Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  She laughed gaily. ‘How very odd of you, Mr Armadale, not to know, when it all belongs to you! Are you really seeing Thorpe-Ambrose this morning for the first time? How indescribably strange it must feel! No, no; don’t say any more complimentary things to me just yet. You may turn my head if you do. We haven’t got the old lady with us; and I really must take care of myself. Let me be useful; let me tell you all about your own grounds. We are going out at that little gate, across one of the drives in the park, and then over the rustic bridge, and then round the corner of the plantation – where do you think? To where I live, Mr Armadale; to the lovely little cottage that you have let to papa. Oh, if you only knew how lucky we thought ourselves to get it!’

  She paused, looked up at her companion, and stopped another compliment on the incorrigible Allan’s lips.

  ‘I’ll drop your arm,’ she said coquettishly, ‘if you do! We were lucky to get the cottage, Mr Armadale. Papa said he felt under an obligation to you for letting it, the day we got in. And I said I felt under an obligation, no longer ago than last week.’

  ‘You, Miss Milroy!’ exclaimed Allan.

  ‘Yes. It may surprise you to hear it; but if you hadn’t let the cottage to papa, I believe I should have suffered the indignity and misery of being sent to school.’

  Allan’s memory reverted to the half-crown that he had spun on the cabin-table of the yacht, at Castletown. ‘If she only knew that I had tossed up for it!’ he thought, guiltily.

  ‘I daresay you don’t understand why I should feel such a horror of going to school,’ pursued Miss Milroy, misinterpreting the momentary silence on her companion’s side. ‘If I had gone to school in early life – I mean at the age when other girls go – I shouldn’t have minded it now. But I had no such chance at the time. It was the time of mamma’s illness and of papa’s unfortunate speculations; and as papa had nobody to comfort him but me, of course I stayed at home. You needn’t laugh; I was of some use, I can tell you. I helped papa over his troubles, by sitting on his knee after dinner, and asking him to tell me stories of all the remarkable people he had known when he was about in the great world, at home and abroad. Without me to amuse him in the evening, and his clock to occupy him in the daytime—’

  ‘His clock?’ repeated Allan.

  ‘Oh, yes! I ought to have told you. Papa is an extraordinary mechanical genius. You will say so, too, when you see his clock. It’s nothing like so large, of course, but it’s on the model of the famous clock at Strasbourg.3 Only think, he began it when I was eight years old; and (though I was sixteen last birthday) it isn’t finished yet! Some of our friends were quite surprised he should take to such a thing when his troubles began. But papa himself set that right in no time; he reminded them that Louis the Sixteenth4 took to lock-making when his troubles began – and then everybody was perfectly satisfied.’ She stopped, and changed colour confusedly. ‘Oh, Mr Armadale,’ she said, in genuine embarrassment this time, ‘here is my unlucky tongue running away with me again! I am talking to you already as if I had known you for years! This is what papa’s friend meant when he said my manners were too bold. It’s quite true; I have a dreadful way of getting familiar with people, if—’ She checked herself suddenly, on the brink of ending the sentence by saying, ‘if I like them.’

  ‘No, no; do go on!’ pleaded Allan. ‘It’s a fault of mine to be familiar, too. Besides, we must be familiar; we are such near neighbours. I’m rather an uncultivated sort of fellow, and I don’t know quite how to say it; but I want your cottage to be jolly and friendly with my house, and my house to be jolly and friendly with your cottage. There’s my meaning, all in the wrong words. Do go on, Miss Milroy; pray go on!’

  She smiled and hesitated. ‘I don’t exactly remember where I was,’ she replied. ‘I only remember I had something I wanted to tell you. This comes, Mr Armadale, of my taking your arm. I should get on so much better, if you would only consent to walk separately. You won’t? Well, then, will you tell me what it was I wanted to say? Where was I before I went wandering off to papa’s troubles and papa’s clock?’

  ‘At school!’ replied Allan, with a prodigious effort of memory.

  ‘Not at school, you mean,’ said Miss Milroy; ‘and all through you. Now I can go on again, which is a great comfort. I am quite serious, Mr Armadale, in saying that I should have been sent to school, if you had said No when papa proposed for the cottage. This is how it happened. When we began moving in, Mrs Blanchard sent us a most kind message from the great house, to say that her servants were at our disposal, if we wanted any assistance. The least papa and I could do, after that, was to call and thank her. We saw Mrs Blanchard and Miss Blanchard. Mrs was charming, and Miss looked perfectly lovely in her mourning. I’m sure you admire her? She’s tall and pale and graceful – quite your idea of beauty, I should think?’

  ‘Nothing like it,’ began Allan. ‘My idea of beauty at the present moment—’

  Miss Milroy felt it coming, and instantly took her hand off his arm.

  ‘I mean I have never seen either Mrs Blanchard or her niece,’ added Allan, precipitately correcting himself.

  Miss Milroy tempered justice with mercy, and put her hand back again.

  ‘How extraordinary that you should never have seen them!’ she went on. ‘Why, you are a perfect stranger to everything and everybody at Thorpe-Ambrose! Well, after Miss Blanchard and I had sat and talked a little while, I heard my name on Mrs Blanchard’s lips, and instantly held my breath. She was asking papa if I had finished my education. Out came papa’s great grievance directly. My old governess, you must know, left us to be married just before we came here, and none of our friends could produce a new one whose terms were reasonable. “I’m told, Mrs Blanchard, by people who understand it better than I do,” says papa, “that advertising is a risk. It all falls on me, in Mrs Milroy’s state of health, and I suppose I must end in sending my little girl to school. Do you happen to know of a school within the means of a poor man?” Mrs Blanchard shook her head – I could have kissed her on the spot for doing it. “All my experience, Major Milroy,” says this perfect angel of a woman, “is in favour of advertising. My niece’s governess was originally obtained by an advertisement, and you may imagine her value to us when I tell you that she lived in our family for more than ten years.” I could have gone down on both my knees and worshipped Mrs Blanchard then and there – and I only wonder I didn’t! Papa was struck at the time – I could see that – and he referred to it again on the way home. “Though I have been long out of the world, my dear,” says papa, “I know a highly-bred woman and a sensible woman when I see her. Mrs Blanchard’s experience puts advertising in a new light – I must think about it.” He has thought about it, and (though he hasn’t openly confessed it to me) I know that he decided to advertise, no later than last night. So, if papa thanks you for letting the cottage, Mr Armadale, I thank you, too. But for you, we should never have known darling Mrs Blanchard; and but for darling Mrs Blanchard, I should have been sent to school.’

  Before Allan could reply, they turned the corner of the plantation, and came in sight of the cottage. Description of it is needless; the civilized universe knows it already. It was the typical cottage of the drawing-master’s early lessons in neat shading and the broad pencil touch – with the trim thatch, the luxuriant creepers, the modest lattice-windows, the rustic porch, and the wicker birdcage, all complete.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Miss Milroy. ‘Do come in!’

  ‘May I?’ asked Allan. ‘Won’t the major think it too early?’

  ‘Early or late, I’m sure papa will be only too glad to see you.’

  She led the way briskly up the garden path, and opened the parlour door. As Allan followed her into the little room, he saw, at the further end of it, a gentleman sitting alone at an old-fashioned writing-table, with his back turned to his visitor.

  ‘Papa! a surprise for you!’ said Miss Milroy, rousing him from his occupation; ‘Mr Armadale has come to Thorpe-Ambros
e; and I have brought him here to see you.’

  The major started – rose, bewildered for the moment – recovered himself immediately, and advanced to welcome his young landlord, with hospitable outstretched hand.

  A man with a larger experience of the world, and a finer observation of humanity than Allan possessed, would have seen the story of Major Milroy’s life written in Major Milroy’s face. The home-troubles that had struck him were plainly betrayed in his stooping figure, and his wan, deeply-wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy self-absorption of his manner and his look while his daughter was speaking to him. The moment after, when he had roused himself to welcome his guest, was the moment which made the self-revelation complete. Then there flickered in the major’s weary eyes a faint reflection of the spirit of his happier youth. Then there passed over the major’s dull and dreamy manner a change which told unmistakably of social graces and accomplishments, learned at some past time in no ignoble social school. A man who had long since taken his patient refuge from trouble in his one mechanical pursuit; a man only roused at intervals to know himself again for what he once had been. So revealed, to all eyes that could read him aright, Major Milroy now stood before Allan, on the first morning of an acquaintance which was destined to be an event in Allan’s life.

  ‘I am heartily glad to see you, Mr Armadale,’ he said, speaking in the changelessly quiet subdued tone peculiar to most men whose occupations are of the solitary and monotonous kind. ‘You have done me one favour already, by taking me as your tenant, and you now do me another by paying this friendly visit. If you have not breakfasted already, let me waive all ceremony on my side, and ask you to take your place at our little table.’

  ‘With the greatest pleasure, Major Milroy, if I am not in the way,’ replied Allan, delighted at his reception. ‘I was sorry to hear from Miss Milroy that Mrs Milroy is an invalid. Perhaps, my being here unexpectedly; perhaps the sight of a strange face—’

  ‘I understand your hesitation, Mr Armadale,’ said the major; ‘but it is quite unnecessary. Mrs Milroy’s illness keeps her entirely confined to her own room.5 – Have we got everything we want on the table, my love?’ he went on, changing the subject so abruptly, that a closer observer than Allan might have suspected it was distasteful to him. ‘Will you come and make tea?’

  Miss Milroy’s attention appeared to be already pre-engaged: she made no reply. While her father and Allan had been exchanging civilities, she had been putting the writing-table in order, and examining the various objects scattered on it with the unrestrained curiosity of a spoilt child. The moment after the major had spoken to her, she discovered a morsel of paper hidden between the leaves of the blotting-book, snatched it up, looked at it, and turned round instantly, with an exclamation of surprise.

  ‘Do my eyes deceive me, papa?’ she asked. ‘Or were you really and truly writing the advertisement when I came in?’

  ‘I had just finished it,’ replied her father. ‘But, my dear, Mr Armadale is here – we are waiting for breakfast.’

  ‘Mr Armadale knows all about it,’ rejoined Miss Milroy. ‘I told him in the garden.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Allan. ‘Pray, don’t make a stranger of me, major! If it’s about the governess, I’ve got something (in an indirect sort of way) to do with it too.’

  Major Milroy smiled. Before he could answer, his daughter, who had been reading the advertisement, appealed to him eagerly, for the second time.

  ‘Oh, papa,’ she said, ‘there’s one thing here I don’t like at all! Why do you put grandmamma’s initials at the end? Why do you tell them to write to grandmamma’s house in London?’

  ‘My dear! your mother can do nothing in this matter, as you know. And as for me (even if I went to London), questioning strange ladies about their characters and accomplishments is the last thing in the world that I am fit to do. Your grandmamma is on the spot; and your grandmamma is the proper person to receive the letters, and to make all the necessary inquiries.’

  ‘But I want to see the letters myself,’ persisted the spoilt child. ‘Some of them are sure to be amusing—’

  ‘I don’t apologize for this very unceremonious reception of you, Mr Armadale,’ said the major, turning to Allan, with a quaint and quiet humour. ‘It may be useful as a warning, if you ever chance to marry and have a daughter – not to begin, as I have done, by letting her have her own way.’

  Allan laughed, and Miss Milroy persisted.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘I should like to help in choosing which letters we answer, and which we don’t. I think I ought to have some voice in the selection of my own governess. Why not tell them, papa, to send their letters down here – to the post-office or the stationer’s, or anywhere you like? When you and I have read them, we can send up the letters we prefer to grandmamma; and she can ask all the questions, and pick out the best governess, just as you have arranged already, without leaving ME entirely in the dark, which I consider (don’t you, Mr Armadale?) to be quite inhuman. Let me alter the address, papa – do, there’s a darling!’

  ‘We shall get no breakfast, Mr Armadale, if I don’t say Yes,’ said the major, good-humouredly. ‘Do as you like, my dear,’ he added, turning to his daughter. ‘As long as it ends in your grandmamma’s managing the matter for us, the rest is of very little consequence.’

  Miss Milroy took up her father’s pen, drew it through the last line of the advertisement, and wrote the altered address with her own hand as follows:

  Apply, by letter, to M., Post-office, Thorpe-Ambrose, Norfolk.

  ‘There!’ she said, bustling to her place at the breakfast-table. ‘The advertisement may go to London now; and, if a governess does come of it, oh, papa, who, in the name of wonder, will she be? – Tea or coffee, Mr Armadale? I’m really ashamed of having kept you waiting. But it is such a comfort,’ she added, saucily, ‘to get all one’s business off one’s mind before breakfast!’

  Father, daughter, and guest sat down together sociably at the little round table – the best of good neighbours and good friends already.

  Three days later, one of the London news-boys got his business off his mind before breakfast. His district was Diana Street, Pimlico; and the last of the morning’s newspapers which he disposed of, was the newspaper he left at Mrs Oldershaw’s door.

  CHAPTER III

  THE CLAIMS OF SOCIETY

  More than an hour after Allan had set forth on his exploring expedition through his own grounds, Midwinter rose, and enjoyed, in his turn, a full view by daylight of the magnificence of the new house.

  Refreshed by his long night’s rest, he descended the great staircase as cheerfully as Allan himself. One after another, he, too, looked into the spacious rooms on the ground-floor in breathless astonishment at the beauty and the luxury which surrounded him. ‘The house where I lived in service when I was a boy was a fine one,’ he thought, gaily; ‘but it was nothing to this! I wonder if Allan is as surprised and delighted as I am?’ The beauty of the summer morning drew him out through the open hall-door, as it had drawn his friend out before him. He ran briskly down the steps, humming the burden of one of the old vagabond tunes which he had danced to long since, in the old vagabond time. Even the memories of his wretched childhood took their colour, on that happy morning, from the bright medium through which he looked back at them. ‘If I was not out of practice,’ he thought to himself, as he leant on the fence and looked over at the park, ‘I could try some of my old tumbling tricks on that delicious grass.’ He turned; noticed two of the servants talking together near the shrubbery, and asked for news of the master of the house. The men pointed with a smile in the direction of the gardens; Mr Armadale had gone that way more than an hour since, and had met (as had been reported) with Miss Milroy in the grounds. Midwinter followed the path through the shrubbery, but, on reaching the flower-garden, stopped, co
nsidered a little, and retraced his steps. ‘If Allan has met with the young lady,’ he said to himself, ‘Allan doesn’t want me.’ He laughed as he drew that inevitable inference, and turned considerately to explore the beauties of Thorpe-Ambrose on the other side of the house.

  Passing the angle of the front wall of the building, he descended some steps, advanced along a paved walk, turned another angle, and found himself in a strip of garden ground at the back of the house. Behind him was a row of small rooms situated on the level of the servants’ offices. In front of him, on the farther side of the little garden, rose a wall, screened by a laurel hedge, and having a door at one end of it, leading past the stables to a gate that opened on the high road. Perceiving that he had only discovered, thus far, the shorter way to the house, used by the servants and tradespeople, Midwinter turned back again, and looked in at the window of one of the rooms on the basement story as he passed it. Were these the servants’ offices? No; the offices were apparently in some other part of the ground-floor; the window he had looked in at was the window of a lumber-room. The next two rooms in the row were both empty. The fourth window, when he approached it, presented a little variety. It served also as a door; and it stood open to the garden at that moment.

  Attracted by the book-shelves which he noticed on one of the walls, Midwinter stepped into the room. The books, few in number, did not detain him long; a glance at their backs was enough, without taking them down. The Waverley Novels, Tales by Miss Edgeworth, and by Miss Edgeworth’s many followers, the Poems of Mrs Hemans,1 with a few odd volumes of the illustrated gift-books of the period, composed the bulk of the little library. Midwinter turned to leave the room, when an object on one side of the window, which he had not previously noticed, caught his attention and stopped him. It was a statuette standing on a bracket – a reduced copy of the famous Niobe of the Florence Museum. He glanced from the statuette to the window, with a sudden doubt which set his heart throbbing fast. It was a French window; and the statuette was on his left hand as he stood before it. He looked out with a suspicion which he had not felt yet. The view before him was the view of a lawn and garden. For a moment his mind struggled blindly to escape the conclusion which had seized it – and struggled in vain. Here, close round him and close before him; here, forcing him mercilessly back from the happy present to the horrible past, was the room that Allan had seen in the Second Vision of the Dream.2