Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1317 page)

“And then you told her the address?”

“I was near it, but I didn’t do it yet. I asked what you had done in the matter. Alas, your kind heart has led you to promise more than you could perform. She had waited to hear from you if Mrs. Norman consented to see her, and had waited in vain. Hard on her, wasn’t it? I was sorry, but I was still obdurate. I only felt the symptoms which warned me that I was going to make a fool of myself, when she let me into her secret for the first time, and said plainly what she wanted with Mrs. Norman. Her tears and her entreaties I had resisted. The confession of her motives overpowered me. It is right,” cried Mr. Sarrazin, suddenly warming into enthusiasm, “that these two women should meet. Remember how that poor girl has proved that her repentance is no sham. I say, she has a right to tell, and the lady whom she has injured has a right to hear, what she has done to atone for the past, what confession she is willing to make to the one woman in the world (though she
is
a divorced woman) who is most interested in hearing what Miss Westerfield’s life has been with that wretched brother of yours. Ah, yes, I know what the English cant might say. Away with the English cant! it is the worst obstacle to the progress of the English nation!”

Randal listened absently: he was thinking.

There could be little doubt to what destination Sydney Westerfield had betaken herself, when she left the lawyer’s office. At that moment, perhaps, she and Catherine were together — and together alone.

Mr. Sarrazin had noticed his friend’s silence. “Is it possible you don’t agree with me?” he asked.

“I don’t feel as hopefully as you do, if these two ladies meet.”

“Ah, my friend, you are not a sanguine man by nature. If Mrs. Norman treats our poor Sydney just as a commonplace ill-tempered woman would treat her, I shall be surprised indeed. Say, if you like, that she will be insulted — of this I am sure, she will not return it; there is no expiation that is too bitter to be endured by that resolute little creature. Her fine nature has been tempered by adversity. A hard life has been Sydney’s, depend upon it, in the years before you and I met with her. Good heavens! What would my wife say if she heard me? The women are nice, but they have their drawbacks. Let us wait till tomorrow, my dear boy; and let us believe in Sydney without allowing our wives — I beg your pardon, I mean
my
wife — to suspect in what forbidden directions our sympathies are leading us. Oh, for shame!”

Who could persist in feeling depressed in the company of such a man as this? Randal went home with the influence of Mr. Sarrazin’s sanguine nature in undisturbed possession of him, until his old servant’s gloomy face confronted him at the door.

“Anything gone wrong, Malcolm?”

“I’m sorry to say, sir, Mr. Herbert has left us.”

“Left us! Why?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Where has he gone?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Is there no letter? No message?”

“There’s a message, sir. Mr. Herbert came back — ”

“Stop! Where had he been when he came back?”

“He said he felt a little lonely after you went out, and he thought it might cheer him up if he went to the club. I was to tell you where he had gone if you asked what had become of him. He said it kindly and pleasantly — quite like himself, sir. But, when he came back — if you’ll excuse my saying so — I never saw a man in a worse temper. ‘Tell my brother I am obliged to him for his hospitality, and I won’t take advantage of it any longer.’ That was Mr. Herbert’s message. I tried to say a word. He banged the door, and away he went.”

Even Randal’s patient and gentle nature rose in revolt against his brother’s treatment of him. He entered his sitting-room in silence. Malcolm followed, and pointed to a letter on the table. “I think you must have thrown it away by mistake, sir,” the old man explained; “I found it in the waste-paper basket.” He bowed with the unfailing respect of the old school, and withdrew.

Randal’s first resolve was to dismiss his brother from further consideration. “Kindness is thrown away on Herbert,” he thought; “I shall treat him for the future as he has treated me.”

But his brother was still in his mind. He opened Mrs. Presty’s letter — on the chance that it might turn the current of his thoughts in a new direction.

In spite of Mrs. Presty, in spite of himself, his heart softened toward the man who had behaved so badly to him. Instead of reading the letter, he was now trying to discover a connection between his brother’s visit to the club and his brother’s angry message. Had Herbert heard something said, among gossiping members in the smoking-room, which might account for his conduct? If Randal had belonged to the club he would have gone there to make inquiries. How could he get the information that he wanted, in some other way?

After considering it for a while, he remembered the dinner that he had given to his friend Sarrazin on his return from the United States, and the departure of the lawyer to his club, with a purpose in view which interested them both. It was the same club to which Herbert belonged. Randal wrote at once to Mr. Sarrazin, mentioning what had happened, and acknowledging the anxiety that weighed on his mind.

Having instructed Malcolm to take the letter to the lawyer’s house, and, if he was not at home, to inquire where he might be found, Randal adopted the readiest means of composing himself, in the servant’s absence, by lighting his pipe.

He was enveloped in clouds of tobacco-smoke — the only clouds which we can trust never to prove unworthy of our confidence in them — when Mrs. Presty’s letter caught his attention. If the month had been January instead of July, he would have thrown it into the fire. Under present circumstances, he took it up and read it:

“I bear no malice, dear Randal, and I write to you as affectionately as if you had kept your temper on the occasion when we last met.

“You will be pleased to hear that Catherine was as thoroughly distressed as you could wish her to be, when it became my disagreeable duty to mention what had passed between us, by way of accounting for your absence. She was quite unable to rally her spirits, even with dear Captain Bennydeck present to encourage her.

“‘I am not receiving you as I ought,’ she said to him, when we began dinner, ‘but there is perhaps some excuse for me. I have lost the regard and esteem of an old friend, who has cruelly wronged me.’ From motives of delicacy (which I don’t expect you to understand) she refrained from mentioning your name. The prettiest answer that I ever heard was the answer that the Captain returned. ‘Let the true friend,’ he said, ‘take the place in your heart which the false friend has lost.’

“He kissed her hand. If you had seen how he did it, and how she looked at him, you would have felt that you had done more toward persuading my daughter to marry the Captain than any other person about her, myself included. You had deserted her; you had thrown her back on the one true friend left. Thank you, Randal. In our best interests, thank you.

“It is needless to add that I got out of the way, and took Kitty with me, at the earliest opportunity — and left them by themselves.

“At bed-time I went into Catherine’s room. Our interview began and ended in less than a minute. It was useless to ask if the Captain had proposed marriage; her agitation sufficiently informed me of what had happened. My one question was: ‘Dearest Catherine, have you said Yes?’ She turned shockingly pale, and answered: ‘I have not said No.’ Could anything be more encouraging? God bless you; we shall meet at the wedding.”

Randal laid down the letter and filled his pipe again. He was not in the least exasperated; he was only anxious to hear from Mr. Sarrazin. If Mrs. Presty had seen him at that moment, she would have said to herself: “I forgot the wretch was a smoker.”

In half an hour more the door was opened by Malcolm, and Mr. Sarrazin in person answered his friend.

“There are no such incorrigible gossips,” he said, “as men in the smoking-room of a club. Those popular newspapers began the mischief, and the editor of one of them completed it. How he got his information I am not able to say. The small-talk turned on that report about the charming widow; and the editor congratulated himself on the delicacy of his conduct. ‘When the paragraph reached me,’ he said, ‘the writer mentioned that Mrs. Norman was that well-known lady, the divorced Mrs. Herbert Linley. I thought this rather too bad, and I cut it out.’ Your brother appears to have been present — but he seldom goes to the club, and none of the members knew him even by sight. Shall I give you a light? Your pipe’s out.”

Randal’s feelings, at that moment, were not within reach of the comforting influence of tobacco.

“Do you think your brother has gone to Sydenham?” Mr. Sarrazin asked.

Randal answered: “I haven’t a doubt of it now.”

Chapter XLIII. Know Your Own Mind.

The garden of the hotel at Sydenham had originally belonged to a private house. Of great extent, it had been laid out in excellent taste. Flower-beds and lawns, a handsome fountain, seats shaded by groups of fine trees at their full growth, completed the pastoral charm of the place. A winding path led across the garden from the back of the house. It had been continued by the speculator who purchased the property, until it reached a road at the extremity of the grounds which communicated with the Crystal Palace. Visitors to the hotel had such pleasant associations with the garden that many of them returned at future opportunities instead of trying the attraction of some other place. Various tastes and different ages found their wishes equally consulted here. Children rejoiced in the finest playground they had ever seen. Remote walks, secluded among shrubberies, invited persons of reserved disposition who came as strangers, and as strangers desired to remain. The fountain and the lawn collected sociable visitors, who were always ready to make acquaintance with each other. Even the amateur artist could take liberties with Nature, and find the accommodating limits of the garden sufficient for his purpose. Trees in the foreground sat to him for likenesses that were never recognised; and hills submitted to unprovoked familiarities, on behalf of brushes which were not daunted by distance.

On the day after the dinner which had so deplorably failed, in respect of one of the guests invited, to fulfill Catherine’s anticipations, there was a festival at the Palace. It had proved so generally attractive to the guests at the hotel that the grounds were almost deserted.

As the sun declined, on a lovely summer evening, the few invalids feebly wandering about the flower-beds, or resting under the trees, began to return to the house in dread of the dew. Catherine and her child, with the nursemaid in attendance, were left alone in the garden. Kitty found her mother, as she openly declared, “not such good company as usual.” Since the day when her grandmother had said the fatal words which checked all further allusion to her father, the child had shown a disposition to complain, if she was not constantly amused. She complained of Mrs. Presty now.

“I think grandmamma might have taken me to the Crystal Palace,” she said.

“My dear, your grandmamma has friends with her — ladies and gentlemen who don’t care to be troubled with a child.”

Kitty received this information in a very unamiable spirit. “I hate ladies and gentlemen!” she said.

“Even Captain Bennydeck?” her mother asked.

“No; I like my nice Captain. And I like the waiters. They would take me to the Crystal Palace — only they’re always busy. I wish it was bedtime; I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Take a little walk with Susan.”

“Where shall I go?”

Catherine looked toward the gate which opened on the road, and proposed a visit to the old man who kept the lodge.

Kitty shook her head. There was an objection to the old man. “He asks questions; he wants to know how I get on with my sums. He’s proud of his summing; and he finds me out when I’m wrong. I don’t like the lodge-keeper.”

Catherine looked the other way, toward the house. The pleasant fall of water in the basin of the distant fountain was just audible. “Go and feed the gold-fishes,” she suggested.

This was a prospect of amusement which at once raised Kitty’s spirits. “That’s the thing!” she cried, and ran off to the fountain, with the nursemaid after her.