He was startled out of the narrow limits of his own little grief by the vibration of the table at which he sat, under a hand that was laid on it heavily. The instinct of reluctance was strong in him; but he conquered it, and looked up. There, silently confronting him in the mixed light of the yellow candle flame and the faint gray dawn, stood the castaway of the village inn--the inheritor of the fatal Armadale name.
Mr. Brock shuddered as the terror of the present time and the darker terror yet of the future that might be coming rushed back on him at the sight of the man"s face. The man saw it, and spoke first.
"Is my father"s crime looking at you out of my eyes?" he asked. "Has the ghost of the drowned man followed me into the room?"
The suffering and the pa.s.sion that he was forcing back shook the hand that he still kept on the table, and stifled the voice in which he spoke until it sank to a whisper.
"I have no wish to treat you otherwise than justly and kindly," answered Mr. Brock. "Do me justice on my side, and believe that I am incapable of cruelly holding you responsible for your father"s crime."
The reply seemed to compose him. He bowed his head in silence, and took up the confession from the table.
"Have you read this through?" he asked, quietly.
"Every word of it, from first to last."
"Have I dealt openly with you so far. Has Ozias Midwinter--"
"Do you still call yourself by that name," interrupted Mr. Brock, "now your true name is known to me?"
"Since I have read my father"s confession," was the answer, "I like my ugly alias better than ever. Allow me to repeat the question which I was about to put to you a minute since: Has Ozias Midwinter done his best thus far to enlighten Mr. Brock?"
The rector evaded a direct reply. "Few men in your position," he said, "would have had the courage to show me that letter."
"Don"t be too sure, sir, of the vagabond you picked up at the inn till you know a little more of him than you know now. You have got the secret of my birth, but you are not in possession yet of the story of my life.
You ought to know it, and you shall know it, before you leave me alone with Mr. Armadale. Will you wait, and rest a little while, or shall I tell it you now?"
"Now," said Mr. Brock, still as far away as ever from knowing the real character of the man before him.
Everything Ozias Midwinter said, everything Ozias Midwinter did, was against him. He had spoken with a sardonic indifference, almost with an insolence of tone, which would have repelled the sympathies of any man who heard him. And now, instead of placing himself at the table, and addressing his story directly to the rector, he withdrew silently and ungraciously to the window-seat. There he sat, his face averted, his hands mechanically turning the leaves of his father"s letter till he came to the last. With his eyes fixed on the closing lines of the ma.n.u.script, and with a strange mixture of recklessness and sadness in his voice, he began his promised narrative in these words:
"The first thing you know of me," he said, "is what my father"s confession has told you already. He mentions here that I was a child, asleep on his breast, when he spoke his last words in this world, and when a stranger"s hand wrote them down for him at his deathbed.
That stranger"s name, as you may have noticed, is signed on the cover--"Alexander Neal, Writer to the Signet, Edinburgh." The first recollection I have is of Alexander Neal beating me with a horsewhip (I dare say I deserved it), in the character of my stepfather."
"Have you no recollection of your mother at the same time?" asked Mr.
Brock.
"Yes; I remember her having shabby old clothes made up to fit me, and having fine new frocks bought for her two children by her second husband. I remember the servants laughing at me in my old things, and the horsewhip finding its way to my shoulders again for losing my temper and tearing my shabby clothes. My next recollection gets on to a year or two later. I remember myself locked up in a lumber-room, with a bit of bread and a mug of water, wondering what it was that made my mother and my stepfather seem to hate the very sight of me. I never settled that question till yesterday, and then I solved the mystery, when my father"s letter was put into my hands. My mother knew what had really happened on board the French timber-ship, and my stepfather knew what had really happened, and they were both well aware that the shameful secret which they would fain have kept from every living creature was a secret which would be one day revealed to _me_. There was no help for it--the confession was in the executor"s hands, and there was I, an ill-conditioned brat, with my mother"s negro blood in my face, and my murdering father"s pa.s.sions in my heart, inheritor of their secret in spite of them! I don"t wonder at the horsewhip now, or the shabby old clothes, or the bread and water in the lumber-room. Natural penalties all of them, sir, which the child was beginning to pay already for the father"s sin."
Mr. Brock looked at the swarthy, secret face, still obstinately turned away from him. "Is this the stark insensibility of a vagabond," he asked himself, "or the despair, in disguise, of a miserable man?"
"School is my next recollection," the other went on--"a cheap place in a lost corner of Scotland. I was left there, with a bad character to help me at starting. I spare you the story of the master"s cane in the schoolroom, and the boys" kicks in the playground. I dare say there was ingrained ingrat.i.tude in my nature; at any rate, I ran away. The first person who met me asked my name. I was too young and too foolish to know the importance of concealing it, and, as a matter of course, I was taken back to school the same evening. The result taught me a lesson which I have not forgotten since. In a day or two more, like the vagabond I was, I ran away for the second time. The school watch-dog had had his instructions, I suppose: he stopped me before I got outside the gate.
Here is his mark, among the rest, on the back of my hand. His master"s marks I can"t show you; they are all on my back. Can you believe in my perversity? There was a devil in me that no dog could worry out. I ran away again as soon as I left my bed, and this time I got off. At nightfall I found myself (with a pocketful of the school oatmeal) lost on a moor. I lay down on the fine soft heather, under the lee of a great gray rock. Do you think I felt lonely? Not I! I was away from the master"s cane, away from my schoolfellows" kicks, away from my mother, away from my stepfather; and I lay down that night under my good friend the rock, the happiest boy in all Scotland!"
Through the wretched childhood which that one significant circ.u.mstance disclosed, Mr. Brock began to see dimly how little was really strange, how little really unaccountable, in the character of the man who was now speaking to him.
"I slept soundly," Midwinter continued, "under my friend the rock. When I woke in the morning, I found a st.u.r.dy old man with a fiddle sitting on one side of me, and two performing dogs on the other. Experience had made me too sharp to tell the truth when the man put his first questions. He didn"t press them; he gave me a good breakfast out of his knapsack, and he let me romp with the dogs. "I"ll tell you what," he said, when he had got my confidence in this manner, "you want three things, my man: you want a new father, a new family, and a new name.
I"ll be your father. I"ll let you have the dogs for your brothers; and, if you"ll promise to be very careful of it, I"ll give you my own name into the bargain. Ozias Midwinter, Junior, you have had a good breakfast; if you want a good dinner, come along with me!" He got up, the dogs trotted after him, and I trotted after the dogs. Who was my new father? you will ask. A half-breed gypsy, sir; a drunkard, a ruffian, and a thief--and the best friend I ever had! Isn"t a man your friend who gives you your food, your shelter, and your education? Ozias Midwinter taught me to dance the Highland fling, to throw somersaults, to walk on stilts, and to sing songs to his fiddle. Sometimes we roamed the country, and performed at fairs. Sometimes we tried the large towns, and enlivened bad company over its cups. I was a nice, lively little boy of eleven years old, and bad company, the women especially, took a fancy to me and my nimble feet. I was vagabond enough to like the life. The dogs and I lived together, ate, and drank, and slept together. I can"t think of those poor little four-footed brothers of mine, even now, without a choking in the throat. Many is the beating we three took together; many is the hard day"s dancing we did together; many is the night we have slept together, and whimpered together, on the cold hill-side. I"m not trying to distress you, sir; I"m only telling you the truth. The life with all its hardships was a life that fitted me, and the half-breed gypsy who gave me his name, ruffian as he was, was a ruffian I liked."
"A man who beat you!" exclaimed Mr. Brock, in astonishment.
"Didn"t I tell you just now, sir, that I lived with the dogs? and did you ever hear of a dog who liked his master the worse for beating him?
Hundreds of thousands of miserable men, women, and children would have liked that man (as I liked him) if he had always given them what he always gave me--plenty to eat. It was stolen food mostly, and my new gypsy father was generous with it. He seldom laid the stick on us when he was sober; but it diverted him to hear us yelp when he was drunk. He died drunk, and enjoyed his favorite amus.e.m.e.nt with his last breath. One day (when I had been two years in his service), after giving us a good dinner out on the moor, he sat down with his back against a stone, and called us up to divert himself with his stick. He made the dogs yelp first, and then he called to me. I didn"t go very willingly; he had been drinking harder than usual, and the more he drank the better he liked his after-dinner amus.e.m.e.nt. He was in high good-humor that day, and he hit me so hard that he toppled over, in his drunken state, with the force of his own blow. He fell with his face in a puddle, and lay there without moving. I and the dogs stood at a distance, and looked at him: we thought he was feigning, to get us near and have another stroke at us. He feigned so long that we ventured up to him at last. It took me some time to pull him over; he was a heavy man. When I did get him on his back, he was dead. We made all the outcry we could; but the dogs were little, and I was little, and the place was lonely; and no help came to us. I took his fiddle and his stick; I said to my two brothers, "Come along, we must get our own living now;" and we went away heavy-hearted, and left him on the moor. Unnatural as it may seem to you, I was sorry for him. I kept his ugly name through all my after-wanderings, and I have enough of the old leaven left in me to like the sound of it still. Midwinter or Armadale, never mind my name now, we will talk of that afterward; you must know the worst of me first."
"Why not the best of you?" said Mr. Brock, gently.
"Thank you, sir; but I am here to tell the truth. We will get on, if you please, to the next chapter in my story. The dogs and I did badly, after our master"s death; our luck was against us. I lost one of my little brothers--the best performer of the two; he was stolen, and I never recovered him. My fiddle and my stilts were taken from me next, by main force, by a tramp who was stronger than I. These misfortunes drew Tommy and me--I beg your pardon, sir, I mean the dog--closer together than ever.
"I think we had some kind of dim foreboding on both sides that we had not done with our misfortunes yet; anyhow, it was not very long before we were parted forever. We were neither of us thieves (our master had been satisfied with teaching us to dance); but we both committed an invasion of the rights of property, for all that. Young creatures, even when they are half starved, cannot resist taking a run sometimes on a fine morning. Tommy and I could not resist taking a run into a gentleman"s plantation; the gentleman preserved his game; and the gentleman"s keeper knew his business. I heard a gun go off; you can guess the rest. G.o.d preserve me from ever feeling such misery again as I felt when I lay down by Tommy, and took him, dead and b.l.o.o.d.y, in my arms! The keeper attempted to part us; I bit him, like the wild animal I was. He tried the stick on me next; he might as well have tried it on one of the trees. The noise reached the ears of two young ladies riding near the place--daughters of the gentleman on whose property I was a trespa.s.ser.
They were too well brought up to lift their voices against the sacred right of preserving game, but they were kind-hearted girls, and they pitied me, and took me home with them. I remember the gentlemen of the house (keen sportsmen all of them) roaring with laughter as I went by the windows, crying, with my little dead dog in my arms. Don"t suppose I complain of their laughter; it did me good service; it roused the indignation of the two ladies. One of them took me into her own garden, and showed me a place where I might bury my dog under the flowers, and be sure that no other hands should ever disturb him again. The other went to her father, and persuaded him to give the forlorn little vagabond a chance in the house, under one of the upper servants. Yes!
you have been cruising in company with a man who was once a foot-boy.
I saw you look at me, when I amused Mr. Armadale by laying the cloth on board the yacht. Now you know why I laid it so neatly, and forgot nothing. It has been my good fortune to see something of society; I have helped to fill its stomach and black its boots. My experience of the servants" hall was not a long one. Before I had worn out my first suit of livery, there was a scandal in the house. It was the old story; there is no need to tell it over again for the thousandth time. Loose money left on a table, and not found there again; all the servants with characters to appeal to except the foot-boy, who had been rashly taken on trial. Well! well! I was lucky in that house to the last; I was not prosecuted for taking what I had not only never touched, but never even seen: I was only turned out. One morning I went in my old clothes to the grave where I had buried Tommy. I gave the place a kiss; I said good-by to my little dead dog; and there I was, out in the world again, at the ripe age of thirteen years!"
"In that friendless state, and at that tender age," said Mr. Brock, "did no thought cross your mind of going home again?"
"I went home again, sir, that very night--I slept on the hill-side. What other home had I? In a day or two"s time I drifted back to the large towns and the bad company, the great open country was so lonely to me, now I had lost the dogs! Two sailors picked me up next. I was a handy lad, and I got a cabin-boy"s berth on board a coasting-vessel. A cabin-boy"s berth means dirt to live in, offal to eat, a man"s work on a boy"s shoulders, and the rope"s-end at regular intervals. The vessel touched at a port in the Hebrides. I was as ungrateful as usual to my best benefactors; I ran away again. Some women found me, half dead of starvation, in the northern wilds of the Isle of Skye. It was near the coast and I took a turn with the fishermen next. There was less of the rope"s-end among my new masters; but plenty of exposure to wind and weather, and hard work enough to have killed a boy who was not a seasoned tramp like me. I fought through it till the winter came, and then the fishermen turned me adrift again. I don"t blame them; food was scarce, and mouths were many. With famine staring the whole community in the face, why should they keep a boy who didn"t belong to them? A great city was my only chance in the winter-time; so I went to Glasgow, and all but stepped into the lion"s mouth as soon as I got there. I was minding an empty cart on the Broomielaw, when I heard my stepfather"s voice on the pavement side of the horse by which I was standing. He had met some person whom he knew, and, to my terror and surprise, they were talking about me. Hidden behind the horse, I heard enough of their conversation to know that I had narrowly escaped discovery before I went on board the coasting-vessel. I had met at that time with another vagabond boy of my own age; we had quarreled and parted. The day after, my stepfather"s inquiries were made in that very district, and it became a question with him (a good personal description being unattainable in either case) which of the two boys he should follow. One of them, he was informed, was known as "Brown," and the other as "Midwinter." Brown was just the common name which a cunning runaway boy would be most likely to a.s.sume; Midwinter, just the remarkable name which he would be most likely to avoid. The pursuit had accordingly followed Brown, and had allowed me to escape. I leave you to imagine whether I was not doubly and trebly determined to keep my gypsy master"s name after that. But my resolution did not stop here. I made up my mind to leave the country altogether. After a day or two"s lurking about the outward-bound vessels in port, I found out which sailed first, and hid myself on board. Hunger tried hard to force me out before the pilot had left; but hunger was not new to me, and I kept my place. The pilot was out of the vessel when I made my appearance on deck, and there was nothing for it but to keep me or throw me overboard. The captain said (I have no doubt quite truly) that he would have preferred throwing me overboard; but the majesty of the law does sometimes stand the friend even of a vagabond like me. In that way I came back to a sea-life. In that way I learned enough to make me handy and useful (as I saw you noticed) on board Mr. Armadale"s yacht. I sailed more than one voyage, in more than one vessel, to more than one part of the world, and I might have followed the sea for life, if I could only have kept my temper under every provocation that could be laid on it. I had learned a great deal; but, not having learned that, I made the last part of my last voyage home to the port of Bristol in irons; and I saw the inside of a prison for the first time in my life, on a charge of mutinous conduct to one of my officers. You have heard me with extraordinary patience, sir, and I am glad to tell you, in return, that we are not far now from the end of my story. You found some books, if I remember right, when you searched my luggage at the Somersetshire inn?"
Mr. Brock answered in the affirmative.
"Those books mark the next change in my life--and the last, before I took the usher"s place at the school. My term of imprisonment was not a long one. Perhaps my youth pleaded for me; perhaps the Bristol magistrates took into consideration the time I had pa.s.sed in irons on board ship. Anyhow, I was just turned seventeen when I found myself out on the world again. I had no friends to receive me; I had no place to go to. A sailor"s life, after what had happened, was a life I recoiled from in disgust. I stood in the crowd on the bridge at Bristol, wondering what I should do with my freedom now I had got it back. Whether I had altered in the prison, or whether I was feeling the change in character that comes with coming manhood, I don"t know; but the old reckless enjoyment of the old vagabond life seemed quite worn out of my nature.
An awful sense of loneliness kept me wandering about Bristol, in horror of the quiet country, till after nightfall. I looked at the lights kindling in the parlor windows, with a miserable envy of the happy people inside. A word of advice would have been worth something to me at that time. Well! I got it: a policeman advised me to move on. He was quite right; what else could I do? I looked up at the sky, and there was my old friend of many a night"s watch at sea, the north star. "All points of the compa.s.s are alike to me," I thought to myself; "I"ll go _your_ way." Not even the star would keep me company that night. It got behind a cloud, and left me alone in the rain and darkness. I groped my way to a cart-shed, fell asleep, and dreamed of old times, when I served my gypsy master and lived with the dogs. G.o.d! what I would have given when I woke to have felt Tommy"s little cold muzzle in my hand! Why am I dwelling on these things? Why don"t I get on to the end? You shouldn"t encourage me, sir, by listening, so patiently. After a week more of wandering, without hope to help me, or prospects to look to, I found myself in the streets of Shrewsbury, staring in at the windows of a book-seller"s shop. An old man came to the shop door, looked about him, and saw me. "Do you want a job?" he asked. "And are you not above doing it cheap?" The prospect of having something to do, and some human creature to speak a word to, tempted me, and I did a day"s dirty work in the book-seller"s warehouse for a shilling. More work followed at the same rate. In a week I was promoted to sweep out the shop and put up the shutters. In no very long time after, I was trusted to carry the books out; and when quarter-day came, and the shop-man left, I took his place.
Wonderful luck! you will say; here I had found my way to a friend at last. I had found my way to one of the most merciless misers in England; and I had risen in the little world of Shrewsbury by the purely commercial process of underselling all my compet.i.tors. The job in the warehouse had been declined at the price by every idle man in the town, and I did it. The regular porter received his weekly pittance under weekly protest. I took two shillings less, and made no complaint. The shop-man gave warning on the ground that he was underfed as well as underpaid. I received half his salary, and lived contentedly on his reversionary sc.r.a.ps. Never were two men so well suited to each other as that book-seller and I. _His_ one object in life was to find somebody who would work for him at starvation wages. _My_ one object in life was to find somebody who would give me an asylum over my head. Without a single sympathy in common--without a vestige of feeling of any sort, hostile or friendly, growing up between us on either side--without wishing each other good-night when we parted on the house stairs, or good-morning when we met at the shop counter, we lived alone in that house, strangers from first to last, for two whole years. A dismal existence for a lad of my age, was it not? You are a clergyman and a scholar--surely you can guess what made the life endurable to me?"
Mr. Brock remembered the well-worn volumes which had been found in the usher"s bag. "The books made it endurable to you," he said.
The eyes of the castaway kindled with a new light.
"Yes!" he said, "the books--the generous friends who met me without suspicion--the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride are the years I pa.s.sed in the miser"s house. The only unalloyed pleasure I have ever tasted is the pleasure that I found for myself on the miser"s shelves.
Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught. There were few customers to serve, for the books were mostly of the solid and scholarly kind. No responsibilities rested on me, for the accounts were kept by my master, and only the small sums of money were suffered to pa.s.s through my hands. He soon found out enough of me to know that my honesty was to be trusted, and that my patience might be counted on, treat me as he might. The one insight into _his_ character which I obtained, on my side, widened the distance between us to its last limits. He was a confirmed opium-eater in secret--a prodigal in laudanum, though a miser in all besides. He never confessed his frailty, and I never told him I had found it out. He had his pleasure apart from me, and I had my pleasure apart from _him_. Week after week, month after month, there we sat, without a friendly word ever pa.s.sing between us--I, alone with my book at the counter; he, alone with his ledger in the parlor, dimly visible to me through the dirty window-pane of the gla.s.s door, sometimes poring over his figures, sometimes lost and motionless for hours in the ecstasy of his opium trance. Time pa.s.sed, and made no impression on us; the seasons of two years came and went, and found us still unchanged. One morning, at the opening of the third year, my master did not appear, as usual, to give me my allowance for breakfast.
I went upstairs, and found him helpless in his bed. He refused to trust me with the keys of the cupboard, or to let me send for a doctor.
I bought a morsel of bread, and went back to my books, with no more feeling for _him_ (I honestly confess it) than he would have had for _me_ under the same circ.u.mstances. An hour or two later I was roused from my reading by an occasional customer of ours, a retired medical man. He went upstairs. I was glad to get rid of him and return to my books. He came down again, and disturbed me once more. "I don"t much like you, my lad," he said; "but I think it my duty to say that you will soon have to shift for yourself. You are no great favorite in the town, and you may have some difficulty in finding a new place. Provide yourself with a written character from your master before it is too late." He spoke to me coldly. I thanked him coldly on my side, and got my character the same day. Do you think my master let me have it for nothing? Not he! He bargained with me on his deathbed. I was his creditor for a month"s salary, and he wouldn"t write a line of my testimonial until I had first promised to forgive him the debt. Three days afterward he died, enjoying to the last the happiness of having overreached his shop-man. "Aha!" he whispered, when the doctor formally summoned me to take leave of him, "I got you cheap!" Was Ozias Midwinter"s stick as cruel as that? I think not. Well! there I was, out on the world again, but surely with better prospects this time. I had taught myself to read Latin, Greek, and German; and I had got my written character to speak for me. All useless! The doctor was quite right; I was not liked in the town. The lower order of the people despised me for selling my services to the miser at the miser"s price. As for the better cla.s.ses, I did with them (G.o.d knows how!) what I have always done with everybody except Mr. Armadale--I produced a disagreeable impression at first sight; I couldn"t mend it afterward; and there was an end of me in respectable quarters. It is quite likely I might have spent all my savings, my puny little golden offspring of two years" miserable growth, but for a school advertis.e.m.e.nt which I saw in a local paper. The heartlessly mean terms that were offered encouraged me to apply; and I got the place. How I prospered in it, and what became of me next, there is no need to tell you. The thread of my story is all wound off; my vagabond life stands stripped of its mystery; and you know the worst of me at last."
A moment of silence followed those closing words. Midwinter rose from the window-seat, and came back to the table with the letter from Wildbad in his hand.
"My father"s confession has told you who I am; and my own confession has told you what my life has been," he said, addressing Mr. Brock, without taking the chair to which the rector pointed. "I promised to make a clean breast of it when I first asked leave to enter this room. Have I kept my word?"
"It is impossible to doubt it," replied Mr. Brock. "You have established your claim on my confidence and my sympathy. I should be insensible, indeed, if I could know what I now know of your childhood and your youth, and not feel something of Allan"s kindness for Allan"s friend."
"Thank you, sir," said Midwinter, simply and gravely.
He sat down opposite Mr. Brook at the table for the first time.
"In a few hours you will have left this place," he proceeded. "If I can help you to leave it with your mind at ease, I will. There is more to be said between us than we have said up to this time. My future relations with Mr. Armadale are still left undecided; and the serious question raised by my father"s letter is a question which we have neither of us faced yet."
He paused, and looked with a momentary impatience at the candle still burning on the table, in the morning light. The struggle to speak with composure, and to keep his own feelings stoically out of view, was evidently growing harder and harder to him.
"It may possibly help your decision," he went on, "if I tell you how I determined to act toward Mr. Armadale--in the matter of the similarity of our names--when I first read this letter, and when I had composed myself sufficiently to be able to think at all." He stopped, and cast a second impatient look at the lighted candle. "Will you excuse the odd fancy of an odd man?" he asked, with a faint smile. "I want to put out the candle: I want to speak of the new subject, in the new light."