‘Give me your hand, Allan.’
Allan gave it, and Midwinter held it firmly while he spoke.
‘There is something strange between us,’ he said. ‘There is something to be set right which touches you nearly; and it has not been set right yet. You asked me just now where I met with Miss Gwilt. I met with her on my way back here, upon the high road on the farther side of the town. She entreated me to protect her from a man who was following, and frightening her. I saw the scoundrel with my own eyes, and I should have laid hands on him, if Miss Gwilt herself had not stopped me. She gave a very strange reason for stopping me. She said I didn’t know who his employer was.’
Allan’s ruddy colour suddenly deepened; he looked aside quickly through the window at the pouring rain. At the same moment their hands fell apart, and there was a pause of silence on either side. Midwinter was the first to speak again.
‘Later in the evening,’ he went on, ‘Miss Gwilt explained herself. She told me two things. She declared that the man whom I had seen following her was a hired spy. I was surprised, but I could not dispute it. She told me next, Allan – what I believe with my whole heart and soul to be a falsehood which has been imposed on her as the truth – she told me that the spy was in your employment!’
Allan turned instantly from the window, and looked Midwinter full in the face again. ‘I must explain myself this time,’ he said resolutely.
The ashy paleness, peculiar to him in moments of strong emotion, began to show itself on Midwinter’s cheeks.
‘More explanations!’ he said, and drew back a step, with his eyes fixed in a sudden terror of inquiry on Allan’s face.
‘You don’t know what I know, Midwinter. You don’t know that what I have done has been done with a good reason. And what is more, I have not trusted to myself– I have had good advice.’
‘Did you hear what I said just new?’ asked Midwinter, incredulously; ‘you can’t – surely, you can’t have been attending to me?’
‘I haven’t missed a word,’ rejoined Allan. ‘I tell you again, you don’t know what I know of Miss Gwilt. She has threatened Miss Milroy. Miss Milroy is in danger while her governess stops in this neighbourhood.’
Midwinter dismissed the major’s daughter from the conversation with a contemptuous gesture of his hand.
‘I don’t want to hear about Miss Milroy,’ he said. ‘Don’t mix up Miss Milroy – Good God, Allan, am I to understand that the spy set to watch Miss Gwilt was doing his vile work with your approval?’
‘Once for all, my dear fellow, will you, or will you not, let me explain?’
‘Explain!’ cried Midwinter, his eyes aflame, and his hot Creole blood rushing crimson into his face. ‘Explain the employment of a spy? What! after having driven Miss Gwilt out of her situation, by meddling with her private affairs, you meddle again, by the vilest of all means – the means of a paid spy? You set a watch on the woman whom you yourself told me you loved, only a fortnight since! the woman you were thinking of as your wife! I don’t believe it; I won’t believe it. Is my head failing me? Is it Allan Armadale I am speaking to? Is it Allan Armadale’s face looking at me? Stop! you are acting under some mistaken scruple. Some low fellow has crept into your confidence, and has done this in your name without telling you first.’
Allan controlled himself with admirable patience and admirable consideration for the temper of his friend. ‘If you persist in refusing to hear me,’ he said, ‘I must wait as well as I can till my turn comes.’
‘Tell me you are a stranger to the employment of that man, and I will hear you willingly.’
’suppose there should be a necessity, that you know nothing about, for employing him?’
‘I acknowledge no necessity for the cowardly persecution of a helpless woman.’
A momentary flush of irritation – momentary, and no more – passed over Allan’s face. ‘You mightn’t think her quite so helpless,’ he said, ‘if you knew the truth.’
‘Are you the man to tell me the truth?’ retorted the other. ‘You who have refused to hear her in her own defence! You, who have closed the doors of this house against her!’
Allan still controlled himself, but the effort began at last to be visible.
‘I know your temper is a hot one,’ he said. ‘But for all that, your violence quite takes me by surprise. I can’t account for it, unless–’ he hesitated a moment, and then finished the sentence in his usual frank, outspoken way– ‘unless you are sweet yourself on Miss Gwilt.’
Those last words heaped fuel on the fire. They stripped the truth instantly of all concealments and disguises, and laid it bare to view. Allan’s instinct had guessed, and the guiding influence stood revealed of Midwinter’s interest in Miss Gwilt.
‘What right have you to say that?’ he asked, with raised voice and threatening eyes.
‘I told you’, said Allan, simply, ‘when I thought I was sweet on her myself. Come! come! it’s a little hard, I think, even if you are in love with her, to believe everything she tells you, and not to let me say a word. Is that the way you decide between us?’
‘Yes, it is!’ cried the other, infuriated by Allan’s second allusion to Miss Gwilt. ‘When I am asked to choose between the employer of a spy, and the victim of a spy, I side with the victim!’
‘Don’t try me too hard, Midwinter; I have a temper to lose as well as you.’
He stopped, struggling with himself. The torture of passion in Midwinter’s face, from which a less simple and less generous nature might have recoiled in horror, touched Allan suddenly with an artless distress, which, at that moment, was little less than sublime. He advanced, with his eyes moistening, and his hand held out. ‘You asked me for my hand just now,’ he said, ‘and I gave it you. Will you remember old times, and give me yours, before it’s too late?’
‘No!’ retorted Midwinter, furiously. ‘I may meet Miss Gwilt again, and I may want my hand free to deal with your spy!’
He had drawn back along the wall, as Allan advanced, until the bracket which supported the Statuette was before instead of behind him. In the madness of his passion, he saw nothing but Allan’s face confronting him. In the madness of his passion, he stretched out his right hand as he answered and shook it threateningly in the air. It struck the forgotten projection of the bracket ‘ and the next instant the Statuette lay in fragments on the floor.
The rain drove slanting over flower-bed and lawn, and pattered heavily against the glass; and the two Armadales stood by the window, as the two Shadows had stood in the second Vision of the Dream, with the wreck of the image between them.
Allan stooped over the fragments of the little figure, and lifted them one by one from the floor. ‘Leave me,’ he said, without looking up, ‘or we shall both repent it.’
Without a word, Midwinter moved back slowly. He stood for the second time with his hand on the door, and looked his last at the room. The horror of the night on the Wreck had got him once more, and the flame of his passion was quenched in an instant.
‘The Dream!’ he whispered, under his breath. ‘The Dream again!’
The door was tried from the outside, and a servant appeared with a trivial message about the breakfast.
Midwinter looked at the man with a blank, dreadful helplessness in his face. ’show me the way out,’ he said. ‘The place is dark, and the room turns round with me.’
The servant took him by the arm, and silently led him out.
As the door closed on them, Allan picked up the last fragment of the broken figure. He sat down alone at the table, and hid his face in his hands. The self-control which he had bravely preserved under exasperation renewed again and again, now failed him at last in the friendless solitude of his room; and in the first bitterness of feeling that Midwinter had turned against him like the rest, he burst into tears.
The moments followed each other, the slow time wore on. Little by little the signs of a new elemental disturbance began to show themselves in the summer storm. The shadow o
f a swiftly-deepening darkness swept over the sky. The pattering of the rain lessened with the lessening wind. There was a momentary hush of stillness. Then on a sudden, the rain poured down again like a cataract, and the low roll of thunder came up solemnly on the dying air.
CHAPTER IX
SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH
I. – From Mr Bashwood to Miss Gwilt
Thorpe-Ambrose, July 20th, 1851.
DEAR MADAM, – I received yesterday, by private messenger, your obliging note, in which you direct me to communicate with you, through the post only, as long as there is reason to believe that any visitors who may come to you are likely to be observed. May I be permitted to say, that I look forward with respectful anxiety to the time when I shall again enjoy the only real happiness I have ever experienced – the happiness of personally addressing you?
In compliance with your desire that I should not allow this day (the Sunday) to pass without privately noticing what went on at the great house, I took the keys, and went this morning to the steward’s office. I accounted for my appearance to the servants, by informing them that I had work to do which it was important to complete in the shortest possible time. The same excuse would have done for Mr Armadale, if we had met, but no such meeting happened.
Although I was at Thorpe-Ambrose, in what I thought good time, I was too late to see or hear anything myself of a serious quarrel which appeared to have taken place, just before I arrived, between Mr Armadale and Mr Midwinter.
All the little information I can give you in this matter is derived from one of the servants. The man told me that he heard the voices of the two gentlemen loud, in Mr Armadale’s sitting-room. He went in to announce breakfast shortly afterwards, and found Mr Midwinter in such a dreadful state of agitation, that he had to be helped out of the room. The servant tried to take him upstairs to lie down and compose himself. He declined, saying he would wait a little first in one of the lower rooms, and begging that he might be left alone. The man had hardly got downstairs again, when he heard the front door opened and closed. He ran back, and found that Mr Midwinter was gone. The rain was pouring at the time, and thunder and lightning came soon afterwards. Dreadful weather, certainly, to go out in. The servant thinks Mr Midwinter’s mind was unsettled. I sincerely hope not. Mr Midwinter is one of the few people I have met with in the course of my life who have treated me kindly.
Hearing that Mr Armadale still remained in his sitting-room, I went into the steward’s office (which, as you may remember, is on the same side of the house), and left the door ajar, and set the window open, waiting and listening for anything that might happen. Dear madam, there was a time when I might have thought such a position in the house of my employer not a very becoming one. Let me hasten to assure you that this is far from being my feeling now. I glory in any position which makes me serviceable to you.
The state of the weather seemed hopelessly adverse to that renewal of intercourse between Mr Armadale and Miss Milroy, which you so confidently anticipate, and of which you are so anxious to be made aware. Strangely enough, however, it is actually in consequence of the state of the weather, that I am now in a position to give you the very information you require. Mr Armadale and Miss Milroy met about an hour since. The circumstances were as follows:
Just at the beginning of the thunderstorm, I saw one of the grooms run across from the stables, and heard him tap at his master’s window. Mr Armadale opened the window, and asked what was the matter. The groom said he came with a message from the coachman’s wife. She had seen from her room over the stables (which looks on to the park,) Miss Milroy quite alone, standing for shelter under one of the trees. As that part of the park was at some distance from the major’s cottage, she had thought that her master might wish to send and ask the young lady into the house – especially as she had placed herself, with a thunderstorm coming on, in what might turn out to be a very dangerous position.
The moment Mr Armadale understood the man’s message, he called for the waterproof things and the umbrellas, and ran out himself, instead of leaving it to the servants. In a little time, he and the groom came back with Miss Milroy between them, as well protected as could be from the rain.
I ascertained from one of the women-servants, who had taken the young lady into a bedroom, and had supplied her with such dry things as she wanted, that Miss Milroy had been afterwards shown into the drawing-room, and that Mr Armadale was there with her. The only way of following your instructions, and finding out what passed between them, was to go round the house in the pelting rain, and get into the conservatory (which opens into the drawing-room) by the outer door. I hesitate at nothing, dear madam, in your service; I would cheerfully get wet every day, to please you. Besides, though I may at first sight be thought rather an elderly man, a wetting is of no very serious consequence to me. I assure you I am not so old as I look, and I am of a stronger constitution than appears.
It was impossible for me to get near enough in the conservatory to see what went on in the drawing-room, without the risk of being discovered. But most of the conversation reached me, except when they dropped their voices. This is the substance of what I heard:
I gathered that Miss Milroy had been prevailed on, against her will, to take refuge from the thunderstorm in Mr Armadale’s house. She said so at least, and she gave two reasons. The first was, that her father had forbidden all intercourse between the cottage and the great house. Mr Armadale met this objection by declaring that her father had issued his orders under a total misconception of the truth, and by entreating her not to treat him as cruelly as the major had treated him. He entered, I suspect, into some explanations at this point, but as he dropped his voice, I am unable to say what they were. His language, when I did hear it, was confused and ungrammatical. It seemed, however, to be quite intelligible enough to persuade Miss Milroy that her father had been acting under a mistaken impression of the circumstances. At least, I infer this; for, when I next heard the conversation, the young lady was driven back to her second objection to being in the house – which was, that Mr Armadale had behaved very badly to her, and that he richly deserved that she should never speak to him again.
In this latter case, Mr Armadale attempted no defence of any kind. He agreed with her that he had behaved badly; he agreed with her that he richly deserved she should never speak to him again. At the same time he implored her to remember that he had suffered his punishment already. He was disgraced in the neighbourhood; and his dearest friend, his one intimate friend in the world, had that very morning turned against him like the rest. Far or near, there was not a living creature whom he was fond of, to comfort him, or to say a friendly word to him. He was lonely and miserable, and his heart ached for a little kindness – and that was his only excuse for asking Miss Milroy to forget and forgive the past.
I must leave you, I fear, to judge for yourself of the effect of this on the young lady; for though I tried hard, I failed to catch what she said. I am almost certain I heard her crying, and Mr Armadale entreating her not to break his heart. They whispered a great deal, which aggravated me. I was afterwards alarmed by Mr Armadale coming out into the conservatory to pick some flowers. He did not come as far, fortunately, as the place where I was hidden; and he went in again into the drawing-room, and there was more talking (I suspect at close quarters), which to my great regret I again failed to catch. Pray forgive me for having so little to tell you. I can only add, that when the storm cleared off, Miss Milroy went away with the flowers in her hand, and with Mr Armadale escorting her from the house. My own humble opinion is that he had a powerful friend at court, all through the interview, in the young lady’s own liking for him.
This is all I can say at present, with the exception of one other thing I heard, which I blush to mention. But your word is law, and you have ordered me to have no concealments from you.
Their talk turned once, dear madam, on yourself. I think I heard the word ‘Creature’ from Miss Milroy; and I am certain that Mr Armadale, while a
cknowledging that he had once admired you, added that circumstances had since satisfied him of ‘his folly’. I quote his own expression – it made me quite tremble with indignation. If I may be permitted to say so, the man who admires Miss Gwilt lives in paradise. Respect, if nothing else, ought to have closed Mr Armadale’s lips. He is my employer, I know – but, after his calling it an act of folly to admire you (though I am his deputy steward), I utterly despise him.
Trusting that I may have been so happy as to give you satisfaction thus far, and earnestly desirous to deserve the honour of your continued confidence in me, I remain, dear madam,
Your grateful and devoted servant,
FELIX BASHWOOD.
2. – From Mrs Oldershaw to Miss Gwilt
Diana Street, Monday, July 21st.
MY DEAR LYDIA, – I trouble you with a few lines. They are written under a sense of the duty which I owe to myself, in our present position towards each other.
I am not at all satisfied with the tone of your two last letters; and I am still less pleased at your leaving me this morning without any letter at all – and this when we had arranged, in the doubtful state of our prospects, that I was to hear from you every day. I can only interpret your conduct in one way. I can only infer that matters at Thorpe-Ambrose, having been all mismanaged, are all going wrong.
It is not my present object to reproach you, for why should I waste time, language, and paper? I merely wish to recall to your memory certain considerations which you appear to be disposed to overlook. Shall I put them in the plainest English? Yes – for with all my faults, I am frankness personified.