When Mr. Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the strange
contrast of character between them which he had noticed already was
impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of them sat at the
well-spread table, hungry and happy, ranging from dish to dish, and
declaring that he had never made such a breakfast in his life. The other
sat apart at the window; his cup thanklessly deserted before it was
empty, his meat left ungraciously half-eaten on his plate. The
doctor’s morning greeting to the two accurately expressed the differing
impressions which they had produced on his mind.
He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He
bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, “I am afraid you have not
recovered the fatigues of the night.”
“It’s not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits,” said Allan.
“It’s something I have been telling him. It is not my fault, mind. If
I had only known beforehand that he believed in dreams, I wouldn’t have
opened my lips.”
“Dreams?” repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, and
addressing him under a mistaken impression of the meaning of Allan’s
words. “With your constitution, you ought to be well used to dreaming by
this time.”
“This way, doctor; you have taken the wrong turning!” cried Allan.
“I’m the dreamer, not he. Don’t look astonished; it wasn’t in this
comfortable house; it was on board that confounded timber-ship. The fact
is, I fell asleep just before you took us off the wreck; and it’s not to
be denied that I had a very ugly dream. Well, when we got back here--”
“Why do you trouble Mr. Hawbury about a matter that cannot possibly
interest him?” asked Midwinter, speaking for the first time, and
speaking very impatiently.
“I beg your pardon,” returned the doctor, rather sharply; “so far as I
have heard, the matter does interest me.”
“That’s right, doctor!” said Allan. “Be interested, I beg and pray; I
want you to clear his head of the nonsense he has got in it now. What
do you think? He will have it that my dream is a warning to me to avoid
certain people; and he actually persists in saying that one of those
people is--himself! Did you ever hear the like of it? I took great
pains; I explained the whole thing to him. I said, warning be hanged;
it’s all indigestion! You don’t know what I ate and drank at the
doctor’s supper-table; I do. Do you think he would listen to me? Not he.
You try him next; you’re a professional man, and he must listen to you.
Be a good fellow, doctor, and give me a certificate of indigestion; I’ll
show you my tongue with pleasure.”
“The sight of your face is quite enough,” said Mr. Hawbury. “I certify,
on the spot, that you never had such a thing as an indigestion in your
life. Let’s hear about the dream, and see what we can make of it, if you
have no objection, that is to say.”
Allan pointed at Midwinter with his fork.
“Apply to my friend, there,” he said; “he has got a much better account
of it than I can give you. If you’ll believe me, he took it all down in
writing from my own lips; and he made me sign it at the end, as if it
was my ‘last dying speech and confession’ before I went to the gallows.
Out with it, old boy--I saw you put it in your pocket-book--out with
it!”
“Are you really in earnest?” asked Midwinter, producing his pocketbook
with a reluctance which was almost offensive under the circumstances,
for it implied distrust of the doctor in the doctor’s own house.
Mr. Hawbury’s color rose. “Pray don’t show it to me, if you feel the
least unwillingness,” he said, with the elaborate politeness of an
offended man.
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Allan. “Throw it over here!”
Instead of complying with that characteristic request, Midwinter took
the paper from the pocket-book, and, leaving his place, approached Mr.
Hawbury. “I beg your pardon,” he said, as he offered the doctor the
manuscript with his own hand. His eyes dropped to the ground, and his
face darkened, while he made the apology. “A secret, sullen fellow,”
thought the doctor, thanking him with formal civility; “his friend is
worth ten thousand of him.” Midwinter went back to the window, and sat
down again in silence, with the old impenetrable resignation which had
once puzzled Mr. Brock.
“Read that, doctor,” said Allan, as Mr. Hawbury opened the written
paper. “It’s not told in my roundabout way; but there’s nothing added
to it, and nothing taken away. It’s exactly what I dreamed, and exactly
what I should have written myself, if I had thought the thing worth
putting down on paper, and if I had had the knack of writing--which,”
concluded Allan, composedly stirring his coffee, “I haven’t, except it’s
letters; and I rattle _them_ off in no time.”
Mr. Hawbury spread the manuscript before him on the breakfast-table, and
read these lines:
“ALLAN ARMADALE’S DREAM.
“Early on the morning of June the first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
I found myself (through circumstances which it is not important to
mention in this place) left alone with a friend of mine--a young man
about my own age--on board the French timber-ship named _La Grace de
Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked in the channel of the Sound between
the main-land of the Isle of Man and the islet called the Calf. Having
not been in bed the previous night, and feeling overcome by fatigue, I
fell asleep on the deck of the vessel. I was in my usual good health at
the time, and the morning was far enough advanced for the sun to have
risen. Under these circumstances, and at that period of the day, I
passed from sleeping to dreaming. As clearly as I can recollect it,
after the lapse of a few hours, this was the succession of events
presented to me by the dream:
“1. The first event of which I was conscious was the appearance of my
father. He took me silently by the hand; and we found ourselves in the
cabin of a ship.
“2. Water rose slowly over us in the cabin; and I and my father sank
through the water together.
“3. An interval of oblivion followed; and then the sense came to me of
being left alone in the darkness.
“4. I waited.
“5. The darkness opened, and showed me the vision--as in a picture--of a
broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the farther margin
of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of
sunset.
“6. On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a Woman.
“7. It was the shadow only. No indication was visible to me by which I
could identify it, or compare it with any living creature. The long robe
showed me that it was the shadow of a woman, and showed me nothing more.
“8. The darkness closed again--remained with me for an interval--and
opened for the second time.
“9. I found myself in a room, standing before a long window. The
only object of furniture or of ornament that I saw (or that I can now
remember having seen) was a little statue placed near me. The window
opened on a lawn and flower-garden; and the rain was pattering heavily
against the glass.
“10. I was not alone in the room. Standing opposite to me at the window
was the Shadow of a Man.
“11. I saw no more of it; I knew no more of it than I saw and knew of
the shadow of the woman. But the shadow of the man moved. It stretched
out its arm toward the statue; and the statue fell in fragments on the
floor.
“12. With a confused sensation in me, which was partly anger and partly
distress, I stooped to look at the fragments. When I rose again, the
Shadow had vanished, and I saw no more.
“13. The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of
the Woman and the Shadow of the Man together.
“14. No surrounding scene (or none that I can now call to mind) was
visible to me.
“15. The Man-Shadow was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back.
From where she stood, there came a sound as of the pouring of a liquid
softly. I saw her touch the shadow of the man with one hand, and with
the other give him a glass. He took the glass, and gave it to me. In
the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness mastered me from
head to foot. When I came to my senses again, the Shadows had vanished,
and the third vision was at an end.
“16. The darkness closed over me again; and the interval of oblivion
followed.
“17. I was conscious of nothing more, till I felt the morning sun shine
on my face, and heard my friend tell me that I had awakened from a
dream....”
After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under
which appeared Allan’s signature), the doctor looked across the
breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript
with a satirical smile.
“Many men, many opinions,” he said. “I don’t agree with either of you
about this dream. Your theory,” he added, looking at Allan, with a
smile, “we have disposed of already: the supper that _you_ can’t digest
is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My theory we will come to
presently; your friend’s theory claims attention first.” He turned again
to Midwinter, with his anticipated triumph over a man whom he disliked
a little too plainly visible in his face and manner. “If I understand
rightly,” he went on, “you believe that this dream is a warning!
supernaturally addressed to Mr. Armadale, of dangerous events that are
threatening him, and of dangerous people connected with those events
whom he would do wisely to avoid. May I inquire whether you have arrived
at this conclusion as an habitual believer in dreams, or as having
reasons of your own for attaching especial importance to this one dream
in particular?”
“You have stated what my conviction is quite accurately,” returned
Midwinter, chafing under the doctor’s looks and tones. “Excuse me if
I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and to let me keep my
reasons to myself.”
“That’s exactly what he said to me,” interposed Allan. “I don’t believe
he has got any reasons at all.”
“Gently! gently!” said Mr. Hawbury. “We can discuss the subject without
intruding ourselves into anybody’s secrets. Let us come to my own method
of dealing with the dream next. Mr. Midwinter will probably not be
surprised to hear that I look at this matter from an essentially
practical point of view.”
“I shall not be at all surprised,” retorted Midwinter. “The view of a
medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve, seldom ranges
beyond the point of his dissecting-knife.”
The doctor was a little nettled on his side. “Our limits are not quite
so narrow as that,” he said; “but I willingly grant you that there
are some articles of your faith in which we doctors don’t believe.
For example, we don’t believe that a reasonable man is justified in
attaching a supernatural interpretation to any phenomenon which comes
within the range of his senses, until he has certainly ascertained that
there is no such thing as a natural explanation of it to be found in the
first instance.”
“Come; that’s fair enough, I’m sure,” exclaimed Allan. “He hit you hard
with the ‘dissecting-knife,’ doctor; and now you have hit him back again
with your ‘natural explanation.’ Let’s have it.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here it is. There is nothing at all
extraordinary in my theory of dreams: it is the theory accepted by
the great mass of my profession. A dream is the reproduction, in the
sleeping state of the brain, of images and impressions produced on it
in the waking state; and this reproduction is more or less involved,
imperfect, or contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the
dreamer is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep.
Without inquiring further into this latter part of the subject--a very
curious and interesting part of it--let us take the theory, roughly and
generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at once to the dream
now under consideration.” He took up the written paper from the table,
and dropped the formal tone (as of a lecturer addressing an audience)
into which he had insensibly fallen. “I see one event already in this
dream,” he resumed, “which I know to be the reproduction of a waking
impression produced on Mr. Armadale in my own presence. If he will only
help me by exerting his memory, I don’t despair of tracing back the
whole succession of events set down here to something that he has said
or thought, or seen or done, in the four-and-twenty hours, or less,
which preceded his falling asleep on the deck of the timber-ship.”
“I’ll exert my memory with the greatest pleasure,” said Allan. “Where
shall we start from?”
“Start by telling me what you did yesterday, before I met you and your
friend on the road to this place,” replied Mr. Hawbury. “We will say,
you got up and had your breakfast. What next?”
“We took a carriage next,” said Allan, “and drove from Castletown
to Douglas to see my old friend, Mr. Brock, off by the steamer to
Liverpool. We came back to Castletown and separated at the hotel door.
Midwinter went into the house, and I went on to my yacht in the harbor.
By-the-bye, doctor, remember you have promised to go cruising with us
before we leave the Isle of Man.”
“Many thanks; but suppose we keep to the matter in hand. What next?”
Allan hesitated. In both senses of the word his mind was at sea already.
“What did you do on board the yacht?”
“Oh, I know! I put the cabin to rights--thoroughly to rights. I give
you my word of honor, I turned every blessed thing topsy-turvy. And my
friend there came off in a shore-boat and helped me. Talking of boats, I
have never asked you yet whether your boat came to any harm last night.
If there’s any damage done, I insist on being allowed to repair it.”
The doctor abandoned all further attempts at the cultivation of Allan’s
memory in despair.
“I doubt if we shall be able to reach our object conveniently in this
way,” he said. “It will be better to take the events of the dream in
their regular order, and to ask the questions that naturally suggest
themselves as we go on. Here are the first two events to begin with. You
dream that your father appears to you--that you and he find yourselves
in the cabin of a ship--that the water rises over you, and that you sink
in it together. Were you down in the cabin of the wreck, may I ask?”
“I couldn’t be down there,” replied Allan, “as the cabin was full of
water. I looked in and saw it, and shut the door again.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Hawbury. “Here are the waking impressions clear
enough, so far. You have had the cabin in your mind; and you have had
the water in your mind; and the sound of the channel current (as I well
know without asking) was the last sound in your ears when you went to
sleep. The idea of drowning comes too naturally out of such impressions
as these to need dwelling on. Is there anything else before we go on?
Yes; there is one more circumstance left to account for.”
“The most important circumstance of all,” remarked Midwinter, joining in
the conversation, without stirring from his place at the window.
“You mean the appearance of Mr. Armadale’s father? I was just coming
to that,” answered Mr. Hawbury. “Is your father alive?” he added,
addressing himself to Allan once more.
“My father died before I was born.”
The doctor started. “This complicates it a little,” he said. “How did
you know that the figure appearing to you in the dream was the figure of
your father?”
Allan hesitated again. Midwinter drew his chair a little away from the
window, and looked at the doctor attentively for the first time.
“Was your father in your thoughts before you went to sleep?” pursued
Mr. Hawbury. “Was there any description of him--any portrait of him at
home--in your mind?”
“Of course there was!” cried Allan, suddenly seizing the lost
recollection. “Midwinter! you remember the miniature you found on the
floor of the cabin when we were putting the yacht to rights? You said I
didn’t seem to value it; and I told you I did, because it was a portrait
of my father--”
“And was the face in the dream like the face in the miniature?” asked
Mr. Hawbury.
“Exactly like! I say, doctor, this is beginning to get interesting!”
“What do you say now?” asked Mr. Hawbury, turning toward the window
again.
Midwinter hurriedly left his chair, and placed himself at the table with
Allan. Just as he had once already taken refuge from the tyranny of his
own superstition in the comfortable common sense of Mr. Brock, so, with
the same headlong eagerness, with the same straightforward sincerity
of purpose, he now took refuge in the doctor’s theory of dreams. “I say
what my friend says,” he answered, flushing with a sudden enthusiasm;
“this is beginning to get interesting. Go on; pray go on.”
The doctor looked at his strange guest more indulgently than he had
looked yet. “You are the only mystic I have met with,” he said, “who is
willing to give fair evidence fair play. I don’t despair of converting
you before our inquiry comes to an end. Let us get on to the next set
of events,” he resumed, after referring for a moment to the manuscript.
“The interval of oblivion which is described as succeeding the first
of the appearances in the dream may be easily disposed of. It means,
in plain English, the momentary cessation of the brain’s intellectual
action, while a deeper wave of sleep flows over it, just as the sense
of being alone in the darkness, which follows, indicates the renewal of
that action, previous to the reproduction of another set of impressions.
Let us see what they are. A lonely pool, surrounded by an open country;
a sunset sky on the further side of the pool; and the shadow of a woman
on the near side. Very good; now for it, Mr. Armadale! How did that pool
get into your head? The open country you saw on your way from Castletown
to this place. But we have no pools or lakes hereabouts; and you can have
seen none recently elsewhere, for you came here after a cruise at sea.
Must we fall back on a picture, or a book, or a conversation with your
friend?”
Allan looked at Midwinter. “I don’t remember talking about pools or
lakes,” he said. “Do you?”
Instead of answering the question, Midwinter suddenly appealed to the
doctor.
“Have you got the last number of the Manx newspaper?” he asked.
The doctor produced it from the sideboard. Midwinter turned to the
page containing those extracts from the recently published “Travels in
Australia,” which had roused Allan’s, interest on the previous evening,
and the reading of which had ended by sending his friend to sleep.
There--in the passage describing the sufferings of the travelers from
thirst, and the subsequent discovery which saved their lives--there,
appearing at the climax of the narrative, was the broad pool of water
which had figured in Allan’s dream!
“Don’t put away the paper,” said the doctor, when Midwinter had shown it
to him, with the necessary explanation. “Before we are at the end of the
inquiry, it is quite possible we may want that extract again. We have
got at the pool. How about the sunset? Nothing of that sort is referred
to in the newspaper extract. Search your memory again, Mr. Armadale; we
want your waking impression of a sunset, if you please.”
Once more, Allan was at a loss for an answer; and, once more,
Midwinter’s ready memory helped him through the difficulty.
“I think I can trace our way back to this impression, as I traced our
way back to the other,” he said, addressing the doctor. “After we got
here yesterday afternoon, my friend and I took a long walk over the
hills--”
“That’s it!” interposed Allan. “I remember. The sun was setting as we
came back to the hotel for supper, and it was such a splendid red sky,
we both stopped to look at it. And then we talked about Mr. Brock, and
wondered how far he had got on his journey home. My memory may be a slow
one at starting, doctor; but when it’s once set going, stop it if you
can! I haven’t half done yet.”
“Wait one minute, in mercy to Mr. Midwinter’s memory and mine,” said the
doctor. “We have traced back to your waking impressions the vision of
the open country, the pool, and the sunset. But the Shadow of the Woman
has not been accounted for yet. Can you find us the original of this
mysterious figure in the dream landscape?”
Allan relapsed into his former perplexity, and Midwinter waited for what
was to come, with his eyes fixed in breathless interest on the doctor’s
face. For the first time there was unbroken silence in the room. Mr.
Hawbury looked interrogatively from Allan to Allan’s friend. Neither of
them answered him. Between the shadow and the shadow’s substance there
was a great gulf of mystery, impenetrable alike to all three of them.
“Patience,” said the doctor, composedly. “Let us leave the figure by the
pool for the present and try if we can’t pick her up again as we go on.
Allow me to observe, Mr. Midwinter, that it is not very easy to identify
a shadow; but we won’t despair. This impalpable lady of the lake may
take some consistency when we next meet with her.”
Midwinter made no reply. From that moment his interest in the inquiry
began to flag.
“What is the next scene in the dream?” pursued Mr. Hawbury, referring
to the manuscript. “Mr. Armadale finds himself in a room. He is standing
before a long window opening on a lawn and flower-garden, and the rain
is pattering against the glass. The only thing he sees in the room is
a little statue; and the only company he has is the Shadow of a Man
standing opposite to him. The Shadow stretches out its arm, and the
statue falls in fragments on the floor; and the dreamer, in anger and
distress at the catastrophe (observe, gentlemen, that here the sleeper’s
reasoning faculty wakes up a little, and the dream passes rationally,
for a moment, from cause to effect), stoops to look at the broken
pieces. When he looks up again, the scene has vanished. That is to say,
in the ebb and flow of sleep, it is the turn of the flow now, and the
brain rests a little. What’s the matter, Mr. Armadale? Has that restive
memory of yours run away with you again?”
“Yes,” said Allan. “I’m off at full gallop. I’ve run the broken statue
to earth; it’s nothing more nor less than a china shepherdess I knocked
off the mantel-piece in the hotel coffee-room, when I rang the bell
for supper last night. I say, how well we get on; don’t we? It’s like
guessing a riddle. Now, then, Midwinter! your turn next.”
“No!” said the doctor. “My turn, if you please. I claim the long window,
the garden, and the lawn, as my property. You will find the long window,
Mr. Armadale, in the next room. If you look out, you’ll see the garden
and lawn in front of it; and, if you’ll exert that wonderful memory of
yours, you will recollect that you were good enough to take special and
complimentary notice of my smart French window and my neat garden, when
I drove you and your friend to Port St. Mary yesterday.”
“Quite right,” rejoined Allan; “so I did. But what about the rain that
fell in the dream? I haven’t seen a drop of rain for the last week.”
Mr. Hawbury hesitated. The Manx newspaper which had been left on the
table caught his eye. “If we can think of nothing else,” he said, “let
us try if we can’t find the idea of the rain where we found the idea of
the pool.” He looked through the extract carefully. “I have got it!”
he exclaimed. “Here is rain described as having fallen on these thirsty
Australian travelers, before they discovered the pool. Behold the
shower, Mr. Armadale, which got into your mind when you read the extract
to your friend last night! And behold the dream, Mr. Midwinter, mixing
up separate waking impressions just as usual!”
“Can you find the waking impression which accounts for the human figure
at the window?” asked Midwinter; “or are we to pass over the Shadow of
the Man as we have passed over the Shadow of the Woman already?”
He put the question with scrupulous courtesy of manner, but with a tone
of sarcasm in his voice which caught the doctor’s ear, and set up the
doctor’s controversial bristles on the instant.
“When you are picking up shells on the beach, Mr. Midwinter, you usually
begin with the shells that lie nearest at hand,” he rejoined. “We are
picking up facts now; and those that are easiest to get at are the facts
we will take first. Let the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the
Woman pair off together for the present; we won’t lose sight of them, I
promise you. All in good time, my dear sir; all in good time!”
He, too, was polite, and he, too, was sarcastic. The short truce between
the opponents was at an end already. Midwinter returned significantly to
his former place by the window. The doctor instantly turned his back
on the window more significantly still. Allan, who never quarreled
with anybody’s opinion, and never looked below the surface of anybody’s
conduct, drummed cheerfully on the table with the handle of his knife.
“Go on, doctor!” he called out; “my wonderful memory is as fresh as
ever.”
“Is it?” said Mr. Hawbury, referring again to the narrative of the
dream. “Do you remember what happened when you and I were gossiping with
the landlady at the bar of the hotel last night?”
“Of course I do! You were kind enough to hand me a glass of
brandy-and-water, which the landlady had just mixed for your own
drinking. And I was obliged to refuse it because, as I told you, the
taste of brandy always turns me sick and faint, mix it how you please.”
“Exactly so,” returned the doctor. “And here is the incident reproduced
in the dream. You see the man’s shadow and the woman’s shadow together
this time. You hear the pouring out of liquid (brandy from the hotel
bottle, and water from the hotel jug); the glass is handed by the
woman-shadow (the landlady) to the man-shadow (myself); the man-shadow
hands it to you (exactly what I did); and the faintness (which you
had previously described to me) follows in due course. I am shocked
to identify these mysterious appearances, Mr. Midwinter, with such
miserably unromantic originals as a woman who keeps a hotel, and a man
who physics a country district. But your friend himself will tell you
that the glass of brandy-and-water was prepared by the landlady, and
that it reached him by passing from her hand to mine. We have picked
up the shadows, exactly as I anticipated; and we have only to account
now--which may be done in two words--for the manner of their appearance
in the dream. After having tried to introduce the waking impression of
the doctor and the landlady separately, in connection with the wrong set
of circumstances, the dreaming mind comes right at the third trial, and
introduces the doctor and the landlady together, in connection with the
right set of circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!--Permit me to
hand you back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete
and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams.” Saying
those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to Midwinter, with
the pitiless politeness of a conquering man.
“Wonderful! not a point missed anywhere from beginning to end! By
Jupiter!” cried Allan, with the ready reverence of intense ignorance.
“What a thing science is!”
“Not a point missed, as you say,” remarked the doctor, complacently.
“And yet I doubt if we have succeeded in convincing your friend.”
“You have _not_ convinced me,” said Midwinter. “But I don’t presume on
that account to say that you are wrong.”
He spoke quietly, almost sadly. The terrible conviction of the
supernatural origin of the dream, from which he had tried to escape, had
possessed itself of him again. All his interest in the argument was at
an end; all his sensitiveness to its irritating influences was gone. In
the case of any other man, Mr. Hawbury would have been mollified by
such a concession as his adversary had now made to him; but he disliked
Midwinter too cordially to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of an
opinion of his own.
“Do you admit,” asked the doctor, more pugnaciously than ever, “that I
have traced back every event of the dream to a waking impression which
preceded it in Mr. Armadale’s mind?”
“I have no wish to deny that you have done so,” said Midwinter,
resignedly.
“Have I identified the shadows with their living originals?”
“You have identified them to your own satisfaction, and to my friend’s
satisfaction. Not to mine.”
“Not to yours? Can _you_ identify them?”
“No. I can only wait till the living originals stand revealed in the
future.”
“Spoken like an oracle, Mr. Midwinter! Have you any idea at present of
who those living originals may be?”
“I have. I believe that coming events will identify the Shadow of the
Woman with a person whom my friend has not met with yet; and the Shadow
of the Man with myself.”
Allan attempted to speak. The doctor stopped him. “Let us clearly
understand this,” he said to Midwinter. “Leaving your own case out
of the question for the moment, may I ask how a shadow, which has no
distinguishing mark about it, is to be identified with a living woman
whom your friend doesn’t know?”
Midwinter’s color rose a little. He began to feel the lash of the
doctor’s logic.
“The landscape picture of the dream has its distinguishing marks,” he
replied; “and in that landscape the living woman will appear when the
living woman is first seen.”
“The same thing will happen, I suppose,” pursued the doctor, “with the
man-shadow which you persist in identifying with yourself. You will be
associated in the future with a statue broken in your friend’s presence,
with a long window looking out on a garden, and with a shower of rain
pattering against the glass? Do you say that?”
“I say that.”
“And so again, I presume, with the next vision? You and the mysterious
woman will be brought together in some place now unknown, and will
present to Mr. Armadale some liquid yet unnamed, which will turn him
faint?--Do you seriously tell me you believe this?”
“I seriously tell you I believe it.”
“And, according to your view, these fulfillments of the dream will
mark the progress of certain coming events, in which Mr. Armadale’s
happiness, or Mr. Armadale’s safety, will be dangerously involved?”
“That is my firm conviction.”
The doctor rose, laid aside his moral dissecting-knife, considered for a
moment, and took it up again.
“One last question,” he said. “Have you any reason to give for going out
of your way to adopt such a mystical view as this, when an unanswerably
rational explanation of the dream lies straight before you?”
“No reason,” replied Midwinter, “that I can give, either to you or to my
friend.”
The doctor looked at his watch with the air of a man who is suddenly
reminded that he has been wasting his time.
“We have no common ground to start from,” he said; “and if we talk till
doomsday, we should not agree. Excuse my leaving you rather abruptly.
It is later than I thought; and my morning’s batch of sick people
are waiting for me in the surgery. I have convinced _your_ mind, Mr.
Armadale, at any rate; so the time we have given to this discussion has
not been altogether lost. Pray stop here, and smoke your cigar. I shall
be at your service again in less than an hour.” He nodded cordially to
Allan, bowed formally to Midwinter, and quitted the room.
As soon as the doctor’s back was turned, Allan left his place at the
table, and appealed to his friend, with that irresistible heartiness of
manner which had always found its way to Midwinter’s sympathies, from
the first day when they met at the Somersetshire inn.
“Now the sparring-match between you and the doctor is over,” said Allan,
“I have got two words to say on my side. Will you do something for my
sake which you won’t do for your own?”
Midwinter’s face brightened instantly. “I will do anything you ask me,”
he said.
“Very well. Will you let the subject of the dream drop out of our talk
altogether from this time forth?”
“Yes, if you wish it.”
“Will you go a step further? Will you leave off thinking about the
dream?”
“It’s hard to leave off thinking about it, Allan. But I will try.”
“That’s a good fellow! Now give me that trumpery bit of paper, and let’s
tear it up, and have done with it.”
He tried to snatch the manuscript out of his friend’s hand; but
Midwinter was too quick for him, and kept it beyond his reach.
“Come! come!” pleaded Allan. “I’ve set my heart on lighting my cigar
with it.”
Midwinter hesitated painfully. It was hard to resist Allan; but he did
resist him. “I’ll wait a little,” he said, “before you light your cigar
with it.”
“How long? Till to-morrow?”
“Longer.”
“Till we leave the Isle of Man?”
“Longer.”
“Hang it--give me a plain answer to a plain question! How long _will_
you wait?”
Midwinter carefully restored the paper to its place in his pocketbook.
“I’ll wait,” he said, “till we get to Thorpe Ambrose.”