No Name (A Thriller). Уилки Коллинз
fond of him — and he had made that appeal to her pity which, to the eternal honour of women, is the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly, that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his rescue hung on her decision. She decided; and saved him.
“Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning — I will only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which must have ended in his early death. It is the truth that she restored him to that happy home existence which you remember so tenderly — which he remembered so gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he made her his wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her early fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose, indeed, if Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her — if Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice, of her whole life.
“A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which have happened within your own experience.
“I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Vanstone was now placed could lead in the end to but one result — to a disclosure, more or less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were made to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake’s family; and, as a matter of course, those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny of her father and her friends. What might have happened if her relatives had been what is termed ‘respectable’ I cannot pretend to say. As it was, they were people who could (in the common phrase) be conveniently treated with. The only survivor of the family at the present time is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When I tell you that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs. Vanstone to the last; and when I add that his conduct presents no extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their lifetime, of the other relatives — you will understand what sort of people I had to deal with in my client’s interests, and how their assumed indignation was appeased.
“Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr. Vanstone and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years. Girl as she was, she faced her position and its necessities without flinching. Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she loved; having quieted her conscience by persuading herself that his marriage was a legal mockery, and that she was ‘his wife in the sight of Heaven,’ she set herself from the first to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so living with him, in the world’s eye, as never to raise the suspicion that she was not his lawful wife. The women are few, indeed, who cannot resolve firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly where the dearest interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs. Vanstone — she has a right now, remember, to that name — Mrs. Vanstone had more than the average share of a woman’s tenacity and a woman’s tact; and she took all the needful precautions, in those early days, which her husband’s less ready capacity had not the art to devise — precautions to which they were largely indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times.
“Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed them when they returned to England. They first settled in Devonshire, merely because they were far removed there from that northern county in which Mr. Vanstone’s family and connections had been known. On the part of his surviving relatives, they had no curious investigations to dread. He was totally estranged from his mother and his elder brother. His married sister had been forbidden by her husband (who was a clergyman) to hold any communication with him, from the period when he had fallen into the deplorable way of life which I have described as following his return from Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and Miss Blake left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to this house. Neither courting nor avoiding notice; simply happy in themselves, in their children, and in their quiet rural life; unsuspected by the few neighbours who formed their modest circle of acquaintance to be other than what they seemed — the truth in their case, as in the cases of many others, remained undiscovered until accident forced it into the light of day.
“If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider the circumstances and you will understand the apparent anomaly. Remember that they had been living as husband and wife, to all intents and purposes (except that the marriage-service had not been read over them), for fifteen years before you came into the house; and bear in mind, at the same time, that no event occurred to disturb Mr. Vanstone’s happiness in the present, to remind him of the past, or to warn him of the future, until the announcement of his wife’s death reached him, in that letter from America which you saw placed in his hand. From that day forth — when a past which he abhorred was forced back to his memory; when a future which she had never dared to anticipate was placed within her reach — you will soon perceive, if you have not perceived already, that they both betrayed themselves, time after time; and that your innocence of all suspicion, and their children’s innocence of all suspicion, alone prevented you from discovering the truth.
“The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. I have had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with true sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory of the dead.”
He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on his hand, in the quiet, undemonstrative manner which was natural to him. Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by an occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She made no effort to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently over her wasted cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. “I have done you some injury, sir, in my thoughts,” she said, with a noble simplicity. “I know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness; let me take your hand.”
Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched him deeply. He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak, the first to set the example of self-control. It is one of the noble instincts of women that nothing more powerfully rouses them to struggle with their own sorrow than the sight of a man’s distress. She quietly dried her tears; she quietly drew her chair round the table, so as to sit nearer to him when she spoke again.
“I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened in this house,” she said, “or I should have borne what you have told me better than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one question before you go on? My heart aches for the children of my love — more than ever my children now. Is there no hope for their future? Are they left with no prospect but poverty before them?”
The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question.
“They are left dependent,” he said, at last, “on the justice and the mercy of a stranger.”
“Through the misfortune of their birth?”
“Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their parents.”
With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor, and restored it to its former position on the table between them.
“I can only place the truth before you,” he resumed, “in one plain form of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr. Vanstone’s daughters dependent on their uncle.”
As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the window.
“On their uncle?” repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a moment, and laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril’s arm. “Not on Michael Vanstone!”
“Yes: on Michael Vanstone.”
Miss Garth’s hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer’s arm. Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which had now burst on her.
“Dependent on Michael Vanstone!” she said to herself. “Dependent on their father’s bitterest enemy? How can it be?”
“Give me your attention for a few minutes more,” said Mr. Pendril, “and you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone, and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother’s orphan