No Name (A Thriller). Уилки Коллинз
understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate children; both of them young women, who are of an age to earn their own livelihood. Various considerations, all equally irregular, have been urged in respect to these persons by the solicitor representing them. Be so good as to tell him that neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere sentiment; and then state plainly, for his better information, what the motives are which regulate my conduct, and what the provision is which I feel myself justified in making for the two young women. Your instructions on both these points you will find detailed in the next paragraph.
“I wish the persons concerned to know, once for all, how I regard the circumstances which have placed my late brother’s property at my disposal. Let them understand that I consider those circumstances to be a Providential interposition which has restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine. I receive the money, not only as my right, but also as a proper compensation for the injustice which I suffered from my father, and a proper penalty paid by my younger brother for the vile intrigue by which he succeeded in disinheriting me. His conduct, when a young man, was uniformly discreditable in all the relations of life; and what it then was it continued to be (on the showing of his own legal representative) after the time when I ceased to hold any communication with him. He appears to have systematically imposed a woman on Society as his wife who was not his wife, and to have completed the outrage on morality by afterward marrying her. Such conduct as this has called down a Judgment on himself and his children. I will not invite retribution on my own head by assisting those children to continue the imposition which their parents practiced, and by helping them to take a place in the world to which they are not entitled. Let them, as becomes their birth, gain their bread in situations. If they show themselves disposed to accept their proper position I will assist them to start virtuously in life by a present of one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to pay them, on their personal application, with the necessary acknowledgment of receipt; and on the express understanding that the transaction, so completed, is to be the beginning and the end of my connection with them. The arrangements under which they quit the house I leave to your discretion; and I have only to add that my decision on this matter, as on all other matters, is positive and final.”
Line by line — without once looking up from the pages before her — Magdalen read those atrocious sentences through, from beginning to end. The other persons assembled in the room, all eagerly looking at her together, saw the dress rising and falling faster and faster over her bosom — saw the hand in which she lightly held the manuscript at the outset close unconsciously on the paper and crush it, as she advanced nearer and nearer to the end — but detected no other outward signs of what was passing within her. As soon as she had done, she silently pushed the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her face. When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed a change in her. Something in her expression had altered, subtly and silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly look strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something, through all after years, never to be forgotten in connection with that day — and never to be described.
The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril.
“May I ask one more favor,” she said, “before you enter on your business arrangements?”
Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent. Magdalen’s resolution to possess herself of the Instructions did not appear to have produced a favorable impression on the lawyer’s mind.
“You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests, when you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone,” she continued. “You said you had told him all the circumstances. I want — if you will allow me — to be made quite sure of what he really knew about us — when he sent these orders to his lawyer. Did he know that my father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes to my sister and myself?”
“He did know it,” said Mr. Pendril.
“Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this helpless position?”
“I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he married, of the necessity for making another will.”
“And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr. Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?”
“He knew that also.”
“Did he know that my father’s untiring goodness and kindness to both of us — ”
Her voice faltered for the first time: she sighed, and put her hand to her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss Garth spoke entreatingly to her; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching her more and more earnestly. She answered her sister’s remonstrance with a faint smile. “I will keep my promise,” she said; “I will distress nobody.” With that reply, she turned again to Mr. Pendril; and steadily reiterated the question — but in another form of words.
“Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father’s great anxiety was to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?”
“He knew it in your father’s own words. I sent him an extract from your father’s last letter to me.”
“The letter which asked you to come for God’s sake, and relieve him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided for? The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he left us disinherited?”
“That letter and those words.”
She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer’s face.
“I want to fasten it all in my mind,” she said “before I go on. Mr. Michael Vanstone knew of the first will; he knew what prevented the making of the second will; he knew of the letter and he read the words. What did he know of besides? Did you tell him of my mother’s last illness? Did you say that her share in the money would have been left to us, if she could have lifted her dying hand in your presence? Did you try to make him ashamed of the cruel law which calls girls in our situation Nobody’s Children, and which allows him to use us as he is using us now?”
“I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them doubtful; I left none of them out.”
She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the Instructions, and slowly folded it up again, in the shape in which it had been presented to her. “I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril.” With those words, she bowed, and gently pushed the manuscript back across the table; then turned to her sister.
“Norah,” she said, “if we both of us live to grow old, and if you ever forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstone — come to me, and I will remind you.”
She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As she passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like fingers and caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of him.
“What is this mask of yours hiding?” he asked, forcing her to bend to him, and looking close into her face. “Which of the extremes of human temperature does your courage start from — the dead cold or the white hot?”
She shrank back from him and turned away her head in silence. She would have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own thoughts from any man alive but Frank’s father. He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had taken it, and let her go on to the window. “No,” he said to himself, “not the cold extreme, whatever else it may be. So much the worse for her, and for all belonging to her.”
There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the rain and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of silence. Mr. Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket, considered a little, and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth, recalled their attention to the present and pressing necessities of the time.
“Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged,” he sail, “by painful references to the past. We shall be better employed in settling our arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return to town this evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you; pray tell me what trouble and what responsibility I can take off your hands.”
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