Armadale

'Never mind the rain,' rejoined Midwinter. 'The rain and I are old friends. You know something, Allan, of the life I led before you met with me. From the time when I was a child, I have been used to hardship and exposure. Night and day, sometimes for months together, I never had my head under a roof. For years and years, the life of a wild animal—perhaps I ought to say, the life of a savage—was the life I led, while you were at home and happy. I have the leaven of the vagabond—the vagabond animal, or the vagabond man, I hardly know which—in me still. Does it distress you to hear me talk of myself in this way? I won't distress you. I will only say that the comfort and the luxury of our life here are, at times, I think, a little too much for a man to whom comforts and luxuries come as strange things. I want nothing to put me right again but more air and exercise; fewer good breakfasts and dinners, my dear friend, than I get here. Let me go back to some of the hardships which this comfortable house is expressly made to shut out. Let me meet the wind and weather as I used to meet them when I was a boy; let me feel weary again for a little while, without a carriage near to pick me up; and hungry when the night falls, with miles of walking between my supper and me. Give me a week or two away, Allan—up northward, on foot, to the Yorkshire moors— and I promise to return to Thorpe Ambrose, better company for you and for your friends. I shall be back before you have time to miss me. Mr. Bashwood will take care of the business in the office; it is only for a fortnight, and it is for my own good—let me go!'

'I don't like it,' said Allan. 'I don't like your leaving me in this sudden manner. There's something so strange and dreary about it. Why not try riding, if you want more exercise; all the horses in the stables are at your disposal. At all events, you can't possibly go to-day. Look at the rain!'

Midwinter looked toward the window, and gently shook his head.

'I thought nothing of the rain,' he said, 'when I was a mere child, getting my living with the dancing dogs— why should I think anything of it now? My getting wet, and your getting wet, Allan, are two very different things. When I was a fisherman's boy in the Hebrides, I hadn't a dry thread on me for weeks together.'

'But you're not in the Hebrides now,' persisted Allan; 'and I expect our friends from the cottage to-morrow evening. You can't start till after to-morrow. Miss Gwilt is going to give us some more music, and you know you like Miss Gwilt's playing.'

Midwinter turned aside to buckle the straps of his knapsack. 'Give me another chance of hearing Miss Gwilt when I come back,' he said, with his head down, and his fingers busy at the straps.

'You have one fault, my dear fellow, and it grows on you,' remonstrated Allan; 'when you have once taken a thing into our head, you're the most obstinate man alive. There's no persuading you to listen to reason. If you will go,' added Allan, suddenly rising, as Midwinter took up his hat and stick in silence, 'I have half a mind to go with you, and try a little roughing it too!'

'Go with me!' repeated Midwinter, with a momentary bitterness in his tone, 'and leave Miss Gwilt!'

Allan sat down again, and admitted the force of the objection in significant silence. Without a word more on his side, Midwinter held out his hand to take leave. They were both deeply moved, and each was anxious to hide his agitation from the other. Allan took the last refuge which his friend's firmness left to him: he tried to lighten the farewell moment by a joke.

'I'll tell you what,' he said, 'I begin to doubt if you're quite cured yet of your belief in the Dream. I suspect you're running away from me, after all!'

Midwinter looked at him, uncertain whether he was in jest or earnest. 'What do you mean?' he asked.

'What did you tell me,' retorted Allan, 'when you took me in here the other day, and made a clean breast of it? What did you say about this room, and the second vision of the dream? By Jupiter!' he exclaimed, starting to his feet once more, 'now I look again, here is the Second Vision! There's the rain pattering against the window—there's the lawn and the garden outside—here am I where I stood in the Dream—and there are you where the Shadow stood. The whole scene complete, out-of-doors and in; and I've discovered it this time!'

A moment's life stirred again in the dead remains of Midwinter's superstition. His color changed, and he eagerly, almost fiercely, disputed Allan's conclusion.

'No!' he said, pointing to the little marble figure on the bracket, 'the scene is not complete—you have forgotten something, as usual. The Dream is wrong this time, thank God—utterly wrong! In the vision you saw, the statue was lying in fragments on the floor, and you were stooping over them with a troubled and an angry mind. There stands the statue safe and sound! and you haven't the vestige of an angry feeling in your mind, have you?' He seized Allan impulsively by the hand. At the same moment the consciousness came to him that he was speaking and acting as earnestly as if he still believed in the Dream. The color rushed back over his face, and he turned away in confused silence.

'What did I tell you?' said Allan, laughing, a little uneasily. 'That night on the Wreck is hanging on your mind as heavily as ever.'

'Nothing hangs heavy on me,' retorted Midwinter, with a sudden outburst of impatience, 'but the knapsack on my back, and the time I'm wasting here. I'll go out, and see if it's likely to clear up.'

'You'll come back?' interposed Allan.

Midwinter opened the French window, and stepped out into the garden.

'Yes,' he said, answering with all his former gentleness of manner; 'I'll come back in a fortnight. Good-by, Allan; and good luck with Miss Gwilt!'

He pushed the window to, and was away across the garden before his friend could open it again and follow him.

Allan rose, and took one step into the garden; then checked himself at the window, and returned to his chair. He knew Midwinter well enough to feel the total uselessness of attempting to follow him or to call him back. He was gone, and for two weeks to come there was no hope of seeing him again. An hour or more passed, the rain still fell, and the sky still threatened. A heavier and heavier sense of loneliness and despondency—the sense of all others which his previous life had least fitted him to understand and endure—possessed itself of Allan's mind. In sheer horror of his own uninhabitably solitary house, he rang for his hat and umbrella, and resolved to take refuge in the major's cottage.

'I might have gone a little way with him,' thought Allan, his mind still running on Midwinter as he put on his hat. 'I should like to have seen the dear old fellow fairly started on his journey.'

He took his umbrella. If he had noticed the face of the servant who gave it to him, he might possibly have