I'm starting to think that if you open the dictionary and look up femme fatale you will see a picture of Lydia Gwilt. Although poor Armadale languished on my night stand over the holidays, I am once again glued to the pages. It started off very good, but with each turn of the page I swear it gets just a little bit better. I shouldn't be surprised as I've loved everything I've read by Wilkie Collins!
The background of the story is a little confusing. Suffice it to say there are more than a couple of Allan Armadale's wandering the pages of this novel. The two we'll be concerned with are Allan Armadale and a man known as Ozias Midwinter. Both are descendents in their own way of the original Allan Armadale. Midwinter changed his name after some rather unsavory information came to light about his father's past. By chance he and Allan have crossed paths and become close friends and confidantes, though Allan is unaware of Midwinter's true identity.
So how does all this tie in with Miss Gwilt? It's sort of a long story, but she has connections with the former Allan Armadales. She was a young woman when tragic events occurred, and I'm curious just how much of a hand she had in it. Now she has become involved in the lives of Allan and Midwinter. The woman is a chameleon. A smart one. I'm not sure whether to admire her for her ability to get along as a woman alone in a man's (and Victorian no less) world, or to dislike her intensely. She's base and manipulative. She knows how to use her beauty (and despite being on the wrong side of 30 she is still beautiful) to get what she wants. But she can be as nasty as she can be sweet--depending on what she needs to achieve.
Predictably Allan fell for her, though when certain information came to light he knows he cannot associate with her. Being a gentleman, however, he will not talk badly about Miss Gwilt. Instead Miss Gwilt has managed to appear the martyr and Allan the liar. Midwinter also fell for her, but knowing his friend was enamored he went away hoping time and distance would shake his feelings. The first person he encounters when he returns is, of course, Lydia Gwilt. Poor, helpless creature that she is, she invites him to tea.
"Her magnificent hair flashed crimson in the candle-light, as she turned her head hither and thither, searching with an easy grace for the things she wanted in the tray. Exercise had heightened the brilliancy of her complexion, and had quickened the rapid alternations of expression in her eyes—the delicious languor that stole over them when she was listening or thinking, the bright intelligence that flashed from them softly when she spoke. In the lightest word she said, in the least thing she did, there was something that gently solicited the heart of the man who sat with her. Perfectly modest in her manner, possessed to perfection of the graceful restraints and refinements of a lady, she had all the allurements that feast the eye, all the siren invitations that seduce the sense—a subtle suggestiveness in her silence, and a sexual sorcery in her smile."
Don't be fooled, though. She can be as loud as a fishwife, too. Her reaction to a man directed by Allan Armadale to keep an eye on her:
"'My compliments to Mr. Armadale,' she said, 'and tell him I’ve caught you watching me.'
'I’m not watching you, miss,' retorted the spy, thrown off his guard by the daring plainness of the language in which she had spoken to him.
Miss Gwilt's eyes measured him contemptuously from head to foot. He was a weakly, undersized man. She was the taller, and (quite possibly) the stronger of the two.
'Take your hat off, you blackguard, when you speak to a lady,' she said, and tossed his hat in an instant, across a ditch by which they were standing, into a pool on the other side."
Do you see what I mean? This is as far as I've read. I've another 300 pages or so to go (it's a long book--close to 700 pages, but honestly doesn't feel long), and I have a feeling that Midwinter and Allan are going to have a very large wedge (called Lydia Gwilt) plunged between them. I'm guessing this was serialized when he first wrote it. He certainly knew how to keep his reader's attention. This is the third Collins novel I've read and I (happily) still have The Law and the Lady, No Name, and Basil waiting for me.