Part 12 (1/2)
He extinguished the candle as he spoke, and let the first tenderness of the daylight flow uninterruptedly into the room.
”I must once more ask your patience,” he resumed, ”if I return for a moment to myself and my circ.u.mstances. I have already told you that my stepfather made an attempt to discover me some years after I had turned my back on the Scotch school. He took that step out of no anxiety of his own, but simply as the agent of my father's trustees. In the exercise of their discretion, they had sold the estates in Barbadoes (at the time of the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves, and the ruin of West Indian property) for what the estates would fetch. Having invested the proceeds, they were bound to set aside a sum for my yearly education. This responsibility obliged them to make the attempt to trace me--a fruitless attempt, as you already know. A little later (as I have been since informed) I was publicly addressed by an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspapers, which I never saw. Later still, when I was twenty-one, a second advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared (which I did see) offering a reward for evidence of my death. If I was alive, I had a right to my half share of the proceeds of the estates on coming of age; if dead, the money reverted to my mother. I went to the lawyers, and heard from them what I have just told you. After some difficulty in proving my ident.i.ty--and after an interview with my stepfather, and a message from my mother, which has hopelessly widened the old breach between us--my claim was allowed; and my money is now invested for me in the funds, under the name that is really my own.”
Mr. Brock drew eagerly nearer to the table. He saw the end now to which the speaker was tending
”Twice a year,” Midwinter pursued, ”I must sign my own name to get my own income. At all other times, and under all other circ.u.mstances, I may hide my ident.i.ty under any name I please. As Ozias Midwinter, Mr.
Armadale first knew me; as Ozias Midwinter he shall know me to the end of my days. Whatever may be the result of this interview--whether I win your confidence or whether I lose it--of one thing you may feel sure: your pupil shall never know the horrible secret which I have trusted to your keeping. This is no extraordinary resolution; for, as you know already, it costs me no sacrifice of feeling to keep my a.s.sumed name.
There is nothing in my conduct to praise; it comes naturally out of the grat.i.tude of a thankful man. Review the circ.u.mstances for yourself, sir, and set my own horror of revealing them to Mr. Armadale out of the question. If the story of the names is ever told, there can be no limiting it to the disclosure of my father's crime; it must go back to the story of Mrs. Armadale's marriage. I have heard her son talk of her; I know how he loves her memory. As G.o.d is my witness, he shall never love it less dearly through _me_!”
Simply as the words were spoken, they touched the deepest sympathies in the rector's nature: they took his thoughts back to Mrs. Armadale's deathbed. There sat the man against whom she had ignorantly warned him in her son's interests; and that man, of his own free-will, had laid on himself the obligation of respecting her secret for her son's sake! The memory of his own past efforts to destroy the very friends.h.i.+p out of which this resolution had sprung rose and reproached Mr. Brock. He held out his hand to Midwinter for the first time. ”In her name, and in her son's name,” he said, warmly, ”I thank you.”
Without replying, Midwinter spread the confession open before him on the table.
”I think I have said all that it was my duty to say,” he began, ”before we could approach the consideration of this letter. Whatever may have appeared strange in my conduct toward you and toward Mr. Armadale may be now trusted to explain itself. You can easily imagine the natural curiosity and surprise that I must have felt (ignorant as I then was of the truth) when the sound of Mr. Armadale's name first startled me as the echo of my own. You will readily understand that I only hesitated to tell him I was his namesake, because I hesitated to damage my position--in your estimation, if not in his--by confessing that I had come among you under an a.s.sumed name. And, after all that you have just heard of my vagabond life and my low a.s.sociates, you will hardly wonder at the obstinate silence I maintained about myself, at a time when I did not feel the sense of responsibility which my father's confession has laid on me. We can return to these small personal explanations, if you wish it, at another time; they cannot be suffered to keep us from the greater interests which we must settle before you leave this place.
We may come now--” His voice faltered, and he suddenly turned his face toward the window, so as to hide it from the rector's view. ”We may come now,” he repeated, his hand trembling visibly as it held the page, ”to the murder on board the timber-s.h.i.+p, and to the warning that has followed me from my father's grave.”
Softly--as if he feared they might reach Allan, sleeping in the neighboring room--he read the last terrible words which the Scotchman's pen had written at Wildbad, as they fell from his father's lips:
”Avoid the widow of the man I killed--if the widow still lives. Avoid the maid whose wicked hand smoothed the way to the marriage--if the maid is still in her service. And, more than all, avoid the man who bears the same name as your own. Offend your best benefactor, if that benefactor's influence has connected you one with the other. Desert the woman who loves you, if that woman is a link between you and him. Hide yourself from him under an a.s.sumed 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. Never let the two Allan Armadales meet in this world; never, never, never!”
After reading those sentences, he pushed the ma.n.u.script from him, without looking up. The fatal reserve which he had been in a fair way of conquering but a few minutes since, possessed itself of him once more.
Again his eyes wandered; again his voice sank in tone. A stranger who had heard his story, and who saw him now, would have said, ”His look is lurking, his manner is bad; he is, every inch of him, his father's son.”
”I have a question to ask you,” said Mr. Brock, breaking the silence between them, on his side. ”Why have you just read that pa.s.sage in your father's letter?”
”To force me into telling you the truth,” was the answer. ”You must know how much there is of my father in me before you trust me to be Mr.
Armadale's friend. I got my letter yesterday, in the morning. Some inner warning troubled me, and I went down on the sea-sh.o.r.e by myself before I broke the seal. Do you believe the dead can come back to the world they once lived in? I believe my father came back in that bright morning light, through the glare of that broad suns.h.i.+ne and the roar of that joyful sea, and watched me while I read. When I got to the words that you have just heard, and when I knew that the very end which he had died dreading was the end that had really come, I felt the horror that had crept over him in his last moments creeping over me. I struggled against myself, as _he_ would have had me struggle. I tried to be all that was most repellent to my own gentler nature; I tried to think pitilessly of putting the mountains and the seas between me and the man who bore my name. Hours pa.s.sed before I could prevail on myself to go back and run the risk of meeting Allan Armadale in this house. When I did get back, and when he met me at night on the stairs, I thought I was looking him in the face as _my_ father looked _his_ father in the face when the cabin door closed between them. Draw your own conclusions, sir. Say, if you like, that the inheritance of my father's heathen belief in fate is one of the inheritances he has left to me. I won't dispute it; I won't deny that all through yesterday _his_ superst.i.tion was _my_ superst.i.tion. The night came before I could find my way to calmer and brighter thoughts. But I did find my way. You may set it down in my favor that I lifted myself at last above the influence of this horrible letter. Do you know what helped me?”
”Did you reason with yourself?”
”I can't reason about what I feel.”
”Did you quiet your mind by prayer?”
”I was not fit to pray.”
”And yet something guided you to the better feeling and the truer view?”
”Something did.”
”What was it?”
”My love for Allan Armadale.”
He cast a doubting, almost a timid look at Mr. Brock as he gave that answer, and, suddenly leaving the table, went back to the window-seat.
”Have I no right to speak of him in that way?” he asked, keeping his face hidden from the rector. ”Have I not known him long enough; have I not done enough for him yet? Remember what my experience of other men had been when I first saw his hand held out to me--when I first heard his voice speaking to me in my sick-room. What had I known of strangers'
hands all through my childhood? I had only known them as hands raised to threaten and to strike me. His hand put my pillow straight, and patted me on the shoulder, and gave me my food and drink. What had I known of other men's voices, when I was growing up to be a man myself? I had only known them as voices that jeered, voices that cursed, voices that whispered in corners with a vile distrust. _His_ voice said to me, 'Cheer up, Midwinter! we'll soon bring you round again. You'll be strong enough in a week to go out for a drive with me in our Somersets.h.i.+re lanes.' Think of the gypsy's stick; think of the devils laughing at me when I went by their windows with my little dead dog in my arms; think of the master who cheated me of my month's salary on his deathbed--and ask your own heart if the miserable wretch whom Allan Armadale has treated as his equal and his friend has said too much in saying that he loves him? I do love him! It _will_ come out of me; I can't keep it back. I love the very ground he treads on! I would give my life--yes, the life that is precious to me now, because his kindness has made it a happy one--I tell you I would give my life--”
The next words died away on his lips; the hysterical pa.s.sion rose, and conquered him. He stretched out one of his hands with a wild gesture of entreaty to Mr. Brock; his head sank on the window-sill and he burst into tears.
Even then the hard discipline of the man's life a.s.serted itself. He expected no sympathy, he counted on no merciful human respect for human weakness. The cruel necessity of self-suppression was present to his mind, while the tears were pouring over his cheeks. ”Give me a minute,”