Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (979 page)

Angry as he was, my father was positively staggered by my audacity.

“You young idiot, your insolence exceeds belief!” he burst out. “I tell you this: you will never darken these doors again! You have been taught to disobey me here. You have had things put into your head, here, which no boy of your age ought to know — I’ll say more, which no decent people would have let you know.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Dermody interposed, very respectfully and very firmly at the same time. “There are many things which a master in a hot temper is privileged to say to the man who serves him. But you have gone beyond your privilege. You have shamed me, sir, in the presence of my mother, in the hearing of my child — ”

My father checked him there.

“You may spare the rest of it,” he said. “We are master and servant no longer. When my son came hanging about your cottage, and playing at sweethearts with your girl there, your duty was to close the door on him. You have failed in your duty. I trust you no longer. Take a month’s notice, Dermody. You leave my service.”

The bailiff steadily met my father on his ground. He was no longer the easy, sweet-tempered, modest man who was the man of my remembrance.

“I beg to decline taking your month’s notice, sir,” he answered. “You shall have no opportunity of repeating what you have just said to me. I will send in my accounts to-night. And I will leave your service to-morrow.”

“We agree for once,” retorted my father. “The sooner you go, the better.”

He stepped across the room and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Listen to me,” he said, making a last effort to control himself. “I don’t want to quarrel with you before a discarded servant. There must be an end to this nonsense. Leave these people to pack up and go, and come back to the house with me.”

His heavy hand, pressing on my shoulder, seemed to press the spirit of resistance out of me. I so far gave way as to try to melt him by entreaties.

“Oh, papa! papa!” I cried. “Don’t part me from Mary! See how pretty and good she is! She has made me a flag for my boat. Let me come here and see her sometimes. I can’t live without her.”

I could say no more. My poor little Mary burst out crying. Her tears and my entreaties were alike wasted on my father.

“Take your choice,” he said, “between coming away of your own accord, or obliging me to take you away by force. I mean to part you and Dermody’s girl.”

“Neither you nor any man can part them,” interposed a voice, speaking behind us. “Rid your mind of that notion, master, before it is too late.”

My father looked round quickly, and discovered Dame Dermody facing him in the full light of the window. She had stepped back, at the outset of the dispute, into the corner behind the fireplace. There she had remained, biding her time to speak, until my father’s last threat brought her out of her place of retirement.

They looked at each other for a moment. My father seemed to think it beneath his dignity to answer her. He went on with what he had to say to me.

“I shall count three slowly,” he resumed. “Before I get to the last number, make up your mind to do what I tell you, or submit to the disgrace of being taken away by force.”

“Take him where you may,” said Dame Dermody, “he will still be on his way to his marriage with my grandchild.”

“And where shall I be, if you please?” asked my father, stung into speaking to her this time.

The answer followed instantly in these startling words:

“
You
will be on your way to your ruin and your death.”

My father turned his back on the prophetess with a smile of contempt.

“One!” he said, beginning to count.

I set my teeth, and clasped both arms round Mary as he spoke. I had inherited some of his temper, and he was now to know it.

“Two!” proceeded my father, after waiting a little.

Mary put her trembling lips to my ear, and whispered: “Let me go, George! I can’t bear to see it. Oh, look how he frowns! I know he’ll hurt you.”

My father lifted his forefinger as a preliminary warning before he counted Three.

“Stop!” cried Dame Dermody.

My father looked round at her again with sardonic astonishment.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am — have you anything particular to say to me?” he asked.

“Man!” returned the Sibyl, “you speak lightly. Have I spoken lightly to You? I warn you to bow your wicked will before a Will that is mightier than yours. The spirits of these children are kindred spirits. For time and for eternity they are united one to the other. Put land and sea between them — they will still be together; they will communicate in visions, they will be revealed to each other in dreams. Bind them by worldly ties; wed your son, in the time to come, to another woman, and my grand-daughter to another man. In vain! I tell you, in vain! You may doom them to misery, you may drive them to sin — the day of their union on earth is still a day predestined in heaven. It will come! it will come! Submit, while the time for submission is yours. You are a doomed man. I see the shadow of disaster, I see the seal of death, on your face. Go; and leave these consecrated ones to walk the dark ways of the world together, in the strength of their innocence, in the light of their love. Go — and God forgive you!” In spite of himself, my father was struck by the irresistible strength of conviction which inspired those words. The bailiff’s mother had impressed him as a tragic actress might have impressed him on the stage. She had checked the mocking answer on his lips, but she had not shaken his iron will. His face was as hard as ever when he turned my way once more.

“The last chance, George,” he said, and counted the last number: “Three!”

I neither moved nor answered him.

“You
will
have it?” he said, as he fastened his hold on my arm.

I fastened
my
hold on Mary; I whispered to her, “I won’t leave you!” She seemed not to hear me. She trembled from head to foot in my arms. A faint cry of terror fluttered from her lips. Dermody instantly stepped forward. Before my father could wrench me away from her, he had said in my ear, “You can give her to
me
, Master George,” and had released his child from my embrace. She stretched her little frail hands out yearningly to me, as she lay in Dermody’s arms. “Good-by, dear,” she said, faintly. I saw her head sink on her father’s bosom as I was dragged to the door. In my helpless rage and misery, I struggled against the cruel hands that had got me with all the strength I had left. I cried out to her, “I love you, Mary! I will come back to you, Mary! I will never marry any one but you!” Step by step, I was forced further and further away. The last I saw of her, my darling’s head was still resting on Dermody’s breast. Her grandmother stood near, and shook her withered hands at my father, and shrieked her terrible prophecy, in the hysteric frenzy that possessed her when she saw the separation accomplished. “Go! — you go to your ruin! you go to your death!” While her voice still rang in my ears, the cottage door was opened and closed again. It was all over. The modest world of my boyish love and my boyish joy disappeared like the vision of a dream. The empty outer wilderness, which was my father’s world, opened before me void of love and void of joy. God forgive me — how I hated him at that moment!

CHAPTER IV. THE CURTAIN FALLS.

FOR the rest of the day, and through the night, I was kept a close prisoner in my room, watched by a man on whose fidelity my father could depend.

The next morning I made an effort to escape, and was discovered before I had got free of the house. Confined again to my room, I contrived to write to Mary, and to slip my note into the willing hand of the housemaid who attended on me. Useless! The vigilance of my guardian was not to be evaded. The woman was suspected and followed, and the letter was taken from her. My father tore it up with his own hands.

Later in the day, my mother was permitted to see me.

She was quite unfit, poor soul, to intercede for me, or to serve my interests in any way. My father had completely overwhelmed her by announcing that his wife and his son were to accompany him, when he returned to America.

“Every farthing he has in the world,” said my mother, “is to be thrown into that hateful speculation. He has raised money in London; he has let the house to some rich tradesman for seven years; he has sold the plate, and the jewels that came to me from his mother. The land in America swallows it all up. We have no home, George, and no choice but to go with him.”

An hour afterward the post-chaise was at the door.

My father himself took me to the carriage. I broke away from him, with a desperation which not even his resolution could resist. I ran, I flew, along the path that led to Dermody’s cottage. The door stood open; the parlor was empty. I went into the kitchen; I went into the upper rooms. Solitude everywhere. The bailiff had left the place; and his mother and his daughter had gone with him. No friend or neighbour lingered near with a message; no letter lay waiting for me; no hint was left to tell me in what direction they had taken their departure. After the insulting words which his master had spoken to him, Dermody’s pride was concerned in leaving no trace of his whereabouts; my father might consider it as a trace purposely left with the object of reuniting Mary and me. I had no keepsake to speak to me of my lost darling but the flag which she had embroidered with her own hand. The furniture still remained in the cottage. I sat down in our customary corner, by Mary’s empty chair, and looked again at the pretty green flag, and burst out crying.

A light touch roused me. My father had so far yielded as to leave to my mother the responsibility of bringing me back to the traveling carriage.

“We shall not find Mary here, George,” she said, gently. “And we
may
hear of her in London. Come with me.”

I rose and silently gave her my hand. Something low down on the clean white door-post caught my eye as we passed it. I stooped, and discovered some writing in pencil. I looked closer — it was writing in Mary’s hand! The unformed childish characters traced these last words of farewell:

“Good-by, dear. Don’t forget Mary.”

I knelt down and kissed the writing. It comforted me — it was like a farewell touch from Mary’s hand. I followed my mother quietly to the carriage.

Late that night we were in London.

My good mother did all that the most compassionate kindness could do (in her position) to comfort me. She privately wrote to the solicitors employed by her family, inclosing a description of Dermody and his mother and daughter and directing inquiries to be made at the various coach-offices in London. She also referred the lawyers to two of Dermody’s relatives, who lived in the city, and who might know something of his movements after he left my father’s service. When she had done this, she had done all that lay in her power. We neither of us possessed money enough to advertise in the newspapers.

A week afterward we sailed for the United States. Twice in that interval I communicated with the lawyers; and twice I was informed that the inquiries had led to nothing.

With this the first epoch in my love story comes to an end.

For ten long years afterward I never again met with my little Mary; I never even heard whether she had lived to grow to womanhood or not. I still kept the green flag, with the dove worked on it. For the rest, the waters of oblivion had closed over the old golden days at Greenwater Broad.

CHAPTER V. MY STORY.

WHEN YOU last saw me, I was a boy of thirteen. You now see me a man of twenty-three.

The story of my life, in the interval between these two ages, is a story that can be soon told.

Speaking of my father first, I have to record that the end of his career did indeed come as Dame Dermody had foretold it. Before we had been a year in America, the total collapse of his land speculation was followed by his death. The catastrophe was complete. But for my mother’s little income (settled on her at her marriage) we should both have been left helpless at the mercy of the world.