Уилки Коллинз - The Guilty River

He tried again—I declare it positively, he tried again. "You'll excuse me, sir? I've never seen his portfolio before. Am I right if I think you know where he keeps it?"

"Spare your breath, Mr. Toller. Once more, it won't do!"

Cristel joined us, amazed at his pertinacity. "Why are you so anxious, father, to know about that portfolio?" she asked.

Her father seemed to have reasons of his own for following my example and declining to answer questions. More polite, however, than I had been, he left his resolution to be inferred. His daughter was answered by a few general remarks, setting forth the advantage to the landlord of having a lodger who had lost one of senses.

"You see there's something convenient, my dear, in the circumstance of that nice-looking gentleman over there being deaf. We can talk about him before his face, just as comfortably as if it was behind his back. Isn't that so, Mr. Gerard? Don't you see it yourself, Cristy? For instance, I say it without fear in his presence: 'tis the act of a fool to be fumbling over writings, when there's nothing in them that's not well known to himself already—unless indeed they are worth money, which I don't doubt is no secret to you, Mr. Gerard? Eh? I beg your pardon, sir, did you speak? No? I beg your pardon again. Yes, yes, Cristy, I'm noticing him; he's done with his writings. Suppose I offer to put them away for him? You can see in his face he finds the tale of them correct. He's coming this way. What's he going to do next?"

He was going to establish a claim on my gratitude, by relieving me of Giles Toller.

"I have something to say to Mr. Roylake," he announced, with a haughty look at his landlord. "Mind! I don't forget your screaming at me just now, and I intend to know what you meant by it. That will do. Get out of the way."

The old fellow received his dismissal with a low bow, and left the kitchen with a look at the Lodger which revealed (unless I was entirely mistaken) a sly sense of triumph. What did it mean?

The deaf man addressed me with a cold and distant manner. "We must understand each other," he said. "Will you follow me to my side of the cottage?" I shook my head. "Very well," he resumed; "we will have it out, here. When I trusted you with my confession last night, I left you to decide (after reading it) whether you would make an enemy of me or not. You remember that?" I nodded my head. "Then I now ask you, Mr. Roylake: Which are we—enemies or friends?"

I took the pencil, and wrote my reply:

"Neither enemies nor friends. We are strangers from this time forth."

Some internal struggle produced a change in his face—visible for one moment, hidden from me in a moment more. "I think you will regret the decision at which you have arrived." He said that, and saluted me with his grandly gracious bow. As he turned away, he perceived Cristel at the other end of the room, and eagerly joined her.

"The only happy moments I have are my moments passed in your presence," he said. "I shall trouble you no more for to-day. Give me a little comfort to take back with me to my solitude. I didn't notice that there were other persons present when I asked leave to kiss you. May I hope that you forgive me?"

He held out his hand; it was not taken. He waited a little, in the vain hope that she would relent: she turned away from him.

A spasm of pain distorted his handsome face. He opened the door that led to his side of the cottage—paused—and looked back at Cristel. She took no notice of him. As he moved again to the door and left us, the hysterical passion in him forced its way outward—he burst into tears.

The dog sprang up from his refuge under the table, and shook himself joyfully. Cristel breathed again freely, and joined me at my end of the room. Shall I make another acknowledgment of weakness? I began to fear that we might all of us (even including the dog!) have been a little hard on the poor deaf wretch who had gone away in such bitter distress. I communicated this view of the matter to Cristel. She failed to see it as I did.

The dog laid his head on her lap, asking to be caressed. She patted him while she answered me.

"I agree with this old friend, Mr. Gerard. We were both of us frightened, on the very first day, when the person you are pitying came to lodge with us. I have got to hate him, since that time—perhaps to despise him. But the dog has never changed; he feels and knows there is something dreadful in that man. One of these days, poor Ponto may turn out to be right.—May I ask you something, sir?"

"Of course!"

"You won't think I am presuming on your kindness?"

"You ought to know me better than that, Cristel!"

"The truth is, sir, I have been a little startled by what I saw in our lodger's face, when he asked if you were his enemy or his friend. I know he is thought to be handsome—but, Mr. Gerard, those beautiful eyes of his sometimes tell tales; and I have seen his pretty complexion change to a color that turned him into an ugly man. Will you tell me what you wrote when you answered him?"

I repeated what I had written, word for word. It failed to satisfy her.

"He is very vain," she said, "and you may have wounded his vanity by treating him like a stranger, after he had given you his writings to read, and invited you to his room. But I thought I saw something much worse than mortification in his face. Shall I be taking a liberty, if I ask how it was you got acquainted with him last night?"

She was evidently in earnest. I saw that I must answer her without reserve; and I was a little afraid of being myself open to a suspicion of vanity, if I mentioned the distrust which I had innocently excited in the mind of my new acquaintance. In this state of embarrassment I took a young man's way out of the difficulty, and spoke lightly of a serious thing.

"I became acquainted with your deaf Lodger, Cristel, under ridiculous circumstances. He saw us talking last night, and did me the honor to be jealous of me."

I had expected to see her blush. To my surprise she turned pale, and vehemently remonstrated.

"Don't laugh, sir! There's nothing to be amused at in what you have just told me. You didn't go into his room last night? Oh, what made you do that!"

I described his successful appeal to my compassion—not very willingly, for it made me look (as I thought) like a weak person. Little by little, she extracted from me the rest: how he objected to find a young man, especially in my social position, talking to Cristel; how he insisted on my respecting his claims, and engaging not to see her again; how, when I refused to do this, he gave me his confession to read, so that I might find out what a formidable man I was setting at defiance; how I had not been in the least alarmed, and had treated him (as Cristel had just heard) on the footing of a perfect stranger.

"There's the whole story," I concluded. "Like a scene in a play, isn't it?"

She protested once more against the light tone that I persisted in assuming.

"I tell you again, sir, this is no laughing matter. You have roused his jealousy. You had better have roused the fury of a wild beast. Knowing what you know of him, why did you stay here, when he came in? And, oh, why did I humiliate him in your presence? Leave us, Mr. Gerard—pray, pray leave us, and don't come near this place again till father has got rid of him."

Did she think I was to be so easily frightened as that? My sense of my own importance was up in arms at the bare suspicion of it!

"My dear child," I said grandly, "do you really suppose I am afraid of that poor wretch? Am I to give up the pleasure of seeing you, because a mad fellow is simple enough to think you will marry him? Absurd, Cristel—absurd!"

The poor girl wrung her hands in despair.

"Oh, sir, don't distress me by talking in that way! Do please remember who you are, and who I am. If I was the miserable means of your coming to any harm—I can't bear even to speak of it! Pray don't think me bold; I don't know how to express myself. You ought never to have come here; you ought to go; you must go!"