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: "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 further
end of the room. The child looked up, toy in hand, as the
stranger came near, opened his bright brown eyes in momentary
astonishment, and then went on with his game.
"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; 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.
"You wish me to write something for you?" he resumed, after
waiting for a reply, and waiting in vain.
"Yes!" said the dying man, with the all-mastering impatience
which his tongue was powerless to express, glittering angrily
in his eye. "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 the quick creaking of casters on the
carpet behind him. Mrs. Armadale was moving the writing-table
across the room to the 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.
"May I ask, sir, before I take the pen in hand, what it is you
wish me to write?"
The angry eyes of the paralyzed 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.
"When I have written what you wish me to write," he asked, "what
is to be done with it?"
This time the answer came:
"Seal it up in my presence, and post it to my ex--"
His laboring articulation suddenly stopped and he looked
piteously in the questioner's face for the next word.
"Do you mean your executor?"
"Yes."
"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?"
"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
furthest 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.
"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 your wishes in relation to the writing and the posting of
the letter have been fulfilled."
"Do you give me your promise?"
"It you want my promise, sir, I will give it--subject to the
condition I have just named."
"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.