Armadale (107 page)

I put the miserable old creature back from me – but very gently. ‘Hush!' I said. ‘Don't distress me now. I want composure – I want to read the letter.'

He went away submissively to the other end of the room. As soon as my eye was off him, I heard him say to himself, with impotent malignity, ‘If the sea had been of my mind, the sea would have drowned him!'

One by one, I slowly opened the folds of the letter; feeling, while I did so, the strangest incapability of fixing my attention on the very lines that I was burning to read. But why dwell any longer on sensations which I can't describe? It will be more to the purpose if I place the letter itself, for future reference, on this page of my journal.

M
R
B
ASHWOOD
,                           Fiume, Illyria, November 21st, 1851.

The address I date from will surprise you – and you will be more surprised still when you hear how it is that I come to write to you from a port on the Adriatic Sea.

I have been the victim of a rascally attempt at robbery and murder. The robbery has succeeded; and it is only through the mercy of God that the murder did not succeed too.

I hired a yacht rather more than a month ago at Naples; and sailed (I am glad to think now) without any friend with me, for Messina. From Messina I went for a cruise in the Adriatic. Two days out, we were caught in a storm. Storms get up in a hurry, and go down in a hurry, in those parts. The vessel behaved nobly – I declare I feel the tears in my eyes now, when I think of her at the bottom of the sea! Towards sunset it began to moderate; and by midnight, except for a long smooth swell, the sea was as quiet as need be. I went below, a little tired (having helped in working the yacht while the gale lasted), and fell asleep in five minutes. About two hours after, I was woke by something falling into my cabin through a chink of the ventilator in the upper part of the door. I jumped up, and found a bit of paper with a key wrapped in it, and with writing on the inner side, in a hand which it was not very easy to read.

‘Up to this time I had not had the ghost of a suspicion that I was alone at sea with a gang of murderous vagabonds (excepting one only) who would stick at nothing. I had got on very well with my sailing-master (the worst scoundrel of the lot), and better still with his English mate. The sailors being all foreigners, I had very little to say to. They did their work, and no quarrels and nothing unpleasant happened. If anybody had told me, before I went to bed on the night after the storm, that the sailing-master and the crew and the mate (who had been no better than the rest of them at starting) were all in a conspiracy to rob me of the money I had on board, and then to drown me in my own vessel afterwards, I should have laughed in his face. Just remember that; and then fancy for yourself (for I'm sure I can't tell you) what I must have thought when I opened the paper round the key, and read what I now copy (from the mate's writing) as follows:

S
IR
, – Stay in your bed till you hear a boat shove off from the starboard side – or you are a dead man. Your money is stolen; and in five minutes' time the yacht will be scuttled, and the cabin-hatch will be nailed down on you. Dead men tell no tales – and the sailing-master's notion is to leave proofs afloat that the vessel has foundered with all on board. It was his doing to begin with, and we were all in it. I can't find it in my heart not to give
you a chance for your life. It's a bad chance, but I can do no more. I should be murdered myself if I didn't seem to go with the rest. The key of your cabin-door is thrown back to you, inside this. Don't be alarmed when you hear the hammer above. I shall do it, and I shall have short nails in my hand as well as long, and use the short ones only. Wait till you hear the boat with all of us shove off, and then prize up the cabin-hatch with your back. The vessel will float a quarter of an hour after the holes are bored in her. Slip into the sea on the port side, and keep the vessel between you and the boat. You will find plenty of loose lumber, wrenched away on purpose, drifting about to hold on by. It's a fine night and a smooth sea, and there's a chance that a ship may pick you up while there's life left in you. I can do no more. – Yours truly, J. M.

As I came to those last words, I heard the hammering down of the hatch over my head. I don't suppose I'm more of a coward than most people – but there was a moment when the sweat poured down me like rain. I got to be my own man again, before the hammering was done, and found myself thinking of somebody very dear to me in England. I said to myself, ‘I'll have a try for my life, for her sake, though the chances are dead against me.'

I put a letter from that person I have mentioned into one of the stoppered bottles of my dressing-case – along with the mate's warning, in case I lived to see him again. I hung this, and a flask of whisky, in a sling round my neck – and, after first dressing myself in my confusion, thought better of it, and stripped again, for swimming, to my shirt and drawers. By the time I had done that, the hammering was over, and there was such a silence that I could hear the water bubbling into the scuttled vessel amidships. The next noise was the noise of the boat and the villains in her (always excepting my friend the mate) shoving off from the starboard side. I waited for the splash of the oars in the water, and then got my back under the hatch. The mate had kept his promise. I lifted it easily – crept across the deck, under cover of the bulwarks, on all fours – and slipped into the sea on the port side. Lots of things were floating about. I took the first thing I came to – a hencoop – and swam away with it about a couple of hundred yards, keeping the yacht between me and the boat. Having got that distance, I was seized with a shivering fit, and I stopped (fearing the cramp next) to take a pull at my flask. When
I had closed the flask again, I turned for a moment to look back, and saw the yacht in the act of sinking. In a minute more there was nothing between me and the boat, but the pieces of wreck that had been purposely thrown out to float. The moon was shining; and, if they had had a glass in the boat, I believe they might have seen my head, though I carefully kept the hencoop between me and them.

As it was, they laid on their oars; and I heard loud voices among them disputing. After what seemed an age to me, I discovered what the dispute was about. The boat's head was suddenly turned my way. Some cleverer scoundrel than the rest (the sailing-master, I daresay,) had evidently persuaded them to row back over the place where the yacht had gone down, and make quite sure that I had gone down with her.

They were more than half way across the distance that separated us, and I had given myself up for lost, when I heard a cry from one of them, and saw the boat's progress suddenly checked. In a minute or two more, the boat's head was turned again; and they rowed straight away from me like men rowing for their lives.

I looked on one side, towards the land, and saw nothing. I looked on the other, towards the sea, and discovered what the boat's crew had discovered before me – a sail in the distance, growing steadily brighter and bigger in the moonlight the longer I looked at it. In a quarter of an hour more the vessel was within hail of me, and the crew had got me on board.

They were all foreigners, and they quite deafened me by their jabber. I tried signs, but before I could make them understand me, I was seized with another shivering fit, and was carried below. The vessel held on her course, I have no doubt, but I was in no condition to know anything about it. Before morning, I was in a fever; and from that time I can remember nothing clearly till I came to my senses at this place, and found myself under the care of a Hungarian merchant, the consignee (as they call it) of the coasting vessel that had picked me up. He speaks English as well or better than I do; and he has treated me with a kindness which I can find no words to praise. When he was a young man he was in England himself, learning business, and he says he has remembrances of our country which make his heart warm towards an Englishman. He has fitted me out with clothes, and has lent me the money to travel with, as soon as the doctor allows me to start for home. Supposing I don't get a relapse, I shall be fit to travel
in a week's time from this. If I can catch the mail at Trieste, and stand the fatigue, I shall be back again at Thorpe-Ambrose in a week or ten days at most after you get my letter. You will agree with me that it is a terribly long letter. But I can't help that. I seem to have lost my old knack at putting things short, and finishing on the first page. However, I am near the end now – for I have nothing left to mention but the reason why I write about what has happened to me, instead of waiting till I get home, and telling it all by word of mouth.

I fancy my head is still muddled by my illness. At any rate, it only struck me this morning that there is barely a chance of some vessel having passed the place where the yacht foundered, and having picked up the furniture, and other things wrenched out of her and left to float. Some false report of my being drowned may, in that case, have reached England.
¹⁴
If this has happened (which I hope to God may be an unfounded fear on my part), go directly to Major Milroy at the cottage. Show him this letter – I have written it quite as much for his eye as for yours – and then give him the enclosed note, and ask him if he doesn't think the circumstances justify me in hoping he will send it to Miss Milroy. I can't explain why I don't write directly to the major, or to Miss Milroy, instead of to you. I can only say there are considerations I am bound in honour to respect, which oblige me to act in this roundabout way.

I don't ask you to answer this – for I shall be on my way home, I hope, long before your letter could reach me in this out-of-the-way place. Whatever you do, don't lose a moment in going to Major Milroy. Go, on second thoughts, whether the loss of the yacht is known in England or not.

Yours truly,

A
LLAN
A
RMADALE.

I looked up when I had come to the end of the letter, and saw, for the first time, that Bashwood had left his chair, and had placed himself opposite to me. He was intently studying my face, with the inquiring expression of a man who was trying to read my thoughts. His eyes fell guiltily when they met mine, and he shrank away to his chair. Believing, as he did, that I was really married to Armadale, was he trying to discover whether the news of Armadale's rescue from the sea was good news or bad news, in my estimation? It was no time then for entering into explanations with him. The first thing to be done was to communicate instantly with the doctor. I called Bashwood back to me, and gave him my hand.

‘You have done me a service,' I said, ‘which makes us closer friends than ever. I shall say more about this, and about other matters of some interest to both of us, later in the day. I want you now to lend me Mr Armadale's letter (which I promise to bring back) and to wait here till I return. Will you do that for me, Mr Bashwood?'

He would do anything I asked him, he said. I went into the bed-room, and put on my bonnet and shawl.

‘Let me be quite sure of the facts before I leave you,' I resumed, when I was ready to go out. ‘You have not shown this letter to anybody but me?'

‘Not a living soul has seen it but our two selves.'

‘What have you done with the note enclosed to Miss Milroy?'

He produced it from his pocket. I ran it over rapidly – saw that there was nothing in it of the slightest importance – and put it in the fire on the spot. That done, I left Bashwood in the sitting-room, and went to the Sanatorium, with Armadale's letter in my hand.

The doctor had gone out; and the servant was unable to say positively at what time he would be back. I went into his study, and wrote a line preparing him for the news I had brought with me, which I sealed up, with Armadale's letter, in an envelope, to await his return. That done, I told the servant I would call again in an hour, and left the place.

It was useless to go back to my lodgings and speak to Bashwood, until I knew first what the doctor meant to do. I walked about the neighbourhood, up and down new streets and crescents and squares, with a kind of dull, numbed feeling in me, which prevented, not only all voluntary exercise of thought, but all sensation of bodily fatigue. I remembered the same feeling overpowering me, years ago, on the morning when the people of the prison came to take me into court to be tried for my life. All that frightful scene came back again to my mind, in the strangest manner, as if it had been a scene in which some other person had figured. Once or twice I wondered, in a heavy senseless way, why they had not hanged me!

When I went back to the Sanatorium, I was informed that the doctor had returned half-an-hour since, and that he was in his own room anxiously waiting to see me.

I went into the study, and found him sitting close by the fire, with his head down, and his hands on his knees. On the table near him, besides Armadale's letter and my note, I saw, in the little circle of light thrown by the reading-lamp, an open railway guide. Was he meditating flight? It was impossible to tell from his face, when he
looked up at me, what he was meditating, or how the shock had struck him when he first discovered that Armadale was a living man.

‘Take a seat near the fire,' he said. ‘It's very raw and cold to-day.'

I took a chair in silence. In silence, on his side, the doctor sat rubbing his knees before the fire.

‘Have you nothing to say to me?' I asked.

He rose, and suddenly removed the shade from the reading-lamp so that the light fell on my face.

‘You are not looking well,' he said. ‘What's the matter?'

‘My head feels dull, and my eyes are heavy and hot,' I replied. ‘The weather, I suppose.'

It was strange how we both got farther and farther from the one vitally important subject which we had both come together to discuss!