Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (226 page)

“Oh, the stupidity, the provoking, impenetrable, pretentious stupidity of respectable English servants!” exclaimed Rosamond, when she and her husband were alone again. “No help, Lenny, to be hoped for from either of those two people. We have nothing to trust to now but the examination of the house to-morrow; and that resource may fail us, like all the rest. What can Doctor Chennery be about? Why did we not hear from him before we left West Winston?”

“Patience, Rosamond, patience. We shall see what the post brings to-morrow.”

“Pray don’t talk about patience, dear! My stock of that virtue was never a very large one, and it was all exhausted ten days ago, at least. Oh, the weeks and weeks I have been vainly asking myself — Why should Mrs. Jazeph warn me against going into the Myrtle Room? Is she afraid of my discovering a crime? or afraid of my tumbling through the floor? What did she want to do in the room, when she made that attempt to get into it? Why, in the name of wonder, should she know something about this house that I never knew, that my father never knew, that nobody else — ”

“Rosamond!” cried Mr. Frankland, suddenly changing colour, and starting in his chair — ”I think I can guess who Mrs. Jazeph is!”

“Good gracious, Lenny! What do you mean?”

“Something in those last words of yours started the idea in my mind the instant you spoke. Do you remember, when we were staying at St. Swithin’s-on-Sea, and talking about the chances for and against our prevailing on your father to live with us here — do you remember, Rosamond, telling me at that time of certain unpleasant associations which he had with the house, and mentioning among them the mysterious disappearance of a servant on the morning of your mother’s death?”

Rosamond turned pale at the question. “How came we never to think of that before?” she said.

“You told me,” pursued Mr. Frankland, “that this servant left a strange letter behind her, in which she confessed that your mother had charged her with the duty of telling a secret to your father — a secret that she was afraid to divulge, and that she was afraid of being questioned about. I am right, am I not, in stating those two reasons as the reasons she gave for her disappearance?”

“Quite right.”

“And your father never heard of her again?”

“Never!”

“It is a bold guess to make, Rosamond, but the impression is strong on my mind that, on the day when Mrs. Jazeph came into your room at West Winston, you and that servant met, and she knew it!”

“And the Secret, dear — the Secret she was afraid to tell my father?”

“Must be in some way connected with the Myrtle Room.”

Rosamond said nothing in answer. She rose from her chair, and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room. Hearing the rustle of her dress, Leonard called her to him, and, taking her hand, laid his fingers on her pulse, and then lifted them for a moment to her cheek.

“I wish I had waited until to-morrow morning before I told you my idea about Mrs. Jazeph,” he said. “I have agitated you to no purpose whatever, and have spoiled your chance of a good night’s rest.”

“No, no! nothing of the kind. Oh, Lenny, how this guess of your’s adds to the interest — the fearful, breathless interest — we have in tracing that woman, and in finding out the Myrtle Room. Do you think — ?”

“I have done with thinking for the night, my dear; and you must have done with it too. We have said more than enough about Mrs. Jazeph already. Change the subject, and I will talk of anything else you please.”

“It is not so easy to change the subject,” said Rosamond, pouting, and moving away to walk up and down the room again.

“Then let us change the place, and make it easier that way. I know you think me the most provokingly obstinate man in the world, but there is reason in my obstinacy, and you will acknowledge as much when you awake to-morrow morning refreshed by a good night’s rest. Come, let us give our anxieties a holiday. Take me into one of the other rooms, and let me try if I can guess what it is like by touching the furniture.”

The reference to his blindness which the last words contained brought Rosamond to his side in a moment. “You always know best,” she said, putting her arm around his neck and kissing him. “I was looking cross, love, a minute ago, but the clouds are all gone now. We will change the scene, and explore some other room, as you propose.”

She paused, her eyes suddenly sparkled, her colour rose, and she smiled to herself as if some new fancy had that instant crossed her mind.

“Lenny, I will take you where you shall touch a very remarkable piece of furniture indeed,” she resumed, leading him to the door while she spoke. “We will see if you can tell me at once what it is like. You must not be impatient, mind; and you must promise to touch nothing till you feel me guiding your hand.”

She drew him after her along the passage, opened the door of the room in which the baby had been put to bed, made a sign to the nurse to be silent, and, leading Leonard up to the cot, guided his hand down gently, so as to let the tips of his fingers touch the child’s cheek.

“There, Sir!” she cried, her face beaming with happiness as she saw the sudden flush of surprise and pleasure which changed her husband’s natural quiet, subdued expression in an instant. “What do you say to that piece of furniture? Is it a chair, or a table? Or is it the most precious thing in all the house, in all Cornwall, in all England, in all the world? Kiss it, and see what it is — a bust of a baby by a sculptor, or a living cherub by your wife!” She turned, laughing, to the nurse — ”Hannah, you look so serious that I am sure you must be hungry. Have you had your supper yet?” The woman smiled, and answered that she had arranged to go downstairs, as soon as one of the servants could relieve her in taking care of the child. “Go at once,” said Rosamond. “I will stop here and look after the baby. Get your supper, and come back again in half an hour.”

When the nurse had left the roam, Rosamond placed a chair for Leonard by the side of the cot, and seated herself on a low stool at his knees. Her variable disposition seemed to change again when she did this; her face grew thoughtful, her eyes softened, as they turned, now on her husband, now on the bed in which the child was sleeping by his side. After a minute or two of silence, she took one of his hands, placed it on his knee, and laid her cheek gently down on it.

“Lenny,” she said, rather sadly, “I wonder whether we are any of us capable of feeling perfect happiness in this world?”

“What makes you ask that question, my dear?”

“I fancy that I could feel perfect happiness, and yet — ”

“And yet, what?”

“And yet it seems as if, with all my blessings, that blessing was never likely to be granted to me. I should be perfectly happy now but for one little thing. I suppose you can’t guess what that thing is?”

“I would rather you told me, Rosamond.”

Ever since our child was born, love, I have had a little aching at the heart — especially when we are all three together, as we are now — a little sorrow that I can’t quite put away from me on your account.”

“On my account! Lift up your head, Rosamond, and come nearer to me. I feel something on my hand which tells me that you are crying.”

She rose directly, and laid her face close to his. “My own love,” she said, clasping her arms fast round him. “My own heart’s darling, you have never seen our child.”

“Yes, Rosamond, I see him with your eyes.”

“Oh, Lenny! I tell you everything I can — I do my best to lighten the cruel, cruel darkness which shuts you out from that lovely little face lying so close to you! But can I tell you how he looks when he first begins to take notice? can I tell you all the thousand pretty things he will do when he first tries to talk? God has been very merciful to us — but, oh, how much more heavily the sense of your affliction weighs on me now when I am more to you than your wife — now when am the mother of your child!”

“And yet that affliction ought to weigh lightly on your spirits, Rosamond, for you have made it weigh lightly on mine.”

“Have I? Really and truly, have I? It is something noble to live for, Lenny, if I can live for that! It is some comfort to hear you say, as you said just now, that you see with my eyes. They shall always serve you — oh, always! always! — as faithfully as if they were your own. The veriest trifle of a visible thing that I look at with any interest, you shall as good as look at too. I might have had my own little harmless secrets, dear, with another husband; but with you to have even so much as a thought in secret seems like taking the basest, the cruelest advantage of your blindness. I do love you so, Lenny! I am so much fonder of you now than I was when we were first married — I never thought I should be, but I am. You are so much handsomer to me, so much cleverer to me, so much more precious to me in every way. But I am always telling you that, am I not? Do you get tired of hearing me? No? Are you sure of that? Very, very, very sure?” She stopped, and looked at him earnestly, with a smile on her lips, and the tears still glistening in her eyes. Just then the child stirred a little in his cot, and drew her attention away. She arranged the bedclothes over him, watched him in silence for a little while, then sat down again on the stool at Leonard’s feet. “Baby has turned his face quite round toward you now,” she said. “Shall I tell you exactly how he looks, and what his bed is like, and how the room is furnished?”

Without waiting for an answer, she began to describe the child’s appearance and position with the marvelous minuteness of a woman’s observation. While she proceeded, her elastic spirits recovered themselves, and its naturally bright happy expression reappeared on her face. By the time the nurse returned to her post, Rosamond was talking with all her accustomed vivacity, and amusing her husband with all her accustomed success.

When they went back to the drawing-room, she opened the piano and sat down to play. “I must give you your usual evening concert, Lenny,” she said, “or I shall be talking again on the forbidden subject of the Myrtle Room.”

She played some of Mr. Frankland’s favorite airs, with a certain union of feeling and fancifulness in her execution of the music, which seemed to blend the charm of her own disposition with the charm of the melodies which sprang into life under her touch. After playing through the airs she could remember most easily, she ended with the Last Waltz of Weber. It was Leonard’s favorite, and it was always reserved on that account to grace the close of the evening’s performance.

She lingered longer than usual over the last plaintive notes of the waltz; then suddenly left the piano, and hastened across the room to the fireplace.

“Surely it has turned much colder within the last minute or two,” she said, kneeling down on the rug, and holding her face and hands over the fire.

“Has it?” returned Leonard. “I don’t feel any change.”

“Perhaps I have caught cold,” said Rosamond. “Or perhaps,” she added, laughing rather uneasily, “the wind that goes before the ghostly lady of the north rooms has been blowing over me. I certainly felt something like a sudden chill, Lenny, while I was playing the last notes of Weber.”

“Nonsense, Rosamond. You are overfatigued and overexcited. Tell your maid to make you some hot wine and water, and lose no time in getting to bed.”

Rosamond cowered closer over the fire. “It’s lucky I am not superstitious,” she said, “or I might fancy that I was predestined to see the ghost.”

CHAPTER IV.

STANDING ON THE BRINK.

THE
first night at Porthgenna passed without the slightest noise or interruption of any kind. No ghost, or dream of a ghost, disturbed the soundness of Rosamond’s slumbers. She awoke in her usual spirits and her usual health, and was out in the west garden before breakfast.

The sky was cloudy, and the wind veered about capriciously to all the points of the compass. In the course of her walk Rosamond met with the gardener, and asked him what he thought about the weather. The man replied that it might rain again before noon, but that, unless he was very much mistaken, it was going to turn to heat in the course of the next four-and-twenty hours.