 Book the last chapter 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 Nadine Kurt Boulet. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 2. In the House Noticing Mr. Bashford's confusion. The woman's glance at the change in his personal appearance. Midwinter spoke first. I see I have surprised you, he said. You are looking, I suppose, for somebody else? Have you heard from Alan? Is he on his way home again already? The inquiry about Alan, though it would naturally have suggested itself to anyone in midwinter's position at that moment, added to Mr. Bashford's confusion. Not knowing how else to extricate himself from the critical position in which he was placed, he took refuge in simple denial. I know nothing about Mr. Armadale. Oh, dear, no, sir. I know nothing about Mr. Armadale, he answered, with needless eagerness and hurry. Welcome back to England, sir, he went on, changing the subject in his nervously talkative manner. I didn't know you had been a brood. It's so long since we have had the pleasure, since I have had the pleasure. Have you enjoyed yourself, sir, in foreign parts? Such different manners from ours. Yes, yes, yes, such different manners from ours. Do you make a long stay in England, now you have come back? I hardly know, said Midwinter. I have been obliged to alter my plans and to come to England unexpectedly. He hesitated a little. His manner changed, and he added, in lower tones, a serious anxiety has brought me back. I can't say what my plans will be until that anxiety is set at rest. The light of a lamp fell on his face while he spoke, and Mr. Bashford observed, for the first time, that he looked slightly worn and changed. I'm sorry, sir. I'm sure I'm very sorry. If I could be of any use, suggested Mr. Bashford, speaking under the influence in some degree of his nervous politeness and in some degree of his remembrance of what Midwinter had done for him at Thorpe Ambrose in the bygone time. Midwinter thanked him and turned away sadly. I am afraid you can be of no use, Mr. Bashford, but I am obliged to you for your offer, all the same. He stopped and considered a little. Suppose she should not be ill? Suppose some misfortune should have happened? He resumed, speaking to himself, and turning again toward the steward. If she has left her mother, some trace of her might be found by inquiring at Thorpe Ambrose. Mr. Bashford's curiosity was instantly aroused. The whole sex was interesting to him now for the sake of Miss Guilt. A lady, sir, he inquired. Are you looking for a lady? I am looking, said Midwinter simply, for my wife. Married, sir, exclaimed Mr. Bashford, married since I last had the pleasure of seeing you. Might I take the liberty of asking? Midwinter's eyes dropped uneasily to the ground. You knew the lady in former times, he said. I have married Miss Guilt. The steward started back as he might have started back from a loaded pistol leveled at his head. His eyes glared as if he had suddenly lost his senses, and the nervous trembling to which he was subject shook him from head to foot. What's the matter? said Midwinter. There was no answer. What is there so very startling, he went on, impatiently, in Miss Guilt's being my wife. Your wife? repeated Mr. Bashford helplessly. Mrs. Armadale? He checked himself by a desperate effort and said no more. The stupor of astonishment which possessed the steward was instantly reflected in Midwinter's face. The name in which he had secretly married his wife had passed the lips of the last man in the world whom he would have dreamed of admitting into his confidence. He took Mr. Bashford by the arm and led him away to a quieter part of the terminus than the part of it in which they had hit her to spoken to each other. You referred to my wife just now, he said, and you spoke of Mrs. Armadale in the same breath. What do you mean by that? Again there was no answer. He was utterly incapable of understanding more than that he had involved himself in some serious complication which was a complete mystery to him. Mr. Bashford struggled to extricate himself from the grasp that was laid on him and struggled in vain. Midwinter sternly repeated the question. I ask you again, he said, what do you mean by it? Nothing, sir, I give you my word of honour, I meant nothing. He found the hand on his arm tightening its grasp. He saw, even in the obscurity of the remote corner in which they stood, that Midwinter's fiery temper was rising and was not to be trifled with. The extremity of his danger inspired him with the one ready capacity that a timid man possesses when he is compelled by main force to face an emergency, the capacity to lie. I only meant to say, sir, he burst out with a desperate effort to look and speak confidently, that Mr. Armadale would be surprised, you said Mrs. Armadale. No, sir, on my word of honour, on my sacred word of honour, you are mistaken, you are indeed. I said Mr. Armadale, how could I say anything else? Please to let me go, sir, I am pressed for time. I do assure you I am dreadfully pressed for time. For a moment longer Midwinter maintained his hold and in that moment he decided what to do. He had accurately stated his motive for returning to England as proceeding from anxiety about his wife, anxiety naturally caused after the regular receipt of a letter from her every other or every third day by the sudden cessation of the correspondence between them on her side for a whole week. The first vaguely terrible suspicion of some other reason for her silence than the reason of accident or of illness to which he had hit or to attributed it had struck through him like a sudden chill. The instant he heard the two would associate the name of Mrs. Armadale with the idea of his wife. Little irregularities in her correspondence with him, which he had thus far only thought strange, now came back on his mind and proclaimed themselves to be suspicions as well. He had hit or to believe the reasons she had given for referring him when he answered her letters to no more definite address than an address at a post office. Now he suspected her reasons of being excuses for the first time. He had hit or to resolved, on reaching London, to inquire at the only place he knew of at which a clue to her could be found, the address she had given him as the address at which her mother lived. Now, with the motive which he was afraid to define even to himself but which was strong enough to overbear every other consideration in his mind, he determined, before all things, to solve the mystery of Mr. Bashwood's familiarity with a secret which was a marriage secret between himself and his wife. Any direct appeal to a man of the Stuart's disposition in the Stuart's present state of mind would be evidently useless. The weapon of deception was, in this case, a weapon literally forced into Midwinter's hands. He let go of Mr. Bashwood's arm and accepted Mr. Bashwood's explanation. I beg your pardon, he said, I have no doubt your right. Pray attribute my rudeness to over anxiety and over fatigue. I wish you good evening. The station was by this time almost a solitude, the passengers by the train being assembled at the examination of the luggage in the custom house waiting room. It was no easy matter ostensibly to take leave of Mr. Bashwood and really to keep him in view. But Midwinter's early life with the Gypsy master had been of a nature to practice him in such stratagems as he was now compelled to adopt. He walked away toward the waiting room by the line of empty carriages, opened the door of one of them as if to look after something that he had left behind, and detected Mr. Bashwood making for the cab rank on the opposite side of the platform. In an instant Midwinter had crossed and had passed through the long row of vehicles so as to skirt it on the side furthest from the platform. He entered the second cab by the left-hand door the moment after Mr. Bashwood had entered the first cab by the right-hand door. Double your fare, whatever it is, he said to the driver, if you keep the cab before you in view and follow it wherever it goes. In a minute more both vehicles were on their way out of the station. The clerk sat in the sentry box of the gate taking down the destinations of the cabs as they passed. Midwinter heard the man who was driving him call out, Hamstead, as he went by the clerk's window. Why did you say Hamstead? he asked when they had left the station. Because the man before me said Hamstead, sir, answered the driver. Over and over again on the wearisome journey to the northwestern Serbup Midwinter asked if the cab was still inside. Over and over again the man answered, right in front of us. It was between nine and ten o'clock when the driver pulled up his holes at last. Midwinter got out and saw the cab before them waiting at a house door. As soon as he had satisfied himself that the driver was the man whom Mr. Bashwood had hired he paid the promised reward and dismissed his own cab. He took a turn backward and forward before the door. The vaguely terrible suspicion which had risen in his mind at the terminus had forced itself by this time into a definite form which was apparent to him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it he found himself blindly distrusting his wife's fidelity and blindly suspecting Mr. Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror of his own morbid fancy he determined to take down the number of the house and the name of the street in which it stood and then, in justice to his wife to return at once to the address which he had given him as the address at which her mother lived. He had taken out his pocketbook and taken his way to the corner of the street when he observed the man who had driven Mr. Bashwood looking at him with an expression of inquisitive surprise. The idea of questioning the cab driver while he had the opportunity instantly occurred to him. He took a half-crown from his pocket and put it into the man's ready hand. "'Has the gentleman whom you drove from the station gone into that house?' he asked. "'Did you hear him inquire for anybody when the door was opened?' "'He asked for a lady, sir. Mrs.' the man hesitated. "'It wasn't a common name, sir. I should know it again if I heard it.' "'Was it midwinter?' "'No, sir.' "'Armedale?' "'That's it, sir. Mrs. Armadale.' "'Are you sure it was Mrs. and not Mr.' "'I am as sure as a man can be who hasn't taken any particular notice, sir.' The doubt implied in that last answer decided midwinter to investigate the murder on the spot. He ascended the house steps. As he raised his hand to the bell at the side of the door the violence of his agitation mastered him physically for the moment. A strange sensation as of something leaping up from his heart to his brain turned his head widely giddy. He held back the house ratings and kept his face to the air and resolutely waited till he was steady again. Then he rang the bell. "'Is?' he tried to ask from Mrs. Armadale when the maid servant had opened the door but not even his resolution could force the name to pass his lips. "'Is your mistress at home?' he asked. "'Yes, sir.' The girl showed him into a back parlor and presented him to a little old lady with an obliging manner and a bright pair of eyes. "'There is some mistake,' said midwinter. "'I wish to see.' Once more he tried to utter the name and once more he failed to force it to his lips. "'Mrs. Armadale?' suggested the little old lady with a smile. "'Yes.' "'Shall the gentleman upstairs, Jenny?' The girl led the way to the drawing-room floor. "'Any names, sir?' "'No name.' Mr. Bashwood had barely completed his report of what had happened at the terminus. Mr. Bashwood's imperious mistress was still sitting speechless under the shock of the discovery that had burst on her when the door of the room opened and, without a word of warning to proceed him, midwinter appeared on the threshold. He took one step into the room and mechanically pushed the door too behind him. He stood in dead silence and confronted his wife with a scrutiny that was terrible in its unnatural self-possession and that enveloped her steadily in one comprehensive look from head to foot. In dead silence on her side, she rose from her chair. In dead silence she stood erect on the hall-thrug and faced her husband in widow's weeds. He took one step nearer to her and stopped again. He lifted his hand and pointed with his lean brown finger at her dress. "'What does that mean?' he asked, without losing his terrible self-possession and without moving his outstretched hand. At the sound of his voice, the quick rise and fall of her bosom, which had been the one outward betrayal thus far of the inner agony that tortured her, suddenly stopped. She stood impenetrably silent, breathlessly still as if his question had struck her dead and his pointing hand had petrified her. He advanced one step nearer and reiterated his words in a voice even lower and quieter than the voice in which he had spoken first. One moment more of silence, one moment more of inaction, might have been the salvation of her. But the fatal force of her character triumphed at the crisis of her destiny and his. Wide and still and haggard and old, she met the dreadful emergency with the dreadful courage and spoke the irrevocable words which renounced him to his face. "'Mr. Midwinter,' she said, in tones unnaturally hard and unnaturally clear, our quaintance hardly entitles you to speak to me in that manner.' Those were her words. She never lifted her eyes from the ground while she spoke them. When she had done, the last faint vestige of color in her cheeks faded out. There was a pause. Still steadily looking at her, he said himself to fix the language she had used to him in his mind. "'She calls me Mr. Midwinter,' he said slowly in a whisper. "'She speaks of our quaintance.' He waited a little and looked round the room. He's wondering eyes encountered Mr. Bashwood for the first time. He saw those two words standing near the fireplace, trembling and watching him. "'I once did your service,' he said, and you once told me you were not an ungrateful man. "'Are you grateful enough to answer me if I ask you something?' He waited a little again. Mr. Bashwood still stood trembling at the fireplace, silently watching him. "'I see you looking at me,' he went on. "'Is there some change in me that I am not conscious of myself? "'Am I seeing things that you don't see? "'Am I hearing words that you don't hear? "'Am I looking or speaking like a man out of his senses?' Again he waited and again the silence was unbroken. His eyes began to glitter and the savage blood that he had inherited from his mother rose dark and slow in his ashy cheeks. "'Is that woman?' he asked. "'The woman whom you once knew, whose name was Miss Gweld?' Once more his wife collected her fatal courage. Once more his wife spoke her fatal words. "'You compare me to repeat,' she said. "'That you are presuming on our acquaintance and that you are forgetting what is due to me.' He turned upon her with a savage suddenness which falls to cry of alarm for Mr. Bashwood's lips. "'Are you or are you not my wife?' he asked through his said teeth. She raised her eyes to his for the first time. Her lost spirit looked at him, steadily defiant, out of the hell of its own despair. "'I am not your wife,' she said. He staggered back, with his hands groping for something to hold by, like the hands of a man in the dark. He leaned heavily against the wall of the room and looked at the woman who had slept on his bosom and who had denied him to his face. Mr. Bashwood stole panic-stricken to her side. "'Go in there,' he whispered, trying to draw her toward the folding doors which led him to the next room. "'For God's sake, be quick. He'll kill you.' She put the old man back with her hand. She looked at him with a sudden irradiation of a blank face. She answered him with lips that struggled slowly into a frightful smile. "'Let him kill me,' she said. As the words passed her lips, he sprang forward from the wall with a cry that rang through the house. The frenzy of a maddened man flashed at her from his glassy eyes and clutched at her in his threatening hands. He came on till he was within arm's length of her and suddenly stood still. The black flush died out of his face in the instant when he stopped. His eyelids fell. His outstretched hands wavered and sank helpless. He dropped as the dead drop. He lay as the dead lie in the arms of the wife who had denied him. She knelt on the floor and rested his head on her knee. She cut the arm of the steward hurrying to help her with a hand that closed round it like a vice. "'Go for a doctor,' she said, and keep the people of the house away till he comes. There was that in her eye, there was that in her voice, which would have warned any man living to obey her in silence. In silence Mr. Bashwood submitted and hurried out of the room. The instant she was alone she raised him from her knee. With both arms clasped round him the miserable woman lifted his lifeless face to hers and rocked him on her bosom in an agony of tenderness beyond all relief in tears, in a passion of remorse beyond all expression in words. In silence she held him to her breast. In silence she devoured his forehead, his cheeks, his lips with kisses. Not a sound escaped her till she heard the trembling footsteps outside hurrying up the stairs. Then a low moan burst from her lips as she looked her last at him and lowered his head again to her knee before the strangers came in. The landlady and the steward were the first persons whom she saw when the door was opened. The medical man, a surgeon living in the street, followed. The horror and the beauty of her face as she looked up at him absorbed the surgeon's attention for the moment to the exclusion of everything else. She had to beckon to him. She had to point to the senseless man before she could claim his attention for his patient and divert it from herself. Is he dead? she asked. The surgeon carried midwinter to the sofa and ordered the windows to be opened. It was a fainting fit, he said, nothing more. At that answer her strength failed her for the first time. She drew a deep breath of relief and leaned on the chimney piece for support. Mr. Bashwood was the only person present who noticed that she was overcome. He led her to the opposite end of the room where there was an easy chair, leaving the landlady to hand the restoratives to the surgeon as they were wanted. Are you going to wait here till he recovers? whispered the steward, looking toward the sofa and trembling as he looked. The question forced her to her sense of her position to a knowledge of the most senseless necessities which that position now forced her to confront. With a heavy sigh she looked toward the sofa considered with herself for a moment and answered Mr. Bashwood's inquiry by a question on her side. Is the cab that brought you here from the railway still at the door? Yes. Drive at once to the gates of the sanitarium and wait there till I join you. Mr. Bashwood hesitated. She lifted her eyes to his and, with a look, sent him out of the room. The gentleman is coming too, ma'am, said the landlady as the steward closed the door. He has just breathed again. She bowed in mute reply, rose, and considered with herself once more, looked toward the sofa for the second time, then passed through the folding doors into her own room. After a short lapse of time the surgeon drew back from the sofa and motioned to the landlady to stand aside. The bodily recovery of the patient was assured. There was nothing to be done now but to wait and let his mind slowly recall its sense of what had happened. Where is she? were the first words he said to the surgeon and the landlady anxiously watching him. The landlady knocked at the folding doors and received no answer. She went in and found the room empty. A sheet of note paper was on the dressing table with the doctor's fee placed on it. The paper contained these lines, evidently written in great agitation or in great haste. It is impossible for me to remain here tonight after what has happened. I will return tomorrow to take away my luggage and to pay what I owe you. Where is she? Midwinter asked again when the landlady returned alone to the drawing room. Gone, sir. I don't believe it. The old lady's color rose. If you know her handwriting, sir, she answered, handing him the sheet of note paper, perhaps you may believe that. He looked at the paper. I beg your pardon, ma'am, he said, as he handed it back. I beg your pardon with all my heart. There was something in his face as he spoke those words which more than soothed the old lady's irritation. It touched her with a sudden pity for the man who had offended her. I am afraid there is some dreadful trouble, sir, at the bottom of all this, she said simply. Do you wish me to give any message to the lady when she comes back? Midwinter rose and steadied himself for a moment against the sofa. I will bring my own message tomorrow, he said. I must see her before she leaves your house. The surgeon accompanied his patient into the street. Can I see you home? he said kindly. You had better not walk if it is far. You mustn't overexert yourself. You mustn't catch a chill this cold night. Midwinter took his hand and thanked him. I have been used to hard walking and cold nights, sir, he said, and I am not easily worn out even when I look so broken as I do now. If you will tell me the nearest way out of these streets, I think the quiet of the country and the quiet of the night will help me. I have something serious to do tomorrow, he added in a lower tone, and I can't rest all sleep till I have thought over it tonight. The surgeon understood that he had no common man to deal with. He gave the necessary directions without any further remark and parted with his patient at his own door. Left by himself, midwinter paused and looked up at the heavens in silence. The night had cleared and the stars were out, the stars which he had first learned to know from his gypsy master on the hillside. For the first time his mind went back regretfully to his boyish days. Oh, for the old life, he thought longingly. I never knew till now how happy the old life was. He roused himself and went on toward the open country. His face darkened as he left the streets behind him and advanced into the solitude and obscurity that lay beyond. She has denied her husband tonight, he said. She shall know her master, tomorrow, at the end of chapter. Mr. Bash would got out in advance to meet her. She took his arm and led him aside a few steps out of the cabman's hearing. Think what you like of me, she said, keeping her thick black veil down over her face. But don't speak to me tonight. Drive back to your hotel as if nothing had happened. Meet the tidal train tomorrow, as usual, and come to me afterward at the sanitarium. Go without a word, and I shall believe there is one man in the world who really loves me. Stay and ask questions, and I shall bid you goodbye at once and forever. She pointed to the cab. In a minute more it had left the sanitarium and was taking Mr. Bashwood back to his hotel. She opened the iron gate and walked slowly up to the house. A shutter ran through her as she rang the bell. She laughed bitterly, shivering again, she said to herself. Who would have thought I had so much feeling left in me? For once in her life the doctor's face told the truth when the study door opened between ten and eleven at night and Ms. Guilt entered the room. Mercy on me, he exclaimed, with a look of the blankest bewilderment. What does this mean? It means, she answered, that I have decided tonight instead of deciding tomorrow. You, who know women so well, ought to know that they act on impulse. I am here on an impulse. Take me or leave me, just as you like. Take you or leave you, repeated the doctor, recovering his presence of mind. My dear lady, what a dreadful way of putting it. Your room shall be got ready instantly. Where is your luggage? Will you let me send for it? No. You can do without your luggage tonight? What admirable fortitude! You will fetch it yourself tomorrow? What extraordinary independence! Do take off your bonnet. Do draw into the fire. What can I offer you? Offer me the strongest sleeping draught you ever made in your life, she replied, and leave me alone till the time comes to take it. I shall be your patient and earnest. She added fiercely as the doctor attempted to remond straight. I shall be the maddest of mad if you irritate me tonight. The principle of the sanitarium became gravely and briefly professional in an instant. Sit down in that dark corner, he said. Not a soul shall disturb you. In half an hour you will find your room ready and your sleeping draught on the table. It's been a harder struggle for her than I anticipated, he thought, as he left the room and crossed to his dispensary on the opposite side of the hall. Good heavens! What business has she with a conscience after such a life as hers has been? The dispensary was elaborately fitted up with all the latest improvements in medical furniture. But one of the four walls of the room was unoccupied by shelves, and here the vacant space was filled by a handsome antique cabinet of carved wood, curiously out of harmony as an object with the unornamented utilitarian aspect of the place generally. On either side of the cabinet, two speaking tubes were inserted in the wall, communicating with the upper regions of the house and labeled respectively Resident Dispenser and Head Nurse. Into the second of these tubes, the doctor spoke on entering the room. An elderly woman appeared, took her orders for preparing Mrs. Armadale's bed chamber, curtsied and retired. Left alone again in the dispensary, the doctor unlocked the center compartment of the cabinet and disclosed a collection of bottles inside, containing the various poisons used in medicine. After taking out the laudanum wanted for the sleeping draught and placing it on the dispensary table, he went back to the cabinet, looked into it for a little while, shook his head doubtfully, and crossed to the open shelves on the opposite side of the room. Here, after more consideration, he took down one out of the row of large chemical bottles before him filled with the yellow liquid. Placing the bottle on the table, he returned to the cabinet an open-decide compartment, containing some specimens of bohemian glasswork. After measuring it with his eye, he took from the specimens a handsome purple flask, high in narrow in form and closed by a glass stopper. This he filled with the yellow liquid, leaving a small quantity only at the bottom of the bottle and locking up the flask again in the place from which he had taken it. The bottle was next restored to its place after having been filled up with water from the cistern in the dispensary, mixed with certain chemical liquids and small quantities, which restored it as far as appearances went to the condition in which it had been when it was first removed from the shelf. Having completed these mysterious proceedings, the doctor laughed softly and went back to his speaking tubes to summon the resident dispenser next. The resident dispenser made his appearance shrouded in the necessary white apron from his waist to his feet. The doctor solemnly wrote a prescription for a composing draught and handed it to his assistant. Wanted immediately, Benjamin, he said in a soft and melancholy voice, a lady patient, Mrs. Armadale, room number one, second floor, ah, dear, dear, groaned the doctor absently, an anxious case, Benjamin, an anxious case. He opened the brand-new ledger of the establishment and entered the case at full length with a brief abstract of the prescription. Have you done with the laudanum? Put it back and lock the cabinet and give me the key. Is the draught ready? Label it to be taken at bedtime and give it to the nurse, Benjamin. Give it to the nurse. While the doctor's lips were issuing these directions, the doctor's hands were occupied in opening a drawer under the desk on which the ledger was placed. He took out some gaily printed cards of admission to view the sanitarium between the hours of 2 and 4 p.m. and filled them up with the date of the next day, December 10th. When a dozen of the cards had been wrapped up in a dozen lithographed letters of imitation and enclosed in a dozen envelopes, he next consulted a list of the family's resident in the neighborhood and directed the envelopes from the list. Ringing a bell this time, instead of speaking through a tube, he summoned the man's servant and gave him the letters to be delivered by hand the first thing the next morning. I think it will do, said the doctor, taking a turn in the dispensary when the servant had gone out. I think it will do. While he was still absorbed in his own reflections, the nurse reappeared to announce that the lady's room was ready to formally return to the study to communicate the information to Miss Quilt. She had not moved since he left her. She rose from her dark corner when he made his announcement and, without speaking or raising her veil, glided out of the room like a ghost. After a brief interval, the nurse came downstairs again with a word for her master's private ear. The lady has ordered me to call her tomorrow at 7 o'clock, sir. She means to fetch her luggage herself and wants to have a cab at the door as soon as she is dressed. What am I to do? Do what the lady tells you, said the doctor. She may be safely trusted to return to the sanitarium. The breakfast hour at the sanitarium was half past eight o'clock. By that time Miss Quilt had settled everything at her lodgings and had returned with her luggage in her own possession. The doctor was quite amazed at the promptitude of his patient. With which energy he asked when they met at the breakfast table, why be in such a hurry, my dear lady, when you had all the morning before you? Mere restlessness, she said briefly. The longer I live, the more impatient I get. The doctor, who had noticed before she spoke that her face looked strangely pale and old that morning, observed when she answered him that her expression, naturally mobile in no ordinary degree, remained quite unaltered by the effort of speaking. There was no usual animation on her lips, none of the usual temper in her eyes. He had never seen her so impenetrable and coldly composed as he saw her now. She has made up her mind at last, he thought. I may say to her this morning what I couldn't say to her last night. He prefaced the coming remarks by a warning look at her widow's dress. Now you have got your luggage, he began gravely. Permit me to suggest putting that cap away and wearing another gown. Why? Do you remember what you told me a day or two since? Asked the doctor. You said there was a chance of Mr. Armadale's dying in my sanitarium? I will say it again, if you like. A more unlikely chance pursued the doctor, deaf as ever to all awkward interruptions, it is hardly possible to imagine. But as long as it is a chance at all, it is worth considering. Say then that he dies. Die suddenly and unexpectedly and makes the coroner's inquest necessary in the house. What is our course in that case? Our course is to preserve the characters to which we have committed ourselves. You as his widow and I as the witness of your marriage and in those characters to court the fullest inquiry. In the entirely improbable event of his dying just when we want him to die, my idea I might even say my resolution is to admit that we knew of his resurrection from the sea and to acknowledge that we instructed Mr. Bashwood to entrap him in this house by means of a false statement about Miss Millroy. When the inevitable questions follow, I propose to assert that he exhibited symptoms of mental alienation shortly after your marriage, that his delusion consisted in denying that you were his wife and in declaring that he was engaged with Miss Millroy. That you were in such terror of him on this account when you heard he was alive and coming back as to be in a state of nervous agitation that required my care. That at your request and to calm that nervous agitation I saw him professionally and got him quietly into the house by a humorine of his delusion perfectly justifiable in such a case. And lastly, that I can certify his brain to have been affected by one of those mysterious disorders infinitely fatal in relation to which medical science is still in the dark. Such a course is this in the remotely possible event which we are now supposing would be in your interests and mine, unquestionably the right course to take. And such a dress as that is just as certainly under existing circumstances the wrong dress to wear. Shall I take it off at once she asked rising from the breakfast table without a word of remark just been said to her any time before two o'clock today will do said the doctor. She looked at him with a languid curiosity nothing more. Why before too she inquired because this is one of my visitors days and the visitors time is from two to four. What have I to do with your visitors? Simply this I think it important that perfectly respectable and perfectly disinterested witnesses should see you in my house in the character of a lady who has come to help me. Your motive seems rather far fetched. Is it the only motive you have in the matter? My dear, dear lady remonstrated the doctor. Have I any concealments from you? Surely you ought to know me better than that. Yes, she said with a rye contempt. It's dull enough of me not to understand you by this time. Send word upstairs when I am wanted. She left him and went back to her room. Two o'clock came and in a quarter of an hour afterward the visitors had arrived. Short as the notice had been, cheerless as the sanitarium looked to spectators from without, the doctor's invitation had been largely accepted, nevertheless by the female members of the families whom he had addressed. In the miserable monotony of the lives led by a large section of the middle classes of England, anything is welcome to the women which offers them any sort of harmless refuge from the established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and ends at home. While the imperious needs of a commercial country limited the representatives of the male sex among the doctor's visitors to one feeble old man and one sleepy little boy, the women pour souls to the number of no less than sixteen. Old and young, married and single had seized the golden opportunity of a plunge into public life. Harmoniously united by the two common objects which they all had in view, in the first place to look at each other and in the second place to look at the sanitarium. They streamed in neatly dressed procession through the doctor's dreary iron gates with a thin varnish over them of assumed superiority to all un-lady-like excitement, most significant and most pitiable to see. The proprietor of the sanitarium received his visitors in the hall with Miss Guilt on his arm. The hungry eyes of every woman in the company overlooked the doctor as if no such person had existed and fixing on the strange lady devoured her from head to foot in an instant. My first inmate said the doctor presenting Miss Guilt, this lady only arrived late last night and she takes the present opportunity, the only one my morning's engagements have allowed me to give her of going over the sanitarium. Allow me, ma'am, he went on releasing Miss Guilt and giving his arm to the eldest lady among the visitors. Shattered nerves, domestic anxiety, he whispered confidentially, sweet woman, sad case. He sighed softly and led the old lady across the hall. The flock of visitors followed Miss Guilt accompanying them in silence and walking alone among them but not of them, the last of all. The grounds, ladies and gentlemen, said the doctor wheeling round and addressing his audience from the foot of the stairs, are as you have seen in a partially unfinished condition. Under any circumstances I should lay little stress on the grounds having Hampstead Heath so near at hand and carriage exercise and horse exercise being parts of my system. In a lesser degree it is also necessary for me to ask your indulgence for the basement floor on which we now stand. The waiting room and study on that side and the dispensary on the other to which I shall presently ask your attention are completed. But the large drawing room is still in the first hands. In that room when the walls are dry not a moment before my inmates will assemble for cheerful society. Nothing will be spared that can improve, elevate and adorn life at these happy little gatherings. Every evening, for example, there will be music for those who like it. At this point there was a fate stirrer among the visitors. A mother of a family interrupted the doctor. She begged to know whether music was playing and if so what music was performed. Sacred music, of course, ma'am, said the doctor, handle on Sunday evening and hide occasionally when not too cheerful. But as I was about to say music is not the only entertainment offered to my nervous inmates. Amusing reading is provided for those who prefer books. There was another stirrer among the visitors. Another mother of a family only such novels as I have selected and proved myself in the first instance of the doctor. Nothing painful, ma'am. There may be plenty that is painful in real life, but for that very reason we don't want it in books. The English novelist who enters my house, no foreign novelist will be admitted, must understand his art as the healthy-minded English reader understands it in our time. He must know that our pure modern taste, our higher morality, limits him to doing exactly two things for us when he writes us a book. All we want of him is occasionally to make us laugh and invariably to make us comfortable. There was a third stirrer among the visitors, caused plainly this time by approval of the sentiments which they had just heard. The doctor, wisely cautious of disturbing the favorable impression that he had produced, dropped the subject of the drawing room and as before the company followed, and as before Miss Quilt walked silently behind them last of all. One after another the ladies looked at her with the idea of speaking and saw something in her face utterly unintelligible to them which checked the well-meant words on their lips. The prevalent impression was that the principle of the sanitarium had been delicately concealing the truth and that his first inmate was mad. The doctor led the way with intervals of breathing time accorded to the old lady on his arm straight to the top of the house. Having collected his visitors in the corridor and having waved his hand indicitably at the numbered doors opening out of it on either side he invited the company to look into any or all of the rooms at their own pleasure. Numbers one to four ladies and gentlemen said the doctor include the dormitories of the numbers four to eight are rooms intended for the accommodation of the poor class of patients whom I receive on terms which simply cover my expenditure nothing more. In the cases of these poor persons among my suffering fellow creatures personal piety and the recommendation of two clergymen are indispensable to admission. Those are the only conditions I make but those I insist on. Pray observe that the rooms are all ventilated and the bed steds all iron and kindly notice as we descend again to the second floor that there is a door shutting off all communication between the second story and the top story when necessary. The rooms on the second floor which we have now reached are with the exception of my own room entirely devoted to the reception of lady inmates experience having convinced me that the greater sensitiveness of the male constitution necessitates the higher position of the sleeping apartment with a view to the greater purity and freer circulation of the air. Here the ladies are established immediately under my care while my assistant physician whom I expect to arrive in a week's time looks after the gentleman on the floor beneath. Observe again as we descend to this lower or first floor a second door closing all communication at night between the two stories to everyone and the assistant physician and myself. And now that we have reached the gentleman's part of the house and that you have observed for yourselves the regulations of the establishment permit me to introduce you to a specimen of my system of treatment next. I can exemplify it practically by introducing you to a room fitted up under my own direction for the accommodation of the most complicated cases of nervous suffering and nervous delusion that can come under me. He threw open the door of a room at one extremity of the corridor numbered four. Look in ladies and gentlemen he said and see if you see anything remarkable pray mention it. The room was not very large but it was well lit by one broad window comfortably furnished as a bedroom it was only remarkable among other rooms of the same sort in one way it had no fireplace the visitors having noticed this were informed that the room was formed in winter by means of hot water and were then invited back again into the corridor to make discoveries under professional direction which they were unable to make for themselves. A word ladies and gentlemen said the doctor literally a word on nervous derangement first. What is the process of treatment when let us say mental anxiety has broken you down and you apply to your doctor. He sees you hears you and gives instructions one is written on paper and made up of the chemists the other is administered by word of mouth at the propitious moment when the fee is ready and consists in a general recommendation to you to keep your mind easy. That excellent advice given your doctor leaves you to spare yourself all earthly annoyances by your own unaided efforts until he calls again. Here my system steps in and helps you when I see the necessity of keeping your mind easy take the bull by the horns and do it for you. I place you in a sphere of action in which the ten thousand trifles which must and do irritate nervous people at home are expressly considered and provided against. I throw up impregnable moral entrenchments between worry and you. Find a door banging in this house if you can. Catch a servant in this house rattling the tea things when he takes away the tray. Discover barking dogs, crowing dogs, hammering workmen, screeching children here and I engage to close my sanitarium tomorrow. Are these nuisances laughing matters to nervous people? Ask them. Can they escape these nuisances at home? Ask them. Will ten minutes irritation from a barking dog or a screeching child undo every atom of good done to a nervous sufferer by a month's medical treatment? There isn't a competent doctor in England who will venture to deny it. On those plain grounds my system is based. I assert the medical treatment of nervous suffering to be entirely subsidiary to the moral treatment of it. That moral treatment of it you find here. That moral treatment, seduously pursued throughout the day follows a sufferer into his room at night and soothes, helps and cures him without his knowledge. You shall see how. The doctor paused his awake breath and looked for the first time since the visitors had entered the house at Miss Guilt. For the first time on her side she stepped forward among the audience and looked at him in return. After a momentary obstruction in the shape of a cough the doctor went on. Say, ladies and gentlemen, he proceeded that my patient has just come in. His mind is one mass of nervous fancies and caprices which his friends with the best possible intentions are irritating at home. They have been afraid of him, for instance, at night. They have forced him to have somebody to sleep in the room with him or they have forbidden him in case of accidents to lock his door. He comes to me the first night and says, mind, I won't have anybody in my room. Certainly not. I insist on locking my door. By all means in he goes and locks his door and there he is soothed and quieted predisposed to confidence predisposed to sleep by having somebody. This is all very well, you may say, but suppose something happens. Suppose he has a fit in the night, what then? You shall see. Hello, my young friend, cried the doctor, suddenly addressing the sleepy little boy. Let's have a game. You shall be the poor sick man and I'll be the good doctor. Go into that room and lock the door. There's a brave boy. Have you locked it? Very good. Do you think I can't get at you if I like? I wait till you're asleep. I press this little white button hidden here in the stenciled pattern of the outer wall. The mortise of the lock inside falls back silently against the doorpost and I walk into the room whenever I like. The same plan is pursued with the window. My capricious patient won't open it at night when he ought. I humor him again. Shut it, dear sir, by all means. As soon as he is asleep I pull the black handle here in the corner of the wall. The window of the room inside noiselessly opens as you see. Say the patient's caprice is the other way. He persists in opening the window when he ought to shut it. Let him, by all means let him. I pull a second handle when he is snug in his bed and the window noiselessly closes in a moment. Nothing to irritate him, ladies and gentlemen. Absolutely nothing to irritate him. But I haven't done with him yet. Epidemic disease in spite of all my precautions may enter the sanitarium and may render the purifying of the sick room necessary. Or the patient's case may be complicated by other than nervous malady. Say, for instance, asthmatic difficulty of breathing. In the one case fumigation is necessary. In the other additional oxygen in the air will give relief. The epidemic nervous patient says I won't be smoked under my own nose. The asthmatic nervous patient gasps with terror at the idea of a chemical explosion in his room. I noiselessly fumigate one of them. I noiselessly oxygenize the other by means of a simple apparatus fixed outside in the corner here. It is protected by this wooden casing. It is locked with my own key and it communicates by means of a tube with the interior of the room. Look at it. With a preliminary glance at Miskwil, the doctor unlocked the lid of the wooden casing and disclosed inside nothing more remarkable than a large stone jar, having a glass funnel and a pipe communicating with the wall, inserted in the cork which closed the mouth of it. With another look at Miskwil the doctor locked the lid again and asked in the blandest manner whether his system was intelligible now. End of Book The Last, Chapter 3, Part 1 Book The Last, Chapter 3, 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 Julie Binham Armadale by Wilkie Collins Chapter 3, Part 2 I might introduce you to all sorts of other contrivances of the same kind that were assumed leading the way downstairs, but it would only be the same thing over and over again. A nervous patient who always has his own way is a nervous patient who is never worried, and a nervous patient who is never worried is a nervous patient cured. There it is in a nutshell. Come and see the dispensary, ladies. The dispensary in the kitchen next. Once more, Miskwil dropped behind the visitors and waited alone, looking at the room which the doctor had opened and at the apparatus which the doctor had unlocked. Again, without a word, passing between them, she had understood him. She knew as well as if he had confessed it that he was craftily putting the necessary temptation in her way before witnesses who could speak to the superficially innocent acts which they had seen if anything serious happened. The apparatus originally constructed to serve the purpose of the doctor's medical was evidently to be put to some other use, of which the doctor himself had probably never dreamed till now and the chances were that before the day was over that other use would be privately revealed to her at the right moment in the presence of the right witness. Armadale will die this time she said to herself as she went slowly down the stairs. The doctor will kill him by my hands. The visitors were in the dispensary when she joined them. All the ladies were admiring the beauty of the antique cabinet and as a necessary consequence all the ladies were desirous of seeing what was inside. The doctor, after a preliminary look at Miss Guilt, good-humorily shook his head. There is nothing to interest you inside, he said, nothing but rows of little shabby bottles containing the poisons used in medicine which I keep under lock and key. Come to the kitchen ladies and honour me with your advice on domestic matters below stairs. He glanced again at Miss Guilt as the company crossed the hall with a look which said plainly wait here. In another quarter of an hour the doctor had expounded his views on cookery and diet and the visitors, duly furnished with prospectuses, were taking leave of him at the door. Quite an intellectual treat they said to each other as they streamed at again in neatly dressed procession through the iron gates and what a very superior man. The doctor turned back to the dispensary humming absently to himself and failing entirely to observe the corner of the hall in which Miss Guilt stood retired. After an instant's hesitation she followed him. The assistant was in the room when she entered it, summoned by his employer the moment before. Doctor, she said coldly and mechanically as if she was repeating a lesson. I am as curious as the other ladies about that pretty cabinet of yours. Now they are all gone won't you show light of it to me? The doctor laughed in his pleasantest manner. The old story he said blue beards lock chamber and female curiosity. Don't go Benjamin, don't go. My dear lady, what interest can you possibly have in looking at a medical bottle simply because it happens to be a bottle of poison? She repeated her lesson for the second time. I have the interest of looking at it she said and of thinking if it got into some people's hands of the terrible things it might do. The doctor glanced at his assistant with a compassionate smile. Curious Benjamin he said, the romantic view taken of these drugs of ours by the unscientific mind. My dear lady he added turning to Miss Guilt if that is the interest you attached to looking at poisons you needn't ask me to unlock my cabinet. You need only look about you round the shelves of this room. There are all sorts of medical liquids and substances in bottles. Most innocent, most useful in themselves, which in combination with other substances and other liquids become poisons as terrible and as deadly as any I have in my cabinet under lock and key. She looked at him for a moment and crossed to the opposite side of the room. Show me one, she said. Still smiling as good-humoredly as ever the doctor humored his nervous patient. He pointed to the bottle from which he had privately removed the yellow liquid in the previous day in which he had filled up again with a carefully colored imitation in the shape of a mixture of his own. Do you see that bottle he said, that plump round comfortable looking bottle? Never mind the name of what is beside it. Let us stick to the bottle and distinguish it if you like by giving it a name of our own. Suppose we call it our stout friend. Very good. Our stout friend by himself is a most harmless and useful medicine. He is freely dispensed every day to tens of thousands of patients all over the civilized world. He has made no romantic appearances in courts of law. He has excited no breathless interest in novels. He has played no terrifying part on the stage. There he is an innocent, inoffensive creature who troubles nobody with the responsibility of locking him up. But bring him into contact with something else, introduce him to the acquaintance of a certain common of a universally accessible kind broken into fragments. Provide yourself with say six doses of our stout friend and pour those doses consecutively on the fragments I have mentioned at intervals of not less than five minutes. Quantities of little bubbles will rise at every pouring. Collect the gas in those bubbles and convey it into a closed chamber and let Samson himself be in that closed chamber. Our stout friend will kill him in an hour. We'll kill him slowly without his seeing anything without his smelling anything without his feeling anything but sleepiness. We'll kill him and tell the whole college of surgeons nothing if they examine him after death, but that he died of apoplexy or congestion of the lungs. What do you think of that, my dear lady, in the way of mystery and romance? Is our harmless stout friend as interesting now as if he rejoiced in the terrible fame of the arsenic and the strict nine which I keep locked up there? Don't suppose I am exaggerating. Don't suppose I am inventing a story to put you off with, as the children say. Ask Benjamin there, said the doctor, appealing to his assistant with his eyes fixed on misquilt. Ask Benjamin, he repeated, with the steadiest emphasis on the next words. If six doses from that bottle at intervals of five minutes each would not, under the conditions I have stated, produce the results described. The resident dispenser, modestly admiring misquilt at a distance, started and colored up. He was plainly gratified by the little attention which included him in the conversation. The doctor is quite right, ma'am, he said, addressing misquilt with his best bow. The production of the gas extended over half an hour would be quite gradual enough. And, added the dispenser, silently appealing to his employer to let him exhibit a little chemical knowledge on his own account, the volume of the gas would be sufficient at the end of the time if I am not mistaken, sir, to be fatal to any person entering the room in less than five minutes. Unquestionably, Benjamin rejoined the doctor, but I think we have had enough of chemistry for the present, he added, turning to misquilt. With every desire, my dear lady, to gratify every passing wish you may form, I venture to propose trying a more cheerful subject. Suppose we leave the dispensary before it suggests any more inquiries to that active mind of yours. No? You want to see an experiment? You want to see how the little bubbles are made? Well, well, there is no harm in that. We will let Mrs. Armadale see the bubbles continued the doctor in the tone of a parent, humoring a spoiled child. Try, if you can, find a few of those fragments we want, Benjamin. I dare say the workmen, slovenly fellows, have left something of the sort about the house or the grounds. The resident dispenser left the room. As soon as his back was turned, the doctor began opening and shutting drawers in various parts of the dispensary with the air of a man who wants something in a hurry and does not know where to find it. Bless my soul, he exclaimed, suddenly stopping at the drawer from which he had taken his cards of imitation on the previous day. What's this? A key? A duplicate key, as I am alive, is beginning apparatus upstairs. Oh, dear, dear, how careless I get, said the doctor turning round briskly to Miss Quilt. I hadn't the least idea that I possessed the second key. I should never have missed it. I do assure you I should never have missed it if anybody had taken it out of the drawer. He bustled away to the other end of the room without closing the drawer and without taking away the duplicate key. In silence Miss Quilt listened to what she had done. In silence she glided to the drawer. In silence she took the key and hid it in her apron pocket. The dispenser came back with the fragments required of him collected in a basin. Thank you, Benjamin, said the doctor. Kindly cover them with water while I get the bottle down. As accidents sometimes happen in the most perfectly regulated families, so clumsiness sometimes possesses itself of the most perfectly disciplined hands. In the process of its transfer from the shelf to the doctor, the bottle slipped and fell smashed to pieces on the floor. Oh, my fingers and thumbs, cried the doctor with an air of comic vexation. What in the world do you mean by playing me such a wicked trick as that? Well, well, well, it can't be helped. Have we got any more of it, Benjamin? Not a drop, sir. Not a drop, echoed the doctor. My dear madam, what excuses can I offer you? My clumsiness has made our little experiment impossible for today. Remind me to order some more tomorrow, Benjamin, and don't think of troubling yourself to put that mess to rights. I'll send the man here to mop it all up. Our stout friend is harmless enough now, my dear lady, in combination with a boarded floor and a coming mop. I'm so sorry. I really am so sorry to have disappointed you. With those soothing words, he offered his arm squilt out of the dispensary. Have you done with me for the present, she asked, when they were in the hall? Oh, dear, dear, what a way of putting it, exclaimed the doctor. Dinner at six, he added with his politest emphasis as she turned from him into sainful silence and slowly mounted the stairs to her own room. A clock of the noiseless sort incapable of offending irritable nerves was fixed in the wall above the first floor landing at the podium. At the moment when the hands pointed to a quarter before six, the silence of the lonely upper regions was softly broken by the rustling of miss squilt's dress. She advanced along the corridor of the first floor, paused at the covered apparatus fixed outside the room numbered four, listened for a moment, and then unlocked the cover with the duplicate key. The open lid cast a shadow over the inside of the casing. All she saw at first was what she had seen already, the jar and the pipe, and glass funnel inserted in the cork. She removed the funnel and looking about her, observed on the windowsill close by, a wax tipped wand used for lighting the gas. She took the wand and introducing it through the aperture occupied by the funnel, moved it to and fro in the jar. The faint splash of some liquid and the grating noise of certain hard substances which she was stirring about were the two sounds that caught her ear. She drew out the wand and cautiously touched the wet left on it with the tip of her tongue. Caution was quite needless in this case. The liquid was water. In putting the funnel back in its place, she noticed something faintly shining in the obscurely lit vacant space at the side of the jar. She drew it out and produced a purple flask. The liquid with which it was filled showed dark through the transparent coloring of the glass and fastened at regular intervals down one side of the flask were six thin strips of paper which divided the contents into six equal parts. There was no doubt now that the apparatus had been secretly prepared for her. The apparatus of which she alone besides the doctor possessed the key. She put back the flask and locked the cover of the casing. For a moment she stood looking at it with the key in her hand. On a sudden her lost color came back. On a sudden its natural animation returned for the first time that day to her face. She turned and hurried breathlessly upstairs to her room on the second floor. With eager hands she snatched her cloak out of the wardrobe and took her bonnet from the box. I'm not in prison she burst out impetuously. I've got the use of my limbs. I can go no matter where as long as I am out of this house. With her cloak on her shoulders and her bonnet in her hand she crossed the room to the door. A moment more and she would have been out in the passage. In that moment the remembrance flashed back on her of the husband whom she had denied to his face. She stopped instantly and threw the cloak and bonnet from her on the bed. No, she said. The gulf is dug between us. The worst is done. There was a knock at the door. The doctor's voice outside politely reminded her that it was six o'clock. She opened the door and stopped him on his way downstairs. What time is the train due tonight? She asked in a whisper. At ten answered the doctor in a voice which all the world might hear and welcome. What room is Mr. Armadale to have when he comes? What room would you like him to have? Number four. The doctor kept up appearances to the very last. Number four let it be, he said provided of course that number four is unoccupied at the time. The evening war on and the night came. At a few minutes before ten Mr. Bashwood was again at his post once more on the watch for the coming of the title train. The inspector on duty who knew him by sight and who had personally ascertained that his regular attendance at the terminus implied no designs on the purses and portmentos of the passengers noticed two new circumstances in connection with Mr. Bashwood that night. In the first place instead of exhibiting his customary cheerfulness he looked anxious and depressed. In the second place while he was watching for the train he was to all appearance being watched in his turn by a slim dark undersized man who had left his luggage marked with the name of Midwinter at the custom house department the evening before and who had returned to have it examined about half an hour since. That had brought Midwinter to the terminus and why was he too waiting for the title train. After straying as far as Hinden during his lonely walk of the previous night he had taken refuge at the village inn and had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion towards those later hours of the morning which were the hours that his wife's foresight had turned to account. When he returned to the lodging the landlady could only inform him that her tenant had settled on something with her and had left. For what destination neither she nor her servant could tell more than two hours since. Having given some little time to inquiries the result of which convinced him that the clue was lost so far Midwinter had quitted the house and had pursued his way mechanically to the busier and more central parts of the metropolis. With the light now thrown on his wife's character to call at the address she had given him the address at which her mother lived would be plainly useless. He went on through the streets resolute to discover her and try and vainly to see the means to his end till the sense of fatigue forced itself on him once more. Stopping to rest and recruit his strength at the first hotel he came to a chance dispute between the waiter and a stranger about a lost portmanteau reminded him of his own luggage left at the terminus and instantly took back to the circumstances under which he and Mr. Bashwood had met. In a moment more the idea that he had been vainly seeking on his way through the streets flashed on him. In a moment more he had determined to try the chance of finding the steward again on the watch for the person whose arrival he had evidently expected by the previous evening's train. Ignorant of the report of Alan's death at sea uninformed at the terrible interview with his wife of the purpose which her assumption of a widow's dress really had in view, midwinner's first vague suspicions of her fidelity had now inevitably developed into the conviction that she was false. He could place but one interpretation on her openness avowal of him and on her taking the name under which he had secretly married her. Her conduct forced the conclusion on him that she was engaged in some infamous intrigue and that she had basely secured herself beforehand in the position of all others in which she knew it would be the most odious and most repellent to him to claim his authority over her. With that conviction he was now watching Mr. Bashwood. Firmly persuaded that his wife's hiding place was known to the vile servant of his wife's vices and darkly suspecting as the time wore on that the unknown man who had wronged him and the unknown traveler for whose arrival the steward was waiting were one and the same. The train was late that night and the carriages were more than usually crowded when they arrived at last. Midwinner became involved in the confusion on the platform and in the effort to extricate himself he lost sight of Mr. Bashwood for the first time. Laps of some few minutes had passed before he again discovered the steward talking eagerly to a man in a loose shaggy coat whose back was broken. Forgetful of all the cautions and restraints which he had imposed on himself before the train appeared Midwinner instantly advanced on them. Mr. Bashwood saw his threatening face as he came on and fell back in silence. The man in the loose coat turned to look where the steward was looking and disclosed to Midwinner in the full light of the station lamp Alan's face. For the moment they both stood speechless hand in hand at each other. Alan was the first to recover himself. Thank God for this he said fervently. I don't ask how you came here. It's enough for me that you have come. Miserable news has met me already Midwinner. Nobody but you can comfort me and help me to bear it. His voice faltered over those last words and he said no more. The tone in which he had spoken roused Midwinner to meet the circumstances as they were by the way to the old grateful interest in his friend which had once been the foremost interest of his life. He mastered his personal misery for the first time since it had fallen on him and gently taken Alan aside asked what had happened. The answer after informing him of his friend's reported death at sea announced on Mr. Bashwood's authority that the news had reached Ms. Milroy and that the deplorable result of the shock thus inflicted had obliged the major to place Midwinner at London under medical care. Before saying a word on his side Midwinner looked distressfully behind him. Mr. Bashwood had followed them. Mr. Bashwood was waiting to see what they did next. Was he waiting your arrival here to tell you this about Ms. Milroy asked Midwinner looking again from the steward to Alan? Yes said Alan. He has been kindly waiting here night after night to meet me and break the news to me. Midwinner paused once more. The attempt to reconcile the conclusion he had drawn from his wife's conduct with the discovery that Alan was the man for whose arrival Mr. Bashwood had been waiting was hopeless. The one present chance of discovering a truer solution of the mystery was to press the steward on the one available point in which he had laid himself open to attack. He had positively denied on the previous evening that he knew anything of Alan's movements or that he had any interest in Alan's return to England. Having detected Mr. Bashwood in one lie told to himself Midwinner instantly suspected him of telling another to Alan. He seized the opportunity of sifting the statement about Ms. Milroy on the spot. How have you become acquainted with this sad news he inquired suddenly turning on Mr. Bashwood? Through the major, of course, said Alan before the steward could answer. Who is the doctor who has the care of Ms. Milroy persisted Midwinner still addressing Mr. Bashwood? For the second time the steward made no reply. For the second time Alan answered for him. He is a man with a foreign name said Alan. He keeps a sanitarium near Hampstead. What did you say the name of the place was called Mr. Bashwood? Fairweather Vale, sir, said the steward answering his employer as a matter of necessity but answering very unwillingly. The address of the sanitarium instantly reminded Midwinner that he had the Fairweather Vale villas the previous night. He began to see light through the darkness dimly for the first time. The instinct which comes with emergency before the slower process of reason can assert itself brought him at a leap to the conclusion that Mr. Bashwood, who had been certainly acting under his wife's influence the previous day, might be acting again under his wife's influence now. He persisted in sifting the steward's statement with the withdrawing firmer and firmer in his mind that the statement was a lie and that his wife was concerned in it. Is the major in Norfolk, he asked, or is he near his daughter in London? In Norfolk, said Mr. Bashwood, having answered Alan's look of inquiry instead of Midwinner's spoken question in those words he hesitated, looked Midwinner in the face for the first time and added suddenly, I object if you pleased to be cross-examined, sir. The words and the voice in which they were spoken were alike at variance with Mr. Bashwood's usual language and Mr. Bashwood's usual tone. There was a sullen depression in his face. There was a furtive distrust and dislike in his eyes when they looked at Midwinner, which Midwinner himself now noticed for the first time. Before he could answer the steward's extraordinary outbreak, Alan interfered. Don't think me impatient, he said, but it's getting late. It's a long way to Hampstead. I'm afraid the sanitarium will be shut up. Midwinner started. You're not going to the sanitarium tonight, he exclaimed. Alan took his friend's hand and rung it hard. If you were as fond of her as I am, he whispered, you would take no rest. You could get no sleep till you had seen the doctor and heard the best and worst he had to tell you. Poor dear little soul, who knows if she could only see me well. The tears came into his eyes and he turned away his head in silence. Midwinner looked at the steward. Stand back, he said. I want to speak to Mr. Armadale. There was something in his eye which it was not safe to trifle with. Mr. Bashwood drew back out of hearing but not out of sight. Midwinner laid his hand fondly on his friend's shoulder. Alan, he said, I have reasons. He stopped. Could the reasons be given before he had fairly realized them himself at that time too and under those circumstances? Impossible. I have reasons, he resumed, for advising you not to believe too readily what Mr. Bashwood may say. Don't tell him this but take the warning. Alan looked at his friend in astonishment. It was you who always liked Mr. Bashwood, he exclaimed. It was you who trusted him when he first came to the great house. Perhaps I was wrong, Alan, and perhaps you were right. Will you only wait till we can telegraph to Major Millroy and get his answer? Will you only wait over the night? I shall go mad if I wait over the night, said Alan. You have made me more anxious than I was before. If I am not to speak about it to Bashwood, I must and will go to the sanitarium and find out whether she is or is not there from the doctor himself. I saw that it was useless. In Alan's interest there was only one other course left to take. Will you let me go with you, he asked? Alan's face brightened for the first time. You dear good fellow, he exclaimed. It was the very thing I was going to beg of you myself. Midwinner beckoned to the steward. Mr. Armadale is going to the sanitarium, he said, and I mean to accompany him. Get a cab and come with us. He waited to see whether Mr. Bashwood would comply. Having been strictly ordered when Alan did arrive not to lose sight of him, and having in his own interest Midwinner's unexpected appearance to explain to Miss Guilt, the steward had no choice but to comply. In sullen submission he did as he had been told. The keys of Alan's baggage was given to the foreign traveling servant whom he had brought with him, and the man was instructed to wait his master's orders at the Terminus Hotel. In a short time he was taken away out of the station, with Midwinner and Alan inside and Mr. Bashwood by the driver on the box. Between eleven and twelve o'clock that night Miss Guilt standing alone at the window which lit the corridor of the sanitarium on the second floor heard the roll of wheels coming toward her. The sound gathering rapidly in volume through the silence of the lonely neighborhood stopped at the iron gates. In another minute she saw the cab beneath her at the house door. The earlier night had been cloudy but the sky was clearing now and the moon was out. She opened the window to see and hear more clearly. By the light of the moon she saw Alan get out of the cab and turn round to speak to some other person inside. The entering voice told her before he appeared in his turn that Armadale's companion was her husband. The same petrifying influence that had fallen on her at the interview with him of the previous night fell on her now. She stood by the window white and still and haggard and old as she had stood when she first faced him in her widow's weeds. Mr. Bashwood, stealing up alone to the second floor to make his report, knew the instant he set eyes on her that the report was needless. It's not my fault was all he said as she slowly turned her head and looked at him. They met together and there was no parting them. She drew a long breath and she said, I know all about it. Turning from him at those words she slowly paced the corridor to its furthest end. Turned and slowly came back to him with frowning brow and drooping head with all the grace and beauty gone from her but the inbred grace and beauty in the movement of her limbs. End of Book The Last Chapter 3 Part 2 Book The Last Chapter 3 Part 3 of Armadale This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit Librox.org Recording by Julie Bynum Armadale by Wilkie Collins Chapter 3 Part 3 Do you wish to speak to me? She asked, her mind far away from him and her eyes looking at him vacantly as she put the question. He roused his courage as he had never roused it in her presence yet. Don't drive me to despair, he cried with a startling abruptness. Don't look at me in that way, now I have found it out. What have you found out, she asked with a momentary surprise on her face which faded from it again before he could gather breath enough to go on. Mr. Armadale is not the man who took you away from me, he answered. Mr. Midwinner is the man. I found it out in your face yesterday. I see it in your face now. Why did you sign your name Armadale when you wrote to me? Why do you call yourself Mrs. Armadale still? He spoke those bold words at long intervals, with an effort to resist her influence over him, pitiable and terrible to see. She looked at him for the first time with softened eyes. I wish I had pitied you when we first met, she said gently, as I pity you now. He struggled desperately to go on and say the words to her which he had strung himself out of the pitch of saying on the drive from the terminus. They were words which hinted darkly at his knowledge of her past life, words which warned her, do what else she might commit what crimes she pleased to think twice before she deceived and asserted him again. In those terms he had vowed to himself to address her. He had the phrases picked and chosen. He had the sentences ranged and ordered in his mind. And even now, after all he had said and all he had dared, the effort was more than he could compass. In helpless gratitude, even for so little as her pity, he stood looking at her and wept the silent womanish tears that fall from old men's eyes. She took his hand and spoke to him with marked forbearance, but without the slightest sign of emotion on her side. You have waited already at my request, she said. Tomorrow and you will know all. If you trust nothing else that I have told you, you may trust what I tell you now. It will end tonight. As she said the words the doctor step was heard on the stairs. Mr. Bashwood drew back from her with his heart beating fast in an utterable expectation. It will end tonight, he repeated to himself under his breath as he moved away toward the far end of the corridor. Mr. Bashwood said the doctor cheerfully as they met. I have nothing to say to Mrs. Armadale but what you or anybody may hear. Mr. Bashwood went on without answering to the far end of the corridor, still repeating to himself it will end tonight. The doctor, passing him in the opposite direction, joined Ms. Guilt. You have heard, no doubt, he began in his blandest manner and his roundest tones that Mr. Armadale had, my dear lady, that there is not the least reason for any nervous agitation on your part. He has been carefully humored and he is as quiet and manageable as his best friends could wish. I have informed him that it is impossible to allow him an interview with the young lady tonight. But that he may count on seeing her with proper precautions at the earliest propitious hour after she is awake tomorrow morning. As there is no hotel near at a moment's notice, it was clearly incumbent on me under the peculiar circumstances to offer him the hospitality of the sanitarium. He has accepted it with the utmost gratitude and has thanked me in a most gentlemanly and touching manner for the pains I have taken to set his mind at ease. Perfectly gratifying, perfectly satisfactory so far. But there has been a little hitch, now happily got over which I think it right to mention to before we all retire for the night. Having paved the way in those words and in Mr. Bashwood's hearing for the statement which he had previously announced his intentions of making in the event of Alan's dying in the sanitarium, the doctor was about to proceed when his attention was attracted by a sound below like the trying of a door. He instantly descended the stairs and unlocked the door of communication between the first and second floors which he had locked behind him on but the person who had tried the door if such a person there really had been was too quick for him. He looked along the corridor and over the staircase into the hall and discovering nothing returned to Ms. Guilt after securing the door of communication behind him once more. Pardon me, he resumed. I thought I heard something downstairs. With regard to the little hitch that I averted to just now permit me to inform you that Mr. Armadale has brought a friend here with a strange name of Midwinner. Do you know the gentleman at all? Asked the doctor with a suspicious anxiety in his eyes which strangely belied the elaborate indifference of his tone. I know him to be an old friend of Mr. Armadale, she said. Does he Her voice failed her and her eyes fell before the doctor's steady scrutiny. She mastered the momentary weakness and finished her question. Does he too stay here tonight? Mr. Midwinner is a person of course manners and suspicious temper. Rejoined the doctor steadily watching her. He was rude enough to insist on staying here as soon as Mr. Armadale had accepted my invitation. He paused to note the effect of those words on her. Left utterly in the dark by the caution with which she had avoided mentioning her husband's assumed name to him at their first interview, the doctors distressed of her was necessarily of the vagus kind. He had heard her voice fail her. He had seen her color change. He suspected her of a mental reservation on the subject of Midwinner and of nothing more. Did you permit him to have his way? She asked. In your place I should have shown him the door. The impenetrable composure of her tone warned the doctor that her self-command was not to be further shaken that night. He resumed the character of Mrs. Armadale's medical referee on the subject of Mr. Armadale's mental health. If I had only had my own feelings to consult, he said, I don't disguise from you that I should, as you say, have shown Mr. Midwinner the door. But on appealing to Mr. Armadale, I found he was himself anxious not to be parted from his friend. Under those circumstances but one alternative was left. The alternative of humoring him again. The responsibility of thwarting him to say nothing out of the doctor, drifting for a moment toward the truth, of my personal apprehension with such a temper as his friends, of a scandal and disturbance in the house, was not to be thought of for a moment. Mr. Midwinner accordingly remains here for the night, and occupies, I ought to say insist on occupying, the next room to Mr. Armadale. Advise me, my dear madame, in this emergency concluded the doctor with his loudest emphasis, what room shall we put them in on the first floor? Put Mr. Armadale in number four. And his friend put him in number three, said the doctor. Well, well, well, perhaps they are the most comfortable rooms. I'll give my orders immediately. Don't hurry away, Mr. Bashwood, he called out cheerfully as he reached the top of the staircase. I have left the assistant physician's key on the windowsill yonder, and Mrs. Armadale can let you out at the staircase door whenever she pleases. Don't sit up late, Mrs. Armadale. Yours is a nervous system that requires plenty of sleep. Your nature, sweet restorer, ball me sleep. Grandline, God bless you, good night. Mr. Bashwood came back from the far end of the corridor, still pondering in an utterable expectation on what was to come with the night. Am I to go now, he asked? No, you are to stay. I said you should know all if you waited till morning. Wait here. He hesitated and looked about him. The doctor, he faltered. The doctor said, the doctor will interfere with nothing that I do in this house tonight. I tell you to stay. There are empty rooms on the floor above this. Take one of them. Mr. Bashwood felt the trembling fit coming on him again as he looked at her. May I ask? He began. Ask nothing. I want you. Will you please to tell me? I will tell you nothing till the night is over and the morning has come. Mr. Bashwood followed his fear. He persisted. Is it something dreadful, he whispered? Too dreadful to tell me? She stamped her foot with a sudden outbreak of impatience. Go, she said, snatching the key of the staircase door from the window sill. You do quite right to distrust me. You do quite right to follow me no further in the dark. Go before the house is shut up. I can do without you. She led the way to the stairs with followed her in silence. No one, knowing what he knew of her earlier life, could have failed to perceive that she was a woman driven to the last extremity and standing consciously on the brink of a crime. In the first terror of the discovery he broke free from the hold she had on him. He thought and acted like a man who had a will of his own again. She put the key in the door and turned to him before she opened it with the light of the candle on her face. No more. She opened the door and standing inside it after he had passed her gave him her hand. He had resisted her look, he had resisted her words, but the magnetic fascination of her touch conquered him at the final moment. I can't leave you, he said, holding helplessly by the hand she had given him. What must I do? Come and see she answered without allowing him an instant to reflect. She opened the door to the floor corridor to the room numbered four. Notice that room she whispered. After a look over the stairs to see that they were alone she retraced her steps with him to the opposite extremity of the corridor. Here facing the window which lit the place at the other end was one little room with a narrow grating in the higher part of the door intended for the sleeping apartment of the doctor's deputy. She opened the door to the side of the corridor and so enabled the deputy physician to inform himself of any irregular proceedings on the part of the patients under his care with little or no chance of being detected in watching them. Ms. Guilt opened the door and led the way into the empty room. Wait here she said while I go back upstairs and lock yourself in if you like. You will be in the dark but the light goes into the room I have just pointed out to you and that he doesn't leave it afterward. If you lose sight of the room for a single moment before I come back you will repent it to the end of your life. If you do as I tell you you shall see me tomorrow and claim your own reward. Quick with your answer is it yes or no? He could make no reply in words. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it rapturously. She left him in the room. With the grating he saw her glide down the corridor to the staircase door. She passed through it and locked it. Then there was silence. The next sound was the sound of the women's servants' voices. Two of them came up to put the sheets on the beds in number three and number four. The women were in high good humor laughing and talking to each other through the open doors of the rooms. The master's customers were coming in at last they said with a vengeance. They began to look cheerful if things went on like this. After a little the beds were got ready and the women returned to the kitchen floor on which the sleeping rooms of the domestic servants were all situated. Then there was silence again. The next sound was the sound of the doctor's voice. He appeared at the end of the corridor showing Alan and Midwinner the way to their rooms. They all went together into number four. After a little while the doctor came out first. He waited till Midwinner joined him and pointed with a formal bow to the door of number three. Midwinner entered the room without speaking and shut himself in. The doctor left alone with drew to the staircase door and unlocked it. Then waited in the corridor whistling to himself softly under his breath. Voices pitched cautiously low became audible in a minute more in the hall. The resident dispenser and the head nurse appeared on their way to the dormitories in attendance at the top of the house. The man bowed silently and passed the doctor. The woman curtsied silently and followed the man. The doctor acknowledged their salutations by a courteous wave of his hand and once more left alone paused a moment still whistling softly to himself. Then walked to the door of number four and opened the case of the fumigating apparatus fixed near it in the corner of the wall. As he lifted the lid and looked in and his whistling ceased. He took a long purple bottle out examined it by the gaslight put it back and closed the case. This done he advanced on tiptoe to the open staircase door passed through it and secured it on the inner side as usual. Mr. Bashwood had seen him at the apparatus. Mr. Bashwood had noticed the manner of his withdrawal through the staircase door. Again the sense of an utterable expectation appeared at his heart. A terror that was slow and cold and deadly crept into his hands and guided them in the dark to the key that had been left for him in the inner side of the door. He turned it in vague distrust of what might happen next and waited. The slow minutes passed and nothing happened. The silence was horrible. The solitude of the lonely corridor was a solitude of invisible treacheries. He began to count to keep his mind and to keep his own growing dread away from him. The numbers as he whispered them followed each other slowly up to a hundred. And still nothing happened. He had begun the second hundred. He had got on to twenty when without a sound to betray that he had been moving in his room midwinner suddenly appeared in the corridor. He stood for a moment and listened. He went to the stairs and looked over into the hall beneath. Then for the second time that night the door and for the second time found it fast. After a moment's reflection he tried the doors of the bedrooms on his right hand next. Looked into one after the other and saw that they were empty. Then came to the door of the end room in which the steward was concealed. Here again the lock resisted him. He listened and looked up at the grating. No sound was to be heard. No light was to be seen inside. Shall I break the door in? He said to himself and make sure. No, it would be giving the doctor an excuse for turning me out of the house. He moved away and looked into the two empty rooms in the row occupied by Allen and himself. Then walked to the window at the staircase end of the corridor. Here the case of the fumigating apparatus attracted his attention. After trying vainly to open it his suspicion seemed to be aroused. He searched back along the corridor and observed that no object of a similar kind appeared outside any of the other bed chambers. Again at the window he looked again at the apparatus and turned away from it with a gesture which plainly indicated that he had tried and failed to guess what it might be. Baffled at all points he still showed no sign of returning to his bed chamber. He stood at the window with his eyes fixed on the door of Allen's room thinking. If Mr. Bashwood, furtively watching him through the grating could have seen him at that moment in the mind as well as in the body, Mr. Bashwood's heart might have throbbed even faster than it was throbbing now in expectation of the next event which midwinner's decision of the next minute was to bring forth. On what was his mind occupied as he stood alone at the dead of night in the strange house? His mind was occupied in drawing its disconnected impressions together little by little to one point. Convinced from the first that some hidden danger threatened Allen in the sanitarium, his distrust vaguely associated thus far with the place itself with his wife whom he firmly believed to be now under the same roof with him, with the doctor who was as plainly in her confidence as Mr. Bashwood himself. Now narrowed its range and centered itself obstinately in Allen's room. Resigning all further effort to connect his suspicion of a conspiracy against his friend with the outrage which had the day before been offered to himself an effort which would have led him if he could have maintained it to a discovery of the fraud really contemplated by his wife, his mind clouded and confused by disturbing influences, instinctively took refuge in its impressions of facts as they had shown themselves since he had entered the house. Everything that he had noticed below stairs suggested that there was some secret purpose to be answered by getting Allen to sleep in the sanitarium. Everything that he had noticed above stairs associated the lurking place in which the danger lay hid with Allen's room. To reach this conclusion and to decide on baffling the conspiracy whatever it might be by taking Allen's place was with midwinter the work of an instant. Confronted by actual peril, the great nature of the man intuitively freed itself from the weaknesses that had beset it in happier and safer times. Not even the shadow of the old superstition rested on his mind for a while. No fatalist suspicion of himself disturbed the steady resolution that was in him. The one last doubt that troubled him as he stood at the window thinking was the doubt whether he could persuade Allen to change rooms with him without involving himself in an explanation which might lead Allen to suspect the truth. In the minute that elapsed while he waited with his eyes on the room the doubt was resolved. He found the trivial yet sufficient excuse of which he was in search. Mr. Bashwood saw him rouse himself and go to the door. Mr. Bashwood heard him knock softly and whisper, Allen, are you in bed? No, answered the voice inside. Come in. He appeared to be on the point of entering the room when he checked himself as if he had suddenly remembered something. Wait a minute, he said through the door and turning away went straight to the end room. If there is anybody watching us in there, he said aloud, let him watch us through this. He took out his handkerchief and stuffed it into the wires of the grating so as to completely close the aperture. Having thus forced the spy inside if there was one, either to portray himself by moving the handkerchief or to remain blinded to all view of what might happen next midwinter presented himself in Allen's room. You know what poor nerves I have, he said, and what a wretched sleeper I am at the best of times. I can't sleep tonight. The window in my room rattles every time the wind blows. I wish it was as fast as your window here. My dear fellow cried Allen, I don't mind a rattling window. Let's change rooms. Nonsense. Why should you make excuses to me? Don't I know how easily trifles upset those excitable nerves of yours? Now the doctor has quieted my mind about my poor little Neely. I begin to feel the journey and I'll answer for sleeping anywhere till tomorrow comes. He took up his traveling bag. We must be quick about it, he added, pointing to his candle. They haven't left me much candle to go to bed by. Be very quiet, Allen said, opening the door for him. We mustn't disturb the house at this time of night. Yes, yes, return to Allen in a whisper. Good night, I hope you'll sleep as well as I shall. Midwinter saw him into number three and noticed that his own candle, which he had left there, was as short as Allen's. Good night, he said, and came out again into the corridor. He went straight to the grading and looked and listened once more. The handkerchief remained exactly as he had left it and still there was no sound to be heard within. He returned slowly along the corridor and thought of the precautions he had taken for the last time. Was there no other way than the way he was trying now? There was none. Any openly avowed posture of defense while the nature of the danger and the quarter from which it might come would be useless in itself and worse than useless in the consequences which it might produce by putting the people of the house on their guard. Without a fact that could justify to other minds his distrust of what might happen with the night incapable of shaking Allen's ready faith in the fair outside which the doctor had presented to him, the one safeguard in his friend's interest that Midwinter could set up was the safeguard of changing the rooms. The one policy he could follow, come what might of it, was the policy of waiting for events. I can trust one thing he said to himself as he looked for the last time up and down the corridor. I can trust myself to keep awake. After a glance at the clock on the wall opposite he went into number four. The sound of the closing door was heard. The sound of the turning lock followed it. Then the dead silence fell over the house once more. Little by little the stewards horror of the stillness and darkness overcame his dread of moving the handkerchief. He cautiously drew aside one corner of it, waited, looked, and took courage at last to draw the whole handkerchief through the wires of the grating. After first hiding it in his pocket he thought of the consequences if it was found on him and threw it down in a corner of the room. He trembled when he had cast it from him as he looked at his watch and placed himself again at the grating to wait for Miss Guilt. It was a quarter to one. The moon had come round from the side to the front of the sanitarium. From time to time her light gleamed on the window of the corridor when the gaps in the flying clouds led it through. The wind had risen and sung its mournful song faintly as it swept in intervals over the desert ground in front of the house. The minute hand of the clock traveled on halfway round the circle of the dial. As it touched the quarter past one Miss Guilt stepped noiselessly into the corridor. Let yourself out she whispered through the grating and follow me. She returned to the stairs by which she had just descended. Pushed the door too softly after Mr. Bashwood had followed her and led the way up to the landing of the second floor. There she put the question to him which she had not ventured to put below stairs. Was Mr. Armadale shown into number four, she asked? He bowed his head without speaking. Answer me in words. Has Mr. Armadale left the room since? He answered no. Have you never lost sight of number four since I left you? He never. Something strange in his manner, something unfamiliar in his voice as he made that last reply attracted her attention. She took her candle from a table near on which she had left it and threw its light on him. His eyes were staring, his teeth chattered. There was everything to portray him to her as a terrified man. There was nothing to tell her that the terror was caused by his consciousness of deceiving her for the first time in his life to her face. If she had threatened him less openly when she placed him on the watch, if she had spoken less unreservedly of the interview which was to reward him in the morning, he might have owned the truth. As it was his strongest fears and his dearest hopes were alike interested in telling her the fatal lie that he had now told, the fatal lie which he reiterated when she put her question for the second time. End of Chapter 3, Part 3