Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (145 page)

“Wait a bit, Mrs. Blyth,” said Zack, “you haven’t heard the best of my notion yet: all the pith and marrow of it has got to come. The bracelet I mean to give her is one that she will prize to the day of her death, or she’s not the affectionate, warm-hearted girl I take her for. What do you think of a bracelet that reminds her of you and Valentine, and jolly old Peck there — and a little of me, too, which I hope won’t make her think the worse of it. I’ve got a design against all your heads,” he continued, imitating the cutting action of a pair of scissors with two of his fingers, and raising his voice in high triumph. “It’s a splendid idea: I mean to give Madonna a Hair Bracelet!”

Mrs. Peckover and Mr. Blyth started back in their chairs, and stared at each other as amazedly as if Zack’s last words had sprung from a charged battery, and had struck them both at the same moment with a smart electrical shock.

“Of all the things in the world, how came he ever to think of giving her that!” ejaculated Mrs. Peckover under her breath; her memory reverting, while she spoke, to the mournful day when strangers had searched the body of Madonna’s mother, and had found the Hair Bracelet hidden away in a corner of the dead woman’s pocket.

“Hush! let’s go on with the game,” said Valentine. He, too, was thinking of the Hair Bracelet — thinking of it as it now lay locked up in his bureau down stairs, remembering how he would fain have destroyed it years ago, but that his conscience and sense of honour forbade him; pondering on the fatal discoveries to which, by bare possibility, it might yet lead, if ever it should fall into strangers’ hands.

“A Hair Bracelet,” continued Zack, quite unconscious of the effect he was producing on two of the card-players behind him; “and
such
hair, too, as I mean it to be made of! — Why, Madonna will think it more precious than all the diamonds in the world. I defy anybody to have hit on a better idea of the sort of present she’s sure to like; it’s elegant and appropriate, and all that sort of thing — isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes! very nice and pretty indeed,” replied Mrs. Blyth, rather absently and confusedly. She knew as much of Madonna’s history as her husband did; and was wondering what he would think of the present which young Thorpe proposed giving to their adopted child.

“The thing I want most to know,” said Zack, “is what you think would be the best pattern for the bracelet. There will be two kinds of hair in it, which can be made into any shape, of course — your hair and Mrs. Peckover’s.”

(“Not a morsel of my hair shall go towards the bracelet!” muttered Mrs. Peckover, who was listening to what was said, while she went on playing.)

“The difficult hair to bring in, will be mine and Valentine’s,” pursued Zack. “Mine’s long enough, to be sure; I ought to have got it cut a month ago; but it’s so stiff and curly; and Blyth keeps his cropped so short — I don’t see what they can do with it (do you?), unless they make rings, or stars, or knobs, or something stumpy, in the way of a cross pattern of it.”

“The people at the shop will know best,” said Mrs. Blyth, resolving to proceed cautiously.

“One thing I’m determined on, though, beforehand,” cried Zack, — ”the clasp. The clasp shall be a serpent, with turquoise eyes, and a carbuncle tail; and all our initials scored up somehow on his scales. Won’t that be splendid? I should like to surprise Madonna with it this very evening.”

(“You shall never give it to her, if
I
can help it,” grumbled Mrs. Peckover, still soliloquizing under her breath. “If anything in this world can bring her ill-luck, it will be a Hair Bracelet!”)

These last words were spoken with perfect seriousness; for they were the result of the strongest superstitious conviction.

From the time when the Hair Bracelet was found on Madonna’s mother, Mrs. Peckover had persuaded herself — not unnaturally, in the absence of any information to the contrary — that it had been in some way connected with the ruin and shame which had driven its unhappy possessor forth as an outcast, to die amongst strangers. To believe, in consequence, that a Hair Bracelet had brought “ill-luck” to the mother, and to derive from that belief the conviction that a Hair Bracelet would therefore also bring “ill-luck” to the child, was a perfectly direct and inevitable deductive process to Mrs. Peckover’s superstitious mind. The motives which had formerly influenced her to forbid her “little Mary” ever to begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young Thorpe’s ill-omened gift.

Although Valentine had only caught a word here and there, to guide him to the subject of Mrs. Peckover’s mutterings to herself while the game was going on, he guessed easily enough the general tenor of her thoughts, and suspected that she would, ere long, begin to talk louder than was at all desirable, if Zack proceeded much further with his present topic of conversation. Accordingly, he took advantage of a pause in the game, and of a relapse into another restless fit of walking about the room on young Thorpe’s part, to approach his wife’s couch, as if he wanted to find something lying near it, and to whisper to her, “Stop his talking any more about that present to Madonna; I’ll tell you why another time.”

Mrs. Blyth very readily and easily complied with this injunction, by telling Zack (with perfect truth) that she had been already a little too much excited by the events of the evening; and that she must put off all further listening or talking, on her part, till the next night, when she promised to advise him about the bracelet to the best of her power.

He was, however, still too full of his subject to relinquish it easily under no stronger influence than the influence of a polite hint. Having lost one listener in Mrs. Blyth, he boldly tried the experiment of inviting two others to replace her, by addressing himself to the players at the card-table.

“I dare say you have heard what I have been talking about to Mrs. Blyth?” he began.

“Lord, Master Zack!” said Mrs. Peckover, “do you think we haven’t had something else to do here, besides listening to you? There, now, don’t talk to us, please, till we are done, or you’ll throw us out altogether. Don’t, sir, on any account, because we are playing for money — sixpence a game.”

Repelled on both sides, Zack was obliged to give way. He walked off to try and amuse himself at the book-case. Mrs. Peckover, with a very triumphant air, nodded and winked several times at Valentine across the table; desiring, by these signs, to show him that she could not only be silent herself when the conversation was in danger of approaching a forbidden subject, but could make other people hold their tongues too.

The room was now perfectly quiet, and the game at cribbage proceeded smoothly enough, but not so pleasantly as usual on other occasions. Valentine did not regain his customary good spirits; and Mrs. Peckover relapsed into whispering discontentedly to herself — now and then looking towards the bookcase, where young Thorpe was sitting sleepily, with a volume of engravings on his knee. It was, more or less, a relief to everybody when the supper-tray came up, and the cards were put away for the night.

Zack, becoming quite lively again at the prospect of a little eating and drinking, tried to return to the dangerous subject of the Hair Bracelet; addressing himself, on this occasion, directly to Valentine. He was interrupted, however, before he had spoken three words. Mr. Blyth suddenly remembered that he had an important communication of his own to make to young Thorpe.

“Excuse me, Zack,” he said, “I have some news to tell you, which Mrs. Peckover’s arrival drove out of my head; and which I must mention at once, while I have the opportunity. Both my pictures are done — what do you think of that? — done, and in their frames. I settled the titles yesterday. The classical landscape is to be called ‘The Golden Age,’ which is a pretty poetical sort of name; and the figure-subject is to be ‘Columbus in Sight of the New World;’ which is, I think, simple, affecting, and grand. Wait a minute! the best of it has yet to come. I am going to exhibit both the pictures in the studio to my friends, and my friends’ friends, as early as Saturday next.”

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Zack. “Why, it’s only January now; and you always used to have your private view of your own pictures, in April, just before they were sent into the Academy Exhibition.”

“Quite right,” interposed Valentine, “but I am going to make a change this year. The fact is, I have got a job to do in the provinces, which will prevent me from having my picture-show at the usual time. So I mean to have it now. The cards of invitation are coming home from the printer’s tomorrow morning. I shall reserve a packet, of course, for you and your friends, when we see you to-morrow night.”

Just as Mr. Blyth spoke those words, the clock on the mantel-piece struck the half hour after ten. Having his own private reasons for continuing to preserve the appearance of perfect obedience to his father’s domestic regulations, Zack rose at once to say good night, in order to insure being home before the house-door was bolted at eleven o’clock. This time he did not forget Madonna’s drawing; but, on the contrary, showed such unusual carefulness in tying his pocket-handkerchief over the frame to preserve it from injury as he carried it through the streets, that she could not help — in the fearless innocence of her heart — unreservedly betraying to him, both by look and manner, how warmly she appreciated his anxiety for the safe preservation of her gift. Never had the bright, kind young face been lovelier in its artless happiness than it appeared at the moment when she was shaking hands with Zack.

Just as Valentine was about to follow his guest out of the room, Mrs. Blyth called him back, reminding him that he had a cold, and begging him not to expose himself to the wintry night air by going down to the door.

“But the servants must be going to bed by this time; and somebody ought to fasten the bolts,” remonstrated Mr. Blyth.

“I’ll go, sir,” said Mrs. Peckover, rising with extraordinary alacrity. “I’ll see Master Zack out, and do up the door. Bless your heart! it’s no trouble to me. I’m always moving about at home from morning to night, to prevent myself getting fatter. Don’t say no, Mr. Blyth, unless you are afraid of trusting an old gossip like me alone with your visitors.”

The last words were intended as a sarcasm, and were whispered into Valentine’s ear. He understood the allusion to their private conversation together easily enough; and felt that unless he let her have her own way without further contest, he must risk offending an old friend by implying a mistrust of her, which would be simply ridiculous, under the circumstances in which they were placed. So, when his wife nodded to him to take advantage of the offer just made, he accepted it forthwith.

“Now, I’ll stop his giving Mary a Hair Bracelet!” thought Mrs. Peckover, as she bustled out after young Thorpe, and closed the room door behind her.

“Wait a bit, young gentleman,” she said, arresting his further progress on the first landing. “Just leave off talking a minute, and let me speak. I’ve got something to say to you. Do you really mean to give Mary that Hair Bracelet?”

“Oho! then you did hear something at the card-table about it, after all?” said Zack. “Mean? Of course I mean — ”

“And you want to put some of my hair in it?”

“To be sure I do! Madonna wouldn’t like it without.”

“Then you had better make up your mind at once to give her some other present; for not one morsel of my hair shall you have. There now! what do you think of that?”

“I don’t believe it, my old darling.”

“It’s true enough, I can tell you. Not a hair of my head shall you have.”

“Why not?”

“Never mind why. I’ve got my own reasons.”

“Very well: if you come to that, I’ve got my reasons for giving the bracelet; and I mean to give it. If you won’t let any of your hair be plaited up along with the rest, it’s Madonna you will disappoint — not me.”

Mrs. Peckover saw that she must change her tactics, or be defeated.

“Don’t you be so dreadful obstinate, Master Zack, and I’ll tell you the reason,” she said in an altered tone, leading the way lower down into the passage. “I don’t want you to give her a Hair Bracelet, because I believe it will bring ill-luck to her — there!”

Zack burst out laughing. “Do you call that a reason? Who ever heard of a Hair Bracelet being an unlucky gift?”

At this moment, the door of Mrs. Blyth’s room opened.