Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (650 page)

“I break the agreement, Rachel, every time I see you.”

“Then don’t see me.”

“Quite useless! I break the agreement every time I think of you. Oh, Rachel! how kindly you told me, only the other day, that my place in your estimation was a higher place than it had ever been yet! Am I mad to build the hopes I do on those dear words? Am I mad to dream of some future day when your heart may soften to me? Don’t tell me so, if I am! Leave me my delusion, dearest! I must have THAT to cherish, and to comfort me, if I have nothing else!”

His voice trembled, and he put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Exeter Hall again! Nothing wanting to complete the parallel but the audience, the cheers, and the glass of water.

Even her obdurate nature was touched. I saw her lean a little nearer to him. I heard a new tone of interest in her next words.

“Are you really sure, Godfrey, that you are so fond of me as that?”

“Sure! You know what I was, Rachel. Let me tell you what I am. I have lost every interest in life, but my interest in you. A transformation has come over me which I can’t account for, myself. Would you believe it? My charitable business is an unendurable nuisance to me; and when I see a Ladies’ Committee now, I wish myself at the uttermost ends of the earth!”

If the annals of apostasy offer anything comparable to such a declaration as that, I can only say that the case in point is not producible from the stores of my reading. I thought of the Mothers’-Small-Clothes. I thought of the Sunday-Sweetheart-Supervision. I thought of the other Societies, too numerous to mention, all built up on this man as on a tower of strength. I thought of the struggling Female Boards, who, so to speak, drew the breath of their business-life through the nostrils of Mr. Godfrey — of that same Mr. Godfrey who had just reviled our good work as a “nuisance” — and just declared that he wished he was at the uttermost ends of the earth when he found himself in our company! My young female friends will feel encouraged to persevere, when I mention that it tried even My discipline before I could devour my own righteous indignation in silence. At the same time, it is only justice to myself to add, that I didn’t lose a syllable of the conversation. Rachel was the next to speak.

“You have made your confession,” she said. “I wonder whether it would cure you of your unhappy attachment to me, if I made mine?”

He started. I confess I started too. He thought, and I thought, that she was about to divulge the mystery of the Moonstone.

“Would you think, to look at me,” she went on, “that I am the wretchedest girl living? It’s true, Godfrey. What greater wretchedness can there be than to live degraded in your own estimation? That is my life now.”

“My dear Rachel! it’s impossible you can have any reason to speak of yourself in that way!”

“How do you know I have no reason?”

“Can you ask me the question! I know it, because I know you. Your silence, dearest, has never lowered you in the estimation of your true friends. The disappearance of your precious birthday gift may seem strange; your unexplained connection with that event may seem stranger still.”

“Are you speaking of the Moonstone, Godfrey —
 
— ”

“I certainly thought that you referred —
 
— ”

“I referred to nothing of the sort. I can hear of the loss of the Moonstone, let who will speak of it, without feeling degraded in my own estimation. If the story of the Diamond ever comes to light, it will be known that I accepted a dreadful responsibility; it will be known that I involved myself in the keeping of a miserable secret — but it will be as clear as the sun at noon-day that I did nothing mean! You have misunderstood me, Godfrey. It’s my fault for not speaking more plainly. Cost me what it may, I will be plainer now. Suppose you were not in love with me? Suppose you were in love with some other woman?”

“Yes?”

“Suppose you discovered that woman to be utterly unworthy of you? Suppose you were quite convinced that it was a disgrace to you to waste another thought on her? Suppose the bare idea of ever marrying such a person made your face burn, only with thinking of it.”

“Yes?”

“And, suppose, in spite of all that — you couldn’t tear her from your heart? Suppose the feeling she had roused in you (in the time when you believed in her) was not a feeling to be hidden? Suppose the love this wretch had inspired in you? Oh, how can I find words to say it in! How can I make a MAN understand that a feeling which horrifies me at myself, can be a feeling that fascinates me at the same time? It’s the breath of my life, Godfrey, and it’s the poison that kills me — both in one! Go away! I must be out of my mind to talk as I am talking now. No! you mustn’t leave me — you mustn’t carry away a wrong impression. I must say what is to be said in my own defence. Mind this! HE doesn’t know — he never will know, what I have told you. I will never see him — I don’t care what happens — I will never, never, never see him again! Don’t ask me his name! Don’t ask me any more! Let’s change the subject. Are you doctor enough, Godfrey, to tell me why I feel as if I was stifling for want of breath? Is there a form of hysterics that bursts into words instead of tears? I dare say! What does it matter? You will get over any trouble I have caused you, easily enough now. I have dropped to my right place in your estimation, haven’t I? Don’t notice me! Don’t pity me! For God’s sake, go away!”

She turned round on a sudden, and beat her hands wildly on the back of the ottoman. Her head dropped on the cushions; and she burst out crying. Before I had time to feel shocked, at this, I was horror-struck by an entirely unexpected proceeding on the part of Mr. Godfrey. Will it be credited that he fell on his knees at her feet? — on BOTH knees, I solemnly declare! May modesty mention that he put his arms round her next? And may reluctant admiration acknowledge that he electrified her with two words?

“Noble creature!”

No more than that! But he did it with one of the bursts which have made his fame as a public speaker. She sat, either quite thunderstruck, or quite fascinated — I don’t know which — without even making an effort to put his arms back where his arms ought to have been. As for me, my sense of propriety was completely bewildered. I was so painfully uncertain whether it was my first duty to close my eyes, or to stop my ears, that I did neither. I attribute my being still able to hold the curtain in the right position for looking and listening, entirely to suppressed hysterics. In suppressed hysterics, it is admitted, even by the doctors, that one must hold something.

“Yes,” he said, with all the fascination of his evangelical voice and manner, “you are a noble creature! A woman who can speak the truth, for the truth’s own sake — a woman who will sacrifice her pride, rather than sacrifice an honest man who loves her — is the most priceless of all treasures. When such a woman marries, if her husband only wins her esteem and regard, he wins enough to ennoble his whole life. You have spoken, dearest, of your place in my estimation. Judge what that place is — when I implore you on my knees, to let the cure of your poor wounded heart be my care. Rachel! will you honour me, will you bless me, by being my wife?”

By this time I should certainly have decided on stopping my ears, if Rachel had not encouraged me to keep them open, by answering him in the first sensible words I had ever heard fall from her lips.

“Godfrey!” she said, “you must be mad!”

“I never spoke more reasonably, dearest — in your interests, as well as in mine. Look for a moment to the future. Is your happiness to be sacrificed to a man who has never known how you feel towards him, and whom you are resolved never to see again? Is it not your duty to yourself to forget this ill-fated attachment? and is forgetfulness to be found in the life you are leading now? You have tried that life, and you are wearying of it already. Surround yourself with nobler interests than the wretched interests of the world. A heart that loves and honours you; a home whose peaceful claims and happy duties win gently on you day by day — try the consolation, Rachel, which is to be found THERE! I don’t ask for your love — I will be content with your affection and regard. Let the rest be left, confidently left, to your husband’s devotion, and to Time that heals even wounds as deep as yours.”

She began to yield already. Oh, what a bringing-up she must have had! Oh, how differently I should have acted in her place!

“Don’t tempt me, Godfrey,” she said; “I am wretched enough and reckless enough as it is. Don’t tempt me to be more wretched and more wreckless still!”

“One question, Rachel. Have you any personal objection to me?”

“I! I always liked you. After what you have just said to me, I should be insensible indeed if I didn’t respect and admire you as well.”

“Do you know many wives, my dear Rachel, who respect and admire their husbands? And yet they and their husbands get on very well. How many brides go to the altar with hearts that would bear inspection by the men who take them there? And yet it doesn’t end unhappily — somehow or other the nuptial establishment jogs on. The truth is, that women try marriage as a Refuge, far more numerously than they are willing to admit; and, what is more, they find that marriage has justified their confidence in it. Look at your own case once again. At your age, and with your attractions, is it possible for you to sentence yourself to a single life? Trust my knowledge of the world — nothing is less possible. It is merely a question of time. You may marry some other man, some years hence. Or you may marry the man, dearest, who is now at your feet, and who prizes your respect and admiration above the love of any other woman on the face of the earth.”

“Gently, Godfrey! you are putting something into my head which I never thought of before. You are tempting me with a new prospect, when all my other prospects are closed before me. I tell you again, I am miserable enough and desperate enough, if you say another word, to marry you on your own terms. Take the warning, and go!”

“I won’t even rise from my knees, till you have said yes!”

“If I say yes you will repent, and I shall repent, when it is too late!”

“We shall both bless the day, darling, when I pressed, and when you yielded.”

“Do you feel as confidently as you speak?”

“You shall judge for yourself. I speak from what I have seen in my own family. Tell me what you think of our household at Frizinghall. Do my father and mother live unhappily together?”

“Far from it — so far as I can see.”

“When my mother was a girl, Rachel (it is no secret in the family), she had loved as you love — she had given her heart to a man who was unworthy of her. She married my father, respecting him, admiring him, but nothing more. Your own eyes have seen the result. Is there no encouragement in it for you and for me?” *

    
* See Betteredge’s Narrative, chapter viii.

“You won’t hurry me, Godfrey?”

“My time shall be yours.”

“You won’t ask me for more than I can give?”

“My angel! I only ask you to give me yourself.”

“Take me!”

In those two words she accepted him!

He had another burst — a burst of unholy rapture this time. He drew her nearer and nearer to him till her face touched his; and then — No! I really cannot prevail upon myself to carry this shocking disclosure any farther. Let me only say, that I tried to close my eyes before it happened, and that I was just one moment too late. I had calculated, you see, on her resisting. She submitted. To every right-feeling person of my own sex, volumes could say no more.

Even my innocence in such matters began to see its way to the end of the interview now. They understood each other so thoroughly by this time, that I fully expected to see them walk off together, arm in arm, to be married. There appeared, however, judging by Mr. Godfrey’s next words, to be one more trifling formality which it was necessary to observe. He seated himself — unforbidden this time — on the ottoman by her side. “Shall I speak to your dear mother?” he asked. “Or will you?”

She declined both alternatives.

“Let my mother hear nothing from either of us, until she is better. I wish it to be kept a secret for the present, Godfrey. Go now, and come back this evening. We have been here alone together quite long enough.”