"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 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
I might 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.
"Thus far Mr. Blanchard's infirmity of sight had helped the
deception. He had been content to send messages to my mother, and
to receive the messages which were duly invented in return. But
when the suitor was accepted, and the wedding-day was appointed,
he felt it due to his old friend to write to her, asking her
formal consent and inviting her to the marriage. He could only
complete part of the letter himself; the rest was finished, under
his dictation, by Miss Blanchard. There was no chance of being
beforehand with the post-office this time; and Ingleby, sure of
his place in the heart of his victim, waylaid her as she came out
of her father's room with the letter, and privately told her the
truth. She was still under age, and the position was a serious
one. If the letter was posted, no resource would be left but to
wait and be parted forever, or to elope under circumstances which
made detection almost a certainty. The destination of any ship
which took them away would be known beforehand; and the
fast-sailing yacht in which Mr. Blanchard had come to Madeira was
waiting in the harbor to take him back to England. The only other
alternative was to continue the deception by suppressing the
letter, and to confess the truth when they were securely married.
What arts of persuasion Ingleby used--what base advantage he
might previously have taken of her love and her trust in him to
degrade Miss Blanchard to his own level--I cannot say. He did
degrade her. The letter never went to its destination; and, with
the daughter's privity and consent, the father's confidence was
abused to the very last.
"The one precaution now left to take was to fabricate the answer
from my mother which Mr. Blanchard expected, and which would
arrive in due course of post before the day appointed for
the marriage. Ingleby had my mother's stolen letter with him;
but he was without the imitative dexterity which would have
enabled him to make use of it for a forgery of her handwriting.
Miss Blanchard, who had consented passively to the deception,
refused to take any active share in the fraud practiced on her
father. In this difficulty, Ingleby found an instrument ready to
his hand in an orphan girl of barely twelve years old, a marvel
of precocious ability, whom Miss Blanchard had taken a romantic
fancy to befriend and whom she had brought away with her from
England to be trained as her maid. That girl's wicked dexterity
removed the one serious obstacle left to the success of
the fraud. I saw the imitation of my mother's writing which she
had produced under Ingleby's instructions and (if the shameful
truth must be told) with her young mistress's knowledge--and
I believe I should have been deceived by it myself. I saw
the girl afterward--and my blood curdled at the sight of her.
If she is alive now, woe to the people who trust her! No creature
more innately deceitful and more innately pitiless ever walked
this earth.
"The forged letter paved the way securely for the marriage;
and when I reached the house, they were (as the servant had
truly told me) man and wife. My arrival on the scene simply
precipitated the confession which they had both agreed to make.
Ingleby's own lips shamelessly acknowledged the truth. He had
nothing to lose by speaking out--he was married, and his wife's
fortune was beyond her father's control. I pass over all that
followed--my interview with the daughter, and my interview with
the father--to come to results. For two days the efforts of the
wife, and the efforts of the clergyman who had celebrated the
marriage, were successful in keeping Ingleby and myself apart. On
the third day I set my trap more successfully, and I and the man
who had mortally injured me met together alone, face to face.
"Remember how my confidence had been abused; remember how the one
good purpose of my life had been thwarted; remember the violent
passions rooted deep in my nature, and never yet controlled--and
then imagine for yourself what passed between us. All I need tell
here is the end. He was a taller and a stronger man than I, and
he took his brute's advantage with a brute's ferocity. He struck
me.
"Think of the injuries I had received at that man's hands, and
then think of his setting his mark on my face by a blow!
"I went to an English officer who had been my fellow-passenger
on the voyage from Barbadoes. I told him the truth, and he agreed
with me that a meeting was inevitable. Dueling had its received
formalities and its established laws in those days; and he began
to speak of them. I stopped him. 'I will take a pistol in my
right hand,' I said, 'and he shall take a pistol in his: I will
take one end of a handkerchief in my left hand, and he shall take
the other end in his; and across that handkerchief the duel shall
be fought.' The officer got up, and looked at me as if I had
personally insulted him. 'You are asking me to be present at a
murder and a suicide,' he said; 'I decline to serve you.' He left
the room. As soon as he was gone I wrote down the words I had
said to the officer and sent them by a messenger to Ingleby.
While I was waiting for an answer, I sat down before the glass,
and looked at his mark on my face. 'Many a man has had blood on
his hands and blood on his conscience,' I thought, 'for less than
this.'
"The messenger came back with Ingleby's answer. It appointed a
meeting for three o'clock the next day, at a lonely place in the
interior of the island. I had resolved what to do if he refused;
his letter released me from the horror of my own resolution.
I felt grateful to him--yes, absolutely grateful to him--for
writing it.
"The next day I went to the place. He was not there. I waited two
hours, and he never came. At last the truth dawned on me. 'Once
a coward, always a coward,' I thought. I went back to Mr.
Blanchard's house. Before I got there, a sudden misgiving seized
me, and I turned aside to the harbor. I was right; the harbor was
the place to go to. A ship sailing for Lisbon that afternoon had
offered him the opportunity of taking a passage for himself and
his wife, and escaping me. His answer to my challenge had served
its purpose of sending me out of the way into the interior of
the island. Once more I had trusted in Fergus Ingleby, and once
more those sharp wits of his had been too much for me.
"I asked my informant if Mr. Blanchard was aware as yet of
his daughter's departure. He had discovered it, but not until
the ship had sailed. This time I took a lesson in cunning from
Ingleby. Instead of showing myself at Mr. Blanchard's house,
I went first and looked at Mr. Blanchard's yacht.