Armadale — Book the third- chapter XIV, pt 3

“August 5th.

--Two letters again from the hotel.

Midwinter writes to remind me, in the prettiest possible manner, that he will have lived long enough in the parish by to-morrow to be able to get our marriage-license, and that he proposes applying for it in the usual way at Doctors’ Commons.

Now, if I am ever to say it, is the time to say No. I can’t say No. There is the plain truth--and there is an end of it!

“Armadale’s letter is a letter of farewell.

He thanks me for my kindness in consenting to write to the major, and bids me good-by, till we meet again at Naples.

He has learned from his friend that there are private reasons which will oblige him to forbid himself the pleasure of being present at our marriage.

Under these circumstances, there is nothing to keep him in London.

He has made all his business arrangements; he goes to Somersetshire by to-night’s train; and, after staying some time with Mr. Brock, he will sail for the Mediterranean from the Bristol Channel (in spite of Midwinter’s objections) in his own yacht.

“The letter incloses a jeweler’s box, with a ring in it--Armadale’s present to me on my marriage.

It is a ruby--but rather a small one, and set in the worst possible taste.

He would have given Miss Milroy a ring worth ten times the money, if it had been _her_ marriage present.

There is no more hateful creature, in my opinion, than a miserly young man.

I

wonder whether his trumpery little yacht will drown him?

“I am so excited and fluttered, I hardly know what I am writing.

Not that I shrink from what is coming--I only feel as if I was being hurried on faster than I quite like to go.

At this rate, if nothing happens, Midwinter will have married me by the end of the week.

And then--!

” “August 6th.

--If anything could startle me now, I should feel startled by the news that has reached me to-day.

“On his return to the hotel this morning, after getting the marriage-license, Midwinter found a telegram waiting for him.

It contained an urgent message from Armadale, announcing that Mr. Brock had had a relapse, and that all hope of his recovery was pronounced by the doctors to be at an end.

By the dying man’s own desire, Midwinter was summoned to take leave of him, and was entreated by Armadale not to lose a moment in starting for the rectory by the first train.

“The hurried letter which tells me this tells me also that, by the time I receive it, Midwinter will be on his way to the West.

He promises to write at greater length, after he has seen Mr. Brock, by to-night’s post.

“This news has an interest for me, which Midwinter little suspects.

There is but one human creature, besides myself, who knows the secret of his birth and his name; and that one is the old man who now lies waiting for him at the point of death.

What will they say to each other at the last moment?

Will some chance word take them back to the time when I was in Mrs. Armadale’s service at Madeira?

Will they speak of Me?

” “August 7th.

--The promised letter has just reached me.

No parting words have been exchanged between them: it was all over before Midwinter reached Somersetshire.

Armadale met him at the rectory gate with the news that Mr. Brock was dead.

“I try to struggle against it, but, coming after the strange complication of circumstances that has been closing round me for weeks past, there is something in this latest event of all that shakes my nerves.

But one last chance of detection stood in my way when I opened my diary yesterday.

When I open it to-day, that chance is removed by Mr. Brock’s death.

It means something; I wish I knew what.

“The funeral is to be on Saturday morning.

Midwinter will attend it as well as Armadale.

But he proposes returning to London first; and he writes word that he will call to-night, in the hope of seeing me, on his way from the station to the hotel.

Even if there was any risk in it, I should see him, as things are now.

But there is no risk if he comes here from the station instead of coming from the hotel.

” “Five o’clock.

--I was not mistaken in believing that my nerves were all unstrung.

Trifles that would not have cost me a second thought at other times weigh heavily on my mind now.

“Two hours since, in despair of knowing how to get through the day, I bethought myself of the milliner who is making my summer dress.

I had intended to go and try it on yesterday; but it slipped out of my memory in the excitement of hearing about Mr. Brock.

So I went this afternoon, eager to do anything that might help me to get rid of myself.

I have returned, feeling more uneasy and more depressed than I felt when I went out; for I have come back fearing that I may yet have reason to repent not having left my unfinished dress on the milliner’s hands.

“Nothing happened to me, this time, in the street.

It was only in the trying-on room that my suspicions were roused; and there it certainly did cross my mind that the attempt to discover me, which I defeated at All Saints’ Terrace, was not given up yet, and that some of the shop-women had been tampered with, if not the mistress herself.

“Can I give myself anything in the shape of a reason for this impression?

Let me think a little.

“I certainly noticed two things which were out of the ordinary routine, under the circumstances.

In the first place, there were twice as many women as were needed in the trying-on room.

This looked suspicious; and yet I might have accounted for it in more ways than one.

Is it not the slack time now?

and don’t I know by experience that I am the sort of woman about whom other women are always spitefully curious?

I thought again, in the second place, that one of the assistants persisted rather oddly in keeping me turned in a particular direction, with my face toward the glazed and curtained door that led into the work-room.

But, after all, she gave a reason when I asked for it.

She said the light fell better on me that way; and, when I looked round, there was the window to prove her right.

Still, these trifles produced such an effect on me, at the time, that I purposely found fault with the dress, so as to have an excuse for trying it on again, before I told them where I lived, and had it sent home.

Pure fancy, I dare say.

Pure fancy, perhaps, at the present moment.

I don’t care; I shall act on instinct (as they say), and give up the dress.

In plainer words still, I won’t go back.

” “Midnight.

--Midwinter came to see me as he promised.

An hour has passed since we said good-night; and here I still sit, with my pen in my hand, thinking of him.

No words of mine can describe what has passed between us.

The end of it is all I can write in these pages; and the end of it is that he has shaken my resolution.

For the first time since I saw the easy way to Armadale’s life at Thorpe Ambrose, I feel as if the man whom I have doomed in my own thoughts had a chance of escaping me.

“Is it my love for Midwinter that has altered me?

Or is it _his_ love for _me_ that has taken possession not only of all I wish to give him, but of all I wish to keep from him as well?

I feel as if I had lost myself--lost myself, I mean, in _him_--all through the evening.

He was in great agitation about what had happened in Somersetshire; and he made me feel as disheartened and as wretched about it as he did.

Though he never confessed it in words, I know that Mr. Brock’s death has startled him as an ill omen for our marriage--I know it, because I feel Mr. Brock’s death as an ill omen too.

The superstition--_his_ superstition--took so strong a hold on me, that when we grew calmer and he spoke of time future--when he told me that he must either break his engagement with his new employers or go abroad, as he is pledged to go, on Monday next--I actually shrank at the thought of our marriage following close on Mr. Brock’s funeral; I actually said to him, in the impulse of the moment, ‘Go, and begin your new life alone!

go, and leave me here to wait for happier times.

’ “He took me in his arms.

He sighed, and kissed me with an angelic tenderness.

He said--oh, so softly and so sadly!

--I have no life now, apart from _you_.

’ As those words passed his lips, the thought seemed to rise in my mind like an echo, ‘Why not live out all the days that are left to me, happy and harmless in a love like this!

’ I can’t explain it--I can’t realize it.

That was the thought in me at the time; and that is the thought in me still.

I see my own hand while I write the words--and I ask myself whether it is really the hand of Lydia Gwilt!

“Armadale-- “No!

I will never write, I will never think of Armadale again.

“Yes!

Let me write once more--let me think once more of him, because it quiets me to know that he is going away, and that the sea will have parted us before I am married.

His old home is home to him no longer, now that the loss of his mother has been followed by the loss of his best and earliest friend.

When the funeral is over, he has decided to sail the same day for the foreign seas.

We may, or we may not, meet at Naples.

Shall I be an altered woman if we do?

I wonder; I wonder!

” “August 8th.

--A line from Midwinter.

He has gone back to Somersetshire to be in readiness for the funeral to-morrow; and he will return here (after bidding Armadale good-by) to-morrow evening.

“The last forms and ceremonies preliminary to our marriage have been complied with.

I am to be his wife on Monday next.

The hour must not be later than half-past ten--which will give us just time, when the service is over, to get from the church door to the railway, and to start on our journey to Naples the same day.

“To-day--Saturday--Sunday!

I am not afraid of the time; the time will pass.

I am not afraid of myself, if I can only keep all thoughts but one out of my mind.

I love him!

Day and night, till Monday comes, I will think of nothing but that.

I love him!

” “Four o’clock.

--Other thoughts are forced into my mind in spite of me.

My suspicions of yesterday were no mere fancies; the milliner has been tampered with.

My folly in going back to her house has led to my being traced here.

I am absolutely certain that I never gave the woman my address; and yet my new gown was sent home to me at two o’clock to-day!

“A man brought it with the bill, and a civil message, to say that, as I had not called at the appointed time to try it on again, the dress had been finished and sent to me.

He caught me in the passage; I had no choice but to pay the bill, and dismiss him.

Any other proceeding, as events have now turned out, would have been pure folly.

The messenger (not the man who followed me in the street, but another spy sent to look at me, beyond all doubt) would have declared he knew nothing about it, if I had spoken to him.

The milliner would tell me to my face, if I went to her, that I had given her my address.

The one useful thing to do now is to set my wits to work in the interests of my own security, and to step out of the false position in which my own rashness has placed me--if I can.

” “Seven o’clock.

--My spirits have risen again.

I believe I am in a fair way of extricating myself already.

“I have just come back from a long round in a cab.

First, to the cloak-room of the Great Western, to get the luggage which I sent there from All Saints’ Terrace.

Next, to the cloak-room of the Southeastern, to leave my luggage (labeled in Midwinter’s name), to wait for me till the starting of the tidal train on Monday.

Next, to the General Post-office, to post a letter to Midwinter at the rectory, which he will receive to-morrow morning.

Lastly, back again to this house--from which I shall move no more till Monday comes.

“My letter to Midwinter will, I have little doubt, lead to his seconding (quite innocently) the precautions that I am taking for my own safety.

The shortness of the time at our disposal on Monday will oblige him to pay his bill at the hotel and to remove his luggage before the marriage ceremony takes place.

All I ask him to do beyond this is to take the luggage himself to the Southeastern (so as to make any inquiries useless which may address themselves to the servants at the hotel)--and, that done, to meet me at the church door, instead of calling for me here.

The rest concerns nobody but myself.

When Sunday night or Monday morning comes, it will be hard, indeed--freed as I am now from all incumbrances--if I can’t give the people who are watching me the slip for the second time.

“It seems needless enough to have written to Midwinter to-day, when he is coming back to me to-morrow night.

But it was impossible to ask, what I have been obliged to ask of him, without making my false family circumstances once more the excuse; and having this to do--I must own the truth--I wrote to him because, after what I suffered on the last occasion, I can never again deceive him to his face.

” “August 9th.

--Two o’clock.

--I rose early this morning, more depressed in spirits than usual.

The re-beginning of one’s life, at the re-beginning of every day, has already been something weary and hopeless to me for years past.

I dreamed, too, all through the night--not of Midwinter and of my married life, as I had hoped to dream--but of the wretched conspiracy to discover me, by which I have been driven from one place to another, like a hunted animal.

Nothing in the shape of a new revelation enlightened me in my sleep.

All I could guess dreaming was what I had guessed waking, that Mother Oldershaw is the enemy who is attacking me in the dark.

“My restless night has, however, produced one satisfactory result.

It has led to my winning the good graces of the servant here, and securing all the assistance she can give me when the time comes for making my escape.

“The girl noticed this morning that I looked pale and anxious.

I

took her into my confidence, to the extent of telling her that I was privately engaged to be married, and that I had enemies who were trying to part me from my sweetheart.

This instantly roused her sympathy, and a present of a ten-shilling piece for her kind services to me did the rest.

In the intervals of her housework she has been with me nearly the whole morning; and I found out, among other things, that _her_ sweetheart is a private soldier in the Guards, and that she expects to see him to-morrow.

I have got money enough left, little as it is, to turn the head of any Private in the British army; and, if the person appointed to watch me to-morrow is a man, I think it just possible that he may find his attention disagreeably diverted from Miss Gwilt in the course of the evening.

“When Midwinter came here last from the railway, he came at half-past eight.

How am I to get through the weary, weary hours between this and the evening?

I think I shall darken my bedroom, and drink the blessing of oblivion from my bottle of Drops.

” “Eleven o’clock.

--We have parted for the last time before the day comes that makes us man and wife.

“He has left me, as he left me before, with an absorbing subject of interest to think of in his absence.

I noticed a change in him the moment he entered the room.

When he told me of the funeral, and of his parting with Armadale on board the yacht, though he spoke with feelings deeply moved, he spoke with a mastery over himself which is new to me in my experience of him.

It was the same when our talk turned next on our own hopes and prospects.

He was plainly disappointed when he found that my family embarrassments would prevent our meeting to-morrow, and plainly uneasy at the prospect of leaving me to find my way by myself on Monday to the church.

But there was a certain hopefulness and composure of manner underlying it all, which produced so strong an impression on me that I was obliged to notice it.

“‘You know what odd fancies take possession of me sometimes,’ I said.

‘Shall I tell you the fancy that has taken possession of me now?

I can’t help thinking that something has happened since we last saw each other which you have not told me yet.

“‘Something _has_ happened,’ he answered.

‘And it is something which you ought to know.

’ “With those words he took out his pocket-book, and produced two written papers from it.

One he looked at and put back.

The other he placed on the table.

“‘Before I tell you what this is, and how it came into my possession,’ he said, ‘I must own something that I have concealed from you.

It is no more serious confession than the confession of my own weakness.

’ “He then acknowledged to me that the renewal of his friendship with Armadale had been clouded, through the whole period of their intercourse in London, by his own superstitious misgivings.

He had obeyed the summons which called him to the rector’s bedside, with the firm intention of confiding his previsions of coming trouble to Mr. Brock;

and he had been doubly confirmed in his superstition when he found that Death had entered the house before him, and had parted them, in this world, forever.

More than this, he had traveled back to be present at the funeral, with a secret sense of relief at the prospect of being parted from Armadale, and with a secret resolution to make the after-meeting agreed on between us three at Naples a meeting that should never take place.

With that purpose in his heart, he had gone up alone to the room prepared for him on his arrival at the rectory, and had opened a letter which he found waiting for him on the table.

The letter had only that day been discovered--dropped and lost--under the bed on which Mr. Brock had died.

It was in the rector’s handwriting throughout;

and the person to whom it was addressed was Midwinter himself.

“Having told me this, nearly in the words in which I have written it, he gave me the written paper that lay on the table between us.

“‘Read it,’ he said; ‘and you will not need to be told that my mind is at peace again, and that I took Allan’s hand at parting with a heart that was worthier of Allan’s love.

’ “I read the letter.

There was no superstition to be conquered in _my_ mind; there were no old feelings of gratitude toward Armadale to be roused in _my_ heart; and yet, the effect which the letter had had on Midwinter was, I firmly believe, more than matched by the effect that the letter now produced on me.

“It was vain to ask him to leave it, and to let me read it again (as I wished) when I was left by myself.

He is determined to keep it side by side with that other paper which I had seen him take out of his pocket-book, and which contains the written narrative of Armadale’s Dream.

All I could do was to ask his leave to copy it; and this he granted readily.

I wrote the copy in his presence; and I now place it here in my diary, to mark a day which is one of the memorable days in my life.

“Boscombe Rectory, August 2d.

“MY DEAR MIDWINTER--For the first time since the beginning of my illness, I found strength enough yesterday to look over my letters.

One among them is a letter from Allan, which has been lying unopened on my table for ten days past.

He writes to me in great distress, to say that there has been dissension between you, and that you have left him.

If you still remember what passed between us, when you first opened your heart to me in the Isle of Man, you will be at no loss to understand how I have thought over this miserable news, through the night that has now passed, and you will not be surprised to hear that I have roused myself this morning to make the effort of writing to you.

“I want no explanation of the circumstances which have parted you from your friend.

If my estimate of your character is not founded on an entire delusion, the one influence which can have led to your estrangement from Allan is the influence of that evil spirit of Superstition which I have once already cast out of your heart--which I will once again conquer, please God, if I have strength enough to make my pen speak my mind to you in this letter.

“It is no part of my design to combat the belief which I know you to hold, that mortal creatures may be the objects of supernatural intervention in their pilgrimage through this world.

Speaking as a reasonable man, I own that I cannot prove you to be wrong.

Speaking as a believer in the Bible, I am bound to go further, and to admit that you possess a higher than any human warrant for the faith that is in you.

The one object which I have it at heart to attain is to induce you to free yourself from the paralyzing fatalism of the heathen and the savage, and to look at the mysteries that perplex, and the portents that daunt you, from the Christian’s point of view.

If I can succeed in this, I shall clear your mind of the ghastly doubts that now oppress it, and I shall reunite you to your friend, never to be parted from him again.

“I have no means of seeing and questioning you.

I can only send this letter to Allan to be forwarded, if he knows, or can discover, your present address.

Placed in this position toward you, I am bound to assume all that _can_ be assumed in your favor.

I will take it for granted that something has happened to you or to Allan which to your mind has not only confirmed the fatalist conviction in which your father died, but has added a new and terrible meaning to the warning which he sent you in his death-bed letter.

“On this common ground I meet you.

On this common ground I appeal to your higher nature and your better sense.

“Preserve your present conviction that the events which have happened (be they what they may) are not to be reconciled with ordinary mortal coincidences and ordinary mortal laws; and view your own position by the best and clearest light that your superstition can throw on it.

What are you?

You are a helpless instrument in the hands of Fate.

You are doomed, beyond all human capacity of resistance, to bring misery and destruction blindfold on a man to whom you have harmlessly and gratefully united yourself in the bonds of a brother’s love.

All that is morally firmest in your will and morally purest in your aspirations avails nothing against the hereditary impulsion of you toward evil, caused by a crime which your father committed before you were born.

In what does that belief end?

It ends in the darkness in which you are now lost; in the self-contradictions in which you are now bewildered; in the stubborn despair by which a man profanes his own soul, and lowers himself to the level of the brutes that perish.

“Look up, my poor suffering brother--look up, my hardly tried, my well-loved friend, higher than this!

Meet the doubts that now assail you from the blessed vantage-ground of Christian courage and Christian hope;

and your heart will turn again to Allan, and your mind will be at peace.

Happen what may, God is all-merciful, God is all-wise: natural or supernatural, it happens through Him.

The mystery of Evil that perplexes our feeble minds, the sorrow and the suffering that torture us in this little life, leave the one great truth unshaken that the destiny of man is in the hands of his Creator, and that God’s blessed Son died to make us worthier of it.

Nothing that is done in unquestioning submission to the wisdom of the Almighty is done wrong.

No evil exists out of which, in obedience to his laws, Good may not come.

Be true to what Christ tells you is true.

Encourage in yourself, be the circumstances what they may, all that is loving, all that is grateful, all that is patient, all that is forgiving, toward your fellow-men.

And humbly and trustfully leave the rest to the God who made you, and to the Saviour who loved you better than his own life.

“This is the faith in which I have lived, by the Divine help and mercy, from my youth upward.

I ask you earnestly, I ask you confidently, to make it your faith, too.

It is the mainspring of all the good I have ever done, of all the happiness I have ever known; it lightens my darkness, it sustains my hope; it comforts and quiets me, lying here, to live or die, I know not which.

Let it sustain, comfort, and enlighten you.

It will help you in your sorest need, as it has helped me in mine.

It will show you another purpose in the events which brought you and Allan together than the purpose which your guilty father foresaw.

Strange things, I do not deny it, have happened to you already.

Stranger things still may happen before long, which I may not live to see.

Remember, if that time comes, that I died firmly disbelieving in your influence over Allan being other than an influence for good.

The great sacrifice of the Atonement--I say it reverently--has its mortal reflections, even in this world.

If danger ever threatens Allan, you, whose father took his father’s life--YOU, and no other, may be the man whom the providence of God has appointed to save him.

“Come to me if I live.

Go back to the friend who loves you, whether I live or die.

“Yours affectionately to the last, “DECIMUS BROCK.

” “‘You, and no other, may be the man whom the providence of God has appointed to save him!

’ “Those are the words which have shaken me to the soul.

Those are the words which make me feel as if the dead man had left his grave, and had put his hand on the place in my heart where my terrible secret lies hidden from every living creature but myself.

One part of the letter has come true already.

The danger that it foresees threatens Armadale at this moment--and threatens him from Me!

“If the favoring circumstances which have driven me thus far drive me on to the end, and if that old man’s last earthly conviction is prophetic of the truth, Armadale will escape me, do what I may.

And Midwinter will be the victim who is sacrificed to save his life.

“It is horrible!

it is impossible!

it shall never be!

At the thinking of it only, my hand trembles and my heart sinks.

I bless the trembling that unnerves me!

I bless the sinking that turns me faint!

I bless those words in the letter which have revived the relenting thoughts that first came to me two days since!

Is it hard, now that events are taking me, smoothly and safely, nearer and nearer to the End--is it hard to conquer the temptation to go on?

No!

If there is only a chance of harm coming to Midwinter, the dread of that chance is enough to decide me--enough to strengthen me to conquer the temptation, for his sake.

I have never loved him yet, never, never, never as I love him now!

” “Sunday, August 10th.

--The eve of my wedding-day!

I close and lock this book, never to write in it, never to open it again.

“I have won the great victory; I have trampled my own wickedness under foot.

I am innocent; I am happy again.

My love!

my angel!

when to-morrow gives me to you, I will not have a thought in my heart which is not _your_ thought, as well as mine!

”