Archibald Malmaison: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Miss Kate Battledown's screams, as she ran down the corridor, must speedily
have summoned the household; and then the dreadful news was told, not
losing anything of its horror, we may be sure, in the recital; and then
appeared poor Archie in confirmation. The greatest confusion and
bewilderment prevailed. No one comprehended anything. It was not known
what had happened. What was this story about Archie's having suddenly
appeared, where before there had been only empty air--just as his great
grandfather, Sir Charles, had done before him? Kate, to whom we may pardon
a little incorrectness or exaggeration under the circumstances, solemnly
asseverated that she had been looking straight at the centre of the room,
and that nobody was there; and that all at once "Archie grew together out
of nothing!" Such is the version of her words given by Lady Malmaison in a
letter to her sister, Miss Tremount, of Cornwall, soon after the
occurrence. Miss Tremount, it may be remembered, had intimated years ago
her intention of making Archibald her heir; and Lady Malmaison's letter is
an amusing and rather ingenious attempt to convey the information about
poor Archie, in such a way as not to frighten off this inheritance. Doctor
Rollinson, she wrote, had seen dear Archie, and had said that what had
happened was only what might have been expected; and that the dear child's
health would certainly not suffer, but, on the contrary, be strengthened,
and his life prolonged. For that there could be no doubt that poor Archie
had been laboring under an almost unnatural excitement, or tension of the
nerves, during the last few years, which had caused Lady Malmaison the
greatest anxiety; and she was truly thankful, for her part, that things
had come out no worse than they had. She could feel secure, now, that her
darling Archie would live to be a quiet, good, sensible English gentleman,
fitted to discharge efficiently, and conscientiously, an English
gentleman's duties, whether it were to manage an estate, or--or in fact
whatever it might be. And then came the little story about the mysterious
apparition of Archie out of vacancy, which Lady Malmaison treated
humorously; though in her own heart she was very much scared at it, and
was moreover privately convinced that Archie was, and would remain, very
little better than an idiot all his life long. Now, it is well known that
English country gentlemen are never idiotic.

What was the elder Dr. Rollinson's real opinion about Archie's relapse? The
only direct evidence worth having on this point--his own--is unfortunately
not forthcoming, and we are obliged to depend on such inaccurate or
interested hearsay as has just been quoted above. It seems likely that he
came to the conclusion that stupidity was the boy's normal condition and
that his seven years of brilliance had been something essentially abnormal
and temporary, and important only from a pathological point of view.
Indeed, there was nothing in the transmuted Archibald's condition that was
susceptible of being treated as a disease. He was as healthy as the
average of boys of fourteen (if he were a boy of fourteen, and not a child
of seven). He knew nothing, and had retained nothing, of his other life;
he had to be taught his letters--and a terrible job that was, by all
accounts; he occasionally expressed a desire to see his nurse Maggie--who,
the charitable reader will rejoice to hear, had been honestly married
since we last heard of her. He was greatly puzzled to find himself so much
taller than when he last knew himself; and it was a long time before he
could be induced to recognize his own reflection in the looking-glass.
Needless to say that everything connected with the secret chamber and the
silver rod was completely erased from his mind; and though he had been
found with the rod in his hand, he could not tell what it was or where he
got it.

In this connection, however, I will mention something which, if it be true,
throws a new and strange light upon his psychological condition. There is
reason to believe that he visited the secret chamber in a somnambulistic
state. The evidence on which this supposition is founded appears, at this
distance of time, rather imperfect; but it is certain that a few weeks
after the boy's entrance upon his unintelligent state, the silver rod was
lost sight of; and it is almost certain that during the time of its
disappearance it was lying in its hidden receptacle under the floor beside
the mantelpiece. But in that case, who but Archibald could have put it
there? and when could he have put it there save in his sleep? It is known
that he was a somnambulist during his unenlightened period, though never
in his alternate state; and if he, as a somnambulist, remembered the
hiding-place of the rod, it follows that he must also have remembered the
rod's use, and visited the secret chamber. Thus it would seem that only in
the boy's waking hours was he oblivious and stupid; in his dreams he
truly lived and was awake! Here, then, is a complication of absorbing
interest, which I will leave for physicians and metaphysicians to fight
out between themselves. For my part, I can only look on in respectful
bewilderment.

But we must leave Archibald for the present, and occupy our minds with the
proceedings of the other personages of this drama. An era of disaster was
in store for most of them. It is curious to note how the proverb that
misfortunes never come single was illustrated in the case of these people.
Fate seems to have launched its thunderbolts at them all at once, as if
making up for lost time; or like a playwright, who clears his stage of all
secondary and superfluous characters, and leaves a free field wherein the
two or three principal people may meet and work out their destiny
unimpeded.

Colonel Battledown fought under Wellington against Soult at Orthez; and in
a charge of the French cavalry the gallant officer and genial gentleman
was cut in the head by a sabre-stroke and ridden down; and when picked up
after the battle he was dead. He was buried on the spot; the practice of
sending the corpses of heroes and others careering over the face of the
earth, in search of a spot of loam worthy to receive them, was not at that
time so fashionable as it has since become. But the news of his death came
home, and put his friends in mourning, and made Mistress Kate the heiress
of a great property at the age of fourteen. But she was older than her
years, and was generally considered to be "just the sort of person to be
an heiress," whatever that may be. I suppose she was exceedingly handsome,
with a proper sense of her importance, and a capacity of keeping an eye
upon what she considered her interests. At the same time many actions of
hers indicate that she was occasionally liable to ungovernable impulses,
and that her temper was fitful and wayward. Such a woman would make a
capital heroine for a modern novel; she would stand a lot of analyzing.

The tender relations which had subsisted between her and Archibald were
perforce broken off. What can you do with a lover who suddenly ceases to
have the most distant recollection of you, who does not believe you when
you tell him your name, and whose only associations with that name date
seven years back and are disagreeable? Nobody can blame Kate for giving
Archibald up; she would have been more than human if she could have
intrusted her heart to the keeping of a half-witted wizard, whose
mysterious likeness to, or connection with, a charming young gentleman
rendered him only the more undesirable. Poor Kate! If she gave her heart
to Archibald, and then Archibald became somebody else, what shall we say
became of her heart? Must it not have been irretrievably lost, and shall
we be surprised if we hereafter detect in her a tendency to heartlessness?

The next one to drop was Sir Clarence Butt Malmaison. The jolly baronet was
never the same man after the relapse of his second son, whom he had grown
to love more than his first-born, and to whose future he had looked
forward with much ambitious anticipation. He used to sit for hours at a
time sadly watching the child's sluggish gambols about the nursery floor;
ever and anon trying to arouse in his darkened mind some sparks of the
former brightness, and, when the effort failed, sighing heavily, sometimes
with tears trickling down his ruddy old cheeks. If Archibald had never
passed through that period of deceptive promise, it is probable that he
would have received a fair amount of affection as he was, and he would at
all events not have committed the unpardonable offence of inspiring hopes
which were not destined to be fulfilled. Sir Clarence felt like the man in
the fairy tale who received from the fairy a purse of gold, but on opening
the purse to handle the money, found nothing in his grasp but a bunch of
yellow autumn leaves. The heroic end of his friend the Colonel served to
augment the baronet's depression of spirits; nor was his gloom lightened
by the reflection that Kate's inheritance of the estate would now in no
way advantage Archibald. So, what with one thing and another, it must be
confessed that Sir Clarence ended by taking too much wine after dinner.
And the more wine he drank, the less inclination did he feel to keep up
his hardy outdoor habits of riding and shooting; and, consequently, the
more moody and plethoric he became. At length he nearly quarrelled with
Dr. Rollinson because the latter told him plainly that the bottle would be
his coffin; and a few days later he did quarrel, and very violently too,
with the Honorable Richard Pennroyal. This gentleman, it seems, had ridden
over to Malmaison and stayed to dinner; and at dessert the conversation
got round to the present melancholy condition of local affairs.

"Everything's going to the dogs!" cried poor Sir Clarence, with an oath;
"and no gentleman, by ---, ought to condescend to exist!"

"Come, Malmaison," said Pennroyal, smiling and cracking filberts, "you're
going too far. Things are not so bad. And there are compensations!"

"Compensations? What compensations? What the devil do you mean?"

"Ha, ha! Well, for instance, about the poor Colonel. Of course, we're all
dooced sorry to lose the Colonel; fine old chap, and a good hand at
piquet. But after all he had to go some time; and then what happens? The
fair Miss Battledown becomes the richest heiress in the three counties."

"Ay, and what's the compensation in that? What good does her being an
heiress do me? Can my boy marry her? Answer me that!"

"Well, I should fancy not; but somebody else can."

"Somebody else? Who, I'd like to know?" bawled Sir Clarence. "Let me see
the scoundrel who'll dare to marry Kate Battledown--let me see him!"

"I hear you quite plainly, Malmaison; and I wouldn't exert myself so much
if I were you--you know what the doctor said. As for Miss Battledown,
surely she has a right to marry whom she pleases, hasn't she?"

"No, she has not!" returned the baronet, getting angrier than ever. "She
belongs to my Archibald; and if any scoundrel--"

"Really, you are intolerable, Sir Clarence," interrupted Pennroyal, still
smiling, but not a pleasant smile. "A man whose temper is faulty at the
best of times should be more careful to avoid whatever tends to make it
worse;" and as Pennroyal said this he glanced significantly at the
decanter--of which, to do him justice, he was very sparing himself.

"Pennroyal!" said the old baronet, drawing himself up with a good deal of
dignity, "your father and I were friends before you were born, and you're
my brother-in-law; but if you were not sitting at my table, I'd teach you
better manners than to lecture your elders. I said I should like to see
the scoundrel who would dare to marry Kate Battledown--and--and what is
that to you?"

"Well, it's just this," returned Pennroyal, quietly; "I'm going to marry
her myself!"

Sir Clarence started up from his chair with a tremendous oath--and sat down
again. He was putting a terrible restraint upon himself. Not for his life
would he outrage the guest who was beneath his roof. His face became dark
red, and the veins on his forehead and in his neck stood out and throbbed
visibly. His eyes were fixed staringly upon the impassable visage of the
Honorable Richard, and he drew his breath with difficulty. There was a
pause of some duration, broken only by this stertorous breathing, and by
the deliberate cracking of the guest's filberts. At last, with a tragic
effort of courtesy that was almost grotesque, the poor gentleman pushed
the decanter toward his brother-in-law and deadly enemy, accompanying the
act by a rattling sound in the throat, probably intended as an invitation
to help himself. But the struggle was too severe. The next moment the
baronet's eyes rolled wildly, a gasping noise broke from him, and he fell
forward with his head on the table.

Mr. Pennroyal promptly arose and rang the bell. "Send for the doctor at
once," he said to the servant who appeared. "Sir Clarence has overdrunk
himself, or overeaten himself, I fancy. And help me to put him on the sofa
and loosen his neckcloth. There--very distressing. Apply the usual
remedies, while I step up-stairs and speak to Lady Malmaison."

The usual remedies availed little, and when Dr. Rollinson arrived, four
hours afterward, it was already evident that even he could be of no use.
Sir Clarence never fully regained consciousness, and two days later he
ceased to breathe. There was an inquest, resulting in a verdict of death
by apoplexy, and followed by a handsome funeral. The widow of the
deceased, who was a lady of easily-stirred emotions and limited intellect,
wept at short intervals during several weeks thereafter, and assured the
Honorable Richard that she had no one in the world to depend on besides
him. Archibald, who had moved about the house during this season of
mourning with handsome vacant face and aimless steps, betrayed little
grief at the family loss or comprehension of it; but whenever Pennroyal
was in the way, he followed him round with a dog-like fondness in strange
contrast with the vivid antipathy which he had manifested toward him in
his other phase of being. As for Archibald's brother, now a pale and
slender but dignified youth of nineteen, he assumed the title of Sir
Edward, and the headship of the house, with a grave propriety of bearing
that surprised those who had only looked upon him as a moping scholar.
Undemonstratively, but surely, he gave evidence that he understood the
responsibilities of his position, and that he knew how to make himself
respected. He did not encourage his mother in her unrestrained dependence
upon Pennroyal; and between the latter and him there appears to have
arisen a coolness more or less marked. Certainly, Pennroyal was far from
loving the ceremonious and punctilious young baronet, who would neither
drink nor play cards. Toward Archibald, on the other hand, he exhibited a
cynical and contemptuous sort of good-humor; often amusing himself by
asking the poor dull-witted youth all sorts of questions about events
which had occurred in his enlightened period, and concerning which, of
course, Archibald was unfathomably ignorant. The Honorable Richard
Pennroyal was not the first man who has failed to see whence his greatest
danger was to be expected.

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