ARMADALE (A Suspense Thriller). Уилки Коллинз
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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 pocketbook — 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 colour rose. “Pray don’t show it to me, if you feel the least unwillingness,” he said, with the elabourate 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 pocketbook, 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 mainland 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