Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  ‘You have stated what my conviction is quite accurately,’ returned Midwinter, chafing under the doctor’s looks and tones. ‘Excuse me if I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and to let me keep my reasons to myself.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he said to me,’ interposed Allan. ‘I don’t believe he has got any reasons at all.’

  ‘Gently! gently!’ said Mr Hawbury. ‘We can discuss the subject, without intruding ourselves into anybody’s secrets. Let us come to my own method of dealing with the dream next. Mr Midwinter will probably not be surprised to hear that I look at this matter from an essentially practical point of view.’

  ‘I shall not be at all surprised,’ retorted Midwinter. ‘The view of a medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve, seldom ranges beyond the point of his dissecting-knife.’

  The doctor was a little nettled on his side. ‘Our limits are not quite so narrow as that,’ he said; ‘but I willingly grant you that there are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don’t believe. For example, we don’t believe that a reasonable man is justified in attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the first instance.’

  ‘Come! that’s fair enough, I’m sure,’ exclaimed Allan. ‘He hit you hard with the “dissecting-knife”, doctor; and now you have hit him back again with your “natural explanation”. Let’s have it.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Mr Hawbury; ‘here it is. There is nothing at all extraordinary in my theory of dreams:2 it is the theory accepted by the great mass of my profession. A Dream is the reproduction, in the sleeping state of the brain, of images and impressions produced on it in the waking state; and this reproduction is more or less involved, imperfect, or contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the dreamer is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep. Without inquiring farther into this latter part of the subject – a very curious and interesting part of it – let us take the theory, roughly and generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at once to the dream now under consideration.’ He took up the written paper from the table, and dropped the formal tone (as of a lecturer addressing an audience) into which he had insensibly fallen. ‘I see one event already in this dream,’ he resumed, ‘which I know to be the reproduction of a waking impression produced on Mr Armadale in my own presence. If he will only help me by exerting his memory, I don’t despair of tracing back the whole succession of events set down here, to something that he has said or thought, or seen or done, in the four-and-twenty hours, or less, which preceded his falling asleep on the deck of the timber-ship.’

  ‘I’ll exert my memory with the greatest pleasure,’ said Allan. ‘Where shall we start from?’

  ‘Start by telling me what you did yesterday, before I met you and your friend on the road to this place,’ replied Mr Hawbury. ‘We will say, you got up and had your breakfast. What next?’

  ‘We took a carriage next,’ said Allan, ‘and drove from Castletown to Douglas to see my old friend, Mr Brock, off by the steamer to Liverpool. We came back to Castletown, and separated at the hotel door. Midwinter went into the house, and I went on to my yacht in the harbour. – By the by, doctor, remember you have promised to go cruising with us before we leave the Isle of Man.’

  ‘Many thanks – but suppose we keep to the matter in hand. What next?’

  Allan hesitated. In both senses of the word his mind was at sea already.

  ‘What did you do on board the yacht?’

  ‘Oh, I know! I put the cabin to rights – thoroughly to rights. I give you my word of honour, I turned every blessed thing topsy-turvy. And my friend there came off in a shore-boat and helped me. – Talking of boats, I have never asked you yet whether your boat came to any harm last night. If there’s any damage done, I insist on being allowed to repair it.’

  The doctor abandoned all futher attempts at the cultivation of Allan’s memory in despair.

  ‘I doubt if we shall be able to reach our object conveniently in this way,’ he said. ‘It will be better to take the events of the dream in their regular order, and to ask the questions that naturally suggest themselves as we go on. Here are the first two events to begin with. You dream that your father appears to you – that you and he find yourselves in the cabin of a ship – that the water rises over you, and that you sink in it together. Were you down in the cabin of the wreck, may I ask?’

  ‘I couldn’t be down there,’ replied Allan, ‘as the cabin was full of water. I looked in and saw it, and shut the door again.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Mr Hawbury. ‘Here are the waking impressions clear enough, so far. You have had the cabin in your mind, and you have had the water in your mind; and the sound of the channel current (as I well know without asking) was the last sound in your ears when you went to sleep. The idea of drowning comes too naturally out of such impressions as these to need dwelling on. Is there anything else before we go on? Yes; there is one more circumstance left to account for.’

  ‘The most important circumstance of all,’ remarked Midwinter, joining in the conversation, without stirring from his place at the window.

  ‘You mean the appearance of Mr Armadale’s father? I was just coming to that,’ answered Mr Hawbury. ‘Is your father alive?’ he added, addressing himself to Allan once more.

  ‘My father died before I was born.’

  The doctor started. ‘This complicates it a little,’ he said. ‘How did you know that the figure appearing to you in the dream was the figure of your father?’

  Allan hesitated again. Midwinter drew his chair a little away from the window, and looked at the doctor attentively for the first time.

  ‘Was your father in your thoughts before you went to sleep?’ pursued Mr Hawbury. ‘Was there any description of him – any portrait of him at home – in your mind?’

  ‘Of course there was!’ cried Allan, suddenly seizing the lost recollection. ‘Midwinter! you remember the miniature you found on the floor of the cabin when we were putting the yacht to rights? You said I didn’t seem to value it; and I told you I did, because it was a portrait of my father—’

  ‘And was the face in the dream like the face in the miniature?’ asked Mr Hawbury.

  ‘Exactly like! I say, doctor, this is beginning to get interesting!’

  ‘What do you say now?’ asked Mr Hawbury, turning towards the window again.

  Midwinter hurriedly left his chair, and placed himself at the table with Allan. Just as he had once already taken refuge from the tyranny of his own superstition in the comfortable common sense of Mr Brock – so, with the same headlong eagerness, with the same straightforward sincerity of purpose, he now took refuge in the doctor’s theory of dreams. ‘I say what my friend says,’ he answered, flushing with a sudden enthusiasm; ‘this is beginning to get interesting. Go on – pray go on.’

  The doctor looked at his strange guest more indulgently than he had looked yet. ‘You are the only mystic I have met with,’ he said, ‘who is willing to give fair evidence fair play. I don’t despair of converting you before our inquiry comes to an end. Let us get on to the next set of events,’ he resumed, after referring for a moment to the manuscript. ‘The interval of oblivion which is described as succeeding the first of the appearances in the dream, may be easily disposed of. It means, in plain English, the momentary cessation of the brain’s intellectual action, while a deeper wave of sleep flows over it, just as the sense of being alone in the darkness, which follows, indicates the renewal of that action, previous to the reproduction of another set of impressions. Let us see what they are. A lonely pool, surrounded by an open country; a sunset sky on the farther side of the pool; and the shadow of a woman on the near side. Very good; now for it, Mr Armadale! How did that pool get into your head? The open country you saw on your way from Castletown to this place. But we have no pools or lakes hereabo
uts; and you can have seen none recently elsewhere, for you came here after a cruise at sea. Must we fall back on a picture, or a book, or a conversation with your friend?’

  Allan looked at Midwinter. ‘I don’t remember talking about pools, or lakes,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

  Instead of answering the question, Midwinter suddenly appealed to the doctor.

  ‘Have you got the last number of the Manx newspaper?’ he asked.

  The doctor produced it from the sideboard. Midwinter turned to the page containing those extracts from the recently published Travels in Australia, which had roused Allan’s interest on the previous evening, and the reading of which had ended by sending his friend to sleep. There – in the passage describing the sufferings of the travellers from thirst, and the subsequent discovery which saved their lives – there, appearing at the climax of the narrative, was the broad pool of water which had figured in Allan’s dream!

  ‘Don’t put away the paper,’ said the doctor, when Midwinter had shown it to him, with the necessary explanation. ‘Before we are at the end of the inquiry, it is quite possible we may want that extract again. We have got at the pool. How about the sunset? Nothing of that sort is referred to in the newspaper extract. Search your memory again, Mr Armadale; we want your waking impression of a sunset, if you please.’

  Once more, Allan was at a loss for an answer; and, once more, Midwinter’s ready memory helped him through the difficulty.

  ‘I think I can trace our way back to this impression, as I traced our way back to the other,’ he said, addressing the doctor. ‘After we got here yesterday afternoon, my friend and I took a long walk over the hills—’

  ‘That’s it!’ interposed Allan. ‘I remember. The sun was setting as we came back to the hotel for supper – and it was such a splendid red sky, we both stopped to look at it. And then we talked about Mr Brock, and wondered how far he had got on his journey home. My memory may be a slow one at starting, doctor; but when it’s once set going, stop it if you can! I haven’t half done yet.’

  ‘Wait one minute, in mercy to Mr Midwinter’s memory and mine,’ said the doctor. ‘We have traced back to your waking impressions, the vision of the open country, the pool, and the sunset. But the Shadow of the Woman has not been accounted for yet. Can you find us the original of this mysterious figure in the dream-landscape?’

  Allan relapsed into his former perplexity, and Midwinter waited for what was to come, with his eyes fixed in breathless interest on the doctor’s face. For the first time there was unbroken silence in the room. Mr Hawbury looked interrogatively from Allan to Allan’s friend. Neither of them answered him. Between the shadow and the shadow’s substance there was a great gulph of mystery, impenetrable alike to all three of them.

  ‘Patience,’ said the doctor, composedly. ‘Let us leave the figure by the pool for the present, and try if we can’t pick her up again as we go on. Allow me to observe, Mr Midwinter, that it is not very easy to identify a shadow; but we won’t despair. This impalpable lady of the lake may take some consistency when we next meet with her.’

  Midwinter made no reply. From that moment his interest in the inquiry began to flag.

  ‘What is the next scene in the dream?’ pursued Mr Hawbury, referring to the manuscript. ‘Mr Armadale finds himself in a room. He is standing before a long window opening on a lawn and flower-garden, and the rain is pattering against the glass. The only thing he sees in the room is a little statue; and the only company he has is the Shadow of a Man standing opposite to him. The Shadow stretches out its arm, and the statue falls in fragments on the floor; and the dreamer, in anger and distress at the catastrophe (observe, gentlemen, that here the sleeper’s reasoning faculty wakes up a little, and the dream passes rationally, for a moment, from cause to effect), stoops to look at the broken pieces. When he looks up again the scene has vanished. That is to say, in the ebb and flow of sleep, it is the turn of the flow now, and the brain rests a little. What’s the matter, Mr Armadale? Has that restive memory of yours run away with you again?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Allan. ‘I’m off at full gallop. I’ve run the broken statue to earth; it’s nothing more nor less than a china shepherdess I knocked off the mantelpiece in the hotel coffee-room, when I rang the bell for supper last night. I say, how well we get on; don’t we? It’s like guessing a riddle. Now then, Midwinter! your turn next.’

  ‘No!’ said the doctor. ‘My turn, if you please. I claim the long window, the garden, and the lawn, as my property. You will find the long window, Mr Armadale, in the next room. If you look out, you’ll see the garden and lawn in front of it – and, if you’ll exert that wonderful memory of yours, you will recollect that you were good enough to take special and complimentary notice of my smart French window and my neat garden, when I drove you and your friend to Port St Mary yesterday.’

  ‘Quite right,’ rejoined Allan, ‘so I did. But what about the rain that fell in the dream? I haven’t seen a drop of rain for the last week.’

  Mr Hawbury hesitated. The Manx newspaper which had been left on the table caught his eye. ‘If we can think of nothing else,’ he said, ‘let us try if we can’t find the idea of the rain where we found the idea of the pool.’ He looked through the extract carefully. ‘I have got it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here is rain described as having fallen on these thirsty Australian travellers, before they discovered the pool. Behold the shower, Mr Armadale, which got into your mind when you read the extract to your friend last night! And behold the dream, Mr Midwinter, mixing up separate waking impressions just as usual!’

  ‘Can you find the waking impression which accounts for the human figure at the window?’ asked Midwinter; ‘or, are we to pass over the Shadow of the Man as we have passed over the Shadow of the Woman already?’

  He put the question with scrupulous courtesy of manner, but with a tone of sarcasm in his voice which caught the doctor’s ear, and set up the doctor’s controversial bristles on the instant.

  ‘When you are picking up shells on the beach, Mr Midwinter, you usually begin with the shells that lie nearest at hand,’ he rejoined. ‘We are picking up facts now; and those that are easiest to get at are the facts we will take first. Let the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the Woman pair off together for the present – we won’t lose sight of them, I promise you. All in good time, my dear sir; all in good time!’

  He too was polite, and he too was sarcastic. The short truce between the opponents was at an end already. Midwinter returned significantly to his former place by the window. The doctor instantly turned his back on the window more significantly still. Allan, who never quarrelled with anybody’s opinion, and never looked below the surface of anybody’s conduct, drummed, cheerfully on the table with the handle of his knife. ‘Go on, doctor!’ he called out; ‘my wonderful memory is as fresh as ever.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Mr Hawbury, referring again to the narrative of the dream. ‘Do you remember what happened, when you and I were gossiping with the landlady at the bar of the hotel last night?’

  ‘Of course I do! You were kind enough to hand me a glass of brandy-and-water, which the landlady had just mixed for your own drinking. And I was obliged to refuse it because, as I told you, the taste of brandy always turns me sick and faint, mix it how you please.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ returned the doctor. ‘And here is the incident reproduced in the dream. You see the man’s shadow and the woman’s shadow together this time. You hear the pouring out of liquid (brandy from the hotel bottle, and water from the hotel jug); the glass is handed by the woman-shadow (the landlady) to the man-shadow (myself); the man-shadow hands it to you (exactly what I did); and the faintness (which you had previously described to me) follows in due course. I am shocked to identify these mysterious Appearances, Mr Midwinter, with such miserably unromantic originals as a woman who keeps an hotel, and a man who physics a country district. But your friend himself will tell you that the glass of brandy-and-water was prepared by the landlady, and it reached him by
passing from her hand to mine. We have picked up the shadows, exactly as I anticipated; and we have only to account now – which may be done in two words – for the manner of their appearance in the dream. After having tried to introduce the waking impression of the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell! – Permit me to hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams.’ Saying those words, Mr Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with the pitiless politeness of a conquering man.

  ‘Wonderful! not a point missed anywhere from beginning to end! By Jupiter!’ cried Allan, with the ready reverence of intense ignorance. ‘What a thing science is!’

  ‘Not a point missed, as you say,’ remarked the doctor, complacently. ‘And yet I doubt if we have succeeded in convincing your friend.’

  ‘You have not convinced me,’ said Midwinter. ‘But I don’t presume on that account to say that you are wrong.’