Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1429 page)

“Old habits are not easily set aside,” he reminded her. “I have been so long accustomed to advise you and help you, that I find myself hoping there may be some need for my services still. Is there no way in which I might relieve you of the hateful presence of Mr. Vimpany?”

“My dear Hugh, I wish you had not mentioned Mr. Vimpany.”

Mountjoy concluded that the subject was disagreeable to her. “After the opinion of him which you expressed in your letter to me,” he said, “I ought not to have spoken of the doctor. Pray forgive me.”

Iris looked distressed. “Oh, you are quite mistaken! The poor doctor has been sadly misjudged; and I” — she shook her head, and sighed penitently — ”and, I,” she resumed, “am one among other people who have ignorantly wronged him. Pray consult my husband. Hear what he can tell you — and you will pity Mr. Vimpany. The newspaper makes such large demands on our means that we can do little to help him. With your recommendation he might find some employment.”

“He has already asked me to assist him, Iris; and I have refused. I can’t agree with your change of opinion about Mr. Vimpany.”

“Why not? Is it because he has separated from his wife?”

“That is one reason, among many others,” Mountjoy replied.

“Indeed, indeed you are wrong! Lord Harry has known Mrs. Vimpany for years, and he says — I am truly sorry to hear it — that the separation is her fault.”

Hugh changed the subject again. The purpose which had mainly induced him to leave England had not been mentioned yet.

Alluding to the newspaper, and to the heavy pecuniary demands made by the preliminary expenses of the new journal, he reminded Iris that their long and intimate friendship permitted him to feel some interest in her affairs. “I won’t venture to express an opinion,” he added; “let me only ask if Lord Harry’s investments in this speculation have compelled him to make some use of your little fortune?”

“My husband refused to touch my fortune,” Iris answered. “But” — She paused, there. “Do you know how honourably, how nobly, he has behaved?” she abruptly resumed. “He has insured his life: he has burdened himself with the payment of a large sum of money every year. And all for me, if I am so unfortunate (which God forbid!) as to survive him. When a large share in the newspaper was for sale, do you think I could be ungrateful enough to let him lose the chance of making our fortune, when the profits begin to come in? I insisted on advancing the money — we almost quarrelled about it — but, you know how sweet he is. I said: ‘Don’t distress me’; and the dearest of men let me have my own way.”

Mountjoy listened in silence. To have expressed what he felt would have been only to mortify and offend Iris. Old habit (as he had said) had made the idea of devoting himself to her interests the uppermost idea in his mind. He asked if the money had all been spent. Hearing that some of it was still left, he resolved on making the attempt to secure the remains of her fortune to herself.

“Tell me,” he said, “have you ever heard of such a thing as buying an annuity?”

She knew nothing about it. He carefully explained the method by which a moderate sum of money might be made to purchase a sufficient income for life. She offered no objection, when he proposed to write to his lawyer in London for the necessary particulars. But when he asked her to tell him what the sum was of which she might be still able to dispose, Iris hesitated, and made no reply.

This time, Hugh arrived at the right conclusion.

It was only too plain to him that what remained of her money represented an amount so trifling that she was ashamed to mention it. Of the need for helping her, there could be no doubt now; and, as for the means, no difficulties presented themselves to Mountjoy — always excepting the one obstacle likely to be offered by the woman herself. Experience warned him to approach her delicately, by the indirect way.

“You know me well enough,” he said, “to feel sure that I am incapable of saying anything which can embarrass you, or cause a moment’s misunderstanding between two old friends. Won’t you look at me, Iris, when I am speaking to you?”

She still looked away from him. “I am afraid of what you are going to say to me,” she answered coldly.

“Then let me say it at once. In one of your letters, written long since — I don’t suppose you remember it — you told me that I was an obstinate man when I once took a thing into my head. You were quite right. My dear, I have taken it into my head that you will be as ready as ever to accept my advice, and will leave me (as your man of business) to buy the annuity” —

She stopped him.

“No,” she cried, “I won’t hear a word more! Do you think I am insensible to years of kindness that I have never deserved? Do you think I forget how nobly you have forgiven me for those cruel refusals which have saddened your life? Is it possible that you expect me to borrow money of You?” She started wildly to her feet. “I declare, as God hears me, I would rather die than take that base, that shameful advantage of all your goodness to me. The woman never lived who owed so much to a man, as I owe to you — but not money! Oh, my dear, not money! not money!”

He was too deeply touched to be able to speak to her — and she saw it. “What a wretch I am,” she said to herself; “I have made his heart ache!”

He heard those words. Still feeling for her — never, never for himself! — he tried to soothe her. In the passion of her self-reproach, she refused to hear him. Pacing the room from end to end, she fanned the fiery emotion that was consuming her. Now, she reviled herself in language that broke through the restraints by which good breeding sets its seal on a woman’s social rank. And now, again, she lost herself more miserably still, and yielded with hysteric recklessness to a bitter outburst of gaiety.

“If you wish to be married happily,” she cried, “never be as fond of any other woman as you have been of me. We are none of us worth it. Laugh at us, Hugh — do anything but believe in us. We all lie, my friend. And I have been lying — shamelessly! shamelessly!”

He tried to check her. “Don’t talk in that way, Iris,” he said sternly.

She laughed at him. “Talk?” she repeated. “It isn’t that; it’s a confession.”

“I don’t desire to hear your confession.”

“You must hear it — you have drawn it out of me. Come! we’ll enjoy my humiliation together. Contradict every word I said to you about that brute and blackguard, the doctor — and you will have the truth. What horrid inconsistency, isn’t it? I can’t help myself; I am a wretched, unreasonable creature; I don’t know my own mind for two days together, and all through my husband — I am so fond of him; Harry is delightfully innocent; he’s like a nice boy; he never seemed to think of Mr. Vimpany, till it was settled between them that the doctor was to come and stay here —
 
— and then he persuaded me — oh, I don’t know how! — to see his friend in quite a new light. I believed him — and I believe him still — I mean I
would
believe him, but for you. Will you do me a favour? I wish you wouldn’t look at me with those eyes that won’t lie; I wish you wouldn’t speak to me with that voice which finds things out. Oh, good Heavens, do you suppose I would let you think that my husband is a bad man, and my marriage an unhappy one? Never! If it turns my blood to sit and eat at the same table with Mr. Vimpany, I’m not cruel enough to blame the dear doctor. It’s my wickedness that’s to blame. We shall quarrel, if you tell me that Harry is capable of letting a rascal be his friend. I’m happy; I’m happy; I’m happy! — do you understand that? Oh, Hugh, I wish you had never come to see me!”

She burst into a passionate fit of weeping, broken down at last under the terrible strain laid on her. “Let me hide myself!” was all that Iris could say to her old friend — before she ran out of the room, and left him.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE MAID AND THE KEYHOLE

DEEPLY as she had grieved him, keenly as he felt that his worst fears for her threatened already to be realised, it was characteristic of Mountjoy that he still refused to despair of Iris — even with the husband’s influence against him.

The moral deterioration of her, revealed in the false words that she had spoken, and in the deceptions that she had attempted, would have justified the saddest misgivings, but for the voluntary confession which had followed, and the signs which it had shown of the better nature still struggling to assert itself. How could Hugh hope to encourage that effort of resistance to the evil influences that were threatening her — first and foremost, among them, being the arrival of Vimpany at the cottage? His presence kept her in a state of perpetual contention, between her own wise instincts which distrusted him, and her husband’s authoritative assertions which recommended him to her confidence. No greater service could be rendered to Iris than the removal of this man — but how could it be accomplished, without giving offence to her husband? Mountjoy’s mind was still in search of a means of overcoming the obstacle thus presented, when he heard the door open. Had Iris recovered herself? or had Lord Harry and his friend returned?

The person who now entered the room was the strange and silent maid, Fanny Mere.

“Can I speak to you, sir?”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“Please give me your address.”

“For your mistress?”

“Yes.”

“Does she wish to write to me?”

“Yes.”

Hugh gave the strange creature the address of his hotel in Paris. For a moment, her eyes rested on him with an expression of steady scrutiny. She opened the door to go out — -stopped — considered — came back again.

“I want to speak for myself,” she said. “Do you care to hear what a servant has to say?”

Mountjoy replied that he was ready to hear what she had to say. She at once stepped up to him, and addressed him in these words:

“I think you are fond of my mistress?”

An ordinary man might have resented the familiar manner in which she had expressed herself. Mountjoy waited for what was still to come. Fanny Mere abruptly went on, with a nearer approach to agitation in her manner than she had shown yet:

“My mistress took me into her service; she trusted me when other ladies would have shown me the door. When she sent for me to see her, my character was lost; I had nobody to feel for me, nobody to help me. She is the one friend who held out a hand to me. I hate the men; I don’t care for the women. Except one. Being a servant I mustn’t say I love that one. If I was a lady, I don’t know that I should say it. Love is cant; love is rubbish. Tell me one thing. Is the doctor a friend of yours?”

“The doctor is nothing of the kind.”

“Perhaps he is your enemy?”

“I can hardly say that.”

She looked at Hugh discontentedly. “I want to get at it,” she said. “Why can’t we understand each other? Will you laugh at me, if I say the first thing that comes into my head? Are you a good swimmer?”

An extraordinary question, even from Fanny Mere. It was put seriously — and seriously Mountjoy answered it. He said that he was considered to be a good swimmer.

“Perhaps,” she continued, “you have saved people’s lives.”

“I have twice been so fortunate as to save lives,” he replied.

“If you saw the doctor drowning, would you save him?
I
wouldn’t!”

“Do you hate him as bitterly as that?” Hugh asked.

She passed the question over without notice. “I wish you would help me to get at it,” she persisted. “Suppose you could rid my mistress of that man by giving him a kick, would you up with your foot and do it?”

“Yes — with pleasure.”

“Thank you, sir. Now I’ve got it. Mr. Mountjoy, the doctor is the curse of my mistress’s life. I can’t bear to see it. If we are not relieved of him somehow, I shall do something wrong. When I wait at table, and see him using his knife, I want to snatch it out of his hand, and stick it into him. I had a hope that my lord might turn him out of the house when they quarrelled. My lord is too wicked himself to do it. For the love of God, sir, help my mistress — or show me the way how!”