“As for the major, I can hardly stand higher in his estimation than I stand already. I am always ready to make his breakfast, and his daughter is not. I can always find things for him when he loses them, and his daughter can’t. I never yawn when he proses, and his daughter does. I like the poor dear harmless old gentleman, so I won’t say a word more about him.
“Well, here is a fair prospect for the future surely? My good Oldershaw, there never was a prospect yet without an ugly place in it. My prospect has two ugly places in it. The name of one of them is Mrs. Milroy, and the name of the other is Mr. Midwinter.
“Mrs. Milroy first. Before I had been five minutes in the cottage, on the day of my arrival, what do you think she did? She sent downstairs and asked to see me. The message startled me a little, after hearing from the old lady, in London, that her daughter-in-law was too great a sufferer to see anybody; but, of course, when I got her message, I had no choice but to go up stairs to the sick-room. I found her bedridden with an incurable spinal complaint, and a really horrible object to look at, but with all her wits about her; and, if I am not greatly mistaken, as deceitful a woman, with as vile a temper, as you could find anywhere in all your long experience. Her excessive politeness, and her keeping her own face in the shade of the bed-curtains while she contrived to keep mine in the light, put me on my guard the moment I entered the room. We were more than half an hour together, without my stepping into any one of the many clever little traps she laid for me. The only mystery in her behavior, which I failed to see through at the time, was her perpetually asking me to bring her things (things she evidently did not want) from different parts of the room.
“Since then events have enlightened me. My first suspicions were raised by overhearing some of the servants’ gossip; and I have been confirmed in my opinion by the conduct of Mrs. Milroy’s nurse.
“On the few occasions when I have happened to be alone with the major, the nurse has also happened to want something of her master, and has invariably forgotten to announce her appearance by knocking, at the door. Do you understand now why Mrs. Milroy sent for me the moment I got into the house, and what she wanted when she kept me going backward and forward, first for one thing and then for another? There is hardly an attractive light in which my face and figure can be seen, in which that woman’s jealous eyes have not studied them already. I am no longer puzzled to know why the father and daughter started, and looked at each other, when I was first presented to them; or why the servants still stare at me with a mischievous expectation in their eyes when I ring the bell and ask them to do anything. It is useless to disguise the truth, Mother Oldershaw, between you and me. When I went upstairs into that sickroom, I marched blindfold into the clutches of a jealous woman. If Mrs. Milroy can turn me out of the house, Mrs. Milroy will; and, morning and night, she has nothing else to do in that bed prison of hers but to find out the way.
“In this awkward position, my own cautious conduct is admirably seconded by the dear old major’s perfect insensibility. His wife’s jealousy of him is as monstrous a delusion as any that could be found in a mad-house; it is the growth of her own vile temper, under the aggravation of an incurable illness. The poor man hasn’t a thought beyond his mechanical pursuits; and I don’t believe he knows at this moment whether I am a handsome woman or not. With this chance to help me, I may hope to set the nurse’s intrusions and the mistress’s contrivances at defiance—for a time, at any rate. But you know what a jealous woman is, and I think I know what Mrs. Milroy is; and I own I shall breathe more freely on the day when young Armadale opens his foolish lips to some purpose, and sets the major advertising for a new governess.
“Armadale’s name reminds me of Armadale’s friend. There is more danger threatening in that quarter; and, what is worse, I don’t feel half as well armed beforehand against Mr. Midwinter as I do against Mrs. Milroy.
“Everything about this man is more or less mysterious, which I don’t like, to begin with. How does he come to be in the confidence of the Somersetshire clergyman? How much has that clergyman told him? How is it that he was so firmly persuaded, when he spoke to me in the park, that I was not the Miss Gwilt of whom his friend was in search? I haven’t the ghost of an answer to give to any of those three questions. I can’t even discover who he is, or how he and young Armadale first became acquainted. I hate him. No, I don’t; I only want to find out about him. He is very young, little and lean, and active and dark, with bright black eyes which say to me plainly, ‘We belong to a man with brains in his head and a will of his own; a man who hasn’t always been hanging about a country house, in attendance on a fool.’ Yes; I am positively certain Mr. Midwinter has done something or suffered something in his past life, young as he is; and I would give I don’t know what to get at it. Don’t resent my taking up so much space in my writing about him. He has influence enough over young Armadale to be a very awkward obstacle in my way, unless I can secure his good opinion at starting.
“Well, you may ask, and what is to prevent your securing his good opinion? I am sadly afraid, Mother Oldershaw, I have got it on terms I never bargained for I am sadly afraid the man is in love with me already.
“Don’t toss your head and say, ‘Just like her vanity!’ After the horrors I have gone through, I have no vanity left; and a man who admires me is a man who makes me shudder. There was a time, I own—Pooh! what am I writing? Sentiment, I declare! Sentiment to you! Laugh away, my dear. As for me, I neither laugh nor cry; I mend my pen, and get on with my—what do the men call it?—my report.