Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (923 page)

So far, one thing at least seemed to be clear. I had done well in sending for the chambermaid. What would Oliver’s report of me have been if I had presented myself to him with my colourless cheeks and my ill-dressed hair?

The servant reappeared, and conducted me to the inner room. Major Fitz-David advanced to welcome me. What was the Major like?

Well, he was like a well-preserved old gentleman of, say, sixty years old, little and lean, and chiefly remarkable by the extraordinary length of his nose. After this feature, I noticed next his beautiful brown wig; his sparkling little gray eyes; his rosy complexion; his short military whisker, dyed to match his wig; his white teeth and his winning smile; his smart blue frock-coat, with a camellia in the button-hole; and his splendid ring, a ruby, flashing on his little finger as he courteously signed to me to take a chair.

“Dear Mrs. Woodville, how very kind of you this is! I have been longing to have the happiness of knowing you. Eustace is an old friend of mine. I congratulated him when I heard of his marriage. May I make a confession? — I envy him now I have seen his wife.”

The future of my life was perhaps in this man’s hands. I studied him attentively: I tried to read his character in his face.

The Major’s sparkling little gray eyes softened as they looked at me; the Major’s strong and sturdy voice dropped to its lowest and tenderest tones when he spoke to me; the Major’s manner expressed, from the moment when I entered the room, a happy mixture of admiration and respect. He drew his chair close to mine, as if it were a privilege to be near me. He took my hand and lifted my glove to his lips, as if that glove were the most delicious luxury the world could produce. “Dear Mrs. Woodville,” he said, as he softly laid my hand back on my lap, “bear with an old fellow who worships your enchanting sex. You really brighten this dull house. It is
such
a pleasure to see you!”

There was no need for the old gentleman to make his little confession. Women, children, and dogs proverbially know by instinct who the people are who really like them. The women had a warm friend — perhaps at one time a dangerously warm friend — in Major Fitz-David. I knew as much of him as that before I had settled myself in my chair and opened my lips to answer him.

“Thank you, Major, for your kind reception and your pretty compliment,” I said, matching my host’s easy tone as closely as the necessary restraints on my side would permit. “You have made your confession. May I make mine?”

Major Fitz-David lifted my hand again from my lap and drew his chair as close as possible to mine. I looked at him gravely and tried to release my hand. Major Fitz-David declined to let go of it, and proceeded to tell me why.

“I have just heard you speak for the first time,” he said. “I am under the charm of your voice. Dear Mrs. Woodville, bear with an old fellow who is under the charm! Don’t grudge me my innocent little pleasures. Lend me — I wish I could say
give
me — this pretty hand. I am such an admirer of pretty hands! I can listen so much better with a pretty hand in mine. The ladies indulge my weakness. Please indulge me too. Yes? And what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say, Major, that I felt particularly sensible of your kind welcome because, as it happens, I have a favor to ask of you.”

I was conscious, while I spoke, that I was approaching the object of my visit a little too abruptly. But Major Fitz-David’s admiration rose from one climax to another with such alarming rapidity that I felt the importance of administering a practical check to it. I trusted to those ominous words, “a favor to ask of you,” to administer the check, and I did not trust in vain. My aged admirer gently dropped my hand, and, with all possible politeness, changed the subject.

“The favor is granted, of course!” he said. “And now, tell me, how is our dear Eustace?”

“Anxious and out of spirits.” I answered.

“Anxious and out of spirits!” repeated the Major. “The enviable man who is married to You anxious and out of spirits? Monstrous! Eustace fairly disgusts me. I shall take him off the list of my friends.”

“In that case, take me off the list with him, Major. I am in wretched spirits too. You are my husband’s old friend. I may acknowledge to
you
that our married life is just now not quite a happy one.”

Major Fitz-David lifted his eyebrows (dyed to match his whiskers) in polite surprise.

“Already!” he exclaimed. “What can Eustace be made of? Has he no appreciation of beauty and grace? Is he the most insensible of living beings?”

“He is the best and dearest of men,” I answered. “But there is some dreadful mystery in his past life — ”

I could get no further; Major Fitz-David deliberately stopped me. He did it with the smoothest politeness, on the surface. But I saw a look in his bright little eyes which said, plainly, “If you
will
venture on delicate ground, madam, don’t ask me to accompany you.”

“My charming friend!” he exclaimed. “May I call you my charming friend? You have — among a thousand other delightful qualities which I can see already — a vivid imagination. Don’t let it get the upper hand. Take an old fellow’s advice; don’t let it get the upper hand! What can I offer you, dear Mrs. Woodville? A cup of tea?”

“Call me by my right name, sir,” I answered, boldly. “I have made a discovery. I know as well as you do that my name is Macallan.”

The Major started, and looked at me very attentively. His manner became grave, his tone changed completely, when he spoke next.

“May I ask,” he said, “if you have communicated to your husband the discovery which you have just mentioned to me?”

“Certainly!” I answered. “I consider that my husband owes me an explanation. I have asked him to tell me what his extraordinary conduct means — and he has refused, in language that frightens me. I have appealed to his mother — and
she
has refused to explain, in language that humiliates me. Dear Major Fitz-David, I have no friends to take my part: I have nobody to come to but you! Do me the greatest of all favors — tell me why your friend Eustace has married me under a false name!”

“Do
me
the greatest of all favors;” answered the Major. “Don’t ask me to say a word about it.”

He looked, in spite of his unsatisfactory reply, as if he really felt for me. I determined to try my utmost powers of persuasion; I resolved not to be beaten at the first repulse.

“I
must
ask you,” I said. “Think of my position. How can I live, knowing what I know — and knowing no more? I would rather hear the most horrible thing you can tell me than be condemned (as I am now) to perpetual misgiving and perpetual suspense. I love my husband with all my heart; but I cannot live with him on these terms: the misery of it would drive me mad. I am only a woman, Major. I can only throw myself on your kindness. Don’t — pray, pray don’t keep me in the dark!”

I could say no more. In the reckless impulse of the moment I snatched up his hand and raised it to my lips. The gallant old gentleman started as if I had given him an electric shock.

“My dear, dear lady!” he exclaimed, “I can’t tell you how I feel for you! You charm me, you overwhelm me, you touch me to the heart. What can I say? What can I do? I can only imitate your admirable frankness, your fearless candor. You have told me what your position is. Let me tell you, in my turn, how I am placed. Compose yourself — pray compose yourself! I have a smelling-bottle here at the service of the ladies. Permit me to offer it.”

He brought me the smelling-bottle; he put a little stool under my feet; he entreated me to take time enough to compose myself. “Infernal fool!” I heard him say to himself, as he considerately turned away from me for a few moments. “If
I
had been her husband, come what might of it, I would have told her the truth!”

Was he referring to Eustace? And was he going to do what he would have done in my husband’s place? — was he really going to tell me the truth?

The idea had barely crossed my mind when I was startled by a loud and peremptory knocking at the street door. The Major stopped and listened attentively. In a few moments the door was opened, and the rustling of a woman’s dress was plainly audible in the hall. The Major hurried to the door of the room with the activity of a young man. He was too late. The door was violently opened from the outer side, just as he got to it. The lady of the rustling dress burst into the room.

CHAPTER IX. THE DEFEAT OF THE MAJOR.

MAJOR FITZ-DAVID’S visitor proved to be a plump, round-eyed overdressed girl, with a florid complexion and straw coloured hair. After first fixing on me a broad stare of astonishment, she pointedly addressed her apologies for intruding on us to the Major alone. The creature evidently believed me to be the last new object of the old gentleman’s idolatry; and she took no pains to disguise her jealous resentment on discovering us together. Major Fitz-David set matters right in his own irresistible way. He kissed the hand of the overdressed girl as devotedly as he had kissed mine; he told her she was looking charmingly. Then he led her, with his happy mixture of admiration and respect, back to the door by which she had entered — a second door communicating directly with the hall.

“No apology is necessary, my dear,” he said. “This lady is with me on a matter of business. You will find your singing-master waiting for you upstairs. Begin your lesson; and I will join you in a few minutes.
Au revoir
, my charming pupil —
au revoir.
”

The young lady answered this polite little speech in a whisper — with her round eyes fixed distrustfully on me while she spoke. The door closed on her. Major Fitz-David was at liberty to set matters right with me, in my turn.

“I call that young person one of my happy discoveries;” said the old gentleman, complacently. “She possesses, I don’t hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; ‘Here is a born prima donna — I will bring her out!’ She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future Queens of Song. Listen! She is beginning her scales. What a voice! Brava! Brava! Bravissima!”

The high soprano notes of the future Queen of Song rang through the house as he spoke. Of the loudness of the young lady’s voice there could be no sort of doubt. The sweetness and the purity of it admitted, in my opinion, of considerable dispute.

Having said the polite words which the occasion rendered necessary, I ventured to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject in discussion between us when his visitor had entered the room. The Major was very unwilling to return to the perilous topic on which we had just touched when the interruption occurred. He beat time with his forefinger to the singing upstairs; he asked me about
my
voice, and whether I sang; he remarked that life would be intolerable to him without Love and Art. A man in my place would have lost all patience, and would have given up the struggle in disgust. Being a woman, and having my end in view, my resolution was invincible. I fairly wore out the Major’s resistance, and compelled him to surrender at discretion. It is only justice to add that, when he did make up his mind to speak to me again of Eustace, he spoke frankly, and spoke to the point.

“I have known your husband,” he began, “since the time when he was a boy. At a certain period of his past life a terrible misfortune fell upon him. The secret of that misfortune is known to his friends, and is religiously kept by his friends. It is the secret that he is keeping from You. He will never tell it to you as long as he lives. And he has bound
me
not to tell it, under a promise given on my word of honour. You wished, dear Mrs. Woodville, to be made acquainted with my position toward Eustace. There it is!”

“You persist in calling me Mrs. Woodville,” I said.

“Your husband wishes me to persist,” the Major answered. “He assumed the name of Woodville, fearing to give his own name, when he first called at your uncle’s house. He will now acknowledge no other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do what we do — you must give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the world in other respects: in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed as he can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that I think he was wrong in courting and marrying you under his false name. He trusted his honour and his happiness to your keeping in making you his — wife. Why should he not trust the story of his troubles to you as well? His mother quite shares my opinion in this matter. You must not blame her for refusing to admit you into her confidence after your marriage: it was then too late. Before your marriage she did all she could do — without betraying secrets which, as a good mother, she was bound to respect — to induce her son to act justly toward you. I commit no indiscretion when I tell you that she refused to sanction your marriage mainly for the reason that Eustace refused to follow her advice, and to tell you what his position really was. On my part I did all I could to support Mrs. Macallan in the course that she took. When Eustace wrote to tell me that he had engaged himself to marry a niece of my good friend Doctor Starkweather, and that he had mentioned me as his reference, I wrote back to warn him that I would have nothing to do with the affair unless he revealed the whole truth about himself to his future wife. He refused to listen to me, as he had refused to listen to his mother; and he held me at the same time to my promise to keep his secret. When Starkweather wrote to me, I had no choice but to involve myself in a deception of which I thoroughly disapproved, or to answer in a tone so guarded and so brief as to stop the correspondence at the outset. I chose the last alternative; and I fear I have offended my good old friend. You now see the painful position in which I am placed. To add to the difficulties of that situation, Eustace came here this very day to warn me to be on my guard, in case of your addressing to me the very request which you have just made! He told me that you had met with his mother, by an unlucky accident, and that you had discovered the family name. He declared that he had traveled to London for the express purpose of speaking to me personally on this serious subject. ‘I know your weakness,’ he said, ‘where women are concerned. Valeria is aware that you are my old friend. She will certainly write to you; she may even be bold enough to make her way into your house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret, on your honour and on your oath. ‘Those were his words, as nearly as I can remember them. I tried to treat the thing lightly; I ridiculed the absurdly theatrical notion of ‘renewing my promise,’ and all the rest of it. Quite useless! He refused to leave me; he reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor fellow, in the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears. You love him, and so do I. Can you wonder that I let him have his way? The result is that I am doubly bound to tell you nothing, by the most sacred promise that a man can give. My dear lady, I cordially side with you in this matter; I long to relieve your anxieties. But what can I do?”