Уилки Коллинз - The Evil Genius - A Domestic Story

“This is the cottage, sir,” she said faintly.

His sorrowful eyes rested kindly on her. And yet, it seemed as if she had in some way disappointed him. The child ventured to say: “Do you know me, sir?”

He answered in the saddest voice that Kitty had ever heard: “My little girl, what makes you think I know you?”

She was at a loss how to reply, fearing to distress him. She could only say: “You are so like my poor papa.”

He shook and shuddered, as if she had said something to frighten him. He took her hand. On that hot day, his fingers felt as cold as if it had been winter time. He led her back to the seat that she had left. “I’m tired, my dear,” he said. “Shall we sit down?” It was surely true that he was tired. He seemed hardly able to lift one foot after the other; Kitty pitied him. “I think you must be ill;” she said, as they took their places, side by side, on the bench.

“No; not ill. Only weary, and perhaps a little afraid of frightening you.” He kept her hand in his hand, and patted it from time to time. “My dear, why did you say ‘ poor papa,’ when you spoke of your father just now?”

“My father is dead, sir.”

He turned his face away from her, and pressed both hands on his breast, as if he had felt some dreadful pain there, and was trying to hide it. But he mastered the pain; and he said a strange thing to her—very gently, but still it was strange. He wished to know who had told her that her father was dead.

“Grandmamma told me.”

“Do you remember what grandmamma said?”

“Yes—she told me papa was drowned at sea.”

He said something to himself, and said it twice over. “Not her mother! Thank God, not her mother!” What did he mean?

Kitty looked and looked at him, and wondered and wondered. He put his arm round her. “Come near to me,” he said. “Don’t be afraid of me, my dear.” She moved nearer and showed him that she was not afraid. The poor man seemed hardly to understand her. His eyes grew dim; he sighed like a person in distress; he said: “Your father would have kissed you, little one, if he had been alive. You say I am like your father. May I kiss you?”

She put her hands on his shoulder and lifted her face to him. In the instant when he kissed her, the child knew him. Her heart beat suddenly with an overpowering delight; she started back from his embrace. “That’s how papa used to kiss me!” she cried. “Oh! you are papa! Not drowned! not drowned!” She flung her arms round his neck, and held him as if she would never let him go again. “Dear papa! Poor lost papa!” His tears fell on her face; he sobbed over her. “My sweet darling! my own little Kitty!”

The hysterical passion that had overcome her father filled her with piteous surprise. How strange, how dreadful that he should cry—that he should be so sorry when she was so glad! She took her little handkerchief out of the pocket of her pinafore, and dried his eyes. “Are you thinking of the cruel sea, papa? No! the good sea, the kind, bright, beautiful sea that has given you back to me, and to mamma—!”

They had forgotten her mother!—and Kitty only discovered it now. She caught at one of her father’s hands hanging helpless at his side, and pulled at it as if her little strength could force him to his feet. “Come,” she cried, “and make mamma as happy as I am!”

He hesitated. She sprang on his knee; she pressed her cheek against his cheek with the caressing tenderness, familiar to him in the first happy days when she was an infant. “Oh, papa, are you going to be unkind to me for the first time in your life?”

His momentary resistance was at an end. He was as weak in her hands now as if he had been the child and she had been the man.

Laughing and singing and dancing round him, Kitty led the way to the window of the room that opened on the garden. Some one had closed it on the inner side. She tapped impatiently at the glass. Her mother heard the tapping; her mother came to the window; her mother ran out to meet them. Since the miserable time when they left Mount Morven, since the long unnatural separation of the parents and the child, those three were together once more!

That a woman of my wife’s mature years should be jealous of one of the most exemplary husbands that the records of matrimony can produce is, to say the least of it, a discouraging circumstance. A man forgets that virtue is its own reward, and asks, What is the use of conjugal fidelity?

However, the motto of married life is (or ought to be): Peace at any price. I have been this day relieved from the condition of secrecy that has been imposed on me. You insisted on an explanation some time since. Here it is at last.

For the ten-thousandth time, my dear, in our joint lives, you are again right. That letter, marked private, which I received at the domestic tea-table, was what you positively declared it to be, a letter from a lady—a charming lady, plunged in the deepest perplexity. We had been well known to each other for many years, as lawyer and client. She wanted advice on this occasion also—and wanted it in the strictest confidence. Was it consistent with my professional duty to show her letter to my wife? Mrs. Sarrazin says Yes; Mrs. Sarrazin’s husband says No.

Let me add that the lady was a person of unblemished reputation, and that she was placed in a false position through no fault of her own. In plain English, she was divorced. Ah, my dear (to speak in the vivid language of the people), do you smell a rat?

Yes: my client was Mrs. Norman; and to her pretty cottage in the country I betook myself the next day. There I found my excellent friend Randal Linley, present by special invitation.

Stop a minute. Why do I write all this, instead of explaining myself by word of mouth? My love, you are a member of an old and illustrious family; you honored me when you married me; and you have (as your father told me on our wedding day) the high and haughty temper of your race. I foresee an explosion of this temper, and I would rather have my writing-paper blown up than be blown up myself.

Is this a cowardly confession on my part? All courage, Mrs. Sarrazin, is relative; the bravest man living has a cowardly side to his character, though it may not always be found out. Some years ago, at a public dinner, I sat next to an officer in the British army. At one time in his life he had led a forlorn hope. At another time, he had picked up a wounded soldier, and had carried him to the care of the surgeons through a hail-storm of the enemy’s bullets. Hot courage and cool courage, this true hero possessed both. I saw the cowardly side of his character. He lost his color; perspiration broke out on his forehead; he trembled; he talked nonsense; he was frightened out of his wits. And all for what? Because he had to get on his legs and make a speech!

Well: Mrs. Norman, and Randal Linley, and I, sat down to our consultation at the cottage.

What did my fair client want?

She contemplated marrying for the second time, and she wanted my advice as a lawyer, and my encouragement as an old friend. I was quite ready; I only waited for particulars. Mrs. Norman became dreadfully embarrassed, and said: “I refer you to my brother-in-law.”

I looked at Randal. “Once her brother-in-law, no doubt,” I said; “but after the Divorce—” My friend stopped me there. “After the Divorce,” he remarked, “I may be her brother-in-law again.”

If this meant anything, it meant that she was actually going to marry Herbert Linley again. This was too ridiculous. “If it’s a joke,” I said, “I have heard better fun in my time. If it’s only an assertion, I don’t believe it.”