Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (98 page)

“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.”