Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1253 page)

Alban led her to one of the garden chairs. “You’re only a little frightened,” he said. “Rest, and compose yourself.”

She looked over her shoulder toward the house. “Not here! I’ve run away from a she-devil; I want to be out of sight. Further away, Mister — I don’t know your name. Tell me your name; I won’t trust you, unless you tell me your name!”

“Hush! hush! Call me Alban.”

“I never heard of such a name; I won’t trust you.”

“You won’t trust your friend, and Emily’s friend? You don’t mean that, I’m sure. Call me by my other name — call me ‘Morris.’“

“Morris?” she repeated. “Ah, I’ve heard of people called ‘Morris.’ Look back! Your eyes are young — do you see her on the terrace?”

“There isn’t a living soul to be seen anywhere.”

With one hand he raised her as he spoke — and with the other he took up the chair. In a minute more, they were out of sight of the house. He seated her so that she could rest her head against the trunk of a tree.

“What a good fellow!” the poor old creature said, admiring him; “he knows how my head pains me. Don’t stand up! You’re a tall man. She might see you.”

“She can see nothing. Look at the trees behind us. Even the starlight doesn’t get through them.”

Mrs. Ellmother was not satisfied yet. “You take it coolly,” she said. “Do you know who saw us together in the passage to-day? You good Morris,
she
saw us — she did. Wretch! Cruel, cunning, shameless wretch.”

In the shadows that were round them, Alban could just see that she was shaking her clinched fists in the air. He made another attempt to control her. “Don’t excite yourself! If she comes into the garden, she might hear you.”

The appeal to her fears had its effect.

“That’s true,” she said, in lowered tones. A sudden distrust of him seized her the next moment. “Who told me I was excited?” she burst out. “It’s you who are excited. Deny it if you dare; I begin to suspect you, Mr. Morris; I don’t like your conduct. What has become of your pipe? I saw you put your pipe in your coat pocket. You did it when you set me down among the trees where
she
could see me! You are in league with her — she is coming to meet you here — you know she does not like tobacco-smoke. Are you two going to put me in the madhouse?”

She started to her feet. It occurred to Alban that the speediest way of pacifying her might be by means of the pipe. Mere words would exercise no persuasive influence over that bewildered mind. Instant action, of some kind, would be far more likely to have the right effect. He put his pipe and his tobacco pouch into her hands, and so mastered her attention before he spoke.

“Do you know how to fill a man’s pipe for him?” he asked.

“Haven’t I filled my husband’s pipe hundreds of times?” she answered sharply.

“Very well. Now do it for me.”

She took her chair again instantly, and filled the pipe. He lighted it, and seated himself on the grass, quietly smoking. “Do you think I’m in league with her now?” he asked, purposely adopting the rough tone of a man in her own rank of life.

She answered him as she might have answered her husband, in the days of her unhappy marriage.

“Oh, don’t gird at me, there’s a good man! If I’ve been off my head for a minute or two, please not to notice me. It’s cool and quiet here,” the poor woman said gratefully. “Bless God for the darkness; there’s something comforting in the darkness — along with a good man like you. Give me a word of advice. You are my friend in need. What am I to do? I daren’t go back to the house!”

She was quiet enough now, to suggest the hope that she might be able to give Alban some information “Were you with Miss de Sor,” he asked, “before you came out here? What did she do to frighten you?”

There was no answer; Mrs. Ellmother had abruptly risen once more. “Hush!” she whispered. “Don’t I hear somebody near us?”

Alban at once went back, along the winding path which they had followed. No creature was visible in the gardens or on the terrace. On returning, he found it impossible to use his eyes to any good purpose in the obscurity among the trees. He waited a while, listening intently. No sound was audible: there was not even air enough to stir the leaves.

As he returned to the place that he had left, the silence was broken by the chimes of the distant church clock, striking the three-quarters past ten.

Even that familiar sound jarred on Mrs. Ellmother’s shattered nerves. In her state of mind and body, she was evidently at the mercy of any false alarm which might be raised by her own fears. Relieved of the feeling of distrust which had thus far troubled him, Alban sat down by her again — opened his match-box to relight his pipe — and changed his mind. Mrs. Ellmother had unconsciously warned him to be cautious.

For the first time, he thought it likely that the heat in the house might induce some of the inmates to try the cooler atmosphere in the grounds. If this happened, and if he continued to smoke, curiosity might tempt them to follow the scent of tobacco hanging on the stagnant air.

“Is there nobody near us?” Mrs. Ellmother asked. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Now tell me, did you really mean it, when you said just now that you wanted my advice?”

“Need you ask that, sir? Who else have I got to help me?”

“I am ready and willing to help you — but I can’t do it unless I know first what has passed between you and Miss de Sor. Will you trust me?”

“I will!”

“May I depend on you?”

“Try me!”

CHAPTER XXXV. THE TREACHERY OF THE PIPE.

Alban took Mrs. Ellmother at her word. “I am going to venture on a guess,” he said. “You have been with Miss de Sor to-night.”

“Quite true, Mr. Morris.”

“I am going to guess again. Did Miss de Sor ask you to stay with her, when you went into her room?”

“That’s it! She rang for me, to see how I was getting on with my needlework — and she was what I call hearty, for the first time since I have been in her service. I didn’t think badly of her when she first talked of engaging me; and I’ve had reason to repent of my opinion ever since. Oh, she showed the cloven foot to-night! ‘Sit down,’ she says; ‘I’ve nothing to read, and I hate work; let’s have a little chat.’ She’s got a glib tongue of her own. All I could do was to say a word now and then to keep her going. She talked and talked till it was time to light the lamp. She was particular in telling me to put the shade over it. We were half in the dark, and half in the light. She trapped me (Lord knows how!) into talking about foreign parts; I mean the place she lived in before they sent her to England. Have you heard that she comes from the West Indies?”

“Yes; I have heard that. Go on.”

“Wait a bit, sir. There’s something, by your leave, that I want to know. Do you believe in Witchcraft?”

“I know nothing about it. Did Miss de Sor put that question to you?”

“She did.”

“And how did you answer?”

“Neither in one way nor the other. I’m in two minds about that matter of Witchcraft. When I was a girl, there was an old woman in our village, who was a sort of show. People came to see her from all the country round — gentlefolks among them. It was her great age that made her famous. More than a hundred years old, sir! One of our neighbours didn’t believe in her age, and she heard of it. She cast a spell on his flock. I tell you, she sent a plague on his sheep, the plague of the Bots. The whole flock died; I remember it well. Some said the sheep would have had the Bots anyhow. Some said it was the spell. Which of them was right? How am I to settle it?”

“Did you mention this to Miss de Sor?”

“I was obliged to mention it. Didn’t I tell you, just now, that I can’t make up my mind about Witchcraft? ‘You don’t seem to know whether you believe or disbelieve,’ she says. It made me look like a fool. I told her I had my reasons, and then I was obliged to give them.”

“And what did she do then?”

“She said, ‘I’ve got a better story of Witchcraft than yours.’ And she opened a little book, with a lot of writing in it, and began to read. Her story made my flesh creep. It turns me cold, sir, when I think of it now.”

He heard her moaning and shuddering. Strongly as his interest was excited, there was a compassionate reluctance in him to ask her to go on. His merciful scruples proved to be needless. The fascination of beauty it is possible to resist. The fascination of horror fastens its fearful hold on us, struggle against it as we may. Mrs. Ellmother repeated what she had heard, in spite of herself.

“It happened in the West Indies,” she said; “and the writing of a woman slave was the writing in the little book. The slave wrote about her mother. Her mother was a black — a Witch in her own country. There was a forest in her own country. The devil taught her Witchcraft in the forest. The serpents and the wild beasts were afraid to touch her. She lived without eating. She was sold for a slave, and sent to the island — an island in the West Indies. An old man lived there; the wickedest man of them all. He filled the black Witch with devilish knowledge. She learned to make the image of wax. The image of wax casts spells. You put pins in the image of wax. At every pin you put, the person under the spell gets nearer and nearer to death. There was a poor black in the island. He offended the Witch. She made his image in wax; she cast spells on him. He couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t eat; he was such a coward that common noises frightened him. Like Me! Oh, God, like me!”

“Wait a little,” Alban interposed. “You are exciting yourself again — wait.”

“You’re wrong, sir! You think it ended when she finished her story, and shut up her book; there’s worse to come than anything you’ve heard yet. I don’t know what I did to offend her. She looked at me and spoke to me, as if I was the dirt under her feet. ‘If you’re too stupid to understand what I have been reading,’ she says, ‘get up and go to the glass. Look at yourself, and remember what happened to the slave who was under the spell. You’re getting paler and paler, and thinner and thinner; you’re pining away just as he did. Shall I tell you why?’ She snatched off the shade from the lamp, and put her hand under the table, and brought out an image of wax.
My
image! She pointed to three pins in it. ‘One,’ she says, ‘for no sleep. One for no appetite. One for broken nerves.’ I asked her what I had done to make such a bitter enemy of her. She says, ‘Remember what I asked of you when we talked of your being my servant. Choose which you will do? Die by inches’ (I swear she said it as I hope to be saved); ‘die by inches, or tell me — ’“

There — in the full frenzy of the agitation that possessed her — there, Mrs. Ellmother suddenly stopped.

Alban’s first impression was that she might have fainted. He looked closer, and could just see her shadowy figure still seated in the chair. He asked if she was ill. No.

“Then why don’t you go on?”

“I have done,” she answered.

“Do you think you can put me off,” he rejoined sternly, “with such an excuse as that? What did Miss de Sor ask you to tell her? You promised to trust me. Be as good as your word.”

In the days of her health and strength, she would have set him at defiance. All she could do now was to appeal to his mercy.

“Make some allowance for me,” she said. “I have been terribly upset. What has become of my courage? What has broken me down in this way? Spare me, sir.”

He refused to listen. “This vile attempt to practice on your fears may be repeated,” he reminded her. “More cruel advantage may be taken of the nervous derangement from which you are suffering in the climate of this place. You little know me, if you think I will allow that to go on.”

She made a last effort to plead with him. “Oh sir, is this behaving like the good kind man I thought you were? You say you are Miss Emily’s friend? Don’t press me — for Miss Emily’s sake!”

“Emily!” Alban exclaimed. “Is
she
concerned in this?”