"G.o.d 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 n.o.body; 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 circ.u.mstances 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 to-night 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 gla.s.s over the fire-place. "You strange creature!" she murmured, leaning her elbows on the mantelpiece, and languidly addressing the reflection of herself in the gla.s.s. "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 gla.s.s. 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 gla.s.s, 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sertion 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.
VIII. SHE COMES BETWEEN THEM.
Appointed hours for the various domestic events of the day were things unknown at Thorpe Ambrose. Irregular in all his habits, Allan accommodated himself to no stated times (with the solitary exception of dinner-time) at any hour of the day or night. He retired to rest early or late, and he rose early or late, exactly as he felt inclined. The servants were forbidden to call him; and Mrs. Gripper was accustomed to improvise the breakfast as she best might, from the time when the kitchen fire was first lighted to the time when the clock stood on the stroke of noon.
Toward nine o"clock on the morning after his return Midwinter knocked at Allan"s door, and on entering the room found it empty. After inquiry among the servants, it appeared that Allan had risen that morning before the man who usually attended on him was up, and that his hot water had been brought to the door by one of the house-maids, who was then still in ignorance of Midwinter"s return. n.o.body had chanced to see the master, either on the stairs or in the hall; n.o.body had heard him ring the bell for breakfast, as usual. In brief, n.o.body knew anything about him, except what was obviously clear to all--that he was not in the house.
Midwinter went out under the great portico. He stood at the head of the flight of steps considering in which direction he should set forth to look for his friend. Allan"s unexpected absence added one more to the disquieting influences which still perplexed his mind. He was in the mood in which trifles irritate a man, and fancies are all-powerful to exalt or depress his spirits.
The sky was cloudy; and the wind blew in puffs from the south; there was every prospect, to weather-wise eyes, of coming rain. While Midwinter was still hesitating, one of the grooms pa.s.sed him on the drive below.
The man proved, on being questioned, to be better informed about his master"s movements than the servants indoors. He had seen Allan pa.s.s the stables more than an hour since, going out by the back way into the park with a nosegay in his hand.
A nosegay in his hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter"s mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that stood in his way.
It meant that Allan had been following his impulses as usual. The one pleasant impression left on his mind after his interview with Pedgift Senior was the impression made by the lawyer"s account of his conversation with Neelie in the park. The anxiety that he should not misjudge her, which the major"s daughter had so earnestly expressed, placed her before Allan"s eyes in an irresistibly attractive character--the character of the one person among all his neighbors who had some respect still left for his good opinion. Acutely sensible of his social isolation, now that there was no Midwinter to keep him company in the empty house, hungering and thirsting in his solitude for a kind word and a friendly look, he began to think more and more regretfully and more and more longingly of the bright young face so pleasantly a.s.sociated with his first happiest days at Thorpe Ambrose.
To be conscious of such a feeling as this was, with a character like Allan"s, to act on it headlong, lead him where it might. He had gone out on the previous morning to look for Neelie with a peace-offering of flowers, but with no very distinct idea of what he should say to her if they met; and failing to find her on the scene of her customary walks, he had characteristically persisted the next morning in making a second attempt with another peace-offering on a larger scale. Still ignorant of his friend"s return, he was now at some distance from the house, searching the park in a direction which he had not tried yet.
After walking out a few hundred yards beyond the stables, and failing to discover any signs of Allan, Midwinter retraced his steps, and waited for his friend"s return, pacing slowly to and fro on the little strip of garden ground at the back of the house.
From time to time, as he pa.s.sed it, he looked in absently at the room which had formerly been Mrs. Armadale"s, which was now (through his interposition) habitually occupied by her son--the room with the Statuette on the bracket, and the French windows opening to the ground, which had once recalled to him the Second Vision of the Dream. The Shadow of the Man, which Allan had seen standing opposite to him at the long window; the view over a lawn and flower-garden; the pattering of the rain against the gla.s.s; the stretching out of the Shadow"s arm, and the fall of the statue in fragments on the floor--these objects and events of the visionary scene, so vividly present to his memory once, were all superseded by later remembrances now, were all left to fade as they might in the dim background of time. He could pa.s.s the room again and again, alone and anxious, and never once think of the boat drifting away in the moonlight, and the night"s imprisonment on the Wrecked Ship!
Toward ten o"clock the well-remembered sound of Allan"s voice became suddenly audible in the direction of the stables. In a moment more he was visible from the garden. His second morning"s search for Neelie had ended to all appearance in a second defeat of his object. The nosegay was still in his hand; and he was resignedly making a present of it to one of the coachman"s children.
Midwinter impulsively took a step forward toward the stables, and abruptly checked his further progress.
Conscious that his position toward his friend was altered already in relation to Miss Gwilt, the first sight of Allan filled his mind with a sudden distrust of the governess"s influence over him, which was almost a distrust of himself. He knew that he had set forth from the moors on his return to Thorpe Ambrose with the resolution of acknowledging the pa.s.sion that had mastered him, and of insisting, if necessary, on a second and a longer absence in the interests of the sacrifice which he was bent on making to the happiness of his friend. What had become of that resolution now? The discovery of Miss Gwilt"s altered position, and the declaration that she had voluntarily made of her indifference to Allan, had scattered it to the winds. The first words with which he would have met his friend, if nothing had happened to him on the homeward way, were words already dismissed from his lips. He drew back as he felt it, and struggled, with an instinctive loyalty toward Allan, to free himself at the last moment from the influence of Miss Gwilt.
Having disposed of his useless nosegay, Allan pa.s.sed on into the garden, and the instant he entered it recognized Midwinter with a loud cry of surprise and delight.
"Am I awake or dreaming?" he exclaimed, seizing his friend excitably by both hands. "You dear old Midwinter, have you sprung up out of the ground, or have you dropped from the clouds?"
It was not till Midwinter had explained the mystery of his unexpected appearance in every particular that Allan could be prevailed on to say a word about himself. When he did speak, he shook his head ruefully, and subdued the hearty loudness of his voice, with a preliminary look round to see if the servants were within hearing.