Armadale (35 page)

Before Allan could reply, they turned the corner of the plantation, and came in sight of the cottage. Description of it is needless; the civilized universe knows it already. It was the typical cottage of the drawing-master's early lessons in neat shading and the broad pencil touch – with the trim thatch, the luxuriant creepers, the modest lattice-windows, the rustic porch, and the wicker birdcage, all complete.

‘Isn't it lovely?' said Miss Milroy. ‘Do come in!'

‘May I?' asked Allan. ‘Won't the major think it too early?'

‘Early or late, I'm sure papa will be only too glad to see you.'

She led the way briskly up the garden path, and opened the parlour door. As Allan followed her into the little room, he saw, at the further end of it, a gentleman sitting alone at an old-fashioned writing-table, with his back turned to his visitor.

‘Papa! a surprise for you!' said Miss Milroy, rousing him from his occupation; ‘Mr Armadale has come to Thorpe-Ambrose; and I have brought him here to see you.'

The major started – rose, bewildered for the moment – recovered himself immediately, and advanced to welcome his young landlord, with hospitable outstretched hand.

A man with a larger experience of the world, and a finer observation of humanity than Allan possessed, would have seen the story of Major Milroy's life written in Major Milroy's face. The home-troubles that had struck him were plainly betrayed in his stooping figure, and his wan, deeply-wrinkled cheeks, when he first showed himself on rising from his chair. The changeless influence of one monotonous pursuit and one monotonous habit of thought was next expressed in the dull, dreamy self-absorption of his manner and his look while his daughter was speaking to him. The moment after, when he had roused himself to welcome his guest, was the moment which made the self-revelation complete. Then there flickered in the major's weary eyes a faint reflection of the spirit of his happier youth. Then there passed over the major's dull and dreamy manner a change which told unmistakably of
social graces and accomplishments, learned at some past time in no ignoble social school. A man who had long since taken his patient refuge from trouble in his one mechanical pursuit; a man only roused at intervals to know himself again for what he once had been. So revealed, to all eyes that could read him aright, Major Milroy now stood before Allan, on the first morning of an acquaintance which was destined to be an event in Allan's life.

‘I am heartily glad to see you, Mr Armadale,' he said, speaking in the changelessly quiet subdued tone peculiar to most men whose occupations are of the solitary and monotonous kind. ‘You have done me one favour already, by taking me as your tenant, and you now do me another by paying this friendly visit. If you have not breakfasted already, let me waive all ceremony on my side, and ask you to take your place at our little table.'

‘With the greatest pleasure, Major Milroy, if I am not in the way,' replied Allan, delighted at his reception. ‘I was sorry to hear from Miss Milroy that Mrs Milroy is an invalid. Perhaps, my being here unexpectedly; perhaps the sight of a strange face—'

‘I understand your hesitation, Mr Armadale,' said the major; ‘but it is quite unnecessary. Mrs Milroy's illness keeps her entirely confined to her own room.
⁵
– Have we got everything we want on the table, my love?' he went on, changing the subject so abruptly, that a closer observer than Allan might have suspected it was distasteful to him. ‘Will you come and make tea?'

Miss Milroy's attention appeared to be already pre-engaged: she made no reply. While her father and Allan had been exchanging civilities, she had been putting the writing-table in order, and examining the various objects scattered on it with the unrestrained curiosity of a spoilt child. The moment after the major had spoken to her, she discovered a morsel of paper hidden between the leaves of the blotting-book, snatched it up, looked at it, and turned round instantly, with an exclamation of surprise.

‘Do my eyes deceive me, papa?' she asked. ‘Or were you really and truly writing
the
advertisement when I came in?'

‘I had just finished it,' replied her father. ‘But, my dear, Mr Armadale is here – we are waiting for breakfast.'

‘Mr Armadale knows all about it,' rejoined Miss Milroy. ‘I told him in the garden.'

‘Oh, yes!' said Allan. ‘Pray, don't make a stranger of me, major! If it's about the governess, I've got something (in an indirect sort of way) to do with it too.'

Major Milroy smiled. Before he could answer, his daughter, who had been reading the advertisement, appealed to him eagerly, for the second time.

‘Oh, papa,' she said, ‘there's one thing here I don't like at all! Why do you put grandmamma's initials at the end? Why do you tell them to write to grandmamma's house in London?'

‘My dear! your mother can do nothing in this matter, as you know. And as for me (even if I went to London), questioning strange ladies about their characters and accomplishments is the last thing in the world that I am fit to do. Your grandmamma is on the spot; and your grandmamma is the proper person to receive the letters, and to make all the necessary inquiries.'

‘But I want to see the letters myself,' persisted the spoilt child. ‘Some of them are sure to be amusing—'

‘I don't apologize for this very unceremonious reception of you, Mr Armadale,' said the major, turning to Allan, with a quaint and quiet humour. ‘It may be useful as a warning, if you ever chance to marry and have a daughter – not to begin, as I have done, by letting her have her own way.'

Allan laughed, and Miss Milroy persisted.

‘Besides,' she went on, ‘I should like to help in choosing which letters we answer, and which we don't. I think I ought to have some voice in the selection of my own governess. Why not tell them, papa, to send their letters down here – to the post-office or the stationer's, or anywhere you like? When you and I have read them, we can send up the letters we prefer to grandmamma; and she can ask all the questions, and pick out the best governess, just as you have arranged already, without leaving
ME
entirely in the dark, which I consider (don't you, Mr Armadale?) to be quite inhuman. Let me alter the address, papa – do, there's a darling!'

‘We shall get no breakfast, Mr Armadale, if I don't say Yes,' said the major, good-humouredly. ‘Do as you like, my dear,' he added, turning to his daughter. ‘As long as it ends in your grandmamma's managing the matter for us, the rest is of very little consequence.'

Miss Milroy took up her father's pen, drew it through the last line of the advertisement, and wrote the altered address with her own hand as follows:

Apply, by letter, to M., Post-office, Thorpe-Ambrose, Norfolk
.

‘There!' she said, bustling to her place at the breakfast-table. ‘The advertisement may go to London now; and, if a governess
does
come of
it, oh, papa, who, in the name of wonder, will she be? – Tea or coffee, Mr Armadale? I'm really ashamed of having kept you waiting. But it is such a comfort,' she added, saucily, ‘to get all one's business off one's mind before breakfast!'

Father, daughter, and guest sat down together sociably at the little round table – the best of good neighbours and good friends already.

Three days later, one of the London news-boys got
his
business off his mind before breakfast. His district was Diana Street, Pimlico; and the last of the morning's newspapers which he disposed of, was the newspaper he left at Mrs Oldershaw's door.

More than an hour after Allan had set forth on his exploring expedition through his own grounds, Midwinter rose, and enjoyed, in his turn, a full view by daylight of the magnificence of the new house.

Refreshed by his long night's rest, he descended the great staircase as cheerfully as Allan himself. One after another, he, too, looked into the spacious rooms on the ground-floor in breathless astonishment at the beauty and the luxury which surrounded him. ‘The house where I lived in service when I was a boy was a fine one,' he thought, gaily; ‘but it was nothing to this! I wonder if Allan is as surprised and delighted as I am?' The beauty of the summer morning drew him out through the open hall-door, as it had drawn his friend out before him. He ran briskly down the steps, humming the burden of one of the old vagabond tunes which he had danced to long since, in the old vagabond time. Even the memories of his wretched childhood took their colour, on that happy morning, from the bright medium through which he looked back at them. ‘If I was not out of practice,' he thought to himself, as he leant on the fence and looked over at the park, ‘I could try some of my old tumbling tricks on that delicious grass.' He turned; noticed two of the servants talking together near the shrubbery, and asked for news of the master of the house. The men pointed with a smile in the direction of the gardens; Mr Armadale had gone that way more than an hour since, and had met (as had been reported) with Miss Milroy in the grounds. Midwinter followed the path through the shrubbery, but, on reaching
the flower-garden, stopped, considered a little, and retraced his steps. ‘If Allan has met with the young lady,' he said to himself, ‘Allan doesn't want me.' He laughed as he drew that inevitable inference, and turned considerately to explore the beauties of Thorpe-Ambrose on the other side of the house.

Passing the angle of the front wall of the building, he descended some steps, advanced along a paved walk, turned another angle, and found himself in a strip of garden ground at the back of the house. Behind him was a row of small rooms situated on the level of the servants' offices. In front of him, on the farther side of the little garden, rose a wall, screened by a laurel hedge, and having a door at one end of it, leading past the stables to a gate that opened on the high road. Perceiving that he had only discovered, thus far, the shorter way to the house, used by the servants and tradespeople, Midwinter turned back again, and looked in at the window of one of the rooms on the basement story as he passed it. Were these the servants' offices? No; the offices were apparently in some other part of the ground-floor; the window he had looked in at was the window of a lumber-room. The next two rooms in the row were both empty. The fourth window, when he approached it, presented a little variety. It served also as a door; and it stood open to the garden at that moment.

Attracted by the book-shelves which he noticed on one of the walls, Midwinter stepped into the room. The books, few in number, did not detain him long; a glance at their backs was enough, without taking them down. The Waverley Novels, Tales by Miss Edgeworth, and by Miss Edgeworth's many followers, the Poems of Mrs Hemans,
¹
with a few odd volumes of the illustrated gift-books of the period, composed the bulk of the little library. Midwinter turned to leave the room, when an object on one side of the window, which he had not previously noticed, caught his attention and stopped him. It was a statuette standing on a bracket – a reduced copy of the famous Niobe of the Florence Museum. He glanced from the statuette to the window, with a sudden doubt which set his heart throbbing fast. It was a French window; and the statuette was on his left hand as he stood before it. He looked out with a suspicion which he had not felt yet. The view before him was the view of a lawn and garden. For a moment his mind struggled blindly to escape the conclusion which had seized it – and struggled in vain. Here, close round him and close before him; here, forcing him mercilessly back from the happy present to the horrible past, was the room that Allan had seen in the Second Vision of the Dream.
²

He waited, thinking and looking round him while he thought. There was wonderfully little disturbance in his face and manner; he looked steadily from one to the other of the few objects in the room, as if the discovery of it had saddened rather than surprised him. Matting of some foreign sort covered the floor. Two cane chairs and a plain table comprised the whole of the furniture. The walls were plainly papered, and bare – broken to the eye in one place by a door leading into the interior of the house; in another, by a small stove; in a third, by the book-shelves which Midwinter had already noticed. He returned to the books; and, this time, he took some of them down from the shelves.

The first that he opened contained lines in a woman's handwriting, traced in ink that had faded with time. He read the inscription – ‘Jane Armadale, from her beloved father. Thorpe-Ambrose, October, 1828.' In the second, third, and fourth volumes that he opened, the same inscription reappeared. His previous knowledge of dates and persons helped him to draw the true inference from what he saw. The books must have belonged to Allan's mother; and she must have inscribed them with her name, in the interval of time between her return to Thorpe-Ambrose from Madeira, and the birth of her son. Midwinter passed on to a volume on another shelf – one of a series containing the writings of Mrs Hemans. In this case, the blank leaf at the beginning of the book was filled on both sides with a copy of verses, the writing being still in Mrs Armadale's hand. The verses were headed, ‘Farewell to Thorpe-Ambrose,' and were dated ‘March, 1829' – two months only after Allan had been born.

Entirely without merit in itself, the only interest of the little poem was in the domestic story that it told. The very room in which Midwinter then stood was described – with the view on the garden, the window made to open on it, the book-shelves, the Niobe, and other more perishable ornaments which Time had destroyed. Here, at variance with her brothers, shrinking from her friends, the widow of the murdered man had, on her own acknowledgment, secluded herself, without other comfort than the love and forgiveness of her father, until her child was born. The father's mercy and the father's recent death filled many verses – happily too vague in their commonplace expression of penitence and despair, to give any hint of the marriage-story in Madeira to any reader who looked at them ignorant of the truth. A passing reference to the writer's estrangement from her surviving relatives, and to her approaching departure from Thorpe-Ambrose, followed. Last came the assertion of the mother's resolution to separate herself from all her old associations; to leave behind her every possession, even to the most
trifling thing she had, that could remind her of the miserable past; and to date her new life in the future from the birthday of the child who had been spared to console her – who was now the one earthly object that could still speak to her of love and hope. So the old story of passionate feeling that finds comfort in phrases rather than not find comfort at all, was told once again. So the poem in the faded ink faded away to its end.