Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1073 page)

Jack finished his hat, and gave it to my aunt. “Do you like it, now it’s done?” he asked.

“I like it very much,” she answered: “and one of these days I shall trim it with ribbons, and wear it for your sake.”

She appealed to the superintendent, holding out the hat to him.

“Look,” she said. “There is not a false turn anywhere in all this intricate plaiting. Poor Jack is sane enough to fix his attention to this subtle work. Do you give him up as incurable, when he can do that?”

The superintendent waved away the question with his hand. “Purely mechanical,” he replied. “It means nothing.”

Jack touched my aunt. “I want to whisper,” he said. She bent down to him, and listened.

I saw her smile, and asked, after we had left the asylum, what he had said. Jack had stated his opinion of the principal officer of Bethlehem Hospital in these words: “Don’t you listen to him, Mistress; he’s a poor half-witted creature. And short, too — not above six inches taller than I am!”

But my aunt had not done with Jack’s enemy yet.

“I am sorry to trouble you, sir,” she resumed — ”I have something more to say before I go, and I wish to say it privately. Can you spare me a few minutes?”

The amiable superintendent declared that he was entirely at her service. She turned to Jack to say good-bye. The sudden discovery that she was about to leave him was more than he could sustain; he lost his self-control.

“Stay with me!” cried the poor wretch, seizing her by both hands. “Oh, be merciful, and stay with me!”

She preserved her presence of mind — she would permit no interference to protect her. Without starting back, without even attempting to release herself, she spoke to him quietly.

“Let us shake hands for to-day,” she said; “you have kept your promise, Jack — you have been quiet and good. I must leave you for a while. Let me go.”

He obstinately shook his head, and still held her.

“Look at me,” she persisted, without showing any fear of him. “I want to tell you something. You are no longer a friendless creature, Jack. You have a friend in me. Look up.”

Her clear firm tones had their effect on him; he looked up. Their eyes met.

“Now, let me go, as I told you.”

He dropped her hand, and threw himself back in his corner and burst out crying.

“I shall never see her again,” he moaned to himself. “Never, never, never again!”

“You shall see me to-morrow,” she said.

He looked at her through his tears, and looked away again with an abrupt change to distrust. “She doesn’t mean it,” he muttered, still speaking to himself; “she only says it to pacify me.”

“You shall see me to-morrow,” my aunt reiterated; “I promise it.”

He was cowed, but not convinced; he crawled to the full length of his chain, and lay down at her feet like a dog. She considered for a moment — and found her way to his confidence at last.

“Shall I leave you something to keep for me until I see you again?”

The idea struck him like a revelation: he lifted his head, and eyed her with breathless interest. She gave him a little ornamental handbag, in which she was accustomed to carry her handkerchief, and purse, and smelling-bottle.

“I trust it entirely to you, Jack: you shall give it back to me when we meet to-morrow.”

Those simple words more than reconciled him to her departure — they subtly flattered his self-esteem.

“You will find your bag torn to pieces, to-morrow,” the superintendent whispered, as the door was opened for us to go out.

“Pardon me, sir,” my aunt replied; “I believe I shall find it quite safe.”

The last we saw of poor Jack, before the door closed on him, he was hugging the bag in both arms, and kissing it.

CHAPTER VI

On our return to home, I found Fritz Keller smoking his pipe in the walled garden at the back of the house.

In those days, it may not be amiss to remark that merchants of the old-fashioned sort still lived over their counting-houses in the city. The late Mr. Wagner’s place of business included two spacious houses standing together, with internal means of communication. One of these buildings was devoted to the offices and warehouses. The other (having the garden at the back) was the private residence.

Fritz advanced to meet me, and stopped, with a sudden change in his manner. “Something has happened,” he said — ”I see it in your face! Has the madman anything to do with it?”

“Yes. Shall I tell you what has happened, Fritz?”

“Not for the world. My ears are closed to all dreadful and distressing narratives. I will imagine the madman — let us talk of something else.”

“You will probably see him, Fritz, in a few weeks’ time.”

“You don’t mean to tell me he is coming into this house?”

“I am afraid it’s likely, to say the least of it.”

Fritz looked at me like a man thunderstruck. “There are some disclosures,” he said, in his quaint way, “which are too overwhelming to be received on one’s legs. Let us sit down.”

He led the way to a summer-house at the end of the garden. On the wooden table, I observed a bottle of the English beer which my friend prized so highly, with glasses on either side of it.

“I had a presentiment that we should want a consoling something of this sort,” said Fritz. “Fill your glass, David, and let out the worst of it at once, before we get to the end of the bottle.”

I let out the best of it first — that is to say, I told him what I have related in the preceding pages. Fritz was deeply interested: full of compassion for Jack Straw, but not in the least converted to my aunt’s confidence in him.

“Jack is supremely pitiable,” he remarked; “but Jack is also a smoldering volcano — and smoldering volcanos burst into eruption when the laws of nature compel them. My only hope is in Mr. Superintendent. Surely he will not let this madman loose on us, with nobody but your aunt to hold the chain? What did she really say, when you left Jack, and had your private talk in the reception-room? One minute, my friend, before you begin,” said Fritz, groping under the bench upon which we were seated. “I had a second presentiment that we might want a second bottle — and here it is! Fill your glass; and let us establish ourselves in our respective positions — you to administer, and I to sustain, a severe shock to the moral sense. I think, David, this second bottle is even more deliciously brisk than the first. Well, and what did your aunt say?”

My aunt had said much more than I could possibly tell him.

In substance it had come to this: — After seeing the whip, and seeing the chains, and seeing the man — she had actually determined to commit herself to the perilous experiment which her husband would have tried, if he had lived! As to the means of procuring Jack Straw’s liberation from the Hospital, the powerful influence which had insisted on his being received by the Institution, in defiance of rules, could also insist on his release, and could be approached by the intercession of the same official person, whose interest in the matter had been aroused by Mr. Wagner in the last days of his life. Having set forth her plans for the future in these terms, my aunt appealed to the lawyer to state the expression of her wishes and intentions, in formal writing, as a preliminary act of submission towards the governors of the asylum.

“And what did the lawyer say to it?” Fritz inquired, after I had reported my aunt’s proceedings thus far.

“The lawyer declined, Fritz, to comply with her request. He said, ‘It would be inexcusable, even in a man, to run such a risk — I don’t believe there is another woman in England who would think of such a thing.’ Those were his words.”

“Did they have any effect on her?”

“Not the least in the world. She apologized for having wasted his valuable time, and wished him good morning. ‘If nobody will help me,’ she said, quietly, ‘I must help myself.’ Then she turned to me. ‘You have seen how carefully and delicately poor Jack can work,’ she said; ‘you have seen him tempted to break out, and yet capable of restraining himself in my presence. And, more than that, on the one occasion when he did lose his self-control, you saw how he recovered himself when he was calmly and kindly reasoned with. Are you content, David, to leave such a man for the rest of his life to the chains and the whip?’ What could I say? She was too considerate to press me; she only asked me to think of it. I have been trying to think of it ever since — and the more I try, the more I dread the consequences if that madman is brought into the house.”

Fritz shuddered at the prospect.

“On the day when Jack comes into the house, I shall go out of it,” he said. The social consequences of my aunt’s contemplated experiment suddenly struck him while he spoke. “What will Mrs. Wagner’s friends think?” he asked piteously. “They will refuse to visit her — they will say she’s mad herself.”

“Don’t let that distress you, gentlemen — I shan’t mind what my friends say of me.”

We both started in confusion to our feet. My aunt herself was standing at the open door of the summer-house with a letter in her hand.

“News from Germany, just come for you, Fritz.”

With those words, she handed him the letter, and left us.

We looked at each other thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, if the truth must be told. Fritz cast an uneasy glance at the letter, and recognised the handwriting on the address. “From my father!” he said. As he opened the envelope a second letter enclosed fell out on the floor. He changed colour as he picked it up, and looked at it. The seal was unbroken — the postmark was Wurzburg.

CHAPTER VII

Fritz kept the letter from Wurzburg unopened in his hand.

“It’s not from Minna,” he said; “the handwriting is strange to me. Perhaps my father knows something about it.” He turned to his father’s letter; read it; and handed it to me without a word of remark.

Mr. Keller wrote briefly as follows: —

“The enclosed letter has reached me by post, as you perceive, with written instructions to forward it to my son. The laws of honour guide me just as absolutely in my relations with my son as in my relations with any other gentleman. I forward the letter to you exactly as I have received it. But I cannot avoid noticing the postmark of the city in which the Widow Fontaine and her daughter are still living. If either Minna or her mother be the person who writes to you, I must say plainly that I forbid your entering into any correspondence with them. The two families shall never be connected by marriage while I live. Understand, my dear son, that this is said in your own best interests, and said, therefore, from the heart of your father who loves you.”

While I was reading these lines Fritz had opened the letter from Wurzburg. “It’s long enough, at any rate,” he said, turning over the closely-written pages to find the signature at the end.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well,” Fritz repeated, “it’s an anonymous letter. The signature is ‘Your Unknown Friend.’“

“Perhaps it relates to Miss Minna, or to her mother,” I suggested. Fritz turned back to the first page and looked up at me, red with anger. “More abominable slanders! More lies about Minna’s mother!” he burst out. “Come here, David. Look at it with me. What do you say? Is it the writing of a woman or a man?”

The writing was so carefully disguised that it was impossible to answer his question. The letter (like the rest of the correspondence connected with this narrative) has been copied in duplicate and placed at my disposal. I reproduce it here for reasons which will presently explain themselves — altering nothing, not even the vulgar familiarity of the address.

“My good fellow, you once did me a kindness a long time since. Never mind what it was or who I am. I mean to do you a kindness in return. Let that be enough.