Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (598 page)

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

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

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

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

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

“I am listening.”

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

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

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

“And suppose he gets home alive — what then?”

“Then there is another chance still left.”

“What is it, pray?”

“He may die in your Sanitarium.”

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

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

“Go on,” she said; “you haven’t done yet.”

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

Miss Gwilt’s rapid needle suddenly stopped. “I understand you,” she said again, as quietly as before.

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

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

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

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

“When do you want my answer?”

“Can you decide to-day?”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes. Have you anything more to say?”

“Nothing more.”

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

“Oh, the sex! the sex!” said the doctor, with his excellent temper in perfect working order again. “So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly reckless of what they say or how they say it! ‘Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please!’ There! there! there! Good-morning!”

Miss Gwilt rose and looked after him contemptuously from the window, when the street door had closed, and he had left the house.

“Armadale himself drove me to it the first time,” she said. “Manuel drove me to it the second time. — You cowardly scoundrel! shall I let
you
drive me to it for the third time, and the last?”

She turned from the window, and looked thoughtfully at her widow’s dress in the glass.

The hours of the day passed — and she decided nothing. The night came — and she hesitated still. The new morning dawned — and the terrible question was still unanswered.

By the early post there came a letter for her. It was Mr. Bashwood’s usual report. Again he had watched for Allan’s arrival, and again in vain.

“I’ll have more time!” she determined, passionately. “No man alive shall hurry me faster than I like!”

At breakfast that morning (the morning of the 9th) the doctor was surprised in his study by a visit from Miss Gwilt.

“I want another day,” she said, the moment the servant had closed the door on her.

The doctor looked at her before he answered, and saw the danger of driving her to extremities plainly expressed in her face.

“The time is getting on,” he remonstrated, in his most persuasive manner. “For all we know to the contrary, Mr. Armadale may be here to-night.”

“I want another day!” she repeated, loudly and passionately.

“Granted!” said the doctor, looking nervously toward the door. “Don’t be too loud — the servants may hear you. Mind!” he added, “I depend on your honour not to press me for any further delay.”

“You had better depend on my despair,” she said, and left him.

The doctor chipped the shell of his egg, and laughed softly.

“Quite right, my dear!” he thought. “I remember where your despair led you in past times; and I think I may trust it to lead you the same way now.”

At a quarter to eight o’clock that night Mr. Bashwood took up his post of observation, as usual, on the platform of the terminus at London Bridge. He was in the highest good spirits; he smiled and smirked in irrepressible exultation. The sense that he held in reserve a means of influence over Miss Gwilt, in virtue of his knowledge of her past career, had had no share in effecting the transformation that now appeared in him. It had upheld his courage in his forlorn life at Thorpe Ambrose, and it had given him that increased confidence of manner which Miss Gwilt herself had noticed; but, from the moment when he had regained his old place in her favor, it had vanished as a motive power in him, annihilated by the electric shock of her touch and her look. His vanity — the vanity which in men at his age is only despair in disguise — had now lifted him to the seventh heaven of fatuous happiness once more. He believed in her again as he believed in the smart new winter overcoat that he wore — as he believed in the dainty little cane (appropriate to the dawning dandyism of lads in their teens) that he flourished in his hand. He hummed! The worn-out old creature, who had not sung since his childhood, hummed, as he paced the platform, the few fragments he could remember of a worn-out old song.

The train was due as early as eight o’clock that night. At five minutes past the hour the whistle sounded. In less than five minutes more the passengers were getting out on the platform.

Following the instructions that had been given to him, Mr. Bashwood made his way, as well as the crowd would let him, along the line of carriages, and, discovering no familiar face on that first investigation, joined the passengers for a second search among them in the custom-house waiting-room next.

He had looked round the room, and had satisfied himself that the persons occupying it were all strangers, when he heard a voice behind him, exclaiming: “Can that be Mr. Bashwood!” He turned in eager expectation, and found himself face to face with the last man under heaven whom he had expected to see.

The man was MIDWINTER.

II. IN THE HOUSE.

Noticing Mr. Bashwood’s confusion (after a moment’s glance at the change in his personal appearance), Midwinter spoke first.

“I see I have surprised you,” he said. “You are looking, I suppose, for somebody else? Have you heard from Allan? Is he on his way home again already?”

The inquiry about Allan, though it would naturally have suggested itself to any one in Midwinter’s position at that moment, added to Mr. Bashwood’s confusion. Not knowing how else to extricate himself from the critical position in which he was placed, he took refuge in simple denial.

“I know nothing about Mr. Armadale — oh dear, no, sir, I know nothing about Mr. Armadale,” he answered, with needless eagerness and hurry. “Welcome back to England, sir,” he went on, changing the subject in his nervously talkative manner. “I didn’t know you had been abroad. It’s so long since we have had the pleasure — since I have had the pleasure. Have you enjoyed yourself, sir, in foreign parts? Such different manners from ours — yes, yes, yes — such different manners from ours! Do you make a long stay in England, now you have come back?”

“I hardly know,” said Midwinter. “I have been obliged to alter my plans, and to come to England unexpectedly.” He hesitated a little; his manner changed, and he added, in lower tones: “A serious anxiety has brought me back. I can’t say what my plans will be until that anxiety is set at rest.”

The light of a lamp fell on his face while he spoke, and Mr. Bashwood observed, for the first time, that he looked sadly worn and changed.

“I’m sorry, sir — I’m sure I’m very sorry. If I could be of any use — ” suggested Mr. Bashwood, speaking under the influence in some degree of his nervous politeness, and in some degree of his remembrance of what Midwinter had done for him at Thorpe Ambrose in the by-gone time.

Midwinter thanked him and turned away sadly. “I am afraid you can be of no use, Mr. Bashwood — but I am obliged to you for your offer, all the same.” He stopped, and considered a little, “Suppose she should
not
be ill? Suppose some misfortune should have happened?” he resumed, speaking to himself, and turning again toward the steward. “If she has left her mother, some trace of her
might
be found by inquiring at Thorpe Ambrose.”

Mr. Bashwood’s curiosity was instantly aroused. The whole sex was interesting to him now, for the sake of Miss Gwilt.

“A lady, sir?” he inquired. “Are you looking for a lady?”

“I am looking,” said Midwinter, simply, “for my wife.”

“Married, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood. “Married since I last had the pleasure of seeing you! Might I take the liberty of asking — ?”

Midwinter’s eyes dropped uneasily to the ground.

“You knew the lady in former times,” he said. “I have married Miss Gwilt.”

The steward started back as he might have started back from a loaded pistol leveled at his head. His eyes glared as if he had suddenly lost his senses, and the nervous trembling to which he was subject shook him from head to foot.

“What’s the matter?” said Midwinter. There was no answer. “What is there so very startling,” he went on, a little impatiently, “in Miss Gwilt’s being my wife?”

“
Your
wife?” repeated Mr. Bashwood, helplessly. “Mrs. Armadale — !” He checked himself by a desperate effort, and said no more.