This was the man whom the march of events at Thorpe-Ambrose had now thrust capriciously into a foremost place. This was the one friend at hand to whom Allan in his social isolation could turn for counsel in the hour of need.
‘Good evening, Mr Armadale. Many thanks for your prompt attention to my very disagreeable letter,’ said Pedgift Senior, opening the conversation cheerfully the moment he entered his client’s house. ‘I hope you understand, sir, that I had really no choice under the circumstances, but to write as I did?’
‘I have very few friends, Mr Pedgift,’ returned Allan simply. ‘And I am sure you are one of the few.’
‘Much obliged, Mr Armadale. I have always tried to deserve your good opinion, and I mean, if I can, to deserve it now. You found yourself comfortable I hope, sir, at the hotel in London? We call it Our hotel. Some rare old wine in the cellar, which I should have introduced to your notice if I had had the honour of being with you. My son unfortunately knows nothing about wine.’
Allan felt his false position in the neighbourhood far too acutely to be capable of talking of anything but the main business of the evening. His lawyer’s politely roundabout method of approaching the painful subject to be discussed between them, rather irritated than composed him. He came at once to the point, in his own bluntly straightforward way.
‘The hotel was very comfortable, Mr Pedgift, and your son was very kind to me. But we are not in London now; and I want to talk to you about how I am to meet the lies that are being told of me in this place. Only point me out any one man,’ cried Allan with a rising voice and a mounting colour, – ‘any one man who says I am afraid to show my face in the neighbourhood; and I’ll horsewhip him publicly before another day is over his head!’
Pedgift Senior helped himself to a pinch of snuff, and held it calmly in suspense midway between his box and his nose.
‘You can horsewhip a man, sir; but you can’t horsewhip a neighbourhood,’ said the lawyer in his politely epigrammatic manner. ‘We will fight our battle, if you please, without borrowing our weapons of the coachman yet awhile, at any rate.’
‘But how are we to begin?’ asked Allan impatiently. ‘How am I to contradict the infamous things they say of me?’
‘There are two ways of stepping out of your present awkward position, sir – a short way, and a long way,’ replied Pedgift Senior. ‘The short way (which is always the best) has occurred to me since I have heard of your proceedings in London from my son. I understand that you permitted him, after you received my letter, to take me into your confidence. I have drawn various conclusions from what he has told me, which I may find it necessary to trouble you with presently. In the meantime I should be glad to know under what circumstances you went to London to make these unfortunate inquiries about Miss Gwilt? Was it your own notion to pay that visit to Mrs Mandeville? or were you acting under the influence of some other person?’
Allan hesitated. ‘I can’t honestly tell you it was my own notion,’ he replied – and said no more.
‘I thought as much!’ remarked Pedgift Senior in high triumph. ‘The short way out of our present difficulty, Mr Armadale, lies straight through that other person, under whose influence you acted. That other person must be presented forthwith to public notice, and must stand in that other person’s proper place. The name if you please, sir, to begin with – we’ll come to the circumstances directly.’
‘I am sorry to say, Mr Pedgift, that we must try the longest way, if you have no objection,’ replied Allan quietly. ‘The short way happens to be a way I can’t take on this occasion.’
The men who rise in the law are the men who decline to take No for an answer. Mr Pedgift the elder had risen in the law; and Mr Pedgift the elder now declined to take No for an answer. But all pertinacity – even professional pertinacity included – sooner or later finds its limits; and the lawyer, doubly fortified as he was by long experience and copious pinches of snuff, found his limits at the very outset of the interview. It was impossible that Allan could respect the confidence which Mrs Milroy had treacherously affected to place in him. But he had an honest man’s regard for his own pledged word – the regard which looks straightforward at the fact, and which never glances sidelong at the circumstances – and the utmost persistency of Pedgift Senior failed to move him a hair’s breadth from the position which he had taken up. ‘No’ is the strongest word in the English language, in the mouth of any man who has the courage to repeat it often enough – and Allan had the courage to repeat it often enough on this occasion.
‘Very good, sir,’ said the lawyer, accepting his defeat without the slightest loss of temper. ‘The choice rests with you, and you have chosen. We will go the long way. It starts (allow me to inform you) from my office; and it leads (as I strongly suspect) through a very miry road to – Miss Gwilt.’
Allan looked at his legal adviser in speechless astonishment.
‘If you won’t expose the person who is responsible, in the first instance, sir, for the inquiries to which you unfortunately lent yourself,’ proceeded Mr Pedgift the elder, ‘the only other alternative, in your present position, is to justify the inquiries themselves.’
‘And how is that to be done?’ inquired Allan.
‘By proving to the whole neighbourhood, Mr Armadale, what I firmly believe to be the truth – that the pet object of the public protection is an adventuress of the worst class; an undeniably worthless and dangerous woman. In plainer English still, sir, by employing time enough and money enough to discover the truth about Miss Gwilt.’
Before Allan could say a word in answer, there was an interruption at the door. After the usual preliminary knock, one of the servants came in.
‘I told you I was not to be interrupted,’ said Allan irritably. ‘Good heavens! am I never to have done with them? another letter!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, holding it out. ‘And,’ he added, speaking words of evil omen in his master’s ears, ‘the person waits for an answer.’
Allan looked at the address of the letter with a natural expectation of encountering the handwriting of the major’s wife. The anticipation was not realized. His correspondent was plainly a lady, but the lady was not Mrs Milroy.
‘Who can it be?’ he said, looking mechanically at Pedgift Senior as he opened the envelope.
Pedgift Senior gently tapped his snuff-box, and said without a moment’s hesitation – ‘Miss Gwilt.’
Allan opened the letter. The first two words in it were the echo of the two words the lawyer had just pronounced. It was Miss Gwilt!
Once more, Allan looked at his legal adviser in speechless astonishment.
‘I have known a good many of them in my time, sir,’ explained Pedgift Senior, with a modesty equally rare and becoming in a man of his age. ‘Not as handsome as Miss Gwilt, I admit. But quite as bad, I dare say. Read your letter, Mr Armadale – read your letter.’
Allan read these lines:
‘Miss Gwilt presents her compliments to Mr Armadale, and begs to know if it will be convenient to him to favour her with an interview, either this evening or to-morrow morning. Miss Gwilt offers no apology for making her present request. She believes Mr Armadale will grant it as an act of justice towards a friendless woman whom he has been innocently the means of injuring, and who is earnestly desirous to set herself right in his estimation.’
Allan handed the letter to his lawyer in silent perplexity and distress.
The face of Mr Pedgift the elder expressed but one feeling when he had read the letter in his turn and had handed it back – a feeling of profound admiration. ‘What a lawyer she would have made,’ he exclaimed, fervently, ‘if she had only been a man!’
‘I can’t treat this as lightly as you do, Mr Pedgift,’ said Allan. ‘It’s dreadfully distressing to me. I was so fond of her,’ he added, in a lower tone, – ‘I was so fond of her once.’
Mr Pedgift Senior suddenly became serious on his side.
‘Do you mean to say, sir, that you actua
lly contemplate seeing Miss Gwilt?’ he asked, with an expression of genuine dismay.
‘I can’t treat her cruelly,’ returned Allan. ‘I have been the means of injuring her – without intending it, God knows! – I can’t treat her cruelly after that!’
‘Mr Armadale,’ said the lawyer, ‘you did me the honour, a little while since, to say that you considered me your friend. May I presume on that position to ask you a question or two, before you go straight to your own ruin?’
‘Any questions you like,’ said Allan, looking back at the letter – the only letter he had ever received from Miss Gwilt.
‘You have had one trap set for you already, sir, and you have fallen into it. Do you want to fall into another?’
‘You know the answer to that question, Mr Pedgift, as well as I do.’
‘I’ll try again, Mr Armadale; we lawyers are not easily discouraged. Do you think that any statement Miss Gwilt might make to you, if you do see her, would be a statement to be relied on, after what you and my son discovered in London?’
‘She might explain what we discovered in London,’ suggested Allan, still looking at the writing, and thinking of the hand that had traced it.
‘Might explain it? My dear sir, she is quite certain to explain it! I will do her justice: I believe she would make out a case without a single flaw in it from beginning to end.’
That last answer forced Allan’s attention away from the letter. The lawyer’s pitiless common sense showed him no mercy.
‘If you see that woman again, sir,’ proceeded Pedgift Senior, ‘you will commit the rashest act of folly I ever heard of in all my experience. She can have but one object in coming here – to practise on your weakness for her. Nobody can say into what false step she may not lead you, if you once give her the opportunity. You admit yourself that you have been fond of her – your attentions to her have been the subject of general remark – if you haven’t actually offered her the chance of becoming Mrs Armadale, you have done the next thing to it – and knowing all this, you propose to see her and to let her work on you with her devilish beauty and her devilish cleverness, in the character of your interesting victim! You, who are one of the best matches in England! You who are the natural prey of all the hungry single women in the community! I never heard the like of it; I never, in all my professional experience, heard the like of it! If you must positively put yourself in a dangerous position, Mr Armadale,’ concluded Pedgift the elder, with the everlasting pinch of snuff held in suspense between his box and his nose, ‘there’s a wild-beast show coming to our town next week. Let in the tigress, sir, – don’t let in Miss Gwilt!’
For the third time Allan looked at his lawyer. And for the third time his lawyer looked back at him quite unabashed.
‘You seem to have a very bad opinion of Miss Gwilt,’ said Allan.
‘The worst possible opinion, Mr Armadale,’ retorted Pedgift Senior, coolly. ‘We will return to that, when we have sent the lady’s messenger about his business. Will you take my advice? Will you decline to see her?’
‘I would willingly decline – it would be so dreadfully distressing to both of us,’ said Allan. ‘I would willingly decline, if I only knew how.’
‘Bless my soul, Mr Armadale, it’s easy enough! Don’t commit yourself in writing. Send out to the messenger, and say there’s no answer.’
The short course thus suggested, was a course which Allan positively declined to take. ‘It’s treating her brutally,’ he said; ‘I can’t and won’t do it.’
Once more, the pertinacity of Pedgift the elder found its limits – and once more that wise man yielded gracefully to a compromise. On receiving his client’s promise not to see Miss Gwilt, he consented to Allan’s committing himself in writing – under his lawyer’s dictation. The letter thus produced was modelled on Allan’s own style; it began and ended in one sentence. ‘Mr Armadale presents his compliments to Miss Gwilt and regrets that he cannot have the pleasure of seeing her at Thorpe-Ambrose.’ Allan had pleaded hard for a second sentence, explaining that he only declined Miss Gwilt’s request from a conviction that an interview would be needlessly distressing on both sides. But his legal adviser firmly rejected the proposed addition to the letter. ‘When you say No to a woman, sir,’ remarked Pedgift Senior, ‘always say it in one word. If you give her your reasons, she invariably believes that you mean Yes.’
Producing that little gem of wisdom from the rich mine of his professional experience, Mr Pedgift the elder sent out the answer to Miss Gwilt’s messenger, and recommended the servant to ‘see the fellow, whoever he was, well clear of the house.’
‘Now, sir,’ said the lawyer, ‘we will come back, if you like, to my opinion of Miss Gwilt. It doesn’t at all agree with yours, I’m afraid. You think her an object for pity – quite natural at your age. I think her an object for the inside of a prison – quite natural at mine. You shall hear the grounds on which I have formed my opinion directly. Let me show you that I am in earnest by putting the opinion itself, in the first place, to a practical test. Do you think Miss Gwilt is likely to persist in paying you a visit, Mr Armadale, after the answer you have just sent to her?’
‘Quite impossible!’ cried Allan, warmly. ‘Miss Gwilt is a lady; after the letter I have sent to her, she will never come near me again.’
‘There we join issue, sir,’ cried Pedgift Senior. ‘I say she will snap her fingers at your letter (which was one of the reasons why I objected to your writing it). I say, she is in all probability waiting her messenger’s return, in or near your grounds at this moment. I say, she will try to force her way in here, before four-and-twenty hours more are over your head. Egad, sir!’ cried Mr Pedgift, looking at his watch, ‘it’s only seven o’clock now. She’s bold enough and clever enough to catch you unawares this very evening. Permit me to ring for the servant – permit me to request that you will give him orders immediately to say you are not at home. You needn’t hesitate, Mr Armadale! If you’re right about Miss Gwilt, it’s a mere formality. If I’m right, it’s a wise precaution. Back your opinion, sir,’ said Mr Pedgift, ringing the bell, ‘I back mine!’
Allan was sufficiently nettled when the bell rang, to feel ready to give the order. But when the servant came in, past remembrances got the better of him, and the words stuck in his throat. ‘You give the order,’ he said to Mr Pedgift – and walked away abruptly to the window. ‘You’re a good fellow!’ thought the old lawyer, looking after him, and penetrating his motive on the instant. ‘The claws of that she-devil shan’t scratch you if I can help it.’
The servant waited inexorably for his orders.
‘If Miss Gwilt calls here, either this evening, or at any other time,’ said Pedgift Senior, ‘Mr Armadale is not at home. Wait! If she asks when Mr Armadale will be back, you don’t know. Wait! If she proposes coming in and sitting down, you have a general order that nobody is to come in and sit down, unless they have a previous appointment with Mr Armadale. Come!’ cried old Pedgift, rubbing his hands cheerfully when the servant had left the room, ‘I’ve stopped her out now, at any rate! The orders are all given, Mr Armadale. We may go on with our conversation.’
Allan came back from the window. ‘The conversation is not a very pleasant one,’ he said. ‘No offence to you, but I wish it was over.’
‘We will get it over as soon as possible, sir,’ said Pedgift Senior, still persisting as only lawyers and women can persist, in forcing his way little by little nearer and nearer to his own object. ‘Let us go back, if you please, to the practical suggestion which I offered to you when the servant came in with Miss Gwilt’s note. There is, I repeat, only one way left for you, Mr Armadale, out of your present awkward position. You must pursue your inquiries about this woman to an end – on the chance (which I consider next to a certainty) that the end will justify you in the estimation of the neighbourhood.’
‘I wish to God I had never made any inquiries at all!’ said Allan. ‘Nothing will induce me, Mr Pedgift, to make any more.’
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‘Why?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Can you ask me why,’ retorted Allan, hotly, ‘after your son has told you what we found out in London? Even if I had less cause to be – to be sorry for Miss Gwilt than I have; even if it was some other woman, do you think I would inquire any further into the secret of a poor betrayed creature – much less expose it to the neighbourhood? I should think myself as great a scoundrel as the man who has cast her out helpless on the world, if I did anything of the kind. I wonder you can ask me the question – upon my soul, I wonder you can ask me the question!’
‘Give me your hand, Mr Armadale!’ cried Pedgift Senior, warmly; ‘I honour you for being so angry with me. The neighbourhood may say what it pleases; you’re a gentleman, sir, in the best sense of the word. Now,’ pursued the lawyer, dropping Allan’s hand, and lapsing back instantly from sentiment to business, ‘just hear what I have got to say in my own defence. Suppose Miss Gwilt’s real position happens to be nothing like what you are generously determined to believe it to be?’
‘We have no reason to suppose that,’ said Allan resolutely.
‘Such is your opinion, sir,’ persisted Pedgift. ‘Mine, founded on what is publicly known of Miss Gwilt’s proceedings here, and on what I have seen of Miss Gwilt herself, is that she is as far as I am from being the sentimental victim you are inclined to make her out. Gently, Mr Armadale! remember that I have put my opinion to a practical test, and wait to condemn it off-hand until events have justified you. Let me put my points, sir, – make allowances for me as a lawyer – and let me put my points. You and my son are young men; and I don’t deny that the circumstances, on the surface, appear to justify the interpretation which, as young men, you have placed on them. I am an old man – I know that circumstances are not always to be taken as they appear on the surface – and I possess the great advantage, in the present case, of having had years of professional experience among some of the wickedest women who ever walked this earth.’
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