Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1225 page)

“She won’t disturb
you
, at any rate! Rouse yourself, Cecilia. We are wide awake on this side of the room — and Francine says it’s our turn to amuse her.”

A low murmur, dying away gently in a sigh, was the only answer. Sweet Cecilia had yielded to the somnolent influences of the supper and the night. The soft infection of repose seemed to be in some danger of communicating itself to Francine. Her large mouth opened luxuriously in a long-continued yawn.

“Good-night!” said Emily.

Miss de Sor became wide awake in an instant.

“No,” she said positively; “you are quite mistaken if you think I am going to sleep. Please exert yourself, Miss Emily — I am waiting to be interested.”

Emily appeared to be unwilling to exert herself. She preferred talking of the weather.

“Isn’t the wind rising?” she said.

There could be no doubt of it. The leaves in the garden were beginning to rustle, and the pattering of the rain sounded on the windows.

Francine (as her straight chin proclaimed to all students of physiognomy) was an obstinate girl. Determined to carry her point she tried Emily’s own system on Emily herself — she put questions.

“Have you been long at this school?”

“More than three years.”

“Have you got any brothers and sisters?”

“I am the only child.”

“Are your father and mother alive?”

Emily suddenly raised herself in bed.

“Wait a minute,” she said; “I think I hear it again.”

“The creaking on the stairs?”

“Yes.”

Either she was mistaken, or the change for the worse in the weather made it not easy to hear slight noises in the house. The wind was still rising. The passage of it through the great trees in the garden began to sound like the fall of waves on a distant beach. It drove the rain — a heavy downpour by this time — rattling against the windows.

“Almost a storm, isn’t it?” Emily said

Francine’s last question had not been answered yet. She took the earliest opportunity of repeating it:

“Never mind the weather,” she said. “Tell me about your father and mother. Are they both alive?”

Emily’s reply only related to one of her parents.

“My mother died before I was old enough to feel my loss.”

“And your father?”

Emily referred to another relative — her father’s sister. “Since I have grown up,” she proceeded, “my good aunt has been a second mother to me. My story is, in one respect, the reverse of yours. You are unexpectedly rich; and I am unexpectedly poor. My aunt’s fortune was to have been my fortune, if I outlived her. She has been ruined by the failure of a bank. In her old age, she must live on an income of two hundred a year — and I must get my own living when I leave school.”

“Surely your father can help you?” Francine persisted.

“His property is landed property.” Her voice faltered, as she referred to him, even in that indirect manner. “It is entailed; his nearest male relative inherits it.”

The delicacy which is easily discouraged was not one of the weaknesses in the nature of Francine.

“Do I understand that your father is dead?” she asked.

Our thick-skinned fellow-creatures have the rest of us at their mercy: only give them time, and they carry their point in the end. In sad subdued tones — telling of deeply-rooted reserves of feeling, seldom revealed to strangers — Emily yielded at last.

“Yes,” she said, “my father is dead.”

“Long ago?”

“Some people might think it long ago. I was very fond of my father. It’s nearly four years since he died, and my heart still aches when I think of him. I’m not easily depressed by troubles, Miss de Sor. But his death was sudden — he was in his grave when I first heard of it — and — Oh, he was so good to me; he was so good to me!”

The gay high-spirited little creature who took the lead among them all — who was the life and soul of the school — hid her face in her hands, and burst out crying.

Startled and — to do her justice — ashamed, Francine attempted to make excuses. Emily’s generous nature passed over the cruel persistency that had tortured her. “No no; I have nothing to forgive. It isn’t your fault. Other girls have not mothers and brothers and sisters — and get reconciled to such a loss as mine. Don’t make excuses.”

“Yes, but I want you to know that I feel for you,” Francine insisted, without the slightest approach to sympathy in face, voice, or manner. “When my uncle died, and left us all the money, papa was much shocked. He trusted to time to help him.”

“Time has been long about it with me, Francine. I am afraid there is something perverse in my nature; the hope of meeting again in a better world seems so faint and so far away. No more of it now! Let us talk of that good creature who is asleep on the other side of you. Did I tell you that I must earn my own bread when I leave school? Well, Cecilia has written home and found an employment for me. Not a situation as governess — something quite out of the common way. You shall hear all about it.”

In the brief interval that had passed, the weather had begun to change again. The wind was as high as ever; but to judge by the lessening patter on the windows the rain was passing away.

Emily began.

She was too grateful to her friend and school-fellow, and too deeply interested in her story, to notice the air of indifference with which Francine settled herself on her pillow to hear the praises of Cecilia. The most beautiful girl in the school was not an object of interest to a young lady with an obstinate chin and unfortunately-placed eyes. Pouring warm from the speaker’s heart the story ran smoothly on, to the monotonous accompaniment of the moaning wind. By fine degrees Francine’s eyes closed, opened and closed again. Toward the latter part of the narrative Emily’s memory became, for the moment only, confused between two events. She stopped to consider — noticed Francine’s silence, in an interval when she might have said a word of encouragement — and looked closer at her. Miss de Sor was asleep.

“She might have told me she was tired,” Emily said to herself quietly. “Well! the best thing I can do is to put out the light and follow her example.”

As she took up the extinguisher, the bedroom door was suddenly opened from the outer side. A tall woman, robed in a black dressing-gown, stood on the threshold, looking at Emily.

CHAPTER III. THE LATE MR. BROWN.

The woman’s lean, long-fingered hand pointed to the candle.

“Don’t put it out.” Saying those words, she looked round the room, and satisfied herself that the other girls were asleep.

Emily laid down the extinguisher. “You mean to report us, of course,” she said. “I am the only one awake, Miss Jethro; lay the blame on me.”

“I have no intention of reporting you. But I have something to say.”

She paused, and pushed her thick black hair (already streaked with gray) back from her temples. Her eyes, large and dark and dim, rested on Emily with a sorrowful interest. “When your young friends wake to-morrow morning,” she went on, “you can tell them that the new teacher, whom nobody likes, has left the school.”

For once, even quick-witted Emily was bewildered. “Going away,” she said, “when you have only been here since Easter!”

Miss Jethro advanced, not noticing Emily’s expression of surprise. “I am not very strong at the best of times,” she continued, “may I sit down on your bed?” Remarkable on other occasions for her cold composure, her voice trembled as she made that request — a strange request surely, when there were chairs at her disposal.

Emily made room for her with the dazed look of a girl in a dream. “I beg your pardon, Miss Jethro, one of the things I can’t endure is being puzzled. If you don’t mean to report us, why did you come in and catch me with the light?”

Miss Jethro’s explanation was far from relieving the perplexity which her conduct had caused.

“I have been mean enough,” she answered, “to listen at the door, and I heard you talking of your father. I want to hear more about him. That is why I came in.”

“You knew my father!” Emily exclaimed.

“I believe I knew him. But his name is so common — there are so many thousands of ‘James Browns’ in England — that I am in fear of making a mistake. I heard you say that he died nearly four years since. Can you mention any particulars which might help to enlighten me? If you think I am taking a liberty — ”

Emily stopped her. “I would help you if I could,” she said. “But I was in poor health at the time; and I was staying with friends far away in Scotland, to try change of air. The news of my father’s death brought on a relapse. Weeks passed before I was strong enough to travel — weeks and weeks before I saw his grave! I can only tell you what I know from my aunt. He died of heart-complaint.”

Miss Jethro started.

Emily looked at her for the first time, with eyes that betrayed a feeling of distrust. “What have I said to startle you?” she asked.

“Nothing! I am nervous in stormy weather — don’t notice me.” She went on abruptly with her inquiries. “Will you tell me the date of your father’s death?”

“The date was the thirtieth of September, nearly four years since.”

She waited, after that reply.

Miss Jethro was silent.

“And this,” Emily continued, “is the thirtieth of June, eighteen hundred and eighty-one. You can now judge for yourself. Did you know my father?”

Miss Jethro answered mechanically, using the same words.

“I did know your father.”

Emily’s feeling of distrust was not set at rest. “I never heard him speak of you,” she said.

In her younger days the teacher must have been a handsome woman. Her grandly-formed features still suggested the idea of imperial beauty — perhaps Jewish in its origin. When Emily said, “I never heard him speak of you,” the colour flew into her pallid cheeks: her dim eyes became alive again with a momentary light. She left her seat on the bed, and, turning away, mastered the emotion that shook her.

“How hot the night is!” she said: and sighed, and resumed the subject with a steady countenance. “I am not surprised that your father never mentioned me — to
you
.” She spoke quietly, but her face was paler than ever. She sat down again on the bed. “Is there anything I can do for you,” she asked, “before I go away? Oh, I only mean some trifling service that would lay you under no obligation, and would not oblige you to keep up your acquaintance with me.”

Her eyes — the dim black eyes that must once have been irresistibly beautiful — looked at Emily so sadly that the generous girl reproached herself for having doubted her father’s friend. “Are you thinking of
him
,” she said gently, “when you ask if you can be of service to me?”

Miss Jethro made no direct reply. “You were fond of your father?” she added, in a whisper. “You told your schoolfellow that your heart still aches when you speak of him.”

“I only told her the truth,” Emily answered simply.

Miss Jethro shuddered — on that hot night! — shuddered as if a chill had struck her.

Emily held out her hand; the kind feeling that had been roused in her glittered prettily in her eyes. “I am afraid I have not done you justice,” she said. “Will you forgive me and shake hands?”

Miss Jethro rose, and drew back. “Look at the light!” she exclaimed.

The candle was all burned out. Emily still offered her hand — and still Miss Jethro refused to see it.