Armadale (16 page)

Leaving all remonstrances for a fitter opportunity, the rector went back to Mrs Armadale. He could not disguise from himself that Allan's mother was the person really answerable for Allan's present indiscretion. If the lad had seen a little less of the small gentry in the neighbourhood, and a little more of the great outside world at home and abroad, the pleasure of cultivating Ozias Midwinter's society might have had fewer attractions for him.

Conscious of the unsatisfactory result of his visit to the inn, Mr Brock felt some anxiety about the reception of his report, when he found himself once more in Mrs Armadale's presence. His forebodings were soon realized. Try as he might to make the best of it, Mrs Armadale seized on the one suspicious fact of the usher's silence about himself, as justifying the strongest measures that could be taken to separate him from her son. If the rector refused to interfere, she declared her intention of writing to Ozias Midwinter with her own hand. Remonstrance irritated her to such a pitch, that she astounded Mr Brock by reverting to the forbidden subject of five years since, and referring him to the conversation which had passed between them when the advertisement had been discovered in the newspaper. She passionately declared that the vagabond Armadale of that advertisement, and the vagabond Midwinter at the village inn, might, for all she knew to the contrary, be one and the same. The rector vainly reiterated his conviction that the name was the very last in the world that any man (and a young man especially) would be likely to assume. Nothing quieted Mrs Armadale but absolute submission to her will. Dreading the consequences if he still resisted her in her feeble state of health, and foreboding a serious disagreement between the mother and son, if the mother interfered, Mr Brock undertook to see Midwinter again, and to tell him plainly that he must give a proper account of himself, or that his intimacy with Allan must cease. The two concessions which he exacted from Mrs Armadale in return, were, that she should wait patiently until the doctor reported
the man fit to travel, and that she should be careful in the interval not to mention the matter in any way to her son.

In a week's time, Midwinter was able to drive out (with Allan for his coachman), in the pony-chaise belonging to the inn; and in ten days, the doctor privately reported him as fit to travel. Towards the close of that tenth day, Mr Brock met Allan and his new friend enjoying the last gleams of wintry sunshine in one of the inland lanes. He waited until the two had separated, and then followed the usher on his way back to the inn.

The rector's resolution to speak pitilessly to the purpose was in some danger of failing him, as he drew nearer and nearer to the friendless man, and saw how feebly he still walked, how loosely his worn coat hung about him, and how heavily he leant on his cheap clumsy stick. Humanely reluctant to say the decisive words too precipitately, Mr Brock tried him first with a little compliment on the range of his reading, as shown by the volume of Sophocles and the volume of Goethe which had been found in his bag; and asked how long he had been acquainted with German and Greek. The quick ear of Midwinter detected something wrong in the tone of Mr Brock's voice. He turned in the darkening twilight and looked suddenly and suspiciously in the rector's face.

‘You have something to say to me,' he answered; ‘and it is not what you are saying now.'

There was no help for it, but to accept the challenge. Very delicately, with many preparatory words, to which the other listened in unbroken silence, Mr Brock came little by little nearer to the point. Long before he had really reached it – long before a man of no more than ordinary sensibility would have felt what was coming – Ozias Midwinter stood still in the lane, and told the rector that he need say no more.

‘I understand you, sir,' said the usher. ‘Mr Armadale has an ascertained position in the world; Mr Armadale has nothing to conceal, and nothing to be ashamed of. I agree with you that I am not a fit companion for him. The best return I can make for his kindness, is to presume on it no longer. You may depend on my leaving this place tomorrow morning.'

He spoke no word more; he would hear no word more. With a self-control which, at his years and with his temperament, was nothing less than marvellous, he civilly took off his hat, bowed, and returned to the inn by himself.

Mr Brock slept badly that night. The issue of the interview in the
lane had made the problem of Ozias Midwinter a harder problem to solve than ever.

Early the next morning a letter was brought to the rector from the inn, and the messenger announced that the strange gentleman had taken his departure. The letter enclosed an open note addressed to Allan, and requested Allan's tutor (after first reading it himself), to forward it or not at his own sole discretion. The note was a startlingly short one: it began and ended in a dozen words: ‘Don't blame Mr Brock; Mr Brock is right. Thank you, and good-by. – O. M.'

The rector forwarded the note to its proper destination, as a matter of course; and sent a few lines to Mrs Armadale at the same time, to quiet her anxiety by the news of the usher's departure. This done, he waited the visit from his pupil, which would probably follow the delivery of the note, in no very tranquil frame of mind. There might or might not be some deep motive at the bottom of Midwinter's conduct; but, thus far, it was impossible to deny that he had behaved in such a manner as to rebuke the rector's distrust, and to justify Allan's good opinion of him.

The morning wore on, and young Armadale never appeared. After looking for him vainly in the yard where the yacht was building, Mr Brock went to Mrs Armadale's house, and there heard news from the servant which turned his steps in the direction of the inn. The landlord at once acknowledged the truth – young Mr Armadale had come there with an open letter in his hand, and had insisted on being informed of the road which his friend had taken. For the first time in the landlord's experience of him, the young gentleman was out of temper; and the girl who waited on the customers had stupidly mentioned a circumstance which had added fuel to the fire. She had acknowledged having heard Mr Midwinter lock himself into his room overnight, and burst into a violent fit of crying. That trifling particular had set Mr Armadale's face all of a flame; he had shouted and sworn; he had rushed into the stables; had forced the ostler to saddle him a horse, and had set off at full gallop on the road that Ozias Midwinter had taken before him.

After cautioning the landlord to keep Allan's conduct a secret, if any of Mrs Armadale's servants came that morning to the inn, Mr Brock went home again, and waited anxiously to see what the day would bring forth.

To his infinite relief, his pupil appeared at the rectory late in the afternoon. Allan looked, and spoke, with a dogged determination which was quite new in his old friend's experience of him. Without waiting to be questioned, he told his story in his usual straightforward way. He had overtaken Midwinter on the road; and – after trying vainly, first to
induce him to return, then to find out where he was going to – had threatened to keep company with him for the rest of the day, and had so extorted the confession that he was going to try his luck in London. Having gained this point, Allan had asked next for his friend's address in London – had been entreated by the other not to press his request – had pressed it, nevertheless, with all his might, and had got the address at last, by making an appeal to Midwinter's gratitude, for which (feeling heartily ashamed of himself) he had afterwards asked Midwinter's pardon. ‘I like the poor fellow, and I won't give him up,' concluded Allan, bringing his clenched fist down with a thump on the rectory table. ‘Don't be afraid of my vexing my mother; I'll leave you to speak to her, Mr Brock, at your own time and in your own way; and I'll just say this much more by way of bringing the thing to an end. Here is the address safe in my pocket-book, and here am I, standing firm, for once, on a resolution of my own. I'll give you and my mother time to re-consider this; and, when the time is up, if my friend Midwinter doesn't come to
me
, I'll go to my friend Midwinter!'

So the matter rested for the present; and such was the result of turning the castaway usher adrift in the world again.

A month passed, and brought in the new year – '51. Overleaping that short lapse of time, Mr Brock paused, with a heavy heart, at the next event; to his mind the one mournful, the one memorable event of the series – Mrs Armadale's death.

The first warning of the affliction that was near at hand, had followed close on the usher's departure in December, and had arisen out of a circumstance which dwelt painfully on the rector's memory from that time forth.

But three days after Midwinter had left for London, Mr Brock was accosted in the village by a neatly dressed woman, wearing a gown and bonnet of black silk and a red Paisley shawl,
¹⁰
who was a total stranger to him, and who inquired the way to Mrs Armadale's house. She put the question without raising the thick black veil that hung over her face. Mr Brock, in giving her the necessary directions, observed that she was a remarkably elegant and graceful woman, and looked after her as she bowed and left him, wondering who Mrs Armadale's visitor could possibly be.

A quarter of an hour later, the lady, still veiled as before, passed Mr Brock again close to the inn. She entered the house, and spoke to the landlady. Seeing the landlord shortly afterwards hurrying round to the stables, Mr Brock asked him if the lady was going away. Yes; she had
come from the railway in the omnibus, but she was going back again more creditably in a carriage of her own hiring, supplied by the inn.

The rector proceeded on his walk, rather surprised to find his thoughts running inquisitively on a woman who was a stranger to him. When he got home again, he found the village surgeon waiting his return, with an urgent message from Allan's mother. About an hour since, the surgeon had been sent for in great haste to see Mrs Armadale. He had found her suffering from an alarming nervous attack, brought on (as the servants suspected) by an unexpected, and, possibly, an unwelcome visitor, who had called that morning. The surgeon had done all that was needful, and had no apprehension of any dangerous results. Finding his patient eagerly desirous, on recovering herself, to see Mr Brock immediately, he had thought it important to humour her, and had readily undertaken to call at the rectory with a message to that effect.

Looking at Mrs Armadale with a far deeper interest in her than the surgeon's interest, Mr Brock saw enough in her face, when it turned towards him on his entering the room, to justify instant and serious alarm. She allowed him no opportunity of soothing her; she heeded none of his inquiries. Answers to certain questions of her own were what she wanted, and what she was determined to have: Had Mr Brock seen the woman who had presumed to visit her that morning? Yes. Had Allan seen her? No: Allan had been at work since breakfast, and was at work still, in his yard by the waterside. This latter reply appeared to quiet Mrs Armadale for the moment: she put her next question – the most extraordinary question of the three – more composedly. Did the rector think Allan would object to leaving his vessel for the present, and to accompanying his mother on a journey to look out for a new house in some other part of England? In the greatest amazement, Mr Brock asked what reason there could possibly be for leaving her present residence? Mrs Armadale's reason, when she gave it, only added to his surprise. The woman's first visit might be followed by a second; and rather than see her again, rather than run the risk of Allan's seeing her and speaking to her, Mrs Armadale would leave England if necessary, and end her days in a foreign land. Taking counsel of his experience as a magistrate, Mr Brock inquired if the woman had come to ask for money. Yes: respectably as she was dressed, she had described herself as being ‘in distress' had asked for money, and had got it
¹¹
– but the money was of no importance; the one thing needful was to get away before the woman came again. More and more surprised, Mr Brock ventured on another question. Was it long since Mrs Armadale and her
visitor had last met? Yes; as long as all Allan's lifetime – as long as one-and-twenty years.

At that reply, the rector shifted his ground, and took counsel next of his experience as a friend.

‘Is this person,' he asked, ‘connected in any way with the painful remembrances of your early life?'

‘Yes, with the painful remembrance of the time when I was married,' said Mrs Armadale. ‘She was associated, as a mere child, with a circumstance which I must think of with shame and sorrow to my dying day.'

Mr Brock noticed the altered tone in which his old friend spoke, and the unwillingness with which she gave her answer.

‘Can you tell me more about her, without referring to yourself?' he went on. ‘I am sure I can protect you, if you will only help me a little. Her name, for instance – you can tell me her name?'

Mrs Armadale shook her head. ‘The name I knew her by,' she said, ‘would be of no use to you. She has been married since then – she told me so herself.'

‘And without telling you her married name?'

‘She refused to tell it.'

‘Do you know anything of her friends?'

‘Only of her friends, when she was a child. They called themselves her uncle and aunt. They were low people, and they deserted her at the school on my father's estate. We never heard any more of them.'

‘Did she remain under your father's care?'
¹²

‘She remained under my care – that is to say, she travelled with us. We were leaving England, just at that time, for Madeira. I had my father's leave to take her with me, and to train the wretch to be my maid—'

At those words Mrs Armadale stopped confusedly. Mr Brock tried gently to lead her on. It was useless; she started up in violent agitation, and walked excitedly backwards and forwards in the room.