I SAY NO

W >> Wilkie Collins >> I SAY NO

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27

Emily wrote gratefully to Miss Ladd, and asked to be excused.

Other days had passed drearily since that time; but the one day
that had brought with it Cecilia's letter set past happiness and
present sorrow together so vividly and so cruelly that Emily's
courage sank. She had forced back the tears, in her lonely home;
she had gone out to seek consolation and encouragement under the
sunny sky--to find comfort for her sore heart in the radiant
summer beauty of flowers and grass, in the sweet breathing of the
air, in the happy heavenward soaring of the birds. No! Mother
Nature is stepmother to the sick at heart. Soon, too soon, she
could hardly see where she went. Again and again she resolutely
cleared her eyes, under the shelter of her veil, when passing
strangers noticed her; and again and again the tears found their
way back. Oh, if the girls at the school were to see her now--the
girls who used to say in their moments of sadness, "Let us go to
Emily and be cheered"--would they know her again? She sat down to
rest and recover herself on the nearest bench. It was unoccupied.
No passing footsteps were audible on the remote path to which she
had strayed. Solitude at home! Solitude in the Park! Where was
Cecilia at that moment? In Italy, among the lake s and mountains,
happy in the company of her light-hearted friend.

The lonely interval passed, and persons came near. Two sisters,
girls like herself, stopped to rest on the bench.

They were full of their own interests; they hardly looked at the
stranger in mourning garments. The younger sister was to be
married, and the elder was to be bridesmaid. They talked of their
dresses and their presents; they compared the dashing bridegroom
of one with the timid lover of the other; they laughed over their
own small sallies of wit, over their joyous dreams of the future,
over their opinions of the guests invited to the wedding. Too
joyfully restless to remain inactive any longer, they jumped up
again from the seat. One of them said, "Polly, I'm too happy!"
and danced as she walked away. The other cried, "Sally, for
shame!" and laughed, as if she had hit on the most irresistible
joke that ever was made.

Emily rose and went home.

By some mysterious influence which she was unable to trace, the
boisterous merriment of the two girls had roused in her a sense
of revolt against the life that she was leading. Change, speedy
change, to some occupation that would force her to exert herself,
presented the one promise of brighter days that she could see. To
feel this was to be inevitably reminded of Sir Jervis Redwood.
Here was a man, who had never seen her, transformed by the
incomprehensible operation of Chance into the friend of whom she
stood in need--the friend who pointed the way to a new world of
action, the busy world of readers in the library of the Museum.

Early in the new week, Emily had accepted Sir Jervis's proposal,
and had so interested the bookseller to whom she had been
directed to apply, that he took it on himself to modify the
arbitrary instructions of his employer.

"The old gentleman has no mercy on himself, and no mercy on
others," he explained, "where his literary labors are concerned.
You must spare yourself, Miss Emily. It is not only absurd, it's
cruel, to expect you to ransack old newspapers for discoveries in
Yucatan, from the time when Stephens published his 'Travels in
Central America'--nearly forty years since! Begin with back
numbers published within a few years--say five years from the
present date--and let us see what your search over that interval
will bring forth."

Accepting this friendly advice, Emily began with the
newspaper-volume dating from New Year's Day, 1876.

The first hour of her search strengthened the sincere sense of
gratitude with which she remembered the bookseller's kindness. To
keep her attention steadily fixed on the one subject that
interested her employer, and to resist the temptation to read
those miscellaneous items of news which especially interest
women, put her patience and resolution to a merciless test.
Happily for herself, her neighbors on either side were no idlers.
To see them so absorbed over their work that they never once
looked at her, after the first moment when she took her place
between them, was to find exactly the example of which she stood
most in need. As the hours wore on, she pursued her weary way,
down one column and up another, resigned at least (if not quite
reconciled yet) to her task. Her labors ended, for the day, with
such encouragement as she might derive from the conviction of
having, thus far, honestly pursued a useless search.

News was waiting for her when she reached home, which raised her
sinking spirits.

On leaving the cottage that morning she had given certain
instructions, relating to the modest stranger who had taken
charge of her correspondence--in case of his paying a second
visit, during her absence at the Museum. The first words spoken
by the servant, on opening the door, informed her that the
unknown gentleman had called again. This time he had boldly left
his card. There was the welcome name that she had expected to
see--Alban Morris.

CHAPTER XXII.

ALBAN MORRIS.

Having looked at the card, Emily put her first question to the
servant.

"Did you tell Mr. Morris what your orders were?" she asked.

"Yes, miss; I said I was to have shown him in, if you had been at
home. Perhaps I did wrong; I told him what you told me when you
went out this morning--I said you had gone to read at the
Museum."

"What makes you think you did wrong?"

"Well, miss, he didn't say anything, but he looked upset."

"Do you mean that he looked angry?"

The servant shook her head. "Not exactly angry--puzzled and put
out."

"Did he leave any message?"

"He said he would call later, if you would be so good as to
receive him."

In half an hour more, Alban and Emily were together again. The
light fell full on her face as she rose to receive him.

"Oh, how you have suffered!"

The words escaped him before he could restrain himself. He looked
at her with the tender sympathy, so precious to women, which she
had not seen in the face of any human creature since the loss of
her aunt. Even the good doctor's efforts to console her had been
efforts of professional routine--the inevitable result of his
life-long familiarity with sorrow and death. While Alban's eyes
rested on her, Emily felt her tears rising. In the fear that he
might misinterpret her reception of him, she made an effort to
speak with some appearance of composure.

"I lead a lonely life," she said; "and I can well understand that
my face shows it. You are one of my very few friends, Mr.
Morris"--the tears rose again; it discouraged her to see him
standing irresolute, with his hat in his hand, fearful of
intruding on her. "Indeed, indeed, you are welcome," she said,
very earnestly.

In those sad days her heart was easily touched. She gave him her
hand for the second time. He held it gently for a moment. Every
day since they had parted she had been in his thoughts; she had
become dearer to him than ever. He was too deeply affected to
trust himself to answer. That silence pleaded for him as nothing
had pleaded for him yet. In her secret self she remembered with
wonder how she had received his confession in the school garden.
It was a little hard on him, surely, to have forbidden him even
to hope.

Conscious of her own weakness--even while giving way to it--she
felt the necessity of turning his attention from herself. In some
confusion, she pointed to a chair at her side, and spoke of his
first visit, when he had left her letters at the door. Having
confided to him all that she had discovered, and all that she had
guessed, on that occasion, it was by an easy transition that she
alluded next to the motive for his journey to the North.

"I thought it might be suspicion of Mrs. Rook," she said. "Was I
mistaken?"

"No; you were right."

"They were serious suspicions, I suppose?"

"Certainly! I should not otherwise have devoted my holiday-time
to clearing them up."

"May I know what they were?"

"I am sorry to disappoint you," he began.

"But you would rather not answer my question," she interposed.

"I would rather hear you tell me if you have made any other
guess."

"One more, Mr. Morris. I guessed that you had become acquainted
with Sir Jervis Redwood."

"For the second time, Miss Emily, you have arrived at a sound
conclusion. My one hope of finding opportunities for observing
Sir Jervis's housekeeper depended on my chance of gaining
admission to Sir Jervis's house."

"How did you succeed? Perhaps you provided yourself with a letter
of introduction?"

"I knew nobody who could introduce me," Alban replied. "As the
event proved, a letter would have been needless. Sir Jervis
introduced himself--and, more wonderful still, he invited me to
his house at our first interview."

"Sir Jervis introduced himself?" Emily repeated, in amazement.
"From Cecilia's description of him, I should have thought he was
the last person in the world to do that!"

Alban smiled. "And you would like to know how it happened?" he
suggested.

"The very favor I was going to ask of you," she replied.

Instead of at once complying with her wishes, he
paused--hesitated--and made a strange request. "Will you forgive
my rudeness, if I ask leave to walk up and down the room while I
talk? I am a restless man. Walking up and down helps me to
express myself freely."

Her f ace brightened for the first time. "How like You that is!"
she exclaimed.

Alban looked at her with surprise and delight. She had betrayed
an interest in studying his character, which he appreciated at
its full value. "I should never have dared to hope," he said,
"that you knew me so well already."

"You are forgetting your story," she reminded him.

He moved to the opposite side of the room, where there were fewer
impediments in the shape of furniture. With his head down, and
his hands crossed behind him, he paced to and fro. Habit made him
express himself in his usual quaint way--but he became
embarrassed as he went on. Was he disturbed by his recollections?
or by the fear of taking Emily into his confidence too freely?

"Different people have different ways of telling a story," he
said. "Mine is the methodical way--I begin at the beginning. We
will start, if you please, in the railway--we will proceed in a
one-horse chaise--and we will stop at a village, situated in a
hole. It was the nearest place to Sir Jervis's house, and it was
therefore my destination. I picked out the biggest of the
cottages--I mean the huts--and asked the woman at the door if she
had a bed to let. She evidently thought me either mad or drunk. I
wasted no time in persuasion; the right person to plead my cause
was asleep in her arms. I began by admiring the baby; and I ended
by taking the baby's portrait. From that moment I became a member
of the family--the member who had his own way. Besides the room
occupied by the husband and wife, there was a sort of kennel in
which the husband's brother slept. He was dismissed (with five
shillings of mine to comfort him) to find shelter somewhere else;
and I was promoted to the vacant place. It is my misfortune to be
tall. When I went to bed, I slept with my head on the pillow, and
my feet out of the window. Very cool and pleasant in summer
weather. The next morning, I set my trap for Sir Jervis."

"Your trap?" Emily repeated, wondering what he meant.

"I went out to sketch from Nature," Alban continued. "Can anybody
(with or without a title, I don't care), living in a lonely
country house, see a stranger hard at work with a color-box and
brushes, and not stop to look at what he is doing? Three days
passed, and nothing happened. I was quite patient; the grand open
country all round me offered lessons of inestimable value in what
we call aerial perspective. On the fourth day, I was absorbed
over the hardest of all hard tasks in landscape art, studying the
clouds straight from Nature. The magnificent moorland silence was
suddenly profaned by a man's voice, speaking (or rather croaking)
behind me. 'The worst curse of human life,' the voice said, 'is
the detestable necessity of taking exercise. I hate losing my
time; I hate fine scenery; I hate fresh air; I hate a pony. Go
on, you brute!' Being too deeply engaged with the clouds to look
round, I had supposed this pretty speech to be addressed to some
second person. Nothing of the sort; the croaking voice had a
habit of speaking to itself. In a minute more, there came within
my range of view a solitary old man, mounted on a rough pony."

"Was it Sir Jervis?"

Alban hesitated.

"It looked more like the popular notion of the devil," he said.

"Oh, Mr. Morris!"

"I give you my first impression, Miss Emily, for what it is
worth. He had his high-peaked hat in his hand, to keep his head
cool. His wiry iron-gray hair looked like hair standing on end;
his bushy eyebrows curled upward toward his narrow temples; his
horrid old globular eyes stared with a wicked brightness; his
pointed beard hid his chin; he was covered from his throat to his
ankles in a loose black garment, something between a coat and a
cloak; and, to complete him, he had a club foot. I don't doubt
that Sir Jervis Redwood is the earthly alias which he finds
convenient--but I stick to that first impression which appeared
to surprise you. 'Ha! an artist; you seem to be the sort of man I
want!' In those terms he introduced himself. Observe, if you
please, that my trap caught him the moment he came my way. Who
wouldn't be an artist?"

"Did he take a liking to you?" Emily inquired.

"Not he! I don't believe he ever took a liking to anybody in his
life."

"Then how did you get your invitation to his house?"

"That's the amusing part of it, Miss Emily. Give me a little
breathing time, and you shall hear."

CHAPTER XXIII.

MISS REDWOOD.

"I got invited to Sir Jervis's house," Alban resumed, "by
treating the old savage as unceremoniously as he had treated me.
'That's an idle trade of yours,' he said, looking at my sketch.
'Other ignorant people have made the same remark,' I answered. He
rode away, as if he was not used to be spoken to in that manner,
and then thought better of it, and came back. 'Do you understand
wood engraving?' he asked. 'Yes.' 'And etching?' 'I have
practiced etching myself.' 'Are you a Royal Academician?' 'I'm a
drawing-master at a ladies' school.' 'Whose school?' 'Miss
Ladd's.' 'Damn it, you know the girl who ought to have been my
secretary.' I am not quite sure whether you will take it as a
compliment--Sir Jervis appeared to view you in the light of a
reference to my respectability. At any rate, he went on with his
questions. 'How long do you stop in these parts?' 'I haven't made
up my mind.' 'Look here; I want to consult you--are you
listening?' 'No; I'm sketching.' He burst into a horrid scream. I
asked if he felt himself taken ill. 'Ill?' he said--'I'm
laughing.' It was a diabolical laugh, in one syllable--not 'ha!
ha! ha!' only 'ha!'--and it made him look wonderfully like that
eminent person, whom I persist in thinking he resembles. 'You're
an impudent dog,' he said; 'where are you living?' He was so
delighted when he heard of my uncomfortable position in the
kennel-bedroom, that he offered his hospitality on the spot. 'I
can't go to you in such a pigstye as that,' he said; 'you must
come to me. What's your name?' 'Alban Morris; what's yours?'
'Jervis Redwood. Pack up your traps when you've done your job,
and come and try my kennel. There it is, in a corner of your
drawing, and devilish like, too.' I packed up my traps, and I
tried his kennel. And now you have had enough of Sir Jervis
Redwood."

"Not half enough!" Emily answered. "Your story leaves off just at
the interesting moment. I want you to take me to Sir Jervis's
house."

"And I want you, Miss Emily, to take me to the British Museum.
Don't let me startle you! When I called here earlier in the day,
I was told that you had gone to the reading-room. Is your reading
a secret?"

His manner, when he made that reply, suggested to Emily that
there was some foregone conclusion in his mind, which he was
putting to the test. She answered without alluding to the
impression which he had produced on her.

"My reading is no secret. I am only consulting old newspapers."

He repeated the last words to himself. "Old newspapers?" he
said--as if he was not quite sure of having rightly understood
her.

She tried to help him by a more definite reply.

"I am looking through old newspapers," she resumed, "beginning
with the year eighteen hundred and seventy-six."

"And going back from that time," he asked eagerly; "to earlier
dates still?"

"No--just the contrary--advancing from 'seventy-six' to the
present time."

He suddenly turned pale--and tried to hide his face from her by
looking out of the window. For a moment, his agitation deprived
him of his presence of mind. In that moment, she saw that she had
alarmed him.

"What have I said to frighten you?" she asked.

He tried to assume a tone of commonplace gallantry. "There are
limits even to your power over me," he replied. "Whatever else
you may do, you can never frighten me. Are you searching those
old newspapers with any particular object in view?"

"Yes."

"May I know what it is?"

"May I know why I frightened you?"

He began to walk up and down the room again--then checked himself
abruptly, and appealed to her mercy.

"Don't be hard on me," he pleaded. "I am so fond of you--oh,
forgive me! I only mean that it distresses me to have any
concealments from you. If I could open my whole heart at this
moment, I shou ld be a happier man."

She understood him and believed him. "My curiosity shall never
embarrass you again," she answered warmly. "I won't even remember
that I wanted to hear how you got on in Sir Jervis's house."

His gratitude seized the opportunity of taking her harmlessly
into his confidence. "As Sir Jervis's guest," he said, "my
experience is at your service. Only tell me how I can interest
you."

She replied, with some hesitation, "I should like to know what
happened when you first saw Mrs. Rook." To her surprise and
relief, he at once complied with her wishes.

"We met," he said, "on the evening when I first entered the
house. Sir Jervis took me into the dining-room--and there sat
Miss Redwood, with a large black cat on her lap. Older than her
brother, taller than her brother, leaner than her brother--with
strange stony eyes, and a skin like parchment--she looked (if I
may speak in contradictions) like a living corpse. I was
presented, and the corpse revived. The last lingering relics of
former good breeding showed themselves faintly in her brow and in
her smile. You will hear more of Miss Redwood presently. In the
meanwhile, Sir Jervis made me reward his hospitality by
professional advice. He wished me to decide whether the artists
whom he had employed to illustrate his wonderful book had cheated
him by overcharges and bad work--and Mrs. Rook was sent to fetch
the engravings from his study upstairs. You remember her
petrified appearance, when she first read the inscription on your
locket? The same result followed when she found herself face to
face with me. I saluted her civilly--she was deaf and blind to my
politeness. Her master snatched the illustrations out of her
hand, and told her to leave the room. She stood stockstill,
staring helplessly. Sir Jervis looked round at his sister; and I
followed his example. Miss Redwood was observing the housekeeper
too attentively to notice anything else; her brother was obliged
to speak to her. 'Try Rook with the bell,' he said. Miss Redwood
took a fine old bronze hand-bell from the table at her side, and
rang it. At the shrill silvery sound of the bell, Mrs. Rook put
her hand to her head as if the ringing had hurt her--turned
instantly, and left us. 'Nobody can manage Rook but my sister,'
Sir Jervis explained; 'Rook is crazy.' Miss Redwood differed with
him. 'No!' she said. Only one word, but there were volumes of
contradiction in it. Sir Jervis looked at me slyly; meaning,
perhaps, that he thought his sister crazy too. The dinner was
brought in at the same moment, and my attention was diverted to
Mrs. Rook's husband."

"What was he like?" Emily asked.

"I really can't tell you; he was one of those essentially
commonplace persons, whom one never looks at a second time. His
dress was shabby, his head was bald, and his hands shook when he
waited on us at table--and that is all I remember. Sir Jervis and
I feasted on salt fish, mutton, and beer. Miss Redwood had cold
broth, with a wine-glass full of rum poured into it by Mr. Rook.
'She's got no stomach,' her brother informed me; 'hot things come
up again ten minutes after they have gone down her throat; she
lives on that beastly mixture, and calls it broth-grog!' Miss
Redwood sipped her elixir of life, and occasionally looked at me
with an appearance of interest which I was at a loss to
understand. Dinner being over, she rang her antique bell. The
shabby old man-servant answered her call. 'Where's your wife?'
she inquired. 'Ill, miss.' She took Mr. Rook's arm to go out, and
stopped as she passed me. 'Come to my room, if you please, sir,
to-morrow at two o'clock,' she said. Sir Jervis explained again:
'She's all to pieces in the morning' (he invariably called his
sister 'She'); 'and gets patched up toward the middle of the day.
Death has forgotten her, that's about the truth of it.' He
lighted his pipe and pondered over the hieroglyphics found among
the ruined cities of Yucatan; I lighted my pipe, and read the
only book I could find in the dining-room--a dreadful record of
shipwrecks and disasters at sea. When the room was full of
tobacco-smoke we fell asleep in our chairs--and when we awoke
again we got up and went to bed. There is the true story of my
first evening at Redwood Hall."

Emily begged him to go on. "You have interested me in Miss
Redwood," she said. "You kept your appointment, of course?"

"I kept my appointment in no very pleasant humor. Encouraged by
my favorable report of the illustrations which he had submitted
to my judgment, Sir Jervis proposed to make me useful to him in a
new capacity. 'You have nothing particular to do,' he said,
'suppose you clean my pictures?' I gave him one of my black
looks, and made no other reply. My interview with his sister
tried my powers of self-command in another way. Miss Redwood
declared her purpose in sending for me the moment I entered the
room. Without any preliminary remarks--speaking slowly and
emphatically, in a wonderfully strong voice for a woman of her
age--she said, 'I have a favor to ask of you, sir. I want you to
tell me what Mrs. Rook has done.' I was so staggered that I
stared at her like a fool. She went on: 'I suspected Mrs. Rook,
sir, of having guilty remembrances on her conscience before she
had been a week in our service.' Can you imagine my astonishment
when I heard that Miss Redwood's view of Mrs. Rook was my view?
Finding that I still said nothing, the old lady entered into
details: 'We arranged, sir,' (she persisted in calling me 'sir,'
with the formal politeness of the old school)--'we arranged, sir,
that Mrs. Rook and her husband should occupy the bedroom next to
mine, so that I might have her near me in case of my being taken
ill in the night. She looked at the door between the two
rooms--suspicious! She asked if there was any objection to her
changing to another room--suspicious! suspicious! Pray take a
seat, sir, and tell me which Mrs. Rook is guilty of--theft or
murder?' "

"What a dreadful old woman!" Emily exclaimed. "How did you answer
her?"

"I told her, with perfect truth, that I knew nothing of Mrs.
Rook's secrets. Miss Redwood's humor took a satirical turn.
'Allow me to ask, sir, whether your eyes were shut, when our
housekeeper found herself unexpectedly in your presence?' I
referred the old lady to her brother's opinion. 'Sir Jervis
believes Mrs. Rook to be crazy,' I reminded her. 'Do you refuse
to trust me, sir?' 'I have no information to give you, madam.'
She waved her skinny old hand in the direction of the door. I
made my bow, and retired. She called me back. 'Old women used to
be prophets, sir, in the bygone time,' she said. 'I will venture
on a prediction. You will be the means of depriving us of the
services of Mr. and Mrs. Rook. If you will be so good as to stay
here a day or two longer you will hear that those two people have
given us notice to quit. It will be her doing, mind--he is a mere
cypher. I wish you good-morning.' Will you believe me, when I
tell you that the prophecy was fulfilled?"

"Do you mean that they actually left the house?"

"They would certainly have left the house," Alban answered, "if
Sir Jervis had not insisted on receiving the customary month's
warning. He asserted his resolution by locking up the old husband
in the pantry. His sister's suspicions never entered his head;
the housekeeper's conduct (he said) simply proved that she was,
what he had always considered her to be, crazy. 'A capital
servant, in spite of that drawback,' he remarked; 'and you will
see, I shall bring her to her senses.' The impression produced on
me was naturally of a very different kind. While I was still
uncertain how to entrap Mrs. Rook into confirming my suspicions,
she herself had saved me the trouble. She had placed her own
guilty interpretation on my appearance in the house--I had driven
her away!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27