Armadale by Wilkie Collins Page A

for him, and my belief in him, by putting himself out of the question, and by generously encouraging me to persist in my new purpose. When we parted, I was in high health and spirits. Before we met again the next day, I was suddenly struck by an illness which threatened both my reason and my life.
    I have no proof against Ingleby. There was more than one woman on the island whom I had wronged beyond all forgiveness, 3 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 afterwards 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 I asked for Ingleby, he was gone. Proofs of his unpardonablemisconduct 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 I remembered 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, I stood 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 towards me – and I beheld the original of my portrait, the fulfilment 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. I drew 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 myposition, 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