THE HOUSE-MAID'S FACE.
ALL was quiet at Thorpe Ambrose. The hall was solitary, the rooms
were dark. The servants, waiting for the supper hour in the
garden at the back of the house, looked up at the clear heaven
and the rising moon, and agreed that there was little prospect
of the return of the picnic party until later in the night. The
general opinion, led by the high authority of the cook, predicted
that they might all sit down to supper without the least fear of
being disturbed by the bell. Having arrived at this conclusion,
the servants assembled round the table, and exactly at the moment
when they sat down the bell rang.
The footman, wondering, went up stairs to open the door,
and found to his astonishment Midwinter waiting alone on the
threshold, and looking (in the servant's opinion) miserably ill.
He asked for a light, and, saying he wanted nothing else,
withdrew at once to his room. The footman went back to his
fellow-servants, and reported that something had certainly
happened to his master's friend.
On entering his room, Midwinter closed the door, and hurriedly
filled a bag with the necessaries for traveling. This done, he
took from a locked drawer, and placed in the breast pocket of his
coat, some little presents which Allan had given him--a cigar
case, a purse, and a set of studs in plain gold. Having possessed
himself of these memorials, he snatched up the bag and laid his
hand on the door. There, for the first time, he paused. There,
the headlong haste of all his actions thus far suddenly ceased,
and the hard despair in his face began to soften: he waited, with
the door in his hand.
Up to that moment he had been conscious of but one motive that
animated him, but one purpose that he was resolute to achieve.
"For Allan's sake!" he had said to himself, when he looked back
toward the fatal landscape and saw his friend leaving him to meet
the woman at the pool. "For Allan's sake!" he had said again,
when he crossed the open country beyond the wood, and saw afar,
in the gray twilight, the long line of embankment and the distant
glimmer of the railway lamps beckoning him away already to the
iron road.
It was only when he now paused before he closed the door behind
him--it was only when his own impetuous rapidity of action came
for the first time to a check, that the nobler nature of the man
rose in protest against the superstitious despair which was
hurrying him from all that he held dear. His conviction of the
terrible necessity of leaving Allan for Allan's good had not been
shaken for an instant since he had seen the first Vision of the
Dream realized on the shores of the Mere. But now, for the first
time, his own heart rose against him in unanswerable rebuke. "Go,
if you must and will! but remember the time when you were ill,
and he sat by your bedside; friendless, and he opened his heart
to you--and write, if you fear to speak; write and ask him to
forgive you, before you leave him forever!"
The half-opened door closed again softly. Midwinter sat down at
the writing-table and took up the pen.
He tried again and again, and yet again, to write the farewell
words; he tried, till the floor all round him was littered with
torn sheets of paper. Turn from them which way he would, the old
times still came back and faced him reproachfully. The spacious
bed-chamber in which he sat, narrowed, in spite of him, to the
sick usher's garret at the west-country inn. The kind hand that
had once patted him on the shoulder touched him again; the kind
voice that had cheered him spoke unchangeably in the old friendly
tones. He flung his arms on the table and dropped his head on
them in tearless despair. The parting words that his tongue was
powerless to utter his pen was powerless to write. Mercilessly in
earnest, his superstition pointed to him to go while the time was
his own. Mercilessly in earnest, his love for Allan held him back
till the farewell plea for pardon and pity was written.
He rose with a sudden resolution, and rang for the servant, "When
Mr. Armadale returns," he said, "ask him to excuse my coming
downstairs, and say that I am trying to get to sleep." He locked
the door and put out the light, and sat down alone in the
darkness. "The night will keep us apart," he said; "and time
may help me to write. I may go in the early morning; I may go
while--" The thought died in him uncompleted; and the sharp agony
of the struggle forced to his lips the first cry of suffering
that had escaped him yet.
He waited in the darkness.
As the time stole on, his senses remained mechanically awake, but
his mind began to sink slowly under the heavy strain that had now
been laid on it for some hours past. A dull vacancy possessed
him; he made no attempt to kindle the light and write once more.
He never started; he never moved to the open window, when the
first sound of approaching wheels broke in on the silence of the
night. He heard the carriages draw up at the door; he heard the
horses champing their bits; he heard the voices of Allan and
young Pedgift on the steps; and still he sat quiet in the
darkness, and still no interest was aroused in him by the sounds
that reached his ear from outside.
The voices remained audible after the carriages had been driven
away; the two young men were evidently lingering on the steps
before they took leave of each other. Every word they said
reached Midwinter through the open window. Their one subject of
conversation was the new governess. Allan's voice was loud in her
praise. He had never passed such an hour of delight in his life
as the hour he had spent with Miss Gwilt in the boat, on the way
from Hurle Mere to the picnic party waiting at the other Broad.
Agreeing, on his side, with all that his client said in praise
of the charming stranger, young Pedgift appeared to treat the
subject, when it fell into his hands, from a different point of
view. Miss Gwilt's attractions had not so entirely absorbed his
attention as to prevent him from noticing the impression which
the new governess had produced on her employer and her pupil.
"There's a screw loose somewhere, sir, in Major Milroy's family,"
said the voice of young Pedgift. "Did you notice how the major
and his daughter looked when Miss Gwilt made her excuses for
being late at the Mere? You don't remember? Do you remember what
Miss Gwilt said?"
"Something about Mrs. Milroy, wasn't it?" Allan rejoined.
Young Pedgift's voice dropped mysteriously a note lower.
"Miss Gwilt reached the cottage this afternoon, sir, at the time
when I told you she would reach it, and she would have joined us
at the time I told you she would come, but for Mrs. Milroy. Mrs.
Milroy sent for her upstairs as soon as she entered the house,
and kept her upstairs a good half-hour and more. That was Miss
Gwilt's excuse, Mr. Armadale, for being late at the Mere."
"Well, and what then?"
"You seem to forget, sir, what the whole neighborhood has heard
about Mrs. Milroy ever since the major first settled among us. We
have all been told, on the doctor's own authority, that she is
too great a sufferer to see strangers. Isn't it a little odd that
she should have suddenly turned out well enough to see Miss Gwilt
(in her husband's absence) the moment Miss Gwilt entered the
house?"
"Not a bit of it! Of course she was anxious to make acquaintance
with her daughter's governess."
"Likely enough, Mr. Armadale. But the major and Miss Neelie don't
see it in that light, at any rate. I had my eye on them both when
the governess told them that Mrs. Milroy had sent for her. If
ever I saw a girl look thoroughly frightened, Miss Milroy was
that girl; and (if I may be allowed, in the strictest confidence,
to libel a gallant soldier) I should say that the major himself
was much in the same condition. Take my word for it, sir, there's
something wrong upstairs in that pretty cottage of yours; and
Miss Gwilt is mixed up in it already!"
There was a minute of silence. When the voices were next heard
by Midwinter, they were further away from the house--Allan was
probably accompanying young Pedgift a few steps on his way back.
After a while, Allan's voice was audible once more under the
portico, making inquiries after his friend; answered by the
servant's voice giving Midwinter's message. This brief
interruption over, the silence was not broken again till the time
came for shutting up the house. The servants' footsteps passing
to and fro, the clang of closing doors, the barking of a
disturbed dog in the stable-yard--these sounds warned Midwinter
it was getting late. He rose mechanically to kindle a light.
But his head was giddy, his hand trembled; he laid aside the
match-box, and returned to his chair. The conversation between
Allan and young Pedgift had ceased to occupy his attention the
instant he ceased to hear it; and now again, the sense that the
precious time was failing him became a lost sense as soon as the
house noises which had awakened it had passed away. His energies
of body and mind were both alike worn out; he waited with a
stolid resignation for the trouble that was to come to him with
the coming day.
An interval passed, and the silence was once more disturbed by
voices outside; the voices of a man and a woman this time. The
first few words exchanged between them indicated plainly enough
a meeting of the clandestine kind; and revealed the man as one
of the servants at Thorpe Ambrose, and the woman as one of the
servants at the cottage.
Here again, after the first greetings were over, the subject
of the new governess became the all-absorbing subject of
conversation.
The major's servant was brimful of forebodings (inspired solely
by Miss Gwilt's good looks) which she poured out irrepressibly on
her "sweetheart," try as he might to divert her to other topics.
Sooner or later, let him mark her words, there would be an awful
"upset" at the cottage. Her master, it might be mentioned in
confidence, led a dreadful life with her mistress. The major was
the best of men; he hadn't a thought in his heart beyond his
daughter and his everlasting clock. But only let a nice-looking
woman come near the place, and Mrs. Milroy was jealous of
her--raging jealous, like a woman possessed, on that miserable
sick-bed of hers. If Miss Gwilt (who was certainly good-looking,
in spite of her hideous hair) didn't blow the fire into a flame
before many days more were over their heads, the mistress was
the mistress no longer, but somebody else. Whatever happened,
the fault, this time, would lie at the door of the major's mother.
The old lady and the mistress had had a dreadful quarrel two years
since; and the old lady had gone away in a fury, telling her son,
before all the servants, that, if he had a spark of spirit in
him, he would never submit to his wife's temper as he did. It
would be too much, perhaps, to accuse the major's mother of
purposely picking out a handsome governess to spite the major's
wife. But it might be safely said that the old lady was the last
person in the world to humor the mistress's jealousy, by
declining to engage a capable and respectable governess for her
granddaughter because that governess happened to be blessed with
good looks. How it was all to end (except that it was certain to
end badly) no human creature could say. Things were looking as
black already as things well could. Miss Neelie was crying, after
the day's pleasure (which was one bad sign); the mistress had
found fault with nobody (which was another); the master had
wished her good-night through the door (which was a third); and
the governess had locked herself up in her room (which was the
worst sign of all, for it looked as if she distrusted the
servants). Thus the stream of the woman's gossip ran on, and thus
it reached Midwinter's ears through the window, till the clock in
the stable-yard struck, and stopped the talking. When the last
vibrations of the bell had died away, the voices were not audible
again, and the silence was broken no more.
Another interval passed, and Midwinter made a new effort to rouse
himself. This time he kindled the light without hesitation, and
took the pen in hand.
He wrote at the first trial with a sudden facility of expression,
which, surprising him as he went on, ended in rousing in him
some vague suspicion of himself. He left the table, and bathed
his head and face in water, and came back to read what he had
written. The language was barely intelligible; sentences were
left unfinished; words were misplaced one for the other.
Every line recorded the protest of the weary brain against the
merciless will that had forced it into action. Midwinter tore up
the sheet of paper as he had torn up the other sheets before it,
and, sinking under the struggle at last, laid his weary head on
the pillow. Almost on the instant, exhaustion overcame him, and
before he could put the light out he fell asleep.
He was roused by a noise at the door. The sunlight was pouring
into the room, the candle had burned down into the socket, and
the servant was waiting outside with a letter which had come for
him by the morning's post.
"I ventured to disturb you, sir," said the man, when Midwinter
opened the door, "because the letter is marked 'Immediate,' and
I didn't know but it might be of some consequence."
Midwinter thanked him, and looked at the letter. It _was_ of some
consequence--the handwriting was Mr. Brock's.
He paused to collect his faculties. The torn sheets of paper
on the floor recalled to him in a moment the position in which
he stood. He locked the door again, in the fear that Allan
might rise earlier than usual and come in to make inquiries.
Then--feeling strangely little interest in anything that the
rector could write to him now--he opened Mr. Brock's letter,
and read these lines:
"Tuesday.
"MY DEAR MIDWINTER--It is sometimes best to tell bad news
plainly, in few words. Let me tell mine at once, in one sentence.
My precautions have all been defeated: the woman has escaped me.
"This misfortune--for it is nothing less--happened yesterday
(Monday). Between eleven and twelve in the forenoon of that day,
the business which originally brought me to London obliged me to
go to Doctors' Commons, and to leave my servant Robert to watch
the house opposite our lodging until my return. About an hour
and a half after my departure he observed an empty cab drawn up
at the door of the house. Boxes and bags made their appearance
first; they were followed by the woman herself, in the dress I
had first seen her in. Having previously secured a cab, Robert
traced her to the terminus of the North-Western Railway, saw her
pass through the ticket office, kept her in view till she reached
the platform, and there, in the crowd and confusion caused by
the starting of a large mixed train, lost her. I must do him
the justice to say that he at once took the right course in
this emergency. Instead of wasting time in searching for her
on the platform, he looked along the line of carriages; and he
positively declares that he failed to see her in any one of them.
He admits, at the same time, that his search (conducted between
two o'clock, when he lost sight of her, and ten minutes past,
when the train started) was, in the confusion of the moment,
necessarily an imperfect one. But this latter circumstance, in
my opinion, matters little. I as firmly disbelieve in the woman's
actual departure by that train as if I had searched every one
of the carriages myself; and you, I have no doubt, will entirely
agree with me.
"You now know how the disaster happened. Let us not waste time
and words in lamenting it. The evil is done, and you and I
together must find the way to remedy it.
"What I have accomplished already, on my side, may be told in two
words. Any hesitation I might have previously felt at trusting
this delicate business in strangers' hands was at an end the
moment I heard Robert's news. I went back at once to the city,
and placed the whole matter confidentially before my lawyers.
The conference was a long one, and when I left the office it was
past the post hour, or I should have written to you on Monday
instead of writing today. My interview with the lawyers was not
very encouraging. They warn me plainly that serious difficulties
stand in the way of our recovering the lost trace. But they have
promised to do their best, and we have decided on the course to
be taken, excepting one point on which we totally differ. I must
tell you what this difference is; for, while business keeps me
away from Thorpe Ambrose, you are the only person whom I can
trust to put my convictions to the test.
"The lawyers are of opinion, then, that the woman has been
aware from the first that I was watching her; that there is,
consequently, no present hope of her being rash enough to appear
personally at Thorpe Ambrose; that any mischief she may have it
in contemplation to do will be done in the first instance by
deputy; and that the only wise course for Allan's friends and
guardians to take is to wait passively till events enlighten
them. My own idea is diametrically opposed to this. After what
has happened at the railway, I cannot deny that the woman must
have discovered that I was watching her. But she has no reason to
suppose that she has not succeeded in deceiving me; and I firmly
believe she is bold enough to take us by surprise, and to win or
force her way into Allan's confidence before we are prepared to
prevent her.
"You and you only (while I am detained in London) can decide
whether I am right or wrong--and you can do it in this way.
Ascertain at once whether any woman who is a stranger in the
neighborhood has appeared since Monday last at or near Thorpe
Ambrose. If any such person has been observed (and nobody escapes
observation in the country), take the first opportunity you can
get of seeing her, and ask yourself if her face does or does not
answer certain plain questions which I am now about to write down
for you. You may depend on my accuracy. I saw the woman unveiled
on more than one occasion, and the last time through an excellent
glass.
"1. Is her hair light brown, and (apparently) not very plentiful?
2. Is her forehead high, narrow, and sloping backward from the
brow? 3. Are her eyebrows very faintly marked, and are her eyes
small, and nearer dark than light--either gray or hazel (I have
not seen her close enough to be certain which)? 4. Is her nose
aquiline? 5 Are her lips thin, and is the upper lip long? 6. Does
her complexion look like an originally fair complexion, which has
deteriorated into a dull, sickly paleness? 7 (and lastly). Has
she a retreating chin, and is there on the left side of it a mark
of some kind--a mole or a scar, I can't say which?
"I add nothing about her expression, for you may see her under
circumstances which may partially alter it as seen by me. Test
her by her features, which no circumstances can change. If there
is a stranger in the neighborhood, and if her face answers my
seven questions, _you have found the woman_! Go instantly, in
that case, to the nearest lawyer, and pledge my name and credit
for whatever expenses may be incurred in keeping her under
inspection night and day. Having done this, take the speediest
means of communicating with me; and whether my business is
finished or not, I will start for Norfolk by the first train.
"Always your friend, DECIMUS BROCK."
Hardened by the fatalist conviction that now possessed him,
Midwinter read the rector's confession of defeat, from the
first line to the last, without the slightest betrayal either
of interest or surprise. The one part of the letter at which
he looked back was the closing part of it. "I owe much to Mr.
Brock's kindness," he thought; "and I shall never see Mr. Brock
again. It is useless and hopeless; but he asks me to do it,
and it shall be done. A moment's look at her will be enough--a
moment's look at her with his letter in my hand--and a line to
tell him that the woman is here!"
Again he stood hesitating at the half-opened door; again the
cruel necessity of writing his farewell to Allan stopped him,
and stared him in the face.
He looked aside doubtingly at the rector's letter. "I will write
the two together," he said. "One may help the other." His face
flushed deep as the words escaped him. He was conscious of doing
what he had not done yet--of voluntarily putting off the evil
hour; of making Mr. Brock the pretext for gaining the last
respite left, the respite of time.
The only sound that reached him through the open door was the
sound of Allan stirring noisily in the next room. He stepped at
once into the empty corridor, and meeting no one on the stairs,
made his way out of the house. The dread that his resolution to
leave Allan might fail him if he saw Allan again was as vividly
present to his mind in the morning as it had been all through the
night. He drew a deep breath of relief as he descended the house
steps--relief at having escaped the friendly greeting of the
morning, from the one human creature whom he loved!
He entered the shrubbery with Mr. Brock's letter in his hand,
and took the nearest way that led to the major's cottage. Not
the slightest recollection was in his mind of the talk which had
found its way to his ears during the night. His one reason for
determining to see the woman was the reason which the rector
had put in his mind. The one remembrance that now guided him
to the place in which she lived was the remembrance of Allan's
exclamation when he first identified the governess with the
figure at the pool.
Arrived at the gate of the cottage, he stopped. The thought
struck him that he might defeat his own object if he looked at
the rector's questions in the woman's presence. Her suspicions
would be probably roused, in the first instance, by his asking
to see her (as he had determined to ask, with or without an
excuse), and the appearance of the letter in his hand might
confirm them.
She might defeat him by instantly leaving the room. Determined
to fix the description in his mind first, and then to confront
her, he opened the letter; and, turning away slowly by the side
of the house, read the seven questions which he felt absolutely
assured beforehand the woman's face would answer.
In the morning quiet of the park slight noises traveled far.
A slight noise disturbed Midwinter over the letter.
He looked up and found himself on the brink of a broad grassy
trench, having the park on one side and the high laurel hedge
of an inclosure on the other. The inclosure evidently surrounded
the back garden of the cottage, and the trench was intended to
protect it from being damaged by the cattle grazing in the park.
Listening carefully as the slight sound which had disturbed him
grew fainter, he recognized in it the rustling of women's
dresses. A few paces ahead, the trench was crossed by a bridge
(closed by a wicket gate) which connected the garden with the
park. He passed through the gate, crossed the bridge, and,
opening a door at the other end, found himself in a summer-house
thickly covered with creepers, and commanding a full view of the
garden from end to end.
He looked, and saw the figures of two ladies walking slowly away
from him toward the cottage. The shorter of the two failed to
occupy his attention for an instant; he never stopped to think
whether she was or was not the major's daughter. His eyes were
riveted on the other figure--the figure that moved over the
garden walk with the long, lightly falling dress and the easy,
seductive grace. There, presented exactly as be had seen her once
already--there, with her back again turned on him, was the Woman
at the pool!
There was a chance that they might take another turn in the
garden--a turn back toward the summer-house. On that chance
Midwinter waited. No consciousness of the intrusion that he
was committing had stopped him at the door of the summer-house,
and no consciousness of it troubled him even now. Every finer
sensibility in his nature, sinking under the cruel laceration of
the past night, had ceased to feel. The dogged resolution to do
what he had come to do was the one animating influence left alive
in him. He acted, he even looked, as the most stolid man living
might have acted and looked in his place. He was self-possessed
enough, in the interval of expectation before governess and pupil
reached the end of the walk, to open Mr. Brock's letter, and to
fortify his memory by a last look at the paragraph which
described her face.
He was still absorbed over the description when he heard the
smooth rustle of the dresses traveling toward him again. Standing
in the shadow of the summer-house, he waited while she lessened
the distance between them. With her written portrait vividly
impressed on his mind, and with the clear light of the morning to
help him, his eyes questioned her as she came on; and these were
the answers that her face gave him back.
The hair in the rector's description was light brown and not
plentiful. This woman's hair, superbly luxuriant in its growth,
was of the one unpardonably remarkable shade of color which the
prejudice of the Northern nations never entirely forgives--it was
_red_! The forehead in the rector's description was high, narrow,
and sloping backward from the brow; the eyebrows were faintly
marked; and the eyes small, and in color either gray or hazel.
This woman's forehead was low, upright, and broad toward the
temples; her eyebrows, at once strongly and delicately marked,
were a shade darker than her hair; her eyes, large, bright, and
well opened, were of that purely blue color, without a tinge
in it of gray or green, so often presented to our admiration in
pictures and books, so rarely met with in the living face. The
nose in the rector's description was aquiline. The line of this
woman's nose bent neither outward nor inward: it was the
straight, delicately molded nose (with the short upper lip
beneath) of the ancient statues and busts. The lips in the
rector's description were thin and the upper lip long; the
complexion was of a dull, sickly paleness; the chin retreating
and the mark of a mole or a scar on the left side of it. This
woman's lips were full, rich, and sensual. Her complexion was
the lovely complexion which accompanies such hair as hers--so
delicately bright in its rosier tints, so warmly and softly white
in its gentler gradations of color on the forehead and the neck.
Her chin, round and dimpled, was pure of the slightest blemish
in every part of it, and perfectly in line with her forehead
to the end. Nearer and nearer, and fairer and fairer she came,
in the glow of the morning light--the most startling, the most
unanswerable contradiction that eye could see or mind conceive
to the description in the rector's letter.
Both governess and pupil were close to the summer-house before
they looked that way, and noticed Midwinter standing inside.
The governess saw him first.
"A friend of yours, Miss Milroy?" she asked, quietly, without
starting or betraying any sign of surprise.
Neelie recognized him instantly. Prejudiced against Midwinter
by his conduct when his friend had introduced him at the cottage,
she now fairly detested him as the unlucky first cause of her
misunderstanding with Allan at the picnic. Her face flushed
and she drew back from the summerhouse with an expression of
merciless surprise.
"He is a friend of Mr. Armadale's," she replied sharply. "I don't
know what he wants, or why he is here."
"A friend of Mr. Armadale's!" The governess's face lighted up
with a suddenly roused interest as she repeated the words, She
returned Midwinter's look, still steadily fixed on her, with
equal steadiness on her side.
"For my part," pursued Neelie, resenting Midwinter's
insensibility to her presence on the scene, "I think it a great
liberty to treat papa's garden as if it were the open park!"
The governess turned round, and gently interposed.
"My dear Miss Milroy," she remonstrated, "there are certain
distinctions to be observed. This gentleman is a friend of Mr.
Armadale's. You could hardly express yourself more strongly
if he was a perfect stranger."
"I express my opinion," retorted Neelie, chafing under the
satirically indulgent tone in which the governess addressed her.
"It's a matter of taste, Miss Gwilt; and tastes differ." She
turned away petulantly, and walked back by herself to the
cottage.
"She is very young," said Miss Gwilt, appealing with a smile
to Midwinter's forbearance; "and, as you must see for yourself,
sir, she is a spoiled child." She paused--showed, for an instant
only, her surprise at Midwinter's strange silence and strange
persistency in keeping his eyes still fixed on her--then set
herself, with a charming grace and readiness, to help him out of
the false position in which he stood. "As you have extended your
walk thus far," she resumed, "perhaps you will kindly favor me,
on your return, by taking a message to your friend? Mr. Armadale
has been so good as to invite me to see the Thorpe Ambrose
gardens this morning. Will you say that Major Milroy permits me
to accept the invitation (in company with Miss Milroy) between
ten and eleven o'clock?" For a moment her eyes rested, with a
renewed look of interest, on Midwinter's face. She waited, still
in vain, for an answering word from him--smiled, as if his
extraordinary silence amused rather than angered her--and
followed her pupil back to the cottage.
It was only when the last trace of her had disappeared that
Midwinter roused himself, and attempted to realize the position
in which he stood. The revelation of her beauty was in no respect
answerable for the breathless astonishment which had held him
spell-bound up to this moment. The one clear impression she had
produced on him thus far began and ended with his discovery of
the astounding contradiction that her face offered, in one
feature after another, to the description in Mr. Brock's letter.
All beyond this was vague and misty--a dim consciousness of a
tall, elegant woman, and of kind words, modestly and gracefully
spoken to him, and nothing more.
He advanced a few steps into the garden without knowing why--
stopped, glancing hither and thither like a man lost--recognized
the summer-house by an effort, as if years had elapsed since he
had seen it--and made his way out again, at last, into the park.
Even here, he wandered first in one direction, then in another.
His mind was still reeling under the shock that had fallen on it;
his perceptions were all confused. Something kept him
mechanically in action, walking eagerly without a motive,
walking he knew not where.
A far less sensitively organized man might have been overwhelmed,
as he was overwhelmed now, by the immense, the instantaneous
revulsion of feeling which the event of the last few minutes had
wrought in his mind.
At the memorable instant when he had opened the door of the
summer-house, no confusing influence troubled his faculties.
In all that related to his position toward his friend, he had
reached an absolutely definite conclusion by an absolutely
definite process of thought. The whole strength of the motive
which had driven him into the resolution to part from Allan
rooted itself in the belief that he had seen at Hurle Mere the
fatal fulfillment of the first Vision of the Dream. And this
belief, in its turn, rested, necessarily, on the conviction that
the woman who was the one survivor of the tragedy in Madeira
must be also inevitably the woman whom he had seen standing in
the Shadow's place at the pool. Firm in that persuasion, he had
himself compared the object of his distrust and of the rector's
distrust with the description written by the rector himself--a
description, carefully minute, by a man entirely trustworthy--and
his own eyes had informed him that the woman whom he had seen at
the Mere, and the woman whom Mr. Brock had identified in London,
were not one, but Two. In the place of the Dream Shadow, there
had stood, on the evidence of the rector's letter, not the
instrument of the Fatality--but a stranger!
No such doubts as might have troubled a less superstitious man,
were started in _his_ mind by the discovery that had now opened
on him.
It never occurred to him to ask himself whether a stranger might
not be the appointed instrument of the Fatality, now when the
letter had persuaded him that a stranger had been revealed as
the figure in the dream landscape. No such idea entered or could
enter his mind. The one woman whom _his_ superstition dreaded
was the woman who had entwined herself with the lives of the two
Armadales in the first generation, and with the fortunes of the
two Armadales in the second--who was at once the marked object of
his father's death-bed warning, and the first cause of the family
calamities which had opened Allan's way to the Thorpe Ambrose
estate--the woman, in a word, whom he would have known
instinctively, but for Mr. Brock's letter, to be the woman whom
he had now actually seen.
Looking at events as they had just happened, under the influence
of the misapprehension into which the rector had innocently
misled him, his mind saw and seized its new conclusion
instantaneously, acting precisely as it had acted in the past
time of his interview with Mr. Brock at the Isle of Man.
Exactly as he had once declared it to be an all-sufficient
refutation of the idea of the Fatality, that he had never met
with the timber-ship in any of his voyages at sea, so he now
seized on the similarly derived conclusion, that the whole claim
of the Dream to a supernatural origin stood self-refuted by the
disclosure of a stranger in the Shadow's place. Once started from
this point--once encouraged to let his love for Allan influence
him undividedly again, his mind hurried along the whole resulting
chain of thought at lightning speed. If the Dream was proved
to be no longer a warning from the other world, it followed
inevitably that accident and not fate had led the way to the
night on the Wreck, and that all the events which had happened
since Allan and he had parted from Mr. Brock were events in
themselves harmless, which his superstition had distorted from
their proper shape. In less than a moment his mobile imagination
had taken him back to the morning at Castletown when he had
revealed to the rector the secret of his name; when he had
declared to the rector, with his father's letter before his eyes,
the better faith that was in him. Now once more he felt his heart
holding firmly by the bond of brotherhood between Allan and
himself; now once more he could say with the eager sincerity
of the old time, "If the thought of leaving him breaks my heart,
the thought of leaving him is wrong!" As that nobler conviction
possessed itself again of his mind--quieting the tumult, clearing
the confusion within him--the house at Thorpe Ambrose, with Allan
on the steps, waiting, looking for him, opened on his eyes
through the trees. A sense of illimitable relief lifted his eager
spirit high above the cares, and doubts, and fears that had
oppressed it so long, and showed him once more the better and
brighter future of his early dreams. His eyes filled with tears,
and he pressed the rector's letter, in his wild, passionate way,
to his lips, as he looked at Allan through the vista of the
trees. "But for this morsel of paper," he thought, "my life might
have been one long sorrow to me, and my father's crime might have
parted us forever!"
Such was the result of the stratagem which had shown the
housemaid's face to Mr. Brock as the face of Miss Gwilt. And
so--by shaking Midwinter's trust in his own superstition, in the
one case in which that superstition pointed to the truth--did
Mother Oldershaw's cunning triumph over difficulties and dangers
which had never been contemplated by Mother Oldershaw herself.