Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1141 page)

“Did I not send you his address when I forwarded your letter to him?”

“No.”

“Then let me atone for my forgetfulness at once.”

I wrote down the address, and took my leave.

As I approached the door I noticed on a side table the Catholic volumes which Penrose left with Romayne. One of them was open, with a pencil lying beside it. I thought that a good sign — but I said nothing.

Romayne pressed my hand at parting. “You have been very kind and friendly, Father Benwell,” he said. “I shall be glad to see you again.”

Don’t mention it in quarters where it might do me harm. Do you know, I really pitied him. He has sacrificed everything to his marriage — and his marriage has disappointed him. He was even reduced to be friendly with Me.

Of course when the right time comes I shall give Penrose leave of absence. Do you foresee, as I do, the speedy return of “the dear gentle little fellow” to his old employment; the resumed work of conversion advancing more rapidly than ever; and the jealousy of the Protestant wife aggravating the false position in which she is already placed by her equivocal reception of Winterfield? You may answer this by reminding me of the darker side of the prospect. An heir may be born; and the heir’s mother, backed by general opinion, may insist — if there is any hesitation in the matter — on asserting the boy’s natural right to succeed his father.

Patience, my reverend colleague! There is no threatening of any such calamity yet. And, even if it happens, don’t forget that Romayne has inherited a second fortune. The Vange estate has an estimated value. If the act of restitution represented that value in ready money, do you think the Church would discourage a good convert by refusing his check? You know better than that — and so do I.

The next day I called to inquire how Mrs. Eyrecourt was getting on. The report was favorable. Three days later I called again. The report was still more encouraging. I was also informed that Mrs. Romayne had returned to Ten Acres Lodge.

Much of my success in life has been achieved by never being in a hurry. I was not in a hurry now. Time sometimes brings opportunities — and opportunities are worth waiting for.

Let me make this clear by an example.

A man of headlong disposition, in my place, would have probably spoken of Miss Eyrecourt’s marriage to Romayne at his first meeting with Winterfield, and would have excited their distrust, and put them respectively on their guard, without obtaining any useful result. I can, at any time, make the disclosure to Romayne which informs him that his wife had been Winterfield’s guest in Devonshire, when she affected to meet her former host on the footing of a stranger. In the meanwhile, I give Penrose ample opportunity for innocently widening the breach between husband and wife.

You see, I hope, that if I maintain a passive position, it is not from indolence or discouragement. Now we may get on.

After an interval of a few days more I decided on making further inquiries at Mrs. Eyrecourt’s house. This time, when I left my card, I sent a message, asking if the lady could receive me. Shall I own my weakness? She possesses all the information that I want, and she has twice baffled my inquiries. Under these humiliating circumstances, it is part of the priestly pugnacity of my disposition to inquire again.

I was invited to go upstairs.

The front and back drawing-rooms of the house were thrown into one. Mrs. Eyrecourt was being gently moved backward and forward in a chair on wheels, propelled by her maid; two gentlemen being present, visitors like myself. In spite of rouge and loosely folded lace and flowing draperies, she presented a deplorable spectacle. The bodily part of her looked like a dead woman, painted and revived — while the moral part, in the strongest contrast, was just as lively as ever.

“So glad to see you again, Father Benwell, and so much obliged by your kind inquiries. I am quite well, though the doctor won’t admit it. Isn’t it funny to see me being wheeled about, like a child in a perambulator? Returning to first principles, I call it. You see it’s a law of my nature that I must go about. The doctor won’t let me go about outside the house, so I go about inside the house. Matilda is the nurse, and I am the baby who will learn to walk some of these days. Are you tired, Matilda? No? Then give me another turn, there’s a good creature. Movement, perpetual movement, is a law of Nature. Oh, dear no, doctor; I didn’t make that discovery for myself. Some eminent scientific person mentioned it in a lecture. The ugliest man I ever saw. Now back again, Matilda. Let me introduce you to my friends, Father Benwell. Introducing is out of fashion, I know. But I am one of the few women who can resist the tyranny of fashion. I like introducing people. Sir John Drone — Father Benwell. Father Benwell — Doctor Wybrow. Ah, yes, you know the doctor by reputation? Shall I give you his character? Personally charming; professionally detestable. Pardon my impudence, doctor, it is one of the consequences of the overflowing state of my health. Another turn, Matilda — and a little faster this time. Oh, how I wish I was traveling by railway!”

There, her breath failed her. She reclined in her chair, and fanned herself silently — for a while.

I was now able to turn my attention to the two visitors. Sir John Drone, it was easy to see, would be no obstacle to confidential conversation with Mrs. Eyrecourt. An excellent country gentleman, with the bald head, the ruddy complexion, and the inexhaustible capacity for silence, so familiar to us in English society — there you have the true description of Sir John. But the famous physician was quite another sort of man. I had only to look at him, and to feel myself condemned to small talk while
he
was in the room.

You have always heard of it in my correspondence, whenever I have been in the wrong. I was in the wrong again now — I had forgotten the law of chances. Capricious Fortune, after a long interval, was about to declare herself again in my favor, by means of the very woman who had twice already got the better of me. What a recompense for my kind inquiries after Mrs. Eyrecourt! She recovered breath enough to begin talking again.

“Dear me, how dull you are!” she said to us. “Why don’t you amuse a poor prisoner confined to the house? Rest a little, Matilda, or you will be falling ill next. Doctor! is this your last professional visit?”

“Promise to take care of yourself, Mrs. Eyrecourt, and I will confess that the professional visits are over. I come here to-day only as a friend.”

“You best of men! Do me another favor. Enliven our dullness. Tell us some interesting story about a patient. These great doctors, Sir John, pass their lives in a perfect atmosphere of romance. Dr. Wybrow’s consulting-room is like your confessional, Father Benwell. The most fascinating sins and sorrows are poured into his ears. What is the last romance in real life, doctor, that has asked you to treat it medically? We don’t want names and places — we are good children; we only want a story.”

Dr. Wybrow looked at me with a smile.

“It is impossible to persuade ladies,” he said, “that we, too, are father-confessors in our way. The first duty of a doctor, Mrs. Eyrecourt — ”

“Is to cure people, of course,” she interposed in her smartest manner.

The doctor answered seriously. “No, indeed. That is only the second duty. Our first duty is invariably to respect the confidence of our patients. However,” he resumed in his easier tone, “I happen to have seen a patient to-day, under circumstances which the rules of professional honour do not forbid me to mention. I don’t know, Mrs. Eyrecourt, whether you will quite like to be introduced to the scene of the story. The scene is in a madhouse.”

Mrs. Eyrecourt burst out with a coquettish little scream, and shook her fan at the doctor. “No horrors!” she cried. “The bare idea of a madhouse distracts me with terror. Oh, fie, fie! I won’t listen to you — I won’t look at you — I positively refuse to be frightened out of my wits. Matilda! wheel me away to the furthest end of the room. My vivid imagination, Father Benwell, is my rock ahead in life. I declare I can
smell
the odious madhouse. Go straight to the window, Matilda; I want to bury my nose among the flowers.”

Sir John, upon this, spoke for the first time. His language consisted entirely of beginnings of sentences, mutely completed by a smile. “Upon my word, you know. Eh, Doctor Wybrow? A man of your experience. Horrors in madhouses. A lady in delicate health. No, really. Upon my honour, now, I cannot. Something funny, oh yes. But such a subject, oh no.”

He rose to leave us. Dr. Wybrow gently stopped him. “I had a motive, Sir John,” he said, “but I won’t trouble you with needless explanations. There is a person, unknown to me, whom I want to discover. You are a great deal in society when you are in London. May I ask if you have ever met with a gentleman named Winterfield?”

I have always considered the power of self-control as one of the strongest points in my character. For the future I shall be more humble. When I heard that name, my surprise so completely mastered me that I sat self-betrayed to Dr. Wybrow as the man who could answer his question.

In the meanwhile, Sir John took his time to consider, and discovered that he had never heard of a person named Winterfield. Having acknowledged his ignorance, in his own eloquent language, he drifted away to the window-box in the next room, and gravely contemplated Mrs. Eyrecourt, with her nose buried in flowers.

The doctor turned to me. “Am I wrong, Father Benwell, in supposing that I had better have addressed myself to
you?”

I admitted that I knew a gentleman named Winterfield.

Dr. Wybrow got up directly. “Have you a few minutes to spare?” he asked. It is needless to say that I was at the doctor’s disposal. “My house is close by, and my carriage is at the door,” he resumed. “When you feel inclined to say good-by to our friend Mrs. Eyrecourt, I have something to say to you which I think you ought to know.”

We took our departure at once. Mrs. Eyrecourt (leaving some of the colour of her nose among the flowers) patted me encouragingly with her fan, and told the doctor that he was forgiven, on the understanding that he would “never do it again.” In five minutes more we were in Dr. Wybrow’s study.

My watch tells me that I cannot hope to finish this letter by post time. Accept what I have written thus far — and be assured that the conclusion of my report shall follow a day later.

II.

The doctor began cautiously. “Winterfield is not a very common name,” he said. “But it may not be amiss, Father Benwell, to discover, if we can, whether
your
Winterfield is the man of whom I am in search. Do you only know him by name? or are you a friend of his?”

I answered, of course, that I was a friend.

Dr. Wybrow went on. “Will you pardon me if I venture on an indiscreet question? When you are acquainted with the circumstances, I am sure you will understand and excuse me. Are you aware of any — what shall I call it? — any romantic incident in Mr. Winterfield’s past life?”

This time — feeling myself, in all probability, on the brink of discovery — I was careful to preserve my composure. I said, quietly: “Some such incident as you describe has occurred in Mr. Winterfield’s past life.” There I stopped discreetly, and looked as if I knew all about it.

The doctor showed no curiosity to hear more. “My object,” he went on, “was merely to be reasonably sure that I was speaking to the right person, in speaking to you. I may now tell you that I have no personal interest in trying to discover Mr. Winterfield; I only act as the representative of an old friend of mine. He is the proprietor of a private asylum at Sandsworth — a man whose integrity is beyond dispute, or he would not be my friend. You understand my motive in saying this?”

Proprietors of private asylums are, in these days, the objects of very general distrust in England. I understood the doctor’s motive perfectly.

He proceeded. “Yesterday evening, my friend called upon me, and said that he had a remarkable case in his house, which he believed would interest me. The person to whom he alluded was a French boy, whose mental powers had been imperfectly developed from his childhood. The mischief had been aggravated, when he was about thirteen years old, by a serious fright. When he was placed in my asylum, he was not idiotic, and not dangerously mad — it was a case (not to use technical language) of deficient intelligence, tending sometimes toward acts of unreasoning mischief and petty theft, but never approaching to acts of downright violence. My friend was especially interested in the lad — won his confidence and affection by acts of kindness — and so improved his bodily health as to justify some hope of also improving the state of his mind, when a misfortune occurred which has altered the whole prospect. The poor creature has fallen ill of a fever, and the fever has developed to typhus. So far, there has been little to interest you — I am coming to a remarkable event at last. At the stage of the fever when delirium usually occurs in patients of sound mind, this crazy French boy has become perfectly sane and reasonable!”