Three weeks passed before the stranger with the uncouth name was pronounced to be at last on the way to recovery. During this period, Allan had made regular inquiries at the inn; and, as soon as the sick man was allowed to see visitors, Allan was the first who appeared at his bedside. So far, Mr Brock’s pupil had shown no more than a natural interest in one of the few romantic circumstances which had varied the monotony of the village life: he had committed no imprudence, and he had exposed himself to no blame. But as the days passed, young Armadale’s visits to the inn began to lengthen considerably; and the surgeon (a cautious elderly man) gave the rector a private hint to bestir himself. Mr Brock acted on the hint immediately, and discovered that Allan had followed his usual impulses in his usual headlong way. He had taken a violent fancy to the castaway usher; and had invited Ozias Midwinter to reside permanently in the neighbourhood, in the new and interesting character of his bosom friend.
Before Mr Brock could make up his mind how to act in this emergency, he received a note from Allan’s mother, begging him to use his privilege as an old friend, and to pay her a visit in her room. He found Mrs Armadale suffering under violent nervous agitation, caused entirely by a recent interview with her son. Allan had been sitting with her all the morning, and had talked of nothing but his new friend. The man with the horrible name (as poor Mrs Armadale described him) had questioned Allan, in a singularly inquisitive manner, on the subject of himself and his family, but had kept his own personal history entirely in the dark. At some former period of his life he had been accustomed to the sea and to sailing. Allan had, unfortunately, found this out, and a bond of union between them was formed on the spot. With a merciless distrust of the stranger – simply because he was a stranger – which appeared rather unreasonable to Mr Brock, Mrs Armadale besought the rector to go to the inn without a moment’s loss of time, and never to rest until he had made the man give a proper account of himself. ‘Find out everything about his father and mother!’ she said, in her vehement female way. ‘Make sure before you leave him that he is not a vagabond roaming the country under an assumed name.’
‘My dear lady,’ remonstrated the rector, obediently taking his hat, ‘whatever else we may doubt, I really think we may feel sure about the man’s name! It is so remarkably ugly, that it must be genuine. No sane human being would assume such a name as Ozias Midwinter.’
‘You may be quite right, and I may be quite wrong; but pray go and see him,’ persisted Mrs Armadale. ‘Go, and don’t spare him, Mr Brock. How do we know that this illness of his may not have been put on for a purpose?’
It was useless to reason with her. The whole College of Physicians might have certified to the man’s illness, and, in her present frame of mind, Mrs Armadale would have disbelieved the College, one and all, from the president downwards. Mr Brock took the wise way out of the difficulty – he said no more, and he set off for the inn immediately.
Ozias Midwinter, recovering from brain-fever, was a startling object to contemplate, on a first view of him. His shaven head, tied up roughly in an old yellow silk handkerchief; his tawny, haggard cheeks; his bright brown eyes, preternaturally large and wild; his tangled black beard;7 his long supple, sinewy fingers, wasted by suffering, till they looked like claws – all tended to discompose the rector at the outset of the interview. When the first feeling of surprise had worn off, the impression that followed it was not an agreeable one. Mr Brock could not conceal from himself that the stranger’s manner was against him. The general opinion has settled that if a man is honest, he is bound to assert it by looking straight at his fellow-creatures when he speaks to them. If this man was honest, his eyes showed a singular perversity in looking away and denying it. Possibly they were affected in some degree by a nervous restlessness in his organization, which appeared to pervade every fibre in his lean, lithe body. The rector’s healthy Anglo-Saxon flesh crept responsively at every casual movement of the usher’s supple brown fingers, and every passing distortion of the usher’s haggard yellow face. ‘God forgive me!’thought Mr Brock, with his mind running on Allan, and Allan’s mother, ‘I wish I could see my way to turning Ozias Midwinter adrift in the world again!’
The conversation which ensued between the two was a very guarded one. Mr Brock felt his way gently, and found himself, try where he might, always kept politely, more or less, in the dark. From first to last, the man’s real character shrank back with a savage shyness from the rector’s touch. He started by an assertion which it was impossible to look at him and believe – he declared that he was only twenty years of age. All he could be persuaded to say on the subject of the school was, that the bare recollection of it was horrible to him. He had only filled the usher’s situation for ten days when the first appearance of his illness caused his dismissal. How he had reached the field in which he had been found, was more than he could say. He remembered travelling a long distance by railway, with a purpose (if he had a purpose) which it was now impossible to recall, and then wandering coastwards, on foot, all through the day, or all through the night – he was not sure which. The sea kept running in his mind, when his mind began to give way. He had been employed on the sea, as a lad. He had left it, and had filled a situation at a bookseller’s in a country town.8 He had left the bookseller’s, and had tried the school. Now the school had turned him out, he must try something else. It mattered little what he tried – failure (for which nobody was ever to blame but himself) was sure to be the end of it, sooner or later. Friends to assist him, he had none to apply to; and as for relations, he wished to be excused from speaking of them. For all he knew they might be dead, and for all they knew he might be dead. That was a melancholy acknowledgment to make at his time of life, there was no denying it. It might tell against him in the opinions of others – and it did tell against him, no doubt, in the opinion of the gentleman who was talking to him at that moment.
These strange answers were given in a tone and manner far removed from bitterness on the one side, or from indifference on the other. Ozias Midwinter at twenty, spoke of his life as Ozias Midwinter at seventy might have spoken, with a long weariness of years on him which he had learnt to bear patiently.
Two circumstances pleaded strongly against the distrust with which, in sheer perplexity of mind, Mr Brock blindly regarded him. He had written to a savings bank in a distant part of England, had drawn his money, and had paid the doctor and the landlord. A man of vulgar mind, after acting in this manner, would have treated his obligations lightly, when he had settled his bills. Ozias Midwinter spoke of his obligations – and especially of his obligation to Allan – with a fervour of thankfulness which it was not surprising only, but absolutely painful to witness. He showed a horrible sincerity of astonishment at having been treated with common Christian kindness in a Christian land. He spoke of Allan’s having become answerable for all the expenses of sheltering, nursing, and curing him, with a savage rapture of gratitude and surprise, which burst out of him like a flash of lightning. ‘So help me God!’ cried the castaway usher, ‘I never met with the like of him; I never heard of the like of him before!’ In the next instant, the one glimpse of light which the man had let in on his own passionate nature was quenched again in darkness. His wandering eyes, returning to their old trick, looked uneasily away from Mr Brock; and his voice dropped back once more into its unnatural steadiness and quietness of tone. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘I have been used to be hunted, and cheated, and starved. Everything else comes strange to me.’ Half attracted by the man, half repelled by him, Mr Brock, on rising to take leave, impulsively offered his hand, and then, with a sudden misgiving, confusedly drew it back again. ‘You meant that kindly, sir,’ said Ozias Midwinter, with his own hands crossed resolutely behind him. ‘I don’t complain of your thinking better of it. A man who can’t give a proper account of himself, is not a man for a gentleman in your position to take by the hand.’
Mr Brock left the inn thoroughly puzzled. Before returning to Mrs Armadale, he sent
for her son. The chances were that the guard had been off the stranger’s tongue when he spoke to Allan; and with Allan’s frankness, there was no fear of his concealing anything that had passed between them from the rector’s knowledge.
Here, again, Mr Brock’s diplomacy achieved no useful results. Once started on the subject of Ozias Midwinter, Allan rattled on about his new friend, in his usual easy light-hearted way. But he had really nothing of importance to tell – for nothing of importance had been revealed to him. They had talked about boat-building and sailing by the hour together; and Allan had got some valuable hints. They had discussed (with diagrams to assist them, and with more valuable hints for Allan) the serious impending question of the launch of the yacht.9 On other occasions they had diverged to other subjects – to more of them than Allan could remember, on the spur of the moment. Had Midwinter said nothing about his relations in the flow of all this friendly talk? Nothing, except that they had not behaved well to him – hang his relations! Was he at all sensitive on the subject of his own odd name? Not the least in the world; he had set the example, like a sensible fellow, of laughing at it himself: deuce take his name, it did very well when you were used to it. What had Allan seen in him to take such a fancy to? Allan had seen in him – what he didn’t see in people in general. He wasn’t like all the other fellows in the neighbourhood. All the other fellows were cut out on the same pattern. Every man of them was equally healthy, muscular, loud, hard-headed, clean-skinned, and rough; every man of them drank the same draughts of beer, smoked the same short pipes all day long, rode the best horse, shot over the best dog, and put the best bottle of wine in England on his table at night; every man of them sponged himself every morning in the same sort of tub of cold water, and bragged about it in frosty weather in the same sort of way; every man of them thought getting into debt a capital joke, and betting on horse-races one of the most meritorious actions that a human being can perform. They were no doubt excellent fellows in their way; but the worst of them was, they were all exactly alike. It was a perfect godsend to meet with a man like Midwinter – a man who was not cut out on the regular local pattern, and whose way in the world had the one great merit (in those parts) of being a way of his own.
Leaving all remonstrances for a fitter opportunity, the rector went back to Mrs Armadale. He could not disguise from himself that Allan’s mother was the person really answerable for Allan’s present indiscretion. If the lad had seen a little less of the small gentry in the neighbourhood, and a little more of the great outside world at home and abroad, the pleasure of cultivating Ozias Midwinter’s society might have had fewer attractions for him.
Conscious of the unsatisfactory result of his visit to the inn, Mr Brock felt some anxiety about the reception of his report, when he found himself once more in Mrs Armadale’s presence. His forebodings were soon realized. Try as he might to make the best of it, Mrs Armadale seized on the one suspicious fact of the usher’s silence about himself, as justifying the strongest measures that could be taken to separate him from her son. If the rector refused to interfere, she declared her intention of writing to Ozias Midwinter with her own hand. Remonstrance irritated her to such a pitch, that she astounded Mr Brock by reverting to the forbidden subject of five years since, and referring him to the conversation which had passed between them when the advertisement had been discovered in the newspaper. She passionately declared that the vagabond Armadale of that advertisement, and the vagabond Midwinter at the village inn, might, for all she knew to the contrary, be one and the same. The rector vainly reiterated his conviction that the name was the very last in the world that any man (and a young man especially) would be likely to assume. Nothing quieted Mrs Armadale but absolute submission to her will. Dreading the consequences if he still resisted her in her feeble state of health, and foreboding a serious disagreement between the mother and son, if the mother interfered, Mr Brock undertook to see Midwinter again, and to tell him plainly that he must give a proper account of himself, or that his intimacy with Allan must cease. The two concessions which he exacted from Mrs Armadale in return, were, that she should wait patiently until the doctor reported the man fit to travel, and that she should be careful in the interval not to mention the matter in any way to her son.
In a week’s time, Midwinter was able to drive out (with Allan for his coachman), in the pony-chaise belonging to the inn; and in ten days, the doctor privately reported him as fit to travel. Towards the close of that tenth day, Mr Brock met Allan and his new friend enjoying the last gleams of wintry sunshine in one of the inland lanes. He waited until the two had separated, and then followed the usher on his way back to the inn.
The rector’s resolution to speak pitilessly to the purpose was in some danger of failing him, as he drew nearer and nearer to the friendless man, and saw how feebly he still walked, how loosely his worn coat hung about him, and how heavily he leant on his cheap clumsy stick. Humanely reluctant to say the decisive words too precipitately, Mr Brock tried him first with a little compliment on the range of his reading, as shown by the volume of Sophocles and the volume of Goethe which had been found in his bag; and asked how long he had been acquainted with German and Greek. The quick ear of Midwinter detected something wrong in the tone of Mr Brock’s voice. He turned in the darkening twilight and looked suddenly and suspiciously in the rector’s face.
‘You have something to say to me,’ he answered; ‘and it is not what you are saying now.’
There was no help for it, but to accept the challenge. Very delicately, with many preparatory words, to which the other listened in unbroken silence, Mr Brock came little by little nearer to the point. Long before he had really reached it – long before a man of no more than ordinary sensibility would have felt what was coming – Ozias Midwinter stood still in the lane, and told the rector that he need say no more.
‘I understand you, sir,’ said the usher. ‘Mr Armadale has an ascertained position in the world; Mr Armadale has nothing to conceal, and nothing to be ashamed of. I agree with you that I am not a fit companion for him. The best return I can make for his kindness, is to presume on it no longer. You may depend on my leaving this place tomorrow morning.’
He spoke no word more; he would hear no word more. With a self-control which, at his years and with his temperament, was nothing less than marvellous, he civilly took off his hat, bowed, and returned to the inn by himself.
Mr Brock slept badly that night. The issue of the interview in the lane had made the problem of Ozias Midwinter a harder problem to solve than ever.
Early the next morning a letter was brought to the rector from the inn, and the messenger announced that the strange gentleman had taken his departure. The letter enclosed an open note addressed to Allan, and requested Allan’s tutor (after first reading it himself), to forward it or not at his own sole discretion. The note was a startlingly short one: it began and ended in a dozen words: ‘Don’t blame Mr Brock; Mr Brock is right. Thank you, and good-by. – O. M.’
The rector forwarded the note to its proper destination, as a matter of course; and sent a few lines to Mrs Armadale at the same time, to quiet her anxiety by the news of the usher’s departure. This done, he waited the visit from his pupil, which would probably follow the delivery of the note, in no very tranquil frame of mind. There might or might not be some deep motive at the bottom of Midwinter’s conduct; but, thus far, it was impossible to deny that he had behaved in such a manner as to rebuke the rector’s distrust, and to justify Allan’s good opinion of him.
The morning wore on, and young Armadale never appeared. After looking for him vainly in the yard where the yacht was building, Mr Brock went to Mrs Armadale’s house, and there heard news from the servant which turned his steps in the direction of the inn. The landlord at once acknowledged the truth – young Mr Armadale had come there with an open letter in his hand, and had insisted on being informed of the road which his friend had taken. For the first time in the landlord’s experience of him, the young gent
leman was out of temper; and the girl who waited on the customers had stupidly mentioned a circumstance which had added fuel to the fire. She had acknowledged having heard Mr Midwinter lock himself into his room overnight, and burst into a violent fit of crying. That trifling particular had set Mr Armadale’s face all of a flame; he had shouted and sworn; he had rushed into the stables; had forced the ostler to saddle him a horse, and had set off at full gallop on the road that Ozias Midwinter had taken before him.
After cautioning the landlord to keep Allan’s conduct a secret, if any of Mrs Armadale’s servants came that morning to the inn, Mr Brock went home again, and waited anxiously to see what the day would bring forth.
To his infinite relief, his pupil appeared at the rectory late in the afternoon. Allan looked, and spoke, with a dogged determination which was quite new in his old friend’s experience of him. Without waiting to be questioned, he told his story in his usual straightforward way. He had overtaken Midwinter on the road; and – after trying vainly, first to induce him to return, then to find out where he was going to – had threatened to keep company with him for the rest of the day, and had so extorted the confession that he was going to try his luck in London. Having gained this point, Allan had asked next for his friend’s address in London – had been entreated by the other not to press his request – had pressed it, nevertheless, with all his might, and had got the address at last, by making an appeal to Midwinter’s gratitude, for which (feeling heartily ashamed of himself) he had afterwards asked Midwinter’s pardon. ‘I like the poor fellow, and I won’t give him up,’ concluded Allan, bringing his clenched fist down with a thump on the rectory table. ‘Don’t be afraid of my vexing my mother; I’ll leave you to speak to her, Mr Brock, at your own time and in your own way; and I’ll just say this much more by way of bringing the thing to an end. Here is the address safe in my pocket-book, and here am I, standing firm, for once, on a resolution of my own. I’ll give you and my mother time to re-consider this; and, when the time is up, if my friend Midwinter doesn’t come to me, I’ll go to my friend Midwinter!’