Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (461 page)

“Nothing of the sort! You’re a foreigner, Lecount; you don’t understand these people. They drink whisky from morning to night. Whisky is the strongest spirit that’s made; whisky is notorious for its effect on the brain. I tell you, I won’t run the risk. I never was driven, and I never will be driven, by anybody but a sober man.”

“Must I go back to Dumfries by myself, sir?”

“And leave me here? Leave me alone in this house after what has happened? How do I know my wife may not come back to-night? How do I know her journey is not a blind to mislead me? Have you no feeling, Lecount? Can you leave me in my miserable situation — ?” He sank into a chair and burst out crying over his own idea, before he had completed the expression of it in words. “Too bad!” he said, with his handkerchief over his face — ”too bad!”

It was impossible not to pity him. If ever mortal was pitiable, he was the man. He had broken down at last, under the conflict of violent emotions which had been roused in him since the morning. The effort to follow Mrs. Lecount along the mazes of intricate combination through which she had steadily led the way, had upheld him while that effort lasted: the moment it was at an end, he dropped. The coachman had hastened a result — of which the coachman was far from being the cause.

“You surprise me — you distress me, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “I entreat you to compose yourself. I will stay here, if you wish it, with pleasure — I will stay here to-night, for your sake. You want rest and quiet after this dreadful day. The coachman shall be instantly sent away, Mr. Noel. I will give him a note to the landlord of the hotel, and the carriage shall come back for us to-morrow morning, with another man to drive it.”

The prospect which those words presented cheered him. He wiped his eyes, and kissed Mrs. Lecount’s hand. “Yes!” he said, faintly; “send the coachman away — and you stop here. You good creature! You excellent Lecount! Send the drunken brute away, and come back directly. We will be comfortable by the fire, Lecount — and have a nice little dinner — and try to make it like old times.” His weak voice faltered; he returned to the fire side, and melted into tears again under the pathetic influence of his own idea.

Mrs. Lecount left him for a minute to dismiss the coachman. When she returned to the parlor she found him with his hand on the bell.

“What do you want, sir?” she asked.

“I want to tell the servants to get your room ready,” he answered. “I wish to show you every attention, Lecount.”

“You are all kindness, Mr. Noel; but wait one moment. It may be well to have these papers put out of the way before the servant comes in again. If you will place the Will and the Sealed Letter together in one envelope — and if you will direct it to the admiral — I will take care that the inclosure so addressed is safely placed in his own hands. Will you come to the table, Mr. Noel, only for one minute more?”

No! He was obstinate; he refused to move from the fire; he was sick and tired of writing: he wished he had never been born, and he loathed the sight of pen and ink. All Mrs. Lecount’s patience and all Mrs. Lecount’s persuasion were required to induce him to write the admiral’s address for the second time. She only succeeded by bringing the blank envelope to him upon the paper-case, and putting it coaxingly on his lap. He grumbled, he even swore, but he directed the envelope at last, in these terms: “To Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. Favored by Mrs. Lecount.” With that final act of compliance his docility came to an end. He refused, in the fiercest terms, to seal the envelope. There was no need to press this proceeding on him. His seal lay ready on the table, and it mattered nothing whether he used it, or whether a person in his confidence used it for him. Mrs. Lecount sealed the envelope, with its two important inclosures placed safely inside.

She opened her traveling-bag for the last time, and pausing for a moment before she put the sealed packet away, looked at it with a triumph too deep for words. She smiled as she dropped it into the bag. Not the shadow of a suspicion that the Will might contain superfluous phrases and expressions which no practical lawyer would have used; not the vestige of a doubt whether the Letter was quite as complete a document as a practical lawyer might have made it, troubled her mind. In blind reliance — born of her hatred for Magdalen and her hunger for revenge — in blind reliance on her own abilities and on her friend’s law, she trusted the future implicitly to the promise of the morning’s work.

As she locked her traveling-bag Noel Vanstone rang the bell. On this occasion, the summons was answered by Louisa.

“Get the spare room ready,” said her master; “this lady will sleep here to-night. And air my warm things; this lady and I are going away to-morrow morning.”

The civil and submissive Louisa received her orders in sullen silence — darted an angry look at her master’s impenetrable guest — and left the room. The servants were evidently all attached to their mistress’s interests, and were all of one opinion on the subject of Mrs. Lecount.

“That’s done!” said Noel Vanstone, with a sigh of infinite relief. “Come and sit down, Lecount. Let’s be comfortable — let’s gossip over the fire.”

Mrs. Lecount accepted the invitation and drew an easy-chair to his side. He took her hand with a confidential tenderness, and held it in his while the talk went on. A stranger, looking in through the window, would have taken them for mother and son, and would have thought to himself: “What a happy home!”

The gossip, led by Noel Vanstone, consisted as usual of an endless string of questions, and was devoted entirely to the subject of himself and his future prospects. Where would Lecount take him to when they went away the next morning? Why to London? Why should he be left in London, while Lecount went on to St. Crux to give the admiral the Letter and the Will? Because his wife might follow him, if he went to the admiral’s? Well, there was something in that. And because he ought to be safely concealed from her, in some comfortable lodging, near Mr. Loscombe? Why near Mr. Loscombe? Ah, yes, to be sure — to know what the law would do to help him. Would the law set him free from the Wretch who had deceived him? How tiresome of Lecount not to know! Would the law say he had gone and married himself a second time, because he had been living with the Wretch, like husband and wife, in Scotland? Anything that publicly assumed to be a marriage was a marriage (he had heard) in Scotland. How excessively tiresome of Lecount to sit there and say she knew nothing about it! Was he to stay long in London by himself, with nobody but Mr. Loscombe to speak to? Would Lecount come back to him as soon as she had put those important papers in the admiral’s own hands? Would Lecount consider herself still in his service? The good Lecount! the excellent Lecount! And after all the law-business was over — what then? Why not leave this horrid England and go abroad again? Why not go to France, to some cheap place near Paris? Say Versailles? say St. Germain? In a nice little French house — cheap? With a nice French
bonne
to cook — who wouldn’t waste his substance in the grease-pot? With a nice little garden — where he could work himself, and get health, and save the expense of keeping a gardener? It wasn’t a bad idea. And it seemed to promise well for the future — didn’t it, Lecount?

So he ran on — the poor weak creature! the abject, miserable little man!

As the darkness gathered at the close of the short November day he began to grow drowsy — his ceaseless questions came to an end at last — he fell asleep. The wind outside sang its mournful winter-song; the tramp of passing footsteps, the roll of passing wheels on the road ceased in dreary silence. He slept on quietly. The firelight rose and fell on his wizen little face and his nervous, drooping hands. Mrs. Lecount had not pitied him yet. She began to pity him now. Her point was gained; her interest in his will was secured; he had put his future life, of his own accord, under her fostering care — the fire was comfortable; the circumstances were favorable to the growth of Christian feeling. “Poor wretch!” said Mrs. Lecount, looking at him with a grave compassion — ”poor wretch!”

The dinner-hour roused him. He was cheerful at dinner; he reverted to the idea of the cheap little house in France; he smirked and simpered; and talked French to Mrs. Lecount, while the house-maid and Louisa waited, turn and turn about, under protest. When dinner was over, he returned to his comfortable chair before the fire, and Mrs. Lecount followed him. He resumed the conversation — which meant, in his case, repeating his questions. But he was not so quick and ready with them as he had been earlier in the day. They began to flag — they continued, at longer and longer intervals — they ceased altogether. Toward nine o’clock he fell asleep again.

It was not a quiet sleep this time. He muttered, and ground his teeth, and rolled his head from side to side of the chair. Mrs. Lecount purposely made noise enough to rouse him. He woke, with a vacant eye and a flushed cheek. He walked about the room restlessly, with a new idea in his mind — the idea of writing a terrible letter; a letter of eternal farewell to his wife. How was it to be written? In what language should he express his feelings? The powers of Shakespeare himself would be unequal to the emergency! He had been the victim of an outrage entirely without parallel. A wretch had crept into his bosom! A viper had hidden herself at his fireside! Where could words be found to brand her with the infamy she deserved? He stopped, with a suffocating sense in him of his own impotent rage — he stopped, and shook his fist tremulously in the empty air.

Mrs. Lecount interfered with an energy and a resolution inspired by serious alarm. After the heavy strain that had been laid on his weakness already, such an outbreak of passionate agitation as was now bursting from him might be the destruction of his rest that night and of his strength to travel the next day. With infinite difficulty, with endless promises to return to the subject, and to advise him about it in the morning, she prevailed on him, at last, to go upstairs and compose himself for the night. She gave him her arm to assist him. On the way upstairs his attention, to her great relief, became suddenly absorbed by a new fancy. He remembered a certain warm and comfortable mixture of wine, eggs, sugar, and spices, which she had often been accustomed to make for him in former times, and which he thought he should relish exceedingly before he went to bed. Mrs. Lecount helped him on with his dressing-gown — then went down-stairs again to make his warm drink for him at the parlor fire.

She rang the bell and ordered the necessary ingredients for the mixture, in Noel Vanstone’s name. The servants, with the small ingenious malice of their race, brought up the materials one by one, and kept her waiting for each of them as long as possible. She had got the saucepan, and the spoon, and the tumbler, and the nutmeg-grater, and the wine — but not the egg, the sugar, or the spices — when she heard him above, walking backward and forward noisily in his room; exciting hi mself on the old subject again, beyond all doubt.

She went upstairs once more; but he was too quick for her — he heard her outside the door; and when she opened it, she found him in his chair, with his back cunningly turned toward her. Knowing him too well to attempt any remonstrance, she merely announced the speedy arrival of the warm drink and turned to leave the room. On her way out, she noticed a table in a corner, with an inkstand and a paper-case on it, and tried, without attracting his attention, to take the writing materials away. He was too quick for her again. He asked, angrily, if she doubted his promise. She put the writing materials back on the table, for fear of offending him, and left the room.

In half an hour more the mixture was ready. She carried it up to him, foaming and fragrant, in a large tumbler. “He will sleep after this,” she thought to herself, as she opened the door; “I have made it stronger than usual on purpose.”

He had changed his place. He was sitting at the table in the corner — still with his back to her, writing. This time his quick ears had not served him; this time she caught him in the fact.

“Oh, Mr. Noel! Mr. Noel!” she said, reproachfully, “what is your promise worth?”

He made no answer. He was sitting with his left elbow on the table, and with his head resting on his left hand. His right hand lay back on the paper, with the pen lying loose in it. “Your drink, Mr. Noel,” she said, in a kinder tone, feeling unwilling to offend him. He took no notice of her. She went to the table to rouse him. Was he deep in thought?

He was dead!