Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1339 page)

On the other hand, I distinctly recollect what my stepmother and I said to each other when our guests had wished us good-night.

If I am asked to account for this, I can only reply that the conspiracy to lead me into proposing marriage to Lady Lena first showed itself on the occasion to which I have referred. In her eagerness to reach her ends, Mrs. Roylake failed to handle the fine weapons of deception as cleverly as usual. Even I, with my small experience of worldly women, discovered the object that she had in view.

I had retired to the seclusion of the smoking-room, and was already encircled by the clouds which float on the heaven of tobacco, when I heard a rustling of silk outside, and saw the smile of Mrs. Roylake beginning to captivate me through the open door.

“If you throw away your cigar,” cried this amiable person, “you will drive me out of the room. Dear Gerard, I like your smoke.”

My fat man in black, coming in at the moment to bring me some soda water, looked at his mistress with an expression of amazement and horror, which told me that he now saw Mrs. Roylake in the smoking-room for the first time. I involved myself in new clouds. If I suffocated my stepmother, her own polite equivocation would justify the act. She settled herself opposite to me in an armchair. The agonies that she must have suffered, in preventing her face from expressing emotions of disgust, I dare not attempt to imagine, even at this distance of time.

“Now, Gerard, let us talk about the two ladies. What do you think of my friend, Lady Rachel?”

“I don’t like your friend, Lady Rachel.”

“You astonish me. Why?”

“I think she’s a false woman.”

“Heavens, what a thing to say of a lady — and that lady my friend! Her politics may very reasonably have surprised you. But surely her vigorous intellect ought to have challenged your admiration; you can’t deny that?”

I was not clever enough to be able to deny it. But I was bold enough to say that Lady Rachel seemed to me to be a woman who talked for the sake of producing effect. She expressed opinions, as I ventured to declare, which (in her position) I did not believe she could honestly entertain.

Mrs. Roylake entered a vigorous protest. She assured me that I was completely mistaken. “Lady Rachel,” she said, “is the most perfectly candid person in the whole circle of my acquaintance.”

With the best intentions on my part, this was more than I could patiently endure.

“Isn’t she the daughter of a nobleman?” I asked. “Doesn’t she owe her rank and her splendor, and the respect that people show to her, to the fortunate circumstance of her birth? And yet she talks as if she was a red republican. You yourself heard her say that she was a thorough Radical, and hoped she might live to see the House of Lords abolished. Oh, I heard her! And what is more, I listened so attentively to such sentiments as these, from a lady with a title, that I can repeat, word for word, what she said next. “We hav’n’t deserved our own titles; we hav’n’t earned our own incomes; and we legislate for the country, without having been trusted by the country. In short, we are a set of impostors, and the time is coming when we shall be found out.” Do you believe she really meant that? All as false as false can be — that’s what I say of it.”

There I stopped, privately admiring my own eloquence.

Quite a mistake on my part; my eloquence had done just what Mrs. Roylake wished me to do. She wanted an opportunity of dropping Lady Rachel, and taking up Lady Lena, with a producible reason which forbade the imputation of a personal motive on her part. I had furnished her with the reason. Thus far, I cannot deny it, my stepmother was equal to herself.

“Really, Gerard, you are so violent in your opinions that I am sorry I spoke of Lady Rachel. Shall I find you equally prejudiced, and equally severe, if I change the subject to dear Lady Lena? Oh, don’t say you think She is false, too!”

Here Mrs. Roylake made her first mistake. She over-acted her part; and, when it was too late, she arrived, I suspect, at that conclusion herself.

“If you hav’n’t seen that I sincerely admire Lady Lena,” I said, as smartly as I could, “the sooner you disfigure yourself with a pair of spectacles, my dear lady, the better. She is very pretty, perfectly unaffected, and, if I may presume to judge, delightfully well-bred and well-dressed.”

My stepmother’s face actually brightened with pleasure. Reflecting on it now, I am strongly disposed to think that she had not allowed her feelings to express themselves so unreservedly, since the time when she was a girl. After all, Mrs. Roylake was paying her step-son a compliment in trying to entrap him into a splendid marriage. It was my duty to think kindly of my ambitious relative. I did my duty.

“You really like my sweet Lena?” she said. “I am so glad. What were you talking about, with her? She made you exert all your powers of conversation, and she seemed to be deeply interested.”

More over-acting! Another mistake! And I could see through it! With no English subject which we could discuss in common, Lady Lena’s ready tact alluded to my past life. Mrs. Roylake had told her that I was educated at a German University. She had heard vaguely of students with long hair, who wore Hessian boots, and fought duels; and she appealed to my experience to tell her something more. I did my best to interest her, with very indifferent success, and was undeservedly rewarded by a patient attention, which presented the unselfish refinements of courtesy under their most perfect form.

But let me do my step-mother justice. She contrived to bend me to her will, before she left the smoking-room — I am sure I don’t know how.

“You have entertained the charming daughters at dinner,” she reminded me; “and the least you can do, after that, is to pay your respects to their noble father. In your position, my dear boy, you cannot neglect our English customs without producing the worst possible impression.”

In two words, I found myself pledged, under pretence of visiting my lord, to improve my acquaintance with Lady Lena on the next day.

“And pray be careful,” Mrs. Roylake proceeded, still braving the atmosphere of the smoking-room, “not to look surprised if you find Lord Uppercliff’s house presenting rather a poor appearance just now.”

I was dying for another cigar, and I entirely misunderstood the words of warning which had just been addressed to me. I tried to bring our interview to a close by making a generous proposal.

“Does he want money?” I asked. “I’ll lend him some with the greatest pleasure.”

Mrs. Roylake’s horror expressed itself in a little thin wiry scream.

“Oh, Gerard, what people you must have lived among! What shocking ignorance of my lord’s enormous fortune! He and his family have only just returned to their country seat, after a long absence — parliament you know, and foreign baths, and so on — and their English establishment is not yet complete. I don’t know what mistake you may not make next. Do listen to what I want to say to you.”

Listening, I must acknowledge, with an absent mind, my attention was suddenly seized by Mrs. Roylake — without the slightest conscious effort towards that end, on the part of the lady herself.

The first words that startled me, in her flow of speech, were these:

“And I must not forget to tell you of poor Lord Uppercliff’s misfortune. He had a fall, some time since, and broke his leg. As I think, he was so unwise as to let a plausible young surgeon set the broken bone. Anyway, the end of it is that my lord slightly limps when he walks; and pray remember that he hates to see it noticed. Lady Rachel doesn’t agree with me in attributing her father’s lameness to his surgeon’s want of experience. Between ourselves, the man seems to have interested her. Very handsome, very clever, very agreeable, and the manners of a gentleman. When his medical services came to an end, he was quite an acquisition at their parties in London — with one drawback: he mysteriously disappeared, and has never been heard of since. Ask Lady Lena about it. She will give you all the details, without her elder sister’s bias in favour of the handsome young man. What a pretty compliment you are paying me! You really look as if I had interested you.”

Knowing what I knew, I was unquestionably interested.

Although the recent return of Lord Uppercliff and his daughter to their country home had, as yet, allowed no opportunity of a meeting, out of doors, between the deaf Lodger and the friends whom he had lost sight of — no doubt at the time of his serious illness — still, the inevitable discovery might happen on any day. What result would follow? And what would be the effect on Lady Rachel, when she met with the fascinating young surgeon, and discovered the terrible change in him?

CHAPTER X

WARNED!

We were alone in the glade, by the side of the spring. At that early hour there were no interruptions to dread; but Cristel was ill at ease. She seemed to be eager to get back to the cottage as soon as possible.

“Father tells me,” she began abruptly, “he saw you at the boathouse. And it seemed to him, that you were behaving yourself like a friend to that terrible man.”

I reminded her of my having expressed the fear that we had been needlessly hard on him; and, I added that he had written a letter which confirmed me in that opinion. She looked, not only disappointed, but even alarmed.

“I had hoped,” she said sadly, “that father was mistaken.”

“So little mistaken,” I assured her, “that I am going to drink tea with the man who seems to frighten you. I hope he will ask you to meet — ”

She recoiled from the bare idea of an invitation.

“Will you hear what I want to tell you?” she said earnestly. “You may alter your opinion if you know what I have been foolish enough to do, when you saw me go to the other side of the cottage.”

“Dear Cristel, I know what I owe to your kind interest in me on that occasion!” Before I could say a word of apology for having wronged her by my suspicions, she insisted on an explanation of what I had just said.

“Did he mention it in his letter?” she asked.

I owned that I had obtained my information in this way. And I declared that he had expressed his admiration of her, and his belief in her, in terms which made it a subject of regret to me not to be able to show what he had written.

Cristel forgot her fear of our being interrupted. Her dismay expressed itself in a cry that rang through the wood.

“You even believe in his letter?” she exclaimed. “Mr. Gerard! His writing in that way to You about Me is a proof that he lies; and I’ll make you see it. If you were anybody else but yourself, I would leave you to your fate. Yes, your fate,” she passionately repeated. “Oh, forgive me, sir! I’m behaving disrespectfully; I beg your pardon. No, no; let me go on. When I spoke to him in your best interests (as I did most truly believe) I never suspected what mischief I had done, till I looked in his face. Then, I saw how he hated you, and how vilely he was thinking in secret of me — ”

Pure delusion! How could I allow it to go on? I interrupted her.

“My dear, you have quite mistaken him. As I have already said, he sincerely respects you — and he owns that he misjudged me when he and I first met.”

“What! Is
that
in his letter too? It’s worse even than I feared. Again, and again, and again, I say it” — she stamped on the ground in the fervor of her conviction — ”he hates you with the hatred that never forgives and never forgets. You think him a good man. Do you suppose I would have begged and prayed of my father to send him away, without having reasons that justified me? Mr. Gerard, you force me to tell you what my unlucky visit did put into his head. Yes, he does believe — believes firmly — that you have forgotten what is due to your rank; that I have been wicked enough to forget it too; and that you are going to take me away from him. Say what he may, and write what he may, he is deceiving you for his own wicked ends. If you go to drink tea with him, God only knows what cause you may have to regret it. Forgive me for being so violent, sir; I have done now. You have made me very wretched, but you are too good and kind to mean it. Good-bye.”

I took her hand, I pressed it tenderly; I was touched, deeply touched.