ARMADALE (A Suspense Thriller). Уилки Коллинз
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of all the information I can give. Say, if you please, sir, have I kept the thread at last? Have I shown you the necessity which brings me here from your countryman’s deathbed?”
“Thus far,” said Mr. Neal, “you merely show me that you are exciting yourself. This is too serious a matter to be treated as you are treating it now. You have involved Me in the business, and I insist on seeing my way plainly. Don’t raise your hands; your hands are not a part of the question. If I am to be concerned in the completion of this mysterious letter, it is only an act of justifiable prudence on my part to inquire what the letter is about. Mrs. Armadale appears to have favored you with an infinite number of domestic particulars — in return, I presume, for your polite attention in taking her by the hand. May I ask what she could tell you about her husband’s letter, so far as her husband has written it?”
“Mrs. Armadale could tell me nothing,” replied the doctor, with a sudden formality in his manner, which showed that his forbearance was at last failing him. “Before she was composed enough to think of the letter, her husband had asked for it, and had caused it to be locked up in his desk. She knows that he has since, time after time, tried to finish it, and that, time after time, the pen has dropped from his fingers. She knows, when all other hope of his restoration was at an end, that his medical advisers encouraged him to hope in the famous waters of this place. And last, she knows how that hope has ended; for she knows what I told her husband this morning.”
The frown which had been gathering latterly on Mr. Neal’s face deepened and darkened. He looked at the doctor as if the doctor had personally offended him.
“The more I think of the position you are asking me to take,” he said, “the less I like it. Can you undertake to say positively that Mr. Armadale is in his right mind?”
“Yes; as positively as words can say it.”
“Does his wife sanction your coming here to request my interference?”
“His wife sends me to you — the only Englishman in Wildbad — to write for your dying countryman what he cannot write for himself; and what no one else in this place but you can write for him.”
That answer drove Mr. Neal back to the last inch of ground left him to stand on. Even on that inch the Scotchman resisted still.
“Wait a little!” he said. “You put it strongly; let us be quite sure you put it correctly as well. Let us be quite sure there is nobody to take this responsibility but myself. There is a mayor in Wildbad, to begin with — a man who possesses an official character to justify his interference.”
“A man of a thousand,” said the doctor. “With one fault — he knows no language but his own.”
“There is an English legation at Stuttgart,” persisted Mr. Neal.
“And there are miles on miles of the forest between this and Stuttgart,” rejoined the doctor. “If we sent this moment, we could get no help from the legation before tomorrow; and it is as likely as not, in the state of this dying man’s articulation, that tomorrow may find him speechless. I don’t know whether his last wishes are wishes harmless to his child and to others, wishes hurtful to his child and to others; but I do know that they must be fulfilled at once or never, and that you are the only man that can help him.”
That open declaration brought the discussion to a close. It fixed Mr. Neal fast between the two alternatives of saying Yes, and committing an act of imprudence, or of saying No, and committing an act of inhumanity. There was a silence of some minutes. The Scotchman steadily reflected; and the German steadily watched him.
The responsibility of saying the next words rested on Mr. Neal, and in course of time Mr. Neal took it. He rose from his chair with a sullen sense of injury lowering on his heavy eyebrows, and working sourly in the lines at the corners of his mouth.
“My position is forced on me,” he said. “I have no choice but to accept it.”
The doctor’s impulsive nature rose in revolt against the merciless brevity and gracelessness of that reply. “I wish to God,” he broke out fervently, “I knew English enough to take your place at Mr. Armadale’s bedside!”
“Bating your taking the name of the Almighty in vain,” answered the Scotchman, “I entirely agree with you. I wish you did.”
Without another word on either side, they left the room together — the doctor leading the way.
III. The Wreck of the Timber Ship
No one answered the doctor’s knock when he and his companion reached the antechamber door of Mr. Armadale’s apartments. They entered unannounced; and when they looked into the sitting-room, the sitting-room was empty.
“I must see Mrs. Armadale,” said Mr. Neal. “I decline acting in the matter unless Mrs. Armadale authorizes my interference with her own lips.”
“Mrs. Armadale is probably with her husband,” replied the doctor. He approached a door at the inner end of the sitting-room while he spoke — hesitated — and, turning round again, looked at his sour companion anxiously. “I am afraid I spoke a little harshly, sir, when we were leaving your room,” he said. “I beg your pardon for it, with all my heart. Before this poor afflicted lady comes in, will you — will you excuse my asking your utmost gentleness and consideration for her?”
“No, sir,” retorted the other harshly; “I won’t excuse you. What right have I given you to think me wanting in gentleness and consideration toward anybody?”
The doctor saw it was useless. “I beg your pardon again,” he said, resignedly, and left the unapproachable stranger to himself.
Mr. Neal walked to the window, and stood there, with his eyes mechanically fixed on the prospect, composing his mind for the coming interview.
It was midday; the sun shone bright and warm; and all the little world of Wildbad was alive and merry in the genial springtime. Now and again heavy wagons, with black-faced carters in charge, rolled by the window, bearing their precious lading of charcoal from the forest. Now and again, hurled over the headlong current of the stream that runs through the town, great lengths of timber, loosely strung together in interminable series — with the booted raftsmen, pole in hand, poised watchful at either end — shot swift and serpent-like past the houses on their course to the distant Rhine. High and steep above the gabled wooden buildings on the riverbank, the great hillsides, crested black with firs, shone to the shining heavens in a glory of lustrous green. In and out, where the forest footpaths wound from the grass through the trees, from the trees over the grass, the bright spring dresses of women and children, on the search for wild flowers, traveled to and fro in the lofty distance like spots of moving light. Below, on the walk by the stream side, the booths of the little bazar that had opened punctually with the opening season showed all their glittering trinkets, and fluttered in the balmy air their splendor of many-coloured flags. Longingly, here the children looked at the show; patiently the sunburned lasses plied their knitting as they paced the walk; courteously the passing townspeople, by fours and fives, and the passing visitors, by ones and twos, greeted each other, hat in hand; and slowly, slowly, the cripple and the helpless in their chairs on wheels came out in the cheerful noontide with the rest, and took their share of the blessed light that cheers, of the blessed sun that shines for all.
On this scene the Scotchman looked, with eyes that never noted its beauty, with a mind far away from every lesson that it taught. One by one he meditated the words he should say when the wife came in. One by one he pondered over the conditions he might impose before he took the pen in hand at the husband’s bedside.
“Mrs. Armadale is here,” said the doctor’s voice, interposing suddenly between his reflections and himself.
He turned on the instant, and saw before him, with the pure midday light shining full on her, a woman of the mixed blood of the European and