Chapter XXIII: Book THE THIRD: I. Mrs. Milroy (6)

“I had a reason, Mrs. Oldershaw, for the silence which has so seriously offended you. I was afraid--actually afraid--to let you into the secret of my thoughts. No such fear troubles me now. My only anxiety this morning is to make you my best acknowledgments for the manner in which you have written to me. After carefully considering it, I think the worst turn I can possibly do you is to tell you what you are burning to know. So here I am at my desk, bent on telling it. If you don’t bitterly repent, when you are at the end of this letter, not having held to your first resolution, and locked me up out of harm’s way while you had the chance, my name is not Lydia Gwilt.

“Where did my last letter end? I don’t remember, and don’t care. Make it out as you can--I am not going back any further than this day week. That is to say, Sunday last.

“There was a thunder-storm in the morning. It began to clear off toward noon. I didn’t go out: I waited to see Midwinter or to hear from him. (Are you surprised at my not writing ‘Mr.’ before his name? We have got so familiar, my dear, that ‘Mr.’ would be quite out of place.) He had left me the evening before, under very interesting circumstances. I had told him that his friend Armadale was persecuting me by means of a hired spy. He had declined to believe it, and had gone straight to Thorpe Ambrose to clear the thing up. I let him kiss my hand before he went. He promised to come back the next day (the Sunday). I felt I had secured my influence over him; and I believed he would keep his word.

“Well, the thunder passed away as I told you. The weather cleared up; the people walked out in their best clothes; the dinners came in from the bakers; I sat dreaming at my wretched little hired piano, nicely dressed and looking my best--and still no Midwinter appeared. It was late in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feel offended, when a letter was brought to me. It had been left by a strange messenger who went away again immediately. I looked at the letter. Midwinter at last--in writing, instead of in person. I began to feel more offended than ever; for, as I told you, I thought I had used my influence over him to better purpose.

“The letter, when I read it, set my mind off in a new direction. It surprised, it puzzled, it interested me. I thought, and thought, and thought of him, all the rest of the day.

“He began by asking my pardon for having doubted what I told him. Mr. Armadale’s own lips had confirmed me. They had quarreled (as I had anticipated they would); and he, and the man who had once been his dearest friend on earth, had parted forever. So far, I was not surprised. I was amused by his telling me in his extravagant way that he and his friend were parted forever; and I rather wondered what he would think when I carried out my plan, and found my way into the great house on pretense of reconciling them.

“But the second part of the letter set me thinking. Here it is, in his own words.

“‘It is only by struggling against myself (and no language can say how hard the struggle has been) that I have decided on writing, instead of speaking to you. A merciless necessity claims my future life. I must leave Thorpe Ambrose, I must leave England, without hesitating, without stopping to look back. There are reasons--terrible reasons, which I have madly trifled with--for my never letting Mr. Armadale set eyes on me, or hear of me again, after what has happened between us. I must go, never more to live under the same roof, never more to breathe the same air with that man. I must hide myself from him under an assumed name; I must put the mountains and the seas between us. I have been warned as no human creature was ever warned before. I believe--I dare not tell you why--I believe that, if the fascination you have for me draws me back to you, fatal consequences will come of it to the man whose life has been so strangely mingled with your life and mine--the man who was once _your_ admirer and _my_ friend. And yet, feeling this, seeing it in my mind as plainly as I see the sky above my head, there is a weakness in me that still shrinks from the one imperative sacrifice of never seeing you again. I am fighting with it as a man fights with the strength of his despair. I have been near enough, not an hour since, to see the house where you live, and have forced myself away again out of sight of it. Can I force myself away further still, now that my letter is written--now, when the useless confession escapes me, and I own to loving you with the first love I have ever known, with the last love I shall ever feel? Let the coming time answer the question; I dare not write of it or think of it more.’

“Those were the last words. In that strange way the letter ended.

“I felt a perfect fever of curiosity to know what he meant. His loving me, of course, was easy enough to understand. But what did he mean by saying he had been warned? Why was he never to live under the same roof, never to breathe the same air again, with young Armadale? What sort of quarrel could it be which obliged one man to hide himself from another under an assumed name, and to put the mountains and the seas between them? Above all, if he came back, and let me fascinate him, why should it be fatal to the hateful lout who possesses the noble fortune and lives in the great house?

“I never longed in my life as I longed to see him again and put these questions to him. I got quite superstitious about it as the day drew on. They gave me a sweet-bread and a cherry pudding for dinner. I actually tried if he would come back by the stones in the plate! He will, he won’t, he will, he won’t--and so on. It ended in ‘He won’t.’ I rang the bell, and had the things taken away. I contradicted Destiny quite fiercely. I said, ‘He will!’ and I waited at home for him.

“You don’t know what a pleasure it is to me to give you all these little particulars. Count up--my bosom friend, my second mother--count up the money you have advanced on the chance of my becoming Mrs. Armadale, and then think of my feeling this breathless interest in another man. Oh, Mrs. Oldershaw, how intensely I enjoy the luxury of irritating you!

“The day got on toward evening. I rang again, and sent down to borrow a railway time-table. What trains were there to take him away on Sunday? The national respect for the Sabbath stood my friend. There was only one train, which had started hours before he wrote to me. I went and consulted my glass. It paid me the compliment of contradicting the divination by cherry-stones. My glass said: ‘Get behind the window-curtain; he won’t pass the long lonely evening without coming back again to look at the house.’ I got behind the window-curtain, and waited with his letter in my hand.

“The dismal Sunday light faded, and the dismal Sunday quietness in the street grew quieter still. The dusk came, and I heard a step coming with it in the silence. My heart gave a little jump--only think of my having any heart left! I said to myself: ‘Midwinter!’ And Midwinter it was.

“When he came in sight he was walking slowly, stopping and hesitating at every two or three steps. My ugly little drawing-room window seemed to be beckoning him on in spite of himself. After waiting till I saw him come to a standstill, a little aside from the house, but still within view of my irresistible window, I put on my things and slipped out by the back way into the garden. The landlord and his family were at supper, and nobody saw me. I opened the door in the wall, and got round by the lane into the street. At that awkward moment I suddenly remembered, what I had forgotten before, the spy set to watch me, who was, no doubt, waiting somewhere in sight of the house.

“It was necessary to get time to think, and it was (in my state of mind) impossible to let Midwinter go without speaking to him. In great difficulties you generally decide at once, if you decide at all. I decided to make an appointment with him for the next evening, and to consider in the interval how to manage the interview so that it might escape observation. This, as I felt at the time, was leaving my own curiosity free to torment me for four-and-twenty mortal hours; but what other choice had I? It was as good as giving up being mistress of Thorpe Ambrose altogether, to come to a private understanding with Midwinter in the sight and possibly in the hearing of Armadale’s spy.

“Finding an old letter of yours in my pocket, I drew back into the lane, and wrote on the blank leaf, with the little pencil that hangs at my watch-chain: ‘I must and will speak to you. It is impossible to-night, but be in the street to-morrow at this time, and leave me afterward forever, if you like. When you have read this, overtake me, and say as you pass, without stopping or looking round, “Yes, I promise.”’

“I folded up the paper, and came on him suddenly from behind. As he started and turned round, I put the note into his hand, pressed his hand, and passed on. Before I had taken ten steps I heard him behind me. I can’t say he didn’t look round--I saw his big black eyes, bright and glittering in the dusk, devour me from head to foot in a moment; but otherwise he did what I told him. ‘I can deny you nothing,’ he whispered; ‘I promise.’ He went on and left me. I couldn’t help thinking at the time how that brute and booby Armadale would have spoiled everything in the same situation.

“I tried hard all night to think of a way of making our interview of the next evening safe from discovery, and tried in vain. Even as early as this, I began to feel as if Midwinter’s letter had, in some unaccountable manner, stupefied me.

“Monday morning made matters worse. News came from my faithful ally, Mr. Bashwood, that Miss Milroy and Armadale had met and become friends again. You may fancy the state I was in! An hour or two later there came more news from Mr. Bashwood--good news this time. The mischievous idiot at Thorpe Ambrose had shown sense enough at last to be ashamed of himself. He had decided on withdrawing the spy that very day, and he and his lawyer had quarreled in consequence.

“So here was the obstacle which I was too stupid to remove for myself obligingly removed for me! No more need to fret about the coming interview with Midwinter; and plenty of time to consider my next proceedings, now that Miss Milroy and her precious swain had come together again. Would you believe it, the letter, or the man himself (I don’t know which), had taken such a hold on me that, though I tried and tried, I could think of nothing else; and this when I had every reason to fear that Miss Milroy was in a fair way of changing her name to Armadale, and when I knew that my heavy debt of obligation to her was not paid yet? Was there ever such perversity? I can’t account for it; can you?

“The dusk of the evening came at last. I looked out of the window--and there he was!

“I joined him at once; the people of the house, as before, being too much absorbed in their eating and drinking to notice anything else. ‘We mustn’t be seen together here,’ I whispered. ‘I must go on first, and you must follow me.’

“He said nothing in the way of reply. What was going on in his mind I can’t pretend to guess; but, after coming to his appointment, he actually hung back as if he was half inclined to go away again.

“‘You look as if you were afraid of me,’ I said.

“‘I _am_ afraid of you,’ he answered--‘of you, and of myself.’

“It was not encouraging; it was not complimentary. But I was in such a frenzy of curiosity by this time that, if he had been ruder still, I should have taken no notice of it. I led the way a few steps toward the new buildings, and stopped and looked round after him.

“‘Must I ask it of you as a favor,’ I said, ‘after your giving me your promise, and after such a letter as you have written to me?’

“Something suddenly changed him; he was at my side in an instant. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; lead the way where you please.’ He dropped back a little after that answer, and I heard him say to himself, ‘What _is_ to be _will_ be. What have I to do with it, and what has she?’

“It could hardly have been the words, for I didn’t understand them--it must have been the tone he spoke in, I suppose, that made me feel a momentary tremor. I was half inclined, without the ghost of a reason for it, to wish him good-night, and go in again. Not much like me, you will say. Not much, indeed! It didn’t last a moment. Your darling Lydia soon came to her senses again.

“I led the way toward the unfinished cottages, and the country beyond. It would have been much more to my taste to have had him into the house, and have talked to him in the light of the candles. But I had risked it once already; and in this scandal-mongering place, and in my critical position, I was afraid to risk it again. The garden was not to be thought of either, for the landlord smokes his pipe there after his supper. There was no alternative but to take him away from the town.

“From time to time, I looked back as I went on. There he was, always at the same distance, dim and ghost-like in the dusk, silently following me.

“I must leave off for a little while. The church bells have broken out, and the jangling of them drives me mad. In these days, when we have all got watches and clocks, why are bells wanted to remind us when the service begins? We don’t require to be rung into the theater. How excessively discreditable to the clergy to be obliged to ring us into the church!”

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“They have rung the congregation in at last; and I can take up my pen, and go on again.

“I was a little in doubt where to lead him to. The high-road was on one side of me; but, empty as it looked, somebody might be passing when we least expected it. The other way was through the coppice. I led him through the coppice.

“At the outskirts of the trees, on the other side, there was a dip in the ground with some felled timber lying on it, and a little pool beyond, still and white and shining in the twilight. The long grazing-grounds rose over its further shore, with the mist thickening on them, and a dim black line far away of cattle in slow procession going home. There wasn’t a living creature near; there wasn’t a sound to be heard. I sat down on one of the felled trees and looked back for him. ‘Come,’ I said, softly--‘come and sit by me here.’

“Why am I so particular about all this? I hardly know. The place made an unaccountably vivid impression on me, and I can’t help writing about it. If I end badly--suppose we say on the scaffold?--I believe the last thing I shall see, before the hangman pulls the drop, will be the little shining pool, and the long, misty grazing-grounds, and the cattle winding dimly home in the thickening night. Don’t be alarmed, you worthy creature! My fancies play me strange tricks sometimes; and there is a little of last night’s laudanum, I dare say, in this part of my letter.

“He came--in the strangest silent way, like a man walking in his sleep--he came and sat down by me. Either the night was very close, or I was by this time literally in a fever: I couldn’t bear my bonnet on; I couldn’t bear my gloves. The want to look at him, and see what his singular silence meant, and the impossibility of doing it in the darkening light, irritated my nerves, till I thought I should have screamed. I took his hand, to try if that would help me. It was burning hot; and it closed instantly on mine--you know how. Silence, after _that_, was not to be thought of. The one safe way was to begin talking to him at once.

“‘Don’t despise me,’ I said. ‘I am obliged to bring you to this lonely place; I should lose my character if we were seen together.’

“I waited a little. His hand warned me once more not to let the silence continue. I determined to _make_ him speak to me this time.

“‘You have interested me, and frightened me,’ I went on. ‘You have written me a very strange letter. I must know what it means.’

“‘It is too late to ask. _You_ have taken the way, and _I_ have taken the way, from which there is no turning back.’ He made that strange answer in a tone that was quite new to me--a tone that made me even more uneasy than his silence had made me the moment before. ‘Too late,’ he repeated--‘too late! There is only one question to ask me now.’

“‘What is it?’

“As I said the words, a sudden trembling passed from his hand to mine, and told me instantly that I had better have held my tongue. Before I could move, before I could think, he had me in his arms. ‘Ask me if I love you,’ he whispered. At the same moment his head sank on my bosom; and some unutterable torture that was in him burst its way out, as it does with _us_, in a passion of sobs and tears.

“My first impulse was the impulse of a fool. I was on the point of making our usual protest and defending myself in our usual way. Luckily or unluckily, I don’t know which, I have lost the fine edge of the sensitiveness of youth; and I checked the first movement of my hands, and the first word on my lips. Oh, dear, how old I felt, while he was sobbing his heart out on my breast! How I thought of the time when he might have possessed himself of my love! All he had possessed himself of now was--my waist.

“I wonder whether I pitied him? It doesn’t matter if I did. At any rate, my hand lifted itself somehow, and my fingers twined themselves softly in his hair. Horrible recollections came back to me of other times, and made me shudder as I touched him. And yet I did it. What fools women are!

“‘I won’t reproach you,’ I said, gently. ‘I won’t say this is a cruel advantage to take of me, in such a position as mine. You are dreadfully agitated; I will let you wait a little and compose yourself.’

“Having got as far as that, I stopped to consider how I should put the questions to him that I was burning to ask. But I was too confused, I suppose, or perhaps too impatient to consider. I let out what was uppermost in my mind, in the words that came first.

“‘I don’t believe you love me,’ I said. ‘You write strange things to me; you frighten me with mysteries. What did you mean by saying in your letter that it would be fatal to Mr. Armadale if you came back to me? What danger can there be to Mr. Armadale--?’

“Before I could finish the question, he suddenly lifted his head and unclasped his arms. I had apparently touched some painful subject which recalled him to himself. Instead of my shrinking from _him_, it was he who shrank from _me_. I felt offended with him; why, I don’t know--but offended I was; and I thanked him with my bitterest emphasis for remembering what was due to me, _at last_!

“‘Do you believe in Dreams?’ he burst out, in the most strangely abrupt manner, without taking the slightest notice of what I had said to him. ‘Tell me,’ he went on, without allowing me time to answer, ‘were you, or was any relation of yours, ever connected with Allan Armadale’s father or mother? Were you, or was anybody belonging to you, ever in the island of Madeira?’

“Conceive my astonishment, if you can. I turned cold. In an instant I turned cold all over. He was plainly in the secret of what had happened when I was in Mrs. Armadale’s service in Madeira--in all probability before he was born! That was startling enough of itself. And he had evidently some reason of his own for trying to connect _me_ with those events--which was more startling still.

“‘No,’ I said, as soon as I could trust myself to speak. ‘I know nothing of his father or mother.’

“‘And nothing of the island of Madeira?’

“‘Nothing of the island of Madeira.’

“He turned his head away, and began talking to himself.

“‘Strange!’ he said. ‘As certainly as I was in the Shadow’s place at the window, _she_ was in the Shadow’s place at the pool!’

“Under other circumstances, his extraordinary behavior might have alarmed me. But after his question about Madeira, there was some greater fear in me which kept all common alarm at a distance. I don’t think I ever determined on anything in my life as I determined on finding out how he had got his information, and who he really was. It was quite plain to me that I had roused some hidden feeling in him by my question about Armadale, which was as strong in its way as his feeling for _me_. What had become of my influence over him?

“I couldn’t imagine what had become of it; but I could and did set to work to make him feel it again.

“‘Don’t treat me cruelly,’ I said; ‘I didn’t treat _you_ cruelly just now. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, it’s so lonely, it’s so dark--don’t frighten me!’

“‘Frighten you!’ He was close to me again in a moment. ‘Frighten you!’ He repeated the word with as much astonishment as if I had woke him from a dream, and charged him with something that he had said in his sleep.

“It was on the tip of my tongue, finding how I had surprised him, to take him while he was off his guard, and to ask why my question about Armadale had produced such a change in his behavior to me. But after what had happened already, I was afraid to risk returning to the subject too soon. Something or other--what they call an instinct, I dare say--warned me to let Armadale alone for the present, and to talk to him first about himself. As I told you in one of my early letters, I had noticed signs and tokens in his manner and appearance which convinced me, young as he was, that he had done something or suffered something out of the common in his past life. I had asked myself more and more suspiciously every time I saw him whether he was what he appeared to be; and first and foremost among my other doubts was a doubt whether he was passing among us by his real name. Having secrets to keep about my own past life, and having gone myself in other days by more than one assumed name, I suppose I am all the readier to suspect other people when I find something mysterious about them. Any way, having the suspicion in my mind, I determined to startle him, as he had startled me, by an unexpected question on my side--a question about his name.

“While I was thinking, he was thinking; and, as it soon appeared, of what I had just said to him. ‘I am so grieved to have frightened you,’ he whispered, with that gentleness and humility which we all so heartily despise in a man when he speaks to other women, and which we all so dearly like when he speaks to ourselves. ‘I hardly know what I have been saying,’ he went on; ‘my mind is miserably disturbed. Pray forgive me, if you can; I am not myself to-night.’

“‘I am not angry,’ I said; ‘I have nothing to forgive. We are both imprudent; we are both unhappy.’ I laid my head on his shoulder. ‘Do you really love me?’ I asked him, softly, in a whisper.

“His arm stole round me again; and I felt the quick beat of his heart get quicker and quicker. ‘If you only knew!’ he whispered back; ‘if you only knew--’ He could say no more. I felt his face bending toward mine, and dropped my head lower, and stopped him in the very act of kissing me.

“‘No,’ I said; ‘I am only a woman who has taken your fancy. You are treating me as if I was your promised wife.’

“‘_Be_ my promised wife!’ he whispered, eagerly, and tried to raise my head. I kept it down. The horror of these old remembrances that you know of came back and made me tremble a little when he asked me to be his wife. I don’t think I was actually faint; but something like faintness made me close my eyes. The moment I shut them, the darkness seemed to open as if lightning had split it; and the ghosts of _those other men_ rose in the horrid gap, and looked at me.

“‘Speak to me!’ he whispered, tenderly. ‘My darling, my angel, speak to me!’

“His voice helped me to recover myself. I had just sense enough left to remember that the time was passing, and that I had not put my question to him yet about his name.

“‘Suppose I felt for you as you feel for me?’ I said. ‘Suppose I loved you dearly enough to trust you with the happiness of all my life to come?’

“I paused a moment to get my breath. It was unbearably still and close; the air seemed to have died when the night came.

“‘Would you be marrying me honorably,’ I went on, ‘if you married me in your present name?’

“His arm dropped from my waist, and I felt him give one great start. After that he sat by me, still, and cold, and silent, as if my question had struck him dumb. I put my arm round his neck, and lifted my head again on his shoulder. Whatever the spell was I had laid on him, my coming closer in that way seemed to break it.

“‘Who told you?’ He stopped. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘nobody can have told you. What made you suspect--?’ He stopped again.

“‘Nobody told me,’ I said; ‘and I don’t know what made me suspect. Women have strange fancies sometimes. Is Midwinter really your name?’

“‘I can’t deceive you,’ he answered, after another interval of silence; ‘Midwinter is _not_ really my name.’

“I nestled a little closer to him.

“‘What _is_ your name?’ I asked.

“He hesitated.

“I lifted my face till my cheek just touched his. I persisted, with my lips close at his ear:

“‘What, no confidence in me even yet! No confidence in the woman who has almost confessed she loves you--who has almost consented to be your wife!’

“He turned his face to mine. For the second time he tried to kiss me, and for the second time I stopped him.

“‘If I tell you my name,’ he said, ‘I must tell you more.’

“I let my cheek touch his again.

“‘Why not?’ I said. ‘How can I love a man--much less marry him--if he keeps himself a stranger to me?’

“There was no answering that, as I thought. But he did answer it.

“‘It is a dreadful story,’ he said. ‘It may darken all your life, if you know it, as it has darkened mine.’

“I put my other arm round him, and persisted. ‘Tell it me; I’m not afraid; tell it me.’

“He began to yield to my other arm.

“‘Will you keep it a sacred secret?’ he said. ‘Never to be breathed--never to be known but to you and me?’

“I promised him it should be a secret. I waited in a perfect frenzy of expectation. Twice he tried to begin, and twice his courage failed him.

“‘I can’t!’ he broke out in a wild, helpless way. ‘I can’t tell it!’

“My curiosity, or more likely my temper, got beyond all control. He had irritated me till I was reckless what I said or what I did. I suddenly clasped him close, and pressed my lips to his. ‘I love you!’ I whispered in a kiss. ‘_Now_ will you tell me?’

“For the moment he was speechless. I don’t know whether I did it purposely to drive him wild. I don’t know whether I did it involuntarily in a burst of rage. Nothing is certain but that I interpreted his silence the wrong way. I pushed him back from me in a fury the instant after I had kissed him. ‘I hate you!’ I said. ‘You have maddened me into forgetting myself. Leave me. I don’t care for the darkness. Leave me instantly, and never see me again!’

“He caught me by the hand and stopped me. He spoke in a new voice; he suddenly _commanded_, as only men can.

“‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You have given me back my courage--you shall know who I am.’

“In the silence and the darkness all round us, I obeyed him, and sat down.

“In the silence and the darkness all round us, he took me in his arms again, and told me who he was.”

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“Shall I trust you with his story? Shall I tell you his real name? Shall I show you, as I threatened, the thoughts that have grown out of my interview with him and out of all that has happened to me since that time?

“Or shall I keep his secret as I promised? and keep my own secret too, by bringing this weary, long letter to an end at the very moment when you are burning to hear more!

“Those are serious questions, Mrs. Oldershaw--more serious than you suppose. I have had time to calm down, and I begin to see, what I failed to see when I first took up my pen to write to you, the wisdom of looking at consequences. Have I frightened myself in trying to frighten _you_? It is possible--strange as it may seem, it is really possible.

“I have been at the window for the last minute or two, thinking. There is plenty of time for thinking before the post leaves. The people are only now coming out of church.

“I have settled to put my letter on one side, and to take a look at my diary. In plainer words I must see what I risk if I decide on trusting you; and my diary will show me what my head is too weary to calculate without help. I have written the story of my days (and sometimes the story of my nights) much more regularly than usual for the last week, having reasons of my own for being particularly careful in this respect under present circumstances. If I end in doing what it is now in my mind to do, it would be madness to trust to my memory. The smallest forgetfulness of the slightest event that has happened from the night of my interview with Midwinter to the present time might be utter ruin to me.

“‘Utter ruin to her!’ you will say. ‘What kind of ruin does she mean?’

“Wait a little, till I have asked my diary whether I can safely tell you.”

X. MISS GWILT’S DIARY.

“July 21st, Monday night, eleven o’clock.--Midwinter has just left me. We parted by my desire at the path out of the coppice; he going his way to the hotel, and I going mine to my lodgings.

“I have managed to avoid making another appointment with him by arranging to write to him to-morrow morning. This gives me the night’s interval to compose myself, and to coax my mind back (if I can) to my own affairs. Will the night pass, and the morning find me still thinking of the Letter that came to him from his father’s deathbed? of the night he watched through on the Wrecked Ship; and, more than all, of the first breathless moment when he told me his real Name?

“Would it help me to shake off these impressions, I wonder, if I made the effort of writing them down? There would be no danger, in that case, of my forgetting anything important. And perhaps, after all, it may be the fear of forgetting something which I ought to remember that keeps this story of Midwinter’s weighing as it does on my mind. At any rate, the experiment is worth trying. In my present situation I _must_ be free to think of other things, or I shall never find my way through all the difficulties at Thorpe Ambrose that are still to come.

“Let me think. What _haunts_ me, to begin with?

“The Names haunt me. I keep saying and saying to myself: Both alike!--Christian name and surname both alike! A light-haired Allan Armadale, whom I have long since known of, and who is the son of my old mistress. A dark-haired Allan Armadale, whom I only know of now, and who is only known to others under the name of Ozias Midwinter. Stranger still; it is not relationship, it is not chance, that has made them namesakes. The father of the light Armadale was the man who was _born_ to the family name, and who lost the family inheritance. The father of the dark Armadale was the man who _took_ the name, on condition of getting the inheritance--and who got it.

“So there are two of them--I can’t help thinking of it--both unmarried. The light-haired Armadale, who offers to the woman who can secure him, eight thousand a year while he lives; who leaves her twelve hundred a year when he dies; who must and shall marry me for those two golden reasons; and whom I hate and loathe as I never hated and loathed a man yet. And the dark-haired Armadale, who has a poor little income, which might perhaps pay his wife’s milliner, if his wife was careful; who has just left me, persuaded that I mean to marry him; and whom--well, whom I _might_ have loved once, before I was the woman I am now.

“And Allan the Fair doesn’t know he has a namesake. And Allan the Dark has kept the secret from everybody but the Somersetshire clergyman (whose discretion he can depend on) and myself.

“And there are two Allan Armadales--two Allan Armadales--two Allan Armadales. There! three is a lucky number. Haunt me again, after that, if you can!

“What next? The murder in the timber ship? No; the murder is a good reason why the dark Armadale, whose father committed it, should keep his secret from the fair Armadale, whose father was killed; but it doesn’t concern _me_. I remember there was a suspicion in Madeira at the time of something wrong. _Was_ it wrong? Was the man who had been tricked out of his wife to blame for shutting the cabin door, and leaving the man who had tricked him to drown in the wreck? Yes; the woman wasn’t worth it.

“What am I sure of that really concerns myself?

“I am sure of one very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter--I must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales before I have done--I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed to arrive from the West Indies, are one and the same. There are not many girls of twelve who could have imitated a man’s handwriting, and held their tongues about it afterward, as I did; but that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that Midwinter’s belief in the Dream is Midwinter’s only reason for trying to connect me with Allan Armadale, by associating me with Allan Armadale’s father and mother. I asked him if he actually thought me old enough to have known either of them. And he said No, poor fellow, in the most innocent, bewildered way. Would he say No if he saw me now? Shall I turn to the glass and see if I look my five-and-thirty years? or shall I go on writing? I will go on writing.

“There is one thing more that haunts me almost as obstinately as the Names.

“I wonder whether I am right in relying on Midwinter’s superstition (as I do) to help me in keeping him at arms-length. After having let the excitement of the moment hurry me into saying more than I need have said, he is certain to press me; he is certain to come back, with a man’s hateful selfishness and impatience in such things, to the question of marrying me. Will the Dream help me to check him? After alternately believing and disbelieving in it, he has got, by his own confession, to believing in it again. Can I say I believe in it, too? I have better reasons for doing so than he knows of. I am not only the person who helped Mrs. Armadale’s marriage by helping her to impose on her own father: I am the woman who tried to drown herself; the woman who started the series of accidents which put young Armadale in possession of his fortune; the woman who has come Thorpe Ambrose to marry him for his fortune, now he has got it; and more extraordinary still, the woman who stood in the Shadow’s place at the pool! These may be coincidences, but they are strange coincidences. I declare I begin to fancy that _I_ believe in the Dream too!

“Suppose I say to him, ‘I think as you think. I say what you said in your letter to me, Let us part before the harm is done. Leave me before the Third Vision of the Dream comes true. Leave me, and put the mountains and the seas between you and the man who bears your name!’

“Suppose, on the other side, that his love for me makes him reckless of everything else? Suppose he says those desperate words again, which I understand now: What _is_ to be, _will_ be. What have I to do with it, and what has she?’ Suppose--suppose--

“I won’t write any more. I hate writing. It doesn’t relieve me--it makes me worse. I’m further from being able to think of all that I _must_ think of than I was when I sat down. It is past midnight. To-morrow has come already; and here I am as helpless as the stupidest woman living! Bed is the only fit place for me.

“Bed? If it was ten years since, instead of to-day; and if I had married Midwinter for love, I might be going to bed now with nothing heavier on my mind than a visit on tiptoe to the nursery, and a last look at night to see if my children were sleeping quietly in their cribs. I wonder whether I should have loved my children if I had ever had any? Perhaps, yes--perhaps, no. It doesn’t matter.”

“Tuesday morning, ten o’clock.--Who was the man who invented laudanum? I thank him from the bottom of my heart whoever he was. If all the miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of relief--and all through the modest little bottle of Drops, which I see on my bedroom chimney-piece at this moment. ‘Drops,’ you are a darling! If I love nothing else, I love _you_.

“My letter to Midwinter has been sent through the post; and I have told him to reply to me in the same manner.

“I feel no anxiety about his answer--he can only answer in one way. I have asked for a little time to consider, because my family circumstances require some consideration, in his interests as well as in mine. I have engaged to tell him what those circumstances are (what shall I say, I wonder?) when we next meet; and I have requested him in the meantime to keep all that has passed between us a secret for the present. As to what he is to do himself in the interval while I am supposed to be considering, I have left it to his own discretion--merely reminding him that his attempting to see me again (while our positions toward each other cannot be openly avowed) might injure my reputation. I have offered to write to him if he wishes it; and I have ended by promising to make the interval of our necessary separation as short as I can.

“This sort of plain, unaffected letter--which I might have written to him last night, if his story had not been running in my head as it did--has one defect, I know. It certainly keeps him out of the way, while I am casting my net, and catching my gold fish at the great house for the second time; but it also leaves an awkward day of reckoning to come with Midwinter if I succeed. How am I to manage him? What am I to do? I ought to face those two questions as boldly as usual; but somehow my courage seems to fail me, and I don’t quite fancy meeting _that_ difficulty, till the time comes when it _must_ be met. Shall I confess to my diary that I am sorry for Midwinter, and that I shrink a little from thinking of the day when he hears that I am going to be mistress at the great house?

“But I am not mistress yet; and I can’t take a step in the direction of the great house till I have got the answer to my letter, and till I know that Midwinter is out of the way. Patience! patience! I must go and forget myself at my piano. There is the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ open, and tempting me, on the music-stand. Have I nerve enough to play it, I wonder? Or will it set me shuddering with the mystery and terror of it, as it did the other day?”

“Five o’clock.--I have got his answer. The slightest request I can make is a command to him. He has gone; and he sends me his address in London. ‘There are two considerations’ (he says) ‘which help to reconcile me to leaving you. The first is that _you_ wish it, and that it is only to be for a little while. The second is that I think I can make some arrangements in London for adding to my income by my own labor. I have never cared for money for myself; but you don’t know how I am beginning already to prize the luxuries and refinements that money can provide, for my wife’s sake.’ Poor fellow! I almost wish I had not written to him as I did; I almost wish I had not sent him away from me.

“Fancy if Mother Oldershaw saw this page in my diary! I have had a letter from her this morning--a letter to remind me of my obligations, and to tell me she suspects things are all going wrong. Let her suspect! I shan’t trouble myself to answer; I can’t be worried with that old wretch in the state I am in now.

“It is a lovely afternoon--I want a walk--I mustn’t think of Midwinter. Suppose I put on my bonnet, and try my experiment at once at the great house? Everything is in my favor. There is no spy to follow me, and no lawyer to keep me out, this time. Am I handsome enough, to-day? Well, yes; handsome enough to be a match for a little dowdy, awkward, freckled creature, who ought to be perched on a form at school, and strapped to a backboard to straighten her crooked shoulders.

“‘The nursery lisps out in all they utter;
Besides, they always smell of bread-and-butter.’

“How admirably Byron has described girls in their teens!”

“Eight o’clock.--I have just got back from Armadale’s house. I have seen him, and spoken to him; and the end of it may be set down in three plain words. I have failed. There is no more chance of my being Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose than there is of my being Queen of England.

“Shall I write and tell Oldershaw? Shall I go back to London? Not till I have had time to think a little. Not just yet.

“Let me think; I have failed completely--failed, with all the circumstances in favor of success. I caught him alone on the drive in front of the house. He was excessively disconcerted, but at the same time quite willing to hear me. I tried him, first quietly--then with tears, and the rest of it. I introduced myself in the character of the poor innocent woman whom he had been the means of injuring. I confused, I interested, I convinced him. I went on to the purely Christian part of my errand, and spoke with such feeling of his separation from his friend, for which I was innocently responsible, that I turned his odious rosy face quite pale, and made him beg me at last not to distress him. But, whatever other feelings I roused in him, I never once roused his old feeling for _me_. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me; I felt it in his fingers when we shook hands. We parted friends, and nothing more.

“It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation, morning after morning, when I knew you were out alone in the park? I have just left you time to slip in, and take my place in Armadale’s good graces, have I? I never resisted temptation yet without suffering for it in some such way as this! If I had only followed my first thoughts, on the day when I took leave of you, my young lady--well, well, never mind that now. I have got the future before me; you are not Mrs. Armadale yet! And I can tell you one other thing--whoever else he marries, he will never marry _you_. If I am even with you in no other way, trust me, whatever comes of it, to be even with you there!

“I am not, to my own surprise, in one of my furious passions. The last time I was in this perfectly cool state, under serious provocation, something came of it, which I daren’t write down, even in my own private diary. I shouldn’t be surprised if something comes of it now.

“On my way back, I called at Mr. Bashwood’s lodgings in the town. He was not at home, and I left a message telling him to come here to-night and speak to me. I mean to relieve him at once of the duty of looking after Armadale and Miss Milroy. I may not see my way yet to ruining her prospects at Thorpe Ambrose as completely as she has ruined mine. But when the time comes, and I do see it, I don’t know to what lengths my sense of injury may take me; and there may be inconvenience, and possibly danger, in having such a chicken-hearted creature as Mr. Bashwood in my confidence.

“I suspect I am more upset by all this than I supposed. Midwinter’s story is beginning to haunt me again, without rhyme or reason.

“A soft, quick, trembling knock at the street door! I know who it is. No hand but old Bashwood’s could knock in that way.”

“Nine o’clock.--I have just got rid of him. He has surprised me by coming out in a new character.

“It seems (though I didn’t detect him) that he was at the great house while I was in company with Armadale. He saw us talking on the drive, and he afterward heard what the servants said, who saw us too. The wise opinion below stairs is that we have ‘made it up,’ and that the master is likely to marry me after all. ‘He’s sweet on her red hair,’ was the elegant expression they used in the kitchen. ‘Little missie can’t match her there; and little missie will get the worst of it.’ How I hate the coarse ways of the lower orders!

“While old Bashwood was telling me this, I thought he looked even more confused and nervous than usual. But I failed to see what was really the matter until after I had told him that he was to leave all further observation of Mr. Armadale and Miss Milroy to me. Every drop of the little blood there is in the feeble old creature’s body seemed to fly up into his face. He made quite an overpowering effort; he really looked as if he would drop down dead of fright at his own boldness; but he forced out the question for all that, stammering, and stuttering, and kneading desperately with both hands at the brim of his hideous great hat. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Gwi-Gwi-Gwilt! You are not really go-go-going to marry Mr. Armadale, are you?’ Jealous--if ever I saw it in a man’s face yet, I saw it in his--actually jealous of Armadale at his age! If I had been in the humor for it, I should have burst out laughing in his face. As it was, I was angry, and lost all patience with him. I told him he was an old fool, and ordered him to go on quietly with his usual business until I sent him word that he was wanted again. He submitted as usual; but there was an indescribable something in his watery old eyes, when he took leave of me, which I have never noticed in them before. Love has the credit of working all sorts of strange transformations. Can it be really possible that Love has made Mr. Bashwood man enough to be angry with me?

“Wednesday.--My experience of Miss Milroy’s habits suggested a suspicion to me last night which I thought it desirable to clear up this morning.

“It was always her way, when I was at the cottage, to take a walk early in the morning before breakfast. Considering that I used often to choose that very time for _my_ private meetings with Armadale, it struck me as likely that my former pupil might be taking a leaf out of my book, and that I might make some desirable discoveries if I turned my steps in the direction of the major’s garden at the right hour. I deprived myself of my Drops, to make sure of waking; passed a miserable night in consequence; and was ready enough to get up at six o’clock, and walk the distance from my lodgings to the cottage in the fresh morning air.

“I had not been five minutes on the park side of the garden inclosure before I saw her come out.

“She seemed to have had a bad night too; her eyes were heavy and red, and her lips and cheeks looked swollen as if she had been crying. There was something on her mind, evidently; something, as it soon appeared, to take her out of the garden into the park. She walked (if one can call it walking; with such legs as hers!) straight to the summer house, and opened the door, and crossed the bridge, and went on quicker and quicker toward the low ground in the park, where the trees are thickest. I followed her over the open space with perfect impunity in the preoccupied state she was in; and, when she began to slacken her pace among the trees, I was among the trees too, and was not afraid of her seeing me.