Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1325 page)

“Tell me plainly,” she cried, “is there something you can’t forgive?”

“There is something I can’t forget.”

“What is it? Oh, what is it! When my mother told poor little Kitty that her father was dead, are you even more sorry than I am that I allowed it? Are you even more ashamed of me than I am of myself?”

“No. I regret that you allowed it; but I understand how you were led into that error. Your husband’s infidelity had shaken his hold on your respect for him and your sympathy with him, and had so left you without your natural safeguard against Mrs. Presty’s sophistical reasoning and bad example. But for
that
wrong-doing, there is a remedy left. Enlighten your child as you have enlightened me; and then — I have no personal motive for pleading Mr. Herbert Linley’s cause, after what I have seen of him — and then, acknowledge the father’s claim on the child.”

“Do you mean his claim to see her?”

“What else can I mean? Yes! let him see her. Do (God help me, now when it’s too late!) — do what you ought to have done, on that accursed day which will be the blackest day in my calendar, to the end of my life.”

“What day do you mean?”

“The day when you remembered the law of man, and forgot the law of God; the day when you broke the marriage tie, the sacred tie, by a Divorce!”

She listened — not conscious now of suspense or fear; she listened, with her whole heart in revolt against him.

“You are too cruel!” she declared. “You can feel for me, you can understand me, you can pardon me in everything else that I have done. But you judge without mercy of the one blameless act of my life, since my husband left me — the act that protected a mother in the exercise of her rights. Oh, can it be you? Can it be you?”

“It can be,” he said, sighing bitterly; “and it is.”

“What horrible delusion possesses you? Why do you curse the happy day, the blessed day, which saw me safe in the possession of my child?”

“For the worst and meanest of reasons,” he answered — ”a selfish reason. Don’t suppose that I have spoken of Divorce as one who has had occasion to think of it. I have had no occasion to think of it; I don’t think of it even now. I abhor it because it stands between you and me. I loathe it, I curse it because it separates us for life.”

“Separates us for life? How?”

“Can you ask me?”

“Yes, I do ask you!”

He looked round him. A society of religious persons had visited the hotel, and had obtained permission to place a copy of the Bible in every room. One of those copies lay on the chimney-piece in Catherine’s room. Bennydeck brought it to her, and placed it on the table near which she was sitting. He turned to the New Testament, and opened it at the Gospel of Saint Matthew. With his hand on the page, he said:

“I have done my best rightly to understand the duties of a Christian. One of those duties, as I interpret them, is to let what I believe show itself in what I do. You have seen enough of me, I hope, to know (though I have not been forward in speaking of it) that I am, to the best of my poor ability, a faithful follower of the teachings of Christ. I dare not set my own interests and my own happiness above His laws. If I suffer in obeying them as I suffer now, I must still submit. They are the laws of my life.”

“Is it through me that you suffer?”

“It is through you.”

“Will you tell me how?”

He had already found the chapter. His tears dropped on it as he pointed to the verse.

“Read,” he answered, “what the most compassionate of all Teachers has said, in the Sermon on the Mount.”

She read: “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”

Another innocent woman, in her place, might have pointed to that first part of the verse, which pre-supposes the infidelity of the divorced wife, and might have asked if those words applied to
her
. This woman, knowing that she had lost him, knew also what she owed to herself. She rose in silence, and held out her hand at parting.

He paused before he took her hand. “Can you forgive me?” he asked.

She said: “I can pity you.”

“Can you look back to the day of your marriage? Can you remember the words which declared the union between you and your husband to be separable only by death? Has he treated you with brutal cruelty?”

“Never!”

“Has he repented of his sin?”

“Yes.”

“Ask your own conscience if there is not a worthier life for you and your child than the life that you are leading now.” He waited, after that appeal to her. The silence remained unbroken. “Do not mistake me,” he resumed gently. “I am not thinking of the calamity that has fallen on me in a spirit of selfish despair — I am looking to
your
future, and I am trying to show you the way which leads to hope. Catherine! have you no word more to say to me?”

In faint trembling tones she answered him at last:

“You have left me but one word to say. Farewell!”

He drew her to him gently, and kissed her on the forehead. The agony in his face was more than she could support; she recoiled from it in horror. His last act was devoted to the tranquillity of the one woman whom he had loved. He signed to her to leave him.

Chapter LIII. The Largest Nature, the Longest Love.

Mrs. Presty waited in the garden to be joined by her daughter and Captain Bennydeck, and waited in vain. It was past her grandchild’s bedtime; she decided on returning to the house.

“Suppose we look for them in the sitting-room?” Kitty proposed.

“Suppose we wait a moment, before we go in?” her wise grandmother advised. “If I hear them talking I shall take you upstairs to bed.”

“Why?”

Mrs. Presty favored Kitty with a hint relating to the management of inquisitive children which might prove useful to her in after-life. “When you grow up to be a woman, my dear, beware of making the mistake that I have just committed. Never be foolish enough to mention your reasons when a child asks, Why?”

“Was that how they treated
you
, grandmamma, when you were a child yourself?”

“Of course it was!”

“Why?”

They had reached the sitting-room door by this time. Kitty opened it without ceremony and looked in. The room was empty.

Having confided her granddaughter to the nursemaid’s care, Mrs. Presty knocked at Catherine’s bedroom door. “May I come in?”

“Come in directly! Where is Kitty?”

“Susan is putting her to bed.”

“Stop it! Kitty mustn’t go to bed. No questions. I’ll explain myself when you come back.” There was a wildness in her eyes, and a tone of stern command in her voice, which warned her mother to set dignity aside, and submit.

“I don’t ask what has happened,” Mrs. Presty resumed on her return. “That letter, that fatal letter to the Captain, has justified my worst fears. What in Heaven’s name are we to do now?”

“We are to leave this hotel,” was the instant reply.

“When?”

“To-night.”

“Catherine! do you know what time it is?”

“Time enough to catch the last train to London. Don’t raise objections! If I stay at this place, with associations in every part of it which remind me of that unhappy man, I shall go mad! The shock I have suffered, the misery, the humiliation — I tell you it’s more than I can bear. Stay here by yourself if you like; I mean to go.”

She paced with frantic rapidity up and down the room. Mrs. Presty took the only way by which it was possible to calm her. “Compose yourself, Catherine, and all that you wish shall be done. I’ll settle everything with the landlord, and give the maid her orders. Sit down by the open window; let the wind blow over you.”

The railway service from Sydenham to London is a late service. At a few minutes before midnight they were in time for the last train. When they left the station, Catherine was calm enough to communicate her plans for the future. The nearest hotel to the terminus would offer them accommodation for that night. On the next day they could find some quiet place in the country — no matter where, so long as they were not disturbed. “Give me rest and peace, and my mind will be easier,” Catherine said. “Let nobody know where to find me.”

These conditions were strictly observed — with an exception in favor of Mr. Sarrazin. While his client’s pecuniary affairs were still unsettled, the lawyer had his claim to be taken into her confidence.

The next morning found Captain Bennydeck still keeping his rooms at Sydenham. The state of his mind presented a complete contrast to the state of Catherine’s mind. So far from sharing her aversion to the personal associations which were connected with the hotel, he found his one consolation in visiting the scenes which reminded him of the beloved woman whom he had lost. The reason for this was not far to seek. His was the largest nature, and his had been the most devoted love.

As usual, his letters were forwarded to him from his place of residence in London. Those addressed in handwritings that he knew were the first that he read. The others he took out with him to that sequestered part of the garden in which he had passed the happiest hours of his life by Catherine’s side.

He had been thinking of her all the morning; he was thinking of her now.

His better judgment protested; his accusing conscience warned him that he was committing, not only an act of folly but (with his religious convictions) an act of sin — and still she held her place in his thoughts. The manager had told him of her sudden departure from the hotel, and had declared with perfect truth that the place of her destination had not been communicated to him. Asked if she had left no directions relating to her correspondence, he had replied that his instructions were to forward all letters to her lawyer. On the point of inquiring next for the name and address, Bennydeck’s sense of duty and sense of shame (roused at last) filled him with a timely contempt for himself. In feeling tempted to write to Catherine — in encouraging fond thoughts of her among scenes which kept her in his memory — he had been false to the very principles to which he had appealed at their farewell interview. She had set him the right example, the example which he was determined to follow, in leaving the place. Before he could falter in his resolution, he gave notice of his departure. The one hope for him now was to find a refuge from himself in acts of mercy. Consolation was perhaps waiting for him in his Home.

His unopened correspondence offered a harmless occupation to his thoughts, in the meanwhile. One after another he read the letters, with an attention constantly wandering and constantly recalled, until he opened the last of them that remained. In a moment more his interest was absorbed. The first sentences in the letter told him that the deserted creature whom he had met in the garden — the stranger to whom he had offered help and consolation in the present and in the future — was no other than the lost girl of whom he had been so long in search; the daughter of Roderick Westerfield, once his dearest and oldest friend.

In the pages that followed, the writer confided to him her sad story; leaving it to her father’s friend to decide whether she was worthy of the sympathy which he had offered to her, when he thought she was a stranger.

This part of her letter was necessarily a repetition of what Bennydeck had read, in the confession which Catherine had addressed to him. That generous woman had been guilty of one, and but one, concealment of the truth. In relating the circumstances under which the elopement from Mount Morven had taken place, she had abstained, in justice to the sincerity of Sydney’s repentance, from mentioning Sydney’s name. “Another instance,” the Captain thought bitterly, as he closed the letter, “of the virtues which might have made the happiness of my life!”