Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1770 page)

Sir John administered his first dose of advice. ‘Sit down, my good fellow — take a cigar — and out with it!’

Cyril told his melancholy story. ‘She treats me cruelly,’ he said, by way of conclusion. ‘And I assure you, on my word of honour, I haven’t observed it.’

Sir John administered the second dose. ‘Exactly my case,’ he remarked coolly. ‘I am devoted to the loveliest girl in the world, and she treats me cruelly. Would you believe it? — she has left London to avoid me, and I don’t know where to find her. Do as I do: take it easy.’

‘I’m too fond of her, Sir John, to take it easy.’

‘Oh, if you come to that,
I’m
broken-hearted. At the same time, I don’t disguise from myself that we are both rowing in the same boat. You’re the favourite plaything of one coquette; and I the favourite plaything of another. There it is in a nutshell.’

This off-hand way of speaking of the beloved object shocked Cyril. ‘You may be right about your lady,’ he answered. ‘Excuse me for saying that you are wrong about mine.’

Sir John laughed. ‘I was as innocent once as you are,’ he said. ‘Let’s get at the facts first. Mine is quite a young one. Is yours quite a young one too?’

‘In the first lovely bloom of youth!’

‘You curious boy! Your imagination is misleading you — and you don’t know it. All girls are alike.’

Cyril indignantly struck his fist on the table. ‘There isn’t another girl in the world like my Mabel!’

Sir John suddenly became serious.

‘Mabel?’ he repeated. ‘There’s something in that name which sounds familiar to me. Not the niece of Major Evergreen, surely?’

‘Yes!’ cried simple Cyril, ‘the same. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before! She has met you in society; and she is naturally interested in a celebrated man like yourself.
You
would have some influence over her. Oh, Sir John, if you would only see Mabel, and say a word to her in my interests, how truly obliged to you I should be!’

The impenetrable face of the man of the world expressed nothing but perfect readiness to make himself useful. Far more experienced eyes than Cyril’s would have discovered nothing in Sir John Bosworth’s manner even remotely suggesting that the two lovers had been, all this time, talking of the same lady.

‘With pleasure!’ cried Sir John. ‘But where shall we find her?’

Cyril seized his hand. ‘You good friend!’ he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes. ‘She’s staying with my mother at our house — only a short ride from this place. When will you let me introduce you to my mother?’

‘Whenever you like.’

‘At once?’

And that excellent man smiled, and cheerfully echoed the words: ‘At once!’

I
V

The two gentlemen discovered Miss Mabel walking up and down the garden terrace in front of Oakapple Hall, reading a book. Good girl! It was a volume of her uncle’s poetry.

‘I felt sure you would be glad to meet Sir John Bosworth again,’ Cyril began.

His manner was a great deal too humble. Before he could get any farther, Sir John spoke for himself.

‘The happiness is all mine,’ he said in his easy way. ‘If I happen, however, to be intruding, pray don’t scruple to say so.’

Mabel raised her eyes from her book. She had only to look at Cyril, and to see what had happened. Angry, perplexed, flattered, amused — in this conflict of small emotions she was completely at a loss how to assert herself to the best advantage; and she took refuge in a cold composure which, for the time being at least, committed her to nothing. ‘I was certainly engaged in reading,’ she replied — and put a mark in her book with a sigh of resignation.

Impenetrable Sir John received the blow without flinching. ‘You led me to hope for the honour of being introduced to Mrs Corydon,’ he said to Cyril. ‘Shall we find her at home?’

He took Cyril’s arm and led him to the house. ‘That’s the way to manage her,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll bet you five to one she’s vexed at our leaving her — and ten to one that she receives us more civilly when she sees us again. Don’t look back! You’re a lost man if she discovers that you’re thinking of her. Which is the way to the drawing-room?’

Sir John Bosworth effected the conquest of Mrs Corydon at the first interview. She treated him as she was accustomed to treat her best friends. In other words, she offered to show him over the house. Oakapple Hall was a place of great age and celebrity. In the upper regions two Kings of England had slept, and the ground floor still showed traces of the passage of Oliver Cromwell and his men. Sir John made his excuses for that day. Having heard that Mabel’s uncle was in the house, he was courteously unwilling to disturb the major in the agonies of poetical composition. When he had taken his leave he whispered to Cyril, on his way to the house door: ‘I’ll lay you another wager, if you like — we shall see Miss Mabel still on the terrace.’ And they did see her.

She was seated, with her closed book on her lap, deep in thought.

Hesitating between her two lovers, she had decided at first in favour of Cyril: he had youth on his side, he was handsome, he was modest and amiable. If he had happened to appear on the terrace, at that moment, he would have been the man preferred. But he was indoors, in attendance on his friend; and he left Mabel time to remember that there was a weak side to his character. In Cyril’s place would Sir John have consulted another man, and have brought him to visit her, without once suspecting that he might be a rival in disguise? Mabel was already leaning to the side of Sir John, when she heard footsteps on the walk — and, looking up, saw the man himself approaching her, alone.

In the present state of her inclinations, she was disposed, as an accomplished flirt, to begin by trifling with him. He saw her intention in the bright malice of her eyes, and put an obstacle in her way. Taking the book off her lap, he assumed to be interested in her reading.

‘Tired of poetry, Miss Mabel?’

‘Never tired of it, Sir John.’

‘You read a great deal of poetry.’

‘I believe I have read all the English poets.’

‘Including the major. Do you find him equal to the others?’

‘My uncle reminds me of the others — always pleasantly.’

Sir John opened the book, at that part of it in which a mark had been left, and read the title of the poem:
The Rival Minstrels: a Contest in Verse.

‘Is it very interesting?’

His tone irritated Mabel. ‘It is perfectly charming,’ she answered — ’and reminds me of Walter Scott. Two minstrels are in love with the same fair lady; she challenges them to an exhibition of their art; they are each to address her in verse; and she offers her hand to the poet whose lines she most admires. Ah, what a position women occupied in those days!’

‘You would like to have been that fair lady, I suppose?’

‘I should indeed! Especially,’ she added with a saucy smile, ‘if you were a minstrel.’

‘I never wrote anything in my life — except letters. A proprietor of a newspaper, Miss Mabel, leaves prose and verse to his editor and his contributors. Are you looking for anything?’

‘I am looking for Mr Corydon. Where is he?’ Mabel asked, with an appearance of deepest interest.

Sir John determined to stop the coming flirtation in another way.

‘Staying in the house,’ he answered gravely, ‘by my advice.’

‘And why does he want your advice?’

‘Because he is under my protection. I feel the truest regard for him, and the sincerest sympathy with him in his present trying situation.’

Sir John knew his young lady well. His object was to puzzle her by presenting himself in an angry and jealous character entirely new to her experience — to keep her flighty mind by this means employed in trying to understand him, when he was obliged to leave her — to return the next day, and, by means of humble excuses and ardent entreaties for a reconciliation, to place poor Cyril’s mild and modest fidelity in a light of comparison which it would be little likely to endure.

Thus far he had succeeded. Mabel listened, and looked at him, and said, ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I will make myself understood,’ Sir John rejoined. ‘Have you forgotten the offer of marriage which I ventured to address to you in London? You didn’t say No; you told me you wished for time to consider. I called again, to hear what your decision might be; and I found that you had not only gone away into the country, without a word of apology, but had left strict instructions that the place of your retreat was not to be mentioned to anybody. If this was not a deliberate insult, it was something extremely like it. When I told you just now that Mr Corydon was under my protection, I meant that I would not allow that excellent young man to be treated as you have treated me.’

Mabel’s indignation was equal to the one possible reply to this.

‘Make your mind easy,’ she said; ‘Mr Corydon is in no danger of being treated as I have treated you.’

‘I sincerely hope for my young friend’s sake,’ Sir John answered, ‘that you really mean what you say.’

Mabel got more and more angry. ‘Mr Corydon is charming!’ she burst out. ‘Mr Corydon is a young man whom I esteem and admire!’

‘Allow me to thank you, Miss Mabel, for your candour. You relieve me from the anxiety that I have been feeling on my friend’s account. If you will only say to him what you have just said to me I shall retire, happy in the conviction that my intercession in Mr Corydon’s favour has been crowned with success. Good morning.’

V

Left by herself, Mabel felt the composing influence of solitude. Little by little, her cheeks recovered their every-day delicacy of colour; her eyebrows took their proper places on her forehead; and her pulse returned to the customary moderation of its beat. She was able to listen to the gentle promptings of her own vanity; and, as a matter of course, she began to look at Sir John’s insolence from a new point of view. He, the self-possessed man of the world, had completely forgotten himself, and there could be but one reason for it. ‘Mad with jealousy,’ she concluded complacently. ‘How fond he must be of me!’

Who was this, approaching slowly from the house with steps that hesitated? This was the fatal young man who was under Sir John’s protection, and who had repaid the obligation by rousing emotions of jealous rage in Sir John’s breast. Mabel was not sure whether she despised him or pitied him. In this difficulty, she took a middle course, and only said, ‘What do you want?’

‘May I not have the happiness of speaking to you?’

‘It depends, Mr Corydon, on what you have to say. I forbid you to speak of Sir John Bosworth; I won’t hear you if you speak of yourself; and I shall retire to my room if you speak to me. Have you any harmless remarks to make? Suppose you try the weather?’

Humble Cyril looked up at the sky. ‘Beautiful weather,’ he said submissively.

‘Or politics?’ Miss Mabel continued.

‘Conservative,’ Cyril answered, as if he was saying his catechism.

‘Or literature?’

‘I haven’t got any.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean , I wish I was as well read as you are. Oh, Miss Mabel, don’t be so hard on a poor fellow who loves you with all his heart. I didn’t mean any harm when I asked Sir John — ’

‘Be quiet!’

‘If there is any sort of atonement that I can make — if you could only tell me what a young lady wants — I mean, what she looks for in a young man — ’

‘She looks, Mr Corydon, for what she doesn’t find in you.’