Part 16

“Is your head more composed?” he asked. “Can you tell me your dream now?”

While he put the question, a last memorable moment in the Adventure of the Wreck was at hand.

They had reached the stern, and were just turning again when Midwinter spoke. As Allan opened his lips to answer, he looked out mechanically to sea. Instead of replying, he suddenly ran to the taffrail, and waved his hat over his head, with a shout of exultation.

Midwinter joined him, and saw a large six-oared boat pulling straight for the channel of the Sound. A figure, which they both thought they recognized, rose eagerly in the stern-sheets and returned the waving of Allan’s hat. The boat came nearer, the steersman called to them cheerfully, and they recognized the doctor’s voice.

“Thank God you’re both above water!” said Mr. Hawbury, as they met him on the deck of the timber-ship. “Of all the winds of heaven, which wind blew you here?”

He looked at Midwinter as he made the inquiry, but it was Allan who told him the story of the night, and Allan who asked the doctor for information in return. The one absorbing interest in Midwinter’s mind--the interest of penetrating the mystery of the dream--kept him silent throughout. Heedless of all that was said or done about him, he watched Allan, and followed Allan, like a dog, until the time came for getting down into the boat. Mr. Hawbury’s professional eye rested on him curiously, noting his varying color, and the incessant restlessness of his hands. “I wouldn’t change nervous systems with that man for the largest fortune that could be offered me,” thought the doctor as he took the boat’s tiller, and gave the oarsmen their order to push off from the wreck.

Having reserved all explanations on his side until they were on their way back to Port St. Mary, Mr. Hawbury next addressed himself to the gratification of Allan’s curiosity. The circumstances which had brought him to the rescue of his two guests of the previous evening were simple enough. The lost boat had been met with at sea by some fishermen of Port Erin, on the western side of the island, who at once recognized it as the doctor’s property, and at once sent a messenger to make inquiry, at the doctor’s house. The man’s statement of what had happened had naturally alarmed Mr. Hawbury for the safety of Allan and his friend. He had immediately secured assistance, and, guided by the boatman’s advice, had made first for the most dangerous place on the coast--the only place, in that calm weather, in which an accident could have happened to a boat sailed by experienced men--the channel of the Sound. After thus accounting for his welcome appearance on the scene, the doctor hospitably insisted that his guests of the evening should be his guests of the morning as well. It would still be too early when they got back for the people at the hotel to receive them, and they would find bed and breakfast at Mr. Hawbury’s house.

At the first pause in the conversation between Allan and the doctor, Midwinter, who had neither joined in the talk nor listened to the talk, touched his friend on the arm. “Are you better?” he asked, in a whisper. “Shall you soon be composed enough to tell me what I want to know?”

Allan’s eyebrows contracted impatiently; the subject of the dream, and Midwinter’s obstinacy in returning to it, seemed to be alike distasteful to him. He hardly answered with his usual good humor. “I suppose I shall have no peace till I tell you,” he said, “so I may as well get it over at once.”

“No!” returned Midwinter, with a look at the doctor and his oarsmen. “Not where other people can hear it--not till you and I are alone.”

“If you wish to see the last, gentlemen, of your quarters for the night,” interposed the doctor, “now is your time! The coast will shut the vessel out in a minute more.”

In silence on the one side and on the other, the two Armadales looked their last at the fatal ship. Lonely and lost they had found the wreck in the mystery of the summer night; lonely and lost they left the wreck in the radiant beauty of the summer morning.

An hour later the doctor had seen his guests established in their bedrooms, and had left them to take their rest until the breakfast hour arrived.

Almost as soon as his back was turned, the doors of both rooms opened softly, and Allan and Midwinter met in the passage.

“Can you sleep after what has happened?” asked Allan.

Midwinter shook his head. “You were coming to my room, were you not?” he said. “What for?”

“To ask you to keep me company. What were you coming to _my_ room for?”

“To ask you to tell me your dream.”

“Damn the dream! I want to forget all about it.”

“And _I_ want to know all about it.”

Both paused; both refrained instinctively from saying more. For the first time since the beginning of their friendship they were on the verge of a disagreement, and that on the subject of the dream. Allan’s good temper just stopped them on the brink.

“You are the most obstinate fellow alive,” he said; “but if you will know all about it, you must know all about it, I suppose. Come into my room, and I’ll tell you.”

He led the way, and Midwinter followed. The door closed and shut them in together.

V. THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.

When Mr. Hawbury joined his guests in the breakfast-room, the strange contrast of character between them which he had noticed already was impressed on his mind more strongly than ever. One of them sat at the well-spread table, hungry and happy, ranging from dish to dish, and declaring that he had never made such a breakfast in his life. The other sat apart at the window; his cup thanklessly deserted before it was empty, his meat left ungraciously half-eaten on his plate. The doctor’s morning greeting to the two accurately expressed the differing impressions which they had produced on his mind.

He clapped Allan on the shoulder, and saluted him with a joke. He bowed constrainedly to Midwinter, and said, “I am afraid you have not recovered the fatigues of the night.”

“It’s not the night, doctor, that has damped his spirits,” said Allan. “It’s something I have been telling him. It is not my fault, mind. If I had only known beforehand that he believed in dreams, I wouldn’t have opened my lips.”

“Dreams?” repeated the doctor, looking at Midwinter directly, 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 pocket-book--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 color 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 Grace de Dieu_, which ship then lay wrecked in the channel of the Sound between the main-land 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 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! supernaturally 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: 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 further 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 harbor. By-the-bye, 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 honor, 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 further 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 toward 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.”