Уильям Коллинз - Лучшие романы Уилки Коллинза / The Best of Wilkie Collins

“I must beg permission, Sir Percival, to speak a few words to you in private,” I said. “Having done so, I shall be ready to proceed with this person to Miss Halcombe’s room.”

Mrs. Rubelle, whom I had indicated by a slight turn of my head, insolently sniffed at her nosegay and walked away, with great deliberation, towards the house door.

“Well,” said Sir Percival sharply, “what is it now?”

“I wish to mention, sir, that I am desirous of resigning the situation I now hold at Blackwater Park.” That was literally how I put it. I was resolved that the first words spoken in his presence should be words which expressed my intention to leave his service.

He eyed me with one of his blackest looks, and thrust his hands savagely into the pockets of his riding-coat.

“Why?” he said, “why, I should like to know?”

“It is not for me, Sir Percival, to express an opinion on what has taken place in this house. I desire to give no offence. I merely wish to say that I do not feel it consistent with my duty to Lady Glyde and to myself to remain any longer in your service.”

“Is it consistent with your duty to me to stand there, casting suspicion on me to my face?” he broke out in his most violent manner. “I see what you’re driving at. You have taken your own mean, underhand view of an innocent deception practised on Lady Glyde for her own good. It was essential to her health that she should have a change of air immediately, and you know as well as I do she would never have gone away if she had been told Miss Halcombe was still left here. She has been deceived in her own interests – and I don’t care who knows it. Go, if you like – there are plenty of housekeepers as good as you to be had for the asking. Go when you please – but take care how you spread scandals about me and my affairs when you’re out of my service. Tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, or it will be the worse for you! See Miss Halcombe for yourself – see if she hasn’t been as well taken care of in one part of the house as in the other. Remember the doctor’s own orders that Lady Glyde was to have a change of air at the earliest possible opportunity. Bear all that well in mind, and then say anything against me and my proceedings if you dare!”

He poured out these words fiercely, all in a breath, walking backwards and forwards, and striking about him in the air with his whip.

Nothing that he said or did shook my opinion of the disgraceful series of falsehoods that he had told in my presence the day before, or of the cruel deception by which he had separated Lady Glyde from her sister, and had sent her uselessly to London, when she was half distracted with anxiety on Miss Halcombe’s account. I naturally kept these thoughts to myself, and said nothing more to irritate him; but I was not the less resolved to persist in my purpose. A soft answer turneth away wrath, and I suppressed my own feelings accordingly when it was my turn to reply.

“While I am in your service, Sir Percival,” I said, “I hope I know my duty well enough not to inquire into your motives. When I am out of your service, I hope I know my own place well enough not to speak of matters which don’t concern me – ”

“When do you want to go?” he asked, interrupting me without ceremony. “Don’t suppose I am anxious to keep you – don’t suppose I care about your leaving the house. I am perfectly fair and open in this matter, from first to last. When do you want to go?”

“I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir Percival.”

“My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the house for good and all to-morrow morning, and I can settle your accounts to-night. If you want to study anybody’s convenience, it had better be Miss Halcombe’s. Mrs. Rubelle’s time is up to-day, and she has reasons for wishing to be in London to-night. If you go at once, Miss Halcombe won’t have a soul left here to look after her.”

I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable of deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now befallen Lady Glyde and herself. After first distinctly ascertaining from Sir Percival that Mrs. Rubelle was certain to leave at once if I took her place, and after also obtaining permission to arrange for Mr. Dawson’s resuming his attendance on his patient, I willingly consented to remain at Blackwater Park until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services. It was settled that I should give Sir Percival’s solicitor a week’s notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary arrangements for appointing my successor. The matter was discussed in very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival abruptly turned on his heel, and left me free to join Mrs. Rubelle. That singular foreign person had been sitting composedly on the door-step all this time, waiting till I could follow her to Miss Halcombe’s room.

I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival, who had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and called me back.

“Why are you leaving my service?” he asked.

The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed between us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.

“Mind! I don’t know why you are going,” he went on. “You must give a reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another situation. What reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that it?”

“There can be no positive objection, Sir Percival, to that reason – ”

“Very well! That’s all I want to know. If people apply for your character, that’s your reason, stated by yourself. You go in consequence of the breaking up of the family.”

He turned away again before I could say another word, and walked out rapidly into the grounds. His manner was as strange as his language. I acknowledge he alarmed me.

Even the patience of Mrs. Rubelle was getting exhausted, when I joined her at the house door.

“At last!” she said, with a shrug of her lean foreign shoulders. She led the way into the inhabited side of the house, ascended the stairs, and opened with her key the door at the end of the passage, which communicated with the old Elizabethan rooms – a door never previously used, in my time, at Blackwater Park. The rooms themselves I knew well, having entered them myself on various occasions from the other side of the house. Mrs. Rubelle stopped at the third door along the old gallery, handed me the key of it, with the key of the door of communication, and told me I should find Miss Halcombe in that room. Before I went in I thought it desirable to make her understand that her attendance had ceased. Accordingly, I told her in plain words that the charge of the sick lady henceforth devolved entirely on myself.

“I am glad to hear it, ma’am,” said Mrs. Rubelle. “I want to go very much.”

“Do you leave to-day?” I asked, to make sure of her.

“Now that you have taken charge, ma’am, I leave in half an hour’s time. Sir Percival has kindly placed at my disposition the gardener, and the chaise [244], whenever I want them. I shall want them in half an hour’s time to go to the station. I am packed up in anticipation already. I wish you good-day, ma’am.”

She dropped a brisk curtsey, and walked back along the gallery, humming a little tune, and keeping time to it cheerfully with the nosegay in her hand. I am sincerely thankful to say that was the last I saw of Mrs. Rubelle.

When I went into the room Miss Halcombe was asleep. I looked at her anxiously, as she lay in the dismal, high, old-fashioned bed. She was certainly not in any respect altered for the worse since I had seen her last. She had not been neglected, I am bound to admit, in any way that I could perceive. The room was dreary, and dusty, and dark, but the window (looking on a solitary court-yard at the back of the house) was opened to let in the fresh air, and all that could be done to make the place comfortable had been done. The whole cruelty of Sir Percival’s deception had fallen on poor Lady Glyde. The only ill-usage which either he or Mrs. Rubelle had inflicted on Miss Halcombe consisted, so far as I could see, in the first offence of hiding her away.