Mr Brock drew eagerly nearer to the table. He saw the end now, to which the speaker was tending.
‘Twice a year,’ Midwinter pursued, ‘I must sign my own name to get my own income. At all other times, and under all other circumstances, I may hide my identity under any name I please. As Ozias Midwinter, Mr Armadale first knew me – as Ozias Midwinter he shall know me to the end of my days. Whatever may be the result of this interview – whether I win your confidence, or whether I lose it – of one thing you may feel sure. Your pupil shall never know the horrible secret which I have trusted to your keeping. This is no extraordinary resolution – for, as you know already, it costs me no sacrifice of feeling to keep my assumed name. There is nothing in my conduct to praise – it comes naturally out of the gratitude of a thankful man. Review the circumstances for yourself, sir; and set my own horror of revealing them to Mr Armadale out of the question. If the story of the names is ever told, there can be no limiting it to the disclosure of my father’s crime; it must go back to the story of Mrs Armadale’s marriage. I have heard her son talk to her; I know how he loves her memory. As God is my witness, he shall never love it less dearly through me!
Simply as the words were spoken, they touched the deepest sympathies in the rector’s nature: they took his thoughts back to Mrs Armadale’s death-bed. There sat the man against whom she had ignorantly warned him, in her son’s interests – and that man, of his own free-will, had laid on himself the obligation of respecting her secret for her son’s sake! The memory of his own past efforts to destroy the very friendship out of which this resolution had sprung, rose, and reproached Mr Brock. He held out his hand to Midwinter for the first time. ‘In her name, and in her son’s name’ he said warmly, ‘I thank you.’
Without replying, Midwinter spread the confession open before him on the table.
‘I think I have said all that it was my duty to say’ he began, ‘before we could approach the consideration of this letter. Whatever may have appeared strange in my conduct towards you and towards Mr Armadale, may be now trusted to explain itself. You can easily imagine the natural curiosity and surprise that I must have felt (ignorant as I then was of the truth) when the sound of Mr Armadale’s name first startled me as the echo of my own. You will readily understand that I only hesitated to tell him I was his namesake, because I hesitated to damage my position – in your estimation, if not in his – by confessing that I had come among you under an assumed name. And, after all that you have just heard of my vagabond life and my low associates, you will hardly wonder at the obstinate silence I maintained about myself, at a time when I did not feel the sense of responsibility which my father’s confession has laid on me. We can return to these small personal explanations, if you wish it, at another time; they cannot be suffered to keep us from the greater interests which we must settle before you leave this place. We may come now—’ his voice faltered; and he suddenly turned his face towards the window, so as to hide it from the rector’s view. ‘We may come now’ he repeated, his hand trembling visibly as it held the page, ‘to the murder on board the timber-ship, and to the warning that has followed me from my father’s grave.’
Softly – as if he feared they might reach Allan, sleeping in the neighbouring room – he read the last terrible words which the Scotchman’s pen had written at Wildbad, as they fell from his father’s lips.
Avoid the widow of the man I killed – if the widow still lives. Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage – if the maid is still in her service. And, more than all, avoid the man who bears the same name as your own. Offend your best benefactor, if that benefactor’s influence has connected you one with the other. Desert the woman who loves you, if that woman is a link between you and him. Hide yourself from him, under an assumed name. Put the mountains and the seas between you; be ungrateful; be unforgiving; be all that is most repellent to your own gentler nature, rather than live under the same roof, and breathe the same air with that man. Never let the two Allan Armadales meet in this world; never, never, never!
After reading those sentences, he pushed the manuscript from him, without looking up. The fatal reserve which he had been in a fair way of conquering but a few minutes since, possessed itself of him once more. Again his eyes wandered; again his voice sank in tone. A stranger who had heard his story, and who saw him now, would have said, ‘His look is lurking, his manner is bad; he is every inch of him, his father’s son.’
‘I have a question to ask you’ said Mr Brock, breaking the silence between them, on his side. ‘Why have you just read that passage in your father’s letter?’
‘To force me into telling you the truth,’ was the answer. ‘You must know how much there is of my father in me, before you trust me to be Mr Armadale’s friend. I got my letter yesterday, in the morning. Some inner warning troubled me, and I went down on the sea-shore by myself, before I broke the seal. Do you believe the dead can come back to the world they once lived in? I believe my father came back in that bright morning light, through the glare of that broad sunshine and the roar of that joyful sea, and watched me while I read. When I got to the words that you have just heard, and when I knew that the very end which he had died dreading, was the end that had really come, I felt the horror that had crept over him in his last moments, creeping over me. I struggled against myself, as he would have had me struggle. I tried to be all that was most repellent to my own gentler nature; I tried to think pitilessly of putting the mountains and the seas between me and the man who bore my name. Hours passed before I could prevail on myself to go back and run the risk of meeting Allan Armadale in this house. When I did get back, and when he met me at night on the stairs, I thought I was looking him in the face as my father looked his father in the face when the cabin door closed between them. Draw your own conclusions, sir. Say, if you like, that the inheritance of my father’s heathen belief in Fate is one of the inheritances he has left to me. I won’t dispute it; I won’t deny that all through yesterday his superstition was my superstition. The night came before I could find my way to calmer and brighter thoughts. But I did find my way. You may set it down in my favour that I lifted myself at last above the influence of this horrible letter. Do you know what helped me?’
‘Did you reason with yourself?’
‘I can’t reason about what I feel.’
‘Did you quiet your mind by prayer?’
‘I was not fit to pray.’
‘And yet something guided you to the better feeling and the truer view?’
‘Something did.’
‘What was it?’
‘My love for Allan Armadale.’
He cast a doubting, almost a timid, look at Mr Brock as he gave that answer; and, suddenly leaving the table, went back to the window-seat.
‘Have I no right to speak of him in that way?’ he asked, keeping his face hidden from the rector. ‘Have I not known him long enough; have I not done enough for him yet? Remember what my experience of other men had been, when I first saw his hand held out to me; when I first heard his voice speaking to me in my sick room. What had I known of strangers’ hands all through my childhood? I had only known them as hands raised to threaten and to strike me. His hand put my pillow straight, and patted me on the shoulder, and gave me my food and drink. What had I known of other men’s voices, when I was growing up to be a man myself? I had only known them as voices that jeered, voices that cursed, voices that whispered in corners with a vile distrust. His voice said to me, “Cheer up, Midwinter! we’ll soon bring you round again. You’ll be strong enough in a week to go out for a drive with me in our Somersetshire lanes.” Think of the gipsy’s stick; think of the devils laughing at me when I went by their windows with my little dead dog in my arms; think of the master who cheated me of my month’s salary on his death-bed – and ask your own heart if the miserable wretch whom Allan Armadale has treated as his equal and his friend, has said too much in saying that he loves him? I do love him! It will come out of me – I ca
n’t keep it back. I love the very ground he treads on! I would give my life – yes, the life that is precious to me now, because his kindness has made it a happy one – I tell you I would give my life—’
The next words died away on his lips; the hysterical passion rose, and conquered him. He stretched out one of his hands with a wild gesture of entreaty to Mr Brock; his head sank on the window-sill, and he burst into tears.
Even then, the hard discipline of the man’s life asserted itself. He expected no sympathy; he counted on no merciful human respect for human weakness. The cruel necessity of self-suppression was present to his mind, while the tears were pouring over his cheeks. ‘Give me a minute’ he said, faintly. ‘I’ll fight it down in a minute; I won’t distress you in this way again.’
True to his resolution, in a minute he had fought it down. In a minute more he was able to speak calmly.
‘We will get back, sir, to those better thoughts which brought me last night from my room to yours,’4 he resumed. ‘I can only repeat that I should never have torn myself from the hold which this letter fastened on me, if I had not loved Allan Armadale with all that I have in me of a brother’s love. I said to myself, “If the thought of leaving him breaks my heart, the thought of leaving him is wrong!” That was some hours since – and I am in the same mind still. I can’t believe – I won’t believe – that a friendship which has grown out of nothing but kindness on one side, and nothing but gratitude on the other, is destined to lead to an evil end. I don’t undervalue the strange circumstances which have made us namesakes – the strange circumstances which have brought us together, and attached us to each other – the strange circumstances which have since happened to us separately. They may, and they do, all link themselves together in my thoughts; but they shall not daunt me. I won’t believe that these events have happened in the order of Fate, for an end that is evil – I will believe that they have happened in the order of God, for an end that is good. Judge, you who are a clergyman, between the dead father, whose word is in these pages, and the living son, whose word is now on his lips! Which am I – now that the two Allan Armadales have met again in the second generation – an instrument in the hands of Fate, or an instrument in the hands of Providence? What is it appointed me to do – now that I am breathing the same air, and living under the same roof with the son of the man whom my father killed – to perpetuate my father’s crime by mortally injuring him? or to atone for my father’s crime by giving him the devotion of my whole life? The last of those two faiths is my faith – and shall be my faith, happen what may. In the strength of that better conviction, I can face you resolutely with the one plain question, which marks the one plain end of all that I have come here to say. Your pupil stands at the starting-point of his new career, in a position singularly friendless; his one great need is a companion of his own age on whom he can rely. The time has come, sir, to decide whether I am to be that companion or not. After all you have heard of Ozias Midwinter, tell me plainly, will you trust him to be Allan Armadale’s friend?’
Mr Brock met that fearlessly frank question by a fearless frankness on his side.
‘I believe you love Allan’ he said; ‘and I believe you have spoken the truth. A man who has produced that impression on me, is a man whom I am bound to trust. I trust you.’
Midwinter started to his feet – his dark face flushing deep; his eyes fixed brightly and steadily, at last, on the rector’s face. ‘A light!’ he exclaimed, tearing the pages of his father’s letter, one by one, from the fastening that held them. ‘Let us destroy the last link that holds us to the horrible past! Let us see this confession a heap of ashes before we part!’
‘Wait!’ said Mr Brock.‘Before you burn it, there is a reason for looking at it once more.’
The parted leaves of the manuscript dropped from Midwinter’s hands. Mr Brock took them up, and sorted them carefully until he found the last page.
‘I view your father’s superstition as you view it’ said the rector.‘But there is a warning given you here, which you will do well (for Allan’s sake, and for your own sake,) not to neglect. The last link with the past will not be destroyed when you have burnt these pages. One of the actors in this story of treachery and murder is not dead yet. Read those words.’
He pushed the page across the table, with his finger on one sentence. Midwinter’s agitation misled him. He mistook the indication, and read, ‘Avoid the widow of the man I killed – if the widow still lives’
‘Not that sentence’ said the rector. ‘The next.’
Midwinter read it:‘Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage – if the maid is still in her service.’
‘The maid and the mistress parted’ said Mr Brock, ‘at the time of the mistress’s marriage. The maid and the mistress met again at Mrs Armadale’s residence in Somersetshire, last year. I myself met the woman in the village, and I myself know that her visit hastened Mrs Armadale’s death. Wait a little, and compose yourself; I see I have startled you.’
He waited as he was bid, his colour fading away to a grey paleness, and the light in his clear brown eyes dying out slowly. What the rector had said had produced no transient impression on him; there was more than doubt, there was alarm in his face, as he sat lost in his own thoughts. Was the struggle of the past night renewing itself already? Did he feel the horror of his hereditary superstition creeping over him again?
‘Can you put me on my guard against her’ he asked, after a long interval of silence. ‘Can you tell me her name?’
‘I can only tell you what Mrs Armadale told me’ answered Mr Brock.‘The woman acknowledged having been married in the long interval since she and her mistress had last met. But not a word more escaped her about her past life. She came to Mrs Armadale to ask for money, under a plea of distress. She got the money, and she left the house, positively refusing, when the question was put to her, to mention her married name.’
‘You saw her yourself in the village. What was she like?’
‘She kept her veil down. I can’t tell you.’
‘You can tell me what you did see?’
‘Certainly. I saw, as she approached me, that she moved very gracefully, that she had a beautiful figure, and that she was a little over the middle height. I noticed, when she asked me the way to Mrs Armadale’s house, that her manner was the manner of a lady, and that the tone of her voice was remarkably soft and winning. Lastly, I remembered afterwards, that she wore a thick black veil, a black bonnet, a black silk dress, and a red Paisley shawl. I feel all the importance of your possessing some better means of identifying her than I can give you. But, unhappily—’
He stopped. Midwinter was leaning eagerly across the table, and Midwinter’s hand was laid suddenly on his arm.
‘Is it possible that you know the woman’ asked Mr Brock, surprised at the sudden change in his manner.
‘No.’
‘What have I said, then, that has startled you so?’
‘Do you remember the woman who threw herself from the river steamer’ asked the other – ‘the woman who caused that succession of deaths, which opened Allan Armadale’s way to the Thorpe-Ambrose estate?’
‘I remember the description of her in the police report’ answered the rector.
‘That woman’ pursued Midwinter,‘moved gracefully, and had a beautiful figure. That woman wore a black veil, a black bonnet, a black silk gown, and a red Paisley shawl—’ He stopped, released his hold of Mr Brock’s arm, and abruptly resumed his chair. ‘Can it be the same’ he said to himself, in a whisper. ‘Is there a fatality that follows men in the dark? And is it following us in that woman’s footsteps?’
If the conjecture was right, the one event in the past which had appeared to be entirely disconnected with the events that had preceded it, was, on the contrary, the one missing link which made the chain complete. Mr Brock’s comfortable common sense instinctively denied that startling conclusion.5 He looked at Midwinter with a compassionate smile.
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‘My young friend’ he said kindly, ‘have you cleared your mind of all superstition as completely as you think? Is what you have just said worthy of the better resolution at which you arrived last night?’
Midwinter’s head drooped on his breast; the colour rushed back over his face: he sighed bitterly.
‘You are beginning to doubt my sincerity’ he said.‘I can’t blame you.’
‘I believe in your sincerity as firmly as ever’ answered Mr Brock. ‘I only doubt whether you have fortified the weak places in your nature as strongly as you yourself suppose. Many a man has lost the battle against himself far oftener than you have lost it yet, and has nevertheless won his victory in the end. I don’t blame you, I don’t distrust you. I only notice what has happened, to put you on your guard against yourself. Come! come! Let your own better sense help you; and you will agree with me, that there is really no evidence to justify the suspicion that the woman whom I met in Somersetshire, and the woman who attempted suicide in London, are one and the same. Need an old man, like me, remind a young man, like you, that there are thousands of women in England, with beautiful figures – thousands of women who are quietly dressed in black silk gowns and red Paisley shawls?’