Wilkie Collins

“ Charlotte’s eyes, riveted on Percy, detected a sudden change of color in his face the moment he looked at the newspaper. That was enough for her. “You are the man!” she cried. “Oh, for shame, for shame! To risk your life for a paltry dispute about cards!”
“I would risk it again,” said Percy, “to hear you speak as if you set some value on it.”
She looked away from him without a word of reply. Her mind seemed to be busy again with its own thoughts. Did she meditate returning to the subject of the duel? Was she not satisfied with the discovery which she had just made? ”

“ Without a word to prepare her for the disclosure, he confessed that he had killed Mr. Varleigh in a duel. His remorse (he declared) had unsettled his reason: only a few days had passed since he had been released from confinement in an asylum.
“You are the cause of it,” he said wildly. “It is for love of you. I have but one hope left to live for—my hope in you. If you cast me off, my mind is made up. I will give my life for the life that I have taken; I will die by my own hand. Look at me, and you will see that I am in earnest. My future as a living man depends on your decision. ”

“ Stop! I’m going to be clever for the first time in my life. A man who talks of love as you do, must have felt love himself. Where is the young one and the pretty one? And what has she done, poor dear, to be deserted for an old woman? Good God! how you look at me! I have hurt your feelings—I have been a greater fool than ever—I am more ashamed of myself than words can say!”
Beaucourt stopped him there, gently and firmly.
“You have made a very natural mistake,” he said. “There was a young lady. She has refused me—absolutely refused me. There is no more love in my life. ”

“ How can I prevail upon Doctor Lagarde to enlighten me?”
“He can only tell you what he sees,” Madame Lagarde answered; “ask him that, and you will get a direct reply. Say to him: ‘Do you see the lady?’”
The stranger repeated the question. The reply followed at once, in these words:
“I see two figures standing side by side. One of them is your figure. The other is the figure of a lady. She only appears dimly. I can discover nothing but that she is taller than women generally are, and that she is dressed in pale blue.” ”

“ Am I a coward? The bare recollection of what followed that reply makes me tremble. Time has passed. I am a new man now; my health is restored; my happiness is assured: I ought to be able to write on. No: it is not to be done. How can I think coolly? how force myself to record the suffering that I innocently, most innocently, inflicted on the sweetest and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. ”

“ Michael answered in sad, submissive tones. “I try to improve myself, sir—though I sometimes lose heart and hope.” “Hope of what?” asked my uncle. “Are you not content to be a servant? Must you rise in the world, as the saying is?” The groom shrank a little at that abrupt question. “If I had relations to care for me and help me along the hard ways of life,” he said, “I might be satisfied, sir, to remain as I am. As it is, I have no one to think about but myself—and I am foolish enough sometimes to look beyond myself.” ”

“ I say it’s the passion of a life! Do you hear? It’s the passion of a man’s whole life! I am not to be trifled with. I have had a night of sleepless misery about you—I have suffered enough for you—and you’re not worth it. Don’t laugh! This is no laughing matter. Take care, Bertha! Take care!”
My aunt rose from her chair. She astonished me. On all ordinary occasions the most retiring, the most feminine of women, she now walked up to Captain Stanwick and looked him full in the face, without flinching for an instant. ”

“ Dick held him back on the doorstep.
“Break off your mad engagement to Miss Dulane,” he said. “Be a man, Howel; wait and hope! You are throwing away your life when happiness is within your reach, if you will only be patient. That poor young creature is worthy of you. Lost? Nonsense! In this narrow little world people are never hopelessly lost till they are dead and underground. Help me to recognize her by a description, and tell me her name. I’ll find her; I’ll persuade her to come back to you—and, mark my words, you will live to bless the day when you followed my advice.” ”

“ The Doctor spoke his first words in the monotonous tones of a man talking in his sleep.
“Own your true motive before you begin,” he said. “Your interest in your future life is centered in a woman. You wish to know if her heart will be yours in the time that is to come—and there your interest in your future life ends.”
This startling proof of the sleeper’s capacity to look, by sympathy, into his mind, and to see there his most secret thoughts, instead of convincing the stranger, excited his suspicions. ”

“ If I marry an old woman for her money, I have no occasion to be a hypocrite; we both know that our marriage is a mere matter of form. But if I make a young woman my wife because I want her money, and if that young woman happens to be worth a straw, I must deceive her and disgrace myself by shamming love. That, my boy, you may depend upon it, I will never do.”
Dick’s face suddenly brightened with a mingled expression of relief and triumph. ”

“ She had no choice left but to let her obstinate father and her misguided lover go to prison—or to take her place with my sister and me in the traveling-carriage.” He appealed once more to Percy. “My friend, you remember the day when you spared my life. Have I remembered it, too?”
For once, there was an Englishman who was not contented to express the noblest emotions that humanity can feel by the commonplace ceremony of shaking hands. Percy’s heart overflowed. In an outburst of unutterable gratitude he threw himself on Bervie’s breast. As brothers the two men embraced. ”

“ His raptures over Felicia; his protestations that she was the first woman he had ever really loved; his profane declaration that he preferred to die, if I refused to let him be her husband—all these flourishes, as I may call them, passed in at one of my ears and out at the other. But eight hundred pounds sterling per annum, descending as it were in a golden avalanche on the mind of a Scottish minister (accustomed to thirty years’ annual contemplation of seventy-four pounds) —eight hundred a year, in one young man’s pocket, I say, completely overpowered me. ”

“ SEVEN months have passed, my dear Dick, since my ‘inhuman obstinacy’ (those were the words you used) made you one of the witnesses at my marriage to Miss Dulane, sorely against your will. Do you remember your parting prophecy when you were out of the bride’s hearing? ‘A miserable life is before that woman’s husband—and, by Jupiter, he has deserved it!’
“Never, my dear boy, attempt to forecast the future again. Viewed as a prophet you are a complete failure. I have nothing to complain of in my married life. ”

“ Beyond the vague threats which had escaped Captain Stanwick’s lips—threats which I own I was rash enough to despise—I had no warning whatever of the dreadful events which happened at Maplesworth on the day after our return to Nettlegrove Hall.
I can only add that I am ready to submit to any questions that may be put to me. Pray don’t think me a heartless woman. My worst fault was ignorance. In those days, I knew nothing of the false pretenses under which men hide what is selfish and savage in their natures from the women whom it is their interest to deceive. ”

“ Bowmore’s politics,” he went on, “I can tell you that the motive of everything he says and does is vanity. To the gratification of that one passion he would sacrifice you or me, his wife or his daughter, without hesitation and without remorse. His one desire is to get into Parliament. You are wealthy, and you can help him. He will leave no effort untried to reach that end; and, if he gets you into political difficulties, he will desert you without scruple.”
Percy made a last effort to take Mr. Bowmore’s part—for the one irresistible reason that he was Charlotte’s father. ”

“ For seven sad months our dear sufferer lingered. I have only one remembrance to comfort me; my mother’s last kiss was mine—she died peacefully with her head on my bosom.
I was nearly nineteen years old before I had sufficiently rallied my courage to be able to think seriously of myself and my prospects.
At that age one does not willingly submit one’s self for the first time to the authority of a governess. Having my aunt for a companion and protectress, I proposed to engage my own masters and to superintend my own education. ”

“ Bowmore followed Percy to the nearest inn that was open, sublimely indifferent to the delays and difficulties of the journey. He ordered refreshments with the air of a man who was performing a melancholy duty to himself, in the name of humanity.
“When I think of my speech,” he said, at supper, “my heart bleeds for the people. In a few hours more, they will assemble in their thousands, eager to hear me. And what will they see? Joskin in my place! Joskin with a manuscript in his hand! Joskin, who drops his voice at the ends of his sentences! I will never forgive Charlotte. ”

“ Cosway looked at the lamp. Once roused, as usual with men of his character, his temper was not to be trifled with.
“Miss Benshaw,” he said, “I dare say you think me a fool; but I can draw my own conclusion, for all that. You are my enemy.”
The only reply was a chuckling laugh. All voices can be more or less effectually disguised by a whisper but a laugh carries the revelation of its own identity with it. Cosway suddenly threw off the shade over the lamp and turned up the wick. ”

“ When do you and your brother-in-law leave London?”
“To-morrow.” She looked at Mr. Rayburn with a piteous entreaty in her eyes; she said, timidly: “Do you ever go to the seaside, and take your dear little girl with you?”
The request, at which she had only dared to hint, touched on the idea which was at that moment in Mr. Rayburn’s mind.
Interpreted by his strong prejudice against John Zant, what she had said of her brother-in-law filled him with forebodings of peril to herself; all the more powerful in their influence, for this reason—that he shrank from distinctly realizing them. ”

“ Percy Linwood waited a little, reflecting on the Captain’s conduct.
Had Doctor Lagarde’s description of the lady accidentally answered the description of a living lady whom Captain Bervie knew? Was he by any chance in love with her? and had the Doctor innocently reminded him that his love was not returned? Assuming this to be likely, was it really possible that he believed in prophetic revelations offered to him under the fantastic influence of a trance? Could any man in the possession of his senses go to those lengths? The Captain’s conduct was simply incomprehensible. ”

“ She had heard mamma say to a lady, “An old German family, my dear, and, in spite of his oddities, an excellent man; but so poor—barely enough to live on—and blurts out the truth, if people ask his opinion, as if he had twenty thousand a year!” “Your mamma knows him well, of course?” “I should think so, and so do we. He often comes here. They say he’s not good company among grown-up people. We think him jolly. He understands dolls, and he’s the best back at leap-frog in the whole of England.” Thus far we had advanced in the praise of Sextus Sax, when one of the maids came in with a note for me. ”

“ What a wholesome protest against the devastating hurry and over-work elsewhere, which has shattered the nerves of the nation! “Far from me and from my friends” (to borrow the eloquent language of Doctor Johnson) “be such frigid enthusiasm as shall conduct us indifferent and unmoved” over the bridge by which you enter Sandwich, and pay a toll if you do it in a carriage. “That man is little to be envied (Doctor Johnson again) who can lose himself in our labyrinthine streets, and not feel that he has reached the welcome limits of progress, and found a haven of rest in an age of hurry.” ”

“ THE boat was discovered, on the next morning, from the ship.
All that the devotion of the officers of the Fortuna could do for their unhappy commander was done on the homeward voyage. Restored to his own country, and to skilled medical help, the Captain’s mind by slow degrees recovered its balance. He has taken his place in society again—he lives and moves and manages his affairs like the rest of us. But his heart is dead to all new emotions; nothing remains in it but the sacred remembrance of his lost love. He neither courts nor avoids the society of women. ”

“ Saying many things in few words—if the ladies who assert our rights will forgive me for confessing it—is an accomplishment in which we are completely beaten by the men. You must have thought me rude, my dear, for leaving you very abruptly, without a word of explanation. The truth is, I had an idea in my head, and I kept it to myself (old people are proverbially cautious, you know) till I had first found out whether it was worth mentioning. When you were speaking of the wretched creature who had claimed Mrs. Evelin’s husband as her own, you said she was an inveterate drunkard. ”

“ The thought of the innocent creature whom he loved was sorrowfully as well as tenderly present to his mind. He almost regretted his rash visit to the island. “I will take her with me to England,” he said to himself. “What does a sailor care for the opinion of the world? Aimata shall be my wife.”
The intense heat oppressed him. He stepped out on the cliff, toward midnight, in search of a breath of air.
At that moment, the first shock of earthquake (felt in the ship while she was inside the reef) shook the ground he stood on. He instantly thought of the volcano on the main island. ”

“ Looking at the open envelope after he had taken out the leaves of writing which it contained, he noticed these lines traced inside the cover:
“My one excuse for troubling you, when I might have consulted my brother-in-law, will be found in the pages which I inclose. To speak plainly, you have been led to fear that I am not in my right senses. For this very reason, I now appeal to you. Your dreadful doubt of me, sir, is my doubt too. Read what I have written about myself—and then tell me, I entreat you, which I am: A person who has been the object of a supernatural revelation? ”

“ In shape and color they were exactly reproduced in Charlotte; the difference was in the expression. The father’s look was habitually restless, eager, and suspicious. Not a trace was to be seen in it of the truthfulness and gentleness which made the charm of the daughter’s expression. A man whose bitter experience of the world had soured his temper and shaken his faith in his fellow-creatures—such was Mr. Bowmore as he presented himself on the surface. He received Percy politely—but with a preoccupied air. ”

“ My aunt signed to me to be silent. The Captain drew back a step as if he felt her reproof. But his eyes, still fixed on me, were as fiercely bright as ever. There the gentleman’s superficial good-breeding failed to hide the natural man beneath.
“I will leave you in undisturbed possession of the room,” he said to my aunt with bitter politeness. “Before I go, permit me to give your niece an opportunity of reconsidering her conduct before it is too late.” My aunt drew back, leaving him free to speak to me. ”