“I mentioned that a point had occurred to me, sir,” remarked Pedgift
Senior.
“You did,” said Allan.
“Would you like to hear what it is, Mr. Armadale?”
“If you please,” said Allan.
“With all my heart, sir! This is the point. I attach considerable
importance--if nothing else can be done--to having Miss Gwilt privately
looked after, as long as she stops at Thorpe Ambrose. It struck me just
now at the door, Mr. Armadale, that what you are not willing to do
for your own security, you might be willing to do for the security of
another person.”
“What other person?” inquired Allan.
“A young lady who is a near neighbor of yours, sir. Shall I mention the
name in confidence? Miss Milroy.”
Allan started, and changed color.
“Miss Milroy!” he repeated. “Can _she_ be concerned in this miserable
business? I hope not, Mr. Pedgift; I sincerely hope not.”
“I paid a visit, in your interests, sir, at the cottage this morning,”
proceeded Pedgift Senior. “You shall hear what happened there, and judge
for yourself. Major Milroy has been expressing his opinion of you pretty
freely; and I thought it highly desirable to give him a caution. It’s
always the way with those quiet addle-headed men: when they do once wake
up, there’s no reasoning with their obstinacy, and no quieting their
violence. Well, sir, this morning I went to the cottage. The major
and Miss Neelie were both in the parlor--miss not looking so pretty
as usual; pale, I thought, pale, and worn, and anxious. Up jumps the
addle-headed major (I wouldn’t give _that_, Mr. Armadale, for the
brains of a man who can occupy himself for half his lifetime in making
a clock!)--up jumps the addle-headed major, in the loftiest manner, and
actually tries to look me down. Ha! ha! the idea of anybody looking _me_
down, at my time of life. I behaved like a Christian; I nodded kindly to
old What’s-o’clock ‘Fine morning, major,’ says I. ‘Have you any business
with me?’ says he. ‘Just a word,’ says I. Miss Neelie, like the sensible
girl she is, gets up to leave the room; and what does her ridiculous
father do? He stops her. ‘You needn’t go, my dear, I have nothing to
say to Mr. Pedgift,’ says this old military idiot, and turns my way, and
tries to look me down again. ‘You are Mr. Armadale’s lawyer,’ says he;
‘if you come on any business relating to Mr. Armadale, I refer you to my
solicitor.’ (His solicitor is Darch; and Darch has had enough of _me_ in
business, I can tell you!) ‘My errand here, major, does certainly relate
to Mr. Armadale,’ says I; ‘but it doesn’t concern your lawyer--at any
rate, just yet. I wish to caution you to suspend your opinion of my
client, or, if you won’t do that, to be careful how you express it in
public. I warn you that our turn is to come, and that you are not at the
end yet of this scandal about Miss Gwilt.’ It struck me as likely that
he would lose his temper when he found himself tackled in that way,
and he amply fulfilled my expectations. He was quite violent in his
language--the poor weak creature--actually violent with _me_! I behaved
like a Christian again; I nodded kindly, and wished him good-morning.
When I looked round to wish Miss Neelie good-morning, too, she was gone.
You seem restless, Mr. Armadale,” remarked Pedgift Senior, as Allan,
feeling the sting of old recollections, suddenly started out of his
chair, and began pacing up and down the room. “I won’t try your patience
much longer, sir; I am coming to the point.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pedgift,” said Allan, returning to his seat, and
trying to look composedly at the lawyer through the intervening image of
Neelie which the lawyer had called up.
“Well, sir, I left the cottage,” resumed Pedgift Senior. “Just as I
turned the corner from the garden into the park, whom should I stumble
on but Miss Neelie herself, evidently on the lookout for me. ‘I want to
speak to you for one moment, Mr. Pedgift!’ says she. ‘Does Mr. Armadale
think _me_ mixed up in this matter?’ She was violently agitated--tears
in her eyes, sir, of the sort which my legal experience has _not_
accustomed me to see. I quite forgot myself; I actually gave her my arm,
and led her away gently among the trees. (A nice position to find me in,
if any of the scandal-mongers of the town had happened to be walking in
that direction!) ‘My dear Miss Milroy,’ says I, ‘why should Mr. Armadale
think _you_ mixed up in it?’”
“You ought to have told her at once that I thought nothing of the kind!”
exclaimed Allan, indignantly. “Why did you leave her a moment in doubt
about it?”
“Because I am a lawyer, Mr. Armadale,” rejoined Pedgift Senior, dryly.
“Even in moments of sentiment, under convenient trees, with a pretty
girl on my arm, I can’t entirely divest myself of my professional
caution. Don’t look distressed, sir, pray! I set things right in due
course of time. Before I left Miss Milroy, I told her, in the plainest
terms, no such idea had ever entered your head.”
“Did she seem relieved?” asked Allan.
“She was able to dispense with the use of my arm, sir,” replied old
Pedgift, as dryly as ever, “and to pledge me to inviolable secrecy on
the subject of our interview. She was particularly desirous that _you_
should hear nothing about it. If you are at all anxious on your side to
know why I am now betraying her confidence, I beg to inform you that
her confidence related to no less a person than the lady who favored you
with a call just now--Miss Gwilt.”
Allan, who had been once more restlessly pacing the room, stopped, and
returned to his chair.
“Is this serious?” he asked.
“Most serious, sir,” returned Pedgift Senior. “I am betraying Miss
Neelie’s secret, in Miss Neelie’s own interest. Let us go back to that
cautious question I put to her. She found some little difficulty in
answering it, for the reply involved her in a narrative of the parting
interview between her governess and herself. This is the substance of
it. The two were alone when Miss Gwilt took leave of her pupil; and the
words she used (as reported to me by Miss Neelie) were these. She said,
‘Your mother has declined to allow me to take leave of her. Do you
decline too?’ Miss Neelie’s answer was a remarkably sensible one for
a girl of her age. ‘We have not been good friends,’ she said, ‘and I
believe we are equally glad to part with each other. But I have no wish
to decline taking leave of you.’ Saying that, she held out her hand.
Miss Gwilt stood looking at her steadily, without taking it, and
addressed her in these words: ‘_You are not Mrs. Armadale yet_.’ Gently,
sir! Keep your temper. It’s not at all wonderful that a woman, conscious
of having her own mercenary designs on you, should attribute similar
designs to a young lady who happens to be your near neighbor. Let me go
on. Miss Neelie, by her own confession (and quite naturally, I think),
was excessively indignant. She owns to having answered, ‘You shameless
creature, how dare you say that to me!’ Miss Gwilt’s rejoinder was
rather a remarkable one--the anger, on her side, appears to have been
of the cool, still, venomous kind. ‘Nobody ever yet injured me, Miss
Milroy,’ she said, ‘without sooner or later bitterly repenting it. _You_
will bitterly repent it.’ She stood looking at her pupil for a moment in
dead silence, and then left the room. Miss Neelie appears to have
felt the imputation fastened on her, in connection with you, far more
sensitively than she felt the threat. She had previously known, as
everybody had known in the house, that some unacknowledged proceedings
of yours in London had led to Miss Gwilt’s voluntary withdrawal from
her situation. And she now inferred, from the language addressed to
her, that she was actually believed by Miss Gwilt to have set those
proceedings on foot, to advance herself, and to injure her governess, in
your estimation. Gently, sir, gently! I haven’t quite done yet. As soon
as Miss Neelie had recovered herself, she went upstairs to speak to Mrs.
Milroy. Miss Gwilt’s abominable imputation had taken her by surprise;
and she went to her mother first for enlightenment and advice. She got
neither the one nor the other. Mrs. Milroy declared she was too ill to
enter on the subject, and she has remained too ill to enter on it ever
since. Miss Neelie applied next to her father. The major stopped her the
moment your name passed her lips: he declared he would never hear you
mentioned again by any member of his family. She has been left in
the dark from that time to this, not knowing how she might have been
misrepresented by Miss Gwilt, or what falsehoods you might have been led
to believe of her. At my age and in my profession, I don’t profess to
have any extraordinary softness of heart. But I do think, Mr. Armadale,
that Miss Neelie’s position deserves our sympathy.”
“I’ll do anything to help her!” cried Allan, impulsively. “You don’t
know, Mr. Pedgift, what reason I have--” He checked himself, and
confusedly repeated his first words. “I’ll do anything,” he reiterated
earnestly--“anything in the world to help her!”
“Do you really mean that, Mr. Armadale? Excuse my asking; but you can
very materially help Miss Neelie, if you choose!”
“How?” asked Allan. “Only tell me how!”
“By giving me your authority, sir, to protect her from Miss Gwilt.”
Having fired that shot pointblank at his client, the wise lawyer waited
a little to let it take its effect before he said any more.
Allan’s face clouded, and he shifted uneasily from side to side of his
chair.
“Your son is hard enough to deal with, Mr. Pedgift,” he said, “and you
are harder than your son.”
“Thank you, sir,” rejoined the ready Pedgift, “in my son’s name and my
own, for a handsome compliment to the firm. If you really wish to be of
assistance to Miss Neelie,” he went on, more seriously, “I have shown
you the way. You can do nothing to quiet her anxiety which I have not
done already. As soon as I had assured her that no misconception of her
conduct existed in your mind, she went away satisfied. Her governess’s
parting threat doesn’t seem to have dwelt on her memory. I can tell you,
Mr. Armadale, it dwells on mine! You know my opinion of Miss Gwilt; and
you know what Miss Gwilt herself has done this very evening to justify
that opinion even in your eyes. May I ask, after all that has passed,
whether you think she is the sort of woman who can be trusted to confine
herself to empty threats?”
The question was a formidable one to answer. Forced steadily back from
the position which he had occupied at the outset of the interview, by
the irresistible pressure of plain facts, Allan began for the first time
to show symptoms of yielding on the subject of Miss Gwilt. “Is there no
other way of protecting Miss Milroy but the way you have mentioned?” he
asked, uneasily.
“Do you think the major would listen to you, sir, if you spoke to him?”
asked Pedgift Senior, sarcastically. “I’m rather afraid he wouldn’t
honor _me_ with his attention. Or perhaps you would prefer alarming Miss
Neelie by telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger?
Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions to inform her
that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially
ready to listen to reason; and they are so universally disposed to alter
their opinions of each other on application--especially when one woman
thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making a good
marriage. Don’t mind _me_, Mr. Armadale; I’m only a lawyer, and I can
sit waterproof under another shower of Miss Gwilt’s tears!”
“Damn it, Mr. Pedgift, tell me in plain words what you want to do!”
cried Allan, losing his temper at last.
“In plain words, Mr. Armadale, I want to keep Miss Gwilt’s proceedings
privately under view, as long as she stops in this neighborhood. I
answer for finding a person who will look after her delicately
and discreetly. And I agree to discontinue even this harmless
superintendence of her actions, if there isn’t good reasons shown for
continuing it, to your entire satisfaction, in a week’s time. I make
that moderate proposal, sir, in what I sincerely believe to be Miss
Milroy’s interest, and I wait your answer, Yes or No.”
“Can’t I have time to consider?” asked Allan, driven to the last
helpless expedient of taking refuge in delay.
“Certainly, Mr. Armadale. But don’t forget, while you are considering,
that Miss Milroy is in the habit of walking out alone in your park,
innocent of all apprehension of danger, and that Miss Gwilt is perfectly
free to take any advantage of that circumstance that Miss Gwilt
pleases.”
“Do as you like!” exclaimed Allan, in despair. “And, for God’s sake,
don’t torment me any longer!”
Popular prejudice may deny it, but the profession of the law is a
practically Christian profession in one respect at least. Of all
the large collection of ready answers lying in wait for mankind on
a lawyer’s lips, none is kept in better working order than “the soft
answer which turneth away wrath.” Pedgift Senior rose with the alacrity
of youth in his legs, and the wise moderation of age on his tongue.
“Many thanks, sir,” he said, “for the attention you have bestowed on me.
I congratulate you on your decision, and I wish you good-evening.” This
time his indicative snuff-box was not in his hand when he opened the
door, and he actually disappeared without coming back for a second
postscript.
Allan’s head sank on his breast when he was left alone. “If it was only
the end of the week!” he thought, longingly. “If I only had Midwinter
back again!”
As that aspiration escaped the client’s lips, the lawyer got gayly
into his gig. “Hie away, old girl!” cried Pedgift Senior, patting
the fast-trotting mare with the end of his whip. “I never keep a lady
waiting--and I’ve got business to-night with one of your own sex!”