Уилки Коллинз - The Fallen Leaves

Amelius asked when she would be well enough to see him.

“Ah, my young friend, it’s not so easy to say, just yet! I could answer you to better purpose tomorrow. Won’t that do? Must I venture on a rash opinion? She ought to be composed enough to see you in three or four days. And, when that time comes, it’s my belief you will do more than I can do to set her right again.”

Amelius was relieved, but not quite satisfied yet. He inquired if it was not possible to remove her from that miserable place.

“Quite impossible—without doing her serious injury. They have got money to go on with; and I have told you already, she will be well taken care of. I will look after her myself tomorrow morning. Go home, and get to bed, and eat a bit of supper first, and make your mind easy. Come to my house at twelve o’clock, noon, and you will find me ready with my references, and my report of the patient. Surgeon Pinfold, Blackacre Buildings; there’s the address. Good night.”

After Amelius had left him, Rufus remembered his promise to communicate with Regina by telegraph.

With his strict regard for truth, it was no easy matter to decide on what message he should send. To inspire Regina, if possible, with his own unshaken belief in the good faith of Amelius, appeared, on reflection, to be all that he could honestly do, under present circumstances. With an anxious and foreboding mind, he despatched his telegram to Paris in these terms:—“Be patient for a while, and do justice to A. He deserves it.”

Having completed his business at the telegraph-office, Rufus went next to pay his visit to Mrs. Payson.

The good lady received him with a grave face and a distant manner, in startling contrast to the customary warmth of her welcome. “I used to think you were a man in a thousand,” she began abruptly; “and I find you are no better than the rest of them. If you have come to speak to me about that blackguard young Socialist, understand, if you please, that I am not so easily imposed upon as Miss Regina. I have done my duty; I have opened her eyes to the truth, poor thing. Ah, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Rufus kept his temper, with his habitual self-command. “It’s possible you may be right,” he said quietly; “but the biggest rascal living has a claim to an explanation, when a lady puzzles him. Have you any particular objection, old friend, to tell me what you mean?”

The explanation was not of a nature to set his mind at ease.

Regina had written, by the mail which took Rufus to England, repeating to Mrs. Payson what had passed at the interview in the Champs Elysees, and appealing to her sympathy for information and advice. Receiving the letter that morning, Mrs. Payson, acting on her own generous and compassionate impulses, had already answered it, and sent it to the post. Her experience of the unfortunate persons received at the Home was far from inclining her to believe in the innocence of a runaway girl, placed under circumstances of temptation. As an act of justice towards Regina, she enclosed to her the letter in which Amelius had acknowledged that Sally had passed the night under his roof.

“I believe I am only telling you the shameful truth,” Mrs. Payson had written, “when I add that the girl has been an inmate of Mr. Goldenheart’s cottage ever since. If you can reconcile this disgraceful state of things, with Mr. Rufus Dingwell’s assertion of his friend’s fidelity to his marriage-engagement, I have no right, and no wish, to make any attempt to alter your opinion. But you have asked for my advice, and I must not shrink from giving it. I am bound as an honest woman, to tell you that your uncle’s resolution to break off the engagement represents the course that I should have taken myself, if a daughter of my own had been placed in your painful and humiliating position.”

There was still ample time to modify this strong expression of opinion by the day’s post. Rufus appealed vainly to Mrs. Payson to reconsider the conclusion at which she had arrived. A more charitable and considerate woman, within the limits of her own daily routine, it would not be possible to find. But the largeness of mind which, having long and trustworthy experience of a rule, can nevertheless understand that other minds may have equal experience of the exception to the rule, was one of the qualities which had not been included in the moral composition of Mrs. Payson. She held firmly to her own narrowly conscientious sense of her duty; stimulated by a natural indignation against Amelius, who had bitterly disappointed her—against Rufus, who had not scrupled to take up his defence. The two old friends parted in coldness, for the first time in their lives.

Rufus returned to his hotel, to wait there for news from Amelius.

The day passed—and the one visitor who enlivened his solitude was an American friend and correspondent, connected with the agency which managed his affairs in England. The errand of this gentleman was to give his client the soundest and speediest advice, relating to the investment of money. Having indicated the safe and solid speculation, the visitor added a warning word, relating to the plausible and dangerous investments of the day. “For instance,” he said, “there’s that bank started by Farnaby—”

“No need to warn me against Farnaby,” Rufus interposed; “I wouldn’t take shares in his bank if he made me a present of them.”

The American friend looked surprised. “Surely,” he exclaimed, “you can’t have heard the news already! They don’t even know it yet on the Stock Exchange.”

Rufus explained that he had only spoken under the influence of personal prejudice against Mr. Farnaby.

“What’s in the wind now?” he asked.

He was confidentially informed that a coming storm was in the wind: in other words, that a serious discovery had been made at the bank. Some time since, the directors had advanced a large sum of money to a man in trade, under Mr. Farnaby’s own guarantee. The man had just died; and examination of his affairs showed that he had only received a few hundred pounds, on condition of holding his tongue. The bulk of the money had been traced to Mr. Farnaby himself, and had all been swallowed up by his newspaper, his patent medicine, and his other rotten speculations, apart from his own proper business. “You may not know it,” the American friend concluded, “but the fact is, Farnaby rose from the dregs. His bankruptcy is only a question of time—he will drop back to the dregs; and, quite possibly, make his appearance to answer a criminal charge in a court of law. I hear that Melton, whose credit has held up the bank lately, is off to see his friend in Paris. They say Farnaby’s niece is a handsome girl, and Melton is sweet on her. Awkward for Melton.”

Rufus listened attentively. In signing the order for his investments, he privately decided to stir no further, for the present, in the matter of his young friend’s marriage-engagement.

For the rest of the day and evening, he still waited for Amelius, and waited in vain. It was drawing near to midnight, when Toff made his appearance with a message from his master. Amelius had discovered Sally, and had returned in such a state of fatigue that he was only fit to take some refreshment, and to go to his bed. He would be away from home again, on the next morning; but he hoped to call at the hotel in the course of the day. Observing Toff’s face with grave and steady scrutiny, Rufus tried to extract some further information from him. But the old Frenchman stood on his dignity, in a state of immovable reserve.

“You took me by the shoulder this morning, sir, and spun me round,” he said; “I do not desire to be treated a second time like a teetotum. For the rest, it is not my habit to intrude myself into my master’s secrets.”