Armadale (41 page)

Luckily for both of us (to come to serious matters), your messenger is a prudent person. He sent upstairs to know if there
was an answer. In the midst of my merriment I had presence of mind enough to send downstairs and say, ‘Yes.'

Some brute of a man says in some book which I once read, that no woman can keep two separate trains of ideas in her mind at the same time. I declare you have almost satisfied me that the man is right. What! when you have escaped unnoticed to your place of business, and when you suspect this house to be watched, you propose to come back here, and to put it in the parson's power to recover the lost trace of you! What madness! Stop where you are; and when you have got over your difficulty at Pimlico (it is some woman's business of course; what worries women are!), be so good as to read what I have got to say about our difficulty at Brompton.

In the first place, the house (as you supposed) is watched. Half-an-hour after you left me, loud voices in the street interrupted me at the piano, and I went to the window. There was a cab at the house opposite, where they let lodgings; and an old man, who looked like a respectable servant, was wrangling with the driver about his fare. An elderly gentleman came out of the house, and stopped them. An elderly gentleman returned into the house, and appeared cautiously at the front drawing-room window. You know him, you worthy creature – he had the bad taste, some few hours since, to doubt whether you were telling him the truth. Don't be afraid, he didn't see me. When he looked up, after settling with the cab-driver, I was behind the curtain. I have been behind the curtain once or twice since; and I have seen enough to satisfy me that he and his servant will relieve each other at the window, so as never to lose sight of your house here, night or day. That the parson suspects the real truth is of course impossible. But that he firmly believes I mean some mischief to young Armadale, and that you have entirely confirmed him in that conviction, is as plain as that two and two make four. And this has happened (as you helplessly remind me) just when we have answered the advertisement, and when we may expect the major's inquiries to be made in a few days' time.

Surely, here is a terrible situation for two women to find themselves in? A fiddlestick's end for the situation! We have got an easy way out of it – thanks, Mother Oldershaw, to what I myself forced you to do, not three hours before the Somersetshire clergyman met with us.

Has that venomous little quarrel
¹
of ours this morning – after we
had pounced on the major's advertisement in the newspaper – quite slipped out of your memory? Have you forgotten how I persisted in my opinion that you were a great deal too well known in London to appear safely as my reference in your own name, or to receive an inquiring lady or gentleman (as you were rash enough to propose) in your own house? Don't you remember what a passion you were in when I brought our dispute to an end by declining to stir a step in the matter, unless I could conclude my application to Major Milroy by referring him to an address at which you were totally unknown, and to a name which might be anything you pleased, as long as it was not yours? What a look you gave me when you found there was nothing for it but to drop the whole speculation, or to let me have my own way! How you fumed over the lodging-hunting on the other side of the Park! and how you groaned when you came back, possessed of Furnished Apartments in respectable Bayswater, over the useless expense I had put you to! What do you think of those Furnished Apartments
now
, you obstinate old woman? Here we are, with discovery threatening us at our very door, and with no hope of escape unless we can contrive to disappear from the parson in the dark. And there are the lodgings in Bayswater, to which no inquisitive strangers have traced either you or me, ready and waiting to swallow us up – the lodgings in which we can escape all further molestation, and answer the major's inquiries at our ease. Can you see, at last, a little farther than your poor old nose? Is there anything in the world to prevent your safe disappearance from Pimlico to-night, and your safe establishment at the new lodgings, in the character of my respectable reference, half-an-hour afterwards? Oh, fie, fie, Mother Oldershaw! Go down on your wicked old knees, and thank your stars that you had a she-devil like me to deal with this morning!

Suppose we come now to the only difficulty worth mentioning –
my
difficulty. Watched as I am in this house, how am I to join you without bringing the parson or the parson's servant with me at my heels?

Being to all intents and purposes a prisoner here, it seems to me that I have no choice but to try the old prison plan of escape – a change of clothes. I have been looking at your housemaid. Except that we are both light, her face and hair and my face and hair are as unlike each other as possible. But she is as nearly as can be my height and size; and (if she only knew how to dress herself, and
had smaller feet) her figure is a very much better one than it ought to be for a person in her station in life. My idea is, to dress her in the clothes I wore in the Gardens to-day – to send her out, with our reverend enemy in full pursuit of her – and, as soon the coast is clear, to slip away myself and join you. The thing would be quite impossible, of course, if I had been seen with my veil up; but, as events have turned out, it is one advantage of the horrible exposure which followed my marriage, that I seldom show myself in public, and never of course in such a populous place as London, without wearing a thick veil and keeping that veil down. If the housemaid wears my dress, I don't really see why the housemaid may not be counted on to represent me to the life.

The one question is, can the woman be trusted? If she can, send me a line, telling her, on your authority, that she is to place herself at my disposal. I won't say a word till I have heard from you first.

Let me have my answer to-night. As long as we were only talking about my getting the governess's place, I was careless enough how it ended. But now that we have actually answered Major Milroy's advertisement, I am in earnest at last. I mean to be Mrs Armadale of Thorpe-Ambrose; and woe to the man or woman who tries to stop me!

Yours,

L
YDIA
G
WILT
.

P.S. – I open my letter again to say that you need have no fear of your messenger being followed on his return to Pimlico. He will drive to a public-house where he is known, will dismiss the cab at the door, and will go out again by a back way which is only used by the landlord and his friends. – L. G.

Diana Street, 10 o'clock.

M
Y
D
EAR
L
YDIA
, – You have written me a heartless letter. If you had been in my trying position, harassed as I was when I wrote to you, I should have made allowances for my friend when I found my friend not so sharp as usual. But the vice of the present age is a want of consideration for persons in the decline of life. Your
mind is in a sad state, my dear; and you stand much in need of a good example. You shall have a good example – I forgive you.

Having now relieved my mind by the performance of a good action, suppose I show you next (though I protest against the vulgarity of the expression) that I
can
see a little farther than my poor old nose?

I will answer your question about the housemaid first. You may trust her implicitly. She has had her troubles, and has learnt discretion. She also looks your age; though it is only her due to say that, in this particular, she has some years the advantage of you. I enclose the necessary directions which will place her entirely at your disposal.

And what comes next? Your plan for joining me at Bayswater comes next. It is very well, as far as it goes; but it stands sadly in need of a little judicious improvement. There is a serious necessity (you shall know why presently) for deceiving the parson far more completely than you propose to deceive him. I want him to see the housemaid's face under circumstances which will persuade him that it is
your
face. And then, going a step farther, I want him to see the housemaid leave London, under the impression that he has seen
you
start on the first stage of your journey to the Brazils. He didn't believe in that journey when I announced it to him this afternoon in the street. He may believe in it yet, if you follow the directions I am now going to give you.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Send the housemaid out in your walking dress of to-day, just as you propose – but don't stir out yourself, and don't go near the window. Desire the woman to keep her veil down; to take half-an-hour's walk (quite unconscious, of course, of the parson or his servant at her heels); and then to come back to you. As soon as she appears, send her instantly to the open window, instructing her to lift her veil carelessly, and look out. Let her go away again after a minute or two, take off her bonnet and shawl, and then appear once more at the window, or, better still, in the balcony outside. She may show herself again occasionally (not too often) later in the day. And to-morrow – as we have a professional gentleman to deal with – by all means send her to church. If these proceedings don't persuade the parson that the housemaid's face is your face, and if they don't make him readier to believe in your reformed character than he was when I spoke to him, I have lived sixty years, my love, in this vale of tears to mighty little purpose.

The next day is Monday. I have looked at the shipping advertisements, and I find that a steamer leaves Liverpool for the Brazils on Tuesday. Nothing could be more convenient; we will start you on your voyage under the parson's own eyes. You may manage it in this way:

At one o'clock send out the man who cleans the knives and forks to get a cab; and when he has brought it up to the door, let him go back and get a second cab, which he is to wait in himself, round the corner, in the square. Let the housemaid (still in your dress) drive off, with the necessary boxes, in the first cab to the North-Western Railway. When she is gone, slip out yourself to the cab waiting round the corner, and come to me at Bayswater. They may be prepared to follow the housemaid's cab, because they have seen it at the door; but they won't be prepared to follow your cab, which has been hidden round the corner. When the housemaid has got to the station, and has done her best to disappear in the crowd (I have chosen the mixed train
²
at 2.10, so as to give her every chance), you will be safe with me; and whether they do or do not find out that she does not really start for Liverpool won't matter by that time. They will have lost all trace of
you
; and they may follow the housemaid half over London, if they like. She has my instructions (enclosed) to leave the empty boxes to find their way to the lost luggage office, and to go to her friends in the City, and stay there till I write word that I want her again.

And what is the object of all this? My dear Lydia, the object is your future security (and mine). We may succeed, or we may fail in persuading the parson that you have actually gone to the Brazils. If we succeed, we are relieved of all fear of him. If we fail, he will warn young Armadale to be careful
of a woman like my housemaid, and not of a woman like you
. This last gain is a very important one; for we don't know that Mrs Armadale may not have told him your maiden name. In that event, the ‘Miss Gwilt' whom he will describe as having slipped through his fingers here, will be so entirely unlike the ‘Miss Gwilt' established at Thorpe-Ambrose, as to satisfy everybody that it is not a case of similarity of persons, but only a case of similarity of names.

What do you say now to my improvement on your idea? Are my brains not quite so addled as you thought them when you
wrote? Don't suppose I'm at all over-boastful about my own ingenuity. Cleverer tricks than this trick of mine are played off on the public by swindlers, and are recorded in the newspapers every week. I only want to show you that my assistance is not less necessary to the success of the Armadale speculation now, than it was when I made our first important discoveries, by means of the harmless-looking young man and the private inquiry-office in Shadyside Place.

There is nothing more to say that I know of, except that I am just going to start for the new lodging, with a box directed in my new name. The last expiring moments of Mother Oldershaw, of the Toilette Repository, are close at hand; and the birth of Miss Gwilt's respectable reference, Mrs Mandeville, will take place in a cab in five minutes' time. I fancy I must be still young at heart, for I am quite in love already with my romantic name; it sounds almost as pretty as Mrs Armadale of Thorpe-Ambrose, doesn't it? Good-night, my dear, and pleasant dreams. If any accident happens between this and Monday, write to me instantly by post. If no accident happens, you will be with me in excellent time for the earliest inquiries that the major can possibly make. My last words are, don't go out, and don't venture near the front windows till Monday comes.

Affectionately yours,

M. O.

Towards noon, on the day of the twenty-first, Miss Milroy was loitering in the cottage garden – released from duty in the sick-room by an improvement in her mother's health – when her attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the park. One of the voices she instantly recognized as Allan's: the other was strange to her. She put aside the branches of a shrub near the garden palings; and peeping through, saw Allan approaching the cottage gate, in company with a slim, dark, undersized man, who was talking and laughing excitably at the top of his voice. Miss Milroy ran indoors, to warn her father of Mr Armadale's
arrival, and to add that he was bringing with him a noisy stranger, who was, in all probability, the friend generally reported to be staying with the squire at the great house.

Had the major's daughter guessed right? Was the squire's loud-talking, loud-laughing companion the shy, sensitive Midwinter of other times? It was even so. In Allan's presence, that morning, an extraordinary change had passed over the ordinarily quiet demeanour of Allan's friend.