Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

Mat gave his hand, but he put it out like a man groping in the dark. His mind was full of that memorable letter about a Hair Bracelet, which he had found in the box given to him by Joanna Grice.

“A Hair Bracelet?” he said, vacantly.

“Don’t be sulky!” cried Zack, clapping him on the shoulder.

“A Hair Bracelet is unlucky to the young woman—and she’s got one already” (he was weighing attentively the lightest word that Zack had spoken to him). “What’s it like?” he asked aloud, turning suddenly to young Thorpe.

“What’s what like?”

“A Hair Bracelet.”

“Still harping on that, after all my explanations! Like? Why it’s hair plaited up, and made to fasten round the wrist, with gold at each end to clasp it by. What are you stopping for again? I’ll tell you what, Mat, I can make every allowance for a man in your love-struck situation; but if I didn’t know how you had been spending the morning, I should say you were drunk.”

They had been walking along quickly, while Mat asked what a Hair Bracelet was like. But no sooner had Zack told him than he came to a dead pause—started and changed color—opened his lips to speak—then checked himself, and remained silent. The information which he had just received had recalled to him a certain object that he had seen in the drawer of Mr. Blyth’s bureau; and the resemblance between the two had at once flashed upon him. The importance which this discovery assumed in his eyes, in connection with what he had already heard, may be easily estimated, when it is remembered that his barbarian life had kept him totally ignorant that a Hair Bracelet is in England one of the commonest ornaments of woman’s wear.

“Are we going to stop here all day?” asked Zack. “If you’re turning from sulky to sentimental again, I shall go back to Blyth’s, and pave the way for you with Madonna, old boy!” He turned gaily in the direction of Valentine’s house, as he said those words.

Mat did not offer to detain him; did not say a word at parting. He passed his hand wearily over his eyes as Zack left him. “I’m sober,” he said vacantly to himself; “I’m not dreaming; I’m not light-headed, though I feel a’most like it. I saw that young woman as plain as I see them houses in front of me now; and by God, if she had been Mary’s ghost, she couldn’t have been more like her!”

He stopped. His hand fell to his side; then fastened mechanically on the railings of a house near him. His rough, misshapen fingers trembled round the iron. Recollections that had slumbered for years and years past, were awakening again awfully to life within him. Through the obscurity and oblivion of long absence, through the changeless darkness of the tomb, there was shining out now, vivid and solemn on his memory, the image—as she had been in her youth-time—of the dead woman whose name was “Mary.” And it was only the sight of that young girl, of that poor, shy, gentle, deaf and dumb creature, that had wrought the miracle!

He tried to shake himself clear of the influences which were now at work on him. He moved forward a step or two, and looked up. Zack?—where was Zack?

Away, at the other end of the solitary suburban street, just visible sauntering along and swinging his stick in his hand.

Without knowing why he did so, Mat turned instantly and walked after him, calling to him to come back. The third summons reached him: he stopped, hesitated, made comic gesticulations with his stick in the air—then began to retrace his steps.

The effort of walking and calling after him, had turned Mat’s thoughts in another direction. They now occupied themselves again with the hints that Zack had dropped of some incomprehensible connection between a Hair Bracelet, and the young girl who was called by the strange name of “Madonna.” With the remembrance of this, there came back also the recollection of the letter about a bracelet, and its enclosure of hair, which he had examined in the lonely cattle-shed at Dibbledean, and which still lay in the little box bearing on it the name of “Mary Grice.”

“Well!” cried Zack, speaking as he came on. “Well, Cupid! what do you want with me now?”

Mat did not immediately answer. His thoughts were still traveling back cautiously over the ground which they had already explored. Once more, he was pondering on that little circle of plaited hair, having gold at each end, and looking just big enough to go round a woman’s wrist, which he had seen in the drawer of Mr. Blyth’s bureau. And once again, the identity between this object and the ornament which young Thorpe had described as being the thing called a Hair Bracelet, began surely and more surely to establish itself in his mind.

“Now then, don’t keep me waiting,” continued Zack, laughing again as he came nearer; “clap your hand on your heart, and give me your tender message for the future Mrs. Marksman.”

It was on the tip of Mat’s tongue to emulate the communicativeness of young Thorpe, and to speak unreservedly of what he had seen in the drawer of the bureau—but he suddenly restrained the words just as they were dropping from his lips. At the same moment his eyes began to lose their vacant perturbed look, and to brighten again with something of craft and cunning, added to their customary watchful expression.

“What’s the young woman’s real name?” he asked carelessly, just as Zack was beginning to banter him for the third time.

“Is that all you called me back for? Her real name’s Mary.”

Mat had made his inquiry with the air of a man whose thoughts were far away from his words, and who only spoke because he felt obliged to say something. Zack’s reply to his question startled him into instant and anxious attention.

“Mary!” he repeated in a tone of surprise. “What else, besides Mary?”

“How should I know? Didn’t I try and beat it into your muddled old head, half-an-hour ago, that Blyth won’t tell his friends anything about her?” There was another pause. The secrecy in which Mr. Blyth chose to conceal Madonna’s history, and the sequestered place in the innermost drawer of his bureau where he kept the Hair Bracelet, began vaguely to connect themselves together in Mat’s mind. A curious smile hovered about his lips, and the cunning look brightened in his eyes. “The Painter-Man won’t tell anything about her, won’t he? Perhaps that thing in his drawer will.” He muttered the words to himself, putting his hands in his pockets, and mechanically kicking away a stone which happened to lie at his feet on the pavement.

“What are you grumbling about now?” asked Zack. “Do you think I’m going to stop here all day for the pleasure of hearing you talk to yourself?” As he spoke, he vivaciously rapped his friend on the shoulder with his stick. “Trust me to pave the way for you with Madonna!” he called out mischievously, as he turned back in the direction of Mr. Blyth’s house.

“Trust me to have another look at your friend’s Hair Bracelet,” said Mat quietly to himself. “I’ll handle it this time, before I’m many days older.”

He nodded over his shoulder at Zack, and walked away quickly in the direction of Kirk Street.

The first thing Mat did when he got to his lodgings, was to fill and light his pipe. He then sat down on his bear-skins, and dragged the box close to him which he had brought from Dibbledean.

Although the machinery of Mat’s mind was constructed of very clumsy and barbaric materials; although book-learning had never oiled it, and wise men’s talk had never quickened it; nevertheless, it always contrived to work on—much as it was working now—until it reached, sooner or later, a practical result. Solitude and Peril are stern schoolmasters, but they do their duty for good or evil, thoroughly with some men; and they had done it thoroughly, amid the rocks and wildernesses of the great American continent, with Mat.