Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1278 page)
Read Complete Works of Wilkie Collins Online
Authors: Wilkie Collins
In another moment, Emily was in his arms — and they were alone. On his faithful breast the blessed relief of tears came to her at last: she burst out crying.
“Oh, Alban, can you forgive me?”
He gently raised her head, so that he could see her face.
“My love, let me look at you,” he said. “I want to think again of the day when we parted in the garden at school. Do you remember the one conviction that sustained me? I told you, Emily, there was a time of fulfillment to come in our two lives; and I have never wholly lost the dear belief. My own darling, the time has come!”
GOSSIP IN THE STUDIO.
The winter time had arrived. Alban was clearing his palette, after a hard day’s work at the cottage. The servant announced that tea was ready, and that Miss Ladd was waiting to see him in the next room.
Alban ran in, and received the visitor cordially with both hands. “Welcome back to England! I needn’t ask if the sea-voyage has done you good. You are looking ten years younger than when you went away.”
Miss Ladd smiled. “I shall soon be ten years older again, if I go back to Netherwoods,” she replied. “I didn’t believe it at the time; but I know better now. Our friend Doctor Allday was right, when he said that my working days were over. I must give up the school to a younger and stronger successor, and make the best I can in retirement of what is left of my life. You and Emily may expect to have me as a near neighbour. Where is Emily?”
“Far away in the North.”
“In the North! You don’t mean that she has gone back to Mrs. Delvin?”
“She has gone back — with Mrs. Ellmother to take care of her — at my express request. You know what Emily is, when there is an act of mercy to be done. That unhappy man has been sinking (with intervals of partial recovery) for months past. Mrs. Delvin sent word to us that the end was near, and that the one last wish her brother was able to express was the wish to see Emily. He had been for some hours unable to speak when my wife arrived. But he knew her, and smiled faintly. He was just able to lift his hand. She took it, and waited by him, and spoke words of consolation and kindness from time to time. As the night advanced, he sank into sleep, still holding her hand. They only knew that he had passed from sleep to death — passed without a movement or a sigh — when his hand turned cold. Emily remained for a day at the tower to comfort poor Mrs. Delvin — and she comes home, thank God, this evening!”
“I needn’t ask if you are happy?” Miss Ladd said.
“Happy? I sing, when I have my bath in the morning. If that isn’t happiness (in a man of my age) I don’t know what is!”
“And how are you getting on?”
“Famously! I have turned portrait painter, since you were sent away for your health. A portrait of Mr. Wyvil is to decorate the town hall in the place that he represents; and our dear kind-hearted Cecilia has induced a fascinated mayor and corporation to confide the work to my hands.”
“Is there no hope yet of that sweet girl being married?” Miss Ladd asked. “We old maids all believe in marriage, Mr. Morris — though some of us don’t own it.”
“There seems to be a chance,” Alban answered. “A young lord has turned up at Monksmoor; a handsome pleasant fellow, and a rising man in politics. He happened to be in the house a few days before Cecilia’s birthday; and he asked my advice about the right present to give her. I said, ‘Try something new in Tarts.’ When he found I was in earnest, what do you think he did? Sent his steam yacht to Rouen for some of the famous pastry! You should have seen Cecilia, when the young lord offered his delicious gift. If I could paint that smile and those eyes, I should be the greatest artist living. I believe she will marry him. Need I say how rich they will be? We shall not envy them — we are rich too. Everything is comparative. The portrait of Mr. Wyvil will put three hundred pounds in my pocket. I have earned a hundred and twenty more by illustrations, since we have been married. And my wife’s income (I like to be particular) is only five shillings and tenpence short of two hundred a year. Moral! we are rich as well as happy.”
“Without a thought of the future?” Miss Ladd asked slyly.
“Oh, Doctor Allday has taken the future in hand! He revels in the old-fashioned jokes, which used to be addressed to newly-married people, in his time. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said the other day, ‘you may possibly be under a joyful necessity of sending for the doctor, before we are all a year older. In that case, let it be understood that I am Honourary Physician to the family.’ The warm-hearted old man talks of getting me another portrait to do. ‘The greatest ass in the medical profession (he informed me) has just been made a baronet; and his admiring friends have decided that he is to be painted at full length, with his bandy legs hidden under a gown, and his great globular eyes staring at the spectator — I’ll get you the job.’ Shall I tell you what he says of Mrs. Rook’s recovery?”
Miss Ladd held up her hands in amazement. “Recovery!” she exclaimed.
“And a most remarkable recovery too,” Alban informed her. “It is the first case on record of any person getting over such an injury as she has received. Doctor Allday looked grave when he heard of it. ‘I begin to believe in the devil,’ he said; ‘nobody else could have saved Mrs. Rook.’ Other people don’t take that view. She has been celebrated in all the medical newspapers — and she has been admitted to come excellent almshouse, to live in comfortable idleness to a green old age. The best of it is that she shakes her head, when her wonderful recovery is mentioned. ‘It seems such a pity,’ she says; ‘I was so fit for heaven.’ Mr. Rook having got rid of his wife, is in excellent spirits. He is occupied in looking after an imbecile old gentleman; and, when he is asked if he likes the employment, he winks mysteriously and slaps his pocket. Now, Miss Ladd, I think it’s my turn to hear some news. What have you got to tell me?”
“I believe I can match your account of Mrs. Rook,” Miss Ladd said. “Do you care to hear what has become of Francine?”
Alban, rattling on hitherto in boyish high spirits, suddenly became serious. “I have no doubt Miss de Sor is doing well,” he said sternly. “She is too heartless and wicked not to prosper.”
“You are getting like your old cynical self again, Mr. Morris — and you are wrong. I called this morning on the agent who had the care of Francine, when I left England. When I mentioned her name, he showed me a telegram, sent to him by her father. ‘There’s my authority,’ he said, ‘for letting her leave my house.’ The message was short enough to be easily remembered: ‘Anything my daughter likes as long as she doesn’t come back to us.’ In those cruel terms Mr. de Sor wrote of his own child. The agent was just as unfeeling, in his way. He called her the victim of slighted love and clever proselytizing. ‘In plain words,’ he said, ‘the priest of the Catholic chapel close by has converted her; and she is now a novice in a convent of Carmelite nuns in the West of England. Who could have expected it? Who knows how it may end?”
As Miss Ladd spoke, the bell rang at the cottage gate. “Here she is!” Alban cried, leading the way into the hall. “Emily has come home.”
This novel was published in 1886 and dedicated to William Holman Hunt, dealing with the related themes of divorce and child-custody. The story was ahead of its time in presenting both the wife and the mistress of an adulterous husband in a sympathetic light and concentrating the reader’s attention on the plight of the child involved in the break-up of a marriage. The ‘evil genius’ of the title is an interfering mother-in-law. Collins unexpectedly upholds double standards in a passage added shortly before publication, claiming that a husband’s adultery should not, by itself, be sufficient grounds for divorce, and ends the novel with a reconciliation and remarriage. Collins also used the plot for a dramatic version with the same title.
The first edition
THE EVIL GENIUS
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Mrs. Presty Presents Herself.
Chapter II. The Governess Enters.
Chapter III. Mrs. Presty Changes Her Mind.
Chapter IV. Randal Receives His Correspondence.
Chapter V. Randal Writes to New York.
Chapter VIII. Mrs. Presty Makes a Discovery.
Chapter IX. Somebody Attends to the Door.
Chapter X. Kitty Mentions Her Birthday.
Chapter XI. Linley Asserts His Authority.
Chapter XII. Two of Them Sleep Badly.