOME.

"I should recommend a complete change of scene altogether, Mr. Carlyle.

Say some place on the French or Belgian coast. Sea bathing might do wonders."

"Should you think it well for her to go so far from home?"

"I should. In these cases of protracted weakness, where you can do nothing but try to coax the strength back again, change of air and scene are of immense benefit."

"I will propose it to her," said Mr. Carlyle.

"I have just done so," replied Dr. Martin, who was the other speaker.

"She met it with objection, which I expected, for invalids naturally feel a disinclination to move from home. But it is necessary that she should go."

The object of their conversation was Lady Isabel. Years had gone on, and there were three children now at East Lynne--Isabel, William, and Archibald--the latter twelve months old. Lady Isabel had, a month or two back, been attacked with illness; she recovered from the disorder; but it had left her in an alarming state of weakness; she seemed to get worse instead of better, and Dr. Martin was summoned from Lynneborough.

The best thing he could recommend--as you have seen--was change of air.