Armadale

"He would do anything I asked him, he said. I went into the bedroom and put on my bonnet and shawl.

""Let me be quite sure of the facts before I leave you," I resumed, when I was ready to go out. "You have not shown this letter to anybody but me?"

""Not a living soul has seen it but our two selves."

""What have you done with the note inclosed to Miss Milroy?"

"He produced it from his pocket. I ran it over rapidly--saw that there was nothing in it of the slightest importance--and put it in the fire on the spot. That done, I left Bashwood in the sitting-room, and went to the Sanitarium, with Armadale"s letter in my hand.

"The doctor had gone out, and the servant was unable to say positively at what time he would be back. I went into his study, and wrote a line preparing him for the news I had brought with me, which I sealed up, with Armadale"s letter, in an envelope, to await his return. Having told the servant I would call again in an hour, I left the place.

"It was useless to go back to my lodgings and speak to Bashwood, until I knew first what the doctor meant to do. I walked about the neighborhood, up and down new streets and crescents and squares, with a kind of dull, numbed feeling in me, which prevented, not only all voluntary exercise of thought, but all sensation of bodily fatigue. I remembered the same feeling overpowering me, years ago, on the morning when the people of the prison came to take me into court to be tried for my life. All that frightful scene came back again to my mind in the strangest manner, as if it had been a scene in which some other person had figured. Once or twice I wondered, in a heavy, senseless way, why they had not hanged me!

"When I went back to the Sanitarium, I was informed that the doctor had returned half an hour since, and that he was in his own room anxiously waiting to see me.

"I went into the study, and found him sitting close by the fire with his head down and his hands on his knees. On the table near him, beside Armadale"s letter and my note, I saw, in the little circle of light thrown by the reading-lamp, an open railway guide. Was he meditating flight? It was impossible to tell from his face, when he looked up at me, what he was meditating, or how the shock had struck him when he first discovered that Armadale was a living man.

""Take a seat near the fire," he said. "It"s very raw and cold to-day."

"I took a chair in silence. In silence, on his side, the doctor sat rubbing his knees before the fire.

""Have you nothing to say to me?" I asked.

"He rose, and suddenly removed the shade from the reading-lamp, so that the light fell on my face.

""You are not looking well," he said. "What"s the matter?"

""My head feels dull, and my eyes are heavy and hot," I replied. "The weather, I suppose."

"It was strange how we both got further and further from the one vitally important subject which we had both come together to discuss!

""I think a cup of tea would do you good," remarked the doctor.

"I accepted his suggestion; and he ordered the tea. While it was coming, he walked up and down the room, and I sat by the fire, and not a word pa.s.sed between us on either side.

"The tea revived me; and the doctor noticed a change for the better in my face. He sat down opposite to me at the table, and spoke out at last.

""If I had ten thousand pounds at this moment," he began, "I would give the whole of it never to have compromised myself in your desperate speculation on Mr. Armadale"s death!"

"He said those words with an abruptness, almost with a violence, which was strangely uncharacteristic of his ordinary manner. Was he frightened himself, or was he trying to frighten me? I determined to make him explain himself at the outset, so far as I was concerned. "Wait a moment, doctor," I said. "Do you hold me responsible for what has happened?"

""Certainly not," he replied, stiffly. "Neither you nor anybody could have foreseen what has happened. When I say I would give ten thousand pounds to be out of this business, I am blaming n.o.body but myself.

And when I tell you next that I, for one, won"t allow Mr. Armadale"s resurrection from the sea to be the ruin of me without a fight for it, I tell you, my dear madam, one of the plainest truths I ever told to man or woman in the whole course of my life. Don"t suppose I am invidiously separating my interests from yours in the common danger that now threatens us both. I simply indicate the difference in the risk that we have respectively run. _You_ have not sunk the whole of your resources in establishing a Sanitarium; and _you_ have not made a false declaration before a magistrate, which is punishable as perjury by the law."

"I interrupted him again. His selfishness did me more good than his tea: it roused my temper effectually. "Suppose we let your risk and my risk alone, and come to the point," I said. "What do you mean by making a fight for it? I see a railway guide on your table. Does making a fight for it mean--running away?"

""Running away?" repeated the doctor. "You appear to forget that every farthing I have in the world is embarked in this establishment."

""You stop here, then?" I said.

""Unquestionably!"

""And what do you mean to do when Mr. Armadale comes to England?"

"A solitary fly, the last of his race whom the winter had spared, was buzzing feebly about the doctor"s face. He caught it before he answered me, and held it out across the table in his closed hand.

""If this fly"s name was Armadale," he said, "and if you had got him as I have got him now, what would _you_ do?"

"His eyes, fixed on my face up to this time, turned significantly, as he ended this question, to my widow"s dress. I, too, looked at it when he looked. A thrill of the old deadly hatred and the old deadly determination ran through me again.

""I should kill him," I said.

"The doctor started to his feet (with the fly still in his hand), and looked at me--a little too theatrically--with an expression of the utmost horror.

""Kill him!" repeated the doctor, in a paroxysm of virtuous alarm.

"Violence--murderous violence--in My Sanitarium! You take my breath away!"

"I caught his eye while he was expressing himself in this elaborately indignant manner, scrutinizing me with a searching curiosity which was, to say the least of it, a little at variance with the vehemence of his language and the warmth of his tone. He laughed uneasily when our eyes met, and recovered his smoothly confidential manner in the instant that elapsed before he spoke again.

""I beg a thousand pardons," he said. "I ought to have known better than to take a lady too literally at her word. Permit me to remind you, however, that the circ.u.mstances are too serious for anything in the nature of--let us say, an exaggeration or a joke. You shall hear what I propose, without further preface." He paused, and resumed his figurative use of the fly imprisoned in his hand. "Here is Mr. Armadale. I can let him out, or keep him in, just as I please--and he knows it. I say to him," continued the doctor, facetiously addressing the fly, "Give me proper security, Mr. Armadale, that no proceedings of any sort shall be taken against either this lady or myself, and I will let you out of the hollow of my hand. Refuse--and, be the risk what it may, I will keep you in." Can you doubt, my dear madam, what Mr. Armadale"s answer is, sooner or later, certain to be? Can you doubt," said the doctor, suiting the action to the word, and letting the fly go, "that it will end to the entire satisfaction of all parties, in this way?"

""I won"t say at present," I answered, "whether I doubt or not. Let me make sure that I understand you first. You propose, if I am not mistaken, to shut the doors of this place on Mr. Armadale, and not to let him out again until he has agreed to the terms which it is our interest to impose on him? May I ask, in that case, how you mean to make him walk into the trap that you have set for him here?"

""I propose," said the doctor, with his hand on the railway guide, "ascertaining first at what time during every evening of this month the tidal trains from Dover and Folkestone reach the London Bridge terminus.

And I propose, next, posting a person whom Mr. Armadale knows, and whom you and I can trust, to wait the arrival of the trains, and to meet our man at the moment when he steps out of the railway carriage."

""Have you thought," I inquired, "of who the person is to be?"

""I have thought," said the doctor, taking up Armadale"s letter "of the person to whom this letter is addressed."

"The answer startled me. Was it possible that he and Bashwood knew one another? I put the question immediately.

""Until to-day I never so much as heard of the gentleman"s name," said the doctor. "I have simply pursued the inductive process of reasoning, for which we are indebted to the immortal Bacon. How does this very important letter come into your possession? I can"t insult you by supposing it to have been stolen. Consequently, it has come to you with the leave and license of the person to whom it is addressed.

Consequently, that person is in your confidence. Consequently, he is the first person I think of. You see the process? Very good. Permit me a question or two, on the subject of Mr. Bashwood, before we go on any further."

"The doctor"s questions went as straight to the point as usual. My answers informed him that Mr. Bashwood stood toward Armadale in the relation of steward; that he had received the letter at Thorpe Ambrose that morning, and had brought it straight to me by the first train; that he had not shown it, or spoken of it before leaving, to Major Milroy or to any one else; that I had not obtained this service at his hands by trusting him with my secret; that I had communicated with him in the character of Armadale"s widow; that he had suppressed the letter, under those circ.u.mstances, solely in obedience to a general caution I had given him to keep his own counsel, if anything strange happened at Thorpe Ambrose, until he had first consulted me; and, lastly, that the reason why he had done as I told him in this matter, was that in this matter, and in all others, Mr. Bashwood was blindly devoted to my interests.

"At that point in the interrogatory, the doctor"s eyes began to look at me distrustfully behind the doctor"s spectacles.

""What is the secret of this blind devotion of Mr. Bashwood"s to your interests?" he asked.

"I hesitated for a moment--in pity to Bashwood, not in pity to myself.

"If you must know," I answered, "Mr. Bashwood is in love with me."

""Ay! ay!" exclaimed the doctor, with an air of relief. "I begin to understand now. Is he a young man?"

""He is an old man."

"The doctor laid himself back in his chair, and chuckled softly. "Better and better!" he said. "Here is the very man we want. Who so fit as Mr.