Armadale (70 page)

‘God forbid!' said Midwinter, fervently. ‘There is no man living,' he went on, thinking of his own family story, ‘who has better reason to understand and respect your silence than I have.'

Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘I knew it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had suffered, that you too had sorrows which you kept sacred! Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism
¹
– do you?' She suddenly recollected herself and shuddered. ‘Oh, what have I done? what must you think of me?' she exclaimed, as he yielded to the magnetic fascination of her touch, and forgetting everything but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed it. ‘Spare me!' she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch of his lips. ‘I am so friendless, I am so completely at your mercy!'

He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands – he was trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him, while his face was hidden from her – she looked at him with a furtive interest and surprise. ‘How that man loves me!' she thought. ‘I wonder whether there was a time once when I might have loved
him
?'

The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes. He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never expected or intended him to feel it – he shrank from looking at her or from speaking to her again.

‘Shall I go on with my story?' she asked. ‘Shall we forget and forgive on both sides?' A woman's inveterate indulgence for every expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits of personal respect, curved her lips gently into a charming smile. She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb off her lap with a little fluttering sigh. ‘I was telling you,' she went on, ‘of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad family story. It was in that way, as I afterwards found out, that I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady who was my reference – at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the worst of it. By some underhand means of which I am quite ignorant, Mr Armadale's simplicity was imposed on – and when application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was made, Mr Midwinter, through your friend.'

Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was, became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down again like a man bewildered, without uttering a word.

‘Remember how weak he is,' pleaded Miss Gwilt gently, ‘and make allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't imagine why, to have excited Mr Armadale's suspicion. At any rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing; I distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win – when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy showed me a correspondence between Mr Armadale and himself. He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make no complaint of her – such affliction as she suffers excuses everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters between Major Milroy and Mr Armadale – but my head is only a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the time! All I can tell you is, that Mr Armadale chose to preserve silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken – but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I
couldn't remain in my situation after a slur had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me. I was brought up like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted even yet!) – my pride got the better of me, and I left my place. Don't let it distress you, Mr Midwinter! There's a bright side to the picture. The ladies in the neighbourhood have overwhelmed me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach; I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my friends. The only complaint I have to make is I think a just one? Mr Armadale has been back at Thorpe-Ambrose for some days. I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? he has declined to see me – under the influence of others; not of his own free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me more cruelly still – he persists in suspecting me – it is he who is having me watched. Oh, Mr Midwinter, don't hate me for telling you what you
must
know! The man you found persecuting me and frightening me to-night was only earning his money after all as Mr Armadale's spy.'

Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the thoughts that were in him found their way into words.

‘I can't believe it; I won't believe it!' he exclaimed indignantly. ‘If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt
you;
I only say there is some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of which you think Allan guilty, I
do
understand. I swear to you, he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it to you if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh,' he burst out desperately, ‘I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said — I feel so for
you
!'

He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him again; and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his own.

‘You are the most generous of living men,' she said softly; ‘I will believe what you tell me to believe. Go,' she added in a whisper, suddenly releasing his hand and turning away from him. ‘For both our sakes, go!'

His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he hesitated – the
next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor, and left her precipitately without a backward look, or a parting word.

She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her the instant she was alone. The colour faded out of her cheeks; the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with a silent despair. ‘It's even baser work than I bargained for,' she said, ‘to deceive
him
.' After pacing to and fro in the room for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over the fireplace. ‘You strange creature!' she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantel-piece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the glass. ‘Have you got any conscience left? And has that man roused it?'

The reflection of her face changed slowly. The colour returned to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror. ‘What am I doing?' she asked herself in a sudden panic of astonishment. ‘Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in
that
way?'

She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table recklessly with a bang. ‘It's high time I had some talk with mother Jezebel,' she said, and sat down to write to Mrs Oldershaw.

‘I have met with Mr Midwinter,' she began, ‘under very lucky circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity. He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors of Thorpe-Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr Midwinter's intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely Christian errand of reconciling them.'

She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied; her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clenched teeth. ‘Young as you are,' she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, – ‘there has been something out of the common in
your
life – and I must and will know it!'

The house-clock struck the hour and roused her. She sighed, and walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one
great mass over her shoulders. ‘Fancy,' she thought, ‘if he saw me now!' She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. ‘Midwinter?' she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bedchamber. ‘I don't believe in his name, to begin with!'

The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house.

Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening – the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan's connection with it – had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe-Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place.

The front of the house was dark and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master.

‘I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the neighbourhood before another week is over his head,' said the first footman.

‘Done.' said the second. ‘He isn't as easy driven as you think.'

‘Isn't he?' retorted the other. ‘He'll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got into already. I know it for certain he's having the governess watched.'

At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings – his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in
the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since.

‘It was my master's particular order, sir,' said the head footman, ‘that he was to be told of it if you came back.'

‘It is
my
particular request,' returned Midwinter, ‘that you won't disturb him.'

The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them.
²

Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe-Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted, to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon.

Towards nine o'clock on the morning after his return, Midwinter knocked at Allan's door; and, on entering the room, found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the housemaids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter's return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all – that he was not in the house.

Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan's unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits.