Уилки Коллинз - The Evil Genius - A Domestic Story

Mr. Linley certainly did notice her—at a distance.

He looked at her with a momentary fervor of interest and admiration which made Sydney (so gratefully and so guiltlessly attached to him) tremble with pleasure; he even stepped forward as if to approach her, checked himself, and went back again among his guests. Now, in one part of the room, and now in another, she saw him speaking to them. The one neglected person whom he never even looked at again, was the poor girl to whom his approval was the breath of her life. Had she ever felt so unhappy as she felt now? No, not even at her aunt’s school!

Friendly Mrs. MacEdwin touched her arm. “My dear, you are losing your pretty color. Are you overcome by the heat? Shall I take you into the next room?”

Sydney expressed her sincere sense of the lady’s kindness. Her commonplace excuse was a true excuse—she had a headache; and she asked leave to retire to her room.

Approaching the door, she found herself face to face with Mr. Linley. He had just been giving directions to one of the servants, and was re-entering the drawing-room. She stopped, trembling and cold; but, in the very intensity of her wretchedness, she found courage enough to speak to him.

“You seem to avoid me, Mr. Linley,” she began, addressing him with ceremonious respect, and keeping her eyes on the ground. “I hope—” she hesitated, and desperately looked at him—"I hope I haven’t done anything to offend you?”

In her knowledge of him, up to that miserable evening, he constantly spoke to her with a smile. She had never yet seen him so serious and so inattentive as he was now. His eyes, wandering round the room, rested on Mrs. Linley—brilliant and beautiful, and laughing gayly. Why was he looking at his wife with plain signs of embarrassment in his face? Sydney piteously persisted in repeating her innocent question: “I hope I haven’t done anything to offend you?”

He seemed to be still reluctant to notice her—on the one occasion of all others when she was looking her best! But he answered at last.

“My dear child, it is impossible that you should offend me; you have misunderstood and mistaken me. Don’t suppose—pray don’t suppose that I am changed or can ever be changed toward you.”

He emphasized the kind intention which those words revealed by giving her his hand.

But the next moment he drew back. There was no disguising it, he drew back as if he wished to get away from her. She noticed that his lips were firmly closed and his eyebrows knitted in a frown; he looked like a man who was forcing himself to submit to some hard necessity that he hated or feared.

Sydney left the room in despair.

He had denied in the plainest and kindest terms that he was changed toward her. Was that not enough? It was nothing like enough. The facts were there to speak for themselves: he was an altered man; anxiety, sorrow, remorse—one or the other seemed to have got possession of him. Judging by Mrs. Linley’s gayety of manner, his wife could not possibly have been taken into his confidence.

What did it mean? Oh, the useless, hopeless question! And yet, again and again she asked herself: what did it mean?

In bewildered wretchedness she lingered on the way to her room, and stopped at the end of a corridor.

On her right hand, a broad flight of old oak stairs led to the bed-chambers on the second floor of the house. On her left hand, an open door showed the stone steps which descended to the terrace and the garden. The moonlight lay in all its loveliness on the flower-beds and the grass, and tempted her to pause and admire it. A prospect of sleepless misery was the one prospect before her that Sydney could see, if she retired to rest. The cool night air came freshly up the vaulted tunnel in which the steps were set; the moonlit garden offered its solace to the girl’s sore heart. No curious women-servants appeared on the stairs that led to the bed-chambers. No inquisitive eyes could look at her from the windows of the ground floor—a solitude abandoned to the curiosity of tourists. Sydney took her hat and cloak from the stand in a recess at the side of the door, and went into the garden.

The dinner-party had come to an end; the neighbors had taken their departure; and the ladies at Mount Morven had retired for the night.

On the way to her room Mrs. Presty knocked at her daughter’s door. “I want to speak to you, Catherine. Are you in bed?”

“No, mamma. Come in.”

Robed in a dressing-gown of delicately-mingled white and blue, and luxuriously accommodated on the softest pillows that could be placed in an armchair, Mrs. Linley was meditating on the events of the evening. “This has been the most successful party we have ever given,” she said to her mother. “And did you notice how charmingly pretty Miss Westerfield looked in her new dress?”

“It’s about that girl I want to speak to you,” Mrs. Presty answered, severely. “I had a higher opinion of her when she first came here than I have now.”

Mrs. Linley pointed to an open door, communicating with a second and smaller bed-chamber. “Not quite so loud,” she answered, “or you might wake Kitty. What has Miss Westerfield done to forfeit your good opinion?”

Discreet Mrs. Presty asked leave to return to the subject at a future opportunity.

“I will merely allude now,” she said, “to a change for the worse in your governess, which you might have noticed when she left the drawing-room this evening. She had a word or two with Herbert at the door; and she left him looking as black as thunder.”

Mrs. Linley laid herself back on her pillows and burst out laughing. “Black as thunder? Poor little Sydney, what a ridiculous description of her! I beg your pardon, mamma; don’t be offended.”

“On the contrary, my dear, I am agreeably surprised. Your poor father—a man of remarkable judgment on most subjects—never thought much of your intelligence. He appears to have been wrong; you have evidently inherited some of my sense of humor. However, that is not what I wanted to say; I am the bearer of good news. When we find it necessary to get rid of Miss Westerfield—”

Mrs. Linley’s indignation expressed itself by a look which, for the moment at least, reduced her mother to silence. Always equal to the occasion, however, Mrs. Presty’s face assumed an expression of innocent amazement, which would have produced a round of applause on the stage. “What have I said to make you angry?” she inquired. “Surely, my dear, you and your husband are extraordinary people.”

“Do you mean to tell me, mamma, that you have said to Herbert what you said just now to me?”

“Certainly. I mentioned it to Herbert in the course of the evening. He was excessively rude. He said: ‘Tell Mrs. MacEdwin to mind her own business—and set her the example yourself.’”

Mrs. Linley returned her mother’s look of amazement, without her mother’s eye for dramatic effect. “What has Mrs. MacEdwin to do with it?” she asked.

“If you will only let me speak, Catherine, I shall be happy to explain myself. You saw Mrs. MacEdwin talking to me at the party. That good lady’s head—a feeble head, as all her friends admit—has been completely turned by Miss Westerfield. ‘The first duty of a governess’ (this foolish woman said to me) ‘is to win the affections of her pupils. My governess has entirely failed to make the children like her. A dreadful temper; I have given her notice to leave my service. Look at that sweet girl and your little granddaughter! I declare I could cry when I see how they understand each other and love each other.’ I quote our charming friend’s nonsense, verbatim (as we used to say when we were in Parliament in Mr. Norman’s time), for the sake of what it led to. If, by any lucky chance, Miss Westerfield happens to be disengaged in the future, Mrs. MacEdwin’s house is open to her—at her own time, and on her own terms. I promised to speak to you on the subject, and I perform my promise. Think over it; I strongly advise you to think over it.”