The Essential Wilkie Collins Collection. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ Madame Danville.

      She had been leaning against the wall, before Lomaque began to speak; but she stood perfectly upright now. She neither spoke nor moved. Not one of the light gaudy ribbons flaunting on her disordered head-dress so much as trembled. The old servant Dubois was crouched on his knees at her side, kissing her cold right hand, chafing it in his, reiterating his faint, mournful cry, "Oh! my mistress! my dear, dear mistress!" but she did not appear to know that he was near her. It was only when her son advanced a step or two toward her that she seemed to awaken suddenly from that death-trance of mental pain. Then she slowly raised the hand that was free, and waved him back from her. He stopped in obedience to the gesture, and endeavored to speak. She waved her hand again, and the deathly stillness of her face began to grow troubled. Her lips moved a little--she spoke.

      "Oblige me, sir, for the last time, by keeping silence. You and I have henceforth nothing to say to each other. I am the daughter of a race of nobles, and the widow of a man of honor. You are a traitor and a false witness--a thing from which all true men and true women turn with contempt. I renounce you! Publicly, in the presence of these gentlemen, I say it--I have no son."

      She turned her back on him; and, bowing to the other persons in the room with the old formal courtesy of by-gone times, walked slowly and steadily to the door. Stopping there, she looked back; and then the artificial courage of the moment failed her. With a faint, suppressed cry she clutched at the hand of the old servant, who still kept faithfully at her side; he caught her in his arms, and her head sank on his shoulder.

      "Help him!" cried the general to the servants near the door. "Help him to take her into the next room!"

      The old man looked up suspiciously from his mistress to the persons who were assisting him to support her. With a strange, sudden jealousy he shook his hand at them. "Home," he cried; "she shall go home, and I will take care of her. Away! you there--nobody holds her head but Dubois. Downstairs! downstairs to her carriage! She has nobody but me now, and I say that she shall be taken home."

      As the door closed, General Berthelin approached Trudaine, who had stood silent and apart, from the time when Lomaque first appeared in the drawing-room.

      "I wish to ask your pardon," said the old soldier, "because I have wronged you by a moment of unjust suspicion. For my daughter's sake, I bitterly regret that we did not see each other long ago; but I thank you, nevertheless, for coming here, even at the eleventh hour."

      While he was speaking, one of his friends came up, and touching him on the shoulder, said: "Berthelin, is that scoundrel to be allowed to go?"

      The general turned on his heel directly, and beckoned contemptuously to Danville to follow him to the door. When they were well out of ear-shot, he spoke these words:

      "You have been exposed as a villain by your brother-in-law, and renounced as a liar by your mother. They have done their duty by you, and now it only remains for me to do mine. When a man enters the house of another under false pretenses, and compromises the reputation of his daughter, we old army men have a very expeditious way of making him answer for it. It is just three o'clock now; at five you will find me and one of my friends--"

      He stopped, and looked round cautiously--then whispered the rest in Danville's ear--threw open the door, and pointed downstairs.

      "Our work here is done," said Lomaque, laying his hand on Trudaine's arm. "Let us give Danville time to get clear of the house, and then leave it too."

      "My sister! where is she?" asked Trudaine, eagerly.

      "Make your mind easy about her. I will tell you more when we get out."

      "You will excuse me, I know," said General Berthelin, speaking to all the persons present, with his hand on the library door, "if I leave you. I have bad news to break to my daughter, and private business after that to settle with a friend."

      He saluted the company, with his usual bluff nod of the head, and entered the library. A few minutes afterward, Trudaine and Lomaque left the house.

      "You will find your sister waiting for you in our apartment at the hotel," said the latter. "She knows nothing, absolutely nothing, of what has passed."

      "But the recognition?" asked Trudaine, amazedly. "His mother saw her. Surely she--"

      "I managed it so that she should be seen, and should not see. Our former experience of Danville suggested to me the propriety of making the experiment, and my old police-office practice came in useful in carrying it out. I saw the carriage standing at the door, and waited till the old lady came down. I walked your sister away as she got in, and walked her back again past the window as the carriage drove off. A moment did it, and it turned out as useful as I thought it would. Enough of that! Go back now to your sister. Keep indoors till the night mail starts for Rouen. I have had two places taken for you on speculation. Go! resume possession of your house, and leave me here to transact the business which my employer has intrusted to me, and to see how matters end with Danville and his mother. I will make time somehow to come and bid you good-by at Rouen, though it should be only for a single day. Bah! no thanks. Give us your hand. I was ashamed to take it eight years ago--I can give it a hearty shake now! There is your way; here is mine. Leave me to my business in silks and satins, and go you back to your sister, and help her to pack up for the night mail."

      CHAPTER III.

      Three more days have passed. It is evening. Rose, Trudaine and Lomaque are seated together on the bench that overlooks the windings of the Seine. The old familiar scene spreads before them, beautiful as ever--unchanged, as if it was but yesterday since they had all looked on it for the last time.

      They talk together seriously and in low voices. The same recollections fill their hearts--recollections which they refrain from acknowledging, but the influence of which each knows by instinct that the other partakes. Sometimes one leads the conversation, sometimes another; but whoever speaks, the topic chosen is always, as if by common consent, a topic connected with the future.

      The evening darkens in, and Rose is the first to rise from the bench. A secret look of intelligence passes between her and her brother, and then she speaks to Lomaque.

      "Will you follow me into the house," she asks, "with as little delay as possible? I have something that I very much wish to show you."

      Her brother waits till she is out of hearing, then inquires anxiously what has happened at Paris since the night when he and Rose left it.

      "Your sister is free," Lomaque answers.

      "The duel took place, then?"

      "The same day. They were both to fire together. The second of his adversary asserts that he was paralyzed with terror; his own second declares that he was resolved, however he might have lived, to confront death courageously by offering his life at the first fire to the man whom he had injured. Which account is true, I know not. It is only certain that he did not discharge his pistol, that he fell by his antagonist's first bullet, and that he never spoke afterward."

      "And his mother?"

      "It is hard to gain information. Her doors are closed; the old servant guards her with jealous care. A medical man is in constant attendance, and there are reports in the house that the illness from which she is suffering affects her mind more than her body. I could ascertain no more."

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