On the night of the 2d of December, Mr. Bashwood took up his post of
observation at the terminus of the South-eastern Railway for the first
time. It was an earlier date, by six days, than the date which Allan
had himself fixed for his return. But the doctor, taking counsel of his
medical experience, had considered it just probable that “Mr. Armadale
might be perverse enough, at his enviable age, to recover sooner than
his medical advisers might have anticipated.” For caution’s sake,
therefore, Mr. Bashwood was instructed to begin watching the arrival of
the tidal trains on the day after he had received his employer’s letter.
From the 2d to the 7th of December, the steward waited punctually on the
platform, saw the trains come in, and satisfied himself, evening after
evening, that the travelers were all strangers to him. From the 2d to
the 7th of December, Miss Gwilt (to return to the name under which
she is best known in these pages) received his daily report, sometimes
delivered personally, sometimes sent by letter. The doctor, to whom
the reports were communicated, received them in his turn with unabated
confidence in the precautions that had been adopted up to the morning of
the 8th. On that date the irritation of continued suspense had produced
a change for the worse in Miss Gwilt’s variable temper, which was
perceptible to every one about her, and which, strangely enough, was
reflected by an equally marked change in the doctor’s manner when he
came to pay his usual visit. By a coincidence so extraordinary that his
enemies might have suspected it of not being a coincidence at all, the
morning on which Miss Gwilt lost her patience proved to be also the
morning on which the doctor lost his confidence for the first time.
“No news, of course,” he said, sitting down with a heavy sigh. “Well!
well!”
Miss Gwilt looked up at him irritably from her work.
“You seem strangely depressed this morning,” she said. “What are you
afraid of now?”
“The imputation of being afraid, madam,” answered the doctor, solemnly,
“is not an imputation to cast rashly on any man--even when he belongs to
such an essentially peaceful profession as mine. I am not afraid. I
am (as you more correctly put it in the first instance) strangely
depressed. My nature is, as you know, naturally sanguine, and I only see
to-day what but for my habitual hopefulness I might have seen, and ought
to have seen, a week since.”
Miss Gwilt impatiently threw down her work. “If words cost money,” she
said, “the luxury of talking would be rather an expensive luxury in your
case!”
“Which I might have seen, and ought to have seen,” reiterated the
doctor, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption, “a week
since. To put it plainly, I feel by no means so certain as I did that
Mr. Armadale will consent, without a struggle, to the terms which it is
my interest (and in a minor degree yours) to impose on him. Observe! I
don’t question our entrapping him successfully into the Sanitarium: I
only doubt whether he will prove quite as manageable as I originally
anticipated when we have got him there. Say,” remarked the doctor,
raising his eyes for the first time, and fixing them in steady inquiry
on Miss Gwilt--“say that he is bold, obstinate, what you please; and
that he holds out--holds out for weeks together, for months together, as
men in similar situations to his have held out before him. What follows?
The risk of keeping him forcibly in concealment--of suppressing him,
if I may so express myself--increases at compound interest, and becomes
Enormous! My house is at this moment virtually ready for patients.
Patients may present themselves in a week’s time. Patients may
communicate with Mr. Armadale, or Mr. Armadale may communicate with
patients. A note may be smuggled out of the house, and may reach the
Commissioners in Lunacy. Even in the case of an unlicensed establishment
like mine, those gentlemen--no! those chartered despots in a land of
liberty--have only to apply to the Lord Chancellor for an order, and to
enter (by heavens, to enter My Sanitarium!) and search the house from
top to bottom at a moment’s notice! I don’t wish to despond; I don’t
wish to alarm you; I don’t pretend to say that the means we are taking
to secure your own safety are any other than the best means at our
disposal. All I ask you to do is to imagine the Commissioners in
the house--and then to conceive the consequences. The consequences!”
repeated the doctor, getting sternly on his feet, and taking up his hat
as if he meant to leave the room.
“Have you anything more to say?” asked Miss Gwilt.
“Have you any remarks,” rejoined the doctor, “to offer on your side?”
He stood, hat in hand, waiting. For a full minute the two looked at each
other in silence.
Miss Gwilt spoke first.
“I think I understand you,” she said, suddenly recovering her composure.
“I beg your pardon,” returned the doctor, with his hand to his ear.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“If you happened to catch another fly this morning,” said Miss Gwilt,
with a bitterly sarcastic emphasis on the words, “I might be capable of
shocking you by another ‘little joke.’”
The doctor held up both hands, in polite deprecation, and looked as if
he was beginning to recover his good humor again.
“Hard,” he murmured, gently, “not to have forgiven me that unlucky
blunder of mine, even yet!”
“What else have you to say? I am waiting for you,” said Miss Gwilt. She
turned her chair to the window scornfully, and took up her work again,
as she spoke.
The doctor came behind her, and put his hand on the back of her chair.
“I have a question to ask, in the first place,” he said; “and a measure
of necessary precaution to suggest, in the second. If you will honor me
with your attention, I will put the question first.”
“I am listening.”
“You know that Mr. Armadale is alive,” pursued the doctor, “and you
know that he is coming back to England. Why do you continue to wear your
widow’s dress?”
She answered him without an instant’s hesitation, steadily going on with
her work.
“Because I am of a sanguine disposition, like you. I mean to trust to
the chapter of accidents to the very last. Mr. Armadale may die yet, on
his way home.”
“And suppose he gets home alive--what then?”
“Then there is another chance still left.”
“What is it, pray?”
“He may die in your Sanitarium.”
“Madam!” remonstrated the doctor, in the deep bass which he reserved for
his outbursts of virtuous indignation. “Wait! you spoke of the chapter
of accidents,” he resumed, gliding back into his softer conversational
tones. “Yes! yes! of course. I understand you this time. Even the
healing art is at the mercy of accidents; even such a Sanitarium as mine
is liable to be surprised by Death. Just so! just so!” said the doctor,
conceding the question with the utmost impartiality. “There _is_ the
chapter of accidents, I admit--if you choose to trust to it.
Mind! I say emphatically, _if_ you choose to trust to it.”
There was another moment of silence--silence so profound that nothing
was audible in the room but the rapid _click_ of Miss Gwilt’s needle
through her work.
“Go on,” she said; “you haven’t done yet.”
“True!” said the doctor. “Having put my question, I have my measure of
precaution to impress on you next. You will see, my dear madam, that
I am not disposed to trust to the chapter of accidents on my side.
Reflection has convinced me that you and I are not (logically speaking)
so conveniently situated as we might be in case of emergency. Cabs
are, as yet, rare in this rapidly improving neighborhood. I am twenty
minutes’ walk from you; you are twenty minutes’ walk from me. I know
nothing of Mr. Armadale’s character; you know it well. It might be
necessary--vitally necessary--to appeal to your superior knowledge of
him at a moment’s notice. And how am I to do that unless we are within
easy reach of each other, under the same roof? In both our interests,
I beg to invite you, my dear madam, to become for a limited period an
inmate of My Sanitarium.”
Miss Gwilt’s rapid needle suddenly stopped. “I understand you,” she said
again, as quietly as before.
“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor, with another attack of deafness,
and with his hand once more at his ear.
She laughed to herself--a low, terrible laugh, which startled even the
doctor into taking his hand off the back of her chair.
“An inmate of your Sanitarium?” she repeated. “You consult appearances
in everything else; do you propose to consult appearances in receiving
me into your house?”
“Most assuredly!” replied the doctor, with enthusiasm. “I am surprised
at your asking me the question! Did you ever know a man of any eminence
in my profession who set appearances at defiance? If you honor me
by accepting my invitation, you enter My Sanitarium in the most
unimpeachable of all possible characters--in the character of a
Patient.”
“When do you want my answer?”
“Can you decide to-day?”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes. Have you anything more to say?”
“Nothing more.”
“Leave me, then. _I_ don’t keep up appearances. I wish to be alone, and
I say so. Good-morning.”
“Oh, the sex! the sex!” said the doctor, with his excellent temper in
perfect working order again. “So delightfully impulsive! so charmingly
reckless of what they say or how they say it! ‘Oh, woman, in our hours
of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please!’ There! there! there!
Good-morning!”
Miss Gwilt rose and looked after him contemptuously from the window,
when the street door had closed, and he had left the house.
“Armadale himself drove me to it the first time,” she said. “Manuel
drove me to it the second time.--You cowardly scoundrel! shall I let
_you_ drive me to it for the third time, and the last?”
She turned from the window, and looked thoughtfully at her widow’s dress
in the glass.
The hours of the day passed--and she decided nothing. The night
came--and she hesitated still. The new morning dawned--and the terrible
question was still unanswered.
By the early post there came a letter for her. It was Mr. Bashwood’s
usual report. Again he had watched for Allan’s arrival, and again in
vain.
“I’ll have more time!” she determined, passionately. “No man alive shall
hurry me faster than I like!”
At breakfast that morning (the morning of the 9th) the doctor was
surprised in his study by a visit from Miss Gwilt.
“I want another day,” she said, the moment the servant had closed the
door on her.
The doctor looked at her before he answered, and saw the danger of
driving her to extremities plainly expressed in her face.
“The time is getting on,” he remonstrated, in his most persuasive
manner. “For all we know to the contrary, Mr. Armadale may be here
to-night.”
“I want another day!” she repeated, loudly and passionately.
“Granted!” said the doctor, looking nervously toward the door. “Don’t be
too loud--the servants may hear you. Mind!” he added, “I depend on your
honor not to press me for any further delay.”
“You had better depend on my despair,” she said, and left him.
The doctor chipped the shell of his egg, and laughed softly.
“Quite right, my dear!” he thought. “I remember where your despair led
you in past times; and I think I may trust it to lead you the same way
now.”
At a quarter to eight o’clock that night Mr. Bashwood took up his post
of observation, as usual, on the platform of the terminus at London
Bridge. He was in the highest good spirits; he smiled and smirked in
irrepressible exultation. The sense that he held in reserve a means
of influence over Miss Gwilt, in virtue of his knowledge of her past
career, had had no share in effecting the transformation that now
appeared in him. It had upheld his courage in his forlorn life at Thorpe
Ambrose, and it had given him that increased confidence of manner
which Miss Gwilt herself had noticed; but, from the moment when he had
regained his old place in her favor, it had vanished as a motive power
in him, annihilated by the electric shock of her touch and her look.
His vanity--the vanity which in men at his age is only despair in
disguise--had now lifted him to the seventh heaven of fatuous happiness
once more. He believed in her again as he believed in the smart new
winter overcoat that he wore--as he believed in the dainty little cane
(appropriate to the dawning dandyism of lads in their teens) that he
flourished in his hand. He hummed! The worn-out old creature, who had
not sung since his childhood, hummed, as he paced the platform, the few
fragments he could remember of a worn-out old song.
The train was due as early as eight o’clock that night. At five minutes
past the hour the whistle sounded. In less than five minutes more the
passengers were getting out on the platform.
Following the instructions that had been given to him, Mr. Bashwood
made his way, as well as the crowd would let him, along the line
of carriages, and, discovering no familiar face on that first
investigation, joined the passengers for a second search among them in
the custom-house waiting-room next.
He had looked round the room, and had satisfied himself that the persons
occupying it were all strangers, when he heard a voice behind him,
exclaiming: “Can that be Mr. Bashwood!” He turned in eager expectation,
and found himself face to face with the last man under heaven whom he
had expected to see.
The man was MIDWINTER.