Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1336 page)

“Neither enemies nor friends. We are strangers from this time forth.”

Some internal struggle produced a change in his face — visible for one moment, hidden from me in a moment more. “I think you will regret the decision at which you have arrived.” He said that, and saluted me with his grandly gracious bow. As he turned away, he perceived Cristel at the other end of the room, and eagerly joined her.

“The only happy moments I have are my moments passed in your presence,” he said. “I shall trouble you no more for to-day. Give me a little comfort to take back with me to my solitude. I didn’t notice that there were other persons present when I asked leave to kiss you. May I hope that you forgive me?”

He held out his hand; it was not taken. He waited a little, in the vain hope that she would relent: she turned away from him.

A spasm of pain distorted his handsome face. He opened the door that led to his side of the cottage — paused — and looked back at Cristel. She took no notice of him. As he moved again to the door and left us, the hysterical passion in him forced its way outward — he burst into tears.

The dog sprang up from his refuge under the table, and shook himself joyfully. Cristel breathed again freely, and joined me at my end of the room. Shall I make another acknowledgment of weakness? I began to fear that we might all of us (even including the dog!) have been a little hard on the poor deaf wretch who had gone away in such bitter distress. I communicated this view of the matter to Cristel. She failed to see it as I did.

The dog laid his head on her lap, asking to be caressed. She patted him while she answered me.

“I agree with this old friend, Mr. Gerard. We were both of us frightened, on the very first day, when the person you are pitying came to lodge with us. I have got to hate him, since that time — perhaps to despise him. But the dog has never changed; he feels and knows there is something dreadful in that man. One of these days, poor Ponto may turn out to be right. — May I ask you something, sir?”

“Of course!”

“You won’t think I am presuming on your kindness?”

“You ought to know me better than that, Cristel!”

“The truth is, sir, I have been a little startled by what I saw in our lodger’s face, when he asked if you were his enemy or his friend. I know he is thought to be handsome — but, Mr. Gerard, those beautiful eyes of his sometimes tell tales; and I have seen his pretty complexion change to a colour that turned him into an ugly man. Will you tell me what you wrote when you answered him?”

I repeated what I had written, word for word. It failed to satisfy her.

“He is very vain,” she said, “and you may have wounded his vanity by treating him like a stranger, after he had given you his writings to read, and invited you to his room. But I thought I saw something much worse than mortification in his face. Shall I be taking a liberty, if I ask how it was you got acquainted with him last night?”

She was evidently in earnest. I saw that I must answer her without reserve; and I was a little afraid of being myself open to a suspicion of vanity, if I mentioned the distrust which I had innocently excited in the mind of my new acquaintance. In this state of embarrassment I took a young man’s way out of the difficulty, and spoke lightly of a serious thing.

“I became acquainted with your deaf Lodger, Cristel, under ridiculous circumstances. He saw us talking last night, and did me the honour to be jealous of me.”

I had expected to see her blush. To my surprise she turned pale, and vehemently remonstrated.

“Don’t laugh, sir! There’s nothing to be amused at in what you have just told me. You didn’t go into his room last night? Oh, what made you do that!”

I described his successful appeal to my compassion — not very willingly, for it made me look (as I thought) like a weak person. Little by little, she extracted from me the rest: how he objected to find a young man, especially in my social position, talking to Cristel; how he insisted on my respecting his claims, and engaging not to see her again; how, when I refused to do this, he gave me his confession to read, so that I might find out what a formidable man I was setting at defiance; how I had not been in the least alarmed, and had treated him (as Cristel had just heard) on the footing of a perfect stranger.

“There’s the whole story,” I concluded. “Like a scene in a play, isn’t it?”

She protested once more against the light tone that I persisted in assuming.

“I tell you again, sir, this is no laughing matter. You have roused his jealousy. You had better have roused the fury of a wild beast. Knowing what you know of him, why did you stay here, when he came in? And, oh, why did I humiliate him in your presence? Leave us, Mr. Gerard — pray, pray leave us, and don’t come near this place again till father has got rid of him.”

Did she think I was to be so easily frightened as that? My sense of my own importance was up in arms at the bare suspicion of it!

“My dear child,” I said grandly, “do you really suppose I am afraid of that poor wretch? Am I to give up the pleasure of seeing you, because a mad fellow is simple enough to think you will marry him? Absurd, Cristel — absurd!”

The poor girl wrung her hands in despair.

“Oh, sir, don’t distress me by talking in that way! Do please remember who you are, and who I am. If I was the miserable means of your coming to any harm — I can’t bear even to speak of it! Pray don’t think me bold; I don’t know how to express myself. You ought never to have come here; you ought to go; you
must
go!”

Driven by strong impulse, she ran to the place in which I had left my hat, and brought it to me, and opened the door with a look of entreaty which it was impossible to resist. It would have been an act of downright cruelty to persist in opposing her. “I wouldn’t distress you, Cristel, for the whole world,” I said — and left her to conclude that I had felt the influence of her entreaties in the right way. She tried to thank me; the tears rose in her eyes — she signed to me to leave her, poor soul, as if she felt ashamed of herself. I was shocked; I was grieved; I was more than ever secretly resolved to go back to her. When we said good-bye — I have been told that I did wrong; I meant no harm — I kissed her.

Having traversed the short distance between the cottage and the wood, I remembered that I had left my walking-stick behind me, and returned to get it.

Cristel was leaving the kitchen; I saw her at the door which communicated with the Lodger’s side of the cottage. Her back was turned towards me; astonishment held me silent. She opened the door, passed through it, and closed it behind her.

Going to that man, after she had repelled his advances, in my presence! Going to the enemy against whom she had warned me, after I had first been persuaded to leave her! Angry thoughts these — and surely thoughts unworthy of me? If it had been the case of another man I should have said he was jealous. Jealous of the miller’s daughter — in my position? Absurd! contemptible! But I was still in such a vile temper that I determined to let Cristel know she had been discovered. Taking one of my visiting cards, I wrote on it: “I came back for my stick, and saw you go to him.” After I had pinned this spiteful little message to the door, so that she might see it when she returned, I suffered a disappointment. I was not half so well satisfied with myself as I had anticipated.

CHAPTER VII

THE BEST SOCIETY

Leaving the cottage for the second time, I was met at the door by a fat man of solemn appearance dressed in black, who respectfully touched his hat. My angry humour acknowledged the harmless stranger’s salute by a rude inquiry: “What the devil do you want?” Instead of resenting this uncivil language, he indirectly reproved me by becoming more respectful than ever.

“My mistress desires me to tell you, sir, that luncheon is waiting.” I was in the presence of a thoroughbred English servant — and I had failed to discover it until he spoke of his mistress! I had also, by keeping luncheon waiting, treated an English institution with contempt. And, worse even than this, as a misfortune which personally affected me, my stepmother evidently knew that I had paid another visit to the mill.

I hurried along the woodland path, followed by the fat domestic in black. Not used apparently to force his legs into rapid motion, he articulated with the greatest difficulty in answering my next question: “How did you know where to find me?”

“Mrs. Roylake ordered inquiries to be made, sir. The head gardener — ” There his small reserves of breath failed him.

“The head gardener saw me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When?”

“Hours ago, sir — when you went into Toller’s cottage.”

I troubled my fat friend with no more questions.

Returning to the house, and making polite apologies, I discovered one more among Mrs. Roylake’s many accomplishments. She possessed two smiles — a sugary smile (with which I was already acquainted), and an acid smile which she apparently reserved for special occasions. It made its appearance when I led her to the luncheon table.

“Don’t let me detain you,” my stepmother began.

“Won’t you give me some luncheon?” I inquired.

“Dear me! hav’n’t you lunched already?”

“Where should I lunch, my dear lady?” I thought this would induce the sugary smile to show itself. I was wrong.

“Where?” Mrs. Roylake repeated. “With your friends at the mill of course. Very inhospitable not to offer you lunch. When are we to have flour cheaper?”

I began to get sulky. All I said was: “I don’t know.”

“Curious!” Mrs. Roylake observed. “You not only don’t get luncheon among your friends: you don’t even get information. To know a miller, and not to know the price of flour, is ignorance presented in one of its most pitiable aspects. And how is Miss Toller looking? Perfectly charming?”

I was angry by this time. “You have exactly described her,” I said. Mrs. Roylake began to get angry, on her side.

“Surely a little coarse and vulgar?” she suggested, reverting to poor Cristel.

“Would you like to judge for yourself?” I asked. “I shall be happy, Mrs. Roylake, to take you to the mill.”

My stepmother’s knowledge of the world implied considerable acquaintance — how obtained I do not pretend to know — with the characters of men. Discovering that she was in danger of overstepping the limits of my patience, she drew back with a skill which performed the retrograde movement without permitting it to betray itself.

“We have carried our little joke, my dear Gerard, far enough,” she said.

“I fancy your residence in Germany has rather blunted your native English sense of humor. You don’t suppose, I hope and trust, that I am so insensible to our relative positions as to think of interfering in your choice of friends or associates. If you are not aware of it already, let me remind you that this house is now yours; not mine. I live here — gladly live here, my dear boy — by your indulgence; fortified (I am sure) by your regard for your excellent father’s wishes as expressed in his will — ”

I stopped her there. She had got the better of me with a dexterity which I see now, but which I was not clever enough to appreciate at time. In a burst of generosity, I entreated her to consider Trimley Deen as her house, and never to mention such a shocking subject as my authority again.

After this, need I say that the most amiable of women took me out in her carriage, and introduced me to some of the best society in England?

If I could only remember all the new friends to whom I made my bow, as well as the conversation in which we indulged, I might write a few pages here, interesting in a high degree to persons with well-balanced minds. Unhappily, so far as my own impressions were concerned, the best society proved to be always the same society. Every house that we entered was in the same beautiful order; every mistress of the house was dressed in the best taste; every master of the house had the same sensible remarks to make on conservative prospects at the coming election; every young gentleman wanted to know how my game preserves had been looked after in my absence; every young lady said: “How nice it must have been, Mr. Roylake, to find yourself again at Trimley Deen.” Has anybody ever suffered as I suffered, during that round of visits, under the desire to yawn and the effort to suppress it? Is there any sympathetic soul who can understand me, when I say that I would have given a hundred pounds for a gag, and for the privilege of using it to stop my stepmother’s pleasant chat in the carriage, following on our friends’ pleasant chat in the drawing-room? Finally, when we got home, and when Mrs. Roylake kindly promised me another round of visits, and more charming people in the neighbourhood to see, will any good Christian forgive me, if I own that I took advantage of being alone to damn the neighbourhood, and to feel relieved by it?