第13章

"I have no proof against Ingleby. There was more than one woman on the island whom I had wronged beyond all forgiveness, and whose vengeance might well have reached me at that time. I can accuse nobody. I can only say that my life was saved by my old black nurse; and that the woman afterward acknowledged having used the known negro antidote to a known negro poison in those parts. When my first days of convalescence came, the ship in which my passage had been taken had long since sailed. When Iasked for Ingleby, he was gone. Proofs of his unpardonable misconduct in his situation were placed before me, which not even my partiality for him could resist. He had been turned out of the office in the first days of my illness, and nothing more was known of him but that he had left the island.

"All through my sufferings the portrait had been under my pillow.

All through my convalescence it was my one consolation when Iremembered the past, and my one encouragement when I thought of the future. No words can describe the hold that first fancy had now taken of me--with time and solitude and suffering to help it.

My mother, with all her interest in the match, was startled by the unexpected success of her own project. She had written to tell Mr. Blanchard of my illness, but had received no reply. She now offered to write again, if I would promise not to leave her before my recovery was complete. My impatience acknowledged no restraint. Another ship in port gave me another chance of leaving for Madeira. Another examination of Mr. Blanchard's letter of invitation assured me that I should find him still in the island, if I seized my opportunity on the spot. In defiance of my mother's entreaties, I insisted on taking my passage in the second ship--and this time, when the ship sailed, I was on board.

"The change did me good; the sea-air made a man of me again.

After an unusually rapid voyage, I found myself at the end of my pilgrimage. On a fine, still evening which I can never forget, Istood alone on the shore, with her likeness in my bosom, and saw the white walls of the house where I knew that she lived.

"I strolled round the outer limits of the grounds to compose myself before I went in. Venturing through a gate and a shrubbery, I looked into the garden, and saw a lady there, loitering alone on the lawn. She turned her face toward me--and Ibeheld the original of my portrait, the fulfillment of my dream!

It is useless, and worse than useless, to write of it now. Let me only say that every promise which the likeness had made to my fancy the living woman kept to my eyes in the moment when they first looked on her. Let me say this--and no more.

"I was too violently agitated to trust myself in her presence. Idrew back undiscovered, and, making my way to the front door of the house, asked for her father first. Mr. Blanchard had retired to his room, and could see nobody. Upon that I took courage, and asked for Miss Blanchard. The servant smiled. 'My young lady is not Miss Blanchard any longer, sir,' he said. 'She is married.'

Those words would have struck some men, in my position, to the earth. They fired my hot blood, and I seized the servant by the throat, in a frenzy of rage 'It's a lie!' I broke out, speaking to him as if he had been one of the slaves on my own estate.

'It's the truth,' said the man, struggling with me; 'her husband is in the house at this moment.' 'Who is he, you scoundrel?' The servant answered by repeating my own name, to my own face:

'_Allan Armadale._'

"You can now guess the truth. Fergus Ingleby was the outlawed son whose name and whose inheritance I had taken. And Fergus Ingleby was even with me for depriving him of his birthright.

"Some account of the manner in which the deception had been carried out is necessary to explain--I don't say to justify--the share I took in the events that followed my arrival at Madeira.

"By Ingleby's own confession, he had come to Barbadoes--knowing of his father's death and of my succession to the estates--with the settled purpose of plundering and injuring me. My rash confidence put such an opportunity into his hands as he could never have hoped for. He had waited to possess himself of the letter which my mother wrote to Mr. Blanchard at the outset of my illness--had then caused his own dismissal from his situation--and had sailed for Madeira in the very ship that was to have sailed with me. Arrived at the island, he had waited again till the vessel was away once more on her voyage, and had then presented himself at Mr. Blanchard's--not in the assumed name by which I shall continue to speak of him here, but in the name which was as certainly his as mine, 'Allan Armadale.' The fraud at the outset presented few difficulties. He had only an ailing old man (who had not seen my mother for half a lifetime)and an innocent, unsuspicious girl (who had never seen her at all) to deal with; and he had learned enough in my service to answer the few questions that were put to him as readily as Imight have answered them myself. His looks and manners, his winning ways with women, his quickness and cunning, did the rest.

While I was still on my sickbed, he had won Miss Blanchard's affections. While I was dreaming over the likeness in the first days of my convalescence, he had secured Mr. Blanchard's consent to the celebration of the marriage before he and his daughter left the island.