Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (496 page)

The five years that had passed had made little if any change in Allan’s character. He had simply developed (to use his tutor’s own expression) from a boy of sixteen to a boy of twenty-one. He was just as easy and open in his disposition as ever; just as quaintly and inveterately good-humored; just as heedless in following his own impulses, lead him where they might. His bias toward the sea had strengthened with his advance to the years of manhood. From building a boat, he had now got on — with two journeymen at work under him — to building a decked vessel of five-and-thirty tons. Mr. Brock had conscientiously tried to divert him to higher aspirations; had taken him to Oxford, to see what college life was like; had taken him to London, to expand his mind by the spectacle of the great metropolis. The change had diverted Allan, but had not altered him in the least. He was as impenetrably superior to all worldly ambition as Diogenes himself. “Which is best,” asked this unconscious philosopher, “to find out the way to be happy for yourself, or to let other people try if they can find it out for you?” From that moment Mr. Brock permitted his pupil’s character to grow at its own rate of development, and Allan went on uninterruptedly with the work of his yacht.

Time, which had wrought so little change in the son, had not passed harmless over the mother.

Mrs. Armadale’s health was breaking fast. As her strength failed, her temper altered for the worse: she grew more and more fretful, more and more subject to morbid fears and fancies, more and more reluctant to leave her own room. Since the appearance of the advertisement five years since, nothing had happened to force her memory back to the painful associations connected with her early life. No word more on the forbidden topic had passed between the rector and herself; no suspicion had ever been raised in Allan’s mind of the existence of his namesake; and yet, without the shadow of a reason for any special anxiety, Mrs. Armadale had become, of late years, obstinately and fretfully uneasy on the subject of her son. More than once Mr. Brock dreaded a serious disagreement between them; but Allan’s natural sweetness of temper, fortified by his love for his mother, carried him triumphantly through all trials. Not a hard word or a harsh look ever escaped him in her presence; he was unchangeably loving and forbearing with her to the very last.

Such were the positions of the son, the mother, and the friend, when the next notable event happened in the lives of the three. On a dreary afternoon, early in the month of November, Mr. Brock was disturbed over the composition of his sermon by a visit from the landlord of the village inn.

After making his introductory apologies, the landlord stated the urgent business on which he had come to the rectory clearly enough.

A few hours since a young man had been brought to the inn by some farm labourers in the neighbourhood, who had found him wandering about one of their master’s fields in a disordered state of mind, which looked to their eyes like downright madness. The landlord had given the poor creature shelter while he sent for medical help; and the doctor, on seeing him, had pronounced that he was suffering from fever on the brain, and that his removal to the nearest town at which a hospital or a work-house infirmary could be found to receive him would in all probability be fatal to his chances of recovery. After hearing this expression of opinion, and after observing for himself that the stranger’s only luggage consisted of a small carpet-bag which had been found in the field near him, the landlord had set off on the spot to consult the rector, and to ask, in this serious emergency, what course he was to take next.

Mr. Brock was the magistrate as well as the clergyman of the district, and the course to be taken, in the first instance, was to his mind clear enough. He put on his hat, and accompanied the landlord back to the inn.

At the inn door they were joined by Allan, who had heard the news through another channel, and who was waiting Mr. Brock’s arrival, to follow in the magistrate’s train, and to see what the stranger was like. The village surgeon joined them at the same moment, and the four went into the inn together.

They found the landlord’s son on one side, and the hostler on the other, holding the man down in his chair. Young, slim, and undersized, he was strong enough at that moment to make it a matter of difficulty for the two to master him. His tawny complexion, his large, bright brown eyes, and his black beard gave him something of a foreign look. His dress was a little worn, but his linen was clean. His dusky hands were wiry and nervous, and were lividly discoloured in more places than one by the scars of old wounds. The toes of one of his feet, off which he had kicked the shoe, grasped at the chair rail through his stocking, with the sensitive muscular action which is only seen in those who have been accustomed to go barefoot. In the frenzy that now possessed him, it was impossible to notice, to any useful purpose, more than this. After a whispered consultation with Mr. Brock, the surgeon personally superintended the patient’s removal to a quiet bedroom at the back of the house. Shortly afterward his clothes and his carpet-bag were sent downstairs, and were searched, on the chance of finding a clew by which to communicate with his friends, in the magistrate’s presence.

The carpet-bag contained nothing but a change of clothing, and two books — the Plays of Sophocles, in the original Greek, and the “Faust” of Goethe, in the original German. Both volumes were much worn by reading, and on the fly-leaf of each were inscribed the initials O. M. So much the bag revealed, and no more.

The clothes which the man wore when he was discovered in the field were tried next. A purse (containing a sovereign and a few shillings), a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, and a little drinking-cup of horn were produced in succession. The next object, and the last, was found crumpled up carelessly in the breast-pocket of the coat. It was a written testimonial to character, dated and signed, but without any address.

So far as this document could tell it, the stranger’s story was a sad one indeed. He had apparently been employed for a short time as usher at a school, and had been turned adrift in the world, at the outset of his illness, from the fear that the fever might be infectious, and that the prosperity of the establishment might suffer accordingly. Not the slightest imputation of any misbehavior in his employment rested on him. On the contrary, the schoolmaster had great pleasure in testifying to his capacity and his character, and in expressing a fervent hope that he might (under Providence) succeed in recovering his health in somebody else’s house. The written testimonial which afforded this glimpse at the man’s story served one purpose more: it connected him with the initials on the books, and identified him to the magistrate and the landlord under the strangely uncouth name of Ozias Midwinter.

Mr. Brock laid aside the testimonial, suspecting that the schoolmaster had purposely abstained from writing his address on it, with the view of escaping all responsibility in the event of his usher’s death. In any case, it was manifestly useless, under existing circumstances, to think of tracing the poor wretch’s friends, if friends he had. To the inn he had been brought, and, as a matter of common humanity, at the inn he must remain for the present. The difficulty about expenses, if it came to the worst, might possibly be met by charitable contributions from the neighbours, or by a collection after a sermon at church. Assuring the landlord that he would consider this part of the question and would let him know the result, Mr. Brock quitted the inn, without noticing for the moment that he had left Allan there behind him.

Before he had got fifty yards from the house his pupil overtook him. Allan had been most uncharacteristically silent and serious all through the search at the inn; but he had now recovered his usual high spirits. A stranger would have set him down as wanting in common feeling.

“This is a sad business,” said the rector. “I really don’t know what to do for the best about that unfortunate man.”

“You may make your mind quite easy, sir,” said young Armadale, in his off-hand way. “I settled it all with the landlord a minute ago.”

“You!” exclaimed Mr. Brock, in the utmost astonishment.

“I have merely given a few simple directions,” pursued Allan. “Our friend the usher is to have everything he requires, and is to be treated like a prince; and when the doctor and the landlord want their money they are to come to me.”

“My dear Allan,” Mr. Brock gently remonstrated, “when will you learn to think before you act on those generous impulses of yours? You are spending more money already on your yacht-building than you can afford — ”

“Only think! we laid the first planks of the deck the day before yesterday,” said Allan, flying off to the new subject in his usual bird-witted way. “There’s just enough of it done to walk on, if you don’t feel giddy. I’ll help you up the ladder, Mr. Brock, if you’ll only come and try.”

“Listen to me,” persisted the rector. “I’m not talking about the yacht now; that is to say, I am only referring to the yacht as an illustration — ”

“And a very pretty illustration, too,” remarked the incorrigible Allan. “Find me a smarter little vessel of her size in all England, and I’ll give up yacht-building to-morrow. Whereabouts were we in our conversation, sir? I’m rather afraid we have lost ourselves somehow.”

“I am rather afraid one of us is in the habit of losing himself every time he opens his lips,” retorted Mr. Brock. “Come, come, Allan, this is serious. You have been rendering yourself liable for expenses which you may not be able to pay. Mind, I am far from blaming you for your kind feeling toward this poor friendless man — ”

“Don’t be low-spirited about him, sir. He’ll get over it — he’ll be all right again in a week or so. A capital fellow, I have not the least doubt!” continued Allan, whose habit it was to believe in everybody and to despair of nothing. “Suppose you ask him to dinner when he gets well, Mr. Brock? I should like to find out (when we are all three snug and friendly together over our wine, you know) how he came by that extraordinary name of his. Ozias Midwinter! Upon my life, his father ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“Will you answer me one question before I go in?” said the rector, stopping in despair at his own gate. “This man’s bill for lodging and medical attendance may mount to twenty or thirty pounds before he gets well again, if he ever does get well. How are you to pay for it?”

“What’s that the Chancellor of the Exchequer says when he finds himself in a mess with his accounts, and doesn’t see his way out again?” asked Allan. “He always tells his honourable friend he is quite willing to leave a something or other — ”

“A margin?” suggested Mr. Brock.

“That’s it,” said Allan. “I’m like the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I’m quite willing to leave a margin. The yacht (bless her heart!) doesn’t eat up everything. If I’m short by a pound or two, don’t be afraid, sir. There’s no pride about me; I’ll go round with the hat, and get the balance in the neighbourhood. Deuce take the pounds, shillings, and pence! I wish they could all three get rid of themselves, like the Bedouin brothers at the show. Don’t you remember the Bedouin brothers, Mr. Brock? ‘Ali will take a lighted torch, and jump down the throat of his brother Muli; Muli will take a lighted torch, and jump down the throat of his brother Hassan; and Hassan, taking a third lighted torch, will conclude the performances by jumping down his own throat, and leaving the spectators in total darkness.’ Wonderfully good, that — what I call real wit, with a fine strong flavour about it. Wait a minute! Where are we? We have lost ourselves again. Oh, I remember — money. What I can’t beat into my thick head,” concluded Allan, quite unconscious that he was preaching socialist doctrines to a clergyman; “is the meaning of the fuss that’s made about giving money away. Why can’t the people who have got money to spare give it to the people who haven’t got money to spare, and make things pleasant and comfortable all the world over in that way? You’re always telling me to cultivate ideas, Mr. Brock There’s an idea, and, upon my life, I don’t think it’s a bad one.”

Mr. Brock gave his pupil a good-humored poke with the end of his stick. “Go back to your yacht,” he said. “All the little discretion you have got in that flighty head of yours is left on board in your tool-chest. How that lad will end,” pursued the rector, when he was left by himself, “is more than any human being can say. I almost wish I had never taken the responsibility of him on my shoulders.”

Three weeks passed before the stranger with the uncouth name was pronounced to be at last on the way to recovery.

During this period Allan had made regular inquiries at the inn, and, as soon as the sick man was allowed to see visitors, Allan was the first who appeared at his bedside. So far Mr. Brock’s pupil had shown no more than a natural interest in one of the few romantic circumstances which had varied the monotony of the village life: he had committed no imprudence, and he had exposed himself to no blame. But as the days passed, young Armadale’s visits to the inn began to lengthen considerably, and the surgeon (a cautious elderly man) gave the rector a private hint to bestir himself. Mr. Brock acted on the hint immediately, and discovered that Allan had followed his usual impulses in his usual headlong way. He had taken a violent fancy to the castaway usher and had invited Ozias Midwinter to reside permanently in the neighbourhood in the new and interesting character of his bosom friend.