Armadale by Wilkie Collins Page B

the quick creaking of castors on the carpet behind him. Mrs Armadale was moving the writing-table across the room tothe foot of the bed. If he was to set up those safeguards of his own devising that were to bear him harmless through all results to come, now was the time, or never. He kept his back turned on Mrs Armadale; and put his precautionary question at once in the plainest terms.
    â€˜May I ask, sir, before I take the pen in hand, what it is you wish me to write?’
    The angry eyes of the paralysed man glittered brighter and brighter. His lips opened and closed again. He made no reply.
    Mr Neal tried another precautionary question, in a new direction.
    â€˜When I have written what you wish me to write,’ he asked, ‘what is to be done with it?’
    This time the answer came:
    â€˜Seal it up in my presence, and post it to my Ex—’
    His labouring articulation suddenly stopped, and he looked piteously in the questioner’s face for the next word.
    â€˜Do you mean your Executor?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜It is a letter, I suppose, that I am to post?’ There was no answer. ‘May I ask if it is a letter altering your will?’
    â€˜Nothing of the sort.’
    Mr Neal considered a little. The mystery was thickening. The one way out of it so far, was the way traced faintly through that strange story of the unfinished letter which the doctor had repeated to him in Mrs Armadale’s words. The nearer he approached his unknown responsibility, the more ominous it seemed of something serious to come. Should he risk another question before he pledged himself irrevocably? As the doubt crossed his mind, he felt Mrs Armadale’s silk dress touch him, on the side farthest from her husband. Her delicate dark hand was laid gently on his arm; her full deep African eyes looked at him in submissive entreaty. ‘My husband is very anxious,’ she whispered. ‘Will you quiet his anxiety, sir, by taking your place at the writing-table?’
    It was from
her
lips that the request came – from the lips of the person who had the best right to hesitate, the wife who was excluded from the secret! Most men in Mr Neal’s position would have given up all their safeguards on the spot. The Scotchman gave them all up, but one.
    â€˜I will write what you wish me to write,’ he said, addressing Mr Armadale. ‘I will seal it in your presence; and I will post it to your Executor myself. But, in engaging to do this, I must beg you to remember, that I am acting entirely in the dark; and I must ask you to excuse me, if I reserve my own entire freedom of action, when yourwishes in relation to the writing and the posting of the letter have been fulfilled.’
    â€˜Do you give me your promise?’
    â€˜If you want my promise, sir, I will give it – subject to the condition I have just named.’
    â€˜Take your condition, and keep your promise. My desk,’ he added, looking at his wife for the first time.
    She crossed the room eagerly to fetch the desk from a chair in a corner. Returning with it, she made a passing sign to the negress, who still stood, grim and silent, in the place that she had occupied from the first. The woman advanced, obedient to the sign, to take the child from the bed. At the instant when she touched him, the father’s eyes – fixed previously on the desk – turned on her with the stealthy quickness of a cat. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No!’ echoed the fresh voice of the boy, still charmed with his plaything, and still liking his place on the bed. The negress left the room, and the child, in high triumph, trotted his toy-soldier up and down on the bedclothes that lay rumpled over his father’s breast. His mother’s lovely face contracted with a pang of jealousy as she looked at him.
    â€˜Shall I open your desk?’ she asked, pushing back the child’s plaything sharply while she spoke. An answering look from