Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1422 page)

As they passed the inn called “The Spaniards,” two women who were standing at the garden gate stared at Iris, and smiled. A few paces further on, they were met by an errand-boy. He too looked at the young lady, and put his hand derisively to his head, with a shrill whistle expressive of malicious enjoyment. “I appear to amuse these people,” Iris said. “What do they see in me?”

Fanny answered with an effort to preserve her gravity, which was not quite successfully disguised: “I beg your pardon, Miss; I think they notice the curious contrast between your beautiful bonnet and your shabby cloak.”

Persons of excitable temperament have a sense of ridicule, and a dread of it, unintelligible to their fellow-creatures who are made of coarser material. For the moment, Iris was angry. “Why didn’t you tell me of it,” she asked sharply, “before I sent away the carriage? How can I walk back, with everybody laughing at me?”

She paused — reflected a little — and led the way off the high road, on the right, to the fine clump of fir-trees which commands the famous view in that part of the Heath.

“There’s but one thing to be done,” she said, recovering her good temper; “we must make my grand bonnet suit itself to my miserable cloak. You will pull out the feather and rip off the lace (and keep them for yourself, if you like), and then I ought to look shabby enough from head to foot, I am sure! No; not here; they may notice us from the road — and what may the fools not do when they see you tearing the ornaments off my bonnet! Come down below the trees, where the ground will hide us.”

They had nearly descended the steep slope which leads to the valley, below the clump of firs, when they were stopped by a terrible discovery.

Close at their feet, in a hollow of the ground, was stretched the insensible body of a man. He lay on his side, with his face turned away from them. An open razor had dropped close by him. Iris stooped over the prostate man, to examine his face. Blood flowing from a frightful wound in his throat, was the first thing that she saw. Her eyes closed instinctively, recoiling from that ghastly sight. The next instant she opened them again, and saw his face.

Dying or dead, it was the face of Lord Harry.

The shriek that burst from her, on making that horrible discovery, was heard by two men who were crossing the lower heath at some distance. They saw the women, and ran to them. One of the men was a labourer; the other, better dressed, looked like a foreman of works. He was the first who arrived on the spot.

“Enough to frighten you out of your senses, ladies,” he said civilly. “It’s a case of suicide, I should say, by the look of it.”

“For God’s sake, let us do something to help him!” Iris burst out. “I know him! I know him!”

Fanny, equal to the emergency, asked Miss Henley for her handkerchief, joined her own handkerchief to it, and began to bandage the wound. “Try if his pulse is beating,” she said quietly to her mistress. The foreman made himself useful by examining the suicide’s pockets. Iris thought she could detect a faint fluttering in the pulse. “Is there no doctor living near?” she cried. “Is there no carriage to be found in this horrible place?”

The foreman had discovered two letters. Iris read her own name on one of them. The other was addressed “To the person who may find my body.” She tore the envelope open. It contained one of Mr. Vimpany’s cards, with these desperate words written on it in pencil: “Take me to the doctor’s address, and let him bury me, or dissect me, whichever he pleases.” Iris showed the card to the foreman. “Is it near here?” she asked. “Yes, Miss; we might get him to that place in no time, if there was a conveyance of any kind to be found.” Still preserving her presence of mind, Fanny pointed in the direction of “The Spaniards” inn. “We might get what we want there,” she said. “Shall I go?”

Iris signed to her to attend to the wounded man, and ascended the sloping ground. She ran on towards the road. The men, directed by Fanny, raised the body and slowly followed her, diverging to an easier ascent. As Iris reached the road, a four-wheel cab passed her. Without an instant’s hesitation, she called to the driver to stop. He pulled up his horse. She confronted a solitary gentleman, staring out of the window of the cab, and looking as if he thought that a lady had taken a liberty with him. Iris allowed the outraged stranger no opportunity of expressing his sentiments. Breathless as she was, she spoke first.

“Pray forgive me — you are alone in the cab — there is room for a gentleman, dangerously wounded — he will bleed to death if we don’t find help for him — the place is close by — oh, don’t refuse me!” She looked back, holding fast by the cab door, and saw Fanny and the men slowly approaching. “Bring him here!” she cried.

“Do nothing of the sort!” shouted the gentleman in possession of the cab.

But Fanny obeyed her mistress; and the men obeyed Fanny. Iris turned indignantly to the merciless stranger. “I ask you to do an act of Christian kindness,” she said. “How can you, how dare you, hesitate?”

“Drive on!” cried the stranger.

“Drive on, at your peril,” Iris added, on her side.

The cabman sat, silent and stolid, on the box, waiting for events.

Slowly the men came in view, bearing Lord Harry, still insensible. The handkerchiefs on his throat were saturated with blood. At that sight, the cowardly instincts of the stranger completely mastered him. “Let me out!” he clamoured; “let me out!”

Finding the cab left at her disposal, Iris actually thanked him! He looked at her with an evil eye. “I have my suspicions, I can tell you,” he muttered. “If this comes to a trial in a court of law, I’m not going to be mixed up with it. Innocent people have been hanged before now, when appearances were against them.”

He walked off; and, by way of completing the revelation of his own meanness, forgot to pay his fare.

On the point of starting the horse to pursue him, the cabman was effectually stopped. Iris showed him a sovereign. Upon this hint (like Othello) he spoke.

“All right, Miss. I see your poor gentleman is a-bleeding. You’ll take care — won’t you? — that he doesn’t spoil my cushions.” The driver was not a ill-conditioned man; he put the case of his property indulgently, with a persuasive smile. Iris turned to the two worthy fellows, who had so readily given her their help, and bade them good-bye, with a solid expression of her gratitude which they both remembered for many a long day to come. Fanny was already in the cab supporting Lord Harry’s body. Iris joined her. The cabman drove carefully to Mr. Vimpany’s new house.

CHAPTER XVIII

PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE

NUMBER Five was near the centre of the row of little suburban houses called Redburn Road.

When the cab drew up at the door Mr. Vimpany himself was visible, looking out of the window on the ground floor — and yawning as he looked. Iris beckoned to him impatiently. “Anything wrong?” he asked, as he approached the door of the cab. She drew back, and silently showed him what was wrong. The doctor received the shock with composure. When he happened to be sober and sad, looking for patients and failing to find them, Mr. Vimpany’s capacity for feeling sympathy began and ended with himself.

“This is a new scrape, even for Lord Harry,” he remarked. “Let’s get him into the house.”

The insensible man was carried into the nearest room on the ground floor. Pale and trembling, Iris related what had happened, and asked if there was no hope of saving him.

“Patience!” Mr. Vimpany answered; “I’ll tell you directly.”

He removed the bandages, and examined the wound. “There’s been a deal of blood lost,” he said; “I’ll try and pull him through. While I am about it, Miss, go upstairs, if you please, and find your way to the drawing-room.” Iris hesitated. The doctor opened a neat mahogany box. “The tools of my trade,” he continued; “I’m going to sew up his lordship’s throat.” Shuddering as she heard those words, Iris hurried out of the room. Fanny followed her mistress up the stairs. In her own very different way, the maid was as impenetrably composed as Mr. Vimpany himself. “There was a second letter found in the gentleman’s pocket, Miss,” she said. “Will you excuse my reminding you that you have not read it yet.”

Iris read the lines that follow:

“Forgive me, my dear, for the last time. My letter is to say that I shall trouble you no more in this world — and, as for the other world, who knows? I brought some money back with me, from the goldfields. It was not enough to be called a fortune — I mean the sort of fortune which might persuade your father to let you marry me. Well! here in England, I had an opportunity of making ten times more of it on the turf; and, let me add, with private information of the horses which I might certainly count on to win. I don’t stop to ask by what cruel roguery I was tempted to my ruin. My money is lost; and, with it, my last hope of a happy and harmless life with you comes to an end. I die, Iris dear, with the death of that hope. Something in me seems to shrink from suicide in the ugly gloom of great overgrown London. I prefer to make away with myself among the fields, where the green will remind me of dear old Ireland. When you think of me sometimes, say to yourself the poor wretch loved me — and perhaps the earth will lie lighter on Harry for those kind words, and the flowers (if you favour me by planting a few) may grow prettier on my grave.”

There it ended.

The heart of Iris sank as she read that melancholy farewell, expressed in language at once wild and childish. If he survived his desperate attempt at self-destruction, to what end would it lead? In silence, the woman who loved him put his letter back in her bosom. Watching her attentively — affected, it was impossible to say how, by that mute distress — Fanny Mere proposed to go downstairs, and ask once more what hope there might be for the wounded man. Iris knew the doctor too well to let the maid leave her on a useless errand.

“Some men might be kindly ready to relieve my suspense,” she said; “the man downstairs is not one of them. I must wait till he comes to me, or sends for me. But there is something I wish to say to you, while we are alone. You have been but a short time in my service, Fanny. Is it too soon to ask if you feel some interest in me?”

“If I can comfort you or help you, Miss, be pleased to tell me how.” She made that reply respectfully, in her usual quiet manner; her pale cheeks showing no change of colour, her faint blue eyes resting steadily on her mistress’s face. Iris went on:

“If I ask you to keep what has happened, on this dreadful day, a secret from everybody, may I trust you — little as you know of me — as I might have trusted Rhoda Bennet?”

“I promise it, Miss.” In saying those few words, the undemonstrative woman seemed to think that she had said enough.

Iris had no alternative but to ask another favour.

“And whatever curiosity you may feel, will you be content to do me a kindness — without wanting an explanation?”

“It is my duty to respect my mistress’s secrets; I will do my duty.” No sentiment, no offer of respectful sympathy; a positive declaration of fidelity, left impenetrably to speak for itself. Was the girl’s heart hardened by the disaster which had darkened her life? Or was she the submissive victim of that inbred reserve, which shrinks from the frank expression of feeling, and lives and dies self-imprisoned in its own secrecy? A third explanation, founded probably on a steadier basis, was suggested by Miss Henley’s remembrance of their first interview. Fanny’s nature had revealed a sensitive side, when she was first encouraged to hope for a refuge from ruin followed perhaps by starvation and death. Judging so far from experience, a sound conclusion seemed to follow. When circumstances strongly excited the girl, there was a dormant vitality in her that revived. At other times when events failed to agitate her by a direct appeal to personal interests, her constitutional reserve held the rule. She could be impenetrably honest, steadily industrious, truly grateful — but the intuitive expression of feeling, on ordinary occasions, was beyond her reach.

After an interval of nearly half an hour, Mr. Vimpany made his appearance. Pausing in the doorway, he consulted his watch, and entered on a calculation which presented him favourably from a professional point of view.

“Allow for time lost in reviving my lord when he fainted, and stringing him up with a drop of brandy, and washing my hands (look how clean they are!), I haven’t been more than twenty minutes in mending his throat. Not bad surgery, Miss Henley.”