Уилки Коллинз - Armadale

Midwinter took his hand and helped him, as he had often helped him to the words that he wanted in the by-gone time.

“You would like to know, Allan,” he said, “that I shall not bring an aching heart with me to your wedding day? If you will let me go back for a moment to the past, I think I can satisfy you.”

They took their chairs again. Allan saw that Midwinter was moved. “Why distress yourself?” he asked, kindly—“why go back to the past?”

“For two reasons, Allan. I ought to have thanked you long since for the silence you have observed, for my sake, on a matter that must have seemed very strange to you. You know what the name is which appears on the register of my marriage, and yet you have forborne to speak of it, from the fear of distressing me. Before you enter on your new life, let us come to a first and last understanding about this. I ask you—as one more kindness to me—to accept my assurance (strange as the thing may seem to you) that I am blameless in this matter; and I entreat you to believe that the reasons I have for leaving it unexplained are reasons which, if Mr. Brock was living, Mr. Brock himself would approve.” In those words he kept the secret of the two names; and left the memory of Allan’s mother, what he had found it, a sacred memory in the heart of her son.

“One word more,” he went on—“a word which will take us, this time, from past to future. It has been said, and truly said, that out of Evil may come Good. Out of the horror and the misery of that night you know of has come the silencing of a doubt which once made my life miserable with groundless anxiety about you and about myself. No clouds raised by my superstition will ever come between us again. I can’t honestly tell you that I am more willing now than I was when we were in the Isle of Man to take what is called the rational view of your Dream. Though I know what extraordinary coincidences are perpetually happening in the experience of all of us, still I cannot accept coincidences as explaining the fulfillment of the Visions which our own eyes have seen. All I can sincerely say for myself is, what I think it will satisfy you to know, that I have learned to view the purpose of the Dream with a new mind. I once believed that it was sent to rouse your distrust of the friendless man whom you had taken as a brother to your heart. I now know that it came to you as a timely warning to take him closer still. Does this help to satisfy you that I, too, am standing hopefully on the brink of a new life, and that while we live, brother, your love and mine will never be divided again?”

They shook hands in silence. Allan was the first to recover himself. He answered in the few words of kindly assurance which were the best words that he could address to his friend.

“I have heard all I ever want to hear about the past,” he said; “and I know what I most wanted to know about the future. Everybody says, Midwinter, you have a career before you, and I believe that everybody is right. Who knows what great things may happen before you and I are many years older?”

“Who need know?” said Midwinter, calmly. “Happen what may, God is all-merciful, God is all-wise. In those words your dear old friend once wrote to me. In that faith I can look back without murmuring at the years that are past, and can look on without doubting to the years that are to come.”

He rose, and walked to the window. While they had been speaking together the darkness had passed. The first light of the new day met him as he looked out, and rested tenderly on his face.

NOTE—My readers will perceive that I have purposely left them, with reference to the Dream in this story, in the position which they would occupy in the case of a dream in real life: they are free to interpret it by the natural or the supernatural theory, as the bent of their own minds may incline them. Persons disposed to take the rational view may, under these circumstances, be interested in hearing of a coincidence relating to the present story, which actually happened, and which in the matter of “extravagant improbability” sets anything of the same kind that a novelist could imagine at flat defiance.

In November, 1865, that is to say, when thirteen monthly parts of “Armadale” had been published, and, I may add, when more than a year and a half had elapsed since the end of the story, as it now appears, was first sketched in my notebook—a vessel lay in the Huskisson Dock at Liverpool which was looked after by one man, who slept on board, in the capacity of shipkeeper. On a certain day in the week this man was found dead in the deck-house. On the next day a second man, who had taken his place, was carried dying to the Northern Hospital. On the third day a third ship-keeper was appointed, and was found dead in the deck-house which had already proved fatal to the other two. The name of that ship was “The Armadale.” And the proceedings at the Inquest proved that the three men had been all suffocated by sleeping in poisoned air !

I am indebted for these particulars to the kindness of the reporters at Liverpool, who sent me their statement of the facts. The case found its way into most of the newspapers. It was noticed—to give two instances in which I can cite the dates—in the Times of November 30th, 1865, and was more fully described in the Daily News of November 28th, in the same year.

Before taking leave of “Armadale,” I may perhaps be allowed to mention, for the benefit of any readers who may be curious on such points, that the “Norfolk Broads” are here described after personal investigation of them. In this, as in other cases, I have spared no pains to instruct myself on matters of fact. Wherever the story touches on questions connected with Law, Medicine, or Chemistry, it has been submitted before publication to the experience of professional men. The kindness of a friend supplied me with a plan of the doctor’s apparatus, and I saw the chemical ingredients at work before I ventured on describing the action of them in the closing scenes of this book.