Уилки Коллинз - Armadale

Mr. Bashwood’s curiosity was instantly aroused. The whole sex was interesting to him now, for the sake of Miss Gwilt.

“A lady, sir?” he inquired. “Are you looking for a lady?”

“I am looking,” said Midwinter, simply, “for my wife.”

“Married, sir!” exclaimed Mr. Bashwood. “Married since I last had the pleasure of seeing you! Might I take the liberty of asking—?”

Midwinter’s eyes dropped uneasily to the ground.

“You knew the lady in former times,” he said. “I have married Miss Gwilt.”

The steward started back as he might have started back from a loaded pistol leveled at his head. His eyes glared as if he had suddenly lost his senses, and the nervous trembling to which he was subject shook him from head to foot.

“What’s the matter?” said Midwinter. There was no answer. “What is there so very startling,” he went on, a little impatiently, “in Miss Gwilt’s being my wife?”

“ Your wife?” repeated Mr. Bashwood, helplessly. “Mrs. Armadale—!” He checked himself by a desperate effort, and said no more.

The stupor of astonishment which possessed the steward was instantly reflected in Midwinter’s face. The name in which he had secretly married his wife had passed the lips of the last man in the world whom he would have dreamed of admitting into his confidence! He took Mr. Bashwood by the arm, and led him away to a quieter part of the terminus than the part of it in which they had hitherto spoken to each other.

“You referred to my wife just now,” he said; “and you spoke of Mrs. Armadale in the same breath. What do you mean by that?”

Again there was no answer. Utterly incapable of understanding more than that he had involved himself in some serious complication which was a complete mystery to him, Mr. Bashwood struggled to extricate himself from the grasp that was laid on him, and struggled in vain.

Midwinter sternly repeated the question. “I ask you again,” he said, “what do you mean by it?”

“Nothing, sir! I give you my word of honor, I meant nothing!” He felt the hand on his arm tightening its grasp; he saw, even in the obscurity of the remote corner in which they stood, that Midwinter’s fiery temper was rising, and was not to be trifled with. The extremity of his danger inspired him with the one ready capacity that a timid man possesses when he is compelled by main force to face an emergency—the capacity to lie. “I only meant to say, sir,” he burst out, with a desperate effort to look and speak confidently, “that Mr. Armadale would be surprised—”

“You said Mrs. Armadale!”

“No, sir—on my word of honor, on my sacred word of honor, you are mistaken—you are, indeed! I said Mr. Armadale—how could I say anything else? Please to let me go, sir—I’m pressed for time. I do assure you I’m dreadfully pressed for time!”

For a moment longer Midwinter maintained his hold, and in that moment he decided what to do.

He had accurately stated his motive for returning to England as proceeding from anxiety about his wife—anxiety naturally caused (after the regular receipt of a letter from her every other, or every third day) by the sudden cessation of the correspondence between them on her side for a whole week. The first vaguely terrible suspicion of some other reason for her silence than the reason of accident or of illness, to which he had hitherto attributed it, had struck through him like a sudden chill the instant he heard the steward associate the name of “Mrs. Armadale” with the idea of his wife. Little irregularities in her correspondence with him, which he had thus far only thought strange, now came back on his mind, and proclaimed themselves to be suspicions as well. He had hitherto believed the reasons she had given for referring him, when he answered her letters, to no more definite address than an address at a post-office. Now he suspected her reasons of being excuses, for the first time. He had hitherto resolved, on reaching London, to inquire at the only place he knew of at which a clew to her could be found—the address she had given him as the address at which “her mother” lived. Now (with a motive which he was afraid to define even to himself, but which was strong enough to overbear every other consideration in his mind) he determined, before all things, to solve the mystery of Mr. Bashwood’s familiarity with a secret, which was a marriage secret between himself and his wife. Any direct appeal to a man of the steward’s disposition, in the steward’s present state of mind, would be evidently useless. The weapon of deception was, in this case, a weapon literally forced into Midwinter’s hands. He let go of Mr. Bashwood’s arm, and accepted Mr. Bashwood’s explanation.

“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I have no doubt you are right. Pray attribute my rudeness to over-anxiety and over-fatigue. I wish you good-evening.”

The station was by this time almost a solitude, the passengers by the train being assembled at the examination of their luggage in the custom-house waiting-room. It was no easy matter, ostensibly to take leave of Mr. Bashwood, and really to keep him in view. But Midwinter’s early life with the gypsy master had been of a nature to practice him in such stratagems as he was now compelled to adopt. He walked away toward the waiting-room by the line of empty carriages; opened the door of one of them, as if to look after something that he had left behind, and detected Mr. Bashwood making for the cab-rank on the opposite side of the platform. In an instant Midwinter had crossed, and had passed through the long row of vehicles, so as to skirt it on the side furthest from the platform. He entered the second cab by the left-hand door the moment after Mr. Bashwood had entered the first cab by the right-hand door. “Double your fare, whatever it is,” he said to the driver, “if you keep the cab before you in view, and follow it wherever it goes.” In a minute more both vehicles were on their way out of the station.

The clerk sat in the sentry-box at the gate, taking down the destinations of the cabs as they passed. Midwinter heard the man who was driving him call out “Hampstead!” as he went by the clerk’s window.

“Why did you say ‘Hampstead’?” he asked, when they had left the station.

“Because the man before me said ‘Hampstead,’ sir,” answered the driver.

Over and over again, on the wearisome journey to the northwestern suburb, Midwinter asked if the cab was still in sight. Over and over again, the man answered, “Right in front of us.”

It was between nine and ten o’clock when the driver pulled up his horse at last. Midwinter got out, and saw the cab before them waiting at a house door. As soon as he had satisfied himself that the driver was the man whom Mr. Bashwood had hired, he paid the promised reward, and dismissed his own cab.

He took a turn backward and forward before the door. The vaguely terrible suspicion which had risen in his mind at the terminus had forced itself by this time into a definite form which was abhorrent to him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it, he found himself blindly distrusting his wife’s fidelity, and blindly suspecting Mr. Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror of his own morbid fancy, he determined to take down the number of the house, and the name of the street in which it stood; and then, in justice to his wife, to return at once to the address which she had given him as the address at which her mother lived. He had taken out his pocket-book, and was on his way to the corner of the street, when he observed the man who had driven Mr. Bashwood looking at him with an expression of inquisitive surprise. The idea of questioning the cab-driver, while he had the opportunity, instantly occurred to him. He took a half-crown from his pocket and put it into the man’s ready hand.