Book: The Evil Genius

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An interval of silence followed. Captain Bennydeck was thinking
over the message which he had just read. Catherine and her mother
were looking at him with the same interest, inspired by very
different motives. The interview so pleasantly begun was in some
danger of lapsing into formality and embarrassment, when a new
personage appeared on the scene.

Kitty had returned in triumph from her ride. "Mamma! the donkey
did more than gallop--he kicked, and I fell off. Oh, I'm not
hurt!" cried the child, seeing the alarm in her mother's face.
"Tumbling off is such a funny sensation. It isn't as if you fell
on the ground; it's as if the ground came up to _you_ and
said--Bump!" She had got as far as that, when the progress of her
narrative was suspended by the discovery of a strange gentleman
in the room.

The smile that brightened the captain's face, when Kitty opened
the door, answered for him as a man who loved children. "Your
little girl, Mrs. Norman?" he said.

"Yes."

(A common question and a common reply. Nothing worth noticing, in
either the one or the other, at the time--and yet they proved to
be important enough to turn Catherine's life into a new course.)

In the meanwhile, Kitty had been whispering to her mother. She
wanted to know the strange gentleman's name. The Captain heard
her. "My name is Bennydeck," he said; "will you come to me?"

Kitty had heard the name mentioned in connection with a yacht.
Like all children, she knew a friend the moment she looked at
him. "I've seen your pretty boat, sir," she said, crossing the
room to Captain Bennydeck. "Is it very nice when you go sailing?"

"If you were not going back to London, my dear, I should ask your
mamma to let me take you sailing with me. Perhaps we shall have
another opportunity."

The Captain's answer delighted Kitty. "Oh, yes, tomorrow or next
day!" she suggested. "Do you know where to find me in London?
Mamma, where do I live, when I am in London?" Before her mother
could answer, she hit on a new idea. "Don't tell me; I'll find it
for myself. It's on grandmamma's boxes, and they're in the
passage."

Captain Bennydeck's eyes followed her, as she left the room, with
an expression of interest which more than confirmed the favorable
impression that he had already produced on Catherine. She was on
the point of asking if he was married, and had children of his
own, when Kitty came back, and declared the right address to be
Buck's Hotel, Sydenham. "Mamma puts things down for fear of
forgetting them," she added. "Will you put down Buck?"

The Captain took out his pocketbook, and appealed pleasantly to
Mrs. Norman. "May I follow your example?" he asked. Catherine not
only humored the little joke, but, gratefully remembering his
kindness, said: "Don't forget, when you are in London, that
Kitty's invitation is my invitation, too." At the same moment,
punctual Mrs. Presty looked at her watch, and reminded her
daughter that railways were not in the habit of allowing
passengers to keep them waiting. Catherine rose, and gave her
hand to the Captain at parting. Kitty improved on her mother's
form of farewell; she gave him a kiss and whispered a little
reminder of her own: "There's a river in London--don't forget
your boat."

Captain Bennydeck opened the door for them, secretly wishing that
he could follow Mrs. Norman to the station and travel by the same
train.

Mrs. Presty made no attempt to remind him that she was still in
the room. Where her family interests were concerned, the old lady
was capable (on very slight encouragement) of looking a long way
into the future. She was looking into the future now. The
Captain's social position was all that could be desired; he was
evidently in easy pecuniary circumstances; he admired Catherine
and Catherine's child. If he only proved to be a single man, Mrs.
Presty's prophetic soul, without waiting an instant to reflect,
perceived a dazzling future. Captain Bennydeck approached to take
leave. "Not just yet," pleaded the most agreeable of women; "my
luggage was ready two hours ago. Sit down again for a few
minutes. You seem to like my little granddaughter."

"If I had such a child as that," the Captain answered, "I believe
I should be the happiest man living."

"Ah, my dear sir, all isn't gold that glitters," Mrs. Presty
remarked. "That proverb must have been originally intended to
apply to children. May I presume to make you the subject of a
guess? I fancy you are not a married man."

The Captain looked a little surprised. "You are quite right," he
said; "I have never been married."

At a later period, Mrs. Presty owned that she felt an inclination
to reward him for confessing himself to be a bachelor, by a kiss.
He innocently checked that impulse by putting a question. "Had
you any particular reason," he asked, "for guessing that I was a
single man?"

Mrs. Presty modestly acknowledged that she had only her own
experience to help her. "You wouldn't be quite so fond of other
people's children," she said, "if you were a married man. Ah,
your time will come yet--I mean your wife will come."

He answered this sadly. "My time has gone by. I have never had
the opportunities that have been granted to some favored men." He
thought of the favored man who had married Mrs. Norman. Was her
husband worthy of his happiness? "Is Mr. Norman with you at this
place?" the Captain asked.

Serious issues depended on the manner in which this question was
answered. For one moment, and for one moment only, Mrs. Presty
hesitated. Then (in her daughter's interest, of course) she put
Catherine in the position of a widow, in the least blamable of
all possible ways, by honestly owning the truth.

"There is no Mr. Norman," she said.

"Your daughter is a widow!" cried the Captain, perfectly unable
to control his delight at that discovery.

"What else should she be?" Mrs. Presty replied, facetiously.

What else, indeed! If "no Mr. Norman" meant (as it must surely
mean) that Mr. Norman was dead, and if the beautiful mother of
Kitty was an honest woman, her social position was beyond a
doubt. Captain Bennydeck felt a little ashamed of his own
impetuosity. Before he had made up his mind what to say next, the
unlucky waiter (doomed to be a cause of disturbance on that day)
appeared again.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he said; "the lady and gentleman who
have taken these rooms have just arrived."

Mrs. Presty got up in a hurry, and cordially shook hands with the
Captain. Looking round, she took up the railway guide and her
knitting left on the table. Was there anything else left about?
There was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Presty crossed the passage to
her daughter's bedroom, to hurry the packing. Captain Bennydeck
went downstairs, on his way back to the yacht.

In the hall of the hotel he passed the lady and gentleman--and,
of course, noticed the lady. She was little and dark and would
have been pretty, if she had not looked ill and out of spirits.
What would he have said, what would he have done, if he had known
that those two strangers were Randal Linley's brother and
Roderick Westerfield's daughter?



Chapter XXXVI



Mr. and Mrs. Herbert.


The stealthy influence of distrust fastens its hold on the mind
by slow degrees. Little by little it reaches its fatal end, and
disguises delusion successfully under the garb of truth.

Day after day, the false conviction grew on Sydney's mind that
Herbert Linley was comparing the life he led now with the happier
life which he remembered at Mount Morven. Day after day, her
unreasoning fear contemplated the time when Herbert Linley would
leave her friendless, in the world that had no place in it for
women like herself. Delusion--fatal delusion that looked like
truth! Morally weak as he might be, the man whom she feared to
trust had not yet entirely lost the sense which birth and
breeding had firmly fastened in him--the sense of honor. Acting
under that influence, he was (if the expression may be permitted)
consistent even in inconsistency. With equal sincerity of
feeling, he reproached himself for his infidelity toward the
woman whom he had deserted, and devoted himself to his duty
toward the woman whom he had misled. In Sydney's presence--suffer
as he might under the struggle to maintain his resolution when he
was alone--he kept his intercourse with her studiously gentle in
manner, and considerate in language; his conduct offered
assurances for the future which she could only see through the
falsifying medium of her own distrust.

In the delusion that now possessed her she read, over and over
again, the letter which Captain Bennydeck had addressed to her
father; she saw, more and more clearly, the circumstances which
associated her situation with the situation of the poor girl who
had closed her wasted life among the nuns in a French convent.

Two results followed on this state of things.

When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go, on
leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had
heard of, and felt some curiosity to see. The same day--bent on
pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad--he
wrote to engage rooms at the hotel.

A time followed, during which they were obliged to wait until
rooms were free. In this interval, brooding over the melancholy
absence of a friend or relative in whom she could confide, her
morbid dread of the future decided her on completing the parallel
between herself and that other lost creature of whom she had
read. Sydney opened communication anonymously with the
Benedictine community at Sandyseal.

She addressed the Mother Superior; telling the truth about
herself with but one concealment, the concealment of names. She
revealed her isolated position among her fellow-creatures; she
declared her fervent desire to repent of her wickedness, and to
lead a religious life; she acknowledged her misfortune in having
been brought up by persons careless of religion, and she
confessed to having attended a Protestant place of worship, as a
mere matter of form connected with the duties of a teacher at a
school. "The religion of any Christian woman who will help me to
be more like herself," she wrote, "is the religion to which I am
willing and eager to belong. If I come to you in my distress,
will you receive me?" To that simple appeal, she added a request
that an answer might be addressed to "S.W., Post-office,
Sandyseal."

When Captain Bennydeck and Sydney Westerfield passed each other
as strangers, in the hall of the hotel, that letter had been
posted in London a week since.



The servant showed "Mr. and Mrs. Herbert" into their
sitting-room, and begged that they would be so good as to wait
for a few minutes, while the other rooms were being prepared for
them.

Sydney seated herself in silence. She was thinking of her letter,
and wondering whether a reply was waiting for her at the
post-office.

Moving toward the window to look at the view, Herbert paused to
examine some prints hanging on the walls, which were superior as
works of art to the customary decorations of a room at a hotel.
If he had gone straight to the window he might have seen his
divorced wife, his child, and his wife's mother, getting into the
carriage which took them to the railway station.

"Come, Sydney," he said, "and look at the sea."

She joined him wearily, with a faint smile. It was a calm, sunny
day. Bathing machines were on the beach; children were playing
here and there; and white sails of pleasure boats were visible in
the offing. The dullness of Sandyseal wore a quiet homely aspect
which was pleasant to the eyes of strangers. Sydney said,
absently, "I think I shall like the place." And Herbert added:
"Let us hope that the air will make you feel stronger." He meant
it and said it kindly--but, instead of looking at her while he
spoke, he continued to look at the view. A woman sure of her
position would not have allowed this trifling circumstance, even
if she had observed it, to disturb her. Sydney thought of the day
in London when he had persisted in looking out at the street, and
returned in silence to her chair.

Had he been so unfortunate as to offend her? And in what way? As
that doubt occurred to Herbert his mind turned to Catherine.
_She_ never took offense at trifles; a word of kindness from him,
no matter how unimportant it might be, always claimed
affectionate acknowledgment in the days when he was living with
his wife. In another moment he had dismissed that remembrance,
and could trust himself to return to Sydney.

"If you find that Sandyseal confirms your first impression," he
said, "let me know it in time, so that I may make arrangements
for a longer stay. I have only taken the rooms here for a
fortnight."

"Thank you, Herbert; I think a fortnight will be long enough."

"Long enough for you?" he asked.

Her morbid sensitiveness mistook him again; she fancied there was
an undernote of irony in his tone.

"Long enough for both of us," she replied.

He drew a chair to her side. "Do you take it for granted," he
said, smiling, "that I shall get tired of the place first?"

She shrank, poor creature, even from his smile. There was, as she
thought, something contemptuous in the good-humor of it.

"We have been to many places," she reminded him, "and we have got
tired of them together."

"Is that my fault?"

"I didn't say it was."

He got up and approached the bell. "I think the journey has a
little over-tired you," he resumed. "Would you like to go to your
room?"

"I will go to my room, if you wish it."

He waited a little, and answered her as quietly as ever. "What I
really wish," he said, "is that we had consulted a doctor while
we were in London. You seem to be very easily irritated of late.
I observe a change in you, which I willingly attribute to the
state of your health--"

She interrupted him. "What change do you mean?"

"It's quite possible I may be mistaken, Sydney. But I have more
than once, as I think, seen something in your manner which
suggests that you distrust me."

"I distrust the evil life we are leading," she burst out, "and I
see the end of it coming. Oh, I don't blame you! You are kind and
considerate, you do your best to hide it; but you have lived long
enough with me to regret the woman whom you have lost. You begin
to feel the sacrifice you have made--and no wonder. Say the word,
Herbert, and I release you."

"I will never say the word!"

She hesitated--first inclined, then afraid, to believe him. "I
have grace enough left in me," she went on, "to feel the
bitterest repentance for the wrong that I have done to Mrs.
Linley. When it ends, as it must end, in our parting, will you
ask your wife--?"

Even his patience began to fail him; he refused--firmly, not
angrily--to hear more. "She is no longer my wife," he said.

Sydney's bitterness and Sydney's penitence were mingled, as
opposite emotions only _can_ be mingled in a woman's breast.
"Will you ask your wife to forgive you?" she persisted.

"After we have been divorced at her petition?" He pointed to the
window as he said it. "Look at the sea. If I was drowning out
yonder, I might as well ask the sea to forgive me."

He produced no effect on her. She ignored the Divorce; her
passionate remorse asserted itself as obstinately as ever. "Mrs.
Linley is a good woman," she insisted; "Mrs. Linley is a
Christian woman."

"I have lost all claim on her--even the claim to remember her
virtues," he answered, sternly. "No more of it, Sydney! I am
sorry I have disappointed you; I am sorry if you are weary of
me."

At those last words her manner changed. "Wound me as cruelly as
you please," she said, humbly. "I will try to bear it."

"I wouldn't wound you for the world! Why do you persist in
distressing me? Why do you feel suspicion of me which I have not
deserved?" He stopped, and held out his hand. "Don't let us
quarrel, Sydney. Which will you do? Keep your bad opinion of me,
or give me a fair trial?"

She loved him dearly; she was so young--and the young are so
ready to hope! Still, she struggled against herself. "Herbert! is
it your pity for me that is speaking now?"

He left her in despair. "It's useless!" he said, sadly. "Nothing
will conquer your inveterate distrust."

She followed him. With a faint cry of entreaty she made him turn
to her, and held him in a trembling embrace, and rested her head
on his bosom. "Forgive me--be patient with me--love me." That was
all she could say.

He attempted to calm her agitation by speaking lightly. "At last,
Sydney, we are friends again!" he said.

Friends? All the woman in her recoiled from that insufficient
word. "Are we Lovers?" she whispered.

"Yes!"

With that assurance her anxious heart was content. She smiled;
she looked out at the sea with a new appreciation of the view.
"The air of this place will do me good now," she said. "Are my
eyes red, Herbert? Let me go and bathe them, and make myself fit
to be seen."

She rang the bell. The chambermaid answered it, ready to show the
other rooms. She turned round at the door.

"Let's try to make our sitting-room look like home," she
suggested. "How dismal, how dreadfully like a thing that doesn't
belong to us, that empty table looks! Put some of your books and
my keepsakes on it, while I am away. I'll bring my work with me
when I come back."

He had left his travelers' bag on a chair, when he first came in.
Now that he was alone, and under no restraint, he sighed as he
unlocked the bag. "Home?" he repeated; "we have no home. Poor
girl! poor unhappy girl! Let me help her to deceive herself."

He opened the bag. The little fragile presents, which she called
her "keepsakes," had been placed by her own hands in the upper
part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and
had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking
them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick
(intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite
of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value
in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to
Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and could be easily mended
so as to keep the accident concealed. Consulting the waiter,
Herbert discovered that the fracture could be repaired at the
nearest town, and that the place would be within reach when he
went out for a walk. In fear of another disaster, if he put it
back in the bag, he opened a drawer in the table, and laid the
two fragments carefully inside, at the further end. In doing
this, his hand touched something that had been already placed in
the drawer. He drew it out, and found that it was a book--the
same book that Mrs. Presty (surely the evil genius of the family
again!) had hidden from Randal's notice, and had forgotten when
she left the hotel.


Herbert instantly recognized the gilding on the cover, imitated
from a design invented by himself. He remembered the inscription,
and yet he read it again:

"To dear Catherine, from Herbert, on the anniversary of our
marriage."

The book dropped from his hand on the table, as if it had been a
new discovery, torturing him with a new pain.

His wife (he persisted in thinking of her as his wife) must have
occupied the room--might perhaps have been the person whom he had
succeeded, as a guest at the hotel. Did she still value his
present to her, in remembrance of old times? No! She valued it so
little that she had evidently forgotten it. Perhaps her maid
might have included it among the small articles of luggage when
they left home, or dear little Kitty might have put it into one
of her mother's trunks. In any case, there it was now, abandoned
in the drawer of a table at a hotel.

"Oh," he thought bitterly, "if I could only feel as coldly toward
Catherine as she feels toward me!" His resolution had resisted
much; but this final trial of his self-control was more than he
could sustain. He dropped into a chair--his pride of manhood
recoiled from the contemptible weakness of crying--he tried to
remember that she had divorced him, and taken his child from him.
In vain! in vain! He burst into tears.



Chapter XXXVII.


Mrs. Norman.


With a heart lightened by reconciliation (not the first
reconciliation unhappily), with hopes revived, and sweet content
restored, Sydney's serenity of mind was not quite unruffled. Her
thoughts were not dwelling on the evil life which she had
honestly deplored, or on the wronged wife to whom she had been
eager to make atonement. Where is the woman whose sorrows are not
thrown into the shade by the bright renewal of love? The one
anxiety that troubled Sydney was caused by remembrance of the
letter which she had sent to the convent at Sandyseal.

As her better mind now viewed it, she had doubly injured
Herbert--first in distrusting him; then by appealing from him to
the compassion of strangers.

If the reply for which she had rashly asked was waiting for her
at that moment--if the mercy of the Mother Superior was ready to
comfort and guide her--what return could she make? how could she
excuse herself from accepting what was offered in kindly reply to
her own petition? She had placed herself, for all she knew to the
contrary, between two alternatives of ingratitude equally
unendurable, equally degrading. To feel this was to feel the
suspense which, to persons of excitable temperament, is of all
trials the hardest to bear. The chambermaid was still in her
room--Sydney asked if the post-office was near to the hotel.

The woman smiled. "Everything is near us, ma'am, in this little
place. Can we send to the post-office for you?"

Sydney wrote her initials. "Ask, if you please, for a letter
addressed in that way." She handed the memorandum to the
chambermaid. "Corresponding with her lover under her husband's
nose!" That was how the chambermaid explained it below stairs,
when the porter remarked that initials looked mysterious.

The Mother Superior had replied. Sydney trembled as she opened
the letter. It began kindly.

"I believe you, my child, and I am anxious to help you. But I
cannot correspond with an unknown person. If you decide to reveal
yourself, it is only right to add that I have shown your letter
to the Reverend Father who, in temporal as in spiritual things,
is our counselor and guide. To him I must refer you, in the first
instance. His wisdom will decide the serious question of
receiving you into our Holy Church, and will discover, in due
time, if you have a true vocation to a religious life. With the
Father's sanction, you may be sure of my affectionate desire to
serve you."

Sydney put the letter back in the envelope, feeling gratefully
toward the Mother Superior, but determined by the conditions
imposed on her to make no further advance toward the Benedictine
community.

Even if her motive in writing to the convent had remained
unchallenged, the allusions to the priest would still have
decided her on taking this step. The bare idea of opening her
inmost heart, and telling her saddest secrets, to a man, and that
man a stranger, was too repellent to be entertained for a moment.
In a few lines of reply, gratefully and respectfully written, she
thanked the Mother Superior, and withdrew from the
correspondence.

The letter having been closed, and posted in the hotel box, she
returned to the sitting-room free from the one doubt that had
troubled her; eager to show Herbert how truly she believed in
him, how hopefully she looked to the future.

With a happy smile on her lips she opened the door. She was on
the point of asking him playfully if he had felt surprised at her
long absence--when the sight that met her eyes turned her cold
with terror in an instant.

His arms were stretched out on the table; his head was laid on
them, despair confessed itself in his attitude; grief spoke in
the deep sobbing breaths that shook him. Love and compassion
restored Sydney's courage; she advanced to raise him in her
arms--and stopped once more. The book on the table caught her
eye. He was still unconscious of her presence; she ventured to
open it. She read the inscription--looked at him--looked back at
the writing--and knew the truth at last.

The rigor of the torture that she suffered paralyzed all outward
expression of pain. Quietly she put the book back on the table.
Quietly she touched him, and called him by his name.

He started and looked up; he made an attempt to speak to her in
his customary tone. "I didn't hear you come in," he said.

She pointed to the book, without the slightest change in her face
or her manner.

"I have read the inscription to your wife," she answered; "I have
seen you while you thought you were alone; the mercy which has so
long kept the truth from me is mercy wasted now. Your bonds are
broken, Herbert. You are a free man."

He affected not to have understood her. She let him try to
persuade her of it, and made no reply. He declared, honestly
declared, that what she had said distressed him. She listened in
submissive silence. He took her hand, and kissed it. She let him
kiss it, and let him drop it at her side. She frightened him; he
began to fear for her reason. There was silence--long, horrid,
hopeless silence.

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