Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1745 page)

In a fortnight more, my father and my brother began to look on the daily companionship of our new friend as one of the settled institutions of their lives. In a fortnight more, Mr. Roland Cameron and I — though we neither of us ventured to acknowledge it — were as devotedly in love with each other as two young people could well be. Ah, what a delightful time it was! and how cruelly soon our happiness came to an end!

During the brief interval which I have just described, I observed certain peculiarities in Roland Cameron’s conduct, which perplexed and troubled me when my mind was busy with him in my lonely moments.

For instance, he was subject to the strangest lapses into silence, when he and I were talking together At these times his eyes assumed a weary, absent look, and his mind seemed to wander away — far from the conversation, and far from me. He was perfectly unaware of his own infirmity; he fell into it unconsciously, and came out of it unconsciously. If I noticed that he had not been attending to me, or if I asked why he had been silent, he was completely at a loss to comprehend what I meant; I puzzled and distressed him. What he was thinking of in these pauses of silence, it was impossible to guess. His face, at other times singularly mobile and expressive, became almost a perfect blank. Had he suffered some terrible shock at some past period of his life and had his mind never quite recovered it? I longed to ask him the question, and yet I shrank from doing it, I was so sadly afraid of distressing him; or, to put it in plainer words, I was so truly and so tenderly fond of him.

Then, again, though he was ordinarily, I sincerely believe, the most gentle and most lovable of men, there were occasions when he would surprise me by violent outbreaks of temper, excited by the merest trifles. A dog barking suddenly at his heels, or a boy throwing stones in the road, or an importunate shop-keeper trying to make him purchase something that he did not want, would throw him into a frenzy of rage which was, without exaggeration, really frightful to see. He always apologized for these outbreaks, in terms which showed that he was sincerely ashamed of his own violence. But he could never succeed in controlling himself. The lapses into passion, like the lapses into silence took him into their own possession, and did with him, for the time being, just what they pleased.

One more example of Roland’s peculiarities, and I have done. The strangeness of his conduct in this case was noticed by my father and my brother, as well as by me.

When Roland was with us in the evening, whether he came to dinner or to tea, he invariably left us exactly at nine o’clock. Try as we might to persuade him to stay longer, he always politely but positively refused. Even I had no influence over him in this matter. When I pressed him to remain, though it cost him an effort, he still retired exactly as the clock struck nine. He gave no reason for this strange proceeding; he only said that it was a habit of his, and begged us to indulge him in it without asking for an explanation. My father and my brother (being men) succeeded in controlling their curiosity. For my part (being a woman) every day that passed only made me more and more eager to penetrate the mystery. I privately resolved to choose my time, when Roland was in a particularly accessible humor, and then to appeal to him for the explanation which he had hitherto refused — as a special favor to myself.

In two days more I found my opportunity.

Some friends of ours, who had joined us at Eastbourne, proposed a picnic party to the famous neighbouring cliff called Beachey Head. We accepted the invitation. The day was lovely, and the gypsy dinner was, as usual, infinitely preferable (for once in a way) to a formal dinner indoors. Toward evening, our little assembly separated into parties of twos and threes to explore the neighbourhood. Roland and I found ourselves together, as a matter of course. We were happy, and we were alone. Was it the right or the wrong time to ask the fatal question? I am not able to decide; I only know that I asked it.

III.

“MR. CAMERON,” I said, “will you make allowances for a weak woman? And will you tell me something that I am dying to know?”

He walked straight into the trap, with that entire absence of ready wit, or small suspicion (I leave you to choose the right phrase), which is so much like men, and so little like women.

“Of course I will,” he answered.

“Then tell me,” I asked, “why you always insist on leaving us at nine o’clock?”

He started, and looked at me so sadly, so reproachfully, that I would have given everything I possessed to recall the rash words that had just passed my lips.

“If I consent to tell you,” he replied, after a momentary struggle with himself, “will you let me put a question to you first, and will you promise to answer it?”

I gave him my promise, and waited eagerly for what was coming next.

“Miss Brading,” he said, “tell me honestly, do you think I am mad?”

It was impossible to laugh at him: he spoke those strange words seriously — sternly, I might almost say.

“No such thought ever entered my head,” I answered.

He looked at me very earnestly.

“You say that on your word of honour?”

“On my word of honour.”

I answered with perfect sincerity, and I evidently satisfied him that I had spoken the truth. He took my hand, and lifted it gratefully to his lips.

“Thank you,” he said, simply. “You encourage me to tell you a very sad story.”

“Your own story?” I asked.

“My own story. Let me begin by telling you why I persist in leaving your house always at the same early hour. Whenever I go out, I am bound by a promise to the person with whom I am living at Eastbourne to return at a quarter-past nine o’clock.”

“The person with whom you are living?” I repeated. “You are living at a boarding-house, are you not?”

“I am living, Miss Brading, under the care of a doctor who keeps an asylum for the insane. He has taken a house for some of his wealthier patients at the sea-side; and he allows me liberty in the day-time, on condition that I faithfully perform my promise at night. It is a quarter of an hour’s walk from your house to the doctor’s, and it is a rule that the patients retire at half-past nine o’clock.”

Here was the mystery which had so sorely perplexed me revealed at last! The disclosure literally struck me speechless. Unconsciously and instinctively I drew back from him a few steps. He fixed his sad eyes on me with a touching look of entreaty.

“Don’t shrink away from me,” he said. “
You
don’t think I am mad.”

I was too confused and distressed to know what to say, and, at the same time, I was too fond of him not to answer that appeal. I took his hand and pressed it in silence. He turned his head aside for a moment. I thought I saw a tear on his cheek. I felt his hand close tremblingly on mine. He mastered himself with surprising resolution; he spoke with perfect composure when he looked at me again.

“Do you care to know my story,” he asked, “after what I have just told you?”

“I am eager to hear it,” I answered. “You don’t know how I feel for you. I am too distressed to be able to express myself in words.”

“You are the kindest and dearest of women!” he said, with the utmost fervor, and at the same time with the utmost respect.

We sat down together in a grassy hollow of the cliff, with our faces toward the grand gray sea. The daylight was beginning to fade as I heard the story which made me Roland Cameron’s wife.

IV.

“MY mother died when I was an infant in arms,” he began. “My father, from my earliest to my latest recollections, was always hard toward me. I have been told that I was an odd child, with strange ways of my own. My father detested anything that was strongly marked, anything out of the ordinary way, in the characters and habits of the persons about him. He himself lived (as the phrase is) by line and rule; and he determined to make his son follow his example. I was subjected to severe discipline at school, and I was carefully watched afterward at college. Looking back on my early life, I can see no traces of happiness, I can find no tokens of sympathy. Sad submission to a hard destiny, weary wayfaring over unfriendly roads — such is the story of my life, from ten years old to twenty.

“I passed one autumn vacation at the Cumberland lakes; and there I met by accident with a young French lady. The result of that meeting decided my whole after-life.

“She filled the position of nursery governess in the house of a wealthy Englishman. I had frequent opportunities of seeing her. We took an innocent pleasure in each other’s society. Her little experience of life was strangely like mine. There was a perfect sympathy of thought and feeling between us. We loved, or thought we loved. I was not twenty-one, and she was not eighteen, when I asked her to be my wife.

“I can understand my folly now, and can laugh at it, or lament over it, as the humour moves me. And yet I can’t help pitying myself when I look back at myself at that time — I was so young, so hungry for a little sympathy, so weary of my empty, friendless life. Well! everything is comparative in this world. I was soon to regret, bitterly to regret, that friendless life — wretched as it was.

“The poor girl’s employer discovered our attachment, through his wife. He at once communicated with my father.

“My father had but one word to say — he insisted on my going abroad, and leaving it to him to release me from my absurd engagement in my absence. I answered him that I should be of age in a few months, and that I was determined to marry the girl. He gave me three days to reconsider that resolution. I held to my resolution. In a week afterward I was declared insane by two medical men; and I was placed by my father in a lunatic asylum.

“Was it an act of insanity for the son of a gentleman, with great expectations before him, to propose marriage to a nursery governess? I declare, as Heaven is my witness, I know of no other act of mine which could justify my father, and justify the doctors, in placing me under restraint.

“I was three years in that asylum. It was officially reported that the air did not agree with me. I was removed, for two years more, to another asylum in a remote part of England. For the five best years of my life I have been herded with madmen — and my reason has survived it. The impression I produce on you, on your father, on your brother, on all our friends at this picnic, is that I am as reasonable as the rest of my fellow-creatures. Am I rushing to a hasty conclusion when I assert myself to be now, and always to have been, a sane man?

“At the end of my five years of arbitrary imprisonment in a free country, happily for me — I am ashamed to say it, but I must speak the truth — happily for me, my merciless father died. His trustees, to whom I was now consigned, felt some pity for me. They could not take the responsibility of granting me my freedom. But they placed me under the care of a surgeon, who received me into his private residence, and who allowed me free exercise in the open air.

“A year’s trial of this new mode of life satisfied the surgeon, and satisfied every one else who took the smallest interest in me, that I was perfectly fit to enjoy my liberty. I was freed from all restraint, and was permitted to reside with a near relative of mine, in that very Lake country which had been the scene of my fatal meeting with the French girl, six years before.”

PART THE SECOND.

V.

“I LIVED happily in the house of my relative, satisfied with the ordinary pursuits of a country gentleman. Time had long since cured me of my boyish infatuation for the nursery governess. I could revisit with perfect composure the paths along which we had walked, the lake on which we had sailed together. Hearing by chance that she was married in her own country, I could wish her all possible happiness, with the sober kindness of a disinterested friend. What a strange thread of irony runs through the texture of the simplest human life! The early love for which I had sacrificed and suffered so much was now revealed to me in its true colours, as a boy’s passing fancy — nothing more!

“Three years of peaceful freedom passed; freedom which, on the uncontradicted testimony of respectable witnesses, I never abused. Well, that long and happy interval, like all intervals, came to its end — and then the great misfortune of my life fell upon me. One of my uncles died and left me inheritor of his whole fortune. I alone, to the exclusion of the other heirs, now received, not only the large income derived from the estates, but seventy thousand pounds in ready money as well.