Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (587 page)

“Midnight. — I am alone again at last. Have I nerve enough to write the history of this terrible evening, just as it has passed? I have nerve enough, at any rate, to turn to a new leaf, and try.”

II. THE DIARY CONTINUED.

“We went to the San Carlo. Armadale’s stupidity showed itself, even in such a simple matter as taking a box. He had confounded an opera with a play, and had chosen a box close to the stage, with the idea that one’s chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers as plainly as possible! Fortunately for our ears, Bellini’s lovely melodies are, for the most part, tenderly and delicately accompanied — or the orchestra might have deafened us.

“I sat back in the box at first, well out of sight; for it was impossible to be sure that some of my old friends of former days at Naples might not be in the theater. But the sweet music gradually tempted me out of my seclusion. I was so charmed and interested that I leaned forward without knowing it, and looked at the stage.

“I was made aware of my own imprudence by a discovery which, for the moment, literally chilled my blood. One of the singers, among the chorus of Druids, was looking at me while he sang with the rest. His head was disguised in the long white hair, and the lower part of his face was completely covered with the flowing white beard proper to the character. But the eyes with which he looked at me were the eyes of the one man on earth whom I have most reason to dread ever seeing again — Manuel!

“If it had not been for my smelling-bottle, I believe I should have lost my senses. As it was, I drew back again into the shadow. Even Armadale noticed the sudden change in me: he, as well as Midwinter, asked if I was ill. I said I felt the heat, but hoped I should be better presently; and then leaned back in the box, and tried to rally my courage. I succeeded in recovering self-possession enough to be able to look again at the stage (without showing myself) the next time the chorus appeared. There was the man again! But to my infinite relief he never looked toward our box a second time. This welcome indifference, on his part, helped to satisfy me that I had seen an extraordinary accidental resemblance, and nothing more. I still hold to this conclusion, after having had leisure to think; but my mind would be more completely at ease than it is if I had seen the rest of the man’s face without the stage disguises that hid it from all investigation.

“When the curtain fell on the first act, there was a tiresome ballet to be performed (according to the absurd Italian custom), before the opera went on. Though I had got over my first fright, I had been far too seriously startled to feel comfortable in the theater. I dreaded all sorts of impossible accidents; and when Midwinter and Armadale put the question to me, I told them I was not well enough to stay through the rest of the performance.

“At the door of the theater Armadale proposed to say good-night. But Midwinter — evidently dreading the evening with
me
— asked him to come back to supper, if I had no objection. I said the necessary words, and we all three returned together to this house.

“Ten minutes’ quiet in my own room (assisted by a little dose of eau-de-cologne and water) restored me to myself. I joined the men at the supper-table. They received my apologies for taking them away from the opera, with the complimentary assurance that I had not cost either of them the slightest sacrifice of his own pleasure. Midwinter declared that he was too completely worn out to care for anything but the two great blessings, unattainable at the theater, of quiet and fresh air. Armadale said — with an Englishman’s exasperating pride in his own stupidity wherever a matter of art is concerned — that he couldn’t make head or tail of the performance. The principal disappointment, he was good enough to add, was mine, for I evidently understood foreign music, and enjoyed it. Ladies generally did. His darling little Neelie —

“I was in no humour to be persecuted with his ‘Darling Neelie’ after what I had gone through at the theater. It might have been the irritated state of my nerves, or it might have been the eau-de-cologne flying to my head, but the bare mention of the girl seemed to set me in a flame. I tried to turn Armadale’s attention in the direction of the supper-table. He was much obliged, but he had no appetite for more. I offered him wine next, the wine of the country, which is all that our poverty allows us to place on the table. He was much obliged again. The foreign wine was very little more to his taste than the foreign music; but he would take some because I asked him; and he would drink my health in the old-fashioned way, with his best wishes for the happy time when we should all meet again at Thorpe Ambrose, and when there would be a mistress to welcome me at the great house.

“Was he mad to persist in this way? No; his face answered for him. He was under the impression that he was making himself particularly agreeable to me.

“I looked at Midwinter. He might have seen some reason for interfering to change the conversation, if he had looked at me in return. But he sat silent in his chair, irritable and overworked, with his eyes on the ground, thinking.

“I got up and went to the window. Still impenetrable to a sense of his own clumsiness, Armadale followed me. If I had been strong enough to toss him out of the window into the sea, I should certainly have done it at that moment. Not being strong enough, I looked steadily at the view over the bay, and gave him a hint, the broadest and rudest I could think of, to go.

“‘A lovely night for a walk,’ I said, ‘if you are tempted to walk back to the hotel.’

“I doubt if he heard me. At any rate, I produced no sort of effect on him. He stood staring sentimentally at the moonlight; and — there is really no other word to express it —
blew
a sigh. I felt a presentiment of what was coming, unless I stopped his mouth by speaking first.

“‘With all your fondness for England,’ I said, ‘you must own that we have no such moonlight as that at home.’

“He looked at me vacantly, and blew another sigh.

“‘I wonder whether it is fine to-night in England as it is here?’ he said. ‘I wonder whether my dear little girl at home is looking at the moonlight, and thinking of me?’

“I could endure it no longer. I flew out at him at last.

“‘Good heavens, Mr. Armadale!’ I exclaimed, ‘is there only one subject worth mentioning, in the narrow little world you live in? I’m sick to death of Miss Milroy. Do pray talk of something else?’

“His great, broad, stupid face coloured up to the roots of his hideous yellow hair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he stammered, with a kind of sulky surprise. ‘I didn’t suppose — ’ He stopped confusedly, and looked from me to Midwinter. I understood what the look meant. ‘I didn’t suppose she could be jealous of Miss Milroy after marrying
you
!’ That is what he would have said to Midwinter, if I had left them alone together in the room!

“As it was, Midwinter had heard us. Before I could speak again — before Armadale could add another word — he finished his friend’s uncompleted sentence, in a tone that I now heard, and with a look that I now saw, for the first time.

“‘You didn’t suppose, Allan,’ he said, ‘that a lady’s temper could be so easily provoked.’

“The first bitter word of irony, the first hard look of contempt, I had ever had from him! And Armadale the cause of it!

“My anger suddenly left me. Something came in its place which steadied me in an instant, and took me silently out of the room.

“I sat down alone in the bedroom. I had a few minutes of thought with myself, which I don’t choose to put into words, even in these secret pages. I got up, and unlocked — never mind what. I went round to Midwinter’s side of the bed, and took — no matter what I took. The last thing I did before I left the room was to look at my watch. It was half-past ten, Armadale’s usual time for leaving us. I went back at once and joined the two men again.

“I approached Armadale good-humoredly, and said to him:

“No! On second thoughts. I won’t put down what I said to him, or what I did afterward. I’m sick of Armadale! he turns up at every second word I write. I shall pass over what happened in the course of the next hour — the hour between half-past ten and half-past eleven — and take up my story again at the time when Armadale had left us. Can I tell what took place, as soon as our visitor’s back was turned, between Midwinter and me in our own room? Why not pass over what happened, in that case as well as in the other? Why agitate myself by writing it down? I don’t know! Why do I keep a diary at all? Why did the clever thief the other day (in the English newspaper) keep the very thing to convict him in the shape of a record of everything he stole? Why are we not perfectly reasonable in all that we do? Why am I not always on my guard and never inconsistent with myself, like a wicked character in a novel? Why? why? why?

“I don’t care why! I must write down what happened between Midwinter and me to-night,
because
I must. There’s a reason that nobody can answer — myself included.”

* * * * * * *

“It was half-past eleven. Armadale had gone. I had put on my dressing-gown, and had just sat down to arrange my hair for the night, when I was surprised by a knock at the door, and Midwinter came in.

“He was frightfully pale. His eyes looked at me with a terrible despair in them. He never answered when I expressed my surprise at his coming in so much sooner than usual; he wouldn’t even tell me, when I asked the question, if he was ill. Pointing peremptorily to the chair from which I had risen on his entering the room, he told me to sit down again; and then, after a moment, added these words: ‘I have something serious to say to you.’

“I thought of what I had done — or, no, of what I had tried to do — in that interval between half-past ten and half-past eleven, which I have left unnoticed in my diary — and the deadly sickness of terror, which I never felt at the time, came upon me now. I sat down again, as I had been told, without speaking to Midwinter, and without looking at him.

“He took a turn up and down the room, and then came and stood over me.

“‘If Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he began, ‘and if you see him — ’

“His voice faltered, and he said no more. There was some dreadful grief at his heart that was trying to master him. But there are times when his will is a will of iron. He took another turn in the room, and crushed it down. He came back, and stood over me again.

“‘When Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he resumed, ‘let him come into my room, if he wants to see me. I shall tell him that I find it impossible to finish the work I now have on hand as soon as I had hoped, and that he must, therefore, arrange to find a crew for the yacht without any assistance on my part. If he comes, in his disappointment, to appeal to you, give him no hope of my being free in time to help him if he waits. Encourage him to take the best assistance he can get from strangers, and to set about manning the yacht without any further delay. The more occupation he has to keep him away from this house, and the less you encourage him to stay here if he does come, the better I shall be pleased. Don’t forget that, and don’t forget one last direction which I have now to give you. When the vessel is ready for sea, and when Allan invites us to sail with him, it is my wish that you should positively decline to go. He will try to make you change your mind; for I shall, of course, decline, on my side, to leave you in this strange house, and in this foreign country, by yourself. No matter what he says, let nothing persuade you to alter your decision. Refuse, positively and finally! Refuse, I insist on it, to set your foot on the new yacht!’

“He ended quietly and firmly, with no faltering in his voice, and no signs of hesitation or relenting in his face. The sense of surprise which I might otherwise have felt at the strange words he had addressed to me was lost in the sense of relief that they brought to my mind. The dread of
those other words
that I had expected to hear from him left me as suddenly as it had come. I could look at him, I could speak to him once more.

“‘You may depend,’ I answered, ‘on my doing exactly what you order me to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the extraordinary directions you have just given to me?’

“His, face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my dressing-table, with a heavy, hopeless sigh.

“‘You may know the reason,’ he said, ‘if you wish it.’ He waited a little, and considered. ‘You have a right to know the reason,’ he resumed, ‘for you yourself are concerned in it.’ He waited a little again, and again went on. ‘I can only explain the strange request I have just made to you in one way,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to recall what happened in the next room, before Allan left us to-night.’