Armadale (49 page)

Meanwhile, the boat floated smoothly along the windings of the watery labyrinth which lay between the two Broads. The view on either side was now limited to nothing but interminable rows of reeds. Not a sound was heard, far or near; not so much as a glimpse of cultivated or inhabited land appeared anywhere. ‘A trifle dreary hereabouts, Mr Armadale,' said the ever-cheerful Pedgift. ‘But we are just out of it now. Look ahead, sir! Here we are at Hurle Mere.'

The reeds opened back on the right hand and the left, and the boat glided suddenly into the wide circle of a pool. Round the nearer half of the circle, the eternal reeds still fringed the margin of the water. Round the farther half, the land appeared again – here, rolling back from the pool in desolate sand-hills; there, rising above it in a sweep of grassy shore. At one point, the ground was occupied by a plantation; and, at another, by the outbuildings of a lonely old red-brick house, with a strip of by-road near, that skirted the garden-wall, and ended at the pool. The sun was sinking in the clear heaven, and the water, where the sun's reflection failed to tinge it, was beginning to look black and cold. The solitude that had been soothing, the silence that had felt like an enchantment on the other Broad, in the day's vigorous prime, was a solitude that saddened here – a silence that struck cold, in the stillness and melancholy of the day's decline.

The course of the boat was directed across the Mere to a creek in the grassy shore. One or two of the little flat-bottomed punts peculiar to the Broads lay in the creek; and the reed-cutters to whom the punts belonged, surprised at the appearance of strangers, came out, staring silently, from behind an angle of the old garden-wall. Not another sign of life was visible anywhere. No pony-chaise had been seen by the reed-cutters;
no stranger, either man or woman, had approached the shores of Hurle Mere that day.

Young Pedgift took another look at his watch, and addressed himself to Miss Milroy. ‘You may, or may not, see the governess when you get back to Thorpe-Ambrose,' he said; ‘but, as the time stands now, you won't see her here. You know best, Mr Armadale,' he added, turning to Allan, ‘whether your friend is to be depended on to keep his appointment?'

‘I am certain he is to be depended on,' replied Allan, looking about him in unconcealed disappointment at Midwinter's absence.

‘Very good,' pursued Pedgift Junior. ‘If we light the fire for our gipsy tea-making on the open ground there, your friend may find us out, sir, by the smoke. That's the Indian dodge for picking up a lost man on the prairie, Miss Milroy – and it's pretty nearly wild enough (isn't it?) to be a prairie here!'

There are some temptations – principally those of the smaller kind – which it is not in the defensive capacity of female human nature to resist. The temptation to direct the whole force of her influence, as the one young lady of the party, towards the instant overthrow of Allan's arrangement for meeting his friend, was too much for the major's daughter. She turned on the smiling Pedgift with a look which ought to have overwhelmed him. But who ever overwhelmed a solicitor?

‘I think it's the most lonely, dreary, hideous place I ever saw in my life!' said Miss Neelie. ‘If you insist on making tea here, Mr Pedgift, don't make any for me. No! I shall stop in the boat; and though I am absolutely dying with thirst, I shall touch nothing till we get back again to the other Broad!'

The major opened his lips to remonstrate. To his daughter's infinite delight, Mrs Pentecost rose from her seat, before he could say a word, and, after surveying the whole landward prospect, and seeing nothing in the shape of a vehicle anywhere, asked indignantly whether they were going all the way back again to the place where they had left the carriages in the middle of the day. On ascertaining that this was, in fact, the arrangement proposed; and that, from the nature of the country, the carriages could not have been ordered round to Hurle Mere without, in the first instance, sending them the whole of the way back to Thorpe-Ambrose, Mrs Pentecost (speaking in her son's interests) instantly declared that no earthly power should induce her to be out on the water after dark. ‘Call me a boat!' cried the old lady, in great
agitation. ‘Wherever there's water, there's a night mist, and wherever there's a night mist, my son Samuel catches cold. Don't talk to
me
about your moonlight and your tea-making – you're all mad! Hi! you two men there!' cried Mrs Pentecost, hailing the silent reed-cutters on shore. 'sixpence a-piece for you, if you'll take me and my son back in your boat!'

Before young Pedgift could interfere, Allan himself settled the difficulty this time, with perfect patience and good temper.

‘I can't think, Mrs Pentecost, of your going back in any boat but the boat you have come out in,' he said. ‘There is not the least need (as you and Miss Milroy don't like the place) for anybody to go on shore here, but me. I
must
go on shore. My friend Midwinter never broke his promise to me yet; and I can't consent to leave Hurle Mere, as long as there is a chance of his keeping his appointment. But there's not the least reason in the world why I should stand in the way on that account. You have the major and Mr Pedgift to take care of you; and you can get back to the carriages before dark, if you go at once. I will wait here, and give my friend half-an-hour more – and then I can follow you in one of the reed-cutters' boats.'

‘That's the most sensible thing, Mr Armadale, you've said to-day,' remarked Mrs Pentecost, seating herself again in a violent hurry. ‘Tell them to be quick!' cried the old lady, shaking her fist at the boatmen. ‘Tell them to be quick!'

Allan gave the necessary directions, and stepped on shore. The wary Pedgift (sticking fast to his client,) tried to follow.

‘We can't leave you here alone, sir,' he said, protesting eagerly in a whisper. ‘Let the major take care of the ladies, and let me keep you company at the Mere.'

‘No, no!' said Allan, pressing him back. ‘They're all in low spirits on board. If you want to be of service to me, stop like a good fellow where you are, and do your best to keep the thing going.'

He waved his hand, and the men pushed the boat off from the shore. The others all waved their hands in return except the major's daughter, who sat apart from the rest, with her face hidden under her parasol. The tears stood thick in Neelie's eyes. Her last angry feeling against Allan died out, and her heart went back to him penitently, the moment he left the boat. ‘How good he is to us all!' she thought, ‘and what a wretch I am!' She got up with every generous impulse in her nature urging her to make atonement to him. She got up, reckless of appearances, and looked after him with eager eyes and flushed cheeks, as he
stood alone on the shore. ‘Don't be long, Mr Armadale!' she said, with a desperate disregard of what the rest of the company thought of her.

The boat was already far out in the water, and with all Neelie's resolution, the words were spoken in a faint little voice, which failed to reach Allan's ears. The one sound he heard, as the boat gained the opposite extremity of the Mere, and disappeared slowly among the reeds, was the sound of the concertina. The indefatigable Pedgift was keeping things going – evidently under the auspices of Mrs Pentecost – by performing a sacred melody.

Left by himself, Allan lit a cigar, and took a turn backwards and forwards on the shore. ‘She might have said a word to me at parting!' he thought. ‘I've done everything for the best; I've as good as told her how fond of her I am, and this is the way she treats me!' He stopped, and stood looking absently at the sinking sun, and the fast-darkening waters of the Mere. Some inscrutable influence in the scene forced its way stealthily into his mind, and diverted his thoughts from Miss Milroy to his absent friend. He started, and looked about him.

The reed-cutters had gone back to their retreat behind the angle of the wall, not a living creature was visible, not a sound rose anywhere along the dreary shore. Even Allan's spirits began to get depressed. It was nearly an hour after the time when Midwinter had promised to be at Hurle Mere. He had himself arranged to walk to the pool (with a stable-boy from Thorpe-Ambrose, as his guide), by lanes and footpaths which shortened the distance by the road. The boy knew the country well, and Midwinter was habitually punctual at all his appointments. Had anything gone wrong at Thorpe-Ambrose? Had some accident happened on the way? Determined to remain no longer doubting and idling by himself, Allan made up his mind to walk inland from the Mere, on the chance of meeting his friend. He went round at once to the angle in the wall, and asked one of the reed-cutters to show him the footpath to Thorpe-Ambrose.

The man led him away from the road, and pointed to a barely-perceptible break in the outer trees of the plantation. After pausing for one more useless look round him, Allan turned his back on the Mere, and made for the trees.

For a few paces, the path ran straight through the plantation. Thence, it took a sudden turn – and the water and the open country became both lost to view. Allan steadily followed the grassy track before him, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, until he came to another winding of the path. Turning in the new direction, he saw dimly a
human figure sitting alone at the foot of one of the trees. Two steps nearer were enough to make the figure familiar to him. ‘Midwinter!' he exclaimed, in astonishment. ‘This is not the place where I was to meet you! What are you waiting for here?'

Midwinter rose, without answering. The evening dimness among the trees, which obscured his face, made his silence doubly perplexing.

Allan went on eagerly questioning him. ‘Did you come here by yourself?' he asked. ‘I thought the boy was to guide you?'

This time Midwinter answered. ‘When we got as far as these trees,' he said, ‘I sent the boy back. He told me I was close to the place, and couldn't miss it.'

‘What made you stop here, when he left you?' reiterated Allan. ‘Why didn't you walk on?'

‘Don't despise me,' answered the other, ‘I hadn't the courage!'

‘Not the courage?' repeated Allan. He paused a moment. ‘Oh, I know!' he resumed, putting his hand gaily on Midwinter's shoulder. ‘You're still shy of the Milroys. What nonsense, when I told you myself that your peace was made at the cottage!'

‘I wasn't thinking, Allan, of your friends at the cottage. The truth is, I'm hardly myself to-day. I am ill and unnerved; trifles startle me.' He stopped, and shrunk away, under the anxious scrutiny of Allan's eyes. ‘If you
will
have it,' he burst out abruptly, ‘the horror of that night on board the Wreck has got me again; there's a dreadful oppression on my head; there's a dreadful sinking at my heart – I am afraid of something happening to us, if we don't part before the day is out. I can't break my promise to you; for God's sake, release me from it, and let me go back?'

Remonstrance, to any one who knew Midwinter, was plainly useless at that moment. Allan humoured him. ‘Come out of this dark airless place,' he said; ‘and we'll talk about it. The water and the open sky are within a stone's throw of us. I hate a wood in the evening – it even gives
me
the horrors. You have been working too hard over the steward's books. Come and breathe freely in the blessed open air.'

Midwinter stopped, considered for a moment, and suddenly submitted.

‘You're right,' he said, ‘and I'm wrong, as usual. I'm wasting time and distressing you to no purpose. What folly to ask you to let me go back! Suppose you had said yes?'

‘Well?' asked Allan.

‘Well,' repeated Midwinter, ‘something would have happened at the first step to stop me – that's all. Come on.'

They walked together in silence on the way to the Mere.

At the last turn in the path Allan's cigar went out. While he stopped to light it again, Midwinter walked on before him, and was the first to come in sight of the open ground.

Allan had just kindled the match, when, to his surprise, his friend came back to him round the turn in the path. There was light enough to show objects more clearly in this part of the plantation. The match, as Midwinter faced him, dropped on the instant from Allan's hand.

‘Good God!' he cried, starting back, ‘you look as you looked on board the Wreck!'

Midwinter held up his hand for silence. He spoke with his wild eyes riveted on Allan's face, with his white lips close at Allan's ear.

‘You remember how I
looked
,' he answered, in a whisper. ‘Do you remember what I
said
, when you and the doctor were talking of the Dream?'

‘I have forgotten the Dream,' said Allan.

As he made that answer, Midwinter took his hand, and led him round the last turn in the path.

‘Do you remember it now?' he asked, and pointed to the Mere.

The sun was sinking in the cloudless westward heaven. The waters of the Mere lay beneath, tinged red by the dying light. The open country stretched away, darkening drearily already on the right hand and the left. And on the near margin of the pool, where all had been solitude before, there now stood, fronting the sunset, the figure of a Woman.

The two Armadales stood together in silence, and looked at the lonely figure and the dreary view.

Midwinter was the first to speak.

‘Your own eyes have seen it,' he said. ‘Now look at your own words.'

He opened the narrative of the Dream, and held it under Allan's eyes. His finger pointed to the lines which recorded the first Vision; his voice sinking lower and lower, repeated the words:

‘The sense came to me of being left alone in the darkness.

‘I waited.

‘The darkness opened and showed me the vision – as in a picture – of a broad, lonely pool, surrounded by open ground. Above the farther margin of the pool I saw the cloudless western sky, red with the light of sunset.