The Greatest Mysteries of Wilkie Collins (Illustrated Edition). Уилки Коллинз
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May I beg that you will communicate my request, in the strictest confidence, to the medical men in attendance? They will understand, and you will understand, the vital importance I attach to this interview when I tell you that I have arranged to defer to it all other business claims on me; and that I hold myself in readiness to obey your summons at any hour of the day or night.”
In those terms the letter ended. Miss Garth read it twice over. At the second reading the request which the lawyer now addressed to her, and the farewell words which had escaped Mr. Clare’s lips the day before, connected themselves vaguely in her mind. There was some other serious interest in suspense, known to Mr. Pendril and known to Mr. Clare, besides the first and foremost interest of Mrs. Vanstone’s recovery. Whom did it affect? The children? Were they threatened by some new calamity which their mother’s signature might avert? What did it mean? Did it mean that Mr. Vanstone had died without leaving a will?
In her distress and confusion of mind Miss Garth was incapable of reasoning with herself, as she might have reasoned at a happier time. She hastened to the antechamber of Mrs. Vanstone’s room; and, after explaining Mr. Pendril’s position toward the family, placed his letter in the hands of the medical men. They both answered, without hesitation, to the same purpose. Mrs. Vanstone’s condition rendered any such interview as the lawyer desired a total impossibility. If she rallied from her present prostration, Miss Garth should be at once informed of the improvement. In the meantime, the answer to Mr. Pendril might be conveyed in one word — Impossible.
“You see what importance Mr. Pendril attaches to the interview?” said Miss Garth.
Yes: both the doctors saw it.
“My mind is lost and confused, gentlemen, in this dreadful suspense. Can you either of you guess why the signature is wanted? or what the object of the interview may be? I have only seen Mr. Pendril when he has come here on former visits: I have no claim to justify me in questioning him. Will you look at the letter again? Do you think it implies that Mr. Vanstone has never made a will?”
“I think it can hardly imply that,” said one of the doctors. “But, even supposing Mr. Vanstone to have died intestate, the law takes due care of the interests of his widow and his children — ”
“Would it do so,” interposed the other medical man, “if the property happened to be in land?”
“I am not sure in that case. Do you happen to know, Miss Garth, whether Mr. Vanstone’s property was in money or in land?”
“In money,” replied Miss Garth. “I have heard him say so on more than one occasion.”
“Then I can relieve your mind by speaking from my own experience. The law, if he has died intestate, gives a third of his property to his widow, and divides the rest equally among his children.”
“But if Mrs. Vanstone — ”
“If Mrs. Vanstone should die,” pursued the doctor, completing the question which Miss Garth had not the heart to conclude for herself, “I believe I am right in telling you that the property would, as a matter of legal course, go to the children. Whatever necessity there may be for the interview which Mr. Pendril requests, I can see no reason for connecting it with the question of Mr. Vanstone’s presumed intestacy. But, by all means, put the question, for the satisfaction of your own mind, to Mr. Pendril himself.”
Miss Garth withdrew to take the course which the doctor advised. After communicating to Mr. Pendril the medical decision which, thus far, refused him the interview that he sought, she added a brief statement of the legal question she had put to the doctors; and hinted delicately at her natural anxiety to be informed of the motives which had led the lawyer to make his request. The answer she received was guarded in the extreme: it did not impress her with a favorable opinion of Mr. Pendril. He confirmed the doctors’ interpretation of the law in general terms only; expressed his intention of waiting at the cottage in the hope that a change for the better might yet enable Mrs. Vanstone to see him; and closed his letter without the slightest explanation of his motives, and without a word of reference to the question of the existence, or the non-existence, of Mr. Vanstone’s will.
The marked caution of the lawyer’s reply dwelt uneasily on Miss Garth’s mind, until the long-expected event of the day recalled all her thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone’s account.
Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He watched long by the bedside of the suffering woman; he remained longer still in consultation with his medical brethren; he went back again to the sickroom, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to communicate to her the opinion at which he had arrived.
When he called out into the antechamber for the second time, he silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face; and the last faint hope died in her before he opened his lips.
“I must speak the hard truth,” he said, gently. “All that can be done has been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most, will end your suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that time — I grieve to say it — you must prepare yourself for the worst.”
Those words said all: they were prophetic of the end.
The night passed; and she lived through it. The next day came; and she lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the tidings of her husband’s death had dealt the mortal blow. When the hour came round again, the mercy of God let her go to him in the better world. Her daughters were kneeling at the bedside as her spirit passed away. She left them unconscious of their presence; mercifully and happily insensible to the pang of the last farewell.
Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane and the sunset was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, the light of the frail little life — faint and feeble from the first — flickered and went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay, that night, on the same bed. The Angel of Death had done his awful bidding; and the two Sisters were left alone in the world.
Chapter XII
Earlier than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third of July, Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and stepped out into the little strip of garden attached to his residence.
After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he was joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal appearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind; whose inexpressive face and conventionally-quiet manner presented nothing that attracted approval and nothing that inspired dislike. This was Mr. Pendril — this was the man on whose lips hung the future of the orphans at Combe-Raven.
“The time is getting on,” he said, looking toward the shrubbery, as he joined Mr. Clare.
“My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o’clock: it only wants ten minutes of the hour.”
“Are you to see her alone?” asked Mr. Clare.
“I left Miss Garth to decide — after warning her, first of all, that the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious nature.”
“And has she decided?”
“She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters. The elder of the two shrinks — and who can wonder at it? — from any discussion connected with the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the funeral. The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the subject. As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister’s example. My interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone — and it is a very great relief to me to know it.”
He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest attentively.
“You are almost as old as I am, sir,” he said. “Has all your long experience