Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1294 page)

Waiting for Sydney to come into the bedroom as usual and wish her good-night, Kitty was astonished by the appearance of her grandmother, entering on tiptoe from the corridor, with a small paper parcel in her hand.

“Whisper!” said Mrs. Presty, pointing to the open door of communication with Mrs. Linley’s room. “This is your birthday present. You mustn’t look at it till you wake to-morrow morning.” She pushed the parcel under the pillow — and, instead of saying good-night, took a chair and sat down.

“May I show my present,” Kitty asked, “when I go to mamma in the morning?”

The present hidden under the paper wrapper was a sixpenny picture-book. Kitty’s grandmother disapproved of spending money lavishly on birthday gifts to children. “Show it, of course; and take the greatest care of it,” Mrs. Presty answered gravely. “But tell me one thing, my dear, wouldn’t you like to see all your presents early in the morning, like mine?”

Still smarting under the recollection of her interview with her son-in-law, Mrs. Presty had certain ends to gain in putting this idea into the child’s head. It was her special object to raise domestic obstacles to a private interview between the husband and wife during the earlier hours of the day. If the gifts, usually presented after the nursery dinner, were produced on this occasion after breakfast, there would be a period of delay before any confidential conversation could take place between Mr. and Mrs. Linley. In this interval Mrs. Presty saw her opportunity of setting Linley’s authority at defiance, by rousing the first jealous suspicion in the mind of his wife.

Innocent little Kitty became her grandmother’s accomplice on the spot. “I shall ask mamma to let me have my presents at breakfast-time,” she announced.

“And kind mamma will say Yes,” Mrs. Presty chimed in. “We will breakfast early, my precious child. Good-night.”

Kitty was half asleep when her governess entered the room afterward, much later than usual. “I thought you had forgotten me,” she said, yawning and stretching out her plump little arms.

Sydney’s heart ached when she thought of the separation that was to come with the next day; her despair forced its way to expression in words.

“I wish I could forget you,” she answered, in reckless wretchedness.

The child was still too drowsy to hear plainly. “What did you say?” she asked. Sydney gently lifted her in the bed, and kissed her again and again. Kitty’s sleepy eyes opened in surprise. “How cold your hands are!” she said; “and how often you kiss me. What is it you have come to say to me — good-night or good-by?”

Sydney laid her down again on the pillow, gave her a last kiss, and ran out of the room.

In the corridor she heard Linley’s voice on the lower floor. He was asking one of the servants if Miss Westerfield was in the house or in the garden. Her first impulse was to advance to the stairs and to answer his question. In a moment more the remembrance of Mrs. Linley checked her. She went back to her bed-chamber. The presents that she had received, since her arrival at Mount Morven, were all laid out so that they could be easily seen by any person entering the room, after she had left the house. On the sofa lay the pretty new dress which she had worn at the evening party. Other little gifts were arranged on either side of it. The bracelet, resting on the pedestal of a statue close by, kept a morsel of paper in its place — on which she had written a few penitent words of farewell addressed to Mrs. Linley. On the toilet-table three photographic portraits showed themselves among the brushes and combs. She sat down, and looked first at the likenesses of Mrs. Linley and Kitty.

Had she any right to make those dear faces her companions in the future?

She hesitated; her tears dropped on the photographs. “They’re as good as spoiled now,” she thought; “they’re no longer fit for anybody but me.” She paused, and abruptly took up the third and last photograph — the likeness of Herbert Linley.

Was it an offense, now, even to look at his portrait? No idea of leaving it behind her was in her mind. Her resolution vibrated between two miseries — the misery of preserving her keep-sake after she had parted from him forever, and the misery of destroying it. Resigned to one more sacrifice, she took the card in both hands to tear it up. It would have been scattered in pieces on the floor, but for the chance which had turned the portrait side of the card toward her instead of the back. Her longing eyes stole a last look at him — a frenzy seized her — she pressed her lips to the photograph in a passion of hopeless love. “What does it matter?” she asked herself. “I’m nothing but the ignorant object of his kindness — the poor fool who could see no difference between gratitude and love. Where is the harm of having him with me when I am starving in the streets, or dying in the workhouse?” The fervid spirit in her that had never known a mother’s loving discipline, never thrilled to the sympathy of a sister-friend, rose in revolt against the evil destiny which had imbittered her life. Her eyes still rested on the photograph. “Come to my heart, my only friend, and kill me!” As those wild words escaped her, she thrust the card furiously into the bosom of her dress — and threw herself on the floor. There was something in the mad self-abandonment of that action which mocked the innocent despair of her childhood, on the day when her mother left her at the cruel mercy of her aunt.

That night was a night of torment in secret to another person at Mount Morven.

Wandering, in his need of self-isolation, up and down the dreary stone passages in the lower part of the house, Linley counted the hours, inexorably lessening the interval between him and the ordeal of confession to his wife. As yet, he had failed to find the opportunity of addressing to Sydney the only words of encouragement he could allow to pass his lips: he had asked for her earlier in the evening, and nobody could tell him where she was. Still in ignorance of the refuge which she might by bare possibility hope to find in Mrs. MacEdwin’s house, Sydney was spared the torturing doubts which now beset Herbert Linley’s mind. Would the noble woman whom they had injured allow their atonement to plead for them, and consent to keep their miserable secret? Might they still put their trust in that generous nature a few hours hence? Again and again those questions confronted Linley; and again and again he shrank from attempting to answer them.

Chapter XIII. Kitty Keeps Her Birthday.

They were all assembled as usual at the breakfast-table.

Preferring the request suggested to her by Mrs. Presty, Kitty had hastened the presentation of the birthday gifts, by getting into her mother’s bed in the morning, and exacting her mother’s promise before she would consent to get out again. By her own express wish, she was left in ignorance of what the presents would prove to be. “Hide them from me,” said this young epicure in pleasurable sensations, “and make me want to see them until I can bear it no longer.” The gifts had accordingly been collected in an embrasure of one of the windows; and the time had now arrived when Kitty could bear it no longer.

In the procession of the presents, Mrs. Linley led the way.

She had passed behind the screen which had thus far protected the hidden treasures from discovery, and appeared again with a vision of beauty in the shape of a doll. The dress of this wonderful creature exhibited the latest audacities of French fashion. Her head made a bow; her eyes went to sleep and woke again; she had a voice that said two words — more precious than two thousand in the mouth of a mere living creature. Kitty’s arms opened and embraced her gift with a scream of ecstasy. That fervent pressure found its way to the right spring. The doll squeaked: “Mamma!” — and creaked — and cried again — and said: “Papa!” Kitty sat down on the floor; her legs would support her no longer. “I think I shall faint,” she said quite seriously.

In the midst of the general laughter, Sydney silently placed a new toy (a pretty little imitation of a jeweler’s casket) at Kitty’s side, and drew back before the child could look at her. Mrs. Presty was the only person present who noticed her pale face and the trembling of her hands as she made the effort which preserved her composure.

The doll’s necklace, bracelets, and watch and chain, riveted Kitty’s attention on the casket. Just as she thought of looking round for her dear Syd, her father produced a new outburst of delight by presenting a perambulator worthy of the doll. Her uncle followed with a parasol, devoted to the preservation of the doll’s complexion when she went out for an airing. Then there came a pause. Where was the generous grandmother’s gift? Nobody remembered it; Mrs. Presty herself discovered the inestimable sixpenny picture-book cast away and forgotten on a distant window-seat. “I have a great mind to keep this,” she said to Kitty, “till you are old enough to value it properly.” In the moment of her absence at the window, Linley’s mother-in-law lost the chance of seeing him whisper to Sydney. “Meet me in the shrubbery in half an hour,” he said. She stepped back from him, startled by the proposal. When Mrs. Presty was in the middle of the room again, Linley and the governess were no longer near each other.

Having by this time recovered herself, Kitty got on her legs. “Now,” the spoiled child declared, addressing the company present, “I’m going to play.”

The doll was put into the perambulator, and was wheeled about the room, while Mrs. Linley moved the chairs out of the way, and Randal attended with the open parasol — under orders to “pretend that the sun was shining.” Once more the sixpenny picture-book was neglected. Mrs. Presty picked it up from the floor, determined by this time to hold it in reserve until her ungrateful grandchild reached years of discretion. She put it in the bookcase between Byron’s “Don Juan” and Butler’s “Lives of the Saints.” In the position which she now occupied, Linley was visible approaching Sydney again. “Your own interests are seriously concerned,” he whispered, “in something that I have to tell you.”

Incapable of hearing what passed between them, Mrs. Presty could see that a secret understanding united her son-in-law and the governess. She looked round cautiously at Mrs. Linley.

Kitty’s humour had changed; she was now eager to see the doll’s splendid clothes taken off and put on again. “Come and look at it,” she said to Sydney; “I want you to enjoy my birthday as much as I do.” Left by himself, Randal got rid of the parasol by putting it on a table near the door. Mrs. Presty beckoned to him to join her at the further end of the room.

“I want you to do me a favor,” she began.

Glancing at Linley before she proceeded, Mrs. Presty took up a newspaper, and affected to be consulting Randal’s opinion on a passage which had attracted her attention. “Your brother is looking our way,” she whispered: “he mustn’t suspect that there is a secret between us.”

False pretenses of any kind invariably irritated Randal. “What do you want me to do?” he asked sharply.

The reply only increased his perplexity.

“Observe Miss Westerfield and your brother. Look at them now.”

Randal obeyed.

“What is there to look at?” he inquired.

“Can’t you see?”

“I see they are talking to each other.”

“They are talking confidentially; talking so that Mrs. Linley can’t hear them. Look again.”

Randal fixed his eyes on Mrs. Presty, with an expression which showed his dislike of that lady a little too plainly. Before he could answer what she had just said to him, his lively little niece hit on a new idea. The sun was shining, the flowers were in their brightest beauty — and the doll had not yet been taken into the garden! Kitty at once led the way out; so completely preoccupied in steering the perambulator in a straight course that she forgot her uncle and the parasol. Only waiting to remind her husband and Sydney that they were wasting the beautiful summer morning indoors, Mrs. Linley followed her daughter — and innocently placed a fatal obstacle in Mrs. Presty’s way by leaving the room. Having consulted each other by a look, Linley and the governess went out next. Left alone with Randal, Mrs. Presty’s anger, under the complete overthrow of her carefully-laid scheme, set restraint at defiance.

“My daughter’s married life is a wreck,” she burst out, pointing theatrically to the door by which Linley and Sydney Westerfield had retired. “And Catherine has the vile creature whom your brother picked up in London to thank for it! Now do you understand me?”

“Less than ever,” Randal answered — ”unless you have taken leave of your senses.”

Mrs. Presty recovered the command of her temper.