Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (114 page)

“Many,” he answered, “many changes just as extraordinary, which have raised hopes that I never knew realised. Expect the worst from the change you have witnessed; it is a fatal sign.”

Still, in spite of what he said, it seemed as if he feared to wake her; for he spoke in his lowest tones, and walked very softly when he went close to the bedside.

He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to feel her pulse, and looked in the direction of the glass door — listened attentively — and said, as if to himself — ”I thought I heard some one moving in that room, but I suppose I am mistaken; nobody can be up in the house yet.” With those words he looked down at Margaret, and gently parted back her hair from her forehead.

“Don’t disturb her,” I whispered, “she is asleep; surely she is asleep!”

He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart. Then softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.

“Yes, she is asleep,” he said gravely; “asleep, never to wake again. She is dead.”

I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment, were not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.

“This has been a sad scene for any one at your age,” he resumed kindly, as he left the bedside, “but you have borne it well. I am glad to see that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial.”

Calmly?

Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could remember that I had forgiven her.

VIII.

On the fourth day from the morning when she had died, I stood alone in the churchyard by the grave of Margaret Sherwin.

It had been left for me to watch her dying moments; it was left for me to bestow on her remains the last human charity which the living can extend to the dead. If I could have looked into the future on our fatal marriage-day, and could have known that the only home of my giving which she would ever inhabit, would be the home of the grave! —

Her father had written me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these pages. Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave the action by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me and upon my family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and disgust of his wife’s surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some pecuniary reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had declared he would accuse her, of having been the real cause of her mother’s death; and that he took care to give the appearance of sincerity to the indignation which he professed to feel against her, by refusing to follow her remains to the place of burial.

Ralph had returned to London, as soon as he received the letter from Mr. Bernard which I had forwarded to him. He offered me his assistance in performing the last duties left to my care, with an affectionate earnestness that I had never seen him display towards me before. But Mr. Bernard had generously undertaken to relieve me of every responsibility which could be assumed by others; and on this occasion, therefore, I had no need to put my brother’s ready kindness in helping me to the test.

I stood alone by the grave. Mr. Bernard had taken leave of me; the workers and the idlers in the churchyard had alike departed. There was no reason why I should not follow them; and yet I remained, with my eyes fixed upon the freshly-turned earth at my feet, thinking of the dead.

Some time had passed thus, when the sound of approaching footsteps attracted my attention. I looked up, and saw a man, clothed in a long cloak drawn loosely around his neck, and wearing a shade over his eyes, which hid the whole upper part of his face, advancing slowly towards me, walking with the help of a stick. He came on straight to the grave, and stopped at the foot of it — stopped opposite me, as I stood at the head.

“Do you know me again?” he said. “Do you know me for Robert Mannion?” As he pronounced his name, he raised the shade and looked at me.

The first sight of that appalling face, with its ghastly discolouration of sickness, its hideous deformity of feature, its fierce and changeless malignity of expression glaring full on me in the piercing noonday sunshine — glaring with the same unearthly look of fury and triumph which I had seen flashing through the flashing lightning, when I parted from him on the night of the storm — struck me speechless where I stood, and has never left me since. I must not, I dare not, describe that frightful sight; though it now rises before my imagination, vivid in its horror as on the first day when I saw it — though it moves hither and thither before me fearfully, while I write; though it lowers at my window, a noisome shadow on the radiant prospect of earth, and sea, and sky, whenever I look up from the page I am now writing towards the beauties of my cottage view.

“Do you know me for Robert Mannion?” he repeated. “Do you know the work of your own hands, now you see it? Or, am I changed to you past recognition, as
your
father might have found
my
father changed, if he had seen him on the morning of his execution, standing under the gallows, with the cap over his face?”

Still I could neither speak nor move. I could only look away from him in horror, and fix my eyes on the ground.

He lowered the shade to its former position on his face, then spoke again.

“Under this earth that we stand on,” he said, setting his foot on the grave; “down here, where you are now looking, lies buried with the buried dead, the last influence which might one day have gained you respite and mercy at my hands. Did you think of the one, last chance that you were losing, when you came to see her die? I watched
you,
and I watched
her.
I heard as much as you heard; I saw as much as you saw; I know when she died, and how, as you know it; I shared her last moments with you, to the very end. It was my fancy not to give her up, as your sole possession, even on her death-bed: it is my fancy, now, not to let you stand alone — as if her corpse was your property — over her grave!”

While he uttered the last words, I felt my self-possession returning. I could not force myself to speak, as I would fain have spoken — I could only move away, to leave him.

“Stop,” he said, “what I have still to say concerns you. I have to tell you, face to face, standing with you here, over her dead body, that what I wrote from the hospital, is what I will do; that I will make your whole life to come, one long expiation of this deformity;” (he pointed to his face), “and of that death” (he set his foot once more on the grave). “Go where you will, this face of mine shall never be turned away from you; this tongue, which you can never silence but by a crime, shall awaken against you the sleeping superstitions and cruelties of all mankind. The noisome secret of that night when you followed us, shall reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your fellow-beings, be they whom they may. You may shield yourself behind your family and your friends — I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest of them! Now you have heard me, go! The next time we meet, you shall acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I speak. Live the free life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you by her death — you will know it soon for the life of Cain!”

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come; but the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had spoken, never left me. Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the crowded streets. The horror of the fiend-face was still before my eyes, the poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I returned to my lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I entered my room.

“At last you have come back!” he said; “I was determined to stop till you did, if I stayed all day. Is anything the matter? Have you got into some worse difficulty than ever?”

“No, Ralph — no. What have you to tell me?”

“Something that will rather surprise you, Basil: I have to tell you to leave London at once! Leave it for your own interests and for everybody else’s. My father has found out that Clara has been to see you.”

“Good heavens! how?”

“He won’t tell me. But he has found it out. You know how you stand in his opinion — I leave you to imagine what he thinks of Clara’s conduct in coming here.”

“No! no! tell me yourself, Ralph — tell me how she bears his displeasure!”

“As badly as possible. After having forbidden her ever to enter this house again, he now only shows how he is offended, by his silence; and it is exactly that, of course, which distresses her. Between her notions of implicit obedience to
him,
and her opposite notions, just as strong, of her sisterly duties to
you,
she is made miserable from morning to night. What she will end in, if things go on like this, I am really afraid to think; and I’m not easily frightened, as you know. Now, Basil, listen to me: it is
your
business to stop this, and
my
business to tell you how.”

“I will do anything you wish — anything for Clara’s sake!”

“Then leave London; and so cut short the struggle between her duty and her inclination. If you don’t, my father is quite capable of taking her at once into the country, though I know he has important business to keep him in London. Write a letter to her, saying that you have gone away for your health, for change of scene and peace of mind — gone away, in short, to come back better some day. Don’t say where you’re going, and don’t tell me, for she is sure to ask, and sure to get it out of me if I know. Then she might be writing to you, and that might be found out, too. She can’t distress herself about your absence, if you account for it properly, as she distresses herself now — that is one consideration. And you will serve your own interests, as well as Clara’s, by going away — that is another.”

“Never mind
my
interests. Clara! I can only think of Clara!”

“But you
have
interests, and you must think of them. I told my father of the death of that unhappy woman, and of your noble behaviour when she was dying. Don’t interrupt me, Basil — it
was
noble; I couldn’t have done what you did, I can tell you! I saw he was more struck by it than he was willing to confess. An impression has been made on him by the turn circumstances have taken. Only leave that impression to strengthen, and you’re safe. But if you destroy it by staying here, after what has happened, and keeping Clara in this new dilemma — my dear fellow, you destroy your best chance! There is a sort of defiance of him in stopping; there is a downright concession to him in going away.”

“I
will
go, Ralph; you have more than convinced me that I ought! I will go to-morrow, though where — ”

“You have the rest of the day to think where.
I
should go abroad and amuse myself; but your ideas of amusement are, most likely, not mine. At any rate, wherever you go, I can always supply you with money, when you want it; you can write to me, after you have been away some little time, and I can write back, as soon as I have good news to tell you. Only stick to your present determination, Basil, and, I’ll answer for it, you will be back in your own study at home, before you are many months older!”

“I will put it out of my power to fail in my resolution, by writing to Clara at once, and giving you the letter to place in her hands to-morrow evening, when I shall have left London some hours.”

“That’s right, Basil! that’s acting and speaking like a man!”

I wrote immediately, accounting for my sudden absence as Ralph had advised me — wrote, with a heavy heart, all that I thought would be most reassuring and cheering to Clara; and then, without allowing myself time to hesitate or to think, gave the letter to my brother.

“She shall have it to-morrow night,” he said, “and my father shall know why you have left town, at the same time. Depend on me in this, as in everything else. And now, Basil, I must say good bye — unless you’re in the humour for coming to look at my new house this evening. Ah! I see that won’t suit you just now, so, good bye, old fellow! Write when you are in any necessity — get back your spirits and your health — and never doubt that the step you are now taking will be the best for Clara, and the best for yourself!”

He hurried out of the room, evidently feeling more at saying farewell than he was willing to let me discover. I was left alone for the rest of the day, to think whither I should turn my steps on the morrow.