It may be a question of weeks or a question of months, they can say no more. She is greatly altered--quiet and gentle, and anxiously affectionate with her husband and her child. But in her case this happy change is, it seems, a sign of approaching dissolution, from the medical point of view. There is a difficulty in making the poor old, major understand this. He only sees that she has gone back to the likeness of her better self when he first married her; and he sits for hours by her bedside now, and tells her about his wonderful clock.
"Mr. Midwinter, of whom you will next expect me to say something, is improving rapidly. After causing some anxiety at first to the medical men (who declared that he was suffering from a serious nervous shock, produced by circumstances about which their patient's obstinate silence kept them quite in the dark), he has rallied, as only men of his sensitive temperament (to quote the doctors again) can rally. He and Mr. Armadale are together in a quiet lodging. I saw him last week when I was in London. His face showed signs of wear and tear, very sad to see in so young a man.
But he spoke of himself and his future with a courage and hopefulness which men of twice his years (if he has suffered as Isuspect him to have suffered) might have envied. If I know anything of humanity, this is no common man; and we shall hear of him yet in no common way.
"You will wonder how I came to be in London. I went up, with a return ticket (from Saturday to Monday), about that matter in dispute at our agent's. We had a tough fight; but, curiously enough, a point occurred to me just as I got up to go; and I went back to my chair, and settled the question in no time. Of course I stayed at Our Hotel in Covent Garden. William, the waiter, asked after you with the affection of a father; and Matilda, the chamber-maid, said you almost persuaded her that last time to have the hollow tooth taken out of her lower jaw. I had the agent's second son (the young chap you nicknamed Mustapha, when he made that dreadful mess about the Turkish Securities) to dine with me on Sunday. A little incident happened in the evening which may be worth recording, as it connected itself with a certain old lady who was not 'at home' when you and Mr. Armadale blundered on that house in Pimlico in the bygone time.
"Mustapha was like all the rest of you young men of the present day--he go t restless after dinner. 'Let's go to a public amusement, Mr. Pedgift,' says he. 'Public amusement? Why, it's Sunday evening!' says I. 'All right, sir,' says Mustapha. 'They stop acting on the stage, I grant you, on Sunday evening--but they don't stop acting in the pulpit. Come and see the last new Sunday performer of our time.' As he wouldn't have any more wine, there was nothing else for it but to go.
"We went to a street at the West End, and found it blocked up with carriages. If it hadn't been Sunday night, I should have thought we were going to the opera. 'What did I tell you?' says Mustapha, taking me up to an open door with a gas star outside and a bill of the performance. I had just time to notice that Iwas going to one of a series of 'Sunday Evening Discourses on the Pomps and Vanities of the World, by A Sinner Who Has Served Them,' when Mustapha jogged my elbow, and whispered, 'Half a crown is the fashionable tip.' I found myself between two demure and silent gentlemen, with plates in their hands, uncommonly well filled already with the fashionable tip. Mustapha patronized one plate, and I the other. We passed through two doors into a long room, crammed with people. And there, on a platform at the further end, holding forth to the audience, was--not a man, as Ihad expected-- but a Woman, and that woman, MOTHER OLDERSHAW! You never listened to anything more eloquent in your life. As long as I heard her she was never once at a loss for a word anywhere. Ishall think less of oratory as a human accomplishment, for the rest of my days, after that Sunday evening. As for the matter of the sermon, I may describe it as a narrative of Mrs. Oldershaw's experience among dilapidated women, profusely illustrated in the pious and penitential style. You will ask what sort of audience it was. Principally Women, Augustus--and, as I hope to be saved, all the old harridans of the world of fashion whom Mother Oldershaw had enameled in her time, sitting boldly in the front places, with their cheeks ruddled with paint, in a state of devout enjoyment wonderful to see! I left Mustapha to hear the end of it. And I thought to myself, as I went out, of what Shakespeare says somewhere, 'Lord, what fools we mortals be!'
"Have I anything more to tell you before I leave off? Only one thing that I can remember.
"That wretched old Bashwood has confirmed the fears I told you Ihad about him when he was brought back here from London. There is no kind of doubt that he has really lost all the little reason he ever had. He is perfectly harmless, and perfectly happy. And he would do very well if we could only prevent him from going out in his last new suit of clothes, smirking and smiling and inviting everybody to his approaching marriage with the handsomest woman in England. It ends of course in the boys pelting him, and in his coming here crying to me, covered with mud. The moment his clothes are cleaned again he falls back into his favorite delusion, and struts about before the church gates, in the character of a bridegroom, waiting for Miss Gwilt. We must get the poor wretch taken care of somewhere for the rest of the little time he has to live. Who would ever have thought of a man at his age falling in love? And who would ever have believed that the mischief that woman's beauty has done could have reached as far in the downward direction as our superannuated old clerk?
"Good-by, for the present, my dear boy. If you see a particularly handsome snuff-box in Paris, remember--though your father scorns Testimonials--he doesn't object to receive a present from his son.
"Yours affectionately, A. PEDGIFT, Sen.
"POSTSCRIPT.--I think it likely that the account you mention in the French papers, of a fatal quarrel among some foreign sailors in one of the Lipari Islands, and of the death of their captain, among others, may really have been a quarrel among the scoundrels who robbed Mr. Armadale and scuttled his yacht. _Those_ fellows, luckily for society, can't always keep up appearances; and, in their case, Rogues and Retribution do occasionally come into collision with each other."