Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1754 page)

V

As for the state of my mind, I can say no more about it than I have said already.

If I can trust my memory I may, however, mention that my thoughts were now more busy with Miss Urban than with her niece. I had turned a deaf ear to Mira’s entreaties at the time; but they had their own irresistible influence when I found myself alone; and they led me to the conviction that the schoolmistress must be answerable for what had befallen me since I entered her house. How was she answerable? To find the right reply to this, was the one obstacle that no effort of mine could overcome. There was a provocation in constantly trying, and constantly failing, to hit on a reasonable interpretation of what Mira had said, which ended in making me too restless to remain in my place of repose. I left the pleasant shade, and wandered away; still battling with my difficulties, and neither knowing nor caring whither I went.

On a sudden, I found myself called back to present things, oddly enough, by a pull at my coat-tail.

Looking around, I discovered a little boy who seemed to be about five or six years of age — a really pretty child, with bright merry eyes and beautiful dark red hair. Here no doubt was the fatal creature who had caused me such suffering when I heard who his mother was. If he had not spoken first, I am afraid I should have gone on without taking any notice of him.

‘Do come, sir, and see my garden.’

He took hold of my hand as he preferred that request, and he looked up in my face with a smile, so innocent and so pretty, that Herod himself must have felt the charm of it.

We took the way to his garden, ‘My little man,’ I said, ‘suppose you tell me your name?’

‘The boys call me Blazes — because of my red hair.’

‘Have you no other name besides that?’

‘Yes; I’m Kit.’

‘Well, Kit, and who do you belong to?’

‘I belong to Aunt Urban.’

‘Have you got no father and mother?’

‘I don’t know that I’ve got a father. They tell me mother lives far away, somewhere.’

‘Have you any playfellows?’

The child shook his head: ‘I’m left to play by myself. Here’s my garden.’

It was a barren little spot in a corner between two walls. Kit’s pride in his few sickly-looking flowers, and his small crookedly directed walks, might have made some people laugh; it made me feel readier to cry.

‘I hope you like my garden?’ the boy said.

‘Indeed I do like it.’

‘And you call me a good boy?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘I like to be praised — I don’t get much of it,’ poor little Kit confessed. He took up his small toy spade. ‘I want to make a new walk. You’re a goodnatured fellow. Will you help me?’

I marked out the course of a new path, and left him hard at work on it. The sooner we separated the better it would be for me: the poor boy innocently embittered my mind against the mother who had deserted him — who had ignored his existence at the very time when she had promised to be my wife. I was afraid to go back to her until I had mastered my own indignation by the help of time.

Walking straight on, and still failing to compose myself, experience reminded me of the comforting and companionable friend of man through the journey of life. In a moment more, my pipe and pouch were in my hand — but I had lost or mislaid the means of lighting the tobacco. While I was still vainly searching my pockets, I noticed a thin blue column of smoke rising through a clump of trees on my left hand. Advancing in that direction, I reached the limit of the grounds and discovered a gate with the customary Lodge by the side of it.

An old woman was knitting at an open window. I asked her if she would kindly give me a light for my pipe.

‘Surely, sir,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘Please come round to the door.’

She was waiting for me on the threshold. When I approached her, she lifted her withered brown hands in amazement. Her brightening face made her look ten years younger directly. ‘Lord bless us and save us, Mr Fencote, don’t you know me?’

I was near enough to her now to make a likely guess. ‘Not Mrs Jennet?’ I said.

‘Come in , sir! come in! Who but Mrs Jennet should it be?’ She insisted on placing me in her own arm chair; and she spoke of her grandson, ‘thriving and married and happy, when he might have been dead at the bottom of the sea, sir, but for you.’ I listened with every appearance of interest that I could command, and flattered myself that I had concealed the state of my mind from the good old soul who was so honestly glad to see me. It soon appeared that I was mistaken.

‘You don’t look like your own bright and cheery self, sir. Has anything happened to trouble you at the school-house?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘something has happened to trouble me.’

Why I suddenly changed my mind, and owned the truth in this offhand way, I hardly know. People sometimes act on impulses which they are not themselves able to explain. That I had no distinct purpose in view, I am quite sure; the result that I produced took me completely by surprise.

My old friend eyed me attentively. ‘Any misunderstanding, sir, between my mistress and you?’ she asked. ‘I make no doubt you’re a friend of Miss Urban’s, or why should you be here in the grounds?’

‘I can’t call myself a friend of Miss Urban,’ I said; ‘I was only introduced to her about an hour ago.’

The temperature of Mrs Jennet’s curiosity rose a little higher.

‘Will it be considered a liberty,’ she went on, ‘if I ask who made you and Miss Urban known to one another?’

Now, when it was probably too late, prudence suggested the necessity of speaking with reserve. I refrained from mentioning Mira’s name.

‘The person who introduced me,’ I answered, ‘was a young lady.’

Mrs Jennet’s eyes fastened on me with an expression of dismay; Mrs Jennet’s voice sank to a whisper.

‘Miss Urban’s niece?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps some relation of yours?’

‘She may be.’

‘May be? What does that mean?’

‘It means that she may be a very near relation of mine — if I marry her.’

That reply put an end to all further hesitation, on Mrs Jennet’s side and on mine. ‘I know what has happened now,’ she said; ‘as well as if I had seen you and heard you. Mr Fencote, I warned my mistress, at the time, that she might expect to meet with some such ill-luck as the misfortune that has fallen on her now. When that telegram surprised us with the news that her niece was coming, I resisted temptation; I didn’t say “I told you so” — I only thought it. Ha! I don’t doubt that you have been hardly dealt with. But there’s another person — you know who she is! — whom I pity more than I pity you. No! you mustn’t tempt me to enter into particulars. What am I to do,’ the poor woman asked, ‘between you who saved my grandson’s life, and my mistress who trusts me after thirty years spent in her service? Why don’t you ask the young lady to tell you that miserable story?’

‘I don’t want to distress the young lady,’ I said. ‘My temper is quieter by this time. I find I’m too fond of my darling to desert her. Whether you take me into your confidence, or whether you don’t — I’ll marry her all the same.’

Mrs Jennet seemed to be strongly impressed by this.

‘Upon you soul, sir?’ she said solemnly.

‘Upon my soul,’ I answered.

What had I done to make the good old dame as reckless of consequences as I was, let others find out. ‘Light your pipe,’ she said; ‘and I’ll tell you all about it.’

V
I

‘A great deal of mischief is sometimes done, sir,’ Mrs Jennet began, ‘among pleasure parties who go to enjoy themselves at the seaside. It was in the Midsummer holidays, six or seven years ago (I don’t rightly recollect which), that we went wrong. When I say We I only mean the eldest Miss Urban, who was then alive — the youngest Miss Urban, now mistress of the school — and my old self, in past days lady’s maid, and afterwards keeper of the gate. My health was not as good in those days as it is now. So the two Misses Urban, as good creatures as ever lived, took me with them to the seaside. We had been about a fortnight in comfortable lodgings, when Miss Esther, (who was the eldest one) says to me: “I’m afraid my sister is going to do a very foolish thing.” You will not be surprised to hear, sir, that a man was at the bottom of it. Also, that he was thought to be a perfect gentleman. Also, that he was handsome and clever and reputed to be well born. Also, that Miss Arabella (that is to say the present Miss Urban) was determined to marry him — and did marry him.’

‘And they are now separated,’ I ventured to guess. ‘And Miss Arabella has returned to her maiden name?’

‘Worse than that, Mr Fencote. She never was married at all. A lady — a perfect lady if ever there was one yet — heard where the newly-married couple had gone for their honeymoon. She says to my mistress, breaking it very kindly to her: ‘I am his victim, and you are his victim; look at my marriage certificate.” You will ask if he was caught and punished. Not he! Early in the morning, the wretch said he was going out for a walk. He never came back, and has never been heard of since. It all happened within the six weeks of the Midsummer holidays; a hundred miles, and more, away from this place. We were saved, owing to those circumstances, from a scandal that might have ruined the school; and, like foolish women, we thought ourselves well out of it. Who could have foreseen, sir, that more misfortunes were going to fall on us? The first of them was the death of the eldest Miss Urban. The second — well some people might blame me for calling it a misfortune. What else is it, I should be glad to know, when a single lady, left sole mistress of a thriving school for girls, finds herself in a way to be a mother — cheated out of her lawful marriage by a villain who went to church with her, the husband of another woman?’

I thought of the little lovable boy whom I had left at work in his garden. But I had not courage enough to speak of him; remembering with shame how cruelly my headlong anger had injured Mira in my thoughts.

‘There’s but little more for me to say,’ Mrs Jennet resumed. ‘You don’t need to be told that a time came when the “health” of the mistress obliged her to leave the management of the school, for a few weeks, to the teachers, and that I was the servant who attended her. But please notice this: I am not to blame for the story which Miss Urban’s cleverness made up (when the child was put out at nurse) to save her reputation. From first to last, I was against that story. Miss Mira was then settled in America with her father and mother, and there was no prospect of the parents or the daughter returning to the old country. What does my mistress do but turn her niece into “Mrs Motherwell, a widow,’ living abroad, and obliged by circumstances to confide her little boy to the care of her aunt in England. That lie succeeded very well. But I have had a good education, Mr Fencote; and I was taught to observe things, before family troubles forced me to take to domestic service. This I have noticed, that lies turn traitors, in the long run, against the very people whom they have served. Miss Urban found this to be true, when your young lady unexpectedly returned to England. Ah, sir, I see what you are thinking of!’

I was thinking of the first interview between the aunt and the niece — and of how my intrusion must have complicated their deplorable position towards each other.

These were Mrs Jennet’s last words:

‘Miss Urban sent for me to bear witness, before her niece, to the cruel deception by which she had suffered. It was the only excuse she could offer by way of appeasing Miss Mira’s indignation — natural indignation, just indignation, I say! The next thing was to offer atonement, so far as it could be done. My mistress proposed to retire from the school, and to sell the business; and to live out her life (with her boy) among strangers. Until this could be done, she threw herself, as the saying is, on Miss Mira’s mercy. “It rests with you,” she said, going down on her knees, “to promise to keep up the deception for a few weeks, or to ruin me for life.” You know how it ended. In having the chance of getting that noble young woman for your wife, I consider you, sir, to be the luckiest man I ever set eyes on. And remember this, if you had not said that your mind was made up to marry her — or, to put it more plainly still, if you had not shown yourself ready to trust her, when you were quite ignorant of what had really happened — not one word of all that I have said to you would have passed my lips. Now I have spoken my mind — and there is an end of it.’