Basil

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As he spoke, the hour struck; and the old French clock rang out gaily
the same little silvery chime which my mother had so often taken me
into her room to listen to, in the bygone time. The shrill, lively
peal mingled awfully with the sharp, tearing sound, as my father rent
out from the book before him the whole of the leaf which contained my
name; tore it into fragments, and cast them on the floor.

He rose abruptly, after he had closed the book again. His cheeks
flushed once more; and when he next spoke, his voice grew louder and
louder with every word he uttered. It seemed as if he still distrusted
his resolution to abandon me; and sought, in his anger, the strength
of purpose which, in his calmer mood, he might even yet have been
unable to command.

"Now, Sir," he said, "we treat together as strangers. You are Mr.
Sherwin's son--not mine. You are the husband of his daughter--not a
relation of my family. Rise, as I do: we sit together no longer in the
same room. Write!" (he pushed pen, ink, and paper before me,) "write
your terms there--I shall find means to keep you to a written
engagement--the terms of your absence, for life, from this country;
and of hers: the terms of your silence, and of the silence of your
accomplices; of all of them. Write what you please; I am ready to pay
dearly for your absence, your secrecy, and your abandonment of the
name you have degraded. My God! that I should live to bargain for
hushing up the dishonour of my family, and to bargain for it with
_you._"

I had listened to him hitherto without pleading a word in my own
behalf; but his last speech roused me. Some of _his_ pride stirred in
my heart against the bitterness of his contempt. I raised my head, and
met his eye steadily for the first time--then, thrust the writing
materials away from me, and left my place at the table.

"Stop!" he cried. "Do you pretend that you have not understood me?"

"It is _because_ I have understood you, Sir, that I go. I have
deserved your anger, and have submitted without a murmur to all that
it could inflict. If you see in my conduct towards you no mitigation
of my offence; if you cannot view the shame and wrong inflicted on me,
with such grief as may have some pity mixed with it--I have, I think,
the right to ask that your contempt may be silent, and your last words
to me, not words of insult."

"Insult! After what has happened, is it for _you_ to utter that word
in the tone in which you have just spoken it? I tell you again, I
insist on your written engagement as I would insist on the engagement
of a stranger--I will have it, before you leave this room!"

"All, and more than all, which that degrading engagement could imply,
I will do. But I have not fallen so low yet, as to be bribed to
perform a duty. You may be able to forget that you are my father; I
can never forget that I am your son."

"The remembrance will avail you nothing as long as I live. I tell you
again, I insist on your written engagement, though it were only to
show that I have ceased to believe in your word. Write at once--do you
hear me?--Write!"

I neither moved nor answered. His face changed again, and grew livid;
his fingers trembled convulsively, and crumpled the sheet of paper, as
he tried to take it up from the table on which it lay.

"You refuse?" he said quickly.

"I have already told you, Sir--"

"Go!" he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, "go out from
this house, never to return to it again--go, not as a stranger to me,
but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made:
there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty of.
But I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are leagued, to take
warning: I have wealth, power, and position; and there is no use to
which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the
fair fame of this family. Leave me, remembering that--and leave me for
ever!"

Just as he uttered the last word, just as my hand was on the lock of
the door, a faint sound--something between breathing and speaking--was
audible in the direction of the library. He started, and looked round.
Impelled, I know not how, I paused on the point of going out. My eyes
followed his, and fixed on the cloth door which led into the library.

It opened a little--then shut again--then opened wide. Slowly and
noiselessly, Clara came into the room.

The silence and suddenness of her entrance at such a moment; the look
of terror which changed to unnatural vacancy the wonted softness and
gentleness of her eyes, her pale face, her white dress, and slow,
noiseless step, made her first appearance in the room seem almost
supernatural; it was as if an apparition had been walking towards us,
and not Clara herself! As she approached my father, he pronounced her
name in astonishment; but his voice sank to a whisper, while he spoke
it. For an instant, she paused, hesitating--I saw her tremble as her
eyes met his--then, as they turned towards me, the brave girl came on;
and, taking my hand, stood and faced my father, standing by my side.

"Clara!" he exclaimed again, still in the same whispering tones.

I felt her cold hand close fast on mine; the grasp of the chill, frail
fingers was almost painful to me. Her lips moved, but her quick,
hysterical breathing made the few words she uttered inarticulate.

"Clara!" repeated my father, for the third time, his voice rising, but
sinking again immediately--when he spoke his next words, "Clara," he
resumed, sadly and gently, "let go his hand; this is not a time for
your presence, I beg you to leave us. You must not take his hand! He
has ceased to be my son, or your brother. Clara, do you not hear me?"

"Yes, Sir, I hear you," she answered. "God grant that my mother in
heaven may not hear you too!"

He was approaching while she replied; but at her last words, he
stopped instantly, and turned his face away from us. Who shall say
what remembrances of other days shook him to the heart?

"You have spoken, Clara, as you should not have spoken," he went on,
without looking up. "Your mother--" his voice faltered and failed him.
"Can you still hold his hand after what I have said? I tell you again,
he is unworthy to be in your presence; my house is his home no
longer--must I _command_ you to leave him?"

The deeply planted instinct of gentleness and obedience prevailed; she
dropped my hand, but did not move away from me, even yet.

"Now leave us, Clara," he said. "You were wrong, my love, to be in
that room, and wrong to come in here. I will speak to you
up-stairs--you must remain here no longer."

She clasped her trembling fingers together, and sighed heavily.

"I cannot go, Sir," she said quickly and breathlessly.

"Must I tell you for the first time in your life, that you are acting
disobediently?" he asked.

"I cannot go," she repeated in the same manner, "till you have said
you will let him atone for his offence, and will forgive him."

"For _his_ offence there is neither atonement nor forgiveness. Clara!
are you so changed, that you can disobey me to my face?"

He walked away from us as he said this.

"Oh, no! no!" She ran towards him; but stopped halfway, and looked
back at me affrightedly, as I stood near the door. "Basil," she cried,
"you have not done what you promised me; you have not been patient.
Oh, Sir, if I have ever deserved kindness from you, be kind to him for
_my_ sake! Basil! speak, Basil! Ask his pardon on your knees. Father,
I promised him he should be forgiven, if I asked you. Not a word; not
a word from either? Basil! you are not going yet--not going at all!
Remember, Sir, how good and kind he has always been to _me._ My poor
mother, (I _must_ speak of her), my poor mother's favourite son--you
have told me so yourself! and he has always been my favourite brother;
I think because my mother loved him so! His first fault, too! his
first grief! And will you tell him for this, that our home is _his_
home no longer? Punish _me,_ Sir! I have done wrong like him; when I
heard your voices so loud, I listened in the library. He's going! No,
no, no! not yet!"

She ran to the door as I opened it, and pushed it to again.
Overwhelmed by the violence of her agitation, my father had sunk into
a chair while she was speaking.

"Come back--come back with me to his knees!" she whispered, fixing her
wild, tearless eyes on mine, flinging her arms round my neck, and
trying to lead me with her from the door. "Come back, or you will
drive me mad!" she repeated loudly, drawing me away towards my father.

He rose instantly from his chair.

"Clara," he said, "I command you, leave him!" He advanced a few steps
towards me. "Go!" he cried; "if you are human in your villany, you
will release me from this!"

I whispered in her ear, "I will write, love--I will write," and
disengaged her arms from my neck--they were hanging round it weakly,
already! As I passed the door, I turned back, and looked again into
the room for the last time.

Clara was in my father's arms, her head lay on his shoulder, her face
was as still in its heavenly calmness as if the world and the world's
looks knew it no more, and the only light that fell on it now, was
light from the angel's eyes. She had fainted.

He was standing with one arm round her, his disengaged hand was
searching impatiently over the wall behind him for the bell, and his
eyes were fixed in anguish and in love unutterable on the peaceful
face, hushed in its sad repose so close beneath his own. For one
moment, I saw him thus, ere I closed the door--the next, I had left
the house.

I never entered it again--I have never seen my father since.

IV.

We are seldom able to discover under any ordinary conditions of
self-knowledge, how intimately that spiritual part of us, which is
undying, can attach to itself and its operations the poorest objects
of that external world around us, which is perishable. In the ravelled
skein, the slightest threads are the hardest to follow. In analysing
the associations and sympathies which regulate the play of our
passions, the simplest and homeliest are the last that we detect. It
is only when the shock comes, and the mind recoils before it--when joy
is changed into sorrow, or sorrow into joy--that we really discern
what trifles in the outer world our noblest mental pleasures, or our
severest mental pains, have made part of themselves; atoms which the
whirlpool has drawn into its vortex, as greedily and as surely as the
largest mass.

It was reserved for me to know this, when--after a moment's pause
before the door of my father's house, more homeless, then, than the
poorest wretch who passed me on the pavement, and had wife or kindred
to shelter him in a garret that night--my steps turned, as of old, in
the direction of North Villa.

Again I passed over the scene of my daily pilgrimage, always to the
same shrine, for a whole year; and now, for the first time, I knew
that there was hardly a spot along the entire way, which my heart had
not unconsciously made beautiful and beloved to me by some association
with Margaret Sherwin. Here was the friendly, familiar shop-window,
filled with the glittering trinkets which had so often lured me in to
buy presents for her, on my way to the house. There was the noisy
street corner, void of all adornment in itself, but once bright to me
with the fairy-land architecture of a dream, because I knew that at
that place I had passed over half the distance which separated my home
from hers. Farther on, the Park trees came in sight--trees that no
autumn decay or winter nakedness could make dreary, in the bygone
time; for she and I had walked under them together. And further yet,
was the turning which led from the long, suburban road into Hollyoake
Square--the lonely, dust-whitened place, around which my past
happiness and my wasted hopes had flung their golden illusions, like
jewels hung round the coarse wooden image of a Roman saint.
Dishonoured and ruined, it was among such associations as these--too
homely to have been recognised by me in former times--that I journeyed
along the well-remembered way to North Villa.

I went on without hesitating, without even a thought of turning back.
I had said that the honour of my family should not suffer by the
calamity which had fallen on me; and, while life remained, I was
determined that nothing should prevent me from holding to my word. It
was from this resolution that I drew the faith in myself, the
confidence in my endurance, the sustaining calmness under my father's
sentence of exclusion, which nerved me to go on. I must inevitably see
Mr. Sherwin (perhaps even suffer the humiliation of seeing her!)--must
inevitably speak such words, disclose such truths, as should show him
that deceit was henceforth useless. I must do this and more, I must be
prepared to guard the family to which--though banished from it--I
still belonged, from every conspiracy against them that detected crime
or shameless cupidity could form, whether in the desire of revenge, or
in the hope of gain.. A hard, almost an impossible task--but,
nevertheless, a task that must be done!

I kept the thought of this necessity before my mind unceasingly; not
only as a duty, but as a refuge from another thought, to which I dared
not for a moment turn. The still, pale face which I had seen lying
hushed on my father's breast--CLARA!--That way, lay the grief that
weakens, the yearning and the terror that are near despair; that way
was not it for _me._

The servant was at the garden-gate of North Villa--the same servant
whom I had seen and questioned in the first days of my fatal delusion.
She was receiving a letter from a man, very poorly dressed, who walked
away the moment I approached. Her confusion and surprise were so great
as she let me in, that she could hardly look at, or speak to me. It
was only when I was ascending the door-steps that she said--

"Miss Margaret"--(she still gave her that name!)--"Miss Margaret is
upstairs, Sir. I suppose you would like--"

"I have no wish to see her: I want to speak to Mr. Sherwin."

Looking more bewildered, and even frightened, than before, the girl
hurriedly opened one of the doors in the passage. I saw, as I entered,
that she had shown me, in her confusion, into the wrong room. Mr.
Sherwin, who was in the apartment, hastily drew a screen across the
lower end of it, apparently to hide something from me; which, however,
I had not seen as I came in.

He advanced, holding out his hand; but his restless eyes wandered
unsteadily, looking away from me towards the screen.

"So you have come at last, have you? Just let's step into the
drawing-room: the fact is--I thought I wrote to you about it--?"

He stopped suddenly, and his outstretched arm fell to his side. I had
not said a word. Something in my look and manner must have told him
already on what errand I had come.

"Why don't you speak?" he said, after a moment's pause. "What are you
looking at me like that for? Stop! Let's say our say in the other
room." He walked past me towards the door, and half opened it.

Why was he so anxious to get me away? Who, or what, was he hiding
behind the screen? The servant had said his daughter was upstairs;
remembering this, and suspecting every action or word that came from
him, I determined to remain in the room, and discover his secret. It
was evidently connected with me.

"Now then," he continued, opening the door a little wider, "it's only
across the hall, you know; and I always receive visitors in the best
room."

"I have been admitted here," I replied, "and have neither time nor
inclination to follow you from room to room, just as you like. What I
have to say is not much; and, unless you give me fit reasons to the
contrary, I shall say it here."

"You will, will you? Let me tell you that's damned like what we plain
mercantile men call downright incivility. I say it again--incivility;
and rudeness too, if you like it better." He saw I was determined, and
closed the door as he spoke, his face twitching and working violently,
and his quick, evil eyes turned again in the direction of the screen.

"Well," he continued, with a sulky defiance of manner and look, "do as
you like; stop here--you'll wish you hadn't before long, I'll be
bound! You don't seem to hurry yourself much about speaking, so _I_
shall sit down. _You_ can do as you please. Now then! just let's cut
it short--do you come here in a friendly way, to ask me to send for
_my_ girl downstairs, and to show yourself the gentleman, or do you
not?"

"You have written me two letters, Mr. Sherwin--"

"Yes: and took devilish good care you should get them--I left them
myself."

"In writing those letters, you were either grossly deceived; and, in
that case, are only to be pitied, or--"

"Pitied! what the devil do you mean by that? Nobody wants your pity
here."

"Or you have been trying to deceive me; and in that case, I have to
tell you that deceit is henceforth useless. I know all--more than you
suspect: more, I believe, than you would wish me to have known."

"Oh, that's your tack, is it? By God, I expected as much the moment
you came in! What! you don't believe _my_ girl--don't you? You're
going to fight shy, and behave like a scamp--are you? Damn your
infernal coolness and your aristocratic airs and graces! You shall see
I'll be even with you--you shall. Ha! ha! look here!--here's the
marriage certificate safe in my pocket. You won't do the honourable by
my poor child--won't you? Come out! Come away! You'd better--I'm off
to your father to blow the whole business; I am, as sure as my name's
Sherwin!"

He struck his fist on the table, and started up, livid with passion.
The screen trembled a little, and a slight rustling noise was audible
behind it, just as he advanced towards me. He stopped instantly, with
an oath, and looked back.

"I warn you to remain here," I said. "This morning, my father has
heard all from my lips. He has renounced me as his son, and I have
left his house for ever."

He turned round quickly, staring at me with a face of mingled fury and
dismay.

"Then you come to me a beggar!" he burst out; "a beggar who has taken
me in about his fine family, and his fine prospects; a beggar who
can't support my child--Yes! I say it again, a beggar who looks me in
the face, and talks as you do. I don't care a damn about you or your
father! I know my rights; I'm an Englishman, thank God! I know my
rights, and _my_ Margaret's rights; and I'll have them in spite of you
both. Yes! you may stare as angry as you like; staring don't hurt. I'm
an honest man, and _my_ girl's an honest girl!"

I was looking at him, at that moment, with the contempt that I really
felt; his rage produced no other sensation in me. All higher and
quicker emotions seemed to have been dried at their sources by the
events of the morning.

"I say _my_ girl's an honest girl," he repeated, sitting down again;
"and I dare you, or anybody--I don't care who--to prove the contrary.
You told me you knew all, just now. What _all?_ Come! we'll have this
out before we do anything else. She says she's innocent, and I say
she's innocent: and if I could find out that damnation scoundrel
Mannion, and get him here, I'd make him say it too. Now, after all
that, what have you got against her?--against your lawful wife; and
I'll make you own her as such, and keep her as such, I can promise
you!"

"I am not here to ask questions, or to answer them," I replied--"my
errand in this house is simply to tell you, that the miserable
falsehoods contained in your letter, will avail you as little as the
foul insolence of language by which you are now endeavouring to
support them. I told you before, and I now tell you again, I know all.
I had been inside that house, before I saw your daughter at the door;
and had heard, from _her_ voice and _his_ voice, what such shame and
misery as you cannot comprehend forbid me to repeat. To your past
duplicity, and to your present violence, I have but one answer to
give:--I will never see your daughter again."

"But you _shall_ see her again--yes! and keep her too! Do you think I
can't see through you and your precious story? Your father's cut you
off with a shilling; and now you want to curry favour with him again
by trumping up a case against _my_ girl, and trying to get her off
your hands that way. But it won't do! You've married her, my fine
gentleman, and you shall stick to her! Do you think I wouldn't sooner
believe her, than believe you? Do you think I'll stand this? Here she
is up-stairs, half heart-broken, on my hands; here's my wife"--(his
voice sank suddenly as he said this)--"with her mind in such a state
that I'm kept away from business, day after day, to look after her;
here's all this crying and misery and mad goings-on in my house,
because you choose to behave like a scamp--and do you think I'll put
up with it quietly? I'll make you do your duty to _my_ girl, if she
goes to the parish to appeal against you! _Your_ story indeed! Who'll
believe that a young female, like Margaret, could have taken to a
fellow like Mannion? and kept it all a secret from you? Who believes
that, I should like to know?"

_"I believe it!"_

The third voice which pronounced those words was Mrs. Sherwin's.

But was the figure that now came out from behind the screen, the same
frail, shrinking figure which had so often moved my pity in the past
time? the same wan figure of sickness and sorrow, ever watching in the
background of the fatal love-scenes at North Villa; ever looking like
the same spectre-shadow, when the evenings darkened in as I sat by
Margaret's side?

Had the grave given up its dead? I stood awe-struck, neither speaking
nor moving while she walked towards me. She was clothed in the white
garments of the sick-room--they looked on _her_ like the raiment of
the tomb. Her figure, which I only remembered as drooping with
premature infirmity, was now straightened convulsively to its proper
height; her arms hung close at her side, like the arms of a corpse;
the natural paleness of her face had turned to an earthy hue; its
natural expression, so meek, so patient, so melancholy in
uncomplaining sadness, was gone; and, in its stead, was left a pining
stillness that never changed; a weary repose of lifeless waking--the
awful seal of Death stamped ghastly on the living face; the awful look
of Death staring out from the chill, shining eyes.

Her husband kept his place, and spoke to her as she stopped opposite
to me. His tones were altered, but his manner showed as little feeling
as ever.

"There now!" he began, "you said you were sure he'd come here, and
that you'd never take to your bed, as the Doctor wanted you, till
you'd seen him and spoken to him. Well, he _has_ come; there he is. He
came in while you were asleep, I rather think; and I let him stop, so
that if you woke up and wanted to see him, you might. You can't
say--nobody can say--I haven't given in to your whims and fancies
after that. There! you've had your way, and you've said you believe
him; and now, if I ring for the nurse, you'll go upstairs at last, and
make no more worry about it--Eh?"

She moved her head slowly, and looked at him. As those dying eyes met
his, as that face on which the light of life was darkening fast,
turned on him, even _his_ gross nature felt the shock. I saw him
shrink--his sallow cheeks whitened, he moved his chair away, and said
no more.

She looked back to me again, and spoke. Her voice was still the same
soft, low voice as ever. It was fearful to hear how little it had
altered, and then to look on the changed face.

"I am dying," she said to me. "Many nights have passed since that
night when Margaret came home by herself and I felt something moving
down into my heart, when I looked at her, which I knew was death--many
nights, since I have been used to say my prayers, and think I had said
them for the last time, before I dared shut my eyes in the darkness
and the quiet. I have lived on till to-day, very weary of my life ever
since that night when Margaret came in; and yet, I could not die,
because I had an atonement to make to _you,_ and you never came to
hear it and forgive me. I was not fit for God to take me till you
came--I know that, know it to be truth from a dream."

She paused, still looking at me, but with the same deathly blank of
expression. The eye had ceased to speak already; nothing but the voice
was left.

"My husband has asked, who will believe you?" she went on; her weak
tones gathering strength with every fresh word she uttered. "I have
answered that _I_ will; for you have spoken the truth. Now, when the
light of this world is fading from my eyes; here, in this earthly home
of much sorrow and suffering, which I must soon quit--in the presence
of my husband--under the same roof with my sinful child--I bear you
witness that you have spoken the truth. I, her mother, say it of her:
Margaret Sherwin is guilty; she is no more worthy to be called your
wife."

She pronounced the last words slowly, distinctly, solemnly. Till that
fearful denunciation was spoken, her husband had been looking sullenly
and suspiciously towards us, as we stood together; but while she
uttered it, his eyes fell, and he turned away his head in silence.

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