As he stood against the damp wall of mossy earth, held together by the roots of the rowans, he suddenly saw a speck of white in a crevice among the twisted roots. He pulled it out, or tried to do so, but it resisted his efforts. Finally, digging with his stick, and pulling with his hands, at risk of bringing the whole mound down upon him, he disinterred from the network of rough and twisted stems a handkerchief, then something black and large which he could not distinguish, and finally the skin of an orange. John's heart, already panting with the toil, gave a jump into his throat. The white handkerchief was folded into a sort of bandage, and had evidently been tied round the head; the large, black square was one of the huge neckcloths (so-called) of the period. These formed, no doubt, the wonderful headgear which his fellow-traveller had worn. But the orange skin overwhelmed John with an impulse to laugh and to cry together. It was one of his oranges which he had brought in, in kindness for the poor old lady. She had remembered them in danger and horror, and eaten it while they were looking for her. That daring creature defying heaven and earth, wet, cold, miserable, and – guilty. She had eaten his orange to comfort her, the poor little demon of a girl!
And was that Marion Wamphrey all white and dazzling, with the pearls on her throat, and the roses in her hair?
CHAPTER V
When John returned to his rooms, carrying his strange spoils with him, he found on his table an invitation. For the last week or two his invitations had been few. This one had been delivered, his landlady told him, by a man and horse from Wamphrey, which was some miles off to the south of Duntrum. This was so startling in the midst of his present thoughts, that his spoils fell from his hands in the excitement of the moment. To Wamphrey! Mr Wamphrey was an invalid, the brother was absent. There had been no festivities there since his arrival in Duntrum, and that such an invitation should come now when he was about, he thought, to disclose the family skeleton, and brand its most beloved member with guilt, startled him as if there was something preternatural in it. He threw himself down in his easy-chair and tried to think, but his head went round and round.
The objects which he had carried in his hands fell on the table and unrolled themselves as inanimate things sometimes do as if there was life in them. They had been tightly done up, and fluttered out of the roll as they felclass="underline" the white handkerchief, folded like a bandage, which had been tied together at the ends, and retained even something of the roundness of the head on which it had been bound, fell quite open, revealing its use. The larger black one had also been tied, two of the ends together. She had got rid of them on the first possible moment, trusting no doubt to the thick Spanish lace of her veil, with its large silken flowers, to disguise her sufficiently: but where did she go from that little shelter in the field? how had she escaped eventually, in the dark midnight, over the slippery, wet ground – so dark you could not see your hand held up before you, so wet and soft, your foot sinking into the clay?
John sat by his fire, and asked himself why he had been so hot in this discovery, and what he had wanted to do. Did he want to convict her, to bring her to shame, a girl who had done him no harm, who (he said to himself) had, after all, done nobody any harm, – except perhaps the bank, which was impersonal and could not suffer much. It was true that it would not do to establish a precedent, and rob his Majesty's mails, when they happened to contain something disagreeable to you. But then, there were very few people in the world who would have the nerve and the strength to do that; and indeed, when you came to think, it was as much the carelessness of the guard, putting such a temptation in the way, as the boldness of the culprit, which was to blame. If he had not left them within everybody's reach, she would not have attempted to get them. The guilt was with the guard. Then, if he himself had kept awake and not gone to sleep like a great baby, she would not have done it. Did he wish he had not gone to sleep? Did he wish the guard had not been so careless? Did he wish that the family should have been disgraced, and the prodigal ruined? John caught himself up with a start. What did it matter who was ruined? No one not with the purest motives, not with the most tender meaning, had a right to take the law in his or her hands. She had made herself amenable to the law – and not only so, but the position was untenable from any point of fact: it was a crime, it struck at the roots of every security. She was a thief! a thief! and of the most dangerous kind.
Suppose it had come into her head that somebody's diamonds would make a nice little portion for her brother, the prodigal whom his own family was sending away to the ends of the earth? Would that native have saved her from the law which has to deal with a criminal and not with the crime, certainly not with the circumstances that account for the crime? He replied to himself, indignantly, that there was no analogy in that case to this. To steal diamonds is common theft; to steal a mail-bag – well! That is a worse crime: and yet he could not endure to have it said even by himself. If Grizel Cochrane, who stopped her father's death-warrant so as to give him time to escape, was the heroine of the district, how was Marion Wamphrey to be called a thief? He went on reasoning with himself, wandering through the wilds of casuistry, examining, accusing, vanquishing himself over and over, and then beginning again.
Nevertheless, when he went to Wamphrey, ten days after, there were war and battle in John's eyes. He was given, as it happened, a very cordial welcome. Mr Wamphrey, the invalid, was down-stairs, seated in an easy-chair in his library, where he could take a quiet share in the amusement of the large party; and it turned out, as it so often turns out, especially in Scotland, that he had known John's father in their respective youths, which was a thing John himself had not done, having been an orphan as long as he could remember. And the elder son had come home from his travels, the object of which John was secretly aware of; but chiefly there was Marion, in the delightful position of daughter of the house, supreme everywhere – disposing of everybody, a princess at the head of her dominions. She was quite gracious to John, treating him with a sort of amused empressement, a smile of triumph on her face, as if to show him how little she feared him. Her manner drove John back into a conviction of the falsehood of all his sophistries, and that this bright creature was nothing more nor less than the robber of his Majesty's mails, and had to be brought to justice. He was not even moved as he had been before by the thought of those little white shoes stumbling over the muddy field. This had subdued him utterly when she was not there. He could not even remember that orange skin which had appealed to him as the subtlest argument. Her smile of triumph seemed to turn his head – but the wrong way.