Armadale, Wilkie Collins [smallest ebook reader txt] 📗

in a glow, and to set his withered old hopes growing again. I had only to add, 'If you will do what I ask you to do, no matter how incomprehensible and how mysterious my request may seem to be; and if you will accept my assurances that you shall run no risk yourself, and that you shall receive the proper explanations at the proper time, you will have such a claim on my gratitude and my regard as no man living has ever had yet!' I had only to say those words, and to point them by a look and a stolen pressure of his hand, and I had him at my feet, blindly eager to obey me. If he could have seen what I thought of myself; but that doesn't matter: he saw nothing.

"Hours have passed since I sent him away (pledged to secrecy, possessed of his instructions, and provided with his time-table) to the hotel near the terminus, at which he is to stay till Armadale appears on the railway platform. The excitement of the earlier part of the evening has all worn off; and the dull, numbed sensation has got me again. Are my energies wearing out, I wonder, just at the time when I most want them? Or is some foreshadowing of disaster creeping over me which I don't yet understand?

"I might be in a humor to sit here for some time longer, thinking thoughts like these, and letting them find their way into words at their own will and pleasure, if my Diary would only let me. But my idle pen has been busy enough to make its way to the end of the volume. I have reached the last morsel of space left on the last page; and whether I like it or not, I must close the book this time for good and all, when I close it to-night.

"Good-by, my old friend and companion of many a miserable day! Having nothing else to be fond of, I half suspect myself of having been unreasonably fond of you.

"What a fool I am!"

THE END OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

BOOK THE LAST.

I. AT THE TERMINUS.

On the night of the 2d of December, Mr. Bashwood took up his post of observation at the terminus of the South-eastern Railway for the first time. It was an earlier date, by six days, than the date which Allan had himself fixed for his return. But the doctor, taking counsel of his medical experience, had considered it just probable that "Mr. Armadale might be perverse enough, at his enviable age, to recover sooner than his medical advisers might have anticipated." For caution's sake, therefore, Mr. Bashwood was instructed to begin watching the arrival of the tidal trains on the day after he had received his employer's letter.

From the 2d to the 7th of December, the steward waited punctually on the platform, saw the trains come in, and satisfied himself, evening after evening, that the travelers were all strangers to him. From the 2d to the 7th of December, Miss Gwilt (to return to the name under which she is best known in these pages) received his daily report, sometimes delivered personally, sometimes sent by letter. The doctor, to whom the reports were communicated, received them in his turn with unabated confidence in the precautions that had been adopted up to the morning of the 8th. On that date the irritation of continued suspense had produced a change for the worse in Miss Gwilt's variable temper, which was perceptible to every one about her, and which, strangely enough, was reflected by an equally marked change in the doctor's manner when he came to pay his usual visit. By a coincidence so extraordinary that his enemies might have suspected it of not being a coincidence at all, the morning on which Miss Gwilt lost her patience proved to be also the morning on which the doctor lost his confidence for the first time.

"No news, of course," he said, sitting down with a heavy sigh. "Well! well!"

Miss Gwilt looked up at him irritably from her work.

"You seem strangely depressed this morning," she said. "What are you afraid of now?"

"The imputation of being afraid, madam," answered the doctor, solemnly, "is not an imputation to cast rashly on any man--even when he belongs to such an essentially peaceful profession as mine. I am not afraid. I am (as you more correctly put it in the first instance) strangely depressed. My nature is, as you know, naturally sanguine, and I only see to-day what but for my habitual hopefulness I might have seen, and ought to have seen, a week since."

Miss Gwilt impatiently threw down her work. "If words cost money," she said, "the luxury of talking would be rather an expensive luxury in your case!"

"Which I might have seen, and ought to have seen," reiterated the doctor, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption, "a week since. To put it plainly, I feel by no means so certain as I did that Mr. Armadale will consent, without a struggle, to the terms which it is my interest (and in a minor degree yours) to impose on him. Observe! I don't question our entrapping him successfully into the Sanitarium: I only doubt whether he will prove quite as manageable as I originally anticipated when we have got him there. Say," remarked the doctor, raising his eyes for the first time, and fixing them in steady inquiry on Miss Gwilt--"say that he is bold, obstinate, what you please; and that he holds out--holds out for weeks together, for months together, as men in similar situations to his have held out before him. What follows? The risk of keeping him forcibly in concealment--of suppressing him, if I may so express myself--increases at compound interest, and becomes Enormous! My house is at this moment virtually ready for patients. Patients may present themselves in a week's time. Patients may communicate with Mr. Armadale, or Mr. Armadale may communicate with patients. A note may be smuggled out of the house, and may reach the Commissioners in Lunacy. Even in the case of an unlicensed establishment like mine, those gentlemen--no! those chartered despots in a land of liberty--have only to apply to the Lord Chancellor for an order, and to enter (by heavens, to enter My Sanitarium!) and search the house from top to bottom at a moment's notice! I don't wish to despond; I don't wish to alarm you; I don't pretend to say that the means we are taking to secure your own safety are any other than the best means at our disposal. All I ask you to do is to imagine the Commissioners in the house--and then to conceive the consequences. The consequences!" repeated the doctor, getting sternly on his feet, and taking up his hat as if he meant to leave the room.

"Have you anything more to say?" asked Miss Gwilt.

"Have you any remarks," rejoined the doctor, "to offer on your side?"

He stood, hat in hand, waiting. For a full minute the two looked at each other in silence.

Miss Gwilt spoke first.

"I think I understand you," she said, suddenly recovering her composure.

"I beg your pardon," returned the doctor, with his hand to his ear. "What did you say?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"If you happened to catch another fly this morning," said Miss Gwilt, with a bitterly sarcastic emphasis on the words, "I might be capable of shocking you by another 'little joke.'"

The doctor held up both hands, in polite deprecation, and looked as if he was beginning to recover his good humor again.

"Hard," he murmured, gently, "not to have forgiven me that unlucky blunder of mine, even yet!"

"What else have you to say? I am waiting for you," said Miss Gwilt. She turned her chair to the window scornfully, and took up her work again, as she spoke.

The doctor came behind her, and put his hand on the back of her chair.

"I have a question to ask, in the first place," he said; "and a measure of necessary precaution to suggest, in the second. If you will honor me with your attention, I will put the question first."

"I am listening."

"You know that Mr. Armadale is alive," pursued the doctor, "and you know that he is coming back to England. Why do you continue to wear your widow's dress?"

She answered him without an instant's hesitation, steadily going on with her work.

"Because I am of a sanguine disposition, like you. I mean to trust to the chapter of accidents to the very last. Mr. Armadale may die yet, on his way home."

"And suppose he gets home alive--what then?"

"Then there is another chance still left."

"What is it, pray?"

"He may die in your Sanitarium."

"Madam!" remonstrated the doctor, in the deep bass which he reserved for his outbursts of virtuous indignation. "Wait! you spoke of the chapter of accidents," he resumed, gliding back into his softer conversational tones. "Yes! yes! of course. I understand you this time. Even the healing art is at the mercy of accidents; even such a Sanitarium as mine is liable to be surprised by Death. Just so! just so!" said the doctor, conceding the question with the utmost impartiality. "There is the chapter of accidents, I admit--if you choose to trust to it. Mind! I say emphatically, if you choose to trust to it."

There was another moment of silence--silence so profound that nothing was audible in the room but the rapid click of Miss Gwilt's needle through her work.

"Go on," she said; "you haven't done yet."

"True!" said the doctor. "Having put my question, I have my measure of precaution to impress on you next. You will see, my dear madam, that I am not disposed to trust to the chapter of accidents on my side. Reflection has convinced me that you and I are not (logically speaking) so conveniently situated as we might be in case of emergency. Cabs are, as yet, rare in this rapidly improving neighborhood. I am twenty minutes' walk from you; you are twenty minutes' walk from me. I know nothing of Mr. Armadale's character; you know it well. It might be necessary--vitally necessary--to appeal to your superior knowledge of him at a moment's notice. And how am I to do that unless we are within easy reach of each other, under the same roof? In both our interests, I beg to invite you, my dear madam, to become for a limited period an inmate of My Sanitarium."

Miss Gwilt's rapid needle suddenly stopped. "I understand you," she said again, as quietly as before.

"I beg your pardon," said the doctor, with another attack of deafness, and with his hand once more at his ear.

She laughed to herself--a low, terrible laugh, which startled even the doctor into taking his hand off the back of her chair.

"An inmate of your Sanitarium?" she repeated. "You consult appearances in everything else; do you propose to consult appearances in receiving me into your house?"

"Most assuredly!" replied the doctor, with enthusiasm. "I am surprised at your asking me the question! Did you ever know a man of any eminence in my profession who set appearances at defiance? If you honor me by accepting my invitation, you enter My Sanitarium in the most unimpeachable of all possible characters--in the character of a Patient."

"When do you want my answer?"

"Can you decide to-day?"

"To-morrow?"

"Yes. Have you anything more to say?"

"Nothing more."

"Leave me, then. I don't keep up appearances. I wish to be alone, and I say so. Good-morning."

"Oh, the sex! the sex!" said the doctor, with his excellent temper in perfect working order again. "So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly reckless of what they say or how they say it! 'Oh,