Armadale (28 page)

Midwinter resumed his walk; his mind lost in doubt; his own past thoughts seeming suddenly to have grown strange to him. How darkly
his forebodings had distrusted the coming time – and how harmlessly that time had come! The sun was mounting in the heavens, the hour of release was drawing nearer and nearer; and of the two Armadales imprisoned in the fatal ship, one was sleeping away the weary time, and the other was quietly watching the growth of the new day.

The sun climbed higher; the hour wore on. With the latent distrust of the wreck which still clung to him, Midwinter looked inquiringly on either shore for signs of awakening human life. The land was still lonely. The smoke-wreaths that were soon to rise from cottage chimneys, had not risen yet.

After a moment's thought he went back again to the after-part of the vessel, to see if there might be a fisherman's boat within hail, astern of them. Absorbed, for the moment, by the new idea, he passed Allan hastily, after barely noticing that he still lay asleep. One step more would have brought him to the taffrail – when that step was suspended by a sound behind him, a sound like a faint groan. He turned, and looked at the sleeper on the deck. He knelt softly, and looked closer.

‘It has come!' he whispered to himself. ‘Not to
me
– but to
him.'

It had come, in the bright freshness of the morning; it had come, in the mystery and terror of a Dream. The face which Midwinter had last seen in perfect repose, was now the distorted face of a suffering man. The perspiration stood thick on Allan's forehead, and matted his curling hair. His partially-opened eyes showed nothing but the white of the eyeball gleaming blindly. His outstretched hands scratched and struggled on the deck. From moment to moment he moaned and muttered helplessly; but the words that escaped him were lost in the grinding and gnashing of his teeth. There he lay – so near in the body to the friend who bent over him; so far away in the spirit, that the two might have been in different worlds – there he lay, with the morning sunshine on his face, in the torture of his dream.

One question, and one only, rose in the mind of the man who was looking at him. What had the Fatality which had imprisoned him in the Wreck decreed that he should see?

Had the treachery of Sleep opened the gates of the grave to that one of the two Armadales whom the other had kept in ignorance of the truth? Was the murder of the father revealing itself to the son – there, on the very spot where the crime had been committed – in the vision of a dream?

With that question over-shadowing all else in his mind, the son of the homicide knelt on the deck, and looked at the son of the man whom his father's hand had slain.

The conflict between the sleeping body and the waking mind was strengthening every moment. The dreamer's helpless groaning for deliverance grew louder; his hands raised themselves, and clutched at the empty air. Struggling with the all-mastering dread that still held him, Midwinter laid his hand gently on Allan's forehead. Light as the touch was, there were mysterious sympathies in the dreaming man that answered it. His groaning ceased, and his hands dropped slowly. There was an instant of suspense, and Midwinter looked closer. His breath just fluttered over the sleeper's face. Before the next breath had risen to his lips, Allan suddenly sprang up on his knees – sprang up, as if the call of a trumpet had rung on his ear, awake in an instant.

‘You have been dreaming,' said Midwinter, as the other looked at him wildly, in the first bewilderment of waking.

Allan's eyes began to wander about the wreck – at first vacandy; then with a look of angry surprise. ‘Are we here still?' he said, as Midwinter helped him to his feet. ‘Whatever else I do on board this infernal ship,' he added, after a moment, ‘I won't go to sleep again!'

As he said those words, his friend's eyes searched his face in silent inquiry. They took a turn together on the deck.

‘Tell me your dream,' said Midwinter, with a strange tone of suspicion in his voice, and a strange appearance of abruptness in his manner.

‘I can't tell it yet,' returned Allan. ‘Wait a little till I'm my own man again.'

They took another turn on the deck. Midwinter stopped, and spoke once more.

‘Look at me for a moment, Allan,' he said.

There was something of the trouble left by the dream, and something of natural surprise at the strange request just addressed to him, in Allan's face, as he turned it full on the speaker; but no shadow of ill-will, no lurking lines of distrust anywhere. Midwinter turned aside quickly, and hid, as he best might, an irrepressible outburst of relief.

‘Do I look a little upset?' asked Allan, taking his arm, and leading him on again. ‘Don't make yourself nervous about me if I do. My head feels wild and giddy – but I shall soon get over it.'

For the next few minutes, they walked backwards and forwards in silence – the one, bent on dismissing the terror of the dream from his thoughts; the other, bent on discovering what the terror of the dream might be. Relieved of the dread that had oppressed it, the superstitious nature of Midwinter had leapt to its next conclusion at a bound. What, if the sleeper had been visited by another revelation than the revelation of the Past? What, if the dream had opened those unturned pages in the
book of the Future, which told the story of his life to come? The bare doubt that it might be so, strengthened tenfold Midwinter's longing to penetrate the mystery which Allan's silence still kept a secret from him.

‘Is your head more composed?' he asked. ‘Can you tell me your dream now?'

While he put the question, a last memorable moment in the Adventure of the Wreck was at hand.

They had reached the stern, and were just turning again when Midwinter spoke. As Allan opened his lips to answer, he looked out mechanically to sea. Instead of replying, he suddenly ran to the taffrail, and waved his hat over his head, with a shout of exultation.

Midwinter joined him, and saw a large six-oared boat pulling straight for the channel of the Sound. A figure, which they both thought they recognized, rose eagerly in the stern-sheets, and returned the waving of Allan's hat. The boat came nearer; the steersman called to them cheerfully; and they recognized the doctor's voice.

‘Thank God you're both above water?' said Mr Hawbury, as they met him on the deck of the timber-ship. ‘Of all the winds of heaven, which wind blew you here?'

He looked at Midwinter, as he made the inquiry – but it was Allan who told him the story of the night; and Allan who asked the doctor for information in return. The one absorbing interest in Midwinter's mind – the interest of penetrating the mystery of the dream – kept him silent throughout. Heedless of all that was said or done about him, he watched Allan, and followed Allan, like a dog, until the time came for getting down into the boat. Mr Hawbury's professional eye rested on him curiously, noting his varying colour, and the incessant restlessness of his hands. ‘I wouldn't change nervous systems with that man, for the largest fortune that could be offered me,' thought the doctor as he took the boat's tiller, and gave the oarsmen their order to push off from the wreck.

Having reserved all explanations on his side until they were on their way back to Port St Mary, Mr Hawbury next addressed himself to the gratification of Allan's curiosity. The circumstances which had brought him to the rescue of his two guests of the previous evening were simple enough. The lost boat had been met with at sea, by some fishermen of Port Erin, on the western side of the island, who at once recognized it as the doctor's property, and at once sent a messenger to make inquiry at the doctor's house. The man's statement of what had happened had naturally alarmed Mr Hawbury for the safety of Allan and his friend. He had immediately secured assistance; and guided by the boatmen's
advice, had made first for the most dangerous place on the coast – the only place, in that calm weather, in which an accident could have happened to a boat sailed by experienced men – the channel of the Sound. After thus accounting for his welcome appearance on the scene, the doctor hospitably insisted that his guests of the evening should be his guests of the morning as well. It would still be too early when they got back for the people at the hotel to receive them, and they would find bed and breakfast at Mr Hawbury's house.

At the first pause in the conversation between Allan and the doctor, Midwinter – who had neither joined in the talk, nor listened to the talk – touched his friend on the arm. ‘Are you better?' he asked in a whisper. ‘Shall you soon be composed enough to tell me what I want to know?'

Allan's eyebrows contracted impatiently; the subject of the dream, and Midwinter's obstinacy in returning to it, seemed to be alike distasteful to him. He hardly answered with his usual good-humour. ‘I suppose I shall have no peace till I tell you,' he said, ‘so I may as well get it over at once.'

‘No!' returned Midwinter, with a look at the doctor and his oarsmen. ‘Not where other people can hear it – not till you and I are alone.'

‘If you wish to see the last, gentlemen, of your quarters for the night,' interposed the doctor, ‘now is your time! the coast will shut the vessel out, in a minute more.'

In silence on the one side and on the other, the two Armadales looked their last at the fatal ship. Lonely and lost they had found the Wreck in the mystery of the summer night. Lonely and lost they left the Wreck in the radiant beauty of the summer morning.

An hour later the doctor had seen his guests established in their bedrooms, and had left them to take their rest until the breakfast hour arrived.

Almost as soon as his back was turned, the doors of both rooms opened softly, and Allan and Midwinter met in the passage.

‘Can you sleep after what has happened?' asked Allan.

Midwinter shook his head. ‘You were coming to my room, were you not?' he said. ‘What for?'

‘To ask you to keep me company. What were
you
coming to
my
room for?'

‘To ask you to tell me your dream.'

‘Damn the dream! I want to forget all about it.'

‘And
I
want to know all about it.'

Both paused; both refrained instinctively from saying more. For the
first time since the beginning of their friendship they were on the verge of a disagreement – and that on the subject of the dream. Allan's good temper just stopped them on the brink.

‘You are the most obstinate fellow alive,' he said, ‘but if you will know all about it, you must know all about it, I suppose. Come into my room, and I'll tell you.'

He led the way, and Midwinter followed. The door closed, and shut them in together.

When Mr Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the strange contrast of character between them which he had noticed already, was impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of them sat at the well-spread table, hungry and happy; ranging from dish to dish, and declaring that he had never made such a breakfast in his life. The other sat apart at the window; his cup thanklessly deserted before it was empty, his meat left ungraciously half eaten on his plate. The doctor's morning greeting to the two, accurately expressed the differing impressions which they had produced on his mind. He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, ‘I am afraid you have not recovered the fatigues of the night.'

‘It's not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits,' said Allan. ‘It's something I have been telling him. It is not my fault, mind. If I had only known beforehand that he believed in dreams, I wouldn't have opened my lips.'

‘Dreams?' repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, and addressing him under a mistaken impression of the meaning of Allan's words. ‘With your constitution, you ought to be well used to dreaming by this time.'

‘This way, doctor; you have taken the wrong turning!' cried Allan. ‘I'm the dreamer – not he. Don't look astonished; it wasn't in this comfortable house – it was on board that confounded timber-ship. The fact is, I fell asleep just before you took us off the wreck; and it's not to be denied that I had a very ugly dream. Well, when we got back here—'

‘Why do you trouble Mr Hawbury about a matter that cannot possibly interest him?' asked Midwinter, speaking for the first time, and speaking very impatiently.

‘I beg your pardon,' returned the doctor, rather sharply; ‘so far as I have heard, the matter does interest me.'

‘That's right, doctor!' said Allan. ‘Be interested, I beg and pray; I want you to clear his head of the nonsense he has got in it now. What do you think? – he will have it that my dream is a warning to me to avoid certain people; and he actually persists in saying that one of those people is – himself! Did you ever hear the like of it? I took great pains; I explained the whole thing to him. I said, warning be hanged – it's all indigestion! You don't know what I ate and drank at the doctor's supper-table – I do. Do you think he would listen to me? Not he. You try him next; you're a professional man, and he must listen to you. Be a good fellow, doctor; and give me a certificate of indigestion; I'll show you my tongue with pleasure.'

‘The sight of your face is quite enough,' said Mr Hawbury. ‘I certify, on the spot, that you never had such a thing as an indigestion in your life. Let's hear about the dream, and see what we can make of it – if you have no objection, that is to say.'

Allan pointed at Midwinter with his fork.

‘Apply to my friend, there,' he said; ‘he has got a much better account of it than I can give you. If you'll believe me, he took it all down in writing from my own lips; and he made me sign it at the end, as if it was my “last dying speech and confession”, before I went to the gallows. Out with it, old boy – I saw you put it in your pocket-book – out with it!'