Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (225 page)

CHAPTER III.

APPROACHING THE PRECIPICE.

TRAVELING
from London to Porthgenna, Mr. and Mrs. Frankland had stopped, on the ninth of May, at the West Winston station. On the eleventh of June they left it again to continue their journey to Cornwall. On the thirteenth, after resting two nights upon the road, they arrived toward the evening at Porthgenna Tower.

There had been storm and rain all the morning; it had lulled toward the afternoon, and at the hour when they reached the house the wind had dropped, a thick white fog hid the sea from view, and sudden showers fell drearily from time to time over the sodden land. Not even a solitary idler from the village was hanging about the west terrace as the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Frankland, the baby, and the two servants drove up to the house.

No one was waiting with the door open to receive the travelers; for all hope of their arriving on that day had been given up, and the ceaseless thundering of the surf, as the stormy sea surged in on the beach beneath, drowned the roll of the carriage-wheels over the terrace road. The driver was obliged to leave his seat and ring at the bell for admittance. A minute or more elapsed before the door was opened. With the rain falling sullen and steady on the roof of the carriage, with the raw dampness of the atmosphere penetrating through all coverings and defenses, with the booming of the surf sounding threateningly near in the dense obscurity of the fog, the young couple waited for admission to their own home, as strangers might have waited who had called at an ill-chosen time.

When the door was opened at last, the master and mistress, whom the servants would have welcomed with the proper congratulations on any other occasion, were now received with the proper apologies instead. Mr. Munder, Mrs. Pentreath, Betsey, and Mr. Frankland’s man all crowded together in the hall, and all begged pardon confusedly for not having been ready at the door when the carriage drove up. The appearance of the baby changed the conventional excuses of the housekeeper and the maid into conventional expressions of admiration; but the men remained grave and gloomy, and spoke of the miserable weather apologetically, as if the rain and the fog had been of their own making.

The reason for their persistency in dwelling on this one dreary topic came out while Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were being conducted up the west staircase. The storm of the morning had been fatal to three of the Porthgenna fishermen, who had been lost with their boat at sea, and whose deaths had thrown the whole village into mourning. The servants had done nothing but talk of the catastrophe ever since the intelligence of it had reached them early in the afternoon; and Mr. Munder now thought it his duty to explain that the absence of the villagers, on the occasion of the arrival of his master and mistress, was entirely attributable to the effect produced among the little community by the wreck of the fishing-boat. Under any less lamentable circumstances the west terrace would have been crowded, and the appearance

of the carriage would have been welcomed with cheers.

“Lenny, I almost wish we had waited a little longer before we came here,” whispered Rosamond, nervously pressing her husband’s arm. “It is very dreary and disheartening to return to my first home on such a day as this. That story of the poor fishermen is a sad story, love, to welcome me back to the place of my birth. Let us send the first thing to-morrow morning, and see what we can do for the poor helpless women and children. I shall not feel easy in my mind, after hearing that story, till we have done something to comfort them.”

“I trust you will approve of the repairs, ma’am,” said the housekeeper, pointing to the staircase which led to the second story.

“The repairs?” said Rosamond, absently. “Repairs! I never hear the word now, without thinking of the north rooms, and of the plans we devised for getting my poor dear father to live in them. Mrs. Pentreath, I have a host of questions to ask you and Mr. Munder about all the extraordinary things that happened when the mysterious lady and the incomprehensible foreigner came here. But tell me first — -this is the west front, I suppose? — how far are we from the north rooms? I mean, how long would it take us to get to them, if we wanted to go now to that part of the house?”

“Oh, dear me, ma’am, not five minutes!” answered Mrs. Pentreath.

“Not five minutes!” repeated Rosamond, whispering to her husband again. “Do you hear that, Lenny? In five minutes we might be in the Myrtle Room!”

“Yet,” said Mr. Frankland, smiling, “in our present state of ignorance, we are just as far from it as if we were at West Winston still.”

“I can’t think that, Lenny. It may be only my fancy, but now we are on the spot I feel as if we had driven the mystery into its last hiding-place. We are actually in the house that holds the Secret; and nothing will persuade me that we are not half-way already toward finding it out. But don’t let us stop on this cold landing. Which way are we to go next?”

“This way, ma’am,” said Mr. Munder, seizing the first opportunity of placing himself in a prominent position. “There is a fire in the drawing-room. Will you allow me the honour of leading and conducting you, Sir, to the apartment in question?” he added, officiously stretching out his hand to Mr. Frankland.

“Certainly not!” interposed Rosamond sharply. She had noticed with her usual quickness of observation that Mr. Munder wanted the delicacy of feeling which ought to have restrained him from staring curiously at his blind master in her presence, and she was unfavorably disposed toward him in consequence. “Wherever the apartment in question may happen to be,” she continued with satirical emphasis, “I will lead Mr. Frankland to it, if you please. If you want to make yourself useful, you had better go on before us, and open the door.”

Outwardly crest-fallen, but inwardly indignant, Mr. Munder led the way to the drawing-room. The fire burned brightly, the old-fashioned furniture displayed itself to the most picturesque advantage, the paper on the walls looked comfortably mellow, the carpet, faded as it was, felt soft and warm underfoot. Rosamond led her husband to an easy chair by the fireside, and began to feel at home for the first time.

“This looks really comfortable,” she said. “When we have shut out that dreary white fog, and the candles are lit, and the tea is on the table, we shall have nothing in the world to complain of. You enjoy this nice warm atmosphere, don’t you, Lenny? There is a piano in the room, my dear; I can play to you in the evening at Porthgenna just as I used in London. Nurse, sit down and make yourself and the baby as comfortable as you can. Before we take our bonnets off, I must go away with Mrs. Pentreath and see about the bedrooms. What is your name, you very rosy, good-natured looking girl? Betsey, is it? Well, then, Betsey, suppose you go down and get the tea; and we shall like you all the better if you can contrive to bring us some cold meat with it.” Giving her orders in those good-humored terms, and not noticing that her husband looked a little uneasy while she was talking so familiarly to a servant, Rosamond left the room in company with Mrs. Pentreath.

When she returned, her face and manner were altered: she looked and spoke seriously and quietly.

“I hope I have arranged everything for the best, Lenny,” she said. “The airiest and largest room, Mrs. Pentreath tells me, is the room in which my mother died. But I thought we had better not make use of that: I felt as if it chilled and saddened me only to look at it. Farther on, along the passage, there is a room that was my nursery. I almost fancied, when Mrs. Pentreath told me she had heard I used to sleep there, that I remembered the pretty little arched door-way leading into the second room — the night-nursery it used to be called in former days. I have ordered the fire to be lit there, and the beds to be made. There is a third room on the right hand, which communicates with the day-nursery. I think we might manage to establish ourselves very comfortably in the three rooms — if you felt no objection — though they are not so large or so grandly furnished as the company bedrooms. I will change the arrangement, if you like — but the house looks rather lonesome and dreary, just at first — and my heart warms to the old nursery — and I think we might at least try it, to begin with, don’t you, Lenny?”

Mr. Frankland was quite of his wife’s opinion, and was ready to accede to any domestic arrangements that she might think fit to make. While he was assuring her of this the tea came up, and the sight of it helped to restore Rosamond to her usual spirits. When the meal was over, she occupied herself in seeing the baby comfortably established for the night, in the room on the right hand which communicated with the day-nursery. That maternal duty performed, she came back to her husband in the drawing-room; and the conversation between them turned — as it almost always turned now when they were alone — on the two perplexing subjects of Mrs. Jazeph and the Myrtle Room.

“I wish it was not night,” said Rosamond. “I should like to begin exploring at once. Mind, Lenny, you must be with me in all my investigations. I lend you my eyes, and you give me your advice. You must never lose patience, and never tell me that you can be of no use. How I do wish we were starting on our voyage of discovery at this very moment! But we may make inquires, at any rate,” she continued, ringing the bell. “Let us have the housekeeper and the steward up, and try if we can’t make them tell us something more than they told us in their letter.”

The bell was answered by Betsey. Rosamond desired that Mr. Munder and Mrs. Pentreath might be sent upstairs. Betsey having heard Mrs. Frankland express her intention of questioning the housekeeper and the steward, guessed why they were wanted, and smiled mysteriously.

“Did you see anything of those strange visitors who behaved so oddly?” asked Rosamond, detecting the smile. “Yes, I am sure you did. Tell us what you saw. We want to hear everything that happened — everything, down to the smallest trifle.”

Appealed to in these direct terms, Betsey contrived, with much circumlocution and confusion, to relate what her own personal experience had been of the proceedings of Mrs. Jazeph and her foreign companion. When she had done, Rosamond stopped her on her way to the door by asking this question —

“You say the lady was found lying in a fainting-fit at the top of the stairs. Have you any notion, Betsey, why she fainted?”

The servant hesitated.

“Come! Come!” said Rosamond. “You have some notion, I can see. Tell us what it is.”

“I’m afraid you will be angry with me, ma’am,” said Betsey, expressing embarrassment by drawing lines slowly with her forefinger on a table at her side.

“Nonsense! I shall only be angry with you if you won’t speak. Why do you think the lady fainted?”

Betsey drew a very long line with her embarrassed forefinger, wiped it afterward on her apron, and answered — ”I think she fainted, if you please, ma’am, because she see the ghost.”

“The ghost! What! is there a ghost in the house? Lenny, here is a romance that we never expected. What sort of ghost is it? Let us have the whole story.”

The whole story, as Betsey told it, was not of a nature to afford her hearers any extraordinary information, or to keep them very long in suspense. The ghost was a lady who had been at a remote period the wife of one of the owner’s of Porthgenna Tower, and who had been guilty of deceiving her husband in some way unknown. She had been condemned in consequence to walk about the north rooms as long as ever the walls of them held together. She had long, curling, light-brown hair, and very white teeth, and a dimple in each cheek, and was altogether “awful beautiful” to look at. Her approach was heralded to any mortal creature who was unfortunate enough to fall in her way by the blowing of a cold wind, and nobody who had once felt that wind had the slightest chance of ever feeling warm again. That was all Betsey knew about the ghost; and it was in her opinion enough to freeze a person’s blood only to think of it.

Rosamond smiled, then looked grave again. “I wish you could have told us a little more,” she said. “But, as you cannot, we must try Mrs. Pentreath and Mr. Munder next. Send them up here, if you please, Betsey, as soon as you get downstairs.”

The examination of the housekeeper and the steward led to no result whatever. Nothing more than they had already communicated in their letter to Mrs. Frankland could be extracted from either of them. Mr. Munder’s dominant idea was that the foreigner had entered the doors of Porthgenna Tower with felonious ideas on the subject of the family plate. Mrs. Pentreath concurred in that opinion, and mentioned, in connection with it, her own private impression that the lady in the quiet dress was an unfortunate person who had escaped from a mad-house. As to giving a word of advice, or suggesting a plan for solving the mystery, neither the housekeeper nor the steward appeared to think that the rendering of any assistance of that sort lay at all within their province. They took their own practical view of the suspicious conduct of the two strangers, and no mortal power could persuade them to look an inch beyond it.