Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1373 page)

I interrupted her; she had interested me in something better than my own wretched self. I asked directly if she had known my mother.

“My dear child, I never even saw her!”

“Has my father never spoken to you about her?”

“Only once, when I asked him how long she had been dead. He told me you lost her while you were an infant, and he told me no more. I was looking at her portrait in the study, only yesterday. I think it must be a bad portrait; your mother’s face disappoints me.”

I had arrived at the same conclusion years since. But I shrank from confessing it.

“At any rate,” Selina continued, “you are not like her. Nobody would ever guess that you were the child of that lady, with the long slanting forehead and the restless look in her eyes.”

What Selina had said of me and my mother’s portrait, other friends had said. There was nothing that I know of to interest me in hearing it repeated — and yet it set me pondering on the want of resemblance between my mother’s face and mine, and wondering (not for the first time) what sort of woman my mother was. When my father speaks of her, no words of praise that he can utter seem to be good enough for her. Oh, me, I wish I was a little more like my mother!

It began to get dark; Maria brought in the lamp. The sudden brightness of the flame struck my aching eyes, as if it had been a blow from a knife. I was obliged to hide my face in my handkerchief. Compassionate Selina entreated me to go to bed. “Rest your poor eyes, my child, and your weary head — and try at least to get some sleep.” She found me very docile; I kissed her, and said good-night. I had my own idea.

When all was quiet in the house, I stole out into the passage and listened at the door of my father’s room.

I heard his regular breathing, and opened the door and went in. The composing medicine, of which I was in search, was not on the table by his bedside. I found it in the cupboard — perhaps placed purposely out of his reach. They say that some physic is poison, if you take too much of it. The label on the bottle told me what the dose was. I dropped it into the medicine glass, and swallowed it, and went back to my father.

Very gently, so as not to wake him, I touched poor papa’s forehead with my lips. “I must have some of your medicine,” I whispered to him; “I want it, dear, as badly as you do.”

Then I returned to my own room — and lay down in bed, waiting to be composed.

CHAPTER XXXI. EUNICE’S DIARY.

My restless nights are passed in Selina’s room.

Her bed remains near the window. My bed has been placed opposite, near the door. Our night-light is hidden in a corner, so that the faint glow of it is all that we see. What trifles these are to write about! But they mix themselves up with what I am determined to set down in my Journal, and then to close the book for good and all. I had not disturbed my little friend’s enviable repose, either when I left our bed-chamber, or when I returned to it. The night was quiet, and the stars were out. Nothing moved but the throbbing at my temples. The lights and shadows in our half-darkened room, which at other times suggest strange resemblances to my fancy, failed to disturb me now. I was in a darkness of my own making, having bound a handkerchief, cooled with water, over my hot eyes. There was nothing to interfere with the soothing influence of the dose that I had taken, if my father’s medicine would only help me.

I began badly. The clock in the hall struck the quarter past the hour, the half-past, the three-quarters past, the new hour. Time was awake — and I was awake with Time.

It was such a trial to my patience that I thought of going back to my father’s room, and taking a second dose of the medicine, no matter what the risk might be. On attempting to get up, I became aware of a change in me. There was a dull sensation in my limbs which seemed to bind them down on the bed. It was the strangest feeling. My will said, Get up — and my heavy limbs said, No.

I lay quite still, thinking desperate thoughts, and getting nearer and nearer to the end that I had been dreading for so many days past. Having been as well educated as most girls, my lessons in history had made me acquainted with assassination and murder. Horrors which I had recoiled from reading in past happy days, now returned to my memory; and, this time, they interested instead of revolting me. I counted the three first ways of killing as I happened to remember them, in my books of instruction: — a way by stabbing; a way by poison; a way in a bed, by suffocation with a pillow. On that dreadful night, I never once called to mind what I find myself remembering now — the harmless past time, when our friends used to say: “Eunice is a good girl; we are all fond of Eunice.” Shall I ever be the same lovable creature again?

While I lay thinking, a strange thing happened. Philip, who had haunted me for days and nights together, vanished out of my thoughts. My memory of the love which had begun so brightly, and had ended so miserably, became a blank. Nothing was left but my own horrid visions of vengeance and death.

For a while, the strokes of the clock still reached my ears. But it was an effort to count them; I ended in letting them pass unheeded. Soon afterward, the round of my thoughts began to circle slowly and more slowly. The strokes of the clock died out. The round of my thoughts stopped.

All this time, my eyes were still covered by the handkerchief which I had laid over them.

The darkness began to weigh on my spirits, and to fill me with distrust. I found myself suspecting that there was some change — perhaps an unearthly change — passing over the room. To remain blindfolded any longer was more than I could endure. I lifted my hand — without being conscious of the heavy sensation which, some time before, had laid my limbs helpless on the bed — I lifted my hand, and drew the handkerchief away from my eyes.

The faint glow of the night-light was extinguished.

But the room was not quite dark. There was a ghastly light trembling over it; like nothing that I have ever seen by day; like nothing that I have ever seen by night. I dimly discerned Selina’s bed, and the frame of the window, and the curtains on either side of it — but not the starlight, and not the shadowy tops of the trees in the garden.

The light grew fainter and fainter; the objects in the room faded slowly away. Darkness came.

It may be a saying hard to believe — but, when I declare that I was not frightened, I am telling the truth. Whether the room was lighted by awful light, or sunk in awful dark, I was equally interested in the expectation of what might happen next. I listened calmly for what I might hear: I waited calmly for what I might feel. A touch came first. I feel it creeping on my face — like a little fluttering breeze. The sensation pleased me for a while. Soon it grew colder, and colder, and colder, till it froze me.

“Oh, no more!” I cried out. “You are killing me with an icy death!”

The dead-cold touches lingered a moment longer — and left me.

The first sound came.

It was the sound of a whisper on my pillow, close to my ear. My strange insensibility to fear remained undisturbed. The whisper was welcome, it kept me company in the dark room.

It said to me: “Do you know who I am?”

I answered: “No.”

It said: “Who have you been thinking of this evening?”

I answered: “My mother.”

The whisper said: “I am your mother.”

“Oh, mother, command the light to come back! Show yourself to me!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My face was hidden when I passed from life to death. My face no mortal creature may see.”

“Oh, mother, touch me! Kiss me!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My touch is poison. My kiss is death.”

The sense of fear began to come to me now. I moved my head away on the pillow. The whisper followed my movement.

“Leave me,” I said. “You are an Evil Spirit.”

The whisper answered: “I am your mother.”

“You come to tempt me.”

“I come to harden your heart. Daughter of mine, whose blood is cool; daughter of mine, who tamely submits — you have loved. Is it true?”

“It is true.”

“The man you loved has deserted you. Is it true?”

“It is true.”

“A woman has lured him away to herself. A woman has had no mercy on you, or on him. Is it true?”

“It is true.”

“If she lives, what crime toward you will she commit next?”

“If she lives, she will marry him.”

“Will you let her live?”

“Never.”

“Have I hardened your heart against her?”

“Yes.”

“Will you kill her?”

“Show me how.”

There was a sudden silence. I was still left in the darkness; feeling nothing, hearing nothing. Even the consciousness that I was lying on my bed deserted me. I had no idea that I was in the bedroom; I had no knowledge of where I was.

The ghastly light that I had seen already dawned on me once more. I was no longer in my bed, no longer in my room, no longer in the house. Without wonder, without even a feeling of surprise, I looked round. The place was familiar to me. I was alone in the Museum of our town.

The light flowed along in front of me. I followed, from room to room in the Museum, where the light led.

First, through the picture-gallery, hung with the works of modern masters; then, through the room filled with specimens of stuffed animals. The lion and the tiger, the vulture of the Alps and the great albatross, looked like living creatures threatening me, in the supernatural light. I entered the third room, devoted to the exhibition of ancient armor, and the weapons of all nations. Here the light rose higher, and, leaving me in darkness where I stood, showed a collection of swords, daggers, and knives arranged on the wall in imitation of the form of a star.

The whisper sounded again, close at my ear. It echoed my own thought, when I called to mind the ways of killing which history had taught me. It said: “Kill her with the knife.”

No. My heart failed me when I thought of the blood. I hid the dreadful weapons from my view. I cried out: “Let me go! let me go!”

Again, I was lost in darkness. Again, I had no knowledge in me of where I was. Again, after an interval, the light showed me the new place in which I stood.

I was alone in the burial-ground of our parish church. The light led me on, among the graves, to the lonely corner in which the great yew tree stands; and, rising higher, revealed the solemn foliage, brightened by the fatal red fruit which hides in itself the seeds of death.

The whisper tempted me again. It followed again the train of my own thought. It said: “Kill her by poison.”

No. Revenge by poison steals its way to its end. The base deceitfulness of Helena’s crime against me seemed to call for a day of reckoning that hid itself under no disguise. I raised my cry to be delivered from the sight of the deadly tree. The changes which I have tried to describe followed once more the confession of what I felt; the darkness was dispelled for the third time.

I was standing in Helena’s room, looking at her as she lay asleep in her bed.

She was quite still now; but she must have been restless at some earlier time. The bedclothes were disordered, her head had sunk so low that the pillow rose high and vacant above her. There, coloured by a tender flush of sleep, was the face whose beauty put my poor face to shame. There, was the sister who had committed the worst of murders — the wretch who had killed in me all that made life worth having. While that thought was in my mind, I heard the whisper again. “Kill her openly,” the tempter mother said. “Kill her daringly. Faint heart, do you still want courage? Rouse your spirit; look! see yourself in the act!”