Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1438 page)

She waited on him with eager obedience, and watched anxiously for the reviving effect of the stimulant.

The little irritabilities which degrade humanity only prolong their mischievous existence, while the surface of life stagnates in calm. Their annihilation follows when strong emotion stirs in the depths, and raises the storm. The estrangement of the day before passed as completely from the minds of the husband and wife — both strongly agitated — as if it had never existed. All-mastering fear was busy at their hearts; fear, in the woman, of the unknown temptation which had tried the man; fear, in the man, of the tell-tale disturbance in him, which might excite the woman’s suspicion. Without venturing to look at him, Iris said: “I am afraid you have heard bad news?” Without venturing to look at her, Lord Harry answered: “Yes, at the newspaper office.” She knew that he was deceiving her; and he felt that she knew it. For awhile, they were both silent.

From time to time, she anxiously stole a look at him.

His mind remained absorbed in thought. There they were, in the same room — seated near each other; united by the most intimate of human relationships — and yet how far, how cruelly far, apart! The slowest of all laggard minutes, the minutes which are reckoned by suspense, followed each other tardily and more tardily, before there appeared the first sign of a change. He lifted his drooping head. Sadly, longingly, he looked at her. The unerring instinct of true love encouraged his wife to speak to him.

“I wish I could relieve your anxieties,” she said simply. “Is there nothing I can do to help you?”

“Come here, Iris.”

She rose and approached him. In the past days of the honeymoon and its sweet familiarities, he had sometimes taken her on his knee. He took her on his knee now, and put his arm round her. “Kiss me,” he said.

With all her heart she kissed him. He sighed heavily; his eyes rested on her with a trustful appealing look which she had never observed in them before.

“Why do you hesitate to confide in me?” she asked. “Dear Harry, do you think I don’t see that something troubles you?”

“Yes,” he said, “there is something that I regret.”

“What is it?”

“Iris,” he answered, “I am sorry I asked Vimpany to come back to us.”

At that unexpected confession, a bright flush of joy and pride overspread his wife’s face. Again, the unerring instinct of love guided her to discovery of the truth. The opinion of his wicked friend must have been accidentally justified, at the secret interview of that day, by the friend himself! In tempting her husband, Vimpany had said something which must have shocked and offended him. The result, as she could hardly doubt, had been the restoration of her domestic influence to its helpful freedom of control — whether for the time only it was not in her nature, at that moment of happiness, to inquire. “After what you have just told me,” she ventured to say, “I may own that I am glad to see you come home, alone.”

In that indirect manner, she confessed the hope that friendly intercourse between the two men had come to an end. His reply disappointed her.

“Vimpany only remains in Paris,” he said, “to present a letter of introduction. He will follow me home.”

“Soon?” she asked, piteously.

“In time for dinner, I suppose.” She was still sitting on his knee. His arm pressed her gently when he said his next words, “I hope you will dine with us to-day, Iris?”

“Yes — if you wish it.”

“I wish it very much. Something in me recoils from being alone with Vimpany. Besides, a dinner at home without you is no dinner at all.”

She thanked him for that little compliment by a look. At the same time, her grateful sense of her husband’s kindness was embittered by the prospect of the doctor’s return. “Is he likely to dine with us often, now?” she was bold enough to say.

“I hope not.”

Perhaps he was conscious that he might have made a more positive reply. He certainly took refuge in another subject — more agreeable to himself.

“My dear, you have expressed the wish to relieve my anxieties,” he said; “and you can help me, I think, in that way. I have a letter to write — of some importance, Iris, to your interests as well as to mine — which must go to Ireland by to-day’s post. You shall read it, and say if you approve of what I have done. Don’t let me be disturbed. This letter, I can tell you, will make a hard demand on my poor brains — I must go and write in my own room.”

Left alone with the thoughts that now crowded on her mind, Iris found her attention claimed once more by passing events. Fanny Mere arrived, to report herself on her return from Paris.

She had so managed her departure from Passy as to precede Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany, and to watch for their arrival in Paris by a later train. They had driven from the railway to the newspaper office — -with the maid in attendance on them in another cab. When they separated, the doctor proceeded on foot to the Luxembourg Gardens. Wearing a plain black dress, and protected from close observation by her veil, Fanny followed him, cautiously keeping at a sufficient distance, now on one side of the street and now on the other. When my lord joined his friend, she just held them in view, and no more, as they walked up and down in the barest and loneliest part of the Gardens that they could find. Their talk having come to an end, they parted. Her master was the first who came out into the street; walking at a great rate, and looking most desperately upset. Mr. Vimpany next appeared, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, grinning as if his own villainous thoughts were thoroughly amusing him. Fanny was now more careful than ever not to lose sight of the doctor. The course which he pursued led them to the famous hospital called the Hotel Dieu.

At the entrance she saw him take a letter out of his pocket, and give it to the porter. Soon afterwards, a person appeared who greeted him politely, and conducted him into the building. For more than an hour, Fanny waited to see Mr. Vimpany come out again, and waited in vain. What could he possibly want in a French hospital? And why had he remained in that foreign institution for so long a time? Baffled by these mysteries, and weary after much walking, Fanny made the best of her way home, and consulted her mistress.

Even if Iris had been capable of enlightening her, the opportunity was wanting. Lord Harry entered the room, with the letter which he had just written, open in his hand, As a matter of course, the maid retired.

CHAPTER XL

DIRE NECESSITY

THE Irish lord had a word to say to his wife, before he submitted to her the letter which he had just written.

He had been summoned to a meeting of proprietors at the office of the newspaper, convened to settle the terms of a new subscription rendered necessary by unforeseen expenses incurred in the interests of the speculation. The vote that followed, after careful preliminary consultation, authorised a claim on the purses of subscribing proprietors, which sadly reduced the sum obtained by Lord Harry’s promissory note. Nor was this inconvenience the only trial of endurance to which the Irish lord was compelled to submit. The hope which he had entertained of assistance from the profits of the new journal, when repayment of the loan that he had raised became due, was now plainly revealed as a delusion. Ruin stared him in the face, unless he could command the means of waiting for the pecuniary success of the newspaper, during an interval variously estimated at six months, or even at a year to come.

“Our case is desperate enough,” he said, “to call for a desperate remedy. Keep up your spirits, Iris — I have written to my brother.”

Iris looked at him in dismay.

“Surely,” she said, “you once told me you had written to your brother, and he answered you in the cruellest manner through his lawyers.”

“Quite true, my dear. But, this time, there is one circumstance in our favour — my brother is going to be married. The lady is said to be an heiress; a charming creature, admired and beloved wherever she goes. There must surely be something to soften the hardest heart in that happy prospect. Read what I have written, and tell me what you think of it.”

The opinion of the devoted wife encouraged the desperate husband: the letter was dispatched by the post of that day.

If boisterous good spirits can make a man agreeable at the dinner-table, then indeed Mr. Vimpany, on his return to the cottage, played the part of a welcome guest. He was inexhaustible in gallant attentions to his friend’s wife; he told his most amusing stories in his happiest way; he gaily drank his host’s fine white Burgundy, and praised with thorough knowledge of the subject the succulent French dishes; he tried Lord Harry with talk on politics, talk on sport, and (wonderful to relate in these days) talk on literature. The preoccupied Irishman was equally inaccessible on all three subjects. When the dessert was placed on the table — still bent on making himself agreeable to Lady Harry — Mr. Vimpany led the conversation to the subject of floriculture. In the interests of her ladyship’s pretty little garden, he advocated a complete change in the system of cultivation, and justified his revolutionary views by misquoting the published work of a great authority on gardening with such polite obstinacy that Iris (eager to confute him) went away to fetch the book. The moment he had entrapped her into leaving the room, the doctor turned to Lord Harry with a sudden change to the imperative mood in look and manner.

“What have you been about,” he asked, “since we had that talk in the Gardens to-day? Have you looked at your empty purse, and are you wise enough to take my way of filling it?”

“As long as there’s the ghost of a chance left to me,” Lord Harry replied, “I’ll take any way of filling my purse but yours.”

“Does that mean you have found a way?”

“Do me a favour, Vimpany. Defer all questions till the end of the week.”

“And then I shall have your answer?”

“Without fail, I promise it. Hush!”

Iris returned to the dining-room with her book; and polite Mr. Vimpany owned in the readiest manner that he had been mistaken.

The remaining days of the week followed each other wearily. During the interval, Lord Harry’s friend carefully preserved the character of a model guest — he gave as little trouble as possible. Every morning after breakfast the doctor went away by the train. Every morning (with similar regularity) he was followed by the resolute Fanny Mere. Pursuing his way through widely different quarters of Paris, he invariably stopped at a public building, invariably presented a letter at the door, and was invariably asked to walk in. Inquiries, patiently persisted in by the English maid, led in each case to the same result. The different public buildings were devoted to the same benevolent purpose. Like the Hotel Dieu, they were all hospitals; and Mr. Vimpany’s object in visiting them remained as profound a mystery as ever.

Early on the last morning of the week the answer from Lord Harry’s brother arrived. Hearing of it, Iris ran eagerly into her husband’s room. The letter was already scattered in fragments on the floor. What the tone of the Earl’s inhuman answer had been in the past time, that it was again now.

Iris put her arms round her husband’s neck. “Oh, my poor love, what is to be done?”

He answered in one reckless word: “Nothing!”

“Is there nobody else who can help us?” she asked.

“Ah, well, darling, there’s perhaps one other person still left,”

“Who is the person?”

“Who should it be but your own dear self?”

She looked at him in undisguised bewilderment: “Only tell me, Harry, what I can do?”

“Write to Mountjoy, and ask him to lend me the money.”

He said it. In those shameless words, he said it. She, who had sacrificed Mountjoy to the man whom she had married, was now asked by that man to use Mountjoy’s devotion to her, as a means of paying his debts! Iris drew back from him with a cry of disgust.

“You refuse?” he said.

“Do you insult me by doubting it?” she answered.

He rang the bell furiously, and dashed out of the room. She heard him, on the stairs, ask where Mr. Vimpany was. The servant replied: “In the garden, my lord.”