It is for this, is it, Miss Milroy, that I resisted temptation,2 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 tonight 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 afterwards 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!3 If I had been in the humour 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 enclosure 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 towards 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 towards us through the underwood 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 underwood 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 underwood, 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!4
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 favoured 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 h
e 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 afterwards. 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 slily 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 for ever!
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 neighbourhood.
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 towards myself has made his name a by-word in the neighbourhood. 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 ladylike 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.5
‘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 neighbourhood.
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 tonight. 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.