 CHAPTER XV. PART III. Wait a minute, said Bashwood the Younger. Are you as certain as ever that Mr. Armadale is the man? What man? The man who is going to marry her? Yes, yes, yes. Let me go, Jimmy, let me go. The spy set his back against the door, and considered for a moment. Mr. Armadale was rich. Mr. Armadale, if he was not stark mad too, might be made to put the right money-value and information that saved him from the disgrace of marrying Miss Squilt. It may be a hundred pounds in my pocket if I work it myself, thought Bashwood the Younger, and it won't be a half-penny if I leave it to my father. He took up his hat and his leather bag. Can you carry it all in your own, addled old head, Daddy? He asked, with his easiest impudence of manner. Not you. I'll go with you and help you. What do you think of that? The father threw his arms in an ecstasy round the son's neck. I can't help it, Jimmy, he said, in broken tones. You're so good to me. Take the other note, my dear. I'll manage without it. Take the other note. The son threw open the door with a flourish, and magnanimously turned his back on the father's offered pocket-book. Hang it, old gentleman. I'm not quite so mercenary as that, he said, with an appearance of the deepest feeling. Put up your pocket-book and let's be off. If I took my respected parent's last five-pound note, he thought to himself, as he led the way downstairs. How do I know he might cry halves when he sees the colour of Mr. Armadale's money? Come along, Dad, he resumed. We'll take a cab and catch the happy bridegroom before he starts for the church. They held a cab in the street and started for the hotel, which had been the residence of Midwinter and Allen during their stay in London. The instant the door of the vehicle had closed, Mr. Bashwood returned to the subject of Miss Guilt. Tell me the rest, he said, taking his son's hand and patting it tenderly. Let's go on talking about here, all the way to the hotel. Help me through the time, Jimmy. Help me through the time. Bashwood, the younger, was in high spirits at the prospect of seeing the colour of Mr. Armadale's money. He trifled with his father's anxiety to the very last. Let's see if you remember what I've told you already, he began. There's a character in the story that's dropped out of it without being accounted for. Come, can you tell me who it is? He had reckoned on finding his father unable to answer the question, but Mr. Bashwood's memory, for anything that related to Miss Guilt, was as clear and ready as his son's. The foreign scoundrel who tempted her and let her screen him at the risk of her own life, he said, without an instant's hesitation. Don't speak of him, Jimmy. Don't speak of him again. I must speak of him, retorted the other. You want to know what became of Miss Guilt when she got out of prison, don't you? Very good. I'm in a position to tell you. She became Mrs. Manuel. It's no use staring at me, old gentleman. I know it officially. At the latter part of last year, a foreign lady came to our place with evidence to prove that she had been lawfully married to Captain Manuel, at a former period of his career. When he had visited England for the first time. She'd only lately discovered that he had been in this country again, and she had reason to believe that he had married another woman in Scotland. Our people were employed to make the necessary inquiries. Comparison of dates showed that the Scotch marriage, if it was a marriage at all, and not a sham, had taken place just about the time when Miss Guilt was a free woman again. And a little further investigation showed us that the second Mrs. Manuel was no other than the heroine of the famous criminal trial, whom we didn't know then but whom we do know now, to be identical with your fascinating friend, Miss Guilt. Mr. Bashwood's head sank on his breast. He clasped his trembling hands fast in each other, and waited in silence to hear the rest. Cheer up, pursued his son. She was no more the Captain's wife than you are, and what is more, the Captain himself is out of your way now. One foggy day in December, last, he gave us the slip, and was off to the continent. Nobody knew where. He had spent the hold of the second Mrs. Manuel's five thousand pounds in the time that had elapsed between two and three years, since she had come out of prison. And the wonder was, where he had got the money to pay his travel expenses. It turned out that he had got it from the second Mrs. Manuel herself. She had filled his empty pockets. And there she was, waiting confidently in a miserable London lodging, to hear from him and join him as soon as he was safely settled in foreign parts. Where had she got the money, you may ask, naturally enough? Nobody could tell at the time. My own notion is, now, that her former mistress must have been still living, and that she must have turned her knowledge of the Blanchard's family secret to profitable account at last. This is mere guesswork, of course, but there is a circumstance that makes it likely guesswork to my mind. She had an elderly female friend to apply to at the time, who was just the woman to help her in feathering out her mistress's address. Can you guess the name of the elderly female friend? Not you? Mrs. Oldershaw, of course. Mr. Bashwood suddenly looked up. Why, she should go back, he asked, to the woman who had deserted her when she was a child. I can't say, rejoined his son, unless she went back in the interest of her own magnificent head of hair. The prison scissors, I needn't tell you, had made short work of it with Miss Guilt's love locks, in every sense of the word. And Mrs. Oldershaw, I beg to add, is the most eminent woman in England, as restorer general of the dilapidated heads and faces of the female sex. Put two and two together, and perhaps you'll agree with me in this case, that they make four. Yes, yes, two and two make four, repeated his father impatiently. But I want to know something else. Did she care for him again? Did he send for her after he had gone away to foreign parts? The Captain. Why, what on earth can you be thinking of? Hadn't he spent every farthing of her money, and wasn't he loosed on the continent out of her reach? She waited to hear from him, I daresay, for she persisted in believing in him. But I'll lay you any wager you like. She never saw the sight of his handwriting again. We did our best at the office to open her eyes. We told her plainly that he had a first wife living, and that she had the shadow of a claim on him. She wouldn't believe us, though we met her with the evidence. Obsonant, devilish, obstinate! I daresay she waited for months together before she gave up the last hope of ever seeing him again. Mr. Bashwood looked aside quickly out of the cab window. Where could she turn for refuge next? he said. Not to his son, but to himself. What in heaven's name could she do? Judging by my experience of women, remarked Bashwood the younger, overhearing him, I should say she probably tried to drown herself, but that's only guesswork again. It's all guesswork at this part of her story. You catch me at the end of my evidence, Dad, when you come to miss Wilt's proceedings in the spring and summer of the present year. She might or she might not have been desperate enough to attempt suicide, and she might or she might not have been at the bottom of those inquiries that I made for Mrs. Oldershaw. I daresay you'll see her this morning, and perhaps, if you use your influence, you may be able to make her finish her own story herself. Mr. Bashwood, still looking out of the cab window, suddenly laid his hand on his son's arm. Hush, hush, he exclaimed, in violent agitation. We have got there at last. Oh, Jimmy, feel how my heart beats. Here's the hotel. Bother your heart, said Bashwood the younger. Wait here while I make the inquiries. I'll come with you, cried his father. I can't wait. I tell you I can't wait. They went into the hotel together and asked for Mr. Armadale. The answer, after some little hesitation and delay, was that Mr. Armadale had gone away six days since. A second waiter added that Mr. Armadale's friend, Mr. Midwinter, had only left that morning. Where had Mr. Armadale gone? Somewhere into the country. Where had Mr. Midwinter gone? Nobody knew. Mr. Bashwood looked at his son in speechless and helpless dismay. Stuff and nonsense, said Bashwood the younger, pushing his father back, ruffling to the cab. He's safe enough. We shall find him at Miss Quilts. The old man took his son's hand and kissed it. Thank you, my dear, he said, gratefully. Thank you for comforting me. The cab was driven next to the second lodging which Miss Quilt had occupied in the neighborhood of Toddingham Courtyard. Stop here, said the spy getting out and shutting his father into the cab. I mean to manage this part of the business myself. He knocked at the house door. I've got a note from Miss Quilt, he said. Walking into the passage, the moment the door was opened. She's gone, answered the servant. She went away last night. Next with the younger, wasted no more words with the servant. He insisted on seeing the mistress. The mistress confirmed the announcement of Miss Quilt's departure on the previous evening. Where had she gone to? The woman couldn't say. How had she left? On foot. At what hour? Between nine and ten. What had she done with her luggage? She had no luggage. Had a gentleman been to see her on the previous day? On a sole, gentle or simple, had come to the house to see Miss Quilt. The father's face, pale and wild, was looking out of the cab window as the sun descended the house steps. Isn't she there, Jimmy? he asked faintly. Isn't she there? Hold your tongue, cried the spy. With the native coarseness of his nature rising to the surface at last, I'm not at the end of my inquiries yet. He crossed the road and entered a coffee shop situated exactly opposite the house he had just left. In the box nearest the window two men were sitting, talking together anxiously. Which of you was on duty, yesterday evening, between nine and ten o'clock? asked Bashford the younger, suddenly joining them and putting his question in a quick, peremptory whisper. I was, sir, said one of the men, unwillingly. Did you lose sight of the house? Yes, I see you did. Only for a minute, sir. An infernal black guard of a soldier came in. That will do, said Bashford the younger. I know what the soldier did and who sent him to do it. She has given us a slip again. You are the greatest ass living. Consider yourself dismissed. With those words and with an oath to emphasize them, he left the coffee shop and returned to the cab. She's gone, cried his father. Oh, Jemmy! Jemmy, I see it in your face. He fell back into his own corner of the cab with a faint, wailing cry. They're married, he moaned to himself, his hands falling helplessly on his knees, his hat falling unregarded from his head. Stop them, he exclaimed, suddenly rousing himself and seizing the sun in a frenzy by the collar of the coat. Go back to the hotel. Shouted Bashford the younger to the cab man. Hold your noise, he added, turning fiercely on his father. I want to think. The varnish of smoothness was all often by this time. His temper was roused, his pride, even such a man has his pride, was wounded to the quick. Twice had he matched his wits against a woman's, and twice the woman had daffled him. He got out on reaching the hotel for the second time and privately tried the servants with the offer of money. The result of the experiment satisfied him that they had, in this instance, really and truly no information to sell. After a moment's reflection he stopped before leaving the hotel to ask the way to the parish church. The chance may be worth trying, he thought to himself, as he gave the address to the driver. Faster, he called out, looking first at his watch and then at his father. The minutes are precious this morning, and the old one is beginning to give in. It was true. Still capable of hearing and of understanding, Mr. Bashford was past speaking by this time. He clung with both hands to his son's grudging arm and let his head fall helplessly on his son's averted shoulder. The parish church stood back from the street, protected by gates and railings, and surrounded by a space of open ground. Shaking off his father's hold, Bashford the Younger made straight for the vistry. The clerk, putting away the books and the clerk's assistant, hanging up a surplus, were the only persons in the room when he entered it, and asked leave to look at the marriage register for the day. The clerk gravely opened the book and stood aside from the desk on which it lay. The day's register comprised three marriages, solemnized that morning, and the first two signatures on the page were Alan Armadale and Lydia Guilt. Even the spy, ignorant as he was of the truth, unsuspicious as he was of the terrible future consequences to which the act of that morning might lead, even the spy started when his eye first fell on the page, it was done. Come what might of it, it was done now. There, in black and white, was the registered evidence of the marriage, which was at once a truth in itself and a lie in the conclusion to which it led. There, through the fatal similarity in the names, there in Midwinter's own signature, was the proof to persuade everybody that not Midwinter, but Alan, was the husband of Miss Guilt. Bashwood the Younger closed the book and returned it to the clerk. He descended the vestry steps, with his hands thrust doggedly into his pockets, and with a serious shock inflicted on his professional self-esteem. The beetle met him under the church wall. He considered for a moment whether it was worthwhile to spend a shilling in questioning the man, and decided in the affirmative. If they could be traced and overtaken, there might be a chance of seeing the color of Mr. Armandale's money, even yet. How long is it, he asked, since the first couple married here this morning, left the church. About an hour, said the beetle. How did they go away? The beetle deferred answering that second question until he at first pocketed his fee. You won't trace them from here, sir, he said, when he got his shilling. They went away on foot. And that is all you know about it. That, sir, is all I know about it. Left by himself, even the detective of the private inquiry office paused for a moment before he returned to his father at the gate. He was roused from his hesitation by the sudden appearance within the church enclosure of the driver of the cab. I'm afraid the old gentleman is going to be taken ill, sir, said the man. Bash with the younger frowned angrily and walked back to the cab. As he opened the door and looked in, his father leaned forward and confronted him with lips that moved speechlessly and with a white stillness over all the rest of his face. She's done us, said the spy. They were married here this morning. The old man's body swayed for a moment from one side to the other. The instant after, his eyes closed and his head fell forward toward the front seat of the cab. Drive to the hospital, cried his son. He's in a fit. This is what comes of putting myself out of my way to please my father, he muttered, suddenly raising Mr. Bash with his head and loosening his cravat. A nice morning's work, upon my soul, a nice morning's work. The hospital was near and the house surgeon was at his post. Will he come out of it? asked Bash with the younger, roughly. Who are you? asked the surgeon sharply on his side. I'm the son. I shouldn't have thought it. Rejoined the surgeon, taking the restoratives that were handed to him by the nurse and turning from the son to the father, with an air of relief which he was at no pains to conceal. Yes, he added, after a minute or two, your father will come out of it this time. When can he be moved away from here? He can be moved from the hospital in an hour or two. The spy laid a card on the table. I'll come back for him or send for him, he said. I suppose I can go now, if I leave my name and address. With those words he put on his hat and walked out. He's a brute, said the nurse. No, said the surgeon, quietly. He's a man. Between nine and ten o'clock that night Mr. Bash would awoke in his bed at the inn in the borough. He had slept for some hours since he had been brought back from the hospital and his mind and body were now slowly recovering together. A light was burning on the bedside table and a letter lay on it, waiting for him till he was awake. It was in his son's handwriting, and it contained these words, My dear dad, having seen you safe out of the hospital and back at your hotel, I think I may fairly claim to have done my duty by you and may consider myself free to look after my own affairs. Business will prevent me from seeing you tonight, and I don't think it at all likely I shall be in your neighbourhood tomorrow morning. My advice to you is to go back to Thor Bambrows and to stick to your employment in the Stewards' office. Wherever Mr. Armadale may be, he must, sooner or later, write to you on business. I wash my hands of the whole matter, mind, so far as I am concerned, from this time forth. But if you like to go on with it, my professional opinion is, though you couldn't hinder his marriage, you may part him from his wife. Pray take care of yourself. You are affectionate son, James Bashwood. The letter dropped from the old man's feeble hands. I wish Jemmy could have come to see me tonight, he thought, but it's very kind of him to advise me, all the same. He turned wearily on the pillow and read the letter a second time. Yes, he said. There's nothing left for me but to go back. I'm too poor and too old to hunt after them all by myself. He closed his eyes. The tears trickled slowly over his wrinkled cheeks. I've been in trouble to Jemmy, he murmured faintly. I've been in a sad trouble, I'm afraid, to poor Jemmy. In a minute more, his weakness overpowered him, and he fell asleep again. The clock of the neighboring church struck. It was ten. As the bell tolled the hour, the tidal train, with midwinter, and his wife among the passengers, was speeding nearer and nearer to Paris. As the bell tolled the hour, the watch on board, Allen's outward-bound yacht, had sided the lighthouse off the land's end, and had set the course of the vessel for Ushant and Vinistier, the end of Chapter 15, Part 3, the end of the third book. Book 4, Chapter 1 of Armadale. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Margaret Brashon. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 1, Book 4, Ms. Guilt's Diary. Naples, October 10. It is two months today since I declared that I had closed my diary, never to open it again. Why have I broken my resolution? Why have I gone back to this secret friend of my wretchedest and wickedest hours? Because I am more friendless than ever. Because I am more lonely than ever, though my husband is sitting writing in their next room to me. My misery is a woman's misery. And it will speak, here, rather than nowhere, to my second self, in this book, if I have no one else to hear me. How happy I was in the first days that followed our marriage, and how happy I made him. Only two months have passed, and that time is a bygone time already. I try to think of anything I might have said or done wrongly on my side, of anything he might have said or done wrongly on his. And I can remember nothing unworthy of my husband, nothing unworthy of myself. I cannot even lay my finger on the day when the cloud first rose between us. I could bear it, if I loved him less dearly than I do. I could conquer the misery of our estrangement, if he only showed the change in him as brutally as other men would show it. But this never has happened, never will happen. It is not in his nature to inflict suffering on others. Not a hard word, not a hard look escapes him. It is only at night, when I hear him sighing in his sleep, and sometimes when I see him dreaming in the morning hours, that I know how hopelessly I am losing the love he once felt for me. He hides, or tries to hide it in the day, for my sake. He is all gentleness, all kindness, but his heart is not on his lips when he kisses me now. His hand tells me nothing when it touches mine. Day after day, the hours that he gives to his hateful writing grow longer and longer. Day after day, he becomes more and more silent in the hours that he gives to me. And, with all this, there is nothing that I can complain of. Nothing marked enough to justify me in noticing it. His disappointment shrinks from all open confession. His resignation collects itself by such fine degrees that even my watchfulness fails to see the growth of it. 50 times a day, I feel the longing in me to throw my arms round his neck and say, for God's sake, do anything to me rather than treat me like this. And 50 times a day, the words are forced back into my heart by the cruel considerateness of his conduct, which gives me no excuse for speaking them. I thought I had suffered the sharpest pain that I could feel when my first husband laid his whip across my face. I thought I knew the worst that despair could do on the day when I knew that the other villain, the meaner villain still, had cast me off. Live and learn. There is sharper pain than I felt under Waldron's whip. There is bitterer despair than the despair I knew when Manuel deserted me. Am I too old for him? Surely not yet. Have I lost my beauty? Not a man passes me in the street, but his eyes tell me I am as handsome as ever. Ah, no, no. The secret lies deeper than that. I have thought and thought about it till a horrible fancy has taken possession of me. He has been noble and good in his past life, and I have been wicked and disgraced. Who can tell what a gap that dreadful difference may make between us, unknown to him and unknown to me? It is folly. It is madness. But when I lie awake by him in the darkness, I ask myself, whether any unconscious disclosure of the truth escapes me in the close intimacy that now unites us? Is there an unutterable something left by the horror of my past life, which clings invisibly to me still? And is he feeling the influence of it sensibly, and yet incomprehensibly to himself? Oh, me, is there no purifying power in such love as mine? Are there plague spots of past wickedness on my heart, which no after repentance can wash out? Who can tell? There is something wrong in our married life. I can only come back to that. There is some adverse influence that neither he nor I can trace, which is parting us further and further from each other day by day. Well, I suppose I shall be hardened in time and learn to bear it. An open carriage has just driven by my window with a nicely dressed lady in it. She had her husband by her side and her children on the seat opposite. At the moment when I saw her, she was laughing and talking in high spirits, a sparkling, lighthearted, happy woman. Ah, my lady, when you were a few years younger, if you had been left to yourself and thrown on the world like me. October 11th. The 11th day of the month was the day, two months since, when we were married. He said nothing about it to me when we woke, nor I to him. But I thought I would make it the occasion at breakfast time of trying to win him back. I don't think I ever took such pains with my toilet before. I don't think I ever looked better than I looked when I went downstairs this morning. He had breakfasted by himself, and I found a little slip of paper on the table with an apology written on it. The post to England, he said, went out that day, and his letter to the newspaper must be finished. In his place I would have let fifty posts go out rather than breakfast without him. I went into his room. There he was, immersed body and soul in his hateful writing. Can't you give me a little time this morning? I asked. He got up with a start. Certainly, if you wish it. He never even looked at me as he said the words. The very sound of his voice told me that all his interest was centered in the pen that he had just laid down. I see you are occupied, I said. I don't wish it. Before I had closed the door on him, he was back at his desk. I have often heard that the wives of authors have been for the most part unhappy women. And now I know why. I suppose, as I said yesterday, I shall learn to bear it. What stuff, by the by, I seem to have written yesterday. How ashamed I should be if anybody thought but myself. I hope the Trumpery newspaper he writes for won't succeed. I hope his rubbishing letter will be well cut up by some other newspaper as soon as it gets into print. What am I to do with myself all the morning? I can't go out, it's raining. If I open the piano, I shall disturb the industrious journalist who is scribbling in the next room. Oh, dear, it was lonely enough in my lodging in Thorpe Ambrose. But how much lonelier it is here. Shall I read? No, books don't interest me. I hate the whole tribe of authors. I think I shall look back through these pages and live my life over again when I was plotting and planning and finding a new excitement to occupy me in every hour of the day. He might have looked at me, though he was so busy with his writing. He might have said, how nicely you addressed this morning. He might have remembered, never mind what. All he remembers is the newspaper. 12 o'clock. I have been reading and thinking. And thanks to my diary, I have got through an hour. What a time it was, what a life it was at Thorpe Ambrose. I wonder I kept my senses. It makes my heart beat. It makes my face flush. Only to read about it now. The rain still falls and the journal is still scribbles. I don't want to think the thoughts of the past time over again. And yet, what else can I do? Supposing. I only say supposing. I felt now, as I felt when I traveled to London with Armadale. And when I saw my way to his life as plainly as I saw the man himself, all through the journey. I'll go and look out the window. I'll go and count the people as they pass by. A funeral has gone by, with the penitents in their black hoods, and the wax torches sputtering in the wet, and the little bell ringing, and the priests droning their monotonous chant. A pleasant sight to see me at the window. I shall go back to my diary. Supposing I was not the altered woman I am. I only say supposing. How would the grand risk that I once thought of running look now? I have married Midwinter in the name that is really his own, and by doing that I have taken the first of those three steps which were once to lead me, through Armadale's life, to the fortune and the station of Armadale's widow. No matter how innocent my intentions might have been on the wedding day, and they were innocent, this is one of the unalterable results of the marriage. Well, having taken the first step then, whether I would or know how, supposing I meant to take the second step, which I don't, how would present circumstances stand toward me? Would they warn me to draw back? I wonder, or would they encourage me to go on? It will interest me to calculate the chances, and I can easily tear the leaf out and destroy it if the prospect looks too encouraging. We are living here, for economy's sake, far away from the expensive English quarter, in a suburb of the city on the Portigie side. We have made no traveling acquaintances among our own country people. Our poverty is against us, midwinter shyness is against us, and with the women, my personal appearance is against us. The men from whom my husband gets his information for the newspaper meet him at the café, and never come here. I discourage his bringing any strangers to see me, for, though years have passed since I was last at Naples, I cannot be sure that some of the many people I once knew in this place may not be living still. The moral of all this is, as the children's storybooks say, that not a single witness has come to this house who could declare, if any after-inquiry took place in England, that midwinter and I had been living here as man and wife, so much for present circumstances as they affect me. Armadale next. Has any unforeseen accident led him to communicate with Thorpe Ambrose? Has he broken the conditions which the Major imposed on him, and asserted himself in the character of Miss Milroy's promised husband, since I saw him last? Nothing of the sort has taken place. No unforeseen accident has altered his position, his tempting position toward myself. I know all that has happened to him since he left England, through the letters which he writes to midwinter and which midwinter shows to me. He has been wrecked to begin with. His trumpery little yacht has actually tried to drown him after all, and has failed. It happened, as midwinter warned him it might happen, with so small a vessel, in a sudden storm. They were blown ashore on the coast of Portugal. The yacht went to pieces, but the lives and papers and so on were saved. The men have been sent back to Bristol, with recommendations from their master, which have already got them employment on board an outward bound ship. And the master himself is on his way here, after stopping first at Lisbon, and next at Gilbuchar, and trying ineffectually in both places to supply himself with another vessel. His third attempt is to be made at Naples, where there is an English yacht laid up, as they call it, to be had for sail or hire. He has had no occasion to ride home since the wreck, for he took away from Coots the whole of the large sum of money lodged there for him in circular notes. And he has felt no inclination to go back to England himself. For, with Mr. Brock dead, Miss Milroy at school, and midwinter here, he has not a living creature in whom he is interested to welcome him if he returned. To see us, and to see the new yacht, are the only two present objects he has in view. Midwinter has been expecting him for a week past. And he may walk into this very room in which I am writing, at this very moment, for all I know to the contrary. Tempting circumstances, these, with all the wrongs I have suffered as his mother's hands and at his, still alive in my memory, with Miss Milroy confidently waiting to take her place at the head of his household, with my dream of living happy and innocent in midwinter's love, dispelled forever, and with nothing left in its place to help me against myself. I wish it wasn't raining. I wish I could go out. Perhaps something may happen to prevent Armadale from coming to Naples. When he last wrote, he was waiting at Gilbuchar for an English steamer in the Mediterranean trade to bring him on here. He may get tired of waiting before the steamer comes, or he may hear of a yacht at some other place than this. A little bird whispers in my ear that it may possibly be the wisest thing he ever did in his life if he breaks his engagement to join us at Naples. Shall I tear out the leaf on which all these shocking things have been written? No. My diary is so nicely bound. It would be positive barbarity to tear out a leaf. Let me occupy myself harmlessly with something else. What shall it be? My dressing case, I will put my dressing case tidy and polish up the few little things in it which my misfortunes have still left in my possession. I have shut up the dressing case again. The first thing I found in it was Armadale's shabby present to me on my marriage, the rubbishing little ruby ring that irritated me to begin with. The second thing that turned up was my bottle of drops. I caught myself measuring the doses with my eye and calculating how many of them would be enough to take a living creature over the borderland between sleep and death. Why I should have locked the dressing case in a fright before I had quite completed my calculation, I don't know, but I did lock it, and here I am again at my diary, with nothing, absolutely nothing to write about. Oh, the weary day, the weary day. Well, nothing happened to excite me a little in this horrible place. October 12th, midwinter's all-important letter to the newspaper was dispatched by the post last night. I was foolish enough to suppose that I might be honored by having some of his spare attention be stowed on me today. Nothing of the sort. He had a restless night, after all his writing, and got up with his head aching and his spirits miserably depressed. When he is in this state, his favorite remedy is to return to his old vagabond habits and go roaming away by himself nobody knows where. He went through the form this morning, knowing I had no writing habit, of offering to hire a little broken need brute of a pony for me in case I wished to accompany him. I preferred remaining at home. I will have a handsome horse and a handsome habit, or I won't write at all. He went away, without attempting to persuade me to change my mind. I wouldn't have changed it, of course, but he might have tried to persuade me all the same. I can open the piano in his absence. That is one comfort. And I am in a fine humor for playing. That is another. There is a sonata of Beethoven's. I forget the number, which always suggests to me the agony of lost spirits and a place of torment. Come, my fingers and thumbs, and take me among the lost spirits this morning. October 13th. Our windows look out on the sea. At noon today we saw a steamer coming in, with the English flag flying. Midwinter has gone to the port on the chance that this may be the vessel from Gilbuchar with Armadale on board. Two o'clock. It is the vessel from Gilbuchar. Armadale has added one more to the long list of his blunders. He has kept his engagement to join us at Naples. How will it end now? Who knows? October 16th. Two days missed out of my diary. I can hardly tell why, unless it is that Armadale irritates me beyond all endurance. The mere sight of him takes me back to Thorpe Ambrose. I fancy I must have been afraid of what I might write about him in the course of the last two days. If I indulge myself in the dangerous luxury of opening these pages, this morning I am afraid of nothing, and I take up my pen again accordingly. Is there any limit, I wonder, to the brutish stupidity of some men? I thought I had discovered Armadale's limit when I was his neighbor and Norfolk, but my later experience at Naples shows me that I was wrong. He is perpetually in and out of this house, crossing over to us in a boat from the hotel at Santa Lucia, where he sleeps. And he has exactly two subjects of conversation, the yacht for sail on the harbor here, and Miss Millroy. Yes, he selects me as the confidant of his devoted attachment to the major's daughter. It's so nice to talk to a woman about it. That is all the apology he has thought it necessary to make for appealing to my sympathies, my sympathies, on the subject of his darling mealy, 50 times a day. He is evidently persuaded, if he thinks about it at all, that I have forgotten, as completely as he has forgotten, all that once passed between us when I was first at Thorpe Ambrose. Such an utter want of the commonest delicacy and the commonest tact and a creature who is, to all appearance, possessed of a skin and not a hide, and who does, unless my ears deceive me, talk and not bray, is really quite incredible when one comes to think of it. But it is, for all that, quite true. He asked me. He actually asked me last night how many hundreds a year the wife of a rich man could spend on her dress. Don't put it too low, the idiot added, with his intolerable grin, nearly shall be one of the best dressed women in England when I have married her. And this to me, after having had him at my feet and then losing him again through Miss Millroy, this to me with an alpaca gown on and a husband whose income must be helped by a newspaper. I had better not dwell on it any longer. I had better think and write of something else. The Yacht. As a relief from hearing about Miss Millroy, I declare the Yacht in the harbor is quite an interesting subject to me. She, the men call a vessel she, and I suppose, if the women took an interest in such things, they would call a vessel he. She is a beautiful model, and her topsides, whatever they may be, are especially distinguished by being built of mahogany. But with these merits she has the defect, on the other hand, of being old, which is a sad drawback, and the crew and the sailing master have been paid off and sent to England, which is additionally distressing. Still, if a new crew and a new sailing master can be picked up here, such a beautiful creature with all her drawbacks is not to be despised. It might answer to hire her for a cruise and to see how she behaves. If she is on my mind, her behavior will rather astonish her new master. The cruise will determine what faults she has and what repairs through the unlucky circumstance of her age she really stands in need of. And then it will be time to settle whether to buy her outright or not. Such is Armadale's conversation when he is not talking of his darling mealy, and mid-winter, who can steal no time from his newspaper work for his wife, can steal hours for his friend, and can offer them unreservedly to my irresistible rival the new yacht. I shall write no more today. If so ladylike a person as I am could feel a tigerish tingling all over her to the very tips of her fingers, I should suspect myself of being in that condition at the present moment. But with my manners and accomplishments, the thing is, of course, out of the question, we all know that a lady has no passions. October seventeenth. A letter from mid-winter this morning from the slave-owners, I mean the newspaper people in London, which has set him at work again harder than ever. A visit at luncheon time and another visit at dinnertime from Armadale. Conversation at luncheon about the yacht. Conversation at dinner about Miss Millroy. I have been honoured in regard to that young lady by an invitation to go with Armadale tomorrow to the Toledo and help him to buy some presents for the beloved object. I didn't fly out at him, I only made an excuse. Can words express the astonishment I feel at my own patience? No words can express it. October eighteenth. Armadale came to breakfast this morning by way of catching mid-winter before he shuts himself up over his work. Conversation the same as yesterday's conversation at lunch. Armadale has made his bargain with the agent for hiring the yacht. The agent, compassionate in his total ignorance of the language, has helped him to find an interpreter, but can't help him to find a crew. The interpreter is civil and willing, but doesn't understand the sea. Mid-winter's assistance is indispensable, and mid-winter's requested and consents to work harder than ever so as to make time for helping his friend. When the crew is found, the merits and defects of the vessel are to be tried by a crew to Sicily, with mid-winter on board to give his opinion. Lastly, in the case she should feel lonely, the lady's cabin is most obligingly placed at the disposal of mid-winter's wife. All this was settled at the breakfast table, and it ended with one of Armadale's neatly turned compliments addressed to myself. I mean to take nearly sailing with me when we are married, and you have such good taste, you will be able to tell me everything the lady's cabin wants between that time and this. If some women bring such men as this into the world, ought other women to allow them to live? It is a matter of opinion, I think not. What maddens me is to see, as I do see plainly, that mid-winter finds an Armadale's company and an Armadale's new yacht, a refuge from me. He is always in better spirits when Armadale is here. He forgets me in Armadale almost as completely as he forgets me in his work, and I bear it. What a patterned wife! What an excellent Christian I am! October 19. Nothing new. Yesterday over again. October 20. One piece of news. Mid-winter is suffering from nervous headache and is working in spite of it to make time for his holiday with his friend. October 21. Mid-winter is worse. Only in wild and unapproachable after two bad nights and two uninterrupted days at his desk. Under any other circumstance he would take this warning and leave off. But nothing warns him now. He is still working as hard as ever for Armadale's sake. How much longer will my patience last? October 22. Signs last night that mid-winter is taxing his brains beyond what his brains will bear. When he did fall asleep he was frightfully restless, groaning and talking and grinding his teeth. From some of the words I heard he seemed at one time to be dreaming of his life when he was a boy, roaming the country with the dancing dogs. At another time he was back again with Armadale, imprisoned all night on the wreckage ship. Toward the early morning hours he grew quieter. I fell asleep and, waking after a short interval, found myself alone. My first glance round showed me a light burning in midwinter's dressing-room. I rose softly and went to look at him. He was seated in the great, ugly, old-fashioned chair which I ordered to be removed into the dressing-room out of the way when we first came here. His head lay back and one of his hands hung listlessly over the arm of the chair. The other hand was on his lap. I stole a little nearer and saw that exhaustion had overpowered him while he was either reading or writing, for there were books, pens, ink, and paper on the table before him. What had he got up to do secretly at the hour of the morning? I looked closer at the papers on the table. They were all neatly folded, as he usually keeps them, with one exception and that exception lying open on the rest was Mr. Rock's letter. I looked round at him again, after making this discovery, and then noticed for the first time another written paper lying under the hand that rested on his lap. There was no moving it away without the risk of waking him. Part of the open manuscript, however, was not covered by his hand. I looked at it to see what he had secretly stolen away to read besides Mr. Rock's letter, and made out enough to tell me that it was the narrative of Armadale's dream. That second discovery sent me back at once to my bed with something serious to think of. Travelling through France, on our way to this place, Midwinter's shyness was conquered for once by a very pleasant man, an Irish doctor, whom we met in the railway carriage, and who quite insisted on being friendly and sociable with us all through the day's journey. Finding that Midwinter was devoting himself to literary pursuits, our travelling companion warmed him not to pass too many hours together at his desk. Your face tells me more than you think, the doctor said. If you are ever tempted to overwork your brain, you will feel it sooner than most men. When you find your nerves playing you strange tricks, don't neglect the warning. Drop your pen. After my last night's discovery in the dressing room, it looks as if Midwinter's nerves were beginning already to justify the doctor's opinion of them. If one of the tricks they are playing him is the trick of tormenting him again with his old superstitious terrors, there will be a change in our lives here before long. I shall wait curiously to see whether the conviction that we too are destined to bring fatal danger to Armadale takes possession of Midwinter's mind once more. If it does, I know what will happen. He will not stir a step toward helping his friend to find a crew for the yacht, and he will certainly refuse to sail with Armadale or to let me sail with him on the trial cruise. October 23rd, Mr. Brock's letter has, apparently, not lost its influence yet. Midwinter is working again today and is as anxious as ever for the holiday time that he is to pass with his friend. Two o'clock, Armadale here, as usual, eager to know when Midwinter will be at his service. No definite answer to be given to the question yet, seeing that it all depends on Midwinter's capacity to continue at his desk. Armadale sat down disappointed. He yawned and put his great clumsy hands in his pockets. I took up a book. The brute didn't understand that I wanted to be left alone. He began again on the unendurable subject of Miss Mildroy, and of all the fine things she was to have when he married her. Her own riding-horse, her own pony carriage, her own beautiful little sitting-room upstairs at the great house, and so on. All that I might have had once Miss Mildroy is to have now, if I let her. Six o'clock. More of the everlasting Armadale, half an hour since, Midwinter came in from his riding, giddy and exhausted. I had been pining all day for a little music, and I knew they were giving Norma at the theatre here. It struck me that an hour or two at the opera might do Midwinter good, as well as me, and I said, Why not take a box at the San Carlo tonight? He answered in a dull, uninterested manner that he was not rich enough to take a box. Armadale was present, and flourished his well-filled purse in his usual insufferable way. I'm rich enough, old boy, and it comes to the same thing. With those words he took up his hat and trampled out on his great elephant's feet to get the box. I looked after him from the window as he went down the street. Your widow, with her twelve hundred a year, I thought to myself, might take a box at the San Carlo whenever she pleased, without being beholden to anybody. The empty-headed wretch whistled as he went his way to the theatre, and tossed his loose silver magnificently to every beggar who ran after him. Midnight, I am alone again at last. Have I nerve enough to write the history of this terrible evening, just as it has passed? I have nerve enough, at any rate, to turn to a new leaf and try. End of Chapter 1, Book 4, Recording by Margaret Prashant. Section 52 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. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Book IV. Chapter 2. The Diary, Continued. We went to the San Carlo. Armadale's stupidity showed itself even in such a simple matter as taking a box. He had confounded an opera with a play, and had chosen a box close to the stage, with the idea that one's chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers as plainly as possible. Fortunately for our ears, Bellini's lovely melodies are for the most part tenderly and delicately accompanied, where the orchestra might have deafened us. I sat back in the box at first, well out of sight, for it was impossible to be sure that some of my old friends of former days at Naples might not be in the theater. But the sweet music gradually tempted me out of my seclusion. I was so charmed and interested that I leaned forward without knowing it and looked at the stage. I was made aware of my own imprudence by a discovery which, for the moment, literally chilled my blood. One of the singers, among the chorus of druids, was looking at me while he sang with the rest. His head was disguised in the long white hair, and the lower part of his face was completely covered with a flowing white beard proper to the character. But the eyes with which he looked at me were the eyes of the one man on earth whom I had most reason to dread ever seeing again. Manuel. If it had not been for my smelling-bottle, I believe I should have lost my senses. As it was, I drew back again into the shadow. Even Armadale noticed the sudden change in me. He, as well as Midwinter, asked if I was ill. I said I felt the heat, but hoped I should be better presently, and then leaned back in the box and tried to rally my courage. I succeeded in recovering, self-possession enough to be able to look again at the stage, without showing myself, the next time the chorus appeared. There was the man again, but to my infinite relief he never looked toward our box a second time. This welcome indifference, on his part, helped to satisfy me that I had seen an extraordinary accidental resemblance and nothing more. I still hold to this conclusion, after having had leisure to think, but my mind would be more completely at ease than it is if I had seen the rest of the man's face without the stage disguises that hid it from all investigation. When the curtain fell on the first act, there was a tiresome ballet to be performed according to the absurd Italian custom before the opera went on. Though I had got over my first fright, I had been far too seriously startled to feel comfortable in the theatre. I dreaded all sorts of impossible accidents, and when Midwinter and Armadale put the question to me, I told them I was not well enough to stay through the rest of the performance. At the door of the theatre, Armadale proposed to say good night, but Midwinter, evidently dreading the evening with me, asked him to come back to supper if I had no objection. I said the necessary words, and we all three returned together to this house. Ten minutes quiet in my own room, assisted by a little dose of Udicolonum water, restored me to myself. I joined the men at the supper table. They received my apologies for taking them away from the opera, with the complimentary assurance that it had not cost either of them the slightest sacrifice of his own pleasure. Midwinter declared that he was too completely worn out to care for anything but the two great blessings, unattainable at the theatre, of quiet and fresh air. Armadale said, with an Englishman's exasperating pride in his own stupidity, wherever a matter of art is concerned, that he couldn't make head or tail of the performance. The principal disappointment, he was good enough to add, was mine, for I evidently understood foreign music and enjoyed it. Ladies generally did, his darling little Neely. I was in no humour to be persecuted with his darling Neely after what I had gone through at the theatre. It might have been the irritated state of my nerves, or it might have been the Udicolon flying to my head, but the bare mention of the girl seemed to set me in a flame. I tried to turn Armadale's attention in the direction of the supper-table. He was much obliged, but he had no appetite for more. I offered him wine next, the wine of the country, which is all that our poverty allows us to place on the table. He was much obliged again. The foreign wine was very little more to his taste than the foreign music, but he would take some because I asked him, and he would drink my health in the old-fashioned way, with his best wishes, for the happy time when we should all meet again at Thorpe Ambrose, and when there would be a mistress to welcome me at the great house. Was he mad to persist in this way? No. His face answered for him. He was under the impression that he was making himself particularly agreeable to me. I looked at midwinter. He might have seen some reason for interfering to change the conversation if he had looked at me in return, but he sat silent in his chair, irritable and overworked, with his eyes on the ground, thinking. I got up and went to the window, still impenetrable to a sense of his own clumsiness. Armadale followed me. If I have been strong enough to toss him out of the window into the sea, I should certainly have done it at that moment. Not being strong enough, I looked steadily at the view over the bay and gave him a hint, the broadest and rudest I could think of to go. A lovely night for a walk, I said, if you are tempted to walk back to the hotel. I doubt if he heard me. At any rate, I produced no sort of effect on him. He stood staring sentimentally at the moonlight, and there's really no other word to express it. Blue, a sigh. I felt a percentiment of what was coming unless I stopped his mouth by speaking first. With all your fondness for England, I said, you must own that we have no such moonlight as that at home. He looked at me vacantly and blew another sigh. I wonder whether it is fine tonight in England as it is here, he said. I wonder whether my dear little girl at home is looking at the moonlight and thinking of me. I could endure it no longer. I flew out at him at last. Good heavens, Mr. Armadale, I exclaimed. Is there only one subject worth mentioning in the narrow little world you live in? I am sick to death of Miss Millroy. Do you pray talk of something else? His great, broad, stupid face colored up to the roots of his hideous yellow hair. I beg your pardon, he stammered, with a kind of sulky surprise. I didn't suppose. He stopped, confusedly, and looked from me to midwinter. I understood what the look meant. I didn't suppose she could be jealous of Miss Millroy after marrying you. That is what he would have said to midwinter if I had left them alone together in the room. As it was, midwinter had heard us. Before I could speak again, before Armadale could add another word, he finished his friend's uncompleted sentence in a tone that I now heard and with a look that I now saw for the first time. You didn't suppose, Alan, he said, that a lady's temper could be so easily provoked. The first bitter word of irony, the first hard look of contempt I had ever had from him, and Armadale the cause of it. My anger suddenly left me. Something came in its place which steadied me in an instant and took me silently out of the room. I sat down in the bedroom. I had a few moments of thought with myself, which I don't choose to put into words, even in these secret pages. I got up and unlocked. Never mind what. I went round to midwinter side of the bed and took, no matter what I took. The last thing I did before I left the room was to look at my watch. It was half-past ten, Armadale's usual time for leaving us. I went back at once and joined the two men again. I approached Armadale good-humoredly and said to him, no, on second thoughts, I won't put down what I said to him or what I did afterward. I'm sick of Armadale. He turns up at every second word I write. I shall pass over what happened in the course of the next hour, the hour between half-past ten and half-past eleven, and take up my story again at the time when Armadale had left us. Can I tell what took place as soon as our visitor's back was turned between midwinter and me in our own room? Why not pass over what happened, in that case, as well as in the other? Why agitate myself by writing it down? I don't know. Why do I keep a diary at all? Why did the clever thief the other day, in the English newspaper, keep the very thing to convict him in the shape of a record of everything he stole? Why are we not perfectly reasonable in all that we do? Why am I not on my guard and never inconsistent with myself, like a wicked character in a novel? Why? Why? Why? I don't care why. I must write down what happened between midwinter and me tonight, because I must. There's a reason that nobody can answer, myself included. It was half past eleven. Armadale had gone. I had put on my dressing gown and had just sat down to arrange my hair for the night when I was surprised by a knock at the door and midwinter came in. He was frightfully pale. His eyes looked at me with a terrible despair in them. He never answered when I expressed my surprise at his coming in so much sooner than usual. He wouldn't even tell me when I asked the question if he was ill. Pointing peremptorily to the chair from which I had risen on his entering the room, he told me to sit down again. And then, after a moment, added these words, I have something serious to say to you. I thought of what I had done, or no, of what I had tried to do, in that interval between half past ten and half past eleven, which I have left unnoticed in my diary, and the deadly sickness of terror, which I never felt at the time, came upon me now. I sat down, as I had been told, without speaking to midwinter and without looking at him. He took a turn up and down the room, and then came and stood over me. If Alan comes here tomorrow, he began. And if you see him, his voice faltered and he said no more, there was some dreadful grief at his heart that was trying to master him. But there are times when his will is a will of iron. He took another turn in the room and crushed it down. He came back and stood over me again. When Alan comes here tomorrow, he resumed, let him come into my room if he wants to see me, and I shall tell him that I find it impossible to finish the work I have now on hand as soon as I had hoped, and that he must, therefore, arrange to find a crew for the yacht without any assistance on my part. If he comes in, in his disappointment, to appeal to you, give him no hope of my being free in time to help him if he waits. Encourage him to take the best assistance he can get from strangers and to set about manning the yacht without any further delay. The more occupation he has to keep him away from this house, and the less you encourage him to stay here if he does come, the better I shall be pleased. Don't forget that, and don't forget one last direction which I have now to give you. When the vessel is ready for sea, and when Alan invites us to sail with him, it is my wish that you should positively decline to go. He will try to make you change your mind, for I shall, of course, decline on my side to leave you in this strange house and in this foreign country by yourself. No matter what he says, let nothing persuade you to alter your decision. Refuse, positively and finally, refuse, I insist on it, to set your foot on the new yacht. He ended quietly and firmly, with no faltering in his voice and no signs of hesitation or relenting in his face. The sense of surprise which I might otherwise have felt at the strange words he addressed to me was lost in the sense of relief that they brought to my mind. The dread of those other words that I had expected to hear from him left me as suddenly as it had come. I could look at him. I could speak to him once more. You may depend, I answered, on my doing exactly what you order me to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the extraordinary directions you have just given to me? His face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my dressing table with a heavy, hopeless sigh. You may know the reason, he said, if you wish it. He waited a little and considered. You have a right to know the reason, he resumed. For you yourself are concerned in it. He waited a little again and again went on. I can only explain the strange request I have just made to you in one way, he said. I must ask you to recall what happened in the next room before Alan left us tonight. He looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions in his face. At one moment I thought he felt pity for me. At another it seemed more like horror of me. I began to feel frightened again. I waited for his next words in silence. I know that I have been working too hard lately, he went on, and that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted or distorted the circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favor if you will test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false anywhere, I entreat you to stop me and tell me of it. I commanded myself sufficiently to ask what the circumstances were to which he referred and in what way I was personally concerned in them. You were personally concerned in them in this way, he answered. The circumstances to which I refer began with your speaking to Alan about Miss Milroy in what I thought was a very inconsiderate and impatient manner. I am afraid I spoke just as petulantly on my side, and I beg your pardon for what I said to you in the irritation of the moment. You left the room. After short absence you came back again and made a perfectly proper apology to Alan, which he received with his usual kindness and sweetness of temper. While this went on you and he were both standing by the supper table, and Alan resumed some conversation which had already passed between you about the Neapolitan wine. He said he thought he should learn to like it in time, and he asked leave to take another glass of the wine we had on the table. Am I right so far? The words almost died on my lips, but I forced them out and answered him that he was right so far. You took the flask out of Alan's hand, he proceeded. You said to him, good humoredly, you know you don't really like the wine, Mr. Armadale, let me make you something which may be more to your taste. I have a recipe of my own for lemonade. Will you favor me by trying it? In those words you made your proposal to him and he accepted it. Did he also ask leave to look on and learn how the lemonade was made? And did you tell him that it would only confuse you and that you would give him the recipe in writing if he wanted it? This time the words did really die on my lips. I could only bow my head and answer yes mutely in that way. Midwinter went on. Alan laughed and went to the window to look out at the bay, and I went with him. After a while Alan remarked, jacosely, that the mere sound of the liquids you were pouring out made him thirsty. When he said this I turned round from the window. I approached you and said the lemonade took a long time to make. You touched me as I was walking away again and handed me the tumbler filled to the brim. At the same time Alan turned round from the window and I, in my turn, handed the tumbler to him. Is there any mistake so far? The quick throbbing of my heart almost choked me. I could just shake my head. I could do no more. I saw Alan raise the tumbler to his lips. Did you see it? I saw his face turn white in an instant. Did you? I saw the glass fall from his hand on the floor. I saw him stagger and caught him before he fell. Are these things true? For God's sake, search your memory and tell me, are these things true? The throbbing at my heart seemed, for one breathless instant, to stop. The next moment something fiery, something maddening, flew through me. I started to my feet, with my temper in a flame, reckless of all consequences, desperate enough to say anything. Your questions are an insult. Your looks are an insult, I burst out. Do you think I tried to poison him? The words rushed out of my lips in spite of me. They were the last words under heaven that any woman, in such a situation as mine, ought to have spoken. And yet I spoke them. He rose in alarm and gave me my smelling bottle. Hush, hush, he said. You, too, are overwrought. You, too, are overexcited by all that has happened tonight. You are talking wildly and shockingly. Good God, how can you have so utterly misunderstood me? Compose yourself. Pray, compose yourself. He might as well have told a wild animal to compose herself. Having been mad enough to say the words, I was mad enough next to return to the subject of the lemonade in spite of his entreaties to me to be silent. I told you what I had put in the glass. The moment Mr. Armadale fainted, I went on, insisting furiously on defending myself when no attack was made on me. I told you I had taken the flask of brandy which you kept at your bedside and mixed some of it with the lemonade. How could I know that he had a nervous horror of the smell and taste of brandy? Didn't he say to me himself when he came to his senses, it's my fault? I ought to have warned you to put no brandy in it? Didn't he remind you afterwards of the time when you and he were in the Isle of Man together? And when the doctor there innocently made the same mistake with him that I made tonight? I laid great stress on my innocence. And with some reason too, whatever else I may be, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. I was innocent. So far as the brandy was concerned, I had put it in the lemonade in pure ignorance of Armadale's nervous peculiarity to disguise the taste of... Nevermind what. Another of the things I pride myself on is that I never wander from my subject. What midwinter said next is what I ought to be writing about now. He looked at me for a moment as if he thought I had taken leave of my senses. Then he came round to my side of the table and stood over me again. If nothing else will satisfy you that you are entirely misinterpreting my motives, he said, and that I haven't any idea of blaming you in the matter. Read this. He took a paper from the breast pocket of his coat and spread it open under my eyes. It was the narrative of Armadale's dream. In an instant the whole weight on my mind was lifted off. I felt mistress of myself again. I understood him at last. Do you know what this is? He asked. Do you remember what I said to you at Thorpe Ambrose about Alan's dream? I told you then that two out of the three visions had already come true. I tell you now that the third vision has been fulfilled in this house tonight. He turned over the leaves of the manuscript and pointed to the lines that he wished me to read. I read these, or nearly read these words, from the narrative of the dream as midwinter had taken it down from Armadale's own lips. The darkness opened for a third time and showed me the shadow of the man and the shadow of the woman together. The man shade was the nearest. The woman shadow stood back. From where she stood I heard a sound like the pouring out of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the shadow of the man with one hand and give him a glass with the other. He took the glass and handed it to me. At the moment when I put it to my lips a deadly faintness overcame me. When I recovered my senses again the shadows had vanished and the vision was at an end. For the moment I was as completely staggered by this extraordinary coincidence as midwinter himself. He put one hand on the open narrative and laid the other heavily on my arm. Now do you understand my motive in coming here? He asked. Now do you see that the last hope I had to cling to was the hope that your memory of the night's events might prove my memory to be wrong? Now do you know why I won't help Alan? Why I won't sail with him? Why I am plotting and lying and making you plot and lie too to keep my best and dearest friend out of the house? Have you forgotten Mr. Brock's letter? I asked. He struck his hand passionately on the open manuscript. If Mr. Brock had lived to see what we have seen tonight he would have felt what I feel. He would have said what I say. His voice sank mysteriously and his great black eyes glittered at me as he made that answer. Thrice, the shadows of the vision warned Alan in his sleep, he went on. And Thrice, those shadows have been embodied in the after time by you and by me. You and no other stood in the woman's place at the pool. I and no other stood in the man's place at the window. And you and I together when the last vision showed the shadows together stand in the man's place and the woman's place still. For this the miserable day dawned when you and I first met. For this your influence drew me to you when my better angel warned me to fly the sight of your face. There is a curse on our lives. There is a fatality in our footsteps. Alan's future depends on his separation from us at once and forever. Drive him from the place we live in and the air we breathe. Force him among strangers. The worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him than we are. Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us without you and without me. And let him know how I loved him in another world than this where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. His grief conquered him. His voice broke into a sob when he spoke these last words. He took the narrative of the dream from the table and left me as abruptly as he had come in. As I heard his door locked between us my mind went back to what he had said to me about himself. In remembering the miserable day when we first saw each other and the better angel that had warned him to fly the sight of my face, I forgot all else. It doesn't matter what I felt. I wouldn't own it even if I had a friend to speak to. Who cares for the misery of such a woman as I am? Who believes in it? Besides, he spoke under the influence of a mad superstition that has got possession of him again. There's every excuse for him. There is no excuse for me. If I can't help being fond of him through it all I must take the consequences and suffer. I deserve to suffer. I deserve neither love nor pity from anybody. Good heavens, what a fool I am. And how unnatural all this would be if it was written in a book. It has struck one. I can hear midwinter still, pacing to and fro in his room. He is thinking I suppose. Well, I can think too. What am I to do next? I shall wait and see. Events take odd turns sometimes and events may justify the fatalism of the amiable man in the next room who curses the day when he first saw my face. He may live to curse it for other reasons than he has now. If I'm the woman pointed at in the dream there will be another temptation put in my way before long and there will be no brandy in Armadale's lemonade if I mix it for him a second time. End of section 52, read by Marianne Spiegel in Chicago, Illinois. Section 53 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. Armadale by Wilkie Collins. Book the fourth, chapter two continued. October 24th. Barely 12 hours have passed since I wrote my yesterday's entry and that other temptation has come, tried, amid, conquered me already. This time there was no alternative. Instant exposure and ruin stared me in the face. I had no choice but to yield in my own defense. In plainer words still, it was no accidental resemblance that startled me at the theater last night. The core singer at the opera was Manuel himself. Not 10 minutes after midwinter had left the sitting room for his study, the woman of the house came in with a dirty little three-cornered note in her hand. One look at the writing on the address was enough. He had recognized me in the box and the ballet between the acts of the opera had given him time to trace me home. I drew that plain conclusion in the moment that elapsed before I opened the letter. It informed me, in two lines, that he was waiting in a by-street leading to the beach and that if I failed to make my appearance in 10 minutes, he should interpret my absence as my invitation to him to call at the house. What I went through yesterday must have hardened me, I suppose. At any rate, after reading the letter I felt more like the woman I once was than I have felt four months past. I put on my bonnet and went downstairs and left the house as if nothing had happened. He was waiting for me at the entrance to the street. In the instant when we stood face to face, all my wretched life with him came back to me. I thought of my trust that he had betrayed. I thought of the cruel mockery of a marriage that he had practiced on me when he knew that he had a wife living. I thought of the time when I had felt despair enough at his desertion of me to attempt my own life. When I recalled all this and when the comparison between midwinter and the mean, miserable villain whom I had once believed in forced itself into my mind, I knew for the first time what a woman feels when every atom of respect for herself has left her. If he had personally insulted me at that moment, I believe I should have submitted to it. But he had no idea of insulting me in the more brutal meaning of the word. He had me at his mercy and his way of making me feel it was to behave with an elaborate mockery of penitence and respect. I let him speak as he pleased without interrupting him, without looking at him a second time, without even allowing my dress to touch him as we walked together toward the quieter part of the beach. I had noticed the wretched state of his clothes and the greedy glitter in his eyes in my first look at him and I knew it would end, as it did end, in a demand on me for money. Yes, after taking from me the last farthing I possessed of my own and the last farthing I could stort for him for my old mistress, he turned on me as we stood by the margin of the sea and asked if I could reconcile it to my conscience to let him be wearing such a coat as he then had on his back and earning his miserable living as a core singer and the opera. My disgust, rather than my indignation, aroused me into speaking to him at last. You want money, I said. Suppose I am too poor to give it to you. In that case, he replied, I shall be forced to remember that you are a treasure in yourself and I shall be under the painful necessity of pressing my claim to you on the attention of one of those two gentlemen whom I saw you with at the opera, the gentleman, of course, who is now honored by your preference and who lives provisionally in the light of your smiles. I made him no answer, for I had no answer to give. Disputing his right to claim me from anybody would have been a mere waste of words. He knew as well as I did that he had not the shadow of a claim on me, but the mere attempt to raise it would, as he was well aware, lead necessarily to the exposure of my whole past life. Still keeping silence, I looked out over the sea. I don't know why, except I instinctively looked anywhere rather than look at him. A little sailing boat was approaching the shore. The man's steering was hidden from me by the sail, but the boat was so near that I thought I recognized the flag on the mast. I looked at my watch. Yes, it was Armadale, coming over from Santa Lucia at his usual time, to visit us in his usual way. Before I had put my watch back in my belt, the means of extricating myself from the frightful position I was placed in showed themselves to me as plainly as I see them now. I turned and led the way to the higher part of the beach, where some fishing boats were drawn up, which completely screened us from the view of anyone landing on the shore below. Seeing probably that I had a purpose of some kind, Manuel followed me without uttering a word. As soon as we were safely under the shelter of the boats, I forced myself, in my own defense, to look at him again. "'What should you say?' I asked, if I was rich instead of poor. "'What should you say if I could afford to give you a hundred pounds?' He started. I saw plainly that he had not expected so much as half the sum I had mentioned. It is needless to add that his tongue lied while his face spoke the truth, and that when he replied to me, the answer was, nothing like enough. Suppose I went on, without taking any notice of what he had said, that I could show you a way of helping yourself to twice as much, three times as much, five times as much as a hundred pounds. Are you bold enough to put out your hand and take it?' The greedy glitter came into his eyes once more. His voice dropped low, in breathless expectation of my next words. "'Who is the person?' he asked. And what is the risk?' I answered him at once in the plainest terms. I threw armadale to him, as I might have thrown a piece of meat to a wild beast who was pursuing me. "'The person is a rich young Englishman,' I said. He has just hired the yacht called the Dorothea. In the harbor here. And he stands in need of a sailing-master and crew. You were once an officer in the Spanish Navy. You speak English and Italian perfectly. You are thoroughly well-acquainted with Naples, and all that belongs to it. The rich young Englishman is ignorant of the language, and the interpreter who assists him knows nothing of the sea. He is at his wit's end for want of useful help in this strange place. He has no more knowledge of the world than that child who is digging holes with a stick there in the sand, and he carries all his money with him in circular notes. So much for the person. As for the risk, estimate it for yourself. The greedy glitter in his eye grew brighter and brighter with every word I said. He was plainly ready to face the risk before I had done speaking. "'When can I see the Englishman?' he asked, eagerly. I moved to the seaward end of the fishing boat and saw that armadale was at that moment disembarking on the shore. You can see him now,' I answered, and pointed to the place. After a long look at armadale walking carelessly up the slope of the beach, Manuel drew back again under the shelter of the boat. He waited a moment, considering something carefully with himself, and put another question to me in a whisper this time. When the vessel is manned, he said, and the Englishman sails from Naples, how many friends sail with him? "'He has but two friends here,' I replied, that other gentleman whom you saw with me at the opera, and myself. He will invite us both to sail with him, and when the time comes we shall both refuse. Do you answer for that?' I answered for it positively. He walked a few steps away and stood with his face hidden from me, thinking again. All I could see was that he took off his hat and passed his handkerchief over his forehead. All I could hear was that he talked to himself, excitedly in his own language. There was a change in him when he came back. His face had turned to a livid yellow, and his eyes looked at me with a hideous distrust. One last question, he said, and suddenly came closer to me, suddenly spoke with a marked emphasis on his next words. What is your interest in this?' I started back from him. The question reminded me that I had an interest in the matter, which was entirely unconnected with the interest of keeping Manuel and Midwinter apart. Thus far I had only remembered that Midwinter's fatalism had smoothed the way for me by abandoning Armadale beforehand any stranger who might come forward to help him. Thus far the sole object I had kept in view was to protect myself by the sacrifice of Armadale from the exposure that threatened me. I tell no lies to my diary. I don't effect to have felt a moment's consideration for the interest of Armadale's purse or the safety of Armadale's life. I hated him too savagely to care what pitfalls my tongue might be the means of opening under his feet. But I certainly did not see, until that last question was put to me, that in serving his own designs, Manuel might, if he dared go to all lengths for the money, be serving my designs too. The one overpowering anxiety to protect myself from exposure before Midwinter had, I suppose, filled all my mind to the exclusion of everything else. Finding that I made no reply for the moment, Manuel reiterated his question, putting it in a new form. You have cast your Englishmen at me, he said, like the sop to Sarabas. Would you have been quite so ready to do that if you had not had a motive of your own? I repeat my question. You have an interest in this. What is it? I have two interests, I answer. The interest of forcing you to respect my position here, and the interest of ridding myself of the sight of you at once and for ever. I spoke with a boldness he had not yet heard from me, the sense that I was making the villain an instrument in my hands, and forcing him to help my purpose blindly while he was helping his own, roused my spirits and made me feel like myself again. He laughed. Strong language on certain occasions is a lady's privilege, he said. You may or may not rid yourself of the sight of me at once and for ever. We will leave that question to be settled in the future, but your other interest in this matter puzzles me. You have told me all I need to know about the Englishman and his yacht, and you have made no conditions before you opened your lips. Pray, how are you to force me, as you say, to respect your position here? I will tell you how, I rejoined. You shall hear my conditions first. I insist on your leaving me in five minutes more. I insist on you never again coming near the house where I live, and I forbid you are attempting to communicate in any way, either with me or with that other gentleman whom you saw with me at the theater. And suppose I say no, he interposed. In that case, what will you do? In that case, I answered, I shall say two words, in private, to the rich young Englishman, and you will find yourself back again among the chorus of the opera. You are a bold woman to take it for granted that I have my designs on the Englishman already and that I am certain to succeed in them. How do you know? I know you, I said, and that is enough. There was a moment silence between us. He looked at me and I looked at him. We understood each other. He was the first to speak. The villainous smile died out of his face and his voice dropped again distrustfully to its lowest tones. I accept your terms, he said, as long as your lips are closed, my lips shall be closed too, except in the event of my finding that you have deceived me, in which case the bargain is at an end and you will see me again. I shall present myself to the Englishman tomorrow with the necessary credentials to establish me in his confidence. Tell me his name. I told it. Give me his address. I gave it and turned to leave him. Before I had stepped out of the shelter of the boats, I heard him behind me again. One last word, he said. Accidents sometimes happen at sea. Have you interest enough in the Englishman if an accident happens in his case to wish to know what has become of him? I stopped and considered on my side. I had plainly failed to persuade him that I had no secret to serve in placing Armadale's money and, as a probable consequence, Armadale's life at his mercy. And it was now equally clear that he was cunningly attempting to associate himself with my private objects, whatever they might be, by opening a means of communication between us in the future. There could be no hesitation about how to answer him under such circumstances as these. If the accident at which he hinted did really happen to Armadale, I stood in no need of Manuel's intervention to give me intelligence of it. An easy search through the obituary columns of the English papers would tell me the news with a great additional advantage that the papers might be relied on, in such a manner as this, to tell the truth. I formally thanked Manuel and declined to accept his proposal. Having no interest in the Englishman, I said, I have no wish whatsoever to know what becomes of him. He looked at me for a moment with steady attention and with an interest in me which he had not shown yet. What the game you are playing may be, he rejoined, speaking slowly and significantly. I don't pretend to know, but I venture on a prophecy nevertheless. You will win it. If we ever meet again, remember, I said that. He took off his hat and bowed to me gravely. Go your way, madame, and leave me to go mine. With those words, he released me from the sight of him. I waited a minute alone to recover myself in the air and then returned to the house. The first object that met my eyes on entering the sitting room was Armadale himself. He was waiting on the chance of seeing me to beg that I would exert my influence with his friend. I made the needful inquiry as to what he meant and found that midwinter had spoken as he warned me he would speak when he and Armadale next met. He announced that he was unable to finish his work for the newspaper as soon as he had hoped and he had advised Armadale to find a crew for the yacht without waiting for any assistance on his part. All that it was necessary for me to do on hearing this was to perform the promise I had made to midwinter when he gave me my directions how to act in the matter. Armadale's vexation on finding me resolved not to interfere expressed itself in the form of all others that is most personally offensive to me. He declined to believe my reiterated assurances that I possessed no influence to exert in his favor. If I was married to Neely, he said, she could do anything she liked with me and I am sure when you choose you can do anything you like with midwinter. If the infatuated fool had actually tried to stifle the last faint struggles of remorse and pity left stirring in my heart he could have said nothing more fatally to the purpose than this. I gave him a look which effectually silenced him so far as I was concerned. He went out of the room grumbling and growling to himself. It's all very well to talk about manning the yacht. I don't speak a word of their gibberish here and the interpreter thinks a fisherman and a sailor means the same thing. Hang me if I know what to do with the vessel now I have got her. He will probably know by tomorrow. And if he only comes here as usual, I shall know too. October 25th, 10 at night, Manuel has got him. He has just left us after staying here more than an hour and talking the whole time of nothing but his own wonderful luck in finding the very help he wanted at the time when he needed it most. At noon today he was on the mole, it seems, with his interpreter trying vainly to make himself understood by the vagabond population of the waterside. Just as he was giving it up in despair, a stranger standing by. Manuel had followed him, I suppose, to the mole from the hotel, kindly interfered to put things right. He said, I speak your language and their language, sir. I know Navel's well and I've been professionally accustomed to the sea. Can I help you? The inevitable result followed. Armadale shifted all his difficulties on the shoulder of the polite stranger in his usual helpless, headlong way. His new friend, however, insisted in the most honorable manner on complying with the customary formalities before he would consent to take the matter into his own hands. He begged leave to wait on Mr. Armadale with his testimonials to character and capacity. The same afternoon he came by appointment to the hotel with all his papers and with the saddest story of his sufferings and privations as a political refugee that Armadale had ever heard. The interview was decisive. Manuel left the hotel, commissioned to find a crew for the yacht and to fill the post of sailing master on the trial cruise. I watched Midwinter anxiously while Armadale was telling us these particulars and afterward when he produced the new sailing master's testimonials which he had brought with him for his friend to see. For the moment Midwinter's superstitious misgivings seemed to be all lost in his natural anxiety for his friend. He examined the stranger's papers after having told me that the sooner Armadale was in the hands of strangers the better with the closest scrutiny and the most business-like distrust. It was needless to say that the credentials were as perfectly regular and satisfactory as credentials could be. When Midwinter handed them back his color rose he seemed to feel the inconsistency of his conduct and to observe for the first time that I was present noticing it. There is nothing to object to in the testimonials, Ellen. I'm glad you have got the help you want at last. That was all he said at parting. As soon as Armadale's back was turned I saw no more of him. He has locked himself up again for the night in his own room. There is now so far as I'm concerned but one anxiety left. When the yacht is ready for sea and when I declined to occupy the ladies' cabin will Midwinter hold to the resolution and refuse to sail without me? October 26th. Warnings already of the coming ordeal. A letter from Armadale to Midwinter which Midwinter has just sent in to me. Here it is. Dear Mid, I am too busy to come today. Get on with your work for heaven's sake. The new sailing master is a man of 10,000. He has got an Englishman whom he knows to serve as mate on board already and he is positively certain of getting the crew together in three or four days' time. I am dying for whiff of the sea and so are you, or you are no sailor. The rigging is set up, the stores are coming on board and we shall bend the sails tomorrow or next day. I never was in such spirits in my life. Remember me to your wife and tell her that she will be doing me a favor if she will come at once and order everything she wants in the ladies' cabin. Yours affectionately, ay, ay. Under this was written in Midwinter's hand. Remember what I told you. Right, it will break it to him more gently in that way and beg him to accept your apologies and to excuse you from sailing on the trial cruise. I have written without a moment's loss of time. The sooner Manuel knows which he is certain to do through Armadale that the promise not to sail in the yacht is performed already, so far as I am concerned, the safer I shall feel. October 27th, a letter from Armadale in answer to mine. He is full of ceremonious regrets at the loss of my company on the cruise and he politely hopes that Midwinter may yet induce me to alter my mind. Wait a little till he finds that Midwinter won't sail with him either. October 30th, nothing new to record until today. Today, the change in our lives here has come at last. Armadale presented himself this morning in his noisiest high spirits to announce that the yacht was ready for sea and to ask when Midwinter would be able to go on board. I told him to make the inquiry himself in Midwinter's room. He left me with the last request that I would consider my refusal to sail with him. I answered by last apology for persisting in my resolution and then took a chair alone in the window to wait the event of the interview in the next room. My whole future depended now on what passed between Midwinter and his friend. Everything had gone smoothly up to this time. The one danger to dread was the danger of Midwinter's resolution, or rather of Midwinter's fatalism, giving way at the last moment. If he allowed himself to be persuaded into accompanying Armadale on the cruise, Manuel's exasperation against me would hesitate it nothing. He would remember that I had answered to him for Armadale sailing from Naples alone and he would be capable of exposing my whole past life to Midwinter before the vessel left the port. As I thought of this, and as the slow minutes followed each other and nothing reached my ears but the hum of the voices in the next room, my suspense became almost unendurable. It was vain to try and fix my attention on what was going on in the street. I sat looking mechanically out of the window and seeing nothing. Suddenly I can't say how long or short a time the hum of voices ceased, the door opened and Armadale showed himself on the threshold alone. I wish you good-bye, he said roughly, and I hope when I am married my wife may never cause Midwinter the disappointment that Midwinter's wife has caused me. He gave me an angry look and made an angry bow and turning sharply left the room. I saw the people in the street again. I saw the calm sea and the mast of the shipping in the harbor where the yacht lay. I could think, I could breathe freely once more. The words that saved me from Manuel, the words that might be Armadale's sentence of death had been spoken. The yacht was to sail without Midwinter, as well as without me. My first feeling of exultation was almost maddening, but it was the feeling of a moment only. My heart sank in me again when I thought of Midwinter alone in the next room. I went out into the passage to listen and heard nothing. I tapped gently at his door and got no answer. I opened the door and looked in. He was sitting at the table, with his face hidden in his hands. I looked at him in silence and saw the glistening of the tears as they trickled through his fingers. Leave me, he said, without moving his hands. I must get over it by myself. I went back into the sitting room. Who can understand women? We don't even understand ourselves. His sending me away from him and that man are cut me to the heart. I don't believe the most harmless and most gentle woman living could have felt it more acutely than I felt it. And this, after what I had been doing, this after what I was thinking of, the moment before I went into his room, who can account for it? Nobody, I least of all. Half an hour later his door opened and I heard him hurrying down the stairs. I ran on without waiting to think and asked if I might go with him. He neither stopped nor answered. I went back to the window and saw him pass, walking rapidly away, with his back turned on Naples and the sea. I can understand now that he might not have heard me. At the time I thought him inexcusably and brutally unkind to me. I put on my bonnet in a frenzy of rage with him. I sent out for a carriage and told the man to take me where he liked. He took me, as he took other strangers, to the museum to see the statues and the pictures. I flounced from room to room with my face in a flame and the people all staring at me. I came to myself again, I don't know how. I returned to the carriage and made the man drive me back in a violent hurry. I don't know why. I tossed off my cloak and bonnet and sat down once more at the window. The sight of the sea cooled me. I forgot midwinter and thought of Armadale and his yacht. There wasn't a breath of wind. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The wide waters of the bay were smooth as the surface of a glass. The sun sank. The short twilight came and went. I had some tea and sat at the table thinking and dreaming over it. When I roused myself and went back to the window, the moon was up, but the quiet sea was quiet as ever. I was still looking out when I saw midwinter in the street below, coming back. I was composed enough by this time to remember his habits and to guess that he had been trying to relieve the oppression on his mind by one of his long solitary walks. When I heard him go into his own room, I was too prudent to disturb him again. I waited his pleasure where I was. Before long I heard his window open and I saw him from my window step into the balcony and after a look at the sea hold up his hand to the air. I was too stupid for the moment to remember that he had once been a sailor and to know what this meant. I waited and wondered what would happen next. He went in again and after an interval came out once more and held up his hand as before to the air. This time he waited, leaning on the balcony rail and looking out steadily with all his attention absorbed by the sea. For a long, long time he never moved. Then on a sudden I saw him start. The next moment he sank on his knees with his clasped hands resting on the balcony rail. God Almighty bless and keep you, Alan, he said fervently. Goodbye, forever. I looked out to the sea. A soft, steady breeze was blowing and the rippled surface of the water was sparkling in the quiet moonlight. I looked again and there passed slowly between me and the track of the moon, a long black vessel with tall, shadowy, ghost-like sails gliding smooth and noiselessly through the water like a snake. The wind had come fair with the night and Armadale's yacht had sailed on the trial cruise. End to section 53, end of chapter two, recording by Marianne Spiegel in Chicago, Illinois.