The Essential Wilkie Collins Collection. Уилки КоллинзЧитать онлайн книгу.
and four times as fat as he ought to be; he has fought against my amiability for ten mortal years; when he can't fight any longer, he'll die suddenly, and I shall be the innocent cause of it."
Mr. Boxsious uttered this fatal prophecy with extraordinary complacency, nodding and smiling out of the window all the time at the unfortunate man who had rashly tried to provoke him. When his favorite enemy was out of sight, he turned away, and indulged himself in a brisk turn or two up and down the room. Meanwhile I lifted my canvas on the easel, and was on the point of asking him to sit down, when he assailed me again.
"Now, Mr. Artist," he cried, quickening his walk impatiently, "in the interests of the Town Council, your employers, allow me to ask you for the last time when you are going to begin?"
"And allow me, Mr. Boxsious, in the interest of the Town Council also," said I, "to ask you if your notion of the proper way of sitting for your portrait is to walk about the room!"
"Aha! well put--devilish well put!" returned Mr. Boxsious; "that's the only sensible thing you have said since you entered my house; I begin to like you already." With these words he nodded at me approvingly, and jumped into the high chair that I had placed for him with the alacrity of a young man.
"I say, Mr. Artist," he went on, when I had put him into the right position (he insisted on the front view of his face being taken, because the Town Council would get the most for their money in that way), "you don't have many such good jobs as this, do you?"
"Not many," I said. "I should not be a poor man if commissions for life-size portraits often fell in my way."
"You poor!" exclaimed Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. "I dispute that point with you at the outset. Why, you've got a good cloth coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. You've got the sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast. You can't humbug me about poverty, for I know what it is. Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow. That was _my_ luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying the law. Poverty, indeed! Do you shake in your shoes, Mr. Artist, when you think what you were at twenty? I do, I can promise you."
He began to shift about so irritably in his chair, that, in the interests of my work, I was obliged to make an effort to calm him.
"It must be a pleasant occupation for you in your present prosperity," said I, "to look back sometimes at the gradual processes by which you passed from poverty to competence, and from that to the wealth you now enjoy."
"Gradual, did you say?" cried Mr. Boxsious; "it wasn't gradual at all. I was sharp--damned sharp, and I jumped at my first start in business slap into five hundred pounds in one day."
"That was an extraordinary step in advance," I rejoined. "I suppose you contrived to make some profitable investment--"
"Not a bit of it! I hadn't a spare sixpence to invest with. I won the money by my brains, my hands, and my pluck; and, what's more, I'm proud of having done it. That was rather a curious case, Mr. Artist. Some men might be shy of mentioning it; I never was shy in my life and I mention it right and left everywhere--the whole case, just as it happened, except the names. Catch me ever committing myself to mentioning names! Mum's the word, sir, with yours to command, Thomas Boxsious."
"As you mention 'the case' everywhere," said I, "perhaps you would not be offended with me if I told you I should like to hear it?"
"Man alive! haven't I told you already that I can't be offended? And didn't I say a moment ago that I was proud of the case? I'll tell you, Mr. Artist--but stop! I've got the interests of the Town Council to look after in this business. Can you paint as well when I'm talking as when I'm not? Don't sneer, sir; you're not wanted to sneer--you're wanted to give an answer--yes or no?"
"Yes, then," I replied, in his own sharp way. "I can always paint the better when I am hearing an interesting story."
"What do you mean by talking about a story? I'm not going to tell you a story; I'm going to make a statement. A statement is a matter of fact, therefore the exact opposite of a story, which is a matter of fiction. What I am now going to tell you really happened to me."
I was glad to see that he settled himself quietly in his chair before he began. His odd manners and language made such an impression on me at the time, that I think I can repeat his "statement" now, almost word for word as he addressed it to me.
THE LAWYER'S STORY OF A STOLEN LETTER.
I served my time--never mind in whose office--and I started in business for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which. I hadn't a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were poor and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr. Frank Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest man and the proudest for many a mile round about our parts. Stop a bit, Mr. Artist, you needn't perk up and look knowing. You won't trace any particulars by the name of Gatliffe. I'm not bound to commit myself or anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first that came into my head.
Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely help--for a consideration, of course--in borrowing money at a fair rate of interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews. The money was borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from college, and stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread about all our neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the saying is, with his young sister's governess, and that his mind was made up to marry her. What! you're at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name, don't you? What do you think of Smith?
Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess--the sweet, darling girl, as _he_ called her; but I'm not sentimental, and _I_ call her Smith, the governess. Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as Lucifer, said "No," as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say "Yes." He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he, looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to do. While he was looking about, Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but an aunt--her father's sister. The aunt refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire's permission. Mr. Frank writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is of age, or shoot himself. Up to town comes the squire and his wife and his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree material to the present statement, takes places among them; and the upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word No, and substituting the word Yes.
I don't believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky peculiarity in the case. The governess's father was a man of good family--pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe's own. He had been in the army; had sold out; set up as a wine-merchant--failed--died; ditto his wife, as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make inquiries about but the father's sister--who had behaved, as old Gatliffe said, like a thorough-bred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr. Frank in the first instance. So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it--Marriage in High Life and all that--put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides, of the governess's father, so as to stop people from talking--a great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine-merchant afterward. Oh, no--not a word about that!
I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadn't a bit of pride about him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I don't mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so. Ah! but she was one of my sort, was that governess.