Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1236 page)

After mentioning the telegram which had followed Mrs. Rook’s arrival at the school, Emily’s letter proceeded in these terms:

“As soon as I had in some degree recovered myself, I informed Mrs. Rook of my aunt’s serious illness.

“Although she carefully confined herself to commonplace expressions of sympathy, I could see that it was equally a relief to both of us to feel that we were prevented from being traveling companions. Don’t suppose that I have taken a capricious dislike to Mrs. Rook — or that you are in any way to blame for the unfavorable impression which she has produced on me. I will make this plain when we meet. In the meanwhile, I need only tell you that I gave her a letter of explanation to present to Sir Jervis Redwood. I also informed him of my address in London: adding a request that he would forward your letter, in case you have written to me before you receive these lines.

“Kind Mr. Alban Morris accompanied me to the railway-station, and arranged with the guard to take special care of me on the journey to London. We used to think him rather a heartless man. We were quite wrong. I don’t know what his plans are for spending the summer holidays. Go where he may, I remember his kindness; my best wishes go with him.

“My dear, I must not sadden your enjoyment of your pleasant visit to the Engadine, by writing at any length of the sorrow that I am suffering. You know how I love my aunt, and how gratefully I have always felt her motherly goodness to me. The doctor does not conceal the truth. At her age, there is no hope: my father’s last-left relation, my one dearest friend, is dying.

“No! I must not forget that I have another friend — I must find some comfort in thinking of
you
.

“I do so long in my solitude for a letter from my dear Cecilia. Nobody comes to see me, when I most want sympathy; I am a stranger in this vast city. The members of my mother’s family are settled in Australia: they have not even written to me, in all the long years that have passed since her death. You remember how cheerfully I used to look forward to my new life, on leaving school? Good-by, my darling. While I can see your sweet face, in my thoughts, I don’t despair — dark as it looks now — of the future that is before me.”

Emily had closed and addressed her letter, and was just rising from her chair, when she heard the voice of the new nurse at the door.

CHAPTER XV. EMILY.

“May I say a word?” Mrs. Mosey inquired. She entered the room — pale and trembling. Seeing that ominous change, Emily dropped back into her chair.

“Dead?” she said faintly.

Mrs. Mosey looked at her in vacant surprise.

“I wish to say, miss, that your aunt has frightened me.”

Even that vague allusion was enough for Emily.

“You need say no more,” she replied. “I know but too well how my aunt’s mind is affected by the fever.”

Confused and frightened as she was, Mrs. Mosey still found relief in her customary flow of words.

“Many and many a person have I nursed in fever,” she announced. “Many and many a person have I heard say strange things. Never yet, miss, in all my experience — !”

“Don’t tell me of it!” Emily interposed.

“Oh, but I
must
tell you! In your own interests, Miss Emily — in your own interests. I won’t be inhuman enough to leave you alone in the house to-night; but if this delirium goes on, I must ask you to get another nurse. Shocking suspicions are lying in wait for me in that bedroom, as it were. I can’t resist them as I ought, if I go back again, and hear your aunt saying what she has been saying for the last half hour and more. Mrs. Ellmother has expected impossibilities of me; and Mrs. Ellmother must take the consequences. I don’t say she didn’t warn me — speaking, you will please to understand, in the strictest confidence. ‘Elizabeth,’ she says, ‘you know how wildly people talk in Miss Letitia’s present condition. Pay no heed to it,’ she says. ‘Let it go in at one ear and out at the other,’ she says. ‘If Miss Emily asks questions — you know nothing about it. If she’s frightened — you know nothing about it. If she bursts into fits of crying that are dreadful to see, pity her, poor thing, but take no notice.’ All very well, and sounds like speaking out, doesn’t it? Nothing of the sort! Mrs. Ellmother warns me to expect this, that, and the other. But there is one horrid thing (which I heard, mind, over and over again at your aunt’s bedside) that she does
not
prepare me for; and that horrid thing is — Murder!”

At that last word, Mrs. Mosey dropped her voice to a whisper — and waited to see what effect she had produced.

Sorely tried already by the cruel perplexities of her position, Emily’s courage failed to resist the first sensation of horror, aroused in her by the climax of the nurse’s hysterical narrative. Encouraged by her silence, Mrs. Mosey went on. She lifted one hand with theatrical solemnity — and luxuriously terrified herself with her own horrors.

“An inn, Miss Emily; a lonely inn, somewhere in the country; and a comfortless room at the inn, with a makeshift bed at one end of it, and a makeshift bed at the other — I give you my word of honour, that was how your aunt put it. She spoke of two men next; two men asleep (you understand) in the two beds. I think she called them ‘gentlemen’; but I can’t be sure, and I wouldn’t deceive you — you know I wouldn’t deceive you, for the world. Miss Letitia muttered and mumbled, poor soul. I own I was getting tired of listening — when she burst out plain again, in that one horrid word — Oh, miss, don’t be impatient! don’t interrupt me!”

Emily did interrupt, nevertheless. In some degree at least she had recovered herself. “No more of it!” she said — ”I won’t hear a word more.”

But Mrs. Mosey was too resolutely bent on asserting her own importance, by making the most of the alarm that she had suffered, to be repressed by any ordinary method of remonstrance. Without paying the slightest attention to what Emily had said, she went on again more loudly and more excitably than ever.

“Listen, miss — listen! The dreadful part of it is to come; you haven’t heard about the two gentlemen yet. One of them was murdered — what do you think of that! — and the other (I heard your aunt say it, in so many words) committed the crime. Did Miss Letitia fancy she was addressing a lot of people when
you
were nursing her? She called out, like a person making public proclamation, when I was in her room. ‘Whoever you are, good people’ (she says), ‘a hundred pounds reward, if you find the runaway murderer. Search everywhere for a poor weak womanish creature, with rings on his little white hands. There’s nothing about him like a man, except his voice — a fine round voice. You’ll know him, my friends — the wretch, the monster — you’ll know him by his voice.’ That was how she put it; I tell you again, that was how she put it. Did you hear her scream? Ah, my dear young lady, so much the better for you! ‘O the horrid murder’ (she says) — ’hush it up!’ I’ll take my Bible oath before the magistrate,” cried Mrs. Mosey, starting out of her chair, “your aunt said, ‘Hush it up!’“

Emily crossed the room. The energy of her character was roused at last. She seized the foolish woman by the shoulders, forced her back in the chair, and looked her straight in the face without uttering a word.

For the moment, Mrs. Mosey was petrified. She had fully expected — having reached the end of her terrible story — to find Emily at her feet, entreating her not to carry out her intention of leaving the cottage the next morning; and she had determined, after her sense of her own importance had been sufficiently flattered, to grant the prayer of the helpless young lady. Those were her anticipations — and how had they been fulfilled? She had been treated like a mad woman in a state of revolt!

“How dare you assault me?” she asked piteously. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. God knows I meant well.”

“You are not the first person,” Emily answered, quietly releasing her, “who has done wrong with the best intentions.”

“I did my duty, miss, when I told you what your aunt said.”

“You forgot your duty when you listened to what my aunt said.”

“Allow me to explain myself.”

“No: not a word more on
that
subject shall pass between us. Remain here, if you please; I have something to suggest in your own interests. Wait, and compose yourself.”

The purpose which had taken a foremost place in Emily’s mind rested on the firm foundation of her love and pity for her aunt.

Now that she had regained the power to think, she felt a hateful doubt pressed on her by Mrs. Mosey’s disclosures. Having taken for granted that there was a foundation in truth for what she herself had heard in her aunt’s room, could she reasonably resist the conclusion that there must be a foundation in truth for what Mrs. Mosey had heard, under similar circumstances?

There was but one way of escaping from this dilemma — and Emily deliberately took it. She turned her back on her own convictions; and persuaded herself that she had been in the wrong, when she had attached importance to anything that her aunt had said, under the influence of delirium. Having adopted this conclusion, she resolved to face the prospect of a night’s solitude by the death-bed — rather than permit Mrs. Mosey to have a second opportunity of drawing her own inferences from what she might hear in Miss Letitia’s room.

“Do you mean to keep me waiting much longer, miss?”

“Not a moment longer, now you are composed again,” Emily answered. “I have been thinking of what has happened; and I fail to see any necessity for putting off your departure until the doctor comes to-morrow morning. There is really no objection to your leaving me to-night.”

“I beg your pardon, miss; there
is
an objection. I have already told you I can’t reconcile it to my conscience to leave you here by yourself. I am not an inhuman woman,” said Mrs. Mosey, putting her handkerchief to her eyes — smitten with pity for herself.

Emily tried the effect of a conciliatory reply. “I am grateful for your kindness in offering to stay with me,” she said.

“Very good of you, I’m sure,” Mrs. Mosey answered ironically. “But for all that, you persist in sending me away.”

“I persist in thinking that there is no necessity for my keeping you here until to-morrow.”

“Oh, have it your own way! I am not reduced to forcing my company on anybody.”

Mrs. Mosey put her handkerchief in her pocket, and asserted her dignity. With head erect and slowly-marching steps she walked out of the room. Emily was left in the cottage, alone with her dying aunt.

CHAPTER XVI. MISS JETHRO.

A fortnight after the disappearance of Mrs. Ellmother, and the dismissal of Mrs. Mosey, Doctor Allday entered his consulting-room, punctual to the hour at which he was accustomed to receive patients.

An occasional wrinkling of his eyebrows, accompanied by an intermittent restlessness in his movements, appeared to indicate some disturbance of this worthy man’s professional composure. His mind was indeed not at ease. Even the inexcitable old doctor had felt the attraction which had already conquered three such dissimilar people as Alban Morris, Cecilia Wyvil, and Francine de Sor. He was thinking of Emily.

A ring at the door-bell announced the arrival of the first patient.

The servant introduced a tall lady, dressed simply and elegantly in dark apparel. Noticeable features, of a Jewish cast — worn and haggard, but still preserving their grandeur of form — were visible through her veil. She moved with grace and dignity; and she stated her object in consulting Doctor Allday with the ease of a well-bred woman.

“I come to ask your opinion, sir, on the state of my heart,” she said; “and I am recommended by a patient, who has consulted you with advantage to herself.” She placed a card on the doctor’s writing-desk, and added: “I have become acquainted with the lady, by being one of the lodgers in her house.”

The doctor recognised the name — and the usual proceedings ensued. After careful examination, he arrived at a favorable conclusion. “I may tell you at once,” he said — ”there is no reason to be alarmed about the state of your heart.”

“I have never felt any alarm about myself,” she answered quietly. “A sudden death is an easy death. If one’s affairs are settled, it seems, on that account, to be the death to prefer. My object was to settle
my
affairs — such as they are — if you had considered my life to be in danger. Is there nothing the matter with me?”