Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  The last mellow hours of the day and the first cool breezes of the long summer evening had met, before the dishes were all laid waste, and the bottles as empty as bottles should be. This point in the proceedings attained, the picnic party looked lazily at Pedgift Junior to know what was to be done next. That inexhaustible functionary was equal as ever to all the calls on him. He had a new amusement ready before the quickest of the company could so much as ask him what that amusement was to be.

  ‘Fond of music on the water, Miss Milroy?’ he asked in his airiest and pleasantest manner.

  Miss Milroy adored music, both on the water and the land – always excepting the one case when she was practising the art herself on the piano at home.

  ‘We’ll get out of the reeds first,’ said young Pedgift. He gave his orders to the boatmen – dived briskly into the little cabin – and reappeared with a concertina in his hand. ‘Neat, Miss Milroy, isn’t it?’ he observed, pointing to his initials, inlaid on the instrument in mother-of-pearl. ‘My name’s Augustus, like my father’s. Some of my friends knock off the “A ”, and call me “Gustus Junior”. A small joke goes a long way among friends, doesn’t it, Mr Armadale? I sing a little, to my own accompaniment, ladies and gentlemen; and, if quite agreeable, I shall be proud and happy to do my best.’

  ’Stop!’ cried Mrs Pentecost; ‘I doat on music’

  With this formidable announcement, the old lady opened a prodigious leather-bag, from which she never parted night or day, and took out an ear-trumpet of the old-fashioned kind – something between a key bugle and a French horn. ‘I don’t care to use the thing generally,’ explained Mrs Pentecost, ‘because I’m afraid of it’s making me deafer than ever. But I can’t and won’t miss the music. I doat on music. If you’ll hold the other end, Sammy, I’ll stick it in my ear. Neelie, my dear, tell him to begin.’

  Young Pedgift was troubled with no nervous hesitation: he began at once – not with songs of the light and modern kind, such as might have been expected from an amateur of his age and character – but with declamatory and patriotic bursts of poetry, set to the bold and blatant music which the people of England loved dearly at the earlier part of the present century, and which, whenever they can get it, they love dearly still. ‘The Death of Marmion’, ‘The Battle of the Baltic’, ‘The Bay of Biscay’, ‘Nelson’,2 under various vocal aspects, as exhibited by the late Braham – these were the songs in which the roaring concertina and strident tenor of Gustus Junior exulted together. ‘Tell me when you’re tired, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the minstrel solicitor. ‘There’s no conceit about me. Will you have a little sentiment by way of variety? Shall I wind up with “The Mistletoe Bough”, and “Poor Mary Anne”?’3

  Having favoured his audience with those two cheerful melodies, young Pedgift respectfully requested the rest of the company to follow his vocal example in turn; offering, in every case, to play ‘a running accompaniment’ impromptu, if the singer would only be so obliging as to favour him with the key-note.

  ‘Go on, somebody!’ cried Mrs Pentecost eagerly. ‘I tell you again, I doat on music. We haven’t had half enough yet, have we, Sammy?’

  The Reverend Samuel made no reply. The unhappy man had reasons of his own – not exactly in his bosom, but a little lower – for remaining silent, in the midst of the general hilarity and the general applause. Alas for humanity! Even maternal love is alloyed with mortal fallibility. Owing much already to his excellent mother, the Reverend Samuel was now additionally indebted to her for a smart indigestion.

  Nobody, however, noticed as yet the signs and tokens of internal revolution in the curate’s face. Everybody was occupied in entreating everybody else to sing. Miss Milroy appealed to the founder of the feast. ‘Do sing something, Mr Armadale,’ she said; ‘I should so like to hear you!’

  ‘If you once begin, sir,’ added the cheerful Pedgift, ‘you’ll find it get uncommonly easy as you go on. Music is a science which requires to be taken by the throat at starting.’

  ‘With all my heart,’ said Allan, in his good-humoured way. ‘I know lots of tunes, but the worst of it is the words escape me. I wonder if I can remember one of Moore’s Melodies? My poor mother used to be fond of teaching me Moore’s Melodies when I was a boy.’

  ‘Whose melodies?’ asked Mrs Pentecost. ‘Moore’s? Aha! I know Tom Moore by heart.’

  ‘Perhaps, in that case, you will be good enough to help me, ma’am, if my memory breaks down,’ rejoined Allan. ‘I’ll take the easiest melody in the whole collection, if you’ll allow me. Everybody knows it – “Eveleen’s Bower”.’4

  ‘I’m familiar, in a general sort of way, with the national melodies of England, Scotland, and Ireland,’ said Pedgift Junior. ‘I’ll accompany you, sir, with the greatest pleasure. This is the sort of thing, I think.’ He seated himself cross-legged on the roof of the cabin, and burst into a complicated musical improvisation, wonderful to hear – a mixture of instrumental flourishes and groans; a jig corrected by a dirge, and a dirge enlivened by a jig. ‘That’s the sort of thing,’ said young Pedgift, with his smile of supreme confidence. ‘Fire away, sir!’

  Mrs Pentecost elevated her trumpet, and Allan elevated his voice. ‘“Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower—”’ He stopped; the accompaniment stopped; the audience waited. ‘It’s a most extraordinary thing,’ said Allan; ‘I thought I had the next line on the tip of my tongue, and it seems to have escaped me. I’ll begin again, if you have no objection. “Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower—”’

  ‘“The lord of the valley with false vows came,”’ said Mrs Pentecost.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Allan. ‘Now I shall get on smoothly. “Oh, weep for the hour when to Eveleen’s Bower, the lord of the valley with false vows came. The moon was shining bright—”’

  ‘No!’ said Mrs Pentecost.

  ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ remonstrated Allan. ‘“The moon was shining bright—”’

  ‘The moon wasn’t doing anything of the kind,’ said Mrs Pentecost. Pedgift Junior, foreseeing a dispute, persevered sotto voce with the accompaniment, in the interests of harmony.

  ‘Moore’s own words, ma’am,’ said Allan, ‘in my mother’s copy of the Melodies.’

  ‘Your mother’s copy was wrong,’ retorted Mrs Pentecost. ‘Didn’t I tell you just now that I knew Tom Moore by heart?’

  Pedgift Junior’s peace-making concertina still flourished and groaned, in the minor key.

  ‘Well, what did the moon do?’ asked Allan, in despair.

  ‘What the moon ought to have done, sir, or Tom Moore wouldn’t have written it so,’ rejoined Mrs Pentecost. ‘“ The moon hid her light from the heaven that night, and wept behind her clouds o’er the maiden’s shame!” I wish that young man would leave off playing,’ added Mrs Pentecost, venting her rising irritation on Gustus Junior. ‘I’ve had enough of him – he tickles my ears.’

  ‘Proud, I’m sure, ma’am,’ said the unblushing Pedgift. ‘The whole science of music consists in tickling the ears.’

  ‘We seem to be drifting into a sort of argument,’ remarked Major Milroy, placidly. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if Mr Armadale went on with his song?’

  ‘Do go on, Mr Armadale!’ added the major’s daughter. ‘Do go on, Mr Pedgift!’

  ‘One of them doesn’t know the words, and the other doesn’t know the music,’ said Mrs Pentecost. ‘Let them go on, if they can!’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,’ said Pedgift Junior; ‘I’m ready to go on, myself, to any extent. Now, Mr Armadale!’

  Allan opened his lips to take up the unfinished melody where he had last left it. Before he could utter a note, the curate suddenly rose, with a ghastly face, and a hand pressed convulsively over the middle region of his waistcoat.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ cried the whole boating party in chorus.

  ‘I am exceedingly unwell,’ said the Reverend Samuel Pentecost.

  The boat was instantly in a state of co
nfusion. ‘Eveleen’s Bower’ expired on Allan’s lips, and even the irrepressible concertina of Pedgift was silenced at last. The alarm proved to be quite needless. Mrs Pentecost’s son possessed a mother, and that mother had a bag. In two seconds, the art of medicine occupied the place left vacant in the attention of the company by the art of music.

  ‘Rub it gently, Sammy,’ said Mrs Pentecost. ‘I’ll get out the bottles and give you a dose. It’s his poor stomach, major. Hold my trumpet, somebody – and stop the boat. You take that bottle, Neelie, my dear; and you take this one, Mr Armadale; and give them to me as I want them. Ah, poor dear, I know what’s the matter with him! Want of power here, major – cold, acid, and flabby. Ginger to warm him; soda to correct him; salvolatile to hold him up. There, Sammy! drink it before it settles – and then go and lie down, my dear, in that dog-kennel of a place they call the cabin. No more music!’ added Mrs Pentecost, shaking her forefinger at the proprietor of the concertina – unless it’s a hymn, and that I don’t object to.’

  Nobody appearing to be in a fit frame of mind for singing a hymn, the all-accomplished Pedgift drew upon his stores of local knowledge, and produced a new idea. The course of the boat was immediately changed under his direction. In a few minutes more, the company found themselves in a little island-creek, with a lonely cottage at the far end of it, and a perfect forest of reeds closing the view all round them.

  ‘What do you say, ladies and gentlemen, to stepping on shore and seeing what a reed-cutter’s cottage looks like?’ suggested young Pedgift.

  ‘We say, yes, to be sure,’ answered Allan. ‘I think our spirits have been a little dashed by Mr Pentecost’s illness and Mrs Pentecost’s bag,’ he added, in a whisper to Miss Milroy. ‘A change of this sort is the very thing we want to set us all going again.’

  He and young Pedgift handed Miss Milroy out of the boat. The major followed. Mrs Pentecost sat immovable as the Egyptian Sphinx, with her bag on her knees, mounting guard over ‘sammy’ in the cabin.

  ‘We must keep the fun going, sir,’ said Allan, as he helped the major over the side of the boat. ‘We haven’t half done yet with the enjoyment of the day.’

  His voice seconded his hearty belief in his own prediction to such good purpose, that even Mrs Pentecost heard him, and ominously shook her head.

  ‘Ah!’ sighed the curate’s mother. ‘If you were as old as I am, young gentleman, you wouldn’t feel quite so sure of the enjoyment of the day!’

  So, in rebuke of the rashness of youth, spoke the caution of age. The negative view is notoriously the safe view, all the world over – and the Pentecost philosophy is, as a necessary consequence, generally in the right.

  CHAPTER IX

  FATE OR CHANCE?

  It was close on six o’clock when Allan and his friends left the boat; and the evening influence was creeping already, in its mystery and its stillness, over the watery solitude of the Broads.

  The shore in these wild regions was not like the shore elsewhere. Firm as it looked, the garden-ground in front of the reed-cutter’s cottage was floating ground, that rose and fell and oozed into puddles under the pressure of the foot. The boatmen who guided the visitors warned them to keep the path, and pointed through gaps in the reeds and pollards to grassy places, on which strangers would have walked confidently, where the crust of earth was not strong enough to bear the weight of a child over the unfathomed depths of slime and water beneath. The solitary cottage, built of planks pitched black, stood on ground that had been steadied and strengthened by resting it on piles. A little wooden tower rose at one end of the roof, and served as a look-out post in the fowling season. From this elevation the eye ranged far and wide over a wilderness of winding water and lonesome marsh. If the reed-cutter had lost his boat, he would have been as completely isolated from all communication with town or village, as if his place of abode had been a light-vessel instead of a cottage. Neither he nor his family complained of their solitude, or looked in any way the rougher or the worse for it. His wife received the visitors hospitably, in a snug little room, with a raftered ceiling, and windows which looked like windows in a cabin on board ship. His wife’s father told stories of the famous days when the smugglers came up from the sea at night, rowing through the network of rivers with muffled oars till they gained the lonely Broads, and sunk their spirit casks in the water, far from the coastguard’s reach. His wild little children played at hide-and-seek with the visitors; and the visitors ranged in and out of the cottage, and round and round the morsel of firm earth on which it stood, surprised and delighted by the novelty of all they saw. The one person who noticed the advance of the evening – the one person who thought of the flying time and the stationary Pentecosts in the boat – was young Pedgift. That experienced pilot of the Broads looked askance at his watch, and drew Allan aside at the first opportunity.

  ‘I don’t wish to hurry you, Mr Armadale,’ said Pedgift Junior; ‘but the time is getting on, and there’s a lady in the case.’

  ‘A lady?’ repeated Allan.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined young Pedgift. ‘A lady from London; connected (if you’ll allow me to jog your memory) with a pony-chaise and white harness.’

  ‘Good heavens, the governess!’ cried Allan; ‘why, we have forgotten all about her!’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, sir; there’s plenty of time, if we only get into the boat again. This is how it stands, Mr Armadale. We settled, if you remember, to have the gipsy tea-making at the next “Broad” to this – Hurle Mere?’1

  ‘Certainly,’ said Allan. ‘Hurle Mere is the place where my friend Midwinter has promised to come and meet us.’

  ‘Hurle Mere is where the governess will be, sir, if your coachman follows my directions,’ pursued young Pedgift. ‘We have got nearly an hour’s punting to do; along the twists and turns of the narrow waters (which they call The Sounds here) between this and Hurle Mere; and according to my calculations we must get on board again in five minutes, if we are to be in time to meet the governess and to meet your friend.’

  ‘We mustn’t miss my friend, on any account,’ said Allan; ‘or the governess either, of course. I’ll tell the major.’

  Major Milroy was at that moment preparing to mount the wooden watch-tower of the cottage to see the view. The ever useful Pedgift volunteered to go up with him, and rattle off all the necessary local explanations in half the time which the reed-cutter would occupy in describing his own neighbourhood to a stranger.

  Allan remained standing in front of the cottage, more quiet and more thoughtful than usual. His interview with young Pedgift had brought his absent friend to his memory for the first time since the picnic party had started. He was surprised that Midwinter, so much in his thoughts on all other occasions, should have been so long out of his thoughts now. Something troubled him, like a sense of self-reproach, as his mind reverted to the faithful friend at home, toiling hard over the steward’s books, in his interests and for his sake. ‘Dear old fellow,’ thought Allan, ‘I shall be so glad to see him at the Mere; the day’s pleasure wont be complete till he joins us!’

  ‘Should I be right or wrong, Mr Armadale, if I guessed that you were thinking of somebody?’ asked a voice softly behind him.

  Allan turned, and found the major’s daughter at his side. Miss Milroy (not unmindful of a certain tender interview which had taken place behind a carriage) had noticed her admirer standing thoughtfully by himself, and had determined on giving him another opportunity, while her father and young Pedgift were at the top of the watch-tower.

  ‘You know everything,’ said Allan smiling. ‘I was thinking of somebody.’

  Miss Milroy stole a glance at him – a glance of gentle encouragement. There could be but one human creature in Mr Armadale’s mind after what had passed between them that morning! It would be only an act of mercy to take him back again at once to the interrupted conversation of a few hours since on the subject of names.

  ‘I have been thinking of somebody too,’ she said, half inviti
ng, half repelling the coming avowal. ‘If I tell you the first letter of my Somebody’s name, will you tell me the first letter of yours?’

  ‘I will tell you anything you like,’ rejoined Allan with the utmost enthusiasm.

  She still shrank coquettishly from the very subject that she wanted to approach. ‘Tell me your letter first,’ she said in low tones, looking away from him.

  Allan laughed. ‘M,’ he said, ‘is my first letter.’

  She started a little. Strange that he should be thinking of her by her surname instead of her Christian name – but it mattered little as long as he was thinking of her.

  ‘What is your letter?’ asked Allan.

  She blushed and smiled. ‘A – if you will have it!’ she answered in a reluctant little whisper. She stole another look at him, and luxuriously protracted her enjoyment of the coming avowal once more. ‘How many syllables is the name in?’ she asked, drawing patterns shyly on the ground with the end of her parasol.

  No man with the slightest knowledge of the sex would have been rash enough, in Allan’s position, to tell her the truth. Allan, who knew nothing whatever of women’s natures, and who told the truth right and left in all mortal emergencies, answered as if he had been under examination in a court of justice.