Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  I was in no humour to be persecuted with his ‘Darling Neelie’ after what I had gone through at the theatre. It might have been the irritated state of my nerves, or it might have been the Eau-de-Cologne flying to my head – but the bare mention of the girl seemed to set me in a flame. I tried to turn Armadale’s attention in the direction of the supper-table. He was much obliged, but he had no appetite for more. I offered him wine next – the wine of the country, which is all that our poverty allows us to place on the table. He was much obliged again. The foreign wine was very little more to his taste than the foreign music; but he would take some because I asked him; and he would drink my health in the old-fashioned way – with his best wishes for the happy time when we should all meet again at Thorpe-Ambrose, and when there would be a mistress to welcome me at the great house.

  Was he mad to persist in this way? No; his face answered for him. He was under the impression that he was making himself particularly agreeable to me.

  I looked at Midwinter. He might have seen some reason for interfering to change the conversation, if he had looked at me in return. But he sat silent in his chair, irritable and overworked, with his eyes on the ground, thinking.

  I got up and went to the window. Still impenetrable to a sense of his own clumsiness, Armadale followed me. If I had been strong enough to toss him out of the window into the sea, I should certainly have done it at that moment. Not being strong enough, I looked steadily at the view over the bay, and gave him a hint, the broadest and rudest I could think of, to go.

  ‘A lovely night for a walk,’ I said, ‘if you are tempted to walk back to the hotel.’

  I doubt if he heard me. At any rate I produced no sort of effect on him. He stood staring sentimentally at the moonlight; and – there is really no other word to express it – blew a sigh. I felt a presentiment of what was coming, unless I stopped his mouth by speaking first.

  ‘With all your fondness for England,’ I said, ‘you must own that we have no such moonlight as that at home.’

  He looked at me vacantly, and blew another sigh.

  ‘I wonder whether it’s as fine to-night in England as it is here?’ he said. ‘I wonder whether my dear little girl at home is looking at the moonlight, and thinking of Me?’

  I could endure it no longer. I flew out at him at last.

  ‘Good heavens, Mr Armadale!’ I exclaimed, ‘is there only one subject worth mentioning, in the narrow little world you live in? I’m sick to death of Miss Milroy. Do pray talk of something else!’

  His great broad stupid face coloured up to the roots of his hideous yellow hair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he stammered, with a kind of sulky surprise. ‘I didn’t suppose—’ he stopped confusedly, and looked from me to Midwinter. I understood what the look meant. ‘I didn’t suppose she could be jealous of Miss Milroy after marrying you!’ That is what he would have said to Midwinter, if I had left them alone together in the room!

  As it was, Midwinter had heard us. Before I could speak again –before Armadale could add another word – he finished his friend’s uncompleted sentence, in a tone that I now heard, and with a look that I now saw, for the first time.

  ‘You didn’t suppose, Allan,’ he said, ‘that a lady’s temper could be so easily provoked.’

  The first bitter word of irony, the first hard look of contempt, I had ever had from him! And Armadale the cause of it!

  My anger suddenly left me. Something came in its place, which steadied me in an instant, and took me silently out of the room.

  I sat down alone in the bed-room. I had a few minutes of thought with myself, which I don’t choose to put into words, even in these secret pages. I got up, and unlocked – never mind what. I went round to Midwinter’s side of the bed, and took – no matter what I took. The last thing I did, before I left the room, was to look at my watch. It was half-past ten; Armadale’s usual time for leaving us. I went back at once and joined the two men again.

  I approached Armadale good-humouredly, and said to him, –

  No! On second thoughts, I won’t put down what I said to him – or what I did, afterwards. I’m sick of Armadale! he turns up at every second word I write. I shall pass over what happened in the course of the next hour – the hour between half-past ten and half-past eleven – and take up my story again at the time when Armadale had left us. Can I tell what took place, as soon as our visitor’s back was turned, between Midwinter and me in our own room? Why not pass over what happened, in that case as well as in the other? Why agitate myself by writing it down? I don’t know! Why do I keep a diary at all? Why did the clever thief the other day (in the English newspapers) keep the very thing to convict him, in the shape of a record of every thing he stole? Why are we not perfectly reasonable in all that we do? Why am I not always on my guard and never inconsistent with myself, like a wicked character in a novel? Why? why? why?

  I don’t care why! I must write down what happened between Midwinter and me to-night, because I must. There’s a reason that nobody can answer – myself included.

  It was half-past eleven. Armadale had gone. I had put on my dressing-gown, and had just sat down to arrange my hair for the night, when I was surprised by a knock at the door – and Midwinter came in.

  He was frightfully pale. His eyes looked at me with a terrible despair in them. He never answered when I expressed my surprise at his coming in so much sooner than usual; he wouldn’t even tell me, when I asked the question, if he was ill. Pointing peremptorily to the chair from which I had risen on his entering the room, he told me to sit down again; and then after a moment, added these words: ‘I have something serious to say to you.’

  I thought of what I had done – or, no, of what I had tried to do – in that interval between half past ten and half past eleven, which I have left unnoticed in my diary – and the deadly sickness of terror, which I never felt at the time, came upon me now. I sat down again, as I had been told, without speaking to Midwinter, and without looking at him.

  He took a turn up and down the room, and then came and stood over me.

  ‘If Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he began, ‘and if you see him—’

  His voice faltered, and he said no more. There was some dreadful grief at his heart that was trying to master him. But there are times when his will is a will of iron. He took another turn in the room, and crushed it down. He came back, and stood over me again.

  ‘When Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he resumed, ‘let him come into my room, if he wants to see me. I shall tell him that I find it impossible to finish the work I now have on hand as soon as I had hoped, and that he must, therefore, arrange to find a crew for the yacht, without any assistance on my part. If he comes, in his disappointment, to appeal to you – give him no hope of my being free in time to help him, if he waits. Encourage him to take the best assistance he can get from strangers, and to set about manning the yacht without any further delay. The more occupation he has to keep him away from this house; and the less you encourage him to stay here, if he does come, the better I shall be pleased. Don’t forget that, and don’t forget one last direction which I have now to give you. When the vessel is ready for sea, and when Allan invites us to sail with him, it is my wish that you should positively decline to go. He will try to make you change your mind – for I shall, of course, decline, on my side, to leave you in this strange house and in this foreign country by yourself. No matter what he says, let nothing persuade you to alter your decision. Refuse, positively and finally! Refuse, I insist on it, to set your foot on the new yacht!’

  He ended quietly and firmly – with no faltering in his voice, and no signs of hesitation or relenting in his face. The sense of surprise which I might otherwise have felt at the strange words he had addressed to me, was lost in the sense of relief that they brought to my mind. The dread of those other words that I had expected to hear from him, left me as suddenly as it had come. I could look at him, I could speak to him once more.

  ‘You may depend,’ I answered, ‘
on my doing exactly what you order me to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the extraordinary directions you have just given to me?’

  His face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my dressing-table, with a heavy, hopeless sigh.

  ‘You may know the reason,’ he said, ‘if you wish it.’ He waited a little, and considered. ‘You have a right to know the reason,’ he resumed, ‘for you yourself are concerned in it.’ He waited a little again, and again went on. ‘I can only explain the strange request I have just made to you, in one way,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to recall what happened in the next room, before Allan left us to-night.’

  He looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions in his face. At one moment I thought he felt pity for me. At another, it seemed more like horror of me. I began to feel frightened again; I waited for his next words in silence.

  ‘I know that I have been working too hard lately,’ he went on, ‘and that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted, or distorted, the circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favour if you will test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false anywhere, I entreat you to stop me, and tell me of it.’2

  I commanded myself sufficiently to ask what the circumstances were to which he referred, and in what way I was personally concerned in them.

  ‘You were personally concerned in them, in this way,’ he answered. ‘The circumstances to which I refer, began with your speaking to Allan about Miss Milroy, in what I thought, a very inconsiderate and very impatient manner. I am afraid I spoke just as petulantly on my side – and I beg your pardon for what I said to you in the irritation of the moment. You left the room. After a short absence, you came back again, and made a perfectly proper apology to Allan, which he received with his usual kindness, and sweetness of temper. While this went on, you and he were both standing by the supper-table; and Allan resumed some conversation which had already passed between you about the Neapolitan wine. He said he thought he should learn to like it in time, and he asked leave to take another glass of the wine we had on the table. Am I right so far?’

  The words almost died on my lips; but I forced them out, and answered him that he was right so far.

  ‘You took the flask out of Allan’s hand,’ he proceeded. ‘You said to him, good-humouredly, “You know you don’t really like the wine, Mr Armadale. Let me make you something which may be more to your taste. I have a receipt of my own for lemonade. Will you favour me by trying it?” In those words, you made your proposal to him, and he accepted it. Did he also ask leave to look on, and learn how the lemonade was made? and did you tell him that he would only confuse you, and that you would give him the receipt in writing, if he wanted it?’

  This time, the words did really die on my lips. I could only bow my head, and answer ‘Yes’ mutely in that way. Midwinter went on.

  ‘Allan laughed, and went to the window to look out at the Bay, and I went with him. After a while, Allan remarked, jocosely, that the mere sound of the liquids you were pouring out, made him thirsty. When he said this, I turned round from the window. I approached you, and said the lemonade took a long time to make. You touched me, as I was walking away again, and handed me the tumbler filled to the brim. At the same time, Allan turned round from the window; and I, in my turn, handed the tumbler to him.– Is there any mistake so far?’

  The quick throbbing of my heart almost choked me. I could just shake my head – I could do no more.

  ‘I saw Allan raise the tumbler to his lips. – Did you see it? I saw his face turn white, in an instant. – Did you? I saw the glass fall from his hand on the floor. I saw him stagger, and caught him before he fell. Are these things true? For God’s sake, search your memory, and tell me – are these things true?’

  The throbbing at my heart seemed, for one breathless instant, to stop. The next moment something fiery, something maddening, flew through me. I started to my feet, with my temper in a flame, reckless of all consequences, desperate enough to say anything.

  ‘Your questions are an insult! Your looks are an insult!’ I burst out. ‘Do you think I tried to poison him?’

  The words rushed out of my lips in spite of me. They were the last words under heaven that any woman, in such a situation as mine, ought to have spoken. And yet I spoke them!

  He rose in alarm, and gave me my smelling-bottle. ‘Hush! hush!’ he said. ‘You, too, are overwrought – you, too, are over-excited by all that has happened to-night. You are talking wildly and shockingly. Good God! how can you have so utterly misunderstood me? Compose yourself – pray, compose yourself.’

  He might as well have told a wild animal to compose herself. Having been mad enough to say the words, I was mad enough next, to return to the subject of the lemonade, in spite of his entreaties to me to be silent.

  ‘I told you what I had put in the glass, the moment Mr Armadale fainted,’ I went on; insisting furiously on defending myself, when no attack was made on me. ‘I told you I had taken the flask of brandy which you keep at your bedside, and mixed some of it with the lemonade. How could I know that he had a nervous horror of the smell and taste of brandy? Didn’t he say to me himself, when he came to his senses, It’s my fault; I ought to have warned you to put no brandy in it? Didn’t he remind you, afterwards, of the time when you and he were in the Isle of Man together, and when the Doctor there innocently made the same mistake with him that I made to-night?’

  [I laid a great stress on my innocence – and with some reason too. Whatever else I may be, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. I was innocent – so far as the brandy was concerned. I had put it into the lemonade, in pure ignorance of Armadale’s nervous peculiarity, to disguise the taste of – never mind what!3 Another of the things I pride myself on is, that I never wander from my subject. What Midwinter said next, is what I ought to be writing about now.]

  He looked at me for a moment, as if he thought I had taken leave of my senses. Then he came round to my side of the table, and stood over me again.

  ‘If nothing else will satisfy you that you are entirely misinterpreting my motives,’ he said, ‘and that I haven’t an idea of blaming you in the matter – read this.’

  He took a paper from the breast-pocket of his coat, and spread it open under my eyes. It was the Narrative of Armadale’s Dream.

  In an instant the whole weight on my mind was lifted off it. I felt mistress of myself again – I understood him at last.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember what I said to you at Thorpe-Ambrose, about Allan’s Dream? I told you, then, that two out of the three Visions had already come true. I tell you now, that the third Vision has been fulfilled in this house to-night.’

  He turned over the leaves of the manuscript, and pointed to the lines that he wished me to read.4

  I read these, or nearly these words, from the Narrative of the Dream, as Midwinter had taken it down from Armadale’s own lips:

  The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of the Man, and the Shadow of the Woman together. The Man-Shadow was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back. From where she stood, I heard a sound like the pouring out of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the Shadow of the Man with one hand, and give him a glass with the other. He took the glass, and handed it to me. At the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness overcame me. When I recovered my senses again, the Shadows had vanished, and the Vision was at an end.

  For the moment, I was as completely staggered by this extraordinary coincidence as Midwinter himself.

  He put one hand on the open Narrative, and laid the other heavily on my arm.

  ‘Now do you understand my motive in coming here?’ he asked. ‘Now do you see that the last hope I had to cling to, was the hope that your memory of the night’s events might prove my memory to be wrong? Now do you know why I won’
t help Allan? Why I won’t sail with him? Why I am plotting and lying, and making you plot and lie too, to keep my best and dearest friend out of the house?’

  ‘Have you forgotten Mr Brock’s letter?’ I asked.

  He struck his hand passionately on the open manuscript. ‘If Mr Brock had lived to see what we have seen to-night, he would have felt what I feel, he would have said what I say!’ His voice sank mysteriously, and his great black eyes glittered at me as he made that answer. ‘Thrice the Shadows of the Vision warned Allan in his sleep,’ he went on; ‘and thrice those Shadows have been embodied in the aftertime by You, and by Me! You, and no other, stood in the Woman’s place at the pool. I, and no other, stood in the Man’s place at the window. And you and I together, when the last Vision showed the Shadows together, stand in the Man’s place and the Woman’s place still! For this, the miserable day dawned when you and I first met. For this, your influence drew me to you, when my better angel warned me to fly the sight of your face. There is a curse on our lives! there is a fatality in our footsteps! Allan’s future depends on his separation from us at once and for ever. Drive him from the place we live in, and the air we breathe. Force him among strangers – the worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him than we are! Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us, without You and without Me – and let him know how I loved him in another world than this, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest!’

  His grief conquered him – his voice broke into a sob when he spoke those last words. He took the Narrative of the Dream from the table, and left me as abruptly as he had come in.

  As I heard his door locked between us, my mind went back to what he had said to me, about myself. In remembering ‘the miserable day’ when we first saw each other, and ‘the better angel’ that had warned him to ‘fly the sight of my face’, I forgot all else. It doesn’t matter what I felt. I wouldn’t own it, even if I had a friend to speak to. Who cares for the misery of such a woman as I am? who believes in it? Besides, he spoke under the influence of the mad superstition that has got possession of him again. There is every excuse for him – there is no excuse for me. If I can’t help being fond of him, through it all, I must take the consequences and suffer. I deserve to suffer; I deserve neither love nor pity from anybody. – Good heavens, what a fool I am! And how unnatural all this would be, if it was written in a book!