“Thorpe Ambrose, July 21st.
“DEAR MADAM--You will probably receive these lines a few hours after
my yesterday’s communication reaches you. I posted my first letter last
night, and I shall post this before noon to-day.
“My present object in writing is to give you some more news from
this house. I have the inexpressible happiness of announcing that Mr.
Armadale’s disgraceful intrusion on your privacy is at an end. The watch
set on your actions is to be withdrawn this day. I write, dear madam,
with the tears in my eyes--tears of joy, caused by feelings which I
ventured to express in my previous letter (see first paragraph toward
the end). Pardon me this personal reference. I can speak to you (I don’t
know why) so much more readily with my pen than with my tongue.
“Let me try to compose myself, and proceed with my narrative.
“I had just arrived at the steward’s office this morning, when Mr.
Pedgift the elder followed me to the great house to see Mr. Armadale by
special appointment. It is needless to say that I at once suspended
any little business there was to do, feeling that your interests might
possibly be concerned. It is also most gratifying to add that this time
circumstances favored me. I was able to stand under the open window and
to hear the whole interview.
“Mr. Armadale explained himself at once in the plainest terms. He
gave orders that the person who had been hired to watch you should be
instantly dismissed. On being asked to explain this sudden change of
purpose, he did not conceal that it was owing to the effect produced
on his mind by what had passed between Mr. Midwinter and himself on the
previous day. Mr. Midwinter’s language, cruelly unjust as it was, had
nevertheless convinced him that no necessity whatever could excuse any
proceeding so essentially base in itself as the employment of a spy, and
on that conviction he was now determined to act.
“But for your own positive directions to me to conceal nothing that
passes here in which your name is concerned, I should really be ashamed
to report what Mr. Pedgift said on his side. He has behaved kindly to
me, I know. But if he was my own brother, I could never forgive him the
tone in which he spoke of you, and the obstinacy with which he tried to
make Mr. Armadale change his mind.
“He began by attacking Mr. Midwinter. He declared that Mr. Midwinter’s
opinion was the very worst opinion that could be taken; for it was quite
plain that you, dear madam, had twisted him round your finger. Producing
no effect by this coarse suggestion (which nobody who knows you could
for a moment believe), Mr. Pedgift next referred to Miss Milroy, and
asked Mr. Armadale if he had given up all idea of protecting her. What
this meant I cannot imagine. I can only report it for your private
consideration. Mr. Armadale briefly answered that he had his own plan
for protecting Miss Milroy, and that the circumstances were altered in
that quarter, or words to a similar effect. Still Mr. Pedgift persisted.
He went on (I blush to mention) from bad to worse. He tried to persuade
Mr. Armadale next to bring an action at law against one or other of
the persons who had been most strongly condemning his conduct in the
neighborhood, for the purpose--I really hardly know how to write it--of
getting you into the witness-box. And worse yet: when Mr. Armadale still
said No, Mr. Pedgift, after having, as I suspected by the sound of his
voice, been on the point of leaving the room, artfully came back, and
proposed sending for a detective officer from London, simply to look at
you. ‘The whole of this mystery about Miss Gwilt’s true character,’ he
said, ‘may turn on a question of identity. It won’t cost much to have
a man down from London; and it’s worth trying whether her face is or is
not known at headquarters to the police.’ I again and again assure you,
dearest lady, that I only repeat those abominable words from a sense of
duty toward yourself. I shook--I declare I shook from head to foot when
I heard them.
“To resume, for there is more to tell you.
“Mr. Armadale (to his credit--I don’t deny it, though I don’t like him)
still said No. He appeared to be getting irritated under Mr. Pedgift’s
persistence, and he spoke in a somewhat hasty way. ‘You persuaded me on
the last occasion when we talked about this,’ he said, ‘to do something
that I have been since heartily ashamed of. You won’t succeed in
persuading me, Mr. Pedgift, a second time.’ Those were his words. Mr.
Pedgift took him up short; Mr. Pedgift seemed to be nettled on his side.
“‘If that is the light in which you see my advice, sir,’ he said, ‘the
less you have of it for the future, the better. Your character and
position are publicly involved in this matter between yourself and Miss
Gwilt; and you persist, at a most critical moment, in taking a course of
your own, which I believe will end badly. After what I have already said
and done in this very serious case, I can’t consent to go on with it
with both my hands tied, and I can’t drop it with credit to myself while
I remain publicly known as your solicitor. You leave me no alternative,
sir, but to resign the honor of acting as your legal adviser.’ ‘I
am sorry to hear it,’ says Mr. Armadale, ‘but I have suffered enough
already through interfering with Miss Gwilt. I can’t and won’t stir any
further in the matter.’ ‘_You_ may not stir any further in it, sir,’
says Mr. Pedgift, ‘and _I_ shall not stir any further in it, for it
has ceased to be a question of professional interest to me. But mark my
words, Mr. Armadale, you are not at the end of this business yet. 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.’
“I report their language, dear madam, almost word for word, I believe,
as I heard it. It produced an indescribable impression on me; it filled
me, I hardly know why, with quite a panic of alarm. I don’t at all
understand it, and I understand still less what happened immediately
afterward.
“Mr. Pedgift’s voice, when he said those last words, sounded dreadfully
close to me. He must have been speaking at the open window, and he must,
I fear, have seen me under it. I had time, before he left the house,
to get out quietly from among the laurels, but not to get back to the
office. Accordingly I walked away along the drive toward the lodge, as
if I was going on some errand connected with the steward’s business.
“Before long, Mr. Pedgift overtook me in his gig, and stopped. ‘So _you_
feel some curiosity about Miss Gwilt, do you?’ he said. ‘Gratify your
curiosity by all means; _I_ don’t object to it.’ I felt naturally
nervous, but I managed to ask him what he meant. He didn’t answer; he
only looked down at me from the gig in a very odd manner, and laughed.
‘I have known stranger things happen even than _that_!’ he said to
himself suddenly, and drove off.
“I have ventured to trouble you with this last incident, though it
may seem of no importance in your eyes, in the hope that your superior
ability may be able to explain it. My own poor faculties, I confess, are
quite unable to penetrate Mr. Pedgift’s meaning. All I know is that he
has no right to accuse me of any such impertinent feeling as curiosity
in relation to a lady whom I ardently esteem and admire. I dare not put
it in warmer words.
“I have only to add that I am in a position to be of continued service
to you here if you wish it. Mr. Armadale has just been into the office,
and has told me briefly that, in Mr. Midwinter’s continued absence, I am
still to act as steward’s deputy till further notice.
“Believe me, dear madam, anxiously and devotedly yours, FELIX BASHWOOD.”