Лучшие романы Уилки Коллинза / The Best of Wilkie Collins. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ found their way into the newspapers – when strangers were speculating whether there was any connection between what had happened at Lady Verinder’s country-house, and what had happened in Northumberland Street and Alfred Place – concealment was not to be thought of; and perfect frankness became a necessity as well as a virtue.

      Some persons, hearing what I now heard, would have been probably overwhelmed with astonishment. For my own part, knowing Rachel’s spirit to have been essentially unregenerate from her childhood upwards, I was prepared for whatever my aunt could tell me on the subject of her daughter. It might have gone on from bad to worse till it ended in Murder; and I should still have said to myself, The natural result! oh, dear, dear, the natural result! The one thing that DID shock me was the course my aunt had taken under the circumstances. Here surely was a case for a clergyman, if ever there was one yet! Lady Verinder had thought it a case for a physician. All my poor aunt’s early life had been passed in her father’s godless household. The natural result again! Oh, dear, dear, the natural result again!

      “The doctors recommend plenty of exercise and amusement for Rachel, and strongly urge me to keep her mind as much as possible from dwelling on the past,” said Lady Verinder.

      “Oh, what heathen advice!” I thought to myself. “In this Christian country, what heathen advice!”

      My aunt went on, “I do my best to carry out my instructions. But this strange adventure of Godfrey’s happens at a most unfortunate time. Rachel has been incessantly restless and excited since she first heard of it. She left me no peace till I had written and asked my nephew Ablewhite to come here. She even feels an interest in the other person who was roughly used – Mr. Luker, or some such name – though the man is, of course, a total stranger to her.”

      “Your knowledge of the world, dear aunt, is superior to mine,” I suggested diffidently. “But there must be a reason surely for this extraordinary conduct on Rachel’s part. She is keeping a sinful secret from you and from everybody. May there not be something in these recent events which threatens her secret with discovery?”

      “Discovery?” repeated my aunt. “What can you possibly mean? Discovery through Mr. Luker? Discovery through my nephew?”

      As the word passed her lips, a special providence occurred. The servant opened the door, and announced Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.

      Chapter ii

      Mr. Godfrey followed the announcement of his name – as Mr. Godfrey does everything else – exactly at the right time. He was not so close on the servant’s heels as to startle us. He was not so far behind as to cause us the double inconvenience of a pause and an open door. It is in the completeness of his daily life that the true Christian appears. This dear man was very complete.

      “Go to Miss Verinder,” said my aunt, addressing the servant, “and tell her Mr. Ablewhite is here.”

      We both inquired after his health. We both asked him together whether he felt like himself again, after his terrible adventure of the past week. With perfect tact, he contrived to answer us at the same moment. Lady Verinder had his reply in words. I had his charming smile.

      “What,” he cried, with infinite tenderness, “have I done to deserve all this sympathy? My dear aunt! my dear Miss Clack! I have merely been mistaken for somebody else. I have only been blindfolded; I have only been strangled; I have only been thrown flat on my back, on a very thin carpet, covering a particularly hard floor. Just think how much worse it might have been! I might have been murdered; I might have been robbed. What have I lost? Nothing but Nervous Force – which the law doesn’t recognise as property; so that, strictly speaking, I have lost nothing at all. If I could have had my own way, I would have kept my adventure to myself – I shrink from all this fuss and publicity. But Mr. Luker made HIS injuries public, and my injuries, as the necessary consequence, have been proclaimed in their turn. I have become the property of the newspapers, until the gentle reader gets sick of the subject. I am very sick indeed of it myself. May the gentle reader soon be like me! And how is dear Rachel? Still enjoying the gaieties of London? So glad to hear it! Miss Clack, I need all your indulgence. I am sadly behind-hand with my Committee Work and my dear Ladies. But I really do hope to look in at the Mothers’-Small-Clothes next week. Did you make cheering progress at Monday’s Committee? Was the Board hopeful about future prospects? And are we nicely off for Trousers?”

      The heavenly gentleness of his smile made his apologies irresistible. The richness of his deep voice added its own indescribable charm to the interesting business question which he had just addressed to me. In truth, we were almost TOO nicely off for Trousers; we were quite overwhelmed by them. I was just about to say so, when the door opened again, and an element of worldly disturbance entered the room, in the person of Miss Verinder.

      She approached dear Mr. Godfrey at a most unladylike rate of speed, with her hair shockingly untidy, and her face, what I should call, unbecomingly flushed.

      “I am charmed to see you, Godfrey,” she said, addressing him, I grieve to add, in the off-hand manner of one young man talking to another. “I wish you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as our present excitement lasts) are the two most interesting men in all London. It’s morbid to say this; it’s unhealthy; it’s all that a well-regulated mind like Miss Clack’s most instinctively shudders at. Never mind that. Tell me the whole of the Northumberland Street story directly. I know the newspapers have left some of it out.”

      Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all inherit from Adam – it is a very small share of our human legacy, but, alas! he has it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel’s hand in both of his own hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his waistcoat. It was a direct encouragement to her reckless way of talking, and her insolent reference to me.

      “Dearest Rachel,” he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, “the newspapers have told you everything – and they have told it much better than I can.”

      “Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter,” my aunt remarked. “He has just been saying that he doesn’t care to speak of it.”

      “Why?”

      She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look up into Mr. Godfrey’s face. On his side, he looked down at her with an indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called on to interfere.

      “Rachel, darling!” I remonstrated gently, “true greatness and true courage are ever modest.”

      “You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey,” she said – not taking the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin as if she was one young man addressing another. “But I am quite sure you are not great; I don’t believe you possess any extraordinary courage; and I am firmly persuaded – if you ever had any modesty – that your lady-worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years since. You have some private reason for not talking of your adventure in Northumberland Street; and I mean to know it.”

      “My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily acknowledged,” he answered, still bearing with her. “I am tired of the subject.”

      “You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a remark.”

      “What is it?”

      “You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for the pleasure of telling them. You can’t go straight with your lady-worshippers. I mean to make you go straight with me. Come, СКАЧАТЬ