Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (396 page)

“‘I shall sleep when we have left Combe-Raven,’ she said. ‘I shall be better when it is all over, and I have bid Frank good-by.’ She had in her hand our father’s will, and the letter he wrote to you; and when she had done speaking, she gave them into my possession. I was the eldest (she said), and those last precious relics ought to be in my keeping. I tried to propose to her that we should divide them; but she shook her head. ‘I have copied for myself,’ was her answer, ‘all that he says of us in the will, and all that he says in the letter.’ She told me this, and took from her bosom a tiny white silk bag, which she had made in the night, and in which she had put the extracts, so as to keep them always about her. ‘This tells me in his own words what his last wishes were for both of us,’ she said; ‘and this is all I want for the future.’

“These are trifles to dwell on; and I am almost surprised at myself for not feeling ashamed to trouble you with them. But, since I have known what your early connection was with my father and mother, I have learned to think of you (and, I suppose, to write to you) as an old friend. And, besides, I have it so much at heart to change your opinion of Magdalen, that I can’t help telling you the smallest things about her which may, in my judgment, end in making you think of her as I do.

“When breakfast-time came (on Thursday morning), we were surprised to find a strange letter on the table. Perhaps I ought to mention it to you, in case of any future necessity for your interference. It was addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest mourning-border round it; and the writer was the same man who followed us on our way home from a walk one day last spring — Captain Wragge. His object appears to be to assert once more his audacious claim to a family connection with my poor mother, under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is an insolence in such a person to have written at all. He expresses as much sympathy — on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper — as if he had been really intimate with us; and he begs to know, in a postscript (being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really happened), whether it is thought desirable that he should be present, among the other relatives, at the reading of the will! The address he gives, at which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, ‘Post-office, Birmingham.’ This is all I have to tell you on the subject. Both the letter and the writer seem to me to be equally unworthy of the slightest notice, on our part or on yours.

“After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged that Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented himself to take his leave. I was upstairs when he came; and I remained upstairs for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anxious, as you may well believe, on Magdalen’s account.

“At the end of the half-hour or more, I came downstairs. As I reached the landing I suddenly heard her voice, raised entreatingly, and calling on him by his name — then loud sobs — then a frightful laughing and screaming, both together, that rang through the house. I instantly ran into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and Frank standing staring at her, with a lowering, angry face, biting his nails.

“I felt so indignant — without knowing plainly why, for I was ignorant, of course, of what had passed at the interview — that I took Mr. Francis Clare by the shoulders and pushed him out of the room. I am careful to tell you how I acted toward him, and what led to it; because I understand that he is excessively offended with me, and that he is likely to mention elsewhere what he calls my unladylike violence toward him. If he should mention it to you, I am anxious to acknowledge, of my own accord, that I forgot myself — not, I hope you will think, without some provocation.

“I pushed him into the hall, leaving Magdalen, for the moment, to Miss Garth’s care. Instead of going away, he sat down sulkily on one of the hall chairs. ‘May I ask the reason of this extraordinary violence?’ he inquired, with an injured look. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You will be good enough to imagine the reason for yourself, and to leave us immediately, if you please.’ He sat doggedly in the chair, biting his nails and considering. ‘What have I done to be treated in this unfeeling manner?’ he asked, after a while. ‘I can enter into no discussion with you,’ I answered; ‘I can only request you to leave us. If you persist in waiting to see my sister again, I will go to the cottage myself and appeal to your father.’ He got up in a great hurry at those words. ‘I have been infamously used in this business,’ he said. ‘All the hardships and the sacrifices have fallen to my share. I’m the only one among you who has any heart: all the rest are as hard as stones — Magdalen included. In one breath she says she loves me, and in another she tells me to go to China. What have I done to be treated with this heartless inconsistency? I am consistent myself — I only want to stop at home — and (what’s the consequence?) you’re all against me!’ In that manner he grumbled his way down the steps, and so I saw the last of him. This was all that passed between us. If he gives you any other account of it, what he says will be false. He made no attempt to return. An hour afterward his father came alone to say good-by. He saw Miss Garth and me, but not Magdalen; and he told us he would take the necessary measures, with your assistance, for having his son properly looked after in London, and seen safely on board the vessel when the time came. It was a short visit, and a sad leave-taking. Even Mr. Clare was sorry, though he tried hard to hide it.

“We had barely two hours, after Mr. Clare had left us, before it would be time to go. I went back to Magdalen, and found her quieter and better, though terribly pale and exhausted, and oppressed, as I fancied, by thoughts which she could not prevail on herself to communicate. She would tell me nothing then — she has told me nothing since — of what passed between herself and Francis Clare. When I spoke of him angrily (feeling as I did that he had distressed and tortured her, when she ought to have had all the encouragement and comfort from him that man could give), she refused to hear me: she made the kindest allowances and the sweetest excuses for him, and laid all the blame of the dreadful state in which I had found her entirely on herself. Was I wrong in telling you that she had a noble nature? And won’t you alter your opinion when you read these lines?

“We had no friends to come and bid us good-by; and our few acquaintances were too far from us — perhaps too indifferent about us — to call. We employed the little leisure left in going over the house together for the last time. We took leave of our old schoolroom, our bedrooms, the room where our mother died, the little study where our father used to settle his accounts and write his letters — feeling toward them, in our forlorn condition, as other girls might have felt at parting with old friends. From the house, in a gleam of fine weather, we went into the garden, and gathered our last nosegay; with the purpose of drying the flowers when they begin to wither, and keeping them in remembrance of the happy days that are gone. When we had said good-by to the garden, there was only half an hour left. We went together to the grave; we knelt down, side by side, in silence, and kissed the sacred ground. I thought my heart would have broken. August was the month of my mother’s birthday; and, this time last year, my father and Magdalen and I were all consulting in secret what present we could make to surprise her with on the birthday morning.

“If you had seen how Magdalen suffered, you would never doubt her again. I had to take her from the last resting-place of our father and mother almost by force. Before we were out of the churchyard she broke from me and ran back. She dropped on her knees at the grave; tore up from it passionately a handful of grass; and said something to herself, at the same moment, which, though I followed her instantly, I did not get near enough to hear. She turned on me in such a frenzied manner, when I tried to raise her from the ground — she looked at me with such a fearful wildness in her eyes — that I felt absolutely terrified at the sight of her. To my relief, the paroxysm left her as suddenly as it had come. She thrust away the tuft of grass into the bosom of her dress, and took my arm and hurried with me out of the churchyard. I asked her why she had gone back — I asked what those words were which she had spoken at the grave. ‘A promise to our dead father,’ she answered, with a momentary return of the wild look and the frenzied manner which had startled me already. I was afraid to agitate her by saying more; I left all other questions to be asked at a fitter and a quieter time. You will understand from this how terribly she suffers, how wildly and strangely she acts under violent agitation; and you will not interpret against her what she said or did when you saw her on Wednesday last.

“We only returned to the house in time to hasten away from it to the train. Perhaps it was better for us so — better that we had only a moment left to look back before the turn in the road hid the last of Combe-Raven from our view. There was not a soul we knew at the station; nobody to stare at us, nobody to wish us good-by. The rain came on again as we took our seats in the train. What we felt at the sight of the railway — what horrible remembrances it forced on our minds of the calamity which has made us fatherless — I cannot, and dare not, tell you. I have tried anxiously not to write this letter in a gloomy tone; not to return all your kindness to us by distressing you with our grief. Perhaps I have dwelt too long already on the little story of our parting from home? I can only say, in excuse, that my heart is full of it; and what is not in my heart my pen won’t write.

“We have been so short a time in our new abode that I have nothing more to tell you — except that Miss Garth’s sister has received us with the heartiest kindness. She considerately leaves us to ourselves, until we are fitter than we are now to think of our future plans, and to arrange as we best can for earning our own living. The house is so large, and the position of our rooms has been so thoughtfully chosen, that I should hardly know — except when I hear the laughing of the younger girls in the garden — that we were living in a school.

“With kindest and best wishes from Miss Garth and my sister, believe me, dear Mr. Pendril, gratefully yours,

“NORAH VANSTONE.”

II.

From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril.

“Westmoreland House, Kensington,

“September 23d, 1846.

“MY DEAR SIR — I write these lines in such misery of mind as no words can describe. Magdalen has deserted us. At an early hour this morning she secretly left the house, and she has not been heard of since.

“I would come and speak to you personally; but I dare not leave Norah. I must try to control myself; I must try to write.

“Nothing happened yesterday to prepare me or to prepare Norah for this last — I had almost said, this worst — of all our afflictions. The only alteration we either of us noticed in the unhappy girl was an alteration for the better when we parted for the night. She kissed me, which she has not done latterly; and she burst out crying when she embraced her sister next. We had so little suspicion of the truth that we thought these signs of renewed tenderness and affection a promise of better things for the future.