Armadale by Wilkie Collins Page A

grateful, but I entreat you not to think of
me
. What my husband wishes—’ Her voice faltered; she waited resolutely, and recovered herself. ‘What my husband wishes in his last moments, I wish too.’
    This time Mr Neal was composed enough to answer her. In low, earnest tones, he entreated her to say no more. ‘I was only anxious to show you every consideration,’ he said. ‘I am only anxious now to spare you every distress.’ As he spoke, something like a glow of colour rose slowly on his sallow face. Her eyes were looking at him, softly attentive – and he thought guiltily of his meditations at the window before she came in.
    The doctor saw his opportunity. He opened the door that led into Mr Armadale’s room, and stood by it, waiting silently. Mrs Armadale entered first. In a minute more the door was closed again; and Mr Neal stood committed to the responsibility that had been forced on him – committed beyond recall.
    The room was decorated in the gaudy continental fashion; and the warm sunlight was shining in joyously. Cupids and flowers were painted on the ceiling; bright ribbons looped up the white window-curtains; a smart gilt clock ticked on a velvet-covered mantelpiece; mirrors gleamed on the walls, and flowers in all the colours of the rainbow speckled the carpet. In the midst of the finery, and the glitter, and the light, lay theparalysed man, with his wandering eyes, and his lifeless lower face – his head propped high with many pillows; his helpless hands laid out over the bed-clothes like the hands of a corpse. By the bed-head stood, grim, and old, and silent, the shrivelled black nurse; and on the counterpane, between his father’s outspread hands, lay the child, in his little white frock, absorbed in the enjoyment of a new toy. When the door opened, and Mrs Armadale led the way in, the boy was tossing his plaything – a soldier on horseback – backwards and forwards over the helpless hands on either side of him; and the father’s wandering eyes were following the toy to and fro, with a stealthy and ceaseless vigilance – a vigilance as of a wild animal, terrible to see.
    The moment Mr Neal appeared in the doorway, those restless eyes stopped, looked up, and fastened on the stranger with a fierce eagerness of inquiry. Slowly the motionless lips struggled into movement. With thick, hesitating articulation, they put the question which the eyes asked mutely, into words.
    â€˜Are you the man?’
    Mr Neal advanced to the bedside; Mrs Armadale drawing back from it as he approached, and waiting with the doctor at the farther end of the room. The child looked up, toy in hand, as the stranger came near – opened his bright brown eyes wide in momentary astonishment – and then went on with his game.
    â€˜I have been made acquainted with your sad situation, sir,’ said Mr Neal. ‘And I have come here to place my services at your disposal; services which no one but myself– as your medical attendant informs me – is in a position to render you in this strange place. My name is Neal. I am a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh; 1 and I may presume to say for myself that any confidence you wish to place in me will be confidence not improperly bestowed.’
    The eyes of the beautiful wife were not confusing him now. He spoke to the helpless husband quietly and seriously, without his customary harshness, and with a grave compassion in his manner which presented him at his best. The sight of the death-bed had steadied him.
    â€˜You wish me to write something for you?’ he resumed, after waiting for a reply, and waiting in vain.
    â€˜Yes!’ said the dying man, with the all-mastering impatience which his tongue was powerless to express, glittering angrily in his eyes. ‘My hand is gone; and my speech is going. Write!’
    Before there was time to speak again, Mr Neal heard the rustling of a woman’s dress, and