 Book 1, Chapter 1, Part 3 of Armadale. Arrived in London, Mr. Brock found himself unexpectedly face to face with a new anxiety. The unwelcome subject of Osias 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 Allen and his mother on the subject of the usher was entirely disassociated with the agitation which had hastened Mrs. Armadale's death. Allen'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, Allen had stoutly preserved his perverse interest in his new friend. He had written to tell midwinter of his affliction 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 Allen's courtesy gave him declined to sanction their 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 Allen free to take his own way. After wiling 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 a light on at the head of the column. There was Allen'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 perish clerks, sextons, and others, 20 pounds reward will be paid to any person who can produce evidence of the death of Allen Armadale, only son of the late Allen Armadale of Barbados, and born in Trinidad in the year 1830. Further particulars on application to Messier's hammock and ridge, Lincoln's infields London. Even Mr. Brock's essentially unimaginative mind began to stagger superstitiously in the dark as he lay the newspaper down again. Little by little, a vague suspicion took position of him at the whole series of events which had followed the first appearance of Allen's namesake in the newspaper six years since, was held together by some mysterious connection, and was tending steadily to some unimaginable end. Without knowing why, he began to feel uneasy at Allen'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 Allen's return to the hotel. The young man was vexed and out of spirits. He had discovered Midwinter's lodging, 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, and that he had not returned in accordance with his usual regular habits at his usual hour. Allen 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, Allen had left a note at the lodgings, giving his address at the hotel and begging Midwinter to come and say goodbye before his departure for Paris. The evening passed, and Allen'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. Osias Midwinter, after intrusively rising to the surface, had conveniently dropped out of sight again. And 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 7th 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 Allen's, with any of the persons who had appeared, or any of the circumstances that had happened in the bygone time. The travelers had as yet got no further than Paris. Allen'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 Allen 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 Allen 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. On receipt of this letter, Allen had seized the pen in his usual headlong way and had insisted on Midwinter's immediately joining Mr. Brock and himself on their travels. The last days of March passed, and no answer to the proposal was received. The first days of April came, and on the 7th of the month there was a letter for Allen at last on the breakfast table. He snatched it up, looked at the address, and threw the letter down again impatiently. The handwriting was not Midwinter's. Allen finished his breakfast before he cared to read what his correspondent had to say to him. The meal over, young Armadale lazily opened the letter. He began it with an expression of supreme indifference. He finished it with a sudden leap out of his chair and a loud shout of astonishment. Wondering, as he well might, at this extraordinary outbreak, Mr. Brock took up the letter which Allen had tossed across the table to him. Before he had come to the end of it, his hands dropped helplessly on his knees, and the blank bewilderment of his pupil's expression was accurately reflected on his own face. If ever two men had good cause for being thrown completely off their balance, Allen and the rector were those too. The letter which had struck them both with the same shock of astonishment did, beyond all question, contain an announcement which, on a first discovery of it, was simply incredible. The news was from Norfolk, and was to this effect. In little more than one week's time, death had mown down no less than three lives in the family at Thorpe Ambrose, and Allen Armadale was at that moment air to an estate of eight thousand a year. A second perusal of the letter enabled the rector and his companion to master the details which had escaped them on a first reading. The writer was the family lawyer at Thorpe Ambrose. After announcing to Allen the deaths of his cousin Arthur at the age of 25, of his uncle Henry at the age of 48, and of his cousin John at the age of 21, the lawyer proceeded to give a brief abstract of the terms of the elder Mr. Blanchard's will. The claims of male issue were, as is not unusual in such cases, preferred to the claims of female issue. Failing Arthur and his issue male, the estate was left to Henry and his issue male. Failing them, it went to the issue male of Henry's sister and, in default of such issue, to the next air male. As events had happened, the two young men, Arthur and John, had died unmarried, and Henry Blanchard had died, leaving no surviving child but a daughter. Under these circumstances, Allen was the next air male pointed at by the will, and was now legally successor to the Thorpe Ambrose estate. Having made this extraordinary announcement, the lawyer requested to be favored with Mr. Armadale's instructions and added in conclusion that he would be happy to furnish any further particulars that were desired. It was useless to waste time in wondering at an event which neither Allen nor his mother had ever thought of as even remotely possible. The only thing to be done was to go back to England at once. The next day found the travelers installed once more in their London hotel, and the day after the affair was placed in the proper professional hands. The inevitable corresponding and consulting ensued, and one by one the all important particulars flowed in until the measure of information was pronounced to be full. This was the strange story of the three deaths. At the time when Mr. Brock had written to Mrs. Armadale's relatives to announce the news of her deceased, that is to say in the middle of the month of January, the family at Thorpe Ambrose numbered five persons, Arthur Blanchard in possession of the estate, living in the great house with his mother, and Henry Blanchard the uncle living in the neighborhood. A widower with two children, a son and a daughter. To cement the family connection still more closely, Arthur Blanchard was engaged to be married to his cousin. The wedding was to be celebrated with great local rejoicings in the coming summer when the young lady had completed her 20th year. The month of February had brought changes with it in the family position. Observing signs of delicacy in the health of his son, Mr. Henry Blanchard left Norfolk taking the young man with him under medical advice to try the climate of Italy. Early in the ensuing month of March, Arthur Blanchard also left Thorpe Ambrose for a few days only on business which required his presence in London. The business took him into the city. Annoyed by the endless impediments in the streets, he returned westward by one of the river steamers and, so returning, met his death. As the steamer left the wharf, he noticed a woman near him who had shown a singular hesitation in embarking and who had been the last of the passengers to take her place in the vessel. She was neatly dressed in black silk with a red paisley shawl over her shoulders and she kept her face hidden behind a thick veil. Arthur Blanchard was struck by the rare grace and elegance of her figure and he felt a young man's passing curiosity to see her face. She neither lifted her veil nor turned her head in his way. After taking a few steps, hesitatingly backward and forward on the deck, she walked away on a sudden to the stern of the vessel. In a minute more there was a cry of alarm from the man at the helm and the engines were stopped immediately. The woman had thrown herself overboard. The passengers all rushed to the side of the vessel to look. Arthur Blanchard alone, without an instant hesitation, jumped into the river. He was an excellent swimmer and he reached the woman as she rose again to the surface after sinking for the first time. Help was in hand and they were both brought safely ashore. The woman was taken to the nearest police station and was soon restored to her senses, her preserver giving his name and address, as usual in such cases, to the inspector on duty, who wisely recommended him to get into a warm bath and to send to his lodgings for dry clothes. Arthur Blanchard, who had never known an hour's illness since he was a child, laughed at the caution and went back in a cab. The next day he was too ill to attend the examination before the magistrate. A fortnight afterward he was a dead man. The news of the calamity reached Henry Blanchard and his son at Milan and within an hour of the time when they had received it they were on their way back to England. The snow on the Alps had loosened earlier than usual that year and the passes were notoriously dangerous. The father and son, traveling in their own carriage, were met on the mountain by the mail returning after sending the letters on by hand. Warnings which would have produced their effect under any ordinary circumstances were now vainly addressed to the two Englishmen. They're impatient to be at home again after the catastrophe which had befallen their family broke no delay. Bribes lavishly offered to the postillions tempted them to go on. The carriage pursued its way and was lost to view in the mist. When it was seen again it was disinterred from the bottom of a precipice. The men, the horses, and the vehicle all crushed together under the wreck and ruin of an avalanche. So the three lives were mown down by death. So in a clear sequence of events a woman's suicide leap into a river had opened to Alan Armadale the succession to the Thorpe Ambrose estates. Who was the woman? The man who saved her life never knew. The magistrate who remanded her, the chaplain who exhorted her, the reporter who exhibited her in print never knew. It was recorded of her with surprise that, though most respectably dressed, she had nevertheless described herself as being in distress. She had expressed the deepest contrition but had persisted in giving a name which was on the face of it a false one, in telling a commonplace story which was manifestly an invention and in refusing to the last to furnish any clues to her friends. A lady connected with a charitable institution, interested by her extreme elegance and beauty, had volunteered to take charge of her and to bring her into a better frame of mind. The first days experience of the penitents had been far from cheering and the second days experience had been conclusive. She had left the institution by stealth and though the visiting clergyman taking a special interest in the case had caused special efforts to be made, all search after her from that time forth had proved fruitless. While this useless investigation undertaken at Alan's express desire was in progress, the lawyers had settled the preliminary formalities connected with the succession to the property. All that remained was for the new master of Thorpe Ambrose to decide when he would personally establish himself on the estate of which he was now the legal possessor. Left necessarily to his own guidance in this matter, Alan settled it for himself in his usual hot-headed generous way. He positively declined to take possession until Mrs. Blanchard and her niece, who had been permitted thus far as a matter of courtesy to remain in their old home, had recovered from the calamity that had befallen them and were fit to decide for themselves what their future proceedings should be. A private correspondence followed this resolution, comprehending on Alan's side unlimited offers of everything he had to give in a house which he had not yet seen and, on the lady's side, a discreetly reluctant readiness to profit by the young gentleman's generosity in the matter of time. To the astonishment of his legal advisors, Alan entered their office one morning, accompanied by Mr. Brock, and announced with perfect composure that the ladies had been good enough to take his own arrangements off his hands, and that, in deference to their convenience, he meant to defer establishing himself at Thorpe Ambrose till that day two months. The lawyer stared at Alan, and Alan, returning the compliment, stared at the lawyers. What on earth are you wondering at gentlemen, he inquired, with a boyish bewilderment in his good-humored blue eyes? Why shouldn't I give the ladies there two months if the ladies want them? Let the poor things take their own time and welcome. My rights? Am I position? Oh, poo, poo. I'm in no hurry to be squire of the parish, it's not in my way. What do I mean to do for the two months? What I should have done anyhow, whether the ladies had stayed or not? I mean to go cruising at sea, that's what I like. I've got a new yacht at home in Somersetshire, a yacht of my own building, and I'll tell you what, sir, continued Alan, seizing the head partner by the arm in the fervor of his friendly intentions. You look sadly in want of a holiday in the fresh air, and you shall come along with me on the trial trip of my new vessel. And your partner's too if they like. And the head clerk, who is the best fellow I ever met with in my life. Plenty of room. We'll all shake down together on the floor, and we'll give Mr. Brock a rug on the cabin table. Thorpe Ambrose be hanged. Do you mean to say, if you had built a vessel yourself, as I have, you would go to any estate in the three kingdoms, while your own little beauty was sitting like a duck on the water at home and waiting for you to try her? You, legal gentleman, are great hands at argument. What do you think of that argument? I think it's unanswerable, and I'm off to Somersetshire tomorrow. With those words, the new possessor of 8,000 a year dashed into the head clerk's office and invited that functionary to a cruise on the high seas, with a smack on the shoulder which was heard distinctly by his masters in the next room. The firm looked in her interrogative wonder at Mr. Brock, a client who could see a position among the landed gentry of England waiting for him, without being in a hurry to occupy it at the earliest possible opportunity, was a client of whom they possessed no previous experience. He must have been very oddly brought up, said the lawyers to the rector. Very oddly, said the rector to his lawyers. A last leap over one month more brought Mr. Brock to the present time, to the bedroom at Castletown, in which he was sitting, thinking, and to the anxiety which was obstinately intruding itself between him and his night's rest. That anxiety was no unfamiliar enemy to the rector's peace of mind. It had first found him out in Somersetshire six months since, and it had now followed him to the Isle of Man under the inveterately obtrusive form of Osias midwinter. The change in Allen's future prospects had worked no corresponding alteration in his perverse fancy for the castaway at the village inn. In the midst of the consultations with the lawyers, he had found time to visit midwinter, and on the journey back with the rector, there was Allen's friend in the carriage returning with them to Somersetshire by Allen's own invitation. The ex-usher's hair had grown again on his shaven skull, and his dress showed the renovating influence of an accession of pecuniary means. But in all other respects the man was unchanged. He met Mr. Brock's distrust with the old, uncomplaining resignation to it. He maintained the same suspicious silence on the subject of his relatives and his early life. He spoke of Allen's kindness to him with the same undisciplined fervor of gratitude and surprise. I have done what I could, sir, he said to Mr. Brock, while Allen was asleep in the railway carriage. I have kept out of Mr. Armadale's way, and I have not even answered his last letter to me. More than that is more than I can do. I don't ask you to consider my own feeling toward the only human creature who has never suspected and never ill-treated me. I can resist my own feeling, but I can't resist the young gentleman himself. There is not another like him in the world. If we are to be parted again it must be his doing or yours, not mine. The dog's master has whistled, said this strange man, with a momentary outburst of the hidden passion in him, and a sudden springing of angry tears in his wild brown eyes. And it is hard, sir, to blame the dog when the dog comes. Once more Mr. Brock's humanity got the better of Mr. Brock's caution. He determined to wait and see what the coming days of social intercourse might bring forth. The days passed. The yacht was rigged and fitted for sea. A cruise was arranged to the Welsh coast. At midwinter the secret was the same midwinter still. Confinement on board a little vessel of five and thirty tons offered no great attraction to a man of Mr. Brock's time of life, but he sailed on the trial trip of the yacht nevertheless, rather than trust Alan alone with his new friend. Would the close companionship of the three on their cruise tempt the man into talking of his own affairs? No. He was ready enough on other subjects, especially if Alan led the way to them, but not a word escaped him about himself. Mr. Brock tried him with questions about his recent inheritance, and was answered as he had been answered once already at Somersetshire Inn. It was a curious coincidence midwinter admitted that Mr. Armadale's prospects and his own prospects should both have unexpectedly changed for the better about the same time, but there the resemblance ended. It was no large fortune that had fallen into his lap to what was enough for his wants. It had not reconciled him with his relations, for the money had not come to him as a matter of kindness, but as a matter of right. As for the circumstance which had led to his communicating with his family, it was not worth mentioning, seeing that the temporary renewal of intercourse which had followed had produced no friendly results. Nothing had come of it but the money, and with the money, and anxiety which troubled him sometimes when he woke in the small hours of the morning. At those last words he became suddenly silent, as if for once his well-guarded tongue had betrayed him. Mr. Brock seized the opportunity and bluntly asked him what the nature of the anxiety might be. Did it relate to money? No. It related to a letter which had been waiting for him for many years. Had he received the letter? Not yet. It had been left under charge of one of the partners in the firm which had managed the business of his inheritance for him. The partner had been absent from England and the letter, locked up among his own private papers, could not be got at till he returned. He was expected back toward the latter part of that present May, and if midwinter could be sure where the crews would take him to at the close of the month, he thought he would write and have the letter forwarded. Had he any family reasons to be anxious about it? None that he knew of. He was curious to see what had been waiting for him for many years, and that was all. So he answered the rector's questions, with his tawny face turned away over the low bulwark of the yacht, and his fishing line dragging in his supple brown hands. Favored by wind and weather, the little vessel had done wonders on her trial trip. Before the period fixed for the duration of the crews had half expired, the yacht was as high up on the Welsh coast as Holyhead, and Allen, eager for adventure in unknown regions, had declared boldly for an extension of the voyage northward to the Isle of Man. Having ascertained from reliable authority, had the weather really promised well for a cruise in that quarter, and that, in the event of any unforeseen necessity for a turn, the railway was accessible by the steamer from Douglas to Liverpool, Mr. Brock agreed to his pupils' proposal. By that night's post, he wrote to Allen's lawyers and to his own rectorie, indicating Douglas in the Isle of Man as the next address to which letters might be forwarded. At the post office, he met Midwinter, who had just dropped the letter into the box. Remembering what he had said on board the yacht, Mr. Brock concluded that they had both taken the same precaution, and had ordered their correspondence to be forwarded to the same place. Late the next day, they set sail for the Isle of Man. For a few hours all went well, but sunset brought with it the signs of a coming change. With the darkness, the wind rose to a gale, and the question whether Allen and his journeymen had or had not built a stout sea boat was seriously tested for the first time. All that night, after trying vainly to bear up for Hollyhead, the little vessel kept the sea, and stood her trial bravely. The next morning the Isle of Man was in view, and the yacht was safe at Castletown. A survey by Daylight of haul and rigging showed that all the damage done might be said or right in a week's time. The cruising party had accordingly remained at Castleton. Allen being occupied and superintending the repairs, Mr. Brock and exploring the neighborhood, and midwinter in making daily pilgrimages on foot to Douglas and back to inquire for letters. The first of the cruising party who received the letter was Allen. More worries from those everlasting lawyers was all he said when he had read the letter and had crumpled it up in his pocket. The rector's turn came next, before the week's sojourn at Castletown had expired. On the fifth day, he found a letter from Somersetshire waiting for him at the hotel. It had been brought there by midwinter, and it contained news which entirely overthrew all Mr. Brock's holiday plans. The clergyman who had undertaken to do duty for him in his absence had been unexpectedly summoned home again, and Mr. Brock had no choice, the day of the week being Friday, but to cross the next morning from Douglas to Liverpool and get back by railway on Saturday night in time for Sunday's service. Having read his letter and resigned himself to his altered circumstances as patiently as he might, the rector passed next to a question that pressed for serious consideration in its turn. Burdened with the heavy responsibility towards Allen and conscious of his own undiminished distrust of Allen's new friend, how was he to act in the emergency that now beset him towards the two young men who had been his companions on the cruise? Mr. Brock had first asked himself that awkward question on the Friday afternoon, and he was still trying vainly to answer it alone in his own room at one o'clock on the Saturday morning. It was then only the end of May, and the residents of the ladies at Tharp Ambrose, unless they chose to shorten it of their own accord, would not expire to the middle of June. Even if the repairs of the yacht had been completed, which was not the case, there was no possible pretense for hurrying Allen back the summer sets here. But one other alternative remained, to leave him where he was. In other words, to leave him at the turning point of his life under the sole influence of a man whom he had first met with as a castaway at a village inn, and who was still, to all practical purposes, a total stranger to him. In despair of obtaining any better means of enlightenment to guide his decision, Mr. Brock reverted to the impression which midwinter had produced on his own mind in the familiarity of the cruise. Young as he was, the ex-usher had evidently lived a very life. He could speak of books like a man who had really enjoyed them. He could take his turn at the helm like a sailor who knew his duty. He could cook and climb the rigging and lay the cloth for dinner with an odd delight in the exhibition of his own dexterity. The display of these and other qualities like them, as his spirits rose with the cruise, had revealed the secret of his attraction for Allen plainly enough. But had all disclosures rested there, had the man let no chance light in on his character in the rector's presence, very little, and that little did not set him forth in a morally alluring aspect. His way in the world had lain evidently in doubtful places, familiarity with the small villainies of vagabonds peeped out of him now and then, and, more significant still, he habitually slept the light, suspicious sleep of a man who has been accustomed to close his eyes in doubt of the company under the same roof with him. Down to the very latest moment of the rector's experience of him, down to that present Friday night, his conduct had been persistently secret and unaccountable to the very last. After bringing Mr. Brock's letter to the hotel, he had mysteriously disappeared from the house without leaving any message for his companions, and without letting anybody see whether he had or had not received a letter himself. At nightfall he had come back stealthily in the darkness, had been caught on the stairs by Allen, eager to tell him of the change in the rector's plans, had listened to the news without a word of remark, and had ended by socially locking himself into his own room. What was there in his favor to set against such revelations of his character as these, against his wandering eyes, his obstinate reserve with the rector, his ominous silence on the subject of family and friends, little or nothing, the sum of all his merits began and ended with his gratitude to Allen. Mr. Brock left his seat on the side of the bed, trimmed his candle, and, still lost in his own thoughts, looked out absently at the night. The change of place brought no new ideas with it. His retrospect over his own past life had amply satisfied him that his present sense of responsibility rested on no merely fanciful grounds, and, having brought him to that point, had left him there, standing at that window, and seeing nothing but the total darkness in his own mind faithfully reflected by the total darkness of the night. If I only had a friend to apply to, thought the rector, if I could only find someone to help me in this miserable place. At the moment when the aspiration crossed his mind, it was suddenly answered by a low knock at the door, and a voice said softly in the passage outside, let me come in. After an instant's pause to steady his nerves, Mr. Brock opened the door and found himself, at one o'clock in the morning, standing face to face on the threshold of his own bedroom with Osias midwinter. Are you ill, as the rector, as soon as his astonishment would allow him to speak? I have come here to make a clean breast of it, was the strange answer. Will you let me in? With those words he walked into the room, his eyes on the ground, his lips ashy pale, and his hand holding something hidden behind him. I saw the light under your door he went on, without looking up, and without moving his hand. And I know the trouble on your mind which is keeping you from your rest. You are going away tomorrow morning, and you don't like leaving Mr. Armadale alone with a stranger like me. Startled as he was, Mr. Brock saw the serious necessity of being plain with a man who had come at that time and had said those words to him. You have guessed right, he answered. I stand in the place of a father to Alan Armadale, and I am naturally unwilling to leave him at his age with a man whom I don't know. Josiah's midwinter took a step forward to the table. His wandering eyes rested on the rector's New Testament, which was one of the objects lying on it. You have read that book in the years of a long life to many congregations, he said. Has it taught you mercy to your miserable fellow creatures? Without waiting to be answered, he looked Mr. Brock in the face for the first time and brought his hidden hand slowly into view. Read that, he said, and for Christ's sake pity me when you know who I am. He laid a letter of many pages on the table. It was the letter that Mr. Neal had posted at Wildbad 19 years since. Recording by Alan Winteroud. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 2 The Man Revealed The first cool breathings of the coming dawn fluttered through the open window as Mr. Brock read the closing lines of the confession. He put it away from him in silence without looking up. The first shock of discovery had struck his mind and had passed away again, at his age and with his habits of thought his grasp was not strong enough to hold the whole revelation that had fallen on him. All his heart when he closed the manuscript was with the memory of the woman who had been the beloved friend of his later and happier life. All his thoughts were busy with the miserable secret of her treason to her own father which the letter had disclosed. He was startled out of the narrow limits of his own little grief by the vibration of the table at which he sat under a hand that was laid upon it heavily. The instinct of reluctance was strong in him but he conquered it and looked up. There silently confronting him in the mixed light of the yellow candle flame and the faint gray dawn stood the castaway of the village in, the inheritor of the fatal Armadale name. Mr. Brock shuddered as the terror of the present time and the darker terror yet of the future that might be coming rushed back on him at the sight of the man's face. The man saw it and spoke first. Is my father's crime looking at you out of my eyes he asked? Has the ghost of the drowned man followed me into the room? The suffering and the passion that he was forcing back shook the hand that he still kept on the table and stifled the voice in which he spoke until it sank to a whisper. I have no wish to treat you otherwise than justly and kindly, answered Mr. Brock. Do me justice on my side and believe that I am capable of cruelly holding you responsible for your father's crime. The reply seemed to compose him. He bowed his head in silence and took up the confession from the table. Have you read this through he asked quietly? Every word of it from first to last. Have I dealt openly with you so far? Has Ozias midwinter? Do you still call yourself by that name? Interrupted Mr. Brock, now that your true name is known to me? Since I have read my father's confession, was the answer. I like my ugly alias better than ever. Allow me to repeat the question which I was about to put to you a minute since. Has Ozias midwinter done his best thus far to enlighten Mr. Brock? The rector evaded a direct reply. Few men in your position, he said, would have had the courage to show me that letter. Don't be too sure, sir, of the vagabond you picked up at the inn, till you know a little more of him than you know now. You have got the secret of my birth, but you are not in possession yet with the story of my life. You ought to know it, and you shall know it before you leave me alone with Mr. Armadale. Will you wait and rest a little while, or shall I tell it you now? Now, said Mr. Brock, still as far away as ever from knowing the real character of the man before him. Everything Ozias midwinter said, everything Ozias midwinter did was against him. He had spoken with a sardonic indifference, almost with an insolence of tone, which would have repelled the sympathies of any man who heard him. And now, instead of placing himself at the table and addressing his story directly to the rector, he withdrew silently and ungraciously to the window seat. There he sat, his face averted, his hands mechanically turning the leaves of his father's letter till he came to the last. With his eyes fixed on the closing lines of the manuscript, and with a strange mixture of recklessness and sadness in his voice, he began his promised narrative in these words. The first thing you know of me, he said, is what my father's confession has told you already. He mentions here that I was a child, asleep on his breast, when he spoke his last words in this world, and when a stranger's hand wrote him down for him at his deathbed. That stranger's name, as you may have noticed, is signed on the cover. Alexander Neal, writer to the signet, Edinburgh. The first recollection I have is of Alexander Neal beating me with a horse whip. I daresay I deserved it, in the character of my stepfather. Have you no recollection of your mother at the same time, as Mr. Brock? Yes. I remember her having shabby old clothes made up to fit me, and having fine new frocks bought for her two children by her second husband. I remember the servants laughing at me and my old things, and the horse whip finding its way to my shoulders again, for losing my temper and tearing my shabby clothes. My next recollection gets on to a year or two later. I remember myself locked up in a lumber room, with a bit of bread and a mug of water, wondering what it was that made my mother and my stepfather seem to hate the very sight of me. I never settled that question till yesterday, and then I solved the mystery, when my father's letter was put into my hands. My mother knew what had really happened on board the French Timbership, and my stepfather knew what had really happened, and they were both well aware that the shameful secret which they would feign have kept from every living creature was a secret which would be one day revealed to me. There was no help for it. The confession was in my executor's hands, and there was I, an ill conditioned brat, with my mother's negro blood in my face, and my murdering father's passions in my heart, in heritor of their secret in spite of them. I don't wonder at the horse whip now, or at the shabby clothes, or the bread and water in the lumber room. Natural penalties all of them, sir, which the child was beginning to pay already for the father's sin. Mr. Rock looked at the swarthy, secret face, still obstantly turned away from him. Is this the stark insensibility of a vagabond he asked himself, or the despair in disguise of a miserable man? School is my next recollection, the other went on. A cheap place in a lost corner of Scotland. I was left there with a bad character to help me at starting. I spare you the story of the master's cane in the schoolroom, and the boy's kicks in the playground. I daresay there was ingrained in gratitude in my nature. At any rate, I ran away. The first person who met me asked my name. I was too young and too foolish to know the importance of concealing it, and as a matter of course, I was taken back to school the same evening. The result taught me a lesson which I have not forgotten since. In a day or two more, like the vagabond I was, I ran away for the second time. The school watchdog had had his instructions, I suppose. He stopped me before I got outside the gate. Here is his mark among the rest on the back of my hand. His master's marks, I can't show you. They are all on my back. Can you believe in my perversity? There was a devil in me that no dog could worry out. I ran away again as soon as I left my bed, and this time I got off. At nightfall I found myself, with the pocket full of the school oatmeal, lost on a moor. I lay down on the fine, soft heather under the lee of a great gray rock. Do you think I felt lonely? Not I. I was away from my master's cane, away from my school fellow's kicks, away from my mother, away from my stepfather, and I lay down that night under my good friend the rock, the happiest boy in all Scotland. 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 is 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 good name into the bargain. Osias 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? Osias midwinter taught me to dance the Highland to throw summer salts, 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 11 years old, and bad company, the women especially, took a fancy to me in 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 days dancing we did together. Many is the night we have slept together and whimpered together on the cold hillside. 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 worst 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 favored 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 the 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 nearer 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 had 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? asked 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 is 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 preserved me from ever feeling such misery again as I felt when I lay down by Tommy and took him, dead and bloody, into my arms. The keeper attempted to part us. I bit him, like the wild animal I was. He tried to 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 pitted me, and took me home with them. I remember the gentleman 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 am used, 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 stomachs 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 again for the thousandth time. Loose money left on a table and not found there again. All the servants, with character 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 goodbye 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 hillside. 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 omen 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 birth on board a coasting vessel. A cabin boy's birth means dirt to live in, awful to eat, a man's work on a boy's shoulders, and the ropes 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 fisherman next. There was less of the ropes 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 fisherman turned me adrift again. I don't blame them, food was scarce, and mouths were many. With famines 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 wintertime, so I went to Glasgow, and all of it stepped into the lion's mouth as soon as I got there. I was minding an empty cart on the Broomie Allow 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 lurking about the outward bound vessels and 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 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 the 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 Somerset Shirin? 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 17 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 and discussed. 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 changing 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 could keep me company that night. It got behind a cloud and left me alone in the rain and darkness. I groat 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 would I 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 bookseller'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 bookseller'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 a 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 bookseller 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 someone 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 were a clergyman and a scholar. Surely you can guess what made the life indurable to me. Mr. Brock remembered the well-worn volumes which had been found in the Usher's bag. The books made it indurable 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 Meiser's house. The only unalloyed pleasure I have ever tasted is the pleasure that I found for myself on the Meiser's shells. Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge and never worried of the draft. There are few customers to serve, for the books are 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 had 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 Meiser in all besides. He never confessed his frailty, and I never told him that 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 pouring 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, Malad, he said, but I think it is 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 afterwards, he died, enjoying to the last his happiness of having overreached his shopman. Ah, he whispered when the doctor formally summoned me to take leave of him. I got you cheap. Was Osias 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 prices. 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 afterwards, 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 on a local paper. The heartlessly mean terms that were offered encouraged me to imply, and I got the place. How I prospered in it, and what became of me, 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 a letter from Wildbad in his hand. End of Chapter 2, Part 1. Recording by Alan Winteroud, boomcoach.blogspot.com. Book 1, Chapter 2, Part 2 of Armadale. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alan Winteroud. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 2, Part 2. 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 Alan's kindness for Alan's friend. Thank you, sir, said Midwinter, simply and gravely. He sat down opposite Mr. Brock 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 you 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 towards 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 Barbados 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 now 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 improving 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 grew 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 Osias midwinter, Mr. Armadale first knew me. As Osias 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 have known already, it cost 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. Simply as the words are spoken, they touch the deepest sympathy in the rector's nature. They took his thoughts back to Mrs. Armadale's deathbed. There sat the man, against whom she had ignorantly warned him in her son's interest, and that man of his own free will had laid on himself the obligation of respecting her secret for her son's sake. The memory of his own past efforts to destroy the very friendship out of which this resolution had sprung rose and reproached Mr. Brock. He held out his hand to Midwinter for the first time. In her name and in her son's name, he said warmly, I thank you. Without replying, Midwinter spread the confession open before him on the table. I think I have said all that it was my duty to say, he began, before we could approach the consideration of this letter. Whatever may have appeared strange in my conduct toward you and toward Mr. Armadale may now be trusted to explain itself. You can easily imagine the natural curiosity and surprise that I must have felt ignorant as I then was of the truth, when the sound of Mr. Armadale's name first startled me as the echo of my own. You will readily understand that I only hesitated to tell him I was his namesake because I hesitated to damage my position, in your estimation, if not in his, by confessing that I had come among you under an assumed name. And after all that you have just heard of my vagabond life and my low associates, you will hardly wonder at the obstinate silence I maintained about myself at a time when I did not feel the sense of responsibility which my father's confession has laid on me. We can return to those small personal explanations, if you wish, at another time. They cannot be suffered to keep us from the greater interests, which we must settle before you leave this place. We may come now, his voice faltered, and he suddenly turned his face toward the window, so as to hide it from the rector's view. We may come now, he repeated, his hand trembling visibly as it held the page, to the murder on board the timbership, and to the warning that has followed me from my father's grave. Softly, as if he feared they might reach Allen sleeping in the neighboring room, he read the last terrible words which the Scotchman's pen had written at Wildbad, as they fell from his father's lips. Avoid the widow of the man I killed, if the widow still lives. Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage, if the maid is still in her service. And more than all, avoid the man who bears the same name as your own. Offend your best benefactor, if that benefactor's influence has connected you one with the other. Dessert the woman who loves you, if that woman is a link between you and him. Hide yourself from him under an assumed name. Put the mountains and the seas between you. Be ungrateful, be unforgiving. Be all that is most repellent to your own gentler nature, rather than live under the same roof, and breathe the same air with that man. Never let the two Alan Armadale's meet in this world. Never, never, never. After reading those sentences, he pushed the manuscript from him without looking up. The fatal reserve, which he had been in a fair way of conquering but a few minutes since, possessed itself of him once more. Again his eyes wandered, again his voice sank in tone. A stranger who had heard his story and who saw him now would have said, his look is lurking, his manner is bad, he is every inch of him his father's son. I have a question to ask you, said Mr. Brock, breaking the silence between them on his side. Why have you just read that passage in your father's letter? To force me into telling you the truth was the answer. You must know how much there is of my father and me before you trust me to be Mr. Armadale's friend. I got my letter yesterday in the morning. Some inner warning troubled me and I went down on the seashore by myself before I broke the seal. Do you believe the dead can come back to the world they once lived in? I believe my father came back in that bright morning light through the glare of that broad sunshine and the roar of that joyful sea and watched me while I read. When I got to the words that you have just heard and when I knew that the very end which he had died dreading was the end that had really come, I felt the horror that had crept over him in his last moments creeping over me. I struggled against myself as he would have had me struggle. I tried to be all that was most repellent to my own gentler nature. I tried to think pitilessly of putting the mountains and the seas between me and the man who bore my name. Hours passed before I could prevail on myself to go back and run the risk of meeting Alan Armadale in this house. When I did get back, and when he met me at night on the stairs, I thought I was looking him in the face as my father looked his father in the face when the cabin door closed between them. Draw your own conclusions, sir. Say if you like that the inheritance of my father's heathen belief in fate is one of the inheritances he has left to me. I won't dispute it. I won't deny that all through yesterday his superstition was my superstition. The night came before I could find my way to calmer and brighter thoughts. But I did find my way. You may set it down in my favor that I lifted myself at last above the influence of this horrible letter. Do you know what helped me? Did you reason with yourself? I can't reason about what I feel. Did you quiet your mind by prayer? I was not fit to pray. And yet something guided you to the better feeling and the truer view something did. What was it? My love for Alan Armadale. He cast a doubting, almost a timid look at Mr. Brock as he gave that answer and suddenly leaving the table went back to the window seat. Have I no right to speak of him in that way? He asked, keeping his face hidden from the rector. Have I not known him long enough? Have I not done enough for him yet? Remember what my experience of other men had been when I first saw his hand held out to me, when I first heard his voice speaking to me in my sick room? What had I known of strangers' hands all through my childhood? I had only known them as hands raised to threaten and to strike me. His hand put my pillow straight and patted me on the shoulder and gave me my food and drink. What had I known of other men's voices when I was growing up to be a man myself? I had only known them as voices that jeered, voices that cursed, voices that whispered in corners with a vile distrust. His voice said to me, Cheer up, midwinter. We'll soon bring you round again. You'll be strong enough in a week to go out for a drive with me in our summerset your lanes. Think of the gypsy stick. Think of the devils laughing at me when I went by their windows with my little dead dog in my arms. Think of the master who cheated me of my month's salary on his deathbed. And ask your own heart if the miserable wretch whom Alan Armedale has treated as his equal and his friend has said too much in saying that he loves him. I do love him. It will come out of me. I can't keep it back. I love the very ground he treads on. I would give my life, yes, the life that is precious to me now because his kindness has made it a happy one. I tell you, I would give my life. The next words died away on his lips. The hysterical passion rose and conquered him. He stretched out one of his hands with a wild gesture of entreaty to Mr. Brock. His head sank on the windowsill and he burst into tears. Even then, the hard discipline of the man's life asserted itself. He expected no sympathy. He counted on no merciful human respect for human weakness. The cruel necessity of self-suppression was present to his mind while the tears were pouring over his cheeks. Give me a minute, he said faintly. I'll fight it down in a minute. I won't distress you in this way again. True to his resolution, in a minute he had fought it down. In a minute more, he was able to speak calmly. We will get back, sir, to those better thoughts which have brought me from my room to yours, he resumed. I can only repeat that I should never have torn myself from the hold which this letter fastened on me if I had not loved Alan Armadale with all that I have in me of a brother's love. I said to myself, if the thought of leaving him breaks my heart, the thought of leaving him is wrong. That was some hour since and I am in the same mind still. I can't believe, I won't believe, that a friendship which has grown out of nothing but kindness on one side and nothing but gratitude on the other is destined to leave to an evil end. Judge, you who are a clergyman between the dead father whose word is in these pages and the living son whose word is now on his lips. What is it appointed me to do now that I am breathing the same air and living under the same roof with the son of the man whom my father killed? To perpetuate my father's crime by mortally injuring him or to atone for my father's crime by giving him the devotion of my whole life. The last of these two faiths is my faith and shall be my faith happen what may. In the strength of that better conviction I have come here to trust you with my father's secret and to confess the wretched story of my own life. In the strength of that better conviction I can face you resolutely with the one plain question which marks the one plain end of all that I have come here to say. Your pupil stands at the starting point of his new career in a position singularly friendless. His one great need is a companion of his own age on whom he can rely. The time has come sir to decide whether I am to be that companion or not. After all you have heard of Osias Midwinter tell me plainly will you trust him to be Alan Armadale's friend? Mr. Brock met that fearlessly frank question by a fearless frankness on his side. I believe you love Alan he said and I believe you have spoken the truth. A man who has produced that impression on me is a man whom I am bound to trust. I trust you. Midwinter started to his feet his dark face flushing deep his eyes fixed brightly and steadily at last on the rector's face. A light he exclaimed tearing the pages of his father's letter one by one from the fastening that held them let us destroy the last link that holds us to the horrible past let us see this confession a heap of ashes before we part wait said Mr. Brock before you burn it there is a reason for looking at it once more the parted leaves of the manuscript drop from Midwinter's hands Mr. Brock took them up and sorted them carefully until he found the last page I view your father's superstition as you view it said director but there is a warning given you here which you will do well for Alan's sake and for your own sake not to neglect the last link with the past will not be destroyed when you have burned these pages one of the actors in this story of treachery and murder is not dead yet read those words he pushed the page across the table with his finger on one sentence Midwinter's agitation misled him he mistook the indication and read avoid the widow of the man I killed if the widow still lives not that sentence said director the next Midwinter read it avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage if the maid is still in her service the maid in the mistress parted said Mr. Brock at the time of the mistress's marriage the maid in the mistress met again at Mrs. Armadale's residence in Somersetshire last year I myself met the woman in the village and I myself know that her visit hastened Mrs. Armadale's death wait a little and compose yourself I see I have startled you he waited as he was bid his color fading away to a gray paleness and the light in his clear brown eyes dying out slowly what the vector had said had produced no transient impression on him there was more than doubt there was alarm in his face as he sat lost in his own thought was the struggle of the past night renewing itself already did he feel the horror of his hereditary superstition creeping over him again can you put me on my guard against her he asked after a long interval of silence can you tell me her name I can only tell you what Mrs. Armadale told me answered Mr. Brock the woman acknowledged having been married in the long interval since she and her mistress had last met but not a word more escaped her about her past life she came to Mrs. Armadale to ask for money under a plea of distress she got the money and she left the house positively refusing when the question was put to her to mention her married name you saw her yourself in the village what was she like she kept her veil down I can't tell you you can tell me what you did see certainly I saw as she approached me that she moved very gracefully that she had a beautiful figure and that she was a little over the middle height I noticed when she asked me the way to Mrs. Armadale's house that her manner was the manner of a lady and that the tone of her voice was remarkably soft and winning lastly I remember afterwards that she wore a thick black veil a black bonnet a black silk dress and a red paisley shawl I feel all the importance of your possessing some better means of identifying her that I can give you but unhappily he stopped midwinter was leaning eagerly across the table at midwinter's hand was laid suddenly on his arm is it possible that you know the woman asked Mr. Brock surprised at the sudden change in his manner no what have I said then that has startled you so do you remember the woman who threw herself from the river steamer asked the other the woman who caused that succession of deaths which opened Alan Armadale's way to the Thorpe Ambrose estate I remember the description referring the police report answered the rector that woman pursued midwinter moved gracefully and had a beautiful figure that woman wore a black veil a black bonnet a black silk gown and a red paisley shawl he stopped released his hold of mr. Brock's arm and abruptly resumed his chair can it be the same he said to himself in a whisper is there a fatality that follows men in the dark and is it following us in that woman's footsteps if the conjecture was right the one event in the past which had appeared to be entirely disconnected with the events that had preceded it was on the contrary the one missing link which made the chain complete mr. Brock's comfortable common sense instinctively denied that startling conclusion he looked at midwinter with a compassionate smile my young friend he said kindly have you cleared your mind of all superstition as completely as you think is what you have just said worthy of the better resolution at which you arrived last night midwinter's head drooped on his breast the color rushed back over his face he sighed bitterly you are beginning to doubt my sincerity he said i can't blame you i believe in your sincerity as firmly as ever answered mr. Brock i only doubt whether you have fortified the weak places in your nature as strongly as you yourself suppose many a man has lost the battle against himself far oftener than you have lost it yet and has nevertheless won his victory in the end i don't blame you i don't distrust you i only notice what has happened to put you on your guard against yourself come come let your own better sense help you and you will agree with me that there is really no evidence to justify the suspicion that the woman whom i met in summer set sure and the woman who attempted suicide in london are one in the same need an old man like me remind a young man like you that there are thousands of women in england with beautiful figures thousands of women who are quietly dressed in black silk gowns and red paisley shawls midwinter caught eagerly at the suggestion too eagerly as if it might have occurred to a harder critic on humanity than mr. Brock you were quite right sir he said and i am quite wrong tens of thousands of women answer the description as you say i have been wasting time on my own idle fancies when i ought to have been carefully gathering up facts if this woman ever attempts to find her way to alan i must be prepared to stop her he began searching restlessly among the manuscript leaves scattered about the table paused over one of the pages and examined it attentively this helps me to something positive he went on this helps me to acknowledge of her age she was 12 at the time of mrs. armandale's marriage add a year and bring her to 13 add alan's age 22 and we make her a woman of five and 30 at the present time i know her age and i know that she has her own reasons for being silent about her married life this is something gained at the outset and it may lead in time to something more he looked up brightly again at mr. Brock am i in the right way now sir am i doing my best to profit by the caution which you have kindly given me you are vindicating your own better sense answer the rector encouraging him to trample down his own imagination with an englishman's ready distrust of the noblest of the human faculties you are paving the way for your own happier life am i said the other thoughtfully he searched among the papers once more and stopped at another of the scattered pages the ship he explained suddenly his color changing again and his manner altering on the instant what ship asked the rector the ship in which the deed was done midwinter answered with the first signs of impatience that he had shown yet the ship in which my father's murderous hand turned the lock of the cabin door what of it said mr. Brock he appeared not to hear the question his eyes remain fixed intently on the page that he was reading a french vessel employed in the timber trade he said still speaking to himself a french vessel named la grèce de dieu if my father's belief had been the right belief if the fatality had been following me step by step from my father's grave in one or another of my voyages i should have fallen in with that ship he looked up again at mr. Brock i am quite sure about it now he said those women are two and not one mr. Brock shook his head i'm glad you have come to that conclusion he said but i wish you had reached it in some other way midwinter started passionately to his feet and seizing on the pages of the manuscript with both hands flung them into the empty fireplace for god's sake let me burn it he exclaimed as long as there is a page left i shall read it and as long as i read it my father gets to better of me in spite of myself mr. Brock pointed to the matchbox in another moment the confession was in flames when the fire had consumed the last morsel of paper midwinter drew a deep breath of relief i may say like mcbeth why so being gone i am a man again he broke out with a feverish gait you look fatigued sir and no wonder he added in a lower tone i have kept you too long from your rest i will keep you no longer depend on my remembering what you have told me depend on my standing between alan and any enemy man or woman who comes near him thank you mr. Brock a thousand thousand times thank you i came into this room the most wretched of living men i can leave it now as happy as the birds that are singing outside as he turned to the door the rays of the rising sun streamed through the window and touched the heap of ashes lying black in the black fireplace the sensitive imagination of midwinter kindled instantly at the site look he said joyously the promise of the future shining over the ashes of the past an inexplicable pity for the man at the moment of his life when he needed pity least stole over the rector's heart when the door had closed and he was left by himself again poor fellow he said with an uneasy surprise at his own compassionate impulse poor fellow end of chapter two part two recording by alan winteroud boomcoach.blogspot.com