Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (844 page)

He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was — naturally, I think — a little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of the truth as that? I appeal to the women!

“You ought to be the last person to blame me,” I said. “I had too high an opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same mistake again — I promise you that!”

He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the face.

“Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the day when I first met her?” he asked. “You were there in the room — didn’t you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her — was there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?”

“I noticed that you were never at your ease with her,” I replied. “But I liked you and trusted you — and I failed to understand it. That’s all.”

“Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn’t I speak to her father? Didn’t I try to hasten Oscar’s marriage?”

It was true. He
had
tried.

“When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discolouration of his face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with her, in his own interests?”

True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.

“When she all but found it out for herself, whose influence was used to make him own it? Mine! What did I do, when he tried to confess it, and failed to make her understand him? what did I do when she first committed the mistake of believing
me
to be the disfigured man?”

The audacity of that last question fairly took away my breath. “You cruelly helped to deceive her,” I answered indignantly. “You basely encouraged your brother in his fatal policy of silence.”

He looked at me with an angry amazement on his side which more than equaled the angry amazement on mine.

“So much for the delicate perception of a woman!” he exclaimed. “So much for the wonderful tact which is the peculiar gift of the sex! You can see no motive but a bad motive in my sacrificing myself for Oscar’s sake?”

I began to discern faintly that there might have been another than a bad motive for his conduct. But — well! I dare say I was wrong; I resented the tone he was taking with me; I would have owned I had made a mistake to anybody else in the world; I wouldn’t own it to
him.
There!

“Look back for one moment,” he resumed, in quieter and gentler tones. “See how hardly you have judged me! I seized the opportunity — I swear to you this is true — I seized the opportunity of making myself an object of horror to her, the moment I heard of the mistake that she had made. I felt in myself that I was growing less and less capable of avoiding her, and I caught at the chance of making
her
avoid
me;
I did that — and I did more! I entreated Oscar to let me leave Dimchurch. He appealed to me, in the name of our love for each other, to remain. I couldn’t resist him. Where do you see signs of the conduct of a scoundrel in all this? Would a scoundrel have betrayed himself to you a dozen times over — as I did in that talk of ours in the summer-house? I remember saying in so many words, I wished I had never come to Dimchurch. What reason but one could there be for my saying that? How is it that you never even asked me what I meant?”

“You forget,” I interposed, “that I had no opportunity of asking you. Lucilla interrupted us, and diverted my attention to other things. What do you mean by putting me on my defence in this way?” I went on, more and more irritated by the tone he was taking with me. “What right have you to judge my conduct?”

He looked at me with a kind of vacant surprise.

“
Have
I been judging your conduct?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I was thinking, if you had seen my infatuation in time you might have checked it in time. No!” he exclaimed, before I could answer him. “Nothing could have checked it — nothing will cure it but my death. Let us try to agree. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I am willing to take a just view of your conduct. Will you take a just view of mine?”

I tried hard to take a just view. Though I resented his manner of speaking to me, I nevertheless secretly felt for him, as I have confessed. Still I could not forget that he had attempted to attract to himself Lucilla’s first look, on the day when she tried her sight — that he had personated his brother to Lucilla that very morning — that he had suffered his brother to go away heart-broken, a voluntary exile from all that he held dear. No! I could feel for him, but I could
not
take a just view of him. I sat down, and said nothing.

He returned to the question between us; treating me with the needful politeness, when he spoke next. For all that, he alarmed me, by what he now said, as he had not alarmed me yet.

“I repeat what I have already told you,” he proceeded. “I am no longer accountable for what I do. If I know anything of myself, I believe it will be useless to trust me in the future. While I am capable of speaking the truth, let me tell it. Whatever happens at a later time — remember this, I have honestly made a clean breast of it to-night.”

“Stop!” I cried. “I don’t understand your reckless way of talking. Every man is accountable for what he does.”

He checked me there by an impatient wave of his hand.

“Keep your opinion; I don’t dispute it. You will see; you will see. — Madame Pratolungo, the day when we had that private talk of ours in the rectory summer-house, marks a memorable date in my calendar. My last honest struggle to be true to my poor Oscar ended with that day. The efforts I have made since then have been little better than mere outbreaks of despair. They have done nothing to help me against the passion that has become the one feeling and the one misery of my life. Don’t talk of resistance. All resistance stops at a certain point. Since the time I have told you of,
my
resistance has reached its limits. You have heard how I struggled against temptation, as long as I could resist it. I have only to tell you how I have yielded to it now.”

The reckless, shameless composure with which he said that, began to set me against him once more. The perpetual shifts and contradictions in him, bewildered and irritated me. Quicksilver itself seemed to be less slippery to lay hold of than this man.

“Do you remember the day,” he asked, “when Lucilla lost her temper, and received you so rudely at your visit to Browndown?”

I made a sign in the affirmative.

“You spoke, a little while since, of my personating Oscar to her. I personated him, on the occasion I have just mentioned, for the first time. You were present and heard me. Did you care to speculate on the motives which made me impose myself on her as my brother?”

“As well as I can remember,” I answered, “I made the first guess that occurred to me. I thought you were indulging in a moment’s mischievous amusement at Lucilla’s expense.

“I was indulging the passion that consumed me! I longed to feel the luxury of her touching me and being familiar with me, under the impression that I was Oscar. Worse even than that, I wanted to try how completely I could impose on her — how easily I might marry her, if I could only deceive you all, and take her away somewhere by herself. The devil was in possession of me. I don’t know how it might have ended, if Oscar had not come in, and if Lucilla had not burst out as she did. She distressed me — she frightened me — she gave me back again to my better self. I rushed, without stopping to prepare her, into the question of her restoration to sight — as the only way of diverting her mind from the vile advantage that I had taken of her blindness. That night, Madame Pratolungo, I suffered pangs of self-reproach and remorse which would even have satisfied
you.
At the very next opportunity that offered, I made my atonement to Oscar. I supported his interests; I even put the words he was to say to Lucilla into his lips.

“When?” I broke in. “Where? How?”

“When the two surgeons had left us. In Lucilla’s sitting-room. In the heat of the discussion whether she should submit to the operation at once — or whether she should marry Oscar first, and let Grosse try his experiment on her eyes at a later time. If you recall our conversation, you will remember that I did all I could to persuade Lucilla to marry my brother before Grosse tried his experiment on her sight. Quite useless! You threw all the weight of your influence into the opposite side of the scale. I failed. It made no difference. I had done what I had done in sheer despair: mere impulse — it didn’t last. When the next temptation tried me, I behaved like a scoundrel — as you say.”

“I have said nothing,” I answered shortly.

“Very well — as you
think,
then. Did you suspect me at last — when we met in the village, yesterday? Surely, even your eyes must have seen through me on that occasion!”

I answered silently, by an inclination of my head. I had no wish to drift into another quarrel. Sorely as he was presuming on my endurance, I tried, in Lucilla’s interests, to keep on friendly terms with him.

“You concealed it wonderfully well,” he went on, “when I tried to find out whether you had, or had not discovered me. You virtuous people are not bad hands at deception, when it suits your interests to deceive. I needn’t tell you what my temptation was yesterday. The first look of her eyes when they opened on the world; the first light of love and joy breaking on her heavenly face — what madness to expect me to let that look fall on another man, that light show itself to other eyes! No living being, adoring her as I adored her, would have acted otherwise than I did. I could have fallen down on my knees and worshipped Grosse, when he innocently proposed to me to take the very place in the room which I was determined to occupy. You saw what I had in my mind! You did your best — and did it admirably — to defeat me. Oh, you pattern people — you can be as shifty with your resources, when a cunning trick is to be played, as the worst of us! You saw how it ended. Fortune stood my friend at the eleventh hour; fortune can shine, like the sun, on the just and the unjust!
I
had the first look of her eyes!
I
felt the first light of love and joy in her face falling on
me! I
have had her arms round me, and her bosom on mine — ”

I could endure it no longer.

“Open the door!” I said. “I am ashamed to be in the same room with you!”

“I don’t wonder at it,” he answered. “You may well be ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself.”

There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner. The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have known what to do. But I say again — impossible as it seems — he was, beyond all doubt, genuinely penitent for what he had said, the instant after he had said it! With all my experience of humanity, and all my practice in dealing with strange characters, I stopped mid-way between Nugent and the locked door, thoroughly puzzled.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

“I don’t understand you,” I answered.

He took the key of the door out of his pocket, and put it on the table — close to the chair from which I had just risen.

“I lose my head when I talk of her, or think of her,” he went on. “I would give everything I possess not to have said what I said just now. No language you can use is too strong to condemn it. The words burst out of me: if Lucilla herself had been present, I couldn’t have controlled them. Go, if you like. I have no right to keep you here, after behaving as I have done. There is the key, at your service. Only think first, before you leave me. You had something to propose when you came in. You might influence me — you might shame me into behaving like an honourable man. Do as you please. It rests with you.”

Which was I, a good Christian? or a contemptible fool? I went back once more to my chair, and determined to give him a last chance.

“That’s kind,” he said. “You encourage me; you show me that I am worth trying again. I had a generous impulse in this room, yesterday. It might have been something better than an impulse — if I had not had another temptation set straight in my way.”