Read Complete Works of Wilkie Collins Online
Authors: Wilkie Collins
Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (868 page)
THE END
This novel was first published in 1873 and dedicated to the memory of Charles Allston Collins who died during its composition.
It is one of the most didactic of Collins’ novels, treating the then fashionable theme of the ‘fallen woman’ who attempts to put her past behind her but is repeatedly thwarted by the prejudices of respectable English society.
The first edition in two volumes
THE NEW MAGDALEN
CONTENTS
FIRST SCENE. — The Cottage on the Frontier.
CHAPTER II. MAGDALEN — IN MODERN TIMES.
CHAPTER III. THE GERMAN SHELL.
CHAPTER V. THE GERMAN SURGEON.
SECOND SCENE. — Mablethorpe House.
CHAPTER VI. LADY JANET’S COMPANION.
CHAPTER VII. THE MAN IS COMING.
CHAPTER VIII. THE MAN APPEARS.
CHAPTER IX. NEWS FROM MANNHEIM.
CHAPTER X. A COUNCIL OF THREE.
CHAPTER XIV. COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE.
CHAPTER XV. A WOMAN’S REMORSE.
CHAPTER XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE SEARCH IN THE GROUNDS.
CHAPTER XX. THE POLICEMAN IN PLAIN CLOTHES.
CHAPTER XXI. THE FOOTSTEP IN THE CORRIDOR.
CHAPTER XXII. THE MAN IN THE DINING-ROOM.
CHAPTER XXIII. LADY JANET AT BAY.
CHAPTER XXIV. LADY JANET’S LETTER.
CHAPTER XXVI. GREAT HEART AND LITTLE HEART.
CHAPTER XXVII. MAGDALEN’S APPRENTICESHIP.
CHAPTER XXVIII. SENTENCE IS PRONOUNCED ON HER.
FIRST SCENE. — The Cottage on the Frontier.
PREAMBLE.
THE place is France.
The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy — the year of the war between France and Germany.
The persons are, Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville, of the French ambulance; Surgeon Wetzel, of the German army; Mercy Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace Roseberry, a traveling lady on her way to England.
IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.
Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a skirmishing party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the little village of Lagrange, close to the German frontier. In the struggle that followed, the French had (for once) got the better of the enemy. For the time, at least, a few hundreds out of the host of the invaders had been forced back over the frontier. It was a trifling affair, occurring not long after the great German victory of Weissenbourg, and the newspapers took little or no notice of it.
Captain Arnault, commanding on the French side, sat alone in one of the cottages of the village, inhabited by the miller of the district. The Captain was reading, by the light of a solitary tallow-candle, some intercepted dispatches taken from the Germans. He had suffered the wood fire, scattered over the large open grate, to burn low; the red embers only faintly illuminated a part of the room. On the floor behind him lay some of the miller’s empty sacks. In a corner opposite to him was the miller’s solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all around him were the miller’s coloured prints, representing a happy mixture of devotional and domestic subjects. A door of communication leading into the kitchen of the cottage had been torn from its hinges, and used to carry the men wounded in the skirmish from the field. They were now comfortably laid at rest in the kitchen, under the care of the French surgeon and the English nurse attached to the ambulance. A piece of coarse canvas screened the opening between the two rooms in place of the door. A second door, leading from the bed-chamber into the yard, was locked; and the wooden shutter protecting the one window of the room was carefully barred. Sentinels, doubled in number, were placed at all the outposts. The French commander had neglected no precaution which could reasonably insure for himself and for his men a quiet and comfortable night.
Still absorbed in his perusal of the dispatches, and now and then making notes of what he read by the help of writing materials placed at his side, Captain Arnault was interrupted by the appearance of an intruder in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering from the kitchen, drew aside the canvas screen, and approached the little round table at which his superior officer was sitting.
“What is it?” said the captain, sharply.
“A question to ask,” replied the surgeon. “Are we safe for the night?”
“Why do you want to know?” inquired the captain, suspiciously.
The surgeon pointed to the kitchen, now the hospital devoted to the wounded men.
“The poor fellows are anxious about the next few hours,” he replied. “They dread a surprise, and they ask me if there is any reasonable hope of their having one night’s rest. What do you think of the chances?”
The captain shrugged his shoulders. The surgeon persisted.
“Surely you ought to know?” he said.
“I know that we are in possession of the village for the present,” retorted Captain Arnault, “and I know no more. Here are the papers of the enemy.” He held them up and shook them impatiently as he spoke. “They give me no information that I can rely on. For all I can tell to the contrary, the main body of the Germans, outnumbering us ten to one, may be nearer this cottage than the main body of the French. Draw your own conclusions. I have nothing more to say.”
Having answered in those discouraging terms, Captain Arnault got on his feet, drew the hood of his great-coat over his head, and lit a cigar at the candle.
“Where are you going?” asked the surgeon.
“To visit the outposts.”
“Do you want this room for a little while?”
“Not for some hours to come. Are you thinking of moving any of your wounded men in here?”
“I was thinking of the English lady,” answered the surgeon. “The kitchen is not quite the place for her. She would be more comfortable here; and the English nurse might keep her company.”
Captain Arnault smiled, not very pleasantly. “They are two fine women,” he said, “and Surgeon Surville is a ladies’ man. Let them come in, if they are rash enough to trust themselves here with you.” He checked himself on the point of going out, and looked back distrustfully at the lighted candle. “Caution the women,” he said, “to limit the exercise of their curiosity to the inside of this room.”