Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1671 page)

The wine-merchant’s head dropped on his breast.  “I was that child!” he said to himself, trying helplessly to fix the idea in his mind.  “I was that child!”

“Not very long after you had been received into the Institution, sir,” pursued Mrs. Goldstraw, “I left my situation there, to be married.  If you will remember that, and if you can give your mind to it, you will see for yourself how the mistake happened.  Between eleven and twelve years passed before the lady, whom you have believed to be your mother, returned to the Foundling, to find her son, and to remove him to her own home.  The lady only knew that her infant had been called ‘Walter Wilding.’  The matron who took pity on her, could but point out the only ‘Walter Wilding’ known in the Institution.  I, who might have set the matter right, was far away from the Foundling and all that belonged to it.  There was nothing — there was really nothing that could prevent this terrible mistake from taking place.  I feel for you — I do indeed, sir!  You must think — and with reason — that it was in an evil hour that I came here (innocently enough, I’m sure), to apply for your housekeeper’s place.  I feel as if I was to blame — I feel as if I ought to have had more self-command.  If I had only been able to keep my face from showing you what that portrait and what your own words put into my mind, you need never, to your dying day, have known what you know now.”

Mr. Wilding looked up suddenly.  The inbred honesty of the man rose in protest against the housekeeper’s last words.  His mind seemed to steady itself, for the moment, under the shock that had fallen on it.

“Do you mean to say that you would have concealed this from me if you could?” he exclaimed.

“I hope I should always tell the truth, sir, if I was asked,” said Mrs. Goldstraw.  “And I know it is better for
me
that I should not have a secret of this sort weighing on my mind.  But is it better for
you
?  What use can it serve now — ?”

“What use?  Why, good Lord! if your story is true — ”

“Should I have told it, sir, as I am now situated, if it had not been true?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the wine-merchant.  “You must make allowance for me.  This dreadful discovery is something I can’t realise even yet.  We loved each other so dearly — I felt so fondly that I was her son.  She died, Mrs. Goldstraw, in my arms — she died blessing me as only a mother
could
have blessed me.  And now, after all these years, to be told she was
not
my mother!  O me, O me!  I don’t know what I am saying!” he cried, as the impulse of self-control under which he had spoken a moment since, flickered, and died out.  “It was not this dreadful grief — it was something else that I had it in my mind to speak of.  Yes, yes.  You surprised me — you wounded me just now.  You talked as if you would have hidden this from me, if you could.  Don’t talk in that way again.  It would have been a crime to have hidden it.  You mean well, I know.  I don’t want to distress you — you are a kind-hearted woman.  But you don’t remember what my position is.  She left me all that I possess, in the firm persuasion that I was her son.  I am not her son.  I have taken the place, I have innocently got the inheritance of another man.  He must be found!  How do I know he is not at this moment in misery, without bread to eat?  He must be found!  My only hope of bearing up against the shock that has fallen on me, is the hope of doing something which
she
would have approved.  You must know more, Mrs. Goldstraw, than you have told me yet.  Who was the stranger who adopted the child?  You must have heard the lady’s name?”

“I never heard it, sir.  I have never seen her, or heard of her, since.”

“Did she say nothing when she took the child away?  Search your memory.  She must have said something.”

“Only one thing, sir, that I can remember.  It was a miserably bad season, that year; and many of the children were suffering from it.  When she took the baby away, the lady said to me, laughing, ‘Don’t be alarmed about his health.  He will be brought up in a better climate than this — I am going to take him to Switzerland.’”

“To Switzerland?  What part of Switzerland?”

“She didn’t say, sir.”

“Only that faint clue!” said Mr. Wilding.  “And a quarter of a century has passed since the child was taken away!  What am I to do?”

“I hope you won’t take offence at my freedom, sir,” said Mrs. Goldstraw; “but why should you distress yourself about what is to be done?  He may not be alive now, for anything you know.  And, if he is alive, it’s not likely he can be in any distress.  The, lady who adopted him was a bred and born lady — it was easy to see that.  And she must have satisfied them at the Foundling that she could provide for the child, or they would never have let her take him away.  If I was in your place, sir — please to excuse my saying so — I should comfort myself with remembering that I had loved that poor lady whose portrait you have got there — truly loved her as my mother, and that she had truly loved me as her son.  All she gave to you, she gave for the sake of that love.  It never altered while she lived; and it won’t alter, I’m sure, as long as
you
live.  How can you have a better right, sir, to keep what you have got than that?”

Mr. Wilding’s immovable honesty saw the fallacy in his housekeeper’s point of view at a glance.

“You don’t understand me,” he said.  “It’s
because
I loved her that I feel it a duty — a sacred duty — to do justice to her son.  If he is a living man, I must find him: for my own sake, as well as for his.  I shall break down under this dreadful trial, unless I employ myself — actively, instantly employ myself — in doing what my conscience tells me ought to be done.  I must speak to my lawyer; I must set my lawyer at work before I sleep to-night.”  He approached a tube in the wall of the room, and called down through it to the office below.  “Leave me for a little, Mrs. Goldstraw,” he resumed; “I shall be more composed, I shall be better able to speak to you later in the day.  We shall get on well — I hope we shall get on well together — in spite of what has happened.  It isn’t your fault; I know it isn’t your fault.  There! there! shake hands; and — and do the best you can in the house — I can’t talk about it now.”

The door opened as Mrs. Goldstraw advanced towards it; and Mr. Jarvis appeared.

“Send for Mr. Bintrey,” said the wine-merchant.  “Say I want to see him directly.”

The clerk unconsciously suspended the execution of the order, by announcing “Mr. Vendale,” and showing in the new partner in the firm of Wilding and Co.

“Pray excuse me for one moment, George Vendale,” said Wilding.  “I have a word to say to Jarvis.  Send for Mr. Bintrey,” he repeated — ”send at once.”

Mr. Jarvis laid a letter on the table before he left the room.

“From our correspondents at Neuchâtel, I think, sir.  The letter has got the Swiss postmark.”

NEW CHARACTERS ON THE SCENE

The words, “The Swiss Postmark,” following so soon upon the housekeeper’s reference to Switzerland, wrought Mr. Wilding’s agitation to such a remarkable height, that his new partner could not decently make a pretence of letting it pass unnoticed.

“Wilding,” he asked hurriedly, and yet stopping short and glancing around as if for some visible cause of his state of mind: “what is the matter?”

“My good George Vendale,” returned the wine-merchant, giving his hand with an appealing look, rather as if he wanted help to get over some obstacle, than as if he gave it in welcome or salutation: “my good George Vendale, so much is the matter, that I shall never be myself again.  It is impossible that I can ever be myself again.  For, in fact, I am not myself.”

The new partner, a brown-cheeked handsome fellow, of about his own age, with a quick determined eye and an impulsive manner, retorted with natural astonishment: “Not yourself?”

“Not what I supposed myself to be,” said Wilding.

“What, in the name of wonder,
did
you suppose yourself to be that you are not?” was the rejoinder, delivered with a cheerful frankness, inviting confidence from a more reticent man.  “I may ask without impertinence, now that we are partners.”

“There again!” cried Wilding, leaning back in his chair, with a lost look at the other.  “Partners!  I had no right to come into this business.  It was never meant for me.  My mother never meant it should be mine.  I mean, his mother meant it should be his — if I mean anything — or if I am anybody.”

“Come, come,” urged his partner, after a moment’s pause, and taking possession of him with that calm confidence which inspires a strong nature when it honestly desires to aid a weak one.  “Whatever has gone wrong, has gone wrong through no fault of yours, I am very sure.  I was not in this counting-house with you, under the old
régime
, for three years, to doubt you, Wilding.  We were not younger men than we are, together, for that.  Let me begin our partnership by being a serviceable partner, and setting right whatever is wrong.  Has that letter anything to do with it?”

“Hah!” said Wilding, with his hand to his temple.  “There again!  My head!  I was forgetting the coincidence.  The Swiss postmark.”

“At a second glance I see that the letter is unopened, so it is not very likely to have much to do with the matter,” said Vendale, with comforting composure.  “Is it for you, or for us?”

“For us,” said Wilding.

“Suppose I open it and read it aloud, to get it out of our way?”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“The letter is only from our champagne-making friends, the house at Neuchâtel.  ‘Dear Sir.  We are in receipt of yours of the 28th ult., informing us that you have taken your Mr. Vendale into partnership, whereon we beg you to receive the assurance of our felicitations.  Permit us to embrace the occasion of specially commanding to you M. Jules Obenreizer.’  Impossible!”

Wilding looked up in quick apprehension, and cried, “Eh?”

“Impossible sort of name,” returned his partner, slightly — ”Obenreizer.  ‘ — Of specially commanding to you M. Jules Obenreizer, of Soho Square, London (north side), henceforth fully accredited as our agent, and who has already had the honour of making the acquaintance of your Mr. Vendale, in his (said M. Obenreizer’s) native country, Switzerland.’  To be sure! pooh pooh, what have I been thinking of!  I remember now; ‘when travelling with his niece.’”

“With his — ?”  Vendale had so slurred the last word, that Wilding had not heard it.

“When travelling with his Niece.  Obenreizer’s Niece,” said Vendale, in a somewhat superfluously lucid manner.  “Niece of Obenreizer.  (I met them in my first Swiss tour, travelled a little with them, and lost them for two years; met them again, my Swiss tour before last, and have lost them ever since.)  Obenreizer.  Niece of Obenreizer.  To be sure!  Possible sort of name, after all!  ‘M. Obenreizer is in possession of our absolute confidence, and we do not doubt you will esteem his merits.’  Duly signed by the House, ‘Defresnier et Cie.’  Very well.  I undertake to see M. Obenreizer presently, and clear him out of the way.  That clears the Swiss postmark out of the way.  So now, my dear Wilding, tell me what I can clear out of
your
way, and I’ll find a way to clear it.”

More than ready and grateful to be thus taken charge of, the honest wine-merchant wrung his partner’s hand, and, beginning his tale by pathetically declaring himself an Impostor, told it.

“It was on this matter, no doubt, that you were sending for Bintrey when I came in?” said his partner, after reflecting.

“It was.”

“He has experience and a shrewd head; I shall be anxious to know his opinion.  It is bold and hazardous in me to give you mine before I know his, but I am not good at holding back.  Plainly, then, I do not see these circumstances as you see them.  I do not see your position as you see it.  As to your being an Impostor, my dear Wilding, that is simply absurd, because no man can be that without being a consenting party to an imposition.  Clearly you never were so.  As to your enrichment by the lady who believed you to be her son, and whom you were forced to believe, on her showing, to be your mother, consider whether that did not arise out of the personal relations between you.  You gradually became much attached to her; she gradually became much attached to you.  It was on you, personally you, as I see the case, that she conferred these worldly advantages; it was from her, personally her, that you took them.”