Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1246 page)

Alban would hear no more. “Whatever you may say, Doctor Allday, is trusted to my honour. If you doubt my honour, be so good as to let go my arm — I am not walking your way.”

The doctor’s hand tightened its grasp. “That little flourish of temper, my dear sir, is all I want to set me at my ease. I feel I have got hold of the right man. Now answer me this. Have you ever heard of a person named Miss Jethro?”

Alban suddenly came to a standstill.

“All right!” said the doctor. “I couldn’t have wished for a more satisfactory reply.”

“Wait a minute,” Alban interposed. “I know Miss Jethro as a teacher at Miss Ladd’s school, who left her situation suddenly — and I know no more.”

The doctor’s peculiar smile made its appearance again.

“Speaking in the vulgar tone,” he said, “you seem to be in a hurry to wash your hands of Miss Jethro.”

“I have no reason to feel any interest in her,” Alban replied.

“Don’t be too sure of that, my friend. I have something to tell you which may alter your opinion. That ex-teacher at the school, sir, knows how the late Mr. Brown met his death, and how his daughter has been deceived about it.”

Alban listened with surprise — and with some little doubt, which he thought it wise not to acknowledge.

“The report of the inquest alludes to a ‘relative’ who claimed the body,” he said. “Was that ‘relative’ the person who deceived Miss Emily? And was the person her aunt?”

“I must leave you to take your own view,” Doctor Allday replied. “A promise binds me not to repeat the information that I have received. Setting that aside, we have the same object in view — and we must take care not to get in each other’s way. Here is my house. Let us go in, and make a clean breast of it on both sides.”

Established in the safe seclusion of his study, the doctor set the example of confession in these plain terms:

“We only differ in opinion on one point,” he said. “We both think it likely (from our experience of the women) that the suspected murderer had an accomplice. I say the guilty person is Miss Jethro. You say — Mrs. Rook.”

“When you have read my copy of the report,” Alban answered, “I think you will arrive at my conclusion. Mrs. Rook might have entered the outhouse in which the two men slept, at any time during the night, while her husband was asleep. The jury believed her when she declared that she never woke till the morning. I don’t.”

“I am open to conviction, Mr. Morris. Now about the future. Do you mean to go on with your inquiries?”

“Even if I had no other motive than mere curiosity,” Alban answered, “I think I should go on. But I have a more urgent purpose in view. All that I have done thus far, has been done in Emily’s interests. My object, from the first, has been to preserve her from any association — in the past or in the future — with the woman whom I believe to have been concerned in her father’s death. As I have already told you, she is innocently doing all she can, poor thing, to put obstacles in my way.”

“Yes, yes,” said the doctor; “she means to write to Mrs. Rook — and you have nearly quarreled about it. Trust me to take that matter in hand. I don’t regard it as serious. But I am mortally afraid of what you are doing in Emily’s interests. I wish you would give it up.”

“Why?”

“Because I see a danger. I don’t deny that Emily is as innocent of suspicion as ever. But the chances, next time, may be against us. How do you know to what lengths your curiosity may lead you? Or on what shocking discoveries you may not blunder with the best intentions? Some unforeseen accident may open her eyes to the truth, before you can prevent it. I seem to surprise you?”

“You do, indeed, surprise me.”

“In the old story, my dear sir, Mentor sometimes surprised Telemachus. I am Mentor — without being, I hope, quite so long-winded as that respectable philosopher. Let me put it in two words. Emily’s happiness is precious to you. Take care you are not made the means of wrecking it! Will you consent to a sacrifice, for her sake?”

“I will do anything for her sake.”

“Will you give up your inquiries?”

“From this moment I have done with them!”

“Mr. Morris, you are the best friend she has.”

“The next best friend to you, doctor.”

In that fond persuasion they now parted — too eagerly devoted to Emily to look at the prospect before them in its least hopeful aspect. Both clever men, neither one nor the other asked himself if any human resistance has ever yet obstructed the progress of truth — when truth has once begun to force its way to the light.

For the second time Alban stopped, on his way home. The longing to be reconciled with Emily was not to be resisted. He returned to the cottage, only to find disappointment waiting for him. The servant reported that her young mistress had gone to bed with a bad headache.

Alban waited a day, in the hope that Emily might write to him. No letter arrived. He repeated his visit the next morning. Fortune was still against him. On this occasion, Emily was engaged.

“Engaged with a visitor?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. A young lady named Miss de Sor.”

Where had he heard that name before? He remembered immediately that he had heard it at the school. Miss de Sor was the unattractive new pupil, whom the girls called Francine. Alban looked at the parlor window as he left the cottage. It was of serious importance that he should set himself right with Emily. “And mere gossip,” he thought contemptuously, “stands in my way!”

If he had been less absorbed in his own interests, he might have remembered that mere gossip is not always to be despised. It has worked fatal mischief in its time.

CHAPTER XXVIII. FRANCINE.

“You’re surprised to see me, of course?” Saluting Emily in those terms, Francine looked round the parlor with an air of satirical curiosity. “Dear me, what a little place to live in!”

“What brings you to London?” Emily inquired.

“You ought to know, my dear, without asking. Why did I try to make friends with you at school? And why have I been trying ever since? Because I hate you — I mean because I can’t resist you — no! I mean because I hate myself for liking you. Oh, never mind my reasons. I insisted on going to London with Miss Ladd — when that horrid woman announced that she had an appointment with her lawyer. I said, ‘I want to see Emily.’ ‘Emily doesn’t like you.’ ‘I don’t care whether she likes me or not; I want to see her.’ That’s the way we snap at each other, and that’s how I always carry my point. Here I am, till my duenna finishes her business and fetches me. What a prospect for You! Have you got any cold meat in the house? I’m not a glutton, like Cecilia — but I’m afraid I shall want some lunch.”

“Don’t talk in that way, Francine!”

“Do you mean to say you’re glad to see me?”

“If you were only a little less hard and bitter, I should always be glad to see you.”

“You darling! (excuse my impetuosity). What are you looking at? My new dress? Do you envy me?”

“No; I admire the colour — that’s all.”

Francine rose, and shook out her dress, and showed it from every point of view. “See how it’s made: Paris, of course! Money, my dear; money will do anything — except making one learn one’s lessons.”

“Are you not getting on any better, Francine?”

“Worse, my sweet friend — worse. One of the masters, I am happy to say, has flatly refused to teach me any longer. ‘Pupils without brains I am accustomed to,’ he said in his broken English; ‘but a pupil with no heart is beyond my endurance.’ Ha! ha! the mouldy old refugee has an eye for character, though. No heart — there I am, described in two words.”

“And proud of it,” Emily remarked.

“Yes — proud of it. Stop! let me do myself justice. You consider tears a sign that one has some heart, don’t you? I was very near crying last Sunday. A popular preacher did it; no less a person that Mr. Mirabel — you look as if you had heard of him.”

“I have heard of him from Cecilia.”

“Is
she
at Brighton? Then there’s one fool more in a fashionable watering place. Oh, she’s in Switzerland, is she? I don’t care where she is; I only care about Mr. Mirabel. We all heard he was at Brighton for his health, and was going to preach. Didn’t we cram the church! As to describing him, I give it up. He is the only little man I ever admired — hair as long as mine, and the sort of beard you see in pictures. I wish I had his fair complexion and his white hands. We were all in love with him — or with his voice, which was it? — when he began to read the commandments. I wish I could imitate him when he came to the fifth commandment. He began in his deepest bass voice: ‘Honour thy father — ’ He stopped and looked up to heaven as if he saw the rest of it there. He went on with a tremendous emphasis on the next word. ‘
And
thy mother,’ he said (as if that was quite a different thing) in a tearful, fluty, quivering voice which was a compliment to mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment — I wonder whether I can remember the sermon.”

“You needn’t attempt it on my account,” Emily said.

“My dear, don’t be obstinate. Wait till you hear him.”

“I am quite content to wait.”

“Ah, you’re just in the right state of mind to be converted; you’re in a fair way to become one of his greatest admirers. They say he is so agreeable in private life; I am dying to know him. — Do I hear a ring at the bell? Is somebody else coming to see you?”

The servant brought in a card and a message.

“The person will call again, miss.”

Emily looked at the name written on the card.

“Mrs. Ellmother!” she exclaimed.

“What an extraordinary name!” cried Francine. “Who is she?”

“My aunt’s old servant.”

“Does she want a situation?”

Emily looked at some lines of writing at the back of the card. Doctor Allday had rightly foreseen events. Rejected by the doctor, Mrs. Ellmother had no alternative but to ask Emily to help her.

“If she is out of place,” Francine went on, “she may be just the sort of person I am looking for.”

“You?” Emily asked, in astonishment.

Francine refused to explain until she got an answer to her question. “Tell me first,” she said, “is Mrs. Ellmother engaged?”

“No; she wants an engagement, and she asks me to be her reference.”

“Is she sober, honest, middle-aged, clean, steady, good-tempered, industrious?” Francine rattled on. “Has she all the virtues, and none of the vices? Is she not too good-looking, and has she no male followers? In one terrible word — will she satisfy Miss Ladd?”

“What has Miss Ladd to do with it?”

“How stupid you are, Emily! Do put the woman’s card down on the table, and listen to me. Haven’t I told you that one of my masters has declined to have anything more to do with me? Doesn’t that help you to understand how I get on with the rest of them? I am no longer Miss Ladd’s pupil, my dear. Thanks to my laziness and my temper, I am to be raised to the dignity of ‘a parlor boarder.’ In other words, I am to be a young lady who patronizes the school; with a room of my own, and a servant of my own. All provided for by a private arrangement between my father and Miss Ladd, before I left the West Indies. My mother was at the bottom of it, I have not the least doubt. You don’t appear to understand me.”

“I don’t, indeed!”

Francine considered a little. “Perhaps they were fond of you at home,” she suggested.