Blind Love. Wilkie Collins

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СКАЧАТЬ that a prompt employment of time might have been necessary to the rescue of Arthur from impending death by murder. In the agitation that overpowered her, Iris actually hurried the police on their return to the town.

      Sir Giles had arranged to wait for news in his private room at the office—and there he was, with Dennis Howmore in attendance to receive visitors.

      The Sergeant went into the banker's room alone, to make his report. He left the door ajar; Iris could hear what passed.

      "Have you got your prisoner?" Sir Giles began.

      "Yes, your honour."

      "Is the wretch securely handcuffed?"

      "I beg your pardon, sir, it isn't a man."

      "Nonsense, Sergeant; it can't be a boy."

      The Sergeant confessed that it was not a boy. "It's a woman," he said.

      "What!!!"

      "A woman," the patient officer repeated—"and a young one. She asked for You."

      "Bring her in."

      Iris was not the sort of person who waits to be brought in. She walked in, of her own accord.

      VII

      "GOOD Heavens!" cried Sir Giles. "Iris! With my cloak on!! With my hat in her hand!!! Sergeant, there has been some dreadful mistake. This is my god-daughter—Miss Henley."

      "We found her at the milestone, your honour. The young lady and nobody else."

      Sir Giles appealed helplessly to his god-daughter. "What does this mean?" Instead of answering, she looked at the Sergeant. The Sergeant, conscious of responsibility, stood his ground and looked at Sir Giles. His face confessed that the Irish sense of humour was tickled: but he showed no intention of leaving the room. Sir Giles saw that Iris would enter into no explanation in the man's presence. "You needn't wait any longer," he said.

      "What am I to do, if you please, with the prisoner?" the Sergeant inquired.

      Sir Giles waived that unnecessary question away with his hand. He was trebly responsible—as knight, banker, and magistrate into the bargain. "I will be answerable," he replied, "for producing Miss Henley, if called upon. Good night."

      The Sergeant's sense of duty was satisfied. He made the military salute. His gallantry added homage to the young lady under the form of a bow. Then, and then only, he walked with dignity out of the room.

      "Now," Sir Giles resumed, "I presume I may expect to receive an explanation. What does this impropriety mean? What were you doing at the milestone?"

      "I was saving the person who made the appointment with you," Iris said; "the poor fellow had no ill-will towards you—who had risked everything to save your nephew's life. Oh, sir, you committed a terrible mistake when you refused to trust that man!"

      Sir Giles had anticipated the appearance of fear, and the reality of humble apologies. She had answered him indignantly, with a heightened colour, and with tears in her eyes. His sense of his own social importance was wounded to the quick. "Who is the man you are speaking of?" he asked loftily. "And what is your excuse for having gone to the milestone to save him—hidden under my cloak, disguised in my hat?"

      "Don't waste precious time in asking questions!" was the desperate reply. "Undo the harm that you have done already. Your help—oh, I mean what I say!—may yet preserve Arthur's life. Go to the farm, and save him."

      Sir Giles's anger assumed a new form, it indulged in an elaborate mockery of respect. He took his watch from his pocket, and consulted it satirically. "Must I make an excuse?" he asked with a clumsy assumption of humility.

      "No! you must go."

      "Permit me to inform you, Miss Henley, that the last train started more than two hours since."

      "What does that matter? You are rich enough to hire a train."

      Sir Giles, the actor, could endure it no longer; he dropped the mask, and revealed Sir Giles, the man. His clerk was summoned by a peremptory ring of the bell. "Attend Miss Henley to the house," he said. "You may come to your senses after a night's rest," he continued, turning sternly to Iris. "I will receive your excuses in the morning."

      In the morning, the breakfast was ready as usual at nine o'clock. Sir Giles found himself alone at the table.

      He sent an order to one of the women-servants to knock at Miss Henley's door. There was a long delay. The housekeeper presented herself in a state of alarm; she had gone upstairs to make the necessary investigation in her own person. Miss Henley was not in her room; the maid was not in her room; the beds had not been slept in; the heavy luggage was labelled—"To be called for from the hotel." And there was an end of the evidence which the absent Iris had left behind her.

      Inquiries were made at the hotel. The young lady had called there, with her maid, early on that morning. They had their travelling-bags with them; and Miss Henley had left directions that the luggage was to be placed under care of the landlord until her return. To what destination she had betaken herself nobody knew.

      Sir Giles was too angry to remember what she had said to him on the previous night, or he might have guessed at the motive which had led to her departure. "Her father has done with her already," he said; "and I have done with her now." The servants received orders not to admit Miss Henley, if her audacity contemplated a return to her godfather's house.

      VIII

      ON the afternoon of the same day, Iris arrived at the village situated in the near neighbourhood of Arthur Mountjoy's farm.

      The infection of political excitement (otherwise the hatred of England) had spread even to this remote place. On the steps of his little chapel, the priest, a peasant himself, was haranguing his brethren of the soil. An Irishman who paid his landlord was a traitor to his country; an Irishman who asserted his free birthright in the land that he walked on was an enlightened patriot. Such was the new law which the reverend gentleman expounded to his attentive audience. If his brethren there would like him to tell them how they might apply the law, this exemplary Christian would point to the faithless Irishman, Arthur Mountjoy. "Buy not of him, sell not to him; avoid him if he approaches you; starve him out of the place. I might say more, boys—you know what I mean."

      To hear the latter part of this effort of oratory, without uttering a word of protest, was a trial of endurance under which Iris trembled. The secondary effect of the priest's address was to root the conviction of Arthur's danger with tenfold tenacity in her mind. After what she had just heard, even the slightest delay in securing his safety might be productive of deplorable results. She astonished a barefooted boy, on the outskirts of the crowd, by a gift of sixpence, and asked her way to the farm. The little Irishman ran on before her, eager to show the generous lady how useful he could be. In less than half an hour, Iris and her maid were at the door of the farm-house. No such civilised inventions appeared as a knocker or a bell. The boy used his knuckles instead—and ran away when he heard the lock of the door turned on the inner side. He was afraid to be seen speaking to any living creature who inhabited the "evicted farm."

      A decent old woman appeared, and inquired suspiciously "what the ladies wanted." The accent in which she spoke was unmistakably СКАЧАТЬ