Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1417 page)

“Wait a minute,” she said.

Mrs. Vimpany hesitated. For the first time in her life at a loss what to say, she could only sign to Iris to stand back. Iris refused to move. She put her terrible question in the plainest words:

“How does Lord Harry know that I am in this house?”

The wretched woman (listening intently for the sound of a step on the stairs) refused to submit to a shameful exposure, even now. To her perverted moral sense, any falsehood was acceptable, as a means of hiding herself from discovery by Iris. In the very face of detection, the skilled deceiver kept up the mockery of deceit.

“My dear,” she said, “what has come to you? Why won’t you let me go to my room?”

Iris eyed her with a look of scornful surprise. “What next?” she said. “Are you impudent enough to pretend that I have not found you out, yet?”

Sheer desperation still sustained Mrs. Vimpany’s courage. She played her assumed character against the contemptuous incredulity of Iris, as she had sometimes played her theatrical characters against the hissing and hooting of a brutal audience.

“Miss Henley,” she said, “you forget yourself!”

“Do you think I didn’t see in your face,” Iris rejoined, “that you heard him, too? Answer my question.”

“What question?”

“You have just heard it.”

“No!”

“You false woman!”

“Don’t forget, Miss Henley, that you are speaking to a lady.”

“I am speaking to Lord Harry’s spy!”

Their voices rose loud; the excitement on either side had reached its climax; neither the one nor the other was composed enough to notice the sound of the carriage-wheels, leaving the house again. In the meanwhile, nobody came to the drawing-room door. Mrs. Vimpany was too well acquainted with the hot-headed Irish lord not to conclude that he would have made himself heard, and would have found his way to Iris, but for some obstacle, below stairs, for which he was not prepared. The doctor’s wife did justice to the doctor at last. Another person had, in all probability, heard Lord Harry’s voice — and that person might have been her husband.

Was it possible that he remembered the service which she had asked of him; and, even if he had succeeded in calling it to mind, was his discretion to be trusted? As those questions occurred to her, the desire to obtain some positive information was more than she was able to resist. Mrs. Vimpany attempted to leave the drawing-room for the second time.

But the same motive had already urged Miss Henley to action. Again, the younger woman outstripped the older. Iris descended the stairs, resolved to discover the cause of the sudden suspension of events in the lower part of the house.

CHAPTER XI

MRS. VIMPANY’S FAREWELL

THE doctor’s wife followed Miss Henley out of the room, as far as the landing — and waited there.

She had her reasons for placing this restraint on herself. The position of the landing concealed her from the view of a person in the hall. If she only listened for the sound of voices she might safely discover whether Lord Harry was, or was not, still in the house. In the first event, it would be easy to interrupt his interview with Iris, before the talk could lead to disclosures which Mrs. Vimpany had every reason to dread. In the second event, there would be no need to show herself.

Meanwhile, Iris opened the dining-room door and looked in.

Nobody was there. The one other room on the ground floor, situated at the back of the building, was the doctor’s consulting-room. She knocked at the door. Mr. Vimpany’s voice answered: “Come in.” There he was alone, drinking brandy and water, and smoking his big black cigar.

“Where is Lord Harry?” she said.

“In Ireland, I suppose,” Mr. Vimpany answered quietly.

Iris wasted no time in making useless inquiries. She closed the door again, and left him. He, too, was undoubtedly in the conspiracy to keep her deceived. How had it been done? Where was the wild lord, at that moment?

Whilst she was pursuing these reflections in the hall, Rhoda came up from the servants’ tea-table in the kitchen. Her mistress gave her the necessary instructions for packing, and promised to help her before long. Mrs. Vimpany’s audacious resolution to dispute the evidence of her own senses, still dwelt on Miss Henley’s mind. Too angry to think of the embarrassment which an interview with Lord Harry would produce, after they had said their farewell words in Ireland, she was determined to prevent the doctor’s wife from speaking to him first, and claiming him as an accomplice in her impudent denial of the truth. If he had been, by any chance, deluded into leaving the house, he would sooner or later discover the trick that had been played on him, and would certainly return. Iris took a chair in the hall.

It is due to the doctor to relate that he had indeed justified his wife’s confidence in him.

The diamond pin, undergoing valuation in London, still represented a present terror in his mind. The money, the money — he was the most attentive husband in England when he thought of the money! At the time when Lord Harry’s carriage stopped at his house-door, he was in the dining-room, taking a bottle of brandy from the cellaret in the sideboard. Looking instantly out of the window, he discovered who the visitor was, and decided on consulting his instructions in the pocket-diary. The attempt was rendered useless, as soon as he had opened the book, by the unlucky activity of the servant in answering the door. Her master stopped her in the hall. He was pleasantly conscious of the recovery of his cunning. But his memory (far from active under the most favourable circumstances) was slower than ever at helping him now. On the spur of the moment he could only call to mind that he had been ordered to prevent a meeting between Lord Harry and Iris. “Show the gentleman into my consulting-room,” he said.

Lord Harry found the doctor enthroned on his professional chair, surprised and delighted to see his distinguished friend. The impetuous Irishman at once asked for Miss Henley.

“Gone,” Mr. Vimpany answered

“Gone — where?” the wild lord wanted to know next.

“To London.”

“By herself?”

“No; with Mr. Hugh Mountjoy.”

Lord Harry seized the doctor by the shoulders, and shook him: “You don’t mean to tell me Mountjoy is going to marry her?”

Mr. Vimpany feared nothing but the loss of money. The weaker and the older man of the two, he nevertheless followed the young lord’s example, and shook him with right good-will. “Let’s see how you like it in your turn,” he said. “As for Mountjoy, I don’t know whether he is married or single — and don’t care.”

“The devil take your obstinacy! When did they start?”

“The devil take your questions! They started not long since.”

“Might I catch them at the station?”

“Yes; if you go at once.”

So the desperate doctor carried out his wife’s instructions — without remembering the conditions which had accompanied them.

The way to the station took Lord Harry past the inn. He saw Hugh Mountjoy through the open house door paying his bill at the bar. In an instant the carriage was stopped, and the two men (never on friendly terms) were formally bowing to each other.

“I was told I should find you,” Lord Harry said, “with Miss Henley, at the station.”

“Who gave you your information?”

“Vimpany — the doctor.”

“He ought to know that the train isn’t due at the station for an hour yet.”

“Has the blackguard deceived me? One word more, Mr. Mountjoy. Is Miss Henley at the inn?”

“No.”

“Are you going with her to London?”

“I must leave Miss Henley to answer that.”

“Where is she, sir?”

“There is an end to everything, my lord, in the world we live in. You have reached the end of my readiness to answer questions.” The Englishman and the Irishman looked at each other: the Anglo-Saxon was impenetrably cool; the Celt was flushed and angry. They might have been on the brink of a quarrel, but for Lord Harry’s native quickness of perception, and his exercise of it at that moment. When he had called at Mr. Vimpany’s house, and had asked for Iris, the doctor had got rid of him by means of a lie. After this discovery, at what conclusion could he arrive? The doctor was certainly keeping Iris out of his way. Reasoning in this rapid manner, Lord Harry let one offence pass, in his headlong eagerness to resent another. He instantly left Mountjoy. Again the carriage rattled back along the street; but it was stopped before it reached Mr. Vimpany’s door.

Lord Harry knew the people whom he had to deal with, and took measures to approach the house silently, on foot. The coachman received orders to look out for a signal, which should tell him when he was wanted again.

Mr. Vimpany’s ears, vigilantly on the watch for suspicious events, detected no sound of carriage wheels and no noisy use of the knocker. Still on his guard, however, a ring at the house-bell disturbed him in his consulting-room. Peeping into the hall, he saw Iris opening the door, and stole back to his room. “The devil take her!” he said, alluding to Miss Henley, and thinking of the enviable proprietor of the diamond pin.

At the unexpected appearance of Iris, Lord Harry forgot every consideration which ought to have been present to his mind, at that critical moment.

He advanced to her with both hands held out in cordial greeting. She signed to him contemptuously to stand back — and spoke in tones cautiously lowered, after a glance at the door of the consulting-room.

“My only reason for consenting to see you,” she said, “is to protect myself from further deception. Your disgraceful conduct is known to me. Go now,” she continued, pointing to the stairs, “and consult with your spy, as soon as you like.” The Irish lord listened — guiltily conscious of having deserved what she had said to him — without attempting to utter a word in excuse.

Still posted at the head of the stairs, the doctor’s wife heard Iris speaking; but the tone was not loud enough to make the words intelligible at that distance; neither was any other voice audible in reply. Vaguely suspicions of some act of domestic treachery, Mrs. Vimpany began to descend the stairs. At the turning which gave her a view of the hall, she stopped; thunderstruck by the discovery of Lord Harry and Miss Henley, together.

The presence of a third person seemed, in some degree, to relieve Lord Harry. He ran upstairs to salute Mrs. Vimpany, and was met again by a cold reception and a hostile look.

Strongly and strangely contrasted, the two confronted each other on the stairs. The faded woman, wan and ghastly under cruel stress of mental suffering, stood face to face with a fine, tall, lithe man, in the prime of his health and strength. Here were the bright blue eyes, the winning smile, and the natural grace of movement, which find their own way to favour in the estimation of the gentler sex. This irreclaimable wanderer among the perilous by-ways of the earth — christened “Irish blackguard,” among respectable members of society, when they spoke of him behind his back — attracted attention, even among the men. Looking at his daring, finely-formed face, they noticed (as an exception to a general rule, in these days) the total suppression, by the razor, of whiskers, moustache, and beard. Strangers wondered whether Lord Harry was an actor or a Roman Catholic priest. Among chance acquaintances, those few favourites of Nature who are possessed of active brains, guessed that his life of adventure might well have rendered disguise necessary to his safety, in more than one part of the world. Sometimes they boldly put the question to him. The hot temper of an Irishman, in moments of excitement, is not infrequently a sweet temper in moments of calm. What they called Lord Harry’s good-nature owned readily that he had been indebted, on certain occasions, to the protection of a false beard, And perhaps a colouring of his face and hair to match. The same easy disposition now asserted itself, under the merciless enmity of Mrs. Vimpany’s eyes. “If I have done anything to offend you,” he said, with an air of puzzled humility, “I’m sure I am sorry for it. Don’t be angry, Arabella, with an old friend. Why won’t you shake hands?”