Armadale (43 page)

‘Good heavens! What has come to you!' he exclaimed, shrinking back from the tortured face before him, as he stopped and looked close at it for the first time.

For the moment, Midwinter was incapable of answering. The hysterical paroxysm was passing from one extreme to the other. He leaned against a tree, sobbing and gasping for breath, and stretched out his hand in mute entreaty to Allan to give him time.

‘You had better not have nursed me through my fever,' he said
faintly, as soon as he could speak. ‘I'm mad and miserable, Allan – I have never recovered it. Go back, and ask them to forgive me; I am ashamed to go and ask them myself. I can't tell how it happened – I can only ask your pardon and theirs.' He turned aside his head quickly so as to conceal his face. ‘Don't stop here,' he said; ‘don't look at me – I shall soon get over it.' Allan still hesitated, and begged hard to be allowed to take him back to the house. It was useless. ‘You break my heart with your kindness,' he burst out passionately. ‘For God's sake leave me by myself!'

Allan went back to the cottage, and pleaded there for indulgence to Midwinter, with an earnestness and simplicity which raised him immensely in the major's estimation, but which totally failed to produce the same favourable impression on Miss Milroy. Little as she herself suspected it, she was fond enough of Allan already to be jealous of Allan's friend.

‘How excessively absurd!' she thought, pettishly. ‘As if either papa or I considered such a person of the slightest consequence!'

‘You will kindly suspend your opinion, won't you, Major Milroy?' said Allan, in his hearty way, at parting.

‘With the greatest pleasure!' replied the major, cordially shaking hands.

‘And you, too, Miss Milroy?' added Allan.

Miss Milroy made a mercilessly formal bow. ‘
My
opinion, Mr Armadale, is not of the slightest consequence.'

Allan left the cottage, sorely puzzled to account for Miss Milroy's sudden coolness towards him. His grand idea of conciliating the whole neighbourhood by becoming a married man, underwent some modification as he closed the garden-gate behind him. The virtue called Prudence and the Squire of Thorpe-Ambrose became personally acquainted with each other, on this occasion, for the first time; and Allan, entering headlong as usual on the high-road to moral improvement, actually decided on doing nothing in a hurry!

A man who is entering on a course of reformation ought, if virtue is its own reward, to be a man engaged in an essentially inspiriting pursuit. But virtue is not always its own reward; and the way that leads to reformation is remarkably ill-lighted for so respectable a thoroughfare. Allan seemed to have caught the infection of his friend's despondency. As he walked home, he, too, began to doubt – in his widely-different way, and for his widely-different reasons – whether the life at Thorpe-Ambrose was promising quite as fairly for the future as it had promised at first.

Two messages were waiting for Allan when he returned to the house. One had been left by Midwinter. ‘He had gone out for a long walk, and Mr Armadale was not to be alarmed if he did not get back till late in the day.' The other message had been left by ‘a person from Mr Pedgift's office', who had called, according to appointment, while the two gentlemen were away at the major's. ‘Mr Bashwood's respects, and he would have the honour of waiting on Mr Armadale again, in the course of the evening.'

Towards five o'clock, Midwinter returned, pale and silent. Allan hastened to assure him that his peace was made at the cottage; and then, to change the subject, mentioned Mr Bashwood's message. Midwinter's mind was so pre-occupied or so languid, that he hardly seemed to remember the name. Allan was obliged to remind him that Bashwood was the elderly clerk, whom Mr Pedgift had sent to be his instructor in the duties of the steward's office. He listened without making any remark, and withdrew to his room, to rest till dinner-time.

Left by himself, Allan went into the library, to try if he could while away the time over a book. He took many volumes off the shelves, and put a few of them back again – and there he ended. Miss Milroy contrived in some mysterious manner to get, in this case, between the reader and the books. Her formal bow, and her merciless parting speech, dwelt, try how he might to forget them, on Allan's mind; he began to grow more and more anxious as the idle hour wore on, to recover his lost place in her favour. To call again that day at the cottage, and ask if he had been so unfortunate as to offend her, was impossible. To put the question in writing with the needful nicety of expression, proved, on trying the experiment, to be a task beyond his literary reach. After a turn or two up and down the room, with his pen in his mouth, he decided on the more diplomatic course (which happened, in this case, to be the easiest course too), of writing to Miss Milroy as cordially as if nothing had happened, and of testing his position in her good graces by the answer that she sent him back. An invitation of some kind (including her father, of course, but addressed directly to herself) was plainly the right thing to oblige her to send a written reply – but here the difficulty occurred of what the invitation
was to be. A ball was not to be thought of, in his present position with the resident gentry. A dinner-party, with no indispensable elderly lady on the premises to receive Miss Milroy – except Mrs Gripper, who could only receive her in the kitchen – was equally out of the question. What was the invitation to be? Never backward, when he wanted help, in asking for it right and left in every available direction, Allan, feeling himself at the end of his own resources, coolly rang the bell, and astonished the servant who answered it, by inquiring how the late family at Thorpe-Ambrose used to amuse themselves, and what sort of invitations they were in the habit of sending to their friends.

‘The family did what the rest of the gentry did, sir,' said the man, staring at his master in utter bewilderment. ‘They gave dinner-parties and balls. And, in fine summer weather, sir, like this, they sometimes had lawn-parties and picnics—'

‘That'll do!' shouted Allan. ‘A picnic's just the thing to please her. Richard, you're an invaluable man – you may go downstairs again.'

Richard retired wondering, and Richard's master seized his ready pen.

D
EAR
M
ISS
M
ILROY
, – Since I left you, it has suddenly struck me that we might have a picnic. A little change and amusement (what I should call a good shaking-up, if I wasn't writing to a young lady) is just the thing for you, after being so long indoors lately in Mrs Milroy's room. A picnic is a change, and (when the wine is good) amusement too. Will you ask the major if he will consent to the picnic, and come? And if you have got any friends in the neighbourhood who like a picnic, pray ask them too – for I have got none. It shall be your picnic, but I will provide everything and take everybody. You shall choose the day, and we will picnic where you like. I have set my heart on this picnic.

Believe me, ever yours,
A
LLAN
A
RMADALE
.

On reading over his composition, before sealing it up, Allan frankly acknowledged to himself, this time, that it was not quite faultless. ‘“Picnic” comes in a little too often,' he said. ‘Never mind – if she likes the idea, she won't quarrel with that.' He sent off the letter on the spot, with strict instructions to the messenger to wait for a reply.

In half-an-hour the answer came back on scented paper, without an erasure anywhere, fragrant to smell and beautiful to see.

The presentation of the naked truth is one of those exhibitions from which the native delicacy of the female mind seems instinctively to revolt. Never were the tables turned more completely than they were now turned on Allan by his fair correspondent. Machiavelli himself would never have suspected, from Miss Milroy's letter, how heartily she had repented her petulance to the young squire as soon as his back was turned, and how extravagantly delighted she was when his invitation was placed in her hands. Her letter was the composition of a model young lady whose emotions are all kept under parental lock and key, and served out for her judiciously as occasion may require. ‘Papa' appeared quite as frequently in Miss Milroy's reply as ‘picnic' had appeared in Allan's invitation. ‘Papa' had been as considerately kind as Mr Armadale, in wishing to procure her a little change and amusement, and had offered to forego his usual quiet habits, and join the picnic. With ‘papa's' sanction, therefore, she accepted, with much pleasure, Mr Armadale's proposal; and, at ‘papa's' suggestion, she would presume on Mr Armadale's kindness, to add two friends of theirs, recently settled at Thorpe-Ambrose, to the picnic party – a widow lady and her son; the latter in holy orders, and in delicate health. If Tuesday next would suit Mr Armadale, Tuesday next would suit ‘papa' – being the first day he could spare from repairs which were required by his clock. The rest, by ‘papa's' advice, she would beg to leave entirely in Mr Armadale's hands; and, in the meantime, she would remain, with ‘papa's' compliments, Mr Armadale's truly – ‘E
LEANOR
M
ILROY
.' Who would ever have supposed that the writer of that letter had jumped for joy when Allan's invitation arrived? Who would ever have suspected that there was an entry already in Miss Milroy's diary, under that day's date, to this effect: ‘The sweetest, dearest letter from
I-know-who
; I'll never behave unkindly to him again as long as I live'? As for Allan, he was charmed with the success of his manoeuvre. Miss Milroy had accepted his invitation – consequently, Miss Milroy was not offended with him. It was on the tip of his tongue to mention the correspondence to his friend when they met at dinner. But there was something in Midwinter's face and manner (even plain enough for Allan to see) which warned him to wait a little before he said anything to revive the painful subject of their visit to the cottage. By common consent they both avoided all topics connected with Thorpe-Ambrose – not even the visit from Mr Bashwood, which was to come with the evening, being referred to by either of them. All through the dinner they drifted farther and farther back into the old endless talk of past times about ships and sailing. When the butler
withdrew from his attendance at table, he came downstairs with a nautical problem on his mind, and asked his fellow-servants if they any of them knew the relative merits ‘on a wind', and ‘off a wind', of a schooner and a brig.

The two young men had sat longer at table than usual that day. When they went out into the garden, with their cigars, the summer twilight fell grey and dim on lawn and flower-bed, and narrowed round them by slow degrees the softly-fading circle of the distant view. The dew was heavy; and, after a few minutes in the garden, they agreed to go back to the drier ground on the drive in front of the house.

They were close to the turning which led into the shrubbery, when there suddenly glided out on them, from behind the foliage, a softly-stepping black figure – a shadow, moving darkly through the dim evening light. Midwinter started back at the sight of it, and even the less finely-strung nerves of his friend were shaken for the moment.

‘Who the devil are you!' cried Allan.

The figure bared its head in the grey light, and came slowly a step nearer. Midwinter advanced a step on his side, and looked closer. It was the man of the timid manners and the mourning garments, of whom he had asked the way to Thorpe-Ambrose where the three roads met.

‘Who are you?' repeated Allan.

‘I humbly beg your pardon, sir,' faltered the stranger, stepping back again confusedly. ‘The servants told me I should find Mr Armadale—'

‘What, are you Mr Bashwood?'

‘Yes, if you please, sir.'

‘I beg your pardon for speaking to you so roughly,' said Allan, ‘but the fact is, you rather startled me. My name is Armadale (put on your hat, pray), and this is my friend, Mr Midwinter, who wants your help in the steward's office.'

‘We hardly stand in need of an introduction,' said Midwinter. ‘I met Mr Bashwood out walking a few days since, and he was kind enough to direct me when I had lost my way.'

‘Put on your hat,' reiterated Allan, as Mr Bashwood, still bareheaded, stood bowing speechlessly, now to one of the young men, and now to the other. ‘My good sir, put on your hat, and let me show you the way back to the house. Excuse me for noticing it,' added Allan, as the man, in sheer nervous helplessness, let his hat fall, instead of putting
it back on his head; ‘but you seem a little out of sorts – a glass of good wine will do you no harm before you and my friend come to business. Whereabouts did you meet with Mr Bashwood, Midwinter, when you lost your way?'

‘I am too ignorant of the neighbourhood to know. I must refer you to Mr Bashwood.'

‘Come, tell us where it was,' said Allan, trying, a little too abruptly, to set the man at his ease, as they all three walked back to the house.

The measure of Mr Bashwood's constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice, and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the occasion when they first met.

‘It was on the road, sir,' he began, addressing himself alternately to Allan, whom he called ‘sir', and to Midwinter, whom he called by his name, ‘I mean, if you please, on the road to Little Gill Beck. A singular name, Mr Midwinter, and a singular place; I don't mean the village; I mean the neighbourhood – I beg your pardon, I mean the “Broads”, beyond the neighbourhood. Perhaps you may have heard of the Norfolk Broads, sir? What they call lakes in other parts of England, they call Broads here. The Broads are quite numerous; I think they would repay a visit. You would have seen the first of them, Mr Midwinter, if you had walked on a few miles from where I had the honour of meeting you. Remarkably numerous, the Broads, sir – situated between this and the sea. About three miles from the sea, Mr Midwinter, – about three miles. Mostly shallow, sir, with rivers running between them. Beautiful; solitary. Quite a watery country, Mr Midwinter; quite separate as it were, in itself. Parties sometimes visit them, sir, – pleasure-parties in boats. It's quite a little network of lakes, or, perhaps, – yes, perhaps more correctly, pools. There is good sport in the cold weather. The wild-fowl are quite numerous. Yes. The Broads would repay a visit, Mr Midwinter, the next time you are walking that way. The distance from here to Little Gill Beck, and then from Little Gill Beck to Girdler Broad, which is the first you come to, is altogether not more —' In sheer nervous inability to leave off, he would apparently have gone on talking of the Norfolk Broads for the rest of the evening, if one of his two listeners had not unceremoniously cut him short before he could find his way into a new sentence.