Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1113 page)

“The result was startling in the last degree. It was nothing less than the complete suspension of all the signs of life (as we know them) for a day, and a night, and part of another day. I only knew that the animal was not really dead, by observing, on the morning of the second day, that no signs of decomposition had set in — the season being summer, and the labouratory badly ventilated.

“An hour after the first symptoms of revival had astonished me, the creature was as lively again as usual, and ate with a good appetite. After a lapse of ten days, it is still in perfect health. This extraordinary example of the action and reaction of the ingredients of the poison and the ingredients of the antidote on each other, and on the sources of life, deserves, and shall have, the most careful investigation. May I live to carry the inquiry through to some good use, and to record it on another page!”

There was no other page, and no further record. The Professor’s last scientific aspiration had not been fulfilled.

VII

“It was past midnight,” said the doctor, “when I made the discovery, with which you are now acquainted. I went at once to Mr. Keller. He had fortunately not gone to bed; and he accompanied me to the Deadhouse. Knowing the overseer’s private door, at the side of the building, I was able to rouse him with very little delay. In the excitement that possessed me, I spoke of the revival as a possible thing in the hearing of the servants. The whole household accompanied us to the Deadhouse, at the opposite extremity of the building. What we saw there, I am utterly incapable of describing to you. I was in time to take the necessary measures for keeping Mrs. Wagner composed, and for removing her without injury to Mr. Keller’s house. Having successfully accomplished this, I presumed that my anxieties were at an end. I was completely mistaken.”

“You refer to Madame Fontaine, I suppose?”

“No; I refer to Jack. The poor wretch’s ignorant faith had unquestionably saved his mistress’s life. I should never have ventured (even if I had been acquainted with the result of the Professor’s experiment, at an earlier hour) to run the desperate risk, which Jack confronted without hesitation. The events of the night (aggravated by the brandy that Schwartz had given to him) had completely overthrown the balance of his feeble brain. He was as mad, for the time being, as ever he could have been in Bedlam. With some difficulty, I prevailed on him to take a composing mixture. He objected irritably to trust me; and, even when the mixture had begun to quiet him, he was ungrateful enough to speak contemptuously of what I had done for him. ‘I had a much better remedy than yours,’ he said, ‘made by a man who was worth a hundred of you. Schwartz and I were fools enough to give it to Mrs. Housekeeper, last night.’ I thought nothing of this — it was one of the eccentricities which were to be expected from him, in his condition. I left him quietly asleep; and I was about to go home, and get a little rest myself — when Mr. Keller’s son stopped me in the hall. ‘Do go and see Madame Fontaine,’ he said; ‘Minna is alarmed about her mother.’ I went upstairs again directly.”

“Had you noticed anything remarkable in Madame Fontaine,” I asked, “before Fritz spoke to you?”

“I noticed, at the Deadhouse, that she looked frightened out of her senses; and I was a little surprised — holding the opinion I did of her — that such a woman should show so much sensibility. Mr. Keller took charge of her, on our way back to the house. I was quite unprepared for what I saw afterwards, when I went to her room at Fritz’s request.

“Did you discover the resemblance to Mr. Keller’s illness?”

“No — not till afterwards. She sent her daughter out of the room; and I thought she looked at me strangely, when we were alone. ‘I want the paper that I gave you in the street, last night,’ she said. I asked her why she wanted it. She seemed not to know how to reply; she became excited and confused. ‘To destroy it, to be sure!’ she burst out suddenly. ‘Every bottle my husband left is destroyed — strewed here, there, and everywhere, from the Gate to the Deadhouse. Oh, I know what you think of me — I defy you!’ She seemed to forget what she had said, the moment she had said it — she turned away, and opened a drawer, and took out a book closed by metal clasps. My presence in the room appeared to be a lost perception in her mind. The clasps of the book, as well as I could make it out, opened by touching some spring. I noticed that her hands trembled as they tried to find the spring. I attributed the trembling to the terrors of the night, and offered to help her. ‘Let my secrets alone,’ she said — and pushed the book under the pillow of her bed. It was my professional duty to assist her, if I could. Though I attached no sort of importance to what Jack had said, I thought it desirable, before I prescribed for her, to discover whether she had really taken some medicine of her own or not. She staggered back from me, on my repeating what I had heard from Jack, as if I had terrified her. ‘What remedy does he mean? I drank nothing but a glass of wine. Send for him directly — I must, and will speak to him!’ I told her this was impossible; I could not permit his sleep to be disturbed. ‘The watchman!’ she cried; ‘the drunken brute! send for him.’ By this time I began to conclude that there was really something wrong. I called in her daughter to look after her while I was away, and then left the room to consult with Fritz. The only hope of finding Schwartz (the night-watch at the Deadhouse being over by that time) was to apply to his sister the nurse. I knew where she lived; and Fritz most kindly offered to go to her. By the time Schwartz was found, and brought to the house, Madame Fontaine was just able to understand what he said, and no more. I began to recognise the symptoms of Mr. Keller’s illness. The apathy which you remember was showing itself already. ‘Leave me to die,’ she said quietly; ‘I deserve it.’ The last effort of the distracted mind, rousing for a moment the sinking body, was made almost immediately afterwards. She raised herself on the pillow, and seized my arm. ‘Mind!’ she said, ‘Minna is to be married on the thirteenth!’ Her eyes rested steadily on me, while she spoke. At the last word, she sank back, and relapsed into the condition in which you have just seen her.”

“Can you do nothing for her?”

“Nothing. Our modern science is absolutely ignorant of the poisons which Professor Fontaine’s fatal ingenuity revived. Slow poisoning by reiterated doses, in small quantities, we understand. But slow poisoning by one dose is so entirely beyond our experience, that medical men in general refuse to believe in it.”

“Are you sure that she is poisoned?” I asked.

“After what Jack told me this morning when he woke, I have no doubt she is poisoned by ‘Alexander’s Wine.’ She appears to have treacherously offered it to him as a remedy — and to have hesitated, at the last moment, to let him have it. As a remedy, Jack’s ignorant faith gave it to her by the hands of Schwartz. When we have more time before us, you shall hear the details. In the meanwhile, I can only tell you that the retribution is complete. Madame Fontaine might even now be saved, if Jack had not given all that remained of the antidote to Mrs. Wagner.

“Is there any objection to my asking Jack for the particulars?”

“The strongest possible objection. It is of the utmost importance to discourage him from touching on the subject, in the future. He has already told Mrs. Wagner that he has saved her life; and, just before you came in, I found him comforting Minna. ‘Your mamma has taken her own good medicine, Missy; she will soon get well.’ I have been obliged — God forgive me! — to tell your aunt and Minna that he is misled by insane delusions, and that they are not to believe one word of what he has said to them.”

“No doubt your motive justifies you,” I said — not penetrating his motive at the moment.

“You will understand me directly,” he answered. “I trust to your honour under any circumstances. Why have I taken you into my confidence, under
these
circumstances? For a very serious reason, Mr. David. You are likely to be closely associated, in the time to come, with your aunt and Minna — and I look to you to help the good work which I have begun. Mrs. Wagner’s future life must not be darkened by a horrible recollection. That sweet girl must enjoy the happy years that are in store for her, unembittered by the knowledge of her mother’s guilt. Do you understand, now, why I am compelled to speak unjustly of poor Jack?”

As a proof that I understood him, I promised the secrecy which he had every right to expect from me.

The entrance of the nurse closed our conference. She reported Madame Fontaine’s malady to be already altering for the worse.

The doctor watched the case. At intervals, I too saw her again.

Although it happened long ago, I cannot prevail upon myself to dwell on the deliberate progress of the hellish Borgia poison, in undermining the forces of life. The nervous shudderings reached their climax, and then declined as gradually as they had arisen. For hours afterwards, she lay in a state of complete prostration. Not a last word, not a last look, rewarded the devoted girl, watching faithfully at the bedside. No more of it — no more! Late in the afternoon of the next day, Doctor Dormann, gently, most gently, removed Minna from the room. Mr. Keller and I looked at each other in silence. We knew that Madame Fontaine was dead.

VIII

I had not forgotten the clasped book that she had tried vainly to open, in Doctor Dormann’s presence. Taking it myself from under the pillow, I left Mr. Keller and the doctor to say if I should give it, unopened, to Minna.

“Certainly not!” said the doctor.

“Why not?”

“Because it will tell her what she must never know. I believe that book to be a Diary. Open it, and see.”

I found the spring and opened the clasps. It
was
a Diary.

“You judged, I suppose, from the appearance of the book?” I said.

“Not at all. I judged from my own experience, at the time when I was Medical Officer at the prison here. An educated criminal is almost invariably an inveterate egotist. We are all interesting to ourselves — but the more vile we are, the more intensely we are absorbed in ourselves. The very people who have, logically speaking, the most indisputable interest in concealing their crimes, are also the very people who, almost without exception, yield to the temptation of looking at themselves in the pages of a Diary.”

“I don’t doubt your experience, doctor. But your results puzzle me.”

“Think a little, Mr. David, and you will not find the riddle so very hard to read. The better we are, the more unselfishly we are interested in others. The worse we are, the more inveterately our interest is concentrated on ourselves. Look at your aunt as an example of what I say. This morning there were some letters waiting for her, on the subject of those reforms in the treatment of mad people, which she is as resolute as ever to promote — in this country as well as in England. It was with the greatest difficulty that I prevailed on her not to answer those letters just yet: in other words, not to excite her brain and nervous system, after such an ordeal as she has just passed through. Do you think a wicked woman — with letters relating merely to the interests of other people waiting for her — would have stood in any need of my interference? Not she! The wicked woman would have thought only of herself, and would have been far too much interested in her own recovery to run the risk of a relapse. Open that book of Madame Fontaine’s at any of the later entries. You will find the miserable woman self-betrayed in every page.”

It was true! Every record of Madame Fontaine’s most secret moments, presented in this narrative, was first found in her Diary.

As an example: — Her Diary records, in the fullest detail, the infernal ingenuity of the stratagem by which she usurped her title to Mr. Keller’s confidence, as the preserver of his life. “I have only to give him the Alexander’s Wine,” she writes, “to make sure, by means of the antidote, of curing the illness which I have myself produced. After that, Minna’s mother becomes Mr. Keller’s guardian angel, and Minna’s marriage is a certainty.”

On a later page, she is similarly self described — in Mrs. Wagner’s case — as acting from an exactly opposite motive, in choosing the Looking-Glass Drops. “They not only kill soonest, and most surely defy detection,” she proceeds, “but I have it on the authority of the label, that my husband has tried to find the antidote to these Drops, and has tried in vain. If my heart fails me, when the deed is done, there can be no reprieve for the woman whose tongue I must silence for ever — or, after all I have sacrificed, my child’s future is ruined.”

There is little doubt that she intended to destroy these compromising pages, on her return to Mr. Keller’s house — and that she would have carried out her intention, but for those first symptoms of the poison, which showed themselves in the wandering of her mind, and the helpless trembling of her hands.