Armadale (83 page)

As she hurried homeward, the leaves parted behind her, and Miss Gwilt stepped softly into the open space. She stood there in triumph, tall, beautiful, and resolute. Her lovely colour brightened while she watched Neelie's retreating figure hastening lightly away from her over the grass.

‘Cry, you little fool!' she said, with her quiet clear tones, and her steady smile of contempt. ‘Cry as you have never cried yet! You have seen the last of your sweetheart.'

An hour later, the landlady at Miss Gwilt's lodgings was lost in astonishment, and the clamorous tongues of the children were in a state of ungovernable revolt. ‘Unforeseen circumstances' had suddenly obliged the tenant of the first floor to terminate the occupation of her apartments, and to go to London that day by the eleven o'clock train.

‘Please to have a fly at the door, at half-past ten,' said Miss Gwilt, as the amazed landlady followed her upstairs. ‘And excuse me, you good creature, if I beg and pray not to be disturbed till the fly comes.'

Once inside her room, she locked the door, and then opened her writing-desk. ‘Now for my letter to the major!' she said. ‘How shall I word it?'

A moment's consideration apparently decided her. Searching through her collection of pens, she carefully selected the worst that could be found, and began the letter by writing the date of the day on a soiled sheet of note-paper, in crooked clumsy characters, which ended in a blot made purposely with the feather of the pen. Pausing, sometimes to think a little, sometimes to make another blot, she completed the letter in these words:

H
ON
^D
S
IR
, – It is on my conscience to tell you something, which I think you ought to know. You ought to know of the goings-on of Miss, your daughter, with young Mister Armadale. I wish you to make sure, and what is more, I advise you to be quick about it, if she is going the way you want her to go, when she takes her morning walk before breakfast. I scorn to make mischief, where there is true love on both sides. But I don't think the young man means truly by Miss. What I mean is, I think Miss only has his fancy. Another person, who shall be nameless betwixt us, has his true heart. Please to pardon my not putting my name; I am only an humble person, and it might get me into trouble. This is all at present, dear sir, from yours,

A W
ELL-
W
ISHER
.

‘There!' said Miss Gwilt, as she folded the letter up. ‘If I had been a professed novelist, I could hardly have written more naturally in
the character of a servant than that!' She wrote the necessary address to Major Milroy; looked admiringly for the last time at the coarse and clumsy writing which her own delicate hand had produced; and rose to post the letter herself, before she entered next on the serious business of packing up. ‘Curious!' she thought, when the letter had been posted, and she was back again making her travelling preparations in her own room; ‘here I am, running headlong into a frightful risk – and I never was in better spirits in my life!'

The boxes were ready when the fly was at the door, and Miss Gwilt was equipped (as becomingly as usual) in her neat travelling costume. The thick veil, which she was accustomed to wear in London, appeared on her country straw-bonnet for the first time. ‘One meets such rude men occasionally in the railway,' she said to the landlady. ‘And though I dress quietly, my hair is so very remarkable.' She was a little paler than usual; but she had never been so sweet-tempered and engaging, so gracefully cordial and friendly, as now, when the moment of departure had come. The simple people of the house were quite moved at taking leave of her. She insisted on shaking hands with the landlord – on speaking to him in her prettiest way, and sunning him in her brightest smiles. ‘Come!' she said to the landlady, ‘you have been so kind, you have been so like a mother to me, you must give me a kiss at parting.' She embraced the children all together in the lump, with a mixture of humour and tenderness delightful to see, and left a shilling among them to buy a cake. ‘If I was only rich enough to make it a sovereign,' she whispered to the mother, ‘how glad I should be!' The awkward lad who ran on errands stood waiting at the fly-door. He was clumsy, he was frowsy, he had a gaping mouth and a turn-up nose – but the ineradicable female delight in being charming, accepted him, for all that, in the character of a last chance. ‘You dear dingy John!' she said kindly at the carriage door. ‘I am so poor I have only sixpence to give you – with my very best wishes. Take my advice, John – grow to be a fine man, and find yourself a nice sweetheart! Thank you a thousand times!' She gave him a friendly little pat on the cheek with two of her gloved fingers, and smiled, and nodded, and got into the fly.

‘Armadale next!' she said to herself as the carriage drove off.

Allan's anxiety not to miss the train had brought him to the station in better time than usual. After taking his ticket and putting his portmanteau under the porter's charge, he was pacing the platform and thinking of Neelie – when he heard the rustling of a lady's dress behind
him, and turning round to look, found himself face to face with Miss Gwilt.

There was no escaping her this time. The station wall was on his right hand, and the line was on his left; a tunnel was behind him, and Miss Gwilt was in front, inquiring in her sweetest tones whether Mr Armadale was going to London.

Allan coloured scarlet with vexation and surprise. There he was, obviously waiting for the train; and there was his portmanteau close by, with his name on it, already labelled for London! What answer but the true one could he make after that? Could he let the train go without him, and lose the precious hours so vitally important to Neelie and himself? Impossible! Allan helplessly confirmed the printed statement on his portmanteau, and heartily wished himself at the other end of the world as he said the words.

‘How very fortunate!' rejoined Miss Gwilt. ‘I am going to London too. Might I ask you, Mr Armadale (as you seem to be quite alone), to be my escort on the journey?'

Allan looked at the little assembly of travellers, and travellers' friends, collected on the platform, near the booking-office door. They were all Thorpe-Ambrose people. He was probably known by sight, and Miss Gwilt was probably known by sight, to every one of them. In sheer desperation, hesitating more awkwardly than ever, he produced his cigar-case. ‘I should be delighted,' he said, with an embarrassment which was almost an insult under the circumstances. ‘But I – I'm what the people who get sick over a cigar, call a slave to smoking.'

‘I delight in smoking!' said Miss Gwilt, with undiminished vivacity and good humour. ‘It's one of the privileges of the men which I have always envied. I'm afraid, Mr Armadale, you must think I am forcing myself on you. It certainly looks like it. The real truth is, I want particularly to say a word to you in private about Mr Midwinter.'

The train came up at the same moment. Setting Midwinter out of the question, the common decencies of politeness left Allan no alternative but to submit. After having been the cause of her leaving her situation at Major Milroy's, after having pointedly avoided her only a few days since on the high-road, to have declined going to London in the same carriage with Miss Gwilt would have been an act of downright brutality which it was simply impossible to commit. ‘Damn her!' said Allan, internally, as he handed his travelling companion into an empty carriage, officiously placed at his disposal, before all the people at the station, by the guard. ‘You shan't be disturbed, sir,' the man whispered confidentially, with a smile, and a touch of his hat. Allan could have
knocked him down with the utmost pleasure. ‘stop!' he said, from the window. ‘I don't want the carriage—' It was useless; the guard was out of hearing; the whistle blew, and the train started for London.

The select assembly of travellers' friends, left behind on the platform, congregated in a circle on the spot, with the station-master in the centre.

The station-master – otherwise, Mr Mack – was a popular character in the neighbourhood. He possessed two social qualifications which invariably impress the average English mind – he was an old soldier, and he was a man of few words. The conclave on the platform insisted on taking his opinion, before it committed itself positively to an opinion of its own. A brisk fire of remarks exploded, as a matter of course, on all sides; but everybody's view of the subject ended interrogatively, in a question aimed point-blank at the station-master's ears.

‘She's got him, hasn't she?' ‘She'll come back “Mrs Armadale”, won't she?' ‘He'd better have stuck to Miss Milroy, hadn't he?' ‘Miss Milroy stuck to
him
. She paid him a visit at the great house, didn't she?' ‘Nothing of the sort; it's a shame to take the girl's character away. She was caught in a thunderstorm close by; he was obliged to give her shelter; and she's never been near the place since. Miss Gwilt's been there, if you like, with no thunderstorm to force
her
in; and Miss Gwilt's off with him to London in a carriage all to themselves, eh, Mr Mack?' ‘Ah, he's a soft one, that Armadale! with all his money, to take up with a red-haired woman, a good eight or nine years older than he is! She's thirty if she's a day. That's what I say, Mr Mack. What do you say?' ‘Older or younger, she'll rule the roost at Thorpe-Ambrose; and I say, for the sake of the place, and for the sake of trade, let's make the best of it; and Mr Mack, as a man of the world, sees it in the same light as I do, don't you, sir?'

‘Gentlemen,' said the station-master, with his abrupt military accent, and his impenetrable military manner, ‘she's a devilish fine woman. And, when I was Mr Armadale's age, it's my opinion, if her fancy had laid that way, she might have married Me.'

With that expression of opinion the station-master wheeled to the right, and intrenched himself impregnably in the stronghold of his own office.

The citizens of Thorpe-Ambrose looked at the closed door, and gravely shook their heads. Mr Mack had disappointed them. No opinion which openly recognizes the frailty of human nature, is ever a popular opinion with mankind. ‘It's as good as saying that any of
us
might have married her, if
we
had been Mr Armadale's age!' Such was the general
impression on the minds of the conclave, when the meeting had been adjourned, and the members were leaving the station.

The last of the party to go was a slow old gentleman, with a habit of deliberately looking about him. Pausing at the door, this observant person stared up the platform, and down the platform, and discovered in the latter direction, standing behind an angle of the wall, an elderly man in black, who had escaped the notice of everybody up to that time. ‘Why, bless my soul!' said the old gentleman, advancing inquisitively by a step at a time, ‘it can't be Mr Bashwood!'

It
was
Mr Bashwood – Mr Bashwood, whose constitutional curiosity had taken him privately to the station, bent on solving the mystery of Allan's sudden journey to London – Mr Bashwood who had seen and heard, behind his angle in the wall, what everybody else had seen and heard, and who appeared to have been impressed by it in no ordinary way. He stood stiffly against the wall, like a man petrified, with one hand pressed on his bare head, and the other holding his hat – he stood, with a dull flush on his face, and a dull stare in his eyes, looking straight into the black depths of the tunnel outside the station, as if the train to London had disappeared in it but the moment before.

‘Is your head bad?' asked the old gentleman. ‘Take my advice. Go home and lie down.'

Mr Bashwood listened mechanically, with his usual attention, and answered mechanically, with his usual politeness.

‘Yes, sir,' he said, in a low lost tone, like a man between dreaming and waking; ‘I'll go home and lie down.'

‘That's right,' rejoined the old gentleman, making for the door. ‘And take a pill, Mr Bashwood – take a pill.'

Five minutes later, the porter charged with the business of locking up the station, found Mr Bashwood, still standing bareheaded against the wall, and still looking straight into the black depths of the tunnel, as if the train to London had disappeared in it but a moment since.

‘Come, sir!' said the porter. ‘I must lock up. Are you out of sorts? Anything wrong with your inside? Try a drop of gin-and-bitters.'

‘Yes,' said Mr Bashwood, answering the porter exactly as he had answered the old gentleman; ‘I'll try a drop of gin-and-bitters.'

The porter took him by the arm, and led him out. ‘You'll get it there,' said the man, pointing confidentially to a public-house; ‘and you'll get it good.'

‘I shall get it there,' echoed Mr Bashwood, still mechanically repeating what was said to him; ‘and I shall get it good.'

His will seemed to be paralysed; his actions depended absolutely on what other people told him to do. He took a few steps in the direction of the public-house – hesitated; staggered – and caught at the pillar of one of the station lamps near him.

The porter followed, and took him by the arm once more.

‘Why, you've been drinking already!' exclaimed the man, with a suddenly-quickened interest in Mr Bashwood's case. ‘What was it? Beer?'

Mr Bashwood, in his low lost tones, echoed the last word.

It was close on the porter's dinner-time. But when the lower orders of the English people believe they have discovered an intoxicated man, their sympathy with him is boundless. The porter let his dinner take its chance, and carefully assisted Mr Bashwood to reach the public-house. ‘Gin-and-bitters will put you on your legs again,' whispered this Samaritan setter-right of the alcoholic disasters of mankind.

If Mr Bashwood had really been intoxicated, the effect of the porter's remedy would have been marvellous indeed. Almost as soon as the glass was emptied, the stimulant did its work. The long-weakened nervous system of the deputy-steward, prostrated for the moment by the shock that had fallen on it, rallied again like a weary horse under the spur. The dull flush on his cheeks, the dull stare in his eyes, disappeared simultaneously. After a momentary effort, he recovered memory enough of what had passed to thank the porter, and to ask whether he would take something himself. The worthy creature instantly accepted a dose of his own remedy – in the capacity of a preventive – and went home to dinner as only those men can go home who are physically warmed by gin-and-bitters, and morally elevated by the performance of a good action.