Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1424 page)

“May I ask how, Mr. Henley?”

“Of course you may. You can find your way to her confidence, if you choose to try; she will trust you, when she won’t trust her father. I don’t care two straws about her other secrets; but I do want to know whether she is, or is not, plotting to marry the Irish blackguard. Satisfy me about that, and you needn’t tell me anything more. May I count on you to find out how the land lies?”

Mountjoy listened, hardly able to credit the evidence of his own senses; he was actually expected to insinuate himself into the confidence of Iris, and then to betray her to her father! He rose, and took his hat — and, without even the formality of a bow, opened the door.

“Does that mean No?” Mr. Henley called after him.

“Most assuredly,” Mountjoy answered — and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER XX

FIRST SUSPICIONS OF IRIS

FROM the last memorable day, on which Iris had declared to him that he might always count on her as his friend, but never as his wife, Hugh had resolved to subject his feelings to a rigorous control. As to conquering his hopeless love, he knew but too well that it would conquer him, on any future occasion when he and Iris happened to meet.

He had been true to his resolution, at what cost of suffering he, and he alone knew. Sincerely, unaffectedly, he had tried to remain her friend. But the nature of the truest and the firmest man has its weak place, where the subtle influence of a woman is concerned. Deeply latent, beyond the reach of his own power of sounding, there was jealousy of the Irish lord lurking in Mountjoy, and secretly leading his mind when he hesitated in those emergencies of his life which were connected with Iris. Ignorant of the influence which was really directing him, he viewed with contempt Mr. Henley’s suspicions of a secret understanding between his daughter and the man who was, by her own acknowledgment, unworthy of the love with which it had been her misfortune to regard him. At the same time, Hugh’s mind was reluctantly in search of an explanation, which might account (without degrading Iris) for her having been traced to the doctor’s house. In his recollection of events at the old country town, he found a motive for her renewal of intercourse with such a man as Mr. Vimpany, in the compassionate feeling with which she regarded the doctor’s unhappy wife. There might well be some humiliating circumstance, recently added to the other trials of Mrs. Vimpany’s married life, which had appealed to all that was generous and forgiving in the nature of Iris. Knowing nothing of the resolution to live apart which had latterly separated the doctor and his wife, Mountjoy decided on putting his idea to the test by applying for information to Mrs. Vimpany at her husband’s house.

In the nature of a sensitive man the bare idea of delay, under these circumstances, was unendurable. Hugh called the first cab that passed him, and drove to Hampstead.

Careful — morbidly careful, perhaps — not to attract attention needlessly to himself, he stopped the cab at the entrance to Redburn Road, and approached Number Five on foot. A servant-girl answered the door. Mountjoy asked if Mrs. Vimpany was at home.

The girl made no immediate reply. She seemed to be puzzled by Mountjoy’s simple question. Her familiar manner, with its vulgar assumption of equality in the presence of a stranger, revealed the London-bred maid-servant of modern times. “Did you say
Mrs.
Vimpany?” she inquired sharply.

“Yes.”

“There’s no such person here.”

It was Mountjoy’s turn to be puzzled. “Is this Mr. Vimpany’s house?” he said.

“Yes, to be sure it is.”

“And yet Mrs. Vimpany doesn’t live here?”

“No Mrs. Vimpany has darkened these doors,” the girl declared positively.

“Are you sure you are not making a mistake?”

“Quite sure. I have been in the doctor’s service since he first took the house.”

Determined to solve the mystery, if it could be done, Mountjoy asked if he could see the doctor. No: Mr. Vimpany had gone out.

“There’s a young person comes to us,” the servant continued. “I wonder whether you mean her, when you ask for Mrs. Vimpany? The name
she
gives is Henley.”

“Is Miss Henley here, now?”

“You can’t see her — she’s engaged.”

She was not engaged with Mrs. Vimpany, for no such person was known in the house. She was not engaged with the doctor, for the doctor had gone out. Mountjoy looked at the hat-stand in the passage, and discovered a man’s hat and a man’s greatcoat. To whom did they belong? Certainly not to Mr. Vimpany, who had gone out. Repellent as it was, Mr. Henley’s idea that the explanation of his daughter’s conduct was to be found in the renewed influence over her of the Irish lord, now presented itself to Hugh’s mind under a new point of view. He tried in vain to resist the impression that had been produced on him. A sense of injury, which he was unable to justify to himself, took possession of him. Come what might of it, he determined to set at rest the doubts of which he was ashamed, by communicating with Iris. His card-case proved to be empty when he opened it; but there were letters in his pocket, addressed to him at his hotel in London. Removing the envelope from one of these, he handed it to the servant: “Take that to Miss Henley, and ask when I can see her.”

The girl left him in the passage, and went upstairs to the drawing-room.

In the flimsily-built little house, he could hear the heavy step of a man, crossing the room above, and then the resonant tones of a man’s voice raised as if in anger. Had she given him already the right to be angry with her? He thought of the time, when the betrayal of Lord Harry’s vindictive purpose in leaving England had frightened her — when he had set aside his own sense of what was due to him, for her sake — and had helped her to communicate, by letter, with the man whose fatal ascendency over Iris had saddened his life. Was what he heard, now, the return that he had deserved?

After a short absence, the servant came back with a message.

“Miss Henley begs you will excuse her. She will write to you.”

Would this promised letter be like the other letters which he had received from her in Scotland? Mountjoy’s gentler nature reminded him that he owed it to his remembrance of happier days, and truer friendship, to wait and see.

He was just getting into the cab, on his return to London, when a closed carriage, with one person in it, passed him on its way to Redburn Road. In that person he recognised Mr. Henley. As the cab-driver mounted to his seat, Hugh saw the carriage stop at Number Five.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PARTING SCENE

THE evening had advanced, and the candles had just been lit in Mountjoy’s sitting-room at the hotel.

His anxiety to hear from Iris had been doubled and trebled, since he had made the discovery of her father’s visit to the doctor’s house, at a time when it was impossible to doubt that Lord Harry was with her. Hugh’s jealous sense of wrong was now mastered by the nobler emotions which filled him with pity and alarm, when he thought of Iris placed between the contending claims of two such men as the heartless Mr. Henley and the reckless Irish lord. He had remained at the hotel, through the long afternoon, on the chance that she might write to him speedily by the hand of a messenger — and no letter had arrived. He was still in expectation of news which might reach him by the evening post, when the waiter knocked at the door.

“A letter?” Mountjoy asked.

“No, sir,” the man answered; “a lady.”

Before she could raise her veil, Hugh had recognised Iris. Her manner was subdued; her face was haggard; her hand lay cold and passive in his hand, when he advanced to bid her welcome. He placed a chair for her by the fire. She thanked him and declined to take it. With the air of a woman conscious of committing an intrusion, she seated herself apart in a corner of the room.

“I have tried to write to you, and I have not been able to do it.” She said that with a dogged resignation of tone and manner, so unlike herself that Mountjoy looked at her in dismay. “My friend,” she went on, “your pity is all I may hope for; I am no longer worthy of the interest you once felt in me.”

Hugh saw that it would be useless to remonstrate. He asked if it had been his misfortune to offend her.

“No,” she said, “you have not offended me.”

“Then what in Heaven’s name does this change in you mean?”

“It means,” she said, as coldly as ever, “that I have lost my self-respect; it means that my father has renounced me, and that you will do well to follow his example. Have I not led you to believe that I could never be the wife of Lord Harry? Well, I have deceived you — -I am going to marry him.”

“I can’t believe it, Iris! I won’t believe it!”

She handed him the letter, in which the Irishman had declared his resolution to destroy himself. Hugh read it with contempt. “Did my lord’s heart fail him?” he asked scornfully.

“He would have died by his own hand, Mr. Mountjoy —
 
— ”

“Oh, Iris —
’Mr.!’“

“I will say ‘Hugh,’ if you prefer it — but the days of our familiar friendship are none the less at an end. I found Lord Harry bleeding to death from a wound in his throat. It was in a lonely place on Hampstead Heath; I was the one person who happened to pass by it. For the third time, you see, it has been my destiny to save him. How can I forget that? My mind will dwell on it. I try to find happiness — oh, only happiness enough for me — in cheering my poor Irishman, on his way back to the life that I have preserved. There is my motive, if I have a motive. Day after day I have helped to nurse him. Day after day I have heard him say things to me — what is the use of repeating them? After years of resistance I have given way; let that be enough. My one act of discretion has been to prevent a quarrel between my father and Harry. I beg your pardon, I ought to have said Lord Harry. When my father came to the house, I insisted on speaking with him alone. I told him what I have just told you. He said: ‘Think again before you make your choice between that man and me. If you decide to marry him, you will live and die without one farthing of my money to help you.’ He put his watch on the table between us, and gave me five minutes to make up my mind. It was a long five minutes, but it ended at last. He asked me which he was to do — leave his will as it was, or go to his lawyer and make another. I said, ‘You will do as you please, sir.’ No; it was not a hasty reply — you can’t make that excuse for me. I knew what I was saying; and I saw the future I was preparing for myself, as plainly as you see it — ”

Hugh could endure no longer the reckless expression of her despair.

“No!” he cried, “you don’t see your future as I see it. Will you hear what I have to say, before it is too late?”

“It is too late already. But I will listen to you if you wish it.”

“And, while you listen,” Mountjoy added, “you will acquit me of being influenced by a selfish motive. I have loved you dearly. Perhaps, in secret, I love you still. But, this I know: if you were to remain a single woman for the rest of your life, there would be no hope for Me. Do you believe that I am speaking the truth?”

“You always speak the truth.”

“I speak in your interest, at least. You think you see your future life plainly — you are blind to your future life. You talk as if you were resigned to suffer. Are you resigned to lose your sense of right and wrong? Are you resigned to lead the life of an outlaw, and — worse still — not to feel the disgrace of it?”

“Go on, Hugh.”

“You won’t answer me?”

“I won’t shock you.”

“You don’t discourage me, my dear; I am still obstinate in the hope of restoring you to your calmer and truer self. Let me do every justice to Lord Harry. I believe, sincerely believe, that his miserable life has not utterly destroyed in him the virtues which distinguish an honourable man. But he has one terrible defect. In his nature, there is the fatal pliability which finds companionable qualities in bad friends. In this aspect of his character, he is a dangerous man — and he may be (forgive me!) a bad husband. It is a thankless task to warn you to any good purpose. A wife — and a loving wife more than another — feels the deteriorating influence of a husband who is not worthy of her. His ways of thinking are apt to become, little by little, her ways of thinking. She makes allowances for him, which he does not deserve; her sense of right and wrong becomes confused; and before she is aware of it herself, she has sunk to his level. Are you angry with me?”