I Say No, Wilkie Collins [top 10 books of all time TXT] 📗

a chair next to him. As she seated herself, she left him free for a moment. In that moment, the infatuated man took an empty chair on the other side of him, and placed it for Emily. He communicated to that hated rival the information which he ought to have reserved for Francine. “The committee insist,” he said, “on my proposing one of the Resolutions. I promise not to bore you; mine shall be the shortest speech delivered at the meeting.”

The proceedings began.

Among the earlier speakers not one was inspired by a feeling of mercy for the audience. The chairman reveled in words. The mover and seconder of the first Resolution (not having so much as the ghost of an idea to trouble either of them), poured out language in flowing and overflowing streams, like water from a perpetual spring. The heat exhaled by the crowded audience was already becoming insufferable. Cries of “Sit down!” assailed the orator of the moment. The chairman was obliged to interfere. A man at the back of the hall roared out, “Ventilation!” and broke a window with his stick. He was rewarded with three rounds of cheers; and was ironically invited to mount the platform and take the chair.

Under these embarrassing circumstances, Mirabel rose to speak.

He secured silence, at the outset, by a humorous allusion to the prolix speaker who had preceded him. “Look at the clock, gentlemen,” he said; “and limit my speech to an interval of ten minutes.” The applause which followed was heard, through the broken window, in the street. The boys among the mob outside intercepted the flow of air by climbing on each other’s shoulders and looking in at the meeting, through the gaps left by the shattered glass. Having proposed his Resolution with discreet brevity of speech, Mirabel courted popularity on the plan adopted by the late Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons—he told stories, and made jokes, adapted to the intelligence of the dullest people who were listening to him. The charm of his voice and manner completed his success. Punctually at the tenth minute, he sat down amid cries of “Go on.” Francine was the first to take his hand, and to express admiration mutely by pressing it. He returned the pressure—but he looked at the wrong lady—the lady on the other side.

Although she made no complaint, he instantly saw that Emily was overcome by the heat. Her lips were white, and her eyes were closing. “Let me take you out,” he said, “or you will faint.”

Francine started to her feet to follow them. The lower order of the audience, eager for amusement, put their own humorous construction on the young lady’s action. They roared with laughter. “Let the parson and his sweetheart be,” they called out; “two’s company, miss, and three isn’t.” Mr. Wyvil interposed his authority and rebuked them. A lady seated behind Francine interfered to good purpose by giving her a chair, which placed her out of sight of the audience. Order was restored—and the proceedings were resumed.

On the conclusion of the meeting, Mirabel and Emily were found waiting for their friends at the door. Mr. Wyvil innocently added fuel to the fire that was burning in Francine. He insisted that Mirabel should return to Monksmoor, and offered him a seat in the carriage at Emily’s side.

Later in the evening, when they all met at dinner, there appeared a change in Miss de Sor which surprised everybody but Mirabel. She was gay and good-humored, and especially amiable and attentive to Emily—who sat opposite to her at the table. “What did you and Mr. Mirabel talk about while you were away from us?” she asked innocently. “Politics?”

Emily readily adopted Francine’s friendly tone. “Would you have talked politics, in my place?” she asked gayly.

“In your place, I should have had the most delightful of companions,” Francine rejoined; “I wish I had been overcome by the heat too!”

Mirabel—attentively observing her—acknowledged the compliment by a bow, and left Emily to continue the conversation. In perfect good faith she owned to having led Mirabel to talk of himself. She had heard from Cecilia that his early life had been devoted to various occupations, and she was interested in knowing how circumstances had led him into devoting himself to the Church. Francine listened with the outward appearance of implicit belief, and with the inward conviction that Emily was deliberately deceiving her. When the little narrative was at an end, she was more agreeable than ever. She admired Emily’s dress, and she rivaled Cecilia in enjoyment of the good things on the table; she entertained Mirabel with humorous anecdotes of the priests at St. Domingo, and was so interested in the manufacture of violins, ancient and modern, that Mr. Wyvil promised to show her his famous collection of instruments, after dinner. Her overflowing amiability included even poor Miss Darnaway and the absent brothers and sisters. She heard with flattering sympathy, how they had been ill and had got well again; what amusing tricks they played, what alarming accidents happened to them, a nd how remarkably clever they were—“including, I do assure you, dear Miss de Sor, the baby only ten months old.” When the ladies rose to retire, Francine was, socially speaking, the heroine of the evening.

While the violins were in course of exhibition, Mirabel found an opportunity of speaking to Emily, unobserved.

“Have you said, or done, anything to offend Miss de Sor?” he asked.

“Nothing whatever!” Emily declared, startled by the question. “What makes you think I have offended her?”

“I have been trying to find a reason for the change in her,” Mirabel answered—“especially the change toward yourself.”

“Well?”

“Well—she means mischief.”

“Mischief of what sort?”

“Of a sort which may expose her to discovery—unless she disarms suspicion at the outset. That is (as I believe) exactly what she has been doing this evening. I needn’t warn you to be on your guard.”

All the next day Emily was on the watch for events—and nothing happened. Not the slightest appearance of jealousy betrayed itself in Francine. She made no attempt to attract to herself the attentions of Mirabel; and she showed no hostility to Emily, either by word, look, or manner.

 

… … . .

 

The day after, an event occurred at Netherwoods. Alban Morris received an anonymous letter, addressed to him in these terms:

“A certain young lady, in whom you are supposed to be interested, is forgetting you in your absence. If you are not mean enough to allow yourself to be supplanted by another man, join the party at Monksmoor before it is too late.”

 

CHAPTER XLII.

COOKING.

The day after the political meeting was a day of departures, at the pleasant country house.

Miss Darnaway was recalled to the nursery at home. The old squire who did justice to Mr. Wyvil’s port-wine went away next, having guests to entertain at his own house. A far more serious loss followed. The three dancing men had engagements which drew them to new spheres of activity in other drawing-rooms. They said, with the same dreary grace of manner, “Very sorry to go”; they drove to the railway, arrayed in the same perfect traveling suits of neutral tint; and they had but one difference of opinion among them—each firmly believed that he was smoking the best cigar to be got in London.

The morning after these departures would have been a dull morning indeed, but for the presence of Mirabel.

When breakfast was over, the invalid Miss Julia established herself on the sofa with a novel. Her father retired to the other end of the house, and profaned the art of music on music’s most expressive instrument. Left with Emily, Cecilia, and Francine, Mirabel made one of his happy suggestions. “We are thrown on our own resources,” he said. “Let us distinguish ourselves by inventing some entirely new amusement for the day. You young ladies shall sit in council—and I will be secretary.” He turned to Cecilia. “The meeting waits to hear the mistress of the house.”

Modest Cecilia appealed to her school friends for help; addressing herself in the first instance (by the secretary’s advice) to Francine, as the eldest. They all noticed another change in this variable young person. She was silent and subdued; and she said wearily, “I don’t care what we do—shall we go out riding?”

The unanswerable objection to riding as a form of amusement, was that it had been more than once tried already. Something clever and surprising was anticipated from Emily when it came to her turn. She, too, disappointed expectation. “Let us sit under the trees,” was all that she could suggest, “and ask Mr. Mirabel to tell us a story.”

Mirabel laid down his pen and took it on himself to reject this proposal. “Remember,” he remonstrated, “that I have an interest in the diversions of the day. You can’t expect me to be amused by my own story. I appeal to Miss Wyvil to invent a pleasure which will include the secretary.”

Cecilia blushed and looked uneasy. “I think I have got an idea,” she announced, after some hesitation. “May I propose that we all go to the keeper’s lodge?” There her courage failed her, and she hesitated again.

Mirabel gravely registered the proposal, as far as it went. “What are we to do when we get to the keeper’s lodge?” he inquired.

“We are to ask the keeper’s wife,” Cecilia proceeded, “to lend us her kitchen.”

“To lend us her kitchen,” Mirabel repeated.

“And what are we to do in the kitchen?”

Cecilia looked down at her pretty hands crossed on her lap, and answered softly, “Cook our own luncheon.”

Here was an entirely new amusement, in the most attractive sense of the words! Here was charming Cecilia’s interest in the pleasures of the table so happily inspired, that the grateful meeting offered its tribute of applause—even including Francine. The members of the council were young; their daring digestions contemplated without fear the prospect of eating their own amateur cookery. The one question that troubled them now was what they were to cook.

“I can make an omelet,” Cecilia ventured to say.

“If there is any cold chicken to be had,” Emily added, “I undertake to follow the omelet with a mayonnaise.”

“There are clergymen in the Church of England who are even clever enough to fry potatoes,” Mirabel announced—“and I am one of them. What shall we have next? A pudding? Miss de Sor, can you make a pudding?”

Francine exhibited another new side to her character—a diffident and humble side. “I am ashamed to say I don’t know how to cook anything,” she confessed; “you had better leave me out of it.”

But Cecilia was now in her element. Her plan of operations was wide enough even to include Francine. “You shall wash the lettuce, my dear, and stone the olives for Emily’s mayonnaise. Don’t be discouraged! You shall have a companion; we will send to the rectory for Miss Plym—the very person to chop parsley and shallot for my omelet. Oh, Emily, what a morning we are going to have!” Her lovely blue eyes sparkled with joy; she gave Emily a kiss which Mirabel must have been more or less than man not to have coveted. “I declare,” cried Cecilia, completely losing her head, “I’m so excited, I don’t know what to do with myself!”

Emily’s intimate knowledge of her friend applied the right remedy. “You don’t know what to do with yourself?” she repeated. “Have you no sense of duty? Give the cook your orders.”

Cecilia instantly recovered her presence of mind. She sat down at the writing-table, and made out a list of eatable productions in the animal and vegetable world, in which every other word was underlined two or three times over. Her serious face was a sight to see, when she rang for