The Complete Short Stories of Wilkie Collins. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ of her father’s decision and bluntness in her manner of speaking.

      “A stranger in the other room, papa, who wants to see you. I suppose the servants showed him upstairs, thinking he was one of the guests. Ought I to have had him shown down again?”

      “A nice question! How should I know? Wait till I have seen him, miss, and then I’ll tell you!” With these words the general turned on his heel, and went into the drawing-room.

      His daughter would have followed him, but Danville caught her by the hand.

      “Can you be hard-hearted enough to leave me here alone?” he asked.

      “What is to become of all my bosom friends in the next room, you selfish man, if I stop here with you?” retorted mademoiselle, struggling to free herself.

      “Call them in here,” said Danville gayly, making himself master of her other hand.

      She laughed, and drew him away toward the drawing-room.

      “Come,” she cried, “and let all the ladies see what a tyrant I am going to marry. Come, and show them what an obstinate, unreasonable, wearisome — ”

      Her voice suddenly failed her; she shuddered, and turned faint. Danville’s hand had in one instant grown cold as death in hers; the momentary touch of his fingers, as she felt their grasp loosen, struck some mysterious chill through her from head to foot. She glanced round at him affrightedly, and saw his eyes looking straight into the drawing-room. They were fixed in a strange, unwavering, awful stare, while, from the rest of his face, all expression, all character, all recognisable play and movement of feature, had utterly gone. It was a breathless, lifeless mask — a white blank. With a cry of terror, she looked where he seemed to be looking; and could see nothing but the stranger standing in the middle of the drawing-room. Before she could ask a question — before she could speak even a single word — her father came to her, caught Danville by the arm, and pushed her roughly back into the library.

      “Go there, and take the women with you,” he said, in a quick, fierce whisper. “Into the library!” he continued, turning to the ladies, and raising his voice. “Into the library, all of you, along with my daughter.”

      The women, terrified by his manner, obeyed him in the greatest confusion. As they hurried past him into the library, he signed to the notary to follow; and then closed the door of communication between the two rooms.

      “Stop where you are!” he cried, addressing the old officers, who had risen from their chairs. “Stay, I insist on it! Whatever happens, Jacques Berthelin has done nothing to be ashamed of in the presence of his old friends and companions. You have seen the beginning, now stay and see the end.”

      While he spoke, he walked into the middle of the room. He had never quitted his hold of Danville’s arm; step by step they advanced together to the place where Trudaine was standing.

      “You have come into my house, and asked me for my daughter in marriage — and I have given her to you,” said the general, addressing Danville, quietly. “You told me that your first wife and her brother were guillotined three years ago in the time of the Terror — and I believed you. Now look at that man — look him straight in the face. He has announced himself to me as the brother of your wife, and he asserts that his sister is alive at this moment. One of you two has deceived me. Which is it?”

      Danville tried to speak, but no sound passed his lips; tried to wrench his arm from the grasp that was on it, but could not stir the old soldier’s steady hand.

      “Are you afraid? are you a coward? Can’t you look him in the face?” asked the general, tightening his hold sternly.

      “Stop! stop!” interposed one of the old officers, coming forward. “Give him time. This may be a case of strange accidental resemblance, which would be enough, under the circumstances, to discompose any man. You will excuse me, citizen,” he continued, turning to Trudaine; “but you are a stranger. You have given us no proof of your identity.”

      “There is the proof,” said Trudaine, pointing to Danville’s face.

      “Yes, yes,” pursued the other; “he looks pale and startled enough, certainly. But I say again, let us not be too hasty; there are strange cases on record of accidental resemblances, and this may be one of them!”

      As he repeated those words, Danville looked at him with a faint, cringing gratitude, stealing slowly over the blank terror of his face. He bowed his head, murmured something, and gesticulated confusedly with the hand that he was free to use.

      “Look!” cried the old officer; “look, Berthelin; he denies the man’s identity.”

      “Do you hear that?” said the general, appealing to Trudaine. “Have you proofs to confute him? If you have, produce them instantly.”

      Before the answer could be given the door leading into the drawing-room from the staircase was violently flung open, and Madame Danville — her hair in disorder, her face in its colourless terror looking like the very counterpart of her son’s — appeared on the threshold, with the old man Dubois and a group of amazed and startled servants behind her.

      “For God’s sake, don’t sign! for God’s sake, come away!” she cried. “I have seen your wife — in the spirit, or in the flesh, I know not which — but I have seen her. Charles! Charles! as true as Heaven is above us, I have seen your wife!”

      “You have seen her in the flesh, living and breathing as you see her brother yonder,” said a firm, quiet voice, from among the servants on the landing outside.

      “Let that man enter, whoever he is!” cried the general.

      Lomaque passed Madame Danville on the threshold. She trembled as he brushed by her; then, supporting herself by the wall, followed him a few paces into the room. She looked first at her son — after that, at Trudaine — after that back again at her son. Something in her presence silenced every one. There fell a sudden stillness over all the assembly — a stillness so deep that the eager, frightened whispering, and sharp rustling of dresses among the women in the library, became audible from the other side of the closed door.

      “Charles,” she said, slowly advancing; “why do you look — ” She stopped, and fixed her eyes again on her son more earnestly than before; then turned them suddenly on Trudaine. “You are looking at my son, sir,” she said, “and I see contempt in your face. By what right do you insult a man whose grateful sense of his mother’s obligations to you made him risk his life for the saving of yours and your sister’s? By what right have you kept the escape of my son’s wife from death by the guillotine — an escape which, for all I know to the contrary, his generous exertions were instrumental in effecting — a secret from my son? By what right, I demand to know, has your treacherous secrecy placed us in such a position as we now stand in before the master of this house?”

      An expression of sorrow and pity passed over Trudaine’s face while she spoke. He retired a few steps, and gave her no answer. The general looked at him with eager curiosity, and, dropping his hold of Danville’s arm, seemed about to speak; but Lomaque stepped forward at the same time, and held up his hand to claim attention.

      “I think I shall express the wishes of Citizen Trudaine,” he said, addressing Madame Danville, “if I recommend this lady not to press for too public an answer to her questions.”

      “Pray who are you, sir, who СКАЧАТЬ