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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Armadale, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Armadale
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Posting Date: September 21, 2008 [EBook #1895]
+Release Date: September, 1999
+Last Updated: December 21, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARMADALE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+
+
+
+
+ARMADALE
+
+By Wilkie Collins
+
+
+               TO
+
+               JOHN FORSTER.
+
+In acknowledgment of the services which he has rendered to the cause of
+literature by his “Life of Goldsmith;” and in affectionate remembrance
+of a friendship which is associated with some of the happiest years of
+my life.
+
+
+Readers in general--on whose friendly reception experience has given me
+some reason to rely--will, I venture to hope, appreciate whatever merit
+there may be in this story without any prefatory pleading for it on my
+part. They will, I think, see that it has not been hastily meditated or
+idly wrought out. They will judge it accordingly, and I ask no more.
+
+Readers in particular will, I have some reason to suppose, be here
+and there disturbed, perhaps even offended, by finding that “Armadale”
+ oversteps, in more than one direction, the narrow limits within which
+they are disposed to restrict the development of modern fiction--if they
+can.
+
+Nothing that I could say to these persons here would help me with them
+as Time will help me if my work lasts. I am not afraid of my design
+being permanently misunderstood, provided the execution has done it any
+sort of justice. Estimated by the clap-trap morality of the present day,
+this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which
+is of all time, it is only a book that is daring enough to speak the
+truth.
+
+LONDON, April, 1866.
+
+
+
+
+ARMADALE.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE TRAVELERS.
+
+It was the opening of the season of eighteen hundred and thirty-two, at
+the Baths of Wildbad.
+
+The evening shadows were beginning to gather over the quiet little
+German town, and the diligence was expected every minute. Before the
+door of the principal inn, waiting the arrival of the first visitors
+of the year, were assembled the three notable personages of Wildbad,
+accompanied by their wives--the mayor, representing the inhabitants;
+the doctor, representing the waters; the landlord, representing his own
+establishment. Beyond this select circle, grouped snugly about the trim
+little square in front of the inn, appeared the towns-people in general,
+mixed here and there with the country people, in their quaint German
+costume, placidly expectant of the diligence--the men in short black
+jackets, tight black breeches, and three-cornered beaver hats; the women
+with their long light hair hanging in one thickly plaited tail behind
+them, and the waists of their short woolen gowns inserted modestly
+in the region of their shoulder-blades. Round the outer edge of the
+assemblage thus formed, flying detachments of plump white-headed
+children careered in perpetual motion; while, mysteriously apart from
+the rest of the inhabitants, the musicians of the Baths stood collected
+in one lost corner, waiting the appearance of the first visitors to play
+the first tune of the season in the form of a serenade. The light of
+a May evening was still bright on the tops of the great wooded hills
+watching high over the town on the right hand and the left; and the
+cool breeze that comes before sunset came keenly fragrant here with the
+balsamic odor of the first of the Black Forest.
+
+“Mr. Landlord,” said the mayor’s wife (giving the landlord his title),
+“have you any foreign guests coming on this first day of the season?”
+
+“Madame Mayoress,” replied the landlord (returning the compliment), “I
+have two. They have written--the one by the hand of his servant, the
+other by his own hand apparently--to order their rooms; and they
+are from England, both, as I think by their names. If you ask me to
+pronounce those names, my tongue hesitates; if you ask me to spell them,
+here they are, letter by letter, first and second in their order as
+they come. First, a high-born stranger (by title Mister) who introduces
+himself in eight letters, A, r, m, a, d, a, l, e--and comes ill in his
+own carriage. Second, a high-born stranger (by title Mister also), who
+introduces himself in four letters--N, e, a, l--and comes ill in the
+diligence. His excellency of the eight letters writes to me (by his
+servant) in French; his excellency of the four letters writes to me in
+German. The rooms of both are ready. I know no more.”
+
+“Perhaps,” suggested the mayor’s wife, “Mr. Doctor has heard from one or
+both of these illustrious strangers?”
+
+“From one only, Madam Mayoress; but not, strictly speaking, from the
+person himself. I have received a medical report of his excellency of
+the eight letters, and his case seems a bad one. God help him!”
+
+“The diligence!” cried a child from the outskirts of the crowd.
+
+The musicians seized their instruments, and silence fell on the whole
+community. From far away in the windings of the forest gorge, the ring
+of horses’ bells came faintly clear through the evening stillness. Which
+carriage was approaching--the private carriage with Mr. Armadale, or the
+public carriage with Mr. Neal?
+
+“Play, my friends!” cried the mayor to the musicians. “Public or
+private, here are the first sick people of the season. Let them find us
+cheerful.”
+
+The band played a lively dance tune, and the children in the square
+footed it merrily to the music. At the same moment, their elders near
+the inn door drew aside, and disclosed the first shadow of gloom that
+fell over the gayety and beauty of the scene. Through the opening made
+on either hand, a little procession of stout country girls advanced,
+each drawing after her an empty chair on wheels; each in waiting (and
+knitting while she waited) for the paralyzed wretches who came helpless
+by hundreds then--who come helpless by thousands now--to the waters of
+Wildbad for relief.
+
+While the band played, while the children danced, while the buzz of many
+talkers deepened, while the strong young nurses of the coming cripples
+knitted impenetrably, a woman’s insatiable curiosity about other women
+asserted itself in the mayor’s wife. She drew the landlady aside, and
+whispered a question to her on the spot.
+
+“A word more, ma’am,” said the mayor’s wife, “about the two strangers
+from England. Are their letters explicit? Have they got any ladies with
+them?”
+
+“The one by the diligence--no,” replied the landlady. “But the one by
+the private carriage--yes. He comes with a child; he comes with a nurse;
+and,” concluded the landlady, skillfully keeping the main point of
+interest till the last, “he comes with a Wife.”
+
+The mayoress brightened; the doctoress (assisting at the conference)
+brightened; the landlady nodded significantly. In the minds of all three
+the same thought started into life at the same moment--“We shall see the
+Fashions!”
+
+In a minute more, there was a sudden movement in the crowd; and a chorus
+of voices proclaimed that the travelers were at hand.
+
+By this time the coming vehicle was in sight, and all further doubt was
+at an end. It was the diligence that now approached by the long street
+leading into the square--the diligence (in a dazzling new coat of yellow
+paint) that delivered the first visitors of the season at the inn door.
+Of the ten travelers released from the middle compartment and the back
+compartment of the carriage--all from various parts of Germany--three
+were lifted out helpless, and were placed in the chairs on wheels to be
+drawn to their lodgings in the town. The front compartment contained
+two passengers only--Mr. Neal and his traveling servant. With an arm
+on either side to assist him, the stranger (whose malady appeared to
+be locally confined to a lameness in one of his feet) succeeded in
+descending the steps of the carriage easily enough. While he steadied
+himself on the pavement by the help of his stick--looking not
+over-patiently toward the musicians who were serenading him with the
+waltz in “Der Freischutz”--his personal appearance rather damped the
+enthusiasm of the friendly little circle assembled to welcome him. He
+was a lean, tall, serious, middle-aged man, with a cold gray eye and a
+long upper lip, with overhanging eyebrows and high cheek-bones; a man
+who looked what he was--every inch a Scotchman.
+
+“Where is the proprietor of this hotel?” he asked, speaking in the
+German language, with a fluent readiness of expression, and an icy
+coldness of manner. “Fetch the doctor,” he continued, when the landlord
+had presented himself, “I want to see him immediately.”
+
+“I am here already, sir,” said the doctor, advancing from the circle of
+friends, “and my services are entirely at your disposal.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Mr. Neal, looking at the doctor, as the rest of us
+look at a dog when we have whistled and the dog has come. “I shall be
+glad to consult you to-morrow morning, at ten o’clock, about my own
+case. I only want to trouble you now with a message which I have
+undertaken to deliver. We overtook a traveling carriage on the road here
+with a gentleman in it--an Englishman, I believe--who appeared to be
+seriously ill. A lady who was with him begged me to see you immediately
+on my arrival, and to secure your professional assistance in removing
+the patient from the carriage. Their courier has met with an accident,
+and has been left behind on the road, and they are obliged to travel
+very slowly. If you are here in an hour, you will be here in time to
+receive them. That is the message. Who is this gentleman who appears to
+be anxious to speak to me? The mayor? If you wish to see my passport,
+sir, my servant will show it to you. No? You wish to welcome me to the
+place, and to offer your services? I am infinitely flattered. If you
+have any authority to shorten the performances of your town band, you
+would be doing me a kindness to exert it. My nerves are irritable, and
+I dislike music. Where is the landlord? No; I want to see my rooms. I
+don’t want your arm; I can get upstairs with the help of my stick. Mr.
+Mayor and Mr. Doctor, we need not detain one another any longer. I wish
+you good-night.”
+
+Both mayor and doctor looked after the Scotchman as he limped upstairs,
+and shook their heads together in mute disapproval of him. The ladies,
+as usual, went a step further, and expressed their opinions openly in
+the plainest words. The case under consideration (so far as _they_ were
+concerned) was the scandalous case of a man who had passed them over
+entirely without notice. Mrs. Mayor could only attribute such an outrage
+to the native ferocity of a savage. Mrs. Doctor took a stronger view
+still, and considered it as proceeding from the inbred brutality of a
+hog.
+
+The hour of waiting for the traveling-carriage wore on, and the creeping
+night stole up the hillsides softly. One by one the stars appeared, and
+the first lights twinkled in the windows of the inn. As the darkness
+came, the last idlers deserted the square; as the darkness came,
+the mighty silence of the forest above flowed in on the valley, and
+strangely and suddenly hushed the lonely little town.
+
+The hour of waiting wore out, and the figure of the doctor, walking
+backward and forward anxiously, was still the only living figure left in
+the square. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, were counted out
+by the doctor’s watch, before the first sound came through the night
+silence to warn him of the approaching carriage. Slowly it emerged into
+the square, at the walking pace of the horses, and drew up, as a hearse
+might have drawn up, at the door of the inn.
+
+“Is the doctor here?” asked a woman’s voice, speaking, out of the
+darkness of the carriage, in the French language.
+
+“I am here, madam,” replied the doctor, taking a light from the
+landlord’s hand and opening the carriage door.
+
+The first face that the light fell on was the face of the lady who had
+just spoken--a young, darkly beautiful woman, with the tears standing
+thick and bright in her eager black eyes. The second face revealed was
+the face of a shriveled old negress, sitting opposite the lady on the
+back seat. The third was the face of a little sleeping child in the
+negress’s lap. With a quick gesture of impatience, the lady signed to
+the nurse to leave the carriage first with the child. “Pray take them
+out of the way,” she said to the landlady; “pray take them to their
+room.” She got out herself when her request had been complied with.
+Then the light fell clear for the first time on the further side of the
+carriage, and the fourth traveler was disclosed to view.
+
+He lay helpless on a mattress, supported by a stretcher; his hair, long
+and disordered, under a black skull-cap; his eyes wide open, rolling
+to and fro ceaselessly anxious; the rest of his face as void of all
+expression of the character within him, and the thought within him, as
+if he had been dead. There was no looking at him now, and guessing what
+he might once have been. The leaden blank of his face met every question
+as to his age, his rank, his temper, and his looks which that face might
+once have answered, in impenetrable silence. Nothing spoke for him now
+but the shock that had struck him with the death-in-life of paralysis.
+The doctor’s eye questioned his lower limbs, and Death-in-Life answered,
+_I am here_. The doctor’s eye, rising attentively by way of his hands
+and arms, questioned upward and upward to the muscles round his mouth,
+and Death-in-Life answered, _I am coming_.
+
+In the face of a calamity so unsparing and so dreadful, there was
+nothing to be said. The silent sympathy of help was all that could be
+offered to the woman who stood weeping at the carriage door.
+
+As they bore him on his bed across the hall of the hotel, his wandering
+eyes encountered the face of his wife. They rested on her for a moment,
+and in that moment he spoke.
+
+“The child?” he said in English, with a slow, thick, laboring
+articulation.
+
+“The child is safe upstairs,” she answered, faintly.
+
+“My desk?”
+
+“It is in my hands. Look! I won’t trust it to anybody; I am taking care
+of it for you myself.”
+
+He closed his eyes for the first time after that answer, and said no
+more. Tenderly and skillfully he was carried up the stairs, with his
+wife on one side of him, and the doctor (ominously silent) on the other.
+The landlord and the servants following saw the door of his room open
+and close on him; heard the lady burst out crying hysterically as soon
+as she was alone with the doctor and the sick man; saw the doctor come
+out, half an hour later, with his ruddy face a shade paler than usual;
+pressed him eagerly for information, and received but one answer to all
+their inquiries--“Wait till I have seen him to-morrow. Ask me nothing
+to-night.” They all knew the doctor’s ways, and they augured ill when he
+left them hurriedly with that reply.
+
+So the two first English visitors of the year came to the Baths of
+Wildbad in the season of eighteen hundred and thirty-two.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE SOLID SIDE OF THE SCOTCH CHARACTER.
+
+AT ten o’clock the next morning, Mr. Neal--waiting for the medical visit
+which he had himself appointed for that hour--looked at his watch, and
+discovered, to his amazement, that he was waiting in vain. It was close
+on eleven when the door opened at last, and the doctor entered the room.
+
+“I appointed ten o’clock for your visit,” said Mr. Neal. “In my country,
+a medical man is a punctual man.”
+
+“In my country,” returned the doctor, without the least ill-humor, “a
+medical man is exactly like other men--he is at the mercy of accidents.
+Pray grant me your pardon, sir, for being so long after my time; I have
+been detained by a very distressing case--the case of Mr. Armadale,
+whose traveling-carriage you passed on the road yesterday.”
+
+Mr. Neal looked at his medical attendant with a sour surprise. There
+was a latent anxiety in the doctor’s eye, a latent preoccupation in the
+doctor’s manner, which he was at a loss to account for. For a moment
+the two faces confronted each other silently, in marked national
+contrast--the Scotchman’s, long and lean, hard and regular; the
+German’s, plump and florid, soft and shapeless. One face looked as if it
+had never been young; the other, as if it would never grow old.
+
+“Might I venture to remind you,” said Mr. Neal, “that the case now under
+consideration is MY case, and not Mr. Armadale’s?”
+
+“Certainly,” replied the doctor, still vacillating between the case
+he had come to see and the case he had just left. “You appear to be
+suffering from lameness; let me look at your foot.”
+
+Mr. Neal’s malady, however serious it might be in his own estimation,
+was of no extraordinary importance in a medical point of view. He was
+suffering from a rheumatic affection of the ankle-joint. The necessary
+questions were asked and answered and the necessary baths were
+prescribed. In ten minutes the consultation was at an end, and the
+patient was waiting in significant silence for the medical adviser to
+take his leave.
+
+“I cannot conceal from myself,” said the doctor, rising, and hesitating
+a little, “that I am intruding on you. But I am compelled to beg your
+indulgence if I return to the subject of Mr. Armadale.”
+
+“May I ask what compels you?”
+
+“The duty which I owe as a Christian,” answered the doctor, “to a dying
+man.”
+
+Mr. Neal started. Those who touched his sense of religious duty touched
+the quickest sense in his nature.
+
+“You have established your claim on my attention,” he said, gravely. “My
+time is yours.”
+
+“I will not abuse your kindness,” replied the doctor, resuming his
+chair. “I will be as short as I can. Mr. Armadale’s case is briefly
+this: He has passed the greater part of his life in the West Indies--a
+wild life, and a vicious life, by his own confession. Shortly after
+his marriage--now some three years since--the first symptoms of an
+approaching paralytic affection began to show themselves, and his
+medical advisers ordered him away to try the climate of Europe. Since
+leaving the West Indies he has lived principally in Italy, with no
+benefit to his health. From Italy, before the last seizure attacked him,
+he removed to Switzerland, and from Switzerland he has been sent to this
+place. So much I know from his doctor’s report; the rest I can tell you
+from my own personal experience. Mr. Armadale has been sent to Wildbad
+too late: he is virtually a dead man. The paralysis is fast spreading
+upward, and disease of the lower part of the spine has already taken
+place. He can still move his hands a little, but he can hold nothing
+in his fingers. He can still articulate, but he may wake speechless
+to-morrow or next day. If I give him a week more to live, I give him
+what I honestly believe to be the utmost length of his span. At his own
+request I told him, as carefully and as tenderly as I could, what I
+have just told you. The result was very distressing; the violence of the
+patient’s agitation was a violence which I despair of describing to you.
+I took the liberty of asking him whether his affairs were unsettled.
+Nothing of the sort. His will is in the hands of his executor in London,
+and he leaves his wife and child well provided for. My next question
+succeeded better; it hit the mark: ‘Have you something on your mind
+to do before you die which is not done yet?’ He gave a great gasp of
+relief, which said, as no words could have said it, Yes. ‘Can I help
+you?’ ‘Yes. I have something to write that I _must_ write; can you make
+me hold a pen?’
+
+“He might as well have asked me if I could perform a miracle. I could
+only say No. ‘If I dictate the words,’ he went on, ‘can you write what I
+tell you to write?’ Once more I could only say No I understand a
+little English, but I can neither speak it nor write it. Mr. Armadale
+understands French when it is spoken (as I speak it to him) slowly, but
+he cannot express himself in that language; and of German he is totally
+ignorant. In this difficulty, I said, what any one else in my situation
+would have said: ‘Why ask _me_? there is Mrs. Armadale at your service
+in the next room.’ Before I could get up from my chair to fetch her,
+he stopped me--not by words, but by a look of horror which fixed me, by
+main force of astonishment, in my place. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘your wife
+is the fittest person to write for you as you desire?’ ‘The last person
+under heaven!’ he answered. ‘What!’ I said, ‘you ask me, a foreigner
+and a stranger, to write words at your dictation which you keep a secret
+from your wife!’ Conceive my astonishment when he answered me, without
+a moment’s hesitation, ‘Yes!’ I sat lost; I sat silent. ‘If _you_
+can’t write English,’ he said, ‘find somebody who can.’ I tried to
+remonstrate. He burst into a dreadful moaning cry--a dumb entreaty, like
+the entreaty of a dog. ‘Hush! hush!’ I said, ‘I will find somebody.’
+‘To-day!’ he broke out, ‘before my speech fails me, like my hand.’
+‘To-day, in an hour’s time.’ He shut his eyes; he quieted himself
+instantly. ‘While I am waiting for you,’ he said, ‘let me see my little
+boy.’ He had shown no tenderness when he spoke of his wife, but I saw
+the tears on his cheeks when he asked for his child. My profession, sir,
+has not made me so hard a man as you might think; and my doctor’s heart
+was as heavy, when I went out to fetch the child, as if I had not been a
+doctor at all. I am afraid you think this rather weak on my part?”
+
+The doctor looked appealingly at Mr. Neal. He might as well have looked
+at a rock in the Black Forest. Mr. Neal entirely declined to be drawn by
+any doctor in Christendom out of the regions of plain fact.
+
+“Go on,” he said. “I presume you have not told me all that you have to
+tell me, yet?”
+
+“Surely you understand my object in coming here, now?” returned the
+other.
+
+“Your object is plain enough, at last. You invite me to connect myself
+blindfold with a matter which is in the last degree suspicious, so far.
+I decline giving you any answer until I know more than I know now. Did
+you think it necessary to inform this man’s wife of what had passed
+between you, and to ask her for an explanation?”
+
+“Of course I thought it necessary!” said the doctor, indignant at the
+reflection on his humanity which the question seemed to imply. “If ever
+I saw a woman fond of her husband, and sorry for her husband, it is this
+unhappy Mrs. Armadale. As soon as we were left alone together, I sat
+down by her side, and I took her hand in mine. Why not? I am an ugly old
+man, and I may allow myself such liberties as these!”
+
+“Excuse me,” said the impenetrable Scotchman. “I beg to suggest that you
+are losing the thread of the narrative.”
+
+“Nothing more likely,” returned the doctor, recovering his good humor.
+“It is in the habit of my nation to be perpetually losing the thread;
+and it is evidently in the habit of yours, sir, to be perpetually
+finding it. What an example here of the order of the universe, and the
+everlasting fitness of things!”
+
+“Will you oblige me, once for all, by confining yourself to the facts,”
+ persisted Mr. Neal, frowning impatiently. “May I inquire, for my own
+information, whether Mrs. Armadale could tell you what it is her husband
+wishes me to write, and why it is that he refuses to let her write for
+him?”
+
+“There is my thread found--and thank you for finding it!” said the
+doctor. “You shall hear what Mrs. Armadale had to tell me, in
+Mrs. Armadale’s own words. ‘The cause that now shuts me out of his
+confidence,’ she said, ‘is, I firmly believe, the same cause that has
+always shut me out of his heart. I am the wife he has wedded, but I am
+not the woman he loves. I knew when he married me that another man had
+won from him the woman he loved. I thought I could make him forget her.
+I hoped when I married him; I hoped again when I bore him a son. Need
+I tell you the end of my hopes--you have seen it for yourself.’ (Wait,
+sir, I entreat you! I have not lost the thread again; I am following it
+inch by inch.) ‘Is this all you know?’ I asked. ‘All I knew,’ she said,
+‘till a short time since. It was when we were in Switzerland, and when
+his illness was nearly at its worst, that news came to him by accident
+of that other woman who has been the shadow and the poison of my
+life--news that she (like me) had borne her husband a son. On the
+instant of his making that discovery--a trifling discovery, if ever
+there was one yet--a mortal fear seized on him: not for me, not for
+himself; a fear for his own child. The same day (without a word to me)
+he sent for the doctor. I was mean, wicked, what you please--I listened
+at the door. I heard him say: _I have something to tell my son, when
+my son grows old enough to understand me. Shall I live to tell it_? The
+doctor would say nothing certain. The same night (still without a word
+to me) he locked himself into his room. What would any woman, treated
+as I was, have done in my place? She would have done as I did--she would
+have listened again. I heard him say to himself: _I shall not live to
+tell it: I must write it before I die_. I heard his pen scrape, scrape,
+scrape over the paper; I heard him groaning and sobbing as he wrote;
+I implored him for God’s sake to let me in. The cruel pen went scrape,
+scrape, scrape; the cruel pen was all the answer he gave me. I waited
+at the door--hours--I don’t know how long. On a sudden, the pen stopped;
+and I heard no more. I whispered through the keyhole softly; I said I
+was cold and weary with waiting; I said, Oh, my love, let me in! Not
+even the cruel pen answered me now: silence answered me. With all the
+strength of my miserable hands I beat at the door. The servants came up
+and broke it in. We were too late; the harm was done. Over that fatal
+letter, the stroke had struck him--over that fatal letter, we found him
+paralyzed as you see him now. Those words which he wants you to write
+are the words he would have written himself if the stroke had spared him
+till the morning. From that time to this there has been a blank place
+left in the letter; and it is that blank place which he has just asked
+you to fill up.’--In those words Mrs. Armadale spoke to me; in those
+words you have the sum and substance of all the information I can give.
+Say, if you please, sir, have I kept the thread at last? Have I
+shown you the necessity which brings me here from your countryman’s
+death-bed?”
+
+“Thus far,” said Mr. Neal, “you merely show me that you are exciting
+yourself. This is too serious a matter to be treated as you are treating
+it now. You have involved me in the business, and I insist on seeing my
+way plainly. Don’t raise your hands; your hands are not a part of the
+question. If I am to be concerned in the completion of this mysterious
+letter, it is only an act of justifiable prudence on my part to inquire
+what the letter is about. Mrs. Armadale appears to have favored you with
+an infinite number of domestic particulars--in return, I presume, for
+your polite attention in taking her by the hand. May I ask what she
+could tell you about her husband’s letter, so far as her husband has
+written it?”
+
+“Mrs. Armadale could tell me nothing,” replied the doctor, with a sudden
+formality in his manner, which showed that his forbearance was at last
+failing him. “Before she was composed enough to think of the letter, her
+husband had asked for it, and had caused it to be locked up in his desk.
+She knows that he has since, time after time, tried to finish it, and
+that, time after time, the pen has dropped from his fingers. She knows,
+when all other hope of his restoration was at an end, that his medical
+advisers encouraged him to hope in the famous waters of this place. And
+last, she knows how that hope has ended; for she knows what I told her
+husband this morning.”
+
+The frown which had been gathering latterly on Mr. Neal’s face deepened
+and darkened. He looked at the doctor as if the doctor had personally
+offended him.
+
+“The more I think of the position you are asking me to take,” he said,
+“the less I like it. Can you undertake to say positively that Mr.
+Armadale is in his right mind?”
+
+“Yes; as positively as words can say it.”
+
+“Does his wife sanction your coming here to request my interference?”
+
+“His wife sends me to you--the only Englishman in Wildbad--to write for
+your dying countryman what he cannot write for himself; and what no one
+else in this place but you can write for him.”
+
+That answer drove Mr. Neal back to the last inch of ground left him to
+stand on. Even on that inch the Scotchman resisted still.
+
+“Wait a little!” he said. “You put it strongly; let us be quite sure you
+put it correctly as well. Let us be quite sure there is nobody to take
+this responsibility but myself. There is a mayor in Wildbad, to
+begin with--a man who possesses an official character to justify his
+interference.”
+
+“A man of a thousand,” said the doctor. “With one fault--he knows no
+language but his own.”
+
+“There is an English legation at Stuttgart,” persisted Mr. Neal.
+
+“And there are miles on miles of the forest between this and Stuttgart,”
+ rejoined the doctor. “If we sent this moment, we could get no help from
+the legation before to-morrow; and it is as likely as not, in the
+state of this dying man’s articulation, that to-morrow may find him
+speechless. I don’t know whether his last wishes are wishes harmless to
+his child and to others, wishes hurtful to his child and to others; but
+I _do_ know that they must be fulfilled at once or never, and that you
+are the only man that can help him.”
+
+That open declaration brought the discussion to a close. It fixed Mr.
+Neal fast between the two alternatives of saying Yes, and committing an
+act of imprudence, or of saying No, and committing an act of inhumanity.
+There was a silence of some minutes. The Scotchman steadily reflected;
+and the German steadily watched him.
+
+The responsibility of saying the next words rested on Mr. Neal, and in
+course of time Mr. Neal took it. He rose from his chair with a sullen
+sense of injury lowering on his heavy eyebrows, and working sourly in
+the lines at the corners of his mouth.
+
+“My position is forced on me,” he said. “I have no choice but to accept
+it.”
+
+The doctor’s impulsive nature rose in revolt against the merciless
+brevity and gracelessness of that reply. “I wish to God,” he broke out
+fervently, “I knew English enough to take your place at Mr. Armadale’s
+bedside!”
+
+“Bating your taking the name of the Almighty in vain,” answered the
+Scotchman, “I entirely agree with you. I wish you did.”
+
+Without another word on either side, they left the room together--the
+doctor leading the way.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE WRECK OF THE TIMBER SHIP.
+
+NO one answered the doctor’s knock when he and his companion reached the
+antechamber door of Mr. Armadale’s apartments. They entered unannounced;
+and when they looked into the sitting-room, the sitting-room was empty.
+
+“I must see Mrs. Armadale,” said Mr. Neal. “I decline acting in the
+matter unless Mrs. Armadale authorizes my interference with her own
+lips.”
+
+“Mrs. Armadale is probably with her husband,” replied the doctor.
+He approached a door at the inner end of the sitting-room while he
+spoke--hesitated--and, turning round again, looked at his sour companion
+anxiously. “I am afraid I spoke a little harshly, sir, when we were
+leaving your room,” he said. “I beg your pardon for it, with all my
+heart. Before this poor afflicted lady comes in, will you--will you
+excuse my asking your utmost gentleness and consideration for her?”
+
+“No, sir,” retorted the other harshly; “I won’t excuse you. What right
+have I given you to think me wanting in gentleness and consideration
+toward anybody?”
+
+The doctor saw it was useless. “I beg your pardon again,” he said,
+resignedly, and left the unapproachable stranger to himself.
+
+Mr. Neal walked to the window, and stood there, with his eyes
+mechanically fixed on the prospect, composing his mind for the coming
+interview.
+
+It was midday; the sun shone bright and warm; and all the little world
+of Wildbad was alive and merry in the genial springtime. Now and again
+heavy wagons, with black-faced carters in charge, rolled by the window,
+bearing their precious lading of charcoal from the forest. Now and
+again, hurled over the headlong current of the stream that runs
+through the town, great lengths of timber, loosely strung together in
+interminable series--with the booted raftsmen, pole in hand, poised
+watchful at either end--shot swift and serpent-like past the houses
+on their course to the distant Rhine. High and steep above the gabled
+wooden buildings on the river-bank, the great hillsides, crested black
+with firs, shone to the shining heavens in a glory of lustrous green.
+In and out, where the forest foot-paths wound from the grass through the
+trees, from the trees over the grass, the bright spring dresses of women
+and children, on the search for wild flowers, traveled to and fro in
+the lofty distance like spots of moving light. Below, on the walk by the
+stream side, the booths of the little bazar that had opened punctually
+with the opening season showed all their glittering trinkets, and
+fluttered in the balmy air their splendor of many-colored flags.
+Longingly, here the children looked at the show; patiently the sunburned
+lasses plied their knitting as they paced the walk; courteously the
+passing townspeople, by fours and fives, and the passing visitors, by
+ones and twos, greeted each other, hat in hand; and slowly, slowly,
+the cripple and the helpless in their chairs on wheels came out in the
+cheerful noontide with the rest, and took their share of the blessed
+light that cheers, of the blessed sun that shines for all.
+
+On this scene the Scotchman looked, with eyes that never noted its
+beauty, with a mind far away from every lesson that it taught. One by
+one he meditated the words he should say when the wife came in. One by
+one he pondered over the conditions he might impose before he took the
+pen in hand at the husband’s bedside.
+
+“Mrs. Armadale is here,” said the doctor’s voice, interposing suddenly
+between his reflections and himself.
+
+He turned on the instant, and saw before him, with the pure midday light
+shining full on her, a woman of the mixed blood of the European and the
+African race, with the Northern delicacy in the shape of her face, and
+the Southern richness in its color--a woman in the prime of her beauty,
+who moved with an inbred grace, who looked with an inbred fascination,
+whose large, languid black eyes rested on him gratefully, whose little
+dusky hand offered itself to him in mute expression of her thanks, with
+the welcome that is given to the coming of a friend. For the first time
+in his life the Scotchman was taken by surprise. Every self-preservative
+word that he had been meditating but an instant since dropped out of his
+memory. His thrice impenetrable armor of habitual suspicion, habitual
+self-discipline, and habitual reserve, which had never fallen from him
+in a woman’s presence before, fell from him in this woman’s presence,
+and brought him to his knees, a conquered man. He took the hand she
+offered him, and bowed over it his first honest homage to the sex, in
+silence.
+
+She hesitated on her side. The quick feminine perception which,
+in happier circumstances, would have pounced on the secret of his
+embarrassment in an instant, failed her now. She attributed his
+strange reception of her to pride, to reluctance--to any cause but the
+unexpected revelation of her own beauty. “I have no words to thank you,”
+ she said, faintly, trying to propitiate him. “I should only distress you
+if I tried to speak.” Her lip began to tremble, she drew back a little,
+and turned away her head in silence.
+
+The doctor, who had been standing apart, quietly observant in a corner,
+advanced before Mr. Neal could interfere, and led Mrs. Armadale to a
+chair. “Don’t be afraid of him,” whispered the good man, patting her
+gently on the shoulder. “He was hard as iron in my hands, but I think,
+by the look of him, he will be soft as wax in yours. Say the words I
+told you to say, and let us take him to your husband’s room, before
+those sharp wits of his have time to recover themselves.”
+
+She roused her sinking resolution, and advanced half-way to the window
+to meet Mr. Neal. “My kind friend, the doctor, has told me, sir, that
+your only hesitation in coming here is a hesitation on my account,” she
+said, her head drooping a little, and her rich color fading away while
+she spoke. “I am deeply grateful, but I entreat you not to think
+of _me_. What my husband wishes--” Her voice faltered; she waited
+resolutely, and recovered herself. “What my husband wishes in his last
+moments, I wish too.”
+
+This time Mr. Neal was composed enough to answer her. In low, earnest
+tones, he entreated her to say no more. “I was only anxious to show you
+every consideration,” he said. “I am only anxious now to spare you every
+distress.” As he spoke, something like a glow of color rose slowly on
+his sallow face. Her eyes were looking at him, softly attentive; and he
+thought guiltily of his meditations at the window before she came in.
+
+The doctor saw his opportunity. He opened the door that led into Mr.
+Armadale’s room, and stood by it, waiting silently. Mrs. Armadale
+entered first. In a minute more the door was closed again; and Mr.
+Neal stood committed to the responsibility that had been forced on
+him--committed beyond recall.
+
+The room was decorated in the gaudy continental fashion, and the warm
+sunlight was shining in joyously. Cupids and flowers were painted on
+the ceiling; bright ribbons looped up the white window-curtains; a smart
+gilt clock ticked on a velvet-covered mantelpiece; mirrors gleamed on
+the walls, and flowers in all the colors of the rainbow speckled the
+carpet. In the midst of the finery, and the glitter, and the light,
+lay the paralyzed man, with his wandering eyes, and his lifeless lower
+face--his head propped high with many pillows; his helpless hands laid
+out over the bed-clothes like the hands of a corpse. By the bed head
+stood, grim, and old, and silent, the shriveled black nurse; and on the
+counter-pane, between his father’s outspread hands, lay the child, in
+his little white frock, absorbed in the enjoyment of a new toy. When the
+door opened, and Mrs. Armadale led the way in, the boy was tossing
+his plaything--a soldier on horseback--backward and forward over the
+helpless hands on either side of him; and the father’s wandering
+eyes were following the toy to and fro, with a stealthy and ceaseless
+vigilance--a vigilance as of a wild animal, terrible to see.
+
+The moment Mr. Neal appeared in the doorway, those restless eyes
+stopped, looked up, and fastened on the stranger with a fierce eagerness
+of inquiry. Slowly the motionless lips struggled into movement. With
+thick, hesitating articulation, they put the question which the eyes
+asked mutely, into words: “Are you the man?”
+
+Mr. Neal advanced to the bedside, Mrs. Armadale drawing back from it
+as he approached, and waiting with the doctor at the further end of
+the room. The child looked up, toy in hand, as the stranger came near,
+opened his bright brown eyes in momentary astonishment, and then went on
+with his game.
+
+“I have been made acquainted with your sad situation, sir,” said
+Mr. Neal; “and I have come here to place my services at your
+disposal--services which no one but myself, as your medical attendant
+informs me, is in a position to render you in this strange place.
+My name is Neal. I am a writer to the signet in Edinburgh; and I may
+presume to say for myself that any confidence you wish to place in me
+will be confidence not improperly bestowed.”
+
+The eyes of the beautiful wife were not confusing him now. He spoke
+to the helpless husband quietly and seriously, without his customary
+harshness, and with a grave compassion in his manner which presented him
+at his best. The sight of the death-bed had steadied him.
+
+“You wish me to write something for you?” he resumed, after waiting for
+a reply, and waiting in vain.
+
+“Yes!” said the dying man, with the all-mastering impatience which his
+tongue was powerless to express, glittering angrily in his eye. “My hand
+is gone, and my speech is going. Write!”
+
+Before there was time to speak again, Mr. Neal heard the rustling of a
+woman’s dress, and the quick creaking of casters on the carpet behind
+him. Mrs. Armadale was moving the writing-table across the room to
+the foot of the bed. If he was to set up those safeguards of his own
+devising that were to bear him harmless through all results to come, now
+was the time, or never. He, kept his back turned on Mrs. Armadale, and
+put his precautionary question at once in the plainest terms.
+
+“May I ask, sir, before I take the pen in hand, what it is you wish me
+to write?”
+
+The angry eyes of the paralyzed man glittered brighter and brighter. His
+lips opened and closed again. He made no reply.
+
+Mr. Neal tried another precautionary question, in a new direction.
+
+“When I have written what you wish me to write,” he asked, “what is to
+be done with it?”
+
+This time the answer came:
+
+“Seal it up in my presence, and post it to my ex--”
+
+His laboring articulation suddenly stopped and he looked piteously in
+the questioner’s face for the next word.
+
+“Do you mean your executor?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It is a letter, I suppose, that I am to post?” There was no answer.
+“May I ask if it is a letter altering your will?”
+
+“Nothing of the sort.”
+
+Mr. Neal considered a little. The mystery was thickening. The one way
+out of it, so far, was the way traced faintly through that strange story
+of the unfinished letter which the doctor had repeated to him in Mrs.
+Armadale’s words. The nearer he approached his unknown responsibility,
+the more ominous it seemed of something serious to come. Should he risk
+another question before he pledged himself irrevocably? As the doubt
+crossed his mind, he felt Mrs. Armadale’s silk dress touch him on the
+side furthest from her husband. Her delicate dark hand was laid gently
+on his arm; her full deep African eyes looked at him in submissive
+entreaty. “My husband is very anxious,” she whispered. “Will you quiet
+his anxiety, sir, by taking your place at the writing-table?”
+
+It was from _her_ lips that the request came--from the lips of the
+person who had the best right to hesitate, the wife who was excluded
+from the secret! Most men in Mr. Neal’s position would have given up all
+their safeguards on the spot. The Scotchman gave them all up but one.
+
+“I will write what you wish me to write,” he said, addressing Mr.
+Armadale. “I will seal it in your presence; and I will post it to your
+executor myself. But, in engaging to do this, I must beg you to remember
+that I am acting entirely in the dark; and I must ask you to excuse
+me, if I reserve my own entire freedom of action, when your wishes
+in relation to the writing and the posting of the letter have been
+fulfilled.”
+
+“Do you give me your promise?”
+
+“If you want my promise, sir, I will give it--subject to the condition I
+have just named.”
+
+“Take your condition, and keep your promise. My desk,” he added, looking
+at his wife for the first time.
+
+She crossed the room eagerly to fetch the desk from a chair in a corner.
+Returning with it, she made a passing sign to the negress, who still
+stood, grim and silent, in the place that she had occupied from the
+first. The woman advanced, obedient to the sign, to take the child from
+the bed. At the instant when she touched him, the father’s eyes--fixed
+previously on the desk--turned on her with the stealthy quickness of
+a cat. “No!” he said. “No!” echoed the fresh voice of the boy, still
+charmed with his plaything, and still liking his place on the bed. The
+negress left the room, and the child, in high triumph, trotted his toy
+soldier up and down on the bedclothes that lay rumpled over his father’s
+breast. His mother’s lovely face contracted with a pang of jealousy as
+she looked at him.
+
+“Shall I open your desk?” she asked, pushing back the child’s plaything
+sharply while she spoke. An answering look from her husband guided her
+hand to the place under his pillow where the key was hidden. She opened
+the desk, and disclosed inside some small sheets of manuscript pinned
+together. “These?” she inquired, producing them.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “You can go now.”
+
+The Scotchman sitting at the writing-table, the doctor stirring a
+stimulant mixture in a corner, looked at each other with an anxiety in
+both their faces which they could neither of them control. The words
+that banished the wife from the room were spoken. The moment had come.
+
+“You can go now,” said Mr. Armadale, for the second time.
+
+She looked at the child, established comfortably on the bed, and an ashy
+paleness spread slowly over her face. She looked at the fatal
+letter which was a sealed secret to her, and a torture of jealous
+suspicion--suspicion of that other woman who had been the shadow and
+the poison of her life--wrung her to the heart. After moving a few
+steps from the bedside, she stopped, and came back again. Armed with the
+double courage of her love and her despair, she pressed her lips on
+her dying husband’s cheek, and pleaded with him for the last time. Her
+burning tears dropped on his face as she whispered to him: “Oh, Allan,
+think how I have loved you! think how hard I have tried to make you
+happy! think how soon I shall lose you! Oh, my own love! don’t, don’t
+send me away!”
+
+The words pleaded for her; the kiss pleaded for her; the recollection
+of the love that had been given to him, and never returned, touched the
+heart of the fast-sinking man as nothing had touched it since the day
+of his marriage. A heavy sigh broke from him. He looked at her, and
+hesitated.
+
+“Let me stay,” she whispered, pressing her face closer to his.
+
+“It will only distress you,” he whispered back.
+
+“Nothing distresses me, but being sent away from _you_!”
+
+He waited. She saw that he was thinking, and waited too.
+
+“If I let you stay a little--?”
+
+“Yes! yes!”
+
+“Will you go when I tell you?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+“On your oath?”
+
+The fetters that bound his tongue seemed to be loosened for a moment in
+the great outburst of anxiety which forced that question to his lips. He
+spoke those startling words as he had spoken no words yet.
+
+“On my oath!” she repeated, and, dropping on her knees at the bedside,
+passionately kissed his hand. The two strangers in the room turned their
+heads away by common consent. In the silence that followed, the one
+sound stirring was the small sound of the child’s toy, as he moved it
+hither and thither on the bed.
+
+The doctor was the first who broke the spell of stillness which had
+fallen on all the persons present. He approached the patient, and
+examined him anxiously. Mrs. Armadale rose from her knees; and, first
+waiting for her husband’s permission, carried the sheets of manuscript
+which she had taken out of the desk to the table at which Mr. Neal was
+waiting. Flushed and eager, more beautiful than ever in the vehement
+agitation which still possessed her, she stooped over him as she put
+the letter into his hands, and, seizing on the means to her end with a
+woman’s headlong self-abandonment to her own impulses, whispered to
+him, “Read it out from the beginning. I must and will hear it!” Her
+eyes flashed their burning light into his; her breath beat on his cheek.
+Before he could answer, before he could think, she was back with her
+husband. In an instant she had spoken, and in that instant her beauty
+had bent the Scotchman to her will. Frowning in reluctant acknowledgment
+of his own inability to resist her, he turned over the leaves of the
+letter; looked at the blank place where the pen had dropped from the
+writer’s hand and had left a blot on the paper; turned back again to the
+beginning, and said the words, in the wife’s interest, which the wife
+herself had put into his lips.
+
+“Perhaps, sir, you may wish to make some corrections,” he began, with
+all his attention apparently fixed on the letter, and with every outward
+appearance of letting his sour temper again get the better of him.
+“Shall I read over to you what you have already written?”
+
+Mrs. Armadale, sitting at the bed head on one side, and the doctor, with
+his fingers on the patient’s pulse, sitting on the other, waited with
+widely different anxieties for the answer to Mr. Neal’s question. Mr.
+Armadale’s eyes turned searchingly from his child to his wife.
+
+“You _will_ hear it?” he said. Her breath came and went quickly; her
+hand stole up and took his; she bowed her head in silence. Her husband
+paused, taking secret counsel with his thoughts, and keeping his eyes
+fixed on his wife. At last he decided, and gave the answer. “Read it,”
+ he said, “and stop when I tell you.”
+
+It was close on one o’clock, and the bell was ringing which summoned the
+visitors to their early dinner at the inn. The quick beat of footsteps,
+and the gathering hum of voices outside, penetrated gayly into the room,
+as Mr. Neal spread the manuscript before him on the table, and read the
+opening sentences in these words:
+
+
+“I address this letter to my son, when my son is of an age to understand
+it. Having lost all hope of living to see my boy grow up to manhood, I
+have no choice but to write here what I would fain have said to him at a
+future time with my own lips.
+
+“I have three objects in writing. First, to reveal the circumstances
+which attended the marriage of an English lady of my acquaintance, in
+the island of Madeira. Secondly, to throw the true light on the death of
+her husband a short time afterward, on board the French timber ship _La
+Grace de Dieu_. Thirdly, to warn my son of a danger that lies in wait
+for him--a danger that will rise from his father’s grave when the earth
+has closed over his father’s ashes.
+
+“The story of the English lady’s marriage begins with my inheriting the
+great Armadale property, and my taking the fatal Armadale name.
+
+“I am the only surviving son of the late Mathew Wrentmore, of Barbadoes.
+I was born on our family estate in that island, and I lost my father
+when I was still a child. My mother was blindly fond of me; she denied
+me nothing, she let me live as I pleased. My boyhood and youth were
+passed in idleness and self-indulgence, among people--slaves and
+half-castes mostly--to whom my will was law. I doubt if there is a
+gentleman of my birth and station in all England as ignorant as I am at
+this moment. I doubt if there was ever a young man in this world whose
+passions were left so entirely without control of any kind as mine were
+in those early days.
+
+“My mother had a woman’s romantic objection to my father’s homely
+Christian name. I was christened Allan, after the name of a wealthy
+cousin of my father’s--the late Allan Armadale--who possessed estates in
+our neighborhood, the largest and most productive in the island, and who
+consented to be my godfather by proxy. Mr. Armadale had never seen his
+West Indian property. He lived in England; and, after sending me the
+customary godfather’s present, he held no further communication with my
+parents for years afterward. I was just twenty-one before we heard again
+from Mr. Armadale. On that occasion my mother received a letter from
+him asking if I was still alive, and offering no less (if I was) than to
+make me the heir to his West Indian property.
+
+“This piece of good fortune fell to me entirely through the misconduct
+of Mr. Armadale’s son, an only child. The young man had disgraced
+himself beyond all redemption; had left his home an outlaw; and had been
+thereupon renounced by his father at once and forever. Having no other
+near male relative to succeed him, Mr. Armadale thought of his cousin’s
+son and his own godson; and he offered the West Indian estate to me, and
+my heirs after me, on one condition--that I and my heirs should take
+his name. The proposal was gratefully accepted, and the proper legal
+measures were adopted for changing my name in the colony and in the
+mother country. By the next mail information reached Mr. Armadale that
+his condition had been complied with. The return mail brought news
+from the lawyers. The will had been altered in my favor, and in a week
+afterward the death of my benefactor had made me the largest proprietor
+and the richest man in Barbadoes.
+
+“This was the first event in the chain. The second event followed it six
+weeks afterward.
+
+“At that time there happened to be a vacancy in the clerk’s office on
+the estate, and there came to fill it a young man about my own age who
+had recently arrived in the island. He announced himself by the name of
+Fergus Ingleby. My impulses governed me in everything; I knew no law but
+the law of my own caprice, and I took a fancy to the stranger the moment
+I set eyes on him. He had the manners of a gentleman, and he possessed
+the most attractive social qualities which, in my small experience, I
+had ever met with. When I heard that the written references to character
+which he had brought with him were pronounced to be unsatisfactory, I
+interfered, and insisted that he should have the place. My will was law,
+and he had it.
+
+“My mother disliked and distrusted Ingleby from the first. When she
+found the intimacy between us rapidly ripening; when she found me
+admitting this inferior to the closest companionship and confidence
+(I had lived with my inferiors all my life, and I liked it), she made
+effort after effort to part us, and failed in one and all. Driven to her
+last resources, she resolved to try the one chance left--the chance of
+persuading me to take a voyage which I had often thought of--a voyage to
+England.
+
+“Before she spoke to me on the subject, she resolved to interest me
+in the idea of seeing England, as I had never been interested yet. She
+wrote to an old friend and an old admirer of hers, the late Stephen
+Blanchard, of Thorpe Ambrose, in Norfolk--a gentleman of landed estate,
+and a widower with a grown-up family. After-discoveries informed me that
+she must have alluded to their former attachment (which was checked,
+I believe, by the parents on either side); and that, in asking Mr.
+Blanchard’s welcome for her son when he came to England, she made
+inquiries about his daughter, which hinted at the chance of a marriage
+uniting the two families, if the young lady and I met and liked one
+another. We were equally matched in every respect, and my mother’s
+recollection of her girlish attachment to Mr. Blanchard made the
+prospect of my marrying her old admirer’s daughter the brightest and
+happiest prospect that her eyes could see. Of all this I knew nothing
+until Mr. Blanchard’s answer arrived at Barbadoes. Then my mother showed
+me the letter, and put the temptation which was to separate me from
+Fergus Ingleby openly in my way.
+
+“Mr. Blanchard’s letter was dated from the Island of Madeira. He was
+out of health, and he had been ordered there by the doctors to try the
+climate. His daughter was with him. After heartily reciprocating all my
+mother’s hopes and wishes, he proposed (if I intended leaving Barbadoes
+shortly) that I should take Madeira on my way to England, and pay him a
+visit at his temporary residence in the island. If this could not be,
+he mentioned the time at which he expected to be back in England, when
+I might be sure of finding a welcome at his own house of Thorpe
+Ambrose. In conclusion, he apologized for not writing at greater length;
+explaining that his sight was affected, and that he had disobeyed the
+doctor’s orders by yielding to the temptation of writing to his old
+friend with his own hand.
+
+“Kindly as it was expressed, the letter itself might have had little
+influence on me. But there was something else besides the letter; there
+was inclosed in it a miniature portrait of Miss Blanchard. At the back
+of the portrait, her father had written, half-jestingly, half-tenderly,
+‘I can’t ask my daughter to spare my eyes as usual, without telling her
+of your inquiries, and putting a young lady’s diffidence to the blush.
+So I send her in effigy (without her knowledge) to answer for herself.
+It is a good likeness of a good girl. If she likes your son--and if I
+like him, which I am sure I shall--we may yet live, my good friend, to
+see our children what we might once have been ourselves--man and wife.’
+My mother gave me the miniature with the letter. The portrait at once
+struck me--I can’t say why, I can’t say how--as nothing of the kind had
+ever struck me before.
+
+“Harder intellects than mine might have attributed the extraordinary
+impression produced on me to the disordered condition of my mind at that
+time; to the weariness of my own base pleasures which had been gaining
+on me for months past, to the undefined longing which that weariness
+implied for newer interests and fresher hopes than any that had
+possessed me yet. I attempted no such sober self-examination as this: I
+believed in destiny then, I believe in destiny now. It was enough for
+me to know--as I did know--that the first sense I had ever felt of
+something better in my nature than my animal self was roused by that
+girl’s face looking at me from her picture as no woman’s face had ever
+looked at me yet. In those tender eyes--in the chance of making that
+gentle creature my wife--I saw my destiny written. The portrait which
+had come into my hands so strangely and so unexpectedly was the silent
+messenger of happiness close at hand, sent to warn, to encourage, to
+rouse me before it was too late. I put the miniature under my pillow at
+night; I looked at it again the next morning. My conviction of the day
+before remained as strong as ever; my superstition (if you please to
+call it so) pointed out to me irresistibly the way on which I should go.
+There was a ship in port which was to sail for England in a fortnight,
+touching at Madeira. In that ship I took my passage.”
+
+
+Thus far the reader had advanced with no interruption to disturb him.
+But at the last words the tones of another voice, low and broken,
+mingled with his own.
+
+“Was she a fair woman,” asked the voice, “or dark, like me?”
+
+Mr. Neal paused, and looked up. The doctor was still at the bed head,
+with his fingers mechanically on the patient’s pulse. The child, missing
+his midday sleep, was beginning to play languidly with his new toy. The
+father’s eyes were watching him with a rapt and ceaseless attention. But
+one great change was visible in the listeners since the narrative had
+begun. Mrs. Armadale had dropped her hold of her husband’s hand, and sat
+with her face steadily turned away from him The hot African blood burned
+red in her dusky cheeks as she obstinately repeated the question: “Was
+she a fair woman, or dark, like me?”
+
+“Fair,” said her husband, without looking at her.
+
+Her hands, lying clasped together in her lap, wrung each other hard--she
+said no more. Mr. Neal’s overhanging eyebrows lowered ominously as
+he returned to the narrative. He had incurred his own severe
+displeasure--he had caught himself in the act of secretly pitying her.
+
+
+“I have said”--the letter proceeded--“that Ingleby was admitted to my
+closest confidence. I was sorry to leave him; and I was distressed by
+his evident surprise and mortification when he heard that I was going
+away. In my own justification, I showed him the letter and the likeness,
+and told him the truth. His interest in the portrait seemed to be hardly
+inferior to my own. He asked me about Miss Blanchard’s family and
+Miss Blanchard’s fortune with the sympathy of a true friend; and he
+strengthened my regard for him, and my belief in him, by putting himself
+out of the question, and by generously encouraging me to persist in my
+new purpose. When we parted, I was in high health and spirits. Before
+we met again the next day, I was suddenly struck by an illness which
+threatened both my reason and my life.
+
+“I have no proof against Ingleby. There was more than one woman on the
+island whom I had wronged beyond all forgiveness, and whose vengeance
+might well have reached me at that time. I can accuse nobody. I can only
+say that my life was saved by my old black nurse; and that the woman
+afterward acknowledged having used the known negro antidote to a known
+negro poison in those parts. When my first days of convalescence came,
+the ship in which my passage had been taken had long since sailed. When
+I asked for Ingleby, he was gone. Proofs of his unpardonable misconduct
+in his situation were placed before me, which not even my partiality for
+him could resist. He had been turned out of the office in the first days
+of my illness, and nothing more was known of him but that he had left
+the island.
+
+“All through my sufferings the portrait had been under my pillow. All
+through my convalescence it was my one consolation when I remembered the
+past, and my one encouragement when I thought of the future. No words
+can describe the hold that first fancy had now taken of me--with time
+and solitude and suffering to help it. My mother, with all her interest
+in the match, was startled by the unexpected success of her own project.
+She had written to tell Mr. Blanchard of my illness, but had received no
+reply. She now offered to write again, if I would promise not to leave
+her before my recovery was complete. My impatience acknowledged no
+restraint. Another ship in port gave me another chance of leaving for
+Madeira. Another examination of Mr. Blanchard’s letter of invitation
+assured me that I should find him still in the island, if I seized
+my opportunity on the spot. In defiance of my mother’s entreaties, I
+insisted on taking my passage in the second ship--and this time, when
+the ship sailed, I was on board.
+
+“The change did me good; the sea-air made a man of me again. After an
+unusually rapid voyage, I found myself at the end of my pilgrimage. On
+a fine, still evening which I can never forget, I stood alone on the
+shore, with her likeness in my bosom, and saw the white walls of the
+house where I knew that she lived.
+
+“I strolled round the outer limits of the grounds to compose myself
+before I went in. Venturing through a gate and a shrubbery, I looked
+into the garden, and saw a lady there, loitering alone on the lawn. She
+turned her face toward me--and I beheld the original of my portrait, the
+fulfillment of my dream! It is useless, and worse than useless, to write
+of it now. Let me only say that every promise which the likeness had
+made to my fancy the living woman kept to my eyes in the moment when
+they first looked on her. Let me say this--and no more.
+
+“I was too violently agitated to trust myself in her presence. I drew
+back undiscovered, and, making my way to the front door of the house,
+asked for her father first. Mr. Blanchard had retired to his room,
+and could see nobody. Upon that I took courage, and asked for Miss
+Blanchard. The servant smiled. ‘My young lady is not Miss Blanchard any
+longer, sir,’ he said. ‘She is married.’ Those words would have struck
+some men, in my position, to the earth. They fired my hot blood, and I
+seized the servant by the throat, in a frenzy of rage ‘It’s a lie!’ I
+broke out, speaking to him as if he had been one of the slaves on my own
+estate. ‘It’s the truth,’ said the man, struggling with me; ‘her husband
+is in the house at this moment.’ ‘Who is he, you scoundrel?’ The servant
+answered by repeating my own name, to my own face: ‘_Allan Armadale_.’
+
+“You can now guess the truth. Fergus Ingleby was the outlawed son whose
+name and whose inheritance I had taken. And Fergus Ingleby was even with
+me for depriving him of his birthright.
+
+“Some account of the manner in which the deception had been carried out
+is necessary to explain--I don’t say to justify--the share I took in the
+events that followed my arrival at Madeira.
+
+“By Ingleby’s own confession, he had come to Barbadoes--knowing of his
+father’s death and of my succession to the estates--with the settled
+purpose of plundering and injuring me. My rash confidence put such an
+opportunity into his hands as he could never have hoped for. He had
+waited to possess himself of the letter which my mother wrote to Mr.
+Blanchard at the outset of my illness--had then caused his own dismissal
+from his situation--and had sailed for Madeira in the very ship that was
+to have sailed with me. Arrived at the island, he had waited again till
+the vessel was away once more on her voyage, and had then presented
+himself at Mr. Blanchard’s--not in the assumed name by which I shall
+continue to speak of him here, but in the name which was as certainly
+his as mine, ‘Allan Armadale.’ The fraud at the outset presented few
+difficulties. He had only an ailing old man (who had not seen my mother
+for half a lifetime) and an innocent, unsuspicious girl (who had never
+seen her at all) to deal with; and he had learned enough in my service
+to answer the few questions that were put to him as readily as I might
+have answered them myself. His looks and manners, his winning ways with
+women, his quickness and cunning, did the rest. While I was still on my
+sickbed, he had won Miss Blanchard’s affections. While I was dreaming
+over the likeness in the first days of my convalescence, he had secured
+Mr. Blanchard’s consent to the celebration of the marriage before he and
+his daughter left the island.
+
+“Thus far Mr. Blanchard’s infirmity of sight had helped the deception.
+He had been content to send messages to my mother, and to receive the
+messages which were duly invented in return. But when the suitor was
+accepted, and the wedding-day was appointed, he felt it due to his old
+friend to write to her, asking her formal consent and inviting her to
+the marriage. He could only complete part of the letter himself; the
+rest was finished, under his dictation, by Miss Blanchard. There was no
+chance of being beforehand with the post-office this time; and Ingleby,
+sure of his place in the heart of his victim, waylaid her as she came
+out of her father’s room with the letter, and privately told her the
+truth. She was still under age, and the position was a serious one.
+If the letter was posted, no resource would be left but to wait and be
+parted forever, or to elope under circumstances which made detection
+almost a certainty. The destination of any ship which took them away
+would be known beforehand; and the fast-sailing yacht in which Mr.
+Blanchard had come to Madeira was waiting in the harbor to take him back
+to England. The only other alternative was to continue the deception by
+suppressing the letter, and to confess the truth when they were securely
+married. What arts of persuasion Ingleby used--what base advantage he
+might previously have taken of her love and her trust in him to degrade
+Miss Blanchard to his own level--I cannot say. He did degrade her. The
+letter never went to its destination; and, with the daughter’s privity
+and consent, the father’s confidence was abused to the very last.
+
+“The one precaution now left to take was to fabricate the answer from
+my mother which Mr. Blanchard expected, and which would arrive in due
+course of post before the day appointed for the marriage. Ingleby had
+my mother’s stolen letter with him; but he was without the imitative
+dexterity which would have enabled him to make use of it for a forgery
+of her handwriting. Miss Blanchard, who had consented passively to the
+deception, refused to take any active share in the fraud practiced on
+her father. In this difficulty, Ingleby found an instrument ready to
+his hand in an orphan girl of barely twelve years old, a marvel of
+precocious ability, whom Miss Blanchard had taken a romantic fancy
+to befriend and whom she had brought away with her from England to
+be trained as her maid. That girl’s wicked dexterity removed the one
+serious obstacle left to the success of the fraud. I saw the imitation
+of my mother’s writing which she had produced under Ingleby’s
+instructions and (if the shameful truth must be told) with her young
+mistress’s knowledge--and I believe I should have been deceived by it
+myself. I saw the girl afterward--and my blood curdled at the sight of
+her. If she is alive now, woe to the people who trust her! No creature
+more innately deceitful and more innately pitiless ever walked this
+earth.
+
+“The forged letter paved the way securely for the marriage; and when I
+reached the house, they were (as the servant had truly told me) man and
+wife. My arrival on the scene simply precipitated the confession
+which they had both agreed to make. Ingleby’s own lips shamelessly
+acknowledged the truth. He had nothing to lose by speaking out--he was
+married, and his wife’s fortune was beyond her father’s control. I pass
+over all that followed--my interview with the daughter, and my interview
+with the father--to come to results. For two days the efforts of the
+wife, and the efforts of the clergyman who had celebrated the marriage,
+were successful in keeping Ingleby and myself apart. On the third day
+I set my trap more successfully, and I and the man who had mortally
+injured me met together alone, face to face.
+
+“Remember how my confidence had been abused; remember how the one good
+purpose of my life had been thwarted; remember the violent passions
+rooted deep in my nature, and never yet controlled--and then imagine for
+yourself what passed between us. All I need tell here is the end. He was
+a taller and a stronger man than I, and he took his brute’s advantage
+with a brute’s ferocity. He struck me.
+
+“Think of the injuries I had received at that man’s hands, and then
+think of his setting his mark on my face by a blow!
+
+“I went to an English officer who had been my fellow-passenger on the
+voyage from Barbadoes. I told him the truth, and he agreed with me that
+a meeting was inevitable. Dueling had its received formalities and its
+established laws in those days; and he began to speak of them. I stopped
+him. ‘I will take a pistol in my right hand,’ I said, ‘and he shall take
+a pistol in his: I will take one end of a handkerchief in my left hand,
+and he shall take the other end in his; and across that handkerchief the
+duel shall be fought.’ The officer got up, and looked at me as if I had
+personally insulted him. ‘You are asking me to be present at a murder
+and a suicide,’ he said; ‘I decline to serve you.’ He left the room. As
+soon as he was gone I wrote down the words I had said to the officer and
+sent them by a messenger to Ingleby. While I was waiting for an answer,
+I sat down before the glass, and looked at his mark on my face. ‘Many a
+man has had blood on his hands and blood on his conscience,’ I thought,
+‘for less than this.’
+
+“The messenger came back with Ingleby’s answer. It appointed a meeting
+for three o’clock the next day, at a lonely place in the interior of the
+island. I had resolved what to do if he refused; his letter released
+me from the horror of my own resolution. I felt grateful to him--yes,
+absolutely grateful to him--for writing it.
+
+“The next day I went to the place. He was not there. I waited two hours,
+and he never came. At last the truth dawned on me. ‘Once a coward,
+always a coward,’ I thought. I went back to Mr. Blanchard’s house.
+Before I got there, a sudden misgiving seized me, and I turned aside
+to the harbor. I was right; the harbor was the place to go to. A ship
+sailing for Lisbon that afternoon had offered him the opportunity of
+taking a passage for himself and his wife, and escaping me. His answer
+to my challenge had served its purpose of sending me out of the way into
+the interior of the island. Once more I had trusted in Fergus Ingleby,
+and once more those sharp wits of his had been too much for me.
+
+“I asked my informant if Mr. Blanchard was aware as yet of his
+daughter’s departure. He had discovered it, but not until the ship had
+sailed. This time I took a lesson in cunning from Ingleby. Instead of
+showing myself at Mr. Blanchard’s house, I went first and looked at Mr.
+Blanchard’s yacht.
+
+“The vessel told me what the vessel’s master might have concealed--the
+truth. I found her in the confusion of a sudden preparation for sea.
+All the crew were on board, with the exception of some few who had been
+allowed their leave on shore, and who were away in the interior of the
+island, nobody knew where. When I discovered that the sailing-master was
+trying in, to supply their places with the best men he could pick up at
+a moment’s notice, my resolution was instantly taken. I knew the duties
+on board a yacht well enough, having had a vessel of my own, and having
+sailed her myself. Hurrying into the town, I changed my dress for a
+sailor’s coat and hat, and, returning to the harbor, I offered myself as
+one of the volunteer crew. I don’t know what the sailing-master saw in
+my face. My answers to his questions satisfied him, and yet he looked at
+me and hesitated. But hands were scarce, and it ended in my being taken
+on board. An hour later Mr. Blanchard joined us, and was assisted into
+the cabin, suffering pitiably in mind and body both. An hour after
+that we were at sea, with a starless night overhead, and a fresh breeze
+behind us.
+
+“As I had surmised, we were in pursuit of the vessel in which Ingleby
+and his wife had left the island that afternoon. The ship was French,
+and was employed in the timber trade: her name was _La Grace de Dieu_.
+Nothing more was known of her than that she was bound for Lisbon; that
+she had been driven out of her course; and that she had touched at
+Madeira, short of men and short of provisions. The last want had been
+supplied, but not the first. Sailors distrusted the sea-worthiness of
+the ship, and disliked the look of the vagabond crew. When those two
+serious facts had been communicated to Mr. Blanchard, the hard words he
+had spoken to his child in the first shock of discovering that she had
+helped to deceive him smote him to the heart. He instantly determined to
+give his daughter a refuge on board his own vessel, and to quiet her by
+keeping her villain of a husband out of the way of all harm at my hands.
+The yacht sailed three feet and more to the ship’s one. There was no
+doubt of our overtaking _La Grace de Dieu_; the only fear was that we
+might pass her in the darkness.
+
+“After we had been some little time out, the wind suddenly dropped, and
+there fell on us an airless, sultry calm. When the order came to get
+the topmasts on deck, and to shift the large sails, we all knew what to
+expect. In little better than an hour more, the storm was upon us, the
+thunder was pealing over our heads, and the yacht was running for it.
+She was a powerful schooner-rigged vessel of three hundred tons,
+as strong as wood and iron could make her; she was handled by a
+sailing-master who thoroughly understood his work, and she behaved
+nobly. As the new morning came, the fury of the wind, blowing still from
+the southwest quarter, subsided a little, and the sea was less heavy.
+Just before daybreak we heard faintly, through the howling of the gale,
+the report of a gun. The men collected anxiously on deck, looked at each
+other, and said: ‘There she is!’
+
+“With the daybreak we saw the vessel, and the timber-ship it was. She
+lay wallowing in the trough of the sea, her foremast and her mainmast
+both gone--a water-logged wreck. The yacht carried three boats;
+one amidships, and two slung to davits on the quarters; and the
+sailing-master, seeing signs of the storm renewing its fury before long,
+determined on lowering the quarter-boats while the lull lasted. Few as
+the people were on board the wreck, they were too many for one boat, and
+the risk of trying two boats at once was thought less, in the critical
+state of the weather, than the risk of making two separate trips from
+the yacht to the ship. There might be time to make one trip in safety,
+but no man could look at the heavens and say there would be time enough
+for two.
+
+“The boats were manned by volunteers from the crew, I being in the
+second of the two. When the first boat was got alongside of the
+timber-ship--a service of difficulty and danger which no words can
+describe--all the men on board made a rush to leave the wreck together.
+If the boat had not been pulled off again before the whole of them had
+crowded in, the lives of all must have been sacrificed. As our boat
+approached the vessel in its turn, we arranged that four of us should
+get on board--two (I being one of them) to see to the safety of Mr.
+Blanchard’s daughter, and two to beat back the cowardly remnant of the
+crew if they tried to crowd in first. The other three--the coxswain and
+two oarsmen--were left in the boat to keep her from being crushed by the
+ship. What the others saw when they first boarded _La Grace de Dieu_ I
+don’t know; what I saw was the woman whom I had lost, the woman
+vilely stolen from me, lying in a swoon on the deck. We lowered her,
+insensible, into the boat. The remnant of the crew--five in number--were
+compelled by main force to follow her in an orderly manner, one by one,
+and minute by minute, as the chance offered for safely taking them in. I
+was the last who left; and, at the next roll of the ship toward us, the
+empty length of the deck, without a living creature on it from stem to
+stern, told the boat’s crew that their work was done. With the louder
+and louder howling of the fast-rising tempest to warn them, they rowed
+for their lives back to the yacht.
+
+“A succession of heavy squalls had brought round the course of the
+new storm that was coming, from the south to the north; and the
+sailing-master, watching his opportunity, had wore the yacht to be ready
+for it. Before the last of our men had got on board again, it burst on
+us with the fury of a hurricane. Our boat was swamped, but not a life
+was lost. Once more we ran before it, due south, at the mercy of the
+wind. I was on deck with the rest, watching the one rag of sail we could
+venture to set, and waiting to supply its place with another, if it blew
+out of the bolt-ropes, when the mate came close to me, and shouted in my
+ear through the thunder of the storm: ‘She has come to her senses in the
+cabin, and has asked for her husband. Where is he?’ Not a man on board
+knew. The yacht was searched from one end to another without finding
+him. The men were mustered in defiance of the weather--he was not among
+them. The crews of the two boats were questioned. All the first crew
+could say was that they had pulled away from the wreck when the rush
+into their boat took place, and that they knew nothing of whom they let
+in or whom they kept out. All the second crew could say was that they
+had brought back to the yacht every living soul left by the first boat
+on the deck of the timber-ship. There was no blaming anybody; but, at
+the same time, there was no resisting the fact that the man was missing.
+
+“All through that day the storm, raging unabatedly, never gave us even
+the shadow of a chance of returning and searching the wreck. The one
+hope for the yacht was to scud. Toward evening the gale, after having
+carried us to the southward of Madeira, began at last to break--the wind
+shifted again--and allowed us to bear up for the island. Early the next
+morning we got back into port. Mr. Blanchard and his daughter were taken
+ashore, the sailing-master accompanying them, and warning us that he
+should have something to say on his return which would nearly concern
+the whole crew.
+
+“We were mustered on deck, and addressed by the sailing-master as soon
+as he came on board again. He had Mr. Blanchard’s orders to go back at
+once to the timber-ship and to search for the missing man. We were bound
+to do this for his sake, and for the sake of his wife, whose reason was
+despaired of by the doctors if something was not done to quiet her. We
+might be almost sure of finding the vessel still afloat, for her ladling
+of timber would keep her above water as long as her hull held together.
+If the man was on board--living or dead--he must be found and brought
+back. And if the weather continued to be moderate, there was no reason
+why the men, with proper assistance, should not bring the ship back,
+too, and (their master being quite willing) earn their share of the
+salvage with the officers of the yacht.
+
+“Upon this the crew gave three cheers, and set to work forthwith to get
+the schooner to sea again. I was the only one of them who drew back
+from the enterprise. I told them the storm had upset me--I was ill, and
+wanted rest. They all looked me in the face as I passed through them on
+my way out of the yacht, but not a man of them spoke to me.
+
+“I waited through that day at a tavern on the port for the first
+news from the wreck. It was brought toward night-fall by one of the
+pilot-boats which had taken part in the enterprise--a successful
+enterprise, as the event proved--for saving the abandoned ship. _La
+Grace de Dieu_ had been discovered still floating, and the body of
+Ingleby had been found on board, drowned in the cabin. At dawn the next
+morning the dead man was brought back by the yacht; and on the same day
+the funeral took place in the Protestant cemetery.”
+
+
+“Stop!” said the voice from the bed, before the reader could turn to a
+new leaf and begin the next paragraph.
+
+There was a change in the room, and there were changes in the audience,
+since Mr. Neal had last looked up from the narrative. A ray of sunshine
+was crossing the death-bed; and the child, overcome by drowsiness, lay
+peacefully asleep in the golden light. The father’s countenance had
+altered visibly. Forced into action by the tortured mind, the muscles of
+the lower face, which had never moved yet, were moving distortedly now.
+Warned by the damps gathering heavily on his forehead, the doctor had
+risen to revive the sinking man. On the other side of the bed the wife’s
+chair stood empty. At the moment when her husband had interrupted the
+reading, she had drawn back behind the bed head, out of his sight.
+Supporting herself against the wall, she stood there in hiding, her eyes
+fastened in hungering suspense on the manuscript in Mr. Neal’s hand.
+
+In a minute more the silence was broken again by Mr. Armadale.
+
+“Where is she?” he asked, looking angrily at his wife’s empty chair. The
+doctor pointed to the place. She had no choice but to come forward. She
+came slowly and stood before him.
+
+“You promised to go when I told you,” he said. “Go now.”
+
+Mr. Neal tried hard to control his hand as it kept his place between the
+leaves of the manuscripts but it trembled in spite of him. A suspicion
+which had been slowly forcing itself on his mind, while he was reading,
+became a certainty when he heard those words. From one revelation to
+another the letter had gone on, until it had now reached the brink of a
+last disclosure to come. At that brink the dying man had predetermined
+to silence the reader’s voice, before he had permitted his wife to hear
+the narrative read. There was the secret which the son was to know
+in after years, and which the mother was never to approach. From that
+resolution, his wife’s tenderest pleadings had never moved him an
+inch--and now, from his own lips, his wife knew it.
+
+She made him no answer. She stood there and looked at him; looked her
+last entreaty--perhaps her last farewell. His eyes gave her back no
+answering glance: they wandered from her mercilessly to the sleeping
+boy. She turned speechless from the bed. Without a look at the
+child--without a word to the two strangers breathlessly watching
+her--she kept the promise she had given, and in dead silence left the
+room.
+
+There was something in the manner of her departure which shook the
+self-possession of both the men who witnessed it. When the door closed
+on her, they recoiled instinctively from advancing further in the dark.
+The doctor’s reluctance was the first to express itself. He attempted
+to obtain the patient’s permission to withdraw until the letter was
+completed. The patient refused.
+
+Mr. Neal spoke next at greater length and to more serious purpose.
+
+“The doctor is accustomed in his profession,” he began, “and I am
+accustomed in mine, to have the secrets of others placed in our keeping.
+But it is my duty, before we go further, to ask if you really understand
+the extraordinary position which we now occupy toward one another. You
+have just excluded Mrs. Armadale, before our own eyes, from a place in
+your confidence. And you are now offering that same place to two men who
+are total strangers to you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Armadale, “_because_ you are strangers.”
+
+Few as the words were, the inference to be drawn from them was not of a
+nature to set distrust at rest. Mr. Neal put it plainly into words.
+
+“You are in urgent need of my help and of the doctor’s help,” he said.
+“Am I to understand (so long as you secure our assistance) that the
+impression which the closing passages of this letter may produce on us
+is a matter of indifference to you?”
+
+“Yes. I don’t spare you. I don’t spare myself. I _do_ spare my wife.”
+
+“You force me to a conclusion, sir, which is a very serious one,” said
+Mr. Neal. “If I am to finish this letter under your dictation, I must
+claim permission--having read aloud the greater part of it already--to
+read aloud what remains, in the hearing of this gentleman, as a
+witness.”
+
+“Read it.”
+
+Gravely doubting, the doctor resumed his chair. Gravely doubting, Mr.
+Neal turned the leaf, and read the next words:
+
+
+“There is more to tell before I can leave the dead man to his rest. I
+have described the finding of his body. But I have not described the
+circumstances under which he met his death.
+
+“He was known to have been on deck when the yacht’s boats were seen
+approaching the wreck; and he was afterward missed in the confusion
+caused by the panic of the crew. At that time the water was five feet
+deep in the cabin, and was rising fast. There was little doubt of his
+having gone down into that water of his own accord. The discovery of his
+wife’s jewel box, close under him, on the floor, explained his presence
+in the cabin. He was known to have seen help approaching, and it was
+quite likely that he had thereupon gone below to make an effort at
+saving the box. It was less probable--though it might still have been
+inferred--that his death was the result of some accident in diving,
+which had for the moment deprived him of his senses. But a discovery
+made by the yacht’s crew pointed straight to a conclusion which struck
+the men, one and all, with the same horror. When the course of their
+search brought them to the cabin, they found the scuttle bolted, and the
+door locked on the outside. Had some one closed the cabin, not knowing
+he was there? Setting the panic-stricken condition of the crew out of
+the question, there was no motive for closing the cabin before leaving
+the wreck. But one other conclusion remained. Had some murderous hand
+purposely locked the man in, and left him to drown as the water rose
+over him?
+
+“Yes. A murderous hand had locked him in, and left him to drown. That
+hand was mine.”
+
+
+The Scotchman started up from the table; the doctor shrank from the
+bedside. The two looked at the dying wretch, mastered by the same
+loathing, chilled by the same dread. He lay there, with his child’s
+head on his breast; abandoned by the sympathies of man, accursed by the
+justice of God--he lay there, in the isolation of Cain, and looked back
+at them.
+
+At the moment when the two men rose to their feet, the door leading into
+the next room was shaken heavily on the outer side, and a sound like
+the sound of a fall, striking dull on their ears, silenced them both.
+Standing nearest to the door, the doctor opened it, passed through, and
+closed it instantly. Mr. Neal turned his back on the bed, and waited the
+event in silence. The sound, which had failed to awaken the child, had
+failed also to attract the father’s notice. His own words had taken him
+far from all that was passing at his deathbed. His helpless body was
+back on the wreck, and the ghost of his lifeless hand was turning the
+lock of the cabin door.
+
+A bell rang in the next room--eager voices talked; hurried footsteps
+moved in it--an interval passed, and the doctor returned. “Was she
+listening?” whispered Mr. Neal, in German. “The women are restoring
+her,” the doctor whispered back. “She has heard it all. In God’s name,
+what are we to do next?” Before it was possible to reply, Mr. Armadale
+spoke. The doctor’s return had roused him to a sense of present things.
+
+“Go on,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
+
+“I refuse to meddle further with your infamous secret,” returned Mr.
+Neal. “You are a murderer on your own confession. If that letter is to
+be finished, don’t ask _me_ to hold the pen for you.”
+
+“You gave me your promise,” was the reply, spoken with the same
+immovable self-possession. “You must write for me, or break your word.”
+
+For the moment, Mr. Neal was silenced. There the man lay--sheltered
+from the execration of his fellow-creatures, under the shadow of
+Death--beyond the reach of all human condemnation, beyond the dread of
+all mortal laws; sensitive to nothing but his one last resolution to
+finish the letter addressed to his son.
+
+Mr. Neal drew the doctor aside. “A word with you,” he said, in German.
+“Do you persist in asserting that he may be speechless before we can
+send to Stuttgart?”
+
+“Look at his lips,” said the doctor, “and judge for yourself.”
+
+His lips answered for him: the reading of the narrative had left its
+mark on them already. A distortion at the corners of his mouth, which
+had been barely noticeable when Mr. Neal entered the room, was plainly
+visible now. His slow articulation labored more and more painfully with
+every word he uttered. The position was emphatically a terrible one.
+After a moment more of hesitation, Mr. Neal made a last attempt to
+withdraw from it.
+
+“Now my eyes are open,” he said, sternly, “do you dare hold me to an
+engagement which you forced on me blindfold?”
+
+“No,” answered Mr. Armadale. “I leave you to break your word.”
+
+The look which accompanied that reply stung the Scotchman’s pride to the
+quick. When he spoke next, he spoke seated in his former place at the
+table.
+
+“No man ever yet said of me that I broke my word,” he retorted, angrily;
+“and not even you shall say it of me now. Mind this! If you hold me to
+my promise, I hold you to my condition. I have reserved my freedom of
+action, and I warn you I will use it at my own sole discretion, as soon
+as I am released from the sight of you.”
+
+“Remember he is dying,” pleaded the doctor, gently.
+
+“Take your place, sir,” said Mr. Neal, pointing to the empty chair.
+“What remains to be read, I will only read in your hearing. What remains
+to be written, I will only write in your presence. _You_ brought me
+here. I have a right to insist--and I do insist--on your remaining as a
+witness to the last.”
+
+The doctor accepted his position without remonstrance. Mr. Neal returned
+to the manuscript, and read what remained of it uninterruptedly to the
+end:
+
+
+“Without a word in my own defense, I have acknowledged my guilt. Without
+a word in my own defense, I will reveal how the crime was committed.
+
+“No thought of him was in my mind, when I saw his wife insensible on the
+deck of the timber-ship. I did my part in lowering her safely into the
+boat. Then, and not till then, I felt the thought of him coming back. In
+the confusion that prevailed while the men of the yacht were forcing the
+men of the ship to wait their time, I had an opportunity of searching
+for him unobserved. I stepped back from the bulwark, not knowing whether
+he was away in the first boat, or whether he was still on board--I
+stepped back, and saw him mount the cabin stairs empty-handed, with the
+water dripping from him. After looking eagerly toward the boat (without
+noticing me), he saw there was time to spare before the crew were taken.
+‘Once more!’ he said to himself--and disappeared again, to make a last
+effort at recovering the jewel box. The devil at my elbow whispered,
+‘Don’t shoot him like a man: drown him like a dog!’ He was under water
+when I bolted the scuttle. But his head rose to the surface before I
+could close the cabin door. I looked at him, and he looked at me--and I
+locked the door in his face. The next minute, I was back among the last
+men left on deck. The minute after, it was too late to repent. The storm
+was threatening us with destruction, and the boat’s crew were pulling
+for their lives from the ship.
+
+“My son! I have pursued you from my grave with a confession which my
+love might have spared you. Read on, and you will know why.
+
+“I will say nothing of my sufferings; I will plead for no mercy to my
+memory. There is a strange sinking at my heart, a strange trembling in
+my hand, while I write these lines, which warns me to hasten to the end.
+I left the island without daring to look for the last time at the woman
+whom I had lost so miserably, whom I had injured so vilely. When I left,
+the whole weight of the suspicion roused by the manner of Ingleby’s
+death rested on the crew of the French vessel. No motive for the
+supposed murder could be brought home to any of them; but they were
+known to be, for the most part, outlawed ruffians capable of any crime,
+and they were suspected and examined accordingly. It was not till
+afterward that I heard by accident of the suspicion shifting round at
+last to me. The widow alone recognized the vague description given
+of the strange man who had made one of the yacht’s crew, and who had
+disappeared the day afterward. The widow alone knew, from that time
+forth, why her husband had been murdered, and who had done the deed.
+When she made that discovery, a false report of my death had been
+previously circulated in the island. Perhaps I was indebted to the
+report for my immunity from all legal proceedings; perhaps (no eye but
+Ingleby’s having seen me lock the cabin door) there was not evidence
+enough to justify an inquiry; perhaps the widow shrank from the
+disclosures which must have followed a public charge against me, based
+on her own bare suspicion of the truth. However it might be, the crime
+which I had committed unseen has remained a crime unpunished from that
+time to this.
+
+“I left Madeira for the West Indies in disguise. The first news that met
+me when the ship touched at Barbadoes was the news of my mother’s death.
+I had no heart to return to the old scenes. The prospect of living at
+home in solitude, with the torment of my own guilty remembrances gnawing
+at me day and night, was more than I had the courage to confront.
+Without landing, or discovering myself to any one on shore, I went on as
+far as the ship would take me--to the island of Trinidad.
+
+“At that place I first saw your mother. It was my duty to tell her the
+truth--and I treacherously kept my secret. It was my duty to spare
+her the hopeless sacrifice of her freedom and her happiness to such an
+existence as mine--and I did her the injury of marrying her. If she is
+alive when you read this, grant her the mercy of still concealing the
+truth. The one atonement I can make to her is to keep her unsuspicious
+to the last of the man she has married. Pity her, as I have pitied her.
+Let this letter be a sacred confidence between father and son.
+
+“The time when you were born was the time when my health began to give
+way. Some months afterward, in the first days of my recovery, you were
+brought to me; and I was told that you had been christened during
+my illness. Your mother had done as other loving mothers do--she had
+christened her first-born by his father’s name. You, too, were Allan
+Armadale. Even in that early time--even while I was happily ignorant of
+what I have discovered since--my mind misgave me when I looked at you,
+and thought of that fatal name.
+
+“As soon as I could be moved, my presence was required at my estates in
+Barbadoes. It crossed my mind--wild as the idea may appear to you--to
+renounce the condition which compelled my son as well as myself to take
+the Armadale name, or lose the succession to the Armadale property.
+But, even in those days, the rumor of a contemplated emancipation of
+the slaves--the emancipation which is now close at hand--was spreading
+widely in the colony. No man could tell how the value of West Indian
+property might be affected if that threatened change ever took place.
+No man could tell--if I gave you back my own paternal name, and left you
+without other provision in the future than my own paternal estate--how
+you might one day miss the broad Armadale acres, or to what future
+penury I might be blindly condemning your mother and yourself. Mark how
+the fatalities gathered one on the other! Mark how your Christian name
+came to you, how your surname held to you, in spite of me!
+
+“My health had improved in my old home--but it was for a time only. I
+sank again, and the doctors ordered me to Europe. Avoiding England (why,
+you may guess), I took my passage, with you and your mother, for France.
+From France we passed into Italy. We lived here; we lived there. It was
+useless. Death had got met and Death followed me, go where I might. I
+bore it, for I had an alleviation to turn to which I had not deserved.
+You may shrink in horror from the very memory of me now. In those days,
+you comforted me. The only warmth I still felt at my heart was the
+warmth you brought to it. My last glimpses of happiness in this world
+were the glimpses given me by my infant son.
+
+“We removed from Italy, and went next to Lausanne--the place from which
+I am now writing to you. The post of this morning has brought me news,
+later and fuller than any I had received thus far, of the widow of the
+murdered man. The letter lies before me while I write. It comes from a
+friend of my early days, who has seen her, and spoken to her--who has
+been the first to inform her that the report of my death in Madeira was
+false. He writes, at a loss to account for the violent agitation which
+she showed on hearing that I was still alive, that I was married, and
+that I had an infant son. He asks me if I can explain it. He speaks in
+terms of sympathy for her--a young and beautiful woman, buried in the
+retirement of a fishing-village on the Devonshire coast; her father
+dead; her family estranged from her, in merciless disapproval of her
+marriage. He writes words which might have cut me to the heart, but for
+a closing passage in his letter, which seized my whole attention the
+instant I came to it, and which has forced from me the narrative that
+these pages contain.
+
+“I now know what never even entered my mind as a suspicion till the
+letter reached me. I now know that the widow of the man whose death lies
+at my door has borne a posthumous child. That child is a boy--a year
+older than my own son. Secure in her belief in my death, his mother
+has done what my son’s mother did: she has christened her child by his
+father’s name. Again, in the second generation, there are two Allan
+Armadales as there were in the first. After working its deadly mischief
+with the fathers, the fatal resemblance of names has descended to work
+its deadly mischief with the sons.
+
+“Guiltless minds may see nothing thus far but the result of a series of
+events which could lead no other way. I--with that man’s life to answer
+for--I, going down into my grave, with my crime unpunished and unatoned,
+see what no guiltless minds can discern. I see danger in the future,
+begotten of the danger in the past--treachery that is the offspring of
+_his_ treachery, and crime that is the child of _my_ crime. Is the dread
+that now shakes me to the soul a phantom raised by the superstition of a
+dying man? I look into the Book which all Christendom venerates, and the
+Book tells me that the sin of the father shall be visited on the child.
+I look out into the world, and I see the living witnesses round me to
+that terrible truth. I see the vices which have contaminated the father
+descending, and contaminating the child; I see the shame which has
+disgraced the father’s name descending, and disgracing the child’s. I
+look in on myself, and I see my crime ripening again for the future
+in the self-same circumstance which first sowed the seeds of it in the
+past, and descending, in inherited contamination of evil, from me to my
+son.”
+
+
+At those lines the writing ended. There the stroke had struck him, and
+the pen had dropped from his hand.
+
+He knew the place; he remembered the words. At the instant when the
+reader’s voice stopped, he looked eagerly at the doctor. “I have
+got what comes next in my mind,” he said, with slower and slower
+articulation. “Help me to speak it.”
+
+The doctor administered a stimulant, and signed to Mr. Neal to give him
+time. After a little delay, the flame of the sinking spirit leaped up
+in his eyes once more. Resolutely struggling with his failing speech,
+he summoned the Scotchman to take the pen, and pronounced the closing
+sentences of the narrative, as his memory gave them back to him, one by
+one, in these words:
+
+
+“Despise my dying conviction if you will, but grant me, I solemnly
+implore you, one last request. My son! the only hope I have left for
+you hangs on a great doubt--the doubt whether we are, or are not,
+the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can
+conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death,
+we go inevitably to nothing that is before death. If this be so, indeed,
+respect--though you respect nothing else--the warning which I give you
+from my grave. Never, to your dying day, let any living soul approach
+you who is associated, directly or indirectly, with the crime which your
+father has committed. Avoid the widow of the man I killed--if the widow
+still lives. Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the
+marriage--if the maid is still in her service. And more than all,
+avoid the man who bears the same name as your own. Offend your best
+benefactor, if that benefactor’s influence has connected you one with
+the other. Desert the woman who loves you, if that woman is a link
+between you and him. Hide yourself from him under an assumed name. Put
+the mountains and the seas between you; be ungrateful, be unforgiving;
+be all that is most repellent to your own gentler nature, rather than
+live under the same roof, and breathe the same air, with that man. Never
+let the two Allan Armadales meet in this world: never, never, never!
+
+“There lies the way by which you may escape--if any way there be. Take
+it, if you prize your own innocence and your own happiness, through all
+your life to come!
+
+“I have done. If I could have trusted any weaker influence than the
+influence of this confession to incline you to my will, I would have
+spared you the disclosure which these pages contain. You are lying on my
+breast, sleeping the innocent sleep of a child, while a stranger’s hand
+writes these words for you as they fall from my lips. Think what the
+strength of my conviction must be, when I can find the courage, on my
+death-bed, to darken all your young life at its outset with the shadow
+of your father’s crime. Think, and be warned. Think, and forgive me if
+you can.”
+
+
+There it ended. Those were the father’s last words to the son.
+
+Inexorably faithful to his forced duty, Mr. Neal laid aside the pen, and
+read over aloud the lines he had just written. “Is there more to add?”
+ he asked, with his pitilessly steady voice. There was no more to add.
+
+Mr. Neal folded the manuscript, inclosed it in a sheet of paper, and
+sealed it with Mr. Armadale’s own seal. “The address?” he said, with his
+merciless business formality. “To Allan Armadale, junior,” he wrote, as
+the words were dictated from the bed. “Care of Godfrey Hammick, Esq.,
+Offices of Messrs. Hammick and Ridge, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.”
+ Having written the address, he waited, and considered for a moment. “Is
+your executor to open this?” he asked.
+
+“No! he is to give it to my son when my son is of an age to understand
+it.”
+
+“In that case,” pursued Mr. Neal, with all his wits in remorseless
+working order, “I will add a dated note to the address, repeating your
+own words as you have just spoken them, and explaining the circumstances
+under which my handwriting appears on the document.” He wrote the note
+in the briefest and plainest terms, read it over aloud as he had read
+over what went before, signed his name and address at the end, and made
+the doctor sign next, as witness of the proceedings, and as medical
+evidence of the condition in which Mr. Armadale then lay. This done,
+he placed the letter in a second inclosure, sealed it as before, and
+directed it to Mr. Hammick, with the superscription of “private” added
+to the address. “Do you insist on my posting this?” he asked, rising
+with the letter in his hand.
+
+“Give him time to think,” said the doctor. “For the child’s sake, give
+him time to think! A minute may change him.”
+
+“I will give him five minutes,” answered Mr. Neal, placing his watch on
+the table, implacable just to the very last.
+
+They waited, both looking attentively at Mr. Armadale. The signs of
+change which had appeared in him already were multiplying fast. The
+movement which continued mental agitation had communicated to the
+muscles of his face was beginning, under the same dangerous influence,
+to spread downward. His once helpless hands lay still no longer; they
+struggled pitiably on the bedclothes. At sight of that warning token,
+the doctor turned with a gesture of alarm, and beckoned Mr. Neal to
+come nearer. “Put the question at once,” he said; “if you let the five
+minutes pass, you may be too late.”
+
+Mr. Neal approached the bed. He, too, noticed the movement of the hands.
+“Is that a bad sign?” he asked.
+
+The doctor bent his head gravely. “Put your question at once,” he
+repeated, “or you may be too late.”
+
+Mr. Neal held the letter before the eyes of the dying man “Do you know
+what this is?”
+
+“My letter.”
+
+“Do you insist on my posting it?”
+
+He mastered his failing speech for the last time, and gave the answer:
+“Yes!”
+
+Mr. Neal moved to the door, with the letter in his hand. The German
+followed him a few steps, opened his lips to plead for a longer delay,
+met the Scotchman’s inexorable eye, and drew back again in silence.
+The door closed and parted them, without a word having passed on either
+side.
+
+The doctor went back to the bed and whispered to the sinking man: “Let
+me call him back; there is time to stop him yet!” It was useless. No
+answer came; nothing showed that he heeded, or even heard. His eyes
+wandered from the child, rested for a moment on his own struggling hand,
+and looked up entreatingly in the compassionate face that bent over him.
+The doctor lifted the hand, paused, followed the father’s longing eyes
+back to the child, and, interpreting his last wish, moved the hand
+gently toward the boy’s head. The hand touched it, and trembled
+violently. In another instant the trembling seized on the arm, and
+spread over the whole upper part of the body. The face turned from pale
+to red, from red to purple, from purple to pale again. Then the toiling
+hands lay still, and the shifting color changed no more.
+
+
+The window of the next room was open, when the doctor entered it from
+the death chamber, with the child in his arms. He looked out as he
+passed by, and saw Mr. Neal in the street below, slowly returning to the
+inn.
+
+“Where is the letter?” he asked.
+
+Three words sufficed for the Scotchman’s answer.
+
+“In the post.”
+
+THE END OF THE PROLOGUE.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+I. THE MYSTERY OF OZIAS MIDWINTER.
+
+ON a warm May night, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
+the Reverend Decimus Brock--at that time a visitor to the Isle of
+Man--retired to his bedroom at Castletown, with a serious personal
+responsibility in close pursuit of him, and with no distinct idea of the
+means by which he might relieve himself from the pressure of his present
+circumstances.
+
+The clergyman had reached that mature period of human life at which a
+sensible man learns to decline (as often as his temper will let him) all
+useless conflict with the tyranny of his own troubles. Abandoning any
+further effort to reach a decision in the emergency that now beset him,
+Mr. Brock sat down placidly in his shirt sleeves on the side of his bed,
+and applied his mind to consider next whether the emergency itself was
+as serious as he had hitherto been inclined to think it. Following this
+new way out of his perplexities, Mr. Brock found himself unexpectedly
+traveling to the end in view by the least inspiriting of all human
+journeys--a journey through the past years of his own life.
+
+One by one the events of those years--all connected with the same little
+group of characters, and all more or less answerable for the anxiety
+which was now intruding itself between the clergyman and his night’s
+rest--rose, in progressive series, on Mr. Brock’s memory. The first of
+the series took him back, through a period of fourteen years, to his own
+rectory on the Somersetshire shores of the Bristol Channel, and closeted
+him at a private interview with a lady who had paid him a visit in the
+character of a total stranger to the parson and the place.
+
+
+The lady’s complexion was fair, the lady’s figure was well preserved;
+she was still a young woman, and she looked even younger than her age.
+There was a shade of melancholy in her expression, and an undertone of
+suffering in her voice--enough, in each case, to indicate that she had
+known trouble, but not enough to obtrude that trouble on the notice of
+others. She brought with her a fine, fair-haired boy of eight years old,
+whom she presented as her son, and who was sent out of the way, at the
+beginning of the interview, to amuse himself in the rectory garden. Her
+card had preceded her entrance into the study, and had announced her
+under the name of “Mrs. Armadale.” Mr. Brock began to feel interested in
+her before she had opened her lips; and when the son had been dismissed,
+he awaited with some anxiety to hear what the mother had to say to him.
+
+Mrs. Armadale began by informing the rector that she was a widow. Her
+husband had perished by shipwreck a short time after their union, on the
+voyage from Madeira to Lisbon. She had been brought to England,
+after her affliction, under her father’s protection; and her child--a
+posthumous son--had been born on the family estate in Norfolk. Her
+father’s death, shortly afterward, had deprived her of her only
+surviving parent, and had exposed her to neglect and misconstruction on
+the part of her remaining relatives (two brothers), which had estranged
+her from them, she feared, for the rest of her days. For some time past
+she had lived in the neighboring county of Devonshire, devoting herself
+to the education of her boy, who had now reached an age at which he
+required other than his mother’s teaching. Leaving out of the question
+her own unwillingness to part with him, in her solitary position, she
+was especially anxious that he should not be thrown among strangers by
+being sent to school. Her darling project was to bring him up privately
+at home, and to keep him, as he advanced in years, from all contact with
+the temptations and the dangers of the world.
+
+With these objects in view, her longer sojourn in her own locality
+(where the services of the resident clergyman, in the capacity of tutor,
+were not obtainable) must come to an end. She had made inquiries, had
+heard of a house that would suit her in Mr. Brock’s neighborhood, and
+had also been told that Mr. Brock himself had formerly been in the habit
+of taking pupils. Possessed of this information, she had ventured to
+present herself, with references that vouched for her respectability,
+but without a formal introduction; and she had now to ask whether (in
+the event of her residing in the neighborhood) any terms that could be
+offered would induce Mr. Brock to open his doors once more to a pupil,
+and to allow that pupil to be her son.
+
+If Mrs. Armadale had been a woman of no personal attractions, or if
+Mr. Brock had been provided with an intrenchment to fight behind in the
+shape of a wife, it is probable that the widow’s journey might have been
+taken in vain. As things really were, the rector examined the references
+which were offered to him, and asked time for consideration. When the
+time had expired, he did what Mrs. Armadale wished him to do--he
+offered his back to the burden, and let the mother load him with the
+responsibility of the son.
+
+This was the first event of the series; the date of it being the year
+eighteen hundred and thirty-seven. Mr. Brock’s memory, traveling forward
+toward the present from that point, picked up the second event in its
+turn, and stopped next at the year eighteen hundred and forty-five.
+
+-------------
+
+The fishing-village on the Somersetshire coast was still the scene, and
+the characters were once again--Mrs. Armadale and her son.
+
+Through the eight years that had passed, Mr. Brock’s responsibility had
+rested on him lightly enough. The boy had given his mother and his tutor
+but little trouble. He was certainly slow over his books, but more from
+a constitutional inability to fix his attention on his tasks than from
+want of capacity to understand them. His temperament, it could not be
+denied, was heedless to the last degree: he acted recklessly on his
+first impulses, and rushed blindfold at all his conclusions. On the
+other hand, it was to be said in his favor that his disposition was open
+as the day; a more generous, affectionate, sweet-tempered lad it
+would have been hard to find anywhere. A certain quaint originality of
+character, and a natural healthiness in all his tastes, carried him
+free of most of the dangers to which his mother’s system of education
+inevitably exposed him. He had a thoroughly English love of the sea and
+of all that belongs to it; and as he grew in years, there was no
+luring him away from the water-side, and no keeping him out of the
+boat-builder’s yard. In course of time his mother caught him actually
+working there, to her infinite annoyance and surprise, as a volunteer.
+He acknowledged that his whole future ambition was to have a yard of his
+own, and that his one present object was to learn to build a boat for
+himself. Wisely foreseeing that such a pursuit as this for his leisure
+hours was exactly what was wanted to reconcile the lad to a position of
+isolation from companions of his own rank and age, Mr. Brock prevailed
+on Mrs. Armadale, with no small difficulty, to let her son have his
+way. At the period of that second event in the clergyman’s life with
+his pupil which is now to be related, young Armadale had practiced long
+enough in the builder’s yard to have reached the summit of his wishes,
+by laying with his own hands the keel of his own boat.
+
+Late on a certain summer day, not long after Allan had completed his
+sixteenth year, Mr. Brock left his pupil hard at work in the yard,
+and went to spend the evening with Mrs. Armadale, taking the _Times_
+newspaper with him in his hand.
+
+The years that had passed since they had first met had long since
+regulated the lives of the clergyman and his neighbor. The first
+advances which Mr. Brock’s growing admiration for the widow had led him
+to make in the early days of their intercourse had been met on her
+side by an appeal to his forbearance which had closed his lips for the
+future. She had satisfied him, at once and forever, that the one place
+in her heart which he could hope to occupy was the place of a friend.
+He loved her well enough to take what she would give him: friends they
+became, and friends they remained from that time forth. No jealous
+dread of another man’s succeeding where he had failed imbittered the
+clergyman’s placid relations with the woman whom he loved. Of the few
+resident gentlemen in the neighborhood, none were ever admitted by Mrs.
+Armadale to more than the merest acquaintance with her. Contentedly
+self-buried in her country retreat, she was proof against every social
+attraction that would have tempted other women in her position and
+at her age. Mr. Brock and his newspaper, appearing with monotonous
+regularity at her tea-table three times a week, told her all she knew
+or cared to know of the great outer world which circled round the narrow
+and changeless limits of her daily life.
+
+On the evening in question Mr. Brock took the arm-chair in which he
+always sat, accepted the one cup of tea which he always drank, and
+opened the newspaper which he always read aloud to Mrs. Armadale, who
+invariably listened to him reclining on the same sofa, with the same
+sort of needle-work everlastingly in her hand.
+
+“Bless my soul!” cried the rector, with his voice in a new octave, and
+his eyes fixed in astonishment on the first page of the newspaper.
+
+No such introduction to the evening readings as this had ever happened
+before in all Mrs. Armadale’s experience as a listener. She looked
+up from the sofa in a flutter of curiosity, and besought her reverend
+friend to favor her with an explanation.
+
+“I can hardly believe my own eyes,” said Mr. Brock. “Here is an
+advertisement, Mrs. Armadale, addressed to your son.”
+
+Without further preface, he read the advertisement as follows:
+
+
+IF this should meet the eye of ALLAN ARMADALE, he is desired to
+communicate, either personally or by letter, with Messrs. Hammick and
+Ridge (Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London), on business of importance which
+seriously concerns him. Any one capable of informing Messrs. H. and R.
+where the person herein advertised can be found would confer a favor
+by doing the same. To prevent mistakes, it is further notified that
+the missing Allan Armadale is a youth aged fifteen years, and that this
+advertisement is inserted at the instance of his family and friends.
+
+
+“Another family, and other friends,” said Mrs. Armadale. “The person
+whose name appears in that advertisement is not my son.”
+
+The tone in which she spoke surprised Mr. Brock. The change in her face,
+when he looked up, shocked him. Her delicate complexion had faded away
+to a dull white; her eyes were averted from her visitor with a strange
+mixture of confusion and alarm; she looked an older woman than she was,
+by ten good years at least.
+
+“The name is so very uncommon,” said Mr. Brock, imagining he had
+offended her, and trying to excuse himself. “It really seemed impossible
+there could be two persons--”
+
+“There _are_ two,” interposed Mrs. Armadale. “Allan, as you know, is
+sixteen years old. If you look back at the advertisement, you will find
+the missing person described as being only fifteen. Although he bears
+the same surname and the same Christian name, he is, I thank God, in no
+way whatever related to my son. As long as I live, it will be the object
+of my hopes and prayers that Allan may never see him, may never even
+hear of him. My kind friend, I see I surprise you: will you bear with
+me if I leave these strange circumstances unexplained? There is past
+misfortune and misery in my early life too painful for me to speak of,
+even to _you_. Will you help me to bear the remembrance of it, by never
+referring to this again? Will you do even more--will you promise not to
+speak of it to Allan, and not to let that newspaper fall in his way?”
+
+Mr. Brock gave the pledge required of him, and considerately left her to
+herself.
+
+The rector had been too long and too truly attached to Mrs. Armadale to
+be capable of regarding her with any unworthy distrust. But it would be
+idle to deny that he felt disappointed by her want of confidence in him,
+and that he looked inquisitively at the advertisement more than once on
+his way back to his own house.
+
+It was clear enough, now, that Mrs. Armadale’s motives for burying her
+son as well as herself in the seclusion of a remote country village was
+not so much to keep him under her own eye as to keep him from discovery
+by his namesake. Why did she dread the idea of their ever meeting? Was
+it a dread for herself, or a dread for her son? Mr. Brock’s loyal belief
+in his friend rejected any solution of the difficulty which pointed at
+some past misconduct of Mrs. Armadale’s. That night he destroyed the
+advertisement with his own hand; that night he resolved that the subject
+should never be suffered to enter his mind again. There was another
+Allan Armadale about the world, a stranger to his pupil’s blood, and
+a vagabond advertised in the public newspapers. So much accident had
+revealed to him. More, for Mrs. Armadale’s sake, he had no wish to
+discover--and more he would never seek to know.
+
+This was the second in the series of events which dated from the
+rector’s connection with Mrs. Armadale and her son. Mr. Brock’s memory,
+traveling on nearer and nearer to present circumstances, reached the
+third stage of its journey through the by-gone time, and stopped at the
+year eighteen hundred and fifty, next.
+
+The five years that had passed had made little if any change in Allan’s
+character. He had simply developed (to use his tutor’s own expression)
+from a boy of sixteen to a boy of twenty-one. He was just as easy and
+open in his disposition as ever; just as quaintly and inveterately
+good-humored; just as heedless in following his own impulses, lead him
+where they might. His bias toward the sea had strengthened with his
+advance to the years of manhood. From building a boat, he had now got
+on--with two journeymen at work under him--to building a decked vessel
+of five-and-thirty tons. Mr. Brock had conscientiously tried to divert
+him to higher aspirations; had taken him to Oxford, to see what college
+life was like; had taken him to London, to expand his mind by the
+spectacle of the great metropolis. The change had diverted Allan, but
+had not altered him in the least. He was as impenetrably superior to
+all worldly ambition as Diogenes himself. “Which is best,” asked this
+unconscious philosopher, “to find out the way to be happy for yourself,
+or to let other people try if they can find it out for you?” From that
+moment Mr. Brock permitted his pupil’s character to grow at its own rate
+of development, and Allan went on uninterruptedly with the work of his
+yacht.
+
+Time, which had wrought so little change in the son, had not passed
+harmless over the mother.
+
+Mrs. Armadale’s health was breaking fast. As her strength failed, her
+temper altered for the worse: she grew more and more fretful, more and
+more subject to morbid fears and fancies, more and more reluctant to
+leave her own room. Since the appearance of the advertisement five years
+since, nothing had happened to force her memory back to the painful
+associations connected with her early life. No word more on the
+forbidden topic had passed between the rector and herself; no suspicion
+had ever been raised in Allan’s mind of the existence of his namesake;
+and yet, without the shadow of a reason for any special anxiety, Mrs.
+Armadale had become, of late years, obstinately and fretfully uneasy
+on the subject of her son. More than once Mr. Brock dreaded a serious
+disagreement between them; but Allan’s natural sweetness of temper,
+fortified by his love for his mother, carried him triumphantly through
+all trials. Not a hard word or a harsh look ever escaped him in her
+presence; he was unchangeably loving and forbearing with her to the very
+last.
+
+Such were the positions of the son, the mother, and the friend, when
+the next notable event happened in the lives of the three. On a dreary
+afternoon, early in the month of November, Mr. Brock was disturbed
+over the composition of his sermon by a visit from the landlord of the
+village inn.
+
+After making his introductory apologies, the landlord stated the urgent
+business on which he had come to the rectory clearly enough.
+
+A few hours since a young man had been brought to the inn by some farm
+laborers in the neighborhood, who had found him wandering about one of
+their master’s fields in a disordered state of mind, which looked to
+their eyes like downright madness. The landlord had given the poor
+creature shelter while he sent for medical help; and the doctor, on
+seeing him, had pronounced that he was suffering from fever on the
+brain, and that his removal to the nearest town at which a hospital or
+a work-house infirmary could be found to receive him would in all
+probability be fatal to his chances of recovery. After hearing this
+expression of opinion, and after observing for himself that the
+stranger’s only luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag which had been
+found in the field near him, the landlord had set off on the spot to
+consult the rector, and to ask, in this serious emergency, what course
+he was to take next.
+
+Mr. Brock was the magistrate as well as the clergyman of the district,
+and the course to be taken, in the first instance, was to his mind clear
+enough. He put on his hat, and accompanied the landlord back to the inn.
+
+At the inn door they were joined by Allan, who had heard the news
+through another channel, and who was waiting Mr. Brock’s arrival, to
+follow in the magistrate’s train, and to see what the stranger was like.
+The village surgeon joined them at the same moment, and the four went
+into the inn together.
+
+They found the landlord’s son on one side, and the hostler on the other,
+holding the man down in his chair. Young, slim, and undersized, he was
+strong enough at that moment to make it a matter of difficulty for the
+two to master him. His tawny complexion, his large, bright brown eyes,
+and his black beard gave him something of a foreign look. His dress was
+a little worn, but his linen was clean. His dusky hands were wiry and
+nervous, and were lividly discolored in more places than one by the
+scars of old wounds. The toes of one of his feet, off which he had
+kicked the shoe, grasped at the chair rail through his stocking, with
+the sensitive muscular action which is only seen in those who have been
+accustomed to go barefoot. In the frenzy that now possessed him, it was
+impossible to notice, to any useful purpose, more than this. After
+a whispered consultation with Mr. Brock, the surgeon personally
+superintended the patient’s removal to a quiet bedroom at the back of
+the house. Shortly afterward his clothes and his carpet-bag were sent
+downstairs, and were searched, on the chance of finding a clew by which
+to communicate with his friends, in the magistrate’s presence.
+
+The carpet-bag contained nothing but a change of clothing, and two
+books--the Plays of Sophocles, in the original Greek, and the “Faust” of
+Goethe, in the original German. Both volumes were much worn by reading,
+and on the fly-leaf of each were inscribed the initials O. M. So much
+the bag revealed, and no more.
+
+The clothes which the man wore when he was discovered in the field were
+tried next. A purse (containing a sovereign and a few shillings), a
+pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, and a little drinking-cup of horn
+were produced in succession. The next object, and the last, was found
+crumpled up carelessly in the breast-pocket of the coat. It was a
+written testimonial to character, dated and signed, but without any
+address.
+
+So far as this document could tell it, the stranger’s story was a sad
+one indeed. He had apparently been employed for a short time as usher at
+a school, and had been turned adrift in the world, at the outset of his
+illness, from the fear that the fever might be infectious, and that
+the prosperity of the establishment might suffer accordingly. Not the
+slightest imputation of any misbehavior in his employment rested on him.
+On the contrary, the schoolmaster had great pleasure in testifying to
+his capacity and his character, and in expressing a fervent hope that
+he might (under Providence) succeed in recovering his health in somebody
+else’s house. The written testimonial which afforded this glimpse at the
+man’s story served one purpose more: it connected him with the initials
+on the books, and identified him to the magistrate and the landlord
+under the strangely uncouth name of Ozias Midwinter.
+
+Mr. Brock laid aside the testimonial, suspecting that the schoolmaster
+had purposely abstained from writing his address on it, with the view
+of escaping all responsibility in the event of his usher’s death. In any
+case, it was manifestly useless, under existing circumstances, to think
+of tracing the poor wretch’s friends, if friends he had. To the inn he
+had been brought, and, as a matter of common humanity, at the inn he
+must remain for the present. The difficulty about expenses, if it came
+to the worst, might possibly be met by charitable contributions from
+the neighbors, or by a collection after a sermon at church. Assuring the
+landlord that he would consider this part of the question and would let
+him know the result, Mr. Brock quitted the inn, without noticing for the
+moment that he had left Allan there behind him.
+
+Before he had got fifty yards from the house his pupil overtook him.
+Allan had been most uncharacteristically silent and serious all through
+the search at the inn; but he had now recovered his usual high spirits.
+A stranger would have set him down as wanting in common feeling.
+
+“This is a sad business,” said the rector. “I really don’t know what to
+do for the best about that unfortunate man.”
+
+“You may make your mind quite easy, sir,” said young Armadale, in his
+off-hand way. “I settled it all with the landlord a minute ago.”
+
+“You!” exclaimed Mr. Brock, in the utmost astonishment.
+
+“I have merely given a few simple directions,” pursued Allan. “Our
+friend the usher is to have everything he requires, and is to be treated
+like a prince; and when the doctor and the landlord want their money
+they are to come to me.”
+
+“My dear Allan,” Mr. Brock gently remonstrated, “when will you learn
+to think before you act on those generous impulses of yours? You
+are spending more money already on your yacht-building than you can
+afford--”
+
+“Only think! we laid the first planks of the deck the day before
+yesterday,” said Allan, flying off to the new subject in his usual
+bird-witted way. “There’s just enough of it done to walk on, if you
+don’t feel giddy. I’ll help you up the ladder, Mr. Brock, if you’ll only
+come and try.”
+
+“Listen to me,” persisted the rector. “I’m not talking about the
+yacht now; that is to say, I am only referring to the yacht as an
+illustration--”
+
+“And a very pretty illustration, too,” remarked the incorrigible Allan.
+“Find me a smarter little vessel of her size in all England, and
+I’ll give up yacht-building to-morrow. Whereabouts were we in our
+conversation, sir? I’m rather afraid we have lost ourselves somehow.”
+
+“I am rather afraid one of us is in the habit of losing himself every
+time he opens his lips,” retorted Mr. Brock. “Come, come, Allan, this is
+serious. You have been rendering yourself liable for expenses which you
+may not be able to pay. Mind, I am far from blaming you for your kind
+feeling toward this poor friendless man--”
+
+“Don’t be low-spirited about him, sir. He’ll get over it--he’ll be all
+right again in a week or so. A capital fellow, I have not the least
+doubt!” continued Allan, whose habit it was to believe in everybody and
+to despair of nothing. “Suppose you ask him to dinner when he gets well,
+Mr. Brock? I should like to find out (when we are all three snug
+and friendly together over our wine, you know) how he came by that
+extraordinary name of his. Ozias Midwinter! Upon my life, his father
+ought to be ashamed of himself.”
+
+“Will you answer me one question before I go in?” said the rector,
+stopping in despair at his own gate. “This man’s bill for lodging and
+medical attendance may mount to twenty or thirty pounds before he gets
+well again, if he ever does get well. How are you to pay for it?”
+
+“What’s that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says when he finds himself
+in a mess with his accounts, and doesn’t see his way out again?” asked
+Allan. “He always tells his honorable friend he is quite willing to
+leave a something or other--”
+
+“A margin?” suggested Mr. Brock.
+
+“That’s it,” said Allan. “I’m like the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I’m
+quite willing to leave a margin. The yacht (bless her heart!) doesn’t
+eat up everything. If I’m short by a pound or two, don’t be afraid,
+sir. There’s no pride about me; I’ll go round with the hat, and get
+the balance in the neighborhood. Deuce take the pounds, shillings,
+and pence! I wish they could all three get rid of themselves, like the
+Bedouin brothers at the show. Don’t you remember the Bedouin brothers,
+Mr. Brock? ‘Ali will take a lighted torch, and jump down the throat
+of his brother Muli; Muli will take a lighted torch, and jump down the
+throat of his brother Hassan; and Hassan, taking a third lighted torch,
+will conclude the performances by jumping down his own throat, and
+leaving the spectators in total darkness.’ Wonderfully good, that--what
+I call real wit, with a fine strong flavor about it. Wait a minute!
+Where are we? We have lost ourselves again. Oh, I remember--money. What
+I can’t beat into my thick head,” concluded Allan, quite unconscious
+that he was preaching socialist doctrines to a clergyman; “is the
+meaning of the fuss that’s made about giving money away. Why can’t the
+people who have got money to spare give it to the people who haven’t got
+money to spare, and make things pleasant and comfortable all the world
+over in that way? You’re always telling me to cultivate ideas, Mr. Brock
+There’s an idea, and, upon my life, I don’t think it’s a bad one.”
+
+Mr. Brock gave his pupil a good-humored poke with the end of his stick.
+“Go back to your yacht,” he said. “All the little discretion you have
+got in that flighty head of yours is left on board in your tool-chest.
+How that lad will end,” pursued the rector, when he was left by himself,
+“is more than any human being can say. I almost wish I had never taken
+the responsibility of him on my shoulders.”
+
+Three weeks passed before the stranger with the uncouth name was
+pronounced to be at last on the way to recovery.
+
+During this period Allan had made regular inquiries at the inn, and, as
+soon as the sick man was allowed to see visitors, Allan was the first
+who appeared at his bedside. So far Mr. Brock’s pupil had shown no more
+than a natural interest in one of the few romantic circumstances
+which had varied the monotony of the village life: he had committed
+no imprudence, and he had exposed himself to no blame. But as the
+days passed, young Armadale’s visits to the inn began to lengthen
+considerably, and the surgeon (a cautious elderly man) gave the rector a
+private hint to bestir himself. Mr. Brock acted on the hint immediately,
+and discovered that Allan had followed his usual impulses in his usual
+headlong way. He had taken a violent fancy to the castaway usher and had
+invited Ozias Midwinter to reside permanently in the neighborhood in the
+new and interesting character of his bosom friend.
+
+Before Mr. Brock could make up his mind how to act in this emergency, he
+received a note from Allan’s mother, begging him to use his privilege as
+an old friend, and to pay her a visit in her room.
+
+He found Mrs. Armadale suffering under violent nervous agitation, caused
+entirely by a recent interview with her son. Allan had been sitting with
+her all the morning, and had talked of nothing but his new friend. The
+man with the horrible name (as poor Mrs. Armadale described him) had
+questioned Allan, in a singularly inquisitive manner, on the subject of
+himself and his family, but had kept his own personal history entirely
+in the dark. At some former period of his life he had been accustomed to
+the sea and to sailing. Allan had, unfortunately, found this out, and
+a bond of union between them was formed on the spot. With a merciless
+distrust of the stranger--simply _because_ he was a stranger--which
+appeared rather unreasonable to Mr. Brock, Mrs. Armadale besought the
+rector to go to the inn without a moment’s loss of time, and never to
+rest until he had made the man give a proper account of himself. “Find
+out everything about his father and mother!” she said, in her vehement
+female way. “Make sure before you leave him that he is not a vagabond
+roaming the country under an assumed name.”
+
+“My dear lady,” remonstrated the rector, obediently taking his hat,
+“whatever else we may doubt, I really think we may feel sure about the
+man’s name! It is so remarkably ugly that it must be genuine. No sane
+human being would _assume_ such a name as Ozias Midwinter.”
+
+“You may be quite right, and I may be quite wrong; but pray go and see
+him,” persisted Mrs. Armadale. “Go, and don’t spare him, Mr. Brock.
+How do we know that this illness of his may not have been put on for a
+purpose?”
+
+It was useless to reason with her. The whole College of Physicians might
+have certified to the man’s illness, and, in her present frame of mind,
+Mrs. Armadale would have disbelieved the College, one and all, from
+the president downward. Mr. Brock took the wise way out of the
+difficulty--he said no more, and he set off for the inn immediately.
+
+Ozias Midwinter, recovering from brain-fever, was a startling object to
+contemplate on a first view of him. His shaven head, tied up in an old
+yellow silk handkerchief; his tawny, haggard cheeks; his bright brown
+eyes, preternaturally large and wild; his rough black beard; his long,
+supple, sinewy fingers, wasted by suffering till they looked like
+claws--all tended to discompose the rector at the outset of the
+interview. When the first feeling of surprise had worn off, the
+impression that followed it was not an agreeable one. Mr. Brock could
+not conceal from himself that the stranger’s manner was against him.
+The general opinion has settled that, if a man is honest, he is bound to
+assert it by looking straight at his fellow-creatures when he speaks to
+them. If this man was honest, his eyes showed a singular perversity in
+looking away and denying it. Possibly they were affected in some degree
+by a nervous restlessness in his organization, which appeared to pervade
+every fiber in his lean, lithe body. The rector’s healthy Anglo-Saxon
+flesh crept responsively at every casual movement of the usher’s supple
+brown fingers, and every passing distortion of the usher’s haggard
+yellow face. “God forgive me!” thought Mr. Brock, with his mind running
+on Allan and Allan’s mother, “I wish I could see my way to turning Ozias
+Midwinter adrift in the world again!”
+
+The conversation which ensued between the two was a very guarded one.
+Mr. Brock felt his way gently, and found himself, try where he might,
+always kept politely, more or less, in the dark.
+
+From first to last, the man’s real character shrank back with a savage
+shyness from the rector’s touch. He started by an assertion which it
+was impossible to look at him and believe--he declared that he was only
+twenty years of age. All he could be persuaded to say on the subject of
+the school was that the bare recollection of it was horrible to him.
+He had only filled the usher’s situation for ten days when the first
+appearance of his illness caused his dismissal. How he had reached
+the field in which he had been found was more than he could say. He
+remembered traveling a long distance by railway, with a purpose (if he
+had a purpose) which it was now impossible to recall, and then wandering
+coastward, on foot, all through the day, or all through the night--he
+was not sure which. The sea kept running in his mind when his mind began
+to give way. He had been employed on the sea as a lad. He had left it,
+and had filled a situation at a bookseller’s in a country town. He had
+left the bookseller’s, and had tried the school. Now the school had
+turned him out, he must try something else. It mattered little what he
+tried--failure (for which nobody was ever to blame but himself) was
+sure to be the end of it, sooner or later. Friends to assist him, he
+had none to apply to; and as for relations, he wished to be excused from
+speaking of them. For all he knew they might be dead, and for all _they_
+knew _he_ might be dead. That was a melancholy acknowledgment to make at
+his time of life, there was no denying it. It might tell against him in
+the opinions of others; and it did tell against him, no doubt, in the
+opinion of the gentleman who was talking to him at that moment.
+
+These strange answers were given in a tone and manner far removed from
+bitterness on the one side, or from indifference on the other. Ozias
+Midwinter at twenty spoke of his life as Ozias Midwinter at seventy
+might have spoken with a long weariness of years on him which he had
+learned to bear patiently.
+
+Two circumstances pleaded strongly against the distrust with which, in
+sheer perplexity of mind, Mr. Brock blindly regarded him. He had written
+to a savings-bank in a distant part of England, had drawn his money, and
+had paid the doctor and the landlord. A man of vulgar mind, after acting
+in this manner, would have treated his obligations lightly when he
+had settled his bills. Ozias Midwinter spoke of his obligations--and
+especially of his obligation to Allan--with a fervor of thankfulness
+which it was not surprising only, but absolutely painful to witness. He
+showed a horrible sincerity of astonishment at having been treated
+with common Christian kindness in a Christian land. He spoke of Allan’s
+having become answerable for all the expenses of sheltering, nursing,
+and curing him, with a savage rapture of gratitude and surprise which
+burst out of him like a flash of lightning. “So help me God!” cried the
+castaway usher, “I never met with the like of him: I never heard of the
+like of him before!” In the next instant, the one glimpse of light which
+the man had let in on his own passionate nature was quenched again
+in darkness. His wandering eyes, returning to their old trick, looked
+uneasily away from Mr. Brock, and his voice dropped back once more into
+its unnatural steadiness and quietness of tone. “I beg your pardon,
+sir,” he said. “I have been used to be hunted, and cheated, and starved.
+Everything else comes strange to me.” Half attracted by the man, half
+repelled by him, Mr. Brock, on rising to take leave, impulsively offered
+his hand, and then, with a sudden misgiving, confusedly drew it back
+again. “You meant that kindly, sir,” said Ozias Midwinter, with his own
+hands crossed resolutely behind him. “I don’t complain of your thinking
+better of it. A man who can’t give a proper account of himself is not a
+man for a gentleman in your position to take by the hand.”
+
+Mr. Brock left the inn thoroughly puzzled. Before returning to Mrs.
+Armadale he sent for her son. The chances were that the guard had been
+off the stranger’s tongue when he spoke to Allan, and with Allan’s
+frankness there was no fear of his concealing anything that had passed
+between them from the rector’s knowledge.
+
+Here again Mr. Brock’s diplomacy achieved no useful results.
+
+Once started on the subject of Ozias Midwinter, Allan rattled on about
+his new friend in his usual easy, light-hearted way. But he had really
+nothing of importance to tell, for nothing of importance had been
+revealed to him. They had talked about boat-building and sailing by the
+hour together, and Allan had got some valuable hints. They had discussed
+(with diagrams to assist them, and with more valuable hints for Allan)
+the serious impending question of the launch of the yacht. On other
+occasions they had diverged to other subjects--to more of them than
+Allan could remember, on the spur of the moment. Had Midwinter said
+nothing about his relations in the flow of all this friendly talk?
+Nothing, except that they had not behaved well to him--hang his
+relations! Was he at all sensitive on the subject of his own odd name?
+Not the least in the world; he had set the example, like a sensible
+fellow, of laughing at it himself.
+
+Mr. Brock still persisted. He inquired next what Allan had seen in the
+stranger to take such a fancy to? Allan had seen in him--what he didn’t
+see in people in general. He wasn’t like all the other fellows in the
+neighborhood. All the other fellows were cut out on the same pattern.
+Every man of them was equally healthy, muscular, loud, hard-hearted,
+clean-skinned, and rough; every man of them drank the same draughts of
+beer, smoked the same short pipes all day long, rode the best horse,
+shot over the best dog, and put the best bottle of wine in England on
+his table at night; every man of them sponged himself every morning
+in the same sort of tub of cold water and bragged about it in frosty
+weather in the same sort of way; every man of them thought getting
+into debt a capital joke and betting on horse-races one of the most
+meritorious actions that a human being can perform. They were, no doubt,
+excellent fellows in their way; but the worst of them was, they were
+all exactly alike. It was a perfect godsend to meet with a man like
+Midwinter--a man who was not cut out on the regular local pattern, and
+whose way in the world had the one great merit (in those parts) of being
+a way of his own.
+
+Leaving all remonstrances for a fitter opportunity, the rector went back
+to Mrs. Armadale. He could not disguise from himself that Allan’s mother
+was the person really answerable for Allan’s present indiscretion. If
+the lad had seen a little less of the small gentry in the neighborhood,
+and a little more of the great outside world at home and abroad, the
+pleasure of cultivating Ozias Midwinter’s society might have had fewer
+attractions for him.
+
+Conscious of the unsatisfactory result of his visit to the inn, Mr.
+Brock felt some anxiety about the reception of his report when he found
+himself once more in Mrs. Armadale’s presence. His forebodings were soon
+realized. Try as he might to make the best of it, Mrs. Armadale seized
+on the one suspicious fact of the usher’s silence about himself as
+justifying the strongest measures that could be taken to separate him
+from her son. If the rector refused to interfere, she declared her
+intention of writing to Ozias Midwinter with her own hand. Remonstrance
+irritated her to such a pitch that she astounded Mr. Brock by reverting
+to the forbidden subject of five years since, and referring him to the
+conversation which had passed between them when the advertisement had
+been discovered in the newspaper. She passionately declared that the
+vagabond Armadale of that advertisement, and the vagabond Midwinter at
+the village inn, might, for all she know to the contrary, be one and the
+same. Foreboding a serious disagreement between the mother and son if
+the mother interfered, Mr. Brock undertook to see Midwinter again, and
+to tell him plainly that he must give a proper account of himself, or
+that his intimacy with Allan must cease. The two concessions which he
+exacted from Mrs. Armadale in return were that she should wait patiently
+until the doctor reported the man fit to travel, and that she should be
+careful in the interval not to mention the matter in any way to her son.
+
+In a week’s time Midwinter was able to drive out (with Allan for his
+coachman) in the pony chaise belonging to the inn, and in ten days the
+doctor privately reported him as fit to travel. Toward the close of
+that tenth day, Mr. Brock met Allan and his new friend enjoying the last
+gleams of wintry sunshine in one of the inland lanes. He waited until
+the two had separated, and then followed the usher on his way back to
+the inn.
+
+The rector’s resolution to speak pitilessly to the purpose was in some
+danger of failing him as he drew nearer and nearer to the friendless
+man, and saw how feebly he still walked, how loosely his worn coat
+hung about him, and how heavily he leaned on his cheap, clumsy stick.
+Humanely reluctant to say the decisive words too precipitately, Mr.
+Brock tried him first with a little compliment on the range of his
+reading, as shown by the volume of Sophocles and the volume of Goethe
+which had been found in his bag, and asked how long he had been
+acquainted with German and Greek. The quick ear of Midwinter detected
+something wrong in the tone of Mr. Brock’s voice. He turned in the
+darkening twilight, and looked suddenly and suspiciously in the rector’s
+face.
+
+“You have something to say to me,” he answered; “and it is not what you
+are saying now.”
+
+There was no help for it but to accept the challenge. Very delicately,
+with many preparatory words, to which the other listened in unbroken
+silence, Mr. Brock came little by little nearer and nearer to the point.
+Long before he had really reached it--long before a man of no more than
+ordinary sensibility would have felt what was coming--Ozias Midwinter
+stood still in the lane, and told the rector that he need say no more.
+
+“I understand you, sir,” said the usher. “Mr. Armadale has an
+ascertained position in the world; Mr. Armadale has nothing to conceal,
+and nothing to be ashamed of. I agree with you that I am not a fit
+companion for him. The best return I can make for his kindness is
+to presume on it no longer. You may depend on my leaving this place
+to-morrow morning.”
+
+He spoke no word more; he would hear no word more. With a self-control
+which, at his years and with his temperament, was nothing less than
+marvelous, he civilly took off his hat, bowed, and returned to the inn
+by himself.
+
+Mr. Brock slept badly that night. The issue of the interview in the lane
+had made the problem of Ozias Midwinter a harder problem to solve than
+ever.
+
+Early the next morning a letter was brought to the rector from the inn,
+and the messenger announced that the strange gentleman had taken his
+departure. The letter inclosed an open note addressed to Allan, and
+requested Allan’s tutor (after first reading it himself) to forward it
+or not at his own sole discretion. The note was a startlingly short one;
+it began and ended in a dozen words: “Don’t blame Mr. Brock; Mr. Brock
+is right. Thank you, and good-by.--O. M.”
+
+The rector forwarded the note to its proper destination, as a matter of
+course, and sent a few lines to Mrs. Armadale at the same time to quiet
+her anxiety by the news of the usher’s departure. This done, he waited
+the visit from his pupil, which would probably follow the delivery of
+the note, in no very tranquil frame of mind. There might or might not be
+some deep motive at the bottom of Midwinter’s conduct; but thus far it
+was impossible to deny that he had behaved in such a manner as to rebuke
+the rector’s distrust, and to justify Allan’s good opinion of him.
+
+The morning wore on, and young Armadale never appeared. After looking
+for him vainly in the yard where the yacht was building, Mr. Brock went
+to Mrs. Armadale’s house, and there heard news from the servant which
+turned his steps in the direction of the inn. The landlord at once
+acknowledged the truth: young Mr. Armadale had come there with an open
+letter in his hand, and had insisted on being informed of the road which
+his friend had taken. For the first time in the landlord’s experience of
+him, the young gentleman was out of temper; and the girl who waited on
+the customers had stupidly mentioned a circumstance which had added
+fuel to the fire. She had acknowledged having heard Mr. Midwinter lock
+himself into his room overnight, and burst into a violent fit of crying.
+That trifling particular had set Mr. Armadale’s face all of a flame; he
+had shouted and sworn; he had rushed into the stables; and forced the
+hostler to saddle him a horse, and had set off full gallop on the road
+that Ozias Midwinter had taken before him.
+
+After cautioning the landlord to keep Allan’s conduct a secret if any
+of Mrs. Armadale’s servants came that morning to the inn, Mr. Brock went
+home again, and waited anxiously to see what the day would bring forth.
+
+To his infinite relief his pupil appeared at the rectory late in the
+afternoon.
+
+Allan looked and spoke with a dogged determination which was quite new
+in his old friend’s experience of him. Without waiting to be questioned,
+he told his story in his usual straightforward way. He had overtaken
+Midwinter on the road; and--after trying vainly first to induce him to
+return, then to find out where he was going to--had threatened to
+keep company with him for the rest of the day, and had so extorted the
+confession that he was going to try his luck in London. Having gained
+this point, Allan had asked next for his friend’s address in London, had
+been entreated by the other not to press his request, had pressed it,
+nevertheless, with all his might, and had got the address at last by
+making an appeal to Midwinter’s gratitude, for which (feeling heartily
+ashamed of himself) he had afterward asked Midwinter’s pardon. “I like
+the poor fellow, and I won’t give him up,” concluded Allan, bringing his
+clinched fist down with a thump on the rectory table. “Don’t be afraid
+of my vexing my mother; I’ll leave you to speak to her, Mr. Brock, at
+your own time and in your own way; and I’ll just say this much more
+by way of bringing the thing to an end. Here is the address safe in my
+pocket-book, and here am I, standing firm for once on a resolution of my
+own. I’ll give you and my mother time to reconsider this; and, when the
+time is up, if my friend Midwinter doesn’t come to _me_, I’ll go to my
+friend Midwinter.”
+
+So the matter rested for the present; and such was the result of turning
+the castaway usher adrift in the world again.
+
+-------------
+
+A month passed, and brought in the new year--‘51. Overleaping that short
+lapse of time, Mr. Brock paused, with a heavy heart, at the next
+event; to his mind the one mournful, the one memorable event of the
+series--Mrs. Armadale’s death.
+
+The first warning of the affliction that was near at hand had followed
+close on the usher’s departure in December, and had arisen out of a
+circumstance which dwelt painfully on the rector’s memory from that time
+forth.
+
+But three days after Midwinter had left for London, Mr. Brock was
+accosted in the village by a neatly dressed woman, wearing a gown and
+bonnet of black silk and a red Paisley shawl, who was a total stranger
+to him, and who inquired the way to Mrs. Armadale’s house. She put the
+question without raising the thick black veil that hung over her face.
+Mr. Brock, in giving her the necessary directions, observed that she
+was a remarkably elegant and graceful woman, and looked after her as she
+bowed and left him, wondering who Mrs. Armadale’s visitor could possibly
+be.
+
+A quarter of an hour later the lady, still veiled as before, passed Mr.
+Brock again close to the inn. She entered the house, and spoke to the
+landlady. Seeing the landlord shortly afterward hurrying round to the
+stables, Mr. Brock asked him if the lady was going away. Yes; she had
+come from the railway in the omnibus, but she was going back again more
+creditably in a carriage of her own hiring, supplied by the inn.
+
+The rector proceeded on his walk, rather surprised to find his thoughts
+running inquisitively on a woman who was a stranger to him. When he
+got home again, he found the village surgeon waiting his return with an
+urgent message from Allan’s mother. About an hour since, the surgeon
+had been sent for in great haste to see Mrs. Armadale. He had found her
+suffering from an alarming nervous attack, brought on (as the servants
+suspected) by an unexpected, and, possibly, an unwelcome visitor, who
+had called that morning. The surgeon had done all that was needful,
+and had no apprehension of any dangerous results. Finding his patient
+eagerly desirous, on recovering herself, to see Mr. Brock immediately,
+he had thought it important to humor her, and had readily undertaken to
+call at the rectory with a message to that effect.
+
+Looking at Mrs. Armadale with a far deeper interest in her than the
+surgeon’s interest, Mr. Brock saw enough in her face, when it turned
+toward him on his entering the room, to justify instant and serious
+alarm. She allowed him no opportunity of soothing her; she heeded none
+of his inquiries. Answers to certain questions of her own were what
+she wanted, and what she was determined to have: Had Mr. Brock seen the
+woman who had presumed to visit her that morning? Yes. Had Allan seen
+her? No; Allan had been at work since breakfast, and was at work still,
+in his yard by the water-side.
+
+This latter reply appeared to quiet Mrs. Armadale for the moment;
+she put her next question--the most extraordinary question of the
+three--more composedly: Did the rector think Allan would object to
+leaving his vessel for the present, and to accompanying his mother on
+a journey to look out for a new house in some other part of England? In
+the greatest amazement Mr. Brock asked what reason there could possibly
+be for leaving her present residence? Mrs. Armadale’s reason, when she
+gave it, only added to his surprise. The woman’s first visit might be
+followed by a second; and rather than see her again, rather than run
+the risk of Allan’s seeing her and speaking to her, Mrs. Armadale would
+leave England if necessary, and end her days in a foreign land. Taking
+counsel of his experience as a magistrate, Mr. Brock inquired if the
+woman had come to ask for money. Yes; respectably as she was dressed,
+she had described herself as being “in distress”; had asked for money,
+and had got it. But the money was of no importance; the one thing
+needful was to get away before the woman came again. More and more
+surprised, Mr. Brock ventured on another question: Was it long since
+Mrs. Armadale and her visitor had last met? Yes; longer than all Allan’s
+lifetime--as long ago as the year before Allan was born.
+
+At that reply, the rector shifted his ground, and took counsel next of
+his experience as a friend.
+
+“Is this person,” he asked, “connected in any way with the painful
+remembrances of your early life?”
+
+“Yes; with the painful remembrance of the time when I was married,” said
+Mrs. Armadale. “She was associated, as a mere child, with a circumstance
+which I must think of with shame and sorrow to my dying day.”
+
+Mr. Brock noticed the altered tone in which his old friend spoke, and
+the unwillingness with which she gave her answer.
+
+“Can you tell me more about her without referring to yourself?” he went
+on. “I am sure I can protect you, if you will only help me a little. Her
+name, for instance--you can tell me her name?”
+
+Mrs. Armadale shook her head, “The name I knew her by,” she said, “would
+be of no use to you. She has been married since then; she told me so
+herself.”
+
+“And without telling you her married name?”
+
+“She refused to tell it.”
+
+“Do you know anything of her friends?”
+
+“Only of her friends when she was a child. They called themselves her
+uncle and aunt. They were low people, and they deserted her at the
+school on my father’s estate. We never heard any more of them.”
+
+“Did she remain under your father’s care?”
+
+“She remained under my care; that is to say, she traveled with us. We
+were leaving England, just as that time, for Madeira. I had my father’s
+leave to take her with me, and to train the wretch to be my maid--”
+
+At those words Mrs. Armadale stopped confusedly. Mr. Brock tried gently
+to lead her on. It was useless; she started up in violent agitation, and
+walked excitedly backward and forward in the room.
+
+“Don’t ask me any more!” she cried out, in loud, angry tones. “I parted
+with her when she was a girl of twelve years old. I never saw her again,
+I never heard of her again, from that time to this. I don’t know how
+she has discovered me, after all the years that have passed; I only know
+that she _has_ discovered me. She will find her way to Allan next; she
+will poison my son’s mind against me. Help me to get away from her! help
+me to take Allan away before she comes back!”
+
+The rector asked no more questions; it would have been cruel to press
+her further. The first necessity was to compose her by promising
+compliance with all that she desired. The second was to induce her to
+see another medical man. Mr. Brock contrived to reach his end harmlessly
+in this latter case by reminding her that she wanted strength to travel,
+and that her own medical attendant might restore her all the more
+speedily to herself if he were assisted by the best professional advice.
+Having overcome her habitual reluctance to seeing strangers by this
+means, the rector at once went to Allan; and, delicately concealing what
+Mrs. Armadale had said at the interview, broke the news to him that his
+mother was seriously ill. Allan would hear of no messengers being sent
+for assistance: he drove off on the spot to the railway, and telegraphed
+himself to Bristol for medical help.
+
+On the next morning the help came, and Mr. Brock’s worst fears were
+confirmed. The village surgeon had fatally misunderstood the case from
+the first, and the time was past now at which his errors of treatment
+might have been set right. The shock of the previous morning had
+completed the mischief. Mrs. Armadale’s days were numbered.
+
+The son who dearly loved her, the old friend to whom her life was
+precious, hoped vainly to the last. In a month from the physician’s
+visit all hope was over; and Allan shed the first bitter tears of his
+life at his mother’s grave.
+
+She had died more peacefully than Mr. Brock had dared to hope, leaving
+all her little fortune to her son, and committing him solemnly to the
+care of her one friend on earth. The rector had entreated her to let him
+write and try to reconcile her brothers with her before it was too
+late. She had only answered sadly that it was too late already. But one
+reference escaped her in her last illness to those early sorrows which
+had weighed heavily on all her after-life, and which had passed thrice
+already, like shadows of evil, between the rector and herself. Even on
+her deathbed she had shrunk from letting the light fall clearly on the
+story of the past. She had looked at Allan kneeling by the bedside,
+and had whispered to Mr. Brock: “_Never let his Namesake come near him!
+Never let that Woman find him out_!” No word more fell from her that
+touched on the misfortunes which had tried her in the past, or on the
+dangers which she dreaded in the future. The secret which she had kept
+from her son and from her friend was a secret which she carried with her
+to the grave.
+
+When the last offices of affection and respect had been performed, Mr.
+Brock felt it his duty, as executor to the deceased lady, to write to
+her brothers, and to give them information of her death. Believing that
+he had to deal with two men who would probably misinterpret his motives
+if he left Allan’s position unexplained, he was careful to remind them
+that Mrs. Armadale’s son was well provided for, and that the object of
+his letter was simply to communicate the news of their sister’s decease.
+The two letters were dispatched toward the middle of January, and by
+return of post the answers were received. The first which the rector
+opened was written not by the elder brother, but by the elder brother’s
+only son. The young man had succeeded to the estates in Norfolk on his
+father’s death, some little time since. He wrote in a frank and friendly
+spirit, assuring Mr. Brock that, however strongly his father might have
+been prejudiced against Mrs. Armadale, the hostile feeling had never
+extended to her son. For himself, he had only to add that he would be
+sincerely happy to welcome his cousin to Thorpe Ambrose whenever his
+cousin came that way.
+
+The second letter was a far less agreeable reply to receive than the
+first. The younger brother was still alive, and still resolute neither
+to forget nor forgive. He informed Mr. Brock that his deceased sister’s
+choice of a husband, and her conduct to her father at the time of her
+marriage, had made any relations of affection or esteem impossible, on
+his side, from that time forth. Holding the opinions he did, it would
+be equally painful to his nephew and himself if any personal intercourse
+took place between them. He had adverted, as generally as possible, to
+the nature of the differences which had kept him apart from his
+late sister, in order to satisfy Mr. Brock’s mind that a personal
+acquaintance with young Mr. Armadale was, as a matter of delicacy, quite
+out of the question and, having done this, he would beg leave to close
+the correspondence.
+
+Mr. Brock wisely destroyed the second letter on the spot, and, after
+showing Allan his cousin’s invitation, suggested that he should go to
+Thorpe Ambrose as soon as he felt fit to present himself to strangers.
+
+Allan listened to the advice patiently enough; but he declined to profit
+by it. “I will shake hands with my cousin willingly if I ever meet him,”
+ he said; “but I will visit no family, and be a guest in no house, in
+which my mother has been badly treated.” Mr. Brock remonstrated gently,
+and tried to put matters in their proper light. Even at that time--even
+while he was still ignorant of events which were then impending--Allan’s
+strangely isolated position in the world was a subject of serious
+anxiety to his old friend and tutor. The proposed visit to Thorpe
+Ambrose opened the very prospect of his making friends and connections
+suited to him in rank and age which Mr. Brock most desired to see; but
+Allan was not to be persuaded; he was obstinate and unreasonable; and
+the rector had no alternative but to drop the subject.
+
+One on another the weeks passed monotonously, and Allan showed but
+little of the elasticity of his age and character in bearing the
+affliction that had made him motherless. He finished and launched his
+yacht; but his own journeymen remarked that the work seemed to have lost
+its interest for him. It was not natural to the young man to brood
+over his solitude and his grief as he was brooding now. As the spring
+advanced, Mr. Brock began to feel uneasy about the future, if Allan was
+not roused at once by change of scene. After much pondering, the
+rector decided on trying a trip to Paris, and on extending the journey
+southward if his companion showed an interest in Continental traveling.
+Allan’s reception of the proposal made atonement for his obstinacy in
+refusing to cultivate his cousin’s acquaintance; he was willing to go
+with Mr. Brock wherever Mr. Brock pleased. The rector took him at his
+word, and in the middle of March the two strangely assorted companions
+left for London on their way to Paris.
+
+Arrived in London, Mr. Brock found himself unexpectedly face to face
+with a new anxiety. The unwelcome subject of Ozias Midwinter, which
+had been buried in peace since the beginning of December, rose to the
+surface again, and confronted the rector at the very outset of his
+travels, more unmanageably than ever.
+
+Mr. Brock’s position in dealing with this difficult matter had been
+hard enough to maintain when he had first meddled with it. He now found
+himself with no vantage-ground left to stand on. Events had so ordered
+it that the difference of opinion between Allan and his mother on the
+subject of the usher was entirely disassociated with the agitation
+which had hastened Mrs. Armadale’s death. Allan’s resolution to say no
+irritating words, and Mr. Brock’s reluctance to touch on a disagreeable
+topic, had kept them both silent about Midwinter in Mrs. Armadale’s
+presence during the three days which had intervened between that
+person’s departure and the appearance of the strange woman in the
+village. In the period of suspense and suffering that had followed no
+recurrence to the subject of the usher had been possible, and none had
+taken place. Free from all mental disquietude on this score, Allan
+had stoutly preserved his perverse interest in his new friend. He had
+written to tell Midwinter of his affliction, and he now proposed (unless
+the rector formally objected to it) paying a visit to his friend before
+he started for Paris the next morning.
+
+What was Mr. Brock to do? There was no denying that Midwinter’s conduct
+had pleaded unanswerably against poor Mrs. Armadale’s unfounded distrust
+of him. If the rector, with no convincing reason to allege against it,
+and with no right to interfere but the right which Allan’s courtesy gave
+him, declined to sanction the proposed visit, then farewell to all
+the old sociability and confidence between tutor and pupil on the
+contemplated tour. Environed by difficulties, which might have been
+possibly worsted by a less just and a less kind-hearted man, Mr. Brock
+said a cautious word or two at parting, and (with more confidence
+in Midwinter’s discretion and self-denial than he quite liked to
+acknowledge, even to himself) left Allan free to take his own way.
+
+After whiling away an hour, during the interval of his pupil’s absence,
+by a walk in the streets, the rector returned to his hotel, and, finding
+the newspaper disengaged in the coffee-room, sat down absently to look
+over it. His eye, resting idly on the title-page, was startled into
+instant attention by the very first advertisement that it chanced
+to light on at the head of the column. There was Allan’s mysterious
+namesake again, figuring in capital letters, and associated this time
+(in the character of a dead man) with the offer of a pecuniary reward.
+Thus it ran:
+
+
+SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD.--To parish clerks, sextons, and others. Twenty
+Pounds reward will be paid to any person who can produce evidence of
+the death of ALLAN ARMADALE, only son of the late Allan Armadale, of
+Barbadoes, and born in Trinidad in the year 1830. Further particulars on
+application to Messrs. Hammick and Ridge, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.
+
+
+Even Mr. Brock’s essentially unimaginative mind began to stagger
+superstitiously in the dark as he laid the newspaper down again. Little
+by little a vague suspicion took possession of him that the whole series
+of events which had followed the first appearance of Allan’s namesake
+in the newspaper six years since was held together by some mysterious
+connection, and was tending steadily to some unimaginable end. Without
+knowing why, he began to feel uneasy at Allan’s absence. Without knowing
+why, he became impatient to get his pupil away from England before
+anything else happened between night and morning.
+
+In an hour more the rector was relieved of all immediate anxiety by
+Allan’s return to the hotel. The young man was vexed and out of spirits.
+He had discovered Midwinter’s lodgings, but he had failed to find
+Midwinter himself. The only account his landlady could give of him was
+that he had gone out at his customary time to get his dinner at the
+nearest eating-house, and that he had not returned, in accordance with
+his usual regular habits, at his usual regular hour. Allan had therefore
+gone to inquire at the eating-house, and had found, on describing him,
+that Midwinter was well known there. It was his custom, on other days,
+to take a frugal dinner, and to sit half an hour afterward reading the
+newspaper. On this occasion, after dining, he had taken up the paper
+as usual, had suddenly thrown it aside again, and had gone, nobody knew
+where, in a violent hurry. No further information being attainable,
+Allan had left a note at the lodgings, giving his address at the hotel,
+and begging Midwinter to come and say good-by before his departure for
+Paris.
+
+The evening passed, and Allan’s invisible friend never appeared. The
+morning came, bringing no obstacles with it, and Mr. Brock and his pupil
+left London. So far Fortune had declared herself at last on the rector’s
+side. Ozias Midwinter, after intrusively rising to the surface, had
+conveniently dropped out of sight again. What was to happen next?
+
+-------------
+
+Advancing once more, by three weeks only, from past to present, Mr.
+Brock’s memory took up the next event on the seventh of April. To all
+appearance, the chain was now broken at last. The new event had no
+recognizable connection (either to his mind or to Allan’s) with any
+of the persons who had appeared, or any of the circumstances that had
+happened, in the by-gone time.
+
+The travelers had as yet got no further than Paris. Allan’s spirits had
+risen with the change; and he had been made all the readier to enjoy the
+novelty of the scene around him by receiving a letter from Midwinter,
+containing news which Mr. Brock himself acknowledged promised fairly for
+the future. The ex-usher had been away on business when Allan had called
+at his lodgings, having been led by an accidental circumstance to open
+communications with his relatives on that day. The result had taken him
+entirely by surprise: it had unexpectedly secured to him a little income
+of his own for the rest of his life. His future plans, now that this
+piece of good fortune had fallen to his share, were still unsettled.
+But if Allan wished to hear what he ultimately decided on, his agent in
+London (whose direction he inclosed) would receive communications
+for him, and would furnish Mr. Armadale at all future times with his
+address.
+
+On receipt of this letter, Allan had seized the pen in his usual
+headlong way, and had insisted on Midwinter’s immediately joining Mr.
+Brock and himself on their travels. The last days of March passed, and
+no answer to the proposal was received. The first days of April came,
+and on the seventh of the month there was a letter for Allan at last on
+the breakfast-table. He snatched it up, looked at the address, and threw
+the letter down again impatiently. The handwriting was not Midwinter’s.
+Allan finished his breakfast before he cared to read what his
+correspondent had to say to him.
+
+The meal over, young Armadale lazily opened the letter. He began it with
+an expression of supreme indifference. He finished it with a sudden leap
+out of his chair, and a loud shout of astonishment. Wondering, as he
+well might, at this extraordinary outbreak, Mr. Brock took up the letter
+which Allan had tossed across the table to him. Before he had come to
+the end of it, his hands dropped helplessly on his knees, and the blank
+bewilderment of his pupil’s expression was accurately reflected on his
+own face.
+
+If ever two men had good cause for being thrown completely off their
+balance, Allan and the rector were those two. The letter which had
+struck them both with the same shock of astonishment did, beyond all
+question, contain an announcement which, on a first discovery of it, was
+simply incredible. The news was from Norfolk, and was to this effect. In
+little more than one week’s time death had mown down no less than three
+lives in the family at Thorpe Ambrose, and Allan Armadale was at that
+moment heir to an estate of eight thousand a year!
+
+A second perusal of the letter enabled the rector and his companion to
+master the details which had escaped them on a first reading.
+
+The writer was the family lawyer at Thorpe Ambrose. After announcing to
+Allan the deaths of his cousin Arthur at the age of twenty-five, of his
+uncle Henry at the age of forty-eight, and of his cousin John at the
+age of twenty-one, the lawyer proceeded to give a brief abstract of the
+terms of the elder Mr. Blanchard’s will. The claims of male issue were,
+as is not unusual in such cases, preferred to the claims of female
+issue. Failing Arthur and his issue male, the estate was left to Henry
+and his issue male. Failing them, it went to the issue male of Henry’s
+sister; and, in default of such issue, to the next heir male. As events
+had happened, the two young men, Arthur and John, had died unmarried,
+and Henry Blanchard had died, leaving no surviving child but a daughter.
+Under these circumstances, Allan was the next heir male pointed at by
+the will, and was now legally successor to the Thorpe Ambrose estate.
+Having made this extraordinary announcement, the lawyer requested to be
+favored with Mr. Armadale’s instructions, and added, in conclusion, that
+he would be happy to furnish any further particulars that were desired.
+
+It was useless to waste time in wondering at an event which neither
+Allan nor his mother had ever thought of as even remotely possible. The
+only thing to be done was to go back to England at once. The next day
+found the travelers installed once more in their London hotel, and the
+day after the affair was placed in the proper professional hands. The
+inevitable corresponding and consulting ensued, and one by one the
+all-important particulars flowed in, until the measure of information
+was pronounced to be full.
+
+This was the strange story of the three deaths:
+
+At the time when Mr. Brock had written to Mrs. Armadale’s relatives to
+announce the news of her decease (that is to say, in the middle of
+the month of January), the family at Thorpe Ambrose numbered five
+persons--Arthur Blanchard (in possession of the estate), living in the
+great house with his mother; and Henry Blanchard, the uncle, living in
+the neighborhood, a widower with two children, a son and a daughter. To
+cement the family connection still more closely, Arthur Blanchard was
+engaged to be married to his cousin. The wedding was to be celebrated
+with great local rejoicings in the coming summer, when the young lady
+had completed her twentieth year.
+
+The month of February had brought changes with it in the family
+position. Observing signs of delicacy in the health of his son, Mr.
+Henry Blanchard left Norfolk, taking the young man with him, under
+medical advice, to try the climate of Italy. Early in the ensuing month
+of March, Arthur Blanchard also left Thorpe Ambrose, for a few days
+only, on business which required his presence in London. The business
+took him into the City. Annoyed by the endless impediments in the
+streets, he returned westward by one of the river steamers, and, so
+returning, met his death.
+
+As the steamer left the wharf, he noticed a woman near him who had shown
+a singular hesitation in embarking, and who had been the last of the
+passengers to take her place in the vessel. She was neatly dressed in
+black silk, with a red Paisley shawl over her shoulders, and she kept
+her face hidden behind a thick veil. Arthur Blanchard was struck by the
+rare grace and elegance of her figure, and he felt a young man’s passing
+curiosity to see her face. She neither lifted her veil nor turned her
+head his way. After taking a few steps hesitatingly backward and forward
+on the deck, she walked away on a sudden to the stern of the vessel. In
+a minute more there was a cry of alarm from the man at the helm, and
+the engines were stopped immediately. The woman had thrown herself
+overboard.
+
+The passengers all rushed to the side of the vessel to look. Arthur
+Blanchard alone, without an instant’s hesitation, jumped into the river.
+He was an excellent swimmer, and he reached the woman as she rose again
+to the surface, after sinking for the first time. Help was at hand, and
+they were both brought safely ashore. The woman was taken to the nearest
+police station, and was soon restored to her senses, her preserver
+giving his name and address, as usual in such cases, to the inspector on
+duty, who wisely recommended him to get into a warm bath, and to send to
+his lodgings for dry clothes. Arthur Blanchard, who had never known an
+hour’s illness since he was a child, laughed at the caution, and went
+back in a cab. The next day he was too ill to attend the examination
+before the magistrate. A fortnight afterward he was a dead man.
+
+The news of the calamity reached Henry Blanchard and his son at Milan,
+and within an hour of the time when they received it they were on their
+way back to England. The snow on the Alps had loosened earlier than
+usual that year, and the passes were notoriously dangerous. The father
+and son, traveling in their own carriage, were met on the mountain by
+the mail returning, after sending the letters on by hand. Warnings which
+would have produced their effect under any ordinary circumstances were
+now vainly addressed to the two Englishmen. Their impatience to be
+at home again, after the catastrophe which had befallen their family,
+brooked no delay. Bribes lavishly offered to the postilions, tempted
+them to go on. The carriage pursued its way, and was lost to view in the
+mist. When it was seen again, it was disinterred from the bottom of a
+precipice--the men, the horses, and the vehicle all crushed together
+under the wreck and ruin of an avalanche.
+
+So the three lives were mown down by death. So, in a clear sequence of
+events, a woman’s suicide-leap into a river had opened to Allan Armadale
+the succession to the Thorpe Ambrose estates.
+
+Who was the woman? The man who saved her life never knew. The magistrate
+who remanded her, the chaplain who exhorted her, the reporter who
+exhibited her in print, never knew. It was recorded of her with surprise
+that, though most respectably dressed, she had nevertheless described
+herself as being “in distress.” She had expressed the deepest
+contrition, but had persisted in giving a name which was on the face of
+it a false one; in telling a commonplace story, which was manifestly
+an invention; and in refusing to the last to furnish any clew to her
+friends. A lady connected with a charitable institution (“interested by
+her extreme elegance and beauty”) had volunteered to take charge of her,
+and to bring her into a better frame of mind. The first day’s experience
+of the penitent had been far from cheering, and the second day’s
+experience had been conclusive. She had left the institution by stealth;
+and--though the visiting clergyman, taking a special interest in the
+case, had caused special efforts to be made--all search after her, from
+that time forth, had proved fruitless.
+
+While this useless investigation (undertaken at Allan’s express desire)
+was in progress, the lawyers had settled the preliminary formalities
+connected with the succession to the property. All that remained was
+for the new master of Thorpe Ambrose to decide when he would personally
+establish himself on the estate of which he was now the legal possessor.
+
+Left necessarily to his own guidance in this matter, Allan settled
+it for himself in his usual hot-headed, generous way. He positively
+declined to take possession until Mrs. Blanchard and her niece (who had
+been permitted thus far, as a matter of courtesy, to remain in their old
+home) had recovered from the calamity that had befallen them, and were
+fit to decide for themselves what their future proceedings should be.
+A private correspondence followed this resolution, comprehending, on
+Allan’s side, unlimited offers of everything he had to give (in a house
+which he had not yet seen), and, on the ladies’ side, a discreetly
+reluctant readiness to profit by the young gentleman’s generosity in the
+matter of time. To the astonishment of his legal advisers, Allan entered
+their office one morning, accompanied by Mr. Brock, and announced, with
+perfect composure, that the ladies had been good enough to take his own
+arrangements off his hands, and that, in deference to their convenience,
+he meant to defer establishing himself at Thorpe Ambrose till that
+day two months. The lawyers stared at Allan, and Allan, returning the
+compliment, stared at the lawyers.
+
+“What on earth are you wondering at, gentlemen?” he inquired, with a
+boyish bewilderment in his good-humored blue eyes. “Why shouldn’t I
+give the ladies their two months, if the ladies want them? Let the poor
+things take their own time, and welcome. My rights? and my position? Oh,
+pooh! pooh! I’m in no hurry to be squire of the parish; it’s not in my
+way. What do I mean to do for the two months? What I should have done
+anyhow, whether the ladies had stayed or not; I mean to go cruising
+at sea. That’s what _I_ like! I’ve got a new yacht at home in
+Somersetshire--a yacht of my own building. And I’ll tell you what, sir,”
+ continued Allan, seizing the head partner by the arm in the fervor of
+his friendly intentions, “you look sadly in want of a holiday in the
+fresh air, and you shall come along with me on the trial trip of my new
+vessel. And your partners, too, if they like. And the head clerk, who
+is the best fellow I ever met with in my life. Plenty of room--we’ll all
+shake down together on the floor, and we’ll give Mr. Brock a rug on the
+cabin table. Thorpe Ambrose be hanged! Do you mean to say, if you had
+built a vessel yourself (as I have), you would go to any estate in the
+three kingdoms, while your own little beauty was sitting like a duck on
+the water at home, and waiting for you to try her? You legal gentlemen
+are great hands at argument. What do you think of that argument? I think
+it’s unanswerable--and I’m off to Somersetshire to-morrow.”
+
+With those words, the new possessor of eight thousand a year dashed into
+the head clerk’s office, and invited that functionary to a cruise on the
+high seas, with a smack on the shoulder which was heard distinctly by
+his masters in the next room. The firm looked in interrogative wonder at
+Mr. Brock. A client who could see a position among the landed gentry of
+England waiting for him, without being in a hurry to occupy it at the
+earliest possible opportunity, was a client of whom they possessed no
+previous experience.
+
+“He must have been very oddly brought up,” said the lawyers to the
+rector.
+
+“Very oddly,” said the rector to the lawyers.
+
+A last leap over one month more brought Mr. Brock to the present
+time--to the bedroom at Castletown, in which he was sitting thinking,
+and to the anxiety which was obstinately intruding itself between
+him and his night’s rest. That anxiety was no unfamiliar enemy to the
+rector’s peace of mind. It had first found him out in Somersetshire six
+months since, and it had now followed him to the Isle of Man under the
+inveterately obtrusive form of Ozias Midwinter.
+
+The change in Allan’s future prospects had worked no corresponding
+alteration in his perverse fancy for the castaway at the village inn.
+In the midst of the consultations with the lawyers he had found time
+to visit Midwinter, and on the journey back with the rector there was
+Allan’s friend in the carriage, returning with them to Somersetshire by
+Allan’s own invitation.
+
+The ex-usher’s hair had grown again on his shaven skull, and his dress
+showed the renovating influence of an accession of pecuniary means, but
+in all other respects the man was unchanged. He met Mr. Brock’s distrust
+with the old uncomplaining resignation to it; he maintained the same
+suspicious silence on the subject of his relatives and his early life;
+he spoke of Allan’s kindness to him with the same undisciplined fervor
+of gratitude and surprise. “I have done what I could, sir,” he said to
+Mr. Brock, while Allan was asleep in the railway carriage. “I have kept
+out of Mr. Armadale’s way, and I have not even answered his last letter
+to me. More than that is more than I can do. I don’t ask you to consider
+my own feeling toward the only human creature who has never suspected
+and never ill-treated me. I can resist my own feeling, but I can’t
+resist the young gentleman himself. There’s not another like him in the
+world. If we are to be parted again, it must be his doing or yours--not
+mine. The dog’s master has whistled,” said this strange man, with a
+momentary outburst of the hidden passion in him, and a sudden springing
+of angry tears in his wild brown eyes, “and it is hard, sir, to blame
+the dog when the dog comes.”
+
+Once more Mr. Brock’s humanity got the better of Mr. Brock’s caution. He
+determined to wait, and see what the coming days of social intercourse
+might bring forth.
+
+The days passed; the yacht was rigged and fitted for sea; a cruise
+was arranged to the Welsh coast--and Midwinter the Secret was the same
+Midwinter still. Confinement on board a little vessel of five-and-thirty
+tons offered no great attraction to a man of Mr. Brock’s time of life.
+But he sailed on the trial trip of the yacht nevertheless, rather than
+trust Allan alone with his new friend.
+
+Would the close companionship of the three on their cruise tempt the
+man into talking of his own affairs? No; he was ready enough on other
+subjects, especially if Allan led the way to them. But not a word
+escaped him about himself. Mr. Brock tried him with questions about
+his recent inheritance, and was answered as he had been answered
+once already at the Somersetshire inn. It was a curious coincidence,
+Midwinter admitted, that Mr. Armadale’s prospects and his own prospects
+should both have unexpectedly changed for the better about the same
+time. But there the resemblance ended. It was no large fortune that
+had fallen into his lap, though it was enough for his wants. It had not
+reconciled him with his relations, for the money had not come to him as
+a matter of kindness, but as a matter of right. As for the circumstance
+which had led to his communicating with his family, it was not worth
+mentioning, seeing that the temporary renewal of intercourse which had
+followed had produced no friendly results. Nothing had come of it but
+the money--and, with the money, an anxiety which troubled him sometimes,
+when he woke in the small hours of the morning.
+
+At those last words he became suddenly silent, as if for once his
+well-guarded tongue had betrayed him.
+
+Mr. Brock seized the opportunity, and bluntly asked him what the nature
+of the anxiety might be. Did it relate to money? No; it related to a
+Letter which had been waiting for him for many years. Had he received
+the letter? Not yet; it had been left under charge of one of the
+partners in the firm which had managed the business of his inheritance
+for him; the partner had been absent from England; and the letter,
+locked up among his own private papers, could not be got at till he
+returned. He was expected back toward the latter part of that present
+May, and, if Midwinter could be sure where the cruise would take them to
+at the close of the month, he thought he would write and have the letter
+forwarded. Had he any family reasons to be anxious about it? None that
+he knew of; he was curious to see what had been waiting for him for many
+years, and that was all. So he answered the rector’s questions, with
+his tawny face turned away over the low bulwark of the yacht, and his
+fishing-line dragging in his supple brown hands.
+
+Favored by wind and weather, the little vessel had done wonders on her
+trial trip. Before the period fixed for the duration of the cruise had
+half expired, the yacht was as high up on the Welsh coast as Holyhead;
+and Allan, eager for adventure in unknown regions, had declared boldly
+for an extension of the voyage northward to the Isle of Man. Having
+ascertained from reliable authority that the weather really promised
+well for a cruise in that quarter, and that, in the event of any
+unforeseen necessity for return, the railway was accessible by the
+steamer from Douglas to Liverpool, Mr. Brock agreed to his pupil’s
+proposal. By that night’s post he wrote to Allan’s lawyers and to his
+own rectory, indicating Douglas in the Isle of Man as the next
+address to which letters might be forwarded. At the post-office he met
+Midwinter, who had just dropped a letter into the box. Remembering what
+he had said on board the yacht, Mr. Brock concluded that they had both
+taken the same precaution, and had ordered their correspondence to be
+forwarded to the same place.
+
+Late the next day they set sail for the Isle of Man.
+
+For a few hours all went well; but sunset brought with it the signs of
+a coming change. With the darkness the wind rose to a gale, and the
+question whether Allan and his journeymen had or had not built a stout
+sea-boat was seriously tested for the first time. All that night, after
+trying vainly to bear up for Holyhead, the little vessel kept the sea,
+and stood her trial bravely. The next morning the Isle of Man was in
+view, and the yacht was safe at Castletown. A survey by daylight of hull
+and rigging showed that all the damage done might be set right again
+in a week’s time. The cruising party had accordingly remained at
+Castletown, Allan being occupied in superintending the repairs, Mr.
+Brock in exploring the neighborhood, and Midwinter in making daily
+pilgrimages on foot to Douglas and back to inquire for letters.
+
+The first of the cruising party who received a letter was Allan. “More
+worries from those everlasting lawyers,” was all he said, when he had
+read the letter, and had crumpled it up in his pocket. The rector’s turn
+came next, before the week’s sojourn at Castletown had expired. On the
+fifth day he found a letter from Somersetshire waiting for him at the
+hotel. It had been brought there by Midwinter, and it contained news
+which entirely overthrew all Mr. Brock’s holiday plans. The clergyman
+who had undertaken to do duty for him in his absence had been
+unexpectedly summoned home again; and Mr. Brock had no choice (the day
+of the week being Friday) but to cross the next morning from Douglass
+to Liverpool, and get back by railway on Saturday night in time for
+Sunday’s service.
+
+Having read his letter, and resigned himself to his altered
+circumstances as patiently as he might, the rector passed next to a
+question that pressed for serious consideration in its turn. Burdened
+with his heavy responsibility toward Allan, and conscious of his own
+undiminished distrust of Allan’s new friend, how was he to act, in the
+emergency that now beset him, toward the two young men who had been his
+companions on the cruise?
+
+Mr. Brock had first asked himself that awkward question on the Friday
+afternoon, and he was still trying vainly to answer it, alone in his own
+room, at one o’clock on the Saturday morning. It was then only the end
+of May, and the residence of the ladies at Thorpe Ambrose (unless they
+chose to shorten it of their own accord) would not expire till the
+middle of June. Even if the repairs of the yacht had been completed
+(which was not the case), there was no possible pretense for hurrying
+Allan back to Somersetshire. But one other alternative remained--to
+leave him where he was. In other words, to leave him, at the
+turning-point of his life, under the sole influence of a man whom he had
+first met with as a castaway at a village inn, and who was still, to all
+practical purposes, a total stranger to him.
+
+In despair of obtaining any better means of enlightenment to guide
+his decision, Mr. Brock reverted to the impression which Midwinter had
+produced on his own mind in the familiarity of the cruise.
+
+Young as he was, the ex-usher had evidently lived a varied life. He
+could speak of books like a man who had really enjoyed them; he could
+take his turn at the helm like a sailor who knew his duty; he could
+cook, and climb the rigging, and lay the cloth for dinner, with an odd
+delight in the exhibition of his own dexterity. The display of these,
+and other qualities like them, as his spirits rose with the cruise, had
+revealed the secret of his attraction for Allan plainly enough. But had
+all disclosures rested there? Had the man let no chance light in on his
+character in the rector’s presence? Very little; and that little did
+not set him forth in a morally alluring aspect. His way in the world had
+lain evidently in doubtful places; familiarity with the small villainies
+of vagabonds peeped out of him now and then; and, more significant
+still, he habitually slept the light, suspicious sleep of a man who has
+been accustomed to close his eyes in doubt of the company under the same
+roof with him. Down to the very latest moment of the rector’s experience
+of him--down to that present Friday night--his conduct had been
+persistently secret and unaccountable to the very last. After bringing
+Mr. Brock’s letter to the hotel, he had mysterious disappeared from
+the house without leaving any message for his companions, and without
+letting anybody see whether he had or had not received a letter himself.
+At nightfall he had come back stealthily in the darkness, had been
+caught on the stairs by Allan, eager to tell him of the change in the
+rector’s plans, had listened to the news without a word of remark! and
+had ended by sulkily locking himself into his own room. What was
+there in his favor to set against such revelations of his character
+as these--against his wandering eyes, his obstinate reserve with the
+rector, his ominous silence on the subject of family and friends? Little
+or nothing: the sum of all his merits began and ended with his gratitude
+to Allan.
+
+
+Mr. Brock left his seat on the side of the bed, trimmed his candle, and,
+still lost in his own thoughts, looked out absently at the night. The
+change of place brought no new ideas with it. His retrospect over
+his own past life had amply satisfied him that his present sense of
+responsibility rested on no merely fanciful grounds, and, having brought
+him to that point, had left him there, standing at the window, and
+seeing nothing but the total darkness in his own mind faithfully
+reflected by the total darkness of the night.
+
+“If I only had a friend to apply to!” thought the rector. “If I could
+only find some one to help me in this miserable place!”
+
+At the moment when the aspiration crossed his mind, it was suddenly
+answered by a low knock at the door, and a voice said softly in the
+passage outside, “Let me come in.”
+
+After an instant’s pause to steady his nerves, Mr. Brock opened the
+door, and found himself, at one o’clock in the morning, standing face to
+face on the threshold of his own bedroom with Ozias Midwinter.
+
+“Are you ill?” asked the rector, as soon as his astonishment would allow
+him to speak.
+
+“I have come here to make a clean breast of it!” was the strange answer.
+“Will you let me in?”
+
+With those words he walked into the room, his eyes on the ground, his
+lips ashy pale, and his hand holding something hidden behind him.
+
+“I saw the light under your door,” he went on, without looking up, and
+without moving his hand, “and I know the trouble on your mind which is
+keeping you from your rest. You are going away to-morrow morning, and
+you don’t like leaving Mr. Armadale alone with a stranger like me.”
+
+Startled as he was, Mr. Brock saw the serious necessity of being plain
+with a man who had come at that time, and had said those words to him.
+
+“You have guessed right,” he answered. “I stand in the place of a father
+to Allan Armadale, and I am naturally unwilling to leave him, at his
+age, with a man whom I don’t know.”
+
+Ozias Midwinter took a step forward to the table. His wandering eyes
+rested on the rector’s New Testament, which was one of the objects lying
+on it.
+
+“You have read that Book, in the years of a long life, to many
+congregations,” he said. “Has it taught you mercy to your miserable
+fellow-creatures?”
+
+Without waiting to be answered, he looked Mr. Brock in the face for the
+first time, and brought his hidden hand slowly into view.
+
+“Read that,” he said; “and, for Christ’s sake, pity me when you know who
+I am.”
+
+He laid a letter of many pages on the table. It was the letter that Mr.
+Neal had posted at Wildbad nineteen years since.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE MAN REVEALED.
+
+THE first cool breathings of the coming dawn fluttered through the open
+window as Mr. Brock read the closing lines of the Confession. He put it
+from him in silence, without looking up. The first shock of discovery
+had struck his mind, and had passed away again. At his age, and with
+his habits of thought, his grasp was not strong enough to hold the whole
+revelation that had fallen on him. All his heart, when he closed the
+manuscript, was with the memory of the woman who had been the beloved
+friend of his later and happier life; all his thoughts were busy with
+the miserable secret of her treason to her own father which the letter
+had disclosed.
+
+He was startled out of the narrow limits of his own little grief by the
+vibration of the table at which he sat, under a hand that was laid on it
+heavily. The instinct of reluctance was strong in him; but he conquered
+it, and looked up. There, silently confronting him in the mixed light of
+the yellow candle flame and the faint gray dawn, stood the castaway of
+the village inn--the inheritor of the fatal Armadale name.
+
+Mr. Brock shuddered as the terror of the present time and the darker
+terror yet of the future that might be coming rushed back on him at the
+sight of the man’s face. The man saw it, and spoke first.
+
+“Is my father’s crime looking at you out of my eyes?” he asked. “Has the
+ghost of the drowned man followed me into the room?”
+
+The suffering and the passion that he was forcing back shook the hand
+that he still kept on the table, and stifled the voice in which he spoke
+until it sank to a whisper.
+
+“I have no wish to treat you otherwise than justly and kindly,” answered
+Mr. Brock. “Do me justice on my side, and believe that I am incapable of
+cruelly holding you responsible for your father’s crime.”
+
+The reply seemed to compose him. He bowed his head in silence, and took
+up the confession from the table.
+
+“Have you read this through?” he asked, quietly.
+
+“Every word of it, from first to last.”
+
+“Have I dealt openly with you so far. Has Ozias Midwinter--”
+
+“Do you still call yourself by that name,” interrupted Mr. Brock, “now
+your true name is known to me?”
+
+“Since I have read my father’s confession,” was the answer, “I like my
+ugly alias better than ever. Allow me to repeat the question which I was
+about to put to you a minute since: Has Ozias Midwinter done his best
+thus far to enlighten Mr. Brock?”
+
+The rector evaded a direct reply. “Few men in your position,” he said,
+“would have had the courage to show me that letter.”
+
+“Don’t be too sure, sir, of the vagabond you picked up at the inn till
+you know a little more of him than you know now. You have got the secret
+of my birth, but you are not in possession yet of the story of my life.
+You ought to know it, and you shall know it, before you leave me alone
+with Mr. Armadale. Will you wait, and rest a little while, or shall I
+tell it you now?”
+
+“Now,” said Mr. Brock, still as far away as ever from knowing the real
+character of the man before him.
+
+Everything Ozias Midwinter said, everything Ozias Midwinter did, was
+against him. He had spoken with a sardonic indifference, almost with an
+insolence of tone, which would have repelled the sympathies of any man
+who heard him. And now, instead of placing himself at the table, and
+addressing his story directly to the rector, he withdrew silently and
+ungraciously to the window-seat. There he sat, his face averted, his
+hands mechanically turning the leaves of his father’s letter till
+he came to the last. With his eyes fixed on the closing lines of the
+manuscript, and with a strange mixture of recklessness and sadness in
+his voice, he began his promised narrative in these words:
+
+
+“The first thing you know of me,” he said, “is what my father’s
+confession has told you already. He mentions here that I was a child,
+asleep on his breast, when he spoke his last words in this world, and
+when a stranger’s hand wrote them down for him at his deathbed.
+That stranger’s name, as you may have noticed, is signed on the
+cover--‘Alexander Neal, Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh.’ The first
+recollection I have is of Alexander Neal beating me with a horsewhip (I
+dare say I deserved it), in the character of my stepfather.”
+
+“Have you no recollection of your mother at the same time?” asked Mr.
+Brock.
+
+“Yes; I remember her having shabby old clothes made up to fit me,
+and having fine new frocks bought for her two children by her second
+husband. I remember the servants laughing at me in my old things, and
+the horsewhip finding its way to my shoulders again for losing my temper
+and tearing my shabby clothes. My next recollection gets on to a year or
+two later. I remember myself locked up in a lumber-room, with a bit of
+bread and a mug of water, wondering what it was that made my mother and
+my stepfather seem to hate the very sight of me. I never settled that
+question till yesterday, and then I solved the mystery, when my father’s
+letter was put into my hands. My mother knew what had really happened
+on board the French timber-ship, and my stepfather knew what had really
+happened, and they were both well aware that the shameful secret which
+they would fain have kept from every living creature was a secret
+which would be one day revealed to _me_. There was no help for
+it--the confession was in the executor’s hands, and there was I, an
+ill-conditioned brat, with my mother’s negro blood in my face, and my
+murdering father’s passions in my heart, inheritor of their secret in
+spite of them! I don’t wonder at the horsewhip now, or the shabby old
+clothes, or the bread and water in the lumber-room. Natural penalties
+all of them, sir, which the child was beginning to pay already for the
+father’s sin.”
+
+Mr. Brock looked at the swarthy, secret face, still obstinately turned
+away from him. “Is this the stark insensibility of a vagabond,” he asked
+himself, “or the despair, in disguise, of a miserable man?”
+
+“School is my next recollection,” the other went on--“a cheap place in a
+lost corner of Scotland. I was left there, with a bad character to
+help me at starting. I spare you the story of the master’s cane in the
+schoolroom, and the boys’ kicks in the playground. I dare say there was
+ingrained ingratitude in my nature; at any rate, I ran away. The first
+person who met me asked my name. I was too young and too foolish to know
+the importance of concealing it, and, as a matter of course, I was taken
+back to school the same evening. The result taught me a lesson which I
+have not forgotten since. In a day or two more, like the vagabond I
+was, I ran away for the second time. The school watch-dog had had his
+instructions, I suppose: he stopped me before I got outside the gate.
+Here is his mark, among the rest, on the back of my hand. His master’s
+marks I can’t show you; they are all on my back. Can you believe in my
+perversity? There was a devil in me that no dog could worry out. I
+ran away again as soon as I left my bed, and this time I got off. At
+nightfall I found myself (with a pocketful of the school oatmeal) lost
+on a moor. I lay down on the fine soft heather, under the lee of a
+great gray rock. Do you think I felt lonely? Not I! I was away from the
+master’s cane, away from my schoolfellows’ kicks, away from my mother,
+away from my stepfather; and I lay down that night under my good friend
+the rock, the happiest boy in all Scotland!”
+
+Through the wretched childhood which that one significant circumstance
+disclosed, Mr. Brock began to see dimly how little was really strange,
+how little really unaccountable, in the character of the man who was now
+speaking to him.
+
+“I slept soundly,” Midwinter continued, “under my friend the rock. When
+I woke in the morning, I found a sturdy old man with a fiddle sitting
+on one side of me, and two performing dogs on the other. Experience
+had made me too sharp to tell the truth when the man put his first
+questions. He didn’t press them; he gave me a good breakfast out of his
+knapsack, and he let me romp with the dogs. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he
+said, when he had got my confidence in this manner, ‘you want three
+things, my man: you want a new father, a new family, and a new name.
+I’ll be your father. I’ll let you have the dogs for your brothers; and,
+if you’ll promise to be very careful of it, I’ll give you my own
+name into the bargain. Ozias Midwinter, Junior, you have had a good
+breakfast; if you want a good dinner, come along with me!’ He got up,
+the dogs trotted after him, and I trotted after the dogs. Who was my new
+father? you will ask. A half-breed gypsy, sir; a drunkard, a ruffian,
+and a thief--and the best friend I ever had! Isn’t a man your friend who
+gives you your food, your shelter, and your education? Ozias Midwinter
+taught me to dance the Highland fling, to throw somersaults, to walk
+on stilts, and to sing songs to his fiddle. Sometimes we roamed the
+country, and performed at fairs. Sometimes we tried the large towns, and
+enlivened bad company over its cups. I was a nice, lively little boy of
+eleven years old, and bad company, the women especially, took a fancy to
+me and my nimble feet. I was vagabond enough to like the life. The dogs
+and I lived together, ate, and drank, and slept together. I can’t think
+of those poor little four-footed brothers of mine, even now, without a
+choking in the throat. Many is the beating we three took together; many
+is the hard day’s dancing we did together; many is the night we have
+slept together, and whimpered together, on the cold hill-side. I’m not
+trying to distress you, sir; I’m only telling you the truth. The life
+with all its hardships was a life that fitted me, and the half-breed
+gypsy who gave me his name, ruffian as he was, was a ruffian I liked.”
+
+“A man who beat you!” exclaimed Mr. Brock, in astonishment.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you just now, sir, that I lived with the dogs? and did
+you ever hear of a dog who liked his master the worse for beating him?
+Hundreds of thousands of miserable men, women, and children would have
+liked that man (as I liked him) if he had always given them what he
+always gave me--plenty to eat. It was stolen food mostly, and my new
+gypsy father was generous with it. He seldom laid the stick on us when
+he was sober; but it diverted him to hear us yelp when he was drunk. He
+died drunk, and enjoyed his favorite amusement with his last breath. One
+day (when I had been two years in his service), after giving us a good
+dinner out on the moor, he sat down with his back against a stone, and
+called us up to divert himself with his stick. He made the dogs yelp
+first, and then he called to me. I didn’t go very willingly; he had been
+drinking harder than usual, and the more he drank the better he liked
+his after-dinner amusement. He was in high good-humor that day, and
+he hit me so hard that he toppled over, in his drunken state, with the
+force of his own blow. He fell with his face in a puddle, and lay there
+without moving. I and the dogs stood at a distance, and looked at him:
+we thought he was feigning, to get us near and have another stroke at
+us. He feigned so long that we ventured up to him at last. It took me
+some time to pull him over; he was a heavy man. When I did get him on
+his back, he was dead. We made all the outcry we could; but the dogs
+were little, and I was little, and the place was lonely; and no help
+came to us. I took his fiddle and his stick; I said to my two brothers,
+‘Come along, we must get our own living now;’ and we went away
+heavy-hearted, and left him on the moor. Unnatural as it may seem
+to you, I was sorry for him. I kept his ugly name through all my
+after-wanderings, and I have enough of the old leaven left in me to like
+the sound of it still. Midwinter or Armadale, never mind my name now, we
+will talk of that afterward; you must know the worst of me first.”
+
+“Why not the best of you?” said Mr. Brock, gently.
+
+“Thank you, sir; but I am here to tell the truth. We will get on, if you
+please, to the next chapter in my story. The dogs and I did badly, after
+our master’s death; our luck was against us. I lost one of my little
+brothers--the best performer of the two; he was stolen, and I never
+recovered him. My fiddle and my stilts were taken from me next, by main
+force, by a tramp who was stronger than I. These misfortunes drew Tommy
+and me--I beg your pardon, sir, I mean the dog--closer together than
+ever.
+
+“I think we had some kind of dim foreboding on both sides that we had not
+done with our misfortunes yet; anyhow, it was not very long before we
+were parted forever. We were neither of us thieves (our master had been
+satisfied with teaching us to dance); but we both committed an invasion
+of the rights of property, for all that. Young creatures, even when
+they are half starved, cannot resist taking a run sometimes on a fine
+morning. Tommy and I could not resist taking a run into a gentleman’s
+plantation; the gentleman preserved his game; and the gentleman’s keeper
+knew his business. I heard a gun go off; you can guess the rest. God
+preserve me from ever feeling such misery again as I felt when I lay
+down by Tommy, and took him, dead and bloody, in my arms! The keeper
+attempted to part us; I bit him, like the wild animal I was. He tried
+the stick on me next; he might as well have tried it on one of the
+trees. The noise reached the ears of two young ladies riding near the
+place--daughters of the gentleman on whose property I was a trespasser.
+They were too well brought up to lift their voices against the sacred
+right of preserving game, but they were kind-hearted girls, and they
+pitied me, and took me home with them. I remember the gentlemen of the
+house (keen sportsmen all of them) roaring with laughter as I went by
+the windows, crying, with my little dead dog in my arms. Don’t suppose
+I complain of their laughter; it did me good service; it roused the
+indignation of the two ladies. One of them took me into her own garden,
+and showed me a place where I might bury my dog under the flowers, and
+be sure that no other hands should ever disturb him again. The other
+went to her father, and persuaded him to give the forlorn little
+vagabond a chance in the house, under one of the upper servants. Yes!
+you have been cruising in company with a man who was once a foot-boy.
+I saw you look at me, when I amused Mr. Armadale by laying the cloth
+on board the yacht. Now you know why I laid it so neatly, and forgot
+nothing. It has been my good fortune to see something of society; I have
+helped to fill its stomach and black its boots. My experience of the
+servants’ hall was not a long one. Before I had worn out my first suit
+of livery, there was a scandal in the house. It was the old story; there
+is no need to tell it over again for the thousandth time. Loose money
+left on a table, and not found there again; all the servants with
+characters to appeal to except the foot-boy, who had been rashly taken
+on trial. Well! well! I was lucky in that house to the last; I was not
+prosecuted for taking what I had not only never touched, but never even
+seen: I was only turned out. One morning I went in my old clothes to the
+grave where I had buried Tommy. I gave the place a kiss; I said good-by
+to my little dead dog; and there I was, out in the world again, at the
+ripe age of thirteen years!”
+
+“In that friendless state, and at that tender age,” said Mr. Brock, “did
+no thought cross your mind of going home again?”
+
+“I went home again, sir, that very night--I slept on the hill-side. What
+other home had I? In a day or two’s time I drifted back to the large
+towns and the bad company, the great open country was so lonely to me,
+now I had lost the dogs! Two sailors picked me up next. I was a handy
+lad, and I got a cabin-boy’s berth on board a coasting-vessel. A
+cabin-boy’s berth means dirt to live in, offal to eat, a man’s work on
+a boy’s shoulders, and the rope’s-end at regular intervals. The vessel
+touched at a port in the Hebrides. I was as ungrateful as usual to my
+best benefactors; I ran away again. Some women found me, half dead of
+starvation, in the northern wilds of the Isle of Skye. It was near the
+coast and I took a turn with the fishermen next. There was less of the
+rope’s-end among my new masters; but plenty of exposure to wind and
+weather, and hard work enough to have killed a boy who was not a
+seasoned tramp like me. I fought through it till the winter came, and
+then the fishermen turned me adrift again. I don’t blame them; food was
+scarce, and mouths were many. With famine staring the whole community in
+the face, why should they keep a boy who didn’t belong to them? A great
+city was my only chance in the winter-time; so I went to Glasgow, and
+all but stepped into the lion’s mouth as soon as I got there. I was
+minding an empty cart on the Broomielaw, when I heard my stepfather’s
+voice on the pavement side of the horse by which I was standing. He had
+met some person whom he knew, and, to my terror and surprise, they
+were talking about me. Hidden behind the horse, I heard enough of their
+conversation to know that I had narrowly escaped discovery before I
+went on board the coasting-vessel. I had met at that time with another
+vagabond boy of my own age; we had quarreled and parted. The day after,
+my stepfather’s inquiries were made in that very district, and it became
+a question with him (a good personal description being unattainable in
+either case) which of the two boys he should follow. One of them, he was
+informed, was known as “Brown,” and the other as “Midwinter.” Brown was
+just the common name which a cunning runaway boy would be most likely
+to assume; Midwinter, just the remarkable name which he would be most
+likely to avoid. The pursuit had accordingly followed Brown, and had
+allowed me to escape. I leave you to imagine whether I was not doubly
+and trebly determined to keep my gypsy master’s name after that. But
+my resolution did not stop here. I made up my mind to leave the country
+altogether. After a day or two’s lurking about the outward-bound vessels
+in port, I found out which sailed first, and hid myself on board. Hunger
+tried hard to force me out before the pilot had left; but hunger was not
+new to me, and I kept my place. The pilot was out of the vessel when I
+made my appearance on deck, and there was nothing for it but to keep me
+or throw me overboard. The captain said (I have no doubt quite truly)
+that he would have preferred throwing me overboard; but the majesty of
+the law does sometimes stand the friend even of a vagabond like me. In
+that way I came back to a sea-life. In that way I learned enough to
+make me handy and useful (as I saw you noticed) on board Mr. Armadale’s
+yacht. I sailed more than one voyage, in more than one vessel, to more
+than one part of the world, and I might have followed the sea for life,
+if I could only have kept my temper under every provocation that could
+be laid on it. I had learned a great deal; but, not having learned that,
+I made the last part of my last voyage home to the port of Bristol in
+irons; and I saw the inside of a prison for the first time in my life,
+on a charge of mutinous conduct to one of my officers. You have heard me
+with extraordinary patience, sir, and I am glad to tell you, in return,
+that we are not far now from the end of my story. You found some books,
+if I remember right, when you searched my luggage at the Somersetshire
+inn?”
+
+Mr. Brock answered in the affirmative.
+
+“Those books mark the next change in my life--and the last, before I
+took the usher’s place at the school. My term of imprisonment was not
+a long one. Perhaps my youth pleaded for me; perhaps the Bristol
+magistrates took into consideration the time I had passed in irons on
+board ship. Anyhow, I was just turned seventeen when I found myself out
+on the world again. I had no friends to receive me; I had no place to go
+to. A sailor’s life, after what had happened, was a life I recoiled from
+in disgust. I stood in the crowd on the bridge at Bristol, wondering
+what I should do with my freedom now I had got it back. Whether I had
+altered in the prison, or whether I was feeling the change in character
+that comes with coming manhood, I don’t know; but the old reckless
+enjoyment of the old vagabond life seemed quite worn out of my nature.
+An awful sense of loneliness kept me wandering about Bristol, in horror
+of the quiet country, till after nightfall. I looked at the lights
+kindling in the parlor windows, with a miserable envy of the happy
+people inside. A word of advice would have been worth something to me
+at that time. Well! I got it: a policeman advised me to move on. He was
+quite right; what else could I do? I looked up at the sky, and there
+was my old friend of many a night’s watch at sea, the north star. ‘All
+points of the compass are alike to me,’ I thought to myself; ‘I’ll go
+_your_ way.’ Not even the star would keep me company that night. It got
+behind a cloud, and left me alone in the rain and darkness. I groped my
+way to a cart-shed, fell asleep, and dreamed of old times, when I served
+my gypsy master and lived with the dogs. God! what I would have given
+when I woke to have felt Tommy’s little cold muzzle in my hand! Why am
+I dwelling on these things? Why don’t I get on to the end? You shouldn’t
+encourage me, sir, by listening, so patiently. After a week more of
+wandering, without hope to help me, or prospects to look to, I found
+myself in the streets of Shrewsbury, staring in at the windows of a
+book-seller’s shop. An old man came to the shop door, looked about him,
+and saw me. ‘Do you want a job?’ he asked. ‘And are you not above
+doing it cheap?’ The prospect of having something to do, and some human
+creature to speak a word to, tempted me, and I did a day’s dirty work
+in the book-seller’s warehouse for a shilling. More work followed at the
+same rate. In a week I was promoted to sweep out the shop and put up the
+shutters. In no very long time after, I was trusted to carry the books
+out; and when quarter-day came, and the shop-man left, I took his place.
+Wonderful luck! you will say; here I had found my way to a friend at
+last. I had found my way to one of the most merciless misers in
+England; and I had risen in the little world of Shrewsbury by the purely
+commercial process of underselling all my competitors. The job in the
+warehouse had been declined at the price by every idle man in the town,
+and I did it. The regular porter received his weekly pittance under
+weekly protest. I took two shillings less, and made no complaint. The
+shop-man gave warning on the ground that he was underfed as well as
+underpaid. I received half his salary, and lived contentedly on his
+reversionary scraps. Never were two men so well suited to each other as
+that book-seller and I. _His_ one object in life was to find somebody
+who would work for him at starvation wages. _My_ one object in life was
+to find somebody who would give me an asylum over my head. Without a
+single sympathy in common--without a vestige of feeling of any sort,
+hostile or friendly, growing up between us on either side--without
+wishing each other good-night when we parted on the house stairs, or
+good-morning when we met at the shop counter, we lived alone in that
+house, strangers from first to last, for two whole years. A dismal
+existence for a lad of my age, was it not? You are a clergyman and a
+scholar--surely you can guess what made the life endurable to me?”
+
+Mr. Brock remembered the well-worn volumes which had been found in the
+usher’s bag. “The books made it endurable to you,” he said.
+
+The eyes of the castaway kindled with a new light.
+
+“Yes!” he said, “the books--the generous friends who met me without
+suspicion--the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of
+my life that I can look back on with something like pride are the years
+I passed in the miser’s house. The only unalloyed pleasure I have ever
+tasted is the pleasure that I found for myself on the miser’s shelves.
+Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer
+days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the
+draught. There were few customers to serve, for the books were mostly of
+the solid and scholarly kind. No responsibilities rested on me, for the
+accounts were kept by my master, and only the small sums of money were
+suffered to pass through my hands. He soon found out enough of me to
+know that my honesty was to be trusted, and that my patience might be
+counted on, treat me as he might. The one insight into _his_ character
+which I obtained, on my side, widened the distance between us to its
+last limits. He was a confirmed opium-eater in secret--a prodigal in
+laudanum, though a miser in all besides. He never confessed his frailty,
+and I never told him I had found it out. He had his pleasure apart from
+me, and I had my pleasure apart from _him_. Week after week, month after
+month, there we sat, without a friendly word ever passing between us--I,
+alone with my book at the counter; he, alone with his ledger in the
+parlor, dimly visible to me through the dirty window-pane of the glass
+door, sometimes poring over his figures, sometimes lost and motionless
+for hours in the ecstasy of his opium trance. Time passed, and made no
+impression on us; the seasons of two years came and went, and found
+us still unchanged. One morning, at the opening of the third year, my
+master did not appear, as usual, to give me my allowance for breakfast.
+I went upstairs, and found him helpless in his bed. He refused to trust
+me with the keys of the cupboard, or to let me send for a doctor.
+I bought a morsel of bread, and went back to my books, with no more
+feeling for _him_ (I honestly confess it) than he would have had for
+_me_ under the same circumstances. An hour or two later I was roused
+from my reading by an occasional customer of ours, a retired medical
+man. He went upstairs. I was glad to get rid of him and return to my
+books. He came down again, and disturbed me once more. ‘I don’t much
+like you, my lad,’ he said; ‘but I think it my duty to say that you will
+soon have to shift for yourself. You are no great favorite in the
+town, and you may have some difficulty in finding a new place. Provide
+yourself with a written character from your master before it is too
+late.’ He spoke to me coldly. I thanked him coldly on my side, and got
+my character the same day. Do you think my master let me have it
+for nothing? Not he! He bargained with me on his deathbed. I was his
+creditor for a month’s salary, and he wouldn’t write a line of my
+testimonial until I had first promised to forgive him the debt. Three
+days afterward he died, enjoying to the last the happiness of having
+overreached his shop-man. ‘Aha!’ he whispered, when the doctor
+formally summoned me to take leave of him, ‘I got you cheap!’ Was Ozias
+Midwinter’s stick as cruel as that? I think not. Well! there I was, out
+on the world again, but surely with better prospects this time. I had
+taught myself to read Latin, Greek, and German; and I had got my written
+character to speak for me. All useless! The doctor was quite right; I
+was not liked in the town. The lower order of the people despised me for
+selling my services to the miser at the miser’s price. As for the better
+classes, I did with them (God knows how!) what I have always done with
+everybody except Mr. Armadale--I produced a disagreeable impression at
+first sight; I couldn’t mend it afterward; and there was an end of me
+in respectable quarters. It is quite likely I might have spent all my
+savings, my puny little golden offspring of two years’ miserable
+growth, but for a school advertisement which I saw in a local paper. The
+heartlessly mean terms that were offered encouraged me to apply; and I
+got the place. How I prospered in it, and what became of me next, there
+is no need to tell you. The thread of my story is all wound off; my
+vagabond life stands stripped of its mystery; and you know the worst of
+me at last.”
+
+
+A moment of silence followed those closing words. Midwinter rose from
+the window-seat, and came back to the table with the letter from Wildbad
+in his hand.
+
+“My father’s confession has told you who I am; and my own confession has
+told you what my life has been,” he said, addressing Mr. Brock, without
+taking the chair to which the rector pointed. “I promised to make a
+clean breast of it when I first asked leave to enter this room. Have I
+kept my word?”
+
+“It is impossible to doubt it,” replied Mr. Brock. “You have established
+your claim on my confidence and my sympathy. I should be insensible,
+indeed, if I could know what I now know of your childhood and your
+youth, and not feel something of Allan’s kindness for Allan’s friend.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Midwinter, simply and gravely.
+
+He sat down opposite Mr. Brook at the table for the first time.
+
+“In a few hours you will have left this place,” he proceeded. “If I can
+help you to leave it with your mind at ease, I will. There is more to be
+said between us than we have said up to this time. My future relations
+with Mr. Armadale are still left undecided; and the serious question
+raised by my father’s letter is a question which we have neither of us
+faced yet.”
+
+He paused, and looked with a momentary impatience at the candle still
+burning on the table, in the morning light. The struggle to speak with
+composure, and to keep his own feelings stoically out of view, was
+evidently growing harder and harder to him.
+
+“It may possibly help your decision,” he went on, “if I tell you how I
+determined to act toward Mr. Armadale--in the matter of the similarity
+of our names--when I first read this letter, and when I had composed
+myself sufficiently to be able to think at all.” He stopped, and cast
+a second impatient look at the lighted candle. “Will you excuse the odd
+fancy of an odd man?” he asked, with a faint smile. “I want to put out
+the candle: I want to speak of the new subject, in the new light.”
+
+He extinguished the candle as he spoke, and let the first tenderness of
+the daylight flow uninterruptedly into the room.
+
+“I must once more ask your patience,” he resumed, “if I return for a
+moment to myself and my circumstances. I have already told you that my
+stepfather made an attempt to discover me some years after I had turned
+my back on the Scotch school. He took that step out of no anxiety of his
+own, but simply as the agent of my father’s trustees. In the exercise of
+their discretion, they had sold the estates in Barbadoes (at the time
+of the emancipation of the slaves, and the ruin of West Indian property)
+for what the estates would fetch. Having invested the proceeds,
+they were bound to set aside a sum for my yearly education. This
+responsibility obliged them to make the attempt to trace me--a fruitless
+attempt, as you already know. A little later (as I have been since
+informed) I was publicly addressed by an advertisement in the
+newspapers, which I never saw. Later still, when I was twenty-one, a
+second advertisement appeared (which I did see) offering a reward for
+evidence of my death. If I was alive, I had a right to my half share
+of the proceeds of the estates on coming of age; if dead, the money
+reverted to my mother. I went to the lawyers, and heard from them what
+I have just told you. After some difficulty in proving my identity--and
+after an interview with my stepfather, and a message from my mother,
+which has hopelessly widened the old breach between us--my claim was
+allowed; and my money is now invested for me in the funds, under the
+name that is really my own.”
+
+Mr. Brock drew eagerly nearer to the table. He saw the end now to which
+the speaker was tending
+
+“Twice a year,” Midwinter pursued, “I must sign my own name to get my
+own income. At all other times, and under all other circumstances, I
+may hide my identity under any name I please. As Ozias Midwinter, Mr.
+Armadale first knew me; as Ozias Midwinter he shall know me to the end
+of my days. Whatever may be the result of this interview--whether I win
+your confidence or whether I lose it--of one thing you may feel sure:
+your pupil shall never know the horrible secret which I have trusted
+to your keeping. This is no extraordinary resolution; for, as you know
+already, it costs me no sacrifice of feeling to keep my assumed name.
+There is nothing in my conduct to praise; it comes naturally out of the
+gratitude of a thankful man. Review the circumstances for yourself,
+sir, and set my own horror of revealing them to Mr. Armadale out of
+the question. If the story of the names is ever told, there can be no
+limiting it to the disclosure of my father’s crime; it must go back to
+the story of Mrs. Armadale’s marriage. I have heard her son talk of her;
+I know how he loves her memory. As God is my witness, he shall never
+love it less dearly through _me_!”
+
+Simply as the words were spoken, they touched the deepest sympathies
+in the rector’s nature: they took his thoughts back to Mrs. Armadale’s
+deathbed. There sat the man against whom she had ignorantly warned him
+in her son’s interests; and that man, of his own free-will, had laid on
+himself the obligation of respecting her secret for her son’s sake! The
+memory of his own past efforts to destroy the very friendship out of
+which this resolution had sprung rose and reproached Mr. Brock. He held
+out his hand to Midwinter for the first time. “In her name, and in her
+son’s name,” he said, warmly, “I thank you.”
+
+Without replying, Midwinter spread the confession open before him on the
+table.
+
+“I think I have said all that it was my duty to say,” he began, “before
+we could approach the consideration of this letter. Whatever may have
+appeared strange in my conduct toward you and toward Mr. Armadale may
+be now trusted to explain itself. You can easily imagine the natural
+curiosity and surprise that I must have felt (ignorant as I then was of
+the truth) when the sound of Mr. Armadale’s name first startled me as
+the echo of my own. You will readily understand that I only hesitated
+to tell him I was his namesake, because I hesitated to damage my
+position--in your estimation, if not in his--by confessing that I had
+come among you under an assumed name. And, after all that you have just
+heard of my vagabond life and my low associates, you will hardly wonder
+at the obstinate silence I maintained about myself, at a time when I did
+not feel the sense of responsibility which my father’s confession has
+laid on me. We can return to these small personal explanations, if you
+wish it, at another time; they cannot be suffered to keep us from the
+greater interests which we must settle before you leave this place.
+We may come now--” His voice faltered, and he suddenly turned his face
+toward the window, so as to hide it from the rector’s view. “We may come
+now,” he repeated, his hand trembling visibly as it held the page,
+“to the murder on board the timber-ship, and to the warning that has
+followed me from my father’s grave.”
+
+Softly--as if he feared they might reach Allan, sleeping in the
+neighboring room--he read the last terrible words which the Scotchman’s
+pen had written at Wildbad, as they fell from his father’s lips:
+
+“Avoid the widow of the man I killed--if the widow still lives. Avoid
+the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage--if the maid
+is still in her service. And, more than all, avoid the man who bears the
+same name as your own. Offend your best benefactor, if that benefactor’s
+influence has connected you one with the other. Desert the woman who
+loves you, if that woman is a link between you and him. Hide yourself
+from him under an assumed name. Put the mountains and the seas between
+you; be ungrateful; be unforgiving; be all that is most repellent
+to your own gentler nature, rather than live under the same roof and
+breathe the same air with that man. Never let the two Allan Armadales
+meet in this world; never, never, never!”
+
+After reading those sentences, he pushed the manuscript from him,
+without looking up. The fatal reserve which he had been in a fair way of
+conquering but a few minutes since, possessed itself of him once more.
+Again his eyes wandered; again his voice sank in tone. A stranger who
+had heard his story, and who saw him now, would have said, “His look is
+lurking, his manner is bad; he is, every inch of him, his father’s son.”
+
+“I have a question to ask you,” said Mr. Brock, breaking the silence
+between them, on his side. “Why have you just read that passage in your
+father’s letter?”
+
+“To force me into telling you the truth,” was the answer. “You must
+know how much there is of my father in me before you trust me to be Mr.
+Armadale’s friend. I got my letter yesterday, in the morning. Some inner
+warning troubled me, and I went down on the sea-shore by myself before I
+broke the seal. Do you believe the dead can come back to the world they
+once lived in? I believe my father came back in that bright morning
+light, through the glare of that broad sunshine and the roar of that
+joyful sea, and watched me while I read. When I got to the words that
+you have just heard, and when I knew that the very end which he had died
+dreading was the end that had really come, I felt the horror that had
+crept over him in his last moments creeping over me. I struggled against
+myself, as _he_ would have had me struggle. I tried to be all that was
+most repellent to my own gentler nature; I tried to think pitilessly of
+putting the mountains and the seas between me and the man who bore my
+name. Hours passed before I could prevail on myself to go back and run
+the risk of meeting Allan Armadale in this house. When I did get back,
+and when he met me at night on the stairs, I thought I was looking him
+in the face as _my_ father looked _his_ father in the face when the
+cabin door closed between them. Draw your own conclusions, sir. Say, if
+you like, that the inheritance of my father’s heathen belief in fate is
+one of the inheritances he has left to me. I won’t dispute it; I
+won’t deny that all through yesterday _his_ superstition was _my_
+superstition. The night came before I could find my way to calmer and
+brighter thoughts. But I did find my way. You may set it down in my
+favor that I lifted myself at last above the influence of this horrible
+letter. Do you know what helped me?”
+
+“Did you reason with yourself?”
+
+“I can’t reason about what I feel.”
+
+“Did you quiet your mind by prayer?”
+
+“I was not fit to pray.”
+
+“And yet something guided you to the better feeling and the truer view?”
+
+“Something did.”
+
+“What was it?”
+
+“My love for Allan Armadale.”
+
+He cast a doubting, almost a timid look at Mr. Brock as he gave that
+answer, and, suddenly leaving the table, went back to the window-seat.
+
+“Have I no right to speak of him in that way?” he asked, keeping his
+face hidden from the rector. “Have I not known him long enough; have I
+not done enough for him yet? Remember what my experience of other men
+had been when I first saw his hand held out to me--when I first heard
+his voice speaking to me in my sick-room. What had I known of strangers’
+hands all through my childhood? I had only known them as hands raised to
+threaten and to strike me. His hand put my pillow straight, and patted
+me on the shoulder, and gave me my food and drink. What had I known of
+other men’s voices, when I was growing up to be a man myself? I had
+only known them as voices that jeered, voices that cursed, voices that
+whispered in corners with a vile distrust. _His_ voice said to me,
+‘Cheer up, Midwinter! we’ll soon bring you round again. You’ll be strong
+enough in a week to go out for a drive with me in our Somersetshire
+lanes.’ Think of the gypsy’s stick; think of the devils laughing at me
+when I went by their windows with my little dead dog in my arms; think
+of the master who cheated me of my month’s salary on his deathbed--and
+ask your own heart if the miserable wretch whom Allan Armadale has
+treated as his equal and his friend has said too much in saying that
+he loves him? I do love him! It _will_ come out of me; I can’t keep it
+back. I love the very ground he treads on! I would give my life--yes,
+the life that is precious to me now, because his kindness has made it a
+happy one--I tell you I would give my life--”
+
+The next words died away on his lips; the hysterical passion rose, and
+conquered him. He stretched out one of his hands with a wild gesture
+of entreaty to Mr. Brock; his head sank on the window-sill and he burst
+into tears.
+
+Even then the hard discipline of the man’s life asserted itself. He
+expected no sympathy, he counted on no merciful human respect for human
+weakness. The cruel necessity of self-suppression was present to his
+mind, while the tears were pouring over his cheeks. “Give me a minute,”
+ he said, faintly. “I’ll fight it down in a minute; I won’t distress you
+in this way again.”
+
+True to his resolution, in a minute he had fought it down. In a minute
+more he was able to speak calmly.
+
+“We will get back, sir, to those better thoughts which have brought me
+from my room to yours,” he resumed. “I can only repeat that I should
+never have torn myself from the hold which this letter fastened on
+me, if I had not loved Allan Armadale with all that I have in me of a
+brother’s love. I said to myself, ‘If the thought of leaving him breaks
+my heart, the thought of leaving him is wrong!’ That was some hours
+since, and I am in the same mind still. I can’t believe--I won’t
+believe--that a friendship which has grown out of nothing but kindness
+on one side, and nothing but gratitude on the other, is destined to lead
+to an evil end. Judge, you who are a clergyman, between the dead father,
+whose word is in these pages, and the living son, whose word is now on
+his lips! What is it appointed me to do, now that I am breathing the
+same air, and living under the same roof with the son of the man whom my
+father killed--to perpetuate my father’s crime by mortally injuring him,
+or to atone for my father’s crime by giving him the devotion of my whole
+life? The last of those two faiths is my faith, and shall be my faith,
+happen what may. In the strength of that better conviction, I have come
+here to trust you with my father’s secret, and to confess the wretched
+story of my own life. In the strength of that better conviction, I can
+face you resolutely with the one plain question, which marks the one
+plain end of all that I have come here to say. Your pupil stands at the
+starting-point of his new career, in a position singularly friendless;
+his one great need is a companion of his own age on whom he can rely.
+The time has come, sir, to decide whether I am to be that companion or
+not. After all you have heard of Ozias Midwinter, tell me plainly, will
+you trust him to be Allan Armadale’s friend?”
+
+Mr. Brock met that fearlessly frank question by a fearless frankness on
+his side.
+
+“I believe you love Allan,” he said, “and I believe you have spoken the
+truth. A man who has produced that impression on me is a man whom I am
+bound to trust. I trust you.”
+
+Midwinter started to his feet, his dark face flushing deep; his eyes
+fixed brightly and steadily, at last, on the rector’s face. “A light!”
+ he exclaimed, tearing the pages of his father’s letter, one by one, from
+the fastening that held them. “Let us destroy the last link that holds
+us to the horrible past! Let us see this confession a heap of ashes
+before we part!”
+
+“Wait!” said Mr. Brock. “Before you burn it, there is a reason for
+looking at it once more.”
+
+The parted leaves of the manuscript dropped from Midwinter’s hands. Mr.
+Brock took them up, and sorted them carefully until he found the last
+page.
+
+“I view your father’s superstition as you view it,” said the rector.
+“But there is a warning given you here, which you will do well (for
+Allan’s sake and for your own sake) not to neglect. The last link with
+the past will not be destroyed when you have burned these pages. One of
+the actors in this story of treachery and murder is not dead yet. Read
+those words.”
+
+He pushed the page across the table, with his finger on one sentence.
+Midwinter’s agitation misled him. He mistook the indication, and read,
+“Avoid the widow of the man I killed, if the widow still lives.”
+
+“Not that sentence,” said the rector. “The next.”
+
+Midwinter read it: “Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to
+the marriage, if the maid is still in her service.”
+
+“The maid and the mistress parted,” said Mr. Brock, “at the time of
+the mistress’s marriage. The maid and the mistress met again at Mrs.
+Armadale’s residence in Somersetshire last year. I myself met the
+woman in the village, and I myself know that her visit hastened Mrs.
+Armadale’s death. Wait a little, and compose yourself; I see I have
+startled you.”
+
+He waited as he was bid, his color fading away to a gray paleness and
+the light in his clear brown eyes dying out slowly. What the rector had
+said had produced no transient impression on him; there was more than
+doubt, there was alarm in his face, as he sat lost in his own thought.
+Was the struggle of the past night renewing itself already? Did he feel
+the horror of his hereditary superstition creeping over him again?
+
+“Can you put me on my guard against her?” he asked, after a long
+interval of silence. “Can you tell me her name?”
+
+“I can only tell you what Mrs. Armadale told me,” answered Mr. Brock.
+“The woman acknowledged having been married in the long interval since
+she and her mistress had last met. But not a word more escaped her about
+her past life. She came to Mrs. Armadale to ask for money, under a
+plea of distress. She got the money, and she left the house, positively
+refusing, when the question was put to her, to mention her married
+name.”
+
+“You saw her yourself in the village. What was she like?”
+
+“She kept her veil down. I can’t tell you.”
+
+“You can tell me what you _did_ see?”
+
+“Certainly. I saw, as she approached me, that she moved very gracefully,
+that she had a beautiful figure, and that she was a little over the
+middle height. I noticed, when she asked me the way to Mrs. Armadale’s
+house, that her manner was the manner of a lady, and that the tone
+of her voice was remarkably soft and winning. Lastly, I remembered
+afterward that she wore a thick black veil, a black bonnet, a black
+silk dress, and a red Paisley shawl. I feel all the importance of your
+possessing some better means of identifying her than I can give you. But
+unhappily--”
+
+He stopped. Midwinter was leaning eagerly across the table, and
+Midwinter’s hand was laid suddenly on his arm.
+
+“Is it possible that you know the woman?” asked Mr. Brock, surprised at
+the sudden change in his manner.
+
+“No.”
+
+“What have I said, then, that has startled you so?”
+
+“Do you remember the woman who threw herself from the river steamer?”
+ asked the other--“the woman who caused that succession of deaths which
+opened Allan Armadale’s way to the Thorpe Ambrose estate?”
+
+“I remember the description of her in the police report,” answered the
+rector.
+
+“_That_ woman,” pursued Midwinter, “moved gracefully, and had a
+beautiful figure. _That_ woman wore a black veil, a black bonnet, a
+black silk gown, and a red Paisley shawl--” He stopped, released his
+hold of Mr. Brock’s arm, and abruptly resumed his chair. “Can it be
+the same?” he said to himself in a whisper. “_Is_ there a fatality
+that follows men in the dark? And is it following _us_ in that woman’s
+footsteps?”
+
+If the conjecture was right, the one event in the past which had
+appeared to be entirely disconnected with the events that had preceded
+it was, on the contrary, the one missing link which made the chain
+complete. Mr. Brock’s comfortable common sense instinctively denied that
+startling conclusion. He looked at Midwinter with a compassionate smile.
+
+“My young friend,” he said, kindly, “have you cleared your mind of all
+superstition as completely as you think? Is what you have just said
+worthy of the better resolution at which you arrived last night?”
+
+Midwinter’s head drooped on his breast; the color rushed back over his
+face; he sighed bitterly.
+
+“You are beginning to doubt my sincerity,” he said. “I can’t blame you.”
+
+“I believe in your sincerity as firmly as ever,” answered Mr. Brock. “I
+only doubt whether you have fortified the weak places in your nature as
+strongly as you yourself suppose. Many a man has lost the battle against
+himself far oftener than you have lost it yet, and has nevertheless won
+his victory in the end. I don’t blame you, I don’t distrust you. I only
+notice what has happened, to put you on your guard against yourself.
+Come! come! Let your own better sense help you; and you will agree with
+me that there is really no evidence to justify the suspicion that the
+woman whom I met in Somersetshire, and the woman who attempted suicide
+in London, are one and the same. Need an old man like me remind a young
+man like you that there are thousands of women in England with beautiful
+figures--thousands of women who are quietly dressed in black silk gowns
+and red Paisley shawls?”
+
+Midwinter caught eagerly at the suggestion; too eagerly, as it might
+have occurred to a harder critic on humanity than Mr. Brock.
+
+“You are quite right, sir,” he said, “and I am quite wrong. Tens of
+thousands of women answer the description, as you say. I have been
+wasting time on my own idle fancies, when I ought to have been carefully
+gathering up facts. If this woman ever attempts to find her way to
+Allan, I must be prepared to stop her.” He began searching restlessly
+among the manuscript leaves scattered about the table, paused over one
+of the pages, and examined it attentively. “This helps me to something
+positive,” he went on; “this helps me to a knowledge of her age. She was
+twelve at the time of Mrs. Armadale’s marriage; add a year, and bring
+her to thirteen; add Allan’s age (twenty-two), and we make her a woman
+of five-and-thirty at the present time. I know her age; and I know that
+she has her own reasons for being silent about her married life. This is
+something gained at the outset, and it may lead, in time, to something
+more.” He looked up brightly again at Mr. Brock. “Am I in the right way
+now, sir? Am I doing my best to profit by the caution which you have
+kindly given me?”
+
+“You are vindicating your own better sense,” answered the rector,
+encouraging him to trample down his own imagination, with an
+Englishman’s ready distrust of the noblest of the human faculties. “You
+are paving the way for your own happier life.”
+
+“Am I?” said the other, thoughtfully.
+
+He searched among the papers once more, and stopped at another of the
+scattered pages.
+
+“The ship!” he exclaimed, suddenly, his color changing again, and his
+manner altering on the instant.
+
+“What ship?” asked the rector.
+
+“The ship in which the deed was done,” Midwinter answered, with the
+first signs of impatience that he had shown yet. “The ship in which my
+father’s murderous hand turned the lock of the cabin door.”
+
+“What of it?” said Mr. Brock.
+
+He appeared not to hear the question; his eyes remained fixed intently
+on the page that he was reading.
+
+“A French vessel, employed in the timber trade,” he said, still speaking
+to himself--“a French vessel, named _La Grace de Dieu_. If my father’s
+belief had been the right belief--if the fatality had been following me,
+step by step, from my father’s grave, in one or other of my voyages, I
+should have fallen in with that ship.” He looked up again at Mr. Brock.
+“I am quite sure about it now,” he said. “Those women are two, and not
+one.”
+
+Mr. Brock shook his head.
+
+“I am glad you have come to that conclusion,” he said. “But I wish you
+had reached it in some other way.”
+
+Midwinter started passionately to his feet, and, seizing on the pages of
+the manuscript with both hands, flung them into the empty fireplace.
+
+“For God’s sake let me burn it!” he exclaimed. “As long as there is a
+page left, I shall read it. And, as long as I read it, my father gets
+the better of me, in spite of myself!”
+
+Mr. Brock pointed to the match-box. In another moment the confession
+was in flames. When the fire had consumed the last morsel of paper,
+Midwinter drew a deep breath of relief.
+
+“I may say, like Macbeth: ‘Why, so, being gone, I am a man again!’”
+ he broke out with a feverish gayety. “You look fatigued, sir; and no
+wonder,” he added, in a lower tone. “I have kept you too long from your
+rest--I will keep you no longer. Depend on my remembering what you
+have told me; depend on my standing between Allan and any enemy, man
+or woman, who comes near him. Thank you, Mr. Brock; a thousand thousand
+times, thank you! I came into this room the most wretched of living men;
+I can leave it now as happy as the birds that are singing outside!”
+
+As he turned to the door, the rays of the rising sun streamed through
+the window, and touched the heap of ashes lying black in the black
+fireplace. The sensitive imagination of Midwinter kindled instantly at
+the sight.
+
+“Look!” he said, joyously. “The promise of the Future shining over the
+ashes of the Past!”
+
+An inexplicable pity for the man, at the moment of his life when he
+needed pity least, stole over the rector’s heart when the door had
+closed, and he was left by himself again.
+
+“Poor fellow!” he said, with an uneasy surprise at his own compassionate
+impulse. “Poor fellow!”
+
+
+
+
+III. DAY AND NIGHT
+
+The morning hours had passed; the noon had come and gone; and Mr. Brock
+had started on the first stage of his journey home.
+
+After parting from the rector in Douglas Harbor, the two young men had
+returned to Castletown, and had there separated at the hotel door, Allan
+walking down to the waterside to look after his yacht, and Midwinter
+entering the house to get the rest that he needed after a sleepless
+night.
+
+He darkened his room; he closed his eyes, but no sleep came to him.
+On this first day of the rector’s absence, his sensitive nature
+extravagantly exaggerated the responsibility which he now held in trust
+for Mr. Brock. A nervous dread of leaving Allan by himself, even for a
+few hours only, kept him waking and doubting, until it became a relief
+rather than a hardship to rise from the bed again, and, following in
+Allan’s footsteps, to take the way to the waterside which led to the
+yacht.
+
+The repairs of the little vessel were nearly completed. It was a breezy,
+cheerful day; the land was bright, the water was blue, the quick waves
+leaped crisply in the sunshine, the men were singing at their work.
+Descending to the cabin, Midwinter discovered his friend busily
+occupied in attempting to set the place to rights. Habitually the least
+systematic of mortals, Allan now and then awoke to an overwhelming sense
+of the advantages of order, and on such occasions a perfect frenzy of
+tidiness possessed him. He was down on his knees, hotly and wildly at
+work, when Midwinter looked in on him; and was fast reducing the neat
+little world of the cabin to its original elements of chaos, with a
+misdirected energy wonderful to see.
+
+“Here’s a mess!” said Allan, rising composedly on the horizon of his own
+accumulated litter. “Do you know, my dear fellow, I begin to wish I had
+let well alone!”
+
+Midwinter smiled, and came to his friend’s assistance with the natural
+neat-handedness of a sailor.
+
+The first object that he encountered was Allan’s dressing-case, turned
+upside down, with half the contents scattered on the floor, and with
+a duster and a hearth-broom lying among them. Replacing the various
+objects which formed the furniture of the dressing-case one by
+one, Midwinter lighted unexpectedly on a miniature portrait, of the
+old-fashioned oval form, primly framed in a setting of small diamonds.
+
+“You don’t seem to set much value on this,” he said. “What is it?”
+
+Allan bent over him, and looked at the miniature. “It belonged to my
+mother,” he answered; “and I set the greatest value on it. It is a
+portrait of my father.”
+
+Midwinter put the miniature abruptly, into Allan’s hands, and withdrew
+to the opposite side of the cabin.
+
+“You know best where the things ought to be put in your own
+dressing-case,” he said, keeping his back turned on Allan. “I’ll make
+the place tidy on this side of the cabin, and you shall make the place
+tidy on the other.”
+
+He began setting in order the litter scattered about him on the cabin
+table and on the floor. But it seemed as if fate had decided that his
+friend’s personal possessions should fall into his hands that morning,
+employ them where he might. One among the first objects which he took
+up was Allan’s tobacco jar, with the stopper missing, and with a letter
+(which appeared by the bulk of it to contain inclosures) crumpled into
+the mouth of the jar in the stopper’s place.
+
+“Did you know that you had put this here?” he asked. “Is the letter of
+any importance?”
+
+Allan recognized it instantly. It was the first of the little series of
+letters which had followed the cruising party to the Isle of Man--the
+letter which young Armadale had briefly referred to as bringing him
+“more worries from those everlasting lawyers,” and had then dismissed
+from further notice as recklessly as usual.
+
+“This is what comes of being particularly careful,” said Allan; “here is
+an instance of my extreme thoughtfulness. You may not think it but I put
+the letter there on purpose. Every time I went to the jar, you know, I
+was sure to see the letter; and every time I saw the letter, I was sure
+to say to myself, ‘This must be answered.’ There’s nothing to laugh at;
+it was a perfectly sensible arrangement, if I could only have remembered
+where I put the jar. Suppose I tie a knot in my pocket-handkerchief this
+time? You have a wonderful memory, my dear fellow. Perhaps you’ll remind
+me in the course of the day, in case I forget the knot next.”
+
+Midwinter saw his first chance, since Mr. Brock’s departure, of usefully
+filling Mr. Brock’s place.
+
+“Here is your writing-case,” he said; “why not answer the letter at
+once? If you put it away again, you may forget it again.”
+
+“Very true,” returned Allan. “But the worst of it is, I can’t quite make
+up my mind what answer to write. I want a word of advice. Come and sit
+down here, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
+
+With his loud boyish laugh--echoed by Midwinter, who caught the
+infection of his gayety--he swept a heap of miscellaneous incumbrances
+off the cabin sofa, and made room for his friend and himself to take
+their places. In the high flow of youthful spirits, the two sat down to
+their trifling consultation over a letter lost in a tobacco jar. It was
+a memorable moment to both of them, lightly as they thought of it at the
+time. Before they had risen again from their places, they had taken the
+first irrevocable step together on the dark and tortuous road of their
+future lives.
+
+Reduced to plain facts, the question on which Allan now required his
+friend’s advice may be stated as follows:
+
+While the various arrangements connected with the succession to Thorpe
+Ambrose were in progress of settlement, and while the new possessor
+of the estate was still in London, a question had necessarily arisen
+relating to the person who should be appointed to manage the property.
+The steward employed by the Blanchard family had written, without loss
+of time, to offer his services. Although a perfectly competent and
+trustworthy man, he failed to find favor in the eyes of the new
+proprietor. Acting, as usual, on his first impulses, and resolved,
+at all hazards, to install Midwinter as a permanent inmate at Thorpe
+Ambrose, Allan had determined that the steward’s place was the place
+exactly fitted for his friend, for the simple reason that it would
+necessarily oblige his friend to live with him on the estate. He
+had accordingly written to decline the proposal made to him without
+consulting Mr. Brock, whose disapproval he had good reason to fear; and
+without telling Midwinter, who would probably (if a chance were allowed
+him of choosing) have declined taking a situation which his previous
+training had by no means fitted him to fill.
+
+Further correspondence had followed this decision, and had raised two
+new difficulties which looked a little embarrassing on the face of them,
+but which Allan, with the assistance of his lawyer, easily contrived to
+solve. The first difficulty, of examining the outgoing steward’s books,
+was settled by sending a professional accountant to Thorpe Ambrose; and
+the second difficulty, of putting the steward’s empty cottage to some
+profitable use (Allan’s plans for his friend comprehending Midwinter’s
+residence under his own roof), was met by placing the cottage on the
+list of an active house agent in the neighboring county town. In this
+state the arrangements had been left when Allan quitted London. He had
+heard and thought nothing more of the matter, until a letter from his
+lawyers had followed him to the Isle of Man, inclosing two proposals
+to occupy the cottage, both received on the same day, and requesting to
+hear, at his earliest convenience, which of the two he was prepared to
+accept.
+
+Finding himself, after having conveniently forgotten the subject for
+some days past, placed face to face once more with the necessity for
+decision, Allan now put the two proposals into his friend’s hands, and,
+after a rambling explanation of the circumstances of the case, requested
+to be favored with a word of advice. Instead of examining the proposals,
+Midwinter unceremoniously put them aside, and asked the two very natural
+and very awkward questions of who the new steward was to be, and why he
+was to live in Allan’s house?
+
+“I’ll tell you who, and I’ll tell you why, when we get to Thorpe
+Ambrose,” said Allan. “In the meantime we’ll call the steward X. Y. Z.,
+and we’ll say he lives with me, because I’m devilish sharp, and I mean
+to keep him under my own eye. You needn’t look surprised. I know the man
+thoroughly well; he requires a good deal of management. If I offered him
+the steward’s place beforehand, his modesty would get in his way, and he
+would say ‘No.’ If I pitch him into it neck and crop, without a word of
+warning and with nobody at hand to relieve him of the situation, he’ll
+have nothing for it but to consult my interests, and say ‘Yes.’ X. Y. Z.
+is not at all a bad fellow, I can tell you. You’ll see him when we go
+to Thorpe Ambrose; and I rather think you and he will get on uncommonly
+well together.”
+
+The humorous twinkle in Allan’s eye, the sly significance in Allan’s
+voice, would have betrayed his secret to a prosperous man. Midwinter was
+as far from suspecting it as the carpenters who were at work above them
+on the deck of the yacht.
+
+“Is there no steward now on the estate?” he asked, his face showing
+plainly that he was far from feeling satisfied with Allan’s answer. “Is
+the business neglected all this time?”
+
+“Nothing of the sort!” returned Allan. “The business is going with ‘a
+wet sheet and a flowing sea, and a wind that follows free.’ I’m not
+joking; I’m only metaphorical. A regular accountant has poked his nose
+into the books, and a steady-going lawyer’s clerk attends at the office
+once a week. That doesn’t look like neglect, does it? Leave the new
+steward alone for the present, and just tell me which of those two
+tenants you would take, if you were in my place.”
+
+Midwinter opened the proposals, and read them attentively.
+
+The first proposal was from no less a person than the solicitor at
+Thorpe Ambrose, who had first informed Allan at Paris of the large
+fortune that had fallen into his hands. This gentleman wrote personally
+to say that he had long admired the cottage, which was charmingly
+situated within the limits of the Thorpe Ambrose grounds. He was
+a bachelor, of studious habits, desirous of retiring to a country
+seclusion after the wear and tear of his business hours; and he ventured
+to say that Mr. Armadale, in accepting him as a tenant, might count
+on securing an unobtrusive neighbor, and on putting the cottage into
+responsible and careful hands.
+
+The second proposal came through the house agent, and proceeded from a
+total stranger. The tenant who offered for the cottage, in this case,
+was a retired officer in the army--one Major Milroy. His family merely
+consisted of an invalid wife and an only child--a young lady. His
+references were unexceptionable; and he, too, was especially anxious to
+secure the cottage, as the perfect quiet of the situation was exactly
+what was required by Mrs. Milroy in her feeble state of health.
+
+“Well, which profession shall I favor?” asked Allan. “The army or the
+law?”
+
+“There seems to me to be no doubt about it,” said Midwinter. “The lawyer
+has been already in correspondence with you; and the lawyer’s claim is,
+therefore, the claim to be preferred.”
+
+“I knew you would say that. In all the thousands of times I have asked
+other people for advice, I never yet got the advice I wanted. Here’s
+this business of letting the cottage as an instance. I’m all on the
+other side myself. I want to have the major.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+Young Armadale laid his forefinger on that part of the agent’s letter
+which enumerated Major Milroy’s family, and which contained the three
+words--“a young lady.”
+
+“A bachelor of studious habits walking about my grounds,” said Allan,
+“is not an interesting object; a young lady is. I have not the least
+doubt Miss Milroy is a charming girl. Ozias Midwinter of the serious
+countenance! think of her pretty muslin dress flitting about among your
+trees and committing trespasses on your property; think of her adorable
+feet trotting into your fruit-garden, and her delicious fresh lips
+kissing your ripe peaches; think of her dimpled hands among your early
+violets, and her little cream-colored nose buried in your blush-roses.
+What does the studious bachelor offer me in exchange for the loss of all
+this? He offers me a rheumatic brown object in gaiters and a wig. No!
+no! Justice is good, my dear friend; but, believe me, Miss Milroy is
+better.”
+
+“Can you be serious about any mortal thing, Allan?”
+
+“I’ll try to be, if you like. I know I ought to take the lawyer; but
+what can I do if the major’s daughter keeps running in my head?”
+
+Midwinter returned resolutely to the just and sensible view of the
+matter, and pressed it on his friend’s attention with all the persuasion
+of which he was master. After listening with exemplary patience until
+he had done, Allan swept a supplementary accumulation of litter off the
+cabin table, and produced from his waistcoat pocket a half-crown coin.
+
+“I’ve got an entirely new idea,” he said. “Let’s leave it to chance.”
+
+The absurdity of the proposal--as coming from a landlord--was
+irresistible. Midwinter’s gravity deserted him.
+
+“I’ll spin,” continued Allan, “and you shall call. We must give
+precedence to the army, of course; so we’ll say Heads, the major; Tails,
+the lawyer. One spin to decide. Now, then, look out!”
+
+He spun the half-crown on the cabin table.
+
+“Tails!” cried Midwinter, humoring what he believed to be one of Allan’s
+boyish jokes.
+
+The coin fell on the table with the Head uppermost.
+
+“You don’t mean to say you are really in earnest!” said Midwinter, as
+the other opened his writing-case and dipped his pen in the ink.
+
+“Oh, but I am, though!” replied Allan. “Chance is on my side, and Miss
+Milroy’s; and you’re outvoted, two to one. It’s no use arguing. The
+major has fallen uppermost, and the major shall have the cottage. I
+won’t leave it to the lawyers; they’ll only be worrying me with more
+letters. I’ll write myself.”
+
+He wrote his answers to the two proposals, literally in two minutes. One
+to the house agent: “Dear sir, I accept Major Milroy’s offer; let him
+come in when he pleases. Yours truly, Allan Armadale.” And one to the
+lawyer: “Dear sir, I regret that circumstances prevent me from
+accepting your proposal. Yours truly,” etc. “People make a fuss about
+letter-writing,” Allan remarked, when he had done. “_I_ find it easy
+enough.”
+
+He wrote the addresses on his two notes, and stamped them for the post,
+whistling gayly. While he had been writing, he had not noticed how
+his friend was occupied. When he had done, it struck him that a sudden
+silence had fallen on the cabin; and, looking up, he observed that
+Midwinter’s whole attention was strangely concentrated on the half crown
+as it lay head uppermost on the table. Allan suspended his whistling in
+astonishment.
+
+“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.
+
+“I was only wondering,” replied Midwinter.
+
+“What about?” persisted Allan.
+
+“I was wondering,” said the other, handing him back the half-crown,
+“whether there is such a thing as chance.”
+
+Half an hour later the two notes were posted; and Allan, whose close
+superintendence of the repairs of the yacht had hitherto allowed him but
+little leisure time on shore, had proposed to while away the idle hours
+by taking a walk in Castletown. Even Midwinter’s nervous anxiety to
+deserve Mr. Brock’s confidence in him could detect nothing objectionable
+in this harmless proposal, and the young men set forth together to see
+what they could make of the metropolis of the Isle of Man.
+
+It is doubtful if there is a place on the habitable globe which,
+regarded as a sight-seeing investment offering itself to the spare
+attention of strangers, yields so small a percentage of interest in
+return as Castletown. Beginning with the waterside, there was an inner
+harbor to see, with a drawbridge to let vessels through; an outer
+harbor, ending in a dwarf lighthouse; a view of a flat coast to the
+right, and a view of a flat coast to the left. In the central solitudes
+of the city, there was a squat gray building called “the castle”; also
+a memorial pillar dedicated to one Governor Smelt, with a flat top for
+a statue, and no statue standing on it; also a barrack, holding the
+half-company of soldiers allotted to the island, and exhibiting one
+spirit-broken sentry at its lonely door. The prevalent color of the town
+was faint gray. The few shops open were parted at frequent intervals
+by other shops closed and deserted in despair. The weary lounging of
+boatmen on shore was trebly weary here; the youth of the district smoked
+together in speechless depression under the lee of a dead wall; the
+ragged children said mechanically: “Give us a penny,” and before the
+charitable hand could search the merciful pocket, lapsed away again in
+misanthropic doubt of the human nature they addressed. The silence of
+the grave overflowed the churchyard, and filled this miserable town. But
+one edifice, prosperous to look at, rose consolatory in the desolation
+of these dreadful streets. Frequented by the students of the neighboring
+“College of King William,” this building was naturally dedicated to
+the uses of a pastry-cook’s shop. Here, at least (viewed through the
+friendly medium of the window), there was something going on for a
+stranger to see; for here, on high stools, the pupils of the college
+sat, with swinging legs and slowly moving jaws, and, hushed in the
+horrid stillness of Castletown, gorged their pastry gravely, in an
+atmosphere of awful silence.
+
+“Hang me if I can look any longer at the boys and the tarts!” said
+Allan, dragging his friend away from the pastry-cook’s shop. “Let’s try
+if we can’t find something else to amuse us in the next street.”
+
+The first amusing object which the next street presented was a
+carver-and-gilder’s shop, expiring feebly in the last stage of
+commercial decay. The counter inside displayed nothing to view but the
+recumbent head of a boy, peacefully asleep in the unbroken solitude of
+the place. In the window were exhibited to the passing stranger three
+forlorn little fly-spotted frames; a small posting-bill, dusty with
+long-continued neglect, announcing that the premises were to let; and
+one colored print, the last of a series illustrating the horrors
+of drunkenness, on the fiercest temperance principles. The
+composition--representing an empty bottle of gin, an immensely spacious
+garret, a perpendicular Scripture reader, and a horizontal expiring
+family--appealed to public favor, under the entirely unobjectionable
+title of “The Hand of Death.” Allan’s resolution to extract amusement
+from Castletown by main force had resisted a great deal, but it
+failed him at this stage of the investigations. He suggested trying an
+excursion to some other place. Midwinter readily agreeing, they went
+back to the hotel to make inquiries.
+
+Thanks to the mixed influence of Allan’s ready gift of familiarity,
+and total want of method in putting his questions, a perfect deluge of
+information flowed in on the two strangers, relating to every subject
+but the subject which had actually brought them to the hotel. They
+made various interesting discoveries in connection with the laws and
+constitution of the Isle of Man, and the manners and customs of the
+natives. To Allan’s delight, the Manxmen spoke of England as of a
+well-known adjacent island, situated at a certain distance from the
+central empire of the Isle of Man. It was further revealed to the two
+Englishmen that this happy little nation rejoiced in laws of its own,
+publicly proclaimed once a year by the governor and the two head judges,
+grouped together on the top of an ancient mound, in fancy costumes
+appropriate to the occasion. Possessing this enviable institution,
+the island added to it the inestimable blessing of a local parliament,
+called the House of Keys, an assembly far in advance of the other
+parliament belonging to the neighboring island, in this respect--that
+the members dispensed with the people, and solemnly elected each other.
+With these and many more local particulars, extracted from all sorts and
+conditions of men in and about the hotel, Allan whiled away the weary
+time in his own essentially desultory manner, until the gossip died out
+of itself, and Midwinter (who had been speaking apart with the landlord)
+quietly recalled him to the matter in hand. The finest coast scenery in
+the island was said to be to the westward and the southward, and there
+was a fishing town in those regions called Port St. Mary, with a hotel
+at which travelers could sleep. If Allan’s impressions of Castletown
+still inclined him to try an excursion to some other place, he had only
+to say so, and a carriage would be produced immediately. Allan jumped at
+the proposal, and in ten minutes more he and Midwinter were on their way
+to the western wilds of the island.
+
+With trifling incidents, the day of Mr. Brock’s departure had worn on
+thus far. With trifling incidents, in which not even Midwinter’s nervous
+watchfulness could see anything to distrust, it was still to proceed,
+until the night came--a night which one at least of the two companions
+was destined to remember to the end of his life.
+
+Before the travelers had advanced two miles on their road, an accident
+happened. The horse fell, and the driver reported that the animal had
+seriously injured himself. There was no alternative but to send for
+another carriage to Castletown, or to get on to Port St. Mary on foot.
+
+Deciding to walk, Midwinter and Allan had not gone far before they were
+overtaken by a gentleman driving alone in an open chaise. He civilly
+introduced himself as a medical man, living close to Port St. Mary, and
+offered seats in his carriage. Always ready to make new acquaintances,
+Allan at once accepted the proposal. He and the doctor (whose name was
+ascertained to be Hawbury) became friendly and familiar before they
+had been five minutes in the chaise together; Midwinter, sitting behind
+them, reserved and silent, on the back seat. They separated just outside
+Port St. Mary, before Mr. Hawbury’s house, Allan boisterously admiring
+the doctor’s neat French windows and pretty flower-garden and lawn,
+and wringing his hand at parting as if they had known each other
+from boyhood upward. Arrived in Port St. Mary, the two friends found
+themselves in a second Castletown on a smaller scale. But the country
+round, wild, open, and hilly, deserved its reputation. A walk brought
+them well enough on with the day--still the harmless, idle day that it
+had been from the first--to see the evening near at hand. After waiting
+a little to admire the sun, setting grandly over hill, and heath, and
+crag, and talking, while they waited, of Mr. Brock and his long journey
+home, they returned to the hotel to order their early supper. Nearer and
+nearer the night, and the adventure which the night was to bring with
+it, came to the two friends; and still the only incidents that happened
+were incidents to be laughed at, if they were noticed at all. The
+supper was badly cooked; the waiting-maid was impenetrably stupid; the
+old-fashioned bell-rope in the coffee-room had come down in Allan’s
+hands, and, striking in its descent a painted china shepherdess on the
+chimney-piece, had laid the figure in fragments on the floor. Events as
+trifling as these were still the only events that had happened, when the
+twilight faded, and the lighted candles were brought into the room.
+
+Finding Midwinter, after the double fatigue of a sleepless night and
+a restless day, but little inclined for conversation, Allan left him
+resting on the sofa, and lounged into the passage of the hotel, on the
+chance of discovering somebody to talk to. Here another of the trivial
+incidents of the day brought Allan and Mr. Hawbury together again, and
+helped--whether happily or not, yet remained to be seen--to strengthen
+the acquaintance between them on either side.
+
+The “bar” of the hotel was situated at one end of the passage, and
+the landlady was in attendance there, mixing a glass of liquor for the
+doctor, who had just looked in for a little gossip. On Allan’s asking
+permission to make a third in the drinking and the gossiping, Mr.
+Hawbury civilly handed him the glass which the landlady had just filled.
+It contained cold brandy-and-water. A marked change in Allan’s face, as
+he suddenly drew back and asked for whisky instead, caught the doctor’s
+medical eye. “A case of nervous antipathy,” said Mr. Hawbury, quietly
+taking the glass away again. The remark obliged Allan to acknowledge
+that he had an insurmountable loathing (which he was foolish enough to
+be a little ashamed of mentioning) to the smell and taste of brandy. No
+matter with what diluting liquid the spirit was mixed, the presence of
+it, instantly detected by his organs of taste and smell, turned him sick
+and faint if the drink touched his lips. Starting from this personal
+confession, the talk turned on antipathies in general; and the doctor
+acknowledged, on his side, that he took a professional interest in the
+subject, and that he possessed a collection of curious cases at home,
+which his new acquaintance was welcome to look at, if Allan had nothing
+else to do that evening, and if he would call, when the medical work of
+the day was over, in an hour’s time.
+
+Cordially accepting the invitation (which was extended to Midwinter
+also, if he cared to profit by it), Allan returned to the coffee-room to
+look after his friend. Half asleep and half awake, Midwinter was still
+stretched on the sofa, with the local newspaper just dropping out of his
+languid hand.
+
+“I heard your voice in the passage,” he said, drowsily. “Whom were you
+talking to?”
+
+“The doctor,” replied Allan. “I am going to smoke a cigar with him, in
+an hour’s time. Will you come too?”
+
+Midwinter assented with a weary sigh. Always shyly unwilling to make new
+acquaintances, fatigue increased the reluctance he now felt to become
+Mr. Hawbury’s guest. As matters stood, however, there was no alternative
+but to go; for, with Allan’s constitutional imprudence, there was no
+safely trusting him alone anywhere, and more especially in a stranger’s
+house. Mr. Brock would certainly not have left his pupil to visit
+the doctor alone; and Midwinter was still nervously conscious that he
+occupied Mr. Brock’s place.
+
+“What shall we do till it’s time to go?” asked Allan, looking about
+him. “Anything in this?” he added, observing the fallen newspaper, and
+picking it up from the floor.
+
+“I’m too tired to look. If you find anything interesting, read it out,”
+ said Midwinter, thinking that the reading might help to keep him awake.
+
+Part of the newspaper, and no small part of it, was devoted to extracts
+from books recently published in London. One of the works most largely
+laid under contribution in this manner was of the sort to interest
+Allan: it was a highly spiced narrative of Traveling Adventures in
+the wilds of Australia. Pouncing on an extract which described the
+sufferings of the traveling-party, lost in a trackless wilderness,
+and in danger of dying by thirst, Allan announced that he had found
+something to make his friend’s flesh creep, and began eagerly to read
+the passage aloud.
+
+Resolute not to sleep, Midwinter followed the progress of the adventure,
+sentence by sentence, without missing a word. The consultation of the
+lost travelers, with death by thirst staring them in the face; the
+resolution to press on while their strength lasted; the fall of a heavy
+shower, the vain efforts made to catch the rainwater, the transient
+relief experienced by sucking their wet clothes; the sufferings renewed
+a few hours after; the night advance of the strongest of the party,
+leaving the weakest behind; the following a flight of birds when morning
+dawned; the discovery by the lost men of the broad pool of water that
+saved their lives--all this Midwinter’s fast-failing attention mastered
+painfully, Allan’s voice growing fainter and fainter on his ear with
+every sentence that was read. Soon the next words seemed to drop away
+gently, and nothing but the slowly sinking sound of the voice was left.
+Then the light in the room darkened gradually, the sound dwindled
+into delicious silence, and the last waking impressions of the weary
+Midwinter came peacefully to an end.
+
+The next event of which he was conscious was a sharp ringing at the
+closed door of the hotel. He started to his feet, with the ready
+alacrity of a man whose life has accustomed him to wake at the shortest
+notice. An instant’s look round showed him that the room was empty, and
+a glance at his watch told him that it was close on midnight. The noise
+made by the sleepy servant in opening the door, and the tread the next
+moment of quick footsteps in the passage, filled him with a sudden
+foreboding of something wrong. As he hurriedly stepped forward to go
+out and make inquiry, the door of the coffee-room opened, and the doctor
+stood before him.
+
+“I am sorry to disturb you,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Don’t be alarmed;
+there’s nothing wrong.”
+
+“Where is my friend?” asked Midwinter.
+
+“At the pier head,” answered the doctor. “I am, to a certain extent,
+responsible for what he is doing now; and I think some careful person,
+like yourself, ought to be with him.”
+
+The hint was enough for Midwinter. He and the doctor set out for the
+pier immediately, Mr. Hawbury mentioning on the way the circumstances
+under which he had come to the hotel.
+
+Punctual to the appointed hour Allan had made his appearance at the
+doctor’s house, explaining that he had left his weary friend so fast
+asleep on the sofa that he had not had the heart to wake him. The
+evening had passed pleasantly, and the conversation had turned on many
+subjects, until, in an evil hour, Mr. Hawbury had dropped a hint
+which showed that he was fond of sailing, and that he possessed a
+pleasure-boat of his own in the harbor. Excited on the instant by his
+favorite topic, Allan had left his host no hospitable alternative but to
+take him to the pier head and show him the boat. The beauty of the night
+and the softness of the breeze had done the rest of the mischief; they
+had filled Allan with irresistible longings for a sail by moonlight.
+Prevented from accompanying his guest by professional hindrances which
+obliged him to remain on shore, the doctor, not knowing what else to
+do, had ventured on disturbing Midwinter, rather than take the
+responsibility of allowing Mr. Armadale (no matter how well he might be
+accustomed to the sea) to set off on a sailing trip at midnight entirely
+by himself.
+
+The time taken to make this explanation brought Midwinter and the doctor
+to the pier head. There, sure enough, was young Armadale in the boat,
+hoisting the sail, and singing the sailor’s “Yo-heave-ho!” at the top of
+his voice.
+
+“Come along, old boy!” cried Allan. “You’re just in time for a frolic by
+moonlight!”
+
+Midwinter suggested a frolic by daylight, and an adjournment to bed in
+the meantime.
+
+“Bed!” cried Allan, on whose harum-scarum high spirits Mr. Hawbury’s
+hospitality had certainly not produced a sedative effect. “Hear him,
+doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse!
+Look at that, and think of bed if you can!”
+
+He pointed to the sea. The moon was shining in the cloudless heaven;
+the night-breeze blew soft and steady from the land; the peaceful waters
+rippled joyfully in the silence and the glory of the night. Midwinter
+turned to the doctor with a wise resignation to circumstances: he had
+seen enough to satisfy him that all words of remonstrance would be words
+simply thrown away.
+
+“How is the tide?” he asked.
+
+Mr. Hawbury told him.
+
+“Are there oars in the boat?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I am well used to the sea,” said Midwinter, descending the pier steps.
+“You may trust me to take care of my friend, and to take care of the
+boat.”
+
+“Good-night, doctor!” shouted Allan. “Your whisky-and-water is
+delicious--your boat’s a little beauty--and you’re the best fellow I
+ever met in my life!”
+
+The doctor laughed and waved his hand, and the boat glided out from the
+harbor, with Midwinter at the helm.
+
+As the breeze then blew, they were soon abreast of the westward
+headland, bounding the Bay of Poolvash, and the question was started
+whether they should run out to sea or keep along the shore. The wisest
+proceeding, in the event of the wind failing them, was to keep by the
+land. Midwinter altered the course of the boat, and they sailed on
+smoothly in a south-westerly direction, abreast of the coast.
+
+Little by little the cliffs rose in height, and the rocks, massed wild
+and jagged, showed rifted black chasms yawning deep in their seaward
+sides. Off the bold promontory called Spanish Head, Midwinter looked
+ominously at his watch. But Allan pleaded hard for half an hour more,
+and for a glance at the famous channel of the Sound, which they were now
+fast nearing, and of which he had heard some startling stories from
+the workmen employed on his yacht. The new change which Midwinter’s
+compliance with this request rendered it necessary to make in the course
+of the boat brought her close to the wind; and revealed, on one side,
+the grand view of the southernmost shores of the Isle of Man, and, on
+the other, the black precipices of the islet called the Calf, separated
+from the mainland by the dark and dangerous channel of the Sound.
+
+Once more Midwinter looked at his watch. “We have gone far enough,” he
+said. “Stand by the sheet!”
+
+“Stop!” cried Allan, from the bows of the boat. “Good God! here’s a
+wrecked ship right ahead of us!”
+
+Midwinter let the boat fall off a little, and looked where the other
+pointed.
+
+There, stranded midway between the rocky boundaries on either side of
+the Sound--there, never again to rise on the living waters from her
+grave on the sunken rock; lost and lonely in the quiet night; high, and
+dark, and ghostly in the yellow moonshine, lay the Wrecked Ship.
+
+“I know the vessel,” said Allan, in great excitement. “I heard my
+workmen talking of her yesterday. She drifted in here, on a pitch-dark
+night, when they couldn’t see the lights; a poor old worn-out
+merchantman, Midwinter, that the ship-brokers have bought to break up.
+Let’s run in and have a look at her.”
+
+Midwinter hesitated. All the old sympathies of his sea-life strongly
+inclined him to follow Allan’s suggestion; but the wind was falling
+light, and he distrusted the broken water and the swirling currents of
+the channel ahead. “This is an ugly place to take a boat into when you
+know nothing about it,” he said.
+
+“Nonsense!” returned Allan. “It’s as light as day, and we float in two
+feet of water.”
+
+Before Midwinter could answer, the current caught the boat, and swept
+them onward through the channel straight toward the wreck.
+
+“Lower the sail,” said Midwinter, quietly, “and ship the oars. We are
+running down on her fast enough now, whether we like it or not.”
+
+Both well accustomed to the use of the oar, they brought the course of
+the boat under sufficient control to keep her on the smoothest side of
+the channel--the side which was nearest to the Islet of the Calf. As
+they came swiftly up with the wreck, Midwinter resigned his oar to
+Allan; and, watching his opportunity, caught a hold with the boat-hook
+on the fore-chains of the vessel. The next moment they had the boat
+safely in hand, under the lee of the wreck.
+
+The ship’s ladder used by the workmen hung over the fore-chains.
+Mounting it, with the boat’s rope in his teeth, Midwinter secured one
+end, and lowered the other to Allan in the boat. “Make that fast,” he
+said, “and wait till I see if it’s all safe on board.” With those words,
+he disappeared behind the bulwark.
+
+“Wait?” repeated Allan, in the blankest astonishment at his friend’s
+excessive caution. “What on earth does he mean? I’ll be hanged if I
+wait. Where one of us goes, the other goes too!”
+
+He hitched the loose end of the rope round the forward thwart of the
+boat, and, swinging himself up the ladder, stood the next moment on the
+deck. “Anything very dreadful on board?” he inquired sarcastically, as
+he and his friend met.
+
+Midwinter smiled. “Nothing whatever,” he replied. “But I couldn’t be
+sure that we were to have the whole ship to ourselves till I got over
+the bulwark and looked about me.”
+
+Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed the wreck critically from
+stem to stern.
+
+“Not much of a vessel,” he said; “the Frenchmen generally build better
+ships than this.”
+
+Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan in a momentary silence.
+
+“Frenchmen?” he repeated, after an interval. “Is this vessel French?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“The men I have got at work on the yacht told me. They know all about
+her.”
+
+Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy face began to look, to
+Allan’s eyes, unaccountably pale in the moonlight.
+
+“Did they mention what trade she was engaged in?”
+
+“Yes; the timber trade.”
+
+As Allan gave that answer, Midwinter’s lean brown hand clutched him fast
+by the shoulder, and Midwinter’s teeth chattered in his head like the
+teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.
+
+“Did they tell you her name?” he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly
+to a whisper.
+
+“They did, I think. But it has slipped my memory.--Gently, old fellow;
+these long claws of yours are rather tight on my shoulder.”
+
+“Was the name--?” He stopped, removed his hand, and dashed away the
+great drops that were gathering on his forehead. “Was the name _La Grace
+de Dieu_?”
+
+“How the deuce did you come to know it? That’s the name, sure enough.
+_La Grace de Dieu_.”
+
+At one bound, Midwinter leaped on the bulwark of the wreck.
+
+“The boat!” he cried, with a scream of horror that rang far and wide
+through the stillness of the night, and brought Allan instantly to his
+side.
+
+The lower end of the carelessly hitched rope was loose on the water, and
+ahead, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating
+out of view. The boat was adrift.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE SHADOW OF THE PAST.
+
+One stepping back under the dark shelter of the bulwark, and one
+standing out boldly in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends
+turned face to face on the deck of the timber-ship, and looked at each
+other in silence. The next moment Allan’s inveterate recklessness seized
+on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself
+astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and
+heartiest laugh.
+
+“All my fault,” he said; “but there’s no help for it now. Here we are,
+hard and fast in a trap of our own setting; and there goes the last of
+the doctor’s boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can’t half see you
+there, and I want to know what’s to be done next.”
+
+Midwinter neither answered nor moved. Allan left the bulwark, and,
+mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the
+Sound.
+
+“One thing is pretty certain,” he said. “With the current on that side,
+and the sunken rocks on this, we can’t find our way out of the scrape
+by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the
+wreck. Let’s try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!” he
+called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. “Come and see what the
+old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us astern.” He sauntered on,
+with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song.
+
+His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but, at the
+light touch of his hand in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out
+slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. “Come along!” cried Allan,
+suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a
+word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached
+the stern end of the wreck: the first time, to throw aside his hat,
+and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time,
+reeling, giddy, to hold for a moment by a ring-bolt close at hand; the
+last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards ahead), to look
+stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes
+that other footsteps are following him in the dark. “Not yet!” he
+whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. “I shall
+see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door.”
+
+The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breakers’ lumber,
+accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object
+that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck was the low wooden
+structure which held the cabin door and roofed in the cabin stairs. The
+wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed, but
+the cabin entrance, and all that had belonged to it, had been left
+untouched. The scuttle was on, and the door was closed.
+
+On gaining the after-part of the vessel, Allan walked straight to the
+stern, and looked out to sea over the taffrail. No such thing as a
+boat was in view anywhere on the quiet, moon-brightened waters. Knowing
+Midwinter’s sight to be better than his own, he called out, “Come up
+here, and see if there’s a fisherman within hail of us.” Hearing no
+reply, he looked back. Midwinter had followed him as far as the cabin,
+and had stopped there. He called again in a louder voice, and beckoned
+impatiently. Midwinter had heard the call, for he looked up, but still
+he never stirred from his place. There he stood, as if he had reached
+the utmost limits of the ship and could go no further.
+
+Allan went back and joined him. It was not easy to discover what he was
+looking at, for he kept his face turned away from the moonlight; but it
+seemed as if his eyes were fixed, with a strange expression of inquiry,
+on the cabin door. “What is there to look at there?” Allan asked.
+“Let’s see if it’s locked.” As he took a step forward to open the door,
+Midwinter’s hand seized him suddenly by the coat collar and forced him
+back. The moment after, the hand relaxed without losing its grasp, and
+trembled violently, like the hand of a man completely unnerved.
+
+“Am I to consider myself in custody?” asked Allan, half astonished and
+half amused. “Why in the name of wonder do you keep staring at the cabin
+door? Any suspicious noises below? It’s no use disturbing the rats--if
+that’s what you mean--we haven’t got a dog with us. Men? Living men they
+can’t be; for they would have heard us and come on deck. Dead men? Quite
+impossible! No ship’s crew could be drowned in a land-locked place like
+this, unless the vessel broke up under them--and here’s the vessel
+as steady as a church to speak for herself. Man alive, how your hand
+trembles! What is there to scare you in that rotten old cabin? What are
+you shaking and shivering about? Any company of the supernatural sort on
+board? Mercy preserve us! (as the old women say) do you see a ghost?”
+
+“_I see two_!” answered the other, driven headlong into speech and
+action by a maddening temptation to reveal the truth. “Two!” he
+repeated, his breath bursting from him in deep, heavy gasps, as he tried
+vainly to force back the horrible words. “The ghost of a man like you,
+drowning in the cabin! And the ghost of a man like me, turning the lock
+of the door on him!”
+
+Once more young Armadale’s hearty laughter rang out loud and long
+through the stillness of the night.
+
+“Turning the lock of the door, is he?” said Allan, as soon as his
+merriment left him breath enough to speak. “That’s a devilish unhandsome
+action, Master Midwinter, on the part of your ghost. The least I can do,
+after that, is to let mine out of the cabin, and give him the run of the
+ship.”
+
+With no more than a momentary exertion of his superior strength, he
+freed himself easily from Midwinter’s hold. “Below there!” he called
+out, gayly, as he laid his strong hand on the crazy lock, and tore open
+the cabin door. “Ghost of Allan Armadale, come on deck!” In his terrible
+ignorance of the truth, he put his head into the doorway and looked
+down, laughing, at the place where his murdered father had died. “Pah!”
+ he exclaimed, stepping back suddenly, with a shudder of disgust. “The
+air is foul already; and the cabin is full of water.”
+
+It was true. The sunken rocks on which the vessel lay wrecked had burst
+their way through her lower timbers astern, and the water had welled up
+through the rifted wood. Here, where the deed had been done, the fatal
+parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been
+in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the
+sons.
+
+Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, a little surprised at
+the sudden silence which appeared to have fallen on his friend from the
+moment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to
+look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had
+dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face
+turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead
+man.
+
+In a moment Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely
+limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter’s head on his knee, for a
+chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. “What am I to
+do?” he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. “Not a drop
+of water near, but the foul water in the cabin.” A sudden recollection
+crossed his memory, the florid color rushed back over his face, and he
+drew from his pocket a wicker-covered flask. “God bless the doctor for
+giving me this before we sailed!” he broke out, fervently, as he poured
+down Midwinter’s throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask
+contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the
+swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. “Have I
+been dreaming?” he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan’s face. His
+eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck
+rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight
+of them, and hid his face on Allan’s knee. “No dream!” he murmured to
+himself, mournfully. “Oh me, no dream!”
+
+“You have been overtired all day,” said Allan, “and this infernal
+adventure of ours has upset you. Take some more whisky, it’s sure to
+do you good. Can you sit by yourself, if I put you against the bulwark,
+so?”
+
+“Why by myself? Why do you leave me?” asked Midwinter.
+
+Allan pointed to the mizzen shrouds of the wreck, which were still left
+standing. “You are not well enough to rough it here till the workmen
+come off in the morning,” he said. “We must find our way on shore at
+once, if we can. I am going up to get a good view all round, and see if
+there’s a house within hail of us.”
+
+Even in the moment that passed while those few words were spoken,
+Midwinter’s eyes wandered back distrustfully to the fatal cabin door.
+“Don’t go near it!” he whispered. “Don’t try to open it, for God’s
+sake!”
+
+“No, no,” returned Allan, humoring him. “When I come down from the
+rigging, I’ll come back here.” He said the words a little constrainedly,
+noticing, for the first time while he now spoke, an underlying distress
+in Midwinter’s face, which grieved and perplexed him. “You’re not angry
+with me?” he said, in his simple, sweet-tempered way. “All this is my
+fault, I know; and I was a brute and a fool to laugh at you, when I
+ought to have seen you were ill. I am so sorry, Midwinter. Don’t be
+angry with me!”
+
+Midwinter slowly raised his head. His eyes rested with a mournful
+interest, long and tender, on Allan’s anxious face.
+
+“Angry?” he repeated, in his lowest, gentlest tones. “Angry with
+_you_?--Oh, my poor boy, were you to blame for being kind to me when I
+was ill in the old west-country inn? And was I to blame for feeling your
+kindness thankfully? Was it our fault that we never doubted each other,
+and never knew that we were traveling together blindfold on the way that
+was to lead us here? The cruel time is coming, Allan, when we shall
+rue the day we ever met. Shake hands, brother, on the edge of the
+precipice--shake hands while we are brothers still!”
+
+Allan turned away quickly, convinced that his mind had not yet recovered
+the shock of the fainting fit. “Don’t forget the whisky!” he said,
+cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the
+mizzen-top.
+
+It was past two, the moon was waning, and the darkness that comes before
+dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as he now
+stood looking out from the elevation of the mizzen-top, spread the broad
+and lonely sea. Before him were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the
+broken waters of the channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm
+of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly
+from the water-side, were the rocks and precipices, with their little
+table-lands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling
+heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand rose the craggy
+sides of the Islet of the Calf, here rent wildly into deep black chasms,
+there lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No
+sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of
+the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening
+mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward
+waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the
+cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful
+hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day.
+
+Even Allan’s careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The
+sound of his own voice startled him when he looked down and hailed his
+friend on deck.
+
+“I think I see one house,” he said. “Here-away, on the mainland to the
+right.” He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white,
+with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow,
+on the main island. “It looks like a stone house and inclosure,” he
+resumed. “I’ll hail it, on the chance.” He passed his arm round a rope
+to steady himself, made a speaking-trumpet of his hands, and suddenly
+dropped them again without uttering a sound. “It’s so awfully quiet,”
+ he whispered to himself. “I’m half afraid to call out.” He looked down
+again on deck. “I shan’t startle you, Midwinter, shall I?” he said, with
+an uneasy laugh. He looked once more at the faint white object, in
+the grassy hollow. “It won’t do to have come up here for nothing,” he
+thought, and made a speaking-trumpet of his hands again. This time he
+gave the hail with the whole power of his lungs. “On shore there!” he
+shouted, turning his face to the main island. “Ahoy-hoy-hoy!”
+
+The last echoes of his voice died away and were lost. No sound answered
+him but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead.
+
+He looked down again at his friend, and saw the dark figure of Midwinter
+rise erect, and pace the deck backward and forward, never disappearing
+out of sight of the cabin when it retired toward the bows of the wreck,
+and never passing beyond the cabin when it returned toward the stern.
+“He is impatient to get away,” thought Allan; “I’ll try again.” He
+hailed the land once more, and, taught by previous experience, pitched
+his voice in its highest key.
+
+This time another sound than the sound of the bubbling water answered
+him. The lowing of frightened cattle rose from the building in the
+grassy hollow, and traveled far and drearily through the stillness
+of the morning air. Allan waited and listened. If the building was a
+farmhouse the disturbance among the beasts would rouse the men. If it
+was only a cattle-stable, nothing more would happen. The lowing of
+the frightened brutes rose and fell drearily, the minutes passed, and
+nothing happened.
+
+“Once more!” said Allan, looking down at the restless figure pacing
+beneath him. For the third time he hailed the land. For the third time
+he waited and listened.
+
+In a pause of silence among the cattle, he heard behind him, on the
+opposite shore of the channel, faint and far among the solitudes of the
+Islet of the Calf, a sharp, sudden sound, like the distant clash of a
+heavy door-bolt drawn back. Turning at once in the new direction, he
+strained his eyes to look for a house. The last faint rays of the
+waning moonlight trembled here and there on the higher rocks, and on the
+steeper pinnacles of ground, but great strips of darkness lay dense
+and black over all the land between; and in that darkness the house, if
+house there were, was lost to view.
+
+“I have roused somebody at last,” Allan called out, encouragingly, to
+Midwinter, still walking to and fro on the deck, strangely indifferent
+to all that was passing above and beyond him. “Look out for the
+answering, hail!” And with his face set toward the islet, Allan shouted
+for help.
+
+The shout was not answered, but mimicked with a shrill, shrieking
+derision, with wilder and wilder cries, rising out of the deep distant
+darkness, and mingling horribly the expression of a human voice with the
+sound of a brute’s. A sudden suspicion crossed Allan’s mind, which
+made his head swim and turned his hand cold as it held the rigging. In
+breathless silence he looked toward the quarter from which the first
+mimicry of his cry for help had come. After a moment’s pause the shrieks
+were renewed, and the sound of them came nearer. Suddenly a figure,
+which seemed the figure of a man, leaped up black on a pinnacle of
+rock, and capered and shrieked in the waning gleam of the moonlight.
+The screams of a terrified woman mingled with the cries of the capering
+creature on the rock. A red spark flashed out in the darkness from a
+light kindled in an invisible window. The hoarse shouting of a man’s
+voice in anger was heard through the noise. A second black figure leaped
+up on the rock, struggled with the first figure, and disappeared with it
+in the darkness. The cries grew fainter and fainter, the screams of the
+woman were stilled, the hoarse voice of the man was heard again for a
+moment, hailing the wreck in words made unintelligible by the distance,
+but in tones plainly expressive of rage and fear combined. Another
+moment, and the clang of the door-bolt was heard again, the red spark
+of light was quenched in darkness, and all the islet lay quiet in the
+shadows once more. The lowing of the cattle on the main-land ceased,
+rose again, stopped. Then, cold and cheerless as ever, the eternal
+bubbling of the broken water welled up through the great gap of
+silence--the one sound left, as the mysterious stillness of the hour
+fell like a mantle from the heavens, and closed over the wreck.
+
+Allan descended from his place in the mizzen-top, and joined his friend
+again on deck.
+
+“We must wait till the ship-breakers come off to their work,” he said,
+meeting Midwinter halfway in the course of his restless walk. “After
+what has happened, I don’t mind confessing that I’ve had enough of
+hailing the land. Only think of there being a madman in that house
+ashore, and of my waking him! Horrible, wasn’t it?”
+
+Midwinter stood still for a moment, and looked at Allan, with the
+perplexed air of a man who hears circumstances familiarly mentioned to
+which he is himself a total stranger. He appeared, if such a thing had
+been possible, to have passed over entirely without notice all that had
+just happened on the Islet of the Calf.
+
+“Nothing is horrible _out_ of this ship,” he said. “Everything is
+horrible _in_ it.”
+
+Answering in those strange words, he turned away again, and went on with
+his walk.
+
+Allan picked up the flask of whisky lying on the deck near him, and
+revived his spirits with a dram. “Here’s one thing on board that isn’t
+horrible,” he retorted briskly, as he screwed on the stopper of the
+flask; “and here’s another,” he added, as he took a cigar from his
+case and lit it. “Three o’clock!” he went on, looking at his watch, and
+settling himself comfortably on deck with his back against the bulwark.
+“Daybreak isn’t far off; we shall have the piping of the birds to cheer
+us up before long. I say, Midwinter, you seem to have quite got over
+that unlucky fainting fit. How you do keep walking! Come here and have
+a cigar, and make yourself comfortable. What’s the good of tramping
+backward and forward in that restless way?”
+
+“I am waiting,” said Midwinter.
+
+“Waiting! What for?”
+
+“For what is to happen to you or to me--or to both of us--before we are
+out of this ship.”
+
+“With submission to your superior judgment, my dear fellow, I think
+quite enough has happened already. The adventure will do very well as
+it stands now; more of it is more than I want.” He took another dram
+of whisky, and rambled on, between the puffs of his cigar, in his usual
+easy way. “I’ve not got your fine imagination, old boy; and I hope the
+next thing that happens will be the appearance of the workmen’s boat. I
+suspect that queer fancy of yours has been running away with you while
+you were down here all by yourself. Come, now, what were you thinking of
+while I was up in the mizzen-top frightening the cows?”
+
+Midwinter suddenly stopped. “Suppose I tell you?” he said.
+
+“Suppose you do?”
+
+The torturing temptation to reveal the truth, roused once already by his
+companion’s merciless gayety of spirit, possessed itself of Midwinter
+for the second time. He leaned back in the dark against the high side
+of the ship, and looked down in silence at Allan’s figure, stretched
+comfortably on the deck. “Rouse him,” the fiend whispered, subtly, “from
+that ignorant self-possession and that pitiless repose. Show him the
+place where the deed was done; let him know it with your knowledge, and
+fear it with your dread. Tell him of the letter you burned, and of the
+words no fire can destroy which are living in your memory now. Let him
+see your mind as it was yesterday, when it roused your sinking faith in
+your own convictions, to look back on your life at sea, and to cherish
+the comforting remembrance that, in all your voyages, you had never
+fallen in with this ship. Let him see your mind as it is now, when the
+ship has got you at the turning-point of your new life, at the outset of
+your friendship with the one man of all men whom your father warned you
+to avoid. Think of those death-bed words, and whisper them in his ear,
+that he may think of them, too: ‘Hide yourself from him under an assumed
+name. Put the mountains and the seas between you; be ungrateful, be
+unforgiving; be all that is most repellent to your own gentler nature,
+rather than live under the same roof and breathe the same air with that
+man.’” So the tempter counseled. So, like a noisome exhalation from the
+father’s grave, the father’s influence rose and poisoned the mind of the
+son.
+
+The sudden silence surprised Allan; he looked back drowsily over his
+shoulder. “Thinking again!” he exclaimed, with a weary yawn.
+
+Midwinter stepped out from the shadow, and came nearer to Allan than he
+had come yet. “Yes,” he said, “thinking of the past and the future.”
+
+“The past and the future?” repeated Allan, shifting himself comfortably
+into a new position. “For my part, I’m dumb about the past. It’s a sore
+subject with me: the past means the loss of the doctor’s boat. Let’s
+talk about the future. Have you been taking a practical view? as dear
+old Brock calls it. Have you been considering the next serious question
+that concerns us both when we get back to the hotel--the question of
+breakfast?”
+
+After an instant’s hesitation, Midwinter took a step nearer. “I have
+been thinking of your future and mine,” he said; “I have been thinking
+of the time when your way in life and my way in life will be two ways
+instead of one.”
+
+“Here’s the daybreak!” cried Allan. “Look up at the masts; they’re
+beginning to get clear again already. I beg your pardon. What were you
+saying?”
+
+Midwinter made no reply. The struggle between the hereditary
+superstition that was driving him on, and the unconquerable affection
+for Allan that was holding him back, suspended the next words on his
+lips. He turned aside his face in speechless suffering. “Oh, my father!”
+ he thought, “better have killed me on that day when I lay on your bosom,
+than have let me live for this.”
+
+“What’s that about the future?” persisted Allan. “I was looking for the
+daylight; I didn’t hear.”
+
+Midwinter controlled himself, and answered: “You have treated me with
+your usual kindness,” he said, “in planning to take me with you to
+Thorpe Ambrose. I think, on reflection, I had better not intrude myself
+where I am not known and not expected.” His voice faltered, and he
+stopped again. The more he shrank from it, the clearer the picture of
+the happy life that he was resigning rose on his mind.
+
+Allan’s thoughts instantly reverted to the mystification about the new
+steward which he had practiced on his friend when they were consulting
+together in the cabin of the yacht. “Has he been turning it over in
+his mind?” wondered Allan; “and is he beginning at last to suspect the
+truth? I’ll try him.--Talk as much nonsense, my dear fellow, as you
+like,” he rejoined, “but don’t forget that you are engaged to see me
+established at Thorpe Ambrose, and to give me your opinion of the new
+steward.”
+
+Midwinter suddenly stepped forward again, close to Allan.
+
+“I am not talking about your steward or your estate,” he burst out
+passionately; “I am talking about myself. Do you hear? Myself! I am not
+a fit companion for you. You don’t know who I am.” He drew back into the
+shadowy shelter of the bulwark as suddenly as he had come out from it.
+“O God! I can’t tell him,” he said to himself, in a whisper.
+
+For a moment, and for a moment only, Allan was surprised. “Not know
+who you are?” Even as he repeated the words, his easy goodhumor got
+the upper-hand again. He took up the whisky flask, and shook it
+significantly. “I say,” he resumed, “how much of the doctor’s medicine
+did you take while I was up in the mizzen-top?”
+
+The light tone which he persisted in adopting stung Midwinter to the
+last pitch of exasperation. He came out again into the light, and
+stamped his foot angrily on the deck. “Listen to me!” he said. “You
+don’t know half the low things I have done in my lifetime. I have been a
+tradesman’s drudge; I have swept out the shop and put up the shutters;
+I have carried parcels through the street, and waited for my master’s
+money at his customers’ doors.”
+
+“I have never done anything half as useful,” returned Allan, composedly.
+“Dear old boy, what an industrious fellow you have been in your time!”
+
+“I’ve been a vagabond and a blackguard in my time,” returned the other,
+fiercely; “I’ve been a street tumbler, a tramp, a gypsy’s boy! I’ve
+sung for half-pence with dancing dogs on the high-road! I’ve worn a
+foot-boy’s livery, and waited at table! I’ve been a common sailors’
+cook, and a starving fisherman’s Jack-of-all-trades! What has a
+gentleman in your position in common with a man in mine? Can you take
+_me_ into the society at Thorpe Ambrose? Why, my very name would be
+a reproach to you. Fancy the faces of your new neighbors when their
+footmen announce Ozias Midwinter and Allan Armadale in the same breath!”
+ He burst into a harsh laugh, and repeated the two names again, with a
+scornful bitterness of emphasis which insisted pitilessly on the marked
+contrast between them.
+
+Something in the sound of his laughter jarred painfully even on Allan’s
+easy nature. He raised himself on the deck and spoke seriously for the
+first time. “A joke’s a joke, Midwinter,” he said, “as long as you don’t
+carry it too far. I remember your saying something of the same sort to
+me once before when I was nursing you in Somersetshire. You forced me
+to ask you if I deserved to be kept at arms-length by _you_ of all the
+people in the world. Don’t force me to say so again. Make as much fun of
+me as you please, old fellow, in any other way. _That_ way hurts me.”
+
+Simple as the words were, and simply as they had been spoken, they
+appeared to work an instant revolution in Midwinter’s mind. His
+impressible nature recoiled as from some sudden shock. Without a word of
+reply, he walked away by himself to the forward part of the ship. He sat
+down on some piled planks between the masts, and passed his hand over
+his head in a vacant, bewildered way. Though his father’s belief in
+fatality was his own belief once more--though there was no longer the
+shadow of a doubt in his mind that the woman whom Mr. Brock had met in
+Somersetshire, and the woman who had tried to destroy herself in London,
+were one and the same--though all the horror that mastered him when he
+first read the letter from Wildbad had now mastered him again, Allan’s
+appeal to their past experience of each other had come home to his
+heart, with a force more irresistible than the force of his superstition
+itself. In the strength of that very superstition, he now sought the
+pretext which might encourage him to sacrifice every less generous
+feeling to the one predominant dread of wounding the sympathies of his
+friend. “Why distress him?” he whispered to himself. “We are not the end
+here: there is the Woman behind us in the dark. Why resist him when the
+mischief’s done, and the caution comes too late? What _is_ to be _will_
+be. What have I to do with the future? and what has he?”
+
+He went back to Allan, sat down by his side, and took his hand. “Forgive
+me,” he said, gently; “I have hurt you for the last time.” Before it
+was possible to reply, he snatched up the whisky flask from the deck.
+“Come!” he exclaimed, with a sudden effort to match his friend’s
+cheerfulness, “you have been trying the doctor’s medicine, why shouldn’t
+I?”
+
+Allan was delighted. “This is something like a change for the better,”
+ he said; “Midwinter is himself again. Hark! there are the birds. Hail,
+smiling morn! smiling morn!” He sang the words of the glee in his old,
+cheerful voice, and clapped Midwinter on the shoulder in his old, hearty
+way. “How did you manage to clear your head of those confounded megrims?
+Do you know you were quite alarming about something happening to one or
+other of us before we were out of this ship?”
+
+“Sheer nonsense!” returned Midwinter, contemptuously. “I don’t think my
+head has ever been quite right since that fever; I’ve got a bee in my
+bonnet, as they say in the North. Let’s talk of something else. About
+those people you have let the cottage to? I wonder whether the agent’s
+account of Major Milroy’s family is to be depended on? There might be
+another lady in the household besides his wife and his daughter.”
+
+“Oho!” cried Allan, “_you’re_ beginning to think of nymphs among the
+trees, and flirtations in the fruit-garden, are you? Another lady, eh?
+Suppose the major’s family circle won’t supply another? We shall have to
+spin that half-crown again, and toss up for which is to have the first
+chance with Miss Milroy.”
+
+For once Midwinter spoke as lightly and carelessly as Allan himself.
+“No, no,” he said, “the major’s landlord has the first claim to the
+notice of the major’s daughter. I’ll retire into the background, and
+wait for the next lady who makes her appearance at Thorpe Ambrose.”
+
+“Very good. I’ll have an address to the women of Norfolk posted in the
+park to that effect,” said Allan. “Are you particular to a shade about
+size or complexion? What’s your favorite age?”
+
+Midwinter trifled with his own superstition, as a man trifles with the
+loaded gun that may kill him, or with the savage animal that may maim
+him for life. He mentioned the age (as he had reckoned it himself) of
+the woman in the black gown and the red Paisley shawl.
+
+“Five-and-thirty,” he said.
+
+As the words passed his lips, his factitious spirits deserted him. He
+left his seat, impenetrably deaf to all Allan’s efforts at rallying him
+on his extraordinary answer, and resumed his restless pacing of the deck
+in dead silence. Once more the haunting thought which had gone to and
+fro with him in the hour of darkness went to and fro with him now in the
+hour of daylight.
+
+Once more the conviction possessed itself of his mind that something was
+to happen to Allan or to himself before they left the wreck.
+
+Minute by minute the light strengthened in the eastern sky; and the
+shadowy places on the deck of the timber-ship revealed their barren
+emptiness under the eye of day. As the breeze rose again, the sea began
+to murmur wakefully in the morning light. Even the cold bubbling of the
+broken water changed its cheerless note, and softened on the ear as the
+mellowing flood of daylight poured warm over it from the rising sun.
+Midwinter paused near the forward part of the ship, and recalled his
+wandering attention to the passing time. The cheering influences of the
+hour were round him, look where he might. The happy morning smile of the
+summer sky, so brightly merciful to the old and weary earth, lavished
+its all-embracing beauty even on the wreck. The dew that lay glittering
+on the inland fields lay glittering on the deck, and the worn and rusted
+rigging was gemmed as brightly as the fresh green leaves on shore.
+Insensibly, as he looked round, Midwinter’s thoughts reverted to the
+comrade who had shared with him the adventure of the night. He returned
+to the after-part of the ship, spoke to Allan as he advanced. Receiving
+no answer, he approached the recumbent figure and looked closer at it.
+Left to his own resources, Allan had let the fatigues of the night take
+their own way with him. His head had sunk back; his hat had fallen off;
+he lay stretched at full length on the deck of the timber-ship, deeply
+and peacefully asleep.
+
+Midwinter resumed his walk; his mind lost in doubt; his own past
+thoughts seeming suddenly to have grown strange to him. How darkly his
+forebodings had distrusted the coming time, and how harmlessly that time
+had come! The sun was mounting in the heavens, the hour of release was
+drawing nearer and nearer, and of the two Armadales imprisoned in the
+fatal ship, one was sleeping away the weary time, and the other was
+quietly watching the growth of the new day.
+
+The sun climbed higher; the hour wore on. With the latent distrust of
+the wreck which still clung to him, Midwinter looked inquiringly on
+either shore for signs of awakening human life. The land was still
+lonely. The smoke wreaths that were soon to rise from cottage chimneys
+had not risen yet.
+
+After a moment’s thought he went back again to the after-part of the
+vessel, to see if there might be a fisherman’s boat within hail astern
+of them. Absorbed for the moment by the new idea, he passed Allan
+hastily, after barely noticing that he still lay asleep. One step more
+would have brought him to the taffrail, when that step was suspended by
+a sound behind him, a sound like a faint groan. He turned, and looked at
+the sleeper on the deck. He knelt softly, and looked closer.
+
+“It has come!” he whispered to himself. “Not to _me_--but to _him_.”
+
+It had come, in the bright freshness of the morning; it had come, in the
+mystery and terror of a Dream. The face which Midwinter had last seen
+in perfect repose was now the distorted face of a suffering man. The
+perspiration stood thick on Allan’s forehead, and matted his curling
+hair. His partially opened eyes showed nothing but the white of the
+eyeball gleaming blindly. His outstretched hands scratched and struggled
+on the deck. From moment to moment he moaned and muttered helplessly;
+but the words that escaped him were lost in the grinding and gnashing of
+his teeth. There he lay--so near in the body to the friend who bent
+over him; so far away in the spirit, that the two might have been in
+different worlds--there he lay, with the morning sunshine on his face,
+in the torture of his dream.
+
+One question, and one only, rose in the mind of the man who was looking
+at him. What had the fatality which had imprisoned him in the wreck
+decreed that he should see?
+
+Had the treachery of Sleep opened the gates of the grave to that one of
+the two Armadales whom the other had kept in ignorance of the truth? Was
+the murder of the father revealing itself to the son--there, on the very
+spot where the crime had been committed--in the vision of a dream?
+
+With that question overshadowing all else in his mind, the son of the
+homicide knelt on the deck, and looked at the son of the man whom his
+father’s hand had slain.
+
+The conflict between the sleeping body and the waking mind was
+strengthening every moment. The dreamer’s helpless groaning for
+deliverance grew louder; his hands raised themselves, and clutched at
+the empty air. Struggling with the all-mastering dread that still held
+him, Midwinter laid his hand gently on Allan’s forehead. Light as the
+touch was, there were mysterious sympathies in the dreaming man that
+answered it. His groaning ceased, and his hands dropped slowly. There
+was an instant of suspense and Midwinter looked closer. His breath just
+fluttered over the sleeper’s face. Before the next breath had risen to
+his lips, Allan suddenly sprang up on his knees--sprang up, as if the
+call of a trumpet had rung on his ear, awake in an instant.
+
+“You have been dreaming,” said Midwinter, as the other looked at him
+wildly, in the first bewilderment of waking.
+
+Allan’s eyes began to wander about the wreck, at first vacantly,
+then with a look of angry surprise. “Are we here still?” he said, as
+Midwinter helped him to his feet. “Whatever else I do on board this
+infernal ship,” he added, after a moment, “I won’t go to sleep again!”
+
+As he said those words, his friend’s eyes searched his face in silent
+inquiry. They took a turn together on the deck.
+
+“Tell me your dream,” said Midwinter, with a strange tone of suspicion
+in his voice, and a strange appearance of abruptness in his manner.
+
+“I can’t tell it yet,” returned Allan. “Wait a little till I’m my own
+man again.”
+
+They took another turn on the deck. Midwinter stopped, and spoke once
+more.
+
+“Look at me for a moment, Allan,” he said.
+
+There was something of the trouble left by the dream, and something
+of natural surprise at the strange request just addressed to him, in
+Allan’s face, as he turned it full on the speaker; but no shadow of
+ill-will, no lurking lines of distrust anywhere. Midwinter turned aside
+quickly, and hid, as he best might, an irrepressible outburst of relief.
+
+“Do I look a little upset?” asked Allan, taking his arm, and leading him
+on again. “Don’t make yourself nervous about me if I do. My head feels
+wild and giddy, but I shall soon get over it.”
+
+For the next few minutes they walked backward and forward in silence,
+the one bent on dismissing the terror of the dream from his thoughts,
+the other bent on discovering what the terror of the dream might be.
+Relieved of the dread that had oppressed it, the superstitious nature
+of Midwinter had leaped to its next conclusion at a bound. What if the
+sleeper had been visited by another revelation than the revelation of
+the Past? What if the dream had opened those unturned pages in the book
+of the Future which told the story of his life to come? The bare
+doubt that it might be so strengthened tenfold Midwinter’s longing to
+penetrate the mystery which Allan’s silence still kept a secret from
+him.
+
+“Is your head more composed?” he asked. “Can you tell me your dream
+now?”
+
+While he put the question, a last memorable moment in the Adventure of
+the Wreck was at hand.
+
+They had reached the stern, and were just turning again when Midwinter
+spoke. As Allan opened his lips to answer, he looked out mechanically to
+sea. Instead of replying, he suddenly ran to the taffrail, and waved his
+hat over his head, with a shout of exultation.
+
+Midwinter joined him, and saw a large six-oared boat pulling straight
+for the channel of the Sound. A figure, which they both thought they
+recognized, rose eagerly in the stern-sheets and returned the waving
+of Allan’s hat. The boat came nearer, the steersman called to them
+cheerfully, and they recognized the doctor’s voice.
+
+“Thank God you’re both above water!” said Mr. Hawbury, as they met him
+on the deck of the timber-ship. “Of all the winds of heaven, which wind
+blew you here?”
+
+He looked at Midwinter as he made the inquiry, but it was Allan who
+told him the story of the night, and Allan who asked the doctor for
+information in return. The one absorbing interest in Midwinter’s
+mind--the interest of penetrating the mystery of the dream--kept him
+silent throughout. Heedless of all that was said or done about him, he
+watched Allan, and followed Allan, like a dog, until the time came for
+getting down into the boat. Mr. Hawbury’s professional eye rested on him
+curiously, noting his varying color, and the incessant restlessness
+of his hands. “I wouldn’t change nervous systems with that man for the
+largest fortune that could be offered me,” thought the doctor as he took
+the boat’s tiller, and gave the oarsmen their order to push off from the
+wreck.
+
+Having reserved all explanations on his side until they were on their
+way back to Port St. Mary, Mr. Hawbury next addressed himself to the
+gratification of Allan’s curiosity. The circumstances which had brought
+him to the rescue of his two guests of the previous evening were simple
+enough. The lost boat had been met with at sea by some fishermen of Port
+Erin, on the western side of the island, who at once recognized it as
+the doctor’s property, and at once sent a messenger to make inquiry,
+at the doctor’s house. The man’s statement of what had happened had
+naturally alarmed Mr. Hawbury for the safety of Allan and his friend. He
+had immediately secured assistance, and, guided by the boatman’s advice,
+had made first for the most dangerous place on the coast--the only
+place, in that calm weather, in which an accident could have happened to
+a boat sailed by experienced men--the channel of the Sound. After
+thus accounting for his welcome appearance on the scene, the doctor
+hospitably insisted that his guests of the evening should be his guests
+of the morning as well. It would still be too early when they got back
+for the people at the hotel to receive them, and they would find bed and
+breakfast at Mr. Hawbury’s house.
+
+At the first pause in the conversation between Allan and the doctor,
+Midwinter, who had neither joined in the talk nor listened to the talk,
+touched his friend on the arm. “Are you better?” he asked, in a whisper.
+“Shall you soon be composed enough to tell me what I want to know?”
+
+Allan’s eyebrows contracted impatiently; the subject of the dream, and
+Midwinter’s obstinacy in returning to it, seemed to be alike distasteful
+to him. He hardly answered with his usual good humor. “I suppose I shall
+have no peace till I tell you,” he said, “so I may as well get it over
+at once.”
+
+“No!” returned Midwinter, with a look at the doctor and his oarsmen.
+“Not where other people can hear it--not till you and I are alone.”
+
+“If you wish to see the last, gentlemen, of your quarters for the
+night,” interposed the doctor, “now is your time! The coast will shut
+the vessel out in a minute more.”
+
+In silence on the one side and on the other, the two Armadales looked
+their last at the fatal ship. Lonely and lost they had found the wreck
+in the mystery of the summer night; lonely and lost they left the wreck
+in the radiant beauty of the summer morning.
+
+An hour later the doctor had seen his guests established in their
+bedrooms, and had left them to take their rest until the breakfast hour
+arrived.
+
+Almost as soon as his back was turned, the doors of both rooms opened
+softly, and Allan and Midwinter met in the passage.
+
+“Can you sleep after what has happened?” asked Allan.
+
+Midwinter shook his head. “You were coming to my room, were you not?” he
+said. “What for?”
+
+“To ask you to keep me company. What were you coming to _my_ room for?”
+
+“To ask you to tell me your dream.”
+
+“Damn the dream! I want to forget all about it.”
+
+“And _I_ want to know all about it.”
+
+Both paused; both refrained instinctively from saying more. For the
+first time since the beginning of their friendship they were on the
+verge of a disagreement, and that on the subject of the dream. Allan’s
+good temper just stopped them on the brink.
+
+“You are the most obstinate fellow alive,” he said; “but if you will
+know all about it, you must know all about it, I suppose. Come into my
+room, and I’ll tell you.”
+
+He led the way, and Midwinter followed. The door closed and shut them in
+together.
+
+
+
+
+V. THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.
+
+When Mr. Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the strange
+contrast of character between them which he had noticed already was
+impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of them sat at the
+well-spread table, hungry and happy, ranging from dish to dish, and
+declaring that he had never made such a breakfast in his life. The other
+sat apart at the window; his cup thanklessly deserted before it was
+empty, his meat left ungraciously half-eaten on his plate. The
+doctor’s morning greeting to the two accurately expressed the differing
+impressions which they had produced on his mind.
+
+He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He
+bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, “I am afraid you have not
+recovered the fatigues of the night.”
+
+“It’s not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits,” said Allan.
+“It’s something I have been telling him. It is not my fault, mind. If
+I had only known beforehand that he believed in dreams, I wouldn’t have
+opened my lips.”
+
+“Dreams?” repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, and
+addressing him under a mistaken impression of the meaning of Allan’s
+words. “With your constitution, you ought to be well used to dreaming by
+this time.”
+
+“This way, doctor; you have taken the wrong turning!” cried Allan.
+“I’m the dreamer, not he. Don’t look astonished; it wasn’t in this
+comfortable house; it was on board that confounded timber-ship. The fact
+is, I fell asleep just before you took us off the wreck; and it’s not to
+be denied that I had a very ugly dream. Well, when we got back here--”
+
+“Why do you trouble Mr. Hawbury about a matter that cannot possibly
+interest him?” asked Midwinter, speaking for the first time, and
+speaking very impatiently.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” returned the doctor, rather sharply; “so far as I
+have heard, the matter does interest me.”
+
+“That’s right, doctor!” said Allan. “Be interested, I beg and pray; I
+want you to clear his head of the nonsense he has got in it now. What
+do you think? He will have it that my dream is a warning to me to avoid
+certain people; and he actually persists in saying that one of those
+people is--himself! Did you ever hear the like of it? I took great
+pains; I explained the whole thing to him. I said, warning be hanged;
+it’s all indigestion! You don’t know what I ate and drank at the
+doctor’s supper-table; I do. Do you think he would listen to me? Not he.
+You try him next; you’re a professional man, and he must listen to you.
+Be a good fellow, doctor, and give me a certificate of indigestion; I’ll
+show you my tongue with pleasure.”
+
+“The sight of your face is quite enough,” said Mr. Hawbury. “I certify,
+on the spot, that you never had such a thing as an indigestion in your
+life. Let’s hear about the dream, and see what we can make of it, if you
+have no objection, that is to say.”
+
+Allan pointed at Midwinter with his fork.
+
+“Apply to my friend, there,” he said; “he has got a much better account
+of it than I can give you. If you’ll believe me, he took it all down in
+writing from my own lips; and he made me sign it at the end, as if it
+was my ‘last dying speech and confession’ before I went to the gallows.
+Out with it, old boy--I saw you put it in your pocket-book--out with
+it!”
+
+“Are you really in earnest?” asked Midwinter, producing his pocketbook
+with a reluctance which was almost offensive under the circumstances,
+for it implied distrust of the doctor in the doctor’s own house.
+
+Mr. Hawbury’s color rose. “Pray don’t show it to me, if you feel the
+least unwillingness,” he said, with the elaborate politeness of an
+offended man.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Allan. “Throw it over here!”
+
+Instead of complying with that characteristic request, Midwinter took
+the paper from the pocket-book, and, leaving his place, approached Mr.
+Hawbury. “I beg your pardon,” he said, as he offered the doctor the
+manuscript with his own hand. His eyes dropped to the ground, and his
+face darkened, while he made the apology. “A secret, sullen fellow,”
+ thought the doctor, thanking him with formal civility; “his friend is
+worth ten thousand of him.” Midwinter went back to the window, and sat
+down again in silence, with the old impenetrable resignation which had
+once puzzled Mr. Brock.
+
+“Read that, doctor,” said Allan, as Mr. Hawbury opened the written
+paper. “It’s not told in my roundabout way; but there’s nothing added
+to it, and nothing taken away. It’s exactly what I dreamed, and exactly
+what I should have written myself, if I had thought the thing worth
+putting down on paper, and if I had had the knack of writing--which,”
+ concluded Allan, composedly stirring his coffee, “I haven’t, except it’s
+letters; and I rattle _them_ off in no time.”
+
+Mr. Hawbury spread the manuscript before him on the breakfast-table, and
+read these lines:
+
+  “ALLAN ARMADALE’S DREAM.
+
+“Early on the morning of June the first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
+I found myself (through circumstances which it is not important to
+mention in this place) left alone with a friend of mine--a young man
+about my own age--on board the French timber-ship named _La Grace de
+Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked in the channel of the Sound between
+the main-land of the Isle of Man and the islet called the Calf. Having
+not been in bed the previous night, and feeling overcome by fatigue, I
+fell asleep on the deck of the vessel. I was in my usual good health at
+the time, and the morning was far enough advanced for the sun to have
+risen. Under these circumstances, and at that period of the day, I
+passed from sleeping to dreaming. As clearly as I can recollect it,
+after the lapse of a few hours, this was the succession of events
+presented to me by the dream:
+
+“1. The first event of which I was conscious was the appearance of my
+father. He took me silently by the hand; and we found ourselves in the
+cabin of a ship.
+
+“2. Water rose slowly over us in the cabin; and I and my father sank
+through the water together.
+
+“3. An interval of oblivion followed; and then the sense came to me of
+being left alone in the darkness.
+
+“4. I waited.
+
+“5. The darkness opened, and showed me the vision--as in a picture--of a
+broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the farther margin
+of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of
+sunset.
+
+“6. On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a Woman.
+
+“7. It was the shadow only. No indication was visible to me by which I
+could identify it, or compare it with any living creature. The long robe
+showed me that it was the shadow of a woman, and showed me nothing more.
+
+“8. The darkness closed again--remained with me for an interval--and
+opened for the second time.
+
+“9. I found myself in a room, standing before a long window. The
+only object of furniture or of ornament that I saw (or that I can now
+remember having seen) was a little statue placed near me. The window
+opened on a lawn and flower-garden; and the rain was pattering heavily
+against the glass.
+
+“10. I was not alone in the room. Standing opposite to me at the window
+was the Shadow of a Man.
+
+“11. I saw no more of it; I knew no more of it than I saw and knew of
+the shadow of the woman. But the shadow of the man moved. It stretched
+out its arm toward the statue; and the statue fell in fragments on the
+floor.
+
+“12. With a confused sensation in me, which was partly anger and partly
+distress, I stooped to look at the fragments. When I rose again, the
+Shadow had vanished, and I saw no more.
+
+“13. The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of
+the Woman and the Shadow of the Man together.
+
+“14. No surrounding scene (or none that I can now call to mind) was
+visible to me.
+
+“15. The Man-Shadow was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back.
+From where she stood, there came a sound as of the pouring of a liquid
+softly. I saw her touch the shadow of the man with one hand, and with
+the other give him a glass. He took the glass, and gave it to me. In
+the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness mastered me from
+head to foot. When I came to my senses again, the Shadows had vanished,
+and the third vision was at an end.
+
+“16. The darkness closed over me again; and the interval of oblivion
+followed.
+
+“17. I was conscious of nothing more, till I felt the morning sun shine
+on my face, and heard my friend tell me that I had awakened from a
+dream....”
+
+
+After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under
+which appeared Allan’s signature), the doctor looked across the
+breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript
+with a satirical smile.
+
+“Many men, many opinions,” he said. “I don’t agree with either of you
+about this dream. Your theory,” he added, looking at Allan, with a
+smile, “we have disposed of already: the supper that _you_ can’t digest
+is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My theory we will come to
+presently; your friend’s theory claims attention first.” He turned again
+to Midwinter, with his anticipated triumph over a man whom he disliked
+a little too plainly visible in his face and manner. “If I understand
+rightly,” he went on, “you believe that this dream is a warning!
+supernaturally addressed to Mr. Armadale, of dangerous events that are
+threatening him, and of dangerous people connected with those events
+whom he would do wisely to avoid. May I inquire whether you have arrived
+at this conclusion as an habitual believer in dreams, or as having
+reasons of your own for attaching especial importance to this one dream
+in particular?”
+
+“You have stated what my conviction is quite accurately,” returned
+Midwinter, chafing under the doctor’s looks and tones. “Excuse me if
+I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and to let me keep my
+reasons to myself.”
+
+“That’s exactly what he said to me,” interposed Allan. “I don’t believe
+he has got any reasons at all.”
+
+“Gently! gently!” said Mr. Hawbury. “We can discuss the subject without
+intruding ourselves into anybody’s secrets. Let us come to my own method
+of dealing with the dream next. Mr. Midwinter will probably not be
+surprised to hear that I look at this matter from an essentially
+practical point of view.”
+
+“I shall not be at all surprised,” retorted Midwinter. “The view of a
+medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve, seldom ranges
+beyond the point of his dissecting-knife.”
+
+The doctor was a little nettled on his side. “Our limits are not quite
+so narrow as that,” he said; “but I willingly grant you that there
+are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don’t believe.
+For example, we don’t believe that a reasonable man is justified in
+attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes
+within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that
+there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the
+first instance.”
+
+“Come; that’s fair enough, I’m sure,” exclaimed Allan. “He hit you hard
+with the ‘dissecting-knife,’ doctor; and now you have hit him back again
+with your ‘natural explanation.’ Let’s have it.”
+
+“By all means,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here it is. There is nothing at all
+extraordinary in my theory of dreams: it is the theory accepted by
+the great mass of my profession. A dream is the reproduction, in the
+sleeping state of the brain, of images and impressions produced on it
+in the waking state; and this reproduction is more or less involved,
+imperfect, or contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the
+dreamer is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep.
+Without inquiring further into this latter part of the subject--a very
+curious and interesting part of it--let us take the theory, roughly and
+generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at once to the dream
+now under consideration.” He took up the written paper from the table,
+and dropped the formal tone (as of a lecturer addressing an audience)
+into which he had insensibly fallen. “I see one event already in this
+dream,” he resumed, “which I know to be the reproduction of a waking
+impression produced on Mr. Armadale in my own presence. If he will only
+help me by exerting his memory, I don’t despair of tracing back the
+whole succession of events set down here to something that he has said
+or thought, or seen or done, in the four-and-twenty hours, or less,
+which preceded his falling asleep on the deck of the timber-ship.”
+
+“I’ll exert my memory with the greatest pleasure,” said Allan. “Where
+shall we start from?”
+
+“Start by telling me what you did yesterday, before I met you and your
+friend on the road to this place,” replied Mr. Hawbury. “We will say,
+you got up and had your breakfast. What next?”
+
+“We took a carriage next,” said Allan, “and drove from Castletown
+to Douglas to see my old friend, Mr. Brock, off by the steamer to
+Liverpool. We came back to Castletown and separated at the hotel door.
+Midwinter went into the house, and I went on to my yacht in the harbor.
+By-the-bye, doctor, remember you have promised to go cruising with us
+before we leave the Isle of Man.”
+
+“Many thanks; but suppose we keep to the matter in hand. What next?”
+
+Allan hesitated. In both senses of the word his mind was at sea already.
+
+“What did you do on board the yacht?”
+
+“Oh, I know! I put the cabin to rights--thoroughly to rights. I give
+you my word of honor, I turned every blessed thing topsy-turvy. And my
+friend there came off in a shore-boat and helped me. Talking of boats, I
+have never asked you yet whether your boat came to any harm last night.
+If there’s any damage done, I insist on being allowed to repair it.”
+
+The doctor abandoned all further attempts at the cultivation of Allan’s
+memory in despair.
+
+“I doubt if we shall be able to reach our object conveniently in this
+way,” he said. “It will be better to take the events of the dream in
+their regular order, and to ask the questions that naturally suggest
+themselves as we go on. Here are the first two events to begin with. You
+dream that your father appears to you--that you and he find yourselves
+in the cabin of a ship--that the water rises over you, and that you sink
+in it together. Were you down in the cabin of the wreck, may I ask?”
+
+“I couldn’t be down there,” replied Allan, “as the cabin was full of
+water. I looked in and saw it, and shut the door again.”
+
+“Very good,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here are the waking impressions clear
+enough, so far. You have had the cabin in your mind; and you have had
+the water in your mind; and the sound of the channel current (as I well
+know without asking) was the last sound in your ears when you went to
+sleep. The idea of drowning comes too naturally out of such impressions
+as these to need dwelling on. Is there anything else before we go on?
+Yes; there is one more circumstance left to account for.”
+
+“The most important circumstance of all,” remarked Midwinter, joining in
+the conversation, without stirring from his place at the window.
+
+“You mean the appearance of Mr. Armadale’s father? I was just coming
+to that,” answered Mr. Hawbury. “Is your father alive?” he added,
+addressing himself to Allan once more.
+
+“My father died before I was born.”
+
+The doctor started. “This complicates it a little,” he said. “How did
+you know that the figure appearing to you in the dream was the figure of
+your father?”
+
+Allan hesitated again. Midwinter drew his chair a little away from the
+window, and looked at the doctor attentively for the first time.
+
+“Was your father in your thoughts before you went to sleep?” pursued
+Mr. Hawbury. “Was there any description of him--any portrait of him at
+home--in your mind?”
+
+“Of course there was!” cried Allan, suddenly seizing the lost
+recollection. “Midwinter! you remember the miniature you found on the
+floor of the cabin when we were putting the yacht to rights? You said I
+didn’t seem to value it; and I told you I did, because it was a portrait
+of my father--”
+
+“And was the face in the dream like the face in the miniature?” asked
+Mr. Hawbury.
+
+“Exactly like! I say, doctor, this is beginning to get interesting!”
+
+“What do you say now?” asked Mr. Hawbury, turning toward the window
+again.
+
+Midwinter hurriedly left his chair, and placed himself at the table with
+Allan. Just as he had once already taken refuge from the tyranny of his
+own superstition in the comfortable common sense of Mr. Brock, so, with
+the same headlong eagerness, with the same straightforward sincerity
+of purpose, he now took refuge in the doctor’s theory of dreams. “I say
+what my friend says,” he answered, flushing with a sudden enthusiasm;
+“this is beginning to get interesting. Go on; pray go on.”
+
+The doctor looked at his strange guest more indulgently than he had
+looked yet. “You are the only mystic I have met with,” he said, “who is
+willing to give fair evidence fair play. I don’t despair of converting
+you before our inquiry comes to an end. Let us get on to the next set
+of events,” he resumed, after referring for a moment to the manuscript.
+“The interval of oblivion which is described as succeeding the first
+of the appearances in the dream may be easily disposed of. It means,
+in plain English, the momentary cessation of the brain’s intellectual
+action, while a deeper wave of sleep flows over it, just as the sense
+of being alone in the darkness, which follows, indicates the renewal of
+that action, previous to the reproduction of another set of impressions.
+Let us see what they are. A lonely pool, surrounded by an open country;
+a sunset sky on the further side of the pool; and the shadow of a woman
+on the near side. Very good; now for it, Mr. Armadale! How did that pool
+get into your head? The open country you saw on your way from Castletown
+to this place. But we have no pools or lakes hereabouts; and you can have
+seen none recently elsewhere, for you came here after a cruise at sea.
+Must we fall back on a picture, or a book, or a conversation with your
+friend?”
+
+Allan looked at Midwinter. “I don’t remember talking about pools or
+lakes,” he said. “Do you?”
+
+Instead of answering the question, Midwinter suddenly appealed to the
+doctor.
+
+“Have you got the last number of the Manx newspaper?” he asked.
+
+The doctor produced it from the sideboard. Midwinter turned to the
+page containing those extracts from the recently published “Travels in
+Australia,” which had roused Allan’s, interest on the previous evening,
+and the reading of which had ended by sending his friend to sleep.
+There--in the passage describing the sufferings of the travelers from
+thirst, and the subsequent discovery which saved their lives--there,
+appearing at the climax of the narrative, was the broad pool of water
+which had figured in Allan’s dream!
+
+“Don’t put away the paper,” said the doctor, when Midwinter had shown it
+to him, with the necessary explanation. “Before we are at the end of the
+inquiry, it is quite possible we may want that extract again. We have
+got at the pool. How about the sunset? Nothing of that sort is referred
+to in the newspaper extract. Search your memory again, Mr. Armadale; we
+want your waking impression of a sunset, if you please.”
+
+Once more, Allan was at a loss for an answer; and, once more,
+Midwinter’s ready memory helped him through the difficulty.
+
+“I think I can trace our way back to this impression, as I traced our
+way back to the other,” he said, addressing the doctor. “After we got
+here yesterday afternoon, my friend and I took a long walk over the
+hills--”
+
+“That’s it!” interposed Allan. “I remember. The sun was setting as we
+came back to the hotel for supper, and it was such a splendid red sky,
+we both stopped to look at it. And then we talked about Mr. Brock, and
+wondered how far he had got on his journey home. My memory may be a slow
+one at starting, doctor; but when it’s once set going, stop it if you
+can! I haven’t half done yet.”
+
+“Wait one minute, in mercy to Mr. Midwinter’s memory and mine,” said the
+doctor. “We have traced back to your waking impressions the vision of
+the open country, the pool, and the sunset. But the Shadow of the Woman
+has not been accounted for yet. Can you find us the original of this
+mysterious figure in the dream landscape?”
+
+Allan relapsed into his former perplexity, and Midwinter waited for what
+was to come, with his eyes fixed in breathless interest on the doctor’s
+face. For the first time there was unbroken silence in the room. Mr.
+Hawbury looked interrogatively from Allan to Allan’s friend. Neither of
+them answered him. Between the shadow and the shadow’s substance there
+was a great gulf of mystery, impenetrable alike to all three of them.
+
+“Patience,” said the doctor, composedly. “Let us leave the figure by the
+pool for the present and try if we can’t pick her up again as we go on.
+Allow me to observe, Mr. Midwinter, that it is not very easy to identify
+a shadow; but we won’t despair. This impalpable lady of the lake may
+take some consistency when we next meet with her.”
+
+Midwinter made no reply. From that moment his interest in the inquiry
+began to flag.
+
+“What is the next scene in the dream?” pursued Mr. Hawbury, referring
+to the manuscript. “Mr. Armadale finds himself in a room. He is standing
+before a long window opening on a lawn and flower-garden, and the rain
+is pattering against the glass. The only thing he sees in the room is
+a little statue; and the only company he has is the Shadow of a Man
+standing opposite to him. The Shadow stretches out its arm, and the
+statue falls in fragments on the floor; and the dreamer, in anger and
+distress at the catastrophe (observe, gentlemen, that here the sleeper’s
+reasoning faculty wakes up a little, and the dream passes rationally,
+for a moment, from cause to effect), stoops to look at the broken
+pieces. When he looks up again, the scene has vanished. That is to say,
+in the ebb and flow of sleep, it is the turn of the flow now, and the
+brain rests a little. What’s the matter, Mr. Armadale? Has that restive
+memory of yours run away with you again?”
+
+“Yes,” said Allan. “I’m off at full gallop. I’ve run the broken statue
+to earth; it’s nothing more nor less than a china shepherdess I knocked
+off the mantel-piece in the hotel coffee-room, when I rang the bell
+for supper last night. I say, how well we get on; don’t we? It’s like
+guessing a riddle. Now, then, Midwinter! your turn next.”
+
+“No!” said the doctor. “My turn, if you please. I claim the long window,
+the garden, and the lawn, as my property. You will find the long window,
+Mr. Armadale, in the next room. If you look out, you’ll see the garden
+and lawn in front of it; and, if you’ll exert that wonderful memory of
+yours, you will recollect that you were good enough to take special and
+complimentary notice of my smart French window and my neat garden, when
+I drove you and your friend to Port St. Mary yesterday.”
+
+“Quite right,” rejoined Allan; “so I did. But what about the rain that
+fell in the dream? I haven’t seen a drop of rain for the last week.”
+
+Mr. Hawbury hesitated. The Manx newspaper which had been left on the
+table caught his eye. “If we can think of nothing else,” he said, “let
+us try if we can’t find the idea of the rain where we found the idea of
+the pool.” He looked through the extract carefully. “I have got it!”
+ he exclaimed. “Here is rain described as having fallen on these thirsty
+Australian travelers, before they discovered the pool. Behold the
+shower, Mr. Armadale, which got into your mind when you read the extract
+to your friend last night! And behold the dream, Mr. Midwinter, mixing
+up separate waking impressions just as usual!”
+
+“Can you find the waking impression which accounts for the human figure
+at the window?” asked Midwinter; “or are we to pass over the Shadow of
+the Man as we have passed over the Shadow of the Woman already?”
+
+He put the question with scrupulous courtesy of manner, but with a tone
+of sarcasm in his voice which caught the doctor’s ear, and set up the
+doctor’s controversial bristles on the instant.
+
+“When you are picking up shells on the beach, Mr. Midwinter, you usually
+begin with the shells that lie nearest at hand,” he rejoined. “We are
+picking up facts now; and those that are easiest to get at are the facts
+we will take first. Let the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the
+Woman pair off together for the present; we won’t lose sight of them, I
+promise you. All in good time, my dear sir; all in good time!”
+
+He, too, was polite, and he, too, was sarcastic. The short truce between
+the opponents was at an end already. Midwinter returned significantly to
+his former place by the window. The doctor instantly turned his back
+on the window more significantly still. Allan, who never quarreled
+with anybody’s opinion, and never looked below the surface of anybody’s
+conduct, drummed cheerfully on the table with the handle of his knife.
+“Go on, doctor!” he called out; “my wonderful memory is as fresh as
+ever.”
+
+“Is it?” said Mr. Hawbury, referring again to the narrative of the
+dream. “Do you remember what happened when you and I were gossiping with
+the landlady at the bar of the hotel last night?”
+
+“Of course I do! You were kind enough to hand me a glass of
+brandy-and-water, which the landlady had just mixed for your own
+drinking. And I was obliged to refuse it because, as I told you, the
+taste of brandy always turns me sick and faint, mix it how you please.”
+
+“Exactly so,” returned the doctor. “And here is the incident reproduced
+in the dream. You see the man’s shadow and the woman’s shadow together
+this time. You hear the pouring out of liquid (brandy from the hotel
+bottle, and water from the hotel jug); the glass is handed by the
+woman-shadow (the landlady) to the man-shadow (myself); the man-shadow
+hands it to you (exactly what I did); and the faintness (which you
+had previously described to me) follows in due course. I am shocked
+to identify these mysterious appearances, Mr. Midwinter, with such
+miserably unromantic originals as a woman who keeps a hotel, and a man
+who physics a country district. But your friend himself will tell you
+that the glass of brandy-and-water was prepared by the landlady, and
+that it reached him by passing from her hand to mine. We have picked
+up the shadows, exactly as I anticipated; and we have only to account
+now--which may be done in two words--for the manner of their appearance
+in the dream. After having tried to introduce the waking impression of
+the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set
+of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and
+introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the
+right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!--Permit me to
+hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete
+and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams.” Saying
+those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with
+the pitiless politeness of a conquering man.
+
+“Wonderful! not a point missed anywhere from beginning to end! By
+Jupiter!” cried Allan, with the ready reverence of intense ignorance.
+“What a thing science is!”
+
+“Not a point missed, as you say,” remarked the doctor, complacently.
+“And yet I doubt if we have succeeded in convincing your friend.”
+
+“You have _not_ convinced me,” said Midwinter. “But I don’t presume on
+that account to say that you are wrong.”
+
+He spoke quietly, almost sadly. The terrible conviction of the
+supernatural origin of the dream, from which he had tried to escape, had
+possessed itself of him again. All his interest in the argument was at
+an end; all his sensitiveness to its irritating influences was gone. In
+the case of any other man, Mr. Hawbury would have been mollified by
+such a concession as his adversary had now made to him; but he disliked
+Midwinter too cordially to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of an
+opinion of his own.
+
+“Do you admit,” asked the doctor, more pugnaciously than ever, “that I
+have traced back every event of the dream to a waking impression which
+preceded it in Mr. Armadale’s mind?”
+
+“I have no wish to deny that you have done so,” said Midwinter,
+resignedly.
+
+“Have I identified the shadows with their living originals?”
+
+“You have identified them to your own satisfaction, and to my friend’s
+satisfaction. Not to mine.”
+
+“Not to yours? Can _you_ identify them?”
+
+“No. I can only wait till the living originals stand revealed in the
+future.”
+
+“Spoken like an oracle, Mr. Midwinter! Have you any idea at present of
+who those living originals may be?”
+
+“I have. I believe that coming events will identify the Shadow of the
+Woman with a person whom my friend has not met with yet; and the Shadow
+of the Man with myself.”
+
+Allan attempted to speak. The doctor stopped him. “Let us clearly
+understand this,” he said to Midwinter. “Leaving your own case out
+of the question for the moment, may I ask how a shadow, which has no
+distinguishing mark about it, is to be identified with a living woman
+whom your friend doesn’t know?”
+
+Midwinter’s color rose a little. He began to feel the lash of the
+doctor’s logic.
+
+“The landscape picture of the dream has its distinguishing marks,” he
+replied; “and in that landscape the living woman will appear when the
+living woman is first seen.”
+
+“The same thing will happen, I suppose,” pursued the doctor, “with the
+man-shadow which you persist in identifying with yourself. You will be
+associated in the future with a statue broken in your friend’s presence,
+with a long window looking out on a garden, and with a shower of rain
+pattering against the glass? Do you say that?”
+
+“I say that.”
+
+“And so again, I presume, with the next vision? You and the mysterious
+woman will be brought together in some place now unknown, and will
+present to Mr. Armadale some liquid yet unnamed, which will turn him
+faint?--Do you seriously tell me you believe this?”
+
+“I seriously tell you I believe it.”
+
+“And, according to your view, these fulfillments of the dream will
+mark the progress of certain coming events, in which Mr. Armadale’s
+happiness, or Mr. Armadale’s safety, will be dangerously involved?”
+
+“That is my firm conviction.”
+
+The doctor rose, laid aside his moral dissecting-knife, considered for a
+moment, and took it up again.
+
+“One last question,” he said. “Have you any reason to give for going out
+of your way to adopt such a mystical view as this, when an unanswerably
+rational explanation of the dream lies straight before you?”
+
+“No reason,” replied Midwinter, “that I can give, either to you or to my
+friend.”
+
+The doctor looked at his watch with the air of a man who is suddenly
+reminded that he has been wasting his time.
+
+“We have no common ground to start from,” he said; “and if we talk till
+doomsday, we should not agree. Excuse my leaving you rather abruptly.
+It is later than I thought; and my morning’s batch of sick people
+are waiting for me in the surgery. I have convinced _your_ mind, Mr.
+Armadale, at any rate; so the time we have given to this discussion has
+not been altogether lost. Pray stop here, and smoke your cigar. I shall
+be at your service again in less than an hour.” He nodded cordially to
+Allan, bowed formally to Midwinter, and quitted the room.
+
+As soon as the doctor’s back was turned, Allan left his place at the
+table, and appealed to his friend, with that irresistible heartiness of
+manner which had always found its way to Midwinter’s sympathies, from
+the first day when they met at the Somersetshire inn.
+
+“Now the sparring-match between you and the doctor is over,” said Allan,
+“I have got two words to say on my side. Will you do something for my
+sake which you won’t do for your own?”
+
+Midwinter’s face brightened instantly. “I will do anything you ask me,”
+ he said.
+
+“Very well. Will you let the subject of the dream drop out of our talk
+altogether from this time forth?”
+
+“Yes, if you wish it.”
+
+“Will you go a step further? Will you leave off thinking about the
+dream?”
+
+“It’s hard to leave off thinking about it, Allan. But I will try.”
+
+“That’s a good fellow! Now give me that trumpery bit of paper, and let’s
+tear it up, and have done with it.”
+
+He tried to snatch the manuscript out of his friend’s hand; but
+Midwinter was too quick for him, and kept it beyond his reach.
+
+“Come! come!” pleaded Allan. “I’ve set my heart on lighting my cigar
+with it.”
+
+Midwinter hesitated painfully. It was hard to resist Allan; but he did
+resist him. “I’ll wait a little,” he said, “before you light your cigar
+with it.”
+
+“How long? Till to-morrow?”
+
+“Longer.”
+
+“Till we leave the Isle of Man?”
+
+“Longer.”
+
+“Hang it--give me a plain answer to a plain question! How long _will_
+you wait?”
+
+Midwinter carefully restored the paper to its place in his pocketbook.
+
+“I’ll wait,” he said, “till we get to Thorpe Ambrose.”
+
+
+THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND
+
+
+
+
+I. LURKING MISCHIEF.
+
+1. _From Ozias Midwinter to Mr. Brock_.
+
+“Thorpe Ambrose, June 15, 1851.
+
+“DEAR MR. BROCK--Only an hour since we reached this house, just as the
+servants were locking up for the night. Allan has gone to bed, worn out
+by our long day’s journey, and has left me in the room they call the
+library, to tell you the story of our journey to Norfolk. Being better
+seasoned than he is to fatigues of all kinds, my eyes are quite wakeful
+enough for writing a letter, though the clock on the chimney-piece
+points to midnight, and we have been traveling since ten in the morning.
+
+“The last news you had of us was news sent by Allan from the Isle of
+Man. If I am not mistaken, he wrote to tell you of the night we passed
+on board the wrecked ship. Forgive me, dear Mr. Brock, if I say nothing
+on that subject until time has helped me to think of it with a quieter
+mind. The hard fight against myself must all be fought over again; but I
+will win it yet, please God; I will, indeed.
+
+“There is no need to trouble you with any account of our journeyings
+about the northern and western districts of the island, or of the short
+cruises we took when the repairs of the yacht were at last complete.
+It will be better if I get on at once to the morning of yesterday, the
+fourteenth. We had come in with the night-tide to Douglas Harbor, and,
+as soon as the post-office was open; Allan, by my advice, sent on shore
+for letters. The messenger returned with one letter only, and the
+writer of it proved to be the former mistress of Thorpe Ambrose--Mrs.
+Blanchard.
+
+“You ought to be informed, I think, of the contents of this letter, for
+it has seriously influenced Allan’s plans. He loses everything, sooner
+or later, as you know, and he has lost the letter already. So I must
+give you the substance of what Mrs. Blanchard wrote to him, as plainly
+as I can.
+
+“The first page announced the departure of the ladies from Thorpe
+Ambrose. They left on the day before yesterday, the thirteenth, having,
+after much hesitation, finally decided on going abroad, to visit some
+old friends settled in Italy, in the neighborhood of Florence. It
+appears to be quite possible that Mrs. Blanchard and her niece may
+settle there, too, if they can find a suitable house and grounds to let.
+They both like the Italian country and the Italian people, and they are
+well enough off to please themselves. The elder lady has her jointure,
+and the younger is in possession of all her father’s fortune.
+
+“The next page of the letter was, in Allan’s opinion, far from a
+pleasant page to read.
+
+“After referring, in the most grateful terms, to the kindness which had
+left her niece and herself free to leave their old home at their own
+time, Mrs. Blanchard added that Allan’s considerate conduct had produced
+such a strongly favorable impression among the friends and dependents of
+the family that they were desirous of giving him a public reception
+on his arrival among them. A preliminary meeting of the tenants on the
+estate and the principal persons in the neighboring town had already
+been held to discuss the arrangements, and a letter might be expected
+shortly from the clergyman inquiring when it would suit Mr. Armadale’s
+convenience to take possession personally and publicly of his estates in
+Norfolk.
+
+“You will now be able to guess the cause of our sudden departure from
+the Isle of Man. The first and foremost idea in your old pupil’s mind,
+as soon as he had read Mrs. Blanchard’s account of the proceedings at
+the meeting, was the idea of escaping the public reception, and the one
+certain way he could see of avoiding it was to start for Thorpe Ambrose
+before the clergyman’s letter could reach him.
+
+“I tried hard to make him think a little before he acted on his first
+impulse in this matter; but he only went on packing his portmanteau in
+his own impenetrably good-humored way. In ten minutes his luggage was
+ready, and in five minutes more he had given the crew their directions
+for taking the yacht back to Somersetshire. The steamer to Liverpool was
+alongside of us in the harbor, and I had really no choice but to go on
+board with him or to let him go by himself. I spare you the account of
+our stormy voyage, of our detention at Liverpool, and of the trains we
+missed on our journey across the country. You know that we have got here
+safely, and that is enough. What the servants think of the new squire’s
+sudden appearance among them, without a word of warning, is of no great
+consequence. What the committee for arranging the public reception may
+think of it when the news flies abroad to-morrow is, I am afraid, a more
+serious matter.
+
+“Having already mentioned the servants, I may proceed to tell you that
+the latter part of Mrs. Blanchard’s letter was entirely devoted to
+instructing Allan on the subject of the domestic establishment which
+she has left behind her. It seems that all the servants, indoors and out
+(with three exceptions), are waiting here, on the chance that Allan
+will continue them in their places. Two of these exceptions are readily
+accounted for: Mrs. Blanchard’s maid and Miss Blanchard’s maid go abroad
+with their mistresses. The third exceptional case is the case of the
+upper housemaid; and here there is a little hitch. In plain words,
+the housemaid has been sent away at a moment’s notice, for what Mrs.
+Blanchard rather mysteriously describes as ‘levity of conduct with a
+stranger.’
+
+“I am afraid you will laugh at me, but I must confess the truth. I have
+been made so distrustful (after what happened to us in the Isle of Man)
+of even the most trifling misadventures which connect themselves in any
+way with Allan’s introduction to his new life and prospects, that I have
+already questioned one of the men-servants here about this apparently
+unimportant matter of the housemaid’s going away in disgrace.
+
+“All I can learn is that a strange man had been noticed hanging
+suspiciously about the grounds; that the housemaid was so ugly a woman
+as to render it next to a certainty that he had some underhand purpose
+to serve in making himself agreeable to her; and that he has not as yet
+been seen again in the neighborhood since the day of her dismissal. So
+much for the one servant who has been turned out at Thorpe Ambrose. I
+can only hope there is no trouble for Allan brewing in that quarter. As
+for the other servants who remain, Mrs. Blanchard describes them, both
+men and women, as perfectly trustworthy, and they will all, no doubt,
+continue to occupy their present places.
+
+“Having now done with Mrs. Blanchard’s letter, my next duty is to beg
+you, in Allan’s name and with Allan’s love, to come here and stay with
+him at the earliest moment when you can leave Somersetshire. Although
+I cannot presume to think that my own wishes will have any special
+influence in determining you to accept this invitation, I must
+nevertheless acknowledge that I have a reason of my own for earnestly
+desiring to see you here. Allan has innocently caused me a new anxiety
+about my future relations with him, and I sorely need your advice to
+show me the right way of setting that anxiety at rest.
+
+“The difficulty which now perplexes me relates to the steward’s place
+at Thorpe Ambrose. Before to-day I only knew that Allan had hit on
+some plan of his own for dealing with this matter, rather strangely
+involving, among other results, the letting of the cottage which was
+the old steward’s place of abode, in consequence of the new steward’s
+contemplated residence in the great house. A chance word in our
+conversation on the journey here led Allan into speaking out more
+plainly than he had spoken yet, and I heard to my unutterable
+astonishment that the person who was at the bottom of the whole
+arrangement about the steward was no other than myself!
+
+“It is needless to tell you how I felt this new instance of Allan’s
+kindness. The first pleasure of hearing from his own lips that I had
+deserved the strongest proof he could give of his confidence in me was
+soon dashed by the pain which mixes itself with all pleasure--at least,
+with all that I have ever known. Never has my past life seemed so
+dreary to look back on as it seems now, when I feel how entirely it has
+unfitted me to take the place of all others that I should have liked to
+occupy in my friend’s service. I mustered courage to tell him that I had
+none of the business knowledge and business experience which his steward
+ought to possess. He generously met the objection by telling me that I
+could learn; and he has promised to send to London for the person who
+has already been employed for the time being in the steward’s office,
+and who will, therefore, be perfectly competent to teach me.
+
+“Do you, too, think I can learn? If you do, I will work day and night to
+instruct myself. But if (as I am afraid) the steward’s duties are of
+far too serious a kind to be learned off-hand by a man so young and so
+inexperienced as I am, then pray hasten your journey to Thorpe Ambrose,
+and exert your influence over Allan personally. Nothing less will induce
+him to pass me over, and to employ a steward who is really fit to take
+the place. Pray, pray act in this matter as you think best for Allan’s
+interests. Whatever disappointment I may feel, _he_ shall not see it.
+
+“Believe me, dear Mr. Brock,
+
+“Gratefuly yours,
+
+“OZIAS MIDWINTER.
+
+“P.S.--I open the envelope again to add one word more. If you have heard
+or seen anything since your return to Somersetshire of the woman in
+the black dress and the red shawl, I hope you will not forget, when you
+write, to let me know it.
+
+“O. M.”
+
+
+2. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Ladies’ Toilet Repository, Diana Street, Pimlico,
+
+“Wednesday.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--To save the post, I write to you, after a long day’s
+worry at my place of business, on the business letter-paper, having news
+since we last met which it seems advisable to send you at the earliest
+opportunity.
+
+“To begin at the beginning. After carefully considering the thing, I
+am quite sure you will do wisely with young Armadale if you hold your
+tongue about Madeira and all that happened there. Your position was, no
+doubt, a very strong one with his mother. You had privately helped
+her in playing a trick on her own father; you had been ungratefully
+dismissed, at a pitiably tender age, as soon as you had served her
+purpose; and, when you came upon her suddenly, after a separation of
+more than twenty years, you found her in failing health, with a grown-up
+son, whom she had kept in total ignorance of the true story of her
+marriage.
+
+“Have you any such advantages as these with the young gentleman who has
+survived her? If he is not a born idiot he will decline to believe your
+shocking aspersions on the memory of his mother; and--seeing that you
+have no proofs at this distance of time to meet him with--there is an
+end of your money-grubbing in the golden Armadale diggings. Mind, I
+don’t dispute that the old lady’s heavy debt of obligation, after what
+you did for her in Madeira, is not paid yet; and that the son is the
+next person to settle with you, now the mother has slipped through your
+fingers. Only squeeze him the right way, my dear, that’s what I venture
+to suggest--squeeze him the right way.
+
+“And which is the right way? That question brings me to my news.
+
+“Have you thought again of that other notion of yours of trying your
+hand on this lucky young gentleman, with nothing but your own good
+looks and your own quick wits to help you? The idea hung on my mind so
+strangely after you were gone that it ended in my sending a little note
+to my lawyer, to have the will under which young Armadale has got
+his fortune examined at Doctor’s Commons. The result turns out to
+be something infinitely more encouraging than either you or I could
+possibly have hoped for. After the lawyer’s report to me, there cannot
+be a moment’s doubt of what you ought to do. In two words, Lydia, take
+the bull by the horns--and marry him!
+
+“I am quite serious. He is much better worth the venture than you
+suppose. Only persuade him to make you Mrs. Armadale, and you may set
+all after-discoveries at flat defiance. As long as he lives, you can
+make your own terms with him; and, if he dies, the will entitles you, in
+spite of anything he can say or do--with children or without them--to
+an income chargeable on his estate of _twelve hundred a year for life_.
+There is no doubt about this; the lawyer himself has looked at the will.
+Of course, Mr. Blanchard had his son and his son’s widow in his eye
+when he made the provision. But, as it is not limited to any one heir by
+name, and not revoked anywhere, it now holds as good with young Armadale
+as it would have held under other circumstances with Mr. Blanchard’s
+son. What a chance for you, after all the miseries and the dangers you
+have gone through, to be mistress of Thorpe Ambrose, if he lives; to
+have an income for life, if he dies! Hook him, my poor dear; hook him at
+any sacrifice.
+
+“I dare say you will make the same objection when you read this which
+you made when we were talking about it the other day; I mean the
+objection of your age.
+
+“Now, my good creature, just listen to me. The question is--not whether
+you were five-and-thirty last birthday; we will own the dreadful truth,
+and say you were--but whether you do look, or don’t look, your real age.
+My opinion on this matter ought to be, and is, one of the best opinions
+in London. I have had twenty years experience among our charming sex in
+making up battered old faces and wornout old figures to look like new,
+and I say positively you don’t look a day over thirty, if as much.
+If you will follow my advice about dressing, and use one or two of my
+applications privately, I guarantee to put you back three years more.
+I will forfeit all the money I shall have to advance for you in this
+matter, if, when I have ground you young again in my wonderful mill,
+you look more than seven-and-twenty in any man’s eyes living--except,
+of course, when you wake anxious in the small hours of the morning; and
+then, my dear, you will be old and ugly in the retirement of your own
+room, and it won’t matter.
+
+“‘But,’ you may say, ‘supposing all this, here I am, even with your
+art to help me, looking a good six years older than he is; and that
+is against me at starting.’ Is it? Just think again. Surely, your
+own experience must have shown you that the commonest of all common
+weaknesses, in young fellows of this Armadale’s age, is to fall in love
+with women older than themselves. Who are the men who really appreciate
+us in the bloom of our youth (I’m sure I have cause to speak well of the
+bloom of youth; I made fifty guineas to-day by putting it on the spotted
+shoulders of a woman old enough to be your mother)--who are the men, I
+say, who are ready to worship us when we are mere babies of seventeen?
+The gay young gentlemen in the bloom of their own youth? No! The cunning
+old wretches who are on the wrong side of forty.
+
+“And what is the moral of this, as the story-books say?
+
+“The moral is that the chances, with such a head as you have got on
+your shoulders, are all in your favor. If you feel your present forlorn
+position, as I believe you do; if you know what a charming woman (in the
+men’s eyes) you can still be when you please; and if all your resolution
+has really come back, after that shocking outbreak of desperation on
+board the steamer (natural enough, I own, under the dreadful provocation
+laid on you), you will want no further persuasion from me to try this
+experiment. Only to think of how things turn out! If the other young
+booby had not jumped into the river after you, _this_ young booby would
+never have had the estate. It really looks as if fate had determined
+that you were to be Mrs. Armadale, of Thorpe Ambrose; and who can
+control his fate, as the poet says?
+
+“Send me one line to say Yes or No; and believe me your attached old
+friend,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+
+3. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+Richmond, Thursday.
+
+‘YOU OLD WRETCH--I won’t say Yes or No till I have had a long, long
+look at my glass first. If you had any real regard for anybody but your
+wicked old self, you would know that the bare idea of marrying again
+(after what I have gone through) is an idea that makes my flesh creep.
+
+“But there can be no harm in your sending me a little more information
+while I am making up my mind. You have got twenty pounds of mine still
+left out of those things you sold for me; send ten pounds here for
+my expenses, in a post-office order, and use the other ten for making
+private inquiries at Thorpe Ambrose. I want to know when the two
+Blanchard women go away, and when young Armadale stirs up the dead ashes
+in the family fire-place. Are you quite sure he will turn out as easy to
+manage as you think? If he takes after his hypocrite of a mother, I can
+tell you this: Judas Iscariot has come to life again.
+
+“I am very comfortable in this lodging. There are lovely flowers in the
+garden, and the birds wake me in the morning delightfully. I have hired
+a reasonably good piano. The only man I care two straws about--don’t be
+alarmed; he was laid in his grave many a long year ago, under the name
+of BEETHOVEN--keeps me company, in my lonely hours. The landlady would
+keep me company, too, if I would only let her. I hate women. The new
+curate paid a visit to the other lodger yesterday, and passed me on the
+lawn as he came out. My eyes have lost nothing yet, at any rate, though
+I _am_ five-and-thirty; the poor man actually blushed when I looked at
+him! What sort of color do you think he would have turned, if one of the
+little birds in the garden had whispered in his ear, and told him the
+true story of the charming Miss Gwilt?
+
+“Good-by, Mother Oldershaw. I rather doubt whether I am yours, or
+anybody’s, affectionately; but we all tell lies at the bottoms of our
+letters, don’t we? If you are my attached old friend, I must, of course,
+be yours affectionately.
+
+“LYDIA GWILT.
+
+“P.S.--Keep your odious powders and paints and washes for the spotted
+shoulders of your customers; not one of them shall touch my skin, I
+promise you. If you really want to be useful, try and find out some
+quieting draught to keep me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. I shall
+break them one of these nights; and then what will become of my beauty,
+I wonder?”
+
+4. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Ladies’ Toilet Repository, Tuesday.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--It is a thousand pities your letter was not addressed to
+Mr. Armadale; your graceful audacity would have charmed him. It doesn’t
+affect me; I am so well used to audacity in my way of life, you
+know. Why waste your sparkling wit, my love, on your own impenetrable
+Oldershaw? It only splutters and goes out. Will you try and be serious
+this next time? I have news for you from Thorpe Ambrose, which is beyond
+a joke, and which must not be trifled with.
+
+“An hour after I got your letter I set the inquiries on foot. Not
+knowing what consequences they might lead to, I thought it safest to
+begin in the dark. Instead of employing any of the people whom I have
+at my own disposal (who know you and know me), I went to the Private
+Inquiry Office in Shadyside Place, and put the matter in the inspector’s
+hands, in the character of a perfect stranger, and without mentioning
+you at all. This was not the cheapest way of going to work, I own; but
+it was the safest way, which is of much greater consequence.
+
+“The inspector and I understood each other in ten minutes; and the right
+person for the purpose--the most harmless looking young man you ever saw
+in your life--was produced immediately. He left for Thorpe Ambrose an
+hour after I saw him. I arranged to call at the office on the afternoons
+of Saturday, Monday, and to-day for news. There was no news till to-day;
+and there I found our confidential agent just returned to town, and
+waiting to favor me with a full account of his trip to Norfolk.
+
+“First of all, let me quiet your mind about those two questions of
+yours; I have got answers to both the one and the other. The Blanchard
+women go away to foreign parts on the thirteenth, and young Armadale is
+at this moment cruising somewhere at sea in his yacht. There is talk
+at Thorpe Ambrose of giving him a public reception, and of calling a
+meeting of the local grandees to settle it all. The speechifying and
+fuss on these occasions generally wastes plenty of time, and the public
+reception is not thought likely to meet the new squire much before the
+end of the month.
+
+“If our messenger had done no more for us than this, I think he would
+have earned his money. But the harmless young man is a regular Jesuit at
+a private inquiry, with this great advantage over all the Popish priests
+I have ever seen, that he has not got his slyness written in his face.
+
+“Having to get his information through the female servants in the usual
+way, he addressed himself, with admirable discretion, to the ugliest
+woman in the house. ‘When they are nice-looking, and can pick and
+choose,’ as he neatly expressed it to me, ‘they waste a great deal
+of valuable time in deciding on a sweetheart. When they are ugly,
+and haven’t got the ghost of a chance of choosing, they snap at a
+sweetheart, if he comes their way, like a starved dog at a bone.’ Acting
+on these excellent principles, our confidential agent succeeded, after
+certain unavoidable delays, in addressing himself to the upper housemaid
+at Thorpe Ambrose, and took full possession of her confidence at
+the first interview. Bearing his instructions carefully in mind, he
+encouraged the woman to chatter, and was favored, of course, with all
+the gossip of the servants’ hall. The greater part of it (as repeated
+to me) was of no earthly importance. But I listened patiently, and was
+rewarded by a valuable discovery at last. Here it is.
+
+“It seems there is an ornamental cottage in the grounds at Thorpe
+Ambrose. For some reason unknown, young Armadale has chosen to let it,
+and a tenant has come in already. He is a poor half-pay major in the
+army, named Milroy, a meek sort of man, by all accounts, with a turn
+for occupying himself in mechanical pursuits, and with a domestic
+incumbrance in the shape of a bedridden wife, who has not been seen by
+anybody. Well, and what of all this? you will ask, with that sparkling
+impatience which becomes you so well. My dear Lydia, don’t sparkle! The
+man’s family affairs seriously concern us both, for, as ill luck will
+have it, the man has got a daughter!
+
+“You may imagine how I questioned our agent, and how our agent ransacked
+his memory, when I stumbled, in due course, on such a discovery as
+this. If Heaven is responsible for women’s chattering tongues, Heaven
+be praised! From Miss Blanchard to Miss Blanchard’s maid; from Miss
+Blanchard’s maid to Miss Blanchard’s aunt’s maid; from Miss Blanchard’s
+aunt’s maid, to the ugly housemaid; from the ugly housemaid to the
+harmless-looking young man--so the stream of gossip trickled into the
+right reservoir at last, and thirsty Mother Oldershaw has drunk it all
+up.
+
+“In plain English, my dear, this is how it stands. The major’s daughter
+is a minx just turned sixteen; lively and nice-looking (hateful little
+wretch!), dowdy in her dress (thank Heaven!) and deficient in her
+manners (thank Heaven again!). She has been brought up at home. The
+governess who last had charge of her left before her father moved to
+Thorpe Ambrose. Her education stands woefully in want of a finishing
+touch, and the major doesn’t quite know what to do next. None of his
+friends can recommend him a new governess and he doesn’t like the
+notion of sending the girl to school. So matters rest at present, on
+the major’s own showing; for so the major expressed himself at a morning
+call which the father and daughter paid to the ladies at the great
+house.
+
+“You have now got my promised news, and you will have little difficulty,
+I think, in agreeing with me that the Armadale business must be settled
+at once, one way or the other. If, with your hopeless prospects, and
+with what I may call your family claim on this young fellow, you decide
+on giving him up, I shall have the pleasure of sending you the balance
+of your account with me (seven-and-twenty shillings), and shall then
+be free to devote myself entirely to my own proper business. If, on the
+contrary, you decide to try your luck at Thorpe Ambrose, then (there
+being no kind of doubt that the major’s minx will set her cap at the
+young squire) I should be glad to hear how you mean to meet the double
+difficulty of inflaming Mr. Armadale and extinguishing Miss Milroy.
+
+“Affectionately yours,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.
+
+5. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw.
+
+(First Answer.)_
+
+“Richmond, Wednesday Morning.
+
+“MRS. OLDERSHAW--Send me my seven-and-twenty shillings, and devote
+yourself to your own proper business. Yours, L. G.”
+
+6. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw.
+
+(Second Answer.)_
+
+“Richmond, Wednesday Night.
+
+“DEAR OLD LOVE--Keep the seven-and-twenty shillings, and burn my other
+letter. I have changed my mind.
+
+“I wrote the first time after a horrible night. I write this time after
+a ride on horseback, a tumbler of claret, and the breast of a chicken.
+Is that explanation enough? Please say Yes, for I want to go back to my
+piano.
+
+“No; I can’t go back yet; I must answer your question first. But are you
+really so very simple as to suppose that I don’t see straight through
+you and your letter? You know that the major’s difficulty is our
+opportunity as well as I do; but you want me to take the responsibility
+of making the first proposal, don’t you? Suppose I take it in your
+own roundabout way? Suppose I say, ‘Pray don’t ask me how I propose
+inflaming Mr. Armadale and extinguishing Miss Milroy; the question is
+so shockingly abrupt I really can’t answer it. Ask me, instead, if it is
+the modest ambition of my life to become Miss Milroy’s governess?’ Yes,
+if you please, Mrs. Oldershaw, and if you will assist me by becoming my
+reference.
+
+“There it is for you! If some serious disaster happens (which is quite
+possible), what a comfort it will be to remember that it was all my
+fault!
+
+“Now I have done this for you, will you do something for me. I want to
+dream away the little time I am likely to have left here in my own way.
+Be a merciful Mother Oldershaw, and spare me the worry of looking at
+the Ins and Outs, and adding up the chances For and Against, in this new
+venture of mine. Think for me, in short, until I am obliged to think for
+myself.
+
+“I had better not write any more, or I shall say something savage that
+you won’t like. I am in one of my tempers to-night. I want a husband to
+vex, or a child to beat, or something of that sort. Do you ever like to
+see the summer insects kill themselves in the candle? I do, sometimes.
+Good-night, Mrs. Jezebel. The longer you can leave me here the better.
+The air agrees with me, and I am looking charmingly.
+
+“L. G.”
+
+7. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Thursday.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--Some persons in my situation might be a little offended
+at the tone of your last letter. But I am so fondly attached to you! And
+when I love a person, it is so very hard, my dear, for that person to
+offend me! Don’t ride quite so far, and only drink half a tumblerful of
+claret next time. I say no more.
+
+“Shall we leave off our fencing-match and come to serious matters now?
+How curiously hard it always seems to be for women to understand each
+other, especially when they have got their pens in their hands! But
+suppose we try.
+
+“Well, then, to begin with: I gather from your letter that you have
+wisely decided to try the Thorpe Ambrose experiment, and to secure, if
+you can, an excellent position at starting by becoming a member of Major
+Milroy’s household. If the circumstances turn against you, and some
+other woman gets the governess’s place (about which I shall have
+something more to say presently), you will then have no choice but to
+make Mr. Armadale’s acquaintance in some other character. In any case,
+you will want my assistance; and the first question, therefore, to set
+at rest between us is the question of what I am willing to do, and what
+I can do, to help you.
+
+“A woman, my dear Lydia, with your appearance, your manners, your
+abilities, and your education, can make almost any excursions into
+society that she pleases if she only has money in her pocket and a
+respectable reference to appeal to in cases of emergency. As to the
+money, in the first place. I will engage to find it, on condition of
+your remembering my assistance with adequate pecuniary gratitude if you
+win the Armadale prize. Your promise so to remember me, embodying the
+terms in plain figures, shall be drawn out on paper by my own lawyer, so
+that we can sign and settle at once when I see you in London.
+
+“Next, as to the reference.
+
+“Here, again, my services are at your disposal, on another condition. It
+is this: that you present yourself at Thorpe Ambrose, under the name
+to which you have returned ever since that dreadful business of your
+marriage; I mean your own maiden name of Gwilt. I have only one motive
+in insisting on this; I wish to run no needless risks. My experience,
+as confidential adviser of my customers, in various romantic cases of
+private embarrassment, has shown me that an assumed name is, nine times
+out of ten, a very unnecessary and a very dangerous form of deception.
+Nothing could justify your assuming a name but the fear of young
+Armadale’s detecting you--a fear from which we are fortunately relieved
+by his mother’s own conduct in keeping your early connection with her a
+profound secret from her son and from everybody.
+
+“The next, and last, perplexity to settle relates, my dear, to the
+chances for and against your finding your way, in the capacity of
+governess, into Major Milroy’s house. Once inside the door, with your
+knowledge of music and languages, if you can keep your temper, you may
+be sure of keeping the place. The only doubt, as things are now, is
+whether you can get it.
+
+“In the major’s present difficulty about his daughter’s education, the
+chances are, I think, in favor of his advertising for a governess. Say
+he does advertise, what address will he give for applicants to write to?
+
+“If he gives an address in London, good-by to all chances in your favor
+at once; for this plain reason, that we shall not be able to pick out
+his advertisement from the advertisements of other people who want
+governesses, and who will give them addresses in London as well. If, on
+the other hand, our luck helps us, and he refers his correspondents to
+a shop, post-office, or what not _at Thorpe Ambrose_, there we have our
+advertiser as plainly picked out for us as we can wish. In this last
+case, I have little or no doubt--with me for your reference--of your
+finding your way into the major’s family circle. We have one great
+advantage over the other women who will answer the advertisement. Thanks
+to my inquiries on the spot, I know Major Milroy to be a poor man; and
+we will fix the salary you ask at a figure that is sure to tempt him. As
+for the style of the letter, if you and I together can’t write a modest
+and interesting application for the vacant place, I should like to know
+who can?
+
+“All this, however, is still in the future. For the present my advice
+is, stay where you are, and dream to your heart’s content, till you hear
+from me again. I take in _The Times_ regularly, and you may trust my
+wary eye not to miss the right advertisement. We can luckily give the
+major time, without doing any injury to our own interests; for there
+is no fear just yet of the girl’s getting the start of you. The public
+reception, as we know, won’t be ready till near the end of the month;
+and we may safely trust young Armadale’s vanity to keep him out of his
+new house until his flatterers are all assembled to welcome him.
+
+“It’s odd, isn’t it, to think how much depends on this half-pay
+officer’s decision? For my part, I shall wake every morning now with
+the same question in my mind: If the major’s advertisment appears, which
+will the major say--Thorpe Ambrose, or London?
+
+“Ever, my dear Lydia, affectionately yours,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+
+
+
+II. ALLAN AS A LANDED GENTLEMAN.
+
+Early on the morning after his first night’s rest at Thorpe Ambrose,
+Allan rose and surveyed the prospect from his bedroom window, lost in
+the dense mental bewilderment of feeling himself to be a stranger in his
+own house.
+
+The bedroom looked out over the great front door, with its portico, its
+terrace and flight of steps beyond, and, further still, the broad sweep
+of the well-timbered park to close the view. The morning mist nestled
+lightly about the distant trees; and the cows were feeding sociably,
+close to the iron fence which railed off the park from the drive
+in front of the house. “All mine!” thought Allan, staring in blank
+amazement at the prospect of his own possessions. “Hang me if I can beat
+it into my head yet. All mine!”
+
+He dressed, left his room, and walked along the corridor which led to
+the staircase and hall, opening the doors in succession as he passed
+them.
+
+The rooms in this part of the house were bedrooms and dressing-rooms,
+light, spacious, perfectly furnished; and all empty, except the one
+bed-chamber next to Allan’s, which had been appropriated to Midwinter.
+He was still sleeping when his friend looked in on him, having sat late
+into the night writing his letter to Mr. Brock. Allan went on to the end
+of the first corridor, turned at right angles into a second, and, that
+passed, gained the head of the great staircase. “No romance here,” he
+said to himself, looking down the handsomely carpeted stone stairs into
+the bright modern hall. “Nothing to startle Midwinter’s fidgety
+nerves in this house.” There was nothing, indeed; Allan’s essentially
+superficial observation had not misled him for once. The mansion of
+Thorpe Ambrose (built after the pulling down of the dilapidated old
+manor-house) was barely fifty years old. Nothing picturesque, nothing in
+the slightest degree suggestive of mystery and romance, appeared in any
+part of it. It was a purely conventional country house--the product of
+the classical idea filtered judiciously through the commercial English
+mind. Viewed on the outer side, it presented the spectacle of a modern
+manufactory trying to look like an ancient temple. Viewed on the inner
+side, it was a marvel of luxurious comfort in every part of it, from
+basement to roof. “And quite right, too,” thought Allan, sauntering
+contentedly down the broad, gently graduated stairs. “Deuce take all
+mystery and romance! Let’s be clean and comfortable, that’s what I say.”
+
+Arrived in the hall, the new master of Thorpe Ambrose hesitated, and
+looked about him, uncertain which way to turn next.
+
+The four reception-rooms on the ground-floor opened into the hall, two
+on either side. Allan tried the nearest door on his right hand at a
+venture, and found himself in the drawing-room. Here the first sign of
+life appeared, under life’s most attractive form. A young girl was in
+solitary possession of the drawing-room. The duster in her hand appeared
+to associate her with the domestic duties of the house; but at that
+particular moment she was occupied in asserting the rights of nature
+over the obligations of service. In other words, she was attentively
+contemplating her own face in the glass over the mantelpiece.
+
+“There! there! don’t let me frighten you,” said Allan, as the girl
+started away from the glass, and stared at him in unutterable confusion.
+“I quite agree with you, my dear; your face is well worth looking at.
+Who are you? Oh, the housemaid. And what’s your name? Susan, eh? Come!
+I like your name, to begin with. Do you know who I am, Susan? I’m your
+master, though you may not think it. Your character? Oh, yes! Mrs.
+Blanchard gave you a capital character. You shall stop here; don’t be
+afraid. And you’ll be a good girl, Susan, and wear smart little caps and
+aprons and bright ribbons, and you’ll look nice and pretty, and dust the
+furniture, won’t you?” With this summary of a housemaid’s duties, Allan
+sauntered back into the hall, and found more signs of life in that
+quarter. A man-servant appeared on this occasion, and bowed, as became a
+vassal in a linen jacket, before his liege lord in a wide-awake hat.
+
+“And who may you be?” asked Allan. “Not the man who let us in last
+night? Ah, I thought not. The second footman, eh? Character? Oh, yes;
+capital character. Stop here, of course. You can valet me, can you?
+Bother valeting me! I like to put on my own clothes, and brush them,
+too, when they _are_ on; and, if I only knew how to black my own boots,
+by George, I should like to do it! What room’s this? Morning-room, eh?
+And here’s the dining-room, of course. Good heavens, what a table! it’s
+as long as my yacht, and longer. I say, by-the-by, what’s your name?
+Richard, is it? Well, Richard, the vessel I sail in is a vessel of my
+own building! What do you think of that? You look to me just the right
+sort of man to be my steward on board. If you’re not sick at sea--oh,
+you _are_ sick at sea? Well, then, we’ll say nothing more about it.
+And what room is this? Ah, yes; the library, of course--more in Mr.
+Midwinter’s way than mine. Mr. Midwinter is the gentleman who came here
+with me last night; and mind this, Richard, you’re all to show him as
+much attention as you show me. Where are we now? What’s this door at the
+back? Billiard-room and smoking-room, eh? Jolly. Another door! and more
+stairs! Where do they go to? and who’s this coming up? Take your time,
+ma’am; you’re not quite so young as you were once--take your time.”
+
+The object of Allan’s humane caution was a corpulent elderly woman of
+the type called “motherly.” Fourteen stairs were all that separated her
+from the master of the house; she ascended them with fourteen stoppages
+and fourteen sighs. Nature, various in all things, is infinitely various
+in the female sex. There are some women whose personal qualities reveal
+the Loves and the Graces; and there are other women whose personal
+qualities suggest the Perquisites and the Grease Pot. This was one of
+the other women.
+
+“Glad to see you looking so well, ma’am,” said Allan, when the cook, in
+the majesty of her office, stood proclaimed before him. “Your name is
+Gripper, is it? I consider you, Mrs. Gripper, the most valuable person
+in the house. For this reason, that nobody in the house eats a heartier
+dinner every day than I do. Directions? Oh, no; I’ve no directions to
+give. I leave all that to you. Lots of strong soup, and joints done
+with the gravy in them--there’s my notion of good feeding, in two
+words. Steady! Here’s somebody else. Oh, to be sure--the butler! Another
+valuable person. We’ll go right through all the wine in the cellar,
+Mr. Butler; and if I can’t give you a sound opinion after that,
+we’ll persevere boldly, and go right through it again. Talking of
+wine--halloo! here are more of them coming up stairs. There! there!
+don’t trouble yourselves. You’ve all got capital characters, and you
+shall all stop here along with me. What was I saying just now? Something
+about wine; so it was. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Butler, it isn’t every
+day that a new master comes to Thorpe Ambrose; and it’s my wish that we
+should all start together on the best possible terms. Let the servants
+have a grand jollification downstairs to celebrate my arrival, and
+give them what they like to drink my health in. It’s a poor heart, Mrs.
+Gripper, that never rejoices, isn’t it? No; I won’t look at the cellar
+now: I want to go out, and get a breath of fresh air before breakfast.
+Where’s Richard? I say, have I got a garden here? Which side of the
+house is it! That side, eh? You needn’t show me round. I’ll go alone,
+Richard, and lose myself, if I can, in my own property.”
+
+With those words Allan descended the terrace steps in front of the
+house, whistling cheerfully. He had met the serious responsibility of
+settling his domestic establishment to his own entire satisfaction.
+“People talk of the difficulty of managing their servants,” thought
+Allan. “What on earth do they mean? I don’t see any difficulty at all.”
+ He opened an ornamental gate leading out of the drive at the side of the
+house, and, following the footman’s directions, entered the shrubbery
+that sheltered the Thorpe Ambrose gardens. “Nice shady sort of place
+for a cigar,” said Allan, as he sauntered along with his hands in his
+pockets “I wish I could beat it into my head that it really belongs to
+_me_.”
+
+The shrubbery opened on the broad expanse of a flower garden, flooded
+bright in its summer glory by the light of the morning sun.
+
+On one side, an archway, broken through, a wall, led into the fruit
+garden. On the other, a terrace of turf led to ground on a lower level,
+laid out as an Italian garden. Wandering past the fountains and statues,
+Allan reached another shrubbery, winding its way apparently to some
+remote part of the grounds. Thus far, not a human creature had been
+visible or audible anywhere; but, as he approached the end of the second
+shrubbery, it struck him that he heard something on the other side of
+the foliage. He stopped and listened. There were two voices speaking
+distinctly--an old voice that sounded very obstinate, and a young voice
+that sounded very angry.
+
+“It’s no use, miss,” said the old voice. “I mustn’t allow it, and I
+won’t allow it. What would Mr. Armadale say?”
+
+“If Mr. Armadale is the gentleman I take him for, you old brute!”
+ replied the young voice, “he would say, ‘Come into my garden, Miss
+Milroy, as often as you like, and take as many nosegays as you please.’”
+ Allan’s bright blue eyes twinkled mischievously. Inspired by a sudden
+idea, he stole softly to the end of the shrubbery, darted round the
+corner of it, and, vaulting over a low ring fence, found himself in a
+trim little paddock, crossed by a gravel walk. At a short distance down
+the wall stood a young lady, with her back toward him, trying to force
+her way past an impenetrable old man, with a rake in his hand, who stood
+obstinately in front of her, shaking his head.
+
+“Come into my garden, Miss Milroy, as often as you like, and take as
+many nosegays as you please,” cried Allan, remorselessly repeating her
+own words.
+
+The young lady turned round, with a scream; her muslin dress, which she
+was holding up in front, dropped from her hand, and a prodigious lapful
+of flowers rolled out on the gravel walk.
+
+Before another word could be said, the impenetrable old man stepped
+forward, with the utmost composure, and entered on the question of his
+own personal interests, as if nothing whatever had happened, and nobody
+was present but his new master and himself.
+
+“I bid you humbly welcome to Thorpe Ambrose, sir,” said this ancient of
+the gardens. “My name is Abraham Sage. I’ve been employed in the grounds
+for more than forty years; and I hope you’ll be pleased to continue me
+in my place.”
+
+So, with vision inexorably limited to the horizon of his own prospects,
+spoke the gardener, and spoke in vain. Allan was down on his knees on
+the gravel walk, collecting the fallen flowers, and forming his first
+impressions of Miss Milroy from the feet upward.
+
+She was pretty; she was not pretty; she charmed, she disappointed, she
+charmed again. Tried by recognized line and rule, she was too short and
+too well developed for her age. And yet few men’s eyes would have wished
+her figure other than it was. Her hands were so prettily plump and
+dimpled that it was hard to see how red they were with the blessed
+exuberance of youth and health. Her feet apologized gracefully for her
+old and ill fitting shoes; and her shoulders made ample amends for the
+misdemeanor in muslin which covered them in the shape of a dress. Her
+dark-gray eyes were lovely in their clear softness of color, in their
+spirit, tenderness, and sweet good humor of expression; and her hair
+(where a shabby old garden hat allowed it to be seen) was of just that
+lighter shade of brown which gave value by contrast to the darker
+beauty of her eyes. But these attractions passed, the little attendant
+blemishes and imperfections of this self-contradictory girl began again.
+Her nose was too short, her mouth was too large, her face was too round
+and too rosy. The dreadful justice of photography would have had no
+mercy on her; and the sculptors of classical Greece would have bowed
+her regretfully out of their studios. Admitting all this, and more, the
+girdle round Miss Milroy’s waist was the girdle of Venus nevertheless;
+and the passkey that opens the general heart was the key she carried,
+if ever a girl possessed it yet. Before Allan had picked up his second
+handful of flowers, Allan was in love with her.
+
+“Don’t! pray don’t, Mr. Armadale!” she said, receiving the flowers under
+protest, as Allan vigorously showered them back into the lap of her
+dress. “I am so ashamed! I didn’t mean to invite myself in that bold way
+into your garden; my tongue ran away with me--it did, indeed! What can I
+say to excuse myself? Oh, Mr. Armadale, what must you think of me?”
+
+Allan suddenly saw his way to a compliment, and tossed it up to her
+forthwith, with the third handful of flowers.
+
+“I’ll tell you what I think, Miss Milroy,” he said, in his blunt, boyish
+way. “I think the luckiest walk I ever took in my life was the walk this
+morning that brought me here.”
+
+He looked eager and handsome. He was not addressing a woman worn out
+with admiration, but a girl just beginning a woman’s life; and it did
+him no harm, at any rate, to speak in the character of master of Thorpe
+Ambrose. The penitential expression on Miss Milroy’s face gently melted
+away; she looked down, demure and smiling, at the flowers in her lap.
+
+“I deserve a good scolding,” she said. “I don’t deserve compliments, Mr.
+Armadale--least of all from _you_.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you do!” cried the headlong Allan, getting briskly on
+his legs. “Besides, it isn’t a compliment; it’s true. You are the
+prettiest--I beg your pardon, Miss Milroy! _my_ tongue ran away with me
+that time.”
+
+Among the heavy burdens that are laid on female human nature, perhaps
+the heaviest, at the age of sixteen, is the burden of gravity. Miss
+Milroy struggled, tittered, struggled again, and composed herself for
+the time being.
+
+The gardener, who still stood where he had stood from the first,
+immovably waiting for his next opportunity, saw it now, and gently
+pushed his personal interests into the first gap of silence that had
+opened within his reach since Allan’s appearance on the scene.
+
+“I humbly bid you welcome to Thorpe Ambrose, sir,” said Abraham Sage,
+beginning obstinately with his little introductory speech for the second
+time. “My name--”
+
+Before he could deliver himself of his name, Miss Milroy looked
+accidentally in the horticulturist’s pertinacious face, and instantly
+lost her hold on her gravity beyond recall. Allan, never backward in
+following a boisterous example of any sort, joined in her laughter with
+right goodwill. The wise man of the gardens showed no surprise, and took
+no offense. He waited for another gap of silence, and walked in again
+gently with his personal interests the moment the two young people
+stopped to take breath.
+
+“I have been employed in the grounds,” proceeded Abraham Sage,
+irrepressibly, “for more than forty years--”
+
+“You shall be employed in the grounds for forty more, if you’ll only
+hold your tongue and take yourself off!” cried Allan, as soon as he
+could speak.
+
+“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the gardener, with the utmost politeness,
+but with no present signs either of holding his tongue or of taking
+himself off.
+
+“Well?” said Allan.
+
+Abraham Sage carefully cleared his throat, and shifted his rake from
+one hand to the other. He looked down the length of his own invaluable
+implement, with a grave interest and attention, seeing, apparently, not
+the long handle of a rake, but the long perspective of a vista, with a
+supplementary personal interest established at the end of it. “When
+more convenient, sir,” resumed this immovable man, “I should wish
+respectfully to speak to you about my son. Perhaps it may be more
+convenient in the course of the day? My humble duty, sir, and my best
+thanks. My son is strictly sober. He is accustomed to the stables, and
+he belongs to the Church of England--without incumbrances.” Having thus
+planted his offspring provisionally in his master’s estimation, Abraham
+Sage shouldered his invaluable rake, and hobbled slowly out of view.
+
+“If that’s a specimen of a trustworthy old servant,” said Allan, “I
+think I’d rather take my chance of being cheated by a new one. _You_
+shall not be troubled with him again, Miss Milroy, at any rate. All the
+flower-beds in the garden are at your disposal, and all the fruit in the
+fruit season, if you’ll only come here and eat it.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Armadale, how very, very kind you are. How can I thank you?”
+
+Allan saw his way to another compliment--an elaborate compliment, in the
+shape of a trap, this time.
+
+“You can do me the greatest possible favor,” he said. “You can assist me
+in forming an agreeable impression of my own grounds.”
+
+“Dear me! how?” asked Miss Milroy, innocently.
+
+Allan judiciously closed the trap on the spot in these words: “By taking
+me with you, Miss Milroy, on your morning walk.” He spoke, smiled, and
+offered his arm.
+
+She saw the way, on her side, to a little flirtation. She rested her
+hand on his arm, blushed, hesitated, and suddenly took it away again.
+
+“I don’t think it’s quite right, Mr. Armadale,” she said, devoting
+herself with the deepest attention to her collection of flowers.
+“Oughtn’t we to have some old lady here? Isn’t it improper to take your
+arm until I know you a little better than I do now? I am obliged to ask;
+I have had so little instruction; I have seen so little of society, and
+one of papa’s friends once said my manners were too bold for my age.
+What do _you_ think?”
+
+“I think it’s a very good thing your papa’s friend is not here now,”
+ answered the outspoken Allan; “I should quarrel with him to a dead
+certainty. As for society, Miss Milroy, nobody knows less about it than
+I do; but if we _had_ an old lady here, I must say myself I think she
+would be uncommonly in the way. Won’t you?” concluded Allan, imploringly
+offering his arm for the second time. “Do!”
+
+Miss Milroy looked up at him sidelong from her flowers “You are as bad
+as the gardener, Mr. Armadale!” She looked down again in a flutter
+of indecision. “I’m sure it’s wrong,” she said, and took his arm the
+instant afterward without the slightest hesitation.
+
+They moved away together over the daisied turf of the paddock, young
+and bright and happy, with the sunlight of the summer morning shining
+cloudless over their flowery path.
+
+“And where are we going to, now?” asked Allan. “Into another garden?”
+
+She laughed gayly. “How very odd of you, Mr. Armadale, not to know, when
+it all belongs to you! Are you really seeing Thorpe Ambrose this morning
+for the first time? How indescribably strange it must feel! No, no;
+don’t say any more complimentary things to me just yet. You may turn my
+head if you do. We haven’t got the old lady with us; and I really must
+take care of myself. Let me be useful; let me tell you all about your
+own grounds. We are going out at that little gate, across one of the
+drives in the park, and then over the rustic bridge, and then round
+the corner of the plantation--where do you think? To where I live, Mr.
+Armadale; to the lovely little cottage that you have let to papa. Oh, if
+you only knew how lucky we thought ourselves to get it!”
+
+She paused, looked up at her companion, and stopped another compliment
+on the incorrigible Allan’s lips.
+
+“I’ll drop your arm,” she said coquettishly, “if you do! We _were_ lucky
+to get the cottage, Mr. Armadale. Papa said he felt under an obligation
+to you for letting it, the day we got in. And _I_ said I felt under an
+obligation, no longer ago than last week.”
+
+“You, Miss Milroy!” exclaimed Allan.
+
+“Yes. It may surprise you to hear it; but if you hadn’t let the cottage
+to papa, I believe I should have suffered the indignity and misery of
+being sent to school.”
+
+Allan’s memory reverted to the half-crown that he had spun on the
+cabin-table of the yacht, at Castletown. “If she only knew that I had
+tossed up for it!” he thought, guiltily.
+
+“I dare say you don’t understand why I should feel such a horror of
+going to school,” pursued Miss Milroy, misinterpreting the momentary
+silence on her companion’s side. “If I had gone to school in early
+life--I mean at the age when other girls go--I shouldn’t have minded it
+now. But I had no such chance at the time. It was the time of mamma’s
+illness and of papa’s unfortunate speculation; and as papa had nobody to
+comfort him but me, of course I stayed at home. You needn’t laugh; I was
+of some use, I can tell you. I helped papa over his trouble, by sitting
+on his knee after dinner, and asking him to tell me stories of all the
+remarkable people he had known when he was about in the great world, at
+home and abroad. Without me to amuse him in the evening, and his clock
+to occupy him in the daytime--”
+
+“His clock?” repeated Allan.
+
+“Oh, yes! I ought to have told you. Papa is an extraordinary mechanical
+genius. You will say so, too, when you see his clock. It’s nothing
+like so large, of course, but it’s on the model of the famous clock
+at Strasbourg. Only think, he began it when I was eight years old; and
+(though I was sixteen last birthday) it isn’t finished yet! Some of our
+friends were quite surprised he should take to such a thing when his
+troubles began. But papa himself set that right in no time; he reminded
+them that Louis the Sixteenth took to lock-making when _his_ troubles
+began, and then everybody was perfectly satisfied.” She stopped, and
+changed color confusedly. “Oh, Mr. Armadale,” she said, in genuine
+embarrassment this time, “here is my unlucky tongue running away with me
+again! I am talking to you already as if I had known you for years! This
+is what papa’s friend meant when he said my manners were too bold. It’s
+quite true; I have a dreadful way of getting familiar with people, if--”
+ She checked herself suddenly, on the brink of ending the sentence by
+saying, “if I like them.”
+
+“No, no; do go on!” pleaded Allan. “It’s a fault of mine to be familiar,
+too. Besides, we _must_ be familiar; we are such near neighbors. I’m
+rather an uncultivated sort of fellow, and I don’t know quite how to say
+it; but I want your cottage to be jolly and friendly with my house, and
+my house to be jolly and friendly with your cottage. There’s my meaning,
+all in the wrong words. Do go on, Miss Milroy; pray go on!”
+
+She smiled and hesitated. “I don’t exactly remember where I was,” she
+replied, “I only remember I had something I wanted to tell you. This
+comes, Mr. Armadale, of my taking your arm. I should get on so much
+better, if you would only consent to walk separately. You won’t? Well,
+then, will you tell me what it was I wanted to say? Where was I before I
+went wandering off to papa’s troubles and papa’s clock?”
+
+“At school!” replied Allan, with a prodigious effort of memory.
+
+“_Not_ at school, you mean,” said Miss Milroy; “and all through _you_.
+Now I can go on again, which is a great comfort. I am quite serious, Mr.
+Armadale, in saying that I should have been sent to school, if you had
+said No when papa proposed for the cottage. This is how it happened.
+When we began moving in, Mrs. Blanchard sent us a most kind message from
+the great house to say that her servants were at our disposal, if we
+wanted any assistance. The least papa and I could do, after that, was to
+call and thank her. We saw Mrs. Blanchard and Miss Blanchard. Mistress
+was charming, and miss looked perfectly lovely in her mourning. I’m sure
+you admire her? She’s tall and pale and graceful--quite your idea of
+beauty, I should think?”
+
+“Nothing like it,” began Allan. “My idea of beauty at the present
+moment--”
+
+Miss Milroy felt it coming, and instantly took her hand off his arm.
+
+“I mean I have never seen either Mrs. Blanchard or her niece,” added
+Allan, precipitately correcting himself.
+
+Miss Milroy tempered justice with mercy, and put her hand back again.
+
+“How extraordinary that you should never have seen them!” she went on.
+“Why, you are a perfect stranger to everything and everybody at Thorpe
+Ambrose! Well, after Miss Blanchard and I had sat and talked a little
+while, I heard my name on Mrs. Blanchard’s lips and instantly held my
+breath. She was asking papa if I had finished my education. Out came
+papa’s great grievance directly. My old governess, you must know, left
+us to be married just before we came here, and none of our friends
+could produce a new one whose terms were reasonable. ‘I’m told, Mrs.
+Blanchard, by people who understand it better than I do,’ says papa,
+‘that advertising is a risk. It all falls on me, in Mrs. Milroy’s state
+of health, and I suppose I must end in sending my little girl to school.
+Do you happen to know of a school within the means of a poor man?’ Mrs.
+Blanchard shook her head; I could have kissed her on the spot for doing
+it. ‘All my experience, Major Milroy,’ says this perfect angel of a
+woman, ‘is in favor of advertising. My niece’s governess was originally
+obtained by an advertisement, and you may imagine her value to us when I
+tell you she lived in our family for more than ten years.’ I could have
+gone down on both my knees and worshipped Mrs. Blanchard then and there;
+and I only wonder I didn’t! Papa was struck at the time--I could see
+that--and he referred to it again on the way home. ‘Though I have been
+long out of the world, my dear,’ says papa, ‘I know a highly-bred woman
+and a sensible woman when I see her. Mrs. Blanchard’s experience puts
+advertising in a new light; I must think about it.’ He has thought about
+it, and (though he hasn’t openly confessed it to me) I know that he
+decided to advertise, no later than last night. So, if papa thanks you
+for letting the cottage, Mr. Armadale, I thank you, too. But for you, we
+should never have known darling Mrs. Blanchard; and but for darling Mrs.
+Blanchard, I should have been sent to school.”
+
+Before Allan could reply, they turned the corner of the plantation,
+and came in sight of the cottage. Description of it is needless; the
+civilized universe knows it already. It was the typical cottage of the
+drawing-master’s early lessons in neat shading and the broad pencil
+touch--with the trim thatch, the luxuriant creepers, the modest
+lattice-windows, the rustic porch, and the wicker bird-cage, all
+complete.
+
+“Isn’t it lovely?” said Miss Milroy. “Do come in!”
+
+“May I?” asked Allan. “Won’t the major think it too early?”
+
+“Early or late, I am sure papa will be only too glad to see you.”
+
+She led the way briskly up the garden path, and opened the parlor door.
+As Allan followed her into the little room, he saw, at the further end
+of it, a gentleman sitting alone at an old-fashioned writing-table, with
+his back turned to his visitor.
+
+“Papa! a surprise for you!” said Miss Milroy, rousing him from his
+occupation. “Mr. Armadale has come to Thorpe Ambrose; and I have brought
+him here to see you.”
+
+The major started; rose, bewildered for the moment; recovered
+himself immediately, and advanced to welcome his young landlord, with
+hospitable, outstretched hand.
+
+A man with a larger experience of the world and a finer observation
+of humanity than Allan possessed would have seen the story of Major
+Milroy’s life written in Major Milroy’s face. The home troubles that
+had struck him were plainly betrayed in his stooping figure and his wan,
+deeply wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from
+his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one
+monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy
+self-absorption of his manner and his look while his daughter was
+speaking to him. The moment after, when he had roused himself to welcome
+his guest, was the moment which made the self-revelation complete. Then
+there flickered in the major’s weary eyes a faint reflection of the
+spirit of his happier youth. Then there passed over the major’s dull
+and dreamy manner a change which told unmistakably of social graces and
+accomplishments, learned at some past time in no ignoble social school;
+a man who had long since taken his patient refuge from trouble in his
+own mechanical pursuit; a man only roused at intervals to know himself
+again for what he once had been. So revealed to all eyes that could read
+him aright, Major Milroy now stood before Allan, on the first morning of
+an acquaintance which was destined to be an event in Allan’s life.
+
+“I am heartily glad to see you, Mr. Armadale,” he said, speaking in the
+changeless quiet, subdued tone peculiar to most men whose occupations
+are of the solitary and monotonous kind. “You have done me one favor
+already by taking me as your tenant, and you now do me another by paying
+this friendly visit. If you have not breakfasted already, let me waive
+all ceremony on my side, and ask you to take your place at our little
+table.”
+
+“With the greatest pleasure, Major Milroy, if I am not in the way,”
+ replied Allan, delighted at his reception. “I was sorry to hear from
+Miss Milroy that Mrs. Milroy is an invalid. Perhaps my being here
+unexpectedly; perhaps the sight of a strange face--”
+
+“I understand your hesitation, Mr. Armadale,” said the major; “but it is
+quite unnecessary. Mrs. Milroy’s illness keeps her entirely confined to
+her own room. Have we got everything we want on the table, my love?” he
+went on, changing the subject so abruptly that a closer observer than
+Allan might have suspected it was distasteful to him. “Will you come and
+make tea?”
+
+Miss Milroy’s attention appeared to be already pre-engaged; she made no
+reply. While her father and Allan had been exchanging civilities, she
+had been putting the writing-table in order, and examining the various
+objects scattered on it with the unrestrained curiosity of a spoiled
+child. The moment after the major had spoken to her, she discovered a
+morsel of paper hidden between the leaves of the blotting-book, snatched
+it up, looked at it, and turned round instantly, with an exclamation of
+surprise.
+
+“Do my eyes deceive me, papa?” she asked. “Or were you really and truly
+writing the advertisement when I came in?”
+
+“I had just finished it,” replied her father. “But, my dear, Mr.
+Armadale is here--we are waiting for breakfast.”
+
+“Mr. Armadale knows all about it,” rejoined Miss Milroy. “I told him in
+the garden.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Allan. “Pray, don’t make a stranger of me, major! If
+it’s about the governess, I’ve got something (in an indirect sort of
+way) to do with it too.”
+
+Major Milroy smiled. Before he could answer, his daughter, who had been
+reading the advertisement, appealed to him eagerly, for the second time.
+
+“Oh, papa,” she said, “there’s one thing here I don’t like at all! Why
+do you put grandmamma’s initials at the end? Why do you tell them to
+write to grandmamma’s house in London?”
+
+“My dear! your mother can do nothing in this matter, as you know. And
+as for me (even if I went to London), questioning strange ladies about
+their characters and accomplishments is the last thing in the world that
+I am fit to do. Your grandmamma is on the spot; and your grandmamma is
+the proper person to receive the letters, and to make all the necessary
+inquires.”
+
+“But I want to see the letters myself,” persisted the spoiled child.
+“Some of them are sure to be amusing--”
+
+“I don’t apologize for this very unceremonious reception of you, Mr.
+Armadale,” said the major, turning to Allan, with a quaint and quiet
+humor. “It may be useful as a warning, if you ever chance to marry and
+have a daughter, not to begin, as I have done, by letting her have her
+own way.”
+
+Allan laughed, and Miss Milroy persisted.
+
+“Besides,” she went on, “I should like to help in choosing which letters
+we answer, and which we don’t. I think I ought to have some voice in the
+selection of my own governess. Why not tell them, papa, to send their
+letters down here--to the post-office or the stationer’s, or anywhere
+you like? When you and I have read them, we can send up the letters we
+prefer to grandmamma; and she can ask all the questions, and pick out
+the best governess, just as you have arranged already, without leaving
+ME entirely in the dark, which I consider (don’t you, Mr. Armadale?)
+to be quite inhuman. Let me alter the address, papa; do, there’s a
+darling!”
+
+“We shall get no breakfast, Mr. Armadale, if I don’t say Yes,” said the
+major good-humoredly. “Do as you like, my dear,” he added, turning to
+his daughter. “As long as it ends in your grandmamma’s managing the
+matter for us, the rest is of very little consequence.”
+
+Miss Milroy took up her father’s pen, drew it through the last line of
+the advertisement, and wrote the altered address with her own hand as
+follows:
+
+“_Apply, by letter, to M., Post-office, Thorpe Ambrose, Norfolk_.”
+
+“There!” she said, bustling to her place at the breakfast-table. “The
+advertisement may go to London now; and, if a governess _does_ come of
+it, oh, papa, who in the name of wonder will she be? Tea or coffee, Mr.
+Armadale? I’m really ashamed of having kept you waiting. But it is such
+a comfort,” she added, saucily, “to get all one’s business off one’s
+mind before breakfast!”
+
+Father, daughter, and guest sat down together sociably at the little
+round table, the best of good neighbors and good friends already.
+
+
+Three days later, one of the London newsboys got _his_ business off his
+mind before breakfast. His district was Diana Street, Pimlico; and the
+last of the morning’s newspapers which he disposed of was the newspaper
+he left at Mrs. Oldershaw’s door.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE CLAIMS OF SOCIETY.
+
+More than an hour after Allan had set forth on his exploring expedition
+through his own grounds, Midwinter rose, and enjoyed, in his turn, a
+full view by daylight of the magnificence of the new house.
+
+Refreshed by his long night’s rest, he descended the great staircase as
+cheerfully as Allan himself. One after another, he, too, looked into
+the spacious rooms on the ground floor in breathless astonishment at the
+beauty and the luxury which surrounded him. “The house where I lived in
+service when I was a boy, was a fine one,” he thought, gayly; “but it
+was nothing to this! I wonder if Allan is as surprised and delighted as
+I am?” The beauty of the summer morning drew him out through the open
+hall door, as it had drawn his friend out before him. He ran briskly
+down the steps, humming the burden of one of the old vagabond tunes
+which he had danced to long since in the old vagabond time. Even the
+memories of his wretched childhood took their color, on that happy
+morning, from the bright medium through which he looked back at them.
+“If I was not out of practice,” he thought to himself, as he leaned
+on the fence and looked over at the park, “I could try some of my old
+tumbling tricks on that delicious grass.” He turned, noticed two of the
+servants talking together near the shrubbery, and asked for news of the
+master of the house.
+
+The men pointed with a smile in the direction of the gardens; Mr.
+Armadale had gone that way more than an hour since, and had met (as had
+been reported) with Miss Milroy in the grounds. Midwinter followed the
+path through the shrubbery, but, on reaching the flower garden, stopped,
+considered a little, and retraced his steps. “If Allan has met with the
+young lady,” he said to himself, “Allan doesn’t want me.” He laughed as
+he drew that inevitable inference, and turned considerately to explore
+the beauties of Thorpe Ambrose on the other side of the house.
+
+Passing the angle of the front wall of the building, he descended some
+steps, advanced along a paved walk, turned another angle, and found
+himself in a strip of garden ground at the back of the house.
+
+Behind him was a row of small rooms situated on the level of the
+servants’ offices. In front of him, on the further side of the little
+garden, rose a wall, screened by a laurel hedge, and having a door at
+one end of it, leading past the stables to a gate that opened on the
+high-road. Perceiving that he had only discovered thus far the shorter
+way to the house, used by the servants and trades-people, Midwinter
+turned back again, and looked in at the window of one of the rooms on
+the basement story as he passed it. Were these the servants’ offices?
+No; the offices were apparently in some other part of the ground-floor;
+the window he had looked in at was the window of a lumber-room. The
+next two rooms in the row were both empty. The fourth window, when he
+approached it, presented a little variety. It served also as a door; and
+it stood open to the garden at that moment.
+
+Attracted by the book-shelves which he noticed on one of the walls,
+Midwinter stepped into the room.
+
+The books, few in number, did not detain him long; a glance at their
+backs was enough without taking them down. The Waverley Novels, Tales
+by Miss Edgeworth, and by Miss Edgeworth’s many followers, the Poems of
+Mrs. Hemans, with a few odd volumes of the illustrated gift-books of
+the period, composed the bulk of the little library. Midwinter turned to
+leave the room, when an object on one side of the window, which he had
+not previously noticed, caught his attention and stopped him. It was a
+statuette standing on a bracket--a reduced copy of the famous Niobe of
+the Florence Museum. He glanced from the statuette to the window, with a
+sudden doubt which set his heart throbbing fast. It was a French window.
+He looked out with a suspicion which he had not felt yet. The view
+before him was the view of a lawn and garden. For a moment his mind
+struggled blindly to escape the conclusion which had seized it, and
+struggled in vain. Here, close round him and close before him--here,
+forcing him mercilessly back from the happy present to the horrible
+past, was the room that Allan had seen in the Second Vision of the
+Dream.
+
+He waited, thinking and looking round him while he thought. There
+was wonderfully little disturbance in his face and manner; he looked
+steadily from one to the other of the few objects in the room, as if the
+discovery of it had saddened rather than surprised him. Matting of
+some foreign sort covered the floor. Two cane chairs and a plain table
+comprised the whole of the furniture. The walls were plainly papered,
+and bare--broken to the eye in one place by a door leading into the
+interior of the house; in another, by a small stove; in a third, by the
+book-shelves which Midwinter had already noticed. He returned to the
+books, and this time he took some of them down from the shelves.
+
+The first that he opened contained lines in a woman’s handwriting,
+traced in ink that had faded with time. He read the inscription--“Jane
+Armadale, from her beloved father. Thorpe Ambrose, October, 1828.”
+ In the second, third, and fourth volumes that he opened, the same
+inscription re-appeared. His previous knowledge of dates and persons
+helped him to draw the true inference from what he saw. The books must
+have belonged to Allan’s mother; and she must have inscribed them with
+her name, in the interval of time between her return to Thorpe Ambrose
+from Madeira and the birth of her son. Midwinter passed on to a volume
+on another shelf--one of a series containing the writings of Mrs.
+Hemans. In this case, the blank leaf at the beginning of the book was
+filled on both sides with a copy of verses, the writing being still
+in Mrs. Armadale’s hand. The verses were headed “Farewell to Thorpe
+Ambrose,” and were dated “March, 1829”--two months only after Allan had
+been born.
+
+Entirely without merit in itself, the only interest of the little poem
+was in the domestic story that it told.
+
+The very room in which Midwinter then stood was described--with the
+view on the garden, the window made to open on it, the bookshelves, the
+Niobe, and other more perishable ornaments which Time had destroyed.
+Here, at variance with her brothers, shrinking from her friends, the
+widow of the murdered man had, on her own acknowledgment, secluded
+herself, without other comfort than the love and forgiveness of her
+father, until her child was born. The father’s mercy and the father’s
+recent death filled many verses, happily too vague in their commonplace
+expression of penitence and despair to give any hint of the marriage
+story in Madeira to any reader who looked at them ignorant of the truth.
+A passing reference to the writer’s estrangement from her surviving
+relatives, and to her approaching departure from Thorpe Ambrose,
+followed. Last came the assertion of the mother’s resolution to separate
+herself from all her old associations; to leave behind her every
+possession, even to the most trifling thing she had, that could remind
+her of the miserable past; and to date her new life in the future from
+the birthday of the child who had been spared to console her--who was
+now the one earthly object that could still speak to her of love and
+hope. So the old story of passionate feeling that finds comfort in
+phrases rather than not find comfort at all was told once again. So the
+poem in the faded ink faded away to its end.
+
+Midwinter put the book back with a heavy sigh, and opened no other
+volume on the shelves. “Here in the country house, or there on board the
+wreck,” he said, bitterly, “the traces of my father’s crime follow me,
+go where I may.” He advanced toward the window, stopped, and looked back
+into the lonely, neglected little room. “Is _this_ chance?” he asked
+himself. “The place where his mother suffered is the place he sees in
+the Dream; and the first morning in the new house is the morning that
+reveals it, not to _him_, but to me. Oh, Allan! Allan! how will it end?”
+
+
+The thought had barely passed through his mind before he heard Allan’s
+voice, from the paved walk at the side of the house, calling to him by
+his name. He hastily stepped out into the garden. At the same moment
+Allan came running round the corner, full of voluble apologies for
+having forgotten, in the society of his new neighbors, what was due to
+the laws of hospitality and the claims of his friend.
+
+“I really haven’t missed you,” said Midwinter; “and I am very, very glad
+to hear that the new neighbors have produced such a pleasant impression
+on you already.”
+
+He tried, as he spoke, to lead the way back by the outside of the house;
+but Allan’s flighty attention had been caught by the open window and the
+lonely little room. He stepped in immediately. Midwinter followed, and
+watched him in breathless anxiety as he looked round. Not the slightest
+recollection of the Dream troubled Allan’s easy mind. Not the slightest
+reference to it fell from the silent lips of his friend.
+
+“Exactly the sort of place I should have expected you to hit on!”
+ exclaimed Allan, gayly. “Small and snug and unpretending. I know you,
+Master Midwinter! You’ll be slipping off here when the county families
+come visiting, and I rather think on those dreadful occasions you won’t
+find me far behind you. What’s the matter? You look ill and out of
+spirits. Hungry? Of course you are! unpardonable of me to have kept you
+waiting. This door leads somewhere, I suppose; let’s try a short
+cut into the house. Don’t be afraid of my not keeping you company at
+breakfast. I didn’t eat much at the cottage; I feasted my eyes on Miss
+Milroy, as the poets say. Oh, the darling! the darling! she turns you
+topsy-turvy the moment you look at her. As for her father, wait till
+you see his wonderful clock! It’s twice the size of the famous clock at
+Strasbourg, and the most tremendous striker ever heard yet in the memory
+of man!”
+
+Singing the praises of his new friends in this strain at the top of his
+voice, Allan hurried Midwinter along the stone passages on the
+basement floor, which led, as he had rightly guessed, to a staircase
+communicating with the hall. They passed the servants’ offices on the
+way. At the sight of the cook and the roaring fire, disclosed through
+the open kitchen door, Allan’s mind went off at a tangent, and Allan’s
+dignity scattered itself to the four winds of heaven, as usual.
+
+“Aha, Mrs. Gripper, there you are with your pots and pans, and your
+burning fiery furnace! One had need be Shadrach, Meshach, and the other
+fellow to stand over that. Breakfast as soon as ever you like. Eggs,
+sausages, bacon, kidneys, marmalade, water-cresses, coffee, and so
+forth. My friend and I belong to the select few whom it’s a perfect
+privilege to cook for. Voluptuaries, Mrs. Gripper, voluptuaries, both of
+us. You’ll see,” continued Allan, as they went on toward the stairs, “I
+shall make that worthy creature young again; I’m better than a doctor
+for Mrs. Gripper. When she laughs, she shakes her fat sides, and when
+she shakes her fat sides, she exerts her muscular system; and when
+she exerts her muscular system--Ha! here’s Susan again. Don’t squeeze
+yourself flat against the banisters, my dear; if you don’t mind hustling
+_me_ on the stairs, I rather like hustling _you_. She looks like a
+full-blown rose when she blushes, doesn’t she? Stop, Susan! I’ve orders
+to give. Be very particular with Mr. Midwinter’s room: shake up his bed
+like mad, and dust his furniture till those nice round arms of yours
+ache again. Nonsense, my dear fellow! I’m not too familiar with them;
+I’m only keeping them up to their work. Now, then, Richard! where do we
+breakfast? Oh, here. Between ourselves, Midwinter, these splendid rooms
+of mine are a size too large for me; I don’t feel as if I should ever
+be on intimate terms with my own furniture. My views in life are of the
+snug and slovenly sort--a kitchen chair, you know, and a low ceiling.
+Man wants but little here below, and wants that little long. That’s not
+exactly the right quotation; but it expresses my meaning, and we’ll let
+alone correcting it till the next opportunity.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” interposed Midwinter, “here is something waiting
+for you which you have not noticed yet.”
+
+As he spoke, he pointed a little impatiently to a letter lying on the
+breakfast-table. He could conceal the ominous discovery which he had
+made that morning, from Allan’s knowledge; but he could not conquer
+the latent distrust of circumstances which was now raised again in
+his superstitious nature--the instinctive suspicion of everything that
+happened, no matter how common or how trifling the event, on the first
+memorable day when the new life began in the new house.
+
+Allan ran his eye over the letter, and tossed it across the table to his
+friend. “I can’t make head or tail of it,” he said, “can you?”
+
+Midwinter read the letter, slowly, aloud. “Sir--I trust you will pardon
+the liberty I take in sending these few lines to wait your arrival at
+Thorpe Ambrose. In the event of circumstances not disposing you to place
+your law business in the hands of Mr. Darch--” He suddenly stopped at
+that point, and considered a little.
+
+“Darch is our friend the lawyer,” said Allan, supposing Midwinter had
+forgotten the name. “Don’t you remember our spinning the half-crown on
+the cabin table, when I got the two offers for the cottage? Heads, the
+major; tails, the lawyer. This is the lawyer.”
+
+Without making any reply, Midwinter resumed reading the letter. “In the
+event of circumstances not disposing you to place your law business
+in the hands of Mr. Darch, I beg to say that I shall be happy to take
+charge of your interests, if you feel willing to honor me with your
+confidence. Inclosing a reference (should you desire it) to my agents in
+London, and again apologizing for this intrusion, I beg to remain, sir,
+respectfully yours, A. PEDGIFT, Sen.”
+
+“Circumstances?” repeated Midwinter, as he laid the letter down. “What
+circumstances can possibly indispose you to give your law business to
+Mr. Darch?”
+
+“Nothing can indispose me,” said Allan. “Besides being the family lawyer
+here, Darch was the first to write me word at Paris of my coming in for
+my fortune; and, if I have got any business to give, of course he ought
+to have it.”
+
+Midwinter still looked distrustfully at the open letter on the table.
+“I am sadly afraid, Allan, there is something wrong already,” he said.
+“This man would never have ventured on the application he has made to
+you, unless he had some good reason for believing he would succeed. If
+you wish to put yourself right at starting, you will send to Mr. Darch
+this morning to tell him you are here, and you will take no notice for
+the present of Mr. Pedgift’s letter.”
+
+Before more could be said on either side, the footman made his
+appearance with the breakfast tray. He was followed, after an interval,
+by the butler, a man of the essentially confidential kind, with a
+modulated voice, a courtly manner, and a bulbous nose. Anybody but Allan
+would have seen in his face that he had come into the room having a
+special communication to make to his master. Allan, who saw nothing
+under the surface, and whose head was running on the lawyer’s letter,
+stopped him bluntly with the point-blank question: “Who’s Mr. Pedgift?”
+
+The butler’s sources of local knowledge opened confidentially on the
+instant. Mr. Pedgift was the second of the two lawyers in the town. Not
+so long established, not so wealthy, not so universally looked up to
+as old Mr. Darch. Not doing the business of the highest people in the
+county, and not mixing freely with the best society, like old Mr. Darch.
+A very sufficient man, in his way, nevertheless. Known as a perfectly
+competent and respectable practitioner all round the neighborhood. In
+short, professionally next best to Mr. Darch; and personally superior to
+him (if the expression might be permitted) in this respect--that Darch
+was a Crusty One, and Pedgift wasn’t.
+
+Having imparted this information, the butler, taking a wise advantage
+of his position, glided, without a moment’s stoppage, from Mr. Pedgift’s
+character to the business that had brought him into the breakfast-room.
+The Midsummer Audit was near at hand; and the tenants were accustomed
+to have a week’s notice of the rent-day dinner. With this necessity
+pressing, and with no orders given as yet, and no steward in office
+at Thorpe Ambrose, it appeared desirable that some confidential person
+should bring the matter forward. The butler was that confidential
+person; and he now ventured accordingly to trouble his master on the
+subject.
+
+At this point Allan opened his lips to interrupt, and was himself
+interrupted before he could utter a word.
+
+“Wait!” interposed Midwinter, seeing in Allan’s face that he was in
+danger of being publicly announced in the capacity of steward. “Wait!”
+ he repeated, eagerly, “till I can speak to you first.”
+
+The butler’s courtly manner remained alike unruffled by Midwinter’s
+sudden interference and by his own dismissal from the scene. Nothing but
+the mounting color in his bulbous nose betrayed the sense of injury
+that animated him as he withdrew. Mr. Armadale’s chance of regaling his
+friend and himself that day with the best wine in the cellar trembled in
+the balance, as the butler took his way back to the basement story.
+
+“This is beyond a joke, Allan,” said Midwinter, when they were alone.
+“Somebody must meet your tenants on the rent-day who is really fit to
+take the steward’s place. With the best will in the world to learn, it
+is impossible for _me_ to master the business at a week’s notice. Don’t,
+pray don’t let your anxiety for my welfare put you in a false position
+with other people! I should never forgive myself if I was the unlucky
+cause--”
+
+“Gently gently!” cried Allan, amazed at his friend’s extraordinary
+earnestness. “If I write to London by to-night’s post for the man who
+came down here before, will that satisfy you?”
+
+Midwinter shook his head. “Our time is short,” he said; “and the man may
+not be at liberty. Why not try in the neighborhood first? You were going
+to write to Mr. Darch. Send at once, and see if he can’t help us between
+this and post-time.”
+
+Allan withdrew to a side-table on which writing materials were placed.
+“You shall breakfast in peace, you old fidget,” he replied, and
+addressed himself forthwith to Mr. Darch, with his usual Spartan brevity
+of epistolary expression. “Dear Sir--Here I am, bag and baggage. Will
+you kindly oblige me by being my lawyer? I ask this, because I want to
+consult you at once. Please look in in the course of the day, and stop
+to dinner if you possibly can. Yours truly. ALLAN ARMADALE.” Having read
+this composition aloud with unconcealed admiration of his own rapidity
+of literary execution, Allan addressed the letter to Mr. Darch, and rang
+the bell. “Here, Richard, take this at once, and wait for an answer.
+And, I say, if there’s any news stirring in the town, pick it up and
+bring it back with you. See how I manage my servants!” continued Allan,
+joining his friend at the breakfast-table. “See how I adapt myself to my
+new duties! I haven’t been down here one clear day yet, and I’m taking
+an interest in the neighborhood already.”
+
+Breakfast over, the two friends went out to idle away the morning under
+the shade of a tree in the park. Noon came, and Richard never appeared.
+One o’clock struck, and still there were no signs of an answer from Mr.
+Darch. Midwinter’s patience was not proof against the delay. He left
+Allan dozing on the grass, and went to the house to make inquiries. The
+town was described as little more than two miles distant; but the day
+of the week happened to be market day, and Richard was being detained
+no doubt by some of the many acquaintances whom he would be sure to meet
+with on that occasion.
+
+Half an hour later the truant messenger returned, and was sent out to
+report himself to his master under the tree in the park.
+
+“Any answer from Mr. Darch?” asked Midwinter, seeing that Allan was too
+lazy to put the question for himself.
+
+“Mr. Darch was engaged, sir. I was desired to say that he would send an
+answer.”
+
+“Any news in the town?” inquired Allan, drowsily, without troubling
+himself to open his eyes.
+
+“No, sir; nothing in particular.”
+
+Observing the man suspiciously as he made that reply, Midwinter
+detected in his face that he was not speaking the truth. He was plainly
+embarrassed, and plainly relieved when his master’s silence allowed
+him to withdraw. After a little consideration, Midwinter followed, and
+overtook the retreating servant on the drive before the house.
+
+“Richard,” he said, quietly, “if I was to guess that there _is_ some
+news in the town, and that you don’t like telling it to your master,
+should I be guessing the truth?”
+
+The man started and changed color. “I don’t know how you have found it
+out,” he said; “but I can’t deny you have guessed right.”
+
+“If you let me hear what the news is, I will take the responsibility on
+myself of telling Mr. Armadale.”
+
+After some little hesitation, and some distrustful consideration, on
+his side, of Midwinter’s face, Richard at last prevailed on himself to
+repeat what he had heard that day in the town.
+
+The news of Allan’s sudden appearance at Thorpe Ambrose had preceded the
+servant’s arrival at his destination by some hours. Wherever he went,
+he found his master the subject of public discussion. The opinion of
+Allan’s conduct among the leading townspeople, the resident gentry
+of the neighborhood, and the principal tenants on the estate was
+unanimously unfavorable. Only the day before, the committee for managing
+the public reception of the new squire had sketched the progress of the
+procession; had settled the serious question of the triumphal arches;
+and had appointed a competent person to solicit subscriptions for the
+flags, the flowers, the feasting, the fireworks, and the band. In less
+than a week more the money could have been collected, and the rector
+would have written to Mr. Armadale to fix the day. And now, by Allan’s
+own act, the public welcome waiting to honor him had been cast back
+contemptuously in the public teeth! Everybody took for granted (what
+was unfortunately true) that he had received private information of
+the contemplated proceedings. Everybody declared that he had purposely
+stolen into his own house like a thief in the night (so the phrase ran)
+to escape accepting the offered civilities of his neighbors. In brief,
+the sensitive self-importance of the little town was wounded to the
+quick, and of Allan’s once enviable position in the estimation of the
+neighborhood not a vestige remained.
+
+For a moment, Midwinter faced the messenger of evil tidings in silent
+distress. That moment past, the sense of Allan’s critical position
+roused him, now the evil was known, to seek the remedy.
+
+“Has the little you have seen of your master, Richard, inclined you to
+like him?” he asked.
+
+This time the man answered without hesitation, “A pleasanter and kinder
+gentleman than Mr. Armadale no one could wish to serve.”
+
+“If you think that,” pursued Midwinter, “you won’t object to give me
+some information which will help your master to set himself right with
+his neighbors. Come into the house.”
+
+He led the way into the library, and, after asking the necessary
+questions, took down in writing a list of the names and addresses of the
+most influential persons living in the town and its neighborhood. This
+done, he rang the bell for the head footman, having previously sent
+Richard with a message to the stables directing an open carriage to be
+ready in an hour’s time.
+
+“When the late Mr. Blanchard went out to make calls in the neighborhood,
+it was your place to go with him, was it not?” he asked, when the upper
+servant appeared. “Very well. Be ready in an hour’s time, if you please,
+to go out with Mr. Armadale.” Having given that order, he left the house
+again on his way back to Allan, with the visiting list in his hand.
+He smiled a little sadly as he descended the steps. “Who would have
+imagined,” he thought, “that my foot-boy’s experience of the ways of
+gentlefolks would be worth looking back at one day for Allan’s sake?”
+
+The object of the popular odium lay innocently slumbering on the grass,
+with his garden hat over his nose, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his
+trousers wrinkled half way up his outstretched legs. Midwinter roused
+him without hesitation, and remorselessly repeated the servant’s news.
+
+Allan accepted the disclosure thus forced on him without the slightest
+disturbance of temper. “Oh, hang ‘em!” was all he said. “Let’s have
+another cigar.” Midwinter took the cigar out of his hand, and, insisting
+on his treating the matter seriously, told him in plain words that he
+must set himself right with his offended neighbors by calling on
+them personally to make his apologies. Allan sat up on the grass in
+astonishment; his eyes opened wide in incredulous dismay. Did Midwinter
+positively meditate forcing him into a “chimney-pot hat,” a nicely
+brushed frock-coat, and a clean pair of gloves? Was it actually in
+contemplation to shut him up in a carriage, with his footman on the box
+and his card-case in his hand, and send him round from house to house,
+to tell a pack of fools that he begged their pardon for not letting them
+make a public show of him? If anything so outrageously absurd as this
+was really to be done, it could not be done that day, at any rate. He
+had promised to go back to the charming Milroy at the cottage and to
+take Midwinter with him. What earthly need had he of the good opinion of
+the resident gentry? The only friends he wanted were the friends he
+had got already. Let the whole neighborhood turn its back on him if it
+liked; back or face, the Squire of Thorpe Ambrose didn’t care two straws
+about it.
+
+After allowing him to run on in this way until his whole stock of
+objections was exhausted, Midwinter wisely tried his personal influence
+next. He took Allan affectionately by the hand. “I am going to ask a
+great favor,” he said. “If you won’t call on these people for your own
+sake, will you call on them to please _me_?”
+
+Allan delivered himself of a groan of despair, stared in mute surprise
+at the anxious face of his friend, and good-humoredly gave way. As
+Midwinter took his arm, and led him back to the house, he looked round
+with rueful eyes at the cattle hard by, placidly whisking their tails in
+the pleasant shade. “Don’t mention it in the neighborhood,” he said; “I
+should like to change places with one of my own cows.”
+
+Midwinter left him to dress, engaging to return when the carriage was at
+the door. Allan’s toilet did not promise to be a speedy one. He began it
+by reading his own visiting cards; and he advanced it a second stage
+by looking into his wardrobe, and devoting the resident gentry to the
+infernal regions. Before he could discover any third means of delaying
+his own proceedings, the necessary pretext was unexpectedly supplied
+by Richard’s appearance with a note in his hand. The messenger had just
+called with Mr. Darch’s answer. Allan briskly shut up the wardrobe, and
+gave his whole attention to the lawyer’s letter. The lawyer’s letter
+rewarded him by the following lines:
+
+
+“SIR--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of to-day’s date,
+honoring me with two proposals; namely, ONE inviting me to act as your
+legal adviser, and ONE inviting me to pay you a visit at your house.
+In reference to the first proposal, I beg permission to decline it with
+thanks. With regard to the second proposal, I have to inform you that
+circumstances have come to my knowledge relating to the letting of the
+cottage at Thorpe Ambrose which render it impossible for me (in justice
+to myself) to accept your invitation. I have ascertained, sir, that my
+offer reached you at the same time as Major Milroy’s; and that, with
+both proposals thus before you, you gave the preference to a total
+stranger, who addressed you through a house agent, over a man who had
+faithfully served your relatives for two generations, and who had been
+the first person to inform you of the most important event in your life.
+After this specimen of your estimate of what is due to the claims of
+common courtesy and common justice, I cannot flatter myself that I
+possess any of the qualities which would fit me to take my place on the
+list of your friends.
+
+“I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+“JAMES DARCH.”
+
+
+“Stop the messenger!” cried Allan, leaping to his feet, his ruddy face
+aflame with indignation. “Give me pen, ink, and paper! By the
+Lord Harry, they’re a nice set of people in these parts; the whole
+neighborhood is in a conspiracy to bully me!” He snatched up the pen in
+a fine frenzy of epistolary inspiration. “Sir--I despise you and your
+letter.--” At that point the pen made a blot, and the writer was seized
+with a momentary hesitation. “Too strong,” he thought; “I’ll give it to
+the lawyer in his own cool and cutting style.” He began again on a clean
+sheet of paper. “Sir--You remind me of an Irish bull. I mean that story
+in ‘Joe Miller’ where Pat remarked, in the hearing of a wag hard by,
+that ‘the reciprocity was all on one side.’ _Your_ reciprocity is all on
+one side. You take the privilege of refusing to be my lawyer, and
+then you complain of my taking the privilege of refusing to be your
+landlord.” He paused fondly over those last words. “Neat!” he thought.
+“Argument and hard hitting both in one. I wonder where my knack of
+writing comes from?” He went on, and finished the letter in two more
+sentences. “As for your casting my invitation back in my teeth, I beg to
+inform you my teeth are none the worse for it. I am equally glad to
+have nothing to say to you, either in the capacity of a friend or a
+tenant.--ALLAN ARMADALE.” He nodded exultantly at his own composition,
+as he addressed it and sent it down to the messenger. “Darch’s hide must
+be a thick one,” he said, “if he doesn’t feel _that_!”
+
+The sound of the wheels outside suddenly recalled him to the business
+of the day. There was the carriage waiting to take him on his round of
+visits; and there was Midwinter at his post, pacing to and fro on the
+drive.
+
+“Read that,” cried Allan, throwing out the lawyer’s letter; “I’ve
+written him back a smasher.”
+
+He bustled away to the wardrobe to get his coat. There was a wonderful
+change in him; he felt little or no reluctance to pay the visits now.
+The pleasurable excitement of answering Mr. Darth had put him in a fine
+aggressive frame of mind for asserting himself in the neighborhood.
+“Whatever else they may say of me, they shan’t say I was afraid to face
+them.” Heated red-hot with that idea, he seized his hat and gloves,
+and hurrying out of the room, met Midwinter in the corridor with the
+lawyer’s letter in his hand.
+
+“Keep up your spirits!” cried Allan, seeing the anxiety in his friend’s
+face, and misinterpreting the motive of it immediately. “If Darch can’t
+be counted on to send us a helping hand into the steward’s office,
+Pedgift can.”
+
+“My dear Allan, I was not thinking of that; I was thinking of Mr.
+Darch’s letter. I don’t defend this sour-tempered man; but I am afraid
+we must admit he has some cause for complaint. Pray don’t give him
+another chance of putting you in the wrong. Where is your answer to his
+letter?”
+
+“Gone!” replied Allan. “I always strike while the iron’s hot--a word and
+a blow, and the blow first, that’s my way. Don’t, there’s a good fellow,
+don’t fidget about the steward’s books and the rent-day. Here! here’s a
+bunch of keys they gave me last night: one of them opens the room where
+the steward’s books are; go in and read them till I come back. I give
+you my sacred word of honor I’ll settle it all with Pedgift before you
+see me again.”
+
+“One moment,” interposed Midwinter, stopping him resolutely on his way
+out to the carriage. “I say nothing against Mr. Pedgift’s fitness to
+possess your confidence, for I know nothing to justify me in distrusting
+him. But he has not introduced himself to your notice in a very delicate
+way; and he has not acknowledged (what is quite clear to my mind) that
+he knew of Mr. Darch’s unfriendly feeling toward you when he wrote. Wait
+a little before you go to this stranger; wait till we can talk it over
+together to-night.”
+
+“Wait!” replied Allan. “Haven’t I told you that I always strike while
+the iron’s hot? Trust my eye for character, old boy, I’ll look Pedgift
+through and through, and act accordingly. Don’t keep me any longer, for
+Heaven’s sake. I’m in a fine humor for tackling the resident gentry; and
+if I don’t go at once, I’m afraid it may wear off.”
+
+With that excellent reason for being in a hurry, Allan boisterously
+broke away. Before it was possible to stop him again, he had jumped into
+the carriage and had left the house.
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE MARCH OF EVENTS.
+
+Midwinter’s face darkened when the last trace of the carriage had
+disappeared from view. “I have done my best,” he said, as he turned back
+gloomily into the house “If Mr. Brock himself were here, Mr. Brock could
+do no more!”
+
+He looked at the bunch of keys which Allan had thrust into his hand,
+and a sudden longing to put himself to the test over the steward’s books
+took possession of his sensitive self-tormenting nature. Inquiring his
+way to the room in which the various movables of the steward’s office
+had been provisionally placed after the letting of the cottage, he sat
+down at the desk, and tried how his own unaided capacity would guide him
+through the business records of the Thorpe Ambrose estate. The result
+exposed his own ignorance unanswerably before his own eyes. The ledgers
+bewildered him; the leases, the plans, and even the correspondence
+itself, might have been written, for all he could understand of them,
+in an unknown tongue. His memory reverted bitterly as he left the room
+again to his two years’ solitary self-instruction in the Shrewsbury
+book-seller’s shop. “If I could only have worked at a business!” he
+thought. “If I could only have known that the company of poets and
+philosophers was company too high for a vagabond like me!”
+
+He sat down alone in the great hall; the silence of it fell heavier and
+heavier on his sinking spirits; the beauty of it exasperated him, like
+an insult from a purse-proud man. “Curse the place!” he said, snatching
+up his hat and stick. “I like the bleakest hillside I ever slept on
+better than I like this house!”
+
+He impatiently descended the door-steps, and stopped on the drive,
+considering, by which direction he should leave the park for the country
+beyond. If he followed the road taken by the carriage, he might risk
+unsettling Allan by accidentally meeting him in the town. If he went
+out by the back gate, he knew his own nature well enough to doubt his
+ability to pass the room of the dream without entering it again. But
+one other way remained: the way which he had taken, and then abandoned
+again, in the morning. There was no fear of disturbing Allan and the
+major’s daughter now. Without further hesitation, Midwinter set forth
+through the gardens to explore the open country on that side of the
+estate.
+
+Thrown off its balance by the events of the day, his mind was full
+of that sourly savage resistance to the inevitable self-assertion of
+wealth, so amiably deplored by the prosperous and the rich; so bitterly
+familiar to the unfortunate and the poor. “The heather-bell costs
+nothing!” he thought, looking contemptuously at the masses of rare and
+beautiful flowers that surrounded him; “and the buttercups and daisies
+are as bright as the best of you!” He followed the artfully contrived
+ovals and squares of the Italian garden with a vagabond indifference to
+the symmetry of their construction and the ingenuity of their design.
+“How many pounds a foot did _you_ cost?” he said, looking back with
+scornful eyes at the last path as he left it. “Wind away over high and
+low like the sheep-walk on the mountain side, if you can!”
+
+He entered the shrubbery which Allan had entered before him; crossed the
+paddock and the rustic bridge beyond; and reached the major’s cottage.
+His ready mind seized the right conclusion at the first sight of it; and
+he stopped before the garden gate, to look at the trim little residence
+which would never have been empty, and would never have been let, but
+for Allan’s ill-advised resolution to force the steward’s situation on
+his friend.
+
+The summer afternoon was warm; the summer air was faint and still. On
+the upper and the lower floor of the cottage the windows were all
+open. From one of them, on the upper story, the sound of voices was
+startlingly audible in the quiet of the park as Midwinter paused on the
+outer side of the garden inclosure. The voice of a woman, harsh, high,
+and angrily complaining--a voice with all the freshness and the
+melody gone, and with nothing but the hard power of it left--was the
+discordantly predominant sound. With it, from moment to moment, there
+mingled the deeper and quieter tones, soothing and compassionate, of the
+voice of a man. Although the distance was too great to allow Midwinter
+to distinguish the words that were spoken, he felt the impropriety of
+remaining within hearing of the voices, and at once stepped forward to
+continue his walk.
+
+At the same moment, the face of a young girl (easily recognizable as the
+face of Miss Milroy, from Allan’s description of her) appeared at the
+open window of the room. In spite of himself, Midwinter paused to look
+at her. The expression of the bright young face, which had smiled
+so prettily on Allan, was weary and disheartened. After looking out
+absently over the park, she suddenly turned her head back into the room,
+her attention having been apparently struck by something that had just
+been said in it. “Oh, mamma, mamma,” she exclaimed, indignantly, “how
+_can_ you say such things!” The words were spoken close to the window;
+they reached Midwinter’s ears, and hurried him away before he heard
+more. But the self-disclosure of Major Milroy’s domestic position had
+not reached its end yet. As Midwinter turned the corner of the garden
+fence, a tradesman’s boy was handing a parcel in at the wicket gate
+to the woman servant. “Well,” said the boy, with the irrepressible
+impudence of his class, “how is the missus?” The woman lifted her hand
+to box his ears. “How is the missus?” she repeated, with an angry toss
+of her head, as the boy ran off. “If it would only please God to take
+the missus, it would be a blessing to everybody in the house.”
+
+No such ill-omened shadow as this had passed over the bright domestic
+picture of the inhabitants of the cottage, which Allan’s enthusiasm
+had painted for the contemplation of his friend. It was plain that
+the secret of the tenants had been kept from the landlord so far. Five
+minutes more of walking brought Midwinter to the park gates. “Am I fated
+to see nothing and hear nothing to-day, which can give me heart and hope
+for the future?” he thought, as he angrily swung back the lodge gate.
+“Even the people Allan has let the cottage to are people whose lives
+are imbittered by a household misery which it is _my_ misfortune to have
+found out!”
+
+He took the first road that lay before him, and walked on, noticing
+little, immersed in his own thoughts.
+
+More than an hour passed before the necessity of turning back entered
+his mind. As soon as the idea occurred to him, he consulted his watch,
+and determined to retrace his steps, so as to be at the house in good
+time to meet Allan on his return. Ten minutes of walking brought him
+back to a point at which three roads met, and one moment’s observation
+of the place satisfied him that he had entirely failed to notice at the
+time by which of the three roads he had advanced. No sign-post was to
+be seen; the country on either side was lonely and flat, intersected
+by broad drains and ditches. Cattle were grazing here and there, and a
+windmill rose in the distance above the pollard willows that fringed the
+low horizon. But not a house was to be seen, and not a human creature
+appeared on the visible perspective of any one of the three roads.
+Midwinter glanced back in the only direction left to look at--the
+direction of the road along which he had just been walking. There, to
+his relief, was the figure of a man, rapidly advancing toward him, of
+whom he could ask his way.
+
+The figure came on, clad from head to foot in dreary black--a moving
+blot on the brilliant white surface of the sun-brightened road. He was
+a lean, elderly, miserably respectable man. He wore a poor old black
+dress-coat, and a cheap brown wig, which made no pretense of being his
+own natural hair. Short black trousers clung like attached old servants
+round his wizen legs; and rusty black gaiters hid all they could of his
+knobbed, ungainly feet. Black crape added its mite to the decayed and
+dingy wretchedness of his old beaver hat; black mohair in the obsolete
+form of a stock drearily encircled his neck and rose as high as his
+haggard jaws. The one morsel of color he carried about him was a
+lawyer’s bag of blue serge, as lean and limp as himself. The one
+attractive feature in his clean-shaven, weary old face was a neat set of
+teeth--teeth (as honest as his wig) which said plainly to all inquiring
+eyes, “We pass our nights on his looking-glass, and our days in his
+mouth.”
+
+All the little blood in the man’s body faintly reddened his fleshless
+cheeks as Midwinter advanced to meet him, and asked the way to
+Thorpe Ambrose. His weak, watery eyes looked hither and thither in a
+bewilderment painful to see. If he had met with a lion instead of a man,
+and if the few words addressed to him had been words expressing a threat
+instead of a question, he could hardly have looked more confused and
+alarmed than he looked now. For the first time in his life, Midwinter
+saw his own shy uneasiness in the presence of strangers reflected, with
+tenfold intensity of nervous suffering, in the face of another man--and
+that man old enough to be his father.
+
+“Which do you please to mean, sir--the town or the house? I beg your
+pardon for asking, but they both go by the same name in these parts.”
+
+He spoke with a timid gentleness of tone, an ingratiatory smile, and an
+anxious courtesy of manner, all distressingly suggestive of his being
+accustomed to receive rough answers in exchange for his own politeness
+from the persons whom he habitually addressed.
+
+“I was not aware that both the house and the town went by the same
+name,” said Midwinter; “I meant the house.” He instinctively conquered
+his own shyness as he answered in those words, speaking with a
+cordiality of manner which was very rare with him in his intercourse
+with strangers.
+
+The man of miserable respectability seemed to feel the warm return of
+his own politeness gratefully; he brightened and took a little courage.
+His lean forefinger pointed eagerly to the right road. “That way, sir,”
+ he said, “and when you come to two roads next, please take the left
+one of the two. I am sorry I have business the other way, I mean in the
+town. I should have been happy to go with you and show you. Fine summer
+weather, sir, for walking? You can’t miss your way if you keep to the
+left. Oh, don’t mention it! I’m afraid I have detained you, sir. I wish
+you a pleasant walk back, and--good-morning.”
+
+By the time he had made an end of speaking (under an impression
+apparently that the more he talked the more polite he would be) he
+had lost his courage again. He darted away down his own road, as
+if Midwinter’s attempt to thank him involved a series of trials too
+terrible to confront. In two minutes more, his black retreating figure
+had lessened in the distance till it looked again, what it had once
+looked already, a moving blot on the brilliant white surface of the
+sun-brightened road.
+
+The man ran strangely in Midwinter’s thoughts while he took his way back
+to the house. He was at a loss to account for it. It never occurred to
+him that he might have been insensibly reminded of himself, when he saw
+the plain traces of past misfortune and present nervous suffering in
+the poor wretch’s face. He blindly resented his own perverse interest in
+this chance foot passenger on the high-road, as he had resented all else
+that had happened to him since the beginning of the day. “Have I made
+another unlucky discovery?” he asked himself, impatiently. “Shall I see
+this man again, I wonder? Who can he be?”
+
+Time was to answer both those questions before many days more had passed
+over the inquirer’s head.
+
+
+Allan had not returned when Midwinter reached the house. Nothing had
+happened but the arrival of a message of apology from the cottage.
+“Major Milroy’s compliments, and he was sorry that Mrs. Milroy’s illness
+would prevent his receiving Mr. Armadale that day.” It was plain that
+Mrs. Milroy’s occasional fits of suffering (or of ill temper) created
+no mere transitory disturbance of the tranquillity of the household.
+Drawing this natural inference, after what he had himself heard at the
+cottage nearly three hours since, Midwinter withdrew into the library to
+wait patiently among the books until his friend came back.
+
+It was past six o’clock when the well-known hearty voice was heard again
+in the hall. Allan burst into the library, in a state of irrepressible
+excitement, and pushed Midwinter back unceremoniously into the chair
+from which he was just rising, before he could utter a word.
+
+“Here’s a riddle for you, old boy!” cried Allan. “Why am I like the
+resident manager of the Augean stable, before Hercules was called in to
+sweep the litter out? Because I have had my place to keep up, and I’ve
+gone and made an infernal mess of it! Why don’t you laugh? By George,
+he doesn’t see the point! Let’s try again. Why am I like the resident
+manager--”
+
+“For God’s sake, Allan, be serious for a moment!” interposed Midwinter.
+“You don’t know how anxious I am to hear if you have recovered the good
+opinion of your neighbors.”
+
+“That’s just what the riddle was intended to tell you!” rejoined Allan.
+“But if you will have it in so many words, my own impression is that you
+would have done better not to disturb me under that tree in the park.
+I’ve been calculating it to a nicety, and I beg to inform you that I
+have sunk exactly three degrees lower in the estimation of the resident
+gentry since I had the pleasure of seeing you last.”
+
+“You _will_ have your joke out,” said Midwinter, bitterly. “Well, if I
+can’t laugh, I can wait.”
+
+“My dear fellow, I’m not joking; I really mean what I say. You shall
+hear what happened; you shall have a report in full of my first visit.
+It will do, I can promise you, as a sample for all the rest. Mind this,
+in the first place, I’ve gone wrong with the best possible intentions.
+When I started for these visits, I own I was angry with that old brute
+of a lawyer, and I certainly had a notion of carrying things with a high
+hand. But it wore off somehow on the road; and the first family I called
+on, I went in, as I tell you, with the best possible intentions. Oh,
+dear, dear! there was the same spick-and-span reception-room for me to
+wait in, with the neat conservatory beyond, which I saw again and again
+and again at every other house I went to afterward. There was the same
+choice selection of books for me to look at--a religious book, a book
+about the Duke of Wellington, a book about sporting, and a book about
+nothing in particular, beautifully illustrated with pictures. Down came
+papa with his nice white hair, and mamma with her nice lace cap; down
+came young mister with the pink face and straw-colored whiskers, and
+young miss with the plump cheeks and the large petticoats. Don’t suppose
+there was the least unfriendliness on my side; I always began with them
+in the same way--I insisted on shaking hands all round. That staggered
+them to begin with. When I came to the sore subject next--the subject
+of the public reception--I give you my word of honor I took the greatest
+possible pains with my apologies. It hadn’t the slightest effect; they
+let my apologies in at one ear and out at the other, and then waited to
+hear more. Some men would have been disheartened: I tried another way
+with them; I addressed myself to the master of the house, and put
+it pleasantly next. ‘The fact is,’ I said, ‘I wanted to escape the
+speechifying--my getting up, you know, and telling you to your face
+you’re the best of men, and I beg to propose your health; and your
+getting up and telling me to my face I’m the best of men, and you beg
+to thank me; and so on, man after man, praising each other and pestering
+each other all round the table.’ That’s how I put it, in an easy,
+light-handed, convincing sort of way. Do you think any of them took it
+in the same friendly spirit? Not one! It’s my belief they had got their
+speeches ready for the reception, with the flags and the flowers, and
+that they’re secretly angry with me for stopping their open mouths just
+as they were ready to begin. Anyway, whenever we came to the matter of
+the speechifying (whether they touched it first or I), down I fell in
+their estimation the first of those three steps I told you of just
+now. Don’t suppose I made no efforts to get up again! I made desperate
+efforts. I found they were all anxious to know what sort of life I had
+led before I came in for the Thorpe Ambrose property, and I did my best
+to satisfy them. And what came of that, do you think? Hang me, if I
+didn’t disappoint them for the second time! When they found out that I
+had actually never been to Eton or Harrow, or Oxford or Cambridge, they
+were quite dumb with astonishment. I fancy they thought me a sort of
+outlaw. At any rate, they all froze up again; and down I fell the second
+step in their estimation. Never mind! I wasn’t to be beaten; I had
+promised you to do my best, and I did it. I tried cheerful small-talk
+about the neighborhood next. The women said nothing in particular; the
+men, to my unutterable astonishment, all began to condole with me. I
+shouldn’t be able to find a pack of hounds, they said, within twenty
+miles of my house; and they thought it only right to prepare me for the
+disgracefully careless manner in which the Thorpe Ambrose covers had
+been preserved. I let them go on condoling with me, and then what do you
+think I did? I put my foot in it again. ‘Oh, don’t take that to heart!’
+I said; ‘I don’t care two straws about hunting or shooting, either. When
+I meet with a bird in my walk, I can’t for the life of me feel eager
+to kill it; I rather like to see the bird flying about and enjoying
+itself.’ You should have seen their faces! They had thought me a sort of
+outlaw before; now they evidently thought me mad. Dead silence fell upon
+them all; and down I tumbled the third step in the general estimation.
+It was just the same at the next house, and the next and the next. The
+devil possessed us all, I think. It _would_ come out, now in one way,
+and now in another, that I couldn’t make speeches--that I had been
+brought up without a university education--and that I could enjoy a ride
+on horseback without galloping after a wretched stinking fox or a poor
+distracted little hare. These three unlucky defects of mine are not
+excused, it seems, in a country gentleman (especially when he has dodged
+a public reception to begin with). I think I got on best, upon the
+whole, with the wives and daughters. The women and I always fell, sooner
+or later, on the subject of Mrs. Blanchard and her niece. We invariably
+agreed that they had done wisely in going to Florence; and the only
+reason we had to give for our opinion was that we thought their minds
+would be benefited after their sad bereavement, by the contemplation
+of the masterpieces of Italian art. Every one of the ladies--I solemnly
+declare it--at every house I went to, came sooner or later to Mrs. and
+Miss Blanchard’s bereavement and the masterpieces of Italian art. What
+we should have done without that bright idea to help us, I really don’t
+know. The one pleasant thing at any of the visits was when we all shook
+our heads together, and declared that the masterpieces would console
+them. As for the rest of it, there’s only one thing more to be said.
+What I might be in other places I don’t know: I’m the wrong man in the
+wrong place here. Let me muddle on for the future in my own way, with my
+own few friends; and ask me anything else in the world, as long as you
+don’t ask me to make any more calls on my neighbors.”
+
+With that characteristic request, Allan’s report of his exploring
+expedition among the resident gentry came to a close. For a moment
+Midwinter remained silent. He had allowed Allan to run on from first to
+last without uttering a word on his side. The disastrous result of
+the visits--coming after what had happened earlier in the day; and
+threatening Allan, as it did, with exclusion from all local sympathies
+at the very outset of his local career--had broken down Midwinter’s
+power of resisting the stealthily depressing influence of his own
+superstition. It was with an effort that he now looked up at Allan; it
+was with an effort that he roused himself to answer.
+
+“It shall be as you wish,” he said, quietly. “I am sorry for what has
+happened; but I am not the less obliged to you, Allan, for having done
+what I asked you.”
+
+His head sank on his breast, and the fatalist resignation which had
+once already quieted him on board the wreck now quieted him again. “What
+_must_ be, _will_ be,” he thought once more. “What have I to do with the
+future, and what has he?”
+
+“Cheer up!” said Allan. “_Your_ affairs are in a thriving condition, at
+any rate. I paid one pleasant visit in the town, which I haven’t told
+you of yet. I’ve seen Pedgift, and Pedgift’s son, who helps him in the
+office. They’re the two jolliest lawyers I ever met with in my life;
+and, what’s more, they can produce the very man you want to teach you
+the steward’s business.”
+
+Midwinter looked up quickly. Distrust of Allan’s discovery was plainly
+written in his face already; but he said nothing.
+
+“I thought of you,” Allan proceeded, “as soon as the two Pedgifts and I
+had had a glass of wine all round to drink to our friendly connection.
+The finest sherry I ever tasted in my life; I’ve ordered some of the
+same--but that’s not the question just now. In two words I told
+these worthy fellows your difficulty, and in two seconds old Pedgift
+understood all about it. ‘I have got the man in my office,’ he said,
+‘and before the audit-day comes, I’ll place him with the greatest
+pleasure at your friend’s disposal.’”
+
+At this last announcement, Midwinter’s distrust found its expression in
+words. He questioned Allan unsparingly.
+
+The man’s name, it appeared was Bashwood. He had been some time (how
+long, Allan could not remember) in Mr. Pedgift’s service. He had been
+previously steward to a Norfolk gentleman (name forgotten) in the
+westward district of the county. He had lost the steward’s place,
+through some domestic trouble, in connection with his son, the precise
+nature of which Allan was not able to specify. Pedgift vouched for him,
+and Pedgift would send him to Thorpe Ambrose two or three days before
+the rent-day dinner. He could not be spared, for office reasons, before
+that time. There was no need to fidget about it; Pedgift laughed at the
+idea of there being any difficulty with the tenants. Two or three
+day’s work over the steward’s books with a man to help Midwinter who
+practically understood that sort of thing would put him all right for
+the audit; and the other business would keep till afterward.
+
+“Have you seen this Mr. Bashwood yourself, Allan?” asked Midwinter,
+still obstinately on his guard.
+
+“No,” replied Allan “he was out--out with the bag, as young Pedgift
+called it. They tell me he’s a decent elderly man. A little broken by
+his troubles, and a little apt to be nervous and confused in his manner
+with strangers; but thoroughly competent and thoroughly to be depended
+on--those are Pedgift’s own words.”
+
+Midwinter paused and considered a little, with a new interest in the
+subject. The strange man whom he had just heard described, and the
+strange man of whom he had asked his way where the three roads met,
+were remarkably like each other. Was this another link in the
+fast-lengthening chain of events? Midwinter grew doubly determined to be
+careful, as the bare doubt that it might be so passed through his mind.
+
+“When Mr. Bashwood comes,” he said, “will you let me see him, and speak
+to him, before anything definite is done?”
+
+“Of course I will!” rejoined Allan. He stopped and looked at his watch.
+“And I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, old boy, in the meantime,” he
+added; “I’ll introduce you to the prettiest girl in Norfolk! There’s
+just time to run over to the cottage before dinner. Come along, and be
+introduced to Miss Milroy.”
+
+“You can’t introduce me to Miss Milroy to-day,” replied Midwinter; and
+he repeated the message of apology which had been brought from the major
+that afternoon. Allan was surprised and disappointed; but he was not to
+be foiled in his resolution to advance himself in the good graces of
+the inhabitants of the cottage. After a little consideration he hit on
+a means of turning the present adverse circumstances to good account.
+“I’ll show a proper anxiety for Mrs. Milroy’s recovery,” he said,
+gravely. “I’ll send her a basket of strawberries, with my best respects,
+to-morrow morning.”
+
+Nothing more happened to mark the end of that first day in the new
+house.
+
+
+The one noticeable event of the next day was another disclosure of
+Mrs. Milroy’s infirmity of temper. Half an hour after Allan’s basket of
+strawberries had been delivered at the cottage, it was returned to him
+intact (by the hands of the invalid lady’s nurse), with a short and
+sharp message, shortly and sharply delivered. “Mrs. Milroy’s compliments
+and thanks. Strawberries invariably disagreed with her.” If this
+curiously petulant acknowledgment of an act of politeness was intended
+to irritate Allan, it failed entirely in accomplishing its object.
+Instead of being offended with the mother, he sympathized with the
+daughter. “Poor little thing,” was all he said, “she must have a hard
+life of it with such a mother as that!”
+
+He called at the cottage himself later in the day, but Miss Milroy was
+not to be seen; she was engaged upstairs. The major received his visitor
+in his working apron--far more deeply immersed in his wonderful clock,
+and far less readily accessible to outer influences, than Allan had seen
+him at their first interview. His manner was as kind as before; but not
+a word more could be extracted from him on the subject of his wife than
+that Mrs. Milroy “had not improved since yesterday.”
+
+The two next days passed quietly and uneventfully. Allan persisted
+in making his inquiries at the cottage; but all he saw of the major’s
+daughter was a glimpse of her on one occasion at a window on the bedroom
+floor. Nothing more was heard from Mr. Pedgift; and Mr. Bashwood’s
+appearance was still delayed. Midwinter declined to move in the matter
+until time enough had passed to allow of his first hearing from Mr.
+Brock, in answer to the letter which he had addressed to the rector on
+the night of his arrival at Thorpe Ambrose. He was unusually silent and
+quiet, and passed most of his hours in the library among the books. The
+time wore on wearily. The resident gentry acknowledged Allan’s visit by
+formally leaving their cards. Nobody came near the house afterward;
+the weather was monotonously fine. Allan grew a little restless and
+dissatisfied. He began to resent Mrs. Milroy’s illness; he began to
+think regretfully of his deserted yacht.
+
+The next day--the twentieth--brought some news with it from the outer
+world. A message was delivered from Mr. Pedgift, announcing that his
+clerk, Mr. Bashwood, would personally present himself at Thorpe Ambrose
+on the following day; and a letter in answer to Midwinter was received
+from Mr. Brock.
+
+The letter was dated the 18th, and the news which it contained raised
+not Allan’s spirits only, but Midwinter’s as well.
+
+On the day on which he wrote, Mr. Brock announced that he was about to
+journey to London; having been summoned thither on business connected
+with the interests of a sick relative, to whom he stood in the position
+of trustee. The business completed, he had good hope of finding one or
+other of his clerical friends in the metropolis who would be able and
+willing to do duty for him at the rectory; and, in that case, he trusted
+to travel on from London to Thorpe Ambrose in a week’s time or less.
+Under these circumstances, he would leave the majority of the subjects
+on which Midwinter had written to him to be discussed when they met. But
+as time might be of importance, in relation to the stewardship of the
+Thorpe Ambrose estate, he would say at once that he saw no reason why
+Midwinter should not apply his mind to learning the steward’s duties,
+and should not succeed in rendering himself invaluably serviceable in
+that way to the interests of his friend.
+
+Leaving Midwinter reading and re-reading the rector’s cheering letter,
+as if he was bent on getting every sentence in it by heart, Allan
+went out rather earlier than usual, to make his daily inquiry at the
+cottage--or, in plainer words, to make a fourth attempt at improving
+his acquaintance with Miss Milroy. The day had begun encouragingly, and
+encouragingly it seemed destined to go on. When Allan turned the corner
+of the second shrubbery, and entered the little paddock where he and the
+major’s daughter had first met, there was Miss Milroy herself loitering
+to and fro on the grass, to all appearance on the watch for somebody.
+
+She gave a little start when Allan appeared, and came forward without
+hesitation to meet him. She was not in her best looks. Her rosy
+complexion had suffered under confinement to the house, and a marked
+expression of embarrassment clouded her pretty face.
+
+“I hardly know how to confess it, Mr. Armadale,” she said, speaking
+eagerly, before Allan could utter a word, “but I certainly ventured
+here this morning in the hope of meeting with you. I have been very much
+distressed; I have only just heard, by accident, of the manner in which
+mamma received the present of fruit you so kindly sent to her. Will you
+try to excuse her? She has been miserably ill for years, and she is not
+always quite herself. After your being so very, very kind to me (and to
+papa), I really could not help stealing out here in the hope of seeing
+you, and telling you how sorry I was. Pray forgive and forget, Mr.
+Armadale--pray do!” her voice faltered over the last words, and, in her
+eagerness to make her mother’s peace with him, she laid her hand on his
+arm.
+
+Allan was himself a little confused. Her earnestness took him by
+surprise, and her evident conviction that he had been offended honestly
+distressed him. Not knowing what else to do, he followed his instincts,
+and possessed himself of her hand to begin with.
+
+“My dear Miss Milroy, if you say a word more you will distress _me_
+next,” he rejoined, unconsciously pressing her hand closer and closer,
+in the embarrassment of the moment. “I never was in the least offended;
+I made allowances--upon my honor I did--for poor Mrs. Milroy’s illness.
+Offended!” cried Allan, reverting energetically to the old complimentary
+strain. “I should like to have my basket of fruit sent back every
+day--if I could only be sure of its bringing you out into the paddock
+the first thing in the morning.”
+
+Some of Miss Milroy’s missing color began to appear again in her cheeks.
+“Oh, Mr. Armadale, there is really no end to your kindness,” she said;
+“you don’t know how you relieve me!” She paused; her spirits rallied with
+as happy a readiness of recovery as if they had been the spirits of a
+child; and her native brightness of temper sparkled again in her eyes,
+as she looked up, shyly smiling in Allan’s face. “Don’t you think,” she
+asked, demurely, “that it is almost time now to let go of my hand?”
+
+Their eyes met. Allan followed his instincts for the second time.
+Instead of releasing her hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed
+it. All the missing tints of the rosier sort returned to Miss Milroy’s
+complexion on the instant. She snatched away her hand as if Allan had
+burned it.
+
+“I’m sure _that’s_ wrong, Mr. Armadale,” she said, and turned her head
+aside quickly, for she was smiling in spite of herself.
+
+“I meant it as an apology for--for holding your hand too long,”
+ stammered Allan. “An apology can’t be wrong--can it?”
+
+There are occasions, though not many, when the female mind accurately
+appreciates an appeal to the force of pure reason. This was one of the
+occasions. An abstract proposition had been presented to Miss Milroy,
+and Miss Milroy was convinced. If it was meant as an apology, that,
+she admitted, made all the difference. “I only hope,” said the little
+coquet, looking at him slyly, “you’re not misleading me. Not that it
+matters much now,” she added, with a serious shake of her head. “If we
+have committed any improprieties, Mr. Armadale, we are not likely to
+have the opportunity of committing many more.”
+
+“You’re not going away?” exclaimed Allan, in great alarm.
+
+“Worse than that, Mr. Armadale. My new governess is coming.”
+
+“Coming?” repeated Allan. “Coming already?”
+
+“As good as coming, I ought to have said--only I didn’t know you wished
+me to be so very particular. We got the answers to the advertisements
+this morning. Papa and I opened them and read them together half an hour
+ago; and we both picked out the same letter from all the rest. I picked
+it out, because it was so prettily expressed; and papa picked it out
+because the terms were so reasonable. He is going to send the letter up
+to grandmamma in London by to-day’s post, and, if she finds everything
+satisfactory on inquiry, the governess is to be engaged You don’t
+know how dreadfully nervous I am getting about it already; a strange
+governess is such an awful prospect. But it is not quite so bad as going
+to school; and I have great hopes of this new lady, because she writes
+such a nice letter! As I said to papa, it almost reconciles me to her
+horrid, unromantic name.”
+
+“What is her name?” asked Allan. “Brown? Grubb? Scraggs? Anything of
+that sort?”
+
+“Hush! hush! Nothing quite so horrible as that. Her name is Gwilt.
+Dreadfully unpoetical, isn’t it? Her reference must be a respectable
+person, though; for she lives in the same part of London as grandmamma.
+Stop, Mr. Armadale! we are going the wrong way. No; I can’t wait to look
+at those lovely flowers of yours this morning, and, many thanks, I can’t
+accept your arm. I have stayed here too long already. Papa is waiting
+for his breakfast; and I must run back every step of the way. Thank you
+for making those kind allowances for mamma; thank you again and again,
+and good-by!”
+
+“Won’t you shake hands?” asked Allan.
+
+She gave him her hand. “No more apologies, if you please, Mr. Armadale,”
+ she said, saucily. Once more their eyes met, and once more the plump,
+dimpled little hand found its way to Allan’s lips. “It isn’t an apology
+this time!” cried Allan, precipitately defending himself. “It’s--it’s a
+mark of respect.”
+
+She started back a few steps, and burst out laughing. “You won’t find me
+in our grounds again, Mr. Armadale,” she said, merrily, “till I have got
+Miss Gwilt to take care of me!” With that farewell, she gathered up her
+skirts, and ran back across the paddock at the top of her speed.
+
+Allan stood watching her in speechless admiration till she was out
+of sight. His second interview with Miss Milroy had produced an
+extraordinary effect on him. For the first time since he had become the
+master of Thorpe Ambrose, he was absorbed in serious consideration of
+what he owed to his new position in life. “The question is,” pondered
+Allan, “whether I hadn’t better set myself right with my neighbors by
+becoming a married man? I’ll take the day to consider; and if I keep in
+the same mind about it, I’ll consult Midwinter to-morrow morning.”
+
+
+When the morning came, and when Allan descended to the breakfast-room,
+resolute to consult his friend on the obligations that he owed to his
+neighbors in general, and to Miss Milroy in particular, no Midwinter was
+to be seen. On making inquiry, it appeared that he had been observed in
+the hall; that he had taken from the table a letter which the morning’s
+post had brought to him; and that he had gone back immediately to his
+own room. Allan at once ascended the stairs again, and knocked at his
+friend’s door.
+
+“May I come in?” he asked.
+
+“Not just now,” was the answer.
+
+“You have got a letter, haven’t you?” persisted Allan. “Any bad news?
+Anything wrong?”
+
+“Nothing. I’m not very well this morning. Don’t wait breakfast for me;
+I’ll come down as soon as I can.”
+
+No more was said on either side. Allan returned to the breakfast-room a
+little disappointed. He had set his heart on rushing headlong into his
+consultation with Midwinter, and here was the consultation indefinitely
+delayed. “What an odd fellow he is!” thought Allan. “What on earth can
+he be doing, locked in there by himself?”
+
+He was doing nothing. He was sitting by the window, with the letter
+which had reached him that morning open in his hand. The handwriting was
+Mr. Brock’s, and the words written were these:
+
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--I have literally only two minutes before post time
+to tell you that I have just met (in Kensington Gardens) with the woman
+whom we both only know, thus far, as the woman with the red Paisley
+shawl. I have traced her and her companion (a respectable-looking
+elderly lady) to their residence--after having distinctly heard Allan’s
+name mentioned between them. Depend on my not losing sight of the woman
+until I am satisfied that she means no mischief at Thorpe Ambrose;
+and expect to hear from me again as soon as I know how this strange
+discovery is to end.
+
+“Very truly yours, DECIMUS BROCK.”
+
+
+After reading the letter for the second time, Midwinter folded it up
+thoughtfully, and placed it in his pocket-book, side by side with the
+manuscript narrative of Allan’s dream.
+
+“Your discovery will not end with _you_, Mr. Brock,” he said. “Do what
+you will with the woman, when the time comes the woman will be here.”
+
+
+
+
+V. MOTHER OLDERSHAW ON HER GUARD.
+
+1. _From Mrs. Oldershaw (Diana Street, Pimlico) to Miss Gwilt (West
+Place, Old Brompton)_.
+
+“Ladies’ Toilet Repository, June 20th,
+
+“Eight in the Evening.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--About three hours have passed, as well as I can
+remember, since I pushed you unceremoniously inside my house in West
+Place, and, merely telling you to wait till you saw me again, banged
+the door to between us, and left you alone in the hall. I know your
+sensitive nature, my dear, and I am afraid you have made up your mind
+by this time that never yet was a guest treated so abominably by her
+hostess as I have treated you.
+
+“The delay that has prevented me from explaining my strange conduct
+is, believe me, a delay for which I am not to blame. One of the many
+delicate little difficulties which beset so essentially confidential
+a business as mine occurred here (as I have since discovered) while
+we were taking the air this afternoon in Kensington Gardens. I see no
+chance of being able to get back to you for some hours to come, and I
+have a word of very urgent caution for your private ear, which has been
+too long delayed already. So I must use the spare minutes as they come,
+and write.
+
+“Here is caution the first. On no account venture outside the door again
+this evening, and be very careful, while the daylight lasts, not to
+show yourself at any of the front windows. I have reason to fear that
+a certain charming person now staying with me may possibly be watched.
+Don’t be alarmed, and don’t be impatient; you shall know why.
+
+“I can only explain myself by going back to our unlucky meeting in the
+Gardens with that reverend gentleman who was so obliging as to follow us
+both back to my house.
+
+“It crossed my mind, just as we were close to the door, that there
+might be a motive for the parson’s anxiety to trace us home, far less
+creditable to his taste, and far more dangerous to both of us, than
+the motive you supposed him to have. In plainer words, Lydia, I rather
+doubted whether you had met with another admirer; and I strongly
+suspected that you had encountered another enemy instead. There was
+no time to tell you this. There was only time to see you safe into the
+house, and to make sure of the parson (in case my suspicions were right)
+by treating him as he had treated us; I mean, by following him in his
+turn.
+
+“I kept some little distance behind him at first, to turn the thing over
+in my mind, and to be satisfied that my doubts were not misleading me.
+We have no concealments from each other; and you shall know what my
+doubts were.
+
+“I was not surprised at _your_ recognizing _him_; he is not at all
+a common-looking old man; and you had seen him twice in
+Somersetshire--once when you asked your way of him to Mrs. Armadale’s
+house, and once when you saw him again on your way back to the railroad.
+But I was a little puzzled (considering that you had your veil down
+on both those occasions, and your veil down also when we were in the
+Gardens) at his recognizing _you_. I doubted his remembering your figure
+in a summer dress after he had only seen it in a winter dress; and
+though we were talking when he met us, and your voice is one among your
+many charms, I doubted his remembering your voice, either. And yet
+I felt persuaded that he knew you. ‘How?’ you will ask. My dear, as
+ill-luck would have it, we were speaking at the time of young Armadale.
+I firmly believe that the name was the first thing that struck him; and
+when he heard _that_, your voice certainly and your figure perhaps,
+came back to his memory. ‘And what if it did?’ you may say. Think again,
+Lydia, and tell me whether the parson of the place where Mrs. Armadale
+lived was not likely to be Mrs. Armadale’s friend? If he _was_ her
+friend, the very first person to whom she would apply for advice
+after the manner in which you frightened her, and after what you most
+injudiciously said on the subject of appealing to her son, would be the
+clergyman of the parish--and the magistrate, too, as the landlord at the
+inn himself told you.
+
+“You will now understand why I left you in that extremely uncivil
+manner, and I may go on to what happened next.
+
+“I followed the old gentleman till he turned into a quiet street,
+and then accosted him, with respect for the Church written (I flatter
+myself) in every line of my face.
+
+“‘Will you excuse me,’ I said, ‘if I venture to inquire, sir, whether
+you recognized the lady who was walking with me when you happened to
+pass us in the Gardens?’
+
+“‘Will you excuse my asking, ma’am, why you put that question?’ was all
+the answer I got.
+
+“‘I will endeavor to tell you, sir,’ I said. ‘If my friend is not an
+absolute stranger to you, I should wish to request your attention to a
+very delicate subject, connected with a lady deceased, and with her son
+who survives her.’
+
+“He was staggered; I could see that. But he was sly enough at the same
+time to hold his tongue and wait till I said something more.
+
+“‘If I am wrong, sir, in thinking that you recognized my friend,’ I went
+on, ‘I beg to apologize. But I could hardly suppose it possible that a
+gentleman in your profession would follow a lady home who was a total
+stranger to him.’
+
+“There I had him. He colored up (fancy that, at his age!), and owned the
+truth, in defense of his own precious character.
+
+“‘I have met with the lady once before, and I acknowledge that I
+recognized her in the Gardens,’ he said. ‘You will excuse me if I
+decline entering into the question of whether I did or did not purposely
+follow her home. If you wish to be assured that your friend is not an
+absolute stranger to me, you now have that assurance; and if you have
+anything particular to say to me, I leave you to decide whether the time
+has come to say it.’
+
+“He waited, and looked about. I waited, and looked about. He said the
+street was hardly a fit place to speak of a delicate subject in. I said
+the street was hardly a fit place to speak of a delicate subject in. He
+didn’t offer to take me to where he lived. I didn’t offer to take him
+to where I lived. Have you ever seen two strange cats, my dear, nose to
+nose on the tiles? If you have, you have seen the parson and me done to
+the life.
+
+“‘Well, ma’am,’ he said, at last, ‘shall we go on with our conversation
+in spite of circumstances?’
+
+“‘Yes, sir,’ I said; ‘we are both of us, fortunately, of an age to set
+circumstances at defiance’ (I had seen the old wretch looking at my gray
+hair, and satisfying himself that his character was safe if he _was_
+seen with me).
+
+“After all this snapping and snarling, we came to the point at last. I
+began by telling him that I feared his interest in you was not of the
+friendly sort. He admitted that much--of course, in defense of his own
+character once more. I next repeated to him everything you had told me
+about your proceedings in Somersetshire, when we first found that he was
+following us home. Don’t be alarmed my dear--I was acting on principle.
+If you want to make a dish of lies digestible, always give it a garnish
+of truth. Well, having appealed to the reverend gentleman’s confidence
+in this matter, I next declared that you had become an altered woman
+since he had seen you last. I revived that dead wretch, your husband
+(without mentioning names, of course), established him (the first place
+I thought of) in business at the Brazils, and described a letter which
+he had written, offering to forgive his erring wife, if she would repent
+and go back to him. I assured the parson that your husband’s noble
+conduct had softened your obdurate nature; and then, thinking I had
+produced the right impression, I came boldly to close quarters with him.
+I said, ‘At the very time when you met us, sir, my unhappy friend was
+speaking in terms of touching, self-reproach of her conduct to the late
+Mrs. Armadale. She confided to me her anxiety to make some atonement,
+if possible, to Mrs. Armadale’s son; and it is at her entreaty (for she
+cannot prevail on herself to face you) that I now beg to inquire whether
+Mr. Armadale is still in Somersetshire, and whether he would consent
+to take back in small installments the sum of money which my friend
+acknowledges that she received by practicing on Mrs. Armadale’s fears.’
+Those were my very words. A neater story (accounting so nicely for
+everything) was never told; it was a story to melt a stone. But this
+Somersetshire parson is harder than stone itself. I blush for _him_,
+my dear, when I assure you that he was evidently insensible enough to
+disbelieve every word I said about your reformed character, your husband
+in the Brazils, and your penitent anxiety to pay the money back. It is
+really a disgrace that such a man should be in the Church; such
+cunning as his is in the last degree unbecoming in a member of a sacred
+profession.
+
+“‘Does your friend propose to join her husband by the next steamer?’ was
+all he condescended to say, when I had done.
+
+“I acknowledge I was angry. I snapped at him. I said, ‘Yes, she does.’
+
+“‘How am I to communicate with her?’ he asked.
+
+“I snapped at him again. ‘By letter--through me.’
+
+“‘At what address, ma’am?’
+
+“There, I had him once more. ‘You have found my address out for
+yourself, sir,’ I said. ‘The directory will tell you my name, if you
+wish to find that out for yourself also; otherwise, you are welcome to
+my card.’
+
+“‘Many thanks, ma’am. If your friend wishes to communicate with Mr.
+Armadale, I will give you _my_ card in return.’
+
+“‘Thank you, sir.’
+
+“‘Thank you, ma’am.’
+
+“‘Good-afternoon, sir.’
+
+“‘Good-afternoon, ma’am.’
+
+“So we parted. I went my way to an appointment at my place of business,
+and he went his in a hurry; which is of itself suspicious. What I can’t
+get over is his heartlessness. Heaven help the people who send for _him_
+to comfort them on their death-beds!
+
+“The next consideration is, What are we to do? If we don’t find out the
+right way to keep this old wretch in the dark, he may be the ruin of us
+at Thorpe Ambrose just as we are within easy reach of our end in view.
+Wait up till I come to you, with my mind free, I hope, from the other
+difficulty which is worrying me here. Was there ever such ill luck as
+ours? Only think of that man deserting his congregation, and coming
+to London just at the very time when we have answered Major Milroy’s
+advertisement, and may expect the inquiries to be made next week! I have
+no patience with him; his bishop ought to interfere.
+
+“Affectionately yours,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+2. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+“West Place, June 20th.
+
+“MY POOR OLD DEAR--How very little you know of my sensitive nature, as
+you call it! Instead of feeling offended when you left me, I went to
+your piano, and forgot all about you till your messenger came. Your
+letter is irresistible; I have been laughing over it till I am quite
+out of breath. Of all the absurd stories I ever read, the story you
+addressed to the Somersetshire clergyman is the most ridiculous. And as
+for your interview with him in the street, it is a perfect sin to keep
+it to ourselves. The public ought really to enjoy it in the form of a
+farce at one of the theaters.
+
+“Luckily for both of us (to come to serious matters), your messenger is
+a prudent person. He sent upstairs to know if there was an answer.
+In the midst of my merriment I had presence of mind enough to send
+downstairs and say ‘Yes.’
+
+“Some brute of a man says, in some book which I once read, that no woman
+can keep two separate trains of ideas in her mind at the same time. I
+declare you have almost satisfied me that the man is right. What! when
+you have escaped unnoticed to your place of business, and when you
+suspect this house to be watched, you propose to come back here, and
+to put it in the parson’s power to recover the lost trace of you! What
+madness! Stop where you are; and when you have got over your difficulty
+at Pimlico (it is some woman’s business, of course; what worries women
+are!), be so good as to read what I have got to say about our difficulty
+at Brompton.
+
+“In the first place, the house (as you supposed) is watched.
+
+“Half an hour after you left me, loud voices in the street interrupted
+me at the piano, and I went to the window. There was a cab at the house
+opposite, where they let lodgings; and an old man, who looked like a
+respectable servant, was wrangling with the driver about his fare. An
+elderly gentleman came out of the house, and stopped them. An elderly
+gentleman returned into the house, and appeared cautiously at the front
+drawing-room window. You know him, you worthy creature; he had the bad
+taste, some few hours since, to doubt whether you were telling him
+the truth. Don’t be afraid, he didn’t see me. When he looked up, after
+settling with the cab driver, I was behind the curtain. I have been
+behind the curtain once or twice since; and I have seen enough to
+satisfy me that he and his servant will relieve each other at the
+window, so as never to lose sight of your house here, night or day. That
+the parson suspects the real truth is of course impossible. But that
+he firmly believes I mean some mischief to young Armadale, and that you
+have entirely confirmed him in that conviction, is as plain as that two
+and two make four. And this has happened (as you helplessly remind me)
+just when we have answered the advertisement, and when we may expect the
+major’s inquiries to be made in a few days’ time.
+
+“Surely, here is a terrible situation for two women to find themselves
+in? A fiddlestick’s end for the situation! We have got an easy way out
+of it--thanks, Mother Oldershaw, to what I myself forced you to do, not
+three hours before the Somersetshire clergyman met with us.
+
+“Has that venomous little quarrel of ours this morning--after we had
+pounced on the major’s advertisement in the newspaper--quite slipped out
+of your memory? Have you forgotten how I persisted in my opinion that
+you were a great deal too well known in London to appear safely as my
+reference in your own name, or to receive an inquiring lady or gentleman
+(as you were rash enough to propose) in your own house? Don’t you
+remember what a passion you were in when I brought our dispute to an end
+by declining to stir a step in the matter, unless I could conclude my
+application to Major Milroy by referring him to an address at which you
+were totally unknown, and to a name which might be anything you pleased,
+as long as it was not yours? What a look you gave me when you found
+there was nothing for it but to drop the whole speculation or to let
+me have my own way! How you fumed over the lodging hunting on the other
+side of the Park! and how you groaned when you came back, possessed of
+furnished apartments in respectable Bayswater, over the useless expense
+I had put you to!
+
+“What do you think of those furnished apartments _now_, you obstinate
+old woman? Here we are, with discovery threatening us at our very door,
+and with no hope of escape unless we can contrive to disappear from the
+parson in the dark. And there are the lodgings in Bayswater, to which no
+inquisitive strangers have traced either you or me, ready and waiting
+to swallow us up--the lodgings in which we can escape all further
+molestation, and answer the major’s inquiries at our ease. Can you see,
+at last, a little further than your poor old nose? Is there anything in
+the world to prevent your safe disappearance from Pimlico to-night,
+and your safe establishment at the new lodgings, in the character of
+my respectable reference, half an hour afterward? Oh, fie, fie, Mother
+Oldershaw! Go down on your wicked old knees, and thank your stars that
+you had a she-devil like me to deal with this morning!
+
+“Suppose we come now to the only difficulty worth mentioning--_my_
+difficulty. Watched as I am in this house, how am I to join you without
+bringing the parson or the parson’s servant with me at my heels?
+
+“Being to all intents and purposes a prisoner here, it seems to me that
+I have no choice but to try the old prison plan of escape: a change of
+clothes. I have been looking at your house-maid. Except that we are both
+light, her face and hair and my face and hair are as unlike each other
+as possible. But she is as nearly as can be my height and size; and (if
+she only knew how to dress herself, and had smaller feet) her figure is
+a very much better one than it ought to be for a person in her station
+in life.
+
+“My idea is to dress her in the clothes I wore in the Gardens to-day;
+to send her out, with our reverend enemy in full pursuit of her; and, as
+soon as the coast is clear, to slip away myself and join you. The thing
+would be quite impossible, of course, if I had been seen with my veil
+up; but, as events have turned out, it is one advantage of the horrible
+exposure which followed my marriage that I seldom show myself in public,
+and never, of course, in such a populous place as London, without
+wearing a thick veil and keeping that veil down. If the house-maid wears
+my dress, I don’t really see why the house-maid may not be counted on to
+represent me to the life.
+
+“The one question is, Can the woman be trusted? If she can, send me a
+line, telling her, on your authority, that she is to place herself at my
+disposal. I won’t say a word till I have heard from you first.
+
+“Let me have my answer to-night. As long as we were only talking about
+my getting the governess’s place, I was careless enough how it ended.
+But now that we have actually answered Major Milroy’s advertisement, I
+am in earnest at last. I mean to be Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose; and
+woe to the man or woman who tries to stop me! Yours,
+
+“LYDIA GWILT.
+
+“P.S.--I open my letter again to say that you need have no fear of your
+messenger being followed on his return to Pimlico. He will drive to a
+public-house where he is known, will dismiss the cab at the door, and
+will go out again by a back way which is only used by the landlord and
+his friends.--L. G.”
+
+3. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Diana Street, 10 o’clock.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--You have written me a heartless letter. If you had been
+in my trying position, harassed as I was when I wrote to you, I should
+have made allowances for my friend when I found my friend not so sharp
+as usual. But the vice of the present age is a want of consideration
+for persons in the decline of life. Morally speaking, you are in a sad
+state, my dear; and you stand much in need of a good example. You shall
+have a good example--I forgive you.
+
+“Having now relieved my mind by the performance of a good action,
+suppose I show you next (though I protest against the vulgarity of the
+expression) that I _can_ see a little further than my poor old nose?
+
+“I will answer your question about the house-maid first. You may trust
+her implicitly. She has had her troubles, and has learned discretion.
+She also looks your age; though it is only her due to say that, in
+this particular, she has some years the advantage of you. I inclose the
+necessary directions which will place her entirely at your disposal.
+
+“And what comes next?
+
+“Your plan for joining me at Bayswater comes next. It is very well
+as far as it goes; but it stands sadly in need of a little judicious
+improvement. There is a serious necessity (you shall know why presently)
+for deceiving the parson far more completely than you propose to deceive
+him. I want him to see the house-maid’s face under circumstances
+which will persuade him that it is _your_ face. And then, going a
+step further, I want him to see the house-maid leave London, under
+the impression that he has seen _you_ start on the first stage of
+your journey to the Brazils. He didn’t believe in that journey when I
+announced it to him this afternoon in the street. He may believe in it
+yet, if you follow the directions I am now going to give you.
+
+“To-morrow is Saturday. Send the housemaid out in your walking dress of
+to-day, just as you propose; but don’t stir out yourself, and don’t go
+near the window. Desire the woman to keep her veil down, to take half an
+hour’s walk (quite unconscious, of course, of the parson or his servant
+at her heels), and then to come back to you. As soon as she appears,
+send her instantly to the open window, instructing her to lift her veil
+carelessly and look out. Let her go away again after a minute or two,
+take off her bonnet and shawl, and then appear once more at the window,
+or, better still, in the balcony outside. She may show herself again
+occasionally (not too often) later in the day. And to-morrow--as we have
+a professional gentleman to deal with--by all means send her to church.
+If these proceedings don’t persuade the parson that the house-maid’s
+face is your face, and if they don’t make him readier to believe in your
+reformed character than he was when I spoke to him, I have lived sixty
+years, my love, in this vale of tears to mighty little purpose.
+
+“The next day is Monday. I have looked at the shipping advertisements,
+and I find that a steamer leaves Liverpool for the Brazils on Tuesday.
+Nothing could be more convenient; we will start you on your voyage under
+the parson’s own eyes. You may manage it in this way:
+
+“At one o’clock send out the man who cleans the knives and forks to get
+a cab; and when he has brought it up to the door, let him go back and
+get a second cab, which he is to wait in himself, round the corner, in
+the square. Let the house-maid (still in your dress) drive off, with the
+necessary boxes, in the first cab to the North-western Railway. When she
+is gone, slip out yourself to the cab waiting round the corner, and come
+to me at Bayswater. They may be prepared to follow the house-maid’s cab,
+because they have seen it at the door; but they won’t be prepared to
+follow your cab, because it has been hidden round the corner. When the
+house-maid has got to the station, and has done her best to disappear
+in the crowd (I have chosen the mixed train at 2:10, so as to give her
+every chance), you will be safe with me; and whether they do or do not
+find out that she does not really start for Liverpool won’t matter by
+that time. They will have lost all trace of you; and they may follow
+the house-maid half over London, if they like. She has my instructions
+(inclosed) to leave the empty boxes to find their way to the lost
+luggage office and to go to her friends in the City, and stay there till
+I write word that I want her again.
+
+“And what is the object of all this?
+
+“My dear Lydia, the object is your future security (and mine). We may
+succeed or we may fail, in persuading the parson that you have actually
+gone to the Brazils. If we succeed, we are relieved of all fear of him.
+If we fail, he will warn young Armadale to be careful _of a woman like
+my house-maid, and not of a woman like you_. This last gain is a very
+important one; for we don’t know that Mrs. Armadale may not have told
+him your maiden name. In that event, the ‘Miss Gwilt’ whom he will
+describe as having slipped through his fingers here will be so entirely
+unlike the ‘Miss Gwilt’ established at Thorpe Ambrose, as to satisfy
+everybody that it is not a case of similarity of persons, but only a
+case of similarity of names.
+
+“What do you say now to my improvement on your idea? Are my brains not
+quite so addled as you thought them when you wrote? Don’t suppose I’m at
+all overboastful about my own ingenuity. Cleverer tricks than this trick
+of mine are played off on the public by swindlers, and are recorded in
+the newspapers every week. I only want to show you that my assistance is
+not less necessary to the success of the Armadale speculation now than
+it was when I made our first important discoveries, by means of the
+harmless-looking young man and the private inquiry office in Shadyside
+Place.
+
+“There is nothing more to say that I know of, except that I am just
+going to start for the new lodging, with a box directed in my new name.
+The last expiring moments of Mother Oldershaw, of the Toilet Repository,
+are close at hand, and the birth of Miss Gwilt’s respectable reference,
+Mrs. Mandeville, will take place in a cab in five minutes’ time. I fancy
+I must be still young at heart, for I am quite in love already with my
+romantic name; it sounds almost as pretty as Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe
+Ambrose, doesn’t it?
+
+“Good-night, my dear, and pleasant dreams. If any accident happens
+between this and Monday, write to me instantly by post. If no accident
+happens you will be with me in excellent time for the earliest inquiries
+that the major can possibly make. My last words are, don’t go out, and
+don’t venture near the front windows till Monday comes.
+
+“Affectionately yours,
+
+“M. O.”
+
+
+
+
+VI. MIDWINTER IN DISGUISE.
+
+Toward noon on the day of the twenty-first, Miss Milroy was loitering
+in the cottage garden--released from duty in the sick-room by an
+improvement in her mother’s health--when her attention was attracted
+by the sound of voices in the park. One of the voices she instantly
+recognized as Allan’s; the other was strange to her. She put aside the
+branches of a shrub near the garden palings, and, peeping through,
+saw Allan approaching the cottage gate, in company with a slim, dark,
+undersized man, who was talking and laughing excitably at the top of
+his voice. Miss Milroy ran indoors to warn her father of Mr. Armadale’s
+arrival, and to add that he was bringing with him a noisy stranger, who
+was, in all probability, the friend generally reported to be staying
+with the squire at the great house.
+
+Had the major’s daughter guessed right? Was the squire’s loud-talking,
+loud-laughing companion the shy, sensitive Midwinter of other times? It
+was even so. In Allan’s presence, that morning, an extraordinary change
+had passed over the ordinarily quiet demeanor of Allan’s friend.
+
+When Midwinter had first appeared in the breakfast-room, after putting
+aside Mr. Brock’s startling letter, Allan had been too much occupied to
+pay any special attention to him. The undecided difficulty of choosing
+the day for the audit dinner had pressed for a settlement once more,
+and had been fixed at last (under the butler’s advice) for Saturday,
+the twenty-eighth of the month. It was only on turning round to remind
+Midwinter of the ample space of time which the new arrangement allowed
+for mastering the steward’s books, that even Allan’s flighty attention
+had been arrested by a marked change in the face that confronted him.
+He had openly noticed the change in his usual blunt manner, and had been
+instantly silenced by a fretful, almost an angry, reply. The two had sat
+down together to breakfast without the usual cordiality, and the meal
+had proceeded gloomily, till Midwinter himself broke the silence by
+bursting into the strange outbreak of gayety which had revealed in
+Allan’s eyes a new side to the character of his friend.
+
+As usual with most of Allan’s judgments, here again the conclusion was
+wrong. It was no new side to Midwinter’s character that now presented
+itself--it was only a new aspect of the one ever-recurring struggle of
+Midwinter’s life.
+
+Irritated by Allan’s discovery of the change in him, and dreading the
+next questions that Allan’s curiosity might put, Midwinter had roused
+himself to efface, by main force, the impression which his own altered
+appearance had produced. It was one of those efforts which no men
+compass so resolutely as the men of his quick temper and his sensitive
+feminine organization. With his whole mind still possessed by the firm
+belief that the Fatality had taken one great step nearer to Allan and
+himself since the rector’s adventure in Kensington Gardens--with his
+face still betraying what he had suffered, under the renewed conviction
+that his father’s death-bed warning was now, in event after event,
+asserting its terrible claim to part him, at any sacrifice, from the one
+human creature whom he loved--with the fear still busy at his heart that
+the first mysterious vision of Allan’s Dream might be a vision realized,
+before the new day that now saw the two Armadales together was a day
+that had passed over their heads--with these triple bonds, wrought by
+his own superstition, fettering him at that moment as they had never
+fettered him yet, he mercilessly spurred his resolution to the desperate
+effort of rivaling, in Allan’s presence, the gayety and good spirits of
+Allan himself.
+
+He talked and laughed, and heaped his plate indiscriminately from every
+dish on the breakfast-table. He made noisily merry with jests that had
+no humor, and stories that had no point. He first astonished Allan, then
+amused him, then won his easily encouraged confidence on the subject
+of Miss Milroy. He shouted with laughter over the sudden development of
+Allan’s views on marriage, until the servants downstairs began to think
+that their master’s strange friend had gone mad. Lastly, he had accepted
+Allan’s proposal that he should be presented to the major’s daughter,
+and judge of her for himself, as readily, nay, more readily than it
+would have been accepted by the least diffident man living. There the
+two now stood at the cottage gate--Midwinter’s voice rising louder and
+louder over Allan’s--Midwinter’s natural manner disguised (how madly
+and miserably none but he knew!) in a coarse masquerade of boldness--the
+outrageous, the unendurable boldness of a shy man.
+
+They were received in the parlor by the major’s daughter, pending the
+arrival of the major himself.
+
+Allan attempted to present his friend in the usual form. To his
+astonishment, Midwinter took the words flippantly out of his lips, and
+introduced himself to Miss Milroy with a confident look, a hard laugh,
+and a clumsy assumption of ease which presented him at his worst.
+His artificial spirits, lashed continuously into higher and higher
+effervescence since the morning, were now mounting hysterically beyond
+his own control. He looked and spoke with that terrible freedom of
+license which is the necessary consequence, when a diffident man has
+thrown off his reserve, of the very effort by which he has broken loose
+from his own restraints. He involved himself in a confused medley of
+apologies that were not wanted, and of compliments that might have
+overflattered the vanity of a savage. He looked backward and forward
+from Miss Milroy to Allan, and declared jocosely that he understood now
+why his friend’s morning walks were always taken in the same direction.
+He asked her questions about her mother, and cut short the answers she
+gave him by remarks on the weather. In one breath, he said she must
+feel the day insufferably hot, and in another he protested that he quite
+envied her in her cool muslin dress.
+
+The major came in.
+
+Before he could say two words, Midwinter overwhelmed him with the same
+frenzy of familiarity, and the same feverish fluency of speech. He
+expressed his interest in Mrs. Milroy’s health in terms which would have
+been exaggerated on the lips of a friend of the family. He overflowed
+into a perfect flood of apologies for disturbing the major at his
+mechanical pursuits. He quoted Allan’s extravagant account of the clock,
+and expressed his own anxiety to see it in terms more extravagant
+still. He paraded his superficial book knowledge of the great clock
+at Strasbourg, with far-fetched jests on the extraordinary automaton
+figures which that clock puts in motion--on the procession of the Twelve
+Apostles, which walks out under the dial at noon, and on the toy cock,
+which crows at St. Peter’s appearance--and this before a man who had
+studied every wheel in that complex machinery, and who had passed whole
+years of his life in trying to imitate it. “I hear you have outnumbered
+the Strasbourg apostles, and outcrowed the Strasbourg cock,” he
+exclaimed, with the tone and manner of a friend habitually privileged
+to waive all ceremony; “and I am dying, absolutely dying, major, to see
+your wonderful clock!”
+
+Major Milroy had entered the room with his mind absorbed in his own
+mechanical contrivances as usual. But the sudden shock of Midwinter’s
+familiarity was violent enough to recall him instantly to himself, and
+to make him master again, for the time, of his social resources as a man
+of the world.
+
+“Excuse me for interrupting you,” he said, stopping Midwinter for the
+moment, by a look of steady surprise. “I happen to have seen the clock
+at Strasbourg; and it sounds almost absurd in my ears (if you will
+pardon me for saying so) to put my little experiment in any light of
+comparison with that wonderful achievement. There is nothing else of
+the kind like it in the world!” He paused, to control his own mounting
+enthusiasm; the clock at Strasbourg was to Major Milroy what the name of
+Michael Angelo was to Sir Joshua Reynolds. “Mr. Armadale’s kindness has
+led him to exaggerate a little,” pursued the major, smiling at Allan,
+and passing over another attempt of Midwinter’s to seize on the talk, as
+if no such attempt had been made. “But as there does happen to be this
+one point of resemblance between the great clock abroad and the little
+clock at home, that they both show what they can do on the stroke of
+noon, and as it is close on twelve now, if you still wish to visit
+my workshop, Mr. Midwinter, the sooner I show you the way to it the
+better.” He opened the door, and apologized to Midwinter, with marked
+ceremony, for preceding him out of the room.
+
+“What do you think of my friend?” whispered Allan, as he and Miss Milroy
+followed.
+
+“Must I tell you the truth, Mr. Armadale?” she whispered back.
+
+“Of course!”
+
+“Then I don’t like him at all!”
+
+“He’s the best and dearest fellow in the world,” rejoined the outspoken
+Allan. “You’ll like him better when you know him better--I’m sure you
+will!”
+
+Miss Milroy made a little grimace, implying supreme indifference to
+Midwinter, and saucy surprise at Allan’s earnest advocacy of the merits
+of his friend. “Has he got nothing more interesting to say to me than
+_that_,” she wondered, privately, “after kissing my hand twice yesterday
+morning?”
+
+They were all in the major’s workroom before Allan had the chance of
+trying a more attractive subject. There, on the top of a rough wooden
+case, which evidently contained the machinery, was the wonderful clock.
+The dial was crowned by a glass pedestal placed on rock-work in carved
+ebony; and on the top of the pedestal sat the inevitable figure of Time,
+with his everlasting scythe in his hand. Below the dial was a little
+platform, and at either end of it rose two miniature sentry-boxes, with
+closed doors. Externally, this was all that appeared, until the magic
+moment came when the clock struck twelve noon.
+
+It wanted then about three minutes to twelve; and Major Milroy seized
+the opportunity of explaining what the exhibition was to be, before the
+exhibition began.
+
+“At the first words, his mind fell back again into its old absorption
+over the one employment of his life. He turned to Midwinter (who had
+persisted in talking all the way from the parlor, and who was talking
+still) without a trace left in his manner of the cool and cutting
+composure with which he had spoken but a few minutes before. The noisy,
+familiar man, who had been an ill-bred intruder in the parlor, became
+a privileged guest in the workshop, for _there_ he possessed the
+all-atoning social advantage of being new to the performances of the
+wonderful clock.
+
+“At the first stroke of twelve, Mr. Midwinter,” said the major, quite
+eagerly, “keep your eye on the figure of Time: he will move his scythe,
+and point it downward to the glass pedestal. You will next see a little
+printed card appear behind the glass, which will tell you the day of
+the month and the day of the week. At the last stroke of the clock, Time
+will lift his scythe again into its former position, and the chimes will
+ring a peal. The peal will be succeeded by the playing of a tune--the
+favorite march of my old regiment--and then the final performance of the
+clock will follow. The sentry-boxes, which you may observe at each
+side, will both open at the same moment. In one of them you will see
+the sentinel appear; and from the other a corporal and two privates will
+march across the platform to relieve the guard, and will then disappear,
+leaving the new sentinel at his post. I must ask your kind allowances
+for this last part of the performance. The machinery is a little
+complicated, and there are defects in it which I am ashamed to say
+I have not yet succeeded in remedying as I could wish. Sometimes the
+figures go all wrong, and sometimes they go all right. I hope they may
+do their best on the occasion of your seeing them for the first time.”
+
+As the major, posted near his clock, said the last words, his little
+audience of three, assembled at the opposite end of the room, saw the
+hour-hand and the minute-hand on the dial point together to twelve. The
+first stroke sounded, and Time, true to the signal, moved his scythe.
+The day of the month and the day of the week announced themselves
+in print through the glass pedestal next; Midwinter applauding their
+appearance with a noisy exaggeration of surprise, which Miss Milroy
+mistook for coarse sarcasm directed at her father’s pursuits, and which
+Allan (seeing that she was offended) attempted to moderate by touching
+the elbow of his friend. Meanwhile, the performances of the clock went
+on. At the last stroke of twelve, Time lifted his scythe again, the
+chimes rang, the march tune of the major’s old regiment followed; and
+the crowning exhibition of the relief of the guard announced itself in a
+preliminary trembling of the sentry-boxes, and a sudden disappearance of
+the major at the back of the clock.
+
+The performance began with the opening of the sentry-box on the
+right-hand side of the platform, as punctually as could be desired;
+the door on the other side, however, was less tractable--it remained
+obstinately closed. Unaware of this hitch in the proceedings, the
+corporal and his two privates appeared in their places in a state
+of perfect discipline, tottered out across the platform, all three
+trembling in every limb, dashed themselves headlong against the closed
+door on the other side, and failed in producing the smallest impression
+on the immovable sentry presumed to be within. An intermittent clicking,
+as of the major’s keys and tools at work, was heard in the machinery.
+The corporal and his two privates suddenly returned, backward, across
+the platform, and shut themselves up with a bang inside their own door.
+Exactly at the same moment, the other door opened for the first time,
+and the provoking sentry appeared with the utmost deliberation at his
+post, waiting to be relieved. He was allowed to wait. Nothing happened
+in the other box but an occasional knocking inside the door, as if the
+corporal and his privates were impatient to be let out. The clicking of
+the major’s tools was heard again among the machinery; the corporal and
+his party, suddenly restored to liberty, appeared in a violent hurry,
+and spun furiously across the platform. Quick as they were, however,
+the hitherto deliberate sentry on the other side now perversely showed
+himself to be quicker still. He disappeared like lightning into his
+own premises, the door closed smartly after him, the corporal and his
+privates dashed themselves headlong against it for the second time,
+and the major, appearing again round the corner of the clock, asked his
+audience innocently “if they would be good enough to tell him whether
+anything had gone wrong?”
+
+The fantastic absurdity of the exhibition, heightened by Major Milroy’s
+grave inquiry at the end of it, was so irresistibly ludicrous that
+the visitors shouted with laughter; and even Miss Milroy, with all her
+consideration for her father’s sensitive pride in his clock, could not
+restrain herself from joining in the merriment which the catastrophe of
+the puppets had provoked. But there are limits even to the license of
+laughter; and these limits were ere long so outrageously overstepped
+by one of the little party as to have the effect of almost instantly
+silencing the other two. The fever of Midwinter’s false spirits flamed
+out into sheer delirium as the performance of the puppets came to an
+end. His paroxysms of laughter followed each other with such convulsive
+violence that Miss Milroy started back from him in alarm, and even the
+patient major turned on him with a look which said plainly, Leave the
+room! Allan, wisely impulsive for once in his life, seized Midwinter by
+the arm, and dragged him out by main force into the garden, and thence
+into the park beyond.
+
+“Good heavens! what has come to you!” he exclaimed, shrinking back from
+the tortured face before him, as he stopped and looked close at it for
+the first time.
+
+For the moment, Midwinter was incapable of answering. The hysterical
+paroxysm was passing from one extreme to the other. He leaned against a
+tree, sobbing and gasping for breath, and stretched out his hand in mute
+entreaty to Allan to give him time.
+
+“You had better not have nursed me through my fever,” he said, faintly,
+as soon as he could speak. “I’m mad and miserable, Allan; I have never
+recovered it. Go back and ask them to forgive me; I am ashamed to go
+and ask them myself. I can’t tell how it happened; I can only ask your
+pardon and theirs.” He turned aside his head quickly so as to conceal
+his face. “Don’t stop here,” he said; “don’t look at me; I shall soon
+get over it.” Allan still hesitated, and begged hard to be allowed to
+take him back to the house. It was useless. “You break my heart with
+your kindness,” he burst out, passionately. “For God’s sake, leave me by
+my self!”
+
+Allan went back to the cottage, and pleaded there for indulgence to
+Midwinter, with an earnestness and simplicity which raised him immensely
+in the major’s estimation, but which totally failed to produce the same
+favorable impression on Miss Milroy. Little as she herself suspected it,
+she was fond enough of Allan already to be jealous of Allan’s friend.
+
+“How excessively absurd!” she thought, pettishly. “As if either papa or
+I considered such a person of the slightest consequence!”
+
+“You will kindly suspend your opinion, won’t you, Major Milroy?” said
+Allan, in his hearty way, at parting.
+
+“With the greatest pleasure!” replied the major, cordially shaking
+hands.
+
+“And you, too, Miss Milroy?” added Allan.
+
+Miss Milroy made a mercilessly formal bow. “_My_ opinion, Mr. Armadale,
+is not of the slightest consequence.”
+
+Allan left the cottage, sorely puzzled to account for Miss Milroy’s
+sudden coolness toward him. His grand idea of conciliating the whole
+neighborhood by becoming a married man underwent some modification as
+he closed the garden gate behind him. The virtue called Prudence and the
+Squire of Thorpe Ambrose became personally acquainted with each other,
+on this occasion, for the first time; and Allan, entering headlong as
+usual on the high-road to moral improvement, actually decided on doing
+nothing in a hurry!
+
+A man who is entering on a course of reformation ought, if virtue is its
+own reward, to be a man engaged in an essentially inspiriting pursuit.
+But virtue is not always its own reward; and the way that leads to
+reformation is remarkably ill-lighted for so respectable a thoroughfare.
+Allan seemed to have caught the infection of his friend’s despondency.
+As he walked home, he, too, began to doubt--in his widely different way,
+and for his widely different reasons--whether the life at Thorpe Ambrose
+was promising quite as fairly for the future as it had promised at
+first.
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE PLOT THICKENS.
+
+Two messages were waiting for Allan when he returned to the house. One
+had been left by Midwinter. “He had gone out for a long walk, and Mr.
+Armadale was not to be alarmed if he did not get back till late in the
+day.” The other message had been left by “a person from Mr. Pedgift’s
+office,” who had called, according to appointment, while the two
+gentlemen were away at the major’s. “Mr. Bashwood’s respects, and he
+would have the honor of waiting on Mr. Armadale again in the course of
+the evening.”
+
+Toward five o’clock, Midwinter returned, pale and silent. Allan hastened
+to assure him that his peace was made at the cottage; and then, to
+change the subject, mentioned Mr. Bashwood’s message. Midwinter’s mind
+was so preoccupied or so languid that he hardly seemed to remember the
+name. Allan was obliged to remind him that Bashwood was the elderly
+clerk, whom Mr. Pedgift had sent to be his instructor in the duties
+of the steward’s office. He listened without making any remark, and
+withdrew to his room, to rest till dinner-time.
+
+Left by himself, Allan went into the library, to try if he could while
+away the time over a book.
+
+He took many volumes off the shelves, and put a few of them back again;
+and there he ended. Miss Milroy contrived in some mysterious manner to
+get, in this case, between the reader and the books. Her formal bow and
+her merciless parting speech dwelt, try how he might to forget them, on
+Allan’s mind; he began to grow more and more anxious as the idle hour
+wore on, to recover his lost place in her favor. To call again that day
+at the cottage, and ask if he had been so unfortunate as to offend her,
+was impossible. To put the question in writing with the needful nicety
+of expression proved, on trying the experiment, to be a task beyond his
+literary reach. After a turn or two up and down the room, with his pen
+in his mouth, he decided on the more diplomatic course (which happened,
+in this case, to be the easiest course, too), of writing to Miss Milroy
+as cordially as if nothing had happened, and of testing his position in
+her good graces by the answer that she sent him back. An invitation of
+some kind (including her father, of course, but addressed directly to
+herself) was plainly the right thing to oblige her to send a written
+reply; but here the difficulty occurred of what the invitation was to
+be. A ball was not to be thought of, in his present position with the
+resident gentry. A dinner-party, with no indispensable elderly lady on
+the premises to receive Miss Milroy--except Mrs. Gripper, who could only
+receive her in the kitchen--was equally out of the question. What was
+the invitation to be? Never backward, when he wanted help, in asking for
+it right and left in every available direction, Allan, feeling himself
+at the end of his own resources, coolly rang the bell, and astonished
+the servant who answered it by inquiring how the late family at Thorpe
+Ambrose used to amuse themselves, and what sort of invitations they were
+in the habit of sending to their friends.
+
+“The family did what the rest of the gentry did, sir,” said the man,
+staring at his master in utter bewilderment. “They gave dinner-parties
+and balls. And in fine summer weather, sir, like this, they sometimes
+had lawn-parties and picnics--”
+
+“That’ll do!” shouted Allan. “A picnic’s just the thing to please her.
+Richard, you’re an invaluable man; you may go downstairs again.”
+
+Richard retired wondering, and Richard’s master seized his ready pen.
+
+
+“DEAR MISS MILROY--Since I left you it has suddenly struck me that we
+might have a picnic. A little change and amusement (what I should call a
+good shaking-up, if I wasn’t writing to a young lady) is just the thing
+for you, after being so long indoors lately in Mrs. Milroy’s room. A
+picnic is a change, and (when the wine is good) amusement, too. Will
+you ask the major if he will consent to the picnic, and come? And if
+you have got any friends in the neighborhood who like a picnic, pray
+ask them too, for I have got none. It shall be your picnic, but I will
+provide everything and take everybody. You shall choose the day, and we
+will picnic where you like. I have set my heart on this picnic.
+
+“Believe me, ever yours,
+
+“ALLAN ARMADALE.”
+
+
+On reading over his composition before sealing it up, Allan frankly
+acknowledged to himself, this time, that it was not quite faultless.
+“‘Picnic’ comes in a little too often,” he said. “Never mind; if she
+likes the idea, she won’t quarrel with that.” He sent off the letter on
+the spot, with strict instructions to the messenger to wait for a reply.
+
+In half an hour the answer came back on scented paper, without an
+erasure anywhere, fragrant to smell, and beautiful to see.
+
+The presentation of the naked truth is one of those exhibitions from
+which the native delicacy of the female mind seems instinctively to
+revolt. Never were the tables turned more completely than they were now
+turned on Allan by his fair correspondent. Machiavelli himself would
+never have suspected, from Miss Milroy’s letter, how heartily she had
+repented her petulance to the young squire as soon as his back was
+turned, and how extravagantly delighted she was when his invitation was
+placed in her hands. Her letter was the composition of a model young
+lady whose emotions are all kept under parental lock and key, and served
+out for her judiciously as occasion may require. “Papa,” appeared quite
+as frequently in Miss Milroy’s reply as “picnic” had appeared in Allan’s
+invitation. “Papa” had been as considerately kind as Mr. Armadale in
+wishing to procure her a little change and amusement, and had offered
+to forego his usual quiet habits and join the picnic. With “papa’s”
+ sanction, therefore, she accepted, with much pleasure, Mr. Armadale’s
+proposal; and, at “papa’s” suggestion, she would presume on Mr.
+Armadale’s kindness to add two friends of theirs recently settled at
+Thorpe Ambrose, to the picnic party--a widow lady and her son; the
+latter in holy orders and in delicate health. If Tuesday next would suit
+Mr. Armadale, Tuesday next would suit “papa”--being the first day he
+could spare from repairs which were required by his clock. The rest,
+by “papa’s” advice, she would beg to leave entirely in Mr. Armadale’s
+hands; and, in the meantime, she would remain, with “papa’s”
+ compliments, Mr. Armadale’s truly--ELEANOR MILROY.
+
+Who would ever have supposed that the writer of that letter had jumped
+for joy when Allan’s invitation arrived? Who would ever have suspected
+that there was an entry already in Miss Milroy’s diary, under that day’s
+date, to this effect: “The sweetest, dearest letter from _I-know-who_;
+I’ll never behave unkindly to him again as long as I live?” As for
+Allan, he was charmed with the sweet success of his maneuver. Miss
+Milroy had accepted his invitation; consequently, Miss Milroy was
+not offended with him. It was on the tip of his tongue to mention the
+correspondence to his friend when they met at dinner. But there was
+something in Midwinter’s face and manner (even plain enough for Allan to
+see) which warned him to wait a little before he said anything to revive
+the painful subject of their visit to the cottage. By common consent
+they both avoided all topics connected with Thorpe Ambrose, not even
+the visit from Mr. Bashwood, which was to come with the evening, being
+referred to by either of them. All through the dinner they drifted
+further and further back into the old endless talk of past times about
+ships and sailing. When the butler withdrew from his attendance at
+table, he came downstairs with a nautical problem on his mind, and asked
+his fellow-servants if they any of them knew the relative merits “on a
+wind” and “off a wind” of a schooner and a brig.
+
+The two young men had sat longer at table than usual that day. When they
+went out into the garden with their cigars, the summer twilight fell
+gray and dim on lawn and flower bed, and narrowed round them by slow
+degrees the softly fading circle of the distant view. The dew was heavy,
+and, after a few minutes in the garden, they agreed to go back to the
+drier ground on the drive in front of the house.
+
+They were close to the turning which led into the shrubbery, when there
+suddenly glided out on them, from behind the foliage, a softly stepping
+black figure--a shadow, moving darkly through the dim evening light.
+Midwinter started back at the sight of it, and even the less finely
+strung nerves of his friend were shaken for the moment.
+
+“Who the devil are you?” cried Allan.
+
+The figure bared its head in the gray light, and came slowly a step
+nearer. Midwinter advanced a step on his side, and looked closer. It was
+the man of the timid manners and the mourning garments, of whom he had
+asked the way to Thorpe Ambrose where the three roads met.
+
+“Who are you?” repeated Allan.
+
+“I humbly beg your pardon, sir,” faltered the stranger, stepping back
+again, confusedly. “The servants told me I should find Mr. Armadale--”
+
+“What, are you Mr. Bashwood?”
+
+“Yes, if you please, sir.”
+
+“I beg your pardon for speaking to you so roughly,” said Allan; “but the
+fact is, you rather startled me. My name is Armadale (put on your hat,
+pray), and this is my friend, Mr. Midwinter, who wants your help in the
+steward’s office.”
+
+“We hardly stand in need of an introduction,” said Midwinter. “I met Mr.
+Bashwood out walking a few days since, and he was kind enough to direct
+me when I had lost my way.”
+
+“Put on your hat,” reiterated Allan, as Mr. Bashwood, still bareheaded,
+stood bowing speechlessly, now to one of the young men, and now to the
+other. “My good sir, put on your hat, and let me show you the way back
+to the house. Excuse me for noticing it,” added Allan, as the man, in
+sheer nervous helplessness, let his hat fall, instead of putting it back
+on his head; “but you seem a little out of sorts; a glass of good
+wine will do you no harm before you and my friend come to business.
+Whereabouts did you meet with Mr. Bashwood, Midwinter, when you lost
+your way?”
+
+“I am too ignorant of the neighborhood to know. I must refer you to Mr.
+Bashwood.”
+
+“Come, tell us where it was,” said Allan, trying, a little too abruptly,
+to set the man at his ease, as they all three walked back to the house.
+
+The measure of Mr. Bashwood’s constitutional timidity seemed to be
+filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan’s voice and the bluntness of
+Allan’s request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which
+he had deluged Midwinter on the occasion when they first met.
+
+“It was on the road, sir,” he began, addressing himself alternately to
+Allan, whom he called, “sir,” and to Midwinter, whom he called by
+his name, “I mean, if you please, on the road to Little Gill Beck. A
+singular name, Mr. Midwinter, and a singular place; I don’t mean
+the village; I mean the neighborhood--I mean the ‘Broads’ beyond the
+neighborhood. Perhaps you may have heard of the Norfolk Broads, sir?
+What they call lakes in other parts of England, they call Broads here.
+The Broads are quite numerous; I think they would repay a visit. You
+would have seen the first of them, Mr. Midwinter, if you had walked on
+a few miles from where I had the honor of meeting you. Remarkably
+numerous, the Broads, sir--situated between this and the sea. About
+three miles from the sea, Mr. Midwinter--about three miles. Mostly
+shallow, sir, with rivers running between them. Beautiful; solitary.
+Quite a watery country, Mr. Midwinter; quite separate, as it were, in
+itself. Parties sometimes visit them, sir--pleasure parties in boats.
+It’s quite a little network of lakes, or, perhaps--yes, perhaps, more
+correctly, pools. There is good sport in the cold weather. The wild fowl
+are quite numerous. Yes; the Broads would repay a visit, Mr. Midwinter.
+The next time you are walking that way. The distance from here to Little
+Gill Beck, and then from Little Gill Beck to Girdler Broad, which is the
+first you come to, is altogether not more--” In sheer nervous inability
+to leave off, he would apparently have gone on talking of the Norfolk
+Broads for the rest of the evening, if one of his two listeners had not
+unceremoniously cut him short before he could find his way into a new
+sentence.
+
+“Are the Broads within an easy day’s drive there and back from this
+house?” asked Allan, feeling, if they were, that the place for the
+picnic was discovered already.
+
+“Oh, yes, sir; a nice drive--quite a nice easy drive from this beautiful
+place!”
+
+They were by this time ascending the portico steps, Allan leading the
+way up, and calling to Midwinter and Mr. Bashwood to follow him into the
+library, where there was a lighted lamp.
+
+In the interval which elapsed before the wine made its appearance,
+Midwinter looked at his chance acquaintance of the high-road with
+strangely mingled feelings of compassion and distrust--of compassion
+that strengthened in spite of him; of distrust that persisted in
+diminishing, try as he might to encourage it to grow. There, perched
+comfortless on the edge of his chair, sat the poor broken-down, nervous
+wretch, in his worn black garments, with his watery eyes, his honest old
+outspoken wig, his miserable mohair stock, and his false teeth that were
+incapable of deceiving anybody--there he sat, politely ill at ease;
+now shrinking in the glare of the lamp, now wincing under the shock
+of Allan’s sturdy voice; a man with the wrinkles of sixty years in his
+face, and the manners of a child in the presence of strangers; an object
+of pity surely, if ever there was a pitiable object yet!
+
+“Whatever else you’re afraid of, Mr. Bashwood,” cried Allan, pouring out
+a glass of wine, “don’t be afraid of that! There isn’t a headache in
+a hogshead of it! Make yourself comfortable; I’ll leave you and Mr.
+Midwinter to talk your business over by yourselves. It’s all in Mr.
+Midwinter’s hands; he acts for me, and settles everything at his own
+discretion.”
+
+He said those words with a cautious choice of expression very
+uncharacteristic of him, and, without further explanation, made abruptly
+for the door. Midwinter, sitting near it, noticed his face as he went
+out. Easy as the way was into Allan’s favor, Mr. Bashwood, beyond all
+kind of doubt, had in some unaccountable manner failed to find it!
+
+The two strangely assorted companions were left together--parted widely,
+as it seemed on the surface, from any possible interchange of sympathy;
+drawn invisibly one to the other, nevertheless, by those magnetic
+similarities of temperament which overleap all difference of age or
+station, and defy all apparent incongruities of mind and character. From
+the moment when Allan left the room, the hidden Influence that works
+in darkness began slowly to draw the two men together, across the great
+social desert which had lain between them up to this day.
+
+Midwinter was the first to approach the subject of the interview.
+
+“May I ask,” he began, “if you have been made acquainted with
+my position here, and if you know why it is that I require your
+assistance?”
+
+Mr. Bashwood--still hesitating and still timid, but manifestly relieved
+by Allan’s departure--sat further back in his chair, and ventured on
+fortifying himself with a modest little sip of wine.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he replied; “Mr. Pedgift informed me of all--at least I
+think I may say so--of all the circumstances. I am to instruct, or
+perhaps, I ought to say to advise--”
+
+“No, Mr. Bashwood; the first word was the best word of the two. I am
+quite ignorant of the duties which Mr. Armadale’s kindness has induced
+him to intrust to me. If I understand right, there can be no question of
+your capacity to instruct me, for you once filled a steward’s situation
+yourself. May I inquire where it was?”
+
+“At Sir John Mellowship’s, sir, in West Norfolk. Perhaps you would
+like--I have got it with me--to see my testimonial? Sir John might have
+dealt more kindly with me; but I have no complaint to make; it’s all
+done and over now!” His watery eyes looked more watery still, and the
+trembling in his hands spread to his lips as he produced an old dingy
+letter from his pocket-book and laid it open on the table.
+
+The testimonial was very briefly and very coldly expressed, but it was
+conclusive as far as it went. Sir John considered it only right to say
+that he had no complaint to make of any want of capacity or integrity
+in his steward. If Mr. Bashwood’s domestic position had been compatible
+with the continued performance of his duties on the estate, Sir John
+would have been glad to keep him. As it was, embarrassments caused by
+the state of Mr. Bashwood’s personal affairs had rendered it undesirable
+that he should continue in Sir John’s service; and on that ground, and
+that only, his employer and he had parted. Such was Sir John’s testimony
+to Mr. Bashwood’s character. As Midwinter read the last lines, he
+thought of another testimonial, still in his own possession--of the
+written character which they had given him at the school, when
+they turned their sick usher adrift in the world. His superstition
+(distrusting all new events and all new faces at Thorpe Ambrose) still
+doubted the man before him as obstinately as ever. But when he now tried
+to put those doubts into words, his heart upbraided him, and he laid the
+letter on the table in silence.
+
+The sudden pause in the conversation appeared to startle Mr. Bashwood.
+He comforted himself with another little sip of wine, and, leaving the
+letter untouched, burst irrepressibly into words, as if the silence was
+quite unendurable to him.
+
+“I am ready to answer any question, sir,” he began. “Mr. Pedgift told
+me that I must answer questions, because I was applying for a place of
+trust. Mr. Pedgift said neither you nor Mr. Armadale was likely to think
+the testimonial sufficient of itself. Sir John doesn’t say--he might
+have put it more kindly, but I don’t complain--Sir John doesn’t say
+what the troubles were that lost me my place. Perhaps you might wish to
+know--” He stopped confusedly, looked at the testimonial, and said no
+more.
+
+“If no interests but mine were concerned in the matter,” rejoined
+Midwinter, “the testimonial would, I assure you, be quite enough to
+satisfy me. But while I am learning my new duties, the person who
+teaches me will be really and truly the steward of my friend’s estate. I
+am very unwilling to ask you to speak on what may be a painful subject,
+and I am sadly inexperienced in putting such questions as I ought
+to put; but, perhaps, in Mr. Armadale’s interests, I ought to know
+something more, either from yourself, or from Mr. Pedgift, if you prefer
+it--” He, too, stopped confusedly, looked at the testimonial, and said
+no more.
+
+There was another moment of silence. The night was warm, and Mr.
+Bashwood, among his other misfortunes, had the deplorable infirmity of
+perspiring in the palms of the hands. He took out a miserable little
+cotton pocket-handkerchief, rolled it up into a ball, and softly dabbed
+it to and fro, from one hand to the other, with the regularity of a
+pendulum. Performed by other men, under other circumstances, the action
+might have been ridiculous. Performed by this man, at the crisis of the
+interview, the action was horrible.
+
+“Mr. Pedgift’s time is too valuable, sir, to be wasted on me,” he said.
+“I will mention what ought to be mentioned myself--if you will please to
+allow me. I have been unfortunate in my family. It is very hard to bear,
+though it seems not much to tell. My wife--” One of his hands closed
+fast on the pocket-handkerchief; he moistened his dry lips, struggled
+with himself, and went on.
+
+“My wife, sir,” he resumed, “stood a little in my way; she did me (I am
+afraid I must confess) some injury with Sir John. Soon after I got the
+steward’s situation, she contracted--she took--she fell into habits (I
+hardly know how to say it) of drinking. I couldn’t break her of it, and
+I couldn’t always conceal it from Sir John’s knowledge. She broke out,
+and--and tried his patience once or twice, when he came to my office on
+business. Sir John excused it, not very kindly; but still he excused
+it. I don’t complain of Sir John! I don’t complain now of my wife.” He
+pointed a trembling finger at his miserable crape-covered beaver hat on
+the floor. “I’m in mourning for her,” he said, faintly. “She died nearly
+a year ago, in the county asylum here.”
+
+His mouth began to work convulsively. He took up the glass of wine
+at his side, and, instead of sipping it this time, drained it to
+the bottom. “I’m not much used to wine, sir,” he said, conscious,
+apparently, of the flush that flew into his face as he drank, and still
+observant of the obligations of politeness amid all the misery of the
+recollections that he was calling up.
+
+“I beg, Mr. Bashwood, you will not distress yourself by telling me any
+more,” said Midwinter, recoiling from any further sanction on his part
+of a disclosure which had already bared the sorrows of the unhappy man
+before him to the quick.
+
+“I’m much obliged to you, sir,” replied Mr. Bashwood. “But if I don’t
+detain you too long, and if you will please to remember that Mr.
+Pedgift’s directions to me were very particular--and, besides, I only
+mentioned my late wife because if she hadn’t tried Sir John’s patience
+to begin with, things might have turned out differently--” He paused,
+gave up the disjointed sentence in which he had involved himself, and
+tried another. “I had only two children, sir,” he went on, advancing to
+a new point in his narrative, “a boy and a girl. The girl died when she
+was a baby. My son lived to grow up; and it was my son who lost me my
+place. I did my best for him; I got him into a respectable office in
+London. They wouldn’t take him without security. I’m afraid it was
+imprudent; but I had no rich friends to help me, and I became security.
+My boy turned out badly, sir. He--perhaps you will kindly understand
+what I mean, if I say he behaved dishonestly. His employers consented,
+at my entreaty, to let him off without prosecuting. I begged very
+hard--I was fond of my son James--and I took him home, and did my best
+to reform him. He wouldn’t stay with me; he went away again to London;
+he--I beg your pardon, sir! I’m afraid I’m confusing things; I’m afraid
+I’m wandering from the point.”
+
+“No, no,” said Midwinter, kindly. “If you think it right to tell me this
+sad story, tell it in your own way. Have you seen your son since he left
+you to go to London?”
+
+“No, sir. He’s in London still, for all I know. When I last heard of
+him, he was getting his bread--not very creditably. He was employed,
+under the inspector, at the Private Inquiry Office in Shadyside Place.”
+
+He spoke those words--apparently (as events then stood) the most
+irrelevant to the matter in hand that had yet escaped him; actually (as
+events were soon to be) the most vitally important that he had uttered
+yet--he spoke those words absently, looking about him in confusion, and
+trying vainly to recover the lost thread of his narrative.
+
+Midwinter compassionately helped him. “You were telling me,” he said,
+“that your son had been the cause of your losing your place. How did
+that happen?”
+
+“In this way, sir,” said Mr. Bashwood, getting back again excitedly into
+the right train of thought. “His employers consented to let him off; but
+they came down on his security; and I was the man. I suppose they were
+not to blame; the security covered their loss. I couldn’t pay it all out
+of my savings; I had to borrow--on the word of a man, sir, I couldn’t
+help it--I had to borrow. My creditor pressed me; it seemed cruel, but,
+if he wanted the money, I suppose it was only just. I was sold out of
+house and home. I dare say other gentlemen would have said what Sir John
+said; I dare say most people would have refused to keep a steward
+who had had the bailiffs after him, and his furniture sold in the
+neighborhood. That was how it ended, Mr. Midwinter. I needn’t detain you
+any longer--here is Sir John’s address, if you wish to apply to him.”
+ Midwinter generously refused to receive the address.
+
+“Thank you kindly, sir,” said Mr. Bashwood, getting tremulously on his
+legs. “There is nothing more, I think, except--except that Mr. Pedgift
+will speak for me, if you wish to inquire into my conduct in his
+service. I’m very much indebted to Mr. Pedgift; he’s a little rough
+with me sometimes, but, if he hadn’t taken me into his office, I think I
+should have gone to the workhouse when I left Sir John, I was so broken
+down.” He picked up his dingy old hat from the floor. “I won’t intrude
+any longer, sir. I shall be happy to call again if you wish to have time
+to consider before you decide-”
+
+“I want no time to consider after what you have told me,” replied
+Midwinter, warmly, his memory busy, while he spoke, with the time when
+_he_ had told _his_ story to Mr. Brock, and was waiting for a generous
+word in return, as the man before him was waiting now. “To-day is
+Saturday,” he went on. “Can you come and give me my first lesson
+on Monday morning? I beg your pardon,” he added, interrupting Mr.
+Bashwood’s profuse expressions of acknowledgment, and stopping him on
+his way out of the room; “there is one thing we ought to settle, ought
+we not? We haven’t spoken yet about your own interest in this matter;
+I mean, about the terms.” He referred, a little confusedly, to the
+pecuniary part of the subject. Mr. Bashwood (getting nearer and nearer
+to the door) answered him more confusedly still.
+
+“Anything, sir--anything you think right. I won’t intrude any longer;
+I’ll leave it to you and Mr. Armadale.”
+
+“I will send for Mr. Armadale, if you like,” said Midwinter, following
+him into the hall. “But I am afraid he has as little experience in
+matters of this kind as I have. Perhaps, if you see no objection, we
+might be guided by Mr. Pedgift?”
+
+Mr. Bashwood caught eagerly at the last suggestion, pushing his retreat,
+while he spoke, as far as the front door. “Yes, sir--oh, yes, yes!
+nobody better than Mr. Pedgift. Don’t--pray don’t disturb Mr. Armadale!”
+ His watery eyes looked quite wild with nervous alarm as he turned round
+for a moment in the light of the hall lamp to make that polite request.
+If sending for Allan had been equivalent to unchaining a ferocious
+watch-dog, Mr. Bashwood could hardly have been more anxious to stop the
+proceeding. “I wish you kindly good-evening, sir,” he went on, getting
+out to the steps. “I’m much obliged to you. I will be scrupulously
+punctual on Monday morning--I hope--I think--I’m sure you will soon
+learn everything I can teach you. It’s not difficult--oh dear, no--not
+difficult at all! I wish you kindly good-evening, sir. A beautiful
+night; yes, indeed, a beautiful night for a walk home.”
+
+With those words, all dropping out of his lips one on the top of the
+other, and without noticing, in his agony of embarrassment at effecting
+his departure, Midwinter’s outstretched hand, he went noiselessly down
+the steps, and was lost in the darkness of the night.
+
+As Midwinter turned to re-enter the house, the dining-room door opened
+and his friend met him in the hall.
+
+“Has Mr. Bashwood gone?” asked Allan.
+
+“He has gone,” replied Midwinter, “after telling me a very sad story,
+and leaving me a little ashamed of myself for having doubted him without
+any just cause. I have arranged that he is to give me my first lesson in
+the steward’s office on Monday morning.”
+
+“All right,” said Allan. “You needn’t be afraid, old boy, of my
+interrupting you over your studies. I dare say I’m wrong--but I don’t
+like Mr. Bashwood.”
+
+“I dare say _I’m_ wrong,” retorted the other, a little petulantly. “I
+do.”
+
+
+The Sunday morning found Midwinter in the park, waiting to intercept the
+postman, on the chance of his bringing more news from Mr. Brock.
+
+At the customary hour the man made his appearance, and placed the
+expected letter in Midwinter’s hands. He opened it, far away from all
+fear of observation this time, and read these lines:
+
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--I write more for the purpose of quieting your
+anxiety than because I have anything definite to say. In my last hurried
+letter I had no time to tell you that the elder of the two women whom
+I met in the Gardens had followed me, and spoken to me in the street.
+I believe I may characterize what she said (without doing her any
+injustice) as a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end. At any rate,
+she confirmed me in the suspicion that some underhand proceeding is on
+foot, of which Allan is destined to be the victim, and that the prime
+mover in the conspiracy is the vile woman who helped his mother’s
+marriage and who hastened his mother’s death.
+
+“Feeling this conviction, I have not hesitated to do, for Allan’s sake,
+what I would have done for no other creature in the world. I have left
+my hotel, and have installed myself (with my old servant Robert) in
+a house opposite the house to which I traced the two women. We are
+alternately on the watch (quite unsuspected, I am certain, by the
+people opposite) day and night. All my feelings, as a gentleman and a
+clergyman, revolt from such an occupation as I am now engaged in; but
+there is no other choice. I must either do this violence to my own
+self-respect, or I must leave Allan, with his easy nature, and in his
+assailable position, to defend himself against a wretch who is prepared,
+I firmly believe, to take the most unscrupulous advantage of his
+weakness and his youth. His mother’s dying entreaty has never left my
+memory; and, God help me, I am now degrading myself in my own eyes in
+consequence.
+
+“There has been some reward already for the sacrifice. This day
+(Saturday) I have gained an immense advantage--I have at last seen the
+woman’s face. She went out with her veil down as before; and Robert kept
+her in view, having my instructions, if she returned to the house, not
+to follow her back to the door. She did return to the house; and the
+result of my precaution was, as I had expected, to throw her off her
+guard. I saw her face unveiled at the window, and afterward again in the
+balcony. If any occasion should arise for describing her particularly,
+you shall have the description. At present I need only say that she
+looks the full age (five-and-thirty) at which you estimated her, and
+that she is by no means so handsome a woman as I had (I hardly know why)
+expected to see.
+
+“This is all I can now tell you. If nothing more happens by Monday or
+Tuesday next, I shall have no choice but to apply to my lawyers for
+assistance; though I am most unwilling to trust this delicate and
+dangerous matter in other hands than mine. Setting my own feelings
+however, out of the question, the business which has been the cause of
+my journey to London is too important to be trifled with much longer as
+I am trifling with it now. In any and every case, depend on my keeping
+you informed of the progress of events, and believe me yours truly,
+
+“DECIMUS BROCK.”
+
+
+Midwinter secured the letter as he had secured the letter that preceded
+it--side by side in his pocket-book with the narrative of Allan’s Dream.
+
+“How many days more?” he asked himself, as he went back to the house.
+“How many days more?”
+
+Not many. The time he was waiting for was a time close at hand.
+
+
+Monday came, and brought Mr. Bashwood, punctual to the appointed hour.
+Monday came, and found Allan immersed in his preparations for the
+picnic. He held a series of interviews, at home and abroad, all through
+the day. He transacted business with Mrs. Gripper, with the butler,
+and with the coachman, in their three several departments of eating,
+drinking, and driving. He went to the town to consult his professional
+advisers on the subject of the Broads, and to invite both the lawyers,
+father and son (in the absence of anybody else in the neighborhood whom
+he could ask), to join the picnic. Pedgift Senior (in his department)
+supplied general information, but begged to be excused from appearing at
+the picnic, on the score of business engagements. Pedgift Junior (in his
+department) added all the details; and, casting business engagements to
+the winds, accepted the invitation with the greatest pleasure. Returning
+from the lawyer’s office, Allan’s next proceeding was to go to the
+major’s cottage and obtain Miss Milroy’s approval of the proposed
+locality for the pleasure party. This object accomplished, he returned
+to his own house, to meet the last difficulty now left to encounter--the
+difficulty of persuading Midwinter to join the expedition to the Broads.
+
+On first broaching the subject, Allan found his friend impenetrably
+resolute to remain at home. Midwinter’s natural reluctance to meet the
+major and his daughter after what had happened at the cottage, might
+probably have been overcome. But Midwinter’s determination not to allow
+Mr. Bashwood’s course of instruction to be interrupted was proof
+against every effort that could be made to shake it. After exerting his
+influence to the utmost, Allan was obliged to remain contented with a
+compromise. Midwinter promised, not very willingly, to join the party
+toward evening, at the place appointed for a gypsy tea-making, which was
+to close the proceedings of the day. To this extent he would consent to
+take the opportunity of placing himself on a friendly footing with the
+Milroys. More he could not concede, even to Allan’s persuasion, and for
+more it would be useless to ask.
+
+The day of the picnic came. The lovely morning, and the cheerful bustle
+of preparation for the expedition, failed entirely to tempt Midwinter
+into altering his resolution. At the regular hour he left the
+breakfast-table to join Mr. Bashwood in the steward’s office. The two
+were quietly closeted over the books, at the back of the house, while
+the packing for the picnic went on in front. Young Pedgift (short in
+stature, smart in costume, and self-reliant in manner) arrived
+some little time before the hour for starting, to revise all the
+arrangements, and to make any final improvements which his local
+knowledge might suggest. Allan and he were still busy in consultation
+when the first hitch occurred in the proceedings. The woman-servant from
+the cottage was reported to be waiting below for an answer to a note
+from her young mistress, which was placed in Allan’s hands.
+
+On this occasion Miss Milroy’s emotions had apparently got the better
+of her sense of propriety. The tone of the letter was feverish, and the
+handwriting wandered crookedly up and down in deplorable freedom from
+all proper restraint.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Armadale” (wrote the major’s daughter), “such a misfortune!
+What _are_ we to do? Papa has got a letter from grandmamma this morning
+about the new governess. Her reference has answered all the questions,
+and she’s ready to come at the shortest notice. Grandmamma thinks (how
+provoking!) the sooner the better; and she says we may expect her--I
+mean the governess--either to-day or to-morrow. Papa says (he _will_ be
+so absurdly considerate to everybody!) that we can’t allow Miss Gwilt to
+come here (if she comes to-day) and find nobody at home to receive her.
+What is to be done? I am ready to cry with vexation. I have got the
+worst possible impression (though grandmamma says she is a charming
+person) of Miss Gwilt. _Can_ you suggest something, dear Mr. Armadale?
+I’m sure papa would give way if you could. Don’t stop to write; send me
+a message back. I have got a new hat for the picnic; and oh, the agony
+of not knowing whether I am to keep it on or take it off. Yours truly,
+E. M.”
+
+“The devil take Miss Gwilt!” said Allan, staring at his legal adviser in
+a state of helpless consternation.
+
+“With all my heart, sir--I don’t wish to interfere,” remarked Pedgift
+Junior. “May I ask what’s the matter?”
+
+Allan told him. Mr. Pedgift the younger might have his faults, but a
+want of quickness of resource was not among them.
+
+“There’s a way out of the difficulty, Mr. Armadale,” he said. “If the
+governess comes to-day, let’s have her at the picnic.”
+
+Allan’s eyes opened wide in astonishment.
+
+“All the horses and carriages in the Thorpe Ambrose stables are not
+wanted for this small party of ours,” proceeded Pedgift Junior. “Of
+course not! Very good. If Miss Gwilt comes to-day, she can’t possibly
+get here before five o’clock. Good again. You order an open carriage to
+be waiting at the major’s door at that time, Mr. Armadale, and I’ll give
+the man his directions where to drive to. When the governess comes to
+the cottage, let her find a nice little note of apology (along with the
+cold fowl, or whatever else they give her after her journey) begging
+her to join us at the picnic, and putting a carriage at her own sole
+disposal to take her there. Gad, sir!” said young Pedgift, gayly, “she
+_must_ be a Touchy One if she thinks herself neglected after that!”
+
+“Capital!” cried Allan. “She shall have every attention. I’ll give her
+the pony-chaise and the white harness, and she shall drive herself, if
+she likes.”
+
+He scribbled a line to relieve Miss Milroy’s apprehensions, and gave the
+necessary orders for the pony-chaise. Ten minutes later, the carriages
+for the pleasure party were at the door.
+
+“Now we’ve taken all this trouble about her,” said Allan, reverting to
+the governess as they left the house, “I wonder, if she does come to-day,
+whether we shall see her at the picnic!”
+
+“Depends, entirely on her age, sir,” remarked young Pedgift, pronouncing
+judgment with the happy confidence in himself which eminently
+distinguished him. “If she’s an old one, she’ll be knocked up with the
+journey, and she’ll stick to the cold fowl and the cottage. If she’s
+a young one, either I know nothing of women, or the pony in the white
+harness will bring her to the picnic.”
+
+They started for the major’s cottage.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. THE NORFOLK BROADS.
+
+The little group gathered together in Major Milroy’s parlor to wait for
+the carriages from Thorpe Ambrose would hardly have conveyed the idea,
+to any previously uninstructed person introduced among them, of a party
+assembled in expectation of a picnic. They were almost dull enough,
+as far as outward appearances went, to have been a party assembled in
+expectation of a marriage.
+
+Even Miss Milroy herself, though conscious, of looking her best in
+her bright muslin dress and her gayly feathered new hat, was at this
+inauspicious moment Miss Milroy under a cloud. Although Allan’s note had
+assured her, in Allan’s strongest language, that the one great object of
+reconciling the governess’s arrival with the celebration of the picnic
+was an object achieved, the doubt still remained whether the plan
+proposed--whatever it might be--would meet with her father’s approval.
+In a word, Miss Milroy declined to feel sure of her day’s pleasure until
+the carriage made its appearance and took her from the door. The major,
+on his side, arrayed for the festive occasion in a tight blue frock-coat
+which he had not worn for years, and threatened with a whole long day of
+separation from his old friend and comrade the clock, was a man out of
+his element, if ever such a man existed yet. As for the friends who had
+been asked at Allan’s request--the widow lady (otherwise Mrs. Pentecost)
+and her son (the Reverend Samuel) in delicate health--two people less
+capable, apparently of adding to the hilarity of the day could hardly
+have been discovered in the length and breadth of all England. A young
+man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and
+listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine
+of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at
+a picnic. An old lady afflicted with deafness, whose one inexhaustible
+subject of interest is the subject of her son, and who (on the happily
+rare occasions when that son opens his lips) asks everybody eagerly,
+“What does my boy say?” is a person to be pitied in respect of her
+infirmities, and a person to be admired in respect of her maternal
+devotedness, but not a person, if the thing could possibly be avoided,
+to take to a picnic. Such a man, nevertheless, was the Reverend Samuel
+Pentecost, and such a woman was the Reverend Samuel’s mother; and in the
+dearth of any other producible guests, there they were, engaged to eat,
+drink, and be merry for the day at Mr. Armadale’s pleasure party to the
+Norfolk Broads.
+
+The arrival of Allan, with his faithful follower, Pedgift Junior, at his
+heels, roused the flagging spirits of the party at the cottage. The plan
+for enabling the governess to join the picnic, if she arrived that day,
+satisfied even Major Milroy’s anxiety to show all proper attention to
+the lady who was coming into his house. After writing the necessary
+note of apology and invitation, and addressing it in her very best
+handwriting to the new governess, Miss Milroy ran upstairs to say
+good-by to her mother, and returned with a smiling face and a side look
+of relief directed at her father, to announce that there was nothing
+now to keep any of them a moment longer indoors. The company at once
+directed their steps to the garden gate, and were there met face to face
+by the second great difficulty of the day. How were the six persons of
+the picnic to be divided between the two open carriages that were in
+waiting for them?
+
+Here, again, Pedgift Junior exhibited his invaluable faculty of
+contrivance. This highly cultivated young man possessed in an eminent
+degree an accomplishment more or less peculiar to all the young men
+of the age we live in: he was perfectly capable of taking his pleasure
+without forgetting his business. Such a client as the Master of Thorpe
+Ambrose fell but seldom in his father’s way, and to pay special but
+unobtrusive attention to Allan all through the day was the business of
+which young Pedgift, while proving himself to be the life and soul of
+the picnic, never once lost sight from the beginning of the merry-making
+to the end. He had detected the state of affairs between Miss Milroy and
+Allan at glance, and he at once provided for his client’s inclinations
+in that quarter by offering, in virtue of his local knowledge, to lead
+the way in the first carriage, and by asking Major Milroy and the curate
+if they would do him the honor of accompanying him.
+
+“We shall pass a very interesting place to a military man, sir,” said
+young Pedgift, addressing the major, with his happy and unblushing
+confidence--“the remains of a Roman encampment. And my father, sir, who
+is a subscriber,” proceeded this rising lawyer, turning to the curate,
+“wished me to ask your opinion of the new Infant School buildings at
+Little Gill Beck. Would you kindly give it me as we go along?” He opened
+the carriage door, and helped in the major and the curate before they
+could either of them start any difficulties. The necessary result
+followed. Allan and Miss Milroy rode together in the same carriage,
+with the extra convenience of a deaf old lady in attendance to keep the
+squire’s compliments within the necessary limits.
+
+Never yet had Allan enjoyed such an interview with Miss Milroy as the
+interview he now obtained on the road to the Broads.
+
+The dear old lady, after a little anecdote or two on the subject of her
+son, did the one thing wanting to secure the perfect felicity of her two
+youthful companions: she became considerately blind for the occasion, as
+well as deaf. A quarter of an hour after the carriage left the major’s
+cottage, the poor old soul, reposing on snug cushions, and fanned by a
+fine summer air, fell peaceably asleep. Allan made love, and Miss Milroy
+sanctioned the manufacture of that occasionally precious article of
+human commerce, sublimely indifferent on both sides to a solemn bass
+accompaniment on two notes, played by the curate’s mother’s unsuspecting
+nose. The only interruption to the love-making (the snoring, being a
+thing more grave and permanent in its nature, was not interrupted at
+all) came at intervals from the carriage ahead. Not satisfied with
+having the major’s Roman encampment and the curate’s Infant Schools on
+his mind, Pedgift Junior rose erect from time to time in his place, and,
+respectfully hailing the hindmost vehicle, directed Allan’s attention,
+in a shrill tenor voice, and with an excellent choice of language,
+to objects of interest on the road. The only way to quiet him was to
+answer, which Allan invariably did by shouting back, “Yes, beautiful,”
+ upon which young Pedgift disappeared again in the recesses of the
+leading carriage, and took up the Romans and the Infants where he had
+left them last.
+
+The scene through which the picnic party was now passing merited far
+more attention than it received either from Allan or Allan’s friends.
+
+
+An hour’s steady driving from the major’s cottage had taken young
+Armadale and his guests beyond the limits of Midwinter’s solitary walk,
+and was now bringing them nearer and nearer to one of the strangest and
+loveliest aspects of nature which the inland landscape, not of Norfolk
+only, but of all England, can show. Little by little the face of the
+country began to change as the carriages approached the remote and
+lonely district of the Broads. The wheat fields and turnip fields became
+perceptibly fewer, and the fat green grazing grounds on either side grew
+wider and wider in their smooth and sweeping range. Heaps of dry rushes
+and reeds, laid up for the basket-maker and the thatcher, began to
+appear at the road-side. The old gabled cottages of the early part of
+the drive dwindled and disappeared, and huts with mud walls rose in
+their place. With the ancient church towers and the wind and water
+mills, which had hitherto been the only lofty objects seen over the
+low marshy flat, there now rose all round the horizon, gliding slow and
+distant behind fringes of pollard willows, the sails of invisible boats
+moving on invisible waters. All the strange and startling anomalies
+presented by an inland agricultural district, isolated from
+other districts by its intricate surrounding network of pools and
+streams--holding its communications and carrying its produce by water
+instead of by land--began to present themselves in closer and closer
+succession. Nets appeared on cottage pailings; little flat-bottomed
+boats lay strangely at rest among the flowers in cottage gardens;
+farmers’ men passed to and fro clad in composite costume of the coast
+and the field, in sailors’ hats, and fishermen’s boots, and plowmen’s
+smocks; and even yet the low-lying labyrinth of waters, embosomed in its
+mystery of solitude, was a hidden labyrinth still. A minute more, and
+the carriages took a sudden turn from the hard high-road into a little
+weedy lane. The wheels ran noiseless on the damp and spongy ground. A
+lonely outlying cottage appeared with its litter of nets and boats. A
+few yards further on, and the last morsel of firm earth suddenly ended
+in a tiny creek and quay. One turn more to the end of the quay--and
+there, spreading its great sheet of water, far and bright and smooth,
+on the right hand and the left--there, as pure in its spotless blue, as
+still in its heavenly peacefulness, as the summer sky above it, was the
+first of the Norfolk Broads.
+
+The carriages stopped, the love-making broke off, and the venerable Mrs.
+Pentecost, recovering the use of her senses at a moment’s notice, fixed
+her eyes sternly on Allan the instant she woke.
+
+“I see in your face, Mr. Armadale,” said the old lady, sharply, “that
+you think I have been asleep.”
+
+The consciousness of guilt acts differently on the two sexes. In nine
+cases out of ten, it is a much more manageable consciousness with a
+woman than with a man. All the confusion, on this occasion, was on
+the man’s side. While Allan reddened and looked embarrassed, the
+quick-witted Miss Milroy instantly embraced the old lady with a burst
+of innocent laughter. “He is quite incapable, dear Mrs. Pentecost,” said
+the little hypocrite, “of anything so ridiculous as thinking you have
+been asleep!”
+
+“All I wish Mr. Armadale to know,” pursued the old lady, still
+suspicious of Allan, “is, that my head being giddy, I am obliged to
+close my eyes in a carriage. Closing the eyes, Mr. Armadale, is one
+thing, and going to sleep is another. Where is my son?”
+
+The Reverend Samuel appeared silently at the carriage door, and assisted
+his mother to get out (“Did you enjoy the drive, Sammy?” asked the old
+lady. “Beautiful scenery, my dear, wasn’t it?”) Young Pedgift, on whom
+the arrangements for exploring the Broads devolved, hustled about,
+giving his orders to the boatman. Major Milroy, placid and patient, sat
+apart on an overturned punt, and privately looked at his watch. Was it
+past noon already? More than an hour past. For the first time, for many
+a long year, the famous clock at home had struck in an empty workshop.
+Time had lifted his wonderful scythe, and the corporal and his men had
+relieved guard, with no master’s eye to watch their performances, with
+no master’s hand to encourage them to do their best. The major sighed
+as he put his watch back in his pocket. “I’m afraid I’m too old for this
+sort of thing,” thought the good man, looking about him dreamily. “I
+don’t find I enjoy it as much as I thought I should. When are we going
+on the water, I wonder? Where’s Neelie?”
+
+Neelie--more properly Miss Milroy--was behind one of the carriages
+with the promoter of the picnic. They were immersed in the interesting
+subject of their own Christian names, and Allan was as near a pointblank
+proposal of marriage as it is well possible for a thoughtless young
+gentleman of two-and-twenty to be.
+
+“Tell me the truth,” said Miss Milroy, with her eyes modestly riveted on
+the ground. “When you first knew what my name was, you didn’t like it,
+did you?”
+
+“I like everything that belongs to you,” rejoined Allan, vigorously. “I
+think Eleanor is a beautiful name; and yet, I don’t know why, I think
+the major made an improvement when he changed it to Neelie.”
+
+“I can tell you why, Mr. Armadale,” said the major’s daughter, with
+great gravity. “There are some unfortunate people in this world whose
+names are--how can I express it?--whose names are misfits. Mine is a
+misfit. I don’t blame my parents, for of course it was impossible to
+know when I was a baby how I should grow up. But as things are, I and
+my name don’t fit each other. When you hear a young lady called Eleanor,
+you think of a tall, beautiful, interesting creature directly--the
+very opposite of _me_! With my personal appearance, Eleanor sounds
+ridiculous; and Neelie, as you yourself remarked, is just the thing. No!
+no! don’t say any more; I’m tired of the subject. I’ve got another
+name in my head, if we must speak of names, which is much better worth
+talking about than mine.”
+
+She stole a glance at her companion which said plainly enough, “The name
+is yours.” Allan advanced a step nearer to her, and lowered his voice,
+without the slightest necessity, to a mysterious whisper. Miss Milroy
+instantly resumed her investigation of the ground. She looked at it with
+such extraordinary interest that a geologist might have suspected her of
+scientific flirtation with the superficial strata.
+
+“What name are you thinking of?” asked Allan.
+
+Miss Milroy addressed her answer, in the form of a remark, to the
+superficial strata--and let them do what they liked with it, in their
+capacity of conductors of sound. “If I had been a man,” she said, “I
+should so like to have been called Allan!”
+
+She felt his eyes on her as she spoke, and, turning her head aside,
+became absorbed in the graining of the panel at the back of the
+carriage. “How beautiful it is!” she exclaimed, with a sudden outburst
+of interest in the vast subject of varnish. “I wonder how they do it?”
+
+Man persists, and woman yields. Allan declined to shift the ground from
+love-making to coach-making. Miss Milroy dropped the subject.
+
+“Call me by my name, if you really like it,” he whispered, persuasively.
+“Call me ‘Allan’ for once; just to try.”
+
+She hesitated with a heightened color and a charming smile, and shook
+her head. “I couldn’t just yet,” she answered, softly.
+
+“May I call you Neelie? Is it too soon?”
+
+She looked at him again, with a sudden disturbance about the bosom of
+her dress, and a sudden flash of tenderness in her dark-gray eyes.
+
+“You know best,” she said, faintly, in a whisper.
+
+The inevitable answer was on the tip of Allan’s tongue. At the very
+instant, however, when he opened his lips, the abhorrent high tenor of
+Pedgift Junior, shouting for “Mr. Armadale,” rang cheerfully through the
+quiet air. At the same moment, from the other side of the carriage, the
+lurid spectacles of the Reverend Samuel showed themselves officiously on
+the search; and the voice of the Reverend Samuel’s mother (who had, with
+great dexterity, put the two ideas of the presence of water and a sudden
+movement among the company together) inquired distractedly if anybody
+was drowned? Sentiment flies and Love shudders at all demonstrations of
+the noisy kind. Allan said: “Damn it,” and rejoined young Pedgift. Miss
+Milroy sighed, and took refuge with her father.
+
+“I’ve done it, Mr. Armadale!” cried young Pedgift, greeting his patron
+gayly. “We can all go on the water together; I’ve got the biggest boat
+on the Broads. The little skiffs,” he added, in a lower tone, as he led
+the way to the quay steps, “besides being ticklish and easily upset,
+won’t hold more than two, with the boatman; and the major told me he
+should feel it his duty to go with his daughter, if we all separated in
+different boats. I thought _that_ would hardly do, sir,” pursued Pedgift
+Junior, with a respectfully sly emphasis on the words. “And, besides, if
+we had put the old lady into a skiff, with her weight (sixteen stone if
+she’s a pound), we might have had her upside down in the water half her
+time, which would have occasioned delay, and thrown what you call a damp
+on the proceedings. Here’s the boat, Mr. Armadale. What do you think of
+it?”
+
+The boat added one more to the strangely anomalous objects which
+appeared at the Broads. It was nothing less than a stout old lifeboat,
+passing its last declining years on the smooth fresh water, after the
+stormy days of its youth time on the wild salt sea. A comfortable
+little cabin for the use of fowlers in the winter season had been built
+amidships, and a mast and sail adapted for inland navigation had been
+fitted forward. There was room enough and to spare for the guests,
+the dinner, and the three men in charge. Allan clapped his faithful
+lieutenant approvingly on the shoulder; and even Mrs. Pentecost,
+when the whole party were comfortably established on board, took a
+comparatively cheerful view of the prospects of the picnic. “If anything
+happens,” said the old lady, addressing the company generally, “there’s
+one comfort for all of us. My son can swim.”
+
+The boat floated out from the creek into the placid waters of the Broad,
+and the full beauty of the scene opened on the view.
+
+On the northward and westward, as the boat reached the middle of the
+lake, the shore lay clear and low in the sunshine, fringed darkly at
+certain points by rows of dwarf trees; and dotted here and there, in
+the opener spaces, with windmills and reed-thatched cottages, of puddled
+mud. Southward, the great sheet of water narrowed gradually to a little
+group of close-nestling islands which closed the prospect; while to the
+east a long, gently undulating line of reeds followed the windings of
+the Broad, and shut out all view of the watery wastes beyond. So clear
+and so light was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern
+quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer
+three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of
+the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the
+faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes
+of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow
+water. The world and the world’s turmoil seemed left behind forever
+on the land; the silence was the silence of enchantment--the delicious
+interflow of the soft purity of the sky and the bright tranquillity of
+the lake.
+
+Established in perfect comfort in the boat--the major and his daughter
+on one side, the curate and his mother on the other, and Allan and young
+Pedgift between the two--the water party floated smoothly toward the
+little nest of islands at the end of the Broad. Miss Milroy was in
+raptures; Allan was delighted; and the major for once forgot his clock.
+Every one felt pleasurably, in their different ways, the quiet and
+beauty of the scene. Mrs. Pentecost, in her way, felt it like a
+clairvoyant--with closed eyes.
+
+“Look behind you, Mr. Armadale,” whispered young Pedgift. “I think the
+parson’s beginning to enjoy himself.”
+
+An unwonted briskness--portentous apparently of coming speech--did
+certainly at that moment enliven the curate’s manner. He jerked his head
+from side to side like a bird; he cleared his throat, and clasped his
+hands, and looked with a gentle interest at the company. Getting into
+spirits seemed, in the case of this excellent person, to be alarmingly
+like getting into the pulpit.
+
+“Even in this scene of tranquillity,” said the Reverend Samuel, coming
+out softly with his first contribution to the society in the shape of
+a remark, “the Christian mind--led, so to speak, from one extreme to
+another--is forcibly recalled to the unstable nature of all earthly
+enjoyments. How if this calm should not last? How if the winds rose and
+the waters became agitated?”
+
+“You needn’t alarm yourself about that, sir,” said young Pedgift;
+“June’s the fine season here--and you can swim.”
+
+Mrs. Pentecost (mesmerically affected, in all probability, by the near
+neighborhood of her son) opened her eyes suddenly and asked, with her
+customary eagerness. “What does my boy say?”
+
+The Reverend Samuel repeated his words in the key that suited his
+mother’s infirmity. The old lady nodded in high approval, and pursued
+her son’s train of thought through the medium of a quotation.
+
+“Ah!” sighed Mrs. Pentecost, with infinite relish, “He rides the
+whirlwind, Sammy, and directs the storm!”
+
+“Noble words!” said the Reverend Samuel. “Noble and consoling words!”
+
+“I say,” whispered Allan, “if he goes on much longer in that way, what’s
+to be done?”
+
+“I told you, papa, it was a risk to ask them,” added Miss Milroy, in
+another whisper.
+
+“My dear!” remonstrated the major. “We knew nobody else in the
+neighborhood, and, as Mr. Armadale kindly suggested our bringing our
+friends, what could we do?”
+
+“We can’t upset the boat,” remarked young Pedgift, with sardonic
+gravity. “It’s a lifeboat, unfortunately. May I venture to suggest
+putting something into the reverend gentleman’s mouth, Mr. Armadale?
+It’s close on three o’clock. What do you say to ringing the dinner-bell,
+sir?”
+
+Never was the right man more entirely in the right place than Pedgift
+Junior at the picnic. In ten minutes more the boat was brought to a
+stand-still among the reeds; the Thorpe Ambrose hampers were unpacked
+on the roof of the cabin; and the current of the curate’s eloquence was
+checked for the day.
+
+How inestimably important in its moral results--and therefore how
+praiseworthy in itself--is the act of eating and drinking! The social
+virtues center in the stomach. A man who is not a better husband,
+father, and brother after dinner than before is, digestively speaking,
+an incurably vicious man. What hidden charms of character disclose
+themselves, what dormant amiabilities awaken, when our common humanity
+gathers together to pour out the gastric juice! At the opening of the
+hampers from Thorpe Ambrose, sweet Sociability (offspring of the happy
+union of Civilization and Mrs. Gripper) exhaled among the boating party,
+and melted in one friendly fusion the discordant elements of which that
+party had hitherto been composed. Now did the Reverend Samuel Pentecost,
+whose light had hitherto been hidden under a bushel, prove at last that
+he could do something by proving that he could eat. Now did Pedgift
+Junior shine brighter than ever he had shone yet in gems of caustic
+humor and exquisite fertilities of resource. Now did the squire, and the
+squire’s charming guest, prove the triple connection between Champagne
+that sparkles, Love that grows bolder, and Eyes whose vocabulary is
+without the word No. Now did cheerful old times come back to the major’s
+memory, and cheerful old stories not told for years find their way to
+the major’s lips. And now did Mrs. Pentecost, coming out wakefully
+in the whole force of her estimable maternal character, seize on a
+supplementary fork, and ply that useful instrument incessantly between
+the choicest morsels in the whole round of dishes, and the few vacant
+places left available on the Reverend Samuel’s plate. “Don’t laugh at my
+son,” cried the old lady, observing the merriment which her proceedings
+produced among the company. “It’s my fault, poor dear--_I_ make him
+eat!” And there are men in this world who, seeing virtues such as
+these developed at the table, as they are developed nowhere else, can,
+nevertheless, rank the glorious privilege of dining with the smallest
+of the diurnal personal worries which necessity imposes on mankind--with
+buttoning your waistcoat, for example, or lacing your stays! Trust no
+such monster as this with your tender secrets, your loves and hatreds,
+your hopes and fears. His heart is uncorrected by his stomach, and the
+social virtues are not in him.
+
+The last mellow hours of the day and the first cool breezes of the long
+summer evening had met before the dishes were all laid waste, and the
+bottles as empty as bottles should be. This point in the proceedings
+attained, the picnic party looked lazily at Pedgift Junior to know what
+was to be done next. That inexhaustible functionary was equal as ever to
+all the calls on him. He had a new amusement ready before the quickest
+of the company could so much as ask him what that amusement was to be.
+
+“Fond of music on the water, Miss Milroy?” he asked, in his airiest and
+pleasantest manner.
+
+Miss Milroy adored music, both on the water and the land--always
+excepting the one case when she was practicing the art herself on the
+piano at home.
+
+“We’ll get out of the reeds first,” said young Pedgift. He gave
+his orders to the boatmen, dived briskly into the little cabin, and
+reappeared with a concertina in his hand. “Neat, Miss Milroy, isn’t
+it?” he observed, pointing to his initials, inlaid on the instrument
+in mother-of-pearl. “My name’s Augustus, like my father’s. Some of my
+friends knock off the ‘A,’ and call me ‘Gustus Junior.’ A small joke
+goes a long way among friends, doesn’t it, Mr. Armadale? I sing a little
+to my own accompaniment, ladies and gentlemen; and, if quite agreeable,
+I shall be proud and happy to do my best.”
+
+“Stop!” cried Mrs. Pentecost; “I dote on music.”
+
+With this formidable announcement, the old lady opened a prodigious
+leather bag, from which she never parted night or day, and took out an
+ear-trumpet of the old-fashioned kind--something between a key-bugle and
+a French horn. “I don’t care to use the thing generally,” explained Mrs.
+Pentecost, “because I’m afraid of its making me deafer than ever. But
+I can’t and won’t miss the music. I dote on music. If you’ll hold the
+other end, Sammy, I’ll stick it in my ear. Neelie, my dear, tell him to
+begin.”
+
+Young Pedgift was troubled with no nervous hesitation. He began at once,
+not with songs of the light and modern kind, such as might have been
+expected from an amateur of his age and character, but with declamatory
+and patriotic bursts of poetry, set to the bold and blatant music which
+the people of England loved dearly at the earlier part of the present
+century, and which, whenever they can get it, they love dearly still.
+“The Death of Marmion,” “The Battle of the Baltic,” “The Bay of
+Biscay,” “Nelson,” under various vocal aspects, as exhibited by the
+late Braham--these were the songs in which the roaring concertina and
+strident tenor of Gustus Junior exulted together. “Tell me when you’re
+tired, ladies and gentlemen,” said the minstrel solicitor. “There’s no
+conceit about _me_. Will you have a little sentiment by way of variety?
+Shall I wind up with ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ and ‘Poor Mary Anne’?”
+
+Having favored his audience with those two cheerful melodies, young
+Pedgift respectfully requested the rest of the company to follow his
+vocal example in turn, offering, in every case, to play “a running
+accompaniment” impromptu, if the singer would only be so obliging as to
+favor him with the key-note.
+
+“Go on, somebody!” cried Mrs. Pentecost, eagerly. “I tell you again, I
+dote on music. We haven’t had half enough yet, have we, Sammy?”
+
+The Reverend Samuel made no reply. The unhappy man had reasons of his
+own--not exactly in his bosom, but a little lower--for remaining silent,
+in the midst of the general hilarity and the general applause. Alas for
+humanity! Even maternal love is alloyed with mortal fallibility. Owing
+much already to his excellent mother, the Reverend Samuel was now
+additionally indebted to her for a smart indigestion.
+
+Nobody, however, noticed as yet the signs and tokens of internal
+revolution in the curate’s face. Everybody was occupied in entreating
+everybody else to sing. Miss Milroy appealed to the founder of the
+feast. “Do sing something, Mr. Armadale,” she said; “I should so like to
+hear you!”
+
+“If you once begin, sir,” added the cheerful Pedgift, “you’ll find it
+get uncommonly easy as you go on. Music is a science which requires to
+be taken by the throat at starting.”
+
+“With all my heart,” said Allan, in his good-humored way. “I know lots
+of tunes, but the worst of it is, the words escape me. I wonder if I
+can remember one of Moore’s Melodies? My poor mother used to be fond of
+teaching me Moore’s Melodies when I was a boy.”
+
+“Whose melodies?” asked Mrs. Pentecost. “Moore’s? Aha! I know Tom Moore
+by heart.”
+
+“Perhaps in that case you will be good enough to help me, ma’am, if my
+memory breaks down,” rejoined Allan. “I’ll take the easiest melody in
+the whole collection, if you’ll allow me. Everybody knows it--‘Eveleen’s
+Bower.’”
+
+“I’m familiar, in a general sort of way, with the national melodies of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland,” said Pedgift Junior. “I’ll accompany
+you, sir, with the greatest pleasure. This is the sort of thing, I
+think.” He seated himself cross-legged on the roof of the cabin, and
+burst into a complicated musical improvisation wonderful to hear--a
+mixture of instrumental flourishes and groans; a jig corrected by a
+dirge, and a dirge enlivened by a jig. “That’s the sort of thing,” said
+young Pedgift, with his smile of supreme confidence. “Fire away, sir!”
+
+Mrs. Pentecost elevated her trumpet, and Allan elevated his voice.
+“Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower--” He stopped; the
+accompaniment stopped; the audience waited. “It’s a most extraordinary
+thing,” said Allan; “I thought I had the next line on the tip of my
+tongue, and it seems to have escaped me. I’ll begin again, if you have
+no objection. ‘Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower--’”
+
+“‘The lord of the valley with false vows came,’” said Mrs. Pentecost.
+
+“Thank you, ma’am,” said Allan. “Now I shall get on smoothly. ‘Oh, weep
+for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower, the lord of the valley with false
+vows came. The moon was shining bright--’”
+
+“No!” said Mrs. Pentecost.
+
+“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” remonstrated Allan. “‘The moon was shining
+bright--’”
+
+“The moon wasn’t doing anything of the kind,” said Mrs. Pentecost.
+
+Pedgift Junior, foreseeing a dispute, persevered _sotto voce_ with the
+accompaniment, in the interests of harmony.
+
+“Moore’s own words, ma’am,” said Allan, “in my mother’s copy of the
+Melodies.”
+
+“Your mother’s copy was wrong,” retorted Mrs. Pentecost. “Didn’t I tell
+you just now that I knew Tom Moore by heart?”
+
+Pedgift Junior’s peace-making concertina still flourished and groaned in
+the minor key.
+
+“Well, what _did_ the moon do?” asked Allan, in despair.
+
+“What the moon _ought_ to have done, sir, or Tom Moore wouldn’t have
+written it so,” rejoined Mrs. Pentecost. “‘The moon hid her light from
+the heaven that night, and wept behind her clouds o’er the maiden’s
+shame!’ I wish that young man would leave off playing,” added Mrs.
+Pentecost, venting her rising irritation on Gustus Junior. “I’ve had
+enough of him--he tickles my ears.”
+
+“Proud, I’m sure, ma’am,” said the unblushing Pedgift. “The whole
+science of music consists in tickling the ears.”
+
+“We seem to be drifting into a sort of argument,” remarked Major Milroy,
+placidly. “Wouldn’t it be better if Mr. Armadale went on with his song?”
+
+“Do go on, Mr. Armadale!” added the major’s daughter. “Do go on, Mr.
+Pedgift!”
+
+“One of them doesn’t know the words, and the other doesn’t know the
+music,” said Mrs. Pentecost. “Let them go on if they can!”
+
+“Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,” said Pedgift Junior; “I’m ready to go
+on myself to any extent. Now, Mr. Armadale!”
+
+Allan opened his lips to take up the unfinished melody where he had last
+left it. Before he could utter a note, the curate suddenly rose, with a
+ghastly face, and a hand pressed convulsively over the middle region of
+his waistcoat.
+
+“What’s the matter?” cried the whole boating party in chorus.
+
+“I am exceedingly unwell,” said the Reverend Samuel Pentecost. The boat
+was instantly in a state of confusion. “Eveleen’s Bower” expired on
+Allan’s lips, and even the irrepressible concertina of Pedgift
+was silenced at last. The alarm proved to be quite needless. Mrs.
+Pentecost’s son possessed a mother, and that mother had a bag. In
+two seconds the art of medicine occupied the place left vacant in the
+attention of the company by the art of music.
+
+“Rub it gently, Sammy,” said Mrs. Pentecost. “I’ll get out the bottles
+and give you a dose. It’s his poor stomach, major. Hold my trumpet,
+somebody--and stop the boat. You take that bottle, Neelie, my dear; and
+you take this one, Mr. Armadale; and give them to me as I want them.
+Ah, poor dear, I know what’s the matter with him! Want of power _here_,
+major--cold, acid, and flabby. Ginger to warm him; soda to correct him;
+sal volatile to hold him up. There, Sammy! drink it before it settles;
+and then go and lie down, my dear, in that dog-kennel of a place they
+call the cabin. No more music!” added Mrs. Pentecost, shaking her
+forefinger at the proprietor of the concertina--“unless it’s a hymn, and
+that I don’t object to.”
+
+Nobody appearing to be in a fit frame of mind for singing a hymn, the
+all-accomplished Pedgift drew upon his stores of local knowledge, and
+produced a new idea. The course of the boat was immediately changed
+under his direction. In a few minutes more, the company found themselves
+in a little island creek, with a lonely cottage at the far end of it,
+and a perfect forest of reeds closing the view all round them. “What do
+you say, ladies and gentlemen, to stepping on shore and seeing what a
+reed-cutter’s cottage looks like?” suggested young Pedgift.
+
+“We say yes, to be sure,” answered Allan. “I think our spirits have been
+a little dashed by Mr. Pentecost’s illness and Mrs. Pentecost’s bag,” he
+added, in a whisper to Miss Milroy. “A change of this sort is the very
+thing we want to set us all going again.”
+
+He and young Pedgift handed Miss Milroy out of the boat. The major
+followed. Mrs. Pentecost sat immovable as the Egyptian Sphinx, with her
+bag on her knees, mounting guard over “Sammy” in the cabin.
+
+“We must keep the fun going, sir,” said Allan, as he helped the major
+over the side of the boat. “We haven’t half done yet with the enjoyment
+of the day.”
+
+His voice seconded his hearty belief in his own prediction to such good
+purpose that even Mrs. Pentecost heard him, and ominously shook her
+head.
+
+“Ah!” sighed the curate’s mother, “if you were as old as I am, young
+gentleman, you wouldn’t feel quite so sure of the enjoyment of the day!”
+
+So, in rebuke of the rashness of youth, spoke the caution of age. The
+negative view is notoriously the safe view, all the world over, and the
+Pentecost philosophy is, as a necessary consequence, generally in the
+right.
+
+
+
+
+IX. FATE OR CHANCE?
+
+It was close on six o’clock when Allan and his friends left the boat,
+and the evening influence was creeping already, in its mystery and its
+stillness, over the watery solitude of the Broads.
+
+The shore in these wild regions was not like the shore elsewhere. Firm
+as it looked, the garden ground in front of the reed-cutter’s cottage
+was floating ground, that rose and fell and oozed into puddles under the
+pressure of the foot. The boatmen who guided the visitors warned them to
+keep to the path, and pointed through gaps in the reeds and pollards to
+grassy places, on which strangers would have walked confidently, where
+the crust of earth was not strong enough to bear the weight of a child
+over the unfathomed depths of slime and water beneath. The solitary
+cottage, built of planks pitched black, stood on ground that had been
+steadied and strengthened by resting it on piles. A little wooden tower
+rose at one end of the roof, and served as a lookout post in the
+fowling season. From this elevation the eye ranged far and wide over a
+wilderness of winding water and lonesome marsh. If the reed-cutter
+had lost his boat, he would have been as completely isolated from all
+communication with town or village as if his place of abode had been a
+light-vessel instead of a cottage. Neither he nor his family complained
+of their solitude, or looked in any way the rougher or the worse for it.
+His wife received the visitors hospitably, in a snug little room, with
+a raftered ceiling, and windows which looked like windows in a cabin on
+board ship. His wife’s father told stories of the famous days when the
+smugglers came up from the sea at night, rowing through the net-work of
+rivers with muffled oars till they gained the lonely Broads, and sank
+their spirit casks in the water, far from the coast-guard’s reach. His
+wild little children played at hide-and-seek with the visitors; and
+the visitors ranged in and out of the cottage, and round and round the
+morsel of firm earth on which it stood, surprised and delighted by the
+novelty of all they saw. The one person who noticed the advance of
+the evening--the one person who thought of the flying time and the
+stationary Pentecosts in the boat--was young Pedgift. That experienced
+pilot of the Broads looked askance at his watch, and drew Allan aside at
+the first opportunity.
+
+“I don’t wish to hurry you, Mr. Armadale,” said Pedgift Junior; “but the
+time is getting on, and there’s a lady in the case.”
+
+“A lady?” repeated Allan.
+
+“Yes, sir,” rejoined young Pedgift. “A lady from London; connected
+(if you’ll allow me to jog your memory) with a pony-chaise and white
+harness.”
+
+“Good heavens, the governess!” cried Allan. “Why, we have forgotten all
+about her!”
+
+“Don’t be alarmed, sir; there’s plenty of time, if we only get into
+the boat again. This is how it stands, Mr. Armadale. We settled, if
+you remember, to have the gypsy tea-making at the next ‘Broad’ to
+this--Hurle Mere?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Allan. “Hurle Mere is the place where my friend
+Midwinter has promised to come and meet us.”
+
+“Hurle Mere is where the governess will be, sir, if your coachman
+follows my directions,” pursued young Pedgift. “We have got nearly an
+hour’s punting to do, along the twists and turns of the narrow waters
+(which they call The Sounds here) between this and Hurle Mere; and
+according to my calculations we must get on board again in five minutes,
+if we are to be in time to meet the governess and to meet your friend.”
+
+“We mustn’t miss my friend on any account,” said Allan; “or the
+governess, either, of course. I’ll tell the major.”
+
+Major Milroy was at that moment preparing to mount the wooden
+watch-tower of the cottage to see the view. The ever useful Pedgift
+volunteered to go up with him, and rattle off all the necessary local
+explanations in half the time which the reed-cutter would occupy in
+describing his own neighborhood to a stranger.
+
+Allan remained standing in front of the cottage, more quiet and more
+thoughtful than usual. His interview with young Pedgift had brought his
+absent friend to his memory for the first time since the picnic party
+had started. He was surprised that Midwinter, so much in his thoughts on
+all other occasions, should have been so long out of his thoughts now.
+Something troubled him, like a sense of self-reproach, as his mind
+reverted to the faithful friend at home, toiling hard over the steward’s
+books, in his interests and for his sake. “Dear old fellow,” thought
+Allan, “I shall be so glad to see him at the Mere; the day’s pleasure
+won’t be complete till he joins us!”
+
+“Should I be right or wrong, Mr. Armadale, if I guessed that you were
+thinking of somebody?” asked a voice, softly, behind him.
+
+Allan turned, and found the major’s daughter at his side. Miss Milroy
+(not unmindful of a certain tender interview which had taken place
+behind a carriage) had noticed her admirer standing thoughtfully by
+himself, and had determined on giving him another opportunity, while her
+father and young Pedgift were at the top of the watch-tower.
+
+“You know everything,” said Allan, smiling. “I _was_ thinking of
+somebody.”
+
+Miss Milroy stole a glance at him--a glance of gentle encouragement.
+There could be but one human creature in Mr. Armadale’s mind after what
+had passed between them that morning! It would be only an act of mercy
+to take him back again at once to the interrupted conversation of a few
+hours since on the subject of names.
+
+“I have been thinking of somebody, too,” she said, half-inviting,
+half-repelling the coming avowal. “If I tell you the first letter of my
+Somebody’s name, will you tell me the first letter of yours?”
+
+“I will tell you anything you like,” rejoined Allan, with the utmost
+enthusiasm.
+
+She still shrank coquettishly from the very subject that she wanted to
+approach. “Tell me your letter first,” she said, in low tones, looking
+away from him.
+
+Allan laughed. “M,” he said, “is my first letter.”
+
+She started a little. Strange that he should be thinking of her by her
+surname instead of her Christian name; but it mattered little as long as
+he _was_ thinking of her.
+
+“What is your letter?” asked Allan.
+
+She blushed and smiled. “A--if you will have it!” she answered, in a
+reluctant little whisper. She stole another look at him, and luxuriously
+protracted her enjoyment of the coming avowal once more. “How many
+syllables is the name in?” she asked, drawing patterns shyly on the
+ground with the end of the parasol.
+
+No man with the slightest knowledge of the sex would have been rash
+enough, in Allan’s position, to tell her the truth. Allan, who knew
+nothing whatever of woman’s natures, and who told the truth right
+and left in all mortal emergencies, answered as if he had been under
+examination in a court of justice.
+
+“It’s a name in three syllables,” he said.
+
+Miss Milroy’s downcast eyes flashed up at him like lightning. “Three!”
+ she repeated in the blankest astonishment.
+
+Allan was too inveterately straightforward to take the warning even now.
+“I’m not strong at my spelling, I know,” he said, with his lighthearted
+laugh. “But I don’t think I’m wrong, in calling Midwinter a name
+in three syllables. I was thinking of my friend; but never mind my
+thoughts. Tell me who A is--tell me whom _you_ were thinking of?”
+
+“Of the first letter of the alphabet, Mr. Armadale, and I beg positively
+to inform you of nothing more!”
+
+With that annihilating answer the major’s daughter put up her parasol
+and walked back by herself to the boat.
+
+Allan stood petrified with amazement. If Miss Milroy had actually boxed
+his ears (and there is no denying that she had privately longed to
+devote her hand to that purpose), he could hardly have felt more
+bewildered than he felt now. “What on earth have I done?” he asked
+himself, helplessly, as the major and young Pedgift joined him, and the
+three walked down together to the water-side. “I wonder what she’ll say
+to me next?”
+
+She said absolutely nothing; she never so much as looked at Allan when
+he took his place in the boat. There she sat, with her eyes and her
+complexion both much brighter than usual, taking the deepest interest in
+the curate’s progress toward recovery; in the state of Mrs. Pentecost’s
+spirits; in Pedgift Junior (for whom she ostentatiously made room
+enough to let him sit beside her); in the scenery and the reed-cutter’s
+cottage; in everybody and everything but Allan--whom she would have
+married with the greatest pleasure five minutes since. “I’ll never
+forgive him,” thought the major’s daughter. “To be thinking of that
+ill-bred wretch when I was thinking of _him_; and to make me all but
+confess it before I found him out! Thank Heaven, Mr. Pedgift is in the
+boat!”
+
+In this frame of mind Miss Neelie applied herself forthwith to the
+fascination of Pedgift and the discomfiture of Allan. “Oh, Mr. Pedgift,
+how extremely clever and kind of you to think of showing us that sweet
+cottage! Lonely, Mr. Armadale? I don’t think it’s lonely at all; I
+should like of all things to live there. What would this picnic have
+been without you, Mr. Pedgift; you can’t think how I have enjoyed it
+since we got into the boat. Cool, Mr. Armadale? What can you possibly
+mean by saying it’s cool; it’s the warmest evening we’ve had this
+summer. And the music, Mr. Pedgift; how nice it was of you to bring your
+concertina! I wonder if I could accompany you on the piano? I would so
+like to try. Oh, yes, Mr. Armadale, no doubt you meant to do something
+musical, too, and I dare say you sing very well when you know the words;
+but, to tell you the truth, I always did, and always shall, hate Moore’s
+Melodies!”
+
+Thus, with merciless dexterity of manipulation, did Miss Milroy work
+that sharpest female weapon of offense, the tongue; and thus she would
+have used it for some time longer, if Allan had only shown the necessary
+jealousy, or if Pedgift had only afforded the necessary encouragement.
+But adverse fortune had decreed that she should select for her victims
+two men essentially unassailable under existing circumstances. Allan was
+too innocent of all knowledge of female subtleties and susceptibilities
+to understand anything, except that the charming Neelie was unreasonably
+out of temper with him without the slightest cause. The wary Pedgift,
+as became one of the quick-witted youth of the present generation,
+submitted to female influence, with his eye fixed immovably all the time
+on his own interests. Many a young man of the past generation, who was
+no fool, has sacrificed everything for love. Not one young man in ten
+thousand of the present generation, _except_ the fools, has sacrificed a
+half-penny. The daughters of Eve still inherit their mother’s merits
+and commit their mother’s faults. But the sons of Adam, in these latter
+days, are men who would have handed the famous apple back with a bow,
+and a “Thanks, no; it might get me into a scrape.” When Allan--surprised
+and disappointed--moved away out of Miss Milroy’s reach to the forward
+part of the boat, Pedgift Junior rose and followed him. “You’re a very
+nice girl,” thought this shrewdly sensible young man; “but a client’s a
+client; and I am sorry to inform you, miss, it won’t do.” He set himself
+at once to rouse Allan’s spirits by diverting his attention to a new
+subject. There was to be a regatta that autumn on one of the Broads, and
+his client’s opinion as a yachtsman might be valuable to the committee.
+“Something new, I should think, to you, sir, in a sailing match on fresh
+water?” he said, in his most ingratiatory manner. And Allan, instantly
+interested, answered, “Quite new. Do tell me about it!”
+
+As for the rest of the party at the other end of the boat, they were in
+a fair way to confirm Mrs. Pentecost’s doubts whether the hilarity of
+the picnic would last the day out. Poor Neelie’s natural feeling of
+irritation under the disappointment which Allan’s awkwardness had
+inflicted on her was now exasperated into silent and settled resentment
+by her own keen sense of humiliation and defeat. The major had relapsed
+into his habitually dreamy, absent manner; his mind was turning
+monotonously with the wheels of his clock. The curate still secluded his
+indigestion from public view in the innermost recesses of the cabin; and
+the curate’s mother, with a second dose ready at a moment’s notice,
+sat on guard at the door. Women of Mrs. Pentecost’s age and character
+generally enjoy their own bad spirits. “This,” sighed the old lady,
+wagging her head with a smile of sour satisfaction “is what you call
+a day’s pleasure, is it? Ah, what fools we all were to leave our
+comfortable homes!”
+
+Meanwhile the boat floated smoothly along the windings of the watery
+labyrinth which lay between the two Broads. The view on either side was
+now limited to nothing but interminable rows of reeds. Not a sound was
+heard, far or near; not so much as a glimpse of cultivated or inhabited
+land appeared anywhere. “A trifle dreary hereabouts, Mr. Armadale,” said
+the ever-cheerful Pedgift. “But we are just out of it now. Look ahead,
+sir! Here we are at Hurle Mere.”
+
+The reeds opened back on the right hand and the left, and the boat
+glided suddenly into the wide circle of a pool. Round the nearer half
+of the circle, the eternal reeds still fringed the margin of the water.
+Round the further half, the land appeared again, here rolling back from
+the pool in desolate sand-hills, there rising above it in a sweep of
+grassy shore. At one point the ground was occupied by a plantation, and
+at another by the out-buildings of a lonely old red brick house, with
+a strip of by-road near, that skirted the garden wall and ended at the
+pool. The sun was sinking in the clear heaven, and the water, where the
+sun’s reflection failed to tinge it, was beginning to look black and
+cold. The solitude that had been soothing, the silence that had felt
+like an enchantment, on the other Broad, in the day’s vigorous prime,
+was a solitude that saddened here--a silence that struck cold, in the
+stillness and melancholy of the day’s decline.
+
+The course of the boat was directed across the Mere to a creek in the
+grassy shore. One or two of the little flat-bottomed punts peculiar
+to the Broads lay in the creek; and the reed cutters to whom the punts
+belonged, surprised at the appearance of strangers, came out, staring
+silently, from behind an angle of the old garden wall. Not another sign
+of life was visible anywhere. No pony-chaise had been seen by the reed
+cutters; no stranger, either man or woman, had approached the shores of
+Hurle Mere that day.
+
+Young Pedgift took another look at his watch, and addressed himself to
+Miss Milroy. “You may, or may not, see the governess when you get back
+to Thorpe Ambrose,” he said; “but, as the time stands now, you won’t
+see her here. You know best, Mr. Armadale,” he added, turning to Allan,
+“whether your friend is to be depended on to keep his appointment?”
+
+“I am certain he is to be depended on,” replied Allan, looking about
+him--in unconcealed disappointment at Midwinter’s absence.
+
+“Very good,” pursued Pedgift Junior. “If we light the fire for our gypsy
+tea-making on the open ground there, your friend may find us out, sir,
+by the smoke. That’s the Indian dodge for picking up a lost man on the
+prairie, Miss Milroy and it’s pretty nearly wild enough (isn’t it?) to
+be a prairie here!”
+
+There are some temptations--principally those of the smaller kind--which
+it is not in the defensive capacity of female human nature to resist.
+The temptation to direct the whole force of her influence, as the
+one young lady of the party, toward the instant overthrow of Allan’s
+arrangement for meeting his friend, was too much for the major’s
+daughter. She turned on the smiling Pedgift with a look which ought to
+have overwhelmed him. But who ever overwhelmed a solicitor?
+
+“I think it’s the most lonely, dreary, hideous place I ever saw in my
+life!” said Miss Neelie. “If you insist on making tea here, Mr. Pedgift,
+don’t make any for me. No! I shall stop in the boat; and, though I am
+absolutely dying with thirst, I shall touch nothing till we get back
+again to the other Broad!”
+
+The major opened his lips to remonstrate. To his daughter’s infinite
+delight, Mrs. Pentecost rose from her seat before he could say a word,
+and, after surveying the whole landward prospect, and seeing nothing
+in the shape of a vehicle anywhere, asked indignantly whether they
+were going all the way back again to the place where they had left the
+carriages in the middle of the day. On ascertaining that this was,
+in fact, the arrangement proposed, and that, from the nature of the
+country, the carriages could not have been ordered round to Hurle Mere
+without, in the first instance, sending them the whole of the way back
+to Thorpe Ambrose, Mrs. Pentecost (speaking in her son’s interests)
+instantly declared that no earthly power should induce her to be out
+on the water after dark. “Call me a boat!” cried the old lady, in great
+agitation. “Wherever there’s water, there’s a night mist, and wherever
+there’s a night mist, my son Samuel catches cold. Don’t talk to _me_
+about your moonlight and your tea-making--you’re all mad! Hi! you two
+men there!” cried Mrs. Pentecost, hailing the silent reed cutters on
+shore. “Sixpence apiece for you, if you’ll take me and my son back in
+your boat!”
+
+Before young Pedgift could interfere, Allan himself settled the
+difficulty this time, with perfect patience and good temper.
+
+“I can’t think, Mrs. Pentecost, of your going back in any boat but the
+boat you have come out in,” he said. “There is not the least need (as
+you and Miss Milroy don’t like the place) for anybody to go on shore
+here but me. I _must_ go on shore. My friend Midwinter never broke his
+promise to me yet; and I can’t consent to leave Hurle Mere as long as
+there is a chance of his keeping his appointment. But there’s not the
+least reason in the world why I should stand in the way on that account.
+You have the major and Mr. Pedgift to take care of you; and you can get
+back to the carriages before dark, if you go at once. I will wait here,
+and give my friend half an hour more, and then I can follow you in one
+of the reed-cutters’ boats.”
+
+“That’s the most sensible thing, Mr. Armadale, you’ve said to-day,”
+ remarked Mrs. Pentecost, seating herself again in a violent hurry
+
+“Tell them to be quick!” cried the old lady, shaking her fist at the
+boatmen. “Tell them to be quick!”
+
+Allan gave the necessary directions, and stepped on shore. The wary
+Pedgift (sticking fast to his client) tried to follow.
+
+“We can’t leave you here alone, sir,” he said, protesting eagerly in
+a whisper. “Let the major take care of the ladies, and let me keep you
+company at the Mere.”
+
+“No, no!” said Allan, pressing him back. “They’re all in low spirits on
+board. If you want to be of service to me, stop like a good fellow where
+you are, and do your best to keep the thing going.”
+
+He waved his hand, and the men pushed the boat off from the shore. The
+others all waved their hands in return except the major’s daughter, who
+sat apart from the rest, with her face hidden under her parasol. The
+tears stood thick in Neelie’s eyes. Her last angry feeling against Allan
+died out, and her heart went back to him penitently the moment he left
+the boat. “How good he is to us all!” she thought, “and what a wretch I
+am!” She got up with every generous impulse in her nature urging her to
+make atonement to him. She got up, reckless of appearances and looked
+after him with eager eyes and flushed checks, as he stood alone on
+the shore. “Don’t be long, Mr. Armadale!” she said, with a desperate
+disregard of what the rest of the company thought of her.
+
+The boat was already far out in the water, and with all Neelie’s
+resolution the words were spoken in a faint little voice, which failed
+to reach Allan’s ears. The one sound he heard, as the boat gained the
+opposite extremity of the Mere, and disappeared slowly among the reeds,
+was the sound of the concertina. The indefatigable Pedgift was keeping
+things going--evidently under the auspices of Mrs. Pentecost--by
+performing a sacred melody.
+
+Left by himself, Allan lit a cigar, and took a turn backward and forward
+on the shore. “She might have said a word to me at parting!” he thought.
+“I’ve done everything for the best; I’ve as good as told her how fond
+of her I am, and this is the way she treats me!” He stopped, and stood
+looking absently at the sinking sun, and the fast-darkening waters
+of the Mere. Some inscrutable influence in the scene forced its way
+stealthily into his mind, and diverted his thoughts from Miss Milroy to
+his absent friend. He started, and looked about him.
+
+The reed-cutters had gone back to their retreat behind the angle of the
+wall, not a living creature was visible, not a sound rose anywhere along
+the dreary shore. Even Allan’s spirits began to get depressed. It was
+nearly an hour after the time when Midwinter had promised to be at Hurle
+Mere. He had himself arranged to walk to the pool (with a stable-boy
+from Thorpe Ambrose as his guide), by lanes and footpaths which
+shortened the distance by the road. The boy knew the country well, and
+Midwinter was habitually punctual at all his appointments. Had anything
+gone wrong at Thorpe Ambrose? Had some accident happened on the way?
+Determined to remain no longer doubting and idling by himself, Allan
+made up his mind to walk inland from the Mere, on the chance of meeting
+his friend. He went round at once to the angle in the wall, and asked
+one of the reedcutters to show him the footpath to Thorpe Ambrose.
+
+The man led him away from the road, and pointed to a barely perceptible
+break in the outer trees of the plantation. After pausing for one more
+useless look around him, Allan turned his back on the Mere and made for
+the trees.
+
+For a few paces, the path ran straight through the plantation. Thence it
+took a sudden turn; and the water and the open country became both lost
+to view. Allan steadily followed the grassy track before him, seeing
+nothing and hearing nothing, until he came to another winding of the
+path. Turning in the new direction, he saw dimly a human figure sitting
+alone at the foot of one of the trees. Two steps nearer were enough
+to make the figure familiar to him. “Midwinter!” he exclaimed, in
+astonishment. “This is not the place where I was to meet you! What are
+you waiting for here?”
+
+Midwinter rose, without answering. The evening dimness among the trees,
+which obscured his face, made his silence doubly perplexing.
+
+Allan went on eagerly questioning him. “Did you come here by yourself?”
+ he asked. “I thought the boy was to guide you?”
+
+This time Midwinter answered. “When we got as far as these trees,” he
+said, “I sent the boy back. He told me I was close to the place, and
+couldn’t miss it.”
+
+“What made you stop here when he left you?” reiterated Allan. “Why
+didn’t you walk on?”
+
+“Don’t despise me,” answered the other. “I hadn’t the courage!”
+
+“Not the courage?” repeated Allan. He paused a moment. “Oh, I know!” he
+resumed, putting his hand gayly on Midwinter’s shoulder. “You’re still
+shy of the Milroys. What nonsense, when I told you myself that your
+peace was made at the cottage!”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking, Allan, of your friends at the cottage. The truth is,
+I’m hardly myself to-day. I am ill and unnerved; trifles startle me.”
+ He stopped, and shrank away, under the anxious scrutiny of Allan’s eyes.
+“If you _will_ have it,” he burst out, abruptly, “the horror of that
+night on board the Wreck has got me again; there’s a dreadful oppression
+on my head; there’s a dreadful sinking at my heart. I am afraid of
+something happening to us, if we don’t part before the day is out. I
+can’t break my promise to you; for God’s sake, release me from it, and
+let me go back!”
+
+Remonstrance, to any one who knew Midwinter, was plainly useless at that
+moment. Allan humored him. “Come out of this dark, airless place,” he
+said, “and we will talk about it. The water and the open sky are within
+a stone’s throw of us. I hate a wood in the evening; it even gives _me_
+the horrors. You have been working too hard over the steward’s books.
+Come and breathe freely in the blessed open air.”
+
+Midwinter stopped, considered for a moment, and suddenly submitted.
+
+“You’re right,” he said, “and I’m wrong, as usual. I’m wasting time and
+distressing you to no purpose. What folly to ask you to let me go back!
+Suppose you had said yes?”
+
+“Well?” asked Allan.
+
+“Well,” repeated Midwinter, “something would have happened at the first
+step to stop me, that’s all. Come on.”
+
+They walked together in silence on the way to the Mere.
+
+At the last turn in the path Allan’s cigar went out. While he stopped
+to light it again, Midwinter walked on before him, and was the first to
+come in sight of the open ground.
+
+Allan had just kindled the match, when, to his surprise, his friend came
+back to him round the turn in the path. There was light enough to show
+objects more clearly in this part of the plantation. The match, as
+Midwinter faced him, dropped on the instant from Allan’s hand.
+
+“Good God!” he cried, starting back, “you look as you looked on board
+the Wreck!”
+
+Midwinter held up his band for silence. He spoke with his wild eyes
+riveted on Allan’s face, with his white lips close at Allan’s ear.
+
+“You remember how I _looked_,” he answered, in a whisper. “Do you
+remember what I _said_ when you and the doctor were talking of the
+Dream?”
+
+“I have forgotten the Dream,” said Allan.
+
+As he made that answer, Midwinter took his hand, and led him round the
+last turn in the path.
+
+“Do you remember it now?” he asked, and pointed to the Mere.
+
+The sun was sinking in the cloudless westward heaven. The waters of
+the Mere lay beneath, tinged red by the dying light. The open country
+stretched away, darkening drearily already on the right hand and the
+left. And on the near margin of the pool, where all had been solitude
+before, there now stood, fronting the sunset, the figure of a woman.
+
+The two Armadales stood together in silence, and looked at the lonely
+figure and the dreary view.
+
+Midwinter was the first to speak.
+
+“Your own eyes have seen it,” he said. “Now look at our own words.”
+
+He opened the narrative of the Dream, and held it under Allan’s eyes.
+His finger pointed to the lines which recorded the first Vision; his
+voice, sinking lower and lower, repeated the words:
+
+
+“The sense came to me of being left alone in the darkness.
+
+“I waited.
+
+“The darkness opened, and showed me the vision--as in a picture--of a
+broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the further margin
+of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of
+sunset.
+
+“On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a Woman.”
+
+He ceased, and let the hand which held the manuscript drop to his side.
+The other hand pointed to the lonely figure, standing with its back
+turned on them, fronting the setting sun.
+
+“There,” he said, “stands the living Woman, in the Shadow’s place! There
+speaks the first of the dream warnings to you and to me! Let the future
+time find us still together, and the second figure that stands in the
+Shadow’s place will be Mine.”
+
+Even Allan was silenced by the terrible certainty of conviction with
+which he spoke.
+
+In the pause that followed, the figure at the pool moved, and walked
+slowly away round the margin of the shore. Allan stepped out beyond the
+last of the trees, and gained a wider view of the open ground. The first
+object that met his eyes was the pony-chaise from Thorpe Ambrose.
+
+He turned back to Midwinter with a laugh of relief. “What nonsense have
+you been talking!” he said. “And what nonsense have I been listening to!
+It’s the governess at last.”
+
+Midwinter made no reply. Allan took him by the arm, and tried to lead
+him on. He released himself suddenly, and seized Allan with both hands,
+holding him back from the figure at the pool, as he had held him back
+from the cabin door on the deck of the timber ship. Once again the
+effort was in vain. Once again Allan broke away as easily as he had
+broken away in the past time.
+
+“One of us must speak to her,” he said. “And if you won’t, I will.”
+
+He had only advanced a few steps toward the Mere, when he heard, or
+thought he heard, a voice faintly calling after him, once and once only,
+the word Farewell. He stopped, with a feeling of uneasy surprise, and
+looked round.
+
+“Was that you, Midwinter?” he asked.
+
+There was no answer. After hesitating a moment more, Allan returned to
+the plantation. Midwinter was gone.
+
+He looked back at the pool, doubtful in the new emergency what to do
+next. The lonely figure had altered its course in the interval; it had
+turned, and was advancing toward the trees. Allan had been evidently
+either heard or seen. It was impossible to leave a woman unbefriended,
+in that helpless position and in that solitary place. For the second
+time Allan went out from the trees to meet her.
+
+As he came within sight of her face, he stopped in ungovernable
+astonishment. The sudden revelation of her beauty, as she smiled and
+looked at him inquiringly, suspended the movement in his limbs and the
+words on his lips. A vague doubt beset him whether it was the governess,
+after all.
+
+He roused himself, and, advancing a few paces, mentioned his name. “May
+I ask,” he added, “if I have the pleasure--?”
+
+The lady met him easily and gracefully half-way. “Major Milroy’s
+governess,” she said. “Miss Gwilt.”
+
+
+
+
+X. THE HOUSE-MAID’S FACE.
+
+All was quiet at Thorpe Ambrose. The hall was solitary, the rooms were
+dark. The servants, waiting for the supper hour in the garden at the
+back of the house, looked up at the clear heaven and the rising moon,
+and agreed that there was little prospect of the return of the picnic
+party until later in the night. The general opinion, led by the high
+authority of the cook, predicted that they might all sit down to supper
+without the least fear of being disturbed by the bell. Having arrived at
+this conclusion, the servants assembled round the table, and exactly at
+the moment when they sat down the bell rang.
+
+The footman, wondering, went up stairs to open the door, and found to
+his astonishment Midwinter waiting alone on the threshold, and looking
+(in the servant’s opinion) miserably ill. He asked for a light, and,
+saying he wanted nothing else, withdrew at once to his room. The footman
+went back to his fellow-servants, and reported that something had
+certainly happened to his master’s friend.
+
+On entering his room, Midwinter closed the door, and hurriedly filled a
+bag with the necessaries for traveling. This done, he took from a
+locked drawer, and placed in the breast pocket of his coat, some little
+presents which Allan had given him--a cigar case, a purse, and a set
+of studs in plain gold. Having possessed himself of these memorials, he
+snatched up the bag and laid his hand on the door. There, for the first
+time, he paused. There, the headlong haste of all his actions thus far
+suddenly ceased, and the hard despair in his face began to soften: he
+waited, with the door in his hand.
+
+Up to that moment he had been conscious of but one motive that animated
+him, but one purpose that he was resolute to achieve. “For Allan’s
+sake!” he had said to himself, when he looked back toward the fatal
+landscape and saw his friend leaving him to meet the woman at the pool.
+“For Allan’s sake!” he had said again, when he crossed the open country
+beyond the wood, and saw afar, in the gray twilight, the long line of
+embankment and the distant glimmer of the railway lamps beckoning him
+away already to the iron road.
+
+It was only when he now paused before he closed the door behind him--it
+was only when his own impetuous rapidity of action came for the first
+time to a check, that the nobler nature of the man rose in protest
+against the superstitious despair which was hurrying him from all that
+he held dear. His conviction of the terrible necessity of leaving Allan
+for Allan’s good had not been shaken for an instant since he had seen
+the first Vision of the Dream realized on the shores of the Mere. But
+now, for the first time, his own heart rose against him in unanswerable
+rebuke. “Go, if you must and will! but remember the time when you were
+ill, and he sat by your bedside; friendless, and he opened his heart to
+you--and write, if you fear to speak; write and ask him to forgive you,
+before you leave him forever!”
+
+The half-opened door closed again softly. Midwinter sat down at the
+writing-table and took up the pen.
+
+He tried again and again, and yet again, to write the farewell words;
+he tried, till the floor all round him was littered with torn sheets of
+paper. Turn from them which way he would, the old times still came back
+and faced him reproachfully. The spacious bed-chamber in which he
+sat, narrowed, in spite of him, to the sick usher’s garret at the
+west-country inn. The kind hand that had once patted him on the
+shoulder touched him again; the kind voice that had cheered him spoke
+unchangeably in the old friendly tones. He flung his arms on the table
+and dropped his head on them in tearless despair. The parting words
+that his tongue was powerless to utter his pen was powerless to write.
+Mercilessly in earnest, his superstition pointed to him to go while the
+time was his own. Mercilessly in earnest, his love for Allan held him
+back till the farewell plea for pardon and pity was written.
+
+He rose with a sudden resolution, and rang for the servant, “When Mr.
+Armadale returns,” he said, “ask him to excuse my coming downstairs, and
+say that I am trying to get to sleep.” He locked the door and put out
+the light, and sat down alone in the darkness. “The night will keep us
+apart,” he said; “and time may help me to write. I may go in the early
+morning; I may go while--” The thought died in him uncompleted; and
+the sharp agony of the struggle forced to his lips the first cry of
+suffering that had escaped him yet.
+
+He waited in the darkness.
+
+As the time stole on, his senses remained mechanically awake, but his
+mind began to sink slowly under the heavy strain that had now been laid
+on it for some hours past. A dull vacancy possessed him; he made no
+attempt to kindle the light and write once more. He never started; he
+never moved to the open window, when the first sound of approaching
+wheels broke in on the silence of the night. He heard the carriages draw
+up at the door; he heard the horses champing their bits; he heard the
+voices of Allan and young Pedgift on the steps; and still he sat quiet
+in the darkness, and still no interest was aroused in him by the sounds
+that reached his ear from outside.
+
+The voices remained audible after the carriages had been driven away;
+the two young men were evidently lingering on the steps before they took
+leave of each other. Every word they said reached Midwinter through the
+open window. Their one subject of conversation was the new governess.
+Allan’s voice was loud in her praise. He had never passed such an hour
+of delight in his life as the hour he had spent with Miss Gwilt in the
+boat, on the way from Hurle Mere to the picnic party waiting at the
+other Broad. Agreeing, on his side, with all that his client said in
+praise of the charming stranger, young Pedgift appeared to treat the
+subject, when it fell into his hands, from a different point of view.
+Miss Gwilt’s attractions had not so entirely absorbed his attention as
+to prevent him from noticing the impression which the new governess had
+produced on her employer and her pupil.
+
+“There’s a screw loose somewhere, sir, in Major Milroy’s family,”
+ said the voice of young Pedgift. “Did you notice how the major and his
+daughter looked when Miss Gwilt made her excuses for being late at the
+Mere? You don’t remember? Do you remember what Miss Gwilt said?”
+
+“Something about Mrs. Milroy, wasn’t it?” Allan rejoined.
+
+Young Pedgift’s voice dropped mysteriously a note lower.
+
+“Miss Gwilt reached the cottage this afternoon, sir, at the time when I
+told you she would reach it, and she would have joined us at the time I
+told you she would come, but for Mrs. Milroy. Mrs. Milroy sent for her
+upstairs as soon as she entered the house, and kept her upstairs a good
+half-hour and more. That was Miss Gwilt’s excuse, Mr. Armadale, for
+being late at the Mere.”
+
+“Well, and what then?”
+
+“You seem to forget, sir, what the whole neighborhood has heard about
+Mrs. Milroy ever since the major first settled among us. We have all
+been told, on the doctor’s own authority, that she is too great a
+sufferer to see strangers. Isn’t it a little odd that she should have
+suddenly turned out well enough to see Miss Gwilt (in her husband’s
+absence) the moment Miss Gwilt entered the house?”
+
+“Not a bit of it! Of course she was anxious to make acquaintance with
+her daughter’s governess.”
+
+“Likely enough, Mr. Armadale. But the major and Miss Neelie don’t see it
+in that light, at any rate. I had my eye on them both when the governess
+told them that Mrs. Milroy had sent for her. If ever I saw a girl look
+thoroughly frightened, Miss Milroy was that girl; and (if I may be
+allowed, in the strictest confidence, to libel a gallant soldier) I
+should say that the major himself was much in the same condition. Take
+my word for it, sir, there’s something wrong upstairs in that pretty
+cottage of yours; and Miss Gwilt is mixed up in it already!”
+
+There was a minute of silence. When the voices were next heard by
+Midwinter, they were further away from the house--Allan was probably
+accompanying young Pedgift a few steps on his way back.
+
+After a while, Allan’s voice was audible once more under the portico,
+making inquiries after his friend; answered by the servant’s voice
+giving Midwinter’s message. This brief interruption over, the silence
+was not broken again till the time came for shutting up the house. The
+servants’ footsteps passing to and fro, the clang of closing doors,
+the barking of a disturbed dog in the stable-yard--these sounds warned
+Midwinter it was getting late. He rose mechanically to kindle a light.
+But his head was giddy, his hand trembled; he laid aside the match-box,
+and returned to his chair. The conversation between Allan and young
+Pedgift had ceased to occupy his attention the instant he ceased to
+hear it; and now again, the sense that the precious time was failing him
+became a lost sense as soon as the house noises which had awakened it
+had passed away. His energies of body and mind were both alike worn out;
+he waited with a stolid resignation for the trouble that was to come to
+him with the coming day.
+
+An interval passed, and the silence was once more disturbed by voices
+outside; the voices of a man and a woman this time. The first few
+words exchanged between them indicated plainly enough a meeting of the
+clandestine kind; and revealed the man as one of the servants at Thorpe
+Ambrose, and the woman as one of the servants at the cottage.
+
+Here again, after the first greetings were over, the subject of the new
+governess became the all-absorbing subject of conversation.
+
+The major’s servant was brimful of forebodings (inspired solely by
+Miss Gwilt’s good looks) which she poured out irrepressibly on her
+“sweetheart,” try as he might to divert her to other topics. Sooner or
+later, let him mark her words, there would be an awful “upset” at the
+cottage. Her master, it might be mentioned in confidence, led a dreadful
+life with her mistress. The major was the best of men; he hadn’t a
+thought in his heart beyond his daughter and his everlasting clock. But
+only let a nice-looking woman come near the place, and Mrs. Milroy
+was jealous of her--raging jealous, like a woman possessed, on
+that miserable sick-bed of hers. If Miss Gwilt (who was certainly
+good-looking, in spite of her hideous hair) didn’t blow the fire into a
+flame before many days more were over their heads, the mistress was the
+mistress no longer, but somebody else. Whatever happened, the fault,
+this time, would lie at the door of the major’s mother. The old lady
+and the mistress had had a dreadful quarrel two years since; and the old
+lady had gone away in a fury, telling her son, before all the servants,
+that, if he had a spark of spirit in him, he would never submit to his
+wife’s temper as he did. It would be too much, perhaps, to accuse the
+major’s mother of purposely picking out a handsome governess to spite
+the major’s wife. But it might be safely said that the old lady was the
+last person in the world to humor the mistress’s jealousy, by declining
+to engage a capable and respectable governess for her granddaughter
+because that governess happened to be blessed with good looks. How
+it was all to end (except that it was certain to end badly) no human
+creature could say. Things were looking as black already as things well
+could. Miss Neelie was crying, after the day’s pleasure (which was one
+bad sign); the mistress had found fault with nobody (which was another);
+the master had wished her good-night through the door (which was a
+third); and the governess had locked herself up in her room (which was
+the worst sign of all, for it looked as if she distrusted the servants).
+Thus the stream of the woman’s gossip ran on, and thus it reached
+Midwinter’s ears through the window, till the clock in the stable-yard
+struck, and stopped the talking. When the last vibrations of the bell
+had died away, the voices were not audible again, and the silence was
+broken no more.
+
+Another interval passed, and Midwinter made a new effort to rouse
+himself. This time he kindled the light without hesitation, and took the
+pen in hand.
+
+He wrote at the first trial with a sudden facility of expression,
+which, surprising him as he went on, ended in rousing in him some vague
+suspicion of himself. He left the table, and bathed his head and face
+in water, and came back to read what he had written. The language
+was barely intelligible; sentences were left unfinished; words were
+misplaced one for the other. Every line recorded the protest of the
+weary brain against the merciless will that had forced it into action.
+Midwinter tore up the sheet of paper as he had torn up the other sheets
+before it, and, sinking under the struggle at last, laid his weary
+head on the pillow. Almost on the instant, exhaustion overcame him, and
+before he could put the light out he fell asleep.
+
+He was roused by a noise at the door. The sunlight was pouring into the
+room, the candle had burned down into the socket, and the servant was
+waiting outside with a letter which had come for him by the morning’s
+post.
+
+“I ventured to disturb you, sir,” said the man, when Midwinter opened
+the door, “because the letter is marked ‘Immediate,’ and I didn’t know
+but it might be of some consequence.”
+
+Midwinter thanked him, and looked at the letter. It _was_ of some
+consequence--the handwriting was Mr. Brock’s.
+
+He paused to collect his faculties. The torn sheets of paper on the
+floor recalled to him in a moment the position in which he stood. He
+locked the door again, in the fear that Allan might rise earlier than
+usual and come in to make inquiries. Then--feeling strangely little
+interest in anything that the rector could write to him now--he opened
+Mr. Brock’s letter, and read these lines:
+
+“Tuesday.
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--It is sometimes best to tell bad news plainly, in
+few words. Let me tell mine at once, in one sentence. My precautions
+have all been defeated: the woman has escaped me.
+
+“This misfortune--for it is nothing less--happened yesterday (Monday).
+Between eleven and twelve in the forenoon of that day, the business
+which originally brought me to London obliged me to go to Doctors’
+Commons, and to leave my servant Robert to watch the house opposite our
+lodging until my return. About an hour and a half after my departure he
+observed an empty cab drawn up at the door of the house. Boxes and bags
+made their appearance first; they were followed by the woman herself,
+in the dress I had first seen her in. Having previously secured a cab,
+Robert traced her to the terminus of the North-Western Railway, saw her
+pass through the ticket office, kept her in view till she reached the
+platform, and there, in the crowd and confusion caused by the starting
+of a large mixed train, lost her. I must do him the justice to say that
+he at once took the right course in this emergency. Instead of wasting
+time in searching for her on the platform, he looked along the line of
+carriages; and he positively declares that he failed to see her in any
+one of them. He admits, at the same time, that his search (conducted
+between two o’clock, when he lost sight of her, and ten minutes past,
+when the train started) was, in the confusion of the moment, necessarily
+an imperfect one. But this latter circumstance, in my opinion, matters
+little. I as firmly disbelieve in the woman’s actual departure by that
+train as if I had searched every one of the carriages myself; and you, I
+have no doubt, will entirely agree with me.
+
+“You now know how the disaster happened. Let us not waste time and words
+in lamenting it. The evil is done, and you and I together must find the
+way to remedy it.
+
+“What I have accomplished already, on my side, may be told in two words.
+Any hesitation I might have previously felt at trusting this delicate
+business in strangers’ hands was at an end the moment I heard Robert’s
+news. I went back at once to the city, and placed the whole matter
+confidentially before my lawyers. The conference was a long one, and
+when I left the office it was past the post hour, or I should have
+written to you on Monday instead of writing to-day. My interview with
+the lawyers was not very encouraging. They warn me plainly that serious
+difficulties stand in the way of our recovering the lost trace. But they
+have promised to do their best, and we have decided on the course to be
+taken, excepting one point on which we totally differ. I must tell you
+what this difference is; for, while business keeps me away from Thorpe
+Ambrose, you are the only person whom I can trust to put my convictions
+to the test.
+
+“The lawyers are of opinion, then, that the woman has been aware from
+the first that I was watching her; that there is, consequently, no
+present hope of her being rash enough to appear personally at Thorpe
+Ambrose; that any mischief she may have it in contemplation to do will
+be done in the first instance by deputy; and that the only wise course
+for Allan’s friends and guardians to take is to wait passively till
+events enlighten them. My own idea is diametrically opposed to this.
+After what has happened at the railway, I cannot deny that the woman
+must have discovered that I was watching her. But she has no reason to
+suppose that she has not succeeded in deceiving me; and I firmly believe
+she is bold enough to take us by surprise, and to win or force her way
+into Allan’s confidence before we are prepared to prevent her.
+
+“You and you only (while I am detained in London) can decide whether
+I am right or wrong--and you can do it in this way. Ascertain at once
+whether any woman who is a stranger in the neighborhood has appeared
+since Monday last at or near Thorpe Ambrose. If any such person has been
+observed (and nobody escapes observation in the country), take the first
+opportunity you can get of seeing her, and ask yourself if her face does
+or does not answer certain plain questions which I am now about to write
+down for you. You may depend on my accuracy. I saw the woman unveiled on
+more than one occasion, and the last time through an excellent glass.
+
+“1. Is her hair light brown, and (apparently) not very plentiful? 2. Is
+her forehead high, narrow, and sloping backward from the brow? 3. Are
+her eyebrows very faintly marked, and are her eyes small, and nearer
+dark than light--either gray or hazel (I have not seen her close enough
+to be certain which)? 4. Is her nose aquiline? 5 Are her lips thin, and
+is the upper lip long? 6. Does her complexion look like an originally
+fair complexion, which has deteriorated into a dull, sickly paleness? 7
+(and lastly). Has she a retreating chin, and is there on the left side
+of it a mark of some kind--a mole or a scar, I can’t say which?
+
+“I add nothing about her expression, for you may see her under
+circumstances which may partially alter it as seen by me. Test her by
+her features, which no circumstances can change. If there is a stranger
+in the neighborhood, and if her face answers my seven questions, _you
+have found the woman_! Go instantly, in that case, to the nearest
+lawyer, and pledge my name and credit for whatever expenses may be
+incurred in keeping her under inspection night and day. Having done
+this, take the speediest means of communicating with me; and whether
+my business is finished or not, I will start for Norfolk by the first
+train.
+
+“Always your friend, DECIMUS BROCK.”
+
+
+Hardened by the fatalist conviction that now possessed him, Midwinter
+read the rector’s confession of defeat, from the first line to the last,
+without the slightest betrayal either of interest or surprise. The one
+part of the letter at which he looked back was the closing part of it.
+“I owe much to Mr. Brock’s kindness,” he thought; “and I shall never see
+Mr. Brock again. It is useless and hopeless; but he asks me to do it,
+and it shall be done. A moment’s look at her will be enough--a moment’s
+look at her with his letter in my hand--and a line to tell him that the
+woman is here!”
+
+Again he stood hesitating at the half-opened door; again the cruel
+necessity of writing his farewell to Allan stopped him, and stared him
+in the face.
+
+He looked aside doubtingly at the rector’s letter. “I will write the two
+together,” he said. “One may help the other.” His face flushed deep as
+the words escaped him. He was conscious of doing what he had not done
+yet--of voluntarily putting off the evil hour; of making Mr. Brock the
+pretext for gaining the last respite left, the respite of time.
+
+The only sound that reached him through the open door was the sound of
+Allan stirring noisily in the next room. He stepped at once into the
+empty corridor, and meeting no one on the stairs, made his way out of
+the house. The dread that his resolution to leave Allan might fail him
+if he saw Allan again was as vividly present to his mind in the morning
+as it had been all through the night. He drew a deep breath of relief
+as he descended the house steps--relief at having escaped the friendly
+greeting of the morning, from the one human creature whom he loved!
+
+He entered the shrubbery with Mr. Brock’s letter in his hand, and took
+the nearest way that led to the major’s cottage. Not the slightest
+recollection was in his mind of the talk which had found its way to his
+ears during the night. His one reason for determining to see the woman
+was the reason which the rector had put in his mind. The one remembrance
+that now guided him to the place in which she lived was the remembrance
+of Allan’s exclamation when he first identified the governess with the
+figure at the pool.
+
+Arrived at the gate of the cottage, he stopped. The thought struck
+him that he might defeat his own object if he looked at the rector’s
+questions in the woman’s presence. Her suspicions would be probably
+roused, in the first instance, by his asking to see her (as he had
+determined to ask, with or without an excuse), and the appearance of the
+letter in his hand might confirm them.
+
+She might defeat him by instantly leaving the room. Determined to fix
+the description in his mind first, and then to confront her, he opened
+the letter; and, turning away slowly by the side of the house, read the
+seven questions which he felt absolutely assured beforehand the woman’s
+face would answer.
+
+In the morning quiet of the park slight noises traveled far. A slight
+noise disturbed Midwinter over the letter.
+
+He looked up and found himself on the brink of a broad grassy trench,
+having the park on one side and the high laurel hedge of an inclosure
+on the other. The inclosure evidently surrounded the back garden of the
+cottage, and the trench was intended to protect it from being damaged by
+the cattle grazing in the park.
+
+Listening carefully as the slight sound which had disturbed him grew
+fainter, he recognized in it the rustling of women’s dresses. A few
+paces ahead, the trench was crossed by a bridge (closed by a wicket
+gate) which connected the garden with the park. He passed through the
+gate, crossed the bridge, and, opening a door at the other end, found
+himself in a summer-house thickly covered with creepers, and commanding
+a full view of the garden from end to end.
+
+He looked, and saw the figures of two ladies walking slowly away from
+him toward the cottage. The shorter of the two failed to occupy his
+attention for an instant; he never stopped to think whether she was
+or was not the major’s daughter. His eyes were riveted on the other
+figure--the figure that moved over the garden walk with the long,
+lightly falling dress and the easy, seductive grace. There, presented
+exactly as he had seen her once already--there, with her back again
+turned on him, was the Woman at the pool!
+
+There was a chance that they might take another turn in the garden--a
+turn back toward the summer-house. On that chance Midwinter waited. No
+consciousness of the intrusion that he was committing had stopped him
+at the door of the summer-house, and no consciousness of it troubled him
+even now. Every finer sensibility in his nature, sinking under the cruel
+laceration of the past night, had ceased to feel. The dogged resolution
+to do what he had come to do was the one animating influence left alive
+in him. He acted, he even looked, as the most stolid man living might
+have acted and looked in his place. He was self-possessed enough, in the
+interval of expectation before governess and pupil reached the end of
+the walk, to open Mr. Brock’s letter, and to fortify his memory by a
+last look at the paragraph which described her face.
+
+He was still absorbed over the description when he heard the smooth
+rustle of the dresses traveling toward him again. Standing in the shadow
+of the summer-house, he waited while she lessened the distance between
+them. With her written portrait vividly impressed on his mind, and with
+the clear light of the morning to help him, his eyes questioned her as
+she came on; and these were the answers that her face gave him back.
+
+The hair in the rector’s description was light brown and not plentiful.
+This woman’s hair, superbly luxuriant in its growth, was of the one
+unpardonably remarkable shade of color which the prejudice of the
+Northern nations never entirely forgives--it was _red_! The forehead in
+the rector’s description was high, narrow, and sloping backward from the
+brow; the eyebrows were faintly marked; and the eyes small, and in color
+either gray or hazel. This woman’s forehead was low, upright, and
+broad toward the temples; her eyebrows, at once strongly and delicately
+marked, were a shade darker than her hair; her eyes, large, bright, and
+well opened, were of that purely blue color, without a tinge in it of
+gray or green, so often presented to our admiration in pictures and
+books, so rarely met with in the living face. The nose in the rector’s
+description was aquiline. The line of this woman’s nose bent neither
+outward nor inward: it was the straight, delicately molded nose (with
+the short upper lip beneath) of the ancient statues and busts. The
+lips in the rector’s description were thin and the upper lip long; the
+complexion was of a dull, sickly paleness; the chin retreating and the
+mark of a mole or a scar on the left side of it. This woman’s lips were
+full, rich, and sensual. Her complexion was the lovely complexion which
+accompanies such hair as hers--so delicately bright in its rosier tints,
+so warmly and softly white in its gentler gradations of color on the
+forehead and the neck. Her chin, round and dimpled, was pure of the
+slightest blemish in every part of it, and perfectly in line with her
+forehead to the end. Nearer and nearer, and fairer and fairer she
+came, in the glow of the morning light--the most startling, the most
+unanswerable contradiction that eye could see or mind conceive to the
+description in the rector’s letter.
+
+Both governess and pupil were close to the summer-house before they
+looked that way, and noticed Midwinter standing inside. The governess
+saw him first.
+
+“A friend of yours, Miss Milroy?” she asked, quietly, without starting
+or betraying any sign of surprise.
+
+Neelie recognized him instantly. Prejudiced against Midwinter by his
+conduct when his friend had introduced him at the cottage, she now
+fairly detested him as the unlucky first cause of her misunderstanding
+with Allan at the picnic. Her face flushed and she drew back from the
+summerhouse with an expression of merciless surprise.
+
+“He is a friend of Mr. Armadale’s,” she replied sharply. “I don’t know
+what he wants, or why he is here.”
+
+“A friend of Mr. Armadale’s!” The governess’s face lighted up with
+a suddenly roused interest as she repeated the words. She returned
+Midwinter’s look, still steadily fixed on her, with equal steadiness on
+her side.
+
+“For my part,” pursued Neelie, resenting Midwinter’s insensibility to
+her presence on the scene, “I think it a great liberty to treat papa’s
+garden as if it were the open park!”
+
+The governess turned round, and gently interposed.
+
+“My dear Miss Milroy,” she remonstrated, “there are certain distinctions
+to be observed. This gentleman is a friend of Mr. Armadale’s. You could
+hardly express yourself more strongly if he was a perfect stranger.”
+
+“I express my opinion,” retorted Neelie, chafing under the satirically
+indulgent tone in which the governess addressed her. “It’s a matter of
+taste, Miss Gwilt; and tastes differ.” She turned away petulantly, and
+walked back by herself to the cottage.
+
+“She is very young,” said Miss Gwilt, appealing with a smile to
+Midwinter’s forbearance; “and, as you must see for yourself, sir, she is
+a spoiled child.” She paused--showed, for an instant only, her surprise
+at Midwinter’s strange silence and strange persistency in keeping his
+eyes still fixed on her--then set herself, with a charming grace and
+readiness, to help him out of the false position in which he stood. “As
+you have extended your walk thus far,” she resumed, “perhaps you will
+kindly favor me, on your return, by taking a message to your friend?
+Mr. Armadale has been so good as to invite me to see the Thorpe Ambrose
+gardens this morning. Will you say that Major Milroy permits me to
+accept the invitation (in company with Miss Milroy) between ten and
+eleven o’clock?” For a moment her eyes rested, with a renewed look
+of interest, on Midwinter’s face. She waited, still in vain, for an
+answering word from him--smiled, as if his extraordinary silence amused
+rather than angered her--and followed her pupil back to the cottage.
+
+
+It was only when the last trace of her had disappeared that Midwinter
+roused himself, and attempted to realize the position in which he
+stood. The revelation of her beauty was in no respect answerable for
+the breathless astonishment which had held him spell-bound up to this
+moment. The one clear impression she had produced on him thus far began
+and ended with his discovery of the astounding contradiction that her
+face offered, in one feature after another, to the description in Mr.
+Brock’s letter. All beyond this was vague and misty--a dim consciousness
+of a tall, elegant woman, and of kind words, modestly and gracefully
+spoken to him, and nothing more.
+
+He advanced a few steps into the garden without knowing why--stopped,
+glancing hither and thither like a man lost--recognized the summer-house
+by an effort, as if years had elapsed since he had seen it--and made his
+way out again, at last, into the park. Even here, he wandered first in
+one direction, then in another. His mind was still reeling under
+the shock that had fallen on it; his perceptions were all confused.
+Something kept him mechanically in action, walking eagerly without a
+motive, walking he knew not where.
+
+A far less sensitively organized man might have been overwhelmed, as
+he was overwhelmed now, by the immense, the instantaneous revulsion of
+feeling which the event of the last few minutes had wrought in his mind.
+
+At the memorable instant when he had opened the door of the
+summer-house, no confusing influence troubled his faculties. In all that
+related to his position toward his friend, he had reached an absolutely
+definite conclusion by an absolutely definite process of thought. The
+whole strength of the motive which had driven him into the resolution
+to part from Allan rooted itself in the belief that he had seen at Hurle
+Mere the fatal fulfillment of the first Vision of the Dream. And this
+belief, in its turn, rested, necessarily, on the conviction that the
+woman who was the one survivor of the tragedy in Madeira must be also
+inevitably the woman whom he had seen standing in the Shadow’s place at
+the pool. Firm in that persuasion, he had himself compared the object of
+his distrust and of the rector’s distrust with the description written
+by the rector himself--a description, carefully minute, by a man
+entirely trustworthy--and his own eyes had informed him that the
+woman whom he had seen at the Mere, and the woman whom Mr. Brock had
+identified in London, were not one, but Two. In the place of the Dream
+Shadow, there had stood, on the evidence of the rector’s letter, not the
+instrument of the Fatality--but a stranger!
+
+No such doubts as might have troubled a less superstitious man, were
+started in _his_ mind by the discovery that had now opened on him.
+
+It never occurred to him to ask himself whether a stranger might not
+be the appointed instrument of the Fatality, now when the letter had
+persuaded him that a stranger had been revealed as the figure in the
+dream landscape. No such idea entered or could enter his mind. The one
+woman whom _his_ superstition dreaded was the woman who had entwined
+herself with the lives of the two Armadales in the first generation, and
+with the fortunes of the two Armadales in the second--who was at once
+the marked object of his father’s death-bed warning, and the first cause
+of the family calamities which had opened Allan’s way to the Thorpe
+Ambrose estate--the woman, in a word, whom he would have known
+instinctively, but for Mr. Brock’s letter, to be the woman whom he had
+now actually seen.
+
+Looking at events as they had just happened, under the influence of the
+misapprehension into which the rector had innocently misled him, his
+mind saw and seized its new conclusion instantaneously, acting precisely
+as it had acted in the past time of his interview with Mr. Brock at the
+Isle of Man.
+
+Exactly as he had once declared it to be an all-sufficient refutation of
+the idea of the Fatality, that he had never met with the timber-ship
+in any of his voyages at sea, so he now seized on the similarly derived
+conclusion, that the whole claim of the Dream to a supernatural origin
+stood self-refuted by the disclosure of a stranger in the Shadow’s
+place. Once started from this point--once encouraged to let his love for
+Allan influence him undividedly again, his mind hurried along the whole
+resulting chain of thought at lightning speed. If the Dream was proved
+to be no longer a warning from the other world, it followed inevitably
+that accident and not fate had led the way to the night on the Wreck,
+and that all the events which had happened since Allan and he had
+parted from Mr. Brock were events in themselves harmless, which his
+superstition had distorted from their proper shape. In less than a
+moment his mobile imagination had taken him back to the morning at
+Castletown when he had revealed to the rector the secret of his name;
+when he had declared to the rector, with his father’s letter before his
+eyes, the better faith that was in him. Now once more he felt his heart
+holding firmly by the bond of brotherhood between Allan and himself; now
+once more he could say with the eager sincerity of the old time, “If the
+thought of leaving him breaks my heart, the thought of leaving him
+is wrong!” As that nobler conviction possessed itself again of his
+mind--quieting the tumult, clearing the confusion within him--the house
+at Thorpe Ambrose, with Allan on the steps, waiting, looking for him,
+opened on his eyes through the trees. A sense of illimitable relief
+lifted his eager spirit high above the cares, and doubts, and fears
+that had oppressed it so long, and showed him once more the better and
+brighter future of his early dreams. His eyes filled with tears, and he
+pressed the rector’s letter, in his wild, passionate way, to his lips,
+as he looked at Allan through the vista of the trees. “But for this
+morsel of paper,” he thought, “my life might have been one long sorrow
+to me, and my father’s crime might have parted us forever!”
+
+
+Such was the result of the stratagem which had shown the housemaid’s
+face to Mr. Brock as the face of Miss Gwilt. And so--by shaking
+Midwinter’s trust in his own superstition, in the one case in which
+that superstition pointed to the truth--did Mother Oldershaw’s cunning
+triumph over difficulties and dangers which had never been contemplated
+by Mother Oldershaw herself.
+
+
+
+
+XI. MISS GWILT AMONG THE QUICKSANDS.
+
+1. _From the Rev. Decimus Brock to Ozias Midwinter_.
+
+“Thursday.
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--No words can tell what a relief it was to me to get
+your letter this morning, and what a happiness I honestly feel in having
+been thus far proved to be in the wrong. The precautions you have taken
+in case the woman should still confirm my apprehensions by venturing
+herself at Thorpe Ambrose seem to me to be all that can be desired. You
+are no doubt sure to hear of her from one or other of the people in the
+lawyer’s office, whom you have asked to inform you of the appearance of
+a stranger in the town.
+
+“I am the more pleased at finding how entirely I can trust you in this
+matter; for I am likely to be obliged to leave Allan’s interests longer
+than I supposed solely in your hands. My visit to Thorpe Ambrose must,
+I regret to say, be deferred for two months. The only one of my
+brother-clergymen in London who is able to take my duty for me cannot
+make it convenient to remove with his family to Somersetshire before
+that time. I have no alternative but to finish my business here, and be
+back at my rectory on Saturday next. If anything happens, you will,
+of course, instantly communicate with me; and, in that case, be the
+inconvenience what it may, I must leave home for Thorpe Ambrose. If,
+on the other hand, all goes more smoothly than my own obstinate
+apprehensions will allow me to suppose, then Allan (to whom I have
+written) must not expect to see me till this day two months.
+
+“No result has, up to this time, rewarded our exertions to recover the
+trace lost at the railway. I will keep my letter open, however, until
+post time, in case the next few hours bring any news.
+
+“Always truly yours,
+
+“DECIMUS BROCK.
+
+“P. S.--I have just heard from the lawyers. They have found out the name
+the woman passed by in London. If this discovery (not a very important
+one, I am afraid) suggests any new course of proceeding to you, pray act
+on it at once. The name is--Miss Gwilt.”
+
+
+2. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+The Cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Saturday, June 28.
+
+“If you will promise not to be alarmed, Mamma Oldershaw, I will begin
+this letter in a very odd way, by copying a page of a letter written
+by somebody else. You have an excellent memory, and you may not have
+forgotten that I received a note from Major Milroy’s mother (after she
+had engaged me as governess) on Monday last. It was dated and signed;
+and here it is, as far as the first page: ‘June 23d, 1851. Dear
+Madam--Pray excuse my troubling you, before you go to Thorpe Ambrose,
+with a word more about the habits observed in my son’s household. When
+I had the pleasure of seeing you at two o’clock to-day, in Kingsdown
+Crescent, I had another appointment in a distant part of London at
+three; and, in the hurry of the moment, one or two little matters
+escaped me which I think I ought to impress on your attention.’ The rest
+of the letter is not of the slightest importance, but the lines that I
+have just copied are well worthy of all the attention you can bestow on
+them. They have saved me from discovery, my dear, before I have been a
+week in Major Milroy’s service!
+
+“It happened no later than yesterday evening, and it began and ended in
+this manner:
+
+“There is a gentleman here, (of whom I shall have more to say presently)
+who is an intimate friend of young Armadale’s, and who bears the strange
+name of Midwinter. He contrived yesterday to speak to me alone in the
+park. Almost as soon as he opened his lips, I found that my name had
+been discovered in London (no doubt by the Somersetshire clergyman);
+and that Mr. Midwinter had been chosen (evidently by the same person)
+to identify the Miss Gwilt who had vanished from Brompton with the Miss
+Gwilt who had appeared at Thorpe Ambrose. You foresaw this danger, I
+remember; but you could scarcely have imagined that the exposure would
+threaten me so soon.
+
+“I spare you the details of our conversation to come to the end.
+Mr. Midwinter put the matter very delicately, declaring, to my great
+surprise, that he felt quite certain himself that I was not the Miss
+Gwilt of whom his friend was in search; and that he only acted as he did
+out of regard to the anxiety of a person whose wishes he was bound to
+respect. Would I assist him in setting that anxiety completely at rest,
+as far as I was concerned, by kindly answering one plain question--which
+he had no other right to ask me than the right my indulgence might
+give him? The lost ‘Miss Gwilt’ had been missed on Monday last, at two
+o’clock, in the crowd on the platform of the North-western Railway, in
+Euston Square. Would I authorize him to say that on that day, and at
+that hour, the Miss Gwilt who was Major Milroy’s governess had never
+been near the place?
+
+“I need hardly tell you that I seized the fine opportunity he had given
+me of disarming all future suspicion. I took a high tone on the spot,
+and met him with the old lady’s letter. He politely refused to look at
+it. I insisted on his looking at it. ‘I don’t choose to be mistaken,’
+I said, ‘for a woman who may be a bad character, because she happens
+to bear, or to have assumed, the same name as mine. I insist on your
+reading the first part of this letter for my satisfaction, if not for
+your own.’ He was obliged to comply; and there was the proof, in the old
+lady’s handwriting, that, at two o’clock on Monday last, she and I were
+together in Kingsdown Crescent, which any directory would tell him is a
+‘crescent’ in Bayswater! I leave you to imagine his apologies, and the
+perfect sweetness with which I received them.
+
+“I might, of course, if I had not preserved the letter, have referred
+him to you, or to the major’s mother, with similar results. As it is,
+the object has been gained without trouble or delay. _I have been proved
+not to be myself_; and one of the many dangers that threatened me
+at Thorpe Ambrose is a danger blown over from this moment. Your
+house-maid’s face may not be a very handsome one; but there is no
+denying that it has done us excellent service.
+
+“So much for the past; now for the future. You shall hear how I get
+on with the people about me; and you shall judge for yourself what the
+chances are for and against my becoming mistress of Thorpe Ambrose.
+
+“Let me begin with young Armadale--because it is beginning with good
+news. I have produced the right impression on him already, and Heaven
+knows _that_ is nothing to boast of! Any moderately good-looking woman
+who chose to take the trouble could make him fall in love with her. He
+is a rattle-pated young fool--one of those noisy, rosy, light-haired,
+good-tempered men whom I particularly detest. I had a whole hour alone
+with him in a boat, the first day I came here, and I have made good use
+of my time, I can tell you, from that day to this. The only difficulty
+with him is the difficulty of concealing my own feelings, especially
+when he turns my dislike of him into downright hatred by sometimes
+reminding me of his mother. I really never saw a man whom I could use
+so ill, if I had the opportunity. He will give me the opportunity, I
+believe, if no accident happens, sooner than we calculated on. I have
+just returned from a party at the great house, in celebration of the
+rent-day dinner, and the squire’s attentions to me, and my modest
+reluctance to receive them, have already excited general remark.
+
+“My pupil, Miss Milroy, comes next. She, too, is rosy and foolish;
+and, what is more, awkward and squat and freckled, and ill-tempered and
+ill-dressed. No fear of _her_, though she hates me like poison, which
+is a great comfort, for I get rid of her out of lesson time and walking
+time. It is perfectly easy to see that she has made the most of her
+opportunities with young Armadale (opportunities, by-the-by, which we
+never calculated on), and that she has been stupid enough to let him
+slip through her fingers. When I tell you that she is obliged, for
+the sake of appearances, to go with her father and me to the little
+entertainments at Thorpe Ambrose, and to see how young Armadale admires
+me, you will understand the kind of place I hold in her affections. She
+would try me past all endurance if I didn’t see that I aggravate her by
+keeping my temper, so, of course, I keep it. If I do break out, it will
+be over our lessons--not over our French, our grammar, history, and
+globes--but over our music. No words can say how I feel for her poor
+piano. Half the musical girls in England ought to have their fingers
+chopped off in the interests of society, and, if I had my way, Miss
+Milroy’s fingers should be executed first.
+
+“As for the major, I can hardly stand higher in his estimation than I
+stand already. I am always ready to make his breakfast, and his daughter
+is not. I can always find things for him when he loses them, and his
+daughter can’t. I never yawn when he proses, and his daughter does. I
+like the poor dear harmless old gentleman, so I won’t say a word more
+about him.
+
+“Well, here is a fair prospect for the future surely? My good Oldershaw,
+there never was a prospect yet without an ugly place in it. _My_
+prospect has two ugly places in it. The name of one of them is Mrs.
+Milroy, and the name of the other is Mr. Midwinter.
+
+“Mrs. Milroy first. Before I had been five minutes in the cottage, on
+the day of my arrival, what do you think she did? She sent downstairs
+and asked to see me. The message startled me a little, after hearing
+from the old lady, in London, that her daughter-in-law was too great a
+sufferer to see anybody; but, of course, when I got her message, I had
+no choice but to go up stairs to the sick-room. I found her bedridden
+with an incurable spinal complaint, and a really horrible object to look
+at, but with all her wits about her; and, if I am not greatly mistaken,
+as deceitful a woman, with as vile a temper, as you could find anywhere
+in all your long experience. Her excessive politeness, and her keeping
+her own face in the shade of the bed-curtains while she contrived to
+keep mine in the light, put me on my guard the moment I entered the
+room. We were more than half an hour together, without my stepping
+into any one of the many clever little traps she laid for me. The only
+mystery in her behavior, which I failed to see through at the time, was
+her perpetually asking me to bring her things (things she evidently did
+not want) from different parts of the room.
+
+“Since then events have enlightened me. My first suspicions were raised
+by overhearing some of the servants’ gossip; and I have been confirmed
+in my opinion by the conduct of Mrs. Milroy’s nurse.
+
+“On the few occasions when I have happened to be alone with the major,
+the nurse has also happened to want something of her master, and has
+invariably forgotten to announce her appearance by knocking, at the
+door. Do you understand now why Mrs. Milroy sent for me the moment I got
+into the house, and what she wanted when she kept me going backward and
+forward, first for one thing and then for another? There is hardly an
+attractive light in which my face and figure can be seen, in which
+that woman’s jealous eyes have not studied them already. I am no longer
+puzzled to know why the father and daughter started, and looked at each
+other, when I was first presented to them; or why the servants still
+stare at me with a mischievous expectation in their eyes when I ring the
+bell and ask them to do anything. It is useless to disguise the truth,
+Mother Oldershaw, between you and me. When I went upstairs into that
+sickroom, I marched blindfold into the clutches of a jealous woman. If
+Mrs. Milroy _can_ turn me out of the house, Mrs. Milroy _will_; and,
+morning and night, she has nothing else to do in that bed prison of hers
+but to find out the way.
+
+“In this awkward position, my own cautious conduct is admirably seconded
+by the dear old major’s perfect insensibility. His wife’s jealousy
+of him is as monstrous a delusion as any that could be found in
+a mad-house; it is the growth of her own vile temper, under the
+aggravation of an incurable illness. The poor man hasn’t a thought
+beyond his mechanical pursuits; and I don’t believe he knows at this
+moment whether I am a handsome woman or not. With this chance to
+help me, I may hope to set the nurse’s intrusions and the mistress’s
+contrivances at defiance--for a time, at any rate. But you know what a
+jealous woman is, and I think I know what Mrs. Milroy is; and I own
+I shall breathe more freely on the day when young Armadale opens his
+foolish lips to some purpose, and sets the major advertising for a new
+governess.
+
+“Armadale’s name reminds me of Armadale’s friend. There is more danger
+threatening in that quarter; and, what is worse, I don’t feel half as
+well armed beforehand against Mr. Midwinter as I do against Mrs. Milroy.
+
+“Everything about this man is more or less mysterious, which I don’t
+like, to begin with. How does he come to be in the confidence of the
+Somersetshire clergyman? How much has that clergyman told him? How is it
+that he was so firmly persuaded, when he spoke to me in the park, that
+I was not the Miss Gwilt of whom his friend was in search? I haven’t the
+ghost of an answer to give to any of those three questions. I can’t
+even discover who he is, or how he and young Armadale first became
+acquainted. I hate him. No, I don’t; I only want to find out about him.
+He is very young, little and lean, and active and dark, with bright
+black eyes which say to me plainly, ‘We belong to a man with brains in
+his head and a will of his own; a man who hasn’t always been hanging
+about a country house, in attendance on a fool.’ Yes; I am positively
+certain Mr. Midwinter has done something or suffered something in his
+past life, young as he is; and I would give I don’t know what to get at
+it. Don’t resent my taking up so much space in my writing about him. He
+has influence enough over young Armadale to be a very awkward obstacle
+in my way, unless I can secure his good opinion at starting.
+
+“Well, you may ask, and what is to prevent your securing his good
+opinion? I am sadly afraid, Mother Oldershaw, I have got it on terms
+I never bargained for I am sadly afraid the man is in love with me
+already.
+
+“Don’t toss your head and say, ‘Just like her vanity!’ After the horrors
+I have gone through, I have no vanity left; and a man who admires me
+is a man who makes me shudder. There was a time, I own--Pooh! what am I
+writing? Sentiment, I declare! Sentiment to _you_! Laugh away, my dear.
+As for me, I neither laugh nor cry; I mend my pen, and get on with
+my--what do the men call it?--my report.
+
+“The only thing worth inquiring is, whether I am right or wrong in my
+idea of the impression I have made on him.
+
+“Let me see; I have been four times in his company. The first time was
+in the major’s garden, where we met unexpectedly, face to face. He stood
+looking at me, like a man petrified, without speaking a word. The effect
+of my horrid red hair, perhaps? Quite likely; let us lay it on my hair.
+The second time was in going over the Thorpe Ambrose grounds, with young
+Armadale on one side of me, and my pupil (in the sulks) on the other.
+Out comes Mr. Midwinter to join us, though he had work to do in the
+steward’s office, which he had never been known to neglect on any other
+occasion. Laziness, possibly? or an attachment to Miss Milroy? I can’t
+say; we will lay it on Miss Milroy, if you like; I only know he did
+nothing but look at _me_. The third time was at the private interview
+in the park, which I have told you of already. I never saw a man so
+agitated at putting a delicate question to a woman in my life. But
+_that_ might have been only awkwardness; and his perpetually looking
+back after me when we had parted might have been only looking back at
+the view. Lay it on the view; by all means, lay it on the view! The
+fourth time was this very evening, at the little party. They made me
+play; and, as the piano was a good one, I did my best. All the company
+crowded round me, and paid me their compliments (my charming pupil
+paid hers, with a face like a cat’s just before she spits), except Mr.
+Midwinter. _He_ waited till it was time to go, and then he caught me
+alone for a moment in the hall. There was just time for him to take my
+hand, and say two words. Shall I tell you _how_ he took my hand, and
+what his voice sounded like when he spoke? Quite needless! You have
+always told me that the late Mr. Oldershaw doted on you. Just recall the
+first time he took your hand, and whispered a word or two addressed to
+your private ear. To what did you attribute his behavior that occasion?
+I have no doubt, if you had been playing on the piano in the course of
+the evening, you would have attributed it entirely to the music!
+
+“No! you may take my word for it, the harm is done. _This_ man is no
+rattle-pated fool, who changes his fancies as readily as he changes his
+clothes. The fire that lights those big black eyes of his is not an easy
+fire, when a woman has once kindled it, for that woman to put out. I
+don’t wish to discourage you; I don’t say the changes are against us.
+But with Mrs. Milroy threatening me on one side, and Mr. Midwinter on
+the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time.
+Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a lout can hint, at
+a private interview! Miss Milroy’s eyes are sharp, and the nurse’s eyes
+are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No
+matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me
+get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, and--if
+his friend doesn’t come between us--I answer for the result!
+
+“In the meantime, have I anything more to tell you? Are there any other
+people in our way at Thorpe Ambrose? Not another creature! None of the
+resident families call here, young Armadale being, most fortunately, in
+bad odor in the neighborhood. There are no handsome highly-bred women to
+come to the house, and no persons of consequence to protest against his
+attentions to a governess. The only guests he could collect at his
+party to-night were the lawyer and his family (a wife, a son, and
+two daughters), and a deaf old woman and _her_ son--all perfectly
+unimportant people, and all obedient humble servants of the stupid young
+squire.
+
+“Talking of obedient humble servants, there is one other person
+established here, who is employed in the steward’s office--a miserable,
+shabby, dilapidated old man, named Bashwood. He is a perfect stranger to
+me, and I am evidently a perfect stranger to him, for he has been asking
+the house-maid at the cottage who I am. It is paying no great compliment
+to myself to confess it, but it is not the less true that I produced the
+most extraordinary impression on this feeble old creature the first
+time he saw me. He turned all manner of colors, and stood trembling and
+staring at me, as if there was something perfectly frightful in my face.
+I felt quite startled for the moment, for, of all the ways in which men
+have looked at me, no man ever looked at me in that way before. Did you
+ever see the boa constrictor fed at the Zoological Gardens? They put a
+live rabbit into his cage, and there is a moment when the two creatures
+look at each other. I declare Mr. Bashwood reminded me of the rabbit.
+
+“Why do I mention this? I don’t know why. Perhaps I have been writing
+too long, and my head is beginning to fail me. Perhaps Mr. Bashwood’s
+manner of admiring me strikes my fancy by its novelty. Absurd! I am
+exciting myself, and troubling you about nothing. Oh, what a weary, long
+letter I have written! and how brightly the stars look at me through the
+window, and how awfully quiet the night is! Send me some more of those
+sleeping drops, and write me one of your nice, wicked, amusing letters.
+You shall hear from me again as soon as I know a little better how it is
+all likely to end. Good-night, and keep a corner in your stony old heart
+for
+
+“L. G.”
+
+
+3. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Diana Street, Pimlico, Monday.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--I am in no state of mind to write you an amusing letter.
+Your news is very discouraging, and the recklessness of your tone quite
+alarms me. Consider the money I have already advanced, and the interests
+we both have at stake. Whatever else you are, don’t be reckless, for
+Heaven’s sake!
+
+“What can I do? I ask myself, as a woman of business, what can I do to
+help you? I can’t give you advice, for I am not on the spot, and I don’t
+know how circumstances may alter from one day to another. Situated as we
+are now, I can only be useful in one way. I can discover a new obstacle
+that threatens you, and I think I can remove it.
+
+“You say, with great truth, that there never was a prospect yet
+without an ugly place in it, and that there are two ugly places in your
+prospect. My dear, there may be _three_ ugly places, if I don’t bestir
+myself to prevent it; and the name of the third place will be--Brock!
+Is it possible you can refer, as you have done, to the Somersetshire
+clergyman, and not see that the progress you make with young Armadale
+will be, sooner or later, reported to him by young Armadale’s friend?
+Why, now I think of it, you are doubly at the parson’s mercy! You are
+at the mercy of any fresh suspicion which may bring him into the
+neighborhood himself at a day’s notice; and you are at the mercy of his
+interference the moment he hears that the squire is committing himself
+with a neighbor’s governess. If I can do nothing else, I can keep this
+additional difficulty out of your way. And oh, Lydia, with what alacrity
+I shall exert myself, after the manner in which the old wretch insulted
+me when I told him that pitiable story in the street! I declare I tingle
+with pleasure at this new prospect of making a fool of Mr. Brock.
+
+“And how is it to be done? Just as we have done it already, to be sure.
+He has lost ‘Miss Gwilt’ (otherwise my house-maid), hasn’t he? Very
+well. He shall find her again, wherever he is now, suddenly settled
+within easy reach of him. As long as _she_ stops in the place, _he_ will
+stop in it; and as we know he is not at Thorpe Ambrose, there you are
+free of him! The old gentleman’s suspicions have given us a great deal
+of trouble so far. Let us turn them to some profitable account at last;
+let us tie him, by his suspicions, to my house-maid’s apron-string. Most
+refreshing. Quite a moral retribution, isn’t it?
+
+“The only help I need trouble you for is help you can easily give.
+Find out from Mr. Midwinter where the parson is now, and let me know
+by return of post. If he is in London, I will personally assist my
+housemaid in the necessary mystification of him. If he is anywhere else,
+I will send her after him, accompanied by a person on whose discretion I
+can implicitly rely.
+
+“You shall have the sleeping drops to-morrow. In the meantime, I say at
+the end what I said at the beginning--no recklessness. Don’t encourage
+poetical feelings by looking at the stars; and don’t talk about the
+night being awfully quiet. There are people (in observatories) paid to
+look at the stars for you; leave it to them. And as for the night,
+do what Providence intended you to do with the night when Providence
+provided you with eyelids--go to sleep in it. Affectionately yours,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+4. _From the Reverend Decimus Brock to Ozias Midwinter_.
+
+“Bascombe Rectory, West Somerset, Thursday, July 8.
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--One line before the post goes out, to relieve you of
+all sense of responsibility at Thorpe Ambrose, and to make my apologies
+to the lady who lives as governess in Major Milroy’s family.
+
+“_The_ Miss Gwilt--or perhaps I ought to say, the woman calling herself
+by that name--has, to my unspeakable astonishment, openly made
+her appearance here, in my own parish! She is staying at the inn,
+accompanied by a plausible-looking man, who passes as her brother. What
+this audacious proceeding really means--unless it marks a new step in
+the conspiracy against Allan, taken under new advice--is, of course,
+more than I can yet find out.
+
+“My own idea is, that they have recognized the impossibility of getting
+at Allan, without finding me (or you) as an obstacle in their way; and
+that they are going to make a virtue of necessity by boldly trying
+to open their communications through me. The man looks capable of any
+stretch of audacity; and both he and the woman had the impudence to bow
+when I met them in the village half an hour since. They have been making
+inquiries already about Allan’s mother here, where her exemplary life
+may set their closest scrutiny at defiance. If they will only attempt to
+extort money, as the price of the woman’s silence on the subject of poor
+Mrs. Armadale’s conduct in Madeira at the time of her marriage, they
+will find me well prepared for them beforehand. I have written by this
+post to my lawyers to send a competent man to assist me, and he will
+stay at the rectory, in any character which he thinks it safest to
+assume under present circumstances.
+
+“You shall hear what happens in the next day or two.
+
+“Always truly yours, DECIMUS BROCK.”
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE CLOUDING OF THE SKY.
+
+Nine days had passed, and the tenth day was nearly at an end, since Miss
+Gwilt and her pupil had taken their morning walk in the cottage garden.
+
+The night was overcast. Since sunset, there had been signs in the sky
+from which the popular forecast had predicted rain. The reception-rooms
+at the great house were all empty and dark. Allan was away, passing
+the evening with the Milroys; and Midwinter was waiting his return--not
+where Midwinter usually waited, among the books in the library, but in
+the little back room which Allan’s mother had inhabited in the last days
+of her residence at Thorpe Ambrose.
+
+Nothing had been taken away, but much had been added to the room, since
+Midwinter had first seen it. The books which Mrs. Armadale had left
+behind her, the furniture, the old matting on the floor, the old paper
+on the walls, were all undisturbed. The statuette of Niobe still stood
+on its bracket, and the French window still opened on the garden.
+But now, to the relics left by the mother, were added the personal
+possessions belonging to the son. The wall, bare hitherto, was decorated
+with water-color drawings--with a portrait of Mrs. Armadale supported
+on one side by a view of the old house in Somersetshire, and on the
+other by a picture of the yacht. Among the books which bore in faded
+ink Mrs. Armadale’s inscriptions, “From my father,” were other books
+inscribed in the same handwriting, in brighter ink, “To my son.” Hanging
+to the wall, ranged on the chimney-piece, scattered over the table, were
+a host of little objects, some associated with Allan’s past life,
+others necessary to his daily pleasures and pursuits, and all plainly
+testifying that the room which he habitually occupied at Thorpe Ambrose
+was the very room which had once recalled to Midwinter the second vision
+of the dream. Here, strangely unmoved by the scene around him, so lately
+the object of his superstitious distrust, Allan’s friend now waited
+composedly for Allan’s return; and here, more strangely still, he looked
+on a change in the household arrangements, due in the first instance
+entirely to himself. His own lips had revealed the discovery which he
+had made on the first morning in the new house; his own voluntary act
+had induced the son to establish himself in the mother’s room.
+
+Under what motives had he spoken the words? Under no motives which were
+not the natural growth of the new interests and the new hopes that now
+animated him.
+
+The entire change wrought in his convictions by the memorable event that
+had brought him face to face with Miss Gwilt was a change which it was
+not in his nature to hide from Allan’s knowledge. He had spoken openly,
+and had spoken as it was in his character to speak. The merit of
+conquering his superstition was a merit which he shrank from claiming,
+until he had first unsparingly exposed that superstition in its worst
+and weakest aspects to view.
+
+It was only after he had unreservedly acknowledged the impulse under
+which he had left Allan at the Mere, that he had taken credit to himself
+for the new point of view from which he could now look at the Dream.
+Then, and not till then, he had spoken of the fulfillment of the first
+Vision as the doctor at the Isle of Man might have spoken of it. He had
+asked, as the doctor might have asked, Where was the wonder of their
+seeing a pool at sunset, when they had a whole network of pools within
+a few hours’ drive of them? and what was there extraordinary in
+discovering a woman at the Mere, when there were roads that led to it,
+and villages in its neighborhood, and boats employed on it, and pleasure
+parties visiting it? So again, he had waited to vindicate the firmer
+resolution with which he looked to the future, until he had first
+revealed all that he now saw himself of the errors of the past.
+The abandonment of his friend’s interests, the unworthiness of the
+confidence that had given him the steward’s place, the forgetfulness of
+the trust that Mr. Brock had reposed in him all implied in the one idea
+of leaving Allan--were all pointed out. The glaring self-contradictions
+betrayed in accepting the Dream as the revelation of a fatality, and
+in attempting to escape that fatality by an exertion of free-will--in
+toiling to store up knowledge of the steward’s duties for the
+future, and in shrinking from letting the future find him in Allan’s
+house--were, in their turn, unsparingly exposed. To every error, to
+every inconsistency, he resolutely confessed, before he ventured on the
+last simple appeal which closed all, “Will you trust me in the future?
+Will you forgive and forget the past?”
+
+A man who could thus open his whole heart, without one lurking reserve
+inspired by consideration for himself, was not a man to forget any minor
+act of concealment of which his weakness might have led him to be guilty
+toward his friend. It lay heavy on Midwinter’s conscience that he had
+kept secret from Allan a discovery which he ought in Allan’s dearest
+interests to have revealed--the discovery of his mother’s room.
+
+But one doubt still closed his lips--the doubt whether Mrs. Armadale’s
+conduct in Madeira had been kept secret on her return to England.
+
+Careful inquiry, first among the servants, then among the tenantry,
+careful consideration of the few reports current at the time, as
+repeated to him by the few persons left who remembered them, convinced
+him at last that the family secret had been successfully kept within the
+family limits. Once satisfied that whatever inquiries the son might
+make would lead to no disclosure which could shake his respect for his
+mother’s memory, Midwinter had hesitated no longer. He had taken Allan
+into the room, and had shown him the books on the shelves, and all that
+the writing in the books disclosed. He had said plainly, “My one motive
+for not telling you this before sprang from my dread of interesting you
+in the room which I looked at with horror as the second of the scenes
+pointed at in the Dream. Forgive me this also, and you will have
+forgiven me all.”
+
+With Allan’s love for his mother’s memory, but one result could follow
+such an avowal as this. He had liked the little room from the first,
+as a pleasant contrast to the oppressive grandeur of the other rooms at
+Thorpe Ambrose, and, now that he knew what associations were connected
+with it, his resolution was at once taken to make it especially his own.
+The same day, all his personal possessions were collected and arranged
+in his mother’s room--in Midwinter’s presence, and with Midwinter’s
+assistance given to the work.
+
+Under those circumstances had the change now wrought in the household
+arrangements been produced; and in this way had Midwinter’s victory over
+his own fatalism--by making Allan the daily occupant of a room which
+he might otherwise hardly ever have entered--actually favored the
+fulfillment of the Second Vision of the Dream.
+
+
+The hour wore on quietly as Allan’s friend sat waiting for Allan’s
+return. Sometimes reading, sometimes thinking placidly, he whiled away
+the time. No vexing cares, no boding doubts, troubled him now. The
+rent-day, which he had once dreaded, had come and gone harmlessly. A
+friendlier understanding had been established between Allan and his
+tenants; Mr. Bashwood had proved himself to be worthy of the confidence
+reposed in him; the Pedgifts, father and son, had amply justified their
+client’s good opinion of them. Wherever Midwinter looked, the prospect
+was bright, the future was without a cloud.
+
+He trimmed the lamp on the table beside him and looked out at the night.
+The stable clock was chiming the half-hour past eleven as he walked to
+the window, and the first rain-drops were beginning to fall. He had his
+hand on the bell to summon the servant, and send him over to the cottage
+with an umbrella, when he was stopped by hearing the familiar footstep
+on the walk outside.
+
+“How late you are!” said Midwinter, as Allan entered through the open
+French window. “Was there a party at the cottage?”
+
+“No! only ourselves. The time slipped away somehow.” He answered in
+lower tones than usual, and sighed as he took his chair.
+
+“You seem to be out of spirits?” pursued Midwinter. “What’s the matter?”
+
+Allan hesitated. “I may as well tell you,” he said, after a moment.
+“It’s nothing to be ashamed of; I only wonder you haven’t noticed it
+before! There’s a woman in it, as usual--I’m in love.”
+
+Midwinter laughed. “Has Miss Milroy been more charming to-night than
+ever?” he asked, gayly.
+
+“Miss Milroy!” repeated Allan. “What are you thinking of! I’m not in
+love with Miss Milroy.”
+
+“Who is it, then?”
+
+“Who is it! What a question to ask! Who can it be but Miss Gwilt?”
+
+There was a sudden silence. Allan sat listlessly, with his hands in his
+pockets, looking out through the open window at the falling rain. If
+he had turned toward his friend when he mentioned Miss Gwilt’s name he
+might possibly have been a little startled by the change he would have
+seen in Midwinter’s face.
+
+“I suppose you don’t approve of it?” he said, after waiting a little.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+“It’s too late to make objections,” proceeded Allan. “I really mean it
+when I tell you I’m in love with her.”
+
+“A fortnight since you were in love with Miss Milroy,” said the other,
+in quiet, measured tones.
+
+“Pooh! a mere flirtation. It’s different this time. I’m in earnest about
+Miss Gwilt.”
+
+He looked round as he spoke. Midwinter turned his face aside on the
+instant, and bent it over a book.
+
+“I see you don’t approve of the thing,” Allan went on. “Do you object to
+her being only a governess? You can’t do that, I’m sure. If you were
+in my place, her being only a governess wouldn’t stand in the way with
+_you_?”
+
+“No,” said Midwinter; “I can’t honestly say it would stand in the way
+with me.” He gave the answer reluctantly, and pushed his chair back out
+of the light of the lamp.
+
+“A governess is a lady who is not rich,” said Allan, in an oracular
+manner; “and a duchess is a lady who is not poor. And that’s all the
+difference I acknowledge between them. Miss Gwilt is older than I am--I
+don’t deny that. What age do you guess her at, Midwinter? I say, seven
+or eight and twenty. What do you say?”
+
+“Nothing. I agree with you.”
+
+“Do you think seven or eight and twenty is too old for me? If you were
+in love with a woman yourself, you wouldn’t think seven or eight and
+twenty too old--would you?”
+
+“I can’t say I should think it too old, if--”
+
+“If you were really fond of her?”
+
+Once more there was no answer.
+
+“Well,” resumed Allan, “if there’s no harm in her being only a
+governess, and no harm in her being a little older than I am, what’s the
+objection to Miss Gwilt?”
+
+“I have made no objection.”
+
+“I don’t say you have. But you don’t seem to like the notion of it, for
+all that.”
+
+There was another pause. Midwinter was the first to break the silence
+this time.
+
+“Are you sure of yourself, Allan?” he asked, with his face bent once
+more over the book. “Are you really attached to this lady? Have you
+thought seriously already of asking her to be your wife?”
+
+“I am thinking seriously of it at this moment,” said Allan. “I can’t be
+happy--I can’t live without her. Upon my soul, I worship the very ground
+she treads on!”
+
+“How long--” His voice faltered, and he stopped. “How long,” he
+reiterated, “have you worshipped the very ground she treads on?”
+
+“Longer than you think for. I know I can trust you with all my
+secrets--”
+
+“Don’t trust me!”
+
+“Nonsense! I _will_ trust you. There is a little difficulty in the way
+which I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s a matter of some delicacy, and I
+want to consult you about it. Between ourselves, I have had private
+opportunities with Miss Gwilt--”
+
+Midwinter suddenly started to his feet, and opened the door.
+
+“We’ll talk of this to-morrow,” he said. “Good-night.”
+
+Allan looked round in astonishment. The door was closed again, and he
+was alone in the room.
+
+“He has never shaken hands with me!” exclaimed Allan, looking bewildered
+at the empty chair.
+
+As the words passed his lips the door opened, and Midwinter appeared
+again.
+
+“We haven’t shaken hands,” he said, abruptly. “God bless you, Allan!
+We’ll talk of it to-morrow. Good-night.”
+
+Allan stood alone at the window, looking out at the pouring rain. He
+felt ill at ease, without knowing why. “Midwinter’s ways get stranger
+and stranger,” he thought. “What can he mean by putting me off till
+to-morrow, when I wanted to speak to him to-night?” He took up his
+bedroom candle a little impatiently, put it down again, and, walking
+back to the open window, stood looking out in the direction of the
+cottage. “I wonder if she’s thinking of me?” he said to himself softly.
+
+She _was_ thinking of him. She had just opened her desk to write to Mrs.
+Oldershaw; and her pen had that moment traced the opening line: “Make
+your mind easy. I have got him!”
+
+
+
+
+XIII. EXIT.
+
+It rained all through the night, and when the morning came it was
+raining still.
+
+Contrary to his ordinary habit, Midwinter was waiting in the
+breakfast-room when Allan entered it. He looked worn and weary, but his
+smile was gentler and his manner more composed than usual. To Allan’s
+surprise he approached the subject of the previous night’s conversation
+of his own accord as soon as the servant was out of the room.
+
+“I am afraid you thought me very impatient and very abrupt with you last
+night,” he said. “I will try to make amends for it this morning. I will
+hear everything you wish to say to me on the subject of Miss Gwilt.”
+
+“I hardly like to worry you,” said Allan. “You look as if you had had a
+bad night’s rest.”
+
+“I have not slept well for some time past,” replied Midwinter, quietly.
+“Something has been wrong with me. But I believe I have found out the
+way to put myself right again without troubling the doctors. Late in the
+morning I shall have something to say to you about this. Let us get back
+first to what you were talking of last night. You were speaking of some
+difficulty--” He hesitated, and finished the sentence in a tone so low
+that Allan failed to hear him. “Perhaps it would be better,” he went on,
+“if, instead of speaking to me, you spoke to Mr. Brock?”
+
+“I would rather speak to _you_,” said Allan. “But tell me first, was I
+right or wrong last night in thinking you disapproved of my falling in
+love with Miss Gwilt?”
+
+Midwinter’s lean, nervous fingers began to crumble the bread in his
+plate. His eyes looked away from Allan for the first time.
+
+“If you have any objection,” persisted Allan, “I should like to hear
+it.”
+
+Midwinter suddenly looked up again, his cheeks turning ashy pale, and
+his glittering black eyes fixed full on Allan’s face.
+
+“You love her,” he said. “Does _she_ love _you_?”
+
+“You won’t think me vain?” returned Allan. “I told you yesterday I had
+had private opportunities with her--”
+
+Midwinter’s eyes dropped again to the crumbs on his plate. “I
+understand,” he interposed, quickly. “You were wrong last night. I had
+no objections to make.”
+
+“Don’t you congratulate me?” asked Allan, a little uneasily. “Such a
+beautiful woman! such a clever woman!”
+
+Midwinter held out his hand. “I owe you more than mere congratulations,”
+ he said. “In anything which is for your happiness I owe you help.”
+ He took Allan’s hand, and wrung it hard. “Can I help you?” he asked,
+growing paler and paler as he spoke.
+
+“My dear fellow,” exclaimed Allan, “what is the matter with you? Your
+hand is as cold as ice.”
+
+Midwinter smiled faintly. “I am always in extremes,” he said; “my hand
+was as hot as fire the first time you took it at the old west-country
+inn. Come to that difficulty which you have not come to yet. You are
+young, rich, your own master--and she loves you. What difficulty can
+there be?”
+
+Allan hesitated. “I hardly know how to put it,” he replied. “As you
+said just now, I love her, and she loves me; and yet there is a sort of
+strangeness between us. One talks a good deal about one’s self when one
+is in love, at least I do. I’ve told her all about myself and my mother,
+and how I came in for this place, and the rest of it. Well--though it
+doesn’t strike me when we are together--it comes across me now and then,
+when I’m away from her, that she doesn’t say much on her side. In fact,
+I know no more about her than you do.”
+
+“Do you mean that you know nothing about Miss Gwilt’s family and
+friends?”
+
+“That’s it, exactly.”
+
+“Have you never asked her about them?”
+
+“I said something of the sort the other day,” returned Allan: “and I’m
+afraid, as usual, I said it in the wrong way. She looked--I can’t quite
+tell you how; not exactly displeased, but--oh, what things words are!
+I’d give the world, Midwinter, if I could only find the right word when
+I want it as well as you do.”
+
+“Did Miss Gwilt say anything to you in the way of a reply?”
+
+“That’s just what I was coming to. She said, ‘I shall have a melancholy
+story to tell you one of these days, Mr. Armadale, about myself and my
+family; but you look so happy, and the circumstances are so distressing,
+that I have hardly the heart to speak of it now.’ Ah, _she_ can express
+herself--with the tears in her eyes, my dear fellow, with the tears
+in her eyes! Of course, I changed the subject directly. And now the
+difficulty is how to get back to it, delicately, without making her cry
+again. We _must_ get back to it, you know. Not on my account; I am quite
+content to marry her first and hear of her family misfortunes, poor
+thing, afterward. But I know Mr. Brock. If I can’t satisfy him about her
+family when I write to tell him of this (which, of course, I must do),
+he will be dead against the whole thing. I’m my own master, of course,
+and I can do as I like about it. But dear old Brock was such a good
+friend to my poor mother, and he has been such a good friend to me--you
+see what I mean, don’t you?”
+
+“Certainly, Allan; Mr. Brock has been your second father. Any
+disagreement between you about such a serious matter as this would be
+the saddest thing that could happen. You ought to satisfy him that Miss
+Gwilt is (what I am sure Miss Gwilt will prove to be) worthy, in every
+way worthy--” His voice sank in spite of him, and he left the sentence
+unfinished.
+
+“Just my feeling in the matter!” Allan struck in, glibly. “Now we can
+come to what I particularly wanted to consult you about. If this was
+your case, Midwinter, you would be able to say the right words to
+her--you would put it delicately, even though you were putting it quite
+in the dark. I can’t do that. I’m a blundering sort of fellow; and I’m
+horribly afraid, if I can’t get some hint at the truth to help me at
+starting, of saying something to distress her. Family misfortunes are
+such tender subjects to touch on, especially with such a refined woman,
+such a tender-hearted woman, as Miss Gwilt. There may have been
+some dreadful death in the family--some relation who has disgraced
+himself--some infernal cruelty which has forced the poor thing out on
+the world as a governess. Well, turning it over in my mind, it struck
+me that the major might be able to put me on the right tack. It is
+quite possible that he might have been informed of Miss Gwilt’s family
+circumstances before he engaged her, isn’t it?”
+
+“It is possible, Allan, certainly.”
+
+“Just my feeling again! My notion is to speak to the major. If I could
+only get the story from him first, I should know so much better how to
+speak to Miss Gwilt about it afterward. You advise me to try the major,
+don’t you?”
+
+There was a pause before Midwinter replied. When he did answer, it was a
+little reluctantly.
+
+“I hardly know how to advise you, Allan,” he said. “This is a very
+delicate matter.”
+
+“I believe you would try the major, if you were in my place,” returned
+Allan, reverting to his inveterately personal way of putting the
+question.
+
+“Perhaps I might,” said Midwinter, more and more unwillingly. “But if I
+did speak to the major, I should be very careful, in your place, not to
+put myself in a false position. I should be very careful to let no one
+suspect me of the meanness of prying into a woman’s secrets behind her
+back.”
+
+Allan’s face flushed. “Good heavens, Midwinter,” he exclaimed, “who
+could suspect me of that?”
+
+“Nobody, Allan, who really knows you.”
+
+“The major knows me. The major is the last man in the world to
+misunderstand me. All I want him to do is to help me (if he can) to
+speak about a delicate subject to Miss Gwilt, without hurting her
+feelings. Can anything be simpler between two gentlemen?”
+
+Instead of replying, Midwinter, still speaking as constrainedly as ever,
+asked a question on his side. “Do you mean to tell Major Milroy,” he
+said, “what your intentions really are toward Miss Gwilt?”
+
+Allan’s manner altered. He hesitated, and looked confused.
+
+“I have been thinking of that,” he replied; “and I mean to feel my way
+first, and then tell him or not afterward, as matters turn out?”
+
+A proceeding so cautious as this was too strikingly inconsistent with
+Allan’s character not to surprise any one who knew him. Midwinter showed
+his surprise plainly.
+
+“You forget that foolish flirtation of mine with Miss Milroy,” Allan
+went on, more and more confusedly. “The major may have noticed it, and
+may have thought I meant--well, what I didn’t mean. It might be rather
+awkward, mightn’t it, to propose to his face for his governess instead
+of his daughter?”
+
+He waited for a word of answer, but none came. Midwinter opened his lips
+to speak, and suddenly checked himself. Allan, uneasy at his silence,
+doubly uneasy under certain recollections of the major’s daughter which
+the conversation had called up, rose from the table and shortened the
+interview a little impatiently.
+
+“Come! come!” he said, “don’t sit there looking unutterable things;
+don’t make mountains out of mole-hills. You have such an old, old head,
+Midwinter, on those young shoulders of yours! Let’s have done with all
+these _pros_ and _cons_. Do you mean to tell me in plain words that it
+won’t do to speak to the major?”
+
+“I can’t take the responsibility, Allan, of telling you that. To be
+plainer still, I can’t feel confident of the soundness of any advice
+I may give you in--in our present position toward each other. All I am
+sure of is that I cannot possibly be wrong in entreating you to do two
+things.”
+
+“What are they?”
+
+“If you speak to Major Milroy, pray remember the caution I have given
+you! Pray think of what you say before you say it!”
+
+“I’ll think, never fear! What next?”
+
+“Before you take any serious step in this matter, write and tell Mr.
+Brock. Will you promise me to do that?”
+
+“With all my heart. Anything more?”
+
+“Nothing more. I have said my last words.”
+
+Allan led the way to the door. “Come into my room,” he said, “and I’ll
+give you a cigar. The servants will be in here directly to clear away,
+and I want to go on talking about Miss Gwilt.”
+
+“Don’t wait for me,” said Midwinter; “I’ll follow you in a minute or
+two.”
+
+He remained seated until Allan had closed the door, then rose, and
+took from a corner of the room, where it lay hidden behind one of the
+curtains, a knapsack ready packed for traveling. As he stood at the
+window thinking, with the knapsack in his hand, a strangely old,
+care-worn look stole over his face: he seemed to lose the last of his
+youth in an instant.
+
+
+What the woman’s quicker insight had discovered days since, the man’s
+slower perception had only realized in the past night. The pang that had
+wrung him when he heard Allan’s avowal had set the truth self-revealed
+before Midwinter for the first time. He had been conscious of looking at
+Miss Gwilt with new eyes and a new mind, on the next occasion when they
+met after the memorable interview in Major Milroy’s garden; but he had
+never until now known the passion that she had roused in him for what
+it really was. Knowing it at last, feeling it consciously in full
+possession of him, he had the courage which no man with a happier
+experience of life would have possessed--the courage to recall what
+Allan had confided to him, and to look resolutely at the future through
+his own grateful remembrances of the past.
+
+Steadfastly, through the sleepless hours of the night, he had bent his
+mind to the conviction that he must conquer the passion which had taken
+possession of him, for Allan’s sake; and that the one way to conquer
+it was--to go. No after-doubt as to the sacrifice had troubled him when
+morning came; and no after-doubt troubled him now. The one question that
+kept him hesitating was the question of leaving Thorpe Ambrose. Though
+Mr. Brock’s letter relieved him from all necessity of keeping watch in
+Norfolk for a woman who was known to be in Somersetshire; though the
+duties of the steward’s office were duties which might be safely left
+in Mr. Bashwood’s tried and trustworthy hands--still, admitting these
+considerations, his mind was not easy at the thought of leaving Allan,
+at a time when a crisis was approaching in Allan’s life.
+
+He slung the knapsack loosely over his shoulder and put the question to
+his conscience for the last time. “Can you trust yourself to see her,
+day by day as you must see her--can you trust yourself to hear him talk
+of her, hour by hour, as you must hear him--if you stay in this house?”
+ Again the answer came, as it had come all through the night. Again his
+heart warned him, in the very interests of the friendship that he held
+sacred, to go while the time was his own; to go before the woman who
+had possessed herself of his love had possessed herself of his power of
+self-sacrifice and his sense of gratitude as well.
+
+He looked round the room mechanically before he turned to leave it.
+Every remembrance of the conversation that had just taken place between
+Allan and himself pointed to the same conclusion, and warned him, as his
+own conscience had warned him, to go.
+
+Had he honestly mentioned any one of the objections which he, or any
+man, must have seen to Allan’s attachment? Had he--as his knowledge of
+his friend’s facile character bound him to do--warned Allan to distrust
+his own hasty impulses, and to test himself by time and absence, before
+he made sure that the happiness of his whole life was bound up in Miss
+Gwilt? No. The bare doubt whether, in speaking of these things, he could
+feel that he was speaking disinterestedly, had closed his lips, and
+would close his lips for the future, till the time for speaking had gone
+by. Was the right man to restrain Allan the man who would have given the
+world, if he had it, to stand in Allan’s place? There was but one plain
+course of action that an honest man and a grateful man could follow in
+the position in which he stood. Far removed from all chance of seeing
+her, and from all chance of hearing of her--alone with his own faithful
+recollection of what he owed to his friend--he might hope to fight it
+down, as he had fought down the tears in his childhood under his gypsy
+master’s stick; as he had fought down the misery of his lonely youth
+time in the country bookseller’s shop. “I must go,” he said, as he
+turned wearily from the window, “before she comes to the house again. I
+must go before another hour is over my head.”
+
+With that resolution he left the room; and, in leaving it, took the
+irrevocable step from Present to Future.
+
+
+The rain was still falling. The sullen sky, all round the horizon,
+still lowered watery and dark, when Midwinter, equipped for traveling,
+appeared in Allan’s room.
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Allan, pointing to the knapsack, “what does _that_
+mean?”
+
+“Nothing very extraordinary,” said Midwinter. “It only means--good-by.”
+
+“Good-by!” repeated Allan, starting to his feet in astonishment.
+
+Midwinter put him back gently into his chair, and drew a seat near to it
+for himself.
+
+“When you noticed that I looked ill this morning,” he said, “I told you
+that I had been thinking of a way to recover my health, and that I meant
+to speak to you about it later in the day. That latter time has come. I
+have been out of sorts, as the phrase is, for some time past. You
+have remarked it yourself, Allan, more than once; and, with your usual
+kindness, you have allowed it to excuse many things in my conduct which
+would have been otherwise unpardonable, even in your friendly eyes.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” interposed Allan, “you don’t mean to say you are going
+out on a walking tour in this pouring rain!”
+
+“Never mind the rain,” rejoined Midwinter. “The rain and I are old
+friends. You know something, Allan, of the life I led before you met
+with me. From the time when I was a child, I have been used to hardship
+and exposure. Night and day, sometimes for months together, I never
+had my head under a roof. For years and years, the life of a wild
+animal--perhaps I ought to say, the life of a savage--was the life
+I led, while you were at home and happy. I have the leaven of the
+vagabond--the vagabond animal, or the vagabond man, I hardly know
+which--in me still. Does it distress you to hear me talk of myself in
+this way? I won’t distress you. I will only say that the comfort and the
+luxury of our life here are, at times, I think, a little too much for a
+man to whom comforts and luxuries come as strange things. I want nothing
+to put me right again but more air and exercise; fewer good breakfasts
+and dinners, my dear friend, than I get here. Let me go back to some
+of the hardships which this comfortable house is expressly made to shut
+out. Let me meet the wind and weather as I used to meet them when I was
+a boy; let me feel weary again for a little while, without a carriage
+near to pick me up; and hungry when the night falls, with miles of
+walking between my supper and me. Give me a week or two away, Allan--up
+northward, on foot, to the Yorkshire moors--and I promise to return to
+Thorpe Ambrose, better company for you and for your friends. I shall be
+back before you have time to miss me. Mr. Bashwood will take care of the
+business in the office; it is only for a fortnight, and it is for my own
+good--let me go!”
+
+“I don’t like it,” said Allan. “I don’t like your leaving me in this
+sudden manner. There’s something so strange and dreary about it. Why not
+try riding, if you want more exercise; all the horses in the stables are
+at your disposal. At all events, you can’t possibly go to-day. Look at
+the rain!”
+
+Midwinter looked toward the window, and gently shook his head.
+
+“I thought nothing of the rain,” he said, “when I was a mere child,
+getting my living with the dancing dogs--why should I think anything of
+it now? _My_ getting wet, and _your_ getting wet, Allan, are two very
+different things. When I was a fisherman’s boy in the Hebrides, I hadn’t
+a dry thread on me for weeks together.”
+
+“But you’re not in the Hebrides now,” persisted Allan; “and I expect our
+friends from the cottage to-morrow evening. You can’t start till after
+to-morrow. Miss Gwilt is going to give us some more music, and you know
+you like Miss Gwilt’s playing.”
+
+Midwinter turned aside to buckle the straps of his knapsack. “Give me
+another chance of hearing Miss Gwilt when I come back,” he said, with
+his head down, and his fingers busy at the straps.
+
+“You have one fault, my dear fellow, and it grows on you,” remonstrated
+Allan; “when you have once taken a thing into our head, you’re the most
+obstinate man alive. There’s no persuading you to listen to reason. If
+you _will_ go,” added Allan, suddenly rising, as Midwinter took up his
+hat and stick in silence, “I have half a mind to go with you, and try a
+little roughing it too!”
+
+“Go with _me_!” repeated Midwinter, with a momentary bitterness in his
+tone, “and leave Miss Gwilt!”
+
+Allan sat down again, and admitted the force of the objection in
+significant silence. Without a word more on his side, Midwinter held
+out his hand to take leave. They were both deeply moved, and each was
+anxious to hide his agitation from the other. Allan took the last
+refuge which his friend’s firmness left to him: he tried to lighten the
+farewell moment by a joke.
+
+“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I begin to doubt if you’re quite cured
+yet of your belief in the Dream. I suspect you’re running away from me,
+after all!”
+
+Midwinter looked at him, uncertain whether he was in jest or earnest.
+“What do you mean?” he asked.
+
+“What did you tell me,” retorted Allan, “when you took me in here the
+other day, and made a clean breast of it? What did you say about this
+room, and the second vision of the dream? By Jupiter!” he exclaimed,
+starting to his feet once more, “now I look again, here _is_ the Second
+Vision! There’s the rain pattering against the window--there’s the lawn
+and the garden outside--here am I where I stood in the Dream--and there
+are you where the Shadow stood. The whole scene complete, out-of-doors
+and in; and _I’ve_ discovered it this time!”
+
+A moment’s life stirred again in the dead remains of Midwinter’s
+superstition. His color changed, and he eagerly, almost fiercely,
+disputed Allan’s conclusion.
+
+“No!” he said, pointing to the little marble figure on the bracket, “the
+scene is _not_ complete--you have forgotten something, as usual. The
+Dream is wrong this time, thank God--utterly wrong! In the vision
+you saw, the statue was lying in fragments on the floor, and you were
+stooping over them with a troubled and an angry mind. There stands the
+statue safe and sound! and you haven’t the vestige of an angry feeling
+in your mind, have you?” He seized Allan impulsively by the hand. At
+the same moment the consciousness came to him that he was speaking and
+acting as earnestly as if he still believed in the Dream. The color
+rushed back over his face, and he turned away in confused silence.
+
+“What did I tell you?” said Allan, laughing, a little uneasily. “That
+night on the Wreck is hanging on your mind as heavily as ever.”
+
+“Nothing hangs heavy on me,” retorted Midwinter, with a sudden outburst
+of impatience, “but the knapsack on my back, and the time I’m wasting
+here. I’ll go out, and see if it’s likely to clear up.”
+
+“You’ll come back?” interposed Allan.
+
+Midwinter opened the French window, and stepped out into the garden.
+
+“Yes,” he said, answering with all his former gentleness of manner;
+“I’ll come back in a fortnight. Good-by, Allan; and good luck with Miss
+Gwilt!”
+
+He pushed the window to, and was away across the garden before his
+friend could open it again and follow him.
+
+Allan rose, and took one step into the garden; then checked himself at
+the window, and returned to his chair. He knew Midwinter well enough to
+feel the total uselessness of attempting to follow him or to call him
+back. He was gone, and for two weeks to come there was no hope of seeing
+him again. An hour or more passed, the rain still fell, and the
+sky still threatened. A heavier and heavier sense of loneliness and
+despondency--the sense of all others which his previous life had least
+fitted him to understand and endure--possessed itself of Allan’s mind.
+In sheer horror of his own uninhabitably solitary house, he rang for his
+hat and umbrella, and resolved to take refuge in the major’s cottage.
+
+“I might have gone a little way with him,” thought Allan, his mind still
+running on Midwinter as he put on his hat. “I should like to have seen
+the dear old fellow fairly started on his journey.”
+
+He took his umbrella. If he had noticed the face of the servant who gave
+it to him, he might possibly have asked some questions, and might have
+heard some news to interest him in his present frame of mind. As it was,
+he went out without looking at the man, and without suspecting that his
+servants knew more of Midwinter’s last moments at Thorpe Ambrose than he
+knew himself. Not ten minutes since, the grocer and butcher had called
+in to receive payment of their bills, and the grocer and the butcher had
+seen how Midwinter started on his journey.
+
+The grocer had met him first, not far from the house, stopping on his
+way, in the pouring rain, to speak to a little ragged imp of a boy, the
+pest of the neighborhood. The boy’s customary impudence had broken out
+even more unrestrainedly than usual at the sight of the gentleman’s
+knapsack. And what had the gentleman done in return? He had stopped
+and looked distressed, and had put his two hands gently on the boy’s
+shoulders. The grocer’s own eyes had seen that; and the grocer’s own
+ears had heard him say, “Poor little chap! I know how the wind gnaws and
+the rain wets through a ragged jacket, better than most people who have
+got a good coat on their backs.” And with those words he had put his
+hand in his pocket, and had rewarded the boy’s impudence with a present
+of a shilling. “Wrong here-abouts,” said the grocer, touching his
+forehead. “That’s my opinion of Mr. Armadale’s friend!”
+
+The butcher had seen him further on in the journey, at the other end of
+the town. He had stopped--again in the pouring rain--and this time to
+look at nothing more remarkable than a half-starved cur, shivering on
+a doorstep. “I had my eye on him,” said the butcher; “and what do you
+think he did? He crossed the road over to my shop, and bought a bit of
+meat fit for a Christian. Very well. He says good-morning, and crosses
+back again; and, on the word of a man, down he goes on his knees on
+the wet doorstep, and out he takes his knife, and cuts up the meat, and
+gives it to the dog. Meat, I tell you again, fit for a Christian! I’m
+not a hard man, ma’am,” concluded the butcher, addressing the cook, “but
+meat’s meat; and it will serve your master’s friend right if he lives to
+want it.”
+
+With those old unforgotten sympathies of the old unforgotten time to
+keep him company on his lonely road, he had left the town behind him,
+and had been lost to view in the misty rain. The grocer and the butcher
+had seen the last of him, and had judged a great nature, as all natures
+_are_ judged from the grocer and the butcher point of view.
+
+THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+I. MRS. MILROY.
+
+Two days after Midwinter’s departure from Thorpe Ambrose, Mrs. Milroy,
+having completed her morning toilet, and having dismissed her nurse,
+rang the bell again five minutes afterward, and on the woman’s
+re-appearance asked impatiently if the post had come in.
+
+“Post?” echoed the nurse. “Haven’t you got your watch? Don’t you know
+that it’s a good half-hour too soon to ask for your letters?” She spoke
+with the confident insolence of a servant long accustomed to presume on
+her mistress’s weakness and her mistress’s necessities. Mrs. Milroy, on
+her side, appeared to be well used to her nurses manner; she gave her
+orders composedly, without noticing it.
+
+“When the postman does come,” she said, “see him yourself. I am
+expecting a letter which I ought to have had two days since. I don’t
+understand it. I’m beginning to suspect the servants.”
+
+The nurse smiled contemptuously. “Whom will you suspect next?” she
+asked. “There! don’t put yourself out. I’ll answer the gate-bell this
+morning; and we’ll see if I can’t bring you a letter when the postman
+comes.” Saying those words, with the tone and manner of a woman who is
+quieting a fractious child, the nurse, without waiting to be dismissed,
+left the room.
+
+Mrs. Milroy turned slowly and wearily on her bed, when she was left by
+herself again, and let the light from the window fall on her face. It
+was the face of a woman who had once been handsome, and who was still,
+so far as years went, in the prime of her life. Long-continued suffering
+of body and long-continued irritation of mind had worn her away--in the
+roughly expressive popular phrase--to skin and bone. The utter wreck of
+her beauty was made a wreck horrible to behold, by her desperate efforts
+to conceal the sight of it from her own eyes, from the eyes of her
+husband and her child, from the eyes even of the doctor who attended
+her, and whose business it was to penetrate to the truth. Her head, from
+which the greater part of the hair had fallen off; would have been less
+shocking to see than the hideously youthful wig by which she tried to
+hide the loss. No deterioration of her complexion, no wrinkling of her
+skin, could have been so dreadful to look at as the rouge that lay
+thick on her cheeks, and the white enamel plastered on her forehead. The
+delicate lace, and the bright trimming on her dressing-gown, the ribbons
+in her cap, and the rings on her bony fingers, all intended to draw the
+eye away from the change that had passed over her, directed the eye to
+it, on the contrary; emphasized it; made it by sheer force of contrast
+more hopeless and more horrible than it really was. An illustrated book
+of the fashions, in which women were represented exhibiting their finery
+by means of the free use of their limbs, lay on the bed, from which she
+had not moved for years without being lifted by her nurse. A hand-glass
+was placed with the book so that she could reach it easily. She took up
+the glass after her attendant had left the room, and looked at her face
+with an unblushing interest and attention which she would have been
+ashamed of herself at the age of eighteen.
+
+“Older and older, and thinner and thinner!” she said. “The major will
+soon be a free man; but I’ll have that red-haired hussy out of the house
+first!”
+
+She dropped the looking-glass on the counterpane, and clinched the hand
+that held it. Her eyes suddenly riveted themselves on a little crayon
+portrait of her husband hanging on the opposite wall; they looked at
+the likeness with the hard and cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird
+of prey. “Red is your taste in your old age is it?” she said to the
+portrait. “Red hair, and a scrofulous complexion, and a padded figure,
+a ballet-girl’s walk, and a pickpocket’s light fingers. _Miss_ Gwilt!
+_Miss_, with those eyes, and that walk!” She turned her head suddenly
+on the pillow, and burst into a harsh, jeering laugh. “_Miss_!” she
+repeated over and over again, with the venomously pointed emphasis of
+the most merciless of all human forms of contempt--the contempt of one
+woman for another.
+
+The age we live in is an age which finds no human creature inexcusable.
+Is there an excuse for Mrs. Milroy? Let the story of her life answer the
+question.
+
+She had married the major at an unusually early age; and, in marrying
+him, had taken a man for her husband who was old enough to be her
+father--a man who, at that time, had the reputation, and not unjustly,
+of having made the freest use of his social gifts and his advantages of
+personal appearance in the society of women. Indifferently educated, and
+below her husband in station, she had begun by accepting his addresses
+under the influence of her own flattered vanity, and had ended by
+feeling the fascination which Major Milroy had exercised over women
+infinitely her mental superiors in his earlier life. He had been
+touched, on his side, by her devotion, and had felt, in his turn, the
+attraction of her beauty, her freshness, and her youth. Up to the time
+when their little daughter and only child had reached the age of eight
+years, their married life had been an unusually happy one. At that
+period the double misfortune fell on the household, of the failure of
+the wife’s health, and the almost total loss of the husband’s fortune;
+and from that moment the domestic happiness of the married pair was
+virtually at an end.
+
+Having reached the age when men in general are readier, under the
+pressure of calamity, to resign themselves than to resist, the major had
+secured the little relics of his property, had retired into the country,
+and had patiently taken refuge in his mechanical pursuits. A woman
+nearer to him in age, or a woman with a better training and more
+patience of disposition than his wife possessed, would have understood
+the major’s conduct, and have found consolation in the major’s
+submission. Mrs. Milroy found consolation in nothing. Neither nature
+nor training helped her to meet resignedly the cruel calamity which had
+struck at her in the bloom of womanhood and the prime of beauty. The
+curse of incurable sickness blighted her at once and for life.
+
+Suffering can, and does, develop the latent evil that there is in
+humanity, as well as the latent good. The good that was in Mrs. Milroy’s
+nature shrank up, under that subtly deteriorating influence in which the
+evil grew and flourished. Month by month, as she became the weaker
+woman physically, she became the worse woman morally. All that was mean,
+cruel, and false in her expanded in steady proportion to the contraction
+of all that had once been generous, gentle, and true. Old suspicions
+of her husband’s readiness to relapse into the irregularities of his
+bachelor life, which, in her healthier days of mind and body, she had
+openly confessed to him--which she had always sooner or later seen to
+be suspicions that he had not deserved--came back, now that sickness had
+divorced her from him, in the form of that baser conjugal distrust which
+keeps itself cunningly secret; which gathers together its inflammatory
+particles atom by atom into a heap, and sets the slowly burning frenzy
+of jealousy alight in the mind. No proof of her husband’s blameless
+and patient life that could now be shown to Mrs. Milroy; no appeal that
+could be made to her respect for herself, or for her child growing up
+to womanhood, availed to dissipate the terrible delusion born of her
+hopeless illness, and growing steadily with its growth. Like all other
+madness, it had its ebb and flow, its time of spasmodic outburst, and
+its time of deceitful repose; but, active or passive, it was always in
+her. It had injured innocent servants, and insulted blameless strangers.
+It had brought the first tears of shame and sorrow into her daughter’s
+eyes, and had set the deepest lines that scored it in her husband’s
+face. It had made the secret misery of the little household for years;
+and it was now to pass beyond the family limits, and to influence coming
+events at Thorpe Ambrose, in which the future interests of Allan and
+Allan’s friend were vitally concerned.
+
+A moment’s glance at the posture of domestic affairs in the cottage,
+prior to the engagement of the new governess, is necessary to the due
+appreciation of the serious consequences that followed Miss Gwilt’s
+appearance on the scene.
+
+On the marriage of the governess who had lived in his service for many
+years (a woman of an age and an appearance to set even Mrs. Milroy’s
+jealousy at defiance), the major had considered the question of sending
+his daughter away from home far more seriously than his wife supposed.
+He was conscious that scenes took place in the house at which no young
+girl should be present; but he felt an invincible reluctance to apply
+the one efficient remedy--the keeping his daughter away from home in
+school time and holiday time alike. The struggle thus raised in his mind
+once set at rest, by the resolution to advertise for a new governess,
+Major Milroy’s natural tendency to avoid trouble rather than to meet
+it had declared itself in its customary manner. He had closed his eyes
+again on his home anxieties as quietly as usual, and had gone back, as
+he had gone back on hundreds of previous occasions, to the consoling
+society of his old friend the clock.
+
+It was far otherwise with the major’s wife. The chance which her husband
+had entirely overlooked, that the new governess who was to come might
+be a younger and a more attractive woman than the old governess who had
+gone, was the first chance that presented itself as possible to Mrs.
+Milroy’s mind. She had said nothing. Secretly waiting, and secretly
+nursing her inveterate distrust, she had encouraged her husband and her
+daughter to leave her on the occasion of the picnic, with the express
+purpose of making an opportunity for seeing the new governess alone. The
+governess had shown herself; and the smoldering fire of Mrs. Milroy’s
+jealousy had burst into flame in the moment when she and the handsome
+stranger first set eyes on each other.
+
+The interview over, Mrs. Milroy’s suspicions fastened at once and
+immovably on her husband’s mother.
+
+She was well aware that there was no one else in London on whom the
+major could depend to make the necessary inquiries; she was well aware
+that Miss Gwilt had applied for the situation, in the first instance,
+as a stranger answering an advertisement published in a newspaper. Yet
+knowing this, she had obstinately closed her eyes, with the blind frenzy
+of the blindest of all the passions, to the facts straight before her;
+and, looking back to the last of many quarrels between them which
+had ended in separating the elder lady and herself, had seized on the
+conclusion that Miss Gwilt’s engagement was due to her mother-in-law’s
+vindictive enjoyment of making mischief in her household. The inference
+which the very servants themselves, witnesses of the family scandal, had
+correctly drawn--that the major’s mother, in securing the services of
+a well-recommended governess for her son, had thought it no part of her
+duty to consider that governess’s looks in the purely fanciful interests
+of the major’s wife--was an inference which it was simply impossible
+to convey into Mrs. Milroy’s mind. Miss Gwilt had barely closed the
+sick-room door when the whispered words hissed out of Mrs. Milroy’s
+lips, “Before another week is over your head, my lady, you go!”
+
+From that moment, through the wakeful night and the weary day, the one
+object of the bedridden woman’s life was to procure the new governess’s
+dismissal from the house.
+
+The assistance of the nurse, in the capacity of spy, was secured--as
+Mrs. Milroy had been accustomed to secure other extra services which her
+attendant was not bound to render her--by a present of a dress from the
+mistress’s wardrobe. One after another articles of wearing apparel which
+were now useless to Mrs. Milroy had ministered in this way to feed the
+nurse’s greed--the insatiable greed of an ugly woman for fine clothes.
+Bribed with the smartest dress she had secured yet, the household spy
+took her secret orders, and applied herself with a vile enjoyment of it
+to her secret work.
+
+The days passed, the work went on; but nothing had come of it. Mistress
+and servant had a woman to deal with who was a match for both of them.
+
+Repeated intrusions on the major, when the governess happened to be in
+the same room with him, failed to discover the slightest impropriety of
+word, look, or action, on either side. Stealthy watching and listening
+at the governess’s bedroom door detected that she kept a light in her
+room at late hours of the night, and that she groaned and ground her
+teeth in her sleep--and detected nothing more. Careful superintendence
+in the day-time proved that she regularly posted her own letters,
+instead of giving them to the servant; and that on certain occasions,
+when the occupation of her hours out of lesson time and walking time was
+left at her own disposal, she had been suddenly missed from the garden,
+and then caught coming back alone to it from the park. Once and once
+only, the nurse had found an opportunity of following her out of the
+garden, had been detected immediately in the park, and had been asked
+with the most exasperating politeness if she wished to join Miss Gwilt
+in a walk. Small circumstances of this kind, which were sufficiently
+suspicious to the mind of a jealous woman, were discovered in abundance.
+But circumstances, on which to found a valid ground of complaint that
+might be laid before the major, proved to be utterly wanting. Day
+followed day, and Miss Gwilt remained persistently correct in her
+conduct, and persistently irreproachable in her relations toward her
+employer and her pupil.
+
+Foiled in this direction, Mrs. Milroy tried next to find an assailable
+place in the statement which the governess’s reference had made on the
+subject of the governess’s character.
+
+Obtaining from the major the minutely careful report which his mother
+had addressed to him on this topic, Mrs. Milroy read and reread it, and
+failed to find the weak point of which she was in search in any part
+of the letter. All the customary questions on such occasions had been
+asked, and all had been scrupulously and plainly answered. The one sole
+opening for an attack which it was possible to discover was an opening
+which showed itself, after more practical matters had been all disposed
+of, in the closing sentences of the letter.
+
+“I was so struck,” the passage ran, “by the grace and distinction of
+Miss Gwilt’s manners that I took an opportunity, when she was out of the
+room, of asking how she first came to be governess. ‘In the usual way,’
+I was told. ‘A sad family misfortune, in which she behaved nobly. She
+is a very sensitive person, and shrinks from speaking of it among
+strangers--a natural reluctance which I have always felt it a matter of
+delicacy to respect.’ Hearing this, of course, I felt the same delicacy
+on my side. It was no part of my duty to intrude on the poor thing’s
+private sorrows; my only business was to do what I have now done, to
+make sure that I was engaging a capable and respectable governess to
+instruct my grandchild.”
+
+After careful consideration of these lines, Mrs. Milroy, having a
+strong desire to find circumstances suspicious, found them suspicious
+accordingly. She determined to sift the mystery of Miss Gwilt’s family
+misfortunes to the bottom, on the chance of extracting from it something
+useful to her purpose. There were two ways of doing this. She might
+begin by questioning the governess herself, or she might begin by
+questioning the governess’s reference. Experience of Miss Gwilt’s
+quickness of resource in dealing with awkward questions at their
+introductory interview decided her on taking the latter course. “I’ll
+get the particulars from the reference first,” thought Mrs. Milroy, “and
+then question the creature herself, and see if the two stories agree.”
+
+The letter of inquiry was short, and scrupulously to the point.
+
+Mrs. Milroy began by informing her correspondent that the state of her
+health necessitated leaving her daughter entirely under the governess’s
+influence and control. On that account she was more anxious than most
+mothers to be thoroughly informed in every respect about the person to
+whom she confided the entire charge of an only child; and feeling this
+anxiety, she might perhaps be excused for putting what might be thought,
+after the excellent character Miss Gwilt had received, a somewhat
+unnecessary question. With that preface, Mrs. Milroy came to the point,
+and requested to be informed of the circumstances which had obliged Miss
+Gwilt to go out as a governess.
+
+The letter, expressed in these terms, was posted the same day. On the
+morning when the answer was due, no answer appeared. The next morning
+arrived, and still there was no reply. When the third morning came, Mrs.
+Milroy’s impatience had broken loose from all restraint. She had rung
+for the nurse in the manner which has been already recorded, and had
+ordered the woman to be in waiting to receive the letters of the morning
+with her own hands. In this position matters now stood; and in these
+domestic circumstances the new series of events at Thorpe Ambrose took
+their rise.
+
+
+Mrs. Milroy had just looked at her watch, and had just put her hand once
+more to the bell-pull, when the door opened and the nurse entered the
+room.
+
+“Has the postman come?” asked Mrs. Milroy.
+
+The nurse laid a letter on the bed without answering, and waited, with
+unconcealed curiosity, to watch the effect which it produced on her
+mistress.
+
+Mrs. Milroy tore open the envelope the instant it was in her hand. A
+printed paper appeared (which she threw aside), surrounding a letter
+(which she looked at) in her own handwriting! She snatched up the
+printed paper. It was the customary Post-office circular, informing her
+that her letter had been duly presented at the right address, and that
+the person whom she had written to was not to be found.
+
+“Something wrong?” asked the nurse, detecting a change in her mistress’s
+face.
+
+The question passed unheeded. Mrs. Milroy’s writing-desk was on the
+table at the bedside. She took from it the letter which the major’s
+mother had written to her son, and turned to the page containing
+the name and address of Miss Gwilt’s reference. “Mrs. Mandeville, 18
+Kingsdown Crescent, Bayswater,” she read, eagerly to herself, and then
+looked at the address on her own returned letter. No error had been
+committed: the directions were identically the same.
+
+“Something wrong?” reiterated the nurse, advancing a step nearer to the
+bed.
+
+“Thank God--yes!” cried Mrs. Milroy, with a sudden outburst of
+exultation. She tossed the Post-office circular to the nurse, and beat
+her bony hands on the bedclothes in an ecstasy of anticipated triumph.
+“Miss Gwilt’s an impostor! Miss Gwilt’s an impostor! If I die for it,
+Rachel, I’ll be carried to the window to see the police take her away!”
+
+“It’s one thing to say she’s an impostor behind her back, and another
+thing to prove it to her face,” remarked the nurse. She put her hand
+as she spoke into her apron pocket, and, with a significant look at her
+mistress, silently produced a second letter.
+
+“For me?” asked Mrs. Milroy.
+
+“No!” said the nurse; “for Miss Gwilt.”
+
+The two women eyed each other, and understood each other without another
+word.
+
+“Where is she?” said Mrs. Milroy.
+
+The nurse pointed in the direction of the park. “Out again, for another
+walk before breakfast--by herself.”
+
+Mrs. Milroy beckoned to the nurse to stoop close over her. “Can you open
+it, Rachel?” she whispered.
+
+Rachel nodded.
+
+“Can you close it again, so that nobody would know?”
+
+“Can you spare the scarf that matches your pearl gray dress?” asked
+Rachel.
+
+“Take it!” said Mrs. Milroy, impatiently.
+
+The nurse opened the wardrobe in silence, took the scarf in silence, and
+left the room in silence. In less than five minutes she came back with
+the envelope of Miss Gwilt’s letter open in her hand.
+
+“Thank you, ma’am, for the scarf,” said Rachel, putting the open letter
+composedly on the counterpane of the bed.
+
+Mrs. Milroy looked at the envelope. It had been closed as usual by means
+of adhesive gum, which had been made to give way by the application of
+steam. As Mrs. Milroy took out the letter, her hand trembled violently,
+and the white enamel parted into cracks over the wrinkles on her
+forehead.
+
+Rachel withdrew to the window to keep watch on the park. “Don’t hurry,”
+ she said. “No signs of her yet.”
+
+Mrs. Milroy still paused, keeping the all-important morsel of paper
+folded in her hand. She could have taken Miss Gwilt’s life, but she
+hesitated at reading Miss Gwilt’s letter.
+
+“Are you troubled with scruples?” asked the nurse, with a sneer.
+“Consider it a duty you owe to your daughter.”
+
+“You wretch!” said Mrs. Milroy. With that expression of opinion, she
+opened the letter.
+
+It was evidently written in great haste, was undated, and was signed in
+initials only. Thus it ran:
+
+“Diana Street.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--The cab is waiting at the door, and I have only a moment
+to tell you that I am obliged to leave London, on business, for three
+or four days, or a week at longest. My letters will be forwarded if
+you write. I got yours yesterday, and I agree with you that it is very
+important to put him off the awkward subject of yourself and your family
+as long as you safely can. The better you know him, the better you will
+be able to make up the sort of story that will do. Once told, you will
+have to stick to it; and, _having_ to stick to it, beware of making
+it complicated, and beware of making it in a hurry. I will write again
+about this, and give you my own ideas. In the meantime, don’t risk
+meeting him too often in the park.
+
+“Yours, M. O.”
+
+“Well?” asked the nurse, returning to the bedside. “Have you done with
+it?”
+
+“Meeting him in the park!” repeated Mrs. Milroy, with her eyes still
+fastened on the letter. “_Him_! Rachel, where is the major?”
+
+“In his own room.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!”
+
+“Have your own way. I want the letter and the envelope.”
+
+“Can you close it again so that she won’t know?”
+
+“What I can open I can shut. Anything more?”
+
+“Nothing more.”
+
+Mrs. Milroy was left alone again, to review her plan of attack by the
+new light that had now been thrown on Miss Gwilt.
+
+The information that had been gained by opening the governess’s letter
+pointed plainly to the conclusion that an adventuress had stolen her way
+into the house by means of a false reference. But having been obtained
+by an act of treachery which it was impossible to acknowledge, it was
+not information that could be used either for warning the major or for
+exposing Miss Gwilt. The one available weapon in Mrs. Milroy’s hands was
+the weapon furnished by her own returned letter, and the one question to
+decide was how to make the best and speediest use of it.
+
+The longer she turned the matter over in her mind, the more hasty and
+premature seemed the exultation which she had felt at the first sight of
+the Post-office circular. That a lady acting as reference to a governess
+should have quitted her residence without leaving any trace behind her,
+and without even mentioning an address to which her letters could be
+forwarded, was a circumstance in itself sufficiently suspicious to be
+mentioned to the major. But Mrs. Milroy, however perverted her estimate
+of her husband might be in some respects, knew enough of his character
+to be assured that, if she told him what had happened, he would frankly
+appeal to the governess herself for an explanation. Miss Gwilt’s
+quickness and cunning would, in that case, produce some plausible answer
+on the spot, which the major’s partiality would be only too ready to
+accept; and she would at the same time, no doubt, place matters
+in train, by means of the post, for the due arrival of all needful
+confirmation on the part of her accomplice in London. To keep strict
+silence for the present, and to institute (without the governess’s
+knowledge) such inquiries as might be necessary to the discovery of
+undeniable evidence, was plainly the only safe course to take with
+such a man as the major, and with such a woman as Miss Gwilt. Helpless
+herself, to whom could Mrs. Milroy commit the difficult and dangerous
+task of investigation? The nurse, even if she was to be trusted, could
+not be spared at a day’s notice, and could not be sent away without
+the risk of exciting remark. Was there any other competent and reliable
+person to employ, either at Thorpe Ambrose or in London? Mrs. Milroy
+turned from side to side of the bed, searching every corner of her mind
+for the needful discovery, and searching in vain. “Oh, if I could only
+lay my hand on some man I could trust!” she thought, despairingly. “If I
+only knew where to look for somebody to help me!”
+
+As the idea passed through her mind, the sound of her daughter’s voice
+startled her from the other side of the door.
+
+“May I come in?” asked Neelie.
+
+“What do you want?” returned Mrs. Milroy, impatiently.
+
+“I have brought up your breakfast, mamma.”
+
+“My breakfast?” repeated Mrs. Milroy, in surprise. “Why doesn’t Rachel
+bring it up as usual?” She considered a moment, and then called out,
+sharply, “Come in!”
+
+
+
+
+II. THE MAN IS FOUND.
+
+Neelie entered the room, carrying the tray with the tea, the dry toast,
+and the pat of butter which composed the invalid’s invariable breakfast.
+
+“What does this mean?” asked Mrs. Milroy, speaking and looking as she
+might have spoken and looked if the wrong servant had come into the
+room.
+
+Neelie put the tray down on the bedside table. “I thought I should like
+to bring you up your breakfast, mamma, for once in a way,” she replied,
+“and I asked Rachel to let me.”
+
+“Come here,” said Mrs. Milroy, “and wish me good-morning.”
+
+Neelie obeyed. As she stooped to kiss her mother, Mrs. Milroy caught her
+by the arm, and turned her roughly to the light. There were plain signs
+of disturbance and distress in her daughter’s face. A deadly thrill of
+terror ran through Mrs. Milroy on the instant. She suspected that the
+opening of the letter had been discovered by Miss Gwilt, and that the
+nurse was keeping out of the way in consequence.
+
+“Let me go, mamma,” said Neelie, shrinking under her mother’s grasp.
+“You hurt me.”
+
+“Tell me why you have brought up my breakfast this morning,” persisted
+Mrs. Milroy.
+
+“I have told you, mamma.”
+
+“You have not! You have made an excuse; I see it in your face. Come!
+what is it?”
+
+Neelie’s resolution gave way before her mother’s. She looked aside
+uneasily at the things in the tray. “I have been vexed,” she said, with
+an effort; “and I didn’t want to stop in the breakfast-room. I wanted to
+come up here, and to speak to you.”
+
+“Vexed? Who has vexed you? What has happened? Has Miss Gwilt anything to
+do with it?”
+
+Neelie looked round again at her mother in sudden curiosity and alarm.
+“Mamma!” she said, “you read my thoughts. I declare you frighten me. It
+_was_ Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Before Mrs. Milroy could say a word more on her side, the door opened
+and the nurse looked in.
+
+“Have you got what you want?” she asked, as composedly as usual. “Miss,
+there, insisted on taking your tray up this morning. Has she broken
+anything?”
+
+“Go to the window. I want to speak to Rachel,” said Mrs. Milroy.
+
+As soon as her daughter’s back was turned, she beckoned eagerly to the
+nurse. “Anything wrong?” she asked, in a whisper. “Do you think she
+suspects us?”
+
+The nurse turned away with her hard, sneering smile. “I told you it
+should be done,” she said, “and it _has_ been done. She hasn’t the ghost
+of a suspicion. I waited in the room; and I saw her take up the letter
+and open it.”
+
+Mrs. Milroy drew a deep breath of relief. “Thank you,” she said, loud
+enough for her daughter to hear. “I want nothing more.”
+
+The nurse withdrew; and Neelie came back from the window. Mrs. Milroy
+took her by the hand, and looked at her more attentively and more kindly
+than usual. Her daughter interested her that morning; for her daughter
+had something to say on the subject of Miss Gwilt.
+
+“I used to think that you promised to be pretty, child,” she said,
+cautiously resuming the interrupted conversation in the least direct
+way. “But you don’t seem to be keeping your promise. You look out of
+health and out of spirits. What is the matter with you?”
+
+If there had been any sympathy between mother and child, Neelie might
+have owned the truth. She might have said frankly: “I am looking ill,
+because my life is miserable to me. I am fond of Mr. Armadale, and Mr.
+Armadale was once fond of me. We had one little disagreement, only one,
+in which I was to blame. I wanted to tell him so at the time, and I have
+wanted to tell him so ever since; and Miss Gwilt stands between us and
+prevents me. She has made us like strangers; she has altered him, and
+taken him away from me. He doesn’t look at me as he did; he doesn’t
+speak to me as he did; he is never alone with me as he used to be; I
+can’t say the words to him that I long to say; and I can’t write to him,
+for it would look as if I wanted to get him back. It is all over between
+me and Mr. Armadale; and it is that woman’s fault. There is ill-blood
+between Miss Gwilt and me the whole day long; and say what I may, and do
+what I may, she always gets the better of me, and always puts me in the
+wrong. Everything I saw at Thorpe Ambrose pleased me, everything I did
+at Thorpe Ambrose made me happy, before she came. Nothing pleases me,
+and nothing makes me happy now!” If Neelie had ever been accustomed to
+ask her mother’s advice and to trust herself to her mother’s love, she
+might have said such words as these. As it was, the tears came into her
+eyes, and she hung her head in silence.
+
+“Come!” said Mrs. Milroy, beginning to lose patience. “You have
+something to say to me about Miss Gwilt. What is it?”
+
+Neelie forced back her tears, and made an effort to answer.
+
+“She aggravates me beyond endurance, mamma; I can’t bear her; I shall do
+something--” Neelie stopped, and stamped her foot angrily on the floor.
+“I shall throw something at her head if we go on much longer like this!
+I should have thrown something this morning if I hadn’t left the room.
+Oh, do speak to papa about it! Do find out some reason for sending her
+away! I’ll go to school--I’ll do anything in the world to get rid of
+Miss Gwilt!”
+
+To get rid of Miss Gwilt! At those words--at that echo from her
+daughter’s lips of the one dominant desire kept secret in her own
+heart--Mrs. Milroy slowly raised herself in bed. What did it mean? Was
+the help she wanted coming from the very last of all quarters in which
+she could have thought of looking for it?
+
+“Why do you want to get rid of Miss Gwilt?” she asked. “What have you
+got to complain of?”
+
+“Nothing!” said Neelie. “That’s the aggravation of it. Miss Gwilt won’t
+let me have anything to complain of. She is perfectly detestable; she
+is driving me mad; and she is the pink of propriety all the time. I dare
+say it’s wrong, but I don’t care--I hate her!”
+
+Mrs. Milroy’s eyes questioned her daughter’s face as they had
+never questioned it yet. There was something under the surface,
+evidently--something which it might be of vital importance to her own
+purpose to discover--which had not risen into view. She went on probing
+her way deeper and deeper into Neelie’s mind, with a warmer and warmer
+interest in Neelie’s secret.
+
+“Pour me out a cup of tea,” she said; “and don’t excite yourself, my
+dear. Why do you speak to _me_ about this? Why don’t you speak to your
+father?”
+
+“I have tried to speak to papa,” said Neelie. “But it’s no use; he
+is too good to know what a wretch she is. She is always on her best
+behavior with him; she is always contriving to be useful to him. I
+can’t make him understand why I dislike Miss Gwilt; I can’t make _you_
+understand--I only understand it myself.” She tried to pour out the
+tea, and in trying upset the cup. “I’ll go downstairs again!” exclaimed
+Neelie, with a burst of tears. “I’m not fit for anything; I can’t even
+pour out a cup of tea!”
+
+Mrs. Milroy seized her hand and stopped her. Trifling as it was,
+Neelie’s reference to the relations between the major and Miss Gwilt had
+roused her mother’s ready jealousy. The restraints which Mrs. Milroy
+had laid on herself thus far vanished in a moment--vanished even in the
+presence of a girl of sixteen, and that girl her own child!
+
+“Wait here!” she said, eagerly. “You have come to the right place and
+the right person. Go on abusing Miss Gwilt. I like to hear you--I hate
+her, too!”
+
+“You, mamma!” exclaimed Neelie, looking at her mother in astonishment.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Milroy hesitated before she said more. Some last-left
+instinct of her married life in its earlier and happier time pleaded
+hard with her to respect the youth and the sex of her child. But
+jealousy respects nothing; in the heaven above and on the earth beneath,
+nothing but itself. The slow fire of self-torment, burning night and day
+in the miserable woman’s breast, flashed its deadly light into her eyes,
+as the next words dropped slowly and venomously from her lips.
+
+“If you had had eyes in your head, you would never have gone to your
+father,” she said. “Your father has reasons of his own for hearing
+nothing that you can say, or that anybody can say, against Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Many girls at Neelie’s age would have failed to see the meaning hidden
+under those words. It was the daughter’s misfortune, in this instance,
+to have had experience enough of the mother to understand her. Neelie
+started back from the bedside, with her face in a glow. “Mamma!” she
+said, “you are talking horribly! Papa is the best, and dearest, and
+kindest--oh, I won’t hear it! I won’t hear it!”
+
+Mrs. Milroy’s fierce temper broke out in an instant--broke out all the
+more violently from her feeling herself, in spite of herself, to have
+been in the wrong.
+
+“You impudent little fool!” she retorted, furiously. “Do you think I
+want _you_ to remind me of what I owe to your father? Am I to learn how
+to speak of your father, and how to think of your father, and how to
+love and honor your father, from a forward little minx like you! I was
+finely disappointed, I can tell you, when you were born--I wished for
+a boy, you impudent hussy! If you ever find a man who is fool enough to
+marry you, he will be a lucky man if you only love him half as well,
+a quarter as well, a hundred-thousandth part as well, as I loved your
+father. Ah, you can cry when it’s too late; you can come creeping back
+to beg your mother’s pardon after you have insulted her. You little
+dowdy, half-grown creature! I was handsomer than ever you will be when
+I married your father. I would have gone through fire and water to serve
+your father! If he had asked me to cut off one of my arms, I would have
+done it--I would have done it to please him!” She turned suddenly with
+her face to the wall, forgetting her daughter, forgetting her husband,
+forgetting everything but the torturing remembrance of her lost beauty.
+“My arms!” she repeated to herself, faintly. “What arms I had when I was
+young!” She snatched up the sleeve of her dressing-gown furtively, with
+a shudder. “Oh, look at it now! look at it now!”
+
+Neelie fell on her knees at the bedside and hid her face. In sheer
+despair of finding comfort and help anywhere else, she had cast herself
+impulsively on her mother’s mercy; and this was how it had ended! “Oh,
+mamma,” she pleaded, “you know I didn’t mean to offend you! I couldn’t
+help it when you spoke so of my father. Oh, do, do forgive me!”
+
+Mrs. Milroy turned again on her pillow, and looked at her daughter
+vacantly. “Forgive you?” she repeated, with her mind still in the past,
+groping its way back darkly to the present.
+
+“I beg your pardon, mamma--I beg your pardon on my knees. I am so
+unhappy; I do so want a little kindness! Won’t you forgive me?”
+
+“Wait a little,” rejoined Mrs. Milroy. “Ah,” she said, after an
+interval, “now I know! Forgive you? Yes; I’ll forgive you on one
+condition.” She lifted Neelie’s head, and looked her searchingly in the
+face. “Tell me why you hate Miss Gwilt! You’ve a reason of your own for
+hating her, and you haven’t confessed it yet.”
+
+Neelie’s head dropped again. The burning color that she was hiding by
+hiding her face showed itself on her neck. Her mother saw it, and gave
+her time.
+
+“Tell me,” reiterated Mrs. Milroy, more gently, “why do you hate her?”
+
+The answer came reluctantly, a word at a time, in fragments.
+
+“Because she is trying--”
+
+“Trying what?”
+
+“Trying to make somebody who is much--”
+
+“Much what?”
+
+“Much too young for her--”
+
+“Marry her?”
+
+“Yes, mamma.”
+
+Breathlessly interested, Mrs. Milroy leaned forward, and twined her hand
+caressingly in her daughter’s hair.
+
+“Who is it, Neelie?” she asked, in a whisper.
+
+“You will never say I told you, mamma?”
+
+“Never! Who is it?”
+
+“Mr. Armadale.”
+
+Mrs. Milroy leaned back on her pillow in dead silence. The plain
+betrayal of her daughter’s first love, by her daughter’s own lips, which
+would have absorbed the whole attention of other mothers, failed to
+occupy her for a moment. Her jealousy, distorting all things to fit its
+own conclusions, was busied in distorting what she had just heard. “A
+blind,” she thought, “which has deceived my girl. It doesn’t deceive
+_me_. Is Miss Gwilt likely to succeed?” she asked, aloud. “Does Mr.
+Armadale show any sort of interest in her?”
+
+Neelie looked up at her mother for the first time. The hardest part
+of the confession was over now. She had revealed the truth about Miss
+Gwilt, and she had openly mentioned Allan’s name.
+
+“He shows the most unaccountable interest,” she said. “It’s impossible
+to understand it. It’s downright infatuation. I haven’t patience to talk
+about it!”
+
+“How do _you_ come to be in Mr. Armadale’s secrets?” inquired Mrs.
+Milroy. “Has he informed _you_, of all the people in the world, of his
+interest in Miss Gwilt?”
+
+“Me!” exclaimed Neelie, indignantly. “It’s quite bad enough that he
+should have told papa.”
+
+At the re-appearance of the major in the narrative, Mrs. Milroy’s
+interest in the conversation rose to its climax. She raised herself
+again from the pillow. “Get a chair,” she said. “Sit down, child, and
+tell me all about it. Every word, mind--every word!”
+
+“I can only tell you, mamma, what papa told me.”
+
+“When?”
+
+“Saturday. I went in with papa’s lunch to the workshop, and he said,
+‘I have just had a visit from Mr. Armadale; and I want to give you
+a caution while I think of it.’ I didn’t say anything, mamma; I only
+waited. Papa went on, and told me that Mr. Armadale had been speaking to
+him on the subject of Miss Gwilt, and that he had been asking a question
+about her which nobody in his position had a right to ask. Papa said he
+had been obliged, good-humoredly, to warn Mr. Armadale to be a little
+more delicate, and a little more careful next time. I didn’t feel much
+interested, mamma; it didn’t matter to _me_ what Mr. Armadale said or
+did. Why should I care about it?”
+
+“Never mind yourself,” interposed Mrs. Milroy, sharply. “Go on with
+what your father said. What was he doing when he was talking about Miss
+Gwilt? How did he look?”
+
+“Much as usual, mamma. He was walking up and down the workshop; and I
+took his arm and walked up and down with him.”
+
+“I don’t care what _you_ were doing,” said Mrs. Milroy, more and more
+irritably. “Did your father tell you what Mr. Armadale’s question was,
+or did he not?”
+
+“Yes, mamma. He said Mr. Armadale began by mentioning that he was very
+much interested in Miss Gwilt, and he then went on to ask whether papa
+could tell him anything about her family misfortunes--”
+
+“What!” cried Mrs. Milroy. The word burst from her almost in a scream,
+and the white enamel on her face cracked in all directions. “Mr.
+Armadale said _that_?” she went on, leaning out further and further over
+the side of the bed.
+
+Neelie started up, and tried to put her mother back on the pillow.
+
+“Mamma!” she exclaimed, “are you in pain? Are you ill? You frighten me!”
+
+“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Mrs. Milroy. She was too violently
+agitated to make any other than the commonest excuse. “My nerves are bad
+this morning; don’t notice it. I’ll try the other side of the pillow.
+Go on! go on! I’m listening, though I’m not looking at you.” She turned
+her face to the wall, and clinched her trembling hands convulsively
+beneath the bedclothes. “I’ve got her!” she whispered to herself, under
+her breath. “I’ve got her at last!”
+
+“I’m afraid I’ve been talking too much,” said Neelie. “I’m afraid I’ve
+been stopping here too long. Shall I go downstairs, mamma, and come back
+later in the day?”
+
+“Go on,” repeated Mrs. Milroy, mechanically. “What did your father say
+next? Anything more about Mr. Armadale?”
+
+“Nothing more, except how papa answered him,” replied Neelie. “Papa
+repeated his own words when he told me about it. He said, ‘In the
+absence of any confidence volunteered by the lady herself, Mr. Armadale,
+all I know or wish to know--and you must excuse me for saying, all
+any one else need know or wish to know--is that Miss Gwilt gave me a
+perfectly satisfactory reference before she entered my house.’ Severe,
+mamma, wasn’t it? I don’t pity him in the least; he richly deserved
+it. The next thing was papa’s caution to _me_. He told me to check Mr.
+Armadale’s curiosity if he applied to me next. As if he was likely to
+apply to me! And as if I should listen to him if he did! That’s all,
+mamma. You won’t suppose, will you, that I have told you this because I
+want to hinder Mr. Armadale from marrying Miss Gwilt? Let him marry her
+if he pleases; I don’t care!” said Neelie, in a voice that faltered
+a little, and with a face which was hardly composed enough to be in
+perfect harmony with a declaration of indifference. “All I want is to
+be relieved from the misery of having Miss Gwilt for my governess. I’d
+rather go to school. I should like to go to school. My mind’s quite
+changed about all that, only I haven’t the heart to tell papa. I don’t
+know what’s come to me, I don’t seem to have heart enough for anything
+now; and when papa takes me on his knee in the evening, and says, ‘Let’s
+have a talk, Neelie,’ he makes me cry. Would you mind breaking it to
+him, mamma, that I’ve changed my mind, and I want to go to school?” The
+tears rose thickly in her eyes, and she failed to see that her mother
+never even turned on the pillow to look round at her.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Milroy, vacantly. “You’re a good girl; you shall
+go to school.”
+
+The cruel brevity of the reply, and the tone in which it was spoken,
+told Neelie plainly that her mother’s attention had been wandering
+far away from her, and that it was useless and needless to prolong the
+interview. She turned aside quietly, without a word of remonstrance.
+It was nothing new in her experience to find herself shut out from her
+mother’s sympathies. She looked at her eyes in the glass, and, pouring
+out some cold water, bathed her face. “Miss Gwilt shan’t see I’ve been
+crying!” thought Neelie, as she went back to the bedside to take her
+leave. “I’ve tired you out, mamma,” she said, gently. “Let me go now;
+and let me come back a little later when you have had some rest.”
+
+“Yes,” repeated her mother, as mechanically as ever; “a little later
+when I have had some rest.”
+
+Neelie left the room. The minute after the door had closed on her, Mrs.
+Milroy rang the bell for her nurse. In the face of the narrative she had
+just heard, in the face of every reasonable estimate of probabilities,
+she held to her own jealous conclusions as firmly as ever. “Mr. Armadale
+may believe her, and my daughter may believe her,” thought the furious
+woman. “But I know the major; and she can’t deceive _me_!”
+
+The nurse came in. “Prop me up,” said Mrs. Milroy. “And give me my desk.
+I want to write.”
+
+“You’re excited,” replied the nurse. “You’re not fit to write.”
+
+“Give me the desk,” reiterated Mrs. Milroy.
+
+“Anything more?” asked Rachel, repeating her invariable formula as she
+placed the desk on the bed.
+
+“Yes. Come back in half an hour. I shall want you to take a letter to
+the great house.”
+
+The nurse’s sardonic composure deserted her for once. “Mercy on us!”
+ she exclaimed, with an accent of genuine surprise. “What next? You don’t
+mean to say you’re going to write--?”
+
+“I am going to write to Mr. Armadale,” interposed Mrs. Milroy; “and you
+are going to take the letter to him, and wait for an answer; and,
+mind this, not a living soul but our two selves must know of it in the
+house.”
+
+“Why are you writing to Mr. Armadale?” asked Rachel. “And why is nobody
+to know of it but our two selves?”
+
+“Wait,” rejoined Mrs. Milroy, “and you will see.”
+
+The nurse’s curiosity, being a woman’s curiosity, declined to wait.
+
+“I’ll help you with my eyes open,” she said; “but I won’t help you
+blindfold.”
+
+“Oh, if I only had the use of my limbs!” groaned Mrs. Milroy. “You
+wretch, if I could only do without you!”
+
+“You have the use of your head,” retorted the impenetrable nurse. “And
+you ought to know better than to trust me by halves, at this time of
+day.”
+
+It was brutally put; but it was true--doubly true, after the opening of
+Miss Gwilt’s letter. Mrs. Milroy gave way.
+
+“What do you want to know?” she asked. “Tell me, and leave me.”
+
+“I want to know what you are writing to Mr. Armadale about?”
+
+“About Miss Gwilt.”
+
+“What has Mr. Armadale to do with you and Miss Gwilt?”
+
+Mrs. Milroy held up the letter that had been returned to her by the
+authorities at the Post-office.
+
+“Stoop,” she said. “Miss Gwilt may be listening at the door. I’ll
+whisper.”
+
+The nurse stooped, with her eye on the door. “You know that the postman
+went with this letter to Kingsdown Crescent?” said Mrs. Milroy. “And you
+know that he found Mrs. Mandeville gone away, nobody could tell where?”
+
+“Well,” whispered Rachel “what next?”
+
+“This, next. When Mr. Armadale gets the letter that I am going to write
+to him, he will follow the same road as the postman; and we’ll see what
+happens when he knocks at Mrs. Mandeville’s door.”
+
+“How do you get him to the door?”
+
+“I tell him to go to Miss Gwilt’s reference.”
+
+“Is he sweet on Miss Gwilt?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Ah!” said the nurse. “I see!”
+
+
+
+
+III. THE BRINK OF DISCOVERY.
+
+The morning of the interview between Mrs. Milroy and her daughter at the
+cottage was a morning of serious reflection for the squire at the great
+house.
+
+Even Allan’s easy-tempered nature had not been proof against the
+disturbing influences exercised on it by the events of the last three
+days. Midwinter’s abrupt departure had vexed him; and Major Milroy’s
+reception of his inquiries relating to Miss Gwilt weighed unpleasantly
+on his mind. Since his visit to the cottage, he had felt impatient and
+ill at ease, for the first time in his life, with everybody who came
+near him. Impatient with Pedgift Junior, who had called on the previous
+evening to announce his departure for London, on business, the next day,
+and to place his services at the disposal of his client; ill at ease
+with Miss Gwilt, at a secret meeting with her in the park that morning;
+and ill at ease in his own company, as he now sat moodily smoking in
+the solitude of his room. “I can’t live this sort of life much longer,”
+ thought Allan. “If nobody will help me to put the awkward question to
+Miss Gwilt, I must stumble on some way of putting it for myself.”
+
+What way? The answer to that question was as hard to find as ever. Allan
+tried to stimulate his sluggish invention by walking up and down the
+room, and was disturbed by the appearance of the footman at the first
+turn.
+
+“Now then! what is it?” he asked, impatiently.
+
+“A letter, sir; and the person waits for an answer.”
+
+Allan looked at the address. It was in a strange handwriting. He opened
+the letter, and a little note inclosed in it dropped to the ground.
+The note was directed, still in the strange handwriting, to “Mrs.
+Mandeville, 18 Kingsdown Crescent, Bayswater. Favored by Mr. Armadale.”
+ More and more surprised, Allan turned for information to the signature
+at the end of the letter. It was “Anne Milroy.”
+
+“Anne Milroy?” he repeated. “It must be the major’s wife. What can she
+possibly want with me?” By way of discovering what she wanted, Allan
+did at last what he might more wisely have done at first. He sat down to
+read the letter.
+
+[“Private.”] “The Cottage, Monday.
+
+“DEAR SIR--The name at the end of these lines will, I fear, recall to
+you a very rude return made on my part, some time since, for an act of
+neighborly kindness on yours. I can only say in excuse that I am a
+great sufferer, and that, if I was ill-tempered enough, in a moment of
+irritation under severe pain, to send back your present of fruit, I have
+regretted doing so ever since. Attribute this letter, if you please, to
+my desire to make some atonement, and to my wish to be of service to our
+good friend and landlord, if I possibly can.
+
+“I have been informed of the question which you addressed to my husband,
+the day before yesterday, on the subject of Miss Gwilt. From all I have
+heard of you, I am quite sure that your anxiety to know more of this
+charming person than you know now is an anxiety proceeding from the most
+honorable motives. Believing this, I feel a woman’s interest--incurable
+invalid as I am--in assisting you. If you are desirous of becoming
+acquainted with Miss Gwilt’s family circumstances without directly
+appealing to Miss Gwilt herself, it rests with you to make the
+discovery; and I will tell you how.
+
+“It so happens that, some few days since, I wrote privately to Miss
+Gwilt’s reference on this very subject. I had long observed that my
+governess was singularly reluctant to speak of her family and her
+friends; and, without attributing her silence to other than perfectly
+proper motives, I felt it my duty to my daughter to make some inquiry on
+the subject. The answer that I have received is satisfactory as far as
+it goes. My correspondent informs me that Miss Gwilt’s story is a very
+sad one, and that her own conduct throughout has been praiseworthy in
+the extreme. The circumstances (of a domestic nature, as I gather) are
+all plainly stated in a collection of letters now in the possession of
+Miss Gwilt’s reference. This lady is perfectly willing to let me see
+the letters; but not possessing copies of them, and being personally
+responsible for their security, she is reluctant, if it can be avoided,
+to trust them to the post; and she begs me to wait until she or I can
+find some reliable person who can be employed to transmit the packet
+from her hands to mine.
+
+“Under these circumstances, it has struck me that you might possibly,
+with your interest in the matter, be not unwilling to take charge of the
+papers. If I am wrong in this idea, and if you are not disposed, after
+what I have told you, to go to the trouble and expense of a journey to
+London, you have only to burn my letter and inclosure, and to think no
+more about it. If you decide on becoming my envoy, I gladly provide you
+with the necessary introduction to Mrs. Mandeville. You have only, on
+presenting it, to receive the letters in a sealed packet, to send
+them here on your return to Thorpe Ambrose, and to wait an early
+communication from me acquainting you with the result.
+
+“In conclusion, I have only to add that I see no impropriety in your
+taking (if you feel so inclined) the course that I propose to you. Miss
+Gwilt’s manner of receiving such allusions as I have made to her family
+circumstances has rendered it unpleasant for me (and would render it
+quite impossible for you) to seek information in the first instance from
+herself. I am certainly justified in applying to her reference; and you
+are certainly not to blame for being the medium of safely transmitting
+a sealed communication with one lady to another. If I find in that
+communication family secrets which cannot honorably be mentioned to any
+third person, I shall, of course, be obliged to keep you waiting until
+I have first appealed to Miss Gwilt. If I find nothing recorded but
+what is to her honor, and what is sure to raise her still higher in your
+estimation, I am undeniably doing her a service by taking you into my
+confidence. This is how I look at the matter; but pray don’t allow me to
+influence _you_.
+
+“In any case, I have one condition to make, which I am sure you will
+understand to be indispensable. The most innocent actions are liable,
+in this wicked world, to the worst possible interpretation I must,
+therefore, request that you will consider this communication as strictly
+_private_. I write to you in a confidence which is on no account (until
+circumstances may, in my opinion, justify the revelation of it) to
+extend beyond our two selves,
+
+“Believe me, dear sir, truly yours,
+
+“ANNE MILROY.”
+
+In this tempting form the unscrupulous ingenuity of the major’s wife
+had set the trap. Without a moment’s hesitation, Allan followed his
+impulses, as usual, and walked straight into it, writing his answer and
+pursuing his own reflections simultaneously in a highly characteristic
+state of mental confusion.
+
+“By Jupiter, this is kind of Mrs. Milroy!” (“My dear madam.”) “Just the
+thing I wanted, at the time when I needed it most!” (“I don’t know how
+to express my sense of your kindness, except by saying that I will go
+to London and fetch the letters with the greatest pleasure.”) “She shall
+have a basket of fruit regularly every day, all through the season.” (“I
+will go at once, dear madam, and be back to-morrow.”) “Ah, nothing like
+the women for helping one when one is in love! This is just what my poor
+mother would have done in Mrs. Milroy’s place.” (“On my word of honor
+as a gentleman, I will take the utmost care of the letters; and keep
+the thing strictly private, as you request.”) “I would have given five
+hundred pounds to anybody who would have put me up to the right way
+to speak to Miss Gwilt; and here is this blessed woman does it
+for nothing.” (“Believe me, my dear madam, gratefully yours, Allan
+Armadale.”)
+
+Having sent his reply out to Mrs. Milroy’s messenger, Allan paused in a
+momentary perplexity. He had an appointment with Miss Gwilt in the park
+for the next morning. It was absolutely necessary to let her know that
+he would be unable to keep it. She had forbidden him to write, and
+he had no chance that day of seeing her alone. In this difficulty, he
+determined to let the necessary intimation reach her through the medium
+of a message to the major, announcing his departure for London on
+business, and asking if he could be of service to any member of the
+family. Having thus removed the only obstacle to his freedom of action,
+Allan consulted the time-table, and found, to his disappointment, that
+there was a good hour to spare before it would be necessary to drive to
+the railway station. In his existing frame of mind he would infinitely
+have preferred starting for London in a violent hurry.
+
+When the time came at last, Allan, on passing the steward’s office,
+drummed at the door, and called through it to Mr. Bashwood, “I’m going
+to town; back to-morrow.” There was no answer from within; and the
+servant, interposing, informed his master that Mr. Bashwood, having no
+business to attend to that day, had locked up the office, and had left
+some hours since.
+
+On reaching the station, the first person whom Allan encountered was
+Pedgift Junior, going to London on the legal business which he had
+mentioned on the previous evening at the great house. The necessary
+explanations exchanged, and it was decided that the two should travel
+in the same carriage. Allan was glad to have a companion; and Pedgift,
+enchanted as usual to make himself useful to his client, bustled away
+to get the tickets and see to the luggage. Sauntering to and fro on the
+platform, until his faithful follower returned, Allan came suddenly upon
+no less a person than Mr. Bashwood himself, standing back in a corner
+with the guard of the train, and putting a letter (accompanied, to all
+appearance, by a fee) privately into the man’s hand.
+
+“Halloo!” cried Allan, in his hearty way. “Something important there,
+Mr. Bashwood, eh?”
+
+If Mr. Bashwood had been caught in the act of committing murder, he
+could hardly have shown greater alarm than he now testified at Allan’s
+sudden discovery of him. Snatching off his dingy old hat, he bowed
+bare-headed, in a palsy of nervous trembling from head to foot. “No,
+sir--no, sir; only a little letter, a little letter, a little letter,”
+ said the deputy-steward, taking refuge in reiteration, and bowing
+himself swiftly backward out of his employer’s sight.
+
+Allan turned carelessly on his heel. “I wish I could take to that
+fellow,” he thought, “but I can’t; he’s such a sneak! What the deuce was
+there to tremble about? Does he think I want to pry into his secrets?”
+
+Mr. Bashwood’s secret on this occasion concerned Allan more nearly than
+Allan supposed. The letter which he had just placed in charge of
+the guard was nothing less than a word of warning addressed to Mrs.
+Oldershaw, and written by Miss Gwilt.
+
+“If you can hurry your business” (wrote the major’s governess) “do so,
+and come back to London immediately. Things are going wrong here, and
+Miss Milroy is at the bottom of the mischief. This morning she insisted
+on taking up her mother’s breakfast, always on other occasions taken up
+by the nurse. They had a long confabulation in private; and half an hour
+later I saw the nurse slip out with a letter, and take the path that
+leads to the great house. The sending of the letter has been followed
+by young Armadale’s sudden departure for London--in the face of an
+appointment which he had with me for to-morrow morning. This looks
+serious. The girl is evidently bold enough to make a fight of it for the
+position of Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, and she has found out some
+way of getting her mother to help her. Don’t suppose I am in the least
+nervous or discouraged, and don’t do anything till you hear from me
+again. Only get back to London, for I may have serious need of your
+assistance in the course of the next day or two.
+
+“I send this letter to town (to save a post) by the midday train, in
+charge of the guard. As you insist on knowing every step I take at
+Thorpe Ambrose, I may as well tell you that my messenger (for I can’t go
+to the station myself) is that curious old creature whom I mentioned
+to you in my first letter. Ever since that time he has been perpetually
+hanging about here for a look at me. I am not sure whether I frighten
+him or fascinate him; perhaps I do both together. All you need care to
+know is that I can trust him with my trifling errands, and possibly, as
+time goes on, with something more. L. G.”
+
+
+Meanwhile the train had started from the Thorpe Ambrose station, and the
+squire and his traveling companion were on their way to London.
+
+Some men, finding themselves in Allan’s company under present
+circumstances, might have felt curious to know the nature of his
+business in the metropolis. Young Pedgift’s unerring instinct as a man
+of the world penetrated the secret without the slightest difficulty.
+“The old story,” thought this wary old head, wagging privately on its
+lusty young shoulders, “There’s a woman in the case, as usual. Any other
+business would have been turned over to me.” Perfectly satisfied with
+this conclusion, Mr. Pedgift the younger proceeded, with an eye to his
+professional interest, to make himself agreeable to his client in the
+capacity of volunteer courier. He seized on the whole administrative
+business of the journey to London, as he had seized on the whole
+administrative business of the picnic at the Broads. On reaching the
+terminus, Allan was ready to go to any hotel that might be recommended.
+His invaluable solicitor straight-way drove him to a hotel at which the
+Pedgift family had been accustomed to put up for three generations.
+
+“You don’t object to vegetables, sir?” said the cheerful Pedgift, as
+the cab stopped at a hotel in Covent Garden Market. “Very good; you may
+leave the rest to my grandfather, my father, and me. I don’t know which
+of the three is most beloved and respected in this house. How d’ye do,
+William? (Our head-waiter, Mr. Armadale.) Is your wife’s rheumatism
+better, and does the little boy get on nicely at school? Your master’s
+out, is he? Never mind, you’ll do. This, William, is Mr. Armadale of
+Thorpe Ambrose. I have prevailed on Mr. Armadale to try our house. Have
+you got the bedroom I wrote for? Very good. Let Mr. Armadale have it
+instead of me (my grandfather’s favorite bedroom, sir; No. 57, on the
+second floor); pray take it; I can sleep anywhere. Will you have the
+mattress on the top of the feather-bed? You hear, William? Tell Matilda,
+the mattress on the top of the feather-bed. How is Matilda? Has she got
+the toothache, as usual? The head-chambermaid, Mr. Armadale, and a most
+extraordinary woman; she will _not_ part with a hollow tooth in her
+lower jaw. My grandfather says, ‘Have it out;’ my father says, ‘Have it
+out;’ I say, ‘Have it out;’ and Matilda turns a deaf ear to all three of
+us. Yes, William, yes; if Mr. Armadale approves, this sitting-room will
+do. About dinner, sir? Shall we say, in that case, half-past seven?
+William, half-past seven. Not the least need to order anything, Mr.
+Armadale. The head-waiter has only to give my compliments to the cook,
+and the best dinner in London will be sent up, punctual to the minute,
+as a necessary consequence. Say, Mr. Pedgift Junior, if you please,
+William; otherwise, sir, we might get my grandfather’s dinner or my
+father’s dinner, and they _might_ turn out a little too heavy and
+old-fashioned in their way of feeding for you and me. As to the wine,
+William. At dinner, _my_ Champagne, and the sherry that my father thinks
+nasty. After dinner, the claret with the blue seal--the wine my innocent
+grandfather said wasn’t worth sixpence a bottle. Ha! ha! poor old boy!
+You will send up the evening papers and the play-bills, just as usual,
+and--that will do? I think, William, for the present. An invaluable
+servant, Mr. Armadale; they’re all invaluable servants in this house. We
+may not be fashionable here, sir, but by the Lord Harry we are snug! A
+cab? you would like a cab? Don’t stir! I’ve rung the bell twice--that
+means, Cab wanted in a hurry. Might I ask, Mr. Armadale, which way your
+business takes you? Toward Bayswater? Would you mind dropping me in the
+park? It’s a habit of mine when I’m in London to air myself among the
+aristocracy. Yours truly, sir, has an eye for a fine woman and a fine
+horse; and when he’s in Hyde Park he’s quite in his native element.”
+ Thus the all-accomplished Pedgift ran on; and by these little arts did
+he recommend himself to the good opinion of his client.
+
+When the dinner hour united the traveling companions again in their
+sitting-room at the hotel, a far less acute observer than young Pedgift
+must have noticed the marked change that appeared in Allan’s manner.
+He looked vexed and puzzled, and sat drumming with his fingers on the
+dining-table without uttering a word.
+
+“I’m afraid something has happened to annoy you, sir, since we parted
+company in the Park?” said Pedgift Junior. “Excuse the question; I only
+ask it in case I can be of any use.”
+
+“Something that I never expected has happened,” returned Allan; “I don’t
+know what to make of it. I should like to have your opinion,” he added,
+after a little hesitation; “that is to say, if you will excuse my not
+entering into any particulars?”
+
+“Certainly!” assented young Pedgift. “Sketch it in outline, sir. The
+merest hint will do; I wasn’t born yesterday.” (“Oh, these women!”
+ thought the youthful philosopher, in parenthesis.)
+
+“Well,” began Allan, “you know what I said when we got to this hotel; I
+said I had a place to go to in Bayswater” (Pedgift mentally checked off
+the first point: Case in the suburbs, Bayswater); “and a person--that
+is to say--no--as I said before, a person to inquire after.” (Pedgift
+checked off the next point: Person in the case. She-person, or
+he-person? She-person, unquestionably!) “Well, I went to the house,
+and when I asked for her--I mean the person--she--that is to say, the
+person--oh, confound it!” cried Allan, “I shall drive myself mad, and
+you, too, if I try to tell my story in this roundabout way. Here it is
+in two words. I went to No. 18 Kingsdown Crescent, to see a lady named
+Mandeville; and, when I asked for her, the servant said Mrs. Mandeville
+had gone away, without telling anybody where, and without even leaving
+an address at which letters could be sent to her. There! it’s out at
+last. And what do you think of it now?”
+
+“Tell me first, sir,” said the wary Pedgift, “what inquiries you made
+when you found this lady had vanished?”
+
+“Inquiries!” repeated Allan. “I was utterly staggered; I didn’t say
+anything. What inquiries ought I to have made?”
+
+Pedgift Junior cleared his throat, and crossed his legs in a strictly
+professional manner.
+
+“I have no wish, Mr. Armadale,” he began, “to inquire into your business
+with Mrs. Mandeville--”
+
+“No,” interposed Allan, bluntly; “I hope you won’t inquire into that. My
+business with Mrs. Mandeville must remain a secret.”
+
+“But,” pursued Pedgift, laying down the law with the forefinger of one
+hand on the outstretched palm of the other, “I may, perhaps, be allowed
+to ask generally whether your business with Mrs. Mandeville is of a
+nature to interest you in tracing her from Kingsdown Crescent to her
+present residence?”
+
+“Certainly!” said Allan. “I have a very particular reason for wishing to
+see her.”
+
+“In that case, sir,” returned Pedgift Junior, “there were two obvious
+questions which you ought to have asked, to begin with--namely, on what
+date Mrs. Mandeville left, and how she left. Having discovered this, you
+should have ascertained next under what domestic circumstances she
+went away--whether there was a misunderstanding with anybody; say a
+difficulty about money matters. Also, whether she went away alone, or
+with somebody else. Also, whether the house was her own, or whether she
+only lodged in it. Also, in the latter event--”
+
+“Stop! stop! you’re making my head swim,” cried Allan. “I don’t
+understand all these ins and outs. I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
+
+“I’ve been used to it myself from my childhood upward, sir,” remarked
+Pedgift. “And if I can be of any assistance, say the word.”
+
+“You’re very kind,” returned Allan. “If you could only help me to find
+Mrs. Mandeville; and if you wouldn’t mind leaving the thing afterward
+entirely in my hands--?”
+
+“I’ll leave it in your hands, sir, with all the pleasure in life,” said
+Pedgift Junior. (“And I’ll lay five to one,” he added, mentally, “when
+the time comes, you’ll leave it in mine!”) “We’ll go to Bayswater
+together, Mr. Armadale, to-morrow morning. In the meantime here’s the
+soup. The case now before the court is, Pleasure versus Business. I
+don’t know what you say, sir; I say, without a moment’s hesitation,
+Verdict for the plaintiff. Let us gather our rosebuds while we may.
+Excuse my high spirits, Mr. Armadale. Though buried in the country, I
+was made for a London life; the very air of the metropolis intoxicates
+me.” With that avowal the irresistible Pedgift placed a chair for
+his patron, and issued his orders cheerfully to his viceroy, the
+head-waiter. “Iced punch, William, after the soup. I answer for the
+punch, Mr. Armadale; it’s made after a recipe of my great-uncle’s. He
+kept a tavern, and founded the fortunes of the family. I don’t mind
+telling you the Pedgifts have had a publican among them; there’s no
+false pride about me. ‘Worth makes the man (as Pope says) and want of
+it the fellow; the rest is all but leather and prunella.’ I cultivate
+poetry as well as music, sir, in my leisure hours; in fact, I’m more or
+less on familiar terms with the whole of the nine Muses. Aha! here’s the
+punch! The memory of my great-uncle, the publican, Mr. Armadale--drunk
+in solemn silence!”
+
+Allan tried hard to emulate his companion’s gayety and good humor, but
+with very indifferent success. His visit to Kingsdown Crescent recurred
+ominously again and again to his memory all through the dinner, and all
+through the public amusements to which he and his legal adviser repaired
+at a later hour of the evening. When Pedgift Junior put out his candle
+that night, he shook his wary head, and regretfully apostrophized “the
+women” for the second time.
+
+By ten o’clock the next morning the indefatigable Pedgift was on
+the scene of action. To Allan’s great relief, he proposed making the
+necessary inquiries at Kingsdown Crescent in his own person, while his
+patron waited near at hand, in the cab which had brought them from the
+hotel. After a delay of little more than five minutes, he reappeared, in
+full possession of all attainable particulars. His first proceeding was
+to request Allan to step out of the cab, and to pay the driver. Next,
+he politely offered his arm, and led the way round the corner of the
+crescent, across a square, and into a by-street, which was rendered
+exceptionally lively by the presence of the local cab-stand. Here he
+stopped, and asked jocosely whether Mr. Armadale saw his way now,
+or whether it would be necessary to test his patience by making an
+explanation.
+
+“See my way?” repeated Allan, in bewilderment. “I see nothing but a
+cab-stand.”
+
+Pedgift Junior smiled compassionately, and entered on his explanation.
+It was a lodging-house at Kingsdown Crescent, he begged to state to
+begin with. He had insisted on seeing the landlady. A very nice person,
+with all the remains of having been a fine girl about fifty years ago;
+quite in Pedgift’s style--if he had only been alive at the beginning of
+the present century--quite in Pedgift’s style. But perhaps Mr. Armadale
+would prefer hearing about Mrs. Mandeville? Unfortunately, there was
+nothing to tell. There had been no quarreling, and not a farthing
+left unpaid: the lodger had gone, and there wasn’t an explanatory
+circumstance to lay hold of anywhere. It was either Mrs. Mandeville’s
+way to vanish, or there was something under the rose, quite
+undiscoverable so far. Pedgift had got the date on which she left, and
+the time of day at which she left, and the means by which she left.
+The means might help to trace her. She had gone away in a cab which the
+servant had fetched from the nearest stand. The stand was now before
+their eyes; and the waterman was the first person to apply to--going to
+the waterman for information being clearly (if Mr. Armadale would excuse
+the joke) going to the fountain-head. Treating the subject in this airy
+manner, and telling Allan that he would be back in a moment,
+Pedgift Junior sauntered down the street, and beckoned the waterman
+confidentially into the nearest public-house.
+
+In a little while the two re-appeared, the waterman taking Pedgift in
+succession to the first, third, fourth, and sixth of the cabmen whose
+vehicles were on the stand. The longest conference was held with the
+sixth man; and it ended in the sudden approach of the sixth cab to the
+part of the street where Allan was waiting.
+
+“Get in, sir,” said Pedgift, opening the door; “I’ve found the man. He
+remembers the lady; and, though he has forgotten the name of the street,
+he believes he can find the place he drove her to when he once gets back
+into the neighborhood. I am charmed to inform you, Mr. Armadale, that
+we are in luck’s way so far. I asked the waterman to show me the regular
+men on the stand; and it turns out that one of the regular men drove
+Mrs. Mandeville. The waterman vouches for him; he’s quite an anomaly--a
+respectable cabman; drives his own horse, and has never been in any
+trouble. These are the sort of men, sir, who sustain one’s belief
+in human nature. I’ve had a look at our friend, and I agree with the
+waterman; I think we can depend on him.”
+
+The investigation required some exercise of patience at the outset. It
+was not till the cab had traversed the distance between Bayswater and
+Pimlico that the driver began to slacken his pace and look about him.
+After once or twice retracing its course, the vehicle entered a quiet
+by-street, ending in a dead wall, with a door in it; and stopped at the
+last house on the left-hand side, the house next to the wall.
+
+“Here it is, gentlemen,” said the man, opening the cab door.
+
+Allan and Allan’s adviser both got out, and both looked at the house,
+with the same feeling of instinctive distrust.
+
+Buildings have their physiognomy--especially buildings in great
+cities--and the face of this house was essentially furtive in its
+expression. The front windows were all shut, and the front blinds were
+all drawn down. It looked no larger than the other houses in the street,
+seen in front; but it ran back deceitfully and gained its greater
+accommodation by means of its greater depth. It affected to be a shop on
+the ground-floor; but it exhibited absolutely nothing in the space that
+intervened between the window and an inner row of red curtains, which
+hid the interior entirely from view. At one side was the shop door,
+having more red curtains behind the glazed part of it, and bearing
+a brass plate on the wooden part of it, inscribed with the name of
+“Oldershaw.” On the other side was the private door, with a bell marked
+Professional; and another brass plate, indicating a medical occupant on
+this side of the house, for the name on it was, “Doctor Downward.” If
+ever brick and mortar spoke yet, the brick and mortar here said plainly,
+“We have got our secrets inside, and we mean to keep them.”
+
+“This can’t be the place,” said Allan; “there must be some mistake.”
+
+“You know best, sir,” remarked Pedgift Junior, with his sardonic
+gravity. “You know Mrs. Mandeville’s habits.”
+
+“I!” exclaimed Allan. “You may be surprised to hear it; but Mrs.
+Mandeville is a total stranger to me.”
+
+“I’m not in the least surprised to hear it, sir; the landlady at
+Kingsdown Crescent informed me that Mrs. Mandeville was an old woman.
+Suppose we inquire?” added the impenetrable Pedgift, looking at the
+red curtains in the shop window with a strong suspicion that Mrs.
+Mandeville’s granddaughter might possibly be behind them.
+
+They tried the shop door first. It was locked. They rang. A lean and
+yellow young woman, with a tattered French novel in her hand, opened it.
+
+“Good-morning, miss,” said Pedgift. “Is Mrs. Mandeville at home?”
+
+The yellow young woman stared at him in astonishment. “No person of that
+name is known here,” she answered, sharply, in a foreign accent.
+
+“Perhaps they know her at the private door?” suggested Pedgift Junior.
+
+“Perhaps they do,” said the yellow young woman, and shut the door in his
+face.
+
+“Rather a quick-tempered young person that, sir,” said Pedgift. “I
+congratulate Mrs. Mandeville on not being acquainted with her.” He led
+the way, as he spoke, to Doctor Downward’s side of the premises, and
+rang the bell.
+
+The door was opened this time by a man in a shabby livery. He, too,
+stared when Mrs. Mandeville’s name was mentioned; and he, too, knew of
+no such person in the house.
+
+“Very odd,” said Pedgift, appealing to Allan.
+
+“What is odd?” asked a softly stepping, softly speaking gentleman in
+black, suddenly appearing on the threshold of the parlor door.
+
+Pedgift Junior politely explained the circumstances, and begged to know
+whether he had the pleasure of speaking to Doctor Downward.
+
+The doctor bowed. If the expression may be pardoned, he was one of those
+carefully constructed physicians in whom the public--especially the
+female public--implicitly trust. He had the necessary bald head,
+the necessary double eyeglass, the necessary black clothes, and the
+necessary blandness of manner, all complete. His voice was soothing, his
+ways were deliberate, his smile was confidential. What particular branch
+of his profession Doctor Downward followed was not indicated on his
+door-plate; but he had utterly mistaken his vocation if he was not a
+ladies’ medical man.
+
+“Are you quite sure there is no mistake about the name?” asked the
+doctor, with a strong underlying anxiety in his manner. “I have known
+very serious inconvenience to arise sometimes from mistakes about names.
+No? There is really no mistake? In that case, gentlemen, I can only
+repeat what my servant has already told you. Don’t apologize, pray.
+Good-morning.” The doctor withdrew as noiselessly as he had appeared;
+the man in the shabby livery silently opened the door; and Allan and his
+companion found themselves in the street again.
+
+“Mr. Armadale,” said Pedgift, “I don’t know how you feel; I feel
+puzzled.”
+
+“That’s awkward,” returned Allan. “I was just going to ask you what we
+ought to do next.”
+
+“I don’t like the look of the place, the look of the shop-woman, or the
+look of the doctor,” pursued the other. “And yet I can’t say I think
+they are deceiving us; I can’t say I think they really know Mrs.
+Mandeville’s name.”
+
+The impressions of Pedgift Junior seldom misled him; and they had not
+misled him in this case. The caution which had dictated Mrs. Oldershaw’s
+private removal from Bayswater was the caution which frequently
+overreaches itself. It had warned her to trust nobody at Pimlico with
+the secret of the name she had assumed as Miss Gwilt’s reference; but
+it had entirely failed to prepare her for the emergency that had really
+happened. In a word, Mrs. Oldershaw had provided for everything except
+for the one unimaginable contingency of an after-inquiry into the
+character of Miss Gwilt.
+
+“We must do something,” said Allan; “it seems useless to stop here.”
+
+Nobody had ever yet caught Pedgift Junior at the end of his resources;
+and Allan failed to catch him at the end of them now. “I quite agree
+with you, sir,” he said; “we must do something. We’ll cross-examine the
+cabman.”
+
+The cabman proved to be immovable. Charged with mistaking the place, he
+pointed to the empty shop window. “I don’t know what you may have seen,
+gentlemen,” he remarked; “but there’s the only shop window I ever saw
+with nothing at all inside it. _That_ fixed the place in my mind at the
+time, and I know it again when I see it.” Charged with mistaking the
+person or the day, or the house at which he had taken the person up, the
+cabman proved to be still unassailable. The servant who fetched him
+was marked as a girl well known on the stand. The day was marked as the
+unluckiest working-day he had had since the first of the year; and the
+lady was marked as having had her money ready at the right moment (which
+not one elderly lady in a hundred usually had), and having paid him his
+fare on demand without disputing it (which not one elderly lady in a
+hundred usually did). “Take my number, gentlemen,” concluded the cabman,
+“and pay me for my time; and what I’ve said to you, I’ll swear to
+anywhere.”
+
+Pedgift made a note in his pocket-book of the man’s number. Having added
+to it the name of the street, and the names on the two brass plates, he
+quietly opened the cab door. “We are quite in the dark, thus far,” he
+said. “Suppose we grope our way back to the hotel?”
+
+He spoke and looked more seriously than usual The mere fact of “Mrs.
+Mandeville’s” having changed her lodging without telling any one where
+she was going, and without leaving any address at which letters could
+be forwarded to her--which the jealous malignity of Mrs. Milroy had
+interpreted as being undeniably suspicious in itself--had produced no
+great impression on the more impartial judgment of Allan’s solicitor.
+People frequently left their lodgings in a private manner, with
+perfectly producible reasons for doing so. But the appearance of the
+place to which the cabman persisted in declaring that he had driven
+“Mrs. Mandeville” set the character and proceedings of that mysterious
+lady before Pedgift Junior in a new light. His personal interest in the
+inquiry suddenly strengthened, and he began to feel a curiosity to know
+the real nature of Allan’s business which he had not felt yet.
+
+“Our next move, Mr. Armadale, is not a very easy move to see,” he said,
+as they drove back to the hotel. “Do you think you could put me in
+possession of any further particulars?”
+
+Allan hesitated; and Pedgift Junior saw that he had advanced a little
+too far. “I mustn’t force it,” he thought; “I must give it time, and let
+it come of its own accord.” “In the absence of any other information,
+sir,” he resumed, “what do you say to my making some inquiry about that
+queer shop, and about those two names on the door-plate? My business in
+London, when I leave you, is of a professional nature; and I am going
+into the right quarter for getting information, if it is to be got.”
+
+“There can’t be any harm, I suppose, in making inquiries,” replied
+Allan.
+
+He, too, spoke more seriously than usual; he, too, was beginning to feel
+an all-mastering curiosity to know more. Some vague connection, not to
+be distinctly realized or traced out, began to establish itself in
+his mind between the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s family
+circumstances and the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s reference.
+“I’ll get down and walk, and leave you to go on to your business,” he
+said. “I want to consider a little about this, and a walk and a cigar
+will help me.”
+
+“My business will be done, sir, between one and two,” said Pedgift, when
+the cab had been stopped, and Allan had got out. “Shall we meet again at
+two o’clock, at the hotel?”
+
+Allan nodded, and the cab drove off.
+
+
+
+
+IV. ALLAN AT BAY.
+
+Two o’clock came; and Pedgift Junior, punctual to his time, came with
+it. His vivacity of the morning had all sparkled out; he greeted Allan
+with his customary politeness, but without his customary smile; and,
+when the headwaiter came in for orders, his dismissal was instantly
+pronounced in words never yet heard to issue from the lips of Pedgift in
+that hotel: “Nothing at present.”
+
+“You seem to be in low spirits,” said Allan. “Can’t we get our
+information? Can nobody tell you anything about the house in Pimlico?”
+
+“Three different people have told me about it, Mr. Armadale, and they
+have all three said the same thing.”
+
+Allan eagerly drew his chair nearer to the place occupied by his
+traveling companion. His reflections in the interval since they had last
+seen each other had not tended to compose him. That strange connection,
+so easy to feel, so hard to trace, between the difficulty of approaching
+Miss Gwilt’s family circumstances and the difficulty of approaching Miss
+Gwilt’s reference, which had already established itself in his thoughts,
+had by this time stealthily taken a firmer and firmer hold on his mind.
+Doubts troubled him which he could neither understand nor express.
+Curiosity filled him, which he half longed and half dreaded to satisfy.
+
+“I am afraid I must trouble you with a question or two, sir, before
+I can come to the point,” said Pedgift Junior. “I don’t want to force
+myself into your confidence. I only want to see my way, in what looks to
+me like a very awkward business. Do you mind telling me whether others
+besides yourself are interested in this inquiry of ours?”
+
+“Other people _are_ interested in it,” replied Allan. “There’s no
+objection to telling you that.”
+
+“Is there any other person who is the object of the inquiry besides Mrs.
+Mandeville, herself?” pursued Pedgift, winding his way a little deeper
+into the secret.
+
+“Yes; there is another person,” said Allan, answering rather
+unwillingly.
+
+“Is the person a young woman, Mr. Armadale?”
+
+Allan started. “How do you come to guess that?” he began, then checked
+himself, when it was too late. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” he
+resumed. “I’m a bad hand at defending myself against a sharp fellow like
+you; and I’m bound in honor toward other people to keep the particulars
+of this business to myself.”
+
+Pedgift Junior had apparently heard enough for his purpose. He drew
+his chair, in his turn, nearer to Allan. He was evidently anxious and
+embarrassed; but his professional manner began to show itself again from
+sheer force of habit.
+
+“I’ve done with my questions, sir,” he said; “and I have something to
+say now on my side. In my father’s absence, perhaps you may be kindly
+disposed to consider me as your legal adviser. If you will take my
+advice, you will not stir another step in this inquiry.”
+
+“What do you mean?” interposed Allan.
+
+“It is just possible, Mr. Armadale, that the cabman, positive as he is,
+may have been mistaken. I strongly recommend you to take it for granted
+that he _is_ mistaken, and to drop it there.”
+
+The caution was kindly intended; but it came too late. Allan did what
+ninety-nine men out of a hundred in his position would have done--he
+declined to take his lawyer’s advice.
+
+“Very well, sir,” said Pedgift Junior; “if you will have it, you must
+have it.”
+
+He leaned forward close to Allan’s ear, and whispered what he had heard
+of the house in Pimlico, and of the people who occupied it.
+
+“Don’t blame me, Mr. Armadale,” he added, when the irrevocable words had
+been spoken. “I tried to spare you.”
+
+Allan suffered the shock, as all great shocks are suffered, in silence.
+His first impulse would have driven him headlong for refuge to that very
+view of the cabman’s assertion which had just been recommended to him,
+but for one damning circumstance which placed itself inexorably in his
+way. Miss Gwilt’s marked reluctance to approach the story of her
+past life rose irrepressibly on his memory, in indirect but horrible
+confirmation of the evidence which connected Miss Gwilt’s reference with
+the house in Pimlico. One conclusion, and one only--the conclusion which
+any man must have drawn, hearing what he had just heard, and knowing
+no more than he knew--forced itself into his mind. A miserable, fallen
+woman, who had abandoned herself in her extremity to the help of
+wretches skilled in criminal concealment, who had stolen her way back to
+decent society and a reputable employment by means of a false character,
+and whose position now imposed on her the dreadful necessity of
+perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past
+life--such was the aspect in which the beautiful governess at Thorpe
+Ambrose now stood revealed to Allan’s eyes!
+
+Falsely revealed, or truly revealed? Had she stolen her way back to
+decent society and a reputable employment by means of a false character?
+She had. Did her position impose on her the dreadful necessity of
+perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past life? It
+did. Was she some such pitiable victim to the treachery of a man unknown
+as Allan had supposed? _She was no such pitiable victim_. The conclusion
+which Allan had drawn--the conclusion literally forced into his mind by
+the facts before him--was, nevertheless, the conclusion of all others
+that was furthest even from touching on the truth. The true story of
+Miss Gwilt’s connection with the house in Pimlico and the people who
+inhabited it--a house rightly described as filled with wicked secrets,
+and people rightly represented as perpetually in danger of feeling the
+grasp of the law--was a story which coming events were yet to disclose:
+a story infinitely less revolting, and yet infinitely more terrible,
+than Allan or Allan’s companion had either of them supposed.
+
+“I tried to spare you, Mr. Armadale,” repeated Pedgift. “I was anxious,
+if I could possibly avoid it, not to distress you.”
+
+Allan looked up, and made an effort to control himself. “You have
+distressed me dreadfully,” he said. “You have quite crushed me down. But
+it is not your fault. I ought to feel you have done me a service; and
+what I ought to do I will do, when I am my own man again. There is one
+thing,” Allan added, after a moment’s painful consideration, “which
+ought to be understood between us at once. The advice you offered me
+just now was very kindly meant, and it was the best advice that could be
+given. I will take it gratefully. We will never talk of this again, if
+you please; and I beg and entreat you will never speak about it to any
+other person. Will you promise me that?”
+
+Pedgift gave the promise with very evident sincerity, but without his
+professional confidence of manner. The distress in Allan’s face seemed
+to daunt him. After a moment of very uncharacteristic hesitation, he
+considerately quitted the room.
+
+Left by himself, Allan rang for writing materials, and took out of his
+pocket-book the fatal letter of introduction to “Mrs. Mandeville” which
+he had received from the major’s wife.
+
+A man accustomed to consider consequences and to prepare himself for
+action by previous thought would, in Allan’s present circumstances,
+have felt some difficulty as to the course which it might now be least
+embarrassing and least dangerous to pursue. Accustomed to let his
+impulses direct him on all other occasions, Allan acted on impulse in
+the serious emergency that now confronted him. Though his attachment
+to Miss Gwilt was nothing like the deeply rooted feeling which he had
+himself honestly believed it to be, she had taken no common place in his
+admiration, and she filled him with no common grief when he thought of
+her now. His one dominant desire, at that critical moment in his life,
+was a man’s merciful desire to protect from exposure and ruin the
+unhappy woman who had lost her place in his estimation, without losing
+her claim to the forbearance that could spare, and to the compassion
+that could shield her. “I can’t go back to Thorpe Ambrose; I can’t
+trust myself to speak to her, or to see her again. But I can keep her
+miserable secret; and I will!” With that thought in his heart, Allan
+set himself to perform the first and foremost duty which now claimed
+him--the duty of communicating with Mrs. Milroy. If he had possessed a
+higher mental capacity and a clearer mental view, he might have
+found the letter no easy one to write. As it was, he calculated no
+consequences, and felt no difficulty. His instinct warned him to
+withdraw at once from the position in which he now stood toward the
+major’s wife, and he wrote what his instinct counseled him to write
+under those circumstances, as rapidly as the pen could travel over the
+paper:
+
+
+“Dunn’s Hotel, Covent Garden, Tuesday.
+
+“DEAR MADAM--Pray excuse my not returning to Thorpe Ambrose to-day, as I
+said I would. Unforeseen circumstances oblige me to stop in London. I am
+sorry to say I have not succeeded in seeing Mrs. Mandeville, for which
+reason I cannot perform your errand; and I beg, therefore, with many
+apologies, to return the letter of introduction. I hope you will allow
+me to conclude by saying that I am very much obliged to you for your
+kindness, and that I will not venture to trespass on it any further.
+
+“I remain, dear madam, yours truly,
+
+“ALLAN ARMADALE.”
+
+
+In those artless words, still entirely unsuspicious of the character of
+the woman he had to deal with, Allan put the weapon she wanted into Mrs.
+Milroy’s hands.
+
+The letter and its inclosure once sealed up and addressed, he was free
+to think of himself and his future. As he sat idly drawing lines with
+his pen on the blotting-paper, the tears came into his eyes for the
+first time--tears in which the woman who had deceived him had no share.
+His heart had gone back to his dead mother. “If she had been alive,” he
+thought, “I might have trusted _her_, and she would have comforted me.”
+ It was useless to dwell on it; he dashed away the tears, and turned his
+thoughts, with the heart-sick resignation that we all know, to living
+and present things.
+
+He wrote a line to Mr. Bashwood, briefly informing the deputy steward
+that his absence from Thorpe Ambrose was likely to be prolonged for some
+little time, and that any further instructions which might be necessary,
+under those circumstances, would reach him through Mr. Pedgift the
+elder. This done, and the letters sent to the post, his thoughts were
+forced back once more on himself. Again the blank future waited before
+him to be filled up; and again his heart shrank from it to the refuge of
+the past.
+
+This time other images than the image of his mother filled his mind. The
+one all-absorbing interest of his earlier days stirred living and eager
+in him again. He thought of the sea; he thought of his yacht lying idle
+in the fishing harbor at his west-country home. The old longing got
+possession of him to hear the wash of the waves; to see the filling of
+the sails; to feel the vessel that his own hands had helped to build
+bounding under him once more. He rose in his impetuous way to call for
+the time-table, and to start for Somersetshire by the first train, when
+the dread of the questions which Mr. Brock might ask, the suspicion of
+the change which Mr. Brock might see in him, drew him back to his chair.
+“I’ll write,” he thought, “to have the yacht rigged and refitted, and
+I’ll wait to go to Somersetshire myself till Midwinter can go with me.”
+ He sighed as his memory reverted to his absent friend. Never had he felt
+the void made in his life by Midwinter’s departure so painfully as he
+felt it now, in the dreariest of all social solitudes--the solitude of a
+stranger in London, left by himself at a hotel.
+
+Before long, Pedgift Junior looked in, with an apology for his
+intrusion. Allan felt too lonely and too friendless not to welcome his
+companion’s re-appearance gratefully. “I’m not going back to Thorpe
+Ambrose,” he said; “I’m going to stay a little while in London. I
+hope you will be able to stay with me?” To do him justice, Pedgift was
+touched by the solitary position in which the owner of the great Thorpe
+Ambrose estate now appeared before him. He had never, in his relations
+with Allan, so entirely forgotten his business interests as he forgot
+them now.
+
+“You are quite right, sir, to stop here; London’s the place to divert
+your mind,” said Pedgift, cheerfully. “All business is more or less
+elastic in its nature, Mr. Armadale; I’ll spin _my_ business out, and
+keep you company with the greatest pleasure. We are both of us on the
+right side of thirty, sir; let’s enjoy ourselves. What do you say to
+dining early, and going to the play, and trying the Great Exhibition
+in Hyde Park to-morrow morning, after breakfast? If we only live like
+fighting-cocks, and go in perpetually for public amusements, we shall
+arrive in no time at the _mens sana in corpore sano_ of the ancients.
+Don’t be alarmed at the quotation, sir. I dabble a little in Latin after
+business hours, and enlarge my sympathies by occasional perusal of the
+Pagan writers, assisted by a crib. William, dinner at five; and, as it’s
+particularly important to-day, I’ll see the cook myself.”
+
+The evening passed; the next day passed; Thursday morning came, and
+brought with it a letter for Allan. The direction was in Mrs. Milroy’s
+handwriting; and the form of address adopted in the letter warned Allan,
+the moment he opened it, that something had gone wrong.
+
+
+[“Private.”]
+
+“The Cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Wednesday.
+
+“SIR--I have just received your mysterious letter. It has more than
+surprised, it has really alarmed me. After having made the friendliest
+advances to you on my side, I find myself suddenly shut out from
+your confidence in the most unintelligible, and, I must add, the most
+discourteous manner. It is quite impossible that I can allow the matter
+to rest where you have left it. The only conclusion I can draw from your
+letter is that my confidence must have been abused in some way, and that
+you know a great deal more than you are willing to tell me. Speaking in
+the interest of my daughter’s welfare, I request that you will inform
+me what the circumstances are which have prevented your seeing Mrs.
+Mandeville, and which have led to the withdrawal of the assistance that
+you unconditionally promised me in your letter of Monday last.
+
+“In my state of health, I cannot involve myself in a lengthened
+correspondence. I must endeavor to anticipate any objections you may
+make, and I must say all that I have to say in my present letter. In the
+event (which I am most unwilling to consider possible) of your declining
+to accede to the request that I have just addressed to you, I beg to
+say that I shall consider it my duty to my daughter to have this very
+unpleasant matter cleared up. If I don’t hear from you to my full
+satisfaction by return of post, I shall be obliged to tell my husband
+that circumstances have happened which justify us in immediately testing
+the respectability of Miss Gwilt’s reference. And when he asks me for my
+authority, I will refer him to you.
+
+“Your obedient servant, ANNE MILROY.”
+
+
+In those terms the major’s wife threw off the mask, and left her victim
+to survey at his leisure the trap in which she had caught him. Allan’s
+belief in Mrs. Milroy’s good faith had been so implicitly sincere
+that her letter simply bewildered him. He saw vaguely that he had been
+deceived in some way, and that Mrs. Milroy’s neighborly interest in
+him was not what it had looked on the surface; and he saw no more. The
+threat of appealing to the major--on which, with a woman’s ignorance of
+the natures of men, Mrs. Milroy had relied for producing its
+effect--was the only part of the letter to which Allan reverted with any
+satisfaction: it relieved instead of alarming him. “If there _is_ to be
+a quarrel,” he thought, “it will be a comfort, at any rate, to have it
+out with a man.”
+
+Firm in his resolution to shield the unhappy woman whose secret he
+wrongly believed himself to have surprised, Allan sat down to write
+his apologies to the major’s wife. After setting up three polite
+declarations, in close marching order, he retired from the field. “He
+was extremely sorry to have offended Mrs. Milroy. He was innocent of all
+intention to offend Mrs. Milroy. And he begged to remain Mrs. Milroy’s
+truly.” Never had Allan’s habitual brevity as a letter-writer done him
+better service than it did him now. With a little more skillfulness in
+the use of his pen, he might have given his enemy even a stronger hold
+on him than the hold she had got already.
+
+The interval day passed, and with the next morning’s post Mrs. Milroy’s
+threat came realized in the shape of a letter from her husband. The
+major wrote less formally than his wife had written, but his questions
+were mercilessly to the point:
+
+
+[“Private.”]
+
+“The Cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Friday, July 11, 1851.
+
+“DEAR SIR--When you did me the favor of calling here a few days since,
+you asked a question relating to my governess, Miss Gwilt, which I
+thought rather a strange one at the time, and which caused, as you may
+remember, a momentary embarrassment between us.
+
+“This morning the subject of Miss Gwilt has been brought to my notice
+again in a manner which has caused me the utmost astonishment. In plain
+words, Mrs. Milroy has informed me that Miss Gwilt has exposed herself
+to the suspicion of having deceived us by a false reference. On my
+expressing the surprise which such an extraordinary statement caused
+me, and requesting that it might be instantly substantiated, I was still
+further astonished by being told to apply for all particulars to no
+less a person than Mr. Armadale. I have vainly requested some further
+explanation from Mrs. Milroy; she persists in maintaining silence, and
+in referring me to yourself.
+
+“Under these extraordinary circumstances, I am compelled, in justice to
+all parties, to ask you certain questions which I will endeavor to put
+as plainly as possible, and which I am quite ready to believe (from my
+previous experience of you) that you will answer frankly on your side.
+
+“I beg to inquire, in the first place, whether you admit or deny
+Mrs. Milroy’s assertion that you have made yourself acquainted with
+particulars relating either to Miss Gwilt or to Miss Gwilt’s reference,
+of which I am entirely ignorant? In the second place, if you admit
+the truth of Mrs. Milroy’s statement, I request to know how you became
+acquainted with those particulars? Thirdly, and lastly, I beg to ask you
+what the particulars are?
+
+“If any special justification for putting these questions be
+needed--which, purely as a matter of courtesy toward yourself, I am
+willing to admit--I beg to remind you that the most precious charge in
+my house, the charge of my daughter, is confided to Miss Gwilt; and that
+Mrs. Milroy’s statement places you, to all appearance, in the position
+of being competent to tell me whether that charge is properly bestowed
+or not.
+
+“I have only to add that, as nothing has thus far occurred to justify
+me in entertaining the slightest suspicion either of my governess or her
+reference, I shall wait before I make any appeal to Miss Gwilt until
+I have received your answer--which I shall expect by return of post.
+Believe me, dear sir, faithfully yours,
+
+“DAVID MILROY.”
+
+
+This transparently straightforward letter at once dissipated the
+confusion which had thus far existed in Allan’s mind. He saw the snare
+in which he had been caught (though he was still necessarily at a loss
+to understand why it had been set for him) as he had not seen it
+yet. Mrs. Milroy had clearly placed him between two alternatives--the
+alternative of putting himself in the wrong, by declining to answer
+her husband’s questions; or the alternative of meanly sheltering his
+responsibility behind the responsibility of a woman, by acknowledging to
+the major’s own face that the major’s wife had deceived him.
+
+In this difficulty Allan acted as usual, without hesitation. His pledge
+to Mrs. Milroy to consider their correspondence private still bound him,
+disgracefully as she had abused it. And his resolution was as immovable
+as ever to let no earthly consideration tempt him into betraying Miss
+Gwilt. “I may have behaved like a fool,” he thought, “but I won’t break
+my word; and I won’t be the means of turning that miserable woman adrift
+in the world again.”
+
+He wrote to the major as artlessly and briefly as he had written to
+the major’s wife. He declared his unwillingness to cause a friend and
+neighbor any disappointment, if he could possibly help it. On this
+occasion he had no other choice. The questions the major asked him were
+questions which he could not consent to answer. He was not very clever
+at explaining himself, and he hoped he might be excused for putting it
+in that way, and saying no more.
+
+Monday’s post brought with it Major Milroy’s rejoinder, and closed the
+correspondence.
+
+
+“The Cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Sunday.
+
+“SIR--Your refusal to answer my questions, unaccompanied as it is by
+even the shadow of an excuse for such a proceeding, can be interpreted
+but in one way. Besides being an implied acknowledgment of the
+correctness of Mrs. Milroy’s statement, it is also an implied reflection
+on my governess’s character. As an act of justice toward a lady who
+lives under the protection of my roof, and who has given me no reason
+whatever to distrust her, I shall now show our correspondence to Miss
+Gwilt; and I shall repeat to her the conversation which I had with Mrs.
+Milroy on the subject, in Mrs. Milroy’s presence.
+
+“One word more respecting the future relations between us, and I have
+done. My ideas on certain subjects are, I dare say, the ideas of an
+old-fashioned man. In my time, we had a code of honor by which we
+regulated our actions. According to that code, if a man made private
+inquiries into a lady’s affairs, without being either her husband, her
+father, or her brother, he subjected himself to the responsibility of
+justifying his conduct in the estimation of others; and, if he evaded
+that responsibility, he abdicated the position of a gentleman. It is
+quite possible that this antiquated way of thinking exists no longer;
+but it is too late for me, at my time of life, to adopt more modern
+views. I am scrupulously anxious, seeing that we live in a country and
+a time in which the only court of honor is a police-court, to express
+myself with the utmost moderation of language upon this the last
+occasion that I shall have to communicate with you. Allow me, therefore,
+merely to remark that our ideas of the conduct which is becoming in a
+gentleman differ seriously; and permit me on this account to request
+that you will consider yourself for the future as a stranger to my
+family and to myself.
+
+“Your obedient servant,
+
+“DAVID MILROY.”
+
+
+The Monday morning on which his client received the major’s letter was
+the blackest Monday that had yet been marked in Pedgift’s calendar. When
+Allan’s first angry sense of the tone of contempt in which his friend
+and neighbor pronounced sentence on him had subsided, it left him sunk
+in a state of depression from which no efforts made by his traveling
+companion could rouse him for the rest of the day. Reverting naturally,
+now that his sentence of banishment had been pronounced, to his early
+intercourse with the cottage, his memory went back to Neelie, more
+regretfully and more penitently than it had gone back to her yet. “If
+_she_ had shut the door on me, instead of her father,” was the bitter
+reflection with which Allan now reviewed the past, “I shouldn’t have had
+a word to say against it; I should have felt it served me right.”
+
+The next day brought another letter--a welcome letter this time,
+from Mr. Brock. Allan had written to Somersetshire on the subject of
+refitting the yacht some days since. The letter had found the rector
+engaged, as he innocently supposed, in protecting his old pupil against
+the woman whom he had watched in London, and whom he now believed to
+have followed him back to his own home. Acting under the directions sent
+to her, Mrs. Oldershaw’s house-maid had completed the mystification of
+Mr. Brock. She had tranquilized all further anxiety on the rector’s part
+by giving him a written undertaking (in the character of Miss Gwilt),
+engaging never to approach Mr. Armadale, either personally or by letter!
+Firmly persuaded that he had won the victory at last, poor Mr. Brock
+answered Allan’s note in the highest spirits, expressing some natural
+surprise at his leaving Thorpe Ambrose, but readily promising that the
+yacht should be refitted, and offering the hospitality of the rectory in
+the heartiest manner.
+
+This letter did wonders in raising Allan’s spirits. It gave him a
+new interest to look to, entirely disassociated from his past life in
+Norfolk. He began to count the days that were still to pass before the
+return of his absent friend. It was then Tuesday. If Midwinter came back
+from his walking trip, as he had engaged to come back, in a fortnight,
+Saturday would find him at Thorpe Ambrose. A note sent to meet the
+traveler might bring him to London the same night; and, if all went
+well, before another week was over they might be afloat together in the
+yacht.
+
+The next day passed, to Allan’s relief, without bringing any letters.
+The spirits of Pedgift rose sympathetically with the spirits of his
+client. Toward dinner time he reverted to the _mens sana in corpore
+sano_ of the ancients, and issued his orders to the head-waiter more
+royally than ever.
+
+Thursday came, and brought the fatal postman with more news from
+Norfolk. A letter-writer now stepped on the scene who had not appeared
+there yet; and the total overthrow of all Allan’s plans for a visit to
+Somersetshire was accomplished on the spot.
+
+Pedgift Junior happened that morning to be the first at the breakfast
+table. When Allan came in, he relapsed into his professional manner, and
+offered a letter to his patron with a bow performed in dreary silence.
+
+“For me?” inquired Allan, shrinking instinctively from a new
+correspondent.
+
+“For you, sir--from my father,” replied Pedgift, “inclosed in one to
+myself. Perhaps you will allow me to suggest, by way of preparing
+you for--for something a little unpleasant--that we shall want a
+particularly good dinner to-day; and (if they’re not performing any
+modern German music to-night) I think we should do well to finish the
+evening melodiously at the Opera.”
+
+“Something wrong at Thorpe Ambrose?” asked Allen.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Armadale; something wrong at Thorpe Ambrose.”
+
+Allan sat down resignedly, and opened the letter.
+
+
+[“Private and Confidential.”]
+
+“High Street Thorpe Ambrose, 17th July, 1851.
+
+“DEAR SIR--I cannot reconcile it with my sense of duty to your interests
+to leave you any longer in ignorance of reports current in this town
+and its neighborhood, which, I regret to say, are reports affecting
+yourself.
+
+“The first intimation of anything unpleasant reached me on Monday last.
+It was widely rumored in the town that something had gone wrong at Major
+Milroy’s with the new governess, and that Mr. Armadale was mixed up in
+it. I paid no heed to this, believing it to be one of the many trumpery
+pieces of scandal perpetually set going here, and as necessary as
+the air they breathe to the comfort of the inhabitants of this highly
+respectable place.
+
+“Tuesday, however, put the matter in a new light. The most interesting
+particulars were circulated on the highest authority. On Wednesday,
+the gentry in the neighborhood took the matter up, and universally
+sanctioned the view adopted by the town. To-day the public feeling has
+reached its climax, and I find myself under the necessity of making you
+acquainted with what has happened.
+
+“To begin at the beginning. It is asserted that a correspondence took
+place last week between Major Milroy and yourself; in which you cast a
+very serious suspicion on Miss Gwilt’s respectability, without defining
+your accusations and without (on being applied to) producing your
+proofs. Upon this, the major appears to have felt it his duty (while
+assuring his governess of his own firm belief in her respectability) to
+inform her of what had happened, in order that she might have no future
+reason to complain of his having had any concealments from her in a
+matter affecting her character. Very magnanimous on the major’s part;
+but you will see directly that Miss Gwilt was more magnanimous still.
+After expressing her thanks in a most becoming manner, she requested
+permission to withdraw herself from Major Milroy’s service.
+
+“Various reports are in circulation as to the governess’s reason for
+taking this step.
+
+“The authorized version (as sanctioned by the resident gentry)
+represents Miss Gwilt to have said that she could not condescend--in
+justice to herself, and in justice to her highly respectable
+reference--to defend her reputation against undefined imputations cast
+on it by a comparative stranger. At the same time it was impossible for
+her to pursue such a course of conduct as this, unless she possessed a
+freedom of action which was quite incompatible with her continuing to
+occupy the dependent position of a governess. For that reason she felt
+it incumbent on her to leave her situation. But, while doing this,
+she was equally determined not to lead to any misinterpretation of her
+motives by leaving the neighborhood. No matter at what inconvenience
+to herself, she would remain long enough at Thorpe Ambrose to await
+any more definitely expressed imputations that might be made on her
+character, and to repel them publicly the instant they assumed a
+tangible form.
+
+“Such is the position which this high-minded lady has taken up, with an
+excellent effect on the public mind in these parts. It is clearly her
+interest, for some reason, to leave her situation, without leaving the
+neighborhood. On Monday last she established herself in a cheap lodging
+on the outskirts of the town. And on the same day she probably wrote to
+her reference, for yesterday there came a letter from that lady to Major
+Milroy, full of virtuous indignation, and courting the fullest inquiry.
+The letter has been shown publicly, and has immensely strengthened
+Miss Gwilt’s position. She is now considered to be quite a heroine. The
+_Thorpe Ambrose Mercury_ has got a leading article about her, comparing
+her to Joan of Arc. It is considered probable that she will be referred
+to in the sermon next Sunday. We reckon five strong-minded single ladies
+in this neighborhood--and all five have called on her. A testimonial was
+suggested; but it has been given up at Miss Gwilt’s own request, and a
+general movement is now on foot to get her employment as a teacher of
+music. Lastly, I have had the honor of a visit from the lady herself,
+in her capacity of martyr, to tell me, in the sweetest manner, that she
+doesn’t blame Mr. Armadale, and that she considers him to be an innocent
+instrument in the hands of other and more designing people. I was
+carefully on my guard with her; for I don’t altogether believe in Miss
+Gwilt, and I have my lawyer’s suspicions of the motive that is at the
+bottom of her present proceedings.
+
+“I have written thus far, my dear sir, with little hesitation or
+embarrassment. But there is unfortunately a serious side to this
+business as well as a ridiculous side; and I must unwillingly come to it
+before I close my letter.
+
+“It is, I think, quite impossible that you can permit yourself to be
+spoken of as you are spoken of now, without stirring personally in the
+matter. You have unluckily made many enemies here, and foremost among
+them is my colleague, Mr. Darch. He has been showing everywhere a
+somewhat rashly expressed letter you wrote to him on the subject of
+letting the cottage to Major Milroy instead of to himself, and it has
+helped to exasperate the feeling against you. It is roundly stated in so
+many words that you have been prying into Miss Gwilt’s family affairs,
+with the most dishonorable motives; that you have tried, for a
+profligate purpose of your own, to damage her reputation, and to deprive
+her of the protection of Major Milroy’s roof; and that, after having
+been asked to substantiate by proof the suspicions that you have cast
+on the reputation of a defenseless woman, you have maintained a silence
+which condemns you in the estimation of all honorable men.
+
+“I hope it is quite unnecessary for me to say that I don’t attach the
+smallest particle of credit to these infamous reports. But they are too
+widely spread and too widely believed to be treated with contempt.
+I strongly urge you to return at once to this place, and to take the
+necessary measures for defending your character, in concert with me, as
+your legal adviser. I have formed, since my interview with Miss Gwilt,
+a very strong opinion of my own on the subject of that lady which it is
+not necessary to commit to paper. Suffice it to say here that I shall
+have a means to propose to you for silencing the slanderous tongues
+of your neighbors, on the success of which I stake my professional
+reputation, if you will only back me by your presence and authority.
+
+“It may, perhaps, help to show you the necessity there is for your
+return, if I mention one other assertion respecting yourself, which is
+in everybody’s mouth. Your absence is, I regret to tell you, attributed
+to the meanest of all motives. It is said that you are remaining in
+London because you are afraid to show your face at Thorpe Ambrose.
+
+“Believe me, dear sir, your faithful servant,
+
+“A. PEDGIFT, Sen.”
+
+
+Allan was of an age to feel the sting contained in the last sentence
+of his lawyer’s letter. He started to his feet in a paroxysm of
+indignation, which revealed his character to Pedgift Junior in an
+entirely new light.
+
+“Where’s the time-table?” cried Allan. “I must go back to Thorpe Ambrose
+by the next train! If it doesn’t start directly, I’ll have a special
+engine. I must and will go back instantly, and I don’t care two straws
+for the expense!”
+
+“Suppose we telegraph to my father, sir?” suggested the judicious
+Pedgift. “It’s the quickest way of expressing your feelings, and the
+cheapest.”
+
+“So it is,” said Allan. “Thank you for reminding me of it. Telegraph
+to them! Tell your father to give every man in Thorpe Ambrose the
+lie direct, in my name. Put it in capital letters, Pedgift--put it in
+capital letters!”
+
+Pedgift smiled and shook his head. If he was acquainted with no other
+variety of human nature, he thoroughly knew the variety that exists in
+country towns.
+
+“It won’t have the least effect on them, Mr. Armadale,” he remarked
+quietly. “They’ll only go on lying harder than ever. If you want to
+upset the whole town, one line will do it. With five shillings’ worth of
+human labor and electric fluid, sir (I dabble a little in science
+after business hours), we’ll explode a bombshell in Thorpe Ambrose!”
+ He produced the bombshell on a slip of paper as he spoke: “A. Pedgift,
+Junior, to A. Pedgift, Senior.--Spread it all over the place that Mr.
+Armadale is coming down by the next train.”
+
+“More words!” suggested Allan, looking over his shoulder. “Make it
+stronger.”
+
+“Leave my father to make it stronger, sir,” returned the wary Pedgift.
+“My father is on the spot, and his command of language is something
+quite extraordinary.” He rang the bell, and dispatched the telegram.
+
+Now that something had been done, Allan subsided gradually into a state
+of composure. He looked back again at Mr. Pedgift’s letter, and then
+handed it to Mr. Pedgift’s son.
+
+“Can you guess your father’s plan for setting me right in the
+neighborhood?” he asked.
+
+Pedgift the younger shook his wise head. “His plan appears to be
+connected in some way, sir, with his opinion of Miss Gwilt.”
+
+“I wonder what he thinks of her?” said Allan.
+
+“I shouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Armadale,” returned Pedgift Junior, “if
+his opinion staggers you a little, when you come to hear it. My father
+has had a large legal experience of the shady side of the sex, and he
+learned his profession at the Old Bailey.”
+
+Allan made no further inquiries. He seemed to shrink from pursuing the
+subject, after having started it himself. “Let’s be doing something to
+kill the time,” he said. “Let’s pack up and pay the bill.”
+
+They packed up and paid the bill. The hour came, and the train left for
+Norfolk at last.
+
+While the travelers were on their way back, a somewhat longer
+telegraphic message than Allan’s was flashing its way past them along
+the wires, in the reverse direction--from Thorpe Ambrose to London. The
+message was in cipher, and, the signs being interpreted, it ran thus:
+“From Lydia Gwilt to Maria Oldershaw.--Good news! He is coming back. I
+mean to have an interview with him. Everything looks well. Now I have
+left the cottage, I have no women’s prying eyes to dread, and I can come
+and go as I please. Mr. Midwinter is luckily out of the way. I don’t
+despair of becoming Mrs. Armadale yet. Whatever happens, depend on my
+keeping away from London until I am certain of not taking any spies
+after me to your place. I am in no hurry to leave Thorpe Ambrose. I mean
+to be even with Miss Milroy first.”
+
+Shortly after that message was received in London, Allan was back again
+in his own house.
+
+It was evening--Pedgift Junior had just left him--and Pedgift Senior was
+expected to call on business in half an hour’s time.
+
+
+
+
+V. PEDGIFT’S REMEDY.
+
+After waiting to hold a preliminary consultation with his son, Mr.
+Pedgift the elder set forth alone for his interview with Allan at the
+great house.
+
+Allowing for the difference in their ages, the son was, in this
+instance, so accurately the reflection of the father, that an
+acquaintance with either of the two Pedgifts was almost equivalent to an
+acquaintance with both. Add some little height and size to the figure
+of Pedgift Junior, give more breadth and boldness to his humor, and some
+additional solidity and composure to his confidence in himself, and
+the presence and character of Pedgift Senior stood, for all general
+purposes, revealed before you.
+
+The lawyer’s conveyance to Thorpe Ambrose was his own smart gig, drawn
+by his famous fast-trotting mare. It was his habit to drive himself; and
+it was one among the trifling external peculiarities in which he and his
+son differed a little, to affect something of the sporting character in
+his dress. The drab trousers of Pedgift the elder fitted close to his
+legs; his boots, in dry weather and wet alike, were equally thick in
+the sole; his coat pockets overlapped his hips, and his favorite summer
+cravat was of light spotted muslin, tied in the neatest and smallest of
+bows. He used tobacco like his son, but in a different form. While the
+younger man smoked, the elder took snuff copiously; and it was noticed
+among his intimates that he always held his “pinch” in a state of
+suspense between his box and his nose when he was going to clinch a good
+bargain or to say a good thing. The art of diplomacy enters largely into
+the practice of all successful men in the lower branch of the law. Mr.
+Pedgift’s form of diplomatic practice had been the same throughout his
+life, on every occasion when he found his arts of persuasion required
+at an interview with another man. He invariably kept his strongest
+argument, or his boldest proposal, to the last, and invariably
+remembered it at the door (after previously taking his leave), as if it
+was a purely accidental consideration which had that instant occurred to
+him. Jocular friends, acquainted by previous experience with this form
+of proceeding, had given it the name of “Pedgift’s postscript.” There
+were few people in Thorpe Ambrose who did not know what it meant when
+the lawyer suddenly checked his exit at the opened door; came back
+softly to his chair, with his pinch of snuff suspended between his
+box and his nose; said, “By-the-by, there’s a point occurs to me;” and
+settled the question off-hand, after having given it up in despair not a
+minute before.
+
+This was the man whom the march of events at Thorpe Ambrose had now
+thrust capriciously into a foremost place. This was the one friend at
+hand to whom Allan in his social isolation could turn for counsel in the
+hour of need.
+
+
+“Good-evening, Mr. Armadale. Many thanks for your prompt attention to my
+very disagreeable letter,” said Pedgift Senior, opening the conversation
+cheerfully the moment he entered his client’s house. “I hope you
+understand, sir, that I had really no choice under the circumstances but
+to write as I did?”
+
+“I have very few friends, Mr. Pedgift,” returned Allan, simply. “And I
+am sure you are one of the few.”
+
+“Much obliged, Mr. Armadale. I have always tried to deserve your good
+opinion, and I mean, if I can, to deserve it now. You found yourself
+comfortable, I hope, sir, at the hotel in London? We call it Our hotel.
+Some rare old wine in the cellar, which I should have introduced to your
+notice if I had had the honor of being with you. My son unfortunately
+knows nothing about wine.”
+
+Allan felt his false position in the neighborhood far too acutely to be
+capable of talking of anything but the main business of the evening. His
+lawyer’s politely roundabout method of approaching the painful subject
+to be discussed between them rather irritated than composed him. He came
+at once to the point, in his own bluntly straightforward way.
+
+“The hotel was very comfortable, Mr. Pedgift, and your son was very kind
+to me. But we are not in London now; and I want to talk to you about
+how I am to meet the lies that are being told of me in this place.
+Only point me out any one man,” cried Allan, with a rising voice and a
+mounting color--“any one man who says I am afraid to show my face in the
+neighborhood, and I’ll horsewhip him publicly before another day is over
+his head!”
+
+Pedgift Senior helped himself to a pinch of snuff, and held it calmly in
+suspense midway between his box and his nose.
+
+“You can horsewhip a man, sir; but you can’t horsewhip a neighborhood,”
+ said the lawyer, in his politely epigrammatic manner. “We will fight our
+battle, if you please, without borrowing our weapons of the coachman yet
+a while, at any rate.”
+
+“But how are we to begin?” asked Allan, impatiently. “How am I to
+contradict the infamous things they say of me?”
+
+“There are two ways of stepping out of your present awkward position,
+sir--a short way, and a long way,” replied Pedgift Senior. “The short
+way (which is always the best) has occurred to me since I have heard of
+your proceedings in London from my son. I understand that you permitted
+him, after you received my letter, to take me into your confidence. I
+have drawn various conclusions from what he has told me, which I may
+find it necessary to trouble you with presently. In the meantime I
+should be glad to know under what circumstances you went to London
+to make these unfortunate inquiries about Miss Gwilt? Was it your own
+notion to pay that visit to Mrs. Mandeville? or were you acting under
+the influence of some other person?”
+
+Allan hesitated. “I can’t honestly tell you it was my own notion,” he
+replied, and said no more.
+
+“I thought as much!” remarked Pedgift Senior, in high triumph. “The
+short way out of our present difficulty, Mr. Armadale, lies straight
+through that other person, under whose influence you acted. That other
+person must be presented forthwith to public notice, and must stand in
+that other person’s proper place. The name, if you please, sir, to begin
+with--we’ll come to the circumstances directly.”
+
+“I am sorry to say, Mr. Pedgift, that we must try the longest way, if
+you have no objection,” replied Allan, quietly. “The short way happens
+to be a way I can’t take on this occasion.”
+
+The men who rise in the law are the men who decline to take No for an
+answer. Mr. Pedgift the elder had risen in the law; and Mr. Pedgift the
+elder now declined to take No for an answer. But all pertinacity--even
+professional pertinacity included--sooner or later finds its limits; and
+the lawyer, doubly fortified as he was by long experience and copious
+pinches of snuff, found his limits at the very outset of the interview.
+It was impossible that Allan could respect the confidence which Mrs.
+Milroy had treacherously affected to place in him. But he had an
+honest man’s regard for his own pledged word--the regard which looks
+straightforward at the fact, and which never glances sidelong at the
+circumstances--and the utmost persistency of Pedgift Senior failed to
+move him a hairbreadth from the position which he had taken up. “No” is
+the strongest word in the English language, in the mouth of any man who
+has the courage to repeat it often enough, and Allan had the courage to
+repeat it often enough on this occasion.
+
+“Very good, sir,” said the lawyer, accepting his defeat without the
+slightest loss of temper. “The choice rests with you, and you have
+chosen. We will go the long way. It starts (allow me to inform you) from
+my office; and it leads (as I strongly suspect) through a very miry road
+to--Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Allan looked at his legal adviser in speechless astonishment.
+
+“If you won’t expose the person who is responsible in the first
+instance, sir, for the inquiries to which you unfortunately lent
+yourself,” proceeded Mr. Pedgift the elder, “the only other alternative,
+in your present position, is to justify the inquiries themselves.”
+
+“And how is that to be done?” inquired Allan.
+
+“By proving to the whole neighborhood, Mr. Armadale, what I firmly
+believe to be the truth--that the pet object of the public protection is
+an adventuress of the worst class; an undeniably worthless and dangerous
+woman. In plainer English still, sir, by employing time enough and money
+enough to discover the truth about Miss Gwilt.”
+
+
+Before Allan could say a word in answer, there was an interruption at
+the door. After the usual preliminary knock, one of the servants came
+in.
+
+“I told you I was not to be interrupted,” said Allan, irritably. “Good
+heavens! am I never to have done with them? Another letter!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the man, holding it out. “And,” he added, speaking
+words of evil omen in his master’s ears, “the person waits for an
+answer.”
+
+Allan looked at the address of the letter with a natural expectation of
+encountering the handwriting of the major’s wife. The anticipation was
+not realized. His correspondent was plainly a lady, but the lady was not
+Mrs. Milroy.
+
+“Who can it be?” he said, looking mechanically at Pedgift Senior as he
+opened the envelope.
+
+Pedgift Senior gently tapped his snuff-box, and said, without a moment’s
+hesitation, “Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Allan opened the letter. The first two words in it were the echo of the
+two words the lawyer had just pronounced. It _was_ Miss Gwilt!
+
+Once more, Allan looked at his legal adviser in speechless astonishment.
+
+“I have known a good many of them in my time, sir,” explained Pedgift
+Senior, with a modesty equally rare and becoming in a man of his age.
+“Not as handsome as Miss Gwilt, I admit. But quite as bad, I dare say.
+Read your letter, Mr. Armadale--read your letter.”
+
+Allan read these lines:
+
+
+“Miss Gwilt presents her compliments to Mr. Armadale and begs to know if
+it will be convenient to him to favor her with an interview, either this
+evening or to-morrow morning. Miss Gwilt offers no apology for making
+her present request. She believes Mr. Armadale will grant it as an act
+of justice toward a friendless woman whom he has been innocently the
+means of injuring, and who is earnestly desirous to set herself right in
+his estimation.”
+
+
+Allan handed the letter to his lawyer in silent perplexity and distress.
+
+The face of Mr. Pedgift the elder expressed but one feeling when he
+had read the letter in his turn and had handed it back--a feeling of
+profound admiration. “What a lawyer she would have made,” he exclaimed,
+fervently, “if she had only been a man!”
+
+“I can’t treat this as lightly as you do, Mr. Pedgift,” said Allan.
+“It’s dreadfully distressing to me. I was so fond of her,” he added, in
+a lower tone--“I was so fond of her once.”
+
+Mr. Pedgift Senior suddenly became serious on his side.
+
+“Do you mean to say, sir, that you actually contemplate seeing Miss
+Gwilt?” he asked, with an expression of genuine dismay.
+
+“I can’t treat her cruelly,” returned Allan. “I have been the means of
+injuring her--without intending it, God knows! I can’t treat her cruelly
+after that!”
+
+“Mr. Armadale,” said the lawyer, “you did me the honor, a little while
+since, to say that you considered me your friend. May I presume on that
+position to ask you a question or two, before you go straight to your
+own ruin?”
+
+“Any questions you like,” said Allan, looking back at the letter--the
+only letter he had ever received from Miss Gwilt.
+
+“You have had one trap set for you already, sir, and you have fallen
+into it. Do you want to fall into another?”
+
+“You know the answer to that question, Mr. Pedgift, as well as I do.”
+
+“I’ll try again, Mr. Armadale; we lawyers are not easily discouraged. Do
+you think that any statement Miss Gwilt might make to you, if you do
+see her, would be a statement to be relied on, after what you and my son
+discovered in London?”
+
+“She might explain what we discovered in London,” suggested Allan, still
+looking at the writing, and thinking of the hand that had traced it.
+
+“_Might_ explain it? My dear sir, she is quite certain to explain it!
+I will do her justice: I believe she would make out a case without a
+single flaw in it from beginning to end.”
+
+That last answer forced Allan’s attention away from the letter. The
+lawyer’s pitiless common sense showed him no mercy.
+
+“If you see that woman again, sir,” proceeded Pedgift Senior, “you will
+commit the rashest act of folly I ever heard of in all my experience.
+She can have but one object in coming here--to practice on your weakness
+for her. Nobody can say into what false step she may not lead you, if
+you once give her the opportunity. You admit yourself that you have been
+fond of her; your attentions to her have been the subject of general
+remark; if you haven’t actually offered her the chance of becoming Mrs.
+Armadale, you have done the next thing to it; and knowing all this, you
+propose to see her, and to let her work on you with her devilish beauty
+and her devilish cleverness, in the character of your interesting
+victim! You, who are one of the best matches in England! You, who are
+the natural prey of all the hungry single women in the community! I
+never heard the like of it; I never, in all my professional experience,
+heard the like of it! If you must positively put yourself in a
+dangerous position, Mr. Armadale,” concluded Pedgift the elder, with
+the everlasting pinch of snuff held in suspense between his box and his
+nose, “there’s a wild-beast show coming to our town next week. Let in
+the tigress, sir; don’t let in Miss Gwilt!”
+
+For the third time Allan looked at his lawyer. And for the third time
+his lawyer looked back at him quite unabashed.
+
+“You seem to have a very bad opinion of Miss Gwilt,” said Allan.
+
+“The worst possible opinion, Mr. Armadale,” retorted Pedgift Senior,
+coolly. “We will return to that when we have sent the lady’s messenger
+about his business. Will you take my advice? Will you decline to see
+her?”
+
+“I would willingly decline--it would be so dreadfully distressing to
+both of us,” said Allan. “I would willingly decline, if I only knew
+how.”
+
+“Bless my soul, Mr. Armadale, it’s easy enough! Don’t commit _you_
+yourself in writing. Send out to the messenger, and say there’s no
+answer.”
+
+The short course thus suggested was a course which Allan positively
+declined to take. “It’s treating her brutally,” he said; “I can’t and
+won’t do it.”
+
+Once more the pertinacity of Pedgift the elder found its limits, and
+once more that wise man yielded gracefully to a compromise. On receiving
+his client’s promise not to see Miss Gwilt, he consented to Allan’s
+committing himself in writing under his lawyer’s dictation. The letter
+thus produced was modeled in Allan’s own style; it began and ended in
+one sentence. “Mr. Armadale presents his compliments to Miss Gwilt,
+and regrets that he cannot have the pleasure of seeing her at Thorpe
+Ambrose.” Allan had pleaded hard for a second sentence, explaining
+that he only declined Miss Gwilt’s request from a conviction that an
+interview would be needlessly distressing on both sides. But his legal
+adviser firmly rejected the proposed addition to the letter. “When you
+say No to a woman, sir,” remarked Pedgift Senior, “always say it in one
+word. If you give her your reasons, she invariably believes that you
+mean Yes.”
+
+Producing that little gem of wisdom from the rich mine of his
+professional experience, Mr. Pedgift the elder sent out the answer to
+Miss Gwilt’s messenger, and recommended the servant to “see the fellow,
+whoever he was, well clear of the house.”
+
+“Now, sir,” said the lawyer, “we will come back, if you like, to my
+opinion of Miss Gwilt. It doesn’t at all agree with yours, I’m afraid.
+You think her an object of pity--quite natural at your age. I think her
+an object for the inside of a prison--quite natural at mine. You shall
+hear the grounds on which I have formed my opinion directly. Let me show
+you that I am in earnest by putting the opinion itself, in the first
+place, to a practical test. Do you think Miss Gwilt is likely to persist
+in paying you a visit, Mr. Armadale, after the answer you have just sent
+to her?”
+
+“Quite impossible!” cried Allan, warmly. “Miss Gwilt is a lady; after
+the letter I have sent to her, she will never come near me again.”
+
+“There we join issue, sir,” cried Pedgift Senior. “I say she will snap
+her fingers at your letter (which was one of the reasons why I objected
+to your writing it). I say, she is in all probability waiting her
+messenger’s return, in or near your grounds at this moment. I say, she
+will try to force her way in here, before four-and-twenty hours more
+are over your head. Egad, sir!” cried Mr. Pedgift, looking at his watch,
+“it’s only seven o’clock now. She’s bold enough and clever enough
+to catch you unawares this very evening. Permit me to ring for the
+servant--permit me to request that you will give him orders immediately
+to say you are not at home. You needn’t hesitate, Mr. Armadale! If
+you’re right about Miss Gwilt, it’s a mere formality. If I’m right, it’s
+a wise precaution. Back your opinion, sir,” said Mr. Pedgift, ringing
+the bell; “I back mine!”
+
+Allan was sufficiently nettled when the bell rang to feel ready to
+give the order. But when the servant came in, past remembrances got the
+better of him, and the words stuck in his throat. “You give the order,”
+ he said to Mr. Pedgift, and walked away abruptly to the window.
+“You’re a good fellow!” thought the old lawyer, looking after him, and
+penetrating his motive on the instant. “The claws of that she-devil
+shan’t scratch you if I can help it.”
+
+The servant waited inexorably for his orders.
+
+“If Miss Gwilt calls here, either this evening, or at any other time,”
+ said Pedgift Senior, “Mr. Armadale is not at home. Wait! If she asks
+when Mr. Armadale will be back, you don’t know. Wait! If she proposes
+coming in and sitting down, you have a general order that nobody is to
+come in and sit down unless they have a previous appointment with Mr.
+Armadale. Come!” cried old Pedgift, rubbing his hands cheerfully when
+the servant had left the room, “I’ve stopped her out now, at any
+rate! The orders are all given, Mr. Armadale. We may go on with our
+conversation.”
+
+Allan came back from the window. “The conversation is not a very
+pleasant one,” he said. “No offense to you, but I wish it was over.”
+
+“We will get it over as soon as possible, sir,” said Pedgift Senior,
+still persisting, as only lawyers and women _can_ persist, in forcing
+his way little by little nearer and nearer to his own object. “Let us go
+back, if you please, to the practical suggestion which I offered to you
+when the servant came in with Miss Gwilt’s note. There is, I repeat,
+only one way left for you, Mr. Armadale, out of your present awkward
+position. You must pursue your inquiries about this woman to an end--on
+the chance (which I consider next to a certainty) that the end will
+justify you in the estimation of the neighborhood.”
+
+“I wish to God I had never made any inquiries at all!” said Allan.
+“Nothing will induce me, Mr. Pedgift, to make any more.”
+
+“Why?” asked the lawyer.
+
+“Can you ask me why,” retorted Allan, hotly, “after your son has told
+you what we found out in London? Even if I had less cause to be--to be
+sorry for Miss Gwilt than I have; even if it was some other woman, do
+you think I would inquire any further into the secret of a poor betrayed
+creature--much less expose it to the neighborhood? I should think myself
+as great a scoundrel as the man who has cast her out helpless on the
+world, if I did anything of the kind. I wonder you can ask me the
+question--upon my soul, I wonder you can ask me the question!”
+
+“Give me your hand, Mr. Armadale!” cried Pedgift Senior, warmly; “I
+honor you for being so angry with me. The neighborhood may say what it
+pleases; you’re a gentleman, sir, in the best sense of the word. Now,”
+ pursued the lawyer, dropping Allan’s hand, and lapsing back instantly
+from sentiment to business, “just hear what I have got to say in my own
+defense. Suppose Miss Gwilt’s real position happens to be nothing like
+what you are generously determined to believe it to be?”
+
+“We have no reason to suppose that,” said Allan, resolutely.
+
+“Such is your opinion, sir,” persisted Pedgift. “Mine, founded on what
+is publicly known of Miss Gwilt’s proceedings here, and on what I have
+seen of Miss Gwilt herself, is that she is as far as I am from being
+the sentimental victim you are inclined to make her out. Gently, Mr.
+Armadale! remember that I have put my opinion to a practical test, and
+wait to condemn it off-hand until events have justified you. Let me put
+my points, sir--make allowances for me as a lawyer--and let me put
+my points. You and my son are young men; and I don’t deny that the
+circumstances, on the surface, appear to justify the interpretation
+which, as young men, you have placed on them. I am an old man--I know
+that circumstances are not always to be taken as they appear on the
+surface--and I possess the great advantage, in the present case, of
+having had years of professional experience among some of the wickedest
+women who ever walked this earth.”
+
+Allan opened his lips to protest, and checked himself, in despair
+of producing the slightest effect. Pedgift Senior bowed in polite
+acknowledgment of his client’s self-restraint, and took instant
+advantage of it to go on.
+
+“All Miss Gwilt’s proceedings,” he resumed, “since your unfortunate
+correspondence with the major show me that she is an old hand at deceit.
+The moment she is threatened with exposure--exposure of some kind, there
+can be no doubt, after what you discovered in London--she turns your
+honorable silence to the best possible account, and leaves the major’s
+service in the character of a martyr. Once out of the house, what does
+she do next? She boldly stops in the neighborhood, and serves three
+excellent purposes by doing so. In the first place, she shows everybody
+that she is not afraid of facing another attack on her reputation. In
+the second place, she is close at hand to twist you round her little
+finger, and to become Mrs. Armadale in spite of circumstances, if you
+(and I) allow her the opportunity. In the third place, if you (and I)
+are wise enough to distrust her, she is equally wise on her side, and
+doesn’t give us the first great chance of following her to London, and
+associating her with her accomplices. Is this the conduct of an unhappy
+woman who has lost her character in a moment of weakness, and who has
+been driven unwillingly into a deception to get it back again?”
+
+“You put it cleverly,” said Allan, answering with marked reluctance; “I
+can’t deny that you put it cleverly.”
+
+“Your own common sense, Mr. Armadale, is beginning to tell you that I
+put it justly,” said Pedgift Senior. “I don’t presume to say yet what
+this woman’s connection may be with those people at Pimlico. All I
+assert is that it is not the connection you suppose. Having stated the
+facts so far, I have only to add my own personal impression of Miss
+Gwilt. I won’t shock you, if I can help it; I’ll try if I can’t put it
+cleverly again. She came to my office (as I told you in my letter), no
+doubt to make friends with your lawyer, if she could; she came to tell
+me, in the most forgiving and Christian manner, that she didn’t blame
+_you_.”
+
+“Do you ever believe in anybody, Mr. Pedgift?” interposed Allan.
+
+“Sometimes, Mr. Armadale,” returned Pedgift the elder, as unabashed as
+ever. “I believe as often as a lawyer can. To proceed, sir. When I
+was in the criminal branch of practice, it fell to my lot to take
+instructions for the defense of women committed for trial from the
+women’s own lips. Whatever other difference there might be among them,
+I got, in time, to notice, among those who were particularly wicked and
+unquestionably guilty, one point in which they all resembled each other.
+Tall and short, old and young, handsome and ugly, they all had a secret
+self-possession that nothing could shake. On the surface they were as
+different as possible. Some of them were in a state of indignation;
+some of them were drowned in tears; some of them were full of pious
+confidence; and some of them were resolved to commit suicide before the
+night was out. But only put your finger suddenly on the weak point in
+the story told by any one of them, and there was an end of her rage, or
+her tears, or her piety, or her despair; and out came the genuine woman,
+in full possession of all her resources with a neat little lie that
+exactly suited the circumstances of the case. Miss Gwilt was in tears,
+sir--becoming tears that didn’t make her nose red--and I put my finger
+suddenly on the weak point in _her_ story. Down dropped her pathetic
+pocket-handkerchief from her beautiful blue eyes, and out came
+the genuine woman with the neat little lie that exactly suited the
+circumstances! I felt twenty years younger, Mr. Armadale, on the spot. I
+declare I thought I was in Newgate again, with my note-book in my hand,
+taking my instructions for the defense!”
+
+“The next thing you’ll say, Mr. Pedgift,” cried Allan, angrily, “is that
+Miss Gwilt has been in prison!”
+
+Pedgift Senior calmly rapped his snuff-box, and had his answer ready at
+a moment’s notice.
+
+“She may have richly deserved to see the inside of a prison, Mr.
+Armadale; but, in the age we live in, that is one excellent reason
+for her never having been near any place of the kind. A prison, in the
+present tender state of public feeling, for a charming woman like Miss
+Gwilt! My dear sir, if she had attempted to murder you or me, and if an
+inhuman judge and jury had decided on sending her to a prison, the first
+object of modern society would be to prevent her going into it; and, if
+that couldn’t be done, the next object would be to let her out again as
+soon as possible. Read your newspaper, Mr. Armadale, and you’ll find we
+live in piping times for the black sheep of the community--if they are
+only black enough. I insist on asserting, sir, that we have got one of
+the blackest of the lot to deal with in this case. I insist on asserting
+that you have had the rare luck, in these unfortunate inquiries, to
+pitch on a woman who happens to be a fit object for inquiry, in the
+interests of the public protection. Differ with me as strongly as you
+please, but don’t make up your mind finally about Miss Gwilt until
+events have put those two opposite opinions of ours to the test that I
+have proposed. A fairer test there can’t be. I agree with you that no
+lady worthy of the name could attempt to force her way in here, after
+receiving your letter. But I deny that Miss Gwilt is worthy of the name;
+and I say she will try to force her way in here in spite of you.”
+
+“And I say she won’t!” retorted Allan, firmly.
+
+Pedgift Senior leaned back in his chair and smiled. There was a
+momentary silence, and in that silence the door-bell rang.
+
+The lawyer and the client both looked expectantly in the direction of
+the hall.
+
+“No,” cried Allan, more angrily than ever.
+
+“Yes!” cried Pedgift Senior, contradicting him with the utmost
+politeness.
+
+They waited the event. The opening of the house door was audible, but
+the room was too far from it for the sound of voices to reach the ear as
+well. After a long interval of expectation, the closing of the door was
+heard at last. Allan rose impetuously and rang the bell. Mr. Pedgift the
+elder sat sublimely calm, and enjoyed, with a gentle zest, the largest
+pinch of snuff he had taken yet.
+
+“Anybody for me?” asked Allan, when the servant came in.
+
+The man looked at Pedgift Senior, with an expression of unutterable
+reverence, and answered, “Miss Gwilt.”
+
+“I don’t want to crow over you, sir,” said Mr. Pedgift the elder, when
+the servant had withdrawn. “But what do you think of Miss Gwilt _now_?”
+
+Allan shook his head in silent discouragement and distress.
+
+“Time is of some importance, Mr. Armadale. After what has just happened,
+do you still object to taking the course I have had the honor of
+suggesting to you?”
+
+“I can’t, Mr. Pedgift,” said Allan. “I can’t be the means of disgracing
+her in the neighborhood. I would rather be disgraced myself--as I am.”
+
+“Let me put it in another way, sir. Excuse my persisting. You have been
+very kind to me and my family; and I have a personal interest, as well
+as a professional interest, in you. If you can’t prevail on yourself
+to show this woman’s character in its true light, will you take common
+precautions to prevent her doing any more harm? Will you consent
+to having her privately watched as long as she remains in this
+neighborhood?”
+
+For the second time Allan shook his head.
+
+“Is that your final resolution, sir?”
+
+“It is, Mr. Pedgift; but I am much obliged to you for your advice, all
+the same.”
+
+Pedgift Senior rose in a state of gentle resignation, and took up his
+hat “Good-evening, sir,” he said, and made sorrowfully for the door.
+Allan rose on his side, innocently supposing that the interview was
+at an end. Persons better acquainted with the diplomatic habits of his
+legal adviser would have recommended him to keep his seat. The time was
+ripe for “Pedgift’s postscript,” and the lawyer’s indicative snuff-box
+was at that moment in one of his hands, as he opened the door with the
+other.
+
+“Good-evening,” said Allan.
+
+Pedgift Senior opened the door, stopped, considered, closed the door
+again, came back mysteriously with his pinch of snuff in suspense
+between his box and his nose, and repeating his invariable formula,
+“By-the-by, there’s a point occurs to me,” quietly resumed possession of
+his empty chair.
+
+Allan, wondering, took the seat, in his turn, which he had just left.
+Lawyer and client looked at each other once more, and the inexhaustible
+interview began again.
+
+
+
+
+VI. PEDGIFT’S POSTSCRIPT.
+
+“I mentioned that a point had occurred to me, sir,” remarked Pedgift
+Senior.
+
+“You did,” said Allan.
+
+“Would you like to hear what it is, Mr. Armadale?”
+
+“If you please,” said Allan.
+
+“With all my heart, sir! This is the point. I attach considerable
+importance--if nothing else can be done--to having Miss Gwilt privately
+looked after, as long as she stops at Thorpe Ambrose. It struck me just
+now at the door, Mr. Armadale, that what you are not willing to do
+for your own security, you might be willing to do for the security of
+another person.”
+
+“What other person?” inquired Allan.
+
+“A young lady who is a near neighbor of yours, sir. Shall I mention the
+name in confidence? Miss Milroy.”
+
+Allan started, and changed color.
+
+“Miss Milroy!” he repeated. “Can _she_ be concerned in this miserable
+business? I hope not, Mr. Pedgift; I sincerely hope not.”
+
+“I paid a visit, in your interests, sir, at the cottage this morning,”
+ proceeded Pedgift Senior. “You shall hear what happened there, and judge
+for yourself. Major Milroy has been expressing his opinion of you pretty
+freely; and I thought it highly desirable to give him a caution. It’s
+always the way with those quiet addle-headed men: when they do once wake
+up, there’s no reasoning with their obstinacy, and no quieting their
+violence. Well, sir, this morning I went to the cottage. The major
+and Miss Neelie were both in the parlor--miss not looking so pretty
+as usual; pale, I thought, pale, and worn, and anxious. Up jumps the
+addle-headed major (I wouldn’t give _that_, Mr. Armadale, for the
+brains of a man who can occupy himself for half his lifetime in making
+a clock!)--up jumps the addle-headed major, in the loftiest manner, and
+actually tries to look me down. Ha! ha! the idea of anybody looking _me_
+down, at my time of life. I behaved like a Christian; I nodded kindly to
+old What’s-o’clock ‘Fine morning, major,’ says I. ‘Have you any business
+with me?’ says he. ‘Just a word,’ says I. Miss Neelie, like the sensible
+girl she is, gets up to leave the room; and what does her ridiculous
+father do? He stops her. ‘You needn’t go, my dear, I have nothing to
+say to Mr. Pedgift,’ says this old military idiot, and turns my way, and
+tries to look me down again. ‘You are Mr. Armadale’s lawyer,’ says he;
+‘if you come on any business relating to Mr. Armadale, I refer you to my
+solicitor.’ (His solicitor is Darch; and Darch has had enough of _me_ in
+business, I can tell you!) ‘My errand here, major, does certainly relate
+to Mr. Armadale,’ says I; ‘but it doesn’t concern your lawyer--at any
+rate, just yet. I wish to caution you to suspend your opinion of my
+client, or, if you won’t do that, to be careful how you express it in
+public. I warn you that our turn is to come, and that you are not at the
+end yet of this scandal about Miss Gwilt.’ It struck me as likely that
+he would lose his temper when he found himself tackled in that way,
+and he amply fulfilled my expectations. He was quite violent in his
+language--the poor weak creature--actually violent with _me_! I behaved
+like a Christian again; I nodded kindly, and wished him good-morning.
+When I looked round to wish Miss Neelie good-morning, too, she was gone.
+You seem restless, Mr. Armadale,” remarked Pedgift Senior, as Allan,
+feeling the sting of old recollections, suddenly started out of his
+chair, and began pacing up and down the room. “I won’t try your patience
+much longer, sir; I am coming to the point.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pedgift,” said Allan, returning to his seat, and
+trying to look composedly at the lawyer through the intervening image of
+Neelie which the lawyer had called up.
+
+“Well, sir, I left the cottage,” resumed Pedgift Senior. “Just as I
+turned the corner from the garden into the park, whom should I stumble
+on but Miss Neelie herself, evidently on the lookout for me. ‘I want to
+speak to you for one moment, Mr. Pedgift!’ says she. ‘Does Mr. Armadale
+think _me_ mixed up in this matter?’ She was violently agitated--tears
+in her eyes, sir, of the sort which my legal experience has _not_
+accustomed me to see. I quite forgot myself; I actually gave her my arm,
+and led her away gently among the trees. (A nice position to find me in,
+if any of the scandal-mongers of the town had happened to be walking in
+that direction!) ‘My dear Miss Milroy,’ says I, ‘why should Mr. Armadale
+think _you_ mixed up in it?’”
+
+“You ought to have told her at once that I thought nothing of the kind!”
+ exclaimed Allan, indignantly. “Why did you leave her a moment in doubt
+about it?”
+
+“Because I am a lawyer, Mr. Armadale,” rejoined Pedgift Senior, dryly.
+“Even in moments of sentiment, under convenient trees, with a pretty
+girl on my arm, I can’t entirely divest myself of my professional
+caution. Don’t look distressed, sir, pray! I set things right in due
+course of time. Before I left Miss Milroy, I told her, in the plainest
+terms, no such idea had ever entered your head.”
+
+“Did she seem relieved?” asked Allan.
+
+“She was able to dispense with the use of my arm, sir,” replied old
+Pedgift, as dryly as ever, “and to pledge me to inviolable secrecy on
+the subject of our interview. She was particularly desirous that _you_
+should hear nothing about it. If you are at all anxious on your side to
+know why I am now betraying her confidence, I beg to inform you that
+her confidence related to no less a person than the lady who favored you
+with a call just now--Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Allan, who had been once more restlessly pacing the room, stopped, and
+returned to his chair.
+
+“Is this serious?” he asked.
+
+“Most serious, sir,” returned Pedgift Senior. “I am betraying Miss
+Neelie’s secret, in Miss Neelie’s own interest. Let us go back to that
+cautious question I put to her. She found some little difficulty in
+answering it, for the reply involved her in a narrative of the parting
+interview between her governess and herself. This is the substance of
+it. The two were alone when Miss Gwilt took leave of her pupil; and the
+words she used (as reported to me by Miss Neelie) were these. She said,
+‘Your mother has declined to allow me to take leave of her. Do you
+decline too?’ Miss Neelie’s answer was a remarkably sensible one for
+a girl of her age. ‘We have not been good friends,’ she said, ‘and I
+believe we are equally glad to part with each other. But I have no wish
+to decline taking leave of you.’ Saying that, she held out her hand.
+Miss Gwilt stood looking at her steadily, without taking it, and
+addressed her in these words: ‘_You are not Mrs. Armadale yet_.’ Gently,
+sir! Keep your temper. It’s not at all wonderful that a woman, conscious
+of having her own mercenary designs on you, should attribute similar
+designs to a young lady who happens to be your near neighbor. Let me go
+on. Miss Neelie, by her own confession (and quite naturally, I think),
+was excessively indignant. She owns to having answered, ‘You shameless
+creature, how dare you say that to me!’ Miss Gwilt’s rejoinder was
+rather a remarkable one--the anger, on her side, appears to have been
+of the cool, still, venomous kind. ‘Nobody ever yet injured me, Miss
+Milroy,’ she said, ‘without sooner or later bitterly repenting it. _You_
+will bitterly repent it.’ She stood looking at her pupil for a moment in
+dead silence, and then left the room. Miss Neelie appears to have
+felt the imputation fastened on her, in connection with you, far more
+sensitively than she felt the threat. She had previously known, as
+everybody had known in the house, that some unacknowledged proceedings
+of yours in London had led to Miss Gwilt’s voluntary withdrawal from
+her situation. And she now inferred, from the language addressed to
+her, that she was actually believed by Miss Gwilt to have set those
+proceedings on foot, to advance herself, and to injure her governess, in
+your estimation. Gently, sir, gently! I haven’t quite done yet. As soon
+as Miss Neelie had recovered herself, she went upstairs to speak to Mrs.
+Milroy. Miss Gwilt’s abominable imputation had taken her by surprise;
+and she went to her mother first for enlightenment and advice. She got
+neither the one nor the other. Mrs. Milroy declared she was too ill to
+enter on the subject, and she has remained too ill to enter on it ever
+since. Miss Neelie applied next to her father. The major stopped her the
+moment your name passed her lips: he declared he would never hear you
+mentioned again by any member of his family. She has been left in
+the dark from that time to this, not knowing how she might have been
+misrepresented by Miss Gwilt, or what falsehoods you might have been led
+to believe of her. At my age and in my profession, I don’t profess to
+have any extraordinary softness of heart. But I do think, Mr. Armadale,
+that Miss Neelie’s position deserves our sympathy.”
+
+“I’ll do anything to help her!” cried Allan, impulsively. “You don’t
+know, Mr. Pedgift, what reason I have--” He checked himself, and
+confusedly repeated his first words. “I’ll do anything,” he reiterated
+earnestly--“anything in the world to help her!”
+
+“Do you really mean that, Mr. Armadale? Excuse my asking; but you can
+very materially help Miss Neelie, if you choose!”
+
+“How?” asked Allan. “Only tell me how!”
+
+“By giving me your authority, sir, to protect her from Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Having fired that shot pointblank at his client, the wise lawyer waited
+a little to let it take its effect before he said any more.
+
+Allan’s face clouded, and he shifted uneasily from side to side of his
+chair.
+
+“Your son is hard enough to deal with, Mr. Pedgift,” he said, “and you
+are harder than your son.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” rejoined the ready Pedgift, “in my son’s name and my
+own, for a handsome compliment to the firm. If you really wish to be of
+assistance to Miss Neelie,” he went on, more seriously, “I have shown
+you the way. You can do nothing to quiet her anxiety which I have not
+done already. As soon as I had assured her that no misconception of her
+conduct existed in your mind, she went away satisfied. Her governess’s
+parting threat doesn’t seem to have dwelt on her memory. I can tell you,
+Mr. Armadale, it dwells on mine! You know my opinion of Miss Gwilt; and
+you know what Miss Gwilt herself has done this very evening to justify
+that opinion even in your eyes. May I ask, after all that has passed,
+whether you think she is the sort of woman who can be trusted to confine
+herself to empty threats?”
+
+The question was a formidable one to answer. Forced steadily back from
+the position which he had occupied at the outset of the interview, by
+the irresistible pressure of plain facts, Allan began for the first time
+to show symptoms of yielding on the subject of Miss Gwilt. “Is there no
+other way of protecting Miss Milroy but the way you have mentioned?” he
+asked, uneasily.
+
+“Do you think the major would listen to you, sir, if you spoke to him?”
+ asked Pedgift Senior, sarcastically. “I’m rather afraid he wouldn’t
+honor _me_ with his attention. Or perhaps you would prefer alarming Miss
+Neelie by telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger?
+Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions to inform her
+that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially
+ready to listen to reason; and they are so universally disposed to alter
+their opinions of each other on application--especially when one woman
+thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making a good
+marriage. Don’t mind _me_, Mr. Armadale; I’m only a lawyer, and I can
+sit waterproof under another shower of Miss Gwilt’s tears!”
+
+“Damn it, Mr. Pedgift, tell me in plain words what you want to do!”
+ cried Allan, losing his temper at last.
+
+“In plain words, Mr. Armadale, I want to keep Miss Gwilt’s proceedings
+privately under view, as long as she stops in this neighborhood. I
+answer for finding a person who will look after her delicately
+and discreetly. And I agree to discontinue even this harmless
+superintendence of her actions, if there isn’t good reasons shown for
+continuing it, to your entire satisfaction, in a week’s time. I make
+that moderate proposal, sir, in what I sincerely believe to be Miss
+Milroy’s interest, and I wait your answer, Yes or No.”
+
+“Can’t I have time to consider?” asked Allan, driven to the last
+helpless expedient of taking refuge in delay.
+
+“Certainly, Mr. Armadale. But don’t forget, while you are considering,
+that Miss Milroy is in the habit of walking out alone in your park,
+innocent of all apprehension of danger, and that Miss Gwilt is perfectly
+free to take any advantage of that circumstance that Miss Gwilt
+pleases.”
+
+“Do as you like!” exclaimed Allan, in despair. “And, for God’s sake,
+don’t torment me any longer!”
+
+Popular prejudice may deny it, but the profession of the law is a
+practically Christian profession in one respect at least. Of all
+the large collection of ready answers lying in wait for mankind on
+a lawyer’s lips, none is kept in better working order than “the soft
+answer which turneth away wrath.” Pedgift Senior rose with the alacrity
+of youth in his legs, and the wise moderation of age on his tongue.
+“Many thanks, sir,” he said, “for the attention you have bestowed on me.
+I congratulate you on your decision, and I wish you good-evening.” This
+time his indicative snuff-box was not in his hand when he opened the
+door, and he actually disappeared without coming back for a second
+postscript.
+
+Allan’s head sank on his breast when he was left alone. “If it was only
+the end of the week!” he thought, longingly. “If I only had Midwinter
+back again!”
+
+As that aspiration escaped the client’s lips, the lawyer got gayly
+into his gig. “Hie away, old girl!” cried Pedgift Senior, patting
+the fast-trotting mare with the end of his whip. “I never keep a lady
+waiting--and I’ve got business to-night with one of your own sex!”
+
+
+
+
+VII. THE MARTYRDOM OF MISS GWILT.
+
+The outskirts of the little town of Thorpe Ambrose, on the side nearest
+to “the great house,” have earned some local celebrity as exhibiting
+the prettiest suburb of the kind to be found in East Norfolk. Here the
+villas and gardens are for the most part built and laid out in excellent
+taste, the trees are in the prime of their growth, and the healthy
+common beyond the houses rises and falls in picturesque and delightful
+variety of broken ground. The rank, fashion, and beauty of the town make
+this place their evening promenade; and when a stranger goes out for a
+drive, if he leaves it to the coachman, the coachman starts by way of
+the common as a matter of course.
+
+On the opposite side, that is to say, on the side furthest from “the
+great house,” the suburbs (in the year 1851) were universally regarded
+as a sore subject by all persons zealous for the reputation of the town.
+
+Here nature was uninviting, man was poor, and social progress, as
+exhibited under the form of building, halted miserably. The streets
+dwindled feebly, as they receded from the center of the town, into
+smaller and smaller houses, and died away on the barren open ground into
+an atrophy of skeleton cottages. Builders hereabouts appeared to have
+universally abandoned their work in the first stage of its creation.
+Land-holders set up poles on lost patches of ground, and, plaintively
+advertising that they were to let for building, raised sickly little
+crops meanwhile, in despair of finding a purchaser to deal with them.
+All the waste paper of the town seemed to float congenially to this
+neglected spot; and all the fretful children came and cried here, in
+charge of all the slatternly nurses who disgraced the place. If there
+was any intention in Thorpe Ambrose of sending a worn-out horse to the
+knacker’s, that horse was sure to be found waiting his doom in a field
+on this side of the town. No growth flourished in these desert regions
+but the arid growth of rubbish; and no creatures rejoiced but the
+creatures of the night--the vermin here and there in the beds, and the
+cats everywhere on the tiles.
+
+The sun had set, and the summer twilight was darkening. The fretful
+children were crying in their cradles; the horse destined for the
+knacker dozed forlorn in the field of his imprisonment; the cats waited
+stealthily in corners for the coming night. But one living figure
+appeared in the lonely suburb--the figure of Mr. Bashwood. But one faint
+sound disturbed the dreadful silence--the sound of Mr. Bashwood’s softly
+stepping feet.
+
+Moving slowly past the heaps of bricks rising at intervals along
+the road, coasting carefully round the old iron and the broken tiles
+scattered here and there in his path, Mr. Bashwood advanced from the
+direction of the country toward one of the unfinished streets of the
+suburb. His personal appearance had been apparently made the object of
+some special attention. His false teeth were brilliantly white; his
+wig was carefully brushed; his mourning garments, renewed throughout,
+gleamed with the hideous and slimy gloss of cheap black cloth. He moved
+with a nervous jauntiness, and looked about him with a vacant smile.
+Having reached the first of the skeleton cottages, his watery eyes
+settled steadily for the first time on the view of the street before
+him. The next instant he started; his breath quickened; he leaned,
+trembling and flushing, against the unfinished wall at his side. A lady,
+still at some distance, was advancing toward him down the length of the
+street. “She’s coming!” he whispered, with a strange mixture of rapture
+and fear, of alternating color and paleness, showing itself in his
+haggard face. “I wish I was the ground she treads on! I wish I was
+the glove she’s got on her hand!” He burst ecstatically into those
+extravagant words, with a concentrated intensity of delight in uttering
+them that actually shook his feeble figure from head to foot.
+
+Smoothly and gracefully the lady glided nearer and nearer, until she
+revealed to Mr. Bashwood’s eyes, what Mr. Bashwood’s instincts had
+recognized in the first instance--the face of Miss Gwilt.
+
+She was dressed with an exquisitely expressive economy of outlay. The
+plainest straw bonnet procurable, trimmed sparingly with the cheapest
+white ribbon, was on her head. Modest and tasteful poverty expressed
+itself in the speckless cleanliness and the modestly proportioned skirts
+of her light “print” gown, and in the scanty little mantilla of cheap
+black silk which she wore over it, edged with a simple frilling of
+the same material. The luster of her terrible red hair showed itself
+unshrinkingly in a plaited coronet above her forehead, and escaped in
+one vagrant love-lock, perfectly curled, that dropped over her left
+shoulder. Her gloves, fitting her like a second skin, were of the sober
+brown hue which is slowest to show signs of use. One hand lifted her
+dress daintily above the impurities of the road; the other held a little
+nosegay of the commonest garden flowers. Noiselessly and smoothly she
+came on, with a gentle and regular undulation of the print gown; with
+the love-lock softly lifted from moment to moment in the evening breeze;
+with her head a little drooped, and her eyes on the ground--in walk, and
+look, and manner, in every casual movement that escaped her, expressing
+that subtle mixture of the voluptuous and the modest which, of the many
+attractive extremes that meet in women, is in a man’s eyes the most
+irresistible of all.
+
+“Mr. Bashwood!” she exclaimed, in loud, clear tones indicative of the
+utmost astonishment, “what a surprise to find you here! I thought none
+but the wretched inhabitants ever ventured near this side of the town.
+Hush!” she added quickly, in a whisper. “You heard right when you heard
+that Mr. Armadale was going to have me followed and watched. There’s
+a man behind one of the houses. We must talk out loud of indifferent
+things, and look as if we had met by accident. Ask me what I am doing.
+Out loud! Directly! You shall never see me again, if you don’t instantly
+leave off trembling and do what I tell you!”
+
+She spoke with a merciless tyranny of eye and voice--with a merciless
+use of her power over the feeble creature whom she addressed. Mr.
+Bashwood obeyed her in tones that quavered with agitation, and with eyes
+that devoured her beauty in a strange fascination of terror and delight.
+
+“I am trying to earn a little money by teaching music,” she said, in the
+voice intended to reach the spy’s ears. “If you are able to recommend me
+any pupils, Mr. Bashwood, your good word will oblige me. Have you been
+in the grounds to-day?” she went on, dropping her voice again in a
+whisper. “Has Mr. Armadale been near the cottage? Has Miss Milroy been
+out of the garden? No? Are you sure? Look out for them to-morrow, and
+next day, and next day. They are certain to meet and make it up again,
+and I must and will know of it. Hush! Ask me my terms for teaching
+music. What are you frightened about? It’s me the man’s after--not you.
+Louder than when you asked me what I was doing, just now; louder, or I
+won’t trust you any more; I’ll go to somebody else!”
+
+Once more Mr. Bashwood obeyed. “Don’t be angry with me,” he murmured,
+faintly, when he had spoken the necessary words. “My heart beats so
+you’ll kill me!”
+
+“You poor old dear!” she whispered back, with a sudden change in her
+manner, with an easy satirical tenderness. “What business have you with
+a heart at your age? Be here to-morrow at the same time, and tell me
+what you have seen in the grounds. My terms are only five shillings a
+lesson,” she went on, in her louder tone. “I’m sure that’s not much,
+Mr. Bashwood; I give such long lessons, and I get all my pupils’ music
+half-price.” She suddenly dropped her voice again, and looked him
+brightly into instant subjection. “Don’t let Mr. Armadale out of your
+sight to-morrow! If that girl manages to speak to him, and if I don’t
+hear of it, I’ll frighten you to death. If I _do_ hear of it, I’ll kiss
+you! Hush! Wish me good-night, and go on to the town, and leave me to
+go the other way. I don’t want you--I’m not afraid of the man behind the
+houses; I can deal with him by myself. Say goodnight, and I’ll let you
+shake hands. Say it louder, and I’ll give you one of my flowers, if
+you’ll promise not to fall in love with it.” She raised her voice
+again. “Goodnight, Mr. Bashwood! Don’t forget my terms. Five shillings a
+lesson, and the lessons last an hour at a time, and I get all my pupils’
+music half-price, which is an immense advantage, isn’t it?” She slipped
+a flower into his hand--frowned him into obedience, and smiled to reward
+him for obeying, at the same moment--lifted her dress again above the
+impurities of the road--and went on her way with a dainty and indolent
+deliberation, as a cat goes on her way when she has exhausted the
+enjoyment of frightening a mouse.
+
+Left alone, Mr. Bashwood turned to the low cottage wall near which he
+had been standing, and, resting himself on it wearily, looked at the
+flower in his hand.
+
+His past existence had disciplined him to bear disaster and insult, as
+few happier men could have borne them; but it had not prepared him to
+feel the master-passion of humanity, for the first time, at the dreary
+end of his life, in the hopeless decay of a manhood that had withered
+under the double blight of conjugal disappointment and parental sorrow.
+“Oh, if I was only young again!” murmured the poor wretch, resting his
+arms on the wall and touching the flower with his dry, fevered lips in
+a stealthy rapture of tenderness. “She might have liked me when I was
+twenty!” He suddenly started back into an erect position, and stared
+about him in vacant bewilderment and terror. “She told me to go home,”
+ he said, with a startled look. “Why am I stopping here?” He turned, and
+hurried on to the town--in such dread of her anger, if she looked round
+and saw him, that he never so much as ventured on a backward glance at
+the road by which she had retired, and never detected the spy dogging
+her footsteps, under cover of the empty houses and the brick-heaps by
+the roadside.
+
+Smoothly and gracefully, carefully preserving the speckless integrity
+of her dress, never hastening her pace, and never looking aside to
+the right hand or the left, Miss Gwilt pursued her way toward the open
+country. The suburban road branched off at its end in two directions. On
+the left, the path wound through a ragged little coppice to the grazing
+grounds of a neighboring farm; on the right, it led across a hillock
+of waste land to the high-road. Stopping a moment to consider, but not
+showing the spy that she suspected him by glancing behind her while
+there was a hiding-place within his reach, Miss Gwilt took the path
+across the hillock. “I’ll catch him there,” she said to herself, looking
+up quietly at the long straight line of the empty high-road.
+
+Once on the ground that she had chosen for her purpose, she met the
+difficulties of the position with perfect tact and self-possession.
+After walking some thirty yards along the road, she let her nosegay
+drop, half turned round in stooping to pick it up, saw the man stopping
+at the same moment behind her, and instantly went on again, quickening
+her pace little by little, until she was walking at the top of her
+speed. The spy fell into the snare laid for him. Seeing the night
+coming, and fearing that he might lose sight of her in the darkness, he
+rapidly lessened the distance between them. Miss Gwilt went on faster
+and faster till she plainly heard his footstep behind her, then stopped,
+turned, and met the man face to face the next moment.
+
+“My compliments to Mr. Armadale,” she said, “and tell him I’ve caught
+you watching me.”
+
+“I’m not watching you, miss,” retorted the spy, thrown off his guard by
+the daring plainness of the language in which she had spoken to him.
+
+Miss Gwilt’s eyes measured him contemptuously from head to foot. He was
+a weakly, undersized man. She was the taller, and (quite possibly) the
+stronger of the two.
+
+“Take your hat off, you blackguard, when you speak to a lady,” she said,
+and tossed his hat in an instant, across a ditch by which they were
+standing, into a pool on the other side.
+
+This time the spy was on his guard. He knew as well as Miss Gwilt knew
+the use which might be made of the precious minutes, if he turned his
+back on her and crossed the ditch to recover his hat. “It’s well for
+you you’re a woman,” he said, standing scowling at her bareheaded in the
+fast-darkening light.
+
+Miss Gwilt glanced sidelong down the onward vista of the road, and saw,
+through the gathering obscurity, the solitary figure of a man rapidly
+advancing toward her. Some women would have noticed the approach of a
+stranger at that hour and in that lonely place with a certain anxiety.
+Miss Gwilt was too confident in her own powers of persuasion not to
+count on the man’s assistance beforehand, whoever he might be, _because_
+he was a man. She looked back at the spy with redoubled confidence
+in herself, and measured him contemptuously from head to foot for the
+second time.
+
+“I wonder whether I’m strong enough to throw you after your hat?” she
+said. “I’ll take a turn and consider it.”
+
+She sauntered on a few steps toward the figure advancing along the road.
+The spy followed her close. “Try it,” he said, brutally. “You’re a fine
+woman; you’re welcome to put your arms round me if you like.” As the
+words escaped him, he too saw the stranger for the first time. He drew
+back a step and waited. Miss Gwilt, on her side, advanced a step and
+waited, too.
+
+The stranger came on, with the lithe, light step of a practiced walker,
+swinging a stick in his hand and carrying a knapsack on his shoulders.
+A few paces nearer, and his face became visible. He was a dark man,
+his black hair was powdered with dust, and his black eyes were looking
+steadfastly forward along the road before him.
+
+Miss Gwilt advanced with the first signs of agitation she had shown yet.
+“Is it possible?” she said, softly. “Can it really be you?”
+
+It was Midwinter, on his way back to Thorpe Ambrose, after his fortnight
+among the Yorkshire moors.
+
+He stopped and looked at her, in breathless surprise. The image of the
+woman had been in his thoughts, at the moment when the woman herself
+spoke to him. “Miss Gwilt!” he exclaimed, and mechanically held out his
+hand.
+
+She took it, and pressed it gently. “I should have been glad to see you
+at any time,” she said. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you now.
+May I trouble you to speak to that man? He has been following me, and
+annoying me all the way from the town.”
+
+Midwinter stepped past her without uttering a word. Faint as the light
+was, the spy saw what was coming in his face, and, turning instantly,
+leaped the ditch by the road-side. Before Midwinter could follow, Miss
+Gwilt’s hand was on his shoulder.
+
+“No,” she said, “you don’t know who his employer is.”
+
+Midwinter stopped and looked at her.
+
+“Strange things have happened since you left us,” she went on. “I have
+been forced to give up my situation, and I am followed and watched by a
+paid spy. Don’t ask who forced me out of my situation, and who pays the
+spy--at least not just yet. I can’t make up my mind to tell you till I
+am a little more composed. Let the wretch go. Do you mind seeing me
+safe back to my lodging? It’s in your way home. May I--may I ask for the
+support of your arm? My little stock of courage is quite exhausted.” She
+took his arm and clung close to it. The woman who had tyrannized over
+Mr. Bashwood was gone, and the woman who had tossed the spy’s hat into
+the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature filled the
+fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of Miss Gwilt. She
+put her handkerchief to her eyes. “They say necessity has no law,” she
+murmured, faintly. “I am treating you like an old friend. God knows I
+want one!”
+
+They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a touching
+fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket, and persisted in
+turning the conversation on Midwinter’s walking tour. “It is bad enough
+to be a burden on you,” she said, gently pressing on his arm as she
+spoke; “I mustn’t distress you as well. Tell me where you have been, and
+what you have seen. Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from
+myself.”
+
+They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little suburb.
+Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took Midwinter’s
+hand. “I have taken refuge here,” she said, simply. “It is clean and
+quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more. We must say good-by, I
+suppose, unless”--she hesitated modestly, and satisfied herself by a
+quick look round that they were unobserved--“unless you would like
+to come in and rest a little? I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr.
+Midwinter! Is there any harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of
+tea?”
+
+The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him while she
+spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted to weaken her hold
+on him, had treacherously strengthened it instead. A man exceptionally
+sensitive, a man exceptionally pure in his past life, he stood hand in
+hand, in the tempting secrecy of the night, with the first woman who had
+exercised over him the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age,
+and in his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man’s
+temperament) doesn’t live who could have left her. Midwinter went in.
+
+A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male
+creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. “The urn, John,”
+ she said, kindly, “and another cup and saucer. I’ll borrow your candle
+to light my candles upstairs, and then I won’t trouble you any more
+to-night.” John was wakeful and active in an instant. “No trouble,
+miss,” he said, with awkward civility. Miss Gwilt took his candle with
+a smile. “How good people are to me!” she whispered, innocently, to
+Midwinter, as she led the way upstairs to the little drawing-room on the
+first floor.
+
+She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped him at
+the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his shoulders.
+“No,” she said, gently; “in the good old times there were occasions when
+the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim the privilege of unarming
+_my_ knight.” Her dexterous fingers intercepted his at the straps and
+buckles, and she had the dusty knapsack off, before he could protest
+against her touching it.
+
+They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very poorly
+furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness of the woman
+who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor ornaments on
+the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound volumes on
+the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the modest little
+work-basket in the window. “Women are not all coquettes,” she said,
+as she took off her bonnet and mantilla, and laid them carefully on a
+chair. “I won’t go into my room, and look in my glass, and make myself
+smart; you shall take me just as I am.” Her hands moved about among the
+tea-things with a smooth, noiseless activity.
+
+Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned
+her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things
+she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her
+complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression
+in her eyes--the delicious languor that stole over them when she was
+listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them
+softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing
+she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the
+man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to
+perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had
+all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that
+seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual
+sorcery in her smile.
+
+“Should I be wrong,” she asked, suddenly suspending the conversation
+which she had thus far persistently restricted to the subject of
+Midwinter’s walking tour, “if I guessed that you have something on your
+mind--something which neither my tea nor my talk can charm away? Are men
+as curious as women? Is the something--Me?”
+
+Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and
+listening to her. “I am very anxious to hear what has happened since I
+have been away,” he said. “But I am still more anxious, Miss Gwilt, not
+to distress you by speaking of a painful subject.”
+
+She looked at him gratefully. “It is for your sake that I have avoided
+the painful subject,” she said, toying with her spoon among the dregs
+in her empty cup. “But you will hear about it from others, if you don’t
+hear about it from me; and you ought to know why you found me in that
+strange situation, and why you see me here. Pray remember one thing, to
+begin with. I don’t blame your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people
+whose instrument he is.”
+
+Midwinter started. “Is it possible,” he began, “that Allan can be in
+any way answerable--?” He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in silent
+astonishment.
+
+She gently laid her hand on his. “Don’t be angry with me for only
+telling the truth,” she said. “Your friend is answerable for everything
+that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr. Midwinter, I firmly
+believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the victim of his position as
+the richest single man in the neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss
+Milroy’s determination to marry him.”
+
+“Miss Milroy?” repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished. “Why, Allan
+himself told me--” He stopped again.
+
+“He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor fellow,
+he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as this,” said Miss
+Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the
+spoon, sighed, and became serious again. “I am guilty of the vanity of
+having let him admire me,” she went on, penitently, “without the excuse
+of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that
+he felt in me. I don’t undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the
+excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman’s heart is not
+to be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of
+Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else.”
+
+She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous
+sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color deepened. He
+had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration of her indifference to
+Allan. For the first time since they had known each other, his interests
+now stood self-revealed before him as openly adverse to the interests of
+his friend.
+
+“I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire me,
+and I have suffered for it,” resumed Miss Gwilt. “If there had been any
+confidence between my pupil and me, I might have easily satisfied her
+that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she could--without having any
+rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss Milroy disliked and distrusted
+me from the first. She took her own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr.
+Armadale’s thoughtless attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy
+the position, such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is
+quite likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also
+(which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me out of
+the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have been forced
+(with Mr. Armadale’s help) to leave the major’s service. Don’t be angry,
+Mr. Midwinter! Don’t form a hasty opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has
+some good qualities, though I have not found them out; and I assure you
+again and again that I don’t blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people
+whose instrument he is.”
+
+“How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any enemy
+of yours?” asked Midwinter. “Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss Gwilt: Allan’s
+good name is as dear to me as my own!”
+
+Miss Gwilt’s eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt’s heart
+abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm. “How I admire
+your earnestness!” she said. “How I like your anxiety for your friend!
+Oh, if women could only form such friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!”
+ Her voice faltered, and her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the
+third time. “I would give all the little beauty I possess,” she said,
+“if I could only find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_.
+I never shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we
+were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is concerned
+in my misfortune by telling you something first about myself. I am like
+many other governesses; I am the victim of sad domestic circumstances.
+It may be weak of me, but I have a horror of alluding to them among
+strangers. My silence about my family and my friends exposes me to
+misinterpretation in my dependent position. Does it do me any harm, Mr.
+Midwinter, in your estimation?”
+
+“God forbid!” said Midwinter, fervently. “There is no man living,” he
+went on, thinking of his own family story, “who has better reason to
+understand and respect your silence than I have.”
+
+Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. “Oh,” she said, “I knew it, the
+first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered; that you,
+too, had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I
+believe in mesmerism--do you?” She suddenly recollected herself, and
+shuddered. “Oh, what have I done? What must you think of me?” she
+exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and,
+forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over
+it and kissed it. “Spare me!” she said, faintly, as she felt the burning
+touch of his lips. “I am so friendless--I am so completely at your
+mercy!”
+
+He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was
+trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was hidden
+from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. “How
+that man loves me!” she thought. “I wonder whether there was a time when
+I might have loved _him_?”
+
+The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt
+her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended
+him to feel it--he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her
+again.
+
+“Shall I go on with my story?” she asked. “Shall we forget and forgive
+on both sides?” A woman’s inveterate indulgence for every expression
+of a man’s admiration which keeps within the limits of personal
+respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down
+meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little
+flattering sigh. “I was telling you,” she went on, “of my reluctance
+to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I
+afterward found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy’s malice and
+Miss Milroy’s suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to
+the lady who was my reference--at Miss Milroy’s suggestion, in the first
+instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst
+of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite ignorant, Mr.
+Armadale’s simplicity was imposed on; and, when application was made
+secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr. Midwinter, through
+your friend.”
+
+Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The
+fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a
+suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at
+last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again, like a man
+bewildered, without uttering a word.
+
+“Remember how weak he is,” pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, “and make
+allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find
+my reference at the address given him seems, I can’t imagine why, to
+have excited Mr. Armadale’s suspicion. At any rate, he remained in
+London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite
+in the dark; I knew nothing: I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my
+little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I
+had failed to win, when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment,
+Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and
+himself. He spoke to me in his wife’s presence. Poor creature, I make no
+complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I
+wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and
+Mr. Armadale; but my head is only a woman’s head, and I was so confused
+and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale
+chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under
+circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The
+major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but
+could his confidence protect me against his wife’s prejudice and his
+daughter’s ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the
+humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I
+do? I couldn’t defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn’t
+remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride
+(Heaven help me, I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have
+sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!)--my pride got the better
+of me, and I left my place. Don’t let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter!
+There’s a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood
+have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils
+to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on
+my friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just one.
+Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days. I have
+entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what
+dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his
+estimation. Would you believe it? He has declined to see me--under the
+influence of others, not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel,
+isn’t it? But he has even used me more cruelly still; he persists in
+suspecting me; it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter,
+don’t hate me for telling you what you _must_ know! The man you found
+persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money,
+after all, as Mr. Armadale’s spy.”
+
+Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that
+were in him found their way into words.
+
+“I can’t believe it; I won’t believe it!” he exclaimed, indignantly. “If
+the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I
+beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don’t, pray don’t think I
+doubt _you_; I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure
+that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last
+infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand.
+I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking
+advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I’ll prove
+it to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at
+once. I can’t rest; I can’t bear to think of it; I can’t even enjoy the
+pleasure of being here. Oh,” he burst out desperately, “I’m sure you
+feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so for _you_!”
+
+He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt’s eyes were looking at him again,
+and Miss Gwilt’s hand had found its way once more into his own.
+
+“You are the most generous of living men,” she said, softly. “I will
+believe what you tell me to believe. Go,” she added, in a whisper,
+suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him. “For both our
+sakes, go!”
+
+His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and
+put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated; the next,
+he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately,
+without a backward look or a parting word.
+
+She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant
+she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of
+her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. “It’s even
+baser work than I bargained for,” she said, “to deceive _him_.” After
+pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily
+before the glass over the fire-place. “You strange creature!” she
+murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly
+addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. “Have you got any
+conscience left? And has that man roused it?”
+
+The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned to her
+cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips
+parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of
+the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment’s absorption in her own
+thoughts, with a start of terror. “What am I doing?” she asked herself,
+in a sudden panic of astonishment. “Am I mad enough to be thinking of
+him in _that_ way?”
+
+She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table
+recklessly with a bang. “It’s high time I had some talk with Mother
+Jezebel,” she said, and sat down to write to Mrs. Oldershaw.
+
+“I have met with Mr. Midwinter,” she began, “under very lucky
+circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just
+left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen
+to-morrow. If they don’t quarrel, the doors of Thorpe Ambrose will be
+opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter’s intercession. If they do quarrel,
+I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for
+myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them.”
+
+She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it,
+scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments,
+and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her
+chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied, her foot
+restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag
+between her clinched teeth. “Young as you are,” she thought, with her
+mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, “there has been
+something out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know
+it!”
+
+The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and,
+walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress;
+wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them
+on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of
+her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one
+great mass over her shoulders. “Fancy,” she thought, “if he saw me now!”
+ She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one
+of the candles and took the other in her hand. “Midwinter?” she said, as
+she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber. “I
+don’t believe in his name, to begin with!”
+
+
+The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back
+again at the great house.
+
+Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of
+the right road. The events of the evening--the interview with Miss
+Gwilt herself, after his fortnight’s solitary thinking of her; the
+extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had
+seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan’s connection with
+it--had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable
+confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment.
+Even the familiar gates of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When
+he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the
+place.
+
+The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night. Midwinter
+went round to the back. The sound of men’s voices, as he advanced,
+caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the
+first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them
+was their master.
+
+“I’ll bet you an even half-crown he’s driven out of the neighborhood
+before another week is over his head,” said the first footman.
+
+“Done!” said the second. “He isn’t as easy driven as you think.”
+
+“Isn’t he!” retorted the other. “He’ll be mobbed if he stops here! I
+tell you again, he’s not satisfied with the mess he’s got into already.
+I know it for certain, he’s having the governess watched.”
+
+At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned
+the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated
+appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence
+exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in
+opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by
+concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our
+ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way
+back, Midwinter’s one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to
+him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the
+new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one present anxiety
+was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the
+house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the
+back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they
+offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that
+night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since.
+
+“It was my master’s’ particular order, sir,” said the head-footman,
+“that he was to be told of it if you came back.”
+
+“It is _my_ particular request,” returned Midwinter, “that you won’t
+disturb him.”
+
+The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left
+them.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM.
+
+Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were
+things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan
+accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of
+dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early
+or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The
+servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed
+to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the
+kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the
+stroke of noon.
+
+Toward nine o’clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked
+at Allan’s door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry
+among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before
+the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had
+been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still
+in ignorance of Midwinter’s return. Nobody had chanced to see the
+master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring
+the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about
+him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the
+house.
+
+Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the
+flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to
+look for his friend. Allan’s unexpected absence added one more to the
+disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the
+mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to
+exalt or depress his spirits.
+
+The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was
+every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter
+was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below.
+The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his
+master’s movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the
+stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park
+with a nosegay in his hand.
+
+A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter’s
+mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back
+of the house. “What does the nosegay mean?” he asked himself, with an
+unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that
+stood in his way.
+
+It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one
+pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with
+Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer’s account of his
+conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not
+misjudge her, which the major’s daughter had so earnestly expressed,
+placed her before Allan’s eyes in an irresistibly attractive
+character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who
+had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible
+of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him
+company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude
+for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more
+regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so
+pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose.
+To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like
+Allan’s, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone
+out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of
+flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if
+they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks,
+he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second
+attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant
+of his friend’s return, he was now at some distance from the house,
+searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet.
+
+After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing
+to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited
+for his friend’s return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of
+garden ground at the back of the house.
+
+From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room
+which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale’s, which was now (through his
+interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the
+Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground,
+which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The
+Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the
+long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of
+the rain against the glass; the stretching out of the Shadow’s arm,
+and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and
+events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once,
+were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as
+they might in the dim background of time. He could pass the room again
+and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting
+away in the moonlight, and the night’s imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship!
+
+Toward ten o’clock the well-remembered sound of Allan’s voice became
+suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he
+was visible from the garden. His second morning’s search for Neelie had
+ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay
+was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to
+one of the coachman’s children.
+
+Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and
+abruptly checked his further progress.
+
+Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in
+relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a
+sudden distrust of the governess’s influence over him, which was almost
+a distrust of himself. He knew that he had set forth from the moors on
+his return to Thorpe Ambrose with the resolution of acknowledging the
+passion that had mastered him, and of insisting, if necessary, on a
+second and a longer absence in the interests of the sacrifice which he
+was bent on making to the happiness of his friend. What had become of
+that resolution now? The discovery of Miss Gwilt’s altered position,
+and the declaration that she had voluntarily made of her indifference
+to Allan, had scattered it to the winds. The first words with which
+he would have met his friend, if nothing had happened to him on the
+homeward way, were words already dismissed from his lips. He drew back
+as he felt it, and struggled, with an instinctive loyalty toward Allan,
+to free himself at the last moment from the influence of Miss Gwilt.
+
+Having disposed of his useless nosegay, Allan passed on into the garden,
+and the instant he entered it recognized Midwinter with a loud cry of
+surprise and delight.
+
+“Am I awake or dreaming?” he exclaimed, seizing his friend excitably
+by both hands. “You dear old Midwinter, have you sprung up out of the
+ground, or have you dropped from the clouds?”
+
+It was not till Midwinter had explained the mystery of his unexpected
+appearance in every particular that Allan could be prevailed on to say
+a word about himself. When he did speak, he shook his head ruefully, and
+subdued the hearty loudness of his voice, with a preliminary look round
+to see if the servants were within hearing.
+
+“I’ve learned to be cautious since you went away and left me,” said
+Allan. “My dear fellow, you haven’t the least notion what things have
+happened, and what an awful scrape I’m in at this very moment!”
+
+“You are mistaken, Allan. I have heard more of what has happened than
+you suppose.”
+
+“What! the dreadful mess I’m in with Miss Gwilt? the row with the major?
+the infernal scandal-mongering in the neighborhood? You don’t mean to
+say--?”
+
+“Yes,” interposed Midwinter, quietly; “I have heard of it all.”
+
+“Good heavens! how? Did you stop at Thorpe Ambrose on your way back?
+Have you been in the coffee-room at the hotel? Have you met Pedgift?
+Have you dropped into the Reading Rooms, and seen what they call the
+freedom of the press in the town newspaper?”
+
+Midwinter paused before he answered, and looked up at the sky. The
+clouds had been gathering unnoticed over their heads, and the first
+rain-drops were beginning to fall.
+
+“Come in here,” said Allan. “We’ll go up to breakfast this way.” He led
+Midwinter through the open French window into his own sitting-room. The
+wind blew toward that side of the house, and the rain followed them in.
+Midwinter, who was last, turned and closed the window.
+
+Allan was too eager for the answer which the weather had interrupted to
+wait for it till they reached the breakfast-room. He stopped close at
+the window, and added two more to his string of questions.
+
+“How can you possibly have heard about me and Miss Gwilt?” he asked.
+“Who told you?”
+
+“Miss Gwilt herself,” replied Midwinter, gravely.
+
+Allan’s manner changed the moment the governess’s name passed his
+friend’s lips.
+
+“I wish you had heard my story first,” he said. “Where did you meet with
+Miss Gwilt?”
+
+There was a momentary pause. They both stood still at the window,
+absorbed in the interest of the moment. They both forgot that their
+contemplated place of shelter from the rain had been the breakfast-room
+upstairs.
+
+“Before I answer your question,” said Midwinter, a little constrainedly,
+“I want to ask you something, Allan, on my side. Is it really true that
+you are in some way concerned in Miss Gwilt’s leaving Major Milroy’s
+service?”
+
+There was another pause. The disturbance which had begun to appear in
+Allan’s manner palpably increased.
+
+“It’s rather a long story,” he began. “I have been taken in, Midwinter.
+I’ve been imposed on by a person, who--I can’t help saying it--who
+cheated me into promising what I oughtn’t to have promised, and doing
+what I had better not have done. It isn’t breaking my promise to tell
+you. I can trust in your discretion, can’t I? You will never say a word,
+will you?”
+
+“Stop!” said Midwinter. “Don’t trust me with any secrets which are not
+your own. If you have given a promise, don’t trifle with it, even in
+speaking to such an intimate friend as I am.” He laid his hand gently
+and kindly on Allan’s shoulder. “I can’t help seeing that I have made
+you a little uncomfortable,” he went on. “I can’t help seeing that my
+question is not so easy a one to answer as I had hoped and supposed.
+Shall we wait a little? Shall we go upstairs and breakfast first?”
+
+Allan was far too earnestly bent on presenting his conduct to his friend
+in the right aspect to heed Midwinter’s suggestion. He spoke eagerly on
+the instant, without moving from the window.
+
+“My dear fellow, it’s a perfectly easy question to answer. Only”--he
+hesitated--“only it requires what I’m a bad hand at: it requires an
+explanation.”
+
+“Do you mean,” asked Midwinter, more seriously, but not less gently
+than before, “that you must first justify yourself, and then answer my
+question?”
+
+“That’s it!” said Allan, with an air of relief. “You’re hit the right
+nail on the head, just as usual.”
+
+Midwinter’s face darkened for the first time. “I am sorry to hear it,”
+ he said, his voice sinking low, and his eyes dropping to the ground as
+he spoke.
+
+The rain was beginning to fall thickly. It swept across the garden,
+straight on the closed windows, and pattered heavily against the glass.
+
+“Sorry!” repeated Allan. “My dear fellow, you haven’t heard the
+particulars yet. Wait till I explain the thing first.”
+
+“You are a bad hand at explanations,” said Midwinter, repeating Allan’s
+own words. “Don’t place yourself at a disadvantage. Don’t explain it.”
+
+Allan looked at him, in silent perplexity and surprise.
+
+“You are my friend--my best and dearest friend,” Midwinter went on. “I
+can’t bear to let you justify yourself to me as if I was your judge, or
+as if I doubted you.” He looked up again at Allan frankly and kindly as
+he said those words. “Besides,” he resumed, “I think, if I look into
+my memory, I can anticipate your explanation. We had a moment’s talk,
+before I went away, about some very delicate questions which you
+proposed putting to Major Milroy. I remember I warned you; I remember
+I had my misgivings. Should I be guessing right if I guessed that those
+questions have been in some way the means of leading you into a false
+position? If it is true that you have been concerned in Miss Gwilt’s
+leaving her situation, is it also true--is it only doing you justice
+to believe--that any mischief for which you are responsible has been
+mischief innocently done?”
+
+“Yes,” said Allan, speaking, for the first time, a little constrainedly
+on his side. “It is only doing me justice to say that.” He stopped and
+began drawing lines absently with his finger on the blurred surface of
+the window-pane. “You’re not like other people, Midwinter,” he resumed,
+suddenly, with an effort; “and I should have liked you to have heard the
+particulars all the same.”
+
+“I will hear them if you desire it,” returned Midwinter. “But I am
+satisfied, without another word, that you have not willingly been the
+means of depriving Miss Gwilt of her situation. If that is understood
+between you and me, I think we need say no more. Besides, I have another
+question to ask, of much greater importance--a question that has been
+forced on me by what I saw with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears,
+last night.”
+
+He stopped, recoiling in spite of himself. “Shall we go upstairs first?”
+ he asked, abruptly, leading the way to the door, and trying to gain
+time.
+
+It was useless. Once again, the room which they were both free to leave,
+the room which one of them had twice tried to leave already, held them
+as if they were prisoners.
+
+Without answering, without even appearing to have heard Midwinter’s
+proposal to go upstairs, Allan followed him mechanically as far as the
+opposite side of the window. There he stopped. “Midwinter!” he burst
+out, in a sudden panic of astonishment and alarm, “there seems to be
+something strange between us! You’re not like yourself. What is it?”
+
+With his hand on the lock of the door, Midwinter turned, and looked
+back into the room. The moment had come. His haunting fear of doing his
+friend an injustice had shown itself in a restraint of word, look, and
+action which had been marked enough to force its way to Allan’s notice.
+The one course left now, in the dearest interests of the friendship that
+united them, was to speak at once, and to speak boldly.
+
+“There’s something strange between us,” reiterated Allan. “For God’s
+sake, what is it?”
+
+Midwinter took his hand from the door, and came down again to the
+window, fronting Allan. He occupied the place, of necessity, which Allan
+had just left. It was the side of the window on which the Statuette
+stood. The little figure, placed on its projecting bracket, was, close
+behind him on his right hand. No signs of change appeared in the stormy
+sky. The rain still swept slanting across the garden, and pattered
+heavily against the glass.
+
+“Give me your hand, Allan.”
+
+Allan gave it, and Midwinter held it firmly while he spoke.
+
+“There is something strange between us,” he said. “There is something
+to be set right which touches you nearly; and it has not been set right
+yet. You asked me just now where I met with Miss Gwilt. I met with her
+on my way back here, upon the high-road on the further side of the
+town. She entreated me to protect her from a man who was following and
+frightening her. I saw the scoundrel with my own eyes, and I should have
+laid hands on him, if Miss Gwilt herself had not stopped me. She gave
+a very strange reason for stopping me. She said I didn’t know who his
+employer was.”
+
+Allan’s ruddy color suddenly deepened; he looked aside quickly through
+the window at the pouring rain. At the same moment their hands fell
+apart, and there was a pause of silence on either side. Midwinter was
+the first to speak again.
+
+“Later in the evening,” he went on, “Miss Gwilt explained herself. She
+told me two things. She declared that the man whom I had seen following
+her was a hired spy. I was surprised, but I could not dispute it. She
+told me next, Allan--what I believe with my whole heart and soul to be
+a falsehood which has been imposed on her as the truth--she told me that
+the spy was in your employment!”
+
+Allan turned instantly from the window, and looked Midwinter full in the
+face again. “I must explain myself this time,” he said, resolutely.
+
+The ashy paleness peculiar to him in moments of strong emotion began to
+show itself on Midwinter’s cheeks.
+
+“More explanations!” he said, and drew back a step, with his eyes fixed
+in a sudden terror of inquiry on Allan’s face.
+
+“You don’t know what I know, Midwinter. You don’t know that what I have
+done has been done with a good reason. And what is more, I have not
+trusted to myself--I have had good advice.”
+
+“Did you hear what I said just now?” asked Midwinter, incredulously.
+“You can’t--surely, you can’t have been attending to me?”
+
+“I haven’t missed a word,” rejoined Allan. “I tell you again, you don’t
+know what I know of Miss Gwilt. She has threatened Miss Milroy. Miss
+Milroy is in danger while her governess stops in this neighborhood.”
+
+Midwinter dismissed the major’s daughter from the conversation with a
+contemptuous gesture of his hand.
+
+“I don’t want to hear about Miss, Milroy,” he said. “Don’t mix up Miss
+Milroy--Good God, Allan, am I to understand that the spy set to watch
+Miss Gwilt was doing his vile work with your approval?”
+
+“Once for all, my dear fellow, will you, or will you not, let me
+explain?”
+
+“Explain!” cried Midwinter, his eyes aflame, and his hot Creole blood
+rushing crimson into his face. “Explain the employment of a spy? What!
+after having driven Miss Gwilt out of her situation by meddling with her
+private affairs, you meddle again by the vilest of all means--the means
+of a paid spy? You set a watch on the woman whom you yourself told me
+you loved, only a fortnight since--the woman you were thinking of as
+your wife! I don’t believe it; I won’t believe it. Is my head failing
+me? Is it Allan Armadale I am speaking to? Is it Allan Armadale’s face
+looking at me? Stop! you are acting under some mistaken scruple. Some
+low fellow has crept into your confidence, and has done this in your
+name without telling you first.”
+
+Allan controlled himself with admirable patience and admirable
+consideration for the temper of his friend. “If you persist in refusing
+to hear me,” he said, “I must wait as well as I can till my turn comes.”
+
+“Tell me you are a stranger to the employment of that man, and I will
+hear you willingly.”
+
+“Suppose there should be a necessity, that you know nothing about, for
+employing him?”
+
+“I acknowledge no necessity for the cowardly persecution of a helpless
+woman.”
+
+A momentary flush of irritation--momentary, and no more--passed over
+Allan’s face. “You mightn’t think her quite so helpless,” he said, “if
+you knew the truth.”
+
+“Are _you_ the man to tell me the truth?” retorted the other. “You who
+have refused to hear her in her own defense! You who have closed the
+doors of this house against her!”
+
+Allan still controlled himself, but the effort began at last to be
+visible.
+
+“I know your temper is a hot one,” he said. “But for all that, your
+violence quite takes me by surprise. I can’t account for it, unless”--he
+hesitated a moment, and then finished the sentence in his usual frank,
+outspoken way--“unless you are sweet yourself on Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Those last words heaped fuel on the fire. They stripped the truth
+instantly of all concealments and disguises, and laid it bare to view.
+Allan’s instinct had guessed, and the guiding influence stood revealed
+of Midwinter’s interest in Miss Gwilt.
+
+“What right have you to say that?” he asked, with raised voice and
+threatening eyes.
+
+“I told _you_,” said Allan, simply, “when I thought I was sweet on her
+myself. Come! come! it’s a little hard, I think, even if you are in love
+with her, to believe everything she tells you, and not to let me say a
+word. Is _that_ the way you decide between us?”
+
+“Yes, it is!” cried the other, infuriated by Allan’s second allusion to
+Miss Gwilt. “When I am asked to choose between the employer of a spy and
+the victim of a spy, I side with the victim!”
+
+“Don’t try me too hard, Midwinter, I have a temper to lose as well as
+you.”
+
+He stopped, struggling with himself. The torture of passion in
+Midwinter’s face, from which a less simple and less generous nature
+might have recoiled in horror, touched Allan suddenly with an artless
+distress, which, at that moment, was little less than sublime. He
+advanced, with his eyes moistening, and his hand held out. “You asked
+me for my hand just now,” he said, “and I gave it you. Will you remember
+old times, and give me yours, before it’s too late?”
+
+“No!” retorted Midwinter, furiously. “I may meet Miss Gwilt again, and I
+may want my hand free to deal with your spy!”
+
+He had drawn back along the wall as Allan advanced, until the bracket
+which supported the Statuette was before instead of behind him. In the
+madness of his passion he saw nothing but Allan’s face confronting him.
+In the madness of his passion, he stretched out his right hand as he
+answered, and shook it threateningly in the air. It struck the forgotten
+projection of the bracket--and the next instant the Statuette lay in
+fragments on the floor.
+
+The rain drove slanting over flower-bed and lawn, and pattered heavily
+against the glass; and the two Armadales stood by the window, as the two
+Shadows had stood in the Second Vision of the Dream, with the wreck of
+the image between them.
+
+Allan stooped over the fragments of the little figure, and lifted them
+one by one from the floor.
+
+“Leave me,” he said, without looking up, “or we shall both repent it.”
+
+Without a word, Midwinter moved back slowly. He stood for the second
+time with his hand on the door, and looked his last at the room. The
+horror of the night on the Wreck had got him once more, and the flame of
+his passion was quenched in an instant.
+
+“The Dream!” he whispered, under his breath. “The Dream again!”
+
+The door was tried from the outside, and a servant appeared with a
+trivial message about the breakfast.
+
+Midwinter looked at the man with a blank, dreadful helplessness in his
+face. “Show me the way out,” he said. “The place is dark, and the room
+turns round with me.”
+
+The servant took him by the arm, and silently led him out.
+
+As the door closed on them, Allan picked up the last fragment of the
+broken figure. He sat down alone at the table, and hid his face in
+his hands. The self-control which he had bravely preserved under
+exasperation renewed again and again now failed him at last in the
+friendless solitude of his room, and, in the first bitterness of feeling
+that Midwinter had turned against him like the rest, he burst into
+tears.
+
+The moments followed each other, the slow time wore on. Little by little
+the signs of a new elemental disturbance began to show themselves in the
+summer storm. The shadow of a swiftly deepening darkness swept over the
+sky. The pattering of the rain lessened with the lessening wind. There
+was a momentary hush of stillness. Then on a sudden the rain poured down
+again like a cataract, and the low roll of thunder came up solemnly on
+the dying air.
+
+
+
+
+IX. SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH.
+
+1. _From Mr. Bashwood to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Thorpe Ambrose, July 20th, 1851.
+
+“DEAR MADAM--I received yesterday, by private messenger, your obliging
+note, in which you direct me to communicate with you through the post
+only, as long as there is reason to believe that any visitors who may
+come to you are likely to be observed. May I be permitted to say that
+I look forward with respectful anxiety to the time when I shall again
+enjoy the only real happiness I have ever experienced--the happiness of
+personally addressing you?
+
+“In compliance with your desire that I should not allow this day (the
+Sunday) to pass without privately noticing what went on at the great
+house, I took the keys, and went this morning to the steward’s office. I
+accounted for my appearance to the servants by informing them that I had
+work to do which it was important to complete in the shortest possible
+time. The same excuse would have done for Mr. Armadale if we had met,
+but no such meeting happened.
+
+“Although I was at Thorpe Ambrose in what I thought good time, I was too
+late to see or hear anything myself of a serious quarrel which appeared
+to have taken place, just before I arrived, between Mr. Armadale and Mr.
+Midwinter.
+
+“All the little information I can give you in this matter is derived
+from one of the servants. The man told me that he heard the voices of
+the two gentlemen loud in Mr. Armadale’s sitting-room. He went in to
+announce breakfast shortly afterward, and found Mr. Midwinter in such
+a dreadful state of agitation that he had to be helped out of the room.
+The servant tried to take him upstairs to lie down and compose himself.
+He declined, saying he would wait a little first in one of the lower
+rooms, and begging that he might be left alone. The man had hardly got
+downstairs again when he heard the front door opened and closed. He ran
+back, and found that Mr. Midwinter was gone. The rain was pouring at the
+time, and thunder and lightning came soon afterward. Dreadful weather
+certainly to go out in. The servant thinks Mr. Midwinter’s mind was
+unsettled. I sincerely hope not. Mr. Midwinter is one of the few people
+I have met with in the course of my life who have treated me kindly.
+
+“Hearing that Mr. Armadale still remained in the sitting-room, I went
+into the steward’s office (which, as you may remember, is on the same
+side of the house), and left the door ajar, and set the window open,
+waiting and listening for anything that might happen. Dear madam, there
+was a time when I might have thought such a position in the house of my
+employer not a very becoming one. Let me hasten to assure you that this
+is far from being my feeling now. I glory in any position which makes me
+serviceable to you.
+
+“The state of the weather seemed hopelessly adverse to that renewal
+of intercourse between Mr. Armadale and Miss Milroy which you so
+confidently anticipate, and of which you are so anxious to be made
+aware. Strangely enough, however, it is actually in consequence of the
+state of the weather that I am now in a position to give you the very
+information you require. Mr. Armadale and Miss Milroy met about an hour
+since. The circumstances were as follows:
+
+“Just at the beginning of the thunder-storm, I saw one of the grooms run
+across from the stables, and heard him tap at his master’s window. Mr.
+Armadale opened the window and asked what was the matter. The groom said
+he came with a message from the coachman’s wife. She had seen from her
+room over the stables (which looks on to the park) Miss Milroy quite
+alone, standing for shelter under one of the trees. As that part of the
+park was at some distance from the major’s cottage, she had thought
+that her master might wish to send and ask the young lady into the
+house--especially as she had placed herself, with a thunder-storm coming
+on, in what might turn out to be a very dangerous position.
+
+“The moment Mr. Armadale understood the man’s message, he called for the
+water-proof things and the umbrellas, and ran out himself, instead of
+leaving it to the servants. In a little time he and the groom came back
+with Miss Milroy between them, as well protected as could be from the
+rain.
+
+“I ascertained from one of the women-servants, who had taken the young
+lady into a bedroom, and had supplied her with such dry things as she
+wanted, that Miss Milroy had been afterward shown into the drawing-room,
+and that Mr. Armadale was there with her. The only way of following your
+instructions, and finding out what passed between them, was to go round
+the house in the pelting rain, and get into the conservatory (which
+opens into the drawing-room) by the outer door. I hesitate at nothing,
+dear madam, in your service; I would cheerfully get wet every day, to
+please you. Besides, though I may at first sight be thought rather an
+elderly man, a wetting is of no very serious consequence to me. I assure
+you I am not so old as I look, and I am of a stronger constitution than
+appears.
+
+“It was impossible for me to get near enough in the conservatory to see
+what went on in the drawing-room, without the risk of being discovered.
+But most of the conversation reached me, except when they dropped their
+voices. This is the substance of what I heard:
+
+“I gathered that Miss Milroy had been prevailed on, against her will, to
+take refuge from the thunder-storm in Mr. Armadale’s house. She said so,
+at least, and she gave two reasons. The first was that her father had
+forbidden all intercourse between the cottage and the great house. Mr.
+Armadale met this objection by declaring that her father had issued his
+orders under a total misconception of the truth, and by entreating her
+not to treat him as cruelly as the major had treated him. He entered,
+I suspect, into some explanations at this point, but as he dropped his
+voice I am unable to say what they were. His language, when I did hear
+it, was confused and ungrammatical. It seemed, however, to be quite
+intelligible enough to persuade Miss Milroy that her father had been
+acting under a mistaken impression of the circumstances. At least, I
+infer this; for, when I next heard the conversation, the young lady was
+driven back to her second objection to being in the house--which was,
+that Mr. Armadale had behaved very badly to her, and that he richly
+deserved that she should never speak to him again.
+
+“In this latter case, Mr. Armadale attempted no defense of any kind. He
+agreed with her that he had behaved badly; he agreed with her that he
+richly deserved she should never speak to him again. At the same time he
+implored her to remember that he had suffered his punishment already.
+He was disgraced in the neighborhood; and his dearest friend, his one
+intimate friend in the world, had that very morning turned against him
+like the rest. Far or near, there was not a living creature whom he was
+fond of to comfort him, or to say a friendly word to him. He was lonely
+and miserable, and his heart ached for a little kindness--and that was
+his only excuse for asking Miss Milroy to forget and forgive the past.
+
+“I must leave you, I fear, to judge for yourself of the effect of this
+on the young lady; for, though I tried hard, I failed to catch what
+she said. I am almost certain I heard her crying, and Mr. Armadale
+entreating her not to break his heart. They whispered a great deal,
+which aggravated me. I was afterward alarmed by Mr. Armadale coming
+out into the conservatory to pick some flowers. He did not come as far,
+fortunately, as the place where I was hidden; and he went in again
+into the drawing-room, and there was more talking (I suspect at close
+quarters), which to my great regret I again failed to catch. Pray
+forgive me for having so little to tell you. I can only add that, when
+the storm cleared off, Miss Milroy went away with the flowers in her
+hand, and with Mr. Armadale escorting her from the house. My own humble
+opinion is that he had a powerful friend at court, all through the
+interview, in the young lady’s own liking for him.
+
+“This is all I can say at present, with the exception of one other thing
+I heard, which I blush to mention. But your word is law, and you have
+ordered me to have no concealments from you.
+
+“Their talk turned once, dear madam, on yourself. I think I heard the
+word ‘creature’ from Miss Milroy; and I am certain that Mr. Armadale,
+while acknowledging that he had once admired you, added that
+circumstances had since satisfied him of ‘his folly.’ I quote his own
+expression; it made me quite tremble with indignation. If I may be
+permitted to say so, the man who admires Miss Gwilt lives in Paradise.
+Respect, if nothing else, ought to have closed Mr. Armadale’s lips.
+He is my employer, I know; but after his calling it an act of folly to
+admire you (though I _am_ his deputy-steward), I utterly despise him.
+
+“Trusting that I may have been so happy as to give you satisfaction
+thus far, and earnestly desirous to deserve the honor of your continued
+confidence in me, I remain, dear madam,
+
+“Your grateful and devoted servant,
+
+“FELIX BASHWOOD.”
+
+2. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Diana Street, Monday, July 21st.
+
+“MY DEAR LYDIA--I trouble you with a few lines. They are written under a
+sense of the duty which I owe to myself, in our present position toward
+each other.
+
+“I am not at all satisfied with the tone of your last two letters; and I
+am still less pleased at your leaving me this morning without any letter
+at all--and this when we had arranged, in the doubtful state of our
+prospects, that I was to hear from you every day. I can only interpret
+your conduct in one way. I can only infer that matters at Thorpe
+Ambrose, having been all mismanaged, are all going wrong.
+
+“It is not my present object to reproach you, for why should I waste
+time, language, and paper? I merely wish to recall to your memory
+certain considerations which you appear to be disposed to overlook.
+Shall I put them in the plainest English? Yes; for, with all my faults,
+I am frankness personified.
+
+“In the first place, then, I have an interest in your becoming Mrs.
+Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose as well as you. Secondly, I have provided you
+(to say nothing of good advice) with all the money needed to accomplish
+our object. Thirdly, I hold your notes of hand, at short dates, for
+every farthing so advanced. Fourthly and lastly, though I am indulgent
+to a fault in the capacity of a friend--in the capacity of a woman of
+business, my dear, I am not to be trifled with. That is all, Lydia, at
+least for the present.
+
+“Pray don’t suppose I write in anger; I am only sorry and disheartened.
+My state of mind resembles David’s. If I had the wings of a dove, I
+would flee away and be at rest.
+
+“Affectionately yours, MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+3. _From Mr. Bashwood to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Thorpe Ambrose, July 21st.
+
+“DEAR MADAM--You will probably receive these lines a few hours after
+my yesterday’s communication reaches you. I posted my first letter last
+night, and I shall post this before noon to-day.
+
+“My present object in writing is to give you some more news from
+this house. I have the inexpressible happiness of announcing that Mr.
+Armadale’s disgraceful intrusion on your privacy is at an end. The watch
+set on your actions is to be withdrawn this day. I write, dear madam,
+with the tears in my eyes--tears of joy, caused by feelings which I
+ventured to express in my previous letter (see first paragraph toward
+the end). Pardon me this personal reference. I can speak to you (I don’t
+know why) so much more readily with my pen than with my tongue.
+
+“Let me try to compose myself, and proceed with my narrative.
+
+“I had just arrived at the steward’s office this morning, when Mr.
+Pedgift the elder followed me to the great house to see Mr. Armadale by
+special appointment. It is needless to say that I at once suspended
+any little business there was to do, feeling that your interests might
+possibly be concerned. It is also most gratifying to add that this time
+circumstances favored me. I was able to stand under the open window and
+to hear the whole interview.
+
+“Mr. Armadale explained himself at once in the plainest terms. He
+gave orders that the person who had been hired to watch you should be
+instantly dismissed. On being asked to explain this sudden change of
+purpose, he did not conceal that it was owing to the effect produced
+on his mind by what had passed between Mr. Midwinter and himself on the
+previous day. Mr. Midwinter’s language, cruelly unjust as it was, had
+nevertheless convinced him that no necessity whatever could excuse any
+proceeding so essentially base in itself as the employment of a spy, and
+on that conviction he was now determined to act.
+
+“But for your own positive directions to me to conceal nothing that
+passes here in which your name is concerned, I should really be ashamed
+to report what Mr. Pedgift said on his side. He has behaved kindly to
+me, I know. But if he was my own brother, I could never forgive him the
+tone in which he spoke of you, and the obstinacy with which he tried to
+make Mr. Armadale change his mind.
+
+“He began by attacking Mr. Midwinter. He declared that Mr. Midwinter’s
+opinion was the very worst opinion that could be taken; for it was quite
+plain that you, dear madam, had twisted him round your finger. Producing
+no effect by this coarse suggestion (which nobody who knows you could
+for a moment believe), Mr. Pedgift next referred to Miss Milroy, and
+asked Mr. Armadale if he had given up all idea of protecting her. What
+this meant I cannot imagine. I can only report it for your private
+consideration. Mr. Armadale briefly answered that he had his own plan
+for protecting Miss Milroy, and that the circumstances were altered in
+that quarter, or words to a similar effect. Still Mr. Pedgift persisted.
+He went on (I blush to mention) from bad to worse. He tried to persuade
+Mr. Armadale next to bring an action at law against one or other of
+the persons who had been most strongly condemning his conduct in the
+neighborhood, for the purpose--I really hardly know how to write it--of
+getting you into the witness-box. And worse yet: when Mr. Armadale still
+said No, Mr. Pedgift, after having, as I suspected by the sound of his
+voice, been on the point of leaving the room, artfully came back, and
+proposed sending for a detective officer from London, simply to look at
+you. ‘The whole of this mystery about Miss Gwilt’s true character,’ he
+said, ‘may turn on a question of identity. It won’t cost much to have
+a man down from London; and it’s worth trying whether her face is or is
+not known at headquarters to the police.’ I again and again assure you,
+dearest lady, that I only repeat those abominable words from a sense of
+duty toward yourself. I shook--I declare I shook from head to foot when
+I heard them.
+
+“To resume, for there is more to tell you.
+
+“Mr. Armadale (to his credit--I don’t deny it, though I don’t like him)
+still said No. He appeared to be getting irritated under Mr. Pedgift’s
+persistence, and he spoke in a somewhat hasty way. ‘You persuaded me on
+the last occasion when we talked about this,’ he said, ‘to do something
+that I have been since heartily ashamed of. You won’t succeed in
+persuading me, Mr. Pedgift, a second time.’ Those were his words. Mr.
+Pedgift took him up short; Mr. Pedgift seemed to be nettled on his side.
+
+“‘If that is the light in which you see my advice, sir,’ he said, ‘the
+less you have of it for the future, the better. Your character and
+position are publicly involved in this matter between yourself and Miss
+Gwilt; and you persist, at a most critical moment, in taking a course of
+your own, which I believe will end badly. After what I have already said
+and done in this very serious case, I can’t consent to go on with it
+with both my hands tied, and I can’t drop it with credit to myself while
+I remain publicly known as your solicitor. You leave me no alternative,
+sir, but to resign the honor of acting as your legal adviser.’ ‘I
+am sorry to hear it,’ says Mr. Armadale, ‘but I have suffered enough
+already through interfering with Miss Gwilt. I can’t and won’t stir any
+further in the matter.’ ‘_You_ may not stir any further in it, sir,’
+says Mr. Pedgift, ‘and _I_ shall not stir any further in it, for it
+has ceased to be a question of professional interest to me. But mark my
+words, Mr. Armadale, you are not at the end of this business yet. Some
+other person’s curiosity may go on from the point where you (and I) have
+stopped; and some other person’s hand may let the broad daylight in yet
+on Miss Gwilt.’
+
+“I report their language, dear madam, almost word for word, I believe,
+as I heard it. It produced an indescribable impression on me; it filled
+me, I hardly know why, with quite a panic of alarm. I don’t at all
+understand it, and I understand still less what happened immediately
+afterward.
+
+“Mr. Pedgift’s voice, when he said those last words, sounded dreadfully
+close to me. He must have been speaking at the open window, and he must,
+I fear, have seen me under it. I had time, before he left the house,
+to get out quietly from among the laurels, but not to get back to the
+office. Accordingly I walked away along the drive toward the lodge, as
+if I was going on some errand connected with the steward’s business.
+
+“Before long, Mr. Pedgift overtook me in his gig, and stopped. ‘So _you_
+feel some curiosity about Miss Gwilt, do you?’ he said. ‘Gratify your
+curiosity by all means; _I_ don’t object to it.’ I felt naturally
+nervous, but I managed to ask him what he meant. He didn’t answer; he
+only looked down at me from the gig in a very odd manner, and laughed.
+‘I have known stranger things happen even than _that_!’ he said to
+himself suddenly, and drove off.
+
+“I have ventured to trouble you with this last incident, though it
+may seem of no importance in your eyes, in the hope that your superior
+ability may be able to explain it. My own poor faculties, I confess, are
+quite unable to penetrate Mr. Pedgift’s meaning. All I know is that he
+has no right to accuse me of any such impertinent feeling as curiosity
+in relation to a lady whom I ardently esteem and admire. I dare not put
+it in warmer words.
+
+“I have only to add that I am in a position to be of continued service
+to you here if you wish it. Mr. Armadale has just been into the office,
+and has told me briefly that, in Mr. Midwinter’s continued absence, I am
+still to act as steward’s deputy till further notice.
+
+“Believe me, dear madam, anxiously and devotedly yours, FELIX BASHWOOD.”
+
+4. _From Allan Armadale to the Reverend Decimus Brock_.
+
+Thorpe Ambrose, Tuesday.
+
+“MY DEAR MR. BROCK--I am in sad trouble. Midwinter has quarreled with
+me and left me; and my lawyer has quarreled with me and left me; and
+(except dear little Miss Milroy, who has forgiven me) all the neighbors
+have turned their backs on me. There is a good deal about ‘me’ in this,
+but I can’t help it. I am very miserable alone in my own house. Do pray
+come and see me! You are the only old friend I have left, and I do long
+so to tell you about it.
+
+“N. B.--On my word of honor as a gentleman, I am not to blame. Yours
+affectionately,
+
+“ALLAN ARMADALE.
+
+“P. S.--I would come to you (for this place is grown quite hateful to
+me), but I have a reason for not going too far away from Miss Milroy
+just at present.”
+
+5. _From Robert Stapleton to Allan Armadale, Esq._
+
+“Bascombe Rectory, Thursday Morning.
+
+“RESPECTED SIR--I see a letter in your writing, on the table along with
+the others, which I am sorry to say my master is not well enough to
+open. He is down with a sort of low fever. The doctor says it has been
+brought on with worry and anxiety which master was not strong enough to
+bear. This seems likely; for I was with him when he went to London last
+month, and what with his own business, and the business of looking after
+that person who afterward gave us the slip, he was worried and anxious
+all the time; and for the matter of that, so was I.
+
+“My master was talking of you a day or two since. He seemed unwilling
+that you should know of his illness, unless he got worse. But I think
+you ought to know of it. At the same time he is not worse; perhaps
+a trifle better. The doctor says he must be kept very quiet, and not
+agitated on any account. So be pleased to take no notice of this--I mean
+in the way of coming to the rectory. I have the doctor’s orders to say
+it is not needful, and it would only upset my master in the state he is
+in now.
+
+“I will write again if you wish it. Please accept of my duty, and
+believe me to remain, sir, your humble servant,
+
+“ROBERT STAPLETON.
+
+“P. S.--The yacht has been rigged and repainted, waiting your orders.
+She looks beautiful.”
+
+6. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Diana Street, July 24th.
+
+“MISS GWILT--The post hour has passed for three mornings following,
+and has brought me no answer to my letter. Are you purposely bent on
+insulting me? or have you left Thorpe Ambrose? In either case, I won’t
+put up with your conduct any longer. The law shall bring you to book, if
+I can’t.
+
+“Your first note of hand (for thirty pounds) falls due on Tuesday next,
+the 29th. If you had behaved with common consideration toward me, I
+would have let you renew it with pleasure. As things are, I shall have
+the note presented; and, if it is not paid, I shall instruct my man of
+business to take the usual course.
+
+“Yours, MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+
+7. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+“5 Paradise Place, Thorpe Ambrose, July 25th.
+
+“MRS. OLDERSHAW--The time of your man of business being, no doubt, of
+some value, I write a line to assist him when he takes the usual course.
+He will find me waiting to be arrested in the first-floor apartments,
+at the above address. In my present situation, and with my present
+thoughts, the best service you can possibly render me is to lock me up.
+
+“L. G.”
+
+8. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.
+
+“Diana Street, July 26th.
+
+“MY DARLING LYDIA--The longer I live in this wicked world the more
+plainly I see that women’s own tempers are the worst enemies women have
+to contend with. What a truly regretful style of correspondence we have
+fallen into! What a sad want of self-restraint, my dear, on your side
+and on mine!
+
+“Let me, as the oldest in years, be the first to make the needful
+excuses, the first to blush for my own want of self-control. Your cruel
+neglect, Lydia, stung me into writing as I did. I am so sensitive to
+ill treatment, when it is inflicted on me by a person whom I love and
+admire; and, though turned sixty, I am still (unfortunately for myself)
+so young at heart. Accept my apologies for having made use of my
+pen, when I ought to have been content to take refuge in my
+pocket-handkerchief. Forgive your attached Maria for being still young
+at heart!
+
+“But oh, my dear--though I own I threatened you--how hard of you to take
+me at my word! How cruel of you, if your debt had been ten times what
+it is, to suppose me capable (whatever I might say) of the odious
+inhumanity of arresting my bosom friend! Heavens! have I deserved to
+be taken at my word in this unmercifully exact way, after the years of
+tender intimacy that have united us? But I don’t complain; I only mourn
+over the frailty of our common human nature. Let us expect as little of
+each other as possible, my dear; we are both women, and we can’t help
+it. I declare, when I reflect on the origin of our unfortunate sex--when
+I remember that we were all originally made of no better material than
+the rib of a man (and that rib of so little importance to its possessor
+that he never appears to have missed it afterward), I am quite
+astonished at our virtues, and not in the least surprised at our faults.
+
+“I am wandering a little; I am losing myself in serious thought, like
+that sweet character in Shakespeare who was ‘fancy free.’ One last word,
+dearest, to say that my longing for an answer to this proceeds entirely
+from my wish to hear from you again in your old friendly tone, and
+is quite unconnected with any curiosity to know what you are doing at
+Thorpe Ambrose--except such curiosity as you yourself might approve.
+Need I add that I beg you as a favor to _me_ to renew, on the customary
+terms? I refer to the little bill due on Tuesday next, and I venture to
+suggest that day six weeks.
+
+“Yours, with a truly motherly feeling,
+
+“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”
+
+9. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+“Paradise Place, July 27th.
+
+“I have just got your last letter. The brazen impudence of it has roused
+me. I am to be treated like a child, am I?--to be threatened first, and
+then, if threatening fails, to be coaxed afterward? You _shall_ coax me;
+you shall know, my motherly friend, the sort of child you have to deal
+with.
+
+“I had a reason, Mrs. Oldershaw, for the silence which has so seriously
+offended you. I was afraid--actually afraid--to let you into the secret
+of my thoughts. No such fear troubles me now. My only anxiety this
+morning is to make you my best acknowledgments for the manner in which
+you have written to me. After carefully considering it, I think the
+worst turn I can possibly do you is to tell you what you are burning to
+know. So here I am at my desk, bent on telling it. If you don’t bitterly
+repent, when you are at the end of this letter, not having held to your
+first resolution, and locked me up out of harm’s way while you had the
+chance, my name is not Lydia Gwilt.
+
+“Where did my last letter end? I don’t remember, and don’t care. Make it
+out as you can--I am not going back any further than this day week. That
+is to say, Sunday last.
+
+“There was a thunder-storm in the morning. It began to clear off toward
+noon. I didn’t go out: I waited to see Midwinter or to hear from him.
+(Are you surprised at my not writing ‘Mr.’ before his name? We have got
+so familiar, my dear, that ‘Mr.’ would be quite out of place.) He had
+left me the evening before, under very interesting circumstances. I had
+told him that his friend Armadale was persecuting me by means of a hired
+spy. He had declined to believe it, and had gone straight to Thorpe
+Ambrose to clear the thing up. I let him kiss my hand before he went. He
+promised to come back the next day (the Sunday). I felt I had secured my
+influence over him; and I believed he would keep his word.
+
+“Well, the thunder passed away as I told you. The weather cleared up;
+the people walked out in their best clothes; the dinners came in from
+the bakers; I sat dreaming at my wretched little hired piano, nicely
+dressed and looking my best--and still no Midwinter appeared. It was
+late in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feel offended, when a
+letter was brought to me. It had been left by a strange messenger
+who went away again immediately. I looked at the letter. Midwinter at
+last--in writing, instead of in person. I began to feel more offended
+than ever; for, as I told you, I thought I had used my influence over
+him to better purpose.
+
+“The letter, when I read it, set my mind off in a new direction. It
+surprised, it puzzled, it interested me. I thought, and thought, and
+thought of him, all the rest of the day.
+
+“He began by asking my pardon for having doubted what I told him. Mr.
+Armadale’s own lips had confirmed me. They had quarreled (as I had
+anticipated they would); and he, and the man who had once been
+his dearest friend on earth, had parted forever. So far, I was not
+surprised. I was amused by his telling me in his extravagant way that he
+and his friend were parted forever; and I rather wondered what he would
+think when I carried out my plan, and found my way into the great house
+on pretense of reconciling them.
+
+“But the second part of the letter set me thinking. Here it is, in his
+own words.
+
+“‘It is only by struggling against myself (and no language can say how
+hard the struggle has been) that I have decided on writing, instead of
+speaking to you. A merciless necessity claims my future life. I must
+leave Thorpe Ambrose, I must leave England, without hesitating, without
+stopping to look back. There are reasons--terrible reasons, which I have
+madly trifled with--for my never letting Mr. Armadale set eyes on me, or
+hear of me again, after what has happened between us. I must go, never
+more to live under the same roof, never more to breathe the same air
+with that man. I must hide myself from him under an assumed name; I
+must put the mountains and the seas between us. I have been warned as
+no human creature was ever warned before. I believe--I dare not tell you
+why--I believe that, if the fascination you have for me draws me back to
+you, fatal consequences will come of it to the man whose life has been
+so strangely mingled with your life and mine--the man who was once
+_your_ admirer and _my_ friend. And yet, feeling this, seeing it in my
+mind as plainly as I see the sky above my head, there is a weakness in
+me that still shrinks from the one imperative sacrifice of never seeing
+you again. I am fighting with it as a man fights with the strength of
+his despair. I have been near enough, not an hour since, to see the
+house where you live, and have forced myself away again out of sight
+of it. Can I force myself away further still, now that my letter is
+written--now, when the useless confession escapes me, and I own to
+loving you with the first love I have ever known, with the last love
+I shall ever feel? Let the coming time answer the question; I dare not
+write of it or think of it more.’
+
+
+“Those were the last words. In that strange way the letter ended.
+
+“I felt a perfect fever of curiosity to know what he meant. His loving
+me, of course, was easy enough to understand. But what did he mean by
+saying he had been warned? Why was he never to live under the same roof,
+never to breathe the same air again, with young Armadale? What sort of
+quarrel could it be which obliged one man to hide himself from another
+under an assumed name, and to put the mountains and the seas between
+them? Above all, if he came back, and let me fascinate him, why should
+it be fatal to the hateful lout who possesses the noble fortune and
+lives in the great house?
+
+“I never longed in my life as I longed to see him again and put these
+questions to him. I got quite superstitious about it as the day drew on.
+They gave me a sweet-bread and a cherry pudding for dinner. I actually
+tried if he would come back by the stones in the plate! He will, he
+won’t, he will, he won’t--and so on. It ended in ‘He won’t.’ I rang
+the bell, and had the things taken away. I contradicted Destiny quite
+fiercely. I said, ‘He will!’ and I waited at home for him.
+
+“You don’t know what a pleasure it is to me to give you all these little
+particulars. Count up--my bosom friend, my second mother--count up the
+money you have advanced on the chance of my becoming Mrs. Armadale, and
+then think of my feeling this breathless interest in another man. Oh,
+Mrs. Oldershaw, how intensely I enjoy the luxury of irritating you!
+
+“The day got on toward evening. I rang again, and sent down to borrow a
+railway time-table. What trains were there to take him away on Sunday?
+The national respect for the Sabbath stood my friend. There was only
+one train, which had started hours before he wrote to me. I went and
+consulted my glass. It paid me the compliment of contradicting
+the divination by cherry-stones. My glass said: ‘Get behind the
+window-curtain; he won’t pass the long lonely evening without coming
+back again to look at the house.’ I got behind the window-curtain, and
+waited with his letter in my hand.
+
+“The dismal Sunday light faded, and the dismal Sunday quietness in the
+street grew quieter still. The dusk came, and I heard a step coming with
+it in the silence. My heart gave a little jump--only think of my having
+any heart left! I said to myself: ‘Midwinter!’ And Midwinter it was.
+
+“When he came in sight he was walking slowly, stopping and hesitating at
+every two or three steps. My ugly little drawing-room window seemed to
+be beckoning him on in spite of himself. After waiting till I saw him
+come to a standstill, a little aside from the house, but still within
+view of my irresistible window, I put on my things and slipped out
+by the back way into the garden. The landlord and his family were at
+supper, and nobody saw me. I opened the door in the wall, and got
+round by the lane into the street. At that awkward moment I suddenly
+remembered, what I had forgotten before, the spy set to watch me, who
+was, no doubt, waiting somewhere in sight of the house.
+
+“It was necessary to get time to think, and it was (in my state of
+mind) impossible to let Midwinter go without speaking to him. In great
+difficulties you generally decide at once, if you decide at all. I
+decided to make an appointment with him for the next evening, and to
+consider in the interval how to manage the interview so that it might
+escape observation. This, as I felt at the time, was leaving my own
+curiosity free to torment me for four-and-twenty mortal hours; but what
+other choice had I? It was as good as giving up being mistress of Thorpe
+Ambrose altogether, to come to a private understanding with Midwinter in
+the sight and possibly in the hearing of Armadale’s spy.
+
+“Finding an old letter of yours in my pocket, I drew back into the lane,
+and wrote on the blank leaf, with the little pencil that hangs at my
+watch-chain: ‘I must and will speak to you. It is impossible to-night,
+but be in the street to-morrow at this time, and leave me afterward
+forever, if you like. When you have read this, overtake me, and say as
+you pass, without stopping or looking round, “Yes, I promise.”’
+
+“I folded up the paper, and came on him suddenly from behind. As he
+started and turned round, I put the note into his hand, pressed his
+hand, and passed on. Before I had taken ten steps I heard him behind me.
+I can’t say he didn’t look round--I saw his big black eyes, bright and
+glittering in the dusk, devour me from head to foot in a moment;
+but otherwise he did what I told him. ‘I can deny you nothing,’ he
+whispered; ‘I promise.’ He went on and left me. I couldn’t help thinking
+at the time how that brute and booby Armadale would have spoiled
+everything in the same situation.
+
+“I tried hard all night to think of a way of making our interview of the
+next evening safe from discovery, and tried in vain. Even as early
+as this, I began to feel as if Midwinter’s letter had, in some
+unaccountable manner, stupefied me.
+
+“Monday morning made matters worse. News came from my faithful ally,
+Mr. Bashwood, that Miss Milroy and Armadale had met and become friends
+again. You may fancy the state I was in! An hour or two later there came
+more news from Mr. Bashwood--good news this time. The mischievous
+idiot at Thorpe Ambrose had shown sense enough at last to be ashamed of
+himself. He had decided on withdrawing the spy that very day, and he and
+his lawyer had quarreled in consequence.
+
+“So here was the obstacle which I was too stupid to remove for myself
+obligingly removed for me! No more need to fret about the coming
+interview with Midwinter; and plenty of time to consider my next
+proceedings, now that Miss Milroy and her precious swain had come
+together again. Would you believe it, the letter, or the man himself (I
+don’t know which), had taken such a hold on me that, though I tried and
+tried, I could think of nothing else; and this when I had every reason
+to fear that Miss Milroy was in a fair way of changing her name to
+Armadale, and when I knew that my heavy debt of obligation to her was
+not paid yet? Was there ever such perversity? I can’t account for it;
+can you?
+
+“The dusk of the evening came at last. I looked out of the window--and
+there he was!
+
+“I joined him at once; the people of the house, as before, being too
+much absorbed in their eating and drinking to notice anything else. ‘We
+mustn’t be seen together here,’ I whispered. ‘I must go on first, and
+you must follow me.’
+
+“He said nothing in the way of reply. What was going on in his mind
+I can’t pretend to guess; but, after coming to his appointment, he
+actually hung back as if he was half inclined to go away again.
+
+“‘You look as if you were afraid of me,’ I said.
+
+“‘I _am_ afraid of you,’ he answered--‘of you, and of myself.’
+
+“It was not encouraging; it was not complimentary. But I was in such
+a frenzy of curiosity by this time that, if he had been ruder still, I
+should have taken no notice of it. I led the way a few steps toward the
+new buildings, and stopped and looked round after him.
+
+“‘Must I ask it of you as a favor,’ I said, ‘after your giving me your
+promise, and after such a letter as you have written to me?’
+
+“Something suddenly changed him; he was at my side in an instant. ‘I beg
+your pardon, Miss Gwilt; lead the way where you please.’ He dropped back
+a little after that answer, and I heard him say to himself, ‘What _is_
+to be _will_ be. What have I to do with it, and what has she?’
+
+“It could hardly have been the words, for I didn’t understand them--it
+must have been the tone he spoke in, I suppose, that made me feel a
+momentary tremor. I was half inclined, without the ghost of a reason for
+it, to wish him good-night, and go in again. Not much like me, you will
+say. Not much, indeed! It didn’t last a moment. Your darling Lydia soon
+came to her senses again.
+
+“I led the way toward the unfinished cottages, and the country beyond.
+It would have been much more to my taste to have had him into the house,
+and have talked to him in the light of the candles. But I had risked it
+once already; and in this scandal-mongering place, and in my critical
+position, I was afraid to risk it again. The garden was not to be
+thought of either, for the landlord smokes his pipe there after his
+supper. There was no alternative but to take him away from the town.
+
+“From time to time, I looked back as I went on. There he was, always at
+the same distance, dim and ghost-like in the dusk, silently following
+me.
+
+“I must leave off for a little while. The church bells have broken out,
+and the jangling of them drives me mad. In these days, when we have
+all got watches and clocks, why are bells wanted to remind us when
+the service begins? We don’t require to be rung into the theater. How
+excessively discreditable to the clergy to be obliged to ring us into
+the church!”
+
+----------
+
+“They have rung the congregation in at last; and I can take up my pen,
+and go on again.
+
+“I was a little in doubt where to lead him to. The high-road was on one
+side of me; but, empty as it looked, somebody might be passing when
+we least expected it. The other way was through the coppice. I led him
+through the coppice.
+
+“At the outskirts of the trees, on the other side, there was a dip
+in the ground with some felled timber lying on it, and a little
+pool beyond, still and white and shining in the twilight. The long
+grazing-grounds rose over its further shore, with the mist thickening on
+them, and a dim black line far away of cattle in slow procession going
+home. There wasn’t a living creature near; there wasn’t a sound to be
+heard. I sat down on one of the felled trees and looked back for him.
+‘Come,’ I said, softly--‘come and sit by me here.’
+
+“Why am I so particular about all this? I hardly know. The place made an
+unaccountably vivid impression on me, and I can’t help writing about
+it. If I end badly--suppose we say on the scaffold?--I believe the last
+thing I shall see, before the hangman pulls the drop, will be the
+little shining pool, and the long, misty grazing-grounds, and the cattle
+winding dimly home in the thickening night. Don’t be alarmed, you worthy
+creature! My fancies play me strange tricks sometimes; and there is a
+little of last night’s laudanum, I dare say, in this part of my letter.
+
+“He came--in the strangest silent way, like a man walking in his
+sleep--he came and sat down by me. Either the night was very close, or
+I was by this time literally in a fever: I couldn’t bear my bonnet on;
+I couldn’t bear my gloves. The want to look at him, and see what
+his singular silence meant, and the impossibility of doing it in the
+darkening light, irritated my nerves, till I thought I should have
+screamed. I took his hand, to try if that would help me. It was burning
+hot; and it closed instantly on mine--you know how. Silence, after
+_that_, was not to be thought of. The one safe way was to begin talking
+to him at once.
+
+“‘Don’t despise me,’ I said. ‘I am obliged to bring you to this lonely
+place; I should lose my character if we were seen together.’
+
+“I waited a little. His hand warned me once more not to let the silence
+continue. I determined to _make_ him speak to me this time.
+
+“‘You have interested me, and frightened me,’ I went on. ‘You have
+written me a very strange letter. I must know what it means.’
+
+“‘It is too late to ask. _You_ have taken the way, and _I_ have taken
+the way, from which there is no turning back.’ He made that strange
+answer in a tone that was quite new to me--a tone that made me even more
+uneasy than his silence had made me the moment before. ‘Too late,’ he
+repeated--‘too late! There is only one question to ask me now.’
+
+“‘What is it?’
+
+“As I said the words, a sudden trembling passed from his hand to mine,
+and told me instantly that I had better have held my tongue. Before I
+could move, before I could think, he had me in his arms. ‘Ask me if I
+love you,’ he whispered. At the same moment his head sank on my bosom;
+and some unutterable torture that was in him burst its way out, as it
+does with _us_, in a passion of sobs and tears.
+
+“My first impulse was the impulse of a fool. I was on the point of
+making our usual protest and defending myself in our usual way. Luckily
+or unluckily, I don’t know which, I have lost the fine edge of the
+sensitiveness of youth; and I checked the first movement of my hands,
+and the first word on my lips. Oh, dear, how old I felt, while he was
+sobbing his heart out on my breast! How I thought of the time when he
+might have possessed himself of my love! All he had possessed himself of
+now was--my waist.
+
+“I wonder whether I pitied him? It doesn’t matter if I did. At any rate,
+my hand lifted itself somehow, and my fingers twined themselves softly
+in his hair. Horrible recollections came back to me of other times, and
+made me shudder as I touched him. And yet I did it. What fools women
+are!
+
+“‘I won’t reproach you,’ I said, gently. ‘I won’t say this is a cruel
+advantage to take of me, in such a position as mine. You are dreadfully
+agitated; I will let you wait a little and compose yourself.’
+
+“Having got as far as that, I stopped to consider how I should put the
+questions to him that I was burning to ask. But I was too confused,
+I suppose, or perhaps too impatient to consider. I let out what was
+uppermost in my mind, in the words that came first.
+
+“‘I don’t believe you love me,’ I said. ‘You write strange things to
+me; you frighten me with mysteries. What did you mean by saying in your
+letter that it would be fatal to Mr. Armadale if you came back to me?
+What danger can there be to Mr. Armadale--?’
+
+“Before I could finish the question, he suddenly lifted his head and
+unclasped his arms. I had apparently touched some painful subject which
+recalled him to himself. Instead of my shrinking from _him_, it was he
+who shrank from _me_. I felt offended with him; why, I don’t know--but
+offended I was; and I thanked him with my bitterest emphasis for
+remembering what was due to me, _at last_!
+
+“‘Do you believe in Dreams?’ he burst out, in the most strangely abrupt
+manner, without taking the slightest notice of what I had said to him.
+‘Tell me,’ he went on, without allowing me time to answer, ‘were you, or
+was any relation of yours, ever connected with Allan Armadale’s father
+or mother? Were you, or was anybody belonging to you, ever in the island
+of Madeira?’
+
+“Conceive my astonishment, if you can. I turned cold. In an instant I
+turned cold all over. He was plainly in the secret of what had happened
+when I was in Mrs. Armadale’s service in Madeira--in all probability
+before he was born! That was startling enough of itself. And he had
+evidently some reason of his own for trying to connect _me_ with those
+events--which was more startling still.
+
+“‘No,’ I said, as soon as I could trust myself to speak. ‘I know nothing
+of his father or mother.’
+
+“‘And nothing of the island of Madeira?’
+
+“‘Nothing of the island of Madeira.’
+
+“He turned his head away, and began talking to himself.
+
+“‘Strange!’ he said. ‘As certainly as I was in the Shadow’s place at the
+window, _she_ was in the Shadow’s place at the pool!’
+
+“Under other circumstances, his extraordinary behavior might have
+alarmed me. But after his question about Madeira, there was some greater
+fear in me which kept all common alarm at a distance. I don’t think I
+ever determined on anything in my life as I determined on finding out
+how he had got his information, and who he really was. It was quite
+plain to me that I had roused some hidden feeling in him by my question
+about Armadale, which was as strong in its way as his feeling for _me_.
+What had become of my influence over him?
+
+“I couldn’t imagine what had become of it; but I could and did set to
+work to make him feel it again.
+
+“‘Don’t treat me cruelly,’ I said; ‘I didn’t treat _you_ cruelly just
+now. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, it’s so lonely, it’s so dark--don’t frighten
+me!’
+
+“‘Frighten you!’ He was close to me again in a moment. ‘Frighten you!’
+He repeated the word with as much astonishment as if I had woke him from
+a dream, and charged him with something that he had said in his sleep.
+
+“It was on the tip of my tongue, finding how I had surprised him, to
+take him while he was off his guard, and to ask why my question about
+Armadale had produced such a change in his behavior to me. But after
+what had happened already, I was afraid to risk returning to the
+subject too soon. Something or other--what they call an instinct, I dare
+say--warned me to let Armadale alone for the present, and to talk to
+him first about himself. As I told you in one of my early letters, I had
+noticed signs and tokens in his manner and appearance which convinced
+me, young as he was, that he had done something or suffered something
+out of the common in his past life. I had asked myself more and more
+suspiciously every time I saw him whether he was what he appeared to be;
+and first and foremost among my other doubts was a doubt whether he was
+passing among us by his real name. Having secrets to keep about my own
+past life, and having gone myself in other days by more than one assumed
+name, I suppose I am all the readier to suspect other people when I find
+something mysterious about them. Any way, having the suspicion in
+my mind, I determined to startle him, as he had startled me, by an
+unexpected question on my side--a question about his name.
+
+“While I was thinking, he was thinking; and, as it soon appeared, of
+what I had just said to him. ‘I am so grieved to have frightened you,’
+he whispered, with that gentleness and humility which we all so heartily
+despise in a man when he speaks to other women, and which we all so
+dearly like when he speaks to ourselves. ‘I hardly know what I have been
+saying,’ he went on; ‘my mind is miserably disturbed. Pray forgive me,
+if you can; I am not myself to-night.’
+
+“‘I am not angry,’ I said; ‘I have nothing to forgive. We are both
+imprudent; we are both unhappy.’ I laid my head on his shoulder. ‘Do you
+really love me?’ I asked him, softly, in a whisper.
+
+“His arm stole round me again; and I felt the quick beat of his heart
+get quicker and quicker. ‘If you only knew!’ he whispered back; ‘if you
+only knew--’ He could say no more. I felt his face bending toward mine,
+and dropped my head lower, and stopped him in the very act of kissing
+me.
+
+“‘No,’ I said; ‘I am only a woman who has taken your fancy. You are
+treating me as if I was your promised wife.’
+
+“‘_Be_ my promised wife!’ he whispered, eagerly, and tried to raise my
+head. I kept it down. The horror of these old remembrances that you know
+of came back and made me tremble a little when he asked me to be his
+wife. I don’t think I was actually faint; but something like faintness
+made me close my eyes. The moment I shut them, the darkness seemed to
+open as if lightning had split it; and the ghosts of _those other men_
+rose in the horrid gap, and looked at me.
+
+“‘Speak to me!’ he whispered, tenderly. ‘My darling, my angel, speak to
+me!’
+
+“His voice helped me to recover myself. I had just sense enough left to
+remember that the time was passing, and that I had not put my question
+to him yet about his name.
+
+“‘Suppose I felt for you as you feel for me?’ I said. ‘Suppose I loved
+you dearly enough to trust you with the happiness of all my life to
+come?’
+
+“I paused a moment to get my breath. It was unbearably still and close;
+the air seemed to have died when the night came.
+
+“‘Would you be marrying me honorably,’ I went on, ‘if you married me in
+your present name?’
+
+“His arm dropped from my waist, and I felt him give one great start.
+After that he sat by me, still, and cold, and silent, as if my question
+had struck him dumb. I put my arm round his neck, and lifted my head
+again on his shoulder. Whatever the spell was I had laid on him, my
+coming closer in that way seemed to break it.
+
+“‘Who told you?’ He stopped. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘nobody can have told
+you. What made you suspect--?’ He stopped again.
+
+“‘Nobody told me,’ I said; ‘and I don’t know what made me suspect. Women
+have strange fancies sometimes. Is Midwinter really your name?’
+
+“‘I can’t deceive you,’ he answered, after another interval of silence;
+‘Midwinter is _not_ really my name.’
+
+“I nestled a little closer to him.
+
+“‘What _is_ your name?’ I asked.
+
+“He hesitated.
+
+“I lifted my face till my cheek just touched his. I persisted, with my
+lips close at his ear:
+
+“‘What, no confidence in me even yet! No confidence in the woman who
+has almost confessed she loves you--who has almost consented to be your
+wife!’
+
+“He turned his face to mine. For the second time he tried to kiss me,
+and for the second time I stopped him.
+
+“‘If I tell you my name,’ he said, ‘I must tell you more.’
+
+“I let my cheek touch his again.
+
+“‘Why not?’ I said. ‘How can I love a man--much less marry him--if he
+keeps himself a stranger to me?’
+
+“There was no answering that, as I thought. But he did answer it.
+
+“‘It is a dreadful story,’ he said. ‘It may darken all your life, if you
+know it, as it has darkened mine.’
+
+“I put my other arm round him, and persisted. ‘Tell it me; I’m not
+afraid; tell it me.’
+
+“He began to yield to my other arm.
+
+“‘Will you keep it a sacred secret?’ he said. ‘Never to be
+breathed--never to be known but to you and me?’
+
+“I promised him it should be a secret. I waited in a perfect frenzy of
+expectation. Twice he tried to begin, and twice his courage failed him.
+
+“‘I can’t!’ he broke out in a wild, helpless way. ‘I can’t tell it!’
+
+“My curiosity, or more likely my temper, got beyond all control. He had
+irritated me till I was reckless what I said or what I did. I suddenly
+clasped him close, and pressed my lips to his. ‘I love you!’ I whispered
+in a kiss. ‘_Now_ will you tell me?’
+
+“For the moment he was speechless. I don’t know whether I did it
+purposely to drive him wild. I don’t know whether I did it involuntarily
+in a burst of rage. Nothing is certain but that I interpreted his
+silence the wrong way. I pushed him back from me in a fury the instant
+after I had kissed him. ‘I hate you!’ I said. ‘You have maddened me into
+forgetting myself. Leave me. I don’t care for the darkness. Leave me
+instantly, and never see me again!’
+
+“He caught me by the hand and stopped me. He spoke in a new voice; he
+suddenly _commanded_, as only men can.
+
+“‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You have given me back my courage--you shall know
+who I am.’
+
+“In the silence and the darkness all round us, I obeyed him, and sat
+down.
+
+“In the silence and the darkness all round us, he took me in his arms
+again, and told me who he was.”
+
+----------
+
+“Shall I trust you with his story? Shall I tell you his real name? Shall
+I show you, as I threatened, the thoughts that have grown out of my
+interview with him and out of all that has happened to me since that
+time?
+
+“Or shall I keep his secret as I promised? and keep my own secret too,
+by bringing this weary, long letter to an end at the very moment when
+you are burning to hear more!
+
+“Those are serious questions, Mrs. Oldershaw--more serious than you
+suppose. I have had time to calm down, and I begin to see, what I
+failed to see when I first took up my pen to write to you, the wisdom of
+looking at consequences. Have I frightened myself in trying to frighten
+_you_? It is possible--strange as it may seem, it is really possible.
+
+“I have been at the window for the last minute or two, thinking. There
+is plenty of time for thinking before the post leaves. The people are
+only now coming out of church.
+
+“I have settled to put my letter on one side, and to take a look at my
+diary. In plainer words I must see what I risk if I decide on trusting
+you; and my diary will show me what my head is too weary to calculate
+without help. I have written the story of my days (and sometimes the
+story of my nights) much more regularly than usual for the last week,
+having reasons of my own for being particularly careful in this respect
+under present circumstances. If I end in doing what it is now in my
+mind to do, it would be madness to trust to my memory. The smallest
+forgetfulness of the slightest event that has happened from the night of
+my interview with Midwinter to the present time might be utter ruin to
+me.
+
+“‘Utter ruin to her!’ you will say. ‘What kind of ruin does she mean?’
+
+“Wait a little, till I have asked my diary whether I can safely tell
+you.”
+
+
+
+
+X. MISS GWILT’S DIARY.
+
+“July 21st, Monday night, eleven o’clock.--Midwinter has just left me.
+We parted by my desire at the path out of the coppice; he going his way
+to the hotel, and I going mine to my lodgings.
+
+“I have managed to avoid making another appointment with him by
+arranging to write to him to-morrow morning. This gives me the night’s
+interval to compose myself, and to coax my mind back (if I can) to my
+own affairs. Will the night pass, and the morning find me still thinking
+of the Letter that came to him from his father’s deathbed? of the night
+he watched through on the Wrecked Ship; and, more than all, of the first
+breathless moment when he told me his real Name?
+
+“Would it help me to shake off these impressions, I wonder, if I made
+the effort of writing them down? There would be no danger, in that case,
+of my forgetting anything important. And perhaps, after all, it may be
+the fear of forgetting something which I ought to remember that keeps
+this story of Midwinter’s weighing as it does on my mind. At any rate,
+the experiment is worth trying. In my present situation I _must_ be free
+to think of other things, or I shall never find my way through all the
+difficulties at Thorpe Ambrose that are still to come.
+
+“Let me think. What _haunts_ me, to begin with?
+
+“The Names haunt me. I keep saying and saying to myself: Both
+alike!--Christian name and surname both alike! A light-haired Allan
+Armadale, whom I have long since known of, and who is the son of my old
+mistress. A dark-haired Allan Armadale, whom I only know of now, and
+who is only known to others under the name of Ozias Midwinter. Stranger
+still; it is not relationship, it is not chance, that has made them
+namesakes. The father of the light Armadale was the man who was _born_
+to the family name, and who lost the family inheritance. The father
+of the dark Armadale was the man who _took_ the name, on condition of
+getting the inheritance--and who got it.
+
+“So there are two of them--I can’t help thinking of it--both unmarried.
+The light-haired Armadale, who offers to the woman who can secure him,
+eight thousand a year while he lives; who leaves her twelve hundred
+a year when he dies; who must and shall marry me for those two golden
+reasons; and whom I hate and loathe as I never hated and loathed a man
+yet. And the dark-haired Armadale, who has a poor little income, which
+might perhaps pay his wife’s milliner, if his wife was careful; who has
+just left me, persuaded that I mean to marry him; and whom--well, whom I
+_might_ have loved once, before I was the woman I am now.
+
+“And Allan the Fair doesn’t know he has a namesake. And Allan the Dark
+has kept the secret from everybody but the Somersetshire clergyman
+(whose discretion he can depend on) and myself.
+
+“And there are two Allan Armadales--two Allan Armadales--two Allan
+Armadales. There! three is a lucky number. Haunt me again, after that,
+if you can!
+
+“What next? The murder in the timber ship? No; the murder is a good
+reason why the dark Armadale, whose father committed it, should keep his
+secret from the fair Armadale, whose father was killed; but it doesn’t
+concern _me_. I remember there was a suspicion in Madeira at the time of
+something wrong. _Was_ it wrong? Was the man who had been tricked out of
+his wife to blame for shutting the cabin door, and leaving the man who
+had tricked him to drown in the wreck? Yes; the woman wasn’t worth it.
+
+“What am I sure of that really concerns myself?
+
+“I am sure of one very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter--I
+must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales
+before I have done--I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that
+I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in
+Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed to arrive from the
+West Indies, are one and the same. There are not many girls of twelve
+who could have imitated a man’s handwriting, and held their tongues
+about it afterward, as I did; but that doesn’t matter now. What does
+matter is that Midwinter’s belief in the Dream is Midwinter’s only
+reason for trying to connect me with Allan Armadale, by associating
+me with Allan Armadale’s father and mother. I asked him if he actually
+thought me old enough to have known either of them. And he said No, poor
+fellow, in the most innocent, bewildered way. Would he say No if he saw
+me now? Shall I turn to the glass and see if I look my five-and-thirty
+years? or shall I go on writing? I will go on writing.
+
+“There is one thing more that haunts me almost as obstinately as the
+Names.
+
+“I wonder whether I am right in relying on Midwinter’s superstition (as
+I do) to help me in keeping him at arms-length. After having let the
+excitement of the moment hurry me into saying more than I need have
+said, he is certain to press me; he is certain to come back, with a
+man’s hateful selfishness and impatience in such things, to the question
+of marrying me. Will the Dream help me to check him? After alternately
+believing and disbelieving in it, he has got, by his own confession,
+to believing in it again. Can I say I believe in it, too? I have better
+reasons for doing so than he knows of. I am not only the person who
+helped Mrs. Armadale’s marriage by helping her to impose on her own
+father: I am the woman who tried to drown herself; the woman who started
+the series of accidents which put young Armadale in possession of his
+fortune; the woman who has come Thorpe Ambrose to marry him for his
+fortune, now he has got it; and more extraordinary still, the woman who
+stood in the Shadow’s place at the pool! These may be coincidences,
+but they are strange coincidences. I declare I begin to fancy that _I_
+believe in the Dream too!
+
+“Suppose I say to him, ‘I think as you think. I say what you said in
+your letter to me, Let us part before the harm is done. Leave me
+before the Third Vision of the Dream comes true. Leave me, and put the
+mountains and the seas between you and the man who bears your name!’
+
+“Suppose, on the other side, that his love for me makes him reckless of
+everything else? Suppose he says those desperate words again, which I
+understand now: What _is_ to be, _will_ be. What have I to do with it,
+and what has she?’ Suppose--suppose--
+
+“I won’t write any more. I hate writing. It doesn’t relieve me--it makes
+me worse. I’m further from being able to think of all that I _must_
+think of than I was when I sat down. It is past midnight. To-morrow has
+come already; and here I am as helpless as the stupidest woman living!
+Bed is the only fit place for me.
+
+“Bed? If it was ten years since, instead of to-day; and if I had married
+Midwinter for love, I might be going to bed now with nothing heavier on
+my mind than a visit on tiptoe to the nursery, and a last look at night
+to see if my children were sleeping quietly in their cribs. I wonder
+whether I should have loved my children if I had ever had any? Perhaps,
+yes--perhaps, no. It doesn’t matter.”
+
+
+“Tuesday morning, ten o’clock.--Who was the man who invented laudanum?
+I thank him from the bottom of my heart whoever he was. If all the
+miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has
+been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would
+be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my
+mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I
+have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled
+over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of relief--and all
+through the modest little bottle of Drops, which I see on my bedroom
+chimney-piece at this moment. ‘Drops,’ you are a darling! If I love
+nothing else, I love _you_.
+
+“My letter to Midwinter has been sent through the post; and I have told
+him to reply to me in the same manner.
+
+“I feel no anxiety about his answer--he can only answer in one way.
+I have asked for a little time to consider, because my family
+circumstances require some consideration, in his interests as well as
+in mine. I have engaged to tell him what those circumstances are (what
+shall I say, I wonder?) when we next meet; and I have requested him in
+the meantime to keep all that has passed between us a secret for the
+present. As to what he is to do himself in the interval while I am
+supposed to be considering, I have left it to his own discretion--merely
+reminding him that his attempting to see me again (while our positions
+toward each other cannot be openly avowed) might injure my reputation.
+I have offered to write to him if he wishes it; and I have ended by
+promising to make the interval of our necessary separation as short as I
+can.
+
+“This sort of plain, unaffected letter--which I might have written
+to him last night, if his story had not been running in my head as it
+did--has one defect, I know. It certainly keeps him out of the way,
+while I am casting my net, and catching my gold fish at the great house
+for the second time; but it also leaves an awkward day of reckoning to
+come with Midwinter if I succeed. How am I to manage him? What am I to
+do? I ought to face those two questions as boldly as usual; but somehow
+my courage seems to fail me, and I don’t quite fancy meeting _that_
+difficulty, till the time comes when it _must_ be met. Shall I confess
+to my diary that I am sorry for Midwinter, and that I shrink a little
+from thinking of the day when he hears that I am going to be mistress at
+the great house?
+
+“But I am not mistress yet; and I can’t take a step in the direction of
+the great house till I have got the answer to my letter, and till I
+know that Midwinter is out of the way. Patience! patience! I must go
+and forget myself at my piano. There is the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ open,
+and tempting me, on the music-stand. Have I nerve enough to play it, I
+wonder? Or will it set me shuddering with the mystery and terror of it,
+as it did the other day?”
+
+
+“Five o’clock.--I have got his answer. The slightest request I can make
+is a command to him. He has gone; and he sends me his address in London.
+‘There are two considerations’ (he says) ‘which help to reconcile me to
+leaving you. The first is that _you_ wish it, and that it is only to
+be for a little while. The second is that I think I can make some
+arrangements in London for adding to my income by my own labor. I have
+never cared for money for myself; but you don’t know how I am beginning
+already to prize the luxuries and refinements that money can provide,
+for my wife’s sake.’ Poor fellow! I almost wish I had not written to him
+as I did; I almost wish I had not sent him away from me.
+
+“Fancy if Mother Oldershaw saw this page in my diary! I have had a
+letter from her this morning--a letter to remind me of my obligations,
+and to tell me she suspects things are all going wrong. Let her suspect!
+I shan’t trouble myself to answer; I can’t be worried with that old
+wretch in the state I am in now.
+
+“It is a lovely afternoon--I want a walk--I mustn’t think of Midwinter.
+Suppose I put on my bonnet, and try my experiment at once at the great
+house? Everything is in my favor. There is no spy to follow me, and no
+lawyer to keep me out, this time. Am I handsome enough, to-day? Well,
+yes; handsome enough to be a match for a little dowdy, awkward, freckled
+creature, who ought to be perched on a form at school, and strapped to a
+backboard to straighten her crooked shoulders.
+
+  “‘The nursery lisps out in all they utter;
+    Besides, they always smell of bread-and-butter.’
+
+“How admirably Byron has described girls in their teens!”
+
+
+“Eight o’clock.--I have just got back from Armadale’s house. I have seen
+him, and spoken to him; and the end of it may be set down in three plain
+words. I have failed. There is no more chance of my being Mrs. Armadale
+of Thorpe Ambrose than there is of my being Queen of England.
+
+“Shall I write and tell Oldershaw? Shall I go back to London? Not till I
+have had time to think a little. Not just yet.
+
+“Let me think; I have failed completely--failed, with all the
+circumstances in favor of success. I caught him alone on the drive in
+front of the house. He was excessively disconcerted, but at the same
+time quite willing to hear me. I tried him, first quietly--then with
+tears, and the rest of it. I introduced myself in the character of the
+poor innocent woman whom he had been the means of injuring. I confused,
+I interested, I convinced him. I went on to the purely Christian part
+of my errand, and spoke with such feeling of his separation from his
+friend, for which I was innocently responsible, that I turned his odious
+rosy face quite pale, and made him beg me at last not to distress him.
+But, whatever other feelings I roused in him, I never once roused his
+old feeling for _me_. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me; I felt
+it in his fingers when we shook hands. We parted friends, and nothing
+more.
+
+“It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation, morning
+after morning, when I knew you were out alone in the park? I have just
+left you time to slip in, and take my place in Armadale’s good graces,
+have I? I never resisted temptation yet without suffering for it in some
+such way as this! If I had only followed my first thoughts, on the day
+when I took leave of you, my young lady--well, well, never mind that
+now. I have got the future before me; you are not Mrs. Armadale yet! And
+I can tell you one other thing--whoever else he marries, he will never
+marry _you_. If I am even with you in no other way, trust me, whatever
+comes of it, to be even with you there!
+
+“I am not, to my own surprise, in one of my furious passions. The last
+time I was in this perfectly cool state, under serious provocation,
+something came of it, which I daren’t write down, even in my own private
+diary. I shouldn’t be surprised if something comes of it now.
+
+“On my way back, I called at Mr. Bashwood’s lodgings in the town. He was
+not at home, and I left a message telling him to come here to-night and
+speak to me. I mean to relieve him at once of the duty of looking
+after Armadale and Miss Milroy. I may not see my way yet to ruining her
+prospects at Thorpe Ambrose as completely as she has ruined mine. But
+when the time comes, and I do see it, I don’t know to what lengths
+my sense of injury may take me; and there may be inconvenience, and
+possibly danger, in having such a chicken-hearted creature as Mr.
+Bashwood in my confidence.
+
+“I suspect I am more upset by all this than I supposed. Midwinter’s
+story is beginning to haunt me again, without rhyme or reason.
+
+“A soft, quick, trembling knock at the street door! I know who it is. No
+hand but old Bashwood’s could knock in that way.”
+
+
+“Nine o’clock.--I have just got rid of him. He has surprised me by
+coming out in a new character.
+
+“It seems (though I didn’t detect him) that he was at the great house
+while I was in company with Armadale. He saw us talking on the drive,
+and he afterward heard what the servants said, who saw us too. The wise
+opinion below stairs is that we have ‘made it up,’ and that the master
+is likely to marry me after all. ‘He’s sweet on her red hair,’ was the
+elegant expression they used in the kitchen. ‘Little missie can’t match
+her there; and little missie will get the worst of it.’ How I hate the
+coarse ways of the lower orders!
+
+“While old Bashwood was telling me this, I thought he looked even more
+confused and nervous than usual. But I failed to see what was really
+the matter until after I had told him that he was to leave all further
+observation of Mr. Armadale and Miss Milroy to me. Every drop of the
+little blood there is in the feeble old creature’s body seemed to fly up
+into his face. He made quite an overpowering effort; he really looked as
+if he would drop down dead of fright at his own boldness; but he forced
+out the question for all that, stammering, and stuttering, and kneading
+desperately with both hands at the brim of his hideous great hat. ‘I beg
+your pardon, Miss Gwi-Gwi-Gwilt! You are not really go-go-going to marry
+Mr. Armadale, are you?’ Jealous--if ever I saw it in a man’s face yet, I
+saw it in his--actually jealous of Armadale at his age! If I had been
+in the humor for it, I should have burst out laughing in his face. As it
+was, I was angry, and lost all patience with him. I told him he was an
+old fool, and ordered him to go on quietly with his usual business until
+I sent him word that he was wanted again. He submitted as usual; but
+there was an indescribable something in his watery old eyes, when he
+took leave of me, which I have never noticed in them before. Love has
+the credit of working all sorts of strange transformations. Can it be
+really possible that Love has made Mr. Bashwood man enough to be angry
+with me?
+
+“Wednesday.--My experience of Miss Milroy’s habits suggested a suspicion
+to me last night which I thought it desirable to clear up this morning.
+
+“It was always her way, when I was at the cottage, to take a walk early
+in the morning before breakfast. Considering that I used often to choose
+that very time for _my_ private meetings with Armadale, it struck me as
+likely that my former pupil might be taking a leaf out of my book, and
+that I might make some desirable discoveries if I turned my steps in the
+direction of the major’s garden at the right hour. I deprived myself
+of my Drops, to make sure of waking; passed a miserable night in
+consequence; and was ready enough to get up at six o’clock, and walk the
+distance from my lodgings to the cottage in the fresh morning air.
+
+“I had not been five minutes on the park side of the garden inclosure
+before I saw her come out.
+
+“She seemed to have had a bad night too; her eyes were heavy and red,
+and her lips and cheeks looked swollen as if she had been crying. There
+was something on her mind, evidently; something, as it soon appeared, to
+take her out of the garden into the park. She walked (if one can call
+it walking; with such legs as hers!) straight to the summer house, and
+opened the door, and crossed the bridge, and went on quicker and quicker
+toward the low ground in the park, where the trees are thickest.
+I followed her over the open space with perfect impunity in the
+preoccupied state she was in; and, when she began to slacken her pace
+among the trees, I was among the trees too, and was not afraid of her
+seeing me.
+
+“Before long, there was a crackling and trampling of heavy feet coming
+up toward us through the under-wood in a deep dip of the ground. I knew
+that step as well as she knew it. ‘Here I am,’ she said, in a faint
+little voice. I kept behind the trees a few yards off, in some doubt
+on which side Armadale would come out of the under-wood to join her. He
+came out up the side of the dell, opposite to the tree behind which I
+was standing. They sat down together on the bank. I sat down behind the
+tree, and looked at them through the under-wood, and heard without the
+slightest difficulty every word that they said.
+
+“The talk began by his noticing that she looked out of spirits, and
+asking if anything had gone wrong at the cottage. The artful little minx
+lost no time in making the necessary impression on him; she began
+to cry. He took her hand, of course, and tried, in his brutishly
+straightforward way, to comfort her. No; she was not to be comforted. A
+miserable prospect was before her; she had not slept the whole night
+for thinking of it. Her father had called her into his room the previous
+evening, had spoken about the state of her education, and had told her
+in so many words that she was to go to school. The place had been found,
+and the terms had been settled; and as soon as her clothes could be got
+ready, miss was to go.
+
+“‘While that hateful Miss Gwilt was in the house,’ says this model young
+person, ‘I would have gone to school willingly--I wanted to go. But it’s
+all different now; I don’t think of it in the same way; I feel too old
+for school. I’m quite heart-broken, Mr. Armadale.’ There she stopped
+as if she had meant to say more, and gave him a look which finished
+the sentence plainly: ‘I’m quite heart-broken, Mr. Armadale, now we are
+friendly again, at going away from you!’ For downright brazen impudence,
+which a grown woman would be ashamed of, give me the young girls whose
+‘modesty’ is so pertinaciously insisted on by the nauseous domestic
+sentimentalists of the present day!
+
+“Even Armadale, booby as he is, understood her. After bewildering
+himself in a labyrinth of words that led nowhere, he took her--one can
+hardly say round the waist, for she hasn’t got one--he took her round
+the last hook-and-eye of her dress, and, by way of offering her a
+refuge from the indignity of being sent to school at her age, made her a
+proposal of marriage in so many words.
+
+“If I could have killed them both at that moment by lifting up my little
+finger, I have not the least doubt I should have lifted it. As things
+were, I only waited to see what Miss Milroy would do.
+
+“She appeared to think it necessary--feeling, I suppose, that she had
+met him without her father’s knowledge, and not forgetting that I
+had had the start of her as the favored object of Mr. Armadale’s good
+opinion--to assert herself by an explosion of virtuous indignation. She
+wondered how he could think of such a thing after his conduct with Miss
+Gwilt, and after her father had forbidden him the house! Did he want to
+make her feel how inexcusably she had forgotten what was due to herself?
+Was it worthy of a gentleman to propose what he knew as well as she did
+was impossible? and so on, and so on. Any man with brains in his head
+would have known what all this rodomontade really meant. Armadale took
+it so seriously that he actually attempted to justify himself.
+
+“He declared, in his headlong, blundering way, that he was quite in
+earnest; he and her father might make it up and be friends again; and,
+if the major persisted in treating him as a stranger, young ladies and
+gentlemen in their situation had made runaway marriages before now, and
+fathers and mothers who wouldn’t forgive them before had forgiven them
+afterward. Such outrageously straightforward love-making as this left
+Miss Milroy, of course, but two alternatives--to confess that she
+had been saying No when she meant Yes, or to take refuge in another
+explosion. She was hypocrite enough to prefer another explosion. ‘How
+dare you, Mr. Armadale? Go away directly! It’s inconsiderate, it’s
+heartless, it’s perfectly disgraceful to say such things to me!’ and so
+on, and so on. It seems incredible, but it is not the less true, that
+he was positively fool enough to take her at her word. He begged her
+pardon, and went away like a child that is put in the corner--the most
+contemptible object in the form of man that eyes ever looked on!
+
+“She waited, after he had gone, to compose herself, and I waited behind
+the trees to see how she would succeed. Her eyes wandered round slyly
+to the path by which he had left her. She smiled (grinned would be the
+truer way of putting it, with such a mouth as hers); took a few steps on
+tiptoe to look after him; turned back again, and suddenly burst into a
+violent fit of crying. I am not quite so easily taken in as Armadale,
+and I saw what it all meant plainly enough.
+
+“‘To-morrow,’ I thought to myself, ‘you will be in the park again, miss,
+by pure accident. The next day, you will lead him on into proposing
+to you for the second time. The day after, he will venture back to the
+subject of runaway marriages, and you will only be becomingly confused.
+And the day after that, if he has got a plan to propose, and if your
+clothes are ready to be packed for school, you will listen to him.’ Yes,
+yes; Time is always on the man’s side, where a woman is concerned, if
+the man is only patient enough to let Time help him.
+
+“I let her leave the place and go back to the cottage, quite unconscious
+that I had been looking at her. I waited among the trees, thinking. The
+truth is, I was impressed by what I had heard and seen, in a manner that
+it is not very easy to describe. It put the whole thing before me in
+a new light. It showed me--what I had never even suspected till this
+morning--that she is really fond of him.
+
+“Heavy as my debt of obligation is to her, there is no fear _now_ of
+my failing to pay it to the last farthing. It would have been no small
+triumph for me to stand between Miss Milroy and her ambition to be one
+of the leading ladies of the county. But it is infinitely more, where
+her first love is concerned, to stand between Miss Milroy and her
+heart’s desire. Shall I remember my own youth and spare her? No! She has
+deprived me of the one chance I had of breaking the chain that binds me
+to a past life too horrible to be thought of. I am thrown back into a
+position, compared to which the position of an outcast who walks the
+streets is endurable and enviable. No, Miss Milroy--no, Mr. Armadale; I
+will spare neither of you.
+
+“I have been back some hours. I have been thinking, and nothing has come
+of it. Ever since I got that strange letter of Midwinter’s last Sunday,
+my usual readiness in emergencies has deserted me. When I am not
+thinking of him or of his story, my mind feels quite stupefied. I, who
+have always known what to do on other occasions, don’t know what to do
+now. It would be easy enough, of course, to warn Major Milroy of his
+daughter’s proceedings. But the major is fond of his daughter; Armadale
+is anxious to be reconciled with him; Armadale is rich and prosperous,
+and ready to submit to the elder man; and sooner or later they will be
+friends again, and the marriage will follow. Warning Major Milroy is
+only the way to embarrass them for the present; it is not the way to
+part them for good and all.
+
+“What _is_ the way? I can’t see it. I could tear my own hair off my
+head! I could burn the house down! If there was a train of gunpowder
+under the whole world, I could light it, and blow the whole world to
+destruction--I am in such a rage, such a frenzy with myself for not
+seeing it!
+
+“Poor dear Midwinter! Yes, ‘_dear_.’ I don’t care. I’m lonely and
+helpless. I want somebody who is gentle and loving to make much of me;
+I wish I had his head on my bosom again; I have a good mind to go to
+London and marry him. Am I mad? Yes; all people who are as miserable
+as I am are mad. I must go to the window and get some air. Shall I jump
+out? No; it disfigures one so, and the coroner’s inquest lets so many
+people see it.
+
+“The air has revived me. I begin to remember that I have Time on my
+side, at any rate. Nobody knows but me of their secret meetings in the
+park the first thing in the morning. If jealous old Bashwood, who is
+slinking and sly enough for anything, tries to look privately after
+Armadale, in his own interests, he will try at the usual time when he
+goes to the steward’s office. He knows nothing of Miss Milroy’s early
+habits; and he won’t be on the spot till Armadale has got back to the
+house. For another week to come, I may wait and watch them, and choose
+my own time and way of interfering the moment I see a chance of his
+getting the better of her hesitation, and making her say Yes.
+
+“So here I wait, without knowing how things will end with Midwinter in
+London; with my purse getting emptier and emptier, and no appearance
+so far of any new pupils to fill it; with Mother Oldershaw certain to
+insist on having her money back the moment she knows I have failed;
+without prospects, friends, or hopes of any kind--a lost woman, if ever
+there was a lost woman yet. Well! I say it again and again and again--I
+don’t care! Here I stop, if I sell the clothes off my back, if I hire
+myself at the public-house to play to the brutes in the tap-room; here I
+stop till the time comes, and I see the way to parting Armadale and Miss
+Milroy forever!”
+
+
+“Seven o’clock.--Any signs that the time is coming yet? I hardly
+know; there are signs of a change, at any rate, in my position in the
+neighborhood.
+
+“Two of the oldest and ugliest of the many old and ugly ladies who
+took up my case when I left Major Milroy’s service have just called,
+announcing themselves, with the insufferable impudence of charitable
+Englishwomen, as a deputation from my patronesses. It seems that the
+news of my reconciliation with Armadale has spread from the servants’
+offices at the great house, and has reached the town, with this result.
+
+“It is the unanimous opinion of my ‘patronesses’ (and the opinion of
+Major Milroy also, who has been consulted) that I have acted with the
+most inexcusable imprudence in going to Armadale’s house, and in there
+speaking on friendly terms with a man whose conduct toward myself
+has made his name a by-word in the neighborhood. My total want of
+self-respect in this matter has given rise to a report that I am trading
+as cleverly as ever on my good looks, and that I am as likely as not
+to end in making Armadale marry me, after all. My ‘patronesses’ are, of
+course, too charitable to believe this. They merely feel it necessary
+to remonstrate with me in a Christian spirit, and to warn me that any
+second and similar imprudence on my part would force all my best friends
+in the place to withdraw the countenance and protection which I now
+enjoy.
+
+“Having addressed me, turn and turn about, in these terms (evidently all
+rehearsed beforehand), my two Gorgon visitors straightened themselves
+in their chairs, and looked at me as much as to say, ‘You may often have
+heard of Virtue, Miss Gwilt, but we don’t believe you ever really saw it
+in full bloom till we came and called on you.’
+
+“Seeing they were bent on provoking me, I kept my temper, and answered
+them in my smoothest, sweetest, and most lady-like manner. I have
+noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people
+begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o’clock on Sunday
+morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o’clock on Sunday
+afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as
+reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. On this hint, as the
+man says in the play, I spoke.
+
+“‘What have I done that is wrong?’ I asked, innocently. ‘Mr. Armadale
+has injured me; and I have been to his house and forgiven him the
+injury. Surely there must be some mistake, ladies? You can’t have really
+come here to remonstrate with me in a Christian spirit for performing an
+act of Christianity?’
+
+“The two Gorgons got up. I firmly believe some women have cats’ tails as
+well as cats’ faces. I firmly believe the tails of those two particular
+cats wagged slowly under their petticoats, and swelled to four times
+their proper size.
+
+“‘Temper we were prepared for, Miss Gwilt,’ they said, ‘but not
+Profanity. We wish you good-evening.’
+
+“So they left me, and so ‘Miss Gwilt’ sinks out of the patronizing
+notice of the neighborhood
+
+“I wonder what will come of this trumpery little quarrel? One thing will
+come of it which I can see already. The report will reach Miss Milroy’s
+ears; she will insist on Armadale’s justifying himself; and Armadale
+will end in satisfying her of his innocence by making another proposal.
+This will be quite likely to hasten matters between them; at least it
+would with me. If I was in her place, I should say to myself, ‘I will
+make sure of him while I can.’ Supposing it doesn’t rain to-morrow
+morning, I think I will take another early walk in the direction of the
+park.”
+
+
+“Midnight.--As I can’t take my drops, with a morning walk before me, I
+may as well give up all hope of sleeping, and go on with my diary.
+Even with my drops, I doubt if my head would be very quiet on my
+pillow to-night. Since the little excitement of the scene with my
+‘lady-patronesses’ has worn off, I have been troubled with misgivings
+which would leave me but a poor chance, under any circumstances, of
+getting much rest.
+
+“I can’t imagine why, but the parting words spoken to Armadale by that
+old brute of a lawyer have come back to my mind! Here they are, as
+reported in Mr. Bashwood’s letter: ‘Some other person’s curiosity may
+go on from the point where you (and I) have stopped, and some other
+person’s hand may let the broad daylight in yet on Miss Gwilt.’
+
+“What does he mean by that? And what did he mean afterward when he
+overtook old Bashwood in the drive, by telling him to gratify his
+curiosity? Does this hateful Pedgift actually suppose there is any
+chance--? Ridiculous! Why, I have only to _look_ at the feeble old
+creature, and he daren’t lift his little finger unless I tell him. _He_
+try to pry into my past life, indeed! Why, people with ten times his
+brains, and a hundred times his courage, have tried--and have left off
+as wise as they began.
+
+“I don’t know, though; it might have been better if I had kept my temper
+when Bashwood was here the other night. And it might be better still if
+I saw him to-morrow, and took him back into my good graces by giving
+him something to do for me. Suppose I tell him to look after the
+two Pedgifts, and to discover whether there is any chance of their
+attempting to renew their connection with Armadale? No such thing is at
+all likely; but if I gave old Bashwood this commission, it would flatter
+his sense of his own importance to me, and would at the same time serve
+the excellent purpose of keeping him out of my way.”
+
+
+“Thursday morning, nine o’clock.--I have just got back from the park.
+
+“For once I have proved a true prophet. There they were together, at
+the same early hour, in the same secluded situation among the trees; and
+there was miss in full possession of the report of my visit to the great
+house, and taking her tone accordingly.
+
+“After saying one or two things about me, which I promise him not to
+forget, Armadale took the way to convince her of his constancy which I
+felt beforehand he would be driven to take. He repeated his proposal
+of marriage, with excellent effect this time. Tears and kisses and
+protestations followed; and my late pupil opened her heart at last, in
+the most innocent manner. Home, she confessed, was getting so miserable
+to her now that it was only less miserable than going to school. Her
+mother’s temper was becoming more violent and unmanageable every day.
+The nurse, who was the only person with any influence over her, had gone
+away in disgust. Her father was becoming more and more immersed in his
+clock, and was made more and more resolute to send her away from home by
+the distressing scenes which now took place with her mother almost day
+by day. I waited through these domestic disclosures on the chance of
+hearing any plans they might have for the future discussed between them;
+and my patience, after no small exercise of it, was rewarded at last.
+
+“The first suggestion (as was only natural where such a fool as Armadale
+was concerned) came from the girl.
+
+“She started an idea which I own I had not anticipated. She proposed
+that Armadale should write to her father; and, cleverer still, she
+prevented all fear of his blundering by telling him what he was to say.
+He was to express himself as deeply distressed at his estrangement from
+the major, and to request permission to call at the cottage, and say a
+few words in his own justification. That was all. The letter was not
+to be sent that day, for the applicants for the vacant place of Mrs.
+Milroy’s nurse were coming, and seeing them and questioning them would
+put her father, with his dislike of such things, in no humor to receive
+Armadale’s application indulgently. The Friday would be the day to send
+the letter, and on the Saturday morning if the answer was unfortunately
+not favorable, they might meet again, ‘I don’t like deceiving my father;
+he has always been so kind to me. And there will be no need to deceive
+him, Allan, if we can only make you friends again.’ Those were the last
+words the little hypocrite said, when I left them.
+
+“What will the major do? Saturday morning will show. I won’t think of it
+till Saturday morning has come and gone. They are not man and wife yet;
+and again and again I say it, though my brains are still as helpless as
+ever, man and wife they shall never be.
+
+“On my way home again, I caught Bashwood at his breakfast, with his poor
+old black tea-pot, and his little penny loaf, and his one cheap morsel
+of oily butter, and his darned dirty tablecloth. It sickens me to think
+of it.
+
+“I coaxed and comforted the miserable old creature till the tears stood
+in his eyes, and he quite blushed with pleasure. He undertakes to
+look after the Pedgifts with the utmost alacrity. Pedgift the elder he
+described, when once roused, as the most obstinate man living; nothing
+will induce him to give way, unless Armadale gives way also on his side.
+Pedgift the younger is much the more likely of the two to make attempts
+at a reconciliation. Such, at least, is Bashwood’s opinion. It is of
+very little consequence now what happens either way. The only important
+thing is to tie my elderly admirer safely again to my apron-string. And
+this is done.
+
+“The post is late this morning. It has only just come in, and has
+brought me a letter from Midwinter.
+
+“It is a charming letter; it flatters me and flutters me as if I was a
+young girl again. No reproaches for my never having written to him; no
+hateful hurrying of me, in plain words, to marry him. He only writes
+to tell me a piece of news. He has obtained, through his lawyers, a
+prospect of being employed as occasional correspondent to a newspaper
+which is about to be started in London. The employment will require him
+to leave England for the Continent, which would exactly meet his own
+wishes for the future, but he cannot consider the proposal seriously
+until he has first ascertained whether it would meet my wishes too.
+He knows no will but mine, and he leaves me to decide, after first
+mentioning the time allowed him before his answer must be sent in. It
+is the time, of course (if I agree to his going abroad), in which I must
+marry him. But there is not a word about this in his letter. He asks for
+nothing but a sight of my handwriting to help him through the interval
+while we are separated from each other.
+
+“That is the letter; not very long, but so prettily expressed.
+
+“I think I can penetrate the secret of his fancy for going abroad. That
+wild idea of putting the mountains and the seas between Armadale and
+himself is still in his mind. As if either he or I could escape doing
+what we are fated to do--supposing we really are fated--by putting a
+few hundred or a few thousand miles between Armadale and ourselves! What
+strange absurdity and inconsistency! And yet how I like him for being
+absurd and inconsistent; for don’t I see plainly that I am at the bottom
+of it all? Who leads this clever man astray in spite of himself? Who
+makes him too blind to see the contradiction in his own conduct, which
+he would see plainly in the conduct of another person? How interested
+I do feel in him! How dangerously near I am to shutting my eyes on the
+past, and letting myself love him! Was Eve fonder of Adam than ever, I
+wonder, after she had coaxed him into eating the apple? I should have
+quite doted on him if I had been in her place. (Memorandum: To write
+Midwinter a charming little letter on my side, with a kiss in it; and as
+time is allowed him before he sends in his answer, to ask for time, too,
+before I tell him whether I will or will not go abroad.)”
+
+
+“Five o’clock.--A tiresome visit from my landlady; eager for a little
+gossip, and full of news which she thinks will interest me.
+
+“She is acquainted, I find, with Mrs. Milroy’s late nurse; and she has
+been seeing her friend off at the station this afternoon. They talked,
+of course, of affairs at the cottage, and my name found its way into the
+conversation. I am quite wrong, it seems, if the nurse’s authority is to
+be trusted, in believing Miss Milroy to be responsible for sending Mr.
+Armadale to my reference in London. Miss Milroy really knew nothing
+about it, and it all originated in her mother’s mad jealousy of me. The
+present wretched state of things at the cottage is due entirely to the
+same cause. Mrs. Milroy is firmly persuaded that my remaining at Thorpe
+Ambrose is referable to my having some private means of communicating
+with the major which it is impossible for her to discover. With this
+conviction in her mind, she has become so unmanageable that no
+person, with any chance of bettering herself, could possibly remain in
+attendance on her; and sooner or later, the major, object to it as he
+may, will be obliged to place her under proper medical care.
+
+“That is the sum and substance of what the wearisome landlady, had to
+tell me. Unnecessary to say that I was not in the least interested
+by it. Even if the nurse’s assertion is to be depended on--which
+I persist in doubting--it is of no importance now. I know that Miss
+Milroy, and nobody but Miss Milroy has utterly ruined my prospect of
+becoming Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, and I care to know nothing
+more. If her mother was really alone in the attempt to expose my false
+reference, her mother seems to be suffering for it, at any rate. And so
+good-by to Mrs. Milroy; and Heaven defend me from any more last glimpses
+at the cottages seen through the medium of my landlady’s spectacles!”
+
+
+“Nine o’clock.--Bashwood has just left me, having come with news from
+the great house. Pedgift the younger has made his attempt at bringing
+about a reconciliation this very day, and has failed. I am the sole
+cause of the failure. Armadale is quite willing to be reconciled if
+Pedgift the elder will avoid all future occasion of disagreement between
+them by never recurring to the subject of Miss Gwilt. This, however,
+happens to be exactly the condition which Pedgift’s father--with his
+opinion of me and my doings--should consider it his duty to Armadale
+_not_ to accept. So lawyer and client remain as far apart as ever, and
+the obstacle of the Pedgifts is cleared out of my way.
+
+“It might have been a very awkward obstacle, so far as Pedgift the elder
+is concerned, if one of his suggestions had been carried out; I mean,
+if an officer of the London police had been brought down here to look
+at me. It is a question, even now, whether I had better not take to the
+thick veil again, which I always wear in London and other large places.
+The only difficulty is that it would excite remark in this inquisitive
+little town to see me wearing a thick veil, for the first time, in the
+summer weather.
+
+“It is close on ten o’clock; I have been dawdling over my diary longer
+than I supposed.
+
+“No words can describe how weary and languid I feel. Why don’t I take my
+sleeping drops and go to bed? There is no meeting between Armadale
+and Miss Milroy to force me into early rising to-morrow morning. Am
+I trying, for the hundredth time, to see my way clearly into the
+future--trying, in my present state of fatigue, to be the quick-witted
+woman I once was, before all these anxieties came together and
+overpowered me? or am I perversely afraid of my bed when I want it most?
+I don’t know; I am tired and miserable; I am looking wretchedly haggard
+and old. With a little encouragement, I might be fool enough to burst
+out crying. Luckily, there is no one to encourage me. What sort of a
+night is it, I wonder?
+
+“A cloudy night, with the moon showing at intervals, and the wind
+rising. I can just hear it moaning among the ins and outs of the
+unfinished cottages at the end of the street. My nerves must be a little
+shaken, I think. I was startled just now by a shadow on the wall. It was
+only after a moment or two that I mustered sense enough to notice where
+the candle was, and to see that the shadow was my own.
+
+“Shadows remind me of Midwinter; or, if the shadows don’t, something
+else does. I must have another look at his letter, and then I will
+positively go to bed.
+
+“I shall end in getting fond of him. If I remain much longer in this
+lonely uncertain state--so irresolute, so unlike my usual self--I shall
+end in getting fond of him. What madness! As if _I_ could ever be really
+fond of a man again!
+
+“Suppose I took one of my sudden resolutions, and married him. Poor as
+he is, he would give me a name and a position if I became his wife. Let
+me see how the name--his own name--would look, if I really did consent
+to it for mine.
+
+“‘Mrs. Armadale!’ Pretty.
+
+“‘Mrs. Allan Armadale!’ Prettier still.
+
+“My nerves _must_ be shaken. Here is my own handwriting startling me
+now! It is so strange; it is enough to startle anybody. The similarity
+in the two names never struck me in this light before. Marry which of
+the two I might, my name would, of course, be the same. I should have
+been Mrs. Armadale, if I had married the light-haired Allan at the great
+house. And I can be Mrs. Armadale still, if I marry the dark-haired
+Allan in London. It’s almost maddening to write it down--to feel that
+something ought to come of it--and to find nothing come.
+
+“How _can_ anything come of it? If I did go to London, and marry him
+(as of course I must marry him) under his real name, would he let me
+be known by it afterward? With all his reasons for concealing his real
+name, he would insist--no, he is too fond of me to do that--he would
+entreat me to take the name which he has assumed. Mrs. Midwinter.
+Hideous! Ozias, too, when I wanted to address him familiarly, as his
+wife should. Worse than hideous!
+
+“And yet there would be some reason for humoring him in this if he asked
+me.
+
+“Suppose the brute at the great house happened to leave this
+neighborhood as a single man; and suppose, in his absence, any of the
+people who know him heard of a Mrs. Allan Armadale, they would set her
+down at once as his wife. Even if they actually saw me--if I actually
+came among them with that name, and if he was not present to contradict
+it--his own servants would be the first to say, ‘We knew she would marry
+him, after all!’ And my lady-patronesses, who will be ready to believe
+anything of me now we have quarreled, would join the chorus _sotto
+voce:_ ‘Only think, my dear, the report that so shocked us actually
+turns out to be true!’ No. If I marry Midwinter, I must either be
+perpetually putting my husband and myself in a false position--or I must
+leave his real name, his pretty, romantic name, behind me at the church
+door.
+
+“My husband! As if I was really going to marry him! I am _not_ going to
+marry him, and there’s an end of it.
+
+“Half-past ten.--Oh, dear! oh, dear! how my temples throb, and how hot
+my weary eyes feel! There is the moon looking at me through the window.
+How fast the little scattered clouds are flying before the wind! Now
+they let the moon in; and now they shut the moon out. What strange
+shapes the patches of yellow light take, and lose again, all in a
+moment! No peace and quiet for me, look where I may. The candle keeps
+flickering, and the very sky itself is restless to-night.
+
+“‘To bed! to bed!’ as Lady Macbeth says. I wonder, by-the-by, what Lady
+Macbeth would have done in my position? She would have killed somebody
+when her difficulties first began. Probably Armadale.
+
+
+“Friday morning.--A night’s rest, thanks again to my Drops. I went to
+breakfast in better spirits, and received a morning welcome in the shape
+of a letter from Mrs. Oldershaw.
+
+“My silence has produced its effect on Mother Jezebel. She attributes
+it to the right cause, and she shows her claws at last. If I am not in
+a position to pay my note of hand for thirty pounds, which is due on
+Tuesday next, her lawyer is instructed to ‘take the usual course.’ _If_
+I am not in a position to pay it! Why, when I have settled to-day with
+my landlord, I shall have barely five pounds left! There is not the
+shadow of a prospect between now and Tuesday of my earning any money;
+and I don’t possess a friend in this place who would trust me with
+sixpence. The difficulties that are swarming round me wanted but one
+more to complete them, and that one has come.
+
+“Midwinter would assist me, of course, if I could bring myself to ask
+him for assistance. But _that_ means marrying him. Am I really desperate
+enough and helpless enough to end it in that way? No; not yet.
+
+“My head feels heavy; I must get out into the fresh air, and think about
+it.”
+
+
+“Two o’clock.--I believe I have caught the infection of Midwinter’s
+superstition. I begin to think that events are forcing me nearer
+and nearer to some end which I don’t see yet, but which I am firmly
+persuaded is now not far off.
+
+“I have been insulted--deliberately insulted before witnesses--by Miss
+Milroy.
+
+“After walking, as usual, in the most unfrequented place I could pick
+out, and after trying, not very successfully, to think to some good
+purpose of what I am to do next, I remembered that I needed some
+note-paper and pens, and went back to the town to the stationer’s shop.
+It might have been wiser to have sent for what I wanted. But I was weary
+of myself, and weary of my lonely rooms; and I did my own errand, for no
+better reason than that it was something to do.
+
+“I had just got into the shop, and was asking for what I wanted, when
+another customer came in. We both looked up, and recognized each other
+at the same moment: Miss Milroy.
+
+“A woman and a lad were behind the counter, besides the man who was
+serving me. The woman civilly addressed the new customer. ‘What can we
+have the pleasure of doing for you, miss?’ After pointing it first by
+looking me straight in the face, she answered, ‘Nothing, thank you, at
+present. I’ll come back when the shop is empty.’
+
+“She went out. The three people in the shop looked at me in silence.
+In silence, on my side, I paid for my purchases, and left the place. I
+don’t know how I might have felt if I had been in my usual spirits.
+In the anxious, unsettled state I am in now, I can’t deny it, the girl
+stung me.
+
+“In the weakness of the moment (for it was nothing else), I was on the
+point of matching her petty spitefulness by spitefulness quite as petty
+on my side. I had actually got as far as the whole length of the street
+on my way to the major’s cottage, bent on telling him the secret of his
+daughter’s morning walks, before my better sense came back to me. When
+I did cool down, I turned round at once, and took the way home. No, no,
+Miss Milroy; mere temporary mischief-making at the cottage, which would
+only end in your father forgiving you, and in Armadale profiting by his
+indulgence, will nothing like pay the debt I owe you. I don’t forget
+that your heart is set on Armadale; and that the major, however he may
+talk, has always ended hitherto in giving you your own way. My head may
+be getting duller and duller, but it has not quite failed me yet.
+
+“In the meantime, there is Mother Oldershaw’s letter waiting obstinately
+to be answered; and here am I, not knowing what to do about it yet.
+Shall I answer it or not? It doesn’t matter for the present; there are
+some hours still to spare before the post goes out.
+
+“Suppose I asked Armadale to lend me the money? I should enjoy getting
+_something_ out of him; and I believe, in his present situation with
+Miss Milroy, he would do anything to be rid of me. Mean enough this, on
+my part. Pooh! When you hate and despise a man, as I hate and despise
+Armadale, who cares for looking mean in _his_ eyes?
+
+“And yet my pride--or my something else, I don’t know what--shrinks from
+it.
+
+“Half-past two--only half-past two. Oh, the dreadful weariness of these
+long summer days! I can’t keep thinking and thinking any longer; I must
+do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I’m not fit
+for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A
+man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I’m not a man, and I can’t
+drink. I’ll dawdle over my dresses, and put my things tidy.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+“Has an hour passed? More than an hour. It seems like a minute.
+
+“I can’t look back through these leaves, but I know I wrote somewhere
+that I felt myself getting nearer and nearer to some end that was still
+hidden from me. The end is hidden no longer. The cloud is off my mind,
+the blindness has gone from my eyes. I see it! I see it!
+
+“It came to me--I never sought it. If I was lying on my death-bed, I
+could swear, with a safe conscience, I never sought it.
+
+“I was only looking over my things; I was as idly and as frivolously
+employed as the most idle and most frivolous woman living. I went
+through my dresses, and my linen. What could be more innocent? Children
+go through their dresses and their linen.
+
+“It was, such a long summer day, and I was so tired of myself. I went to
+my boxes next. I looked over the large box first, which I usually leave
+open; and then I tried the small box, which I always keep locked.
+
+“From one thing to the other, I came at last to the bundle of letters
+at the bottom--the letters of the man for whom I once sacrificed and
+suffered everything; the man who has made me what I am.
+
+“A hundred times I had determined to burn his letters; but I have never
+burned them. This, time, all I said was, ‘I won’t read his letters!’ And
+I did read them.
+
+“The villain--the false, cowardly, heartless villain--what have I to do
+with his letters now? Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh, the meanness
+that our memory of a man can tempt us to, when our love for him is dead
+and gone! I read the letters--I was so lonely and so miserable, I read
+the letters.
+
+“I came to the last--the letter he wrote to encourage me, when I
+hesitated as the terrible time came nearer and nearer; the letter that
+revived me when my resolution failed at the eleventh hour. I read on,
+line after line, till I came to these words:
+
+“‘...I really have no patience with such absurdities as you have written
+to me. You say I am driving you on to do what is beyond a woman’s
+courage. Am I? I might refer you to any collection of Trials, English or
+foreign, to show that you were utterly wrong. But such collections may
+be beyond your reach; and I will only refer you to a case in
+yesterday’s newspaper. The circumstances are totally different from our
+circumstances; but the example of resolution in a woman is an example
+worth your notice.
+
+“‘You will find, among the law reports, a married woman charged with
+fraudulently representing herself to be the missing widow of an officer
+in the merchant service, who was supposed to have been drowned. The name
+of the prisoner’s husband (living) and the name of the officer (a very
+common one, both as to Christian and surname) happened to be identically
+the same. There was money to be got by it (sorely wanted by the
+prisoner’s husband, to whom she was devotedly attached), if the fraud
+had succeeded. The woman took it all on herself. Her husband was
+helpless and ill, and the bailiffs were after him. The circumstances,
+as you may read for yourself, were all in her favor, and were so well
+managed by her that the lawyers themselves acknowledged she might have
+succeeded, if the supposed drowned man had not turned up alive and
+well in the nick of time to confront her. The scene took place at the
+lawyer’s office, and came out in the evidence at the police court. The
+woman was handsome, and the sailor was a good-natured man. He wanted, at
+first, if the lawyers would have allowed him, to let her off. He said
+to her, among other things: “You didn’t count on the drowned man coming
+back, alive and hearty, did you, ma’am?” “It’s lucky for you,” she said,
+“I didn’t count on it. You have escaped the sea, but you wouldn’t have
+escaped _me_.” “Why, what would you have done, if you _had_ known I was
+coming back?” says the sailor. She looked him steadily in the face, and
+answered: “I would have killed you.” There! Do you think such a woman as
+that would have written to tell me I was pressing her further than she
+had courage to go? A handsome woman, too, like yourself. You would drive
+some men in my position to wish they had her now in your place.’
+
+“I read no further. When I had got on, line by line, to those words, it
+burst on me like a flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly
+as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all
+daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity,
+it is to be done. _I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan
+Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale’s death in
+a given time_.
+
+“There, in plain words, is the frightful temptation under which I now
+feel myself sinking. It is frightful in more ways than one; for it has
+come straight out of that other temptation to which I yielded in the
+by-gone time.
+
+“Yes; there the letter has been waiting for me in my box, to serve a
+purpose never thought of by the villain who wrote it. There is the Case,
+as he called it--only quoted to taunt me; utterly unlike my own case at
+the time--there it has been, waiting and lurking for me through all the
+changes in my life, till it has come to be like _my_ case at last.
+
+“It might startle any woman to see this, and even this is not the worst.
+The whole thing has been in my Diary, for days past, without my knowing
+it! Every idle fancy that escaped me has been tending secretly that one
+way! And I never saw, never suspected it, till the reading of the letter
+put my own thoughts before me in a new light--till I saw the shadow of
+my own circumstances suddenly reflected in one special circumstance of
+that other woman’s case!
+
+“It is to be done, if I can but look the necessity in the face. It is to
+be done, _if I can count on Allan Armadale’s death in a given time_.
+
+“All but his death is easy. The whole series of events under which I
+have been blindly chafing and fretting for more than a week past have
+been, one and all--though I was too stupid to see it--events in my
+favor; events paving the way smoothly and more smoothly straight to the
+end.
+
+“In three bold steps--only three!--that end might be reached. Let
+Midwinter marry me privately, under his real name--step the first! Let
+Armadale leave Thorpe Ambrose a single man, and die in some distant
+place among strangers--step the second!
+
+“Why am I hesitating? Why not go on to step the third, and last?
+
+“I _will_ go on. Step the third, and last, is my appearance, after the
+announcement of Armadale’s death has reached this neighborhood, in the
+character of Armadale’s widow, with my marriage certificate in my hand
+to prove my claim. It is as clear as the sun at noonday. Thanks to the
+exact similarity between the two names, and thanks to the careful manner
+in which the secret of that similarity has been kept, I may be the wife
+of the dark Allan Armadale, known as such to nobody but my husband and
+myself; and I may, out of that very position, claim the character of
+widow of the light Allan Armadale, with proof to support me (in the
+shape of my marriage certificate) which would be proof in the estimation
+of the most incredulous person living.
+
+“To think of my having put all this in my Diary! To think of my having
+actually contemplated this very situation, and having seen nothing
+more in it, at the time, than a reason (if I married Midwinter) for
+consenting to appear in the world under my husband’s assumed name!
+
+“What is it daunts me? The dread of obstacles? The fear of discovery?
+
+“Where are the obstacles? Where is the fear of discovery?
+
+“I am actually suspected all over the neighborhood of intriguing to be
+mistress of Thorpe Ambrose. I am the only person who knows the real turn
+that Armadale’s inclinations have taken. Not a creature but myself is
+as yet aware of his early morning meetings with Miss Milroy. If it is
+necessary to part them, I can do it at any moment by an anonymous line
+to the major. If it is necessary to remove Armadale from Thorpe Ambrose,
+I can get him away at three days’ notice. His own lips informed me, when
+I last spoke to him, that he would go to the ends of the earth to be
+friends again with Midwinter, if Midwinter would let him. I have only
+to tell Midwinter to write from London, and ask to be reconciled;
+and Midwinter would obey me--and to London Armadale would go. Every
+difficulty, at starting, is smoothed over ready to my hand.
+Every after-difficulty I could manage for myself. In the whole
+venture--desperate as it looks to pass myself off for the widow of one
+man, while I am all the while the wife of the other--there is absolutely
+no necessity that wants twice considering, but the one terrible
+necessity of Armadale’s death.
+
+“His death! It might be a terrible necessity to any other woman; but is
+it, ought it to be terrible to Me?
+
+“I hate him for his mother’s sake. I hate him for his own sake. I hate
+him for going to London behind my back, and making inquiries about me.
+I hate him for forcing me out of my situation before I wanted to go. I
+hate him for destroying all my hopes of marrying him, and throwing me
+back helpless on my own miserable life. But, oh, after what I have done
+already in the past time, how can I? how can I?
+
+“The girl, too--the girl who has come between us; who has taken him away
+from me; who has openly insulted me this very day--how the girl whose
+heart is set on him would feel it if he died! What a vengeance on _her_,
+if I did it! And when I was received as Armadale’s widow what a triumph
+for _me_. Triumph! It is more than triumph--it is the salvation of me.
+A name that can’t be assailed, a station that can’t be assailed, to
+hide myself in from my past life! Comfort, luxury, wealth! An income
+of twelve hundred a year secured to me secured by a will which has been
+looked at by a lawyer: secured independently of anything Armadale can
+say or do himself! I never had twelve hundred a year. At my luckiest
+time, I never had half as much, really my own. What have I got now? Just
+five pounds left in the world--and the prospect next week of a debtor’s
+prison.
+
+“But, oh, after what I have done already in the past time, how can I?
+how can I?
+
+“Some women--in my place, and with my recollections to look back
+on--would feel it differently. Some women would say, ‘It’s easier the
+second time than the first.’ Why can’t I? why can’t I?
+
+“Oh, you Devil tempting me, is there no Angel near to raise some timely
+obstacle between this and to-morrow which might help me to give it up?
+
+“I shall sink under it--I shall sink, if I write or think of it any
+more! I’ll shut up these leaves and go out again. I’ll get some common
+person to come with me, and we will talk of common things. I’ll take out
+the woman of the house, and her children. We will go and see something.
+There is a show of some kind in the town--I’ll treat them to it. I’m not
+such an ill-natured woman when I try; and the landlady has really been
+kind to me. Surely I might occupy my mind a little in seeing her and her
+children enjoying themselves.
+
+“A minute since, I shut up these leaves as I said I would; and now I
+have opened them again, I don’t know why. I think my brain is turned.
+I feel as if something was lost out of my mind; I feel as if I ought to
+find it here.
+
+“I have found it! _Midwinter!!!_
+
+“Is it possible that I can have been thinking of the reasons For and
+Against, for an hour past--writing Midwinter’s name over and over
+again--speculating seriously on marrying him--and all the time not once
+remembering that, even with every other impediment removed, _he_ alone,
+when the time came, would be an insurmountable obstacle in my way? Has
+the effort to face the consideration of Armadale’s death absorbed me to
+_that_ degree? I suppose it has. I can’t account for such extraordinary
+forgetfulness on my part in any other way.
+
+“Shall I stop and think it out, as I have thought out all the rest?
+Shall I ask myself if the obstacle of Midwinter would, after all, when
+the time came, be the unmanageable obstacle that it looks at present?
+No! What need is there to think of it? I have made up my mind to get the
+better of the temptation. I have made up my mind to give my landlady
+and her children a treat; I have made up my mind to close my Diary. And
+closed it shall be.
+
+“Six o’clock.--The landlady’s gossip is unendurable; the landlady’s
+children distract me. I have left them to run back here before post time
+and write a line to Mrs. Oldershaw.
+
+“The dread that I shall sink under the temptation has grown stronger and
+stronger on me. I have determined to put it beyond my power to have my
+own way and follow my own will. Mother Oldershaw shall be the salvation
+of me for the first time since I have known her. If I can’t pay my note
+of hand, she threatens me with an arrest. Well, she _shall_ arrest me.
+In the state my mind is in now, the best thing that can happen to me is
+to be taken away from Thorpe Ambrose, whether I like it or not. I will
+write and say that I am to be found here I will write and tell her, in
+so many words, that the best service she can render me is to lock me up.”
+
+
+“Seven o’clock.--The letter has gone to the post. I had begun to feel a
+little easier, when the children came in to thank me for taking them to
+the show. One of them is a girl, and the girl upset me. She is a forward
+child, and her hair is nearly the color of mine. She said, ‘I shall
+be like you when I have grown bigger, shan’t I?’ Her idiot of a mother
+said, ‘Please to excuse her, miss,’ and took her out of the room,
+laughing. Like me! I don’t pretend to be fond of the child; but think of
+her being like me!”
+
+
+“Saturday morning.--I have done well for once in acting on impulse, and
+writing as I did to Mrs. Oldershaw. The only new circumstance that has
+happened is another circumstance in my favor!
+
+“Major Milroy has answered Armadale’s letter, entreating permission
+to call at the cottage and justify himself. His daughter read it in
+silence, when Armadale handed it to her at their meeting this morning,
+in the park. But they talked about it afterward, loud enough for me to
+hear them. The major persists in the course he has taken. He says his
+opinion of Armadale’s conduct has been formed, not on common report, but
+on Armadale’s own letters, and he sees no reason to alter the conclusion
+at which he arrived when the correspondence between them was closed.
+
+“This little matter had, I confess, slipped out of my memory. It might
+have ended awkwardly for _me_. If Major Milroy had been less obstinately
+wedded to his own opinion, Armadale might have justified himself; the
+marriage engagement might have been acknowledged; and all _my_ power of
+influencing the matter might have been at an end. As it is, they must
+continue to keep the engagement strictly secret; and Miss Milroy, who
+has never ventured herself near the great house since the thunder-storm
+forced her into it for shelter, will be less likely than ever to venture
+there now. I can part them when I please; with an anonymous line to the
+major, I can part them when I please!
+
+“After having discussed the letter, the talk between them turned on
+what they were to do next. Major Milroy’s severity, as it soon appeared,
+produced the usual results. Armadale returned to the subject of the
+elopement; and this time she listened to him. There is everything to
+drive her to it. Her outfit of clothes is nearly ready; and the summer
+holidays, at the school which has been chosen for her, end at the end of
+next week. When I left them, they had decided to meet again and settle
+something on Monday.
+
+“The last words I heard him address to her, before I went away, shook
+me a little. He said: ‘There is one difficulty, Neelie, that needn’t
+trouble us, at any rate. I have got plenty of money.’ And then he kissed
+her. The way to his life began to look an easier way to me when he
+talked of his money, and kissed her.
+
+“Some hours have passed, and the more I think of it, the more I fear the
+blank interval between this time and the time when Mrs. Oldershaw calls
+in the law, and protects me against myself. It might have been better
+if I had stopped at home this morning. But how could I? After the insult
+she offered me yesterday, I tingled all over to go and look at her.
+
+“To-day; Sunday; Monday; Tuesday. They can’t arrest me for the money
+before Wednesday. And my miserable five pounds are dwindling to four!
+And he told her he had plenty of money! And she blushed and trembled
+when he kissed her. It might have been better for him, better for her,
+and better for me, if my debt had fallen due yesterday, and if the
+bailiffs had their hands on me at this moment.
+
+“Suppose I had the means of leaving Thorpe Ambrose by the next train,
+and going somewhere abroad, and absorbing myself in some new interest,
+among new people. Could I do it, rather than look again at that easy way
+to his life which would smooth the way to everything else?
+
+“Perhaps I might. But where is the money to come from? Surely some
+way of getting it struck me a day or two since? Yes; that mean idea of
+asking Armadale to help me! Well; I _will_ be mean for once. I’ll give
+him the chance of making a generous use of that well-filled purse which
+it is such a comfort to him to reflect on in his present circumstances.
+It would soften my heart toward any man if he lent me money in my
+present extremity; and, if Armadale lends me money, it might soften my
+heart toward him. When shall I go? At once! I won’t give myself time to
+feel the degradation of it, and to change my mind.”
+
+
+“Three ‘clock.--I mark the hour. He has sealed his own doom. He has
+insulted me.
+
+“Yes! I have suffered it once from Miss Milroy. And I have now suffered
+it a second time from Armadale himself. An insult--a marked, merciless,
+deliberate insult in the open day!
+
+“I had got through the town, and had advanced a few hundred yards along
+the road that leads to the great house, when I saw Armadale at a little
+distance, coming toward me. He was walking fast--evidently with some
+errand of his own to take him to the town. The instant he caught sight
+of me he stopped, colored up, took off his hat, hesitated, and turned
+aside down a lane behind him, which I happen to know would take him
+exactly in the contrary direction to the direction in which he was
+walking when he first saw me. His conduct said in so many words, ‘Miss
+Milroy may hear of it; I daren’t run the risk of being seen speaking to
+you.’ Men have used me heartlessly; men have done and said hard things
+to me; but no man living ever yet treated me as if I was plague-struck,
+and as if the very air about me was infected by my presence!
+
+“I say no more. When he walked away from me down that lane, he walked to
+his death. I have written to Midwinter to expect me in London nest week,
+and to be ready for our marriage soon afterward.”
+
+
+“Four o’clock.--Half an hour since, I put on my bonnet to go out and
+post the letter to Midwinter myself. And here I am, still in my room,
+with my mind torn by doubts, and my letter on the table.
+
+“Armadale counts for nothing in the perplexities that are now torturing
+me. It is Midwinter who makes me hesitate. Can I take the first of
+those three steps that lead me to the end, without the common caution
+of looking at consequences? Can I marry Midwinter, without knowing
+beforehand how to meet the obstacle of my husband, when the time
+comes which transforms me from the living Armadale’s wife to the dead
+Armadale’s widow?
+
+“Why can’t I think of it, when I know I _must_ think of it? Why can’t
+I look at it as steadily as I have looked at all the rest? I feel his
+kisses on my lips; I feel his tears on my bosom; I feel his arms round
+me again. He is far away in London; and yet, he is here and won’t let me
+think of it!
+
+“Why can’t I wait a little? Why can’t I let Time help me? Time? It’s
+Saturday! What need is there to think of it, unless I like? There is
+no post to London to-day. I _must_ wait. If I posted the letter, it
+wouldn’t go. Besides, to-morrow I may hear from Mrs. Oldershaw. I ought
+to wait to hear from Mrs. Oldershaw. I can’t consider myself a free
+woman till I know what Mrs. Oldershaw means to do. There is a necessity
+for waiting till to-morrow. I shall take my bonnet off, and lock the
+letter up in my desk.”
+
+
+“Sunday morning.--There is no resisting it! One after another the
+circumstances crowd on me. They come thicker and thicker, and they all
+force me one way.
+
+“I have got Mother Oldershaw’s answer. The wretch fawns on me, and
+cringes to me. I can see, as plainly as if she had acknowledged it,
+that she suspects me of seeing my own way to success at Thorpe Ambrose
+without her assistance. Having found threatening me useless, she tries
+coaxing me now. I am her darling Lydia again! She is quite shocked that
+I could imagine she ever really intended to arrest her bosom friend; and
+she has only to entreat me, as a favor to herself, to renew the bill!
+
+“I say once more, no mortal creature could resist it! Time after time
+I have tried to escape the temptation; and time after time the
+circumstances drive me back again. I can struggle no longer. The post
+that takes the letters to-night shall take my letter to Midwinter among
+the rest.
+
+“To-night! If I give myself till to-night, something else may happen.
+If I give myself till to-night, I may hesitate again. I’m weary of the
+torture of hesitating. I must and will have relief in the present, cost
+what it may in the future. My letter to Midwinter will drive me mad if I
+see it staring and staring at me in my desk any longer. I can post it in
+ten minutes’ time--and I will!
+
+“It is done. The first of the three steps that lead me to the end is a
+step taken. My mind is quieter--the letter is in the post.
+
+“By to-morrow Midwinter will receive it. Before the end of the week
+Armadale must be publicly seen to leave Thorpe Ambrose; and I must be
+publicly seen to leave with him.
+
+“Have I looked at the consequences of my marriage to Midwinter? No! Do
+I know how to meet the obstacle of my husband, when the time comes which
+transforms me from the living Armadale’s wife to the dead Armadale’s
+widow?
+
+“No! When the time comes, I must meet the obstacle as I best may. I
+am going blindfold, then--so far as Midwinter is concerned--into this
+frightful risk? Yes; blindfold. Am I out of my senses? Very likely. Or
+am I a little too fond of him to look the thing in the face? I dare say.
+Who cares?
+
+“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t think of it! Haven’t I a will of my own? And
+can’t I think, if I like, of something else?
+
+“Here is Mother Jezebel’s cringing letter. _That_ is something else to
+think of. I’ll answer it. I am in a fine humor for writing to Mother
+Jezebel.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+_Conclusion of Miss Gwilt’s Letter to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
+
+“...I told you, when I broke off, that I would wait before I finished
+this, and ask my Diary if I could safely tell you what I have now got
+it in my mind to do. Well, I have asked; and my Diary says, ‘Don’t tell
+her!’ Under these circumstances I close my letter--with my best excuses
+for leaving you in the dark.
+
+“I shall probably be in London before long--and I may tell you by word
+of mouth what I don’t think it safe to write here. Mind, I make no
+promise! It all depends on how I feel toward you at the time. I don’t
+doubt your discretion; but (under certain circumstances) I am not so
+sure of your courage. L. G.”
+
+“P. S.--My best thanks for your permission to renew the bill. I decline
+profiting by the proposal. The money will be ready when the money is
+due. I have a friend now in London who will pay it if I ask him. Do you
+wonder who the friend is? You will wonder at one or two other things,
+Mrs. Oldershaw, before many weeks more are over your head and mine.”
+
+
+
+
+XI. LOVE AND LAW.
+
+On the morning of Monday, the 28th of July, Miss Gwilt--once more on the
+watch for Allan and Neelie--reached her customary post of observation in
+the park, by the usual roundabout way.
+
+She was a little surprised to find Neelie alone at the place of meeting.
+She was more seriously astonished, when the tardy Allan made his
+appearance ten minutes later, to see him mounting the side of the dell,
+with a large volume under his arm, and to hear him say, as an apology
+for being late, that “he had muddled away his time in hunting for the
+Books; and that he had only found one, after all, which seemed in
+the least likely to repay either Neelie or himself for the trouble of
+looking into it.”
+
+If Miss Gwilt had waited long enough in the park, on the previous
+Saturday, to hear the lovers’ parting words on that occasion, she would
+have been at no loss to explain the mystery of the volume under Allan’s
+arm, and she would have understood the apology which he now offered for
+being late as readily as Neelie herself.
+
+There is a certain exceptional occasion in life--the occasion of
+marriage--on which even girls in their teens sometimes become capable
+(more or less hysterically) of looking at consequences. At the farewell
+moment of the interview on Saturday, Neelie’s mind had suddenly
+precipitated itself into the future; and she had utterly confounded
+Allan by inquiring whether the contemplated elopement was an offense
+punishable by the Law? Her memory satisfied her that she had certainly
+read somewhere, at some former period, in some book or other (possibly a
+novel), of an elopement with a dreadful end--of a bride dragged home in
+hysterics--and of a bridegroom sentenced to languish in prison, with
+all his beautiful hair cut off, by Act of Parliament, close to his
+head. Supposing she could bring herself to consent to the elopement at
+all--which she positively declined to promise--she must first insist on
+discovering whether there was any fear of the police being concerned in
+her marriage as well as the parson and the clerk. Allan, being a man,
+ought to know; and to Allan she looked for information--with this
+preliminary assurance to assist him in laying down the law, that she
+would die of a broken heart a thousand times over, rather than be the
+innocent means of sending him to languish in prison, and of cutting his
+hair off, by Act of Parliament, close to his head. “It’s no laughing
+matter,” said Neelie, resolutely, in conclusion; “I decline even to
+think of our marriage till my mind is made easy first on the subject of
+the Law.”
+
+“But I don’t know anything about the law, not even as much as you do,”
+ said Allan. “Hang the law! I don’t mind my head being cropped. Let’s
+risk it.”
+
+“Risk it?” repeated Neelie, indignantly. “Have you no consideration for
+me? I won’t risk it! Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We must find
+out the law for ourselves.”
+
+“With all my heart,” said Allan. “How?”
+
+“Out of books, to be sure! There must be quantities of information in
+that enormous library of yours at the great house. If you really love
+me, you won’t mind going over the backs of a few thousand books, for my
+sake!”
+
+“I’ll go over the backs of ten thousand!” cried Allan, warmly. “Would
+you mind telling me what I’m to look for?”
+
+“For ‘Law,’ to be sure! When it says ‘Law’ on the back, open it, and
+look inside for Marriage--read every word of it--and then come here and
+explain it to me. What! you don’t think your head is to be trusted to do
+such a simple thing as that?”
+
+“I’m certain it isn’t,” said Allan. “Can’t you help me?”
+
+“Of course I can, if you can’t manage without me! Law may be hard, but
+it can’t be harder than music; and I must, and will, satisfy my
+mind. Bring me all the books you can find, on Monday morning--in a
+wheelbarrow, if there are a good many of them, and if you can’t manage
+it in any other way.”
+
+The result of this conversation was Allan’s appearance in the park, with
+a volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries under his arm, on the fatal Monday
+morning, when Miss Gwilt’s written engagement of marriage was placed in
+Midwinter’s hands. Here again, in this, as in all other human instances,
+the widely discordant elements of the grotesque and the terrible were
+forced together by that subtle law of contrast which is one of the laws
+of mortal life. Amid all the thickening complications now impending over
+their heads--with the shadow of meditated murder stealing toward one
+of them already from the lurking-place that hid Miss Gwilt--the two sat
+down, unconscious of the future, with the book between them; and applied
+themselves to the study of the law of marriage, with a grave resolution
+to understand it, which, in two such students, was nothing less than a
+burlesque in itself!
+
+
+“Find the place,” said Neelie, as soon as they were comfortably
+established. “We must manage this by what they call a division of labor.
+You shall read, and I’ll take notes.”
+
+She produced forthwith a smart little pocket-book and pencil, and opened
+the book in the middle, where there was a blank page on the right hand
+and the left. At the top of the right-hand page she wrote the word
+_Good_. At the top of the left-hand page she wrote the word _Bad_.
+“‘Good’ means where the law is on our side,” she explained; “and
+‘Bad’ means where the law is against us. We will have ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’
+opposite each other, all down the two pages; and when we get to the
+bottom, we’ll add them up, and act accordingly. They say girls have no
+heads for business. Haven’t they! Don’t look at me--look at Blackstone,
+and begin.”
+
+“Would you mind giving one a kiss first?” asked Allan.
+
+“I should mind it very much. In our serious situation, when we have both
+got to exert our intellects, I wonder you can ask for such a thing!”
+
+“That’s why I asked for it,” said the unblushing Allan. “I feel as if it
+would clear my head.”
+
+“Oh, if it would clear your head, that’s quite another thing! I must
+clear your head, of course, at any sacrifice. Only one, mind,” she
+whispered, coquettishly; “and pray be careful of Blackstone, or you’ll
+lose the place.”
+
+There was a pause in the conversation. Blackstone and the pocket-book
+both rolled on the ground together.
+
+“If this happens again,” said Neelie, picking up the pocket-book, with
+her eyes and her complexion at their brightest and best, “I shall sit
+with my back to you for the rest of the morning. _Will_ you go on?”
+
+Allan found his place for the second time, and fell headlong into the
+bottomless abyss of the English Law.
+
+“Page 280,” he began. “Law of husband and wife. Here’s a bit I don’t
+understand, to begin with: ‘It may be observed generally that the law
+considers marriage in the light of a Contract.’ What does that mean?
+I thought a contract was the sort of a thing a builder signs when he
+promises to have the workmen out of the house in a given time, and when
+the time comes (as my poor mother used to say) the workmen never go.”
+
+“Is there nothing about Love?” asked Neelie. “Look a little lower down.”
+
+“Not a word. He sticks to his confounded ‘Contract’ all the way
+through.”
+
+“Then he’s a brute! Go on to something else that’s more in our way.”
+
+“Here’s a bit that’s more in our way: ‘Incapacities. If any persons
+under legal incapacities come together, it is a meretricious, and not a
+matrimonial union.’ (Blackstone’s a good one at long words, isn’t he?
+I wonder what he means by meretricious?) ‘The first of these legal
+disabilities is a prior marriage, and having another husband or wife
+living--’”
+
+“Stop!” said Neelie; “I must make a note of that.” She gravely made her
+first entry on the page headed “Good,” as follows: “I have no husband,
+and Allan has no wife. We are both entirely unmarried at the present
+time.”
+
+“All right, so far,” remarked Allan, looking over her shoulder.
+
+“Go on,” said Neelie. “What next?”
+
+“‘The next disability,’” proceeded Allan, “‘is want of age. The age
+for consent to matrimony is, fourteen in males, and twelve in females.’
+Come!” cried Allan, cheerfully, “Blackstone begins early enough, at any
+rate!”
+
+Neelie was too business-like to make any other remark, on her side, than
+the necessary remark in the pocket-book. She made another entry under
+the head of “Good”: “I am old enough to consent, and so is Allan too. Go
+on,” resumed Neelie, looking over the reader’s shoulder. “Never mind
+all that prosing of Blackstone’s, about the husband being of years of
+discretion, and the wife under twelve. Abominable wretch! the wife under
+twelve! Skip to the third incapacity, if there is one.”
+
+“‘The third incapacity,’” Allan went on, “‘is want of reason.’”
+
+Neelie immediately made a third entry on the side of “Good”: “Allan and
+I are both perfectly reasonable. Skip to the next page.”
+
+Allan skipped. “‘A fourth incapacity is in respect of proximity of
+relationship.’”
+
+A fourth entry followed instantly on the cheering side of the
+pocket-book: “He loves me, and I love him--without our being in the
+slightest degree related to each other. Any more?” asked Neelie, tapping
+her chin impatiently with the end of the pencil.
+
+“Plenty more,” rejoined Allan; “all in hieroglyphics. Look here:
+‘Marriage Acts, 4 Geo. IV., c. 76, and 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 85 (_q_).’
+Blackstone’s intellect seems to be wandering here. Shall we take another
+skip, and see if he picks himself up again on the next page?”
+
+“Wait a little,” said Neelie; “what’s that I see in the middle?” She
+read for a minute in silence, over Allan’s shoulder, and suddenly
+clasped her hands in despair. “I knew I was right!” she exclaimed. “Oh,
+heavens, here it is!”
+
+“Where?” asked Allan. “I see nothing about languishing in prison,
+and cropping a fellow’s hair close to his head, unless it’s in the
+hieroglyphics. Is ‘4 Geo. IV.’ short for ‘Lock him up’? and does ‘c. 85
+(_q_)’ mean, ‘Send for the hair-cutter’?”
+
+“Pray be serious,” remonstrated Neelie. “We are both sitting on a
+volcano. There,” she said pointing to the place. “Read it! If anything
+can bring you to a proper sense of our situation, _that_ will.”
+
+Allan cleared his throat, and Neelie held the point of her pencil ready
+on the depressing side of the account--otherwise the “Bad” page of the
+pocket-book.
+
+“‘And as it is the policy of our law,’” Allan began, “‘to prevent the
+marriage of persons under the age of twenty-one, without the consent
+of parents and guardians’”--(Neelie made her first entry on the side of
+“Bad!” “I’m only seventeen next birthday, and circumstances forbid me
+to confide my attachment to papa”)--“‘it is provided that in the case
+of the publication of banns of a person under twenty-one, not being a
+widower or widow, who are deemed emancipated’”--(Neelie made another
+entry on the depressing side: “Allan is not a widower, and I am not a
+widow; consequently, we are neither of us emancipated”)--“‘if the parent
+or guardian openly signifies his dissent at the time the banns are
+published’”--(“which papa would be certain to do”)--“‘such publication
+would be void.’ I’ll take breath here if you’ll allow me,” said Allan.
+“Blackstone might put it in shorter sentences, I think, if he can’t
+put it in fewer words. Cheer up, Neelie! there must be other ways of
+marrying, besides this roundabout way, that ends in a Publication and a
+Void. Infernal gibberish! I could write better English myself.”
+
+“We are not at the end of it yet,” said Neelie. “The Void is nothing to
+what is to come.”
+
+“Whatever it is,” rejoined Allan, “we’ll treat it like a dose of
+physic--we’ll take it at once, and be done with it.” He went on reading:
+“‘And no license to marry without banns shall be granted, unless oath
+shall be first made by one of the parties that he or she believes that
+there is no impediment of kindred or alliance’--well, I can take my oath
+of that with a safe conscience! What next? ‘And one of the said parties
+must, for the space of fifteen days immediately preceding such license,
+have had his or her usual place of abode within the parish or chapelry
+within which such marriage is to be solemnized!’ Chapelry! I’d live
+fifteen days in a dog-kennel with the greatest pleasure. I say, Neelie,
+all this seems like plain sailing enough. What are you shaking your head
+about? Go on, and I shall see? Oh, all right; I’ll go on. Here we are:
+‘And where one of the said parties, not being a widower or widow, shall
+be under the age of twenty-one years, oath must first be made that the
+consent of the person or persons whose consent is required has been
+obtained, or that there is no person having authority to give such
+consent. The consent required by this act is that of the father--’” At
+those last formidable words Allan came to a full stop. “The consent
+of the father,” he repeated, with all needful seriousness of look and
+manner. “I couldn’t exactly swear to that, could I?”
+
+Neelie answered in expressive silence. She handed him the pocket-book,
+with the final entry completed, on the side of “Bad,” in these terms:
+“Our marriage is impossible, unless Allan commits perjury.”
+
+The lovers looked at each other, across the insuperable obstacle of
+Blackstone, in speechless dismay.
+
+“Shut up the book,” said Neelie, resignedly. “I have no doubt we should
+find the police, and the prison, and the hair-cutting--all punishments
+for perjury, exactly as I told you!--if we looked at the next page. But
+we needn’t trouble ourselves to look; we have found out quite enough
+already. It’s all over with us. I must go to school on Saturday, and
+you must manage to forget me as soon as you can. Perhaps we may meet in
+after-life, and you may be a widower and I may be a widow, and the
+cruel law may consider us emancipated, when it’s too late to be of the
+slightest use. By that time, no doubt, I shall be old and ugly, and you
+will naturally have ceased to care about me, and it will all end in the
+grave, and the sooner the better. Good-by,” concluded Neelie, rising
+mournfully, with the tears in her eyes. “It’s only prolonging our misery
+to stop here, unless--unless you have anything to propose?”
+
+“I’ve got something to propose,” cried the headlong Allan. “It’s an
+entirely new idea. Would you mind trying the blacksmith at Gretna
+Green?”
+
+“No earthly consideration,” answered Neelie, indignantly, “would induce
+me to be married by a blacksmith!”
+
+“Don’t be offended,” pleaded Allan; “I meant it for the best. Lots of
+people in our situation have tried the blacksmith, and found him quite
+as good as a clergyman, and a most amiable man, I believe, into the
+bargain. Never mind! We must try another string to our bow.”
+
+“We haven’t got another to try,” said Neelie.
+
+“Take my word for it,” persisted Allan, stoutly, “there must be ways and
+means of circumventing Blackstone (without perjury), if we only knew
+of them. It’s a matter of law, and we must consult somebody in the
+profession. I dare say it’s a risk. But nothing venture, nothing have.
+What do you say to young Pedgift? He’s a thorough good fellow. I’m sure
+we could trust young Pedgift to keep our secret.”
+
+“Not for worlds!” exclaimed Neelie. “You may be willing to trust your
+secrets to the vulgar little wretch; I won’t have him trusted with mine.
+I hate him. No!” she concluded, with a mounting color and a peremptory
+stamp of her foot on the grass. “I positively forbid you to take any
+of the Thorpe Ambrose people into your confidence. They would instantly
+suspect me, and it would be all over the place in a moment. My
+attachment may be an unhappy one,” remarked Neelie, with her
+handkerchief to her eyes, “and papa may nip it in the bud, but I won’t
+have it profaned by the town gossip!”
+
+“Hush! hush!” said Allan. “I won’t say a word at Thorpe Ambrose, I won’t
+indeed!” He paused, and considered for a moment. “There’s another way!”
+ he burst out, brightening up on the instant. “We’ve got the whole week
+before us. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll go to London!”
+
+There was a sudden rustling--heard neither by one nor the other--among
+the trees behind them that screened Miss Gwilt. One more of the
+difficulties in her way (the difficulty of getting Allan to London) now
+promised to be removed by an act of Allan’s own will.
+
+“To London?” repeated Neelie, looking up in astonishment.
+
+“To London!” reiterated Allan. “That’s far enough away from Thorpe
+Ambrose, surely? Wait a minute, and don’t forget that this is a question
+of law. Very well, I know some lawyers in London who managed all my
+business for me when I first came in for this property; they are just
+the men to consult. And if they decline to be mixed up in it, there’s
+their head clerk, who is one of the best fellows I ever met with in my
+life. I asked him to go yachting with me, I remember; and, though he
+couldn’t go, he said he felt the obligation all the same. That’s the man
+to help us. Blackstone’s a mere infant to him. Don’t say it’s absurd;
+don’t say it’s exactly like _me_. Do pray hear me out. I won’t breathe
+your name or your father’s. I’ll describe you as ‘a young lady to whom I
+am devotedly attached.’ And if my friend the clerk asks where you live,
+I’ll say the north of Scotland, or the west of Ireland, or the Channel
+Islands, or anywhere else you like. My friend the clerk is a
+total stranger to Thorpe Ambrose and everybody in it (which is one
+recommendation); and in five minutes’ time he’d put me up to what to
+do (which is another). If you only knew him! He’s one of those
+extraordinary men who appear once or twice in a century--the sort of man
+who won’t allow you to make a mistake if you try. All I have got to say
+to him (putting it short) is, ‘My dear fellow, I want to be privately
+married without perjury.’ All he has got to say to me (putting it short)
+is, ‘You must do so-and-so and so-and-so, and you must be careful to
+avoid this, that, and the other.’ I have nothing in the world to do but
+to follow his directions; and you have nothing in the world to do but
+what the bride always does when the bridegroom is ready and willing!”
+ His arm stole round Neelie’s waist, and his lips pointed the moral of
+the last sentence with that inarticulate eloquence which is so uniformly
+successful in persuading a woman against her will.
+
+All Neelie’s meditated objections dwindled, in spite of her, to
+one feeble little question. “Suppose I allow you to go, Allan?” she
+whispered, toying nervously with the stud in the bosom of his shirt.
+“Shall you be very long away?”
+
+“I’ll be off to-day,” said Allan, “by the eleven o’clock train. And I’ll
+be back to-morrow, if I and my friend the clerk can settle it all in
+time. If not, by Wednesday at latest.”
+
+“You’ll write to me every day?” pleaded Neelie, clinging a little closer
+to him. “I shall sink under the suspense, if you don’t promise to write
+to me every day.”
+
+Allan promised to write twice a day, if she liked--letter-writing, which
+was such an effort to other men, was no effort to _him_!
+
+“And mind, whatever those people may say to you in London,” proceeded
+Neelie, “I insist on your coming back for me. I positively decline to
+run away, unless you promise to fetch me.”
+
+Allan promised for the second time, on his sacred word of honor, and at
+the full compass of his voice. But Neelie was not satisfied even yet.
+She reverted to first principles, and insisted on knowing whether Allan
+was quite sure he loved her. Allan called Heaven to witness how sure he
+was; and got another question directly for his pains. Could he solemnly
+declare that he would never regret taking Neelie away from home? Allan
+called Heaven to witness again, louder than ever. All to no purpose!
+The ravenous female appetite for tender protestations still hungered
+for more. “I know what will happen one of these days,” persisted Neelie.
+“You will see some other girl who is prettier than I am; and you will
+wish you had married her instead of me!”
+
+As Allan opened his lips for a final outburst of asseveration, the
+stable clock at the great house was faintly audible in the distance
+striking the hour. Neelie started guiltily. It was breakfast-time at
+the cottage--in other words, time to take leave. At the last moment her
+heart went back to her father; and her head sank on Allan’s bosom as she
+tried to say, Good-by. “Papa has always been so kind to me, Allan,” she
+whispered, holding him back tremulously when he turned to leave her. “It
+seems so guilty and so heartless to go away from him and be married in
+secret. Oh, do, do think before you really go to London; is there no
+way of making him a little kinder and juster to _you_?” The question was
+useless; the major’s resolutely unfavorable reception of Allan’s letter
+rose in Neelie’s memory, and answered her as the words passed her lips.
+With a girl’s impulsiveness she pushed Allan away before he could
+speak, and signed to him impatiently to go. The conflict of contending
+emotions, which she had mastered thus far, burst its way outward in
+spite of her after he had waved his hand for the last time, and had
+disappeared in the depths of the dell. When she turned from the place,
+on her side, her long-restrained tears fell freely at last, and made the
+lonely way back to the cottage the dimmest prospect that Neelie had seen
+for many a long day past.
+
+As she hurried homeward, the leaves parted behind her, and Miss Gwilt
+stepped softly into the open space. She stood there in triumph, tall,
+beautiful, and resolute. Her lovely color brightened while she watched
+Neelie’s retreating figure hastening lightly away from her over the
+grass.
+
+“Cry, you little fool!” she said, with her quiet, clear tones, and her
+steady smile of contempt. “Cry as you have never cried yet! You have
+seen the last of your sweetheart.”
+
+
+
+
+XII. A SCANDAL AT THE STATION.
+
+An hour later, the landlady at Miss Gwilt’s lodgings was lost in
+astonishment, and the clamorous tongues of the children were in a state
+of ungovernable revolt. “Unforeseen circumstances” had suddenly obliged
+the tenant of the first floor to terminate the occupation of her
+apartments, and to go to London that day by the eleven o’clock train.
+
+“Please to have a fly at the door at half-past ten,” said Miss Gwilt,
+as the amazed landlady followed her upstairs. “And excuse me, you good
+creature, if I beg and pray not to be disturbed till the fly comes.”
+ Once inside the room, she locked the door, and then opened her
+writing-desk. “Now for my letter to the major!” she said. “How shall I
+word it?”
+
+A moment’s consideration apparently decided her. Searching through
+her collection of pens, she carefully selected the worst that could be
+found, and began the letter by writing the date of the day on a soiled
+sheet of note-paper, in crooked, clumsy characters, which ended in a
+blot made purposely with the feather of the pen. Pausing, sometimes to
+think a little, sometimes to make another blot, she completed the letter
+in these words:
+
+
+“HON’D SIR--It is on my conscience to tell you something, which I think
+you ought to know. You ought to know of the goings-on of Miss, your
+daughter, with young Mister Armadale. I wish you to make sure, and, what
+is more, I advise you to be quick about it, if she is going the way
+you want her to go, when she takes her morning walk before breakfast.
+I scorn to make mischief, where there is true love on both sides. But I
+don’t think the young man means truly by Miss. What I mean is, I think
+Miss only has his fancy. Another person, who shall be nameless betwixt
+us, has his true heart. Please to pardon my not putting my name; I am
+only a humble person, and it might get me into trouble. This is all at
+present, dear sir, from yours,
+
+“A WELL-WISHER.”
+
+
+“There!” said Miss Gwilt, as she folded the letter up. “If I had been
+a professed novelist, I could hardly have written more naturally in the
+character of a servant than that!” She wrote the necessary address to
+Major Milroy; looked admiringly for the last time at the coarse and
+clumsy writing which her own delicate hand had produced; and rose to
+post the letter herself, before she entered next on the serious business
+of packing up. “Curious!” she thought, when the letter had been posted,
+and she was back again making her traveling preparations in her own
+room; “here I am, running headlong into a frightful risk--and I never
+was in better spirits in my life!”
+
+The boxes were ready when the fly was at the door, and Miss Gwilt was
+equipped (as becomingly as usual) in her neat traveling costume. The
+thick veil, which she was accustomed to wear in London, appeared on
+her country straw bonnet for the first time. “One meets such rude men
+occasionally in the railway,” she said to the landlady. “And though I
+dress quietly, my hair is so very remarkable.” She was a little paler
+than usual; but she had never been so sweet-tempered and engaging, so
+gracefully cordial and friendly, as now, when the moment of departure
+had come. The simple people of the house were quite moved at taking
+leave of her. She insisted on shaking hands with the landlord--on
+speaking to him in her prettiest way, and sunning him in her brightest
+smiles. “Come!” she said to the landlady, “you have been so kind, you
+have been so like a mother to me, you must give me a kiss at parting.”
+ She embraced the children all together in a lump, with a mixture of
+humor and tenderness delightful to see, and left a shilling among them
+to buy a cake. “If I was only rich enough to make it a sovereign,” she
+whispered to the mother, “how glad I should be!” The awkward lad who ran
+on errands stood waiting at the fly door. He was clumsy, he was frowsy,
+he had a gaping mouth and a turn-up nose; but the ineradicable female
+delight in being charming accepted him, for all that, in the character
+of a last chance. “You dear, dingy John!” she said, kindly, at the
+carriage door. “I am so poor I have only sixpence to give you--with my
+very best wishes. Take my advice, John--grow to be a fine man, and find
+yourself a nice sweetheart! Thank you a thousand times!” She gave him
+a friendly little pat on the cheek with two of her gloved fingers, and
+smiled, and nodded, and got into the fly.
+
+“Armadale next!” she said to herself as the carriage drove off.
+
+Allan’s anxiety not to miss the train had brought him to the station
+in better time than usual. After taking his ticket and putting his
+portmanteau under the porter’s charge, he was pacing the platform and
+thinking of Neelie, when he heard the rustling of a lady’s dress behind
+him, and, turning round to look, found himself face to face with Miss
+Gwilt.
+
+There was no escaping her this time. The station wall was on his right
+hand, and the line was on his left; a tunnel was behind him, and Miss
+Gwilt was in front, inquiring in her sweetest tones whether Mr. Armadale
+was going to London.
+
+Allan colored scarlet with vexation and surprise. There he was obviously
+waiting for the train; and there was his portmanteau close by, with his
+name on it, already labeled for London! What answer but the true one
+could he make after that? Could he let the train go without him, and
+lose the precious hours so vitally important to Neelie and himself?
+Impossible! Allan helplessly confirmed the printed statement on his
+portmanteau, and heartily wished himself at the other end of the world
+as he said the words.
+
+“How very fortunate!” rejoined Miss Gwilt. “I am going to London too.
+Might I ask you Mr. Armadale (as you seem to be quite alone), to be my
+escort on the journey?”
+
+Allan looked at the little assembly of travelers, and travelers’
+friends, collected on the platform, near the booking-office door. They
+were all Thorpe Ambrose people. He was probably known by sight, and
+Miss Gwilt was probably known by sight, to every one of them. In sheer
+desperation, hesitating more awkwardly than ever, he produced his cigar
+case. “I should be delighted,” he said, with an embarrassment which was
+almost an insult under the circumstances. “But I--I’m what the people
+who get sick over a cigar call a slave to smoking.”
+
+“I delight in smoking!” said Miss Gwilt, with undiminished vivacity and
+good humor. “It’s one of the privileges of the men which I have always
+envied. I’m afraid, Mr. Armadale, you must think I am forcing myself on
+you. It certainly looks like it. The real truth is, I want particularly
+to say a word to you in private about Mr. Midwinter.”
+
+The train came up at the same moment. Setting Midwinter out of the
+question, the common decencies of politeness left Allan no alternative
+but to submit. After having been the cause of her leaving her situation
+at Major Milroy’s, after having pointedly avoided her only a few days
+since on the high-road, to have declined going to London in the same
+carriage with Miss Gwilt would have been an act of downright brutality
+which it was simply impossible to commit. “Damn her!” said Allan,
+internally, as he handed his traveling companion into an empty carriage,
+officiously placed at his disposal, before all the people at the
+station, by the guard. “You shan’t be disturbed, sir,” the man
+whispered, confidentially, with a smile and a touch of his hat. Allan
+could have knocked him down with the utmost pleasure. “Stop!” he said,
+from the window. “I don’t want the carriage--” It was useless; the guard
+was out of hearing; the whistle blew, and the train started for London.
+
+The select assembly of travelers’ friends, left behind on the platform,
+congregated in a circle on the spot, with the station-master in the
+center.
+
+The station-master--otherwise Mr. Mack--was a popular character in the
+neighborhood. He possessed two social qualifications which invariably
+impress the average English mind--he was an old soldier, and he was a
+man of few words. The conclave on the platform insisted on taking his
+opinion, before it committed itself positively to an opinion of its own.
+A brisk fire of remarks exploded, as a matter of course, on all sides;
+but everybody’s view of the subject ended interrogatively, in a question
+aimed pointblank at the station-master’s ears.
+
+“She’s got him, hasn’t she?” “She’ll come back ‘Mrs. Armadale,’ won’t
+she?” “He’d better have stuck to Miss Milroy, hadn’t he?” “Miss Milroy
+stuck to _him_. She paid him a visit at the great house, didn’t she?”
+ “Nothing of the sort; it’s a shame to take the girl’s character away.
+She was caught in a thunder-storm close by; he was obliged to give her
+shelter; and she’s never been near the place since. Miss Gwilt’s been
+there, if you like, with no thunderstorm to force _her_ in; and Miss
+Gwilt’s off with him to London in a carriage all to themselves, eh, Mr.
+Mack?” “Ah, he’s a soft one, that Armadale! with all his money, to take
+up with a red-haired woman, a good eight or nine years older than he is!
+She’s thirty if she’s a day. That’s what I say, Mr. Mack. What do you
+say?” “Older or younger, she’ll rule the roast at Thorpe Ambrose; and
+I say, for the sake of the place, and for the sake of trade, let’s make
+the best of it; and Mr. Mack, as a man of the world, sees it in the same
+light as I do, don’t you, sir?”
+
+“Gentlemen,” said the station-master, with his abrupt military accent,
+and his impenetrable military manner, “she’s a devilish fine woman. And
+when I was Mr. Armadale’s age, it’s my opinion, if her fancy had laid
+that way, she might have married Me.”
+
+With that expression of opinion the station-master wheeled to the right,
+and intrenched himself impregnably in the stronghold of his own office.
+
+The citizens of Thorpe Ambrose looked at the closed door, and gravely
+shook their heads. Mr. Mack had disappointed them. No opinion which
+openly recognizes the frailty of human nature is ever a popular opinion
+with mankind. “It’s as good as saying that any of _us_ might have
+married her if _we_ had been Mr. Armadale’s age!” Such was the general
+impression on the minds of the conclave, when the meeting had been
+adjourned, and the members were leaving the station.
+
+The last of the party to go was a slow old gentleman, with a habit of
+deliberately looking about him. Pausing at the door, this observant
+person stared up the platform and down the platform, and discovered in
+the latter direction, standing behind an angle of the wall, an elderly
+man in black, who had escaped the notice of everybody up to that time.
+“Why, bless my soul!” said the old gentleman, advancing inquisitively by
+a step at a time, “it can’t be Mr. Bashwood!”
+
+It _was_ Mr. Bashwood--Mr. Bashwood, whose constitutional curiosity
+had taken him privately to the station, bent on solving the mystery of
+Allan’s sudden journey to London--Mr. Bashwood, who had seen and heard,
+behind his angle in the wall, what everybody else had seen and heard,
+and who appeared to have been impressed by it in no ordinary way. He
+stood stiffly against the wall, like a man petrified, with one hand
+pressed on his bare head, and the other holding his hat--he stood, with
+a dull flush on his face, and a dull stare in his eyes, looking straight
+into the black depths of the tunnel outside the station, as if the train
+to London had disappeared in it but the moment before.
+
+“Is your head bad?” asked the old gentleman. “Take my advice. Go home
+and lie down.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood listened mechanically, with his usual attention, and
+answered mechanically, with his usual politeness.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he said, in a low, lost tone, like a man between dreaming
+and waking; “I’ll go home and lie down.”
+
+“That’s right,” rejoined the old gentleman, making for the door. “And
+take a pill, Mr. Bashwood--take a pill.”
+
+Five minutes later, the porter charged with the business of locking up
+the station found Mr. Bashwood, still standing bare-headed against the
+wall, and still looking straight into the black depths of the tunnel, as
+if the train to London had disappeared in it but a moment since.
+
+“Come, sir!” said the porter; “I must lock up. Are you out of sorts?
+Anything wrong with your inside? Try a drop of gin-and-bitters.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Bashwood, answering the porter, exactly as he had
+answered the old gentleman; “I’ll try a drop of gin-and-bitters.”
+
+The porter took him by the arm, and led him out. “You’ll get it there,”
+ said the man, pointing confidentially to a public-house; “and you’ll get
+it good.”
+
+“I shall get it there,” echoed Mr. Bashwood, still mechanically
+repeating what was said to him; “and I shall get it good.”
+
+His will seemed to be paralyzed; his actions depended absolutely on what
+other people told him to do. He took a few steps in the direction of the
+public-house, hesitated, staggered, and caught at the pillar of one of
+the station lamps near him.
+
+The porter followed, and took him by the arm once more.
+
+“Why, you’ve been drinking already!” exclaimed the man, with a suddenly
+quickened interest in Mr. Bashwood’s case. “What was it? Beer?”
+
+Mr. Bashwood, in his low, lost tones, echoed the last word.
+
+It was close on the porter’s dinner-time. But, when the lower orders
+of the English people believe they have discovered an intoxicated man,
+their sympathy with him is boundless. The porter let his dinner take its
+chance, and carefully assisted Mr. Bashwood to reach the public-house.
+“Gin-and-bitters will put you on your legs again,” whispered this
+Samaritan setter-right of the alcoholic disasters of mankind.
+
+If Mr. Bashwood had really been intoxicated, the effect of the porter’s
+remedy would have been marvelous indeed. Almost as soon as the glass was
+emptied, the stimulant did its work. The long-weakened nervous system
+of the deputy-steward, prostrated for the moment by the shock that had
+fallen on it, rallied again like a weary horse under the spur. The
+dull flush on his cheeks, the dull stare in his eyes, disappeared
+simultaneously. After a momentary effort, he recovered memory enough of
+what had passed to thank the porter, and to ask whether he would take
+something himself. The worthy creature instantly accepted a dose of his
+own remedy--in the capacity of a preventive--and went home to dinner as
+only those men can go home who are physically warmed by gin-and-bitters
+and morally elevated by the performance of a good action.
+
+Still strangely abstracted (but conscious now of the way by which he
+went), Mr. Bashwood left the public-house a few minutes later, in his
+turn. He walked on mechanically, in his dreary black garments, moving
+like a blot on the white surface of the sun-brightened road, as
+Midwinter had seen him move in the early days at Thorpe Ambrose, when
+they had first met. Arrived at the point where he had to choose between
+the way that led into the town and the way that led to the great house,
+he stopped, incapable of deciding, and careless, apparently, even of
+making the attempt. “I’ll be revenged on her!” he whispered to himself,
+still absorbed in his jealous frenzy of rage against the woman who had
+deceived him. “I’ll be revenged on her,” he repeated, in louder tones,
+“if I spend every half-penny I’ve got!”
+
+Some women of the disorderly sort, passing on their way to the town,
+heard him. “Ah, you old brute,” they called out, with the measureless
+license of their class, “whatever she did, she served you right!”
+
+The coarseness of the voices startled him, whether he comprehended the
+words or not. He shrank away from more interruption and more insult,
+into the quieter road that led to the great house.
+
+At a solitary place by the wayside he stopped and sat down. He took off
+his hat and lifted his youthful wig a little from his bald old head, and
+tried desperately to get beyond the one immovable conviction which lay
+on his mind like lead--the conviction that Miss Gwilt had been purposely
+deceiving him from the first. It was useless. No effort would free him
+from that one dominant impression, and from the one answering idea that
+it had evoked--the idea of revenge. He got up again, and put on his hat
+and walked rapidly forward a little way--then turned without knowing
+why, and slowly walked back again “If I had only dressed a little
+smarter!” said the poor wretch, helplessly. “If I had only been a little
+bolder with her, she might have overlooked my being an old man!” The
+angry fit returned on him. He clinched his clammy, trembling hands,
+and shook them fiercely in the empty air. “I’ll be revenged on her,” he
+reiterated. “I’ll be revenged on her, if I spend every half-penny I’ve
+got!” It was terribly suggestive of the hold she had taken on him, that
+his vindictive sense of injury could not get far enough away from her to
+reach the man whom he believed to be his rival, even yet. In his rage,
+as in his love, he was absorbed, body and soul, by Miss Gwilt.
+
+In a moment more, the noise of running wheels approaching from behind
+startled him. He turned and looked round. There was Mr. Pedgift the
+elder, rapidly overtaking him in the gig, just as Mr. Pedgift had
+overtaken him once already, on that former occasion when he had listened
+under the window at the great house, and when the lawyer had bluntly
+charged him with feeling a curiosity about Miss Gwilt!
+
+In an instant the inevitable association of ideas burst on his mind. The
+opinion of Miss Gwilt, which he had heard the lawyer express to Allan at
+parting, flashed back into his memory, side by side with Mr. Pedgift’s
+sarcastic approval of anything in the way of inquiry which his own
+curiosity might attempt. “I may be even with her yet,” he thought, “if
+Mr. Pedgift will help me!--Stop, sir!” he called out, desperately, as
+the gig came up with him. “If you please, sir, I want to speak to you.”
+
+Pedgift Senior slackened the pace of his fast-trotting mare, without
+pulling up. “Come to the office in half an hour,” he said; “I’m busy
+now.” Without waiting for an answer, without noticing Mr. Bashwood’s
+bow, he gave the mare the rein again, and was out of sight in another
+minute.
+
+Mr. Bashwood sat down once more in a shady place by the roadside. He
+appeared to be incapable of feeling any slight but the one unpardonable
+slight put upon him by Miss Gwilt. He not only declined to resent, he
+even made the best of Mr. Pedgift’s unceremonious treatment of him.
+“Half an hour,” he said, resignedly. “Time enough to compose myself;
+and I want time. Very kind of Mr. Pedgift, though he mightn’t have meant
+it.”
+
+The sense of oppression in his head forced him once again to remove his
+hat. He sat with it on his lap, deep in thought; his face bent low, and
+the wavering fingers of one hand drumming absently on the crown of the
+hat. If Mr. Pedgift the elder, seeing him as he sat now, could only have
+looked a little way into the future, the monotonously drumming hand of
+the deputy-steward might have been strong enough, feeble as it was, to
+stop the lawyer by the roadside. It was the worn, weary, miserable old
+hand of a worn, weary, miserable old man; but it was, for all that (to
+use the language of Mr. Pedgift’s own parting prediction to Allan), the
+hand that was now destined to “let the light in on Miss Gwilt.”
+
+
+
+
+XIII. AN OLD MAN’S HEART.
+
+Punctual to the moment, when the half hour’s interval had expired, Mr.
+Bashwood was announced at the office as waiting to see Mr. Pedgift by
+special appointment.
+
+The lawyer looked up from his papers with an air of annoyance: he had
+totally forgotten the meeting by the roadside. “See what he wants,” said
+Pedgift Senior to Pedgift Junior, working in the same room with him.
+“And if it’s nothing of importance, put it off to some other time.”
+
+Pedgift Junior swiftly disappeared and swiftly returned.
+
+“Well?” asked the father.
+
+“Well,” answered the son, “he is rather more shaky and unintelligible
+than usual. I can make nothing out of him, except that he persists
+in wanting to see you. My own idea,” pursued Pedgift Junior, with his
+usual, sardonic gravity, “is that he is going to have a fit, and that he
+wishes to acknowledge your uniform kindness to him by obliging you with
+a private view of the whole proceeding.”
+
+Pedgift Senior habitually matched everybody--his son included--with
+their own weapons. “Be good enough to remember, Augustus,” he rejoined,
+“that my Room is not a Court of Law. A bad joke is not invariably
+followed by ‘roars of laughter’ _here_. Let Mr. Bashwood come in.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood was introduced, and Pedgift Junior withdrew. “You mustn’t
+bleed him, sir,” whispered the incorrigible joker, as he passed the back
+of his father’s chair. “Hot-water bottles to the soles of his feet,
+and a mustard plaster on the pit of his stomach--that’s the modern
+treatment.”
+
+“Sit down, Bashwood,” said Pedgift Senior when they were alone. “And
+don’t forget that time’s money. Out with it, whatever it is, at the
+quickest possible rate, and in the fewest possible words.”
+
+These preliminary directions, bluntly but not at all unkindly spoken,
+rather increased than diminished the painful agitation under which Mr.
+Bashwood was suffering. He stammered more helplessly, he trembled more
+continuously than usual, as he made his little speech of thanks, and
+added his apologies at the end for intruding on his patron in business
+hours.
+
+“Everybody in the place, Mr. Pedgift, sir, knows your time is valuable.
+Oh, dear, yes! oh, dear, yes! most valuable, most valuable! Excuse me,
+sir, I’m coming out with it. Your goodness--or rather your business--no,
+your goodness gave me half an hour to wait--and I have thought of what
+I had to say, and prepared it, and put it short.” Having got as far as
+that, he stopped with a pained, bewildered look. He had put it away in
+his memory, and now, when the time came, he was too confused to find it.
+And there was Mr. Pedgift mutely waiting; his face and manner expressive
+alike of that silent sense of the value of his own time which every
+patient who has visited a great doctor, every client who has consulted a
+lawyer in large practice, knows so well. “Have you heard the news, sir?”
+ stammered Mr. Bashwood, shifting his ground in despair, and letting the
+uppermost idea in his mind escape him, simply because it was the one
+idea in him that was ready to come out.
+
+“Does it concern _me_?” asked Pedgift Senior, mercilessly brief, and
+mercilessly straight in coming to the point.
+
+“It concerns a lady, sir--no, not a lady--a young man, I ought to say,
+in whom you used to feel some interest. Oh, Mr. Pedgift, sir, what do
+you think! Mr. Armadale and Miss Gwilt have gone up to London together
+to-day--alone, sir--alone in a carriage reserved for their two selves.
+Do you think he’s going to marry her? Do you really think, like the rest
+of them, he’s going to marry her?”
+
+He put the question with a sudden flush in his face and a sudden
+energy in his manner. His sense of the value of the lawyer’s time,
+his conviction of the greatness of the lawyer’s condescension, his
+constitutional shyness and timidity--all yielded together to his one
+overwhelming interest in hearing Mr. Pedgift’s answer. He was loud for
+the first time in his life in putting the question.
+
+“After my experience of Mr. Armadale,” said the lawyer, instantly
+hardening in look and manner, “I believe him to be infatuated enough
+to marry Miss Gwilt a dozen times over, if Miss Gwilt chose to ask him.
+Your news doesn’t surprise me in the least, Bashwood. I’m sorry for him.
+I can honestly say that, though he _has_ set my advice at defiance.
+And I’m more sorry still,” he continued, softening again as his mind
+reverted to his interview with Neelie under the trees of the park--“I’m
+more sorry still for another person who shall be nameless. But what have
+I to do with all this? And what on earth is the matter with you?” he
+resumed, noticing for the first time the abject misery in Mr. Bashwood’s
+manner, the blank despair in Mr. Bashwood’s face, which his answer
+had produced. “Are you ill? Is there something behind the curtain
+that you’re afraid to bring out? I don’t understand it. Have you come
+here--here in my private room, in business hours--with nothing to tell
+me but that young Armadale has been fool enough to ruin his prospects
+for life? Why, I foresaw it all weeks since, and what is more, I as
+good as told him so at the last conversation I had with him in the great
+house.”
+
+At those last words, Mr. Bashwood suddenly rallied. The lawyer’s passing
+reference to the great house had led him back in a moment to the purpose
+that he had in view.
+
+“That’s it, sir!” he said, eagerly; “that’s what I wanted to speak to
+you about; that’s what I’ve been preparing in my mind. Mr. Pedgift, sir,
+the last time you were at the great house, when you came away in your
+gig, you--you overtook me on the drive.”
+
+“I dare say I did,” remarked Pedgift, resignedly. “My mare happens to be
+a trifle quicker on her legs than you are on yours, Bashwood. Go on, go
+on. We shall come in time, I suppose, to what you are driving at.”
+
+“You stopped, and spoke to me, sir,” proceeded Mr. Bashwood, advancing
+more and more eagerly to his end. “You said you suspected me of feeling
+some curiosity about Miss Gwilt, and you told me (I remember the exact
+words, sir)--you told me to gratify my curiosity by all means, for you
+didn’t object to it.”
+
+Pedgift Senior began for the first time to look interested in hearing
+more.
+
+“I remember something of the sort,” he replied; “and I also remember
+thinking it rather remarkable that you should _happen_--we won’t put
+it in any more offensive way--to be exactly under Mr. Armadale’s open
+window while I was talking to him. It might have been accident, of
+course; but it looked rather more like curiosity. I could only judge by
+appearances,” concluded Pedgift, pointing his sarcasm with a pinch of
+snuff; “and appearances, Bashwood, were decidedly against you.”
+
+“I don’t deny it, sir. I only mentioned the circumstance because I
+wished to acknowledge that I _was_ curious, and _am_ curious about Miss
+Gwilt.”
+
+“Why?” asked Pedgift Senior, seeing something under the surface in Mr.
+Bashwood’s face and manner, but utterly in the dark thus far as to what
+that something might be.
+
+There was silence for a moment. The moment passed, Mr. Bashwood took
+the refuge usually taken by nervous, unready men, placed in his
+circumstances, when they are at a loss for an answer. He simply
+reiterated the assertion that he had just made. “I feel some curiosity
+sir,” he said, with a strange mixture of doggedness and timidity, “about
+Miss Gwilt.”
+
+There was another moment of silence. In spite of his practiced acuteness
+and knowledge of the world, the lawyer was more puzzled than ever. The
+case of Mr. Bashwood presented the one human riddle of all others which
+he was least qualified to solve. Though year after year witnesses in
+thousands and thousands of cases, the remorseless disinheriting of
+nearest and dearest relations, the unnatural breaking-up of sacred
+family ties, the deplorable severance of old and firm friendships, due
+entirely to the intense self-absorption which the sexual passion can
+produce when it enters the heart of an old man, the association of love
+with infirmity and gray hairs arouses, nevertheless, all the world over,
+no other idea than the idea of extravagant improbability or extravagant
+absurdity in the general mind. If the interview now taking place in Mr.
+Pedgift’s consulting-room had taken place at his dinner-table instead,
+when wine had opened his mind to humorous influences, it is possible
+that he might, by this time, have suspected the truth. But, in his
+business hours, Pedgift Senior was in the habit of investigating men’s
+motives seriously from the business point of view; and he was on
+that very account simply incapable of conceiving any improbability so
+startling, any absurdity so enormous, as the absurdity and improbability
+of Mr. Bashwood’s being in love.
+
+Some men in the lawyer’s position would have tried to force their way to
+enlightenment by obstinately repeating the unanswered question. Pedgift
+Senior wisely postponed the question until he had moved the conversation
+on another step. “Well,” he resumed, “let us say you feel a curiosity
+about Miss Gwilt. What next?”
+
+The palms of Mr. Bashwood’s hands began to moisten under the influence
+of his agitation, as they had moistened in the past days when he had
+told the story of his domestic sorrows to Midwinter at the great house.
+Once more he rolled his handkerchief into a ball, and dabbed it softly
+to and fro from one hand to the other.
+
+“May I ask if I am right, sir,” he began, “in believing that you have
+a very unfavorable opinion of Miss Gwilt? You are quite convinced, I
+think--”
+
+“My good fellow,” interrupted Pedgift Senior, “why need you be in any
+doubt about it? You were under Mr. Armadale’s open window all the while
+I was talking to him; and your ears, I presume, were not absolutely
+shut.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood showed no sense of the interruption. The little sting of
+the lawyer’s sarcasm was lost in the nobler pain that wrung him from the
+wound inflicted by Miss Gwilt.
+
+“You are quite convinced, I think, sir,” he resumed, “that there
+are circumstances in this lady’s past life which would be highly
+discreditable to her if they were discovered at the present time?”
+
+“The window was open at the great house, Bashwood; and your ears, I
+presume, were not absolutely shut.”
+
+Still impenetrable to the sting, Mr. Bashwood persisted more obstinately
+than ever.
+
+“Unless I am greatly mistaken,” he said, “your long experience in such
+things has even suggested to you, sir, that Miss Gwilt might turn out to
+be known to the police?”
+
+Pedgift Senior’s patience gave way. “You have been over ten minutes in
+this room,” he broke out. “Can you, or can you not, tell me in plain
+English what you want?”
+
+In plain English--with the passion that had transformed him, the passion
+which (in Miss Gwilt’s own words) had made a man of him, burning in his
+haggard cheeks--Mr. Bashwood met the challenge, and faced the lawyer
+(as, the worried sheep faces the dog) on his own ground.
+
+“I wish to say, sir,” he answered, “that your opinion in this matter is
+my opinion too. I believe there is something wrong in Miss Gwilt’s past
+life which she keeps concealed from everybody, and I want to be the man
+who knows it.”
+
+Pedgift Senior saw his chance, and instantly reverted to the question
+that he had postponed. “Why?” he asked for the second time.
+
+For the second time Mr. Bashwood hesitated.
+
+Could he acknowledge that he had been mad enough to love her, and mean
+enough to be a spy for her? Could he say, She has deceived me from the
+first, and she has deserted me, now her object is served. After robbing
+me of my happiness, robbing me of my honor, robbing me of my last hope
+left in life, she has gone from me forever, and left me nothing but my
+old man’s longing, slow and sly, and strong and changeless, for revenge.
+Revenge that I may have, if I can poison her success by dragging her
+frailties into the public view. Revenge that I will buy (for what is
+gold or what is life to me?) with the last farthing of my hoarded money
+and the last drop of my stagnant blood. Could he say that to the man
+who sat waiting for his answer? No; he could only crush it down and be
+silent.
+
+The lawyer’s expression began to harden once more.
+
+“One of us must speak out,” he said; “and as you evidently won’t, I
+will. I can only account for this extraordinary anxiety of yours to make
+yourself acquainted with Miss Gwilt’s secrets, in one of two ways. Your
+motive is either an excessively mean one (no offense, Bashwood, I
+am only putting the case), or an excessively generous one. After my
+experience of your honest character and your creditable conduct, it is
+only your due that I should absolve you at once of the mean motive. I
+believe you are as incapable as I am--I can say no more--of turning
+to mercenary account any discoveries you might make to Miss Gwilt’s
+prejudice in Miss Gwilt’s past life. Shall I go on any further? or would
+you prefer, on second thoughts, opening your mind frankly to me of your
+own accord?”
+
+“I should prefer not interrupting you, sir,” said Mr. Bashwood.
+
+“As you please,” pursued Pedgift Senior. “Having absolved you of the
+mean motive, I come to the generous motive next. It is possible that you
+are an unusually grateful man; and it is certain that Mr. Armadale has
+been remarkably kind to you. After employing you under Mr. Midwinter, in
+the steward’s office, he has had confidence enough in your honesty and
+your capacity, now his friend has left him, to put his business entirely
+and unreservedly in your hands. It’s not in my experience of human
+nature--but it may be possible, nevertheless--that you are so
+gratefully sensible of that confidence, and so gratefully interested
+in your employer’s welfare, that you can’t see him, in his friendless
+position, going straight to his own disgrace and ruin, without making
+an effort to save him. To put it in two words. Is it your idea that Mr.
+Armadale might be prevented from marrying Miss Gwilt, if he could be
+informed in time of her real character? And do you wish to be the man
+who opens his eyes to the truth? If that is the case--”
+
+He stopped in astonishment. Acting under some uncontrollable impulse,
+Mr. Bashwood had started to his feet. He stood, with his withered face
+lit up by a sudden irradiation from within, which made him look younger
+than his age by a good twenty years--he stood, gasping for breath enough
+to speak, and gesticulated entreatingly at the lawyer with both hands.
+
+“Say it again, sir!” he burst out, eagerly, recovering his breath before
+Pedgift Senior had recovered his surprise. “The question about Mr.
+Armadale, sir!--only once more!--only once more, Mr. Pedgift, please!”
+
+With his practiced observation closely and distrustfully at work on Mr.
+Bashwood’ s face, Pedgift Senior motioned to him to sit down again, and
+put the question for the second time.
+
+“Do I think,” said Mr. Bashwood, repeating the sense, but not the words
+of the question, “that Mr. Armadale might be parted from Miss Gwilt, if
+she could be shown to him as she really is? Yes, sir! And do I wish to
+be the man who does it? Yes, sir! yes, sir!! yes, sir!!!”
+
+“It’s rather strange,” remarked the lawyer, looking at him more and more
+distrustfully, “that you should be so violently agitated, simply because
+my question happens to have hit the mark.”
+
+The question happened to have hit a mark which Pedgift little dreamed
+of. It had released Mr. Bashwood’s mind in an instant from the dead
+pressure of his one dominant idea of revenge, and had shown him a
+purpose to be achieved by the discovery of Miss Gwilt’s secrets which
+had never occurred to him till that moment. The marriage which he had
+blindly regarded as inevitable was a marriage that might be stopped--not
+in Allan’s interests, but in his own--and the woman whom he believed
+that he had lost might yet, in spite of circumstances, be a woman won!
+His brain whirled as he thought of it. His own roused resolution almost
+daunted him, by its terrible incongruity with all the familiar habits of
+his mind, and all the customary proceedings of his life.
+
+Finding his last remark unanswered, Pedgift Senior considered a little
+before he said anything more.
+
+“One thing is clear,” reasoned the lawyer with himself. “His true motive
+in this matter is a motive which he is afraid to avow. My question
+evidently offered him a chance of misleading me, and he has accepted it
+on the spot. That’s enough for _me_. If I was Mr. Armadale’s lawyer, the
+mystery might be worth investigating. As things are, it’s no interest
+of mine to hunt Mr. Bashwood from one lie to another till I run him to
+earth at last. I have nothing whatever to do with it; and I shall leave
+him free to follow his own roundabout courses, in his own roundabout
+way.” Having arrived at that conclusion, Pedgift Senior pushed back his
+chair, and rose briskly to terminate the interview.
+
+“Don’t be alarmed, Bashwood,” he began. “The subject of our conversation
+is a subject exhausted, so far as I am concerned. I have only a few
+last words to say, and it’s a habit of mine, as you know, to say my last
+words on my legs. Whatever else I may be in the dark about, I have made
+one discovery, at any rate. I have found out what you really want with
+me--at last! You want me to help you.”
+
+“If you would be so very, very kind, sir!” stammered Mr. Bashwood. “If
+you would only give me the great advantage of your opinion and advice.”
+
+“Wait a bit, Bashwood. We will separate those two things, if you please.
+A lawyer may offer an opinion like any other man; but when a lawyer
+gives his advice--by the Lord Harry, sir, it’s Professional! You’re
+welcome to my opinion in this matter; I have disguised it from nobody.
+I believe there have been events in Miss Gwilt’s career which (if they
+could be discovered) would even make Mr. Armadale, infatuated as he is,
+afraid to marry her--supposing, of course, that he really _is_ going to
+marry her; for, though the appearances are in favor of it so far, it is
+only an assumption, after all. As to the mode of proceeding by which the
+blots on this woman’s character might or might not be brought to
+light in time--she may be married by license in a fortnight if she
+likes--_that_ is a branch of the question on which I positively decline
+to enter. It implies speaking in my character as a lawyer, and giving
+you, what I decline positively to give you, my professional advice.”
+
+“Oh, sir, don’t say that!” pleaded Mr. Bashwood. “Don’t deny me the
+great favor, the inestimable advantage of your advice! I have such a
+poor head, Mr. Pedgift! I am so old and so slow, sir, and I get so sadly
+startled and worried when I’m thrown out of my ordinary ways. It’s quite
+natural you should be a little impatient with me for taking up your
+time--I know that time is money, to a clever man like you. Would you
+excuse me--would you please excuse me, if I venture to say that I have
+saved a little something, a few pounds, sir; and being quite lonely,
+with nobody dependent on me, I’m sure I may spend my savings as I
+please?” Blind to every consideration but the one consideration of
+propitiating Mr. Pedgift, he took out a dingy, ragged old pocket-book,
+and tried, with trembling fingers, to open it on the lawyer’s table.
+
+“Put your pocket-book back directly,” said Pedgift Senior. “Richer men
+than you have tried that argument with me, and have found that there is
+such a thing (off the stage) as a lawyer who is not to be bribed. I will
+have nothing to do with the case, under existing circumstances. If
+you want to know why, I beg to inform you that Miss Gwilt ceased to
+be professionally interesting to me on the day when I ceased to be Mr.
+Armadale’s lawyer. I may have other reasons besides, which I don’t think
+it necessary to mention. The reason already given is explicit enough.
+Go your own way, and take your responsibility on your own shoulders.
+You _may_ venture within reach of Miss Gwilt’s claws and come out again
+without being scratched. Time will show. In the meanwhile, I wish you
+good-morning--and I own, to my shame, that I never knew till to-day what
+a hero you were.”
+
+This time, Mr. Bashwood felt the sting. Without another word of
+expostulation or entreaty, without even saying “Good-morning” on his
+side, he walked to the door, opened it, softly, and left the room.
+
+The parting look in his face, and the sudden silence that had fallen on
+him, were not lost on Pedgift Senior. “Bashwood will end badly,” said
+the lawyer, shuffling his papers, and returning impenetrably to his
+interrupted work.
+
+The change in Mr. Bashwood’s face and manner to something dogged and
+self-contained was so startlingly uncharacteristic of him, that it
+even forced itself on the notice of Pedgift Junior and the clerks as he
+passed through the outer office. Accustomed to make the old man their
+butt, they took a boisterously comic view of the marked alteration in
+him. Deaf to the merciless raillery with which he was assailed on all
+sides, he stopped opposite young Pedgift, and, looking him attentively
+in the face, said, in a quiet, absent manner, like a man thinking aloud,
+“I wonder whether _you_ would help me?”
+
+“Open an account instantly,” said Pedgift Junior to the clerks, “in the
+name of Mr. Bashwood. Place a chair for Mr. Bashwood, with a footstool
+close by, in case he wants it. Supply me with a quire of extra
+double-wove satin paper, and a gross of picked quills, to take notes of
+Mr. Bashwood’s case; and inform my father instantly that I am going
+to leave him and set up in business for myself, on the strength of Mr.
+Bashwood’s patronage. Take a seat, sir, pray take a seat, and express
+your feelings freely.”
+
+Still impenetrably deaf to the raillery of which he was the object, Mr.
+Bashwood waited until Pedgift Junior had exhausted himself, and then
+turned quietly away.
+
+“I ought to have known better,” he said, in the same absent manner as
+before. “He is his father’s son all over--he would make game of me on
+my death-bed.” He paused a moment at the door, mechanically brushing his
+hat with his hand, and went out into the street.
+
+The bright sunshine dazzled his eyes, the passing vehicles and
+foot-passengers startled and bewildered him. He shrank into a by-street,
+and put his hand over his eyes. “I’d better go home,” he thought, “and
+shut myself up, and think about it in my own room.”
+
+His lodging was in a small house, in the poor quarter of the town. He
+let himself in with his key, and stole softly upstairs. The one little
+room he possessed met him cruelly, look round it where he might, with
+silent memorials of Miss Gwilt. On the chimney-piece were the flowers
+she had given him at various times, all withered long since, and all
+preserved on a little china pedestal, protected by a glass shade. On the
+wall hung a wretched colored print of a woman, which he had caused to be
+nicely framed and glazed, because there was a look in it that reminded
+him of her face. In his clumsy old mahogany writing-desk were the few
+letters, brief and peremptory, which she had written to him at the time
+when he was watching and listening meanly at Thorpe Ambrose to please
+_her_. And when, turning his back on these, he sat down wearily on his
+sofa-bedstead--there, hanging over one end of it, was the gaudy cravat
+of blue satin, which he had bought because she had told him she liked
+bright colors, and which he had never yet had the courage to wear,
+though he had taken it out morning after morning with the resolution to
+put it on! Habitually quiet in his actions, habitually restrained in
+his language, he now seized the cravat as if it was a living thing that
+could feel, and flung it to the other end of the room with an oath.
+
+The time passed; and still, though his resolution to stand between Miss
+Gwilt and her marriage remained unbroken, he was as far as ever from
+discovering the means which might lead him to his end. The more he
+thought and thought of it, the darker and the darker his course in the
+future looked to him.
+
+He rose again, as wearily as he had sat down, and went to his cupboard.
+“I’m feverish and thirsty,” he said; “a cup of tea may help me.” He
+opened his canister, and measured out his small allowance of tea, less
+carefully than usual. “Even my own hands won’t serve me to-day!” he
+thought, as he scraped together the few grains of tea that he had
+spilled, and put them carefully back in the canister.
+
+In that fine summer weather, the one fire in the house was the kitchen
+fire. He went downstairs for the boiling water, with his teapot in his
+hand.
+
+Nobody but the landlady was in the kitchen. She was one of the many
+English matrons whose path through this world is a path of thorns; and
+who take a dismal pleasure, whenever the opportunity is afforded them,
+in inspecting the scratched and bleeding feet of other people in a like
+condition with themselves. Her one vice was of the lighter sort--the
+vice of curiosity; and among the many counterbalancing virtues she
+possessed was the virtue of greatly respecting Mr. Bashwood, as a lodger
+whose rent was regularly paid, and whose ways were always quiet and
+civil from one year’s end to another.
+
+“What did you please to want, sir?” asked the landlady. “Boiling water,
+is it? Did you ever know the water boil, Mr. Bashwood, when you wanted
+it? Did you ever see a sulkier fire than that? I’ll put a stick or two
+in, if you’ll wait a little, and give me the chance. Dear, dear me,
+you’ll excuse my mentioning it, sir, but how poorly you do look to-day!”
+
+The strain on Mr. Bashwood’s mind was beginning to tell. Something of
+the helplessness which he had shown at the station appeared again in his
+face and manner as he put his teapot on the kitchen table and sat down.
+
+“I’m in trouble, ma’am,” he said, quietly; “and I find trouble gets
+harder to bear than it used to be.”
+
+“Ah, you may well say that!” groaned the landlady. “_I’m_ ready for the
+undertaker, Mr. Bashwood, when _my_ time comes, whatever you may be.
+You’re too lonely, sir. When you’re in trouble, it’s some help--though
+not much--to shift a share of it off on another person’s shoulders. If
+your good lady had only been alive now, sir, what a comfort you would
+have found her, wouldn’t you?”
+
+A momentary spasm of pain passed across Mr. Bashwood’s face. The
+landlady had ignorantly recalled him to the misfortunes of his married
+life. He had been long since forced to quiet her curiosity about his
+family affairs by telling her that he was a widower, and that his
+domestic circumstances had not been happy ones; but he had taken her
+no further into his confidence than this. The sad story which he had
+related to Midwinter, of his drunken wife who had ended her miserable
+life in a lunatic asylum, was a story which he had shrunk from confiding
+to the talkative woman, who would have confided it in her turn to every
+one else in the house.
+
+“What I always say to my husband when he’s low, sir,” pursued the
+landlady, intent on the kettle, “is, ‘What would you do _now_, Sam,
+without me?’ When his temper don’t get the better of him (it will boil
+directly, Mr. Bashwood), he says, ‘Elizabeth, I could do nothing.’
+When his temper does get the better of him, he says, ‘I should try the
+public-house, missus; and I’ll try it now.’ Ah, I’ve got _my_ troubles!
+A man with grown-up sons and daughters tippling in a public-house! I
+don’t call to mind, Mr. Bashwood, whether _you_ ever had any sons and
+daughters? And yet, now I think of it, I seem to fancy you said yes, you
+had. Daughters, sir, weren’t they? and, ah, dear! dear! to be sure! all
+dead.”
+
+“I had one daughter, ma’am,” said Mr. Bashwood, patiently--“only one,
+who died before she was a year old.”
+
+“Only one!” repeated the sympathizing landlady. “It’s as near boiling
+as it ever will be, sir; give me the tea-pot. Only one! Ah, it comes
+heavier (don’t it?) when it’s an only child? You said it was an only
+child, I think, didn’t you, sir?”
+
+For a moment, Mr. Bashwood looked at the woman with vacant eyes, and
+without attempting to answer her. After ignorantly recalling the memory
+of the wife who had disgraced him, she was now, as ignorantly, forcing
+him back on the miserable remembrance of the son who had ruined and
+deserted him. For the first time, since he had told his story to
+Midwinter, at their introductory interview in the great house, his mind
+reverted once more to the bitter disappointment and disaster of the
+past. Again he thought of the bygone days, when he had become security
+for his son, and when that son’s dishonesty had forced him to sell
+everything he possessed to pay the forfeit that was exacted when the
+forfeit was due. “I have a son, ma’am,” he said, becoming conscious that
+the landlady was looking at him in mute and melancholy surprise. “I did
+my best to help him forward in the world, and he has behaved very badly
+to me.”
+
+“Did he, now?” rejoined the landlady, with an appearance of the greatest
+interest. “Behaved badly to you--almost broke your heart, didn’t he? Ah,
+it will come home to him, sooner or later. Don’t you fear! ‘Honor your
+father and mother,’ wasn’t put on Moses’s tables of stone for nothing,
+Mr. Bashwood. Where may he be, and what is he doing now, sir?”
+
+The question was in effect almost the same as the question which
+Midwinter had put when the circumstances had been described to him. As
+Mr. Bashwood had answered it on the former occasion, so (in nearly the
+same words) he answered it now.
+
+“My son is in London, ma’am, for all I know to the contrary. He was
+employed, when I last heard of him, in no very creditable way, at the
+Private Inquiry Office--”
+
+At those words he suddenly checked himself. His face flushed, his eyes
+brightened; he pushed away the cup which had just been filled for him,
+and rose from his seat. The landlady started back a step. There was
+something in her lodger’s face that she had never seen in it before.
+
+“I hope I’ve not offended you, sir,” said the woman, recovering her
+self-possession, and looking a little too ready to take offense on her
+side, at a moment’s notice.
+
+“Far from it, ma’am, far from it!” he rejoined, in a strangely
+eager, hurried way. “I have just remembered something--something very
+important. I must go upstairs--it’s a letter, a letter, a letter. I’ll
+come back to my tea, ma’am. I beg your pardon, I’m much obliged to you,
+you’ve been very kind--I’ll say good-by, if you’ll allow me, for the
+present.” To the landlady’s amazement, he cordially shook hands with
+her, and made for the door, leaving tea and tea-pot to take care of
+themselves.
+
+The moment he reached his own room, he locked himself in. For a little
+while he stood holding by the chimney-piece, waiting to recover his
+breath. The moment he could move again, he opened his writing-desk on
+the table. “That for you, Mr. Pedgift and Son!” he said, with a snap of
+his fingers as he sat down. “I’ve got a son too!”
+
+There was a knock at the door--a knock, soft, considerate, and
+confidential. The anxious landlady wished to know whether Mr. Bashwood
+was ill, and begged to intimate for the second time that she earnestly
+trusted she had given him no offense.
+
+“No! no!” he called through the door. “I’m quite well--I’m writing,
+ma’am, I’m writing--please to excuse me. She’s a good woman; she’s an
+excellent woman,” he thought, when the landlady had retired. “I’ll make
+her a little present. My mind’s so unsettled, I might never have thought
+of it but for her. Oh, if my boy is at the office still! Oh, if I can
+only write a letter that will make him pity me!”
+
+He took up his pen, and sat thinking anxiously, thinking long, before he
+touched the paper. Slowly, with many patient pauses to think and think
+again, and with more than ordinary care to make his writing legible, he
+traced these lines:
+
+
+“MY DEAR JAMES--You will be surprised, I am afraid, to see my
+handwriting. Pray don’t suppose I am going to ask you for money, or to
+reproach you for having sold me out of house and home when you forfeited
+your security, and I had to pay. I am willing and anxious to let
+by-gones be by-gones, and to forget the past.
+
+“It is in your power (if you are still at the Private Inquiry Office) to
+do me a great service. I am in sore anxiety and trouble on the subject
+of a person in whom I am interested. The person is a lady. Please don’t
+make game of me for confessing this, if you can help it. If you knew
+what I am now suffering, I think you would be more inclined to pity than
+to make game of me.
+
+“I would enter into particulars, only I know your quick temper, and I
+fear exhausting your patience. Perhaps it may be enough to say that
+I have reason to believe the lady’s past life has not been a very
+creditable one, and that I am interested--more interested than words can
+tell--in finding out what her life has really been, and in making the
+discovery within a fortnight from the present time.
+
+“Though I know very little about the ways of business in an office like
+yours, I can understand that, without first having the lady’s present
+address, nothing can be done to help me. Unfortunately, I am not yet
+acquainted with her present address. I only know that she went to town
+to-day, accompanied by a gentleman, in whose employment I now am, and
+who (as I believe) will be likely to write to me for money before many
+days more are over his head.
+
+“Is this circumstance of a nature to help us? I venture to say ‘us,’
+because I count already, my dear boy, on your kind assistance and
+advice. Don’t let money stand between us; I have saved a little
+something, and it is all freely at your disposal. Pray, pray write to
+me by return of post! If you will only try your best to end the dreadful
+suspense under which I am now suffering, you will atone for all the
+grief and disappointment you caused me in times that are past, and you
+will confer an obligation that he will never forget on
+
+“Your affectionate father,
+
+“FELIX BASHWOOD.”
+
+
+After waiting a little, to dry his eyes, Mr. Bashwood added the date
+and address, and directed the letter to his son, at “The Private Inquiry
+Office, Shadyside Place, London.” That done, he went out at once, and
+posted his letter with his own hands. It was then Monday; and, if the
+answer was sent by return of post, the answer would be received on
+Wednesday morning.
+
+The interval day, the Tuesday, was passed by Mr. Bashwood in the
+steward’s office at the great house. He had a double motive for
+absorbing himself as deeply as might be in the various occupations
+connected with the management of the estate. In the first place,
+employment helped him to control the devouring impatience with which
+he looked for the coming of the next day. In the second place, the more
+forward he was with the business of the office, the more free he would
+be to join his son in London, without attracting suspicion to himself by
+openly neglecting the interests placed under his charge.
+
+Toward the Tuesday afternoon, vague rumors of something wrong at
+the cottage found their way (through Major Milroy’s servants) to the
+servants at the great house, and attempted ineffectually through this
+latter channel to engage the attention of Mr. Bashwood, impenetrably
+fixed on other things. The major and Miss Neelie had been shut up
+together in mysterious conference; and Miss Neelie’s appearance after
+the close of the interview plainly showed that she had been crying. This
+had happened on the Monday afternoon; and on the next day (that present
+Tuesday) the major had startled the household by announcing briefly
+that his daughter wanted a change to the air of the seaside, and that
+he proposed taking her himself, by the next train, to Lowestoft. The
+two had gone away together, both very serious and silent, but both,
+apparently, very good friends, for all that. Opinions at the great
+house attributed this domestic revolution to the reports current on the
+subject of Allan and Miss Gwilt. Opinions at the cottage rejected
+that solution of the difficulty, on practical grounds. Miss Neelie had
+remained inaccessibly shut up in her own room, from the Monday afternoon
+to the Tuesday morning when her father took her away. The major, during
+the same interval, had not been outside the door, and had spoken to
+nobody And Mrs. Milroy, at the first attempt of her new attendant
+to inform her of the prevailing scandal in the town, had sealed the
+servant’s lips by flying into one of her terrible passions the instant
+Miss Gwilt’s name was mentioned. Something must have happened, of
+course, to take Major Milroy and his daughter so suddenly from home; but
+that something was certainly not Mr. Armadale’s scandalous elopement, in
+broad daylight, with Miss Gwilt.
+
+The afternoon passed, and the evening passed, and no other event
+happened but the purely private and personal event which had taken place
+at the cottage. Nothing occurred (for nothing in the nature of things
+_could_ occur) to dissipate the delusion on which Miss Gwilt had
+counted--the delusion which all Thorpe Ambrose now shared with Mr.
+Bashwood, that she had gone privately to London with Allan in the
+character of Allan’s future wife.
+
+On the Wednesday morning, the postman, entering the street in which Mr.
+Bashwood lived, was encountered by Mr. Bashwood himself, so eager to
+know if there was a letter for him that he had come out without his hat.
+There _was_ a letter for him--the letter that he longed for from his
+vagabond son.
+
+These were the terms in which Bashwood the younger answered his father’s
+supplication for help--after having previously ruined his father’s
+prospects for life:
+
+
+“Shadyside Place. Tuesday, July 29th.
+
+“MY DEAR DAD--We have some little practice in dealing with mysteries at
+this office; but the mystery of your letter beats me altogether. Are you
+speculating on the interesting hidden frailties of some charming woman?
+Or, after _your_ experience of matrimony, are you actually going to give
+me a stepmother at this time of day? Whichever it is, upon my life your
+letter interests me.
+
+“I am not joking, mind--though the temptation is not an easy one to
+resist. On the contrary, I have given you a quarter of an hour of my
+valuable time already. The place you date from sounded somehow familiar
+to me. I referred back to the memorandum book, and found that I was sent
+down to Thorpe Ambrose to make private inquiries not very long since.
+My employer was a lively old lady, who was too sly to give us her right
+name and address. As a matter of course, we set to work at once, and
+found out who she was. Her name is Mrs. Oldershaw; and, if you think of
+_her_ for my stepmother, I strongly recommend you to think again before
+you make her Mrs. Bashwood.
+
+“If it is not Mrs. Oldershaw, then all I can do, so far, is to tell you
+how you may find out the unknown lady’s address. Come to town yourself
+as soon as you get the letter you expect from the gentleman who has gone
+away with her (I hope he is not a handsome young man, for your sake)
+and call here. I will send somebody to help you in watching his hotel
+or lodgings; and if he communicates with the lady, or the lady with him,
+you may consider her address discovered from that moment. Once let me
+identify her, and know where she is, and you shall see all her
+charming little secrets as plainly as you see the paper on which your
+affectionate son is now writing to you.
+
+“A word more about the terms. I am as willing as you are to be friends
+again; but, though I own you were out of pocket by me once, I can’t
+afford to be out of pocket by you. It must be understood that you are
+answerable for all the expenses of the inquiry. We may have to employ
+some of the women attached to this office, if your lady is too wideawake
+or too nice-looking to be dealt with by a man. There will be cab hire,
+and postage-stamps--admissions to public amusements, if she is inclined
+that way--shillings for pew-openers, if she is serious, and takes
+our people into churches to hear popular preachers, and so on. My own
+professional services you shall have gratis; but I can’t lose by you as
+well. Only remember that, and you shall have your way. By-gones shall be
+by-gones, and we will forget the past.
+
+“Your affectionate son,
+
+“JAMES BASHWOOD.”
+
+
+In the ecstasy of seeing help placed at last within his reach, the
+father put his son’s atrocious letter to his lips. “My good boy!” he
+murmured, tenderly--“my dear, good boy!”
+
+He put the letter down, and fell into a new train of thought. The next
+question to face was the serious question of time. Mr. Pedgift had told
+him Miss Gwilt might be married in a fortnight. One day of the
+fourteen had passed already, and another was passing. He beat his hand
+impatiently on the table at his side, wondering how soon the want of
+money would force Allan to write to him from London. “To-morrow?” he
+asked himself. “Or next day?”
+
+The morrow passed, and nothing happened. The next day came, and the
+letter arrived! It was on business, as he had anticipated; it asked
+for money, as he had anticipated; and there, at the end of it, in a
+postscript, was the address added, concluding with the words, “You may
+count on my staying here till further notice.”
+
+He gave one deep gasp of relief, and instantly busied himself--though
+there were nearly two hours to spare before the train started for
+London--in packing his bag. The last thing he put in was his blue satin
+cravat. “She likes bright colors,” he said, “and she may see me in it
+yet!”
+
+
+
+
+XIV. MISS GWILT’S DIARY.
+
+“All Saints’ Terrace, New Road, London, July 28th, Monday night.--I can
+hardly hold my head up, I am so tired. But in my situation, I dare not
+trust anything to memory. Before I go to bed, I must write my customary
+record of the events of the day.
+
+“So far, the turn of luck in my favor (it was long enough before it
+took the turn!) seems likely to continue. I succeeded in forcing
+Armadale--the brute required nothing short of forcing!--to leave Thorpe
+Ambrose for London, alone in the same carriage with me, before all the
+people in the station. There was a full attendance of dealers in small
+scandal, all staring hard at us, and all evidently drawing their own
+conclusions. Either I knew nothing of Thorpe Ambrose--or the town gossip
+is busy enough by this time with Mr. Armadale and Miss Gwilt.
+
+“I had some difficulty with him for the first half-hour after we left
+the station. The guard (delightful man! I felt so grateful to him!) had
+shut us up together, in expectation of half a crown at the end of the
+journey. Armadale was suspicious of me, and he showed it plainly. Little
+by little I tamed my wild beast--partly by taking care to display no
+curiosity about his journey to town, and partly by interesting him
+on the subject of his friend Midwinter; dwelling especially on the
+opportunity that now offered itself for a reconciliation between them.
+I kept harping on this string till I set his tongue going, and made
+him amuse me as a gentleman is bound to do when he has the honor of
+escorting a lady on a long railway journey.
+
+“What little mind he has was full, of course, of his own affairs and
+Miss Milroy’s. No words can express the clumsiness he showed in
+trying to talk about himself, without taking me into his confidence or
+mentioning Miss Milroy’s name.
+
+“He was going to London, he gravely informed me, on a matter of
+indescribable interest to him. It was a secret for the present, but he
+hoped to tell it me soon; it had made a great difference already in the
+way in which he looked at the slanders spoken of him in Thorpe Ambrose;
+he was too happy to care what the scandal-mongers said of him now, and
+he should soon stop their mouths by appearing in a new character that
+would surprise them all. So he blundered on, with the firm persuasion
+that he was keeping me quite in the dark. It was hard not to laugh, when
+I thought of my anonymous letter on its way to the major; but I managed
+to control myself--though, I must own, with some difficulty. As the
+time wore on, I began to feel a terrible excitement; the position was, I
+think, a little too much for me. There I was, alone with him, talking in
+the most innocent, easy, familiar manner, and having it in my mind all
+the time to brush his life out of my way, when the moment comes, as I
+might brush a stain off my gown. It made my blood leap, and my cheeks
+flush. I caught myself laughing once or twice much louder than I ought;
+and long before we got to London I thought it desirable to put my face
+in hiding by pulling down my veil.
+
+“There was no difficulty, on reaching the terminus, in getting him to
+come in the cab with me to the hotel where Midwinter is staying. He was
+all eagerness to be reconciled with his dear friend--principally, I have
+no doubt, because he wants the dear friend to lend a helping hand to the
+elopement. The real difficulty lay, of course, with Midwinter. My sudden
+journey to London had allowed me no opportunity of writing to combat his
+superstitious conviction that he and his former friend are better apart.
+I thought it wise to leave Armadale in the cab at the door, and to go
+into the hotel by myself to pave the way for him.
+
+“Fortunately, Midwinter had not gone out. His delight at seeing me some
+days sooner than he had hoped had something infectious in it, I suppose.
+Pooh! I may own the truth to my own diary! There was a moment when _I_
+forgot everything in the world but our two selves as completely as he
+did. I felt as if I was back in my teens--until I remembered the lout in
+the cab at the door. And then I was five-and-thirty again in an instant.
+
+“His face altered when he heard who was below, and what it was I wanted
+of him; he looked not angry, but distressed. He yielded, however, before
+long, not to my reasons, for I gave him none, but to my entreaties.
+His old fondness for his friend might possibly have had some share in
+persuading him against his will; but my own opinion is that he acted
+entirely under the influence of his fondness for Me.
+
+“I waited in the sitting-room while he went down to the door; so I
+knew nothing of what passed between them when they first saw each other
+again. But oh, the difference between the two men when the interval had
+passed, and they came upstairs together and joined me.
+
+“They were both agitated, but in such different ways! The hateful
+Armadale, so loud and red and clumsy; the dear, lovable Midwinter, so
+pale and quiet, with such a gentleness in his voice when he spoke, and
+such tenderness in his eyes every time they turned my way. Armadale
+overlooked me as completely as if I had not been in the room. _He_
+referred to me over and over again in the conversation; _he_ constantly
+looked at me to see what I thought, while I sat in my corner silently
+watching them; _he_ wanted to go with me and see me safe to my lodgings,
+and spare me all trouble with the cabman and the luggage. When I thanked
+him and declined, Armadale looked unaffectedly relieved at the prospect
+of seeing my back turned, and of having his friend all to himself.
+I left him, with his awkward elbows half over the table, scrawling a
+letter (no doubt to Miss Milroy), and shouting to the waiter that he
+wanted a bed at the hotel. I had calculated on his staying, as a matter
+of course, where he found his friend staying. It was pleasant to find my
+anticipations realized, and to know that I have as good as got him now
+under my own eye.
+
+“After promising to let Midwinter know where he could see me to-morrow,
+I went away in the cab to hunt for lodgings by myself.
+
+“With some difficulty I have succeeded in getting an endurable
+sitting-room and bedroom in this house, where the people are perfect
+strangers to me. Having paid a week’s rent in advance (for I naturally
+preferred dispensing with a reference), I find myself with exactly
+three shillings and ninepence left in my purse. It is impossible to ask
+Midwinter for money, after he has already paid Mrs. Oldershaw’s note
+of hand. I must borrow something to-morrow on my watch and chain at the
+pawnbroker’s. Enough to keep me going for a fortnight is all, and
+more than all, that I want. In that time, or in less than that time,
+Midwinter will have married me.”
+
+
+“July 29th.--Two o’clock.--Early in the morning I sent a line to
+Midwinter, telling him that he would find me here at three this
+afternoon. That done, I devoted the morning to two errands of my own.
+One is hardly worth mentioning--it was only to raise money on my watch
+and chain. I got more than I expected; and more (even supposing I buy
+myself one or two little things in the way of cheap summer dress) than I
+am at all likely to spend before the wedding-day.
+
+“The other errand was of a far more serious kind. It led me into an
+attorney’s office.
+
+“I was well aware last night (though I was too weary to put it down in
+my diary), that I could not possibly see Midwinter this morning--in the
+position he now occupies toward me--without at least _appearing_ to take
+him into my confidence on the subject of myself and my circumstances.
+Excepting one necessary consideration which I must be careful not
+to overlook. There is not the least difficulty in my drawing on my
+invention, and telling him any story I please--for thus far I have
+told no story to anybody. Midwinter went away to London before it was
+possible to approach the subject. As to the Milroys (having provided
+them with the customary reference), I could fortunately keep them at
+arms-length on all questions relating purely to myself. And lastly, when
+I affected my reconciliation with Armadale on the drive in front of
+the house, he was fool enough to be too generous to let me defend my
+character. When I had expressed my regret for having lost my temper and
+threatened Miss Milroy, and when I had accepted his assurance that
+my pupil had never done or meant to do me any injury, he was too
+magnanimous to hear a word on the subject of my private affairs. Thus I
+am quite unfettered by any former assertions of my own; and I may tell
+any story I please--with the one drawback hinted at already in the shape
+of a restraint. Whatever I may invent in the way of pure fiction, I must
+preserve the character in which I have appeared at Thorpe Ambrose; for,
+with the notoriety that is attached to _my other name_, I have no other
+choice but to marry Midwinter in my maiden name as ‘Miss Gwilt.’
+
+“This was the consideration that took me into the lawyer’s office. I
+felt that I must inform myself, before I saw Midwinter later in the day,
+of any awkward consequences that may follow the marriage of a widow if
+she conceals her widow’s name.
+
+“Knowing of no other professional person whom I could trust, I went
+boldly to the lawyer who had my interests in his charge, at that
+terrible past time in my life, which I have more reason than ever to
+shrink from thinking of now. He was astonished, and, as I could plainly
+detect, by no means pleased to see me. I had hardly opened my lips
+before he said he hoped I was not consulting him _again_ (with a strong
+emphasis on the word) on my own account. I took the hint, and put the
+question I had come to ask, in the interests of that accommodating
+personage on such occasions--an absent friend. The lawyer evidently saw
+through it at once; but he was sharp enough to turn my ‘friend’ to good
+account on his side. He said he would answer the question as a matter
+of courtesy toward a lady represented by myself; but he must make it a
+condition that this consultation of him by deputy should go no further.
+
+“I accepted his terms; for I really respected the clever manner in which
+he contrived to keep me at arms-length without violating the laws of
+good-breeding. In two minutes I heard what he had to say, mastered it in
+my own mind, and went out.
+
+“Short as it was, the consultation told me everything I wanted to know.
+I risk nothing by marrying Midwinter in my maiden instead of my widow’s
+name. The marriage is a good marriage in this way: that it can only be
+set aside if my husband finds out the imposture, and takes proceedings
+to invalidate our marriage in my lifetime. That is the lawyer’s answer
+in the lawyer’s own words. It relieves me at once--in this direction,
+at any rate--of all apprehension about the future. The only imposture
+my husband will ever discover--and then only if he happens to be on
+the spot--is the imposture that puts me in the place, and gives me the
+income of Armadale’s widow; and by that time I shall have invalidated
+my own marriage forever.
+
+“Half-past two! Midwinter will be here in half an hour. I must go and
+ask my glass how I look. I must rouse my invention, and make up my
+little domestic romance. Am I feeling nervous about it? Something
+flutters in the place where my heart used to be. At five-and-thirty,
+too! and after such a life as mine!”
+
+
+Six o’clock.--He has just gone. The day for our marriage is a day
+determined on already.
+
+“I have tried to rest and recover myself. I can’t rest. I have come back
+to these leaves. There is much to be written in them since Midwinter has
+been here, that concerns me nearly.
+
+“Let me begin with what I hate most to remember, and so be the sooner
+done with it--let me begin with the paltry string of falsehoods which I
+told him about my family troubles.
+
+“What _can_ be the secret of this man’s hold on me? How is it that he
+alters me so that I hardly know myself again? I was like myself in the
+railway carriage yesterday with Armadale. It was surely frightful to be
+talking to the living man, through the whole of that long journey, with
+the knowledge in me all the while that I meant to be his widow--and yet
+I was only excited and fevered. Hour after hour I never shrunk once from
+speaking to Armadale; but the first trumpery falsehood I told Midwinter
+turned me cold when I saw that he believed it! I felt a dreadful
+hysterical choking in the throat when he entreated me not to reveal my
+troubles. And once--I am horrified when I think of it--once, when he
+said, ‘If I _could_ love you more dearly, I should love you more dearly
+now,’ I was within a hair-breadth of turning traitor to myself. I was
+on the very point of crying out to him, ‘Lies! all lies! I’m a fiend in
+human shape! Marry the wretchedest creature that prowls the streets,
+and you will marry a better woman than me!’ Yes! the seeing his eyes
+moisten, the hearing his voice tremble, while I was deceiving him, shook
+me in that way. I have seen handsomer men by hundreds, cleverer men by
+dozens. What can this man have roused in me? Is it Love? I thought I
+_had_ loved, never to love again. Does a woman not love when the man’s
+hardness to her drives her to drown herself? A man drove _me_ to that
+last despair in days gone by. Did all my misery at that time come from
+something which was not Love? Have I lived to be five-and-thirty, and
+am I only feeling now what Love really is?--now, when it is too late?
+Ridiculous! Besides, what is the use of asking? What do I know about
+it? What does any woman ever know? The more we think of it, the more
+we deceive ourselves. I wish I had been born an animal. My beauty might
+have been of some use to me then--it might have got me a good master.
+
+“Here is a whole page of my diary filled; and nothing written yet that
+is of the slightest use to me! My miserable made-up story must be told
+over again here, while the incidents are fresh in my memory--or how am I
+to refer to it consistently on after-occasions when I may be obliged to
+speak of it again?
+
+“There was nothing new in what I told him; it was the commonplace
+rubbish of the circulating libraries. A dead father; a lost fortune;
+vagabond brothers, whom I dread ever seeing again; a bedridden mother
+dependent on my exertions--No! I can’t write it down! I hate myself,
+I despise myself, when I remember that _he_ believed it because I said
+it--that _he_ was distressed by it because it was my story! I will
+face the chances of contradicting myself--I will risk discovery and
+ruin--anything rather than dwell on that contemptible deception of him a
+moment longer.
+
+“My lies came to an end at last. And then he talked to me of himself and
+of his prospects. Oh, what a relief it was to turn to that at the time!
+What a relief it is to come to it now!
+
+“He has accepted the offer about which he wrote to me at Thorpe Ambrose;
+and he is now engaged as occasional foreign correspondent to the new
+newspaper. His first destination is Naples. I wish it had been some
+other place, for I have certain past associations with Naples which I
+am not at all anxious to renew. It has been arranged that he is to
+leave England not later than the eleventh of next month. By that time,
+therefore, I, who am to go with him, must go with him as his wife.
+
+“There is not the slightest difficulty about the marriage. All this part
+of it is so easy that I begin to dread an accident.
+
+“The proposal to keep the thing strictly private--which it might have
+embarrassed me to make--comes from Midwinter. Marrying me in his own
+name--the name that he has kept concealed from every living creature but
+myself and Mr. Brock--it is his interest that not a soul who knows him
+should be present at the ceremony; his friend Armadale least of all.
+He has been a week in London already. When another week has passed, he
+proposes to get the License, and to be married in the church belonging
+to the parish in which the hotel is situated. These are the only
+necessary formalities. I had but to say ‘Yes’ (he told me), and to feel
+no further anxiety about the future. I said ‘Yes’ with such a devouring
+anxiety about the future that I was afraid he would see it. What minutes
+the next few minutes were, when he whispered delicious words to me,
+while I hid my face on his breast!
+
+“I recovered myself first, and led him back to the subject of Armadale,
+having my own reasons for wanting to know what they said to each other
+after I had left them yesterday.
+
+“The manner in which Midwinter replied showed me that he was speaking
+under the restraint of respecting a confidence placed in him by his
+friend. Long before he had done, I detected what the confidence was.
+Armadale had been consulting him (exactly as I anticipated) on the
+subject of the elopement. Although he appears to have remonstrated
+against taking the girl secretly away from her home, Midwinter seems
+to have felt some delicacy about speaking strongly, remembering (widely
+different as the circumstances are) that he was contemplating a private
+marriage himself. I gathered, at any rate, that he had produced very
+little effect by what he had said; and that Armadale had already carried
+out his absurd intention of consulting the head-clerk in the office of
+his London lawyers.
+
+“Having got as far as this, Midwinter put the question which I felt must
+come sooner or later. He asked if I objected to our engagement being
+mentioned, in the strictest secrecy, to his friend.
+
+“‘I will answer,’ he said, ‘for Allan’s respecting any confidence that
+I place in him. And I will undertake, when the time comes, so to use my
+influence over him as to prevent his being present at the marriage, and
+discovering (what he must never know) that my name is the same as his
+own. It would help me,’ he went on, ‘to speak more strongly about the
+object that has brought him to London, if I can requite the frankness
+with which he has spoken of his private affairs to me by the same
+frankness on my side.’
+
+“I had no choice but to give the necessary permission, and I gave it. It
+is of the utmost importance to me to know what course Major Milroy takes
+with his daughter and Armadale after receiving my anonymous letter; and,
+unless I invite Armadale’s confidence in some way, I am nearly certain
+to be kept in the dark. Let him once be trusted with the knowledge that
+I am to be Midwinter’s wife, and what he tells his friend about his love
+affair he will tell me.
+
+“When it had been understood between us that Armadale was to be taken
+into our confidence, we began to talk about ourselves again. How the
+time flew! What a sweet enchantment it was to forget everything in his
+arms! How he loves me!--ah, poor fellow, how he loves me!
+
+“I have promised to meet him to-morrow morning in the Regent’s Park. The
+less he is seen here the better. The people in this house are strangers
+to me, certainly; but it may be wise to consult appearances, as if I
+was still at Thorpe Ambrose, and not to produce the impression, even on
+their minds, that Midwinter is engaged to me. If any after-inquiries are
+made, when I have run my grand risk, the testimony of my London landlady
+might be testimony worth having.
+
+“That wretched old Bashwood! Writing of Thorpe Ambrose reminds me of
+him. What will he say when the town gossip tells him that Armadale has
+taken me to London, in a carriage reserved for ourselves? It really is
+too absurd in a man of Bashwood’s age and appearance to presume to be in
+love!....”
+
+
+“July 30th.--News at last! Armadale has heard from Miss Milroy. My
+anonymous letter has produced its effect. The girl is removed from
+Thorpe Ambrose already; and the whole project of the elopement is
+blown to the winds at once and forever. This was the substance of what
+Midwinter had to tell me when I met him in the Park. I affected to be
+excessively astonished, and to feel the necessary feminine longing
+to know all the particulars. ‘Not that I expect to have my curiosity
+satisfied,’ I added, ‘for Mr. Armadale and I are little better than mere
+acquaintances, after all.’
+
+“‘You are far more than a mere acquaintance in Allan’s eyes,’ said
+Midwinter. ‘Having your permission to trust him, I have already told him
+how near and dear you are to me.’
+
+“Hearing this, I thought it desirable, before I put any questions about
+Miss Milroy, to attend to my own interests first, and to find out what
+effect the announcement of my coming marriage had produced on Armadale.
+It was possible that he might be still suspicious of me, and that the
+inquiries he made in London, at Mrs. Milroy’s instigation, might be
+still hanging on his mind.
+
+“‘Did Mr. Armadale seem surprised,’ I asked, ‘when you told him of
+our engagement, and when you said it was to be kept a secret from
+everybody?’
+
+“‘He seemed greatly surprised,’ said Midwinter, ‘to hear that we were
+going to be married. All he said when I told him it must be kept a
+secret was that he supposed there were reasons on your side for making
+the marriage a private one.’
+
+“‘What did you say,’ I inquired, ‘when he made that remark?’
+
+“‘I said the reasons were on my side,’ answered Midwinter. ‘And I
+thought it right to add--considering that Allan had allowed himself to
+be misled by the ignorant distrust of you at Thorpe Ambrose--that you
+had confided to me the whole of your sad family story, and that you had
+amply justified your unwillingness; under any ordinary circumstances, to
+speak of your private affairs.’”
+
+(“I breathed freely again. He had said just what was wanted, just in the
+right way.”)
+
+“‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for putting me right in your friend’s estimation.
+Does he wish to see me?’ I added, by way of getting back to the other
+subject of Miss Milroy and the elopement.
+
+“‘He is longing to see you,’ returned Midwinter. ‘He is in great
+distress, poor fellow--distress which I have done my best to soothe,
+but which, I believe, would yield far more readily to a woman’s sympathy
+than to mine.’
+
+“‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
+
+“He was at the hotel; and to the hotel I instantly proposed that we
+should go. It is a busy, crowded place; and (with my veil down) I
+have less fear of compromising myself there than at my quiet lodgings.
+Besides, it is vitally important to me to know what Armadale does next,
+under this total change of circumstances--for I must so control his
+proceedings as to get him away from England if I can. We took a cab:
+such was my eagerness to sympathize with the heart-broken lover, that we
+took a cab!
+
+“Anything so ridiculous as Armadale’s behavior under the double shock of
+discovering that his young lady has been taken away from him, and that
+I am to be married to Midwinter, I never before witnessed in all my
+experience. To say that he was like a child is a libel on all children
+who are not born idiots. He congratulated me on my coming marriage,
+and execrated the unknown wretch who had written the anonymous letter,
+little thinking that he was speaking of one and the same person in one
+and the same breath. Now he submissively acknowledged that Major Milroy
+had his rights as a father, and now he reviled the major as having no
+feeling for anything but his mechanics and his clock. At one moment he
+started up, with the tears in his eyes, and declared that his ‘darling
+Neelie’ was an angel on earth. At another he sat down sulkily, and
+thought that a girl of her spirit might have run away on the spot and
+joined him in London. After a good half-hour of this absurd exhibition,
+I succeeded in quieting him; and then a few words of tender inquiry
+produced what I had expressly come to the hotel to see--Miss Milroy’s
+letter.
+
+“It was outrageously long, and rambling, and confused; in short, the
+letter of a fool. I had to wade through plenty of vulgar sentiment and
+lamentation, and to lose time and patience over maudlin outbursts of
+affection, and nauseous kisses inclosed in circles of ink. However, I
+contrived to extract the information I wanted at last; and here it is:
+
+“The major, on receipt of my anonymous warning, appears to have sent at
+once for his daughter, and to have shown her the letter. ‘You know what
+a hard life I lead with your mother; don’t make it harder still, Neelie,
+by deceiving me.’ That was all the poor old gentleman said. I always did
+like the major; and, though he was afraid to show it, I know he always
+liked me. His appeal to his daughter (if _her_ account of it is to be
+believed) cut her to the heart. She burst out crying (let her alone for
+crying at the right moment!) and confessed everything.
+
+“After giving her time to recover herself (if he had given her a good
+box on the ears it would have been more to the purpose!), the major
+seems to have put certain questions, and to have become convinced (as I
+was convinced myself) that his daughter’s heart, or fancy, or whatever
+she calls it, was really and truly set on Armadale. The discovery
+evidently distressed as well as surprised him. He appears to have
+hesitated, and to have maintained his own unfavorable opinion of Miss
+Neelie’s lover for some little time. But his daughter’s tears and
+entreaties (so like the weakness of the dear old gentleman!) shook him
+at last. Though he firmly refused to allow of any marriage engagement at
+present, he consented to overlook the clandestine meetings in the park,
+and to put Armadale’s fitness to become his son-in-law to the test, on
+certain conditions.
+
+“These conditions are, that for the next six months to come all
+communication is to be broken off, both personally and by writing,
+between Armadale and Miss Milroy. That space of time is to be occupied
+by the young gentleman as he himself thinks best, and by the young lady
+in completing her education at school. If, when the six months have
+passed, they are both still of the same mind, and if Armadale’s conduct
+in the interval has been such as to improve the major’s opinion of him,
+he will be allowed to present himself in the character of Miss Milroy’s
+suitor, and, in six months more, if all goes well, the marriage may take
+place.
+
+“I declare I could kiss the dear old major, if I was only within reach
+of him! If I had been at his elbow, and had dictated the conditions
+myself, I could have asked for nothing better than this. Six months
+of total separation between Armadale and Miss Milroy! In half that
+time--with all communication cut off between the two--it must go
+hard with me, indeed, if I don’t find myself dressed in the necessary
+mourning, and publicly recognized as Armadale’s widow.
+
+“But I am forgetting the girl’s letter. She gives her father’s reasons
+for making his conditions, in her father’s own words. The major seems
+to have spoken so sensibly and so feelingly that he left his daughter no
+decent alternative--and he leaves Armadale no decent alternative--but to
+submit. As well as I can remember, he seems to have expressed himself to
+Miss Neelie in these, or nearly in these terms:
+
+“‘Don’t think I am behaving cruelly to you, my dear: I am merely asking
+you to put Mr. Armadale to the proof. It is not only right, it is
+absolutely necessary, that you should hold no communication with him for
+some time to come; and I will show you why. In the first place, if you
+go to school, the necessary rules in such places--necessary for the
+sake of the other girls--would not permit you to see Mr. Armadale or to
+receive letters from him; and, if you are to become mistress of Thorpe
+Ambrose, to school you must go, for you would be ashamed, and I should
+be ashamed, if you occupied the position of a lady of station without
+having the accomplishments which all ladies of station are expected to
+possess. In the second place, I want to see whether Mr. Armadale will
+continue to think of you as he thinks now, without being encouraged in
+his attachment by seeing you, or reminded of it by hearing from you. If
+I am wrong in thinking him flighty and unreliable, and if your opinion
+of him is the right one, this is not putting the young man to an unfair
+test--true love survives much longer separations than a separation of
+six months. And when that time is over, and well over; and when I have
+had him under my own eye for another six months, and have learned to
+think as highly of him as you do--even then, my dear, after all that
+terrible delay, you will still be a married woman before you are
+eighteen. Think of this, Neelie, and show that you love me and trust me,
+by accepting my proposal. I will hold no communication with Mr. Armadale
+myself. I will leave it to you to write and tell him what has been
+decided on. He may write back one letter, and one only, to acquaint you
+with his decision. After that, for the sake of your reputation, nothing
+more is to be said, and nothing more is to be done, and the matter is to
+be kept strictly private until the six months’ interval is at an end.’
+
+“To this effect the major spoke. His behavior to that little slut of a
+girl has produced a stronger impression on me than anything else in the
+letter. It has set me thinking (me, of all the people in the world!) of
+what they call ‘a moral difficulty.’ We are perpetually told that there
+can be no possible connection between virtue and vice. Can there not?
+Here is Major Milroy doing exactly what an excellent father, at
+once kind and prudent, affectionate and firm, would do under the
+circumstances; and by that very course of conduct he has now smoothed
+the way for _me_, as completely as if he had been the chosen accomplice
+of that abominable creature, Miss Gwilt. Only think of my reasoning in
+this way! But I am in such good spirits, I can do anything to-day. I
+have not looked so bright and so young as I look now for months past!
+
+“To return to the letter, for the last time--it is so excessively
+dull and stupid that I really can’t help wandering away from it into
+reflections of my own, as a mere relief.
+
+“After solemnly announcing that she meant to sacrifice herself to her
+beloved father’s wishes (the brazen assurance of her setting up for a
+martyr after what has happened exceeds anything I ever heard or read
+of!), Miss Neelie next mentioned that the major proposed taking her to
+the seaside for change of air, during the few days that were still to
+elapse before she went to school. Armadale was to send his answer
+by return of post, and to address her, under cover to her father, at
+Lowestoft. With this, and with a last outburst of tender protestation,
+crammed crookedly into a corner of the page, the letter ended.
+(N.B.--The major’s object in taking her to the seaside is plain enough.
+He still privately distrusts Armadale, and he is wisely determined to
+prevent any more clandestine meetings in the park before the girl is
+safely disposed of at school.)
+
+“When I had done with the letter--I had requested permission to read
+parts of it which I particularly admired, for the second and third
+time!--we all consulted together in a friendly way about what Armadale
+was to do.
+
+“He was fool enough, at the outset, to protest against submitting to
+Major Milroy’s conditions. He declared, with his odious red face looking
+the picture of brute health, that he should never survive a six
+months’ separation from his beloved Neelie. Midwinter (as may easily be
+imagined) seemed a little ashamed of him, and joined me in bringing
+him to his senses. We showed him, what would have been plain enough
+to anybody but a booby, that there was no honorable or even decent
+alternative left but to follow the example of submission set by the
+young lady. ‘Wait, and you will have her for your wife,’ was what I
+said. ‘Wait, and you will force the major to alter his unjust opinion of
+you,’ was what Midwinter added. With two clever people hammering common
+sense into his head at that rate, it is needless to say that his head
+gave way, and he submitted.
+
+“Having decided him to accept the major’s conditions (I was careful
+to warn him, before he wrote to Miss Milroy, that my engagement to
+Midwinter was to be kept as strictly secret from her as from everybody
+else), the next question we had to settle related to his future
+proceedings. I was ready with the necessary arguments to stop him, if he
+had proposed returning to Thorpe Ambrose. But he proposed nothing of
+the sort. On the contrary, he declared, of his own accord, that nothing
+would induce him to go back. The place and the people were associated
+with everything that was hateful to him. There would be no Miss Milroy
+now to meet him in the park, and no Midwinter to keep him company in the
+solitary house. ‘I’d rather break stones on the road,’ was the sensible
+and cheerful way in which he put it, ‘than go back to Thorpe Ambrose.’
+
+“The first suggestion after this came from Midwinter. The sly old
+clergyman who gave Mrs. Oldershaw and me so much trouble has, it
+seems, been ill, but has been latterly reported better. ‘Why not go to
+Somersetshire,’ said Midwinter, ‘and see your good friend, and my good
+friend, Mr. Brock?’
+
+“Armadale caught at the proposal readily enough. He longed, in the first
+place, to see ‘dear old Brock,’ and he longed, in the second place, to
+see his yacht. After staying a few days more in London with Midwinter,
+he would gladly go to Somersetshire. But what after that?
+
+“Seeing my opportunity, _I_ came to the rescue this time. ‘You have got
+a yacht, Mr. Armadale,’ I said; ‘and you know that Midwinter is going to
+Italy. When you are tired of Somersetshire, why not make a voyage to the
+Mediterranean, and meet your friend, and your friend’s wife, at Naples?’
+
+“I made the allusion to ‘his friend’s wife’ with the most becoming
+modesty and confusion. Armadale was enchanted. I had hit on the best of
+all ways of occupying the weary time. He started up, and wrung my hand
+in quite an ecstasy of gratitude. How I do hate people who can only
+express their feelings by hurting other people’s hands!
+
+“Midwinter was as pleased with my proposal as Armadale; but he saw
+difficulties in the way of carrying it out. He considered the yacht too
+small for a cruise to the Mediterranean, and he thought it desirable to
+hire a larger vessel. His friend thought otherwise. I left them arguing
+the question. It was quite enough for me to have made sure, in the first
+place, that Armadale will not return to Thorpe Ambrose; and to have
+decided him, in the second place, on going abroad. He may go how he
+likes. I should prefer the small yacht myself; for there seems to be
+a chance that the small yacht might do me the inestimable service of
+drowning him....”
+
+
+“Five o’clock.--The excitement of feeling that I had got Armadale’s
+future movements completely under my own control made me so restless,
+when I returned to my lodgings, that I was obliged to go out again, and
+do something. A new interest to occupy me being what I wanted, I went to
+Pimlico to have it out with Mother Oldershaw.
+
+“I walked; and made up my mind, on the way, that I would begin by
+quarreling with her.
+
+“One of my notes of hand being paid already, and Midwinter being willing
+to pay the other two when they fall due, my present position with the
+old wretch is as independent a one as I could desire. I always get the
+better of her when it comes to a downright battle between us, and find
+her wonderfully civil and obliging the moment I have made her feel that
+mine is the strongest will of the two. In my present situation, she
+might be of use to me in various ways, if I could secure her assistance,
+without trusting her with secrets which I am now more than ever
+determined to keep to myself. That was my idea as I walked to Pimlico.
+Upsetting Mother Oldershaw’s nerves, in the first place, and then
+twisting her round my little finger, in the second, promised me, as I
+thought, an interesting occupation for the rest of the afternoon.
+
+“When I got to Pimlico, a surprise was in store for we. The house was
+shut up--not only on Mrs. Oldershaw’s side, but on Doctor Downward’s as
+well. A padlock was on the shop door; and a man was hanging about on the
+watch, who might have been an ordinary idler certainly, but who looked,
+to my mind, like a policeman in disguise.
+
+“Knowing the risks the doctor runs in his particular form of practice,
+I suspected at once that something serious had happened, and that even
+cunning Mrs. Oldershaw was compromised this time. Without stopping, or
+making any inquiry, therefore, I called the first cab that passed me,
+and drove to the post-office to which I had desired my letters to be
+forwarded if any came for me after I left my Thorpe Ambrose lodging.
+
+“On inquiry a letter was produced for ‘Miss Gwilt.’ It was in Mother
+Oldershaw’s handwriting, and it told me (as I had supposed) that the
+doctor had got into a serious difficulty--that she was herself most
+unfortunately mixed up in the matter, and that they were both in hiding
+for the present. The letter ended with some sufficiently venomous
+sentences about my conduct at Thorpe Ambrose, and with a warning that
+I have not heard the last of Mrs. Oldershaw yet. It relieved me to find
+her writing in this way--for she would have been civil and cringing if
+she had had any suspicion of what I have really got in view. I burned
+the letter as soon as the candles came up. And there, for the present,
+is an end of the connection between Mother Jezebel and me. I must do
+all my own dirty work now; and I shall be all the safer, perhaps, for
+trusting nobody’s hands to do it but my own.”
+
+
+“July 31st.--More useful information for me. I met Midwinter again in
+the Park (on the pretext that my reputation might suffer if he called
+too often at my lodgings), and heard the last news of Armadale since I
+left the hotel yesterday.
+
+“After he had written to Miss Milroy, Midwinter took the opportunity
+of speaking to him about the necessary business arrangements during his
+absence from the great house. It was decided that the servants should
+be put on board wages, and that Mr. Bashwood should be left in charge.
+(Somehow, I don’t like this re-appearance of Mr. Bashwood in connection
+with my present interests, but there is no help for it.) The next
+question--the question of money--was settled at once by Mr. Armadale
+himself. All his available ready-money (a large sum) is to be lodged by
+Mr. Bashwood in Coutts’s Bank, and to be there deposited in Armadale’s
+name. This, he said, would save him the worry of any further
+letter-writing to his steward, and would enable him to get what he
+wanted, when he went abroad, at a moment’s notice. The plan thus
+proposed, being certainly the simplest and the safest, was adopted with
+Midwinter’s full concurrence; and here the business discussion would
+have ended, if the everlasting Mr. Bashwood had not turned up again in
+the conversation, and prolonged it in an entirely new direction.
+
+“On reflection, it seems to have struck Midwinter that the whole
+responsibility at Thorpe Ambrose ought not to rest on Mr. Bashwood’s
+shoulders. Without in the least distrusting him, Midwinter felt,
+nevertheless, that he ought to have somebody set over him, to apply to
+in case of emergency. Armadale made no objection to this; he only asked,
+in his helpless way, who the person was to be?
+
+“The answer was not an easy one to arrive at.
+
+“Either of the two solicitors at Thorpe Ambrose might have been
+employed, but Armadale was on bad terms with both of them. Any
+reconciliation with such a bitter enemy as the elder lawyer, Mr. Darch,
+was out of the question; and reinstating Mr. Pedgift in his former
+position implied a tacit sanction on Armadale’s part of the lawyer’s
+abominable conduct toward _me_, which was scarcely consistent with
+the respect and regard that he felt for a lady who was soon to be his
+friend’s wife. After some further discussion, Midwinter hit on a new
+suggestion which appeared to meet the difficulty. He proposed that
+Armadale should write to a respectable solicitor at Norwich, stating his
+position in general terms, and requesting that gentleman to act as Mr.
+Bashwood’s adviser and superintendent when occasion required. Norwich
+being within an easy railway ride of Thorpe Ambrose, Armadale saw no
+objection to the proposal, and promised to write to the Norwich lawyer.
+Fearing that he might make some mistake if he wrote without assistance,
+Midwinter had drawn him out a draft of the necessary letter, and
+Armadale was now engaged in copying the draft, and also in writing to
+Mr. Bashwood to lodge the money immediately in Coutts’s Bank.
+
+“These details are so dry and uninteresting in themselves that I
+hesitated at first about putting them down in my diary. But a little
+reflection has convinced me that they are too important to be passed
+over. Looked at from my point of view, they mean this--that Armadale’s
+own act is now cutting him off from all communication with Thorpe
+Ambrose, even by letter. _He is as good as dead already to everybody he
+leaves behind him_. The causes which have led to such a result as that
+are causes which certainly claim the best place I can give them in these
+pages.”
+
+
+“August 1st.--Nothing to record, but that I have had a long, quiet,
+happy day with Midwinter. He hired a carriage, and we drove to Richmond,
+and dined there. After to-day’s experience, it is impossible to deceive
+myself any longer. Come what may of it, I love him.
+
+“I have fallen into low spirits since he left me. A persuasion has
+taken possession of my mind that the smooth and prosperous course of
+my affairs since I have been in London is too smooth and prosperous to
+last. There is something oppressing me to-night, which is more than the
+oppression of the heavy London air.”
+
+
+“August 2d.--Three o’clock.--My presentiments, like other people’s, have
+deceived me often enough; but I am almost afraid that my presentiment of
+last night was really prophetic, for once in a way.
+
+“I went after breakfast to a milliner’s in this neighborhood to order a
+few cheap summer things, and thence to Midwinter’s hotel to arrange with
+him for another day in the country. I drove to the milliner’s and to the
+hotel, and part of the way back. Then, feeling disgusted with the horrid
+close smell of the cab (somebody had been smoking in it, I suppose), I
+got out to walk the rest of the way. Before I had been two minutes on my
+feet, I discovered that I was being followed by a strange man.
+
+“This may mean nothing but that an idle fellow has been struck by
+my figure, and my appearance generally. My face could have made no
+impression on him, for it was hidden as usual by my veil. Whether he
+followed me (in a cab, of course) from the milliner’s, or from the
+hotel, I cannot say. Nor am I quite certain whether he did or did not
+track me to this door. I only know that I lost sight of him before I got
+back. There is no help for it but to wait till events enlighten me. If
+there is anything serious in what has happened, I shall soon discover
+it.”
+
+
+“Five o’clock.--It _is_ serious. Ten minutes since, I was in my bedroom,
+which communicates with the sitting-room. I was just coming out, when I
+heard a strange voice on the landing outside--a woman’s voice. The next
+instant the sitting-room door was suddenly opened; the woman’s voice
+said, ‘Are these the apartments you have got to let?’ and though the
+landlady, behind her, answered, ‘No! higher up, ma’am,’ the woman came
+on straight to my bedroom, as if she had not heard. I had just time to
+slam the door in her face before she saw me. The necessary explanations
+and apologies followed between the landlady and the stranger in the
+sitting-room, and then I was left alone again.
+
+“I have no time to write more. It is plain that somebody has an interest
+in trying to identify me, and that, but for my own quickness, the
+strange woman would have accomplished this object by taking me by
+surprise. She and the man who followed me in the street are, I suspect,
+in league together; and there is probably somebody in the background
+whose interests they are serving. Is Mother Oldershaw attacking me
+in the dark? or who else can it be? No matter who it is; my present
+situation is too critical to be trifled with. I must get away from this
+house to-night, and leave no trace behind me by which I can be followed
+to another place.”
+
+
+“August 3d.--Gary Street, Tottenham Court Road.--I got away last night
+(after writing an excuse to Midwinter, in which ‘my invalid mother’
+figured as the all-sufficient cause of my disappearance); and I have
+found refuge here. It has cost me some money; but my object is attained!
+Nobody can possibly have traced me from All Saints’ Terrace to this
+address.
+
+“After paying my landlady the necessary forfeit for leaving her without
+notice, I arranged with her son that he should take my boxes in a cab to
+the cloak-room at the nearest railway station, and send me the ticket
+in a letter, to wait my application for it at the post-office. While he
+went his way in one cab, I went mine in another, with a few things for
+the night in my little hand-bag.
+
+“I drove straight to the milliner’s shop, which I had observed, when
+I was there yesterday, had a back entrance into a mews, for the
+apprentices to go in and out by. I went in at once, leaving the cab
+waiting for me at the door. ‘A man is following me,’ I said, ‘and I want
+to get rid of him. Here is my cab fare; wait ten minutes before you give
+it to the driver, and let me out at once by the back way!’ In a moment I
+was out in the mews; in another, I was in the next street; in a third, I
+hailed a passing omnibus, and was a free woman again.
+
+“Having now cut off all communication between me and my last lodgings,
+the next precaution (in case Midwinter or Armadale are watched) is to
+cut off all communication, for some days to come at least, between me
+and the hotel. I have written to Midwinter--making my supposititious
+mother once more the excuse--to say that I am tied to my nursing duties,
+and that we must communicate by writing only for the present. Doubtful
+as I still am of who my hidden enemy really is, I can do no more to
+defend myself than I have done now.”
+
+
+“August 4th.--The two friends at the hotel had both written to me.
+Midwinter expresses his regret at our separation, in the tenderest
+terms. Armadale writes an entreaty for help under very awkward
+circumstances. A letter from Major Milroy has been forwarded to him from
+the great house, and he incloses it in his letter to me.
+
+“Having left the seaside, and placed his daughter safely at the school
+originally chosen for her (in the neighborhood of Ely), the major
+appears to have returned to Thorpe Ambrose at the close of last week; to
+have heard then, for the first time, the reports about Armadale and me;
+and to have written instantly to Armadale to tell him so.
+
+“The letter is stern and short. Major Milroy dismisses the report as
+unworthy of credit, because it is impossible for him to believe in such
+an act of ‘cold-blooded treachery,’ as the scandal would imply, if the
+scandal were true. He simply writes to warn Armadale that, if he is
+not more careful in his actions for the future, he must resign all
+pretensions to Miss Milroy’s hand. ‘I neither expect, nor wish for,
+an answer to this’ (the letter ends), ‘for I desire to receive no mere
+protestations in words. By your conduct, and by your conduct alone,
+I shall judge you as time goes on. Let me also add that I positively
+forbid you to consider this letter as an excuse for violating the terms
+agreed on between us, by writing again to my daughter. You have no need
+to justify yourself in her eyes, for I fortunately removed her from
+Thorpe Ambrose before this abominable report had time to reach her;
+and I shall take good care, for her sake, that she is not agitated and
+unsettled by hearing it where she is now.’
+
+“Armadale’s petition to me, under these circumstances, entreats (as I am
+the innocent cause of the new attack on his character) that I will write
+to the major to absolve him of all indiscretion in the matter, and to
+say that he could not, in common politeness, do otherwise than accompany
+me to London.
+
+“I forgive the impudence of his request, in consideration of the news
+that he sends me. It is certainly another circumstance in my favor
+that the scandal at Thorpe Ambrose is not to be allowed to reach
+Miss Milroy’s ears. With her temper (if she did hear it) she might
+do something desperate in the way of claiming her lover, and might
+compromise me seriously. As for my own course with Armadale, it is easy
+enough. I shall quiet him by promising to write to Major Milroy; and I
+shall take the liberty, in my own private interests, of not keeping my
+word.
+
+“Nothing in the least suspicious has happened to-day. Whoever my enemies
+are, they have lost me, and between this and the time when I leave
+England they shall not find me again. I have been to the post-office,
+and have got the ticket for my luggage, inclosed to me in a letter from
+All Saints’ Terrace, as I directed. The luggage itself I shall still
+leave at the cloak-room, until I see the way before me more clearly than
+I see it now.”
+
+
+“August 5th.--Two letters again from the hotel. Midwinter writes to
+remind me, in the prettiest possible manner, that he will have
+lived long enough in the parish by to-morrow to be able to get our
+marriage-license, and that he proposes applying for it in the usual way
+at Doctors’ Commons. Now, if I am ever to say it, is the time to say No.
+I can’t say No. There is the plain truth--and there is an end of it!
+
+“Armadale’s letter is a letter of farewell. He thanks me for my kindness
+in consenting to write to the major, and bids me good-by, till we meet
+again at Naples. He has learned from his friend that there are private
+reasons which will oblige him to forbid himself the pleasure of being
+present at our marriage. Under these circumstances, there is nothing to
+keep him in London. He has made all his business arrangements; he goes
+to Somersetshire by to-night’s train; and, after staying some time with
+Mr. Brock, he will sail for the Mediterranean from the Bristol Channel
+(in spite of Midwinter’s objections) in his own yacht.
+
+“The letter incloses a jeweler’s box, with a ring in it--Armadale’s
+present to me on my marriage. It is a ruby--but rather a small one, and
+set in the worst possible taste. He would have given Miss Milroy a ring
+worth ten times the money, if it had been _her_ marriage present. There
+is no more hateful creature, in my opinion, than a miserly young man. I
+wonder whether his trumpery little yacht will drown him?
+
+“I am so excited and fluttered, I hardly know what I am writing. Not
+that I shrink from what is coming--I only feel as if I was being hurried
+on faster than I quite like to go. At this rate, if nothing happens,
+Midwinter will have married me by the end of the week. And then--!”
+
+
+“August 6th.--If anything could startle me now, I should feel startled
+by the news that has reached me to-day.
+
+“On his return to the hotel this morning, after getting the
+marriage-license, Midwinter found a telegram waiting for him. It
+contained an urgent message from Armadale, announcing that Mr. Brock had
+had a relapse, and that all hope of his recovery was pronounced by the
+doctors to be at an end. By the dying man’s own desire, Midwinter was
+summoned to take leave of him, and was entreated by Armadale not to lose
+a moment in starting for the rectory by the first train.
+
+“The hurried letter which tells me this tells me also that, by the time
+I receive it, Midwinter will be on his way to the West. He promises
+to write at greater length, after he has seen Mr. Brock, by to-night’s
+post.
+
+“This news has an interest for me, which Midwinter little suspects.
+There is but one human creature, besides myself, who knows the secret of
+his birth and his name; and that one is the old man who now lies waiting
+for him at the point of death. What will they say to each other at the
+last moment? Will some chance word take them back to the time when I was
+in Mrs. Armadale’s service at Madeira? Will they speak of Me?”
+
+
+“August 7th.--The promised letter has just reached me. No parting words
+have been exchanged between them: it was all over before Midwinter
+reached Somersetshire. Armadale met him at the rectory gate with the
+news that Mr. Brock was dead.
+
+“I try to struggle against it, but, coming after the strange
+complication of circumstances that has been closing round me for weeks
+past, there is something in this latest event of all that shakes my
+nerves. But one last chance of detection stood in my way when I opened
+my diary yesterday. When I open it to-day, that chance is removed by Mr.
+Brock’s death. It means something; I wish I knew what.
+
+“The funeral is to be on Saturday morning. Midwinter will attend it
+as well as Armadale. But he proposes returning to London first; and he
+writes word that he will call to-night, in the hope of seeing me, on his
+way from the station to the hotel. Even if there was any risk in it, I
+should see him, as things are now. But there is no risk if he comes here
+from the station instead of coming from the hotel.”
+
+
+“Five o’clock.--I was not mistaken in believing that my nerves were all
+unstrung. Trifles that would not have cost me a second thought at other
+times weigh heavily on my mind now.
+
+“Two hours since, in despair of knowing how to get through the day, I
+bethought myself of the milliner who is making my summer dress. I had
+intended to go and try it on yesterday; but it slipped out of my memory
+in the excitement of hearing about Mr. Brock. So I went this afternoon,
+eager to do anything that might help me to get rid of myself. I have
+returned, feeling more uneasy and more depressed than I felt when I went
+out; for I have come back fearing that I may yet have reason to repent
+not having left my unfinished dress on the milliner’s hands.
+
+“Nothing happened to me, this time, in the street. It was only in the
+trying-on room that my suspicions were roused; and there it certainly
+did cross my mind that the attempt to discover me, which I defeated
+at All Saints’ Terrace, was not given up yet, and that some of the
+shop-women had been tampered with, if not the mistress herself.
+
+“Can I give myself anything in the shape of a reason for this
+impression? Let me think a little.
+
+“I certainly noticed two things which were out of the ordinary routine,
+under the circumstances. In the first place, there were twice as many
+women as were needed in the trying-on room. This looked suspicious; and
+yet I might have accounted for it in more ways than one. Is it not the
+slack time now? and don’t I know by experience that I am the sort of
+woman about whom other women are always spitefully curious? I thought
+again, in the second place, that one of the assistants persisted rather
+oddly in keeping me turned in a particular direction, with my face
+toward the glazed and curtained door that led into the work-room. But,
+after all, she gave a reason when I asked for it. She said the light
+fell better on me that way; and, when I looked round, there was the
+window to prove her right. Still, these trifles produced such an effect
+on me, at the time, that I purposely found fault with the dress, so as
+to have an excuse for trying it on again, before I told them where
+I lived, and had it sent home. Pure fancy, I dare say. Pure fancy,
+perhaps, at the present moment. I don’t care; I shall act on instinct
+(as they say), and give up the dress. In plainer words still, I won’t go
+back.”
+
+
+“Midnight.--Midwinter came to see me as he promised. An hour has passed
+since we said good-night; and here I still sit, with my pen in my hand,
+thinking of him. No words of mine can describe what has passed between
+us. The end of it is all I can write in these pages; and the end of it
+is that he has shaken my resolution. For the first time since I saw the
+easy way to Armadale’s life at Thorpe Ambrose, I feel as if the man whom
+I have doomed in my own thoughts had a chance of escaping me.
+
+“Is it my love for Midwinter that has altered me? Or is it _his_ love
+for _me_ that has taken possession not only of all I wish to give him,
+but of all I wish to keep from him as well? I feel as if I had lost
+myself--lost myself, I mean, in _him_--all through the evening. He was
+in great agitation about what had happened in Somersetshire; and he made
+me feel as disheartened and as wretched about it as he did. Though he
+never confessed it in words, I know that Mr. Brock’s death has startled
+him as an ill omen for our marriage--I know it, because I feel
+Mr. Brock’s death as an ill omen too. The superstition--_his_
+superstition--took so strong a hold on me, that when we grew calmer and
+he spoke of time future--when he told me that he must either break his
+engagement with his new employers or go abroad, as he is pledged to
+go, on Monday next--I actually shrank at the thought of our marriage
+following close on Mr. Brock’s funeral; I actually said to him, in the
+impulse of the moment, ‘Go, and begin your new life alone! go, and leave
+me here to wait for happier times.’
+
+“He took me in his arms. He sighed, and kissed me with an angelic
+tenderness. He said--oh, so softly and so sadly!--I have no life now,
+apart from _you_.’ As those words passed his lips, the thought seemed
+to rise in my mind like an echo, ‘Why not live out all the days that
+are left to me, happy and harmless in a love like this!’ I can’t explain
+it--I can’t realize it. That was the thought in me at the time; and
+that is the thought in me still. I see my own hand while I write the
+words--and I ask myself whether it is really the hand of Lydia Gwilt!
+
+“Armadale--
+
+“No! I will never write, I will never think of Armadale again.
+
+“Yes! Let me write once more--let me think once more of him, because
+it quiets me to know that he is going away, and that the sea will have
+parted us before I am married. His old home is home to him no longer,
+now that the loss of his mother has been followed by the loss of his
+best and earliest friend. When the funeral is over, he has decided to
+sail the same day for the foreign seas. We may, or we may not, meet at
+Naples. Shall I be an altered woman if we do? I wonder; I wonder!”
+
+
+“August 8th.--A line from Midwinter. He has gone back to Somersetshire
+to be in readiness for the funeral to-morrow; and he will return here
+(after bidding Armadale good-by) to-morrow evening.
+
+“The last forms and ceremonies preliminary to our marriage have been
+complied with. I am to be his wife on Monday next. The hour must not be
+later than half-past ten--which will give us just time, when the service
+is over, to get from the church door to the railway, and to start on our
+journey to Naples the same day.
+
+“To-day--Saturday--Sunday! I am not afraid of the time; the time will
+pass. I am not afraid of myself, if I can only keep all thoughts but
+one out of my mind. I love him! Day and night, till Monday comes, I will
+think of nothing but that. I love him!”
+
+
+“Four o’clock.--Other thoughts are forced into my mind in spite of me.
+My suspicions of yesterday were no mere fancies; the milliner has been
+tampered with. My folly in going back to her house has led to my being
+traced here. I am absolutely certain that I never gave the woman my
+address; and yet my new gown was sent home to me at two o’clock to-day!
+
+“A man brought it with the bill, and a civil message, to say that, as I
+had not called at the appointed time to try it on again, the dress had
+been finished and sent to me. He caught me in the passage; I had no
+choice but to pay the bill, and dismiss him. Any other proceeding, as
+events have now turned out, would have been pure folly. The messenger
+(not the man who followed me in the street, but another spy sent to look
+at me, beyond all doubt) would have declared he knew nothing about it,
+if I had spoken to him. The milliner would tell me to my face, if I went
+to her, that I had given her my address. The one useful thing to do now
+is to set my wits to work in the interests of my own security, and
+to step out of the false position in which my own rashness has placed
+me--if I can.”
+
+
+“Seven o’clock.--My spirits have risen again. I believe I am in a fair
+way of extricating myself already.
+
+“I have just come back from a long round in a cab. First, to the
+cloak-room of the Great Western, to get the luggage which I sent there
+from All Saints’ Terrace. Next, to the cloak-room of the Southeastern,
+to leave my luggage (labeled in Midwinter’s name), to wait for me
+till the starting of the tidal train on Monday. Next, to the General
+Post-office, to post a letter to Midwinter at the rectory, which he will
+receive to-morrow morning. Lastly, back again to this house--from which
+I shall move no more till Monday comes.
+
+“My letter to Midwinter will, I have little doubt, lead to his seconding
+(quite innocently) the precautions that I am taking for my own safety.
+The shortness of the time at our disposal on Monday will oblige him to
+pay his bill at the hotel and to remove his luggage before the marriage
+ceremony takes place. All I ask him to do beyond this is to take the
+luggage himself to the Southeastern (so as to make any inquiries useless
+which may address themselves to the servants at the hotel)--and, that
+done, to meet me at the church door, instead of calling for me here.
+The rest concerns nobody but myself. When Sunday night or Monday
+morning comes, it will be hard, indeed--freed as I am now from all
+incumbrances--if I can’t give the people who are watching me the slip
+for the second time.
+
+“It seems needless enough to have written to Midwinter to-day, when he
+is coming back to me to-morrow night. But it was impossible to ask,
+what I have been obliged to ask of him, without making my false family
+circumstances once more the excuse; and having this to do--I must own
+the truth--I wrote to him because, after what I suffered on the last
+occasion, I can never again deceive him to his face.”
+
+
+“August 9th.--Two o’clock.--I rose early this morning, more depressed in
+spirits than usual. The re-beginning of one’s life, at the re-beginning
+of every day, has already been something weary and hopeless to me for
+years past. I dreamed, too, all through the night--not of Midwinter
+and of my married life, as I had hoped to dream--but of the wretched
+conspiracy to discover me, by which I have been driven from one place to
+another, like a hunted animal. Nothing in the shape of a new revelation
+enlightened me in my sleep. All I could guess dreaming was what I had
+guessed waking, that Mother Oldershaw is the enemy who is attacking me
+in the dark.
+
+“My restless night has, however, produced one satisfactory result. It
+has led to my winning the good graces of the servant here, and securing
+all the assistance she can give me when the time comes for making my
+escape.
+
+“The girl noticed this morning that I looked pale and anxious. I
+took her into my confidence, to the extent of telling her that I was
+privately engaged to be married, and that I had enemies who were trying
+to part me from my sweetheart. This instantly roused her sympathy, and
+a present of a ten-shilling piece for her kind services to me did the
+rest. In the intervals of her housework she has been with me nearly
+the whole morning; and I found out, among other things, that _her_
+sweetheart is a private soldier in the Guards, and that she expects to
+see him to-morrow. I have got money enough left, little as it is, to
+turn the head of any Private in the British army; and, if the person
+appointed to watch me to-morrow is a man, I think it just possible that
+he may find his attention disagreeably diverted from Miss Gwilt in the
+course of the evening.
+
+“When Midwinter came here last from the railway, he came at half-past
+eight. How am I to get through the weary, weary hours between this and
+the evening? I think I shall darken my bedroom, and drink the blessing
+of oblivion from my bottle of Drops.”
+
+
+“Eleven o’clock.--We have parted for the last time before the day comes
+that makes us man and wife.
+
+“He has left me, as he left me before, with an absorbing subject of
+interest to think of in his absence. I noticed a change in him the
+moment he entered the room. When he told me of the funeral, and of his
+parting with Armadale on board the yacht, though he spoke with feelings
+deeply moved, he spoke with a mastery over himself which is new to me in
+my experience of him. It was the same when our talk turned next on our
+own hopes and prospects. He was plainly disappointed when he found
+that my family embarrassments would prevent our meeting to-morrow, and
+plainly uneasy at the prospect of leaving me to find my way by myself on
+Monday to the church. But there was a certain hopefulness and composure
+of manner underlying it all, which produced so strong an impression on
+me that I was obliged to notice it.
+
+“‘You know what odd fancies take possession of me sometimes,’ I said.
+‘Shall I tell you the fancy that has taken possession of me now? I can’t
+help thinking that something has happened since we last saw each other
+which you have not told me yet.
+
+“‘Something _has_ happened,’ he answered. ‘And it is something which you
+ought to know.’
+
+“With those words he took out his pocket-book, and produced two written
+papers from it. One he looked at and put back. The other he placed on
+the table.
+
+“‘Before I tell you what this is, and how it came into my possession,’
+he said, ‘I must own something that I have concealed from you. It is no
+more serious confession than the confession of my own weakness.’
+
+“He then acknowledged to me that the renewal of his friendship with
+Armadale had been clouded, through the whole period of their intercourse
+in London, by his own superstitious misgivings. He had obeyed the
+summons which called him to the rector’s bedside, with the firm
+intention of confiding his previsions of coming trouble to Mr. Brock;
+and he had been doubly confirmed in his superstition when he found that
+Death had entered the house before him, and had parted them, in this
+world, forever. More than this, he had traveled back to be present at
+the funeral, with a secret sense of relief at the prospect of being
+parted from Armadale, and with a secret resolution to make the
+after-meeting agreed on between us three at Naples a meeting that should
+never take place. With that purpose in his heart, he had gone up alone
+to the room prepared for him on his arrival at the rectory, and had
+opened a letter which he found waiting for him on the table. The letter
+had only that day been discovered--dropped and lost--under the bed on
+which Mr. Brock had died. It was in the rector’s handwriting throughout;
+and the person to whom it was addressed was Midwinter himself.
+
+“Having told me this, nearly in the words in which I have written it, he
+gave me the written paper that lay on the table between us.
+
+“‘Read it,’ he said; ‘and you will not need to be told that my mind
+is at peace again, and that I took Allan’s hand at parting with a heart
+that was worthier of Allan’s love.’
+
+“I read the letter. There was no superstition to be conquered in _my_
+mind; there were no old feelings of gratitude toward Armadale to be
+roused in _my_ heart; and yet, the effect which the letter had had on
+Midwinter was, I firmly believe, more than matched by the effect that
+the letter now produced on me.
+
+“It was vain to ask him to leave it, and to let me read it again (as I
+wished) when I was left by myself. He is determined to keep it side
+by side with that other paper which I had seen him take out of his
+pocket-book, and which contains the written narrative of Armadale’s
+Dream. All I could do was to ask his leave to copy it; and this he
+granted readily. I wrote the copy in his presence; and I now place it
+here in my diary, to mark a day which is one of the memorable days in my
+life.
+
+“Boscombe Rectory, August 2d.
+
+“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--For the first time since the beginning of my
+illness, I found strength enough yesterday to look over my letters. One
+among them is a letter from Allan, which has been lying unopened on my
+table for ten days past. He writes to me in great distress, to say that
+there has been dissension between you, and that you have left him. If
+you still remember what passed between us, when you first opened your
+heart to me in the Isle of Man, you will be at no loss to understand how
+I have thought over this miserable news, through the night that has now
+passed, and you will not be surprised to hear that I have roused myself
+this morning to make the effort of writing to you.
+
+“I want no explanation of the circumstances which have parted you from
+your friend. If my estimate of your character is not founded on
+an entire delusion, the one influence which can have led to your
+estrangement from Allan is the influence of that evil spirit of
+Superstition which I have once already cast out of your heart--which I
+will once again conquer, please God, if I have strength enough to make
+my pen speak my mind to you in this letter.
+
+“It is no part of my design to combat the belief which I know you
+to hold, that mortal creatures may be the objects of supernatural
+intervention in their pilgrimage through this world. Speaking as a
+reasonable man, I own that I cannot prove you to be wrong. Speaking as
+a believer in the Bible, I am bound to go further, and to admit that you
+possess a higher than any human warrant for the faith that is in you.
+The one object which I have it at heart to attain is to induce you
+to free yourself from the paralyzing fatalism of the heathen and the
+savage, and to look at the mysteries that perplex, and the portents that
+daunt you, from the Christian’s point of view. If I can succeed in this,
+I shall clear your mind of the ghastly doubts that now oppress it, and I
+shall reunite you to your friend, never to be parted from him again.
+
+“I have no means of seeing and questioning you. I can only send this
+letter to Allan to be forwarded, if he knows, or can discover, your
+present address. Placed in this position toward you, I am bound to
+assume all that _can_ be assumed in your favor. I will take it for
+granted that something has happened to you or to Allan which to your
+mind has not only confirmed the fatalist conviction in which your father
+died, but has added a new and terrible meaning to the warning which he
+sent you in his death-bed letter.
+
+“On this common ground I meet you. On this common ground I appeal to
+your higher nature and your better sense.
+
+“Preserve your present conviction that the events which have happened
+(be they what they may) are not to be reconciled with ordinary mortal
+coincidences and ordinary mortal laws; and view your own position by the
+best and clearest light that your superstition can throw on it. What are
+you? You are a helpless instrument in the hands of Fate. You are doomed,
+beyond all human capacity of resistance, to bring misery and destruction
+blindfold on a man to whom you have harmlessly and gratefully united
+yourself in the bonds of a brother’s love. All that is morally firmest
+in your will and morally purest in your aspirations avails nothing
+against the hereditary impulsion of you toward evil, caused by a crime
+which your father committed before you were born. In what does that
+belief end? It ends in the darkness in which you are now lost; in the
+self-contradictions in which you are now bewildered; in the stubborn
+despair by which a man profanes his own soul, and lowers himself to the
+level of the brutes that perish.
+
+“Look up, my poor suffering brother--look up, my hardly tried, my
+well-loved friend, higher than this! Meet the doubts that now assail you
+from the blessed vantage-ground of Christian courage and Christian hope;
+and your heart will turn again to Allan, and your mind will be at
+peace. Happen what may, God is all-merciful, God is all-wise: natural or
+supernatural, it happens through Him. The mystery of Evil that perplexes
+our feeble minds, the sorrow and the suffering that torture us in this
+little life, leave the one great truth unshaken that the destiny of man
+is in the hands of his Creator, and that God’s blessed Son died to make
+us worthier of it. Nothing that is done in unquestioning submission to
+the wisdom of the Almighty is done wrong. No evil exists out of which,
+in obedience to his laws, Good may not come. Be true to what Christ
+tells you is true. Encourage in yourself, be the circumstances what they
+may, all that is loving, all that is grateful, all that is patient, all
+that is forgiving, toward your fellow-men. And humbly and trustfully
+leave the rest to the God who made you, and to the Saviour who loved you
+better than his own life.
+
+“This is the faith in which I have lived, by the Divine help and mercy,
+from my youth upward. I ask you earnestly, I ask you confidently, to
+make it your faith, too. It is the mainspring of all the good I have
+ever done, of all the happiness I have ever known; it lightens my
+darkness, it sustains my hope; it comforts and quiets me, lying here,
+to live or die, I know not which. Let it sustain, comfort, and enlighten
+you. It will help you in your sorest need, as it has helped me in mine.
+It will show you another purpose in the events which brought you and
+Allan together than the purpose which your guilty father foresaw.
+Strange things, I do not deny it, have happened to you already. Stranger
+things still may happen before long, which I may not live to see.
+Remember, if that time comes, that I died firmly disbelieving in your
+influence over Allan being other than an influence for good. The
+great sacrifice of the Atonement--I say it reverently--has its mortal
+reflections, even in this world. If danger ever threatens Allan, you,
+whose father took his father’s life--YOU, and no other, may be the man
+whom the providence of God has appointed to save him.
+
+“Come to me if I live. Go back to the friend who loves you, whether I
+live or die.
+
+“Yours affectionately to the last,
+
+“DECIMUS BROCK.”
+
+“‘You, and no other, may be the man whom the providence of God has
+appointed to save him!’
+
+“Those are the words which have shaken me to the soul. Those are the
+words which make me feel as if the dead man had left his grave, and
+had put his hand on the place in my heart where my terrible secret lies
+hidden from every living creature but myself. One part of the letter
+has come true already. The danger that it foresees threatens Armadale at
+this moment--and threatens him from Me!
+
+“If the favoring circumstances which have driven me thus far drive me on
+to the end, and if that old man’s last earthly conviction is prophetic
+of the truth, Armadale will escape me, do what I may. And Midwinter will
+be the victim who is sacrificed to save his life.
+
+“It is horrible! it is impossible! it shall never be! At the thinking of
+it only, my hand trembles and my heart sinks. I bless the trembling
+that unnerves me! I bless the sinking that turns me faint! I bless those
+words in the letter which have revived the relenting thoughts that first
+came to me two days since! Is it hard, now that events are taking me,
+smoothly and safely, nearer and nearer to the End--is it hard to conquer
+the temptation to go on? No! If there is only a chance of harm coming
+to Midwinter, the dread of that chance is enough to decide me--enough
+to strengthen me to conquer the temptation, for his sake. I have never
+loved him yet, never, never, never as I love him now!”
+
+
+“Sunday, August 10th.--The eve of my wedding-day! I close and lock this
+book, never to write in it, never to open it again.
+
+“I have won the great victory; I have trampled my own wickedness under
+foot. I am innocent; I am happy again. My love! my angel! when to-morrow
+gives me to you, I will not have a thought in my heart which is not
+_your_ thought, as well as mine!”
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE WEDDING-DAY.
+
+The time was nine o’clock in the morning. The place was a private room
+in one of the old-fashioned inns which still remain on the Borough side
+of the Thames. The date was Monday, the 11th of August. And the person
+was Mr. Bashwood, who had traveled to London on a summons from his son,
+and had taken up his abode at the inn on the previous day.
+
+He had never yet looked so pitiably old and helpless as he looked now.
+The fever and chill of alternating hope and despair had dried, and
+withered, and wasted him. The angles of his figure had sharpened. The
+outline of his face had shrunk. His dress pointed the melancholy change
+in him with a merciless and shocking emphasis. Never, even in his youth,
+had he worn such clothes as he wore now. With the desperate resolution
+to leave no chance untried of producing an impression on Miss Gwilt,
+he had cast aside his dreary black garments; he had even mustered the
+courage to wear his blue satin cravat. His coat was a riding-coat of
+light gray. He had ordered it, with a vindictive subtlety of purpose,
+to be made on the pattern of a coat that he had seen Allan wear. His
+waistcoat was white; his trousers were of the gayest summer pattern, in
+the largest check. His wig was oiled and scented, and brushed round, on
+either side, to hide the wrinkles on his temples. He was an object to
+laugh at; he was an object to weep over. His enemies, if a creature so
+wretched could have had enemies, would have forgiven him, on seeing him
+in his new dress. His friends--had any of his friends been left--would
+have been less distressed if they had looked at him in his coffin than
+if they had looked at him as he was now. Incessantly restless, he paced
+the room from end to end. Now he looked at his watch; now he
+looked out of the window; now he looked at the well-furnished
+breakfast-table--always with the same wistful, uneasy inquiry in his
+eyes. The waiter coming in, with the urn of boiling water, was addressed
+for the fiftieth time in the one form of words which the miserable
+creature seemed to be capable of uttering that morning: “My son is
+coming to breakfast. My son is very particular. I want everything of the
+best--hot things and cold things--and tea and coffee--and all the
+rest of it, waiter; all the rest of it.” For the fiftieth time, he now
+reiterated those anxious words. For the fiftieth time, the impenetrable
+waiter had just returned his one pacifying answer, “All right, sir; you
+may leave it to me”--when the sound of leisurely footsteps was heard
+on the stairs; the door opened; and the long-expected son sauntered
+indolently into the room, with a neat little black leather bag in his
+hand.
+
+“Well done, old gentleman!” said Bashwood the younger, surveying his
+father’s dress with a smile of sardonic encouragement. “You’re ready to
+be married to Miss Gwilt at a moment’s notice!”
+
+The father took the son’s hand, and tried to echo the son’s laugh.
+
+“You have such good spirits, Jemmy,” he said, using the name in its
+familiar form, as he had been accustomed to use it in happier days. “You
+always had good spirits, my dear, from a child. Come and sit down; I’ve
+ordered you a nice breakfast. Everything of the best! everything of the
+best! What a relief it is to see you! Oh, dear, dear, what a relief it
+is to see you.” He stopped and sat down at the table, his face flushed
+with the effort to control the impatience that was devouring him.
+“Tell me about her!” he burst out, giving up the effort with a sudden
+self-abandonment. “I shall die, Jemmy, if I wait for it any longer. Tell
+me! tell me! tell me!”
+
+“One thing at a time,” said Bashwood the younger, perfectly unmoved by
+his father’s impatience. “We’ll try the breakfast first, and come to the
+lady afterward! Gently does it, old gentleman--gently does it!”
+
+He put his leather bag on a chair, and sat down opposite to his father,
+composed, and smiling, and humming a little tune.
+
+No ordinary observation, applying the ordinary rules of analysis, would
+have detected the character of Bashwood the younger in his face. His
+youthful look, aided by his light hair and his plump beardless
+cheeks, his easy manner and his ever-ready smile, his eyes which met
+unshrinkingly the eyes of every one whom he addressed, all combined to
+make the impression of him a favorable impression in the general mind.
+No eye for reading character, but such an eye as belongs to one person,
+perhaps, in ten thousand, could have penetrated the smoothly deceptive
+surface of this man, and have seen him for what he really was--the vile
+creature whom the viler need of Society has fashioned for its own use.
+There he sat--the Confidential Spy of modern times, whose business is
+steadily enlarging, whose Private Inquiry Offices are steadily on
+the increase. There he sat--the necessary Detective attendant on the
+progress of our national civilization; a man who was, in this instance
+at least, the legitimate and intelligible product of the vocation that
+employed him; a man professionally ready on the merest suspicion (if the
+merest suspicion paid him) to get under our beds, and to look through
+gimlet-holes in our doors; a man who would have been useless to his
+employers if he could have felt a touch of human sympathy in his
+father’s presence; and who would have deservedly forfeited his situation
+if, under any circumstances whatever, he had been personally accessible
+to a sense of pity or a sense of shame.
+
+“Gently does it, old gentleman,” he repeated, lifting the covers from
+the dishes, and looking under them one after the other all round the
+table. “Gently does it!”
+
+“Don’t be angry with me, Jemmy,” pleaded his father. “Try, if you
+can, to think how anxious I must be. I got your letter so long ago
+as yesterday morning. I have had to travel all the way from Thorpe
+Ambrose--I have had to get through the dreadful long evening and the
+dreadful long night--with your letter telling me that you had found out
+who she is, and telling me nothing more. Suspense is very hard to bear,
+Jemmy, when you come to my age. What was it prevented you, my dear, from
+coming to me when I got here yesterday evening?”
+
+“A little dinner at Richmond,” said Bashwood the younger. “Give me some
+tea.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood tried to comply with the request; but the hand with which
+he lifted the teapot trembled so unmanageably that the tea missed
+the cup and streamed out on the cloth. “I’m very sorry; I can’t help
+trembling when I’m anxious,” said the old man, as his son took the
+tea-pot out of his hand. “I’m afraid you bear me malice, Jemmy, for what
+happened when I was last in town. I own I was obstinate and unreasonable
+about going back to Thorpe Ambrose. I’m more sensible now. You were
+quite right in taking it all on yourself, as soon as I showed you the
+veiled lady when we saw her come out of the hotel; and you were quite
+right to send me back the same day to my business in the steward’s
+office at the Great House.” He watched the effect of these concessions
+on his son, and ventured doubtfully on another entreaty. “If you won’t
+tell me anything else just yet,” he said, faintly, “will you tell me how
+you found her out. Do, Jemmy, do!”
+
+Bashwood the younger looked up from his plate. “I’ll tell you that,” he
+said. “The reckoning up of Miss Gwilt has cost more money and taken more
+time than I expected; and the sooner we come to a settlement about it,
+the sooner we shall get to what you want to know.”
+
+Without a word of expostulation, the father laid his dingy old
+pocket-book and his purse on the table before the son. Bashwood the
+younger looked into the purse; observed, with a contemptuous elevation
+of the eyebrows, that it held no more than a sovereign and some silver;
+and returned it intact. The pocket-book, on being opened next, proved to
+contain four five-pound notes. Bashwood the younger transferred three
+of the notes to his own keeping; and handed the pocket-book back to his
+father, with a bow expressive of mock gratitude and sarcastic respect.
+
+“A thousand thanks,” he said. “Some of it is for the people at our
+office, and the balance is for myself. One of the few stupid things,
+my dear sir, that I have done in the course of my life was to write
+you word, when you first consulted me, that you might have my services
+gratis. As you see, I hasten to repair the error. An hour or two at odd
+times I was ready enough to give you. But this business has taken days,
+and has got in the way of other jobs. I told you I couldn’t be out of
+pocket by you--I put it in my letter, as plain as words could say it.”
+
+“Yes, yes, Jemmy. I don’t complain, my dear, I don’t complain. Never
+mind the money--tell me how you found her out.”
+
+“Besides,” pursued Bashwood, the younger, proceeding impenetrably
+with his justification of himself, “I have given you the benefit of my
+experience; I’ve done it cheap. It would have cost double the money if
+another man had taken this in hand. Another man would have kept a watch
+on Mr. Armadale as well as Miss Gwilt. I have saved you that expense.
+You are certain that Mr. Armadale is bent on marrying her. Very good.
+In that case, while we have our eye on _her_, we have, for all useful
+purposes, got our eye on _him_. Know where the lady is, and you know
+that the gentleman can’t be far off.”
+
+“Quite true, Jemmy. But how was it Miss Gwilt came to give you so much
+trouble?”
+
+“She’s a devilish clever woman,” said Bashwood the younger; “that’s how
+it was. She gave us the slip at a milliner’s shop. We made it all right
+with the milliner, and speculated on the chance of her coming back to
+try on a gown she had ordered. The cleverest women lose the use of their
+wits in nine cases out of ten where there’s a new dress in the case, and
+even Miss Gwilt was rash enough to go back. That was all we wanted. One
+of the women from our office helped to try on her new gown, and put her
+in the right position to be seen by one of our men behind the door. He
+instantly suspected who she was, on the strength of what he had been
+told of her; for she’s a famous woman in her way. Of course, we didn’t
+trust to that. We traced her to her new address; and we got a man from
+Scotland Yard, who was certain to know her, if our own man’s idea was
+the right one. The man from Scotland Yard turned milliner’s lad for
+the occasion, and took her gown home. He saw her in the passage, and
+identified her in an instant. You’re in luck, I can tell you. Miss
+Gwilt’s a public character. If we had had a less notorious woman to deal
+with, she might have cost us weeks of inquiry, and you might have had to
+pay hundreds of pounds. A day did it in Miss Gwilt’s case; and another
+day put the whole story of her life, in black and white, into my hand.
+There it is at the present moment, old gentleman, in my black bag.”
+
+Bashwood the father made straight for the bag with eager eyes and
+outstretched hand. Bashwood the son took a little key out of his
+waistcoat pocket, winked, shook his head, and put the key back again.
+
+“I haven’t done breakfast yet,” he said. “Gently does it, my dear
+sir--gently does it.”
+
+“I can’t wait!” cried the old man, struggling vainly to preserve his
+self-control. “It’s past nine! It’s a fortnight to-day since she went to
+London with Mr. Armadale! She may be married to him in a fortnight! She
+may be married to him this morning! I can’t wait! I can’t wait!”
+
+“There’s no knowing what you can do till you try,” rejoined Bashwood
+the younger. “Try, and you’ll find you can wait. What has become of your
+curiosity?” he went on, feeding the fire ingeniously with a stick at a
+time. “Why don’t you ask me what I mean by calling Miss Gwilt a public
+character? Why don’t you wonder how I came to lay my hand on the story
+of her life, in black and white? If you’ll sit down again, I’ll tell
+you. If you won’t, I shall confine myself to my breakfast.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood sighed heavily, and went back to his chair.
+
+“I wish you were not so fond of your joke, Jemmy,” he said. “I wish, my
+dear, you were not quite so fond of your joke.”
+
+“Joke?” repeated his son. “It would be serious enough in some people’s
+eyes, I can tell you. Miss Gwilt has been tried for her life; and the
+papers in that black bag are the lawyer’s instructions for the Defense.
+Do you call that a joke?”
+
+The father started to his feet, and looked straight across the table at
+the son with a smile of exultation that was terrible to see.
+
+“She’s been tried for her life!” he burst out, with a deep gasp of
+satisfaction. “She’s been tried for her life!” He broke into a low,
+prolonged laugh, and snapped his fingers exultingly. “Aha-ha-ha!
+Something to frighten Mr. Armadale in _that_!”
+
+Scoundrel as he was, the son was daunted by the explosion of pent-up
+passion which burst on him in those words.
+
+“Don’t excite yourself,” he said, with a sullen suppression of the
+mocking manner in which he had spoken thus far.
+
+Mr. Bashwood sat down again, and passed his handkerchief over his
+forehead. “No,” he said, nodding and smiling at his son. “No, no--no
+excitement, as you say--I can wait now, Jemmy; I can wait now.”
+
+He waited with immovable patience. At intervals, he nodded, and smiled,
+and whispered to himself, “Something to frighten Mr. Armadale in
+_that_!” But he made no further attempt, by word, look, or action, to
+hurry his son.
+
+Bashwood the younger finished his breakfast slowly, out of pure bravado;
+lit a cigar with the utmost deliberation; looked at his father, and,
+seeing him still as immovably patient as ever, opened the black bag at
+last, and spread the papers on the table.
+
+“How will you have it?” he asked. “Long or short? I have got her whole
+life here. The counsel who defended her at the trial was instructed to
+hammer hard at the sympathies of the jury: he went head over ears into
+the miseries of her past career, and shocked everybody in court in the
+most workman-like manner. Shall I take the same line? Do you want to
+know all about her, from the time when she was in short frocks and
+frilled trousers? or do you prefer getting on at once to her first
+appearance as a prisoner in the dock?”
+
+“I want to know all about her,” said his father, eagerly. “The
+worst, and the best--the worst particularly. Don’t spare my feelings,
+Jemmy--whatever you do, don’t spare my feelings! Can’t I look at the
+papers myself?”
+
+“No, you can’t. They would be all Greek and Hebrew to you. Thank your
+stars that you have got a sharp son, who can take the pith out of these
+papers, and give it a smack of the right flavor in serving it up. There
+are not ten men in England who could tell you this woman’s story as I
+can tell it. It’s a gift, old gentleman, of the sort that is given to
+very few people--and it lodges here.”
+
+He tapped his forehead smartly, and turned to the first page of the
+manuscript before him, with an unconcealed triumph at the prospect
+of exhibiting his own cleverness, which was the first expression of a
+genuine feeling of any sort that had escaped him yet.
+
+
+“Miss Gwilt’s story begins,” said Bashwood the younger, “in the
+market-place at Thorpe Ambrose. One day, something like a quarter of a
+century ago, a traveling quack doctor, who dealt in perfumery as well
+as medicines, came to the town with his cart, and exhibited, as a living
+example of the excellence of his washes and hair-oils and so on, a
+pretty little girl, with a beautiful complexion and wonderful hair. His
+name was Oldershaw. He had a wife, who helped him in the perfumery part
+of his business, and who carried it on by herself after his death. She
+has risen in the world of late years; and she is identical with that sly
+old lady who employed me professionally a short time since. As for the
+pretty little girl, you know who she was as well as I do. While the
+quack was haranguing the mob and showing them the child’s hair, a young
+lady, driving through the marketplace, stopped her carriage to hear what
+it was all about, saw the little girl, and took a violent fancy to her
+on the spot. The young lady was the daughter of Mr. Blanchard, of Thorpe
+Ambrose. She went home, and interested her father in the fate of the
+innocent little victim of the quack doctor. The same evening, the
+Oldershaws were sent for to the great house and were questioned. They
+declared themselves to be her uncle and aunt--a lie, of course!--and
+they were quite willing to let her attend the village school, while they
+stayed at Thorpe Ambrose, when the proposal was made to them. The new
+arrangement was carried out the next day. And the day after that, the
+Oldershaws had disappeared, and had left the little girl on the squire’s
+hands! She evidently hadn’t answered as they expected in the capacity
+of an advertisement, and that was the way they took of providing for her
+for life. There is the first act of the play for you! Clear enough, so
+far, isn’t it?”
+
+“Clear enough, Jemmy, to clever people. But I’m old and slow. I don’t
+understand one thing. Whose child was she?”
+
+“A very sensible question. Sorry to inform you that nobody can answer
+it--Miss Gwilt herself included. These Instructions that I’m referring to
+are founded, of course, on her own statements, sifted by her attorney.
+All she could remember, on being questioned, was that she was beaten and
+half starved, somewhere in the country, by a woman who took in children
+at nurse. The woman had a card with her, stating that her name was Lydia
+Gwilt, and got a yearly allowance for taking care of her (paid through
+a lawyer) till she was eight years old. At that time, the allowance
+stopped; the lawyer had no explanation to offer; nobody came to look
+after her; nobody wrote. The Oldershaws saw her, and thought she might
+answer to exhibit; and the woman parted with her for a trifle to the
+Oldershaws; and the Oldershaws parted with her for good and all to the
+Blanchards. That’s the story of her birth, parentage, and education! She
+may be the daughter of a duke, or the daughter of a costermonger. The
+circumstances may be highly romantic, or utterly commonplace. Fancy
+anything you like--there’s nothing to stop you. When you’ve had your
+fancy out, say the word, and I’ll turn over the leaves and go on.”
+
+“Please to go on, Jemmy--please to go on.”
+
+“The next glimpse of Miss Gwilt,” resumed Bashwood the younger, turning
+over the papers, “is a glimpse at a family mystery. The deserted child
+was in luck’s way at last. She had taken the fancy of an amiable young
+lady with a rich father, and she was petted and made much of at the
+great house, in the character of Miss Blanchard’s last new plaything.
+Not long afterward Mr. Blanchard and his daughter went abroad, and took
+the girl with them in the capacity of Miss Blanchard’s little maid. When
+they came back, the daughter had married, and become a widow, in the
+interval; and the pretty little maid, instead of returning with them to
+Thorpe Ambrose, turns up suddenly, all alone, as a pupil at a school
+in France. There she was, at a first-rate establishment, with her
+maintenance and education secured until she married and settled in life,
+on this understanding--that she never returned to England. Those were
+all the particulars she could be prevailed on to give the lawyer who
+drew up these instructions. She declined to say what had happened
+abroad; she declined even, after all the years that had passed, to
+mention her mistress’s married name. It’s quite clear, of course, that
+she was in possession of some family secret; and that the Blanchards
+paid for her schooling on the Continent to keep her out of the way. And
+it’s equally plain that she would never have kept her secret as she did
+if she had not seen her way to trading on it for her own advantage at
+some future time. A clever woman, as I’ve told you already! A devilish
+clever woman, who hasn’t been knocked about in the world, and seen the
+ups and downs of life abroad and at home, for nothing.”
+
+“Yes, yes, Jemmy; quite true. How long did she stop, please, at the
+school in France?”
+
+Bashwood the younger referred to the papers. “She stopped at the French
+school,” he replied, “till she was seventeen. At that time something
+happened at the school which I find mildly described in these papers
+as ‘something unpleasant.’ The plain fact was that the music-master
+attached to the establishment fell in love with Miss Gwilt. He was a
+respectable middle-aged man, with a wife and family; and, finding the
+circumstances entirely hopeless, he took a pistol, and, rashly assuming
+that he had brains in his head, tried to blow them out. The doctor saved
+his life, but not his reason; he ended, where he had better have begun,
+in an asylum. Miss Gwilt’s beauty having been at the bottom of the
+scandal, it was, of course, impossible--though she was proved to have
+been otherwise quite blameless in the matter--for her to remain at the
+school after what had happened. Her ‘friends’ (the Blanchards) were
+communicated with. And her friends transferred her to another school; at
+Brussels, this time--What are you sighing about? What’s wrong now?”
+
+“I can’t help feeling a little for the poor music-master, Jemmy. Go on.”
+
+“According to her own account of it, dad, Miss Gwilt seems to have felt
+for him too. She took a serious turn; and was ‘converted’ (as they call
+it) by the lady who had charge of her in the interval before she went to
+Brussels. The priest at the Belgium school appears to have been a man
+of some discretion, and to have seen that the girl’s sensibilities were
+getting into a dangerously excited state. Before he could quiet her
+down, he fell ill, and was succeeded by another priest, who was a
+fanatic. You will understand the sort of interest he took in the girl,
+and the way in which he worked on her feelings, when I tell you that she
+announced it as her decision, after having been nearly two years at the
+school, to end her days in a convent! You may well stare! Miss Gwilt, in
+the character of a Nun, is the sort of female phenomenon you don’t often
+set eyes on.”
+
+“Did she go into the convent?” asked Mr. Bashwood. “Did they let her go
+in, so friendless and so young, with nobody to advise her for the best?”
+
+“The Blanchards were consulted, as a matter of form,” pursued Bashwood
+the younger. “_They_ had no objection to her shutting herself up in a
+convent, as you may well imagine. The pleasantest letter they ever had
+from her, I’ll answer for it, was the letter in which she solemnly took
+leave of them in this world forever. The people at the convent were as
+careful as usual not to commit themselves. Their rules wouldn’t allow
+her to take the veil till she had tried the life for a year first, and
+then, if she had any doubt, for another year after that. She tried the
+life for the first year, accordingly, and doubted. She tried it for the
+second year, and was wise enough, by that time, to give it up without
+further hesitation. Her position was rather an awkward one when she
+found herself at liberty again. The sisters at the convent had lost
+their interest in her; the mistress at the school declined to take her
+back as teacher, on the ground that she was too nice-looking for the
+place; the priest considered her to be possessed by the devil. There
+was nothing for it but to write to the Blanchards again, and ask them to
+start her in life as a teacher of music on her own account. She wrote
+to her former mistress accordingly. Her former mistress had evidently
+doubted the genuineness of the girl’s resolution to be a nun, and had
+seized the opportunity offered by her entry into the convent to cut off
+all further communication between her ex-waiting-maid and herself. Miss
+Gwilt’s letter was returned by the post-office. She caused inquiries to
+be made; and found that Mr. Blanchard was dead, and that his daughter
+had left the great house for some place of retirement unknown. The next
+thing she did, upon this, was to write to the heir in possession of the
+estate. The letter was answered by his solicitors, who were instructed
+to put the law in force at the first attempt she made to extort money
+from any member of the family at Thorpe Ambrose. The last chance was
+to get at the address of her mistress’s place of retirement. The family
+bankers, to whom she wrote, wrote back to say that they were instructed
+not to give the lady’s address to any one applying for it, without being
+previously empowered to do so by the lady herself. That last letter
+settled the question--Miss Gwilt could do nothing more. With money at
+her command, she might have gone to England and made the Blanchards
+think twice before they carried things with too high a hand. Not having
+a half-penny at command, she was helpless. Without money and
+without friends, you may wonder how she supported herself while the
+correspondence was going on. She supported herself by playing the
+piano-forte at a low concert-room in Brussels. The men laid siege to
+her, of course, in all directions; but they found her insensible as
+adamant. One of these rejected gentlemen was a Russian; and he was the
+means of making her acquainted with a countrywoman of his, whose name is
+unpronounceable by English lips. Let us give her her title, and call
+her the baroness. The two women liked each other at their first
+introduction; and a new scene opened in Miss Gwilt’s life. She became
+reader and companion to the baroness. Everything was right, everything
+was smooth on the surface. Everything was rotten and everything was
+wrong under it.”
+
+“In what way, Jemmy? Please to wait a little, and tell me in what way.”
+
+“In this way. The baroness was fond of traveling, and she had a select
+set of friends about her who were quite of her way of thinking. They
+went from one city on the Continent to another, and were such charming
+people that they picked up acquaintances everywhere. The acquaintances
+were invited to the baroness’s receptions, and card-tables were
+invariably a part of the baroness’s furniture. Do you see it now?
+or must I tell you, in the strictest confidence, that cards were not
+considered sinful on these festive occasions, and that the luck, at the
+end of the evening, turned out to be almost invariably on the side of
+the baroness and her friends? Swindlers, all of them; and there isn’t
+a doubt on my mind, whatever there may be on yours, that Miss Gwilt’s
+manners and appearance made her a valuable member of the society in the
+capacity of a decoy. Her own statement is that she was innocent of
+all knowledge of what really went on; that she was quite ignorant of
+card-playing; that she hadn’t such a thing as a respectable friend to
+turn to in the world; and that she honestly liked the baroness, for the
+simple reason that the baroness was a hearty good friend to her from
+first to last. Believe that or not, as you please. For five years she
+traveled about all over the Continent with these card-sharpers in high
+life, and she might have been among them at this moment, for anything I
+know to the contrary, if the baroness had not caught a Tartar at Naples,
+in the shape of a rich traveling Englishman, named Waldron. Aha! that
+name startles you, does it? You’ve read the Trial of the famous Mrs.
+Waldron, like the rest of the world? And you know who Miss Gwilt is now,
+without my telling you?”
+
+He paused, and looked at his father in sudden perplexity. Far from being
+overwhelmed by the discovery which had just burst on him, Mr. Bashwood,
+after the first natural movement of surprise, faced his son with a
+self-possession which was nothing short of extraordinary under the
+circumstances. There was a new brightness in his eyes, and a new color
+in his face. If it had been possible to conceive such a thing of a
+man in his position, he seemed to be absolutely encouraged instead of
+depressed by what he had just heard. “Go on, Jemmy,” he said, quietly;
+“I am one of the few people who didn’t read the trial; I only heard of
+it.”
+
+Still wondering inwardly, Bashwood the younger recovered himself, and
+went on.
+
+“You always were, and you always will be, behind the age,” he said.
+“When we come to the trial, I can tell you as much about it as you need
+know. In the meantime, we must go back to the baroness and Mr. Waldron.
+For a certain number of nights the Englishman let the card-sharpers
+have it all their own way; in other words, he paid for the privilege of
+making himself agreeable to Miss Gwilt. When he thought he had produced
+the necessary impression on her, he exposed the whole confederacy
+without mercy. The police interfered; the baroness found herself in
+prison; and Miss Gwilt was put between the two alternatives of accepting
+Mr. Waldron’s protection or being thrown on the world again. She was
+amazingly virtuous, or amazingly clever, which you please. To Mr.
+Waldron’s astonishment, she told him that she could face the prospect
+of being thrown on the world; and that he must address her honorably or
+leave her forever. The end of it was what the end always is, where the
+man is infatuated and the woman is determined. To the disgust of his
+family and friends, Mr. Waldron made a virtue of necessity, and married
+her.”
+
+“How old was he?” asked Bashwood the elder, eagerly.
+
+Bashwood the younger burst out laughing. “He was about old enough,
+daddy, to be your son, and rich enough to have burst that precious
+pocket-book of yours with thousand-pound notes! Don’t hang your head.
+It wasn’t a happy marriage, though he _was_ so young and so rich. They
+lived abroad, and got on well enough at first. He made a new will, of
+course, as soon as he was married, and provided handsomely for his wife,
+under the tender pressure of the honey-moon. But women wear out, like
+other things, with time; and one fine morning Mr. Waldron woke up with
+a doubt in his mind whether he had not acted like a fool. He was an
+ill-tempered man; he was discontented with himself; and of course he
+made his wife feel it. Having begun by quarreling with her, he got on to
+suspecting her, and became savagely jealous of every male creature who
+entered the house. They had no incumbrances in the shape of children,
+and they moved from one place to another, just as his jealousy inclined
+him, till they moved back to England at last, after having been married
+close on four years. He had a lonely old house of his own among the
+Yorkshire moors, and there he shut his wife and himself up from every
+living creature, except his servants and his dogs. Only one result could
+come, of course, of treating a high-spirited young woman in that way.
+It may be her fate, or it may be chance; but, whenever a woman is
+desperate, there is sure to be a man handy to take advantage of it. The
+man in this case was rather a ‘dark horse,’ as they say on the turf. He
+was a certain Captain Manuel, a native of Cuba, and (according to his
+own account) an ex-officer in the Spanish navy. He had met Mr. Waldron’s
+beautiful wife on the journey back to England; had contrived to speak
+to her in spite of her husband’s jealousy; and had followed her to her
+place of imprisonment in Mr. Waldron’s house on the moors. The captain
+is described as a clever, determined fellow--of the daring piratical
+sort--with the dash of mystery about him that women like--”
+
+“She’s not the same as other women!” interposed Mr. Bashwood, suddenly
+interrupting his son. “Did she--?” His voice failed him, and he stopped
+without bringing the question to an end.
+
+“Did she like the captain?” suggested Bashwood the younger, with another
+laugh. “According to her own account of it, she adored him. At the same
+time her conduct (as represented by herself) was perfectly innocent.
+Considering how carefully her husband watched her, the statement
+(incredible as it appears) is probably true. For six weeks or so they
+confined themselves to corresponding privately, the Cuban captain (who
+spoke and wrote English perfectly) having contrived to make a go-between
+of one of the female servants in the Yorkshire house. How it might
+have ended we needn’t trouble ourselves to inquire--Mr. Waldron himself
+brought matters to a crisis. Whether he got wind of the clandestine
+correspondence or not, doesn’t appear. But this is certain, that he came
+home from a ride one day in a fiercer temper than usual; that his wife
+showed him a sample of that high spirit of hers which he had never yet
+been able to break; and that it ended in his striking her across the
+face with his riding-whip. Ungentlemanly conduct, I am afraid we must
+admit; but, to all outward appearance, the riding-whip produced the
+most astonishing results. From that moment the lady submitted as she had
+never submitted before. For a fortnight afterward he did what he liked,
+and she never thwarted him; he said what he liked, and she never uttered
+a word of protest. Some men might have suspected this sudden reformation
+of hiding something dangerous under the surface. Whether Mr. Waldron
+looked at it in that light, I can’t tell you. All that is known is that,
+before the mark of the whip was off his wife’s face, he fell ill, and
+that in two days afterward he was a dead man. What do you say to that?”
+
+“I say he deserved it!” answered Mr. Bashwood, striking his hand
+excitedly on the table, as his son paused and looked at him.
+
+“The doctor who attended the dying man was not of your way of thinking,”
+ remarked Bashwood the younger, dryly. “He called in two other medical
+men, and they all three refused to certify the death. The usual legal
+investigation followed. The evidence of the doctors and the evidence
+of the servants pointed irresistibly in one and the same direction; and
+Mrs. Waldron was committed for trial, on the charge of murdering her
+husband by poison. A solicitor in first-rate criminal practice was
+sent for from London to get up the prisoner’s defense, and these
+‘Instructions’ took their form and shape accordingly.--What’s the
+matter? What do you want now?”
+
+Suddenly rising from his chair, Mr. Bashwood stretched across the table,
+and tried to take the papers from his son. “I want to look at them,” he
+burst out, eagerly. “I want to see what they say about the captain from
+Cuba. He was at the bottom of it, Jemmy--I’ll swear he was at the bottom
+of it!”
+
+“Nobody doubted that who was in the secret of the case at the time,”
+ rejoined his son. “But nobody could prove it. Sit down again, dad, and
+compose yourself. There’s nothing here about Captain Manuel but the
+lawyer’s private suspicions of him, for the counsel to act on or not, at
+the counsel’s discretion. From first to last she persisted in screening
+the captain. At the outset of the business she volunteered two
+statements to the lawyer--both of which he suspected to be false. In the
+first place she declared that she was innocent of the crime. He wasn’t
+surprised, of course, so far; his clients were, as a general rule,
+in the habit of deceiving him in that way. In the second place, while
+admitting her private correspondence with the Cuban captain, she
+declared that the letters on both sides related solely to a proposed
+elopement, to which her husband’s barbarous treatment had induced her to
+consent. The lawyer naturally asked to see the letters. ‘He has burned
+all my letters, and I have burned all his,’ was the only answer he
+got. It was quite possible that Captain Manuel might have burned _her_
+letters when he heard there was a coroner’s inquest in the house. But it
+was in her solicitor’s experience (as it is in my experience too) that,
+when a woman is fond of a man, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
+risk or no risk, she keeps his letters. Having his suspicions roused
+in this way, the lawyer privately made some inquiries about the foreign
+captain, and found that he was as short of money as a foreign captain
+could be. At the same time, he put some questions to his client about
+her expectations from her deceased husband. She answered, in high
+indignation, that a will had been found among her husband’s papers,
+privately executed only a few days before his death, and leaving her no
+more, out of all his immense fortune, than five thousand pounds.
+‘Was there an older will, then,’ says the lawyer, ‘which the new
+will revoked?’ Yes, there was; a will that he had given into her own
+possession--a will made when they were first married. ‘Leaving his widow
+well provided for?’ Leaving her just ten times as much as the second
+will left her. ‘Had she ever mentioned that first will, now revoked, to
+Captain Manuel?’ She saw the trap set for her, and said, ‘No, never!’
+without an instant’s hesitation. That reply confirmed the lawyer’s
+suspicions. He tried to frighten her by declaring that her life might
+pay the forfeit of her deceiving him in this matter. With the usual
+obstinacy of women, she remained just as immovable as ever. The captain,
+on his side, behaved in the most exemplary manner. He confessed to
+planning the elopement; he declared that he had burned all the lady’s
+letters as they reached him, out of regard for her reputation; he
+remained in the neighborhood; and he volunteered to attend before the
+magistrates. Nothing was discovered that could legally connect him with
+the crime, or that could put him into court on the day of the trial,
+in any other capacity than the capacity of a witness. I don’t believe
+myself that there’s any moral doubt (as they call it) that Manuel knew
+of the will which left her mistress of fifty thousand pounds; and that
+he was ready and willing, in virtue of that circumstance, to marry her
+on Mr. Waldron’s death. If anybody tempted her to effect her own release
+from her husband by making herself a widow, the captain must have been
+the man. And unless she contrived, guarded and watched as she was, to
+get the poison for herself, the poison must have come to her in one of
+the captain’s letters.”
+
+“I don’t believe she used it, if it did come to her!” exclaimed Mr.
+Bashwood. “I believe it was the captain himself who poisoned her
+husband!”
+
+Bashwood the younger, without noticing the interruption, folded up the
+Instructions for the Defense, which had now served their purpose, put
+them back in his bag, and produced a printed pamphlet in their place.
+
+“Here is one of the published Reports of the Trial,” he said, “which
+you can read at your leisure, if you like. We needn’t waste time now
+by going into details. I have told you already how cleverly her counsel
+paved his way for treating the charge of murder as the crowning calamity
+of the many that had already fallen on an innocent woman. The two legal
+points relied on for the defense (after this preliminary flourish) were:
+First, that there was no evidence to connect her with the possession
+of poison; and, secondly, that the medical witnesses, while positively
+declaring that her husband had died by poison, differed in their
+conclusions as to the particular drug that had killed him. Both good
+points, and both well worked; but the evidence on the other side bore
+down everything before it. The prisoner was proved to have had no less
+than three excellent reasons for killing her husband. He had treated her
+with almost unexampled barbarity; he had left her in a will (unrevoked
+so far as she knew) mistress of a fortune on his death; and she was, by
+her own confession, contemplating an elopement with another man. Having
+set forth these motives, the prosecution next showed by evidence, which
+was never once shaken on any single point, that the one person in the
+house who could by any human possibility have administered the poison
+was the prisoner at the bar. What could the judge and jury do, with such
+evidence before them as this? The verdict was Guilty, as a matter of
+course; and the judge declared that he agreed with it. The female part
+of the audience was in hysterics; and the male part was not much better.
+The judge sobbed, and the bar shuddered. She was sentenced to death in
+such a scene as had never been previously witnessed in an English court
+of justice. And she is alive and hearty at the present moment; free
+to do any mischief she pleases, and to poison, at her own entire
+convenience, any man, woman, or child that happens to stand in her way.
+A most interesting woman! Keep on good terms with her, my dear sir,
+whatever you do, for the Law has said to her in the plainest possible
+English, ‘My charming friend, I have no terrors for _you_!’”
+
+“How was she pardoned?” asked Mr. Bashwood, breathlessly. “They told me
+at the time, but I have forgotten. Was it the Home Secretary? If it was,
+I respect the Home Secretary! I say the Home Secretary was deserving of
+his place.”
+
+“Quite right, old gentleman!” rejoined Bashwood the younger. “The Home
+Secretary was the obedient humble servant of an enlightened Free Press,
+and he _was_ deserving of his place. Is it possible you don’t know how
+she cheated the gallows? If you don’t, I must tell you. On the evening
+of the trial, two or three of the young buccaneers of literature
+went down to two or three newspaper offices, and wrote two or three
+heart-rending leading articles on the subject of the proceedings in
+court. The next morning the public caught light like tinder; and the
+prisoner was tried over again, before an amateur court of justice,
+in the columns of the newspapers. All the people who had no personal
+experience whatever on the subject seized their pens, and rushed
+(by kind permission of the editor) into print. Doctors who had _not_
+attended the sick man, and who had _not_ been present at the examination
+of the body, declared by dozens that he had died a natural death.
+Barristers without business, who had _not_ heard the evidence, attacked
+the jury who had heard it, and judged the judge, who had sat on the
+bench before some of them were born. The general public followed the
+lead of the barristers and the doctors, and the young buccaneers who had
+set the thing going. Here was the law that they all paid to protect them
+actually doing its duty in dreadful earnest! Shocking! shocking! The
+British Public rose to protest as one man against the working of its own
+machinery; and the Home Secretary, in a state of distraction, went to
+the judge. The judge held firm. He had said it was the right verdict at
+the time, and he said so still. ‘But suppose,’ says the Home Secretary,
+‘that the prosecution had tried some other way of proving her guilty at
+the trial than the way they did try, what would you and the jury have
+done then?’ Of course it was quite impossible for the judge to say.
+This comforted the Home Secretary, to begin with. And, when he got the
+judge’s consent, after that, to having the conflict of medical evidence
+submitted to one great doctor; and when the one great doctor took the
+merciful view, after expressly stating, in the first instance, that he
+knew nothing practically of the merits of the case, the Home Secretary
+was perfectly satisfied. The prisoner’s death-warrant went into the
+waste-paper basket; the verdict of the law was reversed by general
+acclamation; and the verdict of the newspapers carried the day. But
+the best of it is to come. You know what happened when the people found
+themselves with the pet object of their sympathy suddenly cast loose on
+their hands? A general impression prevailed directly that she was not
+quite innocent enough, after all, to be let out of prison then
+and there! Punish her a little--that was the state of the popular
+feeling--punish her a little, Mr. Home Secretary, on general moral
+grounds. A small course of gentle legal medicine, if you love us, and
+then we shall feel perfectly easy on the subject to the end of our
+days.”
+
+“Don’t joke about it!” cried his father. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, Jemmy!
+Did they try her again? They couldn’t! They durs’n’t! Nobody can be tried
+twice over for the same offense.”
+
+“Pooh! pooh! she could be tried a second time for a second offense,”
+ retorted Bashwood the younger--“and tried she was. Luckily for the
+pacification of the public mind, she had rushed headlong into redressing
+her own grievances (as women will), when she discovered that her husband
+had cut her down from a legacy of fifty thousand pounds to a legacy
+of five thousand by a stroke of his pen. The day before the inquest a
+locked drawer in Mr. Waldron’s dressing-room table, which contained some
+valuable jewelry, was discovered to have been opened and emptied; and
+when the prisoner was committed by the magistrates, the precious stones
+were found torn out of their settings and sewed up in her stays. The
+lady considered it a case of justifiable self-compensation. The law
+declared it to be a robbery committed on the executors of the dead man.
+The lighter offense--which had been passed over when such a charge as
+murder was brought against her--was just the thing to revive, to save
+appearances in the eyes of the public. They had stopped the course of
+justice, in the case of the prisoner, at one trial; and now all they
+wanted was to set the course of justice going again, in the case of the
+prisoner, at another! She was arraigned for the robbery, after having
+been pardoned for the murder. And, what is more, if her beauty and her
+misfortunes hadn’t made a strong impression on her lawyer, she would not
+only have had to stand another trial, but would have had even the five
+thousand pounds, to which she was entitled by the second will, taken
+away from her, as a felon, by the Crown.”
+
+“I respect her lawyer! I admire her lawyer!” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood. “I
+should like to take his hand, and tell him so.”
+
+“He wouldn’t thank you, if you did,” remarked Bashwood the younger. “He
+is under a comfortable impression that nobody knows how he saved Mrs.
+Waldron’s legacy for her but himself.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Jemmy,” interposed his father. “But don’t call her
+Mrs. Waldron. Speak of her, please, by her name when she was innocent,
+and young, and a girl at school. Would you mind, for my sake, calling
+her Miss Gwilt?”
+
+“Not I! It makes no difference to me what name I give her. Bother your
+sentiment! let’s go on with the facts. This is what the lawyer did
+before the second trial came off. He told her she would be found guilty
+_again_, to a dead certainty. ‘And this time,’ he said, ‘the public will
+let the law take its course. Have you got an old friend whom you can
+trust?’ She hadn’t such a thing as an old friend in the world. ‘Very
+well, then,’ says the lawyer, you must trust me. Sign this paper; and
+you will have executed a fictitious sale of all your property to myself.
+When the right time comes, I shall first carefully settle with your
+husband’s executors; and I shall then reconvey the money to you,
+securing it properly (in case you ever marry again) in your own
+possession. The Crown, in other transactions of this kind, frequently
+waives its right of disputing the validity of the sale; and, if the
+Crown is no harder on you than on other people, when you come out of
+prison you will have your five thousand pounds to begin the world with
+again.’ Neat of the lawyer, when she was going to be tried for robbing
+the executors, to put her up to a way of robbing the Crown, wasn’t it?
+Ha! ha! what a world it is!”
+
+The last effort of the son’s sarcasm passed unheeded by the father. “In
+prison!” he said to himself. “Oh me, after all that misery, in prison
+again!”
+
+“Yes,” said Bashwood the younger, rising and stretching himself, “that’s
+how it ended. The verdict was Guilty; and the sentence was imprisonment
+for two years. She served her time; and came out, as well as I can
+reckon it, about three years since. If you want to know what she did
+when she recovered her liberty, and how she went on afterward, I may be
+able to tell you something about it--say, on another occasion, when you
+have got an extra note or two in your pocket-book. For the present, all
+you need know, you do know. There isn’t the shadow of a doubt that this
+fascinating lady has the double slur on her of having been found guilty
+of murder, and of having served her term of imprisonment for theft.
+There’s your money’s worth for your money--with the whole of my
+wonderful knack at stating a case clearly, thrown in for nothing. If you
+have any gratitude in you, you ought to do something handsome, one of
+these days, for your son. But for me, I’ll tell you what you would have
+done, old gentleman. If you could have had your own way, you would have
+married Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood rose to his feet, and looked his son steadily in the face.
+
+“If I could have my own way,” he said, “I would marry her now.”
+
+Bashwood the younger started back a step. “After all I have told you?”
+ he asked, in the blankest astonishment.
+
+“After all you have told me.”
+
+“With the chance of being poisoned, the first time you happened to
+offend her?”
+
+“With the chance of being poisoned,” answered Mr. Bashwood, “in
+four-and-twenty hours.”
+
+The Spy of the Private Inquiry Office dropped back into his chair, cowed
+by his father’s words and his father’s looks.
+
+“Mad!” he said to himself. “Stark mad, by jingo!”
+
+Mr. Bashwood looked at his watch, and hurriedly took his hat from a
+side-table.
+
+“I should like to hear the rest of it,” he said. “I should like to hear
+every word you have to tell me about her, to the very last. But the
+time, the dreadful, galloping time, is getting on. For all I know, they
+may be on their way to be married at this very moment.”
+
+“What are you going to do?” asked Bashwood the younger, getting between
+his father and the door.
+
+“I am going to the hotel,” said the old man, trying to pass him. “I am
+going to see Mr. Armadale.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“To tell him everything you have told me.” He paused after making that
+reply. The terrible smile of triumph which had once already appeared on
+his face overspread it again. “Mr. Armadale is young; Mr. Armadale has
+all his life before him,” he whispered, cunningly, with his trembling
+fingers clutching his son’s arm. “What doesn’t frighten _me_ will
+frighten _him_!”
+
+“Wait a minute,” said Bashwood the younger. “Are you as certain as ever
+that Mr. Armadale is the man?”
+
+“What man?”
+
+“The man who is going to marry her.”
+
+“Yes! yes! yes! Let me go, Jemmy--let me go.”
+
+The spy set his back against the door, and considered for a moment. Mr.
+Armadale was rich--Mr. Armadale (if _he_ was not stark mad too) might be
+made to put the right money-value on information that saved him from
+the disgrace of marrying Miss Gwilt. “It may be a hundred pounds in my
+pocket if I work it myself,” thought Bashwood the younger. “And it won’t
+be a half-penny if I leave it to my father.” He took up his hat and his
+leather bag. “Can you carry it all in your own addled old head, daddy?”
+ he asked, with his easiest impudence of manner. “Not you! I’ll go with
+you and help you. What do you think of that?”
+
+The father threw his arms in an ecstasy round the son’s neck. “I can’t
+help it, Jemmy,” he said, in broken tones. “You are so good to me. Take
+the other note, my dear--I’ll manage without it--take the other note.”
+
+The son threw open the door with a flourish; and magnanimously turned
+his back on the father’s offered pocket-book. “Hang it, old gentleman,
+I’m not quite so mercenary as _that_!” he said, with an appearance of
+the deepest feeling. “Put up your pocket-book, and let’s be off.” “If I
+took my respected parent’s last five-pound note,” he thought to himself,
+as he led the way downstairs, “how do I know he mightn’t cry halves
+when he sees the color of Mr. Armadale’s money?” “Come along, dad!”
+ he resumed. “We’ll take a cab and catch the happy bridegroom before he
+starts for the church!”
+
+They hailed a cab in the street, and started for the hotel which had
+been the residence of Midwinter and Allan during their stay in London.
+The instant the door of the vehicle had closed, Mr. Bashwood returned to
+the subject of Miss Gwilt.
+
+“Tell me the rest,” he said, taking his son’s hand, and patting it
+tenderly. “Let’s go on talking about her all the way to the hotel. Help
+me through the time, Jemmy--help me through the time.”
+
+Bashwood the younger was in high spirits at the prospect of seeing the
+color of Mr. Armadale’s money. He trifled with his father’s anxiety to
+the very last.
+
+“Let’s see if you remember what I’ve told you already,” he began.
+“There’s a character in the story that’s dropped out of it without being
+accounted for. Come! can you tell me who it is?”
+
+He had reckoned on finding his father unable to answer the question. But
+Mr. Bashwood’s memory, for anything that related to Miss Gwilt, was as
+clear and ready as his son’s. “The foreign scoundrel who tempted her,
+and let her screen him at the risk of her own life,” he said, without
+an instant’s hesitation. “Don’t speak of him, Jemmy--don’t speak of him
+again!”
+
+“I _must_ speak of him,” retorted the other. “You want to know what
+became of Miss Gwilt when she got out of prison, don’t you? Very
+good--I’m in a position to tell you. She became Mrs. Manuel. It’s no use
+staring at me, old gentleman. I know it officially. At the latter part
+of last year, a foreign lady came to our place, with evidence to prove
+that she had been lawfully married to Captain Manuel, at a former period
+of his career, when he had visited England for the first time. She had
+only lately discovered that he had been in this country again; and she
+had reason to believe that he had married another woman in Scotland.
+Our people were employed to make the necessary inquiries. Comparison of
+dates showed that the Scotch marriage--if it was a marriage at all, and
+not a sham--had taken place just about the time when Miss Gwilt was a
+free woman again. And a little further investigation showed us that the
+second Mrs. Manuel was no other than the heroine of the famous criminal
+trial--whom we didn’t know then, but whom we do know now, to be
+identical with your fascinating friend, Miss Gwilt.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood’s head sank on his breast. He clasped his trembling hands
+fast in each other, and waited in silence to hear the rest.
+
+“Cheer up!” pursued his son. “She was no more the captain’s wife than
+you are; and what is more, the captain himself is out of your way now.
+One foggy day in December last he gave us the slip; and was off to the
+continent, nobody knew where. He had spent the whole of the second Mrs.
+Manuel’s five thousand pounds, in the time that had elapsed (between two
+and three years) since she had come out of prison; and the wonder was,
+where he had got the money to pay his traveling expenses. It turned out
+that he had got it from the second Mrs. Manuel herself. She had filled
+his empty pockets; and there she was, waiting confidently in a miserable
+London lodging, to hear from him and join him as soon as he was safely
+settled in foreign parts! Where had _she_ got the money, you may ask
+naturally enough? Nobody could tell at the time. My own notion is, now,
+that her former mistress must have been still living, and that she must
+have turned her knowledge of the Blanchards’ family secret to profitable
+account at last. This is mere guess-work, of course; but there’s a
+circumstance that makes it likely guess-work to my mind. She had an
+elderly female friend to apply to at the time, who was just the woman to
+help her in ferreting out her mistress’s address. Can you guess the name
+of the elderly female friend? Not you! Mrs. Oldershaw, of course!”
+
+Mr. Bashwood suddenly looked up. “Why should she go back,” he asked, “to
+the woman who had deserted her when she was a child?”
+
+“I can’t say,” rejoined his son, “unless she went back in the interests
+of her own magnificent head of hair. The prison-scissors, I needn’t tell
+you, had made short work of it with Miss Gwilt’s love-locks, in every
+sense of the word and Mrs. Oldershaw, I beg to add, is the most eminent
+woman in England, as restorer-general of the dilapidated heads and faces
+of the female sex. Put two and two together; and perhaps you’ll agree
+with me, in this case, that they make four.”
+
+“Yes, yes; two and two make four,” repeated his father, impatiently.
+“But I want to know something else. Did she hear from him again? Did he
+send for her after he had gone away to foreign parts?”
+
+“The captain? Why, what on earth can you be thinking of? Hadn’t he spent
+every farthing of her money? and wasn’t he loose on the Continent out of
+her reach? She waited to hear from him. I dare say, for she persisted in
+believing in him. But I’ll lay you any wager you like, she never saw the
+sight of his handwriting again. We did our best at the office to open
+her eyes; we told her plainly that he had a first wife living, and that
+she hadn’t the shadow of a claim on him. She wouldn’t believe us, though
+we met her with the evidence. Obstinate, devilish obstinate. I dare say
+she waited for months together before she gave up the last hope of ever
+seeing him again.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood looked aside quickly out of the cab window. “Where could
+she turn for refuge next?” he said, not to his son, but to himself.
+“What, in Heaven’s name, could she do?”
+
+“Judging by my experience of women,” remarked Bashwood the younger,
+overhearing him, “I should say she probably tried to drown herself. But
+that’s only guess-work again: it’s all guess-work at this part of her
+story. You catch me at the end of my evidence, dad, when you come to
+Miss Gwilt’s proceedings in the spring and summer of the present year.
+She might, or she might not, have been desperate enough to attempt
+suicide; and she might, or she might not, have been at the bottom of
+those inquiries that I made for Mrs. Oldershaw. I dare say you’ll see
+her this morning; and perhaps, if you use your influence, you may be
+able to make her finish her own story herself.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood, still looking out of the cab window, suddenly laid his
+hand on his son’s arm.
+
+“Hush! hush!” he exclaimed, in violent agitation. “We have got there at
+last. Oh, Jemmy, feel how my heart beats! Here is the hotel.”
+
+“Bother your heart,” said Bashwood the younger. “Wait here while I make
+the inquiries.”
+
+“I’ll come with you!” cried his father. “I can’t wait! I tell you, I
+can’t wait!”
+
+They went into the hotel together, and asked for “Mr. Armadale.”
+
+The answer, after some little hesitation and delay, was that Mr.
+Armadale had gone away six days since. A second waiter added that Mr.
+Armadale’s friend--Mr. Midwinter--had only left that morning. Where had
+Mr. Armadale gone? Somewhere into the country. Where had Mr. Midwinter
+gone? Nobody knew.
+
+Mr. Bashwood looked at his son in speechless and helpless dismay.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” said Bashwood the younger, pushing his father
+back roughly into the cab. “He’s safe enough. We shall find him at Miss
+Gwilt’s.”
+
+The old man took his son’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you, my dear,” he
+said, gratefully. “Thank you for comforting me.”
+
+The cab was driven next to the second lodging which Miss Gwilt had
+occupied, in the neighborhood of Tottenham Court Road.
+
+“Stop here,” said the spy, getting out, and shutting his father into the
+cab. “I mean to manage this part of the business myself.”
+
+He knocked at the house door. “I have got a note for Miss Gwilt,” he
+said, walking into the passage, the moment the door was opened.
+
+“She’s gone,” answered the servant. “She went away last night.”
+
+Bashwood the younger wasted no more words with the servant. He insisted
+on seeing the mistress. The mistress confirmed the announcement of Miss
+Gwilt’s departure on the previous evening. Where had she gone to? The
+woman couldn’t say. How had she left? On foot. At what hour? Between
+nine and ten. What had she done with her luggage? She had no luggage.
+Had a gentleman been to see her on the previous day? Not a soul, gentle
+or simple, had come to the house to see Miss Gwilt.
+
+The father’s face, pale and wild, was looking out of the cab window as
+the son descended the house steps. “Isn’t she there, Jemmy?” he asked,
+faintly--“isn’t she there?”
+
+“Hold your tongue,” cried the spy, with the native coarseness of
+his nature rising to the surface at last. “I’m not at the end of my
+inquiries yet.”
+
+He crossed the road, and entered a coffee-shop situated exactly opposite
+the house he had just left.
+
+In the box nearest the window two men were sitting talking together
+anxiously.
+
+“Which of you was on duty yesterday evening, between nine and ten
+o’clock?” asked Bashwood the younger, suddenly joining them, and putting
+his question in a quick, peremptory whisper.
+
+“I was, sir,” said one of the men, unwillingly.
+
+“Did you lose sight of the house?--Yes! I see you did.”
+
+“Only for a minute, sir. An infernal blackguard of a soldier came in--”
+
+“That will do,” said Bashwood the younger. “I know what the soldier did,
+and who sent him to do it. She has given us the slip again. You are the
+greatest ass living. Consider yourself dismissed.” With those words, and
+with an oath to emphasize them, he left the coffee-shop and returned to
+the cab.
+
+“She’s gone!” cried his father. “Oh, Jemmy, Jemmy, I see it in your
+face!” He fell back into his own corner of the cab, with a faint,
+wailing cry. “They’re married,” he moaned to himself; his hands falling
+helplessly on his knees; his hat falling unregarded from his head. “Stop
+them!” he exclaimed, suddenly rousing himself, and seizing his son in a
+frenzy by the collar of the coat.
+
+“Go back to the hotel,” shouted Bashwood the younger to the cabman.
+“Hold your noise!” he added, turning fiercely on his father. “I want to
+think.”
+
+The varnish of smoothness was all off him by this time. His temper was
+roused. His pride--even such a man has his pride!--was wounded to the
+quick. Twice had he matched his wits against a woman’s; and twice the
+woman had baffled him.
+
+He got out, on reaching the hotel for the second time, and privately
+tried the servants with the offer of money. The result of the experiment
+satisfied him that they had, in this instance, really and truly no
+information to sell. After a moment’s reflection, he stopped, before
+leaving the hotel, to ask the way to the parish church. “The chance may
+be worth trying,” he thought to himself, as he gave the address to the
+driver. “Faster!” he called out, looking first at his watch, and then at
+his father. “The minutes are precious this morning; and the old one is
+beginning to give in.”
+
+It was true. Still capable of hearing and of understanding, Mr. Bashwood
+was past speaking by this time. He clung with both hands to his son’s
+grudging arm, and let his head fall helplessly on his son’s averted
+shoulder.
+
+The parish church stood back from the street, protected by gates and
+railings, and surrounded by a space of open ground. Shaking off his
+father’s hold, Bashwood the younger made straight for the vestry. The
+clerk, putting away the books, and the clerk’s assistant, hanging up a
+surplice, were the only persons in the room when he entered it and asked
+leave to look at the marriage register for the day.
+
+The clerk gravely opened the book, and stood aside from the desk on
+which it lay.
+
+The day’s register comprised three marriages solemnized that morning;
+and the first two signatures on the page were “Allan Armadale” and
+“Lydia Gwilt!”
+
+Even the spy--ignorant as he was of the truth, unsuspicious as he was of
+the terrible future consequences to which the act of that morning might
+lead--even the spy started, when his eye first fell on the page. It was
+done! Come what might of it, it was done now. There, in black and white,
+was the registered evidence of the marriage, which was at once a truth
+in itself, and a lie in the conclusion to which it led! There--through
+the fatal similarity in the names--there, in Midwinter’s own signature,
+was the proof to persuade everybody that, not Midwinter, but Allan, was
+the husband of Miss Gwilt!
+
+Bashwood the younger closed the book, and returned it to the clerk.
+He descended the vestry steps, with his hands thrust doggedly into
+his pockets, and with a serious shock inflicted on his professional
+self-esteem.
+
+The beadle met him under the church wall. He considered for a moment
+whether it was worth while to spend a shilling in questioning the man,
+and decided in the affirmative. If they could be traced and overtaken,
+there might be a chance of seeing the color of Mr. Armadale’s money even
+yet.
+
+“How long is it,” he asked, “since the first couple married here this
+morning left the church?”
+
+“About an hour,” said the beadle.
+
+“How did they go away?”
+
+The beadle deferred answering that second question until he had first
+pocketed his fee.
+
+“You won’t trace them from here, sir,” he said, when he had got his
+shilling. “They went away on foot.”
+
+“And that is all you know about it?”
+
+“That, sir, is all I know about it.”
+
+Left by himself, even the Detective of the Private Inquiry Office paused
+for a moment before he returned to his father at the gate. He was
+roused from his hesitation by the sudden appearance, within the church
+inclosure, of the driver of the cab.
+
+“I’m afraid the old gentleman is going to be taken ill, sir,” said the
+man.
+
+Bashwood the younger frowned angrily, and walked back to the cab. As he
+opened the door and looked in, his father leaned forward and confronted
+him, with lips that moved speechlessly, and with a white stillness over
+all the rest of his face.
+
+“She’s done us,” said the spy. “They were married here this morning.”
+
+The old man’s body swayed for a moment from one side to the other. The
+instant after, his eyes closed and his head fell forward toward the
+front seat of the cab. “Drive to the hospital!” cried his son. “He’s in
+a fit. This is what comes of putting myself out of my way to please
+my father,” he muttered, sullenly raising Mr. Bashwood’s head, and
+loosening his cravat. “A nice morning’s work. Upon my soul, a nice
+morning’s work!”
+
+The hospital was near, and the house surgeon was at his post.
+
+“Will he come out of it?” asked Bashwood the younger, roughly.
+
+“Who are _you_?” asked the surgeon, sharply, on his side.
+
+“I am his son.”
+
+“I shouldn’t have thought it,” rejoined the surgeon, taking the
+restoratives that were handed to him by the nurse, and turning from
+the son to the father with an air of relief which he was at no pains to
+conceal. “Yes,” he added, after a minute or two; “your father will come
+out of it this time.”
+
+“When can he be moved away from here?”
+
+“He can be moved from the hospital in an hour or two.”
+
+The spy laid a card on the table. “I’ll come back for him or send for
+him,” he said. “I suppose I can go now, if I leave my name and address?”
+ With those words, he put on his hat, and walked out.
+
+“He’s a brute!” said the nurse.
+
+“No,” said the surgeon, quietly. “He’s a man.”
+
+* * * * * * *
+
+Between nine and ten o’clock that night, Mr. Bashwood awoke in his bed
+at the inn in the Borough. He had slept for some hours since he had been
+brought back from the hospital; and his mind and body were now slowly
+recovering together.
+
+A light was burning on the bedside table, and a letter lay on it,
+waiting for him till he was awake. It was in his son’s handwriting, and
+it contained these words:
+
+
+“MY DEAR DAD--Having seen you safe out of the hospital, and back at your
+hotel, I think I may fairly claim to have done my duty by you, and may
+consider myself free to look after my own affairs. Business will prevent
+me from seeing you to-night; and I don’t think it at all likely I shall
+be in your neighborhood to-morrow morning. My advice to you is to go
+back to Thorpe Ambrose, and to stick to your employment in the steward’s
+office. Wherever Mr. Armadale may be, he must, sooner or later, write to
+you on business. I wash my hands of the whole matter, mind, so far as I
+am concerned, from this time forth. But if _you_ like to go on with it,
+my professional opinion is (though you couldn’t hinder his marriage),
+you may part him from his wife.
+
+“Pray take care of yourself.
+
+“Your affectionate son,
+
+“JAMES BASHWOOD.”
+
+The letter dropped from the old man’s feeble hands. “I wish Jemmy could
+have come to see me to-night,” he thought. “But it’s very kind of him to
+advise me, all the same.”
+
+He turned wearily on the pillow, and read the letter a second time.
+“Yes,” he said, “there’s nothing left for me but to go back. I’m too
+poor and too old to hunt after them all by myself.” He closed his eyes:
+the tears trickled slowly over his wrinkled cheeks. “I’ve been a trouble
+to Jemmy,” he murmured, faintly; “I’ve been a sad trouble, I’m afraid,
+to poor Jemmy!” In a minute more his weakness overpowered him, and he
+fell asleep again.
+
+The clock of the neighboring church struck. It was ten. As the bell
+tolled the hour, the tidal train--with Midwinter and his wife among the
+passengers--was speeding nearer and nearer to Paris. As the bell tolled
+the hour, the watch on board Allan’s outward-bound yacht had sighted the
+light-house off the Land’s End, and had set the course of the vessel for
+Ushant and Finisterre.
+
+THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE FOURTH.
+
+
+
+
+I. MISS GWILT’S DIARY.
+
+“NAPLES, October 10th.--It is two months to-day since I declared that I
+had closed my Diary, never to open it again.
+
+“Why have I broken my resolution? Why have I gone back to this secret
+friend of my wretchedest and wickedest hours? Because I am more
+friendless than ever; because I am more lonely than ever, though my
+husband is sitting writing in the next room to me. My misery is a
+woman’s misery, and it _will_ speak--here, rather than nowhere; to my
+second self, in this book, if I have no one else to hear me.
+
+“How happy I was in the first days that followed our marriage, and how
+happy I made _him_! Only two months have passed, and that time is a
+by-gone time already! I try to think of anything I might have said
+or done wrongly, on my side--of anything he might have said or done
+wrongly, on his; and I can remember nothing unworthy of my husband,
+nothing unworthy of myself. I cannot even lay my finger on the day when
+the cloud first rose between us.
+
+“I could bear it, if I loved him less dearly than I do. I could conquer
+the misery of our estrangement, if he only showed the change in him as
+brutally as other men would show it.
+
+“But this never has happened--never will happen. It is not in his
+nature to inflict suffering on others. Not a hard word, not a hard look,
+escapes him. It is only at night, when I hear him sighing in his sleep,
+and sometimes when I see him dreaming in the morning hours, that I know
+how hopelessly I am losing the love he once felt for me. He hides, or
+tries to hide, it in the day, for my sake. He is all gentleness, all
+kindness; but his heart is not on his lips when he kisses me now; his
+hand tells me nothing when it touches mine. Day after day the hours that
+he gives to his hateful writing grow longer and longer; day after day he
+becomes more and more silent in the hours that he gives to me.
+
+“And, with all this, there is nothing that I can complain of--nothing
+marked enough to justify me in noticing it. His disappointment shrinks
+from all open confession; his resignation collects itself by such fine
+degrees that even my watchfulness fails to see the growth of it. Fifty
+times a day I feel the longing in me to throw my arms round his neck,
+and say: ‘For God’s sake, do anything to me, rather than treat me like
+this!’ and fifty times a day the words are forced back into my heart by
+the cruel considerateness of his conduct; which gives me no excuse for
+speaking them. I thought I had suffered the sharpest pain that I could
+feel when my first husband laid his whip across my face. I thought I
+knew the worst that despair could do on the day when I knew that the
+other villain, the meaner villain still, had cast me off. Live and
+learn. There is sharper pain than I felt under Waldron’s whip; there is
+bitterer despair than the despair I knew when Manuel deserted me.
+
+“Am I too old for him? Surely not yet! Have I lost my beauty? Not a man
+passes me in the street but his eyes tell me I am as handsome as ever.
+
+“Ah, no! no! the secret lies deeper than _that_! I have thought and
+thought about it till a horrible fancy has taken possession of me. He
+has been noble and good in his past life, and I have been wicked and
+disgraced. Who can tell what a gap that dreadful difference may make
+between us, unknown to him and unknown to me? It is folly, it is
+madness; but, when I lie awake by him in the darkness, I ask myself
+whether any unconscious disclosure of the truth escapes me in the close
+intimacy that now unites us? Is there an unutterable Something left by
+the horror of my past life, which clings invisibly to me still? And is
+he feeling the influence of it, sensibly, and yet incomprehensibly to
+himself? Oh me! is there no purifying power in such love as mine?
+Are there plague-spots of past wickedness on my heart which no
+after-repentance can wash out?
+
+“Who can tell? There is something wrong in our married life--I can only
+come back to that. There is some adverse influence that neither he nor I
+can trace which is parting us further and further from each other day by
+day. Well! I suppose I shall be hardened in time, and learn to bear it.
+
+“An open carriage has just driven by my window, with a nicely dressed
+lady in it. She had her husband by her side, and her children on the
+seat opposite. At the moment when I saw her she was laughing and talking
+in high spirits--a sparkling, light-hearted, happy woman. Ah, my lady,
+when you were a few years younger, if you had been left to yourself, and
+thrown on the world like me--”
+
+
+“October 11th.--The eleventh day of the month was the day (two months
+since) when we were married. He said nothing about it to me when we
+woke, nor I to him. But I thought I would make it the occasion, at
+breakfast-time, of trying to win him back.
+
+“I don’t think I ever took such pains with my toilet before. I don’t
+think I ever looked better than I looked when I went downstairs this
+morning. He had breakfasted by himself, and I found a little slip of
+paper on the table with an apology written on it. The post to England,
+he said, went out that day and his letter to the newspaper must be
+finished. In his place I would have let fifty posts go out rather than
+breakfast without him. I went into his room. There he was, immersed body
+and soul in his hateful writing! ‘Can’t you give me a little time this
+morning?’ I asked. He got up with a start. ‘Certainly, if you wish it.’
+He never even looked at me as he said the words. The very sound of his
+voice told me that all his interest was centered in the pen that he had
+just laid down. ‘I see you are occupied,’ I said; ‘I don’t wish it.’
+Before I had closed the door on him he was back at his desk. I have
+often heard that the wives of authors have been for the most part
+unhappy women. And now I know why.
+
+“I suppose, as I said yesterday, I shall learn to bear it. (What
+_stuff_, by-the-by, I seem to have written yesterday! How ashamed I
+should be if anybody saw it but myself!) I hope the trumpery newspaper
+he writes for won’t succeed! I hope his rubbishing letter will be well
+cut up by some other newspaper as soon as it gets into print!
+
+“What am I to do with myself all the morning? I can’t go out, it’s
+raining. If I open the piano, I shall disturb the industrious journalist
+who is scribbling in the next room. Oh, dear, it was lonely enough in
+my lodging in Thorpe Ambrose, but how much lonelier it is here! Shall I
+read? No; books don’t interest me; I hate the whole tribe of authors. I
+think I shall look back through these pages, and live my life over again
+when I was plotting and planning, and finding a new excitement to occupy
+me in every new hour of the day.
+
+“He might have looked at me, though he _was_ so busy with his
+writing.--He might have said, ‘How nicely you are dressed this morning!’
+He might have remembered--never mind what! All he remembers is the
+newspaper.”
+
+
+“Twelve o’clock.--I have been reading and thinking; and, thanks to my
+Diary, I have got through an hour.
+
+“What a time it was--what a life it was, at Thorpe Ambrose! I wonder I
+kept my senses. It makes my heart beat, it makes my face flush, only to
+read about it now!
+
+“The rain still falls, and the journalist still scribbles. I don’t want
+to think the thoughts of that past time over again. And yet, what else
+can I do?
+
+“Supposing--I only say supposing--I felt now, as I felt when I traveled
+to London with Armadale; and when I saw my way to his life as plainly as
+I saw the man himself all through the journey...?
+
+“I’ll go and look out of the window. I’ll go and count the people as
+they pass by.
+
+“A funeral has gone by, with the penitents in their black hoods, and the
+wax torches sputtering in the wet, and the little bell ringing, and the
+priests droning their monotonous chant. A pleasant sight to meet me at
+the window! I shall go back to my Diary.
+
+“Supposing I was not the altered woman I am--I only say, supposing--how
+would the Grand Risk that I once thought of running look now? I have
+married Midwinter in the name that is really his own. And by doing that
+I have taken the first of those three steps which were once to lead me,
+through Armadale’s life, to the fortune and the station of Armadale’s
+widow. No matter how innocent my intentions might have been on the
+wedding-day--and they _were_ innocent--this is one of the unalterable
+results of the marriage. Well, having taken the first step, then,
+whether I would or no, how--supposing I meant to take the second step,
+which I don’t--how would present circumstances stand toward me? Would
+they warn me to draw back, I wonder? or would they encourage me to go
+on?
+
+“It will interest me to calculate the chances; and I can easily tear the
+leaf out, and destroy it, if the prospect looks too encouraging.
+
+“We are living here (for economy’s sake) far away from the expensive
+English quarter, in a suburb of the city, on the Portici side. We
+have made no traveling acquaintances among our own country people. Our
+poverty is against us; Midwinter’s shyness is against us; and (with
+the women) my personal appearance is against us. The men from whom my
+husband gets his information for the newspaper meet him at the cafe, and
+never come here. I discourage his bringing any strangers to see me; for,
+though years have passed since I was last at Naples, I cannot be sure
+that some of the many people I once knew in this place may not be living
+still. The moral of all this is (as the children’s storybooks say), that
+not a single witness has come to this house who could declare, if any
+after-inquiry took place in England, that Midwinter and I had been
+living here as man and wife. So much for present circumstances as they
+affect me.
+
+“Armadale next. Has any unforeseen accident led him to communicate with
+Thorpe Ambrose? Has he broken the conditions which the major imposed
+on him, and asserted himself in the character of Miss Milroy’s promised
+husband since I saw him last?
+
+“Nothing of the sort has taken place. No unforeseen accident has altered
+his position--his tempting position--toward myself. I know all that
+has happened to him since he left England, through the letters which he
+writes to Midwinter, and which Midwinter shows to me.
+
+“He has been wrecked, to begin with. His trumpery little yacht has
+actually tried to drown him, after all, and has failed! It happened (as
+Midwinter warned him it might happen with so small a vessel) in a sudden
+storm. They were blown ashore on the coast of Portugal. The yacht went
+to pieces, but the lives, and papers, and so on, were saved. The men
+have been sent back to Bristol, with recommendations from their master
+which have already got them employment on board an outward-bound ship.
+And the master himself is on his way here, after stopping first at
+Lisbon, and next at Gibraltar, and trying ineffectually in both places
+to supply himself with another vessel. His third attempt is to be made
+at Naples, where there is an English yacht ‘laid up,’ as they call it,
+to be had for sale or hire. He has had no occasion to write home since
+the wreck; for he took away from Coutts’s the whole of the large sum
+of money lodged there for him, in circular notes. And he has felt no
+inclination to go back to England himself; for, with Mr. Brock dead,
+Miss Milroy at school, and Midwinter here, he has not a living creature
+in whom he is interested to welcome him if he returned. To see us, and
+to see the new yacht, are the only two present objects he has in view.
+Midwinter has been expecting him for a week past, and he may walk into
+this very room in which I am writing, at this very moment, for all I
+know to the contrary.
+
+“Tempting circumstances, these--with all the wrongs I have suffered
+at his mother’s hands and at his, still alive in my memory; with
+Miss Milroy confidently waiting to take her place at the head of his
+household; with my dream of living happy and innocent in Midwinter’s
+love dispelled forever, and with nothing left in its place to help me
+against myself. I wish it wasn’t raining; I wish I could go out.
+
+“Perhaps something may happen to prevent Armadale from coming to Naples?
+When he last wrote, he was waiting at Gibraltar for an English steamer
+in the Mediterranean trade to bring him on here. He may get tired of
+waiting before the steamer comes, or he may hear of a yacht at some
+other place than this. A little bird whispers in my ear that it may
+possibly be the wisest thing he ever did in his life if he breaks his
+engagement to join us at Naples.
+
+“Shall I tear out the leaf on which all these shocking things have been
+written? No. My Diary is so nicely bound--it would be positive barbarity
+to tear out a leaf. Let me occupy myself harmlessly with something else.
+What shall it be? My dressing-case--I will put my dressing-case tidy,
+and polish up the few little things in it which my misfortunes have
+still left in my possession.
+
+“I have shut up the dressing-case again. The first thing I found in
+it was Armadale’s shabby present to me on my marriage--the rubbishing
+little ruby ring. That irritated me, to begin with. The second thing
+that turned up was my bottle of Drops. I caught myself measuring the
+doses with my eye, and calculating how many of them would be enough to
+take a living creature over the border-land between sleep and death. Why
+I should have locked the dressing-case in a fright, before I had quite
+completed my calculation, I don’t know; but I did lock it. And here I
+am back again at my Diary, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to write
+about. Oh, the weary day! the weary day! Will nothing happen to excite
+me a little in this horrible place?”
+
+
+“October 12th.--Midwinter’s all-important letter to the newspaper was
+dispatched by the post last night. I was foolish enough to suppose that
+I might be honored by having some of his spare attention bestowed on
+me to-day. Nothing of the sort! He had a restless night, after all his
+writing, and got up with his head aching, and his spirits miserably
+depressed. When he is in this state, his favorite remedy is to return
+to his old vagabond habits, and go roaming away by himself nobody knows
+where. He went through the form this morning (knowing I had no riding
+habit) of offering to hire a little broken-kneed brute of a pony for me,
+in case I wished to accompany him! I preferred remaining at home. I will
+have a handsome horse and a handsome habit, or I won’t ride at all.
+He went away, without attempting to persuade me to change my mind. I
+wouldn’t have changed it, of course; but he might have tried to persuade
+me all the same.
+
+“I can open the piano in his absence--that is one comfort. And I am in
+a fine humor for playing--that is another. There is a sonata of
+Beethoven’s (I forget the number), which always suggests to me the agony
+of lost spirits in a place of torment. Come, my fingers and thumbs, and
+take me among the lost spirits this morning!”
+
+
+“October 13th.--Our windows look out on the sea. At noon to-day we saw
+a steamer coming in, with the English flag flying. Midwinter has gone to
+the port, on the chance that this may be the vessel from Gibraltar, with
+Armadale on board.
+
+“Two o’clock.--It is the vessel from Gibraltar. Armadale has added one
+more to the long list of his blunders: he has kept his engagement to
+join us at Naples.
+
+“How will it end _now_?
+
+“Who knows?”
+
+
+“October 16th.--Two days missed out of my Diary! I can hardly tell why,
+unless it is that Armadale irritates me beyond all endurance. The mere
+sight of him takes me back to Thorpe Ambrose. I fancy I must have been
+afraid of what I might write about him, in the course of the last two
+days, if I indulged myself in the dangerous luxury of opening these
+pages.
+
+“This morning I am afraid of nothing, and I take up my pen again
+accordingly.
+
+“Is there any limit, I wonder, to the brutish stupidity of some men?
+I thought I had discovered Armadale’s limit when I was his neighbor in
+Norfolk; but my later experience at Naples shows me that I was wrong. He
+is perpetually in and out of this house (crossing over to us in a boat
+from the hotel at Santa Lucia, where he sleeps); and he has exactly two
+subjects of conversation--the yacht for sale in the harbor here, and
+Miss Milroy. Yes! he selects ME as the _confidante_ of his devoted
+attachment to the major’s daughter! ‘It’s so nice to talk to a woman
+about it!’ That is all the apology he has thought it necessary to make
+for appealing to my sympathies--_my_ sympathies!--on the subject of ‘his
+darling Neelie,’ fifty times a day. He is evidently persuaded (if he
+thinks about it at all) that I have forgotten, as completely as he has
+forgotten, all that once passed between us when I was first at Thorpe
+Ambrose. Such an utter want of the commonest delicacy and the commonest
+tact, in a creature who is, to all appearance, possessed of a skin, and
+not a hide, and who does, unless my ears deceive me, talk, and not bray,
+is really quite incredible when one comes to think of it. But it is, for
+all that, quite true. He asked me--he actually asked me, last night--how
+many hundreds a year the wife of a rich man could spend on her dress.
+‘Don’t put it too low,’ the idiot added, with his intolerable grin.
+‘Neelie shall be one of the best-dressed women in England when I have
+married her.’ And this to me, after having had him at my feet, and then
+losing him again through Miss Milroy! This to me, with an alpaca gown
+on, and a husband whose income must be helped by a newspaper!
+
+“I had better not dwell on it any longer. I had better think and write
+of something else.
+
+“The yacht. As a relief from hearing about Miss Milroy, I declare the
+yacht in the harbor is quite an interesting subject to me! She (the men
+call a vessel ‘She’; and I suppose, if the women took an interest in
+such things, _they_ would call a vessel ‘He’)--she is a beautiful model;
+and her ‘top-sides’ (whatever they may be) are especially distinguished
+by being built of mahogany. But, with these merits, she has the defect,
+on the other hand, of being old--which is a sad drawback--and the
+crew and the sailing-master have been ‘paid off,’ and sent home to
+England--which is additionally distressing. Still, if a new crew and
+a new sailing-master can be picked up here, such a beautiful creature
+(with all her drawbacks), is not to be despised. It might answer to hire
+her for a cruise, and to see how she behaves. (If she is of _my_ mind,
+her behavior will rather astonish her new master!) The cruise will
+determine what faults she has, and what repairs, through the unlucky
+circumstance of her age, she really stands in need of. And then it will
+be time to settle whether to buy her outright or not. Such is Armadale’s
+conversation when he is not talking of ‘his darling Neelie.’ And
+Midwinter, who can steal no time from his newspaper work for his wife,
+can steal hours for his friend, and can offer them unreservedly to my
+irresistible rival, the new yacht.
+
+“I shall write no more to-day. If so lady-like a person as I am could
+feel a tigerish tingling all over her to the very tips of her fingers, I
+should suspect myself of being in that condition at the present moment.
+But, with _my_ manners and accomplishments, the thing is, of course, out
+of the question. We all know that a lady has no passions.”
+
+
+“October 17th.--A letter for Midwinter this morning from the
+slave-owners--I mean the newspaper people in London--which has set him
+at work again harder than ever. A visit at luncheon-time and another
+visit at dinner-time from Armadale. Conversation at luncheon about the
+yacht. Conversation at dinner about Miss Milroy. I have been honored,
+in regard to that young lady, by an invitation to go with Armadale
+to-morrow to the Toledo, and help him to buy some presents for the
+beloved object. I didn’t fly out at him--I only made an excuse. Can
+words express the astonishment I feel at my own patience? No words can
+express it.”
+
+
+“October 18th.--Armadale came to breakfast this morning, by way of
+catching Midwinter before he shuts himself up over his work.
+
+“Conversation the same as yesterday’s conversation at lunch. Armadale
+has made his bargain with the agent for hiring the yacht. The agent
+(compassionating his total ignorance of the language) has helped him to
+find an interpreter, but can’t help him to find a crew. The interpreter
+is civil and willing, but doesn’t understand the sea. Midwinter’s
+assistance is indispensable; and Midwinter is requested (and consents!)
+to work harder than ever, so as to make time for helping his friend.
+When the crew is found, the merits and defects of the vessel are to
+be tried by a cruise to Sicily, with Midwinter on board to give his
+opinion. Lastly (in case she should feel lonely), the ladies’ cabin is
+most obligingly placed at the disposal of Midwinter’s wife. All this
+was settled at the breakfast-table; and it ended with one of Armadale’s
+neatly-turned compliments, addressed to myself: ‘I mean to take Neelie
+sailing with me, when we are married. And you have such good taste, you
+will be able to tell me everything the ladies’ cabin wants between that
+time and this.’
+
+“If some women bring such men as this into the world, ought other women
+to allow them to live? It is a matter of opinion. _I_ think not.
+
+“What maddens me is to see, as I do see plainly, that Midwinter finds in
+Armadale’s company, and in Armadale’s new yacht, a refuge from me. He
+is always in better spirits when Armadale is here. He forgets me in
+Armadale almost as completely as he forgets me in his work. And I bear
+it! What a pattern wife, what an excellent Christian I am!”
+
+
+“October 19th.--Nothing new. Yesterday over again.”
+
+
+“October 20th.--One piece of news. Midwinter is suffering from nervous
+headache; and is working in spite of it, to make time for his holiday
+with his friend.”
+
+
+“October 21st.--Midwinter is worse. Angry and wild and unapproachable,
+after two bad nights, and two uninterrupted days at his desk. Under any
+other circumstances he would take the warning and leave off. But nothing
+warns him now. He is still working as hard as ever, for Armadale’s sake.
+How much longer will my patience last?”
+
+
+“October 22d.--Signs, last night, that Midwinter is taxing his brains
+beyond what his brains will bear. When he did fall asleep, he was
+frightfully restless; groaning and talking and grinding his teeth. From
+some of the words I heard, he seemed at one time to be dreaming of his
+life when he was a boy, roaming the country with the dancing dogs. At
+another time he was back again with Armadale, imprisoned all night on
+the wrecked ship. Toward the early morning hours he grew quieter. I fell
+asleep; and, waking after a short interval, found myself alone. My first
+glance round showed me a light burning in Midwinter’s dressing-room. I
+rose softly, and went to look at him.
+
+“He was seated in the great, ugly, old-fashioned chair, which I ordered
+to be removed into the dressing-room out of the way when we first came
+here. His head lay back, and one of his hands hung listlessly over
+the arm of the chair. The other hand was on his lap. I stole a little
+nearer, and saw that exhaustion had overpowered him while he was either
+reading or writing, for there were books, pens, ink, and paper on the
+table before him. What had he got up to do secretly, at that hour of
+the morning? I looked closer at the papers on the table. They were all
+neatly folded (as he usually keeps them), with one exception; and that
+exception, lying open on the rest, was Mr. Brock’s letter.
+
+“I looked round at him again, after making this discovery, and then
+noticed for the first time another written paper, lying under the hand
+that rested on his lap. There was no moving it away without the risk of
+waking him. Part of the open manuscript, however, was not covered by his
+hand. I looked at it to see what he had secretly stolen away to read,
+besides Mr. Brock’s letter; and made out enough to tell me that it was
+the Narrative of Armadale’s Dream.
+
+“That second discovery sent me back at once to my bed--with something
+serious to think of.
+
+“Traveling through France, on our way to this place, Midwinter’s shyness
+was conquered for once, by a very pleasant man--an Irish doctor--whom
+we met in the railway carriage, and who quite insisted on being friendly
+and sociable with us all through the day’s journey. Finding that
+Midwinter was devoting himself to literary pursuits, our traveling
+companion warned him not to pass too many hours together at his desk.
+‘Your face tells me more than you think,’ the doctor said: ‘If you are
+ever tempted to overwork your brain, you will feel it sooner than most
+men. When you find your nerves playing you strange tricks, don’t neglect
+the warning--drop your pen.’
+
+“After my last night’s discovery in the dressing-room, it looks as
+if Midwinter’s nerves were beginning already to justify the doctor’s
+opinion of them. If one of the tricks they are playing him is the trick
+of tormenting him again with his old superstitious terrors, there will
+be a change in our lives here before long. I shall wait curiously to see
+whether the conviction that we two are destined to bring fatal danger to
+Armadale takes possession of Midwinter’s mind once more. If it does, I
+know what will happen. He will not stir a step toward helping his friend
+to find a crew for the yacht; and he will certainly refuse to sail with
+Armadale, or to let me sail with him, on the trial cruise.”
+
+
+“October 23d.--Mr. Brock’s letter has, apparently, not lost its
+influence yet. Midwinter is working again to-day, and is as anxious as
+ever for the holiday-time that he is to pass with his friend.
+
+“Two o’clock.--Armadale here as usual; eager to know when Midwinter will
+be at his service. No definite answer to be given to the question yet,
+seeing that it all depends on Midwinter’s capacity to continue at his
+desk. Armadale sat down disappointed; he yawned, and put his great
+clumsy hands in his pockets. I took up a book. The brute didn’t
+understand that I wanted to be left alone; he began again on the
+unendurable subject of Miss Milroy, and of all the fine things she
+was to have when he married her. Her own riding-horse; her own
+pony-carriage; her own beautiful little sitting-room upstairs at the
+great house, and so on. All that I might have had once Miss Milroy is to
+have now--_if I let her_.”
+
+
+“Six o’clock.--More of the everlasting Armadale! Half an hour since,
+Midwinter came in from his writing, giddy and exhausted. I had been
+pining all day for a little music, and I knew they were giving ‘Norma’
+at the theater here. It struck me that an hour or two at the opera might
+do Midwinter good, as well as me; and I said: ‘Why not take a box at the
+San Carlo to-night?’ He answered, in a dull, uninterested manner,
+that he was not rich enough to take a box. Armadale was present, and
+flourished his well-filled purse in his usual insufferable way. ‘_I’m_
+rich enough, old boy, and it comes to the same thing.’ With those words
+he took up his hat, and trampled out on his great elephant’s feet to get
+the box. I looked after him from the window as he went down the street.
+‘Your widow, with her twelve hundred a year,’ I thought to myself,
+‘might take a box at the San Carlo whenever she pleased, without being
+beholden to anybody.’ The empty-headed wretch whistled as he went his
+way to the theater, and tossed his loose silver magnificently to every
+beggar who ran after him.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+“Midnight.--I am alone again at last. Have I nerve enough to write the
+history of this terrible evening, just as it has passed? I have nerve
+enough, at any rate, to turn to a new leaf, and try.”
+
+
+
+
+II. THE DIARY CONTINUED.
+
+
+“We went to the San Carlo. Armadale’s stupidity showed itself, even in
+such a simple matter as taking a box. He had confounded an opera with a
+play, and had chosen a box close to the stage, with the idea that one’s
+chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers
+as plainly as possible! Fortunately for our ears, Bellini’s lovely
+melodies are, for the most part, tenderly and delicately accompanied--or
+the orchestra might have deafened us.
+
+“I sat back in the box at first, well out of sight; for it was
+impossible to be sure that some of my old friends of former days at
+Naples might not be in the theater. But the sweet music gradually
+tempted me out of my seclusion. I was so charmed and interested that I
+leaned forward without knowing it, and looked at the stage.
+
+“I was made aware of my own imprudence by a discovery which, for the
+moment, literally chilled my blood. One of the singers, among the chorus
+of Druids, was looking at me while he sang with the rest. His head was
+disguised in the long white hair, and the lower part of his face was
+completely covered with the flowing white beard proper to the character.
+But the eyes with which he looked at me were the eyes of the one man on
+earth whom I have most reason to dread ever seeing again--Manuel!
+
+“If it had not been for my smelling-bottle, I believe I should have lost
+my senses. As it was, I drew back again into the shadow. Even Armadale
+noticed the sudden change in me: he, as well as Midwinter, asked if I
+was ill. I said I felt the heat, but hoped I should be better presently;
+and then leaned back in the box, and tried to rally my courage. I
+succeeded in recovering self-possession enough to be able to look again
+at the stage (without showing myself) the next time the chorus appeared.
+There was the man again! But to my infinite relief he never looked
+toward our box a second time. This welcome indifference, on his part,
+helped to satisfy me that I had seen an extraordinary accidental
+resemblance, and nothing more. I still hold to this conclusion, after
+having had leisure to think; but my mind would be more completely at
+ease than it is if I had seen the rest of the man’s face without the
+stage disguises that hid it from all investigation.
+
+“When the curtain fell on the first act, there was a tiresome ballet to
+be performed (according to the absurd Italian custom), before the opera
+went on. Though I had got over my first fright, I had been far too
+seriously startled to feel comfortable in the theater. I dreaded all
+sorts of impossible accidents; and when Midwinter and Armadale put the
+question to me, I told them I was not well enough to stay through the
+rest of the performance.
+
+“At the door of the theater Armadale proposed to say good-night. But
+Midwinter--evidently dreading the evening with _me_--asked him to come
+back to supper, if I had no objection. I said the necessary words, and
+we all three returned together to this house.
+
+“Ten minutes’ quiet in my own room (assisted by a little dose of
+eau-de-cologne and water) restored me to myself. I joined the men at the
+supper-table. They received my apologies for taking them away from the
+opera, with the complimentary assurance that I had not cost either of
+them the slightest sacrifice of his own pleasure. Midwinter declared
+that he was too completely worn out to care for anything but the two
+great blessings, unattainable at the theater, of quiet and fresh air.
+Armadale said--with an Englishman’s exasperating pride in his own
+stupidity wherever a matter of art is concerned--that he couldn’t make
+head or tail of the performance. The principal disappointment, he was
+good enough to add, was mine, for I evidently understood foreign music,
+and enjoyed it. Ladies generally did. His darling little Neelie--
+
+“I was in no humor to be persecuted with his ‘Darling Neelie’ after
+what I had gone through at the theater. It might have been the irritated
+state of my nerves, or it might have been the eau-de-cologne flying to
+my head, but the bare mention of the girl seemed to set me in a flame. I
+tried to turn Armadale’s attention in the direction of the supper-table.
+He was much obliged, but he had no appetite for more. I offered him wine
+next, the wine of the country, which is all that our poverty allows us
+to place on the table. He was much obliged again. The foreign wine was
+very little more to his taste than the foreign music; but he would
+take some because I asked him; and he would drink my health in the
+old-fashioned way, with his best wishes for the happy time when we
+should all meet again at Thorpe Ambrose, and when there would be a
+mistress to welcome me at the great house.
+
+“Was he mad to persist in this way? No; his face answered for him.
+He was under the impression that he was making himself particularly
+agreeable to me.
+
+“I looked at Midwinter. He might have seen some reason for interfering
+to change the conversation, if he had looked at me in return. But he
+sat silent in his chair, irritable and overworked, with his eyes on the
+ground, thinking.
+
+“I got up and went to the window. Still impenetrable to a sense of his
+own clumsiness, Armadale followed me. If I had been strong enough to
+toss him out of the window into the sea, I should certainly have done it
+at that moment. Not being strong enough, I looked steadily at the view
+over the bay, and gave him a hint, the broadest and rudest I could think
+of, to go.
+
+“‘A lovely night for a walk,’ I said, ‘if you are tempted to walk back
+to the hotel.’
+
+“I doubt if he heard me. At any rate, I produced no sort of effect on
+him. He stood staring sentimentally at the moonlight; and--there is
+really no other word to express it--_blew_ a sigh. I felt a presentiment
+of what was coming, unless I stopped his mouth by speaking first.
+
+“‘With all your fondness for England,’ I said, ‘you must own that we
+have no such moonlight as that at home.’
+
+“He looked at me vacantly, and blew another sigh.
+
+“‘I wonder whether it is fine to-night in England as it is here?’ he
+said. ‘I wonder whether my dear little girl at home is looking at the
+moonlight, and thinking of me?’
+
+“I could endure it no longer. I flew out at him at last.
+
+“‘Good heavens, Mr. Armadale!’ I exclaimed, ‘is there only one subject
+worth mentioning, in the narrow little world you live in? I’m sick to
+death of Miss Milroy. Do pray talk of something else?’
+
+“His great, broad, stupid face colored up to the roots of his hideous
+yellow hair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he stammered, with a kind of sulky
+surprise. ‘I didn’t suppose--’ He stopped confusedly, and looked from
+me to Midwinter. I understood what the look meant. ‘I didn’t suppose she
+could be jealous of Miss Milroy after marrying _you_!’ That is what he
+would have said to Midwinter, if I had left them alone together in the
+room!
+
+“As it was, Midwinter had heard us. Before I could speak again--before
+Armadale could add another word--he finished his friend’s uncompleted
+sentence, in a tone that I now heard, and with a look that I now saw,
+for the first time.
+
+“‘You didn’t suppose, Allan,’ he said, ‘that a lady’s temper could be so
+easily provoked.’
+
+“The first bitter word of irony, the first hard look of contempt, I had
+ever had from him! And Armadale the cause of it!
+
+“My anger suddenly left me. Something came in its place which steadied
+me in an instant, and took me silently out of the room.
+
+“I sat down alone in the bedroom. I had a few minutes of thought with
+myself, which I don’t choose to put into words, even in these secret
+pages. I got up, and unlocked--never mind what. I went round to
+Midwinter’s side of the bed, and took--no matter what I took. The last
+thing I did before I left the room was to look at my watch. It was
+half-past ten, Armadale’s usual time for leaving us. I went back at once
+and joined the two men again.
+
+“I approached Armadale good-humoredly, and said to him:
+
+“No! On second thoughts. I won’t put down what I said to him, or what I
+did afterward. I’m sick of Armadale! he turns up at every second word
+I write. I shall pass over what happened in the course of the next
+hour--the hour between half-past ten and half-past eleven--and take up
+my story again at the time when Armadale had left us. Can I tell what
+took place, as soon as our visitor’s back was turned, between Midwinter
+and me in our own room? Why not pass over what happened, in that case
+as well as in the other? Why agitate myself by writing it down? I don’t
+know! Why do I keep a diary at all? Why did the clever thief the other
+day (in the English newspaper) keep the very thing to convict him in
+the shape of a record of everything he stole? Why are we not perfectly
+reasonable in all that we do? Why am I not always on my guard and never
+inconsistent with myself, like a wicked character in a novel? Why? why?
+why?
+
+“I don’t care why! I must write down what happened between Midwinter
+and me to-night, _because_ I must. There’s a reason that nobody can
+answer--myself included.”
+
+* * * * * * *
+
+“It was half-past eleven. Armadale had gone. I had put on my
+dressing-gown, and had just sat down to arrange my hair for the night,
+when I was surprised by a knock at the door, and Midwinter came in.
+
+“He was frightfully pale. His eyes looked at me with a terrible despair
+in them. He never answered when I expressed my surprise at his coming
+in so much sooner than usual; he wouldn’t even tell me, when I asked the
+question, if he was ill. Pointing peremptorily to the chair from which
+I had risen on his entering the room, he told me to sit down again; and
+then, after a moment, added these words: ‘I have something serious to
+say to you.’
+
+“I thought of what I had done--or, no, of what I had tried to do--in
+that interval between half-past ten and half-past eleven, which I have
+left unnoticed in my diary--and the deadly sickness of terror, which
+I never felt at the time, came upon me now. I sat down again, as I had
+been told, without speaking to Midwinter, and without looking at him.
+
+“He took a turn up and down the room, and then came and stood over me.
+
+“‘If Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he began, ‘and if you see him--’
+
+“His voice faltered, and he said no more. There was some dreadful grief
+at his heart that was trying to master him. But there are times when his
+will is a will of iron. He took another turn in the room, and crushed it
+down. He came back, and stood over me again.
+
+“‘When Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he resumed, ‘let him come into my
+room, if he wants to see me. I shall tell him that I find it impossible
+to finish the work I now have on hand as soon as I had hoped, and that
+he must, therefore, arrange to find a crew for the yacht without any
+assistance on my part. If he comes, in his disappointment, to appeal to
+you, give him no hope of my being free in time to help him if he waits.
+Encourage him to take the best assistance he can get from strangers,
+and to set about manning the yacht without any further delay. The more
+occupation he has to keep him away from this house, and the less you
+encourage him to stay here if he does come, the better I shall be
+pleased. Don’t forget that, and don’t forget one last direction which I
+have now to give you. When the vessel is ready for sea, and when Allan
+invites us to sail with him, it is my wish that you should positively
+decline to go. He will try to make you change your mind; for I shall, of
+course, decline, on my side, to leave you in this strange house, and in
+this foreign country, by yourself. No matter what he says, let nothing
+persuade you to alter your decision. Refuse, positively and finally!
+Refuse, I insist on it, to set your foot on the new yacht!’
+
+“He ended quietly and firmly, with no faltering in his voice, and no
+signs of hesitation or relenting in his face. The sense of surprise
+which I might otherwise have felt at the strange words he had addressed
+to me was lost in the sense of relief that they brought to my mind. The
+dread of _those other words_ that I had expected to hear from him left
+me as suddenly as it had come. I could look at him, I could speak to him
+once more.
+
+“‘You may depend,’ I answered, ‘on my doing exactly what you order me
+to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the
+extraordinary directions you have just given to me?’
+
+“His, face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my
+dressing-table, with a heavy, hopeless sigh.
+
+“‘You may know the reason,’ he said, ‘if you wish it.’ He waited a
+little, and considered. ‘You have a right to know the reason,’ he
+resumed, ‘for you yourself are concerned in it.’ He waited a little
+again, and again went on. ‘I can only explain the strange request I have
+just made to you in one way,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to recall what
+happened in the next room, before Allan left us to-night.’
+
+“He looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions in his face. At
+one moment I thought he felt pity for me. At another, it seemed more
+like horror of me. I began to feel frightened again; I waited for his
+next words in silence.
+
+“‘I know that I have been working too hard lately,’ he went on, ‘and
+that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in
+now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted, or distorted, the
+circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favor if you will
+test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy
+has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false anywhere, I
+entreat you to stop me, and tell me of it.’
+
+“I commanded myself sufficiently to ask what the circumstances were to
+which he referred, and in what way I was personally concerned in them.
+
+“‘You were personally concerned in them in this way,’ he answered. ‘The
+circumstances to which I refer began with your speaking to Allan about
+Miss Milroy, in what I thought a very inconsiderate and very impatient
+manner. I am afraid I spoke just as petulantly on my side, and I beg
+your pardon for what I said to you in the irritation of the moment. You
+left the room. After a short absence, you came back again, and made
+a perfectly proper apology to Allan, which he received with his usual
+kindness and sweetness of temper. While this went on, you and he were
+both standing by the supper-table; and Allan resumed some conversation
+which had already passed between you about the Neapolitan wine. He said
+he thought he should learn to like it in time, and he asked leave to
+take another glass of the wine we had on the table. Am I right so far?’
+
+“The words almost died on my lips; but I forced them out, and answered
+him that he was right so far.
+
+“‘You took the flask out of Allan’s hand,’ he proceeded. ‘You said
+to him, good-humoredly, “You know you don’t really like the wine, Mr.
+Armadale. Let me make you something which may be more to your taste. I
+have a recipe of my own for lemonade. Will you favor me by trying it?”
+ In those words, you made your proposal to him, and he accepted it. Did
+he also ask leave to look on, and learn how the lemonade was made? and
+did you tell him that he would only confuse you, and that you would give
+him the recipe in writing, if he wanted it?’
+
+“This time the words did really die on my lips. I could only bow my
+head, and answer ‘Yes’ mutely in that way. Midwinter went on.
+
+“‘Allan laughed, and went to the window to look out at the Bay, and I
+went with him. After a while Allan remarked, jocosely, that the mere
+sound of the liquids you were pouring out made him thirsty. When he said
+this, I turned round from the window. I approached you, and said the
+lemonade took a long time to make. You touched me, as I was walking away
+again, and handed me the tumbler filled to the brim. At the same time,
+Allan turned round from the window; and I, in my turn, handed the
+tumbler to _him_.--Is there any mistake so far?’
+
+“The quick throbbing of my heart almost choked me. I could just shake my
+head--I could do no more.
+
+“‘I saw Allan raise the tumbler to his lips.--Did _you_ see it? I saw
+his face turn white in an instant.--Did _you_? I saw the glass fall from
+his hand on the floor. I saw him stagger, and caught him before he fell.
+Are these things true? For God’s sake, search your memory, and tell
+me--are these things true?’
+
+“The throbbing at my heart seemed, for one breathless instant, to stop.
+The next moment something fiery, something maddening, flew through me.
+I started to my feet, with my temper in a flame, reckless of all
+consequences, desperate enough to say anything.
+
+“‘Your questions are an insult! Your looks are an insult!’ I burst out.
+‘_Do you think I tried to poison him_?’
+
+“The words rushed out of my lips in spite of me. They were the last
+words under heaven that any woman, in such a situation as mine, ought to
+have spoken. And yet I spoke them!
+
+“He rose in alarm and gave me my smelling-bottle. ‘Hush! hush!’ he said.
+‘You, too, are overwrought--you, too, are overexcited by all that has
+happened to-night. You are talking wildly and shockingly. Good God!
+how can you have so utterly misunderstood me? Compose yourself--pray,
+compose yourself.’
+
+“He might as well have told a wild animal to compose herself. Having
+been mad enough to say the words, I was mad enough next to return to the
+subject of the lemonade, in spite of his entreaties to me to be silent.
+
+“‘I told you what I had put in the glass, the moment Mr. Armadale
+fainted,’ I went on; insisting furiously on defending myself, when no
+attack was made on me. ‘I told you I had taken the flask of brandy which
+you kept at your bedside, and mixed some of it with the lemonade. How
+could I know that he had a nervous horror of the smell and taste of
+brandy? Didn’t he say to me himself, when he came to his senses, It’s
+my fault; I ought to have warned you to put no brandy in it? Didn’t he
+remind you afterward of the time when you and he were in the Isle of
+Man together, and when the doctor there innocently made the same mistake
+with him that I made to-night?’”
+
+[“I laid a great stress on my innocence--and with some reason too.
+Whatever else I may be, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. I _was_
+innocent--so far as the brandy was concerned. I had put it into the
+lemonade, in pure ignorance of Armadale’s nervous peculiarity, to
+disguise the taste of--never mind what! Another of the things I pride
+myself on is that I never wander from my subject. What Midwinter said
+next is what I ought to be writing about now.”]
+
+“He looked at me for a moment, as if he thought I had taken leave of
+my senses. Then he came round to my side of the table and stood over me
+again.
+
+“‘If nothing else will satisfy you that you are entirely misinterpreting
+my motives,’ he said, ‘and that I haven’t an idea of blaming _you_ in
+the matter--read this.’
+
+“He took a paper from the breast-pocket of his coat, and spread it open
+under my eyes. It was the Narrative of Armadale’s Dream.
+
+“In an instant the whole weight on my mind was lifted off it. I felt
+mistress of myself again--I understood him at last.
+
+“‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember what I said to
+you at Thorpe Ambrose about Allan’s Dream? I told you then that two
+out of the three Visions had already come true. I tell you now that the
+third Vision has been fulfilled in this house to-night.’
+
+“He turned over the leaves of the manuscript, and pointed to the lines
+that he wished me to read.
+
+“I read these, or nearly read these words, from the Narrative of the
+Dream, as Midwinter had taken it down from Armadale’s own lips:
+
+“‘The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of
+the Man and the Shadow of the Woman together. The Man-Shade was the
+nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back. From where she stood, I heard
+a sound like the pouring out of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the
+Shadow of the Man with one hand, and give him a glass with the other.
+He took the glass and handed it to me. At the moment when I put it to my
+lips, a deadly faintness overcame me. When I recovered my senses again,
+the Shadows had vanished, and the Vision was at an end.’
+
+“For the moment, I was as completely staggered by this extraordinary
+coincidence as Midwinter himself.
+
+“He put one hand on the open narrative and laid the other heavily on my
+arm.
+
+“‘_Now_ do you understand my motive in coming here?’ he asked. ‘_Now_
+do you see that the last hope I had to cling to was the hope that your
+memory of the night’s events might prove my memory to be wrong? _Now_
+do you know why I won’t help Allan? Why I won’t sail with him? Why I am
+plotting and lying, and making you plot and lie too, to keep my best and
+dearest friend out of the house?’
+
+“‘Have you forgotten Mr. Brock’s letter?’ I asked.
+
+“He struck his hand passionately on the open manuscript. ‘If Mr. Brook
+had lived to see what we have seen to-night he would have felt what I
+feel, he would have said what I say!’ His voice sank mysteriously, and
+his great black eyes glittered at me as he made that answer. ‘Thrice
+the Shadows of the Vision warned Allan in his sleep,’ he went on; ‘and
+thrice those Shadows have been embodied in the after-time by You and by
+Me! You, and no other, stood in the Woman’s place at the pool. I, and no
+other, stood in the Man’s place at the window. And you and I together,
+when the last Vision showed the Shadows together, stand in the Man’s
+place and the Woman’s place still! For _this_, the miserable day dawned
+when you and I first met. For _this_, your influence drew me to you,
+when my better angel warned me to fly the sight of your face. There is a
+curse on our lives! there is a fatality in our footsteps! Allan’s future
+depends on his separation from us at once and forever. Drive him
+from the place we live in, and the air we breathe. Force him among
+strangers--the worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him
+than we are! Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us,
+without you and without me; and let him know how I loved him in another
+world than this, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary
+are at rest!’
+
+“His grief conquered him; his voice broke into a sob when he spoke those
+last words. He took the Narrative of the Dream from the table, and left
+me as abruptly as he had come in.
+
+“As I heard his door locked between us, my mind went back to what he
+had said to me about myself. In remembering ‘the miserable day’ when we
+first saw each other, and ‘the better angel’ that had warned him to
+‘fly the sight of my face,’ I forgot all else. It doesn’t matter what I
+felt--I wouldn’t own it, even if I had a friend to speak to. Who cares
+for the misery of such a woman as I am? who believes in it? Besides, he
+spoke under the influence of a mad superstition that has got possession
+of him again. There is every excuse for _him_--there is no excuse for
+_me_. If I can’t help being fond of him through it all, I must take the
+consequences and suffer. I deserve to suffer; I deserve neither love nor
+pity from anybody.--Good heavens, what a fool I am! And how unnatural
+all this would be, if it was written in a book!
+
+“It has struck one. I can hear Midwinter still, pacing to and fro in his
+room.
+
+“He is thinking, I suppose? Well! I can think too. What am I to do next?
+I shall wait and see. Events take odd turns sometimes; and events may
+justify the fatalism of the amiable man in the next room, who curses the
+day when he first saw my face. He may live to curse it for other reasons
+than he has now. If I am the Woman pointed at in the Dream, there will
+be another temptation put in my way before long; and there will be no
+brandy in Armadale’s lemonade if I mix it for him a second time.”
+
+
+“October 24th.--Barely twelve hours have passed since I wrote my
+yesterday’s entry; and that other temptation has come, tried, and
+conquered me already!
+
+“This time there was no alternative. Instant exposure and ruin stared me
+in the face: I had no choice but to yield in my own defense. In plainer
+words still, it was no accidental resemblance that startled me at the
+theater last night. The chorus-singer at the opera was Manuel himself!
+
+“Not ten minutes after Midwinter had left the sitting-room for his
+study, the woman of the house came in with a dirty little three-cornered
+note in her hand. One look at the writing on the address was enough.
+He had recognized me in the box; and the ballet between the acts of the
+opera had given him time to trace me home. I drew that plain conclusion
+in the moment that elapsed before I opened the letter. It informed me,
+in two lines, that he was waiting in a by-street leading to the beach;
+and that, if I failed to make my appearance in ten minutes, he should
+interpret my absence as my invitation to him to call at the house.
+
+“What I went through yesterday must have hardened me, I suppose. At any
+rate, after reading the letter, I felt more like the woman I once
+was than I have felt for months past. I put on my bonnet and went
+downstairs, and left the house as if nothing had happened.
+
+“He was waiting for me at the entrance to the street.
+
+“In the instant when we stood face to face, all my wretched life with
+him came back to me. I thought of my trust that he had betrayed; I
+thought of the cruel mockery of a marriage that he had practiced on me,
+when he knew that he had a wife living; I thought of the time when I had
+felt despair enough at his desertion of me to attempt my own life. When
+I recalled all this, and when the comparison between Midwinter and the
+mean, miserable villain whom I had once believed in forced itself into
+my mind, I knew for the first time what a woman feels when every atom
+of respect for herself has left her. If he had personally insulted me at
+that moment, I believe I should have submitted to it.
+
+“But he had no idea of insulting me, in the more brutal meaning of the
+word. He had me at his mercy, and his way of making me feel it was to
+behave with an elaborate mockery of penitence and respect. I let him
+speak as he pleased, without interrupting him, without looking at him a
+second time, without even allowing my dress to touch him, as we walked
+together toward the quieter part of the beach. I had noticed the
+wretched state of his clothes, and the greedy glitter in his eyes, in my
+first look at him. And I knew it would end--as it did end--in a demand
+on me for money.
+
+“Yes! After taking from me the last farthing I possessed of my own, and
+the last farthing I could extort for him from my old mistress, he
+turned on me as we stood by the margin of the sea, and asked if I could
+reconcile it to my conscience to let him be wearing such a coat as
+he then had on his back, and earning his miserable living as a
+chorus-singer at the opera!
+
+“My disgust, rather than my indignation, roused me into speaking to him
+at last.
+
+“‘You want money,’ I said. ‘Suppose I am too poor to give it to you?’
+
+“‘In that case,’ he replied, ‘I shall be forced to remember that you are
+a treasure in yourself. And I shall be under the painful necessity of
+pressing my claim to you on the attention of one of those two gentlemen
+whom I saw with you at the opera--the gentleman, of course, who is now
+honored by your preference, and who lives provisionally in the light of
+your smiles.’
+
+“I made him no answer, for I had no answer to give. Disputing his right
+to claim me from anybody would have been a mere waste of words. He knew
+as well as I did that he had not the shadow of a claim on me. But the
+mere attempt to raise it would, as he was well aware, lead necessarily
+to the exposure of my whole past life.
+
+“Still keeping silence, I looked out over the sea. I don’t know why,
+except that I instinctively looked anywhere rather than look at _him_.
+
+“A little sailing-boat was approaching the shore. The man steering was
+hidden from me by the sail; but the boat was so near that I thought
+I recognized the flag on the mast. I looked at my watch. Yes! It was
+Armadale coming over from Santa Lucia at his usual time, to visit us in
+his usual way.
+
+“Before I had put my watch back in my belt, the means of extricating
+myself from the frightful position I was placed in showed themselves to
+me as plainly as I see them now.
+
+“I turned and led the way to the higher part of the beach, where some
+fishing-boats were drawn up which completely screened us from the view
+of any one landing on the shore below. Seeing probably that I had a
+purpose of some kind, Manuel followed me without uttering a word. As
+soon as we were safely under the shelter of the boats, I forced myself,
+in my own defense, to look at him again.
+
+“‘What should you say,’ I asked, ‘if I was rich instead of poor? What
+should you say if I could afford to give you a hundred pounds?’
+
+“He started. I saw plainly that he had not expected so much as half the
+sum I had mentioned. It is needless to add that his tongue lied, while
+his face spoke the truth, and that when he replied to me the answer was,
+‘Nothing like enough.’
+
+“‘Suppose,’ I went on, without taking any notice of what he had said,
+‘that I could show you a way of helping yourself to twice as much--three
+times as much--five times as much as a hundred pounds, are you bold
+enough to put out your hand and take it?’
+
+“The greedy glitter came into his eyes once more. His voice dropped low,
+in breathless expectation of my next words.
+
+“‘Who is the person?’ he asked. ‘And what is the risk?’
+
+“I answered him at once, in the plainest terms. I threw Armadale to him,
+as I might have thrown a piece of meat to a wild beast who was pursuing
+me.
+
+“‘The person is a rich young Englishman,’ I said. ‘He has just hired the
+yacht called the _Dorothea_, in the harbor here; and he stands in need
+of a sailing-master and a crew. You were once an officer in the Spanish
+navy--you speak English and Italian perfectly--you are thoroughly
+well acquainted with Naples and all that belongs to it. The rich young
+Englishman is ignorant of the language, and the interpreter who assists
+him knows nothing of the sea. He is at his wits’ end for want of useful
+help in this strange place; he has no more knowledge of the world than
+that child who is digging holes with a stick there in the sand; and
+he carries all his money with him in circular notes. So much for the
+person. As for the risk, estimate it for yourself.’
+
+“The greedy glitter in his eyes grew brighter and brighter with every
+word I said. He was plainly ready to face the risk before I had done
+speaking.
+
+“‘When can I see the Englishman?’ he asked, eagerly.
+
+“I moved to the seaward end of the fishing-boat, and saw that Armadale
+was at that moment disembarking on the shore.
+
+“‘You can see him now,’ I answered, and pointed to the place.
+
+“After a long look at Armadale walking carelessly up the slope of the
+beach, Manuel drew back again under the shelter of the boat. He waited
+a moment, considering something carefully with himself, and put another
+question to me, in a whisper this time.
+
+“‘When the vessel is manned,’ he said, ‘and the Englishman sails from
+Naples, how many friends sail with him?’
+
+“‘He has but two friends here,’ I replied; ‘that other gentleman whom
+you saw with me at the opera, and myself. He will invite us both to sail
+with him; and when the time comes, we shall both refuse.’
+
+“‘Do you answer for that?’
+
+“‘I answer for it positively.’
+
+“He walked a few steps away, and stood with his face hidden from me,
+thinking again. All I could see was that he took off his hat and passed
+his handkerchief over his forehead. All I could hear was that he talked
+to himself excitedly in his own language.
+
+“There was a change in him when he came back. His face had turned to a
+livid yellow, and his eyes looked at me with a hideous distrust.
+
+“‘One last question,’ he said, and suddenly came closer to me, suddenly
+spoke with a marked emphasis on his next words: ‘_What is your interest
+in this_?’
+
+“I started back from him. The question reminded me that I _had_ an
+interest in the matter, which was entirely unconnected with the interest
+of keeping Manuel and Midwinter apart. Thus far I had only remembered
+that Midwinter’s fatalism had smoothed the way for me, by abandoning
+Armadale beforehand to any stranger who might come forward to help him.
+Thus far the sole object I had kept in view was to protect myself, by
+the sacrifice of Armadale, from the exposure that threatened me. I
+tell no lies to my Diary. I don’t affect to have felt a moment’s
+consideration for the interests of Armadale’s purse or the safety of
+Armadale’s life. I hated him too savagely to care what pitfalls my
+tongue might be the means of opening under his feet. But I certainly did
+not see (until that last question was put to me) that, in serving his
+own designs, Manuel might--if he dared go all lengths for the money--be
+serving my designs too. The one overpowering anxiety to protect myself
+from exposure before Midwinter had (I suppose) filled all my mind, to
+the exclusion of everything else.
+
+“Finding that I made no reply for the moment, Manuel reiterated his
+question, putting it in a new form.
+
+“‘You have cast your Englishman at me,’ he said, ‘like the sop to
+Cerberus. Would you have been quite so ready to do that if you had not
+had a motive of your own? I repeat my question. You have an interest in
+this--what is it?’
+
+“‘I have two interests,’ I answered. ‘The interest of forcing you to
+respect my position here, and the interest of ridding myself of the
+sight of you at once and forever!’ I spoke with a boldness he had not
+yet heard from me. The sense that I was making the villain an instrument
+in my hands, and forcing him to help my purpose blindly, while he was
+helping his own, roused my spirits, and made me feel like myself again.
+
+“He laughed. ‘Strong language, on certain occasions, is a lady’s
+privilege,’ he said. ‘You may, or may not, rid yourself of the sight of
+me, at once and forever. We will leave that question to be settled in
+the future. But your other interest in this matter puzzles me. You have
+told me all I need know about the Englishman and his yacht, and you have
+made no conditions before you opened your lips. Pray, how are you to
+force me, as you say, to respect your position here?’
+
+“‘I will tell you how,’ I rejoined. ‘You shall hear my conditions first.
+I insist on your leaving me in five minutes more. I insist on your never
+again coming near the house where I live; and I forbid your attempting
+to communicate in any way either with me or with that other gentleman
+whom you saw with me at the theater--’
+
+“‘And suppose I say no?’ he interposed. ‘In that case, what will you
+do?’
+
+“‘In that case,’ I answered, ‘I shall say two words in private to the
+rich young Englishman, and you will find yourself back again among the
+chorus at the opera.’
+
+“‘You are a bold woman to take it for granted that I have my designs on
+the Englishman already, and that I am certain to succeed in them. How do
+you know--?’
+
+“‘I know _you_,’ I said. ‘And that is enough.’
+
+“There was a moment’s silence between us. He looked at me, and I looked
+at him. We understood each other.
+
+“He was the first to speak. The villainous smile died out of his face,
+and his voice dropped again distrustfully to its lowest tones.
+
+“‘I accept your terms,’ he said. ‘As long as your lips are closed, my
+lips shall be closed too--except in the event of my finding that you
+have deceived me; in which case the bargain is at an end, and you will
+see me again. I shall present myself to the Englishman to-morrow, with
+the necessary credentials to establish me in his confidence. Tell me his
+name?’
+
+“I told it.
+
+“‘Give me his address?’
+
+“I gave it, and turned to leave him. Before I had stepped out of the
+shelter of the boats, I heard him behind me again.
+
+“‘One last word,’ he said. ‘Accidents sometimes happen at sea. Have
+you interest enough in the Englishman--if an accident happens in his
+case--to wish to know what has become of him?’
+
+“I stopped, and considered on my side. I had plainly failed to persuade
+him that I had no secret to serve in placing Armadale’s money and (as
+a probable consequence) Armadale’s life at his mercy. And it was now
+equally clear that he was cunningly attempting to associate himself
+with my private objects (whatever they might be) by opening a means of
+communication between us in the future. There could be no hesitation
+about how to answer him under such circumstances as these. If the
+‘accident’ at which he hinted did really happen to Armadale, I stood in
+no need of Manuel’s intervention to give me the intelligence of it. An
+easy search through the obituary columns of the English papers would
+tell me the news--with the great additional advantage that the papers
+might be relied on, in such a matter as this, to tell the truth. I
+formally thanked Manuel, and declined to accept his proposal. ‘Having
+no interest in the Englishman,’ I said, ‘I have no wish whatever to know
+what becomes of him.’
+
+“He looked at me for a moment with steady attention, and with an
+interest in me which he had not shown yet.
+
+“‘What the game you are playing may be,’ he rejoined, speaking slowly
+and significantly, ‘I don’t pretend to know. But I venture on a
+prophecy, nevertheless--_you will win it_! If we ever meet again,
+remember I said that.’ He took off his hat, and bowed to me gravely. ‘Go
+your way, madam. And leave me to go mine!’
+
+“With those words, he released me from the sight of him. I waited a
+minute alone, to recover myself in the air, and then returned to the
+house.
+
+“The first object that met my eyes, on entering the sitting-room,
+was--Armadale himself!
+
+“He was waiting on the chance of seeing me, to beg that I would exert
+my influence with his friend. I made the needful inquiry as to what he
+meant, and found that Midwinter had spoken as he had warned me he would
+speak when he and Armadale next met. He had announced that he was unable
+to finish his work for the newspaper as soon as he had hoped; and he had
+advised Armadale to find a crew for the yacht without waiting for any
+assistance on his part.
+
+“All that it was necessary for me to do, on hearing this, was to perform
+the promise I had made to Midwinter, when he gave me my directions how
+to act in the matter. Armadale’s vexation on finding me resolved not
+to interfere expressed itself in the form of all others that is most
+personally offensive to me. He declined to believe my reiterated
+assurances that I possessed no influence to exert in his favor. ‘If I
+was married to Neelie,’ he said, ‘she could do anything she liked with
+me; and I am sure, when you choose, you can do anything you like with
+Midwinter.’ If the infatuated fool had actually tried to stifle the last
+faint struggles of remorse and pity left stirring in my heart, he could
+have said nothing more fatally to the purpose than this! I gave him a
+look which effectually silenced him, so far as I was concerned. He went
+out of the room grumbling and growling to himself. ‘It’s all very well
+to talk about manning the yacht. I don’t speak a word of their gibberish
+here; and the interpreter thinks a fisherman and a sailor means the
+same thing. Hang me if I know what to do with the vessel, now I have got
+her!’
+
+“He will probably know by to-morrow. And if he only comes here as usual,
+I shall know too!”
+
+
+“October 25th.--Ten at night.--Manuel has got him!
+
+“He has just left us, after staying here more than an hour, and talking
+the whole time of nothing but his own wonderful luck in finding the very
+help he wanted, at the time when he needed it most.
+
+“At noon to-day he was on the Mole, it seems, with his interpreter,
+trying vainly to make himself understood by the vagabond population
+of the water-side. Just as he was giving it up in despair, a stranger
+standing by (Manuel had followed him, I suppose, to the Mole from his
+hotel) kindly interfered to put things right. He said, ‘I speak your
+language and their language, sir. I know Naples well; and I have been
+professionally accustomed to the sea. Can I help you?’ The inevitable
+result followed. Armadale shifted all his difficulties on to the
+shoulders of the polite stranger, in his usual helpless, headlong way.
+His new friend, however, insisted, in the most honorable manner, on
+complying with the customary formalities before he would consent to take
+the matter into his own hands. He begged leave to wait on Mr. Armadale,
+with his testimonials to character and capacity. The same afternoon he
+had come by appointment to the hotel, with all his papers, and with ‘the
+saddest story’ of his sufferings and privations as ‘a political refugee’
+that Armadale had ever heard. The interview was decisive. Manuel left
+the hotel, commissioned to find a crew for the yacht, and to fill the
+post of sailing-master on the trial cruise.
+
+“I watched Midwinter anxiously, while Armadale was telling us these
+particulars, and afterward, when he produced the new sailing-master’s
+testimonials, which he had brought with him for his friend to see.
+
+“For the moment, Midwinter’s superstitious misgivings seemed to be all
+lost in his natural anxiety for his friend. He examined the stranger’s
+papers--after having told me that the sooner Armadale was in the
+hands of strangers the better!--with the closest scrutiny and the most
+business-like distrust. It is needless to say that the credentials were
+as perfectly regular and satisfactory as credentials could be. When
+Midwinter handed them back, his color rose: he seemed to feel the
+inconsistency of his conduct, and to observe for the first time that
+I was present noticing it. ‘There is nothing to object to in the
+testimonials, Allan: I am glad you have got the help you want at last.’
+That was all he said at parting. As soon as Armadale’s back was turned,
+I saw no more of him. He has locked himself up again for the night, in
+his own room.
+
+“There is now--so far as I am concerned--but one anxiety left. When the
+yacht is ready for sea, and when I decline to occupy the lady’s cabin,
+will Midwinter hold to his resolution, and refuse to sail without me?”
+
+
+“October 26th.--Warnings already of the coming ordeal. A letter from
+Armadale to Midwinter, which Midwinter has just sent in to me. Here it
+is:
+
+“‘DEAR MID--I am too busy to come to-day. Get on with your work, for
+Heaven’s sake! The new sailing-master is a man of ten thousand. He has
+got an Englishman whom he knows to serve as mate on board already; and
+he is positively certain of getting the crew together in three or four
+days’ time. I am dying for a whiff of the sea, and so are you, or you
+are no sailor. The rigging is set up, the stores are coming on board,
+and we shall bend the sails to-morrow or next day. I never was in such
+spirits in my life. Remember me to your wife, and tell her she will
+be doing me a favor if she will come at once, and order everything she
+wants in the lady’s cabin. Yours affectionately, A. A.’
+
+“Under this was written, in Midwinter’s hand: ‘Remember what I told you.
+Write (it will break it to him more gently in that way), and beg him
+to accept your apologies, and to excuse you from sailing on the trial
+cruise.’
+
+“I have written without a moment’s loss of time. The sooner Manuel knows
+(which he is certain to do through Armadale) that the promise not to
+sail in the yacht is performed already, so far as I am concerned, the
+safer I shall feel.”
+
+
+“October 27th.--A letter from Armadale, in answer to mine. He is full
+of ceremonious regrets at the loss of my company on the cruise; and he
+politely hopes that Midwinter may yet induce me to alter my mind. Wait a
+little, till he finds that Midwinter won’t sail with him either!....
+
+“October 30th.--Nothing new to record until to-day. To-day the change in
+our lives here has come at last!
+
+“Armadale presented himself this morning, in his noisiest high spirits,
+to announce that the yacht was ready for sea, and to ask when Midwinter
+would be able to go on board. I told him to make the inquiry himself in
+Midwinter’s room. He left me, with a last request that I would consider
+my refusal to sail with him. I answered by a last apology for persisting
+in my resolution, and then took a chair alone at the window to wait the
+event of the interview in the next room.
+
+“My whole future depended now on what passed between Midwinter and his
+friend! Everything had gone smoothly up to this time. The one danger to
+dread was the danger of Midwinter’s resolution, or rather of Midwinter’s
+fatalism, giving way at the last moment. If he allowed himself to
+be persuaded into accompanying Armadale on the cruise, Manuel’s
+exasperation against me would hesitate at nothing--he would remember
+that I had answered to him for Armadale’s sailing from Naples alone; and
+he would be capable of exposing my whole past life to Midwinter before
+the vessel left the port. As I thought of this, and as the slow minutes
+followed each other, and nothing reached my ears but the hum of voices
+in the next room, my suspense became almost unendurable. It was vain
+to try and fix my attention on what was going on in the street. I sat
+looking mechanically out of the window, and seeing nothing.
+
+“Suddenly--I can’t say in how long or how short a time--the hum of
+voices ceased; the door opened; and Armadale showed himself on the
+threshold, alone.
+
+“‘I wish you good-by,’ he said, roughly. ‘And I hope, when I am married,
+my wife may never cause Midwinter the disappointment that Midwinter’s
+wife has caused _me_!’
+
+“He gave me an angry look, and made me an angry bow, and, turning
+sharply, left the room.
+
+“I saw the people in the street again! I saw the calm sea, and the masts
+of the shipping in the harbor where the yacht lay! I could think, I
+could breathe freely once more! The words that saved me from Manuel--the
+words that might be Armadale’s sentence of death--had been spoken. The
+yacht was to sail without Midwinter, as well as without me!
+
+“My first feeling of exultation was almost maddening. But it was the
+feeling of a moment only. My heart sank in me again when I thought of
+Midwinter alone in the next room.
+
+“I went out into the passage to listen, and heard nothing. I tapped
+gently at his door, and got no answer. I opened the door and looked in.
+He was sitting at the table, with his face hidden in his hands. I looked
+at him in silence, and saw the glistening of the tears as they trickled
+through his fingers.
+
+“‘Leave me,’ he said, without moving his hands. ‘I must get over it by
+myself.’
+
+“I went back into the sitting-room. Who can understand women? we don’t
+even understand ourselves. His sending me away from him in that manner
+cut me to the heart. I don’t believe the most harmless and most gentle
+woman living could have felt it more acutely than I felt it. And this,
+after what I have been doing! this, after what I was thinking of, the
+moment before I went into his room! Who can account for it? Nobody--I
+least of all!
+
+“Half an hour later his door opened, and I heard him hurrying down the
+stairs. I ran on without waiting to think, and asked if I might go with
+him. He neither stopped nor answered. I went back to the window, and saw
+him pass, walking rapidly away, with his back turned on Naples and the
+sea.
+
+“I can understand now that he might not have heard me. At the time I
+thought him inexcusably and brutally unkind to me. I put on my bonnet,
+in a frenzy of rage with him; I sent out for a carriage, and told the
+man to take me where he liked. He took me, as he took other strangers,
+to the Museum to see the statues and the pictures. I flounced from room
+to room, with my face in a flame, and the people all staring at me. I
+came to myself again, I don’t know how. I returned to the carriage,
+and made the man drive me back in a violent hurry, I don’t know why. I
+tossed off my cloak and bonnet, and sat down once more at the window.
+The sight of the sea cooled me. I forgot Midwinter, and thought of
+Armadale and his yacht. There wasn’t a breath of wind; there wasn’t
+a cloud in the sky; the wide waters of the Bay were as smooth as the
+surface of a glass.
+
+“The sun sank; the short twilight came and went. I had some tea, and
+sat at the table thinking and dreaming over it. When I roused myself and
+went back to the window, the moon was up; but the quiet sea was as quiet
+as ever.
+
+“I was still looking out, when I saw Midwinter in the street below,
+coming back. I was composed enough by this time to remember his habits,
+and to guess that he had been trying to relieve the oppression on his
+mind by one of his long solitary walks. When I heard him go into his
+own room, I was too prudent to disturb him again: I waited his pleasure
+where I was.
+
+“Before long I heard his window opened, and I saw him, from my window,
+step into the balcony, and, after a look at the sea, hold up his hand to
+the air. I was too stupid, for the moment, to remember that he had once
+been a sailor, and to know what this meant. I waited, and wondered what
+would happen next.
+
+“He went in again; and, after an interval, came out once more, and held
+up his hand as before to the air. This time he waited, leaning on the
+balcony rail, and looking out steadily, with all his attention absorbed
+by the sea.
+
+“For a long, long time he never moved. Then, on a sudden, I saw him
+start. The next moment he sank on his knees, with his clasped hands
+resting on the balcony rail. ‘God Almighty bless and keep you, Allan!’
+he said, fervently. ‘Good-by, forever!’
+
+“I looked out to the sea. A soft, steady breeze was blowing, and the
+rippled surface of the water was sparkling in the quiet moonlight. I
+looked again, and there passed slowly, between me and the track of the
+moon, a long black vessel with tall, shadowy, ghostlike sails, gliding
+smooth and noiseless through the water, like a snake.
+
+“The wind had come fair with the night; and Armadale’s yacht had sailed
+on the trial cruise.”
+
+
+
+
+III. THE DIARY BROKEN OFF.
+
+“London, November 19th.--I am alone again in the Great City; alone, for
+the first time since our marriage. Nearly a week since I started on my
+homeward journey, leaving Midwinter behind me at Turin.
+
+“The days have been so full of events since the month began, and I have
+been so harassed, in mind and body both, for the greater part of the
+time, that my Diary has been wretchedly neglected. A few notes, written
+in such hurry and confusion that I can hardly understand them myself,
+are all that I possess to remind me of what has happened since the night
+when Armadale’s yacht left Naples. Let me try if I can set this right
+without more loss of time; let me try if I can recall the circumstances
+in their order as they have followed each other from the beginning of
+the month.
+
+“On the 3d of November--being then still at Naples--Midwinter received
+a hurried letter from Armadale, date ‘Messina.’ ‘The weather,’ he said,
+‘had been lovely, and the yacht had made one of the quickest passages on
+record. The crew were rather a rough set to look at; but Captain
+Manuel and his English mate’ (the latter described as ‘the best of good
+fellows’) ‘managed them admirably.’ After this prosperous beginning,
+Armadale had arranged, as a matter of course, to prolong the cruise;
+and, at the sailing-master’s suggestion, he had decided to visit some
+of the ports in the Adriatic, which the captain had described as full of
+character, and well worth seeing.
+
+“A postscript followed, explaining that Armadale had written in a hurry
+to catch the steamer to Naples, and that he had opened his letter again,
+before sending it off, to add something that he had forgotten. On the
+day before the yacht sailed, he had been at the banker’s to get ‘a few
+hundreds in gold,’ and he believed he had left his cigar-case there. It
+was an old friend of his, and he begged that Midwinter would oblige him
+by endeavoring recover it, and keeping it for him till they met again.
+
+“That was the substance of the letter.
+
+“I thought over it carefully when Midwinter had left me alone again,
+after reading it. My idea was then (and is still) that Manuel had not
+persuaded Armadale to cruise in a sea like the Adriatic, so much less
+frequented by ships than the Mediterranean, for nothing. The terms, too,
+in which the trifling loss of the cigar-case was mentioned struck me as
+being equally suggestive of what was coming. I concluded that Armadale’s
+circular notes had not been transformed into those ‘few hundreds in
+gold’ through any forethought or business knowledge of his own. Manuel’s
+influence, I suspected, had been exerted in this matter also, and once
+more not without reason. At intervals through the wakeful night these
+considerations came back again and again to me; and time after time they
+pointed obstinately (so far as my next movements were concerned) in one
+and the same way--the way back to England.
+
+“How to get there, and especially how to get there unaccompanied by
+Midwinter, was more than I had wit enough to discover that night. I
+tried and tried to meet the difficulty, and fell asleep exhausted toward
+the morning without having met it.
+
+“Some hours later, as soon as I was dressed, Midwinter came in, with
+news received by that morning’s post from his employers in London. The
+proprietors of the newspaper had received from the editor so favorable
+a report of his correspondence from Naples that they had determined on
+advancing him to a place of greater responsibility and greater emolument
+at Turin. His instructions were inclosed in the letter, and he was
+requested to lose no time in leaving Naples for his new post.
+
+“On hearing this, I relieved his mind, before he could put the question,
+of all anxiety about my willingness to remove. Turin had the great
+attraction, in my eyes, of being on the road to England. I assured him
+at once that I was ready to travel as soon as he pleased.
+
+“He thanked me for suiting myself to his plans, with more of his old
+gentleness and kindness than I had seen in him for some time past. The
+good news from Armadale on the previous day seemed to have roused him a
+little from the dull despair in which he had been sunk since the sailing
+of the yacht. And now the prospect of advancement in his profession,
+and, more than that, the prospect of leaving the fatal place in which
+the Third Vision of the Dream had come true, had (as he owned himself)
+additionally cheered and relieved him. He asked, before he went away to
+make the arrangements for our journey, whether I expected to hear from
+my ‘family’ in England, and whether he should give instructions for the
+forwarding of my letters with his own to the _poste restante_ at Turin.
+I instantly thanked him, and accepted the offer. His proposal had
+suggested to me, the moment he made it, that my fictitious ‘family
+circumstances’ might be turned to good account once more, as a reason
+for unexpectedly summoning me from Italy to England.
+
+“On the ninth of the month we were installed at Turin.
+
+“On the thirteenth, Midwinter--being then very busy--asked if I would
+save him a loss of time by applying for any letters which might have
+followed us from Naples. I had been waiting for the opportunity he now
+offered me; and I determined to snatch at it without allowing myself
+time to hesitate. There were no letters at the _poste restante_ for
+either of us. But when he put the question on my return, I told him
+that there had been a letter for me, with alarming news from ‘home.’
+My ‘mother’ was dangerously ill, and I was entreated to lose no time in
+hurrying back to England to see her.
+
+“It seems quite unaccountable--now that I am away from him--but it is
+none the less true, that I could not, even yet, tell him a downright
+premeditated falsehood, without a sense of shrinking and shame, which
+other people would think, and which I think myself, utterly inconsistent
+with such a character as mine. Inconsistent or not, I felt it. And what
+is stranger--perhaps I ought to say madder--still, if he had persisted
+in his first resolution to accompany me himself to England rather than
+allow me to travel alone, I firmly believe I should have turned my back
+on temptation for the second time, and have lulled myself to rest once
+more in the old dream of living out my life happy and harmless in my
+husband’s love.
+
+“Am I deceiving myself in this? It doesn’t matter--I dare say I am.
+Never mind what _might_ have happened. What _did_ happen is the only
+thing of any importance now.
+
+“It ended in Midwinter’s letting me persuade him that I was old enough
+to take care of myself on the journey to England, and that he owed it to
+the newspaper people, who had trusted their interests in his hands, not
+to leave Turin just as he was established there. He didn’t suffer at
+taking leave of me as he suffered when he saw the last of his friend. I
+saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to
+him at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at
+last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a peck
+of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for
+letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I
+believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let
+him follow his new fancy, if he pleases! I shall be the widow of Mr.
+Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose before long; and what will his likes or
+dislikes matter to me then?
+
+“The events on the journey were not worth mentioning, and my arrival in
+London stands recorded already on the top of the new page.
+
+“As for to-day, the one thing of any importance that I have done since I
+got to the cheap and quiet hotel at which I am now staying, has been
+to send for the landlord, and ask him to help me to a sight of the back
+numbers of _The Times_ newspaper. He has politely offered to accompany
+me himself to-morrow morning to some place in the City where all the
+papers are kept, as he calls it, in file. Till to-morrow, then, I must
+control my impatience for news of Armadale as well as I can. And so
+good-night to the pretty reflection of myself that appears in these
+pages!”
+
+
+“November 20th.--Not a word of news yet, either in the obituary column
+or in any other part of the paper. I looked carefully through each
+number in succession, dating from the day when Armadale’s letter was
+written at Messina to this present 20th of the month, and I am certain,
+whatever may have happened, that nothing is known in England as yet.
+Patience! The newspaper is to meet me at the breakfast-table every
+morning till further notice; and any day now may show me what I most
+want to see.”
+
+
+“November 21st.--No news again. I wrote to Midwinter to-day, to keep up
+appearances.
+
+“When the letter was done, I fell into wretchedly low spirits--I can’t
+imagine why--and felt such a longing for a little company that, in
+despair of knowing where else to go, I actually went to Pimlico, on the
+chance that Mother Oldershaw might have returned to her old quarters.
+
+“There were changes since I had seen the place during my former stay
+in London. Doctor Downward’s side of the house was still empty. But
+the shop was being brightened up for the occupation of a milliner and
+dress-maker. The people, when I went in to make inquiries, were all
+strangers to me. They showed, however, no hesitation in giving me Mrs.
+Oldershaw’s address when I asked for it--from which I infer that the
+little ‘difficulty’ which forced her to be in hiding in August last is
+at an end, so far as she is concerned. As for the doctor, the people at
+the shop either were, or pretended to be, quite unable to tell me what
+had become of him.
+
+“I don’t know whether it was the sight of the place at Pimlico that
+sickened me, or whether it was my own perversity, or what. But now that
+I had got Mrs. Oldershaw’s address, I felt as if she was the very last
+person in the world that I wanted to see. I took a cab, and told the man
+to drive to the street she lived in, and then told him to drive back to
+the hotel. I hardly know what is the matter with me--unless it is that
+I am getting more impatient every hour for information about Armadale.
+When will the future look a little less dark, I wonder? To-morrow is
+Saturday. Will to-morrow’s newspaper lift the veil?”
+
+
+“November 22d.--Saturday’s newspaper _has_ lifted the veil! Words are
+vain to express the panic of astonishment in which I write. I never once
+anticipated it; I can’t believe it or realize it, now it has happened.
+The winds and waves themselves have turned my accomplices! The yacht has
+foundered at sea, and every soul on board has perished!
+
+“Here is the account cut out of this morning’s newspaper:
+
+“‘DISASTER AT SEA.--Intelligence has reached the Royal Yacht Squadron
+and the insurers which leaves no reasonable doubt, we regret to say,
+of the total loss, on the fifth of the present month, of the yacht
+_Dorothea_, with every soul on board. The particulars are as follows:
+At daylight, on the morning of the sixth, the Italian brig _Speranza_,
+bound from Venice to Marsala for orders, encountered some floating
+objects off Cape Spartivento (at the southernmost extremity of Italy)
+which attracted the curiosity of the people of the brig. The previous
+day had been marked by one of the most severe of the sudden and violent
+storms, peculiar to these southern seas, which has been remembered
+for years. The _Speranza_ herself having been in danger while the gale
+lasted, the captain and crew concluded that they were on the traces of
+a wreck, and a boat was lowered for the purpose of examining the objects
+in the water. A hen-coop, some broken spars, and fragments of shattered
+plank were the first evidences discovered of the terrible disaster that
+had happened. Some of the lighter articles of cabin furniture, wrenched
+and shattered, were found next. And, lastly, a memento of melancholy
+interest turned up, in the shape of a lifebuoy, with a corked bottle
+attached to it. These latter objects, with the relics of cabin
+furniture, were brought on board the _Speranza_. On the buoy the name
+of the vessel was painted, as follows: “_Dorothea, R. Y. S._” (meaning
+Royal Yacht Squadron). The bottle, on being uncorked, contained a sheet
+of note-paper, on which the following lines were hurriedly traced in
+pencil: “Off Cape Spartivento; two days out from Messina. Nov. 5th, 4
+P.M.” (being the hour at which the log of the Italian brig showed the
+storm to have been at its height). “Both our boats are stove in by the
+sea. The rudder is gone, and we have sprung a leak astern which is more
+than we can stop. The Lord help us all--we are sinking. (Signed) John
+Mitchenden, Mate.” On reaching Marsala, the captain of the brig made his
+report to the British consul, and left the objects discovered in that
+gentleman’s charge. Inquiry at Messina showed that the ill-fated vessel
+had arrived there from Naples. At the latter port it was ascertained
+that the _Dorothea_ had been hired from the owner’s agent by an English
+gentleman, Mr. Armadale, of Thorpe Ambrose, Norfolk. Whether Mr.
+Armadale had any friends on board with him has not been clearly
+discovered. But there is unhappily no doubt that the ill-fated gentleman
+himself sailed in the yacht from Naples, and that he was also on board
+of the vessel when she left Messina.’
+
+“Such is the story of the wreck, as the newspaper tells it in the
+plainest and fewest words. My head is in a whirl; my confusion is so
+great that I think of fifty different things in trying to think of one.
+I must wait--a day more or less is of no consequence now--I must wait
+till I can face my new position, without feeling bewildered by it.”
+
+
+“November 23d.--Eight in the morning.--I rose an hour ago, and saw
+my way clearly to the first step that I must take under present
+circumstances.
+
+“It is of the utmost importance to me to know what is doing at Thorpe
+Ambrose; and it would be the height of rashness, while I am quite in the
+dark in this matter, to venture there myself. The only other alternative
+is to write to somebody on the spot for news; and the only person I can
+write to is--Bashwood.
+
+“I have just finished the letter. It is headed ‘private and
+confidential,’ and signed ‘Lydia Armadale.’ There is nothing in it to
+compromise me, if the old fool is mortally offended by my treatment of
+him, and if he spitefully shows my letter to other people. But I don’t
+believe he will do this. A man at his age forgives a woman anything,
+if the woman only encourages him. I have requested him, as a personal
+favor, to keep our correspondence for the present strictly private. I
+have hinted that my married life with my deceased husband has not been
+a happy one; and that I feel the injudiciousness of having married a
+_young_ man. In the postscript I go further still, and venture boldly on
+these comforting words: ‘I can explain, dear Mr. Bashwood, what may have
+seemed fake and deceitful in my conduct toward you when you give me a
+personal opportunity.’ If he was on the right side of sixty, I should
+feel doubtful of results. But he is on the wrong side of sixty, and I
+believe he will give me my personal opportunity.
+
+
+“Ten o’clock.--I have been looking over the copy of my marriage
+certificate, with which I took care to provide myself on the
+wedding-day; and I have discovered, to my inexpressible dismay, an
+obstacle to my appearance in the character of Armadale’s widow which I
+now see for the first time.
+
+“The description of Midwinter (under his own name) which the certificate
+presents answers in every important particular to what would have been
+the description of Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I had really married
+him. ‘Name and Surname’--Allan Armadale. ‘Age’--twenty-one,
+instead of twenty-two, which might easily pass for a mistake.
+‘Condition’--Bachelor. ‘Rank or profession’--Gentleman. ‘Residence at
+the time of Marriage’--Frant’s Hotel, Darley Street. ‘Father’s Name and
+Surname’--Allan Armadale. ‘Rank or Profession of Father’--Gentleman.
+Every particular (except the year’s difference in their two ages) which
+answers for the one answers for the other. But suppose, when I produce
+my copy of the certificate, that some meddlesome lawyer insists on
+looking at the original register? Midwinter’s writing is as different as
+possible from the writing of his dead friend. The hand in which he has
+written ‘Allan Armadale’ in the book has not a chance of passing for
+the hand in which Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose was accustomed to sign his
+name.
+
+“Can I move safely in the matter, with such a pitfall as I see here open
+under my feet? How can I tell? Where can I find an experienced person to
+inform me? I must shut up my diary and think.”
+
+
+“Seven o’clock.--My prospects have changed again since I made my last
+entry. I have received a warning to be careful in the future which I
+shall not neglect; and I have (I believe) succeeded in providing myself
+with the advice and assistance of which I stand in need.
+
+“After vainly trying to think of some better person to apply to in the
+difficulty which embarrassed me, I made a virtue of necessity, and set
+forth to surprise Mrs. Oldershaw by a visit from her darling Lydia! It
+is almost needless to add that I determined to sound her carefully, and
+not to let any secret of importance out of my own possession.
+
+“A sour and solemn old maid-servant admitted me into the house. When I
+asked for her mistress, I was reminded with the bitterest emphasis that
+I had committed the impropriety of calling on a Sunday. Mrs. Oldershaw
+was at home, solely in consequence of being too unwell to go to church!
+The servant thought it very unlikely that she would see me. I thought
+it highly probable, on the contrary, that she would honor me with
+an interview in her own interests, if I sent in my name as ‘Miss
+Gwilt’--and the event proved that I was right. After being kept waiting
+some minutes I was shown into the drawing-room.
+
+“There sat Mother Jezebel, with the air of a woman resting on the
+high-road to heaven, dressed in a slate-colored gown, with gray mittens
+on her hands, a severely simple cap on her head, and a volume of sermons
+on her lap. She turned up the whites of her eyes devoutly at the sight
+of me, and the first words she said were--‘Oh, Lydia! Lydia! why are you
+not at church?’
+
+“If I had been less anxious, the sudden presentation of Mrs. Oldershaw
+in an entirely new character might have amused me. But I was in no
+humor for laughing, and (my notes of hand being all paid) I was under
+no obligation to restrain my natural freedom of speech. ‘Stuff and
+nonsense!’ I said. ‘Put your Sunday face in your pocket. I have got some
+news for you, since I last wrote from Thorpe Ambrose.’
+
+“The instant I mentioned ‘Thorpe Ambrose,’ the whites of the old
+hypocrite’s eyes showed themselves again, and she flatly refused to
+hear a word more from me on the subject of my proceedings in Norfolk. I
+insisted; but it was quite useless. Mother Oldershaw only shook her
+head and groaned, and informed me that her connection with the pomps and
+vanities of the world was at an end forever. ‘I have been born again,
+Lydia,’ said the brazen old wretch, wiping her eyes. ‘Nothing will
+induce me to return to the subject of that wicked speculation of yours
+on the folly of a rich young man.’
+
+“After hearing this, I should have left her on the spot, but for one
+consideration which delayed me a moment longer.
+
+“It was easy to see, by this time, that the circumstances (whatever they
+might have been) which had obliged Mother Oldershaw to keep in hiding,
+on the occasion of my former visit to London, had been sufficiently
+serious to force her into giving up, or appearing to give up, her old
+business. And it was hardly less plain that she had found it to her
+advantage--everybody in England finds it to their advantage in some way
+to cover the outer side of her character carefully with a smooth varnish
+of Cant. This was, however, no business of mine; and I should have made
+these reflections outside instead of inside the house, if my interests
+had not been involved in putting the sincerity of Mother Oldershaw’s
+reformation to the test--so far as it affected her past connection with
+myself. At the time when she had fitted me out for our enterprise, I
+remembered signing a certain business document which gave her a handsome
+pecuniary interest in my success, if I became Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe
+Ambrose. The chance of turning this mischievous morsel of paper to
+good account, in the capacity of a touchstone, was too tempting to be
+resisted. I asked my devout friend’s permission to say one last word
+before I left the house.
+
+“‘As you have no further interest in my wicked speculation at Thorpe
+Ambrose,’ I said, ‘perhaps you will give me back the written paper that
+I signed, when you were not quite such an exemplary person as you are
+now?’
+
+“The shameless old hypocrite instantly shut her eyes and shuddered.
+
+“‘Does that mean Yes, or No’?’ I asked.
+
+“‘On moral and religious grounds, Lydia,’ said Mrs. Oldershaw, ‘it means
+No.’
+
+“‘On wicked and worldly grounds,’ I rejoined, ‘I beg to thank you for
+showing me your hand.’
+
+“There could, indeed, be no doubt now about the object she really had
+in view. She would run no more risks and lend no more money; she would
+leave me to win or lose single-handed. If I lost, she would not be
+compromised. If I won, she would produce the paper I had signed, and
+profit by it without remorse. In my present situation, it was mere waste
+of time and words to prolong the matter by any useless recrimination on
+my side. I put the warning away privately in my memory for future use,
+and got up to go.
+
+“At the moment when I left my chair there was a sharp double knock at
+the street door. Mrs. Oldershaw evidently recognized it. She rose in a
+violent hurry, and rang the bell. ‘I am too unwell to see anybody,’ she
+said, when the servant appeared. ‘Wait a moment, if you please,’ she
+added, turning sharply on me, when the woman had left us to answer the
+door.
+
+“It was small, very small, spitefulness on my part, I know; but the
+satisfaction of thwarting Mother Jezebel, even in a trifle, was not to
+be resisted. ‘I can’t wait,’ I said; ‘you reminded me just now that I
+ought to be at church.’ Before she could answer I was out of the room.
+
+“As I put my foot on the first stair the street door was opened, and a
+man’s voice inquired whether Mrs. Oldershaw was at home.
+
+“I instantly recognized the voice. Doctor Downward!
+
+“The doctor repeated the servant’s message in a tone which betrayed
+unmistakable irritation at finding himself admitted no further than the
+door.
+
+“‘Your mistress is not well enough to see visitors? Give her that card,’
+said the doctor, ‘and say I expect her, the next time I call, to be well
+enough to see _me_.’
+
+“If his voice had not told me plainly that he felt in no friendly mood
+toward Mrs. Oldershaw, I dare say I should have let him go without
+claiming his acquaintance; but, as things were, I felt an impulse to
+speak to him or to anybody who had a grudge against Mother Jezebel.
+There was more of my small spitefulness in this, I suppose. Anyway, I
+slipped downstairs; and, following the doctor out quietly, overtook him
+in the street.
+
+“I had recognized his voice, and I recognized his back as I walked
+behind him. But when I called him by his name, and when he turned round
+with a start and confronted me, I followed his example, and started on
+my side. The doctor’s face was transformed into the face of a perfect
+stranger! His baldness had hidden itself under an artfully grizzled wig.
+He had allowed his whiskers to grow, and had dyed them to match his new
+head of hair. Hideous circular spectacles bestrode his nose in place of
+the neat double eyeglass that he used to carry in his hand; and a
+black neckerchief, surmounted by immense shirt-collars, appeared as the
+unworthy successor of the clerical white cravat of former times. Nothing
+remained of the man I once knew but the comfortable plumpness of his
+figure, and the confidential courtesy and smoothness of his manner and
+his voice.
+
+“‘Charmed to see you again,’ said the doctor, looking about him a little
+anxiously, and producing his card-case in a very precipitate manner.
+‘But, my dear Miss Gwilt, permit me to rectify a slight mistake on
+your part. Doctor Downward of Pimlico is dead and buried; and you will
+infinitely oblige me if you will never, on any consideration, mention
+him again!’
+
+“I took the card he offered me, and discovered that I was now supposed
+to be speaking to ‘Doctor Le Doux, of the Sanitarium, Fairweather Vale,
+Hampstead!’
+
+“‘You seem to have found it necessary,’ I said, ‘to change a great many
+things since I last saw you? Your name, your residence, your personal
+appearance--?’
+
+“‘And my branch of practice,’ interposed the doctor. ‘I have purchased
+of the original possessor (a person of feeble enterprise and no
+resources) a name, a diploma, and a partially completed sanitarium for
+the reception of nervous invalids. We are open already to the inspection
+of a few privileged friends--come and see us. Are you walking my way?
+Pray take my arm, and tell me to what happy chance I am indebted for the
+pleasure of seeing you again?’
+
+“I told him the circumstances exactly as they had happened, and I added
+(with a view to making sure of his relations with his former ally at
+Pimlico) that I had been greatly surprised to hear Mrs. Oldershaw’s door
+shut on such an old friend as himself. Cautious as he was, the doctor’s
+manner of receiving my remark satisfied me at once that my suspicions
+of an estrangement were well founded. His smile vanished, and he settled
+his hideous spectacles irritably on the bridge of his nose.
+
+“‘Pardon me if I leave you to draw your own conclusions,’ he said. ‘The
+subject of Mrs. Oldershaw is, I regret to say, far from agreeable to me
+under existing circumstances--a business difficulty connected with our
+late partnership at Pimlico, entirely without interest for a young and
+brilliant woman like yourself. Tell me your news! Have you left your
+situation at Thorpe Ambrose? Are you residing in London? Is there
+anything, professional or otherwise, that I can do for you?’
+
+“That last question was a more important one than he supposed. Before
+I answered it, I felt the necessity of parting company with him and of
+getting a little time to think.
+
+“‘You have kindly asked me, doctor, to pay you a visit,’ I said. ‘In
+your quiet house at Hampstead, I may possibly have something to say to
+you which I can’t say in this noisy street. When are you at home at the
+Sanitarium? Should I find you there later in the day?’
+
+“The doctor assured me that he was then on his way back, and begged that
+I would name my own hour. I said, ‘Toward the afternoon;’ and, pleading
+an engagement, hailed the first omnibus that passed us. ‘Don’t forget
+the address,’ said the doctor, as he handed me in. ‘I have got your
+card,’ I answered, and so we parted.
+
+“I returned to the hotel, and went up into my room, and thought over it
+very anxiously.
+
+“The serious obstacle of the signature on the marriage register still
+stood in my way as unmanageably as ever. All hope of getting assistance
+from Mrs. Oldershaw was at an end. I could only regard her henceforth
+as an enemy hidden in the dark--the enemy, beyond all doubt now, who
+had had me followed and watched when I was last in London. To what other
+counselor could I turn for the advice which my unlucky ignorance of
+law and business obliged me to seek from some one more experienced than
+myself? Could I go to the lawyer whom I consulted when I was about to
+marry Midwinter in my maiden name? Impossible! To say nothing of his
+cold reception of me when I had last seen him, the advice I wanted this
+time related (disguise the facts as I might) to commission of a Fraud--a
+fraud of the sort that no prosperous lawyer would consent to assist if
+he had a character to lose. Was there any other competent person I
+could think of? There was one, and one only--the doctor who had died at
+Pimlico, and had revived again at Hampstead.
+
+“I knew him to be entirely without scruples; to have the business
+experience that I wanted myself; and to be as cunning, as clever, and
+as far-seeing a man as could be found in all London. Beyond this, I had
+made two important discoveries in connection with him that morning. In
+the first place, he was on bad terms with Mrs. Oldershaw, which would
+protect me from all danger of the two leaguing together against me if
+I trusted him. In the second place, circumstances still obliged him to
+keep his identity carefully disguised, which gave me a hold over him in
+no respect inferior to any hold that _I_ might give him over _me_. In
+every way he was the right man, the only man, for my purpose; and yet I
+hesitated at going to him--hesitated for a full hour and more, without
+knowing why!
+
+“It was two o’clock before I finally decided on paying the doctor a
+visit. Having, after this, occupied nearly another hour in determining
+to a hair-breadth how far I should take him into my confidence, I
+sent for a cab at last, and set off toward three in the afternoon for
+Hampstead.
+
+“I found the Sanitarium with some little difficulty.
+
+“Fairweather Vale proved to be a new neighborhood, situated below the
+high ground of Hampstead, on the southern side. The day was overcast,
+and the place looked very dreary. We approached it by a new road running
+between trees, which might once have been the park avenue of a country
+house. At the end we came upon a wilderness of open ground, with
+half-finished villas dotted about, and a hideous litter of boards,
+wheelbarrows, and building materials of all sorts scattered in every
+direction. At one corner of this scene of desolation, stood a great
+overgrown dismal house, plastered with drab-colored stucco, and
+surrounded by a naked, unfinished garden, without a shrub or a flower
+in it, frightful to behold. On the open iron gate that led into this
+inclosure was a new brass plate, with ‘Sanitarium’ inscribed on it in
+great black letters. The bell, when the cabman rang it, pealed through
+the empty house like a knell; and the pallid, withered old man-servant
+in black who answered the door looked as if he had stepped up out of his
+grave to perform that service. He let out on me a smell of damp plaster
+and new varnish; and he let in with me a chilling draft of the damp
+November air. I didn’t notice it at the time, but, writing of it now, I
+remember that I shivered as I crossed the threshold.
+
+“I gave my name to the servant as ‘Mrs. Armadale,’ and was shown into
+the waiting-room. The very fire itself was dying of damp in the grate.
+The only books on the table were the doctor’s Works, in sober drab
+covers; and the only object that ornamented the walls was the foreign
+Diploma (handsomely framed and glazed), of which the doctor had
+possessed himself by purchase, along with the foreign name.
+
+“After a moment or two, the proprietor of the Sanitarium came in, and
+held up his hands in cheerful astonishment at the sight of me.
+
+“‘I hadn’t an idea who “Mrs. Armadale” was!’ he said. ‘My dear lady,
+have _you_ changed your name too? How sly of you not to tell me when
+we met this morning! Come into my private snuggery--I can’t think of
+keeping an old and dear friend like you in the patients’ waiting-room.’
+
+“The doctor’s private snuggery was at the back of the house, looking
+out on fields and trees, doomed but not yet destroyed by the builder.
+Horrible objects in brass and leather and glass, twisted and turned as
+if they were sentient things writhing in agonies of pain, filled up one
+end of the room. A great book-case with glass doors extended over the
+whole of the opposite wall, and exhibited on its shelves long rows of
+glass jars, in which shapeless dead creatures of a dull white color
+floated in yellow liquid. Above the fireplace hung a collection of
+photographic portraits of men and women, inclosed in two large frames
+hanging side by side with a space between them. The left-hand frame
+illustrated the effects of nervous suffering as seen in the face; the
+right-hand frame exhibited the ravages of insanity from the same
+point of view; while the space between was occupied by an elegantly
+illuminated scroll, bearing inscribed on it the time-honored motto,
+‘Prevention is better than Cure.’
+
+“‘Here I am, with my galvanic apparatus, and my preserved specimens,
+and all the rest of it,’ said the doctor, placing me in a chair by the
+fireside. ‘And there is my System mutely addressing you just above
+your head, under a form of exposition which I venture to describe as
+frankness itself. This is no mad-house, my dear lady. Let other men
+treat insanity, if they like--_I_ stop it! No patients in the house as
+yet. But we live in an age when nervous derangement (parent of insanity)
+is steadily on the increase; and in due time the sufferers will come. I
+can wait as Harvey waited, as Jenner waited. And now do put your feet up
+on the fender, and tell me about yourself. You are married, of
+course? And what a pretty name! Accept my best and most heart-felt
+congratulations. You have the two greatest blessings that can fall to a
+woman’s lot; the two capital H’s, as I call them--Husband and Home.’
+
+“I interrupted the genial flow of the doctor’s congratulations at the
+first opportunity.
+
+“‘I am married; but the circumstances are by no means of the ordinary
+kind,’ I said, seriously. My present position includes none of the
+blessings that are usually supposed to fall to a woman’s lot. I am
+already in a situation of very serious difficulty; and before long I may
+be in a situation of very serious danger as well.’
+
+“The doctor drew his chair a little nearer to me, and fell at once into
+his old professional manner and his old confidential tone.
+
+“‘If you wish to consult me,’ he said, softly, ‘you know that I have
+kept some dangerous secrets in my time, and you also know that I possess
+two valuable qualities as an adviser. I am not easily shocked; and I can
+be implicitly trusted.’
+
+“I hesitated even now, at the eleventh hour, sitting alone with him
+in his own room. It was so strange to me to be trusting to anybody
+but myself! And yet, how could I help trusting another person in a
+difficulty which turned on a matter of law?
+
+“‘Just as you please, you know,’ added the doctor. ‘I never invite
+confidences. I merely receive them.’
+
+“There was no help for it; I had come there not to hesitate, but to
+speak. I risked it, and spoke.
+
+“‘The matter on which I wish to consult you,’ I said, ‘is not (as you
+seem to think) within your experience as a professional man. But I
+believe you may be of assistance to me, if I trust myself to your larger
+experience as a man of the world. I warn you beforehand that I shall
+certainly surprise, and possibly alarm, you before I have done.’
+
+“With that preface I entered on my story, telling him what I had settled
+to tell him, and no more.
+
+“I made no secret, at the outset, of my intention to personate
+Armadale’s widow; and I mentioned without reserve (knowing that the
+doctor could go to the office and examine the will for himself) the
+handsome income that would be settled on me in the event of my success.
+Some of the circumstances that followed next in succession I thought it
+desirable to alter or conceal. I showed him the newspaper account of the
+loss of the yacht, but I said nothing about events at Naples. I informed
+him of the exact similarity of the two names; leaving him to imagine
+that it was accidental. I told him, as an important element in the
+matter, that my husband had kept his real name a profound secret from
+everybody but myself; but (to prevent any communication between them)
+I carefully concealed from the doctor what the assumed name under which
+Midwinter had lived all his life really was. I acknowledged that I had
+left my husband behind me on the Continent; but when the doctor put the
+question, I allowed him to conclude--I couldn’t, with all my resolution,
+tell him positively!--that Midwinter knew of the contemplated Fraud, and
+that he was staying away purposely, so as not to compromise me by his
+presence. This difficulty smoothed over--or, as I feel it now, this
+baseness committed--I reverted to myself, and came back again to the
+truth. One after another I mentioned all the circumstances connected
+with my private marriage, and with the movements of Armadale and
+Midwinter, which rendered any discovery of the false personation
+(through the evidence of other people) a downright impossibility. ‘So
+much,’ I said, in conclusion, ‘for the object in view. The next thing is
+to tell you plainly of a very serious obstacle that stands in my way.’
+
+“The doctor, who had listened thus far without interrupting me, begged
+permission here to say a few words on his side before I went on.
+
+“The ‘few words’ proved to be all questions--clever, searching,
+suspicious questions--which I was, however, able to answer with little
+or no reserve, for they related, in almost every instance, to the
+circumstances under which I had been married, and to the chances for and
+against my lawful husband if he chose to assert his claim to me at any
+future time.
+
+“My replies informed the doctor, in the first place, that I had so
+managed matters at Thorpe Ambrose as to produce a general impression
+that Armadale intended to marry me; in the second place, that my
+husband’s early life had not been of a kind to exhibit him favorably
+in the eyes of the world; in the third place, that we had been married,
+without any witnesses present who knew us, at a large parish church
+in which two other couples had been married the same morning, to
+say nothing of the dozens on dozens of other couples (confusing all
+remembrance of us in the minds of the officiating people) who had
+been married since. When I had put the doctor in possession of these
+facts--and when he had further ascertained that Midwinter and I had gone
+abroad among strangers immediately after leaving the church; and that
+the men employed on board the yacht in which Armadale had sailed from
+Somersetshire (before my marriage) were now away in ships voyaging to
+the other end of the world--his confidence in my prospects showed itself
+plainly in his face. ‘So far as I can see,’ he said, ‘your husband’s
+claim to you (after you have stepped into the place of the dead Mr.
+Armadale’s widow) would rest on nothing but his own bare assertion.
+And _that_ I think you may safely set at defiance. Excuse my apparent
+distrust of the gentleman. But there might be a misunderstanding between
+you in the future, and it is highly desirable to ascertain beforehand
+exactly what he could or could not do under those circumstances. And now
+that we have done with the main obstacle that _I_ see in the way of your
+success, let us by all means come to the obstacle that _you_ see next!’
+
+“I was willing enough to come to it. The tone in which he spoke
+of Midwinter, though I myself was responsible for it, jarred on me
+horribly, and roused for the moment some of the old folly of feeling
+which I fancied I had laid asleep forever. I rushed at the chance of
+changing the subject, and mentioned the discrepancy in the register
+between the hand in which Midwinter had signed the name of Allan
+Armadale, and the hand in which Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose had been
+accustomed to write his name, with an eagerness which it quite diverted
+the doctor to see.
+
+“‘Is _that_ all?’ he asked, to my infinite surprise and relief, when
+I had done. ‘My dear lady, pray set your mind at ease! If the late Mr.
+Armadale’s lawyers want a proof of your marriage, they won’t go to the
+church-register for it, I can promise you!’
+
+“‘What!’ I exclaimed, in astonishment. ‘Do you mean to say that the
+entry in the register is not a proof of my marriage?’
+
+“‘It is a proof,’ said the doctor, ‘that you have been married to
+somebody. But it is no proof that you have been married to Mr. Armadale
+of Thorpe Ambrose. Jack Nokes or Tom Styles (excuse the homeliness of
+the illustration!) might have got the license, and gone to the church to
+be married to you under Mr. Armadale’s name; and the register (how
+could it do otherwise?) must in that case have innocently assisted the
+deception. I see I surprise you. My dear madam, when you opened this
+interesting business you surprised _me_--I may own it now--by laying so
+much stress on the curious similarity between the two names. You might
+have entered on the very daring and romantic enterprise in which you
+are now engaged, without necessarily marrying your present husband. Any
+other man would have done just as well, provided he was willing to take
+Mr. Armadale’s name for the purpose.’
+
+“I felt my temper going at this. ‘Any other man would _not_ have done
+just as well,’ I rejoined, instantly. ‘But for the similarity of the
+names, I should never have thought of the enterprise at all.’
+
+“The doctor admitted that he had spoken too hastily. ‘That personal view
+of the subject had, I confess, escaped me,’ he said. ‘However, let us
+get back to the matter in hand. In the course of what I may term an
+adventurous medical life, I have been brought more than once into
+contact with the gentlemen of the law, and have had opportunities
+of observing their proceedings in cases of, let us say, Domestic
+Jurisprudence. I am quite sure I am correct in informing you that the
+proof which will be required by Mr. Armadale’s representatives will be
+the evidence of a witness present at the marriage who can speak to the
+identity of the bride and bridegroom from his own personal knowledge.’
+
+“‘But I have already told you,’ I said, ‘that there was no such person
+present.’
+
+“‘Precisely,’ rejoined the doctor. ‘In that case, what you now want,
+before you can safely stir a step in the matter, is--if you will pardon
+me the expression--a ready-made witness, possessed of rare moral
+and personal resources, who can be trusted to assume the necessary
+character, and to make the necessary Declaration before a magistrate. Do
+you know of any such person?’ asked the doctor, throwing himself back in
+his chair, and looking at me with the utmost innocence.
+
+“‘I only know you,’ I said.
+
+“The doctor laughed softly. ‘So like a woman!’ he remarked, with the
+most exasperating good humor. ‘The moment she sees her object, she
+dashes at it headlong the nearest way. Oh, the sex! the sex!’
+
+“‘Never mind the sex!’ I broke out, impatiently. ‘I want a serious
+answer--Yes or No?’
+
+“The doctor rose, and waved his hand with great gravity and dignity all
+round the room. ‘You see this vast establishment,’ he began; ‘you
+can possibly estimate to some extent the immense stake I have in its
+prosperity and success. Your excellent natural sense will tell you that
+the Principal of this Sanitarium must be a man of the most unblemished
+character--’
+
+“‘Why waste so many words,’ I said, ‘when one word will do? You mean
+No!’
+
+“The Principal of the Sanitarium suddenly relapsed into the character of
+my confidential friend.
+
+“‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘it isn’t Yes, and it isn’t No, at a moment’s
+notice. Give me till to-morrow afternoon. By that time I engage to
+be ready to do one of two things--either to withdraw myself from this
+business at once, or to go into it with you heart and soul. Do you agree
+to that? Very good; we may drop the subject, then, till to-morrow. Where
+can I call on you when I have decided what to do?’
+
+“There was no objection to my trusting him with my address at the hotel.
+I had taken care to present myself there as ‘Mrs. Armadale’; and I had
+given Midwinter an address at the neighboring post-office to write to
+when he answered my letters. We settled the hour at which the doctor was
+to call on me; and, that matter arranged, I rose to go, resisting all
+offers of refreshment, and all proposals to show me over the house. His
+smooth persistence in keeping up appearances after we had thoroughly
+understood each other disgusted me. I got away from him as soon as I
+could, and came back to my diary and my own room.
+
+“We shall see how it ends to-morrow. My own idea is that my confidential
+friend will say Yes.”
+
+
+“November 24th.--The doctor has said Yes, as I supposed; but on terms
+which I never anticipated. The condition on which I have secured his
+services amounts to nothing less than the payment to him, on my stepping
+into the place of Armadale’s widow, of half my first year’s income--in
+other words, six hundred pounds!
+
+“I protested against this extortionate demand in every way I could
+think of. All to no purpose. The doctor met me with the most engaging
+frankness. Nothing, he said, but the accidental embarrassment of his
+position at the present time would have induced him to mix himself up in
+the matter at all. He would honestly confess that he had exhausted his
+own resources, and the resources of other persons whom he described as
+his ‘backers,’ in the purchase and completion of the Sanitarium. Under
+those circumstances, six hundred pounds in prospect was an object
+to him. For that sum he would run the serious risk of advising and
+assisting me. Not a farthing less would tempt him; and there he left it,
+with his best and friendliest wishes, in my hands!
+
+“It ended in the only way in which it could end. I had no choice but to
+accept the terms, and to let the doctor settle things on the spot as he
+pleased. The arrangement once made between us, I must do him the justice
+to say that he showed no disposition to let the grass grow under his
+feet. He called briskly for pen, ink and paper, and suggested opening
+the campaign at Thorpe Ambrose by to-night’s post.
+
+“We agreed on a form of letter which I wrote, and which he copied on the
+spot. I entered into no particulars at starting. I simply asserted that
+I was the widow of the deceased Mr. Armadale; that I had been privately
+married to him; that I had returned to England on his sailing in the
+yacht from Naples; and that I begged to inclose a copy of my marriage
+certificate, as a matter of form with which I presumed it was customary
+to comply. The letter was addressed to ‘The Representatives of the late
+Allan Armadale, Esq., Thorpe Ambrose, Norfolk.’ And the doctor himself
+carried it away, and put it in the post.
+
+“I am not so excited and so impatient for results as I expected to be,
+now that the first step is taken. The thought of Midwinter haunts me
+like a ghost. I have been writing to him again--as before, to keep
+up appearances. It will be my last letter, I think. My courage feels
+shaken, my spirits get depressed, when my thoughts go back to Turin.
+I am no more capable of facing the consideration of Midwinter at this
+moment than I was in the by-gone time, The day of reckoning with him,
+once distant and doubtful, is a day that may come to me now, I know
+not how soon. And here I am, trusting myself blindly to the chapter of
+Accidents still!”
+
+
+“November 25th.--At two o’clock to-day the doctor called again by
+appointment. He has been to his lawyers (of course without taking them
+into our confidence) to put the case simply of proving my marriage.
+The result confirms what he has already told me. The pivot on which the
+whole matter will turn, if my claim is disputed, will be the question
+of identity; and it may be necessary for the witness to make his
+Declaration in the magistrate’s presence before the week is out.
+
+“In this position of affairs, the doctor thinks it important that we
+should be within easy reach of each other, and proposes to find a quiet
+lodging for me in his neighborhood. I am quite willing to go anywhere;
+for, among the other strange fancies that have got possession of me, I
+have an idea that I shall feel more completely lost to Midwinter if I
+move out of the neighborhood in which his letters are addressed to me.
+I was awake and thinking of him again last night. This morning I have
+finally decided to write to him no more.
+
+“After staying half an hour, the doctor left me, having first inquired
+whether I would like to accompany him to Hampstead to look for lodgings.
+I informed him that I had some business of my own which would keep me
+in London. He inquired what the business was. ‘You will see,’ I said,
+‘to-morrow or next day.’
+
+“I had a moment’s nervous trembling when I was by myself again. My
+business in London, besides being a serious business in a woman’s eyes,
+took my mind back to Midwinter in spite of me. The prospect of removing
+to my new lodging had reminded me of the necessity of dressing in my new
+character. The time had come now for getting _my widow’s weeds_.
+
+“My first proceeding, after putting my bonnet on, was to provide myself
+with money. I got what I wanted to fit me out for the character of
+Armadale’s widow by nothing less than the sale of Armadale’s own present
+to me on my marriage--the ruby ring! It proved to be a more valuable
+jewel than I had supposed. I am likely to be spared all money anxieties
+for some time to come.
+
+“On leaving the jeweler’s, I went to the great mourning shop in Regent
+Street. In four-and-twenty hours (if I can give them no more) they
+have engaged to dress me in my widow’s costume from head to foot. I had
+another feverish moment when I left the shop; and, by way of further
+excitement on this agitating day, I found a surprise in store for me on
+my return to the hotel. An elderly gentleman was announced to be waiting
+to see me. I opened my sitting-room door, and there was old Bashwood!
+
+“He had got my letter that morning, and had started for London by the
+next train to answer it in person. I had expected a great deal from
+him, but I had certainly not expected _that_. It flattered me. For the
+moment, I declare it flattered me!
+
+“I pass over the wretched old creature’s raptures and reproaches, and
+groans and tears, and weary long prosings about the lonely months he
+had passed at Thorpe Ambrose, brooding over my desertion of him. He
+was quite eloquent at times; but I don’t want his eloquence here. It
+is needless to say that I put myself right with him, and consulted his
+feelings before I asked him for his news. What a blessing a woman’s
+vanity is sometimes! I almost forgot my risks and responsibilities in
+my anxieties to be charming. For a minute or two I felt a warm little
+flutter of triumph. And it was a triumph--even with an old man! In
+a quarter of an hour I had him smirking and smiling, hanging on my
+lightest words in an ecstasy, and answering all the questions I put to
+him like a good little child.
+
+“Here is his account of affairs at Thorpe Ambrose, as I gently extracted
+it from him bit by bit:
+
+“In the first place, the news of Armadale’s death has reached Miss
+Milroy. It has so completely overwhelmed her that her father has been
+compelled to remove her from the school. She is back at the cottage,
+and the doctor is in daily attendance. Do I pity her? Yes! I pity her
+exactly as much as she once pitied me!
+
+“In the next place, the state of affairs at the great house, which I
+expected to find some difficulty in comprehending, turns out to be quite
+intelligible, and certainly not discouraging so far. Only yesterday, the
+lawyers on both sides came to an understanding. Mr. Darch (the family
+solicitor of the Blanchards, and Armadale’s bitter enemy in past times)
+represents the interests of Miss Blanchard, who (in the absence of any
+male heir) is next heir to the estate, and who has, it appears, been in
+London for some time past. Mr. Smart, of Norwich (originally employed to
+overlook Bashwood), represents the deceased Armadale. And this is what
+the two lawyers have settled between them.
+
+“Mr. Darch, acting for Miss Blanchard, has claimed the possession of the
+estate, and the right of receiving the rents at the Christmas audit,
+in her name. Mr. Smart, on his side, has admitted that there is great
+weight in the family solicitor’s application. He cannot see his way, as
+things are now, to contesting the question of Armadale’s death, and he
+will consent to offer no resistance to the application, if Mr. Darch
+will consent, on his side, to assume the responsibility of taking
+possession in Miss Blanchard’s name. This Mr. Darch has already done;
+and the estate is now virtually in Miss Blanchard’s possession.
+
+“One result of this course of proceeding will be (as Bashwood thinks)
+to put Mr. Darch in the position of the person who really decides on
+my claim to the widow’s place and the widow’s money. The income being
+charged on the estate, it must come out of Miss Blanchard’s pocket; and
+the question of paying it would appear, therefore, to be a question for
+Miss Blanchard’s lawyer. To-morrow will probably decide whether this
+view is the right one, for my letter to Armadale’s representatives will
+have been delivered at the great house this morning.
+
+“So much for what old Bashwood had to tell me. Having recovered my
+influence over him, and possessed myself of all his information so
+far, the next thing to consider was the right use to turn him to in the
+future. He was entirely at my disposal, for his place at the steward’s
+office has been already taken by Miss Blanchard’s man of business, and
+he pleaded hard to be allowed to stay and serve my interests in London.
+There would not have been the least danger in letting him stay, for I
+had, as a matter of course, left him undisturbed in his conviction
+that I really am the widow of Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose. But with the
+doctor’s resources at my command, I wanted no assistance of any sort in
+London; and it occurred to me that I might make Bashwood more useful by
+sending him back to Norfolk to watch events there in my interests.
+
+“He looked sorely disappointed (having had an eye evidently to paying
+his court to me in my widowed condition!) when I told him of the
+conclusion at which I had arrived. But a few words of persuasion, and
+a modest hint that he might cherish hopes in the future if he served
+me obediently in the present, did wonders in reconciling him to the
+necessity of meeting my wishes. He asked helplessly for ‘instructions’
+when it was time for him to leave me and travel back by the evening
+train. I could give him none, for I had no idea as yet of what the
+legal people might or might not do. ‘But suppose something happens,’ he
+persisted, ‘that I don’t understand, what am I to do, so far away from
+you?’ I could only give him one answer. ‘Do nothing,’ I said. ‘Whatever
+it is, hold your tongue about it, and write, or come up to London
+immediately to consult me.’ With those parting directions, and with an
+understanding that we were to correspond regularly, I let him kiss my
+hand, and sent him off to the train.
+
+“Now that I am alone again, and able to think calmly of the interview
+between me and my elderly admirer, I find myself recalling a certain
+change in old Bashwood’s manner which puzzled me at the time, and which
+puzzles me still.
+
+“Even in his first moments of agitation at seeing me, I thought that his
+eyes rested on my face with a new kind of interest while I was speaking
+to him. Besides this, he dropped a word or two afterward, in telling me
+of his lonely life at Thorpe Ambrose, which seemed to imply that he
+had been sustained in his solitude by a feeling of confidence about his
+future relations with me when we next met. If he had been a younger and
+a bolder man (and if any such discovery had been possible), I should
+almost have suspected him of having found out something about my past
+life which had made him privately confident of controlling me, if I
+showed any disposition to deceive and desert him again. But such an idea
+as this in connection with old Bashwood is simply absurd. Perhaps I am
+overexcited by the suspense and anxiety of my present position? Perhaps
+the merest fancies and suspicions are leading me astray? Let this be as
+it may, I have, at any rate, more serious subjects than the subject
+of old Bashwood to occupy me now. Tomorrow’s post may tell me what
+Armadale’s representatives think of the claim of Armadale’s widow.”
+
+
+“November 26th.--The answer has arrived this morning, in the form (as
+Bashwood supposed) of a letter from Mr. Darch. The crabbed old lawyer
+acknowledges my letter in three lines. Before he takes any steps, or
+expresses any opinion on the subject, he wants evidence of identity as
+well as the evidence of the certificate; and he ventures to suggest that
+it may be desirable, before we go any further, to refer him to my legal
+advisers.
+
+“Two o’clock.--The doctor called shortly after twelve to say that he had
+found a lodging for me within twenty minutes’ walk of the Sanitarium. In
+return for his news, I showed him Mr. Darch’s letter. He took it away at
+once to his lawyers, and came back with the necessary information for
+my guidance. I have answered Mr. Darch by sending him the address of
+my legal advisers--otherwise, the doctor’s lawyers--without making any
+comment on the desire that he has expressed for additional evidence of
+the marriage. This is all that can be done to-day. To-morrow will bring
+with it events of greater interest, for to-morrow the doctor is to make
+his Declaration before the magistrate, and to-morrow I am to move to my
+new lodging in my widow’s weeds.”
+
+
+“November 27th.--Fairweather Vale Villas.--The Declaration has been
+made, with all the necessary formalities. And I have taken possession,
+in my widow’s costume, of my new rooms.
+
+“I ought to be excited by the opening of this new act in the drama, and
+by the venturesome part that I am playing in it myself. Strange to say,
+I am quiet and depressed. The thought of Midwinter has followed me to my
+new abode, and is pressing on me heavily at this moment. I have no fear
+of any accident happening, in the interval that must still pass before
+I step publicly into the place of Armadale’s widow. But when that time
+comes, and when Midwinter finds me (as sooner or later find me he must!)
+figuring in my false character, and settled in the position that I have
+usurped--_then_, I ask myself, What will happen? The answer still comes
+as it first came to me this morning, when I put on my widow’s dress.
+Now, as then, the presentiment is fixed in my mind that he will kill me.
+If it was not too late to draw back--Absurd! I shall shut up my journal.”
+
+
+“November 28th.--The lawyers have heard from Mr. Darch, and have sent
+him the Declaration by return of post.
+
+“When the doctor brought me this news, I asked him whether his lawyers
+were aware of my present address; and, finding that he had not yet
+mentioned it to them, I begged that he would continue to keep it a
+secret for the future. The doctor laughed. ‘Are you afraid of Mr.
+Darch’s stealing a march on us, and coming to attack you personally?’
+he asked. I accepted the imputation, as the easiest way of making him
+comply with my request. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am afraid of Mr. Darch.’
+
+“My spirits have risen since the doctor left me. There is a pleasant
+sensation of security in feeling that no strangers are in possession of
+my address. I am easy enough in my mind to-day to notice how wonderfully
+well I look in my widow’s weeds, and to make myself agreeable to the
+people of the house.
+
+“Midwinter disturbed me a little again last night; but I have got over
+the ghastly delusion which possessed me yesterday. I know better now
+than to dread violence from him when he discovers what I have done. And
+there is still less fear of his stooping to assert his claim to a woman
+who has practiced on him such a deception as mine. The one serious trial
+that I shall be put to when the day of reckoning comes will be the trial
+of preserving my false character in his presence. I shall be safe in his
+loathing and contempt for me, after that. On the day when I have denied
+him to his face, I shall have seen the last of him forever.
+
+“Shall I be able to deny him to his face? Shall I be able to look at him
+and speak to him as if he had never been more to me than a friend? How
+do I know till the time comes? Was there ever such an infatuated fool
+as I am, to be writing of him at all, when writing only encourages me
+to think of him? I will make a new resolution. From this time forth, his
+name shall appear no more in these pages.”
+
+
+“Monday, December 1st.--The last month of the worn-out old year 1851! If
+I allowed myself to look back, what a miserable year I should see added
+to all the other miserable years that are gone! But I have made my
+resolution to look forward only, and I mean to keep it.
+
+“I have nothing to record of the last two days, except that on the
+twenty-ninth I remembered Bashwood, and wrote to tell him of my new
+address. This morning the lawyers heard again from Mr. Darch. He
+acknowledges the receipt of the Declaration, but postpones stating the
+decision at which he has arrived until he has communicated with the
+trustees under the late Mr. Blanchard’s will, and has received his
+final instructions from his client, Miss Blanchard. The doctor’s lawyers
+declare that this last letter is a mere device for gaining time--with
+what object they are, of course, not in a position to guess. The doctor
+himself says, facetiously, it is the usual lawyer’s object of making a
+long bill. My own idea is that Mr. Darch has his suspicions of something
+wrong, and that his purpose in trying to gain time--”
+
+* * * * *
+
+“Ten, at night.--I had written as far as that last unfinished sentence
+(toward four in the afternoon) when I was startled by hearing a cab
+drive up to the door. I went to the window, and got there just in time
+to see old Bashwood getting out with an activity of which I should never
+have supposed him capable. So little did I anticipate the tremendous
+discovery that was going to burst on me in another minute, that I turned
+to the glass, and wondered what the susceptible old gentleman would say
+to me in my widow’s cap.
+
+“The instant he entered the room, I saw that some serious disaster had
+happened. His eyes were wild, his wig was awry. He approached me with a
+strange mixture of eagerness and dismay. ‘I’ve done as you told me,’
+he whispered, breathlessly. ‘I’ve held my tongue about it, and come
+straight to _you_!’ He caught me by the hand before I could speak, with
+a boldness quite new in my experience of him. ‘Oh how can I break it to
+you!’ he burst out. ‘I’m beside myself when I think of it!’
+
+“‘When you _can_ speak,’ I said, putting him into a chair, ‘speak out.
+I see in your face that you bring me news I don’t look for from Thorpe
+Ambrose.’
+
+“He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out a
+letter. He looked at the letter, and looked at me. ‘New--new--news you
+don’t look for,’ he stammered; ‘but not from Thorpe Ambrose!’
+
+“‘Not from Thorpe Ambrose!’
+
+“‘No. From the sea!’
+
+“The first dawning of the truth broke on me at those words. I couldn’t
+speak--I could only hold out my hand to him for the letter.
+
+“He still shrank from giving it to me. ‘I daren’t! I daren’t!’ he said
+to himself, vacantly. ‘The shock of it might be the death of her.’
+
+“I snatched the letter from him. One glance at the writing on the
+address was enough. My hands fell on my lap, with the letter fast held
+in them. I sat petrified, without moving, without speaking, without
+hearing a word of what Bashwood was saying to me, and slowly realized
+the terrible truth. The man whose widow I had claimed to be was a living
+man to confront me! In vain I had mixed the drink at Naples--in vain I
+had betrayed him into Manuel’s hands. Twice I had set the deadly snare
+for him, and twice Armadale had escaped me! I came to my sense of
+outward things again, and found Bashwood on his knees at my feet,
+crying.
+
+“‘You look angry,’ he murmured, helplessly. ‘Are you angry with _me_?
+Oh, if you only knew what hopes I had when we last saw each other, and
+how cruelly that letter has dashed them all to the ground!’
+
+“I put the miserable old creature back from me, but very gently. ‘Hush!’
+I said. ‘Don’t distress me now. I want composure; I want to read the
+letter.’
+
+“He went away submissively to the other end of the room. As soon as my
+eye was off him, I heard him say to himself, with impotent malignity,
+‘If the sea had been of my mind, the sea would have drowned him!’
+
+“One by one I slowly opened the folds of the letter; feeling, while I
+did so, the strangest incapability of fixing my attention on the very
+lines that I was burning to read. But why dwell any longer on sensations
+which I can’t describe? It will be more to the purpose if I place the
+letter itself, for future reference, on this page of my journal.
+
+“‘Fiume, Illyria, November 21, 1851.
+
+“MR. BASHWOOD--The address I date from will surprise you; and you will
+be more surprised still when you hear how it is that I come to write to
+you from a port on the Adriatic Sea.
+
+“I have been the victim of a rascally attempt at robbery and murder. The
+robbery has succeeded; and it is only through the mercy of God that the
+murder did not succeed too.
+
+“I hired a yacht rather more than a month ago at Naples; and sailed
+(I am glad to think now) without any friend with me, for Messina. From
+Messina I went for a cruise in the Adriatic. Two days out we were caught
+in a storm. Storms get up in a hurry, and go down in a hurry, in those
+parts. The vessel behaved nobly: I declare I feel the tears in my eyes
+now, when I think of her at the bottom of the sea! Toward sunset it
+began to moderate; and by midnight, except for a long, smooth swell, the
+sea was as quiet as need be. I went below, a little tired (having helped
+in working the yacht while the gale lasted), and fell asleep in five
+minutes. About two hours after, I was woke by something falling into my
+cabin through a chink of the ventilator in the upper part of the door.
+I jumped up, and found a bit of paper with a key wrapped in it, and with
+writing on the inner side, in a hand which it was not very easy to read.
+
+“Up to this time I had not had the ghost of a suspicion that I was alone
+at sea with a gang of murderous vagabonds (excepting one only) who would
+stick at nothing. I had got on very well with my sailing-master (the
+worst scoundrel of the lot), and better still with his English mate.
+The sailors, being all foreigners, I had very little to say to. They did
+their work, and no quarrels and nothing unpleasant happened. If anybody
+had told me, before I went to bed on the night after the storm, that the
+sailing-master and the crew and the mate (who had been no better than
+the rest of them at starting) were all in a conspiracy to rob me of the
+money I had on board, and then to drown me in my own vessel afterward, I
+should have laughed in his face. Just remember that; and then fancy for
+yourself (for I’m sure I can’t tell you) what I must have thought when
+I opened the paper round the key, and read what I now copy (from the
+mate’s writing), as follows:
+
+“‘SIR--Stay in your bed till you hear a boat shove off from the
+starboard side, or you are a dead man. Your money is stolen; and in five
+minutes’ time the yacht will be scuttled, and the cabin hatch will be
+nailed down on you. Dead men tell no tales; and the sailing-master’s
+notion is to leave proofs afloat that the vessel has foundered with
+all on board. It was his doing, to begin with, and we were all in it. I
+can’t find it in my heart not to give you a chance for your life. It’s
+a bad chance, but I can do no more. I should be murdered myself if I
+didn’t seem to go with the rest. The key of your cabin door is thrown
+back to you, inside this. Don’t be alarmed when you hear the hammer
+above. I shall do it, and I shall have short nails in my hand as well as
+long, and use the short ones only. Wait till you hear the boat with all
+of us shove off, and then pry up the cabin hatch with your back. The
+vessel will float a quarter of an hour after the holes are bored in her.
+Slip into the sea on the port side, and keep the vessel between you
+and the boat. You will find plenty of loose lumber, wrenched away on
+purpose, drifting about to hold on by. It’s a fine night and a smooth
+sea, and there’s a chance that a ship may pick you up while there’s life
+left in you. I can do no more.--Yours truly, J. M.’
+
+
+“As I came to those last words, I heard the hammering down of the hatch
+over my head. I don’t suppose I’m more of a coward than most people, but
+there was a moment when the sweat poured down me like rain. I got to
+be my own man again before the hammering was done, and found myself
+thinking of somebody very dear to me in England. I said to myself:
+‘I’ll have a try for my life, for her sake, though the chances are dead
+against me.’
+
+“I put a letter from that person I have mentioned into one of the
+stoppered bottles of my dressing-case, along with the mate’s warning, in
+case I lived to see him again. I hung this, and a flask of whisky, in a
+sling round my neck; and, after first dressing myself in my confusion,
+thought better of it, and stripped, again, for swimming, to my shirt and
+drawers. By the time I had done that the hammering was over and there
+was such a silence that I could hear the water bubbling into the
+scuttled vessel amidships. The next noise was the noise of the boat and
+the villains in her (always excepting my friend, the mate) shoving off
+from the starboard side. I waited for the splash of the oars in the
+water, and then got my back under the hatch. The mate had kept his
+promise. I lifted it easily--crept across the deck, under cover of the
+bulwarks, on all fours--and slipped into the sea on the port side.
+Lots of things were floating about. I took the first thing I came to--a
+hen-coop--and swam away with it about a couple of hundred yards, keeping
+the yacht between me and the boat. Having got that distance, I was
+seized with a shivering fit, and I stopped (fearing the cramp next) to
+take a pull at my flask. When I had closed the flask again, I turned
+for a moment to look back, and saw the yacht in the act of sinking. In a
+minute more there was nothing between me and the boat but the pieces of
+wreck that had been purposely thrown out to float. The moon was shining;
+and, if they had had a glass in the boat, I believe they might have seen
+my head, though I carefully kept the hen-coop between me and them.
+
+“As it was, they laid on their oars; and I heard loud voices among them
+disputing. After what seemed an age to me, I discovered what the dispute
+was about. The boat’s head was suddenly turned my way. Some cleverer
+scoundrel than the rest (the sailing-master, I dare say) had evidently
+persuaded them to row back over the place where the yacht had gone down,
+and make quite sure that I had gone down with her.
+
+“They were more than half-way across the distance that separated us, and
+I had given myself up for lost, when I heard a cry from one of them, and
+saw the boat’s progress suddenly checked. In a minute or two more the
+boat’s head was turned again; and they rowed straight away from me like
+men rowing for their lives.
+
+“I looked on one side toward the land, and saw nothing. I looked on the
+other toward the sea, and discovered what the boat’s crew had discovered
+before me--a sail in the distance, growing steadily brighter and bigger
+in the moonlight the longer I looked at it. In a quarter of an hour more
+the vessel was within hail of me, and the crew had got me on board.
+
+“They were all foreigners, and they quite deafened me by their jabber.
+I tried signs, but before I could make them understand me I was seized
+with another shivering fit, and was carried below. The vessel held on
+her course, I have no doubt, but I was in no condition to know anything
+about it. Before morning I was in a fever; and from that time I can
+remember nothing clearly till I came to my senses at this place, and
+found myself under the care of a Hungarian merchant, the consignee (as
+they call it) of the coasting vessel that had picked me up. He speaks
+English as well or better than I do; and he has treated me with a
+kindness which I can find no words to praise. When he was a young man
+he was in England himself, learning business, and he says he has
+remembrances of our country which make his heart warm toward an
+Englishman. He has fitted me out with clothes, and has lent me the
+money to travel with, as soon as the doctor allows me to start for home.
+Supposing I don’t get a relapse, I shall be fit to travel in a week’s
+time from this. If I can catch the mail at Trieste, and stand the
+fatigue, I shall be back again at Thorpe Ambrose in a week or ten days
+at most after you get my letter. You will agree with me that it is a
+terribly long letter. But I can’t help that. I seem to have lost my old
+knack at putting things short, and finishing on the first page. However,
+I am near the end now; for I have nothing left to mention but the reason
+why I write about what has happened to me, instead of waiting till I get
+home, and telling it all by word of mouth.
+
+“I fancy my head is still muddled by my illness. At any rate, it only
+struck me this morning that there is barely a chance of some vessel
+having passed the place where the yacht foundered, and having picked up
+the furniture, and other things wrenched out of her and left to float.
+Some false report of my being drowned may, in that case, have reached
+England. If this has happened (which I hope to God may be an unfounded
+fear on my part), go directly to Major Milroy at the cottage. Show
+him this letter--I have written it quite as much for his eye as for
+yours--and then give him the inclosed note, and ask him if he doesn’t
+think the circumstances justify me in hoping he will send it to Miss
+Milroy. I can’t explain why I don’t write directly to the major, or to
+Miss Milroy, instead of to you. I can only say there are considerations
+I am bound in honor to respect, which oblige me to act in this
+roundabout way.
+
+“I don’t ask you to answer this, for I shall be on my way home, I hope,
+long before your letter could reach me in this out-of-the-way place.
+Whatever you do, don’t lose a moment in going to Major Milroy. Go, on
+second thoughts, whether the loss of the yacht is known in England or
+not.
+
+“Yours truly, ALLAN ARMADALE.”
+
+
+“I looked up when I had come to the end of the letter, and saw, for
+the first time, that Bashwood had left his chair and had placed himself
+opposite to me. He was intently studying my face, with the inquiring
+expression of a man who was trying to read my thoughts. His eyes fell
+guiltily when they met mine, and he shrank away to his chair. Believing,
+as he did, that I was really married to Armadale, was he trying to
+discover whether the news of Armadale’s rescue from the sea was good
+news or bad news in my estimation? It was no time then for entering into
+explanations with him. The first thing to be done was to communicate
+instantly with the doctor. I called Bashwood back to me and gave him my
+hand.
+
+“‘You have done me a service,’ I said, ‘which makes us closer friends
+than ever. I shall say more about this, and about other matters of some
+interest to both of us, later in the day. I want you now to lend me Mr.
+Armadale’s letter (which I promise to bring back) and to wait here till
+I return. Will you do that for me, Mr. Bashwood?’
+
+“He would do anything I asked him, he said. I went into the bedroom and
+put on my bonnet and shawl.
+
+“‘Let me be quite sure of the facts before I leave you,’ I resumed, when
+I was ready to go out. ‘You have not shown this letter to anybody but
+me?’
+
+“‘Not a living soul has seen it but our two selves.’
+
+“‘What have you done with the note inclosed to Miss Milroy?’
+
+“He produced it from his pocket. I ran it over rapidly--saw that there
+was nothing in it of the slightest importance--and put it in the fire
+on the spot. That done, I left Bashwood in the sitting-room, and went to
+the Sanitarium, with Armadale’s letter in my hand.
+
+“The doctor had gone out, and the servant was unable to say positively
+at what time he would be back. I went into his study, and wrote a line
+preparing him for the news I had brought with me, which I sealed up,
+with Armadale’s letter, in an envelope, to await his return. Having told
+the servant I would call again in an hour, I left the place.
+
+“It was useless to go back to my lodgings and speak to Bashwood, until I
+knew first what the doctor meant to do. I walked about the neighborhood,
+up and down new streets and crescents and squares, with a kind of dull,
+numbed feeling in me, which prevented, not only all voluntary exercise
+of thought, but all sensation of bodily fatigue. I remembered the same
+feeling overpowering me, years ago, on the morning when the people of
+the prison came to take me into court to be tried for my life. All that
+frightful scene came back again to my mind in the strangest manner, as
+if it had been a scene in which some other person had figured. Once or
+twice I wondered, in a heavy, senseless way, why they had not hanged me!
+
+“When I went back to the Sanitarium, I was informed that the doctor had
+returned half an hour since, and that he was in his own room anxiously
+waiting to see me.
+
+“I went into the study, and found him sitting close by the fire with
+his head down and his hands on his knees. On the table near him, beside
+Armadale’s letter and my note, I saw, in the little circle of light
+thrown by the reading-lamp, an open railway guide. Was he meditating
+flight? It was impossible to tell from his face, when he looked up at
+me, what he was meditating, or how the shock had struck him when he
+first discovered that Armadale was a living man.
+
+“‘Take a seat near the fire,’ he said. ‘It’s very raw and cold to-day.’
+
+“I took a chair in silence. In silence, on his side, the doctor sat
+rubbing his knees before the fire.
+
+“‘Have you nothing to say to me?’ I asked.
+
+“He rose, and suddenly removed the shade from the reading-lamp, so that
+the light fell on my face.
+
+“‘You are not looking well,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+“‘My head feels dull, and my eyes are heavy and hot,’ I replied. ‘The
+weather, I suppose.’
+
+“It was strange how we both got further and further from the one vitally
+important subject which we had both come together to discuss!
+
+“‘I think a cup of tea would do you good,’ remarked the doctor.
+
+“I accepted his suggestion; and he ordered the tea. While it was coming,
+he walked up and down the room, and I sat by the fire, and not a word
+passed between us on either side.
+
+“The tea revived me; and the doctor noticed a change for the better in
+my face. He sat down opposite to me at the table, and spoke out at last.
+
+“‘If I had ten thousand pounds at this moment,’ he began, ‘I would
+give the whole of it never to have compromised myself in your desperate
+speculation on Mr. Armadale’s death!’
+
+“He said those words with an abruptness, almost with a violence, which
+was strangely uncharacteristic of his ordinary manner. Was he frightened
+himself, or was he trying to frighten me? I determined to make him
+explain himself at the outset, so far as I was concerned. ‘Wait a
+moment, doctor,’ I said. ‘Do you hold me responsible for what has
+happened?’
+
+“‘Certainly not,’ he replied, stiffly. ‘Neither you nor anybody could
+have foreseen what has happened. When I say I would give ten thousand
+pounds to be out of this business, I am blaming nobody but myself.
+And when I tell you next that I, for one, won’t allow Mr. Armadale’s
+resurrection from the sea to be the ruin of me without a fight for it,
+I tell you, my dear madam, one of the plainest truths I ever told to man
+or woman in the whole course of my life. Don’t suppose I am invidiously
+separating my interests from yours in the common danger that now
+threatens us both. I simply indicate the difference in the risk that we
+have respectively run. _You_ have not sunk the whole of your resources
+in establishing a Sanitarium; and _you_ have not made a false
+declaration before a magistrate, which is punishable as perjury by the
+law.’
+
+“I interrupted him again. His selfishness did me more good than his tea:
+it roused my temper effectually. ‘Suppose we let your risk and my risk
+alone, and come to the point,’ I said. ‘What do you mean by making a
+fight for it? I see a railway guide on your table. Does making a fight
+for it mean--running away?’
+
+“‘Running away?’ repeated the doctor. ‘You appear to forget that every
+farthing I have in the world is embarked in this establishment.’
+
+“‘You stop here, then?’ I said.
+
+“‘Unquestionably!’
+
+“‘And what do you mean to do when Mr. Armadale comes to England?’
+
+“A solitary fly, the last of his race whom the winter had spared, was
+buzzing feebly about the doctor’s face. He caught it before he answered
+me, and held it out across the table in his closed hand.
+
+“‘If this fly’s name was Armadale,’ he said, ‘and if you had got him as
+I have got him now, what would _you_ do?’
+
+“His eyes, fixed on my face up to this time, turned significantly, as he
+ended this question, to my widow’s dress. I, too, looked at it when
+he looked. A thrill of the old deadly hatred and the old deadly
+determination ran through me again.
+
+“‘I should kill him,’ I said.
+
+“The doctor started to his feet (with the fly still in his hand), and
+looked at me--a little too theatrically--with an expression of the
+utmost horror.
+
+“‘Kill him!’ repeated the doctor, in a paroxysm of virtuous alarm.
+‘Violence--murderous violence--in My Sanitarium! You take my breath
+away!’
+
+“I caught his eye while he was expressing himself in this elaborately
+indignant manner, scrutinizing me with a searching curiosity which was,
+to say the least of it, a little at variance with the vehemence of his
+language and the warmth of his tone. He laughed uneasily when our eyes
+met, and recovered his smoothly confidential manner in the instant that
+elapsed before he spoke again.
+
+“‘I beg a thousand pardons,’ he said. ‘I ought to have known better
+than to take a lady too literally at her word. Permit me to remind you,
+however, that the circumstances are too serious for anything in the
+nature of--let us say, an exaggeration or a joke. You shall hear what I
+propose, without further preface.’ He paused, and resumed his figurative
+use of the fly imprisoned in his hand. ‘Here is Mr. Armadale. I can let
+him out, or keep him in, just as I please--and he knows it. I say to
+him,’ continued the doctor, facetiously addressing the fly, ‘Give me
+proper security, Mr. Armadale, that no proceedings of any sort shall be
+taken against either this lady or myself, and I will let you out of the
+hollow of my hand. Refuse--and, be the risk what it may, I will keep you
+in.” Can you doubt, my dear madam, what Mr. Armadale’s answer is, sooner
+or later, certain to be? Can you doubt,’ said the doctor, suiting the
+action to the word, and letting the fly go, ‘that it will end to the
+entire satisfaction of all parties, in this way?’
+
+“‘I won’t say at present,’ I answered, ‘whether I doubt or not. Let
+me make sure that I understand you first. You propose, if I am not
+mistaken, to shut the doors of this place on Mr. Armadale, and not
+to let him out again until he has agreed to the terms which it is our
+interest to impose on him? May I ask, in that case, how you mean to make
+him walk into the trap that you have set for him here?’
+
+“‘I propose,’ said the doctor, with his hand on the railway guide,
+‘ascertaining first at what time during every evening of this month the
+tidal trains from Dover and Folkestone reach the London Bridge terminus.
+And I propose, next, posting a person whom Mr. Armadale knows, and whom
+you and I can trust, to wait the arrival of the trains, and to meet our
+man at the moment when he steps out of the railway carriage.’
+
+“‘Have you thought,’ I inquired, ‘of who the person is to be?’
+
+“‘I have thought,’ said the doctor, taking up Armadale’s letter ‘of the
+person to whom this letter is addressed.’
+
+“The answer startled me. Was it possible that he and Bashwood knew one
+another? I put the question immediately.
+
+“‘Until to-day I never so much as heard of the gentleman’s name,’ said
+the doctor. ‘I have simply pursued the inductive process of reasoning,
+for which we are indebted to the immortal Bacon. How does this very
+important letter come into your possession? I can’t insult you by
+supposing it to have been stolen. Consequently, it has come to you
+with the leave and license of the person to whom it is addressed.
+Consequently, that person is in your confidence. Consequently, he is
+the first person I think of. You see the process? Very good. Permit me
+a question or two, on the subject of Mr. Bashwood, before we go on any
+further.’
+
+“The doctor’s questions went as straight to the point as usual. My
+answers informed him that Mr. Bashwood stood toward Armadale in the
+relation of steward; that he had received the letter at Thorpe Ambrose
+that morning, and had brought it straight to me by the first train; that
+he had not shown it, or spoken of it before leaving, to Major Milroy or
+to any one else; that I had not obtained this service at his hands by
+trusting him with my secret; that I had communicated with him in the
+character of Armadale’s widow; that he had suppressed the letter, under
+those circumstances, solely in obedience to a general caution I had
+given him to keep his own counsel, if anything strange happened at
+Thorpe Ambrose, until he had first consulted me; and, lastly, that the
+reason why he had done as I told him in this matter, was that in this
+matter, and in all others, Mr. Bashwood was blindly devoted to my
+interests.
+
+“At that point in the interrogatory, the doctor’s eyes began to look at
+me distrustfully behind the doctor’s spectacles.
+
+“‘What is the secret of this blind devotion of Mr. Bashwood’s to your
+interests?’ he asked.
+
+“I hesitated for a moment--in pity to Bashwood, not in pity to myself.
+‘If you must know,’ I answered, ‘Mr. Bashwood is in love with me.’
+
+“‘Ay! ay!’ exclaimed the doctor, with an air of relief. ‘I begin to
+understand now. Is he a young man?’
+
+“‘He is an old man.’
+
+“The doctor laid himself back in his chair, and chuckled softly. ‘Better
+and better!’ he said. ‘Here is the very man we want. Who so fit as Mr.
+Armadale’s steward to meet Mr. Armadale on his return to London? And who
+so capable of influencing Mr. Bashwood in the proper way as the charming
+object of Mr. Bashwood’s admiration?’
+
+“There could be no doubt that Bashwood was the man to serve the doctor’s
+purpose, and that my influence was to be trusted to make him serve
+it. The difficulty was not here: the difficulty was in the unanswered
+question that I had put to the doctor a minute since. I put it to him
+again.
+
+“‘Suppose Mr. Armadale’s steward meets his employer at the terminus,’ I
+said. ‘May I ask once more how Mr. Armadale is to be persuaded to come
+here?’
+
+“‘Don’t think me ungallant,’ rejoined the doctor in his gentlest manner,
+‘if I ask, on my side, how are men persuaded to do nine-tenths of the
+foolish acts of their lives? They are persuaded by your charming sex.
+The weak side of every man is the woman’s side of him. We have only
+to discover the woman’s side of Mr. Armadale--to tickle him on it
+gently--and to lead him our way with a silken string. I observe here,’
+pursued the doctor, opening Armadale’s letter, ‘a reference to a certain
+young lady, which looks promising. Where is the note that Mr. Armadale
+speaks of as addressed to Miss Milroy?’
+
+“Instead of answering him, I started, in a sudden burst of excitement,
+to my feet. The instant he mentioned Miss Milroy’s name all that I had
+heard from Bashwood of her illness, and of the cause of it, rushed back
+into my memory. I saw the means of decoying Armadale into the Sanitarium
+as plainly as I saw the doctor on the other side of the table, wondering
+at the extraordinary change in me. What a luxury it was to make Miss
+Milroy serve my interests at last!
+
+“‘Never mind the note,’ I said. ‘It’s burned, for fear of accidents.
+I can tell you all (and more) than the note could have told you. Miss
+Milroy cuts the knot! Miss Milroy ends the difficulty! She is privately
+engaged to him. She has heard the false report of his death; and she has
+been seriously ill at Thorpe Ambrose ever since. When Bashwood meets him
+at the station, the very first question he is certain to ask--’
+
+“‘I see!’ exclaimed the doctor, anticipating me. ‘Mr. Bashwood has
+nothing to do but to help the truth with a touch of fiction. When he
+tells his master that the false report has reached Miss Milroy, he has
+only to add that the shock has affected her head, and that she is
+here under medical care. Perfect! perfect! We shall have him at the
+Sanitarium as fast as the fastest cab-horse in London can bring him to
+us. And mind! no risk--no necessity for trusting other people. This
+is not a mad-house; this is not a licensed establishment; no doctors’
+certificates are necessary here! My dear lady, I congratulate you; I
+congratulate myself. Permit me to hand you the railway guide, with my
+best compliments to Mr. Bashwood, and with the page turned down for him,
+as an additional attention, at the right place.’
+
+“Remembering how long I had kept Bashwood waiting for me, I took
+the book at once, and wished the doctor good-evening without further
+ceremony. As he politely opened the door for me, he reverted, without
+the slightest necessity for doing so, and without a word from me to lead
+to it, to the outburst of virtuous alarm which had escaped him at the
+earlier part of our interview.
+
+“‘I do hope,’ he said, ‘that you will kindly forget and forgive my
+extraordinary want of tact and perception when--in short, when I caught
+the fly. I positively blush at my own stupidity in putting a literal
+interpretation on a lady’s little joke! Violence in My Sanitarium!’
+exclaimed the doctor, with his eyes once more fixed attentively on my
+face--‘violence in this enlightened nineteenth century! Was there ever
+anything so ridiculous? Do fasten your cloak before you go out, it is so
+cold and raw! Shall I escort you? Shall I send my servant? Ah, you were
+always independent! always, if I may say so, a host in yourself! May
+I call to-morrow morning, and hear what you have settled with Mr.
+Bashwood?’
+
+“I said yes, and got away from him at last. In a quarter of an hour more
+I was back at my lodgings, and was informed by the servant that ‘the
+elderly gentleman’ was still waiting for me.
+
+“I have not got the heart or the patience--I hardly know which--to waste
+many words on what passed between me and Bashwood. It was so easy, so
+degradingly easy, to pull the strings of the poor old puppet in any
+way I pleased! I met none of the difficulties which I should have
+been obliged to meet in the case of a younger man, or of a man less
+infatuated with admiration for me. I left the allusions to Miss Milroy
+in Armadale’s letter, which had naturally puzzled him, to be explained
+at a future time. I never even troubled myself to invent a plausible
+reason for wishing him to meet Armadale at the terminus, and to entrap
+him by a stratagem into the doctor’s Sanitarium. All that I found it
+necessary to do was to refer to what I had written to Mr. Bashwood, on
+my arrival in London, and to what I had afterward said to him, when he
+came to answer my letter personally at the hotel.
+
+“‘You know already,’ I said, ‘that my marriage has not been a happy
+one. Draw your own conclusions from that; and don’t press me to tell you
+whether the news of Mr. Armadale’s rescue from the sea is, or is not,
+the welcome news that it ought to be to his wife!’ That was enough to
+put his withered old face in a glow, and to set his withered old hopes
+growing again. I had only to add, ‘If you will do what I ask you to do,
+no matter how incomprehensible and how mysterious my request may seem
+to be; and if you will accept my assurances that you shall run no risk
+yourself, and that you shall receive the proper explanations at the
+proper time, you will have such a claim on my gratitude and my regard as
+no man living has ever had yet!’ I had only to say those words, and to
+point them by a look and a stolen pressure of his hand, and I had him at
+my feet, blindly eager to obey me. If he could have seen what I thought
+of myself; but that doesn’t matter: he saw nothing.
+
+“Hours have passed since I sent him away (pledged to secrecy, possessed
+of his instructions, and provided with his time-table) to the hotel
+near the terminus, at which he is to stay till Armadale appears on the
+railway platform. The excitement of the earlier part of the evening has
+all worn off; and the dull, numbed sensation has got me again. Are my
+energies wearing out, I wonder, just at the time when I most want them?
+Or is some foreshadowing of disaster creeping over me which I don’t yet
+understand?
+
+“I might be in a humor to sit here for some time longer, thinking
+thoughts like these, and letting them find their way into words at their
+own will and pleasure, if my Diary would only let me. But my idle pen
+has been busy enough to make its way to the end of the volume. I have
+reached the last morsel of space left on the last page; and whether I
+like it or not, I must close the book this time for good and all, when I
+close it to-night.
+
+“Good-by, my old friend and companion of many a miserable day! Having
+nothing else to be fond of, I half suspect myself of having been
+unreasonably fond of _you_.
+
+“What a fool I am!”
+
+THE END OF THE FOURTH BOOK.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE LAST.
+
+
+
+
+I. AT THE TERMINUS.
+
+
+On the night of the 2d of December, Mr. Bashwood took up his post of
+observation at the terminus of the South-eastern Railway for the first
+time. It was an earlier date, by six days, than the date which Allan
+had himself fixed for his return. But the doctor, taking counsel of his
+medical experience, had considered it just probable that “Mr. Armadale
+might be perverse enough, at his enviable age, to recover sooner than
+his medical advisers might have anticipated.” For caution’s sake,
+therefore, Mr. Bashwood was instructed to begin watching the arrival of
+the tidal trains on the day after he had received his employer’s letter.
+
+From the 2d to the 7th of December, the steward waited punctually on the
+platform, saw the trains come in, and satisfied himself, evening after
+evening, that the travelers were all strangers to him. From the 2d to
+the 7th of December, Miss Gwilt (to return to the name under which
+she is best known in these pages) received his daily report, sometimes
+delivered personally, sometimes sent by letter. The doctor, to whom
+the reports were communicated, received them in his turn with unabated
+confidence in the precautions that had been adopted up to the morning of
+the 8th. On that date the irritation of continued suspense had produced
+a change for the worse in Miss Gwilt’s variable temper, which was
+perceptible to every one about her, and which, strangely enough, was
+reflected by an equally marked change in the doctor’s manner when he
+came to pay his usual visit. By a coincidence so extraordinary that his
+enemies might have suspected it of not being a coincidence at all, the
+morning on which Miss Gwilt lost her patience proved to be also the
+morning on which the doctor lost his confidence for the first time.
+
+“No news, of course,” he said, sitting down with a heavy sigh. “Well!
+well!”
+
+Miss Gwilt looked up at him irritably from her work.
+
+“You seem strangely depressed this morning,” she said. “What are you
+afraid of now?”
+
+“The imputation of being afraid, madam,” answered the doctor, solemnly,
+“is not an imputation to cast rashly on any man--even when he belongs to
+such an essentially peaceful profession as mine. I am not afraid. I
+am (as you more correctly put it in the first instance) strangely
+depressed. My nature is, as you know, naturally sanguine, and I only see
+to-day what but for my habitual hopefulness I might have seen, and ought
+to have seen, a week since.”
+
+Miss Gwilt impatiently threw down her work. “If words cost money,” she
+said, “the luxury of talking would be rather an expensive luxury in your
+case!”
+
+“Which I might have seen, and ought to have seen,” reiterated the
+doctor, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption, “a week
+since. To put it plainly, I feel by no means so certain as I did that
+Mr. Armadale will consent, without a struggle, to the terms which it is
+my interest (and in a minor degree yours) to impose on him. Observe! I
+don’t question our entrapping him successfully into the Sanitarium: I
+only doubt whether he will prove quite as manageable as I originally
+anticipated when we have got him there. Say,” remarked the doctor,
+raising his eyes for the first time, and fixing them in steady inquiry
+on Miss Gwilt--“say that he is bold, obstinate, what you please; and
+that he holds out--holds out for weeks together, for months together, as
+men in similar situations to his have held out before him. What follows?
+The risk of keeping him forcibly in concealment--of suppressing him,
+if I may so express myself--increases at compound interest, and becomes
+Enormous! My house is at this moment virtually ready for patients.
+Patients may present themselves in a week’s time. Patients may
+communicate with Mr. Armadale, or Mr. Armadale may communicate with
+patients. A note may be smuggled out of the house, and may reach the
+Commissioners in Lunacy. Even in the case of an unlicensed establishment
+like mine, those gentlemen--no! those chartered despots in a land of
+liberty--have only to apply to the Lord Chancellor for an order, and to
+enter (by heavens, to enter My Sanitarium!) and search the house from
+top to bottom at a moment’s notice! I don’t wish to despond; I don’t
+wish to alarm you; I don’t pretend to say that the means we are taking
+to secure your own safety are any other than the best means at our
+disposal. All I ask you to do is to imagine the Commissioners in
+the house--and then to conceive the consequences. The consequences!”
+ repeated the doctor, getting sternly on his feet, and taking up his hat
+as if he meant to leave the room.
+
+“Have you anything more to say?” asked Miss Gwilt.
+
+“Have you any remarks,” rejoined the doctor, “to offer on your side?”
+
+He stood, hat in hand, waiting. For a full minute the two looked at each
+other in silence.
+
+Miss Gwilt spoke first.
+
+“I think I understand you,” she said, suddenly recovering her composure.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” returned the doctor, with his hand to his ear.
+“What did you say?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Nothing?”
+
+“If you happened to catch another fly this morning,” said Miss Gwilt,
+with a bitterly sarcastic emphasis on the words, “I might be capable of
+shocking you by another ‘little joke.’”
+
+The doctor held up both hands, in polite deprecation, and looked as if
+he was beginning to recover his good humor again.
+
+“Hard,” he murmured, gently, “not to have forgiven me that unlucky
+blunder of mine, even yet!”
+
+“What else have you to say? I am waiting for you,” said Miss Gwilt. She
+turned her chair to the window scornfully, and took up her work again,
+as she spoke.
+
+The doctor came behind her, and put his hand on the back of her chair.
+
+“I have a question to ask, in the first place,” he said; “and a measure
+of necessary precaution to suggest, in the second. If you will honor me
+with your attention, I will put the question first.”
+
+“I am listening.”
+
+“You know that Mr. Armadale is alive,” pursued the doctor, “and you
+know that he is coming back to England. Why do you continue to wear your
+widow’s dress?”
+
+She answered him without an instant’s hesitation, steadily going on with
+her work.
+
+“Because I am of a sanguine disposition, like you. I mean to trust to
+the chapter of accidents to the very last. Mr. Armadale may die yet, on
+his way home.”
+
+“And suppose he gets home alive--what then?”
+
+“Then there is another chance still left.”
+
+“What is it, pray?”
+
+“He may die in your Sanitarium.”
+
+“Madam!” remonstrated the doctor, in the deep bass which he reserved for
+his outbursts of virtuous indignation. “Wait! you spoke of the chapter
+of accidents,” he resumed, gliding back into his softer conversational
+tones. “Yes! yes! of course. I understand you this time. Even the
+healing art is at the mercy of accidents; even such a Sanitarium as mine
+is liable to be surprised by Death. Just so! just so!” said the doctor,
+conceding the question with the utmost impartiality. “There _is_ the
+chapter of accidents, I admit--if you choose to trust to it.
+Mind! I say emphatically, _if_ you choose to trust to it.”
+
+There was another moment of silence--silence so profound that nothing
+was audible in the room but the rapid _click_ of Miss Gwilt’s needle
+through her work.
+
+“Go on,” she said; “you haven’t done yet.”
+
+“True!” said the doctor. “Having put my question, I have my measure of
+precaution to impress on you next. You will see, my dear madam, that
+I am not disposed to trust to the chapter of accidents on my side.
+Reflection has convinced me that you and I are not (logically speaking)
+so conveniently situated as we might be in case of emergency. Cabs
+are, as yet, rare in this rapidly improving neighborhood. I am twenty
+minutes’ walk from you; you are twenty minutes’ walk from me. I know
+nothing of Mr. Armadale’s character; you know it well. It might be
+necessary--vitally necessary--to appeal to your superior knowledge of
+him at a moment’s notice. And how am I to do that unless we are within
+easy reach of each other, under the same roof? In both our interests,
+I beg to invite you, my dear madam, to become for a limited period an
+inmate of My Sanitarium.”
+
+Miss Gwilt’s rapid needle suddenly stopped. “I understand you,” she said
+again, as quietly as before.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor, with another attack of deafness,
+and with his hand once more at his ear.
+
+She laughed to herself--a low, terrible laugh, which startled even the
+doctor into taking his hand off the back of her chair.
+
+“An inmate of your Sanitarium?” she repeated. “You consult appearances
+in everything else; do you propose to consult appearances in receiving
+me into your house?”
+
+“Most assuredly!” replied the doctor, with enthusiasm. “I am surprised
+at your asking me the question! Did you ever know a man of any eminence
+in my profession who set appearances at defiance? If you honor me
+by accepting my invitation, you enter My Sanitarium in the most
+unimpeachable of all possible characters--in the character of a
+Patient.”
+
+“When do you want my answer?”
+
+“Can you decide to-day?”
+
+“To-morrow?”
+
+“Yes. Have you anything more to say?”
+
+“Nothing more.”
+
+“Leave me, then. _I_ don’t keep up appearances. I wish to be alone, and
+I say so. Good-morning.”
+
+“Oh, the sex! the sex!” said the doctor, with his excellent temper in
+perfect working order again. “So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly
+reckless of what they say or how they say it! ‘Oh, woman, in our hours
+of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please!’ There! there! there!
+Good-morning!”
+
+Miss Gwilt rose and looked after him contemptuously from the window,
+when the street door had closed, and he had left the house.
+
+“Armadale himself drove me to it the first time,” she said. “Manuel
+drove me to it the second time.--You cowardly scoundrel! shall I let
+_you_ drive me to it for the third time, and the last?”
+
+She turned from the window, and looked thoughtfully at her widow’s dress
+in the glass.
+
+The hours of the day passed--and she decided nothing. The night
+came--and she hesitated still. The new morning dawned--and the terrible
+question was still unanswered.
+
+By the early post there came a letter for her. It was Mr. Bashwood’s
+usual report. Again he had watched for Allan’s arrival, and again in
+vain.
+
+“I’ll have more time!” she determined, passionately. “No man alive shall
+hurry me faster than I like!”
+
+At breakfast that morning (the morning of the 9th) the doctor was
+surprised in his study by a visit from Miss Gwilt.
+
+“I want another day,” she said, the moment the servant had closed the
+door on her.
+
+The doctor looked at her before he answered, and saw the danger of
+driving her to extremities plainly expressed in her face.
+
+“The time is getting on,” he remonstrated, in his most persuasive
+manner. “For all we know to the contrary, Mr. Armadale may be here
+to-night.”
+
+“I want another day!” she repeated, loudly and passionately.
+
+“Granted!” said the doctor, looking nervously toward the door. “Don’t be
+too loud--the servants may hear you. Mind!” he added, “I depend on your
+honor not to press me for any further delay.”
+
+“You had better depend on my despair,” she said, and left him.
+
+The doctor chipped the shell of his egg, and laughed softly.
+
+“Quite right, my dear!” he thought. “I remember where your despair led
+you in past times; and I think I may trust it to lead you the same way
+now.”
+
+At a quarter to eight o’clock that night Mr. Bashwood took up his post
+of observation, as usual, on the platform of the terminus at London
+Bridge. He was in the highest good spirits; he smiled and smirked in
+irrepressible exultation. The sense that he held in reserve a means
+of influence over Miss Gwilt, in virtue of his knowledge of her past
+career, had had no share in effecting the transformation that now
+appeared in him. It had upheld his courage in his forlorn life at Thorpe
+Ambrose, and it had given him that increased confidence of manner
+which Miss Gwilt herself had noticed; but, from the moment when he had
+regained his old place in her favor, it had vanished as a motive power
+in him, annihilated by the electric shock of her touch and her look.
+His vanity--the vanity which in men at his age is only despair in
+disguise--had now lifted him to the seventh heaven of fatuous happiness
+once more. He believed in her again as he believed in the smart new
+winter overcoat that he wore--as he believed in the dainty little cane
+(appropriate to the dawning dandyism of lads in their teens) that he
+flourished in his hand. He hummed! The worn-out old creature, who had
+not sung since his childhood, hummed, as he paced the platform, the few
+fragments he could remember of a worn-out old song.
+
+The train was due as early as eight o’clock that night. At five minutes
+past the hour the whistle sounded. In less than five minutes more the
+passengers were getting out on the platform.
+
+Following the instructions that had been given to him, Mr. Bashwood
+made his way, as well as the crowd would let him, along the line
+of carriages, and, discovering no familiar face on that first
+investigation, joined the passengers for a second search among them in
+the custom-house waiting-room next.
+
+He had looked round the room, and had satisfied himself that the persons
+occupying it were all strangers, when he heard a voice behind him,
+exclaiming: “Can that be Mr. Bashwood!” He turned in eager expectation,
+and found himself face to face with the last man under heaven whom he
+had expected to see.
+
+The man was MIDWINTER.
+
+
+
+
+II. IN THE HOUSE.
+
+
+Noticing Mr. Bashwood’s confusion (after a moment’s glance at the change
+in his personal appearance), Midwinter spoke first.
+
+“I see I have surprised you,” he said. “You are looking, I suppose, for
+somebody else? Have you heard from Allan? Is he on his way home again
+already?”
+
+The inquiry about Allan, though it would naturally have suggested
+itself to any one in Midwinter’s position at that moment, added to Mr.
+Bashwood’s confusion. Not knowing how else to extricate himself from
+the critical position in which he was placed, he took refuge in simple
+denial.
+
+“I know nothing about Mr. Armadale--oh dear, no, sir, I know nothing
+about Mr. Armadale,” he answered, with needless eagerness and hurry.
+“Welcome back to England, sir,” he went on, changing the subject in his
+nervously talkative manner. “I didn’t know you had been abroad. It’s so
+long since we have had the pleasure--since I have had the pleasure. Have
+you enjoyed yourself, sir, in foreign parts? Such different manners from
+ours--yes, yes, yes--such different manners from ours! Do you make a
+long stay in England, now you have come back?”
+
+“I hardly know,” said Midwinter. “I have been obliged to alter my plans,
+and to come to England unexpectedly.” He hesitated a little; his manner
+changed, and he added, in lower tones: “A serious anxiety has brought
+me back. I can’t say what my plans will be until that anxiety is set at
+rest.”
+
+The light of a lamp fell on his face while he spoke, and Mr. Bashwood
+observed, for the first time, that he looked sadly worn and changed.
+
+“I’m sorry, sir--I’m sure I’m very sorry. If I could be of any use--”
+ suggested Mr. Bashwood, speaking under the influence in some degree of
+his nervous politeness, and in some degree of his remembrance of what
+Midwinter had done for him at Thorpe Ambrose in the by-gone time.
+
+Midwinter thanked him and turned away sadly. “I am afraid you can be of
+no use, Mr. Bashwood--but I am obliged to you for your offer, all the
+same.” He stopped, and considered a little, “Suppose she should _not_ be
+ill? Suppose some misfortune should have happened?” he resumed, speaking
+to himself, and turning again toward the steward. “If she has left
+her mother, some trace of her _might_ be found by inquiring at Thorpe
+Ambrose.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood’s curiosity was instantly aroused. The whole sex was
+interesting to him now, for the sake of Miss Gwilt.
+
+“A lady, sir?” he inquired. “Are you looking for a lady?”
+
+“I am looking,” said Midwinter, simply, “for my wife.”
+
+“Married, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood. “Married since I last had the
+pleasure of seeing you! Might I take the liberty of asking--?”
+
+Midwinter’s eyes dropped uneasily to the ground.
+
+“You knew the lady in former times,” he said. “I have married Miss
+Gwilt.”
+
+The steward started back as he might have started back from a loaded
+pistol leveled at his head. His eyes glared as if he had suddenly lost
+his senses, and the nervous trembling to which he was subject shook him
+from head to foot.
+
+“What’s the matter?” said Midwinter. There was no answer. “What is there
+so very startling,” he went on, a little impatiently, “in Miss Gwilt’s
+being my wife?”
+
+“_Your_ wife?” repeated Mr. Bashwood, helplessly. “Mrs. Armadale--!” He
+checked himself by a desperate effort, and said no more.
+
+The stupor of astonishment which possessed the steward was instantly
+reflected in Midwinter’s face. The name in which he had secretly married
+his wife had passed the lips of the last man in the world whom he would
+have dreamed of admitting into his confidence! He took Mr. Bashwood by
+the arm, and led him away to a quieter part of the terminus than the
+part of it in which they had hitherto spoken to each other.
+
+“You referred to my wife just now,” he said; “and you spoke of _Mrs.
+Armadale_ in the same breath. What do you mean by that?”
+
+Again there was no answer. Utterly incapable of understanding more than
+that he had involved himself in some serious complication which was a
+complete mystery to him, Mr. Bashwood struggled to extricate himself
+from the grasp that was laid on him, and struggled in vain.
+
+Midwinter sternly repeated the question. “I ask you again,” he said,
+“what do you mean by it?”
+
+“Nothing, sir! I give you my word of honor, I meant nothing!” He felt
+the hand on his arm tightening its grasp; he saw, even in the obscurity
+of the remote corner in which they stood, that Midwinter’s fiery temper
+was rising, and was not to be trifled with. The extremity of his danger
+inspired him with the one ready capacity that a timid man possesses when
+he is compelled by main force to face an emergency--the capacity to lie.
+“I only meant to say, sir,” he burst out, with a desperate effort to
+look and speak confidently, “that Mr. Armadale would be surprised--”
+
+“You said _Mrs._ Armadale!”
+
+“No, sir--on my word of honor, on my sacred word of honor, you are
+mistaken--you are, indeed! I said _Mr._ Armadale--how could I say
+anything else? Please to let me go, sir--I’m pressed for time. I do
+assure you I’m dreadfully pressed for time!”
+
+For a moment longer Midwinter maintained his hold, and in that moment he
+decided what to do.
+
+He had accurately stated his motive for returning to England as
+proceeding from anxiety about his wife--anxiety naturally caused (after
+the regular receipt of a letter from her every other, or every third
+day) by the sudden cessation of the correspondence between them on her
+side for a whole week. The first vaguely terrible suspicion of some
+other reason for her silence than the reason of accident or of illness,
+to which he had hitherto attributed it, had struck through him like
+a sudden chill the instant he heard the steward associate the name of
+“Mrs. Armadale” with the idea of his wife. Little irregularities in her
+correspondence with him, which he had thus far only thought strange,
+now came back on his mind, and proclaimed themselves to be suspicions as
+well. He had hitherto believed the reasons she had given for referring
+him, when he answered her letters, to no more definite address than
+an address at a post-office. _Now_ he suspected her reasons of being
+excuses, for the first time. He had hitherto resolved, on reaching
+London, to inquire at the only place he knew of at which a clew to her
+could be found--the address she had given him as the address at which
+“her mother” lived. _Now_ (with a motive which he was afraid to define
+even to himself, but which was strong enough to overbear every other
+consideration in his mind) he determined, before all things, to solve
+the mystery of Mr. Bashwood’s familiarity with a secret, which was a
+marriage secret between himself and his wife. Any direct appeal to a man
+of the steward’s disposition, in the steward’s present state of mind,
+would be evidently useless. The weapon of deception was, in this case,
+a weapon literally forced into Midwinter’s hands. He let go of Mr.
+Bashwood’s arm, and accepted Mr. Bashwood’s explanation.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I have no doubt you are right. Pray
+attribute my rudeness to over-anxiety and over-fatigue. I wish you
+good-evening.”
+
+The station was by this time almost a solitude, the passengers by
+the train being assembled at the examination of their luggage in the
+custom-house waiting-room. It was no easy matter, ostensibly to take
+leave of Mr. Bashwood, and really to keep him in view. But Midwinter’s
+early life with the gypsy master had been of a nature to practice him in
+such stratagems as he was now compelled to adopt. He walked away toward
+the waiting-room by the line of empty carriages; opened the door of
+one of them, as if to look after something that he had left behind, and
+detected Mr. Bashwood making for the cab-rank on the opposite side
+of the platform. In an instant Midwinter had crossed, and had passed
+through the long row of vehicles, so as to skirt it on the side furthest
+from the platform. He entered the second cab by the left-hand door the
+moment after Mr. Bashwood had entered the first cab by the right-hand
+door. “Double your fare, whatever it is,” he said to the driver, “if you
+keep the cab before you in view, and follow it wherever it goes.” In a
+minute more both vehicles were on their way out of the station.
+
+The clerk sat in the sentry-box at the gate, taking down the
+destinations of the cabs as they passed. Midwinter heard the man who was
+driving him call out “Hampstead!” as he went by the clerk’s window.
+
+“Why did you say ‘Hampstead’?” he asked, when they had left the station.
+
+“Because the man before me said ‘Hampstead,’ sir,” answered the driver.
+
+Over and over again, on the wearisome journey to the northwestern
+suburb, Midwinter asked if the cab was still in sight. Over and over
+again, the man answered, “Right in front of us.”
+
+It was between nine and ten o’clock when the driver pulled up his horse
+at last. Midwinter got out, and saw the cab before them waiting at a
+house door. As soon as he had satisfied himself that the driver was
+the man whom Mr. Bashwood had hired, he paid the promised reward, and
+dismissed his own cab.
+
+He took a turn backward and forward before the door. The vaguely
+terrible suspicion which had risen in his mind at the terminus had
+forced itself by this time into a definite form which was abhorrent to
+him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it, he found himself
+blindly distrusting his wife’s fidelity, and blindly suspecting Mr.
+Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror
+of his own morbid fancy, he determined to take down the number of
+the house, and the name of the street in which it stood; and then, in
+justice to his wife, to return at once to the address which she had
+given him as the address at which her mother lived. He had taken out
+his pocket-book, and was on his way to the corner of the street, when
+he observed the man who had driven Mr. Bashwood looking at him with
+an expression of inquisitive surprise. The idea of questioning the
+cab-driver, while he had the opportunity, instantly occurred to him. He
+took a half-crown from his pocket and put it into the man’s ready hand.
+
+“Has the gentleman whom you drove from the station gone into that
+house?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Did you hear him inquire for anybody when the door was opened?”
+
+“He asked for a lady, sir. Mrs.--” The man hesitated. “It wasn’t a
+common name, sir; I should know it again if I heard it.”
+
+“Was it ‘Midwinter’?”
+
+“No, sir.
+
+“Armadale?”
+
+“That’s it, sir. Mrs. Armadale.”
+
+“Are you sure it was ‘Mrs.’ and not ‘Mr.’?”
+
+“I’m as sure as a man can be who hasn’t taken any particular notice,
+sir.”
+
+The doubt implied in that last answer decided Midwinter to investigate
+the matter on the spot. He ascended the house steps. As he raised his
+hand to the bell at the side of the door, the violence of his agitation
+mastered him physically for the moment. A strange sensation, as of
+something leaping up from his heart to his brain, turned his head wildly
+giddy. He held by the house railings and kept his face to the air, and
+resolutely waited till he was steady again. Then he rang the bell.
+
+“Is?”--he tried to ask for “Mrs. Armadale,” when the maid-servant had
+opened the door, but not even his resolution could force the name to
+pass his lips--“is your mistress at home?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+The girl showed him into a back parlor, and presented him to a little
+old lady, with an obliging manner and a bright pair of eyes.
+
+“There is some mistake,” said Midwinter. “I wished to see--” Once more
+he tried to utter the name, and once more he failed to force it to his
+lips.
+
+“Mrs. Armadale?” suggested the little old lady, with a smile.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Show the gentleman upstairs, Jenny.”
+
+The girl led the way to the drawing-room floor.
+
+“Any name, sir?”
+
+“No name.”
+
+
+Mr. Bashwood had barely completed his report of what had happened at the
+terminus; Mr. Bashwood’s imperious mistress was still sitting speechless
+under the shock of the discovery that had burst on her--when the door
+of the room opened; and, without a word of warning to proceed him,
+Midwinter appeared on the threshold. He took one step into the room, and
+mechanically pushed the door to behind him. He stood in dead silence,
+and confronted his wife, with a scrutiny that was terrible in its
+unnatural self-possession, and that enveloped her steadily in one
+comprehensive look from head to foot.
+
+In dead silence on her side, she rose from her chair. In dead silence
+she stood erect on the hearth-rug, and faced her husband in widow’s
+weeds.
+
+He took one step nearer to her, and stopped again. He lifted his
+hand, and pointed with his lean brown finger at her dress.
+
+“What does that mean?” he asked, without losing his terrible
+self-possession, and without moving his outstretched hand.
+
+At the sound of his voice, the quick rise and fall of her bosom--which
+had been the one outward betrayal thus far of the inner agony that
+tortured her--suddenly stopped. She stood impenetrably silent,
+breathlessly still--as if his question had struck her dead, and his
+pointing hand had petrified her.
+
+He advanced one step nearer, and reiterated his words in a voice even
+lower and quieter than the voice in which he had spoken first.
+
+One moment more of silence, one moment more of inaction, might have been
+the salvation of her. But the fatal force of her character triumphed
+at the crisis of her destiny, and his. White and still, and haggard and
+old, she met the dreadful emergency with a dreadful courage, and spoke
+the irrevocable words which renounced him to his face.
+
+“Mr. Midwinter,” she said, in tones unnaturally hard and unnaturally
+clear, “our acquaintance hardly entitles you to speak to me in that
+manner.” Those were her words. She never lifted her eyes from the ground
+while she spoke them. When she had done, the last faint vestige of color
+in her cheeks faded out.
+
+There was a pause. Still steadily looking at her, he set himself to
+fix the language she had used to him in his mind. “She calls me
+‘Mr. Midwinter,’” he said, slowly, in a whisper. “She speaks of ‘our
+acquaintance.’” He waited a little and looked round the room. His
+wandering eyes encountered Mr. Bashwood for the first time. He saw the
+steward standing near the fireplace, trembling, and watching him.
+
+“I once did you a service,” he said; “and you once told me you were not
+an ungrateful man. Are you grateful enough to answer me if I ask you
+something?”
+
+He waited a little again. Mr. Bashwood still stood trembling at the
+fireplace, silently watching him.
+
+“I see you looking at me,” he went on. “Is there some change in me that
+I am not conscious of myself? Am I seeing things that you don’t see? Am
+I hearing words that you don’t hear? Am I looking or speaking like a man
+out of his senses?”
+
+Again he waited, and again the silence was unbroken. His eyes began to
+glitter; and the savage blood that he had inherited from his mother rose
+dark and slow in his ashy cheeks.
+
+“Is that woman,” he asked, “the woman whom you once knew, whose name was
+Miss Gwilt?”
+
+Once more his wife collected her fatal courage. Once more his wife spoke
+her fatal words.
+
+“You compel me to repeat,” she said, “that you are presuming on our
+acquaintance, and that you are forgetting what is due to me.”
+
+He turned upon her, with a savage suddenness which forced a cry of alarm
+from Mr. Bashwood’s lips.
+
+“Are you, or are you not, My Wife?” he asked, through his set teeth.
+
+She raised her eyes to his for the first time. Her lost spirit looked at
+him, steadily defiant, out of the hell of its own despair.
+
+“I am _not_ your wife,” she said.
+
+He staggered back, with his hands groping for something to hold by, like
+the hands of a man in the dark. He leaned heavily against the wall of
+the room, and looked at the woman who had slept on his bosom, and who
+had denied him to his face.
+
+Mr. Bashwood stole panic-stricken to her side. “Go in there!” he
+whispered, trying to draw her toward the folding-doors which led into
+the next room. “For God’s sake, be quick! He’ll kill you!”
+
+She put the old man back with her hand. She looked at him with a sudden
+irradiation of her blank face. She answered him with lips that struggled
+slowly into a frightful smile.
+
+“_Let_ him kill me,” she said.
+
+As the words passed her lips, he sprang forward from the wall, with a
+cry that rang through the house. The frenzy of a maddened man flashed at
+her from his glassy eyes, and clutched at her in his threatening hands.
+He came on till he was within arms-length of her--and suddenly stood
+still. The black flush died out of his face in the instant when he
+stopped. His eyelids fell, his outstretched hands wavered and sank
+helpless. He dropped, as the dead drop. He lay as the dead lie, in the
+arms of the wife who had denied him.
+
+She knelt on the floor, and rested his head on her knee. She caught the
+arm of the steward hurrying to help her, with a hand that closed round
+it like a vise. “Go for a doctor,” she said, “and keep the people of the
+house away till he comes.” There was that in her eye, there was that
+in her voice, which would have warned any man living to obey her in
+silence. In silence Mr. Bashwood submitted, and hurried out of the room.
+
+The instant she was alone she raised him from her knee. With both arms
+clasped round him, the miserable woman lifted his lifeless face to hers
+and rocked him on her bosom in an agony of tenderness beyond all relief
+in tears, in a passion of remorse beyond all expression in words.
+In silence she held him to her breast, in silence she devoured his
+forehead, his cheeks, his lips, with kisses. Not a sound escaped her
+till she heard the trampling footsteps outside, hurrying up the stairs.
+Then a low moan burst from her lips, as she looked her last at him, and
+lowered his head again to her knee, before the strangers came in.
+
+The landlady and the steward were the first persons whom she saw when
+the door was opened. The medical man (a surgeon living in the street)
+followed. The horror and the beauty of her face as she looked up at him
+absorbed the surgeon’s attention for the moment, to the exclusion of
+everything else. She had to beckon to him, she had to point to the
+senseless man, before she could claim his attention for his patient and
+divert it from herself.
+
+“Is he dead?” she asked.
+
+The surgeon carried Midwinter to the sofa, and ordered the windows to be
+opened. “It is a fainting fit,” he said; “nothing more.”
+
+At that answer her strength failed her for the first time. She drew a
+deep breath of relief, and leaned on the chimney-piece for support. Mr.
+Bashwood was the only person present who noticed that she was overcome.
+He led her to the opposite end of the room, where there was an
+easy-chair, leaving the landlady to hand the restoratives to the surgeon
+as they were wanted.
+
+“Are you going to wait here till he recovers?” whispered the steward,
+looking toward the sofa, and trembling as he looked.
+
+The question forced her to a sense of her position--to a knowledge
+of the merciless necessities which that position now forced her to
+confront. With a heavy sigh she looked toward the sofa, considered with
+herself for a moment, and answered Mr. Bashwood’s inquiry by a question
+on her side.
+
+“Is the cab that brought you here from the railway still at the door?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Drive at once to the gates of the Sanitarium, and wait there till I
+join you.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood hesitated. She lifted her eyes to his, and, with a look,
+sent him out of the room.
+
+“The gentleman is coming to, ma’am,” said the landlady, as the steward
+closed the door. “He has just breathed again.”
+
+She bowed in mute reply, rose, and considered with herself once
+more--looked toward the sofa for the second time--then passed through
+the folding-doors into her own room.
+
+After a short lapse of time the surgeon drew back from the sofa and
+motioned to the landlady to stand aside. The bodily recovery of the
+patient was assured. There was nothing to be done now but to wait, and
+let his mind slowly recall its sense of what had happened.
+
+“Where is she?” were the first words he said to the surgeon, and the
+landlady anxiously watching him.
+
+The landlady knocked at the folding-doors, and received no answer. She
+went in, and found the room empty. A sheet of note-paper was on the
+dressing-table, with the doctor’s fee placed on it. The paper contained
+these lines, evidently written in great agitation or in great haste: “It
+is impossible for me to remain here to-night, after what has happened.
+I will return to-morrow to take away my luggage, and to pay what I owe
+you.”
+
+“Where is she?” Midwinter asked again, when the landlady returned alone
+to the drawing-room.
+
+“Gone, sir.”
+
+“I don’t believe it!”
+
+The old lady’s color rose. “If you know her handwriting, sir,” she
+answered, handing him the sheet of note-paper, “perhaps you may believe
+_that_?”
+
+He looked at the paper. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said, as he
+handed it back--“I beg your pardon, with all my heart.”
+
+There was something in his face as he spoke those words which more than
+soothed the old lady’s irritation: it touched her with a sudden pity
+for the man who had offended her. “I am afraid there is some dreadful
+trouble, sir, at the bottom of all this,” she said, simply. “Do you wish
+me to give any message to the lady when she comes back?”
+
+Midwinter rose and steadied himself for a moment against the sofa. “I
+will bring my own message to-morrow,” he said. “I must see her before
+she leaves your house.”
+
+The surgeon accompanied his patient into the street. “Can I see you
+home?” he said, kindly. “You had better not walk, if it is far. You
+mustn’t overexert yourself; you mustn’t catch a chill this cold night.”
+
+Midwinter took his hand and thanked him. “I have been used to hard
+walking and cold nights, sir,” he said; “and I am not easily worn out,
+even when I look so broken as I do now. If you will tell me the nearest
+way out of these streets, I think the quiet of the country and the quiet
+of the night will help me. I have something serious to do to-morrow,” he
+added, in a lower tone; “and I can’t rest or sleep till I have thought
+over it to-night.”
+
+The surgeon understood that he had no common man to deal with. He gave
+the necessary directions without any further remark, and parted with his
+patient at his own door.
+
+Left by himself, Midwinter paused, and looked up at the heavens in
+silence. The night had cleared, and the stars were out--the stars which
+he had first learned to know from his gypsy master on the hillside. For
+the first time his mind went back regretfully to his boyish days. “Oh,
+for the old life!” he thought, longingly. “I never knew till now how
+happy the old life was!”
+
+He roused himself, and went on toward the open country. His face
+darkened as he left the streets behind him and advanced into the
+solitude and obscurity that lay beyond.
+
+“She has denied her husband to-night,” he said. “She shall know her
+master to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+
+III. THE PURPLE FLASK.
+
+
+The cab was waiting at the gates as Miss Gwilt approached the
+Sanitarium. Mr. Bashwood got out and advanced to meet her. She took his
+arm and led him aside a few steps, out of the cabman’s hearing.
+
+“Think what you like of me,” she said, keeping her thick black veil down
+over her face, “but don’t speak to me to-night. Drive back to your hotel
+as if nothing had happened. Meet the tidal train to-morrow as usual, and
+come to me afterward at the Sanitarium. Go without a word, and I shall
+believe there is one man in the world who really loves me. Stay and ask
+questions, and I shall bid you good-by at once and forever!”
+
+She pointed to the cab. In a minute more it had left the Sanitarium and
+was taking Mr. Bashwood back to his hotel.
+
+She opened the iron gate and walked slowly up to the house door. A
+shudder ran through her as she rang the bell. She laughed bitterly.
+“Shivering again!” she said to herself. “Who would have thought I had so
+much feeling left in me?”
+
+For once in her life the doctor’s face told the truth, when the study
+door opened between ten and eleven at night, and Miss Gwilt entered the
+room.
+
+“Mercy on me!” he exclaimed, with a look of the blankest bewilderment.
+“What does this mean?”
+
+“It means,” she answered, “that I have decided to-night instead of
+deciding to-morrow. You, who know women so well, ought to know that they
+act on impulse. I am here on an impulse. Take me or leave me, just as
+you like.”
+
+“Take you or leave you?” repeated the doctor, recovering his presence of
+mind. “My dear lady, what a dreadful way of putting it! Your room shall
+be got ready instantly! Where is your luggage? Will you let me send
+for it? No? You can do without your luggage to-night? What admirable
+fortitude! You will fetch it yourself to-morrow? What extraordinary
+independence! Do take off your bonnet. Do draw in to the fire! What can
+I offer you?”
+
+“Offer me the strongest sleeping draught you ever made in your life,”
+ she replied. “And leave me alone till the time comes to take it. I
+shall be your patient in earnest!” she added, fiercely, as the doctor
+attempted to remonstrate. “I shall be the maddest of the mad if you
+irritate me to-night!”
+
+The Principal of the Sanitarium became gravely and briefly professional
+in an instant.
+
+“Sit down in that dark corner,” he said. “Not a soul shall disturb you.
+In half an hour you will find your room ready, and your sleeping
+draught on the table.”--“It’s been a harder struggle for her than
+I anticipated,” he thought, as he left the room, and crossed to his
+Dispensary on the opposite side of the hall. “Good heavens, what
+business has she with a conscience, after such a life as hers has been!”
+
+The Dispensary was elaborately fitted up with all the latest
+improvements in medical furniture. But one of the four walls of the room
+was unoccupied by shelves, and here the vacant space was filled by a
+handsome antique cabinet of carved wood, curiously out of harmony, as an
+object, with the unornamented utilitarian aspect of the place generally.
+On either side of the cabinet two speaking-tubes were inserted in the
+wall, communicating with the upper regions of the house, and labeled
+respectively “Resident Dispenser” and “Head Nurse.” Into the second of
+these tubes the doctor spoke, on entering the room. An elderly woman
+appeared, took her orders for preparing Mrs. Armadale’s bed-chamber,
+courtesied, and retired.
+
+Left alone again in the Dispensary, the doctor unlocked the center
+compartment of the cabinet, and disclosed a collection of bottles
+inside, containing the various poisons used in medicine. After taking
+out the laudanum wanted for the sleeping draught, and placing it on
+the dispensary table, he went back to the cabinet, looked into it for a
+little while, shook his head doubtfully, and crossed to the open shelves
+on the opposite side of the room.
+
+Here, after more consideration, he took down one out of the row of large
+chemical bottles before him, filled with a yellow liquid; placing the
+bottle on the table, he returned to the cabinet, and opened a side
+compartment, containing some specimens of Bohemian glass-work. After
+measuring it with his eye, he took from the specimens a handsome purple
+flask, high and narrow in form, and closed by a glass stopper. This
+he filled with the yellow liquid, leaving a small quantity only at the
+bottom of the bottle, and locking up the flask again in the place from
+which he had taken it. The bottle was next restored to its place, after
+having been filled up with water from the cistern in the Dispensary,
+mixed with certain chemical liquids in small quantities, which restored
+it (so far as appearances went) to the condition in which it had
+been when it was first removed from the shelf. Having completed these
+mysterious proceedings, the doctor laughed softly, and went back to his
+speaking-tubes to summon the Resident Dispenser next.
+
+The Resident Dispenser made his appearance shrouded in the necessary
+white apron from his waist to his feet. The doctor solemnly wrote a
+prescription for a composing draught, and handed it to his assistant.
+
+“Wanted immediately, Benjamin,” he said in a soft and melancholy voice.
+“A lady patient--Mrs. Armadale, Room No. 1, second floor. Ah, dear,
+dear!” groaned the doctor, absently; “an anxious case, Benjamin--an
+anxious case.” He opened the brand-new ledger of the establishment,
+and entered the Case at full length, with a brief abstract of the
+prescription. “Have you done with the laudanum? Put it back, and lock
+the cabinet, and give me the key. Is the draught ready? Label it, ‘To
+be taken at bedtime,’ and give it to the nurse, Benjamin--give it to the
+nurse.”
+
+While the doctor’s lips were issuing these directions, the doctor’s
+hands were occupied in opening a drawer under the desk on which the
+ledger was placed. He took out some gayly printed cards of admission “to
+view the Sanitarium, between the hours of two and four P.M.,” and filled
+them up with the date of the next day, “December 10th.” When a dozen
+of the cards had been wrapped up in a dozen lithographed letters of
+invitation, and inclosed in a dozen envelopes, he next consulted a list
+of the families resident in the neighborhood, and directed the envelopes
+from the list. Ringing a bell this time, instead of speaking through
+a tube, he summoned the man-servant, and gave him the letters, to be
+delivered by hand the first thing the next morning. “I think it will
+do,” said the doctor, taking a turn in the Dispensary when the servant
+had gone out--“I think it will do.” While he was still absorbed in his
+own reflections, the nurse re-appeared to announce that the lady’s room
+was ready; and the doctor thereupon formally returned to the study to
+communicate the information to Miss Gwilt.
+
+She had not moved since he left her. She rose from her dark corner when
+he made his announcement, and, without speaking or raising her veil,
+glided out of the room like a ghost.
+
+After a brief interval, the nurse came downstairs again, with a word for
+her master’s private ear.
+
+“The lady has ordered me to call her to-morrow at seven o’clock, sir,”
+ she said. “She means to fetch her luggage herself, and she wants to have
+a cab at the door as soon as she is dressed. What am I to do?”
+
+“Do what the lady tells you,” said the doctor. “She may be safely
+trusted to return to the Sanitarium.”
+
+The breakfast hour at the Sanitarium was half-past eight o’clock. By
+that time Miss Gwilt had settled everything at her lodgings, and had
+returned with her luggage in her own possession. The doctor was quite
+amazed at the promptitude of his patient.
+
+“Why waste so much energy?” he asked, when they met at the
+breakfast-table. “Why be in such a hurry, my dear lady, when you had all
+the morning before you?”
+
+“Mere restlessness!” she said, briefly. “The longer I live, the more
+impatient I get.”
+
+The doctor, who had noticed before she spoke that her face looked
+strangely pale and old that morning, observed, when she answered him,
+that her expression--naturally mobile in no ordinary degree--remained
+quite unaltered by the effort of speaking. There was none of the usual
+animation on her lips, none of the usual temper in her eyes. He had
+never seen her so impenetrably and coldly composed as he saw her now.
+“She has made up her mind at last,” he thought. “I may say to her this
+morning what I couldn’t say to her last night.”
+
+He prefaced the coming remarks by a warning look at her widow’s dress.
+
+“Now you have got your luggage,” he began, gravely, “permit me to
+suggest putting that cap away, and wearing another gown.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Do you remember what you told me a day or two since?” asked the doctor.
+“You said there was a chance of Mr. Armadale’s dying in my Sanitarium?”
+
+“I will say it again, if you like.”
+
+“A more unlikely chance,” pursued the doctor, deaf as ever to all
+awkward interruptions, “it is hardly possible to imagine! But as long
+as it is a chance at all, it is worth considering. Say, then, that he
+dies--dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and makes a Coroner’s Inquest
+necessary in the house. What is our course in that case? Our course is
+to preserve the characters to which we have committed ourselves--you
+as his widow, and I as the witness of your marriage--and, _in_ those
+characters, to court the fullest inquiry. In the entirely improbable
+event of his dying just when we want him to die, my idea--I might even
+say, my resolution--is to admit that we knew of his resurrection from
+the sea; and to acknowledge that we instructed Mr. Bashwood to entrap
+him into this house, by means of a false statement about Miss Milroy.
+When the inevitable questions follow, I propose to assert that he
+exhibited symptoms of mental alienation shortly after your marriage;
+that his delusion consisted in denying that you were his wife, and in
+declaring that he was engaged to be married to Miss Milroy; that you
+were in such terror of him on this account, when you heard he was alive
+and coming back, as to be in a state of nervous agitation that required
+my care; that at your request, and to calm that nervous agitation, I saw
+him professionally, and got him quietly into the house by a humoring of
+his delusion, perfectly justifiable in such a case; and, lastly, that I
+can certify his brain to have been affected by one of those mysterious
+disorders, eminently incurable, eminently fatal, in relation to which
+medical science is still in the dark. Such a course as this (in the
+remotely possible event which we are now supposing) would be, in your
+interests and mine, unquestionably the right course to take; and such a
+dress as _that_ is, just as certainly, under existing circumstances, the
+wrong dress to wear.”
+
+“Shall I take it off at once?” she asked, rising from the
+breakfast-table, without a word of remark on what had just been said to
+her.
+
+“Anytime before two o’clock to-day will do,” said the doctor.
+
+She looked at him with a languid curiosity--nothing more. “Why before
+two?” she inquired.
+
+“Because this is one of my ‘Visitors’ Days,’ And the visitors’ time is
+from two to four.”
+
+“What have I to do with your visitors?”
+
+“Simply this. I think it important that perfectly respectable and
+perfectly disinterested witnesses should see you, in my house, in the
+character of a lady who has come to consult me.”
+
+“Your motive seems rather far-fetched. Is it the only motive you have in
+the matter?”
+
+“My dear, dear lady!” remonstrated the doctor, “have I any concealments
+from _you_? Surely, you ought to know me better than that?”
+
+“Yes,” she said, with a weary contempt. “It’s dull enough of me not to
+understand you by this time. Send word upstairs when I am wanted.” She
+left him, and went back to her room.
+
+
+Two o’clock came; and in a quarter of an hour afterward the visitors
+had arrived. Short as the notice had been, cheerless as the Sanitarium
+looked to spectators from without, the doctor’s invitation had been
+largely accepted, nevertheless, by the female members of the families
+whom he had addressed. In the miserable monotony of the lives led by a
+large section of the middle classes of England, anything is welcome
+to the women which offers them any sort of harmless refuge from the
+established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and
+ends at home. While the imperious needs of a commercial country limited
+the representatives of the male sex, among the doctor’s visitors, to one
+feeble old man and one sleepy little boy, the women, poor souls, to the
+number of no less than sixteen--old and young, married and single--had
+seized the golden opportunity of a plunge into public life. Harmoniously
+united by the two common objects which they all had in view--in the
+first place, to look at each other, and, in the second place, to look at
+the Sanitarium--they streamed in neatly dressed procession through the
+doctor’s dreary iron gates, with a thin varnish over them of assumed
+superiority to all unladylike excitement, most significant and most
+pitiable to see!
+
+The proprietor of the Sanitarium received his visitors in the hall with
+Miss Gwilt on his arm. The hungry eyes of every woman in the company
+overlooked the doctor as if no such person had existed; and, fixing on
+the strange lady, devoured her from head to foot in an instant.
+
+“My First Inmate,” said the doctor, presenting Miss Gwilt. “This lady
+only arrived late last night; and she takes the present opportunity (the
+only one my morning’s engagements have allowed me to give her) of going
+over the Sanitarium.--Allow me, ma’am,” he went on, releasing Miss
+Gwilt, and giving his arm to the eldest lady among the visitors.
+“Shattered nerves--domestic anxiety,” he whispered, confidentially.
+“Sweet woman! sad case!” He sighed softly, and led the old lady across
+the hall.
+
+The flock of visitors followed, Miss Gwilt accompanying them in silence,
+and walking alone--among them, but not of them--the last of all.
+
+“The grounds, ladies and gentlemen,” said the doctor, wheeling round,
+and addressing his audience from the foot of the stairs, “are, as you
+have seen, in a partially unfinished condition. Under any circumstances,
+I should lay little stress on the grounds, having Hampstead Heath so
+near at hand, and carriage exercise and horse exercise being parts of
+my System. In a lesser degree, it is also necessary for me to ask
+your indulgence for the basement floor, on which we now stand. The
+waiting-room and study on that side, and the Dispensary on the other
+(to which I shall presently ask your attention), are completed. But the
+large drawing-room is still in the decorator’s hands. In that room (when
+the walls are dry--not a moment before) my inmates will assemble for
+cheerful society. Nothing will be spared that can improve, elevate, and
+adorn life at these happy little gatherings. Every evening, for example,
+there will be music for those who like it.”
+
+At this point there was a faint stir among the visitors. A mother of a
+family interrupted the doctor. She begged to know whether music “every
+evening” included Sunday evening; and, if so, what music was performed?
+
+“Sacred music, of course, ma’am,” said the doctor. “Handel on Sunday
+evening--and Haydn occasionally, when not too cheerful. But, as I was
+about to say, music is not the only entertainment offered to my nervous
+inmates. Amusing reading is provided for those who prefer books.”
+
+There was another stir among the visitors. Another mother of a family
+wished to know whether amusing reading meant novels.
+
+“Only such novels as I have selected and perused myself, in the first
+instance,” said the doctor. “Nothing painful, ma’am! There may be plenty
+that is painful in real life; but for that very reason, we don’t want it
+in books. The English novelist who enters my house (no foreign novelist
+will be admitted) must understand his art as the healthy-minded English
+reader understands it in our time. He must know that our purer modern
+taste, our higher modern morality, limits him to doing exactly
+two things for us, when he writes us a book. All we want of him
+is--occasionally to make us laugh; and invariably to make us
+comfortable.”
+
+There was a third stir among the visitors--caused plainly this time by
+approval of the sentiments which they had just heard. The doctor, wisely
+cautious of disturbing the favorable impression that he had produced,
+dropped the subject of the drawing-room, and led the way upstairs. As
+before, the company followed; and, as before, Miss Gwilt walked silently
+behind them, last of all. One after another the ladies looked at her
+with the idea of speaking, and saw something in her face, utterly
+unintelligible to them, which checked the well-meant words on their
+lips. The prevalent impression was that the Principal of the Sanitarium
+had been delicately concealing the truth, and that his first inmate was
+mad.
+
+The doctor led the way--with intervals of breathing-time accorded to the
+old lady on his arm--straight to the top of the house. Having collected
+his visitors in the corridor, and having waved his hand indicatively
+at the numbered doors opening out of it on either side, he invited the
+company to look into any or all of the rooms at their own pleasure.
+
+“Numbers one to four, ladies and gentlemen,” said the doctor, “include
+the dormitories of the attendants. Numbers four to eight are rooms
+intended for the accommodation of the poorer class of patients, whom I
+receive on terms which simply cover my expenditure--nothing more. In
+the cases of these poorer persons among my suffering fellow creatures,
+personal piety and the recommendation of two clergymen are indispensable
+to admission. Those are the only conditions I make; but those I insist
+on. Pray observe that the rooms are all ventilated, and the bedsteads
+all iron and kindly notice, as we descend again to the second floor,
+that there is a door shutting off all communication between the second
+story and the top story when necessary. The rooms on the second floor,
+which we have now reached, are (with the exception of my own room)
+entirely devoted to the reception of lady-inmates--experience having
+convinced me that the greater sensitiveness of the female constitution
+necessitates the higher position of the sleeping apartment, with a view
+to the greater purity and freer circulation of the air. Here the ladies
+are established immediately under my care, while my assistant-physician
+(whom I expect to arrive in a week’s time) looks after the gentlemen on
+the floor beneath. Observe, again, as we descend to this lower, or first
+floor, a second door, closing all communication at night between the
+two stories to every one but the assistant physician and myself. And
+now that we have reached the gentleman’s part of the house, and that
+you have observed for yourselves the regulations of the establishment,
+permit me to introduce you to a specimen of my system of treatment next.
+I can exemplify it practically, by introducing you to a room fitted up,
+under my own direction, for the accommodation of the most complicated
+cases of nervous suffering and nervous delusion that can come under my
+care.”
+
+He threw open the door of a room at one extremity of the corridor,
+numbered Four. “Look in, ladies and gentlemen,” he said; “and, if you
+see anything remarkable, pray mention it.”
+
+The room was not very large, but it was well lit by one broad window.
+Comfortably furnished as a bedroom, it was only remarkable among other
+rooms of the same sort in one way. It had no fireplace. The visitors
+having noticed this, were informed that the room was warmed in winter by
+means of hot water; and were then invited back again into the corridor,
+to make the discoveries, under professional direction, which they were
+unable to make for themselves.
+
+“A word, ladies and gentlemen,” said the doctor; “literally a word, on
+nervous derangement first. What is the process of treatment, when,
+let us say, mental anxiety has broken you down, and you apply to your
+doctor? He sees you, hears you, and gives you two prescriptions. One
+is written on paper, and made up at the chemist’s. The other is
+administered by word of mouth, at the propitious moment when the fee is
+ready; and consists in a general recommendation to you to keep your
+mind easy. That excellent advice given, your doctor leaves you to spare
+yourself all earthly annoyances by your own unaided efforts, until he
+calls again. Here my System steps in and helps you! When _I_ see the
+necessity of keeping your mind easy, I take the bull by the horns and do
+it for you. I place you in a sphere of action in which the ten thousand
+trifles which must, and do, irritate nervous people at home are
+expressly considered and provided against. I throw up impregnable moral
+intrenchments between Worry and You. Find a door banging in _this_
+house, if you can! Catch a servant in _this_ house rattling the
+tea-things when he takes away the tray! Discover barking dogs, crowing
+cocks, hammering workmen, screeching children _here_--and I engage to
+close My Sanitarium to-morrow! Are these nuisances laughing matters to
+nervous people? Ask them! Can they escape these nuisances at home? Ask
+them! Will ten minutes’ irritation from a barking dog or a screeching
+child undo every atom of good done to a nervous sufferer by a month’s
+medical treatment? There isn’t a competent doctor in England who will
+venture to deny it! On those plain grounds my System is based. I assert
+the medical treatment of nervous suffering to be entirely subsidiary
+to the moral treatment of it. That moral treatment of it you find here.
+That moral treatment, sedulously pursued throughout the day, follows
+the sufferer into his room at night; and soothes, helps and cures him,
+without his own knowledge--you shall see how.”
+
+The doctor paused to take breath and looked, for the first time since
+the visitors had entered the house, at Miss Gwilt. For the first time,
+on her side, she stepped forward among the audience, and looked at him
+in return. After a momentary obstruction in the shape of a cough, the
+doctor went on.
+
+“Say, ladies and gentlemen,” he proceeded, “that my patient has just
+come in. His mind is one mass of nervous fancies and caprices, which
+his friends (with the best possible intentions) have been ignorantly
+irritating at home. They have been afraid of him, for instance, at
+night. They have forced him to have somebody to sleep in the room with
+him, or they have forbidden him, in case of accidents, to lock his door.
+He comes to me the first night, and says: ‘Mind, I won’t have anybody
+in my room!’--‘Certainly not!’--‘I insist on locking my door.’--‘By all
+means!’ In he goes, and locks his door; and there he is, soothed and
+quieted, predisposed to confidence, predisposed to sleep, by having his
+own way. ‘This is all very well,’ you may say; ‘but suppose something
+happens, suppose he has a fit in the night, what then?’ You shall see!
+Hallo, my young friend!” cried the doctor, suddenly addressing the
+sleepy little boy. “Let’s have a game. You shall be the poor sick
+man, and I’ll be the good doctor. Go into that room and lock the door.
+There’s a brave boy! Have you locked it? Very good! Do you think I can’t
+get at you if I like? I wait till you’re asleep--I press this little
+white button, hidden here in the stencilled pattern of the outer
+wall--the mortise of the lock inside falls back silently against the
+door-post--and I walk into the room whenever I like. The same plan is
+pursued with the window. My capricious patient won’t open it at night,
+when he ought. I humor him again. ‘Shut it, dear sir, by all means!’ As
+soon as he is asleep, I pull the black handle hidden here, in the corner
+of the wall. The window of the room inside noiselessly opens, as you
+see. Say the patient’s caprice is the other way--he persists in opening
+the window when he ought to shut it. Let him! by all means, let him!
+I pull a second handle when he is snug in his bed, and the window
+noiselessly closes in a moment. Nothing to irritate him, ladies and
+gentlemen--absolutely nothing to irritate him! But I haven’t done with
+him yet. Epidemic disease, in spite of all my precautions, may
+enter this Sanitarium, and may render the purifying of the sick-room
+necessary. Or the patient’s case may be complicated by other than
+nervous malady--say, for instance, asthmatic difficulty of breathing. In
+the one case, fumigation is necessary; in the other, additional oxygen
+in the air will give relief. The epidemic nervous patient says, ‘I won’t
+be smoked under my own nose!’ The asthmatic nervous patient gasps with
+terror at the idea of a chemical explosion in his room. I noiselessly
+fumigate one of them; I noiselessly oxygenize the other, by means of a
+simple Apparatus fixed outside in the corner here. It is protected by
+this wooden casing; it is locked with my own key; and it communicates by
+means of a tube with the interior of the room. Look at it!”
+
+With a preliminary glance at Miss Gwilt, the doctor unlocked the lid of
+the wooden casing, and disclosed inside nothing more remarkable than a
+large stone jar, having a glass funnel, and a pipe communicating with
+the wall, inserted in the cork which closed the mouth of it. With
+another look at Miss Gwilt, the doctor locked the lid again, and asked,
+in the blandest manner, whether his System was intelligible now?
+
+“I might introduce you to all sorts of other contrivances of the same
+kind,” he resumed, leading the way downstairs; “but it would be only the
+same thing over and over again. A nervous patient who always has his own
+way is a nervous patient who is never worried; and a nervous patient who
+is never worried is a nervous patient cured. There it is in a nutshell!
+Come and see the Dispensary, ladies; the Dispensary and the kitchen
+next!”
+
+Once more, Miss Gwilt dropped behind the visitors, and waited
+alone--looking steadfastly at the Room which the doctor had opened, and
+at the apparatus which the doctor had unlocked. Again, without a word
+passing between them, she had understood him. She knew, as well as if he
+had confessed it, that he was craftily putting the necessary temptation
+in her way, before witnesses who could speak to the superficially
+innocent acts which they had seen, if anything serious happened. The
+apparatus, originally constructed to serve the purpose of the doctor’s
+medical crotchets, was evidently to be put to some other use, of which
+the doctor himself had probably never dreamed till now. And the chances
+were that, before the day was over, that other use would be privately
+revealed to her at the right moment, in the presence of the right
+witness. “Armadale will die this time,” she said to herself, as she went
+slowly down the stairs. “The doctor will kill him, by my hands.”
+
+The visitors were in the Dispensary when she joined them. All the ladies
+were admiring the beauty of the antique cabinet; and, as a necessary
+consequence, all the ladies were desirous of seeing what was inside. The
+doctor--after a preliminary look at Miss Gwilt--good-humoredly shook his
+head. “There is nothing to interest you inside,” he said. “Nothing but
+rows of little shabby bottles containing the poisons used in medicine
+which I keep under lock and key. Come to the kitchen, ladies, and honor
+me with your advice on domestic matters below stairs.” He glanced again
+at Miss Gwilt as the company crossed the hall, with a look which said
+plainly, “Wait here.”
+
+In another quarter of an hour the doctor had expounded his views on
+cookery and diet, and the visitors (duly furnished with prospectuses)
+were taking leave of him at the door. “Quite an intellectual treat!”
+ they said to each other, as they streamed out again in neatly dressed
+procession through the iron gates. “And what a very superior man!”
+
+The doctor turned back to the Dispensary, humming absently to himself,
+and failing entirely to observe the corner of the hall in which Miss
+Gwilt stood retired. After an instant’s hesitation, she followed him.
+The assistant was in the room when she entered it--summoned by his
+employer the moment before.
+
+“Doctor,” she said, coldly and mechanically, as if she was repeating a
+lesson, “I am as curious as the other ladies about that pretty cabinet
+of yours. Now they are all gone, won’t you show the inside of it to
+_me_?”
+
+The doctor laughed in his pleasantest manner.
+
+“The old story,” he said. “Blue-Beard’s locked chamber, and female
+curiosity! (Don’t go, Benjamin, don’t go.) My dear lady, what interest
+can you possibly have in looking at a medical bottle, simply because it
+happens to be a bottle of poison?”
+
+She repeated her lesson for the second time.
+
+“I have the interest of looking at it,” she said, “and of thinking, if
+it got into some people’s hands, of the terrible things it might do.”
+
+The doctor glanced at his assistant with a compassionate smile.
+
+“Curious, Benjamin,” he said, “the romantic view taken of these drugs of
+ours by the unscientific mind! My dear lady,” he added, turning to Miss
+Gwilt, “if _that_ is the interest you attach to looking at poisons, you
+needn’t ask me to unlock my cabinet--you need only look about you round
+the shelves of this room. There are all sorts of medical liquids
+and substances in those bottles--most innocent, most useful in
+themselves--which, in combination with other substances and other
+liquids, become poisons as terrible and as deadly as any that I have in
+my cabinet under lock and key.”
+
+She looked at him for a moment, and creased to the opposite side of the
+room.
+
+“Show me one,” she said,
+
+Still smiling as good-humoredly as ever, the doctor humored his nervous
+patient. He pointed to the bottle from which he had privately removed
+the yellow liquid on the previous day, and which he had filled up again
+with a carefully-colored imitation in the shape of a mixture of his own.
+
+“Do you see that bottle,” he said--“that plump, round,
+comfortable-looking bottle? Never mind the name of what is beside it;
+let us stick to the bottle, and distinguish it, if you like, by giving
+it a name of our own. Suppose we call it ‘our Stout Friend’? Very good.
+Our Stout Friend, by himself, is a most harmless and useful medicine. He
+is freely dispensed every day to tens of thousands of patients all over
+the civilized world. He has made no romantic appearances in courts of
+law; he has excited no breathless interest in novels; he has played
+no terrifying part on the stage. There he is, an innocent, inoffensive
+creature, who troubles nobody with the responsibility of locking him up!
+_But_ bring him into contact with something else--introduce him to the
+acquaintance of a certain common mineral substance, of a universally
+accessible kind, broken into fragments; provide yourself with (say) six
+doses of our Stout Friend, and pour those doses consecutively on the
+fragments I have mentioned, at intervals of not less than five minutes.
+Quantities of little bubbles will rise at every pouring; collect the gas
+in those bubbles, and convey it into a closed chamber--and let Samson
+himself be in that closed chamber; our stout Friend will kill him in
+half an hour! Will kill him slowly, without his seeing anything, without
+his smelling anything, without his feeling anything but sleepiness.
+Will kill him, and tell the whole College of Surgeons nothing, if they
+examine him after death, but that he died of apoplexy or congestion
+of the lungs! What do you think of _that_, my dear lady, in the way of
+mystery and romance? Is our harmless Stout Friend as interesting _now_
+as if he rejoiced in the terrible popular fame of the Arsenic and
+the Strychnine which I keep locked up there? Don’t suppose I am
+exaggerating! Don’t suppose I’m inventing a story to put you off with,
+as the children say. Ask Benjamin there,” said the doctor, appealing
+to his assistant, with his eyes fixed on Miss Gwilt. “Ask Benjamin,” he
+repeated, with the steadiest emphasis on the next words, “if six doses
+from that bottle, at intervals of five minutes each, would not, under
+the conditions I have stated, produce the results I have described?”
+
+The Resident Dispenser, modestly admiring Miss Gwilt at a distance,
+started and colored up. He was plainly gratified by the little attention
+which had included him in the conversation.
+
+“The doctor is quite right, ma’am,” he said, addressing Miss Gwilt, with
+his best bow; “the production of the gas, extended over half an hour,
+would be quite gradual enough. And,” added the Dispenser, silently
+appealing to his employer to let him exhibit a little chemical knowledge
+on his own account, “the volume of the gas would be sufficient at the
+end of the time--if I am not mistaken, sir?--to be fatal to any person
+entering the room in less than five minutes.”
+
+“Unquestionably, Benjamin,” rejoined the doctor. “But I think we have
+had enough of chemistry for the present,” he added, turning to Miss
+Gwilt. “With every desire, my dear lady, to gratify every passing wish
+you may form, I venture to propose trying a more cheerful subject.
+Suppose we leave the Dispensary, before it suggests any more inquiries
+to that active mind of yours? No? You want to see an experiment? You
+want to see how the little bubbles are made? Well, well! there is no
+harm in that. We will let Mrs. Armadale see the bubbles,” continued the
+doctor, in the tone of a parent humoring a spoiled child. “Try if you
+can find a few of those fragments that we want, Benjamin. I dare say the
+workmen (slovenly fellows!) have left something of the sort about the
+house or the grounds.”
+
+The Resident Dispenser left the room.
+
+As soon as his back was turned, the doctor began opening and shutting
+drawers in various parts of the Dispensary, with the air of a man who
+wants something in a hurry, and does not know where to find it. “Bless
+my soul!” he exclaimed, suddenly stopping at the drawer from which he
+had taken his cards of invitation on the previous day, “what’s this? A
+key? A duplicate key, as I’m alive, of my fumigating apparatus upstairs!
+Oh dear, dear, how careless I get,” said the doctor, turning round
+briskly to Miss Gwilt. “I hadn’t the least idea that I possessed this
+second key. I should never have missed it. I do assure you I should
+never have missed it if anybody had taken it out of the drawer!” He
+bustled away to the other end of the room--without closing the drawer,
+and without taking away the duplicate key.
+
+In silence, Miss Gwilt listened till he had done. In silence, she glided
+to the drawer. In silence, she took the key and hid it in her apron
+pocket.
+
+The Dispenser came back, with the fragments required of him, collected
+in a basin. “Thank you, Benjamin,” said the doctor. “Kindly cover them
+with water, while I get the bottle down.”
+
+As accidents sometimes happen in the most perfectly regulated families,
+so clumsiness sometimes possesses itself of the most perfectly
+disciplined hands. In the process of its transfer from the shelf to the
+doctor, the bottle slipped and fell smashed to pieces on the floor.
+
+“Oh, my fingers and thumbs!” cried the doctor, with an air of comic
+vexation, “what in the world do you mean by playing me such a wicked
+trick as that? Well, well, well--it can’t be helped. Have we got any
+more of it, Benjamin?”
+
+“Not a drop, sir.”
+
+“Not a drop!” echoed the doctor. “My dear madam, what excuses can I
+offer you? My clumsiness has made our little experiment impossible for
+to-day. Remind me to order some more to-morrow, Benjamin, and don’t
+think of troubling yourself to put that mess to rights. I’ll send the
+man here to mop it all up. Our Stout Friend is harmless enough now, my
+dear lady--in combination with a boarded floor and a coming mop! I’m
+so sorry; I really am so sorry to have disappointed you.” With those
+soothing words, he offered his arm, and led Miss Gwilt out of the
+Dispensary.
+
+“Have you done with me for the present?” she asked, when they were in
+the hall.
+
+“Oh, dear, dear, what a way of putting it!” exclaimed the doctor.
+“Dinner at six,” he added, with his politest emphasis, as she turned
+from him in disdainful silence, and slowly mounted the stairs to her own
+room.
+
+
+A clock of the noiseless sort--incapable of offending irritable
+nerves--was fixed in the wall, above the first-floor landing, at the
+Sanitarium. At the moment when the hands pointed to a quarter before
+six, the silence of the lonely upper regions was softly broken by the
+rustling of Miss Gwilt’s dress. She advanced along the corridor of the
+first floor--paused at the covered apparatus fixed outside the room
+numbered Four--listened for a moment--and then unlocked the cover with
+the duplicate key.
+
+The open lid cast a shadow over the inside of the casing. All she saw
+at first was what she had seen already--the jar, and the pipe and glass
+funnel inserted in the cork. She removed the funnel; and, looking about
+her, observed on the window-sill close by a wax-tipped wand used for
+lighting the gas. She took the wand, and, introducing it through the
+aperture occupied by the funnel, moved it to and fro in the jar. The
+faint splash of some liquid, and the grating noise of certain hard
+substances which she was stirring about, were the two sounds that caught
+her ear. She drew out the wand, and cautiously touched the wet left on
+it with the tip of her tongue. Caution was quite needless in this case.
+The liquid was--water.
+
+In putting the funnel back in its place, she noticed something faintly
+shining in the obscurely lit vacant space at the side of the jar. She
+drew it out, and produced a Purple Flask. The liquid with which it was
+filled showed dark through the transparent coloring of the glass; and
+fastened at regular intervals down one side of the Flask were six thin
+strips of paper, which divided the contents into six equal parts.
+
+There was no doubt now that the apparatus had been secretly prepared for
+her--the apparatus of which she alone (besides the doctor) possessed the
+key.
+
+She put back the Flask, and locked the cover of the casing. For a moment
+she stood looking at it, with the key in her hand. On a sudden, her lost
+color came back. On a sudden, its natural animation returned, for the
+first time that day, to her face. She turned and hurried breathlessly
+upstairs to her room on the second floor. With eager hands she snatched
+her cloak out of the wardrobe, and took her bonnet from the box. “I’m
+not in prison!” she burst out, impetuously. “I’ve got the use of my
+limbs! I can go--no matter where, as long as I am out of this house!”
+
+With her cloak on her shoulders, with her bonnet in her hand, she
+crossed the room to the door. A moment more--and she would have been out
+in the passage. In that moment the remembrance flashed back on her of
+the husband whom she had denied to his face. She stopped instantly, and
+threw the cloak and bonnet from her on the bed. “No!” she said; “the
+gulf is dug between us--the worst is done!”
+
+There was a knock at the door. The doctor’s voice outside politely
+reminded her that it was six o’clock.
+
+She opened the door, and stopped him on his way downstairs.
+
+“What time is the train due to-night?” she asked, in a whisper.
+
+“At ten,” answered the doctor, in a voice which all the world might
+hear, and welcome.
+
+“What room is Mr. Armadale to have when he comes?”
+
+“What room would you like him to have?”
+
+“Number Four.”
+
+The doctor kept up appearances to the very last.
+
+“Number Four let it be,” he said, graciously. “Provided, of course, that
+Number Four is unoccupied at the time.”
+
+* * * * *
+
+The evening wore on, and the night came.
+
+At a few minutes before ten, Mr. Bashwood was again at his post, once
+more on the watch for the coming of the tidal train.
+
+The inspector on duty, who knew him by sight, and who had personally
+ascertained that his regular attendance at the terminus implied no
+designs on the purses and portmanteaus of the passengers, noticed two
+new circumstances in connection with Mr. Bashwood that night. In the
+first place, instead of exhibiting his customary cheerfulness, he looked
+anxious and depressed. In the second place, while he was watching for
+the train, he was to all appearance being watched in his turn, by a
+slim, dark, undersized man, who had left his luggage (marked with the
+name of Midwinter) at the custom-house department the evening before,
+and who had returned to have it examined about half an hour since.
+
+What had brought Midwinter to the terminus? And why was he, too, waiting
+for the tidal train?
+
+After straying as far as Hendon during his lonely walk of the previous
+night, he had taken refuge at the village inn, and had fallen asleep
+(from sheer exhaustion) toward those later hours of the morning which
+were the hours that his wife’s foresight had turned to account. When
+he returned to the lodging, the landlady could only inform him that
+her tenant had settled everything with her, and had left (for what
+destination neither she nor her servant could tell) more than two hours
+since.
+
+Having given some little time to inquiries, the result of which
+convinced him that the clew was lost so far, Midwinter had quitted
+the house, and had pursued his way mechanically to the busier and more
+central parts of the metropolis. With the light now thrown on his wife’s
+character, to call at the address she had given him as the address at
+which her mother lived would be plainly useless. He went on through the
+streets, resolute to discover her, and trying vainly to see the means
+to his end, till the sense of fatigue forced itself on him once more.
+Stopping to rest and recruit his strength at the first hotel he came
+to, a chance dispute between the waiter and a stranger about a lost
+portmanteau reminded him of his own luggage, left at the terminus, and
+instantly took his mind back to the circumstances under which he and
+Mr. Bashwood had met. In a moment more, the idea that he had been vainly
+seeking on his way through the streets flashed on him. In a moment more,
+he had determined to try the chance of finding the steward again on
+the watch for the person whose arrival he had evidently expected by the
+previous evening’s train.
+
+Ignorant of the report of Allan’s death at sea; uninformed, at the
+terrible interview with his wife, of the purpose which her assumption of
+a widow’s dress really had in view, Midwinter’s first vague suspicions
+of her fidelity had now inevitably developed into the conviction
+that she was false. He could place but one interpretation on her open
+disavowal of him, and on her taking the name under which he had secretly
+married her. Her conduct forced the conclusion on him that she was
+engaged in some infamous intrigue; and that she had basely secured
+herself beforehand in the position of all others in which she knew it
+would be most odious and most repellent to him to claim his authority
+over her. With that conviction he was now watching Mr. Bashwood, firmly
+persuaded that his wife’s hiding-place was known to the vile servant of
+his wife’s vices; and darkly suspecting, as the time wore on, that the
+unknown man who had wronged him, and the unknown traveler for whose
+arrival the steward was waiting, were one and the same.
+
+The train was late that night, and the carriages were more than usually
+crowded when they arrived at last. Midwinter became involved in the
+confusion on the platform, and in the effort to extricate himself he
+lost sight of Mr. Bashwood for the first time.
+
+A lapse of some few minutes had passed before he again discovered the
+steward talking eagerly to a man in a loose shaggy coat, whose back was
+turned toward him. Forgetful of all the cautions and restraints which
+he had imposed on himself before the train appeared, Midwinter instantly
+advanced on them. Mr. Bashwood saw his threatening face as he came on,
+and fell back in silence. The man in the loose coat turned to look where
+the steward was looking, and disclosed to Midwinter, in the full light
+of the station-lamp, Allan’s face!
+
+For the moment they both stood speechless, hand in hand, looking at each
+other. Allan was the first to recover himself.
+
+“Thank God for this!” he said, fervently. “I don’t ask how you came
+here: it’s enough for me that you have come. Miserable news has met me
+already, Midwinter. Nobody but you can comfort me, and help me to bear
+it.” His voice faltered over those last words, and he said no more.
+
+The tone in which he had spoken roused Midwinter to meet the
+circumstances as they were, by appealing to the old grateful interest
+in his friend which had once been the foremost interest of his life. He
+mastered his personal misery for the first time since it had fallen on
+him, and gently taking Allan aside, asked what had happened.
+
+The answer--after informing him of his friend’s reported death at
+sea--announced (on Mr. Bashwood’s authority) that the news had reached
+Miss Milroy, and that the deplorable result of the shock thus inflicted
+had obliged the major to place his daughter in the neighborhood of
+London, under medical care.
+
+Before saying a word on his side, Midwinter looked distrustfully behind
+him. Mr. Bashwood had followed them. Mr. Bashwood was watching to see
+what they did next.
+
+“Was he waiting your arrival here to tell you this about Miss Milroy?”
+ asked Midwinter, looking again from the steward to Allan.
+
+“Yes,” said Allan. “He has been kindly waiting here, night after night,
+to meet me, and break the news to me.”
+
+Midwinter paused once more. The attempt to reconcile the conclusion he
+had drawn from his wife’s conduct with the discovery that Allan was the
+man for whose arrival Mr. Bashwood had been waiting was hopeless. The
+one present chance of discovering a truer solution of the mystery was
+to press the steward on the one available point in which he had laid
+himself open to attack. He had positively denied on the previous evening
+that he knew anything of Allan’s movements, or that he had any interest
+in Allan’s return to England. Having detected Mr. Bashwood in one lie
+told to himself. Midwinter instantly suspected him of telling another
+to Allan. He seized the opportunity of sifting the statement about Miss
+Milroy on the spot.
+
+“How have you become acquainted with this sad news?” he inquired,
+turning suddenly on Mr. Bashwood.
+
+“Through the major, of course,” said Allan, before the steward could
+answer.
+
+“Who is the doctor who has the care of Miss Milroy?” persisted
+Midwinter, still addressing Mr. Bashwood.
+
+For the second time the steward made no reply. For the second time,
+Allan answered for him.
+
+“He is a man with a foreign name,” said Allan. “He keeps a Sanitarium
+near Hampstead. What did you say the place was called, Mr. Bashwood?”
+
+“Fairweather Vale, sir,” said the steward, answering his employer, as a
+matter of necessity, but answering very unwillingly.
+
+The address of the Sanitarium instantly reminded Midwinter that he had
+traced his wife to Fairweather Vale Villas the previous night. He
+began to see light through the darkness, dimly, for the first time. The
+instinct which comes with emergency, before the slower process of reason
+can assert itself, brought him at a leap to the conclusion that Mr.
+Bashwood--who had been certainly acting under his wife’s influence the
+previous day--might be acting again under his wife’s influence now.
+He persisted in sifting the steward’s statement, with the conviction
+growing firmer and firmer in his mind that the statement was a lie, and
+that his wife was concerned in it.
+
+“Is the major in Norfolk?” he asked, “or is he near his daughter in
+London?”
+
+“In Norfolk,” said Mr. Bashwood. Having answered Allan’s look of
+inquiry, instead of Midwinter’s spoken question, in those words, he
+hesitated, looked Midwinter in the face for the first time, and added,
+suddenly: “I object, if you please, to be cross-examined, sir. I know
+what I have told Mr. Armadale, and I know no more.”
+
+The words, and the voice in which they were spoken, were alike at
+variance with Mr. Bashwood’s usual language and Mr. Bashwood’s usual
+tone. There was a sullen depression in his face--there was a furtive
+distrust and dislike in his eyes when they looked at Midwinter, which
+Midwinter himself now noticed for the first time. Before he could answer
+the steward’s extraordinary outbreak, Allan interfered.
+
+“Don’t think me impatient,” he said; “but it’s getting late; it’s a long
+way to Hampstead. I’m afraid the Sanitarium will be shut up.”
+
+Midwinter started. “You are not going to the Sanitarium to-night!” he
+exclaimed.
+
+Allan took his friend’s hand and wrung it hard. “If you were as fond of
+her as I am,” he whispered, “you would take no rest, you could get no
+sleep, till you had seen the doctor, and heard the best and the worst he
+had to tell you. Poor dear little soul! who knows, if she could only see
+me alive and well--” The tears came into his eyes, and he turned away
+his head in silence.
+
+Midwinter looked at the steward. “Stand back,” he said. “I want to speak
+to Mr. Armadale.” There was something in his eye which it was not safe
+to trifle with. Mr. Bashwood drew back out of hearing, but not out of
+sight. Midwinter laid his hand fondly on his friend’s shoulder.
+
+“Allan,” he said, “I have reasons--” He stopped. Could the reasons be
+given before he had fairly realized them himself; at that time, too,
+and under those circumstances? Impossible! “I have reasons,” he resumed,
+“for advising you not to believe too readily what Mr. Bashwood may say.
+Don’t tell him this, but take the warning.”
+
+Allan looked at his friend in astonishment. “It was you who always liked
+Mr. Bashwood!” he exclaimed. “It was you who trusted him, when he first
+came to the great house!”
+
+“Perhaps I was wrong, Allan, and perhaps you were right. Will you only
+wait till we can telegraph to Major Milroy and get his answer? Will you
+only wait over the night?”
+
+“I shall go mad if I wait over the night,” said Allan. “You have made
+me more anxious than I was before. If I am not to speak about it to
+Bashwood, I must and will go to the Sanitarium, and find out whether she
+is or is not there, from the doctor himself.”
+
+Midwinter saw that it was useless. In Allan’s interests there was only
+one other course left to take. “Will you let me go with you?” he asked.
+
+Allan’s face brightened for the first time. “You dear, good fellow!” he
+exclaimed. “It was the very thing I was going to beg of you myself.”
+
+Midwinter beckoned to the steward. “Mr. Armadale is going to the
+Sanitarium,” he said, “and I mean to accompany him. Get a cab and come
+with us.”
+
+He waited, to see whether Mr. Bashwood would comply. Having been
+strictly ordered, when Allan did arrive, not to lose sight of him,
+and having, in his own interests, Midwinter’s unexpected appearance
+to explain to Miss Gwilt, the steward had no choice but to comply.
+In sullen submission he did as he had been told. The keys of Allan’s
+baggage was given to the foreign traveling servant whom he had brought
+with him, and the man was instructed to wait his master’s orders at
+the terminus hotel. In a minute more the cab was on its way out of the
+station--with Midwinter and Allan inside, and Mr. Bashwood by the driver
+on the box.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Between eleven and twelve o’clock that night, Miss Gwilt, standing alone
+at the window which lit the corridor of the Sanitarium on the second
+floor, heard the roll of wheels coming toward her. The sound, gathering
+rapidly in volume through the silence of the lonely neighborhood,
+stopped at the iron gates. In another minute she saw the cab draw up
+beneath her, at the house door.
+
+The earlier night had been cloudy, but the sky was clearing now and the
+moon was out. She opened the window to see and hear more clearly. By the
+light of the moon she saw Allan get out of the cab, and turn round to
+speak to some other person inside. The answering voice told her, before
+he appeared in his turn, that Armadale’s companion was her husband.
+
+The same petrifying influence that had fallen on her at the interview
+with him of the previous day fell on her now. She stood by the window,
+white and still, and haggard and old--as she had stood when she first
+faced him in her widow’s weeds.
+
+Mr. Bashwood, stealing up alone to the second floor to make his report,
+knew, the instant he set eyes on her, that the report was needless.
+“It’s not my fault,” was all he said, as she slowly turned her head and
+looked at him. “They met together, and there was no parting them.”
+
+She drew a long breath, and motioned him to be silent. “Wait a little,”
+ she said; “I know all about it.”
+
+Turning from him at those words, she slowly paced the corridor to its
+furthest end; turned, and slowly came back to him with frowning brow
+and drooping head--with all the grace and beauty gone from her, but the
+inbred grace and beauty in the movement of her limbs.
+
+“Do you wish to speak to me?” she asked; her mind far away from him, and
+her eyes looking at him vacantly as she put the question.
+
+He roused his courage as he had never roused it in her presence yet.
+
+“Don’t drive me to despair!” he cried, with a startling abruptness.
+“Don’t look at me in that way, now I have found it out!”
+
+“What have you found out?” she asked, with a momentary surprise on her
+face, which faded from it again before he could gather breath enough to
+go on.
+
+“Mr. Armadale is not the man who took you away from me,” he answered.
+“Mr. Midwinter is the man. I found it out in your face yesterday. I
+see it in your face now. Why did you sign your name ‘Armadale’ when you
+wrote to me? Why do you call yourself ‘Mrs. Armadale’ still?”
+
+He spoke those bold words at long intervals, with an effort to resist
+her influence over him, pitiable and terrible to see.
+
+She looked at him for the first time with softened eyes. “I wish I had
+pitied you when we first met,” she said, gently, “as I pity you now.”
+
+He struggled desperately to go on and say the words to her which he had
+strung himself to the pitch of saying on the drive from the terminus.
+They were words which hinted darkly at his knowledge of her past life;
+words which warned her--do what else she might, commit what crimes she
+pleased--to think twice before she deceived and deserted him again. In
+those terms he had vowed to himself to address her. He had the phrases
+picked and chosen; he had the sentences ranged and ordered in his mind;
+nothing was wanting but to make the one crowning effort of speaking
+them--and, even now, after all he had said and all he had dared, the
+effort was more than he could compass! In helpless gratitude, even for
+so little as her pity, he stood looking at her, and wept the silent,
+womanish tears that fall from old men’s eyes.
+
+She took his hand and spoke to him--with marked forbearance, but without
+the slightest sign of emotion on her side.
+
+“You have waited already at my request,” she said. “Wait till to-morrow,
+and you will know all. If you trust nothing else that I have told you,
+you may trust what I tell you now. _It will end to-night_.”
+
+As she said the words, the doctor’s step was heard on the stairs. Mr.
+Bashwood drew back from her, with his heart beating fast in unutterable
+expectation. “It will end to-night!” he repeated to himself, under his
+breath, as he moved away toward the far end of the corridor.
+
+“Don’t let me disturb you, sir,” said the doctor, cheerfully, as they
+met. “I have nothing to say to Mrs. Armadale but what you or anybody may
+hear.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood went on, without answering, to the far end of the corridor,
+still repeating to himself: “It will end to-night!” The doctor, passing
+him in the opposite direction, joined Miss Gwilt.
+
+“You have heard, no doubt,” he began, in his blandest manner and his
+roundest tones, “that Mr. Armadale has arrived. Permit me to add, my
+dear lady, that there is not the least reason for any nervous agitation
+on your part. He has been carefully humored, and he is as quiet and
+manageable as his best friends could wish. I have informed him that it
+is impossible to allow him an interview with the young lady to-night;
+but that he may count on seeing her (with the proper precautions) at the
+earliest propitious hour, after she is awake to-morrow morning. As there
+is no hotel near, and as the propitious hour may occur at a
+moment’s notice, it was clearly incumbent on me, under the peculiar
+circumstances, to offer him the hospitality of the Sanitarium. He has
+accepted it with the utmost gratitude; and has thanked me in a most
+gentlemanly and touching manner for the pains I have taken to set his
+mind at ease. Perfectly gratifying, perfectly satisfactory, so far! But
+there has been a little hitch--now happily got over--which I think it
+right to mention to you before we all retire for the night.”
+
+Having paved the way in those words (and in Mr. Bashwood’s hearing) for
+the statement which he had previously announced his intention of making,
+in the event of Allan’s dying in the Sanitarium, the doctor was about
+to proceed, when his attention was attracted by a sound below like the
+trying of a door.
+
+He instantly descended the stairs, and unlocked the door of
+communication between the first and second floors, which he had locked
+behind him on his way up. But the person who had tried the door--if such
+a person there really had been--was too quick for him. He looked along
+the corridor, and over the staircase into the hall, and, discovering
+nothing, returned to Miss Gwilt, after securing the door of
+communication behind him once more.
+
+“Pardon me,” he resumed, “I thought I heard something downstairs. With
+regard to the little hitch that I adverted to just now, permit me to
+inform you that Mr. Armadale has brought a friend here with him, who
+bears the strange name of Midwinter. Do you know the gentleman at all?”
+ asked the doctor, with a suspicious anxiety in his eyes, which strangely
+belied the elaborate indifference of his tone.
+
+“I know him to be an old friend of Mr. Armadale’s,” she said. “Does
+he--?” Her voice failed her, and her eyes fell before the doctor’s
+steady scrutiny. She mastered the momentary weakness, and finished her
+question. “Does he, too, stay here to-night?”
+
+“Mr. Midwinter is a person of coarse manners and suspicious temper,”
+ rejoined the doctor, steadily watching her. “He was rude enough
+to insist on staying here as soon as Mr. Armadale had accepted my
+invitation.”
+
+He paused to note the effect of those words on her. Left utterly in the
+dark by the caution with which she had avoided mentioning her husband’s
+assumed name to him at their first interview, the doctor’s distrust of
+her was necessarily of the vaguest kind. He had heard her voice
+fail her--he had seen her color change. He suspected her of a mental
+reservation on the subject of Midwinter--and of nothing more.
+
+“Did you permit him to have his way?” she asked. “In your place, I
+should have shown him the door.”
+
+The impenetrable composure of her tone warned the doctor that her
+self-command was not to be further shaken that night. He resumed the
+character of Mrs. Armadale’s medical referee on the subject of Mr.
+Armadale’s mental health.
+
+“If I had only had my own feelings to consult,” he said, “I don’t
+disguise from you that I should (as you say) have shown Mr. Midwinter
+the door. But on appealing to Mr. Armadale, I found he was himself
+anxious not to be parted from his friend. Under those circumstances,
+but one alternative was left--the alternative of humoring him again.
+The responsibility of thwarting him--to say nothing,” added the doctor,
+drifting for a moment toward the truth, “of my natural apprehension,
+with such a temper as his friend’s, of a scandal and disturbance in the
+house--was not to be thought of for a moment. Mr. Midwinter accordingly
+remains here for the night; and occupies (I ought to say, insists on
+occupying) the next room to Mr. Armadale. Advise me, my dear madam, in
+this emergency,” concluded the doctor, with his loudest emphasis. “What
+rooms shall we put them in, on the first floor?”
+
+“Put Mr. Armadale in Number Four.”
+
+“And his friend next to him, in Number Three?” said the doctor. “Well!
+well! well! perhaps they _are_ the most comfortable rooms. I’ll give
+my orders immediately. Don’t hurry away, Mr. Bashwood,” he called out,
+cheerfully, as he reached the top of the staircase. “I have left the
+assistant physician’s key on the window-sill yonder, and Mrs. Armadale
+can let you out at the staircase door whenever she pleases. Don’t sit up
+late, Mrs. Armadale! Yours is a nervous system that requires plenty of
+sleep. ‘Tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep.’ Grand line! God
+bless you--good-night!”
+
+Mr. Bashwood came back from the far end of the corridor--still
+pondering, in unutterable expectation, on what was to come with the
+night.
+
+“Am I to go now?” he asked.
+
+“No. You are to stay. I said you should know all if you waited till the
+morning. Wait here.”
+
+He hesitated, and looked about him. “The doctor,” he faltered. “I
+thought the doctor said--”
+
+“The doctor will interfere with nothing that I do in this house
+to-night. I tell you to stay. There are empty rooms on the floor above
+this. Take one of them.”
+
+Mr. Bashwood felt the trembling fit coming on him again as he looked at
+her. “May I ask--?” he began.
+
+“Ask nothing. I want you.”
+
+“Will you please to tell me--?”
+
+“I will tell you nothing till the night is over and the morning has
+come.”
+
+His curiosity conquered his fear. He persisted.
+
+“Is it something dreadful?” he whispered. “Too dreadful to tell me?”
+
+She stamped her foot with a sudden outbreak of impatience. “Go!” she
+said, snatching the key of the staircase door from the window-sill.
+“You do quite right to distrust me--you do quite right to follow me no
+further in the dark. Go before the house is shut up. I can do without
+you.” She led the way to the stairs, with the key in one hand, and the
+candle in the other.
+
+Mr. Bashwood followed her in silence. No one, knowing what he knew of
+her earlier life, could have failed to perceive that she was a woman
+driven to the last extremity, and standing consciously on the brink of a
+Crime. In the first terror of the discovery, he broke free from the hold
+she had on him: he thought and acted like a man who had a will of his
+own again.
+
+She put the key in the door, and turned to him before she opened it,
+with the light of the candle on her face. “Forget me, and forgive me,”
+ she said. “We meet no more.”
+
+She opened the door, and, standing inside it, after he had passed her,
+gave him her hand. He had resisted her look, he had resisted her words,
+but the magnetic fascination of her touch conquered him at the final
+moment. “I can’t leave you!” he said, holding helplessly by the hand she
+had given him. “What must I do?”
+
+“Come and see,” she answered, without allowing him an instant to
+reflect.
+
+Closing her hand firmly on his, she led him along the first floor
+corridor to the room numbered Four. “Notice that room,” she whispered.
+After a look over the stairs to see that they were alone, she retraced
+her steps with him to the opposite extremity of the corridor. Here,
+facing the window which lit the place at the other end, was one little
+room, with a narrow grating in the higher part of the door, intended for
+the sleeping apartment of the doctor’s deputy. From the position of this
+room, the grating commanded a view of the bed-chambers down each side of
+the corridor, and so enabled the deputy-physician to inform himself of
+any irregular proceedings on the part of the patients under his care,
+with little or no chance of being detected in watching them. Miss Gwilt
+opened the door and led the way into the empty room.
+
+“Wait here,” she said, “while I go back upstairs; and lock yourself in,
+if you like. You will be in the dark, but the gas will be burning in the
+corridor. Keep at the grating, and make sure that Mr. Armadale goes into
+the room I have just pointed out to you, and that he doesn’t leave it
+afterward. If you lose sight of the room for a single moment before I
+come back, you will repent it to the end of your life. If you do as I
+tell you, you shall see me to-morrow, and claim your own reward. Quick
+with your answer! Is it Yes or No?”
+
+He could make no reply in words. He raised her hand to his lips, and
+kissed it rapturously. She left him in the room. From his place at the
+grating he saw her glide down the corridor to the staircase door. She
+passed through it, and locked it. Then there was silence.
+
+The next sound was the sound of the women-servants’ voices. Two of them
+came up to put the sheets on the beds in Number Three and Number Four.
+The women were in high good-humor, laughing and talking to each other
+through the open doors of the rooms. The master’s customers were coming
+in at last, they said, with a vengeance; the house would soon begin to
+look cheerful, if things went on like this.
+
+After a little, the beds were got ready and the women returned to the
+kitchen floor, on which the sleeping-rooms of the domestic servants were
+all situated. Then there was silence again.
+
+The next sound was the sound of the doctor’s voice. He appeared at the
+end of the corridor, showing Allan and Midwinter the way to their rooms.
+They all went together into Number Four. After a little, the doctor
+came out first. He waited till Midwinter joined him, and pointed with
+a formal bow to the door of Number Three. Midwinter entered the room
+without speaking, and shut himself in. The doctor, left alone, withdrew
+to the staircase door and unlocked it, then waited in the corridor,
+whistling to himself softly, under his breath.
+
+Voices pitched cautiously low became audible in a minute more in the
+hall. The Resident Dispenser and the Head Nurse appeared, on their way
+to the dormitories of the attendants at the top of the house. The man
+bowed silently, and passed the doctor; the woman courtesied silently,
+and followed the man. The doctor acknowledged their salutations by a
+courteous wave of his hand; and, once more left alone, paused a moment,
+still whistling softly to himself, then walked to the door of Number
+Four, and opened the case of the fumigating apparatus fixed near it
+in the corner of the wall. As he lifted the lid and looked in, his
+whistling ceased. He took a long purple bottle out, examined it by the
+gas-light, put it back, and closed the case. This done, he advanced on
+tiptoe to the open staircase door, passed through it, and secured it on
+the inner side as usual.
+
+Mr. Bashwood had seen him at the apparatus; Mr. Bashwood had noticed the
+manner of his withdrawal through the staircase door. Again the sense of
+an unutterable expectation throbbed at his heart. A terror that was slow
+and cold and deadly crept into his hands, and guided them in the dark
+to the key that had been left for him in the inner side of the door. He
+turned it in vague distrust of what might happen next, and waited.
+
+The slow minutes passed, and nothing happened. The silence was horrible;
+the solitude of the lonely corridor was a solitude of invisible
+treacheries. He began to count to keep his mind employed--to keep his
+own growing dread away from him. The numbers, as he whispered them,
+followed each other slowly up to a hundred, and still nothing happened.
+He had begun the second hundred; he had got on to twenty--when, without
+a sound to betray that he had been moving in his room, Midwinter
+suddenly appeared in the corridor.
+
+He stood for a moment and listened; he went to the stairs and looked
+over into the hall beneath. Then, for the second time that night, he
+tried the staircase door, and for the second time found it fast. After
+a moment’s reflection, he tried the doors of the bedrooms on his right
+hand next, looked into one after the other, and saw that they were
+empty, then came to the door of the end room in which the steward was
+concealed. Here, again, the lock resisted him. He listened, and looked
+up at the grating. No sound was to be heard, no light was to be seen
+inside. “Shall I break the door in,” he said to himself, “and make sure?
+No; it would be giving the doctor an excuse for turning me out of the
+house.” He moved away, and looked into the two empty rooms in the
+row occupied by Allan and himself, then walked to the window at the
+staircase end of the corridor. Here the case of the fumigating apparatus
+attracted his attention. After trying vainly to open it, his suspicion
+seemed to be aroused. He searched back along the corridor, and observed
+that no object of a similar kind appeared outside any of the other
+bed-chambers. Again at the window, he looked again at the apparatus, and
+turned away from it with a gesture which plainly indicated that he had
+tried, and failed, to guess what it might be.
+
+Baffled at all points, he still showed no sign of returning to his
+bed-chamber. He stood at the window, with his eyes fixed on the door of
+Allan’s room, thinking. If Mr. Bashwood, furtively watching him through
+the grating, could have seen him at that moment in the mind as well as
+in the body, Mr. Bashwood’s heart might have throbbed even faster than
+it was throbbing now, in expectation of the next event which Midwinter’s
+decision of the next minute was to bring forth.
+
+On what was his mind occupied as he stood alone, at the dead of night,
+in the strange house?
+
+His mind was occupied in drawing its disconnected impressions together,
+little by little, to one point. Convinced from the first that some
+hidden danger threatened Allan in the Sanitarium, his distrust--vaguely
+associated, thus far, with the place itself; with his wife (whom he
+firmly believed to be now under the same roof with him); with
+the doctor, who was as plainly in her confidence as Mr. Bashwood
+himself--now narrowed its range, and centered itself obstinately in
+Allan’s room. Resigning all further effort to connect his suspicion of a
+conspiracy against his friend with the outrage which had the day before
+been offered to himself--an effort which would have led him, if he could
+have maintained it, to a discovery of the fraud really contemplated
+by his wife--his mind, clouded and confused by disturbing influences,
+instinctively took refuge in its impressions of facts as they had
+shown themselves since he had entered the house. Everything that he had
+noticed below stairs suggested that there was some secret purpose to be
+answered by getting Allan to sleep in the Sanitarium. Everything that
+he had noticed above stairs associated the lurking-place in which the
+danger lay hid with Allan’s room. To reach this conclusion, and to
+decide on baffling the conspiracy, whatever it might be, by taking
+Allan’s place, was with Midwinter the work of an instant. Confronted by
+actual peril, the great nature of the man intuitively freed itself from
+the weaknesses that had beset it in happier and safer times. Not even
+the shadow of the old superstition rested on his mind now--no fatalist
+suspicion of himself disturbed the steady resolution that was in
+him. The one last doubt that troubled him, as he stood at the window
+thinking, was the doubt whether he could persuade Allan to change rooms
+with him, without involving himself in an explanation which might lead
+Allan to suspect the truth.
+
+In the minute that elapsed, while he waited with his eyes on the room,
+the doubt was resolved--he found the trivial, yet sufficient, excuse of
+which he was in search. Mr. Bashwood saw him rouse himself and go to the
+door. Mr. Bashwood heard him knock softly, and whisper, “Allan, are you
+in bed?”
+
+“No,” answered the voice inside; “come in.”
+
+He appeared to be on the point of entering the room, when he checked
+himself as if he had suddenly remembered something. “Wait a minute,”
+ he said, through the door, and, turning away, went straight to the end
+room. “If there is anybody watching us in there,” he said aloud, “let
+him watch us through this!” He took out his handkerchief, and stuffed it
+into the wires of the grating, so as completely to close the aperture.
+Having thus forced the spy inside (if there was one) either to betray
+himself by moving the handkerchief, or to remain blinded to all view of
+what might happen next, Midwinter presented himself in Allan’s room.
+
+“You know what poor nerves I have,” he said, “and what a wretched
+sleeper I am at the best of times. I can’t sleep to-night. The window in
+my room rattles every time the wind blows. I wish it was as fast as your
+window here.”
+
+“My dear fellow!” cried Allan, “I don’t mind a rattling window. Let’s
+change rooms. Nonsense! Why should you make excuses to _me_? Don’t I
+know how easily trifles upset those excitable nerves of yours? Now the
+doctor has quieted my mind about my poor little Neelie, I begin to
+feel the journey; and I’ll answer for sleeping anywhere till to-morrow
+comes.” He took up his traveling-bag. “We must be quick about it,” he
+added, pointing to his candle. “They haven’t left me much candle to go
+to bed by.”
+
+“Be very quiet, Allan,” said Midwinter, opening the door for him. “We
+mustn’t disturb the house at this time of night.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” returned Allan, in a whisper. “Good-night; I hope you’ll
+sleep as well as I shall.”
+
+Midwinter saw him into Number Three, and noticed that his own candle
+(which he had left there) was as short as Allan’s. “Good-night,” he
+said, and came out again into the corridor.
+
+He went straight to the grating, and looked and listened once more. The
+handkerchief remained exactly as he had left it, and still there was
+no sound to be heard within. He returned slowly along the corridor, and
+thought of the precautions he had taken, for the last time. Was there
+no other way than the way he was trying now? There was none. Any openly
+avowed posture of defense--while the nature of the danger, and the
+quarter from which it might come, were alike unknown--would be useless
+in itself, and worse than useless in the consequences which it might
+produce by putting the people of the house on their guard. Without a
+fact that could justify to other minds his distrust of what might happen
+with the night, incapable of shaking Allan’s ready faith in the fair
+outside which the doctor had presented to him, the one safeguard in
+his friend’s interests that Midwinter could set up was the safeguard of
+changing the rooms--the one policy he could follow, come what might of
+it, was the policy of waiting for events. “I can trust to one thing,”
+ he said to himself, as he looked for the last time up and down the
+corridor--“I can trust myself to keep awake.”
+
+After a glance at the clock on the wall opposite, he went into Number
+Four. The sound of the closing door was heard, the sound of the turning
+lock followed it. Then the dead silence fell over the house once more.
+
+Little by little, the steward’s horror of the stillness and the darkness
+overcame his dread of moving the handkerchief. He cautiously drew aside
+one corner of it, waited, looked, and took courage at last to draw the
+whole handkerchief through the wires of the grating. After first hiding
+it in his pocket, he thought of the consequences if it was found on him,
+and threw it down in a corner of the room. He trembled when he had cast
+it from him, as he looked at his watch and placed himself again at the
+grating to wait for Miss Gwilt.
+
+It was a quarter to one. The moon had come round from the side to the
+front of the Sanitarium. From time to time her light gleamed on the
+window of the corridor when the gaps in the flying clouds let it
+through. The wind had risen, and sung its mournful song faintly, as it
+swept at intervals over the desert ground in front of the house.
+
+The minute hand of the clock traveled on halfway round the circle of the
+dial. As it touched the quarter-past one, Miss Gwilt stepped noiselessly
+into the corridor. “Let yourself out,” she whispered through the
+grating, “and follow me.” She returned to the stairs by which she
+had just descended, pushed the door to softly after Mr. Bashwood had
+followed her and led the way up to the landing of the second floor.
+There she put the question to him which she had not ventured to put
+below stairs.
+
+“Was Mr. Armadale shown into Number Four?” she asked.
+
+He bowed his head without speaking.
+
+“Answer me in words. Has Mr. Armadale left the room since?”
+
+He answered, “No.”
+
+“Have you never lost sight of Number Four since I left you?”
+
+He answered, “_Never_!”
+
+Something strange in his manner, something unfamiliar in his voice, as
+he made that last reply, attracted her attention. She took her candle
+from a table near, on which she had left it, and threw its light on
+him. His eyes were staring, his teeth chattered. There was everything to
+betray him to her as a terrified man; there was nothing to tell her that
+the terror was caused by his consciousness of deceiving her, for the
+first time in his life, to her face. If she had threatened him less
+openly when she placed him on the watch; if she had spoken less
+unreservedly of the interview which was to reward him in the morning,
+he might have owned the truth. As it was, his strongest fears and his
+dearest hopes were alike interested in telling her the fatal lie that
+he had now told--the fatal lie which he reiterated when she put her
+question for the second time.
+
+She looked at him, deceived by the last man on earth whom she would have
+suspected of deception--the man whom she had deceived herself.
+
+“You seem to be overexcited,” she said quietly. “The night has been too
+much for you. Go upstairs, and rest. You will find the door of one of
+the rooms left open. That is the room you are to occupy. Good-night.”
+
+She put the candle (which she had left burning for him) on the table,
+and gave him her hand. He held her back by it desperately as she turned
+to leave him. His horror of what might happen when she was left by
+herself forced the words to his lips which he would have feared to speak
+to her at any other time.
+
+“Don’t,” he pleaded, in a whisper; “oh, don’t, don’t, don’t go
+downstairs to-night!”
+
+She released her hand, and signed to him to take the candle. “You shall
+see me to-morrow,” she said. “Not a word more now!”
+
+Her stronger will conquered him at that last moment, as it had conquered
+him throughout. He took the candle and waited, following her eagerly
+with his eyes as she descended the stairs. The cold of the December
+night seemed to have found its way to her through the warmth of the
+house. She had put on a long, heavy black shawl, and had fastened it
+close over her breast. The plaited coronet in which she wore her hair
+seemed to have weighed too heavily on her head. She had untwisted it,
+and thrown it back over her shoulders. The old man looked at her flowing
+hair, as it lay red over the black shawl--at her supple, long-fingered
+hand, as it slid down the banisters--at the smooth, seductive grace of
+every movement that took her further and further away from him. “The
+night will go quickly,” he said to himself, as she passed from his view;
+“I shall dream of her till the morning comes!”
+
+
+She secured the staircase door, after she had passed through
+it--listened, and satisfied herself that nothing was stirring--then went
+on slowly along the corridor to the window. Leaning on the window-sill,
+she looked out at the night. The clouds were over the moon at that
+moment; nothing was to be seen through the darkness but the scattered
+gas-lights in the suburb. Turning from the window, she looked at the
+clock. It was twenty minutes past one.
+
+For the last time, the resolution that had come to her in the earlier
+night, with the knowledge that her husband was in the house, forced
+itself uppermost in her mind. For the last time, the voice within her
+said, “Think if there is no other way!”
+
+She pondered over it till the minute-hand of the clock pointed to the
+half-hour. “No!” she said, still thinking of her husband. “The one
+chance left is to go through with it to the end. He will leave the thing
+undone which he has come here to do; he will leave the words unspoken
+which he has come here to say--when he knows that the act may make me
+a public scandal, and that the words may send me to the scaffold!” Her
+color rose, and she smiled with a terrible irony as she looked for the
+first time at the door of the Room. “I shall be your widow,” she said,
+“in half an hour!”
+
+She opened the case of the apparatus and took the Purple Flask in her
+hand. After marking the time by a glance at the clock, she dropped
+into the glass funnel the first of the six separate Pourings that were
+measured for her by the paper slips.
+
+When she had put the Flask back, she listened at the mouth of the
+funnel. Not a sound reached her ear: the deadly process did its work in
+the silence of death itself. When she rose and looked up the moon was
+shining in at the window, and the moaning wind was quiet.
+
+Oh, the time! the time! If it could only have been begun and ended with
+the first Pouring!
+
+She went downstairs into the hall; she walked to and fro, and listened
+at the open door that led to the kitchen stairs. She came up again; she
+went down again. The first of the intervals of five minutes was endless.
+The time stood still. The suspense was maddening.
+
+The interval passed. As she took the Flask for the second time, and
+dropped in the second Pouring, the clouds floated over the moon, and the
+night view through the window slowly darkened.
+
+The restlessness that had driven her up and down the stairs, and
+backward and forward in the hall, left her as suddenly as it had come.
+She waited through the second interval, leaning on the window-sill, and
+staring, without conscious thought of any kind, into the black night.
+The howling of a belated dog was borne toward her on the wind, at
+intervals, from some distant part of the suburb. She found herself
+following the faint sound as it died away into silence with a dull
+attention, and listening for its coming again with an expectation
+that was duller still. Her arms lay like lead on the window-sill; her
+forehead rested against the glass without feeling the cold. It was not
+till the moon struggled out again that she was startled into sudden
+self-remembrance. She turned quickly, and looked at the clock; seven
+minutes had passed since the second Pouring.
+
+As she snatched up the Flask, and fed the funnel for the third time,
+the full consciousness of her position came back to her. The fever-heat
+throbbed again in her blood, and flushed fiercely in her cheeks. Swift,
+smooth, and noiseless, she paced from end to end of the corridor, with
+her arms folded in her shawl and her eye moment after moment on the
+clock.
+
+Three out of the next five minutes passed, and again the suspense began
+to madden her. The space in the corridor grew too confined for the
+illimitable restlessness that possessed her limbs. She went down into
+the hall again, and circled round and round it like a wild creature in
+a cage. At the third turn, she felt something moving softly against her
+dress. The house-cat had come up through the open kitchen door--a large,
+tawny, companionable cat that purred in high good temper, and followed
+her for company. She took the animal up in her arms--it rubbed its
+sleek head luxuriously against her chin as she bent her face over it.
+“Armadale hates cats,” she whispered in the creature’s ear. “Come up and
+see Armadale killed!” The next moment her own frightful fancy horrified
+her. She dropped the cat with a shudder; she drove it below again with
+threatening hands. For a moment after, she stood still, then in headlong
+haste suddenly mounted the stairs. Her husband had forced his way back
+again into her thoughts; her husband threatened her with a danger which
+had never entered her mind till now. What if he were not asleep? What if
+he came out upon her, and found her with the Purple Flask in her hand?
+
+She stole to the door of Number Three and listened. The slow, regular
+breathing of a sleeping man was just audible. After waiting a moment to
+let the feeling of relief quiet her, she took a step toward Number
+Four, and checked herself. It was needless to listen at _that_ door.
+The doctor had told her that Sleep came first, as certainly as Death
+afterward, in the poisoned air. She looked aside at the clock. The time
+had come for the fourth Pouring.
+
+Her hand began to tremble violently as she fed the funnel for the fourth
+time. The fear of her husband was back again in her heart. What if
+some noise disturbed him before the sixth Pouring? What if he woke on
+a sudden (as she had often seen him wake) without any noise at all? She
+looked up and down the corridor. The end room, in which Mr. Bashwood had
+been concealed, offered itself to her as a place of refuge. “I might go
+in there!” she thought. “Has he left the key?” She opened the door to
+look, and saw the handkerchief thrown down on the floor. Was it Mr.
+Bashwood’s handkerchief, left there by accident? She examined it at the
+corners. In the second corner she found her husband’s name!
+
+Her first impulse hurried her to the staircase door, to rouse the
+steward and insist on an explanation. The next moment she remembered the
+Purple Flask, and the danger of leaving the corridor. She turned, and
+looked at the door of Number Three. Her husband, on the evidence of the
+handkerchief had unquestionably been out of his room--and Mr. Bashwood
+had not told her. Was he in his room now? In the violence of her
+agitation, as the question passed through her mind, she forgot the
+discovery which she had herself made not a minute before. Again she
+listened at the door; again she heard the slow, regular breathing of the
+sleeping man. The first time the evidence of her ears had been enough to
+quiet her; _this_ time, in the tenfold aggravation of her suspicion and
+her alarm, she was determined to have the evidence of her eyes as well.
+“All the doors open softly in this house,” she said to herself; “there’s
+no fear of my waking him.” Noiselessly, by an inch at a time, she
+opened the unlocked door, and looked in the moment the aperture was wide
+enough. In the little light she had let into the room, the sleeper’s
+head was just visible on the pillow. Was it quite as dark against the
+white pillow as her husband’s head looked when he was in bed? Was the
+breathing as light as her husband’s breathing when he was asleep?
+
+She opened the door more widely, and looked in by the clearer light.
+
+There lay the man whose life she had attempted for the third time,
+peacefully sleeping in the room that had been given to her husband, and
+in the air that could harm nobody!
+
+The inevitable conclusion overwhelmed her on the instant. With a frantic
+upward action of her hands she staggered back into the passage. The door
+of Allan’s room fell to, but not noisily enough to wake him. She turned
+as she heard it close. For one moment she stood staring at it like a
+woman stupefied. The next, her instinct rushed into action, before her
+reason recovered itself. In two steps she was at the door of Number
+Four.
+
+The door was locked.
+
+She felt over the wall with both hands, wildly and clumsily, for the
+button which she had seen the doctor press when he was showing the room
+to the visitors. Twice she missed it. The third time her eyes helped her
+hands; she found the button and pressed on it. The mortise of the lock
+inside fell back, and the door yielded to her.
+
+Without an instant’s hesitation she entered the room. Though the door
+was open--though so short a time had elapsed since the fourth Pouring
+that but little more than half the contemplated volume of gas had been
+produced as yet--the poisoned air seized her, like the grasp of a hand
+at her throat, like the twisting of a wire round her head. She found him
+on the floor at the foot of the bed: his head and one arm were toward
+the door, as if he had risen under the first feeling of drowsiness,
+and had sunk in the effort to leave the room. With the desperate
+concentration of strength of which women are capable in emergencies, she
+lifted him and dragged him out into the corridor. Her brain reeled as
+she laid him down, and crawled back on her knees to the room to shut out
+the poisoned air from pursuing them into the passage. After closing the
+door, she waited, without daring to look at him the while, for strength
+enough to rise and get to the window over the stairs. When the window
+was opened, when the keen air of the early winter morning blew steadily
+in, she ventured back to him and raised his head, and looked for the
+first time closely at his face.
+
+Was it death that spread the livid pallor over his forehead and his
+cheeks, and the dull leaden hue on his eyelids and his lips?
+
+She loosened his cravat and opened his waistcoat, and bared his throat
+and breast to the air. With her hand on his heart, with her bosom
+supporting his head, so that he fronted the window, she waited the
+event. A time passed: a time short enough to be reckoned by minutes
+on the clock; and yet long enough to take her memory back over all her
+married life with him--long enough to mature the resolution that now
+rose in her mind as the one result that could come of the retrospect. As
+her eyes rested on him, a strange composure settled slowly on her face.
+She bore the look of a woman who was equally resigned to welcome the
+chance of his recovery, or to accept the certainty of his death.
+
+Not a cry or a tear had escaped her yet. Not a cry or a tear escaped her
+when the interval had passed, and she felt the first faint fluttering of
+his heart, and heard the first faint catching of the breath of his lips.
+She silently bent over him and kissed his forehead. When she looked up
+again, the hard despair had melted from her face. There was something
+softly radiant in her eyes, which lit her whole countenance as with an
+inner light, and made her womanly and lovely once more.
+
+She laid him down, and, taking off her shawl, made a pillow of it to
+support his head. “It might have been hard, love,” she said, as she felt
+the faint pulsation strengthening at his heart. “You have made it easy
+now.”
+
+She rose, and, turning from him, noticed the Purple Flask in the place
+where she had left it since the fourth Pouring. “Ah,” she thought,
+quietly, “I had forgotten my best friend--I had forgotten that there is
+more to pour in yet.”
+
+With a steady hand, with a calm, attentive face, she fed the funnel
+for the fifth time. “Five minutes more,” she said, when she had put the
+Flask back, after a look at the clock.
+
+She fell into thought--thought that only deepened the grave and gentle
+composure of her face. “Shall I write him a farewell word?” she asked
+herself. “Shall I tell him the truth before I leave him forever?”
+
+Her little gold pencil-case hung with the other toys at her watch-chain.
+After looking about her for a moment, she knelt over her husband and put
+her hand into the breast-pocket of his coat.
+
+His pocket-book was there. Some papers fell from it as she unfastened
+the clasp. One of them was the letter which had come to him from Mr.
+Brock’s death-bed. She turned over the two sheets of note-paper on which
+the rector had written the words that had now come true, and found the
+last page of the last sheet a blank. On that page she wrote her farewell
+words, kneeling at her husband’s side.
+
+
+“I am worse than the worst you can think of me. You have saved Armadale
+by changing rooms with him to-night; and you have saved him from me. You
+can guess now whose widow I should have claimed to be, if you had not
+preserved his life; and you will know what a wretch you married when
+you married the woman who writes these lines. Still, I had some innocent
+moments, and then I loved you dearly. Forget me, my darling, in the love
+of a better woman than I am. I might, perhaps, have been that better
+woman myself, if I had not lived a miserable life before you met with
+me. It matters little now. The one atonement I can make for all the
+wrong I have done you is the atonement of my death. It is not hard
+for me to die, now I know you will live. Even my wickedness has one
+merit--it has not prospered. I have never been a happy woman.”
+
+
+She folded the letter again, and put it into his hand, to attract his
+attention in that way when he came to himself. As she gently closed his
+fingers on the paper and looked up, the last minute of the last interval
+faced her, recorded on the clock.
+
+She bent over him, and gave him her farewell kiss.
+
+“Live, my angel, live!” she murmured, tenderly, with her lips just
+touching his. “All your life is before you--a happy life, and an honored
+life, if you are freed from _me_!”
+
+With a last, lingering tenderness, she parted the hair back from his
+forehead. “It is no merit to have loved you,” she said. “You are one of
+the men whom women all like.” She sighed and left him. It was her last
+weakness. She bent her head affirmatively to the clock, as if it had
+been a living creature speaking to her; and fed the funnel for the last
+time, to the last drop left in the Flask.
+
+The waning moon shone in faintly at the window. With her hand on the
+door of the room, she turned and looked at the light that was slowly
+fading out of the murky sky.
+
+“Oh, God, forgive me!” she said. “Oh, Christ, bear witness that I have
+suffered!”
+
+One moment more she lingered on the threshold; lingered for her last
+look in this world--and turned that look on _him_.
+
+“Good-by!” she said, softly.
+
+The door of the room opened, and closed on her. There was an interval of
+silence.
+
+Then a sound came dull and sudden, like the sound of a fall.
+
+Then there was silence again.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The hands of the clock, following their steady course, reckoned the
+minutes of the morning as one by one they lapsed away. It was the
+tenth minute since the door of the room had opened and closed, before
+Midwinter stirred on his pillow, and, struggling to raise himself, felt
+the letter in his hand.
+
+At the same moment a key was turned in the staircase door. And the
+doctor, looking expectantly toward the fatal room, saw the Purple Flask
+on the window-sill, and the prostrate man trying to raise himself from
+the floor.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+
+
+I. NEWS FROM NORFOLK.
+
+_From Mr. Pedgift, Senior (Thorpe Ambrose), to Mr. Pedgift, Junior
+(Paris)_.
+
+“High Street, December 20th.
+
+“MY DEAR AUGUSTUS--Your letter reached me yesterday. You seem to be
+making the most of your youth (as you call it) with a vengeance. Well!
+enjoy your holiday. I made the most of my youth when I was your age;
+and, wonderful to relate, I haven’t forgotten it yet!
+
+“You ask me for a good budget of news, and especially for more
+information about that mysterious business at the Sanitarium.
+
+“Curiosity, my dear boy, is a quality which (in our profession
+especially) sometimes leads to great results. I doubt, however, if you
+will find it leading to much on this occasion. All I know of the mystery
+of the Sanitarium, I know from Mr. Armadale: and he is entirely in the
+dark on more than one point of importance. I have already told you how
+they were entrapped into the house, and how they passed the night
+there. To this I can now add that something did certainly happen to Mr.
+Midwinter, which deprived him of consciousness; and that the doctor, who
+appears to have been mixed up in the matter, carried things with a high
+hand, and insisted on taking his own course in his own Sanitarium. There
+is not the least doubt that the miserable woman (however she might have
+come by her death) was found dead--that a coroner’s inquest inquired
+into the circumstances--that the evidence showed her to have entered
+the house as a patient--and that the medical investigation ended in
+discovering that she had died of apoplexy. My idea is that Mr. Midwinter
+had a motive of his own for not coming forward with the evidence that he
+might have given. I have also reason to suspect that Mr. Armadale,
+out of regard for him, followed his lead, and that the verdict at the
+inquest (attaching no blame to anybody) proceeded, like many other
+verdicts of the same kind, from an entirely superficial investigation of
+the circumstances.
+
+“The key to the whole mystery is to be found, I firmly believe, in that
+wretched woman’s attempt to personate the character of Mr. Armadale’s
+widow when the news of his death appeared in the papers. But what first
+set her on this, and by what inconceivable process of deception she
+can have induced Mr. Midwinter to marry her (as the certificate proves)
+under Mr. Armadale’s name, is more than Mr. Armadale himself knows. The
+point was not touched at the inquest, for the simple reason that the
+inquest only concerned itself with the circumstances attending her
+death. Mr. Armadale, at his friend’s request, saw Miss Blanchard, and
+induced her to silence old Darch on the subject of the claim that had
+been made relating to the widow’s income. As the claim had never been
+admitted, even our stiff-necked brother practitioner consented for once
+to do as he was asked. The doctor’s statement that his patient was the
+widow of a gentleman named Armadale was accordingly left unchallenged,
+and so the matter has been hushed up. She is buried in the great
+cemetery, near the place where she died. Nobody but Mr. Midwinter and
+Mr. Armadale (who insisted on going with him) followed her to the grave;
+and nothing has been inscribed on the tombstone but the initial letter
+of her Christian name and the date of her death. So, after all the harm
+she has done, she rests at last; and so the two men whom she has injured
+have forgiven her.
+
+“Is there more to say on this subject before we leave it? On referring
+to your letter, I find you have raised one other point, which may be
+worth a moment’s notice.
+
+“You ask if there is reason to suppose that the doctor comes out of
+the matter with hands which are really as clean as they look? My dear
+Augustus, I believe the doctor to have been at the bottom of more of
+this mischief than we shall ever find out; and to have profited by
+the self-imposed silence of Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Armadale, as rogues
+perpetually profit by the misfortunes and necessities of honest men.
+It is an ascertained fact that he connived at the false statement about
+Miss Milroy, which entrapped the two gentlemen into his house; and that
+one circumstance (after my Old Bailey experience) is enough for _me_.
+As to evidence against him, there is not a jot; and as to Retribution
+overtaking him, I can only say I heartily hope Retribution may prove, in
+the long run, to be the more cunning customer of the two. There is not
+much prospect of it at present. The doctor’s friends and admirers are,
+I understand, about to present him with a Testimonial, ‘expressive of
+their sympathy under the sad occurrence which has thrown a cloud over
+the opening of his Sanitarium, and of their undiminished confidence in
+his integrity and ability as a medical man.’ We live, Augustus, in an
+age eminently favorable to the growth of all roguery which is careful
+enough to keep up appearances. In this enlightened nineteenth century, I
+look upon the doctor as one of our rising men.
+
+“To turn now to pleasanter subjects than Sanitariums, I may tell you
+that Miss Neelie is as good as well again, and is, in my humble opinion,
+prettier than ever. She is staying in London under the care of a female
+relative; and Mr. Armadale satisfies her of the fact of his existence
+(in case she should forget it) regularly every day. They are to be
+married in the spring, unless Mrs. Milroy’s death causes the ceremony
+to be postponed. The medical men are of opinion that the poor lady is
+sinking at last. It may be a question of weeks or a question of months,
+they can say no more. She is greatly altered--quiet and gentle, and
+anxiously affectionate with her husband and her child. But in her case
+this happy change is, it seems, a sign of approaching dissolution, from
+the medical point of view. There is a difficulty in making the poor
+old, major understand this. He only sees that she has gone back to the
+likeness of her better self when he first married her; and he sits for
+hours by her bedside now, and tells her about his wonderful clock.
+
+“Mr. Midwinter, of whom you will next expect me to say something, is
+improving rapidly. After causing some anxiety at first to the medical
+men (who declared that he was suffering from a serious nervous shock,
+produced by circumstances about which their patient’s obstinate silence
+kept them quite in the dark), he has rallied, as only men of his
+sensitive temperament (to quote the doctors again) can rally. He and Mr.
+Armadale are together in a quiet lodging. I saw him last week when I was
+in London. His face showed signs of wear and tear, very sad to see in so
+young a man. But he spoke of himself and his future with a courage
+and hopefulness which men of twice his years (if he has suffered as I
+suspect him to have suffered) might have envied. If I know anything
+of humanity, this is no common man; and we shall hear of him yet in no
+common way.
+
+“You will wonder how I came to be in London. I went up, with a return
+ticket (from Saturday to Monday), about that matter in dispute at our
+agent’s. We had a tough fight; but, curiously enough, a point occurred
+to me just as I got up to go; and I went back to my chair, and settled
+the question in no time. Of course I stayed at Our Hotel in Covent
+Garden. William, the waiter, asked after you with the affection of a
+father; and Matilda, the chamber-maid, said you almost persuaded her
+that last time to have the hollow tooth taken out of her lower jaw. I
+had the agent’s second son (the young chap you nicknamed Mustapha, when
+he made that dreadful mess about the Turkish Securities) to dine with me
+on Sunday. A little incident happened in the evening which may be worth
+recording, as it connected itself with a certain old lady who was not
+‘at home’ when you and Mr. Armadale blundered on that house in Pimlico
+in the bygone time.
+
+“Mustapha was like all the rest of you young men of the present
+day--he got restless after dinner. ‘Let’s go to a public amusement, Mr.
+Pedgift,’ says he. ‘Public amusement? Why, it’s Sunday evening!’ says I.
+‘All right, sir,’ says Mustapha. ‘They stop acting on the stage, I grant
+you, on Sunday evening--but they don’t stop acting in the pulpit. Come
+and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.’ As he wouldn’t have
+any more wine, there was nothing else for it but to go.
+
+“We went to a street at the West End, and found it blocked up with
+carriages. If it hadn’t been Sunday night, I should have thought we were
+going to the opera. ‘What did I tell you?’ says Mustapha, taking me up
+to an open door with a gas star outside and a bill of the performance.
+I had just time to notice that I was going to one of a series of ‘Sunday
+Evening Discourses on the Pomps and Vanities of the World, by A Sinner
+Who Has Served Them,’ when Mustapha jogged my elbow, and whispered,
+‘Half a crown is the fashionable tip.’ I found myself between two demure
+and silent gentlemen, with plates in their hands, uncommonly well filled
+already with the fashionable tip. Mustapha patronized one plate, and I
+the other. We passed through two doors into a long room, crammed with
+people. And there, on a platform at the further end, holding forth to
+the audience, was--not a man, as I had expected--but a Woman, and that
+woman, MOTHER OLDERSHAW! You never listened to anything more eloquent
+in your life. As long as I heard her she was never once at a loss for a
+word anywhere. I shall think less of oratory as a human accomplishment,
+for the rest of my days, after that Sunday evening. As for the matter
+of the sermon, I may describe it as a narrative of Mrs. Oldershaw’s
+experience among dilapidated women, profusely illustrated in the pious
+and penitential style. You will ask what sort of audience it was.
+Principally Women, Augustus--and, as I hope to be saved, all the old
+harridans of the world of fashion whom Mother Oldershaw had enameled in
+her time, sitting boldly in the front places, with their cheeks ruddled
+with paint, in a state of devout enjoyment wonderful to see! I left
+Mustapha to hear the end of it. And I thought to myself, as I went out,
+of what Shakespeare says somewhere, ‘Lord, what fools we mortals be!’
+
+“Have I anything more to tell you before I leave off? Only one thing
+that I can remember.
+
+“That wretched old Bashwood has confirmed the fears I told you I had
+about him when he was brought back here from London. There is no kind of
+doubt that he has really lost all the little reason he ever had. He is
+perfectly harmless, and perfectly happy. And he would do very well if we
+could only prevent him from going out in his last new suit of clothes,
+smirking and smiling and inviting everybody to his approaching marriage
+with the handsomest woman in England. It ends of course in the boys
+pelting him, and in his coming here crying to me, covered with mud. The
+moment his clothes are cleaned again he falls back into his favorite
+delusion, and struts about before the church gates, in the character of
+a bridegroom, waiting for Miss Gwilt. We must get the poor wretch taken
+care of somewhere for the rest of the little time he has to live. Who
+would ever have thought of a man at his age falling in love? And who
+would ever have believed that the mischief that woman’s beauty has done
+could have reached as far in the downward direction as our superannuated
+old clerk?
+
+“Good-by, for the present, my dear boy. If you see a particularly
+handsome snuff-box in Paris, remember--though your father scorns
+Testimonials--he doesn’t object to receive a present from his son.
+
+“Yours affectionately,
+
+“A. PEDGIFT, Sen.
+
+“POSTSCRIPT.--I think it likely that the account you mention in the
+French papers, of a fatal quarrel among some foreign sailors in one of
+the Lipari Islands, and of the death of their captain, among others, may
+really have been a quarrel among the scoundrels who robbed Mr. Armadale
+and scuttled his yacht. _Those_ fellows, luckily for society, can’t
+always keep up appearances; and, in their case, Rogues and Retribution
+do occasionally come into collision with each other.”
+
+
+
+
+II. MIDWINTER.
+
+The spring had advanced to the end of April. It was the eve of Allan’s
+wedding-day. Midwinter and he had sat talking together at the great
+house till far into the night--till so far that it had struck twelve
+long since, and the wedding day was already some hours old.
+
+For the most part the conversation had turned on the bridegroom’s plans
+and projects. It was not till the two friends rose to go to rest that
+Allan insisted on making Midwinter speak of himself.
+
+“We have had enough, and more than enough, of _my_ future,” he began,
+in his bluntly straightforward way. “Let’s say something now, Midwinter,
+about yours. You have promised me, I know, that, if you take to
+literature, it shan’t part us, and that, if you go on a sea-voyage, you
+will remember, when you come back, that my house is your home. But this
+is the last chance we have of being together in our old way; and I own
+I should like to know--” His voice faltered, and his eyes moistened a
+little. He left the sentence unfinished.
+
+Midwinter took his hand and helped him, as he had often helped him to
+the words that he wanted in the by-gone time.
+
+“You would like to know, Allan,” he said, “that I shall not bring an
+aching heart with me to your wedding day? If you will let me go back for
+a moment to the past, I think I can satisfy you.”
+
+They took their chairs again. Allan saw that Midwinter was moved. “Why
+distress yourself?” he asked, kindly--“why go back to the past?”
+
+“For two reasons, Allan. I ought to have thanked you long since for
+the silence you have observed, for my sake, on a matter that must have
+seemed very strange to you. You know what the name is which appears on
+the register of my marriage, and yet you have forborne to speak of it,
+from the fear of distressing me. Before you enter on your new life, let
+us come to a first and last understanding about this. I ask you--as one
+more kindness to me--to accept my assurance (strange as the thing may
+seem to you) that I am blameless in this matter; and I entreat you to
+believe that the reasons I have for leaving it unexplained are reasons
+which, if Mr. Brock was living, Mr. Brock himself would approve.” In
+those words he kept the secret of the two names; and left the memory of
+Allan’s mother, what he had found it, a sacred memory in the heart of
+her son.
+
+“One word more,” he went on--“a word which will take us, this time, from
+past to future. It has been said, and truly said, that out of Evil may
+come Good. Out of the horror and the misery of that night you know of
+has come the silencing of a doubt which once made my life miserable with
+groundless anxiety about you and about myself. No clouds raised by my
+superstition will ever come between us again. I can’t honestly tell you
+that I am more willing now than I was when we were in the Isle of Man to
+take what is called the rational view of your Dream. Though I know what
+extraordinary coincidences are perpetually happening in the experience
+of all of us, still I cannot accept coincidences as explaining the
+fulfillment of the Visions which our own eyes have seen. All I can
+sincerely say for myself is, what I think it will satisfy you to know,
+that I have learned to view the purpose of the Dream with a new mind. I
+once believed that it was sent to rouse your distrust of the friendless
+man whom you had taken as a brother to your heart. I now _know_ that it
+came to you as a timely warning to take him closer still. Does this help
+to satisfy you that I, too, am standing hopefully on the brink of a new
+life, and that while we live, brother, your love and mine will never be
+divided again?”
+
+They shook hands in silence. Allan was the first to recover himself. He
+answered in the few words of kindly assurance which were the best words
+that he could address to his friend.
+
+“I have heard all I ever want to hear about the past,” he said; “and
+I know what I most wanted to know about the future. Everybody says,
+Midwinter, you have a career before you, and I believe that everybody is
+right. Who knows what great things may happen before you and I are many
+years older?”
+
+“Who _need_ know?” said Midwinter, calmly. “Happen what may, God is
+all-merciful, God is all-wise. In those words your dear old friend once
+wrote to me. In that faith I can look back without murmuring at the
+years that are past, and can look on without doubting to the years that
+are to come.”
+
+He rose, and walked to the window. While they had been speaking together
+the darkness had passed. The first light of the new day met him as he
+looked out, and rested tenderly on his face.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE--My readers will perceive that I have purposely left them, with
+reference to the Dream in this story, in the position which they would
+occupy in the case of a dream in real life: they are free to interpret
+it by the natural or the supernatural theory, as the bent of their own
+minds may incline them. Persons disposed to take the rational view may,
+under these circumstances, be interested in hearing of a coincidence
+relating to the present story, which actually happened, and which in
+the matter of “extravagant improbability” sets anything of the same kind
+that a novelist could imagine at flat defiance.
+
+In November, 1865, that is to say, when thirteen monthly parts of
+“Armadale” had been published, and, I may add, when more than a year and
+a half had elapsed since the end of the story, as it now appears, was
+first sketched in my notebook--a vessel lay in the Huskisson Dock at
+Liverpool which was looked after by one man, who slept on board, in the
+capacity of shipkeeper. On a certain day in the week this man was found
+dead in the deck-house. On the next day a second man, who had taken his
+place, was carried dying to the Northern Hospital. On the third day a
+third ship-keeper was appointed, and was found dead in the deck-house
+which had already proved fatal to the other two. _The name of that ship
+was “The Armadale.”_ And the proceedings at the Inquest proved that the
+three men had been all suffocated _by sleeping in poisoned air_!
+
+I am indebted for these particulars to the kindness of the reporters at
+Liverpool, who sent me their statement of the facts. The case found its
+way into most of the newspapers. It was noticed--to give two instances
+in which I can cite the dates--in the _Times_ of November 30th, 1865,
+and was more fully described in the _Daily News_ of November 28th, in
+the same year.
+
+Before taking leave of “Armadale,” I may perhaps be allowed to mention,
+for the benefit of any readers who may be curious on such points, that
+the “Norfolk Broads” are here described after personal investigation
+of them. In this, as in other cases, I have spared no pains to instruct
+myself on matters of fact. Wherever the story touches on questions
+connected with Law, Medicine, or Chemistry, it has been submitted before
+publication to the experience of professional men. The kindness of a
+friend supplied me with a plan of the doctor’s apparatus, and I saw the
+chemical ingredients at work before I ventured on describing the action
+of them in the closing scenes of this book.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Armadale, by Wilkie Collins
+
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