Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (238 page)

“Don’t speak again; don’t tell us anything till you feel more composed,” said Rosamond. “We are relieved from our worst suspense now that we know you have left her quieter and better. I will ask no more questions — at least,” she added, after a pause, “I will only ask one.” She stopped; and her eyes wandered inquiringly toward Leonard. He had hitherto been listening with silent interest to all that had passed; but he now interposed gently, and advised his wife to wait a little before she ventured on saying anything more.

“It is such an easy question to answer,” pleaded Rosamond. “I only wanted to hear whether she has got my message — whether she knows that I am waiting and longing to see her, if she will but let me come?”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man, nodding to Rosamond with an air of relief. “That question is easy; easier even than you think, for it brings me straight to the beginning of all that I have got to say.”

He had been hitherto walking restlessly about the room; sitting down one moment, and getting up the next, he now placed a chair for himself midway between Rosamond — who was sitting, with the child, near the window — and her husband, who occupied the sofa at the lower end of the room. In this position, which enabled him to address himself alternately to Mr. and Mrs. Frankland without difficulty, he soon recovered composure enough to open his heart unreservedly to the interest of his subject.

“When the worst was over and past,” he said, addressing Rosamond — ”when she could listen and when I could speak, the first words of comfort that I said to her were the words of your message. Straight she looked at me, with doubting, fearing eyes. ‘Was her husband there to hear her?’ she says. ‘Did he look angry? did he look sorry? did he change ever so little, when you got that message from her?’ And I said, ‘No; no change, no anger, no sorrow — nothing like it.’ And she said again: ‘Has it made between them no misery? has it nothing wrenched away of all the love and all the happiness that binds them the one to the other?’ And once more I answer to that, ‘No! no misery, no wrench. See now! I shall go my ways at once to the good wife, and fetch her here to answer for the good husband with her own tongue. While I speak those words there flies out over all her face a look — no, not a look — a light, like a sun-flash. While I can count one, it lasts; before I can count two, it is gone; the face is all dark again; it is turned away from me on the pillow, and I see the hand that is outside the bed begin to crumple up the sheet. ‘I shall go my ways, then, and fetch the good wife,’ I say again. And she says, ‘No, not yet. I must not see her, I dare not see her till she knows — ’ and there she stops, and the hand crumples up the sheet again, and softly, softly, I say to her, ‘Knows what?’ and she answers me, ‘What I, her mother, cannot tell her to her face, for shame.’ And I say, ‘So, so, my child! tell it not, then — tell it not at all.’ She shakes her head at me, and wrings her two hands together, like this, on the bed-cover. ‘I must tell it,’ she says. ‘I must rid my heart of all that has been gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at it, or how shall I feel the blessing that the seeing her will bring to me, if my conscience is only clear?’ Then she stops a little, and lifts up her two hands, so, and cries out loud, ‘Oh, will God’s mercy show me no way of telling it that will spare me before my child!’ And I say, ‘Hush, then! there is a way. Tell it to Uncle Joseph, who is the same as a father to you! Tell it to Uncle Joseph, whose little son died in your arms; whose tears your hand wiped away, in the grief time long ago. Tell it, my child, to me; and I shall take the risk, and the shame (if there is shame), of telling it again. I, with nothing to speak for me but my white hair; I, with nothing to help me but my heart that means no harm — shall go to that good and true woman, with the burden of her mother’s grief to lay before her; and, in my soul of souls I believe it, she will not turn away!’“

He paused, and looked at Rosamond. Her head was bent down over her child; her tears were dropping slowly, one by one, on the bosom of his little white dress. Waiting a moment to collect herself before she spoke, she held out her hand to the old man, and firmly and gratefully met the look he fixed on her. “Oh, go on, go on!” she said. “Let me prove to you that your generous confidence in me is not misplaced.”

“I knew it was not, from the first, as surely as I know it now!” said Uncle Joseph. “And Sarah, when I had spoken to her, she knew it too. She was silent for a little; she cried for a little; she leaned over from the pillow and kissed me here, on my cheek, as I sat by the bedside; and then she looked back, back, back, in her mind, to the Long Ago, and very quietly, very slowly, with her eyes looking into my eyes, and her hand resting so in mine, she spoke the words to me that I must now speak again to you, who sit here to-day as her judge, before you go to her to-morrow as her child.”

“Not as her judge!” said Rosamond. “I cannot, I must not hear you say that.”

“I speak her words, not mine,” rejoined the old man, gravely. “Wait before you bid me change them for others — wait till you know the end.”

He drew his chair a little nearer to Rosamond, paused for a minute or two to arrange his recollections, and to separate them one from the other; then resumed.

“As Sarah began with me,” he said, “so I, for my part, must begin also — which means to say, that I go down now through the years that are past, to the time when my niece went out to her first service. You know that the sea-captain, the brave and good man Treverton, took for his wife an artist on the stage — what they call play-actress here? A grand, big woman, and a handsome; with a life and a spirit and a will in her that is not often seen; a woman of the sort who can say, We will do this thing, or that thing — and do it in the spite and face of all the scruples, all the obstacles, all the oppositions in the world. To this lady there comes for maid to wait upon her, Sarah, my niece — a young girl then, pretty and kind and gentle, and very, very shy. Out of many others who want the place, and who are bolder and bigger and quicker girls, Mistress Treverton, nevertheless, picks Sarah. This is strange, but it is stranger yet that Sarah, on her part, when she comes out of her first fears and doubts, and pains of shyness about herself, gets to be fond with all her heart of that grand and handsome mistress, who has a life and a spirit and a will of the sort that is not often seen. This is strange to say, but it is also, as I know from Sarah’s own lips, every word of it true.”

“True beyond a doubt,” said Leonard. “Most strong attachments are formed between people who are unlike each other.”

“So the life they led in that ancient house of Porthgenna began happily for them all,” continued the old man. “The love that the mistress had for her husband was so full in her heart that it overflowed in kindness to everybody who was about her, and to Sarah, her maid, before all the rest. She would have nobody but Sarah to read to her, to work for her, to dress her in the morning and the evening, and to undress her at night. She was as familiar as a sister might have been with Sarah, when they two were alone, in the long days of rain. It was the game of her idle time — the laugh that she liked most — to astonish the poor country maid, who had never so much as seen what a theatre’s inside was like, by dressing in fine clothes, and painting her face, and speaking and doing all that she had done on the theatre-scene in the days that were before her marriage. The more she puzzled Sarah with these jokes and pranks of masquerade, the better she was always pleased. For a year this easy, happy life went on in the ancient house — happy for all the servants — happier still for the master and mistress, but for the want of one thing to make the whole complete, one little blessing that was always hoped for, and that never came — the same, if you please, as the blessing in the long white frock, with

the plump, delicate face and the tiny arms, that I see before me now.”

He paused, to point the allusion by nodding and smiling at the child in Rosamond’s lap; then resumed.

“As the new year gets on,” he said, “Sarah sees in the mistress a change. The good sea-captain is a man who loves children, and is fond of getting to the house all the little boys and girls of his friends round about. He plays with them, he kisses them, he makes them presents — he is the best friend the little boys and girls have ever had. The mistress, who should be their best friend too, looks on and says nothing — looks on, red sometimes, and sometimes pale; goes away into her room where Sarah is at work for her, and walks about and finds fault; and one day lets the evil temper fly out of her at her tongue, and says, ‘Why have I got no child for my husband to be fond of? Why must he kiss and play always with the children of other women? They take his love away for something that is not mine. I hate those children and their mothers too!’ It is her passion that speaks then, but it speaks what is near the truth for all that. She will not make friends with any of those mothers; the ladies she is familiar-fond with are the ladies who have no children, or the ladies whose families are all upgrown. You think that was wrong of the mistress?”

He put the question to Rosamond, who was toying thoughtfully with one of the baby’s hands which was resting in hers. “I think Mrs. Treverton was very much to be pitied,” she answered, gently lifting the child’s hand to her lips.

“Then I, for my part, think so too,” said Uncle Joseph. “To be pitied? — yes! To be more pitied some months after, when there is still no child and no hope of a child, and the good sea-captain says, one day, ‘I rust here, I get old with much idleness; I want to be on the sea again. I shall ask for a ship.’ And he asks for a ship, and they give it him; and he goes away on his cruises — with much kissing and fondness at parting from his wife — but still he goes away. And when he is gone, the mistress comes in again where Sarah is at work for her on a fine new gown, and snatches it away, and casts it down on the floor, and throws after it all the fine jewels she has got on her table, and stamps and cries with the misery and the passion that is in her. ‘I would give all those fine things, and go in rags for the rest of my life, to have a child!’ she says. ‘I am losing my husband’s love: he would never have gone away from me if I had brought him a child!’ Then she looks in the glass, and says between her teeth, ‘Yes! yes! I am a fine woman, with a fine figure, and I would change places with the ugliest, crookedest wretch in all creation, if I could only have a child!’ And then she tells Sarah that the Captain’s brother spoke the vilest of all vile words of her, when she was married, because she was an artist on the stage; and she says, ‘If I have no child, who but he — the rascal-monster that I wish I could kill! — who but he will come to possess all that the Captain has got?’ And then she cries again, and says, ‘I am losing his love — ah, I know it, I know it! — I am losing his love!’ Nothing that Sarah can say will alter her thoughts about that. And the months go on, and the sea-captain comes back, and still there is always the same secret grief growing and growing in the mistress’s heart — growing and growing till it is now the third year since the marriage, and there is no hope yet of a child; and once more the sea-captain gets tired on the land, and goes off again for his cruises — long cruises, this time; away, away, away, at the other end of the world.”

Here Uncle Joseph paused once more, apparently hesitating a little about how he should go on with the narrative. His mind seemed to be soon relieved of its doubts, but his face saddened, and his tones sank lower, when he addressed Rosamond again.

“I must, if you please, go away from the mistress now,” he said, “and get back to Sarah, my niece, and say one word also of a mining man, with the Cornish name of Polwheal. This was a young man that worked well and got good wage, and kept a good character. He lived with his mother in the little village that is near the ancient house; and, seeing Sarah from time to time, took much fancy to her, and she to him. So the end came that the marriage-promise was between them given and taken; as it happened, about the time when the sea-captain was back after his first cruises, and just when he was thinking of going away in a ship again. Against the marriage-promise nor he nor the lady his wife had a word to object, for the miner, Polwheal, had good wage and kept a good character. Only the mistress said that the loss of Sarah would be sad to her — very sad; and Sarah answered that there was yet no hurry to part. So the weeks go on, and the sea-captain sails away again for his long cruises; and about the same time also the mistress finds out that Sarah frets, and looks not like herself, and that the miner, Polwheal, he lurks here and lurks there, round about the house; and she says to herself, ‘So! so! Am I standing too much in the way of this marriage? For Sarah’s sake, that shall not be!’ And she calls for them both one evening, and talks to them kindly, and sends away to put up the banns next morning the young man Polwheal. That night, it is his turn to go down into the Porthgenna mine, and work after the hours of the day. With his heart all light, down into that dark he goes. When he rises to the world again, it is the dead body of him that is drawn up — the dead body, with all the young life, by the fall of a rock, crushed out in a moment. The news flies here; the news flies there. With no break, with no warning, with no comfort near, it comes on a sudden to Sarah, my niece. When to her sweet-heart that evening she had said good-by, she was a young, pretty girl; when, six little weeks after, she, from the sick-bed where the shock threw her, got up, all her youth was gone, all her hair was gray, and in her eyes the fright-look was fixed that has never left them since.”