Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1335 page)

The sluggish river looked muddier than ever, the new cottage looked uglier than ever, exposed to the searching ordeal of sunlight. I knocked at the door on the ancient side of the building.

Cristel’s father — shall I confess I had hoped that it might be Cristel herself? — let me in. In by-gone days, I dimly remembered him as old and small and withered. Advancing years had wasted him away, in the interval, until his white miller’s clothes hung about him in empty folds. His fleshless face would have looked like the face of a mummy, but for the restless brightness of his little watchful black eyes. He stared at me in momentary perplexity, and, suddenly recovering himself, asked me to walk in.

“Are you the young master, sir? Ah, yes, yes; I thought so. My girl Cristy said she saw the young master last night. Thank you kindly, sir; I’m pretty well, considering how I’ve fallen away in my flesh. I have got a fine appetite, but somehow or other, my meals don’t show on me. You will excuse my receiving you in the kitchen, sir; it’s the best room we have. Did Cristy tell you how badly we are off here for repairs? You being our landlord, we look to you to help us. We are falling to pieces, as it were, on this old side of the house. There’s first drains —
 
— ”

He proceeded to reckon up the repairs, counting with his fleshless thumb on his skinny fingers, when he was interrupted by a curious succession of sounds which began with whining, and ended with scratching at the cottage door.

In a minute after, the door was opened from without. A brown dog, of the companionable retriever breed, ran in and fawned upon old Toller. Cristel followed (from the kitchen garden), with a basket of vegetables on her arm. Unlike the river and the cottage, she gained by being revealed in the brilliant sunlight. I now saw, in their full beauty, the luster of her brown eyes, the warm rosiness of her dark complexion, the delightful vivacity of expression which was the crowning charm of her face. She paused confusedly in the doorway, and tried to resist me when I insisted on relieving her of the basket.

“Mr. Gerard,” she protested, “you are treating me as if I was a young lady. What would they say at the great house, if they knew you had done that?”

My answer would no doubt have assumed the form of a foolish compliment, if her father had not spared her that infliction. He returned to the all-important question, the question of repairs.

“You see, sir, it’s no use speaking to the bailiff. Saving your presence, he’s a miser with his master’s money. He says, ‘All right,’ and he does nothing. There’s first, as I told you just now, the truly dreadful state of the drains —
 
— ”

I tried to stop him by promising to speak to the bailiff myself. On hearing this good news, Mr. Toller’s gratitude became ungovernable: he was more eager than ever, and more eloquent than ever, in returning to the repairs.

“And then, sir, there’s the oven. They do call bread the staff of life. It’s a burnt staff at one time, and a clammy staff at another, in our domestic experience. Satisfy yourself, sir; do please cross the kitchen and look with your own eyes at the state, the scandalous state, of the oven.”

His daughter interfered, and stopped him at the critical moment when he was actually offering his arm to conduct me in state across the kitchen. Cristel had just put her pretty brown hand over his mouth, and said, “Oh, father, do pray be quiet!” when we were all three disturbed by another interruption.

A second door communicating, as I concluded from its position, with the new cottage, was suddenly opened. In the instant before the person behind it appeared, the dog looked that way — started up, frightened — and took refuge under the table. At the next moment, the deaf Lodger walked into the room. It was he beyond all doubt who had frightened the dog, forewarned by instinct of his appearance.

What I had read of his writing disposed me, now that I saw the man by daylight, to find something devilish in the expression of his face. No! strong as it was, my prejudice failed to make any discoveries that presented him at a disadvantage. His personal attractions triumphed in the clear searching light. I now perceived that his eyes were of that deeply dark blue, which is commonly and falsely described as resembling the colour of the violet. To my thinking, they were so entirely beautiful that they had no right to be in a man’s face. I might have felt the same objection to the pale delicacy of his complexion, to the soft profusion of his reddish-brown hair, to his finely shaped sensitive lips, but for two marked peculiarities in him which would have shown me to be wrong — that is to say: the expression of power about his head, and the signs of masculine resolution presented by his mouth and chin.

On entering the room, the first person, and the only person, who attracted his attention was Cristel.

He bowed, smiled, possessed himself abruptly of her hand, and kissed it. She tried to withdraw it from his grasp, and met with an obstinate resistance. His gallantry addressed her in sweet words; and his voice destroyed their charm by the dreary monotony of the tone in which he spoke. “On this lovely day, Cristel, Nature pleads for me. Your heart feels the sunshine and softens towards the poor deaf man who worships you. Ah, my dear, it’s useless to say No. My affliction is my happiness, when you say cruel things to me. I live in my fool’s paradise; I don’t hear you.” He tried to draw her nearer to him. “Come, my angel; let me kiss you.”

She made a second attempt to release herself; and this time, she wrenched her hand out of his grasp with a strength for which he was not prepared.

That fiercest anger which turns the face pale, was the anger that had possession of Cristel as she took refuge with her father. “You asked me to bear with that man,” she said, “because he paid you a good rent. I tell you this, father; my patience is coming to an end. Either he must go, or I must go. Make up your mind to choose between your money and me.”

Old Toller astonished me. He seemed to have caught the infection of his daughter’s anger. Placed between Cristel and his money, he really acted as if he preferred Cristel. He hobbled up to his lodger, and shook his infirm fists, and screamed at the highest pitch of his old cracked voice: “Let her be, or I won’t have you here no longer! You deaf adder, let her be!”

The sensitive nerves of the deaf man shrank as those shrill tones pierced them. “If you want to speak to me, write it!” he said, with rage and suffering in every line of his face. He tore from his pocket his little book, filled with blank leaves, and threw it at Toller’s head. “Write,” he repeated. “If you murder me with your screeching again, look out for your skinny throat — I’ll throttle you.”

Cristel picked up the book. She was gratefully sensible of her father’s interference. “He shall know what you said to him,” she promised the old man. “I’ll write it myself.”

She took the pencil from its sheath in the leather binding of the book. Controlling himself, the lover whom she hated advanced towards her with a persuasive smile.

“Have you forgiven me?” he asked. “Have you been speaking kindly of me? I think I see it in your face. There are some deaf people who can tell what is said by looking at the speaker’s lips. I am too stupid, or too impatient, or too wicked to be able to do that. Write it for me, dear, and make me happy for the day.”

Cristel was not attending to him, she was speaking to me. “I hope, sir, you don’t think that father and I are to blame for what has happened this morning,” she said. He looked where she was looking — and discovered, for the first time, that I was in the room.

He had alluded to his wickedness a moment since. When his face turned my way, I thought it bore witness to his knowledge of his own character.

“Why didn’t you come to my side of the house?” he said to me. “What am I to understand, sir, by seeing you here?”

Cristel dropped his book on the table, and hurried to me in breathless surprise. “He speaks as if he knew you!” she cried. “What does it mean?”

“Only that I met him last night,” I explained, “after leaving you.”

“Did you know him before that?”

“No. He was a perfect stranger to me.”

He picked up his book from the table, and took his pencil out of Cristel’s hand, while we were speaking. “I want my answer,” he said, handing me the book and the pencil. I gave him his answer.

“You find me here, because I don’t wish to return to your side of the house.”

“Is that the impression,” he asked, “produced by what I allowed you to read?”

I replied by a sign in the affirmative. He inquired next if I had brought his portfolio with me. I put it at once into his hand.

In some way unknown to me, I had apparently roused his suspicions. He opened the portfolio, and counted the loose leaves of writing in it carefully. While he was absorbed in this occupation, old Toller’s eccentricity assumed a new form. His little restless black eyes followed the movements of his lodger’s fingers, as they turned over leaf after leaf of the manuscript, with such eager curiosity and interest that I looked at him in surprise. Finding that he had attracted my notice, he showed no signs of embarrassment — he seized the opportunity of asking for information.

“Did my gentleman trust you, sir, with all that writing?” he began.

“Yes.”

“Did he want you to read it?”

“He did.”

“What’s it all about, sir?”

Confronted by this cool inquiry, I informed Mr. Toller that the demands of curiosity had their limits, and that he had reached them. On this ground, I declined to answer any more questions. Mr. Toller went on with his questions immediately.

“Do you notice, sir, that he seems to set a deal of store by his writings? Perhaps you can say what the value of them may be?”

I shook my head. “It won’t do, Mr. Toller!”

He tried again — I declare it positively, he tried again. “You’ll excuse me, sir? I’ve never seen his portfolio before. Am I right if I think you know where he keeps it?”

“Spare your breath, Mr. Toller. Once more, it won’t do!”

Cristel joined us, amazed at his pertinacity. “Why are you so anxious, father, to know about that portfolio?” she asked.

Her father seemed to have reasons of his own for following my example and declining to answer questions. More polite, however, than I had been, he left his resolution to be inferred. His daughter was answered by a few general remarks, setting forth the advantage to the landlord of having a lodger who had lost one of senses.

“You see there’s something convenient, my dear, in the circumstance of that nice-looking gentleman over there being deaf. We can talk about him before his face, just as comfortably as if it was behind his back. Isn’t that so, Mr. Gerard? Don’t you see it yourself, Cristy? For instance, I say it without fear in his presence: ‘tis the act of a fool to be fumbling over writings, when there’s nothing in them that’s not well known to himself already — unless indeed they are worth money, which I don’t doubt is no secret to
you,
Mr. Gerard? Eh? I beg your pardon, sir, did you speak? No? I beg your pardon again. Yes, yes, Cristy, I’m noticing him; he’s done with his writings. Suppose I offer to put them away for him? You can see in his face he finds the tale of them correct. He’s coming this way. What’s he going to do next?”

He was going to establish a claim on my gratitude, by relieving me of Giles Toller.

“I have something to say to Mr. Roylake,” he announced, with a haughty look at his landlord. “Mind! I don’t forget your screaming at me just now, and I intend to know what you meant by it. That will do. Get out of the way.”

The old fellow received his dismissal with a low bow, and left the kitchen with a look at the Lodger which revealed (unless I was entirely mistaken) a sly sense of triumph. What did it mean?

The deaf man addressed me with a cold and distant manner. “We must understand each other,” he said. “Will you follow me to my side of the cottage?” I shook my head. “Very well,” he resumed; “we will have it out, here. When I trusted you with my confession last night, I left you to decide (after reading it) whether you would make an enemy of me or not. You remember that?” I nodded my head. “Then I now ask you, Mr. Roylake: Which are we — enemies or friends?”

I took the pencil, and wrote my reply: