_From Mr. Pedgift, Senior (Thorpe Ambrose), to Mr. Pedgift, Junior
(Paris)_.
“High Street, December 20th.
“MY DEAR AUGUSTUS--Your letter reached me yesterday. You seem to be
making the most of your youth (as you call it) with a vengeance. Well!
enjoy your holiday. I made the most of my youth when I was your age;
and, wonderful to relate, I haven’t forgotten it yet!
“You ask me for a good budget of news, and especially for more
information about that mysterious business at the Sanitarium.
“Curiosity, my dear boy, is a quality which (in our profession
especially) sometimes leads to great results. I doubt, however, if you
will find it leading to much on this occasion. All I know of the mystery
of the Sanitarium, I know from Mr. Armadale: and he is entirely in the
dark on more than one point of importance. I have already told you how
they were entrapped into the house, and how they passed the night
there. To this I can now add that something did certainly happen to Mr.
Midwinter, which deprived him of consciousness; and that the doctor, who
appears to have been mixed up in the matter, carried things with a high
hand, and insisted on taking his own course in his own Sanitarium. There
is not the least doubt that the miserable woman (however she might have
come by her death) was found dead--that a coroner’s inquest inquired
into the circumstances--that the evidence showed her to have entered
the house as a patient--and that the medical investigation ended in
discovering that she had died of apoplexy. My idea is that Mr. Midwinter
had a motive of his own for not coming forward with the evidence that he
might have given. I have also reason to suspect that Mr. Armadale,
out of regard for him, followed his lead, and that the verdict at the
inquest (attaching no blame to anybody) proceeded, like many other
verdicts of the same kind, from an entirely superficial investigation of
the circumstances.
“The key to the whole mystery is to be found, I firmly believe, in that
wretched woman’s attempt to personate the character of Mr. Armadale’s
widow when the news of his death appeared in the papers. But what first
set her on this, and by what inconceivable process of deception she
can have induced Mr. Midwinter to marry her (as the certificate proves)
under Mr. Armadale’s name, is more than Mr. Armadale himself knows. The
point was not touched at the inquest, for the simple reason that the
inquest only concerned itself with the circumstances attending her
death. Mr. Armadale, at his friend’s request, saw Miss Blanchard, and
induced her to silence old Darch on the subject of the claim that had
been made relating to the widow’s income. As the claim had never been
admitted, even our stiff-necked brother practitioner consented for once
to do as he was asked. The doctor’s statement that his patient was the
widow of a gentleman named Armadale was accordingly left unchallenged,
and so the matter has been hushed up. She is buried in the great
cemetery, near the place where she died. Nobody but Mr. Midwinter and
Mr. Armadale (who insisted on going with him) followed her to the grave;
and nothing has been inscribed on the tombstone but the initial letter
of her Christian name and the date of her death. So, after all the harm
she has done, she rests at last; and so the two men whom she has injured
have forgiven her.
“Is there more to say on this subject before we leave it? On referring
to your letter, I find you have raised one other point, which may be
worth a moment’s notice.
“You ask if there is reason to suppose that the doctor comes out of
the matter with hands which are really as clean as they look? My dear
Augustus, I believe the doctor to have been at the bottom of more of
this mischief than we shall ever find out; and to have profited by
the self-imposed silence of Mr. Midwinter and Mr. Armadale, as rogues
perpetually profit by the misfortunes and necessities of honest men.
It is an ascertained fact that he connived at the false statement about
Miss Milroy, which entrapped the two gentlemen into his house; and that
one circumstance (after my Old Bailey experience) is enough for _me_.
As to evidence against him, there is not a jot; and as to Retribution
overtaking him, I can only say I heartily hope Retribution may prove, in
the long run, to be the more cunning customer of the two. There is not
much prospect of it at present. The doctor’s friends and admirers are,
I understand, about to present him with a Testimonial, ‘expressive of
their sympathy under the sad occurrence which has thrown a cloud over
the opening of his Sanitarium, and of their undiminished confidence in
his integrity and ability as a medical man.’ We live, Augustus, in an
age eminently favorable to the growth of all roguery which is careful
enough to keep up appearances. In this enlightened nineteenth century, I
look upon the doctor as one of our rising men.
“To turn now to pleasanter subjects than Sanitariums, I may tell you
that Miss Neelie is as good as well again, and is, in my humble opinion,
prettier than ever. She is staying in London under the care of a female
relative; and Mr. Armadale satisfies her of the fact of his existence
(in case she should forget it) regularly every day. They are to be
married in the spring, unless Mrs. Milroy’s death causes the ceremony
to be postponed. The medical men are of opinion that the poor lady is
sinking at last. It may be a question of weeks or a question of months,
they can say no more. She is greatly altered--quiet and gentle, and
anxiously affectionate with her husband and her child. But in her case
this happy change is, it seems, a sign of approaching dissolution, from
the medical point of view. There is a difficulty in making the poor
old, major understand this. He only sees that she has gone back to the
likeness of her better self when he first married her; and he sits for
hours by her bedside now, and tells her about his wonderful clock.
“Mr. Midwinter, of whom you will next expect me to say something, is
improving rapidly. After causing some anxiety at first to the medical
men (who declared that he was suffering from a serious nervous shock,
produced by circumstances about which their patient’s obstinate silence
kept them quite in the dark), he has rallied, as only men of his
sensitive temperament (to quote the doctors again) can rally. He and Mr.
Armadale are together in a quiet lodging. I saw him last week when I was
in London. His face showed signs of wear and tear, very sad to see in so
young a man. But he spoke of himself and his future with a courage
and hopefulness which men of twice his years (if he has suffered as I
suspect him to have suffered) might have envied. If I know anything
of humanity, this is no common man; and we shall hear of him yet in no
common way.
“You will wonder how I came to be in London. I went up, with a return
ticket (from Saturday to Monday), about that matter in dispute at our
agent’s. We had a tough fight; but, curiously enough, a point occurred
to me just as I got up to go; and I went back to my chair, and settled
the question in no time. Of course I stayed at Our Hotel in Covent
Garden. William, the waiter, asked after you with the affection of a
father; and Matilda, the chamber-maid, said you almost persuaded her
that last time to have the hollow tooth taken out of her lower jaw. I
had the agent’s second son (the young chap you nicknamed Mustapha, when
he made that dreadful mess about the Turkish Securities) to dine with me
on Sunday. A little incident happened in the evening which may be worth
recording, as it connected itself with a certain old lady who was not
‘at home’ when you and Mr. Armadale blundered on that house in Pimlico
in the bygone time.
“Mustapha was like all the rest of you young men of the present
day--he got restless after dinner. ‘Let’s go to a public amusement, Mr.
Pedgift,’ says he. ‘Public amusement? Why, it’s Sunday evening!’ says I.
‘All right, sir,’ says Mustapha. ‘They stop acting on the stage, I grant
you, on Sunday evening--but they don’t stop acting in the pulpit. Come
and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.’ As he wouldn’t have
any more wine, there was nothing else for it but to go.
“We went to a street at the West End, and found it blocked up with
carriages. If it hadn’t been Sunday night, I should have thought we were
going to the opera. ‘What did I tell you?’ says Mustapha, taking me up
to an open door with a gas star outside and a bill of the performance.
I had just time to notice that I was going to one of a series of ‘Sunday
Evening Discourses on the Pomps and Vanities of the World, by A Sinner
Who Has Served Them,’ when Mustapha jogged my elbow, and whispered,
‘Half a crown is the fashionable tip.’ I found myself between two demure
and silent gentlemen, with plates in their hands, uncommonly well filled
already with the fashionable tip. Mustapha patronized one plate, and I
the other. We passed through two doors into a long room, crammed with
people. And there, on a platform at the further end, holding forth to
the audience, was--not a man, as I had expected--but a Woman, and that
woman, MOTHER OLDERSHAW! You never listened to anything more eloquent
in your life. As long as I heard her she was never once at a loss for a
word anywhere. I shall think less of oratory as a human accomplishment,
for the rest of my days, after that Sunday evening. As for the matter
of the sermon, I may describe it as a narrative of Mrs. Oldershaw’s
experience among dilapidated women, profusely illustrated in the pious
and penitential style. You will ask what sort of audience it was.
Principally Women, Augustus--and, as I hope to be saved, all the old
harridans of the world of fashion whom Mother Oldershaw had enameled in
her time, sitting boldly in the front places, with their cheeks ruddled
with paint, in a state of devout enjoyment wonderful to see! I left
Mustapha to hear the end of it. And I thought to myself, as I went out,
of what Shakespeare says somewhere, ‘Lord, what fools we mortals be!’
“Have I anything more to tell you before I leave off? Only one thing
that I can remember.
“That wretched old Bashwood has confirmed the fears I told you I had
about him when he was brought back here from London. There is no kind of
doubt that he has really lost all the little reason he ever had. He is
perfectly harmless, and perfectly happy. And he would do very well if we
could only prevent him from going out in his last new suit of clothes,
smirking and smiling and inviting everybody to his approaching marriage
with the handsomest woman in England. It ends of course in the boys
pelting him, and in his coming here crying to me, covered with mud. The
moment his clothes are cleaned again he falls back into his favorite
delusion, and struts about before the church gates, in the character of
a bridegroom, waiting for Miss Gwilt. We must get the poor wretch taken
care of somewhere for the rest of the little time he has to live. Who
would ever have thought of a man at his age falling in love? And who
would ever have believed that the mischief that woman’s beauty has done
could have reached as far in the downward direction as our superannuated
old clerk?
“Good-by, for the present, my dear boy. If you see a particularly
handsome snuff-box in Paris, remember--though your father scorns
Testimonials--he doesn’t object to receive a present from his son.
“Yours affectionately,
“A. PEDGIFT, Sen.
“POSTSCRIPT.--I think it likely that the account you mention in the
French papers, of a fatal quarrel among some foreign sailors in one of
the Lipari Islands, and of the death of their captain, among others, may
really have been a quarrel among the scoundrels who robbed Mr. Armadale
and scuttled his yacht. _Those_ fellows, luckily for society, can’t
always keep up appearances; and, in their case, Rogues and Retribution
do occasionally come into collision with each other.”