The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

you would have helped me to better things. I know it was wrong, darling, but tell me if I was wrong without any excuse.”

I was obliged to turn my face from her. “Don’t ask me!” I said. “Have I suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to decide?”

“I used to think of him,” she pursued, dropping her voice and moving closer to me, “I used to think of him when Percival left me alone at night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what I might have been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty, and if I had been his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap gown, sitting at home and waiting for him while he was earning our bread⁠—sitting at home and working for him and loving him all the better because I had to work for him⁠—seeing him come in tired and taking off his hat and coat for him, and, Marian, pleasing him with little dishes at dinner that I had learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of him and see him!”

As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned to her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim and threatening sky.

“Don’t speak of Walter any more,” I said, as soon as I could control myself. “Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him now!”

She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.

“I would rather be silent about him forever,” she answered, “than cause you a moment’s pain.”

“It is in your interests,” I pleaded; “it is for your sake that I speak. If your husband heard you⁠—”

“It would not surprise him if he did hear me.”

She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness. The change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as much as the answer itself.

“Not surprise him!” I repeated. “Laura! remember what you are saying⁠—you frighten me!”

“It is true,” she said; “it is what I wanted to tell you today, when we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian⁠—you said so yourself. The name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it.”

I heard her, but I could say nothing. Her last words had killed the little hope that still lived in me.

“It happened at Rome,” she went on, as wearily calm and cold as ever. “We were at a little party given to the English by some friends of Sir Percival’s⁠—Mr. and Mrs. Markland. Mrs. Markland had the reputation of sketching very beautifully, and some of the guests prevailed on her to show us her drawings. We all admired them, but something I said attracted her attention particularly to me. ‘Surely you draw yourself?’ she asked. ‘I used to draw a little once,’ I answered, ‘but I have given it up.’ ‘If you have once drawn,’ she said, ‘you may take to it again one of these days, and if you do, I wish you would let me recommend you a master.’ I said nothing⁠—you know why, Marian⁠—and tried to change the conversation. But Mrs. Markland persisted. ‘I have had all sorts of teachers,’ she went on, ‘but the best of all, the most intelligent and the most attentive, was a Mr. Hartright. If you ever take up your drawing again, do try him as a master. He is a young man⁠—modest and gentlemanlike⁠—I am sure you will like him.’ Think of those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence of strangers⁠—strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and bridegroom! I did all I could to control myself⁠—I said nothing, and looked down close at the drawings. When I ventured to raise my head again, my eyes and my husband’s eyes met, and I knew, by his look, that my face had betrayed me. ‘We will see about Mr. Hartright,’ he said, looking at me all the time, ‘when we get back to England. I agree with you, Mrs. Markland⁠—I think Lady Glyde is sure to like him.’ He laid an emphasis on the last words which made my cheeks burn, and set my heart beating as if it would stifle me. Nothing more was said. We came away early. He was silent in the carriage driving back to the hotel. He helped me out, and followed me upstairs as usual. But the moment we were in the drawing-room, he locked the door, pushed me down into a chair, and stood over me with his hands on my shoulders. ‘Ever since that morning when you made your audacious confession to me at Limmeridge,’ he said, ‘I have wanted to find out the man, and I found him in your face tonight. Your drawing-master was the man, and his name is Hartright. You shall repent it, and he shall repent it, to the last hour of your lives. Now go to bed and dream of him if you like, with the marks of my horsewhip on his shoulders.’ Whenever he is angry with me now he refers to what I acknowledged to him in your presence with a sneer or a threat. I have no power to prevent him from putting his own horrible construction on the confidence I placed in him. I have no influence to make him believe me, or to keep him silent. You looked surprised today when you heard him tell me that I had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him. You will not be surprised again when you hear him repeat it, the next time he is out of temper⁠—Oh, Marian! don’t! don’t! you hurt me!”

I had caught