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Samuel Smiles - "Industrial Biography"

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - "Something New"

Xenophon - "The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians"

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Armadale

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Armadale




"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.

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