The morning hours had passed; the noon had come and gone; and Mr. Brock had started on the first stage of his journey home.
After parting from the rector in Douglas Harbor, the two young
men had returned to Castletown, and had there separated at the
hotel door, Allan walking down to the waterside to look after his
yacht, and Midwinter entering the house to get the rest that he
needed after a sleepless night.
He darkened his room; he closed his eyes, but no sleep came to
him. On this first day of the rector's absence, his sensitive
nature extravagantly exaggerated the responsibility which he now
held in trust for Mr. Brock. A nervous dread of leaving Allan by
himself, even for a few hours only, kept him waking and doubting, until it became a relief rather than a hardship to rise from the bed again, and, following in Allan's footsteps, to take the way to the waterside which led to the yacht.
The repairs of the little vessel were nearly completed. It was a
breezy, cheerful day; the land was bright, the water was blue, the quick waves leaped crisply in the sunshine, the men were singing at their work. Descending to the cabin, Midwinter discovered his friend busily occupied in attempting to set the place to rights. Habitually the least systematic of mortals, Allan now and then awoke to an overwhelming sense of the advantages of order, and on such occasions a perfect frenzy of tidiness possessed him. He was down on his knees, hotly and wildly at work, when Midwinter looked in on him; and was fast reducing the neat little world of the cabin to its original elements of chaos, with a misdirected energy wonderful to see.
"Here's a mess!" said Allan, rising composedly on the horizon of
his own accumulated litter. "Do you know, my dear fellow, I begin
to wish I had let well alone!"
Midwinter smiled, and came to his friend's assistance with the
natural neat-handedness of a sailor.
The first object that he encountered was Allan's dressing-case, turned upside down, with half the contents scattered on the floor, and with a duster and a hearth-broom lying among them. Replacing the various objects which formed the furniture of the dressing-case one by one, Midwinter lighted unexpectedly on a miniature portrait, of the old-fashioned oval form, primly framed in a setting of small diamonds.
"You don't seem to set much value on this," he said. "What is
it?"
Allan bent over him, and looked at the miniature. "It belonged to
my mother," he answered; "and I set the greatest value on it. It
is a portrait of my father."
Midwinter put the miniature abruptly, into Allan's hands, and
withdrew to the opposite side of the cabin.
"You know best where the things ought to be put in your own
dressing-case," he said, keeping his back turned on Allan. "I'll
make the place tidy on this side of the cabin, and you shall
make the place tidy on the other."
He began setting in order the litter scattered about him on the
cabin table and on the floor. But it seemed as if fate had
decided that his friend's personal possessions should fall into
his hands that morning, employ them where he might. One among the
first objects which he took up was Allan's tobacco jar, with the
stopper missing, and with a letter (which appeared by the bulk of
it to contain inclosures) crumpled into the mouth of the jar in
the stopper's place.
"Did you know that you had put this here?" he asked. "Is the
letter of any importance?"
Allan recognized it instantly. It was the first of the little
series of letters which had followed the cruising party to the
Isle of Man—the letter which young Armadale had briefly referred
to as bringing him "more worries from those everlasting lawyers," and had then dismissed from further notice as recklessly as usual.
"This is what comes of being particularly careful," said Allan; "here is an instance of my extreme thoughtfulness. You may not think it but I put the letter there on purpose. Every time I went to the jar, you know, I was sure to see the letter; and every time I saw the letter, I was sure to say to myself, 'This must be answered.' There's nothing to laugh at; it was a perfectly sensible arrangement, if I could only have remembered where I put the jar. Suppose I tie a knot in my pocket-handkerchief this time? You have a wonderful memory, my dear fellow. Perhaps you'll remind me in the course of the day, in case I forget the knot next."