Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (544 page)

“Come!” said Mrs. Milroy, beginning to lose patience. “You have something to say to me about Miss Gwilt. What is it?”

Neelie forced back her tears, and made an effort to answer.

“She aggravates me beyond endurance, mamma; I can’t bear her; I shall do something — ” Neelie stopped, and stamped her foot angrily on the floor. “I shall throw something at her head if we go on much longer like this! I should have thrown something this morning if I hadn’t left the room. Oh, do speak to papa about it! Do find out some reason for sending her away! I’ll go to school — I’ll do anything in the world to get rid of Miss Gwilt!”

To get rid of Miss Gwilt! At those words — at that echo from her daughter’s lips of the one dominant desire kept secret in her own heart — Mrs. Milroy slowly raised herself in bed. What did it mean? Was the help she wanted coming from the very last of all quarters in which she could have thought of looking for it?

“Why do you want to get rid of Miss Gwilt?” she asked. “What have you got to complain of?”

“Nothing!” said Neelie. “That’s the aggravation of it. Miss Gwilt won’t let me have anything to complain of. She is perfectly detestable; she is driving me mad; and she is the pink of propriety all the time. I dare say it’s wrong, but I don’t care — I hate her!”

Mrs. Milroy’s eyes questioned her daughter’s face as they had never questioned it yet. There was something under the surface, evidently — something which it might be of vital importance to her own purpose to discover — which had not risen into view. She went on probing her way deeper and deeper into Neelie’s mind, with a warmer and warmer interest in Neelie’s secret.

“Pour me out a cup of tea,” she said; “and don’t excite yourself, my dear. Why do you speak to
me
about this? Why don’t you speak to your father?”

“I have tried to speak to papa,” said Neelie. “But it’s no use; he is too good to know what a wretch she is. She is always on her best behavior with him; she is always contriving to be useful to him. I can’t make him understand why I dislike Miss Gwilt; I can’t make
you
understand — I only understand it myself.” She tried to pour out the tea, and in trying upset the cup. “I’ll go downstairs again!” exclaimed Neelie, with a burst of tears. “I’m not fit for anything; I can’t even pour out a cup of tea!”

Mrs. Milroy seized her hand and stopped her. Trifling as it was, Neelie’s reference to the relations between the major and Miss Gwilt had roused her mother’s ready jealousy. The restraints which Mrs. Milroy had laid on herself thus far vanished in a moment — vanished even in the presence of a girl of sixteen, and that girl her own child!

“Wait here!” she said, eagerly. “You have come to the right place and the right person. Go on abusing Miss Gwilt. I like to hear you — I hate her, too!”

“You, mamma!” exclaimed Neelie, looking at her mother in astonishment.

For a moment Mrs. Milroy hesitated before she said more. Some last-left instinct of her married life in its earlier and happier time pleaded hard with her to respect the youth and the sex of her child. But jealousy respects nothing; in the heaven above and on the earth beneath, nothing but itself. The slow fire of self-torment, burning night and day in the miserable woman’s breast, flashed its deadly light into her eyes, as the next words dropped slowly and venomously from her lips.

“If you had had eyes in your head, you would never have gone to your father,” she said. “Your father has reasons of his own for hearing nothing that you can say, or that anybody can say, against Miss Gwilt.”

Many girls at Neelie’s age would have failed to see the meaning hidden under those words. It was the daughter’s misfortune, in this instance, to have had experience enough of the mother to understand her. Neelie started back from the bedside, with her face in a glow. “Mamma!” she said, “you are talking horribly! Papa is the best, and dearest, and kindest — oh, I won’t hear it! I won’t hear it!”

Mrs. Milroy’s fierce temper broke out in an instant — broke out all the more violently from her feeling herself, in spite of herself, to have been in the wrong.

“You impudent little fool!” she retorted, furiously. “Do you think I want
you
to remind me of what I owe to your father? Am I to learn how to speak of your father, and how to think of your father, and how to love and honour your father, from a forward little minx like you! I was finely disappointed, I can tell you, when you were born — I wished for a boy, you impudent hussy! If you ever find a man who is fool enough to marry you, he will be a lucky man if you only love him half as well, a quarter as well, a hundred-thousandth part as well, as I loved your father. Ah, you can cry when it’s too late; you can come creeping back to beg your mother’s pardon after you have insulted her. You little dowdy, half-grown creature! I was handsomer than ever you will be when I married your father. I would have gone through fire and water to serve your father! If he had asked me to cut off one of my arms, I would have done it — I would have done it to please him!” She turned suddenly with her face to the wall, forgetting her daughter, forgetting her husband, forgetting everything but the torturing remembrance of her lost beauty. “My arms!” she repeated to herself, faintly. “What arms I had when I was young!” She snatched up the sleeve of her dressing-gown furtively, with a shudder. “Oh, look at it now! look at it now!”

Neelie fell on her knees at the bedside and hid her face. In sheer despair of finding comfort and help anywhere else, she had cast herself impulsively on her mother’s mercy; and this was how it had ended! “Oh, mamma,” she pleaded, “you know I didn’t mean to offend you! I couldn’t help it when you spoke so of my father. Oh, do, do forgive me!”

Mrs. Milroy turned again on her pillow, and looked at her daughter vacantly. “Forgive you?” she repeated, with her mind still in the past, groping its way back darkly to the present.

“I beg your pardon, mamma — I beg your pardon on my knees. I am so unhappy; I do so want a little kindness! Won’t you forgive me?”

“Wait a little,” rejoined Mrs. Milroy. “Ah,” she said, after an interval, “now I know! Forgive you? Yes; I’ll forgive you on one condition.” She lifted Neelie’s head, and looked her searchingly in the face. “Tell me why you hate Miss Gwilt! You’ve a reason of your own for hating her, and you haven’t confessed it yet.”

Neelie’s head dropped again. The burning colour that she was hiding by hiding her face showed itself on her neck. Her mother saw it, and gave her time.

“Tell me,” reiterated Mrs. Milroy, more gently, “why do you hate her?”

The answer came reluctantly, a word at a time, in fragments.

“Because she is trying — ”

“Trying what?”

“Trying to make somebody who is much — ”

“Much what?”

“Much too young for her — ”

“Marry her?”

“Yes, mamma.”

Breathlessly interested, Mrs. Milroy leaned forward, and twined her hand caressingly in her daughter’s hair.

“Who is it, Neelie?” she asked, in a whisper.

“You will never say I told you, mamma?”

“Never! Who is it?”

“Mr. Armadale.”

Mrs. Milroy leaned back on her pillow in dead silence. The plain betrayal of her daughter’s first love, by her daughter’s own lips, which would have absorbed the whole attention of other mothers, failed to occupy her for a moment. Her jealousy, distorting all things to fit its own conclusions, was busied in distorting what she had just heard. “A blind,” she thought, “which has deceived my girl. It doesn’t deceive
me
. Is Miss Gwilt likely to succeed?” she asked, aloud. “Does Mr. Armadale show any sort of interest in her?”

Neelie looked up at her mother for the first time. The hardest part of the confession was over now. She had revealed the truth about Miss Gwilt, and she had openly mentioned Allan’s name.

“He shows the most unaccountable interest,” she said. “It’s impossible to understand it. It’s downright infatuation. I haven’t patience to talk about it!”

“How do
you
come to be in Mr. Armadale’s secrets?” inquired Mrs. Milroy. “Has he informed
you
, of all the people in the world, of his interest in Miss Gwilt?”

“Me!” exclaimed Neelie, indignantly. “It’s quite bad enough that he should have told papa.”

At the re-appearance of the major in the narrative, Mrs. Milroy’s interest in the conversation rose to its climax. She raised herself again from the pillow. “Get a chair,” she said. “Sit down, child, and tell me all about it. Every word, mind — every word!”

“I can only tell you, mamma, what papa told me.”

“When?”

“Saturday. I went in with papa’s lunch to the workshop, and he said, ‘I have just had a visit from Mr. Armadale; and I want to give you a caution while I think of it.’ I didn’t say anything, mamma; I only waited. Papa went on, and told me that Mr. Armadale had been speaking to him on the subject of Miss Gwilt, and that he had been asking a question about her which nobody in his position had a right to ask. Papa said he had been obliged, good-humoredly, to warn Mr. Armadale to be a little more delicate, and a little more careful next time. I didn’t feel much interested, mamma; it didn’t matter to
me
what Mr. Armadale said or did. Why should I care about it?”

“Never mind yourself,” interposed Mrs. Milroy, sharply. “Go on with what your father said. What was he doing when he was talking about Miss Gwilt? How did he look?”

“Much as usual, mamma. He was walking up and down the workshop; and I took his arm and walked up and down with him.”

“I don’t care what
you
were doing,” said Mrs. Milroy, more and more irritably. “Did your father tell you what Mr. Armadale’s question was, or did he not?”

“Yes, mamma. He said Mr. Armadale began by mentioning that he was very much interested in Miss Gwilt, and he then went on to ask whether papa could tell him anything about her family misfortunes — ”

“What!” cried Mrs. Milroy. The word burst from her almost in a scream, and the white enamel on her face cracked in all directions. “Mr. Armadale said
that
?” she went on, leaning out further and further over the side of the bed.

Neelie started up, and tried to put her mother back on the pillow.

“Mamma!” she exclaimed, “are you in pain? Are you ill? You frighten me!”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Mrs. Milroy. She was too violently agitated to make any other than the commonest excuse. “My nerves are bad this morning; don’t notice it. I’ll try the other side of the pillow. Go on! go on! I’m listening, though I’m not looking at you.” She turned her face to the wall, and clinched her trembling hands convulsively beneath the bedclothes. “I’ve got her!” she whispered to herself, under her breath. “I’ve got her at last!”

“I’m afraid I’ve been talking too much,” said Neelie. “I’m afraid I’ve been stopping here too long. Shall I go downstairs, mamma, and come back later in the day?”

“Go on,” repeated Mrs. Milroy, mechanically. “What did your father say next? Anything more about Mr. Armadale?”

“Nothing more, except how papa answered him,” replied Neelie. “Papa repeated his own words when he told me about it. He said, ‘In the absence of any confidence volunteered by the lady herself, Mr. Armadale, all I know or wish to know — and you must excuse me for saying, all any one else need know or wish to know — is that Miss Gwilt gave me a perfectly satisfactory reference before she entered my house.’ Severe, mamma, wasn’t it? I don’t pity him in the least; he richly deserved it. The next thing was papa’s caution to
me
. He told me to check Mr. Armadale’s curiosity if he applied to me next. As if he was likely to apply to me! And as if I should listen to him if he did! That’s all, mamma. You won’t suppose, will you, that I have told you this because I want to hinder Mr. Armadale from marrying Miss Gwilt? Let him marry her if he pleases; I don’t care!” said Neelie, in a voice that faltered a little, and with a face which was hardly composed enough to be in perfect harmony with a declaration of indifference. “All I want is to be relieved from the misery of having Miss Gwilt for my governess. I’d rather go to school. I should like to go to school. My mind’s quite changed about all that, only I haven’t the heart to tell papa. I don’t know what’s come to me, I don’t seem to have heart enough for anything now; and when papa takes me on his knee in the evening, and says, ‘Let’s have a talk, Neelie,’ he makes me cry. Would you mind breaking it to him, mamma, that I’ve changed my mind, and I want to go to school?” The tears rose thickly in her eyes, and she failed to see that her mother never even turned on the pillow to look round at her.