Armadale by Wilkie Collins (page 4)

“Suppose you do?”

The torturing temptation to reveal the truth, roused once already by his companion’s merciless gayety of spirit, possessed itself of Midwinter for the second time. He leaned back in the dark against the high side of the ship, and looked down in silence at Allan’s figure, stretched comfortably on the deck. “Rouse him,” the fiend whispered, subtly, “from that ignorant self-possession and that pitiless repose. Show him the place where the deed was done; let him know it with your knowledge, and fear it with your dread. Tell him of the letter you burned, and of the words no fire can destroy which are living in your memory now. Let him see your mind as it was yesterday, when it roused your sinking faith in your own convictions, to look back on your life at sea, and to cherish the comforting remembrance that, in all your voyages, you had never fallen in with this ship. Let him see your mind as it is now, when the ship has got you at the turning-point of your new life, at the outset of your friendship with the one man of all men whom your father warned you to avoid. Think of those death-bed words, and whisper them in his ear, that he may think of them, too: ‘Hide yourself from him under an assumed name. Put the mountains and the seas between you; be ungrateful, be unforgiving; be all that is most repellent to your own gentler nature, rather than live under the same roof and breathe the same air with that man.'” So the tempter counseled. So, like a noisome exhalation from the father’s grave, the father’s influence rose and poisoned the mind of the son.

The sudden silence surprised Allan; he looked back drowsily over his shoulder. “Thinking again!” he exclaimed, with a weary yawn.

Midwinter stepped out from the shadow, and came nearer to Allan than he had come yet. “Yes,” he said, “thinking of the past and the future.”

“The past and the future?” repeated Allan, shifting himself comfortably into a new position. “For my part, I’m dumb about the past. It’s a sore subject with me: the past means the loss of the doctor’s boat. Let’s talk about the future. Have you been taking a practical view? as dear old Brock calls it. Have you been considering the next serious question that concerns us both when we get back to the hotel–the question of breakfast?”

After an instant’s hesitation, Midwinter took a step nearer. “I have been thinking of your future and mine,” he said; “I have been thinking of the time when your way in life and my way in life will be two ways instead of one.”

“Here’s the daybreak!” cried Allan. “Look up at the masts; they’re beginning to get clear again already. I beg your pardon. What were you saying?”

Midwinter made no reply. The struggle between the hereditary superstition that was driving him on, and the unconquerable affection for Allan that was holding him back, suspended the next words on his lips. He turned aside his face in speechless suffering. “Oh, my father!” he thought, “better have killed me on that day when I lay on your bosom, than have let me live for this.”

“What’s that about the future?” persisted Allan. “I was looking for the daylight; I didn’t hear.”

Midwinter controlled himself, and answered: “You have treated me with your usual kindness,” he said, “in planning to take me with you to Thorpe Ambrose. I think, on reflection, I had better not intrude myself where I am not known and not expected.” His voice faltered, and he stopped again. The more he shrank from it, the clearer the picture of the happy life that he was resigning rose on his mind.

Allan’s thoughts instantly reverted to the mystification about the new steward which he had practiced on his friend when they were consulting together in the cabin of the yacht. “Has he been turning it over in his mind?” wondered Allan; “and is he beginning at last to suspect the truth? I’ll try him.–Talk as much nonsense, my dear fellow, as you like,” he rejoined, “but don’t forget that you are engaged to see me established at Thorpe Ambrose, and to give me your opinion of the new steward.”

Midwinter suddenly stepped forward again, close to Allan.

“I am not talking about your steward or your estate,” he burst out passionately; “I am talking about myself. Do you hear? Myself! I am not a fit companion for you. You don’t know who I am.” He drew back into the shadowy shelter of the bulwark as suddenly as he had come out from it. “O God! I can’t tell him,” he said to himself, in a whisper.

For a moment, and for a moment only, Allan was surprised. “Not know who you are?” Even as he repeated the words, his easy goodhumor got the upper-hand again. He took up the whisky flask, and shook it significantly. “I say,” he resumed, “how much of the doctor’s medicine did you take while I was up in the mizzen-top?”

The light tone which he persisted in adopting stung Midwinter to the last pitch of exasperation. He came out again into the light, and stamped his foot angrily on the deck. “Listen to me!” he said. “You don’t know half the low things I have done in my lifetime. I have been a tradesman’s drudge; I have swept out the shop and put up the shutters; I have carried parcels through the street, and waited for my master’s money at his customers’ doors.”

“I have never done anything half as useful,” returned Allan, composedly. “Dear old boy, what an industrious fellow you have been in your time!”

“I’ve been a vagabond and a blackguard in my time,” returned the other, fiercely; “I’ve been a street tumbler, a tramp, a gypsy’s boy! I’ve sung for half-pence with dancing dogs on the high-road! I’ve worn a foot-boy’s livery, and waited at table! I’ve been a common sailors’ cook, and a starving fisherman’s Jack-of-all-trades! What has a gentleman in your position in common with a man in mine? Can you take _me_ into the society at Thorpe Ambrose? Why, my very name would be a reproach to you. Fancy the faces of your new neighbors when their footmen announce Ozias Midwinter and Allan Armadale in the same breath!” He burst into a harsh laugh, and repeated the two names again, with a scornful bitterness of emphasis which insisted pitilessly on the marked contrast between them.

Something in the sound of his laughter jarred painfully even on Allan’s easy nature. He raised himself on the deck and spoke seriously for the first time. “A joke’s a joke, Midwinter,” he said, “as long as you don’t carry it too far. I remember your saying something of the same sort to me once before when I was nursing you in Somersetshire. You forced me to ask you if I deserved to be kept at arms-length by _you_ of all the people in the world. Don’t force me to say so again. Make as much fun of me as you please, old fellow, in any other way. _That_ way hurts me.”

Simple as the words were, and simply as they had been spoken, they appeared to work an instant revolution in Midwinter’s mind. His impressible nature recoiled as from some sudden shock. Without a word of reply, he walked away by himself to the forward part of the ship. He sat down on some piled planks between the masts, and passed his hand over his head in a vacant, bewildered way. Though his father’s belief in fatality was his own belief once more–though there was no longer the shadow of a doubt in his mind that the woman whom Mr. Brock had met in Somersetshire, and the woman who had tried to destroy herself in London, were one and the same–though all the horror that mastered him when he first read the letter from Wildbad had now mastered him again, Allan’s appeal to their past experience of each other had come home to his heart, with a force more irresistible than the force of his superstition itself. In the strength of that very superstition, he now sought the pretext which might encourage him to sacrifice every less generous feeling to the one predominant dread of wounding the sympathies of his friend. “Why distress him?” he whispered to himself. “We are not the end here: there is the Woman behind us in the dark. Why resist him when the mischief’s done, and the caution comes too late? What _is_ to be _will_ be. What have I to do with the future? and what has he?”

He went back to Allan, sat down by his side, and took his hand. “Forgive me,” he said, gently; “I have hurt you for the last time.” Before it was possible to reply, he snatched up the whisky flask from the deck. “Come!” he exclaimed, with a sudden effort to match his friend’s cheerfulness, “you have been trying the doctor’s medicine, why shouldn’t I?”

Allan was delighted. “This is something like a change for the better,” he said; “Midwinter is himself again. Hark! there are the birds. Hail, smiling morn! smiling morn!” He sang the words of the glee in his old, cheerful voice, and clapped Midwinter on the shoulder in his old, hearty way. “How did you manage to clear your head of those confounded megrims? Do you know you were quite alarming about something happening to one or other of us before we were out of this ship?”

“Sheer nonsense!” returned Midwinter, contemptuously. “I don’t think my head has ever been quite right since that fever; I’ve got a bee in my bonnet, as they say in the North. Let’s talk of something else. About those people you have let the cottage to? I wonder whether the agent’s account of Major Milroy’s family is to be depended on? There might be another lady in the household besides his wife and his daughter.”

“Oho!” cried Allan, “_you’re_ beginning to think of nymphs among the trees, and flirtations in the fruit-garden, are you? Another lady, eh? Suppose the major’s family circle won’t supply another? We shall have to spin that half-crown again, and toss up for which is to have the first chance with Miss Milroy.”

For once Midwinter spoke as lightly and carelessly as Allan himself. “No, no,” he said, “the major’s landlord has the first claim to the notice of the major’s daughter. I’ll retire into the background, and wait for the next lady who makes her appearance at Thorpe Ambrose.”

“Very good. I’ll have an address to the women of Norfolk posted in the park to that effect,” said Allan. “Are you particular to a shade about size or complexion? What’s your favorite age?”

Midwinter trifled with his own superstition, as a man trifles with the loaded gun that may kill him, or with the savage animal that may maim him for life. He mentioned the age (as he had reckoned it himself) of the woman in the black gown and the red Paisley shawl.

“Five-and-thirty,” he said.

As the words passed his lips, his factitious spirits deserted him. He left his seat, impenetrably deaf to all Allan’s efforts at rallying him on his extraordinary answer, and resumed his restless pacing of the deck in dead silence. Once more the haunting thought which had gone to and fro with him in the hour of darkness went to and fro with him now in the hour of daylight.

Once more the conviction possessed itself of his mind that something was to happen to Allan or to himself before they left the wreck.

Minute by minute the light strengthened in the eastern sky; and the shadowy places on the deck of the timber-ship revealed their barren emptiness under the eye of day. As the breeze rose again, the sea began to murmur wakefully in the morning light. Even the cold bubbling of the broken water changed its cheerless note, and softened on the ear as the mellowing flood of daylight poured warm over it from the rising sun. Midwinter paused near the forward part of the ship, and recalled his wandering attention to the passing time. The cheering influences of the hour were round him, look where he might. The happy morning smile of the summer sky, so brightly merciful to the old and weary earth, lavished its all-embracing beauty even on the wreck. The dew that lay glittering on the inland fields lay glittering on the deck, and the worn and rusted rigging was gemmed as brightly as the fresh green leaves on shore. Insensibly, as he looked round, Midwinter’s thoughts reverted to the comrade who had shared with him the adventure of the night. He returned to the after-part of the ship, spoke to Allan as he advanced. Receiving no answer, he approached the recumbent figure and looked closer at it. Left to his own resources, Allan had let the fatigues of the night take their own way with him. His head had sunk back; his hat had fallen off; he lay stretched at full length on the deck of the timber-ship, deeply and peacefully asleep.

Midwinter resumed his walk; his mind lost in doubt; his own past thoughts seeming suddenly to have grown strange to him. How darkly his forebodings had distrusted the coming time, and how harmlessly that time had come! The sun was mounting in the heavens, the hour of release was drawing nearer and nearer, and of the two Armadales imprisoned in the fatal ship, one was sleeping away the weary time, and the other was quietly watching the growth of the new day.

The sun climbed higher; the hour wore on. With the latent distrust of the wreck which still clung to him, Midwinter looked inquiringly on either shore for signs of awakening human life. The land was still lonely. The smoke wreaths that were soon to rise from cottage chimneys had not risen yet.

After a moment’s thought he went back again to the after-part of the vessel, to see if there might be a fisherman’s boat within hail astern of them. Absorbed for the moment by the new idea, he passed Allan hastily, after barely noticing that he still lay asleep. One step more would have brought him to the taffrail, when that step was suspended by a sound behind him, a sound like a faint groan. He turned, and looked at the sleeper on the deck. He knelt softly, and looked closer.

“It has come!” he whispered to himself. “Not to _me_–but to _him_.”

It had come, in the bright freshness of the morning; it had come, in the mystery and terror of a Dream. The face which Midwinter had last seen in perfect repose was now the distorted face of a suffering man. The perspiration stood thick on Allan’s forehead, and matted his curling hair. His partially opened eyes showed nothing but the white of the eyeball gleaming blindly. His outstretched hands scratched and struggled on the deck. From moment to moment he moaned and muttered helplessly; but the words that escaped him were lost in the grinding and gnashing of his teeth. There he lay–so near in the body to the friend who bent over him; so far away in the spirit, that the two might have been in different worlds–there he lay, with the morning sunshine on his face, in the torture of his dream.

One question, and one only, rose in the mind of the man who was looking at him. What had the fatality which had imprisoned him in the wreck decreed that he should see?

Had the treachery of Sleep opened the gates of the grave to that one of the two Armadales whom the other had kept in ignorance of the truth? Was the murder of the father revealing itself to the son–there, on the very spot where the crime had been committed –in the vision of a dream?

With that question overshadowing all else in his mind, the son of the homicide knelt on the deck, and looked at the son of the man whom his father’s hand had slain.

The conflict between the sleeping body and the waking mind was strengthening every moment. The dreamer’s helpless groaning for deliverance grew louder; his hands raised themselves, and clutched at the empty air. Struggling with the all-mastering dread that still held him, Midwinter laid his hand gently on Allan’s forehead. Light as the touch was, there were mysterious sympathies in the dreaming man that answered it. His groaning ceased, and his hands dropped slowly. There was an instant of suspense and Midwinter looked closer. His breath just fluttered over the sleeper’s face. Before the next breath had risen to his lips, Allan suddenly sprang up on his knees–sprang up, as if the call of a trumpet had rung on his ear, awake in an instant.

“You have been dreaming,” said Midwinter, as the other looked at him wildly, in the first bewilderment of waking.

Allan’s eyes began to wander about the wreck, at first vacantly, then with a look of angry surprise. “Are we here still?” he said, as Midwinter helped him to his feet. “Whatever else I do on board this infernal ship,” he added, after a moment, “I won’t go to sleep again!”

As he said those words, his friend’s eyes searched his face in silent inquiry. They took a turn together on the deck.

“Tell me your dream,” said Midwinter, with a strange tone of suspicion in his voice, and a strange appearance of abruptness in his manner.

“I can’t tell it yet,” returned Allan. “Wait a little till I’m my own man again.”

They took another turn on the deck. Midwinter stopped, and spoke once more.

“Look at me for a moment, Allan,” he said.

There was something of the trouble left by the dream, and something of natural surprise at the strange request just addressed to him, in Allan’s face, as he turned it full on the speaker; but no shadow of ill-will, no lurking lines of distrust anywhere. Midwinter turned aside quickly, and hid, as he best might, an irrepressible outburst of relief.

“Do I look a little upset?” asked Allan, taking his arm, and leading him on again. “Don’t make yourself nervous about me if I do. My head feels wild and giddy, but I shall soon get over it.”

For the next few minutes they walked backward and forward in silence, the one bent on dismissing the terror of the dream from his thoughts, the other bent on discovering what the terror of the dream might be. Relieved of the dread that had oppressed it, the superstitious nature of Midwinter had leaped to its next conclusion at a bound. What if the sleeper had been visited by another revelation than the revelation of the Past? What if the dream had opened those unturned pages in the book of the Future which told the story of his life to come? The bare doubt that it might be so strengthened tenfold Midwinter’s longing to penetrate the mystery which Allan’s silence still kept a secret from him.

“Is your head more composed?” he asked. “Can you tell me your dream now?”

While he put the question, a last memorable moment in the Adventure of the Wreck was at hand.

They had reached the stern, and were just turning again when Midwinter spoke. As Allan opened his lips to answer, he looked out mechanically to sea. Instead of replying, he suddenly ran to the taffrail, and waved his hat over his head, with a shout of exultation.

Midwinter joined him, and saw a large six-oared boat pulling straight for the channel of the Sound. A figure, which they both thought they recognized, rose eagerly in the stern-sheets and returned the waving of Allan’s hat. The boat came nearer, the steersman called to them cheerfully, and they recognized the doctor’s voice.

“Thank God you’re both above water!” said Mr. Hawbury, as they met him on the deck of the timber-ship. “Of all the winds of heaven, which wind blew you here?”

He looked at Midwinter as he made the inquiry, but it was Allan who told him the story of the night, and Allan who asked the doctor for information in return. The one absorbing interest in Midwinter’s mind–the interest of penetrating the mystery of the dream–kept him silent throughout. Heedless of all that was said or done about him, he watched Allan, and followed Allan, like a dog, until the time came for getting down into the boat. Mr. Hawbury’s professional eye rested on him curiously, noting his varying color, and the incessant restlessness of his hands. “I wouldn’t change nervous systems with that man for the largest fortune that could be offered me,” thought the doctor as he took the boat’s tiller, and gave the oarsmen their order to push off from the wreck.

Having reserved all explanations on his side until they were on their way back to Port St. Mary, Mr. Hawbury next addressed himself to the gratification of Allan’s curiosity. The circumstances which had brought him to the rescue of his two guests of the previous evening were simple enough. The lost boat had been met with at sea by some fishermen of Port Erin, on the western side of the island, who at once recognized it as the doctor’s property, and at once sent a messenger to make inquiry, at the doctor’s house. The man’s statement of what had happened had naturally alarmed Mr. Hawbury for the safety of Allan and his friend. He had immediately secured assistance, and, guided by the boatman’s advice, had made first for the most dangerous place on the coast–the only place, in that calm weather, in which an accident could have happened to a boat sailed by experienced men–the channel of the Sound. After thus accounting for his welcome appearance on the scene, the doctor hospitably insisted that his guests of the evening should be his guests of the morning as well. It would still be too early when they got back for the people at the hotel to receive them, and they would find bed and breakfast at Mr. Hawbury’s house.

At the first pause in the conversation between Allan and the doctor, Midwinter, who had neither joined in the talk nor listened to the talk, touched his friend on the arm. “Are you better?” he asked, in a whisper. “Shall you soon be composed enough to tell me what I want to know?”

Allan’s eyebrows contracted impatiently; the subject of the dream, and Midwinter’s obstinacy in returning to it, seemed to be alike distasteful to him. He hardly answered with his usual good humor. “I suppose I shall have no peace till I tell you,” he said, “so I may as well get it over at once.”

“No!” returned Midwinter, with a look at the doctor and his oarsmen. “Not where other people can hear it–not till you and I are alone.”

“If you wish to see the last, gentlemen, of your quarters for the night,” interposed the doctor, “now is your time! The coast will shut the vessel out in a minute more.”

In silence on the one side and on the other, the two Armadales looked their last at the fatal ship. Lonely and lost they had found the wreck in the mystery of the summer night; lonely and lost they left the wreck in the radiant beauty of the summer morning.

An hour later the doctor had seen his guests established in their bedrooms, and had left them to take their rest until the breakfast hour arrived.

Almost as soon as his back was turned, the doors of both rooms opened softly, and Allan and Midwinter met in the passage.

“Can you sleep after what has happened?” asked Allan.

Midwinter shook his head. “You were coming to my room, were you not?” he said. “What for?”

“To ask you to keep me company. What were you coming to _my_ room for?”

“To ask you to tell me your dream.”

“Damn the dream! I want to forget all about it.”

“And _I_ want to know all about it.”

Both paused; both refrained instinctively from saying more. For the first time since the beginning of their friendship they were on the verge of a disagreement, and that on the subject of the dream. Allan’s good temper just stopped them on the brink.

“You are the most obstinate fellow alive,” he said; “but if you will know all about it, you must know all about it, I suppose. Come into my room, and I’ll tell you.”

He led the way, and Midwinter followed. The door closed and shut them in together.

CHAPTER V.

THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.

When Mr. Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the strange contrast of character between them which he had noticed already was impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of them sat at the well-spread table, hungry and happy, ranging from dish to dish, and declaring that he had never made such a breakfast in his life. The other sat apart at the window; his cup thanklessly deserted before it was empty, his meat left ungraciously half-eaten on his plate. The doctor’s morning greeting to the two accurately expressed the differing impressions which they had produced on his mind.

He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, “I am afraid you have not recovered the fatigues of the night.”

“It’s not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits,” said Allan. “It’s something I have been telling him. It is not my fault, mind. If I had only known beforehand that he believed in dreams, I wouldn’t have opened my lips.”

“Dreams?” repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, and addressing him under a mistaken impression of the meaning of Allan’s words. “With your constitution, you ought to be well used to dreaming by this time.”

“This way, doctor; you have taken the wrong turning!” cried Allan. “I’m the dreamer, not he. Don’t look astonished; it wasn’t in this comfortable house; it was on board that confounded timber-ship. The fact is, I fell asleep just before you took us off the wreck; and it’s not to be denied that I had a very ugly dream. Well, when we got back here–“

“Why do you trouble Mr. Hawbury about a matter that cannot possibly interest him?” asked Midwinter, speaking for the first time, and speaking very impatiently.

“I beg your pardon,” returned the doctor, rather sharply; “so far as I have heard, the matter does interest me.”

“That’s right, doctor!” said Allan. “Be interested, I beg and pray; I want you to clear his head of the nonsense he has got in it now. What do you think? He will have it that my dream is a warning to me to avoid certain people; and he actually persists in saying that one of those people is–himself! Did you ever hear the like of it? I took great pains; I explained the whole thing to him. I said, warning be hanged; it’s all indigestion! You don’t know what I ate and drank at the doctor’s supper-table; I do. Do you think he would listen to me? Not he. You try him next; you’re a professional man, and he must listen to you. Be a good fellow, doctor, and give me a certificate of indigestion; I’ll show you my tongue with pleasure.”

“The sight of your face is quite enough,” said Mr. Hawbury. “I certify, on the spot, that you never had such a thing as an indigestion in your life. Let’s hear about the dream, and see what we can make of it, if you have no objection, that is to say.”

Allan pointed at Midwinter with his fork.

“Apply to my friend, there,” he said; “he has got a much better account of it than I can give you. If you’ll believe me, he took it all down in writing from my own lips; and he made me sign it at the end, as if it was my ‘last dying speech and confession’ before I went to the gallows. Out with it, old boy–I saw you put it in your pocket-book–out with it!”

“Are you really in earnest?” asked Midwinter, producing his pocketbook with a reluctance which was almost offensive under the circumstances, for it implied distrust of the doctor in the doctor’s own house.

Mr. Hawbury’s color rose. “Pray don’t show it to me, if you feel the least unwillingness,” he said, with the elaborate politeness of an offended man.

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Allan. “Throw it over here!”

Instead of complying with that characteristic request, Midwinter took the paper from the pocket-book, and, leaving his place, approached Mr. Hawbury. “I beg your pardon,” he said, as he offered the doctor the manuscript with his own hand. His eyes dropped to the ground, and his face darkened, while he made the apology. “A secret, sullen fellow,” thought the doctor, thanking him with formal civility; “his friend is worth ten thousand of him.” Midwinter went back to the window, and sat down again in silence, with the old impenetrable resignation which had once puzzled Mr. Brock.

“Read that, doctor,” said Allan, as Mr. Hawbury opened the written paper. “It’s not told in my roundabout way; but there’s nothing added to it, and nothing taken away. It’s exactly what I dreamed, and exactly what I should have written myself, if I had thought the thing worth putting down on paper, and if I had had the knack of writing–which,” concluded Allan, composedly stirring his coffee, “I haven’t, except it’s letters; and I rattle _them_ off in no time.”

Mr. Hawbury spread the manuscript before him on the breakfast-table, and read these lines:

“ALLAN ARMADALE’S DREAM.

“Early on the morning of June the first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one, I found myself (through circumstances which it is not important to mention in this place) left alone with a friend of mine–a young man about my own age–on board the French timber-ship named _La Grace de Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked in the channel of the Sound between the main-land of the Isle of Man and the islet called the Calf. Having not been in bed the previous night, and feeling overcome by fatigue, I fell asleep on the deck of the vessel. I was in my usual good health at the time, and the morning was far enough advanced for the sun to have risen. Under these circumstances, and at that period of the day, I passed from sleeping to dreaming. As clearly as I can recollect it, after the lapse of a few hours, this was the succession of events presented to me by the dream:

“1. The first event of which I was conscious was the appearance of my father. He took me silently by the hand; and we found ourselves in the cabin of a ship.

“2. Water rose slowly over us in the cabin; and I and my father sank through the water together.

“3. An interval of oblivion followed; and then the sense came to me of being left alone in the darkness.

“4. I waited.

“5. The darkness opened, and showed me the vision–as in a picture–of a broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the farther margin of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of sunset.

“6. On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a Woman.

“7. It was the shadow only. No indication was visible to me by which I could identify it, or compare it with any living creature. The long robe showed me that it was the shadow of a woman, and showed me nothing more.

“8. The darkness closed again–remained with me for an interval–and opened for the second time.

“9. I found myself in a room, standing before. a long window. The only object of furniture or of ornament that I saw (or that I can now remember having seen) was a little statue placed near me. The window opened on a lawn and flower-garden; and the rain was pattering heavily against the glass.

“10. I was not alone in the room. Standing opposite to me at the window was the Shadow of a Man.

“11. I saw no more of it; I knew no more of it than I saw and knew of the shadow of the woman. But the shadow of the man moved. It stretched out its arm toward the statue; and the statue fell in fragments on the floor.

“12. With a confused sensation in me, which was partly anger and partly distress, I stooped to look at the fragments. When I rose again, the Shadow had vanished, and I saw no more.

“13. The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of the Woman and the Shadow of the Man together.

“14. No surrounding scene (or none that I can now call to mind) was visible to me.

“15. The Man-Shadow was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back. From where she stood, there came a sound as of the pouring of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the shadow of the man with one hand, and with the other give him a glass. He took the glass, and gave it to me. In the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness mastered me from head to foot. When I came to my senses again, the Shadows had vanished, and the third vision was at an end.

“16. The darkness closed over me again; and the interval of oblivion followed.

“17. I was conscious of nothing more, till I felt the morning sun shine on my face, and heard my friend tell me that I had awakened from a dream….”

After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under which appeared Allan’s signature), the doctor looked across the breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript with a satirical smile.

“Many men, many opinions,” he said. “I don’t agree with either of you about this dream. Your theory,” he added, looking at Allan, with a smile, “we have disposed of already: the supper that _you_ can’t digest is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My theory we will come to presently; your friend’s theory claims attention first.” He turned again to Midwinter, with his anticipated triumph over a man whom he disliked a little too plainly visible in his face and manner. “If I understand rightly,” he went on, “you believe that this dream is a warning! supernaturally addressed to Mr. Armadale, of dangerous events that are threatening him, and of dangerous people connected with those events whom he would do wisely to avoid. May I inquire whether you have arrived at this conclusion as an habitual believer in dreams, or as having reasons of your own for attaching especial importance to this one dream in particular?”

“You have stated what my conviction is quite accurately,” returned Midwinter, chafing under the doctor’s looks and tones. “Excuse me if I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and to let me keep my reasons to myself.”

“That’s exactly what he said to me,” interposed Allan. “I don’t believe he has got any reasons at all.”

“Gently! gently!” said Mr. Hawbury. “We can discuss the subject without intruding ourselves into anybody’s secrets. Let us come to my own method of dealing with the dream next. Mr. Midwinter will probably not be surprised to hear that I look at this matter from an essentially practical point of view.”

“I shall not be at all surprised,” retorted Midwinter. “The view of a medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve, seldom ranges beyond the point of his dissecting-knife.”

The doctor was a little nettled on his side. “Our limits are not quite so narrow as that,” he said; “but I willingly grant you that there are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don’t believe. For example, we don’t believe that a reasonable man is justified in attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the first instance.”

“Come; that’s fair enough, I’m sure,” exclaimed Allan. “He hit you hard with the ‘dissecting-knife,’ doctor; and now you have hit him back again with your ‘natural explanation.’ Let’s have it.”

“By all means,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here it is. There is nothing at all extraordinary in my theory of dreams: it is the theory accepted by the great mass of my profession. A dream is the reproduction, in the sleeping state of the brain, of images and impressions produced on it in the waking state; and this reproduction is more or less involved, imperfect, or contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the dreamer is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep. Without inquiring further into this latter part of the subject–a very curious and interesting part of it–let us take the theory, roughly and generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at once to the dream now under consideration.” He took up the written paper from the table, and dropped the formal tone (as of a lecturer addressing an audience) into which he had insensibly fallen. “I see one event already in this dream,” he resumed, “which I know to be the reproduction of a waking impression produced on Mr. Armadale in my own presence. If he will only help me by exerting his memory, I don’t despair of tracing back the whole succession of events set down here to something that he has said or thought, or seen or done, in the four-and-twenty hours, or less, which preceded his falling asleep on the deck of the timber-ship.”

“I’ll exert my memory with the greatest pleasure,” said Allan. “Where shall we start from?”

“Start by telling me what you did yesterday, before I met you and your friend on the road to this place,” replied Mr. Hawbury. “We will say, you got up and had your breakfast. What next?”

“We took a carriage next,” said Allan, “and drove from Castletown to Douglas to see my old friend, Mr. Brock, off by the steamer to Liverpool. We came back to Castletown and separated at the hotel door. Midwinter went into the house, and I went on to my yacht in the harbor. By-the-bye, doctor, remember you have promised to go cruising with us before we leave the Isle of Man.”

“Many thanks; but suppose we keep to the matter in hand. What next?”

Allan hesitated. In both senses of the word his mind was at sea already.

“What did you do on board the yacht?”

“Oh, I know! I put the cabin to rights–thoroughly to rights. I give you my word of honor, I turned every blessed thing topsy-turvy. And my friend there came off in a shore-boat and helped me. Talking of boats, I have never asked you yet whether your boat came to any harm last night. If there’s any damage done, I insist on being allowed to repair it.”

The doctor abandoned all further attempts at the cultivation of Allan’s memory in despair.

“I doubt if we shall be able to reach our object conveniently in this way,” he said. “It will be better to take the events of the dream in their regular order, and to ask the questions that naturally suggest themselves as we go on. Here are the first two events to begin with. You dream that your father appears to you–that you and he find yourselves in the cabin of a ship–that the water rises over you, and that you sink in it together. Were you down in the cabin of the wreck, may I ask?”

“I couldn’t be down there,” replied Allan, “as the cabin was full of water. I looked in and saw it, and shut the door again.”

“Very good,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here are the waking impressions clear enough, so far. You have had the cabin in your mind; and you have had the water in your mind; and the sound of the channel current (as I well know without asking) was the last sound in your ears when you went to sleep. The idea of drowning comes too naturally out of such impressions as these to need dwelling on. Is there anything else before we go on? Yes; there is one more circumstance left to account for.”

“The most important circumstance of all,” remarked Midwinter, joining in the conversation, without stirring from his place at the window.

“You mean the appearance of Mr. Armadale’s father? I was just coming to that,” answered Mr. Hawbury. “Is your father alive?” he added, addressing himself to Allan once more.

“My father died before I was born.”

The doctor started. “This complicates it a little,” he said. “How did you know that the figure appearing to you in the dream was the figure of your father?”

Allan hesitated again. Midwinter drew his chair a little away from the window, and looked at the doctor attentively for the first time.

“Was your father in your thoughts before you went to sleep?” pursued Mr. Hawbury. “Was there any description of him–any portrait of him at home–in your mind?”

“Of course there was!” cried Allan, suddenly seizing the lost recollection. “Midwinter! you remember the miniature you found on the floor of the cabin when we were putting the yacht to rights? You said I didn’t seem to value it; and I told you I did, because it was a portrait of my father–“

“And was the face in the dream like the face in the miniature?” asked Mr. Hawbury.

“Exactly like! I say, doctor, this is beginning to get interesting!”

“What do you say now?” asked Mr. Hawbury, turning toward the window again.

Midwinter hurriedly left his chair, and placed himself at the table with Allan. Just as he had once already taken refuge from the tyranny of his own superstition in the comfortable common sense of Mr. Brock, so, with the same headlong eagerness, with the same straightforward sincerity of purpose, he now took refuge in the doctor’s theory of dreams. “I say what my friend says,” he answered, flushing with a sudden enthusiasm; “this is beginning to get interesting. Go on; pray go on.”

The doctor looked at his strange guest more indulgently than he had looked yet. “You are the only mystic I have met with,” he said, “who is willing to give fair evidence fair play. I don’t despair of converting you before our inquiry comes to an end. Let us get on to the next set of events,” he resumed, after referring for a moment to the manuscript. “The interval of oblivion which is described as succeeding the first of the appearances in the dream may be easily disposed of. It means, in plain English, the momentary cessation of the brain’s intellectual action, while a deeper wave of sleep flows over it, just as the sense of being alone in the darkness, which follows, indicates the renewal of that action, previous to the reproduction of another set of impressions. Let us see what they are. A lonely pool, surrounded by an open country; a sunset sky on the further side of the pool; and the shadow of a woman on the near side. Very good; now for it, Mr. Armadale! How did that pool get into your head? The open country you saw on your way from Castletown to this place But we have no pools or lakes hereabouts; and you can have seen none recently elsewhere, for you came here after a cruise at sea. Must we fall back on a picture, or a book, or a conversation with your friend?”

Allan looked at Midwinter. “I don’t remember talking about pools or lakes,” he said. “Do you?”

Instead of answering the question, Midwinter suddenly appealed to the doctor.

“Have you got the last number of the Manx newspaper?” he asked.

The doctor produced it from the sideboard. Midwinter turned to the page containing those extracts from the recently published “Travels in Australia,” which had roused Allan’s, interest on the previous evening, and the reading of which had ended by sending his friend to sleep. There–in the passage describing the sufferings of the travelers from thirst, and the subsequent discovery which saved their lives–there, appearing at the climax of the narrative, was the broad pool of water which had figured in Allan’s dream!

“Don’t put away the paper,” said the doctor, when Midwinter had shown it to him, with the necessary explanation. “Before we are at the end of the inquiry, it is quite possible we may want that extract again. We have got at the pool. How about the sunset? Nothing of that sort is referred to in the newspaper extract. Search your memory again, Mr. Armadale; we want your waking impression of a sunset, if you please.”

Once more, Allan was at a loss for an answer; and, once more, Midwinter’s ready memory helped him through the difficulty.

“I think I can trace our way back to this impression, as I traced our way back to the other,” he said, addressing the doctor. “After we got here yesterday afternoon, my friend and I took a long walk over the hills–“

“That’s it!” interposed Allan. “I remember. The sun was setting as we came back to the hotel for supper, and it was such a splendid red sky, we both stopped to look at it. And then we talked about Mr. Brock, and wondered how far he had got on his journey home. My memory may be a slow one at starting, doctor; but when it’s once set going, stop it if you can! I haven’t half done yet.”

“Wait one minute, in mercy to Mr. Midwinter’s memory and mine,” said the doctor. “We have traced back to your waking impressions the vision of the open country, the pool, and the sunset. But the Shadow of the Woman has not been accounted for yet. Can you find us the original of this mysterious figure in the dream landscape?”

Allan relapsed into his former perplexity, and Midwinter waited for what was to come, with his eyes fixed in breathless interest on the doctor’s face. For the first time there was unbroken silence in the room. Mr. Hawbury looked interrogatively from Allan to Allan’s friend. Neither of them answered him. Between the shadow and the shadow’s substance there was a great gulf of mystery, impenetrable alike to all three of them.

“Patience,” said the doctor, composedly. “Let us leave the figure by the pool for the present and try if we can’t pick her up again as we go on. Allow me to observe, Mr. Midwinter, that it is not very easy to identify a shadow; but we won’t despair. This impalpable lady of the lake may take some consistency when we next meet with her.”

Midwinter made no reply. From that moment his interest in the inquiry began to flag.

“What is the next scene in the dream?” pursued Mr. Hawbury, referring to the manuscript. “Mr. Armadale finds himself in a room. He is standing before a long window opening on a lawn and flower-garden, and the rain is pattering against the glass. The only thing he sees in the room is a little statue; and the only company he has is the Shadow of a Man standing opposite to him. The Shadow stretches out its arm, and the statue falls in fragments on the floor; and the dreamer, in anger and distress at the catastrophe (observe, gentlemen, that here the sleeper’s reasoning faculty wakes up a little, and the dream passes rationally, for a moment, from cause to effect), stoops to look at the broken pieces. When he looks up again, the scene has vanished. That is to say, in the ebb and flow of sleep, it is the turn of the flow now, and the brain rests a little. What’s the matter, Mr. Armadale? Has that restive memory of yours run away with you again?”

“Yes,” said Allan. “I’m off at full gallop. I’ve run the broken statue to earth; it’s nothing more nor less than a china shepherdess I knocked off the mantel-piece in the hotel coffee-room, when I rang the bell for supper last night. I say, how well we get on; don’t we? It’s like guessing a riddle. Now, then, Midwinter! your turn next.”

“No!” said the doctor. “My turn, if you please. I claim the long window, the garden, and the lawn, as my property. You will find the long window, Mr. Armadale, in the next room. If you look out, you’ll see the garden and lawn in front of it; and, if you’ll exert that wonderful memory of yours, you will recollect that you were good enough to take special and complimentary notice of my smart French window and my neat garden, when I drove you and your friend to Port St. Mary yesterday.”

“Quite right,” rejoined Allan; “so I did. But what about the rain that fell in the dream? I haven’t seen a drop of rain for the last week.”

Mr. Hawbury hesitated. The Manx newspaper which had been left on the table caught his eye. “If we can think of nothing else,” he said, “let us try if we can’t find the idea of the rain where we found the idea of the pool.” He looked through the extract carefully. “I have got it!” he exclaimed. “Here is rain described as having fallen on these thirsty Australian travelers, before they discovered the pool. Behold the shower, Mr. Armadale, which got into your mind when you read the extract to your friend last night! And behold the dream, Mr. Midwinter, mixing up separate waking impressions just as usual!”

“Can you find the waking impression which accounts for the human figure at the window?” asked Midwinter; “or are we to pass over the Shadow of the Man as we have passed over the Shadow of the Woman already?”

He put the question with scrupulous courtesy of manner, but with a tone of sarcasm in his voice which caught the doctor’s ear, and set up the doctor’s controversial bristles on the instant.

“When you are picking up shells on the beach, Mr. Midwinter, you usually begin with the shells that lie nearest at hand,” he rejoined. “We are picking up facts now; and those that are easiest to get at are the facts we will take first. Let the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the Woman pair off together for the present; we won’t lose sight of them, I promise you. All in good time, my dear sir; all in good time!”

He, too, was polite, and he, too, was sarcastic. The short truce between the opponents was at an end already. Midwinter returned significantly to his former place by the window. The doctor instantly turned his back on the window more significantly still. Allan, who never quarreled with anybody’s opinion, and never looked below the surface of anybody’s conduct, drummed cheerfully on the table with the handle of his knife. “Go on, doctor!” he called out; “my wonderful memory is as fresh as ever.”

“Is it?” said Mr. Hawbury, referring again to the narrative of the dream. “Do you remember what happened when you and I were gossiping with the landlady at the bar of the hotel last night?”

“Of course I do! You were kind enough to hand me a glass of brandy-and-water, which the landlady had just mixed for your own drinking. And I was obliged to refuse it because, as I told you, the taste of brandy always turns me sick and faint, mix it how you please.”

“Exactly so,” returned the doctor. “And here is the incident reproduced in the dream. You see the man’s shadow and the woman’s shadow together this time. You hear the pouring out of liquid (brandy from the hotel bottle, and water from the hotel jug); the glass is handed by the woman-shadow (the landlady) to the man-shadow (myself); the man-shadow hands it to you (exactly what I did); and the faintness (which you had previously described to me) follows in due course. I am shocked to identify these mysterious appearances, Mr. Midwinter, with such miserably unromantic originals as a woman who keeps a hotel, and a man who physics a country district. But your friend himself will tell you that the glass of brandy-and-water was prepared by the landlady, and that it reached him by passing from her hand to mine. We have picked up the shadows, exactly as I anticipated; and we have only to account now–which may be done in two words–for the manner of their appearance in the dream. After having tried to introduce the waking impression of the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!–Permit me to hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams.” Saying those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with the pitiless politeness of a conquering man.

“Wonderful! not a point missed anywhere from beginning to end! By Jupiter!” cried Allan, with the ready reverence of intense ignorance. “What a thing science is!”

“Not a point missed, as you say,” remarked the doctor, complacently. “And yet I doubt if we have succeeded in convincing your friend.”

“You have _not_ convinced me,” said Midwinter. “But I don’t presume on that account to say that you are wrong.”

He spoke quietly, almost sadly. The terrible conviction of the supernatural origin of the dream, from which he had tried to escape, had possessed itself of him again. All his interest in the argument was at an end; all his sensitiveness to its irritating influences was gone. In the case of any other man, Mr. Hawbury would have been mollified by such a concession as his adversary had now made to him; but he disliked Midwinter too cordially to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of an opinion of his own.

“Do you admit,” asked the doctor, more pugnaciously than ever, “that I have traced back every event of the dream to a waking impression which preceded it in Mr. Armadale’s mind?”

“I have no wish to deny that you have done so,” said Midwinter, resignedly.

“Have I identified the shadows with their living originals?”

“You have identified them to your own satisfaction, and to my friend’s satisfaction. Not to mine.”

“Not to yours? Can _you_ identify them?”

“No. I can only wait till the living originals stand revealed in the future.”

“Spoken like an oracle, Mr. Midwinter! Have you any idea at present of who those living originals may be?”

“I have. I believe that coming events will identify the Shadow of the Woman with a person whom my friend has not met with yet; and the Shadow of the Man with myself.”

Allan attempted to speak. The doctor stopped him. “Let us clearly understand this,” he said to Midwinter. “Leaving your own case out of the question for the moment, may I ask how a shadow, which has no distinguishing mark about it, is to be identified with a living woman whom your friend doesn’t know?”

Midwinter’s color rose a little. He began to feel the lash of the doctor’s logic.

“The landscape picture of the dream has its distinguishing marks,” he replied; “and in that landscape the living woman will appear when the living woman is first seen.”

“The same thing will happen, I suppose,” pursued the doctor, “with the man-shadow which you persist in identifying with yourself. You will be associated in the future with a statue broken in your friend’s presence, with a long window looking out on a garden, and with a shower of rain pattering against the glass? Do you say that?”

“I say that.”

“And so again, I presume, with the next vision? You and the mysterious woman will be brought together in some place now unknown, and will present to Mr. Armadale some liquid yet unnamed, which will turn him faint?–Do you seriously tell me you believe this?”

“I seriously tell you I believe it.”

“And, according to your view, these fulfillments of the dream will mark the progress of certain coming events, in which Mr. Armadale’s happiness, or Mr. Armadale’s safety, will be dangerously involved?”

“That is my firm conviction.”

The doctor rose, laid aside his moral dissecting-knife, considered for a moment, and took it up again.

“One last question,” he said. “Have you any reason to give for going out of your way to adopt such a mystical view as this, when an unanswerably rational explanation of the dream lies straight before you?”

“No reason,” replied Midwinter, “that I can give, either to you or to my friend.”

The doctor looked at his watch with the air of a man who is suddenly reminded that he has been wasting his time.

“We have no common ground to start from,” he said; “and if we talk till doomsday, we should not agree. Excuse my leaving you rather abruptly. It is later than I thought; and my morning’s batch of sick people are waiting for me in the surgery. I have convinced _your_ mind, Mr. Armadale, at any rate; so the time we have given to this discussion has not been altogether lost. Pray stop here, and smoke your cigar. I shall be at your service again in less than an hour.” He nodded cordially to Allan, bowed formally to Midwinter, and quitted the room.

As soon as the doctor’s back was turned, Allan left his place at the table, and appealed to his friend, with that irresistible heartiness of manner which had always found its way to Midwinter’s sympathies, from the first day when they met at the Somersetshire inn.

“Now the sparring-match between you and the doctor is over,” said Allan, “I have got two words to say on my side. Will you do something for my sake which you won’t do for your own?”

Midwinter’s face brightened instantly. “I will do anything you ask me,” he said.

“Very well. Will you let the subject of the dream drop out of our talk altogether from this time forth?”

“Yes, if you wish it.”

“Will you go a step further? Will you leave off thinking about the dream?”

“It’s hard to leave off thinking about it, Allan. But I will try.”

“That’s a good fellow! Now give me that trumpery bit of paper, and let’s tear it up, and have done with it.”

He tried to snatch the manuscript out of his friend’s hand; but Midwinter was too quick for him, and kept it beyond his reach.

“Come! come!” pleaded Allan. “I’ve set my heart on lighting my cigar with it.”

Midwinter hesitated painfully. It was hard to resist Allan; but he did resist him. “I’ll wait a little,” he said, “before you light your cigar with it.”

“How long? Till to-morrow?”

“Longer.”

“Till we leave the Isle of Man?”

“Longer.”

“Hang it–give me a plain answer to a plain question! How long _will_ you wait?”

Midwinter carefully restored the paper to its place in his pocketbook.

“I’ll wait,” he said, “till we get to Thorpe Ambrose.”

THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.

———

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I.

LURKING MISCHIEF.

1. _From Ozias Midwinter to Mr. Brock_.

“Thorpe Ambrose, June 15, 1851.

“DEAR MR. BROCK–Only an hour since we reached this house, just as the servants were locking up for the night. Allan has gone to bed, worn out by our long day’s journey, and has left me in the room they call the library, to tell you the story of our journey to Norfolk. Being better seasoned than he is to fatigues of all kinds, my eyes are quite wakeful enough for writing a letter, though the clock on the chimney-piece points to midnight, and we have been traveling since ten in the morning.

“The last news you had of us was news sent by Allan from the Isle of Man. If I am not mistaken, he wrote to tell you of the night we passed on board the wrecked ship. Forgive me, dear Mr. Brock, if I say nothing on that subject until time has helped me to think of it with a quieter mind. The hard fight against myself must all be fought over again; but I will win it yet, please God; I will, indeed.

“There is no need to trouble you with any account of our journeyings about the northern and western districts of the island, or of the short cruises we took when the repairs of the yacht were at last complete. It will be better if I get on at once to the morning of yesterday, the fourteenth. We had come in with the night-tide to Douglas Harbor, and, as soon as the post-office was open; Allan, by my advice, sent on shore for letters. The messenger returned with one letter only, and the writer of it proved to be the former mistress of Thorpe Ambrose–Mrs. Blanchard.

“You ought to be informed, I think, of the contents of this letter, for it has seriously influenced Allan’s plans. He loses everything, sooner or later, as you know, and he has lost the letter already. So I must give you the substance of what Mrs. Blanchard wrote to him, as plainly as I can.

“The first page announced the departure of the ladies from Thorpe Ambrose. They left on the day before yesterday, the thirteenth, having, after much hesitation, finally decided on going abroad, to visit some old friends settled in Italy, in the neighborhood of Florence. It appears to be quite possible that Mrs. Blanchard and her niece may settle there, too, if they can find a suitable house and grounds to let. They both like the Italian country and the Italian people, and they are well enough off to please themselves. The elder lady has her jointure, and the younger is in possession of all her father’s fortune.

“The next page of the letter was, in Allan’s opinion, far from a pleasant page to read.

“After referring, in the most grateful terms, to the kindness which had left her niece and herself free to leave their old home at their own time, Mrs. Blanchard added that Allan’s considerate conduct had produced such a strongly favorable impression among the friends and dependents of the family that they were desirous of giving him a public reception on his arrival among them. A preliminary meeting of the tenants on the estate and the principal persons in the neighboring town had already been held to discuss the arrangements, and a letter might be expected shortly from the clergyman inquiring when it would suit Mr. Armadale’s convenience to take possession personally and publicly of his estates in Norfolk.

“You will now be able to guess the cause of our sudden departure from the Isle of Man. The first and foremost idea in your old pupil’s mind, as soon as he had read Mrs. Blanchard’s account of the proceedings at the meeting, was the idea of escaping the public reception, and the one certain way he could see of avoiding it was to start for Thorpe Ambrose before the clergyman’s letter could reach him.

“I tried hard to make him think a little before he acted an his first impulse in this matter; but he only went on packing his portmanteau in his own impenetrably good-humored way. In ten minutes his luggage was ready, and in five minutes more he had given the crew their directions for taking the yacht back to Somersetshire. The steamer to Liverpool was alongside of us in the harbor, and I had really no choice but to go on board with him or to let him go by himself. I spare you the account of our stormy voyage, of our detention at Liverpool, and of the trains we missed on our journey across the country. You know that we have got here safely, and that is enough. What the servants think of the new squire’s sudden appearance among them, without a word of warning, is of no great consequence. What the committee for arranging the public reception may think of it when the news flies abroad to-morrow is, I am afraid, a more serious matter.

“Having already mentioned the servants, I may proceed to tell you that the latter part of Mrs. Blanchard’s letter was entirely devoted to instructing Allan on the subject of the domestic establishment which she has left behind her. It seems that all the servants, indoors and out (with three exceptions), are waiting here, on the chance that Allan will continue them in their places. Two of these exceptions are readily accounted for: Mrs. Blanchard’s maid and Miss Blanchard’s maid go abroad with their mistresses. The third exceptional case is the case of the upper housemaid; and here there is a little hitch. In plain words, the housemaid has been sent away at a moment’s notice, for what Mrs. Blanchard rather mysteriously describes as ‘levity of conduct with a stranger.’

“I am afraid you will laugh at me, but I must confess the truth. I have been made so distrustful (after what happened to us in the Isle of Man) of even the most trifling misadventures which connect themselves in any way with Allan’s introduction to his new life and prospects, that I have already questioned one of the men-servants here about this apparently unimportant matter of the housemaid’s going away in disgrace.

“All I can learn is that a strange man had been noticed hanging suspiciously about the grounds; that the housemaid was so ugly a woman as to render it next to a certainty that he had some underhand purpose to serve in making himself agreeable to her; and that he has not as yet been seen again in the neighborhood since the day of her dismissal. So much for the one servant who has been turned out at Thorpe Ambrose. I can only hope there is no trouble for Allan brewing in that quarter. As for the other servants who remain, Mrs. Blanchard describes them, both men and women, as perfectly trustworthy, and they will all, no doubt, continue to occupy their present places.

“Having now done with Mrs. Blanchard’s letter, my next duty is to beg you, in Allan’s name and with Allan’s love, to come here and stay with him at the earliest moment when you can leave Somersetshire. Although I cannot presume to think that my own wishes will have any special influence in determining you to accept this invitation, I must nevertheless acknowledge that I have a reason of my own for earnestly desiring to see you here. Allan has innocently caused me a new anxiety about my future relations with him, and I sorely need your advice to show me the right way of setting that anxiety at rest.

“The difficulty which now perplexes me relates to the steward’s place at Thorpe Ambrose. Before to-day I only knew that Allan had hit on some plan of his own for dealing with this matter, rather strangely involving, among other results, the letting of the cottage which was the old steward’s place of abode, in consequence of the new steward’s contemplated residence in the great house. A chance word in our conversation on the journey here led Allan into speaking out more plainly than he had spoken yet, and I heard to my unutterable astonishment that the person who was at the bottom of the whole arrangement about the steward was no other than myself!

“It is needless to tell you how I felt this new instance of Allan’s kindness. The first pleasure of hearing from his own lips that I had deserved the strongest proof he could give of his confidence in me was soon dashed by the pain which mixes itself with all pleasure–at least, with all that I have ever known. Never has my past life seemed so dreary to look back on as it seems now, when I feel how entirely it has unfitted me to take the place of all others that I should have liked to occupy in my friend’s service. I mustered courage to tell him that I had none of the business knowledge and business experience which his steward ought to possess. He generously met the objection by telling me that I could learn; and he has promised to send to London for the person who has already been employed for the time being in the steward’s office, and who will, therefore, be perfectly competent to teach me.

“Do you, too, think I can learn? If you do, I will work day and night to instruct myself. But if (as I am afraid) the steward’s duties are of far too serious a kind to be learned off-hand by a man so young and so inexperienced as I am, then pray hasten your journey to Thorpe Ambrose, and exert your influence over Allan personally. Nothing less will induce him to pass me over, and to employ a steward who is really fit to take the place. Pray, pray act in this matter as you think best for Allan’s interests. Whatever disappointment I may feel, _he_ shall not see it.

“Believe me, dear Mr. Brock,

“Gratefuly yours,

“OZIAS MIDWINTER.

“P.S.–I open the envelope again to add one word more. If you have heard or seen anything since your return to Somersetshire of the woman in the black dress and the red shawl, I hope you will not forget, when you write, to let me know it.

O. M.”

2. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.

“Ladies’ Toilet Repository, Diana Street, Pimlico,

Wednesday.

“MY DEAR LYDIA–To save the post, I write to you, after a long day’s worry at my place of business, on the business letter-paper, having news since we last met which it seems advisable to send you at the earliest opportunity.

“To begin at the beginning. After carefully considering the thing, I am quite sure you will do wisely with young Armadale if you hold your tongue about Madeira and all that happened there. Your position was, no doubt, a very strong one with his mother. You had privately helped her in playing a trick on her own father; you had been ungratefully dismissed, at a pitiably tender age, as soon as you had served her purpose; and, when you came upon her suddenly, after a separation of more than twenty years, you found her in failing health, with a grown-up son, whom she had kept in total ignorance of the true story of her marriage.

“Have you any such advantages as these with the young gentleman who has survived her? If he is not a born idiot he will decline to believe your shocking aspersions on the memory of his mother; and–seeing that you have no proofs at this distance of time to meet him with–there is an end of your money-grubbing in the golden Armadale diggings. Mind, I don’t dispute that the old lady’s heavy debt of obligation, after what you did for her in Madeira, is not paid yet; and that the son is the next person to settle with you, now the mother has slipped through your fingers. Only squeeze him the right way, my dear, that’s what I venture to suggest–squeeze him the right way.

“And which is the right way? That question brings me to my news.

“Have you thought again of that other notion of yours of trying your hand on this lucky young gentleman, with nothing but your own good looks and your own quick wits to help you? The idea hung on my mind so strangely after you were gone that it ended in my sending a little note to my lawyer, to have the will under which young Armadale has got his fortune examined at Doctor’s Commons. The result turns out to be something infinitely more encouraging than either you or I could possibly have hoped for. After the lawyer’s report to me, there cannot be a moment’s doubt of what you ought to do. In two words, Lydia, take the bull by the horns–and marry him!

“I am quite serious. He is much better worth the venture than you suppose. Only persuade him to make you Mrs. Armadale, and you may set all after-discoveries at flat defiance. As long as he lives, you can make your own terms with him; and, if he dies, the will entitles you, in spite of anything he can say or do–with children or without them–to an income chargeable on his estate of _twelve hundred a year for life_. There is no doubt about this; the lawyer himself has looked at the will. Of course, Mr. Blanchard had his son and his son’s widow in his eye when he made the provision. But, as it is not limited to any one heir by name, and not revoked anywhere, it now holds as good with young Armadale as it would have held under other circumstances with Mr. Blanchard’s son. What a chance for you, after all the miseries and the dangers you have gone through, to be mistress of Thorpe Ambrose, if he lives; to have an income for life, if he dies! Hook him, my poor dear; hook him at any sacrifice.

“I dare say you will make the same objection when you read this which you made when we were talking about it the other day; I mean the objection of your age.

“Now, my good creature, just listen to me. The question is–not whether you were five-and-thirty last birthday; we will own the dreadful truth, and say you were–but whether you do look, or don’t look, your real age. My opinion on this matter ought to be, and is, one of the best opinions in London. I have had twenty years experience among our charming sex in making up battered old faces and wornout old figures to look like new, and I say positively you don’t look a day over thirty, if as much. If you will follow my advice about dressing, and use one or two of my applications privately, I guarantee to put you back three years more. I will forfeit all the money I shall have to advance for you in this matter, if, when I have ground you young again in my wonderful mill, you look more than seven-and-twenty in any man’s eyes living–except, of course, when you wake anxious in the small hours of the morning; and then, my dear, you will be old and ugly in the retirement of your own room, and it won’t matter.

“‘But,’ you may say, ‘supposing all this, here I am, even with your art to help me, looking a good six years older than he is; and that is against me at starting.’ Is it? Just think again. Surely, your own experience must have shown you that the commonest of all common weaknesses, in young fellows of this Armadale’s age, is to fall in love with women older than themselves. Who are the men who really appreciate us in the bloom of our youth (I’m sure I have cause to speak well of the bloom of youth; I made fifty guineas to-day by putting it on the spotted shoulders of a woman old enough to be your mother)–who are the men, I say, who are ready to worship us when we are mere babies of seventeen? The gay young gentlemen in the bloom of their own youth? No! The cunning old wretches who are on the wrong side of forty.

“And what is the moral of this, as the story-books say?

“The moral is that the chances, with such a head as you have got on your shoulders, are all in your favor. If you feel your present forlorn position, as I believe you do; if you know what a charming woman (in the men’s eyes) you can still be when you please; and if all your resolution has really come back, after that shocking outbreak of desperation on board the steamer (natural enough, I own, under the dreadful provocation laid on you), you will want no further persuasion from me to try this experiment. Only to think of how things turn out! If the other young booby had not jumped into the river after you, _this_ young booby would never have had the estate. It really looks as if fate had determined that you were to be Mrs. Armadale, of Thorpe Ambrose; and who can control his fate, as the poet says?

“Send me one line to say Yes or No; and believe me your attached old friend,

“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”

3. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.

Richmond, Thursday.

‘YOU OLD WRETCH–I won’t say Yes or No till I have had a long, long look at my glass first. If you had any real regard for anybody but your wicked old self, you would know that the bare idea of marrying again (after what I have gone through) is an idea that makes my flesh creep.

“But there can be no harm in your sending me a little more information while I am making up my mind. You have got twenty pounds of mine still left out of those things you sold for me; send ten pounds here for my expenses, in a post-office order, and use the other ten for making private inquiries at Thorpe Ambrose. I want to know when the two Blanchard women go away, and when young Armadale stirs up the dead ashes in the family fire-place. Are you quite sure he will turn out as easy to manage as you think? If he takes after his hypocrite of a mother, I can tell you this: Judas Iscariot has come to life again.

“I am very comfortable in this lodging. There are lovely flowers in the garden, and the birds wake me in the morning delightfully. I have hired a reasonably good piano. The only man I care two straws about–don’t be alarmed; he was laid in his grave many a long year ago, under the name of BEETHOVEN–keeps me company, in my lonely hours. The landlady would keep me company, too, if I would only let her. I hate women. The new curate paid a visit to the other lodger yesterday, and passed me on the lawn as he came out. My eyes have lost nothing yet, at any rate, though I _am_ five-and-thirty; the poor man actually blushed when I looked at him! What sort of color do you think he would have turned, if one of the little birds in the garden had whispered in his ear, and told him the true story of the charming Miss Gwilt?

“Good-by, Mother Oldershaw. I rather doubt whether I am yours, or anybody’s, affectionately; but we all tell lies at the bottoms of our letters, don’t we? If you are my attached old friend, I must, of course, be yours affectionately.

“LYDIA GWILT.

“P.S.–Keep your odious powders and paints and washes for the spotted shoulders of your customers; not one of them shall touch my skin, I promise you. If you really want to be useful, try and find out some quieting draught to keep me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. I shall break them one of these nights; and then what will become of my beauty, I wonder?”

4. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.

“Ladies’ Toilet Repository, Tuesday.

“MY DEAR LYDIA–It is a thousand pities your letter was not addressed to Mr. Armadale; your graceful audacity would have charmed him. It doesn’t affect me; I am so well used to audacity in my way of life, you know. Why waste your sparkling wit, my love, on your own impenetrable Oldershaw? It only splutters and goes out. Will you try and be serious this next time? I have news for you from Thorpe Ambrose, which is beyond a joke, and which must not be trifled with.

“An hour after I got your letter I set the inquiries on foot. Not knowing what consequences they might lead to, I thought it safest to begin in the dark. Instead of employing any of the people whom I have at my own disposal (who know you and know me), I went to the Private Inquiry Office in Shadyside Place, and put the matter in the inspector’s hands, in the character of a perfect stranger, and without mentioning you at all. This was not the cheapest way of going to work, I own; but it was the safest way, which is of much greater consequence.

“The inspector and I understood each other in ten minutes; and the right person for the purpose–the most harmless looking young man you ever saw in your life–was produced immediately. He left for Thorpe Ambrose an hour after I saw him. I arranged to call at the office on the afternoons of Saturday, Monday, and to-day for news. There was no news till to-day; and there I found our confidential agent just returned to town, and waiting to favor me with a full account of his trip to Norfolk.

“First of all, let me quiet your mind about those two questions of yours; I have got answers to both the one and the other. The Blanchard women go away to foreign parts on the thirteenth, and young Armadale is at this moment cruising somewhere at sea in his yacht. There is talk at Thorpe Ambrose of giving him a public reception, and of calling a meeting of the local grandees to settle it all. The speechifying and fuss on these occasions generally wastes plenty of time, and the public reception is not thought likely to meet the new squire much before the end of the month.

“If our messenger had done no more for us than this, I think he would have earned his money. But the harmless young man is a regular Jesuit at a private inquiry, with this great advantage over all the Popish priests I have ever seen, that he has not got his slyness written in his face.

“Having to get his information through the female servants in the usual way, he addressed himself, with admirable discretion, to the ugliest woman in the house. ‘When they are nice-looking, and can pick and choose,’ as he neatly expressed it to me, ‘they waste a great deal of valuable time in deciding on a sweetheart. When they are ugly, and haven’t got the ghost of a chance of choosing, they snap at a sweetheart, if he comes their way, like a starved dog at a bone.’ Acting on these excellent principles, our confidential agent succeeded, after certain unavoidable delays, in addressing himself to the upper housemaid at Thorpe Ambrose, and took full possession of her confidence at the first interview. Bearing his instructions carefully in mind, he encouraged the woman to chatter, and was favored, of course, with all the gossip of the servants’ hall. The greater part of it (as repeated to me) was of no earthly importance. But I listened patiently, and was rewarded by a valuable discovery at last. Here it is.

“It seems there is an ornamental cottage in the grounds at Thorpe Ambrose. For some reason unknown, young Armadale has chosen to let it, and a tenant has come in already. He is a poor half-pay major in the army, named Milroy, a meek sort of man, by all accounts, with a turn for occupying himself in mechanical pursuits, and with a domestic incumbrance in the shape of a bedridden wife, who has not been seen by anybody. Well, and what of all this? you will ask, with that sparkling impatience which becomes you so well. My dear Lydia, don’t sparkle! The man’s family affairs seriously concern us both, for, as ill luck will have it, the man has got a daughter!

“You may imagine how I questioned our agent, and how our agent ransacked his memory, when I stumbled, in due course, on such a discovery as this. If Heaven is responsible for women’s chattering tongues, Heaven be praised! From Miss Blanchard to Miss Blanchard’s maid; from Miss Blanchard’s maid to Miss Blanchard’s aunt’s maid; from Miss Blanchard’s aunt’s maid, to the ugly housemaid; from the ugly housemaid to the harmless-looking young man–so the stream of gossip trickled into the right reservoir at last, and thirsty Mother Oldershaw has drunk it all up.

“In plain English, my dear, this is how it stands. The major’s daughter is a minx just turned sixteen; lively and nice-looking (hateful little wretch!), dowdy in her dress (thank Heaven!) and deficient in her manners (thank Heaven again!). She has been brought up at home. The governess who last had charge of her left before her father moved to Thorpe Ambrose. Her education stands woefully in want of a finishing touch, and the major doesn’t quite know what to do next. None of his friends can recommend him a new governess and he doesn’t like the notion of sending the girl to school. So matters rest at present, on the major’s own showing; for so the major expressed himself at a morning call which the father and daughter paid to the ladies at the great house.

“You have now got my promised news, and you will have little difficulty, I think, in agreeing with me that the Armadale business must be settled at once, one way or the other. If, with your hopeless prospects, and with what I may call your family claim on this young fellow, you decide on giving him up, I shall have the pleasure of sending you the balance of your account with me (seven-and-twenty shillings), and shall then be free to devote myself entirely to my own proper business. If, on the contrary, you decide to try your luck at Thorpe Ambrose, then (there being no kind of doubt that the major’s minx will set her cap at the young squire) I should be glad to hear how you mean to meet the double difficulty of inflaming Mr. Armadale and extinguishing Miss Milroy.

“Affectionately yours,

“MARIA OLDERSHAW.

5. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw.

(First Answer.)_

“Richmond, Wednesday Morning.

“MRS. OLDERSHAW–Send me my seven-and-twenty shillings, and devote yourself to your own proper business. Yours, L. G.”

6. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw.

(Second Answer.)_

“Richmond, Wednesday Night.

“DEAR OLD LOVE–Keep the seven-and-twenty shillings, and burn my other letter. I have changed my mind.

“I wrote the first time after a horrible night. I write this time after a ride on horseback, a tumbler of claret, and the breast of a chicken. Is that explanation enough? Please say Yes, for I want to go back to my piano.

“No; I can’t go back yet; I must answer your question first. But are you really so very simple as to suppose that I don’t see straight through you and your letter? You know that the major’s difficulty is our opportunity as well as I do; but you want me to take the responsibility of making the first proposal, don’t you? Suppose I take it in your own roundabout way? Suppose I say, ‘Pray don’t ask me how I propose inflaming Mr. Armadale and extinguishing Miss Milroy; the question is so shockingly abrupt I really can’t answer it. Ask me, instead, if it is the modest ambition of my life to become Miss Milroy’s governess?’ Yes, if you please, Mrs. Oldershaw, and if you will assist me by becoming my reference.

“There it is for you! If some serious disaster happens (which is quite possible), what a comfort it will be to remember that it was all my fault!

“Now I have done this for you, will you do something for me. I want to dream away the little time I am likely to have left here in my own way. Be a merciful Mother Oldershaw, and spare me the worry of looking at the Ins and Outs, and adding up the chances For and Against, in this new venture of mine. Think for me, in short, until I am obliged to think for myself.

“I had better not write any more, or I shall say something savage that you won’t like. I am in one of my tempers to-night. I want a husband to vex, or a child to beat, or something of that sort. Do you ever like to see the summer insects kill themselves in the candle? I do, sometimes. Good-night, Mrs. Jezebel The longer you can leave me here the better. The air agrees with me, and I am looking charmingly.

“L. G.”

7. _From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt_.

“Thursday.

“MY DEAR LYDIA–Some persons in my situation might be a little offended at the tone of your last letter. But I am so fondly attached to you! And when I love a person, it is so very hard, my dear, for that person to offend me! Don’t ride quite so far, and only drink half a tumblerful of claret next time. I say no more.

“Shall we leave off our fencing-match and come to serious matters now? How curiously hard it always seems to be for women to understand each other, especially when they have got their pens in their hands! But suppose we try.

“Well, then, to begin with: I gather from your letter that you have wisely decided to try the Thorpe Ambrose experiment, and to secure, if you can, an excellent position at starting by becoming a member of Major Milroy’s household. If the circumstances turn against you, and some other woman gets the governess’s place (about which I shall have something more to say presently), you will then have no choice but to make Mr. Armadale’s acquaintance in some other character. In any case, you will want my assistance; and the first question, therefore, to set at rest between us is the question of what I am willing to do, and what I can do, to help you.

“A woman, my dear Lydia, with your appearance, your manners, your abilities, and your education, can make almost any excursions into society that she pleases if she only has money in her pocket and a respectable reference to appeal to in cases of emergency. As to the money, in the first place. I will engage to find it, on condition of your remembering my assistance with adequate pecuniary gratitude if you win the Armadale prize. Your promise so to remember me, embodying the terms in plain figures, shall be drawn out on paper by my own lawyer, so that we can sign and settle at once when I see you in London.

“Next, as to the reference.

“Here, again, my services are at your disposal, on another condition. It is this: that you present yourself at Thorpe Ambrose, under the name to which you have returned ever since that dreadful business of your marriage; I mean your own maiden name of Gwilt. I have only one motive in insisting on this; I wish to run no needless risks. My experience, as confidential adviser of my customers, in various romantic cases of private embarrassment, has shown me that an assumed name is, nine times out of ten, a very unnecessary and a very dangerous form of deception. Nothing could justify your assuming a name but the fear of young Armadale’s detecting you–a fear from which we are fortunately relieved by his mother’s own conduct in keeping your early connection with her a profound secret from her son and from everybody.

“The next, and last, perplexity to settle relates, my dear, to the chances for and against your finding your way, in the capacity of governess, into Major Milroy’s house. Once inside the door, with your knowledge of music and languages, if you can keep your temper, you may be sure of keeping the place. The only doubt, as things are now, is whether you can get it.

“In the major’s present difficulty about his daughter’s education, the chances are, I think, in favor of his advertising for a governess. Say he does advertise, what address will he give for applicants to write to?

“If he gives an address in London, good-by to all chances in your favor at once; for this plain reason, that we shall not be able to pick out his advertisement from the advertisements of other people who want governesses, and who will give them addresses in London as well. If, on the other hand, our luck helps us, and he refers his correspondents to a shop, post-office, or what not _at Thorpe Ambrose_, there we have our advertiser as plainly picked out for us as we can wish. In this last case, I have little or no doubt–with me for your reference–of your finding your way into the major’s family circle. We have one great advantage over the other women who will answer the advertisement. Thanks to my inquiries on the spot, I know Major Milroy to be a poor man; and we will fix the salary you ask at a figure that is sure to tempt him. As for the style of the letter, if you and I together can’t write a modest and interesting application for the vacant place, I should like to know who can?

“All this, however, is still in the future. For the present my advice is, stay where you are, and dream to your heart’s content, till you hear from me again. I take in _The Times_ regularly, and you may trust my wary eye not to miss the right advertisement. We can luckily give the major time, without doing any injury to our own interests; for there is no fear just yet of the girl’s getting the start of you. The public reception, as we know, won’t be ready till near the end of the month; and we may safely trust young Armadale’s vanity to keep him out of his new house until his flatterers are all assembled to welcome him.

“It’s odd, isn’t it, to think how much depends on this half-pay officer’s decision? For my part, I shall wake every morning now with the same question in my mind: If the major’s advertisment appears, which will the major say–Thorpe Ambrose, or London?

“Ever, my dear Lydia, affectionately yours,

“MARIA OLDERSHAW.”

CHAPTER II.

ALLAN AS A LANDED GENTLEMAN.

Early on the morning after his first night’s rest at Thorpe Ambrose, Allan rose and surveyed the prospect from his bedroom window, lost in the dense mental bewilderment of feeling himself to be a stranger in his own house.

The bedroom looked out over the great front door, with its portico, its terrace and flight of steps beyond, and, further still, the broad sweep of the well-timbered park to close the view. The morning mist nestled lightly about the distant trees; and the cows were feeding sociably, close to the iron fence which railed off the park from the drive in front of the house. “All mine!” thought Allan, staring in blank amazement at the prospect of his own possessions. “Hang me if I can beat it into my head yet. All mine!”

He dressed, left his room, and walked along the corridor which led to the staircase and hall, opening the doors in succession as he passed them.

The rooms in this part of the house were bedrooms and dressing-rooms, light, spacious, perfectly furnished; and all empty, except the one bed-chamber next to Allan’s, which had been appropriated to Midwinter. He was still sleeping when his friend looked in on him, having sat late into the night writing his letter to Mr. Brock. Allan went on to the end of the first corridor, turned at right angles into a second, and, that passed, gained the head of the great staircase. “No romance here,” he said to himself, looking down the handsomely carpeted stone stairs into the bright modern hall. “Nothing to startle Midwinter’s fidgety nerves in this house.” There was nothing, indeed; Allan’s essentially superficial observation had not misled him for once. The mansion of Thorpe Ambrose (built after the pulling down of the dilapidated old manor-house) was barely fifty years old. Nothing picturesque, nothing in the slightest degree suggestive of mystery and romance, appeared in any part of it. It was a purely conventional country house–the product of the classical idea filtered judiciously through the commercial English mind. Viewed on the outer side, it presented the spectacle of a modern manufactory trying to look like an ancient temple. Viewed on the inner side, it was a marvel of luxurious comfort in every part of it, from basement to roof. “And quite right, too,” thought Allan, sauntering contentedly down the broad, gently graduated stairs. “Deuce take all mystery and romance! Let’s be clean and comfortable, that’s what I say.”

Arrived in the hall, the new master of Thorpe Ambrose hesitated, and looked about him, uncertain which way to turn next.

The four reception-rooms on the ground-floor opened into the hall, two on either side. Allan tried the nearest door on his right hand at a venture, and found himself in the drawing-room. Here the first sign of life appeared, under life’s most attractive form. A young girl was in solitary possession of the drawing-room. The duster in her hand appeared to associate her with the domestic duties of the house; but at that particular moment she was occupied in asserting the rights of nature over the obligations of service. In other words, she was attentively contemplating her own face in the glass over the mantelpiece.

“There! there! don’t let me frighten you,” said Allan, as the girl started away from the glass, and stared at him in unutterable confusion. “I quite agree with you, my dear; your face is well worth looking at. Who are you? Oh, the housemaid. And what’s your name? Susan, eh? Come! I like your name, to begin with. Do you know who I am, Susan? I’m your master, though you may not think it. Your character? Oh, yes! Mrs. Blanchard gave you a capital character. You shall stop here; don’t be afraid. And you’ll be a good girl, Susan, and wear smart little caps and aprons and bright ribbons, and you’ll look nice and pretty, and dust the furniture, won’t you?” With this summary of a housemaid’s duties, Allan sauntered back into the hall, and found more signs of life in that quarter. A man-servant appeared on this occasion, and bowed, as became a vassal in a linen jacket, before his liege lord in a wide-awake hat.

“And who may you be?” asked Allan. “Not the man who let us in last night? Ah, I thought not. The second footman, eh? Character? Oh, yes; capital character. Stop here, of course. You can valet me, can you? Bother valeting me! I like to put on my own clothes, and brush them, too, when they _are_ on; and, if I only knew how to black my own boots, by George, I should like to do it! What room’s this? Morning-room, eh? And here’s the dining-room, of course. Good heavens, what a table! it’s as long as my yacht, and longer. I say, by-the-by, what’s your name? Richard, is it? Well, Richard, the vessel I sail in is a vessel of my own building! What do you think of that? You look to me just the right sort of man to be my steward on board. If you’re not sick at sea–oh, you _are_ sick at sea? Well, then, we’ll say nothing more about it. And what room is this? Ah, yes; the library, of course–more in Mr. Midwinter’s way than mine. Mr. Midwinter is the gentleman who came here with me last night; and mind this, Richard, you’re all to show him as much attention as you show me. Where are we now? What’s this door at the back? Billiard-room and smoking-room, eh? Jolly. Another door! and more stairs! Where do they go to? and who’s this coming up? Take your time, ma’am; you’re not quite so young as you were once–take your time.”

The object of Allan’s humane caution was a corpulent elderly woman of the type called “motherly.” Fourteen stairs were all that separated her from the master of the house; she ascended them with fourteen stoppages and fourteen sighs. Nature, various in all things, is infinitely various in the female sex. There are some women whose personal qualities reveal the Loves and the Graces; and there are other women whose personal qualities suggest the Perquisites and the Grease Pot. This was one of the other women.

“Glad to see you looking so well, ma’am,” said Allan, when the cook, in the majesty of her office, stood proclaimed before him. “Your name is Gripper, is it? I consider you, Mrs. Gripper, the most valuable person in the house. For this reason, that nobody in the house eats a heartier dinner every day than I do. Directions? Oh, no; I’ve no directions to give. I leave all that to you. Lots of strong soup, and joints done with the gravy in them–there’s my notion of good feeding, in two words. Steady! Here’s somebody else. Oh, to be sure–the butler! Another valuable person. We’ll go right through all the wine in the cellar, Mr. Butler; and if I can’t give you a sound opinion after that, we’ll persevere boldly, and go right through it again. Talking of wine–halloo! here are more of them coming up stairs. There! there! don’t trouble yourselves. You’ve all got capital characters, and you shall all stop here along with me. What was I saying just now? Something about wine; so it was. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Butler, it isn’t every day that a new master comes to Thorpe Ambrose; and it’s my wish that we should all start together on the best possible terms. Let the servants have a grand jollification downstairs to celebrate my arrival, and give them what they like to drink my health in. It’s a poor heart, Mrs. Gripper, that never rejoices, isn’t it? No; I won’t look at the cellar now: I want to go out, and get a breath of fresh air before breakfast. Where’s Richard? I say, have I got a garden here? Which side of the house is it! That side, eh? You needn’t show me round. I’ll go alone, Richard, and lose myself, if I can, in my own property.”

With those words Allan descended the terrace steps in front of the house, whistling cheerfully. He had met the serious responsibility of settling his domestic establishment to his own entire satisfaction. “People talk of the difficulty of managing their servants,” thought Allan. “What on earth do they mean? I don’t see any difficulty at all.” He opened an ornamental gate leading out of the drive at the side of the house, and, following the footman’s directions, entered the shrubbery that sheltered the Thorpe Ambrose gardens. “Nice shady sort of place for a cigar,” said Allan, as he sauntered along with his hands in his pockets “I wish I could beat it into my head that it really belongs to _me_.”

The shrubbery opened on the broad expanse of a flower garden,