Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1314 page)

Herbert approached Sydney. It was a moment when he was bound to assure her of his sympathy. He felt for her. In his inmost heart he felt for her. As he drew nearer, he saw tears in her eyes; but they seemed to have risen without her knowledge. Hardly conscious of his presence, she stood before him — lost in thought.

He endeavored to rouse her. “Did I protect you from insult?” he asked.

She said absently: “Yes!”

“Will you do as I do, dear? Will you try to forget?”

She said: “I will try to atone,” and moved toward the door of her room. The reply surprised him; but it was no time then to ask for an explanation.

“Would you like to lie down, Sydney, and rest?”

“Yes.”

She took his arm. He led her to the door of her room. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

“Nothing, thank you.”

She closed the door — and abruptly opened it again. “One thing more,” she said. “Kiss me.”

He kissed her tenderly. Returning to the sitting-room, he looked back across the passage. Her door was shut.

His head was heavy; his mind felt confused. He threw himself on the sofa — utterly exhausted by the ordeal through which he had passed. In grief, in fear, in pain, the time still comes when Nature claims her rights. The wretched worn-out man fell into a restless sleep. He was awakened by the waiter, laying the cloth for dinner. “It’s just ready, sir,” the servant announced; “shall I knock at the lady’s door?”

Herbert got up and went to her room.

He entered softly, fearing to disturb her if she too had slept. No sign of her was to be seen. She had evidently not rested on her bed. A morsel of paper lay on the smooth coverlet. There was only a line written on it: “You may yet be happy — and it may perhaps be my doing.”

He stood, looking at that last line of her writing, in the empty room. His despair and his submission spoke in the only words that escaped him:

“I have deserved it!”

FIFTH BOOK.

Chapter XXXVIII. Hear the Lawyer.

“Mr. Herbert Linley, I ask permission to reply to your inquiries in writing, because it is quite likely that some of the opinions you will find here might offend you if I expressed them personally. I can relieve your anxiety on the subject of Miss Sydney Westerfield. But I must be allowed to do so in my own way — without any other restraints than those which I think it becoming to an honourable man to impose on himself.

“You are quite right in supposing that Miss Westerfield had heard me spoken of at Mount Morven, as the agent and legal adviser of the lady who was formerly your wife. What purpose led her to apply to me, under these circumstances, you will presently discover. As to the means by which she found her way to my office, I may remind you that any directory would give her the necessary information.

“Miss Westerfield’s object was to tell me, in the first place, that her guilty life with you was at an end. She has left your protection — not to return to it. I was sorry to see (though she tried to hide it from me) how keenly she felt the parting. You have been dearly loved by two sweet women, and they have thrown their hearts away on you — as women will.

“Having explained the circumstances so far, Miss Westerfield next mentioned the motive which had brought her to my office. She asked if I would inform her of Mrs. Norman’s address.

“This request, I confess, astonished me.

“To my mind she was, of all persons, the last who ought to contemplate communicating in any way with Mrs. Norman. I say this to you; but I refrained from saying it to her. What I did venture to do was to ask for her reasons. She answered that they were reasons which would embarrass her if she communicated them to a stranger.

“After this reply, I declined to give her the information she wanted.

“Not unprepared, as it appeared to me, for my refusal, she asked next if I was willing to tell her where she might find your brother, Mr. Randal Linley. In this case I was glad to comply with her request. She could address herself to no person worthier to advise her than your brother. In giving her his address in London, I told her that he was absent on a visit to some friends, and that he was expected to return in a week’s time.

“She thanked me, and rose to go.

“I confess I was interested in her. Perhaps I thought of the time when she might have been as dear to her father as my own daughters are to me. I asked if her parents were living: they were dead. My next question was: ‘Have you any friends in London?’ She answered: ‘I have no friends.’ It was said with a resignation so very sad in so young a creature that I was really distressed. I ran the risk of offending her — and asked if she felt any embarrassment in respect of money. She said: ‘I have some small savings from my salary when I was a governess.’ The change in her tone told me that she was alluding to the time of her residence at Mount Morven. It was impossible to look at this friendless girl, and not feel some anxiety about the lodging which she might have chosen in such a place as London. She had fortunately come to me from the railway, and had not thought yet of where she was to live. At last I was able to be of some use to her. My senior clerk took care of Miss Westerfield, and left her among respectable people, in whose house she could live cheaply and safely. Where that house is, I refuse (for her sake) to tell you. She shall not be disturbed.

“After a week had passed I received a visit from my good friend, Randal Linley.

“He had on that day seen Miss Westerfield. She had said to him what she had said to me, and had repeated the request which I thought it unwise to grant; owning to your brother, however, the motives which she had refused to confide to me. He was so strongly impressed by the sacrifice of herself which this penitent woman had made, that he was at first disposed to trust her with Mrs. Norman’s address.

“Reflection, however, convinced him that her motives, pure and disinterested as they undoubtedly were, did not justify him in letting her expose herself to the consequences which might follow the proposed interview. All that he engaged to do was to repeat to Mrs. Norman what Miss Westerfield had said, and to inform the young lady of the result.

“In the intervals of business, I had felt some uneasiness when I thought of Miss Westerfield’s prospects. Your good brother at once set all anxiety on this subject at rest.

“He proposed to place Miss Westerfield under the care of an old and dear friend of her late father — Captain Bennydeck. Her voluntary separation from you offered to your brother, and to the Captain, the opportunity for which they had both been waiting. Captain Bennydeck was then cruising at sea in his yacht. Immediately on his return, Miss Westerfield’s inclination would be consulted, and she would no doubt eagerly embrace the opportunity of being introduced to her father’s friend.

“I have now communicated all that I know, in reply to the questions which you have addressed to me. Let me earnestly advise you to make the one reparation to this poor girl which is in your power. Resign yourself to a separation which is not only for her good, but for yours. — SAMUEL SARRAZIN.”

Chapter XXXIX. Listen to Reason.

Not having heard from Captain Bennydeck for some little time, Randal thought it desirable in Sydney’s interests to make inquiries at his club. Nothing was known of the Captain’s movements there. On the chance of getting the information that he wanted, Randal wrote to the hotel at Sandyseal.

The landlord’s reply a little surprised him.

Some days since, the yacht had again appeared in the bay. Captain Bennydeck had landed, to all appearance in fairly good health; and had left by an early train for London. The sailing-master announced that he had orders to take the vessel back to her port — with no other explanation than that the cruise was over. This alternative in the Captain’s plans (terminating the voyage a month earlier than his arrangements had contemplated) puzzled Randal. He called at his friend’s private residence, only to hear from the servants that they had seen nothing of their master. Randal waited a while in London, on the chance that Bennydeck might pay him a visit.

During this interval his patience was rewarded in an unexpected manner. He discovered the Captain’s address by means of a letter from Catherine, dated “Buck’s Hotel, Sydenham.” Having gently reproached him for not writing to her or calling on her, she invited him to dinner at the hotel. Her letter concluded in these words: “You will only meet one person besides ourselves — your friend, and (since we last met) our friend too. Captain Bennydeck has got tired of the sea. He is staying at this hotel, to try the air of Sydenham, and he finds that it agrees with him.”

These lines set Randal thinking seriously.

To represent Bennydeck as being “tired of the sea,” and as being willing to try, in place of the breezy Channel, the air of a suburb of London, was to make excuses too perfectly futile and absurd to deceive any one who knew the Captain. In spite of the appearance of innocence which pervaded Catherine’s letter, the true motive for breaking off his cruise might be found, as Randal concluded, in Catherine herself. Her residence at the sea-side, helped by the lapse of time, had restored to her personal attractions almost all they had lost under the deteriorating influences of care and grief; and her change of name must have protected her from a discovery of the Divorce which would have shocked a man so sincerely religious as Bennydeck. Had her beauty fascinated him? Was she aware of the interest that he felt in her? and was it secretly understood and returned? Randal wrote to accept the invitation; determining to present himself before the appointed hour, and to question Catherine privately, without giving her the advantage over him of preparing herself for the interview.

In the short time that passed before the day of the dinner, distressing circumstances strengthened his resolution. After months of separation, he received a visit from Herbert.

Was this man — haggard, pallid, shabby, looking at him piteously with bloodshot eyes — the handsome, pleasant, prosperous brother whom he remembered? Randal was so grieved, that he was for a moment unable to utter a word. He could only point to a seat. Herbert dropped into the chair as if he was reduced to the last extremity of fatigue. And yet he spoke roughly; he looked like an angry man brought to bay.

“I seem to frighten you,” he said.

“You distress me, Herbert, more than words can say.”

“Give me a glass of wine. I’ve been walking — I don’t know where. A long distance; I’m dead beat.”

He drank the wine greedily. Whatever reviving effect it might otherwise have produced on him, it made no change in the threatening gloom of his manner. In a man morally weak, calamity (suffered without resisting power) breaks its way through the surface which exhibits a gentleman, and shows the naked nature which claims kindred with our ancestor the savage.

“Do you feel better, Herbert?”

He put down the empty glass, taking no notice of his brother’s question. “Randal,” he said, “you know where Sydney is.”

Randal admitted it.

“Give me her address. My mind’s in such a state I can’t remember it; write it down.”

“No, Herbert.”

“You won’t write it? and you won’t give it?”

“I will do neither the one nor the other. Go back to your chair; fierce looks and clinched fists don’t frighten me. Miss Westerfield is quite right in separating herself from you. And you are quite wrong in wishing to go back to her. There are my reasons. Try to understand them. And, once again, sit down.”

He spoke sternly — with his heart aching for his brother all the time. He was right. The one way is the positive way, when a man who suffers trouble is degraded by it.

The poor wretch sank under Randal’s firm voice and steady eye.

“Don’t be hard on me,” he said. “I think a man in my situation is to be pitied — especially by his brother. I’m not like you; I’m not accustomed to live alone. I’ve been accustomed to having a kind woman to talk to me, and take care of me. You don’t know what it is to be used to seeing a pretty creature, always nicely dressed, always about the room — thinking so much of you, and so little of herself — and then to be left alone as I am left, out in the dark. I haven’t got my wife; she has thrown me over, and taken my child away from me. And, now, Sydney’s taken away from me next. I’m alone. Do you hear that? Alone! Take the poker there out of the fireplace. Give me back Sydney, or knock out my brains. I haven’t courage enough to do it for myself. Oh, why did I engage that governess! I was so happy, Randal, with Catherine and little Kitty.”