Armadale

"Yes. I don"t spare you. I don"t spare myself. I _do_ spare my wife."

"You force me to a conclusion, sir, which is a very serious one," said Mr. Neal. "If I am to finish this letter under your dictation, I must claim permission--having read aloud the greater part of it already--to read aloud what remains, in the hearing of this gentleman, as a witness."

"Read it."

Gravely doubting, the doctor resumed his chair. Gravely doubting, Mr.

Neal turned the leaf, and read the next words:

"There is more to tell before I can leave the dead man to his rest. I have described the finding of his body. But I have not described the circ.u.mstances under which he met his death.

"He was known to have been on deck when the yacht"s boats were seen approaching the wreck; and he was afterward missed in the confusion caused by the panic of the crew. At that time the water was five feet deep in the cabin, and was rising fast. There was little doubt of his having gone down into that water of his own accord. The discovery of his wife"s jewel box, close under him, on the floor, explained his presence in the cabin. He was known to have seen help approaching, and it was quite likely that he had thereupon gone below to make an effort at saving the box. It was less probable--though it might still have been inferred--that his death was the result of some accident in diving, which had for the moment deprived him of his senses. But a discovery made by the yacht"s crew pointed straight to a conclusion which struck the men, one and all, with the same horror. When the course of their search brought them to the cabin, they found the scuttle bolted, and the door locked on the outside. Had some one closed the cabin, not knowing he was there? Setting the panic-stricken condition of the crew out of the question, there was no motive for closing the cabin before leaving the wreck. But one other conclusion remained. Had some murderous hand purposely locked the man in, and left him to drown as the water rose over him?

"Yes. A murderous hand had locked him in, and left him to drown. That hand was mine."

The Scotchman started up from the table; the doctor shrank from the bedside. The two looked at the dying wretch, mastered by the same loathing, chilled by the same dread. He lay there, with his child"s head on his breast; abandoned by the sympathies of man, accursed by the justice of G.o.d--he lay there, in the isolation of Cain, and looked back at them.

At the moment when the two men rose to their feet, the door leading into the next room was shaken heavily on the outer side, and a sound like the sound of a fall, striking dull on their ears, silenced them both.

Standing nearest to the door, the doctor opened it, pa.s.sed through, and closed it instantly. Mr. Neal turned his back on the bed, and waited the event in silence. The sound, which had failed to awaken the child, had failed also to attract the father"s notice. His own words had taken him far from all that was pa.s.sing at his deathbed. His helpless body was back on the wreck, and the ghost of his lifeless hand was turning the lock of the cabin door.

A bell rang in the next room--eager voices talked; hurried footsteps moved in it--an interval pa.s.sed, and the doctor returned. "Was she listening?" whispered Mr. Neal, in German. "The women are restoring her," the doctor whispered back. "She has heard it all. In G.o.d"s name, what are we to do next?" Before it was possible to reply, Mr. Armadale spoke. The doctor"s return had roused him to a sense of present things.

"Go on," he said, as if nothing had happened.

"I refuse to meddle further with your infamous secret," returned Mr.

Neal. "You are a murderer on your own confession. If that letter is to be finished, don"t ask _me_ to hold the pen for you."

"You gave me your promise," was the reply, spoken with the same immovable self-possession. "You must write for me, or break your word."

For the moment, Mr. Neal was silenced. There the man lay--sheltered from the execration of his fellow-creatures, under the shadow of Death--beyond the reach of all human condemnation, beyond the dread of all mortal laws; sensitive to nothing but his one last resolution to finish the letter addressed to his son.

Mr. Neal drew the doctor aside. "A word with you," he said, in German.

"Do you persist in a.s.serting that he may be speechless before we can send to Stuttgart?"

"Look at his lips," said the doctor, "and judge for yourself."

His lips answered for him: the reading of the narrative had left its mark on them already. A distortion at the corners of his mouth, which had been barely noticeable when Mr. Neal entered the room, was plainly visible now. His slow articulation labored more and more painfully with every word he uttered. The position was emphatically a terrible one.

After a moment more of hesitation, Mr. Neal made a last attempt to withdraw from it.

"Now my eyes are open," he said, sternly, "do you dare hold me to an engagement which you forced on me blindfold?"

"No," answered Mr. Armadale. "I leave you to break your word."

The look which accompanied that reply stung the Scotchman"s pride to the quick. When he spoke next, he spoke seated in his former place at the table.

"No man ever yet said of me that I broke my word," he retorted, angrily; "and not even you shall say it of me now. Mind this! If you hold me to my promise, I hold you to my condition. I have reserved my freedom of action, and I warn you I will use it at my own sole discretion, as soon as I am released from the sight of you."

"Remember he is dying," pleaded the doctor, gently.

"Take your place, sir," said Mr. Neal, pointing to the empty chair.

"What remains to be read, I will only read in your hearing. What remains to be written, I will only write in your presence. _You_ brought me here. I have a right to insist--and I do insist--on your remaining as a witness to the last."

The doctor accepted his position without remonstrance. Mr. Neal returned to the ma.n.u.script, and read what remained of it uninterruptedly to the end:

"Without a word in my own defense, I have acknowledged my guilt. Without a word in my own defense, I will reveal how the crime was committed.

"No thought of him was in my mind, when I saw his wife insensible on the deck of the timber-ship. I did my part in lowering her safely into the boat. Then, and not till then, I felt the thought of him coming back. In the confusion that prevailed while the men of the yacht were forcing the men of the ship to wait their time, I had an opportunity of searching for him un.o.bserved. I stepped back from the bulwark, not knowing whether he was away in the first boat, or whether he was still on board--I stepped back, and saw him mount the cabin stairs empty-handed, with the water dripping from him. After looking eagerly toward the boat (without noticing me), he saw there was time to spare before the crew were taken.

"Once more!" he said to himself--and disappeared again, to make a last effort at recovering the jewel box. The devil at my elbow whispered, "Don"t shoot him like a man: drown him like a dog!" He was under water when I bolted the scuttle. But his head rose to the surface before I could close the cabin door. I looked at him, and he looked at me--and I locked the door in his face. The next minute, I was back among the last men left on deck. The minute after, it was too late to repent. The storm was threatening us with destruction, and the boat"s crew were pulling for their lives from the ship.

"My son! I have pursued you from my grave with a confession which my love might have spared you. Read on, and you will know why.

"I will say nothing of my sufferings; I will plead for no mercy to my memory. There is a strange sinking at my heart, a strange trembling in my hand, while I write these lines, which warns me to hasten to the end.

I left the island without daring to look for the last time at the woman whom I had lost so miserably, whom I had injured so vilely. When I left, the whole weight of the suspicion roused by the manner of Ingleby"s death rested on the crew of the French vessel. No motive for the supposed murder could be brought home to any of them; but they were known to be, for the most part, outlawed ruffians capable of any crime, and they were suspected and examined accordingly. It was not till afterward that I heard by accident of the suspicion shifting round at last to me. The widow alone recognized the vague description given of the strange man who had made one of the yacht"s crew, and who had disappeared the day afterward. The widow alone knew, from that time forth, why her husband had been murdered, and who had done the deed.

When she made that discovery, a false report of my death had been previously circulated in the island. Perhaps I was indebted to the report for my immunity from all legal proceedings; perhaps (no eye but Ingleby"s having seen me lock the cabin door) there was not evidence enough to justify an inquiry; perhaps the widow shrank from the disclosures which must have followed a public charge against me, based on her own bare suspicion of the truth. However it might be, the crime which I had committed unseen has remained a crime unpunished from that time to this.

"I left Madeira for the West Indies in disguise. The first news that met me when the ship touched at Barbadoes was the news of my mother"s death.

I had no heart to return to the old scenes. The prospect of living at home in solitude, with the torment of my own guilty remembrances gnawing at me day and night, was more than I had the courage to confront.

Without landing, or discovering myself to any one on sh.o.r.e, I went on as far as the ship would take me--to the island of Trinidad.

"At that place I first saw your mother. It was my duty to tell her the truth--and I treacherously kept my secret. It was my duty to spare her the hopeless sacrifice of her freedom and her happiness to such an existence as mine--and I did her the injury of marrying her. If she is alive when you read this, grant her the mercy of still concealing the truth. The one atonement I can make to her is to keep her unsuspicious to the last of the man she has married. Pity her, as I have pitied her.

Let this letter be a sacred confidence between father and son.

"The time when you were born was the time when my health began to give way. Some months afterward, in the first days of my recovery, you were brought to me; and I was told that you had been christened during my illness. Your mother had done as other loving mothers do--she had christened her first-born by his father"s name. You, too, were Allan Armadale. Even in that early time--even while I was happily ignorant of what I have discovered since--my mind misgave me when I looked at you, and thought of that fatal name.

"As soon as I could be moved, my presence was required at my estates in Barbadoes. It crossed my mind--wild as the idea may appear to you--to renounce the condition which compelled my son as well as myself to take the Armadale name, or lose the succession to the Armadale property.

But, even in those days, the rumor of a contemplated emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves--the emanc.i.p.ation which is now close at hand--was spreading widely in the colony. No man could tell how the value of West Indian property might be affected if that threatened change ever took place.

No man could tell--if I gave you back my own paternal name, and left you without other provision in the future than my own paternal estate--how you might one day miss the broad Armadale acres, or to what future penury I might be blindly condemning your mother and yourself. Mark how the fatalities gathered one on the other! Mark how your Christian name came to you, how your surname held to you, in spite of me!

"My health had improved in my old home--but it was for a time only. I sank again, and the doctors ordered me to Europe. Avoiding England (why, you may guess), I took my pa.s.sage, with you and your mother, for France.

From France we pa.s.sed into Italy. We lived here; we lived there. It was useless. Death had got met and Death followed me, go where I might. I bore it, for I had an alleviation to turn to which I had not deserved.

You may shrink in horror from the very memory of me now. In those days, you comforted me. The only warmth I still felt at my heart was the warmth you brought to it. My last glimpses of happiness in this world were the glimpses given me by my infant son.

"We removed from Italy, and went next to Lausanne--the place from which I am now writing to you. The post of this morning has brought me news, later and fuller than any I had received thus far, of the widow of the murdered man. The letter lies before me while I write. It comes from a friend of my early days, who has seen her, and spoken to her--who has been the first to inform her that the report of my death in Madeira was false. He writes, at a loss to account for the violent agitation which she showed on hearing that I was still alive, that I was married, and that I had an infant son. He asks me if I can explain it. He speaks in terms of sympathy for her--a young and beautiful woman, buried in the retirement of a fishing-village on the Devonshire coast; her father dead; her family estranged from her, in merciless disapproval of her marriage. He writes words which might have cut me to the heart, but for a closing pa.s.sage in his letter, which seized my whole attention the instant I came to it, and which has forced from me the narrative that these pages contain.

"I now know what never even entered my mind as a suspicion till the letter reached me. I now know that the widow of the man whose death lies at my door has borne a posthumous child. That child is a boy--a year older than my own son. Secure in her belief in my death, his mother has done what my son"s mother did: she has christened her child by his father"s name. Again, in the second generation, there are two Allan Armadales as there were in the first. After working its deadly mischief with the fathers, the fatal resemblance of names has descended to work its deadly mischief with the sons.

"Guiltless minds may see nothing thus far but the result of a series of events which could lead no other way. I--with that man"s life to answer for--I, going down into my grave, with my crime unpunished and unatoned, see what no guiltless minds can discern. I see danger in the future, begotten of the danger in the past--treachery that is the offspring of _his_ treachery, and crime that is the child of _my_ crime. Is the dread that now shakes me to the soul a phantom raised by the superst.i.tion of a dying man? I look into the Book which all Christendom venerates, and the Book tells me that the sin of the father shall be visited on the child.

I look out into the world, and I see the living witnesses round me to that terrible truth. I see the vices which have contaminated the father descending, and contaminating the child; I see the shame which has disgraced the father"s name descending, and disgracing the child"s. I look in on myself, and I see my crime ripening again for the future in the self-same circ.u.mstance which first sowed the seeds of it in the past, and descending, in inherited contamination of evil, from me to my son."

At those lines the writing ended. There the stroke had struck him, and the pen had dropped from his hand.

He knew the place; he remembered the words. At the instant when the reader"s voice stopped, he looked eagerly at the doctor. "I have got what comes next in my mind," he said, with slower and slower articulation. "Help me to speak it."

The doctor administered a stimulant, and signed to Mr. Neal to give him time. After a little delay, the flame of the sinking spirit leaped up in his eyes once more. Resolutely struggling with his failing speech, he summoned the Scotchman to take the pen, and p.r.o.nounced the closing sentences of the narrative, as his memory gave them back to him, one by one, in these words: