Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (215 page)

“Will you step in for a moment, and wait here while I speak to the steward?” said Mrs. Pentreath, pointedly neglecting to notice the familiar old foreigner, and addressing herself straight through him to the lady on the steps below.

“Thank you very much,” said Uncle Joseph, smiling and bowing, impervious to rebuke. “What did I tell you?” he whispered triumphantly to his niece, as she passed him on her way into the house.

Mrs. Pentreath’s first impulse was to go downstairs at once, and speak to Mr. Munder. But a timely recollection of that part of Mrs. Frankland’s letter which enjoined her not to lose sight of the lady in the quiet dress, brought her to a stand-still the next moment. She was the more easily recalled to a remembrance of this particular injunction by a curious alteration in the conduct of the lady herself, who seemed to lose all her diffidence, and to become surprisingly impatient to lead the way into the interior of the house, the moment she had stepped across the threshold.

“Betsey!” cried Mrs. Pentreath, cautiously calling to the servant after she had only retired a few paces from the visitors — ”Betsey! ask Mr. Munder to be so kind as to step this way.”

Mr. Munder presented himself with great deliberation, and with a certain lowering dignity in his face. He had been accustomed to be treated with deference, and he was not pleased with the housekeeper for unceremoniously leaving him the moment she heard the ring at the bell, without giving him time to pronounce an opinion on Mrs. Frankland’s letter. Accordingly, when Mrs. Pentreath, in a high state of excitement, drew him aside out of hearing, and confided to him, in a whisper, the astounding intelligence that the lady in whom Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were so mysteriously interested was, at that moment, actually standing before him in the house, he received her communication with an air of the most provoking indifference. It was worse still when she proceeded to state her difficulties — warily keeping her eye on the two strangers all the while. Appeal as respectfully as she might to Mr. Munder’s superior wisdom for guidance, he persisted in listening with a disparaging frown, and ended by irritably contradicting her when she ventured to add, in conclusion, that her own ideas inclined her to assume no responsibility, and to beg the foreign gentleman to wait outside while the lady, in conformity with Mrs. Frankland’s instructions, was being shown over the house.

“Such may be your opinion, ma’am,” said Mr. Munder, severely. “It is not mine.”

The housekeeper looked aghast. “Perhaps,” she suggested, deferentially, “you think that the foreign old gentleman would be likely to insist on going over the house with the lady?”

“Of course I think so,” said Mr. Munder. (He had thought nothing of the sort; his only idea just then being the idea of asserting his own supremacy by setting himself steadily in opposition to any preconceived arrangements of Mrs. Pentreath.)

“Then you would take the responsibility of showing them both over the house, seeing that they have both come to the door together?” asked the housekeeper.

“Of course I would,” answered the steward, with the promptitude of resolution which distinguishes all superior men.

“Well, Mr. Munder, I am always glad to be guided by your opinion, and I will be guided by it now,” said Mrs. Pentreath. “But, as there will be two people to look after — for I would not trust the foreigner out of sight on any consideration whatever — I must really beg you to share the trouble of showing them over the house along with me. I am so excited and nervous that I don’t feel as if I had all my wits about me — I never was placed in such a position as this before — I am in the midst of mysteries that I don’t understand — and, in short, if I can’t count on your assistance, I won’t answer for it that I shall not make some mistake. I should be very sorry to make a mistake, not only on my own account, but — ” Here the housekeeper stopped, and looked hard at Mr. Munder.

“Go on, ma’am,” said Mr. Munder, with cruel composure.

“Not only on my own account,” resumed Mrs. Pentreath, demurely, “but on yours; for Mrs. Frankland’s letter certainly casts the responsibility of conducting this delicate business on your shoulders as well as on mine.”

Mr. Munder recoiled a few steps, turned red, opened his lips indignantly, hesitated, and closed them again, he was fairly caught in a trap of his own setting. He could not retreat from the responsibility of directing the housekeeper’s conduct, the moment after he had voluntarily assumed it; and he could not deny that Mrs. Frankland’s letter positively and repeatedly referred to him by name. There was only one way of getting out of the difficulty with dignity, and Mr. Munder unblushingly took that way the moment he had recovered self-possession enough to collect himself for the effort.

“I am perfectly amazed, Mrs. Pentreath,” he began, with the gravest dignity. “Yes, I repeat, I am perfectly amazed that you should think me capable of leaving you to go over the house alone, under such remarkable circumstances as those we are now placed in. No, ma’am! whatever my other faults may be, shrinking from my share of responsibility is not one of them. I don’t require to be reminded of Mrs. Frankland’s letter; and — no! — I don’t require any apologies. I am quite ready, ma’am — quite ready to show the way upstairs whenever you are.”

“The sooner the better, Mr. Munder — for there is that audacious old foreigner actually chattering to Betsey now, as if he had known her all his life!”

The assertion was quite true. Uncle Joseph was exercising his gift of familiarity on the maid-servant (who had lingered to stare at the strangers, instead of going back to the kitchen), just as he had already exercised it on the old lady passenger in the stage-coach, and on the driver of the pony-chaise which took his niece and himself to the post-town of Porthgenna. While the housekeeper and the steward were holding their private conference, he was keeping Betsey in ecstasies of suppressed giggling by the odd questions that he asked about the house, and about how she got on with her work in it. His inquiries had naturally led from the south side of the building, by which he and his companion had entered, to the west side, which they were shortly to explore; and thence round to the north side, which was forbidden ground to everybody in the house. When Mrs. Pentreath came forward with the steward, she overheard this exchange of question and answer passing between the foreigner and the maid:

“But tell me, Betzee, my dear,” said Uncle Joseph. “Why does nobody ever go into these mouldy old rooms?”

“Because there’s a ghost in them,” answered Betsey, with a burst of laughter, as if a series of haunted rooms and a series of excellent jokes meant precisely the same thing.

“Hold your tongue directly, and go back to the kitchen,” cried Mrs. Pentreath, indignantly. “The ignorant people about here,” she continued, still pointedly overlooking Uncle Joseph, and addressing herself only to Sarah, “tell absurd stories about some old rooms on the unrepaired side of the house, which have not been inhabited for more than half a century past — absurd stories about a ghost; and my servant is foolish enough to believe them.”

“No, I’m not,” said Betsey, retiring, under protest, to the lower regions. “I don’t believe a word about the ghost — at least not in the day-time.” Adding that important saving clause in a whisper, Betsey unwillingly withdrew from the scene.

Mrs. Pentreath observed, with some surprise, that the mysterious lady in the quiet dress turned very pale at the mention of the ghost story, and made no remark on it whatever. While she was still wondering what this meant, Mr. Munder emerged into dignified prominence, and loftily addressed himself; not to Uncle Joseph, and not to Sarah, but to the empty air between them.

“If you wish to see the house,” he said, “you will have the goodness to follow me.”

With those words, Mr. Munder turned solemnly into the passage that led to the foot of the west staircase, walking with that peculiar, slow strut in which all serious-minded English people indulge when they go out to take a little exercise on Sunday. The housekeeper, adapting her pace with feminine pliancy to the pace of the steward, walked the national Sabbatarian Polonaise by his side, as if she was out with him for a mouthful of fresh air between the services.

“As I am a living sinner, this going over the house is like going to a funeral!” whispered Uncle Joseph to his niece. He drew her arm into his, and felt, as he did so, that she was trembling.

“What is the matter?” he asked, under his breath.

“Uncle! there is something unnatural about the readiness of these people to show us over the house,” was the faintly whispered answer. “What were they talking about just now, out of our hearing? Why did that woman keep her eyes fixed so constantly on me?”

Before the old man could answer, the housekeeper looked round, and begged, with the severest emphasis, that they would be good enough to follow. In less than another minute they were all standing at the foot of the west staircase.

“Aha!” cried Uncle Joseph, as easy and talkative as ever, even in the presence of Mr. Munder himself. “A fine big house, and a very good staircase.”

“We are not accustomed to hear either the house or the staircase spoken of in these terms, Sir,” said Mr. Munder, resolving to nip the foreigner’s familiarity in the bud. “The Guide to West Cornwall, which you would have done well to make yourself acquainted with before you came here, describes Porthgenna Tower as a Mansion, and uses the word Spacious in speaking of the west staircase. I regret to find, Sir, that you have not consulted the Guide-book to West Cornwall.”

“And why?” rejoined the unabashed German. “What do I want with a book, when I have got you for my guide? Ah, dear Sir, but you are not just to yourself! Is not a living guide like you, who talks and walks about, better for me than dead leaves of print and paper? Ah, no, no! I shall not hear another word — I shall not hear you do any more injustice to yourself.” Here Uncle Joseph made another fantastic bow, looked up smiling into the steward’s face, and shook his head several times with an air of friendly reproach.

Mr. Munder felt paralyzed. He could not have been treated with more ease and indifferent familiarity if this obscure foreign stranger had been an English duke. He had often heard of the climax of audacity; and here it was visibly embodied in one small, elderly individual, who did not rise quite five feet from the ground he stood on!

While the steward was swelling with a sense of injury too large for utterance, the housekeeper, followed by Sarah, was slowly ascending the stairs. Uncle Joseph, seeing them go up, hastened to join his niece, and Mr. Munder, after waiting a little while on the mat to recover himself, followed the audacious foreigner with the intention of watching his conduct narrowly, and chastising his insolence at the first opportunity with stinging words of rebuke.

The procession up the stairs thus formed was not, however, closed by the steward; it was further adorned and completed by Betsey, the servant-maid, who stole out of the kitchen to follow the strange visitors over the house, as closely as she could without attracting the notice of Mrs. Pentreath. Betsey had her share of natural human curiosity and love of change. No such event as the arrival of strangers had ever before enlivened the dreary monotony of Porthgenna Tower within her experience; and she was resolved not to stay alone in the kitchen while there was a chance of hearing a stray word of the conversation, or catching a chance glimpse of the proceedings among the company upstairs.

In the mean time the housekeeper had led the way as far as the first-floor landing, on either side of which the principal rooms in the west front were situated. Sharpened by fear and suspicion, Sarah’s eyes immediately detected the repairs which had been effected in the banisters and stairs of the second flight.

“You have had workmen in the house?” she said quickly to Mrs. Pentreath.

“You mean on the stairs?” returned the housekeeper. “Yes, we have had workmen there.”

“And nowhere else?”

“No. But they are wanted in other places badly enough. Even here, on the best side of the house, half the bedrooms upstairs are hardly fit to sleep in. They were anything but comfortable, as I have heard, even in the late Mrs. Treverton’s time; and since she died — ”

The housekeeper stopped with a frown and a look of surprise. The lady in the quiet dress, instead of sustaining the reputation for good manners which had been conferred on her in Mrs. Frankland’s letter, was guilty of the unpardonable discourtesy of turning away from Mrs. Pentreath before she had done speaking. Determined not to allow herself to be impertinently silenced in that way, she coldly and distinctly repeated her last words — ”And since Mrs. Treverton died — ”