Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (548 page)

“I am afraid I must trouble you with a question or two, sir, before I can come to the point,” said Pedgift Junior. “I don’t want to force myself into your confidence. I only want to see my way, in what looks to me like a very awkward business. Do you mind telling me whether others besides yourself are interested in this inquiry of ours?”

“Other people
are
interested in it,” replied Allan. “There’s no objection to telling you that.”

“Is there any other person who is the object of the inquiry besides Mrs. Mandeville, herself?” pursued Pedgift, winding his way a little deeper into the secret.

“Yes; there is another person,” said Allan, answering rather unwillingly.

“Is the person a young woman, Mr. Armadale?”

Allan started. “How do you come to guess that?” he began, then checked himself, when it was too late. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” he resumed. “I’m a bad hand at defending myself against a sharp fellow like you; and I’m bound in honour toward other people to keep the particulars of this business to myself.”

Pedgift Junior had apparently heard enough for his purpose. He drew his chair, in his turn, nearer to Allan. He was evidently anxious and embarrassed; but his professional manner began to show itself again from sheer force of habit.

“I’ve done with my questions, sir,” he said; “and I have something to say now on my side. In my father’s absence, perhaps you may be kindly disposed to consider me as your legal adviser. If you will take my advice, you will not stir another step in this inquiry.”

“What do you mean?” interposed Allan.

“It is just possible, Mr. Armadale, that the cabman, positive as he is, may have been mistaken. I strongly recommend you to take it for granted that he
is
mistaken, and to drop it there.”

The caution was kindly intended; but it came too late. Allan did what ninety-nine men out of a hundred in his position would have done — he declined to take his lawyer’s advice.

“Very well, sir,” said Pedgift Junior; “if you will have it, you must have it.”

He leaned forward close to Allan’s ear, and whispered what he had heard of the house in Pimlico, and of the people who occupied it.

“Don’t blame me, Mr. Armadale,” he added, when the irrevocable words had been spoken. “I tried to spare you.”

Allan suffered the shock, as all great shocks are suffered, in silence. His first impulse would have driven him headlong for refuge to that very view of the cabman’s assertion which had just been recommended to him, but for one damning circumstance which placed itself inexorably in his way. Miss Gwilt’s marked reluctance to approach the story of her past life rose irrepressibly on his memory, in indirect but horrible confirmation of the evidence which connected Miss Gwilt’s reference with the house in Pimlico. One conclusion, and one only — the conclusion which any man must have drawn, hearing what he had just heard, and knowing no more than he knew — forced itself into his mind. A miserable, fallen woman, who had abandoned herself in her extremity to the help of wretches skilled in criminal concealment, who had stolen her way back to decent society and a reputable employment by means of a false character, and whose position now imposed on her the dreadful necessity of perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past life — such was the aspect in which the beautiful governess at Thorpe Ambrose now stood revealed to Allan’s eyes!

Falsely revealed, or truly revealed? Had she stolen her way back to decent society and a reputable employment by means of a false character? She had. Did her position impose on her the dreadful necessity of perpetual secrecy and perpetual deceit in relation to her past life? It did. Was she some such pitiable victim to the treachery of a man unknown as Allan had supposed?
She was no such pitiable victim
. The conclusion which Allan had drawn — the conclusion literally forced into his mind by the facts before him — was, nevertheless, the conclusion of all others that was furthest even from touching on the truth. The true story of Miss Gwilt’s connection with the house in Pimlico and the people who inhabited it — a house rightly described as filled with wicked secrets, and people rightly represented as perpetually in danger of feeling the grasp of the law — was a story which coming events were yet to disclose: a story infinitely less revolting, and yet infinitely more terrible, than Allan or Allan’s companion had either of them supposed.

“I tried to spare you, Mr. Armadale,” repeated Pedgift. “I was anxious, if I could possibly avoid it, not to distress you.”

Allan looked up, and made an effort to control himself. “You have distressed me dreadfully,” he said. “You have quite crushed me down. But it is not your fault. I ought to feel you have done me a service; and what I ought to do I will do, when I am my own man again. There is one thing,” Allan added, after a moment’s painful consideration, “which ought to be understood between us at once. The advice you offered me just now was very kindly meant, and it was the best advice that could be given. I will take it gratefully. We will never talk of this again, if you please; and I beg and entreat you will never speak about it to any other person. Will you promise me that?”

Pedgift gave the promise with very evident sincerity, but without his professional confidence of manner. The distress in Allan’s face seemed to daunt him. After a moment of very uncharacteristic hesitation, he considerately quitted the room.

Left by himself, Allan rang for writing materials, and took out of his pocket-book the fatal letter of introduction to “Mrs. Mandeville” which he had received from the major’s wife.

A man accustomed to consider consequences and to prepare himself for action by previous thought would, in Allan’s present circumstances, have felt some difficulty as to the course which it might now be least embarrassing and least dangerous to pursue. Accustomed to let his impulses direct him on all other occasions, Allan acted on impulse in the serious emergency that now confronted him. Though his attachment to Miss Gwilt was nothing like the deeply rooted feeling which he had himself honestly believed it to be, she had taken no common place in his admiration, and she filled him with no common grief when he thought of her now. His one dominant desire, at that critical moment in his life, was a man’s merciful desire to protect from exposure and ruin the unhappy woman who had lost her place in his estimation, without losing her claim to the forbearance that could spare, and to the compassion that could shield her. “I can’t go back to Thorpe Ambrose; I can’t trust myself to speak to her, or to see her again. But I can keep her miserable secret; and I will!” With that thought in his heart, Allan set himself to perform the first and foremost duty which now claimed him — the duty of communicating with Mrs. Milroy. If he had possessed a higher mental capacity and a clearer mental view, he might have found the letter no easy one to write. As it was, he calculated no consequences, and felt no difficulty. His instinct warned him to withdraw at once from the position in which he now stood toward the major’s wife, and he wrote what his instinct counseled him to write under those circumstances, as rapidly as the pen could travel over the paper:

“Dunn’s Hotel, Covent Garden, Tuesday.

“DEAR MADAM — Pray excuse my not returning to Thorpe Ambrose to-day, as I said I would. Unforeseen circumstances oblige me to stop in London. I am sorry to say I have not succeeded in seeing Mrs. Mandeville, for which reason I cannot perform your errand; and I beg, therefore, with many apologies, to return the letter of introduction. I hope you will allow me to conclude by saying that I am very much obliged to you for your kindness, and that I will not venture to trespass on it any further.

“I remain, dear madam, yours truly,

“ALLAN ARMADALE.”

In those artless words, still entirely unsuspicious of the character of the woman he had to deal with, Allan put the weapon she wanted into Mrs. Milroy’s hands.

The letter and its inclosure once sealed up and addressed, he was free to think of himself and his future. As he sat idly drawing lines with his pen on the blotting-paper, the tears came into his eyes for the first time — tears in which the woman who had deceived him had no share. His heart had gone back to his dead mother. “If she had been alive,” he thought, “I might have trusted
her
, and she would have comforted me.” It was useless to dwell on it; he dashed away the tears, and turned his thoughts, with the heart-sick resignation that we all know, to living and present things.

He wrote a line to Mr. Bashwood, briefly informing the deputy steward that his absence from Thorpe Ambrose was likely to be prolonged for some little time, and that any further instructions which might be necessary, under those circumstances, would reach him through Mr. Pedgift the elder. This done, and the letters sent to the post, his thoughts were forced back once more on himself. Again the blank future waited before him to be filled up; and again his heart shrank from it to the refuge of the past.

This time other images than the image of his mother filled his mind. The one all-absorbing interest of his earlier days stirred living and eager in him again. He thought of the sea; he thought of his yacht lying idle in the fishing harbor at his west-country home. The old longing got possession of him to hear the wash of the waves; to see the filling of the sails; to feel the vessel that his own hands had helped to build bounding under him once more. He rose in his impetuous way to call for the time-table, and to start for Somersetshire by the first train, when the dread of the questions which Mr. Brock might ask, the suspicion of the change which Mr. Brock might see in him, drew him back to his chair. “I’ll write,” he thought, “to have the yacht rigged and refitted, and I’ll wait to go to Somersetshire myself till Midwinter can go with me.” He sighed as his memory reverted to his absent friend. Never had he felt the void made in his life by Midwinter’s departure so painfully as he felt it now, in the dreariest of all social solitudes — the solitude of a stranger in London, left by himself at a hotel.

Before long, Pedgift Junior looked in, with an apology for his intrusion. Allan felt too lonely and too friendless not to welcome his companion’s re-appearance gratefully. “I’m not going back to Thorpe Ambrose,” he said; “I’m going to stay a little while in London. I hope you will be able to stay with me?” To do him justice, Pedgift was touched by the solitary position in which the owner of the great Thorpe Ambrose estate now appeared before him. He had never, in his relations with Allan, so entirely forgotten his business interests as he forgot them now.

“You are quite right, sir, to stop here; London’s the place to divert your mind,” said Pedgift, cheerfully. “All business is more or less elastic in its nature, Mr. Armadale; I’ll spin
my
business out, and keep you company with the greatest pleasure. We are both of us on the right side of thirty, sir; let’s enjoy ourselves. What do you say to dining early, and going to the play, and trying the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park to-morrow morning, after breakfast? If we only live like fighting-cocks, and go in perpetually for public amusements, we shall arrive in no time at the
mens sana in corpore sano
of the ancients. Don’t be alarmed at the quotation, sir. I dabble a little in Latin after business hours, and enlarge my sympathies by occasional perusal of the Pagan writers, assisted by a crib. William, dinner at five; and, as it’s particularly important to-day, I’ll see the cook myself.”

The evening passed; the next day passed; Thursday morning came, and brought with it a letter for Allan. The direction was in Mrs. Milroy’s handwriting; and the form of address adopted in the letter warned Allan, the moment he opened it, that something had gone wrong.

[“Private.”]

“The Cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Wednesday.

“SIR — I have just received your mysterious letter. It has more than surprised, it has really alarmed me. After having made the friendliest advances to you on my side, I find myself suddenly shut out from your confidence in the most unintelligible, and, I must add, the most discourteous manner. It is quite impossible that I can allow the matter to rest where you have left it. The only conclusion I can draw from your letter is that my confidence must have been abused in some way, and that you know a great deal more than you are willing to tell me. Speaking in the interest of my daughter’s welfare, I request that you will inform me what the circumstances are which have prevented your seeing Mrs. Mandeville, and which have led to the withdrawal of the assistance that you unconditionally promised me in your letter of Monday last.

“In my state of health, I cannot involve myself in a lengthened correspondence. I must endeavor to anticipate any objections you may make, and I must say all that I have to say in my present letter. In the event (which I am most unwilling to consider possible) of your declining to accede to the request that I have just addressed to you, I beg to say that I shall consider it my duty to my daughter to have this very unpleasant matter cleared up. If I don’t hear from you to my full satisfaction by return of post, I shall be obliged to tell my husband that circumstances have happened which justify us in immediately testing the respectability of Miss Gwilt’s reference. And when he asks me for my authority, I will refer him to you.