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G.K. Chesterton - "The Ballad of the White Horse"

Somerset Maugham - "Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham"

Alfred Tennyson - "Enoch Arden &c."

Edna Ferber - "Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed"

Armadale

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Armadale




"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.

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