THE MARTYRDOM OF MISS GWILT.
The outskirts of the little town of Thorpe Ambrose, on the side
nearest to "the great house," have earned some local celebrity as
exhibiting the prettiest suburb of the kind to be found in East
Norfolk. Here the villas and gardens are for the most part built
and laid out in excellent taste, the trees are in the prime
of their growth, and the healthy common beyond the houses rises
and falls in picturesque and delightful variety of broken ground.
The rank, fashion, and beauty of the town make this place their
evening promenade; and when a stranger goes out for a drive, if
he leaves it to the coachman, the coachman starts by way of the
common as a matter of course.
On the opposite side, that is to say, on the side furthest
from "the great house," the suburbs (in the year 1851) were
universally regarded as a sore subject by all persons zealous
for the reputation of the town.
Here nature was uninviting, man was poor, and social progress,
as exhibited under the form of building, halted miserably.
The streets dwindled feebly, as they receded from the center of
the town, into smaller and smaller houses, and died away on the
barren open ground into an atrophy of skeleton cottages. Builders
hereabouts appeared to have universally abandoned their work in
the first stage of its creation. Land-holders set up poles on
lost patches of ground, and, plaintively advertising that they
were to let for building, raised sickly little crops meanwhile,
in despair of finding a purchaser to deal with them. All the
waste paper of the town seemed to float congenially to this
neglected spot; and all the fretful children came and cried here,
in charge of all the slatternly nurses who disgraced the place.
If there was any intention in Thorpe Ambrose of sending a
worn-out horse to the knacker's, that horse was sure to be found
waiting his doom in a field on this side of the town. No growth
flourished in these desert regions but the arid growth of
rubbish; and no creatures rejoiced but the creatures of the
night--the vermin here and there in the beds, and the cats
everywhere on the tiles.
The sun had set, and the summer twilight was darkening. The
fretful children were crying in their cradles; the horse destined
for the knacker dozed forlorn in the field of his imprisonment;
the cats waited stealthily in corners for the coming night.
But one living figure appeared in the lonely suburb--the figure
of Mr. Bashwood. But one faint sound disturbed the dreadful
silence--the sound of Mr. Bashwood's softly stepping feet.
Moving slowly past the heaps of bricks rising at intervals along
the road, coasting carefully round the old iron and the broken
tiles scattered here and there in his path, Mr. Bashwood advanced
from the direction of the country toward one of the unfinished
streets of the suburb. His personal appearance had been
apparently made the object of some special attention. His false
teeth were brilliantly white; his wig was carefully brushed; his
mourning garments, renewed throughout, gleamed with the hideous
and slimy gloss of cheap black cloth. He moved with a nervous
jauntiness, and looked about him with a vacant smile. Having
reached the first of the skeleton cottages, his watery eyes
settled steadily for the first time on the view of the street
before him. The next instant he started; his breath quickened;
he leaned, trembling and flushing, against the unfinished wall
at his side. A lady, still at some distance, was advancing toward
him down the length of the street. "She's coming!" he whispered,
with a strange mixture of rapture and fear, of alternating color
and paleness, showing itself in his haggard face. "I wish I was
the ground she treads on! I wish I was the glove she's got on
her hand!" He burst ecstatically into those extravagant words,
with a concentrated intensity of delight in uttering them that
actually shook his feeble figure from head to foot.
Smoothly and gracefully the lady glided nearer and nearer,
until she revealed to Mr. Bashwood's eyes, what Mr. Bashwood's
instincts had recognized in the first instance--the face of Miss
Gwilt.
She was dressed with an exquisitely expressive economy of outlay.
The plainest straw bonnet procurable, trimmed sparingly with
the cheapest white ribbon, was on her head. Modest and tasteful
poverty expressed itself in the speckless cleanliness and the
modestly proportioned skirts of her light "print" gown, and in
the scanty little mantilla of cheap black silk which she wore
over it, edged with a simple frilling of the same material. The
luster of her terrible red hair showed itself unshrinkingly in
a plaited coronet above her forehead, and escaped in one vagrant
love-lock, perfectly curled, that dropped over her left shoulder.
Her gloves, fitting her like a second skin, were of the sober
brown hue which is slowest to show signs of use. One hand lifted
her dress daintily above the impurities of the road; the other
held a little nosegay of the commonest garden flowers.
Noiselessly and smoothly she came on, with a gentle and regular
undulation of the print gown; with the love-lock softly lifted
from moment to moment in the evening breeze; with her head
a little drooped, and her eyes on the ground--in walk, and look,
and manner, in every casual movement that escaped her, expressing
that subtle mixture of the voluptuous and the modest which,
of the many attractive extremes that meet in women, is in a man's
eyes the most irresistible of all.
"Mr. Bashwood!" she exclaimed, in loud, clear tones indicative
of the utmost astonishment, "what a surprise to find you here!
I thought none but the wretched inhabitants ever ventured near
this side of the town. Hush!" she added quickly, in a whisper.
"You heard right when you heard that Mr. Armadale was going to
have me followed and watched. There's a man behind one of the
houses. We must talk out loud of indifferent things, and look
as if we had met by accident. Ask me what I am doing. Out loud!
Directly! You shall never see me again, if you don't instantly
leave off trembling and do what I tell you!"
She spoke with a merciless tyranny of eye and voice--with a
merciless use of her power over the feeble creature whom she
addressed. Mr. Bashwood obeyed her in tones that quavered with
agitation, and with eyes that devoured her beauty in a strange
fascination of terror and delight.
"I am trying to earn a little money by teaching music," she said,
in the voice intended to reach the spy's ears. "If you are able
to recommend me any pupils, Mr. Bashwood, your good word will
oblige me. Have you been in the grounds to-day?" she went on,
dropping her voice again in a whisper. "Has Mr. Armadale been
near the cottage? Has Miss Milroy been out of the garden? No?
Are you sure? Look out for them to-morrow, and next day, and next
day. They are certain to meet and make it up again, and I must
and will know of it. Hush! Ask me my terms for teaching music.
What are you frightened about? It's me the man's after--not you.
Louder than when you asked me what I was doing, just now; louder,
or I won't trust you any more; I'll go to somebody else!"
Once more Mr. Bashwood obeyed. "Don't be angry with me,"
he murmured, faintly, when he had spoken the necessary words.
"My heart beats so you'll kill me!"
You poor old dear!" she whispered back, with a sudden change
in her manner, with an easy satirical tenderness. "What business
have you with a heart at your age? Be here to-morrow at the same
time, and tell me what you have seen in the grounds. My terms are
only five shillings a lesson," she went on, in her louder tone.
"I'm sure that's not much, Mr. Bashwood; I give such long
lessons, and I get all my pupils' music half-price." She suddenly
dropped her voice again, and looked him brightly into instant
subjection. "Don't let Mr. Armadale out of your sight to-morrow!
If that girl manages to speak to him, and if I don't hear of it,
I'll frighten you to death. If I _do_ hear of it, I'll kiss you!
Hush! Wish me good-night, and go on to the town, and leave me to
go the other way. I don't want you--I'm not afraid of the man
behind the houses; I can deal with him by myself. Say goodnight,
and I'll let you shake hands. Say it louder, and I'll give you
one of my flowers, if you'll promise not to fall in love with
it." She raised her voice again. "Goodnight, Mr. Bashwood! Don't
forget my terms. Five shillings a lesson, and the lessons last an
hour at a time, and I get all my pupils' music half-price, which
is an immense advantage, isn't it?" She slipped a flower into his
hand--frowned him into obedience, and smiled to reward him for
obeying, at the same moment--lifted her dress again above the
impurities of the road--and went on her way with a dainty and
indolent deliberation, as a cat goes on her way when she has
exhausted the enjoyment of frightening a mouse.
Left alone, Mr. Bashwood turned to the low cottage wall near
which he had been standing, and, resting himself on it wearily,
looked at the flower in his hand.
His past existence had disciplined him to bear disaster and
insult, as few happier men could have borne them; but it had not
prepared him to feel the master-passion of humanity, for the
first time, at the dreary end of his life, in the hopeless decay
of a manhood that had withered under the double blight of
conjugal disappointment and parental sorrow. "Oh, if I was only
young again!" murmured the poor wretch, resting his arms on the
wall and touching the flower with his dry, fevered lips in a
stealthy rapture of tenderness. "She might have liked me when I
was twenty!" He suddenly started back into an erect position, and
stared about him in vacant bewilderment and terror. "She told me
to go home," he said, with a startled look. "Why am I stopping
here?" He turned, and hurried on to the town--in such dread of
her anger, if she looked round and saw him, that he never so much
as ventured on a backward glance at the road by which she had
retired, and never detected the spy dogging her footsteps, under
cover of the empty houses and the brick-heaps by the roadside.
Smoothly and gracefully, carefully preserving the speckless
integrity of her dress, never hastening her pace, and never
looking aside to the right hand or the left, Miss Gwilt pursued
her way toward the open country. The suburban road branched off
at its end in two directions. On the left, the path wound through
a ragged little coppice to the grazing grounds of a neighboring
farm; on the right, it led across a hillock of waste land to the
high-road. Stopping a moment to consider, but not showing the spy
that she suspected him by glancing behind her while there was a
hiding-place within his reach, Miss Gwilt took the path across
the hillock. "I'll catch him there," she said to herself, looking
up quietly at the long straight line of the empty high-road.
Once on the ground that she had chosen for her purpose, she met
the difficulties of the position with perfect tact and
self-possession. After walking some thirty yards along the road,
she let her nosegay drop, half turned round in stooping to pick
it up, saw the man stopping at the same moment behind her, and
instantly went on again, quickening her pace little by little,
until she was walking at the top of her speed. The spy fell into
the snare laid for him. Seeing the night coming, and fearing that
he might lose sight of her in the darkness, he rapidly lessened
the distance between them. Miss Gwilt went on faster and faster
till she plainly heard his footstep behind her, then stopped,
turned, and met the man face to face the next moment.
"My compliments to Mr. Armadale," she said, "and tell him I've
caught you watching me."
"I'm not watching you, miss," retorted the spy, thrown off his
guard by the daring plainness of the language in which she had
spoken to him.
Miss Gwilt's eyes measured him contemptuously from head to foot.
He was a weakly, undersized man. She was the taller, and (quite
possibly) the stronger of the two.
"Take your hat off, you blackguard, when you speak to a lady,"
she said, and tossed his hat in an instant, across a ditch by
which they were standing, into a pool on the other side.
This time the spy was on his guard. He knew as well as Miss Gwilt
knew the use which might be made of the precious minutes, if he
turned his back on her and crossed the ditch to recover his hat.
"It's well for you you're a woman," he said, standing scowling at
her bareheaded in the fast-darkening light.
Miss Gwilt glanced sidelong down the onward vista of the road,
and saw, through the gathering obscurity, the solitary figure of
a man rapidly advancing toward her. Some women would have noticed
the approach of a stranger at that hour and in that lonely place
with a certain anxiety. Miss Gwilt was too confident in her own
powers of persuasion not to count on the man's assistance
beforehand, whoever he might be, _because_ he was a man. She
looked back at the spy with redoubled confidence in herself, and
measured him contemptuously from head to foot for the second
time.
"I wonder whether I'm strong enough to throw you after your hat?"
she said. "I'll take a turn and consider it."
She sauntered on a few steps toward the figure advancing along
the road. The spy followed her close. "Try it," he said,
brutally. "You're a fine woman; you're welcome to put your arms
round me if you like." As the words escaped him, he too saw the
stranger for the first time. He drew back a step and waited. Miss
Gwilt, on her side, advanced a step and waited, too.
The stranger came on, with the lithe, light step of a practiced
walker, swinging a stick in his hand and carrying a knapsack on
his shoulders. A few paces nearer, and his face became visible.
He was a dark man, his black hair was powdered with dust, and his
black eyes were looking steadfastly forward along the road before
him.
Miss Gwilt advanced with the first signs of agitation she had
shown yet. "Is it possible?" she said, softly. "Can it really be
you?"
It was Midwinter, on his way back to Thorpe Ambrose, after his
fortnight among the Yorkshire moors.
He stopped and looked at her, in breathless surprise. The image
of the woman had been in his thoughts, at the moment when the
woman herself spoke to him. "Miss Gwilt!" he exclaimed, and
mechanically held out his hand.
She took it, and pressed it gently. "I should have been glad to
see you at any time," she said. "You don't know how glad I am to
see you now. May I trouble you to speak to that man? He has been
following me, and annoying me all the way from the town."
Midwinter stepped past her without uttering a word. Faint as the
light was, the spy saw what was coming in his face, and, turning
instantly, leaped the ditch by the road-side. Before Midwinter
could follow, Miss Gwilt's hand was on his shoulder.
"No," she said, "you don't know who his employer is."
Midwinter stopped and looked at her.
"Strange things have happened since you left us," she went on.
"I have been forced to give up my situation, and I am followed
and watched by a paid spy. Don't ask who forced me out of my
situation, and who pays the spy--at least not just yet. I can't
make up my mind to tell you till I am a little more composed.
Let the wretch go. Do you mind seeing me safe back to my lodging?
It's in your way home. May I--may I ask for the support of your
arm? My little stock of courage is quite exhausted." She took his
arm and clung close to it. The woman who had tyrannized over Mr.
Bashwood was gone, and the woman who had tossed the spy's hat
into the pool was gone. A timid, shrinking, interesting creature
filled the fair skin and trembled on the symmetrical limbs of
Miss Gwilt. She put her handkerchief to her eyes. "They say
necessity has no law," she murmured, faintly. "I am treating you
like an old friend. God knows I want one!"
They went on toward the town. She recovered herself with a
touching fortitude; she put her handkerchief back in her pocket,
and persisted in turning the conversation on Midwinter's walking
tour. "It is bad enough to be a burden on you," she said, gently
pressing on his arm as she spoke; "I mustn't distress you as
well. Tell me where you have been, and what you have seen.
Interest me in your journey; help me to escape from myself."
They reached the modest little lodging in the miserable little
suburb. Miss Gwilt sighed, and removed her glove before she took
Midwinter's hand. "I have taken refuge here," she said, simply.
"It is clean and quiet; I am too poor to want or expect more.
We must say good-by, I suppose, unless"--she hesitated modestly,
and satisfied herself by a quick look round that they were
unobserved--"unless you would like to come in and rest a little?
I feel so gratefully toward you, Mr. Midwinter! Is there any
harm, do you think, in my offering you a cup of tea?"
The magnetic influence of her touch was thrilling through him
while she spoke. Change and absence, to which he had trusted
to weaken her hold on him, had treacherously strengthened it
instead. A man exceptionally sensitive, a man exceptionally pure
in his past life, he stood hand in hand, in the tempting secrecy
of the night, with the first woman who had exercised over him
the all-absorbing influence of her sex. At his age, and in
his position, who could have left her? The man (with a man's
temperament) doesn't live who could have left her. Midwinter
went in.
A stupid, sleepy lad opened the house door. Even he, being a male
creature, brightened under the influence of Miss Gwilt. "The urn,
John," she said, kindly, "and another cup and saucer. I'll borrow
your candle to light my candles upstairs, and then I won't
trouble you any more to-night." John was wakeful and active in an
instant. "No trouble, miss," he said, with awkward civility. Miss
Gwilt took his candle with a smile. "How good people are to me!"
she whispered, innocently, to Midwinter, as she led the way
upstairs to the little drawing-room on the first floor.
She lit the candles, and, turning quickly on her guest, stopped
him at the first attempt he made to remove the knapsack from his
shoulders. "No," she said, gently; "in the good old times there
were occasions when the ladies unarmed their knights. I claim
the privilege of unarming _my_ knight." Her dexterous fingers
intercepted his at the straps and buckles, and she had the dusty
knapsack off, before he could protest against her touching it.
They sat down at the one little table in the room. It was very
poorly furnished; but there was something of the dainty neatness
of the woman who inhabited it in the arrangement of the few poor
ornaments on the chimney-piece, in the one or two prettily bound
volumes on the chiffonier, in the flowers on the table, and the
modest little work-basket in the window. "Women are not all
coquettes," she said, as she took off her bonnet and mantilla,
and laid them carefully on a chair. "I won't go into my room,
and look in my glass, and make myself smart; you shall take me
just as I am." Her hands moved about among the tea-things with
a smooth, noiseless activity.
Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she
turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace
for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened
the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid
alternations of expression in her eyes--the delicious languor
that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the
bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke.
In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there
was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat
with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection
of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all
the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations
that seduce the sense--a subtle suggestiveness in her silence,
and a sexual sorcery in her smile.
"Should I be wrong," she asked, suddenly suspending the
conversation which she had thus far persistently restricted to
the subject of Midwinter's walking tour, "if I guessed that you
have something on your mind--something which neither my tea nor
my talk can charm away? Are men as curious as women? Is the
something--Me?"
Midwinter struggled against the fascination of looking at her and
listening to her. "I am very anxious to hear what has happened
since I have been away," he said. "But I am still more anxious,
Miss Gwilt, not to distress you by speaking of a painful
subject."
She looked at him gratefully. "It is for your sake that I have
avoided the painful subject," she said, toying with her spoon
among the dregs in her empty cup. "But you will hear about it
from others, if you don't hear about it from me; and you ought to
know why you found me in that strange situation, and why you see
me here. Pray remember one thing, to begin with. I don't blame
your friend, Mr. Armadale. I blame the people whose instrument
he is."
Midwinter started. "Is it possible," he began, "that Allan can be
in any way answerable--?" He stopped, and looked at Miss Gwilt in
silent astonishment.
She gently laid her hand on his. "Don't be angry with me for only
telling the truth," she said. "Your friend is answerable for
everything that has happened to me--innocently answerable, Mr.
Midwinter, I firmly believe. We are both victims. _He_ is the
victim of his position as the richest single man in the
neighborhood; and I am the victim of Miss Milroy's determination
to marry him."
"Miss Milroy?" repeated Midwinter, more and more astonished.
"Why, Allan himself told me--" He stopped again.
"He told you that I was the object of his admiration? Poor
fellow, he admires everybody; his head is almost as empty as
this," said Miss Gwilt, smiling indicatively into the hollow of
her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again.
"I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went
on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side,
to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me.
I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent
position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to
be commanded--no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master
of Thorpe Ambrose, who commands everything else."
She looked him full in the face as she uttered that magnanimous
sentiment. His eyes dropped before hers, and his dark color
deepened. He had felt his heart leap in him at the declaration
of her indifference to Allan. For the first time since they had
known each other, his interests now stood self-revealed before
him as openly adverse to the interests of his friend.
"I have been guilty of the vanity of letting Mr. Armadale admire
me, and I have suffered for it," resumed Miss Gwilt. "If there
had been any confidence between my pupil and me, I might have
easily satisfied her that she might become Mrs. Armadale--if she
could--without having any rivalry to fear on my part. But Miss
Milroy disliked and distrusted me from the first. She took her
own jealous view, no doubt, of Mr. Armadale's thoughtless
attentions to me. It was her interest to destroy the position,
such as it was, that I held in his estimation; and it is quite
likely her mother assisted her. Mrs. Milroy had her motive also
(which I am really ashamed to mention) for wishing to drive me
out of the house. Anyhow, the conspiracy has succeeded. I have
been forced (with Mr. Armadale's help) to leave the major's
service. Don't be angry, Mr. Midwinter! Don't form a hasty
opinion! I dare say Miss Milroy has some good qualities, though
I have not found them out; and I assure you again and again
that I don't blame Mr. Armadale. I only blame the people whose
instrument he is."
"How is he their instrument? How can he be the instrument of any
enemy of yours?" asked Midwinter. "Pray excuse my anxiety, Miss
Gwilt: Allan's good name is as dear to me as my own!"
Miss Gwilt's eyes turned full on him again, and Miss Gwilt's
heart abandoned itself innocently to an outburst of enthusiasm.
"How I admire your earnestness!" she said. "How I like your
anxiety for your friend! Oh, if women could only form such
friendships! Oh you happy, happy men!" Her voice faltered, and
her convenient tea-cup absorbed her for the third time. "I would
give all the little beauty I possess," she said, "if I could only
find such a friend as Mr. Armadale has found in _you_. I never
shall, Mr. Midwinter--I never shall. Let us go back to what we
were talking about. I can only tell you how your friend is
concerned in my misfortune by telling you something first about
myself. I am like many other governesses; I am the victim of sad
domestic circumstances. It may be weak of me, but I have a horror
of alluding to them among strangers. My silence about my family
and my friends exposes me to misinterpretation in my dependent
position. Does it do me any harm, Mr. Midwinter, in your
estimation?"
"God forbid!" said Midwinter, fervently. "There is no man
living," he went on, thinking of his own family story, "who has
better reason to understand and respect your silence than I
have."
Miss Gwilt seized his hand impulsively. "Oh," she said, "I knew
it, the first moment I saw you! I knew that you, too, had
suffered; that you, too, had sorrows which you kept sacred!
Strange, strange sympathy! I believe in mesmerism--do you?" She
suddenly recollected herself, and shuddered. "Oh, what have I
done? What must you think of me?" she exclaimed, as he yielded to
the magnetic fascination of her touch, and, forgetting everything
but the hand that lay warm in his own, bent over it and kissed
it. "Spare me!" she said, faintly, as she felt the burning touch
of his lips. "I am so friendless--I am so completely at your
mercy!"
He turned away from her, and hid his face in his hands; he was
trembling, and she saw it. She looked at him while his face was
hidden from her; she looked at him with a furtive interest and
surprise. "How that man loves me!" she thought. "I wonder whether
there was a time when I might have loved _him_?"
The silence between them remained unbroken for some minutes.
He had felt her appeal to his consideration as she had never
expected or intended him to feel it--he shrank from looking at
her or from speaking to her again.
"Shall I go on with my story?" she asked. "Shall we forget and
forgive on both sides?" A woman's inveterate indulgence for every
expression of a man's admiration which keeps within the limits
of personal respect curved her lips gently into a charming smile.
She looked down meditatively at her dress, and brushed a crumb
off her lap with a little flattering sigh. "I was telling you,"
she went on, "of my reluctance to speak to strangers of my sad
family story. It was in that way, as I afterward found out, that
I laid myself open to Miss Milroy's malice and Miss Milroy's
suspicion. Private inquiries about me were addressed to the lady
who was my reference--at Miss Milroy's suggestion, in the first
instance, I have no doubt. I am sorry to say, this is not the
worst of it. By some underhand means, of which I am quite
ignorant, Mr. Armadale's simplicity was imposed on; and, when
application was made secretly to my reference in London, it was
made, Mr. Midwinter, through your friend."
Midwinter suddenly rose from his chair and looked at her. The
fascination that she exercised over him, powerful as it was,
became a suspended influence, now that the plain disclosure came
plainly at last from her lips. He looked at her, and sat down
again, like a man bewildered, without uttering a word.
"Remember how weak he is," pleaded Miss Gwilt, gently, "and make
allowances for him as I do. The trifling accident of his failing
to find my reference at the address given him seems, I can't
imagine why, to have excited Mr. Armadale's suspicion. At any
rate, he remained in London. What he did there, it is impossible
for me to say. I was quite in the dark; I knew nothing: I
distrusted nobody; I was as happy in my little round of duties
as I could be with a pupil whose affections I had failed to win,
when, one morning, to my indescribable astonishment, Major Milroy
showed me a correspondence between Mr. Armadale and himself.
He spoke to me in his wife's presence. Poor creature, I make
no complaint of her; such affliction as she suffers excuses
everything. I wish I could give you some idea of the letters
between Major Milroy and Mr. Armadale; but my head is only
a woman's head, and I was so confused and distressed at the
time! All I can tell you is that Mr. Armadale chose to preserve
silence about his proceedings in London, under circumstances
which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major
was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could
his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his
daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other!
Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really
are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere
imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation after a slur
had been cast on me. My pride (Heaven help me, I was brought up
like a gentlewoman, and I have sensibilities that are not blunted
even yet!)--my pride got the better of me, and I left my place.
Don't let it distress you, Mr. Midwinter! There's a bright side
to the picture. The ladies in the neighborhood have overwhelmed
me with kindness; I have the prospect of getting pupils to teach;
I am spared the mortification of going back to be a burden on my
friends. The only complaint I have to make is, I think, a just
one. Mr. Armadale has been back at Thorpe Ambrose for some days.
I have entreated him, by letter, to grant me an interview; to
tell me what dreadful suspicions he has of me, and to let me set
myself right in his estimation. Would you believe it? He has
declined to see me--under the influence of others, not of his own
free will, I am sure! Cruel, isn't it? But he has even used me
more cruelly still; he persists in suspecting me; it is he who is
having me watched. Oh, Mr. Midwinter, don't hate me for telling
you what you _must_ know! The man you found persecuting me and
frightening me tonight was only earning his money, after all, as
Mr. Armadale's spy."
Once more Midwinter started to his feet; and this time the
thoughts that were in him found their way into words.
"I can't believe it; I won't believe it!" he exclaimed,
indignantly. "If the man told you that, the man lied. I beg your
pardon, Miss Gwilt; I beg your pardon from the bottom of my
heart. Don't, pray don't think I doubt _you_; I only say there is
some dreadful mistake. I am not sure that I understand as I ought
all that you have told me. But this last infamous meanness of
which you think Allan guilty, I _do_ understand. I swear to you,
he is incapable of it! Some scoundrel has been taking advantage
of him; some scoundrel has been using his name. I'll prove it
to you, if you will only give me time. Let me go and clear it up
at once. I can't rest; I can't bear to think of it; I can't even
enjoy the pleasure of being here. Oh," he burst out desperately,
"I'm sure you feel for me, after what you have said--I feel so
for _you_!"
He stopped in confusion. Miss Gwilt's eyes were looking at him
again, and Miss Gwilt's hand had found its way once more into his
own.
"You are the most generous of living men," she said, softly. "I
will believe what you tell me to believe. Go," she added, in a
whisper, suddenly releasing his hand, and turning away from him.
"For both our sakes, go!"
His heart beat fast; he looked at her as she dropped into a chair
and put her handkerchief to her eyes. For one moment he
hesitated; the next, he snatched up his knapsack from the floor,
and left her precipitately, without a backward look or a parting
word.
She rose when the door closed on him. A change came over her
the instant she was alone. The color faded out of her cheeks;
the beauty died out of her eyes; her face hardened horribly with
a silent despair. "It's even baser work than I bargained for,"
she said, "to deceive _him_." After pacing to and fro in the room
for some minutes, she stopped wearily before the glass over
the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning
her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the
reflection of herself in the glass. "Have you got any conscience
left? And has that man roused it?"
The reflection of her face changed slowly. The color returned
to her cheeks, the delicious languor began to suffuse her eyes
again. Her lips parted gently, and her quickening breath began
to dim the surface of the glass. She drew back from it, after a
moment's absorption in her own thoughts, with a start of terror.
"What am I doing?" she asked herself, in a sudden panic of
astonishment. "Am I mad enough to be thinking of him in _that_
way?"
She burst into a mocking laugh, and opened her desk on the table
recklessly with a bang. "It's high time I had some talk with
Mother Jezebel," she said, and sat down to write to Mrs.
Oldershaw.
"I have met with Mr. Midwinter," she began, "under very lucky
circumstances; and I have made the most of my opportunity.
He has just left me for his friend Armadale; and one of two good
things will happen to-morrow. If they don't quarrel, the doors
of Thorpe Ambrose will be opened to me again at Mr. Midwinter's
intercession. If they do quarrel, I shall be the unhappy cause
of it, and I shall find my way in for myself, on the purely
Christian errand of reconciling them."
She hesitated at the next sentence, wrote the first few words
of it, scratched them out again, and petulantly tore the letter
into fragments, and threw the pen to the other end of the room.
Turning quickly on her chair, she looked at the seat which
Midwinter had occupied, her foot restlessly tapping the floor,
and her handkerchief thrust like a gag between her clinched
teeth. "Young as you are," she thought, with her mind reviving
the image of him in the empty chair, "there has been something
out of the common in _your_ life; and I must and will know it!"
The house clock struck the hour, and roused her. She sighed, and,
walking back to the glass, wearily loosened the fastenings of her
dress; wearily removed the studs from the chemisette beneath it,
and put them on the chimney-piece. She looked indolently at the
reflected beauties of her neck and bosom, as she unplaited her
hair and threw it back in one great mass over her shoulders.
"Fancy," she thought, "if he saw me now!" She turned back to the
table, and sighed again as she extinguished one of the candles
and took the other in her hand. "Midwinter?" she said, as she
passed through the folding-doors of the room to her bed-chamber.
"I don't believe in his name, to begin with!"
The night had advanced by more than an hour before Midwinter was
back again at the great house.
Twice, well as the homeward way was known to him, he had strayed
out of the right road. The events of the evening--the interview
with Miss Gwilt herself, after his fortnight's solitary thinking
of her; the extraordinary change that had taken place in her
position since he had seen her last; and the startling assertion
of Allan's connection with it--had all conspired to throw his
mind into a state of ungovernable confusion. The darkness of the
cloudy night added to his bewilderment. Even the familiar gates
of Thorpe Ambrose seemed strange to him. When he tried to think
of it, it was a mystery to him how he had reached the place.
The front of the house was dark, and closed for the night.
Midwinter went round to the back. The sound of men's voices,
as he advanced, caught his ear. They were soon distinguishable
as the voices of the first and second footman, and the subject
of conversation between them was their master.
"I'll bet you an even half-crown he's driven out of the
neighborhood before another week is over his head," said
the first footman.
"Done!" said the second. "He isn't as easy driven as you think."
"Isn't he!" retorted the other. "He'll be mobbed if he stops
here! I tell you again, he's not satisfied with the mess he's got
into already. I know it for certain, he's having the governess
watched."
At those words, Midwinter mechanically checked himself before
he turned the corner of the house. His first doubt of the result
of his meditated appeal to Allan ran through him like a sudden
chill. The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal
is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of
mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by
distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the
reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible. On his way back,
Midwinter's one desire had been to find Allan up, and to speak
to him immediately. His one hope now was to gain time to contend
with the new doubts and to silence the new misgivings; his one
present anxiety was to hear that Allan had gone to bed. He turned
the corner of the house, and presented himself before the men
smoking their pipes in the back garden. As soon as their
astonishment allowed them to speak, they offered to rouse their
master. Allan had given his friend up for that night, and had
gone to bed about half an hour since.
"It was my master's' particular order, sir," said the
head-footman, "that he was to be told of it if you came back."
"It is _my_ particular request," returned Midwinter, "that you
won't disturb him."
The men looked at each other wonderingly, as he took his candle
and left them.