I Say No

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER II. BIOGRAPHY IN THE BEDROOM.

  The candle was instantly extinguished. In discreet silence the girlsstole back to their beds, and listened.

  As an aid to the vigilance of the sentinel, the door had been left ajar.Through the narrow opening, a creaking of the broad wooden stairs ofthe old house became audible. In another moment there was silence. Aninterval passed, and the creaking was heard again. This time, thesound was distant and diminishing. On a sudden it stopped. The midnightsilence was disturbed no more.

  What did this mean?

  Had one among the many persons in authority under Miss Ladd's roof heardthe girls talking, and ascended the stairs to surprise them in the actof violating one of the rules of the house? So far, such a proceedingwas by no means uncommon. But was it within the limits of probabilitythat a teacher should alter her opinion of her own duty half-way up thestairs, and deliberately go back to her own room again? The bare ideaof such a thing was absurd on the face of it. What more rationalexplanation could ingenuity discover on the spur of the moment?

  Francine was the first to offer a suggestion. She shook and shivered inher bed, and said, "For heaven's sake, light the candle again! It's aGhost."

  "Clear away the supper, you fools, before the ghost can report us toMiss Ladd."

  With this excellent advice Emily checked the rising panic. The door wasclosed, the candle was lit; all traces of the supper disappeared. Forfive minutes more they listened again. No sound came from the stairs; noteacher, or ghost of a teacher, appeared at the door.

  Having eaten her supper, Cecilia's immediate anxieties were at an end;she was at leisure to exert her intelligence for the benefit of herschoolfellows. In her gentle ingratiating way, she offered a composingsuggestion. "When we heard the creaking, I don't believe there wasanybody on the stairs. In these old houses there are always strangenoises at night--and they say the stairs here were made more than twohundred years since."

  The girls looked at each other with a sense of relief--but they waitedto hear the opinion of the queen. Emily, as usual, justified theconfidence placed in her. She discovered an ingenious method of puttingCecilia's suggestion to the test.

  "Let's go on talking," she said. "If Cecilia is right, the teachers areall asleep, and we have nothing to fear from them. If she's wrong, weshall sooner or later see one of them at the door. Don't be alarmed,Miss de Sor. Catching us talking at night, in this school, only meansa reprimand. Catching us with a light, ends in punishment. Blow out thecandle."

  Francine's belief in the ghost was too sincerely superstitious to beshaken: she started up in bed. "Oh, don't leave me in the dark! I'lltake the punishment, if we are found out."

  "On your sacred word of honor?" Emily stipulated.

  "Yes--yes."

  The queen's sense of humor was tickled.

  "There's something funny," she remarked, addressing her subjects, "ina big girl like this coming to a new school and beginning with apunishment. May I ask if you are a foreigner, Miss de Sor?"

  "My papa is a Spanish gentleman," Francine answered, with dignity.

  "And your mamma?"

  "My mamma is English."

  "And you have always lived in the West Indies?"

  "I have always lived in the Island of St. Domingo."

  Emily checked off on her fingers the different points thus fardiscovered in the character of Mr. de Sor's daughter. "She's ignorant,and superstitious, and foreign, and rich. My dear (forgive thefamiliarity), you are an interesting girl--and we must really know moreof you. Entertain the bedroom. What have you been about all your life?And what in the name of wonder, brings you here? Before you begin Iinsist on one condition, in the name of all the young ladies in theroom. No useful information about the West Indies!"

  Francine disappointed her audience.

  She was ready enough to make herself an object of interest to hercompanions; but she was not possessed of the capacity to arrangeevents in their proper order, necessary to the recital of the simplestnarrative. Emily was obliged to help her, by means of questions. Inone respect, the result justified the trouble taken to obtain it. Asufficient reason was discovered for the extraordinary appearance of anew pupil, on the day before the school closed for the holidays.

  Mr. de Sor's elder brother had left him an estate in St. Domingo, and afortune in money as well; on the one easy condition that he continuedto reside in the island. The question of expense being now beneath thenotice of the family, Francine had been sent to England, especiallyrecommended to Miss Ladd as a young lady with grand prospects, sorelyin need of a fashionable education. The voyage had been so timed, bythe advice of the schoolmistress, as to make the holidays a means ofobtaining this object privately. Francine was to be taken to Brighton,where excellent masters could be obtained to assist Miss Ladd. With sixweeks before her, she might in some degree make up for lost time; and,when the school opened again, she would avoid the mortification of beingput down in the lowest class, along with the children.

  The examination of Miss de Sor having produced these results waspursued no further. Her character now appeared in a new, and not veryattractive, light. She audaciously took to herself the whole credit oftelling her story:

  "I think it's my turn now," she said, "to be interested and amused. MayI ask you to begin, Miss Emily? All I know of you at present is, thatyour family name is Brown."

  Emily held up her hand for silence.

  Was the mysterious creaking on the stairs making itself heard once more?No. The sound that had caught Emily's quick ear came from the beds, onthe opposite side of the room, occupied by the three lazy girls. Withno new alarm to disturb them, Effie, Annis, and Priscilla had yieldedto the composing influences of a good supper and a warm night. They werefast asleep--and the stoutest of the three (softly, as became a younglady) was snoring!

  The unblemished reputation of the bedroom was dear to Emily, in hercapacity of queen. She felt herself humiliated in the presence of thenew pupil.

  "If that fat girl ever gets a lover," she said indignantly, "I shallconsider it my duty to warn the poor man before he marries her.Her ridiculous name is Euphemia. I have christened her (far moreappropriately) Boiled Veal. No color in her hair, no color in hereyes, no color in her complexion. In short, no flavor in Euphemia. Younaturally object to snoring. Pardon me if I turn my back on you--I amgoing to throw my slipper at her."

  The soft voice of Cecilia--suspiciously drowsy in tone--interposed inthe interests of mercy.

  "She can't help it, poor thing; and she really isn't loud enough todisturb us."

  "She won't disturb _you_, at any rate! Rouse yourself, Cecilia. We arewide awake on this side of the room--and Francine says it's our turn toamuse her."

  A low murmur, dying away gently in a sigh, was the only answer. SweetCecilia had yielded to the somnolent influences of the supper and thenight. The soft infection of repose seemed to be in some danger ofcommunicating itself to Francine. Her large mouth opened luxuriously ina long-continued yawn.

  "Good-night!" said Emily.

  Miss de Sor became wide awake in an instant.

  "No," she said positively; "you are quite mistaken if you think I amgoing to sleep. Please exert yourself, Miss Emily--I am waiting to beinterested."

  Emily appeared to be unwilling to exert herself. She preferred talkingof the weather.

  "Isn't the wind rising?" she said.

  There could be no doubt of it. The leaves in the garden were beginningto rustle, and the pattering of the rain sounded on the windows.

  Francine (as her straight chin proclaimed to all students ofphysiognomy) was an obstinate girl. Determined to carry her point shetried Emily's own system on Emily herself--she put questions.

  "Have you been long at this school?"

  "More than three years."

  "Have you got any brothers and sisters?"

  "I am the only child."

  "Are your father and mother alive?"

  Emily suddenly raised herself in bed.

>   "Wait a minute," she said; "I think I hear it again."

  "The creaking on the stairs?"

  "Yes."

  Either she was mistaken, or the change for the worse in the weathermade it not easy to hear slight noises in the house. The wind was stillrising. The passage of it through the great trees in the garden beganto sound like the fall of waves on a distant beach. It drove the rain--aheavy downpour by this time--rattling against the windows.

  "Almost a storm, isn't it?" Emily said

  Francine's last question had not been answered yet. She took theearliest opportunity of repeating it:

  "Never mind the weather," she said. "Tell me about your father andmother. Are they both alive?"

  Emily's reply only related to one of her parents.

  "My mother died before I was old enough to feel my loss."

  "And your father?"

  Emily referred to another relative--her father's sister. "Since I havegrown up," she proceeded, "my good aunt has been a second mother to me.My story is, in one respect, the reverse of yours. You are unexpectedlyrich; and I am unexpectedly poor. My aunt's fortune was to have beenmy fortune, if I outlived her. She has been ruined by the failure ofa bank. In her old age, she must live on an income of two hundred ayear--and I must get my own living when I leave school."

  "Surely your father can help you?" Francine persisted.

  "His property is landed property." Her voice faltered, as she referredto him, even in that indirect manner. "It is entailed; his nearest malerelative inherits it."

  The delicacy which is easily discouraged was not one of the weaknessesin the nature of Francine.

  "Do I understand that your father is dead?" she asked.

  Our thick-skinned fellow-creatures have the rest of us at their mercy:only give them time, and they carry their point in the end. In sadsubdued tones--telling of deeply-rooted reserves of feeling, seldomrevealed to strangers--Emily yielded at last.

  "Yes," she said, "my father is dead."

  "Long ago?"

  "Some people might think it long ago. I was very fond of my father. It'snearly four years since he died, and my heart still aches when I thinkof him. I'm not easily depressed by troubles, Miss de Sor. But his deathwas sudden--he was in his grave when I first heard of it--and--Oh, hewas so good to me; he was so good to me!"

  The gay high-spirited little creature who took the lead among themall--who was the life and soul of the school--hid her face in her hands,and burst out crying.

  Startled and--to do her justice--ashamed, Francine attempted to makeexcuses. Emily's generous nature passed over the cruel persistencythat had tortured her. "No no; I have nothing to forgive. It isn't yourfault. Other girls have not mothers and brothers and sisters--and getreconciled to such a loss as mine. Don't make excuses."

  "Yes, but I want you to know that I feel for you," Francine insisted,without the slightest approach to sympathy in face, voice, or manner."When my uncle died, and left us all the money, papa was much shocked.He trusted to time to help him."

  "Time has been long about it with me, Francine. I am afraid there issomething perverse in my nature; the hope of meeting again in a betterworld seems so faint and so far away. No more of it now! Let us talk ofthat good creature who is asleep on the other side of you. Did I tellyou that I must earn my own bread when I leave school? Well, Ceciliahas written home and found an employment for me. Not a situation asgoverness--something quite out of the common way. You shall hear allabout it."

  In the brief interval that had passed, the weather had begun to changeagain. The wind was as high as ever; but to judge by the lesseningpatter on the windows the rain was passing away.

  Emily began.

  She was too grateful to her friend and school-fellow, and too deeplyinterested in her story, to notice the air of indifference with whichFrancine settled herself on her pillow to hear the praises of Cecilia.The most beautiful girl in the school was not an object of interest to ayoung lady with an obstinate chin and unfortunately-placed eyes.Pouring warm from the speaker's heart the story ran smoothly on, to themonotonous accompaniment of the moaning wind. By fine degrees Francine'seyes closed, opened and closed again. Toward the latter part of thenarrative Emily's memory became, for the moment only, confused betweentwo events. She stopped to consider--noticed Francine's silence, in aninterval when she might have said a word of encouragement--and lookedcloser at her. Miss de Sor was asleep.

  "She might have told me she was tired," Emily said to herself quietly."Well! the best thing I can do is to put out the light and follow herexample."

  As she took up the extinguisher, the bedroom door was suddenly openedfrom the outer side. A tall woman, robed in a black dressing-gown, stoodon the threshold, looking at Emily.