Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  In the meantime, have I anything more to tell you? Are there any other people in our way at Thorpe-Ambrose? Not another creature! None of the resident families call here, young Armadale being, most fortunately, in bad odour in the neighbourhood. There are no handsome highly-bred women to come to the house, and no persons of consequence to protest against his attentions to a governess. The only guests he could collect at his party to-night were the lawyer and his family (a wife, a son, and two daughters), and a deaf old woman, and her son – all perfectly unimportant people, and all obedient humble servants of the stupid young squire.

  Talking of obedient humble servants, there is one other person established here, who is employed in the steward’s office – a miserable, shabby, dilapidated old man, named Bashwood. He is a perfect stranger to me, and I am evidently a perfect stranger to him; for he has been asking the housemaid at the cottage who I am. It is paying no great compliment to myself to confess it; but it is not the less true that I produced the most extraordinary impression on this feeble old creature the first time he saw me. He turned all manner of colours, and stood trembling and staring at me, as if there was something perfectly frightful in my face. I felt quite startled for the moment – for of all the ways in which men have looked at me, no man ever looked at me in that way before. Did you ever see the boa-constrictor fed at the Zoological Gardens?3 They put a live rabbit into his cage, and there is a moment when the two creatures look at each other. I declare Mr Bashwood reminded me of the rabbit!

  Why do I mention this? I don’t know why. Perhaps I have been writing too long, and my head is beginning to fail me. Perhaps Mr Bashwood’s manner of admiring me strikes my fancy by its novelty. Absurd! I am exciting myself, and troubling you about nothing. Oh, what a weary, long letter I have written! and how brightly the stars look at me through the window – and how awfully quiet the night is! Send me some more of those sleeping drops, and write me one of your nice, wicked, amusing letters. You shall hear from me again as soon as I know a little better how it is all likely to end. Good night, and keep a corner in your stony old heart for

  L.G.

  3. – From Mrs Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt

  Diana Street, Pimlico, Monday.

  MY DEAR LYDIA, – I am in no state of mind to write you an amusing letter. Your news is very discouraging and the recklessness of your tone quite alarms me. Consider the money I have already advanced, and the interests we both have at stake. Whatever else you are, don’t be reckless, for heaven’s sake!

  What can I do? – I ask myself, as a woman of business, what can I do to help you? I can’t give you advice, for I am not on the spot, and I don’t know how circumstances may alter from one day to another. Situated as we are now, I can only be useful in one way; I can discover a new obstacle that threatens you, and I think I can remove it.

  You say, with great truth, that there never was a prospect yet without an ugly place in it, and that there are two ugly places in your prospect. My dear, there may be three ugly places, if I don’t bestir myself to prevent it; and the name of the third place will be – Brock! Is it possible you can refer, as you have done, to the Somersetshire clergyman, and not see that the progress you make with young Armadale will be sooner or later, reported to him by young Armadale’s friend? Why, now I think of it, you are doubly at the parson’s mercy! You are at the mercy of any fresh suspicion which may bring him into the neighbourhood himself at a day’s notice; and you are at the mercy of his interference the moment he hears that the squire is committing himself with a neighbour’s governess. If I can do nothing else, I can keep this additional difficulty out of your way. And, oh, Lydia, with what alacrity I shall exert myself, after the manner in which the old wretch insulted me when I told him that pitiable story in the street! I declare I tingle with pleasure at this new prospect of making a fool of Mr Brock.

  And how is it to be done? Just as we have done it already, to be sure. He has lost ‘Miss Gwilt’ (otherwise my housemaid), hasn’t he? Very well. He shall find her again, wherever he is now, suddenly settled within easy reach of him. As long as she stops in the place, he will stop in it; and as we know he is not at Thorpe-Ambrose, there you are free of him! The old gentleman’s suspicions have given us a great deal of trouble so far. Let us turn them to some profitable account at last; let us tie him, by his suspicions, to my housemaid’s apron-string. Most refreshing. Quite a moral retribution, isn’t it?

  The only help I need trouble you for, is help you can easily give. Find out from Mr Midwinter where the parson is now, and let me know by return of post. If he is in London, I will personally assist my housemaid in the necessary mystification of him. If he is anywhere else, I will send her after him, accompanied by a person on whose discretion I can implicitly rely.

  You shall have the sleeping-drops to-morrow. In the meantime, I say at the end what I said at the beginning – no recklessness! Don’t encourage poetical feelings by looking at the stars; and don’t talk about the night being awfully quiet. There are people (in Observatories) paid to look at the stars for you – leave it to them. And as for the night, do what Providence intended you to do with the night when Providence provided you with eyelids – go to sleep in it.

  Affectionately yours,

  MARIA OLDERSHAW.

  4. – From the Reverend Decimus Brock to Ozias Midwinter

  Boscombe Rectory, West Somerset,

  Thursday, July 3rd.

  MY DEAR MIDWINTER, – One line before the post goes out, to relieve you of all sense of responsibility at Thorpe-Ambrose, and to make my apologies to the lady who lives as governess in Major Milroy’s family.

  The Miss Gwilt – or perhaps I ought to say, the woman calling herself by that name – has, to my unspeakable astonishment, openly made her appearance here, in my own parish! She is staying at the inn, accompanied by a plausible-looking man, who passes as her brother. What this audacious proceeding really means – unless it marks a new step in the conspiracy against Allan, taken under new advice – is, of course, more than I can yet find out.

  My own idea is, that they have recognized the impossibility of getting at Allan, without finding me (or you) as an obstacle in their way; and that they are going to make a virtue of necessity by boldly trying to open their communications through me. The man looks capable of any stretch of audacity; and both he and the woman had the impudence to bow when I met them in the village half an hour since. They have been making inquiries already about Allan’s mother – here, where her exemplary life may set their closest scrutiny at defiance. If they will only attempt to extort money, as the price of the woman’s silence on the subject of poor Mrs Armadale’s conduct in Madeira at the time of her marriage, they will find me well prepared for them beforehand. I have written by this post to my lawyers, to send a competent man to assist me; and he will stay at the rectory, in any character which he thinks it safest to assume under present circumstances.

  You shall hear what happens in the next day or two.

  Always truly yours,

  DECIMUS BROCK.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE CLOUDING OF THE SKY

  Nine days had passed, and the tenth day was nearly at an end, since Miss Gwilt and her pupil had taken their morning walk in the cottage garden.

  The night was overcast. Since sunset, there had been signs in the sky from which the popular forecast had predicted rain. The reception-rooms at the great house were all empty and dark. Allan was away, passing the evening with the Milroys; and Midwinter was waiting his return – not where Midwinter usually waited, among the books in the library – but in the little back room which Allan’s mother had inhabited in the last days of her residence at Thorpe-Ambrose.1

  Nothing had been taken away, but much had been added to the room, since Midwinter had first seen it. The books which Mrs Armadale had left behind her, the furniture, the old matting on the floor, the old paper on the walls, were all undisturbed. The statuette of Niobe still stood on its bracket, and the French window still opene
d on the garden. But, now, to the relics left by the mother, were added the personal possessions belonging to the son. The wall, bare hitherto, was decorated with water-colour drawings – with a portrait of Mrs Armadale, supported on one side by a view of the old house in Somersetshire, and on the other by a picture of the yacht. Among the books which bore in faded ink Mrs Armadale’s inscription, ‘From my father,’ were other books inscribed in the same handwriting, in brighter ink, ‘To my son.’ Hanging to the wall, ranged on the chimney-piece, scattered over the table, were a host of little objects, some associated with Allan’s past life, others necessary to his daily pleasures and pursuits, and all plainly testifying that the room which he habitually occupied at Thorpe-Ambrose was the very room which had once recalled to Midwinter the second vision of the dream. Here, strangely unmoved by the scene around him, so lately the object of his superstitious distrust, Allan’s friend now waited composedly for Allan’s return – and here, more strangely still, he looked on a change in the household arrangements, due in the first instance entirely to himself. His own lips had revealed the discovery which he had made on the first morning in the new house; his own voluntary act had induced the son to establish himself in the mother’s room.

  Under what motives had he spoken the words? Under no motives which were not the natural growth of the new interests and the new hopes that now animated him.

  The entire change wrought in his convictions by the memorable event that had brought him face to face with Miss Gwilt, was a change which it was not in his nature to hide from Allan’s knowledge. He had spoken openly, and had spoken as it was in his character to speak. The merit of conquering his superstition was a merit which he shrank from claiming, until he had first unsparingly exposed that superstition in its worst and weakest aspects to view. It was only after he had unreservedly acknowledged the impulse under which he had left Allan at the Mere, that he had taken credit to himself for the new point of view from which he could now look at the Dream. Then, and not till then, he had spoken of the fulfilment of the first Vision, as the doctor at the Isle of Man might have spoken of it – he had asked, as the doctor might have asked, Where was the wonder of their seeing a pool at sunset, when they had a whole network of pools within a few hours’ drive of them? and what was there extraordinary in discovering a woman at the Mere, when there were roads that led to it, and villages in its neighbourhood, and boats employed on it, and pleasure parties visiting it? So again, he had waited to vindicate the firmer resolution with which he looked to the future, until he had first revealed all that he now saw himself of the errors of the past. The abandonment of his friend’s interests, the unworthiness of the confidence that had given him the steward’s place, the forgetfulness of the trust that Mr Brock had reposed in him, all implied in the one idea of leaving Allan, were all pointed out. The glaring self-contradictions betrayed in accepting the Dream as the revelation of a fatality, and in attempting to escape that fatality by an exertion of free will – in toiling to store up knowledge of the steward’s duties for the future, and in shrinking from letting the future find him in Allan’s house – were, in their turn, unsparingly exposed. To every error, to every inconsistency, he resolutely confessed, before he attempted to assert the clearer and better mind that was in him – before he ventured on the last simple appeal which closed all, ‘Will you trust me in the future? will you forgive and forget the past?’

  A man who could thus open his whole heart, without one lurking reserve inspired by consideration for himself, was not a man to forget any minor act of concealment of which his weakness might have led him to be guilty towards his friend. It lay heavy on Midwinter’s conscience that he had kept secret from Allan a discovery which he ought in Allan’s dearest interests to have revealed – the discovery of his mother’s room.

  But one doubt had closed his lips – the doubt whether Mrs Armadale’s conduct in Madeira had been kept secret on her return to England. Careful inquiry, first among the servants, then among the tenantry, careful consideration of the few reports current at the time, as repeated to him by the few persons left who remembered them, convinced him at last that the family secret had been successfully kept within the family limits. Once satisfied that whatever inquiries the son might make would lead to no disclosure which could shake his respect for his mother’s memory, Midwinter had hesitated no longer. He had taken Allan into the room, and had shown him the books on the shelves, and all that the writing in the books disclosed. He had said plainly, ‘My one motive for not telling you this before, sprang from my dread of interesting you in the room which I looked at with horror as the second of the scenes pointed at in the Dream. Forgive me this also, and you will have forgiven me all.’

  With Allan’s love for his mother’s memory, but one result could follow such an avowal as this. He had liked the little room from the first as a pleasant contrast to the oppressive grandeur of the other rooms at Thorpe-Ambrose – and now that he knew what associations were connected with it, his resolution was at once taken to make it especially his own. The same day, all his personal possessions were collected and arranged in his mother’s room – in Midwinter’s presence, and with Midwinter’s assistance given to the work.

  Under those circumstances had the change now wrought in the household arrangements been produced; and in this way had Midwinter’s victory over his own fatalism – by making Allan the daily occupant of a room which he might otherwise hardly ever have entered – actually favoured the fulfilment of the Second Vision of the Dream.

  The hour wore on quietly as Allan’s friend sat waiting for Allan’s return. Sometimes reading, sometimes thinking placidly, he wiled away the time. No vexing cares, no boding doubts troubled him now. The rent-day, which he had once dreaded, had come and gone harmlessly. A friendlier understanding had been established between Allan and his tenants; Mr Bashwood had proved himself to be worthy of the confidence reposed in him; the Pedgifts, father and son, had amply justified their client’s good opinion of them. Wherever Midwinter looked, the prospect was bright, the future was without a cloud.

  He trimmed the lamp on the table beside him, and looked out at the night. The stable-clock was chiming the half-hour past eleven as he walked to the window, and the first raindrops were beginning to fall. He had his hand on the bell, to summon the servant, and send him over to the cottage with an umbrella, when he was stopped by hearing the familiar footstep on the walk outside.

  ‘How late you are!’ said Midwinter, as Allan entered through the open French window. ‘Was there a party at the cottage?’

  ‘No! only ourselves. The time slipped away somehow.’

  He answered in lower tones than usual, and sighed as he took his chair.

  ‘You seem to be out of spirits?’ pursued Midwinter. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Allan hesitated. ‘I may as well tell you,’ he said, after a moment. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of; I only wonder you haven’t noticed it before! There’s a woman in it as usual – I’m in love.’

  Midwinter laughed. ‘Has Miss Milroy been more charming to-night than ever?’ he asked, gaily.

  ‘Miss Milroy!’ repeated Allan. ‘What are you thinking of! I’m not in love with Miss Milroy.’

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  ‘Who is it? What a question to ask! Who can it be but Miss Gwilt?’

  There was a sudden silence. Allan sat listlessly, with his hands in his pockets, looking out through the open window at the falling rain. If he had turned towards his friend when he mentioned Miss Gwilt’s name, he might possibly have been a little startled by the change he would have seen in Midwinter’s face.

  ‘I suppose you don’t approve of it?’ he said, after waiting a little.

  There was no answer.

  ‘It’s too late to make objections,’ proceeded Allan. ‘I really mean it when I tell you I’m in love with her.’

  ‘A fortnight since you were in love with Miss Milroy,’ said the other in quiet, measured tones.

  ‘Pooh
! a mere flirtation. It’s different this time. I’m in earnest about Miss Gwilt.’

  He looked round as he spoke. Midwinter turned his face aside on the instant, and bent it over a book.

  ‘I see you don’t approve of the thing,’ Allan went on. ‘Do you object to her being only a governess? You can’t do that, I’m sure. If you were in my place, her being only a governess wouldn’t stand in the way with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Midwinter; ‘I can’t honestly say it would stand in the way with me.’ He gave the answer reluctantly, and pushed his chair back out of the light of the lamp.

  ‘A governess is a lady who is not rich,’ said Allan, in an oracular manner; ‘and a duchess is a lady who is not poor. And that’s all the difference I acknowledge between them. Miss Gwilt is older than I am – I don’t deny that. What age do you guess her at, Midwinter? I say, seven or eight and twenty. What do you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I agree with you.’

  ‘Do you think seven or eight and twenty is too old for me? If you were in love with a woman yourself, you wouldn’t think seven or eight and twenty too old – would you?’