Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1748 page)

Our new neighbours took possession during an excessively hot summer. On the first day, they were occupied in settling themselves in their house. On the second day, they enjoyed their garden. We were sitting on our lawn; and they were sitting on their lawn. In consideration of Lady Dowager’s deafness, they talked loud enough (especially the daughter, Miss Bess, and the son, Young John) to be heard all over our grounds. This said, let them describe their own characters in an extract from their conversation. I am the reporter. And I own I peeped over the wall.

Stingy Sir John.
— I gave orders, my dear, about those two pieces of bread that were left yesterday; and I find nobody can give any account of them. Is this the manner in which I am to be treated by my own servants?

Deaf Lady Dowager
(
addressing her daughter
). — What does your papa say, Bess?

Sour Bess.
— Pa’s abusing the servants; and all about two bits of bread.

Sir John.
— I’ll thank you, miss, not to misrepresent me to my own face. You do it on purpose.

Sulky Young John.
— She does everything on purpose.

Miss Bess.
— That’s a lie.

Lady Dowager.
— What is it? I can’t hear. What is it?

Sir John.
— My dear, your deafness is certainly growing on you.

Young John.
— And a good thing too, in such a family as ours.

Sir John.
— That is a most improper observation to make.

Miss Bess.
— He looked at me when he made it.

Lady Dowager.
— Who’s speaking now? Bess! what
is
the matter?

Miss Bess.
— Papa and John are quarrelling with me as usual.

Sir John.
— How dare you speak in that way of your father? Over and over again, Miss Elizabeth, I have had occasion to remark —

Young John.
— It’s a perfect misery to live in the same house with her.

Sir John.
— What do you mean, sir, by interrupting me?

Lady Dowager.
— I think it’s rather hard on
me
that nobody speaks loud enough to be heard. I shall go into the house.

Sir John
(
looking after his wife
). — Her temper gets more irritable every day.

There are our next-door neighbours presented by themselves. Why do I introduce such people into these pages? Alas! I am not able to keep them out. They are mixed up, by the inscrutable decrees of Providence, with Sophia Pillico wickedness, and with my sister Salome’s dearest hopes in life. Does my sister’s Christian name sound disagreeably? Let me mention the associations; and no reasonable person will object to it. She was called Salome, and I was called Lois, after my father’s two maiden sisters. Excellent women! They lived in the West of England — they left us their money — and they went to Heaven. (Instructions to the Editor: Now go on.)

I
II

The Editor introduces Mr and Mrs Wholebrook; directors of the famous Hydropathic Establishment at Cosgrove.

As man and wife, they were naturally accustomed to talk over the affairs of the day, in bed. One night, they held an especially interesting conversation. Both agreed — they had not been very long married — in lamenting the departure of a retiring member of the household; registered in the books by the odd name of, ‘Otto Fitzmark.’

‘Why should he leave us?’ Mr Wholebrook asked. ‘He has not gone through the cure; and, when I inquired if he had any complaint to make, he spoke in the most gratifying manner of the comfort of the house, and the excellence of the cooking.’

‘My dear, if you knew him as well as I do — ’

‘What do you mean, Louisa? Has Mr Fitzmark been — ?’

‘Don’t be a fool, James. Mr Fitzmark is a ladies’ man; young and handsome, and in delicate health. He likes to confide in women, poor fellow; especially when they happen to be — there! that will do; I forgive you: don’t interrupt me again. And understand this: I, who am in Mr Otto’s confidence, expected him to say he was going back to London, at least a week since.’

‘Is it business, my dear?’

‘Business! Mr Fitzmark has absolutely nothing to do. His valet is a treasure; and he has a comfortable income left him by his father.’

‘His father was a foreigner, wasn’t he?

‘Good Heavens! what has that got to do with it?’

‘I only spoke. If I am to be taken up short because I only speak, we’ll say good night.’

‘Don’t be angry, darling! Won’t you forgive me? won’t you? won’t you?’

‘What were we talking about, dear?’

‘What indeed! Wasn’t it Mr Fitzmark’s father? You were quite right about him: he was sort of half foreigner. He settled in England, and married an Englishwoman; she led him a horrid life. Mr Otto — you don’t mind my calling him by his Christian name? I like manly men, James, like you; I only pity Mr Otto. Always delicate, brought up at home, indulged in everything. His stupid mother married again; and he didn’t get on with the new family; and he had a private tutor; and he and the tutor went abroad; and there he had it all his own way, and was flattered by everybody. Are you going to sleep, dear?’

‘No! No!’

‘You see I want you to understand that Mr Otto has his whim and caprices — and soon gets tired when the novelty of a thing wears off. But, there’s another reason for his leaving our place; there’s a lady in the case. He hasn’t mentioned her name to me: she lives in London or in the neighbourhood, I’m not sure which. Plays divinely on the piano, and is lovely and elegant, and all that. He hasn’t openly avowed his admiration — not having made up his mind yet about her family. She has a married sister, who rather frightens him; clever, and a will of her own, and so on. However, to come to the point, his main reason for trying our place — What? his main reason must be his health? Nothing of the sort, you dear simple creature! He never expects to be well again. Not that he disbelieves in the cold water cure; but what he really wanted was to try if absence from the young lady would weaken the impression — or, as he put it, rather funnily, if deluges of cold water could drown his memory of a charming girl. She’s not to be disposed of, James, in that way. Wet sheets won’t pack her out; and ten tumblers of cold water a day only make her more lively than ever. Well, it’s past a joke; he is really going back to her to-morrow. Love — ah, We know it, don’t we? — love is a wonderful thing! What? Asleep? He
is
asleep. Snoring, positively snoring. And kicking me. Brute! brute!’

I
V

Mr Otto Fitzmark reached London, late in the evening.

He was so fatigued by the journey, that he went straight to the rooms prepared for him in Sir John’s house. On those occasions when he visited his mother, his step-father arranged — with absolute shamelessness peculiar to misers — to receive compensation privately for trouble and expense. When Lady Dowager sometimes complained that her son treated the house as if it were an hotel, she little thought what a defence of his conduct lay hidden in Sir John’s guilty pocket.

The next morning, the valet — a grave, ponderous, and respectable English servant — came in with coffee and the news, as usual.

‘I have had a wretched night, Frederick. Sir John must have got his beastly bed a bargain. What’s the news? The last time I was here I was driven away by a row in the family. Any more quarrels this time?’

‘The worst row I remember, sir (if I may be allowed to say so), in all our experience,’ Frederick answered.

‘Is my mother in it?’

‘It’s said to be Lady Dowager’s doing, sir.’

‘The devil it is! Give me some more sugar. Did you make this coffee yourself?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Go to the place in Piccadilly, and buy something that really is coffee: this is muck. Well? what’s the new row about?’

‘About a woman, sir.’

‘You don’t mean to say Sir John — ’

‘I beg your pardon, sir, I ought to have expressed myself more correctly. The woman in question is a She-Doctor.’

‘No wonder there’s a row! The fair physician is a bony old wretch with a wig and spectacles, of course?’

‘That’s not the account given to me, sir, by the footman. Except Miss Salome, next door, Sir John’s man says she’s the prettiest young woman he’s seen for many a long day past.’

Otto stared at the valet in astonishment. Frederick went steadily on with his story.

‘The lady has lately set up in practice, in the neighbourhood. And, what with her good looks and her lectures, she’s turned the people’s heads hereabouts, already. The resident medical man has got a red nose, and is suspected of drinking. He’s losing his lady-patients as fast as he can. They say Miss Pillico — ’

‘Miss — who?’

‘The lady’s name, sir, is Miss Sophia Pillico.’

‘I pity Sophia with all my heart. The sooner she changes her name the better.’

‘That’s the joke among the women downstairs, sir. I was about to say that Miss Pillico is not content to doctor her own sex only. She considers it a part of the Rights of Women to doctor the men; and she has begun with Sir John — ’

Here Frederick incomprehensibly checked himself, and prepared for shaving his master by sharpening the razor.

‘Why don’t you go on?’ said Otto. ‘Sophia means to doctor the men; and she’s beginning with Sir John — ’

He
suddenly checked himself, and started up in the bed. His next question seemed to burst out of him irrepressibly. ‘You don’t mean to say, Frederick, that my mother is jealous?’

The valet, still sharpening the razor, looked up. ‘That’s the row, sir,’ he answered as gravely as ever.

Otto fell back on the bed, and pulled the clothes over his face. Deaf Lady Dowager owned to having arrived at sixty years of age. Sir John’s biography (in the past time when he had been Lord Mayor of London) fixed the date of his birth at a period of seventy-four years since. The bedclothes heaved, and the bed shook; violent emotion of some kind was overwhelming Lady Dowager’s son. Not the ghost of a smile — though he was at liberty to indulge his sense of humour as things were now — appeared on the wooden face of Frederick. He laid out his shaving materials, and waited until Mr Fitzmark’s beard was ready for him.

Otto rose again above the horizon of the bedclothes. He looked completely exhausted — but that was all. The altar of appearances, waiting for the sacrifice, claimed and received the necessary recognition. Having first got out of bed — by way of separating himself from irreverent associations possibly lurking in the mind of his valet — Otto posed, as the French say, in an attitude of severe propriety.

‘Drop the subject,’ he said.