“July 21st, Monday night, eleven o’clock.--Midwinter has just left me.
We parted by my desire at the path out of the coppice; he going his way
to the hotel, and I going mine to my lodgings.
“I have managed to avoid making another appointment with him by
arranging to write to him to-morrow morning. This gives me the night’s
interval to compose myself, and to coax my mind back (if I can) to my
own affairs. Will the night pass, and the morning find me still thinking
of the Letter that came to him from his father’s deathbed? of the night
he watched through on the Wrecked Ship; and, more than all, of the first
breathless moment when he told me his real Name?
“Would it help me to shake off these impressions, I wonder, if I made
the effort of writing them down? There would be no danger, in that case,
of my forgetting anything important. And perhaps, after all, it may be
the fear of forgetting something which I ought to remember that keeps
this story of Midwinter’s weighing as it does on my mind. At any rate,
the experiment is worth trying. In my present situation I _must_ be free
to think of other things, or I shall never find my way through all the
difficulties at Thorpe Ambrose that are still to come.
“Let me think. What _haunts_ me, to begin with?
“The Names haunt me. I keep saying and saying to myself: Both
alike!--Christian name and surname both alike! A light-haired Allan
Armadale, whom I have long since known of, and who is the son of my old
mistress. A dark-haired Allan Armadale, whom I only know of now, and
who is only known to others under the name of Ozias Midwinter. Stranger
still; it is not relationship, it is not chance, that has made them
namesakes. The father of the light Armadale was the man who was _born_
to the family name, and who lost the family inheritance. The father
of the dark Armadale was the man who _took_ the name, on condition of
getting the inheritance--and who got it.
“So there are two of them--I can’t help thinking of it--both unmarried.
The light-haired Armadale, who offers to the woman who can secure him,
eight thousand a year while he lives; who leaves her twelve hundred
a year when he dies; who must and shall marry me for those two golden
reasons; and whom I hate and loathe as I never hated and loathed a man
yet. And the dark-haired Armadale, who has a poor little income, which
might perhaps pay his wife’s milliner, if his wife was careful; who has
just left me, persuaded that I mean to marry him; and whom--well, whom I
_might_ have loved once, before I was the woman I am now.
“And Allan the Fair doesn’t know he has a namesake. And Allan the Dark
has kept the secret from everybody but the Somersetshire clergyman
(whose discretion he can depend on) and myself.
“And there are two Allan Armadales--two Allan Armadales--two Allan
Armadales. There! three is a lucky number. Haunt me again, after that,
if you can!
“What next? The murder in the timber ship? No; the murder is a good
reason why the dark Armadale, whose father committed it, should keep his
secret from the fair Armadale, whose father was killed; but it doesn’t
concern _me_. I remember there was a suspicion in Madeira at the time of
something wrong. _Was_ it wrong? Was the man who had been tricked out of
his wife to blame for shutting the cabin door, and leaving the man who
had tricked him to drown in the wreck? Yes; the woman wasn’t worth it.
“What am I sure of that really concerns myself?
“I am sure of one very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter--I
must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales
before I have done--I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that
I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in
Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed to arrive from the
West Indies, are one and the same. There are not many girls of twelve
who could have imitated a man’s handwriting, and held their tongues
about it afterward, as I did; but that doesn’t matter now. What does
matter is that Midwinter’s belief in the Dream is Midwinter’s only
reason for trying to connect me with Allan Armadale, by associating
me with Allan Armadale’s father and mother. I asked him if he actually
thought me old enough to have known either of them. And he said No, poor
fellow, in the most innocent, bewildered way. Would he say No if he saw
me now? Shall I turn to the glass and see if I look my five-and-thirty
years? or shall I go on writing? I will go on writing.
“There is one thing more that haunts me almost as obstinately as the
Names.
“I wonder whether I am right in relying on Midwinter’s superstition (as
I do) to help me in keeping him at arms-length. After having let the
excitement of the moment hurry me into saying more than I need have
said, he is certain to press me; he is certain to come back, with a
man’s hateful selfishness and impatience in such things, to the question
of marrying me. Will the Dream help me to check him? After alternately
believing and disbelieving in it, he has got, by his own confession,
to believing in it again. Can I say I believe in it, too? I have better
reasons for doing so than he knows of. I am not only the person who
helped Mrs. Armadale’s marriage by helping her to impose on her own
father: I am the woman who tried to drown herself; the woman who started
the series of accidents which put young Armadale in possession of his
fortune; the woman who has come Thorpe Ambrose to marry him for his
fortune, now he has got it; and more extraordinary still, the woman who
stood in the Shadow’s place at the pool! These may be coincidences,
but they are strange coincidences. I declare I begin to fancy that _I_
believe in the Dream too!
“Suppose I say to him, ‘I think as you think. I say what you said in
your letter to me, Let us part before the harm is done. Leave me
before the Third Vision of the Dream comes true. Leave me, and put the
mountains and the seas between you and the man who bears your name!’
“Suppose, on the other side, that his love for me makes him reckless of
everything else? Suppose he says those desperate words again, which I
understand now: What _is_ to be, _will_ be. What have I to do with it,
and what has she?’ Suppose--suppose--
“I won’t write any more. I hate writing. It doesn’t relieve me--it makes
me worse. I’m further from being able to think of all that I _must_
think of than I was when I sat down. It is past midnight. To-morrow has
come already; and here I am as helpless as the stupidest woman living!
Bed is the only fit place for me.
“Bed? If it was ten years since, instead of to-day; and if I had married
Midwinter for love, I might be going to bed now with nothing heavier on
my mind than a visit on tiptoe to the nursery, and a last look at night
to see if my children were sleeping quietly in their cribs. I wonder
whether I should have loved my children if I had ever had any? Perhaps,
yes--perhaps, no. It doesn’t matter.”
“Tuesday morning, ten o’clock.--Who was the man who invented laudanum?
I thank him from the bottom of my heart whoever he was. If all the
miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has
been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would
be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my
mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I
have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled
over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of relief--and all
through the modest little bottle of Drops, which I see on my bedroom
chimney-piece at this moment. ‘Drops,’ you are a darling! If I love
nothing else, I love _you_.
“My letter to Midwinter has been sent through the post; and I have told
him to reply to me in the same manner.
“I feel no anxiety about his answer--he can only answer in one way.
I have asked for a little time to consider, because my family
circumstances require some consideration, in his interests as well as
in mine. I have engaged to tell him what those circumstances are (what
shall I say, I wonder?) when we next meet; and I have requested him in
the meantime to keep all that has passed between us a secret for the
present. As to what he is to do himself in the interval while I am
supposed to be considering, I have left it to his own discretion--merely
reminding him that his attempting to see me again (while our positions
toward each other cannot be openly avowed) might injure my reputation.
I have offered to write to him if he wishes it; and I have ended by
promising to make the interval of our necessary separation as short as I
can.
“This sort of plain, unaffected letter--which I might have written
to him last night, if his story had not been running in my head as it
did--has one defect, I know. It certainly keeps him out of the way,
while I am casting my net, and catching my gold fish at the great house
for the second time; but it also leaves an awkward day of reckoning to
come with Midwinter if I succeed. How am I to manage him? What am I to
do? I ought to face those two questions as boldly as usual; but somehow
my courage seems to fail me, and I don’t quite fancy meeting _that_
difficulty, till the time comes when it _must_ be met. Shall I confess
to my diary that I am sorry for Midwinter, and that I shrink a little
from thinking of the day when he hears that I am going to be mistress at
the great house?
“But I am not mistress yet; and I can’t take a step in the direction of
the great house till I have got the answer to my letter, and till I
know that Midwinter is out of the way. Patience! patience! I must go
and forget myself at my piano. There is the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ open,
and tempting me, on the music-stand. Have I nerve enough to play it, I
wonder? Or will it set me shuddering with the mystery and terror of it,
as it did the other day?”
“Five o’clock.--I have got his answer. The slightest request I can make
is a command to him. He has gone; and he sends me his address in London.
‘There are two considerations’ (he says) ‘which help to reconcile me to
leaving you. The first is that _you_ wish it, and that it is only to
be for a little while. The second is that I think I can make some
arrangements in London for adding to my income by my own labor. I have
never cared for money for myself; but you don’t know how I am beginning
already to prize the luxuries and refinements that money can provide,
for my wife’s sake.’ Poor fellow! I almost wish I had not written to him
as I did; I almost wish I had not sent him away from me.
“Fancy if Mother Oldershaw saw this page in my diary! I have had a
letter from her this morning--a letter to remind me of my obligations,
and to tell me she suspects things are all going wrong. Let her suspect!
I shan’t trouble myself to answer; I can’t be worried with that old
wretch in the state I am in now.
“It is a lovely afternoon--I want a walk--I mustn’t think of Midwinter.
Suppose I put on my bonnet, and try my experiment at once at the great
house? Everything is in my favor. There is no spy to follow me, and no
lawyer to keep me out, this time. Am I handsome enough, to-day? Well,
yes; handsome enough to be a match for a little dowdy, awkward, freckled
creature, who ought to be perched on a form at school, and strapped to a
backboard to straighten her crooked shoulders.
“‘The nursery lisps out in all they utter;
Besides, they always smell of bread-and-butter.’
“How admirably Byron has described girls in their teens!”
“Eight o’clock.--I have just got back from Armadale’s house. I have seen
him, and spoken to him; and the end of it may be set down in three plain
words. I have failed. There is no more chance of my being Mrs. Armadale
of Thorpe Ambrose than there is of my being Queen of England.
“Shall I write and tell Oldershaw? Shall I go back to London? Not till I
have had time to think a little. Not just yet.
“Let me think; I have failed completely--failed, with all the
circumstances in favor of success. I caught him alone on the drive in
front of the house. He was excessively disconcerted, but at the same
time quite willing to hear me. I tried him, first quietly--then with
tears, and the rest of it. I introduced myself in the character of the
poor innocent woman whom he had been the means of injuring. I confused,
I interested, I convinced him. I went on to the purely Christian part
of my errand, and spoke with such feeling of his separation from his
friend, for which I was innocently responsible, that I turned his odious
rosy face quite pale, and made him beg me at last not to distress him.
But, whatever other feelings I roused in him, I never once roused his
old feeling for _me_. I saw it in his eyes when he looked at me; I felt
it in his fingers when we shook hands. We parted friends, and nothing
more.
“It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation, morning
after morning, when I knew you were out alone in the park? I have just
left you time to slip in, and take my place in Armadale’s good graces,
have I? I never resisted temptation yet without suffering for it in some
such way as this! If I had only followed my first thoughts, on the day
when I took leave of you, my young lady--well, well, never mind that
now. I have got the future before me; you are not Mrs. Armadale yet! And
I can tell you one other thing--whoever else he marries, he will never
marry _you_. If I am even with you in no other way, trust me, whatever
comes of it, to be even with you there!
“I am not, to my own surprise, in one of my furious passions. The last
time I was in this perfectly cool state, under serious provocation,
something came of it, which I daren’t write down, even in my own private
diary. I shouldn’t be surprised if something comes of it now.
“On my way back, I called at Mr. Bashwood’s lodgings in the town. He was
not at home, and I left a message telling him to come here to-night and
speak to me. I mean to relieve him at once of the duty of looking
after Armadale and Miss Milroy. I may not see my way yet to ruining her
prospects at Thorpe Ambrose as completely as she has ruined mine. But
when the time comes, and I do see it, I don’t know to what lengths
my sense of injury may take me; and there may be inconvenience, and
possibly danger, in having such a chicken-hearted creature as Mr.
Bashwood in my confidence.
“I suspect I am more upset by all this than I supposed. Midwinter’s
story is beginning to haunt me again, without rhyme or reason.
“A soft, quick, trembling knock at the street door! I know who it is. No
hand but old Bashwood’s could knock in that way.”
“Nine o’clock.--I have just got rid of him. He has surprised me by
coming out in a new character.
“It seems (though I didn’t detect him) that he was at the great house
while I was in company with Armadale. He saw us talking on the drive,
and he afterward heard what the servants said, who saw us too. The wise
opinion below stairs is that we have ‘made it up,’ and that the master
is likely to marry me after all. ‘He’s sweet on her red hair,’ was the
elegant expression they used in the kitchen. ‘Little missie can’t match
her there; and little missie will get the worst of it.’ How I hate the
coarse ways of the lower orders!
“While old Bashwood was telling me this, I thought he looked even more
confused and nervous than usual. But I failed to see what was really
the matter until after I had told him that he was to leave all further
observation of Mr. Armadale and Miss Milroy to me. Every drop of the
little blood there is in the feeble old creature’s body seemed to fly up
into his face. He made quite an overpowering effort; he really looked as
if he would drop down dead of fright at his own boldness; but he forced
out the question for all that, stammering, and stuttering, and kneading
desperately with both hands at the brim of his hideous great hat. ‘I beg
your pardon, Miss Gwi-Gwi-Gwilt! You are not really go-go-going to marry
Mr. Armadale, are you?’ Jealous--if ever I saw it in a man’s face yet, I
saw it in his--actually jealous of Armadale at his age! If I had been
in the humor for it, I should have burst out laughing in his face. As it
was, I was angry, and lost all patience with him. I told him he was an
old fool, and ordered him to go on quietly with his usual business until
I sent him word that he was wanted again. He submitted as usual; but
there was an indescribable something in his watery old eyes, when he
took leave of me, which I have never noticed in them before. Love has
the credit of working all sorts of strange transformations. Can it be
really possible that Love has made Mr. Bashwood man enough to be angry
with me?
“Wednesday.--My experience of Miss Milroy’s habits suggested a suspicion
to me last night which I thought it desirable to clear up this morning.
“It was always her way, when I was at the cottage, to take a walk early
in the morning before breakfast. Considering that I used often to choose
that very time for _my_ private meetings with Armadale, it struck me as
likely that my former pupil might be taking a leaf out of my book, and
that I might make some desirable discoveries if I turned my steps in the
direction of the major’s garden at the right hour. I deprived myself
of my Drops, to make sure of waking; passed a miserable night in
consequence; and was ready enough to get up at six o’clock, and walk the
distance from my lodgings to the cottage in the fresh morning air.
“I had not been five minutes on the park side of the garden inclosure
before I saw her come out.
“She seemed to have had a bad night too; her eyes were heavy and red,
and her lips and cheeks looked swollen as if she had been crying. There
was something on her mind, evidently; something, as it soon appeared, to
take her out of the garden into the park. She walked (if one can call
it walking; with such legs as hers!) straight to the summer house, and
opened the door, and crossed the bridge, and went on quicker and quicker
toward the low ground in the park, where the trees are thickest.
I followed her over the open space with perfect impunity in the
preoccupied state she was in; and, when she began to slacken her pace
among the trees, I was among the trees too, and was not afraid of her
seeing me.
“Before long, there was a crackling and trampling of heavy feet coming
up toward us through the under-wood in a deep dip of the ground. I knew
that step as well as she knew it. ‘Here I am,’ she said, in a faint
little voice. I kept behind the trees a few yards off, in some doubt
on which side Armadale would come out of the under-wood to join her. He
came out up the side of the dell, opposite to the tree behind which I
was standing. They sat down together on the bank. I sat down behind the
tree, and looked at them through the under-wood, and heard without the
slightest difficulty every word that they said.
“The talk began by his noticing that she looked out of spirits, and
asking if anything had gone wrong at the cottage. The artful little minx
lost no time in making the necessary impression on him; she began
to cry. He took her hand, of course, and tried, in his brutishly
straightforward way, to comfort her. No; she was not to be comforted. A
miserable prospect was before her; she had not slept the whole night
for thinking of it. Her father had called her into his room the previous
evening, had spoken about the state of her education, and had told her
in so many words that she was to go to school. The place had been found,
and the terms had been settled; and as soon as her clothes could be got
ready, miss was to go.
“‘While that hateful Miss Gwilt was in the house,’ says this model young
person, ‘I would have gone to school willingly--I wanted to go. But it’s
all different now; I don’t think of it in the same way; I feel too old
for school. I’m quite heart-broken, Mr. Armadale.’ There she stopped
as if she had meant to say more, and gave him a look which finished
the sentence plainly: ‘I’m quite heart-broken, Mr. Armadale, now we are
friendly again, at going away from you!’ For downright brazen impudence,
which a grown woman would be ashamed of, give me the young girls whose
‘modesty’ is so pertinaciously insisted on by the nauseous domestic
sentimentalists of the present day!
“Even Armadale, booby as he is, understood her. After bewildering
himself in a labyrinth of words that led nowhere, he took her--one can
hardly say round the waist, for she hasn’t got one--he took her round
the last hook-and-eye of her dress, and, by way of offering her a
refuge from the indignity of being sent to school at her age, made her a
proposal of marriage in so many words.
“If I could have killed them both at that moment by lifting up my little
finger, I have not the least doubt I should have lifted it. As things
were, I only waited to see what Miss Milroy would do.
“She appeared to think it necessary--feeling, I suppose, that she had
met him without her father’s knowledge, and not forgetting that I
had had the start of her as the favored object of Mr. Armadale’s good
opinion--to assert herself by an explosion of virtuous indignation. She
wondered how he could think of such a thing after his conduct with Miss
Gwilt, and after her father had forbidden him the house! Did he want to
make her feel how inexcusably she had forgotten what was due to herself?
Was it worthy of a gentleman to propose what he knew as well as she did
was impossible? and so on, and so on. Any man with brains in his head
would have known what all this rodomontade really meant. Armadale took
it so seriously that he actually attempted to justify himself.
“He declared, in his headlong, blundering way, that he was quite in
earnest; he and her father might make it up and be friends again; and,
if the major persisted in treating him as a stranger, young ladies and
gentlemen in their situation had made runaway marriages before now, and
fathers and mothers who wouldn’t forgive them before had forgiven them
afterward. Such outrageously straightforward love-making as this left
Miss Milroy, of course, but two alternatives--to confess that she
had been saying No when she meant Yes, or to take refuge in another
explosion. She was hypocrite enough to prefer another explosion. ‘How
dare you, Mr. Armadale? Go away directly! It’s inconsiderate, it’s
heartless, it’s perfectly disgraceful to say such things to me!’ and so
on, and so on. It seems incredible, but it is not the less true, that
he was positively fool enough to take her at her word. He begged her
pardon, and went away like a child that is put in the corner--the most
contemptible object in the form of man that eyes ever looked on!
“She waited, after he had gone, to compose herself, and I waited behind
the trees to see how she would succeed. Her eyes wandered round slyly
to the path by which he had left her. She smiled (grinned would be the
truer way of putting it, with such a mouth as hers); took a few steps on
tiptoe to look after him; turned back again, and suddenly burst into a
violent fit of crying. I am not quite so easily taken in as Armadale,
and I saw what it all meant plainly enough.
“‘To-morrow,’ I thought to myself, ‘you will be in the park again, miss,
by pure accident. The next day, you will lead him on into proposing
to you for the second time. The day after, he will venture back to the
subject of runaway marriages, and you will only be becomingly confused.
And the day after that, if he has got a plan to propose, and if your
clothes are ready to be packed for school, you will listen to him.’ Yes,
yes; Time is always on the man’s side, where a woman is concerned, if
the man is only patient enough to let Time help him.
“I let her leave the place and go back to the cottage, quite unconscious
that I had been looking at her. I waited among the trees, thinking. The
truth is, I was impressed by what I had heard and seen, in a manner that
it is not very easy to describe. It put the whole thing before me in
a new light. It showed me--what I had never even suspected till this
morning--that she is really fond of him.
“Heavy as my debt of obligation is to her, there is no fear _now_ of
my failing to pay it to the last farthing. It would have been no small
triumph for me to stand between Miss Milroy and her ambition to be one
of the leading ladies of the county. But it is infinitely more, where
her first love is concerned, to stand between Miss Milroy and her
heart’s desire. Shall I remember my own youth and spare her? No! She has
deprived me of the one chance I had of breaking the chain that binds me
to a past life too horrible to be thought of. I am thrown back into a
position, compared to which the position of an outcast who walks the
streets is endurable and enviable. No, Miss Milroy--no, Mr. Armadale; I
will spare neither of you.
“I have been back some hours. I have been thinking, and nothing has come
of it. Ever since I got that strange letter of Midwinter’s last Sunday,
my usual readiness in emergencies has deserted me. When I am not
thinking of him or of his story, my mind feels quite stupefied. I, who
have always known what to do on other occasions, don’t know what to do
now. It would be easy enough, of course, to warn Major Milroy of his
daughter’s proceedings. But the major is fond of his daughter; Armadale
is anxious to be reconciled with him; Armadale is rich and prosperous,
and ready to submit to the elder man; and sooner or later they will be
friends again, and the marriage will follow. Warning Major Milroy is
only the way to embarrass them for the present; it is not the way to
part them for good and all.
“What _is_ the way? I can’t see it. I could tear my own hair off my
head! I could burn the house down! If there was a train of gunpowder
under the whole world, I could light it, and blow the whole world to
destruction--I am in such a rage, such a frenzy with myself for not
seeing it!
“Poor dear Midwinter! Yes, ‘_dear_.’ I don’t care. I’m lonely and
helpless. I want somebody who is gentle and loving to make much of me;
I wish I had his head on my bosom again; I have a good mind to go to
London and marry him. Am I mad? Yes; all people who are as miserable
as I am are mad. I must go to the window and get some air. Shall I jump
out? No; it disfigures one so, and the coroner’s inquest lets so many
people see it.
“The air has revived me. I begin to remember that I have Time on my
side, at any rate. Nobody knows but me of their secret meetings in the
park the first thing in the morning. If jealous old Bashwood, who is
slinking and sly enough for anything, tries to look privately after
Armadale, in his own interests, he will try at the usual time when he
goes to the steward’s office. He knows nothing of Miss Milroy’s early
habits; and he won’t be on the spot till Armadale has got back to the
house. For another week to come, I may wait and watch them, and choose
my own time and way of interfering the moment I see a chance of his
getting the better of her hesitation, and making her say Yes.
“So here I wait, without knowing how things will end with Midwinter in
London; with my purse getting emptier and emptier, and no appearance
so far of any new pupils to fill it; with Mother Oldershaw certain to
insist on having her money back the moment she knows I have failed;
without prospects, friends, or hopes of any kind--a lost woman, if ever
there was a lost woman yet. Well! I say it again and again and again--I
don’t care! Here I stop, if I sell the clothes off my back, if I hire
myself at the public-house to play to the brutes in the tap-room; here I
stop till the time comes, and I see the way to parting Armadale and Miss
Milroy forever!”
“Seven o’clock.--Any signs that the time is coming yet? I hardly
know; there are signs of a change, at any rate, in my position in the
neighborhood.
“Two of the oldest and ugliest of the many old and ugly ladies who
took up my case when I left Major Milroy’s service have just called,
announcing themselves, with the insufferable impudence of charitable
Englishwomen, as a deputation from my patronesses. It seems that the
news of my reconciliation with Armadale has spread from the servants’
offices at the great house, and has reached the town, with this result.
“It is the unanimous opinion of my ‘patronesses’ (and the opinion of
Major Milroy also, who has been consulted) that I have acted with the
most inexcusable imprudence in going to Armadale’s house, and in there
speaking on friendly terms with a man whose conduct toward myself
has made his name a by-word in the neighborhood. My total want of
self-respect in this matter has given rise to a report that I am trading
as cleverly as ever on my good looks, and that I am as likely as not
to end in making Armadale marry me, after all. My ‘patronesses’ are, of
course, too charitable to believe this. They merely feel it necessary
to remonstrate with me in a Christian spirit, and to warn me that any
second and similar imprudence on my part would force all my best friends
in the place to withdraw the countenance and protection which I now
enjoy.
“Having addressed me, turn and turn about, in these terms (evidently all
rehearsed beforehand), my two Gorgon visitors straightened themselves
in their chairs, and looked at me as much as to say, ‘You may often have
heard of Virtue, Miss Gwilt, but we don’t believe you ever really saw it
in full bloom till we came and called on you.’
“Seeing they were bent on provoking me, I kept my temper, and answered
them in my smoothest, sweetest, and most lady-like manner. I have
noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people
begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o’clock on Sunday
morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o’clock on Sunday
afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as
reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. On this hint, as the
man says in the play, I spoke.
“‘What have I done that is wrong?’ I asked, innocently. ‘Mr. Armadale
has injured me; and I have been to his house and forgiven him the
injury. Surely there must be some mistake, ladies? You can’t have really
come here to remonstrate with me in a Christian spirit for performing an
act of Christianity?’
“The two Gorgons got up. I firmly believe some women have cats’ tails as
well as cats’ faces. I firmly believe the tails of those two particular
cats wagged slowly under their petticoats, and swelled to four times
their proper size.
“‘Temper we were prepared for, Miss Gwilt,’ they said, ‘but not
Profanity. We wish you good-evening.’
“So they left me, and so ‘Miss Gwilt’ sinks out of the patronizing
notice of the neighborhood
“I wonder what will come of this trumpery little quarrel? One thing will
come of it which I can see already. The report will reach Miss Milroy’s
ears; she will insist on Armadale’s justifying himself; and Armadale
will end in satisfying her of his innocence by making another proposal.
This will be quite likely to hasten matters between them; at least it
would with me. If I was in her place, I should say to myself, ‘I will
make sure of him while I can.’ Supposing it doesn’t rain to-morrow
morning, I think I will take another early walk in the direction of the
park.”
“Midnight.--As I can’t take my drops, with a morning walk before me, I
may as well give up all hope of sleeping, and go on with my diary.
Even with my drops, I doubt if my head would be very quiet on my
pillow to-night. Since the little excitement of the scene with my
‘lady-patronesses’ has worn off, I have been troubled with misgivings
which would leave me but a poor chance, under any circumstances, of
getting much rest.
“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 afterward 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 humor 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 favorable, 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 tea-pot, and his little penny loaf, and his one cheap morsel
of oily butter, and his darned dirty tablecloth. 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
described, 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. 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 doted 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.)”
“Five o’clock.--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 found its way into the
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 cottages 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--should 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 to-morrow 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 a
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 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 afterward? 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 humoring him in this if he asked
me.
“Suppose the brute at the great house happened to leave this
neighborhood 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 quarreled, 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 had 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.
“Suppose I asked Armadale to lend me the money? I should enjoy getting
_something_ out of him; and I believe, in his present situation with
Miss Milroy, he would do anything to be rid of me. Mean enough this, on
my part. Pooh! When you hate and despise a man, as I hate and despise
Armadale, who cares for looking mean in _his_ eyes?
“And yet my pride--or my something else, I don’t know what--shrinks from
it.
“Half-past two--only half-past two. Oh, the dreadful weariness of these
long summer days! I can’t keep thinking and thinking any longer; I must
do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I’m not fit
for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A
man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I’m not a man, and I can’t
drink. I’ll dawdle over my dresses, and put my things tidy.”
* * * * *
“Has an hour passed? More than an hour. It seems like a minute.
“I can’t look back through these leaves, but I know I wrote somewhere
that I felt myself getting nearer and nearer to some end that was still
hidden from me. The end is hidden no longer. The cloud is off my mind,
the blindness has gone from my eyes. I see it! I see it!
“It came to me--I never sought it. If I was lying on my death-bed, I
could swear, with a safe conscience, I never sought it.
“I was only looking over my things; I was as idly and as frivolously
employed as the most idle and most frivolous woman living. I went
through my dresses, and my linen. What could be more innocent? Children
go through their dresses and their linen.
“It was, such a long summer day, and I was so tired of myself. I went to
my boxes next. I looked over the large box first, which I usually leave
open; and then I tried the small box, which I always keep locked.
“From one thing to the other, I came at last to the bundle of letters
at the bottom--the letters of the man for whom I once sacrificed and
suffered everything; the man who has made me what I am.
“A hundred times I had determined to burn his letters; but I have never
burned them. This, time, all I said was, ‘I won’t read his letters!’ And
I did read them.
“The villain--the false, cowardly, heartless villain--what have I to do
with his letters now? Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh, the meanness
that our memory of a man can tempt us to, when our love for him is dead
and gone! I read the letters--I was so lonely and so miserable, I read
the letters.
“I came to the last--the letter he wrote to encourage me, when I
hesitated as the terrible time came nearer and nearer; the letter that
revived me when my resolution failed at the eleventh hour. I read on,
line after line, till I came to these words:
“‘...I really have no patience with such absurdities as you have written
to me. You say I am driving you on to do what is beyond a woman’s
courage. Am I? I might refer you to any collection of Trials, English or
foreign, to show that you were utterly wrong. But such collections may
be beyond your reach; and I will only refer you to a case in
yesterday’s newspaper. The circumstances are totally different from our
circumstances; but the example of resolution in a woman is an example
worth your notice.
“‘You will find, among the law reports, a married woman charged with
fraudulently representing herself to be the missing widow of an officer
in the merchant service, who was supposed to have been drowned. The name
of the prisoner’s husband (living) and the name of the officer (a very
common one, both as to Christian and surname) happened to be identically
the same. There was money to be got by it (sorely wanted by the
prisoner’s husband, to whom she was devotedly attached), if the fraud
had succeeded. The woman took it all on herself. Her husband was
helpless and ill, and the bailiffs were after him. The circumstances,
as you may read for yourself, were all in her favor, and were so well
managed by her that the lawyers themselves acknowledged she might have
succeeded, if the supposed drowned man had not turned up alive and
well in the nick of time to confront her. The scene took place at the
lawyer’s office, and came out in the evidence at the police court. The
woman was handsome, and the sailor was a good-natured man. He wanted, at
first, if the lawyers would have allowed him, to let her off. He said
to her, among other things: “You didn’t count on the drowned man coming
back, alive and hearty, did you, ma’am?” “It’s lucky for you,” she said,
“I didn’t count on it. You have escaped the sea, but you wouldn’t have
escaped _me_.” “Why, what would you have done, if you _had_ known I was
coming back?” says the sailor. She looked him steadily in the face, and
answered: “I would have killed you.” There! Do you think such a woman as
that would have written to tell me I was pressing her further than she
had courage to go? A handsome woman, too, like yourself. You would drive
some men in my position to wish they had her now in your place.’
“I read no further. When I had got on, line by line, to those words, it
burst on me like a flash of lightning. In an instant I saw it as plainly
as I see it now. It is horrible, it is unheard of, it outdares all
daring; but, if I can only nerve myself to face one terrible necessity,
it is to be done. _I may personate the richly provided widow of Allan
Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose, if I can count on Allan Armadale’s death in
a given time_.
“There, in plain words, is the frightful temptation under which I now
feel myself sinking. It is frightful in more ways than one; for it has
come straight out of that other temptation to which I yielded in the
by-gone time.
“Yes; there the letter has been waiting for me in my box, to serve a
purpose never thought of by the villain who wrote it. There is the Case,
as he called it--only quoted to taunt me; utterly unlike my own case at
the time--there it has been, waiting and lurking for me through all the
changes in my life, till it has come to be like _my_ case at last.
“It might startle any woman to see this, and even this is not the worst.
The whole thing has been in my Diary, for days past, without my knowing
it! Every idle fancy that escaped me has been tending secretly that one
way! And I never saw, never suspected it, till the reading of the letter
put my own thoughts before me in a new light--till I saw the shadow of
my own circumstances suddenly reflected in one special circumstance of
that other woman’s case!
“It is to be done, if I can but look the necessity in the face. It is to
be done, _if I can count on Allan Armadale’s death in a given time_.
“All but his death is easy. The whole series of events under which I
have been blindly chafing and fretting for more than a week past have
been, one and all--though I was too stupid to see it--events in my
favor; events paving the way smoothly and more smoothly straight to the
end.
“In three bold steps--only three!--that end might be reached. Let
Midwinter marry me privately, under his real name--step the first! Let
Armadale leave Thorpe Ambrose a single man, and die in some distant
place among strangers--step the second!
“Why am I hesitating? Why not go on to step the third, and last?
“I _will_ go on. Step the third, and last, is my appearance, after the
announcement of Armadale’s death has reached this neighborhood, in the
character of Armadale’s widow, with my marriage certificate in my hand
to prove my claim. It is as clear as the sun at noonday. Thanks to the
exact similarity between the two names, and thanks to the careful manner
in which the secret of that similarity has been kept, I may be the wife
of the dark Allan Armadale, known as such to nobody but my husband and
myself; and I may, out of that very position, claim the character of
widow of the light Allan Armadale, with proof to support me (in the
shape of my marriage certificate) which would be proof in the estimation
of the most incredulous person living.
“To think of my having put all this in my Diary! To think of my having
actually contemplated this very situation, and having seen nothing
more in it, at the time, than a reason (if I married Midwinter) for
consenting to appear in the world under my husband’s assumed name!
“What is it daunts me? The dread of obstacles? The fear of discovery?
“Where are the obstacles? Where is the fear of discovery?
“I am actually suspected all over the neighborhood of intriguing to be
mistress of Thorpe Ambrose. I am the only person who knows the real turn
that Armadale’s inclinations have taken. Not a creature but myself is
as yet aware of his early morning meetings with Miss Milroy. If it is
necessary to part them, I can do it at any moment by an anonymous line
to the major. If it is necessary to remove Armadale from Thorpe Ambrose,
I can get him away at three days’ notice. His own lips informed me, when
I last spoke to him, that he would go to the ends of the earth to be
friends again with Midwinter, if Midwinter would let him. I have only
to tell Midwinter to write from London, and ask to be reconciled;
and Midwinter would obey me--and to London Armadale would go. Every
difficulty, at starting, is smoothed over ready to my hand.
Every after-difficulty I could manage for myself. In the whole
venture--desperate as it looks to pass myself off for the widow of one
man, while I am all the while the wife of the other--there is absolutely
no necessity that wants twice considering, but the one terrible
necessity of Armadale’s death.
“His death! It might be a terrible necessity to any other woman; but is
it, ought it to be terrible to Me?
“I hate him for his mother’s sake. I hate him for his own sake. I hate
him for going to London behind my back, and making inquiries about me.
I hate him for forcing me out of my situation before I wanted to go. I
hate him for destroying all my hopes of marrying him, and throwing me
back helpless on my own miserable life. But, oh, after what I have done
already in the past time, how can I? how can I?
“The girl, too--the girl who has come between us; who has taken him away
from me; who has openly insulted me this very day--how the girl whose
heart is set on him would feel it if he died! What a vengeance on _her_,
if I did it! And when I was received as Armadale’s widow what a triumph
for _me_. Triumph! It is more than triumph--it is the salvation of me.
A name that can’t be assailed, a station that can’t be assailed, to
hide myself in from my past life! Comfort, luxury, wealth! An income
of twelve hundred a year secured to me secured by a will which has been
looked at by a lawyer: secured independently of anything Armadale can
say or do himself! I never had twelve hundred a year. At my luckiest
time, I never had half as much, really my own. What have I got now? Just
five pounds left in the world--and the prospect next week of a debtor’s
prison.
“But, oh, after what I have done already in the past time, how can I?
how can I?
“Some women--in my place, and with my recollections to look back
on--would feel it differently. Some women would say, ‘It’s easier the
second time than the first.’ Why can’t I? why can’t I?
“Oh, you Devil tempting me, is there no Angel near to raise some timely
obstacle between this and to-morrow which might help me to give it up?
“I shall sink under it--I shall sink, if I write or think of it any
more! I’ll shut up these leaves and go out again. I’ll get some common
person to come with me, and we will talk of common things. I’ll take out
the woman of the house, and her children. We will go and see something.
There is a show of some kind in the town--I’ll treat them to it. I’m not
such an ill-natured woman when I try; and the landlady has really been
kind to me. Surely I might occupy my mind a little in seeing her and her
children enjoying themselves.
“A minute since, I shut up these leaves as I said I would; and now I
have opened them again, I don’t know why. I think my brain is turned.
I feel as if something was lost out of my mind; I feel as if I ought to
find it here.
“I have found it! _Midwinter!!!_
“Is it possible that I can have been thinking of the reasons For and
Against, for an hour past--writing Midwinter’s name over and over
again--speculating seriously on marrying him--and all the time not once
remembering that, even with every other impediment removed, _he_ alone,
when the time came, would be an insurmountable obstacle in my way? Has
the effort to face the consideration of Armadale’s death absorbed me to
_that_ degree? I suppose it has. I can’t account for such extraordinary
forgetfulness on my part in any other way.
“Shall I stop and think it out, as I have thought out all the rest?
Shall I ask myself if the obstacle of Midwinter would, after all, when
the time came, be the unmanageable obstacle that it looks at present?
No! What need is there to think of it? I have made up my mind to get the
better of the temptation. I have made up my mind to give my landlady
and her children a treat; I have made up my mind to close my Diary. And
closed it shall be.
“Six o’clock.--The landlady’s gossip is unendurable; the landlady’s
children distract me. I have left them to run back here before post time
and write a line to Mrs. Oldershaw.
“The dread that I shall sink under the temptation has grown stronger and
stronger on me. I have determined to put it beyond my power to have my
own way and follow my own will. Mother Oldershaw shall be the salvation
of me for the first time since I have known her. If I can’t pay my note
of hand, she threatens me with an arrest. Well, she _shall_ arrest me.
In the state my mind is in now, the best thing that can happen to me is
to be taken away from Thorpe Ambrose, whether I like it or not. I will
write and say that I am to be found here I will write and tell her, in
so many words, that the best service she can render me is to lock me up.”
“Seven o’clock.--The letter has gone to the post. I had begun to feel a
little easier, when the children came in to thank me for taking them to
the show. One of them is a girl, and the girl upset me. She is a forward
child, and her hair is nearly the color of mine. She said, ‘I shall
be like you when I have grown bigger, shan’t I?’ Her idiot of a mother
said, ‘Please to excuse her, miss,’ and took her out of the room,
laughing. Like me! I don’t pretend to be fond of the child; but think of
her being like me!”
“Saturday morning.--I have done well for once in acting on impulse, and
writing as I did to Mrs. Oldershaw. The only new circumstance that has
happened is another circumstance in my favor!
“Major Milroy has answered Armadale’s letter, entreating permission
to call at the cottage and justify himself. His daughter read it in
silence, when Armadale handed it to her at their meeting this morning,
in the park. But they talked about it afterward, loud enough for me to
hear them. The major persists in the course he has taken. He says his
opinion of Armadale’s conduct has been formed, not on common report, but
on Armadale’s own letters, and he sees no reason to alter the conclusion
at which he arrived when the correspondence between them was closed.
“This little matter had, I confess, slipped out of my memory. It might
have ended awkwardly for _me_. If Major Milroy had been less obstinately
wedded to his own opinion, Armadale might have justified himself; the
marriage engagement might have been acknowledged; and all _my_ power of
influencing the matter might have been at an end. As it is, they must
continue to keep the engagement strictly secret; and Miss Milroy, who
has never ventured herself near the great house since the thunder-storm
forced her into it for shelter, will be less likely than ever to venture
there now. I can part them when I please; with an anonymous line to the
major, I can part them when I please!
“After having discussed the letter, the talk between them turned on
what they were to do next. Major Milroy’s severity, as it soon appeared,
produced the usual results. Armadale returned to the subject of the
elopement; and this time she listened to him. There is everything to
drive her to it. Her outfit of clothes is nearly ready; and the summer
holidays, at the school which has been chosen for her, end at the end of
next week. When I left them, they had decided to meet again and settle
something on Monday.
“The last words I heard him address to her, before I went away, shook
me a little. He said: ‘There is one difficulty, Neelie, that needn’t
trouble us, at any rate. I have got plenty of money.’ And then he kissed
her. The way to his life began to look an easier way to me when he
talked of his money, and kissed her.
“Some hours have passed, and the more I think of it, the more I fear the
blank interval between this time and the time when Mrs. Oldershaw calls
in the law, and protects me against myself. It might have been better
if I had stopped at home this morning. But how could I? After the insult
she offered me yesterday, I tingled all over to go and look at her.
“To-day; Sunday; Monday; Tuesday. They can’t arrest me for the money
before Wednesday. And my miserable five pounds are dwindling to four!
And he told her he had plenty of money! And she blushed and trembled
when he kissed her. It might have been better for him, better for her,
and better for me, if my debt had fallen due yesterday, and if the
bailiffs had their hands on me at this moment.
“Suppose I had the means of leaving Thorpe Ambrose by the next train,
and going somewhere abroad, and absorbing myself in some new interest,
among new people. Could I do it, rather than look again at that easy way
to his life which would smooth the way to everything else?
“Perhaps I might. But where is the money to come from? Surely some
way of getting it struck me a day or two since? Yes; that mean idea of
asking Armadale to help me! Well; I _will_ be mean for once. I’ll give
him the chance of making a generous use of that well-filled purse which
it is such a comfort to him to reflect on in his present circumstances.
It would soften my heart toward any man if he lent me money in my
present extremity; and, if Armadale lends me money, it might soften my
heart toward him. When shall I go? At once! I won’t give myself time to
feel the degradation of it, and to change my mind.”
“Three ‘clock.--I mark the hour. He has sealed his own doom. He has
insulted me.
“Yes! I have suffered it once from Miss Milroy. And I have now suffered
it a second time from Armadale himself. An insult--a marked, merciless,
deliberate insult in the open day!
“I had got through the town, and had advanced a few hundred yards along
the road that leads to the great house, when I saw Armadale at a little
distance, coming toward me. He was walking fast--evidently with some
errand of his own to take him to the town. The instant he caught sight
of me he stopped, colored up, took off his hat, hesitated, and turned
aside down a lane behind him, which I happen to know would take him
exactly in the contrary direction to the direction in which he was
walking when he first saw me. His conduct said in so many words, ‘Miss
Milroy may hear of it; I daren’t run the risk of being seen speaking to
you.’ Men have used me heartlessly; men have done and said hard things
to me; but no man living ever yet treated me as if I was plague-struck,
and as if the very air about me was infected by my presence!
“I say no more. When he walked away from me down that lane, he walked to
his death. I have written to Midwinter to expect me in London next week,
and to be ready for our marriage soon afterward.”
“Four o’clock.--Half an hour since, I put on my bonnet to go out and
post the letter to Midwinter myself. And here I am, still in my room,
with my mind torn by doubts, and my letter on the table.
“Armadale counts for nothing in the perplexities that are now torturing
me. It is Midwinter who makes me hesitate. Can I take the first of
those three steps that lead me to the end, without the common caution
of looking at consequences? Can I marry Midwinter, without knowing
beforehand how to meet the obstacle of my husband, when the time
comes which transforms me from the living Armadale’s wife to the dead
Armadale’s widow?
“Why can’t I think of it, when I know I _must_ think of it? Why can’t
I look at it as steadily as I have looked at all the rest? I feel his
kisses on my lips; I feel his tears on my bosom; I feel his arms round
me again. He is far away in London; and yet, he is here and won’t let me
think of it!
“Why can’t I wait a little? Why can’t I let Time help me? Time? It’s
Saturday! What need is there to think of it, unless I like? There is
no post to London to-day. I _must_ wait. If I posted the letter, it
wouldn’t go. Besides, to-morrow I may hear from Mrs. Oldershaw. I ought
to wait to hear from Mrs. Oldershaw. I can’t consider myself a free
woman till I know what Mrs. Oldershaw means to do. There is a necessity
for waiting till to-morrow. I shall take my bonnet off, and lock the
letter up in my desk.”
“Sunday morning.--There is no resisting it! One after another the
circumstances crowd on me. They come thicker and thicker, and they all
force me one way.
“I have got Mother Oldershaw’s answer. The wretch fawns on me, and
cringes to me. I can see, as plainly as if she had acknowledged it,
that she suspects me of seeing my own way to success at Thorpe Ambrose
without her assistance. Having found threatening me useless, she tries
coaxing me now. I am her darling Lydia again! She is quite shocked that
I could imagine she ever really intended to arrest her bosom friend; and
she has only to entreat me, as a favor to herself, to renew the bill!
“I say once more, no mortal creature could resist it! Time after time
I have tried to escape the temptation; and time after time the
circumstances drive me back again. I can struggle no longer. The post
that takes the letters to-night shall take my letter to Midwinter among
the rest.
“To-night! If I give myself till to-night, something else may happen.
If I give myself till to-night, I may hesitate again. I’m weary of the
torture of hesitating. I must and will have relief in the present, cost
what it may in the future. My letter to Midwinter will drive me mad if I
see it staring and staring at me in my desk any longer. I can post it in
ten minutes’ time--and I will!
“It is done. The first of the three steps that lead me to the end is a
step taken. My mind is quieter--the letter is in the post.
“By to-morrow Midwinter will receive it. Before the end of the week
Armadale must be publicly seen to leave Thorpe Ambrose; and I must be
publicly seen to leave with him.
“Have I looked at the consequences of my marriage to Midwinter? No! Do
I know how to meet the obstacle of my husband, when the time comes which
transforms me from the living Armadale’s wife to the dead Armadale’s
widow?
“No! When the time comes, I must meet the obstacle as I best may. I
am going blindfold, then--so far as Midwinter is concerned--into this
frightful risk? Yes; blindfold. Am I out of my senses? Very likely. Or
am I a little too fond of him to look the thing in the face? I dare say.
Who cares?
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t think of it! Haven’t I a will of my own? And
can’t I think, if I like, of something else?
“Here is Mother Jezebel’s cringing letter. _That_ is something else to
think of. I’ll answer it. I am in a fine humor for writing to Mother
Jezebel.”
* * * * *
_Conclusion of Miss Gwilt’s Letter to Mrs. Oldershaw_.
“...I told you, when I broke off, that I would wait before I finished
this, and ask my Diary if I could safely tell you what I have now got
it in my mind to do. Well, I have asked; and my Diary says, ‘Don’t tell
her!’ Under these circumstances I close my letter--with my best excuses
for leaving you in the dark.
“I shall probably be in London before long--and I may tell you by word
of mouth what I don’t think it safe to write here. Mind, I make no
promise! It all depends on how I feel toward you at the time. I don’t
doubt your discretion; but (under certain circumstances) I am not so
sure of your courage. L. G.”
“P. S.--My best thanks for your permission to renew the bill. I decline
profiting by the proposal. The money will be ready when the money is
due. I have a friend now in London who will pay it if I ask him. Do you
wonder who the friend is? You will wonder at one or two other things,
Mrs. Oldershaw, before many weeks more are over your head and mine.”