THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.
When Mr. Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the
strange contrast of character between them which he had noticed
already was impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of
them sat at the well-spread table, hungry and happy, ranging from
dish to dish, and declaring that he had never made such a
breakfast in his life. The other sat apart at the window;
his cup thanklessly deserted before it was empty, his meat left
ungraciously half-eaten on his plate. The doctor's morning
greeting to the two accurately expressed the differing
impressions which they had produced on his mind.
He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He
bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, "I am afraid you have
not recovered the fatigues of the night."
"It's not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits," said
Allan. "It's something I have been telling him. It is not my
fault, mind. If I had only known beforehand that he believed in
dreams, I wouldn't have opened my lips."
"Dreams?" repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, and
addressing him under a mistaken impression of the meaning of
Allan's words. "With your constitution, you ought to be well used
to dreaming by this time."
"This way, doctor; you have taken the wrong turning!" cried
Allan. "I'm the dreamer, not he. Don't look astonished; it wasn't
in this comfortable house; it was on board that confounded
timber-ship. The fact is, I fell asleep just before you took us
off the wreck; and it's not to be denied that I had a very ugly
dream. Well, when we got back here--"
"Why do you trouble Mr. Hawbury about a matter that cannot
possibly interest him?" asked Midwinter, speaking for the first
time, and speaking very impatiently.
"I beg your pardon," returned the doctor, rather sharply; "so far
as I have heard, the matter does interest me."
"That's right, doctor!" said Allan. "Be interested, I beg and
pray; I want you to clear his head of the nonsense he has got in
it now. What do you think? He will have it that my dream is a
warning to me to avoid certain people; and he actually persists
in saying that one of those people is--himself! Did you ever hear
the like of it? I took great pains; I explained the whole thing
to him. I said, warning be hanged; it's all indigestion! You
don't know what I ate and drank at the doctor's supper-table; I
do. Do you think he would listen to me? Not he. You try him next;
you're a professional man, and he must listen to you. Be a good
fellow, doctor, and give me a certificate of indigestion; I'll
show you my tongue with pleasure."
"The sight of your face is quite enough," said Mr. Hawbury. "I
certify, on the spot, that you never had such a thing as an
indigestion in your life. Let's hear about the dream, and see
what we can make of it, if you have no objection, that is to
say."
Allan pointed at Midwinter with his fork.
"Apply to my friend, there," he said; "he has got a much better
account of it than I can give you. If you'll believe me, he took
it all down in writing from my own lips; and he made me sign it
at the end, as if it was my 'last dying speech and confession'
before I went to the gallows. Out with it, old boy--I saw you put
it in your pocket-book--out with it!"
"Are you really in earnest?" asked Midwinter, producing his
pocketbook with a reluctance which was almost offensive under the
circumstances, for it implied distrust of the doctor in the
doctor's own house.
Mr. Hawbury's color rose. "Pray don't show it to me, if you feel
the least unwillingness," he said, with the elaborate politeness
of an offended man.
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Allan. "Throw it over here!"
Instead of complying with that characteristic request, Midwinter
took the paper from the pocket-book, and, leaving his place,
approached Mr. Hawbury. "I beg your pardon," he said, as he
offered the doctor the manuscript with his own hand. His eyes
dropped to the ground, and his face darkened, while he made the
apology. "A secret, sullen fellow," thought the doctor, thanking
him with formal civility; "his friend is worth ten thousand of
him." Midwinter went back to the window, and sat down again in
silence, with the old impenetrable resignation which had once
puzzled Mr. Brock.
"Read that, doctor," said Allan, as Mr. Hawbury opened the
written paper. "It's not told in my roundabout way; but there's
nothing added to it, and nothing taken away. It's exactly what I
dreamed, and exactly what I should have written myself, if I had
thought the thing worth putting down on paper, and if I had had
the knack of writing--which," concluded Allan, composedly
stirring his coffee, "I haven't, except it's letters; and I
rattle _them_ off in no time."
Mr. Hawbury spread the manuscript before him on the
breakfast-table, and read these lines:
"ALLAN ARMADALE'S DREAM.
"Early on the morning of June the first, eighteen hundred and
fifty-one, I found myself (through circumstances which it is not
important to mention in this place) left alone with a friend of
mine--a young man about my own age--on board the French
timber-ship named _La Grace de Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked
in the channel of the Sound between the main-land of the Isle of
Man and the islet called the Calf. Having not been in bed the
previous night, and feeling overcome by fatigue, I fell asleep on
the deck of the vessel. I was in my usual good health at the
time, and the morning was far enough advanced for the sun to have
risen. Under these circumstances, and at that period of the day,
I passed from sleeping to dreaming. As clearly as I can recollect
it, after the lapse of a few hours, this was the succession of
events presented to me by the dream:
"1. The first event of which I was conscious was the appearance
of my father. He took me silently by the hand; and we found
ourselves in the cabin of a ship.
"2. Water rose slowly over us in the cabin; and I and my father
sank through the water together.
"3. An interval of oblivion followed; and then the sense came to
me of being left alone in the darkness.
"4. I waited.
"5. The darkness opened, and showed me the vision--as in a
picture--of a broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground.
Above the farther margin of the pool I saw the cloudless western
sky, red with the light of sunset.
"6. On the near margin of the pool there stood the Shadow of a
Woman.
"7. It was the shadow only. No indication was visible to me by
which I could identify it, or compare it with any living
creature. The long robe showed me that it was the shadow of a
woman, and showed me nothing more.
"8. The darkness closed again--remained with me for an
interval--and opened for the second time.
"9. I found myself in a room, standing before. a long window. The
only object of furniture or of ornament that I saw (or that I can
now remember having seen) was a little statue placed near me. The
window opened on a lawn and flower-garden; and the rain was
pattering heavily against the glass.
"10. I was not alone in the room. Standing opposite to me at the
window was the Shadow of a Man.
"11. I saw no more of it; I knew no more of it than I saw and
knew of the shadow of the woman. But the shadow of the man moved.
It stretched out its arm toward the statue; and the statue fell
in fragments on the floor.
"12. With a confused sensation in me, which was partly anger and
partly distress, I stooped to look at the fragments. When I rose
again, the Shadow had vanished, and I saw no more.
"13. The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the
Shadow of the Woman and the Shadow of the Man together.
"14. No surrounding scene (or none that I can now call to mind)
was visible to me.
"15. The Man-Shadow was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back.
From where she stood, there came a sound as of the pouring of a
liquid softly. I saw her touch the shadow of the man with one
hand, and with the other give him a glass. He took the glass, and
gave it to me. In the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly
faintness mastered me from head to foot. When I came to my senses
again, the Shadows had vanished, and the third vision was at an
end.
"16. The darkness closed over me again; and the interval of
oblivion followed.
"17. I was conscious of nothing more, till I felt the morning sun
shine on my face, and heard my friend tell me that I had awakened
from a dream...."
After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under
which appeared Allan's signature), the doctor looked across the
breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the
manuscript with a satirical smile.
"Many men, many opinions," he said. "I don't agree with either of
you about this dream. Your theory," he added, looking at Allan,
with a smile, "we have disposed of already: the supper that _you_
can't digest is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My
theory we will come to presently; your friend's theory claims
attention first." He turned again to Midwinter, with his
anticipated triumph over a man whom he disliked a little too
plainly visible in his face and manner. "If I understand
rightly," he went on, "you believe that this dream is a warning!
supernaturally addressed to Mr. Armadale, of dangerous events
that are threatening him, and of dangerous people connected with
those events whom he would do wisely to avoid. May I inquire
whether you have arrived at this conclusion as an habitual
believer in dreams, or as having reasons of your own for
attaching especial importance to this one dream in particular?"
"You have stated what my conviction is quite accurately,"
returned Midwinter, chafing under the doctor's looks and tones.
"Excuse me if I ask you to be satisfied with that admission, and
to let me keep my reasons to myself."
"That's exactly what he said to me," interposed Allan. "I don't
believe he has got any reasons at all."
"Gently! gently!" said Mr. Hawbury. "We can discuss the subject
without intruding ourselves into anybody's secrets. Let us come
to my own method of dealing with the dream next. Mr. Midwinter
will probably not be surprised to hear that I look at this matter
from an essentially practical point of view."
"I shall not be at all surprised," retorted Midwinter. "The view
of a medical man, when he has a problem in humanity to solve,
seldom ranges beyond the point of his dissecting-knife."
The doctor was a little nettled on his side. "Our limits are not
quite so narrow as that," he said; "but I willingly grant you
that there are some articles of your faith in which we doctors
don't believe. For example, we don't believe that a reasonable
man is justified in attaching a supernatural interpretation to
any phenomenon which comes within the range of his senses, until
he has certainly ascertained that there is no such thing as a
natural explanation of it to be found in the first instance."
"Come; that's fair enough, I'm sure," exclaimed Allan. "He hit
you hard with the 'dissecting-knife,' doctor; and now you have
hit him back again with your 'natural explanation.' Let's have
it."
"By all means," said Mr. Hawbury. "Here it is. There is nothing
at all extraordinary in my theory of dreams: it is the theory
accepted by the great mass of my profession. A dream is the
reproduction, in the sleeping state of the brain, of images and
impressions produced on it in the waking state; and this
reproduction is more or less involved, imperfect, or
contradictory, as the action of certain faculties in the dreamer
is controlled more or less completely by the influence of sleep.
Without inquiring further into this latter part of the subject--a
very curious and interesting part of it--let us take the theory,
roughly and generally, as I have just stated it, and apply it at
once to the dream now under consideration." He took up the
written paper from the table, and dropped the formal tone (as of
a lecturer addressing an audience) into which he had insensibly
fallen. "I see one event already in this dream," he resumed,
"which I know to be the reproduction of a waking impression
produced on Mr. Armadale in my own presence. If he will only help
me by exerting his memory, I don't despair of tracing back the
whole succession of events set down here to something that he has
said or thought, or seen or done, in the four-and-twenty hours,
or less, which preceded his falling asleep on the deck of the
timber-ship."
"I'll exert my memory with the greatest pleasure," said Allan.
"Where shall we start from?"
"Start by telling me what you did yesterday, before I met you and
your friend on the road to this place," replied Mr. Hawbury. "We
will say, you got up and had your breakfast. What next?"
"We took a carriage next," said Allan, "and drove from Castletown
to Douglas to see my old friend, Mr. Brock, off by the steamer to
Liverpool. We came back to Castletown and separated at the hotel
door. Midwinter went into the house, and I went on to my yacht
in the harbor. By-the-bye, doctor, remember you have promised to
go cruising with us before we leave the Isle of Man."
"Many thanks; but suppose we keep to the matter in hand. What
next?"
Allan hesitated. In both senses of the word his mind was at sea
already.
"What did you do on board the yacht?"
"Oh, I know! I put the cabin to rights--thoroughly to rights.
I give you my word of honor, I turned every blessed thing
topsy-turvy. And my friend there came off in a shore-boat and
helped me. Talking of boats, I have never asked you yet whether
your boat came to any harm last night. If there's any damage
done, I insist on being allowed to repair it."
The doctor abandoned all further attempts at the cultivation of
Allan's memory in despair.
"I doubt if we shall be able to reach our object conveniently in
this way," he said. "It will be better to take the events of the
dream in their regular order, and to ask the questions that
naturally suggest themselves as we go on. Here are the first two
events to begin with. You dream that your father appears to
you--that you and he find yourselves in the cabin of a ship--that
the water rises over you, and that you sink in it together. Were
you down in the cabin of the wreck, may I ask?"
"I couldn't be down there," replied Allan, "as the cabin was full
of water. I looked in and saw it, and shut the door again."
"Very good," said Mr. Hawbury. "Here are the waking impressions
clear enough, so far. You have had the cabin in your mind; and
you have had the water in your mind; and the sound of the channel
current (as I well know without asking) was the last sound in
your ears when you went to sleep. The idea of drowning comes too
naturally out of such impressions as these to need dwelling on.
Is there anything else before we go on? Yes; there is one more
circumstance left to account for."
"The most important circumstance of all," remarked Midwinter,
joining in the conversation, without stirring from his place at
the window.
"You mean the appearance of Mr. Armadale's father? I was just
coming to that," answered Mr. Hawbury. "Is your father alive?"
he added, addressing himself to Allan once more.
"My father died before I was born."
The doctor started. "This complicates it a little," he said. "How
did you know that the figure appearing to you in the dream was
the figure of your father?"
Allan hesitated again. Midwinter drew his chair a little away
from the window, and looked at the doctor attentively for the
first time.
"Was your father in your thoughts before you went to sleep?"
pursued Mr. Hawbury. "Was there any description of him--any
portrait of him at home--in your mind?"
"Of course there was!" cried Allan, suddenly seizing the lost
recollection. "Midwinter! you remember the miniature you found on
the floor of the cabin when we were putting the yacht to rights?
You said I didn't seem to value it; and I told you I did, because
it was a portrait of my father--"
"And was the face in the dream like the face in the miniature?"
asked Mr. Hawbury.
"Exactly like! I say, doctor, this is beginning to get
interesting!"
"What do you say now?" asked Mr. Hawbury, turning toward the
window again.
Midwinter hurriedly left his chair, and placed himself at the
table with Allan. Just as he had once already taken refuge from
the tyranny of his own superstition in the comfortable common
sense of Mr. Brock, so, with the same headlong eagerness, with
the same straightforward sincerity of purpose, he now took refuge
in the doctor's theory of dreams. "I say what my friend says," he
answered, flushing with a sudden enthusiasm; "this is beginning
to get interesting. Go on; pray go on."
The doctor looked at his strange guest more indulgently than he
had looked yet. "You are the only mystic I have met with," he
said, "who is willing to give fair evidence fair play. I don't
despair of converting you before our inquiry comes to an end. Let
us get on to the next set of events," he resumed, after referring
for a moment to the manuscript. "The interval of oblivion which
is described as succeeding the first of the appearances in the
dream may be easily disposed of. It means, in plain English, the
momentary cessation of the brain's intellectual action, while a
deeper wave of sleep flows over it, just as the sense of being
alone in the darkness, which follows, indicates the renewal of
that action, previous to the reproduction of another set of
impressions. Let us see what they are. A lonely pool, surrounded
by an open country; a sunset sky on the further side of the pool;
and the shadow of a woman on the near side. Very good; now for
it, Mr. Armadale! How did that pool get into your head? The open
country you saw on your way from Castletown to this place But we
have no pools or lakes hereabouts; and you can have seen none
recently elsewhere, for you came here after a cruise at sea. Must
we fall back on a picture, or a book, or a conversation with your
friend?"
Allan looked at Midwinter. "I don't remember talking about pools
or lakes," he said. "Do you?"
Instead of answering the question, Midwinter suddenly appealed to
the doctor.
"Have you got the last number of the Manx newspaper?" he asked.
The doctor produced it from the sideboard. Midwinter turned to
the page containing those extracts from the recently published
"Travels in Australia," which had roused Allan's, interest on the
previous evening, and the reading of which had ended by sending
his friend to sleep. There--in the passage describing the
sufferings of the travelers from thirst, and the subsequent
discovery which saved their lives--there, appearing at the climax
of the narrative, was the broad pool of water which had figured
in Allan's dream!
"Don't put away the paper," said the doctor, when Midwinter had
shown it to him, with the necessary explanation. "Before we are
at the end of the inquiry, it is quite possible we may want that
extract again. We have got at the pool. How about the sunset?
Nothing of that sort is referred to in the newspaper extract.
Search your memory again, Mr. Armadale; we want your waking
impression of a sunset, if you please."
Once more, Allan was at a loss for an answer; and, once more,
Midwinter's ready memory helped him through the difficulty.
"I think I can trace our way back to this impression, as I traced
our way back to the other," he said, addressing the doctor.
"After we got here yesterday afternoon, my friend and I took a
long walk over the hills--"
"That's it!" interposed Allan. "I remember. The sun was setting
as we came back to the hotel for supper, and it was such a
splendid red sky, we both stopped to look at it. And then we
talked about Mr. Brock, and wondered how far he had got on his
journey home. My memory may be a slow one at starting, doctor;
but when it's once set going, stop it if you can! I haven't half
done yet."
"Wait one minute, in mercy to Mr. Midwinter's memory and mine,"
said the doctor. "We have traced back to your waking impressions
the vision of the open country, the pool, and the sunset. But the
Shadow of the Woman has not been accounted for yet. Can you find
us the original of this mysterious figure in the dream
landscape?"
Allan relapsed into his former perplexity, and Midwinter waited
for what was to come, with his eyes fixed in breathless interest
on the doctor's face. For the first time there was unbroken
silence in the room. Mr. Hawbury looked interrogatively from
Allan to Allan's friend. Neither of them answered him. Between
the shadow and the shadow's substance there was a great gulf of
mystery, impenetrable alike to all three of them.
"Patience," said the doctor, composedly. "Let us leave the figure
by the pool for the present and try if we can't pick her up again
as we go on. Allow me to observe, Mr. Midwinter, that it is not
very easy to identify a shadow; but we won't despair. This
impalpable lady of the lake may take some consistency when we
next meet with her."
Midwinter made no reply. From that moment his interest in the
inquiry began to flag.
"What is the next scene in the dream?" pursued Mr. Hawbury,
referring to the manuscript. "Mr. Armadale finds himself in a
room. He is standing before a long window opening on a lawn and
flower-garden, and the rain is pattering against the glass. The
only thing he sees in the room is a little statue; and the only
company he has is the Shadow of a Man standing opposite to him.
The Shadow stretches out its arm, and the statue falls in
fragments on the floor; and the dreamer, in anger and distress
at the catastrophe (observe, gentlemen, that here the sleeper's
reasoning faculty wakes up a little, and the dream passes
rationally, for a moment, from cause to effect), stoops to look
at the broken pieces. When he looks up again, the scene has
vanished. That is to say, in the ebb and flow of sleep, it is the
turn of the flow now, and the brain rests a little. What's the
matter, Mr. Armadale? Has that restive memory of yours run away
with you again?"
"Yes," said Allan. "I'm off at full gallop. I've run the broken
statue to earth; it's nothing more nor less than a china
shepherdess I knocked off the mantel-piece in the hotel
coffee-room, when I rang the bell for supper last night. I say,
how well we get on; don't we? It's like guessing a riddle. Now,
then, Midwinter! your turn next."
"No!" said the doctor. "My turn, if you please. I claim the long
window, the garden, and the lawn, as my property. You will find
the long window, Mr. Armadale, in the next room. If you look out,
you'll see the garden and lawn in front of it; and, if you'll
exert that wonderful memory of yours, you will recollect that you
were good enough to take special and complimentary notice of my
smart French window and my neat garden, when I drove you and your
friend to Port St. Mary yesterday."
"Quite right," rejoined Allan; "so I did. But what about the rain
that fell in the dream? I haven't seen a drop of rain for the
last week."
Mr. Hawbury hesitated. The Manx newspaper which had been left on
the table caught his eye. "If we can think of nothing else," he
said, "let us try if we can't find the idea of the rain where we
found the idea of the pool." He looked through the extract
carefully. "I have got it!" he exclaimed. "Here is rain described
as having fallen on these thirsty Australian travelers, before
they discovered the pool. Behold the shower, Mr. Armadale, which
got into your mind when you read the extract to your friend last
night! And behold the dream, Mr. Midwinter, mixing up separate
waking impressions just as usual!"
"Can you find the waking impression which accounts for the human
figure at the window?" asked Midwinter; "or are we to pass over
the Shadow of the Man as we have passed over the Shadow of the
Woman already?"
He put the question with scrupulous courtesy of manner, but with
a tone of sarcasm in his voice which caught the doctor's ear, and
set up the doctor's controversial bristles on the instant.
"When you are picking up shells on the beach, Mr. Midwinter, you
usually begin with the shells that lie nearest at hand," he
rejoined. "We are picking up facts now; and those that are
easiest to get at are the facts we will take first. Let the
Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the Woman pair off together
for the present; we won't lose sight of them, I promise you. All
in good time, my dear sir; all in good time!"
He, too, was polite, and he, too, was sarcastic. The short truce
between the opponents was at an end already. Midwinter returned
significantly to his former place by the window. The doctor
instantly turned his back on the window more significantly still.
Allan, who never quarreled with anybody's opinion, and never
looked below the surface of anybody's conduct, drummed cheerfully
on the table with the handle of his knife. "Go on, doctor!" he
called out; "my wonderful memory is as fresh as ever."
"Is it?" said Mr. Hawbury, referring again to the narrative of
the dream. "Do you remember what happened when you and I were
gossiping with the landlady at the bar of the hotel last night?"
"Of course I do! You were kind enough to hand me a glass of
brandy-and-water, which the landlady had just mixed for your own
drinking. And I was obliged to refuse it because, as I told you,
the taste of brandy always turns me sick and faint, mix it how
you please."
"Exactly so," returned the doctor. "And here is the incident
reproduced in the dream. You see the man's shadow and the woman's
shadow together this time. You hear the pouring out of liquid
(brandy from the hotel bottle, and water from the hotel jug); the
glass is handed by the woman-shadow (the landlady) to the
man-shadow (myself); the man-shadow hands it to you (exactly what
I did); and the faintness (which you had previously described to
me) follows in due course. I am shocked to identify these
mysterious appearances, Mr. Midwinter, with such miserably
unromantic originals as a woman who keeps a hotel, and a man who
physics a country district. But your friend himself will tell you
that the glass of brandy-and-water was prepared by the landlady,
and that it reached him by passing from her hand to mine. We have
picked up the shadows, exactly as I anticipated; and we have only
to account now--which may be done in two words--for the manner of
their appearance in the dream. After having tried to introduce
the waking impression of the doctor and the landlady separately,
in connection with the wrong set of circumstances, the dreaming
mind comes right at the third trial, and introduces the doctor
and the landlady together, in connection with the right set of
circumstances. There it is in a nutshell!--Permit me to hand you
back the manuscript, with my best thanks for your very complete
and striking confirmation of the rational theory of dreams."
Saying those words, Mr. Hawbury returned the written paper to
Midwinter, with the pitiless politeness of a conquering man.
"Wonderful! not a point missed anywhere from beginning to end!
By Jupiter!" cried Allan, with the ready reverence of intense
ignorance. "What a thing science is!"
"Not a point missed, as you say," remarked the doctor,
complacently. "And yet I doubt if we have succeeded in convincing
your friend."
"You have _not_ convinced me," said Midwinter. "But I don't
presume on that account to say that you are wrong."
He spoke quietly, almost sadly. The terrible conviction of the
supernatural origin of the dream, from which he had tried to
escape, had possessed itself of him again. All his interest in
the argument was at an end; all his sensitiveness to its
irritating influences was gone. In the case of any other man, Mr.
Hawbury would have been mollified by such a concession as his
adversary had now made to him; but he disliked Midwinter too
cordially to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of an opinion
of his own.
"Do you admit," asked the doctor, more pugnaciously than ever,
"that I have traced back every event of the dream to a waking
impression which preceded it in Mr. Armadale's mind?"
"I have no wish to deny that you have done so," said Midwinter,
resignedly.
"Have I identified the shadows with their living originals?"
"You have identified them to your own satisfaction, and to my
friend's satisfaction. Not to mine."
"Not to yours? Can _you_ identify them?"
"No. I can only wait till the living originals stand revealed in
the future."
"Spoken like an oracle, Mr. Midwinter! Have you any idea at
present of who those living originals may be?"
"I have. I believe that coming events will identify the Shadow of
the Woman with a person whom my friend has not met with yet; and
the Shadow of the Man with myself."
Allan attempted to speak. The doctor stopped him. "Let us clearly
understand this," he said to Midwinter. "Leaving your own case
out of the question for the moment, may I ask how a shadow, which
has no distinguishing mark about it, is to be identified with a
living woman whom your friend doesn't know?"
Midwinter's color rose a little. He began to feel the lash of the
doctor's logic.
"The landscape picture of the dream has its distinguishing
marks," he replied; "and in that landscape the living woman will
appear when the living woman is first seen."
"The same thing will happen, I suppose," pursued the doctor,
"with the man-shadow which you persist in identifying with
yourself. You will be associated in the future with a statue
broken in your friend's presence, with a long window looking out
on a garden, and with a shower of rain pattering against the
glass? Do you say that?"
"I say that."
"And so again, I presume, with the next vision? You and the
mysterious woman will be brought together in some place now
unknown, and will present to Mr. Armadale some liquid yet
unnamed, which will turn him faint?--Do you seriously tell me
you believe this?"
"I seriously tell you I believe it."
"And, according to your view, these fulfillments of the dream
will mark the progress of certain coming events, in which Mr.
Armadale's happiness, or Mr. Armadale's safety, will be
dangerously involved?"
"That is my firm conviction."
The doctor rose, laid aside his moral dissecting-knife,
considered for a moment, and took it up again.
"One last question," he said. "Have you any reason to give for
going out of your way to adopt such a mystical view as this, when
an unanswerably rational explanation of the dream lies straight
before you?"
"No reason," replied Midwinter, "that I can give, either to you
or to my friend."
The doctor looked at his watch with the air of a man who is
suddenly reminded that he has been wasting his time.
"We have no common ground to start from," he said; "and if we
talk till doomsday, we should not agree. Excuse my leaving you
rather abruptly. It is later than I thought; and my morning's
batch of sick people are waiting for me in the surgery. I have
convinced _your_ mind, Mr. Armadale, at any rate; so the time we
have given to this discussion has not been altogether lost. Pray
stop here, and smoke your cigar. I shall be at your service again
in less than an hour." He nodded cordially to Allan, bowed
formally to Midwinter, and quitted the room.
As soon as the doctor's back was turned, Allan left his place at
the table, and appealed to his friend, with that irresistible
heartiness of manner which had always found its way to
Midwinter's sympathies, from the first day when they met at the
Somersetshire inn.
"Now the sparring-match between you and the doctor is over," said
Allan, "I have got two words to say on my side. Will you do
something for my sake which you won't do for your own?"
Midwinter's face brightened instantly. "I will do anything you
ask me," he said.
"Very well. Will you let the subject of the dream drop out of our
talk altogether from this time forth?"
"Yes, if you wish it."
"Will you go a step further? Will you leave off thinking about
the dream?"
"It's hard to leave off thinking about it, Allan. But I will
try."
"That's a good fellow! Now give me that trumpery bit of paper,
and let's tear it up, and have done with it."
He tried to snatch the manuscript out of his friend's hand; but
Midwinter was too quick for him, and kept it beyond his reach.
"Come! come!" pleaded Allan. "I've set my heart on lighting my
cigar with it."
Midwinter hesitated painfully. It was hard to resist Allan; but
he did resist him. "I'll wait a little," he said, "before you
light your cigar with it."
"How long? Till to-morrow?"
"Longer."
"Till we leave the Isle of Man?"
"Longer."
"Hang it--give me a plain answer to a plain question! How long
_will_ you wait?"
Midwinter carefully restored the paper to its place in his
pocketbook.
"I'll wait," he said, "till we get to Thorpe Ambrose."
THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
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