Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  I can’t imagine why, but the parting words spoken to Armadale by that old brute of a lawyer, have come back to my mind! Here they are, as reported in Mr Bashwood’s letter: ‘Some other person’s curiosity may go on from the point where you (and I) have stopped, and some other person’s hand may let the broad daylight in yet on Miss Gwilt.’

  What does he mean by that? And what did he mean afterwards when he overtook old Bashwood in the drive, by telling him to gratify his curiosity? Does this hateful Pedgift actually suppose there is any chance—? Ridiculous! Why, I have only to look at the feeble old creature, and he daren’t lift his little finger unless I tell him. He try to pry into my past life indeed! Why, people with ten times his brains, and a hundred times his courage, have tried – and have left off as wise as they began.

  I don’t know though – it might have been better if I had kept my temper when Bashwood was here the other night. And it might be better still if I saw him to-morrow, and took him back into my good graces by giving him something to do for me. Suppose I tell him to look after the two Pedgifts, and to discover whether there is any chance of their attempting to renew their connection with Armadale? No such thing is at all likely – but if I gave old Bashwood this commission, it would flatter his sense of his own importance to me, and would at the same time serve the excellent purpose of keeping him out of my way.

  *

  Thursday morning, nine o’clock. – I have just got back from the park.

  For once, I have proved a true prophet. There they were together, at the same early hour, in the same secluded situation among the trees; and there was Miss in full possession of the report of my visit to the great house, and taking her tone accordingly.

  After saying one or two things about me, which I promise him not to forget, Armadale took the way to convince her of his constancy which I felt beforehand he would be driven to take. He repeated his proposal of marriage, with excellent effect this time. Tears and kisses and protestations followed; and my late pupil opened her heart at last, in the most innocent manner. Home, she confessed, was getting so miserable to her now, that it was only less miserable than going to school. Her mother’s temper was becoming more violent and unmanageable every day. The nurse, who was the only person with any influence over her, had gone away in disgust. Her father was becoming more and more immersed in his clock, and was made more and more resolute to send her away from home, by the distressing scenes which now took place with her mother, almost day by day. I waited through these domestic disclosures on the chance of hearing any plans they might have for the future discussed between them; and my patience, after no small exercise of it, was rewarded at last.

  The first suggestion (as was only natural where such a fool as Armadale was concerned) came from the girl. She started an idea, which I own I had not anticipated. She proposed that Armadale should write to her father; and, cleverer still, she prevented all fear of his blundering by telling him what he was to say. He was to express himself as deeply distressed at his estrangement from the major, and to request permission to call at the cottage, and say a few words in his own justification. That was all. The letter was not to be sent that day, for the applicants for the vacant place of Mrs Milroy’s nurse were coming, and seeing them and questioning them would put her father, with his dislike of such things, in no humour to receive Armadale’s application indulgently. The Friday would be the day to send the letter, and on the Saturday morning, if the answer was unfortunately not favourable, they might meet again. ‘I don’t like deceiving my father; he has always been so kind to me. And there will be no need to deceive him, Allan, if we can only make you friends again.’ Those were the last words the little hypocrite said, when I left them.

  What will the major do? Saturday morning will show. I won’t think of it till Saturday morning has come and gone. They are not man and wife yet; and again and again I say it, though my brains are still as helpless as ever, man and wife they shall never be.

  On my way home again, I caught Bashwood at his breakfast, with his poor old black teapot, and his little penny loaf, and his one cheap morsel of oily butter, and his darned dirty table-cloth. It sickens me to think of it.

  I coaxed and comforted the miserable old creature till the tears stood in his eyes, and he quite blushed with pleasure. He undertakes to look after the Pedgifts with the utmost alacrity. Pedgift the elder, he describes, when once roused, as the most obstinate man living; nothing will induce him to give way, unless Armadale gives way also on his side. Pedgift the younger is much the more likely of the two to make attempts at a reconciliation. Such at least is Bashwood’s opinion. It is of very little consequence now what happens either way. The only important thing is to tie my elderly admirer safely again to my apron-string. And this is done.

  The post is late this morning. It has only just come in, and has brought me a letter from Midwinter.

  It is a charming letter; it flatters me and flutters me as if I was a young girl again. No reproaches for my never having written to him; no hateful hurrying of me, in plain words, to marry him. He only writes to tell me a piece of news. He has obtained, through his lawyers, a prospect of being employed as occasional correspondent to a newspaper which is about to be started in London.6 The employment will require him to leave England for the Continent, which would exactly meet his own wishes for the future, but he cannot consider the proposal seriously until he has first ascertained whether it would meet my wishes too. He knows no will but mine, and he leaves me to decide, after first mentioning the time allowed him before his answer must be sent in. It is the time of course (if I agree to his going abroad) in which I must marry him. But there is not a word about this in his letter. He asks for nothing but a sight of my handwriting to help him through the interval, while we are separated from each other.

  That is the letter; not very long, but so prettily expressed.

  I think I can penetrate the secret of his fancy for going abroad. That wild idea of putting the mountains and the seas between Armadale and himself is still in his mind. As if either he or I could escape doing what we are fated to do – supposing we really are fated – by putting a few hundred, or a few thousand miles, between Armadale and ourselves! What strange absurdity and inconsistency! And yet how I like him for being absurd and inconsistent; for don’t I see plainly that I am at the bottom of it all? Who leads this clever man astray in spite of himself? Who makes him too blind to see the contradiction in his own conduct, which he would see plainly in the conduct of another person? How interested I do feel in him! How dangerously near I am to shutting my eyes on the past, and letting myself love him! Was Eve fonder of Adam than ever, I wonder, after she had coaxed him into eating the apple? I should have quite doated on him if I had been in her place. (Memorandum: To write Midwinter a charming little letter on my side, with a kiss in it; and as time is allowed him before he sends in his answer, to ask for time too, before I tell him whether I will or will not go abroad.)7

  Five o’clock?8 – A tiresome visit from my landlady; eager for a little gossip, and full of news, which she thinks will interest me.

  She is acquainted, I find, with Mrs Milroy’s late nurse; and she has been seeing her friend off, at the station, this afternoon. They talked of course of affairs at the cottage, and my name turned up in the course of conversation. I am quite wrong, it seems, if the nurse’s authority is to be trusted, in believing Miss Milroy to be responsible for sending Mr Armadale to my reference in London. Miss Milroy really knew nothing about it, and it all originated in her mother’s mad jealousy of me. The present wretched state of things at the cottage is due entirely to the same cause. Mrs Milroy is firmly persuaded that my remaining at Thorpe-Ambrose is referable to my having some private means of communicating with the major which it is impossible for her to discover. With this conviction in her mind, she has become so unmanageable that no person, with any chance of bettering herself, could possibly remain in attendance on her; and, sooner or later, the major, object to it as he may
, will be obliged to place her under proper medical care.

  That is the sum and substance of what the wearisome landlady had to tell me. Unnecessary to say that I was not in the least interested by it. Even if the nurse’s assertion is to be depended on – which I persist in doubting – it is of no importance now. I know that Miss Milroy, and nobody but Miss Milroy, has utterly ruined my prospect of becoming Mrs Armadale of Thorpe-Ambrose – and I care to know nothing more. If her mother was really alone in the attempt to expose my false reference, her mother seems to be suffering for it, at any rate. And so good-by to Mrs Milroy – and heaven defend me from any more last glimpses at the cottage, seen through the medium of my landlady’s spectacles!

  Nine o’clock. – Bashwood has just left me, having come with news from the great house. Pedgift the younger has made his attempt at bringing about a reconciliation this very day, and has failed. I am the sole cause of the failure. Armadale is quite willing to be reconciled, if Pedgift the elder will avoid all future occasion of disagreement between them, by never recurring to the subject of Miss Gwilt. This, however, happens to be exactly the condition which Pedgift’s father – with his opinion of me and my doings – would consider it his duty to Armadale not to accept. So lawyer and client remain as far apart as ever, and the obstacle of the Pedgifts is cleared out of my way.

  It might have been a very awkward obstacle, so far as Pedgift the elder is concerned, if one of his suggestions had been carried out – I mean, if an officer of the London police had been brought down here to look at me. It is a question, even now, whether I had better not take to the thick veil again, which I always wear in London and other large places. The only difficulty is, that it would excite remark in this inquisitive little town to see me wearing a thick veil, for the first time, in the summer weather.

  It is close on ten o’clock – I have been dawdling over my diary longer than I supposed. No words can describe how weary and languid I feel. Why don’t I take my sleeping drops and go to bed? There is no meeting between Armadale and Miss Milroy to force me into early rising tomorrow morning. Am I trying, for the hundredth time, to see my way clearly into the future – trying, in my present state of fatigue, to be the quick-witted woman I once was, before all these anxieties came together and overpowered me? or am I perversely afraid of my bed when I want it most? I don’t know – I am tired and miserable; I am looking wretchedly haggard and old. With a little encouragement, I might be fool enough to burst out crying. Luckily, there is no one to encourage me. What sort of night is it, I wonder?

  A cloudy night, with the moon showing at intervals, and the wind rising. I can just hear it moaning among the ins and outs of the unfinished cottages at the end of the street. My nerves must be a little shaken, I think. I was startled just now by a shadow on the wall. It was only after a moment or two that I mustered sense enough to notice where the candle was, and to see that the shadow was my own.

  Shadows remind me of Midwinter – or, if the shadows don’t, something else does. I must have another look at his letter, and then I will positively go to bed.

  I shall end in getting fond of him. If I remain much longer in this lonely uncertain state – so irresolute, so unlike my usual self – I shall end in getting fond of him. What madness! As if I could ever be really fond of a man again!

  Suppose I took one of my sudden resolutions, and married him. Poor as he is, he would give me a name and a position, if I became his wife. Let me see how the name – his own name – would look, if I really did consent to take it for mine.

  ‘Mrs Armadale!’ Pretty.

  ‘Mrs Allan Armadale!’ Prettier still.

  My nerves must be shaken. Here is my own handwriting startling me now! It is so strange – it is enough to startle anybody. The similarity in the two names never struck me in this light before. Marry which of the two I might, my name would of course be the same. I should have been Mrs Armadale, if I had married the light-haired Allan at the great house. And I can be Mrs Armadale still, if I marry the dark-haired Allan in London. It’s almost maddening to write it down – to feel that something ought to come of it – and to find nothing come.

  How can anything come of it? If I did go to London, and marry him (as of course I must marry him) under his real name, would he let me be known by it afterwards? With all his reasons for concealing his real name, he would insist – no, he is too fond of me to do that – he would entreat me to take the name which he has assumed. Mrs Midwinter. Hideous! Ozias, too, when I wanted to address him familiarly as his wife should. Worse than hideous!

  And yet, there would be some reason for humouring him in this, if he asked me. Suppose the brute at the great house happened to leave this neighbourhood as a single man; and suppose, in his absence, any of the people who know him heard of a Mrs Allan Armadale, they would set her down at once as his wife. Even if they actually saw me – if I actually came among them with that name, and if he was not present to contradict it – his own servants would be the first to say, ‘We knew she would marry him after all!’ And my lady-patronesses, who will be ready to believe anything of me now we have quarrelled, would join the chorus sotto voce: ‘Only think, my dear, the report that so shocked us, actually turns out to be true!’ No. If I marry Midwinter, I must either be perpetually putting my husband and myself in a false position – or I must leave his real name, his pretty, romantic name, behind me at the church door.

  My husband! As if I was really going to marry him! I am not going to marry him, and there’s an end of it.

  Half-past ten. – Oh dear! oh dear! how my temples throb, and how hot my weary eyes feel! There is the moon looking at me through the window. How fast the little scattered clouds are flying before the wind! Now they let the moon in; and now they shut the moon out. What strange shapes the patches of yellow light take, and lose again, all in a moment! No peace and quiet for me, look where I may. The candle keeps flickering, and the very sky itself is restless to-night.

  ‘To bed! to bed!’ as Lady Macbeth says. I wonder by-the-by what Lady Macbeth would have done in my position? She would have killed somebody when her difficulties first began. Probably Armadale.

  Friday morning. – A night’s rest, thanks again to my Drops. I went to breakfast in better spirits, and received a morning welcome in the shape of a letter from Mrs Oldershaw.

  My silence has produced its effect on Mother Jezebel. She attributes it to the right cause, and she shows her claws at last. If I am not in a position to pay my note-of-hand for thirty pounds, which is due on Tuesday next, her lawyer is instructed to ‘take the usual course’. If I am not in a position to pay it! Why, when I have settled to-day with my landlord, I shall have barely five pounds left! There is not the shadow of a prospect between now and Tuesday of my earning any money; and I don’t possess a friend in this place who would trust me with sixpence. The difficulties that are swarming round me wanted but one more to complete them, and that one has come.

  Midwinter would assist me, of course, if I could bring myself to ask him for assistance. But that means marrying him. Am I really desperate enough and helpless enough to end it in that way? No; not yet.

  My head feels heavy; I must get out into the fresh air, and think about it.

  Two o’clock. – I believe I have caught the infection of Midwinter’s superstition. I begin to think that events are forcing me nearer and nearer to some end which I don’t see yet, but which I am firmly persuaded is now not far off.

  I have been insulted – deliberately insulted before witnesses – by Miss Milroy.

  After walking, as usual, in the most unfrequented place I could pick out, and after trying not very successfully to think to some good purpose of what I am to do next, I remembered that I needed some note-paper and pens, and went back to the town, to the stationer’s shop. It might have been wiser to have sent for what I wanted. But I was weary of myself, and weary of my lonely rooms; and I did my own errand, for no better reason than that it was something to do.

  I ha
d just got into the shop, and was asking for what I wanted, when another customer came in. We both looked up, and recognized each other at the same moment: Miss Milroy.

  A woman and a lad were behind the counter, besides the man who was serving me. The woman civilly addressed the new customer. ‘What can we have the pleasure of doing for you, Miss?’ After pointing it first, by looking me straight in the face, she answered, ‘Nothing, thank you, at present. I’ll come back when the shop is empty.’

  She went out. The three people in the shop looked at me in silence. In silence, on my side, I paid for my purchases, and left the place. I don’t know how I might have felt if I had been in my usual spirits. In the anxious unsettled state I am in now, I can’t deny it, the girl stung me.

  In the weakness of the moment (for it was nothing else) I was on the point of matching her petty spitefulness by spitefulness quite as petty on my side. I had actually got as far as the whole length of the street, on my way to the major’s cottage, bent on telling him the secret of his daughter’s morning walks, before my better sense came back to me. When I did cool down, I turned round at once, and took the way home. No, no, Miss Milroy: mere temporary mischief-making at the cottage, which would only end in your father forgiving you, and in Armadale profiting by his indulgence, will nothing like pay the debt I owe you. I don’t forget that your heart is set on Armadale; and that the major, however he may talk, has always ended hitherto in giving you your own way. My head may be getting duller and duller, but it has not quite failed me yet.

  In the meantime, there is Mother Oldershaw’s letter waiting obstinately to be answered; and here am I, not knowing what to do about it yet. Shall I answer it or not? It doesn’t matter for the present; there are some hours still to spare before the post goes out.