Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1801 page)

‘So, now there were only two left.  Which two were, He, and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards became the Bride.

‘He put her to school.  In a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman.  “My worthy lady,” he said, “here is a mind to be formed; will you help me to form it?”  She accepted the trust.  For which she, too, wanted compensation in Money, and had it.

‘The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction, that there was no escape from him.  She was taught, from the first, to regard him as her future husband — the man who must marry her — the destiny that overshadowed her — the appointed certainty that could never be evaded.  The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands, and took the impression that they put upon her.  It hardened with time.  It became a part of herself.  Inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life away from her.

‘Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden.  He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close.  He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks.  He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation.  He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark.  When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource.

‘Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured.  She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three weeks.

‘He had dismissed the governess by that time — what he had left to do, he could best do alone — and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation.  She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping from the porch, and said:

‘“O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!”

‘“Well!” he answered.  “And if it were?”

‘“O sir!” she returned to him, “look kindly on me, and be merciful to me!  I beg your pardon.  I will do anything you wish, if you will only forgive me!”

‘That had become the poor fool’s constant song: “I beg your pardon,” and “Forgive me!”

‘She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for her.  But, she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary, and the work was near its end, and had to be worked out.

‘“You fool,” he said.  “Go up the stairs!”

‘She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, “I will do anything you wish!”  When he came into the Bride’s Chamber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and he had arranged that the people who attended on them should come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the paneling as if she would have shrunk through it: her flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.

‘“What are you afraid of?  Come and sit down by me.”

‘“I will do anything you wish.  I beg your pardon, sir.  Forgive me!”  Her monotonous tune as usual.

‘“Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow, in your own hand.  You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged upon it.  When you have written it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house, and sign your name to it before them.  Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.”

‘“I will do it all, with the greatest care.  I will do anything you wish.”

‘“Don’t shake and tremble, then.”

‘“I will try my utmost not to do it — if you will only forgive me!”

‘Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been told.  He often passed in and out of the room, to observe her, and always saw her slowly and labouriously writing: repeating to herself the words she copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task.  He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all particulars; and at night, when they were alone again in the same Bride’s Chamber, and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand.

‘It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her death.  He put her before him, face to face, that he might look at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that?

‘There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress, and they made her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she nodded her head.  There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she stood before him, nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.

‘He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and steadily, in the face.  “Now, die!  I have done with you.”

‘She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.

‘“I am not going to kill you.  I will not endanger my life for yours.  Die!”

‘He sat before her in the gloomy Bride’s Chamber, day after day, night after night, looking the word at her when he did not utter it.  As often as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from the hands in which she rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms and knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it, “Die!”  When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shuddering consciousness, by the whisper, “Die!”  When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered “Die!”  When she had out-watched and out-suffered the long night, and the rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard it hailed with, “Another day and not dead? — Die!”

‘Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this — that either he must die, or she.  He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength against her feebleness.  Hours upon hours he held her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her Die!

‘It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.  He computed the time to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had run down, and he could not be sure.  She had broken away from him in the night, with loud and sudden cries — the first of that kind to which she had given vent — and he had had to put his hands over her mouth.  Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.

‘Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him — a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending hand.

‘“O, forgive me!  I will do anything.  O, sir, pray tell me I may live!”

‘“Die!”

‘“Are you so resolved?  Is there no hope for me?”

‘“Die!”

‘Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing.  It was done.  He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels in her hair — he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glittering among it in little points, as he stood looking down at her — when he lifted her and laid her on her bed.

‘She was soon laid in the ground.  And now they were all gone, and he had compensated himself well.

‘He had a mind to travel.  Not that he meant to waste his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked nothing else, indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate house and wished to turn his back upon it and have done with it.  But, the house was worth Money, and Money must not be thrown away.  He determined to sell it before he went.  That it might look the less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work in the overgrown garden; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.

‘He worked, himself, along with them.  He worked later than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with his bill-hook in his hand.  One autumn evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead.

‘“It grows too dark to work longer,” he said to himself, “I must give over for the night.”

‘He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.  He looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that it was an accursed house.  Near to the porch, and near to where he stood, was a tree whose branches waved before the old bay-window of the Bride’s Chamber, where it had been done.  The tree swung suddenly, and made him start.  It swung again, although the night was still.  Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the branches.

‘It was the figure of a young man.  The face looked down, as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet before him.  A slender youth of about her age, with long light brown hair.

‘“What thief are you?” he said, seizing the youth by the collar.

‘The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with his arm across the face and throat.  They closed, but the young man got from him and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and horror, “Don’t touch me!  I would as lieve be touched by the Devil!”

‘He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at the young man.  For, the young man’s look was the counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again.

‘“I am no thief.  Even if I were, I would not have a coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies.  You murderer!”

‘“What!”

‘“I climbed it,” said the young man, pointing up into the tree, “for the first time, nigh four years ago.  I climbed it, to look at her.  I saw her.  I spoke to her.  I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and listen for her.  I was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that bay-window she gave me this!”

‘He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.

‘“Her life,” said the young man, “was a life of mourning.  She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that she was dead to every one but you.  If I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you.  But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, and what could I do then to break it!”

‘In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying: weakly at first, then passionately.

‘“Murderer!  I climbed the tree on the night when you brought her back.  I heard her, from the tree, speak of the Death-watch at the door.  I was three times in the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her.  I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed.  I have watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your guilt.  The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered up your life to the hangman.  You shall never, until then, be rid of me.  I loved her!  I can know no relenting towards you.  Murderer, I loved her!”

‘The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in his descent from the tree.  He moved towards the gate.  He had to pass — Him — to get to it.  There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the youth’s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in.  He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, since he had stood still to look at the boy.  He faced round, now, to follow him with his eyes.  As the back of the bare light-brown head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it.  He knew, before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted — I say, had alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing was done before he did it.  It cleft the head, and it remained there, and the boy lay on his face.