Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  There is now – so far as I am concerned – but one anxiety left. When the yacht is ready for sea, and when I decline to occupy the lady’s cabin, will Midwinter hold to his 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 to-day. Get on with your work, for heaven’s sake! The new sailing-master is a man of ten thousand. 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 a 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 she will be doing me a favour if she will come at once, and order everything she wants in the lady’s cabin. – Yours affectionately, A. A.

  Under this was written in Midwinter’s hand, – ‘Remember what I told you. Write (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 regret 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 to-day. To-day, 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 a last request that I would reconsider my refusal to sail with him. I answered by a last apology for persisting in my resolution; and then took a chair alone at 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 at nothing – he would remember that I had answered to him for Armadale’s 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 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 in how long, or how short a time – the hum of voices ceased; the door opened; and Armadale showed himself on the threshold, alone.

  ‘I wish you good-by,’ 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 me an angry bow – and, turning sharply, left the room.

  I saw the people in the street again! I saw the calm sea, and the masts of the shipping in the harbour 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 in that manner 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 have 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 out 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 as 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 as 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 opened, 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, Allan!’ he said fervently. ‘Good-by for ever!’

  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 noiseless through the water, like a snake.

  The wind had come fair, with the night; and Armadale’s yacht had sailed on the trial cruise.

  CHAPTER III

  THE DIARY BROKEN OFF

  London, November 19th. – I am alone again in the Great City; alone, for the first time, since our marriage. Nearly a week since, I started on my homeward journey; leaving Midwinter behind me at Turin.

  The days have been so full of events since the month began, and I have been so harassed, in mind and body bo
th, for the greater part of the time, that my Diary has been wretchedly neglected. A few notes, written in such hurry and confusion that I can hardly understand them myself, are all that I possess to remind me of what has happened, since the night when Armadale’s yacht left Naples. Let me try if I can set this right, without more loss of time – let me try if I can recall the circumstances in their order as they have followed each other, from the beginning of the month.

  On the third of November1 – being then still at Naples – Midwinter received a hurried letter from Armadale, dated ‘Messina’. ‘The weather,’ he said, ‘had been lovely, and the yacht had made one of the quickest passages on record. The crew were rather a rough set to look at; but Captain Manuel, and his English mate,’ (the latter described as ‘the best of good fellows’), ‘managed them admirably.’ After this prosperous beginning, Armadale had arranged, as a matter of course, to prolong the cruise; and, at the sailing-master’s suggestion, he had decided to visit some of the ports in the Adriatic, which the captain had described as full of character, and well worth seeing.

  A postcript followed, explaining that Armadale had written in a hurry to catch the steamer to Naples, and that he had opened his letter again, before sending it off, to add something that he had forgotten. On the day before the yacht sailed, he had been at the banker’s to get ‘a few hundreds in gold’, and he believed he had left his cigar-case there. It was an old friend of his, and he begged that Midwinter would oblige him by endeavouring to recover it, and keeping it for him till they met again.

  That was the substance of the letter.

  I thought over it carefully when Midwinter had left me alone again, after reading it. My idea was then (and is still) that Manuel had not persuaded Armadale to cruise in a sea like the Adriatic, so much less frequented by ships than the Mediterranean, for nothing. The terms, too, in which the trifling loss of the cigar-case was mentioned, struck me as being equally suggestive of what was coming. I concluded that Armadale’s circular notes had not been transformed into those ‘few hundreds in gold’, through any forethought or business-knowledge of his own. Manuel’s influence, I suspected, had been exerted in this matter also – and once more not without reason. At intervals, through the wakeful night, these considerations came back again and again to me; and time after time they pointed obstinately (so far as my next movements were concerned) in one and the same way – the way back to England.

  How to get there, and especially how to get there unaccompanied by Midwinter, was more than I had wit enough to discover, that night. I tried, and tried, to meet the difficulty, and fell asleep exhausted towards the morning, without having met it.

  Some hours later, as soon as I was dressed, Midwinter came in, with news received by that morning’s post from his employers in London. The proprietors of the newspaper had received from the editor so favourable a report of his correspondence from Naples, that they had determined on advancing him to a place of greater responsibility and greater emolument at Turin. His instructions were enclosed in the letter; and he was requested to lose no time in leaving Naples for his new post.

  On hearing this, I relieved his mind, before he could put the question, of all anxiety about my willingness to remove. Turin had the great attraction, in my eyes, of being on the road to England. I assured him at once that I was ready to travel as soon as he pleased.

  He thanked me for suiting myself to his plans, with more of his old gentleness and kindness than I had seen in him for some time past. The good news from Armadale on the previous day seemed to have roused him a little from the dull despair in which he had been sunk since the sailing of the yacht. And now, the prospect of advancement in his profession, and, more than that, the prospect of leaving the fatal place in which the third Vision of the Dream had come true, had (as he owned himself) additionally cheered and relieved him. He asked, before he went away to make the arrangements for our journey, whether I expected to hear from my ‘family’ in England, and whether he should give instructions for the forwarding of my letters with his own to the poste restante at Turin. I instantly thanked him, and accepted the offer. His proposal had suggested to me, the moment he made it, that my fictitious ‘family circumstances’ might be turned to good account once more, as a reason for unexpectedly summoning me from Italy to England.

  On the ninth of the month we were installed at Turin.

  On the thirteenth,2 Midwinter – being then very busy – asked if I would save him a loss of time by applying for any letters which might have followed us from Naples. I had been waiting for the opportunity he now offered me; and I determined to snatch at it, without allowing myself time to hesitate. There were no letters at the poste restante for either of us. But, when he put the question on my return, I told him that there had been a letter for me, with alarming news from ‘home’. My ‘mother’ was dangerously ill; and I was entreated to lose no time in hurrying back to England to see her.

  It seems quite unaccountable – now that I am away from him – but it is none the less true, that I could not, even yet, tell him a downright premeditated falsehood, without a sense of shrinking and shame, which other people would think, and which I think myself, utterly inconsistent with such a character as mine. Inconsistent or not, I felt it. And what is stranger – perhaps, I ought to say, madder – still, if he had persisted in his first resolution to accompany me himself to England, rather than allow me to travel alone, I firmly believe I should have turned my back on temptation for the second time, and have lulled myself to rest once more in the old dream of living out my life happy and harmless in my husband’s love.

  Am I deceiving myself in this? It doesn’t matter – I daresay I am. Never mind what might have happened. What did happen is the only thing of any importance now.

  It ended in Midwinter’s letting me persuade him that I was old enough to take care of myself on the journey to England, and that he owed it to the newspaper people, who had trusted their interests in his hands, not to leave Turin just as he was established there. He didn’t suffer at taking leave of me as he suffered when he saw the last of his friend. I saw that, and set down the anxiety he expressed that I should write to him, at its proper value. I have quite got over my weakness for him at last. No man who really loved me would have put what he owed to a pack of newspaper people before what he owed to his wife. I hate him for letting me convince him! I believe he was glad to get rid of me. I believe he has seen some woman whom he likes at Turin. Well, let him follow his new fancy, if he pleases! I shall be the widow of Mr Armadale of Thorpe-Ambrose, before long – and what will his likes or dislikes matter to me then?

  The events on the journey were not worth mentioning, and my arrival in London stands recorded already on the top of the new page.

  As for to-day, the one thing of any importance that I have done, since I got to the cheap and quiet hotel at which I am now staying, has been to send for the landlord, and ask him to help me to a sight of the back numbers of The Times newspaper. He has politely offered to accompany me himself to-morrow morning to some place in the City where all the papers are kept, as he calls it, in file. Till to-morrow, then, I must control my impatience for news of Armadale as well as I can. And so good-night to the pretty reflection of myself that appears in these pages!

  November 20th. – Not a word of news yet, either in the obituary column or in any other part of the paper. I looked carefully through each number in succession, dating from the day when Armadale’s letter was written at Messina, to this present 20th of the month – and I am certain, whatever may have happened, that nothing is known in England as yet. Patience! The newspaper is to meet me at the breakfast-table every morning till further notice – and any day now may show me what I most want to see.

  November 21st. – No news again. I wrote to Midwinter to-day, to keep up appearances.

  When the letter was done, I fell into wretchedly low spirits – I can’t imagine why – and felt such a longing for a little company, that, in despair of knowing where e
lse to go, I actually went to Pimlico, on the chance that Mother Oldershaw might have returned to her old quarters.

  There were changes since I had seen the place during my former stay in London. Doctor Downward’s side of the house was still empty. But the shop was being brightened up for the occupation of a milliner and dress-maker. The people, when I went in to make inquiries, were all strangers to me. They showed, however, no hesitation in giving me Mrs Oldershaw’s address, when I asked for it – from which I infer that the little ‘difficulty’ which forced her to be in hiding in August last, is at an end, so far as she is concerned. As for the doctor, the people at the shop either were, or pretended to be, quite unable to tell me what had become of him.

  I don’t know whether it was the sight of the place at Pimlico that sickened me, or whether it was my own perversity, or what. But now that I had got Mrs Oldershaw’s address, I felt as if she was the very last person in the world that I wanted to see. I took a cab, and told the man to drive to the street she lived in, and then told him to drive back to the hotel. I hardly know what is the matter with me – unless it is that I am getting more impatient every hour for information about Armadale. When will the future look a little less dark, I wonder? To-morrow is Saturday. Will to-morrow’s newspaper lift the veil?

  November 22nd. – Saturday’s newspaper has lifted the veil! Words are vain to express the panic of astonishment in which I write. I never once anticipated it – I can’t believe it or realize it now it has happened. The winds and waves themselves have turned my accomplices! The yacht has foundered at sea, and every soul on board has perished!