Basil

by Wilkie Collins

  After writing this second letter, I set forth instantly for the house to which Mr. Bernard had directed me. No thought of myself; no thought, even, of the peril suggested by the ominous disclosure about Mannion, in the postscript to the surgeon's letter, ever crossed my mind. In the great stillness, in the heavenly serenity that had come to my spirit, the wasting fire of every sensation which was only of this world, seemed quenched for ever.

  It was eleven o'clock when I arrived at the house. A slatternly, sulky woman opened the door to me. "Oh! I suppose you're another doctor," she muttered, staring at me with scowling eyes. "I wish you were the undertaker, to get her out of my house before we all catch our deaths of her! There! there's the other doctor coming down stairs; he'll show you the room—I won't go near it."

  As I took the candle from her hand, I saw that Mr. Bernard was approaching me from the stairs.

  "You can do no good, I am afraid," he said, "but I am glad you have come."

  "There is no hope, then?"

  "In my opinion, none. Turner came here this morning, whether she recognised him, or not, in her delirium, I cannot say; but she grew so much worse in his presence, that I insisted on his not seeing her again, except under medical permission. Just now, there is no one in the room—are you willing to go up stairs at once?"

  "Does she still speak of me in her wanderings?"

  "Yes, as incessantly as ever."

  "Then I am ready to go to her bedside."

  "Pray believe that I feel deeply what a sacrifice you are making. Since I wrote to you, much that she has said in her delirium has told me"—(he hesitated)—"has told me more, I am afraid, than you would wish me to have known, as a comparative stranger to you. I will only say, that secrets unconsciously disclosed on the death-bed are secrets sacred to me, as they are to all who pursue my calling; and that what I have unavoidably heard above stairs, is doubly sacred in my estimation, as affecting a near and dear relative of one of my oldest friends." He paused, and took my hand very kindly; then added: "I am sure you will think yourself rewarded for any trial to your feelings to-night, if you can only remember in years to come, that your presence quieted her in her last moments!"

  I felt his sympathy and delicacy too strongly to thank him in words; I could only look my gratitude as he asked me to follow him up stairs.

  We entered the room softly. Once more, and for the last time in this world, I stood in the presence of Margaret Sherwin.

  Not even to see her, as I had last seen her, was such a sight of misery as to behold her now, forsaken on her deathbed, to look at her, as she lay with her head turned from me, fretfully covering and uncovering her face with the loose tresses of her long black hair, and muttering my name incessantly in her fever-dream: "Basil! Basil! Basil! I'll never leave off calling for him, till he comes. Basil! Basil! Where is he? Oh, where, where, where!"

  "He is here," said the doctor, taking the candle from my hand, and holding it, so that the light fell full on my face. "Look at her and speak to her as usual, when she turns round," he whispered to me.

  Still she never moved; still those hoarse, fierce, quick tones—that voice, once the music that my heart beat to; now the discord that it writhed under—muttered faster and faster: "Basil! Basil! Bring him here! bring me Basil!"

  "He is here," repeated Mr. Bernard loudly. "Look! look up at him!"

  She turned in an instant, and tore the hair back from her face. For a moment, I forced myself to look at her; for a moment, I confronted the smouldering fever in her cheeks; the glare of the bloodshot eyes; the distortion of the parched lips; the hideous clutching of the outstretched fingers at the empty air—but the agony of that sight was more than I could endure: I turned away my head, and hid my face in horror.

  "Compose yourself," whispered the doctor. "Now she is quiet, speak to her; speak to her before she begins again; call her by her name."

  Her name! Could my lips utter it at such a moment as this?

  "Quick! quick!" cried Mr. Bernard. "Try her while you have the chance."

  I struggled against the memories of the past, and spoke to her—God knows as gently, if not as happily, as in the bygone time!

  "Margaret," I said, "Margaret, you asked for me, and I have come."

  She tossed her arms above her head with a shrill scream, frightfully prolonged till it ended in low moanings and murmurings; then turned her face from us again, and pulled her hair over it once more.

  "I am afraid she is too far gone," said the doctor; "but make another trial."

  "Margaret," I said again, "have you forgotten me? Margaret!"

  She looked at me once more. This time, her dry, dull eyes seemed to soften, and her fingers twined themselves less passionately in her hair. She began to laugh—a low, vacant, terrible laugh.

  "Yes, yes," she said, "I know he's come at last; I can make him do anything. Get me my bonnet and shawl; any shawl will do, but a mourning shawl is best, because we are going to the funeral of our wedding. Come, Basil! let's go back to the church, and get unmarried again; that's what I wanted you for. We don't care about each other. Robert Mannion wants me more than you do—he's not ashamed of me because my father's a tradesman; he won't make believe that he's in love with me, and then marry me to spite the pride of his family. Come! I'll tell the clergyman to read the service backwards; that makes a marriage no marriage at all, everybody knows."

  As the last wild words escaped her, some one below stairs called to Mr. Bernard. He went out for a minute, then returned again, telling me that he was summoned to a case of sudden illness which he must attend without a moment's delay.

  "The medical man whom I found here when I first came," he said, "was sent for this evening into the country, to be consulted about an operation, I believe. But if anything happens, I shall be at your service. There is the address of the house to which I am now going" (he wrote it down on a card); "you can send, if you want me. I will get back, however, as soon as possible, and see her again; she seems to be a little quieter already, and may become quieter still, if you stay longer. The night-nurse is below—I will send her up as I go downstairs. Keep the room well ventilated, the windows open as they are now. Don't breathe too close to her, and you need fear no infection. Look! her eyes are still fixed on you. This is the first time I have seen her look in the same direction for two minutes together; one would think she really recognised you. Wait till I come back, if you possibly can—I won't be a moment longer than I can help."

  He hastily left the room. I turned to the bed, and saw that she was still looking at me. She had never ceased murmuring to herself while Mr. Bernard was speaking; and she did not stop when the nurse came in.

  The first sight of this woman, on her entrance, sickened and shocked me. All that was naturally repulsive in her, was made doubly revolting by the characteristics of the habitual drunkard, lowering and glaring at me in her purple, bloated face. To see her heavy hands shaking at the pillow, as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her stand, alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate blasphemy in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most horrible of all mockeries, the most impious of all profanations. No loneliness in the presence of mortal agony could try me to the quick, as the sight of that foul old age of degradation and debauchery, defiling the sick room, now tried me. I determined to wait alone by the bedside till Mr. Bernard returned.

  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.<
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  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!