Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1442 page)

“In this curious little world of ours,” he resumed, “we enjoy our lives on infernally hard terms. We live on condition that we die. The man I want to cure may die, in spite of the best I can do for him — -he may sink slowly, by what we medical men call a hard death. For example, it wouldn’t much surprise me if I found some difficulty in keeping him in his bed. He might roam all over your cottage when my back was turned. Or he might pay the debt of Nature — as somebody calls it — with screaming and swearing. If you were within hearing of him, I’m afraid you might be terrified, and, with the best wish to be useful, I couldn’t guarantee (if the worst happened) to keep him quiet. In your place, if you will allow me to advise you — ”

Iris interrupted him. Instead of confessing the truth, he was impudently attempting to frighten her. “I don’t allow a person in whom I have no confidence to advise me,” she said; “I wish to hear no more.”

Mr. Vimpany found it desirable to resume the forms of politeness. Either he had failed to shake her resolution, or she was sufficiently in possession of herself to conceal what she felt.

“One last word!” he said. “I won’t presume to advise your ladyship; I will merely offer a suggestion. My lord tells me that Hugh Mountjoy is on the way to recovery. You are in communication with him by letter, as I happened to notice when I did you that trifling service of providing a postage-stamp. Why not go to London and cheer your convalescent friend? Harry won’t mind it — I beg your pardon, I ought to have said Lord Harry. Come! come! my dear lady; I am a rough fellow, but I mean well. Take a holiday, and come back to us when my lord writes to say that he can have the pleasure of receiving you again.” He waited for a moment. “Am I not to be favoured with an answer?” he asked.

“My husband shall answer you.”

With those parting words, Iris turned her back on him.

She entered the cottage. Now in one room, and now in another, she searched for Lord Harry; he was nowhere to be found. Had he purposely gone out to avoid her? Her own remembrance of Vimpany’s language and Vimpany’s manner told her that so it must be — the two men were in league together. Of all dangers, unknown danger is the most terrible to contemplate. Lady Harry’s last resources of resolution failed her. She dropped helplessly into a chair.

After an interval — whether it was a long or a short lapse of time she was unable to decide — someone gently opened the door. Had her husband felt for her? Had he returned? “Come in! she cried eagerly — ” come in!

CHAPTER XLV

FACT: RELATED BY FANNY

THE person who now entered the room was Fanny Mere.

But one interest was stirring in the mind of Iris now. “Do you know where your master is?” she asked.

“I saw him go out,” the maid replied. “Which way I didn’t particularly notice — ” She was on the point of adding, “and I didn’t particularly care,” when she checked herself. “Yesterday and to-day, my lady, things have come to my knowledge which I must not keep to myself,” the resolute woman continued. “If a servant may say such a thing without offence, I have never been so truly my mistress’s friend as I am now. I beg you to forgive my boldness; there is a reason for it.”

So she spoke, with no presumption in her looks, with no familiarity in her manner. The eyes of her friendless mistress filled with tears, the offered hand of her friendless mistress answered in silence. Fanny took that kind hand, and pressed it respectfully — a more demonstrative woman than herself might perhaps have kissed it. She only said, “Thank you, my lady,” and went on with what she felt it her duty to relate.

As carefully as usual, as quietly as usual, she repeated the conversation, at Lord Harry’s table; describing also the manner in which Mr. Vimpany had discovered her as a person who understood the French language, and who had cunningly kept it a secret. In this serious state of things, the doctor — yes, the doctor himself! — had interfered to protect her from the anger of her master, and, more wonderful still, for a reason which it seemed impossible to dispute. He wanted a nurse for the foreigner whose arrival was expected on that evening, and he had offered the place to Fanny. “Your ladyship will, I hope, excuse me; I have taken the place.”

This amazing end to the strange events which had just been narrated proved to be more than Iris was immediately capable of understanding. “I am in the dark,” she confessed. “Is Mr. Vimpany a bolder villain even than I have supposed him to be?”

“That he most certainly is!” Fanny said with strong conviction. “As to what he really had in his wicked head when he engaged me, I shall find that out in time. Anyway, I am the nurse who is to help him. When I disobeyed you this morning, my lady, it was to go to the hospital with Mr. Vimpany. I was taken to see the person whose nurse I am to be. A poor, feeble, polite creature, who looked as if he couldn’t hurt a fly — -and yet I promise you he startled me! I saw a likeness, the moment I looked at him.”

“A likeness to anybody whom I know?” Iris asked.

“To the person in all the world, my lady, whom you know most nearly — a likeness to my master.”

“What!”

“Oh, it’s no fancy; I am sure of what I say. To my mind, that Danish man’s likeness to my lord is (if you will excuse my language) a nasty circumstance. I don’t know why or wherefore — all I can say is, I don’t like it; and I shan’t rest until I have found out what it means. Besides this, my lady, I must know the reason why they want to get you out of their way. Please to keep up your heart; I shall warn you in time, when I am sure of the danger.”

Iris refused to sanction the risk involved in this desperate design. “It’s
you
who will be in danger!” she exclaimed.

In her coolest state of obstinacy, Fanny answered: “That’s in your ladyship’s service — and that doesn’t reckon.”

Feeling gratefully this simple and sincere expression of attachment, Iris held to her own opinion, nevertheless.

“You are in my service,” she said; “I won’t let you go to Mr. Vimpany. Give it up, Fanny! Give it up!”

“I’ll give it up, my lady, when I know what the doctor means to do — not before.”

The assertion of authority having failed, Iris tried persuasion next.

“As your mistress, it is my duty to set you an example,” she resumed. “One of us must be considerate and gentle in a dispute — let me try to be that one. There can be no harm, and there may be some good, in consulting the opinion of a friend; some person in whose discretion we can trust.”

“Am I acquainted with the person your ladyship is thinking of?” Fanny inquired. “In that case, a friend will know what we want of her by to-morrow morning. I have written to Mrs. Vimpany.”

“The very person I had in my mind, Fanny! When may we expect to hear from her?”

“If Mrs. Vimpany can put what she has to say to us into few words,” Fanny replied, “we shall hear from her to-morrow by telegraph.”

As she answered her mistress in those cheering words, they were startled by a heavy knock at the door of the room. Under similar circumstances, Lord Harry’s delicate hand would have been just loud enough to be heard, and no more. Iris called out suspiciously: “Who’s there?”

The doctor’s gross voice answered: “Can I say a word, if you please, to Fanny Mere?”

The maid opened the door. Mr. Vimpany’s heavy hand laid bold of her arm, pulled her over the threshold, and closed the door behind her. After a brief absence, Fanny returned with news of my lord.

A commissioner had arrived with a message for the doctor; and Fanny was charged to repeat it or not, just as she thought right under the circumstances. Lord Harry was in Paris. He had been invited to go to the theatre with some friends, and to return with them to supper. If he was late in getting home, he was anxious that my lady should not be made uneasy. After having authorised Mr. Vimpany’s interference in the garden, the husband evidently had his motives for avoiding another interview with the wife. Iris was left alone, to think over that discovery. Fanny had received orders to prepare the bedroom for the doctor’s patient.

CHAPTER XLVI

MAN AND WIFE

TOWARDS evening, the Dane was brought to the cottage.

A feeling of pride which forbade any display of curiosity, strengthened perhaps by an irresistible horror of Vimpany, kept Iris in her room. Nothing but the sound of footsteps, outside, told her when the suffering man was taken to his bed-chamber on the same floor. She was, afterwards informed by Fanny that the doctor turned down the lamp in the corridor, before the patient was helped to ascend the stairs, as a means of preventing the mistress of the house from plainly seeing the stranger’s face, and recognising the living likeness of her husband.

The hours advanced — the bustle of domestic life sank into silence — everybody but Iris rested quietly in bed.

Through the wakeful night the sense of her situation oppressed her sinking spirits. Mysteries that vaguely threatened danger made their presence felt, and took their dark way through her thoughts. The cottage, in which the first happy days of her marriage had been passed, might ere long be the scene of some evil deed, provoking the lifelong separation of her husband and herself! Were these the exaggerated fears of a woman in a state of hysterical suspicion? It was enough for Iris to remember that Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany had been alike incapable of telling her the truth. The first had tried to deceive her; the second had done his best to frighten her. Why? If there was really nothing to be afraid of — why? The hours of the early morning came; and still she listened in vain for the sound of my lord’s footstep on the stairs; still she failed to hear the cautious opening of his dressing-room door. Leaving her chair, Iris rested on the bed. As time advanced, exhaustion mastered her; she slept.

Awakening at a late hour, she rang for Fanny Mere. The master had just returned. He had missed the latest night-train to Passy; and, rather than waste money on hiring a carriage at that hour, he had accepted the offer of a bed at the house of his friends. He was then below stairs, hoping to see Lady Harry at breakfast.

His wife joined him.

Not even at the time of the honeymoon had the Irish lord been a more irresistibly agreeable man than he was on that memorable morning. His apologies for having failed to return at the right time were little masterpieces of grace and gaiety. The next best thing to having been present, at the theatrical performance of the previous night, was to hear his satirical summary of the story of the play, contrasting delightfully with his critical approval of the fine art of the actors. The time had been when Iris would have resented such merciless trifling with serious interests as this. In these earlier and better days, she would have reminded him affectionately of her claim to be received into his confidence — she would have tried all that tact and gentleness and patience could do to win his confession of the ascendency exercised over him by his vile friend — and she would have used the utmost influence of her love and her resolution to disunite the fatal fellowship which was leading him to his ruin.

But Iris Henley was Lady Harry now.

She was sinking — as Mrs. Vimpany had feared, as Mountjoy had foreseen — lower and lower on the descent to her husband’s level. With a false appearance of interest in what he was saying she waited for her chance of matching him with his own weapons of audacious deceit. He ignorantly offered her the opportunity — setting the same snare to catch his wife, which she herself had it in contemplation to use for entrapping her husband into a confession of the truth.

“Ah, well — I have said more than enough of my last night’s amusement,” he confessed. “It’s your turn now, my dear. Have you had a look at the poor fellow whom the doctor is going to cure?” he asked abruptly; eager to discover whether she had noticed the likeness between Oxbye and himself.

Her eyes rested on him attentively. “I have not yet seen the person you allude to,” she answered. “Is Mr. Vimpany hopeful of his recovery?”

He took out his case, and busied himself in choosing a cigar. In the course of his adventurous life, he had gained some knowledge of the effect of his own impetuous temper on others, and of difficulties which he had experienced when circumstances rendered it necessary to keep his face in a state of discipline.