The Woman in White Wilkie Collins (bts books to read txt) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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His first notion was only to tear the leaf out (in the right year and month), to destroy it privately, to go back to London, and to tell the lawyers to get him the necessary certificate of his fatherâs marriage, innocently referring them of course to the date on the leaf that was gone. Nobody could say his father and mother had not been married after that, and whether, under the circumstances, they would stretch a point or not about lending him the money (he thought they would), he had his answer ready at all events, if a question was ever raised about his right to the name and the estate.
But when he came to look privately at the register for himself, he found at the bottom of one of the pages for the year eighteen hundred and three a blank space left, seemingly through there being no room to make a long entry there, which was made instead at the top of the next page. The sight of this chance altered all his plans. It was an opportunity he had never hoped for, or thought ofâ âand he took itâ âyou know how. The blank space, to have exactly tallied with his birth certificate, ought to have occurred in the July part of the register. It occurred in the September part instead. However, in this case, if suspicious questions were asked, the answer was not hard to find. He had only to describe himself as a seven monthsâ child.
I was fool enough, when he told me his story, to feel some interest and some pity for himâ âwhich was just what he calculated on, as you will see. I thought him hardly used. It was not his fault that his father and mother were not married, and it was not his fatherâs and motherâs fault either. A more scrupulous woman than I wasâ âa woman who had not set her heart on a gold watch and chainâ âwould have found some excuses for him. At all events, I held my tongue, and helped to screen what he was about.
He was some time getting the ink the right colour (mixing it over and over again in pots and bottles of mine), and some time afterwards in practising the handwriting. But he succeeded in the end, and made an honest woman of his mother after she was dead in her grave! So far, I donât deny that he behaved honourably enough to myself. He gave me my watch and chain, and spared no expense in buying them; both were of superior workmanship, and very expensive. I have got them stillâ âthe watch goes beautifully.
You said the other day that Mrs. Clements had told you everything she knew. In that case there is no need for me to write about the trumpery scandal by which I was the suffererâ âthe innocent sufferer, I positively assert. You must know as well as I do what the notion was which my husband took into his head when he found me and my fine-gentleman acquaintance meeting each other privately and talking secrets together. But what you donât know is how it ended between that same gentleman and myself. You shall read and see how he behaved to me.
The first words I said to him, when I saw the turn things had taken, were, âDo me justiceâ âclear my character of a stain on it which you know I donât deserve. I donât want you to make a clean breast of it to my husbandâ âonly tell him, on your word of honour as a gentleman, that he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in the way he thinks I am. Do me that justice, at least, after all I have done for you.â He flatly refused, in so many words. He told me plainly that it was his interest to let my husband and all my neighbours believe the falsehoodâ âbecause, as long as they did so they were quite certain never to suspect the truth. I had a spirit of my own, and I told him they should know the truth from my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke, I was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.
Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived me about the risk I ran in helping him. He had practised on my ignorance, he had tempted me with his gifts, he had interested me with his storyâ âand the result of it was that he made me his accomplice. He owned this coolly, and he ended by telling me, for the first time, what the frightful punishment really was for his offence, and for anyone who helped him to commit it. In those days the law was not so tenderhearted as I hear it is now. Murderers were not the only people liable to be hanged, and women convicts were not treated like ladies in undeserved distress. I confess he frightened meâ âthe mean impostor! the cowardly blackguard! Do you understand now how I hated him? Do you understand why I am taking all this troubleâ âthankfully taking itâ âto gratify the curiosity of the meritorious young gentleman who hunted him down?
Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough to drive me to downright desperation. I was not the sort of woman whom it was quite safe to hunt into a cornerâ âhe knew that, and wisely quieted me with proposals for the future.
I deserved some reward (he was kind enough to say) for the service I had done him, and some compensation (he was so obliging as to add) for what I had suffered. He was quite willingâ âgenerous scoundrel!â âto make me a handsome yearly allowance, payable quarterly, on two conditions. First, I was to hold my tongueâ âin my own interests as well as in his. Secondly,
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