Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1340 page)

No! let me write honestly. Her eyes betrayed her, her voice betrayed her, while she said her parting words. What I saw, what I heard, was no longer within the limits of doubt. The sweet girl’s interest in my welfare was not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. And I said just now that I was “touched.” Cant! Lies! I loved her more dearly than I had ever loved her yet. There is the truth — stripped of poor prudery, and the mean fear of being called Vain!

What I might have said to her, if the opportunity had offered itself, may be easily imagined. Before I could open my lips, a man appeared on the path which led from the mill to the spring — the man whom Cristel had secretly suspected of a design to follow her.

I felt her hand trembling in my hand, and gave it a little encouraging squeeze. “Let us judge him,” I suggested, “by what he says and does, on finding us together.”

Without an attempt at concealment on his part, he advanced towards us briskly, smiling and waving his hand.

“What, Mr. Roylake, you have already found out the virtues of your wonderful spring, and you are drinking the water before breakfast! I have often done it myself when I was not too lazy to get up. And this charming girl,” he went on, turning to Cristel, “has she been trying the virtues of the spring by your advice? She won’t listen to me, or I should have recommended it long since. See me set the example.”

He took a silver mug from his pocket, and descended the few steps that led to the spring. Allowing for the dreadful deaf monotony in his voice, no man could have been more innocently joyous and agreeable. While he was taking his morning draught, I appealed to Cristel’s better sense.

“Is this the hypocrite, who is deceiving me for his own wicked ends?” I asked. “Does he look like the jealous monster who is plotting my destruction, and who will succeed if I am fool enough to accept his invitation?”

Poor dear, she was as obstinate as ever! “Think over what I have said to you — think, for your own sake,” was her only reply.

“And a little for
your
sake?” I ventured to add.

She ran away from me, taking the path which would lead her home again. The deaf man and I were left together. He looked after her until she was out of sight. Then he produced his book of blank leaves. But, instead of handing it to me as usual, he began to write in it himself.

“I have something to say to you,” he explained.

It was only possible, while the book was in his possession, to remind him that I could hear, and that he could speak, by using the language of signs. I touched my lips, and pointed to him; I touched my ear, and pointed to myself.

“Yes,” he said, understanding me with his customary quickness; “but I want you to remember as well as to hear. When I have filled this leaf, I shall beg you to keep it about you, and to refer to it from time to time.”

He wrote on steadily, until he had filled both sides of the slip of paper.

“Quite a little letter,” he said. “Pray read it.”

This is what I read:

“You must have seen for yourself that I was incapable of insulting you and Miss Cristel by an outbreak of jealousy, when I found you together just now. Only remember that we all have our weaknesses, and that it is my hard lot to be in a state of contest with the inherited evil which is the calamity of my life. With your encouragement, I may resist temptation in the future, and keep the better part of me in authority over my thoughts and actions. But, be on your guard, and advise Miss Cristel to be on her guard, against false appearances. As we all know, they lie like truth. Consider me. Pity me. I ask no more.”

Straightforward and manly and modest — I appeal to any unprejudiced mind whether I should not have committed a mean action, if I had placed an evil construction on this?

“Am I understood?” he asked.

I signed to him to give me his book, and relieved him of anxiety in these words:

“If I had failed to understand you, I should have felt ashamed of myself. May I show what you have written to Cristel?”

He smiled, more sweetly and pleasantly than I had seen him smile yet.

“If you wish it,” he answered. “I leave it entirely to you. Thank you — and good morning.”

Having advanced a few steps on his way to the cottage, he paused, and reminded me of the tea-drinking: “Don’t forget to-morrow evening, at seven o’clock.”

CHAPTER XI

WARNED AGAIN!

The breakfast hour had not yet arrived when I got home. I went into the garden to refresh my eyes — a little weary of the solemn uniformity of colour in Fordwitch Wood — by looking at the flowers.

Reaching the terrace, in the first place, I heard below me a man’s voice, speaking in tones of angry authority, and using language which expressed an intention of turning somebody out of the garden. I at once descended the steps which led to the flower-beds. The man in authority proved to be one of my gardeners; and the man threatened with instant expulsion was the oddly-dressed servant of the friend whom I had just left.

The poor fellow’s ugly face presented a picture of shame and contrition, the moment I showed myself. He piteously entreated me to look over it, and to forgive him.

“Wait a little,” I said. “Let me see if I have anything to forgive.” I turned to the gardener. “What is your complaint of this man?”

“He’s a trespasser on your grounds, sir. And, his impudence, to say the least of it, is such as I never met with before.”

“What harm has he done?”

“Harm, sir?”

“Yes — harm. Has he been picking the flowers?”

The gardener looked round him, longing to refer me to the necessary evidence, and failing to discover it anywhere. The wretched trespasser took heart of grace, and said a word in his own defence.

“Nobody ever knew me to misbehave myself in a gentleman’s garden,” he said; “I own, sir, to having taken a peep at the flowers, over the wall.”

“And they tempted you to look a little closer at them?”

“That’s the truth, sir.”

“So you are fond of flowers?”

“Yes, sir. I once failed in business as a nurseryman — but I don’t blame the flowers.”

The delightful simplicity of this was lost on the gardener. I heard the brute mutter to himself: “Gammon!” For once I asserted my authority over my servant.

“Understand this,” I said to him: “I don’t confine the enjoyment of my garden to myself and my friends. Any well-behaved persons are welcome to come here and look at the flowers. Remember that. Now you may go.”

Having issued these instructions, I next addressed myself to my friend in the shabby shooting jacket; telling him to roam wherever he liked, and to stay as long as he pleased. Instead of thanking me and using his liberty, he hesitated, and looked thoroughly ill at ease.

“What’s the matter now?” I asked.

“I’m afraid you don’t know, sir, who it is you are so kind to. I’ve been something else in my time, besides a nurseryman.”

“What have you been?”

“A prize-fighter.”

If he expected me to exhibit indignation or contempt, he was disappointed. My ignorance treated him as civilly as ever.

“What is a prize-fighter?” I inquired.

The unfortunate pugilist looked at me in speechless bewilderment. I told him that I had been brought up among foreigners, and that I had never even seen an English newspaper for the last ten years. This explanation seemed to encourage the man of few words: it set him talking freely at last. He delivered a treatise on the art of prizefighting, and he did something else which I found more amusing — he told me his name. To my small sense of humour his name, so to speak, completed this delightfully odd man: it was Gloody. As to the list of his misfortunes, the endless length of it became so unendurably droll, that we both indulged in unfeeling fits of laughter over the sorrows of Gloody. The first lucky accident of the poor fellow’s life had been, literally, the discovery of him by his present master.

This event interested me. I said I should like to hear how it had happened.

Gloody modestly described himself as “one of the starving lot, sir, that looks out for small errands. I got my first dinner for three days, by carrying a gentleman’s portmanteau for him. And he, if you please, was afterwards my master. He lived alone. Bless you, he was as deaf then as he is now. He says to me, ‘If you bawl in my ears, I’ll knock you down.’ I thought to myself, you wouldn’t say that, master, if you knew how I was employed twenty years ago. He took me into his service, sir, because I was ugly. ‘I’m so handsome myself;’ he says, ‘I want a contrast of something ugly about me.’ You may have noticed that he’s a bitter one — and bitterly enough he sometimes behaved to me. But there’s a good side to him. He gives me his old clothes, and sometimes he speaks almost as kindly to me as you do. But for him, I believe I should have perished of starvation — ”

He suddenly checked himself. Whether he was afraid of wearying me, or whether some painful recollection had occurred to him, it was of course impossible to say.

The ugly face, to which he owed his first poor little morsel of prosperity, became overclouded by care and doubt. Bursting into expressions of gratitude which I had certainly not deserved — expressions, so evidently sincere, that they bore witness to constant ill-usage suffered in the course of his hard life — he left me with a headlong haste of movement, driven away as I fancied by an unquiet mind.

I watched him retreating along the path, and saw him stop abruptly, still with his back to me. His deep strong voice travelled farther than he supposed. I heard him say to himself: “What an infernal rascal I am!” He waited a little, and turned my way again. Slowly and reluctantly, he came back to me. As he approached I saw the man, who had lived by the public exhibition of his courage, looking at me with fear plainly visible in the change of his colour, and the expression of his face.

“Anything wrong?” I inquired.

“Nothing wrong, sir. Might I be so bold as to ask — ”

We waited a little; I gave him time to collect his thoughts. Perhaps the silence confused him. Anyhow, I was obliged to help him to get on.

“What do you wish to ask of me?” I said.

“I wished to speak, sir — ”

He stopped again.

“About what?” I asked.

“About to-morrow evening.”

“Well?”

He burst out with it, at last. “Are you coming to drink tea with my master?”

“Of course, I am coming! Mr. Gloody, do you know that you rather surprise me?”

“I hope no offence, sir.”

“Nonsense! It seems odd, my good fellow, that your master shouldn’t have told you I was coming to drink tea with him. Isn’t it your business to get the things ready?”

He shifted from one foot to another, and looked as if he wished himself out of my way. At a later time of my life, I have observed that these are signs by which an honest man is apt to confess that he has told, or is going to tell, a lie. As it was, I only noticed that he answered confusedly.

“I can’t quite say, Mr. Roylake, that my master didn’t mention the thing to me.”

“But you failed to understand him — is that it?”

“Well, sir, if I want to ask him anything I have to write it. I’m slow at writing, and bad at writing, and he isn’t always patient. However, as you reminded me just now, I have got to get the things ready. To cut it short, perhaps I might say that I didn’t quite expect the tea-party would come off.”

“Why shouldn’t it come off?”