She put the old man back with her hand. She looked at him with a sudden irradiation of her blank face. She answered him with lips that struggled slowly into a frightful smile.
‘ Let him kill me,’ she said.
As the words passed her lips, he sprang forward from the wall, with a cry that rang through the house. The frenzy of a maddened man flashed at her from his glassy eyes, and clutched at her in his threatening hands. He came on till he was within arm’s length of her – and suddenly stood still. The black flush died out of his face in the instant when he stopped. His eyelids fell, his outstretched hands wavered, and sank helpless. He dropped, as the dead drop. He lay as the dead lie, in the arms of the wife who had denied him.
She knelt on the floor, and rested his head on her knee. She caught the arm of the steward hurrying to help her, with a hand that closed round it like a vice. ‘Go for a doctor,’ she said, ‘and keep the people of the house away till he comes.’ There was that in her eye, there was that in her voice, which would have warned any man living to obey her in silence. In silence, Mr Bashwood submitted, and hurried out of the room.
The instant she was alone, she raised him from her knee. With both arms clasped round him, the miserable woman lifted his lifeless face to hers, and rocked him on her bosom in an agony of tenderness beyond all relief in tears, in a passion of remorse beyond all expression in words. In silence she held him to her breast, in silence she devoured his forehead, his cheeks, his lips, with kisses. Not a sound escaped her, till she heard the trampling footsteps outside, hurrying up the stairs. Then a low moan burst from her lips, as she looked her last at him, and lowered his head again to her knee, before the strangers came in.
The landlady and the steward were the first persons whom she saw when the door was opened. The medical man (a surgeon living in the street) followed. The horror and the beauty of her face as she looked up at him absorbed the surgeon’s attention for the moment, to the exclusion of everything else. She had to beckon to him, she had to point to the senseless man, before she could claim his attention for his patient and divert it from herself.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked.
The surgeon carried Midwinter to the sofa, and ordered the windows to be opened. ‘It is a fainting fit,’ he said; ‘nothing more.’
At that answer her strength failed her for the first time. She drew a deep breath of relief, and leaned on the chimney-piece for support. Mr Bashwood was the only person present who noticed that she was overcome. He led her to the opposite end of the room, where there was an easy chair – leaving the landlady to hand the restoratives to the surgeon as they were wanted.
‘Are you going to wait here till he recovers?’ whispered the steward, looking towards the sofa, and trembling as he looked.
The question roused her to a sense of her position – to a knowledge of the merciless necessities which that position now forced her to confront. With a heavy sigh she looked towards the sofa, considered with herself for a moment, and answered Mr Bashwood’s inquiry by a question on her side.
‘Is the cab that brought you here from the railway still at the door?’
‘Yes.’
‘Drive at once to the gates of the Sanatorium, and wait there till I join you.’
Mr Bashwood hesitated. She lifted her eyes to his, and, with a look, sent him out of the room.
‘The gentleman is coming to, ma’am,’ said the landlady, as the steward closed the door. ‘He has just breathed again.’
She bowed in mute reply, rose, and considered with herself once more – looked towards the sofa for the second time – then passed through the folding-doors into her own room.
After a short lapse of time the surgeon drew back from the sofa, and motioned to the landlady to stand aside. The bodily recovery of the patient was assured. There was nothing to be done now but to wait, and let his mind slowly recall its sense of what had happened.
‘Where is she?’ were the first words he said to the surgeon and the landlady anxiously watching him.
The landlady knocked at the folding-doors, and received no answer. She went in, and found the room empty. A sheet of note-paper was on the dressing-table, with the doctor’s fee placed on it. The paper contained these lines, evidently written in great agitation or in great haste: ‘It is impossible for me to remain here to-night, after what has happened. I will return to-morrow to take away my luggage, and to pay what I owe you.’
‘Where is she?’ Midwinter asked again, when the landlady returned alone to the drawing-room.
‘Gone, sir.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
The old lady’s colour rose. ‘If you know her handwriting, sir,’ she answered, handing him the sheet of note-paper, ‘perhaps you may believe that?’
He looked at the paper. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ he said, as he handed it back. ‘I beg your pardon, with all my heart.’
There was something in his face as he spoke those words which more than soothed the old lady’s irritation – it touched her with a sudden pity for the man who had offended her. ‘I am afraid there is some dreadful trouble, sir, at the bottom of all this,’ she said simply. ‘Do you wish me to give any message to the lady when she comes back?’
Midwinter rose, and steadied himself for a moment against the sofa. ‘I will bring my own message to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I must see her before she leaves your house.’
The surgeon accompanied his patient into the street. ‘Can I see you home?’ he said, kindly. ‘You had better not walk, if it is far. You mustn’t over-exert yourself; you mustn’t catch a chill this cold night.’
Midwinter took his hand and thanked him. ‘I have been used to hard walking and to cold nights, sir,’ he said; ‘and I am not easily worn out, even when I look so broken as I do now. If you will tell me the nearest way out of these streets, I think the quiet of the country and the quiet of the night will help me. I have something serious to do to-morrow,’ he added, in a lower tone; ‘and I can’t rest or sleep till I have thought over it to-night.’
The surgeon understood that he had no common man to deal with. He gave the necessary directions without any further remark, and parted with his patient at his own door.
Left by himself, Midwinter paused and looked up at the heaven in silence. The night had cleared, and the stars were out – the stars which he had first learnt to know from his gipsy master on the hill-side. For the first time his mind went back regretfully to his boyish days. ‘Oh, for the old life!’ he thought, longingly. ‘I never knew till now how happy the old life was!’
He roused himself and went on towards the open country. His face darkened as he left the streets behind him and advanced into the solitude and obscurity that lay beyond.
‘She has denied her husband to-night,’ he said. ‘She shall know her master to-morrow.’
CHAPTER III
THE PURPLE FLASK
The cab was waiting at the gates as Miss Gwilt approached the Sanatorium. Mr Bashwood got out and advanced to meet her. She took his arm and led him aside a few steps, out of the cabman’s hearing.
‘Think what you like of me,’ she said, keeping her thick black veil down over her face – ‘but don’t speak to me to-night. Drive back to your hotel as if nothing had happened. Meet the tidal train to-morrow as usual; and come to me afterwards at the Sanatorium. Go without a word, and I shall believe there is one man in the world who really loves me. Stay and ask questions, and I shall bid you good-by at once and for ever!’
She pointed to the cab. In a minute more it had left the Sanatorium and was taking Mr Bashwood back to his hotel.
She opened the iron gate and walked slowly up to the house door. A shudder ran through her as she rang the bell. She laughed bitterly. ‘shivering again!’ she said to herself. ‘Who would have thought I had so much feeling left in me?’
For once in his life the doctor’s face told the truth, when the study door opened between ten and eleven at night, and Miss Gwilt entered the room.
‘It means,’ she answered, ‘that I have decided to-night instead of deciding to-morrow. You, who know women so well, ought to know that they act on impulse. I am here on an impulse. Take me or leave me, just as you like.’
‘Take you or leave you?’ repeated the doctor, recovering his presence of mind. ‘My dear lady, what a dreadful way of putting it! Your room shall be got ready instantly! Where is your luggage? Will you let me send for it? No? You can do without your luggage to-night? What admirable fortitude! You will fetch it yourself to-morrow? What extraordinary independence! Do take off your bonnet. Do draw in to the fire! What can I offer you?’
‘Offer me the strongest sleeping-draught you ever made in your life,’ she replied. ‘And leave me alone till the time comes to take it. I shall be your patient in earnest!’ she added fiercely as the doctor attempted to remonstrate. ‘I shall be the maddest of the mad if you irritate me tonight!’
The Principal of the Sanatorium became gravely and briefly professional in an instant.
‘Sit down in that dark corner,’ he said. ‘Not a soul shall disturb you. In half an hour you will find your room ready, and your sleeping-draught on the table. It’s been a harder struggle for her than I anticipated,’ he thought, as he left the room, and crossed to his Dispensary on the opposite side of the hall. ‘Good heavens, what business has she with a conscience, after such a life as hers has been!’
The Dispensary was elaborately fitted up with all the latest improvements in medical furniture. But one of the four walls of the room was unoccupied by shelves, and here the vacant space was filled by a handsome antique cabinet of carved wood, curiously out of harmony, as an object, with the unornamented utilitarian aspect of the place generally. On either side of the cabinet two speaking-tubes were inserted in the wall, communicating with the upper regions of the house, and labelled respectively, ‘Resident Dispenser’, and ‘Head Nurse’. Into the second of these tubes the doctor spoke, on entering the room. An elderly woman appeared, took her orders for preparing Mrs Armadale’s bedchamber, curtseyed, and retired.
Left alone again in the Dispensary, the doctor unlocked the centre compartment of the cabinet, and disclosed a collection of bottles inside, containing the various poisons used in medicine. After taking out the laudanum wanted for the sleeping-draught, and placing it on the dispensary-table, he went back to the cabinet – looked into it for a little while – shook his head doubtfully – and crossed to the open shelves on the opposite side of the room. Here, after more consideration, he took down one out of the row of large chemical bottles before him, filled with a yellow liquid: placing the bottle on the table, he returned to the cabinet, and opened a side compartment, containing some specimens of Bohemian glass-work. After measuring it with his eye, he took from the specimens a handsome purple flask, high and narrow in form, and closed by a glass stopper. This he filled with the yellow liquid, leaving a small quantity only at the bottom of the bottle, and locking up the flask again in the place from which he had taken it. The bottle was next restored to its place, after having been filled up with water from the cistern in the Dispensary, mixed with certain chemical liquids in small quantities, which restored it (so far as appearances went) to the condition in which it had been when it was first removed from the shelf. Having completed these mysterious proceedings, the doctor laughed softly, and went back to his speaking-tubes to summon the Resident Dispenser next.
The Resident Dispenser made his appearance shrouded in the necessary white apron from his waist to his feet. The doctor solemnly wrote a prescription for a composing draught, and handed it to his assistant.
‘Wanted immediately, Benjamin,’ he said, in a soft and melancholy voice. ‘A lady-patient – Mrs Armadale, Room Number-one, Second-floor. Ah, dear, dear!’ groaned the doctor absently; ‘an anxious case, Benjamin – an anxious case.’ He opened the brand-new ledger of the establishment, and entered the Case at full length, with a brief abstract of the prescription. ‘Have you done with the laudanum? Put it back, and lock the cabinet, and give me the key. Is the draught ready? Label it “to be taken at bed-time”, and give it to the nurse, Benjamin – give it to the nurse.’
While the doctor’s lips were issuing these directions, the doctor’s hands were occupied in opening a drawer under the desk on which the ledger was placed. He took out some gaily-printed cards of admission ‘to view the Sanatorium, between the hours of two and four, P.M.’, and filled them up with the date of the next day, ‘December tenth’. When a dozen of the cards had been wrapped up in a dozen lithographed letters of invitation, and enclosed in a dozen envelopes, he next consulted a list of the families resident in the neighbourhood, and directed the envelopes from the list. Ringing a bell this time, instead of speaking through a tube, he summoned the man-servant, and gave him the letters, to be delivered by hand the first thing the next morning. ‘I think it will do,’ said the doctor, taking a turn in the Dispensary when the servant had gone out; ‘I think it will do.’ While he was still absorbed in his own reflections, the nurse re-appeared to announce that the lady’s room was ready; and the doctor thereupon formally returned to the study to communicate the information to Miss Gwilt.
She had not moved since he left her. She rose from her dark corner when he made his announcement, and, without speaking or raising her veil, glided out of the room like a ghost.
After a brief interval, the nurse came downstairs again, with a word for her master’s private ear.
‘The lady has ordered me to call her to-morrow at seven o’clock, sir,’ she said. ‘She means to fetch her luggage herself, and she wants to have a cab at the door as soon as she is dressed. What am I to do?’
‘Do what the lady tells you,’ said the doctor. ‘She may be safely trusted to return to the Sanatorium.’
The breakfast hour at the Sanatorium was half-past eight o’clock. By that time Miss Gwilt had settled everything at her lodging, and had returned with her luggage in her own possession. The doctor was quite amazed at the promptitude of his patient.
‘Why waste so much energy?’ he asked, when they met at the breakfast-table. ‘Why be in such a hurry, my dear lady, when you had all the morning before you?’
‘Mere restlessness!’ she said, briefly. ‘The longer I live, the more impatient I get.’
The doctor, who had noticed before she spoke that her face looked strangely pale and old that morning, observed when she answered him that her expression – naturally mobile in no ordinary degree – remained quite unaltered by the effort of speaking. There was none of the usual animation on her lips, none of the usual temper in her eyes. He had never seen her so impenetrably and coldly composed as he saw her now. ‘She has made up her mind at last,’ he thought. ‘I may say to her this morning, what I couldn’t say to her last night.’
He prefaced the coming remarks by a warning look at her widow’s dress.
‘Now you have got your luggage,’ he began gravely, ‘permit me to suggest putting that cap away, and wearing another gown.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you remember what you told me, a day or two since?’ asked the doctor. ‘You said there was a chance of Mr Armadale’s dying in my Sanatorium?’
‘I will say it again, if you like.’
‘A more unlikely chance,’ pursued the doctor, deaf as ever to all awkward interruptions, ‘it is hardly possible to imagine! But as long as it is a chance at all, it is worth considering. Say then that he dies, – dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and makes a Coroner’s Inquest necessary in the house. What is our course in that case? Our course is to preserve the characters to which we have committed ourselves – you as his widow, and I as the witness of your marriage – and, in those characters, to court the fullest inquiry. In the entirely improbable event of his dying just when we want him to die, my idea – I might even say, my resolution – is, to admit that we knew of his resurrection from
the sea; and to acknowledge that we instructed Mr Bashwood to entrap him into this house, by means of a false statement about Miss Milroy. When the inevitable questions follow, I propose to assert that he exhibited symptoms of mental alienation shortly after your marriage – that his delusion consisted in denying that you were his wife, and in declaring that he was engaged to be married to Miss Milroy – that you were in such terror of him on this account, when you heard he was alive and coming back, as to be in a state of nervous agitation that required my care – that at your request, and to calm that nervous agitation, I saw him professionally, and got him quietly into the house by a humouring of his delusion perfectly justifiable in such a case – and lastly, that I can certify his brain to have been affected by one of those mysterious disorders, eminently incurable, eminently fatal, in relation to which medical science is still in the dark. Such a course as this (in the remotely possible event which we are now supposing) would be, in your interests and mine, unquestionably the right course to take – and such a dress as that is, just as certainly, under existing circumstances, the wrong dress to wear.’
‘Shall I take it off at once?’ she asked, rising from the breakfast-table, without a word of remark on what had just been said to her.
‘Any time before two o’clock to-day, will do,’ said the doctor.
She looked at him, with a languid curiosity – nothing more. ‘Why before two?’ she inquired.
‘Because this is one of my “Visitors’ Days”. And the Visitors’ time is from two to four.’
‘What have I to do with your visitors?’
‘Simply this. I think it important that perfectly respectable and perfectly disinterested witnesses should see you, in my house, in the character of a lady who has come to consult me.’
‘Your motive seems rather far-fetched. Is it the only motive you have in the matter?’
‘My dear, dear lady!’ remonstrated the doctor; ‘have I any concealments from you? Surely, you ought to know me better than that?’
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