Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (576 page)

“July 30th. — News at last! Armadale has heard from Miss Milroy. My anonymous letter has produced its effect. The girl is removed from Thorpe Ambrose already; and the whole project of the elopement is blown to the winds at once and forever. This was the substance of what Midwinter had to tell me when I met him in the Park. I affected to be excessively astonished, and to feel the necessary feminine longing to know all the particulars. ‘Not that I expect to have my curiosity satisfied,’ I added, ‘for Mr. Armadale and I are little better than mere acquaintances, after all.’

“‘You are far more than a mere acquaintance in Allan’s eyes,’ said Midwinter. ‘Having your permission to trust him, I have already told him how near and dear you are to me.’

“Hearing this, I thought it desirable, before I put any questions about Miss Milroy, to attend to my own interests first, and to find out what effect the announcement of my coming marriage had produced on Armadale. It was possible that he might be still suspicious of me, and that the inquiries he made in London, at Mrs. Milroy’s instigation, might be still hanging on his mind.

“‘Did Mr. Armadale seem surprised,’ I asked, ‘when you told him of our engagement, and when you said it was to be kept a secret from everybody?’

“‘He seemed greatly surprised,’ said Midwinter, ‘to hear that we were going to be married. All he said when I told him it must be kept a secret was that he supposed there were reasons on your side for making the marriage a private one.’

“‘What did you say,’ I inquired, ‘when he made that remark?’

“‘I said the reasons were on my side,’ answered Midwinter. ‘And I thought it right to add — considering that Allan had allowed himself to be misled by the ignorant distrust of you at Thorpe Ambrose — that you had confided to me the whole of your sad family story, and that you had amply justified your unwillingness; under any ordinary circumstances, to speak of your private affairs.’“

(“I breathed freely again. He had said just what was wanted, just in the right way.”)

“‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for putting me right in your friend’s estimation. Does he wish to see me?’ I added, by way of getting back to the other subject of Miss Milroy and the elopement.

“‘He is longing to see you,’ returned Midwinter. ‘He is in great distress, poor fellow — distress which I have done my best to soothe, but which, I believe, would yield far more readily to a woman’s sympathy than to mine.’

“‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

“He was at the hotel; and to the hotel I instantly proposed that we should go. It is a busy, crowded place; and (with my veil down) I have less fear of compromising myself there than at my quiet lodgings. Besides, it is vitally important to me to know what Armadale does next, under this total change of circumstances — for I must so control his proceedings as to get him away from England if I can. We took a cab: such was my eagerness to sympathize with the heart-broken lover, that we took a cab!

“Anything so ridiculous as Armadale’s behavior under the double shock of discovering that his young lady has been taken away from him, and that I am to be married to Midwinter, I never before witnessed in all my experience. To say that he was like a child is a libel on all children who are not born idiots. He congratulated me on my coming marriage, and execrated the unknown wretch who had written the anonymous letter, little thinking that he was speaking of one and the same person in one and the same breath. Now he submissively acknowledged that Major Milroy had his rights as a father, and now he reviled the major as having no feeling for anything but his mechanics and his clock. At one moment he started up, with the tears in his eyes, and declared that his ‘darling Neelie’ was an angel on earth. At another he sat down sulkily, and thought that a girl of her spirit might have run away on the spot and joined him in London. After a good half-hour of this absurd exhibition, I succeeded in quieting him; and then a few words of tender inquiry produced what I had expressly come to the hotel to see — Miss Milroy’s letter.

“It was outrageously long, and rambling, and confused; in short, the letter of a fool. I had to wade through plenty of vulgar sentiment and lamentation, and to lose time and patience over maudlin outbursts of affection, and nauseous kisses inclosed in circles of ink. However, I contrived to extract the information I wanted at last; and here it is:

“The major, on receipt of my anonymous warning, appears to have sent at once for his daughter, and to have shown her the letter. ‘You know what a hard life I lead with your mother; don’t make it harder still, Neelie, by deceiving me.’ That was all the poor old gentleman said. I always did like the major; and, though he was afraid to show it, I know he always liked me. His appeal to his daughter (if
her
account of it is to be believed) cut her to the heart. She burst out crying (let her alone for crying at the right moment!) and confessed everything.

“After giving her time to recover herself (if he had given her a good box on the ears it would have been more to the purpose!), the major seems to have put certain questions, and to have become convinced (as I was convinced myself) that his daughter’s heart, or fancy, or whatever she calls it, was really and truly set on Armadale. The discovery evidently distressed as well as surprised him. He appears to have hesitated, and to have maintained his own unfavorable opinion of Miss Neelie’s lover for some little time. But his daughter’s tears and entreaties (so like the weakness of the dear old gentleman!) shook him at last. Though he firmly refused to allow of any marriage engagement at present, he consented to overlook the clandestine meetings in the park, and to put Armadale’s fitness to become his son-in-law to the test, on certain conditions.

“These conditions are, that for the next six months to come all communication is to be broken off, both personally and by writing, between Armadale and Miss Milroy. That space of time is to be occupied by the young gentleman as he himself thinks best, and by the young lady in completing her education at school. If, when the six months have passed, they are both still of the same mind, and if Armadale’s conduct in the interval has been such as to improve the major’s opinion of him, he will be allowed to present himself in the character of Miss Milroy’s suitor, and, in six months more, if all goes well, the marriage may take place.

“I declare I could kiss the dear old major, if I was only within reach of him! If I had been at his elbow, and had dictated the conditions myself, I could have asked for nothing better than this. Six months of total separation between Armadale and Miss Milroy! In half that time — with all communication cut off between the two — it must go hard with me, indeed, if I don’t find myself dressed in the necessary mourning, and publicly recognised as Armadale’s widow.

“But I am forgetting the girl’s letter. She gives her father’s reasons for making his conditions, in her father’s own words. The major seems to have spoken so sensibly and so feelingly that he left his daughter no decent alternative — and he leaves Armadale no decent alternative — but to submit. As well as I can remember, he seems to have expressed himself to Miss Neelie in these, or nearly in these terms:

“‘Don’t think I am behaving cruelly to you, my dear: I am merely asking you to put Mr. Armadale to the proof. It is not only right, it is absolutely necessary, that you should hold no communication with him for some time to come; and I will show you why. In the first place, if you go to school, the necessary rules in such places — necessary for the sake of the other girls — would not permit you to see Mr. Armadale or to receive letters from him; and, if you are to become mistress of Thorpe Ambrose, to school you must go, for you would be ashamed, and I should be ashamed, if you occupied the position of a lady of station without having the accomplishments which all ladies of station are expected to possess. In the second place, I want to see whether Mr. Armadale will continue to think of you as he thinks now, without being encouraged in his attachment by seeing you, or reminded of it by hearing from you. If I am wrong in thinking him flighty and unreliable, and if your opinion of him is the right one, this is not putting the young man to an unfair test — true love survives much longer separations than a separation of six months. And when that time is over, and well over; and when I have had him under my own eye for another six months, and have learned to think as highly of him as you do — even then, my dear, after all that terrible delay, you will still be a married woman before you are eighteen. Think of this, Neelie, and show that you love me and trust me, by accepting my proposal. I will hold no communication with Mr. Armadale myself. I will leave it to you to write and tell him what has been decided on. He may write back one letter, and one only, to acquaint you with his decision. After that, for the sake of your reputation, nothing more is to be said, and nothing more is to be done, and the matter is to be kept strictly private until the six months’ interval is at an end.’

“To this effect the major spoke. His behavior to that little slut of a girl has produced a stronger impression on me than anything else in the letter. It has set me thinking (me, of all the people in the world!) of what they call ‘a moral difficulty.’ We are perpetually told that there can be no possible connection between virtue and vice. Can there not? Here is Major Milroy doing exactly what an excellent father, at once kind and prudent, affectionate and firm, would do under the circumstances; and by that very course of conduct he has now smoothed the way for
me
, as completely as if he had been the chosen accomplice of that abominable creature, Miss Gwilt. Only think of my reasoning in this way! But I am in such good spirits, I can do anything to-day. I have not looked so bright and so young as I look now for months past!

“To return to the letter, for the last time — it is so excessively dull and stupid that I really can’t help wandering away from it into reflections of my own, as a mere relief.

“After solemnly announcing that she meant to sacrifice herself to her beloved father’s wishes (the brazen assurance of her setting up for a martyr after what has happened exceeds anything I ever heard or read of!), Miss Neelie next mentioned that the major proposed taking her to the seaside for change of air, during the few days that were still to elapse before she went to school. Armadale was to send his answer by return of post, and to address her, under cover to her father, at Lowestoft. With this, and with a last outburst of tender protestation, crammed crookedly into a corner of the page, the letter ended. (N.B. — The major’s object in taking her to the seaside is plain enough. He still privately distrusts Armadale, and he is wisely determined to prevent any more clandestine meetings in the park before the girl is safely disposed of at school.)

“When I had done with the letter — I had requested permission to read parts of it which I particularly admired, for the second and third time! — we all consulted together in a friendly way about what Armadale was to do.

“He was fool enough, at the outset, to protest against submitting to Major Milroy’s conditions. He declared, with his odious red face looking the picture of brute health, that he should never survive a six months’ separation from his beloved Neelie. Midwinter (as may easily be imagined) seemed a little ashamed of him, and joined me in bringing him to his senses. We showed him, what would have been plain enough to anybody but a booby, that there was no honourable or even decent alternative left but to follow the example of submission set by the young lady. ‘Wait, and you will have her for your wife,’ was what I said. ‘Wait, and you will force the major to alter his unjust opinion of you,’ was what Midwinter added. With two clever people hammering common sense into his head at that rate, it is needless to say that his head gave way, and he submitted.

“Having decided him to accept the major’s conditions (I was careful to warn him, before he wrote to Miss Milroy, that my engagement to Midwinter was to be kept as strictly secret from her as from everybody else), the next question we had to settle related to his future proceedings. I was ready with the necessary arguments to stop him, if he had proposed returning to Thorpe Ambrose. But he proposed nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he declared, of his own accord, that nothing would induce him to go back. The place and the people were associated with everything that was hateful to him. There would be no Miss Milroy now to meet him in the park, and no Midwinter to keep him company in the solitary house. ‘I’d rather break stones on the road,’ was the sensible and cheerful way in which he put it, ‘than go back to Thorpe Ambrose.’

“The first suggestion after this came from Midwinter. The sly old clergyman who gave Mrs. Oldershaw and me so much trouble has, it seems, been ill, but has been latterly reported better. ‘Why not go to Somersetshire,’ said Midwinter, ‘and see your good friend, and my good friend, Mr. Brock?’

“Armadale caught at the proposal readily enough. He longed, in the first place, to see ‘dear old Brock,’ and he longed, in the second place, to see his yacht. After staying a few days more in London with Midwinter, he would gladly go to Somersetshire. But what after that?