Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1923 page)

“How did you find out where I live?” says he. “Oh, you’re ashamed of me?” says she. “Mr. Helmsley was with us yesterday evening. That’s how I found out!” “What do you mean?” “I mean that Mr. Helmsley had your card and address in his pocket. Ah, you were obliged to give your address when you had to clear up that matter of the bracelet! You cruel, cruel man, what have I done to deserve such a note as you sent me this morning?” “Do what the note tells you!” “Do what the note tells me? Did anybody ever hear a man talk so, out of a lunatic asylum? Why, you haven’t even the grace to carry out your own wicked deception — you haven’t even gone to bed!” There the voices grew less angry, and we missed what followed. Soon the lady burst out again, piteously entreating him this time. “Oh, Marmy, don’t ruin me! Has anybody offended you? Is there anything you wish to have altered? Do you want more money? It is too cruel to treat me in this way — it is indeed!” He made some answer, which we were not able to hear; we could only suppose that he had upset her temper again. She went on louder than ever “I’ve begged and prayed of you — and you’re as hard as iron. I’ve told you about the Prince — and
that
has had no effect on you. I have done now. We’ll see what the doctor says.” He got angry, in his turn; we heard him again. “I won’t see the doctor!” “Oh, you refuse to see the doctor? — I shall make your refusal known — and if there’s law in England, you shall feel it!” Their voices dropped again; some new turn seemed to be taken by the conversation. We heard the lady once more, shrill and joyful this time. “There’s a dear! You see it, don’t you, in the right light? And you haven’t forgotten the old times, have you? You’re the same dear, honourable, kind-hearted fellow that you always were!”

I caught hold of Felicia, and put my hand over her mouth.

There was a sound in the next room which might have been — I cannot be certain — the sound of a kiss. The next moment, we heard the door of the room unlocked. Then the door of the house was opened, and the noise of retreating carriage-wheels followed. We met him in the hall, as he entered the house again.

My daughter walked up to him, pale and determined.

“I insist on knowing who that woman is, and what she wants here.” Those were her first words. He looked at her like a man in utter confusion. “Wait till this evening; I am in no state to speak to you now!” With that, he snatched his hat off the hall table and rushed out of the house.

It is little more than three weeks since they returned to London from their happy wedding-tour — and it has come to this!

The clock has just struck seven; a letter has been left by a messenger, addressed to my daughter. I had persuaded her, poor soul, to lie down in her own room. God grant that the letter may bring her some tidings of her husband! I please myself in the hope of hearing good news.

My mind has not been kept long in suspense. Felicia’s waiting-woman has brought me a morsel of writing paper, with these lines penciled on it in my daughter’s handwriting: “Dearest father, make your mind easy. Everything is explained. I cannot trust myself to speak to you about it to-night — and
he
doesn’t wish me to do so. Only wait till tomorrow, and you shall know all. He will be back about eleven o’clock. Please don’t wait up for him — he will come straight to me.”

September 13th. — The scales have fallen from my eyes; the light is let in on me at last. My bewilderment is not to be uttered in words — I am like a man in a dream.

Before I was out of my room in the morning, my mind was upset by the arrival of a telegram addressed to myself. It was the first thing of the kind I ever received; I trembled under the prevision of some new misfortune as I opened the envelope.

Of all the people in the world, the person sending the telegram was sister Judith! Never before did this distracting relative confound me as she confounded me now. Here is her message: “You can’t come back. An architect from Edinburgh asserts his resolution to repair the kirk and the manse. The man only waits for his lawful authority to begin. The money is ready — but who has found it? Mr. Architect is forbidden to tell. We live in awful times. How is Felicia?”

Naturally concluding that Judith’s mind must be deranged, I went downstairs to meet my son-in-law (for the first time since the events of yesterday) at the late breakfast which is customary in this house. He was waiting for me — but Felicia was not present. “She breakfasts in her room this morning,” says Marmaduke; “and I am to give you the explanation which has already satisfied your daughter. Will you take it at great length, sir? or will you have it in one word?” There was something in his manner that I did not at all like — he seemed to be setting me at defiance. I said, stiffly, “Brevity is best; I will have it in one word.”

“Here it is then,” he answered. “I am Barrymore.”

POSTSCRIPT ADDED BY FELICIA.

If the last line extracted from my dear father’s Diary does not contain explanation enough in itself, I add some sentences from Marmaduke’s letter to me, sent from the theater last night. (N. B. — I leave out the expressions of endearment: they are my own private property.)

... “Just remember how your father talked about theaters and actors, when I was at Cauldkirk, and how you listened in dutiful agreement with him. Would he have consented to your marriage if he had known that I was one of the ‘spouting rogues,’ associated with the ‘painted Jezebels’ of the playhouse? He would never have consented — and you yourself, my darling, would have trembled at the bare idea of marrying an actor.

“Have I been guilty of any serious deception? and have my friends been guilty in helping to keep my secret? My birth, my name, my surviving relatives, my fortune inherited from my father — all these important particulars have been truly stated. The name of Barrymore is nothing but the name that I assumed when I went on the stage.

“As to what has happened, since our return from Switzerland, I own that I ought to have made my confession to you. Forgive me if I weakly hesitated. I was so fond of you; and I so distrusted the Puritanical convictions which your education had rooted in your mind, that I put it off from day to day. Oh, my angel....!

“Yes, I kept the address of my new house a secret from all my friends, knowing they would betray me if they paid us visits. As for my mysteriously-closed study, it was the place in which I privately rehearsed my new part. When I left you in the mornings, it was to go to the theater rehearsals. My evening absences began of course with the first performance.

“Your father’s arrival seriously embarrassed me. When you (most properly) insisted on my giving up some of my evenings to him, you necessarily made it impossible for me to appear on the stage. The one excuse I could make to the theater was, that I was too ill to act. It did certainly occur to me to cut the Gordian knot by owning the truth. But your father’s horror, when you spoke of the newspaper review of the play, and the shame and fear you showed at your own boldness, daunted me once more.

“The arrival at the theater of my written excuse brought the manageress down upon me, in a state of distraction. Nobody could supply my place; all the seats were taken; and the Prince was expected. There was what we call a scene between the poor lady and myself. I felt I was in the wrong; I saw that the position in which I had impulsively placed myself was unworthy of me — and it ended in my doing my duty to the theater and the public. But for the affair of the bracelet, which obliged me as an honourable man to give my name and address, the manageress would not have discovered me. She, like every one else, only knew of my address at my bachelor chambers. How could you be jealous of the old theatrical comrade of my first days on the stage? Don’t you know yet that you are the one woman in the world....?

“A last word relating to your father, and I have done.

“Do you remember my leaving you at the telegraph office? It was to send a message to a friend of mine, an architect in Edinburgh, instructing him to go immediately to Cauldkirk, and provide for the repairs at my expense. The theater, my dear, more than trebles my paternal income, and I can well afford it. Will your father refuse to accept a tribute of respect to a Scottish minister, because it is paid out of an actor’s pocket? You shall ask him the question.

“And, I say, Felicia — will you come and see me act? I don’t expect your father to enter a theater; but, by way of further reconciling him to his son-in-law, suppose you ask him to hear me read the play?”

MR. PERCY AND THE PROPHET.

P
ART 1. — THE PREDICTION.

C
HAPTER I.

T
HE QUACK.

THE disasters that follow the hateful offense against Christianity, which men call war, were severely felt in England during the peace that ensued on the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo. With rare exceptions, distress prevailed among all classes of the community. The starving nation was ripe and ready for a revolutionary rising against its rulers, who had shed the people’s blood and wasted the people’s substance in a war which had yielded to the popular interests absolutely nothing in return.

Among the unfortunate persons who were driven, during the disastrous early years of this century, to strange shifts and devices to obtain the means of living, was a certain obscure medical man, of French extraction, named Lagarde. The Doctor (duly qualified to bear the title) was an inhabitant of London; living in one of the narrow streets which connect the great thoroughfare of the Strand with the bank of the Thames.

The method of obtaining employment chosen by poor Lagarde, as the one alternative left in the face of starvation, was, and is still considered by the medical profession to be, the method of a quack. He advertised in the public journals.

Addressing himself especially to two classes of the community, the Doctor proceeded in these words:

“I have the honour of inviting to my house, in the first place: Persons afflicted with maladies which ordinary medical practice has failed to cure — and, in the second place: Persons interested in investigations, the object of which is to penetrate the secrets of the future. Of the means by which I endeavor to alleviate suffering and to enlighten doubt, it is impossible to speak intelligibly within the limits of an advertisement. I can only offer to submit my system to public inquiry, without exacting any preliminary fee from ladies and gentlemen who may honour me with a visit. Those who see sufficient reason to trust me, after personal experience, will find a money-box fixed on the waiting-room table, into which they can drop their offerings according to their means. Those whom I am not fortunate enough to satisfy will be pleased to accept the expression of my regret, and will not be expected to give anything. I shall be found at home every evening between the hours of six and ten.”

Toward the close of the year 1816 this strange advertisement became a general topic of conversation among educated people in London. For some weeks the Doctor’s invitations were generally accepted — and, all things considered, were not badly remunerated. A faithful few believed in him, and told wonderful stories of what he had pronounced and prophesied in the sanctuary of his consulting-room. The majority of his visitors simply viewed him in the light of a public amusement, and wondered why such a gentlemanlike man should have chosen to gain his living by exhibiting himself as a quack.

C
HAPTER II.

T
HE NUMBERS.

ON a raw and snowy evening toward the latter part of January, 1817, a gentleman, walking along the Strand, turned into the street in which Doctor Lagarde lived, and knocked at the physician’s door.

He was admitted by an elderly male servant to a waiting-room on the first floor. The light of one little lamp, placed on a bracket fixed to the wall, was so obscured by a dark green shade as to make it difficult, if not impossible, for visitors meeting by accident to recognise each other. The metal money-box fixed to the table was just visible. In the flickering light of a small fire, the stranger perceived the figures of three men seated, apart and silent, who were the only occupants of the room beside himself.

So far as objects were to be seen, there was nothing to attract attention in the waiting-room. The furniture was plain and neat, and nothing more. The elderly servant handed a card, with a number inscribed on it, to the new visitor, said in a whisper, “Your number will be called, sir, in your turn,” and disappeared. For some minutes nothing disturbed the deep silence but the faint ticking of a clock. After a while a bell rang from an inner room, a door opened, and a gentleman appeared, whose interview with Doctor Lagarde had terminated. His opinion of the sitting was openly expressed in one emphatic word — ”Humbug!” No contribution dropped from his hand as he passed the money-box on his way out.