Basil

by Wilkie Collins

  She stopped suddenly. I saw her lip tremble, and her eyes grow dim again, as she looked round her. When I tried to speak all the gratitude I felt, she turned away quickly, and began to busy herself in re-arranging the wretched furniture; in setting in order the glaring ornaments on the chimney-piece; in hiding the holes in the ragged window-curtains; in changing, as far as she could, all the tawdry discomfort of my one miserable little room. She was still absorbed in this occupation, when the church-clocks of the neighbourhood struck the hour—the hour that warned her to stay no longer.

  "I must go," she said; "it is later than I thought. Don't be afraid about my getting home: old Martha came here with me, and is waiting downstairs to go back (you know we can trust her). Write to me as often as you can; I shall hear about you every day, from Ralph; but I should like a letter sometimes, as well. Be as hopeful and as patient yourself, dear, under misfortune, as you wish me to be; and I shall despair of nothing. Don't tell Ralph I have been here—he might be angry. I will come again, the first opportunity. Good-bye, Basil! Let us try and part happily, in the hope of better days. Good-bye, dear—good-bye, only for the present!"

  Her self-possession nearly failed her, as she kissed me, and then turned to the door. She just signed to me not to follow her down-stairs, and, without looking round again, hurried from the room.

  It was well for the preservation of our secret, that she had so resolutely refrained from delaying her departure. She had been gone but for a few minutes—the lovely and consoling influence of her presence was still fresh in my heart—I was still looking sadly over the once precious pages of manuscript which she had restored to me—when Ralph returned from North Villa. I heard him leaping, rather than running, up the ricketty wooden stairs. He burst into my room more impetuously than ever.

  "All right!" he said, jumping back to his former place on the bed. "We can buy Mr. Shopkeeper for anything we like—for nothing at all, if we choose to be stingy. His innocent daughter has made the best of all confessions, just at the right time. Basil, my boy, she has left her father's house!"

  "What do you mean?"

  "She has eloped to the hospital!"

  "Mannion!"

  "Yes, Mannion: I have got his letter to her. She is criminated by it, even past her father's contradiction—and he doesn't stick at a trifle! But I'll begin at the beginning, and tell you everything. Hang it, Basil, you look as if I'd brought you bad news instead of good!"

  "Never mind how I look, Ralph—pray go on!"

  "Well: the first thing I heard, on getting to the house, was that Sherwin's wife was dying. The servant took in my name: but I thought of course I shouldn't be admitted. No such thing! I was let in at once, and the first words this fellow, Sherwin, said to me, were, that his wife was only ill, that the servants were exaggerating, and that he was quite ready to hear what Mr. Basil's 'highly-respected' brother (fancy calling me 'highly-respected!') had to say to him. The fool, however, as you see, was cunning enough to try civility to begin with. A more ill-looking human mongrel I never set eyes on! I took the measure of my man directly, and in two minutes told him exactly what I came for, without softening a single word."

  "And how did he answer you?"

  "As I anticipated, by beginning to bluster immediately. I took him down, just as he swore his second oath. 'Sir,' I said very politely, 'if you mean to make a cursing and a swearing conference of this, I think it only fair to inform you before-hand that you are likely to get the worst of it. When the whole collection of British oaths is exhausted, I can swear fluently in five foreign languages: I have always made it a principle to pay back abuse at compound interest, and I don't exaggerate in saying, that I am quite capable of swearing you out of your senses, if you persist in setting me the example. And now, if you like to go on, pray do—I'm ready to hear you.' While I was speaking, he stared at me in a state of helpless astonishment; when I had done, he began to bluster again—but it was a pompous, dignified, parliamentary sort of bluster, now, ending in his pulling your unlucky marriage-certificate out of his pocket, asserting for the fiftieth time, that the girl was innocent, and declaring that he'd make you acknowledge her, if he went before a magistrate to do it. That's what he said when you saw him, I suppose?"

  "Yes: almost word for word."

  "I had my answer ready for him, before he could put the certificate back in his pocket. 'Now, Mr. Sherwin,' I said, 'have the goodness to listen to me. My father has certain family prejudices and nervous delicacies, which I do not inherit from him, and which I mean to take good care to prevent you from working on. At the same time, I beg you to understand that I have come here without his knowledge. I am not my father's ambassador, but my brother's—who is unfit to deal with you, himself; because he is not half hard-hearted, or half worldly enough. As my brother's envoy, therefore, and out of consideration for my father's peculiar feelings, I now offer you, from my own resources, a certain annual sum of money, far more than sufficient for all your daughter's expenses—a sum payable quarterly, on condition that neither you nor she shall molest us; that you shall never make use of our name anywhere; and that the fact of my brother's marriage (hitherto preserved a secret) shall for the future be consigned to oblivion. We keep our opinion of your daughter's guilt—you keep your opinion of her innocence. We have silence to buy, and you have silence to sell, once a quarter; and if either of us break our conditions, we both have our remedy—your's the easy remedy, our's the difficult. This arrangement—a very unfair and dangerous for us; a very advantageous and safe one for you—I understand that you finally refuse?' 'Sir,' says he, solemnly, 'I should be unworthy the name of a father—' 'Thank you'—I remarked, feeling that he was falling back on paternal sentiment—'thank you; I quite understand. We will get on, if you please, to the reverse side of the question.'"

  "The reverse side! What reverse side, Ralph? What could you possibly say more?"

  "You shall hear. 'Being, on your part, thoroughly determined,' I said, 'to permit no compromise, and to make my brother (his family of course included) acknowledge a woman, of whose guilt they entertain not the slightest doubt, you think you can gain your object by threatening an exposure. Don't threaten any more! Make your exposure! Go to the magistrate at once, if you like! Gibbet our names in the newspaper report, as a family connected by marriage with Mr. Sherwin the linen-draper's daughter, whom they believe to have disgraced herself as a woman and a wife for ever. Do your very worst; make public every shameful particular that you can—what advantage will you get by it? Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your pocket? Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter's keep? Will revenge make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into a corner; we shall have no exposure to dread after you have exposed us; we shall have no remedy left, but a desperate remedy, and we'll go to law—boldly, openly go to law, and get a divorce. We have written evidence, which you know nothing about, and can call testimony which you cannot gag. I am no lawyer, but I'll bet you five hundred to one (quite in a friendly way, my dear Sir!) that we get our case. What follows? We send you back your daughter, without a shred of character left to cover her; and we comfortably wash our hands of you altogether.'"

  "Ralph! Ralph! how could you—"

  "Stop! hear the end of it. Of course I knew that we couldn't carry out this divorce-threat, without its being the death of my father; but I thought a little quiet bullying on my part might do Mr. Shopkeeper Sherwin some good. And I was right. You never saw a man sit sorer on the sharp edges of a dilemma than he did. I stuck to my point in spite of everything; silence and money, or exposure and divorce—just which he pleased. 'I deny every one of your infamous imputations,' said he. 'That's not the question,' said I. 'I'll go to your father,' said he. 'You won't be let in,' said I. 'I'll write to him,' said he. 'He won't receive your letter,' said I. There we came to a pull-up. He began to stammer, and I refreshed myself with a pinch of snuff. Finding it wouldn't do, he threw off the Roman at last, and resumed the Tr
adesman. 'Even supposing I consented to this abominable compromise, what is to become of my daughter?' he asked. 'Just what becomes of other people who have comfortable annuities to live on,' I answered. 'Affection for my deeply-wronged child half inclines me to consult her wishes, before we settle anything—I'll go up-stairs,' said he. 'And I'll wait for you down here,' said I."

  "Did he object to that?"

  "Not he. He went up-stairs, and in a few minutes ran down again, with an open letter in his hand, looking as if the devil was after him before his time. At the last three or four stairs, he tripped, caught at the bannisters, dropped the letter over them in doing so, tumbled into the passage in such a fury and fright that he looked like a madman, tore his hat off a peg, and rushed out. I just heard him say his daughter should come back, if he put a straight waistcoat on her, as he passed the door. Between his tumble, his passion, and his hurry, he never thought of coming back for the letter he had dropped over the bannisters. I picked it up before I went away, suspecting it might be good evidence on our side; and I was right. Read it yourself; Basil; you have every moral and legal claim on the precious document—and here it is."

  I took the letter, and read (in Mannion's handwriting) these words, dated from the hospital:—

  "I have received your last note, and cannot wonder that you are getting impatient under restraint. But, remember, that if you had not acted as I warned you beforehand to act in case of accidents—if you had not protested innocence to your father, and preserved total silence towards your mother; if you had not kept in close retirement, behaving like a domestic martyr, and avoiding, in your character of a victim, all voluntary mention of your husband's name—your position might have been a very awkward one. Not being able to help you, the only thing I could do was to teach you how to help yourself. I gave you the lesson, and you have been wise enough to profit by it.

  "The time has now come for a change in my plans. I have suffered a relapse; and the date of my discharge from this place is still uncertain. I doubt the security, both on your account, and on mine, of still leaving you at your father's house, to await my cure. Come to me here, therefore, to-morrow, at any hour when you can get away unperceived. You will be let in as a visitor, and shown to my bedside, if you ask for Mr. Turner—the name I have given to the hospital authorities. Through the help of a friend outside these walls, I have arranged for a lodging in which you can live undiscovered, until I am discharged and can join you. You can come here twice a week, if you like, and you had better do so, to accustom yourself to the sight of my injuries. I told you in my first letter how and where they had been inflicted—when you see them with your own eyes, you will be best prepared to hear what my future purposes are, and how you can aid them.

  "R. M."

  This was evidently the letter about which I had been consulted by the servant at North Villa; the date corresponded with the date of Mannion's letter to me. I noticed that the envelope was missing, and asked Ralph whether he had got it.

  "No," he replied; "Sherwin dropped the letter just in the state in which I have given it to you. I suspect the girl took away the envelope with her, thinking that the letter which she left behind her was inside. But the loss of the envelope doesn't matter. Look there: the fellow has written her name at the bottom of the leaf; as coolly as if it was an ordinary correspondence. She is identified with the letter, and that's all we want in our future dealings with her father."

  "But, Ralph, do you think—"

  "Do I think her father will get her back? If he's in time to catch her at the hospital, he assuredly will. If not, we shall have some little trouble on our side, I suspect. This seems to me to be how the matter stands now, Basil:—After that letter, and her running away, Sherwin will have nothing for it but to hold his tongue about her innocence; we may consider him as settled and done with. As for the other rascal, Mannion, he certainly writes as if he meant to do something dangerous. If he really does attempt to annoy us, we will mark him again (I'll do it next time, by way of a little change!); he has no marriage certificate to shake over our heads, at any rate. What's the matter now?—you're looking pale again."

  I felt that my colour was changing, while he spoke. There was something ominous in the contrast which, at that moment, I could not fail to draw between Mannion's enmity, as Ralph ignorantly estimated it, and as I really knew it. Already the first step towards the conspiracy with which I was threatened, had been taken by the departure of Sherwin's daughter from her father's house. Should I, at this earliest warning of coming events, show my brother the letter I had received from Mannion? No! such defence against the dangers threatened in it as Ralph would be sure to counsel, and to put in practice, might only include him in the life-long persecution which menaced me. When he repeated his remark about my sudden paleness, I merely accounted for it by some common-place excuse, and begged him to proceed.

  "I suppose, Basil," he said, "the truth is, that you can't help being a little shocked—though you could expect nothing better from the girl—at her boldly following this fellow Mannion, even to the hospital" (Ralph was right; in spite of myself, this feeling was one among the many which now influenced me.) "Setting that aside, however, we are quite ready, I take it, to let her stick to her choice, and live just as she pleases, so long as she doesn't live under our name. There is the great fear and great difficulty now! If Sherwin can't find her, we must; otherwise, we can never feel certain that she is not incurring all sorts of debts as your wife. If her father gets her back, I shall be able to bring her to terms at North Villa; if not, I must get speech of her, wherever she happens to be hidden. She's the only thorn in our side now, and we must pull her out with gold pincers immediately. Don't you see that, Basil?"

  "I see it, Ralph!"

  "Very well. Either to-night or to-morrow morning, I'll communicate with Sherwin, and find out whether he has laid hands on her. If he hasn't, we must go to the hospital, and see what we can discover for ourselves. Don't look miserable and downhearted, Basil, I'll go with you: you needn't see her again, or the man either; but you must come with me, for I may be obliged to make use of you. And now, I'm off for to-day, in good earnest. I must get back to Mrs. Ralph (unfortunately she happens to be one of the most sensitive women in the world), or she will be sending to advertise me in the newspapers. We shall pull through this, my dear fellow—you will see we shall! By the bye, you don't know of a nice little detached house in the Brompton neighbourhood, do you? Most of my old theatrical friends live about there—a detached house, mind! The fact is, I have taken to the violin lately (I wonder what I shall take to next?); Mrs. Ralph accompanies me on the pianoforte; and we might be an execrable nuisance to very near neighbours—that's all! You don't know of a house? Never mind; I can go to an agent, or something of that sort. Clara shall know to-night that we are moving prosperously, if I can only give the worthiest creature in the world the slip: she's a little obstinate, but, I assure you, a really superior woman. Only think of my dropping down to playing the fiddle, and paying rent and taxes in a suburban villa! How are the fast men fallen! Good bye, Basil, good bye!"

  VII.

  The next morning, Ralph never appeared—the day passed on, and I heard nothing—at last, when it was evening, a letter came from him.

  The letter informed me that my brother had written to Mr. Sherwin, simply asking whether he had recovered his daughter. The answer to this question did not arrive till late in the day; and was in the negative—Mr. Sherwin had not found his daughter. She had left the hospital before he got there; and no one could tell him whither she had gone. His language and manner, as he himself admitted, had been so violent that he was not allowed to enter the ward where Mannion lay. When he returned home, he found his wife at the point of death; and on the same evening she expired. Ralph described his letter, as the letter of a man half out of his senses. He only mentioned his daughter, to declare, in terms almost of fury, that he would accuse her before his wife's surviving relatives, of having been the cause of her
mother's death; and called down the most terrible denunciations on his own head, if he ever spoke to his child again, though he should see her starving before him in the streets. In a postscript, Ralph informed me that he would call the next morning, and concert measures for tracking Sherwin's daughter to her present retreat.

  Every sentence in this letter bore warning of the crisis which was now close at hand; yet I had as little of the desire as of the power to prepare for it. A superstitious conviction that my actions were governed by a fatality which no human foresight could alter or avoid, began to strengthen within me. From this time forth, I awaited events with the uninquiring patience, the helpless resignation of despair.

  My brother came, punctual to his appointment. When he proposed that I should at once accompany him to the hospital, I never hesitated at doing as he desired. We reached our destination; and Ralph approached the gates to make his first enquiries.

  He was still speaking to the porter, when a gentleman advanced towards them, on his way out of the hospital. I saw him recognise my brother, and heard Ralph exclaim:

  "Bernard! Jack Bernard! Have you come to England, of all the men in the world!"

  "Why not?" was the answer. "I got every surgical testimonial the Hotel Dieu could give me, six months ago; and couldn't afford to stay in Paris only for my pleasure. Do you remember calling me a 'mute, inglorious Liston,' long ago, when we last met? Well, I have come to England to soar out of my obscurity and blaze into a shining light of the profession. Plenty of practice at the hospital, here—very little anywhere else, I am sorry to say."

  "You don't mean that you belong to this hospital?"