Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1344 page)

It had a taste which I can compare to no drink, and to no medicine, known to me. I thought of the other strange taste peculiar to the tea. At last, the tremendous truth forced itself on my mind. The man in whom my boyish generosity had so faithfully believed had attempted my life.

Cristel took the tumbler from me. My poor angel clasped her free arm round my neck, and pressed her lips, in an ecstasy of joy, on my cheek. The next instant, she seized the claret jug, and dashed it into pieces on the floor. “Get the jug from his washhand-stand,” she said. When I gave it to her, she poured some of the water upon the broken fragments of crystal scattered on the floor. I had put the jug back in its place, and was returning to Cristel, when the poisoner showed himself, entering from the servant’s room.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “Gloody’s name ought to be Glutton. An attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. I have relieved him. You remember, Mr. Roylake, that I was once a surgeon — ”

The broken claret jug caught his eye.

We have all read of men who were petrified by terror. Of the few persons who have really witnessed that spectacle, I am one. The utter stillness of him was really terrible to see. Cristel wrote in his book an excuse, no doubt prepared beforehand: “That fall in the next room frightened me, and I felt faint. I went to get some water from the jug you drank out of, and it slipped from my hand.”

She placed those words under his eyes — she might just as well have shown them to the dog. A dead man, erect on his feet — so he looked to our eyes. So he still looked, when I took Cristel’s arm, and led her out of that dreadful presence.

“Take me into the air!” she whispered.

A burst of tears relieved her, after the unutterable suspense that she had so bravely endured. When she was in some degree composed again, we walked gently up and down for a minute or two in the cool night air. “Don’t speak to me,” she said, as we stopped before her father’s door. “I am not fit for it yet; I know what you feel.” I pressed her to my heart, and let the embrace speak for me. She yielded to it, faintly sighing. “To-morrow?” I whispered. She bent her head, and left me.

Walking home through the wood, I became aware, little by little, that my thoughts were not under the customary control. Over and over again, I tried to review the events of that terrible evening, and failed. Fragments of other memories presented themselves — and then deserted me. Nonsense, absolute nonsense, found its way into my mind next, and rose in idiotic words to my lips. I grew too lazy even to talk to myself. I strayed from the path. The mossy earth began to rise and sink under my feet, like the waters in a ground-swell at sea. I stood still, in a state of idiot-wonder. The ground suddenly rose right up to my face. I remember no more.

My first conscious exercise of my senses, when I revived, came to me by way of my ears. Leaden weights seemed to close my eyes, to fetter my movements, to silence my tongue, to paralyze my touch. But I heard a wailing voice, speaking close to me, so close that it might have been my own voice: I distinguished the words; I knew the tones.

“Oh, my master, my lord, who am I that I should live — and you die! and you die!”

Was it her warm young breath that quickened me with its vigorous life? I only know that the revival of my sense of touch did certainly spring from the contact of her lips, pressed to mine in the reckless abandonment of grief without hope. Her cry of joy, when my first sigh told her that I was still a living creature, ran through me like an electric shock. I opened my eyes; I held out my hand; I tried to help her when she raised my head, and set me against the tree under which I had been stretched helpless. With an effort I could call her by her name. Even that exhausted me. My mind was so weak that I should have believed her, if she had declared herself to be a spirit seen in a dream, keeping watch over me in the wood.

Wiser than I was, she snatched up my hat, ran on before me, and was lost in the darkness.

An interval, an unendurable interval, passed. She returned, having filled my hat from the spring. But for the exquisite coolness of the water falling on my face, trickling down my throat, I should have lost my senses again. In a few minutes more, I could take that dear hand, and hold it to me as if I was holding to my life. We could only see each other obscurely, and in that very circumstance (as we confessed to each other afterwards) we found the needful composure before we could speak.

“Cristel! what does it mean?”

“Poison,” she answered. “And
he
has suffered too.”

To my astonishment, there was no anger in her tone: she spoke of him as quietly as if she had been alluding to an innocent man.

“Do you mean that he has been at death’s door, like me?”

“Yes, thank God — or I should never have found you here. Poor old Gloody came to us, in search of help. ‘My master’s in a swoon, and I can’t bring him to.’ Directly I heard that, I remembered that you had drunk what he had drunk. What had happened to him, must have happened to you. Don’t ask me how long it was before I found you, and what I felt when I did find you. I do so want to enjoy my happiness! Only let me see you safely home, and I ask no more.”

She helped me to rise, with the encouraging words which she might have used to a child. She put my arm in hers, and led me carefully along through the wood, as if I had been an old man.

Cristel had saved my life — but she would hear of no allusion to it. She knew how the poisoner had plotted to get rid of me — but nothing that I could say induced her to tell me how she had made the discovery. In view of Trimley Deen, my guardian angel dropped my arm.

“Go on,” she said, “and let me see the servant let you in, before I run home.”

If she had not been once more wiser than I was, I should have taken her with me to the house; I should have positively refused to let her go back by herself. Nothing that I could say or do had the slightest effect on her resolution. Does the man live who could have taken leave of her calmly, in my place? She tore herself away from me, with a sigh of bitterness that was dreadful to hear.

“Oh, my darling,” I said, “do I distress you?”

“Horribly,” she answered; “but you are not to blame.”

Those were her farewell words. I called after her. I tried to follow her. She was lost to me in the darkness.

CHAPTER XIV

GLOODY SETTLES THE ACCOUNT

A night of fever; a night, when I did slumber for a few minutes, of horrid dreams — this was what I might have expected, and this is what really happened. The fresh morning air, flowing through my open window, cooled and composed me; the mercy of sleep found me. When I woke, and looked at my watch, I was a new man. The hour was noon.

I rang my bell. The servant announced that a man was waiting to see me. “The same man, sir, who was found in the garden, looking at your flowers.” I at once gave directions to have him shown up into my bedroom. The delay of dressing was more than I had patience to encounter. Unless I was completely mistaken, here was the very person whom I wanted to enlighten me.

Gloody showed himself at the door, with a face ominously wretched, as well as ugly. I instantly thought of Cristel.

“If you bring me bad news,” I said, “don’t keep me waiting for it.”

“It’s nothing that need trouble You, sir. I’m dismissed from my master’s service — that’s all.”

It was plainly not “all.” Relieved even by that guarded reply, I pointed to a chair by the bedside.

“Do you believe that I mean well by you?” I asked.

“I do, sir, with all my heart.”

“Then sit down, Gloody, and make a clean breast of it.”

He lifted his enormous fist, by way of emphasizing his answer.

“I was within a hair’s breadth, sir, of striking him. If I hadn’t kept my temper, I might have killed him.”

“What did he do?”

“Flew into a furious rage. I don’t complain of that; I daresay I deserved it. Please to excuse my getting up again. I can’t look you in the face, and tell you of it.” He walked away to the window. “Even a poor devil, like me, does sometimes feel it when he is insulted. Mr. Roylake, he kicked me. Say no more about it, sir! I would never have mentioned it, if I hadn’t had something else to tell you; only I don’t know how.” In this difficulty, he came back to my bedside. “Look here, sir! What I say is — that kick has wiped out the debt of thanks I owe him. Yes. I say the account between us two is settled now, on both sides. In two words, sir, if you mean to charge him before the magistrates with attempting your life, I’ll take my Bible oath he did attempt it, and you may call me as your witness. There! Now it’s out.”

What his master had no doubt inferred, was what I saw plainly too. Cristel had saved my life, and had been directed how to do it by the poor fellow who had suffered in my cause.

“We will wait a little before we talk of setting the law in force,” I said. “In the meantime, Gloody, I want you to tell me what you would tell the magistrate if I called you as a witness.”

He considered a little. “The magistrate would put questions to me — wouldn’t he, sir? Very good. You put questions to me, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.”

The investigation that followed was far too long and too wearisome to be related here. If I give the substance of it, I shall have done enough.

Sometimes when he was awake, and supposed that he was alone — sometimes when he was asleep and dreaming — the Cur had betrayed himself. (It was a paltry vengeance, I own, to gratify a malicious pleasure — as I did now — in thinking of him and speaking of him by the degrading name which his morbid humility had suggested. But are the demands of a man’s dignity always paid in the ready money of prompt submission?) Anyway, it appeared that Gloody had heard enough, in the sleeping moments and the solitary moments of his master, to give him some idea of the jealous hatred with which the Cur regarded me. He had done his best to warn me, without actually betraying the man who had rescued him from starvation or the workhouse — and he had failed.

But his resolution to do me good service, in return for my kindness to him, far from being shaken, was confirmed by circumstances.

When his master returned to the chemical studies which have been already mentioned, Gloody was employed as assistant, to the extent of his limited capacity for making himself useful. He had no reason to suppose that I was the object of any of the experiments, until the day before the tea-party. Then, he saw the dog enticed into the new cottage, and apparently killed by the administration of poison of some sort. After an interval, a dose of another kind was poured down the poor creature’s throat, and he began to revive. A lapse of a quarter of an hour followed; the last dose was repeated; and the dog soon sprang to his feet again, as lively as ever. Gloody was thereupon told to set the animal free; and was informed at the same time that he would be instantly dismissed, if he mentioned to any living creature what he had just seen.

By what process he arrived at the suspicion that my safety might be threatened, by the experiment on the dog, he was entirely unable to explain.

“It was borne in on my mind, sir; and that’s all I can tell you,” he said. “I didn’t dare speak to you about it; you wouldn’t have believed me. Or, if you did believe me, you might have sent for the police. The one way of putting a stop to murdering mischief (if murdering mischief it might be) was to trust Miss Cristel. That she was fond of you — I don’t mean any offence, sir — I pretty well guessed. That she was true as steel, and not easily frightened, I didn’t need to guess; I knew it.”

Gloody had done his best to prepare Cristel for the terrible confidence which he had determined to repose in her, and had not succeeded. What the poor girl must have suffered, I could but too readily understand, on recalling the startling changes in her look and manner when we met at the river-margin of the wood. She was pledged to secrecy, under penalty of ruining the man who was trying to save me; and to her presence of mind was trusted the whole responsibility of preserving my life. What a situation for a girl of eighteen!

“We made it out between us, sir, in two ways,” Gloody proceeded. “First and foremost, she was to invite herself to tea. And, being at the table, she was to watch my master. Whatever she saw him drink, she was to insist on your drinking it too. You heard me ask leave to make the tea?”