Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (394 page)

“Excuse me, Mr. Pendril,” interposed Norah; “I think I understand, from what you have just said, that our house and everything in it belongs to — ?” She stopped, as if the mere utterance of the man’s name was abhorrent to her.

“To Michael Vanstone,” said Mr. Pendril. “The house goes to him with the rest of the property.”

“Then I, for one, am ready to leave it tomorrow!”

Magdalen started at the window, as her sister spoke, and looked at Mr. Clare, with the first open signs of anxiety and alarm which she had shown yet.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she whispered, stooping over the old man with a sudden humility of look, and a sudden nervousness of manner. “I can’t go without seeing Frank first!”

“You shall see him,” replied Mr. Clare. “I am here to speak to you about it, when the business is done.”

“It is quite unnecessary to hurry your departure, as you propose,” continued Mr. Pendril, addressing Norah. “I can safely assure you that a week hence will be time enough.”

“If this is Mr. Michael Vanstone’s house,” repeated Norah; “I am ready to leave it tomorrow.”

She impatiently quitted her chair and seated herself further away on the sofa. As she laid her hand on the back of it, her face changed. There, at the head of the sofa, were the cushions which had supported her mother when she lay down for the last time to repose. There, at the foot of the sofa, was the clumsy, old-fashioned arm-chair, which had been her father’s favorite seat on rainy days, when she and her sister used to amuse him at the piano opposite, by playing his favorite tunes. A heavy sigh, which she tried vainly to repress, burst from her lips. “Oh,” she thought, “I had forgotten these old friends! How shall we part from them when the time comes!”

“May I inquire, Miss Vanstone, whether you and your sister have formed any definite plans for the future?” asked Mr. Pendril. “Have you thought of any place of residence?”

“I may take it on myself, sir,” said Miss Garth, “to answer your question for them. When they leave this house, they leave it with me. My home is their home, and my bread is their bread. Their parents honoured me, trusted me, and loved me. For twelve happy years they never let me remember that I was their governess; they only let me know myself as their companion and their friend. My memory of them is the memory of unvarying gentleness and generosity; and my life shall pay the debt of my gratitude to their orphan children.”

Norah rose hastily from the sofa; Magdalen impetuously left the window. For once, there was no contrast in the conduct of the sisters. For once, the same impulse moved their hearts, the same earnest feeling inspired their words. Miss Garth waited until the first outburst of emotion had passed away; then rose, and, taking Norah and Magdalen each by the hand, addressed herself to Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare. She spoke with perfect self-possession; strong in her artless unconsciousness of her own good action.

“Even such a trifle as my own story,” she said, “is of some importance at such a moment as this. I wish you both, gentlemen, to understand that I am not promising more to the daughters of your old friend than I can perform. When I first came to this house, I entered it under such independent circumstances as are not common in the lives of governesses. In my younger days, I was associated in teaching with my elder sister: we established a school in London, which grew to be a large and prosperous one. I only left it, and became a private governess, because the heavy responsibility of the school was more than my strength could bear. I left my share in the profits untouched, and I possess a pecuniary interest in our establishment to this day. That is my story, in few words. When we leave this house, I propose that we shall go back to the school in London, which is still prosperously directed by my elder sister. We can live there as quietly as we please, until time has helped us to bear our affliction better than we can bear it now. If Norah’s and Magdalen’s altered prospects oblige them to earn their own independence, I can help them to earn it, as a gentleman’s daughters should. The best families in this land are glad to ask my sister’s advice where the interests of their children’s home-training are concerned; and I answer, beforehand, for her hearty desire to serve Mr. Vanstone’s daughters, as I answer for my own. That is the future which my gratitude to their father and mother, and my love for themselves, now offers to them. If you think my proposal, gentlemen, a fit and fair proposal — and I see in your faces that you do — let us not make the hard necessities of our position harder still, by any useless delay in meeting them at once. Let us do what we must do; let us act on Norah’s decision, and leave this house to-morrow. You mentioned the servants just now, Mr. Pendril: I am ready to call them together in the next room, and to assist you in the settlement of their claims, whenever you please.”

Without waiting for the lawyer’s answer, without leaving the sisters time to realize their own terrible situation, she moved at once toward the door. It was her wise resolution to meet the coming trial by doing much and saying little. Before she could leave the room, Mr. Clare followed, and stopped her on the threshold.

“I never envied a woman’s feelings before,” said the old man. “It may surprise you to hear it; but I envy yours. Wait! I have something more to say. There is an obstacle still left — the everlasting obstacle of Frank. Help me to sweep him off. Take the elder sister along with you and the lawyer, and leave me here to have it out with the younger. I want to see what metal she’s really made of.”

While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr. Pendril had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. “Before I go back to town,” he said, “I should like to have a word with you in private. From what has passed today, Miss Vanstone, I have formed a very high opinion of your discretion; and, as an old friend of your father’s, I want to take the freedom of speaking to you about your sister.”

Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance with Mr. Clare’s request, to the conference with the servants. Mr. Pendril followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the three were out in the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed the door, and signed peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair.

She obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the room, with his hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shapeless coat which he habitually wore.

“How old are you?” he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking to her with the whole breadth of the room between them.

“I was eighteen last birthday,” she answered, humbly, without looking up at him.

“You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. Have you got any of that courage left?”

She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.

“I can’t give Frank up,” she said, faintly. “You don’t care for me, I know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to be kind to me for my father’s sake?”

The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more. Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman’s love possesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly associated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment. Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the man of their choice — the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank’s nature — surrounded him with a brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the possession of the son. “Oh, don’t ask me to give him up!” she said, trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot. In the next instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. “I won’t give him up!” she burst out violently. “No! not if a thousand fathers ask me!”

“I am one father,” said Mr. Clare. “And I don’t ask you.”

In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to throw her arms round his neck. She might as well have attempted to move the house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child.

“Hug Frank,” he said; “don’t hug me. I haven’t done with you yet; when I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like. Wait, and compose yourself.”

He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his monotonous march up and down the room began again.

“Ready?” he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to answer. “Take two minutes more,” he said, and resumed his walk with the regularity of clock-work. “These are the creatures,” he thought to himself, “into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?”

He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the dark flush on her face was dying out again.

“Ready?” he repeated. “Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and let’s get it over. I don’t ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to wait.”

“I will wait,” she said. “Patiently, willingly.”

“Will you make Frank wait?”

“Yes.”

“Will you send him to China?”

Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched straight up to it on the spot.

“I don’t pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank’s for you,” he said. “The subject doesn’t interest me. But I
do
pretend to state two plain truths. It is one plain truth that you can’t be married till you have money enough to pay for the roof that shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat. It is another plain truth that you can’t find the money; that I can’t find the money; and that Frank’s only chance of finding it, is going to China. If I tell him to go, he’ll sit in a corner and cry. If I insist, he’ll say Yes, and deceive me. If I go a step further, and see him on board ship with my own eyes, he’ll slip off in the pilot’s boat, and sneak back secretly to you. That’s his disposition.”

“No!” said Magdalen. “It’s not his disposition; it’s his love for Me.”

“Call it what you like,” retorted Mr. Clare. “Sneak or Sweetheart — he’s too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him. My shutting the door won’t keep him from coming back. Your shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you fond enough of him not to stand in his light?”