Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (843 page)

“Is Mr. Nugent Dubourg at home?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He lowered his voice, and added, “I think Mr. Nugent expected to see you to-night.”

Whether he intended it, or not, the servant had done me a good turn — he had put me on my guard. Nugent Dubourg understood my character better than I had understood his. He had foreseen what would happen, when I heard of Lucilla’s visit on my return to the rectory — and he had, no doubt, prepared himself accordingly. I was conscious of a certain nervous trembling (I own) as I followed the servant to the sitting-room. At the moment, however, when he opened the door, this ignoble sensation left me as suddenly as it had come. I felt myself Pratolungo’s widow again, when I entered the room.

A reading-lamp, with its shade down, was the only light on the table. Nugent Dubourg, comfortably reposing in an easychair, sat by the lamp, with a cigar in his mouth, and a book in his hand. He put down the book on the table as he rose to receive me. Knowing, by this time, what sort of man I had to deal with, I was determined not to let even the merest trifles escape me. It might have its use in helping me to understand him, if I knew how he had been occupying his mind while he was expecting me to arrive. I looked at the book. It was
Rousseau’s Confessions.

He advanced with his pleasant smile, and offered his hand as if nothing had happened to disturb our ordinary relations towards each other. I drew back a step, and looked at him.

“Won’t you shake hands with me?” he asked.

“I will answer that directly,” I said. “Where is your brother?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you
do
know, Mr. Nugent Dubourg, and when you have brought your brother back to this house, I will take your hand — not before.”

He bowed resignedly, with a little satirical shrug of the shoulders, and asked if he might offer me a chair.

I took a chair for myself, and placed it so that I might be opposite to him when he resumed his seat. He checked himself in the act of sitting down, and looked towards the open window.

“Shall I throw away my cigar?” he said.

“Not on my account. I have no objection to smoking.”

“Thank you.” He took his chair — keeping his face in the partial obscurity cast by the shade of the lamp. After smoking for a moment, he spoke again, without turning to look at me. “May I ask what your object is in honouring me with this visit?”

“I have two objects. The first is to see that you leave Dimchurch to-morrow morning. The second is to make you restore your brother to his promised wife.”

He looked round at me quickly. His experience of my irritable temper had not prepared him for the perfect composure of voice and manner with which I answered his question. He looked back again from me to his cigar, and knocked off the ash at the tip of it (considering with himself) before he addressed his next words to me.

“We will come to the question of my leaving Dimchurch presently,” he said. “Have you received a letter from Oscar?”

“Yes.”

“Have you read it?”

“I have read it.”

“Then you know that we understand each other?”

“I know that your brother has sacrificed himself — and that you have taken a base advantage of the sacrifice.”

He started, and looked round at me once more. I saw that something in my language, or in my tone of speaking, had stung him.

“You have your privilege as a lady,” he said. “Don’t push it too far. What Oscar has done, he has done of his own free will.”

“What Oscar has done,” I rejoined, “is lamentably foolish, cruelly wrong. Still, perverted as it is, there is something generous, something noble, in the motive which has led
him.
As for your conduct in this matter, I see nothing but what is mean, nothing but what is cowardly, in the motive which has led
you.
”

He started to his feet, and flung his cigar into the empty fireplace.

“Madame Pratolungo,” he said, “I have not the honour of knowing anything of your family. I can’t call a woman to account for insulting me. Do you happen to have any
man
related to you, in or out of England?”

“I happen to have what will do equally well on this occasion,” I replied. “I have a hearty contempt for threats of all sorts, and a steady resolution in me to say what I think.”

He walked to the door, and opened it.

“I decline to give you the opportunity of saying anything more,” he rejoined. “I beg to leave you in possession of the room, and to wish you good evening.”

He opened the door. I had entered the house, armed in my own mind with a last desperate resolve, only to be communicated to him, or to anybody, in the final emergency and at the eleventh hour. The time had come for saying what I had hoped with my whole heart to have left unsaid.

I rose on my side, and stopped him as he was leaving the room.

“Return to your chair and your book,” I said. “Our interview is at an end. In leaving the house, I have one last word to say. You are wasting your time in remaining at Dimchurch.”

“I am the best judge of that,” he answered, making way for me to go out.

“Pardon me, you are not in a position to judge at all. You don’t know what I mean to do as soon as I get back to the rectory.”

He instantly changed his position; placing himself in the doorway so as to prevent me from leaving the room.

“What do you mean to do?” he asked, keeping his eyes attentively fixed on mine.

“I mean to force you to leave Dimchurch.”

He laughed insolently. I went on as quietly as before. “You have personated your brother to Lucilla this morning,” I said. “You have done that, Mr. Nugent Dubourg, for the last time.”

“Have I? Who will prevent me from doing it again?”

“I will.”

This time he took it seriously.

“You?” he said. “How are
you
to control me, if you please?”

“I can control you through Lucilla. When I get back to the rectory, I can, and will, tell Lucilla the truth.”

He started — and instantly recovered himself.

“You forget something, Madame Pratolungo. You forget what the surgeon in attendance on her has told us.”

“I remember it perfectly. If we say or do anything to agitate his patient, in her present state, the surgeon refuses to answer for the consequences.”

“Well?”

“Well — between the alternative of leaving you free to break both their hearts, and the alternative of setting the surgeon’s warning at defiance — dreadful as the choice is, my choice is made. I tell you to your face, I would rather see Lucilla blind again than see her your wife.”

His estimate of the strength of the position on his side, had been necessarily based on one conviction — the conviction that Grosse’s professional authority would tie my tongue. I had scattered his calculations to the winds. He turned so deadly pale that, dim as the light was, I could see the change in his face.

“I don’t believe you!” he said.

“Present yourself at the rectory tomorrow,” I answered — ”and you will see. I have no more to say to you. Let me by.”

You may suppose I was only trying to frighten him. I was doing nothing of the sort. Blame me, or approve of me, as you please, I was expressing the resolution which I had in my mind when I spoke. Whether my courage would have held out through the walk from Browndown to the rectory — whether I should have shrunk from it when I actually found myself in Lucilla’s presence — is more than I can venture to decide. All I say is that I did, in my desperation, positively mean doing it, at the moment when I threatened to do it — and that Nugent Dubourg heard something in my voice which told him I was in earnest.

“You fiend!” he burst out, stepping close up to me with a look of fury.

The whole passionate fervour of the love that the miserable wretch felt for her, shook him from head to foot, as his horror of me found its way to expression in those two words.

“Spare me your opinion of my character,” I said. “I don’t expect
you
to understand the motives of an honest woman. For the last time, let me by!”

Instead of letting me by, he locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. That done, he pointed to the chair that I had left.

“Sit down,” he said, with a sudden sinking in his voice which implied a sudden change in his temper. “Let me have a minute to myself.”

I returned to my place. He took his own chair on the other side of the table, and covered his face with his hands. We waited awhile in silence. I looked at him, once or twice, as the minutes followed each other. The shaded lamp-light glistened dimly on something between his fingers. I rose softly, and stretched across the table to look closer. Tears! On my word of honour, tears forcing their way through his fingers, as he held them over his face! I had been on the point of speaking. I sat down again in silence.

“Say what you want of me. Tell me what you wish me to do.” Those were his first words. He spoke them without moving his hands; so quietly, so sadly, with such hopeless sorrow, such uncomplaining resignation in his voice, that I, who had entered that room, hating him, rose again, and went round to his chair. I — who a minute ago, if I had had the strength, would have struck him down on the floor at my feet — laid my hand on his shoulder, pitying him from the bottom of my heart. That is what women are! There is a specimen of their sense, firmness, and self-control!

“Be just, Nugent,” I said. “Be honourable. Be all that I once thought you. I want no more.”

He dropped his arms on the table: his head fell on them, and he burst into a fit of crying. It was so like his brother, that I could almost have fancied I, too, had mistaken one of them for the other. “Oscar over again,” I thought to myself, “on the first day when I spoke to him in this very room!”

“Come!” I said, when he was quieter. “We shall end in understanding each other and respecting each other after all.”

He irritably shook my hand off his shoulder, and turned his face away from the light.

“Don’t talk of understanding
me,
” he said. “Your sympathy is for Oscar. He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honour and no heart. Tread Me under foot like a reptile.
My
misery is only what I deserve! Compassion is thrown away — isn’t it? — on such a scoundrel as I am?”

I was sorely puzzled how to answer him. All that he had said against himself, I had thought of him in my own mind. And why not? He
had
behaved infamously — he
was
a fit object for righteous indignation. And yet — and yet — it is sometimes so very hard, however badly a man may have behaved, for women to hold out against forgiving him, when they know that a woman is at the bottom of it.

“Whatever I may have thought of you,” I said, “it is still in your power, Nugent, to win back my old regard for you.”

“Is it?” he answered scornfully. “I know better than that. You are not talking to Oscar now — you are talking to a man who has had some experience of women. I know how you all hold to your opinions because they are your opinions — without asking yourselves whether they are right or wrong. There are men who could understand me and pity me. No woman can do it. The best and cleverest among you don’t know what love is — as a man feels it. It isn’t the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It acknowledges restraints in a woman — it bursts through everything in a man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honour, his self-respect — it levels him with the brutes — it debases him into idiocy — it lashes him into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse. The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat. — Oh, yes! this is a shocking way of talking, isn’t it? I ought to struggle against it — as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a clever woman — here is an experienced woman. And yet — though she has seen me in Lucilla’s company hundreds of times — she has never once discovered the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct in one light — it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!”