Little Novels

by Wilkie Collins

  Encouraged by my silence, the obstinate woman persisted. "Won't you even send a message to Susan?" she asked.

  Rashly, madly, without an instant's hesitation, I answered:

  "Go back to Susan, and say I leave it to her."

  Mrs. Rymer started to her feet. "You leave it to Susan to be your wife, if she likes?"

  "I do."

  "And if she consents?"

  "I consent."

  In two weeks and a day from that time, the deed was done. When Rothsay returned to England, he would ask for Susan—and he would find my virgin-widow rich and free.

  SEVENTH EPOCH.

  WHATEVER may be thought of my conduct, let me say this in justice to myself—I was resolved that Susan should not be deceived.

  Half an hour after Mrs. Rymer had left my house, I wrote to her daughter, plainly revealing the motive which led me to offer marriage, solely in the future interest of Rothsay and herself. "If you refuse," I said in conclusion, "you may depend on my understanding you and feeling for you. But, if you consent—then I have a favor to ask Never let us speak to one another of the profanation that we have agreed to commit, for your faithful lover's sake."

  I had formed a high opinion of Susan—too high an opinion as it seemed. Her reply surprised and disappointed me. In other words, she gave her consent.

  I stipulated that the marriage should be kept strictly secret, for a certain period. In my own mind I decided that the interval should be held to expire, either on the day of my death, or on the day when Rothsay returned.

  My next proceeding was to write in confidence to the priest whom I have already mentioned, in an earlier part of these pages. He has reasons of his own for not permitting me to disclose the motive which induced him to celebrate my marriage privately in the chapel at Lord Lepel's house. My uncle's desire that I should try change of air, as offering a last chance of recovery, was known to my medical attendant, and served as a sufficient reason (although he protested against the risk) for my removal to the country. I was carried to the station, and placed on a bed—slung by ropes to the ceiling of a saloon carriage, so as to prevent me from feeling the vibration when the train was in motion. Faithful Mrs. Mozeen entreated to be allowed to accompany me. I was reluctantly compelled to refuse compliance with this request, in justice to the claims of my lord's housekeeper; who had been accustomed to exercise undivided authority in the household, and who had made every preparation for my comfort. With her own hands, Mrs. Mozeen packed everything that I required, including the medicines prescribed for the occasion. She was deeply affected, poor soul, when we parted.

  I bore the journey—happily for me, it was a short one—better than had been anticipated. For the first few days that followed, the purer air of the country seemed, in some degree, to revive me. But the deadly sense of weakness, the slow sinking of the vital power in me, returned as the time drew near for the marriage. The ceremony was performed at night. Only Susan and her mother were present. No persons in the house but ourselves had the faintest suspicion of what had happened.

  I signed my new will (the priest and Mrs. Rymer being the witnesses) in my bed that night. It left everything that I possessed, excepting a legacy to Mrs. Mozeen, to my wife.

  Obliged, it is needless to say, to preserve appearances, Susan remained at the lodge as usual. But it was impossible to resist her entreaty to be allowed to attend on me, for a few hours daily, as assistant to the regular nurse. When she was alone with me, and had no inquisitive eyes to dread, the poor girl showed a depth of feeling, which I was unable to reconcile with the motives that could alone have induced her (as I then supposed) to consent to the mockery of our marriage. On occasions when I was so far able to resist the languor that oppressed me as to observe what was passing at my bedside—I saw Susan look at me as if there were thoughts in her pressing for utterance which she hesitated to express. Once, she herself acknowledged this. "I have so much to say to you," she owned, "when you are stronger and fitter to hear me." At other times, her nerves seemed to be shaken by the spectacle of my sufferings. Her kind hands trembled and made mistakes, when they had any nursing duties to perform near me. The servants, noticing her, used to say, "That pretty girl seems to be the most awkward person in the house." On the day that followed the ceremony in the chapel, this want of self-control brought about an accident which led to serious results.

  In removing the small chest which held my medicines from the shelf on which it was placed, Susan let it drop on the floor. The two full bottles still left were so completely shattered that not even a teaspoonful of the contents was saved.

  Shocked at what she had done, the poor girl volunteered to go herself to my chemist in London by the first train. I refused to allow it. What did it matter to me now, if my death from exhaustion was hastened by a day or two? Why need my life be prolonged artificially by drugs, when I had nothing left to live for? An excuse for me which would satisfy others was easily found. I said that I had been long weary of physic, and that the accident had decided me on refusing to take more.

  That night I did not wake quite so often as usual. When she came to me the next day, Susan noticed that I looked better. The day after, the other nurse made the same observation. At the end of the week, I was able to leave my bed, and sit by the fireside, while Susan read to me. Some mysterious change in my health had completely falsified the prediction of the medical men. I sent to London for my doctor—and told him that the improvement in me had begun on the day when I left off taking his remedies. "Can you explain it?" I asked.

  He answered that no such "resurrection from the dead" (as he called it) had ever happened in his long experience. On leaving me, he asked for the latest prescriptions that had been written. I inquired what he was going to do with them. "I mean to go to the chemist," he replied, "and to satisfy myself that your medicines have been properly made up."

  I owed it to Mrs. Mozeen's true interest in me to tell her what had happened. The same day I wrote to her. I also mentioned what the doctor had said, and asked her to call on him, and ascertain if the prescriptions had been shown to the chemist, and if any mistake had been made.

  A more innocently intended letter than this never was written. And yet there are people who have declared that it was inspired by suspicion of Mrs. Mozeen!

  EIGHTH EPOCH.

  WHETHER I was so weakened by illness as to be incapable of giving my mind to more than one subject for reflection at a time (that subject being now the extraordinary recovery of my health)—or whether I was preoccupied by the effort, which I was in honor bound to make, to resist the growing attraction to me of Susan's society—I cannot presume to say. This only I know: when the discovery of the terrible position toward Rothsay in which I now stood suddenly overwhelmed me, an interval of some days had passed. I cannot account for it. I can only say—so it was.

  Susan was in the room. I was wholly unable to hide from her the sudden change of color which betrayed the horror that had overpowered me. She said, anxiously: "What has frightened you?"

  I don't think I heard her. The play was in my memory again—the fatal play, which had wound itself into the texture of Rothsay's life and mine. In vivid remembrance, I saw once more the dramatic situation of the first act, and shrank from the reflection of it in the disaster which had fallen on my friend and myself.

  "What has frightened you?" Susan repeated.

  I answered in one word—I whispered his name: "Rothsay!"

  She looked at me in innocent surprise. "Has he met with some misfortune?" she asked, quietly.

  "Misfortune"—did she call it? Had I not said enough to disturb her tranquillity in mentioning Rothsay's name? "I am living!" I said. "Living—and likely to live!"

  Her answer expressed fervent gratitude. "Thank God for it!"

  I looked at her, astonished as she had been astonished when she looked at me.

  "Susan, Susan," I cried—"must I own it? I love you!"

  She came nearer to me with timid pleasure in her ey
es—with the first faint light of a smile playing round her lips.

  "You say it very strangely," she murmured. "Surely, my dear one, you ought to love me? Since the first day when you gave me my French lesson—haven't I loved You?"

  "You love me?" I repeated. "Have you read—?" My voice failed me; I could say no more.

  She turned pale. "Read what?" she asked.

  "My letter."

  "What letter?"

  "The letter I wrote to you before we were married."

  Am I a coward? The bare recollection of what followed that reply makes me tremble. Time has passed. I am a new man now; my health is restored; my happiness is assured: I ought to be able to write on. No: it is not to be done. How can I think coolly? how force myself to record the suffering that I innocently, most innocently, inflicted on the sweetest and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. The artless avowal of her affection had been justified, had been honored, by the words which laid my heart at her feet when I said "I love you."

  She had risen to leave me. In a last look, we had silently resigned ourselves to wait, apart from each other, for the day of reckoning that must follow Rothsay's return, when we heard the sound of carriage-wheels on the drive that led to the house. In a minute more the man himself entered the room.

  He looked first at Susan—then at me. In both of us he saw the traces that told of agitation endured, but not yet composed. Worn and weary he waited, hesitating, near the door.

  "Am I intruding?" he asked.

  "We were thinking of you, and speaking of you," I replied, "just before you came in."

  "We?" he repeated, turning toward Susan once more. After a pause, he offered me his hand—and drew it back.

  "You don't shake hands with me," he said.

  "I am waiting, Rothsay, until I know that we are the same firm friends as ever."

  For the third time he looked at Susan.

  "Will you shake hands?" he asked.

  She gave him her hand cordially. "May I stay here?" she said, addressing herself to me.

  In my situation at that moment, I understood the generous purpose that animated her. But she had suffered enough already—I led her gently to the door. "It will be better," I whispered, "if you will wait downstairs in the library." She hesitated. "What will they say in the house?" she objected, thinking of the servants and of the humble position which she was still supposed to occupy. "It matters nothing what they say, now." I told her. She left us.

  "There seems to be some private understanding between you," Rothsay said, when we were alone.

  "You shall hear what it is," I answered. "But I must beg you to excuse me if I speak first of myself."

  "Are you alluding to your health?"

  "Yes."

  "Quite needless, Lepel. I met your doctor this morning. I know that a council of physicians decided you would die before the year was out."

  He paused there.

  "And they proved to be wrong," I added.

  "They might have proved to be right," Rothsay rejoined, "but for the accident which spilled your medicine and the despair of yourself which decided you on taking no more."

  I could hardly believe that I understood him. "Do you assert," I said, "that my medicine would have killed me, if I had taken the rest of it?"

  "I have no doubt that it would."

  "Will you explain what you mean?"

  "Let me have your explanation first. I was not prepared to find Susan in your room. I was surprised to see traces of tears in her face. Something has happened in my absence. Am I concerned in it?"

  "You are."

  I said it quietly—in full possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the truth was known.

  "Do you remember the time," I resumed, "when I was so eager to serve you that I proposed to make Susan your wife by making her rich?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you remember asking me if I was thinking of the play we saw together at Rome? Is the story as present to your mind now, as it was then?"

  "Quite as present."

  "You asked if I was performing the part of the Marquis—and if you were the Count. Rothsay! the devotion of that ideal character to his friend has been my devotion; his conviction that his death would justify what he had done for his friend's sake, has been my conviction; and as it ended with him, so it has ended with me—his terrible position is my terrible position toward you, at this moment."

  "Are you mad?" Rothsay asked, sternly.

  I passed over that first outbreak of his anger in silence.

  "Do you mean to tell me you have married Susan?" he went on.

  "Bear this in mind," I said. "When I married her, I was doomed to death. Nay, more. In your interests—as God is my witness—I welcomed death."

  He stepped up to me, in silence, and raised his hand with a threatening gesture.

  That action at once deprived me of my self-possession. I spoke with the ungovernable rashness of a boy.

  "Carry out your intention," I said. "Insult me."

  His hand dropped.

  "Insult me," I repeated; "it is one way out of the unendurable situation in which we are placed. You may trust me to challenge you. Duels are still fought on the Continent; I will follow you abroad; I will choose pistols; I will take care that we fight on the fatal foreign system; and I will purposely miss you. Make her what I intended her to be—my rich widow."

  He looked at me attentively.

  "Is that your refuge?" he asked, scornfully. "No! I won't help you to commit suicide."

  God forgive me! I was possessed by a spirit of reckless despair; I did my best to provoke him.

  "Reconsider your decision," I said; "and remember—you tried to commit suicide yourself."

  He turned quickly to the door, as if he distrusted his own powers of self-control.

  "I wish to speak to Susan," he said, keeping his back turned on me.

  "You will find her in the library."

  He left me.

  I went to the window. I opened it and let the cold wintry air blow over my burning head. I don't know how long I sat at the window. There came a time when I saw Rothsay on the house steps. He walked rapidly toward the park gate. His head was down; he never once looked back at the room in which he had left me.

  As he passed out of my sight, I felt a hand laid gently on my shoulder. Susan had returned to me.

  "He will not come back," she said. "Try still to remember him as your old friend. He asks you to forgive and forget."

  She had made the peace between us. I was deeply touched; my eyes filled with tears as I looked at her. She kissed me on the forehead and went out. I afterward asked what had passed between them when Rothsay spoke with her in the library. She never has told me what they said to each other; and she never will. She is right.

  Later in the day I was told that Mrs. Rymer had called, and wished to "pay her respects."

  I refused to see her. Whatever claim she might have otherwise had on my consideration had been forfeited by the infamy of her conduct, when she intercepted my letter to Susan. Her sense of injury on receiving my message was expressed in writing, and was sent to me the same evening. The last sentence in her letter was characteristic of the woman.

  "However your pride may despise me," she wrote, "I am indebted to you for the rise in life that I have always desired. You may refuse to see me—but you can't prevent my being the mother-in-law of a gentleman."

  Soon afterward, I received a visit which I had hardly ventured to expect. Busy as he was in London, my doctor came to see me. He was not in his usual good spirits.

  "I hope you don't bring me any bad news?" I said.

  "You shall judge for yourself," he rep
lied. "I come from Mr. Rothsay, to say for him what he is not able to say for himself."

  "Where is he?"

  "He has left England."

  "For any purpose that you know of?"

  "Yes. He has sailed to join the expedition of rescue—I ought rather to call it the forlorn hope—which is to search for the lost explorers in Central Australia."

  In other words, he had gone to seek death in the fatal footsteps of Burke and Wills. I could not trust myself to speak.

  The doctor saw that there was a reason for my silence, and that he would do well not to notice it. He changed the subject.

  "May I ask," he said, "if you have heard from the servants left in charge at your house in London?"

  "Has anything happened?"

  "Something has happened which they are evidently afraid to tell you, knowing the high opinion which you have of Mrs. Mozeen. She has suddenly quitted your service, and has gone, nobody knows where. I have taken charge of a letter which she left for you."

  He handed me the letter. As soon as I had recovered myself, I looked at it.

  There was this inscription on the address: "For my good master, to wait until he returns home." The few lines in the letter itself ran thus:

  "Distressing circumstances oblige me to leave you, sir, and do not permit me to enter into particulars. In asking your pardon, I offer my sincere thanks for your kindness, and my fervent prayers for your welfare."

  That was all. The date had a special interest for me. Mrs. Mozeen had written on the day when she must have received my letter—the letter which has already appeared in these pages.