Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1292 page)

He followed her. “Why are you thinking of the child,” he asked, “at such a time as this?”

She replied without returning or looking round; distrust of herself had inspired her with terror of Linley, from the time when the bracelet had dropped on the grass.

“I can make but one atonement,” she said. “We must see each other no more. I must say good-by to Kitty — I must go. Help me to submit to my hard lot — I must go.”

He set her no example of resignation; he shrank from the prospect that she presented to him.

“Where are you to go if you leave us?” he asked.

“Away from England! The further away from
you
the better for both of us. Help me with your interest; have me sent to the new world in the west, with other emigrants. Give me something to look forward to that is not shame and despair. Let me do something that is innocent and good — I may find a trace of my poor lost brother. Oh, let me go! Let me go!”

Her resolution shamed him. He rose to her level, in spite of himself.

“I dare not tell you that you are wrong,” he said. “I only ask you to wait a little till we are calmer, before you speak of the future again.” He pointed to the summer-house. “Go in, my poor girl. Rest, and compose yourself, while I try to think.”

He left her, and paced up and down the formal walks in the garden. Away from the maddening fascination of her presence, his mind grew clearer. He resisted the temptation to think of her tenderly; he set himself to consider what it would be well to do next.

The moonlight was seen no more. Misty and starless, the dark sky spread its majestic obscurity over the earth. Linley looked wearily toward the eastern heaven. The darkness daunted him; he saw in it the shadow of his own sense of guilt. The gray glimmering of dawn, the songs of birds when the pure light softly climbed the sky, roused and relieved him. With the first radiant rising of the sun he returned to the summer-house.

“Do I disturb you?” he asked, waiting at the door.

“No.”

“Will you come out and speak to me?”

She appeared at the door, waiting to hear what he had to say to her.

“I must ask you to submit to a sacrifice of your own feelings,” he began. “When I kept away from you in the drawing room, last night — when my strange conduct made you fear that you had offended me — I was trying to remember what I owed to my good wife. I have been thinking of her again. We must spare her a discovery too terrible to be endured, while her attention is claimed by the guests who are now in the house. In a week’s time they will leave us. Will you consent to keep up appearances? Will you live with us as usual, until we are left by ourselves?”

“It shall be done, Mr. Linley. I only ask one favor of you. My worst enemy is my own miserable wicked heart. Oh, don’t you understand me? I am ashamed to look at you!”

He had only to examine his own heart, and to know what she meant. “Say no more,” he answered sadly. “We will keep as much away from each other as we can.”

She shuddered at that open recognition of the guilty love which united them, in spite of their horror of it, and took refuge from him in the summer-house. Not a word more passed between them until the unbarring of doors was heard in the stillness of the morning, and the smoke began to rise from the kitchen chimney. Then he returned, and spoke to her.

“You can get back to the house,” he said. “Go up by the front stairs, and you will not meet the servants at this early hour. If they do see you, you have your cloak on; they will think you have been in the garden earlier than usual. As you pass the upper door, draw back the bolts quietly, and I can let myself in.”

She bent her head in silence. He looked after her as she hastened away from him over the lawn; conscious of admiring her, conscious of more than he dared realize to himself. When she disappeared, he turned back to wait where she had been waiting. With his sense of the duty he owed to his wife penitently present to his mind, the memory of that fatal kiss still left its vivid impression on him. “What a scoundrel I am!” he said to himself as he stood alone in the summer-house, looking at the chair which she had just left.

Chapter X. Kitty Mentions Her Birthday.

A clever old lady, possessed of the inestimable advantages of worldly experience, must submit nevertheless to the laws of Nature. Time and Sleep together — powerful agents in the small hours of the morning — had got the better of Mrs. Presty’s resolution to keep awake. Free from discovery, Sydney ascended the stairs. Free from discovery, Sydney entered her own room.

Half-an-hour later, Linley opened the door of his dressing-room. His wife was still sleeping. His mother-in-law woke two hours later; looked at her watch; and discovered that she had lost her opportunity. Other old women, under similar circumstances, might have felt discouraged. This old woman believed in her own suspicions more devoutly than ever. When the breakfast-bell rang, Sydney found Mrs. Presty in the corridor, waiting to say good morning.

“I wonder what you were doing last night, when you ought to have been in bed?” the old lady began, with a treacherous amiability of manner. “Oh, I am not mistaken! your door was open, my dear, and I looked in.”

“Why did you look in, Mrs. Presty?”

“My young friend, I was naturally anxious about you. I am anxious still. Were you in the house? or out of the house?”

“I was walking in the garden,” Sydney replied.

“Admiring the moonlight?”

“Yes; admiring the moonlight.”

“Alone, of course?” Sydney’s friend suggested.

And Sydney took refuge in prevarication. “Why should you doubt it?” she said.

Mrs. Presty wasted no more time in asking questions. She was pleasantly reminded of the words of worldly wisdom which she had addressed to her daughter on the day of Sydney’s arrival at Mount Morven. “The good qualities of that unfortunate young creature” (she had said) “can
not
have always resisted the horrid temptations and contaminations about her. Hundreds of times she must have lied through ungovernable fear.” Elevated a little higher than ever in her own estimation, Mrs. Presty took Sydney’s arm, and led her down to breakfast with motherly familiarity. Linley met them at the foot of the stairs. His mother-in-law first stole a look at Sydney, and then shook hands with him cordially. “My dear Herbert, how pale you are! That horrid smoking. You look as if you had been up all night.”

Mrs. Linley paid her customary visit to the schoolroom that morning.

The necessary attention to her guests had left little leisure for the exercise of observation at the breakfast-table; the one circumstance which had forced itself on her notice had been the boisterous gayety of her husband. Too essentially honest to practice deception of any kind cleverly, Linley had overacted the part of a man whose mind was entirely at ease. The most unsuspicious woman living, his wife was simply amused “How he does enjoy society!” she thought. “Herbert will be a young man to the end of his life.”

In the best possible spirits — still animated by her successful exertions to entertain her friends — Mrs. Linley opened the schoolroom door briskly. “How are the lessons getting on?” she began — and checked herself with a start, “Kitty!” she exclaimed, “Crying?”

The child ran to her mother with tears in her eyes. “Look at Syd! She sulks; she cries; she won’t talk to me — send for the doctor.”

“You tiresome child, I don’t want the doctor. I’m not ill.”

“There, mamma!” cried Kitty. “She never scolded me before to-day.”

In other words, here was a complete reversal of the usual order of things in the schoolroom. Patient Sydney was out of temper; gentle Sydney spoke bitterly to the little friend whom she loved. Mrs. Linley drew a chair to the governess’s side, and took her hand. The strangely altered girl tore her hand away and burst into a violent fit of crying. Puzzled and frightened, Kitty (to the best of a child’s ability) followed her example. Mrs. Linley took her daughter on her knee, and gave Sydney’s outbreak of agitation time to subside. There were no feverish appearances in her face, there was no feverish heat in her skin when their hands had touched each other for a moment. In all probability the mischief was nervous mischief, and the outburst of weeping was an hysterical effort at relief.

“I am afraid, my dear, you have had a bad night,” Mrs. Linley said.

“Bad? Worse than bad!”

Sydney stopped; looked at her good mistress and friend in terror; and made a confused effort to explain away what she had just said. As sensibly and kindly self-possessed as ever, Mrs. Linley told her that she only wanted rest and quiet. “Let me take you to my room,” she proposed. “We will have the sofa moved into the balcony, and you will soon go to sleep in the delicious warm air. You may put away your books, Kitty; this is a holiday. Come with me, and be petted and spoiled by the ladies in the morning-room.”

Neither the governess nor the pupil was worthy of the sympathy so frankly offered to them. Still strangely confused, Sydney made commonplace apologies and asked leave to go out and walk in the park. Hearing this, Kitty declared that where her governess went she would go too. Mrs. Linley smoothed her daughter’s pretty auburn hair, and said, playfully: “I think I ought to be jealous.” To her surprise, Sydney looked up as if the words had been addressed to herself “You mustn’t be fonder, my dear, of your governess,” Mrs. Linley went on, “than you are of your mother.” She kissed the child, and, rising to go, discovered that Sydney had moved to another part of the room. She was standing at the piano, with a page of music in her hand. The page was upside down — and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face. Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something wrong, and with a conviction that she would do well to consult her husband.

Hearing the door close, Sydney looked round. She and Kitty were alone again; and Kitty was putting away her books without showing any pleasure at the prospect of a holiday.

Sydney took the child fondly in her arms. “Would you be very sorry,” she asked, “if I was obliged to go away, some day, and leave you?” Kitty turned pale with terror at the dreadful prospect which those words presented. “There! there! I am only joking,” Sydney said, shocked at the effect which her attempt to suggest the impending separation had produced. “You shall come with me, darling; we will walk in the park together.”

Kitty’s face brightened directly. She proposed extending their walk to the paddock, and feeding the cows. Sydney readily consented. Any amusement was welcome to her which diverted the child’s attention from herself.

They had been nearly an hour in the park, and were returning to the house through a clump of trees, when Sydney’s companion, running on before her, cried: “Here’s papa!” Her first impulse was to draw back behind a tree, in the hope of escaping notice. Linley sent Kitty away to gather a nosegay of daisies, and joined Sydney under the trees.

“I have been looking for you everywhere,” he said. “My wife — ”

Sydney interrupted him. “Discovered!” she exclaimed.

“There is nothing that need alarm you,” he replied. “Catherine is too good and too true herself to suspect others easily. She sees a change in you that she doesn’t understand — she asks if I have noticed it — and that is all. But her mother has the cunning of the devil. There is a serious reason for controlling yourself.”

He spoke so earnestly that he startled her. “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“Angry! Does the man live who could be angry with you?”

“It might be better for both of us if you
were
angry with me. I have to control myself; I will try again. Oh, if you only knew what I suffer when Mrs. Linley is kind to me!”

He persisted in trying to rouse her to a sense of the danger that threatened them, while the visitors remained in the house. “In a few days, Sydney, there will be no more need for the deceit that is now forced on us. Till that time comes, remember — Mrs. Presty suspects us.”

Kitty ran back to them with her hands full of daisies before they could say more.