Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (919 page)

“I have not the slightest doubt of it,” he answered, coolly.

“Why, she didn’t even recognise my name!” I burst out. “Twice over the landlady called me Mrs. Woodville in your mother’s hearing, and twice over, I declare to you on my word of honour, it failed to produce the slightest impression on her. She looked and acted as if she had never heard her own name before in her life.”

“‘Acted’ is the right word,” he said, just as composedly as before. “The women on the stage are not the only women who can act. My mother’s object was to make herself thoroughly acquainted with you, and to throw you off your guard by speaking in the character of a stranger. It is exactly like her to take that roundabout way of satisfying her curiosity about a daughter-in-law she disapproves of. If I had not joined you when I did, you would have been examined and cross-examined about yourself and about me, and you would innocently have answered under the impression that you were speaking to a chance acquaintance. There is my mother all over! She is your enemy, remember — not your friend. She is not in search of your merits, but of your faults. And you wonder why no impression was produced on her when she heard you addressed by your name! Poor innocent! I can tell you this — you only discovered my mother in her own character when I put an end to the mystification by presenting you to each other. You saw how angry she was, and now you know why.”

I let him go on without saying a word. I listened — oh! with such a heavy heart, with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and despair! The idol of my worship, the companion, guide, protector of my life — had he fallen so low? could he stoop to such shameless prevarication as this?

Was there one word of truth in all that he had said to me? Yes! If I had not discovered his mother’s portrait, it was certainly true that I should not have known, not even have vaguely suspected, who she really was. Apart from this, the rest was lying, clumsy lying, which said one thing at least for him, that he was not accustomed to falsehood and deceit. Good Heavens! if my husband was to be believed, his mother must have tracked us to London, tracked us to the church, tracked us to the railway station, tracked us to Ramsgate! To assert that she knew me by sight as the wife of Eustace, and that she had waited on the sands and dropped her letter for the express purpose of making acquaintance with me, was also to assert every one of these monstrous probabilities to be facts that had actually happened!

I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely four days.

“Valeria,” he asked, “have you nothing to say to me?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you not satisfied with my explanation?”

I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question. The tone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a tone that my experience associated with him in certain moods of his which I had already learned to know well. Among the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can’t say why) to the happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying.

He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to look at me.

I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of my weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look at him.

In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at my feet, with a cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.

“Valeria! I am vile — I am false — I am unworthy of you. Don’t believe a word of what I have been saying — lies, lies, cowardly, contemptible lies! You don’t know what I have gone through; you don’t know how I have been tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to despise me! I must have been beside myself when I spoke to you as I did. You looked hurt; you looked offended; I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to spare you even a moment’s pain — I wanted to hush it up, and have done with it. For God’s sake don’t ask me to tell you any more! My love! my angel! it’s something between my mother and me; it’s nothing that need disturb you; it’s nothing to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart and soul are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. You shall never see my mother again. We will leave this place to-morrow. We will go away in the yacht. Does it matter where we live, so long as we live for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh, Valeria, Valeria, forgive and forget!”

Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his voice. Remember this. And remember that I loved him.

“It is easy to forgive,” I said, sadly. “For your sake, Eustace, I will try to forget.”

I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air of a man who was too humble to venture on any more familiar expression of his gratitude than that. The sense of embarrassment between us as we slowly walked on again was so unendurable that I actually cast about in my mind for a subject of conversation, as if I had been in the company of a stranger! In mercy to
him
, I asked him to tell me about the yacht.

He seized on the subject as a drowning man seizes on the hand that rescues him.

On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked, talked, as if his life depended upon his not being silent for an instant on the rest of the way back. To me it was dreadful to hear him. I could estimate what he was suffering by the violence which he — ordinarily a silent and thoughtful man — was now doing to his true nature, and to the prejudices and habits of his life. With the greatest difficulty I preserved my self-control until we reached the door of our lodgings. There I was obliged to plead fatigue, and ask him to let me rest for a little while in the solitude of my own room.

“Shall we sail to-morrow?” he called after me suddenly, as I ascended the stairs.

Sail with him to the Mediterranean the next day? Pass weeks and weeks absolutely alone with him, in the narrow limits of a vessel, with his horrible secret parting us in sympathy further and further from each other day by day? I shuddered at the thought of it.

“To-morrow is rather a short notice,” I said. “Will you give me a little longer time to prepare for the voyage?”

“Oh yes — take any time you like,” he answered, not (as I thought) very willingly. “While you are resting — there are still one or two little things to be settled — I think I will go back to the yacht. Is there anything I can do for you, Valeria, before I go?”

“Nothing — thank you, Eustace.”

He hastened away to the harbor. Was he afraid of his own thoughts, if he were left by himself in the house. Was the company of the sailing-master and the steward better than no company at all?

It was useless to ask. What did I know about him or his thoughts? I locked myself into my room.

CHAPTER V. THE LANDLADY’S DISCOVERY.

I SAT down, and tried to compose my spirits. Now or never was the time to decide what it was my duty to my husband and my duty to myself to do next.

The effort was beyond me. Worn out in mind and body alike, I was perfectly incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I vaguely felt — if I left things as they were — that I could never hope to remove the shadow which now rested on the married life that had begun so brightly. We might live together, so as to save appearances. But to forget what had happened, or to feel satisfied with my position, was beyond the power of my will. My tranquillity as a woman — perhaps my dearest interests as a wife — depended absolutely on penetrating the mystery of my mother-in-law’s conduct, and on discovering the true meaning of the wild words of penitence and self-reproach which my husband had addressed to me on our way home.

So far I could advance toward realising my position — and no further. When I asked myself what was to be done next, hopeless confusion, maddening doubt, filled my mind, and transformed me into the most listless and helpless of living women.

I gave up the struggle. In dull, stupid, obstinate despair, I threw myself on my bed, and fell from sheer fatigue into a broken, uneasy sleep.

I was awakened by a knock at the door of my room.

Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to me. Was some new trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand? Half nervously, half irritably, I asked who was there.

The landlady’s voice answered me.

“Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?”

I opened the door. There is no disguising it — though I loved him so dearly, though I had left home and friends for his sake — it was a relief to me, at that miserable time, to know that Eustace had not returned to the house.

The landlady came in, and took a seat, without waiting to be invited, close by my side. She was no longer satisfied with merely asserting herself as my equal. Ascending another step on the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform of patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.

“I have just returned from Broadstairs,” she began. “I hope you will do me the justice to believe that I sincerely regret what has happened.”

I bowed, and said nothing.

“As a gentlewoman myself,” proceeded the landlady — ”reduced by family misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman — I feel sincere sympathy with you. I will even go further than that. I will take it on myself to say that I don’t blame
you
. No, no. I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised at your mother-in-law’s conduct as I was; and that is saying a great deal — a great deal indeed. However, I have a duty to perform. It is disagreeable, but it is not the less a duty on that account. I am a single woman; not from want of opportunities of changing my condition — I beg you will understand that — but from choice. Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons into my house. There must be no mystery about the positions of
my
lodgers. Mystery in the position of a lodger carries with it — what shall I say? I don’t wish to offend you — I will say, a certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own common-sense. Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself to — Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian spirit. As a lady yourself — I will even go the length of saying a cruelly used lady — you will, I am sure, understand — ”

I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.

“I understand,” I said, “that you wish to give us notice to quit your lodgings. When do you want us to go?”

The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and sisterly protest.

“No,” she said. “Not that tone; not those looks. It’s natural you should be annoyed; it’s natural you should be angry. But do — now do please try and control yourself. I put it to your own common-sense (we will say a week for the notice to quit) — why not treat me like a friend? You don’t know what a sacrifice, what a cruel sacrifice, I have made — entirely for your sake.

“You?” I exclaimed. “What sacrifice?”

“What sacrifice?” repeated the landlady. “I have degraded myself as a gentlewoman. I have forfeited my own self-respect.” She paused for a moment, and suddenly seized my hand in a perfect frenzy of friendship. “Oh, my poor dear!” cried this intolerable person. “I have discovered everything. A villain has deceived you. You are no more married than I am!”

I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.

“Are you mad?” I asked.

The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it cheerfully.

“Yes,” she said. “I begin to think I
am
mad — mad to have devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn’t appreciate a sisterly and Christian sacrifice of self. Well, I won’t do it again. Heaven forgive me — I won’t do it again!”

“Do what again?” I asked.

“Follow your mother-in-law,” cried the landlady, suddenly dropping the character of a martyr, and assuming the character of a vixen in its place. “I blush when I think of it. I followed that most respectable person every step of the way to her own door.”