Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1731 page)

“He has been a little restless, madam. But he is now quiet again. If he is not disturbed” (I added those words to prevent her from ascending the stairs), “he will soon fall off into a quiet sleep.”

“Has nothing happened since I was here last?”

“Nothing, madam.”

The doctor lifted his eyebrows with a comical look of distress.

“Alas, alas, Mrs. Fairbank!” he said. “Nothing has happened! The days of romance are over!”

“It is not two o’clock yet,” my mistress answered, a little irritably.

The smell of the stables was strong on the morning air. She put her handkerchief to her nose and led the way out of the yard, by the north entrance — the entrance communicating with the gardens and the house. I was ordered to follow her, along with the doctor. Once out of the smell of the stables, she began to question me again. She was unwilling to believe that nothing had occurred in her absence. I invented the best answers I could think of on the spur of the moment; and the doctor stood by, laughing. So the minutes passed, till the clock struck two. Upon that, Mrs. Fairbank announced her intention of personally visiting the Englishman in his room. To my great relief, the doctor interfered to stop her from doing this.

“You have heard that Francis is just falling asleep,” he said. “If you enter his room you may disturb him. It is essential to the success of my experiment that he should have a good night’s rest, and that he should own it himself, before I tell him the truth. I must request, madam, that you will not disturb the man. Rigobert will ring the alarm bell if anything happens.”

My mistress was unwilling to yield. For the next five minutes at least, there was a warm discussion between the two. In the end, Mrs. Fairbank was obliged to give way — for the time. “In half an hour,” she said, “Francis will either be sound asleep, or awake again. In half an hour I shall come back.” She took the doctor’s arm. They returned together to the house.

Left by myself, with half an hour before me, I resolved to take the Englishwoman back to the village — then, returning to the stables, to remove the gag and the bindings from Francis, and to let him screech to his heart’s content. What would his alarming the whole establishment matter to
me,
after I had got rid of the compromising presence of my guest?

Returning to the yard I heard a sound like the creaking of an open door on its hinges. The gate of the north entrance I had just closed with my own hand. I went round to the west entrance, at the back of the stables. It opened on a field crossed by two footpaths, in Mr. Fairbank’s grounds. The nearest footpath led to the village. The other led to the high road and the river.

Arriving at the west entrance I found the door open — swinging to and fro slowly in the fresh morning breeze. I had myself locked and bolted that door after admitting my fair friend at eleven o’clock. A vague dread of something wrong stole its way into my mind. I hurried back to the stables.

I looked into my own room. It was empty. I went to the harness-room. Not a sign of the woman was there. I returned to my room, and approached the door of the Englishman’s bedchamber. Was it possible that she had remained there during my absence? An unaccountable reluctance to open the door made me hesitate, with my hand on the lock. I listened. There was not a sound inside. I called softly. There was no answer. I drew back a step, still hesitating. I noticed something dark, moving slowly in the crevice between the bottom of the door and the boarded floor. Snatching up the candle from the table, I held it low, and looked. The dark, slowly-moving object was a stream of blood!

That horrid sight roused me. I opened the door.

The Englishman lay on his bed — alone in the room. He was stabbed in two places — in the throat and in the heart. The weapon was left in the second wound. It was a knife of English manufacture, with a handle of buck-horn as good as new.

I instantly gave the alarm. Witnesses can speak to what followed. It is monstrous to suppose that I am guilty of the murder. I admit that I am capable of committing follies; but I shrink from the bare idea of a crime. Besides, I had no motive for killing the man. The woman murdered him in my absence. The woman escaped by the west entrance while I was talking to my mistress. I have no more to say. I swear to you what I have here written is a true statement of all that happened on the morning of the first of March.

Accept, sir, the assurance of my sentiments of profound gratitude and respect.

JOSEPH RIGOBERT.

LAST LINES.

ADDED BY PERCY FAIRBANK.

TRIED for the murder of Francis Raven, Joseph Rigobert was found Not Guilty; the papers of the assassinated man presenting ample evidence of the deadly animosity felt towards him by his wife.

The investigations pursued on the morning when the crime was committed showed that the murderess, after leaving the stable, had taken the footpath which led to the river. The river was dragged — without result. It remains doubtful to this day whether she died by drowning or not. The one thing certain is — that Alicia Warlock was never seen again.

So — beginning in mystery, ending in mystery — the Dream-Woman passes from your view. Ghost; demon; or living human creature — say for yourselves which she is. Or, knowing what unfathomed wonders are around you, what unfathomed wonders are
in
you, let the wise words of the greatest of all poets be explanation enough:

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

I.

‘T
HE
captain is still in the prime of life,’ the widow remarked to me. ‘He has given up his ship; he possesses a sufficient income, and he has nobody to live with him. I should like to know why he doesn’t marry.’

‘The captain was excessively rude to Me,’ the widow’s younger sister added, on her side. ‘When we took leave of him in London, I asked if there was any likelihood of his joining us at Brighton this season. He turned his back on me as if I had mortally offended him; and he made me this extraordinary answer: ‘Miss! I hate the sight of the sea.’ The man has been a sailor all his life. What does he mean by saying that he hates the sight of the sea?’

I was entirely at the mercy of the widow and the widow’s sister. The other members of our little society at the boarding-house had all gone to a concert. I was known to be the captain’s oldest friend, and to be well acquainted with all the events of the captain’s life. No polite alternative was left but to answer the questions that had been put to me.

‘I can satisfy your curiosity,’ I said to the two ladies, ‘without violating any confidence reposed in me — if you only have patience enough to listen to a very strange story.’

It is needless to report the answer that I received. We sent away the tea-things, and we trimmed the lamp; and then I told the ladies why the captain would never marry, and why (sailor as he was) he hated the sight of the sea.

II.

T
HE
British merchantman, ‘Fortuna’
on the last occasion when our friend the captain took command of the ship) sailed from the port of Liverpool with the morning tide. She was bound to certain islands in the Pacific Ocean, in search of a cargo of sandal-wood — a commodity which, in those days, found a ready and profitable market in the Chinese Empire.

A large discretion was reposed in the captain by the owners, who knew him to be not only thoroughly trustworthy, but a man of rare abilities, carefully cultivated during the leisure hours of a seafaring life. Devoted heart and soul to his professional duties, he was a hard reader and an excellent linguist as well. Having had considerable experience among the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, he had attentively studied their characters, and had mastered their language in more than one of its many dialects. Thanks to the valuable information thus obtained, the captain was never at a loss to conciliate the islanders; and he had more than once succeeded in finding a cargo under circumstances in which other captains had failed. Possessing these merits, he had his fair share of human defects. For instance, he was a little too conscious of his own good looks — of his bright chestnut hair and whiskers, of his beautiful blue eyes, of his fair white skin, which many a woman had looked at with the admiration that is akin to envy. His shapely hands were protected by gloves; a broad-brimmed hat sheltered his complexion in fine weather from the sun. He was nice in his choice of perfumes; he never drank spirits, and the smell of tobacco was abhorrent to him. New men among his officers and his crew, seeing him studying in his cabin, perfectly dressed, washed, and brushed until he was an object speckless to look upon, soft of voice and careful in his choice of words, were apt to conclude that they had trusted themselves at sea under a commander who was an anomalous mixture of a schoolmaster and a dandy. But if the slightest infraction of discipline took place, or if the storm rose and the vessel was in peril, it was soon discovered that the gloved hands held a rod of iron; that the soft voice could make itself heard through wind and sea from one end of the deck to the other; and that it issued orders which the greatest fool on board knew to be orders that saved the ship. Throughout his professional life, the general impression that this variously-gifted man produced on the little world about him was always the same. Some few liked him; everybody respected him; nobody understood him. The captain accepted those results, and went on reading his books and protecting his complexion; and his owners shook hands with him, and put up with his gloves.

The ‘Fortuna’ touched at Rio for water, and for supplies of food which might prove useful in case of scurvy. In due time the ship rounded Cape Horn, in the finest weather ever known in those latitudes by the oldest hand on board. The mate, one Mr. Duncalf — a boozing, wheezing, self-confident old sea-dog, with a flaming face and a vast vocabulary of oaths — swore that he didn’t like it. ‘The foul weather’s coming, my lads,’ said Mr. Duncalf. ‘Mark my words, there’ll be wind enough to take the curl out of the captain’s whiskers before we are many days older!’

During a fortnight more the ship cruised in search of the islands to which the owners had directed her. At the end of that time the wind took the predicted liberties with the captain’s whiskers; and Mr. Duncalf stood revealed to an admiring crew in the character of a true prophet.

For three days and three nights the ‘Fortuna’ ran before the storm, at the mercy of wind and sea. On the fourth morning the gale blew itself out, the sun appeared again towards noon, and the captain was able to take an observation. The result informed him that he was in a part of the Pacific Ocean with which he was entirely unacquainted. Thereupon, the officers were called into the cabin. Mr. Duncalf, as became his rank, was consulted first. His opinion possessed the merit of brevity. ‘My lads, this ship’s bewitched. Take my word for it, we shall wish ourselves back in our own latitudes before we are many days older.’ Which, being interpreted, meant that Mr. Duncalf was lost, like his superior officer, in a part of the ocean of which he knew nothing.

The captain decided (the weather being now quite fine again) to stand on, under an easy press of sail, for four-and-twenty hours more, and to see if anything came of it.

Soon after nightfall, something did come of it. The lookout forward hailed the deck with the dreadful cry, ‘Breakers ahead!’ In less than a minute more, everybody heard the crash of the broken water. The ‘Fortuna’ was put about, and came round slowly in the light wind. Thanks to the timely alarm and the fine weather, the safety of the vessel was easily provided for. They kept her under short sail; and they waited for the morning.