Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (172 page)

He had calculated, rightly enough, on being able to execute this maneuver with impunity from discovery, knowing that she was incapable of hearing the sound of his breath when he blew her candle out, and that the darkness would afterwards not only effectually shield him from detection, but also oblige her to leave him alone in the room again, while she went to get another light. He had not calculated, however, on the serious effect which the success of his stratagem would have upon her nerves, for he knew nothing of the horror which the loss of her sense of hearing caused her always to feel when she was left in darkness; and he had not stopped to consider that by depriving her of her light, he was depriving her of that all-important guiding sense of sight, the loss of which she could not supply in the dark, as others could, by the exercise of the ear.

The instant he blew her candle out, she dropped the china candlestick, in a paroxysm of terror. It fell, and broke, with a deadened sound, on one of the many portfolios lying on the floor about her. He had hardly time to hear this happen, before the dumb moaning, the inarticulate cry of fear which was all that the poor panic-stricken girl could utter, rose low, shuddering, and ceaseless, in the darkness — so close at his ear, that he fancied he could feel her breath palpitating quick and warm on his cheek.

If she should touch him? If she should be sensible of the motion of
his
foot on the floor, as she had been sensible of the motion of Zack’s, when young Thorpe offered her the glass of wine at supper-time? It was a risk to remain still — it was a risk to move! He stood as helpless even as the helpless creature near him. That low, ceaseless, dumb moaning, smote so painfully on his heart, roused up so fearfully the rude superstitious fancies lying in wait within him, in connection with the lost and dead Mary Grice, that the sweat broke out on his face, the coldness of sharp mental suffering seized on his limbs, the fever of unutterable expectation parched up his throat, and mouth, and lips; and for the first time, perhaps, in his existence, he felt the chillness of mortal dread running through him to his very soul — he, who amid perils of seas and wildernesses, and horrors of hunger and thirst, had played familiarly with his own life for more than twenty years past, as a child plays familiarly with an old toy.

He knew not how long it was before the dumb moaning seemed to grow fainter; to be less fearfully close to him; to change into what sounded, at one moment, like a shivering of her whole body; at another, like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to grope her way out — he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn along the wall; then the lessening gasps of her affrighted breathing as she gained the stairs.

When she was gone, and the change and comfort of silence and solitude stole over him, his power of thinking, his cunning and resolution began to return. Listening yet a little while, and hearing no sound of any disturbance among the sleepers in the house, he ventured to light one of his matches; and, by the brief flicker that it afforded, picked his way noiselessly through the lumber in the studio, and gained the garden door. In a minute he was out again in the open air. In a minute more, he had got over the garden wall, and was walking freely along the lonely road of the new suburb, with the Hair Bracelet safe in his pocket.

At first, he did not attempt to take it out and examine it. He had not felt the slightest scruple beforehand; he did not feel the slightest remorse now, in connection with the Bracelet, and with his manner of obtaining possession of it. Callous, however, as he was in this direction, he was sensitive in another. There was both regret and repentance in him, as he thought of the deaf and dumb girl, and of the paroxysm of terror he had caused her. How patiently and prettily she had tried to explain to him her gratitude for his gift, and the use she meant to put it to; and how cruelly he had made her suffer in return! “I wish I hadn’t frighted her so,” said Mat to himself; thinking of this in his own rough way, as he walked rapidly homewards. “I wish I hadn’t frighted her so.”

But his impatience to examine the Bracelet got the better of his repentance, as it had already got the better of every other thought and feeling in him. He stopped under a gas lamp, and drew his prize out of his pocket. He could see that it was made of two kinds of hair, and that something was engraved on the flat gold of the clasp. But his hand shook, his eyes were dimmer than usual, the light was too high above him, and try as he might he could make out nothing clearly.

He put the Bracelet into his pocket again, and, muttering to himself impatiently, made for Kirk Street at his utmost speed. His landlord’s wife happened to be in the passage when he opened the door. Without the ceremony of a single preliminary word, he astonished her by taking her candle out of her hand, and instantly disappearing up-stairs with it. Zack had not come from the theater — he had the lodgings to himself — he could examine the hair Bracelet in perfect freedom.

His first look was at the clasp. By holding it close to the flame of the candle, he succeeded in reading the letters engraved on it.

“M. G. In memory of S. G.”

“Mary Grice. In memory of Susan Grice.”
Mat’s hand closed fast on the Bracelet — and dropped heavily on his knee, as he uttered those words.

             
* * * * * *

The pantomime which Zack had gone to see, was so lengthened out by encores of incidental songs and dances, that it was not over till close on midnight. When he left the theater, the physical consequences of breathing a vitiated atmosphere made themselves felt immediately in the regions of his mouth, throat, and stomach. Those ardent aspirations in the direction of shell-fish and malt liquor, which it is especially the mission of the English drama to create, overcame him as he issued into the fresh air, and took him to the local oyster shop for refreshment and change of scene.

Having the immediate prospect of the private Drawing Academy vividly and menacingly present before his eyes, Zack thought of the future for once in his life, and astonished the ministering vassals of the oyster shop (with all of whom he was on terms of intimate friendship), by enjoying himself with exemplary moderation at the festive board. When he had done supper, and was on his way to bed at the tobacconist’s across the road, it is actually not too much to say that he was sober and subdued enough to have borne inspection by the President and Council of the Royal Academy, as a model student of the Fine Arts.

It was rather a surprise to him not to hear his friend snoring when he let himself into the passage, but his surprise rose to blank astonishment when he entered the front room, and saw the employment on which his fellow lodger was engaged.

Mat was sitting by the table, with his rifle laid across his knees, and was scouring the barrel bright with a piece of sand paper. By his side was an unsnuffed candle, an empty bottle, and a tumbler with a little raw brandy left in the bottom of it. His face, when he looked up, showed that he had been drinking hard. There was a stare in his eyes that was at once fierce and vacant, and a hard, fixed, unnatural smile on his lips which Zack did not at all like to see.

“Why, Mat, old boy!” he said soothingly, “you look a little out of sorts. What’s wrong?”

Mat scoured away at the barrel of the gun harder than ever, and gave no answer.

“What, in the name of wonder, can you be scouring your rifle for to-night?” continued young Thorpe. “You have never yet touched it since you brought it into the house. What can you possibly want with it now? We don’t shoot birds in England with rifle bullets.”

“A rifle bullet will do for
my
game, if I put it up,” said Mat, suddenly and fiercely fixing his eyes on Zack.

“What game does he mean?” thought young Thorpe. “He’s been drinking himself pretty nearly drunk. Can anything have happened to him since we parted company at the theater? — I should like to find out; but he’s such an old savage when the brandy’s in his head, that I don’t half like to question him — ”

Here Zack’s reflections were interrupted by the voice of his eccentric friend.

“Did you ever meet with a man of the name of Carr?” asked Mat. He looked away from young Thorpe, keeping his eyes steadily on the rifle, and rubbing hard at the barrel, as he put this question.

“No,” said Zack. “Not that I can remember.”

Mat left off cleaning the gun, and began to fumble awkwardly in one of his pockets. After some little time, he produced what appeared to Zack to be an inordinately long letter, written in a cramped hand, and superscribed apparently with two long lines of inscription, instead of an ordinary address. Opening this strange-looking document, Mat guided himself a little way down the lines on the first page with a very unsteady forefinger — stopped, and read somewhat anxiously and with evident difficulty — then put the letter back in his pocket, dropped his eyes once more on the gun in his lap, and said with a strong emphasis on the Christian name: —

“Arthur
Carr?”

“No,” returned Zack. “I never met with a man of that name. Is he a friend of yours?”

Mat went on scouring the rifle barrel.

Young Thorpe said nothing more. He had been a little puzzled early in the evening, when his friend had exhibited the fan and tobacco pouch (neither of which had been produced before), and had mentioned to Mr. Blyth that they were once intended for “a woman” who was now dead. Zack had thought this conduct rather odd at the time; but now, when it was followed by these strangely abrupt references to the name of Carr, by this mysterious scouring of the rifle and desperate brandy drinking in solitude, he began to feel perplexed in the last degree about Mat’s behavior. “Is this about Arthur Carr a secret of the old boy’s?” Zack asked himself with a sort of bewildered curiosity. “Is he letting out more than he ought, I wonder, now he’s a little in liquor?”

While young Thorpe was pondering thus, Mat was still industriously scouring the barrel of his rifle. After the silence in the room had lasted some minutes, he suddenly threw away his morsel of sand-paper, and spoke again.

“Zack,” he said, familiarly smacking the stock of his rifle, “me and you had some talk once about going away to the wild country over the waters together. I’m ready to sail when you are, if — ” He had glanced up at young Thorpe with his vacant bloodshot eyes, as he spoke the last words. But he checked himself almost at the same moment, and looked away again quickly at the gun.

“If what?” asked Zack.

“If I can lay my hands first on Arthur Carr,” answered Mat, with very unusual lowness of tone. “Only let me do that, and I shall be game to tramp it at an hour’s notice. He may be dead and buried for anything I know — ”

“Then what’s the use of looking after him?” interposed Zack.

“The use is, I’ve got it into my head that he’s alive, and that I shall find him,” returned Mat.

“‘Well?” said young Thorpe eagerly.

Mat became silent again. His head drooped slowly forward, and his body followed it till he rested his elbows on the gun. Sitting in this crouched-up position, he abstractedly began to amuse himself by snapping the lock of the rifle. Zack, suspecting that the brandy he had swallowed was beginning to stupefy him, determined, with characteristic recklessness, to rouse him into talking at any hazard.

“What the devil is all this mystery about?” he cried boldly. “Ever since you pulled out that feather-fan and tobacco-pouch at Blyth’s — ”

“Well, what of them?” interrupted Mat, looking up instantly with a fierce, suspicious stare.

“Nothing particular,” pursued Zack, undauntedly, “except that it’s odd you never brought them out before; and odder still that you should tell Blyth, and never say a word here to me, about getting them for a woman — ”

“What of
her?”
broke out Mat, rising to his feet with flushed face and threatening eyes, and making the room ring again as he grounded his rifle on the floor.

“Nothing but what a friend ought to say,” replied Zack, feeling that, in Mat’s present condition, he had ventured a little too far. “I’m sorry, for your sake, that she never lived to have the presents you meant for her. There’s no offense, I hope, in saying that much, or in asking (after what you yourself told Blyth) whether her death happened lately, or — ”