Armadale (88 page)

Half-past two! Midwinter will be here in half an hour. I must go and ask my glass how I look. I must rouse my invention, and make up my little domestic romance. Am I feeling nervous about it? Something flutters in the place where my heart used to be. At five and thirty, too! and after such a life as mine!

Six o'clock
. – He has just gone. The day for our marriage is a day determined on already.

I have tried to rest, and recover myself. I can't rest. I have come back to these leaves. There is much to be written in them since Midwinter has been here, that concerns me nearly.

Let me begin with what I hate most to remember, and so be the sooner done with it – let me begin with the paltry string of falsehoods I told him about my family troubles.

What
can
be the secret of this man's hold on me? How is it that he alters me so that I hardly know myself again? I was like myself in the railway carriage yesterday with Armadale. It was surely frightful to be talking to the living man, through the whole of that long journey, with the knowledge in me all the while that I meant to be his widow – and yet I was only excited and fevered. Hour after hour I never shrunk once from speaking to Armadale – but the first trumpery falsehood I told Midwinter, turned me cold when I saw that he believed it! I felt a dreadful hysterical choking in the throat when he entreated me not to reveal my troubles. And once – I am horrified when I think of it – once when he said, ‘If I
could
love you more dearly, I should love you more dearly, now,' I was within a hair's breadth of turning traitor to myself. I was on the very point of crying out to him, ‘Lies! all lies! I'm a fiend in human shape! Marry the wretchedest creature that prowls the streets, and you will marry a better woman than me!' Yes! the seeing his eyes moisten, the hearing his voice tremble while I was deceiving him, shook me in that way. I have seen handsomer men by hundreds, cleverer men by hundreds. What can this man have roused in me? Is it Love? I thought I
had
loved, never to love again. Does a woman not love, when the man's hardness to her drives her to drown herself? A man drove
me
to that last despair in days gone by. Did all my misery at that time come from something which was not Love? Have I lived to be five and thirty, and am I only feeling, now, what Love really is? – now, when it is too late? Ridiculous! Besides, what is the use of asking? What do I know about it? What does any woman ever know? The more we think of it, the more we deceive ourselves. I wish I had been born an animal. My beauty might have been of some use to me then – it might have got me a good master.

Here is a whole page of my diary filled; and nothing written yet that is of the slightest use to me! My miserable made-up story must be told over again here, while the incidents are fresh in my memory – or how am I to refer to it consistently on after-occasions when I may be obliged to speak of it again?

There was nothing new in what I told him: it was the commonplace rubbish of the circulating libraries. A dead father; a lost fortune; vagabond brothers, whom I dread ever seeing again; a bedridden mother dependent on my exertions – No! I can't write it down! I hate myself, I despise myself, when I remember that
he
believed it because I said it – that
he
was distressed by it, because it was my story! I will face the chances of contradicting myself – I will risk discovery and ruin – anything rather than dwell on that contemptible deception of him a moment longer.

My lies came to an end at last. And then he talked to me of himself, and of his prospects. Oh, what a relief it was to turn to that, at the time! What a relief it is to come to it now!

He has accepted the offer about which he wrote to me at Thorpe-Ambrose; and he is now engaged as occasional foreign correspondent to the new newspaper. His first destination is Naples. I wish it had been some other place, for I have certain past associations with Naples which I am not at all anxious to renew. It has been arranged that he is to leave England not later than the eleventh of next month. By that time, therefore, I, who am to go with him, must go with him as his wife.

There is not the slightest difficulty about the marriage. All this part of it is so easy, that I begin to dread an accident. The proposal to keep the thing strictly private – which it might have embarrassed me to make – comes from him. Marrying me in his own name – the name that he has kept concealed from every living creature but myself and Mr Brock – it is his interest that not a soul who knows him should be present at the ceremony; his friend Armadale least of all. He has been a week in London already. When another week has passed, he proposes to get the Licence, and to be married in the church belonging to the parish in which the hotel is situated. These are the only necessary formalities. I had but to say ‘Yes' (he told me), and to feel no further anxiety about the future. I said ‘Yes', with such a devouring anxiety about the future, that I was afraid he would see it. What minutes the next few minutes were, when he whispered delicious words to me, while I hid my face on his breast!

I recovered myself first, and led him back to the subject of Armadale; having my own reasons for wanting to know what they said to each other, after I had left them yesterday.

The manner in which Midwinter replied, showed me that he was speaking under the restraint of respecting a confidence placed in him by his friend. Long before he had done, I detected what the confidence was. Armadale had been consulting him (exactly as I anticipated) on
the subject of the elopement. Although he appears to have remonstrated against taking the girl secretly away from her home, Midwinter seems to have felt some delicacy about speaking strongly; remembering (widely different as the circumstances are) that he was contemplating a private marriage himself. I gathered, at any rate, that he had produced very little effect by what he had said; and that Armadale had already carried out his absurd intention of consulting the head-clerk in the office of his London lawyers.

Having got as far as this, Midwinter put the question which I felt must come sooner or later. He asked if I objected to our engagement being mentioned in the strictest secresy to his friend.

‘I will answer,' he said, ‘for Allan's respecting any confidence that I place in him. And I will undertake, when the time comes, so to use my influence over him as to prevent his being present at the marriage, and discovering (what he must never know) that my name is the same as his own. It would help me,' he went on, ‘to speak more strongly about the object that has brought him to London, if I can requite the frankness with which he has spoken of his private affairs to me, by the same frankness on my side.'

I had no choice but to give the necessary permission, and I gave it. It is of the utmost importance to me to know what course Major Milroy takes with his daughter and Armadale, after receiving my anonymous letter; and, unless I invite Armadale's confidence in some way, I am nearly certain to be kept in the dark. Let him once be trusted with the knowledge that I am to be Midwinter's wife; and what he tells his friend about his love-affair, he will tell me.
³

When it had been understood between us that Armadale was to be taken into our confidence, we began to talk about ourselves again. How the time flew! What a sweet enchantment it was to forget everything in his arms! How he loves me! – ah, poor fellow, how he loves me!

I have promised to meet him to-morrow morning in the Regent's Park. The less he is seen here the better. The people in this house are strangers to me certainly – but it may be wise to consult appearances, as if I was still at Thorpe-Ambrose, and not to produce the impression, even on their minds, that Midwinter is engaged to me. If any after-inquiries are made, when I have run my grand risk, the testimony of my London landlady might be testimony worth having.

That wretched old Bashwood! Writing of Thorpe-Ambrose reminds me of him. What will he say when the town-gossip tells him that Armadale has taken me to London, in a carriage reserved for ourselves?

It really is too absurd in a man of Bashwood's age and appearance to presume to be in love!…

July 30th
. News at last! Armadale has heard from Miss Milroy. My anonymous letter has produced its effect. The girl is removed from Thorpe-Ambrose already; and the whole project of the elopement is blown to the winds at once and for ever. This was the substance of what Midwinter had to tell me, when I met him in the Park. I affected to be excessively astonished, and to feel the necessary feminine longing to know all the particulars. ‘Not that I expected to have my curiosity satisfied,' I added, ‘for Mr Armadale and I are little better than mere acquaintances, after all.'

‘You are far more than a mere acquaintance in Allan's eyes,' said Midwinter. ‘Having your permission to trust him, I have already told him how near and dear you are to me.'

Hearing this, I thought it desirable, before I put any questions about Miss Milroy, to attend to my own interests first, and to find out what effect the announcement of my coming marriage had produced on Armadale. It was possible that he might be still suspicious of me, and that the inquiries he made in London, at Mrs Milroy's instigation, might be still hanging on his mind.

‘Did Mr Armadale seem surprised,' I asked, ‘when you told him of our engagement, and when you said it was to be kept a secret from everybody?'

‘He seemed greatly surprised,' said Midwinter, ‘to hear that we were going to be married. All he said when I told him it must be kept a secret was, that he supposed there were family reasons on your side for making the marriage a private one.'

‘What did you say,' I inquired, ‘when he made that remark?'

‘I said the family reasons were on my side,' answered Midwinter. ‘And I thought it right to add – considering that Allan had allowed himself to be misled by the ignorant distrust of you at Thorpe-Ambrose – that you had confided to me the whole of your sad family story, and that you had amply justified your unwillingness, under any ordinary circumstances, to speak of your private affairs.'

(I breathed freely again. He had said just what was wanted, just in the right way.)

‘Thank you,' I said, ‘for putting me right in your friend's estimation. Does he wish to see me?' I added, by way of getting back to the other subject of Miss Milroy and the elopement.

‘He is longing to see you,' returned Midwinter. ‘He is in great
distress, poor fellow – distress which I have done my best to soothe, but which I believe would yield far more readily to a woman's sympathy than to mine.'

‘Where is he now?' I asked.

He was at the hotel; and to the hotel I instantly proposed that we should go. It is a busy, crowded place; and (with my veil down) I have less fear of compromising myself there than at my quiet lodgings. Besides, it is vitally important to me to know what Armadale does next, under this total change of circumstances, – for I must so control his proceedings as to get him away from England if I can. We took a cab: such was my eagerness to sympathize with the heart-broken lover, that we took a cab!

Anything so ridiculous as Armadale's behaviour under the double shock of discovering that his young lady has been taken away from him, and that I am to be married to Midwinter, I never before witnessed in all my experience. To say that he was like a child is a libel on all children who are not born idiots. He congratulated me on my coming marriage, and execrated the unknown wretch who had written the anonymous letter, little thinking that he was speaking of one and the same person in one and the same breath. Now he submissively acknowledged that Major Milroy had his rights as a father, and now he reviled the major as having no feeling for anything but his mechanics and his clock. At one moment he started up, with the tears in his eyes, and declared that his ‘darling Neelie' was an angel on earth. At another he sat down sulkily, and thought that a girl of her spirit might have run away on the spot and joined him in London. After a good half-hour of this absurd exhibition, I succeeded in quieting him; and then a few words of tender inquiry produced what I had expressly come to the hotel to see – Miss Milroy's letter.

It was outrageously long and rambling and confused – in short, the letter of a fool. I had to wade through plenty of vulgar sentiment and lamentation, and to lose time and patience over maudlin outbursts of affection, and nauseous kisses enclosed in circles of ink. However, I contrived to extract the information I wanted at last; and here it is:

The major, on receipt of my anonymous warning, appears to have sent at once for his daughter, and to have shown her the letter. ‘You know what a hard life I lead with your mother; don't make it harder still, Neelie, by deceiving me.' That was all the poor old gentleman said. I always did like the major; and, though he was afraid to show it, I know he always liked me. His appeal to his daughter (if
her
account of it
is to be believed) cut her to the heart. She burst out crying (let her alone for crying at the right moment!), and confessed everything.

After giving her time to recover herself (if he had given her a good box on the ears it would have been more to the purpose!) the major seems to have put certain questions, and to have become convinced (as I was convinced myself) that his daughter's heart, or fancy, or whatever she calls it, was really and truly set on Armadale. The discovery evidently distressed as well as surprised him. He appears to have hesitated, and to have maintained his own unfavourable opinion of Miss Neelie's lover for some little time. But his daughter's tears and entreaties (so like the weakness of the dear old gentleman!) shook him at last. Though he firmly refused to allow of any marriage engagement at present, he consented to overlook the clandestine meetings in the park, and to put Armadale's fitness to become his son-in-law to the test, on certain conditions.

These conditions are, that for the next six months to come, all communication is to be broken off, both personally and by writing, between Armadale and Miss Milroy. That space of time is to be occupied by the young gentleman as he himself thinks best, and by the young lady in completing her education at school. If, when the six months have passed, they are both still of the same mind, and if Armadale's conduct in the interval has been such as to improve the major's opinion of him, he will be allowed to present himself in the character of Miss Milroy's suitor – and, in six months more, if all goes well, the marriage may take place.