He arose in his turn. He understood that the conference was over.
“Well, well,” he said, with a kind of sad good-humor, “I suppose it is unreasonable of me to expect that a young woman like you should share any opinion with an old lawyer like me. Let me only remind you that our conversation must remain strictly confidential for the present; and then let us change the subject. Is there anything that I can do for you? Are you alone in Edinburgh?”
“No. I am traveling with an old friend of mine, who has known me from childhood.”
“And do you stay here tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Will you do me one favor? Will you think over what has passed between us, and will you come back to me in the morning?”
“Willingly, Mr. Playmore, if it is only to thank you again for your kindness.”
On that understanding we parted. He sighed—the cheerful man sighed, as he opened the door for me. Women are contradictory creatures. That sigh affected me more than all his arguments. I felt myself blush for my own headstrong resistance to him as I took my leave and turned away into the street.
XXXIV
Gleninch
I found Benjamln at the hotel, poring over a cheap periodical; absorbed in guessing one of the weekly “Enigmas” which the Editor presented to his readers. My old friend was a great admirer of these verbal “Puzzles,” and had won all sorts of cheap prizes by his ingenuity in arriving at the right solution of the problems submitted to him. On ordinary occasions, it was useless to attempt to attract his attention, while he was occupied with his favourite amusement. But his interest in hearing the result of my interview with the lawyer proved to be even keener than his interest in solving the problem before him. He shut up his journal the moment I entered the room, and asked, eagerly, “What news, Valeria? What news?”
In telling him what had happened, I of course respected Mr. Playmore’s confidence in me. Not a word relating to the lawyer’s horrible suspicion of Misernmus Dexter passed my lips.
“Aha!” said Benjamin, complacently. “So the lawyer thinks, as I do, that you will be highly imprudent if you go back to Mr. Dexter? A hardheaded, sensible man the lawyer, no doubt. You will listen to Mr. Playmore, won’t you, though you wouldn’t listen to me?”
“You must forgive me, my old friend,” I said, answering Benjamin. “I am afraid it has come to this—try as I may, I can listen to nobody who advises me. On our way here I honestly meant to be guided by Mr. Playmore—we should never have taken this long journey if I had not honestly meant it. I have tried, tried hard to be a teachable, reasonable woman. But there is something in me that won’t be taught. I am afraid I shall go back to Dexter.”
Even Benjamin lost all patience with me this time.
“What is bred in the bone,” he said, quoting the old proverb, “will never come out of the flesh. In years gone by, you were the most obstinate child that ever made a mess in a nursery. Oh, dear me, we might as well have stayed in London.”
“No,” I replied, “now we have traveled to Edinburgh, we will see something (interesting to me at any rate) which we should never have seen if we had not left London. My husband’s country-house is within a few miles of us here. Tomorrow—we will go to Gleninch.”
“Where the poor lady was poisoned?” asked Benjamin, with a look of dismay. “You mean that place?”
“Yes. I want to see the room in which she died; I want to go all over the house.”
Benjamin crossed his hands resignedly on his lap. “I try to understand the new generation,” said the old man, sadly; “but I can’t manage it. The new generation beats me.”
I sat down to write to Mr. Playmore about the visit to Gleninch. The house in which the tragedy had occurred that had blighted my husband’s life was, to my mind, the most interesting house on the habitable globe. The prospect of visiting Gleninch had, indeed (to tell the truth), strongly influenced my resolution to consult the Edinburgh lawyer. I sent my note to Mr. Playmore by a messenger, and received the kindest reply in return. If I would wait until the afternoon, he would get the day’s business done, and would take us to Gleninch in his own carriage.
Benjamin’s obstinacy—in its own quiet way, and on certain occasions only—was quite a match for mine. He had privately determined, as one of the old generation, to have nothing to do with Gleninch. Not a word on the subject escaped him until Mr. Playmore’s carriage was at the hotel door. At that appropriate moment Benjamin remembered an old friend of his in Edinburgh. “Will you please to excuse me, Valeria? My friend’s name is Saunders; and he will take it unkindly of me if I don’t dine with him today.”
Apart from the associations that I connected with it, there was nothing to interest a traveler at Gleninch.
The country around was pretty and well cultivated, and nothing more. The park was, to an English eye, wild and badly kept. The house had been built within the last seventy or eighty years. Outside, it was as bare of all ornament as a factory, and as gloomily heavy in effect as a prison. Inside, the deadly dreariness, the close, oppressive solitude of a deserted dwelling wearied the eye and weighed on the mind, from the roof to the basement. The house had been shut up since the time of the trial. A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the keys and the charge of it. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful disapproval of our intrusion when Mr. Playmore ordered him to open the doors and shutters, and let the light in on the dark, deserted place. Fires were
