Little Novels. Wilkie CollinsЧитать онлайн книгу.
There was a moment of silence. Cosway looked at the lamp. Once roused, as usual with men of his character, his temper was not to be trifled with.
“Miss Benshaw,” he said, “I dare say you think me a fool; but I can draw my own conclusion, for all that. You are my enemy.”
The only reply was a chuckling laugh. All voices can be more or less effectually disguised by a whisper but a laugh carries the revelation of its own identity with it. Cosway suddenly threw off the shade over the lamp and turned up the wick.
The light flooded the room, and showed him—His Wife.
The Third Epoch in Mr. Cosway’s Life.
Three days had passed. Cosway sat alone in his lodging—pale and worn: the shadow already of his former self.
He had not seen Adela since the discovery. There was but one way in which he could venture to make the inevitable disclosure—he wrote to her; and Mr. Atherton’s daughter took care that the letter should be received. Inquiries made afterward, by help of the same good friend, informed him that Miss Restall was suffering from illness.
The mistress of the house came in.
“Cheer up, sir,” said the good woman. “There is better news of Miss Restall to-day.”
He raised his head.
“Don’t trifle with me!” he answered fretfully; “tell me exactly what the servant said.”
The mistress repeated the words. Miss Restall had passed a quieter night, and had been able for a few hours to leave her room. He asked next if any reply to his letter had arrived. No reply had been received.
If Adela definitely abstained from writing to him, the conclusion would be too plain to be mistaken. She had given him up—and who could blame her?
There was a knock at the street-door. The mistress looked out.
“Here’s Mr. Stone come back, sir!” she exclaimed joyfully—and hurried away to let him in.
Cosway never looked up when his friend appeared.
“I knew I should succeed,” said Stone. “I have seen your wife.”
“Don’t speak of her,” cried Cosway. “I should have murdered her when I saw her face, if I had not instantly left the house. I may be the death of the wretch yet, if you presist in speaking of her!”
Stone put his hand kindly on his friend’s shoulder.
“Must I remind you that you owe something to your old comrade?” he asked. “I left my father and mother, the morning I got your letter—and my one thought has been to serve you. Reward me. Be a man, and hear what is your right and duty to know. After that, if you like, we will never refer to the woman again.”
Cosway took his hand, in silent acknowledgment that he was right. They sat down together. Stone began.
“She is so entirely shameless,” he said, “that I had no difficulty in getting her to speak. And she so cordially hates you that she glories in her own falsehood and treachery.”
“Of course, she lies,” Cosway said bitterly, “when she calls herself Miss Benshaw?”
“No; she is really the daughter of the man who founded the great house in the City. With every advantage that wealth and position could give her the perverse creature married one of her father’s clerks, who had been deservedly dismissed from his situation. From that moment her family discarded her. With the money procured by the sale of her jewels, her husband took the inn which we have such bitter cause to remember—and she managed the house after his death. So much for the past. Carry your mind on now to the time when our ship brought us back to England. At that date, the last surviving member of your wife’s family—her elder brother—lay at the point of death. He had taken his father’s place in the business, besides inheriting his father’s fortune. After a happy married life he was left a widower, without children; and it became necessary that he should alter his will. He deferred performing his duty. It was only at the time of his last illness that he had dictated instructions for a new will, leaving his wealth (excepting certain legacies to old friends) to the hospitals of Great Britain and Ireland. His lawyer lost no time in carrying out the instructions. The new will was ready for signature (the old will having been destroyed by his own hand), when the doctors sent a message to say that their patient was insensible, and might die in that condition.”
“Did the doctors prove to be right?”
“Perfectly right. Our wretched landlady, as next of kin, succeeded, not only to the fortune, but (under the deed of partnership) to her late brother’s place in the firm: on the one easy condition of resuming the family name. She calls herself “Miss Benshaw.” But as a matter of legal necessity she is set down in the deed as “Mrs. Cosway Benshaw.” Her partners only now know that her husband is living, and that you are the Cosway whom she privately married. Will you take a little breathing time? or shall I go on, and get done with it?”
Cosway signed to him to go on.
“She doesn’t in the least care,” Stone proceeded, “for the exposure. ‘I am the head partner,’ she says ‘and the rich one of the firm; they daren’t turn their backs on Me.’ You remember the information I received—in perfect good faith on his part—from the man who keeps the inn? The visit to the London doctor, and the assertion of failing health, were adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady’s connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived by the stratagem, with two exceptions. They were both men—vagabonds who had pertinaciously tried to delude her into marrying them in the days when she was a widow. They refused to believe in the doctor and the declining health; they had their own suspicion of the motives which had led to the sale of the inn, under very unfavorable circumstances; and they decided on going to London, inspired by the same base hope of making discoveries which might be turned into a means of extorting money.”
“She escaped them, of course,” said Cosway. “How?”
“By the help of her lawyer, who was not above accepting a handsome private fee. He wrote to the new landlord of the inn, falsely announcing his client’s death, in the letter which I repeated to you in the railway carriage on our journey to London. Other precautions were taken to keep up the deception, on which it is needless to dwell. Your natural conclusion that you were free to pay your addresses to Miss Restall, and the poor young lady’s innocent confidence in ‘Miss Benshaw’s’ sympathy, gave this unscrupulous woman the means of playing the heartless trick on you which is now exposed. Malice and jealousy—I have it, mind, from herself!—were not her only motives. ‘But for that Cosway,’ she said (I spare you the epithet which she put before your name), ‘with my money and position, I might have married a needy lord, and sunned myself in my old age in the full blaze of the peerage.’ Do you understand how she hated you, now? Enough of the subject! The moral of it, my dear Cosway, is to leave this place, and try what change of scene will do for you. I have time to spare; and I will go abroad with you. When shall it be?”
“Let me wait a day or two more,” Cosway pleaded.
Stone shook his head. “Still hoping, my poor friend, for a line from Miss Restall? You distress me.”
“I am sorry to distress you, Stone. If I can get one pitying word from her, I can submit to the miserable life that lies before me.”
“Are you not expecting too much?”
“You wouldn’t say so, if you were as fond of her as I am.”
They were silent. The evening slowly darkened; and the mistress came in as usual with the candles. She brought with her a letter for Cosway.
He tore it open; read it in an instant; and devoured it with kisses. His highly wrought feelings found their vent in a little allowable exaggeration. “She has