Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (113 page)

With some difficulty, I made the wretched drunkard understand that she might go downstairs again; and that I would call her if she was wanted. At last, she comprehended my meaning, and slowly quitted the room. The door closed on her; and I was left alone to watch the last moments of the woman who had ruined me!

As I sat down near the open window, the sounds outside in the street told of the waning of the night. There was an echo of many footsteps, a hoarse murmur of conflicting voices, now near, now afar off. The public houses were dispersing their drunken crowds — the crowds of a Saturday night: it was twelve o’clock.

Through those street-sounds of fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more distinctly, more terribly than it had spoken yet.

“I see him,” she said, staring vacantly at me, and moving her hands slowly to and fro in the air. “I see him! But he’s a long way off; he can’t hear our secrets, and he does not suspect you as mother does. Don’t tell me that about him any more; my flesh creeps at it! What are you looking at me in that way for? You make me feel on fire. You know I like you, because I
must
like you; because I can’t help it. It’s no use saying hush: I tell you he can’t hear us, and can’t see us. He can see nothing; you make a fool of him, and I make a fool of him. But mind! I
will
ride in my own carriage: you must keep things secret enough to let me do that. I say I
will
ride in my carriage: and I’ll go where father walks to business: I don’t care if I splash him with
my
carriage wheels! I’ll be even with him for some of the passions he’s been in with me. You see how I’ll go into our shop and order dresses! (be quiet! I say he can’t hear us). I’ll have velvet where his sister has silk, and silk where she has muslin: I’m a finer girl than she is, and I’ll be better dressed. Tell
him
anything, indeed! What have I ever let out? It’s not so easy always to make believe I’m in love with him, after what you have told me. Suppose he found us out? — Rash? I’m no more rash than you are! Why didn’t you come back from France in time, and stop it all? Why did you let me marry him? A nice wife I’ve been to him, and a nice husband he has been to me — a husband who waits a year! Ha! ha! he calls himself a man, doesn’t he? A husband who waits a year!”

I approached nearer to the bedside, and spoke to her again, in the hope to win her tenderly towards dreaming of better things. I know not whether she heard me, but her wild thoughts changed — changed darkly to later events.

“Beds! beds!” she cried, “beds everywhere, with dying men on them! And one bed the most terrible of all — look at it! The deformed face, with the white of the pillow all round it!
His
face?
his
face, that hadn’t a fault in it? Never! It’s the face of a devil; the finger-nails of the devil are on it! Take me away! drag me out! I can’t move for that face: it’s always before me: it’s walling me up among the beds: it’s burning me all over. Water! water! drown me in the sea; drown me deep, away from the burning face!”

“Hush, Margaret! hush! drink this, and you will be cool again.” I gave her some lemonade, which stood by the bedside.

“Yes, yes; hush, as you say. Where’s Robert? Robert Mannion? Not here! then I’ve got a secret for you. When you go home to-night, Basil, and say your prayers, pray for a storm of thunder and lightning; and pray that I may be struck dead in it, and Robert too. It’s a fortnight to my aunt’s party; and in a fortnight you’ll wish us both dead, so you had better pray for what I tell you in time. We shall make handsome corpses. Put roses into my coffin — scarlet roses, if you can find any, because that stands for Scarlet Woman — in the Bible, you know. Scarlet? What do I care! It’s the boldest colour in the world. Robert will tell you, and all your family, how many women are as scarlet as I am — virtue wears it at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in public: that’s the only difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet roses! throw them into the coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them; bury me down deep; in the dark, quiet street — where there’s a broad door-step in front of a house, and a white, wild face, something like Basil’s, that’s always staring on the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I marry him! oh, why! why!”

She uttered the last words in slow, measured cadence — the horrible mockery of a chaunt which she used to play to us at North Villa, on Sunday evenings. Then her voice sank again; her articulation thickened, and grew indistinct. It was like the change from darkness to daylight, in the sight of sleepless eyes, to hear her only murmuring now, after hearing her last terrible words.

The weary night-time passed on. Longer and longer grew the intervals of silence between the scattered noises from the streets; less and less frequent were the sounds of distant carriage-wheels, and the echoing rapid footsteps of late pleasure-seekers hurrying home. At last, the heavy tramp of the policeman going his rounds, alone disturbed the silence of the early morning hours. Still, the voice from the bed muttered incessantly; but now, in drowsy, languid tones: still, Mr. Bernard did not return: still the father of the dying girl never came, never obeyed the letter which summoned him for the last time to her side.

(There was yet one more among the absent — one from whose approach the death-bed must be kept sacred; one, whose evil presence was to be dreaded as a pestilence and a scourge. Mannion! — where was Mannion?)

I sat by the window, resigned to wait in loneliness till the end came, watching mechanically the vacant eyes that ever watched me — when, suddenly, the face of Margaret seemed to fade out of my sight. I started and looked round. The candle, which I had placed at the opposite end of the room, had burnt down without my noticing it, and was now expiring in the socket. I ran to light the fresh candle which lay on the table by its side, but was too late. The wick flickered its last; the room was left in darkness.

While I felt among the different objects under my hands for a box of matches: Margaret’s voice strengthened again.

“Innocent! innocent!” I heard her cry mournfully through the darkness. “I’ll swear I’m innocent, and father is sure to swear it too. Innocent Margaret! Oh, me! what innocence!”

She repeated these words over and over again, till the hearing them seemed to bewilder all my senses. I hardly knew what I touched. Suddenly, my searching hands stopped of themselves, I could not tell why. Was there some change in the room? Was there more air in it, as if a door had been opened? Was there something moving over the floor? Had Margaret left her bed? — No! the mournful voice was speaking unintermittingly, and speaking from the same distance.

I moved to search for the matches on a chest of drawers, which stood near the window. Though the morning was at its darkest, and the house stood midway between two gas-lamps, there was a glimmering of light in this place. I looked back into the room from the window, and thought I saw something shadowy moving near the bed. “Take him away!” I heard Margaret scream in her wildest tones. “His hands are on me: he’s feeling my face, to feel if I’m dead!”

I ran to her, striking against some piece of furniture in the darkness. Something passed swiftly between me and the bed, as I got near it. I thought I heard a door close. Then there was silence for a moment; and then, as I stretched out my hands, my right hand encountered the little table placed by Margaret’s side, and the next moment I felt the match-box that had been left on it.

As I struck a light, her voice repeated close at my ear:

“His hands are on me: he’s feeling my face to feel if I’m dead!”

The match flared up. As I carried it to the candle, I looked round, and noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the further corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through glass panes at the top. When I tried this door, it was locked on the inside, and the room beyond was dark.

Dark and silent. But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and silence? Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in obscurity? — Doubt? There was none on that point, none on any other. Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the bedside, with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of an evil spirit in the chamber of death.

He was waiting secretly in the house — waiting for her last moments; listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence! I placed myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at any hazard, from the bedside. How long I remained absorbed in watching before the darkness of the inner room, I know not — but some time must have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my attention. I turned towards Margaret; and, in an instant, all previous thoughts were suspended in my mind, by the sight that now met my eyes.

She had altered completely. Her hands, so restless hitherto, lay quite still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of her face had changed — the fever-traces remained on every feature, and yet the fever-look was gone. Her eyes were almost closed; her quick breathing had grown calm and slow. I touched her pulse; it was beating with a wayward, fluttering gentleness. What did this striking alteration indicate? Recovery? Was it possible? As the idea crossed my mind, every one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation of watching her face; I could not have stirred an instant from the bed, for worlds.

The earliest dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before another change appeared — before she drew a long, sighing breath, and slowly opened her eyes on mine. Their first look was very strange and startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always been in the past time. It lasted only for a moment. She recognised me; and, instantly, an expression of anguish and shame flew over the first terror and surprise of her face. She struggled vainly to lift her hands — so busy all through the night; so idle now! A faint moan of supplication breathed from her lips; and she slowly turned her head on the pillow, so as to hide her face from my sight.

“Oh, my God! my God!” she murmured, in low, wailing tones, “I’ve broken his heart, and he still comes here to be kind to me! This is worse than death! I’m too bad to be forgiven — leave me! leave me! — oh, Basil, leave me to die!”

I spoke to her; but desisted almost immediately — desisted even from uttering her name. At the mere sound of my voice, her suffering rose to agony; the wild despair of the soul wrestling awfully with the writhing weakness of the body, uttered itself in words and cries horrible, beyond all imagination, to hear. I sank down on my knees by the bedside; the strength which had sustained me for hours, gave way in an instant, and I burst into a passion of tears, as my spirit poured from my lips in supplication for hers — tears that did not humiliate me; for I knew, while I shed them, that I had forgiven her!

The dawn brightened. Gradually, as the fair light of the new day flowed in lovely upon her bed; as the fresh morning breeze lifted tenderly and playfully the scattered locks of her hair that lay over the pillow — so, the calmness began to come back to her voice and the stillness of repose to her limbs. But she never turned her face to me again; never, when the wild words of her despair grew fewer and fainter; never, when the last faint supplication to me, to leave her to die forsaken as she deserved, ended mournfully in a long, moaning gasp for breath. I waited after this — waited a long time — then spoke to her softly — then waited once more; hearing her still breathe, but slowly and more slowly with every minute — then spoke to her for the second time, louder than before. She never answered, and never moved. Was she sleeping? I could not tell. Some influence seemed to hold me back from going to the other side of the bed, to look at her face, as it lay away from me, almost hidden in the pillow.

The light strengthened faster, and grew mellow with the clear beauty of the morning sunshine. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps advancing along the street; they stopped under the window: and a voice which I recognised, called me by my name. I looked out: Mr. Bernard had returned at last.

“I could not get back sooner,” he said; “the case was desperate, and I was afraid to leave it. You will find a key on the chimney-piece — throw it out to me, and I can let myself in; I told them not to bolt the door before I went out.”

I obeyed his directions. When he entered the room, I thought Margaret moved a little, and signed to him with my hand to make no noise. He looked towards the bed without any appearance of surprise, and asked me in a whisper when the change had come over her, and how. I told him very briefly, and inquired whether he had known of such changes in other cases, like hers.