Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (197 page)

“Yes, but they have a fault. Come! tell me what the fault is.”

“They are not quite so strongly marked as they might be.”

“Right again! And my eyes?”

“Brown eyes, large eyes, wakeful eyes, that are always looking about them. Eyes that can be very soft at one time, and very bright at another. Eyes tender and clear, just at the present moment, but capable, on very slight provocation, of opening rather too widely, and looking rather too brilliantly resolute.”

“Mind you don’t make them look so now! What is there below the eyes?”

“A nose that is not quite big enough to be in proper proportion with them. A nose that has a slight tendency to be — ”

“Don’t say the horrid English word! Spare my feelings by putting it in French. Say
retroussé,
and skip over my nose as fast as possible.”

“I must stop at the mouth, then, and own that it is as near perfection as possible. The lips are lovely in shape, fresh in colour, and irresistible in expression. They smile in my portrait, and I am sure they are smiling at me now.”

“How could they do otherwise when they are getting so much praise? My vanity whispers to me that I had better stop the catechism here. If I talk about my complexion, I shall only hear that it is of the dusky sort; and that there is never red enough in it except when I am walking, or confused, or angry. If I ask a question about my figure, I shall receive the dreadful answer, ‘You are dangerously inclined to be fat.’ If I say, How do I dress? I shall be told, Not soberly enough; you are as fond as a child of gay colours — No! I will venture no more questions. But, vanity apart, Lenny, I am so glad, so proud, so happy to find that you can keep the image of me clearly in your mind. I shall do my best now to look and dress like your last remembrance of me. My love of loves! I will do you credit — I will try if I can’t make you envied for your wife. You deserve a hundred thousand kisses for saying your catechism so well — and there they are!”

While Mrs. Frankland was conferring the reward of merit on her husband, the sound of a faint, small, courteously significant cough made itself timidly audible in a corner of the room. Turning round instantly, with the quickness that characterized all her actions, Mrs. Frankland, to her horror and indignation, confronted Miss Mowlem standing just inside the door, with a letter in her hand and a blush of sentimental agitation on her simpering face.

“You wretch! how dare you come in without knocking at the door?” cried Rosamond, starting to her feet with a stamp, and passing in an instant from the height of fondness to the height of indignation.

Miss Mowlem shook guiltily before the bright, angry eyes that looked through and through her, turned very pale, held out the letter apologetically, and said in her meekest tones that she was very sorry.

“Sorry!” exclaimed Rosamond, getting even more irritated by the apology than she had been by the intrusion, and showing it by another stamp of the foot; “who cares whether you are sorry? I don’t want your sorrow — I won’t have it. I never was so insulted in my life — never, you mean, prying, inquisitive creature!”

“Rosamond! Rosamond! pray don’t forget yourself!” interposed the quiet voice of Mr. Frankland.

“Lenny, dear, I can’t help it! That creature would drive a saint mad. She has been plying after us ever since we have been here — you have, you ill-bred, indelicate woman! — I suspected it before — I am certain of it now! Must we lock our doors to keep you out? — we won’t lock our doors! Fetch the bill! We give you warning. Mr. Frankland gives you warning — don’t you, Lenny? I’ll pack up all your things, dear: she sha’n’t touch one of them. Go downstairs and make out your bill, and give your mother warning. Mr. Frankland says he won’t have his rooms burst into, and his doors listened at by inquisitive women — and I say so too. Put that letter down on the table — unless you want to open it and read it — put it down, you audacious woman, and fetch the bill, and tell your mother we are going to leave the house directly!”

At this dreadful threat, Miss Mowlem, who was soft and timid, as well as curious, by nature, wrung her hands in despair, and overflowed meekly in a shower of tears.

“Oh! good gracious Heavens above!” cried Miss Mowlem, addressing herself distractedly to the ceiling, “what will mother say! whatever will become of me now! Oh, ma’am! I thought I knocked — I did, indeed! Oh, ma’am! I humbly beg pardon, and I’ll never intrude again. Oh, ma’am! mother’s a widow, and this is the first time we have let the lodgings, and the furniture’s swallowed up all our money, and oh, ma’am! ma’am! how I shall catch it if you go!” Here words failed Miss Mowlem, and hysterical sobs pathetically supplied their place.

“Rosamond!” said Mr. Frankland. There was an accent of sorrow in his voice this time, as well as an accent of remonstrance. Rosamond’s quick ear caught the alteration in his tone. As she looked round at him her colour changed, her head drooped a little, and her whole expression altered on the instant. She stole gently to her husband’s side with softened, saddened eyes, and put her lips caressingly close to his ear.

“Lenny,” she whispered, “have I made you angry with me?”

“I can’t be angry with you, Rosamond,” was the quiet answer. “I only wish, love, that you could have controlled yourself a little sooner.”

“I am so sorry — so very, very sorry!” The fresh, soft lips came closer still to his ear as they whispered these penitent words; and the cunning little hand crept up tremblingly round his neck and began to play with his hair. “So sorry, and so ashamed of myself! But it was enough to make almost anybody angry, just at first — wasn’t it, dear? And you will forgive me — won’t you, Lenny? — if I promise never to behave so badly again? Never mind that wretched whimpering fool at the door,” said Rosamond, undergoing a slight relapse as she looked round at Miss Mowlem, standing immovably repentant against the wall, with her face buried in a dingy-white pocket-handkerchief. “I’ll make it up with her; I’ll stop her crying; I’ll take her out of the room; I’ll do anything in the world that’s kind to her, if you will only forgive me.”

“A polite word or two is all that is wanted — nothing more than a polite word or two,” said Mr. Frankland, rather coldly and constrainedly.

“Don’t cry any more, for goodness sake!” said Rosamond, walking straight up to Miss Mowlem, and pulling the dingy-white pocket-handkerchief away from her face without the least ceremony. “There! leave off will you? I am very sorry I was in a passion — though you had no business to come in without knocking — I never meant to distress you, and I’ll never say a hard word to you again, if you will only knock at the door for the future, and leave off crying now. Do leave off crying, you tiresome creature! We are not going away. We don’t want your mother, or the bill, or anything. Here! here’s a present for you, if you’ll leave off crying. Here’s my neck-ribbon — I saw you trying it on yesterday afternoon, when I was lying down on the bedroom sofa, and you thought I was asleep. Never mind; I’m not angry about that. Take the ribbon — take it as a peace-offering, if you won’t as a present. You shall take it! — No, I don’t mean that — I mean, please take it! There, I’ve pinned it on. And now, shake hands and be friends, and go upstairs and see how it looks in the glass.” With these words, Mrs. Frankland opened the door, administered, under the pretense of a pat on the shoulder, a good-humored shove to the amazed and embarrassed Miss Mowlem, closed the door again, and resumed her place in a moment on her husband’s knee.

“I’ve made it up with her, dear. I’ve sent her away with my bright green ribbon, and it makes her look as yellow as a guinea, and as ugly as — ” Rosamond stopped, and looked anxiously into Mr. Frankland’s face. “Lenny!” she said, sadly, putting her cheek against his, “are you angry with me still?”

“My love, I was never angry with you. I never can be.”

“I will always keep my temper down for the future, Lenny!”

“I am sure you will, Rosamond. But never mind that. I am not thinking of your temper now.”

“Of what, then?”

“Of the apology you made to Miss Mowlem.”

“Did I not say enough? I’ll call her back if you like — I’ll make another penitent speech — I’ll do anything but kiss her. I really can’t do that — I can’t kiss anybody now but you.”

“My dear, dear love, how very much like a child you are still in some of your ways! You said more than enough to Miss Mowlem — far more. And if you will pardon me for making the remark, I think in your generosity and good-nature you a little forgot yourself with the young woman. I don’t so much allude to your giving her the ribbon — though, perhaps, that might have been done a little less familiarly — but, from what I heard you say, I infer that you actually went the length of shaking hands with her.”

“Was that wrong? I thought it was the kindest way of making it up.”

“My dear, it is an excellent way of making it up between equals. But consider the difference between your station in society and Miss Mower’s.”

“I will try and consider it, if you wish me, love. But I think I take after my father, who never troubles his head (dear old man!) about differences of station. I can’t help liking people who are kind to me, without thinking whether they are above my rank or below it; and when I got cool, I must confess I felt just as vexed with myself for frightening and distressing that unlucky Miss Mowlem as if her station had been equal to mine. I will try to think as you do, Lenny; but I am very much afraid that I have got, without knowing exactly how, to be what the newspapers call a Radical.”

“My dear Rosamond! don’t talk of yourself in that way, even in joke. You ought to be the last person in the world to confuse those distinctions in rank on which the whole well-being of society depends.”

“Does it really? And yet, dear, we don’t seem to have been created with such very wide distinctions between us. We have all got the same number of arms and legs; we are all hungry and thirsty, and hot in the summer and cold in the winter; we all laugh when we are pleased, and cry when we are distressed; and, surely, we have all got very much the same feelings, whether we are high or whether we are low. I could not have loved you better, Lenny, than I do now if I had been a duchess, or less than I do now if I had been a servant-girl.”

“My love, you are not a servant-girl. And, as to what you say about being a duchess, let me remind you that you are not so much below a duchess as you seem to think. Many a lady of high title cannot look back on such a line of ancestors as yours. Your father’s family, Rosamond, is one of the oldest in England: even
my
father’s family hardly dates back so far; and we were landed gentry when many a name in the peerage was not heard of. It is really almost laughably absurd to hear you talking of yourself as a Radical.”

“I won’t talk of myself so again, Lenny — only don’t look so serious. I will be a Tory, dear, if you will give me a kiss, and let me sit on your knee a little longer.”

Mr. Frankland’s gravity was not proof against his wife’s change of political principles, and the conditions which she annexed to it. His face cleared up, and he laughed almost as gayly as Rosamond herself.

“By the bye,” he said, after an interval of silence had given him time to collect his thoughts, “did I not hear you tell Miss Mowlem to put a letter down on the table? Is it a letter for you or for me?”

“Ah! I forgot all about the letter,” said Rosamond, running to the table. “It is for you, Lenny — and, goodness me! here’s the Porthgenna postmark on it.”

“It must be from the builder whom I sent down to the old house about the repairs. Lend me your eyes, love, and let us hear what he says.”

Rosamond opened the letter, drew a stool to her husband’s feet, and, sitting down with her arms on his knees, read as follows:

“To LEONARD FRANKLAND, ESQ.:

“SIR, — Agreeably to the instructions with which you favored me, I have proceeded to survey Porthgenna Tower, with a view to ascertaining what repairs the house in general, and the north side of it in particular, may stand in need of.

“As regards the outside, a little cleaning and new pointing is all that the building wants. The walls and foundations seem made to last forever. Such strong, solid work I never set eyes on before.

“Inside the house, I cannot report so favorably. The rooms in the west front, having been inhabited during the period of Captain Treverton’s occupation, and having been well looked after since, are in tolerably sound condition. I should say two hundred pounds would cover the expense of all repairs in my line which these rooms need. This sum would not include the restoration of the western staircase, which has given a little in some places, and the banisters of which are decidedly insecure from the first to the second landing. From twenty-five to thirty pounds would suffice to set this all right.