Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (998 page)

A moment passed — and I saw the ghostly Presence stoop over the living woman. It lifted the writing-case from her lap. It rested the writing-case on her shoulder. Its white fingers took the pen and wrote on the unfinished letter. It put the writing-case back on the lap of the living woman. Still standing behind the chair, it turned toward me. It looked at me once more. And now it beckoned — beckoned to me to approach.

Moving without conscious will of my own, as I had moved when I first saw her in the summer-house — drawn nearer and nearer by an irresistible power — I approached and stopped within a few paces of her. She advanced and laid her hand on my bosom. Again I felt those strangely mingled sensations of rapture and awe, which had once before filled me when I was conscious, spiritually, of her touch. Again she spoke, in the low, melodious tones which I recalled so well. Again she said the words: “Remember me. Come to me.” Her hand dropped from my bosom. The pale light in which she stood quivered, sunk, vanished. I saw the twilight glimmering between the curtains — and I saw no more. She had spoken. She had gone.

I was near Miss Dunross — near enough, when I put out my hand, to touch her.

She started and shuddered, like a woman suddenly awakened from a dreadful dream.

“Speak to me!” she whispered. “Let me know that it is
you
who touched me.”

I spoke a few composing words before I questioned her.

“Have you seen anything in the room?”

She answered. “I have been filled with a deadly fear. I have seen nothing but the writing-case lifted from my lap.”

“Did you see the hand that lifted it?”

“No.”

“Did you see a starry light, and a figure standing in it?”

“No.”

“Did you see the writing-case after it was lifted from your lap?”

“I saw it resting on my shoulder.”

“Did you see writing on the letter, which was not
your
writing?”

“I saw a darker shadow on the paper than the shadow in which I am sitting.”

“Did it move?”

“It moved across the paper.”

“As a pen moves in writing?”

“Yes. As a pen moves in writing.”

“May I take the letter?”

She handed it to me.

“May I light a candle?”

She drew her veil more closely over her face, and bowed in silence.

I lighted the candle on the mantel-piece, and looked for the writing.

There, on the blank space in the letter, as I had seen it before on the blank space in the sketch-book — there were the written words which the ghostly Presence had left behind it; arranged once more in two lines, as I copy them here:

At the month’s end, In the shadow of Saint Paul’s.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE KISS.

SHE had need of me again. She had claimed me again. I felt all the old love, all the old devotion owning her power once more. Whatever had mortified or angered me at our last interview was forgiven and forgotten now. My whole being still thrilled with the mingled awe and rapture of beholding the Vision of her that had come to me for the second time. The minutes passed — and I stood by the fire like a man entranced; thinking only of her spoken words, “Remember me. Come to me;” looking only at her mystic writing, “At the month’s end, In the shadow of Saint Paul’s.”

The month’s end was still far off; the apparition of her had shown itself to me, under some subtle prevision of trouble that was still in the future. Ample time was before me for the pilgrimage to which I was self-dedicated already — my pilgrimage to the shadow of Saint Paul’s. Other men, in my position, might have hesitated as to the right understanding of the place to which they were bidden. Other men might have wearied their memories by recalling the churches, the institutions, the streets, the towns in foreign countries, all consecrated to Christian reverence by the great apostle’s name, and might have fruitlessly asked themselves in which direction they were first to turn their steps. No such difficulty troubled me. My first conclusion was the one conclusion that was acceptable to my mind. “Saint Paul’s” meant the famous Cathedral of London. Where the shadow of the great church fell, there, at the month’s end, I should find her, or the trace of her. In London once more, and nowhere else, I was destined to see the woman I loved, in the living body, as certainly as I had just seen her in the ghostly presence.

Who could interpret the mysterious sympathies that still united us, in defiance of distance, in defiance of time? Who could predict to what end our lives were tending in the years that were to come?

Those questions were still present to my thoughts; my eyes were still fixed on the mysterious writing — when I became instinctively aware of the strange silence in the room. Instantly the lost remembrance of Miss Dunross came back to me. Stung by my own sense of self-reproach, I turned with a start, and looked toward her chair by the window.

The chair was empty. I was alone in the room.

Why had she left me secretly, without a word of farewell? Because she was suffering, in mind or body? Or because she resented, naturally resented, my neglect of her?

The bare suspicion that I had given her pain was intolerable to me. I rang my bell, to make inquiries.

The bell was answered, not, as usual, by the silent servant Peter, but by a woman of middle age, very quietly and neatly dressed, whom I had once or twice met on the way to and from my room, and of whose exact position in the house I was still ignorant.

“Do you wish to see Peter?” she asked.

“No. I wish to know where Miss Dunross is.”

“Miss Dunross is in her room. She has sent me with this letter.”

I took the letter, feeling some surprise and uneasiness. It was the first time Miss Dunross had communicated with me in that formal way. I tried to gain further information by questioning her messenger.

“Are you Miss Dunross’s maid?” I asked.

“I have served Miss Dunross for many years,” was the answer, spoken very ungraciously.

“Do you think she would receive me if I sent you with a message to her?”

“I can’t say, sir. The letter may tell you. You will do well to read the letter.”

We looked at each other. The woman’s preconceived impression of me was evidently an unfavorable one. Had I indeed pained or offended Miss Dunross? And had the servant — perhaps the faithful servant who loved her — discovered and resented it? The woman frowned as she looked at me. It would be a mere waste of words to persist in questioning her. I let her go.

Left by myself again, I read the letter. It began, without any form of address, in these lines:

“I write, instead of speaking to you, because my self-control has already been severely tried, and I am not strong enough to bear more. For my father’s sake — not for my own — I must take all the care I can of the little health that I have left.

“Putting together what you have told me of the visionary creature whom you saw in the summer-house in Scotland, and what you said when you questioned me in your room a little while since, I cannot fail to infer that the same vision has shown itself to you, for the second time. The fear that I felt, the strange things that I saw (or thought I saw), may have been imperfect reflections in my mind of what was passing in yours. I do not stop to inquire whether we are both the victims of a delusion, or whether we are the chosen recipients of a supernatural communication. The result, in either case, is enough for me. You are once more under the influence of Mrs. Van Brandt. I will not trust myself to tell you of the anxieties and forebodings by which I am oppressed: I will only acknowledge that my one hope for you is in your speedy reunion with the worthier object of your constancy and devotion. I still believe, and I am consoled in believing, that you and your first love will meet again.

“Having written so far, I leave the subject — not to return to it, except in my own thoughts.

“The necessary preparations for your departure to-morrow are all made. Nothing remains but to wish you a safe and pleasant journey home. Do not, I entreat you, think me insensible of what I owe to you, if I say my farewell words here.

“The little services which you have allowed me to render you have brightened the closing days of my life. You have left me a treasury of happy memories which I shall hoard, when you are gone, with miserly care. Are you willing to add new claims to my grateful remembrance? I ask it of you, as a last favor — do not attempt to see me again! Do not expect me to take a personal leave of you! The saddest of all words is ‘Good-by’: I have fortitude enough to write it, and no more. God preserve and prosper you — farewell!

“One more request. I beg that you will not forget what you promised me, when I told you my foolish fancy about the green flag. Wherever you go, let Mary’s keepsake go with you. No written answer is necessary — I would rather not receive it. Look up, when you leave the house to-morrow, at the centre window over the doorway — that will be answer enough.”

To say that these melancholy lines brought the tears into my eyes is only to acknowledge that I had sympathies which could be touched. When I had in some degree recovered my composure, the impulse which urged me to write to Miss Dunross was too strong to be resisted. I did not trouble her with a long letter; I only entreated her to reconsider her decision with all the art of persuasion which I could summon to help me. The answer was brought back by the servant who waited on Miss Dunross, in four resolute words: “It can not be.” This time the woman spoke out before she left me. “If you have any regard for my mistress,” she said sternly, “don’t make her write to you again.” She looked at me with a last lowering frown, and left the room.

It is needless to say that the faithful servant’s words only increased my anxiety to see Miss Dunross once more before we parted — perhaps forever. My one last hope of success in attaining this object lay in approaching her indirectly through the intercession of her father.

I sent Peter to inquire if I might be permitted to pay my respects to his master that evening. My messenger returned with an answer that was a new disappointment to me. Mr. Dunross begged that I would excuse him, if he deferred the proposed interview until the next morning. The next morning was the morning of my departure. Did the message mean that he had no wish to see me again until the time had come to take leave of him? I inquired of Peter whether his master was particularly occupied that evening. He was unable to tell me. “The Master of Books” was not in his study, as usual. When he sent his message to me, he was sitting by the sofa in his daughter’s room.

Having answered in those terms, the man left me by myself until the next morning. I do not wish my bitterest enemy a sadder time in his life than the time I passed during the last night of my residence under Mr. Dunross’s roof.

After walking to and fro in the room until I was weary, I thought of trying to divert my mind from the sad thoughts that oppressed it by reading. The one candle which I had lighted failed to sufficiently illuminate the room. Advancing to the mantel-piece to light the second candle which stood there, I noticed the unfinished letter to my mother lying where I had placed it, when Miss Dunross’s servant first presented herself before me. Having lighted the second candle, I took up the letter to put it away among my other papers. Doing this (while my thoughts were still dwelling on Miss Dunross), I mechanically looked at the letter again — and instantly discovered a change in it.

The written characters traced by the hand of the apparition had vanished! Below the last lines written by Miss Dunross nothing met my eyes now but the blank white paper!

My first impulse was to look at my watch.

When the ghostly presence had written in my sketch-book, the characters had disappeared after an interval of three hours. On this occasion, as nearly as I could calculate, the writing had vanished in one hour only.