I.
WHEN the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, the same
succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world, immediately
shuts out the bright prospect again, for a time. A bandage is passed
over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of the recovered sense, it
should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from darkness to
light. But between the awful blank of total privation of vision, and
the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies the widest
difference. In the moment of their restoration, the blind have had
one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering gleam of
brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot extinguish. The
new darkness is not like the void darkness of old; it is filled with
changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying forms, rising,
falling, whirling hither and thither with every second. Even when
the handkerchief is passed over them, the once sightless eyes, though
bandaged fast, are yet not blinded as they were before.
It was so with my mental vision. After the utter oblivion and darkness
of a deep swoon, consciousness flashed like light on my mind, when I
found myself in my father’s presence, and in my own home. But, almost
at the very moment when I first awakened to the bewildering influence
of that sight, a new darkness fell upon my faculties--a darkness, this
time, which was not utter oblivion; a peopled darkness, like that which
the bandage casts over the opened eyes of the blind.
I had sensations, I had thoughts, I had visions, now--but they all acted
in the frightful self-concentration of delirium. The lapse of time, the
march of events, the alternation of day and night, the persons who moved
about me, the words they spoke, the offices of kindness they did for
me--all these were annihilated from the period when I closed my eyes
again, after having opened them for an instant on my father, in my own
study.
My first sensation (how soon it came after I had been brought home, I
know not) was of a terrible heat; a steady, blazing heat, which seemed
to have shrivelled and burnt up the whole of the little world around me,
and to have left me alone to suffer, but never to consume in it. After
this, came a quick, restless, unintermittent toiling of obscure thought,
ever in the same darkened sphere, ever on the same impenetrable subject,
ever failing to reach some distant and visionary result. It was as if
something were imprisoned in my mind, and moving always to and fro in
it--moving, but never getting free.
Soon, these thoughts began to take a form that I could recognise.
In the clinging heat and fierce seething fever, to which neither waking
nor sleeping brought a breath of freshness or a dream of change, I
began to act my part over again, in the events that had passed, but in
a strangely altered character. Now, instead of placing implicit trust in
others, as I had done; instead of failing to discover a significance and
a warning in each circumstance as it arose, I was suspicious from the
first--suspicious of Margaret, of her father, of her mother, of Mannion,
of the very servants in the house. In the hideous phantasmagoria of
my own calamity on which I now looked, my position was reversed. Every
event of the doomed year of my probation was revived. But the doom
itself, the night-scene of horror through which I had passed, had
utterly vanished from my memory. This lost recollection, it was the one
unending toil of my wandering mind to recover, and I never got it back.
None who have not suffered as I suffered then, can imagine with what a
burning rage of determination I followed past events in my delirium, one
by one, for days and nights together,--followed, to get to the end which
I knew was beyond, but which I never could see, not even by glimpses,
for a moment at a time.
However my visions might alter in their course of succession, they
always began with the night when Mannion returned from the continent
to North Villa. I stood again in the drawing-room; I saw him enter; I
marked the slight confusion of Margaret; and instantly doubted her.
I noticed his unwillingness to meet her eye or mine; I looked on the
sinister stillness of his face; and suspected him. From that moment,
love vanished, and hatred came in its place. I began to watch; to garner
up slight circumstances which confirmed my suspicions; to wait craftily
for the day when I should discover, judge, and punish them both--the day
of disclosure and retribution that never came.
Sometimes, I was again with Mannion, in his house, on the night of the
storm. I detected in every word he spoke an artful lure to trap me into
trusting him as my second father, more than as my friend. I heard in
the tempest sounds which mysteriously interrupted, or mingled with, my
answers, voices supernaturally warning me of my enemy, each time that I
spoke to him. I saw once more the hideous smile of triumph on his face,
as I took leave of him on the doorstep: and saw it, this time, not as
an illusion produced by a flash of lightning, but as a frightful reality
which the lightning disclosed.
Sometimes, I was again in the garden at North Villa accidentally
overhearing the conversation between Margaret and her
mother--overhearing what deceit she was willing to commit, for the sake
of getting a new dress--then going into the room, and seeing her assume
her usual manner on meeting me, as if no such words as I had listened to
but the moment before, had ever proceeded from her lips. Or, I saw her
on that other morning, when, to revenge the death of her bird, she would
have killed with her own hand the one pet companion that her sick
mother possessed. Now, no generous, trusting love blinded me to the
real meaning of such events as these. Now, instead of regarding them as
little weaknesses of beauty, and little errors of youth, I saw them as
timely warnings, which bade me remember when the day of my vengeance
came, that in the contriving of the iniquity on which they were both
bent, the woman had been as vile as the man.
Sometimes, I was once more on my way to North Villa, after my week’s
absence at our country house. I saw again the change in Margaret since
I had left her--the paleness, the restlessness, the appearance of
agitation. I took the hand of Mannion, and started as I felt its deadly
coldness, and remarked the strange alteration in his manner. When they
accounted for these changes by telling me that both had been ill, in
different ways, since my departure, I detected the miserable lie at
once; I knew that an evil advantage had been taken of my absence; that
the plot against me was fast advancing towards consummation: and that,
at the sight of their victim, even the two wretches who were compassing
my dishonour could not repress all outward manifestation of their guilt.
Sometimes, the figure of Mrs. Sherwin appeared to me, wan and weary, and
mournful with a ghostly mournfulness. Again I watched her, and listened
to her; but now with eager curiosity, with breathless attention. Once
more, I saw her shudder when Mannion’s cold eyes turned on her face--I
marked the anxious, imploring look that she cast on Margaret and on
me--I heard her confused, unwilling answer, when I inquired the cause
of her dislike of the man in whom her husband placed the most implicit
trust--I listened to her abrupt, inexplicable injunction to “watch
continually over my wife, and keep bad people from her.” All these
different circumstances occurred again as vividly as in the reality;
but I did not now account for them, as I had once accounted for them, by
convincing myself that Mrs. Sherwin’s mind was wandering, and that her
bodily sufferings had affected her intellect. I saw immediately, that
she suspected Mannion, and dared not openly confess her suspicions; I
saw, that in the stillness, and abandonment, and self-concentration of
her neglected life, she had been watching more vigilantly than others
had watched; I detected in every one of her despised gestures, and
looks, and halting words, the same concealed warning ever lying beneath
the surface; I knew they had not succeeded in deceiving her; I was
determined they should not succeed in deceiving me.
It was oftenest at this point, that my restless memory recoiled before
the impenetrable darkness which forbade it to see further--to see on
to the last evening, to the fatal night. It was oftenest at this point,
that I toiled and struggled back, over and over again, to seek once more
the lost events of the End, through the events of the Beginning. How
often my wandering thoughts thus incessantly and desperately traced and
retraced their way over their own fever track, I cannot tell: but there
came a time when they suddenly ceased to torment me; when the heavy
burden that was on my mind fell off; when a sudden strength and fury
possessed me, and I plunged down through a vast darkness into a world
whose daylight was all radiant flame. Giant phantoms mustered by
millions, flashing white as lightning in the ruddy air. They rushed on
me with hurricane speed; their wings fanned me with fiery breezes; and
the echo of their thunder-music was like the groaning and rending of an
earthquake, as they tore me away with them on their whirlwind course.
Away! to a City of Palaces, to measureless halls, and arches, and domes,
soaring one above another, till their flashing ruby summits are lost
in the burning void, high overhead. On! through and through these
mountain-piles, into countless, limitless corridors, reared on pillars
lurid and rosy as molten lava. Far down the corridors rise visions
of flying phantoms, ever at the same distance before us--their raving
voices clanging like the hammers of a thousand forges. Still on and
on; faster and faster, for days, years, centuries together, till there
comes, stealing slowly forward to meet us, a shadow--a vast, stealthy,
gliding shadow--the first darkness that has ever been shed over that
world of blazing light! It comes nearer--nearer and nearer softly, till
it touches the front ranks of our phantom troop. Then in an instant, our
rushing progress is checked: the thunder-music of our wild march stops;
the raving voices of the spectres ahead, cease; a horror of blank
stillness is all about us--and as the shadow creeps onward and onward,
until we are enveloped in it from front to rear, we shiver with icy cold
under the fiery air and amid the lurid lava pillars which hem us in on
either side.
A silence, like no silence ever known on earth; a darkening of the
shadow, blacker than the blackest night in the thickest wood--a
pause--then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and then,
an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow--two monsters
stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us; leaving
on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly light.
Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst of them, the phantom troop
dropped into formless masses, while the monsters advanced. They came
close to me; and I alone, of all the myriads around, changed not at
their approach. Each laid a talon on my shoulder--each raised a veil
which was one hideous net-work of twining worms. I saw through the
ghastly corruption of their faces the look that told me who they
were--the monstrous iniquities incarnate in monstrous forms; the
fiend-souls made visible in fiend-shapes--Margaret and Mannion!
A moment more! and I was alone with those two. Not a wreck of the
phantom-multitude remained; the towering city, the gleaming corridors,
the fire-bright radiance had vanished. We stood on a wilderness--a
still, black lake of dead waters was before us; a white, faint, misty
light shone on us. Outspread over the noisome ground lay the ruins of a
house, rooted up and overthrown to its foundations. The demon figures,
still watching on either side of me, drew me slowly forward to the
fallen stones, and pointed to two dead bodies lying among them.
My father!--my sister!--both cold and still, and whiter than the white
light that showed them to me. The demons at my side stretched out their
crooked talons, and forbade me to kneel before my father, or to kiss
Clara’s wan face, before I went to torment. They struck me motionless
where I stood--and unveiled their hideous faces once more, jeering at me
in triumph. Anon, the lake of black waters heaved up and overflowed,
and noiselessly sucked us away into its central depths--depths that were
endless; depths of rayless darkness, in which we slowly eddied round
and round, deeper and deeper down at every turn. I felt the bodies of
my father and my sister touching me in cold contact: I stretched out my
arms to clasp them and sink with them; and the demon pair glided between
us, and separated me from them. This vain striving to join myself to my
dead kindred when we touched each other in the slow, endless whirlpool,
ever continued and was ever frustrated in the same way. Still we sank
apart, down the black gulphs of the lake; still there was no light,
no sound, no change, no pause of repose--and this was eternity: the
eternity of Hell!
* * * * *
Such was one dream-vision out of many that I saw. It must have been at
this time that men were set to watch me day and night (as I afterwards
heard), in order that I might be held down in my bed, when a paroxysm of
convulsive strength made me dangerous to myself and to all about me. The
period too when the doctors announced that the fever had seized on my
brain, and was getting the better of their skill, must have been _this_
period.
But though they gave up my life as lost, I was not to die. There came a
time, at last, when the gnawing fever lost its hold; and I awoke faintly
one morning to a new existence--to a life frail and helpless as the life
of a new-born babe.
I was too weak to move, to speak, to open my eyes, to exert in the
smallest degree any one faculty, bodily or mental, that I possessed. The
first sense of which I regained the use, was the sense of hearing;
and the first sound that I recognised, was of a light footstep which
mysteriously approached, paused, and then retired again gently outside
my door. The hearing of this sound was my first pleasure, the waiting
for its repetition my first source of happy expectation, since I had
been ill. Once more the footsteps approached--paused a moment--then
seemed to retire as before--then returned slowly. A sigh, very faint and
trembling; a whisper of which I could not yet distinguish the import,
caught my ear--and after that, there was silence. Still I waited (oh,
how happily and calmly!) to hear the whisper soon repeated, and to hear
it better when it next came. Ere long, for the third time, the footsteps
advanced, and the whispering accents sounded again. I could now hear
that they pronounced my name--once, twice, three times--very softly and
imploringly, as if to beg the answer which I was still too weak to give.
But I knew the voice: I knew it was Clara’s. Long after it had ceased,
the whisper lingered gently on my ear, like a lullaby that alternately
soothed me to slumber, and welcomed me to wakefulness. It seemed to be
thrilling through my frame with a tender, reviving influence--the same
influence which the sunshine had, weeks afterwards, when I enjoyed it
for the first time out of doors.
The next sound that came to me was audible in my room; audible
sometimes, close at my pillow. It was the simplest sound
imaginable--nothing but the soft rustling of a woman’s dress. And yet,
I heard in it innumerable harmonies, sweet changes, and pauses minute
beyond all definition. I could only open my eyes for a minute at a time,
and even then, could not fix them steadily on anything; but I knew that
the rustling dress was Clara’s; and fresh sensations seemed to throng
upon me, as I listened to the sound which told me that she was in the
room. I felt the soft summer air on my face; I enjoyed the sweet scent
of flowers, wafted on that air; and once, when my door was left open for
a moment, the twittering of birds in the aviary down stairs, rang
with exquisite clearness and sweetness on my ear. It was thus that my
faculties strengthened, hour by hour, always in the same gradual way,
from the time when I first heard the footstep and the whisper outside my
chamber-door.
One evening I awoke from a cool, dreamless sleep; and, seeing Clara
sitting by my bedside, faintly uttered her name, and moved my wasted
hand to take hers. As I saw the calm, familiar face bending over me;
the anxious eyes looking tenderly and lovingly into mine--as the last
melancholy glory of sunset hovered on my bed, and the air, sinking
already into its twilight repose, came softly and more softly into
the room--as my sister took me in her arms, and raising me on my weary
pillow, bade me for her sake lie hushed and patient a little longer--the
memory of the ruin and the shame that had overwhelmed me; the memory of
my love that had become an infamy; and of my brief year’s hope miserably
fulfilled by a life of despair, swelled darkly over my heart. The red,
retiring rays of sunset just lingered at that moment on my face. Clara
knelt down by my pillow, and held up her handkerchief to shade my
eyes--“God has given you back to us, Basil,” she whispered, “to make us
happier than ever.” As she spoke, the springs of the grief so long pent
up within me were loosened; hot tears dropped heavily and quickly from
my eyes; and I wept for the first time since the night of horror which
had stretched me where I now lay--wept in my sister’s arms, at that
quiet evening hour, for the lost honour, the lost hope, the lost
happiness that had gone from me for ever in my youth!
II.
Darkly and wearily the days of my recovery went on. After that first
outburst of sorrow on the evening when I recognised my sister, and
murmured her name as she sat by my side, there sank over all my
faculties a dull, heavy trance of mental pain.
I dare not describe what remembrances of the guilty woman who had
deceived and ruined me, now gnawed unceasingly and poisonously at my
heart. My bodily strength feebly revived; but my mental energies
never showed a sign of recovering with them. My father’s considerate
forbearance, Clara’s sorrowful reserve in touching on the subject of my
long illness, or of the wild words which had escaped me in my delirium,
mutely and gently warned me that the time was come when I owed the tardy
atonement of confession to the family that I had disgraced; and still,
I had no courage to speak, no resolution to endure. The great misery
of the past, shut out from me the present and the future alike--every
active power of my mind seemed to be destroyed hopelessly and for ever.
There were moments--most often at the early morning hours, while
the heaviness of the night’s sleep still hung over me in my
wakefulness--when I could hardly realise the calamity which had
overwhelmed me; when it seemed that I must have dreamt, during the
night, of scenes of crime and woe and heavy trial which had never
actually taken place. What was the secret of the terrible influence
which--let her even be the vilest of the vile--Mannion must have
possessed over Margaret Sherwin, to induce her to sacrifice me to him?
Even the crime itself was not more hideous and more incredible than the
mystery in which its evil motives, and the manner of its evil ripening,
were still impenetrably veiled.
Mannion! It was a strange result of the mental malady under which I
suffered, that, though the thought of Mannion was now inextricably
connected with every thought of Margaret, I never once asked myself, or
had an idea of asking myself, for days together, after my convalescence,
what had been the issue of our struggle, for him. In the despair of
first awakening to a perfect sense of the calamity which had been
hurled on me from the hand of my wife--in the misery of first clearly
connecting together, after the wanderings of delirium, the Margaret to
whom with my hand I had given all my heart, with the Margaret who had
trampled on the gift and ruined the giver--all minor thoughts and
minor feelings, all motives of revengeful curiosity or of personal
apprehension were suppressed. And yet, the time was soon to arrive when
that lost thought of inquiry into Mannion’s fate, was to become the
one master-thought that possessed me--the thought that gave back its
vigilance to my intellect, and its manhood to my heart.
One evening I was sitting alone in my room. My father had taken Clara
out for a little air and exercise, and the servant had gone away at my
own desire. It was in this quiet and solitude, when the darkness was
fast approaching, when the view from my window was at its loneliest,
when my mind was growing listless and confused as the weary day
wore out--it was exactly at this time that the thought suddenly and
mysteriously flashed across me: Had Mannion been taken up from the
stones on which I had hurled him, a living man or a dead?
I instinctively started to my feet with something of the vigour of
my former health; repeating the question to myself; and feeling, as I
unconsciously murmured aloud the few words which expressed it, that my
life had purposes and duties, trials and achievements, which were yet to
be fulfilled. How could I instantly solve the momentous doubt which had
now, for the first time, crossed my mind?
One moment I paused in eager consideration--the next, I descended to the
library. A daily newspaper was kept there, filed for reference. I might
possibly decide the fatal question in a few moments by consulting it.
In my burning anxiety and impatience I could hardly handle the leaves or
see the letters, as I tried to turn back to the right date--the day (oh
anguish of remembrance!) on which I was to have claimed Margaret Sherwin
as my wife!
At last, I found the number I desired; but the closely-printed columns
swam before me as I looked at them. A glass of water stood on a table
near me--I dipped my handkerchief in it, and cooled my throbbing eyes.
The destiny of my future life might be decided by the discovery I was
now about to make!
I locked the door to guard against all intrusion, and then returned to
my task--returned to my momentous search--slowly tracing my way through
the paper, paragraph by paragraph, column by column.
On the last page, and close to the end, I read these lines:
“MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE.
“About one o’clock this morning, a gentleman was discovered lying on his
face in the middle of the road, in Westwood Square, by the policeman on
duty. The unfortunate man was to all appearance dead. He had fallen on
a part of the road which had been recently macadamised; and his face, we
are informed, is frightfully mutilated by contact with the granite.
The policeman conveyed him to the neighbouring hospital, where it was
discovered that he was still alive, and the promptest attentions were
immediately paid him. We understand that the surgeon in attendance
considers it absolutely impossible that he could have been injured as he
was, except by having been violently thrown down on his face, either
by a vehicle driven at a furious rate, or by a savage attack from some
person or persons unknown. In the latter case, robbery could not have
been the motive; for the unfortunate man’s watch, purse, and ring were
all found about him. No cards of address or letters of any kind were
discovered in his pockets, and his linen and handkerchief were only
marked with the letter M. He was dressed in evening costume--entirely in
black. After what has been already said about the injuries to his
face, any recognisable personal description of him is, for the present,
unfortunately out of the question. We wait with much anxiety to gain
some further insight into this mysterious affair, when the sufferer is
restored to consciousness. The last particulars which our reporter was
able to collect at the hospital were, that the surgeon expected to save
his patient’s life, and the sight of one of his eyes. The sight of the
other is understood to be entirely destroyed.”
With sensations of horror which I could not then, and cannot now
analyse, I turned to the next day’s paper; but found in it no further
reference to the object of my search. In the number for the day after,
however, the subject was resumed in these words:
“The mystery of the accident in Westwood Square thickens. The sufferer
is restored to consciousness; he is perfectly competent to hear and
understand what is said to him, and is able to articulate, but not very
plainly, and only for a moment or so, at a time. The authorities at the
hospital anticipated, as we did, that, on the patient’s regaining his
senses, some information of the manner in which the terrible accident
from which he is suffering was caused, would be obtained from him. But,
to the astonishment of every one, he positively refuses to answer any
questions as to the circumstances under which his frightful injuries
were inflicted. With the same unaccountable secrecy, he declines to tell
his name, his place of abode, or the names of any friends to whom notice
of his situation might be communicated. It is quite in vain to press him
for any reason for this extraordinary course of conduct--he appears
to be a man of very unusual firmness of character; and his refusal to
explain himself in any way, is evidently no mere caprice of the moment.
All this leads to the conjecture that the injuries he has sustained were
inflicted on him from some motive of private vengeance; and that certain
persons are concerned in this disgraceful affair, whom he is unwilling
to expose to public odium, for some secret reason which it is impossible
to guess at. We understand that he bears the severe pain consequent
upon his situation, in such a manner as to astonish every person about
him--no agony draws from him a word or a sigh. He displayed no emotion
even when the surgeons informed him that the sight of one of his eyes
was hopelessly destroyed; and merely asked to be supplied with writing
materials as soon as he could see to use them, when he was told that the
sight of the other would be saved. He further added, we are informed,
that he was in a position to reward the hospital authorities for any
trouble he gave, by making a present to the funds of the charity, as
soon as he should be discharged as cured. His coolness in the midst of
sufferings which would deprive most other men of all power of thinking
or speaking, is as remarkable as his unflinching secrecy--a secrecy
which, for the present at least, we cannot hope to penetrate.”
I closed the newspaper. Even then, a vague forewarning of what Mannion’s
inexplicable reserve boded towards me, crossed my mind. There was yet
more difficulty, danger, and horror to be faced, than I had hitherto
confronted. The slough of degradation and misery into which I had
fallen, had its worst perils yet in store for me.
As I became impressed by this conviction, the enervating remembrance
of the wickedness to which I had been sacrificed, grew weaker in its
influence over me; the bitter tears that I had shed in secret for so
many days past, dried sternly at their sources; and I felt the power
to endure and to resist coming back to me with my sense of the coming
strife. On leaving the library, I ascended again to my own room. In a
basket, on my table, lay several unopened letters, which had arrived
for me during my illness. There were two which I at once suspected,
in hastily turning over the collection, might be all-important in
enlightening me on the vile subject of Mannion’s female accomplice. The
addresses of both these letters were in Mr. Sherwin’s handwriting. The
first that I opened was dated nearly a month back, and ran thus:
“North Villa, Hollyoake Square.
“DEAR SIR,
“With agonised feelings which no one but a parent, and I will add, an
affectionate parent, can possibly form an idea of, I address you on
the subject of the act of atrocity committed by that perjured villain,
Mannion. You will find that I and my innocent daughter have been, like
you, victims of the most devilish deceit that ever was practised on
respectable and unsuspecting people.
“Let me ask you, Sir, to imagine the state of my feelings on the night
of that most unfortunate party, when I saw my beloved Margaret, instead
of coming home quietly as usual, rush into the room in a state bordering
on distraction, with a tale the most horrible that ever was addressed
to a father’s ears. The double-faced villain (I really can’t mention his
name again) had, I blush to acknowledge, attempted to take advantage of
her innocence and confidence--all our innocences and confidences, I may
say--but my dear Margaret showed a virtuous courage beyond her years,
the natural result of the pious principles and the moral bringing up
which I have given her from her cradle. Need I say what was the upshot?
Virtue triumphed, as virtue always does, and the villain left her to
herself. It was when she was approaching the door-step to fly to
the bosom of her home that, I am given to understand, you, by a most
remarkable accident, met her. As a man of the world, you will easily
conceive what must have been the feelings of a young female, under such
peculiar and shocking circumstances. Besides this, your manner, as I am
informed, was so terrifying and extraordinary, and my poor Margaret felt
so strongly that deceitful appearances might be against her, that she
lost all heart, and fled at once, as I said before, to the bosom of her
home.
“She is still in a very nervous and unhappy state; she fears that
you may be too ready to believe appearances; but I know better. Her
explanation will be enough for you, as it was for me. We may have our
little differences on minor topics, but we have both the same manly
confidence, I am sure--you in your wife, and me in my daughter.
“I called at your worthy father’s mansion, to have a fuller
explanation with you than I can give here, the morning after this
to-all-parties-most-distressing occurrence happened: and was then
informed of your serious illness, for which pray accept my best
condolences. The next thing I thought of doing was to write to your
respected father, requesting a private interview. But on maturer
consideration, I thought it perhaps slightly injudicious to take such a
step, while you, as the principal party concerned, were ill in bed, and
not able to come forward and back me. I was anxious, you will observe,
to act for your interests, as well as the interests of my darling
girl--of course, knowing at the same time that I had the marriage
certificate in my possession, if needed as a proof, and supposing I was
driven to extremities and obliged to take my own course in the matter.
But, as I said before, I have a fatherly and friendly confidence in your
feeling as convinced of the spotless innocence of my child as I do. So
will write no more on this head.
“Having determined, as best under all circumstances, to wait till your
illness was over, I have kept my dear Margaret in strict retirement
at home (which, as she is your wife, you will acknowledge I had no
obligation to do), until you were well enough to come forward and do her
justice before her family and yours. I have not omitted to make almost
daily inquiries after you, up to the time of penning these lines, and
shall continue so to do until your convalescence, which I sincerely
hope may be speedily at hand; I am unfortunately obliged to ask that our
first interview, when you are able to see me and my daughter, may not
take place at North Villa, but at some other place, any you like to fix
on. The fact is, my wife, whose wretched health has been a trouble and
annoyance to us for years past, has now, I grieve to say, under pressure
of this sad misfortune, quite lost her reason. I am sorry to say that
she would be capable of interrupting us here, in a most undesirable
manner to all parties, and therefore request that our first happy
meeting may not take place at my house.
“Trusting that this letter will quite remove all unpleasant feelings
from your mind, and that I shall hear from you soon, on your
much-to-be-desired recovery,
“I remain, dear Sir,
“Your faithful, obedient servant,
“STEPHEN SHERWIN.
“P. S.--I have not been able to find out where that scoundrel Mannion,
has betaken himself to; but if you should know, or suspect, I wish to
tell you, as a proof that my indignation at his villany is as great as
yours, that I am ready and anxious to pursue him with the utmost rigour
of the law, if law can only reach him--paying out of my own pocket all
expenses of punishing him and breaking him for the rest of his life, if
I go through every court in the country to do it!--S. S.”
Hurriedly as I read over this wretched and revolting letter, I detected
immediately how the new plot had been framed to keep me still deceived;
to heap wrong after wrong on me with the same impunity. She was not
aware that I had followed her into the house, and had heard all from
her voice and Mannion’s--she believed that I was still ignorant of
everything, until we met at the door-step; and in this conviction she
had forged the miserable lie which her father’s hand had written down.
Did he really believe it, or was he writing as her accomplice? It was
not worth while to inquire: the worst and darkest discovery which it
concerned me to make, had already proclaimed itself--she was a liar and
a hypocrite to the very last!
And it was this woman’s lightest glance which had once been to me as
the star that my life looked to!---it was for this woman that I had
practised a deceit on my family which it now revolted me to think
of; had braved whatever my father’s anger might inflict; had risked
cheerfully the loss of all that birth and fortune could bestow! Why had
I ever risen from my weary bed of sickness?--it would have been better,
far better, that I had died!
But, while life remained, life had its trials and its toils, from which
it was useless to shrink. There was still another letter to be opened:
there was yet more wickedness which I must know how to confront.
The second of Mr. Sherwin’s letters was much shorter than the first, and
had apparently been written not more than a day or two back. His tone
was changed; he truckled to me no longer--he began to threaten. I
was reminded that the servant’s report pronounced me to have been
convalescent for several days past: and was asked why, under these
circumstances, I had never even written. I was warned that my silence
had been construed greatly to my disadvantage; and that if it continued
longer, the writer would assert his daughter’s cause loudly and
publicly, not to my father only, but to all the world. The letter
ended by according to me three days more of grace, before the fullest
disclosure would be made.
For a moment, my indignation got the better of me. I rose, to go that
instant to North Villa and unmask the wretches who still thought to
make their market of me as easily as ever. But the mere momentary delay
caused by opening the door of my room, restored me to myself. I felt
that my first duty, my paramount obligation, was to confess all to my
father immediately; to know and accept my future position in my own
home, before I went out from it to denounce others. I returned to the
table, and gathered up the letters scattered on it. My heart beat fast,
my head felt confused; but I was resolute in my determination to tell
my father, at all hazards, the tale of degradation which I have told in
these pages.
I waited in the stillness and loneliness, until it grew nearly dark. The
servant brought in candles. Why could I not ask him whether my father
and Clara had come home yet? Was I faltering in my resolution already?
Shortly after this, I heard a step on the stairs and a knock at my
door.--My father? No! Clara. I tried to speak to her unconcernedly, when
she came in.
“Why, you have been walking till it is quite dark, Clara!”
“We have only been in the garden of the Square--neither papa nor I
noticed how late it was. We were talking on a subject of the deepest
interest to us both.”
She paused a moment, and looked down; then hurriedly came nearer to me,
and drew a chair to my side. There was a strange expression of sadness
and anxiety in her face, as she continued:
“Can’t you imagine what the subject was? It was you, Basil. Papa is
coming here directly, to speak to you.”
She stopped once more. Her cheeks reddened a little, and she
mechanically busied herself in arranging some books that lay on the
table. Suddenly, she abandoned this employment; the colour left her
face; it was quite pale when she addressed me again, speaking in very
altered tones; so altered, that I hardly recognised them as hers.
“You know, Basil, that for a long time past, you have kept some secret
from us; and you promised that I should know it first; but I--I have
changed my mind; I have no wish to know it, dear: I would rather we
never said anything about it.” (She coloured, and hesitated a little
again, then proceeded quickly and earnestly:) “But I hope you will tell
it all to papa: he is coming here to ask you--oh, Basil! be candid with
him, and tell him everything; let us all be to one another what we were
before this time last year! You have nothing to fear, if you only speak
openly; for I have begged him to be gentle and forgiving with you, and
you know he refuses me nothing. I only came here to prepare you; to beg
you to be candid and patient. Hush! there is a step on the stairs. Speak
out, Basil, for my sake--pray, pray, speak out, and then leave the rest
to me.”
She hurriedly left the room. The next minute, my father entered it.
Perhaps my guilty conscience deceived me, but I thought he looked at me
more sadly and severely than I had ever seen him look before. His voice,
too, was troubled when he spoke. This was a change, which meant much in
him.
“I have come to speak to you,” he said, “on a subject about which I had
much rather you had spoken to me first.”
“I think, Sir, I know to what subject you refer. I--”
“I must beg you will listen to me as patiently as you can,” he rejoined;
“I have not much to say.”
He paused, and sighed heavily. I thought he looked at me more kindly. My
heart grew very sad; and I yearned to throw my arms round his neck, to
give freedom to the repressed tears which half choked me, to weep out on
his bosom my confession that I was no more worthy to be called his son.
Oh, that I had obeyed the impulse which moved me to do this!
“Basil,” pursued my father, gravely and sadly; “I hope and believe that
I have little to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you. I think
I am justified in saying, that very few fathers would have acted towards
a son as I have acted for the last year or more. I may often have
grieved over the secresy which has estranged you from us; I may even
have shown you by my manner that I resented it; but I have never used my
authority to force you into the explanation of your conduct, which you
have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I rested on that implicit
faith in the honour and integrity of my son, which I will not yet
believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I fear, has led me
to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed to your own
well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here to atone for
this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It deeply concerns
my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of our family, to
know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to be nothing else)
that stretched my son senseless in the open street, and afflicted him
afterwards with an illness which threatened his reason and his life.
You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal this; and I only use my
legitimate authority over my own children, when I tell you that I must
now know all. If you persist in remaining silent, the relations between
us must henceforth change for life.”
“I am ready to make my confession, Sir. I only ask you to believe
beforehand, that if I have sinned grievously against you, I have been
already heavily punished for the sin. I am afraid it is impossible that
your worst forebodings can have prepared you--”
“The words you spoke in your delirium--words which I heard, but will not
judge you by--justified the worst forebodings.”
“My illness has spared me the hardest part of a hard trial, Sir, if it
has prepared you for what I have to confess; if you suspect--”
“I do not _suspect_--I feel but too _sure,_ that you, my second son,
from whom I had expected far better things, have imitated in secret--I
am afraid, outstripped--the worst vices of your elder brother.”
“My brother!--my brother’s faults mine! Ralph!”
“Yes, Ralph. It is my last hope that you will now imitate Ralph’s
candour. Take example from that best part of him, as you have already
taken example from the worst.”
My heart grew faint and cold as he spoke. Ralph’s example! Ralph’s
vices!--vices of the reckless hour, or the idle day!--vices whose stain,
in the world’s eye, was not a stain for life!--convenient, reclaimable
vices, that men were mercifully unwilling to associate with grinning
infamy and irreparable disgrace! How far--how fearfully far, my father
was from the remotest suspicion of what had really happened! I tried to
answer his last words, but the apprehension of the life-long humiliation
and grief which my confession might inflict on him--absolutely
incapable, as he appeared to be, of foreboding even the least degrading
part of it--kept me speechless. When he resumed, after a momentary
silence, his tones were stern, his looks searching--pitilessly
searching, and bent full upon my face.
“A person has been calling, named Sherwin,” he said, “and inquiring
about you every day. What intimate connection between you authorises
this perfect stranger to me to come to the house as frequently as he
does, and to make his inquiries with a familiarity of tone and manner
which has struck every one of the servants who have, on different
occasions, opened the door to him? Who is this Mr. Sherwin?”
“It is not with him, Sir, that I can well begin. I must go back--”
“You must go back farther, I am afraid, than you will be able to return.
You must go back to the time when you had nothing to conceal from me,
and when you could speak to me with the frankness and directness of a
gentleman.”
“Pray be patient with me, Sir; give me a few minutes to collect myself.
I have much need for a little self-possession before I tell you all.”
“All? your tones mean more than your words--_they_ are candid, at least!
Have I feared the worst, and yet not feared as I ought? Basil!--do you
hear me, Basil? You are trembling very strangely; you are growing pale!”
“I shall be better directly, Sir. I am afraid I am not quite so strong
yet as I thought myself. Father! I am heart-broken and spirit-broken: be
patient and kind to me, or I cannot speak to you.”
I thought I saw his eyes moisten. He shaded them a moment with his hand,
and sighed again--the same long, trembling sigh that I had heard before.
I tried to rise from my chair, and throw myself on my knees at his feet.
He mistook the action, and caught me by the arm, believing that I was
fainting.
“No more to-night, Basil,” he said, hurriedly, but very gently; “no more
on this subject till to-morrow.”
“I can speak now, Sir; it is better to speak at once.”
“No: you are too much agitated; you are weaker than I thought.
To-morrow, in the morning, when you are stronger after a night’s rest.
No! I will hear nothing more. Go to bed now; I will tell your sister not
to disturb you to-night. To-morrow, you shall speak to me; and speak in
your own way, without interruption. Good-night, Basil, good-night.”
Without waiting to shake hands with me, he hastened to the door, as if
anxious to hide from my observation the grief and apprehension which had
evidently overcome him. But, just at the moment when he was leaving
the room, he hesitated, turned round, looked sorrowfully at me for an
instant, and then, retracing his steps, gave me his hand, pressed mine
for a moment in silence, and left me.
After the morrow was over, would he ever give me that hand again?
III.
The morning which was to decide all between my father and me, the
morning on whose event hung the future of my home life, was the
brightest and loveliest that my eyes ever looked on. A cloudless sky,
a soft air, sunshine so joyous and dazzling that the commonest objects
looked beautiful in its light, seemed to be mocking at me for my heavy
heart, as I stood at my window, and thought of the hard duty to be
fulfilled, on the harder judgment that might be pronounced, before the
dawning of another day.
During the night, I had arranged no plan on which to conduct the
terrible disclosure which I was now bound to make--the greatness of the
emergency deprived me of all power of preparing myself for it. I thought
on my father’s character, on the inbred principles of honour which ruled
him with the stern influence of a fanaticism: I thought on his pride of
caste, so unobtrusive, so rarely hinted at in words, and yet so firmly
rooted in his nature, so intricately entwined with every one of his
emotions, his aspirations, his simplest feelings and ideas: I thought
on his almost feminine delicacy in shrinking from the barest mention of
impurities which other men could carelessly discuss, or could laugh over
as good material for an after-dinner jest. I thought over all this,
and when I remembered that it was to such a man that I must confess the
infamous marriage which I had contracted in secret, all hope from his
fatherly affection deserted me; all idea of appealing to his chivalrous
generosity became a delusion in which it was madness to put a moment’s
trust.
The faculties of observation are generally sharpened, in proportion
as the faculties of reflection are dulled, under the influence of
an absorbing suspense. While I now waited alone in my room, the most
ordinary sounds and events in the house, which I never remembered
noticing before, absolutely enthralled me. It seemed as if the noise of
a footstep, the echo of a voice, the shutting or opening of doors down
stairs, must, on this momentous day, presage some mysterious calamity,
some strange discovery, some secret project formed against me, I
knew not how, or by whom. Two or three times I found myself listening
intently on the staircase, with what object I could hardly tell. It was
always, however, on those occasions, that a dread, significant quiet
appeared to have fallen suddenly on the house. Clara never came to
me, no message arrived from my father; the door-bell seemed strangely
silent, the servants strangely neglectful of their duties above stairs.
I caught myself returning to my own room softly, as if I expected that
some hidden catastrophe might break forth, if sound of my footsteps were
heard.
Would my father seek me again in my own room, or would he send for me
down stairs? It was not long before the doubt was decided. One of the
servants knocked at my door--the servant whose special duty it had
been to wait on me in my illness. I longed to take the man’s hand, and
implore his sympathy and encouragement while he addressed me.
“My master, Sir, desires me to say that, if you feel well enough, he
wishes to see you in his own room.”
I rose, and immediately followed the servant. On our way, we passed the
door of Clara’s private sitting-room--it opened, and my sister came
out and laid her hand on my arm. She smiled as I looked at her; but the
tears stood thick in her eyes, and her face was deadly pale.
“Think of what I said last night, Basil,” she whispered, “and, if hard
words are spoken to you, think of _me._ All that our mother would have
done for you, if she had been still among us, _I_ will do. Remember
that, and keep heart and hope to the very last.”
She hastily returned to her room, and I went on down stairs. In the
hall, the servant was waiting for me, with a letter in his hand.
“This was left for you, Sir, a little while ago. The messenger who
brought it said he was not to wait for an answer.”
It was no time for reading letters--the interview with my father was too
close at hand. I hastily put the letter into my pocket, barely noticing,
as I did so, that the handwriting on the address was very irregular, and
quite unknown to me.
I went at once into my father’s room.
He was sitting at his table, cutting the leaves of some new books
that lay on it. Pointing to a chair placed opposite to him, he briefly
inquired after my health; and then added, in a lower tone--
“Take any time you like, Basil, to compose and collect yourself. This
morning my time is yours.”
He turned a little away from me, and went on cutting the leaves of the
books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself in
any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or hope,
or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for the
reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak--I mechanically
looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence
to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly
foreshadowed in the faces of the old family portraits which hung above
the fireplace.
What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even
by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In moments
of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the
past, in spite of the present--in moments of bitter affliction, it can
still recur to every-day trifles, in spite of ourselves. While I now
sat silent in my father’s room, long-forgotten associations of childhood
connected with different parts of it, began to rise on my memory in the
strangest and most startling independence of any influence or control,
which my present agitation and suspense might be supposed to exercise
over them. The remembrances that should have been the last to be
awakened at this time of heavy trial, were the very remembrances which
now moved within me.
With burdened heart and aching eyes I looked over the walls around me.
There, in that corner, was the red cloth door which led to the library.
As children, how often Ralph and I had peeped curiously through that
very door, to see what my father was about in his study, to wonder
why he had so many letters to write, and so many books to read. How
frightened we both were, when he discovered us one day, and reproved
us severely! How happy the moment afterwards, when we had begged him
to pardon us, and were sent back to the library again with a great
picture-book to look at, as a token that we were both forgiven! Then,
again, there was the high, old-fashioned, mahogany press before the
window, with the same large illustrated folio about Jewish antiquities
lying on it, which, years and years ago, Clara and I were sometimes
allowed to look at, as a special treat, on Sunday afternoons; and which
we always examined and re-examined with never-ending delight--standing
together on two chairs to reach up to the thick, yellow-looking leaves,
and turn them over with our own hands. And there, in the recess between
two bookcases, still stood the ancient desk-table, with its rows of
little inlaid drawers; and on the bracket above it the old French clock,
which had once belonged to my mother, and which always chimed the hours
so sweetly and merrily. It was at that table that Ralph and I always
bade my father farewell, when we were going back to school after the
holidays, and were receiving our allowance of pocket-money, given to us
out of one of the tiny inlaid drawers, just before we started. Near that
spot, too, Clara--then a little rosy child--used to wait gravely and
anxiously, with her doll in her arms, to say good-bye for the last time,
and to bid us come back soon, and then never go away again. I turned,
and looked abruptly towards the window; for such memories as the room
suggested were more than I could bear.
Outside, in the dreary strip of garden, the few stunted, dusky trees
were now rustling as pleasantly in the air, as if the breeze that
stirred them came serenely over an open meadow, or swept freshly under
their branches from the rippling surface of a brook. Distant, but yet
well within hearing, the mighty murmur from a large thoroughfare--the
great mid-day voice of London--swelled grandly and joyously on the ear.
While, nearer still, in a street that ran past the side of the house,
the notes of an organ rang out shrill and fast; the instrument was
playing its liveliest waltz tune--a tune which I had danced to in
the ball-room over and over again. What mocking memories within, what
mocking sounds without, to herald and accompany such a confession as I
had now to make!
Minute after minute glided on, inexorably fast; and yet I never broke
silence. My eyes turned anxiously and slowly on my father.
He was still looking away from me, still cutting the leaves of the books
before him. Even in that trifling action, the strong emotions which he
was trying to conceal, were plainly and terribly betrayed. His hand,
usually so steady and careful, trembled perceptibly; and the paper-knife
tore through the leaves faster and faster--cutting them awry, rending
them one from another, so as to spoil the appearance of every page.
I believe he _felt_ that I was looking at him; for he suddenly
discontinued his employment, turned round towards me, and spoke--
“I have resolved to give you your own time,” he said, “and from that
resolve I have no wish to depart--I only ask you to remember that every
minute of delay adds to the suffering and suspense which I am enduring
on your account.” He opened the books before him again, adding in lower
and colder tones, as he did so--“In _your_ place, Ralph would have
spoken before this.”
Ralph, and Ralph’s example quoted to me again!--I could remain silent no
longer.
“My brother’s faults towards you, and towards his family, are not such
faults as mine, Sir,” I began. “I have _not_ imitated his vices; I have
acted as he would _not_ have acted. And yet, the result of my error will
appear far more humiliating, and even disgraceful, in your eyes, than
the results of any errors of Ralph’s.”
As I pronounced the word “disgraceful,” he suddenly looked me full in
the face. His eyes lightened up sternly, and the warning red spot rose
on his pale cheeks.
“What do you mean by ‘disgraceful?’” he asked abruptly; “what do you
mean by associating such a word as _disgrace_ with your conduct--with
the conduct of a son of mine?”
“I must reply to your question indirectly, Sir,” I continued. “You asked
me last night who the Mr. Sherwin was who has called here so often--”
“And this morning I ask it again. I have other questions to put to you,
besides--you called constantly on a woman’s name in your delirium. But I
will repeat last night’s question first--who _is_ Mr. Sherwin?”
“He lives--”
“I don’t ask where he lives. Who is he? What is he?”
“Mr. Sherwin is a linen-draper--”
“You owe him money?--you have borrowed money of him? Why did you not
tell me this before? You have degraded my house by letting a man call at
the door--I know it!--in the character of a dun. He has inquired about
you as his ‘friend,’--the servants told me of it. This money-lending
tradesman, your _‘friend!’_ If I had heard that the poorest labourer
on my land called you ‘friend,’ I should have held you honoured by the
attachment and gratitude of an honest man. When I hear that name given
to you by a tradesman and money-lender, I hold you contaminated by
connection with a cheat. You were right, Sir!--this _is_ disgrace; how
much do you owe? Where are your dishonoured acceptances? Where have you
used _my_ name and _my_ credit? Tell me at once--I insist on it!”
He spoke rapidly and contemptuously, and rising from his chair as he
ended, walked impatiently up and down the room.
“I owe no money to Mr. Sherwin, Sir--no money to any one.”
He stopped suddenly:
“No money to any one?” he repeated very slowly, and in very altered
tones. “You spoke of disgrace just now. There is a worse disgrace then
that you have hidden from me, than debts dishonourably contracted?”
At this moment, a step passed across the hall. He instantly turned
round, and locked the door on that side of the room--then continued:
“Speak! and speak honestly if you can. How have you been deceiving me?
A woman’s name escaped you constantly, when your delirium was at its
worst. You used some very strange expressions about her, which it was
impossible altogether to comprehend; but you said enough to show that
her character was one of the most abandoned; that her licentiousness--it
is too revolting to speak of _her_--I return to _you._ I insist on
knowing how far your vices have compromised you with that vicious
woman.”
“She has wronged me--cruelly, horribly, wronged me--” I could say no
more. My head drooped on my breast; my shame overpowered me.
“Who is she? You called her Margaret, in your illness--who is she?”
“She is Mr. Sherwin’s daughter--” The words that I would fain have
spoken next, seemed to suffocate me. I was silent again.
I heard him mutter to himself:
_“That_ man’s daughter!--a worse bait than the bait of money!”
He bent forward, and looked at me searchingly. A frightful paleness flew
over his face in an instant.
“Basil!” he cried, “in God’s name, answer me at once! What is Mr.
Sherwin’s daughter to _you?_”
“She is my wife!”
I heard no answer--not a word, not even a sigh. My eyes were blinded
with tears, my face was bent down; I saw nothing at first. When I raised
my head, and dashed away the blinding tears, and looked up, the blood
chilled at my heart.
My father was leaning against one of the bookcases, with his hands
clasped over his breast. His head was drawn back; his white lips moved,
but no sound came from them. Over his upturned face there had passed
a ghastly change, as indescribable in its awfulness as the change of
death.
I ran horror-stricken to his side, and attempted to take his hand.
He started instantly into an erect position, and thrust me from him
furiously, without uttering a word. At that fearful moment, in that
fearful silence, the sounds out of doors penetrated with harrowing
distinctness and merriment into the room. The pleasant rustling of
the trees mingled musically with the softened, monotonous rolling of
carriages in the distant street, while the organ-tune, now changed to
the lively measure of a song, rang out clear and cheerful above both,
and poured into the room as lightly and happily as the very sunshine
itself.
For a few minutes we stood apart, and neither of us moved or spoke. I
saw him take out his handkerchief, and pass it over his face, breathing
heavily and thickly, and leaning against the bookcase once more. When he
withdrew the handkerchief and looked at me again, I knew that the sharp
pang of agony had passed away, that the last hard struggle between his
parental affection and his family pride was over, and that the great
gulph which was hence-forth to separate father and son, had now opened
between us for ever.
He pointed peremptorily to me to go back to my former place, but did not
return to his own chair. As I obeyed, I saw him unlock the door of the
bookcase against which he had been leaning, and place his hand on one of
the books inside. Without withdrawing it from its place, without turning
or looking towards me, he asked if I had anything more to say to him.
The chilling calmness of his tones, the question itself, and the time at
which he put it, the unnatural repression of a single word of rebuke,
of passion, or of sorrow, after such a confession as I had just made,
struck me speechless. He turned a little away from the bookcase--still
keeping his hand on the book inside--and repeated the question. His
eyes, when they met mine, had a pining, weary look, as if they had been
long condemned to rest on woeful and revolting objects; his expression
had lost its natural refinement, its gentleness of repose, and had
assumed a hard, lowering calmness, under which his whole countenance
appeared to have shrunk and changed--years of old age seemed to have
fallen on it, since I had spoken the last fatal words!
“Have you anything more to say to me?”
On the repetition of that terrible question, I sank down in the chair at
my side, and hid my face in my hands. Unconscious how I spoke, or why I
spoke; with no hope in myself, or in him; with no motive but to invite
and bear the whole penalty of my disgrace, I now disclosed the miserable
story of my marriage, and of all that followed it. I remember nothing of
the words I used---nothing of what I urged in my own defence. The sense
of bewilderment and oppression grew heavier and heavier on my brain;
I spoke more and more rapidly, confusedly, unconsciously, until I was
again silenced and recalled to myself by the sound of my father’s voice.
I believe I had arrived at the last, worst part of my confession, when
he interrupted me.
“Spare me any more details,” he said, bitterly, “you have humiliated me
sufficiently--you have spoken enough.”
He removed the book on which his hand had hitherto rested from the case
behind him, and advanced with it to the table--paused for a moment, pale
and silent--then slowly opened it at the first page, and resumed his
chair.
I recognised the book instantly. It was a biographical history of his
family, from the time of his earliest ancestors down to the date of
the births of his own children. The thick quarto pages were beautifully
illuminated in the manner of the ancient manuscripts; and the narrative,
in written characters, had been produced under his own inspection. This
book had cost him years of research and perseverance. The births and
deaths, the marriages and possessions, the battle achievements and
private feuds of the old Norman barons from whom he traced his descent,
were all enrolled in regular order on every leaf--headed, sometimes
merely by representations of the Knight’s favourite weapon; sometimes by
copies of the Baron’s effigy on his tombstone in a foreign land. As
the history advanced to later dates, beautiful miniature portraits were
inlaid at the top of each leaf; and the illuminations were so managed as
to symbolize the remarkable merits or the peculiar tastes of the subject
of each biography. Thus, the page devoted to my mother was surrounded
by her favourite violets, clustering thickest round the last melancholy
lines of writing which told the story of her death.
Slowly and in silence, my father turned over the leaves of the book
which, next to the Bible, I believe he most reverenced in the world,
until he came to the last-written page but one--the page which I knew,
from its position, to be occupied by my name. At the top, a miniature
portrait of me, when a child, was let into the leaf. Under it, was the
record of my birth and names, of the School and College at which I had
been taught, and of the profession that I had adopted. Below, a large
blank space was left for the entry of future particulars. On this page
my father now looked, still not uttering a word, still with the same
ghastly calmness on his face. The organ-notes sounded no more; but
the trees rustled as pleasantly, and the roar of the distant carriages
swelled as joyously as ever on the ear. Some children had come out to
play in the garden of a neighbouring house. As their voices reached
us, so fresh, and clear, and happy--but another modulation of the
thanksgiving song to God which the trees were singing in the summer
air--I saw my father, while he still looked on the page before him,
clasp his trembling hands over my portrait so as to hide it from sight.
Then he spoke; but without looking up, and more as if he were speaking
to himself than to me. His voice, at other times clear and gentle in its
tones, was now so hard and harsh in its forced calmness and deliberation
of utterance, that it sounded like a stranger’s.
“I came here, this morning,” he began, “prepared to hear of faults and
misfortunes which should pain me to the heart; which I might never,
perhaps, be able to forget, however willing and even predetermined
to forgive. But I did _not_ come prepared to hear, that unutterable
disgrace had been cast on me and mine, by my own child. I have no words
of rebuke or of condemnation for this: the reproach and the punishment
have fallen already where the guilt was--and not there only. My son’s
infamy defiles his brother’s birthright, and puts his father to shame.
Even his sister’s name--”
He stopped, shuddering. When he proceeded, his voice faltered, and his
head drooped low.
“I say it again:--you are below all reproach and all condemnation; but I
have a duty to perform towards my two who are absent, and I have a last
word to say to _you_ when that duty is done. On this page--” (as he
pointed to the family history, his tones strengthened again)--“on this
page there is a blank space left, after the last entry, for writing the
future events of your life. Here, then, if I still acknowledge you to
be my son; if I think your presence and the presence of my daughter
possible in the same house, must be written such a record of dishonour
and degradation as has never yet defiled a single page of this
book--here, the foul stain of your marriage, and its consequences, must
be admitted to spread over all that is pure before it, and to taint to
the last whatever comes after. This shall not be. I have no faith or
hope in you more. I know you now, only as an enemy to me and to my
house--it is mockery and hypocrisy to call you son; it is an insult to
Clara, and even to Ralph, to think of you as my child. In this record
your place is destroyed--and destroyed for ever. Would to God I could
tear the past from my memory, as I tear the leaf from this book!”
As he spoke, the hour struck; and the old French clock rang out gaily
the same little silvery chime which my mother had so often taken me
into her room to listen to, in the bygone time. The shrill, lively peal
mingled awfully with the sharp, tearing sound, as my father rent out
from the book before him the whole of the leaf which contained my name;
tore it into fragments, and cast them on the floor.
He rose abruptly, after he had closed the book again. His cheeks flushed
once more; and when he next spoke, his voice grew louder and louder
with every word he uttered. It seemed as if he still distrusted his
resolution to abandon me; and sought, in his anger, the strength of
purpose which, in his calmer mood, he might even yet have been unable to
command.
“Now, Sir,” he said, “we treat together as strangers. You are Mr.
Sherwin’s son--not mine. You are the husband of his daughter--not a
relation of my family. Rise, as I do: we sit together no longer in the
same room. Write!” (he pushed pen, ink, and paper before me,)
“write your terms there--I shall find means to keep you to a written
engagement--the terms of your absence, for life, from this country;
and of hers: the terms of your silence, and of the silence of your
accomplices; of all of them. Write what you please; I am ready to pay
dearly for your absence, your secrecy, and your abandonment of the name
you have degraded. My God! that I should live to bargain for hushing up
the dishonour of my family, and to bargain for it with _you._”
I had listened to him hitherto without pleading a word in my own behalf;
but his last speech roused me. Some of _his_ pride stirred in my heart
against the bitterness of his contempt. I raised my head, and met his
eye steadily for the first time--then, thrust the writing materials away
from me, and left my place at the table.
“Stop!” he cried. “Do you pretend that you have not understood me?”
“It is _because_ I have understood you, Sir, that I go. I have deserved
your anger, and have submitted without a murmur to all that it could
inflict. If you see in my conduct towards you no mitigation of my
offence; if you cannot view the shame and wrong inflicted on me, with
such grief as may have some pity mixed with it--I have, I think, the
right to ask that your contempt may be silent, and your last words to
me, not words of insult.”
“Insult! After what has happened, is it for _you_ to utter that word in
the tone in which you have just spoken it? I tell you again, I insist
on your written engagement as I would insist on the engagement of a
stranger--I will have it, before you leave this room!”
“All, and more than all, which that degrading engagement could imply, I
will do. But I have not fallen so low yet, as to be bribed to perform
a duty. You may be able to forget that you are my father; I can never
forget that I am your son.”
“The remembrance will avail you nothing as long as I live. I tell you
again, I insist on your written engagement, though it were only to show
that I have ceased to believe in your word. Write at once--do you hear
me?--Write!”
I neither moved nor answered. His face changed again, and grew livid;
his fingers trembled convulsively, and crumpled the sheet of paper, as
he tried to take it up from the table on which it lay.
“You refuse?” he said quickly.
“I have already told you, Sir--”
“Go!” he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, “go out from
this house, never to return to it again--go, not as a stranger to me,
but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made:
there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty of.
But I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are leagued, to take
warning: I have wealth, power, and position; and there is no use to
which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the
fair fame of this family. Leave me, remembering that--and leave me for
ever!”
Just as he uttered the last word, just as my hand was on the lock of
the door, a faint sound--something between breathing and speaking--was
audible in the direction of the library. He started, and looked round.
Impelled, I know not how, I paused on the point of going out. My eyes
followed his, and fixed on the cloth door which led into the library.
It opened a little--then shut again--then opened wide. Slowly and
noiselessly, Clara came into the room.
The silence and suddenness of her entrance at such a moment; the look
of terror which changed to unnatural vacancy the wonted softness and
gentleness of her eyes, her pale face, her white dress, and slow,
noiseless step, made her first appearance in the room seem almost
supernatural; it was as if an apparition had been walking towards us,
and not Clara herself! As she approached my father, he pronounced her
name in astonishment; but his voice sank to a whisper, while he spoke
it. For an instant, she paused, hesitating--I saw her tremble as her
eyes met his--then, as they turned towards me, the brave girl came on;
and, taking my hand, stood and faced my father, standing by my side.
“Clara!” he exclaimed again, still in the same whispering tones.
I felt her cold hand close fast on mine; the grasp of the chill,
frail fingers was almost painful to me. Her lips moved, but her quick,
hysterical breathing made the few words she uttered inarticulate.
“Clara!” repeated my father, for the third time, his voice rising, but
sinking again immediately--when he spoke his next words, “Clara,” he
resumed, sadly and gently, “let go his hand; this is not a time for
your presence, I beg you to leave us. You must not take his hand! He has
ceased to be my son, or your brother. Clara, do you not hear me?”
“Yes, Sir, I hear you,” she answered. “God grant that my mother in
heaven may not hear you too!”
He was approaching while she replied; but at her last words, he
stopped instantly, and turned his face away from us. Who shall say what
remembrances of other days shook him to the heart?
“You have spoken, Clara, as you should not have spoken,” he went on,
without looking up. “Your mother--” his voice faltered and failed him.
“Can you still hold his hand after what I have said? I tell you
again, he is unworthy to be in your presence; my house is his home no
longer--must I _command_ you to leave him?”
The deeply planted instinct of gentleness and obedience prevailed; she
dropped my hand, but did not move away from me, even yet.
“Now leave us, Clara,” he said. “You were wrong, my love, to be in that
room, and wrong to come in here. I will speak to you up-stairs--you must
remain here no longer.”
She clasped her trembling fingers together, and sighed heavily.
“I cannot go, Sir,” she said quickly and breathlessly.
“Must I tell you for the first time in your life, that you are acting
disobediently?” he asked.
“I cannot go,” she repeated in the same manner, “till you have said you
will let him atone for his offence, and will forgive him.”
“For _his_ offence there is neither atonement nor forgiveness. Clara!
are you so changed, that you can disobey me to my face?”
He walked away from us as he said this.
“Oh, no! no!” She ran towards him; but stopped halfway, and looked back
at me affrightedly, as I stood near the door. “Basil,” she cried, “you
have not done what you promised me; you have not been patient. Oh, Sir,
if I have ever deserved kindness from you, be kind to him for _my_ sake!
Basil! speak, Basil! Ask his pardon on your knees. Father, I promised
him he should be forgiven, if I asked you. Not a word; not a word from
either? Basil! you are not going yet--not going at all! Remember, Sir,
how good and kind he has always been to _me._ My poor mother, (I _must_
speak of her), my poor mother’s favourite son--you have told me so
yourself! and he has always been my favourite brother; I think because
my mother loved him so! His first fault, too! his first grief! And will
you tell him for this, that our home is _his_ home no longer? Punish
_me,_ Sir! I have done wrong like him; when I heard your voices so loud,
I listened in the library. He’s going! No, no, no! not yet!”
She ran to the door as I opened it, and pushed it to again. Overwhelmed
by the violence of her agitation, my father had sunk into a chair while
she was speaking.
“Come back--come back with me to his knees!” she whispered, fixing her
wild, tearless eyes on mine, flinging her arms round my neck, and trying
to lead me with her from the door. “Come back, or you will drive me
mad!” she repeated loudly, drawing me away towards my father.
He rose instantly from his chair.
“Clara,” he said, “I command you, leave him!” He advanced a few steps
towards me. “Go!” he cried; “if you are human in your villany, you will
release me from this!”
I whispered in her ear, “I will write, love--I will write,” and
disengaged her arms from my neck--they were hanging round it weakly,
already! As I passed the door, I turned back, and looked again into the
room for the last time.
Clara was in my father’s arms, her head lay on his shoulder, her face
was as still in its heavenly calmness as if the world and the world’s
looks knew it no more, and the only light that fell on it now, was light
from the angel’s eyes. She had fainted.
He was standing with one arm round her, his disengaged hand was
searching impatiently over the wall behind him for the bell, and his
eyes were fixed in anguish and in love unutterable on the peaceful face,
hushed in its sad repose so close beneath his own. For one moment, I saw
him thus, ere I closed the door--the next, I had left the house.
I never entered it again--I have never seen my father since.
IV.
We are seldom able to discover under any ordinary conditions of
self-knowledge, how intimately that spiritual part of us, which is
undying, can attach to itself and its operations the poorest objects
of that external world around us, which is perishable. In the ravelled
skein, the slightest threads are the hardest to follow. In analysing the
associations and sympathies which regulate the play of our passions, the
simplest and homeliest are the last that we detect. It is only when the
shock comes, and the mind recoils before it--when joy is changed into
sorrow, or sorrow into joy--that we really discern what trifles in the
outer world our noblest mental pleasures, or our severest mental pains,
have made part of themselves; atoms which the whirlpool has drawn into
its vortex, as greedily and as surely as the largest mass.
It was reserved for me to know this, when--after a moment’s pause before
the door of my father’s house, more homeless, then, than the poorest
wretch who passed me on the pavement, and had wife or kindred to shelter
him in a garret that night--my steps turned, as of old, in the direction
of North Villa.
Again I passed over the scene of my daily pilgrimage, always to the same
shrine, for a whole year; and now, for the first time, I knew that
there was hardly a spot along the entire way, which my heart had not
unconsciously made beautiful and beloved to me by some association with
Margaret Sherwin. Here was the friendly, familiar shop-window, filled
with the glittering trinkets which had so often lured me in to buy
presents for her, on my way to the house. There was the noisy street
corner, void of all adornment in itself, but once bright to me with the
fairy-land architecture of a dream, because I knew that at that place
I had passed over half the distance which separated my home from hers.
Farther on, the Park trees came in sight--trees that no autumn decay or
winter nakedness could make dreary, in the bygone time; for she and I
had walked under them together. And further yet, was the turning which
led from the long, suburban road into Hollyoake Square--the lonely,
dust-whitened place, around which my past happiness and my wasted hopes
had flung their golden illusions, like jewels hung round the coarse
wooden image of a Roman saint. Dishonoured and ruined, it was among
such associations as these--too homely to have been recognised by me in
former times--that I journeyed along the well-remembered way to North
Villa.
I went on without hesitating, without even a thought of turning back. I
had said that the honour of my family should not suffer by the calamity
which had fallen on me; and, while life remained, I was determined that
nothing should prevent me from holding to my word. It was from this
resolution that I drew the faith in myself, the confidence in my
endurance, the sustaining calmness under my father’s sentence of
exclusion, which nerved me to go on. I must inevitably see Mr. Sherwin
(perhaps even suffer the humiliation of seeing her!)--must inevitably
speak such words, disclose such truths, as should show him that deceit
was henceforth useless. I must do this and more, I must be prepared to
guard the family to which--though banished from it--I still belonged,
from every conspiracy against them that detected crime or shameless
cupidity could form, whether in the desire of revenge, or in the hope of
gain.. A hard, almost an impossible task--but, nevertheless, a task that
must be done!
I kept the thought of this necessity before my mind unceasingly; not
only as a duty, but as a refuge from another thought, to which I dared
not for a moment turn. The still, pale face which I had seen lying
hushed on my father’s breast--CLARA!--That way, lay the grief that
weakens, the yearning and the terror that are near despair; that way was
not it for _me._
The servant was at the garden-gate of North Villa--the same servant whom
I had seen and questioned in the first days of my fatal delusion. She
was receiving a letter from a man, very poorly dressed, who walked away
the moment I approached. Her confusion and surprise were so great as she
let me in, that she could hardly look at, or speak to me. It was only
when I was ascending the door-steps that she said--
“Miss Margaret”--(she still gave her that name!)--“Miss Margaret is
upstairs, Sir. I suppose you would like--”
“I have no wish to see her: I want to speak to Mr. Sherwin.”
Looking more bewildered, and even frightened, than before, the girl
hurriedly opened one of the doors in the passage. I saw, as I entered,
that she had shown me, in her confusion, into the wrong room. Mr.
Sherwin, who was in the apartment, hastily drew a screen across the
lower end of it, apparently to hide something from me; which, however, I
had not seen as I came in.
He advanced, holding out his hand; but his restless eyes wandered
unsteadily, looking away from me towards the screen.
“So you have come at last, have you? Just let’s step into the
drawing-room: the fact is--I thought I wrote to you about it--?”
He stopped suddenly, and his outstretched arm fell to his side. I had
not said a word. Something in my look and manner must have told him
already on what errand I had come.
“Why don’t you speak?” he said, after a moment’s pause. “What are you
looking at me like that for? Stop! Let’s say our say in the other room.”
He walked past me towards the door, and half opened it.
Why was he so anxious to get me away? Who, or what, was he hiding behind
the screen? The servant had said his daughter was upstairs; remembering
this, and suspecting every action or word that came from him, I
determined to remain in the room, and discover his secret. It was
evidently connected with me.
“Now then,” he continued, opening the door a little wider, “it’s only
across the hall, you know; and I always receive visitors in the best
room.”
“I have been admitted here,” I replied, “and have neither time nor
inclination to follow you from room to room, just as you like. What
I have to say is not much; and, unless you give me fit reasons to the
contrary, I shall say it here.”
“You will, will you? Let me tell you that’s damned like what we plain
mercantile men call downright incivility. I say it again--incivility;
and rudeness too, if you like it better.” He saw I was determined, and
closed the door as he spoke, his face twitching and working violently,
and his quick, evil eyes turned again in the direction of the screen.
“Well,” he continued, with a sulky defiance of manner and look, “do as
you like; stop here--you’ll wish you hadn’t before long, I’ll be bound!
You don’t seem to hurry yourself much about speaking, so _I_ shall sit
down. _You_ can do as you please. Now then! just let’s cut it short--do
you come here in a friendly way, to ask me to send for _my_ girl
downstairs, and to show yourself the gentleman, or do you not?”
“You have written me two letters, Mr. Sherwin--”
“Yes: and took devilish good care you should get them--I left them
myself.”
“In writing those letters, you were either grossly deceived; and, in
that case, are only to be pitied, or--”
“Pitied! what the devil do you mean by that? Nobody wants your pity
here.”
“Or you have been trying to deceive me; and in that case, I have to
tell you that deceit is henceforth useless. I know all--more than you
suspect: more, I believe, than you would wish me to have known.”
“Oh, that’s your tack, is it? By God, I expected as much the moment you
came in! What! you don’t believe _my_ girl--don’t you? You’re going to
fight shy, and behave like a scamp--are you? Damn your infernal coolness
and your aristocratic airs and graces! You shall see I’ll be even with
you--you shall. Ha! ha! look here!--here’s the marriage certificate safe
in my pocket. You won’t do the honourable by my poor child--won’t you?
Come out! Come away! You’d better--I’m off to your father to blow the
whole business; I am, as sure as my name’s Sherwin!”
He struck his fist on the table, and started up, livid with passion. The
screen trembled a little, and a slight rustling noise was audible behind
it, just as he advanced towards me. He stopped instantly, with an oath,
and looked back.
“I warn you to remain here,” I said. “This morning, my father has heard
all from my lips. He has renounced me as his son, and I have left his
house for ever.”
He turned round quickly, staring at me with a face of mingled fury and
dismay.
“Then you come to me a beggar!” he burst out; “a beggar who has taken
me in about his fine family, and his fine prospects; a beggar who can’t
support my child--Yes! I say it again, a beggar who looks me in the
face, and talks as you do. I don’t care a damn about you or your father!
I know my rights; I’m an Englishman, thank God! I know my rights, and
_my_ Margaret’s rights; and I’ll have them in spite of you both. Yes!
you may stare as angry as you like; staring don’t hurt. I’m an honest
man, and _my_ girl’s an honest girl!”
I was looking at him, at that moment, with the contempt that I really
felt; his rage produced no other sensation in me. All higher and quicker
emotions seemed to have been dried at their sources by the events of the
morning.
“I say _my_ girl’s an honest girl,” he repeated, sitting down again;
“and I dare you, or anybody--I don’t care who--to prove the contrary.
You told me you knew all, just now. What _all?_ Come! we’ll have this
out before we do anything else. She says she’s innocent, and I say she’s
innocent: and if I could find out that damnation scoundrel Mannion, and
get him here, I’d make him say it too. Now, after all that, what have
you got against her?--against your lawful wife; and I’ll make you own
her as such, and keep her as such, I can promise you!”
“I am not here to ask questions, or to answer them,” I replied--“my
errand in this house is simply to tell you, that the miserable
falsehoods contained in your letter, will avail you as little as the
foul insolence of language by which you are now endeavouring to support
them. I told you before, and I now tell you again, I know all. I had
been inside that house, before I saw your daughter at the door; and had
heard, from _her_ voice and _his_ voice, what such shame and misery as
you cannot comprehend forbid me to repeat. To your past duplicity, and
to your present violence, I have but one answer to give:--I will never
see your daughter again.”
“But you _shall_ see her again--yes! and keep her too! Do you think I
can’t see through you and your precious story? Your father’s cut you
off with a shilling; and now you want to curry favour with him again
by trumping up a case against _my_ girl, and trying to get her off your
hands that way. But it won’t do! You’ve married her, my fine gentleman,
and you shall stick to her! Do you think I wouldn’t sooner believe her,
than believe you? Do you think I’ll stand this? Here she is up-stairs,
half heart-broken, on my hands; here’s my wife”--(his voice sank
suddenly as he said this)--“with her mind in such a state that I’m kept
away from business, day after day, to look after her; here’s all this
crying and misery and mad goings-on in my house, because you choose to
behave like a scamp--and do you think I’ll put up with it quietly? I’ll
make you do your duty to _my_ girl, if she goes to the parish to appeal
against you! _Your_ story indeed! Who’ll believe that a young female,
like Margaret, could have taken to a fellow like Mannion? and kept it
all a secret from you? Who believes that, I should like to know?”
_“I believe it!”_
The third voice which pronounced those words was Mrs. Sherwin’s.
But was the figure that now came out from behind the screen, the same
frail, shrinking figure which had so often moved my pity in the past
time? the same wan figure of sickness and sorrow, ever watching in the
background of the fatal love-scenes at North Villa; ever looking like
the same spectre-shadow, when the evenings darkened in as I sat by
Margaret’s side?
Had the grave given up its dead? I stood awe-struck, neither speaking
nor moving while she walked towards me. She was clothed in the white
garments of the sick-room--they looked on _her_ like the raiment of the
tomb. Her figure, which I only remembered as drooping with premature
infirmity, was now straightened convulsively to its proper height; her
arms hung close at her side, like the arms of a corpse; the natural
paleness of her face had turned to an earthy hue; its natural
expression, so meek, so patient, so melancholy in uncomplaining sadness,
was gone; and, in its stead, was left a pining stillness that never
changed; a weary repose of lifeless waking--the awful seal of Death
stamped ghastly on the living face; the awful look of Death staring out
from the chill, shining eyes.
Her husband kept his place, and spoke to her as she stopped opposite to
me. His tones were altered, but his manner showed as little feeling as
ever.
“There now!” he began, “you said you were sure he’d come here, and that
you’d never take to your bed, as the Doctor wanted you, till you’d seen
him and spoken to him. Well, he _has_ come; there he is. He came in
while you were asleep, I rather think; and I let him stop, so that if
you woke up and wanted to see him, you might. You can’t say--nobody can
say--I haven’t given in to your whims and fancies after that. There!
you’ve had your way, and you’ve said you believe him; and now, if I ring
for the nurse, you’ll go upstairs at last, and make no more worry about
it--Eh?”
She moved her head slowly, and looked at him. As those dying eyes met
his, as that face on which the light of life was darkening fast, turned
on him, even _his_ gross nature felt the shock. I saw him shrink--his
sallow cheeks whitened, he moved his chair away, and said no more.
She looked back to me again, and spoke. Her voice was still the same
soft, low voice as ever. It was fearful to hear how little it had
altered, and then to look on the changed face.
“I am dying,” she said to me. “Many nights have passed since that night
when Margaret came home by herself and I felt something moving down into
my heart, when I looked at her, which I knew was death--many nights,
since I have been used to say my prayers, and think I had said them
for the last time, before I dared shut my eyes in the darkness and the
quiet. I have lived on till to-day, very weary of my life ever since
that night when Margaret came in; and yet, I could not die, because I
had an atonement to make to _you,_ and you never came to hear it and
forgive me. I was not fit for God to take me till you came--I know that,
know it to be truth from a dream.”
She paused, still looking at me, but with the same deathly blank of
expression. The eye had ceased to speak already; nothing but the voice
was left.
“My husband has asked, who will believe you?” she went on; her weak
tones gathering strength with every fresh word she uttered. “I have
answered that _I_ will; for you have spoken the truth. Now, when the
light of this world is fading from my eyes; here, in this earthly home
of much sorrow and suffering, which I must soon quit--in the presence of
my husband--under the same roof with my sinful child--I bear you witness
that you have spoken the truth. I, her mother, say it of her: Margaret
Sherwin is guilty; she is no more worthy to be called your wife.”
She pronounced the last words slowly, distinctly, solemnly. Till that
fearful denunciation was spoken, her husband had been looking sullenly
and suspiciously towards us, as we stood together; but while she uttered
it, his eyes fell, and he turned away his head in silence.
He never looked up, never moved, or interrupted her, as she continued,
still addressing me; but now speaking very slowly and painfully, pausing
longer and longer between every sentence.
“From this room I go to my death-bed. The last words I speak in this
world shall be to my husband, and shall change his heart towards you. I
have been weak of purpose,” (as she said this, a strange sweetness and
mournfulness began to steal over her tones,) “miserably, guiltily weak,
all my life. Much sorrow and pain and heavy disappointment, when I was
young, did some great harm to me which I have never recovered since. I
have lived always in fear of others, and doubt of myself; and this has
made me guilty of a great sin towards _you._ Forgive me before I die! I
suspected the guilt that was preparing--I foreboded the shame that was
to come--they hid it from others’ eyes; but, from the first, they could
not hide it from mine--and yet I never warned you as I ought! _That_ man
had the power of Satan over me! I always shuddered before him, as I used
to shudder at the darkness when I was a little child! My life has been
all fear--fear of _him;_ fear of my husband, and even of my daughter;
fear, worse still, of my own thoughts, and of what I had discovered that
should be told to _you._ When I tried to speak, you were too generous
to understand me--I was afraid to think my suspicions were right, long
after they should have been suspicions no longer. It was misery!--oh,
what misery from then till now!”
Her voice died away for a moment, in faint, breathless murmurings. She
struggled to recover it, and repeated in a whisper:
“Forgive me before I die! I have made a terrible atonement; I have borne
witness against the innocence of my own child. My own child! I dare
not bid God bless her, if they bring her to my bedside!--forgive
me!--forgive me before I die!”
She took my hand, and pressed it to her cold lips. The tears gushed into
my eyes, as I tried to speak to her.
“No tears for _me!_” she murmured gently. “Basil!--let me call you as
your mother would call you if she was alive--Basil! pray that I may be
forgiven in the dreadful Eternity to which I go, as _you_ have forgiven
me! And, for _her?_--oh! who will pray for _her_ when I am gone?”
Those words were the last I heard her pronounce. Exhausted beyond the
power of speaking more, though it were only in a whisper, she tried to
take my hand again, and express by a gesture the irrevocable farewell.
But her strength failed her even for this--failed her with awful
suddenness. Her hand moved halfway towards mine; then stopped, and
trembled for a moment in the air; then fell to her side, with the
fingers distorted and clenched together. She reeled where she stood, and
sank helplessly as I stretched out my arms to support her.
Her husband rose fretfully from his chair, and took her from me. When
his eyes met mine, the look of sullen self-restraint in his countenance
was crossed, in an instant, by an expression of triumphant
malignity. He whispered to me: “If you don’t change your tone by
to-morrow!”--paused--and then, without finishing the sentence, moved
away abruptly, and supported his wife to the door.
Just when her face was turned towards where I stood, as he took her out,
I thought I saw the cold, vacant eyes soften as they rested on me, and
change again tenderly to the old look of patience and sadness which I
remembered so well. Was my imagination misleading me? or had the light
of that meek spirit shone out on earth, for the last time at parting, in
token of farewell to mine? She was gone to me, gone for ever--before I
could look nearer, and know.
* * * * *
I was told, afterwards, how she died.
For the rest of that day, and throughout the night, she lay speechless,
but still alive. The next morning, the faint pulse still fluttered. As
the day wore on, the doctors applied fresh stimulants, and watched her
in astonishment; for they had predicted her death as impending every
moment, at least twelve hours before. When they spoke of this to her
husband, his behaviour was noticed as very altered and unaccountable by
every one. He sulkily refused to believe that her life was in danger; he
roughly accused anybody who spoke of her death, as wanting to fix on
him the imputation of having ill-used her, and so being the cause of her
illness; and more than this, he angrily vindicated himself to every one
about her--even to the servants--by quoting the indulgence he had shown
to her fancy for seeing me when I called, and his patience while she
was (as he termed it) wandering in her mind in trying to talk to me. The
doctors, suspecting how his uneasy conscience was accusing him, forbore
in disgust all expostulation. Except when he was in his daughter’s room,
he was shunned by everybody in the house.
Just before noon, on the second day, Mrs. Sherwin rallied a little under
the stimulants administered to her, and asked to see her husband
alone. Both her words and manner gave the lie to his assertion that her
faculties were impaired--it was observed by all her attendants, that
whenever she had strength to speak, her speech never wandered in the
slightest degree. Her husband quitted her room more fretfully uneasy,
more sullenly suspicious of the words and looks of those about him than
ever--went instantly to seek his daughter--and sent her in alone to her
mother’s bedside. In a few minutes, she hurriedly came out again, pale,
and violently agitated; and was heard to say, that she had been spoken
to so unnaturally, and so shockingly, that she could not, and would not,
enter that room again until her mother was better. Better! the father
and daughter were both agreed in that; both agreed that she was not
dying, but only out of her mind.
During the afternoon, the doctors ordered that Mrs. Sherwin should
not be allowed to see her husband or her child again, without their
permission. There was little need of taking such a precaution to
preserve the tranquillity of her last moments. As the day began to
decline, she sank again into insensibility: her life was just not death,
and that was all. She lingered on in this quiet way, with her eyes
peacefully closed, and her breathing so gentle as to be quite inaudible,
until late in the evening. Just as it grew quite dark, and the candle
was lit in the sick room, the servant who was helping to watch by her,
drew aside the curtain to look at her mistress; and saw that, though
her eyes were still closed, she was smiling. The girl turned round,
and beckoned to the nurse to come to the bedside. When they lifted the
curtains again to look at her, she was dead.
* * * * *
Let me return to the day of my last visit to North Villa. More remains
to be recorded, before my narrative can advance to the morrow.
After the door had closed, and I knew that I had looked my last on Mrs.
Sherwin in this world, I remained a few minutes alone in the room, until
I had steadied my mind sufficiently to go out again into the streets. As
I walked down the garden-path to the gate, the servant whom I had seen
on my entrance, ran after me, and eagerly entreated that I would wait
one moment and speak to her.
When I stopped and looked at the girl, she burst into tears. “I’m afraid
I’ve been doing wrong, Sir,” she sobbed out, “and at this dreadful time
too, when my poor mistress is dying! If you please, Sir, I _must_ tell
you about it!”
I gave her a little time to compose herself; and then asked what she had
to say.
“I think you must have seen a man leaving a letter with me, Sir,” she
continued, “just when you came up to the door, a little while ago?”
“Yes: I saw him.”
“It was for Miss Margaret, Sir, that letter; and I was to keep it
secret; and--and--it isn’t the first I’ve taken in for her. It’s weeks
and weeks ago, Sir, that the same man came with a letter, and gave me
money to let nobody see it but Miss Margaret--and that time, Sir, he
waited; and she sent me with an answer to give him, in the same secret
way. And now, here’s this second letter; I don’t know who it comes
from--but I haven’t taken it to her yet; I waited to show it to you,
Sir, as you came out, because--”
“Why, Susan?--tell me candidly why?”
“I hope you won’t take it amiss, Sir, if I say that having lived in the
family so long as I have, I can’t help knowing a little about what
you and Miss Margaret used to be to each other, and that something’s
happened wrong between you lately; and so, Sir, it seems to be very
bad and dishonest in me (after first helping you to come together, as I
did), to be giving her strange letters, unknown to you. They may be bad
letters. I’m sure I wouldn’t wish to say anything disrespectful, or that
didn’t become my place; but--”
“Go on, Susan--speak as freely and as truly to me as ever.”
“Well, Sir, Miss Margaret’s been very much altered, ever since that
night when she came home alone, and frightened us so. She shuts herself
up in her room, and won’t speak to anybody except my master; she doesn’t
seem to care about anything that happens; and sometimes she looks so at
me, when I’m waiting on her, that I’m almost afraid to be in the same
room with her. I’ve never heard her mention your name once, Sir; and I’m
fearful there’s something on her mind that there oughtn’t to be. He’s
a very shabby man that leaves the letters--would you please to look at
this, and say whether you think it’s right in me to take it up-stairs.”
She held out a letter. I hesitated before I looked at it.
“Oh, Sir! please, please do take it!” said the girl earnestly. “I did
wrong, I’m afraid, in giving her the first; but I can’t do wrong again,
when my poor mistress is dying in the house. I can’t keep secrets, Sir,
that may be bad secrets, at such a dreadful time as this; I couldn’t
have laid down in my bed to-night, when there’s likely to be death in
the house, if I hadn’t confessed what I’ve done; and my poor mistress
has always been so kind and good to us servants--better than ever we
deserved.”
Weeping bitterly as she said this, the kind-hearted girl held out the
letter to me once more. This time I took it from her, and looked at the
address.
Though I did not know the handwriting, still there was something in
those unsteady characters which seemed familiar to me. Was it possible
that I had ever seen them before? I tried to consider; but my memory
was confused, my mind wearied out, after all that had happened since the
morning. The effort was fruitless: I gave back the letter.
“I know as little about it, Susan, as you do.”
“But ought I to take it up-stairs, Sir? only tell me that!”
“It is not for me to say. All interest or share on my part, Susan, in
what she--in what your young mistress receives, is at an end.”
“I’m very sorry to hear you say that, Sir; very, very sorry. But what
would you advise me to do?”
“Let me look at the letter once more.”
On a second view, the handwriting produced the same effect on me as
before, ending too with just the same result. I returned the letter
again.
“I respect your scruples, Susan, but I am not the person to remove or
to justify them. Why should you not apply in this difficulty to your
master?”
“I dare not, Sir; I dare not for my life. He’s been worse than ever,
lately; if I said as much to him as I’ve said to you, I believe he’d
kill me!” She hesitated, then continued more composedly; “Well, at any
rate I’ve told _you,_ Sir, and that’s made my mind easier; and--and I’ll
give her the letter this once, and then take in no more--if they come,
unless I hear a proper account of them.”
She curtseyed; and, bidding me farewell very sadly and anxiously,
returned to the house with the letter in her hand. If I had guessed at
that moment who it was written by! If I could only have suspected what
were its contents!
I left Hollyoake Square in a direction which led to some fields a little
distance on. It was very strange; but that unknown handwriting still
occupied my thoughts: that wretched trifle absolutely took possession of
my mind, at such a time as this; in such a position as mine was now.
I stopped wearily in the fields at a lonely spot, away from the
footpath. My eyes ached at the sunlight, and I shaded them with my hand.
Exactly at the same instant, the lost recollection flashed back on me so
vividly that I started almost in terror. The handwriting shown me by the
servant at North Villa, was the same as the handwriting on that unopened
and forgotten letter in my pocket, which I had received from the servant
at home--received in the morning, as I crossed the hall to enter my
father’s room.
I took out the letter, opened it with trembling fingers, and looked
through the cramped, closely-written pages for the signature.
It was “ROBERT MANNION.”
V.
Mannion! I had never suspected that the note shown to me at North Villa
might have come from him. And yet, the secrecy with which it had been
delivered; the person to whom it was addressed; the mystery connected
with it even in the servant’s eyes, all pointed to the discovery which
I had so incomprehensibly failed to make. I had suffered a letter, which
might contain written proof of her guilt, to be taken, from under my own
eyes, to Margaret Sherwin! How had my perceptions become thus strangely
blinded? The confusion of my memory, the listless incapacity of all my
faculties, answered the question but too readily, of themselves.
“Robert Mannion!” I could not take my eyes from that name: I still held
before me the crowded, closely-written lines of his writing, and delayed
to read them. Something of the horror which the presence of the man
himself would have inspired in me, was produced by the mere sight of his
letter, and that letter addressed to _me._ The vengeance which my
own hands had wreaked on him, he was, of all men the surest to repay.
Perhaps, in these lines, the dark future through which his way and mine
might lie, would be already shadowed forth. Margaret too! Could he write
so much, and not write of _her?_ not disclose the mystery in which the
motives of _her_ crime were still hidden? I turned back again to the
first page, and resolved to read the letter. It began abruptly, in the
following terms:--
“St. Helen’s Hospital.
“You may look at the signature when you receive this, and may be tempted
to tear up my letter, and throw it from you unread. I warn you to read
what I have written, and to estimate, if you can, its importance to
yourself. Destroy these pages afterwards if you like--they will have
served their purpose.
“Do you know where I am, and what I suffer? I am one of the patients
of this hospital, hideously mutilated for life by your hand. If I could
have known certainly the day of my dismissal, I should have waited to
tell you with my own lips what I now write--but I am ignorant of this.
At the very point of recovery I have suffered a relapse.
“You will silence any uneasy upbraidings of conscience, should you feel
them, by saying that I have deserved death at your hands. I will tell
you, in answer, what you deserve and shall receive at mine.