Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1249 page)

She had just placed the letter in her desk, when a visitor was announced. Doctor Allday presented himself (in a hurry as usual).

“Another patient waiting?” Emily asked mischievously. “No time to spare, again?”

“Not a moment,” the old gentleman answered. “Have you heard from Mrs. Ellmother?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mean to say you have answered her?”

“I have done better than that, doctor — I have seen her this morning.”

“And consented to be her reference, of course?”

“How well you know me!”

Doctor Allday was a philosopher: he kept his temper. “Just what I might have expected,” he said. “Eve and the apple! Only forbid a woman to do anything, and she does it directly — be cause you have forbidden her. I’ll try the other way with you now, Miss Emily. There was something else that I meant to have forbidden.”

“What was it?”

“May I make a special request?”

“Certainly.”

“Oh, my dear, write to Mrs. Rook! I beg and entreat of you, write to Mrs. Rook!”

Emily’s playful manner suddenly disappeared.

Ignoring the doctor’s little outbreak of humor, she waited in grave surprise, until it was his pleasure to explain himself.

Doctor Allday, on his side, ignored the ominous change in Emily; he went on as pleasantly as ever. “Mr. Morris and I have had a long talk about you, my dear. Mr. Morris is a capital fellow; I recommend him as a sweetheart. I also back him in the matter of Mrs. Rook. — What’s the matter now? You’re as red as a rose. Temper again, eh?”

“Hatred of meanness!” Emily answered indignantly. “I despise a man who plots, behind my back, to get another man to help him. Oh, how I have been mistaken in Alban Morris!”

“Oh, how little you know of the best friend you have!” cried the doctor, imitating her. “Girls are all alike; the only man they can understand, is the man who flatters them.
Will
you oblige me by writing to Mrs. Rook?”

Emily made an attempt to match the doctor, with his own weapons. “Your little joke comes too late,” she said satirically. “There is Mrs. Rook’s answer. Read it, and — ” she checked herself, even in her anger she was incapable of speaking ungenerously to the old man who had so warmly befriended her. “I won’t say to
you
,” she resumed, “what I might have said to another person.”

“Shall I say it for you?” asked the incorrigible doctor. “‘Read it, and be ashamed of yourself’ — That was what you had in your mind, isn’t it? Anything to please you, my dear.” He put on his spectacles, read the letter, and handed it back to Emily with an impenetrable countenance. “What do you think of my new spectacles?” he asked, as he took the glasses off his nose. “In the experience of thirty years, I have had three grateful patients.” He put the spectacles back in the case. “This comes from the third. Very gratifying — very gratifying.”

Emily’s sense of humour was not the uppermost sense in her at that moment. She pointed with a peremptory forefinger to Mrs. Rook’s letter. “Have you nothing to say about this?”

The doctor had so little to say about it that he was able to express himself in one word:

“Humbug!”

He took his hat — nodded kindly to Emily — and hurried away to feverish pulses waiting to be felt, and to furred tongues that were ashamed to show themselves.

CHAPTER XXXI. MOIRA.

When Alban presented himself the next morning, the hours of the night had exercised their tranquilizing influence over Emily. She remembered sorrowfully how Doctor Allday had disturbed her belief in the man who loved her; no feeling of irritation remained. Alban noticed that her manner was unusually subdued; she received him with her customary grace, but not with her customary smile.

“Are you not well?” he asked.

“I am a little out of spirits,” she replied. “A disappointment — that is all.”

He waited a moment, apparently in the expectation that she might tell him what the disappointment was. She remained silent, and she looked away from him. Was he in any way answerable for the depression of spirits to which she alluded? The doubt occurred to him — but he said nothing.

“I suppose you have received my letter?” she resumed.

“I have come here to thank you for your letter.”

“It was my duty to tell you of Sir Jervis’s illness; I deserve no thanks.”

“You have written to me so kindly,” Alban reminded her; “you have referred to our difference of opinion, the last time I was here, so gently and so forgivingly — ”

“If I had written a little later,” she interposed, “the tone of my letter might have been less agreeable to you. I happened to send it to the post, before I received a visit from a friend of yours — a friend who had something to say to me after consulting with you.”

“Do you mean Doctor Allday?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“What you wished him to say. He did his best; he was as obstinate and unfeeling as you could possibly wish him to be; but he was too late. I have written to Mrs. Rook, and I have received a reply.” She spoke sadly, not angrily — and pointed to the letter lying on her desk.

Alban understood: he looked at her in despair. “Is that wretched woman doomed to set us at variance every time we meet!” he exclaimed.

Emily silently held out the letter.

He refused to take it. “The wrong you have done me is not to be set right in that way,” he said. “You believe the doctor’s visit was arranged between us. I never knew that he intended to call on you; I had no interest in sending him here — and I must not interfere again between you and Mrs. Rook.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You will understand me when I tell you how my conversation with Doctor Allday ended. I have done with interference; I have done with advice. Whatever my doubts may be, all further effort on my part to justify them — all further inquiries, no matter in what direction — are at an end: I made the sacrifice, for your sake. No! I must repeat what you said to me just now; I deserve no thanks. What I have done, has been done in deference to Doctor Allday — against my own convictions; in spite of my own fears. Ridiculous convictions! ridiculous fears! Men with morbid minds are their own tormentors. It doesn’t matter how I suffer, so long as you are at ease. I shall never thwart you or vex you again. Have you a better opinion of me now?”

She made the best of all answers — she gave him her hand.

“May I kiss it?” he asked, as timidly as if he had been a boy addressing his first sweetheart.

She was half inclined to laugh, and half inclined to cry. “Yes, if you like,” she said softly.

“Will you let me come and see you again?”

“Gladly — when I return to London.”

“You are going away?”

“I am going to Brighton this afternoon, to stay with Miss Ladd.”

It was hard to lose her, on the happy day when they understood each other at last. An expression of disappointment passed over his face. He rose, and walked restlessly to the window. “Miss Ladd?” he repeated, turning to Emily as if an idea had struck him. “Did I hear, at the school, that Miss de Sor was to spend the holidays under the care of Miss Ladd?”

“Yes.”

“The same young lady,” he went on, “who paid you a visit yesterday morning?”

“The same.”

That haunting distrust of the future, which he had first betrayed and then affected to ridicule, exercised its depressing influence over his better sense. He was unreasonable enough to feel doubtful of Francine, simply because she was a stranger.

“Miss de Sor is a new friend of yours,” he said. “Do you like her?”

It was not an easy question to answer — without entering into particulars which Emily’s delicacy of feeling warned her to avoid. “I must know a little more of Miss de Sor,” she said, “before I can decide.”

Alban’s misgivings were naturally encouraged by this evasive reply. He began to regret having left the cottage, on the previous day, when he had heard that Emily was engaged. He might have sent in his card, and might have been admitted. It was an opportunity lost of observing Francine. On the morning of her first day at school, when they had accidentally met at the summer house, she had left a disagreeable impression on his mind. Ought he to allow his opinion to be influenced by this circumstance? or ought he to follow Emily’s prudent example, and suspend judgment until he knew a little more of Francine?

“Is any day fixed for your return to London?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said; “I hardly know how long my visit will be.”

“In little more than a fortnight,” he continued, “I shall return to my classes — they will be dreary classes, without you. Miss de Sor goes back to the school with Miss Ladd, I suppose?”

Emily was at a loss to account for the depression in his looks and tones, while he was making these unimportant inquiries. She tried to rouse him by speaking lightly in reply.

“Miss de Sor returns in quite a new character; she is to be a guest instead of a pupil. Do you wish to be better acquainted with her?”

“Yes,” he said grave ly, “now I know that she is a friend of yours.” He returned to his place near her. “A pleasant visit makes the days pass quickly,” he resumed. “You may remain at Brighton longer than you anticipate; and we may not meet again for some time to come. If anything happens — ”

“Do you mean anything serious?” she asked.

“No, no! I only mean — if I can be of any service. In that case, will you write to me?”

“You know I will!”

She looked at him anxiously. He had completely failed to hide from her the uneasy state of his mind: a man less capable of concealment of feeling never lived. “You are anxious, and out of spirits,” she said gently. “Is it my fault?”

“Your fault? oh, don’t think that! I have my dull days and my bright days — and just now my barometer is down at dull.” His voice faltered, in spite of his efforts to control it; he gave up the struggle, and took his hat to go. “Do you remember, Emily, what I once said to you in the garden at the school? I still believe there is a time of fulfillment to come in our lives.” He suddenly checked himself, as if there had been something more in his mind to which he hesitated to give expression — and held out his hand to bid her good-by.

“My memory of what you said in the garden is better than yours,” she reminded him. “You said ‘Happen what may in the interval, I trust the future.’ Do you feel the same trust still?”

He sighed — drew her to him gently — and kissed her on the forehead. Was that his own reply? She was not calm enough to ask him the question: it remained in her thoughts for some time after he had gone.

                        
........

On the same day Emily was at Brighton.

Francine happened to be alone in the drawing-room. Her first proceeding, when Emily was shown in, was to stop the servant.

“Have you taken my letter to the post?”

“Yes, miss.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She dismissed the servant by a gesture, and burst into such effusive hospitality that she actually insisted on kissing Emily. “Do you know what I have been doing?” she said. “I have been writing to Cecilia — directing to the care of her father, at the House of Commons. I stupidly forgot that you would be able to give me the right address in Switzerland. You don’t object, I hope, to my making myself agreeable to our dear, beautiful, greedy girl? It is of such importance to me to surround myself with influential friends — and, of course, I have given her your love. Don’t look disgusted! Come, and see your room. — Oh, never mind Miss Ladd. You will see her when she wakes. Ill? Is that sort of old woman ever ill? She’s only taking her nap after bathing. Bathing in the sea, at her age! How she must frighten the fishes!”