“Hold your tongue,” cried the spy, with the native coarseness of his nature rising to the surface at last. “I’m not at the end of my inquiries yet.”
He crossed the road, and entered a coffee-shop situated exactly opposite the house he had just left.
In the box nearest the window two men were sitting talking together anxiously.
“Which of you was on duty yesterday evening, between nine and ten o’clock?” asked Bashwood the younger, suddenly joining them, and putting his question in a quick, peremptory whisper.
“I was, sir,” said one of the men, unwillingly.
“Did you lose sight of the house?—Yes! I see you did.”
“Only for a minute, sir. An infernal blackguard of a soldier came in—”
“That will do,” said Bashwood the younger. “I know what the soldier did, and who sent him to do it. She has given us the slip again. You are the greatest ass living. Consider yourself dismissed.” With those words, and with an oath to emphasize them, he left the coffee-shop and returned to the cab.
“She’s gone!” cried his father. “Oh, Jemmy, Jemmy, I see it in your face!” He fell back into his own corner of the cab, with a faint, wailing cry. “They’re married,” he moaned to himself; his hands falling helplessly on his knees; his hat falling unregarded from his head. “Stop them!” he exclaimed, suddenly rousing himself, and seizing his son in a frenzy by the collar of the coat.
“Go back to the hotel,” shouted Bashwood the younger to the cabman. “Hold your noise!” he added, turning fiercely on his father. “I want to think.”
The varnish of smoothness was all off him by this time. His temper was roused. His pride—even such a man has his pride!—was wounded to the quick. Twice had he matched his wits against a woman’s; and twice the woman had baffled him.
He got out, on reaching the hotel for the second time, and privately tried the servants with the offer of money. The result of the experiment satisfied him that they had, in this instance, really and truly no information to sell. After a moment’s reflection, he stopped, before leaving the hotel, to ask the way to the parish church. “The chance may be worth trying,” he thought to himself, as he gave the address to the driver. “Faster!” he called out, looking first at his watch, and then at his father. “The minutes are precious this morning; and the old one is beginning to give in.”
It was true. Still capable of hearing and of understanding, Mr. Bashwood was past speaking by this time. He clung with both hands to his son’s grudging arm, and let his head fall helplessly on his son’s averted shoulder.
The parish church stood back from the street, protected by gates and railings, and surrounded by a space of open ground. Shaking off his father’s hold, Bashwood the younger made straight for the vestry. The clerk, putting away the books, and the clerk’s assistant, hanging up a surplice, were the only persons in the room when he entered it and asked leave to look at the marriage register for the day.
The clerk gravely opened the book, and stood aside from the desk on which it lay.
The day’s register comprised three marriages solemnized that morning; and the first two signatures on the page were “Allan Armadale” and “Lydia Gwilt!”
Even the spy—ignorant as he was of the truth, unsuspicious as he was of the terrible future consequences to which the act of that morning might lead—even the spy started, when his eye first fell on the page. It was done! Come what might of it, it was done now. There, in black and white, was the registered evidence of the marriage, which was at once a truth in itself, and a lie in the conclusion to which it led! There—through the fatal similarity in the names—there, in Midwinter’s own signature, was the proof to persuade everybody that, not Midwinter, but Allan, was the husband of Miss Gwilt!
Bashwood the younger closed the book, and returned it to the clerk. He descended the vestry steps, with his hands thrust doggedly into his pockets, and with a serious shock inflicted on his professional self-esteem.
The beadle met him under the church wall. He considered for a moment whether it was worth while to spend a shilling in questioning the man, and decided in the affirmative. If they could be traced and overtaken, there might be a chance of seeing the color of Mr. Armadale’s money even yet.
“How long is it,” he asked, “since the first couple married here this morning left the church?”
“About an hour,” said the beadle.
“How did they go away?”
The beadle deferred answering that second question until he had first pocketed his fee.
“You won’t trace them from here, sir,” he said, when he had got his shilling. “They went away on foot.”
“And that is all you know about it?”
“That, sir, is all I know about it.”
Left by himself, even the Detective of the Private Inquiry Office paused for a moment before he returned to his father at the gate. He was roused from his hesitation by the sudden appearance, within the church inclosure, of the driver of the cab.
“I’m afraid the old gentleman is going to be taken ill, sir,” said the man.
Bashwood the younger frowned angrily, and walked back to the cab. As he opened the door and looked in, his father leaned forward and confronted him, with lips that moved speechlessly, and with a white stillness over all the rest of his face.
“She’s done us,” said the spy. “They were married here this morning.”
The old man’s body swayed for a moment from one side to the other. The instant after, his eyes closed and his head fell forward toward the front seat of the cab. “Drive to the hospital!” cried his son. “He’s in a fit. This is what comes of putting myself out of my way to please my father,” he muttered, sullenly raising Mr. Bashwood’s head, and loosening his cravat. “A nice morning’s work. Upon my soul, a nice morning’s work!”
The hospital was near, and the house surgeon was at his post.
“Will he come out of it?” asked Bashwood the younger, roughly.
“Who areyou?” asked the surgeon, sharply, on his side.
“I am his son.”
“I shouldn’t have thought it,” rejoined the surgeon, taking the restoratives that were handed to him by the nurse, and turning from the son to the father with an air of relief which he was at no pains to conceal. “Yes,” he added, after a minute or two; “your father will come out of it this time.”
“When can he be moved away from here?”
“He can be moved from the hospital in an hour or two.”
The spy laid a card on the table. “I’ll come back for him or send for him,” he said. “I suppose I can go now, if I leave my name and address?” With those words, he put on his hat, and walked out.
“He’s a brute!” said the nurse.
“No,” said the surgeon, quietly. “He’s a man.”
* * * * * * *
Between nine and ten o’clock that night, Mr. Bashwood awoke in his bed at the inn in the Borough. He had slept for some hours since he had been brought back from the hospital; and his mind and body were now slowly recovering together.
A light was burning on the bedside table, and a letter lay on it, waiting for him till he was awake. It was in his son’s handwriting, and it contained these words:
“MY DEAR DAD—Having seen you safe out of the hospital, and back at your hotel, I think I may fairly claim to have done my duty by you, and may consider myself free to look after my own affairs. Business will prevent me from seeing you to-night; and I don’t think it at all likely I shall be in your neighborhood to-morrow morning. My advice to you is to go back to Thorpe Ambrose, and to stick to your employment in the steward’s office. Wherever Mr. Armadale may be, he must, sooner or later, write to you on business. I wash my hands of the whole matter, mind, so far as I am concerned, from this time forth. But ifyoulike to go on with it, my professional opinion is (though you couldn’t hinder his marriage), you may part him from his wife.
“Pray take care of yourself.
“Your affectionate son,
“JAMES BASHWOOD.”
The letter dropped from the old man’s feeble hands. “I wish Jemmy could have come to see me to-night,” he thought. “But it’s very kind of him to advise me, all the same.”
He turned wearily on the pillow, and read the letter a second time. “Yes,” he said, “there’s nothing left for me but to go back. I’m too poor and too old to hunt after them all by myself.” He closed his eyes: the tears trickled slowly over his wrinkled cheeks. “I’ve been a trouble to Jemmy,” he murmured, faintly; “I’ve been a sad trouble, I’m afraid, to poor Jemmy!” In a minute more his weakness overpowered him, and he fell asleep again.
The clock of the neighboring church struck. It was ten. As the bell tolled the hour, the tidal train—with Midwinter and his wife among the passengers—was speeding nearer and nearer to Paris. As the bell tolled the hour, the watch on board Allan’s outward-bound yacht had sighted the light-house off the Land’s End, and had set the course of the vessel for Ushant and Finisterre.
THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK.
“NAPLES, October 10th.—It is two months to-day since I declared that I had closed my Diary, never to open it again.
“Why have I broken my resolution? Why have I gone back to this secret friend of my wretchedest and wickedest hours? Because I am more friendless than ever; because I am more lonely than ever, though my husband is sitting writing in the next room to me. My misery is a woman’s misery, and itwillspeak—here, rather than nowhere; to my second self, in this book, if I have no one else to hear me.
“How happy I was in the first days that followed our marriage, and how happy I madehim! Only two months have passed, and that time is a by-gone time already! I try to think of anything I might have said or done wrongly, on my side—of anything he might have said or done wrongly, on his; and I can remember nothing unworthy of my husband, nothing unworthy of myself. I cannot even lay my finger on the day when the cloud first rose between us.
“I could bear it, if I loved him less dearly than I do. I could conquer the misery of our estrangement, if he only showed the change in him as brutally as other men would show it.
“But this never has happened—never will happen. It is not in his nature to inflict suffering on others. Not a hard word, not a hard look, escapes him. It is only at night, when I hear him sighing in his sleep, and sometimes when I see him dreaming in the morning hours, that I know how hopelessly I am losing the love he once felt for me. He hides, or tries to hide, it in the day, for my sake. He is all gentleness, all kindness; but his heart is not on his lips when he kisses me now; his hand tells me nothing when it touches mine. Day after day the hours that he gives to his hateful writing grow longer and longer; day after day he becomes more and more silent in the hours that he gives to me.
“And, with all this, there is nothing that I can complain of—nothing marked enough to justify me in noticing it. His disappointment shrinks from all open confession; his resignation collects itself by such fine degrees that even my watchfulness fails to see the growth of it. Fifty times a day I feel the longing in me to throw my arms round his neck, and say: ‘For God’s sake, do anything to me, rather than treat me like this!’ and fifty times a day the words are forced back into my heart by the cruel considerateness of his conduct; which gives me no excuse for speaking them. I thought I had suffered the sharpest pain that I could feel when my first husband laid his whip across my face. I thought I knew the worst that despair could do on the day when I knew that the other villain, the meaner villain still, had cast me off. Live and learn. There is sharper pain than I felt under Waldron’s whip; there is bitterer despair than the despair I knew when Manuel deserted me.
“Am I too old for him? Surely not yet! Have I lost my beauty? Not a man passes me in the street but his eyes tell me I am as handsome as ever.
“Ah, no! no! the secret lies deeper thanthat! I have thought and thought about it till a horrible fancy has taken possession of me. He has been noble and good in his past life, and I have been wicked and disgraced. Who can tell what a gap that dreadful difference may make between us, unknown to him and unknown to me? It is folly, it is madness; but, when I lie awake by him in the darkness, I ask myself whether any unconscious disclosure of the truth escapes me in the close intimacy that now unites us? Is there an unutterable Something left by the horror of my past life, which clings invisibly to me still? And is he feeling the influence of it, sensibly, and yet incomprehensibly to himself? Oh me! is there no purifying power in such love as mine? Are there plague-spots of past wickedness on my heart which no after-repentance can wash out?
“Who can tell? There is something wrong in our married life—I can only come back to that. There is some adverse influence that neither he nor I can trace which is parting us further and further from each other day by day. Well! I suppose I shall be hardened in time, and learn to bear it.
“An open carriage has just driven by my window, with a nicely dressed lady in it. She had her husband by her side, and her children on the seat opposite. At the moment when I saw her she was laughing and talking in high spirits—a sparkling, light-hearted, happy woman. Ah, my lady, when you were a few years younger, if you had been left to yourself, and thrown on the world like me—”
“October 11th.—The eleventh day of the month was the day (two months since) when we were married. He said nothing about it to me when we woke, nor I to him. But I thought I would make it the occasion, at breakfast-time, of trying to win him back.
“I don’t think I ever took such pains with my toilet before. I don’t think I ever looked better than I looked when I went downstairs this morning. He had breakfasted by himself, and I found a little slip of paper on the table with an apology written on it. The post to England, he said, went out that day and his letter to the newspaper must be finished. In his place I would have let fifty posts go out rather than breakfast without him. I went into his room. There he was, immersed body and soul in his hateful writing! ‘Can’t you give me a little time this morning?’ I asked. He got up with a start. ‘Certainly, if you wish it.’ He never even looked at me as he said the words. The very sound of his voice told me that all his interest was centered in the pen that he had just laid down. ‘I see you are occupied,’ I said; ‘I don’t wish it.’ Before I had closed the door on him he was back at his desk. I have often heard that the wives of authors have been for the most part unhappy women. And now I know why.
“I suppose, as I said yesterday, I shall learn to bear it. (Whatstuff, by-the-by, I seem to have written yesterday! How ashamed I should be if anybody saw it but myself!) I hope the trumpery newspaper he writes for won’t succeed! I hope his rubbishing letter will be well cut up by some other newspaper as soon as it gets into print!
“What am I to do with myself all the morning? I can’t go out, it’s raining. If I open the piano, I shall disturb the industrious journalist who is scribbling in the next room. Oh, dear, it was lonely enough in my lodging in Thorpe Ambrose, but how much lonelier it is here! Shall I read? No; books don’t interest me; I hate the whole tribe of authors. I think I shall look back through these pages, and live my life over again when I was plotting and planning, and finding a new excitement to occupy me in every new hour of the day.
“He might have looked at me, though hewasso busy with his writing.—He might have said, ‘How nicely you are dressed this morning!’ He might have remembered—never mind what! All he remembers is the newspaper.”
“Twelve o’clock.—I have been reading and thinking; and, thanks to my Diary, I have got through an hour.
“What a time it was—what a life it was, at Thorpe Ambrose! I wonder I kept my senses. It makes my heart beat, it makes my face flush, only to read about it now!
“The rain still falls, and the journalist still scribbles. I don’t want to think the thoughts of that past time over again. And yet, what else can I do?
“Supposing—I only say supposing—I felt now, as I felt when I traveled to London with Armadale; and when I saw my way to his life as plainly as I saw the man himself all through the journey...?
“I’ll go and look out of the window. I’ll go and count the people as they pass by.
“A funeral has gone by, with the penitents in their black hoods, and the wax torches sputtering in the wet, and the little bell ringing, and the priests droning their monotonous chant. A pleasant sight to meet me at the window! I shall go back to my Diary.
“Supposing I was not the altered woman I am—I only say, supposing—how would the Grand Risk that I once thought of running look now? I have married Midwinter in the name that is really his own. And by doing that I have taken the first of those three steps which were once to lead me, through Armadale’s life, to the fortune and the station of Armadale’s widow. No matter how innocent my intentions might have been on the wedding-day—and theywereinnocent—this is one of the unalterable results of the marriage. Well, having taken the first step, then, whether I would or no, how—supposing I meant to take the second step, which I don’t—how would present circumstances stand toward me? Would they warn me to draw back, I wonder? or would they encourage me to go on?
“It will interest me to calculate the chances; and I can easily tear the leaf out, and destroy it, if the prospect looks too encouraging.
“We are living here (for economy’s sake) far away from the expensive English quarter, in a suburb of the city, on the Portici side. We have made no traveling acquaintances among our own country people. Our poverty is against us; Midwinter’s shyness is against us; and (with the women) my personal appearance is against us. The men from whom my husband gets his information for the newspaper meet him at the cafe, and never come here. I discourage his bringing any strangers to see me; for, though years have passed since I was last at Naples, I cannot be sure that some of the many people I once knew in this place may not be living still. The moral of all this is (as the children’s storybooks say), that not a single witness has come to this house who could declare, if any after-inquiry took place in England, that Midwinter and I had been living here as man and wife. So much for present circumstances as they affect me.
“Armadale next. Has any unforeseen accident led him to communicate with Thorpe Ambrose? Has he broken the conditions which the major imposed on him, and asserted himself in the character of Miss Milroy’s promised husband since I saw him last?
“Nothing of the sort has taken place. No unforeseen accident has altered his position—his tempting position—toward myself. I know all that has happened to him since he left England, through the letters which he writes to Midwinter, and which Midwinter shows to me.
“He has been wrecked, to begin with. His trumpery little yacht has actually tried to drown him, after all, and has failed! It happened (as Midwinter warned him it might happen with so small a vessel) in a sudden storm. They were blown ashore on the coast of Portugal. The yacht went to pieces, but the lives, and papers, and so on, were saved. The men have been sent back to Bristol, with recommendations from their master which have already got them employment on board an outward-bound ship. And the master himself is on his way here, after stopping first at Lisbon, and next at Gibraltar, and trying ineffectually in both places to supply himself with another vessel. His third attempt is to be made at Naples, where there is an English yacht ‘laid up,’ as they call it, to be had for sale or hire. He has had no occasion to write home since the wreck; for he took away from Coutts’s the whole of the large sum of money lodged there for him, in circular notes. And he has felt no inclination to go back to England himself; for, with Mr. Brock dead, Miss Milroy at school, and Midwinter here, he has not a living creature in whom he is interested to welcome him if he returned. To see us, and to see the new yacht, are the only two present objects he has in view. Midwinter has been expecting him for a week past, and he may walk into this very room in which I am writing, at this very moment, for all I know to the contrary.
“Tempting circumstances, these—with all the wrongs I have suffered at his mother’s hands and at his, still alive in my memory; with Miss Milroy confidently waiting to take her place at the head of his household; with my dream of living happy and innocent in Midwinter’s love dispelled forever, and with nothing left in its place to help me against myself. I wish it wasn’t raining; I wish I could go out.
“Perhaps something may happen to prevent Armadale from coming to Naples? When he last wrote, he was waiting at Gibraltar for an English steamer in the Mediterranean trade to bring him on here. He may get tired of waiting before the steamer comes, or he may hear of a yacht at some other place than this. A little bird whispers in my ear that it may possibly be the wisest thing he ever did in his life if he breaks his engagement to join us at Naples.
“Shall I tear out the leaf on which all these shocking things have been written? No. My Diary is so nicely bound—it would be positive barbarity to tear out a leaf. Let me occupy myself harmlessly with something else. What shall it be? My dressing-case—I will put my dressing-case tidy, and polish up the few little things in it which my misfortunes have still left in my possession.
“I have shut up the dressing-case again. The first thing I found in it was Armadale’s shabby present to me on my marriage—the rubbishing little ruby ring. That irritated me, to begin with. The second thing that turned up was my bottle of Drops. I caught myself measuring the doses with my eye, and calculating how many of them would be enough to take a living creature over the border-land between sleep and death. Why I should have locked the dressing-case in a fright, before I had quite completed my calculation, I don’t know; but I did lock it. And here I am back again at my Diary, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to write about. Oh, the weary day! the weary day! Will nothing happen to excite me a little in this horrible place?”
“October 12th.—Midwinter’s all-important letter to the newspaper was dispatched by the post last night. I was foolish enough to suppose that I might be honored by having some of his spare attention bestowed on me to-day. Nothing of the sort! He had a restless night, after all his writing, and got up with his head aching, and his spirits miserably depressed. When he is in this state, his favorite remedy is to return to his old vagabond habits, and go roaming away by himself nobody knows where. He went through the form this morning (knowing I had no riding habit) of offering to hire a little broken-kneed brute of a pony for me, in case I wished to accompany him! I preferred remaining at home. I will have a handsome horse and a handsome habit, or I won’t ride at all. He went away, without attempting to persuade me to change my mind. I wouldn’t have changed it, of course; but he might have tried to persuade me all the same.
“I can open the piano in his absence—that is one comfort. And I am in a fine humor for playing—that is another. There is a sonata of Beethoven’s (I forget the number), which always suggests to me the agony of lost spirits in a place of torment. Come, my fingers and thumbs, and take me among the lost spirits this morning!”
“October 13th.—Our windows look out on the sea. At noon to-day we saw a steamer coming in, with the English flag flying. Midwinter has gone to the port, on the chance that this may be the vessel from Gibraltar, with Armadale on board.
“Two o’clock.—It is the vessel from Gibraltar. Armadale has added one more to the long list of his blunders: he has kept his engagement to join us at Naples.
“How will it endnow?
“Who knows?”
“October 16th.—Two days missed out of my Diary! I can hardly tell why, unless it is that Armadale irritates me beyond all endurance. The mere sight of him takes me back to Thorpe Ambrose. I fancy I must have been afraid of what I might write about him, in the course of the last two days, if I indulged myself in the dangerous luxury of opening these pages.
“This morning I am afraid of nothing, and I take up my pen again accordingly.
“Is there any limit, I wonder, to the brutish stupidity of some men? I thought I had discovered Armadale’s limit when I was his neighbor in Norfolk; but my later experience at Naples shows me that I was wrong. He is perpetually in and out of this house (crossing over to us in a boat from the hotel at Santa Lucia, where he sleeps); and he has exactly two subjects of conversation—the yacht for sale in the harbor here, and Miss Milroy. Yes! he selects ME as theconfidanteof his devoted attachment to the major’s daughter! ‘It’s so nice to talk to a woman about it!’ That is all the apology he has thought it necessary to make for appealing to my sympathies—mysympathies!—on the subject of ‘his darling Neelie,’ fifty times a day. He is evidently persuaded (if he thinks about it at all) that I have forgotten, as completely as he has forgotten, all that once passed between us when I was first at Thorpe Ambrose. Such an utter want of the commonest delicacy and the commonest tact, in a creature who is, to all appearance, possessed of a skin, and not a hide, and who does, unless my ears deceive me, talk, and not bray, is really quite incredible when one comes to think of it. But it is, for all that, quite true. He asked me—he actually asked me, last night—how many hundreds a year the wife of a rich man could spend on her dress. ‘Don’t put it too low,’ the idiot added, with his intolerable grin. ‘Neelie shall be one of the best-dressed women in England when I have married her.’ And this to me, after having had him at my feet, and then losing him again through Miss Milroy! This to me, with an alpaca gown on, and a husband whose income must be helped by a newspaper!
“I had better not dwell on it any longer. I had better think and write of something else.
“The yacht. As a relief from hearing about Miss Milroy, I declare the yacht in the harbor is quite an interesting subject to me! She (the men call a vessel ‘She’; and I suppose, if the women took an interest in such things,theywould call a vessel ‘He’)—she is a beautiful model; and her ‘top-sides’ (whatever they may be) are especially distinguished by being built of mahogany. But, with these merits, she has the defect, on the other hand, of being old—which is a sad drawback—and the crew and the sailing-master have been ‘paid off,’ and sent home to England—which is additionally distressing. Still, if a new crew and a new sailing-master can be picked up here, such a beautiful creature (with all her drawbacks), is not to be despised. It might answer to hire her for a cruise, and to see how she behaves. (If she is ofmymind, her behavior will rather astonish her new master!) The cruise will determine what faults she has, and what repairs, through the unlucky circumstance of her age, she really stands in need of. And then it will be time to settle whether to buy her outright or not. Such is Armadale’s conversation when he is not talking of ‘his darling Neelie.’ And Midwinter, who can steal no time from his newspaper work for his wife, can steal hours for his friend, and can offer them unreservedly to my irresistible rival, the new yacht.
“I shall write no more to-day. If so lady-like a person as I am could feel a tigerish tingling all over her to the very tips of her fingers, I should suspect myself of being in that condition at the present moment. But, withmymanners and accomplishments, the thing is, of course, out of the question. We all know that a lady has no passions.”
“October 17th.—A letter for Midwinter this morning from the slave-owners—I mean the newspaper people in London—which has set him at work again harder than ever. A visit at luncheon-time and another visit at dinner-time from Armadale. Conversation at luncheon about the yacht. Conversation at dinner about Miss Milroy. I have been honored, in regard to that young lady, by an invitation to go with Armadale to-morrow to the Toledo, and help him to buy some presents for the beloved object. I didn’t fly out at him—I only made an excuse. Can words express the astonishment I feel at my own patience? No words can express it.”
“October 18th.—Armadale came to breakfast this morning, by way of catching Midwinter before he shuts himself up over his work.
“Conversation the same as yesterday’s conversation at lunch. Armadale has made his bargain with the agent for hiring the yacht. The agent (compassionating his total ignorance of the language) has helped him to find an interpreter, but can’t help him to find a crew. The interpreter is civil and willing, but doesn’t understand the sea. Midwinter’s assistance is indispensable; and Midwinter is requested (and consents!) to work harder than ever, so as to make time for helping his friend. When the crew is found, the merits and defects of the vessel are to be tried by a cruise to Sicily, with Midwinter on board to give his opinion. Lastly (in case she should feel lonely), the ladies’ cabin is most obligingly placed at the disposal of Midwinter’s wife. All this was settled at the breakfast-table; and it ended with one of Armadale’s neatly-turned compliments, addressed to myself: ‘I mean to take Neelie sailing with me, when we are married. And you have such good taste, you will be able to tell me everything the ladies’ cabin wants between that time and this.’
“If some women bring such men as this into the world, ought other women to allow them to live? It is a matter of opinion.Ithink not.
“What maddens me is to see, as I do see plainly, that Midwinter finds in Armadale’s company, and in Armadale’s new yacht, a refuge from me. He is always in better spirits when Armadale is here. He forgets me in Armadale almost as completely as he forgets me in his work. And I bear it! What a pattern wife, what an excellent Christian I am!”
“October 19th.—Nothing new. Yesterday over again.”
“October 20th.—One piece of news. Midwinter is suffering from nervous headache; and is working in spite of it, to make time for his holiday with his friend.”
“October 21st.—Midwinter is worse. Angry and wild and unapproachable, after two bad nights, and two uninterrupted days at his desk. Under any other circumstances he would take the warning and leave off. But nothing warns him now. He is still working as hard as ever, for Armadale’s sake. How much longer will my patience last?”
“October 22d.—Signs, last night, that Midwinter is taxing his brains beyond what his brains will bear. When he did fall asleep, he was frightfully restless; groaning and talking and grinding his teeth. From some of the words I heard, he seemed at one time to be dreaming of his life when he was a boy, roaming the country with the dancing dogs. At another time he was back again with Armadale, imprisoned all night on the wrecked ship. Toward the early morning hours he grew quieter. I fell asleep; and, waking after a short interval, found myself alone. My first glance round showed me a light burning in Midwinter’s dressing-room. I rose softly, and went to look at him.
“He was seated in the great, ugly, old-fashioned chair, which I ordered to be removed into the dressing-room out of the way when we first came here. His head lay back, and one of his hands hung listlessly over the arm of the chair. The other hand was on his lap. I stole a little nearer, and saw that exhaustion had overpowered him while he was either reading or writing, for there were books, pens, ink, and paper on the table before him. What had he got up to do secretly, at that hour of the morning? I looked closer at the papers on the table. They were all neatly folded (as he usually keeps them), with one exception; and that exception, lying open on the rest, was Mr. Brock’s letter.
“I looked round at him again, after making this discovery, and then noticed for the first time another written paper, lying under the hand that rested on his lap. There was no moving it away without the risk of waking him. Part of the open manuscript, however, was not covered by his hand. I looked at it to see what he had secretly stolen away to read, besides Mr. Brock’s letter; and made out enough to tell me that it was the Narrative of Armadale’s Dream.
“That second discovery sent me back at once to my bed—with something serious to think of.
“Traveling through France, on our way to this place, Midwinter’s shyness was conquered for once, by a very pleasant man—an Irish doctor—whom we met in the railway carriage, and who quite insisted on being friendly and sociable with us all through the day’s journey. Finding that Midwinter was devoting himself to literary pursuits, our traveling companion warned him not to pass too many hours together at his desk. ‘Your face tells me more than you think,’ the doctor said: ‘If you are ever tempted to overwork your brain, you will feel it sooner than most men. When you find your nerves playing you strange tricks, don’t neglect the warning—drop your pen.’
“After my last night’s discovery in the dressing-room, it looks as if Midwinter’s nerves were beginning already to justify the doctor’s opinion of them. If one of the tricks they are playing him is the trick of tormenting him again with his old superstitious terrors, there will be a change in our lives here before long. I shall wait curiously to see whether the conviction that we two are destined to bring fatal danger to Armadale takes possession of Midwinter’s mind once more. If it does, I know what will happen. He will not stir a step toward helping his friend to find a crew for the yacht; and he will certainly refuse to sail with Armadale, or to let me sail with him, on the trial cruise.”
“October 23d.—Mr. Brock’s letter has, apparently, not lost its influence yet. Midwinter is working again to-day, and is as anxious as ever for the holiday-time that he is to pass with his friend.
“Two o’clock.—Armadale here as usual; eager to know when Midwinter will be at his service. No definite answer to be given to the question yet, seeing that it all depends on Midwinter’s capacity to continue at his desk. Armadale sat down disappointed; he yawned, and put his great clumsy hands in his pockets. I took up a book. The brute didn’t understand that I wanted to be left alone; he began again on the unendurable subject of Miss Milroy, and of all the fine things she was to have when he married her. Her own riding-horse; her own pony-carriage; her own beautiful little sitting-room upstairs at the great house, and so on. All that I might have had once Miss Milroy is to have now—if I let her.”
“Six o’clock.—More of the everlasting Armadale! Half an hour since, Midwinter came in from his writing, giddy and exhausted. I had been pining all day for a little music, and I knew they were giving ‘Norma’ at the theater here. It struck me that an hour or two at the opera might do Midwinter good, as well as me; and I said: ‘Why not take a box at the San Carlo to-night?’ He answered, in a dull, uninterested manner, that he was not rich enough to take a box. Armadale was present, and flourished his well-filled purse in his usual insufferable way. ‘I’mrich enough, old boy, and it comes to the same thing.’ With those words he took up his hat, and trampled out on his great elephant’s feet to get the box. I looked after him from the window as he went down the street. ‘Your widow, with her twelve hundred a year,’ I thought to myself, ‘might take a box at the San Carlo whenever she pleased, without being beholden to anybody.’ The empty-headed wretch whistled as he went his way to the theater, and tossed his loose silver magnificently to every beggar who ran after him.”
“Midnight.—I am alone again at last. Have I nerve enough to write the history of this terrible evening, just as it has passed? I have nerve enough, at any rate, to turn to a new leaf, and try.”
“We went to the San Carlo. Armadale’s stupidity showed itself, even in such a simple matter as taking a box. He had confounded an opera with a play, and had chosen a box close to the stage, with the idea that one’s chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers as plainly as possible! Fortunately for our ears, Bellini’s lovely melodies are, for the most part, tenderly and delicately accompanied—or the orchestra might have deafened us.
“I sat back in the box at first, well out of sight; for it was impossible to be sure that some of my old friends of former days at Naples might not be in the theater. But the sweet music gradually tempted me out of my seclusion. I was so charmed and interested that I leaned forward without knowing it, and looked at the stage.
“I was made aware of my own imprudence by a discovery which, for the moment, literally chilled my blood. One of the singers, among the chorus of Druids, was looking at me while he sang with the rest. His head was disguised in the long white hair, and the lower part of his face was completely covered with the flowing white beard proper to the character. But the eyes with which he looked at me were the eyes of the one man on earth whom I have most reason to dread ever seeing again—Manuel!
“If it had not been for my smelling-bottle, I believe I should have lost my senses. As it was, I drew back again into the shadow. Even Armadale noticed the sudden change in me: he, as well as Midwinter, asked if I was ill. I said I felt the heat, but hoped I should be better presently; and then leaned back in the box, and tried to rally my courage. I succeeded in recovering self-possession enough to be able to look again at the stage (without showing myself) the next time the chorus appeared. There was the man again! But to my infinite relief he never looked toward our box a second time. This welcome indifference, on his part, helped to satisfy me that I had seen an extraordinary accidental resemblance, and nothing more. I still hold to this conclusion, after having had leisure to think; but my mind would be more completely at ease than it is if I had seen the rest of the man’s face without the stage disguises that hid it from all investigation.
“When the curtain fell on the first act, there was a tiresome ballet to be performed (according to the absurd Italian custom), before the opera went on. Though I had got over my first fright, I had been far too seriously startled to feel comfortable in the theater. I dreaded all sorts of impossible accidents; and when Midwinter and Armadale put the question to me, I told them I was not well enough to stay through the rest of the performance.
“At the door of the theater Armadale proposed to say good-night. But Midwinter—evidently dreading the evening withme—asked him to come back to supper, if I had no objection. I said the necessary words, and we all three returned together to this house.
“Ten minutes’ quiet in my own room (assisted by a little dose of eau-de-cologne and water) restored me to myself. I joined the men at the supper-table. They received my apologies for taking them away from the opera, with the complimentary assurance that I had not cost either of them the slightest sacrifice of his own pleasure. Midwinter declared that he was too completely worn out to care for anything but the two great blessings, unattainable at the theater, of quiet and fresh air. Armadale said—with an Englishman’s exasperating pride in his own stupidity wherever a matter of art is concerned—that he couldn’t make head or tail of the performance. The principal disappointment, he was good enough to add, was mine, for I evidently understood foreign music, and enjoyed it. Ladies generally did. His darling little Neelie—
“I was in no humor to be persecuted with his ‘Darling Neelie’ after what I had gone through at the theater. It might have been the irritated state of my nerves, or it might have been the eau-de-cologne flying to my head, but the bare mention of the girl seemed to set me in a flame. I tried to turn Armadale’s attention in the direction of the supper-table. He was much obliged, but he had no appetite for more. I offered him wine next, the wine of the country, which is all that our poverty allows us to place on the table. He was much obliged again. The foreign wine was very little more to his taste than the foreign music; but he would take some because I asked him; and he would drink my health in the old-fashioned way, with his best wishes for the happy time when we should all meet again at Thorpe Ambrose, and when there would be a mistress to welcome me at the great house.
“Was he mad to persist in this way? No; his face answered for him. He was under the impression that he was making himself particularly agreeable to me.
“I looked at Midwinter. He might have seen some reason for interfering to change the conversation, if he had looked at me in return. But he sat silent in his chair, irritable and overworked, with his eyes on the ground, thinking.
“I got up and went to the window. Still impenetrable to a sense of his own clumsiness, Armadale followed me. If I had been strong enough to toss him out of the window into the sea, I should certainly have done it at that moment. Not being strong enough, I looked steadily at the view over the bay, and gave him a hint, the broadest and rudest I could think of, to go.
“‘A lovely night for a walk,’ I said, ‘if you are tempted to walk back to the hotel.’
“I doubt if he heard me. At any rate, I produced no sort of effect on him. He stood staring sentimentally at the moonlight; and—there is really no other word to express it—blewa sigh. I felt a presentiment of what was coming, unless I stopped his mouth by speaking first.
“‘With all your fondness for England,’ I said, ‘you must own that we have no such moonlight as that at home.’
“He looked at me vacantly, and blew another sigh.
“‘I wonder whether it is fine to-night in England as it is here?’ he said. ‘I wonder whether my dear little girl at home is looking at the moonlight, and thinking of me?’
“I could endure it no longer. I flew out at him at last.
“‘Good heavens, Mr. Armadale!’ I exclaimed, ‘is there only one subject worth mentioning, in the narrow little world you live in? I’m sick to death of Miss Milroy. Do pray talk of something else?’
“His great, broad, stupid face colored up to the roots of his hideous yellow hair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he stammered, with a kind of sulky surprise. ‘I didn’t suppose—’ He stopped confusedly, and looked from me to Midwinter. I understood what the look meant. ‘I didn’t suppose she could be jealous of Miss Milroy after marryingyou!’ That is what he would have said to Midwinter, if I had left them alone together in the room!
“As it was, Midwinter had heard us. Before I could speak again—before Armadale could add another word—he finished his friend’s uncompleted sentence, in a tone that I now heard, and with a look that I now saw, for the first time.
“‘You didn’t suppose, Allan,’ he said, ‘that a lady’s temper could be so easily provoked.’
“The first bitter word of irony, the first hard look of contempt, I had ever had from him! And Armadale the cause of it!
“My anger suddenly left me. Something came in its place which steadied me in an instant, and took me silently out of the room.
“I sat down alone in the bedroom. I had a few minutes of thought with myself, which I don’t choose to put into words, even in these secret pages. I got up, and unlocked—never mind what. I went round to Midwinter’s side of the bed, and took—no matter what I took. The last thing I did before I left the room was to look at my watch. It was half-past ten, Armadale’s usual time for leaving us. I went back at once and joined the two men again.
“I approached Armadale good-humoredly, and said to him:
“No! On second thoughts. I won’t put down what I said to him, or what I did afterward. I’m sick of Armadale! he turns up at every second word I write. I shall pass over what happened in the course of the next hour—the hour between half-past ten and half-past eleven—and take up my story again at the time when Armadale had left us. Can I tell what took place, as soon as our visitor’s back was turned, between Midwinter and me in our own room? Why not pass over what happened, in that case as well as in the other? Why agitate myself by writing it down? I don’t know! Why do I keep a diary at all? Why did the clever thief the other day (in the English newspaper) keep the very thing to convict him in the shape of a record of everything he stole? Why are we not perfectly reasonable in all that we do? Why am I not always on my guard and never inconsistent with myself, like a wicked character in a novel? Why? why? why?
“I don’t care why! I must write down what happened between Midwinter and me to-night,becauseI must. There’s a reason that nobody can answer—myself included.”
* * * * * * *
“It was half-past eleven. Armadale had gone. I had put on my dressing-gown, and had just sat down to arrange my hair for the night, when I was surprised by a knock at the door, and Midwinter came in.
“He was frightfully pale. His eyes looked at me with a terrible despair in them. He never answered when I expressed my surprise at his coming in so much sooner than usual; he wouldn’t even tell me, when I asked the question, if he was ill. Pointing peremptorily to the chair from which I had risen on his entering the room, he told me to sit down again; and then, after a moment, added these words: ‘I have something serious to say to you.’
“I thought of what I had done—or, no, of what I had tried to do—in that interval between half-past ten and half-past eleven, which I have left unnoticed in my diary—and the deadly sickness of terror, which I never felt at the time, came upon me now. I sat down again, as I had been told, without speaking to Midwinter, and without looking at him.
“He took a turn up and down the room, and then came and stood over me.
“‘If Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he began, ‘and if you see him—’
“His voice faltered, and he said no more. There was some dreadful grief at his heart that was trying to master him. But there are times when his will is a will of iron. He took another turn in the room, and crushed it down. He came back, and stood over me again.
“‘When Allan comes here to-morrow,’ he resumed, ‘let him come into my room, if he wants to see me. I shall tell him that I find it impossible to finish the work I now have on hand as soon as I had hoped, and that he must, therefore, arrange to find a crew for the yacht without any assistance on my part. If he comes, in his disappointment, to appeal to you, give him no hope of my being free in time to help him if he waits. Encourage him to take the best assistance he can get from strangers, and to set about manning the yacht without any further delay. The more occupation he has to keep him away from this house, and the less you encourage him to stay here if he does come, the better I shall be pleased. Don’t forget that, and don’t forget one last direction which I have now to give you. When the vessel is ready for sea, and when Allan invites us to sail with him, it is my wish that you should positively decline to go. He will try to make you change your mind; for I shall, of course, decline, on my side, to leave you in this strange house, and in this foreign country, by yourself. No matter what he says, let nothing persuade you to alter your decision. Refuse, positively and finally! Refuse, I insist on it, to set your foot on the new yacht!’
“He ended quietly and firmly, with no faltering in his voice, and no signs of hesitation or relenting in his face. The sense of surprise which I might otherwise have felt at the strange words he had addressed to me was lost in the sense of relief that they brought to my mind. The dread ofthose other wordsthat I had expected to hear from him left me as suddenly as it had come. I could look at him, I could speak to him once more.
“‘You may depend,’ I answered, ‘on my doing exactly what you order me to do. Must I obey you blindly? Or may I know your reason for the extraordinary directions you have just given to me?’
“His, face darkened, and he sat down on the other side of my dressing-table, with a heavy, hopeless sigh.
“‘You may know the reason,’ he said, ‘if you wish it.’ He waited a little, and considered. ‘You have a right to know the reason,’ he resumed, ‘for you yourself are concerned in it.’ He waited a little again, and again went on. ‘I can only explain the strange request I have just made to you in one way,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to recall what happened in the next room, before Allan left us to-night.’
“He looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions in his face. At one moment I thought he felt pity for me. At another, it seemed more like horror of me. I began to feel frightened again; I waited for his next words in silence.
“‘I know that I have been working too hard lately,’ he went on, ‘and that my nerves are sadly shaken. It is possible, in the state I am in now, that I may have unconsciously misinterpreted, or distorted, the circumstances that really took place. You will do me a favor if you will test my recollection of what has happened by your own. If my fancy has exaggerated anything, if my memory is playing me false anywhere, I entreat you to stop me, and tell me of it.’
“I commanded myself sufficiently to ask what the circumstances were to which he referred, and in what way I was personally concerned in them.
“‘You were personally concerned in them in this way,’ he answered. ‘The circumstances to which I refer began with your speaking to Allan about Miss Milroy, in what I thought a very inconsiderate and very impatient manner. I am afraid I spoke just as petulantly on my side, and I beg your pardon for what I said to you in the irritation of the moment. You left the room. After a short absence, you came back again, and made a perfectly proper apology to Allan, which he received with his usual kindness and sweetness of temper. While this went on, you and he were both standing by the supper-table; and Allan resumed some conversation which had already passed between you about the Neapolitan wine. He said he thought he should learn to like it in time, and he asked leave to take another glass of the wine we had on the table. Am I right so far?’
“The words almost died on my lips; but I forced them out, and answered him that he was right so far.
“‘You took the flask out of Allan’s hand,’ he proceeded. ‘You said to him, good-humoredly, “You know you don’t really like the wine, Mr. Armadale. Let me make you something which may be more to your taste. I have a recipe of my own for lemonade. Will you favor me by trying it?” In those words, you made your proposal to him, and he accepted it. Did he also ask leave to look on, and learn how the lemonade was made? and did you tell him that he would only confuse you, and that you would give him the recipe in writing, if he wanted it?’
“This time the words did really die on my lips. I could only bow my head, and answer ‘Yes’ mutely in that way. Midwinter went on.
“‘Allan laughed, and went to the window to look out at the Bay, and I went with him. After a while Allan remarked, jocosely, that the mere sound of the liquids you were pouring out made him thirsty. When he said this, I turned round from the window. I approached you, and said the lemonade took a long time to make. You touched me, as I was walking away again, and handed me the tumbler filled to the brim. At the same time, Allan turned round from the window; and I, in my turn, handed the tumbler tohim.—Is there any mistake so far?’
“The quick throbbing of my heart almost choked me. I could just shake my head—I could do no more.
“‘I saw Allan raise the tumbler to his lips.—Didyousee it? I saw his face turn white in an instant.—Didyou? I saw the glass fall from his hand on the floor. I saw him stagger, and caught him before he fell. Are these things true? For God’s sake, search your memory, and tell me—are these things true?’
“The throbbing at my heart seemed, for one breathless instant, to stop. The next moment something fiery, something maddening, flew through me. I started to my feet, with my temper in a flame, reckless of all consequences, desperate enough to say anything.
“‘Your questions are an insult! Your looks are an insult!’ I burst out. ‘Do you think I tried to poison him?’
“The words rushed out of my lips in spite of me. They were the last words under heaven that any woman, in such a situation as mine, ought to have spoken. And yet I spoke them!
“He rose in alarm and gave me my smelling-bottle. ‘Hush! hush!’ he said. ‘You, too, are overwrought—you, too, are overexcited by all that has happened to-night. You are talking wildly and shockingly. Good God! how can you have so utterly misunderstood me? Compose yourself—pray, compose yourself.’
“He might as well have told a wild animal to compose herself. Having been mad enough to say the words, I was mad enough next to return to the subject of the lemonade, in spite of his entreaties to me to be silent.
“‘I told you what I had put in the glass, the moment Mr. Armadale fainted,’ I went on; insisting furiously on defending myself, when no attack was made on me. ‘I told you I had taken the flask of brandy which you kept at your bedside, and mixed some of it with the lemonade. How could I know that he had a nervous horror of the smell and taste of brandy? Didn’t he say to me himself, when he came to his senses, It’s my fault; I ought to have warned you to put no brandy in it? Didn’t he remind you afterward of the time when you and he were in the Isle of Man together, and when the doctor there innocently made the same mistake with him that I made to-night?’”
[“I laid a great stress on my innocence—and with some reason too. Whatever else I may be, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. Iwasinnocent—so far as the brandy was concerned. I had put it into the lemonade, in pure ignorance of Armadale’s nervous peculiarity, to disguise the taste of—never mind what! Another of the things I pride myself on is that I never wander from my subject. What Midwinter said next is what I ought to be writing about now.”]
“He looked at me for a moment, as if he thought I had taken leave of my senses. Then he came round to my side of the table and stood over me again.
“‘If nothing else will satisfy you that you are entirely misinterpreting my motives,’ he said, ‘and that I haven’t an idea of blamingyouin the matter—read this.’
“He took a paper from the breast-pocket of his coat, and spread it open under my eyes. It was the Narrative of Armadale’s Dream.
“In an instant the whole weight on my mind was lifted off it. I felt mistress of myself again—I understood him at last.
“‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember what I said to you at Thorpe Ambrose about Allan’s Dream? I told you then that two out of the three Visions had already come true. I tell you now that the third Vision has been fulfilled in this house to-night.’
“He turned over the leaves of the manuscript, and pointed to the lines that he wished me to read.
“I read these, or nearly read these words, from the Narrative of the Dream, as Midwinter had taken it down from Armadale’s own lips:
“‘The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the Woman together. The Man-Shade was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back. From where she stood, I heard a sound like the pouring out of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the Shadow of the Man with one hand, and give him a glass with the other. He took the glass and handed it to me. At the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness overcame me. When I recovered my senses again, the Shadows had vanished, and the Vision was at an end.’
“For the moment, I was as completely staggered by this extraordinary coincidence as Midwinter himself.
“He put one hand on the open narrative and laid the other heavily on my arm.
“‘Nowdo you understand my motive in coming here?’ he asked. ‘Nowdo you see that the last hope I had to cling to was the hope that your memory of the night’s events might prove my memory to be wrong?Nowdo you know why I won’t help Allan? Why I won’t sail with him? Why I am plotting and lying, and making you plot and lie too, to keep my best and dearest friend out of the house?’
“‘Have you forgotten Mr. Brock’s letter?’ I asked.
“He struck his hand passionately on the open manuscript. ‘If Mr. Brook had lived to see what we have seen to-night he would have felt what I feel, he would have said what I say!’ His voice sank mysteriously, and his great black eyes glittered at me as he made that answer. ‘Thrice the Shadows of the Vision warned Allan in his sleep,’ he went on; ‘and thrice those Shadows have been embodied in the after-time by You and by Me! You, and no other, stood in the Woman’s place at the pool. I, and no other, stood in the Man’s place at the window. And you and I together, when the last Vision showed the Shadows together, stand in the Man’s place and the Woman’s place still! Forthis, the miserable day dawned when you and I first met. Forthis, your influence drew me to you, when my better angel warned me to fly the sight of your face. There is a curse on our lives! there is a fatality in our footsteps! Allan’s future depends on his separation from us at once and forever. Drive him from the place we live in, and the air we breathe. Force him among strangers—the worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him than we are! Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us, without you and without me; and let him know how I loved him in another world than this, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!’
“His grief conquered him; his voice broke into a sob when he spoke those last words. He took the Narrative of the Dream from the table, and left me as abruptly as he had come in.
“As I heard his door locked between us, my mind went back to what he had said to me about myself. In remembering ‘the miserable day’ when we first saw each other, and ‘the better angel’ that had warned him to ‘fly the sight of my face,’ I forgot all else. It doesn’t matter what I felt—I wouldn’t own it, even if I had a friend to speak to. Who cares for the misery of such a woman as I am? who believes in it? Besides, he spoke under the influence of a mad superstition that has got possession of him again. There is every excuse forhim—there is no excuse forme. If I can’t help being fond of him through it all, I must take the consequences and suffer. I deserve to suffer; I deserve neither love nor pity from anybody.—Good heavens, what a fool I am! And how unnatural all this would be, if it was written in a book!
“It has struck one. I can hear Midwinter still, pacing to and fro in his room.
“He is thinking, I suppose? Well! I can think too. What am I to do next? I shall wait and see. Events take odd turns sometimes; and events may justify the fatalism of the amiable man in the next room, who curses the day when he first saw my face. He may live to curse it for other reasons than he has now. If I am the Woman pointed at in the Dream, there will be another temptation put in my way before long; and there will be no brandy in Armadale’s lemonade if I mix it for him a second time.”
“October 24th.—Barely twelve hours have passed since I wrote my yesterday’s entry; and that other temptation has come, tried, and conquered me already!
“This time there was no alternative. Instant exposure and ruin stared me in the face: I had no choice but to yield in my own defense. In plainer words still, it was no accidental resemblance that startled me at the theater last night. The chorus-singer at the opera was Manuel himself!
“Not ten minutes after Midwinter had left the sitting-room for his study, the woman of the house came in with a dirty little three-cornered note in her hand. One look at the writing on the address was enough. He had recognized me in the box; and the ballet between the acts of the opera had given him time to trace me home. I drew that plain conclusion in the moment that elapsed before I opened the letter. It informed me, in two lines, that he was waiting in a by-street leading to the beach; and that, if I failed to make my appearance in ten minutes, he should interpret my absence as my invitation to him to call at the house.
“What I went through yesterday must have hardened me, I suppose. At any rate, after reading the letter, I felt more like the woman I once was than I have felt for months past. I put on my bonnet and went downstairs, and left the house as if nothing had happened.
“He was waiting for me at the entrance to the street.
“In the instant when we stood face to face, all my wretched life with him came back to me. I thought of my trust that he had betrayed; I thought of the cruel mockery of a marriage that he had practiced on me, when he knew that he had a wife living; I thought of the time when I had felt despair enough at his desertion of me to attempt my own life. When I recalled all this, and when the comparison between Midwinter and the mean, miserable villain whom I had once believed in forced itself into my mind, I knew for the first time what a woman feels when every atom of respect for herself has left her. If he had personally insulted me at that moment, I believe I should have submitted to it.
“But he had no idea of insulting me, in the more brutal meaning of the word. He had me at his mercy, and his way of making me feel it was to behave with an elaborate mockery of penitence and respect. I let him speak as he pleased, without interrupting him, without looking at him a second time, without even allowing my dress to touch him, as we walked together toward the quieter part of the beach. I had noticed the wretched state of his clothes, and the greedy glitter in his eyes, in my first look at him. And I knew it would end—as it did end—in a demand on me for money.
“Yes! After taking from me the last farthing I possessed of my own, and the last farthing I could extort for him from my old mistress, he turned on me as we stood by the margin of the sea, and asked if I could reconcile it to my conscience to let him be wearing such a coat as he then had on his back, and earning his miserable living as a chorus-singer at the opera!
“My disgust, rather than my indignation, roused me into speaking to him at last.
“‘You want money,’ I said. ‘Suppose I am too poor to give it to you?’
“‘In that case,’ he replied, ‘I shall be forced to remember that you are a treasure in yourself. And I shall be under the painful necessity of pressing my claim to you on the attention of one of those two gentlemen whom I saw with you at the opera—the gentleman, of course, who is now honored by your preference, and who lives provisionally in the light of your smiles.’
“I made him no answer, for I had no answer to give. Disputing his right to claim me from anybody would have been a mere waste of words. He knew as well as I did that he had not the shadow of a claim on me. But the mere attempt to raise it would, as he was well aware, lead necessarily to the exposure of my whole past life.
“Still keeping silence, I looked out over the sea. I don’t know why, except that I instinctively looked anywhere rather than look athim.