Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (922 page)

“Nothing?” He paused as he repeated the word, and passed his hand over his forehead in a weary way. “Nothing, of course,” he resumed, speaking to himself, “or she would not be here.” He paused once more, and looked at me searchingly. “Don’t say again what you said just now,” he went on. “For your own sake, Valeria, as well as for mine.” He dropped into the nearest chair, and said no more.

I certainly heard the warning; but the only words which really produced an impression on my mind were the words preceding it, which he had spoken to himself. He had said: “Nothing, of course,
or she could not be here.”
If I had found out some other truth besides the truth about the name, would it have prevented me from ever returning to my husband? Was that what he meant? Did the sort of discovery that he contemplated mean something so dreadful that it would have parted us at once and forever? I stood by his chair in silence, and tried to find the answer to those terrible questions in his face. It used to speak to me so eloquently when it spoke of his love. It told me nothing now.

He sat for some time without looking at me, lost in his own thoughts. Then he rose on a sudden and took his hat.

“The friend who lent me the yacht is in town,” he said. “I suppose I had better see him, and say our plans are changed.” He tore up the telegram with an air of sullen resignation as he spoke. “You are evidently determined not to go to sea with me,” he resumed. “We had better give it up. I don’t see what else is to be done. Do you?”

His tone was almost a tone of contempt. I was too depressed about myself, too alarmed about
him,
to resent it.

“Decide as you think best, Eustace,” I said, sadly. “Every way, the prospect seems a hopeless one. As long as I am shut out from your confidence, it matters little whether we live on land or at sea — we cannot live happily.”

“If you could control your curiosity,” he answered, sternly, “we might live happily enough. I thought I had married a woman who was superior to the vulgar failings of her sex. A good wife should know better than to pry into affairs of her husband’s with which she had no concern.”

Surely it was hard to bear this? However, I bore it.

“Is it no concern of mine?” I asked, gently, “when I find that my husband has not married me under his family name? Is it no concern of mine when I hear your mother say, in so many words, that she pities your wife? It is hard, Eustace, to accuse me of curiosity because I cannot accept the unendurable position in which you have placed me. Your cruel silence is a blight on my happiness and a threat to my future. Your cruel silence is estranging us from each other at the beginning of our married life. And you blame me for feeling this? You tell me I am prying into affairs which are yours only? They are
not
yours only: I have my interest in them too. Oh, my darling, why do you trifle with our love and our confidence in each other? Why do you keep me in the dark?”

He answered with a stern and pitiless brevity,

“For your own good.”

I turned away from him in silence. He was treating me like a child.

He followed me. Putting one hand heavily on my shoulder, he forced me to face him once more.

“Listen to this,” he said. “What I am now going to say to you I say for the first and last time. Valeria! if you ever discover what I am now keeping from your knowledge — from that moment you live a life of torture; your tranquillity is gone. Your days will be days of terror; your nights will be full of horrid dreams — through no fault of mine, mind! through no fault of mine! Every day of your life you will feel some new distrust, some growing fear of me, and you will be doing me the vilest injustice all the time. On my faith as a Christian, on my honour as a man, if you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end to your happiness for the rest of your life! Think seriously of what I have said to you; you will have time to reflect. I am going to tell my friend that our plans for the Mediterranean are given up. I shall not be back before the evening.” He sighed, and looked at me with unutterable sadness. “I love you, Valeria,” he said. “In spite of all that has passed, as God is my witness, I love you more dearly than ever.”

So he spoke. So he left me.

I must write the truth about myself, however strange it may appear. I don’t pretend to be able to analyze my own motives; I don’t pretend even to guess how other women might have acted in my place. It is true of me, that my husband’s terrible warning — all the more terrible in its mystery and its vagueness — produced no deterrent effect on my mind: it only stimulated my resolution to discover what he was hiding from me. He had not been gone two minutes before I rang the bell and ordered the carriage, to take me to Major Fitz-David’s house in Vivian Place.

Walking to and fro while I was waiting — I was in such a fever of excitement that it was impossible for me to sit still — I accidentally caught sight of myself in the glass.

My own face startled me, it looked so haggard and so wild. Could I present myself to a stranger, could I hope to produce the necessary impression in my favor, looking as I looked at that moment? For all I knew to the contrary, my whole future might depend upon the effect which I produced on Major Fitz-David at first sight. I rang the bell again, and sent a message to one of the chambermaids to follow me to my room.

I had no maid of my own with me: the stewardess of the yacht would have acted as my attendant if we had held to our first arrangement. It mattered little, so long as I had a woman to help me. The chambermaid appeared. I can give no better idea of the disordered and desperate condition of my mind at that time than by owning that I actually consulted this perfect stranger on the question of my personal appearance. She was a middle-aged woman, with a large experience of the world and its wickedness written legibly on her manner and on her face. I put money into the woman’s hand, enough of it to surprise her. She thanked me with a cynical smile, evidently placing her own evil interpretation on my motive for bribing her.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” she asked, in a confidential whisper. “Don’t speak loud! there is somebody in the next room.”

“I want to look my best,” I said, “and I have sent for you to help me.”

“I understand, ma’am.”

“What do you understand?”

She nodded her head significantly, and whispered to me again. “Lord bless you, I’m used to this!” she said. “There is a gentleman in the case. Don’t mind me, ma’am. It’s a way I have. I mean no harm.” She stopped, and looked at me critically. “I wouldn’t change my dress if I were you,” she went on. “The colour becomes you.”

It was too late to resent the woman’s impertinence. There was no help for it but to make use of her. Besides, she was right about the dress. It was of a delicate maize-colour, prettily trimmed with lace. I could wear nothing which suited me better. My hair, however, stood in need of some skilled attention. The chambermaid rearranged it with a ready hand which showed that she was no beginner in the art of dressing hair. She laid down the combs and brushes, and looked at me; then looked at the toilet-table, searching for something which she apparently failed to find.

“Where do you keep it?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at your complexion, ma’am. You will frighten him if he sees you like that. A touch of colour you
must
have. Where do you keep it? What! you haven’t got it? you never use it? Dear, dear, dear me!”

For a moment surprise fairly deprived her of her self-possession. Recovering herself, she begged permission to leave me for a minute. I let her go, knowing what her errand was. She came back with a box of paint and powders; and I said nothing to check her. I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a false colour, my eyes a false brightness — and I never shrank from it. No! I let the odious conceit go on; I even admired the extraordinary delicacy and dexterity with which it was all done. “Anything” (I thought to myself, in the madness of that miserable time) “so long as it helps me to win the Major’s confidence! Anything, so long as I discover what those last words of my husband’s really mean!”

The transformation of my face was accomplished. The chambermaid pointed with her wicked forefinger in the direction of the glass.

“Bear in mind, ma’am, what you looked like when you sent for me,” she said. “And just see for yourself how you look now. You’re the prettiest woman (of your style) in London. Ah what a thing pearl-powder is, when one knows how to use it!”

CHAPTER VIII. THE FRIEND OF THE WOMEN.

I FIND it impossible to describe my sensations while the carriage was taking me to Major Fitz-David’s house. I doubt, indeed, if I really felt or thought at all, in the true sense of those words.

From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity — to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave my coming interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning confidence in myself, and a blind faith in
him
. Now neither the past nor the future troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the present. I looked at the shops as we drove by them, and at the other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed — yes, and enjoyed — the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers on the pavement cast on me. I said to myself, “This looks well for my prospect of making a friend of the Major!” When we drew up at the door in Vivian Place, it is no exaggeration to say that I had but one anxiety — anxiety to find the Major at home.

The door was opened by a servant out of livery, an old man who looked as if he might have been a soldier in his earlier days. He eyed me with a grave attention, which relaxed little by little into sly approval. I asked for Major Fitz-David. The answer was not altogether encouraging: the man was not sure whether his master were at home or not.

I gave him my card. My cards, being part of my wedding outfit, necessarily had the false name printed on them —
Mrs. Eustace Woodville
. The servant showed me into a front room on the ground-floor, and disappeared with my card in his hand.

Looking about me, I noticed a door in the wall opposite the window, communicating with some inner room. The door was not of the ordinary kind. It fitted into the thickness of the partition wall, and worked in grooves. Looking a little nearer, I saw that it had not been pulled out so as completely to close the doorway. Only the merest chink was left; but it was enough to convey to my ears all that passed in the next room.

“What did you say, Oliver, when she asked for me?” inquired a man’s voice, pitched cautiously in a low key.

“I said I was not sure you were at home, sir,” answered the voice of the servant who had let me in.

There was a pause. The first speaker was evidently Major Fitz-David himself. I waited to hear more.

“I think I had better not see her, Oliver,” the Major’s voice resumed.

“Very good, sir.”

“Say I have gone out, and you don’t know when I shall be back again. Beg the lady to write, if she has any business with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop, Oliver!”

Oliver stopped. There was another and longer pause. Then the master resumed the examination of the man.

“Is she young, Oliver?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And — pretty?”

“Better than pretty, sir, to my thinking.”

“Aye? aye? What you call a fine woman — eh, Oliver?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Tall?”

“Nearly as tall as I am, Major.”

“Aye? aye? aye? A good figure?”

“As slim as a sapling, sir, and as upright as a dart.”

“On second thoughts, I am at home, Oliver. Show her in! show her in!”