 Book the last Chapter 3 Part 4 of Armadale. She looked at him, deceived by the last man on earth whom she would have suspected of deception, the man whom she had deceived herself. You seem to be over-excited, she said quietly. The night has been too much for you. Go upstairs and rest. You will find the door of one of the rooms left open. That is the room you are to occupy. Good night. She put the candle which she had left burning for him on the table, and gave him her hand. He held her back by it desperately as she turned to leave him. His horror of what might happen when she was left by herself forced the words to his lips which he would have feared to speak to her at any other time. Don't, he pleaded in a whisper, oh, don't, don't, don't go downstairs tonight. She released her hand and signed to him to take the candle. You shall see me to-morrow, she said, not a word more now. Her stronger will conquered him at the last moment, as it had conquered him throughout. He took the candle and waited, following her eagerly with his eyes as she descended the stairs. The cold of the December night seemed to have found its way to her through the warmth of the house. She had put on a long, heavy black shawl, and had fastened it close over her breast. The plaited coronet in which she wore her hair seemed to have weighed too heavily on her head. She had untwisted it and thrown it back over her shoulders. The old man looked at her flowing hair as it lay red over the black shawl, at her supple long-fingered hand as it slid down the banisters. The smooth seductive grace of every movement that took her further and further away from him. The night will go quickly, he said to himself, as she passed from his view, I shall dream of her till morning comes. She secured the staircase door after she had passed through it, listened and satisfied herself that nothing was stirring, then went on slowly along the corridor to the window. Leaning on the window sill she looked out at the night. The clouds were over the moon at that moment. Nothing was to be seen through the darkness but the scattered gaslights in the suburb. Turning from the window she looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes past one. For the last time the resolution that had come to her or in the earlier night with the knowledge that her husband was in the house forced itself uppermost in her mind. For the last time the voice within her said, Think if there is no other way. She pondered over it till the minute hand of the clock pointed to the half hour. No, she said, still thinking of her husband. The one chance left is to go through with it to the end. He will leave the thing undone which he has come here to do. He will leave the words unspoken which he has come here to say. When he knows that the act may make me a public scandal and the words may send me to the scaffold. Her color rose and she smiled with terrible irony as she looked up for the first time at the door of the room. I shall be your widow, she said, in half an hour. She opened the case of the apparatus and took the purple flask in her hand. After marking the time by a glance at the clock she dropped into the glass funnel the first of six separate pourings that were measured for her by the paper slips. When she had put the flask back she listened at the mouth of the funnel. Not a sound reached her ear. The deadly process did its work in the silence of death itself. When she rose and looked up the moon was shining in at the window and the moaning wind was quiet. Oh, the time! The time! If it could only have begun and ended with the first pouring. She went downstairs into the hall. She walked to and fro and listened at the open door that led to the kitchen stairs. She came up again. She went down again. The first of the intervals of five minutes was endless. The time stood still. The suspense was maddening. The interval passed. As she took the flask for the second time and dropped in the second pouring the clouds floated over the moon and the night view through the window slowly darkened. The restlessness that had driven her up and down the stairs and backward and forward in the hall left her as suddenly as it had come. She waded through the second interval, leaning on the windowsill and staring, without conscious thought of any kind into the black night. The howling of a belated dog was born toward her on the wind at intervals from some distant part of the suburb. She found herself following the faint sound as it died away into silence with a dull attention and listening for its coming again with an expectation that was duller still. Her arms lay like lead on the windowsill. Her forehead rested against the glass without feeling the cold. It was not till the moon struggled out again that she was startled into sudden self-remembrance. She turned quickly and looked at the clock. Seven minutes had passed since the second pouring. As she snatched up the flask and fed the funnel for the third time the full consciousness of her position came back to her. The fever heat throbbed again in her blood and flushed fiercely in her cheeks. Swift, smooth, and noiseless she paced from end to end of the corridor with her arms folded in her shawl and her eye moment after moment on the clock. Three out of the next five minutes passed and again the suspense began to madden her. The space in the corridor grew too confined for the inimitable restlessness that possessed her limbs. She went down into the hall again and circled round and round it like a wild creature in a cage. At the third turn she felt something moving softly against her dress. The house cat had come up through the open kitchen door, a large, tawny, companionable cat that purred in high good temper and followed her for company. She took the animal up in her arms. It rubbed its sleek head luxuriously against her chin as she bent her face over it. Armadale hates cats, she whispered in the creature's ear. Come up and see Armadale killed. The next moment her own frightful fancy horrified her. She dropped the cat with a shutter. She drove it below again with threatening hands. For a moment after she stood still, then in headlong haste suddenly mounted the stairs. Her husband had forced his way back again into her thoughts. Her husband threatened her with a danger which had never entered her mind till now. What if he were not asleep? What if he came out upon her and found her with a purple flask in her hand? She stole to the door of number three and listened. The slow, regular breathing of a sleeping man was just audible. After waiting a moment to let the feeling of relief quiet her, she took a step toward number four and checked herself. It was needless to listen at that door. The doctor had told her that sleep came first as certainly is death afterward in the poisoned air. She looked aside at the clock. The time had come for the fourth pouring. Her hand began to tremble violently as she fed the funnel for the fourth time. The fear of her husband was back again in her heart. What if some noise disturbed him before the sixth pouring? What if he awoke on a sudden, as she had often seen him wake? Without any noise at all. She looked up and down the corridor. The end room in which Mr. Bashwood had been concealed offered itself to her as a place of refuge. I might go in there, she thought. Has he left the key? She opened the door to look and saw the handkerchief thrown down on the floor. Was it Mr. Bashwood's handkerchief left there by accident? She examined it at the corners. In the second corner she found her husband's name. Her first impulse hurried her to the staircase to rouse the steward and insist on an explanation. The next moment she remembered the purple flask and the danger of leaving the corridor. She turned and looked at the door of number three. Her husband, on the evidence of the handkerchief, had unquestionably been out of his room, and Mr. Bashwood had not told her. Was he in his room now? In the violence of her agitation, as the question passed through her mind, she forgot the discovery which she had herself made not a minute before. Again she listened at the door. Again she heard the slow, regular breathing of the sleeping man. The first time the evidence of her ears had been enough to quiet her. This time, in the tenfold aggravation of her suspicion and her alarm, she was determined to have the evidence of her eyes as well. All the doors opened softly in this house, she said to herself. There's no fear of my waking him. Noiselessly, by an inch at a time she opened the unlocked door and looked in the moment the aperture was wide enough. In the little light she had let into the room the sleeper's head was just visible on the pillow. Was it quite as dark against the white pillow as her husband's head looked when he was in bed? Was the breathing as light as her husband's breathing when he was asleep? She opened the door more widely and looked in by the clearer light. There lay the man whose life she had attempted for the third time, peacefully sleeping in the room that had been given to her husband and in the air that could harm nobody. The inevitable conclusion overwhelmed her on the instant. With a frantic upward action of her hands she staggered back into the passage. The door of Alan's room fell too, but not noiselessly enough to wake him. She turned as she heard it close. For one moment she stood staring at it like a woman stupefied. The next, her instinct rushed into action before her reason recovered itself. In two steps she was at the door of number four. The door was locked. She felt over the wall with both hands wildly and clumsily for the button which she had seen the doctor press when he was showing the room to the visitors. Twice she missed it. The third time her eyes helped her hands. She found the button and pressed on it. The mortise of the lock inside fell back and the door yielded to her. Without an instant's hesitation she entered the room. Though the door was open, though so short a time had elapsed since the fourth pouring, that but little more than half the contemplated volume of gas had been produced as yet, the poisoned air seized her, like the grasp of a hand at her throat, like the twisting of a wire around her head. She found him on the floor at the foot of the bed. His head and one arm were toward the door as if he had risen under the first feeling of drowsiness and had sunk in the effort to leave the room. With the desperate concentration of strength of which women are capable in emergencies, she lifted him and dragged him out into the corridor. Her brain reeled as she laid him down and crawled back on her knees to the room to shut out the poisoned air from pursuing them into the passage. After closing the door she waited, without daring to look at him the while, for strength enough to rise and get to the window over the stairs. When the window was opened, when the keen air of the early winter morning blew steadily in, she ventured back to him and raised his head and looked for the first time closely at his face. Was it death that spread the livid pallor over his forehead and his cheeks and the dull leaden hue on his eyelids and his lips? She loosened his cravat and opened his waistcoat and bared his throat and breast to the air, with her hand on his heart, with her bosom supporting his head, so that he fronted the window she waited the event. A time passed, a short time enough to be reckoned by minutes on the clock, and yet long enough to take her memory back over all her married life with him, long enough to mature the resolution that now rose in her mind as the one result that would come of the retrospect. As her eyes rested on him, a strange composure settled slowly on her face. She bore the look of a woman who was equally resigned to welcome the chance of his recovery or to accept the certainty of his death. Not a cry or a tear had escaped her yet. Not a cry or a tear escaped her when the interval had passed, and she felt the first faint fluttering of his heart and she heard the first faint catching of the breath of his lips. She silently bent over him and kissed his forehead. When she looked up again, the hard despair had melted from her face. There was something softly radiant in her eyes which led her whole countenance as with an inner light and made her womanly and lovely once more. She laid him down and, taking off her shawl, made a pillow of it to support his head. It might have been hard, love, she said, as she felt the faint pulsation strengthening in his heart. You have made it easy now. She rose and, turning from him, noticed the purple flask in the place where she had left it since the fourth pouring. Ah, she thought quietly, I had forgotten my best friend. I had forgotten that there is more to pour in yet. With a steady hand, with a calm, attentive face, she fed the funnel for the fifth time. Five minutes more, she said, when she had put the flask back after a look at the clock. She fell into thought, thought that only deepened the grave and gentle composure of her face. Shall I write him a farewell word, she asked herself? Shall I tell him the truth before I leave him forever? Her little gold pencil case hung with the other toys at her watch chain. After looking about her for a moment, she knelt over her husband and put her hand into the breast pocket of his coat. His pocket book was there. Some papers fell from it as she unfastened the clasp. One of them was the letter which had come to him from Mr. Brock's deathbed. She turned over the two sheets of note paper on which the rector had written the words that had now come true, and found the last page of the last sheet a blank. On that page she wrote her farewell words, kneeling at her husband's side. I am worse than the worst you can think of me. You have saved Armadale by changing rooms with him tonight, and you have saved him from me. You can guess now whose widow I should have claimed to be if you had not preserved his life, and you will know what a wretch you married when you married the woman who writes these lines. Still, I had some innocent moments, and then I loved you dearly. Forget me, my darling, in the love of a better woman than I am. I might perhaps have been that better woman myself if I had not lived a miserable life before you met with me. It matters little now. The one atonement I can make for all the wrong I have done you is the atonement of my death. It is not hard for me to die. Now I know you will live. Even my wickedness has won merit. It has not prospered. I have never been a happy woman. She folded the letter again and put it into his hand to attract his attention in that way when he came to himself. As she gently closed his fingers on the paper and looked up, the last minute of the last interval phased her, recorded on the clock. She bent over him and gave him her farewell kiss. Live, my angel, live, she murmured tenderly, with her lips just touching his. All your life is before you, a happy life and an honored life if you are free from me. With the last lingering tenderness she parted the hair back from his forehead. It is no merit to have loved you, she said. You are one of the men whom women all like. She sighed and left him. It was her last weakness. She bent her head affirmatively to the clock, as if it had been a living creature speaking to her, and fed the funnel for the last time, to the last drop left in the flask. The waning moon shone in faintly at the window. With her hand on the door of the room she turned and looked at the light that was slowly fading out of the murky sky. Oh, God, forgive me, she said. Oh, Christ, bear witness that I have suffered. One moment more she lingered on the threshold, lingered for her last look in this world, and turned that look on him. Goodbye, she said softly. The door of the room opened and closed on her. There was an interval of silence. Then a sound came, dull and sudden, like the sound of a fall. Then there was silence again. The hands of the clock, following their steady course, reckoned the minutes of the morning as one by one they lapsed away. It was the tenth minute since the door of the room had opened and closed before midwinter stirred on his pillow, and struggling to raise himself felt the letter in his hand. At the same moment a key was turned in the staircase door, and the doctor, looking expectantly toward the fatal room, saw the purple flask on the windowsill and the prostrate man trying to raise himself from the floor. End of Book The Last, Chapter 3. Epilogue, Chapter 1 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. Keep Recording by Michael Anthony Petronic. One News from Norfolk. From Mr. Pedgif Sr. Thorpe Ambrose to Mr. Pedgif Jr. Paris. High Street, December 20th. My dear Augustus, your letter reached me yesterday. You seem to be meeting the most of your youth, as you call it, with a vengeance. Well, enjoy your holiday. I made the most of my youth when I was your age, and wonderful to relate. I haven't forgotten it yet. You asked me for a good budget of news, and especially for more information about that mysterious business at the Sanitarium. Curiosity, my boy, is a quality which, in our profession especially, sometimes leads to great results. I doubt, however, if you will find it leading to much on this occasion. All I know of the mystery of the Sanitarium I know from Mr. Armadale, and he is entirely in the dark on more than one point of importance. I have already told you how they were entrapped into the house, and how they passed the night there. To this I can now add that something did certainly happen to Mr. Midwinter, which deprived him of consciousness, and that the doctor, who appears to have been mixed up in the matter, carried things with a high hand and insisted on taking his own course in his own Sanitarium. There is not the least doubt that the miserable woman, however she might have come by her death, was found dead, that a coroner's inquest inquired into the circumstances, that evidence showed her to have entered the house as a patient, and that the medical investigation ended in discovering she had died of apoplexy. My idea is that Mr. Midwinter had a motive of his own for not coming forward with the evidence that he might have given. I have also reasoned to suspect that Mr. Armadale, out of regard for him, followed his lead and that the verdict at the inquest, attaching no blame to anybody, proceeded, like many other verdicts of the same kind, from an entirely superficial investigation of the circumstances. The key to the whole mystery is to be found, I firmly believe, in that wretched woman's attempt to personate the character of Mr. Armadale's widow when the news of his death appeared in the papers. But what first set her on this, and by what inconceivable process of deception, she can have induced Mr. Midwinter to marry her, as the certificate proves, under Mr. Armadale's name, is more than Mr. Armadale himself knows. The point was not touched at the inquest, for the simple reason that the inquest only concerned itself with the circumstances attending her death. Mr. Armadale, at his friend's request, saw Miss Blanchard and induced her to silence Old Dark on the subject of the claim that had been made relating to the widow's income. As the claim had never been admitted, even our stiff-necked brother practitioner consented for once to do as he was asked. The doctor's statement that his patient was the widow of a gentleman named Armadale was accordingly left unchallenged, and so the matter has been hushed up. She is buried in the Great Cemetery in either place where she died. Nobody but Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Armadale, who insisted on going with him, followed her to the grave, and nothing has been inscribed on the tombstone, but the initial letter of her Christian name and the date of her death. So after all the harm she has done, she rests at last, and so the two men whom she has injured have forgiven her. Is there more to say on this subject before we leave it? I'm referring to your letter. I find you have raised one other point, which may be worth a moment's notice. You ask if there is reason to suppose that the doctor comes out of the matter with hands which are really as clean as they look. My dear Augustus, I believe the doctor who have been at the bottom of more of this mischief than we shall ever find out, and to have profited by the self-imposed silence of Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Armadale, as rogues perpetually profit by the misfortunes and necessities of honest men. It is an ascertained fact that he connived the false statement about Miss Milroy, which entrapped the two gentlemen into his house, and that one circumstance, after my old, brilliant experience, is enough for me. As to evidence against him, there is not a jot. And as to retribution overtaking him, I can only say I hardly hope retribution may prove in the long run to be the more cunning customer of the two. There is not much prospect of it at present. The doctor's friends and admirers are, I understand, about to present him with a testimonial, expressive of their sympathy under the sad occurrence, which has thrown a cloud over the opening of his sanitarium, and of their undiminished confidence in his integrity and ability as a medical man. We live, Augustus, in an age eminently favorable to the growth of all roguery, which is careful enough to keep up appearances. In this enlightened 19th century, I look upon the doctor as one of our rising men. To turn now to pleasanter subjects than sanitariums, I may tell you that Miss Neely is as good as well again, and is, in my humble opinion, prettier than ever. She is staying in London under the care of a female relative, and Mr. Armadale satisfies her of the fact of his existence in case she should forget it, regularly every day. They are to be married in the spring, unless Miss Milroy's death causes a ceremony to be postponed. The medical men are of opinion that the poor lady is singing at last. It may be a question of weeks or a question of months. They can say no more. She is greatly altered, quiet and gentle, and anxiously affectionate with her husband and her child. But in her case, this happy change is, it seems, a sign of approaching disillusion from the medical point of view. There is a difficulty in making the poor old major understand this. He only sees that she has gone back to the likeness of her brother self when he first married her, and he sits for hours by her bedside now and tells her about his wonderful clock. Mr. Midwinter, of whom you will next expect me to say something, is improving rapidly. After causing some anxiety at first to the medical men, who declared that he was suffering from a serious nervous shock, produced by circumstances about which their patient's obstinate silence kept them quite in the dark, he has rallied as only men of sensitive temperament to quote the doctors again, can rally. He and Mr. Armadil are together in a quiet lodging. I saw him last week when I was in London. His face showed signs of wear and tear, very sad to see, and so young a man. But he spoke of himself and his future with a courage and hopefulness, which men of twice his years, if he has suffered as I suspect him to have suffered, might have envied. If I know anything about humanity, this is no common man, and we shall hear of him yet in no common way. You will wonder how I came to be in London. I went up with a return ticket from Saturday to Monday, above that matter in dispute at our agents. We had a tough fight, but curiously enough, a point occurred to me just as I got up to go. And I went back to my chair and settled the question in no time. Of course, I stayed at our hotel in Covent Garden. William, the waiter, asked after you with an affection of a father, and Matilda, the chambermaid, said you almost persuaded her that last time to have that hollow tooth taken out of her lower jaw. I had the agent's second son, the younger chap you nicknamed Mustafa, when he made that dreadful mess about the Turkish securities to dine with me on Sunday. A little incident happened in the evening which may be worth recording as it connected itself with a certain old lady who was not at home when you and Mr. Armadale blundered on that house in Pimlet Coal in the bygone time. Mustafa was like all the rest of young men of the present day. He got restless after dinner. Let's go to a public amusement, Mr. Pedgift says he, public amusement, it's Sunday evening, says I. All right, sir, says Mustafa. They stop acting on stage. I grant you on Sunday evening, but they don't stop acting in the pulpit. Come and see the latest new Sunday performer of our time. As he wouldn't have any more wine, there was nothing else left but to go. We went to a street at the West End and found it blocked up with carriages. If it hadn't been Sunday night, I should have thought we were going to the opera. What did I tell you, says Mustafa, taking me up to an open door with a gas star outside and a bill of the performance. I had just time to notice that I was going to one of a series of Sunday evening discourses on the poms and vanities of the world by a sinner who has served them. When Mustafa jogged my elbow and whispered, half a crown is a fashionable tip. I found myself between two demirer and silent gentleman with plates in their hands, uncommonly well filled already with the fashionable tip. Mustafa patronized one plate and I the other. We passed through two doors into a long room, crammed with people, and there, on a platform at the further end, holding forth to the audience was not a man, as I had expected, but a woman, and that woman, mother older Shah. You never listened to anything more eloquent in your life. As long as I heard her, she was never once at a loss for a word anywhere. I shall think less of oratory as a human accomplishment for the rest of my days after that Sunday evening. As for the matter of the sermon, I may describe it as a narrative of Mrs. Older Shah's experience among dilapidated women, profusely illustrated in the pious and penitential style. You will ask what sort of audience it was, principally women, Augustus, and as I hope to be saved all the old heritons of the world of fashion whom Mother Older Shah had enameled her in her time, sitting boldly in the front places, with her cheeks ruddled with paint in a state of devout enjoyment, wonderful to see. I left Mustafa to hear the end of it, and I thought to myself, as I went out, of what Shakespeare says somewhere, Lord, what fools we mortals be. Have I anything more to tell you before I leave off? Only one thing that I can remember, that wretched old Bashwood has confirmed the fears I told you I had about him when he was brought back here from London. There is no kind of doubt that he has really lost all the little reason he ever had. He is perfectly harmless and perfectly happy, and he would do very well if we could only prevent him from going out in his latest new suit of clothes, smirking and smiling and inviting everybody to his approaching marriage with the handsomest of women in England. It ends, of course, in the boys pelting him, and in his coming over here, crying to be covered with mud. The moment his clothes are cleaned again, he falls back into his favorite delusion and struts about before the church gates in the character of a bridegroom waiting for Miss Guilt. We must get the poor wretch taking care of somewhere for the rest of the little time he has to live. Who would ever have thought of a man at his age falling in love? And who would ever have believed that the mischief that woman's beauty has done could have reached as far in the downward direction as our super-annudated old clerk? Goodbye for the present, my dear boy. If you see a particularly handsome snuff box in Paris, remember, though your father's scorned testimonials, he doesn't object to receive a present from his son. Yours affectionately, a pet gift senior. Post script. I think it likely that the account you mentioned in the French papers of a fatal quarrel among some foreign sailors in one of the La Prairie Islands and of the death of their captain, among others, may really have been a quarrel among the scoundrels who robbed Mr. Armadale and scuttled his yacht. Those fellows, luckily for society, can't always keep up appearances, and in their case, rogues and retribution do occasionally come into collision with each other. End of Epilogue, Chapter One. Recording by Michael Anthony Petronic, www.voiceoftemptation.biz. Epilogue, Chapter Two 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 Bridget. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Epilogue, Chapter Two, Midwinter. The spring had advanced to the end of April. It was the eve of Ellen's wedding day. Midwinter and he had sat talking together at the great house till far into the night, till so far that it had struck twelve long since, and the wedding day was already some hours old. For the most part the conversation had turned on the bridegroom's plans and projects. It was not till the two friends rose to go to rest that Ellen insisted on making Midwinter speak of himself. We have had enough and more than enough of my future, he began, in his bluntly straightforward way. Let's say something now, Midwinter, about yours. You have promised me, I know, that if you take to literature, it shan't part us, and that if you go on a sea voyage, you will remember when you come back that my house is your home. But this is the last chance we have of being together in our old way, and I own I should like to know. His voice faltered and his eyes moistened a little. He left the sentence unfinished. Midwinter took his hand and helped him, as he had often helped him to the words that he wanted in the bygone time. You would like to know, Ellen, he said, that I shall not bring an aching heart with me to your wedding-day. If you will let me go back for a moment to the past, I think I can satisfy you. They took their chairs again. Ellen saw that Midwinter was moved. Why distress yourself, he asked kindly. Why go back to the past? For two reasons, Ellen. I ought to have thanked you long since for the silence you have observed, for my sake, on a matter that must have seemed very strange to you. You know what the name is which appears on the register of my marriage, and yet you have foreborn to speak of it, from the fear of distressing me. Before you enter on your new life, let us come to a first and last understanding about this. I ask you, as one more kindness to me, to accept my assurance, strange as a thing may seem to you, that I am blameless in this matter, and I entreat you to believe that the reasons I have for leaving it unexplained are reasons which, if Mr. Brock was living, Mr. Brock himself would approve. In those words he kept the secret of the two names, and left the memory of Ellen's mother, what he had found it, a sacred memory in the heart of her son. One word more, he went on, a word which will take us this time, from past to future. It has been said, and truly said, that out of evil may come good. Out of the horror and the misery of that night you know of has come the silencing of a doubt, which once made my life miserable, with groundless anxiety about you and about myself. No clouds raised by my superstition will ever come between us again. I can't honestly tell you that I am more willing now than I was when we were in the Isle of Man to take what is called the rational view of your dream. Though I know what extraordinary coincidences are perpetually happening in the experience of all of us, still I cannot accept coincidences as explaining the fulfillment of the visions which our own eyes have seen. All I can sincerely say for myself is what I think it will satisfy you to know, that I have learned to view the purpose of the dream with a new mind. I once believed that it was sent to rouse your distrust of the friendless man whom you had taken as a brother to your heart. I now know that it came to you as a timely warning to take him closer still. Does this help to satisfy you that I too am standing hopefully on the brink of a new life and that while we live, brother, your love and mine will never be divided again? They shook hands in silence. Ellen was the first to recover himself. He answered in the few words of kindly assurance which were the best words that he could address to his friend. I have heard all I ever want to hear about the past, he said, and I know what I most wanted to know about the future. Everybody says, Midwinter, you have a career before you and I believe that everybody is right. Who knows what great things may happen before you and I are many years older? Who need to know, said Midwinter calmly, happen what may, God is all merciful, God is all wise, and those words your dear old friend once wrote to me and that faith I can look back without murmuring at the years that are past and can look on without doubting to the years that are to come. He rose and walked to the window. While they had been speaking together, the darkness had passed. The first flight of the new day met him as he looked out and rested tenderly on his face. End of chapter two. Appendix to 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 Martin Geeson. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Appendix. Note, my readers will perceive that I have purposely left them with reference to the dream in this story in the position which they would occupy in the case of a dream in real life. They are free to interpret it by the natural or the supernatural theory as the bent of their own minds may incline them. Persons disposed to take the rational view may under these circumstances be interested in hearing of a coincidence relating to the present story which actually happened and which in the matter of extravagant improbability sets anything of the same kind that a novelist could imagine had flat defiance. In November, 1865, that is to say when 13 monthly parts of Armadale had been published and I may add when more than a year and a half had elapsed since the end of my story, as it now appears, was first sketched in my notebook, a vessel lay in the huskies and dock at Liverpool which was looked after by one man who slept on board in the capacity of shipkeeper. On a certain day in the week, this man was found dead in the deck house. On the next day, a second man who had taken his place was carried dying to the northern hospital. On the third day, a third shipkeeper was appointed and was found dead in the deck house which had already proved fatal to the other two. The name of that ship was the Armadale and the proceedings at the inquest proved that the three men had been all suffocated by sleeping in poisoned air. I'm indebted for these particulars to the kindness of the reporters at Liverpool who sent me their statement of the facts. The case found its way into most of the newspapers. It was noticed to give two instances in which I can cite the dates in the times of November the 30th, 1865 and was more fully described in the daily news of November the 28th in the same year. Before taking leave of Armadale, I may perhaps be allowed to mention for the benefit of any readers who may be curious on such points that the Norfolk Broads are here described after personal investigation of them. In this, as in other cases, I have spared no pains to instruct myself on matters of fact. Wherever the story touches on questions connected with law, medicine or chemistry, it has been submitted before publication to the experience of professional men. The kindness of a friend supplied me with a plan of the doctor's apparatus and I saw the chemical ingredients at work before I ventured on describing the action of them in the closing scenes of this book. End of appendix. End of Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmeyer Surrey.