Armadale (29 page)

‘Are you really in earnest?' asked Midwinter, producing his pocket-book 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 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 Grâce 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 statue was on my left hand, and the window was on my right. 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 towards 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 Shadow had vanished, and the third vision was at an end.

16. The darkness closed over me again; and the interval of oblivion followed.
¹

17. I was conscious of nothing more, till I felt the morning sunshine 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, super-naturally 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:
²
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 farther 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 harbour. – By the by, 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 honour, 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 futher 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 towards 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 farther 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?'