Armadale (91 page)

Midnight
. – Midwinter came to see me as he promised. An hour has passed since we said good-night; and here I still sit, with my pen in my hand, thinking of him. No words of mine can describe what has passed between us. The end of it is all I can write in these pages – and the end of it is, that he has shaken my resolution. For the first time since I saw the easy way to Armadale's life at Thorpe-Ambrose, I feel as if the man whom I have doomed in my own thoughts, had a chance of escaping me.

Is it my love for Midwinter that has altered me? Or is it
his
love for
me
that has taken possession, not only of all I wish to give him, but of all I wish to keep from him as well? I feel as if I had lost myself – lost myself, I mean, in
him
– all through the evening. He was in great agitation about what had happened in Somersetshire – and he made me
feel as disheartened and as wretched about it as he did. Though he never confessed it in words, I know that Mr Brock's death has startled him as an ill-omen for our marriage – I know it because I feel Mr Brock's death as an ill-omen too. The superstition –
his
superstition – took so strong a hold on me, that when we grew calmer, and he spoke of the future – when he told me that he must either break his engagement with his new employers, or go abroad, as he is pledged to go, on Monday next – I actually shrank at the thought of our marriage following close on Mr Brock's funeral; I actually said to him, in the impulse of the moment, ‘Go, and begin your new life alone! go, and leave me here to wait for happier times.'

He took me in his arms. He sighed, and kissed me with an angelic tenderness. He said – oh, so softly and so sadly! – ‘I have no life now, apart from
you
.' As those words passed his lips, the thought seemed to rise in my mind like an echo, ‘Why not live out all the days that are left to me, happy and harmless in a love like this!' I can't explain it – I can't realize it. That was the thought in me at the time; and that is the thought in me still. I see my own hand while I write the words – and I ask myself whether it is really the hand of Lydia Gwilt!

Armadale—

No! I will never write, I will never think of Armadale again.

Yes! Let me write once more – let me think once more of him, because it quiets me to know that he is going away, and that the sea will have parted us before I am married. His old home is home to him no longer, now that the loss of his mother has been followed by the loss of his best and earliest friend. When the funeral is over, he has decided to sail the same day for the foreign seas. We may, or we may not, meet at Naples. Shall I be an altered woman, if we do? I wonder! I wonder!

August 8th
. – A line from Midwinter. He has gone back to Somersetshire to be in readiness for the funeral to-morrow; and he will return here (after bidding Armadale good-by) to-morrow evening.

The last forms and ceremonies preliminary to our marriage have been complied with. I am to be his wife, on Monday next. The hour must not be later than half-past ten – which will give us just time, when the service is over, to get from the church door to the railway, and to start on our journey to Naples the same day.

To-day – Saturday – Sunday! I am not afraid of the time; the time will pass. I am not afraid of myself, if I can only keep all thoughts but one out of my mind. I love him! Day and night, till Monday comes, I will think of nothing but that. I love him!

Four o'clock
. – Other thoughts are forced into my mind in spite of me. My suspicions of yesterday were no mere fancies; the milliner
has
been tampered with. My folly in going back to her house has led to my being traced here. I am absolutely certain that I never gave the woman my address – and yet my new gown was sent home to me at two o'clock today!

A man brought it with the bill, and a civil message to say that, as I had not called at the appointed time to try it on again, the dress had been finished and sent to me. He caught me in the passage; I had no choice but to pay the bill, and dismiss him. Any other proceeding, as events have now turned out, would have been pure folly. The messenger (not the man who followed me in the street, but another spy sent to look at me beyond all doubt) would have declared he knew nothing about it, if I had spoken to him. The milliner would tell me to my face, if I went to her, that I had given her my address. The one useful thing to do now, is to set my wits to work in the interests of my own security, and to step out of the false position in which my own rashness has placed me – if I can.

Seven o'clock
. – My spirits have risen again. I believe I am in a fair way of extricating myself already.

I have just come back from a long round in a cab. First, to the cloak-room of the Great Western, to get the luggage which I sent there from All Saints' Terrace. Next, to the cloak-room of the South Eastern, to leave my luggage (labelled in Midwinter's name), to wait for me till the starting of the tidal train
⁷
on Monday. Next, to the General Post Office, to post a letter to Midwinter at the rectory, which he will receive tomorrow morning. Lastly, back again to this house – from which I shall move no more till Monday comes.

My letter to Midwinter will, I have little doubt, lead to his seconding (quite innocently) the precautions that I am taking for my own safety. The shortness of the time at our disposal, on Monday, will oblige him to pay his bill at the hotel and to remove his luggage, before the marriage ceremony takes place. All I ask him to do beyond this, is to take the luggage himself to the South Eastern (so as to make any inquiries useless which may address themselves to the servants at the hotel) – and, that done, to meet me at the church door, instead of calling for me here. The rest concerns nobody but myself. When Sunday night or Monday morning comes, it will be hard indeed – freed as I am now from all encumbrances – if I can't give the people who are watching me the slip for the second time.

It seems needless enough to have written to Midwinter to-day, when he is coming back to me to-morrow night. But it was impossible to ask, what I have been obliged to ask of him, without making my false family circumstances once more the excuse; and having this to do – I must own the truth – I wrote to him because, after what I suffered on the last occasion, I can never again deceive him to his face.

August 9th
. – Two o'clock. – I rose early this morning, more depressed in spirits than usual. The re-beginning of one's life, at the re-beginning of every day, has always been something weary and hopeless to me for years past. I dreamt too all through the night – not of Midwinter and of my married life, as I had hoped to dream – but of the wretched conspiracy to discover me, by which I have been driven from one place to another, like a hunted animal. Nothing in the shape of a new revelation enlightened me in my sleep. All I could guess, dreaming, was what I had guessed waking, that Mother Oldershaw is the enemy who is attacking me in the dark. Except old Bashwood (whom it would be ridiculous to think of in such a serious matter as this), who else but Mother Oldershaw can have an object to serve by interfering with my proceedings at the present time?

My restless night has, however, produced one satisfactory result. It has led to my winning the good graces of the servant here, and securing all the assistance she can give me when the time comes for making my escape.

The girl noticed this morning that I looked pale and anxious. I took her into my confidence, to the extent of telling her that I was privately engaged to be married, and that I had enemies who were trying to part me from my sweetheart. This instantly roused her sympathy – and a present of a ten-shilling piece for her kind services to me did the rest. In the intervals of her house-work she has been with me nearly the whole morning; and I have found out, among other things, that
her
sweetheart is a private soldier in the Guards, and that she expects to see him tomorrow. I have got money enough left, little as it is, to turn the head of any Private in the British army – and, if the person appointed to watch me to-morrow is a man, I think it just possible that he may find his attention disagreeably diverted from Miss Gwilt in the course of the evening.

When Midwinter came here last from the railway, he came at half-past eight. How am I to get through the weary, weary hours between this and the evening? I think I shall darken my bedroom, and drink the blessing of oblivion from my bottle of Drops.

Eleven o'clock
. – We have parted for the last time before the day comes that makes us man and wife.

He has left me, as he left me before, with an absorbing subject of interest to think of in his absence. I noticed a change in him the moment he entered the room. When he told me of the funeral, and of his parting with Armadale on board the yacht, though he spoke with feelings deeply moved, he spoke with a mastery over himself which is new to me in my experience of him. It was the same when our talk turned next on our own hopes and prospects. He was plainly disappointed when he found that my family embarrassments would prevent our meeting to-morrow, and plainly uneasy at the prospect of leaving me to find my way by myself on Monday to the church. But there was a certain hopefulness and composure of manner underlying it all, which produced so strong an impression on me that I was obliged to notice it. ‘You know what odd fancies take possession of me sometimes,' I said. 'shall I tell you the fancy that has taken possession of me now? I can't help thinking that something has happened since we last saw each other, which you have not told me yet.'

'something
has
happened,' he answered. ‘And it is something which you ought to know.'

With those words he took out his pocket-book, and produced two written papers from it. One he looked at and put back. The other he placed on the table before me. Keeping his hand on it for a moment, he spoke again.

‘Before I tell you what this is, and how it came into my possession,' he said, ‘I must own something that I have concealed from you. It is no more serious confession than the confession of my own weakness.'

He then acknowledged to me, that the renewal of his friendship with Armadale had been clouded, through the whole period of their intercourse in London, by his own superstitious misgivings. On every occasion when they were alone together, the terrible words of his father's deathbed letter, and the terrible confirmation of them in the warnings of the Dream, were present to his mind. Day after day, the conviction that fatal consequences to Armadale would come of the renewal of their friendship, and of my share in accomplishing it, had grown stronger and stronger in its influence over him. He had obeyed the summons which called him to the rector's bedside, with the firm intention of confiding his previsions of coming trouble to Mr Brock; and he had been doubly confirmed in his superstition, when he found that Death had entered the house before him, and had parted them, in this world, for ever. He had travelled back to be present at the funeral, with a
secret sense of relief at the prospect of being parted from Armadale, and with a secret resolution to make the after-meeting agreed on between us three at Naples, a meeting that should never take place. With that purpose in his heart, he had gone up alone to the room prepared for him, on his arrival at the rectory, and had opened a letter which he found waiting for him on the table. The letter had only that day been discovered – dropped and lost – under the bed on which Mr Brock had died. It was in the rector's handwriting throughout; and the person to whom it was addressed, was Midwinter himself.

Having told me this, nearly in the words in which I have written it, he lifted his hand from the written paper that lay on the table between us.

‘Read it,' he said; ‘and you will not need to be told that my mind is at peace again, and that I took Allan's hand at parting, with a heart that was worthier of Allan's love.'

I read the letter. There was no superstition to be conquered in
my
mind; there were no old feelings of gratitude towards Armadale, to be roused in
my
heart – and yet, the effect which the letter had had on Midwinter, was, I firmly believe, more than matched by the effect that the letter now produced on Me.

It was vain to ask him to leave it, and to let me read it again (as I wished) when I was left by myself. He is determined not to let it out of his own possession; he is determined to keep it side by side with that other paper which I had seen him take out of his pocket-book, and which contains the written narrative of Armadale's Dream. All I could do was to ask his leave to copy it; and this he granted readily. I wrote the copy in his presence; and I now place it here in my diary, to mark a day which is one of the memorable days of my life.

Boscombe Rectory, August 2nd.

M
Y
D
EAR
M
IDWINTER
, – For the first time since the beginning of my illness, I found strength enough yesterday to look over my letters. One among them is a letter from Allan, which has been lying unopened on my table for ten days past. He writes to me in great distress, to say that there has been dissension between you, and that you have left him. If you still remember what passed between us, when you first opened your heart to me in the Isle of Man, you will be at no loss to understand how I have thought over this miserable news, through the night that has now passed, and you will not be surprised to hear that I have roused myself this morning to make the effort of writing to you. Although I am
far from despairing of myself, I dare not, at my age, trust too confidently to my prospects of recovery. While the time is still my own, I must employ it for Allan's sake and for yours.

I want no explanation of the circumstances which have parted you from your friend. If my estimate of your character is not founded on an entire delusion, the one influence which can have led to your estrangement from Allan, is the influence of that evil spirit of Superstition, which I have once already cast out of your heart – which I will once again conquer, please God, if I have strength enough to make my pen speak my mind to you in this letter.