Armadale by Wilkie Collins
‘Other people are interested in it,’ replied Allan. ‘There’s no objection to telling you that.’
‘Is there any other person who is the object of the inquiry besides Mrs Mandeville herself?’ pursued Pedgift, winding his way a little deeper into the secret.
‘Yes; there is another person,’ said Allan, answering rather unwillingly.
‘Is the person a young woman, Mr Armadale?’
Allan started. ‘How do you come to guess that?’ he began – then checked himself, when it was too late. ‘Don’t ask me any more questions,’ he resumed. ‘I’m a bad hand at defending myself against a sharp fellow like you; and I’m bound in honour towards other people to keep the particulars of this business to myself.’
Pedgift Junior had apparently heard enough for his purpose. He drew his chair, in his turn, nearer to Allan. He was evidently anxious and embarrassed – but his professional manner began to show itself again from sheer force of habit.
‘I’ve done with my questions, sir,’ he said; ‘and I have something to say now, on my side. In my father’s absence, perhaps you may be kindly disposed to consider me as your legal adviser. If you will take my advice, you will not stir another step in this inquiry.’
‘What do you mean?’ interposed Allan.
‘It is just possible, Mr Armadale, that the cabman, positive as he is, may have been mistaken. I strongly recommend you to take it for granted that he is mistaken – and to drop it there.’
The caution was kindly intended; but it came too late. Allan did what ninety-nine men out of a hundred in his position would have done – he declined to take his lawyer’s advice.
‘Very well, sir,’ said Pedgift Junior; ‘if you will have it, you must have it.’
He leaned forward close to Allan’s ear, and whispered what he had heard of the house in Pimlico, and of the people who occupied it.
‘Don’t blame me, Mr Armadale,’ he added, when the irrevocable words had been spoken. ‘I tried to spare you.’
Allan suffered the shock, as all great shocks are suffered, in silence. His first impulse would have driven him headlong for refuge to that very view of the cabman’s assertion which had just been recommended to him, but for one damning circumstance which placed itself inexorably in his way. Miss Gwilt’s marked reluctance to approach the story of her past life, rose irrepressibly on his memory, in indirect but horrible confirmation of the evidence which connected Miss Gwilt’s reference with the house in Pimlico. One conclusion, and one only – the conclusion which any man must have drawn, hearing what he had just heard, and knowing no more than he knew – forced itself into his mind. A miserable, fallen woman, who had abandoned herself in her extremity to the help of wretches skilled in criminal concealment – who had stolen her way back to decent society and a reputable employment, by means of a false character – and whose position now imposed on her the dreadful necessity of perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past life – such was the aspect in which the beautiful governess at Thorpe-Ambrose now stood revealed to Allan’s eyes!
Falsely revealed, or truly revealed? Had she stolen her way back to decent society, and a reputable employment, by means of a false character? She had. Did her position impose on her the dreadful necessity of perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit, in relation to her past life? It did. Was she some such pitiable victim to the treachery of a man unknown as Allan had supposed? She was no such pitiable victim. The conclusion which Allan had drawn – the conclusion literally forced into his mind by the facts before him – was, nevertheless, the conclusion of all others that was farthest even from touching on the truth. The true story of Miss Gwilt’s connection with the house in Pimlico and the people who inhabited it – a house rightly described as filled with wicked secrets, and people rightly represented as perpetually in danger of feeling the grasp of the law – was a story which coming events were yet to disclose: a story infinitely less revolting, and yet infinitely more terrible, than Allan or Allan’s companion had either of them supposed.
‘I tried to spare you, Mr Armadale,’ repeated Pedgift. ‘I was anxious, if I could possibly avoid it, not to distress you.’
Allan looked up, and made an effort to control himself. ‘You have distressed me dreadfully,’ he said. ‘You have quite crushed me down. But it is not your fault. I ought to feel you have done me a service – and what I ought to do I will do, when I am my own man again. There is one thing,’ Allan added, after a moment’s painful consideration, ‘which ought to be understood between us at once. The advice you offered me just now was very kindly meant, and it was the best advice that could be given. I will take it gratefully. We will never talk of this again, if you please; and I beg and entreat you will never speak about it to any other person. Will you promise me that?’
Pedgift gave the promise with very evident sincerity, but without his professional confidence of manner. The distress in Allan’s face seemed to daunt him. After a moment of very uncharacteristic hesitation, he considerately quitted the room.
Left by himself, Allan rang for writing materials, and took out of his pocket-book the fatal letter of introduction to ‘Mrs Mandeville’, which he had received from the major’s wife.
A man accustomed to consider consequences and to prepare himself for action by previous thought would, in Allan’s present circumstances, have felt some difficulty as to the course which it might now be least embarrassing and least dangerous to pursue. Accustomed to let his impulses direct him on all other occasions, Allan acted on impulse in the serious emergency that now confronted him. Though his attachment to Miss Gwilt was nothing like the deeply-rooted feeling which he had himself honestly believed it to be, she had taken no common place in his admiration, and she filled him with no common grief when he thought of her now. His one dominant desire, at that critical moment in his life, was a man’s merciful desire to protect from exposure and ruin the unhappy woman who had lost her place in his estimation, without losing her claim to the forbearance that could spare and to the compassion that could shield her. ‘I can’t go back to Thorpe-Ambrose; I can’t trust myself to speak to her, or to see her again. But I can keep her miserable secret – and I will!’ With that thought in his heart, Allan set himself to perform the first and foremost duty which now claimed him – the duty of communicating with Mrs Milroy. If he had possessed a higher mental capacity and a clearer mental view, he might have found the letter no easy one to write. As it was, he calculated no consequences, and felt no difficulty. His instinct warned him to withdraw at once from the position in which he now stood towards the major’s wife, and he wrote what his instinct counselled him to write under those circumstances, as rapidly as the pen could travel over the paper:
Dunn’s Hotel, Covent Garden, Tuesday.
DEAR MADAM, – Pray excuse my not returning to Thorpe-Ambrose to-day, as I said I would. Unforeseen circumstances oblige me to stop in London. I am sorry to say I have not succeeded in seeing Mrs Mandeville, for which reason I cannot perform your errand; and I beg, therefore, with many apologies, to return the letter of introduction. I hope you will allow me to conclude by saying that I am very much obliged to you for your kindness, and that I will not venture to trespass on it any further.
I remain, dear madam, yours truly,
ALLAN ARMADALE.
In those artless words, still entirely unsuspicious of the character of the woman he had to deal with, Allan put the weapon she wanted into Mrs Milroy’s hands.
The letter and its enclosure once sealed up, and addressed, he was free to think of himself and his future. As he sat idly drawing lines with his pen on the blotting-paper, the tears came into his eyes for the first time – tears in which the woman who had deceived him had no share. His heart had gone back to his dead mother. ‘If she had been alive,’ he thought, ‘I might have trusted her, and she would have comforted me.’ It was useless to dwell on it – he dashed away the tears, and turned his thoughts with the heart-sick resignation that we all know,
He wrote a line to Mr Bashwood, briefly informing the deputy-steward that his absence from Thorpe-Ambrose was likely to be prolonged for some little time, and that any further instructions which might be necessary, under those circumstances, would reach him through Mr Pedgift the elder. This done, and the letters sent to the post, his thoughts were forced back once more on himself. Again the blank future waited before him to be filled up; and again his heart shrank from it to the refuge of the past.
This time, other images than the image of his mother filled his mind. The one all-absorbing interest of his earlier days stirred living and eager in him again. He thought of the sea; he thought of his yacht lying idle in the fishing harbour at his West-country home. The old longing got possession of him to hear the wash of the waves; to see the filling of the sails; to feel the vessel that his own hands had helped to build, bounding under him once more. He rose in his impetuous way, to call for the time-table, and to start for Somersetshire by the first train – when the dread of the questions which Mr Brock might ask, the suspicion of the change which Mr Brock might see in him, drew him back to his chair. ‘I’ll write,’ he thought, ‘to have the yacht rigged and refitted, and I’ll wait to go to Somersetshire myself till Midwinter can go with me.’ He sighed as his memory reverted to his absent friend. Never had he felt the void made in his life by Midwinter’s departure so painfully as he felt it now, in the dreariest of all social solitudes – the solitude of a stranger in London, left by himself at an hotel.
Before long, Pedgift Junior looked in, with an apology for his intrusion. Allan felt too lonely and too friendless not to welcome his companion’s reappearance gratefully. ‘I’m not going back to Thorpe-Ambrose,’ he said: ‘I’m going to stay a little while in London. I hope you will be able to stay with me?’ To do him justice, Pedgift was touched, by the solitary position in which the owner of the great Thorpe-Ambrose estate now appeared before him. He had never, in his relations with Allan, so entirely forgotten his business-interests as he forgot them now.
‘You are quite right, sir, to stop here – London’s the place to divert your mind,’ said Pedgift cheerfully. ‘All business is more or less elastic in its nature, Mr Armadale; I’ll spin my business out, and keep you company with the greatest pleasure. We are both of us on the right side of thirty, sir – let’s enjoy ourselves. What do you say to dining early, and going to the play, and trying the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park1 to-morrow morning, after breakfast? If we only live like fighting-cocks, and go in perpetually for public amusements, we shall arrive in no time at the mens sana in corpore sano of the ancients. Don’t be alarmed at the quotation, sir. I dabble a little in Latin after business hours, and enlarge my sympathies by occasional perusal of the Pagan writers, assisted by a crib. William, dinner at five; and, as it’s particularly important to-day, I’ll see the cook myself.’
The evening passed – the next day passed – Thursday morning came, and brought with it a letter for Allan. The direction was in Mrs Milroy’s handwriting; and the form of address adopted in the letter warned Allan the moment he opened it that something had gone wrong.
[Private.]
The Cottage, Thorpe-Ambrose, Wednesday.
SIR, – I have just received your mysterious letter. It has more than surprised, it has really alarmed me. After having made the friendliest advances to you on my side, I find myself suddenly shut out from your confidence in the most unintelligible, and, I must add, the most discourteous manner. It is quite impossible that I can allow the matter to rest where you have left it. The only conclusion I can draw from your letter is, that my confidence must have been abused in some way, and that you know a great deal more than you are willing to tell me. Speaking in the interest of my daughter’s welfare, I request that you will inform me what the circumstances are which have prevented your seeing Mrs Mandeville, and which have led to the withdrawal of the assistance that you unconditionally promised me in your letter of Monday last.
In my state of health, I cannot involve myself in a lengthened correspondence. I must endeavour to anticipate any objections you may make, and I must say all that I have to say in my present letter. In the event (which I am most unwilling to consider possible) of your declining to accede to the request that I have just addressed to you, I beg to say that I shall consider it my duty to my daughter to have this very unpleasant matter cleared up. If I don’t hear from you to my full satisfaction by return of post, I shall be obliged to tell my husband that circumstances have happened which justify us in immediately testing the respectability of Miss Gwilt’s reference. And when he asks me for my authority, I will refer him to you.
Your obedient servant,
ANNE MILROY.
In those terms the major’s wife threw off the mask, and left her victim to survey at his leisure the trap in which she had caught him. Allan’s belief in Mrs Milroy’s good faith had been so implicitly sincere, that her letter simply bewildered him. He saw vaguely that he had been deceived in some way, and that Mrs Milroy’s neighbourly interest in him was not what it had looked on the surface; and he saw no more. The threat of appealing to the major – on which, with a woman’s ignorance of the natures of men, Mrs Milroy had relied for producing its effect – was the only part of the letter to which Allan reverted with any satisfaction: it relieved instead of alarming him. ‘If there is to be a quarrel,’ he thought, ‘it will be a comfort, at any rate, to have it out with a man.’
Firm in his resolution to shield the unhappy woman whose secret he wrongly believed himself to have surprised, Allan sat down to write his apologies to the major’s wife. After setting up three polite declarations, in close marching order, he retired from the field. ‘He was extremely sorry to have offended Mrs Milroy. He was innocent of all intention to offend Mrs Milroy. And he begged to remain Mrs Milroy’s truly.’ Never had Allan’s habitual brevity as a letter-writer done him better service than it did him now. With a little more skilfulness in the use of his pen, he might have given his enemy even a stronger hold on him than the hold she had got already.
The interval-day passed, and with the next morning’s post Mrs Milroy’s threat came realized in the shape of a letter from her husband. The major wrote less formally than his wife had written, but his questions were mercilessly to the point.
The Cottage, Thorpe-Ambrose,
Friday, July nth, 1851.
[Private.]
DEAR SIR, – When you did me the favour of calling here a few days since, you asked a question relating to my governess, Miss Gwilt, which I thought rather a strange one at the time, and which caused, as you may remember, a momentary embarrassment between us.
This morning, the subject of Miss Gwilt has been brought to my notice again in a manner which has caused me the utmost astonishment. In plain words, Mrs Milroy has informed me that Miss Gwilt has exposed herself to the suspicion of having deceived us by a false reference. On my expressing the surprise which such an extraordinary statement caused me, and requesting that it might be instantly substantiated, I was still further astonished by being told to apply for all particulars to no less a person than Mr Armadale. I have vainly requested some further explanation from Mrs Milroy; she persists in maintaining silence, and in referring me to yourself.
Under these extraordinary circumstances I am compelled, in justice to all parties, to ask you certain questions, which I will endeavour to put as plainly as possible, and which I am quite ready to believe (from my previous experience of you) that you will answer frankly on your side.
I beg to inquire in the first place, whether you admit or deny Mrs Milroy’s assertion that you have made yourself acquainted with particulars relating either to Miss Gwilt or to Miss Gwilt’s reference, of which I am entirely ignorant? In the second place, if you admit the truth of Mrs Milroy’s statement, I request to know how you became acquainted with those particulars? Thirdly, and lastly, I beg to ask you what the particulars are?
If any special justification
I have only to add that, as nothing has thus far occurred to justify me in entertaining the slightest suspicion either of my governess or her reference, I shall wait before I make any appeal to Miss Gwilt until I have received your answer – which I shall expect by return of post.
Believe me, dear sir, faithfully yours,
DAVID MILROY.
This transparently straightforward letter at once dissipated the confusion which had thus far existed in Allan’s mind: he saw the snare in which he had been caught, as he had not seen it yet. Mrs Milroy had clearly placed him between two alternatives – the alternative of putting himself in the wrong, by declining to answer her husband’s questions; or the alternative of meanly sheltering his responsibility behind the responsibility of a woman, by acknowledging to the major’s own face that the major’s wife had deceived him. In this difficulty Allan acted, as usual, without hesitation. His pledge to Mrs Milroy to consider their correspondence private still bound him, disgracefully as she had abused it. And his resolution was as immovable as ever to let no earthly consideration tempt him into betraying Miss Gwilt. ‘I may have behaved like a fool,’ he thought, ‘but I won’t break my word; and I won’t be the means of turning that miserable woman adrift in the world again.’
He wrote to the major as artlessly and briefly as he had written to the major’s wife. He declared his unwillingness to cause a friend and neighbour any disappointment, if he could possibly help it. On this occasion he had no other choice. The questions the major asked him were questions which he could not consent to answer. He was not very clever at explaining himself, and he hoped he might be excused for putting it in that way, and saying no more.