Armadale (48 page)

Nobody appearing to be in a fit frame of mind for singing a hymn, the all-accomplished Pedgift drew upon his stores of local knowledge, and produced a new idea. The course of the boat was immediately changed under his direction. In a few minutes more, the company found themselves in a little island-creek, with a lonely cottage at the far end of it, and a perfect forest of reeds closing the view all round them.

‘What do you say, ladies and gentlemen, to stepping on shore and seeing what a reed-cutter's cottage looks like?' suggested young Pedgift.

‘We say, yes, to be sure,' answered Allan. ‘I think our spirits have been a little dashed by Mr Pentecost's illness and Mrs Pentecost's bag,' he added, in a whisper to Miss Milroy. ‘A change of this sort is the very thing we want to set us all going again.'

He and young Pedgift handed Miss Milroy out of the boat. The major followed. Mrs Pentecost sat immovable as the Egyptian Sphinx, with her bag on her knees, mounting guard over ‘sammy' in the cabin.

‘We must keep the fun going, sir,' said Allan, as he helped the major over the side of the boat. ‘We haven't half done yet with the enjoyment of the day.'

His voice seconded his hearty belief in his own prediction to such good purpose, that even Mrs Pentecost heard him, and ominously shook her head.

‘Ah!' sighed the curate's mother. ‘If you were as old as I am, young gentleman, you wouldn't feel quite so sure of the enjoyment of the day!'

So, in rebuke of the rashness of youth, spoke the caution of age. The negative view is notoriously the safe view, all the world over – and the Pentecost philosophy is, as a necessary consequence, generally in the right.

It was close on six o'clock when Allan and his friends left the boat; and the evening influence was creeping already, in its mystery and its stillness, over the watery solitude of the Broads.

The shore in these wild regions was not like the shore elsewhere. Firm as it looked, the garden-ground in front of the reed-cutter's cottage was floating ground, that rose and fell and oozed into puddles under the pressure of the foot. The boatmen who guided the visitors warned them to keep the path, and pointed through gaps in the reeds and pollards to grassy places, on which strangers would have walked confidently, where the crust of earth was not strong enough to bear the weight of a child over the unfathomed depths of slime and water beneath. The solitary cottage, built of planks pitched black, stood on ground that had been steadied and strengthened by resting it on piles. A little wooden tower rose at one end of the roof, and served as a look-out post in the fowling season. From this elevation the eye ranged far and wide over a wilderness of winding water and lonesome marsh. If the reed-cutter had lost his boat, he would have been as completely isolated from all communication with town or village, as if his place of abode had been a light-vessel instead of a cottage. Neither he nor his family complained of their solitude, or
looked in any way the rougher or the worse for it. His wife received the visitors hospitably, in a snug little room, with a raftered ceiling, and windows which looked like windows in a cabin on board ship. His wife's father told stories of the famous days when the smugglers came up from the sea at night, rowing through the network of rivers with muffled oars till they gained the lonely Broads, and sunk their spirit casks in the water, far from the coastguard's reach. His wild little children played at hide-and-seek with the visitors; and the visitors ranged in and out of the cottage, and round and round the morsel of firm earth on which it stood, surprised and delighted by the novelty of all they saw. The one person who noticed the advance of the evening – the one person who thought of the flying time and the stationary Pentecosts in the boat – was young Pedgift. That experienced pilot of the Broads looked askance at his watch, and drew Allan aside at the first opportunity.

‘I don't wish to hurry you, Mr Armadale,' said Pedgift Junior; ‘but the time is getting on, and there's a lady in the case.'

‘A lady?' repeated Allan.

‘Yes, sir,' rejoined young Pedgift. ‘A lady from London; connected (if you'll allow me to jog your memory) with a pony-chaise and white harness.'

‘Good heavens, the governess!' cried Allan; ‘why, we have forgotten all about her!'

‘Don't be alarmed, sir; there's plenty of time, if we only get into the boat again. This is how it stands, Mr Armadale. We settled, if you remember, to have the gipsy tea-making at the next “Broad” to this – Hurle Mere?'
¹

‘Certainly,' said Allan. ‘Hurle Mere is the place where my friend Midwinter has promised to come and meet us.'

‘Hurle Mere is where the governess will be, sir, if your coachman follows my directions,' pursued young Pedgift. ‘We have got nearly an hour's punting to do; along the twists and turns of the narrow waters (which they call The Sounds here) between this and Hurle Mere; and according to my calculations we must get on board again in five minutes, if we are to be in time to meet the governess and to meet your friend.'

‘We mustn't miss my friend, on any account,' said Allan; ‘or the governess either, of course. I'll tell the major.'

Major Milroy was at that moment preparing to mount the wooden watch-tower of the cottage to see the view. The ever useful Pedgift volunteered to go up with him, and rattle off all the necessary local
explanations in half the time which the reed-cutter would occupy in describing his own neighbourhood to a stranger.

Allan remained standing in front of the cottage, more quiet and more thoughtful than usual. His interview with young Pedgift had brought his absent friend to his memory for the first time since the picnic party had started. He was surprised that Midwinter, so much in his thoughts on all other occasions, should have been so long out of his thoughts now. Something troubled him, like a sense of self-reproach, as his mind reverted to the faithful friend at home, toiling hard over the steward's books, in his interests and for his sake. ‘Dear old fellow,' thought Allan, ‘I shall be so glad to see him at the Mere; the day's pleasure wont be complete till he joins us!'

‘Should I be right or wrong, Mr Armadale, if I guessed that you were thinking of somebody?' asked a voice softly behind him.

Allan turned, and found the major's daughter at his side. Miss Milroy (not unmindful of a certain tender interview which had taken place behind a carriage) had noticed her admirer standing thoughtfully by himself, and had determined on giving him another opportunity, while her father and young Pedgift were at the top of the watch-tower.

‘You know everything,' said Allan smiling. ‘I
was
thinking of somebody.'

Miss Milroy stole a glance at him – a glance of gentle encouragement. There could be but one human creature in Mr Armadale's mind after what had passed between them that morning! It would be only an act of mercy to take him back again at once to the interrupted conversation of a few hours since on the subject of names.

‘I have been thinking of somebody too,' she said, half inviting, half repelling the coming avowal. ‘If I tell you the first letter of my Somebody's name, will you tell me the first letter of yours?'

‘I will tell you anything you like,' rejoined Allan with the utmost enthusiasm.

She still shrank coquettishly from the very subject that she wanted to approach. ‘Tell me your letter first,' she said in low tones, looking away from him.

Allan laughed. ‘M,' he said, ‘is my first letter.'

She started a little. Strange that he should be thinking of her by her surname instead of her Christian name – but it mattered little as long as he
was
thinking of her.

‘What is your letter?' asked Allan.

She blushed and smiled. ‘A – if you will have it!' she answered in a
reluctant little whisper. She stole another look at him, and luxuriously protracted her enjoyment of the coming avowal once more. ‘How many syllables is the name in?' she asked, drawing patterns shyly on the ground with the end of her parasol.

No man with the slightest knowledge of the sex would have been rash enough, in Allan's position, to tell her the truth. Allan, who knew nothing whatever of women's natures, and who told the truth right and left in all mortal emergencies, answered as if he had been under examination in a court of justice.

‘It's a name in three syllables,' he said.

Miss Milroy's downcast eyes flashed up at him like lightning. ‘Three!' she repeated in the blankest astonishment.

Allan was too inveterately straightforward to take the warning even now. ‘I'm not strong at my spelling, I know,' he said, with his light-hearted laugh. ‘But I don't think I'm wrong in calling Midwinter a name in three syllables. I was thinking of my friend – but never mind my thoughts. Tell me who A is – tell me who
you
were thinking of?'

‘Of the first letter of the alphabet, Mr Armadale, and I beg positively to inform you of nothing more!'

With that annihilating answer the major's daughter put up her parasol and walked back by herself to the boat.

Allan stood petrified with amazement. If Miss Milroy had actually boxed his ears (and there is no denying that she had privately longed to devote her hand to that purpose) he could hardly have felt more bewildered than he felt now. ‘What on earth have I done?' he asked himself helplessly, as the major and young Pedgift joined him, and the three walked down together to the waterside. ‘I wonder what she'll say to me next?'

She said absolutely nothing – she never so much as looked at Allan when he took his place in the boat. There she sat, with her eyes and her complexion both much brighter than usual, taking the deepest interest in the curate's progress towards recovery; in the state of Mrs Pentecost's spirits; in Pedgift Junior (for whom she ostentatiously made room enough to let him sit beside her); in the scenery and the reed-cutter's cottage; in everybody and everything but Allan – whom she would have married with the greatest pleasure five minutes since. ‘I'll never forgive him,' thought the major's daughter. ‘To be thinking of that ill-bred wretch when I was thinking of
him
– and to make me all but confess it before I found him out! Thank heaven Mr Pedgift is in the boat!'

In this frame of mind Miss Neelie applied herself forthwith to the fascination of Pedgift and the discomfiture of Allan. ‘Oh, Mr Pedgift,
how extremely clever and kind of you to think of showing us that sweet cottage! Lonely, Mr Armadale? I don't think it's lonely at all; I should like of all things to live there. What would this picnic have been without you, Mr Pedgift; you can't think how I have enjoyed it since we got into the boat. Cool, Mr Armadale? What can you possibly mean by saying it's cool; it's the warmest evening we've had this summer. And the music, Mr Pedgift; how nice it was of you to bring your concertina! I wonder if I could accompany you on the piano? I should so like to try. Oh, yes, Mr Armadale, no doubt you meant to do something musical too, and I daresay you sing very well when you know the words; but, to tell you the truth, I always did, and always shall hate Moore's Melodies!'

Thus, with merciless dexterity of manipulation, did Miss Milroy work that sharpest female weapon of offence, the tongue – and thus she would have used it for some time longer, if Allan had only shown the necessary jealousy, or if Pedgift had only afforded the necessary encouragement. But adverse fortune had decreed that she should select for her victims two men essentially unassailable under existing circumstances. Allan was too innocent of all knowledge of female subtleties and susceptibilities to understand anything, except that the charming Neelie was unreasonably out of temper with him without the slightest cause. The wary Pedgift, as became one of the quick-witted youth of the present generation, submitted to female influence, with his eye fixed immovably all the time on his own interests. Many a young man of the past generation, who was no fool, has sacrificed everything for love. Not one young man in ten thousand of the present generation,
except
the fools, has sacrificed a halfpenny. The daughters of Eve still inherit their mother's merits, and commit their mother's faults. But the sons of Adam, in these latter days, are men who would have handed the famous apple back with a bow, and a ‘Thanks, no; it might get me into a scrape.' When Allan – surprised and disappointed – moved away out of Miss Milroy's reach to the forward part of the boat, Pedgift Junior rose and followed him. ‘You're a very nice girl,' thought this shrewd and sensible young man; ‘but a client's a client – and I am sorry to inform you, Miss, it won't do.' He set himself at once to rouse Allan's spirits by diverting his attention to a new subject. There was to be a regatta that autumn on one of the Broads, and his client's opinion as a yachtsman might be valuable to the committee. 'something new I should think to you, sir, in a sailing-match on fresh water?' he said in his most ingratiatory manner. And Allan, instantly interested, answered, ‘Quite new. Do tell me about it!'

As for the rest of the party, at the other end of the boat, they were in a fair way to confirm Mrs Pentecost's doubts whether the hilarity of the picnic would last the day out. Poor Neelie's natural feeling of irritation under the disappointment which Allan's awkwardness had inflicted on her, was now exasperated into silent and settled resentment by her own keen sense of humiliation and defeat. The major had relapsed into his habitually dreamy, absent manner; his mind was turning monotonously with the wheels of his clock. The curate still secluded his indigestion from public view in the innermost recesses of the cabin; and the curate's mother, with a second dose ready at a moment's notice, sat on guard at the door. Women of Mrs Pentecost's age and character generally enjoy their own bad spirits. ‘This,' sighed the old lady, wagging her head with a smile of sour satisfaction, ‘is what you call a day's pleasure, is it? Ah, what fools we all were to leave our comfortable homes!'