CHAPTER XXVI
ALEXANDER BARCLAY DOES HIS BEST
THOUGH Barclay had no intention of allowing the letter he carried to reach its final destination, he could not venture to stop its course till it had passed Fullarton’s hands. He was too much afraid that Somerville and Fullarton might meet within the next few days. The mail office should be responsible for its loss, if that loss were ever discovered; a contingency which he doubted strongly. He found it exceedingly annoying to be obliged to take this farcical drive on such a chilly afternoon, but Prudence demanded the sacrifice and he humoured her, like a wise man. Fordyce’s obligations to him were becoming colossal.
He found Fullarton in his library and explained that he was on his way home. He had looked in in passing, he said, to ask him to address a letter which Captain Somerville had given him for Miss Raeburn. He was rather hurried, and would not send his carriage to the stables; if the letter were directed at once, he would take it with him and leave it at the mail office, should it still be open. Robert was not in the humour either for gossip or business and he was glad to be rid of Barclay so easily. He took up his pen at once. In five minutes the lawyer was on his return road to Kaims.
The mail office was closed, as he knew it would be at that time in the evening, and he brought his prize home; to-morrow, though he would take several letters there in person, it would not be among their number. In its place would be one addressed by himself to the bride-elect and containing a formal congratulation on her marriage. Should inquiry arise, it would be found that he had despatched a letter bearing her name on that day. It was best that the track should lose itself on the further side of the mail office; the rest was in the hands of Providence. It was a badly-patched business, but it was the neatest work he could put together at such short notice.
When the servants had gone to bed and the house was quiet, the lawyer locked himself into his dining-room, where a snug little mahogany table with a suggestive load of comforts stood ready by the arm of his easy-chair. He sat down and took from his pocket the letter he had carried about all the afternoon, reading it through carefully. As he refreshed himself with the port he had poured out he counted again on his fingers. But there was no use in counting; he could come to no conclusion, for it rested purely with accident to decide how soon Captain Somerville’s communication should reach Gilbert. If there were no delays, if he were at Madrid or at some place within reach of it, if he made up his mind on the spot, if he could find means to start immediately and met no obstacle on the way—it was possible he might arrive within a few days of the wedding. Then, everything would depend upon Cecilia; and it would need almost superhuman courage for a woman to draw back in such circumstances. He had done a great thing in possessing himself of the paper he held. Little as he knew her, he suspected her to be a person of some character, and there was no guessing what step she might take, were she given time to think. ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’ He was doing this throughly.
He emptied his glass, and, with the gold pencil on his fob-chain, made a rough note in his pocket-book of the contents of Somerville’s letter; then he crushed the epistle into a ball and stuffed it into the red heart of the coals with the poker, holding it down till it was no more than a flutter of black ash. This over, he wrote Fordyce an account of what he had done. ‘I am not really apprehensive,’ he concluded, ‘but, hurry the wedding, if you can do so on any pretext, and never say that Alexander Barclay did not do his best for you.’
Crauford was at Fordyce Castle when the news reached him and it gave him a shock. His ally seemed to be outrunning all discretion in his zeal; to stop a letter was such a definitely improper thing to do that it took his breath away. Not that it was his fault, he assured himself as he pondered on it, and it was too late to make any remonstrance; besides which, as he had not personally committed the act, he had nothing with which to blame himself. Things looked serious. In a few days Speid might be on his way home. He would write to Cecilia on the spot; nay, he would go to Edinburgh himself and persuade her to hasten the wedding. He would invent a pretext. It was curious that, while Barclay’s act struck him as a breach of gentlemanlike behaviour, it never struck him from Cecilia’s point of view, though it was clear she did not want to marry him and that she did want to marry Speid. If it had struck him he would scarcely have understood. She was behaving most foolishly and against her own interests; she did not seem to realize that he had the warmest feelings for her, that he was prepared to make her happy and give her everything she could desire. So great was the complacency—personal and hereditary—in which he had been enveloped since his birth, that he could not see another obvious truth which stared him in the face: namely, that he whose wife has married one man and loves another stands in a place which ought to terrify a demi-god. If he hated Speid now, he might have to hate him still more in time. In his reply to Barclay he did not remonstrate with him; what was the use of doing so now that the thing was over?
Heartily did he wish the wedding hurried on for many reasons; one of them was that his mother, who had taken to her bed on hearing of his engagement, had now arisen, though her health, she said, would not admit of her leaving Fordyce Castle or being present at the ceremony. Nor were the protests of her family very sincere. Agneta and Mary, who were to go to their uncle, were looking forward feverishly to their first taste of emancipation, and Sir Thomas, having had experience of his wife when in contact with the outer world, thought with small gusto of repeating it. He had insisted that his daughters should go to Fullarton and no one but himself knew what he had undergone, Lady Fordyce being furious with her brother for having, as she said, arranged the marriage. Everyone agreed that her decision was a merciful one for all concerned, and, while Sir Thomas again ‘found it convenient’ to sit up in his study till the cocks crew, the two girls were supported by the prospect of the coming excitement.
Agneta and Crauford kept much together; but, though she was the only person to whom he could speak with any freedom, he did not tell her what he had heard from Barclay. He was a hero to his sister; and a hero’s bride is conventionally supposed to have eyes for no one but himself. Existing conventions were quite good enough for him.
His engagement was scarcely a blow to Lady Maria Milwright; for though, as has been said, he was a hero in her eyes also, she was so simple in character and so diffident that she had never even speculated on his notice. Ideas of the sort were foreign to her. But, as her fingers embroidered the handkerchief-case which she sent him as a wedding-gift, she was overwhelmed with Miss Cecilia Raeburn’s good fortune. Agneta was with him in his room when he unpacked the little parcel and read the letter it contained.
‘I consider that very kind of Lady Maria; very kind indeed,’ he said. He did not only consider it kind, he considered it forgiving and magnanimous.
‘I wonder if you will be as happy as if you had married her?’ said his sister, suddenly. ‘Is Miss Raeburn devoted to you, Crauford?’
The question took him rather unawares.
‘Why do you ask?’ inquired he.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Only she refused you twice, you know, brother.’
‘Not twice,’ said he. ‘She gave me great encouragement the second time.’
‘I am sorry it is not to be a grand wedding with lots of fine company. I should have enjoyed that. But, all the same, it will be a great change for me and Mary. Miss Raeburn said we were to choose our own dresses. Do you know, we have never chosen anything for ourselves before?’
‘I am going to Edinburgh to-morrow or the next day to order my own clothes,’ said he. ‘I have chosen stuffs already. I shall wear claret-coloured cloth with a buff waistcoat and a satin stock. That ought to look well, I think.’
‘We are to wear white, and white fur tippets and Leghorn bonnets with pink rosettes. Papa gave Mary the money to pay for what we chose, for mamma would have nothing to do with it. It is a good thing, for she would not have given us nearly so much. Will there really be no one but ourselves and Uncle Fullarton at the wedding, Crauford?’
‘There will be our cousin Frederick Bumfield, who is to be best man, and my friend Mr. Barclay of Kaims. He is the Fullarton man of business and a mighty pleasant fellow. Frederick and I are to stay at his house for the wedding. Then there are a Captain and Mrs. Somerville whom Miss Raeburn’—he always spoke of Cecilia as ‘Miss Raeburn,’ even to his family—‘has invited, I cannot understand why; they are dull people and the lady is not over genteel in her connections, I believe. Morphie Kirk is a very small place for a wedding but Miss Raeburn has made a particular point of being married there. I often accompanied her to it when Lady Eliza was alive and I can guess (though she has not told me) that she feels the suitability of our being married there for that reason. It is a pretty feeling on her part,’ said Crauford.
Her fancy for Speid could not really go very deep, he reflected, as this little sentiment of hers came into his mind. The meddlesome old woman who had brought such a story to Captain Somerville might have known how hysterical women were when there was a question of weddings. Cecilia simply did not know her own mind.
He would see her in Edinburgh and do his best to persuade her to settle a new date for their marriage, even should it be only a few days earlier than the old one. And he would buy her some jewels—they would help on his request.