Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (858 page)

“What do you mean by the old complaint?” I asked.

“Oh! you know!”

“I
don’t
know.”

“You would know if you really loved me.”

“Oscar! it is a shame to say that. It is a shame to doubt that I love you!”

“Is it? Ever since I have been here, I have doubted that you love me. It is getting to be an old complaint of mine now. I still suffer a little sometimes. Don’t notice it!”

He was so cruel and so unjust, that I got up to leave him, without saying a word more. But, oh! he looked so forlorn and so submissive — sitting with his head down, and his hands crossed listlessly over his knees — that I could not find it in my heart to treat him harshly. Was I wrong? I don’t know! I have no idea how to manage men — and no Madame Pratolungo now to teach me. Right or wrong, it ended in my sitting down by him again in the place which I had just left.

“You ought to beg my pardon,” I said, “for thinking of me as you think, and talking to me as you talk.”

“I do beg your pardon,” he answered humbly. “I am sorry if I have offended you.”

How could I resist that? I put my hand on his shoulder, and tried to make him lift up his head and look at me.

“You will always believe in me in the future?” I went on. “Promise me that.”

“I can promise to try, Lucilla. As things are now I can promise no more.”

“As things are now? You are speaking in riddles to-night. Explain yourself.”

“I explained myself this morning on the pier.”

Surely, this was hard on me — after he had promised to give me till the end of the week to consider his proposal? I took my hand off his shoulder. He — who never used to displease or disappoint me when I was blind — had displeased and disappointed me for the second time in a few minutes!

“Do you wish to force me?” I asked, “after telling me this morning that you would give me time to reflect?”

He rose, on his side — languidly and mechanically, like a man who neither knew nor cared what he was doing.

“Force you?” he repeated. “Did I say that? I don’t know what I am talking about; I don’t know what I am doing. You are right and I am wrong. I am a miserable wretch, Lucilla — I am utterly unworthy of you. It would be better for you if you never saw me again!” He paused; and taking me by both hands, looked earnestly and sadly into my face. “Good night, my dear!” he said — and suddenly dropped my hands, and turned away to go out.

I stopped him. “Going already?” I said. “It is not late yet.

“It is best for me to go.”

“Why?”

“I am in wretched spirits. It is better for me to be by myself.”

“Don’t say that! It sounds like a reproach to me.”

“On the contrary, it is all my fault. Good night!”

I refused to say good night — I refused to let him go. His wanting to go was in itself a reproach to me. He had never done it before. I asked him to sit down again.

He shook his head.

“For ten minutes!”

He shook his head again.

“For five minutes!”

Instead of answering, he gently lifted a long lock of my hair, which hung at the side of my neck. (My head, I should add, had been dressed that evening on the old-fashioned plan, by my aunt’s maid — to please my aunt.)

“If I stay for five minutes longer,” he said, “I shall ask for something.”

“For what?”

“You have beautiful hair, Lucilla.”

“You can’t want a lock of my hair, surely?”

“Why not?”

“I gave you a keepsake of that sort — ages ago. Have you forgotten it?”

[Note. — The keepsake had of course been given to the true Oscar, and was then, as it is now, still in his possession. Notice, when he recovers himself, how quickly the false Oscar infers this, and how cleverly he founds his excuse upon it. — P.]

His face flushed deep; his eyes dropped before mine. I could see that he was ashamed of himself — I could only conclude that he
had
forgotten it! A morsel of
his
hair was, at that moment, in a locket which I wore round my neck. I had more I think, to doubt him than he had to doubt me. I was so mortified that I stepped aside, and made way for him to go out.

“You wish to go away,” I said; “I won’t keep you any longer.”

It was his turn now to plead with
me.

“Suppose I have been deprived of your keepsake?” he said. “Suppose somebody whom I would rather not mention, has taken it away from me?”

I instantly understood him. His miserable brother had taken it. My work-basket was close by. I cut off a lock of my hair, and tied it at each end with a morsel of my favorite light-blue ribbon.

“Are we friends again, Oscar?” was all I said as I put it into his hand.

He caught me in his arms in a kind of frenzy — holding me to him so violently that he hurt me; kissing me so fiercely that he frightened me. Before I had recovered breath enough to speak to him, he had released me, and had gone out in such headlong haste that he knocked down a little round table with books on it, and woke my aunt.

The old lady called for me in her most formidable voice, and showed me the family temper in its sourest aspect. Grosse had gone back to London without making any apology to her; and Oscar had knocked down her books. The indignation aroused by these two outrages called loudly for a victim — and (no one else being near at the moment) selected Me. Miss Batchford discovered for the first time that she had undertaken too much in assuming the sole charge of her niece at Ramsgate.

“I decline to accept the entire responsibility,” said my aunt. “At my age, the entire responsibility is too much for me. I shall write to your father, Lucilla. I always did, and always shall, detest him, as you know. His views on politics and religion are (in a clergyman) simply detestable. Still he is your father; and it is a duty on my part, after what that rude foreigner has said about your health, to offer to restore you to your father’s roof — or, at least, to obtain your father’s sanction to your continuing to remain under my care. This course, in either case you will observe, relieves me from the entire responsibility. I am doing nothing to compromise my position. My position is quite plain to me. I should have formally accepted your father’s hospitality on the occasion of your wedding — if I had been well enough and if the wedding had taken place. It follows as a matter of course that I may formally report to your father what the medical opinion is of your health. However brutally it may have been given, it is a medical opinion — and as such I am bound to communicate it.”

Knowing but too well how bitterly my aunt’s aversion to him is reciprocated by my father, I did my best to combat Miss Batchford’s resolution — without making matters worse by telling her what my motives really were. With some difficulty I prevailed on her to defer the proposed report of me for a day or two — and we parted for the night (the old lady’s fits of temper are soon over) as good friends as usual.

This little episode in my narrative of events diverted my mind for the time from Oscar’s strange conduct yesterday evening. But once up here by myself in my own room, I have been thinking of it, or dreaming of it (such horrid dreams — I cannot write them down!) almost incessantly from that time to this. When we meet again to-day — how will he look? what will he say?

He was right yesterday. I
am
cold to him; there is some change in me towards him, which I don’t understand myself. My conscience accuses me, now I am alone — and yet, God knows, it is not my fault. Poor Oscar! Poor me! I have never longed to see him — since we met at this place — as I long now. He sometimes comes to breakfast. Will he come to breakfast to-day? Oh, how my eyes ache! and how obstinately the mist stops in the room! Suppose I close the window, and go back to bed again for a little while?

Nine o’clock.
— The maid came in half an hour since, and woke me. She went to open the window as usual. I stopped her.

“Is the mist gone?” I asked.

The girl stared, “What mist, Miss?”

“Haven’t you seen it?”

“No, Miss.”

“What time did you get up?”

“At seven, Miss.”

At seven I was still writing in my Journal, and the mist was still over everything in the room. Persons in the lower ranks of life are curiously unobservant of the aspects of Nature. I never (in the days of my blindness) got any information from servants or labourers about the views round Dimchurch. They seemed to have no eyes for anything beyond the range of the kitchen, or the ploughed field. I got out of bed, and took the maid myself to the window, and opened it.

“There!” I said. “It is not quite so thick as it was some hours since. But there is the mist as plain as can be!”

The girl looked backwards and forwards in a state of bewilderment between me and the view.

“Mist?” she repeated. “Begging your pardon, Miss, it’s a beautiful clear morning — as I see it.”

“Clear?” I repeated on my side.

“Yes, Miss!”

“Do you mean to tell me it’s clear over the sea?”

“The sea is a beautiful blue, Miss. Far and near, you can see the ships.”

“Where are the ships?”

She pointed, out of the window, to a certain spot.

“There are two of them, Miss. A big ship, with three masts. And a little ship just behind, with one.”

I looked along her finger, and strained my eyes to see. All I could make out was a dim greyish mist, with something like a little spot or blur on it, at the place which the maid’s finger indicated as the position occupied by the two ships.

The idea struck me for the first time that the dimness which I had attributed to the mist, was, in plain truth, the dimness in my own eyes. For the moment I was a little startled. I left the window, and made the best excuse that I could to the girl. As soon as it was possible to dismiss her, I sent her away, and bathed my eyes with one of Grosse’s lotions, and then tried them again in writing this entry. To my relief, I can see to write better than I did earlier in the morning. Still, I have had a warning to pay a little more attention to Grosse’s directions than I have hitherto done. Is it possible that he saw something in the state of my eyes which he was afraid to tell me of? Nonsense! Grosse is not the sort of man who shrinks from speaking out. I have fatigued my eyes — that is all. Let me shut up my book, and go down-stairs to breakfast.

Ten o’clock.
— For a moment, I open my Journal again.

Something has happened which I must positively set down in the history of my life. I am so vexed and so angry! The maid, (wretched chattering fool!) has told my aunt what passed between us this morning at my window. Miss Batchford has taken the alarm, and has insisted on writing, not only to Grosse, but to my father. In the present embittered state of my father’s feelings against my aunt, he will either leave her letter unanswered, or he will offend her by an angry reply. In either case, I shall be the sufferer: my aunt’s sense of injury — which cannot address itself to my father — will find a convenient object to assail in me. I shall never hear the last of it. Being already nervous and dispirited, the prospect of finding myself involved in a new family quarrel quite daunts me. I feel ungratefully inclined to run away from Miss Batchford, when I think of it!

No signs of Oscar; and no news of Oscar — yet.

Twelve o’clock.
— But one trial more was wanted to make my life here quite unendurable. The trial has come.