The Queen of Hearts. Wilkie Collins Collins

found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers with serious faces. They started when they saw me as if I had been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.

      “He’s too young to feel it much,” I heard one say to the other. “So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it happened no later.”

      In a few minutes they had told me the worst. It was indeed my aunt who had been crying in the bedroom. Caroline was dead.

      I felt the blow more severely than the servants or anyone else about me supposed. Still I was a child in years, and I had the blessed elasticity of a child’s nature. If I had been older I might have been too much absorbed in grief to observe my aunt so closely as I did, when she was composed enough to see me later in the day.

      I was not surprised by the swollen state of her eyes, the paleness of her cheeks, or the fresh burst of tears that came from her when she took me in her arms at meeting. But I was both amazed and perplexed by the look of terror that I detected in her face. It was natural enough that she should grieve and weep over my sister’s death, but why should she have that frightened look as if some other catastrophe had happened?

      I asked if there was any more dreadful news from home besides the news of Caroline’s death.

      My aunt, said No in a strange, stifled voice, and suddenly turned her face from me. Was my father dead? No. My mother? No. Uncle George? My aunt trembled all over as she said No to that also, and bade me cease asking any more questions. She was not fit to bear them yet she said, and signed to the servant to lead me out of the room.

      The next day I was told that I was to go home after the funeral, and was taken out toward evening by the housemaid, partly for a walk, partly to be measured for my mourning clothes. After we had left the tailor’s, I persuaded the girl to extend our walk for some distance along the sea-beach, telling her, as we went, every little anecdote connected with my lost sister that came tenderly back to my memory in those first days of sorrow. She was so interested in hearing and I in speaking that we let the sun go down before we thought of turning back.

      The evening was cloudy, and it got on from dusk to dark by the time we approached the town again. The housemaid was rather nervous at finding herself alone with me on the beach, and once or twice looked behind her distrustfully as we went on. Suddenly she squeezed my hand hard, and said:

      “Let’s get up on the cliff as fast as we can.”

      The words were hardly out of her mouth before I heard footsteps behind me—a man came round quickly to my side, snatched me away from the girl, and, catching me up in his arms without a word, covered my face with kisses. I knew he was crying, because my cheeks were instantly wet with his tears; but it was too dark for me to see who he was, or even how he was dressed. He did not, I should think, hold me half a minute in his arms. The housemaid screamed for help. I was put down gently on the sand, and the strange man instantly disappeared in the darkness.

      When this extraordinary adventure was related to my aunt, she seemed at first merely bewildered at hearing of it; but in a moment more there came a change over her face, as if she had suddenly recollected or thought of something. She turned deadly pale, and said, in a hurried way, very unusual with her:

      “Never mind; don’t talk about it any more. It was only a mischievous trick to frighten you, I dare say. Forget all about it, my dear—forget all about it.”

      It was easier to give this advice than to make me follow it. For many nights after, I thought of nothing but the strange man who had kissed me and cried over me.

      Who could he be? Somebody who loved me very much, and who was very sorry. My childish logic carried me to that length. But when I tried to think over all the grown-up gentlemen who loved me very much, I could never get on, to my own satisfaction, beyond my father and my Uncle George.

CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      I was taken home on the appointed day to suffer the trial—a hard one even at my tender years—of witnessing my mother’s passionate grief and my father’s mute despair. I remember that the scene of our first meeting after Caroline’s death was wisely and considerately shortened by my aunt, who took me out of the room. She seemed to have a confused desire to keep me from leaving her after the door had closed behind us; but I broke away and ran downstairs to the surgery, to go and cry for my lost playmate with the sharer of all our games, Uncle George.

      I opened the surgery door and could see nobody. I dried my tears and looked all round the room—it was empty. I ran upstairs again to Uncle George’s garret bedroom—he was not there; his cheap hairbrush and old cast-off razor-case that had belonged to my grandfather were not on the dressing-table. Had he got some other bedroom? I went out on the landing and called softly, with an unaccountable terror and sinking at my heart:

      “Uncle George!”

      Nobody answered; but my aunt came hastily up the garret stairs.

      “Hush!” she said. “You must never call that name out here again!”

      She stopped suddenly, and looked as if her own words had frightened her.

      “Is Uncle George dead?” I asked. My aunt turned red and pale, and stammered.

      I did not wait to hear what she said. I brushed past her, down the stairs. My heart was bursting—my flesh felt cold. I ran breathlessly and recklessly into the room where my father and mother had received me. They were both sitting there still. I ran up to them, wringing my hands, and crying out in a passion of tears:

      “Is Uncle George dead?”

      My mother gave a scream that terrified me into instant silence and stillness. My father looked at her for a moment, rang the bell that summoned the maid, then seized me roughly by the arm and dragged me out of the room.

      He took me down into the study, seated himself in his accustomed chair, and put me before him between his knees. His lips were awfully white, and I felt his two hands, as they grasped my shoulders, shaking violently.

      “You are never to mention the name of Uncle George again,” he said, in a quick, angry, trembling whisper. “Never to me, never to your mother, never to your aunt, never to anybody in this world! Never—never—never!”

      The repetition of the word terrified me even more than the suppressed vehemence with which he spoke. He saw that I was frightened, and softened his manner a little before he went on.

      “You will never see Uncle George again,” he said. “Your mother and I love you dearly; but if you forget what I have told you, you will be sent away from home. Never speak that name again—mind, never! Now kiss me, and go away.”

      How his lips trembled—and oh, how cold they felt on mine!

      I shrunk out of the room the moment he had kissed me, and went and hid myself in the garden.

      “Uncle George is gone. I am never to see him any more; I am never to speak of him again”—those were the words I repeated to myself, with indescribable terror and confusion, the moment I was alone. There was something unspeakably horrible to my young mind in this mystery which I was commanded always to respect, and which, so far as I then knew, I could never hope to see revealed. My father, my mother, my aunt, all appeared to be separated from me now by some impassable barrier. Home seemed home no longer with Caroline dead, Uncle George gone, and a forbidden subject of talk perpetually and mysteriously interposing between my parents and me.

      Though I never infringed the command my father had given me in his study (his words and looks, and that dreadful scream of my mother’s, which seemed to be still ringing in my ears, were more than enough to insure my obedience), I also never lost the secret desire to penetrate the darkness which clouded over the fate of Uncle George.

      For