Basil

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He never looked up, never moved, or interrupted her, as she continued,
still addressing me; but now speaking very slowly and painfully,
pausing longer and longer between every sentence.

"From this room I go to my death-bed. The last words I speak in this
world shall be to my husband, and shall change his heart towards you.
I have been weak of purpose," (as she said this, a strange sweetness
and mournfulness began to steal over her tones,) "miserably, guiltily
weak, all my life. Much sorrow and pain and heavy disappointment, when
I was young, did some great harm to me which I have never recovered
since. I have lived always in fear of others, and doubt of myself; and
this has made me guilty of a great sin towards _you._ Forgive me
before I die! I suspected the guilt that was preparing--I foreboded
the shame that was to come--they hid it from others' eyes; but, from
the first, they could not hide it from mine--and yet I never warned
you as I ought! _That_ man had the power of Satan over me! I always
shuddered before him, as I used to shudder at the darkness when I was
a little child! My life has been all fear--fear of _him;_ fear of my
husband, and even of my daughter; fear, worse still, of my own
thoughts, and of what I had discovered that should be told to _you._
When I tried to speak, you were too generous to understand me--I was
afraid to think my suspicions were right, long after they should have
been suspicions no longer. It was misery!--oh, what misery from then
till now!"

Her voice died away for a moment, in faint, breathless murmurings. She
struggled to recover it, and repeated in a whisper:

"Forgive me before I die! I have made a terrible atonement; I have
borne witness against the innocence of my own child. My own child! I
dare not bid God bless her, if they bring her to my bedside!--forgive
me!--forgive me before I die!"

She took my hand, and pressed it to her cold lips. The tears gushed
into my eyes, as I tried to speak to her.

"No tears for _me!_" she murmured gently. "Basil!--let me call you as
your mother would call you if she was alive--Basil! pray that I may be
forgiven in the dreadful Eternity to which I go, as _you_ have
forgiven me! And, for _her?_--oh! who will pray for _her_ when I am
gone?"

Those words were the last I heard her pronounce. Exhausted beyond the
power of speaking more, though it were only in a whisper, she tried to
take my hand again, and express by a gesture the irrevocable farewell.
But her strength failed her even for this--failed her with awful
suddenness. Her hand moved halfway towards mine; then stopped, and
trembled for a moment in the air; then fell to her side, with the
fingers distorted and clenched together. She reeled where she stood,
and sank helplessly as I stretched out my arms to support her.

Her husband rose fretfully from his chair, and took her from me. When
his eyes met mine, the look of sullen self-restraint in his
countenance was crossed, in an instant, by an expression of triumphant
malignity. He whispered to me: "If you don't change your tone by
to-morrow!"--paused--and then, without finishing the sentence, moved
away abruptly, and supported his wife to the door.

Just when her face was turned towards where I stood, as he took her
out, I thought I saw the cold, vacant eyes soften as they rested on
me, and change again tenderly to the old look of patience and sadness
which I remembered so well. Was my imagination misleading me? or had
the light of that meek spirit shone out on earth, for the last time at
parting, in token of farewell to mine? She was gone to me, gone for
ever--before I could look nearer, and know.

* * * * *

I was told, afterwards, how she died.

For the rest of that day, and throughout the night, she lay
speechless, but still alive. The next morning, the faint pulse still
fluttered. As the day wore on, the doctors applied fresh stimulants,
and watched her in astonishment; for they had predicted her death as
impending every moment, at least twelve hours before. When they spoke
of this to her husband, his behaviour was noticed as very altered and
unaccountable by every one. He sulkily refused to believe that her
life was in danger; he roughly accused anybody who spoke of her death,
as wanting to fix on him the imputation of having ill-used her, and so
being the cause of her illness; and more than this, he angrily
vindicated himself to every one about her--even to the servants--by
quoting the indulgence he had shown to her fancy for seeing me when I
called, and his patience while she was (as he termed it) wandering in
her mind in trying to talk to me. The doctors, suspecting how his
uneasy conscience was accusing him, forbore in disgust all
expostulation. Except when he was in his daughter's room, he was
shunned by everybody in the house.

Just before noon, on the second day, Mrs. Sherwin rallied a little
under the stimulants administered to her, and asked to see her husband
alone. Both her words and manner gave the lie to his assertion that
her faculties were impaired--it was observed by all her attendants,
that whenever she had strength to speak, her speech never wandered in
the slightest degree. Her husband quitted her room more fretfully
uneasy, more sullenly suspicious of the words and looks of those about
him than ever--went instantly to seek his daughter--and sent her in
alone to her mother's bedside. In a few minutes, she hurriedly came
out again, pale, and violently agitated; and was heard to say, that
she had been spoken to so unnaturally, and so shockingly, that she
could not, and would not, enter that room again until her mother was
better. Better! the father and daughter were both agreed in that; both
agreed that she was not dying, but only out of her mind.

During the afternoon, the doctors ordered that Mrs. Sherwin should not
be allowed to see her husband or her child again, without their
permission. There was little need of taking such a precaution to
preserve the tranquillity of her last moments. As the day began to
decline, she sank again into insensibility: her life was just not
death, and that was all. She lingered on in this quiet way, with her
eyes peacefully closed, and her breathing so gentle as to be quite
inaudible, until late in the evening. Just as it grew quite dark, and
the candle was lit in the sick room, the servant who was helping to
watch by her, drew aside the curtain to look at her mistress; and saw
that, though her eyes were still closed, she was smiling. The girl
turned round, and beckoned to the nurse to come to the bedside. When
they lifted the curtains again to look at her, she was dead.

* * * * *

Let me return to the day of my last visit to North Villa. More remains
to be recorded, before my narrative can advance to the morrow.

After the door had closed, and I knew that I had looked my last on
Mrs. Sherwin in this world, I remained a few minutes alone in the
room, until I had steadied my mind sufficiently to go out again into
the streets. As I walked down the garden-path to the gate, the servant
whom I had seen on my entrance, ran after me, and eagerly entreated
that I would wait one moment and speak to her.

When I stopped and looked at the girl, she burst into tears. "I'm
afraid I've been doing wrong, Sir," she sobbed out, "and at this
dreadful time too, when my poor mistress is dying! If you please, Sir,
I _must_ tell you about it!"

I gave her a little time to compose herself; and then asked what she
had to say.

"I think you must have seen a man leaving a letter with me, Sir," she
continued, "just when you came up to the door, a little while ago?"

"Yes: I saw him."

"It was for Miss Margaret, Sir, that letter; and I was to keep it
secret; and--and--it isn't the first I've taken in for her. It's weeks
and weeks ago, Sir, that the same man came with a letter, and gave me
money to let nobody see it but Miss Margaret--and that time, Sir, he
waited; and she sent me with an answer to give him, in the same secret
way. And now, here's this second letter; I don't know who it comes
from--but I haven't taken it to her yet; I waited to show it to you,
Sir, as you came out, because--"

"Why, Susan?--tell me candidly why?"

"I hope you won't take it amiss, Sir, if I say that having lived in
the family so long as I have, I can't help knowing a little about what
you and Miss Margaret used to be to each other, and that something's
happened wrong between you lately; and so, Sir, it seems to be very
bad and dishonest in me (after first helping you to come together, as
I did), to be giving her strange letters, unknown to you. They may be
bad letters. I'm sure I wouldn't wish to say anything disrespectful,
or that didn't become my place; but--"

"Go on, Susan--speak as freely and as truly to me as ever."

"Well, Sir, Miss Margaret's been very much altered, ever since that
night when she came home alone, and frightened us so. She shuts
herself up in her room, and won't speak to anybody except my master;
she doesn't seem to care about anything that happens; and sometimes
she looks so at me, when I'm waiting on her, that I'm almost afraid to
be in the same room with her. I've never heard her mention your name
once, Sir; and I'm fearful there's something on her mind that there
oughtn't to be. He's a very shabby man that leaves the letters--would
you please to look at this, and say whether you think it's right in me
to take it up-stairs."

She held out a letter. I hesitated before I looked at it.

"Oh, Sir! please, please do take it!" said the girl earnestly. "I did
wrong, I'm afraid, in giving her the first; but I can't do wrong
again, when my poor mistress is dying in the house. I can't keep
secrets, Sir, that may be bad secrets, at such a dreadful time as
this; I couldn't have laid down in my bed to-night, when there's
likely to be death in the house, if I hadn't confessed what I've done;
and my poor mistress has always been so kind and good to us
servants--better than ever we deserved."

Weeping bitterly as she said this, the kind-hearted girl held out the
letter to me once more. This time I took it from her, and looked at
the address.

Though I did not know the handwriting, still there was something in
those unsteady characters which seemed familiar to me. Was it possible
that I had ever seen them before? I tried to consider; but my memory
was confused, my mind wearied out, after all that had happened since
the morning. The effort was fruitless: I gave back the letter.

"I know as little about it, Susan, as you do."

"But ought I to take it up-stairs, Sir? only tell me that!"

"It is not for me to say. All interest or share on my part, Susan, in
what she--in what your young mistress receives, is at an end."

"I'm very sorry to hear you say that, Sir; very, very sorry. But what
would you advise me to do?"

"Let me look at the letter once more."

On a second view, the handwriting produced the same effect on me as
before, ending too with just the same result. I returned the letter
again.

"I respect your scruples, Susan, but I am not the person to remove or
to justify them. Why should you not apply in this difficulty to your
master?"

"I dare not, Sir; I dare not for my life. He's been worse than ever,
lately; if I said as much to him as I've said to you, I believe he'd
kill me!" She hesitated, then continued more composedly; "Well, at any
rate I've told _you,_ Sir, and that's made my mind easier; and--and
I'll give her the letter this once, and then take in no more--if they
come, unless I hear a proper account of them."

She curtseyed; and, bidding me farewell very sadly and anxiously,
returned to the house with the letter in her hand. If I had guessed at
that moment who it was written by! If I could only have suspected what
were its contents!

I left Hollyoake Square in a direction which led to some fields a
little distance on. It was very strange; but that unknown handwriting
still occupied my thoughts: that wretched trifle absolutely took
possession of my mind, at such a time as this; in such a position as
mine was now.

I stopped wearily in the fields at a lonely spot, away from the
footpath. My eyes ached at the sunlight, and I shaded them with my
hand. Exactly at the same instant, the lost recollection flashed back
on me so vividly that I started almost in terror. The handwriting
shown me by the servant at North Villa, was the same as the
handwriting on that unopened and forgotten letter in my pocket, which
I had received from the servant at home--received in the morning, as I
crossed the hall to enter my father's room.

I took out the letter, opened it with trembling fingers, and looked
through the cramped, closely-written pages for the signature.

It was "ROBERT MANNION."

V.

Mannion! I had never suspected that the note shown to me at North
Villa might have come from him. And yet, the secrecy with which it had
been delivered; the person to whom it was addressed; the mystery
connected with it even in the servant's eyes, all pointed to the
discovery which I had so incomprehensibly failed to make. I had
suffered a letter, which might contain written proof of her guilt, to
be taken, from under my own eyes, to Margaret Sherwin! How had my
perceptions become thus strangely blinded? The confusion of my memory,
the listless incapacity of all my faculties, answered the question but
too readily, of themselves.

"Robert Mannion!" I could not take my eyes from that name: I still
held before me the crowded, closely-written lines of his writing, and
delayed to read them. Something of the horror which the presence of
the man himself would have inspired in me, was produced by the mere
sight of his letter, and that letter addressed to _me._ The vengeance
which my own hands had wreaked on him, he was, of all men the surest
to repay. Perhaps, in these lines, the dark future through which his
way and mine might lie, would be already shadowed forth. Margaret too!
Could he write so much, and not write of _her?_ not disclose the
mystery in which the motives of _her_ crime were still hidden? I
turned back again to the first page, and resolved to read the letter.
It began abruptly, in the following terms:--

"St. Helen's Hospital.

"You may look at the signature when you receive this, and may be
tempted to tear up my letter, and throw it from you unread. I warn you
to read what I have written, and to estimate, if you can, its
importance to yourself. Destroy these pages afterwards if you
like--they will have served their purpose.

"Do you know where I am, and what I suffer? I am one of the patients
of this hospital, hideously mutilated for life by your hand. If I
could have known certainly the day of my dismissal, I should have
waited to tell you with my own lips what I now write--but I am
ignorant of this. At the very point of recovery I have suffered a
relapse.

"You will silence any uneasy upbraidings of conscience, should you
feel them, by saying that I have deserved death at your hands. I will
tell you, in answer, what you deserve and shall receive at mine.

"But I will first assume that it was knowledge of your wife's guilt
which prompted your attack on me. I am well aware that she has
declared herself innocent, and that her father supports her
declaration. By the time you receive this letter (my injuries oblige
me to allow myself a whole fortnight to write it in), I shall have
taken measures which render further concealment unnecessary.
Therefore, if my confession avail you aught, you have it here:--She is
guilty: _willingly_ guilty, remember, whatever she may say to the
contrary. You may believe this, and believe all I write hereafter.
Deception between us two is at an end.

"I have told you Margaret Sherwin is guilty. Why was she guilty? What
was the secret of my influence over her?

"To make you comprehend what I have now to communicate, it is
necessary for me to speak of myself; and of my early life. To-morrow,
I will undertake this disclosure--to-day, I can neither hold the pen,
nor see the paper any longer. If you could look at my face, where I am
now laid, you would know why!"

-----

"When we met for the first time at North Villa, I had not been five
minutes in your presence before I detected your curiosity to know
something about me, and perceived that you doubted, from the first,
whether I was born and bred for such a situation as I held under Mr.
Sherwin. Failing--as I knew you would fail--to gain any information
about me from my employer or his family, you tried, at various times,
to draw me into familiarity, to get me to talk unreservedly to you;
and only gave up the attempt to penetrate my secret, whatever it might
be, when we parted after our interview at my house on the night of the
storm. On that night, I determined to baulk your curiosity, and yet to
gain your confidence; and I succeeded. You little thought, when you
bade me farewell at my own door, that you had given your hand and your
friendship to a man, who--long before you met with Margaret
Sherwin--had inherited the right to be the enemy of your father, and
of every descendant of your father's house.

"Does this declaration surprise you? Read on, and you will understand
it.

"I am the son of a gentleman. My father's means were miserably
limited, and his family was not an old family, like yours.
Nevertheless, he was a gentleman in anybody's sense of the word; he
knew it, and that knowledge was his ruin. He was a weak, kind,
careless man; a worshipper of conventionalities; and a great respecter
of the wide gaps which lay between social stations in his time. Thus,
he determined to live like a gentleman, by following a gentleman's
pursuit--a profession, as distinguished from a trade. Failing in this,
he failed to follow out his principle, and starve like a gentleman. He
died the death of a felon; leaving me no inheritance but the name of a
felon's son.

"While still a young man, he contrived to be introduced to a gentleman
of great family, great position, and great wealth. He interested, or
fancied he interested, this gentleman; and always looked on him as the
patron who was to make his fortune, by getting him the first
government sinecure (they were plenty enough in those days!) which
might fall vacant. In firm and foolish expectation of this, he lived
far beyond his little professional income--lived among rich people
without the courage to make use of them as a poor man. It was the old
story: debts and liabilities of all kinds pressed heavy on
him--creditors refused to wait--exposure and utter ruin threatened
him--and the prospect of the sinecure was still as far off as ever.

"Nevertheless he believed in the advent of this office; and all the
more resolutely now, because he looked to it as his salvation. He was
quite confident of the interest of his patron, and of its speedy
exertion in his behalf. Perhaps, that gentleman had overrated his own
political influence; perhaps, my father had been too sanguine, and had
misinterpreted polite general promises into special engagements.
However it was, the bailiffs came into his house one morning, while
help from a government situation, or any situation, was as
unattainable as ever--came to take him to prison: to seize everything,
in execution, even to the very bed on which my mother (then seriously
ill) was lying. The whole fabric of false prosperity which he had been
building up to make the world respect him, was menaced with instant
and shameful overthrow. He had not the courage to let it go; so he
took refuge from misfortune in a crime.

"He forged a bond, to prop up his credit for a little time longer. The
name he made use of was the name of his patron. In doing this, he
believed--as all men who commit crime believe--that he had the best
possible chance of escaping consequences. In the first place, he might
get the long-expected situation in time to repay the amount of the
bond before detection. In the second place, he had almost the
certainty of a legacy from a rich relative, old and in ill-health,
whose death might be fairly expected from day to day. If both these
prospects failed (and they _did_ fail), there was still a third
chance--the chance that his rich patron would rather pay the money
than appear against him. In those days they hung for forgery. My
father believed it to be impossible that a man at whose table he had
sat, whose relatives and friends he had amused and instructed by his
talents, would be the man to give evidence which should condemn him to
be hanged on the public scaffold.

"He was wrong. The wealthy patron held strict principles of honour
which made no allowance for temptations and weaknesses; and was
moreover influenced by high-flown notions of his responsibilities as a
legislator (he was a member of Parliament) to the laws of his country.
He appeared accordingly, and gave evidence against the prisoner; who
was found guilty, and left for execution.

"Then, when it was too late, this man of pitiless honour thought
himself at last justified in leaning to the side of mercy, and
employed his utmost interest, in every direction, to obtain a
mitigation of the sentence to transportation for life. The application
failed; even a reprieve of a few days was denied. At the appointed
time, my father died on the scaffold by the hangman's hand.

"Have you suspected, while reading this part of my letter, who the
high-born gentleman was whose evidence hung him? If you have not, I
will tell you. That gentleman was _your father._ You will now wonder
no longer how I could have inherited the right to be his enemy, and
the enemy of all who are of his blood.

"The shock of her husband's horrible death deprived my mother of
reason. She lived a few months after his execution; but never
recovered her faculties. I was their only child; and was left
penniless to begin life as the son of a father who had been hanged,
and of a mother who had died in a public madhouse.

"More of myself to-morrow--my letter will be a long one: I must pause
often over it, as I pause to-day."

-----

"Well: I started in life with the hangman's mark on me--with the
parent's shame for the son's reputation. Wherever I went, whatever
friends I kept, whatever acquaintances I made--people knew how my
father had died: and showed that they knew it. Not so much by shunning
or staring at me (vile as human nature is, there were not many who did
that), as by insulting me with over-acted sympathy, and elaborate
anxiety to sham entire ignorance of my father's fate. The
gallows-brand was on my forehead; but they were too benevolently blind
to see it. The gallows-infamy was my inheritance; but they were too
resolutely generous to discover it! This was hard to bear. However, I
was strong-hearted even then, when my sensations were quick, and my
sympathies young: so I bore it.

"My only weakness was my father's weakness--the notion that I was born
to a station ready made for me, and that the great use of my life was
to live up to it. My station! I battled for that with the world for
years and years, before I discovered that the highest of all stations
is the station a man makes for himself: and the lowest, the station
that is made for him by others.

"At starting in life, your father wrote to make me offers of
assistance--assistance, after he had ruined me! Assistance to the
child, from hands which had tied the rope round the parent's neck! I
sent him back his letter. He knew that I was his enemy, his son's
enemy, and his son's son's enemy, as long as I lived. I never heard
from him again.

"Trusting boldly to myself to carve out my own way, and to live down
my undeserved ignominy; resolving in the pride of my integrity to
combat openly and fairly with misfortune, I shrank, at first, from
disowning my parentage and abandoning my father's name. Standing on my
own character, confiding in my intellect and my perseverance, I tried
pursuit after pursuit, and was beaten afresh at every new effort.
Whichever way I turned, the gallows still rose as the same immovable
obstacle between me and fortune, between me and station, between me
and my fellowmen. I was morbidly sensitive on this point. The
slightest references to my father's fate, however remote or
accidental, curdled my blood. I saw open insult, or humiliating
compassion, or forced forbearance, in the look and manner of every man
about me. So I broke off with old friends, and tried new; and, in
seeking fresh pursuits, sought fresh connections, where my father's
infamy might be unknown. Wherever I went, the old stain always broke
out afresh, just at the moment when I had deceived myself into the
belief that it was utterly effaced. I had a warm heart then--it was
some time before it turned to stone, and felt nothing. Those were the
days when failure and humiliation could still draw tears from me: that
epoch in my life is marked in my memory as the epoch when I could
weep.

"At last, I gave way before difficulty, and conceded the first step to
the calamity which had stood front to front with me so long. I left
the neighbourhood where I was known, and assumed the name of a
schoolfellow who had died. For some time this succeeded; but the curse
of my father's death followed me, though I saw it not. After various
employments--still, mind, the employments of a gentleman!--had first
supported, then failed me, I became an usher at a school. It was there
that my false name was detected, and my identity discovered again--I
never knew through whom. The exposure was effected by some enemy,
anonymously. For several days, I thought everybody in the school
treated me in an altered way. The cause came out, first in whispers,
then in reckless jests, while I was taking care of the boys in the
playground. In the fury of the moment I struck one of the most
insolent, and the eldest of them, and hurt him rather seriously. The
parents heard of it, and threatened me with prosecution; the whole
neighbourhood was aroused. I had to leave my situation secretly, by
night, or the mob would have pelted the felon's son out of the parish.

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