“Who was it wrote and asked you?”
“The letter was from Lady Laura.”
“Yes;—from my wife. What right had my wife to write to you when she will not even answer my appeals? She is my wife;—my wife! In the presence of God she and I have been made one, and even man’s ordinances have not dared to separate us. Mr. Finn, as the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy, I desire that you abstain from seeking her presence.” As he said this he rose from his chair, and took the poker in his hand. The chair in which he was sitting was placed upon the rug, and it might be that the fire required his attention. As he stood bending down, with the poker in his right hand, with his eye still fixed on his guest’s face, his purpose was doubtful. The motion might be a threat, or simply have a useful domestic tendency. But Phineas, believing that the man was mad, rose from his seat and stood upon his guard. The point of the poker had undoubtedly been raised; but as Phineas stretched himself to his height, it fell gradually towards the fire, and at last was buried very gently among the coals. But he was never convinced that Mr. Kennedy had carried out the purpose with which he rose from his chair. “After what has passed, you will no doubt abandon your purpose,” said Mr. Kennedy.
“I shall certainly go to Dresden,” said Phineas. “If you have a message to send, I will take it.”
“Then you will be accursed among adulterers,” said the laird of Loughlinter. “By such a one I will send no message. From the first moment that I saw you I knew you for a child of Apollyon. But the sin was my own. Why did I ask to my house an idolater, one who pretends to believe that a crumb of bread is my God, a Papist, untrue alike to his country and to his Saviour? When she desired it of me I knew that I was wrong to yield. Yes;—it is you who have done it all, you, you, you;—and if she be a castaway, the weight of her soul will be doubly heavy on your own.”
To get out of the room, and then at the earliest possible hour of the morning out of the house, were now the objects to be attained. That his presence had had a peculiarly evil influence on Mr. Kennedy, Phineas could not doubt; as assuredly the unfortunate man would not have been left with mastery over his own actions had his usual condition been such as that which he now displayed. He had been told that “poor Kennedy” was mad—as we are often told of the madness of our friends when they cease for awhile to run in the common grooves of life. But the madman had now gone a long way out of the grooves;—so far, that he seemed to Phineas to be decidedly dangerous. “I think I had better wish you good night,” he said.
“Look here, Mr. Finn.”
“Well?”
“I hope you won’t go and make more mischief.”
“I shall not do that, certainly.”
“You won’t tell her what I have said?”
“I shall tell her nothing to make her think that your opinion of her is less high than it ought to be.”
“Good night.”
“Good night,” said Phineas again; and then he left the room. It was as yet but nine o’clock, and he had no alternative but to go to bed. He found his way back into the hall, and from thence up to his own chamber. But there was no fire there, and the night was cold. He went to the window, and raised it for a moment, that he might hear the well-remembered sound of the Fall of Linter. Though the night was dark and wintry, a dismal damp November night, he would have crept out of the house and made his way up to the top of the brae, for the sake of auld lang syne, had he not feared that the inhospitable mansion would be permanently closed against him on his return. He rang the bell once or twice, and after a while the old serving man came to him. Could he have a cup of tea? The man shook his head, and feared that no boiling water could be procured at that late hour of the night. Could he have his breakfast the next morning at seven, and a conveyance to Callender at half-past seven? When the old man again shook his head, seeming to be dazed at the enormity of the demand, Phineas insisted that his request should be conveyed to the master of the house. As to the breakfast, he said he did not care about it, but the conveyance he must have. He did, in fact, obtain both, and left the house early on the following morning without again seeing Mr. Kennedy, and without having spoken a single word to Mr. Kennedy’s mother. And so great was his hurry to get away from the place which had been so disagreeable to him, and which he thought might possibly become more so, that he did not even run across the sward that divided the gravel sweep from the foot of the waterfall.
XI
The Truant Wife
Phineas on his return to London wrote a line to Lady Chiltern in accordance with a promise which had been exacted from him. She was anxious to learn something as to the real condition of her husband’s brother-in-law, and, when she heard that Phineas was going to Loughlinter, had begged that he would tell her the truth. “He has become eccentric, gloomy, and very strange,” said Phineas. “I do not believe that he is really mad, but his condition is such that I think no friend should recommend Lady Laura to return to him. He seems to have devoted himself to a gloomy religion—and
