East Lynne Part 76

"Who?" shrieked Miss Carlyle.

"You are not deaf, Cornelia."

"Well, you are an idiot!" she exclaimed, lifting up her hands and eyes.

"Thank you," he said, but without any signs of irritation.

"And so you are; you are, Archibald. To suffer that girl, who has been angling after you so long, to catch you at last."

"She has not angled after me; had she done so, she would probably never have been Mrs. Carlyle. Whatever pa.s.sing fancy she may have entertained for me in earlier days, she has shown no symptoms of it of late years; and I am quite certain that she had no more thought or idea that I should choose her for my second wife, than you had I should choose you.

Others have angled after me too palpably, but Barbara has not."

"She is a conceited minx, as vain as she is high."

"What else have you to urge against her?"

"I would have married a girl without a slur, if I must have married,"

aggravatingly returned Miss Corny.

"Slur?"

"Slur, yes. Dear me, is it an honor--the possessing a brother such as Richard?"

Miss Corny sniffed. "Pigs may fly; but I never saw them try at it."

"The next consideration, Cornelia, is about your residence. You will go back, I presume, to your own home."

Miss Corny did not believe her own ears. "Go back to my own home!" she exclaimed. "I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall stop at East Lynne.

What's to hinder me?"

Mr. Carlyle shook his head. "It cannot be," he said, in a low, decisive tone.

"Who says so?" she sharply asked.

"I do. Have you forgotten that night--when she went away--the words spoken by Joyce? Cornelia, whether they were true or false, I will not subject another to the chance."

She did not answer. Her lips parted and closed again. Somehow, Miss Carlyle could not bear to be reminded of that revelation of Joyce's; it subdued even her.

"I cast no reflection upon you," hastily continued Mr. Carlyle. "You have been a mistress of a house for many years, and you naturally look to be so; it is right you should. But two mistresses in a house do not answer, Cornelia; they never did, and they never will."

"Why did you not give me so much of your sentiments when I first came to East Lynne?" she burst forth. "I hate hypocrisy."

"They were not my sentiments then; I possessed none. I was ignorant upon the subject as I was upon many others. Experience has come to me since."

"You will not find a better mistress of a house than I have made you,"

she resentfully spoke.

"I do not look for it. The tenants leave your house in March, do they not?"

"Yes, they do," snapped Miss Corny. "But as we are on the subject of details of ways and means, allow me to tell you that if you did what is right, you would move into that house of mine, and I will go to a smaller--as you seem to think I shall poison Barbara if I remain with her. East Lynne is a vast deal too fine and too grand for you."

"I do not consider it so. I shall not quit East Lynne."

"Are you aware that, in leaving your house, I take my income with me, Archibald?"

"Most certainly. Your income is yours, and you will require it for your own purposes. I have neither a right to, nor wish for it."

"It will make a pretty good hole in your income, the withdrawing of it, I can tell you that. Take care that you and East Lynne don't go bankrupt together."

At this moment the summons of a visitor was heard. Even that excited the ire of Miss Carlyle. "I wonder who's come bothering to-night?" she uttered.

Peter entered. "It is Major Thorn, sir. I have shown him into the drawing-room."

Mr. Carlyle was surprised. He had not thought Major Thorn within many a mile of West Lynne. He proceeded to the drawing-room.

"Such a journey!" said Major Thorn to Mr. Carlyle. "It is my general luck to get ill-weather when I travel. Rain and hail, thunder and heat; nothing bad comes amiss when I am out. The snow lay on the rails, I don't know how thick; at one station we were detained two hours."

"Are you proposing to make any stay at West Lynne?"

"Off again to-morrow. My leave, this time, is to be spent at my mother's. I may bestow a week of it or so on West Lynne, but am not sure. I must be back in Ireland in a month. Such a horrid boghole we are quartered in just now!"

"To go from one subject to another," observed Mr. Carlyle; "there is a question I have long thought to put to you, Thorn, did we ever meet again. Which year was it that you were staying at Swainson?"

Major Thorn mentioned it. It was the year of Hallijohn's murder.

"As I thought--in fact, know," said Mr. Carlyle. "Did you, while you were stopping there, ever come across a namesake of yours--one Thorn?"

"I believe I did. But I don't know the man, of my knowledge, and I saw him but once only. I don't think he was living at Swainson. I never observed him in the town."

"Where did you meet with him?"

"At a roadside beer-shop, about two miles from Swainson. I was riding one day, when a fearful storm came on, and I took shelter there.

Scarcely had I entered, when another hors.e.m.e.n rode up, and he likewise took shelter--a tall, dandified man, aristocratic and exclusive. When he departed--for he quitted first, the storm being over--I asked the people who he was. They said they did not know, though they had often seen him ride by; but a man who was there, drinking, said he was a Captain Thorn.

The same man, by the way, volunteered the information that he came from a distance; somewhere near West Lynne; I remember that."

"That Captain Thorn did?"

"No--that he, himself did. He appeared to know nothing of Captain Thorn, beyond the name."

It seemed to be ever so! Sc.r.a.ps of information, but nothing tangible.

Nothing to lay hold of, or to know the man by. Would it be thus always?

"Should you recognize him again were you to see him?" resumed Mr.

Carlyle awakening from his reverie.

"I think I should. There was something peculiar in his countenance, and I remember it well yet."

"Were you by chance to meet him, and discover his real name--for I have reason to believe that Thorn, the one he went by then, was an a.s.sumed one--will you oblige me by letting me know it?"