The Greatest Mysteries of Wilkie Collins (Illustrated Edition). Уилки Коллинз
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he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to answer. “Take two minutes more,” he said, and resumed his walk with the regularity of clockwork. “These are the creatures,” he thought to himself, “into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?”
He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the dark flush on her face was dying out again.
“Ready?” he repeated. “Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and let’s get it over. I don’t ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to wait.”
“I will wait,” she said. “Patiently, willingly.”
“Will you make Frank wait?”
“Yes.”
“Will you send him to China?”
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched straight up to it on the spot.
“I don’t pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank’s for you,” he said. “The subject doesn’t interest me. But I do pretend to state two plain truths. It is one plain truth that you can’t be married till you have money enough to pay for the roof that shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat. It is another plain truth that you can’t find the money; that I can’t find the money; and that Frank’s only chance of finding it, is going to China. If I tell him to go, he’ll sit in a corner and cry. If I insist, he’ll say Yes, and deceive me. If I go a step further, and see him on board ship with my own eyes, he’ll slip off in the pilot’s boat, and sneak back secretly to you. That’s his disposition.”
“No!” said Magdalen. “It’s not his disposition; it’s his love for Me.”
“Call it what you like,” retorted Mr. Clare. “Sneak or Sweetheart — he’s too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him. My shutting the door won’t keep him from coming back. Your shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you fond enough of him not to stand in his light?”
“Fond! I would die for him!”
“Will you send him to China?”
She sighed bitterly.
“Have a little pity for me,” she said. “I have lost my father; I have lost my mother; I have lost my fortune — and now I am to lose Frank. You don’t like women, I know; but try to help me with a little pity. I don’t say it’s not for his own interests to send him to China; I only say it’s hard — very, very hard on me.”
Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her caresses, blind to her tears; but under the tough integument of his philosophy he had a heart — and it answered that hopeless appeal; it felt those touching words.
“I don’t deny that your case is a hard one,” he said. “I don’t want to make it harder. I only ask you to do in Frank’s interests what Frank is too weak to do for himself. It’s no fault of yours; it’s no fault of mine — but it’s not the less true that the fortune you were to have brought him has changed owners.”
She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a threatening smile on her lips.
“It may change owners again,” she said.
Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the tones of her voice. But the words were spoken low; spoken as if to herself — they failed to reach him across the breadth of the room. He stopped instantly in his walk and asked what she had said.
“Nothing,” she answered, turning her head away toward the window, and looking out mechanically at the falling rain. “Only my own thoughts.”
Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject.
“It’s your interest,” he went on, “as well as Frank’s interest, that he should go. He may make money enough to marry you in China; he can’t make it here. If he stops at home, he’ll be the ruin of both of you. He’ll shut his eyes to every consideration of prudence, and pester you to marry him; and when he has carried his point, he will be the first to turn round afterward and complain that you’re a burden on him. Hear me out! You’re in love with Frank — I’m not, and I know him. Put you two together often enough; give him time enough to hug, cry, pester, and plead; and I’ll tell you what the end will be — you’ll marry him.”
He had touched the right string at last. It rung back in answer before he could add another word.
“You don’t know me,” she said, firmly. “You don’t know what I can suffer for Frank’s sake. He shall never marry me till I can be what my father said I should be — the making of his fortune. He shall take no burden, when he takes me; I promise you that! I’ll be the good angel of Frank’s life; I’ll not go a penniless girl to him, and drag him down.” She abruptly left her seat, advanced a few steps toward Mr. Clare, and stopped in the middle of the room. Her arms fell helpless on either side of her, and she burst into tears. “He shall go,” she said. “If my heart breaks in doing it, I’ll tell him tomorrow that we must say Good-by!”
Mr. Clare at once advanced to meet her, and held out his hand.
“I’ll help you,” he said. “Frank shall hear every word that has passed between us. When he comes tomorrow he shall know, beforehand, that he comes to say Good-by.”
She took his hand in both her own — hesitated — looked at him — and pressed it to her bosom. “May I ask a favor of you, before you go?” she said, timidly. He tried to take his hand from her; but she knew her advantage, and held it fast. “Suppose there should be some change for the better?” she went on. “Sup pose I could come to Frank, as my fat her said I should come to him — ?”
Before she could complete the question, Mr. Clare made a second effort and withdrew his hand. “As your father said you should come to him?” he repeated, looking at her attentively.
“Yes,” she replied. “Strange things happen sometimes. If strange things happen to me will you let Frank come back before the five years are out?”
What did she mean? Was she clinging desperately to the hope of melting Michael Vanstone’s heart? Mr. Clare could draw no other conclusion from what she had just said to him. At the beginning of the interview he would have roughly dispelled her delusion. At the end of the interview he left her compassionately in possession of it.
“You are hoping against all hope,” he said; “but if it gives you courage, hope on. If this impossible good fortune of yours ever happens, tell me, and Frank shall come back. In the meantime — ”
“In the meantime,” she interposed sadly, “you have my promise.”
Once more Mr. Clare’s sharp eyes searched her face attentively.
“I will trust your promise,” he said. “You shall see Frank tomorrow.”
She went back thoughtfully to her chair, and sat down again in silence. Mr. Clare made for the door before any formal leave-taking could pass between them. “Deep!” he thought to himself, as he looked back at her before he went out; “only eighteen; and too deep for my sounding!”
In the hall he found Norah, waiting anxiously to hear what had happened.
“Is it all over?” she asked. “Does Frank go to China?”
“Be careful how you manage that sister of yours,” said Mr. Clare, without noticing the question. “She has one great misfortune to contend with: she’s not made for the ordinary jog-trot of a woman’s life. I don’t say I can see straight to the end of the good or evil in her — I only warn you, her future will be no common one.”
An hour later, Mr. Pendril left the house; and, by that night’s post, Miss