One stepping back under the dark shelter of the bulwark, and one
standing out boldly in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends
turned face to face on the deck of the timber-ship, and looked at each
other in silence. The next moment Allan’s inveterate recklessness seized
on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself
astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and
heartiest laugh.
“All my fault,” he said; “but there’s no help for it now. Here we are,
hard and fast in a trap of our own setting; and there goes the last of
the doctor’s boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can’t half see you
there, and I want to know what’s to be done next.”
Midwinter neither answered nor moved. Allan left the bulwark, and,
mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the
Sound.
“One thing is pretty certain,” he said. “With the current on that side,
and the sunken rocks on this, we can’t find our way out of the scrape
by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the
wreck. Let’s try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!” he
called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. “Come and see what the
old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us astern.” He sauntered on,
with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song.
His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but, at the
light touch of his hand in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out
slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. “Come along!” cried Allan,
suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a
word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached
the stern end of the wreck: the first time, to throw aside his hat,
and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time,
reeling, giddy, to hold for a moment by a ring-bolt close at hand; the
last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards ahead), to look
stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes
that other footsteps are following him in the dark. “Not yet!” he
whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. “I shall
see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door.”
The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breakers’ lumber,
accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object
that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck was the low wooden
structure which held the cabin door and roofed in the cabin stairs. The
wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed, but
the cabin entrance, and all that had belonged to it, had been left
untouched. The scuttle was on, and the door was closed.
On gaining the after-part of the vessel, Allan walked straight to the
stern, and looked out to sea over the taffrail. No such thing as a
boat was in view anywhere on the quiet, moon-brightened waters. Knowing
Midwinter’s sight to be better than his own, he called out, “Come up
here, and see if there’s a fisherman within hail of us.” Hearing no
reply, he looked back. Midwinter had followed him as far as the cabin,
and had stopped there. He called again in a louder voice, and beckoned
impatiently. Midwinter had heard the call, for he looked up, but still
he never stirred from his place. There he stood, as if he had reached
the utmost limits of the ship and could go no further.
Allan went back and joined him. It was not easy to discover what he was
looking at, for he kept his face turned away from the moonlight; but it
seemed as if his eyes were fixed, with a strange expression of inquiry,
on the cabin door. “What is there to look at there?” Allan asked.
“Let’s see if it’s locked.” As he took a step forward to open the door,
Midwinter’s hand seized him suddenly by the coat collar and forced him
back. The moment after, the hand relaxed without losing its grasp, and
trembled violently, like the hand of a man completely unnerved.
“Am I to consider myself in custody?” asked Allan, half astonished and
half amused. “Why in the name of wonder do you keep staring at the cabin
door? Any suspicious noises below? It’s no use disturbing the rats--if
that’s what you mean--we haven’t got a dog with us. Men? Living men they
can’t be; for they would have heard us and come on deck. Dead men? Quite
impossible! No ship’s crew could be drowned in a land-locked place like
this, unless the vessel broke up under them--and here’s the vessel
as steady as a church to speak for herself. Man alive, how your hand
trembles! What is there to scare you in that rotten old cabin? What are
you shaking and shivering about? Any company of the supernatural sort on
board? Mercy preserve us! (as the old women say) do you see a ghost?”
“_I see two_!” answered the other, driven headlong into speech and
action by a maddening temptation to reveal the truth. “Two!” he
repeated, his breath bursting from him in deep, heavy gasps, as he tried
vainly to force back the horrible words. “The ghost of a man like you,
drowning in the cabin! And the ghost of a man like me, turning the lock
of the door on him!”
Once more young Armadale’s hearty laughter rang out loud and long
through the stillness of the night.
“Turning the lock of the door, is he?” said Allan, as soon as his
merriment left him breath enough to speak. “That’s a devilish unhandsome
action, Master Midwinter, on the part of your ghost. The least I can do,
after that, is to let mine out of the cabin, and give him the run of the
ship.”
With no more than a momentary exertion of his superior strength, he
freed himself easily from Midwinter’s hold. “Below there!” he called
out, gayly, as he laid his strong hand on the crazy lock, and tore open
the cabin door. “Ghost of Allan Armadale, come on deck!” In his terrible
ignorance of the truth, he put his head into the doorway and looked
down, laughing, at the place where his murdered father had died. “Pah!”
he exclaimed, stepping back suddenly, with a shudder of disgust. “The
air is foul already; and the cabin is full of water.”
It was true. The sunken rocks on which the vessel lay wrecked had burst
their way through her lower timbers astern, and the water had welled up
through the rifted wood. Here, where the deed had been done, the fatal
parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been
in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the
sons.
Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, a little surprised at
the sudden silence which appeared to have fallen on his friend from the
moment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to
look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had
dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face
turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead
man.
In a moment Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely
limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter’s head on his knee, for a
chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. “What am I to
do?” he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. “Not a drop
of water near, but the foul water in the cabin.” A sudden recollection
crossed his memory, the florid color rushed back over his face, and he
drew from his pocket a wicker-covered flask. “God bless the doctor for
giving me this before we sailed!” he broke out, fervently, as he poured
down Midwinter’s throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask
contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the
swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. “Have I
been dreaming?” he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan’s face. His
eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck
rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight
of them, and hid his face on Allan’s knee. “No dream!” he murmured to
himself, mournfully. “Oh me, no dream!”
“You have been overtired all day,” said Allan, “and this infernal
adventure of ours has upset you. Take some more whisky, it’s sure to
do you good. Can you sit by yourself, if I put you against the bulwark,
so?”
“Why by myself? Why do you leave me?” asked Midwinter.
Allan pointed to the mizzen shrouds of the wreck, which were still left
standing. “You are not well enough to rough it here till the workmen
come off in the morning,” he said. “We must find our way on shore at
once, if we can. I am going up to get a good view all round, and see if
there’s a house within hail of us.”
Even in the moment that passed while those few words were spoken,
Midwinter’s eyes wandered back distrustfully to the fatal cabin door.
“Don’t go near it!” he whispered. “Don’t try to open it, for God’s
sake!”
“No, no,” returned Allan, humoring him. “When I come down from the
rigging, I’ll come back here.” He said the words a little constrainedly,
noticing, for the first time while he now spoke, an underlying distress
in Midwinter’s face, which grieved and perplexed him. “You’re not angry
with me?” he said, in his simple, sweet-tempered way. “All this is my
fault, I know; and I was a brute and a fool to laugh at you, when I
ought to have seen you were ill. I am so sorry, Midwinter. Don’t be
angry with me!”
Midwinter slowly raised his head. His eyes rested with a mournful
interest, long and tender, on Allan’s anxious face.
“Angry?” he repeated, in his lowest, gentlest tones. “Angry with
_you_?--Oh, my poor boy, were you to blame for being kind to me when I
was ill in the old west-country inn? And was I to blame for feeling your
kindness thankfully? Was it our fault that we never doubted each other,
and never knew that we were traveling together blindfold on the way that
was to lead us here? The cruel time is coming, Allan, when we shall
rue the day we ever met. Shake hands, brother, on the edge of the
precipice--shake hands while we are brothers still!”
Allan turned away quickly, convinced that his mind had not yet recovered
the shock of the fainting fit. “Don’t forget the whisky!” he said,
cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the
mizzen-top.
It was past two, the moon was waning, and the darkness that comes before
dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as he now
stood looking out from the elevation of the mizzen-top, spread the broad
and lonely sea. Before him were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the
broken waters of the channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm
of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly
from the water-side, were the rocks and precipices, with their little
table-lands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling
heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand rose the craggy
sides of the Islet of the Calf, here rent wildly into deep black chasms,
there lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No
sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of
the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening
mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward
waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the
cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful
hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day.
Even Allan’s careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The
sound of his own voice startled him when he looked down and hailed his
friend on deck.
“I think I see one house,” he said. “Here-away, on the mainland to the
right.” He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white,
with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow,
on the main island. “It looks like a stone house and inclosure,” he
resumed. “I’ll hail it, on the chance.” He passed his arm round a rope
to steady himself, made a speaking-trumpet of his hands, and suddenly
dropped them again without uttering a sound. “It’s so awfully quiet,”
he whispered to himself. “I’m half afraid to call out.” He looked down
again on deck. “I shan’t startle you, Midwinter, shall I?” he said, with
an uneasy laugh. He looked once more at the faint white object, in
the grassy hollow. “It won’t do to have come up here for nothing,” he
thought, and made a speaking-trumpet of his hands again. This time he
gave the hail with the whole power of his lungs. “On shore there!” he
shouted, turning his face to the main island. “Ahoy-hoy-hoy!”
The last echoes of his voice died away and were lost. No sound answered
him but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead.
He looked down again at his friend, and saw the dark figure of Midwinter
rise erect, and pace the deck backward and forward, never disappearing
out of sight of the cabin when it retired toward the bows of the wreck,
and never passing beyond the cabin when it returned toward the stern.
“He is impatient to get away,” thought Allan; “I’ll try again.” He
hailed the land once more, and, taught by previous experience, pitched
his voice in its highest key.
This time another sound than the sound of the bubbling water answered
him. The lowing of frightened cattle rose from the building in the
grassy hollow, and traveled far and drearily through the stillness
of the morning air. Allan waited and listened. If the building was a
farmhouse the disturbance among the beasts would rouse the men. If it
was only a cattle-stable, nothing more would happen. The lowing of
the frightened brutes rose and fell drearily, the minutes passed, and
nothing happened.
“Once more!” said Allan, looking down at the restless figure pacing
beneath him. For the third time he hailed the land. For the third time
he waited and listened.
In a pause of silence among the cattle, he heard behind him, on the
opposite shore of the channel, faint and far among the solitudes of the
Islet of the Calf, a sharp, sudden sound, like the distant clash of a
heavy door-bolt drawn back. Turning at once in the new direction, he
strained his eyes to look for a house. The last faint rays of the
waning moonlight trembled here and there on the higher rocks, and on the
steeper pinnacles of ground, but great strips of darkness lay dense
and black over all the land between; and in that darkness the house, if
house there were, was lost to view.
“I have roused somebody at last,” Allan called out, encouragingly, to
Midwinter, still walking to and fro on the deck, strangely indifferent
to all that was passing above and beyond him. “Look out for the
answering, hail!” And with his face set toward the islet, Allan shouted
for help.
The shout was not answered, but mimicked with a shrill, shrieking
derision, with wilder and wilder cries, rising out of the deep distant
darkness, and mingling horribly the expression of a human voice with the
sound of a brute’s. A sudden suspicion crossed Allan’s mind, which
made his head swim and turned his hand cold as it held the rigging. In
breathless silence he looked toward the quarter from which the first
mimicry of his cry for help had come. After a moment’s pause the shrieks
were renewed, and the sound of them came nearer. Suddenly a figure,
which seemed the figure of a man, leaped up black on a pinnacle of
rock, and capered and shrieked in the waning gleam of the moonlight.
The screams of a terrified woman mingled with the cries of the capering
creature on the rock. A red spark flashed out in the darkness from a
light kindled in an invisible window. The hoarse shouting of a man’s
voice in anger was heard through the noise. A second black figure leaped
up on the rock, struggled with the first figure, and disappeared with it
in the darkness. The cries grew fainter and fainter, the screams of the
woman were stilled, the hoarse voice of the man was heard again for a
moment, hailing the wreck in words made unintelligible by the distance,
but in tones plainly expressive of rage and fear combined. Another
moment, and the clang of the door-bolt was heard again, the red spark
of light was quenched in darkness, and all the islet lay quiet in the
shadows once more. The lowing of the cattle on the main-land ceased,
rose again, stopped. Then, cold and cheerless as ever, the eternal
bubbling of the broken water welled up through the great gap of
silence--the one sound left, as the mysterious stillness of the hour
fell like a mantle from the heavens, and closed over the wreck.
Allan descended from his place in the mizzen-top, and joined his friend
again on deck.
“We must wait till the ship-breakers come off to their work,” he said,
meeting Midwinter halfway in the course of his restless walk. “After
what has happened, I don’t mind confessing that I’ve had enough of
hailing the land. Only think of there being a madman in that house
ashore, and of my waking him! Horrible, wasn’t it?”
Midwinter stood still for a moment, and looked at Allan, with the
perplexed air of a man who hears circumstances familiarly mentioned to
which he is himself a total stranger. He appeared, if such a thing had
been possible, to have passed over entirely without notice all that had
just happened on the Islet of the Calf.
“Nothing is horrible _out_ of this ship,” he said. “Everything is
horrible _in_ it.”
Answering in those strange words, he turned away again, and went on with
his walk.
Allan picked up the flask of whisky lying on the deck near him, and
revived his spirits with a dram. “Here’s one thing on board that isn’t
horrible,” he retorted briskly, as he screwed on the stopper of the
flask; “and here’s another,” he added, as he took a cigar from his
case and lit it. “Three o’clock!” he went on, looking at his watch, and
settling himself comfortably on deck with his back against the bulwark.
“Daybreak isn’t far off; we shall have the piping of the birds to cheer
us up before long. I say, Midwinter, you seem to have quite got over
that unlucky fainting fit. How you do keep walking! Come here and have
a cigar, and make yourself comfortable. What’s the good of tramping
backward and forward in that restless way?”
“I am waiting,” said Midwinter.
“Waiting! What for?”
“For what is to happen to you or to me--or to both of us--before we are
out of this ship.”
“With submission to your superior judgment, my dear fellow, I think
quite enough has happened already. The adventure will do very well as
it stands now; more of it is more than I want.” He took another dram
of whisky, and rambled on, between the puffs of his cigar, in his usual
easy way. “I’ve not got your fine imagination, old boy; and I hope the
next thing that happens will be the appearance of the workmen’s boat. I
suspect that queer fancy of yours has been running away with you while
you were down here all by yourself. Come, now, what were you thinking of
while I was up in the mizzen-top frightening the cows?”
Midwinter suddenly stopped. “Suppose I tell you?” he said.
“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.