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Henry van Dyke - "The Blue Flower"

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Armadale

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Armadale




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_!"

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