Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1009 page)

Still following the windings of the deserted streets, I reached what I at first supposed to be the end of the town.

Before me, for half a mile or more (as well as I could guess), rose a tract of meadow-land, with sheep dotted over it at intervals reposing for the night. I advanced over the grass, and observed here and there, where the ground rose a little, some moldering fragments of brickwork. Looking onward as I reached the middle of the meadow, I perceived on its further side, towering gaunt and black in the night, a lofty arch or gateway, without walls at its sides, without a neighbouring building of any sort, far or near. This (as I afterward learned) was one of the ancient gates of the city. The walls, crumbling to ruin, had been destroyed as useless obstacles that cumbered the ground. On the waste meadow-land round me had once stood the shops of the richest merchants, the palaces of the proudest nobles of North Holland. I was actually standing on what had been formerly the wealthy quarter of Enkhuizen! And what was left of it now? A few mounds of broken bricks, a pasture-land of sweet-smelling grass, and a little flock of sheep sleeping.

The mere desolation of the view (apart altogether from its history) struck me with a feeling of horror. My mind seemed to lose its balance in the dreadful stillness that was round me. I felt unutterable forebodings of calamities to come. For the first time, I repented having left England. My thoughts turned regretfully to the woody shores of Greenwater Broad. If I had only held to my resolution, I might have been at rest now in the deep waters of the lake. For what had I lived and planned and traveled since I left Dermody’s cottage? Perhaps only to find that I had lost the woman whom I loved — now that I was in the same town with her!

Regaining the outer rows of houses still left standing, I looked about me, intending to return by the street which was known to me already. Just as I thought I had discovered it, I noticed another living creature in the solitary city. A man was standing at the door of one of the outermost houses on my right hand, looking at me.

At the risk of meeting with another rough reception, I determined to make a last effort to discover Mrs. Van Brandt before I returned to the boat.

Seeing that I was approaching him, the stranger met me midway. His dress and manner showed plainly that I had not encountered this time a person in the lower ranks of life. He answered my question civilly in his own language. Seeing that I was at a loss to understand what he said, he invited me by signs to follow him. After walking for a few minutes in a direction which was quite new to me, we stopped in a gloomy little square, with a plot of neglected garden-ground in the middle of it. Pointing to a lower window in one of the houses, in which a light dimly appeared, my guide said in Dutch: “Office of Van Brandt, sir,” bowed, and left me.

I advanced to the window. It was open, and it was just high enough to be above my head. The light in the room found its way outward through the interstices of closed wooden shutters. Still haunted by misgivings of trouble to come, I hesitated to announce my arrival precipitately by ringing the house-bell. How did I know what new calamity might not confront me when the door was opened? I waited under the window and listened.

Hardly a minute passed before I heard a woman’s voice in the room. There was no mistaking the charm of those tones. It was the voice of Mrs. Van Brandt.

“Come, darling,” she said. “It is very late — you ought to have been in bed two hours ago.”

The child’s voice answered, “I am not sleepy, mamma.”

“But, my dear, remember you have been ill. You may be ill again if you keep out of bed so late as this. Only lie down, and you will soon fall asleep when I put the candle out.”

“You must
not
put the candle out!” the child returned, with strong emphasis. “My new papa is coming. How is he to find his way to us, if you put out the light?”

The mother answered sharply, as if the child’s strange words had irritated her.

“You are talking nonsense,” she said; “and you must go to bed. Mr. Germaine knows nothing about us. Mr. Germaine is in England.”

I could restrain myself no longer. I called out under the window:

“Mr. Germaine is here!”

CHAPTER XXXVI. LOVE AND PRIDE.

A CRY of terror from the room told me that I had been heard. For a moment more nothing happened. Then the child’s voice reached me, wild and shrill: “Open the shutters, mamma! I said he was coming — I want to see him!”

There was still an interval of hesitation before the mother opened the shutters. She did it at last. I saw her darkly at the window, with the light behind her, and the child’s head just visible above the lower part of the window-frame. The quaint little face moved rapidly up and down, as if my self-appointed daughter were dancing for joy!

“Can I trust my own senses?” said Mrs. Van Brandt. “Is it really Mr. Germaine?”

“How do you do, new papa?” cried the child. “Push open the big door and come in. I want to kiss you.”

There was a world of difference between the coldly doubtful tone of the mother and the joyous greeting of the child. Had I forced myself too suddenly on Mrs. Van Brandt? Like all sensitively organized persons, she possessed that inbred sense of self-respect which is pride under another name. Was her pride wounded at the bare idea of my seeing her, deserted as well as deceived — abandoned contemptuously, a helpless burden on strangers — by the man for whom she had sacrificed and suffered so much? And that man a thief, flying from the employers whom he had cheated! I pushed open the heavy oaken street-door, fearing that this might be the true explanation of the change which I had already remarked in her. My apprehensions were confirmed when she unlocked the inner door, leading from the courtyard to the sitting-room, and let me in.

As I took her by both hands and kissed her, she turned her head, so that my lips touched her cheek only. She flushed deeply; her eyes looked away from me as she spoke her few formal words of welcome. When the child flew into my arms, she cried out, irritably, “Don’t trouble Mr. Germaine!” I took a chair, with the little one on my knee. Mrs. Van Brandt seated herself at a distance from me. “It is needless, I suppose, to ask you if you know what has happened,” she said, turning pale again as suddenly as she had turned red, and keeping her eyes fixed obstinately on the floor.

Before I could answer, the child burst out with the news of her father’s disappearance in these words:

“My other papa has run away! My other papa has stolen money! It’s time I had a new one, isn’t it?” She put her arms round my neck. “And now I’ve got him!” she cried, at the shrillest pitch of her voice.

The mother looked at us. For a while, the proud, sensitive woman struggled successfully with herself; but the pang that wrung her was not to be endured in silence. With a low cry of pain, she hid her face in her hands. Overwhelmed by the sense of her own degradation, she was even ashamed to let the man who loved her see that she was in tears.

I took the child off my knee. There was a second door in the sitting-room, which happened to be left open. It showed me a bed-chamber within, and a candle burning on the toilet-table.

“Go in there and play,” I said. “I want to talk to your mamma.”

The child pouted: my proposal did not appear to tempt her. “Give me something to play with,” she said. “I’m tired of my toys. Let me see what you have got in your pockets.”

Her busy little hands began to search in my coat-pockets. I let her take what she pleased, and so bribed her to run away into the inner room. As soon as she was out of sight, I approached the poor mother and seated myself by her side.

“Think of it as I do,” I said. “Now that he has forsaken you, he has left you free to be mine.”

She lifted her head instantly; her eyes flashed through her tears.

“Now that he has forsaken me,” she answered, “I am more unworthy of you than ever!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why!” she repeated, passionately. “Has a woman not reached the lowest depths of degradation when she has lived to be deserted by a thief?”

It was hopeless to attempt to reason with her in her present frame of mind. I tried to attract her attention to a less painful subject by referring to the strange succession of events which had brought me to her for the third time. She stopped me impatiently at the outset.

“It seems useless to say once more what we have said on other occasions,” she answered. “I understand what has brought you here. I have appeared to you again in a vision, just as I appeared to you twice before.”

“No,” I said. “Not as you appeared to me twice before. This time I saw you with the child by your side.”

That reply roused her. She started, and looked nervously toward the bed-chamber door.

“Don’t speak loud!” she said. “Don’t let the child hear us! My dream of you this time has left a painful impression on my mind. The child is mixed up in it — and I don’t like that. Then the place in which I saw you is associated — ” She paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. “I am nervous and wretched to-night,” she resumed; “and I don’t want to speak of it. And yet, I should like to know whether my dream has misled me, or whether you really were in that cottage, of all places in the world?”

I was at a loss to understand the embarrassment which she appeared to feel in putting her question. There was nothing very wonderful, to my mind, in the discovery that she had been in Suffolk, and that she was acquainted with Greenwater Broad. The lake was known all over the county as a favorite resort of picnic parties; and Dermody’s pretty cottage used to be one of the popular attractions of the scene. What really surprised me was to see, as I now plainly saw, that she had some painful association with my old home. I decided on answering her question in such terms as might encourage her to take me into her confidence. In a moment more I should have told her that my boyhood had been passed at Greenwater Broad — in a moment more, we should have recognised each other — when a trivial interruption suspended the words on my lips. The child ran out of the bed-chamber, with a quaintly shaped key in her hand. It was one of the things she had taken out of my pockets and it belonged to the cabin door on board the boat. A sudden fit of curiosity (the insatiable curiosity of a child) had seized her on the subject of this key. She insisted on knowing what door it locked; and, when I had satisfied her on that point, she implored me to take her immediately to see the boat. This entreaty led naturally to a renewal of the disputed question of going, or not going, to bed. By the time the little creature had left us again, with permission to play for a few minutes longer, the conversation between Mrs. Van Brandt and myself had taken a new direction. Speaking now of the child’s health, we were led naturally to the kindred subject of the child’s connection with her mother’s dream.

“She had been ill with fever,” Mrs. Van Brandt began; “and she was just getting better again on the day when I was left deserted in this miserable place. Toward evening, she had another attack that frightened me dreadfully. She became perfectly insensible — her little limbs were stiff and cold. There is one doctor here who has not yet abandoned the town. Of course I sent for him. He thought her insensibility was caused by a sort of cataleptic seizure. At the same time, he comforted me by saying that she was in no immediate danger of death; and he left me certain remedies to be given, if certain symptoms appeared. I took her to bed, and held her to me, with the idea of keeping her warm. Without believing in mesmerism, it has since struck me that we might unconsciously have had some influence over each other, which may explain what followed. Do you think it likely?”

“Quite likely. At the same time, the mesmeric theory (if you could believe in it) would carry the explanation further still. Mesmerism would assert, not only that you and the child influenced each other, but that — in spite of the distance — you both influenced
me
. And in that way, mesmerism would account for my vision as the necessary result of a highly developed sympathy between us. Tell me, did you fall asleep with the child in your arms?”

“Yes. I was completely worn out; and I fell asleep, in spite of my resolution to watch through the night. In my forlorn situation, forsaken in a strange place, I dreamed of you again, and I appealed to you again as my one protector and friend. The only new thing in the dream was, that I thought I had the child with me when I approached you, and that the child put the words into my mind when I wrote in your book. You saw the words, I suppose? and they vanished, as before, no doubt, when I awoke? I found the child still lying, like a dead creature, in my arms. All through the night there was no change in her. She only recovered her senses at noon the next day. Why do you start? What have I said that surprises you?”