Armadale by Wilkie Collins
She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter into fragments and threw the pen to the other end of the room. Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which Midwinter had occupied; her foot restlessly tapping the floor, and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clenched teeth. ‘Young as you are,’ she thought, with her mind reviving the image of him in the empty chair, – ‘there has been something out of the common in your life – and I must and will know it!’
The house-clock struck the hour and roused her. She sighed, and walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it, and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders. ‘Fancy,’ she thought, ‘if he saw me now!’ She turned back to the table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles and took the other in her hand. ‘Midwinter?’ she said, as she passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bedchamber. ‘I don’t believe in his name, to begin with!’
The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was back again at the great house.
Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed out of the right road. The events of the evening – the interview with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight’s solitary thinking of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion of Allan’s connection with it – had all conspired to throw his mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates of Thorpe-Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place.
The front of the house was dark and closed for the night. Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men’s voices, as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject of conversation between them was their master.
‘I’ll bet you an even half-crown he’s driven out of the neighbourhood before another week is over his head,’ said the first footman.
‘Done.’ said the second. ‘He isn’t as easy driven as you think.’
‘Isn’t he?’ retorted the other. ‘He’ll be mobbed if he stops here! I tell you again, he’s not satisfied with the mess he’s got into already. I know it for certain he’s having the governess watched.’
At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back, Midwinter’s one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings – his one present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had gone to bed about half an hour since.
‘It was my master’s particular order, sir,’ said the head footman, ‘that he was to be told of it if you came back.’
‘It is my particular request,’ returned Midwinter, ‘that you won’t disturb him.’
The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle and left them.2
CHAPTER VIII
SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM
Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe-Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted, to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon.
Towards nine o’clock on the morning after his return, Midwinter knocked at Allan’s door; and, on entering the room, found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the housemaids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter’s return. Nobody had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; nobody had heard him ring the bell for breakfast as usual. In brief, nobody knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all – that he was not in the house.
Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan’s unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits.
The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south – there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms passed him on the drive below. The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master’s movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pass the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park, with a nosegay in his hand.
A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter’s mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. ‘What does the nosegay mean?’ he asked himself with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way.
It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior, was the impression made by the lawyer’s account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major’s daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan’s eyes, in an irresistibly attractive character – the character of the one person among all his neighbours who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house; hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face, so pleasantly associated with his first happiest days at Thorpe-Ambrose. To be conscious of such a feeling as this, was with a character like Allan’s, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend’s return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet.
After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend’s return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house.
From time to time, as he passed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs Armadale’s, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son – the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to
Towards ten o’clock the well-remembered sound of Allan’s voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more, he was visible from the garden. His second morning’s search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman’s children.
Midwinter impulsively took a step forward towards the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress. Conscious that his position towards his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess’s influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that he had set forth from the moors on his return to Thorpe-Ambrose with the resolution of acknowledging the passion that had mastered him, and of insisting, if necessary, on a second and a longer absence in the interests of the sacrifice which he was bent on making to the happiness of his friend. What had become of that resolution now? The discovery of Miss Gwilt’s altered position, and the declaration that she had voluntarily made of her indifference to Allan, had scattered it to the winds. The first words with which he would have met his friend, if nothing had happened to him on the homeward way, were words already dismissed from his lips. He drew back as he felt it, and struggled with an instinctive loyalty towards Allan, to free himself at the last moment from the influence of Miss Gwilt.
Having disposed of his useless nosegay, Allan passed on into the garden, and the instant he entered it, recognized Midwinter with a loud cry of surprise and delight.
‘Am I awake, or dreaming?’ he exclaimed, seizing his friend excitably by both hands. ‘You dear old Midwinter, have you sprung up out of the ground, or have you dropped from the clouds?’
It was not till Midwinter had explained the mystery of his unexpected appearance in every particular, that Allan could be prevailed on to say a word about himself. When he did speak, he shook his head ruefully, and subdued the hearty loudness of his voice, with a preliminary look round to see if the servants were within hearing.
‘I’ve learnt to be cautious since you went away and left me,’ said Allan. ‘My dear fellow, you haven’t the least notion what things have happened, and what an awful scrape I’m in at this very moment!’
‘You are mistaken, Allan. I have heard more of what has happened than you suppose.’
‘What! the dreadful mess I’m in with Miss Gwilt? the row with the major? the infernal scandal-mongering in the neighbourhood? You don’t mean to say—?’
‘Yes,’ interposed Midwinter quietly, ‘I have heard of it all.’
‘Good heavens! how? Did you stop at Thorpe-Ambrose on your way back? Have you been in the coffee-room at the hotel? Have you met Pedgift? Have you dropped into the Reading Rooms, and seen what they call the freedom of the press in the town newspaper?’
Midwinter paused before he answered, and looked up at the sky. The clouds had been gathering unnoticed over their heads, and the first rain-drops were beginning to fall.
‘Come in here,’ said Allen. ‘We’ll go up to breakfast this way.’ He led Midwinter through the open French window into his own sitting-room. The wind blew towards that side of the house, and the rain followed them in. Midwinter, who was last, turned and closed the window.
Allan was too eager for the answer which the weather had interrupted, to wait for it till they reached the breakfast-room. He stopped close at the window, and added two more to his string of questions.
‘How can you possibly have heard about me and Miss Gwilt?’ he asked. ‘Who told you?’
‘Miss Gwilt herself,’ replied Midwinter gravely.
Allan’s manner changed the moment the governess’s name passed his friend’s lips.
‘I wish you had heard my story first,’ he said. ‘Where did you meet with Miss Gwilt?’
There was a momentary pause. They both stood still at the window, absorbed in the interest of the moment. They both forgot that their contemplated place of shelter from the rain had been the breakfast-room upstairs.
‘Before I answer your question,’ said Midwinter a little constrainedly, ‘I want to ask you something, Allan, on my side. Is it really true that you are in some way concerned in Miss Gwilt’s leaving Major Milroy’s service?’
There was another pause. The disturbance which had begun to appear in Allan’s manner palpably increased.
‘It’s rather a long story,’ he began. ‘I have been taken in, Midwinter. I’ve been imposed on by a person, who – I can’t help saying it – who cheated me into promising what I oughtn’t to have promised, and doing what I had better not have done. It isn’t breaking my promise to tell you. I can trust in your discretion, can’t I? You will never say a word, will you?’
‘Stop!’ said Midwinter. ‘Don’t trust me with any secrets which are not your own. If you have given a promise, don’t trifle with it, even in speaking to such an intimate friend as I am.’ He laid his hand gently and kindly on Allan’s shoulder. ‘I can’t help seeing that I have made you a little uncomfortable,’ he went on. ‘I can’t help seeing that my question is not so easy a one to answer as I had hoped and supposed. Shall we wait a little? shall we go upstairs and breakfast first?’
Allan was far too earnestly bent on presenting his conduct to his friend in the right aspect, to heed Midwinter’s suggestion. He spoke eagerly on the instant, without moving from the window.
‘My dear fellow, it’s a perfectly easy question to answer. Only—’ He hesitated. ‘Only it requires what I’m a bad hand at – it requires an explanation.’
‘Do you mean,’ asked Midwinter more seriously, but not less gently than before, ‘that you must first justify yourself, and then answer my question?’
‘That’s it!’ said Allan, with an air of relief. ‘You’ve hit the right nail on the head, just as usual.’
Midwinter’s face darkened for the first time. ‘I am sorry to hear it,’ he said; his voice sinking low, and his eyes dropping to the ground as he spoke.
The rain was beginning to fall thickly. It swept across the garden, straight on the closed windows, and pattered heavily against the glass.
‘Sorry!’ repeated Allan. ‘My dear fellow, you haven’t heard the particulars yet. Wait till I explain the thing first.’
‘You are a bad hand at explanations,’ said Midwinter, repeating Allan’s own words. ‘Don’t place yourself at a disadvantage. Don’t explain it.’
Allan looked at him, in silent perplexity and surprise.
‘You are my friend – my best and dearest friend,’ Midwinter went on. ‘I can’t bear to let you justify yourself to me as if I was your judge, or as if I doubted you.’ He looked up again at Allan frankly and kindly as he said those words. ‘Besides,’ he resumed, ‘I think if I look into my memory, I can anticipate your explanation. We had a moment’s talk, before I went away, about some very delicate questions, which you proposed putting to Major Milroy. I remember I warned you; I remember I had my misgivings. Should I be guessing right if I guessed that those questions have been in some way the means of leading you into a false position? If it is true that you have been concerned in Miss Gwilt’s leaving her situation, is it also true – is it only doing you justice to believe – that any mischief for which you are responsible, has been mischief innocently done?’
‘Yes,’ said Allan, speaking for th
‘I will hear them if you desire it,’ returned Midwinter. ‘But I am satisfied without another word, that you have not willingly been the means of depriving Miss Gwilt of her situation. If that is understood between you and me, I think we need say no more. Besides, I have another question to ask, of much greater importance: a question that has been forced on me by what I saw with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears, last night.’
He stopped, recoiling in spite of himself. ’shall we go upstairs first?’ he asked abruptly, leading the way to the door, and trying to gain time.
It was useless. Once again, the room which they were both free to leave, the room which one of them had twice tried to leave already, held them as if they were prisoners.
Without answering, without even appearing to have heard Midwinter’s proposal to go upstairs, Allan followed him mechanically as far as the opposite side of the window. There he stopped. ‘Midwinter!’ he burst out, in a sudden panic of astonishment and alarm, ‘there seems to be something strange between us! you’re not like yourself. What is it?’
With his hand on the lock of the door, Midwinter turned, and looked back into the room. The moment had come. His haunting fear of doing his friend an injustice had shown itself in a restraint of word, look, and action, which had been marked enough to force its way to Allan’s notice. The one course left now, in the dearest interests of the friendship that united them, was to speak at once, and to speak boldly.
‘There’s something strange between us,’ reiterated Allan. ‘For God’s sake what is it?’
Midwinter took his hand from the door, and came down again to the window, fronting Allan. He occupied the place, of necessity, which Allan had just left. It was the side of the window on which the Statuette stood. The little figure, placed on its projecting bracket, was close behind him on his right hand. No signs of change appeared in the stormy sky. The rain still swept slanting across the garden, and pattered heavily against the glass.