Armadale (86 page)

The time passed; and still, though his resolution to stand between Miss Gwilt and her marriage remained unbroken, he was as far as ever from discovering the means which might lead him to his end. The more he thought and thought of it, the darker and the darker his course in the future looked to him.

He rose again, as wearily as he had sat down, and went to his cupboard. ‘I'm feverish and thirsty,' he said; ‘a cup of tea may help me.' He opened his canister, and measured out his small allowance of tea, less carefully than usual. ‘Even my own hands won't serve me today!' he thought, as he scraped together the few grains of tea that he had spilt, and put them carefully back in the canister.

In that fine summer weather, the one fire in the house was the kitchen-fire. He went downstairs for the boiling water, with his teapot in his hand.

Nobody but the landlady was in the kitchen. She was one of the many English matrons whose path through this world is a path of thorns; and who take a dismal pleasure, whenever the opportunity is
afforded them, in inspecting the scratched and bleeding feet of other people in a like condition with themselves. Her one vice was of the lighter sort – the vice of curiosity; and among the many counterbalancing virtues she possessed, was the virtue of greatly respecting Mr Bashwood, as a lodger whose rent was regularly paid, and whose ways were always quiet and civil from one year's end to another.

‘What did you please to want, sir?' asked the landlady. ‘Boiling water, is it? Did you ever know the water boil, Mr Bashwood, when you wanted it? Did you ever see a sulkier fire than that? I'll put a stick or two in, if you'll wait a little, and give me the chance. Dear, dear me, you'll excuse my mentioning it, sir, but how poorly you do look to-day!'

The strain on Mr Bashwood's mind was beginning to tell. Something of the helplessness which he had shown at the station, appeared again in his face and manner as he put his teapot on the kitchen-table, and sat down.

‘I'm in trouble, ma'am,' he said quietly; ‘and I find trouble gets harder to bear than it used to be.'

‘Ah, you may well say that!' groaned the landlady. ‘
I'm
ready for the undertaker, Mr Bashwood, when
my
time comes, whatever you may be. You're too lonely, sir. When you're in trouble it's some help – though not much – to shift a share of it off on another person's shoulders. If your good lady had only been alive now, sir, what a comfort you would have found her, wouldn't you?'

A momentary spasm of pain passed across Mr Bashwood's face. The landlady had ignorantly recalled him to the misfortunes of his married life. He had been long since forced to quiet her curiosity about his family affairs, by telling her that he was a widower, and that his domestic circumstances had not been happy ones; but he had taken her no further into his confidence than this. The sad story which he had related to Midwinter, of his drunken wife who had ended her miserable life in a lunatic asylum, was a story which he had shrunk from confiding to the talkative woman, who would have confided it in her turn to every one else in the house.

‘What I always say to my husband, when he's low, sir,' pursued the landlady, intent on the kettle, ‘is, “What would you do
now
, Sam, without Me?” When his temper don't get the better of him (it will boil directly, Mr Bashwood), he says, “Elizabeth, I could do nothing.” When his temper does get the better of him, he says, “I should try the public-house, missus; and I'll try it now.” Ah, I've got
my
troubles! A man with grown-up sons and daughters, tippling in a public-house! I don't call to mind, Mr Bashwood, whether
you
ever had any sons and
daughters? And yet, now I think of it, I seem to fancy you said yes, you had. Daughters, sir, weren't they? – and, ah, dear! dear! to be sure! all dead.'

‘I had one daughter, ma'am,' said Mr Bashwood, patiently – ‘Only one, who died before she was a year old.'

‘Only one!' repeated the sympathizing landlady. ‘It's as near boiling as it ever will be, sir; give me the teapot. Only one! Ah, it comes heavier (don't it?) when it's an only child? You said it was an only child, I think, didn't you, sir?'

For a moment, Mr Bashwood looked at the woman with vacant eyes, and without attempting to answer her. After ignorantly recalling the memory of the wife who had disgraced him, she was now, as ignorantly, forcing him back on the miserable remembrance of the son who had ruined and deserted him. For the first time, since he had told his story to Midwinter, at their introductory interview in the great house, his mind reverted once more to the bitter disappointment and disaster of the past. Again, he thought of the bygone days, when he had become security for his son, and when that son's dishonesty had forced him to sell everything he possessed, to pay the forfeit that was exacted when the forfeit was due. ‘I have a son, ma'am,' he said, becoming conscious that the landlady was looking at him in mute and melancholy surprise. ‘I did my best to help him forward in the world, and he has behaved very badly to me.'

‘Did he now?' rejoined the landlady, with an appearance of the greatest interest. ‘Behaved badly to you – almost broke your heart, didn't he? Ah, it will come home to him, sooner or later. Don't you fear! Honour your father and mother, wasn't put on Moses's tables of stone for nothing, Mr Bashwood. Where may he be, and what is he doing now, sir?'

The question was in effect almost the same as the question which Midwinter had put when the circumstances had been described to him. As Mr Bashwood had answered it on the former occasion, so (in nearly the same words) he answered it now.

‘My son is in London, ma'am, for all I know to the contrary. He was employed, when I last heard of him, in no very creditable way, at the Private Inquiry Office—'

At those words, he suddenly checked himself. His face flushed, his eyes brightened; he pushed away the cup which had just been filled for him, and rose from his seat. The landlady started back a step. There was something in her lodger's face that she had never seen in it before.

‘I hope I've not offended you, sir,' said the woman, recovering her
self-possession, and looking a little too ready to take offence on her side, at a moment's notice.

‘Far from it, ma'am, far from it!' he rejoined in a strangely eager, hurried way. ‘I have just remembered something – something very important. I must go upstairs – it's a letter, a letter, a letter. I'll come back to my tea, ma'am. I beg your pardon, I'm much obliged to you, you've been very kind – I'll say good-by, if you'll allow me, for the present.' To the landlady's amazement, he cordially shook hands with her, and made for the door, leaving tea and teapot to take care of themselves.

The moment he reached his own room, he locked himself in. For a little while he stood holding by the chimney-piece, waiting to recover his breath. The moment he could move again, he opened his writing-desk on the table. ‘That for you, Mr Pedgift and Son!' he said, with a snap of his fingers as he sat down. ‘I've got a son too!'

There was a knock at the door – a knock, soft, considerate, and confidential. The anxious landlady wished to know whether Mr Bash-wood was ill, and begged to intimate for the second time, that she earnestly trusted she had given him no offence.

‘No! no!' he called through the door. ‘I'm quite well – I'm writing, ma'am, I'm writing – please to excuse me. She's a good woman; she's an excellent woman,' he thought when the landlady had retired. ‘I'll make her a little present. My mind's so unsettled, I might never have thought of it but for her. Oh, if my boy is at the office still! Oh, if I can only write a letter that will make him pity me!'

He took up his pen, and sat thinking anxiously, thinking long, before he touched the paper. Slowly, with many patient pauses to think and think again, and with more than ordinary care to make his writing legible, he traced these lines:

M
Y DEAR
J
AMES
, – You will be surprised, I am afraid, to see my handwriting. Pray don't suppose I am going to ask you for money, or to reproach you for having sold me out of house and home when you forfeited your security, and I had to pay. I am willing, and anxious, to let bygones be bygones, and to forget the past.

It is in your power (if you are still at the Private Inquiry Office) to do me a great service. I am in sore anxiety and trouble, on the subject of a person in whom I am interested. The person is a lady. Please don't make game of me for confessing this, if you can help it. If you knew what I am now suffering, I think you would be more inclined to pity than to make game of me.

I would enter into particulars, only I know your quick temper, and I fear exhausting your patience. Perhaps, it may be enough to say, that I have reason to believe the lady's past life has not been a very creditable one, and that I am interested – more interested than words can tell – in finding out what her life has really been, and in making the discovery within a fortnight from the present time.
⁴

Though I know very little about the ways of business in an office like yours, I can understand that, without first having the lady's present address, nothing can be done to help me. Unfortunately, I am not yet acquainted with her present address. I only know that she went to town to-day, accompanied by a gentleman, in whose employment I now am, and who (as I believe) will be likely to write to me for money before many days more are over his head.

Is this circumstance of a nature to help us? I venture to say ‘us', because I count already, my dear boy, on your kind assistance and advice. Don't let money stand between us – I have saved a little something, and it is all freely at your disposal. Pray, pray write to me by return of post! If you will only try your best to end the dreadful suspense under which I am now suffering, you will atone for all the grief and disappointment you caused me in times that are past, and you will confer an obligation that he will never forget, on,

Your affectionate Father,

F
ELIX
B
ASHWOOD.

After waiting a little, to dry his eyes, Mr Bashwood added the date and address, and directed the letter to his son, at ‘The Private Inquiry Office, Shadyside Place, London.' That done, he went out at once, and posted his letter with his own hands. It was then Monday; and, if the answer was sent by return of post, the answer would be received on Wednesday morning.

The interval day, the Tuesday, was passed by Mr Bashwood in the steward's office at the great house. He had a double motive for absorbing himself as deeply as might be in the various occupations connected with the management of the estate. In the first place, employment helped him to control the devouring impatience with which he looked for the coming of the next day. In the second place, the more forward he was with the business of the office, the more free he would be to join his son
in London, without attracting suspicion to himself by openly neglecting the interests placed under his charge.

Towards the Tuesday afternoon, vague rumours of something wrong at the cottage, found their way (through Major Milroy's servants) to the servants at the great house, and attempted ineffectually through this latter channel to engage the attention of Mr Bashwood, impenetrably fixed on other things. The major and Miss Neelie had been shut up together in mysterious conference; and Miss Neelie's appearance after the close of the interview, plainly showed that she had been crying. This had happened on the Monday afternoon; and on the next day (that present Tuesday) the major had startled the household by announcing briefly that his daughter wanted a change to the air of the sea-side, and that he proposed taking her himself, by the next train, to Lowestoft. The two had gone away together, both very serious and silent, but both, apparently, very good friends, for all that. Opinions at the great house attributed this domestic revolution to the reports current on the subject of Allan and Miss Gwilt. Opinions at the cottage rejected that solution of the difficulty, on practical grounds. Miss Neelie had remained inaccessibly shut up in her own room, from the Monday afternoon to the Tuesday morning when her father took her away. The major, during the same interval, had not been outside the door, and had spoken to nobody. And Mrs Milroy, at the first attempt of her new attendant to inform her of the prevailing scandal in the town, had sealed the servant's lips by flying into one of her terrible passions, the instant Miss Gwilt's name was mentioned. Something must have happened, of course, to take Major Milroy and his daughter so suddenly from home – but that something was certainly not Mr Armadale's scandalous elopement, in broad daylight, with Miss Gwilt.

The afternoon passed, and the evening passed, and no other event happened but the purely private and personal event which had taken place at the cottage. Nothing occurred (for nothing in the nature of things
could
occur) to dissipate the delusion on which Miss Gwilt had counted – the delusion which all Thorpe-Ambrose now shared with Mr Bashwood, that she had gone privately to London with Allan, in the character of Allan's future wife.

On the Wednesday morning, the postman, entering the street in which Mr Bashwood lived, was encountered by Mr Bashwood himself, so eager to know, if there was a letter for him, that he had come out without his hat. There
was
a letter for him – the letter that he longed for from his vagabond son.

These were the terms, in which Bashwood the younger answered his father's supplication for help – after having previously ruined his father's prospects for life:

Shadyside Place, Tuesday, July 29.

M
Y DEAR
D
AD
, – We have some little practice in dealing with mysteries at this office; but the mystery of your letter beats me altogether. Are you speculating on the interesting hidden frailties of some charming woman? Or, after
your
experience of matrimony, are you actually going to give me a stepmother at this time of day? Whichever it is, upon my life your letter interests me.