The Dead Alive
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Wilkie Collins >> The Dead Alive
She stopped as the word passed her lips, looked back over her shoulder,
and started violently.
I looked where my companion was looking. The dark figure of a man was
standing, watching us, in the shadow of the elm-tree. I rose directly
to approach him. Naomi recovered her self-possession, and checked me
before I could interfere.
"Who are you?" she asked, turning sharply toward the stranger. "What do
you want there?"
The man stepped out from the shadow into the moonlight, and stood
revealed to us as John Jago.
"I hope I am not intruding?" he said, looking hard at me.
"What do you want?" Naomi repeated.
"I don't wish to disturb you, or to disturb this gentleman," he
proceeded. "When you are quite at leisure, Miss Naomi, you would be
doing me a favor if you would permit me to say a few words to you in
private."
He spoke with the most scrupulous politeness; trying, and trying
vainly, to conceal some strong agitation which was in possession of
him. His wild brown eyes--wilder than ever in the moonlight--rested
entreatingly, with a strange underlying expression of despair, on
Naomi's face. His hands, clasped lightly in front of him, trembled
incessantly. Little as I liked the man, he did really impress me as a
pitiable object at that moment.
"Do you mean that you want to speak to me to-night?" Naomi asked, in
undisguised surprise.
"Yes, miss, if you please, at your leisure and at Mr. Lefrank's."
Naomi hesitated.
"Won't it keep till to-morrow?" she said.
"I shall be away on farm business to-morrow, miss, for the whole day.
Please to give me a few minutes this evening." He advanced a step
toward her; his voice faltered, and dropped timidly to a whisper. "I
really have something to say to you, Miss Naomi. It would be a kindness
on your part--a very, very great kindness--if you will let me say it
before I rest to-night."
I rose again to resign my place to him. Once more Naomi checked me.
"No," she said. "Don't stir." She addressed John Jago very reluctantly:
"If you are so much in earnest about it, Mr. John, I suppose it must
be. I can't guess what _you_ can possibly have to say to me which
cannot be said before a third person. However, it wouldn't be civil, I
suppose, to say 'No' in my place. You know it's my business to wind up
the hall-clock at ten every night. If you choose to come and help me,
the chances are that we shall have the hall to ourselves. Will that
do?"
"Not in the hall, miss, if you will excuse me."
"Not in the hall!"
"And not in the house either, if I may make so bold."
"What do you mean?" She turned impatiently, and appealed to me. "Do
_you_ understand him?"
John Jago signed to me imploringly to let him answer for himself.
"Bear with me, Miss Naomi," he said. "I think I can make you understand
me. There are eyes on the watch, and ears on the watch, in the house;
and there are some footsteps--I won't say whose--so soft, that no
person can hear them."
The last allusion evidently made itself understood. Naomi stopped him
before he could say more.
"Well, where is it to be?" she asked, resignedly. "Will the garden do,
Mr. John?"
"Thank you kindly, miss; the garden will do." He pointed to a
gravel-walk beyond us, bathed in the full flood of the moonlight.
"There," he said, "where we can see all round us, and be sure that
nobody is listening. At ten o'clock." He paused, and addressed himself
to me. "I beg to apologize, sir, for intruding myself on your
conversation. Please to excuse me."
His eyes rested with a last anxious, pleading look on Naomi's face. He
bowed to us, and melted away into the shadow of the tree. The distant
sound of a door closed softly came to us through the stillness of the
night. John Jago had re-entered the house.
Now that he was out of hearing, Naomi spoke to me very earnestly:
"Don't suppose, sir, I have any secrets with _him_," she said. "I know
no more than you do what he wants with me. I have half a mind not to
keep the appointment when ten o'clock comes. What would you do in my
place?"
"Having made the appointment," I answered, "it seems to be due to
yourself to keep it. If you feel the slightest alarm, I will wait in
another part of the garden, so that I can hear if you call me."
She received my proposal with a saucy toss of the head, and a smile of
pity for my ignorance.
"You are a stranger, Mr. Lefrank, or you would never talk to me in that
way. In America, we don't do the men the honor of letting them alarm
us. In America, the women take care of themselves. He has got my
promise to meet him, as you say; and I must keep my promise. Only
think," she added, speaking more to herself than to me, "of John Jago
finding out Miss Meadowcroft's nasty, sly, underhand ways in the house!
Most men would never have noticed her."
I was completely taken by surprise. Sad and severe Miss Meadowcroft a
listener and a spy! What next at Morwick Farm?
"Was that hint at the watchful eyes and ears, and the soft footsteps,
really an allusion to Mr. Meadowcroft's daughter?" I asked.
"Of course it was. Ah! she has imposed on you as she imposes on
everybody else. The false wretch! She is secretly at the bottom of half
the bad feeling among the men. I am certain of it--she keeps Mr.
Meadowcroft's mind bitter toward the boys. Old as she is, Mr. Lefrank,
and ugly as she is, she wouldn't object (if she could only make him ask
her) to be John Jago's second wife. No, sir; and she wouldn't break her
heart if the boys were not left a stick or a stone on the farm when the
father dies. I have watched her, and I know it. Ah! I could tell you
such things! But there's no time now--it's close on ten o'clock; we
must say good-night. I am right glad I have spoken to you, sir. I say
again, at parting, what I have said already: Use your influence, pray
use your influence, to soften them, and to make them ashamed of
themselves, in this wicked house. We will have more talk about what you
can do to-morrow, when you are shown over the farm. Say good-by now.
Hark! there is ten striking! And look! here is John Jago stealing out
again in the shadow of the tree! Good-night, friend Lefrank; and
pleasant dreams."
With one hand she took mine, and pressed it cordially; with the other
she pushed me away without ceremony in the direction of the house. A
charming girl--an irresistible girl! I was nearly as bad as the boys. I
declare, _I_ almost hated John Jago, too, as we crossed each other in
the shadow of the tree.
Arrived at the glass door, I stopped and looked back at the gravelwalk.
They had met. I saw the two shadowy figures slowly pacing backward and
forward in the moonlight, the woman a little in advance of the man.
What was he saying to her? Why was he so anxious that not a word of it
should be heard? Our presentiments are sometimes, in certain rare
cases, the faithful prophecy of the future. A vague distrust of that
moonlight meeting stealthily took a hold on my mind. "Will mischief
come of it?" I asked myself as I closed the door and entered the house.
Mischief _did_ come of it. You shall hear how.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEECHEN STICK.
PERSONS of sensitive, nervous temperament, sleeping for the first time
in a strange house, and in a bed that is new to them, must make up
their minds to pass a wakeful night. My first night at Morwick Farm was
no exception to this rule. The little sleep I had was broken and
disturbed by dreams. Toward six o'clock in the morning, my bed became
unendurable to me. The sun was shining in brightly at the window. I
determined to try the reviving influence of a stroll in the fresh
morning air.
Just as I got out of bed, I heard footsteps and voices under my window.
The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had passed
the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from
below, to look out.
The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three
strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that
they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen
stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coarsely and insolently
enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night.
"Next time you go courting a young lady in secret," said Silas, "make
sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were
seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth
for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she
say 'Yes?'"
John Jago kept his temper.
"If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas," he said, quietly and firmly,
"be pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in
what you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me."
Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three
laborers.
"You hear him, boys? He can't tell the truth, try him as you may. He
wasn't making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He
has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on
his shoulders for the second time!"
Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal
and serious reply.
"You are quite right, sir," he said. "I have no intention of marrying
for the second time. What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn't matter to
you. It was not at all what you choose to suppose; it was something of
quite another kind, with which you have no concern. Be pleased to
understand once for all, Mr. Silas, that not so much as the thought of
making love to the young lady has ever entered my head. I respect her;
I admire her good qualities; but if she was the only woman left in the
world, and if I was a much younger man than I am, I should never think
of asking her to be my wife." He burst out suddenly into a harsh,
uneasy laugh. "No, no! not my style, Mr. Silas--not my style!"
Something in those words, or in his manner of speaking them, appeared
to exasperate Silas. He dropped his clumsy irony, and addressed himself
directly to John Jago in a tone of savage contempt.
"Not your style?" he repeated. "Upon my soul, that's a cool way of
putting it, for a man in your place! What do you mean by calling her
'not your style?' You impudent beggar! Naomi Colebrook is meat for your
master!"
John Jago's temper began to give way at last. He approached defiantly a
step or two nearer to Silas Meadowcroft.
"Who is my master?" he asked.
"Ambrose will show you, if you go to him," answered the other. "Naomi
is _his_ sweetheart, not mine. Keep out of his way, if you want to keep
a whole skin on your bones."
John Jago cast one of his sardonic side-looks at the farmer's wounded
left hand. "Don't forget your own skin, Mr. Silas, when you threaten
mine! I have set my mark on you once, sir. Let me by on my business, or
I may mark you for a second time."
Silas lifted his beechen stick. The laborers, roused to some rude sense
of the serious turn which the quarrel was taking, got between the two
men, and parted them. I had been hurriedly dressing myself while the
altercation was proceeding; and I now ran downstairs to try what my
influence could do toward keeping the peace at Morwick Farm.
The war of angry words was still going on when I joined the men
outside.
"Be off with you on your business, you cowardly hound!" I heard Silas
say. "Be off with you to the town! and take care you don't meet Ambrose
on the way!"
"Take _you_ care you don't feel my knife again before I go!" cried the
other man.
Silas made a desperate effort to break away from the laborers who were
holding him.
"Last time you only felt my fist!" he shouted "Next time you shall feel
_this!_"
He lifted the stick as he spoke. I stepped up and snatched it out of
his hand.
"Mr. Silas," I said, "I am an invalid, and I am going out for a walk.
Your stick will be useful to me. I beg leave to borrow it."
The laborers burst out laughing. Silas fixed his eyes on me with a
stare of angry surprise. John Jago, immediately recovering his
self-possession, took off his hat, and made me a deferential bow.
"I had no idea, Mr. Lefrank, that we were disturbing you," he said. "I
am very much ashamed of myself, sir. I beg to apologize."
"I accept your apology, Mr. Jago," I answered, "on the understanding
that you, as the older man, will set the example of forbearance if your
temper is tried on any future occasion as it has been tried today. And
I have further to request," I added, addressing myself to Silas, "that
you will do me a favor, as your father's guest. The next time your good
spirits lead you into making jokes at Mr. Jago's expense, don't carry
them quite so far. I am sure you meant no harm, Mr. Silas. Will you
gratify me by saying so yourself? I want to see you and Mr. Jago shake
hands."
John Jago instantly held out his hand, with an assumption of good
feeling which was a little overacted, to my thinking. Silas Meadowcroft
made no advance of the same friendly sort on his side.
"Let him go about his business," said Silas. "I won't waste any more
words on him, Mr. Lefrank, to please _you_. But (saving your presence)
I'm d--d if I take his hand!"
Further persuasion was plainly useless, addressed to such a man as
this. Silas gave me no further opportunity of remonstrating with him,
even if I had been inclined to do so. He turned about in sulky silence,
and, retracing his steps along the path, disappeared round the corner
of the house. The laborers withdrew next, in different directions, to
begin the day's, work. John Jago and I were alone.
I left it to the man of the wild brown eyes to speak first.
"In half an hour's time, sir," he said, "I shall be going on business
to Narrabee, our market-town here. Can I take any letters to the post
for you? or is there anything else that I can do in the town?"
I thanked him, and declined both proposals. He made me another
deferential bow, and withdrew into the house. I mechanically followed
the path in the direction which Silas had taken before me.
Turning the corner of the house, and walking on for a little way, I
found myself at the entrance to the stables, and face to face with
Silas Meadowcroft once more. He had his elbows on the gate of the yard,
swinging it slowly backward and forward, and turning and twisting a
straw between his teeth. When he saw me approaching him, he advanced a
step from the gate, and made an effort to excuse himself, with a very
ill grace.
"No offense, mister. Ask me what you will besides, and I'll do it for
you. But don't ask me to shake hands with John Jago; I hate him too
badly for that. If I touched him with one hand, sir, I tell you this, I
should throttle him with the other."
"That's your feeling toward the man, Mr. Silas, is it?"
"That's my feeling, Mr. Lefrank; and I'm not ashamed of it either."
"Is there any such place as a church in your neighborhood, Mr. Silas?"
"Of course there is."
"And do you ever go to it?"
"Of course I do."
"At long intervals, Mr. Silas?"
"Every Sunday, sir, without fail."
Some third person behind me burst out laughing; some third person had
been listening to our talk. I turned round, and discovered Ambrose
Meadowcroft.
"I understand the drift of your catechism, sir, though my brother
doesn't," he said. "Don't be hard on Silas, sir. He isn't the only
Christian who leaves his Christianity in the pew when he goes out of
church. You will never make us friends with John Jago, try as you may.
Why, what have you got there, Mr. Lefrank? May I die if it isn't my
stick! I have been looking for it everywhere!"
The thick beechen stick had been feeling uncomfortably heavy in my
invalid hand for some time past. There was no sort of need for my
keeping it any longer. John Jago was going away to Narrabee, and Silas
Meadowcroft's savage temper was subdued to a sulky repose. I handed the
stick back to Ambrose. He laughed as he took it from me.
"You can't think how strange it feels, Mr. Lefrank, to be out without
one's stick," he said. "A man gets used to his stick, sir; doesn't he?
Are you ready for your breakfast?"
"Not just yet. I thought of taking a little walk first."
"All right, sir. I wish I could go with you; but I have got my work to
do this morning, and Silas has his work too. If you go back by the way
you came, you will find yourself in the garden. If you want to go
further, the wicket-gate at the end will lead you into the lane."
Through sheer thoughtlessness, I did a very foolish thing. I turned
back as I was told, and left the brothers together at the gate of the
stable-yard.
CHAPTER V.
THE NEWS FROM NARRABEE.
ARRIVED at the garden, a thought struck me. The cheerful speech and
easy manner of Ambrose plainly indicated that he was ignorant thus far
of the quarrel which had taken place under my window. Silas might
confess to having taken his brother's stick, and might mention whose
head he had threatened with it. It was not only useless, but
undesirable, that Ambrose should know of the quarrel. I retraced my
steps to the stable-yard. Nobody was at the gate. I called alternately
to Silas and to Ambrose. Nobody answered. The brothers had gone away to
their work.
Returning to the garden, I heard a pleasant voice wishing me
"Good-morning." I looked round. Naomi Colebrook was standing at one of
the lower windows of the farm. She had her working apron on, and she
was industriously brightening the knives for the breakfast-table on an
old-fashioned board. A sleek black cat balanced himself on her
shoulder, watching the flashing motion of the knife as she passed it
rapidly to and fro on the leather-covered surface of the board.
"Come here," she said; "I want to speak to you."
I noticed, as I approached, that her pretty face was clouded and
anxious. She pushed the cat irritably off her shoulder; she welcomed me
with only the faint reflection of her bright customary smile.
"I have seen John Jago," she said. "He has been hinting at something
which he says happened under your bedroom window this morning. When I
begged him to explain himself, he only answered, 'Ask Mr. Lefrank; I
must be off to Narrabee.' What does it mean? Tell me right away, sir!
I'm out of temper, and I can't wait!"
Except that I made the best instead of the worst of it, I told her what
had happened under my window as plainly as I have told it here. She put
down the knife that she was cleaning, and folded her hands before her,
thinking.
"I wish I had never given John Jago that meeting," she said. "When a
man asks anything of a woman, the woman, I find, mostly repents it if
she says 'Yes.'"
She made that quaint reflection with a very troubled brow. The
moonlight meeting had left some unwelcome remembrances in her mind. I
saw that as plainly as I saw Naomi herself.
What had John Jago said to her? I put the question with all needful
delicacy, making my apologies beforehand.
"I should like to tell _you_," she began, with a strong emphasis on the
last word.
There she stopped. She turned pale; then suddenly flushed again to the
deepest red. She took up the knife once more, and went on cleaning it
as industriously as ever.
"I mustn't tell you," she resumed, with her head down over the knife.
"I have promised not to tell anybody. That's the truth. Forget all
about it, sir, as soon as you can. Hush! here's the spy who saw us last
night on the walk and who told Silas!"
Dreary Miss Meadowcroft opened the kitchen door. She carried an
ostentatiously large Prayer-book; and she looked at Naomi as only a
jealous woman of middle age _can_ look at a younger and prettier woman
than herself.
"Prayers, Miss Colebrook," she said in her sourest manner. She paused,
and noticed me standing under the window. "Prayers, Mr. Lefrank," she
added, with a look of devout pity, directed exclusively to my address.
"We will follow you directly, Miss Meadowcroft," said Naomi.
"I have no desire to intrude on your secrets Miss Colebrook."
With that acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-book
out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden
door. She met me eagerly. "I am not quite easy about something," she
said. "Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and Silas together?"
"Yes."
"Suppose Silas tells Ambrose of what happened this morning?"
The same idea, as I have already mentioned, had occurred to my mind. I
did my best to reassure Naomi.
"Mr. Jago is out of the way," I replied. "You and I can easily put
things right in his absence."
She took my arm.
"Come in to prayers," she said. "Ambrose will be there, and I shall
find an opportunity of speaking to him."
Neither Ambrose nor Silas was in the breakfast-room when we entered it.
After waiting vainly for ten minutes, Mr. Meadowcroft told his daughter
to read the prayers. Miss Meadowcroft read, thereupon, in the tone of
an injured woman taking the throne of mercy by storm, and insisting on
her rights. Breakfast followed; and still the brothers were absent.
Miss Meadowcroft looked at her father, and said, "From bad to worse,
sir. What did I tell you?" Naomi instantly applied the antidote: "The
boys are no doubt detained over their work, uncle." She turned to me.
"You want to see the farm, Mr. Lefrank. Come and help me to find the
boys."
For more than an hour we visited one part of the farm after another,
without discovering the missing men. We found them at last near the
outskirts of a small wood, sitting, talking together, on the trunk of a
felled tree.
Silas rose as we approached, and walked away, without a word of
greeting or apology, into the wood. As he got on his feet, I noticed
that his brother whispered something in his ear; and I heard him
answer, "All right."
"Ambrose, does that mean you have something to keep a secret from us?"
asked Naomi, approaching her lover with a smile. "Is Silas ordered to
hold his tongue?"
Ambrose kicked sulkily at the loose stones lying about him. I noticed,
with a certain surprise that his favorite stick was not in his hand,
and was not lying near him.
"Business," he said in answer to Naomi, not very graciously--"business
between Silas and me. That's what it means, if you must know."
Naomi went on, woman-like, with her questioning, heedless of the
reception which they might meet with from an irritated man.
"Why were you both away at prayers and breakfast-time?" she asked next.
"We had too much to do," Ambrose gruffly replied, "and we were too far
from the house."
"Very odd," said Naomi. "This has never happened before since I have
been at the farm."
"Well, live and learn. It has happened now."
The tone in which he spoke would have warned any man to let him alone.
But warnings which speak by implication only are thrown away on women.
The woman, having still something in her mind to say, said it.
"Have you seen anything of John Jago this morning?"
The smoldering ill-temper of Ambrose burst suddenly--why, it was
impossible to guess--into a flame. "How many more questions am I to
answer?" he broke out violently. "Are you the parson putting me through
my catechism? I have seen nothing of John Jago, and I have got my work
to go on with. Will that do for you?"
He turned with an oath, and followed his brother into the wood. Naomi's
bright eyes looked up at me, flashing with indignation.
"What does he mean, Mr. Lefrank, by speaking to me in that way? Rude
brute! How dare he do it?" She paused; her voice, look and manner
suddenly changed. "This has never happened before, sir. Has anything
gone wrong? I declare, I shouldn't know Ambrose again, he is so
changed. Say, how does it strike you?"
I still made the best of a bad case.
"Something has upset his temper," I said. "The merest trifle, Miss
Colebrook, upsets a man's temper sometimes. I speak as a man, and I
know it. Give him time, and he will make his excuses, and all will be
well again."
My presentation of the case entirely failed to re-assure my pretty
companion. We went back to the house. Dinner-time came, and the
brothers appeared. Their father spoke to them of their absence from
morning prayers with needless severity, as I thought. They resented the
reproof with needless indignation on their side, and left the room. A
sour smile of satisfaction showed itself on Miss Meadowcroft's thin
lips. She looked at her father; then raised her eyes sadly to the
ceiling, and said, "We can only pray for them, sir."
Naomi disappeared after dinner. When I saw her again, she had some news
for me.
"I have been with Ambrose," she said, "and he has begged my pardon. We
have made it up, Mr. Lefrank. Still--still--"
"Still--_what_, Miss Naomi?"
"He is not like himself, sir. He denies it; but I can't help thinking
he is hiding something from me."
The day wore on; the evening came. I returned to my French novel. But
not even Dumas himself could keep my attention to the story. What else
I was thinking of I cannot say. Why I was out of spirits I am unable to
explain. I wished myself back in England: I took a blind, unreasoning
hatred to Morwick Farm.
Nine o'clock struck; and we all assembled again at supper, with the
exception of John Jago. He was expected back to supper; and we waited
for him a quarter of an hour, by Mr. Meadowcroft's own directions. John
Jago never appeared.