They were all Thorpe Ambrose people. He was probably known by sight, and Miss Gwilt was probably known by sight, to every one of them. In sheer desperation, hesitating more awkwardly than ever, he produced his cigar case. "I should be delighted," he said, with an embarrassment which was almost an insult under the circumstances. "But I--I'm what the people who get sick over a cigar call a slave to smoking.""I delight in smoking!" said Miss Gwilt, with undiminished vivacity and good humor. "It's one of the privileges of the men which I have always envied. I'm afraid, Mr. Armadale, you must think I am forcing myself on you. It certainly looks like it. The real truth is, I want particularly to say a word to you in private about Mr. Midwinter."The train came up at the same moment. Setting Midwinter out of the question, the common decencies of politeness left Allan no alternative but to submit. After having been the cause of her leaving her situation at Major Milroy's, after having pointedly avoided her only a few days since on the high-road, to have declined going to London in the same carriage with Miss Gwilt would have been an act of downright brutality which it was simply impossible to commit. "Damn her!" said Allan, internally, as he handed his traveling companion into an empty carriage, officiously placed at his disposal, before all the people at the station, by the guard. "You shan't be disturbed, sir," the man whispered, confidentially, with a smile and a touch of his hat.
Allan could have knocked him down with the utmost pleasure.
"Stop!" he said, from the window. "I don't want the carriage--"It was useless; the guard was out of hearing; the whistle blew, and the train started for London.
The select assembly of travelers' friends, left behind on the platform, congregated in a circle on the spot, with the station-master in the center.
The station-master--otherwise Mr. Mack--was a popular character in the neighborhood. He possessed two social qualifications which invariably impress the average English mind--he was an old soldier, and he was a man of few words. The conclave on the platform insisted on taking his opinion, before it committed itself positively to an opinion of its own. A brisk fire of remarks exploded, as a matter of course, on all sides; but everybody's view of the subject ended interrogatively, in a question aimed pointblank at the station-master's ears.
"She's got him, hasn't she?" "She'll come back 'Mrs. Armadale,'
won't she?" "He'd better have stuck to Miss Milroy, hadn't he?""Miss Milroy stuck to _him._ She paid him a visit at the great house, didn't she?" "Nothing of the sort; it's a shame to take the girl's character away. She was caught in a thunder-storm close by; he was obliged to give her shelter; and she's never been near the place since. Miss Gwilt's been there, if you like, with no thunderstorm to force _her_ in; and Miss Gwilt's off with him to London in a carriage all to themselves, eh, Mr. Mack?""Ah, he's a soft one, that Armadale! with all his money, to take up with a red-haired woman, a good eight or nine years older than he is! She's thirty if she's a day. That's what I say, Mr. Mack.
What do you say?" "Older or younger, she'll rule the roast at Thorpe Ambrose; and I say, for the sake of the place, and for the sake of trade, let's make the best of it; and Mr. Mack, as a man of the world, sees it in the same light as I do, don't you, sir?""Gentlemen," said the station-master, with his abrupt military accent, and his impenetrable military manner, "she's a devilish fine woman. And when I was Mr. Armadale's age, it's my opinion, if her fancy had laid that way, she might have married Me."With that expression of opinion the station-master wheeled to the right, and intrenched himself impregnably in the stronghold of his own office.
The citizens of Thorpe Ambrose looked at the closed door, and gravely shook their heads. Mr. Mack had disappointed them. No opinion which openly recognizes the frailty of human nature is ever a popular opinion with mankind. "It's as good as saying that any of _us_ might have married her if _we_ had been Mr.
Armadale's age!" Such was the general impression on the minds of the conclave, when the meeting had been adjourned, and the members were leaving the station.
The last of the party to go was a slow old gentleman, with a habit of deliberately looking about him. Pausing at the door, this observant person stared up the platform and down the platform, and discovered in the latter direction, standing behind an angle of the wall, an elderly man in black, who had escaped the notice of everybody up to that time. "Why, bless my soul!"said the old gentleman, advancing inquisitively by a step at a time, "it can't be Mr. Bashwood!"It _was_ Mr. Bashwood--Mr. Bashwood, whose constitutional curiosity had taken him privately to the station, bent on solving the mystery of Allan's sudden journey to London--Mr. Bashwood, who had seen and heard, behind his angle in the wall, what everybody else had seen and heard, and who appeared to have been impressed by it in no ordinary way. He stood stiffly against the wall, like a man petrified, with one hand pressed on his bare head, and the other holding his hat--he stood, with a dull flush on his face, and a dull stare in his eyes, looking straight into the black depths of the tunnel outside the station, as if the train to London had disappeared in it but the moment before.
"Is your head bad?" asked the old gentleman. "Take my advice. Go home and lie down."Mr. Bashwood listened mechanically, with his usual attention, and answered mechanically, with his usual politeness.
"Yes, sir," he said, in a low, lost tone, like a man between dreaming and waking; "I'll go home and lie down.""That's right," rejoined the old gentleman, making for the door.