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Edward Bulwer Lytton - "Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII"

Samuel Pepys - "Diary of Samuel Pepys, September/October 1663"

Rex Beach - "Going Some"

Cyril G. Hopkins - "The Farm That Won't Wear Out"

Basil

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Basil




The light strengthened faster, and grew mellow with the clear beauty
of the morning sunshine. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps
advancing along the street; they stopped under the window: and a voice
which I recognized, called me by my name. I looked out: Mr. Bernard
had returned at last.

"I could not get back sooner," he said; "the case was desperate, and I
was afraid to leave it. You will find a key on the
chimney-piece--throw it out to me, and I can let myself in; I told
them not to bolt the door before I went out."

I obeyed his directions. When he entered the room, I thought Margaret
moved a little, and signed to him with my hand to make no noise. He
looked towards the bed without any appearance of surprise, and asked
me in a whisper when the change had come over her, and how. I told him
very briefly, and inquired whether he had known of such changes in
other cases, like hers.

"Many," he answered, "many changes just as extraordinary, which have
raised hopes that I never knew realised. Expect the worst from the
change you have witnessed; it is a fatal sign."

Still, in spite of what he said, it seemed as if he feared to wake
her; for he spoke in his lowest tones, and walked very softly when he
went close to the bedside.

He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to feel her pulse, and
looked in the direction of the glass door--listened attentively--and
said, as if to himself-- "I thought I heard some one moving in that
room, but I suppose I am mistaken; nobody can be up in the house yet."
With those words he looked down at Margaret, and gently parted back
her hair from her forehead.

"Don't disturb her," I whispered, "she is asleep; surely she is
asleep!"

He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart.
Then softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.

"Yes, she is asleep," he said gravely; "asleep, never to wake again.
She is dead."

I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment,
were not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.

"This has been a sad scene for any one at your age," he resumed
kindly, as he left the bedside, "but you have borne it well. I am glad
to see that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial."



Calmly?

Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could
remember that I had forgiven her.

VIII.

On the fourth day from the morning when she had died, I stood alone in
the churchyard by the grave of Margaret Sherwin.

It had been left for me to watch her dying moments; it was left for me
to bestow on her remains the last human charity which the living can
extend to the dead. If I could have looked into the future on our
fatal marriage-day, and could have known that the only home of my
giving which she would ever inhabit, would be the home of the grave!--

Her father had written me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and
which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these
pages. Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave
the action by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me
and upon my family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and
disgust of his wife's surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some
pecuniary reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had
declared he would accuse her, of having been the real cause of her
mother's death; and that he took care to give the appearance of
sincerity to the indignation which he professed to feel against her,
by refusing to follow her remains to the place of burial.

Ralph had returned to London, as soon as he received the letter from
Mr. Bernard which I had forwarded to him. He offered me his assistance
in performing the last duties left to my care, with an affectionate
earnestness that I had never seen him display towards me before. But
Mr. Bernard had generously undertaken to relieve me of every
responsibility which could be assumed by others; and on this occasion,
therefore, I had no need to put my brother's ready kindness in helping
me to the test.

I stood alone by the grave. Mr. Bernard had taken leave of me; the
workers and the idlers in the churchyard had alike departed. There was
no reason why I should not follow them; and yet I remained, with my
eyes fixed upon the freshly-turned earth at my feet, thinking of the
dead.

Some time had passed thus, when the sound of approaching footsteps
attracted my attention. I looked up, and saw a man, clothed in a long
cloak drawn loosely around his neck, and wearing a shade over his
eyes, which hid the whole upper part of his face, advancing slowly
towards me, walking with the help of a stick. He came on straight to
the grave, and stopped at the foot of it--stopped opposite me, as I
stood at the head.

"Do you know me again?" he said. "Do you know me for Robert Mannion?"
As he pronounced his name, he raised the shade and looked at me.

The first sight of that appalling face, with its ghastly
discolouration of sickness, its hideous deformity of feature, its
fierce and changeless malignity of expression glaring full on me in
the piercing noonday sunshine--glaring with the same unearthly look of
fury and triumph which I had seen flashing through the flashing
lightning, when I parted from him on the night of the storm--struck me
speechless where I stood, and has never left me since. I must not, I
dare not, describe that frightful sight; though it now rises before my
imagination, vivid in its horror as on the first day when I saw
it--though it moves hither and thither before me fearfully, while I
write; though it lowers at my window, a noisome shadow on the radiant
prospect of earth, and sea, and sky, whenever I look up from the page
I am now writing towards the beauties of my cottage view.

"Do you know me for Robert Mannion?" he repeated. "Do you know the
work of your own hands, now you see it? Or, am I changed to you past
recognition, as _your_ father might have found _my_ father changed, if
he had seen him on the morning of his execution, standing under the
gallows, with the cap over his face?"

Still I could neither speak nor move. I could only look away from him
in horror, and fix my eyes on the ground.

He lowered the shade to its former position on his face, then spoke
again.

"Under this earth that we stand on," he said, setting his foot on the
grave; "down here, where you are now looking, lies buried with the
buried dead, the last influence which might one day have gained you
respite and mercy at my hands. Did you think of the one, last chance
that you were losing, when you came to see her die? I watched _you,_
and I watched _her._ I heard as much as you heard; I saw as much as
you saw; I know when she died, and how, as you know it; I shared her
last moments with you, to the very end. It was my fancy not to give
her up, as your sole possession, even on her death-bed: it is my
fancy, now, not to let you stand alone--as if her corpse was your
property--over her grave!"

While he uttered the last words, I felt my self-possession returning.
I could not force myself to speak, as I would fain have spoken--I
could only move away, to leave him.

"Stop," he said, "what I have still to say concerns you. I have to
tell you, face to face, standing with you here, over her dead body,
that what I wrote from the hospital, is what I will do; that I will
make your whole life to come, one long expiation of this deformity;"
(he pointed to his face), "and of that death" (he set his foot once
more on the grave). "Go where you will, this face of mine shall never
be turned away from you; this tongue, which you can never silence but
by a crime, shall awaken against you the sleeping superstitions and
cruelties of all mankind. The noisome secret of that night when you
followed us, shall reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your
fellow-beings, be they whom they may. You may shield yourself behind
your family and your friends--I will strike at you through the dearest
and the bravest of them! Now you have heard me, go! The next time we
meet, you shall acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I
speak. Live the free life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you
by her death--you will know it soon for the life of Cain!"

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come; but
the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had
spoken, never left me. Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in
the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the
crowded streets. The horror of the fiend-face was still before my
eyes, the poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I
returned to my lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I
entered my room.

"At last you have come back!" he said; "I was determined to stop till
you did, if I stayed all day. Is anything the matter? Have you got
into some worse difficulty than ever?"

"No, Ralph--no. What have you to tell me?"

"Something that will rather surprise you, Basil: I have to tell you to
leave London at once! Leave it for your own interests and for
everybody else's. My father has found out that Clara has been to see
you."

"Good heavens! how?"

"He won't tell me. But he has found it out. You know how you stand in
his opinion--I leave you to imagine what he thinks of Clara's conduct
in coming here."

"No! no! tell me yourself, Ralph--tell me how she bears his
displeasure!"

"As badly as possible. After having forbidden her ever to enter this
house again, he now only shows how he is offended, by his silence; and
it is exactly that, of course, which distresses her. Between her
notions of implicit obedience to _him,_ and her opposite notions, just
as strong, of her sisterly duties to _you,_ she is made miserable from
morning to night. What she will end in, if things go on like this, I
am really afraid to think; and I'm not easily frightened, as you know.
Now, Basil, listen to me: it is _your_ business to stop this, and _my_
business to tell you how."

"I will do anything you wish--anything for Clara's sake!"

"Then leave London; and so cut short the struggle between her duty and
her inclination. If you don't, my father is quite capable of taking
her at once into the country, though I know he has important business
to keep him in London. Write a letter to her, saying that you have
gone away for your health, for change of scene and peace of mind--gone
away, in short, to come back better some day. Don't say where you're
going, and don't tell me, for she is sure to ask, and sure to get it
out of me if I know. Then she might be writing to you, and that might
be found out, too. She can't distress herself about your absence, if
you account for it properly, as she distresses herself now--that is
one consideration. And you will serve your own interests, as well as
Clara's, by going away--that is another."

"Never mind _my_ interests. Clara! I can only think of Clara!"

"But you _have_ interests, and you must think of them. I told my
father of the death of that unhappy woman, and of your noble behaviour
when she was dying. Don't interrupt me, Basil--it _was_ noble; I
couldn't have done what you did, I can tell you! I saw he was more
struck by it than he was willing to confess. An impression has been
made on him by the turn circumstances have taken. Only leave that
impression to strengthen, and you're safe. But if you destroy it by
staying here, after what has happened, and keeping Clara in this new
dilemma--my dear fellow, you destroy your best chance! There is a sort
of defiance of him in stopping; there is a downright concession to him
in going away."

"I _will_ go, Ralph; you have more than convinced me that I ought! I
will go to-morrow, though where--"

"You have the rest of the day to think where. _I_ should go abroad and
amuse myself; but your ideas of amusement are, most likely, not mine.
At any rate, wherever you go, I can always supply you with money, when
you want it; you can write to me, after you have been away some little
time, and I can write back, as soon as I have good news to tell you.
Only stick to your present determination, Basil, and, I'll answer for
it, you will be back in your own study at home, before you are many
months older!"

"I will put it out of my power to fail in my resolution, by writing to
Clara at once, and giving you the letter to place in her hands
to-morrow evening, when I shall have left London some hours."

"That's right, Basil! that's acting and speaking like a man!"

I wrote immediately, accounting for my sudden absence as Ralph had
advised me--wrote, with a heavy heart, all that I thought would be
most reassuring and cheering to Clara; and then, without allowing
myself time to hesitate or to think, gave the letter to my brother.

"She shall have it to-morrow night," he said, "and my father shall
know why you have left town, at the same time. Depend on me in this,
as in everything else. And now, Basil, I must say good bye--unless
you're in the humour for coming to look at my new house this evening.
Ah! I see that won't suit you just now, so, good bye, old fellow!
Write when you are in any necessity--get back your spirits and your
health--and never doubt that the step you are now taking will be the
best for Clara, and the best for yourself!"

He hurried out of the room, evidently feeling more at saying farewell
than he was willing to let me discover. I was left alone for the rest
of the day, to think whither I should turn my steps on the morrow.

I knew that it would be best that I should leave England; but there
seemed to have grown within me, suddenly, a yearning towards my own
country that I had never felt before--a home-sickness for the land in
which my sister lived. Not once did my thoughts wander away to foreign
places, while I now tried to consider calmly in what direction I
should depart when I left London.

While I was still in doubt, my earliest impressions of childhood came
back to my memory; and influenced by them, I thought of Cornwall. My
nurse had been a Cornish woman; my first fancies and first feelings of
curiosity had been excited by her Cornish stories, by the descriptions
of the scenery, the customs, and the people of her native land, with
which she was ever ready to amuse me. As I grew older, it had always
been one of my favourite projects to go to Cornwall, to explore the
wild western land, on foot, from hill to hill throughout. And now,
when no motive of pleasure could influence my choice--now, when I was
going forth homeless and alone, in uncertainty, in grief, in
peril--the old fancy of long-past days still kept its influence, and
pointed out my new path to me among the rocky boundaries of the
Cornish shore.

My last night in London was a night made terrible by Mannion's fearful
image in all my dreams--made mournful, in my waking moments, by
thoughts of the morrow which was to separate me from Clara. But I
never faltered in my resolution to leave London for her sake. When the
morning came, I collected my few necessaries, added to them one or two
books, and was ready to depart.

My way through the streets took me near my father's house. As I passed
by the well-remembered neighbourhood, my self-control so far deserted
me, that I stopped and turned aside into the Square, in the hope of
seeing Clara once more before I went away. Cautiously and doubtfully,
as if I was a trespasser even on the public pavement, I looked up at
the house which was no more my home--at the windows, side by side, of
my sister's sitting-room and bed-room. She was neither standing near
them, nor passing accidentally from one room to another at that
moment. Still I could not persuade myself to go on. I thought of many
and many an act of kindness that she had done for me, which I seemed
never to have appreciated until now--I thought of what she had
suffered, and might yet suffer, for my sake--and the longing to see
her once more, though only for an instant, still kept me lingering
near the house and looking up vainly at the lonely windows.

It was a bright, cool, autumnal morning; perhaps she might have gone
out into the garden of the square: it used often to be her habit, when
I was at home, to go there and read at this hour. I walked round,
outside the railings, searching for her between gaps in the foliage;
and had nearly made the circuit of the garden thus, before the figure
of a lady sitting alone under one of the trees, attracted my
attention. I stopped--looked intently towards her--and saw that it was
Clara.

Her face was almost entirely turned from me; but I knew her by her
dress, by her figure--even by her position, simple as it was. She was
sitting with her hands on a closed book which rested on her knee. A
little spaniel that I had given her lay asleep at her feet: she seemed
to be looking down at the animal, as far as I could tell by the
position of her head. When I moved aside, to try if I could see her
face, the trees hid her from sight. I was obliged to be satisfied with
the little I could discern of her, through the one gap in the foliage
which gave me a clear view of the place where she was sitting. To
speak to her, to risk the misery to both of us of saying farewell, was
more than I dared trust myself to do. I could only stand silent, and
look at her--it might be for the last time!--until the tears gathered
in my eyes, so that I could see nothing more. I resisted the
temptation to dash them away. While they still hid her from me--while
I could not see her again, if I would--I turned from the garden view,
and left the Square.

Amid all the thoughts which thronged on me, as I walked farther and
farther away from the neighbourhood of what was once my home; amid all
the remembrances of past events--from the first day when I met
Margaret Sherwin to the day when I stood by her grave--which were
recalled by the mere act of leaving London, there now arose in my
mind, for the first time, a doubt, which from that day to this has
never left it; a doubt whether Mannion might not be tracking me in
secret along every step of my way.

I stopped instinctively, and looked behind me. Many figures were
moving in the distance; but the figure that I had seen in the
churchyard was nowhere visible among them. A little further on, I
looked back again, and still with the same result. After this, I let a
longer interval elapse before I stopped; and then, for the third time,
I turned round, and scanned the busy street-scene behind me, with
eager, suspicious eyes. Some little distance back, on the opposite
side of the way, I caught sight of a man who was standing still (as I
was standing), amid the moving throng. His height was like Mannion's
height; and he wore a cloak like the cloak I had seen on Mannion, when
he approached me at Margaret's grave. More than this I could not
detect, without crossing over. The passing vehicles and
foot-passengers constantly intercepted my view, from the position in
which I stood.

Was this figure, thus visible only by intervals, the figure of
Mannion? and was he really tracking my steps? As the suspicion
strengthened in my mind that it was so, the remembrance of his threat
in the churchyard: "You may shield yourself behind your family and
your friends: I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest
of them--" suddenly recurred to me; and brought with it a thought
which urged me instantly to proceed on my way. I never looked behind
me again, as I now walked on; for I said within myself:--"If he is
following me, I must not, and will not avoid him: it will be the best
result of my departure, that I shall draw after me that destroying
presence; and thus at least remove it far and safely away from my
family and my home!"

So, I neither turned aside from the straight direction, nor hurried my
steps, nor looked back any more. At the time I had resolved on, I left
London for Cornwall, without making any attempt to conceal my
departure. And though I knew that he must surely be following me,
still I never saw him again: never discovered how close or how far off
he was on my track.

-----

Two months have passed since that period; and I know no more about him
_now_ than I knew _then._



JOURNAL.

October 19th--My retrospect is finished. I have traced the history of
my errors and misfortunes, of the wrong I have done and the punishment
I have suffered for it, from the past to the present time.

The pages of my manuscript (many more than I thought to write at
first) lie piled together on the table before me. I dare not look them
over: I dare not read the lines which my own hand has traced. There
may be much in my manner of writing that wants alteration; but I have
no heart to return to my task, and revise and reconsider as I might if
I were intent on producing a book which was to be published during my
lifetime. Others will be found, when I am no more, to carve, and
smooth, and polish to the popular taste of the day this rugged
material of Truth which I shall leave behind me.

But now, while I collect these leaves, and seal them up, never to be
opened again by my hands, can I feel that I have related all which it
is necessary to tell? No! While Mannion lives--while I am ignorant of
the changes that may yet be wrought in the home from which I am
exiled--there remains for me a future which must be recorded, as the
necessary sequel to the narrative of the past. What may yet happen
worthy of record, I know not: what sufferings I may yet undergo, which
may unfit me for continuing the labour now terminated for a time, I
cannot foresee. I have not hope enough in the future, or in myself; to
believe that I shall have the time or the energy to write hereafter,
as I have written already, from recollection. It is best, then, that I
should note down events daily as they occur; and so ensure, as far as
may be, a continuation of my narrative, fragment by fragment, to the
very last.

But, first, as a fit beginning to the Journal I now propose to keep,
let me briefly reveal something, in this place, of the life that I am
leading in my retirement on the Cornish coast.

The fishing hamlet in which I have written the preceding pages, is on
the southern shore of Cornwall, not more than a few miles distant from
the Land's End. The cottage I inhabit is built of rough granite,
rudely thatched, and has but two rooms. I possess no furniture but my
bed, my table, and my chair; and some half-dozen fishermen and their
families are my only neighbours. But I feel neither the want of
luxuries, nor the want of society: all that I wished for in coming
here, I have--the completest seclusion.

My arrival produced, at first, both astonishment and suspicion. The
fishermen of Cornwall still preserve almost all the superstitions,
even to the grossest, which were held dear by their humble ancestors,
centuries back. My simple neighbours could not understand why I had no
business to occupy me; could not reconcile my worn, melancholy face
with my youthful years. Such loneliness as mine looked
unnatural--especially to the women. They questioned me curiously; and
the very simplicity of my answer, that I had only come to Cornwall to
live in quiet, and regain my health, perplexed them afresh. They
waited, day after day, when I was first installed in the cottage, to
see letters sent to me--and no letters arrived: to see my friends join
me--and no friends came. This deepened the mystery to their eyes. They
began to recall to memory old Cornish legends of solitary, secret
people who had lived, years and years ago, in certain parts of the
county--coming, none knew whence; existing, none knew by what means;
dying and disappearing, none knew when. They felt half inclined to
identify me with these mysterious visitors--to consider me as some
being, a stranger to the whole human family, who had come to waste
away under a curse, and die ominously and secretly among them. Even
the person to whom I first paid money for my necessaries, questioned,
for a moment, the lawfulness and safety of receiving it!

But these doubts gradually died away; this superstitious curiosity
insensibly wore off, among my poor neighbours. They became used to my
solitary, thoughtful, and (to them) inexplicable mode of existence.
One or two little services of kindness which I rendered, soon after my
arrival, to their children, worked wonders in my favour; and I am
pitied now, rather than distrusted. When the results of the fishing
are abundant, a little present has been often made to me, out of the
nets. Some weeks ago, after I had gone out in the morning, I found on
my return, two or three gulls' eggs placed in a basket before my door.
They had been left there by the children, as ornaments for my cottage
window--the only ornaments they had to give; the only ornaments they
had ever heard of.

I can now go out unnoticed, directing my steps up the ravine in which
our hamlet is situated, towards the old grey stone church which stands
solitary on the hill-top, surrounded by the lonesome moor. If any
children happen to be playing among the scattered tombs, they do not
start and run away, when they see me sitting on the coffin stone at
the entrance of the churchyard, or wandering round the sturdy granite
tower, reared by hands which have mouldered into dust centuries ago.
My approach has ceased to be of evil omen for my little neighbours.
They just look up at me, for a moment, with bright smiles, and then go
on with their game.

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