Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1347 page)

“My master has sent me, sir — ”

A voice below interrupted him. “Come back,” I heard the Cur say; “I’ll do it myself. Toller! where is Toller?”

The enraged dog, barking furiously, struggled to get away from me. I dragged him — the good honest creature who was incapable of concealments and treacheries! — into his master’s room. In the moment before I closed the door again, I saw Toller down on his knees with his arms laid helplessly on the window-sill, staring up at the sky as if he had gone mad. There was no time for questions; I drove poor Ponto back into the room, and shut the door.

On the landing, I found myself face to face with the Cur.

“
You!
” he said.

I lifted my hand. The servant ran between us. “For God’s sake, control yourself, sir! We mean no harm. It’s only to tell Mr. Toller that his boat is missing.”

“Mr. Toller knows it already,” I said. “No honest man would touch your master if he could help it. I warn him to go; and I make him understand me by a sign.” I pointed down the stairs, and turned my head to look at him.

He was no longer before me. His face, hideously distorted by rage and terror, showed itself at the door of Cristel’s empty room. He rushed out on me; his voice rose to the detestable screech which I had heard once already.

“Where have you hidden her? Give her back to me — or you die.” He drew a pistol out of the breast-pocket of his coat. I seized the weapon by the barrel, and snatched it away from him. As the charge exploded harmlessly between us, I struck him on the head with the butt-end of the pistol. He dropped on the landing.

The door of Toller’s room opened behind me. He stood speechless; the report of the pistol had terrified him. In the instant when I looked at the old man, I saw, through the window of his room, a rocket soar into the sky, from behind the promontory between us and Kylam.

Some cry of surprise must, I suppose, have escaped me. Toller suddenly looked round towards the window, just as the last fiery particles of the rocket were floating slowly downwards against the black clouds.

I had barely time enough to see this, before a trembling hand was laid on my shoulder, from behind. The servant, white with terror, pointed to his master.

“Have you killed him?” the man said.

The same question must have been in the mind of the dog. He was quiet now. Doubtfully, reluctantly, he was smelling at the prostrate human creature. I knelt down, and put my hand on the wretch’s heart. Ponto, finding us both on a level together, gave me the dog’s kiss; I returned the caress with my free hand. The servant saw me, with my attention divided in this way between the animal and the man.

“Damn it, sir,” he burst out indignantly, “isn’t a Christian of more importance than a dog?”

A Christian! — but I was in no humour to waste words. “Are you strong enough to carry him to his own side of the house?” I asked.

“I won’t touch him, if he’s dead!”

“He is
not
dead. Take him away!”

All this time my mind was pre-occupied by the extraordinary appearance of the rocket, rising from the neighbourhood of a lonely little village between midnight and one in the morning. How I connected that mysterious signal with a possibility of tracing Cristel, it is useless to inquire. That was the thought in me, when I led my lost darling’s father back to his room. Without stopping to explain myself, I reminded him that the cottage was quiet again, and told him to wait my return.

In the kitchen, I overtook the servant and his burden. The door of communication (by which they had entered) was still open.

“Lock that door,” I said.

“Lock it yourself,” he answered; “I’ll have nothing to do with this business.” He passed through the doorway, and along the passage, and ascended his master’s stairs.

It struck me directly that the man had suggested a sure way of protecting Toller, during my absence. The miller’s own door was already secured; I took the key, so as to be able to let myself in again — then passed through the door of communication — fastened it — and put the key in my pocket. The third door, by which the Cur entered his lodgings, was of course at my disposal. I had just closed it, when I discovered that I had a companion. Ponto had followed me.

I felt at once that the dog’s superior powers of divination might be of use, on such an errand as mine was. We set out together for Kylam.

Wildly hurried — without any fixed idea in my mind — I ran to Kylam, for the greater part of the way. It was now very dark. On a sandy creek, below the village, I came in contact with something solid enough to hurt me for the moment. It was the stranded boat.

A smoker generally has matches about him. Helped by my little short-lived lights, I examined the interior of the boat. There was absolutely nothing in it but a strip of old tarpaulin — used, as I guessed, to protect the boat, or something that it carried, in rainy weather.

The village population had long since been in bed. Silence and darkness mercilessly defied me to discover anything. For a while I waited, encouraging the dog to circle round me and exercise his sense of smell. Any suspicious person or object he would have certainly discovered. Nothing — not even the fallen stick of the rocket — rewarded our patience. Determined to leave nothing untried, I groped, rather than found, my way to the village ale house, and succeeded at last in rousing the landlord. He hailed me from the window (naturally enough) in no friendly voice. I called out my name. Within my own little limits, it was the name of a celebrated person. The landlord opened his door directly; eager to answer my questions if he could do it. Nothing in the least out of the common way had happened at Kylam. No strangers had been seen in, or near, the place. The stranded boat had not been discovered; and the crashing flight of the rocket into the air had failed to disturb the soundly-sleeping villagers.

On my melancholy way back, fatigue of body — and, far worse, fatigue of mind — forced me to take a few minutes’ rest.

The dimly-flowing river was at my feet; the river on which I had seen Cristel again, for the first time since we were children. Thus far, the dreadful loss of her had been a calamity, held away from me in some degree by events which had imperatively taken possession of my mind. In the darkness and the stillness, the misery of having lost her was free to crush me. My head dropped on the neck of the dog, nestling close at my side. “Oh, Ponto!” I said to him, “she’s gone!” Nobody could see me; nobody could despise me — I burst out crying.

CHAPTER XVI

BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION

Twice, I looked into Toller’s room during the remainder of the night, and found him sleeping. When the sun rose, I could endure the delay no longer. I woke him.

“What is it?” he asked peevishly.

“You must be the last person who saw Cristel,” I answered. “I want to know all that you can tell me.”

His anger completely mastered him; he burst out with a furious reply.

“It’s you two — you my landlord, and him my lodger — who have driven Cristy away from her home. She said she would go, and she has gone. Get out of my place, sir! You ought to be ashamed to look at me.”

It was useless to reason with him, and it was of vital importance to lose no time in instituting a search. After the reception I had met with, I took care to restore the key of the door leading into the new cottage, before I left him. It was his key; and the poor distracted old man might charge me with taking away his property next.

As I set forth on my way home, I found the new man-servant on the look-out.

His first words showed that he was acting under orders. He asked if I had found the young lady; and he next informed me that his master had revived some hours since, and “bore no malice.” This outrageous assertion suddenly fired me with suspicion. I believed that the Cur had been acting a part when he threatened me with his pistol, and that he was answerable for the disappearance of Cristel. My first impulse now was to get the help of a lawyer.

The men at my stables were just stirring when I got home. In ten minutes more, I was driving to our town.

The substance of the professional opinion which I received has been already stated in these pages.

One among my answers to the many questions which my legal adviser put to me led him to a conclusion that made my heart ache. He was of opinion that my brief absence, while I was taking that fatal “breath of air” on the banks of the river, had offered to Cristel her opportunity of getting away without discovery. “Her old father,” the lawyer said, “was no doubt in his bed, and you yourself found nobody watching, in the neighbourhood of the cottage.”

“Employ me in some way!” I burst out. “I can’t endure my life, if I’m not helping to trace Cristel.”

He was most kind. “I understand,” he said. “Try what you can get those two ladies to tell you — and you may help us materially.”

Mrs. Roylake was nearest to me. I appealed to her womanly sympathies, and was answered by tears. I made another attempt; I said I was willing to believe that she meant well, and that I should be sorry to offend her. She got up, and indignantly left the room.

I went to Lady Rachel next.

She was at home, but the servant returned to me with an excuse: her ladyship was particularly engaged. I sent a message upstairs, asking when I might hope to be received. The servant was charged with the delivery of another excuse: her ladyship would write. After waiting at home for hours I was foolish enough to write, on my side; and (how could I help it?) to express myself strongly. The she-socialist’s reply is easy to remember: “Dear Mr. Roylake, when you have recovered your temper, you will hear from me again.”

Even my stepmother gained by comparison with this.

To rest, and do nothing, was to exercise a control over myself of which I was perfectly incapable. I went back to the cottage. Having no hopeful prospect in any other quarter, I persisted in believing that Toller must have seen something or heard something that might either help me, or suggest an idea to my legal adviser.

On entering the kitchen, I found the door of communication wide open, and the new servant established in the large armchair.

“I’m waiting for my master, sir.”

He had got over his fright, and had recovered his temper. The respectful side of him was turned to me again.

“Your master is with Mr. Toller?”

“Yes, sir.”

What I felt, amply justified the lawyer in having exacted a promise from me to keep carefully out of the Cur’s presence. “You might knock him on the head again, Mr. Roylake, and might hit a little too hard next time.”

But I had an idea of my own. I said, as if speaking to myself: “I would give a five pound note to know what is going on upstairs.”

“I shall be glad to earn it, sir,” the fellow said. “If I make a clean breast of what I know already, and if I tell you to-morrow what I can find out — will it be worth the money?”

I began to feel degraded in my own estimation. But I nodded to him, for all that.

“I am the innocent cause, sir, of what happened last night,” he coolly resumed. “We kept a look-out on the road and saw you, though you didn’t see us. But my master never suspected you (for reasons which he kept to himself) of making use of the boat. I reminded him that one of us had better have an eye on the slip of pathway, between the cottage and the river. This led to his sending me to the boathouse — and you know what happened afterwards. My master, as I suppose, is pumping Mr. Toller. That’s all, sir, for to-night. When may I have the honour of expecting you to-morrow morning?”

I appointed an hour, and left the place.

As I entered the wood again, I found a man on the watch. He touched his hat, and said: “I’m the clerk, sir. Your gamekeeper is wanted for his own duties to-night; he will relieve me in the morning.”

I went home with my mind in a ferment of doubt. If I could believe the servant, the Cur was as innocent of the abduction of Cristel as I was. But could I trust the servant?