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Armadale

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Armadale




"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.

CHAPTER 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?"

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