Toward noon on the day of the twenty-first, Miss Milroy was loitering
in the cottage garden--released from duty in the sick-room by an
improvement in her mother’s health--when her attention was attracted
by the sound of voices in the park. One of the voices she instantly
recognized as Allan’s; the other was strange to her. She put aside the
branches of a shrub near the garden palings, and, peeping through,
saw Allan approaching the cottage gate, in company with a slim, dark,
undersized man, who was talking and laughing excitably at the top of
his voice. Miss Milroy ran indoors to warn her father of Mr. Armadale’s
arrival, and to add that he was bringing with him a noisy stranger, who
was, in all probability, the friend generally reported to be staying
with the squire at the great house.
Had the major’s daughter guessed right? Was the squire’s loud-talking,
loud-laughing companion the shy, sensitive Midwinter of other times? It
was even so. In Allan’s presence, that morning, an extraordinary change
had passed over the ordinarily quiet demeanor of Allan’s friend.
When Midwinter had first appeared in the breakfast-room, after putting
aside Mr. Brock’s startling letter, Allan had been too much occupied to
pay any special attention to him. The undecided difficulty of choosing
the day for the audit dinner had pressed for a settlement once more,
and had been fixed at last (under the butler’s advice) for Saturday,
the twenty-eighth of the month. It was only on turning round to remind
Midwinter of the ample space of time which the new arrangement allowed
for mastering the steward’s books, that even Allan’s flighty attention
had been arrested by a marked change in the face that confronted him.
He had openly noticed the change in his usual blunt manner, and had been
instantly silenced by a fretful, almost an angry, reply. The two had sat
down together to breakfast without the usual cordiality, and the meal
had proceeded gloomily, till Midwinter himself broke the silence by
bursting into the strange outbreak of gayety which had revealed in
Allan’s eyes a new side to the character of his friend.
As usual with most of Allan’s judgments, here again the conclusion was
wrong. It was no new side to Midwinter’s character that now presented
itself--it was only a new aspect of the one ever-recurring struggle of
Midwinter’s life.
Irritated by Allan’s discovery of the change in him, and dreading the
next questions that Allan’s curiosity might put, Midwinter had roused
himself to efface, by main force, the impression which his own altered
appearance had produced. It was one of those efforts which no men
compass so resolutely as the men of his quick temper and his sensitive
feminine organization. With his whole mind still possessed by the firm
belief that the Fatality had taken one great step nearer to Allan and
himself since the rector’s adventure in Kensington Gardens--with his
face still betraying what he had suffered, under the renewed conviction
that his father’s death-bed warning was now, in event after event,
asserting its terrible claim to part him, at any sacrifice, from the one
human creature whom he loved--with the fear still busy at his heart that
the first mysterious vision of Allan’s Dream might be a vision realized,
before the new day that now saw the two Armadales together was a day
that had passed over their heads--with these triple bonds, wrought by
his own superstition, fettering him at that moment as they had never
fettered him yet, he mercilessly spurred his resolution to the desperate
effort of rivaling, in Allan’s presence, the gayety and good spirits of
Allan himself.
He talked and laughed, and heaped his plate indiscriminately from every
dish on the breakfast-table. He made noisily merry with jests that had
no humor, and stories that had no point. He first astonished Allan, then
amused him, then won his easily encouraged confidence on the subject
of Miss Milroy. He shouted with laughter over the sudden development of
Allan’s views on marriage, until the servants downstairs began to think
that their master’s strange friend had gone mad. Lastly, he had accepted
Allan’s proposal that he should be presented to the major’s daughter,
and judge of her for himself, as readily, nay, more readily than it
would have been accepted by the least diffident man living. There the
two now stood at the cottage gate--Midwinter’s voice rising louder and
louder over Allan’s--Midwinter’s natural manner disguised (how madly
and miserably none but he knew!) in a coarse masquerade of boldness--the
outrageous, the unendurable boldness of a shy man.
They were received in the parlor by the major’s daughter, pending the
arrival of the major himself.
Allan attempted to present his friend in the usual form. To his
astonishment, Midwinter took the words flippantly out of his lips, and
introduced himself to Miss Milroy with a confident look, a hard laugh,
and a clumsy assumption of ease which presented him at his worst.
His artificial spirits, lashed continuously into higher and higher
effervescence since the morning, were now mounting hysterically beyond
his own control. He looked and spoke with that terrible freedom of
license which is the necessary consequence, when a diffident man has
thrown off his reserve, of the very effort by which he has broken loose
from his own restraints. He involved himself in a confused medley of
apologies that were not wanted, and of compliments that might have
overflattered the vanity of a savage. He looked backward and forward
from Miss Milroy to Allan, and declared jocosely that he understood now
why his friend’s morning walks were always taken in the same direction.
He asked her questions about her mother, and cut short the answers she
gave him by remarks on the weather. In one breath, he said she must
feel the day insufferably hot, and in another he protested that he quite
envied her in her cool muslin dress.
The major came in.
Before he could say two words, Midwinter overwhelmed him with the same
frenzy of familiarity, and the same feverish fluency of speech. He
expressed his interest in Mrs. Milroy’s health in terms which would have
been exaggerated on the lips of a friend of the family. He overflowed
into a perfect flood of apologies for disturbing the major at his
mechanical pursuits. He quoted Allan’s extravagant account of the clock,
and expressed his own anxiety to see it in terms more extravagant
still. He paraded his superficial book knowledge of the great clock
at Strasbourg, with far-fetched jests on the extraordinary automaton
figures which that clock puts in motion--on the procession of the Twelve
Apostles, which walks out under the dial at noon, and on the toy cock,
which crows at St. Peter’s appearance--and this before a man who had
studied every wheel in that complex machinery, and who had passed whole
years of his life in trying to imitate it. “I hear you have outnumbered
the Strasbourg apostles, and outcrowed the Strasbourg cock,” he
exclaimed, with the tone and manner of a friend habitually privileged
to waive all ceremony; “and I am dying, absolutely dying, major, to see
your wonderful clock!”
Major Milroy had entered the room with his mind absorbed in his own
mechanical contrivances as usual. But the sudden shock of Midwinter’s
familiarity was violent enough to recall him instantly to himself, and
to make him master again, for the time, of his social resources as a man
of the world.
“Excuse me for interrupting you,” he said, stopping Midwinter for the
moment, by a look of steady surprise. “I happen to have seen the clock
at Strasbourg; and it sounds almost absurd in my ears (if you will
pardon me for saying so) to put my little experiment in any light of
comparison with that wonderful achievement. There is nothing else of
the kind like it in the world!” He paused, to control his own mounting
enthusiasm; the clock at Strasbourg was to Major Milroy what the name of
Michael Angelo was to Sir Joshua Reynolds. “Mr. Armadale’s kindness has
led him to exaggerate a little,” pursued the major, smiling at Allan,
and passing over another attempt of Midwinter’s to seize on the talk, as
if no such attempt had been made. “But as there does happen to be this
one point of resemblance between the great clock abroad and the little
clock at home, that they both show what they can do on the stroke of
noon, and as it is close on twelve now, if you still wish to visit
my workshop, Mr. Midwinter, the sooner I show you the way to it the
better.” He opened the door, and apologized to Midwinter, with marked
ceremony, for preceding him out of the room.
“What do you think of my friend?” whispered Allan, as he and Miss Milroy
followed.
“Must I tell you the truth, Mr. Armadale?” she whispered back.
“Of course!”
“Then I don’t like him at all!”
“He’s the best and dearest fellow in the world,” rejoined the outspoken
Allan. “You’ll like him better when you know him better--I’m sure you
will!”
Miss Milroy made a little grimace, implying supreme indifference to
Midwinter, and saucy surprise at Allan’s earnest advocacy of the merits
of his friend. “Has he got nothing more interesting to say to me than
_that_,” she wondered, privately, “after kissing my hand twice yesterday
morning?”
They were all in the major’s workroom before Allan had the chance of
trying a more attractive subject. There, on the top of a rough wooden
case, which evidently contained the machinery, was the wonderful clock.
The dial was crowned by a glass pedestal placed on rock-work in carved
ebony; and on the top of the pedestal sat the inevitable figure of Time,
with his everlasting scythe in his hand. Below the dial was a little
platform, and at either end of it rose two miniature sentry-boxes, with
closed doors. Externally, this was all that appeared, until the magic
moment came when the clock struck twelve noon.
It wanted then about three minutes to twelve; and Major Milroy seized
the opportunity of explaining what the exhibition was to be, before the
exhibition began.
“At the first words, his mind fell back again into its old absorption
over the one employment of his life. He turned to Midwinter (who had
persisted in talking all the way from the parlor, and who was talking
still) without a trace left in his manner of the cool and cutting
composure with which he had spoken but a few minutes before. The noisy,
familiar man, who had been an ill-bred intruder in the parlor, became
a privileged guest in the workshop, for _there_ he possessed the
all-atoning social advantage of being new to the performances of the
wonderful clock.
“At the first stroke of twelve, Mr. Midwinter,” said the major, quite
eagerly, “keep your eye on the figure of Time: he will move his scythe,
and point it downward to the glass pedestal. You will next see a little
printed card appear behind the glass, which will tell you the day of
the month and the day of the week. At the last stroke of the clock, Time
will lift his scythe again into its former position, and the chimes will
ring a peal. The peal will be succeeded by the playing of a tune--the
favorite march of my old regiment--and then the final performance of the
clock will follow. The sentry-boxes, which you may observe at each
side, will both open at the same moment. In one of them you will see
the sentinel appear; and from the other a corporal and two privates will
march across the platform to relieve the guard, and will then disappear,
leaving the new sentinel at his post. I must ask your kind allowances
for this last part of the performance. The machinery is a little
complicated, and there are defects in it which I am ashamed to say
I have not yet succeeded in remedying as I could wish. Sometimes the
figures go all wrong, and sometimes they go all right. I hope they may
do their best on the occasion of your seeing them for the first time.”
As the major, posted near his clock, said the last words, his little
audience of three, assembled at the opposite end of the room, saw the
hour-hand and the minute-hand on the dial point together to twelve. The
first stroke sounded, and Time, true to the signal, moved his scythe.
The day of the month and the day of the week announced themselves
in print through the glass pedestal next; Midwinter applauding their
appearance with a noisy exaggeration of surprise, which Miss Milroy
mistook for coarse sarcasm directed at her father’s pursuits, and which
Allan (seeing that she was offended) attempted to moderate by touching
the elbow of his friend. Meanwhile, the performances of the clock went
on. At the last stroke of twelve, Time lifted his scythe again, the
chimes rang, the march tune of the major’s old regiment followed; and
the crowning exhibition of the relief of the guard announced itself in a
preliminary trembling of the sentry-boxes, and a sudden disappearance of
the major at the back of the clock.
The performance began with the opening of the sentry-box on the
right-hand side of the platform, as punctually as could be desired;
the door on the other side, however, was less tractable--it remained
obstinately closed. Unaware of this hitch in the proceedings, the
corporal and his two privates appeared in their places in a state
of perfect discipline, tottered out across the platform, all three
trembling in every limb, dashed themselves headlong against the closed
door on the other side, and failed in producing the smallest impression
on the immovable sentry presumed to be within. An intermittent clicking,
as of the major’s keys and tools at work, was heard in the machinery.
The corporal and his two privates suddenly returned, backward, across
the platform, and shut themselves up with a bang inside their own door.
Exactly at the same moment, the other door opened for the first time,
and the provoking sentry appeared with the utmost deliberation at his
post, waiting to be relieved. He was allowed to wait. Nothing happened
in the other box but an occasional knocking inside the door, as if the
corporal and his privates were impatient to be let out. The clicking of
the major’s tools was heard again among the machinery; the corporal and
his party, suddenly restored to liberty, appeared in a violent hurry,
and spun furiously across the platform. Quick as they were, however,
the hitherto deliberate sentry on the other side now perversely showed
himself to be quicker still. He disappeared like lightning into his
own premises, the door closed smartly after him, the corporal and his
privates dashed themselves headlong against it for the second time,
and the major, appearing again round the corner of the clock, asked his
audience innocently “if they would be good enough to tell him whether
anything had gone wrong?”
The fantastic absurdity of the exhibition, heightened by Major Milroy’s
grave inquiry at the end of it, was so irresistibly ludicrous that
the visitors shouted with laughter; and even Miss Milroy, with all her
consideration for her father’s sensitive pride in his clock, could not
restrain herself from joining in the merriment which the catastrophe of
the puppets had provoked. But there are limits even to the license of
laughter; and these limits were ere long so outrageously overstepped
by one of the little party as to have the effect of almost instantly
silencing the other two. The fever of Midwinter’s false spirits flamed
out into sheer delirium as the performance of the puppets came to an
end. His paroxysms of laughter followed each other with such convulsive
violence that Miss Milroy started back from him in alarm, and even the
patient major turned on him with a look which said plainly, Leave the
room! Allan, wisely impulsive for once in his life, seized Midwinter by
the arm, and dragged him out by main force into the garden, and thence
into the park beyond.
“Good heavens! what has come to you!” he exclaimed, shrinking back from
the tortured face before him, as he stopped and looked close at it for
the first time.
For the moment, Midwinter was incapable of answering. The hysterical
paroxysm was passing from one extreme to the other. He leaned against a
tree, sobbing and gasping for breath, and stretched out his hand in mute
entreaty to Allan to give him time.
“You had better not have nursed me through my fever,” he said, faintly,
as soon as he could speak. “I’m mad and miserable, Allan; I have never
recovered it. Go back and ask them to forgive me; I am ashamed to go
and ask them myself. I can’t tell how it happened; I can only ask your
pardon and theirs.” He turned aside his head quickly so as to conceal
his face. “Don’t stop here,” he said; “don’t look at me; I shall soon
get over it.” Allan still hesitated, and begged hard to be allowed to
take him back to the house. It was useless. “You break my heart with
your kindness,” he burst out, passionately. “For God’s sake, leave me by
my self!”
Allan went back to the cottage, and pleaded there for indulgence to
Midwinter, with an earnestness and simplicity which raised him immensely
in the major’s estimation, but which totally failed to produce the same
favorable impression on Miss Milroy. Little as she herself suspected it,
she was fond enough of Allan already to be jealous of Allan’s friend.
“How excessively absurd!” she thought, pettishly. “As if either papa or
I considered such a person of the slightest consequence!”
“You will kindly suspend your opinion, won’t you, Major Milroy?” said
Allan, in his hearty way, at parting.
“With the greatest pleasure!” replied the major, cordially shaking
hands.
“And you, too, Miss Milroy?” added Allan.
Miss Milroy made a mercilessly formal bow. “_My_ opinion, Mr. Armadale,
is not of the slightest consequence.”
Allan left the cottage, sorely puzzled to account for Miss Milroy’s
sudden coolness toward him. His grand idea of conciliating the whole
neighborhood by becoming a married man underwent some modification as
he closed the garden gate behind him. The virtue called Prudence and the
Squire of Thorpe Ambrose became personally acquainted with each other,
on this occasion, for the first time; and Allan, entering headlong as
usual on the high-road to moral improvement, actually decided on doing
nothing in a hurry!
A man who is entering on a course of reformation ought, if virtue is its
own reward, to be a man engaged in an essentially inspiriting pursuit.
But virtue is not always its own reward; and the way that leads to
reformation is remarkably ill-lighted for so respectable a thoroughfare.
Allan seemed to have caught the infection of his friend’s despondency.
As he walked home, he, too, began to doubt--in his widely different way,
and for his widely different reasons--whether the life at Thorpe Ambrose
was promising quite as fairly for the future as it had promised at
first.