Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

“It’s the most infamous thing I ever read!” interrupted Mr. Blyth indignantly. “The man who wrote it ought to be put in the pillory. I never remember wanting to throw a rotten egg at any of my fellow-creatures before; but I feel certain that I should enjoy having a shy at Mr. Jubber!”

“Gently, Valentine—gently,” interposed the rector. “I think, my love,” he continued, turning to Mrs. Joyce, “that it is hardly considerate to Mrs. Peckover to expect her to comply with your request. She has already sacrificed herself once to our curiosity; and, really, to ask her now to recur a second time to recollections which I am sure must distress her—”

“It’s worse than distressing, indeed, sir, even to think of that dreadful accident,” said Mrs. Peckover, “and specially as I can’t help taking some blame to myself for it. But if the lady wishes to know how it happened, I’m sure I’m agreeable to tell her. People in our way of life, ma’am—as I’ve often heard Peggy Burke say—are obliged to dry the tear at their eyes long before it’s gone from their hearts. But pray don’t think, sir, I mean that now about myself and in your company. If I do feel low at talking of little Mary’s misfortune, I can take a look out into the garden there, and see how happy she is—and that’s safe to set me right again.”

“I ought to tell you first, sir,” proceeded the clown’s wife, after waiting thoughtfully for a moment or two before she spoke again, “that I got on much better with little Mary than ever I thought I should for the first six years of her life. She grew up so pretty that gentlefolks was always noticing her, and asking about her; and nearly in every place the circus went to they made her presents, which helped nicely in her keep and clothing. And our own people, too, petted her and were fond of her. All those six years we got on as pleasantly as could be. It was not till she was near her seventh birthday that I was wicked and foolish enough to consent to her being shown in the performances.

“I was sorely tried and tempted before I did consent. Jubber first said he wanted her to perform with the riders; and I said ‘No’ at once, though I was awful frightened of him in those days. But soon after, Jemmy (who wasn’t the clown then that he is now, sir; there was others to be got for his money, to do what he did at that time)—Jemmy comes to me, saying he’s afraid he shall lose his place, if I don’t give in about Mary. This staggered me a good deal; for I don’t know what we should have done then, if my husband had lost his engagement. And, besides, there was the poor dear child herself, who was mad to be carried up in the air on horseback, always begging and praying to be made a little rider of. And all the rest of ‘em in the circus worried and laughed at me; and, in short, I give in at last against my conscience, but I couldn’t help it.

“I made a bargain, though, that she should only be trusted to the steadiest, soberest man, and the best rider of the whole lot. They called him ‘Muley’ in the bills, and stained his face to make him look like a Turk, or something of that sort; but his real name was Francis Yapp, and a very good fatherly sort of man he was in his way, having a family of his own to look after. He used to ride splendid, at full straddle, with three horses under him—one foot, you know, sir, being on the outer horse’s back, and one foot on the inner. Him and Jubber made it out together that he was to act a wild man, flying for his life across some desert, with his only child, and poor little Mary was to be the child. They darkened her face to look like his; and put an outlandish kind of white dress on her; and buckled a red belt round her waist, with a sort of handle in it for Yapp to hold her by. After first making believe in all sorts of ways, that him and the child was in danger of being taken and shot, he had to make believe afterwards that they had escaped; and to hold her up, in a sort of triumph, at the full stretch of his arm—galloping round and round the ring all the while. He was a tremendous strong man, and could do it as easy as I could hold up a bit of that plum cake.

“Poor little love! she soon got over the first fright of the thing, and had a sort of mad fondness for it that I never liked to see, for it wasn’t natural to her. Yapp, he said, she’d got the heart of a lion, and would grow up the finest woman-rider in the world. I was very unhappy about it, and lived a miserable life, always fearing some accident. But for some time nothing near an accident happened; and lots of money come into the circus to see Yapp and little Mary—but that was Jubber’s luck and not ours. One night—when she was a little better than seven year old—

“Oh, ma’am, how I ever lived over that dreadful night I don’t know! I was a sinful, miserable wretch not to have starved sooner than let the child go into danger; but I was so sorely tempted and driven to it, God knows!—No, sir! no, ma’am; and many thanks for your kindness, I’ll go on now I’ve begun. Don’t mind me crying; I’ll manage to tell it somehow. The strap—no, I mean the handle; the handle in the strap gave way all of a sudden—just at the last too! just at the worst time, when he couldn’t catch her—!

“Never—oh, never, never, to my dying day shall I forget the horrible screech that went up from the whole audience; and the sight of the white thing lying huddled dead-still on the boards! We hadn’t such a number in as usual that night; and she fell on an empty place between the benches. I got knocked down by the horses in running to her—I was clean out of my senses, and didn’t know where I was going—Yapp had fallen among them, and hurt himself badly, trying to catch her—they were running wild in the ring—the horses was—frantic-like with the noise all round them. I got up somehow, and a crowd of people jostled me, and I saw my innocent darling carried among them. I felt hands on me, trying to pull me back; but I broke away, and got into the waiting-room along with the rest.

“There she was—my own, own little Mary, that I’d promised her poor mother to take care of—there she was, lying all white and still on an old box, with my cloak rolled up as a pillow for her. And people crowding round her. And a doctor feeling her head all over. And Yapp among them, held up by two men, with his face all over blood. I wasn’t able to speak or move; I didn’t feel as if I was breathing even, till the doctor stopped, and looked up; and then a great shudder went through all of us together, as if we’d been one body, instead of twenty or more.

“‘It’s not killed her,’ says the doctor. ‘Her brain’s escaped injury.’

“I didn’t hear another word.

“I don’t know how long it was before I seemed to wake up like, with a dreadful feeling of pain and tearing of everything inside me. I was on the landlady’s bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle of salts. ‘They’ve put her to bed,’ he says to me, ‘and the doctor’s setting her arm.’ I didn’t recollect at first; but when I did, it was almost as bad as seeing the dreadful accident all over again.

“It was some time before any of us found out what had really happened. The breaking of her arm, the doctor said, had saved her head; which was only cut and bruised a little, not half as bad as was feared. Day after day, and night after night, I sat by her bedside, comforting her through her fever, and the pain of the splints on her arm, and never once suspecting—no more, I believe, than she did—the awful misfortune that had really happened. She was always wonderful quiet and silent for a child, poor lamb, in little illnesses that she’d had before; and somehow, I didn’t wonder—at least, at first—why she never said a word, and never answered me when I spoke to her.