Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  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,10 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.

  A quarter of an hour later, the lady, still veiled as before, passed Mr Brock again close to the inn. She entered the house, and spoke to the landlady. Seeing the landlord shortly afterwards hurrying round to the stables, Mr Brock asked him if the lady was going away. Yes; she had come from the railway in the omnibus, but she was going back again more creditably in a carriage of her own hiring, supplied by the inn.

  The rector proceeded on his walk, rather surprised to find his thoughts running inquisitively on a woman who was a stranger to him. When he got home again, he found the village surgeon waiting his return, with an urgent message from Allan’s mother. About an hour since, the surgeon had been sent for in great haste to see Mrs Armadale. He had found her suffering from an alarming nervous attack, brought on (as the servants suspected) by an unexpected, and, possibly, an unwelcome visitor, who had called that morning. The surgeon had done all that was needful, and had no apprehension of any dangerous results. Finding his patient eagerly desirous, on recovering herself, to see Mr Brock immediately, he had thought it important to humour her, and had readily undertaken to call at the rectory with a message to that effect.

  Looking at Mrs Armadale with a far deeper interest in her than the surgeon’s interest, Mr Brock saw enough in her face, when it turned towards him on his entering the room, to justify instant and serious alarm. She allowed him no opportunity of soothing her; she heeded none of his inquiries. Answers to certain questions of her own were what she wanted, and what she was determined to have: Had Mr Brock seen the woman who had presumed to visit her that morning? Yes. Had Allan seen her? No: Allan had been at work since breakfast, and was at work still, in his yard by the waterside. This latter reply appeared to quiet Mrs Armadale for the moment: she put her next question – the most extraordinary question of the three – more composedly. Did the rector think Allan would object to leaving his vessel for the present, and to accompanying his mother on a journey to look out for a new house in some other part of England? In the greatest amazement, Mr Brock asked what reason there could possibly be for leaving her present residence? Mrs Armadale’s reason, when she gave it, only added to his surprise. The woman’s first visit might be followed by a second; and rather than see her again, rather than run the risk of Allan’s seeing her and speaking to her, Mrs Armadale would leave England if necessary, and end her days in a foreign land. Taking counsel of his experience as a magistrate, Mr Brock inquired if the woman had come to ask for money. Yes: respectably as she was dressed, she had described herself as being ‘in distress’ had asked for money, and had got it11 – but the money was of no importance; the one thing needful was to get away before the woman came again. More and more surprised, Mr Brock ventured on another question. Was it long since Mrs Armadale and her visitor had last met? Yes; as long as all Allan’s lifetime – as long as one-and-twenty years.

  At that reply, the rector shifted his ground, and took counsel next of his experience as a friend.

  ‘Is this person,’ he asked, ‘connected in any way with the painful remembrances of your early life?’

  ‘Yes, with the painful remembrance of the time when I was married,’ said Mrs Armadale. ‘She was associated, as a mere child, with a circumstance which I must think of with shame and sorrow to my dying day.’

  Mr Brock noticed the altered tone in which his old friend spoke, and the unwillingness with which she gave her answer.

  ‘Can you tell me more about her, without referring to yourself?’ he went on. ‘I am sure I can protect you, if you will only help me a little. Her name, for instance – you can tell me her name?’

  Mrs Armadale shook her head. ‘The name I knew her by,’ she said, ‘would be of no use to you. She has been married since then – she told me so herself.’

  ‘And without telling you her married name?’

  ‘She refused to tell it.’

  ‘Do you know anything of her friends?’

  ‘Only of her friends, when she was a child. They called themselves her uncle and aunt. They were low people, and they deserted her at the school on my father’s estate. We never heard any more of them.’

  ‘Did she remain under your father’s care?’12

  ‘She remained under my care – that is to say, she travelled with us. We were leaving England, just at that time, for Madeira. I had my father’s leave to take her with me, and to train the wretch to be my maid—’

  At those words Mrs Armadale stopped confusedly. Mr Brock tried gently to lead her on. It was useless; she started up in violent agitation, and walked excitedly backwards and forwards in the room.

  ‘Don’t ask me any more!’ she cried out, in loud, angry tones. ‘I parted with her when she was a girl of twelve years old. I never saw her again, I never heard of her again, from that time to this. I don’t know how she has discovered me, after all the years that have passed – I only know that she has discovered me. She will find her way to Allan next, she will poison my son’s mind against me. Help me to get away from her! help me to take Allan away before she comes back!’

  The rector asked no more questions; it would have been cruel to press her farther. The first necessity was to compose her by promising compliance with all that she desired. The second was to induce her to see another medical man. Mr Brock contrived to reach his end harmlessly in this latter case, by reminding her that she wanted strength to travel, and that her own medical attendant might restore her all the more speedily to herself, if he were assisted by the best professional advice. Having overcome her habitual reluctance to seeing strangers by this means, the rector at once went to Allan; and, delicately concealing what Mrs Armadale had said at the interview, broke the news to him that his mother was seriously ill. Allan would hear of no messengers being sent for assistance: he drove off on the spot to the railway, and telegraphed himself to Bristol for medical help.

  On the next morning the help came, and Mr Brock’s worst fears were confirmed. The village surgeon had fatally misunderstood the case from the first, and the time was past now at which his errors of treatment might have been set right. The shock of the previous morning had completed the mischief. Mrs Armadale’s days were numbered.

  The son who dearly loved her, the old friend to whom her life was precious, hoped vainly to the last. In a month from the physician’s visit all hope was over; and Allan shed the first bitter tears of his life at his mother’s grave.

  She had died more peacefully than Mr Brock had dared to hope; leaving all her little fortune to her son, and committing him solemnly to the care of her one friend on earth. The rector had entreated her to let him write and try to reconcile her brothers with her before it was too late. She had only answered sadly, that it was too late already. But one reference escaped her in her last illness to those early sorrows which had weighed heavily on all her after-life, and which had passed thrice already, like shadows of evil, between the rector and herself. Even on
her death-bed she had shrunk from letting the light fall clearly on the story of the past. She had looked at Allan kneeling by the bedside, and had whispered to Mr Brock: ‘Never let his Namesake come near him! Never let that Woman find him out!’ No word more fell from her that touched on the misfortunes which had tried her in the past, or on the dangers which she dreaded in the future. The secret which she had kept from her son and from her friend, was a secret which she carried with her to the grave.

  When the last offices of affection and respect had been performed, Mr Brock felt it his duty, as executor to the deceased lady, to write to her brothers, and to give them information of her death. Believing that he had to deal with two men who would probably misinterpret his motives, if he left Allan’s position unexplained, he was careful to remind them that Mrs Armadale’s son was well provided for; and that the object of his letter was simply to communicate the news of their sister’s decease. The two letters were despatched towards the middle of January, and by return of post the answers were received. The first which the rector opened, was written, not by the elder brother, but by the elder brother’s only son. The young man had succeeded to the estates in Norfolk on his father’s death, some little time since. He wrote in a frank and friendly spirit, assuring Mr Brock that, however strongly his father might have been prejudiced against Mrs Armadale, the hostile feeling had never extended to her son. For himself, he had only to add that he would be sincerely happy to welcome his cousin to Thorpe-Ambrose, whenever his cousin came that way.

  The second letter was a far less agreeable reply to receive than the first. The younger brother was still alive, and still resolute neither to forget nor forgive. He informed Mr Brock that his deceased sister’s choice of a husband, and her conduct to her father at the time of her marriage, had made any relations of affection or esteem impossible, on his side, from that time forth. Holding the opinions he did, it would be equally painful to his nephew and himself if any personal intercourse took place between them. He had adverted, as generally as possible, to the nature of the differences which had kept him apart from his late sister, in order to satisfy Mr Brock’s mind that a personal acquaintance with young Mr Armadale was, as a matter of delicacy, quite out of the question, and having done this, he would beg leave to close the correspondence.

  Mr Brock wisely destroyed the second letter on the spot, and, after showing Allan his cousin’s invitation, suggested that he should go to Thorpe-Ambrose as soon as he felt fit to present himself to strangers. Allan listened to the advice patiently enough; but he declined to profit by it. ‘I will shake hands with my cousin willingly if I ever meet him,’ he said, ‘but I will visit no family, and be a guest in no house, in which my mother has been badly treated.’ Mr Brock remonstrated gently, and tried to put matters in their proper light. Even at that time – even while he was still ignorant of events which were then impending – Allan’s strangely isolated position in the world was a subject of serious anxiety to his old friend and tutor. The proposed visit to Thorpe-Ambrose opened the very prospect of his making friends and connections suited to him in rank and age which Mr Brock most desired to see – but Allan was not to be persuaded; he was obstinate and unreasonable; and the rector had no alternative but to drop the subject.

  One on another, the weeks passed monotonously; and Allan showed but little of the elasticity of his age and character, in bearing the affliction that had made him motherless. He finished and launched his yacht; but his own journeymen remarked that the work seemed to have lost its interest for him. It was not natural to the young man to brood over his solitude and his grief, as he was brooding now. As the spring advanced, Mr Brock began to feel uneasy about the future, if Allan was not roused at once by change of scene. After much pondering, the rector decided on trying a trip to Paris, and on extending the journey southwards if his companion showed an interest in continental travelling.13 Allan’s reception of the proposal made atonement for his obstinacy in refusing to cultivate his cousin’s acquaintance – he was willing to go with Mr Brock wherever Mr Brock pleased. The rector took him at his word, and, in the middle of March, the two strangely assorted companions left for London on their way to Paris.

  Arrived in London, Mr Brock found himself unexpectedly face to face with a new anxiety. The unwelcome subject of Ozias Midwinter, which had been buried in peace since the beginning of December, rose to the surface again, and confronted the rector at the very outset of his travels, more unmanageably than ever.

  Mr Brock’s position, in dealing with this difficult matter, had been hard enough to maintain when he had first meddled with it. He now found himself with no vantage-ground left to stand on. Events had so ordered it, that the difference of opinion between Allan and his mother on the subject of the usher, was entirely disassociated with the agitation which had hastened Mrs Armadale’s death. Allan’s resolution to say no irritating words, and Mr Brock’s reluctance to touch on a disagreeable topic, had kept them both silent about Midwinter in Mrs Armadale’s presence, during the three days which had intervened between that person’s departure and the appearance of the strange woman in the village. In the period of suspense and suffering that had followed, no recurrence to the subject of the usher had been possible, and none had taken place. Free from all mental disquietude on this score, Allan had stoutly preserved his perverse interest in his new friend. He had written to tell Midwinter of his affliction14 – and he now proposed (unless the rector formally objected to it) paying a visit to his friend, before he started for Paris the next morning. What was Mr Brock to do? There was no denying that Midwinter’s conduct had pleaded unanswerably against poor Mrs Armadale’s unfounded distrust of him. If the rector, with no convincing reason to allege against it, and with no right to interfere but the right which Allan’s courtesy gave him, declined to sanction the proposed visit – then farewell to all the old sociability and confidence between tutor and pupil on the contemplated tour. Environed by difficulties, which might have been possibly worsted by a less just and a less kind-hearted man, Mr Brock said a cautious word or two at parting; and (with more confidence in Midwinter’s discretion and self-denial than he quite liked to acknowledge, even to himself), left Allan free to take his own way.

  After willing away an hour, during the interval of his pupil’s absence, by a walk in the streets, the rector returned to his hotel; and, finding the newspaper disengaged in the coffee-room, sat down absently to look over it. His eye, resting idly on the title-page, was startled into instant attention by the very first advertisement that it chanced to light on at the head of the column. There was Allan’s mysterious namesake again, figuring in capital letters – and associated, this time (in the character of a dead man) with the offer of a pecuniary reward! Thus it ran:

  SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD – To parish clerks, sextons, and others. Twenty Pounds Reward will be paid to any person who can produce evidence of the death of ALLAN ARMADALE, only son of the late Allan Armadale, of Barbadoes, and born in that island in the year 1830. Further particulars, on application to Messrs Hammick and Ridge, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.

  Even Mr Brock’s essentially unimaginative mind began to stagger superstitiously in the dark, as he laid the newspaper down again. Little by little, a vague suspicion took possession of him, that the whole series of events which had followed the first appearance of Allan’s namesake in the newspaper six years since, were held together by some mysterious connection, and were tending steadily to some unimaginable end. Without knowing why, he began to feel uneasy at Allan’s absence. Without knowing why, he became impatient to get his pupil away from England before anything else happened between night and morning.

  In an hour more the rector was relieved of all immediate anxiety, by Allan’s return to the hotel. The young man was vexed and out of spirits. He had discovered Midwinter’s lodgings, but he had failed to find Midwinter himself. The only account his landlady could give of him was, that he had gone out at his customary time to get his dinner at the nearest eating-house, a
nd that he had not returned, in accordance with his usual regular habits, at his usual regular hour. Allan had therefore gone to inquire at the eating-house, and had found, on describing him, that Midwinter was well known there. It was his custom, on other days, to take a frugal dinner, and to sit half an hour afterwards reading the newspaper. On this occasion, after dining, he had taken up the paper as usual, had suddenly thrown it aside again, and had gone, nobody knew where, in a violent hurry. No further information being attainable, Allan had left a note at the lodgings, giving his address at the hotel, and begging Midwinter to come and say good-by before his departure for Paris.

  The evening passed, and Allan’s invisible friend never appeared. The morning came, bringing no obstacles with it, and Mr Brock and his pupil left London. So far, fortune had declared herself at last on the rector’s side. Ozias Midwinter, after intrusively rising to the surface, had conveniently dropped out of sight again. What was to happen next?

  Advancing once more, by three weeks only, from past to present, Mr Brock’s memory took up the next event on the seventh of April. To all appearance, the chain was now broken at last. The new event had no recognizable connection (either to his mind or to Allan’s) with any of the persons who had appeared, or any of the circumstances that had happened, in the bygone time.

  The travellers had, as yet, got no farther than Paris. Allan’s spirits had risen with the change; and he had been made all the readier to enjoy the novelty of the scene around him, by receiving a letter from Midwinter, containing news which Mr Brock himself acknowledged promised fairly for the future. The ex-usher had been away on business when Allan had called at his lodgings, having been led by an accidental circumstance to open communications with his relatives on that day. The result had taken him entirely by surprise – it had unexpectedly secured to him a little income of his own for the rest of his life. His future plans, now that this piece of good fortune had fallen to his share, were still unsettled. But if Allan wished to hear what he ultimately decided on, his agent in London (whose direction he enclosed) would receive communications for him, and would furnish Mr Armadale at all future times with his address.