Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1342 page)

His answer raised him a step higher in my estimation.

“How can I help it, sir?”

An odd man, with a personal appearance that might excite a prejudice against him, in some minds. I failed to see it myself in that light. It struck me, as I walked home, that Cristel might have made many a worse friend than the retired prize-fighter.

A change in my manner was of course remarked by Mrs. Roylake’s ready observation. I told her that I had been annoyed, and offered no other explanation. Wonderful to relate, she showed no curiosity and no surprise. More wonderful still, at every fair opportunity that offered, she kept out of my way.

My next day’s engagement being for seven o’clock in the evening, I put Mrs. Roylake’s self-control to a new test. With prefatory excuses, I informed her that I should not be able to dine at home as usual. Impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this, her presence of mind was equal to the occasion. I left the house, followed by my stepmother’s best wishes for a pleasant evening.

Hoping to speak with Cristel alone, I had arranged to reach the cottage before seven o’clock.

On the river-margin of the wood, I was confronted by a wild gleam of beauty in the familiar view, for which previous experience had not prepared me. Am I wrong in believing that all scenery, no matter how magnificent or how homely it may be, derives a splendor not its own from favouring conditions of light and shade? Our gloomy trees and our repellent river presented an aspect superbly transfigured, under the shadows of the towering clouds, the fantastic wreaths of the mist, and the lurid reddening of the sun as it stooped to its setting. Lovely interfusions of sobered colour rested, faded, returned again, on the upper leaves of the foliage as they lightly moved. The mist, rolling capriciously over the waters, revealed the grandly deliberate course of the flowing current, while it dimmed the turbid earthy yellow that discoloured and degraded the stream under the full glare of day. While my eyes followed the successive transformations of the view, as the hour advanced, tender and solemn influences breathed their balm over my mind. Days, happy days that were past, revived. Again, I walked hand in hand with my mother, among the scenes that were round me, and learnt from her to be grateful for the beauty of the earth, with a heart that felt it. We were tracing our way along our favorite woodland path; and we found a companion of tender years, hiding from us. She showed herself; blushing, hesitating, offering a nosegay of wild flowers. My mother whispered to me — I thanked the little mill-girl, and gave her a kiss. Did I feel the child’s breath, in my day-dream, still fluttering on my cheek? Was I conscious of her touch? I started, trembled, returned reluctantly to my present self. A visible hand touched my arm. As I turned suddenly, a living breath played on my face. The child had faded into a vanishing shade: the perfected woman who had grown from her had stolen on me unawares, and was asking me to pardon her. “Mr. Gerard, you were lost in your thoughts; I spoke, and you never heard me.”

I looked at her in silence.

Was this the dear Cristel so well known to me? Or was it a mockery of her that had taken her place?

“I hope I have not offended you?” she said.

“You have surprised me,” I answered. “Something must have happened, since I saw you last. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

I advanced a step, and drew her closer to me. A dark flush discoloured her face. An overpowering brilliancy flashed from her eyes; there was an hysterical defiance in her manner. “Are you excited? are you angry? are you trying to startle me by acting a part?” I urged those questions on her, one after another; and I was loudly and confidently answered.

“I dare say I am excited, Mr. Gerard, by the honour that has been done me. You are going to keep your engagement, of course? Well, your friend, your favorite friend, has invited me to meet you. No! that’s not quite true. I invited myself — the deaf gentleman submitted.”

“Why did you invite yourself?”

“Because a tea-party is not complete without a woman.”

Her manner was as strangely altered as her looks. That she was beside herself for the moment, I clearly saw. That she had answered me unreservedly, it was impossible to believe. I began to feel angry, when I ought to have made allowances for her.

“Is this Lady Rachel’s doing?” I said.

“What do you know of Lady Rachel, sir?”

“I know that she has visited you, and spoken to you.”

“Do you know what she has said?”

“I can guess.”

“Mr. Gerard, don’t abuse that good and kind lady. She deserves your gratitude as well as mine.”

Her manner had become quieter; her face was more composed; her expression almost recovered its natural charm while she spoke of Lady Rachel. I was stupefied.

“Try, sir, to forget it and forgive it,” she resumed gently, “if I have misbehaved myself. I don’t rightly know what I am saying or doing.”

I pointed to the new side of the cottage, behind us.

“Is the cause there?” I asked.

“No! no indeed! I have not seen him; I have not heard from him. His servant often brings me messages. Not one message to-day.”

“Have you seen Gloody to-day?”

“Oh, yes! There’s one thing, if I may make so bold, I should like to know. Mr. Gloody is as good to me as good can be; we see each other continually, living in the same place. But you are different; and he tells me himself he has only seen you twice. What have you done, Mr. Gerard, to make him like you so well, in that short time?”

I told her that he had been found in my garden, looking at the flowers. “As he had done no harm,” I said, “I wouldn’t allow the servant to turn him out; and I walked round the flower-beds with him. Little enough to deserve such gratitude as the poor fellow expressed — and felt, I don’t doubt it.”

I had intended to say no more than this. But the remembrance of Gloody’s mysterious prevarication, and of the uneasiness which I had undoubtedly felt when I thought of it afterwards, led me (I cannot pretend to say how) into associating Cristel’s agitation with something which this man might have said to her. I was on the point of putting the question, when she held up her hand, and said, “Hush!”

The wind was blowing towards us from the river-side village, to which I have already alluded. I am not sure whether I have mentioned that the name of the place was Kylam. It was situated behind a promontory of the river-bank, clothed thickly with trees, and was not visible from the mill. In the present direction of the wind, we could hear the striking of the church clock. Cristel counted the strokes.

“Seven,” she said. “Are you determined to keep your engagement?”

She had repeated — in an unsteady voice, and with a sudden change in her colour to paleness — the strange question put to me by Gloody. In his case I had failed to trace the motive. I tried to discover it now.

“Tell me why I ought to break my engagement,” I said.

“Remember what I told you at the spring,” she answered. “You are deceived by a false friend who lies to you and hates you.”

The man she was speaking of turned the corner of the new cottage. He waved his hand gaily, and approached us along the road.

“Go!” she said. “Your guardian angel has forgotten you. It’s too late now.”

Instead of letting me precede her, as I had anticipated, she ran on before me — made a sign to the deaf man, as she passed him, not to stop her — and disappeared through the open door of her father’s side of the cottage.

I was left to decide for myself. What should I have done, if I had been twenty years older?

Say that my moral courage would have risen superior to the poorest of all fears, the fear of appearing to be afraid, and that I should have made my excuses to my host of the evening — how would my moral courage have answered him, if he had asked for an explanation? Useless to speculate on it! Had I possessed the wisdom of middle life, his book of leaves would not have told him, in my own handwriting, that I believed in his better nature, and accepted his friendly letter in the spirit in which he had written.

Explain it who can — I knew that I was going to drink tea with him, and yet I was unwilling to advance a few steps, and meet him on the road!

“I find a new bond of union between us,” he said, as he joined me. “We both feel
that.
” He pointed to the grandly darkening view. “The two men who could have painted the mystery of those growing shadows and fading lights, lie in the graves of Rembrandt and Turner. Shall we go to tea?”

On our way to his room we stopped at the miller’s door.

“Will
you
inquire,” he said, “if Miss Cristel is ready?”

I went in. Old Toller was in the kitchen, smoking his pipe without appearing to enjoy it.

“What’s come to my girl?” he asked, the moment he saw me. “Yesterday she was in her room, crying. To-day she’s in her room, praying.”

The warnings which I had neglected rose in judgment against me. I was silent; I was awed. Before I recovered myself, Cristel entered the kitchen. Her father whispered, “Look at her!”

Of the excitement which had disturbed — I had almost said, profaned — her beautiful face, not a vestige remained. Pale, composed, resolute, she said, “I am ready,” and led the way out.

The man whom she hated offered his arm. She took it!

CHAPTER XIII

THE CLARET JUG

I perceived but one change in the Lodger’s miserable room, since I had seen it last.

A second table was set against one of the walls. Our boiling water for the tea was kept there, in a silver kettle heated by a spirit-lamp. I next observed a delicate little china vase which held the tea, and a finely-designed glass claret jug, with a silver cover. Other men, possessing that beautiful object, would have thought it worthy of the purest Bordeaux wine which the arts of modern adulteration permit us to drink. This man had filled the claret jug with water.

“All my valuable property, ostentatiously exposed to view,” he said, in his bitterly facetious manner. “My landlord’s property matches it on the big table.”

The big table presented a coarse earthenware teapot; cups and saucers with pieces chipped out of them; a cracked milk jug; a tumbler which served as a sugar basin; and an old vegetable dish, honoured by holding delicate French sweet-meats for the first time since it had left the shop.

My deaf friend, in boisterously good spirits, pointed backwards and forwards between the precious and the worthless objects on the two tables, as if he saw a prospect that delighted him.

“I don’t believe the man lives,” he said, “who enjoys Contrast as I do. — What do you want now?”

This question was addressed to Gloody, who had just entered the room. He touched the earthenware teapot. His master answered: “Let it alone.”

“I make the tea at other times,” the man persisted, looking at me.

“What does he say? Write it down for me, Mr. Roylake. I beg you will write it down.”

There was anger in his eyes as he made that request. I took his book, and wrote the words — harmless words, surely? He read them, and turned savagely to his unfortunate servant.

“In the days when you were a ruffian in the prize-ring, did the other men’s fists beat all the brains out of your head? Do you think you can make tea that is fit for Mr. Roylake to drink?”

He pointed to an open door, communicating with another bedroom. Gloody’s eyes rested steadily on Cristel: she failed to notice him, being occupied at the moment in replacing the pin of a brooch which had slipped out of her dress. The man withdrew into the second bedroom, and softly closed the door.

Our host recovered his good humor. He took a wooden stool, and seated himself by Cristel.