CHAPTER I.
The hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morning.
The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire, called
Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the year was eighteen
hundred and forty-six.
No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish snoring
of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room door,
disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. Who
were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let the house reveal its
own secrets; and, one by one, as they descend the stairs from their
beds, let the sleepers disclose themselves.
As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and shook
himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was accustomed to
let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from one closed door to
another on the ground-floor; and, returning to his mat in great
perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family with a long and melancholy
howl.
Before the last notes of the dog's remonstrance had died away, the
oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the female
servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl over her
shouldersfor the March morning was bleak; and rheumatism and the cook
were old acquaintances.
Receiving the dog's first cordial advances with the worst possible
grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the animal out. It
was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and behind a black plantation
of firs, the rising sun rent its way upward through piles of ragged
gray cloud; heavy drops of rain fell few and far between; the March
wind shuddered round the corners of the house, and the wet trees swayed
wearily.
Seven o'clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to show
themselves in more rapid succession.
The housemaid came downtall and slim, with the state of the spring
temperature written redly on her nose. The lady's-maid followedyoung,
smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid came nextafflicted with the
face-ache, and making no secret of her sufferings. Last of all, the
footman appeared, yawning disconsolately; the living picture of a man
who felt that he had been defrauded of his fair night's rest.
The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the slowly
lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event, and turned at
starting on this question: Had Thomas, the footman, seen anything of
the concert at Clifton, at which his master and the two young ladies
had been present on the previous night? Yes; Thomas had heard the
concert; he had been paid for to go in at the back; it was a loud
concert; it was a hot concert; it was described at the top of the bills
as Grand; whether it was worth traveling sixteen miles to hear by
railway, with the additional hardship of going back nineteen miles by
road, at half-past one in the morningwas a question which he would
leave his master and the young ladies to decide; his own opinion, in
the meantime, being unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part
of all the female servants in succession, elicited no additional
information of any sort. Thomas could hum none of the songs, and could
describe none of the ladies' dresses. His audience, accordingly, gave
him up in despair; and the kitchen small-talk flowed back into its
ordinary channels, until the clock struck eight and startled the
assembled servants into separating for their morning's work.
A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half-pastand more signs of
life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next member of the family
who came downstairs was Mr. Andrew Vanstone, the master of the house.
Tall, stout, and uprightwith bright blue eyes, and healthy, florid
complexionhis brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly buttoned awry;
his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking unrebuked at his heels; one
hand thrust into his waistcoat pocket, and the other smacking the
banisters cheerfully as he came downstairs humming a tuneMr. Vanstone
showed his character on the surface of him freely to all men. An easy,
hearty, handsome, good-humored gentleman, who walked on the sunny side
of the way of life, and who asked nothing better than to meet all his
fellow-passengers in this world on the sunny side, too. Estimating him
by years, he had turned fifty. Judging him by lightness of heart,
strength of constitution, and capacity for enjoyment, he was no older
than most men who have only turned thirty.
"Thomas!" cried Mr. Vanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his thick
walking stick from the hall table. "Breakfast, this morning, at ten.
The young ladies are not likely to be down earlier after the concert
last night.By-the-by, how did you like the concert yourself, eh? You
thought it was grand? Quite right; so it was. Nothing but crash-bang,
varied now and then by bang-crash; all the women dressed within an inch
of their lives; smothering heat, blazing gas, and no room for
anybodyyes, yes, Thomas; grand's the word for it, and comfortable
isn't." With that expression of opinion, Mr. Vanstone whistled to his
vixenish terrier; flourished his stick at the hall door in cheerful
defiance of the rain; and set off through wind and weather for his
morning walk.
The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock,
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family appeared
on the stairsMiss Garth, the governess.
No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without seeing at once
that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard featured face; her
masculine readiness and decision of movement; her obstinate honesty of
look and manner, all proclaimed her border birth and border training.
Though little more than forty years of age, her hair was quite gray;
and she wore over it the plain cap of an old woman. Neither hair nor
head-dress was out of harmony with her faceit looked older than her
years: the hard handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some
past time. The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air
of habitual authority with which she looked about her, spoke well for
her position in Mr. Vanstone's family. This was evidently not one of
the forlorn, persecuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here
was a woman who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her
employersa woman who looked capable of sending any parents in England
to the right-about, if they failed to rate her at her proper value.
"Breakfast at ten?" repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had answered
the bell, and had mentioned his master's orders. "Ha! I thought what
would come of that concert last night. When people who live in the
country patronize public amusements, public amusements return the
compliment by upsetting the family afterward for days together.
You're upset, Thomas, I can see your eyes are as red as a ferret's,
and your cravat looks as if you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a
quarter to tenand if you don't get better in the course of the day,
come to me, and I'll give you a dose of physic. That's a well-meaning
lad, if you only let him alone," continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy,
when Thomas had retired; "but he's not strong enough for concerts
twenty miles off. They wanted me to go with them last night. Yes:
catch me!"
Nine o'clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty minutes
past the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on the stairs. At
the end of that time, two ladies appeared, descending to the
breakfast-room togetherMrs. Vanstone and her eldest daughter.
If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier period of
life, had depended solely on her native English charms of complexion
and freshness, she must have long since lost the last relics of her
fairer self. But her beauty as a young woman had passed beyond the
average national limits; and she still preserved the advantage of her
more exceptional personal gifts. Although she was now in her
forty-fourth year; although she had been tried, in bygone times, by the
premature loss of more than one of her children, and by long attacks of
illness which had followed those bereavements of former yearsshe still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature, once
associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of beauty,
which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now descending
the stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she could look back and
see again the reflection of her own youth. There, folded thick on the
daughter's head, lay the massive dark hair, which, on the mother's, was
fast turning gray. There, in the daughter's cheek, glowed the lovely
dusky red which had faded from the mother's to bloom again no more.
Miss Vanstone had already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she
had completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark majestic
character of her mother's beauty, she had yet hardly inherited all its
charms. Though the shape of her face was the same, the features were
scarcely so delicate, their proportion was scarcely so true. She was
not so tall. She had the dark-brown eyes of her motherfull and soft,
with the steady luster in them which Mrs. Vanstone's eyes had lostand
yet there was less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in
her expression: it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain
quiet reserve, from which her mother's face was free. If we dare to
look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of
character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often
to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission to children? In
these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous
malady, is it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely
than we are willing to admit, to the bodily gifts as well?
The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs togetherthe first
dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders;
the second more simply attired in black, with a plain collar and cuffs,
and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the bosom of her dress. As they
crossed the hall and entered the breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full
of the all-absorbing subject of the last night's concert.
"I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us," she said. "You have been
so strong and so well ever since last summeryou have felt so many
years younger, as you said yourselfthat I am sure the exertion would
not have been too much for you."
"Perhaps not, my lovebut it was as well to keep on the safe side."
"Quite as well," remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the breakfast-room
door. "Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear)look, I say, at Norah. A
perfect wreck; a living proof of your wisdom and mine in staying at
home. The vile gas, the foul air, the late hourswhat can you expect?
She's not made of iron, and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you
needn't deny it. I see you've got a headache."
Norah's dark, handsome face brightened into a smilethen lightly
clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.
"A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the
concert," she said, and walked away by herself to the window.
On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a stream,
some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of a wooded,
rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which here cleft its
way through the hills that closed the prospect. A winding strip of road
was visible, at no great distance, amid the undulations of the open
ground; and along this strip the stalwart figure of Mr. Vanstone was
now easily recognizable, returning to the house from his morning walk.
He flourished his stick gayly, as he observed his eldest daughter at
the window. She nodded and waved her hand in return, very gracefully
and prettilybut with something of old-fashioned formality in her
manner, which looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed
out of harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.
The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the minute
hand had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door banged in the
bedroom regionsa clear young voice was heard singing blithelylight,
rapid footsteps pattered on the upper stairs, descended with a jump to
the landing, and pattered again, faster than ever, down the lower
flight. In another moment the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's two daughters
(and two only surviving children) dashed into view on the dingy old
oaken stairs, with the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the
last three steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless
in the breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.
By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves still
unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's children presented no
recognizable resemblance to either of her parents. How had she come by
her hair? how had she come by her eyes? Even her father and mother had
asked themselves those questions, as she grew up to girlhood, and had
been sorely perplexed to answer them. Her hair was of that purely
light-brown hue, unmixed with flaxen, or yellow, or redwhich is
oftener seen on the plumage of a bird than on the head of a human
being. It was soft and plentiful, and waved downward from her low
forehead in regular foldsbut, to some tastes, it was dull and dead, in
its absolute want of glossiness, in its monotonous purity of plain
light color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a shade darker than
her hair, and seemed made expressly for those violet-blue eyes, which
assert their most irresistible charm when associated with a fair
complexion. But it was here exactly that the promise of her face failed
of performance in the most startling manner. The eyes, which should
have been dark, were incomprehensibly and discordantly light; they were
of that nearly colorless gray which, though little attractive in
itself, possesses the rare compensating merit of interpreting the
finest gradations of thought, the gentlest changes of feeling, the
deepest trouble of passion, with a subtle transparency of expression
which no darker eyes can rival. Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the
upper part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with
established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true
feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and
smoothness of youthbut the mouth was too large and firm, the chin too
square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion partook of the
pure monotony of tint which characterized her hairit was of the same
soft, warm, creamy fairness all over, without a tinge of color in the
cheeks, except on occasions of unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental
disturbance. The whole countenanceso remarkable in its strongly
opposed characteristicswas rendered additionally striking by its
extraordinary mobility. The large, electric, light-gray eyes were
hardly ever in repose; all varieties of expression followed each other
over the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity which left
sober analysis far behind in the race. The girl's exuberant vitality
asserted itself all over her, from head to foot. Her figuretaller than
her sister's, taller than the average of woman's height; instinct with
such a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully
graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements
of a young cather figure was so perfectly developed already that no
one who saw her could have supposed that she was only eighteen. She
bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty years or morebloomed
naturally and irresistibly, in right of her matchless health and
strength. Here, in truth, lay the mainspring of this
strangely-constituted organization. Her headlong course down the house
stairs; the brisk activity of all her movements; the incessant sparkle
of expression in her face; the enticing gayety which took the hearts of
the quietest people by stormeven the reckless delight in bright colors
which showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning dress, in her
fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her smart little
shoesall sprang alike from the same source; from the overflowing
physical health which strengthened every muscle, braced every nerve,
and set the warm young blood tingling through her veins, like the blood
of a growing child.
On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the
customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality
habitually provoked from the long-suffering household authorities. In
Miss Garth's favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born with all the
sensesexcept a sense of order."
Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange, indeed; and
yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The name had been
borne by one of Mr. Vanstone's sisters, who had died in early youth;
and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he had called his second
daughter by itjust as he had called his eldest daughter Norah, for his
wife's sake. Magdalen! Surely, the grand old Bible namesuggestive of a
sad and somber dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful
ideas of penitence and seclusionhad been here, as events had turned
out, inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl had
perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a
character which was out of all harmony with her own Christian name!
"Late again!" said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed her.
"Late again!" chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next.
"Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in her hand,
with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the
youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess's
favorite"Well? and what has the concert done for you? What form of
suffering has dissipation inflicted on your system this morning?"
"Suffering!" repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the use of
her tongue with it. "I don't know the meaning of the word: if there's
anything the matter with me, I'm too well. Suffering! I'm ready for
another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and a play the day
after. Oh," cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair and crossing her
hands rapturously on the table, "how I do like pleasure!"
"Come! that's explicit at any rate," said Miss Garth. "I think Pope
must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines:
"Men some to business, some to pleasure take,
But every woman is at heart a rake."
"The deuce she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss
Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. "Well; live
and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned
topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for it
but to stop at home and darn the stockings.Let's have some breakfast."
"How-d'ye-do, papa?" said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as boisterously
round the neck as if he belonged to some larger order of Newfoundland
dog, and was made to be romped with at his daughter's convenience. "I'm
the rake Miss Garth means; and I want to go to another concertor a
play, if you likeor a ball, if you prefer itor anything else in the
way of amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me
in a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot. Anything will
do, as long as it doesn't send us to bed at eleven o'clock."
Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter's flow of language,
like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from that quarter.
"If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next time," said the
worthy gentleman, "I think a play will suit me better than a concert.
The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, my dear," he continued,
addressing his wife. "More than I did, I must say. It was altogether
above my mark. They played one piece of music which lasted forty
minutes. It stopped three times, by-the-way; and we all thought it was
done each time, and clapped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on
it went again, to our great surprise and mortification, till we gave it
up in despair, and all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear!
when we had crash-bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages
by-the-way, what did they call it?"
"A symphony, papa," replied Norah.
"Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!" added
Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you forgotten the
yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpronounceable name? Don't you
remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied
and courtesied, till she cheated the foolish people into crying encore?
Look here, mammalook here, Miss Garth!"
She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a sheet of
music, held it before her in the established concert-room position, and
produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer's grimaces and
courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that her
father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that
moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed
the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side of the
door.
"Letters, papa. I want the key," said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with
the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.
Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy to
see where Magdalen's unmethodical habits came from.
"I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,"
said Mr. Vanstone. "Go and look for it, my dear."
"You really should check Magdalen," pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing
her husband when her daughter had left the room. "Those habits of
mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which
it is positively shocking to hear."
"Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,"
remarked Miss Garth. "She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of
younger brother of hers."
"You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen's high spiritsdon't you?" said the quiet
Norah, taking her father's part and her sister's with so little show of
resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp
enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.
"Thank you, my dear," said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. "Thank you for a
very pretty speech. As for Magdalen," he continued, addressing his wife
and Miss Garth, "she's an unbroken filly. Let her caper and kick in the
paddock to her heart's content. Time enough to break her to harness
when she gets a little older."
The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked the
post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap. Sorting
them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the breakfast-table
with both hands full, and delivered the letters all round with the
business-like rapidity of a London postman.
"Two for Norah," she announced, beginning with her sister. "Three for
Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa.
You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued
Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's.
"How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish
there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your
nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the
answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow
after all! The Bristol Theater's open, papa," she whispered, slyly
and suddenly, in her father's ear; "I saw it in the newspaper when I
went to the library to get the key. Let's go to-morrow night!"
While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically
sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession and
looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth his
attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, suddenly became
fixed on the post-mark of the letter.
Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could see
the post-mark as plainly as her father saw itNEW ORLEANS.
"An American letter, papa!" she said. "Who do you know at New Orleans?"
Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the moment
Magdalen spoke those words.
Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter's arm from
his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption. She
returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table. Her father,
with the letter in his hand, waited a little before he opened it; her
mother looking at him, the while, with an eager, expectant attention
which attracted Miss Garth's notice, and Norah's, as well as
Magdalen's.
After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the letter.
His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his cheeks
fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been ashy paleness
in a less florid man; and his expression becoming saddened and
overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen, watching anxiously, saw
nothing but the change that passed over their father. Miss Garth alone
observed the effect which that change produced on the attentive
mistress of the house.
It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have anticipated.
Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A faint flush rose on
her cheeksher eyes brightenedshe stirred the tea round and round in
her cup in a restless, impatient manner which was not natural to her.
Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the first to
break the silence.
"What is the matter, papa?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.
"I'm sure there must be something," persisted Magdalen. "I'm sure there
is bad news, papa, in that American letter."
"There is nothing in the letter that concerns you," said Mr.
Vanstone.
It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received from her
father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, which would
have been irresistibly absurd under less serious circumstances.
Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, the
family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence. Mr. Vanstone's
hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning spirits, was gone. He
absently broke off some morsels of dry toast from the rack near him,
absently finished his first cup of teathen asked for a second, which
he left before him untouched.
"Norah," he said, after an interval, "you needn't wait for me.
Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like."
His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed
their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his
family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and
the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.
"What can have happened?" whispered Norah, as they closed the
breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.
"What does papa mean by being cross with Me?" exclaimed Magdalen,
chafing under a sense of her own injuries.
"May I askwhat right you had to pry into your father's private
affairs?" retorted Miss Garth.
"Right?" repeated Magdalen. "I have no secrets from papawhat business
has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself insulted."
"If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding your own
business," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, "you would be a trifle
nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of the girls in the
present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows which end of her's
uppermost."
The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen acknowledged
Miss Garth's reproof by banging the door.
Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left the
breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened, went in to
clear the tablefound his master and mistress seated close together in
deep consultationand immediately went out again. Another quarter of an
hour elapsed before the breakfast-room door was opened, and the private
conference of the husband and wife came to an end.
"I hear mamma in the hall," said Norah. "Perhaps she is coming to tell
us something."
Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. The color
was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried tears
glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her movements were
quicker than usual.
"I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you," she said, addressing
her daughters. "Your father and I are going to London to-morrow."
Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment. Miss
Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah started to her
feet, and amazedly repeated the words, "Going to London!"
"Without us?" added Magdalen.
"Your father and I are going alone," said Mrs. Vanstone. "Perhaps, for
as long as three weeksbut not longer. We are going"she hesitated"we
are going on important family business. Don't hold me, Magdalen. This
is a sudden necessityI have a great deal to do to-daymany things to
set in order before tomorrow. There, there, my love, let me go."
She drew her arm away; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on the
forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen saw that her
mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answering any more
questions.
The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Vanstone. With the
reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in defiance of
Miss Garth's prohibition and her sister's remonstrances, determined to
go to the study and look for her father there. When she tried the door,
it was locked on the inside. She said, "It's only me, papa;" and waited
for the answer. "I'm busy now, my dear," was the answer. "Don't disturb
me."
Mrs. Vanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She remained
in her own room, with the female servants about her, immersed in
endless preparations for the approaching departure. The servants,
little used in that family to sudden resolutions and unexpected orders,
were awkward and confused in obeying directions. They ran from room to
room unnecessarily, and lost time and patience in jostling each other
on the stairs. If a stranger had entered the house that day, he might
have imagined that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead
of an unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded
in its ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the
morning at the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases and
passages, and in and out of doors when there were glimpses of fine
weather. Norah, whose fondness for reading had passed into a family
proverb, took up book after book from table and shelf, and laid them
down again, in despair of fixing her attention. Even Miss Garth felt
the all-pervading influence of the household disorganization, and sat
alone by the morning-room fire, with her head shaking ominously, and
her work laid aside.
"Family affairs?" thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs. Vanstone's
vague explanatory words. "I have lived twelve years at Combe-Raven; and
these are the first family affairs which have got between the parents
and the children, in all my experience. What does it mean? Change? I
suppose I'm getting old. I don't like change."
CHAPTER II.
At ten o'clock the next morning Norah and Magdalen stood alone in the
hall at Combe-Raven watching the departure of the carriage which took
their father and mother to the London train.
Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some explanation
of that mysterious "family business" to which Mrs. Vanstone had so
briefly alluded on the previous day. No such explanation had been
offered. Even the agitation of the leave-taking, under circumstances
entirely new in the home experience of the parents and children, had
not shaken the resolute discretion of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone. They had
gonewith the warmest testimonies of affection, with farewell embraces
fervently reiterated again and againbut without dropping one word,
from first to last, of the nature of their errand.
As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at a turn
in the road, the sisters looked one another in the face; each feeling,
and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense that she was openly
excluded, for the first time, from the confidence of her parents.
Norah's customary reserve strengthened into sullen silenceshe sat down
in one of the hall chairs and looked out frowningly through the open
house door. Magdalen, as usual when her temper was ruffled, expressed
her dissatisfaction in the plainest terms. "I don't care who knows itI
think we are both of us shamefully ill-used!" With those words, the
young lady followed her sister's example by seating herself on a hall
chair and looking aimlessly out through the open house door.
Almost at the same moment Miss Garth entered the hall from the
morning-room. Her quick observation showed her the necessity for
interfering to some practical purpose; and her ready good sense at once
pointed the way.
"Look up, both of you, if you please, and listen to me," said Miss
Garth. "If we are all three to be comfortable and happy together, now
we are alone, we must stick to our usual habits and go on in our
regular way. There is the state of things in plain words. Accept the
situationas the French say. Here am I to set you the example. I have
just ordered an excellent dinner at the customary hour. I am going to
the medicine-chest next, to physic the kitchen-maidan unwholesome
girl, whose face-ache is all stomach. In the meantime, Norah, my dear,
you will find your work and your books, as usual, in the library.
Magdalen, suppose you leave off tying your handkerchief into knots and
use your fingers on the keys of the piano instead? We'll lunch at one,
and take the dogs out afterward. Be as brisk and cheerful both of you
as I am. Come, rouse up directly. If I see those gloomy faces any
longer, as sure as my name's Garth, I'll give your mother written
warning and go back to my friends by the mixed train at twelve forty."
Concluding her address of expostulation in those terms, Miss Garth led
Norah to the library door, pushed Magdalen into the morning-room, and
went on her own way sternly to the regions of the medicine-chest.
In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner she was accustomed to
maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr. Vanstone's daughters,
after her proper functions as governess had necessarily come to an end.
Norah, it is needless to say, had long since ceased to be her pupil;
and Magdalen had, by this time, completed her education. But Miss Garth
had lived too long and too intimately under Mr. Vanstone's roof to be
parted with for any purely formal considerations; and the first hint at
going away which she had thought it her duty to drop was dismissed with
such affectionate warmth of protest that she never repeated it again,
except in jest. The entire management of the household was, from that
time forth, left in her hands; and to those duties she was free to add
what companionable assistance she could render to Norah's reading, and
what friendly superintendence she could still exercise over Magdalen's
music. Such were the terms on which Miss Garth was now a resident in
Mr. Vanstone's family.
Toward the afternoon the weather improved. At half-past one the sun was
shining brightly; and the ladies left the house, accompanied by the
dogs, to set forth on their walk.
They crossed the stream, and ascended by the little rocky pass to the
hills beyond; then diverged to the left, and returned by a cross-road
which led through the village of Combe-Raven.
As they came in sight of the first cottages, they passed a man, hanging
about the road, who looked attentively, first at Magdalen, then at
Norah. They merely observed that he was short, that he was dressed in
black, and that he was a total stranger to themand continued their
homeward walk, without thinking more about the loitering foot-passenger
whom they had met on their way back.
After they had left the village, and had entered the road which led
straight to the house, Magdalen surprised Miss Garth by announcing that
the stranger in black had turned, after they had passed him, and was
now following them. "He keeps on Norah's side of the road," she said,
mischievously. "I'm not the attractiondon't blame me."
Whether the man was really following them, or not, made little
difference, for they were now close to the house. As they passed
through the lodge-gates, Miss Garth looked round, and saw that the
stranger was quickening his pace, apparently with the purpose of
entering into conversation. Seeing this, she at once directed the young
ladies to go on to the house with the dogs, while she herself waited
for events at the gate.
There was just time to complete this discreet arrangement, before the
stranger reached the lodge. He took off his hat to Miss Garth politely,
as she turned round. What did he look like, on the face of him? He
looked like a clergyman in difficulties.
Taking his portrait, from top to toe, the picture of him began with a
tall hat, broadly encircled by a mourning band of crumpled crape. Below
the hat was a lean, long, sallow face, deeply pitted with the smallpox,
and characterized, very remarkably, by eyes of two different colorsone
bilious green, one bilious brown, both sharply intelligent. His hair
was iron-gray, carefully brushed round at the temples. His cheeks and
chin were in the bluest bloom of smooth shaving; his nose was short
Roman; his lips long, thin, and supple, curled up at the corners with a
mildly-humorous smile. His white cravat was high, stiff, and dingy; the
collar, higher, stiffer, and dingier, projected its rigid points on
either side beyond his chin. Lower down, the lithe little figure of the
man was arrayed throughout in sober-shabby black. His frock-coat was
buttoned tight round the waist, and left to bulge open majestically at
the chest. His hands were covered with black cotton gloves neatly
darned at the fingers; his umbrella, worn down at the ferule to the
last quarter of an inch, was carefully preserved, nevertheless, in an
oilskin case. The front view of him was the view in which he looked
oldest; meeting him face to face, he might have been estimated at fifty
or more. Walking behind him, his back and shoulders were almost young
enough to have passed for five-and-thirty. His manners were
distinguished by a grave serenity. When he opened his lips, he spoke in
a rich bass voice, with an easy flow of language, and a strict
attention to the elocutionary claims of words in more than one
syllable. Persuasion distilled from his mildly-curling lips; and,
shabby as he was, perennial flowers of courtesy bloomed all over him
from head to foot.
"This is the residence of Mr. Vanstone, I believe?" he began, with a
circular wave of his hand in the direction of the house. "Have I the
honor of addressing a member of Mr. Vanstone's family?"
"Yes," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth. "You are addressing Mr.
Vanstone's governess."
The persuasive man fell back a stepadmired Mr. Vanstone's
governessadvanced a step againand continued the conversation.
"And the two young ladies," he went on, "the two young ladies who were
walking with you are doubtless Mr. Vanstone's daughters? I recognized
the darker of the two, and the elder as I apprehend, by her likeness to
her handsome mother. The younger lady"
"You are acquainted with Mrs. Vanstone, I suppose?" said Miss Garth,
interrupting the stranger's flow of language, which, all things
considered, was beginning, in her opinion, to flow rather freely. The
stranger acknowledged the interruption by one of his polite bows, and
submerged Miss Garth in his next sentence as if nothing had happened.
"The younger lady," he proceeded, "takes after her father, I presume? I
assure you, her face struck me. Looking at it with my friendly interest
in the family, I thought it very remarkable. I said to myselfCharming,
Characteristic, Memorable. Not like her sister, not like her mother. No
doubt, the image of her father?"
Once more Miss Garth attempted to stem the man's flow of words. It was
plain that he did not know Mr. Vanstone, even by sightotherwise he
would never have committed the error of supposing that Magdalen took
after her father. Did he know Mrs. Vanstone any better? He had left
Miss Garth's question on that point unanswered. In the name of wonder,
who was he? Powers of impudence! what did he want?
"You may be a friend of the family, though I don't remember your face,"
said Miss Garth. "What may your commands be, if you please? Did you
come here to pay Mrs. Vanstone a visit?"
"I had anticipated the pleasure of communicating with Mrs. Vanstone,"
answered this inveterately evasive and inveterately civil man. "How is
she?"
"Much as usual," said Miss Garth, feeling her resources of politeness
fast failing her.
"Is she at home?"
"No."
"Out for long?"
"Gone to London with Mr. Vanstone."
The man's long face suddenly grew longer. His bilious brown eye looked
disconcerted, and his bilious green eye followed its example. His
manner became palpably anxious; and his choice of words was more
carefully selected than ever.
"Is Mrs. Vanstone's absence likely to extend over any very lengthened
period?" he inquired.
"It will extend over three weeks," replied Miss Garth. "I think you
have now asked me questions enough," she went on, beginning to let her
temper get the better of her at last. "Be so good, if you please, as to
mention your business and your name. If you have any message to leave
for Mrs. Vanstone, I shall be writing to her by to-night's post, and I
can take charge of it."
"A thousand thanks! A most valuable suggestion. Permit me to take
advantage of it immediately."
He was not in the least affected by the severity of Miss Garth's looks
and languagehe was simply relieved by her proposal, and he showed it
with the most engaging sincerity. This time his bilious green eye took
the initiative, and set his bilious brown eye the example of recovered
serenity. His curling lips took a new twist upward; he tucked his
umbrella briskly under his arm; and produced from the breast of his
coat a large old-fashioned black pocketbook. From this he took a pencil
and a cardhesitated and considered for a momentwrote rapidly on the
cardand placed it, with the politest alacrity, in Miss Garth's hand.
"I shall feel personally obliged if you will honor me by inclosing that
card in your letter," he said. "There is no necessity for my troubling
you additionally with a message. My name will be quite sufficient to
recall a little family matter to Mrs. Vanstone, which has no doubt
escaped her memory. Accept my best thanks. This has been a day of
agreeable surprises to me. I have found the country hereabouts
remarkably pretty; I have seen Mrs. Vanstone's two charming daughters;
I have become acquainted with an honored preceptress in Mr. Vanstone's
family. I congratulate myselfI apologize for occupying your valuable
timeI beg my renewed acknowledgmentsI wish you good-morning."
He raised his tall hat. His brown eye twinkled, his green eye twinkled,
his curly lips smiled sweetly. In a moment he turned on his heel. His
youthful back appeared to the best advantage; his active little legs
took him away trippingly in the direction of the village. One, two,
threeand he reached the turn in the road. Four, five, sixand he was
gone.
Miss Garth looked down at the card in her hand, and looked up again in
blank astonishment. The name and address of the clerical-looking
stranger (both written in pencil) ran as follows:
Captain Wragge. Post-office, Bristol.
CHAPTER III.
When she returned to the house, Miss Garth made no attempt to conceal
her unfavorable opinion of the stranger in black. His object was, no
doubt, to obtain pecuniary assistance from Mrs. Vanstone. What the
nature of his claim on her might be seemed less intelligibleunless it
was the claim of a poor relation. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever mentioned, in
the presence of her daughters, the name of Captain Wragge? Neither of
them recollected to have heard it before. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever
referred to any poor relations who were dependent on her? On the
contrary she had mentioned of late years that she doubted having any
relations at all who were still living. And yet Captain Wragge had
plainly declared that the name on his card would recall "a family
matter" to Mrs. Vanstone's memory. What did it mean? A false statement,
on the stranger's part, without any intelligible reason for making it?
Or a second mystery, following close on the heels of the mysterious
journey to London?
All the probabilities seemed to point to some hidden connection between
the "family affairs" which had taken Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone so suddenly
from home and the "family matter" associated with the name of Captain
Wragge. Miss Garth's doubts thronged back irresistibly on her mind as
she sealed her letter to Mrs. Vanstone, with the captain's card added
by way of inclosure.
By return of post the answer arrived.
Always the earliest riser among the ladies of the house, Miss Garth was
alone in the breakfast-room when the letter was brought in. Her first
glance at its contents convinced her of the necessity of reading it
carefully through in retirement, before any embarrassing questions
could be put to her. Leaving a message with the servant requesting
Norah to make the tea that morning, she went upstairs at once to the
solitude and security of her own room.
Mrs. Vanstone's letter extended to some length. The first part of it
referred to Captain Wragge, and entered unreservedly into all necessary
explanations relating to the man himself and to the motive which had
brought him to Combe-Raven.
It appeared from Mrs. Vanstone's statement that her mother had been
twice married. Her mother's first husband had been a certain Doctor
Wraggea widower with young children; and one of those children was now
the unmilitary-looking captain, whose address was "Post-office,
Bristol." Mrs. Wragge had left no family by her first husband; and had
afterward married Mrs. Vanstone's father. Of that second marriage Mrs.
Vanstone herself was the only issue. She had lost both her parents
while she was still a young woman; and, in course of years, her
mother's family connections (who were then her nearest surviving
relatives) had been one after another removed by death. She was left,
at the present writing, without a relation in the worldexcepting,
perhaps, certain cousins whom she had never seen, and of whose
existence even, at the present moment, she possessed no positive
knowledge.
Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge on Mrs.
Vanstone?
None whatever. As the son of her mother's first husband, by that
husband's first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy could
have included him at any time in the list of Mrs. Vanstone's most
distant relations. Well knowing this (the letter proceeded to say), he
had nevertheless persisted in forcing himself upon her as a species of
family connection: and she had weakly sanctioned the intrusion, solely
from the dread that he would otherwise introduce himself to Mr.
Vanstone's notice, and take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone's
generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be
annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed,
however preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been
her practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house, and
that he should not presume to make any application whatever to Mr.
Vanstone.
Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone further
explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to adopt it
through having been always accustomed, in her early days, to see the
captain living now upon one member, and now upon another, of her
mother's family. Possessed of abilities which might have raised him to
distinction in almost any career that he could have chosen, he had
nevertheless, from his youth upward, been a disgrace to all his
relatives. He had been expelled the militia regiment in which he once
held a commission. He had tried one employment after another, and had
discreditably failed in all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest
and basest meaning of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman,
who had served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had
unexpectedly come into a little money, and whose small inheritance he
had mercilessly squandered to the last farthing. In plain terms, he was
an incorrigible scoundrel; and he had now added one more to the list of
his many misdemeanors by impudently breaking the conditions on which
Mrs. Vanstone had hitherto assisted him. She had written at once to the
address indicated on his card, in such terms and to such purpose as
would prevent him, she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the
house again. Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that
first part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.
Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs.
Vanstone's character which Miss Garth, after many years of intimate
experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a
matter of course; receiving it all the more readily inasmuch as it
might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the
irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially
she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of
relief. Far different was the impression produced on her when she
advanced to the second half, and when she had read it to the end.
The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the journey
to London.
Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friendship
which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now felt it due
to that friendship to explain confidentially the motive which had
induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss Garth had delicately
refrained from showing it, but she must naturally have felt, and must
still be feeling, great surprise at the mystery in which their
departure had been involved; and she must doubtless have asked herself
why Mrs. Vanstone should have been associated with family affairs which
(in her independent position as to relatives) must necessarily concern
Mr. Vanstone alone.
Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable nor
necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she would at
once set all Miss Garth's doubts at rest, so far as they related to
herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in accompanying her
husband to London was to see a certain celebrated physician, and to
consult him privately on a very delicate and anxious matter connected
with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious
matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again
become a mother.
When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a mere
delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her
last child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death
of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now
arrivedall inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her
mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the
necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk,
at the same time, from alarming her daughters by summoning a London
physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the
circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was
confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to
take place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to
say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her;
but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than he
supposed, and she knew that he looked to the future with more than
ordinary doubt.
Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that they
might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. She had
felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, until those
suspicions had been confirmedand she now recoiled, with even greater
reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any way alarmed about
her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for the present, and to
wait hopefully till the summer came. In the meantime they would all,
she trusted, be happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month,
which Mr. Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this
intimation, and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly and
confusedly, came to an end.
For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Vanstone was the
only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she had laid the
letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely on her mind a
doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the explanation which she
had just read really as satisfactory and as complete as it professed to
be? Testing it plainly by facts, surely not.
On the morning of her departure, Mrs. Vanstone had unquestionably left
the house in good spirits. At her age, and in her state of health, were
good spirits compatible with such an errand to a physician as the
errand on which she was bent? Then, again, had that letter from New
Orleans, which had necessitated Mr. Vanstone's departure, no share in
occasioning his wife's departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she
looked up so eagerly the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark.
Granting the avowed motive for her journeydid not her manner, on the
morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of
departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her letter
kept concealed?
If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing one.
Mrs. Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship with Miss
Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in her, on one
subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the strictest reserve
toward her on another. Naturally frank and straightforward in all her
own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from plainly pursuing her doubts to
this result: a want of loyalty toward her tried and valued friend
seemed implied in the mere dawning of it on her mind.
She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely to
attend to the passing interests of the day; and went downstairs again
to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties, this at least was
clear, Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone were coming back on the twenty-third of
the month. Who could say what new revelations might not come back with
them?
CHAPTER IV.
No new revelations came back with them: no anticipations associated
with their return were realized. On the one forbidden subject of their
errand in London, there was no moving either the master or the mistress
of the house. Whatever their object might have been, they had to all
appearance successfully accomplished itfor they both returned in
perfect possession of their every-day looks and manners. Mrs.
Vanstone's spirits had subsided to their natural quiet level; Mr.
Vanstone's imperturbable cheerfulness sat as easily and indolently on
him as usual. This was the one noticeable result of their journeythis,
and no more. Had the household revolution run its course already? Was
the secret thus far hidden impenetrably, hidden forever?
Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for
centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the
surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed
over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has
been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the
substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the
thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who
betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of
revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a
secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.
How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe-Raven doomed to
disclose itself? Through what coming event in the daily lives of the
father, the mother, and the daughters, was the law of revelation
destined to break the fatal way to discovery? The way opened (unseen by
the parents, and unsuspected by the children) through the first event
that happened after Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone's returnan event which
presented, on the surface of it, no interest of greater importance than
the trivial social ceremony of a morning call.
Three days after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had come back,
the female members of the family happened to be assembled together in
the morning-room. The view from the windows looked over the
flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected at its outward
extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane beyond by a
wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation, the attention of
the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate, by the sharp sound of
the iron latch falling in its socket. Some one had entered the
shrubbery from the lane; and Magdalen at once placed herself at the
window to catch the first sight of the visitor through the trees.
After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at the
point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk which led
to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively, without appearing, at
first, to know who he was. As he came nearer, however, she started in
astonishment; and, turning quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed
the gentleman in the garden to be no other than "Mr. Francis Clare."
The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone's oldest
associate and nearest neighbor.
Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage, situated
just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit of the
Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a family of
great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that he had derived
from his ancestors was the possession of a magnificent library, which
not only filled all the rooms in his modest little dwelling, but lined
the staircases and passages as well. Mr. Clare's books represented the
one important interest of Mr. Clare's life. He had been a widower for
many years past, and made no secret of his philosophical resignation to
the loss of his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons
in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened
the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books. When the boys
went to school, Mr. Clare said "good-by" to themand "thank God" to
himself. As for his small income, and his still smaller domestic
establishment, he looked at them both from the same satirically
indifferent point of view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree.
He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly
old woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never
to venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's
end to the other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen
philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and his fresh
air under protest; and always walked the same distance to a yard, on
the ugliest high-road in the neighborhood. He was crooked of back, and
quick of temper. He could digest radishes, and sleep after green tea.
His views of human nature were the views of Diogenes, tempered by
Rochefoucauld; his personal habits were slovenly in the last degree;
and his favorite boast was that he had outlived all human prejudices.
Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What
nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had ever
discovered. Mr. Vanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that "Mr.
Clare's worst side was his outside"but in this expression of opinion
he stood alone among his neighbors. The association between these two
widely-dissimilar men had lasted for many years, and was almost close
enough to be called a friendship. They had acquired a habit of meeting
to smoke together on certain evenings in the week, in the
cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every imaginable
subjectMr. Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels of assertion, and
Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools of sophistry. They
generally quarreled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the
shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning. The bond of
intercourse thus curiously established between them was strengthened on
Mr. Vanstone's side by a hearty interest in his neighbor's three
sonsan interest by which those sons benefited all the more
importantly, seeing that one of the prejudices which their father had
outlived was a prejudice in favor of his own children.
"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say, "with a
perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their
birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in
every respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming
to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary
ability. My boys have been addle-headed from infancy. If I had any
capital to give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and
Arthur a grocerthose being the only human vocations I know of which
are certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to help
them with; and they have no brains to help themselves. They appear to
me to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and noisy boots;
and, unless they clear themselves off the community by running away, I
don't myself profess to see what is to be done with them."
Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Vanstone's views were still fast
imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and through
his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on the foundation
of a well-reputed grammar-school. In holiday-time they were mercifully
allowed the run of Mr. Vanstone's paddock; and were humanized and
refined by association, indoors, with Mrs. Vanstone and her daughters.
On these occasions, Mr. Clare used sometimes to walk across from his
cottage (in his dressing-gown and slippers), and look at the boys
disparagingly, through the window or over the fence, as if they were
three wild animals whom his neighbor was attempting to tame. "You and
your wife are excellent people," he used to say to Mr. Vanstone. "I
respect your honest prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all
my heart. But you are so wrong about themyou are indeed! I wish to
give no offense; I speak quite impartiallybut mark my words, Vanstone:
they'll all three turn out ill, in spite of everything you can do to
prevent it."
In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the same
curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and friend between
the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly than ever. A civil
engineer in the north of England, who owed certain obligations to Mr.
Vanstone, expressed his willingness to take Frank under
superintendence, on terms of the most favorable kind. When this
proposal was received, Mr. Clare, as usual, first shifted his own
character as Frank's father on Mr. Vanstone's shouldersand then
moderated his neighbor's parental enthusiasm from the point of view of
an impartial spectator.
"It's the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have happened,"
cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.
"My good fellow, he won't take it," retorted Mr. Clare, with the icy
composure of a disinterested friend.
"But he shall take it," persisted Mr. Vanstone.
"Say he shall have a mathematical head," rejoined Mr. Clare; "say he
shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose. Pooh! pooh!
you don't look at him with my impartial eyes. I say, No mathematics, no
industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose. Frank is a compound of
negativesand there they are."
"Hang your negatives!" shouted Mr. Vanstone. "I don't care a rush for
negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this splendid
chance; and I'll lay you any wager you like he makes the best of it."
"I am not rich enough to lay wagers, usually," replied Mr. Clare; "but
I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere; and I'll lay you
that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad shilling."
"Done!" said Mr. Vanstone. "No: stop a minute! I won't do the lad's
character the injustice of backing it at even money. I'll lay you five
to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You ought to be ashamed
of yourself for talking of him as you do. What sort of hocus-pocus you
bring it about by, I don't pretend to know; but you always end in
making me take his part, as if I was his father instead of you. Ah yes!
give you time, and you'll defend yourself. I won't give you time; I
won't have any of your special pleading. Black's white according to
you. I don't care: it's black for all that. You may talk nineteen to
the dozenI shall write to my friend and say Yes, in Frank's interests,
by to-day's post."
Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Francis Clare departed for
the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to start in life as a
civil engineer.
From time to time, Mr. Vanstone's friend communicated with him on the
subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet,
gentleman-like, interesting ladbut he was also reported to be rather
slow at acquiring the rudiments of engineering science. Other letters,
later in date, described him as a little too ready to despond about
himself; as having been sent away, on that account, to some new railway
works, to see if change of scene would rouse him; and as having
benefited in every respect by the experimentexcept perhaps in regard
to his professional studies, which still advanced but slowly.
Subsequent communications announced his departure, under care of a
trustworthy foreman, for some public works in Belgium; touched on the
general benefit he appeared to derive from this new change; praised his
excellent manners and address, which were of great assistance in
facilitating business communications with the foreignersand passed
over in ominous silence the main question of his actual progress in the
acquirement of knowledge. These reports, and many others which
resembled them, were all conscientiously presented by Frank's friend to
the attention of Frank's father. On each occasion, Mr. Clare exulted
over Mr. Vanstone, and Mr. Vanstone quarreled with Mr. Clare. "One of
these days you'll wish you hadn't laid that wager," said the cynic
philosopher. "One of these days I shall have the blessed satisfaction
of pocketing your guinea," cried the sanguine friend. Two years had
then passed since Frank's departure. In one year more results asserted
themselves, and settled the question.
Two days after Mr. Vanstone's return from London, he was called away
from the breakfast-table before he had found time enough to look over
his letters, delivered by the morning's post. Thrusting them into one
of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, he took the letters out again,
at one grasp, to read them when occasion served, later in the day. The
grasp included the whole correspondence, with one exceptionthat
exception being a final report from the civil engineer, which notified
the termination of the connection between his pupil and himself, and
the immediate return of Frank to his father's house.
While this important announcement lay unsuspected in Mr. Vanstone's
pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast as railways could
take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr. Clare was sitting in
studious solitude over his books and his green tea, with his favorite
black cat to keep him company, he heard footsteps in the passagethe
door openedand Frank stood before him.
Ordinary men would have been astonished. But the philosopher's
composure was not to be shaken by any such trifle as the unexpected
return of his eldest son. He could not have looked up more calmly from
his learned volume if Frank had been absent for three minutes instead
of three years.
"Exactly what I predicted," said Mr. Clare. "Don't interrupt me by
making explanations; and don't frighten the cat. If there is anything
to eat in the kitchen, get it and go to bed. You can walk over to
Combe-Raven tomorrow and give this message from me to Mr. Vanstone:
'Father's compliments, sir, and I have come back upon your hands like a
bad shilling, as he always said I should. He keeps his own guinea, and
takes your five; and he hopes you'll mind what he says to you another
time.' That is the message. Shut the door after you. Good-night."
Under these unfavorable auspices, Mr. Francis Clare made his appearance
the next morning in the grounds at Combe-Raven; and, something doubtful
of the reception that might await him, slowly approached the precincts
of the house.
It was not wonderful that Magdalen should have failed to recognize him
when he first appeared in view. He had gone away a backward lad of
seventeen; he returned a young man of twenty. His slim figure had now
acquired strength and grace, and had increased in stature to the medium
height. The small regular features, which he was supposed to have
inherited from his mother, were rounded and filled out, without having
lost their remarkable delicacy of form. His beard was still in its
infancy; and nascent lines of whisker traced their modest way sparely
down his cheeks. His gentle, wandering brown eyes would have looked to
better advantage in a woman's facethey wanted spirit and firmness to
fit them for the face of a man. His hands had the same wandering habit
as his eyes; they were constantly changing from one position to
another, constantly twisting and turning any little stray thing they
could pick up. He was undeniably handsome, graceful, well-bredbut no
close observer could look at him without suspecting that the stout old
family stock had begun to wear out in the later generations, and that
Mr. Francis Clare had more in him of the shadow of his ancestors than
of the substance.
When the astonishment caused by his appearance had partially subsided,
a search was instituted for the missing report. It was found in the
remotest recesses of Mr. Vanstone's capacious pocket, and was read by
that gentleman on the spot.
The plain facts, as stated by the engineer, were briefly these: Frank
was not possessed of the necessary abilities to fit him for his new
calling; and it was useless to waste time by keeping him any longer in
an employment for which he had no vocation. This, after three years'
trial, being the conviction on both sides, the master had thought it
the most straightforward course for the pupil to go home and candidly
place results before his father and his friends. In some other pursuit,
for which he was more fit, and in which he could feel an interest, he
would no doubt display the industry and perseverance which he had been
too much discouraged to practice in the profession that he had now
abandoned. Personally, he was liked by all who knew him; and his future
prosperity was heartily desired by the many friends whom he had made in
the North. Such was the substance of the report, and so it came to an
end.
Many men would have thought the engineer's statement rather too
carefully worded; and, suspecting him of trying to make the best of a
bad case, would have entertained serious doubts on the subject of
Frank's future. Mr. Vanstone was too easy-tempered and sanguineand too
anxious, as well, not to yield his old antagonist an inch more ground
than he could helpto look at the letter from any such unfavorable
point of view. Was it Frank's fault if he had not got the stuff in him
that engineers were made of? Did no other young men ever begin life
with a false start? Plenty began in that way, and got over it, and did
wonders afterward. With these commentaries on the letter, the
kind-hearted gentleman patted Frank on the shoulder. "Cheer up, my
lad!" said Mr. Vanstone. "We will be even with your father one of these
days, though he has won the wager this time!"
The example thus set by the master of the house was followed at once by
the familywith the solitary exception of Norah, whose incurable
formality and reserve expressed themselves, not too graciously, in her
distant manner toward the visitor. The rest, led by Magdalen (who had
been Frank's favorite playfellow in past times) glided back into their
old easy habits with him without an effort. He was "Frank" with all of
them but Norah, who persisted in addressing him as "Mr. Clare." Even
the account he was now encouraged to give of the reception accorded to
him by his father, on the previous night, failed to disturb Norah's
gravity. She sat with her dark, handsome face steadily averted, her
eyes cast down, and the rich color in her cheeks warmer and deeper than
usual. All the rest, Miss Garth included, found old Mr. Clare's speech
of welcome to his son quite irresistible. The noise and merriment were
at their height when the servant came in, and struck the whole party
dumb by the announcement of visitors in the drawing-room. "Mr.
Marrable, Mrs. Marrable, and Miss Marrable; Evergreen Lodge, Clifton."
Norah rose as readily as if the new arrivals had been a relief to her
mind. Mrs. Vanstone was the next to leave her chair. These two went
away first, to receive the visitors. Magdalen, who preferred the
society of her father and Frank, pleaded hard to be left behind; but
Miss Garth, after granting five minutes' grace, took her into custody
and marched her out of the room. Frank rose to take his leave.
"No, no," said Mr. Vanstone, detaining him. "Don't go. These people
won't stop long. Mr. Marrable's a merchant at Bristol. I've met him
once or twice, when the girls forced me to take them to parties at
Clifton. Mere acquaintances, nothing more. Come and smoke a cigar in
the greenhouse. Hang all visitorsthey worry one's life out. I'll
appear at the last moment with an apology; and you shall follow me at a
safe distance, and be a proof that I was really engaged."
Proposing this ingenious stratagem in a confidential whisper, Mr.
Vanstone took Frank's arm and led him round the house by the back way.
The first ten minutes of seclusion in the conservatory passed without
events of any kind. At the end of that time, a flying figure in bright
garments flashed upon the two gentlemen through the glassthe door was
flung openflower-pots fell in homage to passing petticoatsand Mr.
Vanstone's youngest daughter ran up to him at headlong speed, with
every external appearance of having suddenly taken leave of her senses.
"Papa! the dream of my whole life is realized," she said, as soon as
she could speak. "I shall fly through the roof of the greenhouse if
somebody doesn't hold me down. The Marrables have come here with an
invitation. Guess, you darlingguess what they're going to give at
Evergreen Lodge!"
"A ball!" said Mr. Vanstone, without a moment's hesitation.
"Private Theatricals!!!" cried Magdalen, her clear young voice ringing
through the conservatory like a bell; her loose sleeves falling back
and showing her round white arms to the dimpled elbows, as she clapped
her hands ecstatically in the air. "'The Rivals' is the play, papa'The
Rivals,' by the famous what's-his-nameand they want ME to act! The one
thing in the whole universe that I long to do most. It all depends on
you. Mamma shakes her head; and Miss Garth looks daggers; and Norah's
as sulky as usualbut if you say Yes, they must all three give way and
let me do as I like. Say Yes," she pleaded, nestling softly up to her
father, and pressing her lips with a fond gentleness to his ear, as she
whispered the next words. "Say Yes, and I'll be a good girl for the
rest of my life."
"A good girl?" repeated Mr. Vanstone"a mad girl, I think you must
mean. Hang these people and their theatricals! I shall have to go
indoors and see about this matter. You needn't throw away your cigar,
Frank. You're well out of the business, and you can stop here."
"No, he can't," said Magdalen. "He's in the business, too."
Mr. Francis Clare had hitherto remained modestly in the background. He
now came forward with a face expressive of speechless amazement.
"Yes," continued Magdalen, answering his blank look of inquiry with
perfect composure. "You are to act. Miss Marrable and I have a turn for
business, and we settled it all in five minutes. There are two parts in
the play left to be filled. One is Lucy, the waiting-maid; which is the
character I have undertakenwith papa's permission," she added, slyly
pinching her father's arm; "and he won't say No, will he? First,
because he's a darling; secondly, because I love him, and he loves me;
thirdly, because there is never any difference of opinion between us
(is there?); fourthly, because I give him a kiss, which naturally stops
his mouth and settles the whole question. Dear me, I'm wandering. Where
was I just now? Oh yes! explaining myself to Frank"
"I beg your pardon," began Frank, attempting, at this point, to enter
his protest.
"The second character in the play," pursued Magdalen, without taking
the smallest notice of the protest, "is Falklanda jealous lover, with
a fine flow of language. Miss Marrable and I discussed Falkland
privately on the window-seat while the rest were talking. She is a
delightful girlso impulsive, so sensible, so entirely unaffected. She
confided in me. She said: 'One of our miseries is that we can't find a
gentleman who will grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.'
Of course I soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and
he shall grapple immediately.''Oh heavens! who is he?''Mr. Francis
Clare.''And where is he?''In the house at this moment.''Will you be
so very charming, Miss Vanstone, as to fetch him?''I'll fetch him,
Miss Marrable, with the greatest pleasure.' I left the window-seatI
rushed into the morning-roomI smelled cigarsI followed the smelland
here I am."
"It's a compliment, I know, to be asked to act," said Frank, in great
embarrassment. "But I hope you and Miss Marrable will excuse me"
"Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the
firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is positively to
act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it. Come in and be
introduced."
"But I never tried to act. I don't know how."
"Not of the slightest consequence. If you don't know how, come to me
and I'll teach you."
"You!" exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. "What do you know about it?"
"Pray, papa, be serious! I have the strongest internal conviction that
I could act every character in the playFalkland included. Don't let me
have to speak a second time, Frank. Come and be introduced."
She took her father's arm, and moved on with him to the door of the
greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see if Frank
was following her. It was only the action of a moment; but in that
moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its
resourcesstrengthened itself with the influence of her beauty
commandedand conquered. She looked lovely: the flush was tenderly
bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and sparkled in her
eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly from the waist
upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its supple firmness, its
seductive, serpentine grace. "Come!" she said, with a coquettish
beckoning action of her head. "Come, Frank!"
Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank was
twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and
followed her out of the greenhouse.
As he turned and closed the doorin the instant when he lost sight of
herhis disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals
revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a
twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him
uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to
his father's cottagethe way of escape lay open. Why not take it?
While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached the top
of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked roundlooked with her
resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She beckoned again;
and again he followed herup the steps, and over the threshold. The
door closed on them.
So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a trifling
act of compliance on the other: sowith no knowledge in his mind, with
no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden under the journey to
Londonthey took the way which led to that secret's discovery, through
many a darker winding that was yet to come.
CHAPTER V.
Mr. Vanstone's inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertainment at
Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic disasters; of
which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, and in which her
father and mother played the parts of chief victims.
Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrantsan only child. She
had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed father
and mother since the time when she cut her first tooth. Her seventeenth
birthday was now near at hand; she had decided on celebrating it by
acting a play; had issued her orders accordingly; and had been obeyed
by her docile parents as implicitly as usual. Mrs. Marrable gave up the
drawing-room to be laid waste for a stage and a theater. Mr. Marrable
secured the services of a respectable professional person to drill the
young ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other
responsibilities incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a
domestic chaos. Having further accustomed themselves to the breaking of
furniture and the staining of wallsto thumping, tumbling, hammering,
and screaming; to doors always banging, and to footsteps perpetually
running up and down stairsthe nominal master and mistress of the house
fondly believed that their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal
delusion! It is one thing in private society to set up the stage and
choose the playit is another thing altogether to find the actors.
Hitherto, only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the occasion
had shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge. The sound and serious troubles
were all to come.
"The Rivals" having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a matter
of course, appropriated to herself the part of "Lydia Languish." One of
her favored swains next secured "Captain Absolute," and another laid
violent hands on "Sir Lucius O'Trigger." These two were followed by an
accommodating spinster relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic
responsibility of "Mrs. Malaprop"and there the theatrical proceedings
came to a pause. Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted
with representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious
troubles began.
All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, for
the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of the play,
they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in itor, they accepted
characters, and then broke down in the effort to study themor they
volunteered to take the parts which they knew were already engaged, and
declined the parts which were waiting to be actedor they were
afflicted with weak constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when they
were wanted at rehearsalor they had Puritan relatives in the
background, and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the
week's beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family
pressure, at the week's end. Meanwhile, the carpenters hammered and the
scenes rose. Miss Marrable, whose temperament was sensitive, became
hysterical under the strain of perpetual anxiety; the family doctor
declined to answer for the nervous consequences if something was not
done. Renewed efforts were made in every direction. Actors and
actresses were sought with a desperate disregard of all considerations
of personal fitness. Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama
or out of it, accepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of "Sir
Anthony Absolute"; the stage-manager undertaking to supply the
necessary wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art. A
lady whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stoutbut
whose heart was in the right placevolunteered to act the part of the
sentimental "Julia," and brought with her the dramatic qualification of
habitually wearing a wig in private life. Thanks to these vigorous
measures, the play was at last supplied with representativesalways
excepting the two unmanageable characters of "Lucy" the waiting-maid,
and "Falkland," Julia's jealous lover. Gentlemen came; saw Julia at
rehearsal; observed her stoutness and her wig; omitted to notice that
her heart was in the right place; quailed at the prospect, apologized,
and retired. Ladies read the part of "Lucy"; remarked that she appeared
to great advantage in the first half of the play, and faded out of it
altogether in the latter half; objected to pass from the notice of the
audience in that manner, when all the rest had a chance of
distinguishing themselves to the end; shut up the book, apologized, and
retired. In eight days more the night of performance would arrive; a
phalanx of social martyrs two hundred strong had been convened to
witness it; three full rehearsals were absolutely necessary; and two
characters in the play were not filled yet. With this lamentable story,
and with the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance,
the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young ladies
for a "Lucy," and to the universe for a "Falkland," with the mendicant
pertinacity of a family in despair.
This statement of circumstancesaddressed to an audience which included
a father of Mr. Vanstone's disposition, and a daughter of Magdalen's
temperamentproduced the result which might have been anticipated from
the first.
Either misinterpreting, or disregarding, the ominous silence preserved
by his wife and Miss Garth, Mr. Vanstone not only gave Magdalen
permission to assist the forlorn dramatic company, but accepted an
invitation to witness the performance for Norah and himself. Mrs.
Vanstone declined accompanying them on account of her health; and Miss
Garth only engaged to make one among the audience conditionally on not
being wanted at home. The "parts" of "Lucy" and "Falkland" (which the
distressed family carried about with them everywhere, like incidental
maladies) were handed to their representatives on the spot. Frank's
faint remonstrances were rejected without a hearing; the days and hours
of rehearsal were carefully noted down on the covers of the parts; and
the Marrables took their leave, with a perfect explosion of
thanksfather, mother, and daughter sowing their expressions of
gratitude broadcast, from the drawing-room door to the garden-gates.
As soon as the carriage had driven away, Magdalen presented herself to
the general observation under an entirely new aspect.
"If any more visitors call to-day," she said, with the profoundest
gravity of look and manner, "I am not at home. This is a far more
serious matter than any of you suppose. Go somewhere by yourself,
Frank, and read over your part, and don't let your attention wander if
you can possibly help it. I shall not be accessible before the evening.
If you will come herewith papa's permissionafter tea, my views on the
subject of Falkland will be at your disposal. Thomas! whatever else the
gardener does, he is not to make any floricultural noises under my
window. For the rest of the afternoon I shall be immersed in studyand
the quieter the house is, the more obliged I shall feel to everybody."
Before Miss Garth's battery of reproof could open fire, before the
first outburst of Mr. Vanstone's hearty laughter could escape his lips,
she bowed to them with imperturbable gravity; ascended the house-steps,
for the first time in her life, at a walk instead of a run, and retired
then and there to the bedroom regions. Frank's helpless astonishment at
her disappearance added a new element of absurdity to the scene. He
stood first on one leg and then on the other; rolling and unrolling his
part, and looking piteously in the faces of the friends about him. "I
know I can't do it," he said. "May I come in after tea, and hear
Magdalen's views? Thank youI'll look in about eight. Don't tell my
father about this acting, please; I should never hear the last of it."
Those were the only words he had spirit enough to utter. He drifted
away aimlessly in the direction of the shrubbery, with the part hanging
open in his handthe most incapable of Falklands, and the most helpless
of mankind.
Frank's departure left the family by themselves, and was the signal
accordingly for an attack on Mr. Vanstone's inveterate carelessness in
the exercise of his paternal authority.
"What could you possibly be thinking of, Andrew, when you gave your
consent?" said Mrs. Vanstone. "Surely my silence was a sufficient
warning to you to say No?"
"A mistake, Mr. Vanstone," chimed in Miss Garth. "Made with the best
intentionsbut a mistake for all that."
"It may be a mistake," said Norah, taking her father's part, as usual.
"But I really don't see how papa, or any one else, could have declined,
under the circumstances."
"Quite right, my dear," observed Mr. Vanstone. "The circumstances, as
you say, were dead against me. Here were these unfortunate people in a
scrape on one side; and Magdalen, on the other, mad to act. I couldn't
say I had methodistical objectionsI've nothing methodistical about me.
What other excuse could I make? The Marrables are respectable people,
and keep the best company in Clifton. What harm can she get in their
house? If you come to prudence and that sort of thingwhy shouldn't
Magdalen do what Miss Marrable does? There! there! let the poor things
act, and amuse themselves. We were their age onceand it's no use
making a fussand that's all I've got to say about it."
With that characteristic defense of his own conduct, Mr. Vanstone
sauntered back to the greenhouse to smoke another cigar.
"I didn't say so to papa," said Norah, taking her mother's arm on the
way back to the house, "but the bad result of the acting, in my
opinion, will be the familiarity it is sure to encourage between
Magdalen and Francis Clare."
"You are prejudiced against Frank, my love," said Mrs. Vanstone.
Norah's soft, secret, hazel eyes sank to the ground; she said no more.
Her opinions were unchangeablebut she never disputed with anybody. She
had the great failing of a reserved naturethe failing of obstinacy;
and the great meritthe merit of silence. "What is your head running on
now?" thought Miss Garth, casting a sharp look at Norah's dark,
downcast face. "You're one of the impenetrable sort. Give me Magdalen,
with all her perversities; I can see daylight through her. You're as
dark as night."
The hours of the afternoon passed away, and still Magdalen remained
shut up in her own room. No restless footsteps pattered on the stairs;
no nimble tongue was heard chattering here, there, and everywhere, from
the garret to the kitchenthe house seemed hardly like itself, with the
one ever-disturbing element in the family serenity suddenly withdrawn
from it. Anxious to witness with her own eyes the reality of a
transformation in which past experience still inclined her to
disbelieve, Miss Garth ascended to Magdalen's room, knocked twice at
the door, received no answer, opened it and looked in.
There sat Magdalen, in an arm-chair before the long looking-glass, with
all her hair let down over her shoulders; absorbed in the study of her
part and comfortably arrayed in her morning wrapper, until it was time
to dress for dinner. And there behind her sat the lady's-maid, slowly
combing out the long heavy locks of her young mistress's hair, with the
sleepy resignation of a woman who had been engaged in that employment
for some hours past. The sun was shining; and the green shutters
outside the window were closed. The dim light fell tenderly on the two
quiet seated figures; on the little white bed, with the knots of
rose-colored ribbon which looped up its curtains, and the bright dress
for dinner laid ready across it; on the gayly painted bath, with its
pure lining of white enamel; on the toilet-table with its sparkling
trinkets, its crystal bottles, its silver bell with Cupid for a handle,
its litter of little luxuries that adorn the shrine of a woman's
bed-chamber. The luxurious tranquillity of the scene; the cool
fragrance of flowers and perfumes in the atmosphere; the rapt attitude
of Magdalen, absorbed over her reading; the monotonous regularity of
movement in the maid's hand and arm, as she drew the comb smoothly
through and through her mistress's hairall conveyed the same soothing
impression of drowsy, delicious quiet. On one side of the door were the
broad daylight and the familiar realities of life. On the other was the
dream-land of Elysian serenitythe sanctuary of unruffled repose.
Miss Garth paused on the threshold, and looked into the room in
silence.
Magdalen's curious fancy for having her hair combed at all times and
seasons was among the peculiarities of her character which were
notorious to everybody in the house. It was one of her father's
favorite jokes that she reminded him, on such occasions, of a cat
having her back stroked, and that he always expected, if the combing
were only continued long enough, to hear her purr. Extravagant as it
may seem, the comparison was not altogether inappropriate. The girl's
fervid temperament intensified the essentially feminine pleasure that
most women feel in the passage of the comb through their hair, to a
luxury of sensation which absorbed her in enjoyment, so serenely
self-demonstrative, so drowsily deep that it did irresistibly suggest a
pet cat's enjoyment under a caressing hand. Intimately as Miss Garth
was acquainted with this peculiarity in her pupil, she now saw it
asserting itself for the first time, in association with mental
exertion of any kind on Magdalen's part. Feeling, therefore, some
curiosity to know how long the combing and the studying had gone on
together, she ventured on putting the question, first to the mistress;
and (receiving no answer in that quarter) secondly to the maid.
"All the afternoon, miss, off and on," was the weary answer. "Miss
Magdalen says it soothes her feelings and clears her mind."
Knowing by experience that interference would be hopeless, under these
circumstances, Miss Garth turned sharply and left the room. She smiled
when she was outside on the landing. The female mind does
occasionallythough not oftenproject itself into the future. Miss
Garth was prophetically pitying Magdalen's unfortunate husband.
Dinner-time presented the fair student to the family eye in the same
mentally absorbed aspect. On all ordinary occasions Magdalen's appetite
would have terrified those feeble sentimentalists who affect to ignore
the all-important influence which female feeding exerts in the
production of female beauty. On this occasion she refused one dish
after another with a resolution which implied the rarest of all modern
martyrdomsgastric martyrdom. "I have conceived the part of Lucy," she
observed, with the demurest gravity. "The next difficulty is to make
Frank conceive the part of Falkland. I see nothing to laugh atyou
would all be serious enough if you had my responsibilities. No, papano
wine to-day, thank you. I must keep my intelligence clear. Water,
Thomasand a little more jelly, I think, before you take it away."
When Frank presented himself in the evening, ignorant of the first
elements of his part, she took him in hand, as a middle-aged
schoolmistress might have taken in hand a backward little boy. The few
attempts he made to vary the sternly practical nature of the evening's
occupation by slipping in compliments sidelong she put away from her
with the contemptuous self-possession of a woman of twice her age. She
literally forced him into his part. Her father fell asleep in his
chair. Mrs. Vanstone and Miss Garth lost their interest in the
proceedings, retired to the further end of the room, and spoke together
in whispers. It grew later and later; and still Magdalen never flinched
from her taskstill, with equal perseverance, Norah, who had been on
the watch all through the evening, kept on the watch to the end. The
distrust darkened and darkened on her face as she looked at her sister
and Frank; as she saw how close they sat together, devoted to the same
interest and working to the same end. The clock on the mantel-piece
pointed to half-past eleven before Lucy the resolute permitted Falkland
the helpless to shut up his task-book for the night. "She's wonderfully
clever, isn't she?" said Frank, taking leave of Mr. Vanstone at the
hall door. "I'm to come to-morrow, and hear more of her viewsif you
have no objection. I shall never do it; don't tell her I said so. As
fast as she teaches me one speech, the other goes out of my head.
Discouraging, isn't it? Goodnight."
The next day but one was the day of the first full rehearsal. On the
previous evening Mrs. Vanstone's spirits had been sadly depressed. At a
private interview with Miss Garth she had referred again, of her own
accord, to the subject of her letter from Londonhad spoken
self-reproachfully of her weakness in admitting Captain Wragge's
impudent claim to a family connection with herand had then reverted to
the state of her health and to the doubtful prospect that awaited her
in the coming summer in a tone of despondency which it was very
distressing to hear. Anxious to cheer her spirits, Miss Garth had
changed the conversation as soon as possiblehad referred to the
approaching theatrical performanceand had relieved Mrs. Vanstone's
mind of all anxiety in that direction, by announcing her intention of
accompanying Magdalen to each rehearsal, and of not losing sight of her
until she was safely back again in her father's house. Accordingly,
when Frank presented himself at Combe-Raven on the eventful morning,
there stood Miss Garth, preparedin the interpolated character of
Argusto accompany Lucy and Falkland to the scene of trial. The railway
conveyed the three, in excellent time, to Evergreen Lodge; and at one
o'clock the rehearsal began.
CHAPTER VI.
"I hope Miss Vanstone knows her part?" whispered Mrs. Marrable,
anxiously addressing herself to Miss Garth, in a corner of the theater.
"If airs and graces make an actress, ma'am, Magdalen's performance will
astonish us all." With that reply, Miss Garth took out her work, and
seated herself, on guard, in the center of the pit.
The manager perched himself, book in hand, on a stool close in front of
the stage. He was an active little man, of a sweet and cheerful temper;
and he gave the signal to begin with as patient an interest in the
proceedings as if they had caused him no trouble in the past and
promised him no difficulty in the future. The two characters which
opened the comedy of The Rivals, "Fag" and "The Coachman," appeared on
the scenelooked many sizes too tall for their canvas background, which
represented a "Street in Bath"exhibited the customary inability to
manage their own arms, legs, and voiceswent out severally at the wrong
exitsand expressed their perfect approval of results, so far, by
laughing heartily behind the scenes. "Silence, gentlemen, if you
please," remonstrated the cheerful manager. "As loud as you like on
the stage, but the audience mustn't hear you off it. Miss Marrable
ready? Miss Vanstone ready? Easy there with the 'Street in Bath'; it's
going up crooked! Face this way, Miss Marrable; full face, if you
please. Miss Vanstone" he checked himself suddenly. "Curious," he
said, under his breath"she fronts the audience of her own accord!"
Lucy opened the scene in these words: "Indeed, ma'am, I traversed half
the town in search of it: I don't believe there's a circulating library
in Bath I haven't been at." The manager started in his chair. "My heart
alive! she speaks out without telling!" The dialogue went on. Lucy
produced the novels for Miss Lydia Languish's private reading from
under her cloak. The manager rose excitably to his feet. Marvelous! No
hurry with the books; no dropping them. She looked at the titles before
she announced them to her mistress; she set down "Humphrey Clinker" on
"The Tears of Sensibility" with a smart little smack which pointed the
antithesis. One momentand she announced Julia's visit; anotherand she
dropped the brisk waiting-maid's courtesy; a thirdand she was off the
stage on the side set down for her in the book. The manager wheeled
round on his stool, and looked hard at Miss Garth. "I beg your pardon,
ma'am," he said. "Miss Marrable told me, before we began, that this was
the young lady's first attempt. It can't be, surely!"
"It is," replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager's look of amazement
on her own face. Was it possible that Magdalen's unintelligible
industry in the study of her part really sprang from a serious interest
in her occupationan interest which implied a natural fitness for it?
The rehearsal went on. The stout lady with the wig (and the excellent
heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an inveterately tragic
point of view, and used her handkerchief distractedly in the first
scene. The spinster relative felt Mrs. Malaprop's mistakes in language
so seriously, and took such extraordinary pains with her blunders, that
they sounded more like exercises in elocution than anything else. The
unhappy lad who led the forlorn hope of the company, in the person of
"Sir Anthony Absolute," expressed the age and irascibility of his
character by tottering incessantly at the knees, and thumping the stage
perpetually with his stick. Slowly and clumsily, with constant
interruptions and interminable mistakes, the first act dragged on,
until Lucy appeared again to end it in soliloquy, with the confession
of her assumed simplicity and the praise of her own cunning.
Here the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties which
Magdalen had not encountered in the first sceneand here, her total
want of experience led her into more than one palpable mistake. The
stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not shown in the case of
any other member of the company, interfered immediately, and set her
right. At one point she was to pause, and take a turn on the stageshe
did it. At another, she was to stop, toss her head, and look pertly at
the audienceshe did it. When she took out the paper to read the list
of the presents she had received, could she give it a tap with her
finger (Yes)? And lead off with a little laugh (Yesafter twice
trying)? Could she read the different items with a sly look at the end
of each sentence, straight at the pit (Yes, straight at the pit, and as
sly as you please)? The manager's cheerful face beamed with approval.
He tucked the play under his arm, and clapped his hands gayly; the
gentlemen, clustered together behind the scenes, followed his example;
the ladies looked at each other with dawning doubts whether they had
not better have left the new recruit in the retirement of private life.
Too deeply absorbed in the business of the stage to heed any of them,
Magdalen asked leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite sure of
her own improvement. She went all through it again without a mistake,
this time, from beginning to end; the manager celebrating her attention
to his directions by an outburst of professional approbation, which
escaped him in spite of himself. "She can take a hint!" cried the
little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on the prompt-book. "She's
a born actress, if ever there was one yet!"
"I hope not," said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work which had
dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some perplexity. Her
worst apprehension of results in connection with the theatrical
enterprise had foreboded levity of conduct with some of the
gentlemenshe had not bargained for this. Magdalen, in the capacity of
a thoughtless girl, was comparatively easy to deal with. Magdalen, in
the character of a born actress, threatened serious future
difficulties.
The rehearsal proceeded. Lucy returned to the stage for her scenes in
the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir Lucius and Fag.
Here, again, Magdalen's inexperience betrayed itselfand here once more
her resolution in attacking and conquering her own mistakes astonished
everybody. "Bravo!" cried the gentlemen behind the scenes, as she
steadily trampled down one blunder after another. "Ridiculous!" said
the ladies, "with such a small part as hers." "Heaven forgive me!"
thought Miss. Garth, coming round unwillingly to the general opinion.
"I almost wish we were Papists, and I had a convent to put her in
to-morrow." One of Mr. Marrable's servants entered the theater as that
desperate aspiration escaped the governess. She instantly sent the man
behind the scene with a message: "Miss Vanstone has done her part in
the rehearsal; request her to come here and sit by me." The servant
returned with a polite apology: "Miss Vanstone's kind love, and she
begs to be excusedshe's prompting Mr. Clare." She prompted him to such
purpose that he actually got through his part. The performances of the
other gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile. Frank was just one degree
betterhe was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison. "Thanks
to Miss Vanstone," observed the manager, who had heard the prompting.
"She pulled him through. We shall be flat enough at night, when the
drop falls on the second act, and the audience have seen the last of
her. It's a thousand pities she hasn't got a better part!"
"It's a thousand mercies she's no more to do than she has," muttered
Miss Garth, overhearing him. "As things are, the people can't well turn
her head with applause. She's out of the play in the second actthat's
one comfort!"
No well-regulated mind ever draws its inferences in a hurry; Miss
Garth's mind was well regulated; therefore, logically speaking, Miss
Garth ought to have been superior to the weakness of rushing at
conclusions. She had committed that error, nevertheless, under present
circumstances. In plainer terms, the consoling reflection which had
just occurred to her assumed that the play had by this time survived
all its disasters, and entered on its long-deferred career of success.
The play had done nothing of the sort. Misfortune and the Marrable
family had not parted company yet.
When the rehearsal was over, nobody observed that the stout lady with
the wig privately withdrew herself from the company; and when she was
afterward missed from the table of refreshments, which Mr. Marrable's
hospitality kept ready spread in a room near the theater, nobody
imagined that there was any serious reason for her absence. It was not
till the ladies and gentlemen assembled for the next rehearsal that the
true state of the case was impressed on the minds of the company. At
the appointed hour no Julia appeared. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable
portentously approached the stage, with an open letter in her hand. She
was naturally a lady of the mildest good breeding: she was mistress of
every bland conventionality in the English languagebut disasters and
dramatic influences combined, threw even this harmless matron off her
balance at last. For the first time in her life Mrs. Marrable indulged
in vehement gesture, and used strong language. She handed the letter
sternly, at arms-length, to her daughter. "My dear," she said, with an
aspect of awful composure, "we are under a Curse." Before the amazed
dramatic company could petition for an explanation, she turned and left
the room. The manager's professional eye followed her out
respectfullyhe looked as if he approved of the exit, from a theatrical
point of view.
What new misfortune had befallen the play? The last and worst of all
misfortunes had assailed it. The stout lady had resigned her part.
Not maliciously. Her heart, which had been in the right place
throughout, remained inflexibly in the right place still. Her
explanation of the circumstances proved this, if nothing else did. The
letter began with a statement: She had overheard, at the last rehearsal
(quite unintentionally), personal remarks of which she was the subject.
They might, or might not, have had reference to herHair; and
herFigure. She would not distress Mrs. Marrable by repeating them.
Neither would she mention names, because it was foreign to her nature
to make bad worse. The only course at all consistent with her own
self-respect was to resign her part. She inclosed it, accordingly, to
Mrs. Marrable, with many apologies for her presumption in undertaking a
youthful character, atwhat a gentleman was pleased to termher Age;
and with what two ladies were rude enough to characterize as her
disadvantages ofHair, andFigure. A younger and more attractive
representative of Julia would no doubt be easily found. In the
meantime, all persons concerned had her full forgiveness, to which she
would only beg leave to add her best and kindest wishes for the success
of the play.
In four nights more the play was to be performed. If ever any human
enterprise stood in need of good wishes to help it, that enterprise was
unquestionably the theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge!
One arm-chair was allowed on the stage; and into that arm-chair Miss
Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen stepped
forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from Miss
Marrable's hand; and stopped the threatened catastrophe.
"She's an ugly, bald-headed, malicious, middle-aged wretch!" said
Magdalen, tearing the letter into fragments, and tossing them over the
heads of the company. "But I can tell her one thingshe shan't spoil
the play. I'll act Julia."
"Bravo!" cried the chorus of gentlementhe anonymous gentleman who had
helped to do the mischief (otherwise Mr. Francis Clare) loudest of all.
"If you want the truth, I don't shrink from owning it," continued
Magdalen. "I'm one of the ladies she means. I said she had a head like
a mop, and a waist like a bolster. So she has."
"I am the other lady," added the spinster relative. "But I only said
she was too stout for the part."
"I am the gentleman," chimed in Frank, stimulated by the force of
example. "I said nothingI only agreed with the ladies."
Here Miss Garth seized her opportunity, and addressed the stage loudly
from the pit.
"Stop! Stop!" she said. "You can't settle the difficulty that way. If
Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy?"
Miss Marrable sank back in the arm-chair, and gave way to the second
convulsion.
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Magdalen, "the thing's simple enough, I'll
act Julia and Lucy both together."
The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy's first
entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into a
soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of
importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen's project.
Lucy's two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second acts,
were sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia appeared to
give time for the necessary transformations in dress. Even Miss Garth,
though she tried hard to find them, could put no fresh obstacles in the
way. The question was settled in five minutes, and the rehearsal went
on; Magdalen learning Julia's stage situations with the book in her
hand, and announcing afterward, on the journey home, that she proposed
sitting up all night to study the new part. Frank thereupon expressed
his fears that she would have no time left to help him through his
theatrical difficulties. She tapped him on the shoulder coquettishly
with her part. "You foolish fellow, how am I to do without you? You're
Julia's jealous lover; you're always making Julia cry. Come to-night,
and make me cry at tea-time. You haven't got a venomous old woman in a
wig to act with now. It's my heart you're to breakand of course I
shall teach you how to do it."
The four days' interval passed busily in perpetual rehearsals, public
and private. The night of performance arrived; the guests assembled;
the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the
most of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could
teach her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began,
sitting apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with
her smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely
training herself for the coming ordeal, to the very last.
The play began, with all the proper accompaniments of a theatrical
performance in private life; with a crowded audience, an African
temperature, a bursting of heated lamp-glasses, and a difficulty in
drawing up the curtain. "Fag" and "the Coachman," who opened the scene,
took leave of their memories as soon as they stepped on the stage; left
half their dialogue unspoken; came to a dead pause; were audibly
entreated by the invisible manager to "come off"; and went off
accordingly, in every respect sadder and wiser men than when they went
on. The next scene disclosed Miss Marrable as "Lydia Languish,"
gracefully seated, very pretty, beautifully dressed, accurately
mistress of the smallest words in her part; possessed, in short, of
every personal resourceexcept her voice. The ladies admired, the
gentlemen applauded. Nobody heard anything but the words "Speak up,
miss," whispered by the same voice which had already entreated "Fag"
and "the Coachman" to "come off." A responsive titter rose among the
younger spectators; checked immediately by magnanimous applause. The
temperature of the audience was rising to Blood Heatbut the national
sense of fair play was not boiled out of them yet.
In the midst of the demonstration, Magdalen quietly made her first
entrance, as "Julia." She was dressed very plainly in dark colors, and
wore her own hair; all stage adjuncts and alterations (excepting the
slightest possible touch of rouge on her cheeks) having been kept in
reserve to disguise her the more effectually in her second part. The
grace and simplicity of her costume, the steady self-possession with
which she looked out over the eager rows of faces before her, raised a
low hum of approval and expectation. She spokeafter suppressing a
momentary tremorwith a quiet distinctness of utterance which reached
all ears, and which at once confirmed the favorable impression that her
appearance had produced. The one member of the audience who looked at
her and listened to her coldly, was her elder sister. Before the
actress of the evening had been five minutes on the stage, Norah
detected, to her own indescribable astonishment, that Magdalen had
audaciously individualized the feeble amiability of "Julia's"
character, by seizing no less a person than herself as the model to act
it by. She saw all her own little formal peculiarities of manner and
movement unblushingly reproducedand even the very tone of her voice so
accurately mimicked from time to time, that the accents startled her as
if she was speaking herself, with an echo on the stage. The effect of
this cool appropriation of Norah's identity to theatrical purposes on
the audiencewho only saw resultsasserted itself in a storm of
applause on Magdalen's exit. She had won two incontestable triumphs in
her first scene. By a dexterous piece of mimicry, she had made a living
reality of one of the most insipid characters in the English drama; and
she had roused to enthusiasm an audience of two hundred exiles from the
blessings of ventilation, all simmering together in their own animal
heat. Under the circumstances, where is the actress by profession who
could have done much more?
But the event of the evening was still to come. Magdalen's disguised
re-appearance at the end of the act, in the character of "Lucy"with
false hair and false eyebrows, with a bright-red complexion and patches
on her cheeks, with the gayest colors flaunting in her dress, and the
shrillest vivacity of voice and mannerfairly staggered the audience.
They looked down at their programmes, in which the representative of
Lucy figured under an assumed name; looked up again at the stage;
penetrated the disguise; and vented their astonishment in another round
of applause, louder and heartier even than the last. Norah herself
could not deny this time that the tribute of approbation had been well
deserved. There, forcing its way steadily through all the faults of
inexperiencethere, plainly visible to the dullest of the spectators,
was the rare faculty of dramatic impersonation, expressing itself in
every look and action of this girl of eighteen, who now stood on a
stage for the first time in her life. Failing in many minor requisites
of the double task which she had undertaken, she succeeded in the one
important necessity of keeping the main distinctions of the two
characters thoroughly apart. Everybody felt that the difficulty lay
hereeverybody saw the difficulty conqueredeverybody echoed the
manager's enthusiasm at rehearsal, which had hailed her as a born
actress.
When the drop-scene descended for the first time, Magdalen had
concentrated in herself the whole interest and attraction of the play.
The audience politely applauded Miss Marrable, as became the guests
assembled in her father's house: and good-humoredly encouraged the
remainder of the company, to help them through a task for which they
were all, more or less, palpably unfit. But, as the play proceeded,
nothing roused them to any genuine expression of interest when Magdalen
was absent from the scene. There was no disguising it: Miss Marrable
and her bosom friends had been all hopelessly cast in the shade by the
new recruit whom they had summoned to assist them, in the capacity of
forlorn hope. And this on Miss Marrable's own birthday! and this in her
father's house! and this after the unutterable sacrifices of six weeks
past! Of all the domestic disasters which the thankless theatrical
enterprise had inflicted on the Marrable family, the crowning
misfortune was now consummated by Magdalen's success.
Leaving Mr. Vanstone and Norah, on the conclusion of the play, among
the guests in the supper-room, Miss Garth went behind the scenes;
ostensibly anxious to see if she could be of any use; really bent on
ascertaining whether Magdalen's head had been turned by the triumphs of
the evening. It would not have surprised Miss Garth if she had
discovered her pupil in the act of making terms with the manager for
her forthcoming appearance in a public theater. As events really turned
out, she found Magdalen on the stage, receiving, with gracious smiles,
a card which the manager presented to her with a professional bow.
Noticing Miss Garth's mute look of inquiry, the civil little man
hastened to explain that the card was his own, and that he was merely
asking the favor of Miss Vanstone's recommendation at any future
opportunity.
"This is not the last time the young lady will be concerned in private
theatricals, I'll answer for it," said the manager. "And if a
superintendent is wanted on the next occasion, she has kindly promised
to say a good word for me. I am always to be heard of, miss, at that
address." Saying those words, he bowed again, and discreetly
disappeared.
Vague suspicions beset the mind of Miss Garth, and urged her to insist
on looking at the card. No more harmless morsel of pasteboard was ever
passed from one hand to another. The card contained nothing but the
manager's name, and, under it, the name and address of a theatrical
agent in London.
"It is not worth the trouble of keeping," said Miss Garth.
Magdalen caught her hand before she could throw the card awaypossessed
herself of it the next instantand put it in her pocket.
"I promised to recommend him," she said"and that's one reason for
keeping his card. If it does nothing else, it will remind me of the
happiest evening of my lifeand that's another. Come!" she cried,
throwing her arms round Miss Garth with a feverish gayety"congratulate
me on my success!"
"I will congratulate you when you have got over it," said Miss Garth.
In half an hour more Magdalen had changed her dress; had joined the
guests; and had soared into an atmosphere of congratulation high above
the reach of any controlling influence that Miss Garth could exercise.
Frank, dilatory in all his proceedings, was the last of the dramatic
company who left the precincts of the stage. He made no attempt to join
Magdalen in the supper-roombut he was ready in the hall with her cloak
when the carriages were called and the party broke up.
"Oh, Frank!" she said, looking round at him as he put the cloak on her
shoulders, "I am so sorry it's all over! Come to-morrow morning, and
let's talk about it by ourselves."
"In the shrubbery at ten?" asked Frank, in a whisper.
She drew up the hood of her cloak and nodded to him gayly. Miss Garth,
standing near, noticed the looks that passed between them, though the
disturbance made by the parting guests prevented her from hearing the
words. There was a soft, underlying tenderness in Magdalen's assumed
gayety of mannerthere was a sudden thoughtfulness in her face, a
confidential readiness in her hand, as she took Frank's arm and went
out to the carriage. What did it mean? Had her passing interest in him
as her stage-pupil treacherously sown the seeds of any deeper interest
in him, as a man? Had the idle theatrical scheme, now that it was all
over, graver results to answer for than a mischievous waste of time?
The lines on Miss Garth's face deepened and hardened: she stood lost
among the fluttering crowd around her. Norah's warning words, addressed
to Mrs. Vanstone in the garden, recurred to her memoryand now, for the
first time, the idea dawned on her that Norah had seen the consequences
in their true light.
CHAPTER VII.
Early the next morning Miss Garth and Norah met in the garden and spoke
together privately. The only noticeable result of the interview, when
they presented themselves at the breakfast-table, appeared in the
marked silence which they both maintained on the topic of the
theatrical performance. Mrs. Vanstone was entirely indebted to her
husband and to her youngest daughter for all that she heard of the
evening's entertainment. The governess and the elder daughter had
evidently determined on letting the subject drop.
After breakfast was over Magdalen proved to be missing, when the ladies
assembled as usual in the morning-room. Her habits were so little
regular that Mrs. Vanstone felt neither surprise nor uneasiness at her
absence. Miss Garth and Norah looked at one another significantly, and
waited in silence. Two hours passedand there were no signs of
Magdalen. Norah rose, as the clock struck twelve, and quietly left the
room to look for her.
She was not upstairs dusting her jewelry and disarranging her dresses.
She was not in the conservatory, not in the flower-garden; not in the
kitchen teasing the cook; not in the yard playing with the dogs. Had
she, by any chance, gone out with her father? Mr. Vanstone had
announced his intention, at the breakfast-table, of paying a morning
visit to his old ally, Mr. Clare, and of rousing the philosopher's
sarcastic indignation by an account of the dramatic performance. None
of the other ladies at Combe-Raven ever ventured themselves inside the
cottage. But Magdalen was reckless enough for anythingand Magdalen
might have gone there. As the idea occurred to her, Norah entered the
shrubbery.
At the second turning, where the path among the trees wound away out of
sight of the house, she came suddenly face to face with Magdalen and
Frank: they were sauntering toward her, arm in arm, their heads close
together, their conversation apparently proceeding in whispers. They
looked suspiciously handsome and happy. At the sight of Norah both
started, and both stopped. Frank confusedly raised his hat, and turned
back in the direction of his father's cottage. Magdalen advanced to
meet her sister, carelessly swinging her closed parasol from side to
side, carelessly humming an air from the overture which had preceded
the rising of the curtain on the previous night.
"Luncheon-time already!" she said, looking at her watch. "Surely not?"
"Have you and Mr. Francis Clare been alone in the shrubbery since ten
o'clock?" asked Norah.
"Mr. Francis Clare! How ridiculously formal you are. Why don't you
call him Frank?"
"I asked you a question, Magdalen."
"Dear me, how black you look this morning! I'm in disgrace, I suppose.
Haven't you forgiven me yet for my acting last night? I couldn't help
it, love; I should have made nothing of Julia, if I hadn't taken you
for my model. It's quite a question of Art. In your place, I should
have felt flattered by the selection."
"In your place, Magdalen, I should have thought twice before I
mimicked my sister to an audience of strangers."
"That's exactly why I did itan audience of strangers. How were they to
know? Come! come! don't be angry. You are eight years older than I
amyou ought to set me an example of good-humor."
"I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry than I
can say, Magdalen, to meet you as I met you here just now!"
"What next, I wonder? You meet me in the shrubbery at home, talking
over the private theatricals with my old playfellow, whom I knew when I
was no taller than this parasol. And that is a glaring impropriety, is
it? 'Honi soit qui mal y pense.' You wanted an answer a minute
agothere it is for you, my dear, in the choicest Norman-French."
"I am in earnest about this, Magdalen"
"Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you of ever making jokes."
"I am seriously sorry"
"Oh, dear!"
"It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience to
tell youand I will tell youthat I am sorry to see how this intimacy
is growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding established
already between you and Mr. Francis Clare."
"Poor Frank! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on earth has he done
to offend you?"
Norah's self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark
cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke again.
Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her sister. She
tossed it high in the air and caught it. "Once!" she saidand tossed it
up again. "Twice!"and she tossed it higher. "Thrice" Before she could
catch it for the third time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm,
and the parasol dropped to the ground between them.
"You are treating me heartlessly," she said. "For shame, Magdalenfor
shame!"
The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest
to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two
sistersso strangely dissimilar in person and characterfaced one
another, without a word passing between them. For a moment the deep
brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the younger looked
into each other with steady, unyielding scrutiny on either side.
Norah's face was the first to change; Norah's head was the first to
turn away. She dropped her sister's arm in silence. Magdalen stooped
and picked up her parasol.
"I try to keep my temper," she said, "and you call me heartless for
doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be."
Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. "Hard on you!"
she said, in low, mournful tonesand sighed bitterly.
Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol with
the end of her garden cloak.
"Yes!" she resumed, doggedly. "Hard on me and hard on Frank."
"Frank!" repeated Norah, advancing on her sister and turning pale as
suddenly as she had turned red. "Do you talk of yourself and Frank as
if your interests were One already? Magdalen! if I hurt you, do I
hurt him? Is he so near and so dear to you as that?"
Magdalen drew further and further back. A twig from a tree near caught
her cloak; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and threw it on the
ground. "What right have you to question me?" she broke out on a
sudden. "Whether I like Frank, or whether I don't, what interest is it
of yours?" As she said the words, she abruptly stepped forward to pass
her sister and return to the house.
Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. "If I hold you
by main force," she said, "you shall stop and hear me. I have watched
this Francis Clare; I know him better than you do. He is unworthy of a
moment's serious feeling on your part; he is unworthy of our dear,
good, kind-hearted father's interest in him. A man with any principle,
any honor, any gratitude, would not have come back as he has come back,
disgracedyes! disgraced by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I
watched his face while the friend who has been better than a father to
him was comforting and forgiving him with a kindness he had not
deserved: I watched his face, and I saw no shame and no distress in
itI saw nothing but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is
selfish, he is ungrateful, he is ungeneroushe is only twenty, and he
has the worst failings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I
find you meeting in secretthe man who has taken such a place in your
favor that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from my lips!
Magdalen! this will end ill. For God's sake, think of what I have said
to you, and control yourself before it is too late!" She stopped,
vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the hand.
Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment.
"You are so violent," she said, "and so unlike yourself, that I hardly
know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words I get for my
pains. You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank; and you are
unreasonably angry with me because I won't hate him, too. Don't, Norah!
you hurt my hand."
Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. "I shall never hurt your
heart," she said; and suddenly turned her back on Magdalen as she spoke
the words.
There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Magdalen looked
at her perplexedlyhesitatedthen walked away by herself toward the
house.
At the turn in the shrubbery path she stopped and looked back uneasily.
"Oh, dear, dear!" she thought to herself, "why didn't Frank go when I
told him?" She hesitated, and went back a few steps. "There's Norah
standing on her dignity, as obstinate as ever." She stopped again.
"What had I better do? I hate quarreling: I think I'll make up." She
ventured close to her sister and touched her on the shoulder. Norah
never moved. "It's not often she flies into a passion," thought
Magdalen, touching her again; "but when she does, what a time it lasts
her!Come!" she said, "give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won't you
let me get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck?
Well, it's a very nice neckit's better worth kissing than mineand
there the kiss is, in spite of you!"
She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action to the
word, with a total disregard of all that had just passed, which her
sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since the warm
outpouring of Norah's heart had burst through all obstacles. Had the
icy reserve frozen her up again already! It was hard to say. She never
spoke; she never changed her positionshe only searched hurriedly for
her handkerchief. As she drew it out, there was a sound of approaching
footsteps in the inner recesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier
scampered into view; and a cheerful voice sang the first lines of the
glee in "As You Like It." "It's papa!" cried Magdalen. "Come,
Norahcome and meet him."
Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of her
garden hat, turned in the opposite direction, and hurried back to the
house. She ran up to her own room and locked herself in. She was crying
bitterly.
CHAPTER VIII.
When Magdalen and her father met in the shrubbery Mr. Vanstone's face
showed plainly that something had happened to please him since he had
left home in the morning. He answered the question which his daughter's
curiosity at once addressed to him by informing her that he had just
come from Mr. Clare's cottage; and that he had picked up, in that
unpromising locality, a startling piece of news for the family at
Combe-Raven.
On entering the philosopher's study that morning, Mr. Vanstone had
found him still dawdling over his late breakfast, with an open letter
by his side, in place of the book which, on other occasions, lay ready
to his hand at meal-times. He held up the letter the moment his visitor
came into the room, and abruptly opened the conversation by asking Mr.
Vanstone if his nerves were in good order, and if he felt himself
strong enough for the shock of an overwhelming surprise.
"Nerves!" repeated Mr. Vanstone. "Thank God, I know nothing about my
nerves. If you have got anything to tell me, shock or no shock, out
with it on the spot."
Mr. Clare held the letter a little higher, and frowned at his visitor
across the breakfast-table. "What have I always told you?" he asked,
with his sourest solemnity of look and manner.
"A great deal more than I could ever keep in my head," answered Mr.
Vanstone.
"In your presence and out of it," continued Mr. Clare, "I have always
maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern
society isthe enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an individual
Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which gives that
highly-favored personage nine chances out of tenand grudges the tenth
to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high
place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest
intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social
system, complacent Imbecility rules supremesnuffs out the searching
light of Intelligence with total impunityand hoots, owl-like, in
answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark!
One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically
contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come
down with a crash."
"God forbid!" cried Mr. Vanstone, looking about him as if the crash was
coming already.
"With a crash!" repeated Mr. Clare. "There is my theory, in few words.
Now for the remarkable application of it which this letter suggests.
Here is my lout of a boy"
"You don't mean that Frank has got another chance?" exclaimed Mr.
Vanstone.
"Here is this perfectly hopeless booby, Frank," pursued the
philosopher. "He has never done anything in his life to help himself,
and, as a necessary consequence, Society is in a conspiracy to carry
him to the top of the tree. He has hardly had time to throw away that
chance you gave him before this letter comes, and puts the ball at his
foot for the second time. My rich cousin (who is intellectually fit to
be at the tail of the family, and who is, therefore, as a matter of
course, at the head of it) has been good enough to remember my
existence; and has offered his influence to serve my eldest boy. Read
his letter, and then observe the sequence of events. My rich cousin is
a booby who thrives on landed property; he has done something for
another booby who thrives on Politics, who knows a third booby who
thrives on Commerce, who can do something for a fourth booby, thriving
at present on nothing, whose name is Frank. So the mill goes. So the
cream of all human rewards is sipped in endless succession by the
Fools. I shall pack Frank off to-morrow. In course of time he'll come
back again on our hands, like a bad shilling; more chances will fall in
his way, as a necessary consequence of his meritorious imbecility.
Years will go onI may not live to see it, no more may youit doesn't
matter; Frank's future is equally certain either wayput him into the
army, the Church, politics, what you please, and let him drift: he'll
end in being a general, a bishop, or a minister of State, by dint of
the great modern qualification of doing nothing whatever to deserve his
place." With this summary of his son's worldly prospects, Mr. Clare
tossed the letter contemptuously across the table and poured himself
out another cup of tea.
Mr. Vanstone read the letter with eager interest and pleasure. It was
written in a tone of somewhat elaborate cordiality; but the practical
advantages which it placed at Frank's disposal were beyond all doubt.
The writer had the means of using a friend's interestinterest of no
ordinary kindwith a great Mercantile Firm in the City; and he had at
once exerted this influence in favor of Mr. Clare's eldest boy. Frank
would be received in the office on a very different footing from the
footing of an ordinary clerk; he would be "pushed on" at every
available opportunity; and the first "good thing" the House had to
offer, either at home or abroad, would be placed at his disposal. If he
possessed fair abilities and showed common diligence in exercising
them, his fortune was made; and the sooner he was sent to London to
begin the better for his own interests it would be.
"Wonderful news!" cried Mr. Vanstone, returning the letter. "I'm
delightedI must go back and tell them at home. This is fifty times the
chance that mine was. What the deuce do you mean by abusing Society?
Society has behaved uncommonly well, in my opinion. Where's Frank?"
"Lurking," said Mr. Clare. "It is one of the intolerable peculiarities
of louts that they always lurk. I haven't seen my lout this morning.
It you meet with him anywhere, give him a kick, and say I want him."
Mr. Clare's opinion of his son's habits might have been expressed more
politely as to form; but, as to substance, it happened, on that
particular morning, to be perfectly correct. After leaving Magdalen,
Frank had waited in the shrubbery, at a safe distance, on the chance
that she might detach herself from her sister's company, and join him
again. Mr. Vanstone's appearance immediately on Norah's departure,
instead of encouraging him to show himself, had determined him on
returning to the cottage. He walked back discontentedly; and so fell
into his father's clutches, totally unprepared for the pending
announcement, in that formidable quarter, of his departure for London.
In the meantime, Mr. Vanstone had communicated his newsin the first
place, to Magdalen, and afterward, on getting back to the house, to his
wife and Miss Garth. He was too unobservant a man to notice that
Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss Garth unaccountably
relieved, by his announcement of Frank's good fortune. He talked on
about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the luncheon-bell rangand then,
for the first time, he noticed Norah's absence. She sent a message
downstairs, after they had assembled at the table, to say that a
headache was keeping her in her own room. When Miss Garth went up
shortly afterward to communicate the news about Frank, Norah appeared,
strangely enough, to feel very little relieved by hearing it. Mr.
Francis Clare had gone away on a former occasion (she remarked), and
had come back. He might come back again, and sooner than they any of
them thought for. She said no more on the subject than this: she made
no reference to what had taken place in the shrubbery. Her
unconquerable reserve seemed to have strengthened its hold on her since
the outburst of the morning. She met Magdalen, later in the day, as if
nothing had happened: no formal reconciliation took place between them.
It was one of Norah's peculiarities to shrink from all reconciliations
that were openly ratified, and to take her shy refuge in
reconciliations that were silently implied. Magdalen saw plainly, in
her look and manner, that she had made her first and last protest.
Whether the motive was pride, or sullenness, or distrust of herself, or
despair of doing good, the result was not to be mistakenNorah had
resolved on remaining passive for the future.
Later in the afternoon, Mr. Vanstone suggested a drive to his eldest
daughter, as the best remedy for her headache. She readily consented to
accompany her father; who thereupon proposed, as usual, that Magdalen
should join them. Magdalen was nowhere to be found. For the second time
that day she had wandered into the grounds by herself. On this
occasion, Miss Garthwho, after adopting Norah's opinions, had passed
from the one extreme of over-looking Frank altogether, to the other
extreme of believing him capable of planning an elopement at five
minutes' noticevolunteered to set forth immediately, and do her best
to find the missing young lady. After a prolonged absence, she returned
unsuccessfulwith the strongest persuasion in her own mind that
Magdalen and Frank had secretly met one another somewhere, but without
having discovered the smallest fragment of evidence to confirm her
suspicions. By this time the carriage was at the door, and Mr. Vanstone
was unwilling to wait any longer. He and Norah drove away together; and
Mrs. Vanstone and Miss Garth sat at home over their work.
In half an hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the room. She was
pale and depressed. She received Miss Garth's remonstrances with a
weary inattention; explained carelessly that she had been wandering in
the wood; took up some books, and put them down again; sighed
impatiently, and went away upstairs to her own room.
"I think Magdalen is feeling the reaction, after yesterday," said Mrs.
Vanstone, quietly. "It is just as we thought. Now the theatrical
amusements are all over, she is fretting for more."
Here was an opportunity of letting in the light of truth on Mrs.
Vanstone's mind, which was too favorable to be missed. Miss Garth
questioned her conscience, saw her chance, and took it on the spot.
"You forget," she rejoined, "that a certain neighbor of ours is going
away to-morrow. Shall I tell you the truth? Magdalen is fretting over
the departure of Francis Clare."
Mrs. Vanstone looked up from her work with a gentle, smiling surprise.
"Surely not?" she said. "It is natural enough that Frank should be
attracted by Magdalen; but I can't think that Magdalen returns the
feeling. Frank is so very unlike her; so quiet and undemonstrative; so
dull and helpless, poor fellow, in some things. He is handsome, I know,
but he is so singularly unlike Magdalen, that I can't think it
possibleI can't indeed."
"My dear good lady!" cried Miss Garth, in great amazement; "do you
really suppose that people fall in love with each other on account of
similarities in their characters? In the vast majority of cases, they
do just the reverse. Men marry the very last women, and women the very
last men, whom their friends would think it possible they could care
about. Is there any phrase that is oftener on all our lips than 'What
can have made Mr. So-and-So marry that woman?'or 'How could Mrs.
So-and-So throw herself away on that man?' Has all your experience of
the world never yet shown you that girls take perverse fancies for men
who are totally unworthy of them?"
"Very true," said Mrs. Vanstone, composedly. "I forgot that. Still it
seems unaccountable, doesn't it?"
"Unaccountable, because it happens every day!" retorted Miss Garth,
good-humoredly. "I know a great many excellent people who reason
against plain experience in the same waywho read the newspapers in the
morning, and deny in the evening that there is any romance for writers
or painters to work upon in modern life. Seriously, Mrs. Vanstone, you
may take my word for itthanks to those wretched theatricals, Magdalen
is going the way with Frank that a great many young ladies have gone
before her. He is quite unworthy of her; he is, in almost every
respect, her exact oppositeand, without knowing it herself, she has
fallen in love with him on that very account. She is resolute and
impetuous, clever and domineering; she is not one of those model women
who want a man to look up to, and to protect themher beau-ideal
(though she may not think it herself) is a man she can henpeck. Well!
one comfort is, there are far better men, even of that sort, to be had
than Frank. It's a mercy he is going away, before we have more trouble
with them, and before any serious mischief is done."
"Poor Frank!" said Mrs. Vanstone, smiling compassionately. "We have
known him since he was in jackets, and Magdalen in short frocks. Don't
let us give him up yet. He may do better this second time."
Miss Garth looked up in astonishment.
"And suppose he does better?" she asked. "What then?"
Mrs. Vanstone cut off a loose thread in her work, and laughed outright.
"My good friend," she said, "there is an old farmyard proverb which
warns us not to count our chickens before they are hatched. Let us wait
a little before we count ours."
It was not easy to silence Miss Garth, when she was speaking under the
influence of a strong conviction; but this reply closed her lips. She
resumed her work, and looked, and thought, unutterable things.
Mrs. Vanstone's behavior was certainly remarkable under the
circumstances. Here, on one side, was a girlwith great personal
attractions, with rare pecuniary prospects, with a social position
which might have justified the best gentleman in the neighborhood in
making her an offer of marriageperversely casting herself away on a
penniless idle young fellow, who had failed at his first start in life,
and who even if he succeeded in his second attempt, must be for years
to come in no position to marry a young lady of fortune on equal terms.
And there, on the other side, was that girl's mother, by no means
dismayed at the prospect of a connection which was, to say the least of
it, far from desirable; by no means certain, judging her by her own
words and looks, that a marriage between Mr. Vanstone's daughter and
Mr. Clare's son might not prove to be as satisfactory a result of the
intimacy between the two young people as the parents on both sides
could possibly wish for! It was perplexing in the extreme. It was
almost as unintelligible as that past mysterythat forgotten mystery
nowof the journey to London.
In the evening, Frank made his appearance, and announced that his
father had mercilessly sentenced him to leave Combe-Raven by the
parliamentary train the next morning. He mentioned this circumstance
with an air of sentimental resignation; and listened to Mr. Vanstone's
boisterous rejoicings over his new prospects with a mild and mute
surprise. His gentle melancholy of look and manner greatly assisted his
personal advantages. In his own effeminate way he was more handsome
than ever that evening. His soft brown eyes wandered about the room
with a melting tenderness; his hair was beautifully brushed; his
delicate hands hung over the arms of his chair with a languid grace. He
looked like a convalescent Apollo. Never, on any previous occasion, had
he practiced more successfully the social art which he habitually
cultivatedthe art of casting himself on society in the character of a
well-bred Incubus, and conferring an obligation on his fellow-creatures
by allowing them to sit under him. It was undeniably a dull evening.
All the talking fell to the share of Mr. Vanstone and Miss Garth. Mrs.
Vanstone was habitually silent; Norah kept herself obstinately in the
background; Magdalen was quiet and undemonstrative beyond all former
precedent. From first to last, she kept rigidly on her guard. The few
meaning looks that she cast on Frank flashed at him like lightning, and
were gone before any one else could see them. Even when she brought him
his tea; and when, in doing so, her self-control gave way under the
temptation which no woman can resistthe temptation of touching the man
she loveseven then, she held the saucer so dexterously that it
screened her hand. Frank's self-possession was far less steadily
disciplined: it only lasted as long as he remained passive. When he
rose to go; when he felt the warm, clinging pressure of Magdalen's
fingers round his hand, and the lock of her hair which she slipped into
it at the same moment, he became awkward and confused. He might have
betrayed Magdalen and betrayed himself, but for Mr. Vanstone, who
innocently covered his retreat by following him out, and patting him on
the shoulder all the way. "God bless you, Frank!" cried the friendly
voice that never had a harsh note in it for anybody. "Your fortune's
waiting for you. Go in, my boygo in and win."
"Yes," said Frank. "Thank you. It will be rather difficult to go in and
win, at first. Of course, as you have always told me, a man's business
is to conquer his difficulties, and not to talk about them. At the same
time, I wish I didn't feel quite so loose as I do in my figures. It's
discouraging to feel loose in one's figures.Oh, yes; I'll write and
tell you how I get on. I'm very much obliged by your kindness, and very
sorry I couldn't succeed with the engineering. I think I should have
liked engineering better than trade. It can't be helped now, can it?
Thank you, again. Good-by."
So he drifted away into the misty commercial futureas aimless, as
helpless, as gentleman-like as ever.
CHAPTER IX.
Three months passed. During that time Frank remained in London;
pursuing his new duties, and writing occasionally to report himself to
Mr. Vanstone, as he had promised.
His letters were not enthusiastic on the subject of mercantile
occupations. He described himself as being still painfully loose in his
figures. He was also more firmly persuaded than evernow when it was
unfortunately too latethat he preferred engineering to trade. In spite
of this conviction; in spite of headaches caused by sitting on a high
stool and stooping over ledgers in unwholesome air; in spite of want of
society, and hasty breakfasts, and bad dinners at chop-houses, his
attendance at the office was regular, and his diligence at the desk
unremitting. The head of the department in which he was working might
be referred to if any corroboration of this statement was desired. Such
was the general tenor of the letters; and Frank's correspondent and
Frank's father differed over them as widely as usual. Mr. Vanstone
accepted them as proofs of the steady development of industrious
principles in the writer. Mr. Clare took his own characteristically
opposite view. "These London men," said the philosopher, "are not to be
trifled with by louts. They have got Frank by the scruff of the neckhe
can't wriggle himself freeand he makes a merit of yielding to sheer
necessity."
The three months' interval of Frank's probation in London passed less
cheerfully than usual in the household at Combe-Raven.
As the summer came nearer and nearer, Mrs. Vanstone's spirits, in spite
of her resolute efforts to control them, became more and more
depressed.
"I do my best," she said to Miss Garth; "I set an example of
cheerfulness to my husband and my childrenbut I dread July." Norah's
secret misgivings on her sister's account rendered her more than
usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year advanced. Even Mr.
Vanstone, when July drew nearer, lost something of his elasticity of
spirit. He kept up appearances in his wife's presencebut on all other
occasions there was now a perceptible shade of sadness in his look and
manner. Magdalen was so changed since Frank's departure that she helped
the general depression, instead of relieving it. All her movements had
grown languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same
weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she lost her
interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her eyes were heavy,
her nerves were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the
worsein one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to
herself and to all about her. Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with
these growing domestic difficulties, her own spirits suffered in the
effort. Her memory reverted, oftener and oftener, to the March morning
when the master and mistress of the house had departed for London, and
then the first serious change, for many a year past, had stolen over
the family atmosphere. When was that atmosphere to be clear again? When
were the clouds of change to pass off before the returning sunshine of
past and happier times?
The spring and the early summer wore away. The dreaded month of July
came, with its airless nights, its cloudless mornings, and its sultry
days.
On the fifteenth of the month, an event happened which took every one
but Norah by surprise. For the second time, without the slightest
apparent reasonfor the second time, without a word of warning
beforehandFrank suddenly re-appeared at his father's cottage.
Mr. Clare's lips opened to hail his son's return, in the old character
of the "bad shilling"; and closed again without uttering a word. There
was a portentous composure in Frank's manner which showed that he had
other news to communicate than the news of his dismissal. He answered
his father's sardonic look of inquiry by at once explaining that a very
important proposal for his future benefit had been made to him, that
morning, at the office. His first idea had been to communicate the
details in writing; but the partners had, on reflection, thought that
the necessary decision might be more readily obtained by a personal
interview with his father and his friends. He had laid aside the pen
accordingly, and had resigned himself to the railway on the spot.
After this preliminary statement, Frank proceeded to describe the
proposal which his employers had addressed to him, with every external
appearance of viewing it in the light of an intolerable hardship.
The great firm in the City had obviously made a discovery in relation
to their clerk, exactly similar to the discovery which had formerly
forced itself on the engineer in relation to his pupil. The young man,
as they politely phrased it, stood in need of some special stimulant to
stir him up. His employers (acting under a sense of their obligation to
the gentleman by whom Frank had been recommended) had considered the
question carefully, and had decided that the one promising use to which
they could put Mr. Francis Clare was to send him forthwith into another
quarter of the globe.
As a consequence of this decision, it was now, therefore, proposed that
he should enter the house of their correspondents in China; that he
should remain there, familiarizing himself thoroughly on the spot with
the tea trade and the silk trade for five years; and that he should
return, at the expiration of this period, to the central establishment
in London. If he made a fair use of his opportunities in China, he
would come back, while still a young man, fit for a position of trust
and emolument, and justified in looking forward, at no distant date, to
a time when the House would assist him to start in business for
himself. Such were the new prospects whichto adopt Mr. Clare's
theorynow forced themselves on the ever-reluctant, ever-helpless and
ever-ungrateful Frank. There was no time to be lost. The final answer
was to be at the office on "Monday, the twentieth": the correspondents
in China were to be written to by the mail on that day; and Frank was
to follow the letter by the next opportunity, or to resign his chance
in favor of some more enterprising young man.
Mr. Clare's reception of this extraordinary news was startling in the
extreme. The glorious prospect of his son's banishment to China
appeared to turn his brain. The firm pedestal of his philosophy sank
under him; the prejudices of society recovered their hold on his mind.
He seized Frank by the arm, and actually accompanied him to
Combe-Raven, in the amazing character of visitor to the house!
"Here I am with my lout," said Mr. Clare, before a word could be
uttered by the astonished family. "Hear his story, all of you. It has
reconciled me, for the first time in my life, to the anomaly of his
existence." Frank ruefully narrated the Chinese proposal for the second
time, and attempted to attach to it his own supplementary statement of
objections and difficulties. His father stopped him at the first word,
pointed peremptorily southeastward (from Somersetshire to China); and
said, without an instant's hesitation: "Go!" Mr. Vanstone, basking in
golden visions of his young friend's future, echoed that monosyllabic
decision with all his heart. Mrs. Vanstone, Miss Garth, even Norah
herself, spoke to the same purpose. Frank was petrified by an absolute
unanimity of opinion which he had not anticipated; and Magdalen was
caught, for once in her life, at the end of all her resources.
So far as practical results were concerned, the sitting of the family
council began and ended with the general opinion that Frank must go.
Mr. Vanstone's faculties were so bewildered by the son's sudden
arrival, the father's unexpected visit, and the news they both brought
with them, that he petitioned for an adjournment before the necessary
arrangements connected with his young friend's departure were
considered in detail. "Suppose we all sleep upon it?" he said.
"Tomorrow our heads will feel a little steadier; and to-morrow will be
time enough to decide all uncertainties." This suggestion was readily
adopted; and all further proceedings stood adjourned until the next
day.
That next day was destined to decide more uncertainties than Mr.
Vanstone dreamed of.
Early in the morning, after making tea by herself as usual, Miss Garth
took her parasol and strolled into the garden. She had slept ill; and
ten minutes in the open air before the family assembled at breakfast
might help to compensate her, as she thought, for the loss of her
night's rest.
She wandered to the outermost boundary of the flower-garden, and then
returned by another path, which led back, past the side of an
ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields from a corner
of the lawn. A slight noiselike, and yet not like, the chirruping of a
birdcaught her ear as she approached the summer-house. She stepped
round to the entrance; looked in; and discovered Magdalen and Frank
seated close together. To Miss Garth's horror, Magdalen's arm was
unmistakably round Frank's neck; and, worse still, the position of her
face, at the moment of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had
just been offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and
foremost of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In
plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss.
In the presence of such an emergency as now confronted her, Miss Garth
felt instinctively that all ordinary phrases of reproof would be
phrases thrown away.
"I presume," she remarked, addressing Magdalen with the merciless
self-possession of a middle-aged lady, unprovided for the occasion with
any kissing remembrances of her own"I presume (whatever excuses your
effrontery may suggest) you will not deny that my duty compels me to
mention what I have just seen to your father?"
"I will save you the trouble," replied Magdalen, composedly. "I will
mention it to him myself."
With those words, she looked round at Frank, standing trebly helpless
in a corner of the summer-house. "You shall hear what happens," she
said, with her bright smile. "And so shall you," she added for Miss
Garth's especial benefit, as she sauntered past the governess on her
way back to the breakfast-table. The eyes of Miss Garth followed her
indignantly; and Frank slipped out on his side at that favorable
opportunity.
Under these circumstances, there was but one course that any
respectable woman could takeshe could only shudder. Miss Garth
registered her protest in that form, and returned to the house.
When breakfast was over, and when Mr. Vanstone's hand descended to his
pocket in search of his cigar-case, Magdalen rose; looked significantly
at Miss Garth; and followed her father into the hall.
"Papa," she said, "I want to speak to you this morningin private."
"Ay! ay!" returned Mr. Vanstone. "What about, my dear!"
"About" Magdalen hesitated, searching for a satisfactory form of
expression, and found it. "About business, papa," she said.
Mr. Vanstone took his garden hat from the hall tableopened his eyes in
mute perplexityattempted to associate in his mind the two
extravagantly dissimilar ideas of Magdalen and "business"failedand
led the way resignedly into the garden.
His daughter took his arm, and walked with him to a shady seat at a
convenient distance from the house. She dusted the seat with her smart
silk apron before her father occupied it. Mr. Vanstone was not
accustomed to such an extraordinary act of attention as this. He sat
down, looking more puzzled than ever. Magdalen immediately placed
herself on his knee, and rested her head comfortably on his shoulder.
"Am I heavy, papa?" she asked.
"Yes, my dear, you are," said Mr. Vanstone"but not too heavy for me.
Stop on your perch, if you like it. Well? And what may this business
happen to be?"
"It begins with a question."
"Ah, indeed? That doesn't surprise me. Business with your sex, my dear,
always begins with questions. Go on."
"Papa! do you ever intend allowing me to be married?"
Mr. Vanstone's eyes opened wider and wider. The question, to use his
own phrase, completely staggered him.
"This is business with a vengeance!" he said. "Why, Magdalen! what have
you got in that harum-scarum head of yours now?"
"I don't exactly know, papa. Will you answer my question?"
"I will if I can, my dear; you rather stagger me. Well, I don't know.
Yes; I suppose I must let you be married one of these daysif we can
find a good husband for you. How hot your face is! Lift it up, and let
the air blow over it. You won't? Wellhave your own way. If talking of
business means tickling your cheek against my whisker I've nothing to
say against it. Go on, my dear. What's the next question? Come to the
point."
She was far too genuine a woman to do anything of the sort. She skirted
round the point and calculated her distance to the nicety of a
hair-breadth.
"We were all very much surprised yesterdaywere we not, papa? Frank is
wonderfully lucky, isn't he?"
"He's the luckiest dog I ever came across," said Mr. Vanstone "But what
has that got to do with this business of yours? I dare say you see your
way, Magdalen. Hang me if I can see mine!"
She skirted a little nearer.
"I suppose he will make his fortune in China?" she said. "It's a long
way off, isn't it? Did you observe, papa, that Frank looked sadly out
of spirits yesterday?"
"I was so surprised by the news," said Mr. Vanstone, "and so staggered
by the sight of old Clare's sharp nose in my house, that I didn't much
notice. Now you remind me of ityes. I don't think Frank took kindly to
his own good luck; not kindly at all."
"Do you wonder at that, papa?"
"Yes, my dear; I do, rather."
"Don't you think it's hard to be sent away for five years, to make your
fortune among hateful savages, and lose sight of your friends at home
for all that long time? Don't you think Frank will miss us sadly?
Don't you, papa?don't you?"
"Gently, Magdalen! I'm a little too old for those long arms of yours to
throttle me in fun.You're right, my love. Nothing in this world
without a drawback. Frank will miss his friends in England: there's
no denying that."
"You always liked Frank. And Frank always liked you."
"Yes, yesa good fellow; a quiet, good fellow. Frank and I have always
got on smoothly together."
"You have got on like father and son, haven't you?"
"Certainly, my dear."
"Perhaps you will think it harder on him when he has gone than you
think it now?"
"Likely enough, Magdalen; I don't say no."
"Perhaps you will wish he had stopped in England? Why shouldn't he stop
in England, and do as well as if he went to China?"
"My dear! he has no prospects in England. I wish he had, for his own
sake. I wish the lad well, with all my heart."
"May I wish him well too, papawith all my heart?"
"Certainly, my loveyour old playfellowwhy not? What's the matter? God
bless my soul, what is the girl crying about? One would think Frank was
transported for life. You goose! You know, as well as I do, he is going
to China to make his fortune."
"He doesn't want to make his fortunehe might do much better."
"The deuce he might! How, I should like to know?"
"I'm afraid to tell you. I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Will you
promise not to laugh at me?"
"Anything to please you, my dear. Yes: I promise. Now, then, out with
it! How might Frank do better?"
"He might marry Me."
If the summer scene which then spread before Mr. Vanstone's eyes had
suddenly changed to a dreary winter viewif the trees had lost all
their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with snow in an
instanthis face could hardly have expressed greater amazement than it
displayed when his daughter's faltering voice spoke those four last
words. He tried to look at herbut she steadily refused him the
opportunity: she kept her face hidden over his shoulder. Was she in
earnest? His cheek, still wet with her tears, answered for her. There
was a long pause of silence; she waitedwith unaccustomed patience, she
waited for him to speak. He roused himself, and spoke these words only:
"You surprise me, Magdalen; you surprise me more than I can say."
At the altered tone of his voicealtered to a quiet, fatherly
seriousnessMagdalen's arms clung round him closer than before.
"Have I disappointed you, papa?" she asked, faintly. "Don't say I have
disappointed you! Who am I to tell my secret to, if not to you? Don't
let him godon't! don't! You will break his heart. He is afraid to tell
his father; he is even afraid you might be angry with him. There is
nobody to speak for us, exceptexcept me. Oh, don't let him go! Don't
for his sake" she whispered the next words in a kiss"Don't for Mine!"
Her father's kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair head
tenderly. "Hush, my love," he said, almost in a whisper; "hush!" She
little knew what a revelation every word, every action that escaped
her, now opened before him. She had made him her grown-up playfellow,
from her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks,
she had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long
enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter
forced on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had
taught him that she was a taller child in later yearsand had taught
him little more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction
that she was a woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of
her bosom pressed against his; in the nervous thrill of her arms
clasped around his neck. The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a
womanwith the master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart
already!
"Have you thought long of this, my dear?" he asked, as soon as he could
speak composedly. "Are you sure?"
She answered the question before he could finish it.
"Sure I love him?" she said. "Oh, what words can say Yes for me, as I
want to say it? I love him!" Her voice faltered softly; and her answer
ended in a sigh.
"You are very young. You and Frank, my love, are both very young."
She raised her head from his shoulder for the first time. The thought
and its expression flashed from her at the same moment.
"Are we much younger than you and mamma were?" she asked, smiling
through her tears.
She tried to lay her head back in its old position; but as she spoke
those words, her father caught her round the waist, forced her, before
she was aware of it, to look him in the faceand kissed her, with a
sudden outburst of tenderness which brought the tears thronging back
thickly into her eyes. "Not much younger, my child," he said, in low,
broken tones"not much younger than your mother and I were." He put her
away from him, and rose from the seat, and turned his head aside
quickly. "Wait here, and compose yourself; I will go indoors and speak
to your mother." His voice trembled over those parting words; and he
left her without once looking round again.
She waitedwaited a weary time; and he never came back. At last her
growing anxiety urged her to follow him into the house. A new timidity
throbbed in her heart as she doubtingly approached the door. Never had
she seen the depths of her father's simple nature stirred as they had
been stirred by her confession. She almost dreaded her next meeting
with him. She wandered softly to and fro in the hall, with a shyness
unaccountable to herself; with a terror of being discovered and spoken
to by her sister or Miss Garth, which made her nervously susceptible to
the slightest noises in the house. The door of the morning-room opened
while her back was turned toward it. She started violently, as she
looked round and saw her father in the hall: her heart beat faster and
faster, and she felt herself turning pale. A second look at him, as he
came nearer, re-assured her. He was composed again, though not so
cheerful as usual. She noticed that he advanced and spoke to her with a
forbearing gentleness, which was more like his manner to her mother
than his ordinary manner to herself.
"Go in, my love," he said, opening the door for her which he had just
closed. "Tell your mother all you have told meand more, if you have
more to say. She is better prepared for you than I was. We will take
to-day to think of it, Magdalen; and to-morrow you shall know, and
Frank shall know, what we decide."
Her eyes brightened, as they looked into his face and saw the decision
there already, with the double penetration of her womanhood and her
love. Happy, and beautiful in her happiness, she put his hand to her
lips, and went, without hesitation, into the morning-room. There, her
father's words had smoothed the way for her; there, the first shock of
the surprise was past and over, and only the pleasure of it remained.
Her mother had been her age once; her mother would know how fond she
was of Frank. So the coming interview was anticipated in her thoughts;
andexcept that there was an unaccountable appearance of restraint in
Mrs. Vanstone's first reception of herwas anticipated aright. After a
little, the mother's questions came more and more unreservedly from the
sweet, unforgotten experience of the mother's heart. She lived again
through her own young days of hope and love in Magdalen's replies.
The next morning the all-important decision was announced in words. Mr.
Vanstone took his daughter upstairs into her mother's room, and there
placed before her the result of the yesterday's consultation, and of
the night's reflection which had followed it. He spoke with perfect
kindness and self-possession of mannerbut in fewer and more serious
words than usual; and he held his wife's hand tenderly in his own all
through the interview.
He informed Magdalen that neither he nor her mother felt themselves
justified in blaming her attachment to Frank. It had been in part,
perhaps, the natural consequence of her childish familiarity with him;
in part, also, the result of the closer intimacy between them which the
theatrical entertainment had necessarily produced. At the same time, it
was now the duty of her parents to put that attachment, on both sides,
to a proper testfor her sake, because her happy future was their
dearest care; for Frank's sake, because they were bound to give him the
opportunity of showing himself worthy of the trust confided in him.
They were both conscious of being strongly prejudiced in Frank's favor.
His father's eccentric conduct had made the lad the object of their
compassion and their care from his earliest years. He (and his younger
brothers) had almost filled the places to them of those other children
of their own whom they had lost. Although they firmly believed their
good opinion of Frank to be well foundedstill, in the interest of
their daughter's happiness, it was necessary to put that opinion firmly
to the proof, by fixing certain conditions, and by interposing a year
of delay between the contemplated marriage and the present time.
During that year, Frank was to remain at the office in London; his
employers being informed beforehand that family circumstances prevented
his accepting their offer of employment in China. He was to consider
this concession as a recognition of the attachment between Magdalen and
himself, on certain terms only. If, during the year of probation, he
failed to justify the confidence placed in hima confidence which had
led Mr. Vanstone to take unreservedly upon himself the whole
responsibility of Frank's future prospectsthe marriage scheme was to
be considered, from that moment, as at an end. If, on the other hand,
the result to which Mr. Vanstone confidently looked forward really
occurredif Frank's probationary year proved his claim to the most
precious trust that could be placed in his handsthen Magdalen herself
should reward him with all that a woman can bestow; and the future,
which his present employers had placed before him as the result of a
five years' residence in China, should be realized in one year's time,
by the dowry of his young wife.
As her father drew that picture of the future, the outburst of
Magdalen's gratitude could no longer be restrained. She was deeply
touchedshe spoke from her inmost heart. Mr. Vanstone waited until his
daughter and his wife were composed again; and then added the last
words of explanation which were now left for him to speak.
"You understand, my love," he said, "that I am not anticipating Frank's
living in idleness on his wife's means? My plan for him is that he
should still profit by the interest which his present employers take in
him. Their knowledge of affairs in the City will soon place a good
partnership at his disposal, and you will give him the money to buy it
out of hand. I shall limit the sum, my dear, to half your fortune; and
the other half I shall have settled upon yourself. We shall all be
alive and hearty, I hope"he looked tenderly at his wife as he said
those words"all alive and hearty at the year's end. But if I am gone,
Magdalen, it will make no difference. My willmade long before I ever
thought of having a son-in-law divides my fortune into two equal parts.
One part goes to your mother; and the other part is fairly divided
between my children. You will have your share on your wedding-day (and
Norah will have hers when she marries) from my own hand, if I live; and
under my will if I die. There! there! no gloomy faces," he said, with a
momentary return of his every-day good spirits. "Your mother and I mean
to live and see Frank a great merchant. I shall leave you, my dear, to
enlighten the son on our new projects, while I walk over to the
cottage"
He stopped; his eyebrows contracted a little; and he looked aside
hesitatingly at Mrs. Vanstone.
"What must you do at the cottage, papa?" asked Magdalen, after having
vainly waited for him to finish the sentence of his own accord.
"I must consult Frank's father," he replied. "We must not forget that
Mr. Clare's consent is still wanting to settle this matter. And as time
presses, and we don't know what difficulties he may not raise, the
sooner I see him the better."
He gave that answer in low, altered tones; and rose from his chair in a
half-reluctant, half-resigned manner, which Magdalen observed with
secret alarm.
She glanced inquiringly at her mother. To all appearance, Mrs. Vanstone
had been alarmed by the change in him also. She looked anxious and
uneasy; she turned her face away on the sofa pillowturned it suddenly,
as if she was in pain.
"Are you not well, mamma?" asked Magdalen.
"Quite well, my love," said Mrs. Vanstone, shortly and sharply, without
turning round. "Leave me a littleI only want rest."
Magdalen went out with her father.
"Papa!" she whispered anxiously, as they descended the stairs; "you
don't think Mr. Clare will say No?"
"I can't tell beforehand," answered Mr. Vanstone. "I hope he will say
Yes."
"There is no reason why he should say anything elseis there?"
She put the question faintly, while he was getting his hat and stick;
and he did not appear to hear her. Doubting whether she should repeat
it or not, she accompanied him as far as the garden, on his way to Mr.
Clare's cottage. He stopped her on the lawn, and sent her back to the
house.
"You have nothing on your head, my dear," he said. "If you want to be
in the garden, don't forget how hot the sun isdon't come out without
your hat."
He walked on toward the cottage.
She waited a moment, and looked after him. She missed the customary
flourish of his stick; she saw his little Scotch terrier, who had run
out at his heels, barking and capering about him unnoticed. He was out
of spirits: he was strangely out of spirits. What did it mean?
CHAPTER X.
On returning to the house, Magdalen felt her shoulder suddenly touched
from behind as she crossed the hall. She turned and confronted her
sister. Before she could ask any questions, Norah confusedly addressed
her, in these words: "I beg your pardon; I beg you to forgive me."
Magdalen looked at her sister in astonishment. All memory, on her side,
of the sharp words which had passed between them in the shrubbery was
lost in the new interests that now absorbed her; lost as completely as
if the angry interview had never taken place. "Forgive you!" she
repeated, amazedly. "What for?"
"I have heard of your new prospects," pursued Norah, speaking with a
mechanical submissiveness of manner which seemed almost ungracious; "I
wished to set things right between us; I wished to say I was sorry for
what happened. Will you forget it? Will you forget and forgive what
happened in the shrubbery?" She tried to proceed; but her inveterate
reserveor, perhaps, her obstinate reliance on her own
opinionssilenced her at those last words. Her face clouded over on a
sudden. Before her sister could answer her, she turned away abruptly
and ran upstairs.
The door of the library opened, before Magdalen could follow her; and
Miss Garth advanced to express the sentiments proper to the occasion.
They were not the mechanically-submissive sentiments which Magdalen had
just heard. Norah had struggled against her rooted distrust of Frank,
in deference to the unanswerable decision of both her parents in his
favor; and had suppressed the open expression of her antipathy, though
the feeling itself remained unconquered. Miss Garth had made no such
concession to the master and mistress of the house. She had hitherto
held the position of a high authority on all domestic questions; and
she flatly declined to get off her pedestal in deference to any change
in the family circumstances, no matter how amazing or how unexpected
that change might be.
"Pray accept my congratulations," said Miss Garth, bristling all over
with implied objections to Frank"my congratulations, and my
apologies. When I caught you kissing Mr. Francis Clare in the
summer-house, I had no idea you were engaged in carrying out the
intentions of your parents. I offer no opinion on the subject. I merely
regret my own accidental appearance in the character of an Obstacle to
the course of true-lovewhich appears to run smooth in summer-houses,
whatever Shakespeare may say to the contrary. Consider me for the
future, if you please, as an Obstacle removed. May you be happy!" Miss
Garth's lips closed on that last sentence like a trap, and Miss Garth's
eyes looked ominously prophetic into the matrimonial future.
If Magdalen's anxieties had not been far too serious to allow her the
customary free use of her tongue, she would have been ready on the
instant with an appropriately satirical answer. As it was, Miss Garth
simply irritated her. "Pooh!" she saidand ran upstairs to her sister's
room.
She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She tried the door,
and it resisted her from the inside. The sullen, unmanageable Norah was
locked in.
Under other circumstances, Magdalen would not have been satisfied with
knockingshe would have called through the door loudly and more loudly,
till the house was disturbed and she had carried her point. But the
doubts and fears of the morning had unnerved her already. She went
downstairs again softly, and took her hat from the stand in the hall.
"He told me to put my hat on," she said to herself, with a meek filial
docility which was totally out of her character.
She went into the garden, on the shrubbery side; and waited there to
catch the first sight of her father on his return. Half an hour passed;
forty minutes passedand then his voice reached her from among the
distant trees. "Come in to heel!" she heard him call out loudly to the
dog. Her face turned pale. "He's angry with Snap!" she exclaimed to
herself in a whisper. The next minute he appeared in view; walking
rapidly, with his head down and Snap at his heels in disgrace. The
sudden excess of her alarm as she observed those ominous signs of
something wrong rallied her natural energy, and determined her
desperately on knowing the worst. She walked straight forward to meet
her father.
"Your face tells your news," she said faintly. "Mr. Clare has been as
heartless as usualMr. Clare has said No?"
Her father turned on her with a sudden severity, so entirely
unparalleled in her experience of him that she started back in
downright terror.
"Magdalen!" he said; "whenever you speak of my old friend and neighbor
again, bear this in mind: Mr. Clare has just laid me under an
obligation which I shall remember gratefully to the end of my life."
He stopped suddenly after saying those remarkable words. Seeing that he
had startled her, his natural kindness prompted him instantly to soften
the reproof, and to end the suspense from which she was plainly
suffering. "Give me a kiss, my love," he resumed; "and I'll tell you in
return that Mr. Clare has saidYES."
She attempted to thank him; but the sudden luxury of relief was too
much for her. She could only cling round his neck in silence. He felt
her trembling from head to foot, and said a few words to calm her. At
the altered tones of his master's voice, Snap's meek tail re-appeared
fiercely from between his legs; and Snap's lungs modestly tested his
position with a brief, experimental bark. The dog's quaintly
appropriate assertion of himself on his old footing was the
interruption of all others which was best fitted to restore Magdalen to
herself. She caught the shaggy little terrier up in her arms and kissed
him next. "You darling," she exclaimed, "you're almost as glad as I
am!" She turned again to her father, with a look of tender reproach.
"You frightened me, papa," she said. "You were so unlike yourself."
"I shall be right again to-morrow, my dear. I am a little upset
to-day."
"Not by me?"
"No, no."
"By something you have heard at Mr. Clare's?"
"Yesnothing you need alarm yourself about; nothing that won't wear off
by to-morrow. Let me go now, my dear; I have a letter to write; and I
want to speak to your mother."
He left her and went on to the house. Magdalen lingered a little on the
lawn, to feel all the happiness of her new sensationsthen turned away
toward the shrubbery to enjoy the higher luxury of communicating them.
The dog followed her. She whistled, and clapped her hands. "Find him!"
she said, with beaming eyes. "Find Frank!" Snap scampered into the
shrubbery, with a bloodthirsty snarl at starting. Perhaps he had
mistaken his young mistress and considered himself her emissary in
search of a rat?
Meanwhile, Mr. Vanstone entered the house. He met his wife slowly
descending the stairs, and advanced to give her his arm. "How has it
ended?" she asked, anxiously, as he led her to the sofa.
"Happilyas we hoped it would," answered her husband. "My old friend
has justified my opinion of him."
"Thank God!" said Mrs. Vanstone, fervently. "Did you feel it, love?"
she asked, as her husband arranged the sofa pillows"did you feel it as
painfully as I feared you would?"
"I had a duty to do, my dearand I did it."
After replying in those terms, he hesitated. Apparently, he had
something more to saysomething, perhaps, on the subject of that
passing uneasiness of mind which had been produced by his interview
with Mr. Clare, and which Magdalen's questions had obliged him to
acknowledge. A look at his wife decided his doubts in the negative. He
only asked if she felt comfortable; and then turned away to leave the
room.
"Must you go?" she asked.
"I have a letter to write, my dear."
"Anything about Frank?"
"No: to-morrow will do for that. A letter to Mr. Pendril. I want him
here immediately."
"Business, I suppose?"
"Yes, my dearbusiness."
He went out, and shut himself into the little front room, close to the
hall door, which was called his study. By nature and habit the most
procrastinating of letter-writers, he now inconsistently opened his
desk and took up the pen without a moment's delay. His letter was long
enough to occupy three pages of note-paper; it was written with a
readiness of expression and a rapidity of hand which seldom
characterized his proceedings when engaged over his ordinary
correspondence. He wrote the address as follows: "ImmediateWilliam
Pendril, Esq., Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn, London"then pushed the
letter away from him, and sat at the table, drawing lines on the
blotting-paper with his pen, lost in thought. "No," he said to himself;
"I can do nothing more till Pendril comes." He rose; his face
brightened as he put the stamp on the envelope. The writing of the
letter had sensibly relieved him, and his whole bearing showed it as he
left the room.
On the doorstep he found Norah and Miss Garth, setting forth together
for a walk.
"Which way are you going?" he asked. "Anywhere near the post-office? I
wish you would post this letter for me, Norah. It is very importantso
important that I hardly like to trust it to Thomas, as usual."
Norah at once took charge of the letter.
"If you look, my dear," continued her father, "you will see that I am
writing to Mr. Pendril. I expect him here to-morrow afternoon. Will you
give the necessary directions, Miss Garth? Mr. Pendril will sleep here
to-morrow night, and stay over Sunday.Wait a minute! Today is Friday.
Surely I had an engagement for Saturday afternoon?" He consulted his
pocketbook and read over one of the entries, with a look of annoyance.
"Grailsea Mill, three o'clock, Saturday. Just the time when Pendril
will be here; and I must be at home to see him. How can I manage it?
Monday will be too late for my business at Grailsea. I'll go to-day,
instead; and take my chance of catching the miller at his dinner-time."
He looked at his watch. "No time for driving; I must do it by railway.
If I go at once, I shall catch the down train at our station, and get
on to Grailsea. Take care of the letter, Norah. I won't keep dinner
waiting; if the return train doesn't suit, I'll borrow a gig and get
back in that way."
As he took up his hat, Magdalen appeared at the door, returning from
her interview with Frank. The hurry of her father's movements attracted
her attention; and she asked him where he was going.
"To Grailsea," replied Mr. Vanstone. "Your business, Miss Magdalen, has
got in the way of mineand mine must give way to it."
He spoke those parting words in his old hearty manner; and left them,
with the old characteristic flourish of his trusty stick.
"My business!" said Magdalen. "I thought my business was done."
Miss Garth pointed significantly to the letter in Norah's hand. "Your
business, beyond all doubt," she said. "Mr. Pendril is coming tomorrow;
and Mr. Vanstone seems remarkably anxious about it. Law, and its
attendant troubles already! Governesses who look in at summer-house
doors are not the only obstacles to the course of true-love. Parchment
is sometimes an obstacle. I hope you may find Parchment as pliable as I
amI wish you well through it. Now, Norah!"
Miss Garth's second shaft struck as harmless as the first. Magdalen had
returned to the house, a little vexed; her interview with Frank having
been interrupted by a messenger from Mr. Clare, sent to summon the son
into the father's presence. Although it had been agreed at the private
interview between Mr. Vanstone and Mr. Clare that the questions
discussed that morning should not be communicated to the children until
the year of probation was at an end-and although under these
circumstances Mr. Clare had nothing to tell Frank which Magdalen could
not communicate to him much more agreeablythe philosopher was not the
less resolved on personally informing his son of the parental
concession which rescued him from Chinese exile. The result was a
sudden summons to the cottage, which startled Magdalen, but which did
not appear to take Frank by surprise. His filial experience penetrated
the mystery of Mr. Clare's motives easily enough. "When my father's in
spirits," he said, sulkily, "he likes to bully me about my good luck.
This message means that he's going to bully me now."
"Don't go," suggested Magdalen.
"I must," rejoined Frank. "I shall never hear the last of it if I
don't. He's primed and loaded, and he means to go off. He went off,
once, when the engineer took me; he went off, twice, when the office in
the City took me; and he's going off, thrice, now you've taken me. If
it wasn't for you, I should wish I had never been born. Yes; your
father's been kind to me, I knowand I should have gone to China, if it
hadn't been for him. I'm sure I'm very much obliged. Of course, we have
no right to expect anything elsestill it's discouraging to keep us
waiting a year, isn't it?"
Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which even Frank
submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not forget to set down
his discontent to the right side. "How fond he is of me!" she thought.
"A year's waiting is quite a hardship to him." She returned to the
house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank's
complimentary complaints. Miss Garth's elaborate satire, addressed to
her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste
of Miss Garth's breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do
Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? She never even said as
much as "Pooh!" this time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence,
and sauntered languidly into the morning-room to keep her mother
company. She lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel between Frank and
his father, with accidental interruptions in the shape of cold chicken
and cheese-cakes. She trifled away half an hour at the piano; and
played, in that time, selections from the Songs of Mendelssohn, the
Mazurkas of Chopin, the Operas of Verdi, and the Sonatas of Mozartall
of whom had combined together on this occasion and produced one
immortal work, entitled "Frank." She closed the piano and went up to
her room, to dream away the hours luxuriously in visions of her married
future. The green shutters were closed, the easy-chair was pushed in
front of the glass, the maid was summoned as usual; and the comb
assisted the mistress's reflections, through the medium of the
mistress's hair, till heat and idleness asserted their narcotic
influences together, and Magdalen fell asleep.
It was past three o'clock when she woke. On going downstairs again she
found her mother, Norah and Miss Garth all sitting together enjoying
the shade and the coolness under the open portico in front of the
house.
Norah had the railway time-table in her hand. They had been discussing
the chances of Mr. Vanstone's catching the return train and getting
back in good time. That topic had led them, next, to his business
errand at Grailseaan errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the
benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm-servant, and who was
now hard pressed by serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had
glided insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never
exhausted by repetitionthe praise of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of
the three had some experience of her own to relate of his simple,
generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost painfully
interesting to his wife. She was too near the time of her trial now not
to feel nervously sensitive to the one subject which always held the
foremost place in her heart. Her eyes overflowed as Magdalen joined the
little group under the portico; her frail hand trembled as it signed to
her youngest daughter to take the vacant chair by her side. "We were
talking of your father," she said, softly. "Oh, my love, if your
married life is only as happy" Her voice failed her; she put her
handkerchief hurriedly over her face and rested her head on Magdalen's
shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Garth, who at once led the
conversation back to the more trivial subject of Mr. Vanstone's return.
"We have all been wondering," she said, with a significant look at
Magdalen, "whether your father will leave Grailsea in time to catch the
trainor whether he will miss it and be obliged to drive back. What do
you say?"
"I say, papa will miss the train," replied Magdalen, taking Miss
Garth's hint with her customary quickness. "The last thing he attends
to at Grailsea will be the business that brings him there. Whenever he
has business to do, he always puts it off to the last moment, doesn't
he, mamma?"
The question roused her mother exactly as Magdalen had intended it
should. "Not when his errand is an errand of kindness," said Mrs.
Vanstone. "He has gone to help the miller in a very pressing
difficulty"
"And don't you know what he'll do?" persisted Magdalen. "He'll romp
with the miller's children, and gossip with the mother, and hob-and-nob
with the father. At the last moment when he has got five minutes left
to catch the train, he'll say: 'Let's go into the counting-house and
look at the books.' He'll find the books dreadfully complicated; he'll
suggest sending for an accountant; he'll settle the business off hand,
by lending the money in the meantime; he'll jog back comfortably in the
miller's gig; and he'll tell us all how pleasant the lanes were in the
cool of the evening."
The little character-sketch which these words drew was too faithful a
likeness not to be recognized. Mrs. Vanstone showed her appreciation of
it by a smile. "When your father returns," she said, "we will put your
account of his proceedings to the test. I think," she continued, rising
languidly from her chair, "I had better go indoors again now and rest
on the sofa till he comes back."
The little group under the portico broke up. Magdalen slipped away into
the garden to hear Frank's account of the interview with his father.
The other three ladies entered the house together. When Mrs. Vanstone
was comfortably established on the sofa, Norah and Miss Garth left her
to repose, and withdrew to the library to look over the last parcel of
books from London.
It was a quiet, cloudless summer's day. The heat was tempered by a
light western breeze; the voices of laborers at work in a field near
reached the house cheerfully; the clock-bell of the village church as
it struck the quarters floated down the wind with a clearer ring, a
louder melody than usual. Sweet odors from field and flower-garden,
stealing in at the open windows, filled the house with their fragrance;
and the birds in Norah's aviary upstairs sang the song of their
happiness exultingly in the sun.
As the church clock struck the quarter past four, the morning-room door
opened; and Mrs. Vanstone crossed the hall alone. She had tried vainly
to compose herself. She was too restless to lie still and sleep. For a
moment she directed her steps toward the porticothen turned, and
looked about her, doubtful where to go, or what to do next. While she
was still hesitating, the half-open door of her husband's study
attracted her attention. The room seemed to be in sad confusion.
Drawers were left open; coats and hats, account-books and papers, pipes
and fishing-rods were all scattered about together. She went in, and
pushed the door tobut so gently that she still left it ajar. "It will
amuse me to put his room to rights," she thought to herself. "I should
like to do something for him before I am down on my bed, helpless." She
began to arrange his drawers, and found his banker's book lying open in
one of them. "My poor dear, how careless he is! The servants might have
seen all his affairs, if I had not happened to have looked in." She set
the drawers right; and then turned to the multifarious litter on a
side-table. A little old-fashioned music-book appeared among the
scattered papers, with her name written in it, in faded ink. She
blushed like a young girl in the first happiness of the discovery. "How
good he is to me! He remembers my poor old music-book, and keeps it for
my sake." As she sat down by the table and opened the book, the bygone
time came back to her in all its tenderness. The clock struck the
half-hour, struck the three-quartersand still she sat there, with the
music-book on her lap, dreaming happily over the old songs; thinking
gratefully of the golden days when his hand had turned the pages for
her, when his voice had whispered the words which no woman's memory
ever forgets.
Norah roused herself from the volume she was reading, and glanced at
the clock on the library mantel-piece.
"If papa comes back by the railway," she said, "he will be here in ten
minutes."
Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily from the book which was just
dropping out of her hand.
"I don't think he will come by train," she replied. "He will jog
backas Magdalen flippantly expressed itin the miller's gig."
As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door. The
footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth.
"A person wishes to see you, ma'am."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, ma'am. A stranger to mea respectable-looking manand he
said he particularly wished to see you."
Miss Garth went out into the hall. The footman closed the library door
after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs.
The man stood just inside the door, on the mat. His eyes wandered, his
face was palehe looked ill; he looked frightened. He trifled nervously
with his cap, and shifted it backward and forward, from one hand to the
other.
"You wanted to see me?" said Miss Garth.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am.You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are you?"
"Certainly not. I am Miss Garth. Why do you ask the question?"
"I am employed in the clerk's office at Grailsea Station"
"Yes?"
"I am sent here"
He stopped again. His wandering eyes looked down at the mat, and his
restless hands wrung his cap harder and harder. He moistened his dry
lips, and tried once more.
"I am sent here on a very serious errand."
"Serious to me?"
"Serious to all in this house."
Miss Garth took one step nearer to himtook one steady look at his
face. She turned cold in the summer heat. "Stop!" she said, with a
sudden distrust, and glanced aside anxiously at the door of the
morning-room. It was safely closed. "Tell me the worst; and don't speak
loud. There has been an accident. Where?"
"On the railway. Close to Grailsea Station."
"The up-train to London?"
"No: the down-train at one-fifty"
"God Almighty help us! The train Mr. Vanstone traveled by to Grailsea?"
"The same. I was sent here by the up-train; the line was just cleared
in time for it. They wouldn't writethey said I must see 'Miss Garth,'
and tell her. There are seven passengers badly hurt; and two"
The next word failed on his lips; he raised his hand in the dead
silence. With eyes that opened wide in horror, he raised his hand and
pointed over Miss Garth's shoulder.
She turned a little, and looked back.
Face to face with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood the
mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched fast
mechanically in both hands. She stood, the specter of herself. With a
dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her voice,
she repeated the man's last words:
"Seven passengers badly hurt; and two"
Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the book dropped from them;
she sank forward heavily. Miss Garth caught her before she fellcaught
her, and turned upon the man, with the wife's swooning body in her
arms, to hear the husband's fate.
"The harm is done," she said; "you may speak out. Is he wounded, or
dead?"
"Dead."
CHAPTER XI.
The sun sank lower; the western breeze floated cool and fresh into the
house. As the evening advanced, the cheerful ring of the village clock
came nearer and nearer. Field and flower-garden felt the influence of
the hour, and shed their sweetest fragrance. The birds in Norah's
aviary sunned themselves in the evening stillness, and sang their
farewell gratitude to the dying day.
Staggered in its progress for a time only, the pitiless routine of the
house went horribly on its daily way. The panic-stricken servants took
their blind refuge in the duties proper to the hour. The footman softly
laid the table for dinner. The maid sat waiting in senseless doubt,
with the hot-water jugs for the bedrooms ranged near her in their
customary row. The gardener, who had been ordered to come to his
master, with vouchers for money that he had paid in excess of his
instructions, said his character was dear to him, and left the vouchers
at his appointed time. Custom that never yields, and Death that never
spares, met on the wreck of human happinessand Death gave way.
Heavily the thunder-clouds of Affliction had gathered over the
househeavily, but not at their darkest yet. At five, that evening, the
shock of the calamity had struck its blow. Before another hour had
passed, the disclosure of the husband's sudden death was followed by
the suspense of the wife's mortal peril. She lay helpless on her
widowed bed; her own life, and the life of her unborn child, trembling
in the balance.
But one mind still held possession of its resourcesbut one guiding
spirit now moved helpfully in the house of mourning.
If Miss Garth's early days had been passed as calmly and as happily as
her later life at Combe-Raven, she might have sunk under the cruel
necessities of the time. But the governess's youth had been tried in
the ordeal of family affliction; and she met her terrible duties with
the steady courage of a woman who had learned to suffer. Alone, she had
faced the trial of telling the daughters that they were fatherless.
Alone, she now struggled to sustain them, when the dreadful certainty
of their bereavement was at last impressed on their minds.
Her least anxiety was for the elder sister. The agony of Norah's grief
had forced its way outward to the natural relief of tears. It was not
so with Magdalen. Tearless and speechless, she sat in the room where
the revelation of her father's death had first reached her; her face,
unnaturally petrified by the sterile sorrow of old agea white,
changeless blank, fearful to look at. Nothing roused, nothing melted
her. She only said, "Don't speak to me; don't touch me. Let me bear it
by myself"and fell silent again. The first great grief which had
darkened the sisters' lives had, as it seemed, changed their everyday
characters already.
The twilight fell, and faded; and the summer night came brightly. As
the first carefully shaded light was kindled in the sick-room, the
physician, who had been summoned from Bristol, arrived to consult with
the medical attendant of the family. He could give no comfort: he could
only say, "We must try, and hope. The shock which struck her, when she
overheard the news of her husband's death, has prostrated her strength
at the time when she needed it most. No effort to preserve her shall be
neglected. I will stay here for the night."
He opened one of the windows to admit more air as he spoke. The view
overlooked the drive in front of the house and the road outside. Little
groups of people were standing before the lodge-gates, looking in. "If
those persons make any noise," said the doctor, "they must be warned
away." There was no need to warn them: they were only the laborers who
had worked on the dead man's property, and here and there some women
and children from the village. They were all thinking of himsome
talking of himand it quickened their sluggish minds to look at his
house. The gentlefolks thereabouts were mostly kind to them (the men
said), but none like him. The women whispered to each other of his
comforting ways when he came into their cottages. "He was a cheerful
man, poor soul; and thoughtful of us, too: he never came in and stared
at meal-times; the rest of 'em help us, and scold usall he ever said
was, better luck next time." So they stood and talked of him, and
looked at his house and grounds and moved off clumsily by twos and
threes, with the dim sense that the sight of his pleasant face would
never comfort them again. The dullest head among them knew, that night,
that the hard ways of poverty would be all the harder to walk on, now
he was gone.
A little later, news was brought to the bed-chamber door that old Mr.
Clare had come alone to the house, and was waiting in the hall below,
to hear what the physician said. Miss Garth was not able to go down to
him herself: she sent a message. He said to the servant, "I'll come and
ask again, in two hours' time"and went out slowly. Unlike other men in
all things else, the sudden death of his old friend had produced no
discernible change in him. The feeling implied in the errand of inquiry
that had brought him to the house was the one betrayal of human
sympathy which escaped the rugged, impenetrable old man.
He came again, when the two hours had expired; and this time Miss Garth
saw him.
They shook hands in silence. She waited; she nerved herself to hear him
speak of his lost friend. No: he never mentioned the dreadful accident,
he never alluded to the dreadful death. He said these words, "Is she
better, or worse?" and said no more. Was the tribute of his grief for
the husband sternly suppressed under the expression of his anxiety for
the wife? The nature of the man, unpliably antagonistic to the world
and the world's customs, might justify some such interpretation of his
conduct as this. He repeated his question, "Is she better, or worse?"
Miss Garth answered him:
"No better; if there is any change, it is a change for the worse."
They spoke those words at the window of the morning-room which opened
on the garden. Mr. Clare paused, after hearing the reply to his
inquiry, stepped out on to the walk, then turned on a sudden, and spoke
again:
"Has the doctor given her up?" he asked.
"He has not concealed from us that she is in danger. We can only pray
for her."
The old man laid his hand on Miss Garth's arm as she answered him, and
looked her attentively in the face.
"You believe in prayer?" he said.
Miss Garth drew sorrowfully back from him.
"You might have spared me that question sir, at such a time as this."
He took no notice of her answer; his eyes were still fastened on her
face.
"Pray!" he said. "Pray as you never prayed before, for the preservation
of Mrs. Vanstone's life."
He left her. His voice and manner implied some unutterable dread of the
future, which his words had not confessed. Miss Garth followed him into
the garden, and called to him. He heard her, but he never turned back:
he quickened his pace, as if he desired to avoid her. She watched him
across the lawn in the warm summer moonlight. She saw his white,
withered hands, saw them suddenly against the black background of the
shrubbery, raised and wrung above his head. They droppedthe trees
shrouded him in darknesshe was gone.
Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman, with the burden on her
mind of one anxiety more.
It was then past eleven o'clock. Some little time had elapsed since she
had seen the sisters and spoken to them. The inquiries she addressed to
one of the female servants only elicited the information that they were
both in their rooms. She delayed her return to the mother's bedside to
say her parting words of comfort to the daughters, before she left them
for the night. Norah's room was the nearest. She softly opened the door
and looked in. The kneeling figure by the bedside told her that God's
help had found the fatherless daughter in her affliction. Grateful
tears gathered in her eyes as she looked: she softly closed the door,
and went on to Magdalen's room. There doubt stayed her feet at the
threshold, and she waited for a moment before going in.
A sound in the room caught her earthe monotonous rustling of a woman's
dress, now distant, now near; passing without cessation from end to end
over the floora sound which told her that Magdalen was pacing to and
fro in the secrecy of her own chamber. Miss Garth knocked. The rustling
ceased; the door was opened, and the sad young face confronted her,
locked in its cold despair; the large light eyes looked mechanically
into hers, as vacant and as tearless as ever.
That look wrung the heart of the faithful woman, who had trained her
and loved her from a child. She took Magdalen tenderly in her arms.
"Oh, my love," she said, "no tears yet! Oh, if I could see you as I
have seen Norah! Speak to me, Magdalentry if you can speak to me."
She tried, and spoke:
"Norah," she said, "feels no remorse. He was not serving Norah's
interests when he went to his death: he was serving mine."
With that terrible answer, she put her cold lips to Miss Garth's cheek.
"Let me bear it by myself," she said, and gently closed the door.
Again Miss Garth waited at the threshold, and again the sound of the
rustling dress passed to and fronow far, now nearto and fro with a
cruel, mechanical regularity, that chilled the warmest sympathy, and
daunted the boldest hope.
The night passed. It had been agreed, if no change for the better
showed itself by the morning, that the London physician whom Mrs.
Vanstone had consulted some months since should be summoned to the
house on the next day. No change for the better appeared, and the
physician was sent for.
As the morning advanced, Frank came to make inquiries from the cottage.
Had Mr. Clare intrusted to his son the duty which he had personally
performed on the previous day through reluctance to meet Miss Garth
again after what he had said to her? It might be so. Frank could throw
no light on the subject; he was not in his father's confidence. He
looked pale and bewildered. His first inquiries after Magdalen showed
how his weak nature had been shaken by the catastrophe. He was not
capable of framing his own questions: the words faltered on his lips,
and the ready tears came into his eyes. Miss Garth's heart warmed to
him for the first time. Grief has this that is noble in itit accepts
all sympathy, come whence it may. She encouraged the lad by a few kind
words, and took his hand at parting.
Before noon Frank returned with a second message. His father desired to
know whether Mr. Pendril was not expected at Combe-Raven on that day.
If the lawyer's arrival was looked for, Frank was directed to be in
attendance at the station, and to take him to the cottage, where a bed
would be placed at his disposal. This message took Miss Garth by
surprise. It showed that Mr. Clare had been made acquainted with his
dead friend's purpose of sending for Mr. Pendril. Was the old man's
thoughtful offer of hospitality another indirect expression of the
natural human distress which he perversely concealed? or was he aware
of some secret necessity for Mr. Pendril's presence, of which the
bereaved family had been kept in total ignorance? Miss Garth was too
heart-sick and hopeless to dwell on either question. She told Frank
that Mr. Pendril had been expected at three o'clock, and sent him back
with her thanks.
Shortly after his departure, such anxieties on Magdalen's account as
her mind was now able to feel were relieved by better news than her
last night's experience had inclined her to hope for. Norah's influence
had been exerted to rouse her sister; and Norah's patient sympathy had
set the prisoned grief free. Magdalen had suffered severelysuffered
inevitably, with such a nature as hersin the effort that relieved her.
The healing tears had not come gently; they had burst from her with a
torturing, passionate vehemencebut Norah had never left her till the
struggle was over, and the calm had come. These better tidings
encouraged Miss Garth to withdraw to her own room, and to take the rest
which she needed sorely. Worn out in body and mind, she slept from
sheer exhaustionslept heavily and dreamless for some hours. It was
between three and four in the afternoon when she was roused by one of
the female servants. The woman had a note in her handa note left by
Mr. Clare the younger, with a message desiring that it might be
delivered to Miss Garth immediately. The name written in the lower
corner of the envelope was "William Pendril." The lawyer had arrived.
Miss Garth opened the note. After a few first sentences of sympathy and
condolence, the writer announced his arrival at Mr. Clare's; and then
proceeded, apparently in his professional capacity, to make a very
startling request.
"If," he wrote, "any change for the better in Mrs. Vanstone should take
placewhether it is only an improvement for the time, or whether it is
the permanent improvement for which we all hopein either case I
entreat you to let me know of it immediately. It is of the last
importance that I should see her, in the event of her gaining strength
enough to give me her attention for five minutes, and of her being able
at the expiration of that time to sign her name. May I beg that you
will communicate my request, in the strictest confidence, to the
medical men in attendance? They will understand, and you will
understand, the vital importance I attach to this interview when I tell
you that I have arranged to defer to it all other business claims on
me; and that I hold myself in readiness to obey your summons at any
hour of the day or night."
In those terms the letter ended. Miss Garth read it twice over. At the
second reading the request which the lawyer now addressed to her, and
the farewell words which had escaped Mr. Clare's lips the day before,
connected themselves vaguely in her mind. There was some other serious
interest in suspense, known to Mr. Pendril and known to Mr. Clare,
besides the first and foremost interest of Mrs. Vanstone's recovery.
Whom did it affect? The children? Were they threatened by some new
calamity which their mother's signature might avert? What did it mean?
Did it mean that Mr. Vanstone had died without leaving a will?
In her distress and confusion of mind Miss Garth was incapable of
reasoning with herself, as she might have reasoned at a happier time.
She hastened to the antechamber of Mrs. Vanstone's room; and, after
explaining Mr. Pendril's position toward the family, placed his letter
in the hands of the medical men. They both answered, without
hesitation, to the same purpose. Mrs. Vanstone's condition rendered any
such interview as the lawyer desired a total impossibility. If she
rallied from her present prostration, Miss Garth should be at once
informed of the improvement. In the meantime, the answer to Mr. Pendril
might be conveyed in one wordImpossible.
"You see what importance Mr. Pendril attaches to the interview?" said
Miss Garth.
Yes: both the doctors saw it.
"My mind is lost and confused, gentlemen, in this dreadful suspense.
Can you either of you guess why the signature is wanted? or what the
object of the interview may be? I have only seen Mr. Pendril when he
has come here on former visits: I have no claim to justify me in
questioning him. Will you look at the letter again? Do you think it
implies that Mr. Vanstone has never made a will?"
"I think it can hardly imply that," said one of the doctors. "But, even
supposing Mr. Vanstone to have died intestate, the law takes due care
of the interests of his widow and his children"
"Would it do so," interposed the other medical man, "if the property
happened to be in land?"
"I am not sure in that case. Do you happen to know, Miss Garth, whether
Mr. Vanstone's property was in money or in land?"
"In money," replied Miss Garth. "I have heard him say so on more than
one occasion."
"Then I can relieve your mind by speaking from my own experience. The
law, if he has died intestate, gives a third of his property to his
widow, and divides the rest equally among his children."
"But if Mrs. Vanstone"
"If Mrs. Vanstone should die," pursued the doctor, completing the
question which Miss Garth had not the heart to conclude for herself, "I
believe I am right in telling you that the property would, as a matter
of legal course, go to the children. Whatever necessity there may be
for the interview which Mr. Pendril requests, I can see no reason for
connecting it with the question of Mr. Vanstone's presumed intestacy.
But, by all means, put the question, for the satisfaction of your own
mind, to Mr. Pendril himself."
Miss Garth withdrew to take the course which the doctor advised. After
communicating to Mr. Pendril the medical decision which, thus far,
refused him the interview that he sought, she added a brief statement
of the legal question she had put to the doctors; and hinted delicately
at her natural anxiety to be informed of the motives which had led the
lawyer to make his request. The answer she received was guarded in the
extreme: it did not impress her with a favorable opinion of Mr.
Pendril. He confirmed the doctors' interpretation of the law in general
terms only; expressed his intention of waiting at the cottage in the
hope that a change for the better might yet enable Mrs. Vanstone to see
him; and closed his letter without the slightest explanation of his
motives, and without a word of reference to the question of the
existence, or the non-existence, of Mr. Vanstone's will.
The marked caution of the lawyer's reply dwelt uneasily on Miss Garth's
mind, until the long-expected event of the day recalled all her
thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone's account.
Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He watched long
by the bedside of the suffering woman; he remained longer still in
consultation with his medical brethren; he went back again to the
sick-room, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to communicate to her
the opinion at which he had arrived.
When he called out into the antechamber for the second time, he
silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face; and the last
faint hope died in her before he opened his lips.
"I must speak the hard truth," he said, gently. "All that can be done
has been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most, will end your
suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that timeI grieve to say ityou
must prepare yourself for the worst."
Those words said all: they were prophetic of the end.
The night passed; and she lived through it. The next day came; and she
lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the tidings of
her husband's death had dealt the mortal blow. When the hour came round
again, the mercy of God let her go to him in the better world. Her
daughters were kneeling at the bedside as her spirit passed away. She
left them unconscious of their presence; mercifully and happily
insensible to the pang of the last farewell.
Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane and the sunset
was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, the light of
the frail little lifefaint and feeble from the firstflickered and
went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay, that night, on
the same bed. The Angel of Death had done his awful bidding; and the
two Sisters were left alone in the world.
CHAPTER XII.
Earlier than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third of
July, Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and stepped out
into the little strip of garden attached to his residence.
After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he was
joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal appearance
was totally devoid of marked character of any kind; whose inexpressive
face and conventionally-quiet manner presented nothing that attracted
approval and nothing that inspired dislike. This was Mr. Pendrilthis
was the man on whose lips hung the future of the orphans at
Combe-Raven.
"The time is getting on," he said, looking toward the shrubbery, as he
joined Mr. Clare.
"My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o'clock: it only wants
ten minutes of the hour."
"Are you to see her alone?" asked Mr. Clare.
"I left Miss Garth to decideafter warning her, first of all, that the
circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious nature."
"And has she decided?"
"She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and repeated the
warning I had given her to both the daughters. The elder of the two
shrinksand who can wonder at it?from any discussion connected with
the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the
funeral. The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the
subject. As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided
by her sister's example. My interview, therefore, will take place with
Miss Garth aloneand it is a very great relief to me to know it."
He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed
habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest
attentively.
"You are almost as old as I am, sir," he said. "Has all your long
experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?"
"I never knew how little it had hardened me," replied Mr. Pendril,
quietly, "until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral.
I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their
parents to the grave. I think their presence made the closing scene of
this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching. You saw how
the great concourse of people were moved by itand they were in
ignorance of the truth; they knew nothing of the cruel necessity
which takes me to the house this morning. The sense of that
necessityand the sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my
hard duty toward them most painfullyshook me, as a man of my years and
my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present or
any suspense in the future. I have not recovered it this morning: I
hardly feel sure of myself yet."
"A man's composurewhen he is a man like youcomes with the necessity
for it," said Mr. Clare. "You must have had duties to perform as trying
in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning."
Mr. Pendril shook his head. "Many duties as serious; many stories more
romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this."
With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for the
shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned to the
cottage.
On reaching the passage, he looked through the open door of his little
parlor and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness, with his head
resting wearily on his hand.
"I have had an answer from your employers in London," said Mr. Clare.
"In consideration of what has happened, they will allow the offer they
made you to stand over for another month."
Frank changed color, and rose nervously from his chair.
"Are my prospects altered?" he asked. "Are Mr. Vanstone's plans for me
not to be carried out? He told Magdalen his will had provided for her.
She repeated his words to me; she said I ought to know all that his
goodness and generosity had done for both of us. How can his death make
a change? Has anything happened?"
"Wait till Mr. Pendril comes back from Combe-Raven," said his father.
"Question himdon't question me."
The ready tears rose in Frank's eyes.
"You won't be hard on me?" he pleaded, faintly. "You won't expect me to
go back to London without seeing Magdalen first?"
Mr. Clare looked thoughtfully at his son, and considered a little
before he replied.
"You may dry your eyes," he said. "You shall see Magdalen before you go
back."
He left the room, after making that reply, and withdrew to his study.
The books lay ready to his hand as usual. He opened one of them and set
himself to read in the customary manner. But his attention wandered;
and his eyes strayed away, from time to time, to the empty chair
oppositethe chair in which his old friend and gossip had sat and
wrangled with him good-humoredly for many and many a year past. After a
struggle with himself he closed the book. "Dn the chair!" he said: "it
will talk of him; and I must listen." He reached down his pipe from
the wall and mechanically filled it with tobacco. His hand shook, his
eyes wandered back to the old place; and a heavy sigh came from him
unwillingly. That empty chair was the only earthly argument for which
he had no answer: his heart owned its defeat and moistened his eyes in
spite of him. "He has got the better of me at last," said the rugged
old man. "There is one weak place left in me stilland he has found
it."
Meanwhile, Mr. Pendril entered the shrubbery, and followed the path
which led to the lonely garden and the desolate house. He was met at
the door by the man-servant, who was apparently waiting in expectation
of his arrival.
"I have an appointment with Miss Garth. Is she ready to see me?"
"Quite ready, sir."
"Is she alone?"
"Yes, sir."
"In the room which was Mr. Vanstone's study?"
"In that room, sir."
The servant opened the door and Mr. Pendril went in.
The governess stood alone at the study window. The morning was
oppressively hot, and she threw up the lower sash to admit more air
into the room, as Mr. Pendril entered it.
They bowed to each other with a formal politeness, which betrayed on
either side an uneasy sense of restraint. Mr. Pendril was one of the
many men who appear superficially to the worst advantage, under the
influence of strong mental agitation which it is necessary for them to
control. Miss Garth, on her side, had not forgotten the ungraciously
guarded terms in which the lawyer had replied to her letter; and the
natural anxiety which she had felt on the subject of the interview was
not relieved by any favorable opinion of the man who sought it. As they
confronted each other in the silence of the summer's morningboth
dressed in black; Miss Garth's hard features, gaunt and haggard with
grief; the lawyer's cold, colorless face, void of all marked
expression, suggestive of a business embarrassment and of nothing
moreit would have been hard to find two persons less attractive
externally to any ordinary sympathies than the two who had now met
together, the one to tell, the other to hear, the secrets of the dead.
"I am sincerely sorry, Miss Garth, to intrude on you at such a time as
this. But circumstances, as I have already explained, leave me no other
choice."
"Will you take a seat, Mr. Pendril? You wished to see me in this room,
I believe?"
"Only in this room, because Mr. Vanstone's papers are kept here, and I
may find it necessary to refer to some of them."
After that formal interchange of question and answer, they sat down on
either side of a table placed close under the window. One waited to
speak, the other waited to hear. There was a momentary silence. Mr.
Pendril broke it by referring to the young ladies, with the customary
expressions of sympathy. Miss Garth answered him with the same
ceremony, in the same conventional tone. There was a second pause of
silence. The humming of flies among the evergreen shrubs under the
window penetrated drowsily into the room; and the tramp of a
heavy-footed cart-horse, plodding along the high-road beyond the
garden, was as plainly audible in the stillness as if it had been
night.
The lawyer roused his flagging resolution, and spoke to the purpose
when he spoke next.
"You have some reason, Miss Garth," he began, "to feel not quite
satisfied with my past conduct toward you, in one particular. During
Mrs. Vanstone's fatal illness, you addressed a letter to me, making
certain inquiries; which, while she lived, it was impossible for me to
answer. Her deplorable death releases me from the restraint which I had
imposed on myself, and permitsor, more properly, obliges me to speak.
You shall know what serious reasons I had for waiting day and night in
the hope of obtaining that interview which unhappily never took place;
and in justice to Mr. Vanstone's memory, your own eyes shall inform you
that he made his will."
He rose; unlocked a little iron safe in the corner of the room; and
returned to the table with some folded sheets of paper, which he spread
open under Miss Garth's eyes. When she had read the first words, "In
the name of God, Amen," he turned the sheet, and pointed to the end of
the next page. She saw the well-known signature: "Andrew Vanstone." She
saw the customary attestations of the two witnesses; and the date of
the document, reverting to a period of more than five years since.
Having thus convinced her of the formality of the will, the lawyer
interposed before she could question him, and addressed her in these
words:
"I must not deceive you," he said. "I have my own reasons for producing
this document."
"What reasons, sir?"
"You shall hear them. When you are in possession of the truth, these
pages may help to preserve your respect for Mr. Vanstone's memory"
Miss Garth started back in her chair.
"What do you mean?" she asked, with a stern straightforwardness.
He took no heed of the question; he went on as if she had not
interrupted him.
"I have a second reason," he continued, "for showing you the will. If I
can prevail on you to read certain clauses in it, under my
superintendence, you will make your own discovery of the circumstances
which I am here to disclosecircumstances so painful that I hardly know
how to communicate them to you with my own lips."
Miss Garth looked him steadfastly in the face.
"Circumstances, sir, which affect the dead parents, or the living
children?"
"Which affect the dead and the living both," answered the lawyer.
"Circumstances, I grieve to say, which involve the future of Mr.
Vanstone's unhappy daughters."
"Wait," said Miss Garth, "wait a little." She pushed her gray hair back
from her temples, and struggled with the sickness of heart, the
dreadful faintness of terror, which would have overpowered a younger or
a less resolute woman. Her eyes, dim with watching, weary with grief,
searched the lawyer's unfathomable face. "His unhappy daughters?" she
repeated to herself, vacantly. "He talks as if there was some worse
calamity than the calamity which has made them orphans." She paused
once more; and rallied her sinking courage. "I will not make your hard
duty, sir, more painful to you than I can help," she resumed. "Show me
the place in the will. Let me read it, and know the worst."
Mr. Pendril turned back to the first page, and pointed to a certain
place in the cramped lines of writing. "Begin here," he said.
She tried to begin; she tried to follow his finger, as she had followed
it already to the signatures and the dates. But her senses seemed to
share the confusion of her mindthe words mingled together, and the
lines swam before her eyes.
"I can't follow you," she said. "You must tell it, or read it to me."
She pushed her chair back from the table, and tried to collect herself.
"Stop!" she exclaimed, as the lawyer, with visible hesitation and
reluctance, took the papers in his own hand. "One question, first. Does
his will provide for his children?"
"His will provided for them, when he made it."
"When he made it!" (Something of her natural bluntness broke out in her
manner as she repeated the answer.) "Does it provide for them now?"
"It does not."
She snatched the will from his hand, and threw it into a corner of the
room. "You mean well," she said; "you wish to spare mebut you are
wasting your time, and my strength. If the will is useless, there let
it lie. Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendriltell it plainly, tell it
instantly, in your own words!"
He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal. There
was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot.
"I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth. Do you
remember the fourth of March?"
Her attention wandered again; a thought seemed to have struck her at
the moment when he spoke. Instead of answering his inquiry, she put a
question of her own.
"Let me break the news to myself," she said"let me anticipate you, if
I can. His useless will, the terms in which you speak of his daughters,
the doubt you seem to feel of my continued respect for his memory, have
opened a new view to me. Mr. Vanstone has died a ruined manis that
what you had to tell me?"
"Far from it. Mr. Vanstone has died, leaving a fortune of more than
eighty thousand poundsa fortune invested in excellent securities. He
lived up to his income, but never beyond it; and all his debts added
together would not reach two hundred pounds. If he had died a ruined
man, I should have felt deeply for his children: but I should not have
hesitated to tell you the truth, as I am hesitating now. Let me repeat
a question which escaped you, I think, when I first put it. Carry your
mind back to the spring of this year. Do you remember the fourth of
March?"
Miss Garth shook her head. "My memory for dates is bad at the best of
times," she said. "I am too confused to exert it at a moment's notice.
Can you put your question in no other form?"
He put it in this form:
"Do you remember any domestic event in the spring of the present year
which appeared to affect Mr. Vanstone more seriously than usual?"
Miss Garth leaned forward in her chair, and looked eagerly at Mr.
Pendril across the table. "The journey to London!" she exclaimed. "I
distrusted the journey to London from the first! Yes! I remember Mr.
Vanstone receiving a letterI remember his reading it, and looking so
altered from himself that he startled us all."
"Did you notice any apparent understanding between Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone on the subject of that letter?"
"Yes: I did. One of the girlsit was Magdalenmentioned the post-mark;
some place in America. It all comes back to me, Mr. Pendril. Mrs.
Vanstone looked excited and anxious, the moment she heard the place
named. They went to London together the next day; they explained
nothing to their daughters, nothing to me. Mrs. Vanstone said the
journey was for family affairs. I suspected something wrong; I couldn't
tell what. Mrs. Vanstone wrote to me from London, saying that her
object was to consult a physician on the state of her health, and not
to alarm her daughters by telling them. Something in the letter rather
hurt me at the time. I thought there might be some other motive that
she was keeping from me. Did I do her wrong?"
"You did her no wrong. There was a motive which she was keeping from
you. In revealing that motive, I reveal the painful secret which brings
me to this house. All that I could do to prepare you, I have done. Let
me now tell the truth in the plainest and fewest words. When Mr. and
Mrs. Vanstone left Combe-Raven, in the March of the present year"
Before he could complete the sentence, a sudden movement of Miss
Garth's interrupted him. She started violently, and looked round toward
the window. "Only the wind among the leaves," she said, faintly. "My
nerves are so shaken, the least thing startles me. Speak out, for God's
sake! When Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone left this house, tell me in plain
words, why did they go to London?"
In plain words, Mr. Pendril told her:
"They went to London to be married."
With that answer he placed a slip of paper on the table. It was the
marriage certificate of the dead parents, and the date it bore was
March the twentieth, eighteen hundred and forty-six.
Miss Garth neither moved nor spoke. The certificate lay beneath her
unnoticed. She sat with her eyes rooted on the lawyer's face; her mind
stunned, her senses helpless. He saw that all his efforts to break the
shock of the discovery had been efforts made in vain; he felt the vital
importance of rousing her, and firmly and distinctly repeated the fatal
words.
"They went to London to be married," he said. "Try to rouse yourself:
try to realize the plain fact first: the explanation shall come
afterward. Miss Garth, I speak the miserable truth! In the spring of
this year they left home; they lived in London for a fortnight, in the
strictest retirement; they were married by license at the end of that
time. There is a copy of the certificate, which I myself obtained on
Monday last. Read the date of the marriage for yourself. It is Friday,
the twentieth of Marchthe March of this present year."
As he pointed to the certificate, that faint breath of air among the
shrubs beneath the window, which had startled Miss Garth, stirred the
leaves once more. He heard it himself this time, and turned his face,
so as to let the breeze play upon it. No breeze came; no breath of air
that was strong enough for him to feel, floated into the room.
Miss Garth roused herself mechanically, and read the certificate. It
seemed to produce no distinct impression on her: she laid it on one
side in a lost, bewildered manner. "Twelve years," she said, in low,
hopeless tones"twelve quiet, happy years I lived with this family.
Mrs. Vanstone was my friend; my dear, valued friendmy sister, I might
almost say. I can't believe it. Bear with me a little, sir, I can't
believe it yet."
"I shall help you to believe it when I tell you more," said Mr.
Pendril"you will understand me better when I take you back to the time
of Mr. Vanstone's early life. I won't ask for your attention just yet.
Let us wait a little, until you recover yourself."
They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his
pocket, referred to them attentively, and put them back again. "Can you
listen to me, now?" he asked, kindly. She bowed her head in answer. Mr.
Pendril considered with himself for a moment, "I must caution you on
one point," he said. "If the aspect of Mr. Vanstone's character which I
am now about to present to you seems in some respects at variance with
your later experience, bear in mind that, when you first knew him
twelve years since, he was a man of forty; and that, when I first knew
him, he was a lad of nineteen."
His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past.
CHAPTER XIII.
"The fortune which Mr. Vanstone possessed when you knew him" (the
lawyer began) "was part, and part only, of the inheritance which fell
to him on his father's death. Mr. Vanstone the elder was a manufacturer
in the North of England. He married early in life; and the children of
the marriage were either six or seven in numberI am not certain which.
First, Michael, the eldest son, still living, and now an old man turned
seventy. Secondly, Selina, the eldest daughter, who married in
after-life, and who died ten or eleven years ago. After those two came
other sons and daughters, whose early deaths make it unnecessary to
mention them particularly. The last and by many years the youngest of
the children was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age
of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the
active pursuit of his profession; and in succeeding to his business, I
also succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones as the family
solicitor.
"At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the army.
After little more than a year of home-service, he was ordered out with
his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England, he left his father and
his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. I need not detain you
by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I need only tell you that
the elder Mr. Vanstone, with many excellent qualities, was a man of
fierce and intractable temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance,
under circumstances which might have justly irritated a father of far
milder character; and he declared, in the most positive terms, that he
would never see Michael's face again. In defiance of my entreaties, and
of the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will
which provided for Michael's share in the paternal inheritance. Such
was the family position, when the younger son left home for Canada.
"Some months after Andrew's arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he
became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who came,
or said she came, from one of the Southern States of America. She
obtained an immediate influence over him; and she used it to the basest
purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man in
later lifeyou can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulse of
his youth. It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the story.
He was just twenty-one: he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman;
and she led him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to
draw back. In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life: he
married her.
"She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the influence
of his brother-officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the
marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret.
She could do this; but she could not provide against the results of
accident. Hardly three months had passed, when a chance disclosure
exposed the life she had led before her marriage. But one alternative
was left to her husbandthe alternative of instantly separating from
her.
"The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boyfor a boy in
disposition he still wasmay be judged by the event which followed the
exposure. One of Andrew's superior officersa certain Major Kirke, if I
remember rightfound him in his quarters, writing to his father a
confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pistol by his side.
That officer saved the lad's life from his own hand, and hushed up the
scandalous affair by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal
one, and the wife's misconduct prior to the ceremony giving her husband
no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to
appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual allowance
was secured to her, on condition that she returned to the place from
which she had come; that she never appeared in England; and that she
ceased to use her husband's name. Other stipulations were added to
these. She accepted them all; and measures were privately taken to have
her well looked after in the place of her retreat. What life she led
there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on her, I
cannot say. I can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came
to England; that she never annoyed Mr. Vanstone; and that the annual
allowance was paid her, through a local agent in America, to the day of
her death. All that she wanted in marrying him was money; and money she
got.
"In the meantime, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing would induce
him to face his brother-officers after what had happened. He sold out
and returned to England. The first intelligence which reached him on
his return was the intelligence of his father's death. He came to my
office in London, before going home, and there learned from my lips how
the family quarrel had ended.
"The will which Mr. Vanstone the elder had destroyed in my presence had
not been, so far as I know, replaced by another. When I was sent for,
in the usual course, on his death, I fully expected that the law would
be left to make the customary division among his widow and his
children. To my surprise, a will appeared among his papers, correctly
drawn and executed, and dated about a week after the period when the
first will had been destroyed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose
against his eldest son, and had applied to a stranger for the
professional assistance which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask
for at my hands.
"It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in
detail. There were the widow and three surviving children to be
provided for. The widow received a life-interest only in a portion of
the testator's property. The remaining portion was divided between
Andrew and Selinatwo-thirds to the brother; one-third to the sister.
On the mother's death, the money from which her income had been derived
was to go to Andrew and Selina, in the same relative proportions as
beforefive thousand pounds having been first deducted from the sum and
paid to Michael, as the sole legacy left by the implacable father to
his eldest son.
"Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled by the
will, stood thus. Before the mother's death, Andrew had seventy
thousand pounds; Selina had thirty-five thousand pounds; Michaelhad
nothing. After the mother's death, Michael had five thousand pounds, to
set against Andrew's inheritance augmented to one hundred thousand, and
Selina's inheritance increased to fifty thousand.Do not suppose that I
am dwelling unnecessarily on this part of the subject. Every word I now
speak bears on interests still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr.
Vanstone's daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in mind
the terrible inequality of Michael's inheritance and Andrew's
inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear,
not over yet.
"Andrew's first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to tell
him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He at once
proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder brother. But there
was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter from Michael was waiting
for him at my office when he came there, and that letter charged him
with being the original cause of estrangement between his father and
his elder brother. The efforts which he had madebluntly and
incautiously, I own, but with the purest and kindest intentions, as I
knowto compose the quarrel before leaving home, were perverted, by the
vilest misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and
falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt,
what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn before his
generous intentions toward his brother took effect, the mere fact of
their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgment of the
justice of Michael's charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the
most forbearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words
could make it. Michael had inherited his father's temper, unredeemed by
his father's better qualities: his second letter reiterated the charges
contained in the first, and declared that he would only accept the
offered division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew's
part. I next wrote to the mother to use her influence. She was herself
aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest in her
husband's property; she sided resolutely with Michael; and she
stigmatized Andrew's proposal as an attempt to bribe her eldest son
into withdrawing a charge against his brother which that brother knew
to be true. After this last repulse, nothing more could be done.
Michael withdrew to the Continent; and his mother followed him there.
She lived long enough, and saved money enough out of her income, to add
considerably, at her death, to her elder son's five thousand pounds. He
had previously still further improved his pecuniary position by an
advantageous marriage; and he is now passing the close of his days
either in France or Switzerlanda widower, with one son. We shall
return to him shortly. In the meantime, I need only tell you that
Andrew and Michael never again metnever again communicated, even by
writing. To all intents and purposes they were dead to each other, from
those early days to the present time.
"You can now estimate what Andrew's position was when he left his
profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, he was
alone in the world; his future destroyed at the fair outset of life;
his mother and brother estranged from him; his sister lately married,
with interests and hopes in which he had no share. Men of firmer mental
caliber might have found refuge from such a situation as this in an
absorbing intellectual pursuit. He was not capable of the effort; all
the strength of his character lay in the affections he had wasted. His
place in the world was that quiet place at home, with wife and children
to make his life happy, which he had lost forever. To look back was
more than he dare. To look forward was more than he could. In sheer
despair, he let his own impetuous youth drive him on; and cast himself
into the lowest dissipations of a London life.
"A woman's falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman's love saved
him at the outset of his downward career. Let us not speak of her
harshlyfor we laid her with him yesterday in the grave.
"You, who only knew Mrs. Vanstone in later life, when illness and
sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form no
adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when she was a
girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met her. I had tried
to rescue him, for one night at least, from degrading associates and
degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go with me to a ball given by
one of the great City Companies. There they met. She produced a strong
impression on him the moment he saw her. To me, as to him, she was a
total stranger. An introduction to her, obtained in the customary
manner, informed him that she was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The
rest he discovered from herself. They were partners in the dance
(unobserved in that crowded ball-room) all through the evening.
"Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhappy at
home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in life:
they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of her. It was
her first ballit was the first time she had ever met with a man who
had the breeding, the manners and the conversation of a gentleman. Are
these excuses for her, which I have no right to make? If we have any
human feeling for human weakness, surely not!
"The meeting of that night decided their future. When other meetings
had followed, when the confession of her love had escaped her, he took
the one course of all others (took it innocently and unconsciously),
which was most dangerous to them both. His frankness and his sense of
honor forbade him to deceive her: he opened his heart and told her the
truth. She was a generous, impulsive girl; she had no home ties strong
enough to plead with her; she was passionately fond of himand he had
made that appeal to her pity which, to the eternal honor of women, is
the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly,
that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his
rescue hung on her decision. She decided; and saved him.
"Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling with
the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I
will defend her memory by no false reasoningI will only speak the
truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which
must have ended in his early death. It is the truth that she restored
him to that happy home existence which you remember so tenderlywhich
he remembered so gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he
made her his wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her
early fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose, indeed, if
Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against herif
Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and
fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice, of her whole life.
"A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which
have happened within your own experience.
"I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Vanstone was now
placed could lead in the end to but one resultto a disclosure, more or
less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were made to keep the hopeless
misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake's family; and, as a
matter of course, those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny
of her father and her friends. What might have happened if her
relatives had been what is termed 'respectable' I cannot pretend to
say. As it was, they were people who could (in the common phrase) be
conveniently treated with. The only survivor of the family at the
present time is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When I tell
you that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs.
Vanstone to the last; and when I add that his conduct presents no
extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their lifetime, of the other
relativesyou will understand what sort of people I had to deal with in
my client's interests, and how their assumed indignation was appeased.
"Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr. Vanstone
and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years. Girl as she
was, she faced her position and its necessities without flinching.
Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she loved; having
quieted her conscience by persuading herself that his marriage was a
legal mockery, and that she was 'his wife in the sight of Heaven,' she
set herself from the first to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so
living with him, in the world's eye, as never to raise the suspicion
that she was not his lawful wife. The women are few, indeed, who cannot
resolve firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly where the dearest
interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs. Vanstoneshe has a right
now, remember, to that nameMrs. Vanstone had more than the average
share of a woman's tenacity and a woman's tact; and she took all the
needful precautions, in those early days, which her husband's less
ready capacity had not the art to deviseprecautions to which they were
largely indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times.
"Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed them
when they returned to England. They first settled in Devonshire, merely
because they were far removed there from that northern county in which
Mr. Vanstone's family and connections had been known. On the part of
his surviving relatives, they had no curious investigations to dread.
He was totally estranged from his mother and his elder brother. His
married sister had been forbidden by her husband (who was a clergyman)
to hold any communication with him, from the period when he had fallen
into the deplorable way of life which I have described as following his
return from Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and Miss Blake
left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to this house.
Neither courting nor avoiding notice; simply happy in themselves, in
their children, and in their quiet rural life; unsuspected by the few
neighbors who formed their modest circle of acquaintance to be other
than what they seemedthe truth in their case, as in the cases of many
others, remained undiscovered until accident forced it into the light
of day.
"If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they
should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider the
circumstances and you will understand the apparent anomaly. Remember
that they had been living as husband and wife, to all intents and
purposes (except that the marriage-service had not been read over
them), for fifteen years before you came into the house; and bear in
mind, at the same time, that no event occurred to disturb Mr.
Vanstone's happiness in the present, to remind him of the past, or to
warn him of the future, until the announcement of his wife's death
reached him, in that letter from America which you saw placed in his
hand. From that day forthwhen a past which he abhorred was forced
back to his memory; when a future which she had never dared to
anticipate was placed within her reachyou will soon perceive, if you
have not perceived already, that they both betrayed themselves, time
after time; and that your innocence of all suspicion, and their
children's innocence of all suspicion, alone prevented you from
discovering the truth.
"The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. I have
had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them with true
sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the memory of the
dead."
He paused, turned his face a little away, and rested his head on his
hand, in the quiet, undemonstrative manner which was natural to him.
Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by an
occasional word or by a mute token of her attention. She made no effort
to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently over her wasted
cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. "I have done you some
injury, sir, in my thoughts," she said, with a noble simplicity. "I
know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness; let me take your
hand."
Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched him deeply.
He took her hand in silence. She was the first to speak, the first to
set the example of self-control. It is one of the noble instincts of
women that nothing more powerfully rouses them to struggle with their
own sorrow than the sight of a man's distress. She quietly dried her
tears; she quietly drew her chair round the table, so as to sit nearer
to him when she spoke again.
"I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened in this
house," she said, "or I should have borne what you have told me better
than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask one question before
you go on? My heart aches for the children of my lovemore than ever my
children now. Is there no hope for their future? Are they left with no
prospect but poverty before them?"
The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question.
"They are left dependent," he said, at last, "on the justice and the
mercy of a stranger."
"Through the misfortune of their birth?"
"Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of their
parents."
With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the floor,
and restored it to its former position on the table between them.
"I can only place the truth before you," he resumed, "in one plain form
of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left Mr.
Vanstone's daughters dependent on their uncle."
As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the
window.
"On their uncle?" repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a moment, and
laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril's arm. "Not on Michael Vanstone!"
"Yes: on Michael Vanstone."
Miss Garth's hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer's arm. Her
whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery which
had now burst on her.
"Dependent on Michael Vanstone!" she said to herself. "Dependent on
their father's bitterest enemy? How can it be?"
"Give me your attention for a few minutes more," said Mr. Pendril, "and
you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful interview to a
close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. Michael Vanstone,
and the sooner you will know what he decides on doing for his brother's
orphan daughters. I repeat to you that they are absolutely dependent on
him. You will most readily understand how and why, if we take up the
chain of events where we last left itat the period of Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone's marriage."
"One moment, sir," said Miss Garth. "Were you in the secret of that
marriage at the time when it took place?"
"Unhappily, I was not. I was away from Londonaway from England at the
time. If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communicate with me when the
letter from America announced the death of his wife, the fortunes of
his daughters would not have been now at stake."
He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at the
letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the interview.
He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by his side.
"At the beginning of the present year," he resumed, "a very serious
business necessity, in connection with some West Indian property
possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required the presence
either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in Jamaica. One of the
two could not be spared; the other was not in health to undertake the
voyage. There was no choice left but for me to go. I wrote to Mr.
Vanstone, telling him that I should leave England at the end of
February, and that the nature of the business which took me away
afforded little hope of my getting back from the West Indies before
June. My letter was not written with any special motive. I merely
thought it rightseeing that my partners were not admitted to my
knowledge of Mr. Vanstone's private affairsto warn him of my absence,
as a measure of formal precaution which it was right to take. At the
end of February I left England, without having heard from him. I was on
the sea when the news of his wife's death reached him, on the fourth of
March: and I did not return until the middle of last June."
"You warned him of your departure," interposed Miss Garth. "Did you not
warn him of your return?"
"Not personally. My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars which were
dispatched from my office, in various directions, to announce my
return. It was the first substitute I thought of for the personal
letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all crowding on
me together after my long absence, did not allow me leisure to write.
Barely a month later, the first information of his marriage reached me
in a letter from himself, written on the day of the fatal accident. The
circumstances which induced him to write arose out of an event in which
you must have taken some interestI mean the attachment between Mr.
Clare's son and Mr. Vanstone's youngest daughter."
"I cannot say that I was favorably disposed toward that attachment at
the time," replied Miss Garth. "I was ignorant then of the family
secret: I know better now."
"Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the motive that
leads us to the point. The young lady herself (as I have heard from the
elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my knowledge of the
circumstances in detail) confessed her attachment to her father, and
innocently touched him to the quick by a chance reference to his own
early life. He had a long conversation with Mrs. Vanstone, at which
they both agreed that Mr. Clare must be privately informed of the
truth, before the attachment between the two young people was allowed
to proceed further. It was painful in the last degree, both to husband
and wife, to be reduced to this alternative. But they were resolute,
honorably resolute, in making the sacrifice of their own feelings; and
Mr. Vanstone betook himself on the spot to Mr. Clare's cottage.You no
doubt observed a remarkable change in Mr. Vanstone's manner on that
day; and you can now account for it?"
Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on.
"You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare's contempt for all
social prejudices," he continued, "to anticipate his reception of the
confession which his neighbor addressed to him. Five minutes after the
interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and unrestrained
together as usual. In the course of conversation, Mr. Vanstone
mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made for the benefit
of his daughter and of her future husbandand, in doing so, he
naturally referred to his will here, on the table between us. Mr.
Clare, remembering that his friend had been married in the March of
that year, at once asked when the will had been executed: receiving the
reply that it had been made five years since; and, thereupon, astounded
Mr. Vanstone by telling him bluntly that the document was waste paper
in the eye of the law. Up to that moment he, like many other persons,
had been absolutely ignorant that a man's marriage is, legally as well
as socially, considered to be the most important event in his life;
that it destroys the validity of any will which he may have made as a
single man; and that it renders absolutely necessary the entire
re-assertion of his testamentary intentions in the character of a
husband. The statement of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr.
Vanstone. Declaring that his friend had laid him under an obligation
which he should remember to his dying day, he at once left the cottage,
at once returned home, and wrote me this letter."
He handed the letter open to Miss Garth. In tearless, speechless grief,
she read these words:
"MY DEAR PENDRILSince we last wrote to each other an extraordinary
change has taken place in my life. About a week after you went away, I
received news from America which told me that I was free. Need I say
what use I made of that freedom? Need I say that the mother of my
children is now my Wife?
"If you are surprised at not having heard from me the moment you
got back, attribute my silence, in great partif not altogetherto
my own total ignorance of the legal necessity for making another
will. Not half an hour since, I was enlightened for the first time
(under circumstances which I will mention when me meet) by my old
friend, Mr. Clare. Family anxieties have had something to do with
my silence as well. My wife's confinement is close at hand; and,
besides this serious anxiety, my second daughter is just engaged to
be married. Until I saw Mr. Clare to-day, these matters so filled
my mind that I never thought of writing to you during the one short
month which is all that has passed since I got news of your return.
Now I know that my will must be made again, I write instantly. For
God's sake, come on the day when you receive thiscome and relieve
me from the dreadful thought that my two darling girls are at this
moment unprovided for. If anything happened to me, and if my desire
to do their mother justice, ended (through my miserable ignorance
of the law) in leaving Norah and Magdalen disinherited, I should
not rest in my grave! Come at any cost, to yours ever,
"A. V."
"On the Saturday morning," Mr. Pendril resumed, "those lines reached
me. I instantly set aside all other business, and drove to the railway.
At the London terminus, I heard the first news of the Friday's
accident; heard it, with conflicting accounts of the numbers and names
of the passengers killed. At Bristol, they were better informed; and
the dreadful truth about Mr. Vanstone was confirmed. I had time to
recover myself before I reached your station here, and found Mr.
Clare's son waiting for me. He took me to his father's cottage; and
there, without losing a moment, I drew out Mrs. Vanstone's will. My
object was to secure the only provision for her daughters which it was
now possible to make. Mr. Vanstone having died intestate, a third of
his fortune would go to his widow; and the rest would be divided among
his next of kin. As children born out of wedlock, Mr. Vanstone's
daughters, under the circumstances of their father's death, had no more
claim to a share in his property than the daughters of one of his
laborers in the village. The one chance left was that their mother
might sufficiently recover to leave her third share to them, by will,
in the event of her decease. Now you know why I wrote to you to ask for
that interviewwhy I waited day and night, in the hope of receiving a
summons to the house. I was sincerely sorry to send back such an answer
to your note of inquiry as I was compelled to write. But while there
was a chance of the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone's life, the secret of
the marriage was hers, not mine; and every consideration of delicacy
forbade me to disclose it."
"You did right, sir," said Miss Garth; "I understand your motives, and
respect them."
"My last attempt to provide for the daughters," continued Mr. Pendril,
"was, as you know, rendered unavailing by the dangerous nature of Mrs.
Vanstone's illness. Her death left the infant who survived her by a few
hours (the infant born, you will remember, in lawful wedlock)
possessed, in due legal course, of the whole of Mr. Vanstone's fortune.
On the child's deathif it had only outlived the mother by a few
seconds, instead of a few hours, the result would have been the
samethe next of kin to the legitimate offspring took the money; and
that next of kin is the infant's paternal uncle, Michael Vanstone. The
whole fortune of eighty thousand pounds has virtually passed into his
possession already."
"Are there no other relations?" asked Miss Garth. "Is there no hope
from any one else?"
"There are no other relations with Michael Vanstone's claim," said the
lawyer. "There are no grandfathers or grandmothers of the dead child
(on the side of either of the parents) now alive. It was not likely
there should be, considering the ages of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone when
they died. But it is a misfortune to be reasonably lamented that no
other uncles or aunts survive. There are cousins alive; a son and two
daughters of that elder sister of Mr. Vanstone's, who married
Archdeacon Bartram, and who died, as I told you, some years since. But
their interest is superseded by the interest of the nearer blood. No,
Miss Garth, we must look facts as they are resolutely in the face. Mr.
Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children; and the law leaves them
helpless at their uncle's mercy."
"A cruel law, Mr. Pendrila cruel law in a Christian country."
"Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking
peculiarity in this case. I am far from defending the law of England as
it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a
disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents on the
children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the
strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage; and it
claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality
and religion. But it has no extraordinary oppression to answer for in
the case of these unhappy girls. The more merciful and Christian law of
other countries, which allows the marriage of the parents to make the
children legitimate, has no mercy on these children. The accident of
their father having been married, when he first met with their mother,
has made them the outcasts of the whole social community; it has placed
them out of the pale of the Civil Law of Europe. I tell you the hard
truthit is useless to disguise it. There is no hope, if we look back
at the past: there may be hope, if we look on to the future. The best
service which I can now render you is to shorten the period of your
suspense. In less than an hour I shall be on my way back to London.
Immediately on my arrival, I will ascertain the speediest means of
communicating with Mr. Michael Vanstone; and will let you know the
result. Sad as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at
it on its best side; we must not lose hope."
"Hope?" repeated Miss Garth. "Hope from Michael Vanstone!"
"Yes; hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the influence
of mercy. As I have already told you, he is now an old man; he cannot,
in the course of nature, expect to live much longer. If he looks back
to the period when he and his brother were first at variance, he must
look back through thirty years. Surely, these are softening influences
which must affect any man? Surely, his own knowledge of the shocking
circumstances under which he has become possessed of this money will
plead with him, if nothing else does?"
"I will try to think as you do, Mr. PendrilI will try to hope for the
best. Shall we be left long in suspense before the decision reaches
us?"
"I trust not. The only delay on my side will be caused by the necessity
of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone's residence on the
Continent. I think I have the means of meeting this difficulty
successfully; and the moment I reach London, those means shall be
tried."
He took up his hat; and then returned to the table on which the
father's last letter, and the father's useless will, were lying side by
side. After a moment's consideration, he placed them both in Miss
Garth's hands.
"It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sisters," he
said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, "if they can see how their
father refers to them in his willif they can read his letter to me,
the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens tell them that the one idea of
their father's life was the idea of making atonement to his children.
'They may think bitterly of their birth,' he said to me, at the time
when I drew this useless will; 'but they shall never think bitterly of
me. I will cross them in nothing: they shall never know a sorrow that I
can spare them, or a want which I will not satisfy.' He made me put
those words in his will, to plead for him when the truth which he had
concealed from his children in his lifetime was revealed to them after
his death. No law can deprive his daughters of the legacy of his
repentance and his love. I leave the will and the letter to help you: I
give them both into your care."
He saw how his parting kindness touched her and thoughtfully hastened
the farewell. She took his hand in both her own and murmured a few
broken words of gratitude. "Trust me to do my best," he saidand,
turning away with a merciful abruptness, left her. In the broad,
cheerful sunshine he had come in to reveal the fatal truth. In the
broad, cheerful sunshinethat truth disclosedhe went out.
CHAPTER XIV.
It was nearly an hour past noon when Mr. Pendril left the house. Miss
Garth sat down again at the table alone, and tried to face the
necessity which the event of the morning now forced on her.
Her mind was not equal to the effort. She tried to lessen the strain on
itto lose the sense of her own positionto escape from her thoughts
for a few minutes only. After a little, she opened Mr. Vanstone's
letter, and mechanically set herself to read it through once more.
One by one, the last words of the dead man fastened themselves more and
more firmly on her attention. The unrelieved solitude, the unbroken
silence, helped their influence on her mind and opened it to those very
impressions of past and present which she was most anxious to shun. As
she reached the melancholy lines which closed the letter, she found
herselfinsensibly, almost unconsciously, at firsttracing the fatal
chain of events, link by link backward, until she reached its beginning
in the contemplated marriage between Magdalen and Francis Clare.
That marriage had taken Mr. Vanstone to his old friend, with the
confession on his lips which would otherwise never have escaped them.
Thence came the discovery which had sent him home to summon the lawyer
to the house. That summons, again, had produced the inevitable
acceleration of the Saturday's journey to Friday; the Friday of the
fatal accident, the Friday when he went to his death. From his death
followed the second bereavement which had made the house desolate; the
helpless position of the daughters whose prosperous future had been his
dearest care; the revelation of the secret which had overwhelmed her
that morning; the disclosure, more terrible still, which she now stood
committed to make to the orphan sisters. For the first time she saw the
whole sequence of eventssaw it as plainly as the cloudless blue of the
sky and the green glow of the trees in the sunlight outside.
Howwhen could she tell them? Who could approach them with the
disclosure of their own illegitimacy before their father and mother had
been dead a week? Who could speak the dreadful words, while the first
tears were wet on their cheeks, while the first pang of separation was
at its keenest in their hearts, while the memory of the funeral was not
a day old yet? Not their last friend left; not the faithful woman whose
heart bled for them. No! silence for the present time, at all
risksmerciful silence, for many days to come!
She left the room, with the will and the letter in her handwith the
natural, human pity at her heart which sealed her lips and shut her
eyes resolutely to the future. In the hall she stopped and listened.
Not a sound was audible. She softly ascended the stairs, on her way to
her own room, and passed the door of Norah's bed-chamber. Voices
inside, the voices of the two sisters, caught her ear. After a moment's
consideration, she checked herself, turned back, and quickly descended
the stairs again. Both Norah and Magdalen knew of the interview between
Mr. Pendril and herself; she had felt it her duty to show them his
letter making the appointment. Could she excite their suspicion by
locking herself up from them in her room as soon as the lawyer had left
the house? Her hand trembled on the banister; she felt that her face
might betray her. The self-forgetful fortitude, which had never failed
her until that day, had been tried once too oftenhad been tasked
beyond its powers at last.
At the hall door she reflected for a moment again, and went into the
garden; directing her steps to a rustic bench and table placed out of
sight of the house among the trees. In past times she had often sat
there, with Mrs. Vanstone on one side, with Norah on the other, with
Magdalen and the dogs romping on the grass. Alone she sat there nowthe
will and the letter which she dared not trust out of her own
possession, laid on the tableher head bowed over them; her face hidden
in her hands. Alone she sat there and tried to rouse her sinking
courage.
Doubts thronged on her of the dark days to come; dread beset her of the
hidden danger which her own silence toward Norah and Magdalen might
store up in the near future. The accident of a moment might suddenly
reveal the truth. Mr. Pendril might write, might personally address
himself to the sisters, in the natural conviction that she had
enlightened them. Complications might gather round them at a moment's
notice; unforeseen necessities might arise for immediately leaving the
house. She saw all these perilsand still the cruel courage to face the
worst, and speak, was as far from her as ever. Ere long the thickening
conflict of her thoughts forced its way outward for relief, in words
and actions. She raised her head and beat her hand helplessly on the
table.
"God help me, what am I to do?" she broke out. "How am I to tell them?"
"There is no need to tell them," said a voice behind her. "They know it
already."
She started to her feet and looked round. It was Magdalen who stood
before herMagdalen who had spoken those words.
Yes, there was the graceful figure, in its mourning garments, standing
out tall and black and motionless against the leafy background. There
was Magdalen herself, with a changeless stillness on her white face;
with an icy resignation in her steady gray eyes.
"We know it already," she repeated, in clear, measured tones. "Mr.
Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children; and the law leaves them
helpless at their uncle's mercy."
So, without a tear on her cheeks, without a faltering tone in her
voice, she repeated the lawyer's own words, exactly as he had spoken
them. Miss Garth staggered back a step and caught at the bench to
support herself. Her head swam; she closed her eyes in a momentary
faintness. When they opened again, Magdalen's arm was supporting her,
Magdalen's breath fanned her cheek, Magdalen's cold lips kissed her.
She drew back from the kiss; the touch of the girl's lips thrilled her
with terror.
As soon as she could speak she put the inevitable question. "You heard
us," she said. "Where?"
"Under the open window."
"All the time?"
"From beginning to end."
She had listenedthis girl of eighteen, in the first week of her
orphanage, had listened to the whole terrible revelation, word by word,
as it fell from the lawyer's lips; and had never once betrayed herself!
From first to last, the only movements which had escaped her had been
movements guarded enough and slight enough to be mistaken for the
passage of the summer breeze through the leaves!
"Don't try to speak yet," she said, in softer and gentler tones. "Don't
look at me with those doubting eyes. What wrong have I done? When Mr.
Pendril wished to speak to you about Norah and me, his letter gave us
our choice to be present at the interview, or to keep away. If my elder
sister decided to keep away, how could I come? How could I hear my own
story except as I did? My listening has done no harm. It has done
goodit has saved you the distress of speaking to us. You have suffered
enough for us already; it is time we learned to suffer for ourselves. I
have learned. And Norah is learning."
"Norah!"
"Yes. I have done all I could to spare you. I have told Norah."
She had told Norah! Was this girl, whose courage had faced the terrible
necessity from which a woman old enough to be her mother had recoiled,
the girl Miss Garth had brought up? the girl whose nature she had
believed to be as well known to her as her own?
"Magdalen!" she cried out, passionately, "you frighten me!"
Magdalen only sighed, and turned wearily away.
"Try not to think worse of me than I deserve," she said. "I can't cry.
My heart is numbed."
She moved away slowly over the grass. Miss Garth watched the tall black
figure gliding away alone until it was lost among the trees. While it
was in sight she could think of nothing else. The moment it was gone,
she thought of Norah. For the first time in her experience of the
sisters her heart led her instinctively to the elder of the two.
Norah was still in her own room. She was sitting on the couch by the
window, with her mother's old music-bookthe keepsake which Mrs.
Vanstone had found in her husband's study on the day of her husband's
deathspread open on her lap. She looked up from it with such quiet
sorrow, and pointed with such ready kindness to the vacant place at her
side, that Miss Garth doubted for the moment whether Magdalen had
spoken the truth. "See," said Norah, simply, turning to the first leaf
in the music-book"my mother's name written in it, and some verses to
my father on the next page. We may keep this for ourselves, if we keep
nothing else." She put her arm round Miss Garth's neck, and a faint
tinge of color stole over her cheeks. "I see anxious thoughts in your
face," she whispered. "Are you anxious about me? Are you doubting
whether I have heard it? I have heard the whole truth. I might have
felt it bitterly, later; it is too soon to feel it now. You have seen
Magdalen? She went out to find youwhere did you leave her?"
"In the garden. I couldn't speak to her; I couldn't look at her.
Magdalen has frightened me."
Norah rose hurriedly; rose, startled and distressed by Miss Garth's
reply.
"Don't think ill of Magdalen," she said. "Magdalen suffers in secret
more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard about us
this morning. Does it matter who we are, or what we keep or lose? What
loss is there for us after the loss of our father and mother? Oh, Miss
Garth, there is the only bitterness! What did we remember of them
when we laid them in the grave yesterday? Nothing but the love they
gave usthe love we must never hope for again. What else can we
remember to-day? What change can the world, and the world's cruel laws
make in our memory of the kindest father, the kindest mother, that
children ever had!" She stopped: struggled with her rising grief; and
quietly, resolutely, kept it down. "Will you wait here," she said,
"while I go and bring Magdalen back? Magdalen was always your favorite:
I want her to be your favorite still." She laid the music-book gently
on Miss Garth's lapand left the room.
"Magdalen was always your favorite."
Tenderly as they had been spoken, those words fell reproachfully on
Miss Garth's ear. For the first time in the long companionship of her
pupils and herself a doubt whether she, and all those about her, had
not been fatally mistaken in their relative estimate of the sisters,
now forced itself on her mind.
She had studied the natures of her two pupils in the daily intimacy of
twelve years. Those natures, which she believed herself to have sounded
through all their depths, had been suddenly tried in the sharp ordeal
of affliction. How had they come out from the test? As her previous
experience had prepared her to see them? No: in flat contradiction to
it.
What did such a result as this imply?
Thoughts came to her, as she asked herself that question, which have
startled and saddened us all.
Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward and visible
character which is shaped into form by the social influences
surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition, which is part of
ourselves, which education may indirectly modify, but can never hope to
change? Is the philosophy which denies this and asserts that we are
born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper a philosophy which
has failed to remark that we are not born with blank facesa philosophy
which has never compared together two infants of a few days old, and
has never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers
for mothers and nurses to fill up at will? Are there, infinitely
varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of
us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal
repressionhidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the
liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation? Within these
earthly limits, is earthly Circumstance ever the key; and can no human
vigilance warn us beforehand of the forces imprisoned in ourselves
which that key may unlock?
For the first time, thoughts such as these rose darklyas shadowy and
terrible possibilitiesin Miss Garth's mind. For the first time, she
associated those possibilities with the past conduct and characters,
with the future lives and fortunes of the orphan sisters.
Searching, as in a glass darkly, into the two natures, she felt her
way, doubt by doubt, from one possible truth to another. It might be
that the upper surface of their characters was all that she had, thus
far, plainly seen in Norah and Magdalen. It might be that the
unalluring secrecy and reserve of one sister, the all-attractive
openness and high spirits of the other, were more or less referable, in
each case, to those physical causes which work toward the production of
moral results. It might be, that under the surface so formeda surface
which there had been nothing, hitherto, in the happy, prosperous,
uneventful lives of the sisters to disturbforces of inborn and inbred
disposition had remained concealed, which the shock of the first
serious calamity in their lives had now thrown up into view. Was this
so? Was the promise of the future shining with prophetic light through
the surface-shadow of Norah's reserve, and darkening with prophetic
gloom, under the surface-glitter of Magdalen's bright spirits? If the
life of the elder sister was destined henceforth to be the ripening
ground of the undeveloped Good that was in herwas the life of the
younger doomed to be the battle-field of mortal conflict with the
roused forces of Evil in herself?
On the brink of that terrible conclusion, Miss Garth shrank back in
dismay. Her heart was the heart of a true woman. It accepted the
conviction which raised Norah higher in her love: it rejected the doubt
which threatened to place Magdalen lower. She rose and paced the room
impatiently; she recoiled with an angry suddenness from the whole train
of thought in which her mind had been engaged but the moment before.
What if there were dangerous elements in the strength of Magdalen's
characterwas it not her duty to help the girl against herself? How had
she performed that duty? She had let herself be governed by first fears
and first impressions; she had never waited to consider whether
Magdalen's openly acknowledged action of that morning might not imply a
self-sacrificing fortitude, which promised, in after-life, the noblest
and the most enduring results. She had let Norah go and speak those
words of tender remonstrance, which she should first have spoken
herself. "Oh!" she thought, bitterly, "how long I have lived in the
world, and how little I have known of my own weakness and wickedness
until to-day!"
The door of the room opened. Norah came in, as she had gone out, alone.
"Do you remember leaving anything on the little table by the
garden-seat?" she asked, quietly.
Before Miss Garth could answer the question, she held out her father's
will and her father's letter.
"Magdalen came back after you went away," she said, "and found these
last relics. She heard Mr. Pendril say they were her legacy and mine.
When I went into the garden she was reading the letter. There was no
need for me to speak to her; our father had spoken to her from his
grave. See how she has listened to him!"
She pointed to the letter. The traces of heavy tear-drops lay thick
over the last lines of the dead man's writing.
"Her tears," said Norah, softly.
Miss Garth's head drooped low over the mute revelation of Magdalen's
return to her better self.
"Oh, never doubt her again!" pleaded Norah. "We are alone nowwe have
our hard way through the world to walk on as patiently as we can. If
Magdalen ever falters and turns back, help her for the love of old
times; help her against herself."
"With all my heart and strengthas God shall judge me, with the
devotion of my whole life!" In those fervent words Miss Garth answered.
She took the hand which Norah held out to her, and put it, in sorrow
and humility, to her lips. "Oh, my love, forgive me! I have been
miserably blindI have never valued you as I ought!"
Norah gently checked her before she could say more; gently whispered,
"Come with me into the gardencome, and help Magdalen to look patiently
to the future."
The future! Who could see the faintest glimmer of it? Who could see
anything but the ill-omened figure of Michael Vanstone, posted darkly
on the verge of the present timeand closing all the prospect that lay
beyond him?
CHAPTER XV.
On the next morning but one, news was received from Mr. Pendril. The
place of Michael Vanstone's residence on the Continent had been
discovered. He was living at Zurich; and a letter had been dispatched
to him, at that place, on the day when the information was obtained. In
the course of the coming week an answer might be expected, and the
purport of it should be communicated forthwith to the ladies at
Combe-Raven.
Short as it was, the interval of delay passed wearily. Ten days elapsed
before the expected answer was received; and when it came at last, it
proved to be, strictly speaking, no answer at all. Mr. Pendril had been
merely referred to an agent in London who was in possession of Michael
Vanstone's instructions. Certain difficulties had been discovered in
connection with those instructions, which had produced the necessity of
once more writing to Zurich. And there "the negotiations" rested again
for the present.
A second paragraph in Mr. Pendril's letter contained another piece of
intelligence entirely new. Mr. Michael Vanstone's son (and only child),
Mr. Noel Vanstone, had recently arrived in London, and was then staying
in lodgings occupied by his cousin, Mr. George Bartram. Professional
considerations had induced Mr. Pendril to pay a visit to the lodgings.
He had been very kindly received by Mr. Bartram; but had been informed
by that gentleman that his cousin was not then in a condition to
receive visitors. Mr. Noel Vanstone had been suffering, for some years
past, from a wearing and obstinate malady; he had come to England
expressly to obtain the best medical advice, and he still felt the
fatigue of the journey so severely as to be confined to his bed. Under
these circumstances, Mr. Pendril had no alternative but to take his
leave. An interview with Mr. Noel Vanstone might have cleared up some
of the difficulties in connection with his father's instructions. As
events had turned out, there was no help for it but to wait for a few
days more.
The days passed, the empty days of solitude and suspense. At last, a
third letter from the lawyer announced the long delayed conclusion of
the correspondence. The final answer had been received from Zurich, and
Mr. Pendril would personally communicate it at Combe-Raven on the
afternoon of the next day.
That next day was Wednesday, the twelfth of August. The weather had
changed in the night; and the sun rose watery through mist and cloud.
By noon the sky was overcast at all points; the temperature was
sensibly colder; and the rain poured down, straight and soft and
steady, on the thirsty earth. Toward three o'clock, Miss Garth and
Norah entered the morning-room, to await Mr. Pendril's arrival. They
were joined shortly afterward by Magdalen. In half an hour more the
familiar fall of the iron latch in the socket reached their ears from
the fence beyond the shrubbery. Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare advanced into
view along the garden-path, walking arm-in-arm through the rain,
sheltered by the same umbrella. The lawyer bowed as they passed the
windows; Mr. Clare walked straight on, deep in his own
thoughtsnoticing nothing.
After a delay which seemed interminable; after a weary scraping of wet
feet on the hall mat; after a mysterious, muttered interchange of
question and answer outside the door, the two came inMr. Clare leading
the way. The old man walked straight up to the table, without any
preliminary greeting, and looked across it at the three women, with a
stern pity for them in his ragged, wrinkled face.
"Bad news," he said. "I am an enemy to all unnecessary suspense.
Plainness is kindness in such a case as this. I mean to be kindand I
tell you plainlybad news."
Mr. Pendril followed him. He shook hands, in silence, with Miss Garth
and the two sisters, and took a seat near them. Mr. Clare placed
himself apart on a chair by the window. The gray rainy light fell soft
and sad on the faces of Norah and Magdalen, who sat together opposite
to him. Miss Garth had placed herself a little behind them, in partial
shadow; and the lawyer's quiet face was seen in profile, close beside
her. So the four occupants of the room appeared to Mr. Clare, as he sat
apart in his corner; his long claw-like fingers interlaced on his knee;
his dark vigilant eyes fixed searchingly now on one face, now on
another. The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the
clear, ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute
of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in their
places indescribably oppressive. It was a relief to every one when Mr.
Pendril spoke.
"Mr. Clare has told you already," he began, "that I am the bearer of
bad news. I am grieved to say, Miss Garth, that your doubts, when I
last saw you, were better founded than my hopes. What that heartless
elder brother was in his youth, he is still in his old age. In all my
unhappy experience of the worst side of human nature, I have never met
with a man so utterly dead to every consideration of mercy as Michael
Vanstone."
"Do you mean that he takes the whole of his brother's fortune, and
makes no provision whatever for his brother's children?" asked Miss
Garth.
"He offers a sum of money for present emergencies," replied Mr.
Pendril, "so meanly and disgracefully insufficient that I am ashamed to
mention it."
"And nothing for the future?"
"Absolutely nothing."
As that answer was given, the same thought passed, at the same moment,
through Miss Garth's mind and through Norah's. The decision, which
deprived both the sisters alike of the resources of fortune, did not
end there for the younger of the two. Michael Vanstone's merciless
resolution had virtually pronounced the sentence which dismissed Frank
to China, and which destroyed all present hope of Magdalen's marriage.
As the words passed the lawyer's lips, Miss Garth and Norah looked at
Magdalen anxiously. Her face turned a shade palerbut not a feature of
it moved; not a word escaped her. Norah, who held her sister's hand in
her own, felt it tremble for a moment, and then turn coldand that was
all.
"Let me mention plainly what I have done," resumed Mr. Pendril; "I am
very desirous you should not think that I have left any effort untried.
When I wrote to Michael Vanstone, in the first instance, I did not
confine myself to the usual formal statement. I put before him, plainly
and earnestly, every one of the circumstances under which he has become
possessed of his brother's fortune. When I received the answer,
referring me to his written instructions to his lawyer in Londonand
when a copy of those instructions was placed in my handsI positively
declined, on becoming acquainted with them, to receive the writer's
decision as final. I induced the solicitor, on the other side, to
accord us a further term of delay; I attempted to see Mr. Noel Vanstone
in London for the purpose of obtaining his intercession; and, failing
in that, I myself wrote to his father for the second time. The answer
referred me, in insolently curt terms, to the instructions already
communicated; declared those instructions to be final; and declined any
further correspondence with me. There is the beginning and the end of
the negotiation. If I have overlooked any means of touching this
heartless mantell me, and those means shall be tried."
He looked at Norah. She pressed her sister's hand encouragingly, and
answered for both of them.
"I speak for my sister, as well as for myself," she said, with her
color a little heightened, with her natural gentleness of manner just
touched by a quiet, uncomplaining sadness. "You have done all that
could be done, Mr. Pendril. We have tried to restrain ourselves from
hoping too confidently; and we are deeply grateful for your kindness,
at a time when kindness is sorely needed by both of us."
Magdalen's hand returned the pressure of her sister'swithdrew
itselftrifled for a moment impatiently with the arrangement of her
dressthen suddenly moved the chair closer to the table. Leaning one
arm on it (with the hand fast clinched), she looked across at Mr.
Pendril. Her face, always remarkable for its want of color, was now
startling to contemplate, in its blank, bloodless pallor. But the light
in her large gray eyes was bright and steady as ever; and her voice,
though low in tone, was clear and resolute in accent as she addressed
the lawyer in these terms:
"I understood you to say, Mr. Pendril, that my father's brother had
sent his written orders to London, and that you had a copy. Have you
preserved it?"
"Certainly."
"Have you got it about you?"
"I have."
"May I see it?"
Mr. Pendril hesitated, and looked uneasily from Magdalen to Miss Garth,
and from Miss Garth back again to Magdalen.
"Pray oblige me by not pressing your request," he said. "It is surely
enough that you know the result of the instructions. Why should you
agitate yourself to no purpose by reading them? They are expressed so
cruelly; they show such abominable want of feeling, that I really
cannot prevail upon myself to let you see them."
"I am sensible of your kindness, Mr. Pendril, in wishing to spare me
pain. But I can bear pain; I promise to distress nobody. Will you
excuse me if I repeat my request?"
She held out her handthe soft, white, virgin hand that had touched
nothing to soil it or harden it yet.
"Oh, Magdalen, think again!" said Norah.
"You distress Mr. Pendril," added Miss Garth; "you distress us all."
"There can be no end gained," pleaded the lawyer"forgive me for saying
sothere can really be no useful end gained by my showing you the
instructions."
("Fools!" said Mr. Clare to himself. "Have they no eyes to see that she
means to have her own way?")
"Something tells me there is an end to be gained," persisted Magdalen.
"This decision is a very serious one. It is more serious to me" She
looked round at Mr. Clare, who sat closely watching her, and instantly
looked back again, with the first outward betrayal of emotion which had
escaped her yet. "It is even more serious to me," she resumed, "for
private reasonsthan it is to my sister. I know nothing yet but that
our father's brother has taken our fortunes from us. He must have some
motives of his own for such conduct as that. It is not fair to him, or
fair to us, to keep those motives concealed. He has deliberately robbed
Norah, and robbed me; and I think we have a right, if we wish it, to
know why?"
"I don't wish it," said Norah.
"I do," said Magdalen; and once more she held out her hand.
At this point Mr. Clare roused himself and interfered for the first
time.
"You have relieved your conscience," he said, addressing the lawyer.
"Give her the right she claims. It is her rightif she will have it."
Mr. Pendril quietly took the written instructions from his pocket. "I
have warned you," he saidand handed the papers across the table
without another word. One of the pages of writingwas folded down at
the corner; and at that folded page the manuscript opened, when
Magdalen first turned the leaves. "Is this the place which refers to my
sister and myself?" she inquired. Mr. Pendril bowed; and Magdalen
smoothed out the manuscript before her on the table.
"Will you decide, Norah?" she asked, turning to her sister. "Shall I
read this aloud, or shall I read it to myself?"
"To yourself," said Miss Garth; answering for Norah, who looked at her
in mute perplexity and distress.
"It shall be as you wish," said Magdalen. With that reply, she turned
again to the manuscript and read these lines:
". . . . You are now in possession of my wishes in relation to the
property in money, and to the sale of the furniture, carriages, horses,
and so forth. The last point left on which it is necessary for me to
instruct you refers to the persons inhabiting the house, and to certain
preposterous claims on their behalf set up by a solicitor named
Pendril; who has, no doubt, interested reasons of his own for making
application to me.
"I understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate children;
both of them young women, who are of an age to earn their own
livelihood. Various considerations, all equally irregular, have been
urged in respect to these persons by the solicitor representing them.
Be so good as to tell him that neither you nor I have anything to do
with questions of mere sentiment; and then state plainly, for his
better information, what the motives are which regulate my conduct, and
what the provision is which I feel myself justified in making for the
two young women. Your instructions on both these points you will find
detailed in the next paragraph.
"I wish the persons concerned to know, once for all, how I regard the
circumstances which have placed my late brother's property at my
disposal. Let them understand that I consider those circumstances to be
a Providential interposition which has restored to me the inheritance
that ought always to have been mine. I receive the money, not only as
my right, but also as a proper compensation for the injustice which I
suffered from my father, and a proper penalty paid by my younger
brother for the vile intrigue by which he succeeded in disinheriting
me. His conduct, when a young man, was uniformly discreditable in all
the relations of life; and what it then was it continued to be (on the
showing of his own legal representative) after the time when I ceased
to hold any communication with him. He appears to have systematically
imposed a woman on Society as his wife who was not his wife, and to
have completed the outrage on morality by afterward marrying her. Such
conduct as this has called down a Judgment on himself and his children.
I will not invite retribution on my own head by assisting those
children to continue the imposition which their parents practiced, and
by helping them to take a place in the world to which they are not
entitled. Let them, as becomes their birth, gain their bread in
situations. If they show themselves disposed to accept their proper
position I will assist them to start virtuously in life by a present of
one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to pay them, on their
personal application, with the necessary acknowledgment of receipt; and
on the express understanding that the transaction, so completed, is to
be the beginning and the end of my connection with them. The
arrangements under which they quit the house I leave to your
discretion; and I have only to add that my decision on this matter, as
on all other matters, is positive and final."
Line by linewithout once looking up from the pages before her
Magdalen read those atrocious sentences through, from beginning to
end. The other persons assembled in the room, all eagerly looking at
her together, saw the dress rising and falling faster and faster over
her bosomsaw the hand in which she lightly held the manuscript at the
outset close unconsciously on the paper and crush it, as she advanced
nearer and nearer to the endbut detected no other outward signs of
what was passing within her. As soon as she had done, she silently
pushed the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her
face. When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed
a change in her. Something in her expression had altered, subtly and
silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly look
strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something, through all
after years, never to be forgotten in connection with that dayand
never to be described.
The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril.
"May I ask one more favor," she said, "before you enter on your
business arrangements?"
Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent. Magdalen's
resolution to possess herself of the Instructions did not appear to
have produced a favorable impression on the lawyer's mind.
"You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests, when
you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone," she continued. "You said you
had told him all the circumstances. I wantif you will allow meto be
made quite sure of what he really knew about uswhen he sent these
orders to his lawyer. Did he know that my father had made a will, and
that he had left our fortunes to my sister and myself?"
"He did know it," said Mr. Pendril.
"Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this helpless
position?"
"I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he married, of
the necessity for making another will."
"And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr. Clare,
but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?"
"He knew that also."
"Did he know that my father's untiring goodness and kindness to both of
us"
Her voice faltered for the first time: she sighed, and put her hand to
her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss Garth spoke
entreatingly to her; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching her more and more
earnestly. She answered her sister's remonstrance with a faint smile.
"I will keep my promise," she said; "I will distress nobody." With that
reply, she turned again to Mr. Pendril; and steadily reiterated the
questionbut in another form of words.
"Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father's great anxiety was to
make sure of providing for my sister and myself?"
"He knew it in your father's own words. I sent him an extract from your
father's last letter to me."
"The letter which asked you to come for God's sake, and relieve him
from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided for? The
letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he left us
disinherited?"
"That letter and those words."
She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer's face.
"I want to fasten it all in my mind," she said "before I go on. Mr.
Michael Vanstone knew of the first will; he knew what prevented the
making of the second will; he knew of the letter and he read the words.
What did he know of besides? Did you tell him of my mother's last
illness? Did you say that her share in the money would have been left
to us, if she could have lifted her dying hand in your presence? Did
you try to make him ashamed of the cruel law which calls girls in our
situation Nobody's Children, and which allows him to use us as he is
using us now?"
"I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them doubtful; I
left none of them out."
She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the Instructions, and slowly
folded it up again, in the shape in which it had been presented to her.
"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril." With those words, she bowed,
and gently pushed the manuscript back across the table; then turned to
her sister.
"Norah," she said, "if we both of us live to grow old, and if you ever
forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstonecome to me, and I will
remind you."
She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As she
passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like fingers and
caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of him.
"What is this mask of yours hiding?" he asked, forcing her to bend to
him, and looking close into her face. "Which of the extremes of human
temperature does your courage start fromthe dead cold or the white
hot?"
She shrank back from him and turned away her head in silence. She would
have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own thoughts from any
man alive but Frank's father. He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had
taken it, and let her go on to the window. "No," he said to himself,
"not the cold extreme, whatever else it may be. So much the worse for
her, and for all belonging to her."
There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the rain
and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of silence. Mr.
Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket, considered a little,
and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth, recalled their attention to
the present and pressing necessities of the time.
"Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged," he said, "by painful
references to the past. We shall be better employed in settling our
arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return to town this
evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you; pray tell me what
trouble and what responsibility I can take off your hands."
For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be capable of
answering him. Magdalen's reception of the news which annihilated the
marriage prospect that her father's own lips had placed before her not
a month since, had bewildered and dismayed them alike. They had
summoned their courage to meet the shock of her passionate grief, or to
face the harder trial of witnessing her speechless despair. But they
were not prepared for her invincible resolution to read the
Instructions; for the terrible questions which she had put to the
lawyer; for her immovable determination to fix all the circumstances in
her mind, under which Michael Vanstone's decision had been pronounced.
There she stood at the window, an unfathomable mystery to the sister
who had never been parted from her, to the governess who had trained
her from a child. Miss Garth remembered the dark doubts which had
crossed her mind on the day when she and Magdalen had met in the
garden. Norah looked forward to the coming time, with the first serious
dread of it on her sister's account which she had felt yet. Both had
hitherto remained passive, in despair of knowing what to do. Both were
now silent, in despair of knowing what to say.
Mr. Pendril patiently and kindly helped them, by returning to the
subject of their future plans for the second time.
"I am sorry to press any business matters on your attention," he said,
"when you are necessarily unfitted to deal with them. But I must take
my instructions back to London with me to-night. With reference, in the
first place, to the disgraceful pecuniary offer, to which I have
already alluded. The younger Miss Vanstone having read the
Instructions, needs no further information from my lips. The elder
will, I hope, excuse me if I tell her (what I should be ashamed to tell
her, but that it is a matter of necessity), that Mr. Michael Vanstone's
provision for his brother's children begins and ends with an offer to
each of them of one hundred pounds."
Norah's face crimsoned with indignation. She started to her feet, as if
Michael Vanstone had been present in the room, and had personally
insulted her.
"I see," said the lawyer, wishing to spare her; "I may tell Mr. Michael
Vanstone you refuse the money."
"Tell him," she broke out passionately, "if I was starving by the
roadside, I wouldn't touch a farthing of it!"
"Shall I notify your refusal also?" asked Mr. Pendril, speaking to
Magdalen next.
She turned round from the windowbut kept her face in shadow, by
standing close against it with her back to the light.
"Tell him, on my part," she said, "to think again before he starts me
in life with a hundred pounds. I will give him time to think." She
spoke those strange words with a marked emphasis; and turning back
quickly to the window, hid her face from the observation of every one
in the room.
"You both refuse the offer," said Mr. Pendril, taking out his pencil,
and making his professional note of the decision. As he shut up his
pocketbook, he glanced toward Magdalen doubtfully. She had roused in
him the latent distrust which is a lawyer's second nature: he had his
suspicions of her looks; he had his suspicions of her language. Her
sister seemed to have mere influence over her than Miss Garth. He
resolved to speak privately to her sister before he went away.
While the idea was passing through his mind, his attention was claimed
by another question from Magdalen.
"Is he an old man?" she asked, suddenly, without turning round from the
window.
"If you mean Mr. Michael Vanstone, he is seventy-five or seventy-six
years of age."
"You spoke of his son a little while since. Has he any other sonsor
daughters?"
"None."
"Do you know anything of his wife?"
"She has been dead for many years."
There was a pause. "Why do you ask these questions?" said Norah.
"I beg your pardon," replied Magdalen, quietly; "I won't ask any more."
For the third time, Mr. Pendril returned to the business of the
interview.
"The servants must not be forgotten," he said. "They must be settled
with and discharged: I will give them the necessary explanation before
I leave. As for the house, no questions connected with it need trouble
you. The carriages and horses, the furniture and plate, and so on, must
simply be left on the premises to await Mr. Michael Vanstone's further
orders. But any possessions, Miss Vanstone, personally belonging to you
or to your sisterjewelry and dresses, and any little presents which
may have been made to youare entirely at your disposal. With regard to
the time of your departure, I understand that a month or more will
elapse before Mr. Michael Vanstone can leave Zurich; and I am sure I
only do his solicitor justice in saying"
"Excuse me, Mr. Pendril," interposed Norah; "I think I understand, from
what you have just said, that our house and everything in it belongs
to?" She stopped, as if the mere utterance of the man's name was
abhorrent to her.
"To Michael Vanstone," said Mr. Pendril. "The house goes to him with
the rest of the property."
"Then I, for one, am ready to leave it tomorrow!"
Magdalen started at the window, as her sister spoke, and looked at Mr.
Clare, with the first open signs of anxiety and alarm which she had
shown yet.
"Don't be angry with me," she whispered, stooping over the old man with
a sudden humility of look, and a sudden nervousness of manner. "I can't
go without seeing Frank first!"
"You shall see him," replied Mr. Clare. "I am here to speak to you
about it, when the business is done."
"It is quite unnecessary to hurry your departure, as you propose,"
continued Mr. Pendril, addressing Norah. "I can safely assure you that
a week hence will be time enough."
"If this is Mr. Michael Vanstone's house," repeated Norah; "I am ready
to leave it tomorrow."
She impatiently quitted her chair and seated herself further away on
the sofa. As she laid her hand on the back of it, her face changed.
There, at the head of the sofa, were the cushions which had supported
her mother when she lay down for the last time to repose. There, at the
foot of the sofa, was the clumsy, old-fashioned arm-chair, which had
been her father's favorite seat on rainy days, when she and her sister
used to amuse him at the piano opposite, by playing his favorite tunes.
A heavy sigh, which she tried vainly to repress, burst from her lips.
"Oh," she thought, "I had forgotten these old friends! How shall we
part from them when the time comes!"
"May I inquire, Miss Vanstone, whether you and your sister have formed
any definite plans for the future?" asked Mr. Pendril. "Have you
thought of any place of residence?"
"I may take it on myself, sir," said Miss Garth, "to answer your
question for them. When they leave this house, they leave it with me.
My home is their home, and my bread is their bread. Their parents
honored me, trusted me, and loved me. For twelve happy years they never
let me remember that I was their governess; they only let me know
myself as their companion and their friend. My memory of them is the
memory of unvarying gentleness and generosity; and my life shall pay
the debt of my gratitude to their orphan children."
Norah rose hastily from the sofa; Magdalen impetuously left the window.
For once, there was no contrast in the conduct of the sisters. For
once, the same impulse moved their hearts, the same earnest feeling
inspired their words. Miss Garth waited until the first outburst of
emotion had passed away; then rose, and, taking Norah and Magdalen each
by the hand, addressed herself to Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare. She spoke
with perfect self-possession; strong in her artless unconsciousness of
her own good action.
"Even such a trifle as my own story," she said, "is of some importance
at such a moment as this. I wish you both, gentlemen, to understand
that I am not promising more to the daughters of your old friend than I
can perform. When I first came to this house, I entered it under such
independent circumstances as are not common in the lives of
governesses. In my younger days, I was associated in teaching with my
elder sister: we established a school in London, which grew to be a
large and prosperous one. I only left it, and became a private
governess, because the heavy responsibility of the school was more than
my strength could bear. I left my share in the profits untouched, and I
possess a pecuniary interest in our establishment to this day. That is
my story, in few words. When we leave this house, I propose that we
shall go back to the school in London, which is still prosperously
directed by my elder sister. We can live there as quietly as we please,
until time has helped us to bear our affliction better than we can bear
it now. If Norah's and Magdalen's altered prospects oblige them to earn
their own independence, I can help them to earn it, as a gentleman's
daughters should. The best families in this land are glad to ask my
sister's advice where the interests of their children's home-training
are concerned; and I answer, beforehand, for her hearty desire to serve
Mr. Vanstone's daughters, as I answer for my own. That is the future
which my gratitude to their father and mother, and my love for
themselves, now offers to them. If you think my proposal, gentlemen, a
fit and fair proposaland I see in your faces that you dolet us not
make the hard necessities of our position harder still, by any useless
delay in meeting them at once. Let us do what we must do; let us act on
Norah's decision, and leave this house to-morrow. You mentioned the
servants just now, Mr. Pendril: I am ready to call them together in the
next room, and to assist you in the settlement of their claims,
whenever you please."
Without waiting for the lawyer's answer, without leaving the sisters
time to realize their own terrible situation, she moved at once toward
the door. It was her wise resolution to meet the coming trial by doing
much and saying little. Before she could leave the room, Mr. Clare
followed, and stopped her on the threshold.
"I never envied a woman's feelings before," said the old man. "It may
surprise you to hear it; but I envy yours. Wait! I have something more
to say. There is an obstacle still leftthe everlasting obstacle of
Frank. Help me to sweep him off. Take the elder sister along with you
and the lawyer, and leave me here to have it out with the younger. I
want to see what metal she's really made of."
While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr. Pendril
had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. "Before I go back to
town," he said, "I should like to have a word with you in private. From
what has passed today, Miss Vanstone, I have formed a very high opinion
of your discretion; and, as an old friend of your father's, I want to
take the freedom of speaking to you about your sister."
Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance with Mr.
Clare's request, to the conference with the servants. Mr. Pendril
followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the three were out in
the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed the door, and signed
peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair.
She obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the room, with
his hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shapeless coat which
he habitually wore.
"How old are you?" he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking to her with
the whole breadth of the room between them.
"I was eighteen last birthday," she answered, humbly, without looking
up at him.
"You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. Have you
got any of that courage left?"
She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard. A few tears
gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.
"I can't give Frank up," she said, faintly. "You don't care for me, I
know; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to be kind to me
for my father's sake?"
The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more. Never had
she felt the illimitable power which a woman's love possesses of
absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of
her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly associated
Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment. Never had
the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the
man of their choicethe atmosphere which had blinded her to all that
was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank's naturesurrounded him with a
brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the
possession of the son. "Oh, don't ask me to give him up!" she said,
trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot. In the next
instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a
flash of lightning. "I won't give him up!" she burst out violently.
"No! not if a thousand fathers ask me!"
"I am one father," said Mr. Clare. "And I don't ask you."
In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected
words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to throw
her arms round his neck. She might as well have attempted to move the
house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders and put her
back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and
his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a
fractious child.
"Hug Frank," he said; "don't hug me. I haven't done with you yet; when
I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like. Wait, and compose
yourself."
He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his monotonous
march up and down the room began again.
"Ready?" he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to answer.
"Take two minutes more," he said, and resumed his walk with the
regularity of clock-work. "These are the creatures," he thought to
himself, "into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness
of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which
answers its end as badly as a woman does?"
He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier; the dark
flush on her face was dying out again.
"Ready?" he repeated. "Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; and let's get
it over. I don't ask you to give Frank up. I ask you to wait."
"I will wait," she said. "Patiently, willingly."
"Will you make Frank wait?"
"Yes."
"Will you send him to China?"
Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in
silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched straight
up to it on the spot.
"I don't pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank's for
you," he said. "The subject doesn't interest me. But I do pretend to
state two plain truths. It is one plain truth that you can't be married
till you have money enough to pay for the roof that shelters you, the
clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat. It is another plain
truth that you can't find the money; that I can't find the money; and
that Frank's only chance of finding it, is going to China. If I tell
him to go, he'll sit in a corner and cry. If I insist, he'll say Yes,
and deceive me. If I go a step further, and see him on board ship with
my own eyes, he'll slip off in the pilot's boat, and sneak back
secretly to you. That's his disposition."
"No!" said Magdalen. "It's not his disposition; it's his love for Me."
"Call it what you like," retorted Mr. Clare. "Sneak or Sweetheart he's
too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold him. My
shutting the door won't keep him from coming back. Your shutting the
door will. Have you the courage to shut it? Are you fond enough of him
not to stand in his light?"
"Fond! I would die for him!"
"Will you send him to China?"
She sighed bitterly.
"Have a little pity for me," she said. "I have lost my father; I have
lost my mother; I have lost my fortuneand now I am to lose Frank. You
don't like women, I know; but try to help me with a little pity. I
don't say it's not for his own interests to send him to China; I only
say it's hardvery, very hard on me."
Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her caresses,
blind to her tears; but under the tough integument of his philosophy he
had a heartand it answered that hopeless appeal; it felt those
touching words.
"I don't deny that your case is a hard one," he said. "I don't want to
make it harder. I only ask you to do in Frank's interests what Frank is
too weak to do for himself. It's no fault of yours; it's no fault of
minebut it's not the less true that the fortune you were to have
brought him has changed owners."
She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a
threatening smile on her lips.
"It may change owners again," she said.
Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the tones of
her voice. But the words were spoken low; spoken as if to herselfthey
failed to reach him across the breadth of the room. He stopped
instantly in his walk and asked what she had said.
"Nothing," she answered, turning her head away toward the window, and
looking out mechanically at the falling rain. "Only my own thoughts."
Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject.
"It's your interest," he went on, "as well as Frank's interest, that he
should go. He may make money enough to marry you in China; he can't
make it here. If he stops at home, he'll be the ruin of both of you.
He'll shut his eyes to every consideration of prudence, and pester you
to marry him; and when he has carried his point, he will be the first
to turn round afterward and complain that you're a burden on him. Hear
me out! You're in love with FrankI'm not, and I know him. Put you two
together often enough; give him time enough to hug, cry, pester, and
plead; and I'll tell you what the end will beyou'll marry him."
He had touched the right string at last. It rung back in answer before
he could add another word.
"You don't know me," she said, firmly. "You don't know what I can
suffer for Frank's sake. He shall never marry me till I can be what my
father said I should bethe making of his fortune. He shall take no
burden, when he takes me; I promise you that! I'll be the good angel of
Frank's life; I'll not go a penniless girl to him, and drag him down."
She abruptly left her seat, advanced a few steps toward Mr. Clare, and
stopped in the middle of the room. Her arms fell helpless on either
side of her, and she burst into tears. "He shall go," she said. "If my
heart breaks in doing it, I'll tell him to-morrow that we must say
Good-by!"
Mr. Clare at once advanced to meet her, and held out his hand.
"I'll help you," he said. "Frank shall hear every word that has passed
between us. When he comes to-morrow he shall know, beforehand, that he
comes to say Good-by."
She took his hand in both her ownhesitatedlooked at himand pressed
it to her bosom. "May I ask a favor of you, before you go?" she said,
timidly. He tried to take his hand from her; but she knew her
advantage, and held it fast. "Suppose there should be some change for
the better?" she went on. "Suppose I could come to Frank, as my fat her
said I should come to him?"
Before she could complete the question, Mr. Clare made a second effort
and withdrew his hand. "As your father said you should come to him?" he
repeated, looking at her attentively.
"Yes," she replied. "Strange things happen sometimes. If strange things
happen to me will you let Frank come back before the five years are
out?"
What did she mean? Was she clinging desperately to the hope of melting
Michael Vanstone's heart? Mr. Clare could draw no other conclusion from
what she had just said to him. At the beginning of the interview he
would have roughly dispelled her delusion. At the end of the interview
he left her compassionately in possession of it.
"You are hoping against all hope," he said; "but if it gives you
courage, hope on. If this impossible good fortune of yours ever
happens, tell me, and Frank shall come back. In the meantime"
"In the meantime," she interposed sadly, "you have my promise."
Once more Mr. Clare's sharp eyes searched her face attentively.
"I will trust your promise," he said. "You shall see Frank to-morrow."
She went back thoughtfully to her chair, and sat down again in silence.
Mr. Clare made for the door before any formal leave-taking could pass
between them. "Deep!" he thought to himself, as he looked back at her
before he went out; "only eighteen; and too deep for my sounding!"
In the hall he found Norah, waiting anxiously to hear what had
happened.
"Is it all over?" she asked. "Does Frank go to China?"
"Be careful how you manage that sister of yours," said Mr. Clare,
without noticing the question. "She has one great misfortune to contend
with: she's not made for the ordinary jog-trot of a woman's life. I
don't say I can see straight to the end of the good or evil in herI
only warn you, her future will be no common one."
An hour later, Mr. Pendril left the house; and, by that night's post,
Miss Garth dispatched a letter to her sister in London.
THE END OF THE FIRST SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril.
"Westmoreland House, Kensington,
"August 14th, 1846.
"DEAR MR. PENDRIL,
"The date of this letter will show you that the last of many hard
partings is over. We have left Combe-Raven; we have said farewell to
home.
"I have been thinking seriously of what you said to me on Wednesday,
before you went back to town. I entirely agree with you that Miss Garth
is more shaken by all she has gone through for our sakes than she is
herself willing to admit; and that it is my duty, for the future, to
spare her all the anxiety that I can on the subject of my sister and
myself. This is very little to do for our dearest friend, for our
second mother. Such as it is, I will do it with all my heart.
"But, forgive me for saying that I am as far as ever from agreeing with
you about Magdalen. I am so sensible, in our helpless position, of the
importance of your assistance; so anxious to be worthy of the interest
of my father's trusted adviser and oldest friend, that I feel really
and truly disappointed with myself for differing with youand yet I do
differ. Magdalen is very strange, very unaccountable, to those who
don't know her intimately. I can understand that she has innocently
misled you; and that she has presented herself, perhaps, under her
least favorable aspect. But that the clue to her language and her
conduct on Wednesday last is to be found in such a feeling toward the
man who has ruined us, as the feeling at which you hinted, is what I
cannot and will not believe of my sister. If you knew, as I do, what a
noble nature she has, you would not be surprised at this obstinate
resistance of mine to your opinion. Will you try to alter it? I don't
mind what Mr. Clare says; he believes in nothing. But I attach a very
serious importance to what you say; and, kind as I know your motives
to be, it distresses me to think you are doing Magdalen an injustice.
"Having relieved my mind of this confession, I may now come to the
proper object of my letter. I promised, if you could not find leisure
time to visit us to-day, to write and tell you all that happened after
you left us. The day has passed without our seeing you. So I open my
writing-case and perform my promise.
"I am sorry to say that three of the women-servantsthe house-maid, the
kitchen-maid, and even our own maid (to whom I am sure we have always
been kind)took advantage of your having paid them their wages to pack
up and go as soon as your back was turned. They came to say good-by
with as much ceremony and as little feeling as if they were leaving the
house under ordinary circumstances. The cook, for all her violent
temper, behaved very differently: she sent up a message to say that she
would stop and help us to the last. And Thomas (who has never yet been
in any other place than ours) spoke so gratefully of my dear father's
unvarying kindness to him, and asked so anxiously to be allowed to go
on serving us while his little savings lasted, that Magdalen and I
forgot all formal considerations and both shook hands with him. The
poor lad went out of the room crying. I wish him well; I hope he will
find a kind master and a good place.
"The long, quiet, rainy evening out-of-doorsour last evening at
Combe-Ravenwas a sad trial to us. I think winter-time would have
weighed less on our spirits; the drawn curtains and the bright lamps,
and the companionable fires would have helped us. We were only five in
the house altogetherafter having once been so many! I can't tell you
how dreary the gray daylight looked, toward seven o'clock, in the
lonely rooms, and on the noiseless staircase. Surely, the prejudice in
favor of long summer evenings is the prejudice of happy people? We did
our best. We kept ourselves employed, and Miss Garth helped us. The
prospect of preparing for our departure, which had seemed so dreadful
earlier in the day, altered into the prospect of a refuge from
ourselves as the evening came on. We each tried at first to pack up in
our own roomsbut the loneliness was more than we could bear. We
carried all our possessions downstairs, and heaped them on the large
dining-table, and so made our preparations together in the same room. I
am sure we have taken nothing away which does not properly belong to
us.
"Having already mentioned to you my own conviction that Magdalen was
not herself when you saw her on Wednesday, I feel tempted to stop here
and give you an instance in proof of what I say. The little
circumstance happened on Wednesday night, just before we went up to our
rooms.
"After we had packed our dresses and our birthday presents, our books
and our music, we began to sort our letters, which had got confused
from being placed on the table together. Some of my letters were mixed
with Magdalen's, and some of hers with mine. Among these last I found a
card, which had been given to my sister early in the year by an actor
who managed an amateur theatrical performance in which she took a part.
The man had given her the card, containing his name and address, in the
belief that she would be invited to many more amusements of the same
kind, and in the hope that she would recommend him as a superintendent
on future occasions. I only relate these trifling particulars to show
you how little worth keeping such a card could be, in such
circumstances as ours. Naturally enough, I threw it away from me across
the table, meaning to throw it on the floor. It fell short, close to
the place in which Magdalen was sitting. She took it up, looked at it,
and immediately declared that she would not have had this perfectly
worthless thing destroyed for the world. She was almost angry with me
for having thrown it away; almost angry with Miss Garth for asking what
she could possibly want with it! Could there be any plainer proof than
this that our misfortunesfalling so much more heavily on her than on
mehave quite unhinged her, and worn her out? Surely her words and
looks are not to be interpreted against her, when she is not
sufficiently mistress of herself to exert her natural judgmentwhen she
shows the unreasonable petulance of a child on a question which is not
of the slightest importance.
"A little after eleven we went upstairs to try if we could get some
rest.
"I drew aside the curtain of my window and looked out. Oh, what a cruel
last night it was: no moon, no stars; such deep darkness that not one
of the dear familiar objects in the garden was visible when I looked
for them; such deep stillness that even my own movements about the room
almost frightened me! I tried to lie down and sleep, but the sense of
loneliness came again and quite overpowered me. You will say I am old
enough, at six-and-twenty, to have exerted more control over myself. I
hardly know how it happened, but I stole into Magdalen's room, just as
I used to steal into it years and years ago, when we were children. She
was not in bed; she was sitting with her writing materials before her,
thinking. I said I wanted to be with her the last night; and she kissed
me, and told me to lie down, and promised soon to follow me. My mind
was a little quieted and I fell asleep. It was daylight when I wokeand
the first sight I saw was Magdalen, still sitting in the chair, and
still thinking. She had never been to bed; she had not slept all
through the night.
"'I shall sleep when we have left Combe-Raven,' she said. 'I shall be
better when it is all over, and I have bid Frank good-by.' She had in
her hand our father's will, and the letter he wrote to you; and when
she had done speaking, she gave them into my possession. I was the
eldest (she said), and those last precious relics ought to be in my
keeping. I tried to propose to her that we should divide them; but she
shook her head. 'I have copied for myself,' was her answer, 'all that
he says of us in the will, and all that he says in the letter.' She
told me this, and took from her bosom a tiny white silk bag, which she
had made in the night, and in which she had put the extracts, so as to
keep them always about her. 'This tells me in his own words what his
last wishes were for both of us,' she said; 'and this is all I want for
the future.'
"These are trifles to dwell on; and I am almost surprised at myself for
not feeling ashamed to trouble you with them. But, since I have known
what your early connection was with my father and mother, I have
learned to think of you (and, I suppose, to write to you) as an old
friend. And, besides, I have it so much at heart to change your opinion
of Magdalen, that I can't help telling you the smallest things about
her which may, in my judgment, end in making you think of her as I do.
"When breakfast-time came (on Thursday morning), we were surprised to
find a strange letter on the table. Perhaps I ought to mention it to
you, in case of any future necessity for your interference. It was
addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest mourning-border
round it; and the writer was the same man who followed us on our way
home from a walk one day last springCaptain Wragge. His object appears
to be to assert once more his audacious claim to a family connection
with my poor mother, under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is
an insolence in such a person to have written at all. He expresses as
much sympathyon his discovery of our affliction in the newspaperas if
he had been really intimate with us; and he begs to know, in a
postscript (being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really
happened), whether it is thought desirable that he should be present,
among the other relatives, at the reading of the will! The address he
gives, at which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is,
'Post-office, Birmingham.' This is all I have to tell you on the
subject. Both the letter and the writer seem to me to be equally
unworthy of the slightest notice, on our part or on yours.
"After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the
morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged that
Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented himself to
take his leave. I was upstairs when he came; and I remained upstairs
for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anxious, as you may well
believe, on Magdalen's account.
"At the end of the half-hour or more, I came downstairs. As I reached
the landing I suddenly heard her voice, raised entreatingly, and
calling on him by his namethen loud sobsthen a frightful laughing and
screaming, both together, that rang through the house. I instantly ran
into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and
Frank standing staring at her, with a lowering, angry face, biting his
nails.
"I felt so indignantwithout knowing plainly why, for I was ignorant,
of course, of what had passed at the interviewthat I took Mr. Francis
Clare by the shoulders and pushed him out of the room. I am careful to
tell you how I acted toward him, and what led to it; because I
understand that he is excessively offended with me, and that he is
likely to mention elsewhere what he calls my unladylike violence toward
him. If he should mention it to you, I am anxious to acknowledge, of my
own accord, that I forgot myselfnot, I hope you will think, without
some provocation.
"I pushed him into the hall, leaving Magdalen, for the moment, to Miss
Garth's care. Instead of going away, he sat down sulkily on one of the
hall chairs. 'May I ask the reason of this extraordinary violence?' he
inquired, with an injured look. 'No,' I said. 'You will be good enough
to imagine the reason for yourself, and to leave us immediately, if you
please.' He sat doggedly in the chair, biting his nails and
considering. 'What have I done to be treated in this unfeeling manner?'
he asked, after a while. 'I can enter into no discussion with you,' I
answered; 'I can only request you to leave us. If you persist in
waiting to see my sister again, I will go to the cottage myself and
appeal to your father.' He got up in a great hurry at those words. 'I
have been infamously used in this business,' he said. 'All the
hardships and the sacrifices have fallen to my share. I'm the only one
among you who has any heart: all the rest are as hard as
stonesMagdalen included. In one breath she says she loves me, and in
another she tells me to go to China. What have I done to be treated
with this heartless inconsistency? I am consistent myselfI only want
to stop at homeand (what's the consequence?) you're all against me!'
In that manner he grumbled his way down the steps, and so I saw the
last of him. This was all that passed between us. If he gives you any
other account of it, what he says will be false. He made no attempt to
return. An hour afterward his father came alone to say good-by. He saw
Miss Garth and me, but not Magdalen; and he told us he would take the
necessary measures, with your assistance, for having his son properly
looked after in London, and seen safely on board the vessel when the
time came. It was a short visit, and a sad leave-taking. Even Mr. Clare
was sorry, though he tried hard to hide it.
"We had barely two hours, after Mr. Clare had left us, before it would
be time to go. I went back to Magdalen, and found her quieter and
better, though terribly pale and exhausted, and oppressed, as I
fancied, by thoughts which she could not prevail on herself to
communicate. She would tell me nothing thenshe has told me nothing
sinceof what passed between herself and Francis Clare. When I spoke of
him angrily (feeling as I did that he had distressed and tortured her,
when she ought to have had all the encouragement and comfort from him
that man could give), she refused to hear me: she made the kindest
allowances and the sweetest excuses for him, and laid all the blame of
the dreadful state in which I had found her entirely on herself. Was I
wrong in telling you that she had a noble nature? And won't you alter
your opinion when you read these lines?
"We had no friends to come and bid us good-by; and our few
acquaintances were too far from usperhaps too indifferent about usto
call. We employed the little leisure left in going over the house
together for the last time. We took leave of our old schoolroom, our
bedrooms, the room where our mother died, the little study where our
father used to settle his accounts and write his lettersfeeling toward
them, in our forlorn condition, as other girls might have felt at
parting with old friends. From the house, in a gleam of fine weather,
we went into the garden, and gathered our last nosegay; with the
purpose of drying the flowers when they begin to wither, and keeping
them in remembrance of the happy days that are gone. When we had said
good-by to the garden, there was only half an hour left. We went
together to the grave; we knelt down, side by side, in silence, and
kissed the sacred ground. I thought my heart would have broken. August
was the month of my mother's birthday; and, this time last year, my
father and Magdalen and I were all consulting in secret what present we
could make to surprise her with on the birthday morning.
"If you had seen how Magdalen suffered, you would never doubt her
again. I had to take her from the last resting-place of our father and
mother almost by force. Before we were out of the churchyard she broke
from me and ran back. She dropped on her knees at the grave; tore up
from it passionately a handful of grass; and said something to herself,
at the same moment, which, though I followed her instantly, I did not
get near enough to hear. She turned on me in such a frenzied manner,
when I tried to raise her from the groundshe looked at me with such a
fearful wildness in her eyesthat I felt absolutely terrified at the
sight of her. To my relief, the paroxysm left her as suddenly as it had
come. She thrust away the tuft of grass into the bosom of her dress,
and took my arm and hurried with me out of the churchyard. I asked her
why she had gone backI asked what those words were which she had
spoken at the grave. 'A promise to our dead father,' she answered, with
a momentary return of the wild look and the frenzied manner which had
startled me already. I was afraid to agitate her by saying more; I left
all other questions to be asked at a fitter and a quieter time. You
will understand from this how terribly she suffers, how wildly and
strangely she acts under violent agitation; and you will not interpret
against her what she said or did when you saw her on Wednesday last.
"We only returned to the house in time to hasten away from it to the
train. Perhaps it was better for us sobetter that we had only a moment
left to look back before the turn in the road hid the last of
Combe-Raven from our view. There was not a soul we knew at the station;
nobody to stare at us, nobody to wish us good-by. The rain came on
again as we took our seats in the train. What we felt at the sight of
the railwaywhat horrible remembrances it forced on our minds of the
calamity which has made us fatherlessI cannot, and dare not, tell you.
I have tried anxiously not to write this letter in a gloomy tone; not
to return all your kindness to us by distressing you with our grief.
Perhaps I have dwelt too long already on the little story of our
parting from home? I can only say, in excuse, that my heart is full of
it; and what is not in my heart my pen won't write.
"We have been so short a time in our new abode that I have nothing more
to tell youexcept that Miss Garth's sister has received us with the
heartiest kindness. She considerately leaves us to ourselves, until we
are fitter than we are now to think of our future plans, and to arrange
as we best can for earning our own living. The house is so large, and
the position of our rooms has been so thoughtfully chosen, that I
should hardly knowexcept when I hear the laughing of the younger girls
in the gardenthat we were living in a school.
"With kindest and best wishes from Miss Garth and my sister, believe
me, dear Mr. Pendril, gratefully yours,
"NORAH VANSTONE."
II.
From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril.
"Westmoreland House, Kensington,
"September 23d, 1846.
"MY DEAR SIR,
"I write these lines in such misery of mind as no words can describe.
Magdalen has deserted us. At an early hour this morning she secretly
left the house, and she has not been heard of since.
"I would come and speak to you personally; but I dare not leave Norah.
I must try to control myself; I must try to write.
"Nothing happened yesterday to prepare me or to prepare Norah for this
lastI had almost said, this worstof all our afflictions. The only
alteration we either of us noticed in the unhappy girl was an
alteration for the better when we parted for the night. She kissed me,
which she has not done latterly; and she burst out crying when she
embraced her sister next. We had so little suspicion of the truth that
we thought these signs of renewed tenderness and affection a promise of
better things for the future.
"This morning, when her sister went into her room, it was empty, and a
note in her handwriting, addressed to Norah, was lying on the
dressing-table. I cannot prevail on Norah to part with the note; I can
only send you the inclosed copy of it. You will see that it affords no
clue to the direction she has taken.
"Knowing the value of time, in this dreadful emergency, I examined her
room, and (with my sister's help) questioned the servants immediately
on the news of her absence reaching me. Her wardrobe was empty; and all
her boxes but one, which she has evidently taken away with her, are
empty, too. We are of opinion that she has privately turned her dresses
and jewelry into money; that she had the one trunk she took with her
removed from the house yesterday; and that she left us this morning on
foot. The answers given by one of the servants are so unsatisfactory
that we believe the woman has been bribed to assist her; and has
managed all those arrangements for her flight which she could not have
safely undertaken by herself.
"Of the immediate object with which she has left us, I entertain no
doubt.
"I have reasons (which I can tell you at a fitter time) for feeling
assured that she has gone away with the intention of trying her fortune
on the stage. She has in her possession the card of an actor by
profession, who superintended an amateur theatrical performance at
Clifton, in which she took part; and to him she has gone to help her. I
saw the card at the time, and I know the actor's name to be Huxtable.
The address I cannot call to mind quite so correctly; but I am almost
sure it was at some theatrical place in Bow Street, Covent Garden. Let
me entreat you not to lose a moment in sending to make the necessary
inquiries; the first trace of her will, I firmly believe, be found at
that address.
"If we had nothing worse to dread than her attempting to go on the
stage, I should not feel the distress and dismay which now overpower
me. Hundreds of other girls have acted as recklessly as she has acted,
and have not ended ill after all. But my fears for Magdalen do not
begin and end with the risk she is running at present.
"There has been something weighing on her mind ever since we left
Combe-Ravenweighing far more heavily for the last six weeks than at
first. Until the period when Francis Clare left England, I am persuaded
she was secretly sustained by the hope that he would contrive to see
her again. From the day when she knew that the measures you had taken
for preventing this had succeeded; from the day when she was assured
that the ship had really taken him away, nothing has roused, nothing
has interested her. She has given herself up, more and more hopelessly,
to her own brooding thoughts; thoughts which I believe first entered
her mind on the day when the utter ruin of the prospects on which her
marriage depended was made known to her. She has formed some desperate
project of contesting the possession of her father's fortune with
Michael Vanstone; and the stage career which she has gone away to try
is nothing more than a means of freeing herself from all home
dependence, and of enabling her to run what mad risks she pleases, in
perfect security from all home control. What it costs me to write of
her in these terms, I must leave you to imagine. The time has gone by
when any consideration of distress to my own feelings can weigh with
me. Whatever I can say which will open your eyes to the real danger,
and strengthen your conviction of the instant necessity of averting it,
I say in despite of myself, without hesitation and without reserve.
"One word more, and I have done.
"The last time you were so good as to come to this house, do you
remember how Magdalen embarrassed and distressed us by questioning you
about her right to bear her father's name? Do you remember her
persisting in her inquiries, until she had forced you to acknowledge
that, legally speaking, she and her sister had No Name? I venture to
remind you of this, because you have the affairs of hundreds of clients
to think of, and you might well have forgotten the circumstance.
Whatever natural reluctance she might otherwise have had to deceiving
us, and degrading herself, by the use of an assumed name, that
conversation with you is certain to have removed. We must discover her
by personal descriptionwe can trace her in no other way.
"I can think of nothing more to guide your decision in our deplorable
emergency. For God's sake, let no expense and no efforts be spared. My
letter ought to reach you by ten o'clock this morning, at the latest.
Let me have one line in answer, to say you will act instantly for the
best. My only hope of quieting Norah is to show her a word of
encouragement from your pen. Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely and
obliged,
"HARRIET GARTH."
III.
From Magdalen to Norah (inclosed in the preceding Letter).
"MY DARLING,
"Try to forgive me. I have struggled against myself till I am worn out
in the effort. I am the wretchedest of living creatures. Our quiet life
here maddens me; I can bear it no longer; I must go. If you knew what
my thoughts are; if you knew how hard I have fought against them, and
how horribly they have gone on haunting me in the lonely quiet of this
house, you would pity and forgive me. Oh, my love, don't feel hurt at
my not opening my heart to you as I ought! I dare not open it. I dare
not show myself to you as I really am.
"Pray don't send and seek after me; I will write and relieve all your
anxieties. You know, Norah, we must get our living for ourselves; I
have only gone to get mine in the manner which is fittest for me.
Whether I succeed, or whether I fail, I can do myself no harm either
way. I have no position to lose, and no name to degrade. Don't doubt I
love youdon't let Miss Garth doubt my gratitude. I go away miserable
at leaving you; but I must go. If I had loved you less dearly, I might
have had the courage to say this in your presencebut how could I trust
myself to resist your persuasions, and to bear the sight of your
distress? Farewell, my darling! Take a thousand kisses from me, my own
best, dearest love, till we meet again.
"MAGDALEN."
IV.
From Sergeant Bulmer (of the Detective Police) to Mr. Pendril.
"Scotland Yard,
"September 29th, 1846.
"SIR,
"Your clerk informs me that the parties interested in our inquiry after
the missing young lady are anxious for news of the same. I went to your
office to speak to you about the matter to-day. Not having found you,
and not being able to return and try again to-morrow, I write these
lines to save delay, and to tell you how we stand thus far.
"I am sorry to say, no advance has been made since my former report.
The trace of the young lady which we found nearly a week since, still
remains the last trace discovered of her. This case seems a mighty
simple one looked at from a distance. Looked at close, it alters very
considerably for the worse, and becomes, to speak the plain trutha
Poser.
"This is how we now stand:
"We have traced the young lady to the theatrical agent's in Bow Street.
We know that at an early hour on the morning of the twenty-third the
agent was called downstairs, while he was dressing, to speak to a young
lady in a cab at the door. We know that, on her production of Mr.
Huxtable's card, he wrote on it Mr. Huxtable's address in the country,
and heard her order the cabman to drive to the Great Northern terminus.
We believe she left by the nine o'clock train. We followed her by the
twelve o'clock train. We have ascertained that she called at half-past
two at Mr. Huxtable's lodgings; that she found he was away, and not
expected back till eight in the evening; that she left word she would
call again at eight; and that she never returned. Mr. Huxtable's
statement ishe and the young lady have never set eyes on each other.
The first consideration which follows, is this: Are we to believe Mr.
Huxtable? I have carefully inquired into his character; I know as much,
or more, about him than he knows about himself; and my opinion is, that
we are to believe him. To the best of my knowledge, he is a perfectly
honest man.
"Here, then, is the hitch in the case. The young lady sets out with a
certain object before her. Instead of going on to the accomplishment of
that object, she stops short of it. Why has she stopped? and where?
Those are, unfortunately, just the questions which we can't answer yet.
"My own opinion of the matter is, briefly, as follows: I don't think
she has met with any serious accident. Serious accidents, in nine cases
out of ten, discover themselves. My own notion is, that she has fallen
into the hands of some person or persons interested in hiding her away,
and sharp enough to know how to set about it. Whether she is in their
charge, with or without her own consent, is more than I can undertake
to say at present. I don't wish to raise false hopes or false fears; I
wish to stop short at the opinion I have given already.
"In regard to the future, I may tell you that I have left one of my men
in daily communication with the authorities. I have also taken care to
have the handbills offering a reward for the discovery of her widely
circulated. Lastly, I have completed the necessary arrangements for
seeing the play-bills of all country theaters, and for having the
dramatic companies well looked after. Some years since, this would have
cost a serious expenditure of time and money. Luckily for our purpose,
the country theaters are in a bad way. Excepting the large cities,
hardly one of them is open, and we can keep our eye on them, with
little expense and less difficulty.
"These are the steps which I think it needful to take at present. If
you are of another opinion, you have only to give me your directions,
and I will carefully attend to the same. I don't by any means despair
of our finding the young lady and bringing her back to her friends safe
and well. Please to tell them so; and allow me to subscribe myself,
yours respectfully,
"ABRAHAM BULMER."
V.
Anonymous Letter addressed to Mr. Pendril.
"SIR,
"A word to the wise. The friends of a certain young lady are wasting
time and money to no purpose. Your confidential clerk and your
detective policeman are looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. This
is the ninth of October, and they have not found her yet: they will as
soon find the Northwest Passage. Call your dogs off; and you may hear
of the young lady's safety under her own hand. The longer you look for
her, the longer she will remain, what she is nowlost."
[The preceding letter is thus indorsed, in Mr. Pendril's handwriting:
"No apparent means of tracing the inclosed to its source. Post-mark,
'Charing Cross.' Stationer's stamp cut off the inside of the envelope.
Handwriting, probably a man's, in disguise. Writer, whoever he is,
correctly informed. No further trace of the younger Miss Vanstone
discovered yet."]
THE SECOND SCENE.
SKELDERGATE, YORK.
CHAPTER I.
In that part of the city of York which is situated on the western bank
of the Ouse there is a narrow street, called Skeldergate, running
nearly north and south, parallel with the course of the river. The
postern by which Skeldergate was formerly approached no longer exists;
and the few old houses left in the street are disguised in melancholy
modern costume of whitewash and cement. Shops of the smaller and poorer
order, intermixed here and there with dingy warehouses and joyless
private residences of red brick, compose the present aspect of
Skeldergate. On the river-side the houses are separated at intervals by
lanes running down to the water, and disclosing lonely little plots of
open ground, with the masts of sailing-barges rising beyond. At its
southward extremity the street ceases on a sudden, and the broad flow
of the Ouse, the trees, the meadows, the public-walk on one bank and
the towing-path on the other, open to view.
Here, where the street ends, and on the side of it furthest from the
river, a narrow little lane leads up to the paved footway surmounting
the ancient Walls of York. The one small row of buildings, which is all
that the lane possesses, is composed of cheap lodging-houses, with an
opposite view, at the distance of a few feet, of a portion of the
massive city wall. This place is called Rosemary Lane. Very little
light enters it; very few people live in it; the floating population of
Skeldergate passes it by; and visitors to the Walk on the Walls, who
use it as the way up or the way down, get out of the dreary little
passage as fast as they can.
The door of one of the houses in this lost corner of York opened softly
on the evening of the twenty-third of September, eighteen hundred and
forty-six; and a solitary individual of the male sex sauntered into
Skeldergate from the seclusion of Rosemary Lane.
Turning northward, this person directed his steps toward the bridge
over the Ouse and the busy center of the city. He bore the external
appearance of respectable poverty; he carried a gingham umbrella,
preserved in an oilskin case; he picked his steps, with the neatest
avoidance of all dirty places on the pavement; and he surveyed the
scene around him with eyes of two different colorsa bilious brown eye
on the lookout for employment, and a bilious green eye in a similar
predicament. In plainer terms, the stranger from Rosemary Lane was no
other thanCaptain Wragge.
Outwardly speaking, the captain had not altered for the better since
the memorable spring day when he had presented himself to Miss Garth at
the lodge-gate at Combe-Raven. The railway mania of that famous year
had attacked even the wary Wragge; had withdrawn him from his customary
pursuits; and had left him prostrate in the end, like many a better
man. He had lost his clerical appearancehe had faded with the autumn
leaves. His crape hat-band had put itself in brown mourning for its own
bereavement of black. His dingy white collar and cravat had died the
death of old linen, and had gone to their long home at the
paper-maker's, to live again one day in quires at a stationer's shop. A
gray shooting-jacket in the last stage of woolen atrophy replaced the
black frockcoat of former times, and, like a faithful servant, kept the
dark secret of its master's linen from the eyes of a prying world. From
top to toe every square inch of the captain's clothing was altered for
the worse; but the man himself remained unchangedsuperior to all forms
of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust. He was as
courteous, as persuasive, as blandly dignified as ever. He carried his
head as high without a shirt-collar as ever he had carried it with one.
The threadbare black handkerchief round his neck was perfectly tied;
his rotten old shoes were neatly blacked; he might have compared chins,
in the matter of smooth shaving, with the highest church dignitary in
York. Time, change, and poverty had all attacked the captain together,
and had all failed alike to get him down on the ground. He paced the
streets of York, a man superior to clothes and circumstanceshis
vagabond varnish as bright on him as ever.
Arrived at the bridge, Captain Wragge stopped and looked idly over the
parapet at the barges in the river. It was plainly evident that he had
no particular destination to reach and nothing whatever to do. While he
was still loitering, the clock of York Minster chimed the half-hour
past five. Cabs rattled by him over the bridge on their way to meet the
train from London, at twenty minutes to six. After a moment's
hesitation, the captain sauntered after the cabs. When it is one of a
man's regular habits to live upon his fellow-creatures, that man is
always more or less fond of haunting large railway stations. Captain
Wragge gleaned the human field, and on that unoccupied afternoon the
York terminus was as likely a corner to look about in as any other.
He reached the platform a few minutes after the train had arrived. That
entire incapability of devising administrative measures for the
management of large crowds, which is one of the characteristics of
Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than at
York. Three different lines of railway assemble three passenger mobs,
from morning to-night, under one roof; and leave them to raise a
traveler's riot, with all the assistance which the bewildered servants
of the company can render to increase the confusion. The customary
disturbance was rising to its climax as Captain Wragge approached the
platform. Dozens of different people were trying to attain dozens of
different objects, in dozens of different directions, all starting from
the same common point and all equally deprived of the means of
information. A sudden parting of the crowd, near the second-class
carriages, attracted the captain's curiosity. He pushed his way in; and
found a decently-dressed manassisted by a porter and a
policemanattempting to pick up some printed bills scattered from a
paper parcel, which his frenzied fellow-passengers had knocked out of
his hand.
Offering his assistance in this emergency, with the polite alacrity
which marked his character, Captain Wragge observed the three startling
words, "Fifty Pounds Reward," printed in capital letters on the bills
which he assisted in recovering; and instantly secreted one of them, to
be more closely examined at the first convenient opportunity. As he
crumpled up the bill in the palm of his hand, his party-colored eyes
fixed with hungry interest on the proprietor of the unlucky parcel.
When a man happens not to be possessed of fifty pence in his own
pocket, if his heart is in the right place, it bounds; if his mouth is
properly constituted, it waters, at the sight of another man who
carries about with him a printed offer of fifty pounds sterling,
addressed to his fellow-creatures.
The unfortunate traveler wrapped up his parcel as he best might, and
made his way off the platform, after addressing an inquiry to the first
official victim of the day's passenger-traffic, who was sufficiently in
possession of his senses to listen to it. Leaving the station for the
river-side, which was close at hand, the stranger entered the ferryboat
at the North Street Postern. The captain, who had carefully dogged his
steps thus far, entered the boat also; and employed the short interval
of transit to the opposite bank in a perusal of the handbill which he
had kept for his own private enlightenment. With his back carefully
turned on the traveler, Captain Wragge now possessed his mind of the
following lines:
"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD."
"Left her home, in London, early on the morning of September 23d, 1846,
A YOUNG LADY. Ageeighteen. Dressdeep mourning. Personal
appearancehair of a very light brown; eyebrows and eyelashes darker;
eyes light gray; complexion strikingly pale; lower part of her face
large and full; tall upright figure; walks with remarkable grace and
ease; speaks with openness and resolution; has the manners and habits
of a refined, cultivated lady. Personal markstwo little moles, close
together, on the left side of the neck. Mark on the
under-clothing'Magdalen Vanstone.' Is supposed to have joined, or
attempted to join, under an assumed name, a theatrical company now
performing at York. Had, when she left London, one black box, and no
other luggage. Whoever will give such information as will restore her
to her friends shall receive the above Reward. Apply at the office of
Mr. Harkness, solicitor, Coney Street, York. Or to Messrs. Wyatt,
Pendril, and Gwilt, Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn, London."
Accustomed as Captain Wragge was to keep the completest possession of
himself in all human emergencies, his own profound astonishment, when
the course of his reading brought him to the mark on the linen of the
missing young lady, betrayed him into an exclamation of surprise which
even startled the ferryman. The traveler was less observant; his whole
attention was fixed on the opposite bank of the river, and he left the
boat hastily the moment it touched the landing-place. Captain Wragge
recovered himself, pocketed the handbill, and followed his leader for
the second time.
The stranger directed his steps to the nearest street which ran down to
the river, compared a note in his pocketbook with the numbers of the
houses on the left-hand side, stopped at one of them, and rang the
bell. The captain went on to the next house; affected to ring the bell,
in his turn, and stood with his back to the travelerin appearance,
waiting to be let in; in reality, listening with all his might for any
scraps of dialogue which might reach his ears on the opening of the
door behind him.
The door was answered with all due alacrity, and a sufficiently
instructive interchange of question and answer on the threshold
rewarded the dexterity of Captain Wragge.
"Does Mr. Huxtable live here?" asked the traveler.
"Yes, sir," was the answer, in a woman's voice.
"Is he at home?"
"Not at home now, sir; but he will be in again at eight to-night."
"I think a young lady called here early in the day, did she not?"
"Yes; a young lady came this afternoon."
"Exactly; I come on the same business. Did she see Mr. Huxtable?"
"No, sir; he has been away all day. The young lady told me she would
come back at eight o'clock."
"Just so. I will call and see Mr. Huxtable at the same time."
"Any name, sir?"
"No; say a gentleman called on theatrical businessthat will be enough.
Wait one minute, if you please. I am a stranger in York; will you
kindly tell me which is the way to Coney Street?"
The woman gave the required information, the door closed, and the
stranger hastened away in the direction of Coney Street.
On this occasion Captain Wragge made no attempt to follow him. The
handbill revealed plainly enough that the man's next object was to
complete the necessary arrangements with the local solicitor on the
subject of the promised reward.
Having seen and heard enough for his immediate purpose, the captain
retraced his steps down the street, turned to the right, and entered on
the Esplanade, which, in that quarter of the city, borders the
river-side between the swimming-baths and Lendal Tower. "This is a
family matter," said Captain Wragge to himself, persisting, from sheer
force of habit, in the old assertion of his relationship to Magdalen's
mother; "I must consider it in all its bearings." He tucked the
umbrella under his arm, crossed his hands behind him, and lowered
himself gently into the abyss of his own reflections. The order and
propriety observable in the captain's shabby garments accurately
typified the order and propriety which distinguished the operations of
the captain's mind. It was his habit always to see his way before him
through a neat succession of alternativesand so he saw it now.
Three courses were open to him in connection with the remarkable
discovery which he had just made. The first course was to do nothing in
the matter at all. Inadmissible, on family grounds: equally
inadmissible on pecuniary grounds: rejected accordingly. The second
course was to deserve the gratitude of the young lady's friends, rated
at fifty pounds. The third course was, by a timely warning to deserve
the gratitude of the young lady herself, ratedat an unknown figure.
Between these two last alternatives the wary Wragge hesitated; not from
doubt of Magdalen's pecuniary resourcesfor he was totally ignorant of
the circumstances which had deprived the sisters of their
inheritancebut from doubt whether an obstacle in the shape of an
undiscovered gentleman might not be privately connected with her
disappearance from home. After mature reflection, he determined to
pause, and be guided by circumstances. In the meantime, the first
consideration was to be beforehand with the messenger from London, and
to lay hands securely on the young lady herself.
"I feel for this misguided girl," mused the captain, solemnly strutting
backward and forward by the lonely river-side. "I always have looked
upon herI always shall look upon herin the light of a niece."
Where was the adopted relative at that moment? In other words, how was
a young lady in Magdalen's critical position likely to while away the
hours until Mr. Huxtable 's return? If there was an obstructive
gentleman in the background, it would be mere waste of time to pursue
the question. But if the inference which the handbill suggested was
correctif she was really alone at that moment in the city of
Yorkwhere was she likely to be?
Not in the crowded thoroughfares, to begin with. Not viewing the
objects of interest in the Minster, for it was now past the hour at
which the cathedral could be seen. Was she in the waiting-room at the
railway? She would hardly run that risk. Was she in one of the hotels?
Doubtful, considering that she was entirely by herself. In a
pastry-cook's shop? Far more likely. Driving about in a cab? Possible,
certainly; but no more. Loitering away the time in some quiet locality,
out-of-doors? Likely enough, again, on that fine autumn evening. The
captain paused, weighed the relative claims on his attention of the
quiet locality and the pastry-cook's shop; and decided for the first of
the two. There was time enough to find her at the pastry-cook's, to
inquire after her at the principal hotels, or, finally, to intercept
her in Mr. Huxtable's immediate neighborhood from seven to eight. While
the light lasted, the wise course was to use it in looking for her
out-of-doors. Where? The Esplanade was a quiet locality; but she was
not therenot on the lonely road beyond, which ran back by the Abbey
Wall. Where next? The captain stopped, looked across the river,
brightened under the influence of a new idea, and suddenly hastened
back to the ferry.
"The Walk on the Walls," thought this judicious man, with a twinkle of
his party-colored eyes. "The quietest place in York; and the place that
every stranger goes to see."
In ten minutes more Captain Wragge was exploring the new field of
search. He mounted to the walls (which inclose the whole western
portion of the city) by the North Street Postern, from which the walk
winds round until it ends again at its southernly extremity in the
narrow passage of Rosemary Lane. It was then twenty minutes to seven.
The sun had set more than half an hour since; the red light lay broad
and low in the cloudless western heaven; all visible objects were
softening in the tender twilight, but were not darkening yet. The first
few lamps lit in the street below looked like faint little specks of
yellow light, as the captain started on his walk through one of the
most striking scenes which England can show.
On his right hand, as he set forth, stretched the open country beyond
the wallsthe rich green meadows, the boundary-trees dividing them, the
broad windings of the river in the distance, the scattered buildings
nearer to view; all wrapped in the evening stillness, all made
beautiful by the evening peace. On his left hand, the majestic west
front of York Minster soared over the city and caught the last
brightest light of heaven on the summits of its lofty towers. Had this
noble prospect tempted the lost girl to linger and look at it? No; thus
far, not a sign of her. The captain looked round him attentively, and
walked on.
He reached the spot where the iron course of the railroad strikes its
way through arches in the old wall. He paused at this placewhere the
central activity of a great railway enterprise beats, with all the
pulses of its loud-clanging life, side by side with the dead majesty of
the past, deep under the old historic stones which tell of fortified
York and the sieges of two centuries sincehe stood on this spot, and
searched for her again, and searched in vain. Others were looking idly
down at the desolate activity on the wilderness of the iron rails; but
she was not among them. The captain glanced doubtfully at the darkening
sky, and walked on.
He stopped again where the postern of Micklegate still stands, and
still strengthens the city wall as of old. Here the paved walk descends
a few steps, passes through the dark stone guardroom of the ancient
gate, ascends again, and continues its course southward until the walls
reach the river once more. He paused, and peered anxiously into the dim
inner corners of the old guard-room. Was she waiting there for the
darkness to come, and hide her from prying eyes? No: a solitary workman
loitered through the stone chamber; but no other living creature
stirred in the place. The captain mounted the steps which led out from
the postern and walked on.
He advanced some fifty or sixty yards along the paved footway; the
outlying suburbs of York on one side of him, a rope-walk and some
patches of kitchen garden occupying a vacant strip of ground on the
other. He advanced with eager eyes and quickened step; for he saw
before him the lonely figure of a woman, standing by the parapet of the
wall, with her face set toward the westward view. He approached
cautiously, to make sure of her before she turned and observed him.
There was no mistaking that tall, dark figure, as it rested against the
parapet with a listless grace. There she stood, in her long black cloak
and gown, the last dim light of evening falling tenderly on her pale,
resolute young face. There she stoodnot three months since the spoiled
darling of her parents; the priceless treasure of the household, never
left unprotected, never trusted alonethere she stood in the lovely
dawn of her womanhood, a castaway in a strange city, wrecked on the
world!
Vagabond as he was, the first sight of her staggered even the dauntless
assurance of Captain Wragge. As she slowly turned her face and looked
at him, he raised his hat, with the nearest approach to respect which a
long life of unblushing audacity had left him capable of making.
"I think I have the honor of addressing the younger Miss Vanstone?" he
began. "Deeply gratified, I am surefor more reasons than one."
She looked at him with a cold surprise. No recollection of the day when
he had followed her sister and herself on their way home with Miss
Garth rose in her memory, while he now confronted her, with his altered
manner and his altered dress.
"You are mistaken," she said, quietly. "You are a perfect stranger to
me."
"Pardon me," replied the captain; "I am a species of relation. I had
the pleasure of seeing you in the spring of the present year. I
presented myself on that memorable occasion to an honored preceptress
in your late father's family. Permit me, under equally agreeable
circumstances, to present myself to you. My name is Wragge."
By this time he had recovered complete possession of his own impudence;
his party-colored eyes twinkled cheerfully, and he accompanied his
modest announcement of himself with a dancing-master's bow.
Magdalen frowned, and drew back a step. The captain was not a man to be
daunted by a cold reception. He tucked his umbrella under his arm and
jocosely spelled his name for her further enlightenment. "W, R, A,
double G, EWragge," said the captain, ticking off the letters
persuasively on his fingers.
"I remember your name," said Magdalen. "Excuse me for leaving you
abruptly. I have an engagement."
She tried to pass him and walk on northward toward the railway. He
instantly met the attempt by raising both hands, and displaying a pair
of darned black gloves outspread in polite protest.
"Not that way," he said; "not that way, Miss Vanstone, I beg and
entreat!"
"Why not?" she asked haughtily.
"Because," answered the captain, "that is the way which leads to Mr.
Huxtable's."
In the ungovernable astonishment of hearing his reply she suddenly bent
forward, and for the first time looked him close in the face. He
sustained her suspicious scrutiny with every appearance of feeling
highly gratified by it. "H, U, XHux," said the captain, playfully
turning to the old joke: "T, Ata, Huxta; B, L, Eble; Huxtable."
"What do you know about Mr. Huxtable?" she asked. "What do you mean by
mentioning him to me?"
The captain's curly lip took a new twist upward. He immediately
replied, to the best practical purpose, by producing the handbill from
his pocket.
"There is just light enough left," he said, "for young (and lovely)
eyes to read by. Before I enter upon the personal statement which your
flattering inquiry claims from me, pray bestow a moment's attention on
this Document."
She took the handbill from him. By the last gleam of twilight she read
the lines which set a price on her recoverywhich published the
description of her in pitiless print, like the description of a strayed
dog. No tender consideration had prepared her for the shock, no kind
word softened it to her when it came. The vagabond, whose cunning eyes
watched her eagerly while she read, knew no more that the handbill
which he had stolen had only been prepared in anticipation of the
worst, and was only to be publicly used in the event of all more
considerate means of tracing her being tried in vainthan she knew it.
The bill dropped from her hand; her face flushed deeply. She turned
away from Captain Wragge, as if all idea of his existence had passed
out of her mind.
"Oh, Norah, Norah!" she said to herself, sorrowfully. "After the letter
I wrote youafter the hard struggle I had to go away! Oh, Norah,
Norah!"
"How is Norah?" inquired the captain, with the utmost politeness.
She turned upon him with an angry brightness in her large gray eyes.
"Is this thing shown publicly?" she asked, stamping her foot on it. "Is
the mark on my neck described all over York?"
"Pray compose yourself," pleaded the persuasive Wragge. "At present I
have every reason to believe that you have just perused the only copy
in circulation. Allow me to pick it up."
Before he could touch the bill she snatched it from the pavement, tore
it into fragments, and threw them over the wall.
"Bravo!" cried the captain. "You remind me of your poor dear mother.
The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my
maternal grandfather."
"How did you come by it?" she asked, suddenly.
"My dear creature, I have just told you," remonstrated the captain. "We
all come by it from my maternal grandfather."
"How did you come by that handbill?" she repeated, passionately.
"I beg ten thousand pardons! My head was running on the family
spirit.How did I come by it? Briefly thus." Here Captain Wragge
entered on his personal statement; taking his customary vocal exercise
through the longest words of the English language, with the highest
elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare occasion, nothing to gain by
concealment, he departed from his ordinary habits, and, with the utmost
amazement at the novelty of his own situation, permitted himself to
tell the unmitigated truth.
The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled Captain
Wragge's anticipations in relating it. She was not startled; she was
not irritated; she showed no disposition to cast herself on his mercy,
and to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the face; and all
she said, when he had neatly rounded his last sentence, was"Go on."
"Go on?" repeated the captain. "Shocked to disappoint you, I am sure;
but the fact is, I have done."
"No, you have not," she rejoined; "you have left out the end of your
story. The end of it is, you came here to look for me; and you mean to
earn the fifty pounds reward."
Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge that for the
moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward truths of all
sorts far too often to be permanently disconcerted by them. Before
Magdalen could pursue her advantage, the vagabond had recovered his
balance: Wragge was himself again.
"Smart," said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming with his
umbrella on the pavement. "Some men might take it seriously. I'm not
easily offended. Try again."
Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute
perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience
among people who possessed a common sense of honor, and a common
responsibility of social position. She had hitherto seen nothing but
the successful human product from the great manufactory of
Civilization. Here was one of the failures, and, with all her
quickness, she was puzzled how to deal with it.
"Pardon me for returning to the subject," pursued the captain. "It has
just occurred to my mind that you might actually have spoken in
earnest. My poor child! how can I earn the fifty pounds before the
reward is offered to me? Those handbills may not be publicly posted for
a week to come. Precious as you are to all your relatives (myself
included), take my word for it, the lawyers who are managing this case
will not pay fifty pounds for you if they can possibly help it. Are you
still persuaded that my needy pockets are gaping for the money? Very
good. Button them up in spite of me with your own fair fingers. There
is a train to London at nine forty-five to-night. Submit yourself to
your friend's wishes and go back by it."
"Never!" said Magdalen, firing at the bare suggestion, exactly as the
captain had intended she should. "If my mind had not been made up
before, that vile handbill would have decided me. I forgive Norah," she
added, turning away and speaking to herself, "but not Mr. Pendril, and
not Miss Garth."
"Quite right!" said Captain Wragge. "The family spirit. I should have
done the same myself at your age. It runs in the blood. Hark! there
goes the clock againhalf-past seven. Miss Vanstone, pardon this
seasonable abruptness! If you are to carry out your resolutionif you
are to be your own mistress much longer, you must take a course of some
kind before eight o'clock. You are young, you are inexperienced, you
are in imminent danger. Here is a position of emergency on one sideand
here am I, on the other, with an uncle's interest in you, full of
advice. Tap me."
"Suppose I choose to depend on nobody, and to act for myself?" said
Magdalen. "What then?"
"Then," replied the captain, "you will walk straight into one of the
four traps which are set to catch you in the ancient and interesting
city of York. Trap the first, at Mr. Huxtable's house; trap the second,
at all the hotels; trap the third, at the railway station; trap the
fourth, at the theater. That man with the handbills has had an hour at
his disposal. If he has not set those four traps (with the assistance
of the local solicitor) by this time, he is not the competent lawyer's
clerk I take him for. Come, come, my dear girl! if there is somebody
else in the background, whose advice you prefer to mine"
"You see that I am alone," she interposed, proudly. "If you knew me
better, you would know that I depend on nobody but myself."
Those words decided the only doubt which now remained in the captain's
mindthe doubt whether the course was clear before him. The motive of
her flight from home was evidently what the handbills assumed it to
bea reckless fancy for going on the stage. "One of two things,"
thought Wragge to himself, in his logical way. "She's worth more than
fifty pounds to me in her present situation, or she isn't. If she is,
her friends may whistle for her. If she isn't, I have only to keep her
till the bills are posted." Fortified by this simple plan of action,
the captain returned to the charge, and politely placed Magdalen
between the two inevitable alternatives of trusting herself to him, on
the one hand, or of returning to her friends, on the other.
"I respect independence of character wherever I find it," he said, with
an air of virtuous severity. "In a young and lovely relative, I more
than respectI admire it. But (excuse the bold assertion), to walk on a
way of your own, you must first have a way to walk on. Under existing
circumstances, where is your way? Mr. Huxtable is out of the
question, to begin with."
"Out of the question for to-night," said Magdalen; "but what hinders me
from writing to Mr. Huxtable, and making my own private arrangements
with him for to-morrow?"
"Granted with all my hearta hit, a palpable hit. Now for my turn. To
get to to-morrow (excuse the bold assertion, once more), you must first
pass through to-night. Where are you to sleep?"
"Are there no hotels in York?"
"Excellent hotels for large families; excellent hotels for single
gentlemen. The very worst hotels in the world for handsome young ladies
who present themselves alone at the door without male escort, without a
maid in attendance, and without a single article of luggage. Dark as it
is, I think I could see a lady's box, if there was anything of the sort
in our immediate neighborhood."
"My box is at the cloak-room. What is to prevent my sending the ticket
for it?"
"Nothingif you want to communicate your address by means of your
boxnothing whatever. Think; pray think! Do you really suppose that the
people who are looking for you are such fools as not to have an eye on
the cloakroom? Do you think they are such foolswhen they find you
don't come to Mr. Huxtable's at eight to-nightas not to inquire at all
the hotels? Do you think a young lady of your striking appearance (even
if they consented to receive you) could take up her abode at an inn
without becoming the subject of universal curiosity and remark? Here is
night coming on as fast as it can. Don't let me bore you; only let me
ask once moreWhere are you to sleep?"
There was no answer to that question: in Magdalen's position, there was
literally no answer to it on her side. She was silent.
"Where are you to sleep?" repeated the captain. "The reply is
obviousunder my roof. Mrs. Wragge will be charmed to see you. Look
upon her as your aunt; pray look upon her as your aunt. The landlady is
a widow, the house is close by, there are no other lodgers, and there
is a bedroom to let. Can anything be more satisfactory, under all the
circumstances? Pray observe, I say nothing about to-morrowI leave
to-morrow to you, and confine myself exclusively to the night. I may,
or may not, command theatrical facilities, which I am in a position to
offer you. Sympathy and admiration may, or may not, be strong within
me, when I contemplate the dash and independence of your character.
Hosts of examples of bright stars of the British drama, who have begun
their apprenticeship to the stage as you are beginning yours, may, or
may not, crowd on my memory. These are topics for the future. For the
present, I confine myself within my strict range of duty. We are within
five minutes' walk of my present address. Allow me to offer you my arm.
No? You hesitate? You distrust me? Good heavens! is it possible you can
have heard anything to my disadvantage?"
"Quite possible," said Magdalen, without a moment's flinching from the
answer.
"May I inquire the particulars?" asked the captain, with the politest
composure. "Don't spare my feelings; oblige me by speaking out. In the
plainest terms, now, what have you heard?"
She answered him with a woman's desperate disregard of consequences
when she is driven to bayshe answered him instantly,
"I have heard you are a Rogue."
"Have you, indeed?" said the impenetrable Wragge. "A Rogue? Well, I
waive my privilege of setting you right on that point for a fitter
time. For the sake of argument, let us say I am a Rogue. What is Mr.
Huxtable?"
"A respectable man, or I should not have seen him in the house where we
first met."
"Very good. Now observe! You talked of writing to Mr. Huxtable a minute
ago. What do you think a respectable man is likely to do with a young
lady who openly acknowledges that she has run away from her home and
her friends to go on the stage? My dear girl, on your own showing, it's
not a respectable man you want in your present predicament. It's a
Roguelike me."
Magdalen laughed, bitterly.
"There is some truth in that," she said. "Thank you for recalling me to
myself and my circumstances. I have my end to gainand who am I, to
pick and choose the way of getting to it? It is my turn to beg pardon
now. I have been talking as if I was a young lady of family and
position. Absurd! We know better than that, don't we, Captain Wragge?
You are quite right. Nobody's child must sleep under Somebody's
roofand why not yours?"
"This way," said the captain, dexterously profiting by the sudden
change in her humor, and cunningly refraining from exasperating it by
saying more himself. "This way."
She followed him a few steps, and suddenly stopped.
"Suppose I am discovered?" she broke out, abruptly. "Who has any
authority over me? Who can take me back, if I don't choose to go? If
they all find me to-morrow, what then? Can't I say No to Mr. Pendril?
Can't I trust my own courage with Miss Garth?"
"Can you trust your courage with your sister?" whispered the captain,
who had not forgotten the references to Norah which had twice escaped
her already.
Her head drooped. She shivered as if the cold night air had struck her,
and leaned back wearily against the parapet of the wall.
"Not with Norah," she said, sadly. "I could trust myself with the
others. Not with Norah."
"This way," repeated Captain Wragge. She roused herself; looked up at
the darkening heaven, looked round at the darkening view. "What must
be, must," she said, and followed him.
The Minster clock struck the quarter to eight as they left the Walk on
the Wall and descended the steps into Rosemary Lane. Almost at the same
moment the lawyer's clerk from London gave the last instructions to his
subordinates, and took up his own position, on the opposite side of the
river, within easy view of Mr. Huxtable's door.
CHAPTER II.
Captain Wragge stopped nearly midway in the one little row of houses
composing Rosemary Lane, and let himself and his guest in at the door
of his lodgings with his own key. As they entered the passage, a
care-worn woman in a widow's cap made her appearance with a candle. "My
niece," said the captain, presenting Magdalen; "my niece on a visit to
York. She has kindly consented to occupy your empty bedroom. Consider
it let, if you please, to my nieceand be very particular in airing the
sheets? Is Mrs. Wragge upstairs? Very good. You may lend me your
candle. My dear girl, Mrs. Wragge's boudoir is on the first floor; Mrs.
Wragge is visible. Allow me to show you the way up."
As he ascended the stairs first, the care-worn widow whispered,
piteously, to Magdalen, "I hope you'll pay me, miss. Your uncle
doesn't."
The captain threw open the door of the front room on the first floor,
and disclosed a female figure, arrayed in a gown of tarnished
amber-colored satin, seated solitary on a small chair, with dingy old
gloves on its hands, with a tattered old book on its knees, and with
one little bedroom candle by its side. The figure terminated at its
upper extremity in a large, smooth, white round facelike a
moonencircled by a cap and green ribbons, and dimly irradiated by eyes
of mild and faded blue, which looked straightforward into vacancy, and
took not the smallest notice of Magdalen's appearance, on the opening
of the door.
"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain, shouting at her as if she was fast
asleep. "Mrs. Wragge!"
The lady of the faded blue eyes slowly rose to an apparently
interminable height. When she had at last attained an upright position,
she towered to a stature of two or three inches over six feet. Giants
of both sexes are, by a wise dispensation of Providence, created, for
the most part, gentle. If Mrs. Wragge and a lamb had been placed side
by side, comparison, under those circumstances, would have exposed the
lamb as a rank impostor.
"Tea, captain?" inquired Mrs. Wragge, looking submissively down at her
husband, whose head, when he stood on tiptoe, barely reached her
shoulder.
"Miss Vanstone, the younger," said the captain, presenting Magdalen.
"Our fair relative, whom I have met by fortunate accident. Our guest
for the night. Our guest!" reiterated the captain, shouting once more
as if the tall lady was still fast asleep, in spite of the plain
testimony of her own eyes to the contrary.
A smile expressed itself (in faint outline) on the large vacant space
of Mrs. Wragge's countenance. "Oh?" she said, interrogatively. "Oh,
indeed? Please, miss, will you sit down? I'm sorryno, I don't mean I'm
sorry; I mean I'm glad" she stopped, and consulted her husband by a
helpless look.
"Glad, of course!" shouted the captain.
"Glad, of course," echoed the giantess of the amber satin, more meekly
than ever.
"Mrs. Wragge is not deaf," explained the captain. "She's only a little
slow. Constitutionally torpidif I may use the expression. I am merely
loud with her (and I beg you will honor me by being loud, too) as a
necessary stimulant to her ideas. Shout at herand her mind comes up to
time. Speak to herand she drifts miles away from you directly. Mrs.
Wragge!"
Mrs. Wragge instantly acknowledged the stimulant. "Tea, captain?" she
inquired, for the second time.
"Put your cap straight!" shouted her husband. "I beg ten thousand
pardons," he resumed, again addressing himself to Magdalen. "The sad
truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. All untidiness, all
want of system and regularity, cause me the acutest irritation. My
attention is distracted, my composure is upset; I can't rest till
things are set straight again. Externally speaking, Mrs. Wragge is, to
my infinite regret, the crookedest woman I ever met with. More to the
right!" shouted the captain, as Mrs. Wragge, like a well-trained child,
presented herself with her revised head-dress for her husband's
inspection.
Mrs. Wragge immediately pulled the cap to the left. Magdalen rose, and
set it right for her. The moon-face of the giantess brightened for the
first time. She looked admiringly at Magdalen's cloak and bonnet. "Do
you like dress, miss?" she asked, suddenly, in a confidential whisper.
"I do."
"Show Miss Vanstone her room," said the captain, looking as if the
whole house belonged to him. "The spare-room, the landlady's
spare-room, on the third floor front. Offer Miss Vanstone all articles
connected with the toilet of which she may stand in need. She has no
luggage with her. Supply the deficiency, and then come back and make
tea."
Mrs. Wragge acknowledged the receipt of these lofty directions by a
look of placid bewilderment, and led the way out of the room; Magdalen
following her, with a candle presented by the attentive captain. As
soon as they were alone on the landing outside, Mrs. Wragge raised the
tattered old book which she had been reading when Magdalen was first
presented to her, and which she had never let out of her hand since,
and slowly tapped herself on the forehead with it. "Oh, my poor head!"
said the tall lady, in meek soliloquy; "it's Buzzing again worse than
ever!"
"Buzzing?" repeated Magdalen, in the utmost astonishment.
Mrs. Wragge ascended the stairs, without offering any explanation,
stopped at one of the rooms on the second floor, and led the way in.
"This is not the third floor," said Magdalen. "This is not my room,
surely?"
"Wait a bit," pleaded Mrs. Wragge. "Wait a bit, miss, before we go up
any higher. I've got the Buzzing in my head worse than ever. Please
wait for me till I'm a little better again."
"Shall I ask for help?" inquired Magdalen. "Shall I call the landlady?"
"Help?" echoed Mrs. Wragge. "Bless you, I don't want help! I'm used to
it. I've had the Buzzing in my head, off and onhow many years?" She
stopped, reflected, lost herself, and suddenly tried a question in
despair. "Have you ever been at Darch's Dining-rooms in London?" she
asked, with an appearance of the deepest interest.
"No," replied Magdalen, wondering at the strange inquiry.
"That's where the Buzzing in my head first began," said Mrs. Wragge,
following the new clue with the deepest attention and anxiety. "I was
employed to wait on the gentlemen at Darch's Dining-roomsI was. The
gentlemen all came together; the gentlemen were all hungry together;
the gentlemen all gave their orders together" She stopped, and tapped
her head again, despondently, with the tattered old book.
"And you had to keep all their orders in your memory, separate one from
the other?" suggested Magdalen, helping her out. "And the trying to do
that confused you?"
"That's it!" said Mrs. Wragge, becoming violently excited in a moment.
"Boiled pork and greens and pease-pudding, for Number One. Stewed beef
and carrots and gooseberry tart, for Number Two. Cut of mutton, and
quick about it, well done, and plenty of fat, for Number Three. Codfish
and parsnips, two chops to follow, hot-and-hot, or I'll be the death of
you, for Number Four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Carrots and
gooseberry tartpease-pudding and plenty of fatpork and beef and
mutton, and cut 'em all, and quick about itstout for one, and ale for
t'otherand stale bread here, and new bread thereand this gentleman
likes cheese, and that gentleman doesn'tMatilda, Tilda, Tilda, Tilda,
fifty times over, till I didn't know my own name againoh lord! oh
lord!! oh lord!!! all together, all at the same time, all out of
temper, all buzzing in my poor head like forty thousand million
beesdon't tell the captain! don't tell the captain!" The unfortunate
creature dropped the tattered old book, and beat both her hands on her
head, with a look of blank terror fixed on the door.
"Hush! hush!" said Magdalen. "The captain hasn't heard you. I know what
is the matter with your head now. Let me cool it."
She dipped a towel in water, and pressed it on the hot and helpless
head which Mrs. Wragge submitted to her with the docility of a sick
child.
"What a pretty hand you've got!" said the poor creature, feeling the
relief of the coolness and taking Magdalen's hand, admiringly, in her
own. "How soft and white it is! I try to be a lady; I always keep my
gloves onbut I can't get my hands like yours. I'm nicely dressed,
though, ain't I? I like dress; it's a comfort to me. I'm always happy
when I'm looking at my things. I sayyou won't be angry with me?I
should so like to try your bonnet on."
Magdalen humored her, with the ready compassion of the young. She stood
smiling and nodding at herself in the glass, with the bonnet perched on
the top of her head. "I had one as pretty as this, once," she
said"only it was white, not black. I wore it when the captain married
me."
"Where did you meet with him?" asked Magdalen, putting the question as
a chance means of increasing her scanty stock of information on the
subject of Captain Wragge.
"At the Dining-rooms," said Mrs. Wragge. "He was the hungriest and the
loudest to wait upon of the lot of 'em. I made more mistakes with him
than I did with all the rest of them put together. He used to swearoh,
didn't he use to swear! When he left off swearing at me he married me.
There was others wanted me besides him. Bless you, I had my pick. Why
not? When you have a trifle of money left you that you didn't expect,
if that don't make a lady of you, what does? Isn't a lady to have her
pick? I had my trifle of money, and I had my pick, and I picked the
captainI did. He was the smartest and the shortest of them all. He
took care of me and my money. I'm here, the money's gone. Don't you put
that towel down on the tablehe won't have that! Don't move his
razorsdon't, please, or I shall forget which is which. I've got to
remember which is which to-morrow morning. Bless you, the captain don't
shave himself! He had me taught. I shave him. I do his hair, and cut
his nailshe's awfully particular about his nails. So he is about his
trousers. And his shoes. And his newspaper in the morning. And his
breakfasts, and lunches, and dinners, and teas" She stopped, struck by
a sudden recollection, looked about her, observed the tattered old book
on the floor, and clasped her hands in despair. "I've lost the place!"
she exclaimed helplessly. "Oh, mercy, what will become of me! I've lost
the place."
"Never mind," said Magdalen; "I'll soon find the place for you again."
She picked up the book, looked into the pages, and found that the
object of Mrs. Wragge's anxiety was nothing more important than an
old-fashioned Treatise on the Art of Cookery, reduced under the usual
heads of Fish, Flesh, and Fowl, and containing the customary series of
recipes. Turning over the leaves, Magdalen came to one particular page,
thickly studded with little drops of moisture half dry. "Curious!" she
said. "If this was anything but a cookery-book, I should say somebody
had been crying over it."
"Somebody?" echoed Mrs. Wragge, with a stare of amazement. "It isn't
somebodyit's Me. Thank you kindly, that's the place, sure enough.
Bless you, I'm used to crying over it. You'd cry, too, if you had to
get the captain's dinners out of it. As sure as ever I sit down to this
book the Buzzing in my head begins again. Who's to make it out?
Sometimes I think I've got it, and it all goes away from me. Sometimes
I think I haven't got it, and it all comes back in a heap. Look here!
Here's what he's ordered for his breakfast to-morrow: 'Omelette with
Herbs. Beat up two eggs with a little water or milk, salt, pepper,
chives, and parsley. Mince small.'There! mince small! How am I to
mince small when it's all mixed up and running? 'Put a piece of butter
the size of your thumb into the frying-pan.'Look at my thumb, and look
at yours! whose size does she mean? 'Boil, but not brown.'If it
mustn't be brown, what color must it be? She won't tell me; she expects
me to know, and I don't. 'Pour in the omelette.'There! I can do that.
'Allow it to set, raise it round the edge; when done, turn it over to
double it.'Oh, the number of times I turned it over and doubled it in
my head, before you came in to-night! 'Keep it soft; put the dish on
the frying-pan, and turn it over.' Which am I to turn overoh, mercy,
try the cold towel again, and tell me whichthe dish or the
frying-pan?"
"Put the dish on the frying-pan," said Magdalen; "and then turn the
frying-pan over. That is what it means, I think."
"Thank you kindly," said Mrs. Wragge, "I want to get it into my head;
please say it again."
Magdalen said it again.
"And then turn the frying-pan over," repeated Mrs. Wragge, with a
sudden burst of energy. "I've got it now! Oh, the lots of omelettes all
frying together in my head; and all frying wrong! Much obliged, I'm
sure. You've put me all right again: I'm only a little tired with
talking. And then turn the frying-pan, then turn the frying-pan, then
turn the frying-pan over. It sounds like poetry, don't it?"
Her voice sank, and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same moment
the door of the room below opened, and the captain's mellifluous bass
notes floated upstairs, charged with the customary stimulant to his
wife's faculties.
"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain. "Mrs. Wragge!"
She started to her feet at that terrible summons. "Oh, what did he tell
me to do?" she asked, distractedly. "Lots of things, and I've forgotten
them all!"
"Say you have done them when he asks you," suggested Magdalen. "They
were things for methings I don't want. I remember all that is
necessary. My room is the front room on the third floor. Go downstairs
and say I am coming directly."
She took up the candle and pushed Mrs. Wragge out on the landing. "Say
I am coming directly," she whispered againand went upstairs by herself
to the third story.
The room was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former days
Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the
servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a few minutes
alone; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that account. She locked
herself in and walked mechanically, with a woman's first impulse in a
strange bedroom, to the rickety little table and the dingy little
looking-glass. She waited there for a moment, and then turned away with
weary contempt. "What does it matter how pale I am?" she thought to
herself. "Frank can't see mewhat does it matter now!"
She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to collect herself.
But the events of the day had worn her out. The past, when she tried to
remember it, only made her heart ache. The future, when she tried to
penetrate it, was a black void. She rose again, and stood by the
uncurtained windowstood looking out, as if there was some hidden
sympathy for her own desolation in the desolate night.
"Norah!" she said to herself, tenderly; "I wonder if Norah is thinking
of me? Oh, if I could be as patient as she is! If I could only forget
the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!"
Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the little
cage of a room backward and forward, softly. "No: never till the debt
is paid!" Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. "Still at sea, poor
fellow; further and further away from me; sailing through the day,
sailing through the night. Oh, Frank, love me!"
Her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away, made for the door,
and laughed with a desperate levity, as she unlocked it again.
"Any company is better than my own thoughts," she burst out,
recklessly, as she left the room. "I'm forgetting my ready-made
relationsmy half-witted aunt, and my uncle the rogue." She descended
the stairs to the landing on the first floor, and paused there in
momentary hesitation. "How will it end?" she asked herself. "Where is
my blindfolded journey taking me to now? Who knows, and who cares?"
She entered the room.
Captain Wragge was presiding at the tea-tray with the air of a prince
in his own banqueting-hall. At one side of the table sat Mrs. Wragge,
watching her husband's eye like an animal waiting to be fed. At the
other side was an empty chair, toward which the captain waved his
persuasive hand when Magdalen came in. "How do you like your room?" he
inquired; "I trust Mrs. Wragge has made herself useful? You take milk
and sugar? Try the local bread, honor the York butter, test the
freshness of a new and neighboring egg. I offer my little all. A
pauper's meal, my dear girlseasoned with a gentleman's welcome."
"Seasoned with salt, pepper, chives and parsley," murmured Mrs. Wragge,
catching instantly at a word in connection with cookery, and harnessing
her head to the omelette for the rest of the evening.
"Sit straight at the table!" shouted the captain. "More to the left,
more stillthat will do. During your absence upstairs," he continued,
addressing himself to Magdalen, "my mind has not been unemployed. I
have been considering your position with a view exclusively to your own
benefit. If you decide on being guided to-morrow by the light of my
experience, that light is unreservedly at your service. You may
naturally say: 'I know but little of you, captain, and that little is
unfavorable.' Granted, on one conditionthat you permit me to make
myself and my character quite familiar to you when tea is over. False
shame is foreign to my nature. You see my wife, my house, my bread, my
butter, and my eggs, all exactly as they are. See me, too, my dear
girl, while you are about it."
When tea was over, Mrs. Wragge, at a signal from her husband, retired
to a corner of the room, with the eternal cookery-book still in her
hand. "Mince small," she whispered, confidentially, as she passed
Magdalen. "That's a teaser, isn't it?"
"Down at heel again!" shouted the captain, pointing to his wife's heavy
flat feet as they shuffled across the room. "The right shoe. Pull it up
at heel, Mrs. Wraggepull it up at heel! Pray allow me," he continued,
offering his arm to Magdalen, and escorting her to a dirty little
horse-hair sofa. "You want reposeafter your long journey, you really
want repose." He drew his chair to the sofa, and surveyed her with a
bland look of investigationas if he had been her medical attendant,
with a diagnosis on his mind.
"Very pleasant! very pleasant!" said the captain, when he had seen his
guest comfortable on the sofa. "I feel quite in the bosom of my family.
Shall we return to our subjectthe subject of my rascally self? No! no!
No apologies, no protestations, pray. Don't mince the matter on your
sideand depend on me not to mince it on mine. Now come to facts; pray
come to facts. Who, and what am I? Carry your mind back to our
conversation on the Walls of this interesting City, and let us start
once more from your point of view. I am a Rogue; and, in that capacity
(as I have already pointed out), the most useful man you possibly could
have met with. Now observe! There are many varieties of Rogue; let me
tell you my variety, to begin with. I am a Swindler."
His entire shamelessness was really super-human. Not the vestige of a
blush varied the sallow monotony of his complexion; the smile wreathed
his curly lips as pleasantly as ever his party-colored eyes twinkled at
Magdalen with the self-enjoying frankness of a naturally harmless man.
Had his wife heard him? Magdalen looked over his shoulder to the corner
of the room in which she was sitting behind him. No: the self-taught
student of cookery was absorbed in her subject. She had advanced her
imaginary omelette to the critical stage at which the butter was to be
thrown inthat vaguely-measured morsel of butter, the size of your
thumb. Mrs. Wragge sat lost in contemplation of one of her own thumbs,
and shook her head over it, as if it failed to satisfy her.
"Don't be shocked," proceeded the captain; "don't be astonished.
Swindler is nothing but a word of two syllables. S, W, I, N, Dswind;
L, E, Rler; Swindler. Definition: A moral agriculturist; a man who
cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral agriculturist,
that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, envious of my success
in my profession, calls me a Swindler. What of that? The same low tone
of mind assails men in other professions in a similar mannercalls
great writers scribblersgreat generals, butchersand so on. It
entirely depends on the point of view. Adopting your point, I announce
myself intelligibly as a Swindler. Now return the obligation, and adopt
mine. Hear what I have to say for myself, in the exercise of my
profession.Shall I continue to put it frankly?"
"Yes," said Magdalen; "and I'll tell you frankly afterward what I think
of it."
The captain cleared his throat; mentally assembled his entire army of
wordshorse, foot, artillery, and reserves; put himself at the head;
and dashed into action, to carry the moral intrenchments of Society by
a general charge.
"Now observe," he began. "Here am I, a needy object. Very good. Without
complicating the question by asking how I come to be in that condition,
I will merely inquire whether it is, or is not, the duty of a Christian
community to help the needy. If you say No, you simply shock me; and
there is an end of it; if you say Yes, then I beg to ask, Why am I to
blame for making a Christian community do its duty? You may say, Is a
careful man who has saved money bound to spend it again on a careless
stranger who has saved none? Why of course he is! And on what ground,
pray? Good heavens! on the ground that he has got the money, to be
sure. All the world over, the man who has not got the thing, obtains
it, on one pretense or another, of the man who hasand, in nine cases
out of ten, the pretense is a false one. What! your pockets are full,
and my pockets are empty; and you refuse to help me? Sordid wretch! do
you think I will allow you to violate the sacred obligations of charity
in my person? I won't allow youI say, distinctly, I won't allow you.
Those are my principles as a moral agriculturist. Principles which
admit of trickery? Certainly. Am I to blame if the field of human
sympathy can't be cultivated in any other way? Consult my brother
agriculturists in the mere farming linedo they get their crops for the
asking? No! they must circumvent arid Nature exactly as I circumvent
sordid Man. They must plow, and sow, and top-dress, and bottom-dress,
and deep-drain, and surface-drain, and all the rest of it. Why am I to
be checked in the vast occupation of deep-draining mankind? Why am I to
be persecuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our
common nature? Infamous!I can characterize it by no other
wordinfamous! If I hadn't confidence in the future, I should despair
of humanitybut I have confidence in the future. Yes! one of these days
(when I am dead and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlightenment
progresses, the abstract merits of the profession now called swindling
will be recognized. When that day comes, don't drag me out of my grave
and give me a public funeral; don't take advantage of my having no
voice to raise in my own defense, and insult me by a national statue.
No! do me justice on my tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly
sentence, on my epitaph. Here lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy
recognition of his species: he plowed, sowed, and reaped his
fellow-creatures; and enlightened posterity congratulates him on the
uniform excellence of his crops."
He stopped; not from want of confidence, not from want of wordspurely
from want of breath. "I put it frankly, with a dash of humor," he said,
pleasantly. "I don't shock youdo I?" Weary and heart-sick as she
wassuspicious of others, doubtful of herselfthe extravagant impudence
of Captain Wragge's defense of swindling touched Magdalen's natural
sense of humor, and forced a smile to her lips. "Is the Yorkshire crop
a particularly rich one just at present?" she inquired, meeting him, in
her neatly feminine way, with his own weapons.
"A hita palpable hit," said the captain, jocosely exhibiting the tails
of his threadbare shooting jacket, as a practical commentary on
Magdalen's remark. "My dear girl, here or elsewhere, the crop never
failsbut one man can't always gather it in. The assistance of
intelligent co-operation is, I regret to say, denied me. I have nothing
in common with the clumsy rank and file of my profession, who convict
themselves, before recorders and magistrates, of the worst of all
offensesincurable stupidity in the exercise of their own vocation.
Such as you see me, I stand entirely alone. After years of successful
self-dependence, the penalties of celebrity are beginning to attach to
me. On my way from the North, I pause at this interesting city for the
third time; I consult my Books for the customary references to past
local experience; I find under the heading, 'Personal position in
York,' the initials, T. W. K., signifying Too Well Known. I refer to my
Index, and turn to the surrounding neighborhood. The same brief marks
meet my eye. 'Leeds. T. W. K.Scarborough. T. W. K.Harrowgate. T. W.
K.'and so on. What is the inevitable consequence? I suspend my
proceedings; my resources evaporate; and my fair relative finds me the
pauper gentleman whom she now sees before her."
"Your books?" said Magdalen. "What books do you mean?"
"You shall see," replied the captain. "Trust me, or not, as you likeI
trust you implicitly. You shall see."
With those words he retired into the back room. While he was gone,
Magdalen stole another look at Mrs. Wragge. Was she still self-isolated
from her husband's deluge of words? Perfectly self-isolated. She had
advanced the imaginary omelette to the last stage of culinary progress;
and she was now rehearsing the final operation of turning it overwith
the palm of her hand to represent the dish, and the cookery-book to
impersonate the frying-pan. "I've got it," said Mrs. Wragge, nodding
across the room at Magdalen. "First put the frying-pan on the dish, and
then tumble both of them over."
Captain Wragge returned, carrying a neat black dispatch-box, adorned
with a bright brass lock. He produced from the box five or six plump
little books, bound in commercial calf and vellum, and each fitted
comfortably with its own little lock.
"Mind!" said the moral agriculturist, "I take no credit to myself for
this: it is my nature to be orderly, and orderly I am. I must have
everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my
commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of
Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one
of them. I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a
careless entry in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this
roomis there a chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at me. Am
I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless
pauper, or am I not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of
the man, my dear girlthe nature of the man!"
He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable
correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could
estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of
figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black
ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. Although
Captain Wragge's inborn sense of order was in himas it is in othersa
sense too inveterately mechanical to exercise any elevating moral
influence over his actions, it had produced its legitimate effect on
his habits, and had reduced his rogueries as strictly to method and
system as if they had been the commercial transactions of an honest
man.
"In appearance, my system looks complicated?" pursued the captain. "In
reality, it is simplicity itself. I merely avoid the errors of inferior
practitioners. That is to say, I never plead for myself; and I never
apply to rich peopleboth fatal mistakes which the inferior
practitioner perpetually commits. People with small means sometimes
have generous impulses in connection with moneyrich people, never.
My lord, with forty thousand a year; Sir John, with property in half a
dozen countiesthose are the men who never forgive the genteel beggar
for swindling them out of a sovereign; those are the men who send for
the mendicity officers; those are the men who take care of their money.
Who are the people who lose shillings and sixpences by sheer
thoughtlessness? Servants and small clerks, to whom shillings and
sixpences are of consequence. Did you ever hear of Rothschild or Baring
dropping a fourpenny-piece down a gutter-hole? Fourpence in
Rothschild's pocket is safer than fourpence in the pocket of that woman
who is crying stale shrimps in Skeldergate at this moment. Fortified by
these sound principles, enlightened by the stores of written
information in my commercial library, I have ranged through the
population for years past, and have raised my charitable crops with the
most cheering success. Here, in book Number One, are all my Districts
mapped out, with the prevalent public feeling to appeal to in each:
Military District, Clerical District, Agricultural District; et cetera,
et cetera. Here, in Number Two, are my cases that I plead: Family of an
officer who fell at Waterloo; Wife of a poor curate stricken down by
nervous debility; Widow of a grazier in difficulties gored to death by
a mad bull; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Three, are the people
who have heard of the officer's family, the curate's wife, the
grazier's widow, and the people who haven't; the people who have said
Yes, and the people who have said No; the people to try again, the
people who want a fresh case to stir them up, the people who are
doubtful, the people to beware of; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in
Number Four, are my Adopted Handwritings of public characters; my
testimonials to my own worth and integrity; my Heartrending Statements
of the officer's family, the curate's wife, and the grazier's widow,
stained with tears, blotted with emotion; et cetera, et cetera. Here,
in Numbers Five and Six, are my own personal subscriptions to local
charities, actually paid in remunerative neighborhoods, on the
principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring; also, my diary of
each day's proceedings, my personal reflections and remarks, my
statement of existing difficulties (such as the difficulty of finding
myself T. W. K. in this interesting city); my outgivings and incomings;
wind and weather; politics and public events; fluctuations in my own
health; fluctuations in Mrs. Wragge's head; fluctuations in our means
and meals, our payments, prospects, and principles; et cetera, et
cetera. So, my dear girl, the Swindler's Mill goes. So you see me
exactly as I am. You knew, before I met you, that I lived on my wits.
Well! have I, or have I not, shown you that I have wits to live on?"
"I have no doubt you have done yourself full justice," said Magdalen,
quietly.
"I am not at all exhausted," continued the captain. "I can go on, if
necessary, for the rest of the evening.However, if I have done myself
full justice, perhaps I may leave the remaining points in my character
to develop themselves at future opportunities. For the present, I
withdraw myself from notice. Exit Wragge. And now to business! Permit
me to inquire what effect I have produced on your own mind? Do you
still believe that the Rogue who has trusted you with all his secrets
is a Rogue who is bent on taking a mean advantage of a fair relative?"
"I will wait a little," Magdalen rejoined, "before I answer that
question. When I came down to tea, you told me you had been employing
your mind for my benefit. May I ask how?"
"By all means," said Captain Wragge. "You shall have the net result of
the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the present and
future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of the lawyers who
are helping them to find you. Their present proceedings are, in all
probability, assuming the following form: the lawyer's clerk has given
you up at Mr. Huxtable's, and has also, by this time, given you up,
after careful inquiry, at all the hotels. His last chance is that you
may send for your box to the cloak-roomyou don't send for itand there
the clerk is to-night (thanks to Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane) at
the end of his resources. He will forthwith communicate that fact to
his employers in London; and those employers (don't be alarmed!) will
apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable delays,
a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with those
handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here
certainly not later than the day after tomorrowpossibly earlier. If
you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable,
that spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city
before he comes (taking your departure by other means than the railway,
of course) you put him in the same predicament as the clerkyou defy
him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief abstract of your
present position. What do you think of it?"
"I think it has one defect," said Magdalen. "It ends in nothing."
"Pardon me," retorted the captain. "It ends in an arrangement for your
safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of your
wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the resources of
my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, to be poured forth
immediately in the fullest detail."
"I think I know what that word is," replied Magdalen, looking at him
attentively.
"Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, 'Captain Wragge,
take charge of me'and my plans are yours from that moment."
"I will take to-night to consider your proposal," she said, after an
instant's reflection. "You shall have my answer to-morrow morning."
Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not expected the
reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a reservation on
hers.
"Why not decide at once?" he remonstrated, in his most persuasive
tones. "You have only to consider"
"I have more to consider than you think for," she answered. "I have
another object in view besides the object you know of."
"May I ask?"
"Excuse me, Captain Wraggeyou may not ask. Allow me to thank you for
your hospitality, and to wish you good-night. I am worn out. I want
rest."
Once more the captain wisely adapted himself to her humor with the
ready self-control of an experienced man.
"Worn out, of course!" he said, sympathetically. "Unpardonable on my
part not to have thought of it before. We will resume our conversation
to-morrow. Permit me to give you a candle. Mrs. Wragge!"
Prostrated by mental exertion, Mrs. Wragge was pursuing the course of
the omelette in dreams. Her head was twisted one way, and her body the
other. She snored meekly. At intervals one of her hands raised itself
in the air, shook an imaginary frying-pan, and dropped again with a
faint thump on the cookery-book in her lap. At the sound of her
husband's voice, she started to her feet, and confronted him with her
mind fast asleep, and her eyes wide open.
"Assist Miss Vanstone," said the captain. "And the next time you forget
yourself in your chair, fall asleep straightdon't annoy me by falling
asleep crooked."
Mrs. Wragge opened her eyes a little wider, and looked at Magdalen in
helpless amazement.
"Is the captain breakfasting by candle-light?" she inquired, meekly.
"And haven't I done the omelette?"
Before her husband's corrective voice could apply a fresh stimulant,
Magdalen took her compassionately by the arm and led her out of the
room.
"Another object besides the object I know of?" repeated Captain Wragge,
when he was left by himself. "Is there a gentleman in the background,
after all? Is there mischief brewing in the dark that I don't bargain
for?"
CHAPTER III.
Toward six o'clock the next morning, the light pouring in on her face
awoke Magdalen in the bedroom in Rosemary Lane.
She started from her deep, dreamless repose of the past night with that
painful sense of bewilderment, on first waking, which is familiar to
all sleepers in strange beds. "Norah!" she called out mechanically,
when she opened her eyes. The next instant her mind roused itself, and
her senses told her the truth. She looked round the miserable room with
a loathing recognition of it. The sordid contrast which the place
presented to all that she had been accustomed to see in her own
bed-chamberthe practical abandonment, implied in its scanty furniture,
of those elegant purities of personal habit to which she had been
accustomed from her childhoodshocked that sense of bodily self-respect
in Magdalen which is a refined woman's second nature. Contemptible as
the influence seemed, when compared with her situation at that moment,
the bare sight of the jug and basin in a corner of the room decided her
first resolution when she woke. She determined, then and there, to
leave Rosemary Lane.
How was she to leave it? With Captain Wragge, or without him?
She dressed herself, with a dainty shrinking from everything in the
room which her hands or her clothes touched in the process, and then
opened the window. The autumn air felt keen and sweet; and the little
patch of sky that she could see was warmly bright already with the new
sunlight. Distant voices of bargemen on the river, and the chirping of
birds among the weeds which topped the old city wall, were the only
sounds that broke the morning silence. She sat down by the window; and
searched her mind for the thoughts which she had lost, when weariness
overcame her on the night before.
The first subject to which she returned was the vagabond subject of
Captain Wragge.
The "moral agriculturist" had failed to remove her personal distrust of
him, cunningly as he had tried to plead against it by openly confessing
the impostures that he had practiced on others. He had raised her
opinion of his abilities; he had amused her by his humor; he had
astonished her by his assurance; but he had left her original
conviction that he was a Rogue exactly where it was when he first met
with her. If the one design then in her mind had been the design of
going on the stage, she would, at all hazards, have rejected the more
than doubtful assistance of Captain Wragge on the spot.
But the perilous journey on which she had now adventured herself had
another end in viewan end, dark and distantan end, with pitfalls
hidden on the way to it, far other than the shallow pitfalls on the way
to the stage. In the mysterious stillness of the morning, her mind
looked on to its second and its deeper design, and the despicable
figure of the swindler rose before her in a new view.
She tried to shut him outto feel above him and beyond him again, as
she had felt up to this time.
After a little trifling with her dress, she took from her bosom the
white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at
Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken
strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of
Frank's hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet
of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father's
will and her father's letter; the last was a closely-folded packet of
bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred poundsthe produce (as
Miss Garth had rightly conjectured) of the sale of her jewelry and her
dresses, in which the servant at the boarding-school had privately
assisted her. She put back the notes at once, without a second glance
at them, and then sat looking thoughtfully at the lock of hair as it
lay on her lap. "You are better than nothing," she said, speaking to it
with a girl's fanciful tenderness. "I can sit and look at you
sometimes, till I almost think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling!
my darling!" Her voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair,
with a languid gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into
her bosom. A lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread
downward to her neck, as if it followed the falling hair. She closed
her eyes, and let her fair head droop softly. The world passed from
her; and, for one enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise
to the daughter of Eve.
The trivial noises in the neighboring street, gathering in number as
the morning advanced, forced her back to the hard realities of the
passing time. She raised her head with a heavy sigh, and opened her
eyes once more on the mean and miserable little room.
The extracts from the will and the letterthose last memorials of her
father, now so closely associated with the purpose which had possession
of her mindstill lay before her. The transient color faded from her
face, as she spread the little manuscript open on her lap. The extracts
from the will stood highest on the page; they were limited to those few
touching words in which the dead father begged his children's
forgiveness for the stain on their birth, and implored them to remember
the untiring love and care by which he had striven to atone for it. The
extract from the letter to Mr. Pendril came next. She read the last
melancholy sentences aloud to herself: "For God's sake come on the day
when you receive thiscome and relieve me from the dreadful thought
that my two darling girls are at this moment unprovided for. If
anything happened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice
ended (through my miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and
Magdalen disinherited, I should not rest in my grave!" Under these
lines again, and close at the bottom of the page, was written the
terrible commentary on that letter which had fallen from Mr. Pendril's
lips: "Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children, and the law
leaves them helpless at their uncle's mercy."
Helpless when those words were spokenhelpless still, after all that
she had resolved, after all that she had sacrificed. The assertion of
her natural rights and her sister's, sanctioned by the direct
expression of her father's last wishes; the recall of Frank from China;
the justification of her desertion of Norahall hung on her desperate
purpose of recovering the lost inheritance, at any risk, from the man
who had beggared and insulted his brother's children. And that man was
still a shadow to her! So little did she know of him that she was even
ignorant at that moment of his place of abode.
She rose and paced the room with the noiseless, negligent grace of a
wild creature of the forest in its cage. "How can I reach him in the
dark?" she said to herself. "How can I find out?" She stopped
suddenly. Before the question had shaped itself to an end in her
thoughts, Captain Wragge was back in her mind again.
A man well used to working in the dark; a man with endless resources of
audacity and cunning; a man who would hesitate at no mean employment
that could be offered to him, if it was employment that filled his
pocketswas this the instrument for which, in its present need, her
hand was waiting? Two of the necessities to be met, before she could
take a single step in advance, were plainly present to herthe
necessity of knowing more of her father's brother than she knew now;
and the necessity of throwing him off his guard by concealing herself
personally during the process of inquiry. Resolutely self-dependent as
she was, the inevitable spy's work at the outset must be work delegated
to another. In her position, was there any ready human creature within
reach but the vagabond downstairs? Not one. She thought of it
anxiously, she thought of it long. Not one! There the choice was,
steadily confronting her: the choice of taking the Rogue, or of turning
her back on the Purpose.
She paused in the middle of the room. "What can he do at his worst?"
she said to herself. "Cheat me. Well! if my money governs him for me,
what then? Let him have my money!" She returned mechanically to her
place by the window. A moment more decided her. A moment more, and she
took the first fatal step downward-she determined to face the risk, and
try Captain Wragge.
At nine o'clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen's door, and informed
her (with the captain's kind compliments) that breakfast was ready.
She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland
wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The
ex-waitress at Darch's Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation
of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled
yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little black spots.
"There it is!" said Mrs. Wragge. "Omelette with herbs. The landlady
helped me. And that's what we've made of it. Don't you ask the captain
for any when he comes indon't, there's a good soul. It isn't nice. We
had some accidents with it. It's been under the grate. It's been
spilled on the stairs. It's scalded the landlady's youngest boyhe went
and sat on it. Bless you, it isn't half as nice as it looks! Don't you
ask for any. Perhaps he won't notice if you say nothing about it. What
do you think of my wrapper? I should so like to have a white one. Have
you got a white one? How is it trimmed? Do tell me!"
The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on
her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious
for the promised expression of Magdalen's decision to pay his customary
attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he
dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling
her that she had his full permission to "give it to the dogs."
"How does my little proposal look by daylight?" he asked, placing
chairs for Magdalen and himself. "Which is it to be: 'Captain Wragge,
take charge of me?' or, 'Captain Wragge, good-morning?'"
"You shall hear directly," replied Magdalen. "I have something to say
first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view
besides the object of earning my living on the stage"
"I beg your pardon," interposed Captain Wragge. "Did you say, earning
your living?"
"Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions
to gain our daily bread."
"What!!!" cried the captain, starting to his feet. "The daughters of my
wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their own
living? Impossiblewildly, extravagantly impossible!" He sat down
again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury
on him.
"You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune," she
said, quietly. "I will tell you what has happened before I go any
further." She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find,
and with as few details as possible.
Captain Wragge's profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one
distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer's
offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended
instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied
until that moment.
"Do I understand," he inquired, "that you are entirely deprived of
present resources?"
"I have sold my jewelry and my dresses," said Magdalen, impatient of
his mean harping on the pecuniary string. "If my want of experience
keeps me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can
afford to pay me."
Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces,
the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune,
atsay, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds
Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation
of this judicious man.
"Just so," he said, in his most business-like manner. "There is not the
least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theater, if you
possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance."
"I must accept more assistance than you have already offeredor none,"
said Magdalen. "I have more serious difficulties before me than the
difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the
stage."
"You don't say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!"
She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.
"There are certain inquiries," she said, "which I am interested in
making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of
the person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I
wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my
being seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much
greater importance than the service you offered last night."
Captain Wragge's vagabond face became gravely and deeply attentive.
"May I ask," he said, "what the nature of the inquiries is likely to
be?"
Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael Vanstone's
name in informing the captain of the loss of her inheritance. She must
inevitably mention it to him again if she employed his services. He
would doubtless discover it for himself, by a plain process of
inference, before she said many words more, frame them as carefully as
she might. Under these circumstances, was there any intelligible reason
for shrinking from direct reference to Michael Vanstone? No
intelligible reasonand yet she shrank.
"For instance," pursued Captain Wragge, "are they inquiries about a man
or a woman; inquiries about an enemy or a friend?"
"An enemy," she answered, quickly.
Her reply might still have kept the captain in the darkbut her eyes
enlightened him. "Michael Vanstone!" thought the wary Wragge. "She
looks dangerous; I'll feel my way a little further."
"With regard, now, to the person who is the object of these inquiries,"
he resumed. "Are you thoroughly clear in your own mind about what you
want to know?"
"Perfectly clear," replied Magdalen. "I want to know where he lives, to
begin with."
"Yes. And after that?"
"I want to know about his habits; about who the people are whom he
associates with; about what he does with his money" She considered a
little. "And one thing more," she said; "I want to know whether there
is any woman about his housea relation, or a housekeeperwho has an
influence over him."
"Harmless enough, so far," said the captain. "What next?"
"Nothing. The rest is my secret."
The clouds on Captain Wragge's countenance began to clear away again.
He reverted, with his customary precision, to his customary choice of
alternatives. "These inquiries of hers," he thought, "mean one of two
thingsMischief, or Money! If it's Mischief, I'll slip through her
fingers. If it's Money, I'll make myself useful, with a view to the
future."
Magdalen's vigilant eyes watched the progress of his reflections
suspiciously. "Captain Wragge," she said, "if you want time to
consider, say so plainly."
"I don't want a moment," replied the captain. "Place your departure
from York, your dramatic career, and your private inquiries under my
care. Here I am, unreservedly at your disposal. Say the worddo you
take me?"
Her heart beat fast; her lips turned drybut she said the word.
"I do."
There was a pause. Magdalen sat silent, struggling with the vague dread
of the future which had been roused in her mind by her own reply.
Captain Wragge, on his side, was apparently absorbed in the
consideration of a new set of alternatives. His hands descended into
his empty pockets, and prophetically tested their capacity as
receptacles for gold and silver. The brightness of the precious metals
was in his face, the smoothness of the precious metals was in his
voice, as he provided himself with a new supply of words, and resumed
the conversation.
"The next question," he said, "is the question of time. Do these
confidential investigations of ours require immediate attentionor can
they wait?"
"For the present, they can wait," replied Magdalen. "I wish to secure
my freedom from all interference on the part of my friends before the
inquiries are made."
"Very good. The first step toward accomplishing that object is to beat
our retreatexcuse a professional metaphor from a military manto beat
our retreat from York to-morrow. I see my way plainly so far; but I am
all abroad, as we used to say in the militia, about my marching orders
afterward. The next direction we take ought to be chosen with an eye to
advancing your dramatic views. I am all ready, when I know what your
views are. How came you to think of the theater at all? I see the
sacred fire burning in you; tell me, who lit it?"
Magdalen could only answer him in one way. She could only look back at
the days that were gone forever, and tell him the story of her first
step toward the stage at Evergreen Lodge. Captain Wragge listened with
his usual politeness; but he evidently derived no satisfactory
impression from what he heard. Audiences of friends were audiences whom
he privately declined to trust; and the opinion of the stage-manager
was the opinion of a man who spoke with his fee in his pocket and his
eye on a future engagement.
"Interesting, deeply interesting," he said, when Magdalen had done.
"But not conclusive to a practical man. A specimen of your abilities is
necessary to enlighten me. I have been on the stage myself; the comedy
of the Rivals is familiar to me from beginning to end. A sample is all
I want, if you have not forgotten the wordsa sample of 'Lucy,' and a
sample of 'Julia.'"
"I have not forgotten the words," said Magdalen, sorrowfully; "and I
have the little books with me in which my dialogue was written out. I
have never parted with them; they remind me of a time" Her lip
trembled, and a pang of the heart-ache silenced her.
"Nervous," remarked the captain, indulgently. "Not at all a bad sign.
The greatest actresses on the stage are nervous. Follow their example,
and get over it. Where are the parts? Oh, here they are! Very nicely
written, and remarkably clean. I'll give you the cuesit will all be
over (as the dentists say) in no time. Take the back drawing-room for
the stage, and take me for the audience. Tingle goes the bell; up runs
the curtain; order in the gallery, silence in the pitenter Lucy!"
She tried hard to control herself; she forced back the sorrowthe
innocent, natural, human sorrow for the absent and the deadpleading
hard with her for the tears that she refused. Resolutely, with cold,
clinched hands, she tried to begin. As the first familiar words passed
her lips, Frank came back to her from the sea, and the face of her dead
father looked at her with the smile of happy old times. The voices of
her mother and her sister talked gently in the fragrant country
stillness, and the garden-walks at Combe-Raven opened once more on her
view. With a faint, wailing cry, she dropped into a chair; her head
fell forward on the table, and she burst passionately into tears.
Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment. She shuddered as he came
near her, and waved him back vehemently with her hand. "Leave me!" she
said; "leave me a minute by myself!" The compliant Wragge retired to
the front room; looked out of the window; and whistled under his
breath. "The family spirit again!" he said. "Complicated by hysterics."
After waiting a minute or two he returned to make inquiries.
"Is there anything I can offer you?" he asked. "Cold water? burned
feathers? smelling salts? medical assistance? Shall I summon Mrs.
Wragge? Shall we put it off till to-morrow?"
She started up, wild and flushed, with a desperate self-command in her
face, with an angry resolution in her manner.
"No!" she said. "I must harden myselfand I will! Sit down again and
see me act."
"Bravo!" cried the captain. "Dash at it, my beautyand it's done!"
She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herselfwith a raised voice,
and a glow like fever in her cheeks. All the artless, girlish charm of
the performance in happier and better days was gone. The native
dramatic capacity that was in her came, hard and bold, to the surface,
stripped of every softening allurement which had once adorned it. She
would have saddened and disappointed a man with any delicacy of
feeling. She absolutely electrified Captain Wragge. He forgot his
politeness, he forgot his long words. The essential spirit of the man's
whole vagabond life burst out of him irresistibly in his first
exclamation. "Who the devil would have thought it? She can act, after
all!" The instant the words escaped his lips he recovered himself, and
glided off into his ordinary colloquial channels. Magdalen stopped him
in the middle of his first compliment. "No," she said; "I have forced
the truth out of you for once. I want no more."
"Pardon me," replied the incorrigible Wragge. "You want a little
instruction; and I am the man to give it you."
With that answer, he placed a chair for her, and proceeded to explain
himself.
She sat down in silence. A sullen indifference began to show itself in
her manner; her cheeks turned pale again; and her eyes looked wearily
vacant at the wall before her. Captain Wragge noticed these signs of
heart-sickness and discontent with herself, after the effort she had
made, and saw the importance of rousing her by speaking, for once,
plainly and directly to the point. She had set a new value on herself
in his mercenary eyes. She had suggested to him a speculation in her
youth, her beauty, and her marked ability for the stage, which had
never entered his mind until he saw her act. The old militia-man was
quick at his shifts. He and his plans had both turned right about
together when Magdalen sat down to hear what he had to say.
"Mr. Huxtable's opinion is my opinion," he began. "You are a born
actress. But you must be trained before you can do anything on the
stage. I am disengagedI am competentI have trained othersI can train
you. Don't trust my word: trust my eye to my own interests. I'll make
it my interest to take pains with you, and to be quick about it. You
shall pay me for my instructions from your profits on the stage. Half
your salary for the first year; a third of your salary for the second
year; and half the sum you clear by your first benefit in a London
theater. What do you say to that? Have I made it my interest to push
you, or have I not?"
So far as appearances went, and so far as the stage went, it was plain
that he had linked his interests and Magdalen's together. She briefly
told him so, and waited to hear more.
"A month or six weeks' study," continued the captain, "will give me a
reasonable idea of what you can do best. All ability runs in grooves;
and your groove remains to be found. We can't find it herefor we can't
keep you a close prisoner for weeks together in Rosemary Lane. A quiet
country place, secure from all interference and interruption, is the
place we want for a month certain. Trust my knowledge of Yorkshire, and
consider the place found. I see no difficulties anywhere, except the
difficulty of beating our retreat to-morrow."
"I thought your arrangements were made last night?" said Magdalen.
"Quite right," rejoined the captain. "They were made last night; and
here they are. We can't leave by railway, because the lawyer's clerk is
sure to be on the lookout for you at the York terminus. Very good; we
take to the road instead, and leave in our own carriage. Where the
deuce do we get it? We get it from the landlady's brother, who has a
horse and chaise which he lets out for hire. That chaise comes to the
end of Rosemary Lane at an early hour to-morrow morning. I take my wife
and my niece out to show them the beauties of the neighborhood. We have
a picnic hamper with us, which marks our purpose in the public eye. You
disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet, and veil of Mrs. Wragge's; we
turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip for the
dayyou and I on the front seat, Mrs. Wragge and the hamper behind.
Good again. Once on the highroad, what do we do? Drive to the first
station beyond York, northward, southward, or eastward, as may be
hereafter determined. No lawyer's clerk is waiting for you there. You
and Mrs. Wragge get outfirst opening the hamper at a convenient
opportunity. Instead of containing chickens and Champagne, it contains
a carpet-bag, with the things you want for the night. You take your
tickets for a place previously determined on, and I take the chaise
back to York. Arrived once more in this house, I collect the luggage
left behind, and send for the woman downstairs. 'Ladies so charmed with
such and such a place (wrong place of course), that they have
determined to stop there. Pray accept the customary week's rent, in
place of a week's warning. Good day.' Is the clerk looking for me at
the York terminus? Not he. I take my ticket under his very nose; I
follow you with the luggage along your line of railwayand where is the
trace left of your departure? Nowhere. The fairy has vanished; and the
legal authorities are left in the lurch."
"Why do you talk of difficulties?" asked Magdalen. "The difficulties
seem to be provided for."
"All but ONE," said Captain Wragge, with an ominous emphasis on the
last word. "The Grand Difficulty of humanity from the cradle to the
graveMoney." He slowly winked his green eye; sighed with deep feeling;
and buried his insolvent hands in his unproductive pockets.
"What is the money wanted for?" inquired Magdalen.
"To pay my bills," replied the captain, with a touching simplicity.
"Pray understand! I never wasand never shall bepersonally desirous of
paying a single farthing to any human creature on the habitable globe.
I am speaking in your interest, not in mine."
"My interest?"
"Certainly. You can't get safely away from York to-morrow without the
chaise. And I can't get the chaise without money. The landlady's
brother will lend it if he sees his sister's bill receipted, and if he
gets his day's hire beforehandnot otherwise. Allow me to put the
transaction in a business light. We have agreed that I am to be
remunerated for my course of dramatic instruction out of your future
earnings on the stage. Very good. I merely draw on my future prospects;
and you, on whom those prospects depend, are naturally my banker. For
mere argument's sake, estimate my share in your first year's salary at
the totally inadequate value of a hundred pounds. Halve that sum;
quarter that sum"
"How much do you want?" said Magdalen, impatiently.
Captain Wragge was sorely tempted to take the Reward at the top of the
handbills as his basis of calculation. But he felt the vast future
importance of present moderation; and actually wanting some twelve or
thirteen pounds, he merely doubled the amount, and said,
"Five-and-twenty."
Magdalen took the little bag from her bosom, and gave him the money,
with a contemptuous wonder at the number of words which he had wasted
on her for the purpose of cheating on so small a scale. In the old days
at Combe-Raven, five-and-twenty pounds flowed from a stroke of her
father's pen into the hands of any one in the house who chose to ask
for it.
Captain Wragge's eyes dwelt on the little bag as the eyes of lovers
dwell on their mistresses. "Happy bag!" he murmured, as she put it back
in her bosom. He rose; dived into a corner of the room; produced his
neat dispatch-box; and solemnly unlocked it on the table between
Magdalen and himself.
"The nature of the man, my dear girlthe nature of the man," he said,
opening one of his plump little books bound in calf and vellum. "A
transaction has taken place between us. I must have it down in black
and white." He opened the book at a blank page, and wrote at the top,
in a fine mercantile hand: "Miss Vanstone, the Younger: In account
with Horatio Wragge, late of the Royal Militia. Dr.Cr. Sept.
24th, 1846. Dr.: To estimated value of H. Wragge's interest in
Miss V.'s first year's salarysay  200. Cr. By paid on account, 
25." Having completed the entryand having also shown, by doubling his
original estimate on the Debtor side, that Magdalen's easy compliance
with his demand on her had not been thrown away on himthe captain
pressed his blotting-paper over the wet ink, and put away the book with
the air of a man who had done a virtuous action, and who was above
boasting about it.
"Excuse me for leaving you abruptly," he said. "Time is of importance;
I must make sure of the chaise. If Mrs. Wragge comes in, tell her
nothingshe is not sharp enough to be trusted. If she presumes to ask
questions, extinguish her immediately. You have only to be loud. Pray
take my authority into your own hands, and be as loud with Mrs. Wragge
as I am!" He snatched up his tall hat, bowed, smiled, and tripped out
of the room.
Sensible of little else but of the relief of being alone; feeling no
more distinct impression than the vague sense of some serious change
having taken place in herself and her position, Magdalen let the events
of the morning come and go like shadows on her mind, and waited wearily
for what the day might bring forth. After the lapse of some time, the
door opened softly. The giant figure of Mrs. Wragge stalked into the
room, and stopped opposite Magdalen in solemn astonishment.
"Where are your Things?" asked Mrs. Wragge, with a burst of
incontrollable anxiety. "I've been upstairs looking in your drawers.
Where are your night-gowns and night-caps? and your petticoats and
stockings? and your hair-pins and bear's grease, and all the rest of
it?"
"My luggage is left at the railway station," said Magdalen.
Mrs. Wragge's moon-face brightened dimly. The ineradicable female
instinct of Curiosity tried to sparkle in her faded blue eyesflickered
piteouslyand died out.
"How much luggage?" she asked, confidentially. "The captain's gone out.
Let's go and get it!"
"Mrs. Wragge!" cried a terrible voice at the door.
For the first time in Magdalen's experience, Mrs. Wragge was deaf to
the customary stimulant. She actually ventured on a feeble remonstrance
in the presence of her husband.
"Oh, do let her have her Things!" pleaded Mrs. Wragge. "Oh, poor soul,
do let her have her Things!"
The captain's inexorable forefinger pointed to a corner of the
roomdropped slowly as his wife retired before itand suddenly stopped
at the region of her shoes.
"Do I hear a clapping on the floor!" exclaimed Captain Wragge, with an
expression of horror. "Yes; I do. Down at heel again! The left shoe
this time. Pull it up, Mrs. Wragge! pull it up!The chaise will be here
to-morrow morning at nine o'clock," he continued, addressing Magdalen.
"We can't possibly venture on claiming your box. There is note-paper.
Write down a list of the necessaries you want. I will take it myself to
the shop, pay the bill for you, and bring back the parcel. We must
sacrifice the boxwe must, indeed."
While her husband was addressing Magdalen, Mrs. Wragge had stolen out
again from her corner, and had ventured near enough to the captain to
hear the words "shop" and "parcel." She clapped her great hands
together in ungovernable excitement, and lost all control over herself
immediately.
"Oh, if it's shopping, let me do it!" cried Mrs. Wragge. "She's going
out to buy her Things! Oh, let me go with herplease let me go with
her!"
"Sit down!" shouted the captain. "Straight! more to the rightmore
still. Stop where you are!"
Mrs. Wragge crossed her helpless hands on her lap, and melted meekly
into tears.
"I do so like shopping," pleaded the poor creature; "and I get so
little of it now!"
Magdalen completed her list; and Captain Wragge at once left the room
with it. "Don't let my wife bore you," he said, pleasantly, as he went
out. "Cut her short, poor soulcut her short!"
"Don't cry," said Magdalen, trying to comfort Mrs. Wragge by patting
her on the shoulder. "When the parcel comes back you shall open it."
"Thank you, my dear," said Mrs. Wragge, meekly, drying her eyes; "thank
you kindly. Don't notice my handkerchief, please. It's such a very
little one! I had a nice lot of them once, with lace borders. They're
all gone now. Never mind! It will comfort me to unpack your Things.
You're very good to me. I like you. I sayyou won't be angry, will you?
Give us a kiss."
Magdalen stooped over her with the frank grace and gentleness of past
days, and touched her faded cheek. "Let me do something harmless!" she
thought, with a pang at her heart"oh let me do something innocent and
kind for the sake of old times!"
She felt her eyes moistening, and silently turned away.
That night no rest came to her. That night the roused forces of Good
and Evil fought their terrible fight for her souland left the strife
between them still in suspense when morning came. As the clock of York
Minster struck nine, she followed Mrs. Wragge to the chaise, and took
her seat by the captain's side. In a quarter of an hour more York was
in the distance, and the highroad lay bright and open before them in
the morning sunlight.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
CHRONICLE OF EVENTS: PRESERVED IN CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S DESPATCH BOX.
I.
Chronicle for October, 1846.
I have retired into the bosom of my family. We are residing in the
secluded village of Ruswarp, on the banks of the Esk, about two miles
inland from Whitby. Our lodgings are comfortable, and we possess the
additional blessing of a tidy landlady. Mrs. Wragge and Miss Vanstone
preceded me here, in accordance with the plan I laid down for effecting
our retreat from York. On the next day I followed them alone, with the
luggage. On leaving the terminus, I had the satisfaction of seeing the
lawyer's clerk in close confabulation with the detective officer whose
advent I had prophesied. I left him in peaceable possession of the city
of York, and the whole surrounding neighborhood. He has returned the
compliment, and has left us in peaceable possession of the valley of
the Esk, thirty miles away from him.
Remarkable results have followed my first efforts at the cultivation of
Miss Vanstone's dramatic abilities.
I have discovered that she possesses extraordinary talent as a mimic.
She has the flexible face, the manageable voice, and the dramatic knack
which fit a woman for character-parts and disguises on the stage. All
she now wants is teaching and practice, to make her sure of her own
resources. The experience of her, thus gained, has revived an idea in
my mind which originally occurred to me at one of the "At Homes" of the
late inimitable Charles Mathews, comedian. I was in the Wine Trade at
the time, I remember. We imitated the Vintage-processes of Nature in a
back-kitchen at Brompton, and produced a dinner-sherry, pale and
curious, tonic in character, round in the mouth, a favorite with the
Court of Spain, at nineteen-and-sixpence a dozen, bottles
includedVide Prospectus of the period. The profits of myself and
partners were small; we were in advance of the tastes of the age, and
in debt to the bottle merchant. Being at my wits' end for want of
money, and seeing what audiences Mathews drew, the idea occurred to me
of starting an imitation of the great Imitator himself, in the shape of
an "At Home," given by a woman. The one trifling obstacle in the way
was the difficulty of finding the woman. From that time to this, I have
hitherto failed to overcome it. I have conquered it at last; I have
found the woman now. Miss Vanstone possesses youth and beauty as well
as talent. Train her in the art of dramatic disguise; provide her with
appropriate dresses for different characters; develop her
accomplishments in singing and playing; give her plenty of smart talk
addressed to the audience; advertise her as a Young Lady at Home;
astonish the public by a dramatic entertainment which depends from
first to last on that young lady's own sole exertions; commit the
entire management of the thing to my careand what follows as a
necessary con sequence? Fame for my fair relative, and a fortune for
myself.
I put these considerations, as frankly as usual, to Miss Vanstone;
offering to write the Entertainment, to manage all the business, and to
share the profits. I did not forget to strengthen my case by informing
her of the jealousies she would encounter, and the obstacles she would
meet, if she went on the stage. And I wound up by a neat reference to
the private inquiries which she is interested in making, and to the
personal independence which she is desirous of securing before she acts
on her information. "If you go on the stage," I said, "your services
will be bought by a manager, and he may insist on his claims just at
the time when you want to get free from him. If, on the contrary, you
adopt my views, you will be your own mistress and your own manager, and
you can settle your course just as you like." This last consideration
appeared to strike her. She took a day to consider it; and, when the
day was over, gave her consent.
I had the whole transaction down in black and white immediately. Our
arrangement is eminently satisfactory, except in one particular. She
shows a morbid distrust of writing her name at the bottom of any
document which I present to her, and roundly declares she will sign
nothing. As long as it is her interest to provide herself with
pecuniary resources for the future, she verbally engages to go on. When
it ceases to be her interest, she plainly threatens to leave off at a
week's notice. A difficult girl to deal with; she has found out her own
value to me already. One comfort is, I have the cooking of the
accounts; and my fair relative shall not fill her pockets too suddenly
if I can help it.
My exertions in training Miss Vanstone for the coming experiment have
been varied by the writing of two anonymous letters in that young
lady's interests. Finding her too fidgety about arranging matters with
her friends to pay proper attention to my instructions, I wrote
anonymously to the lawyer who is conducting the inquiry after her,
recommending him, in a friendly way, to give it up. The letter was
inclosed to a friend of mine in London, with instructions to post it at
Charing Cross. A week later I sent a second letter, through the same
channel, requesting the lawyer to inform me, in writing, whether he and
his clients had or had not decided on taking my advice. I directed him,
with jocose reference to the collision of interests between us, to
address his letter: "Tit for Tat, Post-office, West Strand."
In a few days the answer arrivedprivately forwarded, of course, to
Post-office, Whitby, by arrangement with my friend in London.
The lawyer's reply was short and surly: "SIRIf my advice had been
followed, you and your anonymous letter would both be treated with the
contempt which they deserve. But the wishes of Miss Magdalen Vanstone's
eldest sister have claims on my consideration which I cannot dispute;
and at her entreaty I inform you that all further proceedings on my
part are withdrawnon the express understanding that this concession is
to open facilities for written communication, at least, between the two
sisters. A letter from the elder Miss Vanstone is inclosed in this. If
I don't hear in a week's time that it has been received, I shall place
the matter once more in the hands of the police.WILLIAM PENDRIL." A
sour man, this William Pendril. I can only say of him what an eminent
nobleman once said of his sulky servant"I wouldn't have such a temper
as that fellow has got for any earthly consideration that could be
offered me!"
As a matter of course, I looked into the letter which the lawyer
inclosed, before delivering it. Miss Vanstone, the elder, described
herself as distracted at not hearing from her sister; as suited with a
governess's situation in a private family; as going into the situation
in a week's time; and as longing for a letter to comfort her, before
she faced the trial of undertaking her new duties. After closing the
envelope again, I accompanied the delivery of the letter to Miss
Vanstone, the younger, by a word of caution. "Are you more sure of your
own courage now," I said, "than you were when I met you?" She was ready
with her answer. "Captain Wragge, when you met me on the Walls of York
I had not gone too far to go back. I have gone too far now."
If she really feels thisand I think she doesher corresponding with
her sister can do no harm. She wrote at great length the same day;
cried profusely over her own epistolary composition; and was remarkably
ill-tempered and snappish toward me, when we met in the evening. She
wants experience, poor girlshe sadly wants experience of the world.
How consoling to know that I am just the man to give it her!
II.
Chronicle for November.
We are established at Derby. The Entertainment is written; and the
rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are provided for,
but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone's resources
stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants; including
piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making of the
necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Entertainment are
beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatrical friend of mine
here, whom I had hoped to interest in our undertaking, proves,
unhappily, to be at a crisis in his career. The field of human
sympathy, out of which I might have raised the needful pecuniary crop,
is closed to me from want of time to cultivate it. I see no other
resource leftif we are to be ready by Christmasthan to try one of the
local music-sellers in this town, who is said to be a speculating man.
A private rehearsal at these lodgings, and a bargain which will fill
the pockets of a grasping strangersuch are the sacrifices which dire
necessity imposes on me at starting. Well! there is only one
consolation: I'll cheat the music-seller.
III.
Chronicle for December. First Fortnight.
The music-seller extorts my unwilling respect. He is one of the very
few human beings I have met with in the course of my life who is not to
be cheated. He has taken a masterly advantage of our helplessness; and
has imposed terms on us, for performances at Derby and Nottingham, with
such a business-like disregard of all interests but his own thatfond
as I am of putting things down in black and whiteI really cannot
prevail upon myself to record the bargain. It is needless to say, I
have yielded with my best grace; sharing with my fair relative the
wretched pecuniary prospects offered to us. Our turn will come. In the
meantime, I cordially regret not having known the local music-seller in
early life.
Personally speaking, I have no cause to complain of Miss Vanstone. We
have arranged that she shall regularly forward her address (at the
post-office) to her friends, as we move about from place to place.
Besides communicating in this way with her sister, she also reports
herself to a certain Mr. Clare, residing in Somersetshire, who is to
forward all letters exchanged between herself and his son. Careful
inquiry has informed me that this latter individual is now in China.
Having suspected from the first that there was a gentleman in the
background, it is highly satisfactory to know that he recedes into the
remote perspective of Asia. Long may he remain there!
The trifling responsibility of finding a name for our talented Magdalen
to perform under has been cast on my shoulders. She feels no interest
whatever in this part of the subject. "Give me any name you like," she
said; "I have as much right to one as to another. Make it yourself." I
have readily consented to gratify her wishes. The resources of my
commercial library include a list of useful names to assume; and we can
choose one at five minutes' notice, when the admirable man of business
who now oppresses us is ready to issue his advertisements. On this
point my mind is easy enough: all my anxieties center in the fair
performer. I have not the least doubt she will do wonders if she is
only left to herself on the first night. But if the day's post is
mischievous enough to upset her by a letter from her sister, I tremble
for the consequences.
IV.
Chronicle for December. Second Fortnight.
My gifted relative has made her first appearance in public, and has
laid the foundation of our future fortunes.
On the first night the attendance was larger than I had ventured to
hope. The novelty of an evening's entertainment, conducted from
beginning to end by the unaided exertions of a young lady (see
advertisement), roused the public curiosity, and the seats were
moderately well filled. As good luck would have it, no letter addressed
to Miss Vanstone came that day. She was in full possession of herself
until she got the first dress on and heard the bell ring for the music.
At that critical moment she suddenly broke down. I found her alone in
the waiting-room, sobbing, and talking like a child. "Oh, poor papa!
poor papa! Oh, my God, if he saw me now!" My experience in such matters
at once informed me that it was a case of sal-volatile, accompanied by
sound advice. We strung her up in no time to concert pitch; set her
eyes in a blaze; and made her out-blush her own rouge. The curtain rose
when we had got her at a red heat. She dashed at it exactly as she
dashed at it in the back drawing-room at Rosemary Lane. Her personal
appearance settled the question of her reception before she opened her
lips. She rushed full gallop through her changes of character, her
songs, and her dialogue; making mistakes by the dozen, and never
stopping to set them right; carrying the people along with her in a
perfect whirlwind, and never waiting for the applause. The whole thing
was over twenty minutes sooner than the time we had calculated on. She
carried it through to the end, and fainted on the waiting-room sofa a
minute after the curtain was down. The music-seller having taken leave
of his senses from sheer astonishment, and I having no evening costume
to appear in, we sent the doctor to make the necessary apology to the
public, who were calling for her till the place rang again. I prompted
our medical orator with a neat speech from behind the curtain; and I
never heard such applause, from such a comparatively small audience,
before in my life. I felt the tributeI felt it deeply. Fourteen years
ago I scraped together the wretched means of existence in this very
town by reading the newspaper (with explanatory comments) to the
company at a public-house. And now here I am at the top of the tree.
It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the
music-seller on the spot. He called the next morning, no doubt with a
liberal proposal for extending the engagement beyond Derby and
Nottingham. My niece was described as not well enough to see him; and,
when he asked for me, he was told I was not up. I happened to be at
that moment engaged in putting the case pathetically to our gifted
Magdalen. Her answer was in the highest degree satisfactory. She would
permanently engage herself to nobodyleast of all to a man who had
taken sordid advantage of her position and mine. She would be her own
mistress, and share the profits with me, while she wanted money, and
while it suited her to go on. So far so good. But the reason she added
next, for her flattering preference of myself, was less to my taste.
"The music-seller is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries,"
she said. "You are the man." I don't like her steadily remembering
those inquiries, in the first bewilderment of her success. It looks ill
for the future; it looks infernally ill for the future.
V.
Chronicle for January, 1847.
She has shown the cloven foot already. I begin to be a little afraid of
her.
On the conclusion of the Nottingham engagement (the results of which
more than equaled the results at Derby), I proposed taking the
entertainment nextnow we had got it into our own handsto Newark. Miss
Vanstone raised no objection until we came to the question of time,
when she amazed me by stipulating for a week's delay before we appeared
in public again.
"For what possible purpose?" I asked.
"For the purpose of making the inquiries which I mentioned to you at
York," she answered.
I instantly enlarged on the danger of delay, putting all the
considerations before her in every imaginable form. She remained
perfectly immovable. I tried to shake her on the question of expenses.
She answered by handing me over her share of the proceeds at Derby and
Nottinghamand there were my expenses paid, at the rate of nearly two
guineas a day. I wonder who first picked out a mule as the type of
obstinacy? How little knowledge that man must have had of women!
There was no help for it. I took down my instructions in black and
white, as usual. My first exertions were to be directed to the
discovery of Mr. Michael Vanstone's address: I was also expected to
find out how long he was likely to live there, and whether he had sold
Combe-Raven or not. My next inquiries were to inform me of his ordinary
habits of life; of what he did with his money; of who his intimate
friends were; and of the sort of terms on which his son, Mr. Noel
Vanstone, was now living with him. Lastly, the investigations were to
end in discovering whether there was any female relative, or any woman
exercising domestic authority in the house, who was known to have an
influence over either father or son.
If my long practice in cultivating the field of human sympathy had not
accustomed me to private investigations into the affairs of other
people, I might have found some of these queries rather difficult to
deal with in the course of a week. As it was, I gave myself all the
benefit of my own experience, and brought the answers back to
Nottingham in a day less than the given time. Here they are, in regular
order, for convenience of future reference:
(1.) Mr. Michael Vanstone is now residing at German Place, Brighton,
and likely to remain there, as he finds the air suits him. He reached
London from Switzerland in September last; and sold the Combe-Raven
property immediately on his arrival.
(2.) His ordinary habits of life are secret and retired; he seldom
visits, or receives company. Part of his money is supposed to be in the
Funds, and part laid out in railway investments, which have survived
the panic of eighteen hundred and forty-six, and are rapidly rising in
value. He is said to be a bold speculator. Since his arrival in England
he has invested, with great judgment, in house property. He has some
houses in remote parts of London, and some houses in certain
watering-places on the east coast, which are shown to be advancing in
public repute. In all these cases he is reported to have made
remarkably good bargains.
(3.) It is not easy to discover who his intimate friends are. Two names
only have been ascertained. The first is Admiral Bartram; supposed to
have been under friendly obligations, in past years, to Mr. Michael
Vanstone. The second is Mr. George Bartram, nephew of the Admiral, and
now staying on a short visit in the house at German Place. Mr. George
Bartram is the son of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone's sister, also
deceased. He is therefore a cousin of Mr. Noel Vanstone's. This
lastviz., Mr. Noel Vanstoneis in delicate health, and is living on
excellent terms with his father in German Place.
(4.) There is no female relative in Mr. Michael Vanstone's family
circle. But there is a housekeeper who has lived in his service ever
since his wife's death, and who has acquired a strong influence over
both father and son. She is a native of Switzerland, elderly, and a
widow. Her name is Mrs. Lecount.
On placing these particulars in Miss Vanstone's hands, she made no
remark, except to thank me. I endeavored to invite her confidence. No
results; nothing but a renewal of civility, and a sudden shifting to
the subject of the Entertainment. Very good. If she won't give me the
information I want, the conclusion is obviousI must help myself.
Business considerations claim the remainder of this page. Let me return
to business.
Financial Statement.   |    Third Week in January.
Place Visited.         |    Performances.
Newark.                |      Two.
Net Receipts.          |      Net Receipts.
In black and white.    |      Actually Realized.
25                   |      32 10s.
Apparent Division      |   Actual Division
of Profits.            |   of Profits.
Miss V....... 12 10  |   Miss V....... 12 10
Self......... 12 10  |   Self......... 20 00
Private Surplus on the Week,
Or say,
Self-presented Testimonial.
7 10s.
Audited,               |     Passed correct,
H. WRAGGE.         |        H. WRAGGE
The next stronghold of British sympathy which we take by storm is
Sheffield. We open the first week in February.
VI.
Chronicle for February.
Practice has now given my fair relative the confidence which I
predicted would come with time. Her knack of disguising her own
identity in the impersonation of different characters so completely
staggers her audiences that the same people come twice over to find out
how she does it. It is the amiable defect of the English public never
to know when they have had enough of a good thing. They actually try to
encore one of her charactersan old north-country lady; modeled on that
honored preceptress in the late Mr. Vanstone's family to whom I
presented myself at Combe-Raven. This particular performance fairly
amazes the people. I don't wonder at it. Such an extraordinary
assumption of age by a girl of nineteen has never been seen in public
before, in the whole course of my theatrical experience.
I find myself writing in a lower tone than usual; I miss my own dash of
humor. The fact is, I am depressed about the future. In the very height
of our prosperity my perverse pupil sticks to her trumpery family
quarrel. I feel myself at the mercy of the first whim in the Vanstone
direction which may come into her headI, the architect of her
fortunes. Too bad; upon my soul, too bad.
She has acted already on the inquiries which she forced me to make for
her. She has written two letters to Mr. Michael Vanstone.
To the first letter no answer came. To the second a reply was received.
Her infernal cleverness put an obstacle I had not expected in the way
of my intercepting it. Later in the day, after she had herself opened
and read the answer, I laid another trap for her. It just succeeded,
and no more. I had half a minute to look into the envelope in her
absence. It contained nothing but her own letter returned. She is not
the girl to put up quietly with such an insult as this. Mischief will
come of itMischief to Michael Vanstonewhich is of no earthly
consequence: mischief to Mewhich is a truly serious matter.
VII.
Chronicle for March.
After performing at Sheffield and Manchester, we have moved to
Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster. Another change in this weathercock
of a girl. She has written no more letters to Michael Vanstone; and she
has become as anxious to make money as I am myself. We are realizing
large profits, and we are worked to death. I don't like this change in
her: she has a purpose to answer, or she would not show such
extraordinary eagerness to fill her purse. Nothing I can dono cooking
of accounts; no self-presented testimonialscan keep that purse empty.
The success of the Entertainment, and her own sharpness in looking
after her interests, literally force me into a course of comparative
honesty. She puts into her pocket more than a third of the profits, in
defiance of my most arduous exertions to prevent her. And this at my
age! this after my long and successful career as a moral agriculturist!
Marks of admiration are very little things; but they express my
feelings, and I put them in freely.
VIII.
Chronicle for April and May.
We have visited seven more large towns, and are now at Birmingham.
Consulting my books, I find that Miss Vanstone has realized by the
Entertainment, up to this time, the enormous sum of nearly four hundred
pounds. It is quite possible that my own profits may reach one or two
miserable hundred more. But I was the architect of her fortunesthe
publisher, so to speak, of her bookand, if anything, I am underpaid.
I made the above discovery on the twenty-ninth of the monthanniversary
of the Restoration of my royal predecessor in the field of human
sympathies, Charles the Second. I had barely finished locking up my
dispatch-box, when the ungrateful girl, whose reputation I have made,
came into the room and told me in so many words that the business
connection between us was for the present at an end.
I attempt no description of my own sensations: I merely record facts.
She informed me, with an appearance of perfect composure, that she
needed rest, and that she had "new objects in view." She might possibly
want me to assist those objects; and she might possibly return to the
Entertainment. In either case it would be enough if we exchanged
addresses, at which we could write to each other in case of need.
Having no desire to leave me too abruptly, she would remain the next
day (which was Sunday); and would take her departure on Monday morning.
Such was her explanation, in so many words.
Remonstrance, as I knew by experience, would be thrown away. Authority
I had none to exert. My one sensible course to take in this emergency
was to find out which way my own interests pointed, and to go that way
without a moment's unnecessary hesitation.
A very little reflection has since convinced me that she has a
deep-laid scheme against Michael Vanstone in view. She is young,
handsome, clever, and unscrupulous; she has made money to live on, and
has time at her disposal to find out the weak side of an old man; and
she is going to attack Mr. Michael Vanstone unawares with the
legitimate weapons of her sex. Is she likely to want me for such a
purpose as this? Doubtful. Is she merely anxious to get rid of me on
easy terms? Probable. Am I the sort of man to be treated in this way by
my own pupil? Decidedly not: I am the man to see my way through a neat
succession of alternatives; and here they are:
First alternative: To announce my compliance with her proposal; to
exchange addresses with her; and then to keep my eye privately on all
her future movements. Second alternative: to express fond anxiety in a
paternal capacity; and to threaten giving the alarm to her sister and
the lawyer, if she persists in her design. Third alternative: to turn
the information I already possess to the best account, by making it a
marketable commodity between Mr. Michael Vanstone and myself. At
present I incline toward the last of these three courses. But my
decision is far too important to be hurried. To-day is only the
twenty-ninth. I will suspend my Chronicle of Events until Monday.
May 31st.My alternatives and her plans are both overthrown together.
The newspaper came in, as usual, after breakfast. I looked it over, and
discovered this memorable entry among the obituary announcements of the
day:
"On the 29th inst., at Brighton, Michael Vanstone, Esq., formerly of
Zurich, aged 77."
Miss Vanstone was present in the room when I read those two startling
lines. Her bonnet was on; her boxes were packed; she was waiting
impatiently until it was time to go to the train. I handed the paper to
her, without a word on my side. Without a word on hers, she looked
where I pointed, and read the news of Michael Vanstone's death.
The paper dropped out of her hand, and she suddenly pulled down her
veil. I caught one glance at her face before she hid it from me. The
effect on my mind was startling in the extreme. To put it with my
customary dash of humorher face informed me that the most sensible
action which Michael Vanstone, Esq., formerly of Zurich, had ever
achieved in his life was the action he performed at Brighton on the
29th instant.
Finding the dead silence in the room singularly unpleasant under
existing circumstances, I thought I would make a remark. My regard for
my own interests supplied me with a subject. I mentioned the
Entertainment.
"After what has happened," I said, "I presume we go on with our
performances as usual?"
"No," she answered, behind the veil. "We go on with my inquiries."
"Inquiries after a dead man?"
"Inquiries after the dead man's son."
"Mr. Noel Vanstone?"
"Yes; Mr. Noel Vanstone."
Not having a veil to put down over my own face, I stooped and picked up
the newspaper. Her devilish determination quite upset me for the
moment. I actually had to steady myself before I could speak to her
again.
"Are the new inquiries as harmless as the old ones?" I asked.
"Quite as harmless."
"What am I expected to find out?"
"I wish to know whether Mr. Noel Vanstone remains at Brighton after the
funeral."
"And if not?"
"If not, I shall want to know his new address wherever it may be."
"Yes. And what next?"
"I wish you to find out next if all the father's money goes to the
son."
I began to see her drift. The word money relieved me; I felt quite on
my own ground again.
"Anything more?" I asked.
"Only one thing more," she answered. "Make sure, if you please, whether
Mrs. Lecount, the housekeeper, remains or not in Mr. Noel Vanstone's
service."
Her voice altered a little as she mentioned Mrs. Lecount's name; she is
evidently sharp enough to distrust the housekeeper already.
"My expenses are to be paid as usual?" I said.
"As usual."
"When am I expected to leave for Brighton?"
"As soon as you can."
She rose, and left the room. After a momentary doubt, I decided on
executing the new commission. The more private inquiries I conduct for
my fair relative the harder she will find it to get rid of hers truly,
Horatio Wragge.
There is nothing to prevent my starting for Brighton to-morrow. So
to-morrow I go. If Mr. Noel Vanstone succeeds to his father's property,
he is the only human being possessed of pecuniary blessings who fails
to inspire me with a feeling of unmitigated envy.
IX.
Chronicle for June.
9th.I returned yesterday with my information. Here it is, privately
noted down for convenience of future reference:
Mr. Noel Vanstone has left Brighton, and has removed, for the purpose
of transacting business in London, to one of his late father's empty
houses in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. This singularly mean selection of a
place of residence on the part of a gentleman of fortune looks as if
Mr. N. V. and his money were not easily parted.
Mr. Noel Vanstone has stepped into his father's shoes under the
following circumstances: Mr. Michael Vanstone appears to have died,
curiously enough, as Mr. Andrew Vanstone diedintestate. With this
difference, however, in the two cases, that the younger brother left an
informal will, and the elder brother left no will at all. The hardest
men have their weaknesses; and Mr. Michael Vanstone's weakness seems to
have been an insurmountable horror of contemplating the event of his
own death. His son, his housekeeper, and his lawyer, had all three
tried over and over again to get him to make a will; and had never
shaken his obstinate resolution to put off performing the only business
duty he was ever known to neglect. Two doctors attended him in his last
illness; warned him that he was too old a man to hope to get over it;
and warned him in vain. He announced his own positive determination not
to die. His last words in this world (as I succeeded in discovering
from the nurse who assisted Mrs. Lecount) were: "I'm getting better
every minute; send for the fly directly and take me out for a drive."
The same night Death proved to be the more obstinate of the two; and
left his son (and only child) to take the property in due course of
law. Nobody doubts that the result would have been the same if a will
had been made. The father and son had every confidence in each other,
and were known to have always lived together on the most friendly
terms.
Mrs. Lecount remains with Mr. Noel Vanstone, in the same housekeeping
capacity which she filled with his father, and has accompanied him to
the new residence in Vauxhall Walk. She is acknowledged on all hands to
have been a sufferer by the turn events have taken. If Mr. Michael
Vanstone had made his will, there is no doubt she would have received a
handsome legacy. She is now left dependent on Mr. Noel Vanstone's sense
of gratitude; and she is not at all likely, I should imagine, to let
that sense fall asleep for want of a little timely jogging. Whether my
fair relative's future intentions in this quarter point toward Mischief
or Money, is more than I can yet say. In either case, I venture to
predict that she will find an awkward obstacle in Mrs. Lecount.
So much for my information to the present date. The manner in which it
was received by Miss Vanstone showed the most ungrateful distrust of
me. She confided nothing to my private ear but the expression of her
best thanks. A sharp girla devilish sharp girl. But there is such a
thing as bowling a man out once too often; especially when the name of
that man happens to be Wragge.
Not a word more about the Entertainment; not a word more about moving
from our present quarters. Very good. My right hand lays my left hand a
wager. Ten to one, on her opening communications with the son as she
opened them with the father. Ten to one, on her writing to Noel
Vanstone before the month is out.
21st.She has written by to-day's post. A long letter, apparentlyfor
she put two stamps on the envelope. (Private memorandum, addressed to
myself. Wait for the answer.)
22d, 23d, 24th.(Private memorandum continued. Wait for the answer.)
25th.The answer has come. As an ex-military man, I have naturally
employed stratagem to get at it. The success which rewards all genuine
perseverance has rewarded meand I have got at it accordingly.
The letter is written, not by Mr. Noel Vanstone, but by Mrs. Lecount.
She takes the highest moral ground, in a tone of spiteful politeness.
Mr. Noel Vanstone's delicate health and recent bereavement prevent him
from writing himself. Any more letters from Miss Vanstone will be
returned unopened. Any personal application will produce an immediate
appeal to the protection of the law. Mr. Noel Vanstone, having been
expressly cautioned against Miss Magdalen Vanstone by his late lamented
father, has not yet forgotten his father's advice. Considers it a
reflection cast on the memory of the best of men, to suppose that his
course of action toward the Misses Vanstone can be other than the
course of action which his father pursued. This is what he has himself
instructed Mrs. Lecount to say. She has endeavored to express herself
in the most conciliatory language she could select; she had tried to
avoid giving unnecessary pain, by addressing Miss Vanstone (as a matter
of courtesy) by the family name; and she trusts these concessions,
which speak for themselves, will not be thrown away.Such is the
substance of the letter, and so it ends.
I draw two conclusions from this little document. Firstthat it will
lead to serious results. Secondlythat Mrs. Lecount, with all her
politeness, is a dangerous woman to deal with. I wish I saw my way safe
before me. I don't see it yet.
29th.Miss Vanstone has abandoned my protection; and the whole
lucrative future of the dramatic entertainment has abandoned me with
her. I am swindledI, the last man under heaven who could possibly have
expected to write in those disgraceful terms of myselfI AM SWINDLED!
Let me chronicle the events. They exhibit me, for the time being, in a
sadly helpless point of view. But the nature of the man prevails: I
must have the events down in black and white.
The announcement of her approaching departure was intimated to me
yesterday. After another civil speech about the information I had
procured at Brighton, she hinted that there was a necessity for pushing
our inquiries a little further. I immediately offered to undertake
them, as before. "No," she said; "they are not in your way this time.
They are inquiries relating to a woman; and I mean to make them
myself!" Feeling privately convinced that this new resolution pointed
straight at Mrs. Lecount, I tried a few innocent questions on the
subject. She quietly declined to answer them. I asked next when she
proposed to leave. She would leave on the twenty-eighth. For what
destination? London. For long? Probably not. By herself? No. With me?
No. With whom then? With Mrs. Wragge, if I had no objection. Good
heavens! for what possible purpose? For the purpose of getting a
respectable lodging, which she could hardly expect to accomplish unless
she was accompanied by an elderly female friend. And was I, in the
capacity of elderly male friend, to be left out of the business
altogether? Impossible to say at present. Was I not even to forward any
letters which might come for her at our present address? No: she would
make the arrangement herself at the post-office; and she would ask me,
at the same time, for an address, at which I could receive a letter
from her, in case of necessity for future communication. Further
inquiries, after this last answer, could lead to nothing but waste of
time. I saved time by putting no more questions.
It was clear to me that our present position toward each other was what
our position had been previously to the event of Michael Vanstone's
death. I returned, as before, to my choice of alternatives. Which way
did my private interests point? Toward trusting the chance of her
wanting me again? Toward threatening her with the interference of her
relatives and friends? Or toward making the information which I
possessed a marketable commodity between the wealthy branch of the
family and myself? The last of the three was the alternative I had
chosen in the case of the father. I chose it once more in the case of
the son.
The train started for London nearly four hours since, and took her away
in it, accompanied by Mrs. Wragge.
My wife is too great a fool, poor soul, to be actively valuable in the
present emergency; but she will be passively useful in keeping up Miss
Vanstone's connection with meand, in consideration of that
circumstance, I consent to brush my own trousers, shave my own chin,
and submit to the other inconveniences of waiting on myself for a
limited period. Any faint glimmerings of sense which Mrs. Wragge may
have formerly possessed appear to have now finally taken their leave of
her. On receiving permission to go to London, she favored us
immediately with two inquiries. Might she do some shopping? and might
she leave the cookery-book behind her? Miss Vanstone said Yes to one
question, and I said Yes to the otherand from that moment, Mrs. Wragge
has existed in a state of perpetual laughter. I am still hoarse with
vainly repeated applications of vocal stimulant; and I left her in the
railway carriage, to my inexpressible disgust, with both shoes down
at heel.
Under ordinary circumstances these absurd particulars would not have
dwelt on my memory. But, as matters actually stand, my unfortunate
wife's imbecility may, in her present position, lead to consequences
which we none of us foresee. She is nothing more or less than a
grown-up child; and I can plainly detect that Miss Vanstone trusts her,
as she would not have trusted a sharper woman, on that very account. I
know children, little and big, rather better than my fair relative
does; and I saybeware of all forms of human innocence, when it happens
to be your interest to keep a secret to yourself.
Let me return to business. Here I am, at two o'clock on a fine summer's
afternoon, left entirely alone, to consider the safest means of
approaching Mr. Noel Vanstone on my own account. My private suspicions
of his miserly character produce no discouraging effect on me. I have
extracted cheering pecuniary results in my time from people quite as
fond of their money as he can be. The real difficulty to contend with
is the obstacle of Mrs. Lecount. If I am not mistaken, this lady merits
a little serious consideration on my part. I will close my chronicle
for to-day, and give Mrs. Lecount her due.
Three o'clock.I open these pages again to record a discovery which has
taken me entirely by surprise.
After completing the last entry, a circumstance revived in my memory
which I had noticed on escorting the ladies this morning to the
railway. I then remarked that Miss Vanstone had only taken one of her
three boxes with herand it now occurred to me that a private
investigation of the luggage she had left behind might possibly be
attended with beneficial results. Having, at certain periods of my life
been in the habit of cultivating friendly terms with strange locks, I
found no difficulty in establishing myself on a familiar footing with
Miss Vanstone's boxes. One of the two presented nothing to interest me.
The otherdevoted to the preservation of the costumes, articles of
toilet, and other properties used in the dramatic Entertainmentproved
to be better worth examining: for it led me straight to the discovery
of one of its owner's secrets.
I found all the dresses in the box completewith one remarkable
exception. That exception was the dress of the old north-country lady;
the character which I have already mentioned as the best of all my
pupil's disguises, and as modeled in voice and manner on her old
governess, Miss Garth. The wig; the eyebrows; the bonnet and veil; the
cloak, padded inside to disfigure her back and shoulders; the paints
and cosmetics used to age her face and alter her complexionwere all
gone. Nothing but the gown remained; a gaudily-flowered silk, useful
enough for dramatic purposes, but too extravagant in color and pattern
to bear inspection by daylight. The other parts of the dress are
sufficiently quiet to pass muster; the bonnet and veil are only
old-fashioned, and the cloak is of a sober gray color. But one plain
inference can be drawn from such a discovery as this. As certainly as I
sit here, she is going to open the campaign against Noel Vanstone and
Mrs. Lecount in a character which neither of those two persons can have
any possible reason for suspecting at the outsetthe character of Miss
Garth.
What course am I to take under these circumstances? Having got her
secret, what am I to do with it? These are awkward considerations; I am
rather puzzled how to deal with them.
It is something more than the mere fact of her choosing to disguise
herself to forward her own private ends that causes my present
perplexity. Hundreds of girls take fancies for disguising themselves;
and hundreds of instances of it are related year after year in the
public journals. But my ex-pupil is not to be confounded for one moment
with the average adventuress of the newspapers. She is capable of going
a long way beyond the limit of dressing herself like a man, and
imitating a man's voice and manner. She has a natural gift for assuming
characters which I have never seen equaled by a woman; and she has
performed in public until she has felt her own power, and trained her
talent for disguising herself to the highest pitch. A girl who takes
the sharpest people unawares by using such a capacity as this to help
her own objects in private life, and who sharpens that capacity by a
determination to fight her way to her own purpose, which has beaten
down everything before it, up to this timeis a girl who tries an
experiment in deception, new enough and dangerous enough to lead, one
way or the other, to very serious results. This is my conviction,
founded on a large experience in the art of imposing on my
fellow-creatures. I say of my fair relative's enterprise what I never
said or thought of it till I introduced myself to the inside of her
box. The chances for and against her winning the fight for her lost
fortune are now so evenly balanced that I cannot for the life of me see
on which side the scale inclines. All I can discern is, that it will,
to a dead certainty, turn one way or the other on the day when she
passes Noel Vanstone's doors in disguise.
Which way do my interests point now? Upon my honor, I don't know.
Five o'clock.I have effected a masterly compromise; I have decided on
turning myself into a Jack-on-both-sides.
By to-day's post I have dispatched to London an anonymous letter for
Mr. Noel Vanstone. It will be forwarded to its destination by the same
means which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr. Pendril; and it will
reach Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, by the afternoon of to-morrow at the
latest.
The letter is short, and to the purpose. It warns Mr. Noel Vanstone, in
the most alarming language, that he is destined to become the victim of
a conspiracy; and that the prime mover of it is a young lady who has
already held written communication with his father and himself. It
offers him the information necessary to secure his own safety, on
condition that he makes it worth the writer's while to run the serious
personal risk which such a disclosure will entail on him. And it ends
by stipulating that the answer shall be advertised in the Times;
shall be addressed to "An Unknown Friend"; and shall state plainly what
remuneration Mr. Noel Vanstone offers for the priceless service which
it is proposed to render him.
Unless some unexpected complication occurs, this letter places me
exactly in the position which it is my present interest to occupy. If
the advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered is large
enough to justify me in going over to the camp of the enemy, over I go.
If no advertisement appears, or if Mr. Noel Vanstone rates my
invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I remain, biding my
time till my fair relative wants me, or till I make her want me, which
comes to the same thing. If the anonymous letter falls by any accident
into her hands, she will find disparaging allusions in it to myself,
purposely introduced to suggest that the writer must be one of the
persons whom I addressed while conducting her inquiries. If Mrs.
Lecount takes the business in hand and lays a trap for meI decline her
tempting invitation by becoming totally ignorant of the whole affair
the instant any second person appears in it. Let the end come as it
may, here I am ready to profit by it: here I am, facing both ways, with
perfect ease and securitya moral agriculturist, with his eye on two
crops at once, and his swindler's sickle ready for any emergency.
For the next week to come, the newspaper will be more interesting to me
than ever. I wonder which side I shall eventually belong to?
THE THIRD SCENE.
VAUXHALL WALK, LAMBETH.
CHAPTER I.
The old Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, on the southern bank of the
Thameswith its Bishop's Walk and Garden, and its terrace fronting the
riveris an architectural relic of the London of former times, precious
to all lovers of the picturesque, in the utilitarian London of the
present day. Southward of this venerable structure lies the street
labyrinth of Lambeth; and nearly midway, in that part of the maze of
houses which is placed nearest to the river, runs the dingy double row
of buildings now, as in former days, known by the name of Vauxhall
Walk.
The network of dismal streets stretching over the surrounding
neighborhood contains a population for the most part of the poorer
order. In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle
with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers
its forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday
night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight. Miserable women,
whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers' shops in such London
localities as these, with relics of the men's wages saved from the
public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the
meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously, as
the fingers of their richer sisters touch a precious stone. In this
district, as in other districts remote from the wealthy quarters of the
metropolis, the hideous London vagabondwith the filth of the street
outmatched in his speech, with the mud of the street outdirtied in his
clotheslounges, lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the
gin-shop door; the public disgrace of his country, the unheeded warning
of social troubles that are yet to come. Here, the loud self-assertion
of Modern Progresswhich has reformed so much in manners, and altered
so little in menmeets the flat contradiction that scatters its
pretensions to the winds. Here, while the national prosperity feasts,
like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is
the Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his glory
is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.
Situated in such a neighborhood as this, Vauxhall Walk gains by
comparison, and establishes claims to respectability which no impartial
observation can fail to recognize. A large proportion of the Walk is
still composed of private houses. In the scattered situations where
shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the crowds of more
populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public
consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have
sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and
canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs,
bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may
want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same
repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas which
illuminates London, tracks its parent source to Works established in
this locality. Here the followers of John Wesley have set up a temple,
built before the period of Methodist conversion to the principles of
architectural religion. And heremost striking object of allon the
site where thousands of lights once sparkled; where sweet sounds of
music made night tuneful till morning dawned; where the beauty and
fashion of London feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a
centuryspreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish;
the deserted dead body of Vauxhall Gardens mouldering in the open air.
On the same day when Captain Wragge completed the last entry in his
Chronicle of Events, a woman appeared at the window of one of the
houses in Vauxhall Walk, and removed from the glass a printed paper
which had been wafered to it announcing that Apartments were to be let.
The apartments consisted of two rooms on the first floor. They had just
been taken for a week certain by two ladies who had paid in
advancethose two ladies being Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge.
As soon as the mistress of the house had left the room, Magdalen walked
to the window, and cautiously looked out from it at the row of
buildings opposite. They were of superior pretensions in size and
appearance to the other houses in the Walk: the date at which they had
been erected was inscribed on one of them, and was stated to be the
year 1759. They stood back from the pavement, separated from it by
little strips of garden-ground. This peculiarity of position, added to
the breadth of the roadway interposing between them and the smaller
houses opposite, made it impossible for Magdalen to see the numbers on
the doors, or to observe more of any one who might come to the windows
than the bare general outline of dress and figure. Nevertheless, there
she stood, anxiously fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly
opposite to herthe house she had looked for before entering the
lodgings; the house inhabited at that moment by Noel Vanstone and Mrs.
Lecount.
After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or more,
she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect which her
behavior might have produced on her traveling companion.
Not the slightest cause appeared for any apprehension in that quarter.
Mrs. Wragge was seated at the table absorbed in the arrangement of a
series of smart circulars and tempting price-lists, issued by
advertising trades-people, and flung in at the cab-windows as they left
the London terminus. "I've often heard tell of light reading," said
Mrs. Wragge, restlessly shifting the positions of the circulars as a
child restlessly shifts the position of a new set of toys. "Here's
light reading, printed in pretty colors. Here's all the Things I'm
going to buy when I'm out shopping to-morrow. Lend us a pencil,
pleaseyou won't be angry, will you? I do so want to mark 'em off." She
looked up at Magdalen, chuckled joyfully over her own altered
circumstances, and beat her great hands on the table in irrepressible
delight. "No cookery-book!" cried Mrs. Wragge. "No Buzzing in my head!
no captain to shave to-morrow! I'm all down at heel; my cap's on one
side; and nobody bawls at me. My heart alive, here is a holiday and
no mistake!" Her hands began to drum on the table louder than ever,
until Magdalen quieted them by presenting her with a pencil. Mrs.
Wragge instantly recovered her dignity, squared her elbows on the
table, and plunged into imaginary shopping for the rest of the evening.
Magdalen returned to the window. She took a chair, seated herself
behind the curtain, and steadily fixed her eyes once more on the house
opposite.
The blinds were down over the windows of the first floor and the
second. The window of the room on the ground-floor was uncovered and
partly open, but no living creature came near it. Doors opened, and
people came and went, in the houses on either side; children by the
dozen poured out on the pavement to play, and invaded the little strips
of garden-ground to recover lost balls and shuttlecocks; streams of
people passed backward and forward perpetually; heavy wagons piled high
with goods lumbered along the road on their way to, or their way from,
the railway station near; all the daily life of the district stirred
with its ceaseless activity in every direction but one. The hours
passedand there was the house opposite still shut up, still void of
any signs of human existence inside or out. The one object which had
decided Magdalen on personally venturing herself in Vauxhall Walkthe
object of studying the looks, manners and habits of Mrs. Lecount and
her master from a post of observation known only to herselfwas thus
far utterly defeated. After three hours' watching at the window, she
had not even discovered enough to show her that the house was inhabited
at all.
Shortly after six o'clock, the landlady disturbed Mrs. Wragge's studies
by spreading the cloth for dinner. Magdalen placed herself at the table
in a position which still enabled her to command the view from the
window. Nothing happened. The dinner came to an end; Mrs. Wragge
(lulled by the narcotic influence of annotating circulars, and eating
and drinking with an appetite sharpened by the captain's absence)
withdrew to an arm-chair, and fell asleep in an attitude which would
have caused her husband the acutest mental suffering; seven o'clock
struck; the shadows of the summer evening lengthened stealthily on the
gray pavement and the brown house-wallsand still the closed door
opposite remained shut; still the one window open showed nothing but
the black blank of the room inside, lifeless and changeless as if that
room had been a tomb.
Mrs. Wragge's meek snoring deepened in tone; the evening wore on
drearily; it was close on eight o'clockwhen an event happened at last.
The street door opposite opened for the first time, and a woman
appeared on the threshold.
Was the woman Mrs. Lecount? No. As she came nearer, her dress showed
her to be a servant. She had a large door-key in her hand, and was
evidently going out to perform an errand. Roused partly by curiosity,
partly by the impulse of the moment, which urged her impetuous nature
into action after the passive endurance of many hours past, Magdalen
snatched up her bonnet, and determined to follow the servant to her
destination, wherever it might be.
The woman led her to the great thoroughfare of shops close at hand,
called Lambeth Walk. After proceeding some little distance, and looking
about her with the hesitation of a person not well acquainted with the
neighborhood, the servant crossed the road and entered a stationer's
shop. Magdalen crossed the road after her and followed her in.
The inevitable delay in entering the shop under these circumstances
made Magdalen too late to hear what the woman asked for. The first
words spoken, however, by the man behind the counter reached her ears,
and informed her that the servant's object was to buy a railway guide.
"Do you mean a Guide for this month or a Guide for July?" asked the
shopman, addressing his customer.
"Master didn't tell me which," answered the woman. "All I know is, he's
going into the country the day after to-morrow."
"The day after to-morrow is the first of July," said the shopman. "The
Guide your master wants is the Guide for the new month. It won't be
published till to-morrow."
Engaging to call again on the next day, the servant left the shop, and
took the way that led back to Vauxhall Walk.
Magdalen purchased the first trifle she saw on the counter, and hastily
returned in the same direction. The discovery she had just made was of
very serious importance to her; and she felt the necessity of acting on
it with as little delay as possible.
On entering the front room at the lodgings she found Mrs. Wragge just
awake, lost in drowsy bewilderment, with her cap fallen off on her
shoulders, and with one of her shoes missing altogether. Magdalen
endeavored to persuade her that she was tired after her journey, and
that her wisest proceeding would be to go to bed. Mrs. Wragge was
perfectly willing to profit by this suggestion, provided she could find
her shoe first. In looking for the shoe, she unfortunately discovered
the circulars, put by on a side-table, and forthwith recovered her
recollection of the earlier proceedings of the evening.
"Give us the pencil," said Mrs. Wragge, shuffling the circulars in a
violent hurry. "I can't go to bed yetI haven't half done marking down
the things I want. Let's see; where did I leave off? Try Finch's
feeding-bottle for Infants. No! there's a cross against that: the
cross means I don't want it. Comfort in the Field. Buckler's
Indestructible Hunting-breeches. Oh dear, dear! I've lost the place.
No, I haven't. Here it is; here's my mark against it. Elegant Cashmere
Robes; strictly Oriental, very grand; reduced to one pound
nineteen-and-sixpence. Be in time. Only three left. Only three! Oh, do
lend us the money, and let's go and get one!"
"Not to-night," said Magdalen. "Suppose you go to bed now, and finish
the circulars tomorrow? I will put them by the bedside for you, and you
can go on with them as soon as you wake the first thing in the
morning."
This suggestion met with Mrs. Wragge's immediate approval. Magdalen
took her into the next room and put her to bed like a childwith her
toys by her side. The room was so narrow, and the bed was so small; and
Mrs. Wragge, arrayed in the white apparel proper for the occasion, with
her moon-face framed round by a spacious halo of night-cap, looked so
hugely and disproportionately large, that Magdalen, anxious as she was,
could not repress a smile on taking leave of her traveling companion
for the night.
"Aha!" cried Mrs. Wragge, cheerfully; "we'll have that Cashmere Robe
to-morrow. Come here! I want to whisper something to you. Just you look
at meI'm going to sleep crooked, and the captain's not here to bawl at
me!"
The front room at the lodgings contained a sofa-bedstead which the
landlady arranged betimes for the night. This done, and the candles
brought in, Magdalen was left alone to shape the future course as her
own thoughts counseled her.
The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that evening
at the stationer's shop led plainly to the conclusion that one day more
would bring Noel Vanstone's present term of residence in Vauxhall Walk
to an end. Her first cautious resolution to pass many days together in
unsuspected observation of the house opposite before she ventured
herself inside was entirely frustrated by the turn events had taken.
She was placed in the dilemma of running all risks headlong on the next
day, or of pausing for a future opportunity which might never occur.
There was no middle course open to her. Until she had seen Noel
Vanstone with her own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to
fear from Mrs. Lecountuntil she had achieved this double object, with
the needful precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the
darknot a step could she advance toward the accomplishment of the
purpose which had brought her to London.
One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one after
another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her mindand
still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and doubted, with a
hesitation new to her in her experience of herself. At last she crossed
the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief of unlocking her trunk
and taking from it the few things that she wanted for the night.
Captain Wragge's suspicions had not misled him. There, hidden between
two dresses, were the articles of costume which he had missed from her
box at Birmingham. She turned them over one by one, to satisfy herself
that nothing she wanted had been forgotten, and returned once more to
her post of observation by the window.
The house opposite was dark down to the parlor. There the blind,
previously raised, was now drawn over the window: the light burning
behind it showed her for the first time that the room was inhabited.
Her eyes brightened, and her color rose as she looked at it.
"There he is!" she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper. "There he
lives on our money, in the house that his father's warning has closed
against me!" She dropped the blind which she had raised to look out,
returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray wig which was part of
her dramatic costume in the character of the North-country lady. The
wig had been crumpled in packing; she put it on and went to the
toilet-table to comb it out. "His father has warned him against
Magdalen Vanstone," she said, repeating the passage in Mrs. Lecount's
letter, and laughing bitterly, as she looked at herself in the glass.
"I wonder whether his father has warned him against Miss Garth?
To-morrow is sooner than I bargained for. No matter: to-morrow shall
show."
CHAPTER II.
The early morning, when Magdalen rose and looked out, was cloudy and
overcast. But as time advanced to the breakfast hour the threatening of
rain passed away; and she was free to provide, without hinderance from
the weather, for the first necessity of the daythe necessity of
securing the absence of her traveling companion from the house.
Mrs. Wragge was dressed, armed at all points with her collection of
circulars, and eager to be away by ten o'clock. At an earlier hour
Magdalen had provided for her being properly taken care of by the
landlady's eldest daughtera quiet, well-conducted girl, whose interest
in the shopping expedition was readily secured by a little present of
money for the purchase, on her own account, of a parasol and a muslin
dress. Shortly after ten o'clock Magdalen dismissed Mrs. Wragge and her
attendant in a cab. She then joined the landladywho was occupied in
setting the rooms in order upstairswith the object of ascertaining, by
a little well-timed gossip, what the daily habits might be of the
inmates of the house.
She discovered that there were no other lodgers but Mrs. Wragge and
herself. The landlady's husband was away all day, employed at a railway
station. Her second daughter was charged with the care of the kitchen
in the elder sister's absence. The younger children were at school, and
would be back at one o'clock to dinner. The landlady herself "got up
fine linen for ladies," and expected to be occupied over her work all
that morning in a little room built out at the back of the premises.
Thus there was every facility for Magdalen's leaving the house in
disguise, and leaving it unobserved, provided she went out before the
children came back to dinner at one o'clock.
By eleven o'clock the apartments were set in order, and the landlady
had retired to pursue her own employments. Magdalen softly locked the
door of her room, drew the blind over the window, and entered at once
on her preparations for the perilous experiment of the day.
The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to
be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her
character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully
alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for
the amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to
deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress
which she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material
called "alpaca"), of a dark-brown color, with a neat pattern of little
star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom
of this dress was the only milliner's ornament which it presentedan
ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to
an elderly lady. The disguise of her head and face was the next object
of her attention. She fitted and arranged the gray wig with the
dexterity which constant practice had given her; fixed the false
eyebrows (made rather large, and of hair darker than the wig) carefully
in their position with the gum she had with her for the purpose, and
stained her face with the customary stage materials, so as to change
the transparent fairness of her complexion to the dull, faintly opaque
color of a woman in ill health. The lines and markings of age followed
next; and here the first obstacles presented themselves. The art which
succeeded by gas-light failed by day: the difficulty of hiding the
plainly artificial nature of the marks was almost insuperable. She
turned to her trunk; took from it two veils; and putting on her
old-fashioned bonnet, tried the effect of them in succession. One of
the veils (of black lace) was too thick to be worn over the face at
that summer season without exciting remark. The other, of plain net,
allowed her features to be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to
permit the safe introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was
accustomed to use in performing the character) on the forehead and at
the sides of the mouth. But the obstacle thus set aside only opened the
way to a new difficultythe difficulty of keeping her veil down while
she was speaking to other persons, without any obvious reason for doing
so. An instant's consideration, and a chance look at her little china
palette of stage colors, suggested to her ready invention the
production of a visible excuse for wearing her veil. She deliberately
disfigured herself by artificially reddening the insides of her eyelids
so as to produce an appearance of inflammation which no human creature
but a doctorand that doctor at close quarterscould have detected as
false. She sprang to her feet and looked triumphantly at the hideous
transformation of herself reflected in the glass. Who could think it
strange now if she wore her veil down, and if she begged Mrs. Lecount's
permission to sit with her back to the light?
Her last proceeding was to put on the quiet gray cloak which she had
brought from Birmingham, and which had been padded inside by Captain
Wragge's own experienced hands, so as to hide the youthful grace and
beauty of her back and shoulders. Her costume being now complete, she
practiced the walk which had been originally taught her as appropriate
to the charactera walk with a slight limpand, returning to the glass
after a minute's trial, exercised herself next in the disguise of her
voice and manner. This was the only part of the character in which it
had been possible, with her physical peculiarities, to produce an
imitation of Miss Garth; and here the resemblance was perfect. The
harsh voice, the blunt manner, the habit of accompanying certain
phrases by an emphatic nod of the head, the Northumbrian burr
expressing itself in every word which contained the letter "r"all
these personal peculiarities of the old North-country governess were
reproduced to the life. The personal transformation thus completed was
literally what Captain Wragge had described it to bea triumph in the
art of self-disguise. Excepting the one case of seeing her face close,
with a strong light on it, nobody who now looked at Magdalen could have
suspected for an instant that she was other than an ailing, ill-made,
unattractive woman of fifty years old at least.
Before unlocking the door, she looked about her carefully, to make sure
that none of her stage materials were exposed to view in case the
landlady entered the room in her absence. The only forgotten object
belonging to her that she discovered was a little packet of Norah's
letters which she had been reading overnight, and which had been
accidentally pushed under the looking-glass while she was engaged in
dressing herself. As she took up the letters to put them away, the
thought struck her for the first time, "Would Norah know me now if we
met each other in the street?" She looked in the glass, and smiled
sadly. "No," she said, "not even Norah."
She unlocked the door, after first looking at her watch. It was close
on twelve o'clock. There was barely an hour left to try her desperate
experiment, and to return to the lodging before the landlady's children
came back from school.
An instant's listening on the landing assured her that all was quiet in
the passage below. She noiselessly descended the stairs and gained the
street without having met any living creature on her way out of the
house. In another minute she had crossed the road, and had knocked at
Noel Vanstone's door.
The door was opened by the same woman-servant whom she had followed on
the previous evening to the stationer's shop. With a momentary tremor,
which recalled the memorable first night of her appearance in public,
Magdalen inquired (in Miss Garth's voice, and with Miss Garth's manner)
for Mrs. Lecount.
"Mrs. Lecount has gone out, ma'am," said the servant.
"Is Mr. Vanstone at home?" asked Magdalen, her resolution asserting
itself at once against the first obstacle that opposed it.
"My master is not up yet, ma'am."
Another check! A weaker nature would have accepted the warning.
Magdalen's nature rose in revolt against it.
"What time will Mrs. Lecount be back?" she asked.
"About one o'clock, ma'am."
"Say, if you please, that I will call again as soon after one o'clock
as possible. I particularly wish to see Mrs. Lecount. My name is Miss
Garth."
She turned and left the house. Going back to her own room was out of
the question. The servant (as Magdalen knew by not hearing the door
close) was looking after her; and, moreover, she would expose herself,
if she went indoors, to the risk of going out again exactly at the time
when the landlady's children were sure to be about the house. She
turned mechanically to the right, walked on until she recalled Vauxhall
Bridge, and waited there, looking out over the river.
The interval of unemployed time now before her was nearly an hour. How
should she occupy it?
As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck her
when she put away the packet of Norah's letters rose in her mind once
more. A sudden impulse to test the miserable completeness of her
disguise mixed with the higher and purer feeling at her heart, and
strengthened her natural longing to see her sister's face again, though
she dare not discover herself and speak. Norah's later letters had
described, in the fullest details, her life as a governessher hours
for teaching, her hours of leisure, her hours for walking out with her
pupils. There was just time, if she could find a vehicle at once, for
Magdalen to drive to the house of Norah's employer, with the chance of
getting there a few minutes before the hour when her sister would be
going out. "One look at her will tell me more than a hundred letters!"
With that thought in her heart, with the one object of following Norah
on her daily walk, under protection of the disguise, Magdalen hastened
over the bridge, and made for the northern bank of the river.
So, at the turning-point of her lifeso, in the interval before she
took the irrevocable step, and passed the threshold of Noel Vanstone's
doorthe forces of Good triumphing in the strife for her over the
forces of Evil, turned her back on the scene of her meditated
deception, and hurried her mercifully further and further away from the
fatal house.
She stopped the first empty cab that passed her; told the driver to go
to New Street, Spring Gardens; and promised to double his fare if he
reached his destination by a given time. The man earned the moneymore
than earned it, as the event proved. Magdalen had not taken ten steps
in advance along New Street, walking toward St. James's Park, before
the door of a house beyond her opened, and a lady in mourning came out,
accompanied by two little girls. The lady also took the direction of
the Park, without turning her head toward Magdalen as she descended the
house step. It mattered little; Magdalen's heart looked through her
eyes, and told her that she saw Norah.
She followed them into St. James's Park, and thence (along the Mall)
into the Green Park, venturing closer and closer as they reached the
grass and ascended the rising ground in the direction of Hyde Park
Corner. Her eager eyes devoured every detail in Norah's dress, and
detected the slightest change that had taken place in her figure and
her bearing. She had become thinner since the autumnher head drooped a
little; she walked wearily. Her mourning dress, worn with the modest
grace and neatness which no misfortune could take from her, was suited
to her altered station; her black gown was made of stuff; her black
shawl and bonnet were of the plainest and cheapest kind. The two little
girls, walking on either side of her, were dressed in silk. Magdalen
instinctively hated them.
She made a wide circuit on the grass, so as to turn gradually and meet
her sister without exciting suspicion that the meeting was contrived.
Her heart beat fast; a burning heat glowed in her as she thought of her
false hair, her false color, her false dress, and saw the dear familiar
face coming nearer and nearer. They passed each other close. Norah's
dark gentle eyes looked up, with a deeper light in them, with a sadder
beauty than of oldrested, all unconscious of the truth, on her
sister's faceand looked away from it again as from the face of a
stranger. That glance of an instant struck Magdalen to the heart. She
stood rooted to the ground after Norah had passed by. A horror of the
vile disguise that concealed her; a yearning to burst its trammels and
hide her shameful painted face on Norah's bosom, took possession of
her, body and soul. She turned and looked back.
Norah and the two children had reached the higher ground, and were
close to one of the gates in the iron railing which fenced the Park
from the street. Drawn by an irresistible fascination, Magdalen
followed them again, gained on them as they reached the gate, and heard
the voices of the two children raised in angry dispute which way they
wanted to walk next. She saw Norah take them through the gate, and then
stoop and speak to them, while waiting for an opportunity to cross the
road. They only grew the louder and the angrier for what she said. The
youngesta girl of eight or nine years oldflew into a child's vehement
passion, cried, screamed, and even kicked at the governess. The people
in the street stopped and laughed; some of them jestingly advised a
little wholesome correction; one woman asked Norah if she was the
child's mother; another pitied her audibly for being the child's
governess. Before Magdalen could push her way through the crowdbefore
her all-mastering anxiety to help her sister had blinded her to every
other consideration, and had brought her, self-betrayed, to Norah's
sidean open carriage passed the pavement slowly, hindered in its
progress by the press of vehicles before it. An old lady seated inside
heard the child's cries, recognized Norah, and called to her
immediately. The footman parted the crowd, and the children were put
into the carriage. "It's lucky I happened to pass this way," said the
old lady, beckoning contemptuously to Norah to take her place on the
front seat; "you never could manage my daughter's children, and you
never will." The footman put up the steps, the carriage drove on with
the children and the governess, the crowd dispersed, and Magdalen was
alone again.
"So be it!" she thought, bitterly. "I should only have distressed her.
We should only have had the misery of parting to suffer again."
She mechanically retraced her steps; she returned, as in a dream, to
the open space of the Park. Arming itself treacherously with the
strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the
indignation that she felt for her sister's sake, the terrible
temptation of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever.
Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce
despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and
horrible. Norah made an object of public curiosity and amusement; Norah
reprimanded in the open street; Norah, the hired victim of an old
woman's insolence and a child's ill-temper, and the same man to thank
for it who had sent Frank to China!and that man's son to thank after
him! The thought of her sister, which had turned her from the scene of
her meditated deception, which had made the consciousness of her own
disguise hateful to her, was now the thought which sanctioned that
means, or any means, to compass her end; the thought which set wings to
her feet, and hurried her back nearer and nearer to the fatal house.
She left the Park again, and found herself in the streets without
knowing where. Once more she hailed the first cab that passed her, and
told the man to drive to Vauxhall Walk.
The change from walking to riding quieted her. She felt her attention
returning to herself and her dress. The necessity of making sure that
no accident had happened to her disguise in the interval since she had
left her own room impressed itself immediately on her mind. She stopped
the driver at the first pastry-cook's shop which he passed, and there
obtained the means of consulting a looking-glass before she ventured
back to Vauxhall Walk.
Her gray head-dress was disordered, and the old-fashioned bonnet was a
little on one side. Nothing else had suffered. She set right the few
defects in her costume, and returned to the cab. It was half-past one
when she approached the house and knocked, for the second time, at Noel
Vanstone's door. The woman-servant opened it as before.
"Has Mrs. Lecount come back?"
"Yes, ma'am. Step this way, if you please."
The servant preceded Magdalen along an empty passage, and, leading her
past an uncarpeted staircase, opened the door of a room at the back of
the house. The room was lighted by one window looking out on a yard;
the walls were bare; the boarded floor was uncovered. Two bedroom
chairs stood against the wall, and a kitchen-table was placed under the
window. On the table stood a glass tank filled with water, and
ornamented in the middle by a miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced
with weeds. Snails clung to the sides of the tank; tadpoles and tiny
fish swam swiftly in the green water, slippery efts and slimy frogs
twined their noiseless way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on
top of the pyramid there sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the
stone, motionless as the stone, a little bright-eyed toad. The art of
keeping fish and reptiles as domestic pets had not at that time been
popularized in England; and Magdalen, on entering the room, started
back, in irrepressible astonishment and disgust, from the first
specimen of an Aquarium that she had ever seen.
"Don't be alarmed," said a woman's voice behind her. "My pets hurt
nobody."
Magdalen turned, and confronted Mrs. Lecount. She had expectedfounding
her anticipations on the letter which the housekeeper had written to
herto see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent old woman. She found
herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose
dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity,
whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical
resistance to the deteriorating influence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had
struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted
herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man in a
thousand, or one woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to
believe her. Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more. It
was plainly parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with
mourning ribbons. Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white forehead,
or her plump white cheeks. Her double chin was dimpled, and her teeth
were marvels of whiteness and regularity. Her lips might have been
critically considered as too thin, if they had not been accustomed to
make the best of their defects by means of a pleading and persuasive
smile. Her large black eyes might have looked fierce if they had been
set in the face of another woman, they were mild and melting in the
face of Mrs. Lecount; they were tenderly interested in everything she
looked atin Magdalen, in the toad on the rock-work, in the back-yard
view from the window; in her own plump fair hands,which she rubbed
softly one over the other while she spoke; in her own pretty cambric
chemisette, which she had a habit of looking at complacently while she
listened to others. The elegant black gown in which she mourned the
memory of Michael Vanstone was not a mere dressit was a well-made
compliment paid to Death. Her innocent white muslin apron was a little
domestic poem in itself. Her jet earrings were so modest in their
pretensions that a Quaker might have looked at them and committed no
sin. The comely plumpness of her face was matched by the comely
plumpness of her figure; it glided smoothly over the ground; it flowed
in sedate undulations when she walked. There are not many men who could
have observed Mrs. Lecount entirely from the Platonic point of
viewlads in their teens would have found her irresistiblewomen only
could have hardened their hearts against her, and mercilessly forced
their way inward through that fair and smiling surface. Magdalen's
first glance at this Venus of the autumn period of female life more
than satisfied her that she had done well to feel her ground in
disguise before she ventured on matching herself against Mrs. Lecount.
"Have I the pleasure of addressing the lady who called this morning?"
inquired the housekeeper. "Am I speaking to Miss Garth?"
Something in the expression of her eyes, as she asked that question,
warned Magdalen to turn her face further inward from the window than
she had turned it yet. The bare doubt whether the housekeeper might not
have seen her already under too strong a light shook her
self-possession for the moment. She gave herself time to recover it,
and merely answered by a bow.
"Accept my excuses, ma'am, for the place in which I am compelled to
receive you," proceeded Mrs. Lecount in fluent English, spoken with a
foreign accent. "Mr. Vanstone is only here for a temporary purpose. We
leave for the sea-side to-morrow afternoon, and it has not been thought
worth while to set the house in proper order. Will you take a seat, and
oblige me by mentioning the object of your visit?"
She glided imperceptibly a step or two nearer to Magdalen, and placed a
chair for her exactly opposite the light from the window. "Pray sit
down," said Mrs. Lecount, looking with the tenderest interest at the
visitor's inflamed eyes through the visitor's net veil.
"I am suffering, as you see, from a complaint in the eyes," replied
Magdalen, steadily keeping her profile toward the window, and carefully
pitching her voice to the tone of Miss Garth's. "I must beg your
permission to wear my veil down, and to sit away from the light." She
said those words, feeling mistress of herself again. With perfect
composure she drew the chair back into the corner of the room beyond
the window and seated herself, keeping the shadow of her bonnet well
over her face. Mrs. Lecount's persuasive lips murmured a polite
expression of sympathy; Mrs. Lecount's amiable black eyes looked more
interested in the strange lady than ever. She placed a chair for
herself exactly on a line with Magdalen's, and sat so close to the wall
as to force her visitor either to turn her head a little further round
toward the window, or to fail in politeness by not looking at the
person whom she addressed. "Yes," said Mrs. Lecount, with a
confidential little cough. "And to what circumstances am I indebted for
the honor of this visit?"
"May I inquire, first, if my name happens to be familiar to you?" said
Magdalen, turning toward her as a matter of necessity, but coolly
holding up her handkerchief at the same time between her face and the
light.
"No," answered Mrs. Lecount, with another little cough, rather harsher
than the first. "The name of Miss Garth is not familiar to me."
"In that case," pursued Magdalen, "I shall best explain the object that
causes me to intrude on you by mentioning who I am. I lived for many
years as governess in the family of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone, of
Combe-Raven, and I come here in the interest of his orphan daughters."
Mrs. Lecount's hands, which had been smoothly sliding one over the
other up to this time, suddenly stopped; and Mrs. Lecount's lips,
self-forgetfully shutting up, owned they were too thin at the very
outset of the interview.
"I am surprised you can bear the light out-of-doors without a green
shade," she quietly remarked; leaving the false Miss Garth's
announcement of herself as completely unnoticed as it she had not
spoken at all.
"I find a shade over my eyes keeps them too hot at this time of the
year," rejoined Magdalen, steadily matching the housekeeper's
composure. "May I ask whether you heard what I said just now on the
subject of my errand in this house?"
"May I inquire on my side, ma'am, in what way that errand can possibly
concern me?" retorted Mrs. Lecount.
"Certainly," said Magdalen. "I come to you because Mr. Noel Vanstone's
intentions toward the two young ladies were made known to them in the
form of a letter from yourself."
That plain answer had its effect. It warned Mrs. Lecount that the
strange lady was better informed than she had at first suspected, and
that it might hardly be wise, under the circumstances, to dismiss her
unheard.
"Pray pardon me," said the housekeeper, "I scarcely understood before;
I perfectly understand now. You are mistaken, ma'am, in supposing that
I am of any importance, or that I exercise any influence in this
painful matter. I am the mouth-piece of Mr. Noel Vanstone; the pen he
holds, if you will excuse the expressionnothing more. He is an
invalid, and like other invalids, he has his bad days and his good. It
was his bad day when that answer was written to the young personshall
I call her Miss Vanstone? I will, with pleasure, poor girl; for who am
I to make distinctions, and what is it to me whether her parents were
married or not? As I was saying, it was one of Mr. Noel Vanstone's bad
days when that answer was sent, and therefore I had to write it; simply
as his secretary, for want of a better. If you wish to speak on the
subject of these young ladiesshall I call them young ladies, as you
did just now? no, poor things, I will call them the Misses Vanstone.If
you wish to speak on the subject of these Misses Vanstone, I will
mention your name, and your object in favoring me with this call, to
Mr. Noel Vanstone. He is alone in the parlor, and this is one of his
good days. I have the influence of an old servant over him, and I will
use that influence with pleasure in your behalf. Shall I go at once?"
asked Mrs. Lecount, rising, with the friendliest anxiety to make
herself useful.
"If you please," replied Magdalen; "and if I am not taking any undue
advantage of your kindness."
"On the contrary," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "you are laying me under an
obligationyou are permitting me, in my very limited way, to assist the
performance of a benevolent action." She bowed, smiled, and glided out
of the room.
Left by herself, Magdalen allowed the anger which she had suppressed in
Mrs. Lecount's presence to break free from her. For want of a nobler
object to attack, it took the direction of the toad. The sight of the
hideous little reptile sitting placid on his rock throne, with his
bright eyes staring impenetrably into vacancy, irritated every nerve in
her body. She looked at the creature with a shrinking intensity of
hatred; she whispered at it maliciously through her set teeth. "I
wonder whose blood runs coldest," she said, "yours, you little monster,
or Mrs. Lecount's? I wonder which is the slimiest, her heart or your
back? You hateful wretch, do you know what your mistress is? Your
mistress is a devil!"
The speckled skin under the toad's mouth mysteriously wrinkled itself,
then slowly expanded again, as if he had swallowed the words just
addressed to him. Magdalen started back in disgust from the first
perceptible movement in the creature's body, trifling as it was, and
returned to her chair. She had not seated herself again a moment too
soon. The door opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Lecount appeared once more.
"Mr. Vanstone will see you," she said, "if you will kindly wait a few
minutes. He will ring the parlor bell when his present occupation is at
an end, and he is ready to receive you. Be careful, ma'am, not to
depress his spirits, nor to agitate him in any way. His heart has been
a cause of serious anxiety to those about him, from his earliest years.
There is no positive disease; there is only a chronic feeblenessa
fatty degenerationa want of vital power in the organ itself. His heart
will go on well enough if you don't give his heart too much to dothat
is the advice of all the medical men who have seen him. You will not
forget it, and you will keep a guard over your conversation
accordingly. Talking of medical men, have you ever tried the Golden
Ointment for that sad affliction in your eyes? It has been described to
me as an excellent remedy."
"It has not succeeded in my case," replied Magdalen, sharply. "Before I
see Mr. Noel Vanstone," she continued, "may I inquire"
"I beg your pardon," interposed Mrs. Lecount. "Does your question refer
in any way to those two poor girls?"
"It refers to the Misses Vanstone."
"Then I can't enter into it. Excuse me, I really can't discuss these
poor girls (I am so glad to hear you call them the Misses Vanstone!)
except in my master's presence, and by my master's express permission.
Let us talk of something else while we are waiting here. Will you
notice my glass Tank? I have every reason to believe that it is a
perfect novelty in England."
"I looked at the tank while you were out of the room," said Magdalen.
"Did you? You take no interest in the subject, I dare say? Quite
natural. I took no interest either until I was married. My dear
husbanddead many years sinceformed my tastes and elevated me to
himself. You have heard of the late Professor Lecomte, the eminent
Swiss naturalist? I am his widow. The English circle at Zurich (where I
lived in my late master's service) Anglicized my name to Lecount. Your
generous country people will have nothing foreign about themnot even a
name, if they can help it. But I was speaking of my husbandmy dear
husband, who permitted me to assist him in his pursuits. I have had
only one interest since his deathan interest in science. Eminent in
many things, the professor was great at reptiles. He left me his
Subjects and his Tank. I had no other legacy. There is the Tank. All
the Subjects died but this quiet little fellowthis nice little toad.
Are you surprised at my liking him? There is nothing to be surprised
at. The professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common
prejudice against the reptile creation. Properly understood, the
reptile creation is beautiful. Properly dissected, the reptile creation
is instructive in the last degree." She stretched out her little
finger, and gently stroked the toad's back with the tip of it. "So
refreshing to the touch," said Mrs. Lecount"so nice and cool this
summer weather!"
The bell from the parlor rang. Mrs. Lecount rose, bent fondly over the
Aquarium, and chirruped to the toad at parting as if it had been a
bird. "Mr. Vanstone is ready to receive you. Follow me, if you please,
Miss Garth." With these words she opened the door, and led the way out
of the room.
CHAPTER III.
"Miss Garth, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, opening the parlor door, and
announcing the visitor's appearance with the tone and manner of a
well-bred servant.
Magdalen found herself in a long, narrow room, consisting of a back
parlor and a front parlor, which had been thrown into one by opening
the folding-doors between them. Seated not far from the front window,
with his back to the light, she saw a frail, flaxen-haired,
self-satisfied little man, clothed in a fair white dressing-gown many
sizes too large for him, with a nosegay of violets drawn neatly through
the button-hole over his breast. He looked from thirty to
five-and-thirty years old. His complexion was as delicate as a young
girl's, his eyes were of the lightest blue, his upper lip was adorned
by a weak little white mustache, waxed and twisted at either end into a
thin spiral curl. When any object specially attracted his attention he
half closed his eyelids to look at it. When he smiled, the skin at his
temples crumpled itself up into a nest of wicked little wrinkles. He
had a plate of strawberries on his lap, with a napkin under them to
preserve the purity of his white dressing-gown. At his right hand stood
a large round table, covered with a collection of foreign curiosities,
which seemed to have been brought together from the four quarters of
the globe. Stuffed birds from Africa, porcelain monsters from China,
silver ornaments and utensils from India and Peru, mosaic work from
Italy, and bronzes from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with
the coarse deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them
for traveling. The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simpering
conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his
delicate health; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his
attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor's disposal.
Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. Lecount had
not deceived her. Was this the man who mercilessly followed the path on
which his merciless father had walked before him? She could hardly
believe it. "Take a seat, Miss Garth," he repeated, observing her
hesitation, and announcing his own name in a high, thin,
fretfully-consequential voice: "I am Mr. Noel Vanstone. You wished to
see mehere I am!"
"May I be permitted to retire, sir?" inquired Mrs. Lecount.
"Certainly not!" replied her master. "Stay here, Lecount, and keep us
company. Mrs. Lecount has my fullest confidence," he continued,
addressing Magdalen. "Whatever you say to me, ma'am, you say to her.
She is a domestic treasure. There is not another house in England has
such a treasure as Mrs. Lecount."
The housekeeper listened to the praise of her domestic virtues with
eyes immovably fixed on her elegant chemisette. But Magdalen's quick
penetration had previously detected a look that passed between Mrs.
Lecount and her master, which suggested that Noel Vanstone had been
instructed beforehand what to say and do in his visitor's presence. The
suspicion of this, and the obstacles which the room presented to
arranging her position in it so as to keep her face from the light,
warned Magdalen to be on her guard.
She had taken her chair at first nearly midway in the room. An
instant's after-reflection induced her to move her seat toward the left
hand, so as to place herself just inside, and close against, the left
post of the folding-door. In this position she dexterously barred the
only passage by which Mrs. Lecount could have skirted round the large
table and contrived to front Magdalen by taking a chair at her master's
side. On the right hand of the table the empty space was well occupied
by the fireplace and fender, by some traveling-trunks, and a large
packing-case. There was no alternative left for Mrs. Lecount but to
place herself on a line with Magdalen against the opposite post of the
folding-door, or to push rudely past the visitor with the obvious
intention of getting in front of her. With an expressive little cough,
and with one steady look at her master, the housekeeper conceded the
point, and took her seat against the right-hand door-post. "Wait a
little," thought Mrs. Lecount; "my turn next!"
"Mind what you are about, ma'am!" cried Noel Vanstone, as Magdalen
accidentally approached the table in moving her chair. "Mind the sleeve
of your cloak! Excuse me, you nearly knocked down that silver
candlestick. Pray don't suppose it's a common candlestick. It's nothing
of the sortit's a Peruvian candlestick. There are only three of that
pattern in the world. One is in the possession of the President of
Peru; one is locked up in the Vatican; and one is on My table. It cost
ten pounds; it's worth fifty. One of my father's bargains, ma'am. All
these things are my father's bargains. There is not another house in
England which has such curiosities as these. Sit down, Lecount; I beg
you will make yourself comfortable. Mrs. Lecount is like the
curiosities, Miss Garthshe is one of my father's bargains. You are one
of my father's bargains, are you not, Lecount? My father was a
remarkable man, ma'am. You will be reminded of him here at every turn.
I have got his dressing-gown on at this moment. No such linen as this
is made nowyou can't get it for love or money. Would you like to feel
the texture? Perhaps you're no judge of texture? Perhaps you would
prefer talking to me about these two pupils of yours? They are two, are
they not? Are they fine girls? Plump, fresh, full-blown English
beauties?"
"Excuse me, sir," interposed Mrs. Lecount, sorrowfully. "I must really
beg permission to retire if you speak of the poor things in that way. I
can't sit by, sir, and hear them turned into ridicule. Consider their
position; consider Miss Garth."
"You good creature!" said Noel Vanstone, surveying the housekeeper
through his half-closed eyelids. "You excellent Lecount! I assure you,
ma'am, Mrs. Lecount is a worthy creature. You will observe that she
pities the two girls. I don't go so far as that myself, but I can make
allowances for them. I am a large-minded man. I can make allowances for
them and for you." He smiled with the most cordial politeness, and
helped himself to a strawberry from the dish on his lap.
"You shock Miss Garth; indeed, sir, without meaning it, you shock Miss
Garth," remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. "She is not accustomed to you as I
am. Consider Miss Garth, sir. As a favor to me, consider Miss Garth."
Thus far Magdalen had resolutely kept silence. The burning anger, which
would have betrayed her in an instant if she had let it flash its way
to the surface, throbbed fast and fiercely at her heart, and warned
her, while Noel Vanstone was speaking, to close her lips. She would
have allowed him to talk on uninterruptedly for some minutes more if
Mrs. Lecount had not interfered for the second time. The refined
insolence of the housekeeper's pity was a woman's insolence; and it
stung her into instantly controlling herself. She had never more
admirably imitated Miss Garth's voice and manner than when she spoke
her next words.
"You are very good," she said to Mrs. Lecount. "I make no claim to be
treated with any extraordinary consideration. I am a governess, and I
don't expect it. I have only one favor to ask. I beg Mr. Noel Vanstone,
for his own sake, to hear what I have to say to him."
"You understand, sir?" observed Mrs. Lecount. "It appears that Miss
Garth has some serious warning to give you. She says you are to hear
her, for your own sake."
Mr. Noel Vanstone's fair complexion suddenly turned white. He put away
the plate of strawberries among his father's bargains. His hand shook
and his little figure twisted itself uneasily in the chair. Magdalen
observed him attentively. "One discovery already," she thought; "he is
a coward!"
"What do you mean, ma'am?" asked Noel Vanstone, with visible
trepidation of look and manner. "What do you mean by telling me I must
listen to you for my own sake? If you come her to intimidate me, you
come to the wrong man. My strength of character was universally noticed
in our circle at Zurichwasn't it, Lecount?"
"Universally, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "But let us hear Miss Garth.
Perhaps I have misinterpreted her meaning."
"On the contrary," replied Magdalen, "you have exactly expressed my
meaning. My object in coming here is to warn Mr. Noel Vanstone against
the course which he is now taking."
"Don't!" pleaded Mrs. Lecount. "Oh, if you want to help these poor
girls, don't talk in that way! Soften his resolution, ma'am, by
entreaties; don't strengthen it by threats!" She a little overstrained
the tone of humility in which she spoke those wordsa little overacted
the look of apprehension which accompanied them. If Magdalen had not
seen plainly enough already that it was Mrs. Lecount's habitual
practice to decide everything for her master in the first instance, and
then to persuade him that he was not acting under his housekeeper's
resolution but under his own, she would have seen it now.
"You hear what Lecount has just said?" remarked Noel Vanstone. "You
hear the unsolicited testimony of a person who has known me from
childhood? Take care, Miss Garthtake care!" He complacently arranged
the tails of his white dressing-gown over his knees and took the plate
of strawberries back on his lap.
"I have no wish to offend you," said Magdalen. "I am only anxious to
open your eyes to the truth. You are not acquainted with the characters
of the two sisters whose fortunes have fallen into your possession. I
have known them from childhood; and I come to give you the benefit of
my experience in their interests and in yours. You have nothing to
dread from the elder of the two; she patiently accepts the hard lot
which you, and your father before you, have forced on her. The younger
sister's conduct is the very opposite of this. She has already declined
to submit to your father's decision, and she now refuses to be silenced
by Mrs. Lecount's letter. Take my word for it, she is capable of giving
you serious trouble if you persist in making an enemy of her."
Noel Vanstone changed color once more, and began to fidget again in his
chair. "Serious trouble," he repeated, with a blank look. "If you mean
writing letters, ma'am, she has given trouble enough already. She has
written once to me, and twice to my father. One of the letters to my
father was a threatening letterwasn't it, Lecount?"
"She expressed her feelings, poor child," said Mrs. Lecount. "I thought
it hard to send her back her letter, but your dear father knew best.
What I said at the time was, Why not let her express her feelings? What
are a few threatening words, after all? In her position, poor creature,
they are words, and nothing more."
"I advise you not to be too sure of that," said Magdalen. "I know her
better than you do."
She paused at those wordspaused in a momentary terror. The sting of
Mrs. Lecount's pity had nearly irritated her into forgetting her
assumed character, and speaking in her own voice.
"You have referred to the letters written by my pupil," she resumed,
addressing Noel Vanstone as soon as she felt sure of herself again. "We
will say nothing about what she has written to your father; we will
only speak of what she has written to you. Is there anything unbecoming
in her letter, anything said in it that is false? Is it not true that
these two sisters have been cruelly deprived of the provision which
their father made for them? His will to this day speaks for him and for
them; and it only speaks to no purpose, because he was not aware that
his marriage obliged him to make it again, and because he died before
he could remedy the error. Can you deny that?"
Noel Vanstone smiled, and helped himself to a strawberry. "I don't
attempt to deny it," he said. "Go on, Miss Garth."
"Is it not true," persisted Magdalen, "that the law which has taken the
money from these sisters, whose father made no second will, has now
given that very money to you, whose father made no will at all? Surely,
explain it how you may, this is hard on those orphan girls?"
"Very hard," replied Noel Vanstone. "It strikes you in that light,
toodoesn't it, Lecount?"
Mrs. Lecount shook her head, and closed her handsome black eyes.
"Harrowing," she said; "I can characterize it, Miss Garth, by no other
wordharrowing. How the young personno! how Miss Vanstone, the
youngerdiscovered that my late respected master made no will I am at a
loss to understand. Perhaps it was put in the papers? But I am
interrupting you, Miss Garth. Do have something more to say about your
pupil's letter?" She noiselessly drew her chair forward, as she said
these words, a few inches beyond the line of the visitor's chair. The
attempt was neatly made, but it proved useless. Magdalen only kept her
head more to the left, and the packing-case on the floor prevented Mrs.
Lecount from advancing any further.
"I have only one more question to put," said Magdalen. "My pupil's
letter addressed a proposal to Mr. Noel Vanstone. I beg him to inform
me why he has refused to consider it."
"My good lady!" cried Noel Vanstone, arching his white eyebrows in
satirical astonishment. "Are you really in earnest? Do you know what
the proposal is? Have you seen the letter?"
"I am quite in earnest," said Magdalen, "and I have seen the letter. It
entreats you to remember how Mr. Andrew Vanstone's fortune has come
into your hands; it informs you that one-half of that fortune, divided
between his daughters, was what his will intended them to have; and it
asks of your sense of justice to do for his children what he would have
done for them himself if he had lived. In plainer words still, it asks
you to give one-half of the money to the daughters, and it leaves you
free to keep the other half yourself. That is the proposal. Why have
you refused to consider it?"
"For the simplest possible reason, Miss Garth," said Noel Vanstone, in
high good-humor. "Allow me to remind you of a well-known proverb: A
fool and his money are soon parted. Whatever else I may be, ma'am, I'm
not a fool."
"Don't put it in that way, sir!" remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. "Be
seriouspray be serious!"
"Quite impossible, Lecount," rejoined her master. "I can't be serious.
My poor father, Miss Garth, took a high moral point of view in this
matter. Lecount, there, takes a high moral point of viewdon't you,
Lecount? I do nothing of the sort. I have lived too long in the
Continental atmosphere to trouble myself about moral points of view. My
course in this business is as plain as two and two make four. I have
got the money, and I should be a born idiot if I parted with it. There
is my point of view! Simple enough, isn't it? I don't stand on my
dignity; I don't meet you with the law, which is all on my side; I
don't blame your coming here, as a total stranger, to try and alter my
resolution; I don't blame the two girls for wanting to dip their
fingers into my purse. All I say is, I am not fool enough to open it.
Pas si bete, as we used to say in the English circle at Zurich. You
understand French, Miss Garth? Pas si bete!" He set aside his plate
of strawberries once more, and daintily dried his fingers on his fine
white napkin.
Magdalen kept her temper. If she could have struck him dead by lifting
her hand at that moment, it is probable she would have lifted it. But
she kept her temper.
"Am I to understand," she asked, "that the last words you have to say
in this matter are the words said for you in Mrs. Lecount's letter!"
"Precisely so," replied Noel Vanstone.
"You have inherited your own father's fortune, as well as the fortune
of Mr. Andrew Vanstone, and yet you feel no obligation to act from
motives of justice or generosity toward these two sisters? All you
think it necessary to say to them is, you have got the money, and you
refuse to part with a single farthing of it?"
"Most accurately stated! Miss Garth, you are a woman of business.
Lecount, Miss Garth is a woman of business."
"Don't appeal to me, sir," cried Mrs. Lecount, gracefully wringing her
plump white hands. "I can't bear it! I must interfere! Let me
suggestoh, what do you call it in English?a compromise. Dear Mr.
Noel, you are perversely refusing to do yourself justice; you have
better reasons than the reason you have given to Miss Garth. You follow
your honored father's example; you feel it due to his memory to act in
this matter as he acted before you. That is his reason, Miss Garth I
implore you on my knees to take that as his reason. He will do what his
dear father did; no more, no less. His dear father made a proposal, and
he himself will now make that proposal over again. Yes, Mr. Noel, you
will remember what this poor girl says in her letter to you. Her sister
has been obliged to go out as a governess; and she herself, in losing
her fortune, has lost the hope of her marriage for years and years to
come. You will remember thisand you will give the hundred pounds to
one, and the hundred pounds to the other, which your admirable father
offered in the past time? If he does this, Miss Garth, will he do
enough? If he gives a hundred pounds each to these unfortunate
sisters?"
"He will repent the insult to the last hour of his life," said
Magdalen.
The instant that answer passed her lips she would have given worlds to
recall it. Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting in the right place at
last. Those rash words of Magdalen's had burst from her passionately,
in her own voice.
Nothing but the habit of public performance saved her from making the
serious error that she had committed more palpable still, by attempting
to set it right. Here her past practice in the Entertainment came to
her rescue, and urged her to go on instantly in Miss Garth's voice as
if nothing had happened.
"You mean well, Mrs. Lecount," she continued, "but you are doing harm
instead of good. My pupils will accept no such compromise as you
propose. I am sorry to have spoken violently just now; I beg you will
excuse me." She looked hard for information in the housekeeper's face
while she spoke those conciliatory words. Mrs. Lecount baffled the look
by putting her handkerchief to her eyes. Had she, or had she not,
noticed the momentary change in Magdalen's voice from the tones that
were assumed to the tones that were natural? Impossible to say.
"What more can I do!" murmured Mrs. Lecount behind her handkerchief.
"Give me time to thinkgive me time to recover myself. May I retire,
sir, for a moment? My nerves are shaken by this sad scene. I must have
a glass of water, or I think I shall faint. Don't go yet, Miss Garth. I
beg you will give us time to set this sad matter right, if we canI beg
you will remain until I come back."
There were two doors of entrance to the room. One, the door into the
front parlor, close at Magdalen's left hand. The other, the door into
the back parlor, situated behind her. Mrs. Lecount politely
retiredthrough the open folding-doorsby this latter means of exit, so
as not to disturb the visitor by passing in front of her. Magdalen
waited until she heard the door open and close again behind her, and
then resolved to make the most of the opportunity which left her alone
with Noel Vanstone. The utter hopelessness of rousing a generous
impulse in that base nature had now been proved by her own experience.
The last chance left was to treat him like the craven creature he was,
and to influence him through his fears.
Before she could speak, Noel Vanstone himself broke the silence.
Cunningly as he strove to hide it, he was half angry, half alarmed at
his housekeeper's desertion of him. He looked doubtingly at his
visitor; he showed a nervous anxiety to conciliate her until Mrs.
Lecount's return.
"Pray remember, ma'am, I never denied that this case was a hard one,"
he began. "You said just now you had no wish to offend meand I'm sure
I don't want to offend you. May I offer you some strawberries? Would
you like to look at my father's bargains? I assure you, ma'am, I am
naturally a gallant man; and I feel for both these sistersespecially
the younger one. Touch me on the subject of the tender passion, and you
touch me on a weak place. Nothing would please me more than to hear
that Miss Vanstone's lover (I'm sure I always call her Miss Vanstone,
and so does Lecount)I say, ma'am, nothing would please me more than to
hear that Miss Vanstone's lover had come back and married her. If a
loan of money would be likely to bring him back, and if the security
offered was good, and if my lawyer thought me justified"
"Stop, Mr. Vanstone," said Magdalen. "You are entirely mistaken in your
estimate of the person you have to deal with. You are seriously wrong
in supposing that the marriage of the younger sisterif she could be
married in a week's timewould make any difference in the convictions
which induced her to write to your father and to you. I don't deny that
she may act from a mixture of motives. I don't deny that she clings to
the hope of hastening her marriage, and to the hope of rescuing her
sister from a life of dependence. But if both those objects were
accomplished by other means, nothing would induce her to leave you in
possession of the inheritance which her father meant his children to
have. I know her, Mr. Vanstone! She is a nameless, homeless, friendless
wretch. The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of
all legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is
your lawnot hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile
oppression, an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts her
like a possession of the devil. The resolution to right that wrong
burns in her like fire. If that miserable girl was married and rich,
with millions tomorrow, do you think she would move an inch from her
purpose? I tell you she would resist, to the last breath in her body,
the vile injustice which has struck at the helpless children, through
the calamity of their father's death! I tell you she would shrink from
no means which a desperate woman can employ to force that closed hand
of yours open, or die in the attempt!"
She stopped abruptly. Once more her own indomitable earnestness had
betrayed her. Once more the inborn nobility of that perverted nature
had risen superior to the deception which it had stooped to practice.
The scheme of the moment vanished from her mind's view; and the
resolution of her life burst its way outward in her own words, in her
own tones, pouring hotly and more hotly from her heart. She saw the
abject manikin before her cowering, silent, in his chair. Had his fears
left him sense enough to perceive the change in her voice? No: his
face spoke the truthhis fears had bewildered him. This time the chance
of the moment had befriended her. The door behind her chair had not
opened again yet. "No ears but his have heard me," she thought, with a
sense of unutterable relief. "I have escaped Mrs. Lecount."
She had done nothing of the kind. Mrs. Lecount had never left the room.
After opening the door and closing it again, without going out, the
housekeeper had noiselessly knelt down behind Magdalen's chair.
Steadying herself against the post of the folding-door, she took a pair
of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Vanstone (from whose
view she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen's attention by
speaking to her, and then bent forward, with the scissors ready in her
hand. The skirt of the false Miss Garth's gownthe brown alpaca dress,
with the white spots on ittouched the floor, within the housekeeper's
reach. Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran
round the bottom of the dress one over the other, softly cut away a
little irregular fragment of stuff from the inner flounce, and neatly
smoothed the outer one over it again, so as to hide the gap. By the
time she had put the scissors back in her pocket, and had risen to her
feet (sheltering herself behind the post of the folding-door), Magdalen
had spoken her last words. Mrs. Lecount quietly repeated the ceremony
of opening and shutting the back parlor door; and returned to her
place.
"What has happened, sir, in my absence?" she inquired, addressing her
master with a look of alarm. "You are pale; you are agitated! Oh, Miss
Garth, have you forgotten the caution I gave you in the other room?"
"Miss Garth has forgotten everything," cried Noel Vanstone, recovering
his lost composure on the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount. "Miss Garth
has threatened me in the most outrageous manner. I forbid you to pity
either of those two girls any more, Lecountespecially the younger one.
She is the most desperate wretch I ever heard of! If she can't get my
money by fair means, she threatens to have it by foul. Miss Garth has
told me that to my face. To my face!" he repeated, folding his arms,
and looking mortally insulted.
"Compose yourself, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "Pray compose yourself, and
leave me to speak to Miss Garth. I regret to hear, ma'am, that you have
forgotten what I said to you in the next room. You have agitated Mr.
Noel; you have compromised the interests you came here to plead; and
you have only repeated what we knew before. The language you have
allowed yourself to use in my absence is the same language which your
pupil was foolish enough to employ when she wrote for the second time
to my late master. How can a lady of your years and experience
seriously repeat such nonsense? This girl boasts and threatens. She
will do this; she will do that. You have her confidence, ma'am. Tell
me, if you please, in plain words, what can she do?"
Sharply as the taunt was pointed, it glanced off harmless. Mrs. Lecount
had planted her sting once too often. Magdalen rose in complete
possession of her assumed character and composedly terminated the
interview. Ignorant as she was of what had happened behind her chair,
she saw a change in Mrs. Lecount's look and manner which warned her to
run no more risks, and to trust herself no longer in the house.
"I am not in my pupil's confidence," she said. "Her own acts will
answer your question when the time comes. I can only tell you, from my
own knowledge of her, that she is no boaster. What she wrote to Mr.
Michael Vanstone was what she was prepared to do-what, I have reason
to think, she was actually on the point of doing, when her plans were
overthrown by his death. Mr. Michael Vanstone's son has only to persist
in following his father's course to find, before long, that I am not
mistaken in my pupil, and that I have not come here to intimidate him
by empty threats. My errand is done. I leave Mr. Noel Vanstone with two
alternatives to choose from. I leave him to share Mr. Andrew Vanstone's
fortune with Mr. Andrew Vanstone's daughtersor to persist in his
present refusal and face the consequences." She bowed, and walked to
the door.
Noel Vanstone started to his feet, with anger and alarm struggling
which should express itself first in his blank white face. Before he
could open his lips, Mrs. Lecount's plump hands descended on his
shoulders, put him softly back in his chair, and restored the plate of
strawberries to its former position on his lap.
"Refresh yourself, Mr. Noel, with a few more strawberries," she said,
"and leave Miss Garth to me."
She followed Magdalen into the passage, and closed the door of the room
after her.
"Are you residing in London, ma'am?" asked Mrs. Lecount.
"No," replied Magdalen. "I reside in the country."
"If I want to write to you, where can I address my letter?"
"To the post-office, Birmingham," said Magdalen, mentioning the place
which she had last left, and at which all letters were still addressed
to her.
Mrs. Lecount repeated the direction to fix it in her memory, advanced
two steps in the passage, and quietly laid her right hand on Magdalen's
arm.
"A word of advice, ma'am," she said; "one word at parting. You are a
bold woman and a clever woman. Don't be too bold; don't be too clever.
You are risking more than you think for." She suddenly raised herself
on tiptoe and whispered the next words in Magdalen's ear. "I hold you
in the hollow of my hand!" said Mrs. Lecount, with a fierce hissing
emphasis on every syllable. Her left hand clinched itself stealthily as
she spoke. It was the hand in which she had concealed the fragment of
stuff from Magdalen's gownthe hand which held it fast at that moment.
"What do you mean?" asked Magdalen, pushing her back.
Mrs. Lecount glided away politely to open the house door.
"I mean nothing now," she said; "wait a little, and time may show. One
last question, ma'am, before I bid you good-by. When your pupil was a
little innocent child, did she ever amuse herself by building a house
of cards?"
Magdalen impatiently answered by a gesture in the affirmative.
"Did you ever see her build up the house higher and higher," proceeded
Mrs. Lecount, "till it was quite a pagoda of cards? Did you ever see
her open her little child's eyes wide and look at it, and feel so proud
of what she had done already that she wanted to do more? Did you ever
see her steady her pretty little hand, and hold her innocent breath,
and put one other card on the top, and lay the whole house, the instant
afterward, a heap of ruins on the table? Ah, you have seen that. Give
her, if you please, a friendly message from me. I venture to say she
has built the house high enough already; and I recommend her to be
careful before she puts on that other card."
"She shall have your message," said Magdalen, with Miss Garth's
bluntness, and Miss Garth's emphatic nod of the head. "But I doubt her
minding it. Her hand is rather steadier than you suppose, and I think
she will put on the other card."
"And bring the house down," said Mrs. Lecount.
"And build it up again," rejoined Magdalen. "I wish you good-morning."
"Good-morning," said Mrs. Lecount, opening the door. "One last word,
Miss Garth. Do think of what I said in the back room! Do try the Golden
Ointment for that sad affliction in your eyes!"
As Magdalen crossed the threshold of the door she was met by the
postman ascending the house steps with a letter picked out from the
bundle in his hand. "Noel Vanstone, Esquire?" she heard the man say,
interrogatively, as she made her way down the front garden to the
street.
She passed through the garden gates little thinking from what new
difficulty and new danger her timely departure had saved her. The
letter which the postman had just delivered into the housekeeper's
hands was no other than the anonymous letter addressed to Noel Vanstone
by Captain Wragge.
CHAPTER IV.
Mrs. Lecount returned to the parlor, with the fragment of Magdalen's
dress in one hand, and with Captain Wragge's letter in the other.
"Have you got rid of her?" asked Noel Vanstone. "Have you shut the door
at last on Miss Garth?"
"Don't call her Miss Garth, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, smiling
contemptuously. "She is as much Miss Garth as you are. We have been
favored by the performance of a clever masquerade; and if we had taken
the disguise off our visitor, I think we should have found under it
Miss Vanstone herself.Here is a letter for you, sir, which the postman
has just left."
She put the letter on the table within her master's reach. Noel
Vanstone's amazement at the discovery just communicated to him kept his
whole attention concentrated on the housekeeper's face. He never so
much as looked at the letter when she placed it before him.
"Take my word for it, sir," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, composedly taking a
chair. "When our visitor gets home she will put her gray hair away in a
box, and will cure that sad affliction in her eyes with warm water and
a sponge. If she had painted the marks on her face, as well as she
painted the inflammation in her eyes, the light would have shown me
nothing, and I should certainly have been deceived. But I saw the
marks; I saw a young woman's skin under that dirty complexion of hers;
I heard in this room a true voice in a passion, as well as a false
voice talking with an accent, and I don't believe in one morsel of that
lady's personal appearance from top to toe. The girl herself, in my
opinion, Mr. Noeland a bold girl too."
"Why didn't you lock the door and send for the police?" asked Mr. Noel.
"My father would have sent for the police. You know, as well as I do,
Lecount, my father would have sent for the police."
"Pardon me, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, "I think your father would have
waited until he had got something more for the police to do than we
have got for them yet. We shall see this lady again, sir. Perhaps she
will come here next time with her own face and her own voice. I am
curious to see what her own face is like. I am curious to know whether
what I have heard of her voice in a passion is enough to make me
recognize her voice when she is calm. I possess a little memorial of
her visit of which she is not aware, and she will not escape me so
easily as she thinks. If it turns out a useful memorial, you shall know
what it is. If not, I will abstain from troubling you on so trifling a
subject.Allow me to remind you, sir, of the letter under your hand.
You have not looked at it yet."
Noel Vanstone opened the letter. He started as his eye fell on the
first lineshesitatedand then hurriedly read it through. The paper
dropped from his hand, and he sank back in his chair. Mrs. Lecount
sprang to her feet with the alacrity of a young woman and picked up the
letter.
"What has happened, sir?" she asked. Her face altered as she put the
question, and her large black eyes hardened fiercely, in genuine
astonishment and alarm.
"Send for the police," exclaimed her master. "Lecount, I insist on
being protected. Send for the police!"
"May I read the letter, sir?"
He feebly waved his hand. Mrs. Lecount read the letter attentively, and
put it aside on the table, without a word, when she had done.
"Have you nothing to say to me?" asked Noel Vanstone, staring at his
housekeeper in blank dismay. "Lecount, I'm to be robbed! The scoundrel
who wrote that letter knows all about it, and won't tell me anything
unless I pay him. I'm to be robbed! Here's property on this table worth
thousands of poundsproperty that can never be replacedproperty that
all the crowned heads in Europe could not produce if they tried. Lock
me in, Lecount, and send for the police!"
Instead of sending for the police, Mrs. Lecount took a large green
paper fan from the chimney-piece, and seated herself opposite her
master.
"You are agitated, Mr. Noel," she said, "you are heated. Let me cool
you."
With her face as hard as everwith less tenderness of look and manner
than most women would have shown if they had been rescuing a
half-drowned fly from a milk-jugshe silently and patiently fanned him
for five minutes or more. No practiced eye observing the peculiar
bluish pallor of his complexion, and the marked difficulty with which
he drew his breath, could have failed to perceive that the great organ
of life was in this man, what the housekeeper had stated it to be, too
weak for the function which it was called on to perform. The heart
labored over its work as if it had been the heart of a worn-out old
man.
"Are you relieved, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Can you think a little?
Can you exercise your better judgment?"
She rose and put her hand over his heart with as much mechanical
attention and as little genuine interest as if she had been feeling the
plates at dinner to ascertain if they had been properly warmed. "Yes,"
she went on, seating herself again, and resuming the exercise of the
fan; "you are getting better already, Mr. Noel.Don't ask me about this
anonymous letter until you have thought for yourself, and have given
your own opinion first." She went on with the fanning, and looked him
hard in the face all the time. "Think," she said; "think, sir, without
troubling yourself to express your thoughts. Trust to my intimate
sympathy with you to read them. Yes, Mr. Noel, this letter is a paltry
attempt to frighten you. What does it say? It says you are the object
of a conspiracy directed by Miss Vanstone. We know that alreadythe
lady of the inflamed eyes has told us. We snap our fingers at the
conspiracy. What does the letter say next? It says the writer has
valuable information to give you if you will pay for it. What did you
call this person yourself just now, sir?"
"I called him a scoundrel," said Noel Vanstone, recovering his
self-importance, and raising himself gradually in his chair.
"I agree with you in that, sir, as I agree in everything else,"
proceeded Mrs. Lecount. "He is a scoundrel who really has this
information and who means what he says, or he is a mouthpiece of Miss
Vanstone's, and she has caused this letter to be written for the
purpose of puzzling us by another form of disguise. Whether the letter
is true, or whether the letter is falseam I not reading your own wiser
thoughts now, Mr. Noel?you know better than to put your enemies on
their guard by employing the police in this matter too soon. I quite
agree with youno police just yet. You will allow this anonymous man,
or anonymous woman, to suppose you are easily frightened; you will lay
a trap for the information in return for the trap laid for your money;
you will answer the letter, and see what comes of the answer; and you
will only pay the expense of employing the police when you know the
expense is necessary. I agree with you againno expense, if we can help
it. In every particular, Mr. Noel, my mind and your mind in this matter
are one."
"It strikes you in that light, Lecountdoes it?" said Noel Vanstone. "I
think so myself; I certainly think so. I won't pay the police a
farthing if I can possibly help it." He took up the letter again, and
became fretfully perplexed over a second reading of it. "But the man
wants money!" he broke out, impatiently. "You seem to forget, Lecount,
that the man wants money."
"Money which you offer him, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount; "butas your
thoughts have already anticipatedmoney which you don't give him. No!
no! you say to this man: 'Hold out your hand, sir;' and when he has
held it, you give him a smack for his pains, and put your own hand back
in your pocket.I am so glad to see you laughing, Mr. Noel! so glad to
see you getting back your good spirits. We will answer the letter by
advertisement, as the writer directsadvertisement is so cheap! Your
poor hand is trembling a littleshall I hold the pen for you? I am not
fit to do more; but I can always promise to hold the pen."
Without waiting for his reply she went into the back parlor, and
returned with pen, ink, and paper. Arranging a blotting-book on her
knees, and looking a model of cheerful submission, she placed herself
once more in front of her master's chair.
"Shall I write from your dictation, sir?" she inquired. "Or shall I
make a little sketch, and will you correct it afterward? I will make a
little sketch. Let me see the letter. We are to advertise in the
Times, and we are to address 'An Unknown Friend.' What shall I say,
Mr. Noel? Stay; I will write it, and then you can see for yourself: 'An
Unknown Friend is requested to mention (by advertisement) an address at
which a letter can reach him. The receipt of the information which he
offers will be acknowledged by a reward of' What sum of money do you
wish me to set down, sir?"
"Set down nothing," said Noel Vanstone, with a sudden outbreak of
impatience. "Money matters are my businessI say money matters are my
business, Lecount. Leave it to me."
"Certainly, sir," replied Mrs. Lecount, handing her master the
blotting-book. "You will not forget to be liberal in offering money
when you know beforehand you don't mean to part with it?"
"Don't dictate, Lecount! I won't submit to dictation!" said Noel
Vanstone, asserting his own independence more and more impatiently. "I
mean to conduct this business for myself. I am master, Lecount!"
"You are master, sir."
"My father was master before me. And I am my father's son. I tell you,
Lecount, I am my father's son!"
Mrs. Lecount bowed submissively.
"I mean to set down any sum of money I think right," pursued Noel
Vanstone, nodding his little flaxen head vehemently. "I mean to send
this advertisement myself. The servant shall take it to the stationer's
to be put into the Times. When I ring the bell twice, send the
servant. You understand, Lecount? Send the servant."
Mrs. Lecount bowed again and walked slowly to the door. She knew to a
nicety when to lead her master and when to let him go alone. Experience
had taught her to govern him in all essential points by giving way to
him afterward on all points of minor detail. It was a characteristic of
his weak natureas it is of all weak naturesto assert itself
obstinately on trifles. The filling in of the blank in the
advertisement was the trifle in this case; and Mrs. Lecount quieted her
master's suspicions that she was leading him by instantly conceding it.
"My mule has kicked," she thought to herself, in her own language, as
she opened the door. "I can do no more with him to-day."
"Lecount!" cried her master, as she stepped into the passage. "Come
back."
Mrs. Lecount came back.
"You're not offended with me, are you?" asked Noel Vanstone, uneasily.
"Certainly not, sir," replied Mrs. Lecount. "As you said just nowyou
are master."
"Good creature! Give me your hand." He kissed her hand, and smiled in
high approval of his own affectionate proceeding. "Lecount, you are a
worthy creature!"
"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. She courtesied and went out. "If
he had any brains in that monkey head of his," she said to herself in
the passage, "what a rascal he would be!"
Left by himself, Noel Vanstone became absorbed in anxious reflection
over the blank space in the advertisement. Mrs. Lecount's apparently
superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money when he knew he
had no intention of parting with it, had been founded on an intimate
knowledge of his character. He had inherited his father's sordid love
of money, without inheriting his father's hard-headed capacity for
seeing the uses to which money can be put. His one idea in connection
with his wealth was the idea of keeping it. He was such an inborn miser
that the bare prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him. He
took up the pen; laid it down again; and read the anonymous letter for
the third time, shaking his head over it suspiciously. "If I offer this
man a large sum of money," he thought, on a sudden, "how do I know he
may not find a means of actually making me pay it? Women are always in
a hurry. Lecount is always in a hurry. I have got the afternoon before
meI'll take the afternoon to consider it."
He fretfully put away the blotting-book and the sketch of the
advertisement on the chair which Mrs. Lecount had just left. As he
returned to his own seat, he shook his little head solemnly, and
arranged his white dressing-gown over his knees with the air of a man
absorbed in anxious thought. Minute after minute passed away; the
quarters and the half-hours succeeded each other on the dial of Mrs.
Lecount's watch, and still Noel Vanstone remained lost in doubt; still
no summons for the servants disturbed the tranquillity of the parlor
bell.
Meanwhile, after parting with Mrs. Lecount, Magdalen had cautiously
abstained from crossing the road to her lodgings, and had only ventured
to return after making a circuit in the neighborhood. When she found
herself once more in Vauxhall Walk, the first object which attracted
her attention was a cab drawn up before the door of the lodgings. A few
steps more in advance showed her the landlady's daughter standing at
the cab door engaged in a dispute with the driver on the subject of his
fare. Noticing that the girl's back was turned toward her, Magdalen
instantly profited by that circumstance and slipped unobserved into the
house.
She glided along the passage, ascended the stairs, and found herself,
on the first landing, face to face with her traveling companion! There
stood Mrs. Wragge, with a pile of small parcels hugged up in her arms,
anxiously waiting the issue of the dispute with the cabman in the
street. To return was impossiblethe sound of the angry voices below
was advancing into the passage. To hesitate was worse than useless. But
one choice was leftthe choice of going onand Magdalen desperately
took it. She pushed by Mrs. Wragge without a word, ran into her own
room, tore off her cloak, bonnet and wig, and threw them down out of
sight in the blank space between the sofa-bedstead and the wall.
For the first few moments, astonishment bereft Mrs. Wragge of the power
of speech, and rooted her to the spot where she stood. Two out of the
collection of parcels in her arms fell from them on the stairs. The
sight of that catastrophe roused her. "Thieves!" cried Mrs. Wragge,
suddenly struck by an idea. "Thieves!"
Magdalen heard her through the room door, which she had not had time to
close completely. "Is that you, Mrs. Wragge?" she called out in her own
voice. "What is the matter?" She snatched up a towel while she spoke,
dipped it in water, and passed it rapidly over the lower part of her
face. At the sound of the familiar voice Mrs. Wragge turned
rounddropped a third parceland, forgetting it in her astonishment,
ascended the second flight of stairs. Magdalen stepped out on the
first-floor landing, with the towel held over her forehead as if she
was suffering from headache. Her false eyebrows required time for their
removal, and a headache assumed for the occasion suggested the most
convenient pretext she could devise for hiding them as they were hidden
now.
"What are you disturbing the house for?" she asked. "Pray be quiet; I
am half blind with the headache."
"Anything wrong, ma'am?" inquired the landlady from the passage.
"Nothing whatever," replied Magdalen. "My friend is timid; and the
dispute with the cabman has frightened her. Pay the man what he wants,
and let him go."
"Where is She?" asked Mrs. Wragge, in a tremulous whisper. "Where's the
woman who scuttled by me into your room?"
"Pooh!" said Magdalen. "No woman scuttled by youas you call it. Look
in and see for yourself."
She threw open the door. Mrs. Wragge walked into the roomlooked all
over itsaw nobodyand indicated her astonishment at the result by
dropping a fourth parcel, and trembling helplessly from head to foot.
"I saw her go in here," said Mrs. Wragge, in awestruck accents. "A
woman in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. A rude woman. She scuttled by
me on the stairsshe did. Here's the room, and no woman in it. Give us
a Prayer-book!" cried Mrs. Wragge, turning deadly pale, and letting her
whole remaining collection of parcels fall about her in a little
cascade of commodities. "I want to read something Good. I want to think
of my latter end. I've seen a Ghost!"
"Nonsense!" said Magdalen. "You're dreaming; the shopping has been too
much for you. Go into your own room and take your bonnet off."
"I've heard tell of ghosts in night-gowns, ghosts in sheets, and ghosts
in chains," proceeded Mrs. Wragge, standing petrified in her own magic
circle of linen-drapers' parcels. "Here's a worse ghost than any of
'ema ghost in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. I know what it is,"
continued Mrs. Wragge, melting into penitent tears. "It's a judgment on
me for being so happy away from the captain. It's a judgment on me for
having been down at heel in half the shops in London, first with one
shoe and then with the other, all the time I've been out. I'm a sinful
creature. Don't let go of mewhatever you do, my dear, don't let go of
me!" She caught Magdalen fast by the arm and fell into another
trembling fit at the bare idea of being left by herself.
The one remaining chance in such an emergency as this was to submit to
circumstances. Magdalen took Mrs. Wragge to a chair; having first
placed it in such a position as might enable her to turn her back on
her traveling-companion, while she removed the false eyebrows by the
help of a little water. "Wait a minute there," she said, "and try if
you can compose yourself while I bathe my head."
"Compose myself?" repeated Mrs. Wragge. "How am I to compose myself
when my head feels off my shoulders? The worst Buzzing I ever had with
the Cookery-book was nothing to the Buzzing I've got now with the
Ghost. Here's a miserable end to a holiday! You may take me back again,
my dear, whenever you likeI've had enough of it already!"
Having at last succeeded in removing the eyebrows, Magdalen was free to
combat the unfortunate impression produced on her companion's mind by
every weapon of persuasion which her ingenuity could employ.
The attempt proved useless. Mrs. Wragge persistedon evidence which, it
may be remarked in parenthesis, would have satisfied many wiser
ghost-seers than herselfin believing that she had been supernaturally
favored by a visitor from the world of spirits. All that Magdalen could
do was to ascertain, by cautious investigation, that Mrs. Wragge had
not been quick enough to identify the supposed ghost with the character
of the old North-country lady in the Entertainment. Having satisfied
herself on this point, she had no resource but to leave the rest to the
natural incapability of retaining impressionsunless those impressions
were perpetually renewedwhich was one of the characteristic
infirmities of her companion's weak mind. After fortifying Mrs. Wragge
by reiterated assurances that one appearance (according to all the laws
and regulations of ghosts) meant nothing unless it was immediately
followed by two moreafter patiently leading back her attention to the
parcels dropped on the floor and on the stairsand after promising to
keep the door of communication ajar between the two rooms if Mrs.
Wragge would engage on her side to retire to her own chamber, and to
say no more on the terrible subject of the ghostMagdalen at last
secured the privilege of reflecting uninterruptedly on the events of
that memorable day.
Two serious consequences had followed her first step forward. Mrs.
Lecount had entrapped her into speaking in her own voice, and accident
had confronted her with Mrs. Wragge in disguise.
What advantage had she gained to set against these disasters? The
advantage of knowing more of Noel Vanstone and of Mrs. Lecount than she
might have discovered in months if she had trusted to inquiries made
for her by others. One uncertainty which had hitherto perplexed her was
set at rest already. The scheme she had privately devised against
Michael Vanstonewhich Captain Wragge's sharp insight had partially
penetrated when she first warned him that their partnership must be
dissolvedwas a scheme which she could now plainly see must be
abandoned as hopeless, in the case of Michael Vanstone's son. The
father's habits of speculation had been the pivot on which the whole
machinery of her meditated conspiracy had been constructed to turn. No
such vantage-ground was discoverable in the doubly sordid character of
the son. Noel Vanstone was invulnerable on the very point which had
presented itself in his father as open to attack.
Having reached this conclusion, how was she to shape her future course?
What new means could she discover which would lead her secretly to her
end, in defiance of Mrs. Lecount's malicious vigilance and Noel
Vanstone's miserly distrust?
She was seated before the looking-glass, mechanically combing out her
hair, while that all-important consideration occupied her mind. The
agitation of the moment had raised a feverish color in her cheeks, and
had brightened the light in her large gray eyes. She was conscious of
looking her best; conscious how her beauty gained by contrast, after
the removal of the disguise. Her lovely light brown hair looked thicker
and softer than ever, now that it had escaped from its imprisonment
under the gray wig. She twisted it this way and that, with quick,
dexterous fingers; she laid it in masses on her shoulders; she threw it
back from them in a heap and turned sidewise to see how it fellto see
her back and shoulders freed from the artificial deformities of the
padded cloak. After a moment she faced the looking-glass once more;
plunged both hands deep in her hair; and, resting her elbows on the
table, looked closer and closer at the reflection of herself, until her
breath began to dim the glass. "I can twist any man alive round my
finger," she thought, with a smile of superb triumph, "as long as I
keep my looks! If that contemptible wretch saw me now" She shrank from
following that thought to its end, with a sudden horror of herself: she
drew back from the glass, shuddering, and put her hands over her face.
"Oh, Frank!" she murmured, "but for you, what a wretch I might be!" Her
eager fingers snatched the little white silk bag from its hiding-place
in her bosom; her lips devoured it with silent kisses. "My darling! my
angel! Oh, Frank, how I love you!" The tears gushed into her eyes. She
passionately dried them, restored the bag to its place, and turned her
back on the looking-glass. "No more of myself," she thought; "no more
of my mad, miserable self for to-day!"
Shrinking from all further contemplation of her next step in
advanceshrinking from the fast-darkening future, with which Noel
Vanstone was now associated in her inmost thoughtsshe looked
impatiently about the room for some homely occupation which might take
her out of herself. The disguise which she had flung down between the
wall and the bed recurred to her memory. It was impossible to leave it
there. Mrs. Wragge (now occupied in sorting her parcels) might weary of
her employment, might come in again at a moment's notice, might pass
near the bed, and see the gray cloak. What was to be done?
Her first thought was to put the disguise back in her trunk. But after
what had happened, there was danger in trusting it so near to herself
while she and Mrs. Wragge were together under the same roof. She
resolved to be rid of it that evening, and boldly determined on sending
it back to Birmingham. Her bonnet-box fitted into her trunk. She took
the box out, thrust in the wig and cloak, and remorselessly flattened
down the bonnet at the top. The gown (which she had not yet taken off)
was her own; Mrs. Wragge had been accustomed to see her in itthere was
no need to send the gown back. Before closing the box, she hastily
traced these lines on a sheet of paper: "I took the inclosed things
away by mistake. Please keep them for me, with the rest of my luggage
in your possession, until you hear from me again." Putting the paper on
the top of the bonnet, she directed the box to Captain Wragge at
Birmingham, took it downstairs immediately, and sent the landlady's
daughter away with it to the nearest Receiving-house. "That difficulty
is disposed of," she thought, as she went back to her own room again.
Mrs. Wragge was still occupied in sorting her parcels on her narrow
little bed. She turned round with a faint scream when Magdalen looked
in at her. "I thought it was the ghost again," said Mrs. Wragge. "I'm
trying to take warning, my dear, by what's happened to me. I've put all
my parcels straight, just as the captain would like to see 'em. I'm up
at heel with both shoes. If I close my eyes to-nightwhich I don't
think I shallI'll go to sleep as straight as my legs will let me. And
I'll never have another holiday as long as I live. I hope I shall be
forgiven," said Mrs. Wragge, mournfully shaking her head. "I humbly
hope I shall be forgiven."
"Forgiven!" repeated Magdalen. "If other women wanted as little
forgiving as you doWell! well! Suppose you open some of these parcels.
Come! I want to see what you have been buying to-day."
Mrs. Wragge hesitated, sighed penitently, considered a little,
stretched out her hand timidly toward one of the parcels, thought of
the supernatural warning, and shrank back from her own purchases with a
desperate exertion of self-control.
"Open this one." said Magdalen, to encourage her: "what is it?"
Mrs. Wragge's faded blue eyes began to brighten dimly, in spite of her
remorse; but she self-denyingly shook her head. The master-passion of
shopping might claim his own againbut the ghost was not laid yet.
"Did you get it at a bargain?" asked Magdalen, confidentially.
"Dirt cheap!" cried poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the snare,
and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing had happened.
Magdalen kept her gossiping over her purchases for an hour or more, and
then wisely determined to distract her attention from all ghostly
recollections in another way by taking her out for a walk.
As they left the lodgings, the door of Noel Vanstone's house opened,
and the woman-servant appeared, bent on another errand. She was
apparently charged with a letter on this occasion which she carried
carefully in her hand. Conscious of having formed no plan yet either
for attack or defense, Magdalen wondered, with a momentary dread,
whether Mrs. Lecount had decided already on opening fresh
communications, and whether the letter was directed to "Miss Garth."
The letter bore no such address. Noel Vanstone had solved his pecuniary
problem at last. The blank space in the advertisement was filled up,
and Mrs. Lecount's acknowledgment of the captain's anonymous warning
was now on its way to insertion in the Times.
THE END OF THE THIRD SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
Extract from the Advertising Columns of "The Times."
"An unknown friend is requested to mention (by advertisement) an
address at which a letter can reach him. The receipt of the information
which he offers will be acknowledged by a reward of Five Pounds."
II.
From Captain Wragge to Magdalen.
"Birmingham, July 2d, 1847.
"MY DEAR GIRL,
"The box containing the articles of costumes which you took away by
mistake has come safely to hand. Consider it under my special
protection until I hear from you again.
"I embrace this opportunity to assure you once more of my unalterable
fidelity to your interests. Without attempting to intrude myself into
your confidence, may I inquire whether Mr. Noel Vanstone has consented
to do you justice? I greatly fear he has declinedin which case I can
lay my hand on my heart, and solemnly declare that his meanness revolts
me. Why do I feel a foreboding that you have appealed to him in vain?
Why do I find myself viewing this fellow in the light of a noxious
insect? We are total strangers to each other; I have no sort of
knowledge of him, except the knowledge I picked up in making your
inquiries. Has my intense sympathy with your interests made my
perceptions prophetic? or, to put it fancifully, is there really such a
thing as a former state of existence? and has Mr. Noel Vanstone
mortally insulted mesay, in some other planet?
"I write, my dear Magdalen, as you see, with my customary dash of
humor. But I am serious in placing my services at your disposal. Don't
let the question of terms cause you an instant's hesitation. I accept
beforehand any terms you like to mention. If your present plans point
that way, I am ready to squeeze Mr. Noel Vanstone, in your interests,
till the gold oozes out of him at every pore. Pardon the coarseness of
this metaphor. My anxiety to be of service to you rushes into words;
lays my meaning, in the rough, at your feet; and leaves your taste to
polish it with the choicest ornaments of the English language.
"How is my unfortunate wife? I am afraid you find it quite impossible
to keep her up at heel, or to mold her personal appearance into harmony
with the eternal laws of symmetry and order. Does she attempt to be too
familiar with you? I have always been accustomed to check her, in this
respect. She has never been permitted to call me anything but Captain;
and on the rare occasions since our union, when circumstances may have
obliged her to address me by letter, her opening form of salutation has
been rigidly restricted to 'Dear Sir.' Accept these trifling domestic
particulars as suggesting hints which may be useful to you in managing
Mrs. Wragge; and believe me, in anxious expectation of hearing from you
again,
"Devotedly yours,
"HORATIO WRAGGE."
III.
From Norah to Magdalen.
Forwarded, with the Two Letters that follow it, from the Post Office,
Birmingham.
"Westmoreland House, Kensington,
"July 1st.
"MY DEAREST MAGDALEN,
"When you write next (and pray write soon!) address your letter to me
at Miss Garth's. I have left my situation; and some little time may
elapse before I find another.
"Now it is all over I may acknowledge to you, my darling, that I was
not happy. I tried hard to win the affection of the two little girls I
had to teach; but they seemed, I am sure I can't tell why, to dislike
me from the first. Their mother I have no reason to complain of. But
their grandmother, who was really the ruling power in the house, made
my life very hard to me. My inexperience in teaching was a constant
subject of remark with her; and my difficulties with the children were
always visited on me as if they had been entirely of my own making. I
tell you this, so that you may not suppose I regret having left my
situation. Far from it, my loveI am glad to be out of the house.
"I have saved a little money, Magdalen; and I should so like to spend
it in staying a few days with you. My heart aches for a sight of my
sister; my ears are weary for the sound of her voice. A word from you
telling me where we can meet, is all I want. Think of itpray think of
it.
"Don't suppose I am discouraged by this first check. There are many
kind people in the world; and some of them may employ me next time. The
way to happiness is often very hard to find; harder, I almost think,
for women than for men. But if we only try patiently, and try long
enough, we reach it at lastin heaven, if not on earth. I think my
way now is the way which leads to seeing you again. Don't forget that,
my love, the next time you think of
"NORAH."
IV.
From Miss Garth to Magdalen.
"Westmoreland House, July 1st.
"MY DEAR MAGDALEN,
"You have no useless remonstrances to apprehend at the sight of my
handwriting. My only object in this letter is to tell you something
which I know your sister will not tell you of her own accord. She is
entirely ignorant that I am writing to you. Keep her in ignorance, if
you wish to spare her unnecessary anxiety, and me unnecessary distress.
"Norah's letter, no doubt, tells you that she has left her situation. I
feel it my painful duty to add that she has left it on your account.
"The matter occurred in this manner. Messrs. Wyatt, Pendril, and Gwilt
are the solicitors of the gentleman in whose family Norah was employed.
The life which you have chosen for yourself was known as long ago as
December last to all the partners. You were discovered performing in
public at Derby by the person who had been employed to trace you at
York; and that discovery was communicated by Mr. Wyatt to Norah's
employer a few days since, in reply to direct inquiries about you on
that gentleman's part. His wife and his mother (who lives with him) had
expressly desired that he would make those inquiries; their doubts
having been aroused by Norah's evasive answers when they questioned her
about her sister. You know Norah too well to blame her for this.
Evasion was the only escape your present life had left her, from
telling a downright falsehood.
"That same day, the two ladies of the family, the elder and the
younger, sent for your sister, and told her they had discovered that
you were a public performer, roaming from place to place in the country
under an assumed name. They were just enough not to blame Norah for
this; they were just enough to acknowledge that her conduct had been as
irreproachable as I had guaranteed it should be when I got her the
situation. But, at the same time, they made it a positive condition of
her continuing in their employment that she should never permit you to
visit her at their house, or to meet her and walk out with her when she
was in attendance on the children. Your sisterwho has patiently borne
all hardships that fell on herselfinstantly resented the slur cast on
you. She gave her employers warning on the spot. High words followed,
and she left the house that evening.
"I have no wish to distress you by representing the loss of this
situation in the light of a disaster. Norah was not so happy in it as I
had hoped and believed she would be. It was impossible for me to know
beforehand that the children were sullen and intractable, or that the
husband's mother was accustomed to make her domineering disposition
felt by every one in the house. I will readily admit that Norah is well
out of this situation. But the harm does not stop here. For all you and
I know to the contrary, the harm may go on. What has happened in this
situation may happen in another. Your way of life, however pure your
conduct may beand I will do you the justice to believe it pureis a
suspicious way of life to all respectable people. I have lived long
enough in this world to know that the sense of Propriety, in nine
Englishwomen out of ten, makes no allowances and feels no pity. Norah's
next employers may discover you; and Norah may throw up a situation
next time which we may never be able to find for her again.
"I leave you to consider this. My child, don't think I am hard on you.
I am jealous for your sister's tranquillity. If you will forget the
past, Magdalen, and come back, trust to your old governess to forget it
too, and to give you the home which your father and mother once gave
her. Your friend, my dear, always,
"HARRIET GARTH."
V.
From Francis Clare, Jun., to Magdalen.
"Shanghai, China,
"April 23d, 1847.
"MY DEAR MAGDALEN,
"I have deferred answering your letter, in consequence of the
distracted state of my mind, which made me unfit to write to you. I am
still unfit, but I feel I ought to delay no longer. My sense of honor
fortifies me, and I undergo the pain of writing this letter.
"My prospects in China are all at an end. The Firm to which I was
brutally consigned, as if I was a bale of merchandise, has worn out my
patience by a series of petty insults; and I have felt compelled, from
motives of self-respect, to withdraw my services, which were
undervalued from the first. My returning to England under these
circumstances is out of the question. I have been too cruelly used in
my own country to wish to go back to it, even if I could. I propose
embarking on board a private trading-vessel in these seas in a
mercantile capacity, to make my way, if I can, for myself. How it will
end, or what will happen to me next, is more than I can say. It matters
little what becomes of me. I am a wanderer and an exile, entirely
through the fault of others. The unfeeling desire at home to get rid of
me has accomplished its object. I am got rid of for good.
"There is only one more sacrifice left for me to makethe sacrifice of
my heart's dearest feelings. With no prospects before me, with no
chance of coming home, what hope can I feel of performing my engagement
to yourself? None! A more selfish man than I am might hold you to that
engagement; a less considerate man than I am might keep you waiting for
yearsand to no purpose after all. Cruelly as they have been trampled
on, my feelings are too sensitive to allow me to do this. I write it
with the tears in my eyesyou shall not link your fate to an outcast.
Accept these heart-broken lines as releasing you from your promise. Our
engagement is at an end.
"The one consolation which supports me in bidding you farewell is, that
neither of us is to blame. You may have acted weakly, under my father's
influence, but I am sure you acted for the best. Nobody knew what the
fatal consequences of driving me out of England would be but myselfand
I was not listened to. I yielded to my father, I yielded to you; and
this is the end of it!
"I am suffering too acutely to write more. May you never know what my
withdrawal from our engagement has cost me! I beg you will not blame
yourself. It is not your fault that I have had all my energies
misdirected by othersit is not your fault that I have never had a fair
chance of getting on in life. Forget the deserted wretch who breathes
his heartfelt prayers for your happiness, and who will ever remain your
friend and well-wisher.
"FRANCIS CLARE, Jun."
VI.
From Francis Clare, Sen., to Magdalen.
Enclosing the preceding Letter.
"I always told your poor father my son was a Fool, but I never knew he
was a Scoundrel until the mail came in from China. I have every reason
to believe that he has left his employers under the most disgraceful
circumstances. Forget him from this time forth, as I do. When you and I
last set eyes on each other, you behaved well to me in this business.
All I can now say in return, I do say. My girl, I am sorry for you,
"F. C."
VII.
From Mrs. Wragge to her Husband.
"Dear sir for mercy's sake come here and help us She had a dreadful
letter I don't know what yesterday but she read it in bed and when I
went in with her breakfast I found her dead and if the doctor had not
been two doors off nobody else could have brought her to life again and
she sits and looks dreadful and won't speak a word her eyes frighten me
so I shake from head to foot oh please do come I keep things as tidy as
I can and I do like her so and she used to be so kind to me and the
landlord says he's afraid she'll destroy herself I wish I could write
straight but I do shake so your dutiful wife matilda wragge excuse
faults and beg you on my knees come and help us the Doctor good man
will put some of his own writing into this for fear you can't make out
mine and remain once more your dutiful wife matilda wragge."
Added by the Doctor.
"SIR,I beg to inform you that I was yesterday called into a neighbor's
in Vauxhall Walk to attend a young lady who had been suddenly taken
ill. I recovered her with great difficulty from one of the most
obstinate fainting-fits I ever remember to have met with. Since that
time she has had no relapse, but there is apparently some heavy
distress weighing on her mind which it has hitherto been found
impossible to remove. She sits, as I am informed, perfectly silent, and
perfectly unconscious of what goes on about her, for hours together,
with a letter in her hand which she will allow nobody to take from her.
If this state of depression continues, very distressing mental
consequences may follow; and I only do my duty in suggesting that some
relative or friend should interfere who has influence enough to rouse
her.
"Your obedient servant,
"RICHARD JARVIS, M.R.C.S."
VIII.
From Norah to Magdalen.
"July 5th.
"For God's sake, write me one line to say if you are still at
Birmingham, and where I can find you there! I have just heard from old
Mr. Clare. Oh, Magdalen, if you have no pity on yourself, have some
pity on me! The thought of you alone among strangers, the thought of
you heart-broken under this dreadful blow, never leaves me for an
instant. No words can tell how I feel for you! My own love, remember
the better days at home before that cowardly villain stole his way into
your heart; remember the happy time at Combe-Raven when we were always
together. Oh, don't, don't treat me like a stranger! We are alone in
the world nowlet me come and comfort you, let me be more than a sister
to you, if I can. One lineonly one line to tell me where I can find
you!"
IX.
From Magdalen to Norah.
"July 7th.
"MY DEAREST NORAH,
"All that your love for me can wish your letter has done. You, and you
alone, have found your way to my heart. I could think again, I could
feel again, after reading what you have written to me. Let this
assurance quiet your anxieties. My mind lives and breathes once moreit
was dead until I got your letter.
"The shock I have suffered has left a strange quietness in me. I feel
as if I had parted from my former selfas if the hopes once so dear to
me had all gone back to some past time from which I am now far removed.
I can look at the wreck of my life more calmly, Norah, than you could
look at it if we were both together again. I can trust myself already
to write to Frank.
"My darling, I think no woman ever knows how utterly she has given
herself up to the man she lovesuntil that man has ill-treated her. Can
you pity my weakness if I confess to having felt a pang at my heart
when I read that part of your letter which calls Frank a coward and a
villain? Nobody can despise me for this as I despise myself. I am like
a dog who crawls back and licks the master's hand that has beaten him.
But it is soI would confess it to nobody but youindeed, indeed it is
so. He has deceived and deserted me; he has written me a cruel farewell
but don't call him a villain! If he repented and came back to me, I
would die rather than marry him nowbut it grates on me to see that
word coward written against him in your hand! If he is weak of purpose,
who tried his weakness beyond what it could bear? Do you think this
would have happened if Michael Vanstone had not robbed us of our own,
and forced Frank away from me to China? In a week from to-day the year
of waiting would have come to an end, and I should have been Frank's
wife, if my marriage portion had not been taken from me.
"You will say, after what has happened, it is well that I have escaped.
My love! there is something perverse in my heart which answers, No!
Better have been Frank's wretched wife than the free woman I am now.
"I have not written to him. He sends me no address at which I could
write, even if I would. But I have not the wish. I will wait before I
send him my farewell. If a day ever comes when I have the fortune
which my father once promised I should bring to him, do you know what I
would do with it? I would send it all to Frank, as my revenge on him
for his letter; as the last farewell word on my side to the man who has
deserted me. Let me live for that day! Let me live, Norah, in the hope
of better times for you, which is all the hope I have left. When I
think of your hard life, I can almost feel the tears once more in my
weary eyes. I can almost think I have come back again to my former
self.
"You will not think me hard-hearted and ungrateful if I say that we
must wait a little yet before we meet. I want to be more fit to see you
than I am now. I want to put Frank further away from me, and to bring
you nearer still. Are these good reasons? I don't knowdon't ask me for
reasons. Take the kiss I have put for you here, where the little circle
is drawn on the paper; and let that bring us together for the present
till I write again. Good-by, my love. My heart is true to you, Norah,
but I dare not see you yet.
"MAGDALEN."
X. From Magdalen to Miss Garth.
"MY DEAR MISS GARTH,
"I have been long in answering your letter; but you know what has
happened, and you will forgive me.
"All that I have to say may be said in a few words. You may depend on
my never making the general Sense of Propriety my enemy again: I am
getting knowledge enough of the world to make it my accomplice next
time. Norah will never leave another situation on my accountmy life as
a public performer is at an end. It was harmless enough, God knowsI
may live, and so may you, to mourn the day when I parted from itbut I
shall never return to it again. It has left me, as Frank has left me,
as all my better thoughts have left me except my thoughts of Norah.
"Enough of myself! Shall I tell you some news to brighten this dull
letter? Mr. Michael Vanstone is dead, and Mr. Noel Vanstone has
succeeded to the possession of my fortune and Norah's. He is quite
worthy of his inheritance. In his father's place, he would have ruined
us as his father did.
"I have no more to say that you would care to know. Don't be distressed
about me. I am trying to recover my spiritsI am trying to forget the
poor deluded girl who was foolish enough to be fond of Frank in the old
days at Combe-Raven. Sometimes a pang comes which tells me the girl
won't be forgottenbut not often.
"It was very kind of you, when you wrote to such a lost creature as I
am, to sign yourselfalways my friend. 'Always' is a bold word, my
dear old governess! I wonder whether you will ever want to recall it?
It will make no difference if you do, in the gratitude I shall always
feel for the trouble you took with me when I was a little girl. I have
ill repaid that troubleill repaid your kindness to me in after life. I
ask your pardon and your pity. The best thing you can do for both of us
is to forget me. Affectionately yours,
"MAGDALEN."
"P.S.I open the envelope to add one line. For God's sake, don't show
this letter to Norah!"
XI.
From Magdalen to Captain Wragge.
"Vauxhall Walk, July 17th.
"If I am not mistaken, it was arranged that I should write to you at
Birmingham as soon as I felt myself composed enough to think of the
future. My mind is settled at last, and I am now able to accept the
services which you have so unreservedly offered to me.
"I beg you will forgive the manner in which I received you on your
arrival in this house, after hearing the news of my sudden illness. I
was quite incapable of controlling myselfI was suffering an agony of
mind which for the time deprived me of my senses. It is only your due
that I should now thank you for treating me with great forbearance at a
time when forbearance was mercy.
"I will mention what I wish you to do as plainly and briefly as I can.
"In the first place, I request you to dispose (as privately as
possible) of every article of costume used in the dramatic
Entertainment. I have done with our performances forever; and I wish to
be set free from everything which might accidentally connect me with
them in the future. The key of my box is inclosed in this letter.
"The other box, which contains my own dresses, you will be kind enough
to forward to this house. I do not ask you to bring it yourself,
because I have a far more important commission to intrust to you.
"Referring to the note which you left for me at your departure, I
conclude that you have by this time traced Mr. Noel Vanstone from
Vauxhall Walk to the residence which he is now occupying. If you have
made the discoveryand if you are quite sure of not having drawn the
attention either of Mrs. Lecount or her master to yourselfI wish you
to arrange immediately for my residing (with you and Mrs. Wragge) in
the same town or village in which Mr. Noel Vanstone has taken up his
abode. I write this, it is hardly necessary to say, under the
impression that, wherever he may now be living, he is settled in the
place for some little time.
"If you can find a small furnished house for me on these conditions
which is to be let by the month, take it for a month certain to begin
with. Say that it is for your wife, your niece, and yourself, and use
any assumed name you please, as long as it is a name that can be
trusted to defeat the most suspicious inquiries. I leave this to your
experience in such matters. The secret of who we really are must be
kept as strictly as if it was a secret on which our lives depend.
"Any expenses to which you may be put in carrying out my wishes I will
immediately repay. If you easily find the sort of house I want, there
is no need for your returning to London to fetch us. We can join you as
soon as we know where to go. The house must be perfectly respectable,
and must be reasonably near to Mr. Noel Vanstone's present residence,
wherever that is.
"You must allow me to be silent in this letter as to the object which I
have now in view. I am unwilling to risk an explanation in writing.
When all our preparations are made, you shall hear what I propose to do
from my own lips; and I shall expect you to tell me plainly, in return,
whether you will or will not give me the help I want on the best terms
which I am able to offer you.
"One word more before I seal up this letter.
"If any opportunity falls in your way after you have taken the house,
and before we join you, of exchanging a few civil words either with Mr.
Noel Vanstone or Mrs. Lecount, take advantage of it. It is very
important to my present object that we should become acquainted with
each otheras the purely accidental result of our being near neighbors.
I want you to smooth the way toward this end if you can, before Mrs.
Wragge and I come to you. Pray throw away no chance of observing Mrs.
Lecount, in particular, very carefully. Whatever help you can give me
at the outset in blindfolding that woman's sharp eyes will be the most
precious help I have ever received at your hands.
"There is no need to answer this letter immediatelyunless I have
written it under a mistaken impression of what you have accomplished
since leaving London. I have taken our lodgings on for another week;
and I can wait to hear from you until you are able to send me such news
as I wish to receive. You may be quite sure of my patience for the
future, under all possible circumstances. My caprices are at an end,
and my violent temper has tried your forbearance for the last time.
"MAGDALEN."
XII.
From Captain Wragge to Magdalen.
"North Shingles Villa, Aldborough, Suffolk,
"July 22d.
"MY DEAR GIRL,
"Your letter has charmed and touched me. Your excuses have gone
straight to my heart; and your confidence in my humble abilities has
followed in the same direction. The pulse of the old militia-man throbs
with pride as he thinks of the trust you have placed in him, and vows
to deserve it. Don't be surprised at this genial outburst. All
enthusiastic natures must explode occasionally; and my form of
explosion isWords.
"Everything you wanted me to do is done. The house is taken; the name
is found; and I am personally acquainted with Mrs. Lecount. After
reading this general statement, you will naturally be interested in
possessing your mind next of the accompanying details. Here they are,
at your service:
"The day after leaving you in London, I traced Mr. Noel Vanstone to
this curious little seaside snuggery. One of his father's innumerable
bargains was a house at Aldborougha rising watering-place, or Mr.
Michael Vanstone would not have invested a farthing in it. In this
house the despicable little miser, who lived rent free in London, now
lives, rent free again, on the coast of Suffolk. He is settled in his
present abode for the summer and autumn; and you and Mrs. Wragge have
only to join me here, to be established five doors away from him in
this elegant villa. I have got the whole house for three guineas a
week, with the option of remaining through the autumn at the same
price. In a fashionable watering-place, such a residence would have
been cheap at double the money.
"Our new name has been chosen with a wary eye to your suggestions. My
booksI hope you have not forgotten my Books?contain, under the
heading of Skins To Jump Into, a list of individuals retired from
this mortal scene, with whose names, families, and circumstances I am
well acquainted. Into some of those Skins I have been compelled to
Jump, in the exercise of my profession, at former periods of my career.
Others are still in the condition of new dresses and remain to be tried
on. The Skin which will exactly fit us originally clothed the bodies of
a family named Bygrave. I am in Mr. Bygrave's skin at this moment-and
it fits without a wrinkle. If you will oblige me by slipping into Miss
Bygrave (Christian name, Susan); and if you will afterward push Mrs.
Wraggeanyhow; head foremost if you likeinto Mrs. Bygrave (Christian
name, Julia), the transformation will be complete. Permit me to inform
you that I am your paternal uncle. My worthy brother was established
twenty years ago in the mahogany and logwood trade at Belize, Honduras.
He died in that place; and is buried on the south-west side of the
local cemetery, with a neat monument of native wood carved by a
self-taught negro artist. Nineteen months afterward his widow died of
apoplexy at a boarding-house in Cheltenham. She was supposed to be the
most corpulent woman in England, and was accommodated on the
ground-floor of the house in consequence of the difficulty of getting
her up and down stairs. You are her only child; you have been under my
care since the sad event at Cheltenham; you are twenty-one years old on
the second of August next; and, corpulence excepted, you are the living
image of your mother. I trouble you with these specimens of my intimate
knowledge of our new family Skin, to quiet your mind on the subject of
future inquiries. Trust to me and my books to satisfy any amount of
inquiry. In the meantime write down our new name and address, and see
how they strike you: 'Mr. Bygrave, Mrs. Bygrave, Miss Bygrave; North
Shingles Villa, Aldborough.' Upon my life, it reads remarkably well!
"The last detail I have to communicate refers to my acquaintance with
Mrs. Lecount.
"We met yesterday, in the grocer's shop here. Keeping my ears open, I
found that Mrs. Lecount wanted a particular kind of tea which the man
had not got, and which he believed could not be procured any nearer
than Ipswich. I instantly saw my way to beginning an acquaintance, at
the trifling expense of a journey to that flourishing city. 'I have
business to-day in Ipswich,' I said, 'and I propose returning to
Aldborough (if I can get back in time) this evening. Pray allow me to
take your order for the tea, and to bring it back with my own parcels.'
Mrs. Lecount politely declined giving me the troubleI politely
insisted on taking it. We fell into conversation. There is no need to
trouble you with our talk. The result of it on my mind isthat Mrs.
Lecount's one weak point, if she has such a thing at all, is a taste
for science, implanted by her deceased husband, the professor. I think
I see a chance here of working my way into her good graces, and casting
a little needful dust into those handsome black eyes of hers. Acting on
this idea when I purchased the lady's tea at Ipswich, I also bought on
my own account that far-famed pocket-manual of knowledge, 'Joyce's
Scientific Dialogues.' Possessing, as I do, a quick memory and
boundless confidence in myself, I propose privately inflating my new
skin with as much ready-made science as it will hold, and presenting
Mr. Bygrave to Mrs. Lecount's notice in the character of the most
highly informed man she has met with since the professor's death. The
necessity of blindfolding that woman (to use your own admirable
expression) is as clear to me as to you. If it is to be done in the way
I propose, make your mind easyWragge, inflated by Joyce, is the man to
do it.
"You now have my whole budget of news. Am I, or am I not, worthy of
your confidence in me? I say nothing of my devouring anxiety to know
what your objects really arethat anxiety will be satisfied when we
meet. Never yet, my dear girl, did I long to administer a productive
pecuniary Squeeze to any human creature, as I long to administer it to
Mr. Noel Vanstone. I say no more. Verbum sap. Pardon the pedantry of
a Latin quotation, and believe me,
"Entirely yours,
"HORATIO WRAGGE.
"P.S.I await my instructions, as you requested. You have only to say
whether I shall return to London for the purpose of escorting you to
this place, or whether I shall wait here to receive you. The house is
in perfect order, the weather is charming, and the sea is as smooth as
Mrs. Lecount's apron. She has just passed the window, and we have
exchanged bows. A sharp woman, my dear Magdalen; but Joyce and I
together may prove a trifle too much for her."
XIII.
Extract from the East Suffolk Argus.
"ALDBOROUGH.We notice with pleasure the arrival of visitors to this
healthful and far-famed watering-place earlier in the season than usual
during the present year. Esto Perpetua is all we have to say.
"VISITORS' LIST.Arrivals since our last. North Shingles VillaMrs.
Bygrave; Miss Bygrave."
THE FOURTH SCENE.
ALDBOROUGH, SUFFOLK.
CHAPTER I.
The most striking spectacle presented to a stranger by the shores of
Suffolk is the extraordinary defenselessness of the land against the
encroachments of the sea.
At Aldborough, as elsewhere on this coast, local traditions are, for
the most part, traditions which have been literally drowned. The site
of the old town, once a populous and thriving port, has almost entirely
disappeared in the sea. The German Ocean has swallowed up streets,
market-places, jetties, and public walks; and the merciless waters,
consummating their work of devastation, closed, no longer than eighty
years since, over the salt-master's cottage at Aldborough, now famous
in memory only as the birthplace of the poet CRABBE.
Thrust back year after year by the advancing waves, the inhabitants
have receded, in the present century, to the last morsel of land which
is firm enough to be built ona strip of ground hemmed in between a
marsh on one side and the sea on the other. Here, trusting for their
future security to certain sand-hills which the capricious waves have
thrown up to encourage them, the people of Aldborough have boldly
established their quaint little watering-place. The first fragment of
their earthly possessions is a low natural dike of shingle, surmounted
by a public path which runs parallel with the sea. Bordering this path,
in a broken, uneven line, are the villa residences of modern
Aldboroughfanciful little houses, standing mostly in their own
gardens, and possessing here and there, as horticultural ornaments,
staring figure-heads of ships doing duty for statues among the flowers.
Viewed from the low level on which these villas stand, the sea, in
certain conditions of the atmosphere, appears to be higher than the
land: coasting-vessels gliding by assume gigantic proportions, and look
alarmingly near the windows. Intermixed with the houses of the better
sort are buildings of other forms and periods. In one direction the
tiny Gothic town-hall of old Aldboroughonce the center of the vanished
port and boroughnow stands, fronting the modern villas close on the
margin of the sea. At another point, a wooden tower of observation,
crowned by the figure-head of a wrecked Russian vessel, rises high
above the neighboring houses, and discloses through its scuttle-window
grave men in dark clothing seated on the topmost story, perpetually on
the watchthe pilots of Aldborough looking out from their tower for
ships in want of help. Behind the row of buildings thus curiously
intermingled runs the one straggling street of the town, with its
sturdy pilots' cottages, its mouldering marine store-houses, and its
composite shops. Toward the northern end this street is bounded by the
one eminence visible over all the marshy flata low wooded hill, on
which the church is built. At its opposite extremity the street leads
to a deserted martello tower, and to the forlorn outlying suburb of
Slaughden, between the river Alde and the sea. Such are the main
characteristics of this curious little outpost on the shores of England
as it appears at the present time.
On a hot and cloudy July afternoon, and on the second day which had
elapsed since he had written to Magdalen, Captain Wragge sauntered
through the gate of North Shingles Villa to meet the arrival of the
coach, which then connected Aldborough with the Eastern Counties
Railway. He reached the principal inn as the coach drove up, and was
ready at the door to receive Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge, on their leaving
the vehicle.
The captain's reception of his wife was not characterized by an
instant's unnecessary waste of time. He looked distrustfully at her
shoesraised himself on tiptoeset her bonnet straight for her with a
sharp tug-said, in a loud whisper, "hold your tongue"and left her,
for the time being, without further notice. His welcome to Magdalen,
beginning with the usual flow of words, stopped suddenly in the middle
of the first sentence. Captain Wragge's eye was a sharp one, and it
instantly showed him something in the look and manner of his old pupil
which denoted a serious change.
There was a settled composure on her face which, except when she spoke,
made it look as still and cold as marble. Her voice was softer and more
equable, her eyes were steadier, her step was slower than of old. When
she smiled, the smile came and went suddenly, and showed a little
nervous contraction on one side of her mouth never visible there
before. She was perfectly patient with Mrs. Wragge; she treated the
captain with a courtesy and consideration entirely new in his
experience of herbut she was interested in nothing. The curious little
shops in the back street; the high impending sea; the old town-hall on
the beach; the pilots, the fishermen, the passing shipsshe noticed all
these objects as indifferently as if Aldborough had been familiar to
her from her infancy. Even when the captain drew up at the garden-gate
of North Shingles, and introduced her triumphantly to the new house,
she hardly looked at it. The first question she asked related not to
her own residence, but to Noel Vanstone's.
"How near to us does he live?" she inquired, with the only betrayal of
emotion which had escaped her yet.
Captain Wragge answered by pointing to the fifth villa from North
Shingles, on the Slaughden side of Aldborough. Magdalen suddenly drew
back from the garden-gate as he indicated the situation, and walked
away by herself to obtain a nearer view of the house. Captain Wragge
looked after her, and shook his head, discontentedly.
"May I speak now?" inquired a meek voice behind him, articulating
respectfully ten inches above the top of his straw hat.
The captain turned round, and confronted his wife. The more than
ordinary bewilderment visible in her face at once suggested to him that
Magdalen had failed to carry out the directions in his letter; and that
Mrs. Wragge had arrived at Aldborough without being properly aware of
the total transformation to be accomplished in her identity and her
name. The necessity of setting this doubt at rest was too serious to be
trifled with; and Captain Wragge instituted the necessary inquiries
without a moment's delay.
"Stand straight, and listen to me," he began. "I have a question to ask
you. Do you know whose Skin you are in at this moment? Do you know that
you are dead and buried in London; and that you have risen like a
phoenix from the ashes of Mrs. Wragge? No! you evidently don't know it.
This is perfectly disgraceful. What is your name?"
"Matilda," answered Mrs. Wragge, in a state of the densest
bewilderment.
"Nothing of the sort!" cried the captain, fiercely. "How dare you tell
me your name's Matilda? Your name is Julia. Who am I?Hold that basket
of sandwiches straight, or I'll pitch it into the sea!Who am I?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Wragge, meekly taking refuge in the negative
side of the question this time.
"Sit down!" said her husband, pointing to the low garden wall of North
Shingles Villa. "More to the right! More still! That will do. You don't
know?" repeated the captain, sternly confronting his wife as soon as he
had contrived, by seating her, to place her face on a level with his
own. "Don't let me hear you say that a second time. Don't let me have a
woman who doesn't know who I am to operate on my beard to-morrow
morning. Look at me! More to the leftmore stillthat will do. Who am
I? I'm Mr. BygraveChristian name, Thomas. Who are you? You're Mrs.
BygraveChristian name, Julia. Who is that young lady who traveled with
you from London? That young lady is Miss BygraveChristian name, Susan.
I'm her clever uncle Tom; and you're her addle-headed aunt Julia. Say
it all over to me instantly, like the Catechism! What is your name?"
"Spare my poor head!" pleaded Mrs. Wragge. "Oh, please spare my poor
head till I've got the stage-coach out of it!"
"Don't distress her," said Magdalen, joining them at that moment. "She
will learn it in time. Come into the house."
Captain Wragge shook his wary head once more. "We are beginning badly,"
he said, with less politeness than usual. "My wife's stupidity stands
in our way already."
They went into the house. Magdalen was perfectly satisfied with all the
captain's arrangements; she accepted the room which he had set apart
for her; approved of the woman servant whom he had engaged; presented
herself at tea-time the moment she was summoned but still showed no
interest whatever in the new scene around her. Soon after the table was
cleared, although the daylight had not yet faded out, Mrs. Wragge's
customary drowsiness after fatigue of any kind overcame her, and she
received her husband's orders to leave the room (taking care that she
left it "up at heel"), and to betake herself (strictly in the character
of Mrs. Bygrave) to bed. As soon as they were left alone, the captain
looked hard at Magdalen, and waited to be spoken to. She said nothing.
He ventured next on opening the conversation by a polite inquiry after
the state of her health. "You look fatigued," he remarked, in his most
insinuating manner. "I am afraid the journey has been too much for
you."
"No," she said, looking out listlessly through the window; "I am not
more tired than usual. I am always weary now; weary at going to bed,
weary at getting up. If you would like to hear what I have to say to
you to-night, I am willing and ready to say it. Can't we go out? It is
very hot here; and the droning of those men's voices is beyond all
endurance." She pointed through the window to a group of boatmen
idling, as only nautical men can idle, against the garden wall. "Is
there no quiet walk in this wretched place?" she asked, impatiently.
"Can't we breathe a little fresh air, and escape being annoyed by
strangers?"
"There is perfect solitude within half an hour's walk of the house,"
replied the ready captain.
"Very well. Come out, then."
With a weary sigh she took up her straw bonnet and her light muslin
scarf from the side-table upon which she had thrown them on coming in,
and carelessly led the way to the door. Captain Wragge followed her to
the garden gate, then stopped, struck by a new idea.
"Excuse me," he whispered, confidentially. "In my wife's existing state
of ignorance as to who she is, we had better not trust her alone in the
house with a new servant. I'll privately turn the key on her, in case
she wakes before we come back. Safe bind, safe findyou know the
proverb!I will be with you again in a moment."
He hastened back to the house, and Magdalen seated herself on the
garden wall to await his return.
She had hardly settled herself in that position when two gentlemen
walking together, whose approach along the public path she had not
previously noticed, passed close by her.
The dress of one of the two strangers showed him to be a clergyman. His
companion's station in life was less easily discernible to ordinary
observation. Practiced eyes would probably have seen enough in his
look, his manner, and his walk to show that he was a sailor. He was a
man in the prime of life; tall, spare, and muscular; his face
sun-burned to a deep brown; his black hair just turning gray; his eyes
dark, deep and firmthe eyes of a man with an iron resolution and a
habit of command. He was the nearest of the two to Magdalen, as he and
his friend passed the place where she was sitting; and he looked at her
with a sudden surprise at her beauty, with an open, hearty, undisguised
admiration, which was too evidently sincere, too evidently beyond his
own control, to be justly resented as insolent; and yet, in her humor
at that moment, Magdalen did resent it. She felt the man's resolute
black eyes strike through her with an electric suddenness; and frowning
at him impatiently, she turned away her head and looked back at the
house.
The next moment she glanced round again to see if he had gone on. He
had advanced a few yardshad then evidently stoppedand was now in the
very act of turning to look at her once more. His companion, the
clergyman, noticing that Magdalen appeared to be annoyed, took him
familiarly by the arm, and, half in jest, half in earnest, forced him
to walk on. The two disappeared round the corner of the next house. As
they turned it, the sun-burned sailor twice stopped his companion
again, and twice looked back.
"A friend of yours?" inquired Captain Wragge, joining Magdalen at that
moment.
"Certainly not," she replied; "a perfect stranger. He stared at me in
the most impertinent manner. Does he belong to this place?"
"I'll find out in a moment," said the compliant captain, joining the
group of boatmen, and putting his questions right and left, with the
easy familiarity which distinguished him. He returned in a few minutes
with a complete budget of information. The clergyman was well known as
the rector of a place situated some few miles inland. The dark man with
him was his wife's brother, commander of a ship in the
merchant-service. He was supposed to be staying with his relatives, as
their guest for a short time only, preparatory to sailing on another
voyage. The clergyman's name was Strickland, and the merchant-captain's
name was Kirke; and that was all the boatmen knew about either of them.
"It is of no consequence who they are," said Magdalen, carelessly. "The
man's rudeness merely annoyed me for the moment. Let us have done with
him. I have something else to think of, and so have you. Where is the
solitary walk you mentioned just now? Which way do we go?"
The captain pointed southward toward Slaughden, and offered his arm.
Magdalen hesitated before she took it. Her eyes wandered away
inquiringly to Noel Vanstone's house. He was out in the garden, pacing
backward and forward over the little lawn, with his head high in the
air, and with Mrs. Lecount demurely in attendance on him, carrying her
master's green fan. Seeing this, Magdalen at once took Captain Wragge's
right arm, so as to place herself nearest to the garden when they
passed it on their walk.
"The eyes of our neighbors are on us; and the least your niece can do
is to take your arm," she said, with a bitter laugh. "Come! let us go
on."
"They are looking this way," whispered the captain. "Shall I introduce
you to Mrs. Lecount?"
"Not to-night," she answered. "Wait, and hear what I have to say to you
first."
They passed the garden wall. Captain Wragge took off his hat with a
smart flourish, and received a gracious bow from Mrs. Lecount in
return. Magdalen saw the housekeeper survey her face, her figure, and
her dress, with that reluctant interest, that distrustful curiosity,
which women feel in observing each other. As she walked on beyond the
house, the sharp voice of Noel Vanstone reached her through the evening
stillness. "A fine girl, Lecount," she heard him say. "You know I am a
judge of that sort of thinga fine girl!"
As those words were spoken, Captain Wragge looked round at his
companion in sudden surprise. Her hand was trembling violently on his
arm, and her lips were fast closed with an expression of speechless
pain.
Slowly and in silence the two walked on until they reached the southern
limit of the houses, and entered on a little wilderness of shingle and
withered grassthe desolate end of Aldborough, the lonely beginning of
Slaughden.
It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward, was the gray majesty of the
sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into
the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle
water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive
circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass, closed
the view darkly on all that lay beyond. Westward, a lurid streak of
sunset glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened the fringing trees on
the far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little
gleaming water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to the eye, the sullen
flow of the tidal river Alde ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks;
and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the bleak water-side, lay
the lost little port of Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and
warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered coasting-vessels
deserted on the oozy river-shore. No fall of waves was heard on the
beach, no trickling of waters bubbled audibly from the idle stream. Now
and then the cry of a sea-bird rose from the region of the marsh; and
at intervals, from farmhouses far in the inland waste, the faint
winding of horns to call the cattle home traveled mournfully through
the evening calm.
Magdalen drew her hand from the captain's arm, and led the way to the
mound of the martello tower. "I am weary of walking," she said. "Let us
stop and rest here."
She seated herself on the slope, and resting on her elbow, mechanically
pulled up and scattered from her into the air the tufts of grass
growing under her hand. After silently occupying herself in this way
for some minutes, she turned suddenly on Captain Wragge. "Do I surprise
you?" she asked, with a startling abruptness. "Do you find me changed?"
The captain's ready tact warned him that the time had come to be plain
with her, and to reserve his flowers of speech for a more appropriate
occasion.
"If you ask the question, I must answer it," he replied. "Yes, I do
find you changed."
She pulled up another tuft of grass. "I suppose you can guess the
reason?" she said.
The captain was wisely silent. He only answered by a bow.
"I have lost all care for myself," she went on, tearing faster and
faster at the tufts of grass. "Saying that is not saying much, perhaps,
but it may help you to understand me. There are things I would have
died sooner than do at one timethings it would have turned me cold to
think of. I don't care now whether I do them or not. I am nothing to
myself; I am no more interested in myself than I am in these handfuls
of grass. I suppose I have lost something. What is it? Heart?
Conscience? I don't know. Do you? What nonsense I am talking! Who cares
what I have lost? It has gone; and there's an end of it. I suppose my
outside is the best side of meand that's left, at any rate. I have not
lost my good looks, have I? There! there! never mind answering; don't
trouble yourself to pay me compliments. I have been admired enough
to-day. First the sailor, and then Mr. Noel Vanstoneenough for any
woman's vanity, surely! Have I any right to call myself a woman?
Perhaps not: I am only a girl in my teens. Oh, me, I feel as if I was
forty!" She scattered the last fragments of grass to the winds; and
turning her back on the captain, let her head droop till her cheek
touched the turf bank. "It feels soft and friendly," she said, nestling
to it with a hopeless tenderness horrible to see. "It doesn't cast me
off. Mother Earth! The only mother I have left!"
Captain Wragge looked at her in silent surprise. Such experience of
humanity as he possessed was powerless to sound to its depths the
terrible self-abandonment which had burst its way to the surface in her
reckless wordswhich was now fast hurrying her to actions more reckless
still. "Devilish odd!" he thought to himself, uneasily. "Has the loss
of her lover turned her brain?" He considered for a minute longer and
then spoke to her. "Leave it till to-morrow," suggested the captain
confidentially. "You are a little tired to-night. No hurry, my dear
girlno hurry."
She raised her head instantly, and looked round at him with the same
angry resolution, with the same desperate defiance of herself, which he
had seen in her face on the memorable day at York when she had acted
before him for the first time. "I came here to tell you what is in my
mind," she said; "and I will tell it!" She seated herself upright on
the slope; and clasping her hands round her knees, looked out steadily,
straight before her, at the slowly darkening view. In that strange
position, she waited until she had composed herself, and then addressed
the captain, without turning her head to look round at him, in these
words:
"When you and I first met," she began, abruptly, "I tried hard to keep
my thoughts to myself. I know enough by this time to know that I
failed. When I first told you at York that Michael Vanstone had ruined
us, I believe you guessed for yourself that I, for one, was determined
not to submit to it. Whether you guessed or not, it is so. I left my
friends with that determination in my mind; and I feel it in me now
stronger, ten times stronger, than ever."
"Ten times stronger than ever," echoed the captain. "Exactly sothe
natural result of firmness of character."
"Nothe natural result of having nothing else to think of. I had
something else to think of before you found me ill in Vauxhall Walk. I
have nothing else to think of now. Remember that, if you find me for
the future always harping on the same string. One question first. Did
you guess what I meant to do on that morning when you showed me the
newspaper, and when I read the account of Michael Vanstone's death?"
"Generally," replied Captain Wragge"I guessed, generally, that you
proposed dipping your hand into his purse and taking from it (most
properly) what was your own. I felt deeply hurt at the time by your not
permitting me to assist you. Why is she so reserved with me? (I
remarked to myself)why is she so unreasonably reserved?"
"You shall have no reserve to complain of now," pursued Magdalen. "I
tell you plainly, if events had not happened as they did, you would
have assisted me. If Michael Vanstone had not died, I should have gone
to Brighton, and have found my way safely to his acquaintance under an
assumed name. I had money enough with me to live on respectably for
many months together. I would have employed that timeI would have
waited a whole year, if necessary, to destroy Mrs. Lecount's influence
over himand I would have ended by getting that influence, on my own
terms, into my own hands. I had the advantage of years, the advantage
of novelty, the advantage of downright desperation, all on my side, and
I should have succeeded. Before the year was outbefore half the year
was outyou should have seen Mrs. Lecount dismissed by her master, and
you should have seen me taken into the house in her place, as Michael
Vanstone's adopted daughteras the faithful friendwho had saved him
from an adventuress in his old age. Girls no older than I am have tried
deceptions as hopeless in appearance as mine, and have carried them
through to the end. I had my story ready; I had my plans all
considered; I had the weak point in that old man to attack in my way,
which Mrs. Lecount had found out before me to attack in hers, and I
tell you again I should have succeeded."
"I think you would," said the captain. "And what next?"
"Mr. Michael Vanstone would have changed his man of business next. You
would have succeeded to the place; and those clever speculations on
which he was so fond of venturing would have cost him the fortunes of
which he had robbed my sister and myself. To the last farthing, Captain
Wragge, as certainly as you sit there, to the last farthing! A bold
conspiracy, a shocking deceptionwasn't it? I don't care! Any
conspiracy, any deception, is justified to my conscience by the vile
law which has left us helpless. You talked of my reserve just now. Have
I dropped it at last? Have I spoken out at the eleventh hour?"
The captain laid his hand solemnly on his heart, and launched himself
once more on his broadest flow of language.
"You fill me with unavailing regret," he said. "If that old man had
lived, what a crop I might have reaped from him! What enormous
transactions in moral agriculture it might have been my privilege to
carry on! Ars longa," said Captain Wragge, pathetically drifting into
Latin"vita brevis! Let us drop a tear on the lost opportunities of
the past, and try what the present can do to console us. One conclusion
is clear to my mindthe experiment you proposed to try with Mr. Michael
Vanstone is totally hopeless, my dear girl, in the case of his son. His
son is impervious to all common forms of pecuniary temptation. You may
trust my solemn assurance," continued the captain, speaking with an
indignant recollection of the answer to his advertisement in the Times,
"when I inform you that Mr. Noel Vanstone is emphatically the meanest
of mankind."
"I can trust my own experience as well," said Magdalen. "I have seen
him, and spoken to himI know him better than you do. Another
disclosure, Captain Wragge, for your private ear! I sent you back
certain articles of costume when they had served the purpose for which
I took them to London. That purpose was to find my way to Noel Vanstone
in disguise, and to judge for myself of Mrs. Lecount and her master. I
gained my object; and I tell you again, I know the two people in that
house yonder whom we have now to deal with better than you do."
Captain Wragge expressed the profound astonishment, and asked the
innocent questions appropriate to the mental condition of a person
taken completely by surprise.
"Well," he resumed, when Magdalen had briefly answered him, "and what
is the result on your own mind? There must be a result, or we should
not be here. You see your way? Of course, my dear girl, you see your
way?"
"Yes," she said, quickly. "I see my way."
The captain drew a little nearer to her, with eager curiosity expressed
in every line of his vagabond face.
"Go on," he said, in an anxious whisper; "pray go on."
She looked out thoughtfully into the gathering darkness, without
answering, without appearing to have heard him. Her lips closed, and
her clasped hands tightened mechanically round her knees.
"There is no disguising the fact," said Captain Wragge, warily rousing
her into speaking to him. "The son is harder to deal with than the
father"
"Not in my way," she interposed, suddenly.
"Indeed!" said the captain. "Well! they say there is a short cut to
everything, if we only look long enough to find it. You have looked
long enough, I suppose, and the natural result has followedyou have
found it."
"I have not troubled myself to look; I have found it without looking."
"The deuce you have!" cried Captain Wragge, in great perplexity. "My
dear girl, is my view of your present position leading me altogether
astray? As I understand it, here is Mr. Noel Vanstone in possession of
your fortune and your sister's, as his father was, and determined to
keep it, as his father was?"
"Yes."
"And here are youquite helpless to get it by persuasionquite helpless
to get it by lawjust as resolute in his case as you were in his
father's, to take it by stratagem in spite of him?"
"Just as resolute. Not for the sake of the fortunemind that! For the
sake of the right."
"Just so. And the means of coming at that right which were hard with
the fatherwho was not a miserare easy with the son, who is?"
"Perfectly easy."
"Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life!" cried the
captain, at the end of his patience. "Hang me if I know what you mean!"
She looked round at him for the first timelooked him straight and
steadily in the face.
"I will tell you what I mean," she said. "I mean to marry him."
Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, petrified
by astonishment.
"Remember what I told you," said Magdalen, looking away from him again.
"I have lost all care for myself. I have only one end in life now, and
the sooner I reach itand diethe better. If" She stopped, altered her
position a little, and pointed with one hand to the fast-ebbing stream
beneath her, gleaming dim in the darkening twilight"if I had been what
I once was, I would have thrown myself into that river sooner than do
what I am going to do now. As it is, I trouble myself no longer; I
weary my mind with no more schemes. The short way and the vile way lies
before me. I take it, Captain Wragge, and marry him."
"Keeping him in total ignorance of who you are?" said the captain,
slowly rising to his feet, and slowly moving round, so as to see her
face. "Marrying him as my niece, Miss Bygrave?"
"As your niece, Miss Bygrave."
"And after the marriage?" His voice faltered, as he began the
question, and he left it unfinished.
"After the marriage," she said, "I shall stand in no further need of
your assistance."
The captain stooped as she gave him that answer, looked close at her,
and suddenly drew back, without uttering a word. He walked away some
paces, and sat down again doggedly on the grass. If Magdalen could have
seen his face in the dying light, his face would have startled her. For
the first time, probably, since his boyhood, Captain Wragge had changed
color. He was deadly pale.
"Have you nothing to say to me?" she asked. "Perhaps you are waiting to
hear what terms I have to offer? These are my terms; I pay all our
expenses here; and when we part, on the day of the marriage, you take a
farewell gift away with you of two hundred pounds. Do you promise me
your assistance on those conditions?"
"What am I expected to do?" he asked, with a furtive glance at her, and
a sudden distrust in his voice.
"You are expected to preserve my assumed character and your own," she
answered, "and you are to prevent any inquiries of Mrs. Lecount's from
discovering who I really am. I ask no more. The rest is my
responsibilitynot yours."
"I have nothing to do with what happensat any time, or in any
placeafter the marriage?"
"Nothing whatever."
"I may leave you at the church door if I please?"
"At the church door, with your fee in your pocket."
"Paid from the money in your own possession?"
"Certainly! How else should I pay it?"
Captain Wragge took off his hat, and passed his handkerchief over his
face with an air of relief.
"Give me a minute to consider it," he said.
"As many minutes as you like," she rejoined, reclining on the bank in
her former position, and returning to her former occupation of tearing
up the tufts of grass and flinging them out into the air.
The captain's reflections were not complicated by any unnecessary
divergences from the contemplation of his own position to the
contemplation of Magdalen's. Utterly incapable of appreciating the
injury done her by Frank's infamous treachery to his engagementan
injury which had severed her, at one cruel blow, from the aspiration
which, delusion though it was, had been the saving aspiration of her
lifeCaptain Wragge accepted the simple fact of her despair just as he
found it, and then looked straight to the consequences of the proposal
which she had made to him.
In the prospect before the marriage he saw nothing more serious
involved than the practice of a deception, in no important degree
differentexcept in the end to be attained by itfrom the deceptions
which his vagabond life had long since accustomed him to contemplate
and to carry out. In the prospect after the marriage he dimly
discerned, through the ominous darkness of the future, the lurking
phantoms of Terror and Crime, and the black gulfs behind them of Ruin
and Death. A man of boundless audacity and resource, within his own
mean limits; beyond those limits, the captain was as deferentially
submissive to the majesty of the law as the most harmless man in
existence; as cautious in looking after his own personal safety as the
veriest coward that ever walked the earth. But one serious question now
filled his mind. Could he, on the terms proposed to him, join the
conspiracy against Noel Vanstone up to the point of the marriage, and
then withdraw from it, without risk of involving himself in the
consequences which his experience told him must certainly ensue?
Strange as it may seem, his decision in this emergency was mainly
influenced by no less a person than Noel Vanstone himself. The captain
might have resisted the money-offer which Magdalen had made to himfor
the profits of the Entertainment had filled his pockets with more than
three times two hundred pounds. But the prospect of dealing a blow in
the dark at the man who had estimated his information and himself at
the value of a five pound note proved too much for his caution and his
self-control. On the small neutral ground of self-importance, the best
men and the worst meet on the same terms. Captain Wragge's indignation,
when he saw the answer to his advertisement, stooped to no
retrospective estimate of his own conduct; he was as deeply offended,
as sincerely angry as if he had made a perfectly honorable proposal,
and had been rewarded for it by a personal insult. He had been too full
of his own grievance to keep it out of his first letter to Magdalen. He
had more or less forgotten himself on every subsequent occasion when
Noel Vanstone's name was mentioned. And in now finally deciding the
course he should take, it is not too much to say that the motive of
money receded, for the first time in his life, into the second place,
and the motive of malice carried the day.
"I accept the terms," said Captain Wragge, getting briskly on his legs
again. "Subject, of course, to the conditions agreed on between us. We
part on the wedding-day. I don't ask where you go: you don't ask where
I go. From that time forth we are strangers to each other."
Magdalen rose slowly from the mound. A hopeless depression, a sullen
despair, showed itself in her look and manner. She refused the
captain's offered hand; and her tones, when she answered him, were so
low that he could hardly hear her.
"We understand each other," she said; "and we can now go back. You may
introduce me to Mrs. Lecount to-morrow."
"I must ask a few questions first," said the captain, gravely. "There
are more risks to be run in this matter, and more pitfalls in our way,
than you seem to suppose. I must know the whole history of your morning
call on Mrs. Lecount before I put you and that woman on speaking terms
with each other."
"Wait till to-morrow," she broke out impatiently. "Don't madden me by
talking about it to-night."
The captain said no more. They turned their faces toward Aldborough,
and walked slowly back.
By the time they reached the houses night had overtaken them. Neither
moon nor stars were visible. A faint noiseless breeze blowing from the
land had come with the darkness. Magdalen paused on the lonely public
walk to breathe the air more freely. After a while she turned her face
from the breeze and looked out toward the sea. The immeasurable silence
of the calm waters, lost in the black void of night, was awful. She
stood looking into the darkness, as if its mystery had no secrets for
hershe advanced toward it slowly, as if it drew her by some hidden
attraction into itself.
"I am going down to the sea," she said to her companion. "Wait here,
and I will come back."
He lost sight of her in an instant; it was as if the night had
swallowed her up. He listened, and counted her footsteps by the
crashing of them on the shingle in the deep stillness. They retreated
slowly, further and further away into the night. Suddenly the sound of
them ceased. Had she paused on her course or had she reached one of the
strips of sand left bare by the ebbing tide?
He waited, and listened anxiously. The time passed, and no sound
reached him. He still listened, with a growing distrust of the
darkness. Another moment, and there came a sound from the invisible
shore. Far and faint from the beach below, a long cry moaned through
the silence. Then all was still once more.
In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and to
call to her. Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly
advancing caught his ear. He waited an instant, and the figure of a man
passed quickly along the walk between him and the sea. It was too dark
to discern anything of the stranger's face; it was only possible to see
that he was a tall manas tall as that officer in the merchant-service
whose name was Kirke.
The figure passed on northward, and was instantly lost to view. Captain
Wragge crossed the path, and, advancing a few steps down the beach,
stopped and listened again. The crash of footsteps on the shingle
caught his ear once more. Slowly, as the sound had left him, that sound
now came back. He called, to guide her to him. She came on till he
could just see hera shadow ascending the shingly slope, and growing
out of the blackness of the night.
"You alarmed me," he whispered, nervously. "I was afraid something had
happened. I heard you cry out as if you were in pain."
"Did you?" she said, carelessly. "I was in pain. It doesn't
matterit's over now."
Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she answered him.
It was the little white silk bag which she had always kept hidden in
her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which it heldone of the
relics which she had not had the heart to part with beforewas gone
from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange shore, she had torn from
her the fondest of her virgin memories, the dearest of her virgin
hopes. Alone, on a strange shore, she had taken the lock of Frank's
hair from its once-treasured place, and had cast it away from her to
the sea and the night.
CHAPTER II.
The tall man who had passed Captain Wragge in the dark proceeded
rapidly along the public walk, struck off across a little waste patch
of ground, and entered the open door of the Aldborough Hotel. The light
in the passage, falling full on his face as he passed it, proved the
truth of Captain Wragge's surmise, and showed the stranger to be Mr.
Kirke, of the merchant service.
Meeting the landlord in the passage, Mr. Kirke nodded to him with the
familiarity of an old customer. "Have you got the paper?" he asked; "I
want to look at the visitors' list."
"I have got it in my room, sir," said the landlord, leading the way
into a parlor at the back of the house. "Are there any friends of yours
staying here, do you think?"
Without replying, the seaman turned to the list as soon as the
newspaper was placed in his hand, and ran his finger down it, name by
name. The finger suddenly stopped at this line: "Sea-view Cottage; Mr.
Noel Vanstone." Kirke of the merchant-service repeated the name to
himself, and put down the paper thoughtfully.
"Have you found anybody you know, captain?" asked the landlord.
"I have found a name I knowa name my father used often to speak of in
his time. Is this Mr. Vanstone a family man? Do you know if there is a
young lady in the house?"
"I can't say, captain. My wife will be here directly; she is sure to
know. It must have been some time ago, if your father knew this Mr.
Vanstone?"
"It was some time ago. My father knew a subaltern officer of that
name when he was with his regiment in Canada. It would be curious if
the person here turned out to be the same man, and if that young lady
was his daughter."
"Excuse me, captainbut the young lady seems to hang a little on your
mind," said the landlord, with a pleasant smile.
Mr. Kirke looked as if the form which his host's good-humor had just
taken was not quite to his mind. He returned abruptly to the subaltern
officer and the regiment in Canada. "That poor fellow's story was as
miserable a one as ever I heard," he said, looking back again absently
at the visitors' list.
"Would there be any harm in telling it, sir?" asked the landlord.
"Miserable or not, a story's a story, when you know it to be true."
Mr. Kirke hesitated. "I hardly think I should be doing right to tell
it," he said. "If this man, or any relations of his, are still alive,
it is not a story they might like strangers to know. All I can tell you
is, that my father was the salvation of that young officer under very
dreadful circumstances. They parted in Canada. My father remained with
his regiment; the young officer sold out and returned to England, and
from that moment they lost sight of each other. It would be curious if
this Vanstone here was the same man. It would be curious"
He suddenly checked himself just as another reference to "the young
lady" was on the point of passing his lips. At the same moment the
landlord's wife came in, and Mr. Kirke at once transferred his
inquiries to the higher authority in the house.
"Do you know anything of this Mr. Vanstone who is down here on the
visitors' list?" asked the sailor. "Is he an old man?"
"He's a miserable little creature to look at," replied the landlady;
"but he's not old, captain."
"Then he's not the man I mean. Perhaps he is the man's son? Has he got
any ladies with him?"
The landlady tossed her head, and pursed up her lips disparagingly.
"He has a housekeeper with him," she said. "A middle-aged personnot
one of my sort. I dare say I'm wrongbut I don't like a dressy woman in
her station of life."
Mr. Kirke began to look puzzled. "I must have made some mistake about
the house," he said. "Surely there's a lawn cut octagon-shape at
Sea-view Cottage, and a white flag-staff in the middle of the
gravel-walk?"
"That's not Sea-view, sir! It's North Shingles you're talking of. Mr.
Bygrave's. His wife and his niece came here by the coach to-day. His
wife's tall enough to be put in a show, and the worst-dressed woman I
ever set eyes on. But Miss Bygrave is worth looking at, if I may
venture to say so. She's the finest girl, to my mind, we've had at
Aldborough for many a long day. I wonder who they are! Do you know the
name, captain?"
"No," said Mr. Kirke, with a shade of disappointment on his dark,
weather-beaten face; "I never heard the name before."
After replying in those words, he rose to take his leave. The landlord
vainly invited him to drink a parting glass; the landlady vainly
pressed him to stay another ten minutes and try a cup of tea. He only
replied that his sister expected him, and that he must return to the
parsonage immediately.
On leaving the hotel Mr. Kirke set his face westward, and walked inland
along the highroad as fast as the darkness would let him.
"Bygrave?" he thought to himself. "Now I know her name, how much am I
the wiser for it! If it had been Vanstone, my father's son might have
had a chance of making acquaintance with her." He stopped, and looked
back in the direction of Aldborough. "What a fool I am!" he burst out
suddenly, striking his stick on the ground. "I was forty last
birthday." He turned and went on again faster than everhis head down;
his resolute black eyes searching the darkness on the land as they had
searched it many a time on the sea from the deck of his ship.
After more than an hour's walking he reached a village, with a
primitive little church and parsonage nestled together in a hollow. He
entered the house by the back way, and found his sister, the
clergyman's wife, sitting alone over her work in the parlor.
"Where is your husband, Lizzie?" he asked, taking a chair in a corner.
"William has gone out to see a sick person. He had just time enough
before he went," she added, with a smile, "to tell me about the young
lady; and he declares he will never trust himself at Aldborough with
you again until you are a steady, married man." She stopped, and looked
at her brother more attentively than she had looked at him yet.
"Robert!" she said, laying aside her work, and suddenly crossing the
room to him. "You look anxious, you look distressed. William only
laughed about your meeting with the young lady. Is it serious? Tell me;
what is she like?"
He turned his head away at the question.
She took a stool at his feet, and persisted in looking up at him. "Is
it serious, Robert?" she repeated, softly.
Kirke's weather-beaten face was accustomed to no concealmentsit
answered for him before he spoke a word. "Don't tell your husband till
I am gone," he said, with a roughness quite new in his sister's
experience of him. "I know I only deserve to be laughed at; but it
hurts me, for all that."
"Hurts you?" she repeated, in astonishment.
"You can't think me half such a fool, Lizzie, as I think myself,"
pursued Kirke, bitterly. "A man at my age ought to know better. I
didn't set eyes on her for as much as a minute altogether; and there I
have been hanging about the place till after nightfall on the chance of
seeing her againskulking, I should have called it, if I had found one
of my men doing what I have been doing myself. I believe I'm bewitched.
She's a mere girl, LizzieI doubt if she's out of her teensI'm old
enough to be her father. It's all one; she stops in my mind in spite of
me. I've had her face looking at me, through the pitch darkness, every
step of the way to this house; and it's looking at me nowas plain as I
see yours, and plainer."
He rose impatiently, and began to walk backward and forward in the
room. His sister looked after him, with surprise as well as sympathy
expressed in her face. From his boyhood upward she had always been
accustomed to see him master of himself. Years since, in the failing
fortunes of the family, he had been their example and their support.
She had heard of him in the desperate emergencies of a life at sea,
when hundreds of his fellow-creatures had looked to his steady
self-possession for rescue from close-threatening deathand had not
looked in vain. Never, in all her life before, had his sister seen the
balance of that calm and equal mind lost as she saw it lost now.
"How can you talk so unreasonably about your age and yourself?" she
said. "There is not a woman alive, Robert, who is good enough for you.
What is her name?"
"Bygrave. Do you know it?"
"No. But I might soon make acquaintance with her. If we only had a
little time before us; if I could only get to Aldborough and see
herbut you are going away to-morrow; your ship sails at the end of the
week."
"Thank God for that!" said Kirke, fervently.
"Are you glad to be going away?" she asked, more and more amazed at
him.
"Right glad, Lizzie, for my own sake. If I ever get to my senses again,
I shall find my way back to them on the deck of my ship. This girl has
got between me and my thoughts already: she shan't go a step further,
and get between me and my duty. I'm determined on that. Fool as I am, I
have sense enough left not to trust myself within easy hail of
Aldborough to-morrow morning. I'm good for another twenty miles of
walking, and I'll begin my journey back tonight."
His sister started up, and caught him fast by the arm. "Robert!" she
exclaimed; "you're not serious? You don't mean to leave us on foot,
alone in the dark?"
"It's only saying good-by, my dear, the last thing at night instead of
the first thing in the morning," he answered, with a smile. "Try and
make allowances for me, Lizzie. My life has been passed at sea; and I'm
not used to having my mind upset in this way. Men ashore are used to
it; men ashore can take it easy. I can't. If I stopped here I shouldn't
rest. If I waited till to-morrow, I should only be going back to have
another look at her. I don't want to feel more ashamed of myself than I
do already. I want to fight my way back to my duty and myself, without
stopping to think twice about it. Darkness is nothing to meI'm used to
darkness. I have got the high-road to walk on, and I can't lose my way.
Let me go, Lizzie! The only sweetheart I have any business with at my
age is my ship. Let me get back to her!"
His sister still kept her hold of his arm, and still pleaded with him
to stay till the morning. He listened to her with perfect patience and
kindness, but she never shook his determination for an instant.
"What am I to say to William?" she pleaded. "What will he think when he
comes back and finds you gone?"
"Tell him I have taken the advice he gave us in his sermon last Sunday.
Say I have turned my back on the world, the flesh, and the devil."
"How can you talk so, Robert! And the boys, tooyou promised not to go
without bidding the boys good-by."
"That's true. I made my little nephews a promise, and I'll keep it." He
kicked off his shoes as he spoke, on the mat outside the door. "Light
me upstairs, Lizzie; I'll bid the two boys good-by without waking
them."
She saw the uselessness of resisting him any longer; and, taking the
candle, went before him upstairs.
The boysboth young childrenwere sleeping together in the same bed.
The youngest was his uncle's favorite, and was called by his uncle's
name. He lay peacefully asleep, with a rough little toy ship hugged
fast in his arms. Kirke's eyes softened as he stole on tiptoe to the
child's side, and kissed him with the gentleness of a woman. "Poor
little man!" said the sailor, tenderly. "He is as fond of his ship as I
was at his age. I'll cut him out a better one when I come back. Will
you give me my nephew one of these days, Lizzie, and will you let me
make a sailor of him?"
"Oh, Robert, if you were only married and happy, as I am!"
"The time has gone by, my dear. I must make the best of it as I am,
with my little nephew there to help me."
He left the room. His sister's tears fell fast as she followed him into
the parlor. "There is something so forlorn and dreadful in your leaving
us like this," she said. "Shall I go to Aldborough to-morrow, Robert,
and try if I can get acquainted with her for your sake?"
"No!" he replied. "Let her be. If it's ordered that I am to see that
girl again, I shall see her. Leave it to the future, and you leave it
right." He put on his shoes, and took up his hat and stick. "I won't
overwalk myself," he said, cheerfully. "If the coach doesn't overtake
me on the road, I can wait for it where I stop to breakfast. Dry your
eyes, my dear, and give me a kiss."
She was like her brother in features and complexion, and she had a
touch of her brother's spirit; she dashed away the tears, and took her
leave of him bravely.
"I shall be back in a year's time," said Kirke, falling into his old
sailor-like way at the door. "I'll bring you a China shawl, Lizzie, and
a chest of tea for your store-room. Don't let the boys forget me, and
don't think I'm doing wrong to leave you in this way. I know I am doing
right. God bless you and keep you, my dearand your husband, and your
children! Good-by!"
He stooped and kissed her. She ran to the door to look after him. A
puff of air extinguished the candle, and the black night shut him out
from her in an instant.
Three days afterward the first-class merchantman Deliverance, Kirke,
commander, sailed from London for the China Sea.
CHAPTER III.
The threatening of storm and change passed away with the night. When
morning rose over Aldborough, the sun was master in the blue heaven,
and the waves were rippling gayly under the summer breeze.
At an hour when no other visitors to the wateringplace were yet astir,
the indefatigable Wragge appeared at the door of North Shingles Villa,
and directed his steps northward, with a neatly-bound copy of "Joyce's
Scientific Dialogues" in his hand. Arriving at the waste ground beyond
the houses, he descended to the beach and opened his book. The
interview of the past night had sharpened his perception of the
difficulties to be encountered in the coming enterprise. He was now
doubly determined to try the characteristic experiment at which he had
hinted in his letter to Magdalen, and to concentrate on himselfin the
character of a remarkably well-informed manthe entire interest and
attention of the formidable Mrs. Lecount.
Having taken his dose of ready-made science (to use his own expression)
the first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, Captain Wragge
joined his small family circle at breakfast-time, inflated with
information for the day. He observed that Magdalen's face showed plain
signs of a sleepless night. She made no complaint: her manner was
composed, and her temper perfectly under control. Mrs. Wraggerefreshed
by some thirteen consecutive hours of uninterrupted reposewas in
excellent spirits, and up at heel (for a wonder) with both shoes. She
brought with her into the room several large sheets of tissue-paper,
cut crisply into mysterious and many-varying forms, which immediately
provoked from her husband the short and sharp question, "What have you
got there?"
"Patterns, captain," said Mrs. Wragge, in timidly conciliating tones.
"I went shopping in London, and bought an Oriental Cashmere Robe. It
cost a deal of money; and I'm going to try and save, by making it
myself. I've got my patterns, and my dress-making directions written
out as plain as print. I'll be very tidy, captain; I'll keep in my own
corner, if you'll please to give me one; and whether my head Buzzes, or
whether it don't, I'll sit straight at my work all the same."
"You will do your work," said the captain, sternly, "when you know who
you are, who I am, and who that young lady isnot before. Show me your
shoes! Good. Show me you cap! Good. Make the breakfast."
When breakfast was over, Mrs. Wragge received her orders to retire into
an adjoining room, and to wait there until her husband came to release
her. As soon as her back was turned, Captain Wragge at once resumed the
conversation which had been suspended, by Magdalen's own desire, on the
preceding night. The questions he now put to her all related to the
subject of her visit in disguise to Noel Vanstone's house. They were
the questions of a thoroughly clear-headed manshort, searching, and
straight to the point. In less than half an hour's time he had made
himself acquainted with every incident that had happened in Vauxhall
Walk.
The conclusions which the captain drew, after gaining his information,
were clear and easily stated.
On the adverse side of the question, he expressed his conviction that
Mrs. Lecount had certainly detected her visitor to be disguised; that
she had never really left the room, though she might have opened and
shut the door; and that on both the occasions, therefore, when Magdalen
had been betrayed into speaking in her own voice, Mrs. Lecount had
heard her. On the favorable side of the question, he was perfectly
satisfied that the painted face and eyelids, the wig, and the padded
cloak had so effectually concealed Magdalen's identity, that she might
in her own person defy the housekeeper's closest scrutiny, so far as
the matter of appearance was concerned. The difficulty of deceiving
Mrs. Lecount's ears, as well as her eyes, was, he readily admitted, not
so easily to be disposed of. But looking to the fact that Magdalen, on
both the occasions when she had forgotten herself, had spoken in the
heat of anger, he was of opinion that her voice had every reasonable
chance of escaping detection, if she carefully avoided all outbursts of
temper for the future, and spoke in those more composed and ordinary
tones which Mrs. Lecount had not yet heard. Upon the whole, the captain
was inclined to pronounce the prospect hopeful, if one serious obstacle
were cleared away at the outsetthat obstacle being nothing less than
the presence on the scene of action of Mrs. Wragge.
To Magdalen's surprise, when the course of her narrative brought her to
the story of the ghost, Captain Wragge listened with the air of a man
who was more annoyed than amused by what he heard. When she had done,
he plainly told her that her unlucky meeting on the stairs of the
lodging-house with Mrs. Wragge was, in his opinion, the most serious of
all the accidents that had happened in Vauxhall Walk.
"I can deal with the difficulty of my wife's stupidity," he said, "as I
have often dealt with it before. I can hammer her new identity into
her head, but I can't hammer the ghost out of it. We have no security
that the woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet may not come back to
her recollection at the most critical time, and under the most awkward
circumstances. In plain English, my dear girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall
under our feet at every step we take."
"If we are aware of the pitfall," said Magdalen, "we can take our
measures for avoiding it. What do you propose?"
"I propose," replied the captain, "the temporary removal of Mrs.
Wragge. Speaking purely in a pecuniary point of view, I can't afford a
total separation from her. You have often read of very poor people
being suddenly enriched by legacies reaching them from remote and
unexpected quarters? Mrs. Wragge's case, when I married her, was one of
these. An elderly female relative shared the favors of fortune on that
occasion with my wife; and if I only keep up domestic appearances, I
happen to know that Mrs. Wragge will prove a second time profitable to
me on that elderly relative's death. But for this circumstance, I
should probably long since have transferred my wife to the care of
society at largein the agreeable conviction that if I didn't support
her, somebody else would. Although I can't afford to take this course,
I see no objection to having her comfortably boarded and lodged out of
our way for the time beingsay, at a retired farm-house, in the
character of a lady in infirm mental health. You would find the
expense trifling; I should find the relief unutterable. What do you
say? Shall I pack her up at once, and take her away by the next coach?"
"No!" replied Magdalen, firmly. "The poor creature's life is hard
enough already; I won't help to make it harder. She was affectionately
and truly kind to me when I was ill, and I won't allow her to be shut
up among strangers while I can help it. The risk of keeping her here is
only one risk more. I will face it, Captain Wragge, if you won't."
"Think twice," said the captain, gravely, "before you decide on keeping
Mrs. Wragge."
"Once is enough," rejoined Magdalen. "I won't have her sent away."
"Very good," said the captain, resignedly. "I never interfere with
questions of sentiment. But I have a word to say on my own behalf. If
my services are to be of any use to you, I can't have my hands tied at
starting. This is serious. I won't trust my wife and Mrs. Lecount
together. I'm afraid, if you're not, and I make it a condition that, if
Mrs. Wragge stops here, she keeps her room. If you think her health
requires it, you can take her for a walk early in the morning, or late
in the evening; but you must never trust her out with the servant, and
never trust her out by herself. I put the matter plainly, it is too
important to be trifled with. What do you sayyes or no?"
"I say yes," replied Magdalen, after a moment's consideration. "On the
understanding that I am to take her out walking, as you propose."
Captain Wragge bowed, and recovered his suavity of manner. "What are
our plans?" he inquired. "Shall we start our enterprise this afternoon?
Are you ready for your introduction to Mrs. Lecount and her master?"
"Quite ready."
"Good again. We will meet them on the Parade, at their usual hour for
going outtwo o'clock. It is not twelve yet. I have two hours before
mejust time enough to fit my wife into her new Skin. The process is
absolutely necessary, to prevent her compromising us with the servant.
Don't be afraid about the results; Mrs. Wragge has had a copious
selection of assumed names hammered into her head in the course of her
matrimonial career. It is merely a question of hammering hard
enoughnothing more. I think we have settled everything now. Is there
anything I can do before two o'clock? Have you any employment for the
morning?"
"No," said Magdalen. "I shall go back to my own room, and try to rest."
"You had a disturbed night, I am afraid?" said the captain, politely
opening the door for her.
"I fell asleep once or twice," she answered, carelessly. "I suppose my
nerves are a little shaken. The bold black eyes of that man who stared
so rudely at me yesterday evening seemed to be looking at me again in
my dreams. If we see him to-day, and if he annoys me any more, I must
trouble you to speak to him. We will meet here again at two o'clock.
Don't be hard with Mrs. Wragge; teach her what she must learn as
tenderly as you can."
With those words she left him, and went upstairs.
She lay down on her bed with a heavy sigh, and tried to sleep. It was
useless. The dull weariness of herself which now possessed her was not
the weariness which finds its remedy in repose. She rose again and sat
by the window, looking out listlessly over the sea.
A weaker nature than hers would not have felt the shock of Frank's
desertion as she had felt itas she was feeling it still. A weaker
nature would have found refuge in indignation and comfort in tears. The
passionate strength of Magdalen's love clung desperately to the sinking
wreck of its own delusion-clung, until she tore herself from it, by
plain force of will. All that her native pride, her keen sense of wrong
could do, was to shame her from dwelling on the thoughts which still
caught their breath of life from the undying devotion of the past;
which still perversely ascribed Frank's heartless farewell to any cause
but the inborn baseness of the man who had written it. The woman never
lived yet who could cast a true-love out of her heart because the
object of that love was unworthy of her. All she can do is to struggle
against it in secretto sink in the contest if she is weak; to win her
way through it if she is strong, by a process of self-laceration which
is, of all moral remedies applied to a woman's nature, the most
dangerous and the most desperate; of all moral changes, the change that
is surest to mark her for life. Magdalen's strong nature had sustained
her through the struggle; and the issue of it had left her what she now
was.
After sitting by the window for nearly an hour, her eyes looking
mechanically at the view, her mind empty of all impressions, and
conscious of no thoughts, she shook off the strange waking stupor that
possessed her, and rose to prepare herself for the serious business of
the day.
She went to the wardrobe and took down from the pegs two bright,
delicate muslin dresses, which had been made for summer wear at
Combe-Raven a year since, and which had been of too little value to be
worth selling when she parted with her other possessions. After placing
these dresses side by side on the bed, she looked into the wardrobe
once more. It only contained one other summer dressthe plain alpaca
gown which she had worn during her memorable interview with Noel
Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount. This she left in its place, resolving not to
wear itless from any dread that the housekeeper might recognize a
pattern too quiet to be noticed, and too common to be remembered, than
from the conviction that it was neither gay enough nor becoming enough
for her purpose. After taking a plain white muslin scarf, a pair of
light gray kid gloves, and a garden-hat of Tuscan straw, from the
drawers of the wardrobe, she locked it, and put the key carefully in
her pocket.
Instead of at once proceeding to dress herself, she sat idly looking at
the two muslin gowns; careless which she wore, and yet inconsistently
hesitating which to choose. "What does it matter!" she said to herself,
with a reckless laugh; "I am equally worthless in my own estimation,
whichever I put on." She shuddered, as if the sound of her own laughter
had startled her, and abruptly caught up the dress which lay nearest to
her hand. Its colors were blue and whitethe shade of blue which best
suited her fair complexion. She hurriedly put on the gown, without
going near her looking-glass. For the first time in her life she shrank
from meeting the reflection of herselfexcept for a moment, when she
arranged her hair under her garden-hat, leaving the glass again
immediately. She drew her scarf over her shoulders and fitted on her
gloves, with her back to the toilet-table. "Shall I paint?" she asked
herself, feeling instinctively that she was turning pale. "The rouge is
still left in my box. It can't make my face more false than it is
already." She looked round toward the glass, and again turned away from
it. "No!" she said. "I have Mrs. Lecount to face as well as her master.
No paint." After consulting her watch, she left the room and went
downstairs again. It wanted ten minutes only of two o'clock.
Captain Wragge was waiting for her in the parlorrespectable, in a
frock-coat, a stiff summer cravat, and a high white hat; specklessly
and cheerfully rural, in a buff waistcoat, gray trousers, and gaiters
to match. His collars were higher than ever, and he carried a brand-new
camp-stool in his hand. Any tradesman in England who had seen him at
that moment would have trusted him on the spot.
"Charming!" said the captain, paternally surveying Magdalen when she
entered the room. "So fresh and cool! A little too pale, my dear, and a
great deal too serious. Otherwise perfect. Try if you can smile."
"When the time comes for smiling," said Magdalen, bitterly, "trust my
dramatic training for any change of face that may be necessary. Where
is Mrs. Wragge?"
"Mrs. Wragge has learned her lesson," replied the captain, "and is
rewarded by my permission to sit at work in her own room. I sanction
her new fancy for dressmaking, because it is sure to absorb all her
attention, and to keep her at home. There is no fear of her finishing
the Oriental Robe in a hurry, for there is no mistake in the process of
making it which she is not certain to commit. She will sit incubating
her gownpardon the expressionlike a hen over an addled egg. I assure
you, her new whim relieves me. Nothing could be more convenient, under
existing circumstances."
He strutted away to the window, looked out, and beckoned to Magdalen to
join him. "There they are!" he said, and pointed to the Parade.
Noel Vanstone slowly walked by, as she looked, dressed in a complete
suit of old-fashioned nankeen. It was apparently one of the days when
the state of his health was at the worst. He leaned on Mrs. Lecount's
arm, and was protected from the sun by a light umbrella which she held
over him. The housekeeperdressed to perfection, as usual, in a quiet,
lavender-colored summer gown, a black mantilla, an unassuming straw
bonnet, and a crisp blue veilescorted her invalid master with the
tenderest attention; sometimes directing his notice respectfully to the
various objects of the sea view; sometimes bending her head in graceful
acknowledgment of the courtesy of passing strangers on the Parade, who
stepped aside to let the invalid pass by. She produced a visible effect
among the idlers on the beach. They looked after her with unanimous
interest, and exchanged confidential nods of approval which said, as
plainly as words could have expressed it, "A very domestic person! a
truly superior woman!"
Captain Wragge's party-colored eyes followed Mrs. Lecount with a
steady, distrustful attention. "Tough work for us there," he
whispered in Magdalen's ear; "tougher work than you think, before we
turn that woman out of her place."
"Wait," said Magdalen, quietly. "Wait and see."
She walked to the door. The captain followed her without making any
further remark. "I'll wait till you're married," he thought to
himself"not a moment longer, offer me what you may."
At the house door Magdalen addressed him again.
"We will go that way," she said, pointing southward, "then turn, and
meet them as they come back."
Captain Wragge signified his approval of the arrangement, and followed
Magdalen to the garden gate. As she opened it to pass through, her
attention was attracted by a lady, with a nursery-maid and two little
boys behind her, loitering on the path outside the garden wall. The
lady started, looked eagerly, and smiled to herself as Magdalen came
out. Curiosity had got the better of Kirke's sister, and she had come
to Aldborough for the express purpose of seeing Miss Bygrave.
Something in the shape of the lady's face, something in the expression
of her dark eyes, reminded Magdalen of the merchant-captain whose
uncontrolled admiration had annoyed her on the previous evening. She
instantly returned the stranger's scrutiny by a frowning, ungracious
look. The lady colored, paid the look back with interest, and slowly
walked on.
"A hard, bold, bad girl," thought Kirke's sister. "What could Robert be
thinking of to admire her? I am almost glad he is gone. I hope and
trust he will never set eyes on Miss Bygrave again."
"What boors the people are here!" said Magdalen to Captain Wragge.
"That woman was even ruder than the man last night. She is like him in
the face. I wonder who she is?"
"I'll find out directly," said the captain. "We can't be too cautious
about strangers." He at once appealed to his friends, the boatmen. They
were close at hand, and Magdalen heard the questions and answers
plainly.
"How are you all this morning?" said Captain Wragge, in his easy
jocular way. "And how's the wind? Nor'-west and by west, is it? Very
good. Who is that lady?"
"That's Mrs. Strickland, sir."
"Ay! ay! The clergyman's wife and the captain's sister. Where's the
captain to-day?"
"On his way to London, I should think, sir. His ship sails for China at
the end of the week."
China! As that one word passed the man's lips, a pang of the old sorrow
struck Magdalen to the heart. Stranger as he was, she began to hate the
bare mention of the merchant-captain's name. He had troubled her dreams
of the past night; and now, when she was most desperately and
recklessly bent on forgetting her old home-existence, he had been
indirectly the cause of recalling her mind to Frank.
"Come!" she said, angrily, to her companion. "What do we care about the
man or his ship? Come away."
"By all means," said Captain Wragge. "As long as we don't find friends
of the Bygraves, what do we care about anybody?"
They walked on southward for ten minutes or more, then turned and
walked back again to meet Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.
CHAPTER IV.
Captain Wragge and Magdalen retraced their steps until they were again
within view of North Shingles Villa before any signs appeared of Mrs.
Lecount and her master. At that point the housekeeper's
lavender-colored dress, the umbrella, and the feeble little figure in
nankeen walking under it, became visible in the distance. The captain
slackened his pace immediately, and issued his directions to Magdalen
for her conduct at the coming interview in these words:
"Don't forget your smile," he said. "In all other respects you will do.
The walk has improved your complexion, and the hat becomes you. Look
Mrs. Lecount steadily in the face; show no embarrassment when you
speak; and if Mr. Noel Vanstone pays you pointed attention, don't take
too much notice of him while his housekeeper's eye is on you. Mind one
thing! I have been at Joyce's Scientific Dialogues all the morning; and
I am quite serious in meaning to give Mrs. Lecount the full benefit of
my studies. If I can't contrive to divert her attention from you and
her master, I won't give sixpence for our chance of success. Small-talk
won't succeed with that woman; compliments won't succeed; jokes won't
succeedready-made science may recall the deceased professor, and
ready-made science may do. We must establish a code of signals to let
you know what I am about. Observe this camp-stool. When I shift it from
my left hand to my right, I am talking Joyce. When I shift it from my
right hand to my left, I am talking Wragge. In the first case, don't
interrupt meI am leading up to my point. In the second case, say
anything you like; my remarks are not of the slightest consequence.
Would you like a rehearsal? Are you sure you understand? Very goodtake
my arm, and look happy. Steady! here they are."
The meeting took place nearly midway between Sea-view Cottage and North
Shingles. Captain Wragge took off his tall white hat and opened the
interview immediately on the friendliest terms.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Lecount," he said, with the frank and cheerful
politeness of a naturally sociable man. "Good-morning, Mr. Vanstone; I
am sorry to see you suffering to-day. Mrs. Lecount, permit me to
introduce my niecemy niece, Miss Bygrave. My dear girl, this is Mr.
Noel Vanstone, our neighbor at Sea-view Cottage. We must positively be
sociable at Aldborough, Mrs. Lecount. There is only one walk in the
place (as my niece remarked to me just now, Mr. Vanstone); and on that
walk we must all meet every time we go out. And why not? Are we formal
people on either side? Nothing of the sort; we are just the reverse.
You possess the Continental facility of manner, Mr. VanstoneI match
you with the blunt cordiality of an old-fashioned Englishmanthe ladies
mingle together in harmonious variety, like flowers on the same bedand
the result is a mutual interest in making our sojourn at the sea-side
agreeable to each other. Pardon my flow of spirits; pardon my feeling
so cheerful and so young. The Iodine in the sea-air, Mrs. Lecountthe
notorious effect of the Iodine in the sea-air!"
"You arrived yesterday, Miss Bygrave, did you not?" said the
housekeeper, as soon as the captain's deluge of language had come to an
end.
She addressed those words to Magdalen with a gentle motherly interest
in her youth and beauty, chastened by the deferential amiability which
became her situation in Noel Vanstone's household. Not the faintest
token of suspicion or surprise betrayed itself in her face, her voice,
or her manner, while she and Magdalen now looked at each other. It was
plain at the outset that the true face and figure which she now saw
recalled nothing to her mind of the false face and figure which she had
seen in Vauxhall Walk. The disguise had evidently been complete enough
even to baffle the penetration of Mrs. Lecount.
"My aunt and I came here yesterday evening," said Magdalen. "We found
the latter part of the journey very fatiguing. I dare say you found it
so, too?"
She designedly made her answer longer than was necessary for the
purpose of discovering, at the earliest opportunity, the effect which
the sound of her voice produced on Mrs. Lecount.
The housekeeper's thin lips maintained their motherly smile; the
housekeeper's amiable manner lost none of its modest deference, but the
expression of her eyes suddenly changed from a look of attention to a
look of inquiry. Magdalen quietly said a few words more, and then
waited again for results. The change spread gradually all over Mrs.
Lecount's face, the motherly smile died away, and the amiable manner
betrayed a slight touch of restraint. Still no signs of positive
recognition appeared; the housekeeper's expression remained what it had
been from the firstan expression of inquiry, and nothing more.
"You complained of fatigue, sir, a few minutes since," she said,
dropping all further conversation with Magdalen and addressing her
master. "Will you go indoors and rest?"
The proprietor of Sea-view Cottage had hitherto confined himself to
bowing, simpering and admiring Magdalen through his half-closed
eyelids. There was no mistaking the sudden flutter and agitation in his
manner, and the heightened color in his wizen little face. Even the
reptile temperament of Noel Vanstone warmed under the influence of the
sex: he had an undeniably appreciative eye for a handsome woman, and
Magdalen's grace and beauty were not thrown away on him.
"Will you go indoors, sir, and rest?" asked the housekeeper, repeating
her quest ion.
"Not yet, Lecount," said her master. "I fancy I feel stronger; I fancy
I can go on a little." He turned simpering to Magdalen, and added, in a
lower tone: "I have found a new interest in my walk, Miss Bygrave.
Don't desert us, or you will take the interest away with you."
He smiled and smirked in the highest approval of the ingenuity of his
own complimentfrom which Captain Wragge dexterously diverted the
housekeeper's attention by ranging himself on her side of the path and
speaking to her at the same moment. They all four walked on slowly.
Mrs. Lecount said nothing more. She kept fast hold of her master's arm,
and looked across him at Magdalen with the dangerous expression of
inquiry more marked than ever in her handsome black eyes. That look was
not lost on the wary Wragge. He shifted his indicative camp-stool from
the left hand to the right, and opened his scientific batteries on the
spot.
"A busy scene, Mrs. Lecount," said the captain, politely waving his
camp-stool over the sea and the passing ships. "The greatness of
England, ma'amthe true greatness of England. Pray observe how heavily
some of those vessels are laden! I am often inclined to wonder whether
the British sailor is at all aware, when he has got his cargo on board,
of the Hydrostatic importance of the operation that he has performed.
If I were suddenly transported to the deck of one of those ships (which
Heaven forbid, for I suffer at sea); and if I said to a member of the
crew: 'Jack! you have done wonders; you have grasped the Theory of
Floating Vessels'how the gallant fellow would stare! And yet on that
theory Jack's life depends. If he loads his vessel one-thirtieth part
more than he ought, what happens? He sails past Aldborough, I grant
you, in safety. He enters the Thames, I grant you again, in safety. He
gets on into the fresh water as far, let us say, as Greenwich; anddown
he goes! Down, ma'am, to the bottom of the river, as a matter of
scientific certainty!"
Here he paused, and left Mrs. Lecount no polite alternative but to
request an explanation.
"With infinite pleasure, ma'am," said the captain, drowning in the
deepest notes of his voice the feeble treble in which Noel Vanstone
paid his compliments to Magdalen. "We will start, if you please, with a
first principle. All bodies whatever that float on the surface of the
water displace as much fluid as is equal in weight to the weight of the
bodies. Good. We have got our first principle. What do we deduce from
it? Manifestly this: That, in order to keep a vessel above water, it is
necessary to take care that the vessel and its cargo shall be of less
weight than the weight of a quantity of waterpray follow me here!of a
quantity of water equal in bulk to that part of the vessel which it
will be safe to immerse in the water. Now, ma'am, salt-water is
specifically thirty times heavier than fresh or river water, and a
vessel in the German Ocean will not sink so deep as a vessel in the
Thames. Consequently, when we load our ship with a view to the London
market, we have (Hydrostatically speaking) three alternatives. Either
we load with one-thirtieth part less than we can carry at sea; or we
take one-thirtieth part out at the mouth of the river; or we do neither
the one nor the other, and, as I have already had the honor of
remarkingdown we go! Such," said the captain, shifting the camp-stool
back again from his right hand to his left, in token that Joyce was
done with for the time being; "such, my dear madam, is the Theory of
Floating Vessels. Permit me to add, in conclusion, you are heartily
welcome to it."
"Thank you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "You have unintentionally saddened
me; but the information I have received is not the less precious on
that account. It is long, long ago, Mr. Bygrave, since I have heard
myself addressed in the language of science. My dear husband made me
his companionmy dear husband improved my mind as you have been trying
to improve it. Nobody has taken pains with my intellect since. Many
thanks, sir. Your kind consideration for me is not thrown away."
She sighed with a plaintive humility, and privately opened her ears to
the conversation on the other side of her.
A minute earlier she would have heard her master expressing himself in
the most flattering terms on the subject of Miss Bygrave's appearance
in her sea-side costume. But Magdalen had seen Captain Wragge's signal
with the camp-stool, and had at once diverted Noel Vanstone to the
topic of himself and his possessions by a neatly-timed question about
his house at Aldborough.
"I don't wish to alarm you, Miss Bygrave," were the first words of Noel
Vanstone's which caught Mrs. Lecount's attention, "but there is only
one safe house in Aldborough, and that house is mine. The sea may
destroy all the other housesit can't destroy Mine. My father took care
of that; my father was a remarkable man. He had My house built on
piles. I have reason to believe they are the strongest piles in
England. Nothing can possibly knock them downI don't care what the sea
doesnothing can possibly knock them down."
"Then, if the sea invades us," said Magdalen, "we must all run for
refuge to you."
Noel Vanstone saw his way to another compliment; and, at the same
moment, the wary captain saw his way to another burst of science.
"I could almost wish the invasion might happen," murmured one of the
gentlemen, "to give me the happiness of offering the refuge."
"I could almost swear the wind had shifted again!" exclaimed the other.
"Where is a man I can ask? Oh, there he is. Boatman! How's the wind
now? Nor'west and by west stillhey? And southeast and by south
yesterday eveningha? Is there anything more remarkable, Mrs. Lecount,
than the variableness of the wind in this climate?" proceeded the
captain, shifting the camp-stool to the scientific side of him. "Is
there any natural phenomenon more bewildering to the scientific
inquirer? You will tell me that the electric fluid which abounds in the
air is the principal cause of this variableness. You will remind me of
the experiment of that illustrious philosopher who measured the
velocity of a great storm by a flight of small feathers. My dear madam,
I grant all your propositions"
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Mrs. Lecount; "you kindly attribute to
me a knowledge that I don't possess. Propositions, I regret to say, are
quite beyond me."
"Don't misunderstand me, ma'am," continued the captain, politely
unconscious of the interruption. "My remarks apply to the temperate
zone only. Place me on the coasts beyond the tropicsplace me where the
wind blows toward the shore in the day-time, and toward the sea by
nightand I instantly advance toward conclusive experiments. For
example, I know that the heat of the sun during the day rarefies the
air over the land, and so causes the wind. You challenge me to prove
it. I escort you down the kitchen stairs (with your kind permission);
take my largest pie-dish out of the cook's hands; I fill it with cold
water. Good! that dish of cold water represents the ocean. I next
provide myself with one of our most precious domestic conveniences, a
hot-water plate; I fill it with hot water and I put it in the middle of
the pie-dish. Good again! the hot-water plate represents the land
rarefying the air over it. Bear that in mind, and give me a lighted
candle. I hold my lighted candle over the cold water, and blow it out.
The smoke immediately moves from the dish to the plate. Before you have
time to express your satisfaction, I light the candle once more, and
reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the pie-dish with hot-water, and
the plate with cold; I blow the candle out again, and the smoke moves
this time from the plate to the dish. The smell is disagreeablebut the
experiment is conclusive."
He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount with
his ingratiating smile. "You don't find me long-winded, ma'amdo you?"
he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the housekeeper was
privately opening her ears once more to the conversation on the other
side of her.
"I am amazed, sir, by the range of your information," replied Mrs.
Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexitybut thus far with
no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an Englishman, and
possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had at least paid her
the implied compliment of addressing that knowledge to herself; and she
felt it the more sensibly, from having hitherto found her scientific
sympathies with her deceased husband treated with no great respect by
the people with whom she came in contact. "Have you extended your
inquiries, sir," she proceeded, after a momentary hesitation, "to my
late husband's branch of science? I merely ask, Mr. Bygrave, because
(though I am only a woman) I think I might exchange ideas with you on
the subject of the reptile creation."
Captain Wragge was far too sharp to risk his ready-made science on the
enemy's ground. The old militia-man shook his wary head.
"Too vast a subject, ma'am," he said, "for a smatterer like me. The
life and labors of such a philosopher as your husband, Mrs. Lecount,
warn men of my intellectual caliber not to measure themselves with a
giant. May I inquire," proceeded the captain, softly smoothing the way
for future intercourse with Sea-view Cottage, "whether you possess any
scientific memorials of the late Professor?"
"I possess his Tank, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, modestly casting her eyes
on the ground, "and one of his Subjectsa little foreign Toad."
"His Tank!" exclaimed the captain, in tones of mournful interest; "and
his Toad! Pardon my blunt way of speaking my mind, ma'am. You possess
an object of public interest; and, as one of the public, I acknowledge
my curiosity to see it."
Mrs. Lecount's smooth cheeks colored with pleasure. The one assailable
place in that cold and secret nature was the place occupied by the
memory of the Professor. Her pride in his scientific achievements, and
her mortification at finding them but little known out of his own
country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain Wragge burned his
adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human vanity to better
purpose than he was burning it now.
"You are very good, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "In honoring my husband's
memory, you honor me. But though you kindly treat me on a footing of
equality, I must not forget that I fill a domestic situation. I shall
feel it a privilege to show you my relics, if you will allow me to ask
my master's permission first."
She turned to Noel Vanstone; her perfectly sincere intention of making
the proposed request, minglingin that strange complexity of motives
which is found so much oftener in a woman's mind than in a man'swith
her jealous distrust of the impression which Magdalen had produced on
her master.
"May I make a request, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount, after waiting a moment
to catch any fragments of tenderly-personal talk that might reach her,
and after being again neatly baffled by Magdalenthanks to the
camp-stool. "Mr. Bygrave is one of the few persons in England who
appreciate my husband's scientific labors. He honors me by wishing to
see my little world of reptiles. May I show it to him?"
"By all means, Lecount," said Noel Vanstone, graciously. "You are an
excellent creature, and I like to oblige you. Lecount's Tank, Mr.
Bygrave, is the only Tank in EnglandLecount's Toad is the oldest Toad
in the world. Will you come and drink tea at seven o'clock to-night?
And will you prevail on Miss Bygrave to accompany you? I want her to
see my house. I don't think she has any idea what a strong house it is.
Come and survey my premises, Miss Bygrave. You shall have a stick and
rap on the walls; you shall go upstairs and stamp on the floors, and
then you shall hear what it all cost." His eyes wrinkled up cunningly
at the corners, and he slipped another tender speech into Magdalen's
ear, under cover of the all-predominating voice in which Captain Wragge
thanked him for the invitation. "Come punctually at seven," he
whispered, "and pray wear that charming hat!"
Mrs. Lecount's lips closed ominously. She set down the captain's niece
as a very serious drawback to the intellectual luxury of the captain's
society.
"You are fatiguing yourself, sir," she said to her master. "This is one
of your bad days. Let me recommend you to be careful; let me beg you to
walk back."
Having carried his point by inviting the new acquaintances to tea, Noel
Vanstone proved to be unexpectedly docile. He acknowledged that he was
a little fatigued, and turned back at once in obedience to the
housekeeper's advice.
"Take my arm, sirtake my arm on the other side," said Captain Wragge,
as they turned to retrace their steps. His party-colored eyes looked
significantly at Magdalen while he spoke, and warned her not to stretch
Mrs. Lecount's endurance too far at starting. She instantly understood
him; and, in spite of Noel Vanstone's reiterated assertions that he
stood in no need of the captain's arm, placed herself at once by the
housekeeper's side. Mrs. Lecount recovered her good-humor, and opened
another conversation with Magdalen by making the one inquiry of all
others which, under existing circumstances, was the hardest to answer.
"I presume Mrs. Bygrave is too tired, after her journey, to come out
to-day?" said Mrs. Lecount. "Shall we have the pleasure of seeing her
tomorrow?"
"Probably not," replied Magdalen. "My aunt is in delicate health."
"A complicated case, my dear madam," added the captain; conscious that
Mrs. Wragge's personal appearance (if she happened to be seen by
accident) would offer the flattest of all possible contradictions to
what Magdalen had just said of her. "There is some remote nervous
mischief which doesn't express itself externally. You would think my
wife the picture of health if you looked at her, and yet, so delusive
are appearances, I am obliged to forbid her all excitement. She sees no
societyour medical attendant, I regret to say, absolutely prohibits
it."
"Very sad," said Mrs. Lecount. "The poor lady must often feel lonely,
sir, when you and your niece are away from her?"
"No," replied the captain. "Mrs. Bygrave is a naturally domestic woman.
When she is able to employ herself, she finds unlimited resources in
her needle and thread." Having reached this stage of the explanation,
and having purposely skirted, as it were, round the confines of truth,
in the event of the housekeeper's curiosity leading her to make any
private inquiries on the subject of Mrs. Wragge, the captain wisely
checked his fluent tongue from carrying him into any further details.
"I have great hope from the air of this place," he remarked, in
conclusion. "The Iodine, as I have already observed, does wonders."
Mrs. Lecount acknowledged the virtues of Iodine, in the briefest
possible form of words, and withdrew into the innermost sanctuary of
her own thoughts. "Some mystery here," said the housekeeper to herself.
"A lady who looks the picture of health; a lady who suffers from a
complicated nervous malady; and a lady whose hand is steady enough to
use her needle and threadis a living mass of contradictions I don't
quite understand. Do you make a long stay at Aldborough, sir?" she
added aloud, her eyes resting for a moment, in steady scrutiny, on the
captain's face.
"It all depends, my dear madam, on Mrs. Bygrave. I trust we shall stay
through the autumn. You are settled at Sea-view Cottage, I presume, for
the season?"
"You must ask my master, sir. It is for him to decide, not for me."
The answer was an unfortunate one. Noel Vanstone had been secretly
annoyed by the change in the walking arrangements, which had separated
him from Magdalen. He attributed that change to the meddling influence
of Mrs. Lecount, and he now took the earliest opportunity of resenting
it on the spot.
"I have nothing to do with our stay at Aldborough," he broke out,
peevishly. "You know as well as I do, Lecount, it all depends on you.
Mrs. Lecount has a brother in Switzerland," he went on, addressing
himself to the captain"a brother who is seriously ill. If he gets
worse, she will have to go there to see him. I can't accompany her, and
I can't be left in the house by myself. I shall have to break up my
establishment at Aldborough, and stay with some friends. It all depends
on you, Lecountor on your brother, which comes to the same thing. If
it depended on me," continued Mr. Noel Vanstone, looking pointedly at
Magdalen across the housekeeper, "I should stay at Aldborough all
through the autumn with the greatest pleasure. With the greatest
pleasure," he reiterated, repeating the words with a tender look for
Magdalen, and a spiteful accent for Mrs. Lecount.
Thus far Captain Wragge had remained silent; carefully noting in his
mind the promising possibilities of a separation between Mrs. Lecount
and her master which Noel Vanstone's little fretful outbreak had just
disclosed to him. An ominous trembling in the housekeeper's thin lips,
as her master openly exposed her family affairs before strangers, and
openly set her jealously at defiance, now warned him to interfere. If
the misunderstanding were permitted to proceed to extremities, there
was a chance that the invitation for that evening to Sea-view Cottage
might be put off. Now, as ever, equal to the occasion, Captain Wragge
called his useful information once more to the rescue. Under the
learned auspices of Joyce, he plunged, for the third time, into the
ocean of science, and brought up another pearl. He was still haranguing
(on Pneumatics this time), still improving Mrs. Lecount's mind with his
politest perseverance and his smoothest flow of languagewhen the
walking party stopped at Noel Vanstone's door.
"Bless my soul, here we are at your house, sir!" said the captain,
interrupting himself in the middle of one of his graphic sentences. "I
won't keep you standing a moment. Not a word of apology, Mrs. Lecount,
I beg and pray! I will put that curious point in Pneumatics more
clearly before you on a future occasion. In the meantime I need only
repeat that you can perform the experiment I have just mentioned to
your own entire satisfaction with a bladder, an exhausted receiver, and
a square box. At seven o'clock this evening, sirat seven o'clock, Mrs.
Lecount. We have had a remarkably pleasant walk, and a most instructive
interchange of ideas. Now, my dear girl, your aunt is waiting for us."
While Mrs. Lecount stepped aside to open the garden gate, Noel Vanstone
seized his opportunity and shot a last tender glance at Magdalen, under
shelter of the umbrella, which he had taken into his own hands for that
express purpose. "Don't forget," he said, with the sweetest smile;
"don't forget, when you come this evening, to wear that charming hat!"
Before he could add any last words, Mrs. Lecount glided back to her
place, and the sheltering umbrella changed hands again immediately.
"An excellent morning's work!" said Captain Wragge, as he and Magdalen
walked on together to North Shingles. "You and I and Joyce have all
three done wonders. We have secured a friendly invitation at the first
day's fishing for it."
He paused for an answer; and, receiving none, observed Magdalen more
attentively than he had observed her yet. Her face had turned deadly
pale again; her eyes looked out mechanically straight before her in
heedless, reckless despair.
"What is the matter?" he asked, with the greatest surprise. "Are you
ill?"
She made no reply; she hardly seemed to hear him.
"Are you getting alarmed about Mrs. Lecount?" he inquired next. "There
is not the least reason for alarm. She may fancy she has heard
something like your voice before, but your face evidently bewilders
her. Keep your temper, and you keep her in the dark. Keep her in the
dark, and you will put that two hundred pounds into my hands before the
autumn is over."
He waited again for an answer, and again she remained silent. The
captain tried for the third time in another direction.
"Did you get any letters this morning?" he went on. "Is there bad news
again from home? Any fresh difficulties with your sister?"
"Say nothing about my sister!" she broke out passionately. "Neither you
nor I are fit to speak of her."
She said those words at the garden-gate, and hurried into the house by
herself. He followed her, and heard the door of her own room violently
shut to, violently locked and double-locked. Solacing his indignation
by an oath, Captain Wragge sullenly went into one of the parlors on the
ground-floor to look after his wife. The room communicated with a
smaller and darker room at the back of the house by means of a quaint
little door with a window in the upper half of it. Softly approaching
this door, the captain lifted the white muslin curtain which hung over
the window, and looked into the inner room.
There was Mrs. Wragge, with her cap on one side, and her shoes down at
heel; with a row of pins between her teeth; with the Oriental Cashmere
Robe slowly slipping off the table; with her scissors suspended
uncertain in one hand, and her written directions for dressmaking held
doubtfully in the otherso absorbed over the invincible difficulties of
her employment as to be perfectly unconscious that she was at that
moment the object of her husband's superintending eye. Under other
circumstances she would have been soon brought to a sense of her
situation by the sound of his voice. But Captain Wragge was too anxious
about Magdalen to waste any time on his wife, after satisfying himself
that she was safe in her seclusion, and that she might be trusted to
remain there.
He left the parlor, and, after a little hesitation in the passage,
stole upstairs and listened anxiously outside Magdalen's door. A dull
sound of sobbinga sound stifled in her handkerchief, or stifled in the
bed-clotheswas all that caught his ear. He returned at once to the
ground-floor, with some faint suspicion of the truth dawning on his
mind at last.
"The devil take that sweetheart of hers!" thought the captain. "Mr.
Noel Vanstone has raised the ghost of him at starting."
CHAPTER V.
When Magdalen appeared in the parlor shortly before seven o'clock, not
a trace of discomposure was visible in her manner. She looked and spoke
as quietly and unconcernedly as usual.
The lowering distrust on Captain Wragge's face cleared away at the
sight of her. There had been moments during the afternoon when he had
seriously doubted whether the pleasure of satisfying the grudge he owed
to Noel Vanstone, and the prospect of earning the sum of two hundred
pounds, would not be dearly purchased by running the risk of discovery
to which Magdalen's uncertain temper might expose him at any hour of
the day. The plain proof now before him of her powers of self-control
relieved his mind of a serious anxiety. It mattered little to the
captain what she suffered in the privacy of her own chamber, as long as
she came out of it with a face that would bear inspection, and a voice
that betrayed nothing.
On the way to Sea-view Cottage, Captain Wragge expressed his intention
of asking the housekeeper a few sympathizing questions on the subject
of her invalid brother in Switzerland. He was of opinion that the
critical condition of this gentleman's health might exercise an
important influence on the future progress of the conspiracy. Any
chance of a separation, he remarked, between the housekeeper and her
master was, under existing circumstances, a chance which merited the
closest investigation. "If we can only get Mrs. Lecount out of the way
at the right time," whispered the captain, as he opened his host's
garden gate, "our man is caught!"
In a minute more Magdalen was again under Noel Vanstone's roof; this
time in the character of his own invited guest.
The proceedings of the evening were for the most part a repetition of
the proceedings during the morning walk. Noel Vanstone vibrated between
his admiration of Magdalen's beauty and his glorification of his own
possessions. Captain Wragge's inexhaustible outbursts of
informationrelieved by delicately-indirect inquiries relating to Mrs.
Lecount's brotherperpetually diverted the housekeeper's jealous
vigilance from dwelling on the looks and language of her master. So the
evening passed until ten o'clock. By that time the captain's ready-made
science was exhausted, and the housekeeper's temper was forcing its way
to the surface. Once more Captain Wragge warned Magdalen by a look,
and, in spite of Noel Vanstone's hospitable protest, wisely rose to say
good-night.
"I have got my information," remarked the captain on the way back.
"Mrs. Lecount's brother lives at Zurich. He is a bachelor; he possesses
a little money, and his sister is his nearest relation. If he will only
be so obliging as to break up altogether, he will save us a world of
trouble with Mrs. Lecount."
It was a fine moonlight night. He looked round at Magdalen, as he said
those words, to see if her intractable depression of spirits had seized
on her again.
No! her variable humor had changed once more. She looked about her with
a flaunting, feverish gayety; she scoffed at the bare idea of any
serious difficulty with Mrs. Lecount; she mimicked Noel Vanstone's
high-pitched voice, and repeated Noel Vanstone's high-flown
compliments, with a bitter enjoyment of turning him into ridicule.
Instead of running into the house as before, she sauntered carelessly
by her companion's side, humming little snatches of song, and kicking
the loose pebbles right and left on the garden-walk. Captain Wragge
hailed the change in her as the best of good omens. He thought he saw
plain signs that the family spirit was at last coming back again.
"Well," he said, as he lit her bedroom candle for her, "when we all
meet on the Parade tomorrow, we shall see, as our nautical friends say,
how the land lies. One thing I can tell you, my dear girlI have used
my eyes to very little purpose if there is not a storm brewing tonight
in Mr. Noel Vanstone's domestic atmosphere."
The captain's habitual penetration had not misled him. As soon as the
door of Sea-view Cottage was closed on the parting guests, Mrs. Lecount
made an effort to assert the authority which Magdalen's influence was
threatening already.
She employed every artifice of which she was mistress to ascertain
Magdalen's true position in Noel Vanstone's estimation. She tried again
and again to lure him into an unconscious confession of the pleasure
which he felt already in the society of the beautiful Miss Bygrave; she
twined herself in and out of every weakness in his character, as the
frogs and efts twined themselves in and out of the rock-work of her
Aquarium. But she made one serious mistake which very clever people in
their intercourse with their intellectual inferiors are almost
universally apt to commitshe trusted implicitly to the folly of a
fool. She forgot that one of the lowest of human qualitiescunningis
exactly the capacity which is often most largely developed in the
lowest of intellectual natures. If she had been honestly angry with her
master, she would probably have frightened him. If she had opened her
mind plainly to his view, she would have astonished him by presenting a
chain of ideas to his limited perceptions which they were not strong
enough to grasp; his curiosity would have led him to ask for an
explanation; and by practicing on that curiosity, she might have had
him at her mercy. As it was, she set her cunning against his, and the
fool proved a match for her. Noel Vanstone, to whom all large-minded
motives under heaven were inscrutable mysteries, saw the small-minded
motive at the bottom of his housekeeper's conduct with as instantaneous
a penetration as if he had been a man of the highest ability. Mrs.
Lecount left him for the night, foiled, and knowing she was foiledleft
him, with the tigerish side of her uppermost, and a low-lived longing
in her elegant finger-nails to set them in her master's face.
She was not a woman to be beaten by one defeat or by a hundred. She was
positively determined to think, and think again, until she had found a
means of checking the growing intimacy with the Bygraves at once and
forever. In the solitude of her own room she recovered her composure,
and set herself for the first time to review the conclusions which she
had gathered from the events of the day.
There was something vaguely familiar to her in the voice of this Miss
Bygrave, and, at the same time, in unaccountable contradiction,
something strange to her as well. The face and figure of the young lady
were entirely new to her. It was a striking face, and a striking
figure; and if she had seen either at any former period, she would
certainly have remembered it. Miss Bygrave was unquestionably a
stranger; and yet
She had got no further than this during the day; she could get no
further now: the chain of thought broke. Her mind took up the
fragments, and formed another chain which attached itself to the lady
who was kept in seclusionto the aunt, who looked well, and yet was
nervous; who was nervous, and yet able to ply her needle and thread. An
incomprehensible resemblance to some unremembered voice in the niece;
an unintelligible malady which kept the aunt secluded from public view;
an extraordinary range of scientific cultivation in the uncle,
associated with a coarseness and audacity of manner which by no means
suggested the idea of a man engaged in studious pursuitswere the
members of this small family of three what they seemed on the surface
of them?
With that question on her mind, she went to bed.
As soon as the candle was out, the darkness seemed to communicate some
inexplicable perversity to her thoughts. They wandered back from
present things to past, in spite of her. They brought her old master
back to life again; they revived forgotten sayings and doings in the
English circle at Zurich; they veered away to the old man's death-bed
at Brighton; they moved from Brighton to London; they entered the bare,
comfortless room at Vauxhall Walk; they set the Aquarium back in its
place on the kitchen table, and put the false Miss Garth in the chair
by the side of it, shading her inflamed eyes from the light; they
placed the anonymous letter, the letter which glanced darkly at a
conspiracy, in her hand again, and brought her with it into her
master's presence; they recalled the discussion about filling in the
blank space in the advertisement, and the quarrel that followed when
she told Noel Vanstone that the sum he had offered was preposterously
small; they revived an old doubt which had not troubled her for weeks
pasta doubt whether the threatened conspiracy had evaporated in mere
words, or whether she and her master were likely to hear of it again.
At this point her thoughts broke off once more, and there was a
momentary blank. The next instant she started up in bed; her heart
beating violently, her head whirling as if she had lost her senses.
With electric suddenness her mind pieced together its scattered
multitude of thoughts, and put them before her plainly under one
intelligible form. In the all-mastering agitation of the moment, she
clapped her hands together, and cried out suddenly in the darkness:
"Miss Vanstone again!!!"
She got out of bed and kindled the light once more. Steady as her
nerves were, the shock of her own suspicion had shaken them. Her firm
hand trembled as she opened her dressing-case and took from it a little
bottle of sal-volatile. In spite of her smooth cheeks and her
well-preserved hair, she looked every year of her age as she mixed the
spirit with water, greedily drank it, and, wrapping her dressing-gown
round her, sat down on the bedside to get possession again of her
calmer self.
She was quite incapable of tracing the mental process which had led her
to discovery. She could not get sufficiently far from herself to see
that her half-formed conclusions on the subject of the Bygraves had
ended in making that family objects of suspicion to her; that the
association of ideas had thereupon carried her mind back to that other
object of suspicion which was represented by the conspiracy against her
master; and that the two ideas of those two separate subjects of
distrust, coming suddenly in contact, had struck the light. She was not
able to reason back in this way from the effect to the cause. She could
only feel that the suspicion had become more than a suspicion already:
conviction itself could not have been more firmly rooted in her mind.
Looking back at Magdalen by the new light now thrown on her, Mrs.
Lecount would fain have persuaded herself that she recognized some
traces left of the false Miss Garth's face and figure in the graceful
and beautiful girl who had sat at her master's table hardly an hour
sincethat she found resemblances now, which she had never thought of
before, between the angry voice she had heard in Vauxhall Walk and the
smooth, well-bred tones which still hung on her ears after the
evening's experience downstairs. She would fain have persuaded herself
that she had reached these results with no undue straining of the truth
as she really knew it, but the effort was in vain.
Mrs. Lecount was not a woman to waste time and thought in trying to
impose on herself. She accepted the inevitable conclusion that the
guesswork of a moment had led her to discovery. And, more than that,
she recognized the plain truthunwelcome as it wasthat the conviction
now fixed in her own mind was thus far unsupported by a single fragment
of producible evidence to justify it to the minds of others.
Under these circumstances, what was the safe course to take with her
master?
If she candidly told him, when they met the next morning, what had
passed through her mind that night, her knowledge of Noel Vanstone
warned her that one of two results would certainly happen. Either he
would be angry and disputatious; would ask for proofs; and, finding
none forthcoming, would accuse her of alarming him without a cause, to
serve her own jealous end of keeping Magdalen out of the house; or he
would be seriously startled, would clamor for the protection of the
law, and would warn the Bygraves to stand on their defense at the
outset. If Magdalen only had been concerned in the plot this latter
consequence would have assumed no great importance in the housekeeper's
mind. But seeing the deception as she now saw it, she was far too
clever a woman to fail in estimating the captain's inexhaustible
fertility of resource at its true value. "If I can't meet this impudent
villain with plain proofs to help me," thought Mrs. Lecount, "I may
open my master's eyes to-morrow morning, and Mr. Bygrave will shut them
up again before night. The rascal is playing with all his own cards
under the table, and he will win the game to a certainty, if he sees my
hand at starting."
This policy of waiting was so manifestly the wise policythe wily Mr.
Bygrave was so sure to have provided himself, in case of emergency,
with evidence to prove the identity which he and his niece had assumed
for their purposethat Mrs. Lecount at once decided to keep her own
counsel the next morning, and to pause before attacking the conspiracy
until she could produce unanswerable facts to help her. Her master's
acquaintance with the Bygraves was only an acquaintance of one day's
standing. There was no fear of its developing into a dangerous intimacy
if she merely allowed it to continue for a few days more, and if she
permanently checked it, at the latest, in a week's time.
In that period what measures could she take to remove the obstacles
which now stood in her way, and to provide herself with the weapons
which she now wanted?
Reflection showed her three different chances in her favorthree
different ways of arriving at the necessary discovery.
The first chance was to cultivate friendly terms with Magdalen, and
then, taking her unawares, to entrap her into betraying herself in Noel
Vanstone's presence. The second chance was to write to the elder Miss
Vanstone, and to ask (with some alarming reason for putting the
question) for information on the subject of her younger sister's
whereabouts, and of any peculiarities in her personal appearance which
might enable a stranger to identify her. The third chance was to
penetrate the mystery of Mrs. Bygrave's seclusion, and to ascertain at
a personal interview whether the invalid lady's real complaint might
not possibly be a defective capacity for keeping her husband's secrets.
Resolving to try all three chances, in the order in which they are here
enumerated, and to set her snares for Magdalen on the day that was now
already at hand, Mrs. Lecount at last took off her dressing-gown and
allowed her weaker nature to plead with her for a little sleep.
The dawn was breaking over the cold gray sea as she lay down in her bed
again. The last idea in her mind before she fell asleep was
characteristic of the womanit was an idea that threatened the captain.
"He has trifled with the sacred memory of my husband," thought the
Professor's widow. "On my life and honor, I will make him pay for it."
Early the next morning Magdalen began the day, according to her
agreement with the captain, by taking Mrs. Wragge out for a little
exercise at an hour when there was no fear of her attracting the public
attention. She pleaded hard to be left at home; having the Oriental
Cashmere Robe still on her mind, and feeling it necessary to read her
directions for dressmaking, for the hundredth time at least, before (to
use her own expression) she could "screw up her courage to put the
scissors into the stuff." But her companion would take no denial, and
she was forced to go out. The one guileless purpose of the life which
Magdalen now led was the resolution that poor Mrs. Wragge should not be
made a prisoner on her account; and to that resolution she mechanically
clung, as the last token left her by which she knew her better-self.
They returned later than usual to breakfast. While Mrs. Wragge was
upstairs, straightening herself from head to foot to meet the morning
inspection of her husband's orderly eye; and while Magdalen and the
captain were waiting for her in the parlor, the servant came in with a
note from Sea-view Cottage. The messenger was waiting for an answer,
and the note was addressed to Captain Wragge.
The captain opened the note and read these lines:
"DEAR SIR,
Mr. Noel Vanstone desires me to write and tell you that he proposes
enjoying this fine day by taking a long drive to a place on the
coast here called Dunwich. He is anxious to know if you will share
the expense of a carriage, and give him the pleasure of your
company and Miss Bygrave's company on this excursion. I am kindly
permitted to be one of the party; and if I may say so without
impropriety, I would venture to add that I shall feel as much
pleasure as my master if you and your young lady will consent to
join us. We propose leaving Aldborough punctually at eleven
o'clock.
"Believe me, dear sir,
"your humble servant,
"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."
"Who is the letter from?" asked Magdalen, noticing a change in Captain
Wragge's face as he read it. "What do they want with us at Sea-view
Cottage?"
"Pardon me," said the captain, gravely, "this requires consideration.
Let me have a minute or two to think."
He took a few turns up and down the room, then suddenly stepped aside
to a table in a corner on which his writing materials were placed. "I
was not born yesterday, ma'am!" said the captain, speaking jocosely to
himself. He winked his brown eye, took up his pen, and wrote the
answer.
"Can you speak now?" inquired Magdalen, when the servant had left the
room. "What does that letter say, and how have you answered it?"
The captain placed the letter in her hand. "I have accepted the
invitation," he replied, quietly.
Magdalen read the letter. "Hidden enmity yesterday," she said, "and
open friendship to-day. What does it mean?"
"It means," said Captain Wragge, "that Mrs. Lecount is even sharper
than I thought her. She has found you out."
"Impossible," cried Magdalen. "Quite impossible in the time."
"I can't say how she has found you out," proceeded the captain, with
perfect composure. "She may know more of your voice than we supposed
she knew. Or she may have thought us, on reflection, rather a
suspicious family; and anything suspicious in which a woman was
concerned may have taken her mind back to that morning call of yours in
Vauxhall Walk. Whichever way it may be, the meaning of this sudden
change is clear enough. She has found you out; and she wants to put her
discovery to the proof by slipping in an awkward question or two, under
cover of a little friendly talk. My experience of humanity has been a
varied one, and Mrs. Lecount is not the first sharp practitioner in
petticoats whom I have had to deal with. All the world's a stage, my
dear girl, and one of the scenes on our little stage is shut in from
this moment."
With those words he took his copy of Joyce's Scientific Dialogues out
of his pocket. "You're done with already, my friend!" said the captain,
giving his useful information a farewell smack with his hand, and
locking it up in the cupboard. "Such is human popularity!" continued
the indomitable vagabond, putting the key cheerfully in his pocket.
"Yesterday Joyce was my all-in-all. To-day I don't care that for him!"
He snapped his fingers and sat down to breakfast.
"I don't understand you," said Magdalen, looking at him angrily. "Are
you leaving me to my own resources for the future?"
"My dear girl!" cried Captain Wragge, "can't you accustom yourself to
my dash of humor yet? I have done with my ready-made science simply
because I am quite sure that Mrs. Lecount has done believing in me.
Haven't I accepted the invitation to Dunwich? Make your mind easy. The
help I have given you already counts for nothing compared with the help
I am going to give you now. My honor is concerned in bowling out Mrs.
Lecount. This last move of hers has made it a personal matter between
us. The woman actually thinks she can take me in!!!" cried the
captain, striking his knife-handle on the table in a transport of
virtuous indignation. "By heavens, I never was so insulted before in my
life! Draw your chair in to the table, my dear, and give me half a
minute's attention to what I have to say next."
Magdalen obeyed him. Captain Wragge cautiously lowered his voice before
he went on.
"I have told you all along," he said, "the one thing needful is never
to let Mrs. Lecount catch you with your wits wool-gathering. I say the
same after what has happened this morning. Let her suspect you! I defy
her to find a fragment of foundation for her suspicions, unless we help
her. We shall see to-day if she has been foolish enough to betray
herself to her master before she has any facts to support her. I doubt
it. If she has told him, we will rain down proofs of our identity with
the Bygraves on his feeble little head till it absolutely aches with
conviction. You have two things to do on this excursion. First, to
distrust every word Mrs. Lecount says to you. Secondly, to exert all
your fascinations, and make sure of Mr. Noel Vanstone, dating from
to-day. I will give you the opportunity when we leave the carriage and
take our walk at Dunwich. Wear your hat, wear your smile; do your
figure justice, lace tight; put on your neatest boots and brightest
gloves; tie the miserable little wretch to your apron-stringtie him
fast; and leave the whole management of the matter after that to me.
Steady! here is Mrs. Wragge: we must be doubly careful in looking after
her now. Show me your cap, Mrs. Wragge! show me your shoes! What do I
see on your apron? A spot? I won't have spots! Take it off after
breakfast, and put on another. Pull your chair to the middle of the
tablemore to the leftmore still. Make the breakfast."
At a quarter before eleven Mrs. Wragge (with her own entire
concurrence) was dismissed to the back room, to bewilder herself over
the science of dressmaking for the rest of the day. Punctually as the
clock struck the hour, Mrs. Lecount and her master drove up to the gate
of North Shingles, and found Magdalen and Captain Wragge waiting for
them in the garden.
On the way to Dunwich nothing occurred to disturb the enjoyment of the
drive. Noel Vanstone was in excellent health and high good-humor.
Lecount had apologized for the little misunderstanding of the previous
night; Lecount had petitioned for the excursion as a treat to herself.
He thought of these concessions, and looked at Magdalen, and smirked
and simpered without intermission. Mrs. Lecount acted her part to
perfection. She was motherly with Magdalen and tenderly attentive to
Noel Vanstone. She was deeply interested in Captain Wragge's
conversation, and meekly disappointed to find it turn on general
subjects, to the exclusion of science. Not a word or look escaped her
which hinted in the remotest degree at her real purpose. She was
dressed with her customary elegance and propriety; and she was the only
one of the party on that sultry summer's day who was perfectly cool in
the hottest part of the journey.
As they left the carriage on their arrival at Dunwich, the captain
seized a moment when Mrs. Lecount's eye was off him and fortified
Magdalen by a last warning word.
"'Ware the cat!" he whispered. "She will show her claws on the way
back."
They left the village and walked to the ruins of a convent near at
handthe last relic of the once populous city of Dunwich which has
survived the destruction of the place, centuries since, by the
all-devouring sea. After looking at the ruins, they sought the shade of
a little wood between the village and the low sand-hills which overlook
the German Ocean. Here Captain Wragge maneuvered so as to let Magdalen
and Noel Vanstone advance some distance in front of Mrs. Lecount and
himself, took the wrong path, and immediately lost his way with the
most consummate dexterity. After a few minutes' wandering (in the wrong
direction), he reached an open space near the sea; and politely opening
his camp-stool for the housekeeper's accommodation, proposed waiting
where they were until the missing members of the party came that way
and discovered them.
Mrs. Lecount accepted the proposal. She was perfectly well aware that
her escort had lost himself on purpose, but that discovery exercised no
disturbing influence on the smooth amiability of her manner. Her day of
reckoning with the captain had not come yetshe merely added the new
item to her list, and availed herself of the camp-stool. Captain Wragge
stretched himself in a romantic attitude at her feet, and the two
determined enemies (grouped like two lovers in a picture) fell into as
easy and pleasant a conversation as if they had been friends of twenty
years' standing.
"I know you, ma'am!" thought the captain, while Mrs. Lecount was
talking to him. "You would like to catch me tripping in my ready-made
science, and you wouldn't object to drown me in the Professor's Tank!"
"You villain with the brown eye and the green!" thought Mrs. Lecount,
as the captain caught the ball of conversation in his turn; "thick as
your skin is, I'll sting you through it yet!"
In this frame of mind toward each other they talked fluently on general
subjects, on public affairs, on local scenery, on society in England
and society in Switzerland, on health, climate, books, marriage and
moneytalked, without a moment's pause, without a single
misunderstanding on either side for nearly an hour, before Magdalen and
Noel Vanstone strayed that way and made the party of four complete
again.
When they reached the inn at which the carriage was waiting for them,
Captain Wragge left Mrs. Lecount in undisturbed possession of her
master, and signed to Magdalen to drop back for a moment and speak to
him.
"Well?" asked the captain, in a whisper, "is he fast to your
apron-string?"
She shuddered from head to foot as she answered.
"He has kissed my hand," she said. "Does that tell you enough? Don't
let him sit next me on the way home! I have borne all I can bearspare
me for the rest of the day."
"I'll put you on the front seat of the carriage," replied the captain,
"side by side with me."
On the journey back Mrs. Lecount verified Captain Wragge's prediction.
She showed her claws.
The time could not have been better chosen; the circumstances could
hardly have favored her more. Magdalen's spirits were depressed: she
was weary in body and mind; and she sat exactly opposite the
housekeeper, who had been compelled, by the new arrangement, to occupy
the seat of honor next her master. With every facility for observing
the slightest changes that passed over Magdalen's face, Mrs. Lecount
tried her first experiment by leading the conversation to the subject
of London, and to the relative advantages offered to residents by the
various quarters of the metropolis on both sides of the river. The
ever-ready Wragge penetrated her intention sooner than she had
anticipated, and interposed immediately. "You're coming to Vauxhall
Walk, ma'am," thought the captain; "I'll get there before you."
He entered at once into a purely fictitious description of the various
quarters of London in which he had himself resided; and, adroitly
mentioning Vauxhall Walk as one of them, saved Magdalen from the sudden
question relating to that very locality with which Mrs. Lecount had
proposed startling her, to begin with. From his residences he passed
smoothly to himself, and poured his whole family history (in the
character of Mr. Bygrave) into the housekeeper's earsnot forgetting
his brother's grave in Honduras, with the monument by the self-taught
negro artist, and his brother's hugely corpulent widow, on the
ground-floor of the boarding-house at Cheltenham. As a means of giving
Magdalen time to compose herself, this outburst of autobiographical
information attained its object, but it answered no other purpose. Mrs.
Lecount listened, without being imposed on by a single word the captain
said to her. He merely confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of
taking Noel Vanstone into her confidence before she had facts to help
her against Captain Wragge's otherwise unassailable position in the
identity which he had assumed. She quietly waited until he had done,
and then returned to the charge.
"It is a coincidence that your uncle should have once resided in
Vauxhall Walk," she said, addressing herself to Magdalen. "Mr. Noel has
a house in the same place, and we lived there before we came to
Aldborough. May I inquire, Miss Bygrave, whether you know anything of a
lady named Miss Garth?"
This time she put the question before the captain could interfere.
Magdalen ought to have been prepared for it by what had already passed
in her presence, but her nerves had been shaken by the earlier events
of the day; and she could only answer the question in the negative,
after an instant's preliminary pause to control herself. Her hesitation
was of too momentary a nature to attract the attention of any
unsuspicious person. But it lasted long enough to confirm Mrs.
Lecount's private convictions, and to encourage her to advance a little
further.
"I only asked," she continued, steadily fixing her eyes on Magdalen,
steadily disregarding the efforts which Captain Wragge made to join in
the conversation, "because Miss Garth is a stranger to me, and I am
curious to find out what I can about her. The day before we left town,
Miss Bygrave, a person who presented herself under the name I have
mentioned paid us a visit under very extraordinary circumstances."
With a smooth, ingratiating manner, with a refinement of contempt which
was little less than devilish in its ingenious assumption of the
language of pity, she now boldly described Magdalen's appearance in
disguise in Magdalen's own presence. She slightingly referred to the
master and mistress of Combe-Raven as persons who had always annoyed
the elder and more respectable branch of the family; she mourned over
the children as following their parents' example, and attempting to
take a mercenary advantage of Mr. Noel Vanstone, under the protection
of a respectable person's character and a respectable person's name.
Cleverly including her master in the conversation, so as to prevent the
captain from effecting a diversion in that quarter; sparing no petty
aggravation; striking at every tender place which the tongue of a
spiteful woman can wound, she would, beyond all doubt, have carried her
point, and tortured Magdalen into openly betraying herself, if Captain
Wragge had not checked her in full career by a loud exclamation of
alarm, and a sudden clutch at Magdalen's wrist.
"Ten thousand pardons, my dear madam!" cried the captain. "I see in my
niece's face, I feel in my niece's pulse, that one of her violent
neuralgic attacks has come on again. My dear girl, why hesitate among
friends to confess that you are in pain? What mistimed politeness! Her
face shows she is sufferingdoesn't it Mrs. Lecount? Darting pains, Mr.
Vanstone, darting pains on the left side of the head. Pull down your
veil, my dear, and lean on me. Our friends will excuse you; our
excellent friends will excuse you for the rest of the day."
Before Mrs. Lecount could throw an instant's doubt on the genuineness
of the neuralgic attack, her master's fidgety sympathy declared itself
exactly as the captain had anticipated, in the most active
manifestations. He stopped the carriage, and insisted on an immediate
change in the arrangement of the placesthe comfortable back seat for
Miss Bygrave and her uncle, the front seat for Lecount and himself. Had
Lecount got her smelling-bottle? Excellent creature! let her give it
directly to Miss Bygrave, and let the coachman drive carefully. If the
coachman shook Miss Bygrave he should not have a half-penny for
himself. Mesmerism was frequently useful in these cases. Mr. Noel
Vanstone's father had been the most powerful mesmerist in Europe, and
Mr. Noel Vanstone was his father's son. Might he mesmerize? Might he
order that infernal coachman to draw up in a shady place adapted for
the purpose? Would medical help be preferred? Could medical help be
found any nearer than Aldborough? That ass of a coachman didn't know.
Stop every respectable man who passed in a gig, and ask him if he was a
doctor! So Mr. Noel Vanstone ran on, with brief intervals for
breathing-time, in a continually-ascending scale of sympathy and
self-importance, throughout the drive home.
Mrs. Lecount accepted her defeat without uttering a word. From the
moment when Captain Wragge interrupted her, her thin lips closed and
opened no more for the remainder of the journey. The warmest
expressions of her master's anxiety for the suffering young lady
provoked from her no outward manifestations of anger. She took as
little notice of him as possible. She paid no attention whatever to the
captain, whose exasperating consideration for his vanquished enemy made
him more polite to her than ever. The nearer and the nearer they got to
Aldborough the more and more fixedly Mrs. Lecount's hard black eyes
looked at Magdalen reclining on the opposite seat, with her eyes closed
and her veil down.
It was only when the carriage stopped at North Shingles, and when
Captain Wragge was handing Magdalen out, that the housekeeper at last
condescended to notice him. As he smiled and took off his hat at the
carriage door, the strong restraint she had laid on herself suddenly
gave way, and she flashed one look at him which scorched up the
captain's politeness on the spot. He turned at once, with a hasty
acknowledgment of Noel Vanstone's last sympathetic inquiries, and took
Magdalen into the house. "I told you she would show her claws," he
said. "It is not my fault that she scratched you before I could stop
her. She hasn't hurt you, has she?"
"She has hurt me, to some purpose," said Magdalen"she has given me the
courage to go on. Say what must be done to-morrow, and trust me to do
it." She sighed heavily as she said those words, and went up to her
room.
Captain Wragge walked meditatively into the parlor, and sat down to
consider. He felt by no means so certain as he could have wished of the
next proceeding on the part of the enemy after the defeat of that day.
The housekeeper's farewell look had plainly informed him that she was
not at the end of her resources yet, and the old militia-man felt the
full importance of preparing himself in good time to meet the next step
which she took in advance. He lit a cigar, and bent his wary mind on
the dangers of the future.
While Captain Wragge was considering in the parlor at North Shingles,
Mrs. Lecount was meditating in her bedroom at Sea View. Her
exasperation at the failure of her first attempt to expose the
conspiracy had not blinded her to the instant necessity of making a
second effort before Noel Vanstone's growing infatuation got beyond her
control. The snare set for Magdalen having failed, the chance of
entrapping Magdalen's sister was the next chance to try. Mrs. Lecount
ordered a cup of tea, opened her writing-case, and began the rough
draft of a letter to be sent to Miss Vanstone, the elder, by the
morrow's post.
So the day's skirmish ended. The heat of the battle was yet to come.
CHAPTER VI.
All human penetration has its limits. Accurately as Captain Wragge had
seen his way hitherto, even his sharp insight was now at fault. He
finished his cigar with the mortifying conviction that he was totally
unprepared for Mrs. Lecount's next proceeding. In this emergency, his
experience warned him that there was one safe course, and one only,
which he could take. He resolved to try the confusing effect on the
housekeeper of a complete change of tactics before she had time to
press her advantage and attack him in the dark. With this view he sent
the servant upstairs to request that Miss Bygrave would come down and
speak to him.
"I hope I don't disturb you," said the captain, when Magdalen entered
the room. "Allow me to apologize for the smell of tobacco, and to say
two words on the subject of our next proceedings. To put it with my
customary frankness, Mrs. Lecount puzzles me, and I propose to return
the compliment by puzzling her. The course of action which I have to
suggest is a very simple one. I have had the honor of giving you a
severe neuralgic attack already, and I beg your permission (when Mr.
Noel Vanstone sends to inquire to-morrow morning) to take the further
liberty of laying you up altogether. Question from Sea-view Cottage:
'How is Miss Bygrave this morning?' Answer from North Shingles: 'Much
worse: Miss Bygrave is confined to her room.' Question repeated every
day, say for a fortnight: 'How is Miss Bygrave?' Answer repeated, if
necessary, for the same time: 'No better.' Can you bear the
imprisonment? I see no objection to your getting a breath of fresh air
the first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night. But for the
whole of the day, there is no disguising it, you must put yourself in
the same category with Mrs. Wraggeyou must keep your room."
"What is your object in wishing me to do this?" inquired Magdalen.
"My object is twofold," replied the captain. "I blush for my own
stupidity; but the fact is, I can't see my way plainly to Mrs.
Lecount's next move. All I feel sure of is, that she means to make
another attempt at opening her master's eyes to the truth. Whatever
means she may employ to discover your identity, personal communication
with you must be necessary to the accomplishment of her object. Very
good. If I stop that communication, I put an obstacle in her way at
startingor, as we say at cards, I force her hand. Do you see the
point?"
Magdalen saw it plainly. The captain went on.
"My second reason for shutting you up," he said, "refers entirely to
Mrs. Lecount's master. The growth of love, my dear girl, is, in one
respect, unlike all other growthsit flourishes under adverse
circumstances. Our first course of action is to make Mr. Noel Vanstone
feel the charm of your society. Our next is to drive him distracted by
the loss of it. I should have proposed a few more meetings, with a view
to furthering this end, but for our present critical position toward
Mrs. Lecount. As it is, we must trust to the effect you produced
yesterday, and try the experiment of a sudden separation rather sooner
than I could have otherwise wished. I shall see Mr. Noel Vanstone,
though you don't; and if there is a raw place established anywhere
about the region of that gentleman's heart, trust me to hit him on it!
You are now in full possession of my views. Take your time to consider,
and give me your answerYes or no."
"Any change is for the better," said Magdalen "which keeps me out of
the company of Mrs. Lecount and her master! Let it be as you wish."
She had hitherto answered faintly and wearily; but she spoke those last
words with a heightened tone and a rising colorsigns which warned
Captain Wragge not to press her further.
"Very good," said the captain. "As usual, we understand each other. I
see you are tired; and I won't detain you any longer."
He rose to open the door, stopped half-way to it, and came back again.
"Leave me to arrange matters with the servant downstairs," he
continued. "You can't absolutely keep your bed, and we must purchase
the girl's discretion when she answers the door, without taking her
into our confidence, of course. I will make her understand that she is
to say you are ill, just as she might say you are not at home, as a way
of keeping unwelcome acquaintances out of the house. Allow me to open
the door for youI beg your pardon, you are going into Mrs. Wragge's
work-room instead of going to your own."
"I know I am," said Magdalen. "I wish to remove Mrs. Wragge from the
miserable room she is in now, and to take her upstairs with me."
"For the evening?"
"For the whole fortnight."
Captain Wragge followed her into the dining-room, and wisely closed the
door before he spoke again.
"Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife's society on yourself for a
fortnight?" he asked, in great surprise.
"Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house," she
burst out vehemently. "I must and will have her with me!"
"Pray don't agitate yourself," said the captain. "Take Mrs. Wragge, by
all means. I don't want her." Having resigned the partner of his
existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the parlor. "The
weakness of the sex!" thought the captain, tapping his sagacious head.
"Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the female temper gives way
directly."
The strain to which the captain alluded was not confined that evening
to the female intellect at North Shingles: it extended to the female
intellect at Sea View. For nearly two hours Mrs. Lecount sat at her
desk writing, correcting, and writing again, before she could produce a
letter to Miss Vanstone, the elder, which exactly accomplished the
object she wanted to attain. At last the rough draft was completed to
her satisfaction; and she made a fair copy of it forthwith, to be
posted the next day.
Her letter thus produced was a masterpiece of ingenuity. After the
first preliminary sentences, the housekeeper plainly informed Norah of
the appearance of the visitor in disguise at Vauxhall Walk; of the
conversation which passed at the interview; and of her own suspicion
that the person claiming to be Miss Garth was, in all probability, the
younger Miss Vanstone herself. Having told the truth thus far, Mrs.
Lecount next proceeded to say that her master was in possession of
evidence which would justify him in putting the law in force; that he
knew the conspiracy with which he was threatened to be then in process
of direction against him at Aldborough; and that he only hesitated to
protect himself in deference to family considerations, and in the hope
that the elder Miss Vanstone might so influence her sister as to render
it unnecessary to proceed to extremities.
Under these circumstances (the letter continued) it was plainly
necessary that the disguised visitor to Vauxhall Walk should be
properly identified; for if Mrs. Lecount's guess proved to be wrong,
and if the person turned out to be a stranger, Mr. Noel Vanstone was
positively resolved to prosecute in his own defense. Events at
Aldborough, on which it was not necessary to dwell, would enable Mrs.
Lecount in a few days to gain sight of the suspected person in her own
character. But as the housekeeper was entirely unacquainted with the
younger Miss Vanstone, it was obviously desirable that some better
informed person should, in this particular, take the matter in hand. If
the elder Miss Vanstone happened to be at liberty to come to Aldborough
herself, would she kindly write and say so? and Mrs. Lecount would
write back again to appoint a day. If, on the other hand, Miss Vanstone
was prevented from taking the journey, Mrs. Lecount suggested that her
reply should contain the fullest description of her sister's personal
appearanceshould mention any little peculiarities which might exist in
the way of marks on her face or her handsand should state (in case she
had written lately) what the address was in her last letter, and
failing that, what the post-mark was on the envelope. With this
information to help her, Mrs. Lecount would, in the interest of the
misguided young lady herself, accept the responsibility of privately
identifying her, and would write back immediately to acquaint the elder
Miss Vanstone with the result.
The difficulty of sending this letter to the right address gave Mrs.
Lecount very little trouble. Remembering the name of the lawyer who had
pleaded the cause of the two sisters in Michael Vanstone's time, she
directed her letter to "Miss Vanstone, care ofPendril, Esquire,
London." This she inclosed in a second envelope, addressed to Mr. Noel
Vanstone's solicitor, with a line inside, requesting that gentleman to
send it at once to the office of Mr. Pendril.
"Now," thought Mrs. Lecount, as she locked the letter up in her desk,
preparatory to posting it the next day with her own hand, "now I have
got her!"
The next morning the servant from Sea View came, with her master's
compliments, to make inquiries after Miss Bygrave's health. Captain
Wragge's bulletin was duly announcedMiss Bygrave was so ill as to be
confined to her room.
On the reception of this intelligence, Noel Vanstone's anxiety led him
to call at North Shingles himself when he went out for his afternoon
walk. Miss Bygrave was no better. He inquired if he could see Mr.
Bygrave. The worthy captain was prepared to meet this emergency. He
thought a little irritating suspense would do Noel Vanstone no harm,
and he had carefully charged the servant, in case of necessity, with
her answer: "Mr. Bygrave begged to be excused; he was not able to see
any one."
On the second day inquiries were made as before, by message in the
morning, and by Noel Vanstone himself in the afternoon. The morning
answer (relating to Magdalen) was, "a shade better." The afternoon
answer (relating to Captain Wragge) was, "Mr. Bygrave has just gone
out." That evening Noel Vanstone's temper was very uncertain, and Mrs.
Lecount's patience and tact were sorely tried in the effort to avoid
offending him.
On the third morning the report of the suffering young lady was less
favorable"Miss Bygrave was still very poorly, and not able to leave
her bed." The servant returning to Sea View with this message, met the
postman, and took into the breakfast-room with her two letters
addressed to Mrs. Lecount.
The first letter was in a handwriting familiar to the housekeeper. It
was from the medical attendant on her invalid brother at Zurich; and it
announced that the patient's malady had latterly altered in so marked a
manner for the better that there was every hope now of preserving his
life.
The address on the second letter was in a strange handwriting. Mrs.
Lecount, concluding that it was the answer from Miss Vanstone, waited
to read it until breakfast was over, and she could retire to her own
room.
She opened the letter, looked at once for the name at the end, and
started a little as she read it. The signature was not "Norah
Vanstone," but "Harriet Garth."
Miss Garth announced that the elder Miss Vanstone had, a week since,
accepted an engagement as governess, subject to the condition of
joining the family of her employer at their temporary residence in the
south of France, and of returning with them when they came back to
England, probably in a month or six weeks' time. During the interval of
this necessary absence Miss Vanstone had requested Miss Garth to open
all her letters, her main object in making that arrangement being to
provide for the speedy answering of any communication which might
arrive for her from her sister. Miss Magdalen Vanstone had not written
since the middle of Julyon which occasion the postmark on the letter
showed that it must have been posted in London, in the district of
Lambethand her elder sister had left England in a state of the most
distressing anxiety on her account.
Having completed this explanation, Miss Garth then mentioned that
family circumstances prevented her from traveling personally to
Aldborough to assist Mrs. Lecount's object, but that she was provided
with a substitute; in every way fitter for the purpose, in the person
of Mr. Pendril. That gentleman was well acquainted with Miss Magdalen
Vanstone, and his professional experience and discretion would render
his assistance doubly valuable. He had kindly consented to travel to
Aldborough whenever it might be thought necessary. But as his time was
very valuable, Miss Garth specially requested that he might not be sent
for until Mrs. Lecount was quite sure of the day on which his services
might be required.
While proposing this arrangement, Miss Garth added that she thought it
right to furnish her correspondent with a written description of the
younger Miss Vanstone as well. An emergency might happen which would
allow Mrs. Lecount no time for securing Mr. Pendril's services; and the
execution of Mr. Noel Vanstone's intentions toward the unhappy girl who
was the object of his forbearance might be fatally delayed by an
unforeseen difficulty in establishing her identity. The personal
description, transmitted under these circumstances, then followed. It
omitted no personal peculiarity by which Magdalen could be recognized,
and it included the "two little moles close together on the left side
of the neck," which had been formerly mentioned in the printed
handbills sent to York.
In conclusion, Miss Garth expressed her fears that Mrs. Lecount's
suspicions were only too likely to be proved true. While, however,
there was the faintest chance that the conspiracy might turn out to be
directed by a stranger, Miss Garth felt bound, in gratitude toward Mr.
Noel Vanstone, to assist the legal proceedings which would in that case
be instituted. She accordingly appended her own formal denialwhich she
would personally repeat if necessaryof any identity between herself
and the person in disguise who had made use of her name. She was the
Miss Garth who had filled the situation of the late Mr. Andrew
Vanstone's governess, and she had never in her life been in, or near,
the neighborhood of Vauxhall Wall.
With this disclaimer, and with the writer's fervent assurances that she
would do all for Magdalen's advantage which her sister might have done
if her sister had been in England, the letter concluded. It was signed
in full, and was dated with the business-like accuracy in such matters
which had always distinguished Miss Garth's character.
This letter placed a formidable weapon in the housekeeper's hands.
It provided a means of establishing Magdalen's identity through the
intervention of a lawyer by profession. It contained a personal
description minute enough to be used to advantage, if necessary, before
Mr. Pendril's appearance. It presented a signed exposure of the false
Miss Garth under the hand of the true Miss Garth; and it established
the fact that the last letter received by the elder Miss Vanstone from
the younger had been posted (and therefore probably written) in the
neighborhood of Vauxhall Walk. If any later letter had been received
with the Aldborough postmark, the chain of evidence, so far as the
question of localities was concerned, might doubtless have been more
complete. But as it was, there was testimony enough (aided as that
testimony might be by the fragment of the brown alpaca dress still in
Mrs. Lecount's possession) to raise the veil which hung over the
conspiracy, and to place Mr. Noel Vanstone face to face with the plain
and startling truth.
The one obstacle which now stood in the way of immediate action on the
housekeeper's part was the obstacle of Miss Bygrave's present seclusion
within the limits of her own room. The question of gaining personal
access to her was a question which must be decided before any
communication could be opened with Mr. Pendril. Mrs. Lecount put on her
bonnet at once, and called at North Shingles to try what discoveries
she could make for herself before post-time.
On this occasion Mr. Bygrave was at home, and she was admitted without
the least difficulty.
Careful consideration that morning had decided Captain Wragge on
advancing matters a little nearer to the crisis. The means by which he
proposed achieving this result made it necessary for him to see the
housekeeper and her master separately, and to set them at variance by
producing two totally opposite impressions relating to himself on their
minds. Mrs. Lecount's visit, therefore, instead of causing him any
embarrassment, was the most welcome occurrence he could have wished
for. He received her in the parlor with a marked restraint of manner
for which she was quite unprepared. His ingratiating smile was gone,
and an impenetrable solemnity of countenance appeared in its stead.
"I have ventured to intrude on you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, "to
express the regret with which both my master and I have heard of Miss
Bygrave's illness. Is there no improvement?"
"No, ma'am," replied the captain, as briefly as possible. "My niece is
no better."
"I have had some experience, Mr. Bygrave, in nursing. If I could be of
any use"
"Thank you, Mrs. Lecount. There is no necessity for our taking
advantage of your kindness."
This plain answer was followed by a moment's silence. The housekeeper
felt some little perplexity. What had become of Mr. Bygrave's elaborate
courtesy, and Mr. Bygrave's many words? Did he want to offend her? If
he did, Mrs. Lecount then and there determined that he should not gain
his object.
"May I inquire the nature of the illness?" she persisted. "It is not
connected, I hope, with our excursion to Dunwich?"
"I regret to say, ma'am," replied the captain, "it began with that
neuralgic attack in the carriage."
"So! so!" thought Mrs. Lecount. "He doesn't even try to make me think
the illness a real one; he throws off the mask at starting.Is it a
nervous illness, sir?" she added, aloud.
The captain answered by a solemn affirmative inclination of the head.
"Then you have two nervous sufferers in the house, Mr. Bygrave?"
"Yes, ma'amtwo. My wife and my niece."
"That is rather a strange coincidence of misfortunes."
"It is, ma'am. Very strange."
In spite of Mrs. Lecount's resolution not to be offended, Captain
Wragge's exasperating insensibility to every stroke she aimed at him
began to ruffle her. She was conscious of some little difficulty in
securing her self-possession before she could say anything more.
"Is there no immediate hope," she resumed, "of Miss Bygrave being able
to leave her room?"
"None whatever, ma'am."
"You are satisfied, I suppose, with the medical attendance?"
"I have no medical attendance," said the captain, composedly. "I watch
the case myself."
The gathering venom in Mrs. Lecount swelled up at that reply, and
overflowed at her lips.
"Your smattering of science, sir," she said, with a malicious smile,
"includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine as well?"
"It does, ma'am," answered the captain, without the slightest
disturbance of face or manner. "I know as much of one as I do of the
other."
The tone in which he spoke those words left Mrs. Lecount but one
dignified alternative. She rose to terminate the interview. The
temptation of the moment proved too much for her, and she could not
resist casting the shadow of a threat over Captain Wragge at parting.
"I defer thanking you, sir, for the manner in which you have received
me," she said, "until I can pay my debt of obligation to some purpose.
In the meantime I am glad to infer, from the absence of a medical
attendant in the house, that Miss Bygrave's illness is much less
serious than I had supposed it to be when I came here."
"I never contradict a lady, ma'am," rejoined the incorrigible captain.
"If it is your pleasure, when we next meet to think my niece quite
well, I shall bow resignedly to the expression of your opinion." With
those words, he followed the housekeeper into the passage, and politely
opened the door for her. "I mark the trick, ma'am!" he said to himself,
as he closed it again. "The trump-card in your hand is a sight of my
niece, and I'll take care you don't play it!"
He returned to the parlor, and composedly awaited the next event which
was likely to happena visit from Mrs. Lecount's master. In less than
an hour results justified Captain Wragge's anticipations, and Noel
Vanstone walked in.
"My dear sir!" cried the captain, cordially seizing his visitor's
reluctant hand, "I know what you have come for. Mrs. Lecount has told
you of her visit here, and has no doubt declared that my niece's
illness is a mere subterfuge. You feel surprisedyou feel hurtyou
suspect me of trifling with your kind sympathiesin short, you require
an explanation. That explanation you shall have. Take a seat. Mr.
Vanstone. I am about to throw myself on your sense and judgment as a
man of the world. I acknowledge that we are in a false position, sir;
and I tell you plainly at the outsetyour housekeeper is the cause of
it."
For once in his life, Noel Vanstone opened his eyes. "Lecount!" he
exclaimed, in the utmost bewilderment.
"The same, sir," replied Captain Wragge. "I am afraid I offended Mrs.
Lecount, when she came here this morning, by a want of cordiality in my
manner. I am a plain man, and I can't assume what I don't feel. Far be
it from me to breathe a word against your housekeeper's character. She
is, no doubt, a most excellent and trustworthy woman, but she has one
serious failing common to persons at her time of life who occupy her
situationshe is jealous of her influence over her master, although you
may not have observed it."
"I beg your pardon," interposed Noel Vanstone; "my observation is
remarkably quick. Nothing escapes me."
"In that case, sir," resumed the captain, "you cannot fail to have
noticed that Mrs. Lecount has allowed her jealousy to affect her
conduct toward my niece?"
Noel Vanstone thought of the domestic passage at arms between Mrs.
Lecount and himself when his guests of the evening had left Sea View,
and failed to see his way to any direct reply. He expressed the utmost
surprise and distresshe thought Lecount had done her best to be
agreeable on the drive to Dunwichhe hoped and trusted there was some
unfortunate mistake.
"Do you mean to say, sir," pursued the captain, severely, "that you
have not noticed the circumstance yourself? As a man of honor and a man
of observation, you can't tell me that! Your housekeeper's superficial
civility has not hidden your housekeeper's real feeling. My niece has
seen it, and so have you, and so have I. My niece, Mr. Vanstone, is a
sensitive, high-spirited girl; and she has positively declined to
cultivate Mrs. Lecount's society for the future. Don't misunderstand
me! To my niece as well as to myself, the attraction of your society,
Mr. Vanstone, remains the same. Miss Bygrave simply declines to be an
apple of discord (if you will permit the classical allusion) cast into
your household. I think she is right so far, and I frankly confess that
I have exaggerated a nervous indisposition, from which she is really
suffering, into a serious illnesspurely and entirely to prevent these
two ladies for the present from meeting every day on the Parade, and
from carrying unpleasant impressions of each other into your domestic
establishment and mine."
"I allow nothing unpleasant in my establishment," remarked Noel
Vanstone. "I'm masteryou must have noticed that already, Mr.
BygraveI'm master."
"No doubt of it, my dear sir. But to live morning, noon, and night in
the perpetual exercise of your authority is more like the life of a
governor of a prison than the life of a master of a household. The wear
and tearconsider the wear and tear."
"It strikes you in that light, does it?" said Noel Vanstone, soothed by
Captain Wragge's ready recognition of his authority. "I don't know that
you're not right. But I must take some steps directly. I won't be made
ridiculousI'll send Lecount away altogether, sooner than be made
ridiculous." His color rose, and he folded his little arms fiercely.
Captain Wragge's artfully irritating explanation had awakened that
dormant suspicion of his housekeeper's influence over him which
habitually lay hidden in his mind, and which Mrs. Lecount was now not
present to charm back to repose as usual. "What must Miss Bygrave think
of me!" he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of vexation. "I'll send
Lecount away. Damme, I'll send Lecount away on the spot!"
"No, no, no!" said the captain, whose interest it was to avoid driving
Mrs. Lecount to any desperate extremities. "Why take strong measures
when mild measures will do? Mrs. Lecount is an old servant; Mrs.
Lecount is attached and useful. She has this little drawback of
jealousyjealousy of her domestic position with her bachelor master.
She sees you paying courteous attention to a handsome young lady; she
sees that young lady properly sensible of your politeness; and, poor
soul, she loses her temper! What is the obvious remedy? Humor hermake
a manly concession to the weaker sex. If Mrs. Lecount is with you, the
next time we meet on the Parade, walk the other way. If Mrs. Lecount is
not with you, give us the pleasure of your company by all means. In
short, my dear sir, try the suaviter in modo (as we classical men
say) before you commit yourself to the fortiter in re!"
There was one excellent reason why Noel Vanstone should take Captain
Wragge's conciliatory advice. An open rupture with Mrs. Lecounteven if
he could have summoned the courage to face itwould imply the
recognition of her claims to a provision, in acknowledgment of the
services she had rendered to his father and to himself. His sordid
nature quailed within him at the bare prospect of expressing the
emotion of gratitude in a pecuniary form; and, after first consulting
appearances by a show of hesitation, he consented to adopt the
captain's suggestion, and to humor Mrs. Lecount.
"But I must be considered in this matter," proceeded Noel Vanstone. "My
concession to Lecount's weakness must not be misunderstood. Miss
Bygrave must not be allowed to suppose I am afraid of my housekeeper."
The captain declared that no such idea ever had entered, or ever could
enter, Miss Bygrave's mind. Noel Vanstone returned to the subject
nevertheless, again and again, with his customary pertinacity. Would it
be indiscreet if he asked leave to set himself right personally with
Miss Bygrave? Was there any hope that he might have the happiness of
seeing her on that day? or, if not, on the next day? or if not, on the
day after? Captain Wragge answered cautiously: he felt the importance
of not rousing Noel Vanstone's distrust by too great an alacrity in
complying with his wishes.
"An interview to-day, my dear sir, is out of the question," he said.
"She is not well enough; she wants repose. To-morrow I propose taking
her out before the heat of the day beginsnot merely to avoid
embarrassment, after what has happened with Mrs. Lecount, but because
the morning air and the morning quiet are essential in these nervous
cases. We are early people herewe shall start at seven o'clock. If you
are early, too, and if you would like to join us, I need hardly say
that we can feel no objection to your company on our morning walk. The
hour, I am aware, is an unusual onebut later in the day my niece may
be resting on the sofa, and may not be able to see visitors."
Having made this proposal purely for the purpose of enabling Noel
Vanstone to escape to North Shingles at an hour in the morning when his
housekeeper would be probably in bed, Captain Wragge left him to take
the hint, if he could, as indirectly as it had been given. He proved
sharp enough (the case being one in which his own interests were
concerned) to close with the proposal on the spot. Politely declaring
that he was always an early man when the morning presented any special
attraction to him, he accepted the appointment for seven o'clock, and
rose soon afterward to take his leave.
"One word at parting," said Captain Wragge. "This conversation is
entirely between ourselves. Mrs. Lecount must know nothing of the
impression she has produced on my niece. I have only mentioned it to
you to account for my apparently churlish conduct and to satisfy your
own mind. In confidence, Mr. Vanstonestrictly in confidence.
Good-morning!"
With these parting words, the captain bowed his visitor out. Unless
some unexpected disaster occurred, he now saw his way safely to the end
of the enterprise. He had gained two important steps in advance that
morning. He had sown the seeds of variance between the housekeeper and
her master, and he had given Noel Vanstone a common interest with
Magdalen and himself, in keeping a secret from Mrs. Lecount. "We have
caught our man," thought Captain Wragge, cheerfully rubbing his
hands"we have caught our man at last!"
On leaving North Shingles Noel Vanstone walked straight home, fully
restored to his place in his own estimation, and sternly determined to
carry matters with a high hand if he found himself in collision with
Mrs. Lecount.
The housekeeper received her master at the door with her mildest manner
and her gentlest smile. She addressed him with downcast eyes; she
opposed to his contemplated assertion of independence a barrier of
impenetrable respect.
"May I venture to ask, sir," she began, "if your visit to North
Shingles has led you to form the same conclusion as mine on the subject
of Miss Bygrave's illness?"
"Certainly not, Lecount. I consider your conclusion to have been both
hasty and prejudiced."
"I am sorry to hear it, sir. I felt hurt by Mr. Bygrave's rude
reception of me, but I was not aware that my judgment was prejudiced by
it. Perhaps he received you, sir, with a warmer welcome?"
"He received me like a gentlemanthat is all I think it necessary to
say, Lecounthe received me like a gentleman."
This answer satisfied Mrs. Lecount on the one doubtful point that had
perplexed her. Whatever Mr. Bygrave's sudden coolness toward herself
might mean, his polite reception of her master implied that the risk of
detection had not daunted him, and that the plot was still in full
progress. The housekeeper's eyes brightened; she had expressly
calculated on this result. After a moment's thinking, she addressed her
master with another question: "You will probably visit Mr. Bygrave
again, sir?"
"Of course I shall visit himif I please."
"And perhaps see Miss Bygrave, if she gets better?"
"Why not? I should be glad to know why not? Is it necessary to ask your
leave first, Lecount?"
"By no means, sir. As you have often said (and as I have often agreed
with you), you are master. It may surprise you to hear it, Mr. Noel,
but I have a private reason for wishing that you should see Miss
Bygrave again."
Mr. Noel started a little, and looked at his housekeeper with some
curiosity.
"I have a strange fancy of my own, sir, about that young lady,"
proceeded Mrs. Lecount. "If you will excuse my fancy, and indulge it,
you will do me a favor for which I shall be very grateful."
"A fancy?" repeated her master, in growing surprise. "What fancy?"
"Only this, sir," said Mrs. Lecount.
She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel of
note-paper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, and
respectfully placed it in Noel Vanstone's hands.
"If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. Noel,"
she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, "you will kindly
put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat pocket; you will open and
read it, for the first time, when you are next in Miss Bygrave's
company, and you will say nothing of what has now passed between us to
any living creature, from this time to that. I promise to explain my
strange request, sir, when you have done what I ask, and when your next
interview with Miss Bygrave has come to an end."
She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room.
Noel Vanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and from the
door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonishment. A mystery
in his own house! under his own nose! What did it mean?
It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning. While
the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North Shingles, the
housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under his feet. The folded
paper contained nothing less than a carefully written extract from the
personal description of Magdalen in Miss Garth's letter. With a daring
ingenuity which even Captain Wragge might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had
found her instrument for exposing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting
person of the victim himself!
CHAPTER VII.
Late that evening, when Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge came back from their
walk in the dark, the captain stopped Magdalen on her way upstairs to
inform her of the proceedings of the day. He added the expression of
his opinion that the time had come for bringing Noel Vanstone, with the
least possible delay, to the point of making a proposal. She merely
answered that she understood him, and that she would do what was
required of her. Captain Wragge requested her in that case to oblige
him by joining a walking excursion in Mr. Noel Vanstone's company at
seven o'clock the next morning. "I will be ready," she replied. "Is
there anything more?" There was nothing more. Magdalen bade him
good-night and returned to her own room.
She had shown the same disinclination to remain any longer than was
necessary in the captain's company throughout the three days of her
seclusion in the house.
During all that time, instead of appearing to weary of Mrs. Wragge's
society, she had patiently, almost eagerly, associated herself with her
companion's one absorbing pursuit. She who had often chafed and fretted
in past days under the monotony of her life in the freedom of
Combe-Raven, now accepted without a murmur the monotony of her life at
Mrs. Wragge's work-table. She who had hated the sight of her needle and
thread in old timeswho had never yet worn an article of dress of her
own makingnow toiled as anxiously over the making of Mrs. Wragge's
gown, and bore as patiently with Mrs. Wragge's blunders, as if the sole
object of her existence had been the successful completion of that one
dress. Anything was welcome to herthe trivial difficulties of fitting
a gown: the small, ceaseless chatter of the poor half-witted creature
who was so proud of her assistance, and so happy in her
companyanything was welcome that shut her out from the coming future,
from the destiny to which she stood self-condemned. That sorely-wounded
nature was soothed by such a trifle now as the grasp of her companion's
rough and friendly handthat desolate heart was cheered, when night
parted them, by Mrs. Wragge's kiss.
The captain's isolated position in the house produced no depressing
effect on the captain's easy and equal spirits. Instead of resenting
Magdalen's systematic avoidance of his society, he looked to results,
and highly approved of it. The more she neglected him for his wife the
more directly useful she became in the character of Mrs. Wragge's
self-appointed guardian. He had more than once seriously contemplated
revoking the concession which had been extorted from him, and removing
his wife, at his own sole responsibility, out of harm's way; and he had
only abandoned the idea on discovering that Magdalen's resolution to
keep Mrs. Wragge in her own company was really serious. While the two
were together, his main anxiety was set at rest. They kept their door
locked by his own desire while he was out of the house, and, whatever
Mrs. Wragge might do, Magdalen was to be trusted not to open it until
he came back. That night Captain Wragge enjoyed his cigar with a mind
at ease, and sipped his brandy-and-water in happy ignorance of the
pitfall which Mrs. Lecount had prepared for him in the morning.
Punctually at seven o'clock Noel Vanstone made his appearance. The
moment he entered the room Captain Wragge detected a change in his
visitor's look and manner. "Something wrong!" thought the captain. "We
have not done with Mrs. Lecount yet."
"How is Miss Bygrave this morning?" asked Noel Vanstone. "Well enough,
I hope, for our early walk?" His half-closed eyes, weak and watery with
the morning light and the morning air, looked about the room furtively,
and he shifted his place in a restless manner from one chair to
another, as he made those polite inquiries.
"My niece is bettershe is dressing for the walk," replied the captain,
steadily observing his restless little friend while he spoke. "Mr.
Vanstone!" he added, on a sudden, "I am a plain Englishmanexcuse my
blunt way of speaking my mind. You don't meet me this morning as
cordially as you met me yesterday. There is something unsettled in your
face. I distrust that housekeeper of yours, sir! Has she been presuming
on your forbearance? Has she been trying to poison your mind against me
or my niece?"
If Noel Vanstone had obeyed Mrs. Lecount's injunctions, and had kept
her little morsel of note-paper folded in his pocket until the time
came to use it, Captain Wragge's designedly blunt appeal might not have
found him unprepared with an answer. But curiosity had got the better
of him; he had opened the note at night, and again in the morning; it
had seriously perplexed and startled him; and it had left his mind far
too disturbed to allow him the possession of his ordinary resources. He
hesitated; and his answer, when he succeeded in making it, began with a
prevarication.
Captain Wragge stopped him before he had got beyond his first sentence.
"Pardon me, sir," said the captain, in his loftiest manner. "If you
have secrets to keep, you have only to say so, and I have done. I
intrude on no man's secrets. At the same time, Mr. Vanstone, you must
allow me to recall to your memory that I met you yesterday without any
reserves on my side. I admitted you to my frankest and fullest
confidence, sirand, highly as I prize the advantages of your society,
I can't consent to cultivate your friendship on any other than equal
terms." He threw open his respectable frock-coat and surveyed his
visitor with a manly and virtuous severity.
"I mean no offense!" cried Noel Vanstone, piteously. "Why do you
interrupt me, Mr. Bygrave? Why don't you let me explain? I mean no
offense."
"No offense is taken, sir," said the captain. "You have a perfect right
to the exercise of your own discretion. I am not offendedI only claim
for myself the same privilege which I accord to you." He rose with
great dignity and rang the bell. "Tell Miss Bygrave," he said to the
servant, "that our walk this morning is put off until another
opportunity, and that I won't trouble her to come downstairs."
This strong proceeding had the desired effect. Noel Vanstone vehemently
pleaded for a moment's private conversation before the message was
delivered. Captain Wragge's severity partially relaxed. He sent the
servant downstairs again, and, resuming his chair, waited confidently
for results. In calculating the facilities for practicing on his
visitor's weakness, he had one great superiority over Mrs. Lecount. His
judgment was not warped by latent female jealousies, and he avoided the
error into which the housekeeper had fallen, self-deludedthe error of
underrating the impression on Noel Vanstone that Magdalen had produced.
One of the forces in this world which no middle-aged woman is capable
of estimating at its full value, when it acts against her, is the force
of beauty in a woman younger than herself.
"You are so hasty, Mr. Bygraveyou won't give me timeyou won't wait
and hear what I have to say!" cried Noel Vanstone, piteously, when the
servant had closed the parlor door.
"My family failing, sirthe blood of the Bygraves. Accept my excuses.
We are alone, as you wished; pray proceed."
Placed between the alternatives of losing Magdalen's society or
betraying Mrs. Lecount, unenlightened by any suspicion of the
housekeeper's ultimate object, cowed by the immovable scrutiny of
Captain Wragge's inquiring eye, Noel Vanstone was not long in making
his choice. He confusedly described his singular interview of the
previous evening with Mrs. Lecount, and, taking the folded paper from
his pocket, placed it in the captain's hand.
A suspicion of the truth dawned on Captain Wragge's mind the moment he
saw the mysterious note. He withdrew to the window before he opened it.
The first lines that attracted his attention were these: "Oblige me,
Mr. Noel, by comparing the young lady who is now in your company with
the personal description which follows these lines, and which has been
communicated to me by a friend. You shall know the name of the person
describedwhich I have left a blankas soon as the evidence of your own
eyes has forced you to believe what you would refuse to credit on the
unsupported testimony of Virginie Lecount."
That was enough for the captain. Before he had read a word of the
description itself, he knew what Mrs. Lecount had done, and felt, with
a profound sense of humiliation, that his female enemy had taken him by
surprise.
There was no time to think; the whole enterprise was threatened with
irrevocable overthrow. The one resource in Captain Wragge's present
situation was to act instantly on the first impulse of his own
audacity. Line by line he read on, and still the ready inventiveness
which had never deserted him yet failed to answer the call made on it
now. He came to the closing sentenceto the last words which mentioned
the two little moles on Magdalen's neck. At that crowning point of the
description, an idea crossed his mind; his party-colored eyes twinkled;
his curly lips twisted up at the corners; Wragge was himself again. He
wheeled round suddenly from the window, and looked Noel Vanstone
straight in the face with a grimly-quiet suggestiveness of something
serious to come.
"Pray, sir, do you happen to know anything of Mrs. Lecount's family?"
he inquired.
"A respectable family," said Noel Vanstone"that's all I know. Why do
you ask?"
"I am not usually a betting man," pursued Captain Wragge. "But on this
occasion I will lay you any wager you like there is madness in your
housekeeper's family."
"Madness!" repeated Noel Vanstone, amazedly
"Madness!" reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with his
forefinger. "I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity,
the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable
document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed
for Mrs. Lecount's behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss
Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your
housekeeperwho has been formerly connected, perhaps, with an outbreak
of insanity in your housekeeperand who is now evidently confused with
my niece in your housekeeper's wandering mind. That is my conviction,
Mr. Vanstone. I may be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is
thisneither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the
production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you
are requested to make of it."
"I don't think Lecount's mad," said Noel Vanstone, with a very blank
look, and a very discomposed manner. "It couldn't have escaped me, with
my habits of observation; it couldn't possibly have escaped me if
Lecount had been mad."
"Very good, my dear sir. In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane
delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has
some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way,
there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount's description to the test,
not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction
on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell my niece that she is
to be made the subject of such a preposterous experiment as that note
of yours suggests. But you can use your own eyes, Mr. Vanstone; you can
keep your own counsel; andmad or notyou can at least tell your
housekeeper, on the testimony of your own senses, that she is wrong.
Let me look at the description again. The greater part of it is not
worth two straws for any purpose of identification; hundreds of young
ladies have tall figures, fair complexions, light brown hair, and light
gray eyes. You will say, on the other hand, hundreds of young ladies
have not got two little moles close together on the left side of the
neck. Quite true. The moles supply us with what we scientific men call
a Crucial Test. When my niece comes downstairs, sir, you have my full
permission to take the liberty of looking at her neck."
Noel Vanstone expressed his high approval of the Crucial Test by
smirking and simpering for the first time that morning.
"Of looking at her neck," repeated the captain, returning the note to
his visitor, and then making for the door. "I will go upstairs myself,
Mr. Vanstone," he continued, "and inspect Miss Bygrave's walking-dress.
If she has innocently placed any obstacles in your way, if her hair is
a little too low, or her frill is a little too high, I will exert my
authority, on the first harmless pretext I can think of, to have those
obstacles removed. All I ask is, that you will choose your opportunity
discreetly, and that you will not allow my niece to suppose that her
neck is the object of a gentleman's inspection."
The moment he was out of the parlor Captain Wragge ascended the stairs
at the top of his speed and knocked at Magdalen's door. She opened it
to him in her walking-dress, obedient to the signal agreed on between
them which summoned her downstairs.
"What have you done with your paints and powders?" asked the captain,
without wasting a word in preliminary explanations. "They were not in
the box of costumes which I sold for you at Birmingham. Where are
they?"
"I have got them here," replied Magdalen. "What can you possibly mean
by wanting them now?"
"Bring them instantly into my dressing-roomthe whole collection,
brushes, palette, and everything. Don't waste time in asking questions;
I'll tell you what has happened as we go on. Every moment is precious
to us. Follow me instantly!"
His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his strange
proposal. Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics and followed him
into the dressing-room. He locked the door, placed her on a chair close
to the light, and then told her what had happened.
"We are on the brink of detection," proceeded the captain, carefully
mixing his colors with liquid glue, and with a strong "drier" added
from a bottle in his own possession. "There is only one chance for us
(lift up your hair from the left side of your neck)I have told Mr.
Noel Vanstone to take a private opportunity of looking at you; and I am
going to give the lie direct to that she-devil Lecount by painting out
your moles."
"They can't be painted out," said Magdalen. "No color will stop on
them."
"My color will," remarked Captain Wragge. "I have tried a variety of
professions in my timethe profession of painting among the rest. Did
you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye? I lived some months once
in the neighborhood of Drury Lane entirely on Black Eyes. My
flesh-color stood on bruises of all sorts, shades, and sizes, and it
will stand, I promise you, on your moles."
With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump of
opaque color which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had graduated
as nearly as the materials would permit to the color of Magdalen's
skin. After first passing a cambric handkerchief, with some white
powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he designed to
operate, he placed two layers of color on the moles with the tip of the
brush. The process was performed in a few moments, and the moles, as if
by magic, disappeared from view. Nothing but the closest inspection
could have discovered the artifice by which they had been concealed; at
the distance of two or three feet only, it was perfectly invisible.
"Wait here five minutes," said Captain Wragge, "to let the paint
dryand then join us in the parlor. Mrs. Lecount herself would be
puzzled if she looked at you now."
"Stop!" said Magdalen. "There is one thing you have not told me yet.
How did Mrs. Lecount get the description which you read downstairs?
Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen the mark on my
neckit is too far back, and too high up; my hair hides it."
"Who knows of the mark?" asked Captain Wragge.
She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollection of
Frank.
"My sister knows it," she said, faintly.
"Mrs. Lecount may have written to your sister," suggested the captain:
"Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger has a
right to know? Never! never!"
"Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs. Lecount? The mark was
mentioned in the handbills at York. Who put it there?"
"Not Norah! Perhaps Mr. Pendril. Perhaps Miss Garth."
"Then Mrs. Lecount has written to Mr. Pendril or Miss Garthmore likely
to Miss Garth. The governess would be easier to deal with than the
lawyer."
"What can she have said to Miss Garth?"
Captain Wragge considered a little.
"I can't say what Mrs. Lecount may have written," he said, "but I can
tell you what I should have written in Mrs. Lecount's place. I should
have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to begin with,
and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to help a
benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends." The angry
glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen's eyes.
"What you would have done is what Mrs. Lecount has done," she said,
indignantly. "Neither lawyer nor governess shall dispute my right to my
own will and my own way. If Miss Garth thinks she can control my
actions by corresponding with Mrs. Lecount, I will show Miss Garth she
is mistaken! It is high time, Captain Wragge, to have done with these
wretched risks of discovery. We will take the short way to the end we
have in view sooner than Mrs. Lecount or Miss Garth think for. How long
can you give me to wring an offer of marriage out of that creature
downstairs?"
"I dare not give you long," replied Captain Wragge. "Now your friends
know where you are, they may come down on us at a day's notice. Could
you manage it in a week?"
"I'll manage it in half the time," she said, with a hard, defiant
laugh. "Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich, and
take Mrs. Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company. Is the
paint dry yet? Go downstairs and tell him I am coming directly."
So, for the second time, Miss Garth's well-meant efforts defeated their
own end. So the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that would
fain have held Magdalen back into the hand that drove her on.
The captain returned to his visitor in the parlor, after first stopping
on his way to issue his orders for the walking excursion to Mrs.
Wragge.
"I am shocked to have kept you waiting," he said, sitting down again
confidentially by Noel Vanstone's side. "My only excuse is, that my
niece had accidentally dressed her hair so as to defeat our object. I
have been persuading her to alter it, and young ladies are apt to be a
little obstinate on questions relating to their toilet. Give her a
chair on that side of you when she comes in, and take your look at her
neck comfortably before we start for our walk."
Magdalen entered the room as he said those words, and after the first
greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with the most
unsuspicious readiness. Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial Test on the
spot, with the highest appreciation of the fair material which was the
subject of experiment. Not the vestige of a mole was visible on any
part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave's neck. It mutely
answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone's half-closed eyes by
the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs. Lecount. That one central
incident in the events of the morning was of all the incidents that had
hitherto occurred, the most important in its results. That one
discovery shook the housekeeper's hold on her master as nothing had
shaken it yet.
In a few minutes Mrs. Wragge made her appearance, and excited as much
surprise in Noel Vanstone's mind as he was capable of feeling while
absorbed in the enjoyment of Magdalen's society. The walking-party left
the house at once, directing their steps northward, so as not to pass
the windows of Sea-view Cottage. To Mrs. Wragge's unutterable
astonishment, her husband, for the first time in the course of their
married life, politely offered her his arm, and led her on in advance
of the young people, as if the privilege of walking alone with her
presented some special attraction to him! "Step out!" whispered the
captain, fiercely. "Leave your niece and Mr. Vanstone alone! If I catch
you looking back at them, I'll put the Oriental Cashmere Robe on the
top of the kitchen fire! Turn your toes out, and keep stepconfound
you, keep step!" Mrs. Wragge kept step to the best of her limited
ability. Her sturdy knees trembled under her. She firmly believed the
captain was intoxicated.
The walk lasted for rather more than an hour. Before nine o'clock they
were all back again at North Shingles. The ladies went at once into the
house. Noel Vanstone remained with Captain Wragge in the garden.
"Well," said the captain, "what do you think now of Mrs. Lecount?"
"Damn Lecount!" replied Noel Vanstone, in great agitation. "I'm half
inclined to agree with you. I'm half inclined to think my infernal
housekeeper is mad."
He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the merest allusion to Mrs.
Lecount was distasteful to him. His color came and went; his manner was
absent and undecided; he fidgeted restlessly about the garden walk. It
would have been plain to a far less acute observation than Captain
Wragge's, that Magdalen had met his advances by an unexpected grace and
readiness of encouragement which had entirely overthrown his
self-control.
"I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life!" he exclaimed, with a
sudden outburst of enthusiasm. "I hope Miss Bygrave feels all the
better, for it. Do you go out at the same time to-morrow morning? May I
join you again?"
"By all means, Mr. Vanstone," said the Captain, cordially. "Excuse me
for returning to the subjectbut what do you propose saying to Mrs.
Lecount?"
"I don't know. Lecount is a perfect nuisance! What would you do, Mr.
Bygrave, if you were in my place?"
"Allow me to ask a question, my dear sir, before I tell you. What is
your breakfast-hour?"
"Half-past nine."
"Is Mrs. Lecount an early riser?"
"No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I hate lazy women! If you were in
my place, what should you say to her?"
"I should say nothing," replied Captain Wragge. "I should return at
once by the back way; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in the front
garden as if I was taking a turn before breakfast; and I should leave
her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. If she asks you
whether you mean to come here today, say No. Secure a quiet life until
circumstances force you to give her an answer. Then tell the plain
truthsay that Mr. Bygrave's niece and Mrs. Lecount's description are
at variance with each other in the most important particular, and beg
that the subject may not be mentioned again. There is my advice. What
do you think of it?"
If Noel Vanstone could have looked into his counselor's mind, he might
have thought the captain's advice excellently adapted to serve the
captain's interests. As long as Mrs. Lecount could be kept in ignorance
of her master's visits to North Shingles, so long she would wait until
the opportunity came for trying her experiment, and so long she might
be trusted not to endanger the conspiracy by any further proceedings.
Necessarily incapable of viewing Captain Wragge's advice under this
aspect, Noel Vanstone simply looked at it as offering him a temporary
means of escape from an explanation with his housekeeper. He eagerly
declared that the course of action suggested to him should be followed
to the letter, and returned to Sea View without further delay.
On this occasion Captain Wragge's anticipations were in no respect
falsified by Mrs. Lecount's conduct. She had no suspicion of her
master's visit to North Shingles: she had made up her mind, if
necessary, to wait patiently for his interview with Miss Bygrave until
the end of the week; and she did not embarrass him by any unexpected
questions when he announced his intention of holding no personal
communication with the Bygraves on that day. All she said was, "Don't
you feel well enough, Mr. Noel? or don't you feel inclined?" He
answered, shortly, "I don't feel well enough"; and there the
conversation ended.
The next day the proceedings of the previous morning were exactly
repeated. This time Noel Vanstone went home rapturously with a keepsake
in his breast-pocket; he had taken tender possession of one of Miss
Bygrave's gloves. At intervals during the day, whenever he was alone,
he took out the glove and kissed it with a devotion which was almost
passionate in its fervor. The miserable little creature luxuriated in
his moments of stolen happiness with a speechless and stealthy delight
which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met
with, in his father's narrow circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous
pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest
impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which
their lap-dogs might have rivaled him; the deepest interest he could
create in them was the interest they might have felt in a new trinket
or a new dress. The only women who had hitherto invited his admiration,
and taken his compliments seriously had been women whose charms were on
the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. For the
first time in his life he had now passed hours of happiness in the
society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her afterward
without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him in his own
esteem.
Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change produced in his look and
manner by the new feeling awakened in him was not a change which could
be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the second day she pointedly asked
him whether he had not made an arrangement to call on the Bygraves. He
denied it as before. "Perhaps you are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?"
persisted the housekeeper. He was at the end of his resources; he was
impatient to be rid of her inquiries; he trusted to his friend at North
Shingles to help him; and this time he answered Yes. "If you see the
young lady," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, "don't forget that note of mine,
sir, which you have in your waistcoat-pocket." No more was said on
either side, but by that night's post the housekeeper wrote to Miss
Garth. The letter merely acknowledged, with thanks, the receipt of Miss
Garth's communication, and informed her that in a few days Mrs. Lecount
hoped to be in a position to write again and summon Mr. Pendril to
Aldborough.
Late in the evening, when the parlor at North Shingles began to get
dark, and when the captain rang the bell for candles as usual, he was
surprised by hearing Magdalen's voice in the passage telling the
servant to take the lights downstairs again. She knocked at the door
immediately afterward, and glided into the obscurity of the room like a
ghost.
"I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow," she
said. "My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you will not
object to dispense with the candles for a few minutes."
She spoke in low, stifled tones, and felt her way noiselessly to a
chair far removed from the captain in the darkest part of the room.
Sitting near the window, he could just discern the dim outline of her
dress, he could just hear the faint accents of her voice. For the last
two days he had seen nothing of her except during their morning walk.
On that afternoon he had found his wife crying in the little backroom
down-stairs. She could only tell him that Magdalen had frightened
herthat Magdalen was going the way again which she had gone when the
letter came from China in the terrible past time at Vauxhall Walk.
"I was sorry to hear that you were ill to-day, from Mrs. Wragge," said
the captain, unconsciously dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he
spoke.
"It doesn't matter," she answered quietly, out of the darkness. "I am
strong enough to suffer, and live. Other girls in my place would have
been happierthey would have suffered, and died. It doesn't matter; it
will be all the same a hundred years hence. Is he coming again tomorrow
morning at seven o'clock?"
"He is coming, if you feel no objection to it."
"I have no objection to make; I have done with objecting. But I should
like to have the time altered. I don't look my best in the early
morning-I have bad nights, and I rise haggard and worn. Write him a
note this evening, and tell him to come at twelve o'clock."
"Twelve is rather late, under the circumstances, for you to be seen out
walking."
"I have no intention of walking. Let him be shown into the parlor"
Her voice died away in silence before she ended the sentence.
"Yes?" said Captain Wragge.
"And leave me alone in the parlor to receive him."
"I understand," said the captain. "An admirable idea. I'll be out of
the way in the dining-room while he is here, and you can come and tell
me about it when he has gone."
There was another moment of silence.
"Is there no way but telling you?" she asked, suddenly. "I can control
myself while he is with me, but I can't answer for what I may say or do
afterward. Is there no other way?"
"Plenty of ways," said the captain. "Here is the first that occurs to
me. Leave the blind down over the window of your room upstairs before
he comes. I will go out on the beach, and wait there within sight of
the house. When I see him come out again, I will look at the window. If
he has said nothing, leave the blind down. If he has made you an offer,
draw the blind up. The signal is simplicity itself; we can't
misunderstand each other. Look your best to-morrow! Make sure of him,
my dear girlmake sure of him, if you possibly can."
He had spoken loud enough to feel certain that she had heard him, but
no answering word came from her. The dead silence was only disturbed by
the rustling of her dress, which told him she had risen from her chair.
Her shadowy presence crossed the room again; the door shut softly; she
was gone. He rang the bell hurriedly for the lights. The servant found
him standing close at the window, looking less self-possessed than
usual. He told her he felt a little poorly, and sent her to the
cupboard for the brandy.
At a few minutes before twelve the next day Captain Wragge withdrew to
his post of observation, concealing himself behind a fishing-boat drawn
up on the beach. Punctually as the hour struck, he saw Noel Vanstone
approach North Shingles and open the garden gate. When the house door
had closed on the visitor, Captain Wragge settled himself comfortably
against the side of the boat and lit his cigar.
He smoked for half an hourfor ten minutes over the half-hour, by his
watch. He finished the cigar down to the last morsel of it that he
could hold in his lips. Just as he had thrown away the end, the door
opened again and Noel Vanstone came out.
The captain looked up instantly at Magdalen's window. In the absorbing
excitement of the moment, he counted the seconds. She might get from
the parlor to her own room in less than a minute. He counted to thirty,
and nothing happened. He counted to fifty, and nothing happened. He
gave up counting, and left the boat impatiently, to return to the
house.
As he took his first step forward he saw the signal.
The blind was drawn up.
Cautiously ascending the eminence of the beach, Captain Wragge looked
toward Sea-view Cottage before he showed himself on the Parade. Noel
Vanstone had reached home again; he was just entering his own door.
"If all your money was offered me to stand in your shoes," said the
captain, looking after him"rich as you are, I wouldn't take it!"
CHAPTER VIII.
On returning to the house, Captain Wragge received a significant
message from the servant. "Mr. Noel Vanstone would call again at two
o'clock that afternoon, when he hoped to have the pleasure of finding
Mr. Bygrave at home."
The captain's first inquiry after hearing this message referred to
Magdalen. "Where was Miss Bygrave?" "In her own room." "Where was Mrs.
Bygrave?" "In the back parlor." Captain Wragge turned his steps at once
in the latter direction, and found his wife, for the second time, in
tears. She had been sent out of Magdalen's room for the whole day, and
she was at her wits' end to know what she had done to deserve it.
Shortening her lamentations without ceremony, her husband sent her
upstairs on the spot, with instructions to knock at the door, and to
inquire whether Magdalen could give five minutes' attention to a
question of importance which must be settled before two o'clock.
The answer returned was in the negative. Magdalen requested that the
subject on which she was asked to decide might be mentioned to her in
writing. She engaged to reply in the same way, on the understanding
that Mrs. Wragge, and not the servant, should be employed to deliver
the note and to take back the answer.
Captain Wragge forthwith opened his paper-case and wrote these lines:
"Accept my warmest congratulations on the result of your interview with
Mr. N. V. He is coming again at two o'clockno doubt to make his
proposals in due form. The question to decide is, whether I shall press
him or not on the subject of settlements. The considerations for your
own mind are two in number. First, whether the said pressure (without
at all underrating your influence over him) may not squeeze for a long
time before it squeezes money out of Mr. N. V. Secondly, whether we are
altogether justifiedconsidering our present position toward a certain
sharp practitioner in petticoatsin running the risk of delay. Consider
these points, and let me have your decision as soon as convenient."
The answer returned to this note was written in crooked, blotted
characters, strangely unlike Magdalen's usually firm and clear
handwriting. It only contained these words: "Give yourself no trouble
about settlements. Leave the use to which he is to put his money for
the future in my hands."
"Did you see her?" asked the captain, when his wife had delivered the
answer.
"I tried," said Mrs. Wragge, with a fresh burst of tears"but she only
opened the door far enough to put out her hand. I took and gave it a
little squeezeand, oh poor soul, it felt so cold in mine!"
When Mrs. Lecount's master made his appearance at two o'clock, he stood
alarmingly in need of an anodyne application from Mrs. Lecount's green
fan. The agitation of making his avowal to Magdalen; the terror of
finding himself discovered by the housekeeper; the tormenting suspicion
of the hard pecuniary conditions which Magdalen's relative and guardian
might impose on himall these emotions, stirring in conflict together,
had overpowered his feebly-working heart with a trial that strained it
sorely. He gasped for breath as he sat down in the parlor at North
Shingles, and that ominous bluish pallor which always overspread his
face in moments of agitation now made its warning appearance again.
Captain Wragge seized the brandy bottle in genuine alarm, and forced
his visitor to drink a wine-glassful of the spirit before a word was
said between them on either side.
Restored by the stimulant, and encouraged by the readiness with which
the captain anticipated everything that he had to say, Noel Vanstone
contrived to state the serious object of his visit in tolerably plain
terms. All the conventional preliminaries proper to the occasion were
easily disposed of. The suitor's family was respectable; his position
in life was undeniably satisfactory; his attachment, though hasty, was
evidently disinterested and sincere. All that Captain Wragge had to do
was to refer to these various considerations with a happy choice of
language in a voice that trembled with manly emotion, and this he did
to perfection. For the first half-hour of the interview, no allusion
whatever was made to the delicate and dangerous part of the subject.
The captain waited until he had composed his visitor, and when that
result was achieved came smoothly to the point in these terms:
"There is one little difficulty, Mr. Vanstone, which I think we have
both overlooked. Your housekeeper's recent conduct inclines me to fear
that she will view the approaching change in your life with anything
but a friendly eye. Probably you have not thought it necessary yet to
inform her of the new tie which you propose to form?"
Noel Vanstone turned pale at the bare idea of explaining himself to
Mrs. Lecount.
"I can't tell what I'm to do," he said, glancing aside nervously at the
window, as if he expected to see the housekeeper peeping in. "I hate
all awkward positions, and this is the most unpleasant position I ever
was placed in. You don't know what a terrible woman Lecount is. I'm not
afraid of her; pray don't suppose I'm afraid of her"
At those words his fears rose in his throat, and gave him the lie
direct by stopping his utterance.
"Pray don't trouble yourself to explain," said Captain Wragge, coming
to the rescue. "This is the common story, Mr. Vanstone. Here is a woman
who has grown old in your service, and in your father's service before
you; a woman who has contrived, in all sorts of small, underhand ways,
to presume systematically on her position for years and years past; a
woman, in short, whom your inconsiderate but perfectly natural kindness
has allowed to claim a right of property in you"
"Property!" cried Noel Vanstone, mistaking the captain, and letting the
truth escape him through sheer inability to conceal his fears any
longer. "I don't know what amount of property she won't claim. She'll
make me pay for my father as well as for myself. Thousands, Mr.
Bygravethousands of pounds sterling out of my pocket!!!" He clasped
his hands in despair at the picture of pecuniary compulsion which his
fancy had conjured uphis own golden life-blood spouting from him in
great jets of prodigality, under the lancet of Mrs. Lecount.
"Gently, Mr. Vanstonegently! The woman knows nothing so far, and the
money is not gone yet."
"No, no; the money is not gone, as you say. I'm only nervous about it;
I can't help being nervous. You were saying something just now; you
were going to give me advice. I value your advice; you don't know how
highly I value your advice." He said those words with a conciliatory
smile which was more than helpless; it was absolutely servile in its
dependence on his judicious friend.
"I was only assuring you, my dear sir, that I understood your
position," said the captain. "I see your difficulty as plainly as you
can see it yourself. Tell a woman like Mrs. Lecount that she must come
off her domestic throne, to make way for a young and beautiful
successor, armed with the authority of a wife, and an unpleasant scene
must be the inevitable result. An unpleasant scene, Mr. Vanstone, if
your opinion of your housekeeper's sanity is well founded. Something
far more serious, if my opinion that her intellect is unsettled happens
to turn out the right one."
"I don't say it isn't my opinion, too," rejoined Noel Vanstone.
"Especially after what has happened to-day."
Captain Wragge immediately begged to know what the event alluded to
might be.
Noel Vanstone thereupon explainedwith an infinite number of
parentheses all referring to himselfthat Mrs. Lecount had put the
dreaded question relating to the little note in her master's pocket
barely an hour since. He had answered her inquiry as Mr. Bygrave had
advised him. On hearing that the accuracy of the personal description
had been fairly put to the test, and had failed in the one important
particular of the moles on the neck, Mrs. Lecount had considered a
little, and had then asked him whether he had shown her note to Mr.
Bygrave before the experiment was tried. He had answered in the
negative, as the only safe form of reply that he could think of on the
spur of the moment, and the housekeeper had then addressed him in these
strange and startling words: "You are keeping the truth from me, Mr.
Noel. You are trusting strangers, and doubting your old servant and
your old friend. Every time you go to Mr. Bygrave's house, every time
you see Miss Bygrave, you are drawing nearer and nearer to your
destruction. They have got the bandage over your eyes in spite of me;
but I tell them, and tell you, before many days are over I will take it
off!" To this extraordinary outbreakaccompanied as it was by an
expression in Mrs. Lecount's face which he had never seen there
beforeNoel Vanstone had made no reply. Mr. Bygrave's conviction that
there was a lurking taint of insanity in the housekeeper's blood had
recurred to his memory, and he had left the room at the first
opportunity.
Captain Wragge listened with the closest attention to the narrative
thus presented to him. But one conclusion could be drawn from itit was
a plain warning to him to hasten the end.
"I am not surprised," he said, gravely, "to hear that you are inclining
more favorably to my opinion. After what you have just told me, Mr.
Vanstone, no sensible man could do otherwise. This is becoming serious.
I hardly know what results may not be expected to follow the
communication of your approaching change in life to Mrs. Lecount. My
niece may be involved in those results. She is nervous; she is
sensitive in the highest degree; she is the innocent object of this
woman's unreasoning hatred and distrust. You alarm me, sir! I am not
easily thrown off my balance, but I acknowledge you alarm me for the
future." He frowned, shook his head, and looked at his visitor
despondently.
Noel Vanstone began to feel uneasy. The change in Mr. Bygrave's manner
seemed ominous of a reconsideration of his proposals from a new and
unfavorable point of view. He took counsel of his inborn cowardice and
his inborn cunning, and proposed a solution of the difficulty
discovered by himself.
"Why should we tell Lecount at all?" he asked. "What right has Lecount
to know? Can't we be married without letting her into the secret? And
can't somebody tell her afterward when we are both out of her reach?"
Captain Wragge received this proposal with an expression of surprise
which did infinite credit to his power of control over his own
countenance. His foremost object throughout the interview had been to
conduct it to this point, or, in other words, to make the first idea of
keeping the marriage a secret from Mrs. Lecount emanate from Noel
Vanstone instead of from himself. No one knew better than the captain
that the only responsibilities which a weak man ever accepts are
responsibilities which can be perpetually pointed out to him as resting
exclusively on his own shoulders.
"I am accustomed to set my face against clandestine proceedings of all
kinds," said Captain Wragge. "But there are exceptions to the strictest
rules; and I am bound to admit, Mr. Vanstone, that your position in
this matter is an exceptional position, if ever there was one yet. The
course you have just proposedhowever unbecoming I may think it,
however distasteful it may be to myselfwould not only spare you a very
serious embarrassment (to say the least of it), but would also protect
you from the personal assertion of those pecuniary claims on the part
of your housekeeper to which you have already adverted. These are both
desirable results to achieveto say nothing of the removal, on my side,
of all apprehension of annoyance to my niece. On the other hand,
however, a marriage solemnized with such privacy as you propose must be
a hasty marriage; for, as we are situated, the longer the delay the
greater will be the risk that our secret may escape our keeping. I am
not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an
adequate income. My own was a love-match contracted in a hurry. There
are plenty of instances in the experience of every one, of short
courtships and speedy marriages, which have turned up trumpsI beg your
pardonwhich have turned out well after all. But if you and my niece,
Mr. Vanstone, are to add one to the number of these eases, the usual
preliminaries of marriage among the higher classes must be hastened by
some means. You doubtless understand me as now referring to the subject
of settlements."
"I'll take another teaspoonful of brandy," said Noel Vanstone, holding
out his glass with a trembling hand as the word "settlements" passed
Captain Wragge's lips.
"I'll take a teaspoonful with you," said the captain, nimbly
dismounting from the pedestal of his respectability, and sipping his
brandy with the highest relish. Noel Vanstone, after nervously
following his host's example, composed himself to meet the coming
ordeal, with reclining head and grasping hands, in the position
familiarly associated to all civilized humanity with a seat in a
dentist's chair.
The captain put down his empty glass and got up again on his pedestal.
"We were talking of settlements," he resumed. "I have already
mentioned, Mr. Vanstone, at an early period of our conversation, that
my niece presents the man of her choice with no other dowry than the
most inestimable of all giftsthe gift of herself. This circumstance,
however (as you are no doubt aware), does not disentitle me to make the
customary stipulations with her future husband. According to the usual
course in this matter, my lawyer would see yoursconsultations would
take placedelays would occurstrangers would be in possession of your
intentionsand Mrs. Lecount would, sooner or later, arrive at that
knowledge of the truth which you are anxious to keep from her. Do you
agree with me so far?"
Unutterable apprehension closed Noel Vanstone's lips. He could only
reply by an inclination of the head.
"Very good," said the captain. "Now, sir, you may possibly have
observed that I am a man of a very original turn of mind. If I have not
hitherto struck you in that light, it may then be necessary to mention
that there are some subjects on which I persist in thinking for myself.
The subject of marriage settlements is one of them. What, let me ask
you, does a parent or guardian in my present condition usually do?
After having trusted the man whom he has chosen for his son-in-law with
the sacred deposit of a woman's happiness, he turns round on that man,
and declines to trust him with the infinitely inferior responsibility
of providing for her pecuniary future. He fetters his son-in-law with
the most binding document the law can produce, and employs with the
husband of his own child the same precautions which he would use if he
were dealing with a stranger and a rogue. I call such conduct as this
inconsistent and unbecoming in the last degree. You will not find it my
course of conduct, Mr. Vanstoneyou will not find me preaching what I
don't practice. If I trust you with my niece, I trust you with every
inferior responsibility toward her and toward me. Give me your hand,
sir; tell me, on your word of honor, that you will provide for your
wife as becomes her position and your means, and the question of
settlements is decided between us from this moment at once and
forever!" Having carried out Magdalen's instructions in this lofty
tone, he threw open his respectable frockcoat, and sat with head erect
and hand extended, the model of parental feeling and the picture of
human integrity.
For one moment Noel Vanstone remained literally petrified by
astonishment. The next, he started from his chair and wrung the hand of
his magnanimous friend in a perfect transport of admiration. Never yet,
throughout his long and varied career, had Captain Wragge felt such
difficulty in keeping his countenance as he felt now. Contempt for the
outburst of miserly gratitude of which he was the object; triumph in
the sense of successful conspiracy against a man who had rated the
offer of his protection at five pounds; regret at the lost opportunity
of effecting a fine stroke of moral agriculture, which his dread of
involving himself in coming consequences had forced him to let slipall
these varied emotions agitated the captain's mind; all strove together
to find their way to the surface through the outlets of his face or his
tongue. He allowed Noel Vanstone to keep possession of his hand, and to
heap one series of shrill protestations and promises on another, until
he had regained his usual mastery over himself. That result achieved,
he put the little man back in his chair, and returned forthwith to the
subject of Mrs. Lecount.
"Suppose we now revert to the difficulty which we have not conquered
yet," said the captain. "Let us say that I do violence to my own habits
and feelings; that I allow the considerations I have already mentioned
to weigh with me; and that I sanction your wish to be united to my
niece without the knowledge of Mrs. Lecount. Allow me to inquire in
that case what means you can suggest for the accomplishment of your
end?"
"I can't suggest anything," replied Noel Vanstone, helplessly. "Would
you object to suggest for me?"
"You are making a bolder request than you think, Mr. Vanstone. I never
do things by halves. When I am acting with my customary candor, I am
frank (as you know already) to the utmost verge of imprudence. When
exceptional circumstances compel me to take an opposite course, there
isn't a slyer fox alive than I am. If, at your express request, I take
off my honest English coat here and put on a Jesuit's gownif, purely
out of sympathy for your awkward position, I consent to keep your
secret for you from Mrs. LecountI must have no unseasonable scruples
to contend with on your part. If it is neck or nothing on my side, sir,
it must be neck or nothing on yours also."
"Neck or nothing, by all means," said Noel Vanstone, briskly"on the
understanding that you go first. I have no scruples about keeping
Lecount in the dark. But she is devilish cunning, Mr. Bygrave. How is
it to be done?"
"You shall hear directly," replied the captain. "Before I develop my
views, I should like to have your opinion on an abstract question of
morality. What do you think, my dear sir, of pious frauds in general?"
Noel Vanstone looked a little embarrassed by the question.
"Shall I put it more plainly?" continued Captain Wragge. "What do you
say to the universally-accepted maxim that 'all stratagems are fair in
love and war'?Yes or No?"
"Yes!" answered Noel Vanstone, with the utmost readiness.
"One more question and I have done," said the captain. "Do you see any
particular objection to practicing a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount?"
Noel Vanstone's resolution began to falter a little.
"Is Lecount likely to find it out?" he asked cautiously.
"She can't possibly discover it until you are married and out of her
reach."
"You are sure of that?"
"Quite sure."
"Play any trick you like on Lecount," said Noel Vanstone, with an air
of unutterable relief. "I have had my suspicions lately that she is
trying to domineer over me; I am beginning to feel that I have borne
with Lecount long enough. I wish I was well rid of her."
"You shall have your wish," said Captain Wragge. "You shall be rid of
her in a week or ten days."
Noel Vanstone rose eagerly and approached the captain's chair.
"You don't say so!" he exclaimed. "How do you mean to send her away?"
"I mean to send her on a journey," replied Captain Wragge.
"Where?"
"From your house at Aldborough to her brother's bedside at Zurich."
Noel Vanstone started back at the answer, and returned suddenly to his
chair.
"How can you do that?" he inquired, in the greatest perplexity. "Her
brother (hang him!) is much better. She had another letter from Zurich
to say so, this morning."
"Did you see the letter?"
"Yes. She always worries about her brothershe would show it to me."
"Who was it from? and what did it say?"
"It was from the doctorhe always writes to her. I don't care two
straws about her brother, and I don't remember much of the letter,
except that it was a short one. The fellow was much better; and if the
doctor didn't write again, she might take it for granted that he was
getting well. That was the substance of it."
"Did you notice where she put the letter when you gave it her back
again?"
"Yes. She put it in the drawer where she keeps her account-books."
"Can you get at that drawer?"
"Of course I can. I have got a duplicate keyI always insist on a
duplicate key of the place where she keeps her account books. I never
allow the account-books to be locked up from my inspection: it's a rule
of the house."
"Be so good as to get that letter to-day, Mr. Vanstone, without your
housekeeper's knowledge, and add to the favor by letting me have it
here privately for an hour or two."
"What do you want it for?"
"I have some more questions to ask before I tell you. Have you any
intimate friend at Zurich whom you could trust to help you in playing a
trick on Mrs. Lecount?"
"What sort of help do you mean?" asked Noel Vanstone.
"Suppose," said the captain, "you were to send a letter addressed to
Mrs. Lecount at Aldborough, inclosed in another letter addressed to one
of your friends abroad? And suppose you were to instruct that friend to
help a harmless practical joke by posting Mrs. Lecount's letter at
Zurich? Do you know any one who could be trusted to do that?"
"I know two people who could be trusted!" cried Noel Vanstone. "Both
ladiesboth spinstersboth bitter enemies of Lecount's. But what is
your drift, Mr. Bygrave? Though I am not usually wanting in
penetration, I don't altogether see your drift."
"You shall see it directly, Mr. Vanstone."
With those words he rose, withdrew to his desk in the corner of the
room, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper. After first
reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to come
and read them too.
"A few minutes since," said the captain, pointing complacently to his
own composition with the feather end of his pen, "I had the honor of
suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. There it is!"
He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor. Noel
Vanstone sat down, and read these lines:
"MY DEAR MADAMSince I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform you that
your brother has suffered a relapse. The symptoms are so serious, that
it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his bedside. I am
making every effort to resist the renewed progress of the malady, and I
have not yet lost all hope of success. But I cannot reconcile it to my
conscience to leave you in ignorance of a serious change in my patient
for the worse, which may be attended by fatal results. With much
sympathy, I remain, etc. etc."
Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which this
letter might produce. Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, even Noel
Vanstone might feel some compunction at practicing such a deception as
was here suggested on a woman who stood toward him in the position of
Mrs. Lecount. She had served him faithfully, however interested her
motives might beshe had lived since he was a lad in the full
possession of his father's confidenceshe was living now under the
protection of his own roof. Could he fail to remember this; and,
remembering it, could he lend his aid without hesitation to the scheme
which was now proposed to him? Captain Wragge unconsciously retained
belief enough in human nature to doubt it. To his surprise, and, it
must be added, to his relief, also, his apprehensions proved to be
groundless. The only emotions aroused in Noel Vanstone's mind by a
perusal of the letter were a hearty admiration of his friend's idea,
and a vainglorious anxiety to claim the credit to himself of being the
person who carried it out. Examples may be found every day of a fool
who is no coward; examples may be found occasionally of a fool who is
not cunning; but it may reasonably be doubted whether there is a
producible instance anywhere of a fool who is not cruel.
"Perfect!" cried Noel Vanstone, clapping his hands. "Mr. Bygrave, you
are as good as Figaro in the French comedy. Talking of French, there is
one serious mistake in this clever letter of yoursit is written in the
wrong language. When the doctor writes to Lecount, he writes in French.
Perhaps you meant me to translate it? You can't manage without my help,
can you? I write French as fluently as I write English. Just look at
me! I'll translate it, while I sit here, in two strokes of the pen."
He completed the translation almost as rapidly as Captain Wragge had
produced the original. "Wait a minute!" he cried, in high critical
triumph at discovering another defect in the composition of his
ingenious friend. "The doctor always dates his letters. Here is no date
to yours."
"I leave the date to you," said the captain, with a sardonic smile.
"You have discovered the fault, my dear sirpray correct it!"
Noel Vanstone mentally looked into the great gulf which separates the
faculty that can discover a defect, from the faculty that can apply a
remedy, and, following the example of many a wiser man, declined to
cross over it.
"I couldn't think of taking the liberty," he said, politely. "Perhaps
you had a motive for leaving the date out?"
"Perhaps I had," replied Captain Wragge, with his easiest good-humor.
"The date must depend on the time a letter takes to get to Zurich. I
have had no experience on that pointyou must have had plenty of
experience in your father's time. Give me the benefit of your
information, and we will add the date before you leave the
writing-table."
Noel Vanstone's experience was, as Captain Wragge had anticipated,
perfectly competent to settle the question of time. The railway
resources of the Continent (in the year eighteen hundred and
forty-seven) were but scanty; and a letter sent at that period from
England to Zurich, and from Zurich back again to England, occupied ten
days in making the double journey by post.
"Date the letter in French five days on from to-morrow," said the
captain, when he had got his information. "Very good. The next thing is
to let me have the doctor's note as soon as you can. I may be obliged
to practice some hours before I can copy your translation in an exact
imitation of the doctor's handwriting. Have you got any foreign
note-paper? Let me have a few sheets, and send, at the same time, an
envelope addressed to one of those lady-friends of yours at Zurich,
accompanied by the necessary request to post the inclosure. This is all
I need trouble you to do, Mr. Vanstone. Don't let me seem inhospitable;
but the sooner you can supply me with my materials, the better I shall
be pleased. We entirely understand each other, I suppose? Having
accepted your proposal for my niece's hand, I sanction a private
marriage in consideration of the circumstances on your side. A little
harmless stratagem is necessary to forward your views. I invent the
stratagem at your request, and you make use of it without the least
hesitation. The result is, that in ten days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount
will be on her way to Switzerland; in fifteen days from to-morrow Mrs.
Lecount will reach Zurich, and discover the trick we have played her;
in twenty days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be back at Aldborough,
and will find her master's wedding-cards on the table, and her master
himself away on his honey-moon trip. I put it arithmetically, for the
sake of putting it plain. God bless you. Good-morning!"
"I suppose I may have the happiness of seeing Miss Bygrave to-morrow?"
said Noel Vanstone, turning round at the door.
"We must be careful," replied Captain Wragge. "I don't forbid
to-morrow, but I make no promise beyond that. Permit me to remind you
that we have got Mrs. Lecount to manage for the next ten days."
"I wish Lecount was at the bottom of the German Ocean!" exclaimed Noel
Vanstone, fervently. "It's all very well for you to manage heryou
don't live in the house. What am I to do?"
"I'll tell you to-morrow," said the captain. "Go out for your walk
alone, and drop in here, as you dropped in to-day, at two o'clock. In
the meantime, don't forget those things I want you to send me. Seal
them up together in a large envelope. When you have done that, ask Mrs.
Lecount to walk out with you as usual; and while she is upstairs
putting her bonnet on, send the servant across to me. You understand?
Good-morning."
An hour afterward, the sealed envelope, with its inclosures, reached
Captain Wragge in perfect safety. The double task of exactly imitating
a strange handwriting, and accurately copying words written in a
language with which he was but slightly acquainted, presented more
difficulties to be overcome than the captain had anticipated. It was
eleven o'clock before the employment which he had undertaken was
successfully completed, and the letter to Zurich ready for the post.
Before going to bed, he walked out on the deserted Parade to breathe
the cool night air. All the lights were extinguished in Sea-view
Cottage, when he looked that way, except the light in the housekeeper's
window. Captain Wragge shook his head suspiciously. He had gained
experience enough by this time to distrust the wakefulness of Mrs.
Lecount.
CHAPTER IX.
If Captain Wragge could have looked into Mrs. Lecount's room while he
stood on the Parade watching the light in her window, he would have
seen the housekeeper sitting absorbed in meditation over a worthless
little morsel of brown stuff which lay on her toilet-table.
However exasperating to herself the conclusion might be, Mrs. Lecount
could not fail to see that she had been thus far met and baffled
successfully at every point. What was she to do next? If she sent for
Mr. Pendril when he came to Aldborough (with only a few hours spared
from his business at her disposal), what definite course would there be
for him to follow? If she showed Noel Vanstone the original letter from
which her note had been copied, he would apply instantly to the writer
for an explanation: would expose the fabricated story by which Mrs.
Lecount had succeeded in imposing on Miss Garth; and would, in any
event, still declare, on the evidence of his own eyes, that the test by
the marks on the neck had utterly failed. Miss Vanstone, the elder,
whose unexpected presence at Aldborough might have done wonderswhose
voice in the hall at North Shingles, even if she had been admitted no
further, might have reached her sister's ears and led to instant
resultsMiss Vanstone, the elder, was out of the country, and was not
likely to return for a month at least. Look as anxiously as Mrs.
Lecount might along the course which she had hitherto followed, she
failed to see her way through the accumulated obstacles which now
barred her advance.
Other women in this position might have waited until circumstances
altered, and helped them. Mrs. Lecount boldly retraced her steps, and
determined to find her way to her end in a new direction. Resigning for
the present all further attempt to prove that the false Miss Bygrave
was the true Magdalen Vanstone, she resolved to narrow the range of her
next efforts; to leave the actual question of Magdalen's identity
untouched; and to rest satisfied with convincing her master of this
simple factthat the young lady who was charming him at North Shingles,
and the disguised woman who had terrified him in Vauxhall Walk, were
one and the same person.
The means of effecting this new object were, to all appearance, far
less easy of attainment than the means of effecting the object which
Mrs. Lecount had just resigned. Here no help was to be expected from
others, no ostensibly benevolent motives could be put forward as a
blindno appeal could be made to Mr. Pendril or to Miss Garth. Here the
housekeeper's only chance of success depended, in the first place, on
her being able to effect a stolen entrance into Mr. Bygrave's house,
and, in the second place, on her ability to discover whether that
memorable alpaca dress from which she had secretly cut the fragment of
stuff happened to form part of Miss Bygrave's wardrobe.
Taking the difficulties now before her in their order as they occurred,
Mrs. Lecount first resolved to devote the next few days to watching the
habits of the inmates of North Shingles, from early in the morning to
late at night, and to testing the capacity of the one servant in the
house to resist the temptation of a bribe. Assuming that results proved
successful, and that, either by money or by stratagem, she gained
admission to North Shingles (without the knowledge of Mr. Bygrave or
his niece), she turned next to the second difficulty of the twothe
difficulty of obtaining access to Miss Bygrave's wardrobe.
If the servant proved corruptible, all obstacles in this direction
might be considered as removed beforehand. But if the servant proved
honest, the new problem was no easy one to solve.
Long and careful consideration of the question led the housekeeper at
last to the bold resolution of obtaining an interviewif the servant
failed herwith Mrs. Bygrave herself. What was the true cause of this
lady's mysterious seclusion? Was she a person of the strictest and the
most inconvenient integrity? or a person who could not be depended on
to preserve a secret? or a person who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave
himself, and who was kept in reserve to forward the object of some new
deception which was yet to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount
could trust in her own powers of dissimulation, and in the results
which they might achieve. In the last case (if no other end was
gained), it might be of vital importance to her to discover an enemy
hidden in the dark. In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of
the three chances in her favor on which she had reckoned at the outset
of the strugglethe chance of entrapping Magdalen by word of mouth, the
chance of entrapping her by the help of her friends, and the chance of
entrapping her by means of Mrs. Bygravetwo had been tried, and two had
failed. The third remained to be tested yet; and the third might
succeed.
So, the captain's enemy plotted against him in the privacy of her own
chamber, while the captain watched the light in her window from the
beach outside.
Before breakfast the next morning, Captain Wragge posted the forged
letter to Zurich with his own hand. He went back to North Shingles with
his mind not quite decided on the course to take with Mrs. Lecount
during the all-important interval of the next ten days.
Greatly to his surprise, his doubts on this point were abruptly decided
by Magdalen herself.
He found her waiting for him in the room where the breakfast was laid.
She was walking restlessly to and fro, with her head drooping on her
bosom and her hair hanging disordered over her shoulders. The moment
she looked up on his entrance, the captain felt the fear which Mrs.
Wragge had felt before himthe fear that her mind would be struck
prostrate again, as it had been struck once already, when Frank's
letter reached her in Vauxhall Walk.
"Is he coming again to-day?" she asked, pushing away from her the chair
which Captain Wragge offered, with such violence that she threw it on
the floor.
"Yes," said the captain, wisely answering her in the fewest words. "He
is coming at two o'clock."
"Take me away!" she exclaimed, tossing her hair back wildly from her
face. "Take me away before he comes. I can't get over the horror of
marrying him while I am in this hateful place; take me somewhere where
I can forget it, or I shall go mad! Give me two days' resttwo days out
of sight of that horrible seatwo days out of prison in this horrible
housetwo days anywhere in the wide world away from Aldborough. I'll
come back with you! I'll go through with it to the end! Only give me
two days' escape from that man and everything belonging to him! Do you
hear, you villain?" she cried, seizing his arm and shaking it in a
frenzy of passion; "I have been tortured enoughI can bear it no
longer!"
There was but one way of quieting her, and the captain instantly took
it.
"If you will try to control yourself," he said, "you shall leave
Aldborough in an hour's time."
She dropped his arm, and leaned back heavily against the wall behind
her.
"I'll try," she answered, struggling for breath, but looking at him
less wildly. "You shan't complain of me, if I can help it." She
attempted confusedly to take her handkerchief from her apron pocket,
and failed to find it. The captain took it out for her. Her eyes
softened, and she drew her breath more freely as she received the
handkerchief from him. "You are a kinder man than I thought you were,"
she said; "I am sorry I spoke so passionately to you just nowI am
very, very sorry." The tears stole into her eyes, and she offered him
her hand with the native grace and gentleness of happier days. "Be
friends with me again," she said, pleadingly. "I'm only a girl, Captain
WraggeI'm only a girl!"
He took her hand in silence, patted it for a moment, and then opened
the door for her to go back to her own room again. There was genuine
regret in his face as he showed her that trifling attention. He was a
vagabond and a cheat; he had lived a mean, shuffling, degraded life,
but he was human; and she had found her way to the lost sympathies in
him which not even the self-profanation of a swindler's existence could
wholly destroy. "Damn the breakfast!" he said, when the servant came in
for her orders. "Go to the inn directly, and say I want a carriage and
pair at the door in an hour's time." He went out into the passage,
still chafing under a sense of mental disturbance which was new to him,
and shouted to his wife more fiercely than ever"Pack up what we want
for a week's absence, and be ready in half an hour!" Having issued
those directions, he returned to the breakfast-room, and looked at the
half-spread table with an impatient wonder at his disinclination to do
justice to his own meal. "She has rubbed off the edge of my appetite,"
he said to himself, with a forced laugh. "I'll try a cigar, and a turn
in the fresh air."
If he had been twenty years younger, those remedies might have failed
him. But where is the man to be found whose internal policy succumbs to
revolution when that man is on the wrong side of fifty? Exercise and
change of place gave the captain back into the possession of himself.
He recovered the lost sense of the flavor of his cigar, and recalled
his wandering attention to the question of his approaching absence from
Aldborough. A few minutes' consideration satisfied his mind that
Magdalen's outbreak had forced him to take the course of all others
which, on a fair review of existing emergencies, it was now most
desirable to adopt.
Captain Wragge's inquiries on the evening when he and Magdalen had
drunk tea at Sea View had certainly informed him that the housekeeper's
brother possessed a modest competence; that his sister was his nearest
living relative; and that there were some unscrupulous cousins on the
spot who were anxious to usurp the place in his will which properly
belonged to Mrs. Lecount. Here were strong motives to take the
housekeeper to Zurich when the false report of her brother's relapse
reached England. But if any idea of Noel Vanstone's true position
dawned on her in the meantime, who could say whether she might not, at
the eleventh hour, prefer asserting her large pecuniary interest in her
master, to defending her small pecuniary interest at her brother's
bedside? While that question remained undecided, the plain necessity of
checking the growth of Noel Vanstone's intimacy with the family at
North Shingles did not admit of a doubt; and of all means of effecting
that object, none could be less open to suspicion than the temporary
removal of the household from their residence at Aldborough. Thoroughly
satisfied with the soundness of this conclusion, Captain Wragge made
straight for Sea-view Cottage, to apologize and explain before the
carriage came and the departure took place.
Noel Vanstone was easily accessible to visitors; he was walking in the
garden before breakfast. His disappointment and vexation were freely
expressed when he heard the news which his friend had to communicate.
The captain's fluent tongue, however, soon impressed on him the
necessity of resignation to present circumstances. The bare hint that
the "pious fraud" might fail after all, if anything happened in the ten
days' interval to enlighten Mrs. Lecount, had an instant effect in
making Noel Vanstone as patient and as submissive as could be wished.
"I won't tell you where we are going, for two good reasons," said
Captain Wragge, when his preliminary explanations were completed. "In
the first place, I haven't made up my mind yet; and, in the second
place, if you don't know where our destination is, Mrs. Lecount can't
worm it out of you. I have not the least doubt she is watching us at
this moment from behind her window-curtain. When she asks what I wanted
with you this morning, tell her I came to say good-by for a few days,
finding my niece not so well again, and wishing to take her on a short
visit to some friends to try change of air. If you could produce an
impression on Mrs. Lecount's mind (without overdoing it), that you are
a little disappointed in me, and that you are rather inclined to doubt
my heartiness in cultivating your acquaintance, you will greatly help
our present object. You may depend on our return to North Shingles in
four or five days at furthest. If anything strikes me in the meanwhile,
the post is always at our service, and I won't fail to write to you."
"Won't Miss Bygrave write to me?" inquired Noel Vanstone, piteously.
"Did she know you were coming here? Did she send me no message?"
"Unpardonable on my part to have forgotten it!" cried the captain. "She
sent you her love."
Noel Vanstone closed his eyes in silent ecstasy.
When he opened them again Captain Wragge had passed through the garden
gate and was on his way back to North Shingles. As soon as his own door
had closed on him, Mrs. Lecount descended from the post of observation
which the captain had rightly suspected her of occupying, and addressed
the inquiry to her master which the captain had rightly foreseen would
follow his departure. The reply she received produced but one
impression on her mind. She at once set it down as a falsehood, and
returned to her own window to keep watch over North Shingles more
vigilantly than ever.
To her utter astonishment, after a lapse of less than half an hour she
saw an empty carriage draw up at Mr. Bygrave's door. Luggage was
brought out and packed on the vehicle. Miss Bygrave appeared, and took
her seat in it. She was followed into the carriage by a lady of great
size and stature, whom the housekeeper conjectured to be Mrs. Bygrave.
The servant came next, and stood waiting on the path. The last person
to appear was Mr. Bygrave. He locked the house door, and took the key
away with him to a cottage near at hand, which was the residence of the
landlord of North Shingles. On his return, he nodded to the servant,
who walked away by herself toward the humbler quarter of the little
town, and joined the ladies in the carriage. The coachman mounted the
box, and the vehicle disappeared.
Mrs. Lecount laid down the opera-glass, through which she had been
closely investigating these proceedings, with a feeling of helpless
perplexity which she was almost ashamed to acknowledge to herself. The
secret of Mr. Bygrave's object in suddenly emptying his house at
Aldborough of every living creature in it was an impenetrable mystery
to her.
Submitting herself to circumstances with a ready resignation which
Captain Wragge had not shown, on his side, in a similar situation, Mrs.
Lecount wasted neither time nor temper in unprofitable guess-work. She
left the mystery to thicken or to clear, as the future might decide,
and looked exclusively at the uses to which she might put the morning's
event in her own interests. Whatever might have become of the family at
North Shingles, the servant was left behind, and the servant was
exactly the person whose assistance might now be of vital importance to
the housekeeper's projects. Mrs. Lecount put on her bonnet, inspected
the collection of loose silver in her purse, and set forth on the spot
to make the servant's acquaintance.
She went first to the cottage at which Mr. Bygrave had left the key of
North Shingles, to discover the servant's present address from the
landlord. So far as this object was concerned, her errand proved
successful. The landlord knew that the girl had been allowed to go home
for a few days to her friends, and knew in what part of Aldborough her
friends lived. But here his sources of information suddenly dried up.
He knew nothing of the destination to which Mr. Bygrave and his family
had betaken themselves, and he was perfectly ignorant of the number of
days over which their absence might be expected to extend. All he could
say was, that he had not received a notice to quit from his tenant, and
that he had been requested to keep the key of the house in his
possession until Mr. Bygrave returned to claim it in his own person.
Baffled, but not discouraged, Mrs. Lecount turned her steps next toward
the back street of Aldborough, and astonished the servant's relatives
by conferring on them the honor of a morning call.
Easily imposed on at starting by Mrs. Lecount's pretense of calling to
engage her, under the impression that she had left Mr. Bygrave's
service, the servant did her best to answer the questions put to her.
But she knew as little as the landlord of her master's plans. All she
could say about them was, that she had not been dismissed, and that she
was to await the receipt of a note recalling her when necessary to her
situation at North Shingles. Not having expected to find her better
informed on this part of the subject, Mrs. Lecount smoothly shifted her
ground, and led the woman into talking generally of the advantages and
defects of her situation in Mr. Bygrave's family.
Profiting by the knowledge gained, in this indirect manner, of the
little secrets of the household, Mrs. Lecount made two discoveries. She
found out, in the first place, that the servant (having enough to do in
attending to the coarser part of the domestic work) was in no position
to disclose the secrets of Miss Bygrave's wardrobe, which were known
only to the young lady herself and to her aunt. In the second place,
the housekeeper ascertained that the true reason of Mrs. Bygrave's
rigid seclusion was to be found in the simple fact that she was little
better than an idiot, and that her husband was probably ashamed of
allowing her to be seen in public. These apparently trivial discoveries
enlightened Mrs. Lecount on a very important point which had been
previously involved in doubt. She was now satisfied that the likeliest
way to obtaining a private investigation of Magdalen's wardrobe lay
through deluding the imbecile lady, and not through bribing the
ignorant servant.
Having reached that conclusionpregnant with coming assaults on the
weakly-fortified discretion of poor Mrs. Wraggethe housekeeper
cautiously abstained from exhibiting herself any longer under an
inquisitive aspect. She changed the conversation to local topics,
waited until she was sure of leaving an excellent impression behind
her, and then took her leave.
Three days passed; and Mrs. Lecount and her mastereach with their
widely-different ends in viewwatched with equal anxiety for the first
signs of returning life in the direction of North Shingles. In that
interval, no letter either from the uncle or the niece arrived for Noel
Vanstone. His sincere feeling of irritation under this neglectful
treatment greatly assisted the effect of those feigned doubts on the
subject of his absent friends which the captain had recommended him to
express in the housekeeper's presence. He confessed his apprehensions
of having been mistaken, not in Mr. Bygrave only, but even in his niece
as well, with such a genuine air of annoyance that he actually
contributed a new element of confusion to the existing perplexities of
Mrs. Lecount.
On the morning of the fourth day Noel Vanstone met the postman in the
garden; and, to his great relief, discovered among the letters
delivered to him a note from Mr. Bygrave.
The date of the note was "Woodbridge," and it contained a few lines
only. Mr. Bygrave mentioned that his niece was better, and that she
sent her love as before. He proposed returning to Aldborough on the
next day, when he would have some new considerations of a strictly
private nature to present to Mr. Noel Vanstone's mind. In the meantime
he would beg Mr. Vanstone not to call at North Shingles until he
received a special invitation to do sowhich invitation should
certainly be given on the day when the family returned. The motive of
this apparently strange request should be explained to Mr. Vanstone's
perfect satisfaction when he was once more united to his friends. Until
that period arrived, the strictest caution was enjoined on him in all
his communications with Mrs. Lecount; and the instant destruction of
Mr. Bygrave's letter, after due perusal of it, was (if the classical
phrase might be pardoned) a sine qua non.
The fifth day came. Noel Vanstone (after submitting himself to the
sine qua non, and destroying the letter) waited anxiously for
results; while Mrs. Lecount, on her side, watched patiently for events.
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon the carriage appeared again at
the gate of North Shingles. Mr. Bygrave got out and tripped away
briskly to the landlord's cottage for the key. He returned with the
servant at his heels. Miss Bygrave left the carriage; her giant
relative followed her example; the house door was opened; the trunks
were taken off; the carriage disappeared, and the Bygraves were at home
again!
Four o'clock struck, five o'clock, six o'clock, and nothing happened.
In half an hour more, Mr. Bygravespruce, speckless, and respectable as
everappeared on the Parade, sauntering composedly in the direction of
Sea View.
Instead of at once entering the house, he passed it; stopped, as if
struck by a sudden recollection; and, retracing his steps, asked for
Mr. Vanstone at the door. Mr. Vanstone came out hospitably into the
passage. Pitching his voice to a tone which could be easily heard by
any listening individual through any open door in the bedroom regions,
Mr. Bygrave announced the object of his visit on the door-mat in the
fewest possible words. He had been staying with a distant relative. The
distant relative possessed two picturesGems by the Old Masterswhich
he was willing to dispose of, and which he had intrusted for that
purpose to Mr. Bygrave's care. If Mr. Noel Vanstone, as an amateur in
such matters, wished to see the Gems, they would be visible in half an
hour's time, when Mr. Bygrave would have returned to North Shingles.
Having delivered himself of this incomprehensible announcement, the
arch-conspirator laid his significant forefinger along the side of his
short Roman nose, said, "Fine weather, isn't it? Good-afternoon!" and
sauntered out inscrutably to continue his walk on the Parade.
On the expiration of the half-hour Noel Vanstone presented himself at
North Shingles, with the ardor of a lover burning inextinguishably in
his bosom, through the superincumbent mental fog of a thoroughly
bewildered man. To his inexpressible happiness, he found Magdalen alone
in the parlor. Never yet had she looked so beautiful in his eyes. The
rest and relief of her four days' absence from Aldborough had not
failed to produce their results; she had more than recovered her
composure. Vibrating perpetually from one violent extreme to another,
she had now passed from the passionate despair of five days since to a
feverish exaltation of spirits which defied all remorse and confronted
all consequences. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were bright with color;
she talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of
past days; she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing; she
imitated Mrs. Lecount's smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount's insinuating
graces of manner with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which
was but the coarse reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of
former times. Noel Vanstone, who had never yet seen her as he saw her
now, was enchanted; his weak head whirled with an intoxication of
enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had caught the infection
from hers. The half-hour during which he was alone with her passed like
five minutes to him. When that time had elapsed, and when she suddenly
left himto obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt's
presencemiser as he was, he would have paid at that moment five golden
sovereigns out of his pocket for five golden minutes more passed in her
society.
The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, and the
captain walked in. He entered on the explanations which his visitor
naturally expected from him with the unceremonious abruptness of a man
hard pressed for time, and determined to make the most of every moment
at his disposal.
"Since we last saw each other," he began, "I have been reckoning up the
chances for and against us as we stand at present. The result on my own
mind is this: If you are still at Aldborough when that letter from
Zurich reaches Mrs. Lecount, all the pains we have taken will have been
pains thrown away. If your housekeeper had fifty brothers all dying
together, she would throw the whole fifty over sooner than leave you
alone at Sea View while we are your neighbors at North Shingles."
Noel Vanstone's flushed cheek turned pale with dismay. His own
knowledge of Mrs. Lecount told him that this view of the case was the
right one.
"If we go away again," proceeded the captain, "nothing will be
gained, for nothing would persuade your housekeeper, in that case, that
we have not left you the means of following us. You must leave
Aldborough this time; and, what is more, you must go without leaving a
single visible trace behind you for us to follow. If we accomplish this
object in the course of the next five days, Mrs. Lecount will take the
journey to Zurich. If we fail, she will be a fixture at Sea View, to a
dead certainty. Don't ask questions! I have got your instructions ready
for you, and I want your closest attention to them. Your marriage with
my niece depends on your not forgetting a word of what I am now going
to tell you.One question first. Have you followed my advice? Have you
told Mrs. Lecount you are beginning to think yourself mistaken in me?"
"I did worse than that," replied Noel Vanstone penitently. "I committed
an outrage on my own feelings. I disgraced myself by saying that I
doubted Miss Bygrave!"
"Go on disgracing yourself, my dear sir! Doubt us both with all your
might, and I'll help you. One question more. Did I speak loud enough
this afternoon? Did Mrs. Lecount hear me?"
"Yes. Lecount opened her door; Lecount heard you. What made you give me
that message? I see no pictures here. Is this another pious fraud, Mr.
Bygrave?"
"Admirably guessed, Mr. Vanstone! You will see the object of my
imaginary picture-dealing in the very next words which I am now about
to address to you. When you get back to Sea View, this is what you are
to say to Mrs. Lecount. Tell her that my relative's works of Art are
two worthless picturescopies from the Old Masters, which I have tried
to sell you as originals at an exorbitant price. Say you suspect me of
being little better than a plausible impostor, and pity my unfortunate
niece for being associated with such a rascal as I am. There is your
text to speak from. Say in many words what I have just said in a few.
You can do that, can't you?"
"Of course I can do it," said Noel Vanstone. "But I can tell you one
thingLecount won't believe me."
"Wait a little, Mr. Vanstone; I have not done with my instructions yet.
You understand what I have just told you? Very good. We may get on from
to-day to to-morrow. Go out to-morrow with Mrs. Lecount at your usual
time. I will meet you on the Parade, and bow to you. Instead of
returning my bow, look the other way. In plain English, cut me! That is
easy enough to do, isn't it?"
"She won't believe me, Mr. Bygraveshe won't believe me!"
"Wait a little again, Mr. Vanstone. There are more instructions to
come. You have got your directions for to-day, and you have got your
directions for to-morrow. Now for the day after. The day after is the
seventh day since we sent the letter to Zurich. On the seventh day
decline to go out walking as before, from dread of the annoyance of
meeting me again. Grumble about the smallness of the place; complain of
your health; wish you had never come to Aldborough, and never made
acquaintances with the Bygraves; and when you have well worried Mrs.
Lecount with your discontent, ask her on a sudden if she can't suggest
a change for the better. If you put that question to her naturally, do
you think she can be depended on to answer it?"
"She won't want to be questioned at all," replied Noel Vanstone,
irritably. "I have only got to say I am tired of Aldborough; and, if
she believes mewhich she won't; I'm quite positive, Mr. Bygrave, she
won't!she will have her suggestion ready before I can ask for it."
"Ay! ay!" said the captain eagerly. "There is some place, then, that
Mrs. Lecount wants to go to this autumn?"
"She wants to go there (hang her!) every autumn."
"To go where?"
"To Admiral Bartram'syou don't know him, do you?at St.
Crux-in-the-Marsh."
"Don't lose your patience, Mr. Vanstone! What you are now telling me is
of the most vital importance to the object we have in view. Who is
Admiral Bartram?"
"An old friend of my father's. My father laid him under obligationsmy
father lent him money when they were both young men. I am like one of
the family at St. Crux; my room is always kept ready for me. Not that
there's any family at the admiral's except his nephew, George Bartram.
George is my cousin; I'm as intimate with George as my father was with
the admiral; and I've been sharper than my father, for I haven't lent
my friend any money. Lecount always makes a show of liking GeorgeI
believe to annoy me. She likes the admiral, too; he flatters her
vanity. He always invites her to come with me to St. Crux. He lets her
have one of the best bedrooms, and treats her as if she was a lady. She
is as proud as Lucifershe likes being treated like a ladyand she
pesters me every autumn to go to St. Crux. What's the matter? What are
you taking out your pocketbook for?"
"I want the admiral's address, Mr. Vanstone, for a purpose which I will
explain immediately."
With those words, Captain Wragge opened his pocketbook and wrote down
the address from Noel Vanstone's dictation, as follows: "Admiral
Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, near Ossory, Essex."
"Good!" cried the captain, closing his pocketbook again. "The only
difficulty that stood in our way is now cleared out of it. Patience,
Mr. Vanstonepatience! Let us take up my instructions again at the
point where we dropped them. Give me five minutes' more attention, and
you will see your way to your marriage as plainly as I see it. On the
day after to-morrow you declare you are tired of Aldborough, and Mrs.
Lecount suggests St. Crux. You don't say yes or no on the spot; you
take the next day to consider it, and you make up your mind the last
thing at night to go to St. Crux the first thing in the morning. Are
you in the habit of superintending your own packing up, or do you
usually shift all the trouble of it on Mrs. Lecount's shoulders?"
"Lecount has all the trouble, of course; Lecount is paid for it! But I
don't really go, do I?"
"You go as fast as horses can take you to the railway without having
held any previous communication with this house, either personally or
by letter. You leave Mrs. Lecount behind to pack up your curiosities,
to settle with the tradespeople, and to follow you to St. Crux the next
morning. The next morning is the tenth morning. On the tenth morning
she receives the letter from Zurich; and if you only carry out my
instructions, Mr. Vanstone, as sure as you sit there, to Zurich she
goes."
Noel Vanstone's color began to rise again, as the captain's stratagem
dawned on him at last in its true light.
"And what am I to do at St. Crux?" he inquired.
"Wait there till I call for you," replied the captain. "As soon as Mrs.
Lecount's back is turned, I will go to the church here and give the
necessary notice of the marriage. The same day or the next, I will
travel to the address written down in my pocketbook, pick you up at the
admiral's, and take you on to London with me to get the license. With
that document in our possession, we shall be on our way back to
Aldborough while Mrs. Lecount is on her way out to Zurich; and before
she starts on her return journey, you and my niece will be man and
wife! There are your future prospects for you. What do you think of
them?"
"What a head you have got!" cried Noel Vanstone, in a sudden outburst
of enthusiasm. "You're the most extraordinary man I ever met with. One
would think you had done nothing all your life but take people in."
Captain Wragge received that unconscious tribute to his native genius
with the complacency of a man who felt that he thoroughly deserved it.
"I have told you already, my dear sir," he said, modestly, "that I
never do things by halves. Pardon me for reminding you that we have no
time for exchanging mutual civilities. Are you quite sure about your
instructions? I dare not write them down for fear of accidents. Try the
system of artificial memory; count your instructions off after me, on
your thumb and your four fingers. To-day you tell Mrs. Lecount I have
tried to take you in with my relative's works of Art. To-morrow you cut
me on the Parade. The day after you refuse to go out, you get tired of
Aldborough, and you allow Mrs. Lecount to make her suggestion. The next
day you accept the suggestion. And the next day to that you go to St.
Crux. Once more, my dear sir! Thumbworks of Art. Forefingercut me on
the Parade. Middle fingertired of Aldborough. Third fingertake
Lecount's advice. Little fingeroff to St. Crux. Nothing can be
clearernothing can be easier to do. Is there anything you don't
understand? Anything that I can explain over again before you go?"
"Only one thing," said Noel Vanstone. "Is it settled that I am not to
come here again before I go to St. Crux?"
"Most decidedly!" answered the captain. "The whole success of the
enterprise depends on your keeping away. Mrs. Lecount will try the
credibility of everything you say to her by one testthe test of your
communicating, or not, with this house. She will watch you night and
day! Don't call here, don't send messages, don't write letters; don't
even go out by yourself. Let her see you start for St. Crux on her
suggestion, with the absolute certainty in her own mind that you have
followed her advice without communicating it in any form whatever to me
or to my niece. Do that, and she must believe you, on the best of all
evidence for our interests, and the worst for hersthe evidence of her
own senses."
With those last words of caution, he shook the little man warmly by the
hand and sent him home on the spot.
CHAPTER X.
On returning to Sea View, Noel Vanstone executed the instructions which
prescribed his line of conduct for the first of the five days with
unimpeachable accuracy. A faint smile of contempt hovered about Mrs.
Lecount's lips while the story of Mr. Bygrave's attempt to pass off his
spurious pictures as originals was in progress, but she did not trouble
herself to utter a single word of remark when it had come to an end.
"Just what I said!" thought Noel Vanstone, cunningly watching her face;
"she doesn't believe a word of it!"
The next day the meeting occurred on the Parade. Mr. Bygrave took off
his hat, and Noel Vanstone looked the other way. The captain's start of
surprise and scowl of indignation were executed to perfection, but they
plainly failed to impose on Mrs. Lecount. "I am afraid, sir, you have
offended Mr. Bygrave to-day," she ironically remarked. "Happily for
you, he is an excellent Christian! and I venture to predict that he
will forgive you to-morrow."
Noel Vanstone wisely refrained from committing himself to an answer.
Once more he privately applauded his own penetration; once more he
triumphed over his ingenious friend.
Thus far the captain's instructions had been too clear and simple to be
mistaken by any one. But they advanced in complication with the advance
of time, and on the third day Noel Vanstone fell confusedly into the
commission of a slight error. After expressing the necessary weariness
of Aldborough, and the consequent anxiety for change of scene, he was
met (as he had anticipated) by an immediate suggestion from the
housekeeper, recommending a visit to St. Crux. In giving his answer to
the advice thus tendered, he made his first mistake. Instead of
deferring his decision until the next day, he accepted Mrs. Lecount's
suggestion on the day when it was offered to him.
The consequences of this error were of no great importance. The
housekeeper merely set herself to watch her master one day earlier than
had been calculated ona result which had been already provided for by
the wise precautionary measure of forbidding Noel Vanstone all
communication with North Shingles. Doubting, as Captain Wragge had
foreseen, the sincerity of her master's desire to break off his
connection with the Bygraves by going to St. Crux, Mrs. Lecount tested
the truth or falsehood of the impression produced on her own mind by
vigilantly watching for signs of secret communication on one side or on
the other. The close attention with which she had hitherto observed the
out-goings and in-comings at North Shingles was now entirely
transferred to her master. For the rest of that third day she never let
him out of her sight; she never allowed any third person who came to
the house, on any pretense whatever, a minute's chance of private
communication with him. At intervals through the night she stole to the
door of his room, to listen and assure herself that he was in bed; and
before sunrise the next morning, the coast-guardsman going his rounds
was surprised to see a lady who had risen as early as himself engaged
over her work at one of the upper windows of Sea View.
On the fourth morning Noel Vanstone came down to breakfast conscious of
the mistake that he had committed on the previous day. The obvious
course to take, for the purpose of gaining time, was to declare that
his mind was still undecided. He made the assertion boldly when the
housekeeper asked him if he meant to move that day. Again Mrs. Lecount
offered no remark, and again the signs and tokens of incredulity showed
themselves in her face. Vacillation of purpose was not at all unusual
in her experience of her master. But on this occasion she believed that
his caprice of conduct was assumed for the purpose of gaining time to
communicate with North Shingles, and she accordingly set her watch on
him once more with doubled and trebled vigilance.
No letters came that morning. Toward noon the weather changed for the
worse, and all idea of walking out as usual was abandoned. Hour after
hour, while her master sat in one of the parlors, Mrs. Lecount kept
watch in the other, with the door into the passage open, and with a
full view of North Shingles through the convenient side-window at which
she had established herself. Not a sign that was suspicious appeared,
not a sound that was suspicious caught her ear. As the evening closed
in, her master's hesitation came to an end. He was disgusted with the
weather; he hated the place; he foresaw the annoyance of more meetings
with Mr. Bygrave, and he was determined to go to St. Crux the first
thing the next morning. Lecount could stay behind to pack up the
curiosities and settle with the trades-people, and could follow him to
the admiral's on the next day. The housekeeper was a little staggered
by the tone and manner in which he gave these orders. He had, to her
own certain knowledge, effected no communication of any sort with North
Shingles, and yet he seemed determined to leave Aldborough at the
earliest possible opportunity. For the first time she hesitated in her
adherence to her own conclusions. She remembered that her master had
complained of the Bygraves before they returned to Aldborough; and she
was conscious that her own incredulity had once already misled her when
the appearance of the traveling-carriage at the door had proved even
Mr. Bygrave himself to be as good as his word.
Still Mrs. Lecount determined to act with unrelenting caution to the
last. That night, when the doors were closed, she privately removed the
keys from the door in front and the door at the back. She then softly
opened her bedroom window and sat down by it, with her bonnet and cloak
on, to prevent her taking cold. Noel Vanstone's window was on the same
side of the house as her own. If any one came in the dark to speak to
him from the garden beneath, they would speak to his housekeeper as
well. Prepared at all points to intercept every form of clandestine
communication which stratagem could invent, Mrs. Lecount watched
through the quiet night. When morning came, she stole downstairs before
the servant was up, restored the keys to their places, and re-occupied
her position in the parlor until Noel Vanstone made his appearance at
the breakfast-table. Had he altered his mind? No. He declined posting
to the railway on account of the expense, but he was as firm as ever in
his resolution to go to St. Crux. He desired that an inside place might
be secured for him in the early coach. Suspicious to the last, Mrs.
Lecount sent the baker's man to take the place. He was a public
servant, and Mr. Bygrave would not suspect him of performing a private
errand.
The coach called at Sea View. Mrs. Lecount saw her master established
in his place, and ascertained that the other three inside seats were
already occupied by strangers. She inquired of the coachman if the
outside places (all of which were not yet filled up) had their full
complement of passengers also. The man replied in the affirmative. He
had two gentlemen to call for in the town, and the others would take
their places at the inn. Mrs. Lecount forthwith turned her steps toward
the inn, and took up her position on the Parade opposite from a point
of view which would enable her to see the last of the coach on its
departure. In ten minutes more it rattled away, full outside and in;
and the housekeeper's own eyes assured her that neither Mr. Bygrave
himself, nor any one belonging to North Shingles, was among the
passengers.
There was only one more precaution to take, and Mrs. Lecount did not
neglect it. Mr. Bygrave had doubtless seen the coach call at Sea View.
He might hire a carriage and follow it to the railway on pure
speculation. Mrs. Lecount remained within view of the inn (the only
place at which a carriage could be obtained) for nearly an hour longer,
waiting for events. Nothing happened; no carriage made its appearance;
no pursuit of Noel Vanstone was now within the range of human
possibility. The long strain on Mrs. Lecount's mind relaxed at last.
She left her seat on the Parade, and returned in higher spirits than
usual, to perform the closing household ceremonies at Sea View.
She sat down alone in the parlor and drew a long breath of relief.
Captain Wragge's calculations had not deceived him. The evidence of her
own senses had at last conquered the housekeeper's incredulity, and had
literally forced her into the opposite extreme of belief.
Estimating the events of the last three days from her own experience of
them; knowing (as she certainly knew) that the first idea of going to
St. Crux had been started by herself, and that her master had found no
opportunity and shown no inclination to inform the family at North
Shingles that he had accepted her proposal, Mrs. Lecount was fairly
compelled to acknowledge that not a fragment of foundation remained to
justify the continued suspicion of treachery in her own mind. Looking
at the succession of circumstances under the new light thrown on them
by results, she could see nothing unaccountable, nothing contradictory
anywhere. The attempt to pass off the forged pictures as originals was
in perfect harmony with the character of such a man as Mr. Bygrave. Her
master's indignation at the attempt to impose on him; his
plainly-expressed suspicion that Miss Bygrave was privy to it; his
disappointment in the niece; his contemptuous treatment of the uncle on
the Parade; his weariness of the place which had been the scene of his
rash intimacy with strangers, and his readiness to quit it that
morning, all commended themselves as genuine realities to the
housekeeper's mind, for one sufficient reason. Her own eyes had seen
Noel Vanstone take his departure from Aldborough without leaving, or
attempting to leave, a single trace behind him for the Bygraves to
follow.
Thus far the housekeeper's conclusions led her, but no further. She was
too shrewd a woman to trust the future to chance and fortune. Her
master's variable temper might relent. Accident might at any time give
Mr. Bygrave an opportunity of repairing the error that he had
committed, and of artfully regaining his lost place in Noel Vanstone's
estimation. Admitting that circumstances had at last declared
themselves unmistakably in her favor, Mrs. Lecount was not the less
convinced that nothing would permanently assure her master's security
for the future but the plain exposure of the conspiracy which she had
striven to accomplish from the firstwhich she was resolved to
accomplish still.
"I always enjoy myself at St. Crux," thought Mrs. Lecount, opening her
account-books, and sorting the tradesmen's bills. "The admiral is a
gentleman, the house is noble, the table is excellent. No matter! Here
at Sea View I stay by myself till I have seen the inside of Miss
Bygrave's wardrobe."
She packed her master's collection of curiosities in their various
cases, settled the claims of the trades-people, and superintended the
covering of the furniture in the course of the day. Toward nightfall
she went out, bent on investigation, and ventured into the garden at
North Shingles under cover of the darkness. She saw the light in the
parlor window, and the lights in the windows of the rooms upstairs, as
usual. After an instant's hesitation she stole to the house door, and
noiselessly tried the handle from the outside. It turned the lock as
she had expected, from her experience of houses at Aldborough and at
other watering-places, but the door resisted her; the door was
distrustfully bolted on the inside. After making that discovery, she
went round to the back of the house, and ascertained that the door on
that side was secured in the same manner. "Bolt your doors, Mr.
Bygrave, as fast as you like," said the housekeeper, stealing back
again to the Parade. "You can't bolt the entrance to your servant's
pocket. The best lock you have may be opened by a golden key."
She went back to bed. The ceaseless watching, the unrelaxing excitement
of the last two days, had worn her out.
The next morning she rose at seven o'clock. In half an hour more she
saw the punctual Mr. Bygraveas she had seen him on many previous
mornings at the same timeissue from the gate of North Shingles, with
his towels under his arm, and make his way to a boat that was waiting
for him on the beach. Swimming was one among the many personal
accomplishments of which the captain was master. He was rowed out to
sea every morning, and took his bath luxuriously in the deep blue
water. Mrs. Lecount had already computed the time consumed in this
recreation by her watch, and had discovered that a full hour usually
elapsed from the moment when he embarked on the beach to the moment
when he returned.
During that period she had never seen any other inhabitant of North
Shingles leave the house. The servant was no doubt at her work in the
kitchen; Mrs. Bygrave was probably still in her bed; and Miss Bygrave
(if she was up at that early hour) had perhaps received directions not
to venture out in her uncle's absence. The difficulty of meeting the
obstacle of Magdalen's presence in the house had been, for some days
past, the one difficulty which all Mrs. Lecount's ingenuity had thus
far proved unable to overcome.
She sat at the window for a quarter of an hour after the captain's boat
had left the beach with her mind hard at work, and her eyes fixed
mechanically on North Shinglesshe sat considering what written excuse
she could send to her master for delaying her departure from Aldborough
for some days to comewhen the door of the house she was watching
suddenly opened, and Magdalen herself appeared in the garden. There was
no mistaking her figure and her dress. She took a few steps hastily
toward the gate, stopped and pulled down the veil of her garden hat as
if she felt the clear morning light too much for her, then hurried out
on the Parade and walked away northward, in such haste, or in such
pre-occupation of mind, that she went through the garden gate without
closing it after her.
Mrs. Lecount started up from her chair with a moment's doubt of the
evidence of her own eyes. Had the opportunity which she had been vainly
plotting to produce actually offered itself to her of its own accord?
Had the chances declared themselves at last in her favor, after
steadily acting against her for so long? There was no doubt of it: in
the popular phrase, "her luck had turned." She snatched up her bonnet
and mantilla, and made for North Shingles without an instant's
hesitation. Mr. Bygrave out at sea; Miss Bygrave away for a walk; Mrs.
Bygrave and the servant both at home, and both easily dealt withthe
opportunity was not to be lost; the risk was well worth running!
This time the house door was easily opened: no one had bolted it again
after Magdalen's departure. Mrs. Lecount closed the door softly,
listened for a moment in the passage, and heard the servant noisily
occupied in the kitchen with her pots and pans. "If my lucky star leads
me straight into Miss Bygrave's room," thought the housekeeper,
stealing noiselessly up the stairs, "I may find my way to her wardrobe
without disturbing anybody."
She tried the door nearest to the front of the house on the right-hand
side of the landing. Capricious chance had deserted her already. The
lock was turned. She tried the door opposite, on her left hand. The
boots ranged symmetrically in a row, and the razors on the
dressing-table, told her at once that she had not found the right room
yet. She returned to the right-hand side of the landing, walked down a
little passage leading to the back of the house, and tried a third
door. The door opened, and the two opposite extremes of female
humanity, Mrs. Wragge and Mrs. Lecount, stood face to face in an
instant!
"I beg ten thousand pardons!" said Mrs. Lecount, with the most
consummate self-possession.
"Lord bless us and save us!" cried Mrs. Wragge, with the most helpless
amazement.
The two exclamations were uttered in a moment, and in that moment Mrs.
Lecount took the measure of her victim. Nothing of the least importance
escaped her. She noticed the Oriental Cashmere Robe lying half made,
and half unpicked again, on the table; she noticed the imbecile foot of
Mrs. Wragge searching blindly in the neighborhood of her chair for a
lost shoe; she noticed that there was a second door in the room besides
the door by which she had entered, and a second chair within easy
reach, on which she might do well to seat herself in a friendly and
confidential way. "Pray don't resent my intrusion," pleaded Mrs.
Lecount, taking the chair. "Pray allow me to explain myself!"
Speaking in her softest voice, surveying Mrs. Wragge with a sweet smile
on her insinuating lips, and a melting interest in her handsome black
eyes, the housekeeper told her little introductory series of falsehoods
with an artless truthfulness of manner which the Father of Lies himself
might have envied. She had heard from Mr. Bygrave that Mrs. Bygrave was
a great invalid; she had constantly reproached herself, in her idle
half-hours at Sea View (where she filled the situation of Mr. Noel
Vanstone's housekeeper), for not having offered her friendly services
to Mrs. Bygrave; she had been directed by her master (doubtless well
known to Mrs. Bygrave, as one of her husband's friends, and, naturally,
one of her charming niece's admirers), to join him that day at the
residence to which he had removed from Aldborough; she was obliged to
leave early, but she could not reconcile it to her conscience to go
without calling to apologize for her apparent want of neighborly
consideration; she had found nobody in the house; she had not been able
to make the servant hear; she had presumed (not discovering that
apartment downstairs) that Mrs. Bygrave's boudoir might be on the upper
story; she had thoughtlessly committed an intrusion of which she was
sincerely ashamed, and she could now only trust to Mrs. Bygrave's
indulgence to excuse and forgive her.
A less elaborate apology might have served Mrs. Lecount's purpose. As
soon as Mrs. Wragge's struggling perceptions had grasped the fact that
her unexpected visitor was a neighbor well known to her by repute, her
whole being became absorbed in admiration of Mrs. Lecount's lady-like
manners, and Mrs. Lecount's perfectly-fitting gown! "What a noble way
she has of talking!" thought poor Mrs. Wragge, as the housekeeper
reached her closing sentence. "And, oh my heart alive, how nicely she's
dressed!"
"I see I disturb you," pursued Mrs. Lecount, artfully availing herself
of the Oriental Cashmere Robe as a means ready at hand of reaching the
end she had in view"I see I disturb you, ma'am, over an occupation
which, I know by experience, requires the closest attention. Dear, dear
me, you are unpicking the dress again, I see, after it has been made!
This is my own experience again, Mrs. Bygrave. Some dresses are so
obstinate! Some dresses seem to say to one, in so many words, 'No! you
may do what you like with me; I won't fit!'"
Mrs. Wragge was greatly struck by this happy remark. She burst out
laughing, and clapped her great hands in hearty approval.
"That's what this gown has been saying to me ever since I first put the
scissors into it," she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I know I've got an awful
big back, but that's no reason. Why should a gown be weeks on hand, and
then not meet behind you after all? It hangs over my Boasom like a
sackit does. Look here, ma'am, at the skirt. It won't come right. It
draggles in front, and cocks up behind. It shows my heelsand, Lord
knows, I get into scrapes enough about my heels, without showing them
into the bargain!"
"May I ask a favor?" inquired Mrs. Lecount, confidentially. "May I try,
Mrs. Bygrave, if I can make my experience of any use to you? I think
our bosoms, ma'am, are our great difficulty. Now, this bosom of
yours?Shall I say in plain words what I think? This bosom of yours is
an Enormous Mistake!"
"Don't say that!" cried Mrs. Wragge, imploringly. "Don't please,
there's a good soul! It's an awful big one, I know; but it's modeled,
for all that, from one of Magdalen's own."
She was far too deeply interested on the subject of the dress to notice
that she had forgotten herself already, and that she had referred to
Magdalen by her own name. Mrs. Lecount's sharp ears detected the
mistake the instant it was committed. "So! so!" she thought. "One
discovery already. If I had ever doubted my own suspicions, here is an
estimable lady who would now have set me right.I beg your pardon," she
proceeded, aloud, "did you say this was modeled from one of your
niece's dresses?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Wragge. "It's as like as two peas."
"Then," replied Mrs. Lecount, adroitly, "there must be some serious
mistake in the making of your niece's dress. Can you show it to me?"
"Bless your heartyes!" cried Mrs. Wragge. "Step this way, ma'am; and
bring the gown along with you, please. It keeps sliding off, out of
pure aggravation, if you lay it out on the table. There's lots of room
on the bed in here."
She opened the door of communication and led the way eagerly into
Magdalen's room. As Mrs. Lecount followed, she stole a look at her
watch. Never before had time flown as it flew that morning! In twenty
minutes more Mr. Bygrave would be back from his bath.
"There!" said Mrs. Wragge, throwing open the wardrobe, and taking a
dress down from one of the pegs. "Look there! There's plaits on her
Boasom, and plaits on mine. Six of one and half a dozen of the other;
and mine are the biggestthat's all!"
Mrs. Lecount shook her head gravely, and entered forthwith into
subtleties of disquisition on the art of dressmaking which had the
desired effect of utterly bewildering the proprietor of the Oriental
Cashmere Robe in less than three minutes.
"Don't!" cried Mrs. Wragge, imploringly. "Don't go on like that! I'm
miles behind you; and my head's Buzzing already. Tell us, like a good
soul, what's to be done. You said something about the pattern just now.
Perhaps I'm too big for the pattern? I can't help it if I am. Many's
the good cry I had, when I was a growing girl, over my own size!
There's half too much of me, ma'ammeasure me along or measure me
across, I don't deny itthere's half too much of me, anyway."
"My dear madam," protested Mrs. Lecount, "you do yourself a wrong!
Permit me to assure you that you possess a commanding figurea figure
of Minerva. A majestic simplicity in the form of a woman imperatively
demands a majestic simplicity in the form of that woman's dress. The
laws of costume are classical; the laws of costume must not be trifled
with! Plaits for Venus, puffs for Juno, folds for Minerva. I venture to
suggest a total change of pattern. Your niece has other dresses in her
collection. Why may we not find a Minerva pattern among them?"
As she said those words, she led the way back to the wardrobe.
Mrs. Wragge followed, and took the dresses out one by one, shaking her
head despondently. Silk dresses appeared, muslin dresses appeared. The
one dress which remained invisible was the dress of which Mrs. Lecount
was in search.
"There's the lot of 'em," said Mrs. Wragge. "They may do for Venus and
the two other Ones (I've seen 'em in picters without a morsel of decent
linen among the three), but they won't do for Me."
"Surely there is another dress left?" said Mrs. Lecount, pointing to
the wardrobe, but touching nothing in it. "Surely I see something
hanging in the corner behind that dark shawl?"
Mrs. Wragge removed the shawl; Mrs. Lecount opened the door of the
wardrobe a little wider. Therehitched carelessly on the innermost
pegthere, with its white spots, and its double flounce, was the brown
Alpaca dress!
The suddenness and completeness of the discovery threw the housekeeper,
practiced dissembler as she was, completely off her guard. She started
at the sight of the dress. The instant afterward her eyes turned
uneasily toward Mrs. Wragge. Had the start been observed? It had passed
entirely unnoticed. Mrs. Wragge's whole attention was fixed on the
Alpaca dress: she was staring at it incomprehensibly, with an
expression of the utmost dismay.
"You seem alarmed, ma'am," said Mrs. Lecount. "What is there in the
wardrobe to frighten you?"
"I'd have given a crown piece out of my pocket," said Mrs. Wragge, "not
to have set my eyes on that gown. It had gone clean out of my head, and
now it's come back again. Cover it up!" cried Mrs. Wragge, throwing the
shawl over the dress in a sudden fit of desperation. "If I look at it
much longer, I shall think I'm back again in Vauxhall Walk!"
Vauxhall Walk! Those two words told Mrs. Lecount she was on the brink
of another discovery. She stole a second look at her watch. There was
barely ten minutes to spare before the time when Mr. Bygrave might
return; there was not one of those ten minutes which might not bring
his niece back to the house. Caution counseled Mrs. Lecount to go,
without running any more risks. Curiosity rooted her to the spot, and
gave the courage to stay at all hazards until the time was up. Her
amiable smile began to harden a little as she probed her way tenderly
into Mrs. Wragge's feeble mind.
"You have some unpleasant remembrances of Vauxhall Walk?" she said,
with the gentlest possible tone of inquiry in her voice. "Or perhaps I
should say, unpleasant remembrances of that dress belonging to your
niece?"
"The last time I saw her with that gown on," said Mrs. Wragge, dropping
into a chair and beginning to tremble, "was the time when I came back
from shopping and saw the Ghost."
"The Ghost?" repeated Mrs. Lecount, clasping her hands in graceful
astonishment. "Dear madam, pardon me! Is there such a thing in the
world? Where did you see it? In Vauxhall Walk? Tell meyou are the
first lady I ever met with who has seen a ghostpray tell me!"
Flattered by the position of importance which she had suddenly assumed
in the housekeeper's eyes, Mrs. Wragge entered at full length into the
narrative of her supernatural adventure. The breathless eagerness with
which Mrs. Lecount listened to her description of the specter's
costume, the specter's hurry on the stairs, and the specter's
disappearance in the bedroom; the extraordinary interest which Mrs.
Lecount displayed on hearing that the dress in the wardrobe was the
very dress in which Magdalen happened to be attired at the awful moment
when the ghost vanished, encouraged Mrs. Wragge to wade deeper and
deeper into details, and to involve herself in a confusion of
collateral circumstances out of which there seemed to be no prospect of
her emerging for hours to come. Faster and faster the inexorable
minutes flew by; nearer and nearer came the fatal moment of Mr.
Bygrave's return. Mrs. Lecount looked at her watch for the third time,
without an attempt on this occasion to conceal the action from her
companion's notice. There were literally two minutes left for her to
get clear of North Shingles. Two minutes would be enough, if no
accident happened. She had discovered the Alpaca dress; she had heard
the whole story of the adventure in Vauxhall Walk; and, more than that,
she had even informed herself of the number of the housewhich Mrs.
Wragge happened to remember, because it answered to the number of years
in her own age. All that was necessary to her master's complete
enlightenment she had now accomplished. Even if there had been time to
stay longer, there was nothing worth staying for. "I'll strike this
worthy idiot dumb with a coup d'etat," thought the housekeeper, "and
vanish before she recovers herself."
"Horrible!" cried Mrs. Lecount, interrupting the ghostly narrative by a
shrill little scream and making for the door, to Mrs. Wragge's
unutterable astonishment, without the least ceremony. "You freeze the
very marrow of my bones. Good-morning!" She coolly tossed the Oriental
Cashmere Robe into Mrs. Wragge's expansive lap and left the room in an
instant.
As she swiftly descended the stairs, she heard the door of the bedroom
open.
"Where are your manners?" cried a voice from above, hailing her feebly
over the banisters. "What do you mean by pitching my gown at me in that
way? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" pursued Mrs. Wragge, turning
from a lamb to a lioness, as she gradually realized the indignity
offered to the Cashmere Robe. "You nasty foreigner, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself!"
Pursued by this valedictory address, Mrs. Lecount reached the house
door, and opened it without interruption. She glided rapidly along the
garden path, passed through the gate, and finding herself safe on the
Parade, stopped, and looked toward the sea.
The first object which her eyes encountered was the figure of Mr.
Bygrave standing motionless on the beacha petrified bather, with his
towels in his hand! One glance at him was enough to show that he had
seen the housekeeper passing out through his garden gate.
Rightly conjecturing that Mr. Bygrave's first impulse would lead him to
make instant inquiries in his own house, Mrs. Lecount pursued her way
back to Sea View as composedly as if nothing had happened. When she
entered the parlor where her solitary breakfast was waiting for her,
she was surprised to see a letter lying on the table. She approached to
take it up with an expression of impatience, thinking it might be some
tradesman's bill which she had forgotten.
It was the forged letter from Zurich.
CHAPTER XI.
The postmark and the handwriting on the address (admirably imitated
from the original) warned Mrs. Lecount of the contents of the letter
before she opened it.
After waiting a moment to compose herself, she read the announcement of
her brother's relapse.
There was nothing in the handwriting, there was no expression in any
part of the letter which could suggest to her mind the faintest
suspicion of foul play. Not the shadow of a doubt occurred to her that
the summons to her brother's bedside was genuine. The hand that held
the letter dropped heavily into her lap; she became pale, and old, and
haggard in a moment. Thoughts, far removed from her present aims and
interests; remembrances that carried her back to other lands than
England, to other times than the time of her life in service, prolonged
their inner shadows to the surface, and showed the traces of their
mysterious passage darkly on her face. The minutes followed each other,
and still the servant below stairs waited vainly for the parlor bell.
The minutes followed each other, and still she sat, tearless and quiet,
dead to the present and the future, living in the past.
The entrance of the servant, uncalled, roused her. With a heavy sigh,
the cold and secret woman folded the letter up again and addressed
herself to the interests and the duties of the passing time.
She decided the question of going or not going to Zurich, after a very
brief consideration of it. Before she had drawn her chair to the
breakfast-table she had resolved to go.
Admirably as Captain Wragge's stratagem had worked, it might have
failedunassisted by the occurrence of the morningto achieve this
result. The very accident against which it had been the captain's chief
anxiety to guardthe accident which had just taken place in spite of
himwas, of all the events that could have happened, the one event
which falsified every previous calculation, by directly forwarding the
main purpose of the conspiracy! If Mrs. Lecount had not obtained the
information of which she was in search before the receipt of the letter
from Zurich, the letter might have addressed her in vain. She would
have hesitated before deciding to leave England, and that hesitation
might have proved fatal to the captain's scheme.
As it was, with the plain proofs in her possession, with the gown
discovered in Magdalen's wardrobe, with the piece cut out of it in her
own pocketbook, and with the knowledge, obtained from Mrs. Wragge, of
the very house in which the disguise had been put on, Mrs. Lecount had
now at her command the means of warning Noel Vanstone as she had never
been able to warn him yet, or, in other words, the means of guarding
against any dangerous tendencies toward reconciliation with the
Bygraves which might otherwise have entered his mind during her absence
at Zurich. The only difficulty which now perplexed her was the
difficulty of deciding whether she should communicate with her master
personally or by writing, before her departure from England.
She looked again at the doctor's letter. The word "instantly," in the
sentence which summoned her to her dying brother, was twice underlined.
Admiral Bartram's house was at some distance from the railway; the time
consumed in driving to St. Crux, and driving back again, might be time
fatally lost on the journey to Zurich. Although she would infinitely
have preferred a personal interview with Noel Vanstone, there was no
choice on a matter of life and death but to save the precious hours by
writing to him.
After sending to secure a place at once in the early coach, she sat
down to write to her master.
Her first thought was to tell him all that had happened at North
Shingles that morning. On reflection, however, she rejected the idea.
Once already (in copying the personal description from Miss Garth's
letter) she had trusted her weapons in her master's hands, and Mr.
Bygrave had contrived to turn them against her. She resolved this time
to keep them strictly in her own possession. The secret of the missing
fragment of the Alpaca dress was known to no living creature but
herself; and, until her return to England, she determined to keep it to
herself. The necessary impression might be produced on Noel Vanstone's
mind without venturing into details. She knew by experience the form of
letter which might be trusted to produce an effect on him, and she now
wrote it in these words:
"DEAR MR. NOELSad news has reached me from Switzerland. My beloved
brother is dying and his medical attendant summons me instantly to
Zurich. The serious necessity of availing myself of the earliest means
of conveyance to the Continent leaves me but one alternative. I must
profit by the permission to leave England, if necessary, which you
kindly granted to me at the beginning of my brother's illness, and I
must avoid all delay by going straight to London, instead of turning
aside, as I should have liked, to see you first at St. Crux.
"Painfully as I am affected by the family calamity which has fallen on
me, I cannot let this opportunity pass without adverting to another
subject which seriously concerns your welfare, and in which (on that
account) your old housekeeper feels the deepest interest.
"I am going to surprise and shock you, Mr. Noel. Pray don't be
agitated! pray compose yourself!
"The impudent attempt to cheat you, which has happily opened your eyes
to the true character of our neighbors at North Shingles, was not the
only object which Mr. Bygrave had in forcing himself on your
acquaintance. The infamous conspiracy with which you were threatened in
London has been in full progress against you under Mr. Bygrave's
direction, at Aldborough. AccidentI will tell you what accident when
we meethas put me in possession of information precious to your future
security. I have discovered, to an absolute certainty, that the person
calling herself Miss Bygrave is no other than the woman who visited us
in disguise at Vauxhall Walk.
"I suspected this from the first, but I had no evidence to support my
suspicions; I had no means of combating the false impression produced
on you. My hands, I thank Heaven, are tied no longer. I possess
absolute proof of the assertion that I have just madeproof that your
own eyes can seeproof that would satisfy you, if you were judge in a
Court of Justice.
"Perhaps even yet, Mr. Noel, you will refuse to believe me? Be it so.
Believe me or not, I have one last favor to ask, which your English
sense of fair play will not deny me.
"This melancholy journey of mine will keep me away from England for a
fortnight, or, at most, for three weeks. You will oblige meand you
will certainly not sacrifice your own convenience and pleasureby
staying through that interval with your friends at St. Crux. If, before
my return, some unexpected circumstance throws you once more into the
company of the Bygraves, and if your natural kindness of heart inclines
you to receive the excuses which they will, in that case, certainly
address to you, place one trifling restraint on yourself, for your own
sake, if not for mine. Suspend your flirtation with the young lady (I
beg pardon of all other young ladies for calling her so!) until my
return. If, when I come back, I fail to prove to you that Miss Bygrave
is the woman who wore that disguise, and used those threatening words,
in Vauxhall Wall, I will engage to leave your service at a day's
notice; and I will atone for the sin of bearing false witness against
my neighbor by resigning every claim I have to your grateful
remembrance, on your father's account as well as on your own. I make
this engagement without reserves of any kind; and I promise to abide by
itif my proofs failon the faith of a good Catholic, and the word of
an honest woman. Your faithful servant,
"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."
The closing sentences of this letteras the housekeeper well knew when
she wrote themembodied the one appeal to Noel Vanstone which could be
certainly trusted to produce a deep and lasting effect. She might have
staked her oath, her life, or her reputation, on proving the assertion
which she had made, and have failed to leave a permanent impression on
his mind. But when she staked not only her position in his service, but
her pecuniary claims on him as well, she at once absorbed the ruling
passion of his life in expectation of the result. There was not a doubt
of it, in the strongest of all his intereststhe interest of saving his
moneyhe would wait.
"Checkmate for Mr. Bygrave!" thought Mrs. Lecount, as she sealed and
directed the letter. "The battle is overthe game is played out."
While Mrs. Lecount was providing for her master's future security at
Sea View, events were in full progress at North Shingles.
As soon as Captain Wragge recovered his astonishment at the
housekeeper's appearance on his own premises, he hurried into the
house, and, guided by his own forebodings of the disaster that had
happened, made straight for his wife's room.
Never, in all her former experience, had poor Mrs. Wragge felt the full
weight of the captain's indignation as she felt it now. All the little
intelligence she naturally possessed vanished at once in the whirlwind
of her husband's rage. The only plain facts which he could extract from
her were two in number. In the first place, Magdalen's rash desertion
of her post proved to have no better reason to excuse it than
Magdalen's incorrigible impatience: she had passed a sleepless night;
she had risen feverish and wretched; and she had gone out, reckless of
all consequences, to cool her burning head in the fresh air. In the
second place, Mrs. Wragge had, on her own confession, seen Mrs.
Lecount, had talked with Mrs. Lecount, and had ended by telling Mrs.
Lecount the story of the ghost. Having made these discoveries, Captain
Wragge wasted no time in contending with his wife's terror and
confusion. He withdrew at once to a window which commanded an
uninterrupted prospect of Noel Vanstone's house, and there established
himself on the watch for events at Sea View, precisely as Mrs. Lecount
had established herself on the watch for events at North Shingles.
Not a word of comment on the disaster of the morning escaped him when
Magdalen returned and found him at his post. His flow of language
seemed at last to have run dry. "I told you what Mrs. Wragge would do,"
he said, "and Mrs. Wragge has done it." He sat unflinchingly at the
window with a patience which Mrs. Lecount herself could not have
surpassed. The one active proceeding in which he seemed to think it
necessary to engage was performed by deputy. He sent the servant to the
inn to hire a chaise and a fast horse, and to say that he would call
himself before noon that day and tell the hostler when the vehicle
would be wanted. Not a sign of impatience escaped him until the time
drew near for the departure of the early coach. Then the captain's
curly lips began to twitch with anxiety, and the captain's restless
fingers beat the devil's tattoo unremittingly on the window-pane.
The coach appeared at last, and drew up at Sea View. In a minute more,
Captain Wragge's own observation informed him that one among the
passengers who left Aldborough that morning wasMrs. Lecount.
The main uncertainty disposed of, a serious questionsuggested by the
events of the morningstill remained to be solved. Which was the
destined end of Mrs. Lecount's journeyZurich or St. Crux? That she
would certainly inform her master of Mrs. Wragge's ghost story, and of
every other disclosure in relation to names and places which might have
escaped Mrs. Wragge's lips, was beyond all doubt. But of the two ways
at her disposal of doing the mischiefeither personally or by letterit
was vitally important to the captain to know which she had chosen. If
she had gone to the admiral's, no choice would be left him but to
follow the coach, to catch the train by which she traveled, and to
outstrip her afterward on the drive from the station in Essex to St.
Crux. If, on the contrary, she had been contented with writing to her
master, it would only be necessary to devise measures for intercepting
the letter. The captain decided on going to the post-office, in the
first place. Assuming that the housekeeper had written, she would not
have left the letter at the mercy of the servantshe would have seen it
safely in the letter-box before leaving Aldborough.
"Good-morning," said the captain, cheerfully addressing the postmaster.
"I am Mr. Bygrave of North Shingles. I think you have a letter in the
box, addressed to Mr.?"
The postmaster was a short man, and consequently a man with a proper
idea of his own importance. He solemnly checked Captain Wragge in full
career.
"When a letter is once posted, sir," he said, "nobody out of the office
has any business with it until it reaches its address."
The captain was not a man to be daunted, even by a postmaster. A bright
idea struck him. He took out his pocketbook, in which Admiral Bartram's
address was written, and returned to the charge.
"Suppose a letter has been wrongly directed by mistake?" he began. "And
suppose the writer wants to correct the error after the letter is put
into the box?"
"When a letter is once posted, sir," reiterated the impenetrable local
authority, "nobody out of the office touches it on any pretense
whatever."
"Granted, with all my heart," persisted the captain. "I don't want to
touch itI only want to explain myself. A lady has posted a letter
here, addressed to 'Noel Vanstone, Esq., Admiral Bartram's, St.
Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex.' She wrote in a great hurry, and she is not
quite certain whether she added the name of the post-town, 'Ossory.' It
is of the last importance that the delivery of the letter should not be
delayed. What is to hinder your facilitating the post-office work, and
obliging a lady, by adding the name of the post-town (if it happens to
be left out), with your own hand? I put it to you as a zealous officer,
what possible objection can there be to granting my request?"
The postmaster was compelled to acknowledge that there could be no
objection, provided nothing but a necessary line was added to the
address, provided nobody touched the letter but himself, and provided
the precious time of the post-office was not suffered to run to waste.
As there happened to be nothing particular to do at that moment, he
would readily oblige the lady at Mr. Bygrave's request.
Captain Wragge watched the postmaster's hands, as they sorted the
letters in the box, with breathless eagerness. Was the letter there?
Would the hands of the zealous public servant suddenly stop? Yes! They
stopped, and picked out a letter from the rest.
"'Noel Vanstone, Esquire,' did you say?" asked the postmaster, keeping
the letter in his own hand.
"'Noel Vanstone, Esquire,'" replied the captain, "'Admiral Bartram's,
St. Crux-in-the-Marsh.'"
"Ossory, Essex," chimed in the postmaster, throwing the letter back
into the box. "The lady has made no mistake, sir. The address is quite
right."
Nothing but a timely consideration of the heavy debt he owed to
appearances prevented Captain Wragge from throwing his tall white hat
up in the air as soon as he found the street once more. All further
doubt was now at an end. Mrs. Lecount had written to her
mastertherefore Mrs. Lecount was on her way to Zurich!
With his head higher than ever, with the tails of his respectable
frock-coat floating behind him in the breeze, with his bosom's native
impudence sitting lightly on its throne, the captain strutted to the
inn and called for the railway time-table. After making certain
calculations (in black and white, as a matter of course), he ordered
his chaise to be ready in an hourso as to reach the railway in time
for the second train running to Londonwith which there happened to be
no communication from Aldborough by coach.
His next proceeding was of a far more serious kind; his next proceeding
implied a terrible certainty of success. The day of the week was
Thursday. From the inn he went to the church, saw the clerk, and gave
the necessary notice for a marriage by license on the following Monday.
Bold as he was, his nerves were a little shaken by this last
achievement; his hand trembled as it lifted the latch of the garden
gate. He doctored his nerves with brandy and water before he sent for
Magdalen to inform her of the proceedings of the morning. Another
outbreak might reasonably be expected when she heard that the last
irrevocable step had been taken, and that notice had been given of the
wedding-day.
The captain's watch warned him to lose no time in emptying his glass.
In a few minutes he sent the necessary message upstairs. While waiting
for Magdalen's appearance, he provided himself with certain materials
which were now necessary to carry the enterprise to its crowning point.
In the first place, he wrote his assumed name (by no means in so fine a
hand as usual) on a blank visiting-card, and added underneath these
words: "Not a moment is to be lost. I am waiting for you at the
doorcome down to me directly." His next proceeding was to take some
half-dozen envelopes out of the case, and to direct them all alike to
the following address: "Thomas Bygrave, Esq., Mussared's Hotel,
Salisbury Street, Strand, London." After carefully placing the
envelopes and the card in his breast-pocket, he shut up the desk. As he
rose from the writing-table, Magdalen came into the room.
The captain took a moment to decide on the best method of opening the
interview, and determined, in his own phrase, to dash at it. In two
words he told Magdalen what had happened, and informed her that Monday
was to be her wedding-day.
He was prepared to quiet her, if she burst into a frenzy of passion; to
reason with her, if she begged for time; to sympathize with her, if she
melted into tears. To his inexpressible surprise, results falsified all
his calculations. She heard him without uttering a word, without
shedding a tear. When he had done, she dropped into a chair. Her large
gray eyes stared at him vacantly. In one mysterious instant all her
beauty left her; her face stiffened awfully, like the face of a corpse.
For the first time in the captain's experience of her,
fearall-mastering fearhad taken possession of her, body and soul.
"You are not flinching," he said, trying to rouse her. "Surely you are
not flinching at the last moment?"
No light of intelligence came into her eyes, no change passed over her
face. But she heard himfor she moved a little in the chair, and slowly
shook her head.
"You planned this marriage of your own freewill," pursued the captain,
with the furtive look and the faltering voice of a man ill at ease. "It
was your own ideanot mine. I won't have the responsibility laid on my
shouldersno! not for twice two hundred pounds. If your resolution
fails you; if you think better of it?"
He stopped. Her face was changing; her lips were moving at last. She
slowly raised her left hand, with the fingers outspread; she looked at
it as if it was a hand that was strange to her; she counted the days on
it, the days before the marriage.
"Friday, one," she whispered to herself; "Saturday, two; Sunday, three;
Monday" Her hands dropped into her lap, her face stiffened again; the
deadly fear fastened its paralyzing hold on her once more, and the next
words died away on her lips.
Captain Wragge took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
"Damn the two hundred pounds!" he said. "Two thousand wouldn't pay me
for this!"
He put the handkerchief back, took the envelopes which he had addressed
to himself out of his pocket, and, approaching her closely for the
first time, laid his hand on her arm.
"Rouse yourself," he said, "I have a last word to say to you. Can you
listen?"
She struggled, and roused herselfa faint tinge of color stole over her
white cheeksshe bowed her head.
"Look at these," pursued Captain Wragge, holding up the envelopes. "If
I turn these to the use for which they have been written, Mrs.
Lecount's master will never receive Mrs. Lecount's letter. If I tear
them up, he will know by to-morrow's post that you are the woman who
visited him in Vauxhall Walk. Say the word! Shall I tear the envelopes
up, or shall I put them back in my pocket?"
There was a pause of dead silence. The murmur of the summer waves on
the shingle of the beach and the voices of the summer idlers on the
Parade floated through the open window, and filled the empty stillness
of the room.
She raised her head; she lifted her hand and pointed steadily to the
envelopes.
"Put them back," she said.
"Do you mean it?" he asked.
"I mean it."
As she gave that answer, there was a sound of wheels on the road
outside.
"You hear those wheels?" said Captain Wragge.
"I hear them."
"You see the chaise?" said the captain, pointing through the window as
the chaise which had been ordered from the inn made its appearance at
the garden gate.
"I see it."
"And, of your own free-will, you tell me to go?"
"Yes. Go!"
Without another word he left her. The servant was waiting at the door
with his traveling bag. "Miss Bygrave is not well," he said. "Tell your
mistress to go to her in the parlor."
He stepped into the chaise, and started on the first stage of the
journey to St. Crux.
CHAPTER XII.
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon Captain Wragge stopped at the
nearest station to Ossory which the railway passed in its course
through Essex. Inquiries made on the spot informed him that he might
drive to St. Crux, remain there for a quarter of an hour, and return to
the station in time for an evening train to London. In ten minutes more
the captain was on the road again, driving rapidly in the direction of
the coast.
After proceeding some miles on the highway, the carriage turned off,
and the coachman involved himself in an intricate network of
cross-roads.
"Are we far from St. Crux?" asked the captain, growing impatient, after
mile on mile had been passed without a sign of reaching the journey's
end.
"You'll see the house, sir, at the next turn in the road," said the
man.
The next turn in the road brought them within view of the open country
again. Ahead of the carriage, Captain Wragge saw a long dark line
against the skythe line of the sea-wall which protects the low coast
of Essex from inundation. The flat intermediate country was intersected
by a labyrinth of tidal streams, winding up from the invisible sea in
strange fantastic curvesrivers at high water, and channels of mud at
low. On his right hand was a quaint little village, mostly composed of
wooden houses, straggling down to the brink of one of the tidal
streams. On his left hand, further away, rose the gloomy ruins of an
abbey, with a desolate pile of buildings, which covered two sides of a
square attached to it. One of the streams from the sea (called, in
Essex, "backwaters") curled almost entirely round the house. Another,
from an opposite quarter, appeared to run straight through the grounds,
and to separate one side of the shapeless mass of buildings, which was
in moderate repair, from another, which was little better than a ruin.
Bridges of wood and bridges of brick crossed the stream, and gave
access to the house from all points of the compass. No human creature
appeared in the neighborhood, and no sound was heard but the hoarse
barking of a house-dog from an invisible courtyard.
"Which door shall I drive to, sir?" asked the coachman. "The front or
the back?"
"The back," said Captain Wragge, feeling that the less notice he
attracted in his present position, the safer that position might be.
The carriage twice crossed the stream before the coachman made his way
through the grounds into a dreary inclosure of stone. At an open door
on the inhabited side of the place sat a weather-beaten old man, busily
at work on a half-finished model of a ship. He rose and came to the
carriage door, lifting up his spectacles on his forehead, and looking
disconcerted at the appearance of a stranger.
"Is Mr. Noel Vanstone staying here?" asked Captain Wragge.
"Yes, sir," replied the old man. "Mr. Noel came yesterday."
"Take that card to Mr. Vanstone, if you please," said the captain, "and
say I am waiting here to see him."
In a few minutes Noel Vanstone made his appearance, breathless and
eagerabsorbed in anxiety for news from Aldborough. Captain Wragge
opened the carriage door, seized his outstretched hand, and pulled him
in without ceremony.
"Your housekeeper has gone," whispered the captain, "and you are to be
married on Monday. Don't agitate yourself, and don't express your
feelingsthere isn't time for it. Get the first active servant you can
find in the house to pack your bag in ten minutes, take leave of the
admiral, and come back at once with me to the London train."
Noel Vanstone faintly attempted to ask a question. The captain declined
to hear it.
"As much talk as you like on the road," he said. "Time is too precious
for talking here. How do we know Lecount may not think better of it?
How do we know she may not turn back before she gets to Zurich?"
That startling consideration terrified Noel Vanstone into instant
submission.
"What shall I say to the admiral?" he asked, helplessly.
"Tell him you are going to be married, to be sure! What does it matter,
now Lecount's back is turned? If he wonders you didn't tell him before,
say it's a runaway match, and the bride is waiting for you. Stop! Any
letters addressed to you in your absence will be sent to this place, of
course? Give the admiral these envelopes, and tell him to forward your
letters under cover to me. I am an old customer at the hotel we are
going to; and if we find the place full, the landlord may be depended
on to take care of any letters with my name on them. A safe address in
London for your correspondence may be of the greatest importance. How
do we know Lecount may not write to you on her way to Zurich?"
"What a head you have got!" cried Noel Vanstone, eagerly taking the
envelopes. "You think of everything."
He left the carriage in high excitement, and ran back into the house.
In ten minutes more Captain Wragge had him in safe custody, and the
horses started on their return journey.
The travelers reached London in good time that evening, and found
accommodation at the hotel.
Knowing the restless, inquisitive nature of the man he had to deal
with, Captain Wragge had anticipated some little difficulty and
embarrassment in meeting the questions which Noel Vanstone might put to
him on the way to London. To his great relief, a startling domestic
discovery absorbed his traveling companion's whole attention at the
outset of the journey. By some extraordinary oversight, Miss Bygrave
had been left, on the eve of her marriage, unprovided with a maid. Noel
Vanstone declared that he would take the whole responsibility of
correcting this deficiency in the arrangements, on his own shoulders;
he would not trouble Mr. Bygrave to give him any assistance; he would
confer, when they got to their journey's end, with the landlady of the
hotel, and would examine the candidates for the vacant office himself.
All the way to London, he returned again and again to the same subject;
all the evening, at the hotel, he was in and out of the landlady's
sitting-room, until he fairly obliged her to lock the door. In every
other proceeding which related to his marriage, he had been kept in the
background; he had been compelled to follow in the footsteps of his
ingenious friend. In the matter of the lady's maid he claimed his
fitting position at lasthe followed nobody; he took the lead!
The forenoon of the next day was devoted to obtaining the licensethe
personal distinction of making the declaration on oath being eagerly
accepted by Noel Vanstone, who swore, in perfect good faith (on
information previously obtained from the captain) that the lady was of
age. The document procured, the bridegroom returned to examine the
characters and qualifications of the women-servants out of the place
whom the landlady had engaged to summon to the hotel, while Captain
Wragge turned his steps, "on business personal to himself," toward the
residence of a friend in a distant quarter of London.
The captain's friend was connected with the law, and the captain's
business was of a twofold nature. His first object was to inform
himself of the legal bearings of the approaching marriage on the future
of the husband and the wife. His second object was to provide
beforehand for destroying all traces of the destination to which he
might betake himself when he left Aldborough on the wedding-day. Having
reached his end successfully in both these cases, he returned to the
hotel, and found Noel Vanstone nursing his offended dignity in the
landlady's sitting-room. Three ladies' maids had appeared to pass their
examination, and had all, on coming to the question of wages,
impudently declined accepting the place. A fourth candidate was
expected to present herself on the next day; and, until she made her
appearance, Noel Vanstone positively declined removing from the
metropolis. Captain Wragge showed his annoyance openly at the
unnecessary delay thus occasioned in the return to Aldborough, but
without producing any effect. Noel Vanstone shook his obstinate little
head, and solemnly refused to trifle with his responsibilities.
The first event which occurred on Saturday morning was the arrival of
Mrs. Lecount's letter to her master, inclosed in one of the envelopes
which the captain had addressed to himself. He received it (by previous
arrangement with the waiter) in his bedroomread it with the closest
attentionand put it away carefully in his pocketbook. The letter was
ominous of serious events to come when the housekeeper returned to
England; and it was due to Magdalenwho was the person threatenedto
place the warning of danger in her own possession.
Later in the day the fourth candidate appeared for the maid's
situationa young woman of small expectations and subdued manners, who
looked (as the landlady remarked) like a person overtaken by
misfortune. She passed the ordeal of examination successfully, and
accepted the wages offered without a murmur. The engagement having been
ratified on both sides, fresh delays ensued, of which Noel Vanstone was
once more the cause. He had not yet made up his mind whether he would,
or would not, give more than a guinea for the wedding-ring; and he
wasted the rest of the day to such disastrous purpose in one jeweler's
shop after another, that he and the captain, and the new lady's maid
(who traveled with them), were barely in time to catch the last train
from London that evening. It was late at night when they left the
railway at the nearest station to Aldborough. Captain Wragge had been
strangely silent all through the journey. His mind was ill at ease. He
had left Magdalen, under very critical circumstances, with no fit
person to control her, and he was wholly ignorant of the progress of
events in his absence at North Shingles.
CHAPTER XIII.
What had happened at Aldborough in Captain Wragge's absence? Events had
occurred which the captain's utmost dexterity might have found it hard
to remedy.
As soon as the chaise had left North Shingles, Mrs. Wragge received the
message which her husband had charged the servant to deliver. She
hastened into the parlor, bewildered by her stormy interview with the
captain, and penitently conscious that she had done wrong, without
knowing what the wrong was. If Magdalen's mind had been unoccupied by
the one idea of the marriage which now filled itif she had possessed
composure enough to listen to Mrs. Wragge's rambling narrative of what
had happened during her interview with the housekeeperMrs. Lecount's
visit to the wardrobe must, sooner or later, have formed part of the
disclosure; and Magdalen, although she might never have guessed the
truth, must at least have been warned that there was some element of
danger lurking treacherously in the Alpaca dress. As it was, no such
consequence as this followed Mrs. Wragge's appearance in the parlor;
for no such consequence was now possible.
Events which had happened earlier in the morning, events which had
happened for days and weeks past, had vanished as completely from
Magdalen's mind as if they had never taken place. The horror of the
coming Mondaythe merciless certainty implied in the appointment of the
day and hourpetrified all feeling in her, and annihilated all thought.
Mrs. Wragge made three separate attempts to enter on the subject of the
housekeeper's visit. The first time she might as well have addressed
herself to the wind, or to the sea. The second attempt seemed likely to
be more successful. Magdalen sighed, listened for a moment
indifferently, and then dismissed the subject. "It doesn't matter," she
said. "The end has come all the same. I'm not angry with you. Say no
more." Later in the day, from not knowing what else to talk about, Mrs.
Wragge tried again. This time Magdalen turned on her impatiently. "For
God's sake, don't worry me about trifles! I can't bear it." Mrs. Wragge
closed her lips on the spot, and returned to the subject no more.
Magdalen, who had been kind to her at all other times, had angrily
forbidden it. The captainutterly ignorant of Mrs. Lecount's interest
in the secrets of the wardrobehad never so much as approached it. All
the information that he had extracted from his wife's mental confusion,
he had extracted by putting direct questions, derived purely from the
resources of his own knowledge. He had insisted on plain answers,
without excuses of any kind; he had carried his point as usual; and his
departure the same morning had left him no chance of re-opening the
question, even if his irritation against his wife had permitted him to
do so. There the Alpaca dress hung, neglected in the darkthe
unnoticed, unsuspected center of dangers that were still to come.
Toward the afternoon Mrs. Wragge took courage to start a suggestion of
her ownshe pleaded for a little turn in the fresh air.
Magdalen passively put on her hat; passively accompanied her companion
along the public walk, until they reached its northward extremity. Here
the beach was left solitary, and here they sat down, side by side, on
the shingle. It was a bright, exhilarating day; pleasure-boats were
sailing on the calm blue water; Aldborough was idling happily afloat
and ashore. Mrs. Wragge recovered her spirits in the gayety of the
prospectshe amused herself like a child, by tossing pebbles into the
sea. From time to time she stole a questioning glance at Magdalen, and
saw no encouragement in her manner, no change to cordiality in her
face. She sat silent on the slope of the shingle, with her elbow on her
knee, and her head resting on her hand, looking out over the
sealooking with rapt attention, and yet with eyes that seemed to
notice nothing. Mrs. Wragge wearied of the pebbles, and lost her
interest in looking at the pleasure-boats. Her great head began to nod
heavily, and she dozed in the warm, drowsy air. When she woke, the
pleasure-boats were far off; their sails were white specks in the
distance. The idlers on the beach were thinned in number; the sun was
low in the heaven; the blue sea was darker, and rippled by a breeze.
Changes on sky and earth and ocean told of the waning day; change was
everywhereexcept close at her side. There Magdalen sat, in the same
position, with weary eyes that still looked over the sea, and still saw
nothing.
"Oh, do speak to me!" said Mrs. Wragge.
Magdalen started, and looked about her vacantly.
"It's late," she said, shivering under the first sensation that reached
her of the rising breeze. "Come home; you want your tea." They walked
home in silence.
"Don't be angry with me for asking," said Mrs. Wragge, as they sat
together at the tea-table. "Are you troubled, my dear, in your mind?"
"Yes," replied Magdalen. "Don't notice me. My trouble will soon be
over."
She waited patiently until Mrs. Wragge had made an end of the meal, and
then went upstairs to her own room.
"Monday!" she said, as she sat down at her toilet-table. "Something may
happen before Monday comes!"
Her fingers wandered mechanically among the brushes and combs, the tiny
bottles and cases placed on the table. She set them in order, now in
one way, and now in anotherthen on a sudden pushed them away from her
in a heap. For a minute or two her hands remained idle. That interval
passed, they grew restless again, and pulled the two little drawers
backward and forward in their grooves. Among the objects laid in one of
them was a Prayer-book which had belonged to her at Combe-Raven, and
which she had saved with her other relics of the past, when she and her
sister had taken their farewell of home. She opened the Prayer-book,
after a long hesitation, at the Marriage Service, shut it again before
she had read a line, and put it back hurriedly in one of the drawers.
After turning the key in the locks, she rose and walked to the window.
"The horrible sea!" she said, turning from it with a shudder of
disgust"the lonely, dreary, horrible sea!"
She went back to the drawer, and took the Prayer-book out for the
second time, half opened it again at the Marriage Service, and
impatiently threw it back into the drawer. This time, after turning the
lock, she took the key away, walked with it in her hand to the open
window, and threw it violently from her into the garden. It fell on a
bed thickly planted with flowers. It was invisible; it was lost. The
sense of its loss seemed to relieve her.
"Something may happen on Friday; something may happen on Saturday;
something may happen on Sunday. Three days still!"
She closed the green shutters outside the window and drew the curtains
to darken the room still more. Her head felt heavy; her eyes were
burning hot. She threw herself on her bed, with a sullen impulse to
sleep away the time. The quiet of the house helped her; the darkness of
the room helped her; the stupor of mind into which she had fallen had
its effect on her senses; she dropped into a broken sleep. Her restless
hands moved incessantly, her head tossed from side to side of the
pillow, but still she slept. Ere long words fell by ones and twos from
her lips; words whispered in her sleep, growing more and more
continuous, more and more articulate, the longer the sleep lastedwords
which seemed to calm her restlessness and to hush her into deeper
repose. She smiled; she was in the happy land of dreams; Frank's name
escaped her. "Do you love me, Frank?" she whispered. "Oh, my darling,
say it again! say it again!"
The time passed, the room grew darker; and still she slumbered and
dreamed. Toward sunsetwithout any noise inside the house or out to
account for itshe started up on the bed, awake again in an instant.
The drowsy obscurity of the room struck her with terror. She ran to the
window, pushed open the shutters, and leaned far out into the evening
air and the evening light. Her eyes devoured the trivial sights on the
beach; her ears drank in the welcome murmur of the sea. Anything to
deliver her from the waking impression which her dreams had left! No
more darkness, no more repose. Sleep that came mercifully to others
came treacherously to her. Sleep had only closed her eyes on the
future, to open them on the past.
She went down again into the parlor, eager to talkno matter how idly,
no matter on what trifles. The room was empty. Perhaps Mrs. Wragge had
gone to her workperhaps she was too tired to talk. Magdalen took her
hat from the table and went out. The sea that she had shrunk from, a
few hours since, looked friendly now. How lovely it was in its cool
evening blue! What a god-like joy in the happy multitude of waves
leaping up to the light of heaven!
She stayed out until the night fell and the stars appeared. The night
steadied her.
By slow degrees her mind recovered its balance and she looked her
position unflinchingly in the face. The vain hope that accident might
defeat the very end for which, of her own free-will, she had
ceaselessly plotted and toiled, vanished and left her; self-dissipated
in its own weakness. She knew the true alternative, and faced it. On
one side was the revolting ordeal of the marriage; on the other, the
abandonment of her purpose. Was it too late to choose between the
sacrifice of the purpose and the sacrifice of herself? Yes! too late.
The backward path had closed behind her. Time that no wish could
change, Time that no prayers could recall, had made her purpose a part
of herself: once she had governed it; now it governed her. The more she
shrank, the harder she struggled, the more mercilessly it drove her on.
No other feeling in her was strong enough to master itnot even the
horror that was maddening herthe horror of her marriage.
Toward nine o'clock she went back to the house.
"Walking again!" said Mrs. Wragge, meeting her at the door. "Come in
and sit down, my dear. How tired you must be!"
Magdalen smiled, and patted Mrs. Wragge kindly on the shoulder.
"You forget how strong I am," she said. "Nothing hurts me."
She lit her candle and went upstairs again into her room. As she
returned to the old place by her toilet-table, the vain hope in the
three days of delay, the vain hope of deliverance by accident, came
back to herthis time in a form more tangible than the form which it
had hitherto worn.
"Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Something may happen to him; something may
happen to me. Something serious; something fatal. One of us may die."
A sudden change came over her face. She shivered, though there was no
cold in the air. She started, though there was no noise to alarm her.
"One of us may die. I may be the one."
She fell into deep thought, roused herself after a while, and, opening
the door, called to Mrs. Wragge to come and speak to her.
"You were right in thinking I should fatigue myself," she said. "My
walk has been a little too much for me. I feel tired, and I am going to
bed. Good-night." She kissed Mrs. Wragge and softly closed the door
again.
After a few turns backward and forward in the room, she abruptly opened
her writing-case and began a letter to her sister. The letter grew and
grew under her hands; she filled sheet after sheet of note-paper. Her
heart was full of her subject: it was her own story addressed to Norah.
She shed no tears; she was composed to a quiet sadness. Her pen ran
smoothly on. After writing for more than two hours, she left off while
the letter was still unfinished. There was no signature attached to
itthere was a blank space reserved, to be filled up at some other
time. After putting away the case, with the sheets of writing secured
inside it, she walked to the window for air, and stood there looking
out.
The moon was waning over the sea. The breeze of the earlier hours had
died out. On earth and ocean, the spirit of the Night brooded in a deep
and awful calm.
Her head drooped low on her bosom, and all the view waned before her
eyes with the waning moon. She saw no sea, no sky. Death, the Tempter,
was busy at her heart. Death, the Tempter, pointed homeward, to the
grave of her dead parents in Combe-Raven churchyard.
"Nineteen last birthday," she thought. "Only nineteen!" She moved away
from the window, hesitated, and then looked out again at the view. "The
beautiful night!" she said, gratefully. "Oh, the beautiful night!"
She left the window and lay down on her bed. Sleep, that had come
treacherously before, came mercifully now; came deep and dreamless, the
image of her last waking thoughtthe image of Death.
Early the next morning Mrs. Wragge went into Magdalen's room, and found
that she had risen betimes. She was sitting before the glass, drawing
the comb slowly through and through her hairthoughtful and quiet.
"How do you feel this morning, my dear?" asked Mrs. Wragge. "Quite well
again?"
"Yes."
After replying in the affirmative, she stopped, considered for a
moment, and suddenly contradicted herself.
"No," she said, "not quite well. I am suffering a little from
toothache."
As she altered her first answer in those words she gave a twist to her
hair with the comb, so that it fell forward and hid her face.
At breakfast she was very silent, and she took nothing but a cup of
tea.
"Let me go to the chemist's and get something," said Mrs. Wragge.
"No, thank you."
"Do let me!"
"No!"
She refused for the second time, sharply and angrily. As usual, Mrs.
Wragge submitted, and let her have her own way. When breakfast was
over, she rose, without a word of explanation, and went out. Mrs.
Wragge watched her from the window and saw that she took the direction
of the chemist's shop.
On reaching the chemist's door she stoppedpaused before entering the
shop, and looked in at the windowhesitated, and walked away a
littlehesitated again, and took the first turning which led back to
the beach.
Without looking about her, without caring what place she chose, she
seated herself on the shingle. The only persons who were near to her,
in the position she now occupied, were a nursemaid and two little boys.
The youngest of the two had a tiny toy-ship in his hand. After looking
at Magdalen for a little while with the quaintest gravity and
attention, the boy suddenly approached her, and opened the way to an
acquaintance by putting his toy composedly on her lap.
"Look at my ship," said the child, crossing his hands on Magdalen's
knee.
She was not usually patient with children. In happier days she would
not have met the boy's advance toward her as she met it now. The hard
despair in her eyes left them suddenly; her fast-closed lips parted and
trembled. She put the ship back into the child's hands and lifted him
on her lap.
"Will you give me a kiss?" she said, faintly. The boy looked at his
ship as if he would rather have kissed the ship.
She repeated the questionrepeated it almost humbly. The child put his
hand up to her neck and kissed her.
"If I was your sister, would you love me?" All the misery of her
friendless position, all the wasted tenderness of her heart, poured
from her in those words.
"Would you love me?" she repeated, hiding her face on the bosom of the
child's frock.
"Yes," said the boy. "Look at my ship."
She looked at the ship through her gathering tears.
"What do you call it?" she asked, trying hard to find her way even to
the interest of a child.
"I call it Uncle Kirke's ship," said the boy. "Uncle Kirke has gone
away."
The name recalled nothing to her memory. No remembrances but old
remembrances lived in her now. "Gone?" she repeated absently, thinking
what she should say to her little friend next.
"Yes," said the boy. "Gone to China."
Even from the lips of a child that word struck her to the heart. She
put Kirke's little nephew off her lap, and instantly left the beach.
As she turned back to the house, the struggle of the past night renewed
itself in her mind. But the sense of relief which the child had brought
to her, the reviving tenderness which she had felt while he sat on her
knee, influenced her still. She was conscious of a dawning hope,
opening freshly on her thoughts, as the boy's innocent eyes had opened
on her face when he came to her on the beach. Was it too late to turn
back? Once more she asked herself that question, and now, for the first
time, she asked it in doubt.
She ran up to her own room with a lurking distrust in her changed self
which warned her to act, and not to think. Without waiting to remove
her shawl or to take off her hat, she opened her writing-case and
addressed these lines to Captain Wragge as fast as her pen could trace
them:
"You will find the money I promised you inclosed in this. My resolution
has failed me. The horror of marrying him is more than I can face. I
have left Aldborough. Pity my weakness, and forget me. Let us never
meet again."
With throbbing heart, with eager, trembling fingers, she drew her
little white silk bag from her bosom and took out the banknotes to
inclose them in the letter. Her hand searched impetuously; her hand had
lost its discrimination of touch. She grasped the whole contents of the
bag in one handful of papers, and drew them out violently, tearing some
and disarranging the folds of others. As she threw them down before her
on the table, the first object that met her eye was her own
handwriting, faded already with time. She looked closer, and saw the
words she had copied from her dead father's lettersaw the lawyer's
brief and terrible commentary on them confronting her at the bottom of
the page:
Mr. Vanstone's daughters are Nobody's Children, and the law leaves
them helpless at their uncle's mercy.
Her throbbing heart stopped; her trembling hands grew icily quiet. All
the Past rose before her in mute, overwhelming reproach. She took up
the lines which her own hand had written hardly a minute since, and
looked at the ink, still wet on the letters, with a vacant incredulity.
The color that had risen on her cheeks faded from them once more. The
hard despair looked out again, cold and glittering, in her tearless
eyes. She folded the banknotes carefully, and put them back in her bag.
She pressed the copy of her father's letter to her lips, and returned
it to its place with the banknotes. When the bag was in her bosom
again, she waited a little, with her face hidden in her hands, then
deliberately tore up the lines addressed to Captain Wragge. Before the
ink was dry, the letter lay in fragments on the floor.
"No!" she said, as the last morsel of the torn paper dropped from her
hand. "On the way I go there is no turning back."
She rose composedly and left the room. While descending the stairs, she
met Mrs. Wragge coming up. "Going out again, my dear?" asked Mrs.
Wragge. "May I go with you?"
Magdalen's attention wandered. Instead of answering the question, she
absently answered her own thoughts.
"Thousands of women marry for money," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"
The helpless perplexity of Mrs. Wragge's face as she spoke those words
roused her to a sense of present things. "My poor dear!" she said; "I
puzzle you, don't I? Never mind what I sayall girls talk nonsense, and
I'm no better than the rest of them. Come! I'll give you a treat. You
shall enjoy yourself while the captain is away. We will have a long
drive by ourselves. Put on your smart bonnet, and come with me to the
hotel. I'll tell the landlady to put a nice cold dinner into a basket.
You shall have all the things you like, and I'll wait on you. When you
are an old, old woman, you will remember me kindly, won't you? You will
say: 'She wasn't a bad girl; hundreds worse than she was live and
prosper, and nobody blames them.' There! there! go and put your bonnet
on. Oh, my God, what is my heart made of! How it lives and lives, when
other girls' hearts would have died in them long ago!"
In half an hour more she and Mrs. Wragge were seated together in the
carriage. One of the horses was restive at starting. "Flog him," she
cried angrily to the driver. "What are you frightened about? Flog him!
Suppose the carriage was upset," she said, turning suddenly to her
companion; "and suppose I was thrown out and killed on the spot?
Nonsense! don't look at me in that way. I'm like your husband; I have a
dash of humor, and I'm only joking."
They were out the whole day. When they reached home again, it was after
dark. The long succession of hours passed in the fresh air left them
both with the same sense of fatigue. Again that night Magdalen slept
the deep dreamless sleep of the night before. And so the Friday closed.
Her last thought at night had been the thought which had sustained her
throughout the day. She had laid her head on the pillow with the same
reckless resolution to submit to the coming trial which had already
expressed itself in words when she and Mrs. Wragge met by accident on
the stairs. When she woke on the morning of Saturday, the resolution
was gone. The Friday's thoughtsthe Friday's events evenwere blotted
out of her mind. Once again, creeping chill through the flow of her
young blood, she felt the slow and deadly prompting of despair which
had come to her in the waning moonlight, which had whispered to her in
the awful calm.
"I saw the end as the end must be," she said to herself, "on Thursday
night. I have been wrong ever since."
When she and her companion met that morning, she reiterated her
complaint of suffering from the toothache; she repeated her refusal to
allow Mrs. Wragge to procure a remedy; she left the house after
breakfast, in the direction of the chemist's shop, exactly as she had
left it on the morning before.
This time she entered the shop without an instant's hesitation.
"I have got an attack of toothache," she said, abruptly, to an elderly
man who stood behind the counter.
"May I look at the tooth, miss?"
"There is no necessity to look. It is a hollow tooth. I think I have
caught cold in it."
The chemist recommended various remedies which were in vogue fifteen
years since. She declined purchasing any of them.
"I have always found Laudanum relieve the pain better than anything
else," she said, trifling with the bottles on the counter, and looking
at them while she spoke, instead of looking at the chemist. "Let me
have some Laudanum."
"Certainly, miss. Excuse my asking the questionit is only a matter of
form. You are staying at Aldborough, I think?"
"Yes. I am Miss Bygrave, of North Shingles."
The chemist bowed; and, turning to his shelves, filled an ordinary
half-ounce bottle with laudanum immediately. In ascertaining his
customer's name and address beforehand, the owner of the shop had taken
a precaution which was natural to a careful man, but which was by no
means universal, under similar circumstances, in the state of the law
at that time.
"Shall I put you up a little cotton wool with the laudanum?" he asked,
after he had placed a label on the bottle, and had written a word on it
in large letters.
"If you please. What have you just written on the bottle?" She put the
question sharply, with something of distrust as well as curiosity in
her manner.
The chemist answered the question by turning the label toward her. She
saw written on it, in large lettersPOISON.
"I like to be on the safe side, miss," said the old man, smiling. "Very
worthy people in other respects are often sadly careless where poisons
are concerned."
She began trifling again with the bottles on the counter, and put
another question, with an ill-concealed anxiety to hear the answer.
"Is there danger," she asked, "in such a little drop of Laudanum as
that?"
"There is Death in it, miss," replied the chemist, quietly.
"Death to a child, or to a person in delicate health?"
"Death to the strongest man in England, let him be who he may."
With that answer, the chemist sealed up the bottle in its wrapping of
white paper and handed the laudanum to Magdalen across the counter. She
laughed as she took it from him, and paid for it.
"There will be no fear of accidents at North Shingles," she said. "I
shall keep the bottle locked up in my dressing-case. If it doesn't
relieve the pain, I must come to you again, and try some other remedy.
Good-morning."
"Good-morning, miss."
She went straight back to the house without once looking up, without
noticing any one who passed her. She brushed by Mrs. Wragge in the
passage as she might have brushed by a piece of furniture. She ascended
the stairs, and caught her foot twice in her dress, from sheer
inattention to the common precaution of holding it up. The trivial
daily interests of life had lost their hold on her already.
In the privacy of her own room, she took the bottle from its wrapping,
and threw the paper and the cotton wool into the fire-place. At the
moment when she did this there was a knock at the door. She hid the
little bottle, and looked up impatiently. Mrs. Wragge came into the
room.
"Have you got something for your toothache, my dear?"
"Yes."
"Can I do anything to help you?"
"No."
Mrs. Wragge still lingered uneasily near the door. Her manner showed
plainly that she had something more to say.
"What is it?" asked Magdalen, sharply.
"Don't be angry," said Mrs. Wragge. "I'm not settled in my mind about
the captain. He's a great writer, and he hasn't written. He's as quick
as lightning, and he hasn't come back. Here's Saturday, and no signs of
him. Has he run away, do you think? Has anything happened to him?"
"I should think not. Go downstairs; I'll come and speak to you about it
directly."
As soon as she was alone again, Magdalen rose from her chair, advanced
toward a cupboard in the room which locked, and paused for a moment,
with her hand on the key, in doubt. Mrs. Wragge's appearance had
disturbed the whole current of her thoughts. Mrs. Wragge's last
question, trifling as it was, had checked her on the verge of the
precipicehad roused the old vain hope in her once more of release by
accident.
"Why not?" she said. "Why may something not have happened to one of
them?"
She placed the laudanum in the cupboard, locked it, and put the key in
her pocket. "Time enough still," she thought, "before Monday. I'll wait
till the captain comes back."
After some consultation downstairs, it was agreed that the servant
should sit up that night, in expectation of her master's return. The
day passed quietly, without events of any kind. Magdalen dreamed away
the hours over a book. A weary patience of expectation was all she felt
nowthe poignant torment of thought was dulled and blunted at last. She
passed the day and the evening in the parlor, vaguely conscious of a
strange feeling of aversion to going back to her own room. As the night
advanced, as the noises ceased indoors and out, her restlessness began
to return. She endeavored to quiet herself by reading. Books failed to
fix her attention. The newspaper was lying in a corner of the room: she
tried the newspaper next.
She looked mechanically at the headings of the articles; she listlessly
turned over page after page, until her wandering attention was arrested
by the narrative of an Execution in a distant part of England. There
was nothing to strike her in the story of the crime, and yet she read
it. It was a common, horribly common, act of bloodshedthe murder of a
woman in farm-service by a man in the same employment who was jealous
of her. He had been convicted on no extraordinary evidence, he had been
hanged under no unusual circumstances. He had made his confession, when
he knew there was no hope for him, like other criminals of his class,
and the newspaper had printed it at the end of the article, in these
terms:
"I kept company with the deceased for a year or thereabouts. I said I
would marry her when I had money enough. She said I had money enough
now. We had a quarrel. She refused to walk out with me any more; she
wouldn't draw me my beer; she took up with my fellow-servant, David
Crouch. I went to her on the Saturday, and said I would marry her as
soon as we could be asked in church if she would give up Crouch. She
laughed at me. She turned me out of the wash-house, and the rest of
them saw her turn me out. I was not easy in my mind. I went and sat on
the gatethe gate in the meadow they call Pettit's Piece. I thought I
would shoot her. I went and fetched my gun and loaded it. I went out
into Pettit's Piece again. I was hard put to it to make up my mind. I
thought I would try my luckI mean try whether to kill her or not-by
throwing up the Spud of the plow into the air. I said to myself, if it
falls flat, I'll spare her; if it falls point in the earth, I'll kill
her. I took a good swing with it, and shied it up. It fell point in the
earth. I went and shot her. It was a bad job, but I did it. I did it,
as they said I did it at the trial. I hope the Lord will have mercy on
me. I wish my mother to have my old clothes. I have no more to say."
In the happier days of her life, Magdalen would have passed over the
narrative of the execution, and the printed confession which
accompanied it unread; the subject would have failed to attract her.
She read the horrible story nowread it with an interest unintelligible
to herself. Her attention, which had wandered over higher and better
things, followed every sentence of the murderer's hideously direct
confession from beginning to end. If the man or the woman had been
known to her, if the place had been familiar to her memory, she could
hardly have followed the narrative more closely, or have felt a more
distinct impression of it left on her mind. She laid down the paper,
wondering at herself; she took it up once more, and tried to read some
other portion of the contents. The effort was useless; her attention
wandered again. She threw the paper away, and went out into the garden.
The night was dark; the stars were few and faint. She could just see
the gravel-walkshe could just pace backward and forward between the
house door and the gate.
The confession in the newspaper had taken a fearful hold on her mind.
As she paced the walk, the black night opened over the sea, and showed
her the murderer in the field hurling the Spud of the plow into the
air. She ran, shuddering, back to the house. The murderer followed her
into the parlor. She seized the candle and went up into her room. The
vision of her own distempered fancy followed her to the place where the
laudanum was hidden, and vanished there.
It was midnight, and there was no sign yet of the captain's return.
She took from the writing-case the long letter which she had written to
Norah, and slowly read it through. The letter quieted her. When she
reached the blank space left at the end, she hurriedly turned back and
began it over again.
One o'clock struck from the church clock, and still the captain never
appeared.
She read the letter for the second time; she turned back obstinately,
despairingly, and began it for the third time. As she once more reached
the last page, she looked at her watch. It was a quarter to two. She
had just put the watch back in the belt of her dress, when there came
to herfar off in the stillness of the morninga sound of wheels.
She dropped the letter and clasped her cold hands in her lap and
listened. The sound came on, faster and faster, nearer and nearerthe
trivial sound to all other ears; the sound of Doom to hers. It passed
the side of the house; it traveled a little further on; it stopped. She
heard a loud knockingthen the opening of a windowthen voicesthen a
long silencethan the wheels again coming backthen the opening of the
door below, and the sound of the captain's voice in the passage.
She could endure it no longer. She opened her door a little way and
called to him.
He ran upstairs instantly, astonished that she was not in bed. She
spoke to him through the narrow opening of the door, keeping herself
hidden behind it, for she was afraid to let him see her face.
"Has anything gone wrong?" she asked.
"Make your mind easy," he answered. "Nothing has gone wrong."
"Is no accident likely to happen between this and Monday?"
"None whatever. The marriage is a certainty."
"A certainty?"
"Yes."
"Good-night."
She put her hand out through the door. He took it with some little
surprise; it was not often in his experience that she gave him her hand
of her own accord.
"You have sat up too long," he said, as he felt the clasp of her cold
fingers. "I am afraid you will have a bad nightI'm afraid you will not
sleep."
She softly closed the door.
"I shall sleep," she said, "sounder than you think for."
It was past two o'clock when she shut herself up alone in her room. Her
chair stood in its customary place by the toilet-table. She sat down
for a few minutes thoughtfully, then opened her letter to Norah, and
turned to the end where the blank space was left. The last lines
written above the space ran thus: "... I have laid my whole heart bare
to you; I have hidden nothing. It has come to this. The end I have
toiled for, at such terrible cost to myself, is an end which I must
reach or die. It is wickedness, madness, what you willbut it is so.
There are now two journeys before me to choose between. If I can marry
himthe journey to the church. If the profanation of myself is more
than I can bearthe journey to the grave!"
Under that last sentence, she wrote these lines:
"My choice is made. If the cruel law will let you, lay me with my
father and mother in the churchyard at home. Farewell, my love! Be
always innocent; be always happy. If Frank ever asks about me, say I
died forgiving him. Don't grieve long for me, NorahI am not worth it."
She sealed the letter, and addressed it to her sister. The tears
gathered in her eyes as she laid it on the table. She waited until her
sight was clear again, and then took the banknotes once more from the
little bag in her bosom. After wrapping them in a sheet of note paper,
she wrote Captain Wragge's name on the inclosure, and added these words
below it: "Lock the door of my room, and leave me till my sister comes.
The money I promised you is in this. You are not to blame; it is my
fault, and mine only. If you have any friendly remembrance of me, be
kind to your wife for my sake."
After placing the inclosure by the letter to Norah, she rose and looked
round the room. Some few little things in it were not in their places.
She set them in order, and drew the curtains on either side at the head
of her bed. Her own dress was the next object of her scrutiny. It was
all as neat, as pure, as prettily arranged as ever. Nothing about her
was disordered but her hair. Some tresses had fallen loose on one side
of her head; she carefully put them back in their places with the help
of her glass. "How pale I look!" she thought, with a faint smile.
"Shall I be paler still when they find me in the morning?"
She went straight to the place where the laudanum was hidden, and took
it out. The bottle was so small that it lay easily in the palm of her
hand. She let it remain there for a little while, and stood looking at
it.
"DEATH!" she said. "In this drop of brown drinkDEATH!"
As the words passed her lips, an agony of unutterable horror seized on
her in an instant. She crossed the room unsteadily, with a maddening
confusion in her head, with a suffocating anguish at her heart. She
caught at the table to support herself. The faint clink of the bottle,
as it fell harmlessly from her loosened grasp and rolled against some
porcelain object on the table, struck through her brain like the stroke
of a knife. The sound of her own voice, sunk to a whisperher voice
only uttering that one word, Deathrushed in her ears like the rushing
of a wind. She dragged herself to the bedside, and rested her head
against it, sitting on the floor. "Oh, my life! my life!" she thought;
"what is my life worth, that I cling to it like this?"
An interval passed, and she felt her strength returning. She raised
herself on her knees and hid her face on the bed. She tried to prayto
pray to be forgiven for seeking the refuge of death. Frantic words
burst from her lipswords which would have risen to cries, if she had
not stifled them in the bed-clothes. She started to her feet; despair
strengthened her with a headlong fury against herself. In one moment
she was back at the table; in another, the poison was once more in her
hand.
She removed the cork and lifted the bottle to her mouth.
At the first cold touch of the glass on her lips, her strong young life
leaped up in her leaping blood, and fought with the whole frenzy of its
loathing against the close terror of Death. Every active power in the
exuberant vital force that was in her rose in revolt against the
destruction which her own will would fain have wreaked on her own life.
She paused: for the second time, she paused in spite of herself. There,
in the glorious perfection of her youth and healththere, trembling on
the verge of human existence, she stood; with the kiss of the Destroyer
close at her lips, and Nature, faithful to its sacred trust, fighting
for the salvation of her to the last.
No word passed her lips. Her cheeks flushed deep; her breath came thick
and fast. With the poison still in her hand, with the sense that she
might faint in another moment, she made for the window, and threw back
the curtain that covered it.
The new day had risen. The broad gray dawn flowed in on her, over the
quiet eastern sea.
She saw the waters heaving, large and silent, in the misty calm; she
felt the fresh breath of the morning flutter cool on her face. Her
strength returned; her mind cleared a little. At the sight of the sea,
her memory recalled the walk in the garden overnight, and the picture
which her distempered fancy had painted on the black void. In thought,
she saw the picture againthe murderer hurling the Spud of the plow
into the air, and setting the life or death of the woman who had
deserted him on the hazard of the falling point. The infection of that
terrible superstition seized on her mind as suddenly as the new day had
burst on her view. The promise of release which she saw in it from the
horror of her own hesitation roused the last energies of her despair.
She resolved to end the struggle by setting her life or death on the
hazard of a chance.
On what chance?
The sea showed it to her. Dimly distinguishable through the mist, she
saw a little fleet of coasting-vessels slowly drifting toward the
house, all following the same direction with the favoring set of the
tide. In half an hourperhaps in lessthe fleet would have passed her
window. The hands of her watch pointed to four o'clock. She seated
herself close at the side of the window, with her back toward the
quarter from which the vessels were drifting down on herwith the
poison placed on the window-sill and the watch on her lap. For one
half-hour to come she determined to wait there and count the vessels as
they went by. If in that time an even number passed her, the sign given
should be a sign to live. If the uneven number prevailed, the end
should be Death.
With that final resolution, she rested her head against the window and
waited for the ships to pass.
The first came, high, dark and near in the mist, gliding silently over
the silent sea. An intervaland the second followed, with the third
close after it. Another interval, longer and longer drawn outand
nothing passed. She looked at her watch. Twelve minutes, and three
ships. Three.
The fourth came, slower than the rest, larger than the rest, further
off in the mist than the rest. The interval followed; a long interval
once more. Then the next vessel passed, darkest and nearest of all.
Five. The next uneven number
Five.
She looked at her watch again. Nineteen minutes, and five ships. Twenty
minutes. Twenty-one, two, threeand no sixth vessel. Twenty-four, and
the sixth came by. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight,
and the next uneven numberthe fatal Sevenglided into view. Two
minutes to the end of the half-hour. And seven ships.
Twenty-nine, and nothing followed in the wake of the seventh ship. The
minute-hand of the watch moved on half-way to thirty, and still the
white heaving sea was a misty blank. Without moving her head from the
window, she took the poison in one hand, and raised the watch in the
other. As the quick seconds counted each other out, her eyes, as quick
as they, looked from the watch to the sea, from the sea to the
watchlooked for the last time at the seaand saw the EIGHTH ship.
She never moved, she never spoke. The death of thought, the death of
feeling, seemed to have come to her already. She put back the poison
mechanically on the ledge of the window and watched, as in a dream, the
ship gliding smoothly on its silent waygliding till it melted dimly
into shadowgliding till it was lost in the mist.
The strain on her mind relaxed when the Messenger of Life had passed
from her sight.
"Providence?" she whispered faintly to herself. "Or chance?"
Her eyes closed, and her head fell back. When the sense of life
returned to her, the morning sun was warm on her facethe blue heaven
looked down on herand the sea was a sea of gold.
She fell on her knees at the window and burst into tears.
Towards noon that day, the captain, waiting below stairs, and hearing
no movement in Magdalen's room, felt uneasy at the long silence. He
desired the new maid to follow him upstairs, and, pointing to the door,
told her to go in softly and see whether her mistress was awake.
The maid entered the room, remained there a moment, and came out again,
closing the door gently.
"She looks beautiful, sir," said the girl; "and she's sleeping as
quietly as a new-born child."
CHAPTER XIV.
The morning of her husband's return to North Shingles was a morning
memorable forever in the domestic calendar of Mrs. Wragge. She dated
from that occasion the first announcement which reached her of
Magdalen's marriage.
It had been Mrs. Wragge's earthly lot to pass her life in a state of
perpetual surprise. Never yet, however, had she wandered in such a maze
of astonishment as the maze in which she lost herself when the captain
coolly told her the truth. She had been sharp enough to suspect Mr.
Noel Vanstone of coming to the house in the character of a sweetheart
on approval; and she had dimly interpreted certain expressions of
impatience which had fallen from Magdalen's lips as boding ill for the
success of his suit, but her utmost penetration had never reached as
far as a suspicion of the impending marriage. She rose from one climax
of amazement to another, as her husband proceeded with his disclosure.
A wedding in the family at a day's notice! and that wedding Magdalen's!
and not a single new dress ordered for anybody, the bride included! and
the Oriental Cashmere Robe totally unavailable on the occasion when she
might have worn it to the greatest advantage! Mrs. Wragge dropped
crookedly into a chair, and beat her disorderly hands on her
unsymmetrical knees, in utter forgetfulness of the captain's presence
and the captain's terrible eye. It would not have surprised her to hear
that the world had come to an end, and that the only mortal whom
Destiny had overlooked, in winding up the affairs of this earthly
planet, was herself!
Leaving his wife to recover her composure by her own unaided efforts,
Captain Wragge withdrew to wait for Magdalen's appearance in the lower
regions of the house. It was close on one o'clock before the sound of
footsteps in the room above warned him that she was awake and stirring.
He called at once for the maid (whose name he had ascertained to be
Louisa), and sent her upstairs to her mistress for the second time.
Magdalen was standing by her dressing-table when a faint tap at the
door suddenly roused her. The tap was followed by the sound of a meek
voice, which announced itself as the voice of "her maid," and inquired
if Miss Bygrave needed any assistance that morning.
"Not at present," said Magdalen, as soon as she had recovered the
surprise of finding herself unexpectedly provided with an attendant. "I
will ring when I want you."
After dismissing the woman with that answer, she accidentally looked
from the door to the window. Any speculations on the subject of the new
servant in which she might otherwise have engaged were instantly
suspended by the sight of the bottle of laudanum, still standing on the
ledge of the window, where she had left it at sunrise. She took it once
more in her hand, with a strange confusion of feelingwith a vague
doubt even yet, whether the sight of it reminded her of a terrible
reality or a terrible dream. Her first impulse was to rid herself of it
on the spot. She raised the bottle to throw the contents out of the
window, and paused, in sudden distrust of the impulse that had come to
her. "I have accepted my new life," she thought. "How do I know what
that life may have in store for me?" She turned from the window and
went back to the table. "I may be forced to drink it yet," she said,
and put the laudanum into her dressing-case.
Her mind was not at ease when she had done this: there seemed to be
some indefinable ingratitude in the act. Still she made no attempt to
remove the bottle from its hiding-place. She hurried on her toilet; she
hastened the time when she could ring for the maid, and forget herself
and her waking thoughts in a new subject. After touching the bell, she
took from the table her letter to Norah and her letter to the captain,
put them both into her dressing-case with the laudanum, and locked it
securely with the key which she kept attached to her watch-chain.
Magdalen's first impression of her attendant was not an agreeable one.
She could not investigate the girl with the experienced eye of the
landlady at the London hotel, who had characterized the stranger as a
young person overtaken by misfortune, and who had showed plainly, by
her look and manner, of what nature she suspected that misfortune to
be. But with this drawback, Magdalen was perfectly competent to detect
the tokens of sickness and sorrow lurking under the surface of the new
maid's activity and politeness. She suspected the girl was
ill-tempered; she disliked her name; and she was indisposed to welcome
any servant who had been engaged by Noel Vanstone. But after the first
few minutes, "Louisa" grew on her liking. She answered all the
questions put to her with perfect directness; she appeared to
understand her duties thoroughly; and she never spoke until she was
spoken to first. After making all the inquiries that occurred to her at
the time, and after determining to give the maid a fair trial, Magdalen
rose to leave the room. The very air in it was still heavy to her with
the oppression of the past night.
"Have you anything more to say to me?" she asked, turning to the
servant, with her hand on the door.
"I beg your pardon, miss," said Louisa, very respectfully and very
quietly. "I think my master told me that the marriage was to be
to-morrow?"
Magdalen repressed the shudder that stole over her at that reference to
the marriage on the lips of a stranger, and answered in the
affirmative.
"It's a very short time, miss, to prepare in. If you would be so kind
as to give me my orders about the packing before you go downstairs?"
"There are no such preparations to make as you suppose," said Magdalen,
hastily. "The few things I have here can be all packed at once, if you
like. I shall wear the same dress to-morrow which I have on to-day.
Leave out the straw bonnet and the light shawl, and put everything else
into my boxes. I have no new dresses to pack; I have nothing ordered
for the occasion of any sort." She tried to add some commonplace
phrases of explanation, accounting as probably as might be for the
absence of the usual wedding outfit and wedding-dress. But no further
reference to the marriage would pass her lips, and without another word
she abruptly left the room.
The meek and melancholy Louisa stood lost in astonishment. "Something
wrong here," she thought. "I'm half afraid of my new place already."
She sighed resignedly, shook her head, and went to the wardrobe. She
first examined the drawers underneath, took out the various articles of
linen laid inside, and placed them on chairs. Opening the upper part of
the wardrobe next, she ranged the dresses in it side by side on the
bed. Her last proceeding was to push the empty boxes into the middle of
the room, and to compare the space at her disposal with the articles of
dress which she had to pack. She completed her preliminary calculations
with the ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her
business, and began the packing forthwith. Just as she had placed the
first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened,
and the house-servant, eager for gossip, came in.
"What do you want?" asked Louisa, quietly.
"Did you ever hear of anything like this!" said the house-servant,
entering on her subject immediately.
"Like what?"
"Like this marriage, to be sure. You're London bred, they tell me. Did
you ever hear of a young lady being married without a single new thing
to her back? No wedding veil, and no wedding breakfast, and no wedding
favors for the servants. It's flying in the face of Providencethat's
what I say. I'm only a poor servant, I know. But it's wicked, downright
wickedand I don't care who hears me!"
Louisa went on with the packing.
"Look at her dresses!" persisted the house-servant, waving her hand
indignantly at the bed. "I'm only a poor girl, but I wouldn't marry the
best man alive without a new gown to my back. Look here! look at this
dowdy brown thing here. Alpaca! You're not going to pack this Alpaca
thing, are you? Why, it's hardly fit for a servant! I don't know that
I'd take a gift of it if it was offered me. It would do for me if I
took it up in the skirt, and let it out in the waistand it wouldn't
look so bad with a bit of bright trimming, would it?"
"Let that dress alone, if you please," said Louisa, as quietly as ever.
"What did you say?" inquired the other, doubting whether her ears had
not deceived her.
"I said, let that dress alone. It belongs to my mistress, and I have my
mistress's orders to pack up everything in the room. You are not
helping me by coming hereyou are very much in my way."
"Well!" said the house-servant, "you may be London bred, as they say.
But if these are your London manners, give me Suffolk!" She opened the
door with an angry snatch at the handle, shut it violently, opened it
again, and looked in. "Give me Suffolk!" said the house-servant, with a
parting nod of her head to point the edge of her sarcasm.
Louisa proceeded impenetrably with her packing up.
Having neatly disposed of the linen in the smaller box, she turned her
attention to the dresses next. After passing them carefully in review,
to ascertain which was the least valuable of the collection, and to
place that one at the bottom of the trunk for the rest to lie on, she
made her choice with very little difficulty. The first gown which she
put into the box wasthe brown Alpaca dress.
Meanwhile, Magdalen had joined the captain downstairs. Although he
could not fail to notice the languor in her face and the listlessness
of all her movements, he was relieved to find that she met him with
perfect composure. She was even self-possessed enough to ask him for
news of his journey, with no other signs of agitation than a passing
change of color and a little trembling of the lips.
"So much for the past," said Captain Wragge, when his narrative of the
expedition to London by way of St. Crux had come to an end. "Now for
the present. The bridegroom"
"If it makes no difference," she interposed, "call him Mr. Noel
Vanstone."
"With all my heart. Mr. Noel Vanstone is coming here this afternoon to
dine and spend the evening. He will be tiresome in the last degree;
but, like all tiresome people, he is not to be got rid of on any terms.
Before he comes, I have a last word or two of caution for your private
ear. By this time to-morrow we shall have partedwithout any certain
knowledge, on either side, of our ever meeting again. I am anxious to
serve your interests faithfully to the last; I am anxious you should
feel that I have done all I could for your future security when we say
good-by."
Magdalen looked at him in surprise. He spoke in altered tones. He was
agitated; he was strangely in earnest. Something in his look and manner
took her memory back to the first night at Aldborough, when she had
opened her mind to him in the darkening solitudewhen they two had sat
together alone on the slope of the martello tower. "I have no reason to
think otherwise than kindly of you," she said.
Captain Wragge suddenly left his chair, and took a turn backward and
forward in the room. Magdalen's last words seemed to have produced some
extraordinary disturbance in him.
"Damn it!" he broke out; "I can't let you say that. You have reason to
think ill of me. I have cheated you. You never got your fair share of
profit from the Entertainment, from first to last. There! now the
murder's out!"
Magdalen smiled, and signed to him to come back to his chair.
"I know you cheated me," she said, quietly. "You were in the exercise
of your profession, Captain Wragge. I expected it when I joined you. I
made no complaint at the time, and I make none now. If the money you
took is any recompense for all the trouble I have given you, you are
heartily welcome to it."
"Will you shake hands on that?" asked the captain, with an awkwardness
and hesitation strongly at variance with his customary ease of manner.
Magdalen gave him her hand. He wrung it hard. "You are a strange girl,"
he said, trying to speak lightly. "You have laid a hold on me that I
don't quite understand. I'm half uncomfortable at taking the money from
you now; and yet you don't want it, do you?" He hesitated. "I almost
wish," he said, "I had never met you on the Walls of York."
"It is too late to wish that, Captain Wragge. Say no more. You only
distress mesay no more. We have other subjects to talk about. What
were those words of caution which you had for my private ear?"
The captain took another turn in the room, and struggled back again
into his every-day character. He produced from his pocketbook Mrs.
Lecount's letter to her master, and handed it to Magdalen.
"There is the letter that might have ruined us if it had ever reached
its address," he said. "Read it carefully. I have a question to ask you
when you have done."
Magdalen read the letter. "What is this proof," she inquired, "which
Mrs. Lecount relies on so confidently!"
"The very question I was going to ask you," said Captain Wragge.
"Consult your memory of what happened when you tried that experiment in
Vauxhall Walk. Did Mrs. Lecount get no other chance against you than
the chances you have told me of already?"
"She discovered that my face was disguised, and she heard me speak in
my own voice."
"And nothing more?"
"Nothing more."
"Very good. Then my interpretation of the letter is clearly the right
one. The proof Mrs. Lecount relies on is my wife's infernal ghost
storywhich is, in plain English, the story of Miss Bygrave having been
seen in Miss Vanstone's disguise; the witness being the very person who
is afterward presented at Aldborough in the character of Miss Bygrave's
aunt. An excellent chance for Mrs. Lecount, if she can only lay her
hand at the right time on Mrs. Wragge, and no chance at all, if she
can't. Make your mind easy on that point. Mrs. Lecount and my wife have
seen the last of each other. In the meantime, don't neglect the warning
I give you, in giving you this letter. Tear it up, for fear of
accidents, but don't forget it."
"Trust me to remember it," replied Magdalen, destroying the letter
while she spoke. "Have you anything more to tell me?"
"I have some information to give you," said Captain Wragge, "which may
be useful, because it relates to your future security. Mind, I want to
know nothing about your proceedings when to-morrow is over; we settled
that when we first discussed this matter. I ask no questions, and I
make no guesses. All I want to do now is to warn you of your legal
position after your marriage, and to leave you to make what use you
please of your knowledge, at your own sole discretion. I took a
lawyer's opinion on the point when I was in London, thinking it might
be useful to you."
"It is sure to be useful. What did the lawyer say?"
"To put it plainly, this is what he said. If Mr. Noel Vanstone ever
discovers that you have knowingly married him under a false name, he
can apply to the Ecclesiastical Court to have his marriage declared
null and void. The issue of the application would rest with the judges.
But if he could prove that he had been intentionally deceived, the
legal opinion is that his case would be a strong one."
"Suppose I chose to apply on my side?" said Magdalen, eagerly. "What
then?"
"You might make the application," replied the captain. "But remember
one thingyou would come into Court with the acknowledgment of your own
deception. I leave you to imagine what the judges would think of that."
"Did the lawyer tell you anything else?"
"One thing besides," said Captain Wragge. "Whatever the law might do
with the marriage in the lifetime of both the parties to iton the
death of either one of them, no application made by the survivor would
avail; and, as to the case of that survivor, the marriage would remain
valid. You understand? If he dies, or if you dieand if no application
has been made to the Courthe the survivor, or you the survivor, would
have no power of disputing the marriage. But in the lifetime of both of
you, if he claimed to have the marriage dissolved, the chances are all
in favor of his carrying his point."
He looked at Magdalen with a furtive curiosity as he said those words.
She turned her head aside, absently tying her watch-chain into a loop
and untying it again, evidently thinking with the closest attention
over what he had last said to her. Captain Wragge walked uneasily to
the window and looked out. The first object that caught his eye was Mr.
Noel Vanstone approaching from Sea View. He returned instantly to his
former place in the room, and addressed himself to Magdalen once more.
"Here is Mr. Noel Vanstone," he said. "One last caution before he comes
in. Be on your guard with him about your age. He put the question to me
before he got the License. I took the shortest way out of the
difficulty, and told him you were twenty-one, and he made the
declaration accordingly. Never mind about me; after to-morrow I am
invisible. But, in your own interests, don't forget, if the subject
turns up, that you were of age when you were married. There is nothing
more. You are provided with every necessary warning that I can give
you. Whatever happens in the future, remember I have done my best."
He hurried to the door without waiting for an answer, and went out into
the garden to receive his guest.
Noel Vanstone made his appearance at the gate, solemnly carrying his
bridal offering to North Shingles with both hands. The object in
question was an ancient casket (one of his father's bargains); inside
the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch, set in silver
(another of his father's bargains)bridal presents both, possessing the
inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in his pocket. He
shook his head portentously when the captain inquired after his health
and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night; ungovernable apprehensions
of Lecount's sudden re-appearance had beset him as soon as he found
himself alone at Sea View. Sea View was redolent of Lecount: Sea View
(though built on piles, and the strongest house in England) was
henceforth odious to him. He had felt this all night; he had also felt
his responsibilities. There was the lady's maid, to begin with. Now he
had hired her, he began to think she wouldn't do. She might fall sick
on his hands; she might have deceived him by a false character; she and
the landlady of the hotel might have been in league together. Horrible!
Really horrible to think of. Then there was the other
responsibilityperhaps the heavier of the twothe responsibility of
deciding where he was to go and spend his honeymoon to-morrow. He would
have preferred one of his father's empty houses: But except at Vauxhall
Walk (which he supposed would be objected to), and at Aldborough (which
was of course out of the question) all the houses were let. He would
put himself in Mr. Bygrave's hands. Where had Mr. Bygrave spent his own
honeymoon? Given the British Islands to choose from, where would Mr.
Bygrave pitch his tent, on a careful review of all the circumstances?
At this point the bridegroom's questions suddenly came to an end, and
the bridegroom's face exhibited an expression of ungovernable
astonishment. His judicious friend, whose advice had been at his
disposal in every other emergency, suddenly turned round on him, in the
emergency of the honeymoon, and flatly declined discussing the subject.
"No!" said the captain, as Noel Vanstone opened his lips to plead for a
hearing, "you must really excuse me. My point of view in this matter
is, as usual, a peculiar one. For some time past I have been living in
an atmosphere of deception, to suit your convenience. That atmosphere,
my good sir, is getting close; my Moral Being requires ventilation.
Settle the choice of a locality with my niece, and leave me, at my
particular request, in total ignorance of the subject. Mrs. Lecount is
certain to come here on her return from Zurich, and is certain to ask
me where you are gone. You may think it strange, Mr. Vanstone; but when
I tell her I don't know, I wish to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of
feeling, for once in a way, that I am speaking the truth!"
With those words, he opened the sitting-room door, introduced Noel
Vanstone to Magdalen's presence, bowed himself out of the room again,
and set forth alone to while away the rest of the afternoon by taking a
walk. His face showed plain tokens of anxiety, and his party-colored
eyes looked hither and thither distrustfully, as he sauntered along the
shore. "The time hangs heavy on our hands," thought the captain. "I
wish to-morrow was come and gone."
The day passed and nothing happened; the evening and the night
followed, placidly and uneventfully. Monday came, a cloudless, lovely
day; Monday confirmed the captain's assertion that the marriage was a
certainty. Toward ten o'clock, the clerk, ascending the church steps
quoted the old proverb to the pew-opener, meeting him under the porch:
"Happy the bride on whom the sun shines!"
In a quarter of an hour more the wedding-party was in the vestry, and
the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret of the
marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the morning had
been enough to betray it. A small congregation, almost entirely
composed of women, were scattered here and there among the pews.
Kirke's sister and her children were staying with a friend at
Aldborough, and Kirke's sister was one of the congregation.
As the wedding-party entered the church, the haunting terror of Mrs.
Lecount spread from Noel Vanstone to the captain. For the first few
minutes, the eyes of both of them looked among the women in the pews
with the same searching scrutiny, and looked away again with the same
sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that look, and investigated the
License more closely than usual. The clerk began to doubt privately
whether the old proverb about the bride was a proverb to be always
depended on. The female members of the congregation murmured among
themselves at the inexcusable disregard of appearances implied in the
bride's dress. Kirke's sister whispered venomously in her friend's ear,
"Thank God for to-day for Robert's sake." Mrs. Wragge cried silently,
with the dread of some threatening calamity she knew not what. The one
person present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalen herself.
She stood, with tearless resignation, in her place before the
altarstood, as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up
within her.
The clergyman opened the Book.
It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to Heaven were
pronounced. The children of the two dead brothersinheritors of the
implacable enmity which had parted their parentswere Man and Wife.
From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting
scene. They were back at the house while the words of the Marriage
Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five
minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the garden gate. In a minute
more the opportunity came for which Magdalen and the captain had been
on the watchthe opportunity of speaking together in private for the
last time. She still preserved her icy resignation; she seemed beyond
all reach now of the fear that had once mastered her, of the remorse
that had once tortured her soul. With a firm hand she gave him the
promised money. With a firm face she looked her last at him. "I'm not
to blame," he whispered, eagerly; "I have only done what you asked me."
She bowed her head; she bent it toward him kindly and let him touch her
fore-head with his lips. "Take care!" he said. "My last words arefor
God's sake take care when I'm gone!" She turned from him with a smile,
and spoke her farewell words to his wife. Mrs. Wragge tried hard to
face her loss bravelythe loss of the friend whose presence had fallen
like light from Heaven over the dim pathway of her life. "You have been
very good to me, my dear; I thank you kindly; I thank you with all my
heart." She could say no more; she clung to Magdalen in a passion of
tears, as her mother might have clung to her, if her mother had lived
to see that horrible day. "I'm frightened for you!" cried the poor
creature, in a wild, wailing voice. "Oh, my darling, I'm frightened for
you!" Magdalen desperately drew herself freekissed herand hurried out
to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, the cry of that
guileless love, shook her as nothing else had shaken her that day. It
was a refuge to get to the carriagea refuge, though the man she had
married stood there waiting for her at the door.
Mrs. Wragge tried to follow her into the garden. But the captain had
seen Magdalen's face as she ran out, and he steadily held his wife back
in the passage. From that distance the last farewells were exchanged.
As long as the carriage was in sight, Magdalen looked back at them; she
waved her handkerchief as she turned the corner. In a moment more the
last thread which bound her to them was broken; the familiar
companionship of many months was a thing of the past already!
Captain Wragge closed the house door on the idlers who were looking in
from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room, and spoke
to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him.
"She has gone her way," he said, "and in another hour we shall have
gone ours. Cry your cry outI don't deny she's worth crying for."
Even theneven when the dread of Magdalen's future was at its darkest
in his mindthe ruling habit of the man's life clung to him.
Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch-box. Mechanically he opened his
Book of Accounts, and made the closing entrythe entry of his last
transaction with Magdalenin black and white. "By Rec'd from Miss
Vanstone," wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, "Two hundred pounds."
"You won't be angry with me?" said Mrs. Wragge, looking timidly at her
husband through her tears. "I want a word of comfort, captain. Oh, do
tell me, when shall I see her again?"
The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable word:
"Never!"
Between eleven and twelve o'clock that night Mrs. Lecount drove into
Zurich.
Her brother's house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some
difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in
speechless amazement when she opened the door and saw who the visitor
was.
"Is my brother alive?" asked Mrs. Lecount, entering the house.
"Alive!" echoed the servant. "He has gone holiday-making into the
country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air."
The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The
coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid, and
her teeth chattered in her head.
"Send for my brother's doctor," she said, as soon as she could speak.
The doctor came. She handed him a letter before he could say a word.
"Did you write that letter?"
He looked it over rapidly, and answered her without hesitation,
"Certainly not!"
"It is your handwriting."
"It is a forgery of my handwriting."
She rose from the chair with a new strength in her.
"When does the return mail start for Paris?" she asked.
"In half an hour."
"Send instantly and take me a place in it!"
The servant hesitated, the doctor protested. She turned a deaf ear to
them both.
"Send!" she reiterated, "or I will go myself."
They obeyed. The servant went to take the place: the doctor remained
and held a conversation with Mrs. Lecount. When the half-hour had
passed, he helped her into her place in the mail, and charged the
conductor privately to take care of his passenger.
"She has traveled from England without stopping," said the doctor; "and
she is traveling back again without rest. Be careful of her, or she
will break down under the double journey."
The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an end
Mrs. Lecount was on her way back to England.
THE END OF THE FOURTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From George Bartram to Noel Vanstone.
"St. Crux, September 4th, 1847.
"My dear Noel,
"Here are two plain questions at starting. In the name of all that is
mysterious, what are you hiding for? And why is everything relating to
your marriage kept an impenetrable secret from your oldest friends?
"I have been to Aldborough to try if I could trace you from that place,
and have come back as wise as I went. I have applied to your lawyer in
London, and have been told, in reply, that you have forbidden him to
disclose the place of your retreat to any one without first receiving
your permission to do so. All I could prevail on him to say was, that
he would forward any letter which might be sent to his care. I write
accordingly, and mind this, I expect an answer.
"You may ask, in your ill-tempered way, what business I have to meddle
with affairs of yours which it is your pleasure to keep private. My
dear Noel, there is a serious reason for our opening communications
with you from this house. You don't know what events have taken place
at St. Crux since you ran away to get married; and though I detest
writing letters, I must lose an hour's shooting to-day in trying to
enlighten you.
"On the twenty-third of last month, the admiral and I were disturbed
over our wine after dinner by the announcement that a visitor had
unexpectedly arrived at St. Crux. Who do you think the visitor was?
Mrs. Lecount!
"My uncle, with that old-fashioned bachelor gallantry of his which pays
equal respect to all wearers of petticoats, left the table directly to
welcome Mrs. Lecount. While I was debating whether I should follow him
or not, my meditations were suddenly brought to an end by a loud call
from the admiral. I ran into the morning-room, and there was your
unfortunate housekeeper on the sofa, with all the women servants about
her, more dead than alive. She had traveled from England to Zurich, and
from Zurich back again to England, without stopping; and she looked,
seriously and literally, at death's door. I immediately agreed with my
uncle that the first thing to be done was to send for medical help. We
dispatched a groom on the spot, and, at Mrs. Lecount's own request,
sent all the servants in a body out of the room.
"As soon as we were alone, Mrs. Lecount surprised us by a singular
question. She asked if you had received a letter which she had
addressed to you before leaving England at this house. When we told her
that the letter had been forwarded, under cover to your friend Mr.
Bygrave, by your own particular request, she turned as pale as ashes;
and when we added that you had left us in company with this same Mr.
Bygrave, she clasped her hands and stared at us as if she had taken
leave of her senses. Her next question was, 'Where is Mr. Noel now?' We
could only give her one replyMr. Noel had not informed us. She looked
perfectly thunderstruck at that answer. 'He has gone to his ruin!' she
said. 'He has gone away in company with the greatest villain in
England. I must find him! I tell you I must find Mr. Noel! If I don't
find him at once, it will be too late. He will be married!' she burst
out quite frantically. 'On my honor and my oath, he will be married!'
The admiral, incautiously perhaps, but with the best intentions, told
her you were married already. She gave a scream that made the windows
ring again and dropped back on the sofa in a fainting-fit. The doctor
came in the nick of time, and soon brought her to. But she was taken
ill the same night; she has grown worse and worse ever since; and the
last medical report is, that the fever from which she has been
suffering is in a fair way to settle on her brain.
"Now, my dear Noel, neither my uncle nor I have any wish to intrude
ourselves on your confidence. We are naturally astonished at the
extraordinary mystery which hangs over you and your marriage, and we
cannot be blind to the fact that your housekeeper has, apparently, some
strong reason of her own for viewing Mrs. Noel Vanstone with an enmity
and distrust which we are quite ready to believe that lady has done
nothing to deserve. Whatever strange misunderstanding there may have
been in your household, is your business (if you choose to keep it to
yourself), and not ours. All we have any right to do is to tell you
what the doctor says. His patient has been delirious; he declines to
answer for her life if she goes on as she is going on now; and he
thinksfinding that she is perpetually talking of her masterthat your
presence would be useful in quieting her, if you could come here at
once, and exert your influence before it is too late.
"What do you say? Will you emerge from the darkness that surrounds you
and come to St. Crux? If this was the case of an ordinary servant, I
could understand your hesitating to leave the delights of your
honeymoon for any such object as is here proposed to you. But, my dear
fellow, Mrs. Lecount is not an ordinary servant. You are under
obligations to her fidelity and attachment in your father's time, as
well as in your own; and if you can quiet the anxieties which seem to
be driving this unfortunate woman mad, I really think you ought to come
here and do so. Your leaving Mrs. Noel Vanstone is of course out of the
question. There is no necessity for any such hard-hearted proceeding.
The admiral desires me to remind you that he is your oldest friend
living, and that his house is at your wife's disposal, as it has always
been at yours. In this great rambling-place she need dread no near
association with the sick-room; and, with all my uncle's oddities, I am
sure she will not think the offer of his friendship an offer to be
despised.
"Have I told you already that I went to Aldborough to try and find a
clue to your whereabouts? I can't be at the trouble of looking back to
see; so, if I have told you, I tell you again. The truth is, I made an
acquaintance at Aldborough of whom you know somethingat least by
report.
"After applying vainly at Sea View, I went to the hotel to inquire
about you. The landlady could give me no information; but the moment I
mentioned your name, she asked if I was related to you; and when I told
her I was your cousin, she said there was a young lady then at the
hotel whose name was Vanstone also, who was in great distress about a
missing relative, and who might prove of some use to meor I to herif
we knew of each other's errand at Aldborough. I had not the least idea
who she was, but I sent in my card at a venture; and in five minutes
afterward I found myself in the presence of one of the most charming
women these eyes ever looked on.
"Our first words of explanation informed me that my family name was
known to her by repute. Who do you think she was? The eldest daughter
of my uncle and yoursAndrew Vanstone. I had often heard my poor mother
in past years speak of her brother Andrew, and I knew of that sad story
at Combe-Raven. But our families, as you are aware, had always been
estranged, and I had never seen my charming cousin before. She has the
dark eyes and hair, and the gentle, retiring manners that I always
admire in a woman. I don't want to renew our old disagreement about
your father's conduct to those two sisters, or to deny that his brother
Andrew may have behaved badly to him; I am willing to admit that the
high moral position he took in the matter is quite unassailable by such
a miserable sinner as I am; and I will not dispute that my own
spendthrift habits incapacitate me from offering any opinion on the
conduct of other people's pecuniary affairs. But, with all these
allowances and drawbacks, I can tell you one thing, Noel. If you ever
see the elder Miss Vanstone, I venture to prophesy that, for the first
time in your life, you will doubt the propriety of following your
father's example.
"She told me her little story, poor thing, most simply and
unaffectedly. She is now occupying her second situation as a
governessand, as usual, I, who know everybody, know the family. They
are friends of my uncle's, whom he has lost sight of latterlythe
Tyrrels of Portland Placeand they treat Miss Vanstone with as much
kindness and consideration as if she was a member of the family. One of
their old servants accompanied her to Aldborough, her object in
traveling to that place being what the landlady of the hotel had stated
it to be. The family reverses have, it seems, had a serious effect on
Miss Vanstone's younger sister, who has left her friends and who has
been missing from home for some time. She had been last heard of at
Aldborough; and her elder sister, on her return from the Continent with
the Tyrrels, had instantly set out to make inquiries at that place.
"This was all Miss Vanstone told me. She asked whether you had seen
anything of her sister, or whether Mrs. Lecount knew anything of her
sisterI suppose because she was aware you had been at Aldborough. Of
course I could tell her nothing. She entered into no details on the
subject, and I could not presume to ask her for any. All I did was to
set to work with might and main to assist her inquiries. The attempt
was an utter failure; nobody could give us any information. We tried
personal description of course; and strange to say, the only young lady
formerly staying at Aldborough who answered the description was, of all
the people in the world, the lady you have married! If she had not had
an uncle and aunt (both of whom have left the place), I should have
begun to suspect that you had married your cousin without knowing it!
Is this the clue to the mystery? Don't be angry; I must have my little
joke, and I can't help writing as carelessly as I talk. The end of it
was, our inquiries were all baffled, and I traveled back with Miss
Vanstone and her attendant as far as our station here. I think I shall
call on the Tyrrels when I am next in London. I have certainly treated
that family with the most inexcusable neglect.
"Here I am at the end of my third sheet of note-paper! I don't often
take the pen in hand; but when I do, you will agree with me that I am
in no hurry to lay it aside again. Treat the rest of my letter as you
like, but consider what I have told you about Mrs. Lecount, and
remember that time is of consequence.
"Ever yours,
"GEORGE BARTRAM."
II.
From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth.
"Portland Place.
"MY DEAR MISS GARTH,
"More sorrow, more disappointment! I have just returned from
Aldborough, without making any discovery. Magdalen is still lost to us.
"I cannot attribute this new overthrow of my hopes to any want of
perseverance or penetration in making the necessary inquiries. My
inexperience in such matters was most kindly and unexpectedly assisted
by Mr. George Bartram. By a strange coincidence, he happened to be at
Aldborough, inquiring after Mr. Noel Vanstone, at the very time when I
was there inquiring after Magdalen. He sent in his card, and knowing,
when I looked at the name, that he was my cousinif I may call him soI
thought there would be no impropriety in my seeing him and asking his
advice. I abstained from entering into particulars for Magdalen's sake,
and I made no allusion to that letter of Mrs. Lecount's which you
answered for me. I only told him Magdalen was missing, and had been
last heard of at Aldborough. The kindness which he showed in devoting
himself to my assistance exceeds all description. He treated me, in my
forlorn situation, with a delicacy and respect which I shall remember
gratefully long after he has himself perhaps forgotten our meeting
altogether. He is quite youngnot more than thirty, I should think. In
face and figure, he reminded me a little of the portrait of my father
at Combe-RavenI mean the portrait in the dining-room, of my father
when he was a young man.
"Useless as our inquiries were, there is one result of them which has
left a very strange and shocking impression on my mind.
"It appears that Mr. Noel Vanstone has lately married, under mysterious
circumstances, a young lady whom he met with at Aldborough, named
Bygrave. He has gone away with his wife, telling nobody but his lawyer
where he has gone to. This I heard from Mr. George Bartram, who was
endeavoring to trace him, for the purpose of communicating the news of
his housekeeper's serious illnessthe housekeeper being the same Mrs.
Lecount whose letter you answered. So far, you may say, there is
nothing which need particularly interest either of us. But I think you
will be as much surprised as I was when I tell you that the description
given by the people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave's appearance is most
startlingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen's
appearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the
circumstances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I cannot
describe to youwhich I dare not realize to myself. Pray come and see
me! I have never felt so wretched about Magdalen as I feel now.
Suspense must have weakened my nerves in some strange way. I feel
superstitious about the slightest things. This accidental resemblance
of a total stranger to Magdalen fills me every now and then with the
most horrible misgivingsmerely because Mr. Noel Vanstone's name
happens to be mixed up with it. Once more, pray come to me; I have so
much to say to you that I cannot, and dare not, say in writing.
"Gratefully and affectionately yours,
"NORAH."
III.
From Mr. John Loscombe (Solicitor) to George Bartram, Esq.
"Lincoln's Inn, London,
"September 6th, 1847.
"SIR,
"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note, inclosing a letter
addressed to my client, Mr. Noel Vanstone, and requesting that I will
forward the same to Mr. Vanstone's present address.
"Since I last had the pleasure of communicating with you on this
subject, my position toward my client is entirely altered. Three days
ago I received a letter from him, which stated his intention of
changing his place of residence on the next day then ensuing, but which
left me entirely in ignorance on the subject of the locality to which
it was his intention to remove. I have not heard from him since; and,
as he had previously drawn on me for a larger sum of money than usual,
there would be no present necessity for his writing to me
againassuming that it is his wish to keep his place of residence
concealed from every one, myself included.
"Under these circumstances, I think it right to return you your letter,
with the assurance that I will let you know, if I happen to be again
placed in a position to forward it to its destination.
"Your obedient servant,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
IV.
From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth.
"Portland Place.
"MY DEAR MISS GARTH,
"Forget the letter I wrote to you yesterday, and all the gloomy
forebodings that it contains. This morning's post has brought new life
to me. I have just received a letter, addressed to me at your house,
and forwarded here, in your absence from home yesterday, by your
sister. Can you guess who the writer is?Magdalen!
"The letter is very short; it seems to have been written in a hurry.
She says she has been dreaming of me for some nights past, and the
dreams have made her fear that her long silence has caused me more
distress on her account than she is worth. She writes, therefore, to
assure me that she is safe and wellthat she hopes to see me before
longand that she has something to tell me, when we meet, which will
try my sisterly love for her as nothing has tried it yet. The letter is
not dated; but the postmark is 'Allonby,' which I have found, on
referring to the Gazetteer, to be a little sea-side place in
Cumberland. There is no hope of my being able to write back, for
Magdalen expressly says that she is on the eve of departure from her
present residence, and that she is not at liberty to say where she is
going to next, or to leave instructions for forwarding any letters
after her.
"In happier times I should have thought this letter very far from being
a satisfactory one, and I should have been seriously alarmed by that
allusion to a future confidence on her part which will try my love for
her as nothing has tried it yet. But after all the suspense I have
suffered, the happiness of seeing her handwriting again seems to fill
my heart and to keep all other feelings out of it. I don't send you her
letter, because I know you are coming to me soon, and I want to have
the pleasure of seeing you read it.
"Ever affectionately yours,
"NORAH.
"P.S.Mr. George Bartram called on Mrs. Tyrrel to-day. He insisted on
being introduced to the children. When he was gone, Mrs. Tyrrel laughed
in her good-humored way, and said that his anxiety to see the children
looked, to her mind, very much like an anxiety to see me. You may
imagine how my spirits are improved when I can occupy my pen in writing
such nonsense as this!"
V.
From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot, General Agent, London.
"St. Crux, October 23d, 1847.
"DEAR SIR,
"I have been long in thanking you for the kind letter which promises me
your assistance, in friendly remembrance of the commercial relations
formerly existing between my brother and yourself. The truth is, I have
over-taxed my strength on my recovery from a long and dangerous
illness; and for the last ten days I have been suffering under a
relapse. I am now better again, and able to enter on the business which
you so kindly offer to undertake for me.
"The person whose present place of abode it is of the utmost importance
to me to discover is Mr. Noel Vanstone. I have lived, for many years
past, in this gentleman's service as house-keeper; and not having
received my formal dismissal, I consider myself in his service still.
During my absence on the Continent he was privately married at
Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the eighteenth of August last. He left
Aldborough the same day, taking his wife with him to some place of
retreat which was kept a secret from everybody except his lawyer, Mr.
Loscombe, of Lincoln's Inn. After a short time he again removed, on the
4th of September, without informing Mr. Loscombe, on this occasion, of
his new place of abode. From that date to this the lawyer has remained
(or has pretended to remain) in total ignorance of where he now is.
Application has been made to Mr. Loscombe, under the circumstances, to
mention what that former place of residence was, of which Mr. Vanstone
is known to have informed him. Mr. Loscombe has declined acceding to
this request, for want of formal permission to disclose his client's
proceedings after leaving Aldborough. I have all these latter
particulars from Mr. Loscombe's correspondentthe nephew of the
gentleman who owns this house, and whose charity has given me an
asylum, during the heavy affliction of my sickness, under his own roof.
"I believe the reasons which have induced Mr. Noel Vanstone to keep
himself and his wife in hiding are reasons which relate entirely to
myself. In the first place, he is aware that the circumstances under
which he has married are such as to give me the right of regarding him
with a just indignation. In the second place, he knows that my faithful
services, rendered through a period of twenty years, to his father and
to himself, forbid him, in common decency, to cast me out helpless on
the world without a provision for the end of my life. He is the meanest
of living men, and his wife is the vilest of living women. As long as
he can avoid fulfilling his obligations to me, he will; and his wife's
encouragement may be trusted to fortify him in his ingratitude.
"My object in determining to find him out is briefly this. His marriage
has exposed him to consequences which a man of ten times his courage
could not face without shrinking. Of those consequences he knows
nothing. His wife knows, and keeps him in ignorance. I know, and can
enlighten him. His security from the danger that threatens him is in my
hands alone; and he shall pay the price of his rescue to the last
farthing of the debt that justice claims for me as my dueno more, and
no less.
"I have now laid my mind before you, as you told me, without reserve.
You know why I want to find this man, and what I mean to do when I find
him. I leave it to your sympathy for me to answer the serious question
that remains: How is the discovery to be made? If a first trace of them
can be found, after their departure from Aldborough, I believe careful
inquiry will suffice for the rest. The personal appearance of the wife,
and the extraordinary contrast between her husband and herself, are
certain to be remarked, and remembered, by every stranger who sees
them.
"When you favor me with your answer, please address it to 'Care of
Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in the-Marsh, near Ossory, Essex'.
"Your much obliged,
"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."
VI.
From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.
"Dark's Buildings, Kingsland,
"October 25th, 1847.
"Private and Confidential.
"DEAR MADAM,
"I hasten to reply to your favor of Saturday's date. Circumstances have
enabled me to forward your interests, by consulting a friend of mine
possessing great experience in the management of private inquiries of
all sorts. I have placed your case before him (without mentioning
names); and I am happy to inform you that my views and his views of the
proper course to take agree in every particular.
"Both myself and friend, then, are of opinion that little or nothing
can be done toward tracing the parties you mention, until the place of
their temporary residence after they left Aldborough has been
discovered first. If this can be done, the sooner it is done the
better. Judging from your letter, some weeks must have passed since the
lawyer received his information that they had shifted their quarters.
As they are both remarkable-looking people, the strangers who may have
assisted them on their travels have probably not forgotten them yet.
Nevertheless, expedition is desirable.
"The question for you to consider is, whether they may not possibly
have communicated the address of which we stand in need to some other
person besides the lawyer. The husband may have written to members of
his family, or the wife may have written to members of her family. Both
myself and friend are of opinion that the latter chance is the likelier
of the two. If you have any means of access in the direction of the
wife's family, we strongly recommend you to make use of them. If not,
please supply us with the names of any of her near relations or
intimate female friends whom you know, and we will endeavor to get
access for you.
"In any case, we request you will at once favor us with the most exact
personal description that can be written of both the parties. We may
require your assistance, in this important particular, at five minutes'
notice. Favor us, therefore, with the description by return of post. In
the meantime, we will endeavor to ascertain on our side whether any
information is to be privately obtained at Mr. Loscombe's office. The
lawyer himself is probably altogether beyond our reach. But if any one
of his clerks can be advantageously treated with on such terms as may
not overtax your pecuniary resources, accept my assurance that the
opportunity shall be made the most of by,
"Dear madam,
"Your faithful servant,
"ALFRED DE BLERIOT."
VII.
From Mr. Pendril to Norah Vanstone.
"Serle Street, October 27th. 1847.
"MY DEAR MISS VANSTONE,
"A lady named Lecount (formerly attached to Mr. Noel Vanstone's service
in the capacity of housekeeper) has called at my office this morning,
and has asked me to furnish her with your address. I have begged her to
excuse my immediate compliance with her request, and to favor me with a
call to-morrow morning, when I shall be prepared to meet her with a
definite answer.
"My hesitation in this matter does not proceed from any distrust of
Mrs. Lecount personally, for I know nothing whatever to her prejudice.
But in making her request to me, she stated that the object of the
desired interview was to speak to you privately on the subject of your
sister. Forgive me for acknowledging that I determined to withhold the
address as soon as I heard this. You will make allowances for your old
friend, and your sincere well-wisher? You will not take it amiss if I
express my strong disapproval of your allowing yourself, on any
pretense whatever, to be mixed up for the future with your sister's
proceedings.
"I will not distress you by saying more than this. But I feel too deep
an interest in your welfare, and too sincere an admiration of the
patience with which you have borne all your trials, to say less.
"If I cannot prevail on you to follow my advice, you have only to say
so, and Mrs. Lecount shall have your address to-morrow. In this case
(which I cannot contemplate without the greatest unwillingness), let me
at least recommend you to stipulate that Miss Garth shall be present at
the interview. In any matter with which your sister is concerned, you
may want an old friend's advice, and an old friend's protection against
your own generous impulses. If I could have helped you in this way, I
would; but Mrs. Lecount gave me indirectly to understand that the
subject to be discussed was of too delicate a nature to permit of my
presence. Whatever this objection may be really worth, it cannot apply
to Miss Garth, who has brought you both up from childhood. I say,
again, therefore, if you see Mrs. Lecount, see her in Miss Garth's
company.
"Always most truly yours,
"WILLIAM PENDRIL."
VIII.
From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril.
"Portland Place, Wednesday.
"DEAR MR. PENDRIL,
"Pray don't think I am ungrateful for your kindness. Indeed, indeed I
am not! But I must see Mrs. Lecount. You were not aware when you wrote
to me that I had received a few lines from Magdalennot telling me
where she is, but holding out the hope of our meeting before long.
Perhaps Mrs. Lecount may have something to say to me on this very
subject. Even if it should not be so, my sisterdo what she mayis
still my sister. I can't desert her; I can't turn my back on any one
who comes to me in her name. You know, dear Mr. Pendril, I have always
been obstinate on this subject, and you have always borne with me. Let
me owe another obligation to you which I can never return, and bear
with me still!
"Need I say that I willingly accept that part of your advice which
refers to Miss Garth? I have already written to beg that she will come
here at four to-morrow afternoon. When you see Mrs. Lecount, please
inform her that Miss Garth will be with me, and that she will find us
both ready to receive her here to-morrow at four o'clock.
"Gratefully yours,
"NORAH VANSTONE."
IX.
From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.
"Dark's Buildings, October 28th.
"Private.
"DEAR MADAM,
"One of Mr. Loscombe's clerks has proved amenable to a small pecuniary
consideration, and has mentioned a circumstance which it may be of some
importance to you to know.
"Nearly a month since, accident gave the clerk in question an
opportunity of looking into one of the documents on his master's table,
which had attracted his attention from a slight peculiarity in the form
and color of the paper. He had only time, during Mr. Loscombe's
momentary absence, to satisfy his curiosity by looking at the beginning
of the document and at the end. At the beginning he saw the customary
form used in making a will; at the end he discovered the signature of
Mr. Noel Vanstone, with the names of two attesting witnesses, and the
date (of which he is quite certain)the thirtieth of September last.
"Before the clerk had time to make any further investigations, his
master returned, sorted the papers on the table, and carefully locked
up the will in the strong box devoted to the custody of Mr. Noel
Vanstone's documents. It has been ascertained that, at the close of
September, Mr. Loscombe was absent from the office. If he was then
employed in superintending the execution of his client's willwhich is
quite possibleit follows clearly that he was in the secret of Mr.
Vanstone's address after the removal of the 4th of September; and if
you can do nothing on your side, it may be desirable to have the lawyer
watched on ours. In any case, it is certainly ascertained that Mr. Noel
Vanstone has made his will since his marriage. I leave you to draw your
own conclusions from that fact, and remain, in the hope of hearing from
you shortly,
"Your faithful servant,
"ALFRED DE BLERIOT."
X.
From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril.
"Portland Place, October 28th.
"MY DEAR SIR,
"Mrs. Lecount has just left us. If it was not too late to wish, I
should wish, from the bottom of my heart, that Norah had taken your
advice, and had refused to see her.
"I write in such distress of mind that I cannot hope to give you a
clear and complete account of the interview. I can only tell you
briefly what Mrs. Lecount has done, and what our situation now is. The
rest must be left until I am more composed, and until I can speak to
you personally.
"You will remember my informing you of the letter which Mrs. Lecount
addressed to Norah from Aldborough, and which I answered for her in her
absence. When Mrs. Lecount made her appearance to-day, her first words
announced to us that she had come to renew the subject. As well as I
can remember it, this is what she said, addressing herself to Norah:
"'I wrote to you on the subject of your sister, Miss Vanstone, some
little time since, and Miss Garth was so good as to answer the letter.
What I feared at that time has come true. Your sister has defied all my
efforts to check her; she has disappeared in company with my master,
Mr. Noel Vanstone; and she is now in a position of danger which may
lead to her disgrace and ruin at a moment's notice. It is my interest
to recover my master, it is your interest to save your sister. Tell
mefor time is precioushave you any news of her?'
"Norah answered, as well as her terror and distress would allow her, 'I
have had a letter, but there was no address on it.'
"Mrs. Lecount asked, 'Was there no postmark on the envelope?'
"Norah said, 'Yes; Allonby.'
"'Allonby is better than nothing,' said Mrs. Lecount. 'Allonby may help
you to trace her. Where is Allonby?'
"Norah told her. It all passed in a minute. I had been too much
confused and startled to interfere before, but I composed myself
sufficiently to interfere now.
"'You have entered into no particulars,' I said. 'You have only
frightened usyou have told us nothing.'
"'You shall hear the particulars, ma'am,' said Mrs. Lecount; 'and you
and Miss Vanstone shall judge for yourselves if I have frightened you
without a cause.'
"Upon this, she entered at once upon a long narrative, which I cannotI
might almost say, which I dare notrepeat. You will understand the
horror we both felt when I tell you the end. If Mrs. Lecount's
statement is to be relied on, Magdalen has carried her mad resolution
of recovering her father's fortune to the last and most desperate
extremityshe has married Michael Vanstone's son under a false name.
Her husband is at this moment still persuaded that her maiden name was
Bygrave, and that she is really the niece of a scoundrel who assisted
her imposture, and whom I recognize, by the description of him, to have
been Captain Wragge.
"I spare you Mrs. Lecount's cool avowal, when she rose to leave us, of
her own mercenary motives in wishing to discover her master and to
enlighten him. I spare you the hints she dropped of Magdalen's purpose
in contracting this infamous marriage. The one aim and object of my
letter is to implore you to assist me in quieting Norah's anguish of
mind. The shock she has received at hearing this news of her sister is
not the worst result of what has happened. She has persuaded herself
that the answers she innocently gave, in her distress, to Mrs.
Lecount's questions on the subject of her letterthe answers wrung from
her under the sudden pressure of confusion and alarmmay be used to
Magdalen's prejudice by the woman who purposely startled her into
giving the information. I can only prevent her from taking some
desperate step on her sidesome step by which she may forfeit the
friendship and protection of the excellent people with whom she is now
livingby reminding her that if Mrs. Lecount traces her master by means
of the postmark on the letter, we may trace Magdalen at the same time,
and by the same means. Whatever objection you may personally feel to
renewing the efforts for the rescue of this miserable girl which failed
so lamentably at York, I entreat you, for Norah's sake, to take the
same steps now which we took then. Send me the only assurance which
will quiet herthe assurance, under your own hand, that the search on
our side has begun. If you will do this, you may trust me, when the
time comes, to stand between these two sisters, and to defend Norah's
peace, character, and future prosperity at any price.
"Most sincerely yours,
"HARRIET GARTH."
XI.
From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot.
"October 28th.
"DEAR SIR,
"I have found the trace you wanted. Mrs. Noel Vanstone has written to
her sister. The letter contains no address, but the postmark is
Allonby, in Cumberland. From Allonby, therefore, the inquiries must
begin. You have already in your possession the personal description of
both husband and wife. I urgently recommend you not to lose one
unnecessary moment. If it is possible to send to Cumberland immediately
on receipt of this letter, I beg you will do so.
"I have another word to say before I close my notea word about the
discovery in Mr. Loscombe's office.
"It is no surprise to me to hear that Mr. Noel Vanstone has made his
will since his marriage, and I am at no loss to guess in whose favor
the will is made. If I succeed in finding my master, let that person
get the money if that person can. A course to follow in this matter has
presented itself to my mind since I received your letter, but my
ignorance of details of business and intricacies of law leaves me still
uncertain whether my idea is capable of ready and certain execution. I
know no professional person whom I can trust in this delicate and
dangerous business. Is your large experience in other matters large
enough to help me in this? I will call at your office to-morrow at two
o'clock, for the purpose of consulting you on the subject. It is of the
greatest importance, when I next see Mr. Noel Vanstone, that he should
find me thoroughly prepared beforehand in this matter of the will.
"Your much obliged servant,
"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."
XII.
From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth.
"Serle Street, October 29th.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"I have only a moment to assure you of the sorrow with which I have
read your letter. The circumstances under which you urge your request,
and the reasons you give for making it, are sufficient to silence any
objection I might otherwise feel to the course you propose. A
trustworthy person, whom I have myself instructed, will start for
Allonby to-day, and as soon as I receive any news from him, you shall
hear of it by special messenger. Tell Miss Vanstone this, and pray add
the sincere expression of my sympathy and regard.
"Faithfully yours,
"WILLIAM PENDRIL."
XIII.
From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.
"Dark's Buildings. November 1st.
"DEAR MADAM,
"I have the pleasure of informing you that the discovery has been made
with far less trouble than I had anticipated.
"Mr. and Mrs. Noel Vanstone have been traced across the Solway Firth to
Dumfries, and thence to a cottage a few miles from the town, on the
banks of the Nith. The exact address is Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries.
"This information, though easily hunted up, has nevertheless been
obtained under rather singular circumstances.
"Before leaving Allonby, the persons in my employ discovered, to their
surprise, that a stranger was in the place pursuing the same inquiry as
themselves. In the absence of any instructions preparing them for such
an occurrence as this, they took their own view of the circumstance.
Considering the man as an intruder on their business, whose success
might deprive them of the credit and reward of making the discovery,
they took advantage of their superiority in numbers, and of their being
first in the field, and carefully misled the stranger before they
ventured any further with their own investigations. I am in possession
of the details of their proceedings, with which I need not trouble you.
The end is, that this person, whoever he may be, was cleverly turned
back southward on a false scent before the men in my employment crossed
the Firth.
"I mention the circumstance, as you may be better able than I am to
find a clue to it, and as it may possibly be of a nature to induce you
to hasten your journey.
"Your faithful servant,
"ALFRED DE BLERIOT."
XIV.
From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot.
"November 1st.
"DEAR SIR,
"One line to say that your letter has just reached me at my lodging in
London. I think I know who sent the strange man to inquire at Allonby.
It matters little. Before he finds out his mistake, I shall be at
Dumfries. My luggage is packed, and I start for the North by the next
train.
"Your deeply obliged,
"VIRGINIE LECOUNT."
THE FIFTH SCENE.
BALIOL COTTAGE, DUMFRIES.
CHAPTER I.
Toward eleven o'clock, on the morning of the third of November, the
breakfast-table at Baliol Cottage presented that essentially
comfortless appearance which is caused by a meal in a state of
transitionthat is to say, by a meal prepared for two persons, which
has been already eaten by one, and which has not yet been approached by
the other. It must be a hardy appetite which can contemplate without a
momentary discouragement the battered egg-shell, the fish half stripped
to a skeleton, the crumbs in the plate, and the dregs in the cup. There
is surely a wise submission to those weaknesses in human nature which
must be respected and not reproved, in the sympathizing rapidity with
which servants in places of public refreshment clear away all signs of
the customer in the past, from the eyes of the customer in the present.
Although his predecessor may have been the wife of his bosom or the
child of his loins, no man can find himself confronted at table by the
traces of a vanished eater, without a passing sense of injury in
connection with the idea of his own meal.
Some such impression as this found its way into the mind of Mr. Noel
Vanstone when he entered the lonely breakfast-parlor at Baliol Cottage
shortly after eleven o'clock. He looked at the table with a frown, and
rang the bell with an expression of disgust.
"Clear away this mess," he said, when the servant appeared. "Has your
mistress gone?"
"Yes, sirnearly an hour ago."
"Is Louisa downstairs?"
"Yes, sir."
"When you have put the table right, send Louisa up to me."
He walked away to the window. The momentary irritation passed away from
his face; but it left an expression there which remainedan expression
of pining discontent. Personally, his marriage had altered him for the
worse. His wizen little cheeks were beginning to shrink into hollows,
his frail little figure had already contracted a slight stoop. The
former delicacy of his complexion had gonethe sickly paleness of it
was all that remained. His thin flaxen mustaches were no longer
pragmatically waxed and twisted into a curl: their weak feathery ends
hung meekly pendent over the querulous corners of his mouth. If the ten
or twelve weeks since his marriage had been counted by his locks, they
might have reckoned as ten or twelve years. He stood at the window
mechanically picking leaves from a pot of heath placed in front of it,
and drearily humming the forlorn fragment of a tune.
The prospect from the window overlooked the course of the Nith at a
bend of the river a few miles above Dumfries. Here and there, through
wintry gaps in the wooded bank, broad tracts of the level cultivated
valley met the eye. Boats passed on the river, and carts plodded along
the high-road on their way to Dumfries. The sky was clear; the November
sun shone as pleasantly as if the year had been younger by two good
months; and the view, noted in Scotland for its bright and peaceful
charm, was presented at the best which its wintry aspect could assume.
If it had been hidden in mist or drenched with rain, Mr. Noel Vanstone
would, to all appearance, have found it as attractive as he found it
now. He waited at the window until he heard Louisa's knock at the door,
then turned back sullenly to the breakfast-table and told her to come
in.
"Make the tea," he said. "I know nothing about it. I'm left here
neglected. Nobody helps me."
The discreet Louisa silently and submissively obeyed.
"Did your mistress leave any message for me," he asked, "before she
went away?"
"No message in particular, sir. My mistress only said she should be too
late if she waited breakfast any longer."
"Did she say nothing else?"
"She told me at the carriage door, sir, that she would most likely be
back in a week."
"Was she in good spirits at the carriage door?"
"No, sir. I thought my mistress seemed very anxious and uneasy. Is
there anything more I can do, sir?"
"I don't know. Wait a minute."
He proceeded discontentedly with his breakfast. Louisa waited
resignedly at the door.
"I think your mistress has been in bad spirits lately," he resumed,
with a sudden outbreak of petulance.
"My mistress has not been very cheerful, sir."
"What do you mean by not very cheerful? Do you mean to prevaricate? Am
I nobody in the house? Am I to be kept in the dark about everything? Is
your mistress to go away on her own affairs, and leave me at home like
a childand am I not even to ask a question about her? Am I to be
prevaricated with by a servant? I won't be prevaricated with! Not very
cheerful? What do you mean by not very cheerful?"
"I only meant that my mistress was not in good spirits, sir."
"Why couldn't you say it, then? Don't you know the value of words? The
most dreadful consequences sometimes happen from not knowing the value
of words. Did your mistress tell you she was going to London?"
"Yes, sir."
"What did you think when your mistress told you she was going to
London? Did you think it odd she was going without me?"
"I did not presume to think it odd, sir.Is there anything more I can
do for you, if you please, sir?"
"What sort of a morning is it out? Is it warm? Is the sun on the
garden?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have you seen the sun yourself on the garden?"
"Yes, sir."
"Get me my great-coat; I'll take a little turn. Has the man brushed it?
Did you see the man brush it yourself? What do you mean by saying he
has brushed it, when you didn't see him? Let me look at the tails. If
there's a speck of dust on the tails, I'll turn the man off!Help me on
with it."
Louisa helped him on with his coat, and gave him his hat. He went out
irritably. The coat was a large one (it had belonged to his father);
the hat was a large one (it was a misfit purchased as a bargain by
himself). He was submerged in his hat and coat; he looked singularly
small, and frail, and miserable, as he slowly wended his way, in the
wintry sunlight, down the garden walk. The path sloped gently from the
back of the house to the water side, from which it was parted by a low
wooden fence. After pacing backward and forward slowly for some little
time, he stopped at the lower extremity of the garden, and, leaning on
the fence, looked down listlessly at the smooth flow of the river.
His thoughts still ran on the subject of his first fretful question to
Louisahe was still brooding over the circumstances under which his
wife had left the cottage that morning, and over the want of
consideration toward himself implied in the manner of her departure.
The longer he thought of his grievance, the more acutely he resented
it. He was capable of great tenderness of feeling where any injury to
his sense of his own importance was concerned. His head drooped little
by little on his arms, as they rested on the fence, and, in the deep
sincerity of his mortification, he sighed bitterly.
The sigh was answered by a voice close at his side.
"You were happier with me, sir," said the voice, in accents of tender
regret.
He looked up with a screamliterally, with a screamand confronted Mrs.
Lecount.
Was it the specter of the woman, or the woman herself? Her hair was
white; her face had fallen away; her eyes looked out large, bright, and
haggard over her hollow cheeks. She was withered and old. Her dress
hung loose round her wasted figure; not a trace of its buxom autumnal
beauty remained. The quietly impenetrable resolution, the smoothly
insinuating voicethese were the only relics of the past which sickness
and suffering had left in Mrs. Lecount.
"Compose yourself, Mr. Noel," she said, gently. "You have no cause to
be alarmed at seeing me. Your servant, when I inquired, said you were
in the garden, and I came here to find you. I have traced you out, sir,
with no resentment against yourself, with no wish to distress you by so
much as the shadow of a reproach. I come here on what has been, and is
still, the business of my lifeyour service."
He recovered himself a little, but he was still incapable of speech. He
held fast by the fence, and stared at her.
"Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say," proceeded Mrs. Lecount.
"I have come here not as your enemy, but as your friend. I have been
tried by sickness, I have been tried by distress. Nothing remains of me
but my heart. My heart forgives you; my heart, in your sore needneed
which you have yet to feel-places me at your service. Take my arm, Mr.
Noel. A little turn in the sun will help you to recover yourself."
She put his hand through her arm and marched him slowly up the garden
walk. Before she had been five minutes in his company, she had resumed
full possession of him in her own right.
"Now down again, Mr. Noel," she said. "Gently down again, in this fine
sunlight. I have much to say to you, sir, which you never expected to
hear from me. Let me ask a little domestic question first. They told me
at the house door Mrs. Noel Vanstone was gone away on a journey. Has
she gone for long?"
Her master's hand trembled on her arm as she put that question. Instead
of answering it, he tried faintly to plead for himself. The first words
that escaped him were prompted by his first returning sensethe sense
that his housekeeper had taken him into custody. He tried to make his
peace with Mrs. Lecount.
"I always meant to do something for you," he said, coaxingly. "You
would have heard from me before long. Upon my word and honor, Lecount,
you would have heard from me before long!"
"I don't doubt it, sir," replied Mrs. Lecount. "But for the present,
never mind about Me. You and your interests first."
"How did you come here?" he asked, looking at her in astonishment. "How
came you to find me out?"
"It is a long story, sir; I will tell it you some other time. Let it be
enough to say now that I have found you. Will Mrs. Noel be back again
at the house to-day? A little louder, sir; I can hardly hear you. So!
so! Not back again for a week! And where has she gone? To London, did
you say? And what for?I am not inquisitive, Mr. Noel; I am asking
serious questions, under serious necessity. Why has your wife left you
here, and gone to London by herself?"
They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry, and
they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered. Her
reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were producing their
effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of
addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper was returning already
with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecountreturning insidiously, in
company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which
had got the better of him at the breakfast-table, and which had shown
the wound inflicted on his vanity to his wife's maid.
"I can't answer for Mrs. Noel Vanstone," he said, spitefully. "Mrs.
Noel Vanstone has not treated me with the consideration which is my
due. She has taken my permission for granted, and she has only thought
proper to tell me that the object of her journey is to see her friends
in London. She went away this morning without bidding me good-by. She
takes her own way as if I was nobody; she treats me like a child. You
may not believe it, Lecount, but I don't even know who her friends are.
I am left quite in the dark; I am left to guess for myself that her
friends in London are her uncle and aunt."
Mrs. Lecount privately considered the question by the help of her own
knowledge obtained in London. She soon reached the obvious conclusion.
After writing to her sister in the first instance, Magdalen had now, in
all probability, followed the letter in person. There was little doubt
that the friends she had gone to visit in London were her sister and
Miss Garth.
"Not her uncle and aunt, sir," resumed Mrs. Lecount, composedly. "A
secret for your private ear! She has no uncle and aunt. Another little
turn before I explain myselfanother little turn to compose your
spirits."
She took him into custody once more, and marched him back toward the
house.
"Mr. Noel!" she said, suddenly stopping in the middle of the walk. "Do
you know what was the worst mischief you ever did yourself in your
life? I will tell you. That worst mischief was sending me to Zurich."
His hand began to tremble on her arm once more.
"I didn't do it!" he cried piteously. "It was all Mr. Bygrave."
"You acknowledge, sir, that Mr. Bygrave deceived me?" proceeded Mrs.
Lecount. "I am glad to hear that. You will be all the readier to make
the next discovery which is waiting for youthe discovery that Mr.
Bygrave has deceived you. He is not here to slip through my fingers
now, and I am not the helpless woman in this place that I was at
Aldborough. Thank God!"
She uttered that devout exclamation through her set teeth. All her
hatred of Captain Wragge hissed out of her lips in those two words.
"Oblige me, sir, by holding one side of my traveling-bag," she resumed,
"while I open it and take something out."
The interior of the bag disclosed a series of neatly-folded papers, all
laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs. Lecount took out one
of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud snap of the spring
that closed it.
"At Aldborough, Mr. Noel, I had only my own opinion to support me," she
remarked. "My own opinion was nothing against Miss Bygrave's youth and
beauty, and Mr. Bygrave's ready wit. I could only hope to attack your
infatuation with proofs, and at that time I had not got them. I have
got them now! I am armed at all points with proofs; I bristle from head
to foot with proofs; I break my forced silence, and speak with the
emphasis of my proofs. Do you know this writing, sir?"
He shrank back from the paper which she offered to him.
"I don't understand this," he said, nervously. "I don't know what you
want, or what you mean."
Mrs. Lecount forced the paper into his hand. "You shall know what I
mean, sir, if you will give me a moment's attention," she said. "On the
day after you went away to St. Crux, I obtained admission to Mr.
Bygrave's house, and I had some talk in private with Mr. Bygrave's
wife. That talk supplied me with the means to convince you which I had
wanted to find for weeks and weeks past. I wrote you a letter to say
soI wrote to tell you that I would forfeit my place in your service,
and my expectations from your generosity, if I did not prove to you
when I came back from Switzerland that my own private suspicion of Miss
Bygrave was the truth. I directed that letter to you at St. Crux, and I
posted it myself. Now, Mr. Noel, read the paper which I have forced
into your hand. It is Admiral Bartram's written affirmation that my
letter came to St. Crux, and that he inclosed it to you, under cover to
Mr. Bygrave, at your own request. Did Mr. Bygrave ever give you that
letter? Don't agitate yourself, sir! One word of reply will doYes or
No."
He read the paper, and looked up at her with growing bewilderment and
fear. She obstinately waited until he spoke. "No," he said, faintly; "I
never got the letter."
"First proof!" said Mrs. Lecount, taking the paper from him, and
putting it back in the bag. "One more, with your kind permission,
before we come to things more serious still. I gave you a written
description, sir, at Aldborough, of a person not named, and I asked you
to compare it with Miss Bygrave the next time you were in her company.
After having first shown the description to Mr. Bygraveit is useless
to deny it now, Mr. Noel; your friend at North Shingles is not here to
help you!after having first shown my note to Mr. Bygrave, you made the
comparison, and you found it fail in the most important particular.
There were two little moles placed close together on the left side of
the neck, in my description of the unknown lady, and there were no
little moles at all when you looked at Miss Bygrave's neck. I am old
enough to be your mother, Mr. Noel. If the question is not indelicate,
may I ask what the present state of your knowledge is on the subject of
your wife's neck?"
She looked at him with a merciless steadiness. He drew back a few
steps, cowering under her eye. "I can't say," he stammered. "I don't
know. What do you mean by these questions? I never thought about the
moles afterward; I never looked. She wears her hair low"
"She has excellent reasons to wear it low, sir," remarked Mrs. Lecount.
"We will try and lift that hair before we have done with the subject.
When I came out here to find you in the garden, I saw a neat young
person through the kitchen window, with her work in her hand, who
looked to my eyes like a lady's maid. Is this young person your wife's
maid? I beg your pardon, sir, did you say yes? In that case, another
question, if you please. Did you engage her, or did your wife?"
"I engaged her"
"While I was away? While I was in total ignorance that you meant to
have a wife, or a wife's maid?"
"Yes."
"Under those circumstances, Mr. Noel, you cannot possibly suspect me of
conspiring to deceive you, with the maid for my instrument. Go into the
house, sir, while I wait here. Ask the woman who dresses Mrs. Noel
Vanstone's hair morning and night whether her mistress has a mark on
the left side of her neck, and (if so) what that mark is?"
He walked a few steps toward the house without uttering a word, then
stopped, and looked back at Mrs. Lecount. His blinking eyes were
steady, and his wizen face had become suddenly composed. Mrs. Lecount
advanced a little and joined him. She saw the change; but, with all her
experience of him, she failed to interpret the true meaning of it.
"Are you in want of a pretense, sir?" she asked. "Are you at a loss to
account to your wife's maid for such a question as I wish you to put to
her? Pretenses are easily found which will do for persons in her
station of life. Say I have come here with news of a legacy for Mrs.
Noel Vanstone, and that there is a question of her identity to settle
before she can receive the money."
She pointed to the house. He paid no attention to the sign. His face
grew paler and paler. Without moving or speaking he stood and looked at
her.
"Are you afraid?" asked Mrs. Lecount.
Those words roused him; those words lit a spark of the fire of manhood
in him at last. He turned on her like a sheep on a dog.
"I won't be questioned and ordered!" he broke out, trembling violently
under the new sensation of his own courage. "I won't be threatened and
mystified any longer! How did you find me out at this place? What do
you mean by coming here with your hints and your mysteries? What have
you got to say against my wife?"
Mrs. Lecount composedly opened the traveling-bag and took out her
smelling bottle, in case of emergency.
"You have spoken to me in plain words," she said. "In plain words, sir,
you shall have your answer. Are you too angry to listen?"
Her looks and tones alarmed him, in spite of himself. His courage began
to sink again; and, desperately as he tried to steady it, his voice
trembled when he answered her.
"Give me my answer," he said, "and give it at once."
"Your commands shall be obeyed, sir, to the letter," replied Mrs.
Lecount. "I have come here with two objects. To open your eyes to your
own situation, and to save your fortuneperhaps your life. Your
situation is this. Miss Bygrave has married you under a false character
and a false name. Can you rouse your memory? Can you call to mind the
disguised woman who threatened you in Vauxhall Walk? That womanas
certainly as I stand hereis now your wife."
He looked at her in breathless silence, his lips falling apart, his
eyes fixed in vacant inquiry. The suddenness of the disclosure had
overreached its own end. It had stupefied him.
"My wife?" he repeated, and burst into an imbecile laugh.
"Your wife," reiterated Mrs. Lecount.
At the repetition of those two words the strain on his faculties
relaxed. A thought dawned on him for the first time. His eyes fixed on
her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily. "Mad!" he said to
himself, with a sudden remembrance of what his friend Mr. Bygrave had
told him at Aldborough, sharpened by his own sense of the haggard
change that he saw in her face.
He spoke in a whisper, but Mrs. Lecount heard him. She was close at his
side again in an instant. For the first time, her self-possession
failed her, and she caught him angrily by the arm.
"Will you put my madness to the proof, sir?" she asked.
He shook off her hold; he began to gather courage again, in the intense
sincerity of his disbelief, courage to face the assertion which she
persisted in forcing on him.
"Yes," he answered. "What must I do?"
"Do what I told you," said Mrs. Lecount. "Ask the maid that question
about her mistress on the spot. And if she tells you the mark is there,
do one thing more. Take me up into your wife's room, and open her
wardrobe in my presence with your own hands."
"What do you want with her wardrobe?" he asked.
"You shall know when you open it."
"Very strange!" he said to himself, vacantly. "It's like a scene in a
novelit's like nothing in real life." He went slowly into the house,
and Mrs. Lecount waited for him in the garden.
After an absence of a few minutes only he appeared again, on the top of
the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house. He held
by the iron rail with one hand, while with the other he beckoned to
Mrs. Lecount to join him on the steps.
"What does the maid say?" she asked, as she approached him. "Is the
mark there?"
He answered in a whisper, "Yes." What he had heard from the maid had
produced a marked change in him. The horror of the coming discovery had
laid its paralyzing hold on his mind. He moved mechanically; he looked
and spoke like a man in a dream.
"Will you take my arm, sir?"
He shook his head, and, preceding her along the passage and up the
stairs, led the way into his wife's room. When she joined him and
locked the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, without
making any remark, without showing any external appearance of surprise.
He had not removed either his hat or coat. Mrs. Lecount took them off
for him. "Thank you," he said, with the docility of a well-trained
child. "It's like a scene in a novelit's like nothing in real life."
The bed-chamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy and
old-fashioned. But evidences of Magdalen's natural taste and refinement
were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that graced and
enlivened the aspect of the room. The perfume of dried rose-leaves hung
fragrant on the cool air. Mrs. Lecount sniffed the perfume with a
disparaging frown and threw the window up to its full height. "Pah!"
she said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust, "the atmosphere of
deceit!"
She seated herself near the window. The wardrobe stood against the wall
opposite, and the bed was at the side of the room on her right hand.
"Open the wardrobe, Mr. Noel," she said. "I don't go near it. I touch
nothing in it myself. Take out the dresses with your own hand and put
them on the bed. Take them out one by one until I tell you to stop."
He obeyed her. "I'll do it as well as I can," he said. "My hands are
cold, and my head feels half asleep."
The dresses to be removed were not many, for Magdalen had taken some of
them away with her. After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was
obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe before he could
find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. Lecount made a sign to him to
stop. The end was reached already; he had found the brown Alpaca dress.
"Lay it out on the bed, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "You will see a double
flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and
pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a
place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop and look up at
me."
He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers for a minute or more,
then stopped and looked up. Mrs. Lecount produced her pocket-book and
opened it.
"Every word I now speak, sir, is of serious consequence to you and to
me," she said. "Listen with your closest attention. When the woman
calling herself Miss Garth came to see us in Vauxhall Walk, I knelt
down behind the chair in which she was sitting and I cut a morsel of
stuff from the dress she wore, which might help me to know that dress
if I ever saw it again. I did this while the woman's whole attention
was absorbed in talking to you. The morsel of stuff has been kept in my
pocketbook from that time to this. See for yourself, Mr. Noel, if it
fits the gap in that dress which your own hands have just taken from
your wife's wardrobe."
She rose and handed him the fragment of stuff across the bed. He put it
into the vacant space in the flounce as well as his trembling fingers
would let him.
"Does it fit, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount.
The dress dropped from his hands, and the deadly bluish pallorwhich
every doctor who attended him had warned his housekeeper to
dreadoverspread his face slowly. Mrs. Lecount had not reckoned on such
an answer to her question as she now saw in his cheeks. She hurried
round to him, with the smelling-bottle in her hand. He dropped to his
knees and caught at her dress with the grasp of a drowning man. "Save
me!" he gasped, in a hoarse, breathless whisper. "Oh, Lecount, save
me!"
"I promise to save you," said Mrs. Lecount; "I am here with the means
and the resolution to save you. Come away from this placecome nearer
to the air." She raised him as she spoke, and led him across the room
to the window. "Do you feel the chill pain again on your left side?"
she asked, with the first signs of alarm that she had shown yet. "Has
your wife got any eau-de-cologne, any sal-volatile in her room? Don't
exhaust yourself by speakingpoint to the place!"
He pointed to a little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten
walnut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the
door: it was locked.
As she made that discovery, she saw his head sink back gradually on the
easy-chair in which she had placed him. The warning of the doctors in
past years"If you ever let him faint, you let him die"recurred to her
memory as if it had been spoken the day before. She looked at the
cupboard again. In a recess under it lay some ends of cord, placed
there apparently for purposes of packing. Without an instant's
hesitation, she snatched up a morsel of cord, tied one end fast round
the knob of the cupboard door, and seizing the other end in both hands,
pulled it suddenly with the exertion of her whole strength. The rotten
wood gave way, the cupboard doors flew open, and a heap of little
trifles poured out noisily on the floor. Without stopping to notice the
broken china and glass at her feet, she looked into the dark recesses
of the cupboard and saw the gleam of two glass bottles. One was put
away at the extreme back of the shelf, the other was a little in
advance, almost hiding it. She snatched them both out at once, and took
them, one in each hand, to the window, where she could read their
labels in the clearer light.
The bottle in her right hand was the first bottle she looked at. It was
markedSal-volatile.
She instantly laid the other bottle aside on the table without looking
at it. The other bottle lay there, waiting its turn. It held a dark
liquid, and it was labeledPOISON.
CHAPTER II.
Mrs. Lecount mixed the sal-volatile with water, and administered it
immediately. The stimulant had its effect. In a few minutes Noel
Vanstone was able to raise himself in the chair without assistance; his
color changed again for the better, and his breath came and went more
freely.
"How do you feel now, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Are you warm again on
your left side?"
He paid no attention to that inquiry; his eyes, wandering about the
room, turned by chance toward the table. To Mrs. Lecount's surprise,
instead of answering her, he bent forward in his chair, and looked with
staring eyes and pointing hand at the second bottle which she had taken
from the cupboard, and which she had hastily laid aside without paying
attention to it. Seeing that some new alarm possessed him, she advanced
to the table, and looked where he looked. The labeled side of the
bottle was full in view; and there, in the plain handwriting of the
chemist at Aldborough, was the one startling word confronting them
both"Poison."
Even Mrs. Lecount's self-possession was shaken by that discovery. She
was not prepared to see her own darkest forebodingsthe unacknowledged
offspring of her hatred for Magdalenrealized as she saw them realized
now. The suicide-despair in which the poison had been procured; the
suicide-purpose for which, in distrust of the future, the poison had
been kept, had brought with them their own retribution. There the
bottle lay, in Magdalen's absence, a false witness of treason which had
never entered her mindtreason against her husband's life!
With his hand still mechanically pointing at the table Noel Vanstone
raised his head and looked up at Mrs. Lecount.
"I took it from the cupboard," she said, answering the look. "I took
both bottles out together, not knowing which might be the bottle I
wanted. I am as much shocked, as much frightened, as you are."
"Poison!" he said to himself, slowly. "Poison locked up by my wife in
the cupboard in her own room." He stopped, and looked at Mrs. Lecount
once more. "For me?" he asked, in a vacant, inquiring tone.
"We will not talk of it, sir, until your mind is more at ease," said
Mrs. Lecount. "In the meantime, the danger that lies waiting in this
bottle shall be instantly destroyed in your presence." She took out the
cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the empty bottle after
it. "Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery for the present," she
resumed; "let us go downstairs at once. All that I have now to say to
you can be said in another room."
She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her own. "It
is well for him; it is well for me," she thought, as they went
downstairs together, "that I came when I did."
On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the
carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and
instructed the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to
call again for her in two hours' time. This done, she accompanied Noel
Vanstone into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed him
before it comfortably in an easy-chair. He sat for a few minutes,
warming his hands feebly like an old man, and staring straight into the
flame. Then he spoke.
"When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk," he began,
still staring into the fire, "you came back to the parlor after she was
gone, and you told me?" He stopped, shivered a little, and lost the
thread of his recollections at that point.
"I told you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, "that the woman was, in my
opinion, Miss Vanstone herself. Don't start, Mr. Noel! Your wife is
away, and I am here to take care of you. Say to yourself, if you feel
frightened, 'Lecount is here; Lecount will take care of me.' The truth
must be told, sir, however hard to bear the truth may be. Miss Magdalen
Vanstone was the woman who came to you in disguise; and the woman who
came to you in disguise is the woman you have married. The conspiracy
which she threatened you with in London is the conspiracy which has
made her your wife. That is the plain truth. You have seen the dress
upstairs. If that dress had been no longer in existence, I should still
have had my proofs to convince you. Thanks to my interview with Mrs.
Bygrave I have discovered the house your wife lodged at in London; it
was opposite our house in Vauxhall Walk. I have laid my hand on one of
the landlady's daughters, who watched your wife from an inner room, and
saw her put on the disguise; who can speak to her identity, and to the
identity of her companion, Mrs. Bygrave; and who has furnished me, at
my own request, with a written statement of facts, which she is ready
to affirm on oath if any person ventures to contradict her. You shall
read the statement, Mr. Noel, if you like, when you are fitter to
understand it. You shall also read a letter in the handwriting of Miss
Garthwho will repeat to you personally every word she has written to
mea letter formally denying that she was ever in Vauxhall Walk, and
formally asserting that those moles on your wife's neck are marks
peculiar to Miss Magdalen Vanstone, whom she has known from childhood.
I say it with a just prideyou will find no weak place anywhere in the
evidence which I bring you. If Mr. Bygrave had not stolen my letter,
you would have had your warning before I was cruelly deceived into
going to Zurich; and the proofs which I now bring you, after your
marriage, I should then have offered to you before it. Don't hold me
responsible, sir, for what has happened since I left England. Blame
your uncle's bastard daughter, and blame that villain with the brown
eye and the green!"
She spoke her last venomous words as slowly and distinctly as she had
spoken all the rest. Noel Vanstone made no answerhe still sat cowering
over the fire. She looked round into his face. He was crying silently.
"I was so fond of her!" said the miserable little creature; "and I
thought she was so fond of Me!"
Mrs. Lecount turned her back on him in disdainful silence. "Fond of
her!" As she repeated those words to herself, her haggard face became
almost handsome again in the magnificent intensity of its contempt.
She walked to a book-case at the lower end of the room, and began
examining the volumes in it. Before she had been long engaged in this
way, she was startled by the sound of his voice, affrightedly calling
her back. The tears were gone from his face; it was blank again with
terror when he now turned it toward her.
"Lecount!" he said, holding to her with both hands. "Can an egg be
poisoned? I had an egg for breakfast this morning, and a little toast."
"Make your mind easy, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "The poison of your
wife's deceit is the only poison you have taken yet. If she had
resolved already on making you pay the price of your folly with your
life, she would not be absent from the house while you were left living
in it. Dismiss the thought from your mind. It is the middle of the day;
you want refreshment. I have more to say to you in the interests of
your own safetyI have something for you to do, which must be done at
once. Recruit your strength, and you will do it. I will set you the
example of eating, if you still distrust the food in this house. Are
you composed enough to give the servant her orders, if I ring the bell?
It is necessary to the object I have in view for you, that nobody
should think you ill in body or troubled in mind. Try first with me
before the servant comes in. Let us see how you look and speak when you
say, 'Bring up the lunch.'"
After two rehearsals, Mrs. Lecount considered him fit to give the
order, without betraying himself.
The bell was answered by LouisaLouisa looked hard at Mrs. Lecount. The
luncheon was brought up by the house-maidthe house-maid looked hard at
Mrs. Lecount. When luncheon was over, the table was cleared by the
cookthe cook looked hard at Mrs. Lecount. The three servants were
plainly suspicious that something extraordinary was going on in the
house. It was hardly possible to doubt that they had arranged to share
among themselves the three opportunities which the service of the table
afforded them of entering the room.
The curiosity of which she was the object did not escape the
penetration of Mrs. Lecount. "I did well," she thought, "to arm myself
in good time with the means of reaching my end. If I let the grass grow
under my feet, one or the other of those women might get in my way."
Roused by this consideration, she produced her traveling-bag from a
corner, as soon as the last of the servants had entered the room; and
seating herself at the end of the table opposite Noel Vanstone, looked
at him for a moment, with a steady, investigating attention. She had
carefully regulated the quantity of wine which he had taken at
luncheonshe had let him drink exactly enough to fortify, without
confusing him; and she now examined his face critically, like an artist
examining his picture at the end of the day's work. The result appeared
to satisfy her, and she opened the serious business of the interview on
the spot.
"Will you look at the written evidence I have mentioned to you, Mr.
Noel, before I say any more?" she inquired. "Or are you sufficiently
persuaded of the truth to proceed at once to the suggestion which I
have now to make to you?"
"Let me hear your suggestion," he said, sullenly resting his elbows on
the table, and leaning his head on his hands.
Mrs. Lecount took from her traveling-bag the written evidence to which
she had just alluded, and carefully placed the papers on one side of
him, within easy reach, if he wished to refer to them. Far from being
daunted, she was visibly encouraged by the ungraciousness of his
manner. Her experience of him informed her that the sign was a
promising one. On those rare occasions when the little resolution that
he possessed was roused in him, it invariably asserted itselflike the
resolution of most other weak menaggressively. At such times, in
proportion as he was outwardly sullen and discourteous to those about
him, his resolution rose; and in proportion as he was considerate and
polite, it fell. The tone of the answer he had just given, and the
attitude he assumed at the table, convinced Mrs. Lecount that Spanish
wine and Scotch mutton had done their duty, and had rallied his sinking
courage.
"I will put the question to you for form's sake, sir, if you wish it,"
she proceeded. "But I am already certain, without any question at all,
that you have made your will?"
He nodded his head without looking at her.
"You have made it in your wife's favor?"
He nodded again.
"You have left her everything you possess?"
"No."
Mrs. Lecount looked surprised.
"Did you exercise a reserve toward her, Mr. Noel, of your own accord?"
she inquired; "or is it possible that your wife put her own limits to
her interest in your will?"
He was uneasily silenthe was plainly ashamed to answer the question.
Mrs. Lecount repeated it in a less direct form.
"How much have you left your widow, Mr. Noel, in the event of your
death?"
"Eighty thousand pounds."
That reply answered the question. Eighty thousand pounds was exactly
the fortune which Michael Vanstone had taken from his brother's orphan
children at his brother's deathexactly the fortune of which Michael
Vanstone's son had kept possession, in his turn, as pitilessly as his
father before him. Noel Vanstone's silence was eloquent of the
confession which he was ashamed to make. His doting weakness had,
beyond all doubt, placed his whole property at the feet of his wife.
And this girl, whose vindictive daring had defied all restraintsthis
girl, who had not shrunk from her desperate determination even at the
church doorhad, in the very hour of her triumph, taken part only from
the man who would willingly have given all!had rigorously exacted her
father's fortune from him to the last farthing; and had then turned her
back on the hand that was tempting her with tens of thousands more! For
the moment, Mrs. Lecount was fairly silenced by her own surprise;
Magdalen had forced the astonishment from her which is akin to
admiration, the astonishment which her enmity would fain have refused.
She hated Magdalen with a tenfold hatred from that time.
"I have no doubt, sir," she resumed, after a momentary silence, "that
Mrs. Noel gave you excellent reasons why the provision for her at your
death should be no more, and no less, than eighty thousand pounds. And,
on the other hand, I am equally sure that you, in your innocence of all
suspicion, found those reasons conclusive at the time. That time has
now gone by. Your eyes are opened, sir; and you will not fail to remark
(as I remark) that the Combe-Raven property happens to reach the same
sum exactly, as the legacy which your wife's own instructions directed
you to leave her. If you are still in any doubt of the motive for which
she married you, look in your own willand there the motive is!"
He raised his head from his hands, and became closely attentive to what
she was saying to him, for the first time since they had faced each
other at the table. The Combe-Raven property had never been classed by
itself in his estimation. It had come to him merged in his father's
other possessions, at his father's death. The discovery which had now
opened before him was one to which his ordinary habits of thought, as
well as his innocence of suspicion, had hitherto closed his eyes. He
said nothing; but he looked less sullenly at Mrs. Lecount. His manner
was more ingratiating; the high tide of his courage was already on the
ebb.
"Your position, sir, must be as plain by this time to you as it is to
me," said Mrs. Lecount. "There is only one obstacle now left between
this woman and the attainment of her end. That obstacle is your life.
After the discovery we have made upstairs, I leave you to consider for
yourself what your life is worth."
At those terrible words, the ebbing resolution in him ran out to the
last drop. "Don't frighten me!" he pleaded; "I have been frightened
enough already." He rose, and dragged his chair after him, round the
table to Mrs. Lecount's side. He sat down and caressingly kissed her
hand. "You good creature!" he said, in a sinking voice. "You excellent
Lecount! Tell me what to do. I'm full of resolutionI'll do anything to
save my life!"
"Have you got writing materials in the room, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount.
"Will you put them on the table, if you please?"
While the writing materials were in process of collection, Mrs. Lecount
made a new demand on the resources of her traveling-bag. She took two
papers from it, each indorsed in the same neat commercial handwriting.
One was described as "Draft for proposed Will," and the other as "Draft
for proposed Letter." When she placed them before her on the table, her
hand shook a little; and she applied the smelling-salts, which she had
brought with her in Noel Vanstone's interests, to her own nostrils.
"I had hoped, when I came here, Mr. Noel," she proceeded, "to have
given you more time for consideration than it seems safe to give you
now. When you first told me of your wife's absence in London, I thought
it probable that the object of her journey was to see her sister and
Miss Garth. Since the horrible discovery we have made upstairs, I am
inclined to alter that opinion. Your wife's determination not to tell
you who the friends are whom she has gone to see, fills me with alarm.
She may have accomplices in Londonaccomplices, for anything we know to
the contrary, in this house. All three of your servants, sir, have
taken the opportunity, in turn, of coming into the room and looking at
me. I don't like their looks! Neither you nor I know what may happen
from day to day, or even from hour to hour. If you take my advice, you
will get the start at once of all possible accidents; and, when the
carriage comes back, you will leave this house with me!"
"Yes, yes!" he said, eagerly; "I'll leave the house with you. I
wouldn't stop here by myself for any sum of money that could be offered
me. What do we want the pen and ink for? Are you to write, or am I?"
"You are to write, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "The means taken for
promoting your own safety are to be means set in motion, from beginning
to end, by yourself. I suggest, Mr. Noeland you decide. Recognize your
own position, sir. What is your first and foremost necessity? It is
plainly this. You must destroy your wife's interest in your death by
making another will."
He vehemently nodded his approval; his color rose, and his blinking
eyes brightened in malicious triumph. "She shan't have a farthing," he
said to himself, in a whisper"she shan't have a farthing!"
"When your will is made, sir," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, "you must place
it in the hands of a trustworthy personnot my hands, Mr. Noel; I am
only your servant! Then, when the will is safe, and when you are safe,
write to your wife at this house. Tell her her infamous imposture is
discovered; tell her you have made a new will, which leaves her
penniless at your death; tell her, in your righteous indignation, that
she enters your doors no more. Place yourself in that strong position,
and it is no longer you who are at your wife's mercy, but your wife who
is at yours. Assert your own power, sir, with the law to help you, and
crush this woman into submission to any terms for the future that you
please to impose."
He eagerly took up the pen. "Yes," he said, with a vindictive
self-importance, "any terms I please to impose." He suddenly checked
himself and his face became dejected and perplexed. "How can I do it
now?" he asked, throwing down the pen as quickly as he had taken it up.
"Do what, sir?" inquired Mrs. Lecount.
"How can I make my will, with Mr. Loscombe away in London, and no
lawyer here to help me?"
Mrs. Lecount gently tapped the papers before her on the table with her
forefinger.
"All the help you need, sir, is waiting for you here," she said. "I
considered this matter carefully before I came to you; and I provided
myself with the confidential assistance of a friend to guide me through
those difficulties which I could not penetrate for myself. The friend
to whom I refer is a gentleman of Swiss extraction, but born and bred
in England. He is not a lawyer by professionbut he has had his own
sufficient experience of the law, nevertheless; and he has supplied me,
not only with a model by which you may make your will, but with the
written sketch of a letter which it is as important for us to have, as
the model of the will itself. There is another necessity waiting for
you, Mr. Noel, which I have not mentioned yet, but which is no less
urgent in its way than the necessity of the will."
"What is it?" he asked, with roused curiosity.
"We will take it in its turn, sir," answered Mrs. Lecount. "Its turn
has not come yet. The will, if you please, first. I will dictate from
the model in my possession and you will write."
Noel Vanstone looked at the draft for the Will and the draft for the
Letter with suspicious curiosity.
"I think I ought to see the papers myself, before you dictate," he
said. "It would be more satisfactory to my own mind, Lecount."
"By all means, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, handing him the papers
immediately.
He read the draft for the Will first, pausing and knitting his brows
distrustfully, wherever he found blank spaces left in the manuscript to
be filled in with the names of persons and the enumeration of sums
bequeathed to them. Two or three minutes of reading brought him to the
end of the paper. He gave it back to Mrs. Lecount without making any
objection to it.
The draft for the Letter was a much longer document. He obstinately
read it through to the end, with an expression of perplexity and
discontent which showed that it was utterly unintelligible to him. "I
must have this explained," he said, with a touch of his old
self-importance, "before I take any steps in the matter."
"It shall be explained, sir, as we go on," said Mrs. Lecount.
"Every word of it?"
"Every word of it, Mr. Noel, when its turn comes. You have no objection
to the will? To the will, then, as I said before, let us devote
ourselves first. You have seen for yourself that it is short enough and
simple enough for a child to understand it. But if any doubts remain on
your mind, by all means compose those doubts by showing your will to a
lawyer by profession. In the meantime, let me not be considered
intrusive if I remind you that we are all mortal, and that the lost
opportunity can never be recalled. While your time is your own, sir,
and while your enemies are unsuspicious of you, make your will!"
She opened a sheet of note-paper and smoothed it out before him; she
dipped the pen in ink, and placed it in his hands. He took it from her
without speakinghe was, to all appearance, suffering under some
temporary uneasiness of mind. But the main point was gained. There he
sat, with the paper before him, and the pen in his hand; ready at last,
in right earnest, to make his will.
"The first question for you to decide, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, after a
preliminary glance at her Draft, "is your choice of an executor. I have
no desire to influence your decision; but I may, without impropriety,
remind you that a wise choice means, in other words, the choice of an
old and tried friend whom you know that you can trust."
"It means the admiral, I suppose?" said Noel Vanstone.
Mrs. Lecount bowed.
"Very well," he continued. "The admiral let it be."
There was plainly some oppression still weighing on his mind. Even
under the trying circumstances in which he was placed it was not in his
nature to take Mrs. Lecount's perfectly sensible and disinterested
advice without a word of cavil, as he had taken it now.
"Are you ready, sir?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount dictated the first paragraph from the Draft, as follows:
"This is the last Will and Testament of me, Noel Vanstone, now living
at Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries. I revoke, absolutely and in every
particular, my former will executed on the thirtieth of September,
eighteen hundred and forty-seven; and I hereby appoint Rear-Admiral
Arthur Everard Bartram, of St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex, sole executor
of this my will."
"Have you written those words, sir?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft; Noel Vanstone laid down the pen. They
neither of them looked at each other. There was a long silence.
"I am waiting, Mr. Noel," said Mrs. Lecount, at last, "to hear what
your wishes are in respect to the disposal of your fortune. Your
large fortune," she added, with merciless emphasis.
He took up the pen again, and began picking the feathers from the quill
in dead silence.
"Perhaps your existing will may help you to instruct me, sir," pursued
Mrs. Lecount. "May I inquire to whom you left all your surplus money,
after leaving the eighty thousand pounds to your wife?"
If he had answered that question plainly, he must have said: "I have
left the whole surplus to my cousin, George Bartram"and the implied
acknowledgment that Mrs. Lecount's name was not mentioned in the will
must then have followed in Mrs. Lecount's presence. A much bolder man,
in his situation, might have felt the same oppression and the same
embarrassment which he was feeling now. He picked the last morsel of
feather from the quill; and, desperately leaping the pitfall under his
feet, advanced to meet Mrs. Lecount's claims on him of his own accord.
"I would rather not talk of any will but the will I am making now," he
said uneasily. "The first thing, Lecount" He hesitatedput the bare
end of the quill into his mouthgnawed at it thoughtfullyand said no
more.
"Yes, sir?" persisted Mrs. Lecount.
"The first thing is"
"Yes, sir?"
"The first thing is, toto make some provision for You?"
He spoke the last words in a tone of plaintive interrogationas if all
hope of being met by a magnanimous refusal had not deserted him even
yet. Mrs. Lecount enlightened his mind on this point, without a
moment's loss of time.
"Thank you, Mr. Noel," she said, with the tone and manner of a woman
who was not acknowledging a favor, but receiving a right.
He took another bite at the quill. The perspiration began to appear on
his face.
"The difficulty is," he remarked, "to say how much."
"Your lamented father, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "met that
difficulty (if you remember) at the time of his last illness?"
"I don't remember," said Noel Vanstone, doggedly.
"You were on one side of his bed, sir, and I was on the other. We were
vainly trying to persuade him to make his will. After telling us he
would wait and make his will when he was well again, he looked round at
me, and said some kind and feeling words which my memory will treasure
to my dying day. Have you forgotten those words, Mr. Noel?"
"Yes," said Mr. Noel, without hesitation.
"In my present situation, sir," retorted Mrs. Lecount, "delicacy
forbids me to improve your memory."
She looked at her watch, and relapsed into silence. He clinched his
hands, and writhed from side to side of his chair in an agony of
indecision. Mrs. Lecount passively refused to take the slightest notice
of him.
"What should you say?" he began, and suddenly stopped again.
"Yes, sir?"
"What should you say toa thousand pounds?"
Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair, and looked him full in the face, with
the majestic indignation of an outraged woman.
"After the service I have rendered you to-day, Mr. Noel," she said, "I
have at least earned a claim on your respect, if I have earned nothing
more. I wish you good-morning."
"Two thousand!" cried Noel Vanstone, with the courage of despair.
Mrs. Lecount folded up her papers and hung her traveling-bag over her
arm in contemptuous silence.
"Three thousand!"
Mrs. Lecount moved with impenetrable dignity from the table to the
door.
"Four thousand!"
Mrs. Lecount gathered her shawl round her with a shudder, and opened
the door.
"Five thousand!"
He clasped his hands, and wrung them at her in a frenzy of rage and
suspense. "Five thousand" was the death-cry of his pecuniary suicide.
Mrs. Lecount softly shut the door again, and came back a step.
"Free of legacy duty, sir?" she inquired.
"No."
Mrs. Lecount turned on her heel and opened the door again.
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount came back, and resumed her place at the table as if
nothing had happened.
"Five thousand pounds, free of legacy duty, was the sum, sir, which
your father's grateful regard promised me in his will," she said,
quietly. "If you choose to exert your memory, as you have not chosen to
exert it yet, your memory will tell you that I speak the truth. I
accept your filial performance of your father's promise, Mr. Noeland
there I stop. I scorn to take a mean advantage of my position toward
you; I scorn to grasp anything from your fears. You are protected by my
respect for myself, and for the Illustrious Name I bear. You are
welcome to all that I have done, and to all that I have suffered in
your service. The widow of Professor Lecompte, sir, takes what is
justly hersand takes no more!"
As she spoke those words, the traces of sickness seemed, for the
moment, to disappear from her face; her eyes shone with a steady inner
light; all the woman warmed and brightened in the radiance of her own
triumphthe triumph, trebly won, of carrying her point, of vindicating
her integrity, and of matching Magdalen's incorruptible self-denial on
Magdalen's own ground.
"When you are yourself again, sir, we will proceed. Let us wait a
little first."
She gave him time to compose himself; and then, after first looking at
her Draft, dictated the second paragraph of the will, in these terms:
"I give and bequeath to Madame Virginie Lecompte (widow of Professor
Lecompte, late of Zurich) the sum of Five Thousand Pounds, free of
Legacy Duty. And, in making this bequest, I wish to place it on record
that I am not only expressing my own sense of Madame Lecompte's
attachment and fidelity in the capacity of my housekeeper, but that I
also believe myself to be executing the intentions of my deceased
father, who, but for the circumstance of his dying intestate, would
have left Madame Lecompte, in his will, the same token of grateful
regard for her services which I now leave her in mine."
"Have you written the last words, sir?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount leaned across the table and offered Noel Vanstone her
hand.
"Thank you, Mr. Noel," she said. "The five thousand pounds is the
acknowledgment on your father's side of what I have done for him. The
words in the will are the acknowledgment on yours."
A faint smile flickered over his face for the first time. It comforted
him, on reflection, to think that matters might have been worse. There
was balm for his wounded spirit in paying the debt of gratitude by a
sentence not negotiable at his banker's. Whatever his father might have
done, he had got Lecount a bargain, after all!
"A little more writing, sir," resumed Mrs. Lecount, "and your painful
but necessary duty will be performed. The trifling matter of my legacy
being settled, we may come to the important question that is left. The
future direction of a large fortune is now waiting your word of
command. To whom is it to go?"
He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-powerful
fascination of his wife the parting with his money on paper had not
been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the pang; he had
resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was the dreaded ordeal
again, awaiting him mercilessly for the second time!
"Perhaps it may assist your decision, sir, if I repeat a question which
I have put to you already," observed Mrs. Lecount. "In the will that
you made under your wife's influence, to whom did you leave the surplus
money which remained at your own disposal?"
There was no harm in answering the question now. He acknowledged that
he had left the money to his cousin George.
"You could have done nothing better, Mr. Noel; and you can do nothing
better now," said Mrs. Lecount. "Mr. George and his two sisters are
your only relations left. One of those sisters is an incurable invalid,
with more than money enough already for all the wants which her
affliction allows her to feel. The other is the wife of a man even
richer than yourself. To leave the money to these sisters is to waste
it. To leave the money to their brother George is to give your cousin
exactly the assistance which he will want when he one day inherits his
uncle's dilapidated house and his uncle's impoverished estate. A will
which names the admiral your executor and Mr. George your heir is the
right will for you to make. It does honor to the claims of friendship,
and it does justice to the claims of blood."
She spoke warmly; for she spoke with a grateful remembrance of all that
she herself owed to the hospitality of St. Crux. Noel Vanstone took up
another pen and began to strip the second quill of its feathers as he
had stripped the first.
"Yes," he said, reluctantly, "I suppose George must have itI suppose
George has the principal claim on me." He hesitated: he looked at the
door, he looked at the window, as if he longed to make his escape by
one way or the other. "Oh, Lecount," he cried, piteously, "it's such a
large fortune! Let me wait a little before I leave it to anybody."
To his surprise; Mrs. Lecount at once complied with this characteristic
request.
"I wish you to wait, sir," she replied. "I have something important to
say, before you add another line to your will. A little while since, I
told you there was a second necessity connected with your present
situation, which had not been provided for yet, but which must be
provided for, when the time came. The time has come now. You have a
serious difficulty to meet and conquer before you can leave your
fortune to your cousin George."
"What difficulty?" he asked.
Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair without answering, stole to the door,
and suddenly threw it open. No one was listening outside; the passage
was a solitude, from one end to the other.
"I distrust all servants," she said, returning to her place"your
servants particularly. Sit closer, Mr. Noel. What I have now to say to
you must be heard by no living creature but ourselves."
CHAPTER III.
There was a pause of a few minutes while Mrs. Lecount opened the second
of the two papers which lay before her on the table, and refreshed her
memory by looking it rapidly through. This done, she once more
addressed herself to Noel Vanstone, carefully lowering her voice, so as
to render it inaudible to any one who might be listening in the passage
outside.
"I must beg your permission, sir," she began, "to return to the subject
of your wife. I do so most unwillingly; and I promise you that what I
have now to say about her shall be said, for your sake and for mine, in
the fewest words. What do we know of this woman, Mr. Noeljudging her
by her own confession when she came to us in the character of Miss
Garth, and by her own acts afterward at Aldborough? We know that, if
death had not snatched your father out of her reach, she was ready with
her plot to rob him of the Combe-Raven money. We know that, when you
inherited the money in your turn, she was ready with her plot to rob
you. We know how she carried that plot through to the end; and we
know that nothing but your death is wanted, at this moment, to crown
her rapacity and her deception with success. We are sure of these
things. We are sure that she is young, bold, and cleverthat she has
neither doubts, scruples, nor pityand that she possesses the personal
qualities which men in general (quite incomprehensibly to me!) are
weak enough to admire. These are not fancies, Mr. Noel, but facts; you
know them as well as I do."
He made a sign in the affirmative, and Mrs. Lecount went on:
"Keep in your mind what I have said of the past, sir, and now look with
me to the future. I hope and trust you have a long life still before
you; but let us, for the moment only, suppose the case of your
deathyour death leaving this will behind you, which gives your fortune
to your cousin George. I am told there is an office in London in which
copies of all wills must be kept. Any curious stranger who chooses to
pay a shilling for the privilege may enter that office, and may read
any will in the place at his or her discretion. Do you see what I am
coming to, Mr. Noel? Your disinherited widow pays her shilling, and
reads your will. Your disinherited widow sees that the Combe-Raven
money, which has gone from your father to you, goes next from you to
Mr. George Bartram. What is the certain end of that discovery? The end
is, that you leave to your cousin and your friend the legacy of this
woman's vengeance and this woman's deceit-vengeance made more resolute,
deceit made more devilish than ever, by her exasperation at her own
failure. What is your cousin George? He is a generous, unsuspicious
man; incapable of deceit himself, and fearing no deception in others.
Leave him at the mercy of your wife's unscrupulous fascinations and
your wife's unfathomable deceit, and I see the end as certainly as I
see you sitting there! She will blind his eyes, as she blinded yours;
and, in spite of you, in spite of me, she will have the money!"
She stopped, and left her last words time to gain their hold on his
mind. The circumstances had been stated so clearly, the conclusion from
them had been so plainly drawn, that he seized her meaning without an
effort, and seized it at once.
"I see!" he said, vindictively clinching his hands. "I understand,
Lecount! She shan't have a farthing. What shall I do? Shall I leave the
money to the admiral?" He paused, and considered a little. "No," he
resumed; "there's the same danger in leaving it to the admiral that
there is in leaving it to George."
"There is no danger, Mr. Noel, if you take my advice."
"What is your advice?"
"Follow your own idea, sir. Take the pen in hand again, and leave the
money to Admiral Bartram."
He mechanically dipped the pen in the ink, and then hesitated.
"You shall know where I am leading you, sir," said Mrs. Lecount,
"before you sign your will. In the meantime, let us gain every inch of
ground we can, as we go on. I want the will to be all written out
before we advance a single step beyond it. Begin your third paragraph,
Mr. Noel, under the lines which leave me my legacy of five thousand
pounds."
She dictated the last momentous sentence of the will (from the rough
draft in her own possession) in these words:
"The whole residue of my estate, after payment of my burial expenses
and my lawful debts, I give and bequeath to Rear-Admiral Arthur Everard
Bartram, my Executor aforesaid; to be by him applied to such uses as he
may think fit.
"Signed, sealed, and delivered, this third day of November, eighteen
hundred and forty-seven, by Noel Vanstone, the within-named testator,
as and for his last Will and Testament, in the presence of us"
"Is that all?" asked Noel Vanstone, in astonishment.
"That is enough, sir, to bequeath your fortune to the admiral; and
therefore that is all. Now let us go back to the case which we have
supposed already. Your widow pays her shilling, and sees this will.
There is the Combe-Raven money left to Admiral Bartram, with a
declaration in plain words that it is his, to use as he likes. When she
sees this, what does she do? She sets her trap for the admiral. He is a
bachelor, and he is an old man. Who is to protect him against the arts
of this desperate woman? Protect him yourself, sir, with a few more
strokes of that pen which has done such wonders already. You have left
him this legacy in your willwhich your wife sees. Take the legacy away
again, in a letterwhich is a dead secret between the admiral and you.
Put the will and the letter under one cover, and place them in the
admiral's possession, with your written directions to him to break the
seal on the day of your death. Let the will say what it says now; and
let the letter (which is your secret and his) tell him the truth. Say
that, in leaving him your fortune, you leave it with the request that
he will take his legacy with one hand from you, and give it with the
other to his nephew George. Tell him that your trust in this matter
rests solely on your confidence in his honor, and on your belief in his
affectionate remembrance of your father and yourself. You have known
the admiral since you were a boy. He has his little whims and oddities;
but he is a gentleman from the crown of his head to the sole of his
foot; and he is utterly incapable of proving false to a trust in his
honor, reposed by his dead friend. Meet the difficulty boldly, by such
a stratagem as this; and you save these two helpless men from your
wife's snare, one by means of the other. Here, on one side, is your
will, which gives the fortune to the admiral, and sets her plotting
accordingly. And there, on the other side, is your letter, which
privately puts the money into the nephew's hands!"
The malicious dexterity of this combination was exactly the dexterity
which Noel Vanstone was most fit to appreciate. He tried to express his
approval and admiration in words. Mrs. Lecount held up her hand
warningly and closed his lips.
"Wait, sir, before you express your opinion," she went on. "Half the
difficulty is all that we have conquered yet. Let us say, the admiral
has made the use of your legacy which you have privately requested him
to make of it. Sooner or later, however well the secret may be kept,
your wife will discover the truth. What follows that discovery! She
lays siege to Mr. George. All you have done is to leave him the money
by a roundabout way. There he is, after an interval of time, as much at
her mercy as if you had openly mentioned him in your will. What is the
remedy for this? The remedy is to mislead her, if we can, for the
second timeto set up an obstacle between her and the money, for the
protection of your cousin George. Can you guess for yourself, Mr. Noel,
what is the most promising obstacle we can put in her way?"
He shook his head. Mrs. Lecount smiled, and startled him into close
attention by laying her hand on his arm.
"Put a Woman in her way, sir!" she whispered in her wiliest tones.
"We don't believe in that fascinating beauty of herswhatever you
may do. Our lips don't burn to kiss those smooth cheeks. Our arms
don't long to be round that supple waist. We see through her smiles
and her graces, and her stays and her paddingshe can't fascinate us!
Put a woman in her way, Mr. Noel! Not a woman in my helpless situation,
who is only a servant, but a woman with the authority and the jealousy
of a Wife. Make it a condition, in your letter to the admiral, that if
Mr. George is a bachelor at the time of your death, he shall marry
within a certain time afterward, or he shall not have the legacy.
Suppose he remains single in spite of your condition, who is to have
the money then? Put a woman in your wife's way, sir, once moreand
leave the fortune, in that case, to the married sister of your cousin
George."
She paused. Noel Vanstone again attempted to express his opinion, and
again Mrs. Lecount's hand extinguished him in silence.
"If you approve, Mr. Noel," she said, "I will take your approval for
granted. If you object, I will meet your objection before it is out of
your mouth. You may say: Suppose this condition is sufficient to answer
the purpose, why hide it in a private letter to the admiral? Why not
openly write it down, with my cousin's name, in the will? Only for one
reason, sir. Only because the secret way is the sure way, with such a
woman as your wife. The more secret you can keep your intentions, the
more time you force her to waste in finding them out for herself. That
time which she loses is time gained from her treachery by the
admiraltime gained by Mr. George (if he is still a bachelor) for his
undisturbed choice of a ladytime gained, for her own security, by the
object of his choice, who might otherwise be the first object of your
wife's suspicion and your wife's hostility. Remember the bottle we have
discovered upstairs; and keep this desperate woman ignorant, and
therefore harmless, as long as you can. There is my advice, Mr. Noel,
in the fewest and plainest words. What do you say, sir? Am I almost as
clever in my way as your friend Mr. Bygrave? Can I, too, conspire a
little, when the object of my conspiracy is to assist your wishes and
to protect your friends?"
Permitted the use of his tongue at last, Noel Vanstone's admiration of
Mrs. Lecount expressed itself in terms precisely similar to those which
he had used on a former occasion, in paying his compliments to Captain
Wragge. "What a head you have got!" were the grateful words which he
had once spoken to Mrs. Lecount's bitterest enemy. "What a head you
have got!" were the grateful words which he now spoke again to Mrs.
Lecount herself. So do extremes meet; and such is sometimes the
all-embracing capacity of the approval of a fool!
"Allow my head, sir, to deserve the compliment which you have paid to
it," said Mrs. Lecount. "The letter to the admiral is not written yet.
Your will there is a body without a soulan Adam without an Eveuntil
the letter is completed and laid by its side. A little more dictation
on my part, a little more writing on yours, and our work is done.
Pardon me. The letter will be longer than the will; we must have larger
paper than the note-paper this time."
The writing-case was searched, and some letter paper was found in it of
the size required. Mrs. Lecount resumed her dictation; and Noel
Vanstone resumed his pen.
"Baliol Cottage, Dumfries,
"November 3d, 1847.
"Private.
"DEAR ADMIRAL BARTRAM,
"When you open my Will (in which you are named my sole executor), you
will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue of my estateafter
payment of one legacy of five thousand poundsto yourself. It is the
purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the object is for which
I have left you the fortune which is now placed in your hands.
"I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended, under certain
conditions, to be given by you to your nephew George. If your nephew is
married at the time of my death, and if his wife is living, I request
you to put him at once in possession of your legacy; accompanying it by
the expression of my desire (which I am sure he will consider a sacred
and binding obligation on him) that he will settle the money on his
wifeand on his children, if he has any. If, on the other hand, he is
unmarried at the time of my death, or if he is a widowerin either of
those cases, I make it a condition of his receiving the legacy, that he
shall be married within the period of"
Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft letter from which she had been
dictating thus far, and informed Noel Vanstone by a sign that his pen
might rest.
"We have come to the question of time, sir," she observed. "How long
will you give your cousin to marry, if he is single, or a widower, at
the time of your death?"
"Shall I give him a year?" inquired Noel Vanstone.
"If we had nothing to consider but the interests of Propriety," said
Mrs. Lecount, "I should say a year too, sirespecially if Mr. George
should happen to be a widower. But we have your wife to consider, as
well as the interests of Propriety. A year of delay, between your death
and your cousin's marriage, is a dangerously long time to leave the
disposal of your fortune in suspense. Give a determined woman a year to
plot and contrive in, and there is no saying what she may not do."
"Six months?" suggested Noel Vanstone.
"Six months, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "is the preferable time of
the two. A six months' interval from the day of your death is enough
for Mr. George. You look discomposed, sir; what is the matter?"
"I wish you wouldn't talk so much about my death," he broke out,
petulantly. "I don't like it! I hate the very sound of the word!"
Mrs. Lecount smiled resignedly, and referred to her Draft.
"I see the word 'decease' written here," she remarked. "Perhaps, Mr.
Noel, you would prefer it?"
"Yes," he said; "I prefer 'Decease.' It doesn't sound so dreadful as
'Death.'"
"Let us go on with the letter, sir."
She resumed her dictation, as follows:
"...in either of those cases, I make it a condition of his receiving
the legacy that he shall be married within the period of Six calendar
months from the day of my decease; that the woman he marries shall not
be a widow; and that his marriage shall be a marriage by Banns,
publicly celebrated in the parish church of Ossorywhere he has been
known from his childhood, and where the family and circumstances of his
future wife are likely to be the subject of public interest and
inquiry."
"This," said Mrs. Lecount, quietly looking up from the Draft, "is to
protect Mr. George, sir, in case the same trap is set for him which was
successfully set for you. She will not find her false character and her
false name fit quite so easily next timeno, not even with Mr. Bygrave
to help her! Another dip of ink, Mr. Noel; let us write the next
paragraph. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Lecount went on.
"If your nephew fails to comply with these conditionsthat is to say,
if being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he
fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry,
within Six calendar months from that timeit is my desire that he shall
not receive the legacy, or any part of it. I request you, in the case
here supposed, to pass him over altogether; and to give the fortune
left you in my will to his married sister, Mrs. Girdlestone.
"Having now put you in possession of my motives and intentions, I come
to the next question which it is necessary to consider. If, when you
open this letter, your nephew is an unmarried man, it is clearly
indispensable that he should know of the conditions here imposed on
him, as soon, if possible, as you know of them yourself. Are you, under
these circumstances, freely to communicate to him what I have here
written to you? Or are you to leave him under the impression that no
such private expression of my wishes as this is in existence; and are
you to state all the conditions relating to his marriage, as if they
emanated entirely from yourself?
"If you will adopt this latter alternative, you will add one more to
the many obligations under which your friendship has placed me.
"I have serious reason to believe that the possession of my money, and
the discovery of any peculiar arrangements relating to the disposal of
it, will be objects (after my decease) of the fraud and conspiracy of
an unscrupulous person. I am therefore anxiousfor your sake, in the
first placethat no suspicion of the existence of this letter should be
conveyed to the mind of the person to whom I allude. And I am equally
desirousfor Mrs. Girdlestone's sake, in the second placethat this
same person should be entirely ignorant that the legacy will pass into
Mrs. Girdlestone's possession, if your nephew is not married in the
given time. I know George's easy, pliable disposition; I dread the
attempts that will be made to practice on it; and I feel sure that the
prudent course will be, to abstain from trusting him with secrets, the
rash revelation of which might be followed by serious, and even
dangerous results.
"State the conditions, therefore, to your nephew, as if they were your
own. Let him think they have been suggested to your mind by the new
responsibilities imposed on you as a man of property, by your position
in my will, and by your consequent anxiety to provide for the
perpetuation of the family name. If these reasons are not sufficient to
satisfy him, there can be no objection to your referring him, for any
further explanations which he may desire, to his wedding-day.
"I have done. My last wishes are now confided to you, in implicit
reliance on your honor, and on your tender regard for the memory of
your friend. Of the miserable circumstances which compel me to write as
I have written here, I say nothing. You will hear of them, if my life
is spared, from my own lipsfor you will be the first friend whom I
shall consult in my difficulty and distress. Keep this letter strictly
secret, and strictly in your own possession, until my requests are
complied with. Let no human being but yourself know where it is, on any
pretense whatever.
"Believe me, dear Admiral Bartram,
"Affectionately yours,
"NOEL VANSTONE."
"Have you signed, sir?" asked Mrs. Lecount. "Let me look the letter
over, if you please, before we seal it up."
She read the letter carefully. In Noel Vanstone's close, cramped
handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top
of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded
it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in
the ink-stand, and returned the letter to the writer.
"Seal it, Mr. Noel," she said, "with your own hand, and your own seal."
She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again. "Address the
letter, sir," she proceeded, "to Admiral Bartram, St.
Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex. Now, add these words, and sign them, above
the address: To be kept in your own possession, and to be opened by
yourself only, on the day of my deathor 'Decease,' if you prefer
itNoel Vanstone. Have you done? Let me look at it again. Quite right
in every particular. Accept my congratulations, sir. If your wife has
not plotted her last plot for the Combe-Raven money, it is not your
fault, Mr. Noeland not mine!"
Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, Noel
Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations. "There is
my packing-up to be thought of now," he said. "I can't go away without
my warm things."
"Excuse me, sir," rejoined Mrs. Lecount, "there is the Will to be
signed first; and there must be two persons found to witness your
signature." She looked out of the front window, and saw the carriage
waiting at the door. "The coachman will do for one of the witnesses,"
she said. "He is in respectable service at Dumfries, and he can be
found if he happens to be wanted. We must have one of your own
servants, I suppose, for the other witness. They are all detestable
women; but the cook is the least ill-looking of the three. Send for the
cook, sir; while I go out and call the coachman. When we have got our
witnesses here, you have only to speak to them in these words: 'I have
a document here to sign, and I wish you to write your names on it, as
witnesses of my signature.' Nothing more, Mr. Noel! Say those few words
in your usual mannerand, when the signing is over, I will see myself
to your packing-up, and your warm things."
She went to the front door, and summoned the coachman to the parlor. On
her return, she found the cook already in the room. The cook looked
mysteriously offended, and stared without intermission at Mrs. Lecount.
In a minute more the coachmanan elderly mancame in. He was preceded
by a relishing odor of whisky; but his head was Scotch; and nothing but
his odor betrayed him.
"I have a document here to sign," said Noel Vanstone, repeating his
lesson; "and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses of my
signature."
The coachman looked at the will. The cook never removed her eyes from
Mrs. Lecount.
"Ye'll no object, sir," said the coachman, with the national caution
showing itself in every wrinkle on his face"ye'll no object, sir, to
tell me, first, what the Doecument may be?"
Mrs. Lecount interposed before Noel Vanstone's indignation could
express itself in words.
"You must tell the man, sir, that this is your Will," she said. "When
he witnesses your signature, he can see as much for himself if he looks
at the top of the page."
"Ay, ay," said the coachman, looking at the top of the page
immediately. "His last Will and Testament. Hech, sirs! there's a sair
confronting of Death in a Doecument like yon! A' flesh is grass,"
continued the coachman, exhaling an additional puff of whisky, and
looking up devoutly at the ceiling. "Tak' those words in connection
with that other Screepture: Many are ca'ad, but few are chosen. Tak'
that again, in connection with Rev'lations, Chapter the First, verses
One to Fefteen. Lay the whole to heart; and what's your Walth, then?
Dross, sirs! And your body? (Screepture again.) Clay for the potter!
And your life? (Screepture once more.) The Breeth o' your Nostrils!"
The cook listened as if the cook was at church: but she never removed
her eyes from Mrs. Lecount.
"You had better sign, sir. This is apparently some custom prevalent in
Dumfries during the transaction of business," said Mrs. Lecount,
resignedly. "The man means well, I dare say."
She added those last words in a soothing tone, for she saw that Noel
Vanstone's indignation was fast merging into alarm. The coachman's
outburst of exhortation seemed to have inspired him with fear, as well
as disgust.
He dipped the pen in the ink, and signed the Will without uttering a
word. The coachman (descending instantly from Theology to Business)
watched the signature with the most scrupulous attention; and signed
his own name as witness, with an implied commentary on the proceeding,
in the form of another puff of whisky, exhaled through the medium of a
heavy sigh. The cook looked away from Mrs. Lecount with an
effortsigned her name in a violent hurryand looked back again with a
start, as if she expected to see a loaded pistol (produced in the
interval) in the housekeeper's hands. "Thank you," said Mrs. Lecount,
in her friendliest manner. The cook shut up her lips aggressively and
looked at her master. "You may go!" said her master. The cook coughed
contemptuously, and went.
"We shan't keep you long," said Mrs. Lecount, dismissing the coachman.
"In half an hour, or less, we shall be ready for the journey back."
The coachman's austere countenance relaxed for the first time. He
smiled mysteriously, and approached Mrs. Lecount on tiptoe.
"Ye'll no forget one thing, my leddy," he said, with the most
ingratiating politeness. "Ye'll no forget the witnessing as weel as the
driving, when ye pay me for my day's wark!" He laughed with guttural
gravity; and, leaving his atmosphere behind him, stalked out of the
room.
"Lecount," said Noel Vanstone, as soon as the coachman closed the door,
"did I hear you tell that man we should be ready in half an hour?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you blind?"
He asked the question with an angry stamp of his foot. Mrs. Lecount
looked at him in astonishment.
"Can't you see the brute is drunk?" he went on, more and more
irritably. "Is my life nothing? Am I to be left at the mercy of a
drunken coachman? I won't trust that man to drive me, for any
consideration under heaven! I'm surprised you could think of it,
Lecount."
"The man has been drinking, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "It is easy to see
and to smell that. But he is evidently used to drinking. If he is sober
enough to walk quite straightwhich he certainly doesand to sign his
name in an excellent handwritingwhich you may see for yourself on the
WillI venture to think he is sober enough to drive us to Dumfries."
"Nothing of the sort! You're a foreigner, Lecount; you don't understand
these people. They drink whisky from morning to-night. Whisky is the
strongest spirit that's made; whisky is notorious for its effect on the
brain. I tell you, I won't run the risk. I never was driven, and I
never will be driven, by anybody but a sober man."
"Must I go back to Dumfries by myself, sir?"
"And leave me here? Leave me alone in this house after what has
happened? How do I know my wife may not come back to-night? How do I
know her journey is not a blind to mislead me? Have you no feeling,
Lecount? Can you leave me in my miserable situation?" He sank into a
chair and burst out crying over his own idea, before he had completed
the expression of it in words. "Too bad!" he said, with his
handkerchief over his face"too bad!"
It was impossible not to pity him. If ever mortal was pitiable, he was
the man. He had broken down at last, under the conflict of violent
emotions which had been roused in him since the morning. The effort to
follow Mrs. Lecount along the mazes of intricate combination through
which she had steadily led the way, had upheld him while that effort
lasted: the moment it was at an end, he dropped. The coachman had
hastened a resultof which the coachman was far from being the cause.
"You surprise meyou distress me, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "I entreat
you to compose yourself. I will stay here, if you wish it, with
pleasureI will stay here to-night, for your sake. You want rest and
quiet after this dreadful day. The coachman shall be instantly sent
away, Mr. Noel. I will give him a note to the landlord of the hotel,
and the carriage shall come back for us to-morrow morning, with another
man to drive it."
The prospect which those words presented cheered him. He wiped his
eyes, and kissed Mrs. Lecount's hand. "Yes!" he said, faintly; "send
the coachman awayand you stop here. You good creature! You excellent
Lecount! Send the drunken brute away, and come back directly. We will
be comfortable by the fire, Lecountand have a nice little dinnerand
try to make it like old times." His weak voice faltered; he returned to
the fire side, and melted into tears again under the pathetic influence
of his own idea.
Mrs. Lecount left him for a minute to dismiss the coachman. When she
returned to the parlor she found him with his hand on the bell.
"What do you want, sir?" she asked.
"I want to tell the servants to get your room ready," he answered. "I
wish to show you every attention, Lecount."
"You are all kindness, Mr. Noel; but wait one moment. It may be well to
have these papers put out of the way before the servant comes in again.
If you will place the Will and the Sealed Letter together in one
envelopeand if you will direct it to the admiralI will take care that
the inclosure so addressed is safely placed in his own hands. Will you
come to the table, Mr. Noel, only for one minute more?"
No! He was obstinate; he refused to move from the fire; he was sick and
tired of writing: he wished he had never been born, and he loathed the
sight of pen and ink. All Mrs. Lecount's patience and all Mrs.
Lecount's persuasion were required to induce him to write the admiral's
address for the second time. She only succeeded by bringing the blank
envelope to him upon the paper-case, and putting it coaxingly on his
lap. He grumbled, he even swore, but he directed the envelope at last,
in these terms: "To Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. Favored by
Mrs. Lecount." With that final act of compliance his docility came to
an end. He refused, in the fiercest terms, to seal the envelope. There
was no need to press this proceeding on him. His seal lay ready on the
table, and it mattered nothing whether he used it, or whether a person
in his confidence used it for him. Mrs. Lecount sealed the envelope,
with its two important inclosures placed safely inside.
She opened her traveling-bag for the last time, and pausing for a
moment before she put the sealed packet away, looked at it with a
triumph too deep for words. She smiled as she dropped it into the bag.
Not the shadow of a suspicion that the Will might contain superfluous
phrases and expressions which no practical lawyer would have used; not
the vestige of a doubt whether the Letter was quite as complete a
document as a practical lawyer might have made it, troubled her mind.
In blind relianceborn of her hatred for Magdalen and her hunger for
revengein blind reliance on her own abilities and on her friend's law,
she trusted the future implicitly to the promise of the morning's work.
As she locked her traveling-bag Noel Vanstone rang the bell. On this
occasion, the summons was answered by Louisa.
"Get the spare room ready," said her master; "this lady will sleep here
to-night. And air my warm things; this lady and I are going away
to-morrow morning."
The civil and submissive Louisa received her orders in sullen
silencedarted an angry look at her master's impenetrable guestand
left the room. The servants were evidently all attached to their
mistress's interests, and were all of one opinion on the subject of
Mrs. Lecount.
"That's done!" said Noel Vanstone, with a sigh of infinite relief.
"Come and sit down, Lecount. Let's be comfortablelet's gossip over the
fire."
Mrs. Lecount accepted the invitation and drew an easy-chair to his
side. He took her hand with a confidential tenderness, and held it in
his while the talk went on. A stranger, looking in through the window,
would have taken them for mother and son, and would have thought to
himself: "What a happy home!"
The gossip, led by Noel Vanstone, consisted as usual of an endless
string of questions, and was devoted entirely to the subject of himself
and his future prospects. Where would Lecount take him to when they
went away the next morning? Why to London? Why should he be left in
London, while Lecount went on to St. Crux to give the admiral the
Letter and the Will? Because his wife might follow him, if he went to
the admiral's? Well, there was something in that. And because he ought
to be safely concealed from her, in some comfortable lodging, near Mr.
Loscombe? Why near Mr. Loscombe? Ah, yes, to be sureto know what the
law would do to help him. Would the law set him free from the Wretch
who had deceived him? How tiresome of Lecount not to know! Would the
law say he had gone and married himself a second time, because he had
been living with the Wretch, like husband and wife, in Scotland?
Anything that publicly assumed to be a marriage was a marriage (he had
heard) in Scotland. How excessively tiresome of Lecount to sit there
and say she knew nothing about it! Was he to stay long in London by
himself, with nobody but Mr. Loscombe to speak to? Would Lecount come
back to him as soon as she had put those important papers in the
admiral's own hands? Would Lecount consider herself still in his
service? The good Lecount! the excellent Lecount! And after all the
law-business was overwhat then? Why not leave this horrid England and
go abroad again? Why not go to France, to some cheap place near Paris?
Say Versailles? say St. Germain? In a nice little French housecheap?
With a nice French bonne to cookwho wouldn't waste his substance in
the grease-pot? With a nice little gardenwhere he could work himself,
and get health, and save the expense of keeping a gardener? It wasn't a
bad idea. And it seemed to promise well for the futuredidn't it,
Lecount?
So he ran onthe poor weak creature! the abject, miserable little man!
As the darkness gathered at the close of the short November day he
began to grow drowsyhis ceaseless questions came to an end at lasthe
fell asleep. The wind outside sang its mournful winter-song; the tramp
of passing footsteps, the roll of passing wheels on the road ceased in
dreary silence. He slept on quietly. The firelight rose and fell on his
wizen little face and his nervous, drooping hands. Mrs. Lecount had not
pitied him yet. She began to pity him now. Her point was gained; her
interest in his will was secured; he had put his future life, of his
own accord, under her fostering carethe fire was comfortable; the
circumstances were favorable to the growth of Christian feeling. "Poor
wretch!" said Mrs. Lecount, looking at him with a grave
compassion"poor wretch!"
The dinner-hour roused him. He was cheerful at dinner; he reverted to
the idea of the cheap little house in France; he smirked and simpered;
and talked French to Mrs. Lecount, while the house-maid and Louisa
waited, turn and turn about, under protest. When dinner was over, he
returned to his comfortable chair before the fire, and Mrs. Lecount
followed him. He resumed the conversationwhich meant, in his case,
repeating his questions. But he was not so quick and ready with them as
he had been earlier in the day. They began to flagthey continued, at
longer and longer intervalsthey ceased altogether. Toward nine o'clock
he fell asleep again.
It was not a quiet sleep this time. He muttered, and ground his teeth,
and rolled his head from side to side of the chair. Mrs. Lecount
purposely made noise enough to rouse him. He woke, with a vacant eye
and a flushed cheek. He walked about the room restlessly, with a new
idea in his mindthe idea of writing a terrible letter; a letter of
eternal farewell to his wife. How was it to be written? In what
language should he express his feelings? The powers of Shakespeare
himself would be unequal to the emergency! He had been the victim of an
outrage entirely without parallel. A wretch had crept into his bosom! A
viper had hidden herself at his fireside! Where could words be found to
brand her with the infamy she deserved? He stopped, with a suffocating
sense in him of his own impotent ragehe stopped, and shook his fist
tremulously in the empty air.
Mrs. Lecount interfered with an energy and a resolution inspired by
serious alarm. After the heavy strain that had been laid on his
weakness already, such an outbreak of passionate agitation as was now
bursting from him might be the destruction of his rest that night and
of his strength to travel the next day. With infinite difficulty, with
endless promises to return to the subject, and to advise him about it
in the morning, she prevailed on him, at last, to go upstairs and
compose himself for the night. She gave him her arm to assist him. On
the way upstairs his attention, to her great relief, became suddenly
absorbed by a new fancy. He remembered a certain warm and comfortable
mixture of wine, eggs, sugar, and spices, which she had often been
accustomed to make for him in former times, and which he thought he
should relish exceedingly before he went to bed. Mrs. Lecount helped
him on with his dressing-gownthen went down-stairs again to make his
warm drink for him at the parlor fire.
She rang the bell and ordered the necessary ingredients for the
mixture, in Noel Vanstone's name. The servants, with the small
ingenious malice of their race, brought up the materials one by one,
and kept her waiting for each of them as long as possible. She had got
the saucepan, and the spoon, and the tumbler, and the nutmeg-grater,
and the winebut not the egg, the sugar, or the spiceswhen she heard
him above, walking backward and forward noisily in his room; exciting
himself on the old subject again, beyond all doubt.
She went upstairs once more; but he was too quick for herhe heard her
outside the door; and when she opened it, she found him in his chair,
with his back cunningly turned toward her. Knowing him too well to
attempt any remonstrance, she merely announced the speedy arrival of
the warm drink and turned to leave the room. On her way out, she
noticed a table in a corner, with an inkstand and a paper-case on it,
and tried, without attracting his attention, to take the writing
materials away. He was too quick for her again. He asked, angrily, if
she doubted his promise. She put the writing materials back on the
table, for fear of offending him, and left the room.
In half an hour more the mixture was ready. She carried it up to him,
foaming and fragrant, in a large tumbler. "He will sleep after this,"
she thought to herself, as she opened the door; "I have made it
stronger than usual on purpose."
He had changed his place. He was sitting at the table in the
cornerstill with his back to her, writing. This time his quick ears
had not served him; this time she caught him in the fact.
"Oh, Mr. Noel! Mr. Noel!" she said, reproachfully, "what is your
promise worth?"
He made no answer. He was sitting with his left elbow on the table, and
with his head resting on his left hand. His right hand lay back on the
paper, with the pen lying loose in it. "Your drink, Mr. Noel," she
said, in a kinder tone, feeling unwilling to offend him. He took no
notice of her. She went to the table to rouse him. Was he deep in
thought?
He was dead!
THE END OF THE FIFTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe.
"Park Terrace, St. John's Wood, November 5th.
"Dear Sir,
"I came to London yesterday for the purpose of seeing a relative,
leaving Mr. Vanstone at Baliol Cottage, and proposing to return to him
in the course of the week. I reached London late last night, and drove
to these lodgings, having written to secure accommodation beforehand.
"This morning's post has brought me a letter from my own maid, whom I
left at Baliol Cottage, with instructions to write to me if anything
extraordinary took place in my absence. You will find the girl's letter
inclosed in this. I have had some experience of her; and I believe she
is to be strictly depended on to tell the truth.
"I purposely abstain from troubling you by any useless allusions to
myself. When you have read my maid's letter, you will understand the
shock which the news contained in it has caused me. I can only repeat
that I place implicit belief in her statement. I am firmly persuaded
that my husband's former housekeeper has found him out, has practiced
on his weakness in my absence, and has prevailed on him to make another
Will. From what I know of this woman, I feel no doubt that she has used
her influence over Mr. Vanstone to deprive me, if possible, of all
future interests in my husband's fortune.
"Under such circumstances as these, it is in the last degree
importantfor more reasons than I need mention herethat I should see
Mr. Vanstone, and come to an explanation with him, at the earliest
possible opportunity. You will find that my maid thoughtfully kept her
letter open until the last moment before post-timewithout, however,
having any later news to give me than that Mrs. Lecount was to sleep at
the cottage last night and that she and Mr. Vanstone were to leave
together this morning. But for that last piece of intelligence, I
should have been on my way back to Scotland before now. As it is, I
cannot decide for myself what I ought to do next. My going back to
Dumfries, after Mr. Vanstone has left it, seems like taking a journey
for nothing and my staying in London appears to be almost equally
useless.
"Will you kindly advise me in this difficulty? I will come to you at
Lincoln's Inn at any time this afternoon or to-morrow which you may
appoint. My next few hours are engaged. As soon as this letter is
dispatched, I am going to Kensington, with the object of ascertaining
whether certain doubts I feel about the means by which Mrs. Lecount may
have accomplished her discovery are well founded or not. If you will
let me have your answer by return of post, I will not fail to get back
to St. John's Wood in time to receive it.
"Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely,
"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."
II.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn, November 5th.
"DEAR MADAM,
"Your letter and its inclosure have caused me great concern and
surprise. Pressure of business allows me no hope of being able to see
you either to-day or to-morrow morning. But if three o'clock to-morrow
afternoon will suit you, at that hour you will find me at your service.
"I cannot pretend to offer a positive opinion until I know more of the
particulars connected with this extraordinary business than I find
communicated either in your letter or in your maid's. But with this
reserve, I venture to suggest that your remaining in London until
to-morrow may possibly lead to other results besides your consultation
at my chambers. There is at least a chance that you or I may hear
something further in this strange matter by the morning's post.
"I remain, dear Madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
III.
From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Miss Garth.
"November 5th, Two o'clock.
"I have just returned from Westmoreland Houseafter purposely leaving
it in secret, and purposely avoiding you under your own roof. You shall
know why I came, and why I went away. It is due to my remembrance of
old times not to treat you like a stranger, although I can never again
treat you like a friend.
"I set forth on the third from the North to London. My only object in
taking this long journey was to see Norah. I had been suffering for
many weary weeks past such remorse as only miserable women like me can
feel. Perhaps the suffering weakened me; perhaps it roused some old
forgotten tendernessGod knows!I can't explain it; I can only tell you
that I began to think of Norah by day, and to dream of Norah by night,
till I was almost heartbroken. I have no better reason than this to
give for running all the risks which I ran, and coming to London to see
her. I don't wish to claim more for myself than I deserve; I don't wish
to tell you I was the reformed and repenting creature whom you might
have approved. I had only one feeling in me that I know of. I wanted to
put my arms round Norah's neck, and cry my heart out on Norah's bosom.
Childish enough, I dare say. Something might have come of it; nothing
might have come of itwho knows?
"I had no means of finding Norah without your assistance. However you
might disapprove of what I had done, I thought you would not refuse to
help me to find my sister. When I lay down last night in my strange
bed, I said to myself, 'I will ask Miss Garth, for my father's sake and
my mother's sake, to tell me.' You don't know what a comfort I felt in
that thought. How should you? What do good women like you know of
miserable sinners like me? All you know is that you pray for us at
church.
"Well, I fell asleep happily that nightfor the first time since my
marriage. When the morning came, I paid the penalty of daring to be
happy only for one night. When the morning came, a letter came with it,
which told me that my bitterest enemy on earth (you have meddled
sufficiently with my affairs to know what enemy I mean) had revenged
herself on me in my absence. In following the impulse which led me to
my sister, I had gone to my ruin.
"The mischief was beyond all present remedy, when I received the news
of it. Whatever had happened, whatever might happen, I made up my mind
to persist in my resolution of seeing Norah before I did anything else.
I suspected you of being concerned in the disaster which had
overtaken mebecause I felt positively certain at Aldborough that you
and Mrs. Lecount had written to each other. But I never suspected
Norah. If I lay on my death-bed at this moment I could say with a safe
conscience I never suspected Norah.
"So I went this morning to Westmoreland House to ask you for my
sister's address, and to acknowledge plainly that I suspected you of
being again in correspondence with Mrs. Lecount.
"When I inquired for you at the door, they told me you had gone out,
but that you were expected back before long. They asked me if I would
see your sister, who was then in the school-room. I desired that your
sister should on no account be disturbed: my business was not with her,
but with you. I begged to be allowed to wait in a room by myself until
you returned.
"They showed me into the double room on the ground-floor, divided by
curtainsas it was when I last remember it. There was a fire in the
outer division of the room, but none in the inner; and for that reason,
I suppose, the curtains were drawn. The servant was very civil and
attentive to me. I have learned to be thankful for civility and
attention, and I spoke to her as cheerfully as I could. I said to her,
'I shall see Miss Garth here, as she comes up to the door, and I can
beckon her in through the long window.' The servant said I could do so,
if you came that way, but that you let yourself in sometimes with your
own key by the back-garden gate; and if you did this, she would take
care to let you know of my visit. I mention these trifles, to show you
that there was no pre-meditated deceit in my mind when I came to the
house.
"I waited a weary time, and you never came: I don't know whether my
impatience made me think so, or whether the large fire burning made the
room really as hot as I felt it to beI only know that, after a while,
I passed through the curtains into the inner room, to try the cooler
atmosphere.
"I walked to the long window which leads into the back garden, to look
out, and almost at the same time I heard the door openedthe door of
the room I had just left, and your voice and the voice of some other
woman, a stranger to me, talking. The stranger was one of the
parlor-boarders, I dare say. I gathered from the first words you
exchanged together, that you had met in the passageshe on her way
downstairs, and you on your way in from the back garden. Her next
question and your next answer informed me that this person was a friend
of my sister's, who felt a strong interest in her, and who knew that
you had just returned from a visit to Norah. So far, I only hesitated
to show myself, because I shrank, in my painful situation, from facing
a stranger. But when I heard my own name immediately afterward on your
lips and on hers, then I purposely came nearer to the curtain between
us, and purposely listened.
"A mean action, you will say? Call it mean, if you like. What better
can you expect from such a woman as I am?
"You were always famous for your memory. There is no necessity for my
repeating the words you spoke to your friend, and the words your friend
spoke to you, hardly an hour since. When you read these lines, you will
know, as well as I know, what those words told me. I ask for no
particulars; I will take all your reasons and all your excuses for
granted. It is enough for me to know that you and Mr. Pendril have been
searching for me again, and that Norah is in the conspiracy this time,
to reclaim me in spite of myself. It is enough for me to know that my
letter to my sister has been turned into a trap to catch me, and that
Mrs. Lecount's revenge has accomplished its object by means of
information received from Norah's lips.
"Shall I tell you what I suffered when I heard these things? No; it
would only be a waste of time to tell you. Whatever I suffer, I deserve
itdon't I?
"I waited in that inner roomknowing my own violent temper, and not
trusting myself to see you, after what I had heardI waited in that
inner room, trembling lest the servant should tell you of my visit
before I could find an opportunity of leaving the house. No such
misfortune happened. The servant, no doubt, heard the voices upstairs,
and supposed that we had met each other in the passage. I don't know
how long or how short a time it was before you left the room to go and
take off your bonnetyou went, and your friend went with you. I raised
the long window softly, and stepped into the back garden. The way by
which you returned to the house was the way by which I left it. No
blame attaches to the servant. As usual, where I am concerned, nobody
is to blame but me.
"Time enough has passed now to quiet my mind a little. You know how
strong I am? You remember how I used to fight against all my illnesses
when I was a child? Now I am a woman, I fight against my miseries in
the same way. Don't pity me, Miss Garth! Don't pity me!
"I have no harsh feeling against Norah. The hope I had of seeing her is
a hope taken from me; the consolation I had in writing to her is a
consolation denied me for the future. I am cut to the heart; but I have
no angry feeling toward my sister. She means well, poor soulI dare say
she means well. It would distress her, if she knew what has happened.
Don't tell her. Conceal my visit, and burn my letter.
"A last word to yourself and I have done:
"If I rightly understand my present situation, your spies are still
searching for me to just as little purpose as they searched at York.
Dismiss themyou are wasting your money to no purpose. If you
discovered me to-morrow, what could you do? My position has altered. I
am no longer the poor outcast girl, the vagabond public performer, whom
you once hunted after. I have done what I told you I would doI have
made the general sense of propriety my accomplice this time. Do you
know who I am? I am a respectable married woman, accountable for my
actions to nobody under heaven but my husband. I have got a place in
the world, and a name in the world, at last. Even the law, which is the
friend of all you respectable people, has recognized my existence, and
has become my friend too! The Archbishop of Canterbury gave me his
license to be married, and the vicar of Aldborough performed the
service. If I found your spies following me in the street, and if I
chose to claim protection from them, the law would acknowledge my
claim. You forget what wonders my wickedness has done for me. It has
made Nobody's Child Somebody's Wife.
"If you will give these considerations their due weight; if you will
exert your excellent common sense, I have no fear of being obliged to
appeal to my newly-found friend and protectorthe law. You will feel,
by this time, that you have meddled with me at last to some purpose. I
am estranged from NorahI am discovered by my husbandI am defeated by
Mrs. Lecount. You have driven me to the last extremity; you have
strengthened me to fight the battle of my life with the resolution
which only a lost and friendless woman can feel. Badly as your schemes
have prospered, they have not proved totally useless after all!
"I have no more to say. If you ever speak about me to Norah, tell her
that a day may come when she will see me againthe day when we two
sisters have recovered our natural rights; the day when I put Norah's
fortune into Norah's hand.
"Those are my last words. Remember them the next time you feel tempted
to meddle with me again.
"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."
IV.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn, November 6th.
"DEAR MADAM,
"This morning's post has doubtless brought you the same shocking news
which it has brought to me. You must know by this time that a terrible
affliction has befallen youthe affliction of your husband's sudden
death.
"I am on the point of starting for the North, to make all needful
inquiries, and to perform whatever duties I may with propriety
undertake, as solicitor to the deceased gentleman. Let me earnestly
recommend you not to follow me to Baliol Cottage, until I have had time
to write to you first, and to give you such advice as I cannot, through
ignorance of all the circumstances, pretend to offer now. You may rely
on my writing, after my arrival in Scotland, by the first post.
"I remain, dear Madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
V.
From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth.
"Serle Street, November 6th.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"I return you Mrs. Noel Vanstone's letter. I can understand your
mortification at the tone in which it is written, and your distress at
the manner in which this unhappy woman has interpreted the conversation
that she overheard at your house. I cannot honestly add that I lament
what has happened. My opinion has never altered since the Combe-Raven
time. I believe Mrs. Noel Vanstone to be one of the most reckless,
desperate, and perverted women living; and any circumstances that
estrange her from her sister are circumstances which I welcome, for her
sister's sake.
"There cannot be a moment's doubt on the course you ought to follow in
this matter. Even Mrs. Noel Vanstone herself acknowledges the propriety
of sparing her sister additional and unnecessary distress. By all
means, keep Miss Vanstone in ignorance of the visit to Kensington, and
of the letter which has followed it. It would be not only unwise, but
absolutely cruel, to enlighten her. If we had any remedy to apply, or
even any hope to offer, we might feel some hesitation in keeping our
secret. But there is no remedy, and no hope. Mrs. Noel Vanstone is
perfectly justified in the view she takes of her own position. Neither
you nor I can assert the smallest right to control her.
"I have already taken the necessary measures for putting an end to our
useless inquiries. In a few days I will write to Miss Vanstone, and
will do my best to tranquilize her mind on the subject of her sister.
If I can find no sufficient excuse to satisfy her, it will be better
she should think we have discovered nothing than that she should know
the truth.
"Believe me most truly yours,
"WILLIAM PENDRIL."
VI.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn, November 15th.
"Private.
"DEAR MADAM,
"In compliance with your request, I now proceed to communicate to you
in writing what (but for the calamity which has so recently befallen
you) I should have preferred communicating by word of mouth. Be pleased
to consider this letter as strictly confidential between yourself and
me.
"I enclose, as you desire, a copy of the Will executed by your late
husband on the third of this month. There can be no question of the
genuineness of the original document. I protested, as a matter of form,
against Admiral Bartram's solicitor assuming a position of authority at
Baliol Cottage. But he took the position, nevertheless; acting as legal
representative of the sole Executor under the second Will. I am bound
to say I should have done the same myself in his place.
"The serious question follows, What can we do for the best in your
interests? The Will executed under my professional superintendence, on
the thirtieth of September last, is at present superseded and revoked
by the second and later Will, executed on the third of November. Can we
dispute this document?
"I doubt the possibility of disputing the new Will on the face of it.
It is no doubt irregularly expressed; but it is dated, signed, and
witnessed as the law directs; and the perfectly simple and
straightforward provisions that it contains are in no respect, that I
can see, technically open to attack.
"This being the case, can we dispute the Will on the ground that it has
been executed when the Testator was not in a fit state to dispose of
his own property? or when the Testator was subjected to undue and
improper influence?
"In the first of these cases, the medical evidence would put an
obstacle in our way. We cannot assert that previous illness had
weakened the Testator's mind. It is clear that he died suddenly, as the
doctors had all along declared he would die, of disease of the heart.
He was out walking in his garden, as usual, on the day of his death; he
ate a hearty dinner; none of the persons in his service noticed any
change in him; he was a little more irritable with them than usual, but
that was all. It is impossible to attack the state of his faculties:
there is no case to go into court with, so far.
"Can we declare that he acted under undue influence; or, in plainer
terms, under the influence of Mrs. Lecount?
"There are serious difficulties, again, in the way of taking this
course. We cannot assert, for example, that Mrs. Lecount has assumed a
place in the will which she has no fair claim to occupy. She has
cunningly limited her own legacy, not only to what is fairly due her,
but to what the late Mr. Michael Vanstone himself had the intention of
leaving her. If I were examined on the subject, I should be compelled
to acknowledge that I had heard him express this intention myself. It
is only the truth to say that I have heard him express it more than
once. There is no point of attack in Mrs. Lecount's legacy, and there
is no point of attack in your late husband's choice of an executor. He
has made the wise choice, and the natural choice, of the oldest and
trustiest friend he had in the world.
"One more consideration remainsthe most important which I have yet
approached, and therefore the consideration which I have reserved to
the last. On the thirtieth of September, the Testator executes a will,
leaving his widow sole executrix, with a legacy of eighty thousand
pounds. On the third of November following, he expressly revokes this
will, and leaves another in its stead, in which his widow is never once
mentioned, and in which the whole residue of his estate, after payment
of one comparatively trifling legacy, is left to a friend.
"It rests entirely with you to say whether any valid reason can or
cannot be produced to explain such an extraordinary proceeding as this.
If no reason can be assignedand I know of none myselfI think we have
a point here which deserves our careful consideration; for it may be a
point which is open to attack. Pray understand that I am now appealing
to you solely as a lawyer, who is obliged to look all possible
eventualities in the face. I have no wish to intrude on your private
affairs; I have no wish to write a word which could be construed into
any indirect reflection on yourself.
"If you tell me that, so far as you know, your husband capriciously
struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or motive for
doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his conduct than
that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence of Mrs.
Lecount, I will immediately take Counsel's opinion touching the
propriety of disputing the will on this ground. If, on the other hand,
you tell me that there are reasons (known to yourself, though unknown
to me) for not taking the course I propose, I will accept that
intimation without troubling you, unless you wish it, to explain
yourself further. In this latter event, I will write to you again; for
I shall then have something more to say, which may greatly surprise
you, on the subject of the Will.
"Faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
VII.
From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe.
"November 16th.
"DEAR SIR,
"Accept my best thanks for the kindness and consideration with which
you have treated me; and let the anxieties under which I am now
suffering plead my excuse, if I reply to your letter without ceremony,
in the fewest possible words.
"I have my own reasons for not hesitating to answer your question in
the negative. It is impossible for us to go to law, as you propose, on
the subject of the Will.
"Believe me, dear sir, yours gratefully,
"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."
VIII.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn. November 17th.
"DEAR MADAM,
"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, answering my proposal
in the negative, for reasons of your own. Under these circumstanceson
which I offer no commentI beg to perform my promise of again
communicating with you on the subject of your late husband's Will.
"Be so kind as to look at your copy of the document. You will find that
the clause which devises the whole residue of your husband's estate to
Admiral Bartram ends in these terms: to be by him applied to such uses
as he may think fit.
"Simple as they may seem to you, these are very remarkable words. In
the first place, no practical lawyer would have used them in drawing
your husband's will. In the second place, they are utterly useless to
serve any plain straightforward purpose. The legacy is left
unconditionally to the admiral; and in the same breath he is told that
he may do what he likes with it! The phrase points clearly to one of
two conclusions. It has either dropped from the writer's pen in pure
ignorance, or it has been carefully set where it appears to serve the
purpose of a snare. I am firmly persuaded that the latter explanation
is the right one. The words are expressly intended to mislead some
personyourself in all probabilityand the cunning which has put them
to that use is a cunning which (as constantly happens when uninstructed
persons meddle with law) has overreached itself. My thirty years'
experience reads those words in a sense exactly opposite to the sense
which they are intended to convey. I say that Admiral Bartram is not
free to apply his legacy to such purposes as he may think fit; I
believe he is privately controlled by a supplementary document in the
shape of a Secret Trust.
"I can easily explain to you what I mean by a Secret Trust. It is
usually contained in the form of a letter from a Testator to his
Executors, privately informing them of testamentary intentions on his
part which he has not thought proper openly to acknowledge in his will.
I leave you a hundred pounds; and I write a private letter enjoining
you, on taking the legacy, not to devote it to your own purposes, but
to give it to some third person, whose name I have my own reasons for
not mentioning in my will. That is a Secret Trust.
"If I am right in my own persuasion that such a document as I here
describe is at this moment in Admiral Bartram's possessiona persuasion
based, in the first instance, on the extraordinary words that I have
quoted to you; and, in the second instance, on purely legal
considerations with which it is needless to incumber my letterif I am
right in this opinion, the discovery of the Secret Trust would be, in
all probability, a most important discovery to your interests. I will
not trouble you with technical reasons, or with references to my
experience in these matters, which only a professional man could
understand. I will merely say that I don't give up your cause as
utterly lost, until the conviction now impressed on my own mind is
proved to be wrong.
"I can add no more, while this important question still remains
involved in doubt; neither can I suggest any means of solving that
doubt. If the existence of the Trust was proved, and if the nature of
the stipulations contained in it was made known to me, I could then say
positively what the legal chances were of your being able to set up a
Case on the strength of it: and I could also tell you whether I should
or should not feel justified in personally undertaking that Case under
a private arrangement with yourself.
"As things are, I can make no arrangement, and offer no advice. I can
only put you confidentially in possession of my private opinion,
leaving you entirely free to draw your own inferences from it, and
regretting that I cannot write more confidently and more definitely
than I have written here. All that I could conscientiously say on this
very difficult and delicate subject, I have said.
"Believe me, dear madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE.
"P.S.I omitted one consideration in my last letter, which I may
mention here, in order to show you that no point in connection with the
case has escaped me. If it had been possible to show that Mr. Vanstone
was domiciled in Scotland at the time of his death, we might have
asserted your interests by means of the Scotch law, which does not
allow a husband the power of absolutely disinheriting his wife. But it
is impossible to assert that Mr. Vanstone was legally domiciled in
Scotland. He came there as a visitor only; he occupied a furnished
house for the season; and he never expressed, either by word or deed,
the slightest intention of settling permanently in the North."
IX.
From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe.
"DEAR SIR,
"I have read your letter more than once, with the deepest interest and
attention; and the oftener I read it, the more firmly I believe that
there is really such a Letter as you mention in Admiral Bartram's
hands.
"It is my interest that the discovery should be made, and I at once
acknowledge to you that I am determined to find the means of secretly
and certainly making it. My resolution rests on other motives than the
motives which you might naturally suppose would influence me. I only
tell you this, in case you feel inclined to remonstrate. There is good
reason for what I say, when I assure you that remonstrance will be
useless.
"I ask for no assistance in this matter; I will trouble nobody for
advice. You shall not be involved in any rash proceedings on my part.
Whatever danger there may be, I will risk it. Whatever delays may
happen, I will bear them patiently. I am lonely and friendless, and
surely troubled in mind, but I am strong enough to win my way through
worse trials than these. My spirits will rise again, and my time will
come. If that Secret Trust is in Admiral Bartram's possessionwhen you
next see me, you shall see me with it in my own hands.
"Yours gratefully,
"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."
THE SIXTH SCENE.
ST. JOHN'S WOOD.
CHAPTER I.
It wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the weather
showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally associated
with the coming season. The atmosphere was unnaturally warm, and the
old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and enervating mist.
Toward the close of the December afternoon, Magdalen sat alone in the
lodging which she had occupied since her arrival in London. The fire
burned sluggishly in the narrow little grate; the view of the wet
houses and soaking gardens opposite was darkening fast; and the bell of
the suburban muffin-boy tinkled in the distance drearily. Sitting close
over the fire, with a little money lying loose in her lap, Magdalen
absently shifted the coins to and fro on the smooth surface of her
dress, incessantly altering their positions toward each other, as if
they were pieces of a "child's puzzle" which she was trying to put
together. The dim fire-light flaming up on her faintly from time to
time showed changes which would have told their own tale sadly to
friends of former days. Her dress had become loose through the wasting
of her figure; but she had not cared to alter it. The old restlessness
in her movements, the old mobility in her expression, appeared no more.
Her face passively maintained its haggard composure, its changeless
unnatural calm. Mr. Pendril might have softened his hard sentence on
her, if he had seen her now; and Mrs. Lecount, in the plenitude of her
triumph, might have pitied her fallen enemy at last.
Hardly four months had passed since the wedding-day at Aldborough, and
the penalty for that day was paid alreadypaid in unavailing remorse,
in hopeless isolation, in irremediable defeat! Let this be said for
her; let the truth which has been told of the fault be told of the
expiation as well. Let it be recorded of her that she enjoyed no secret
triumph on the day of her success. The horror of herself with which her
own act had inspired her, had risen to its climax when the design of
her marriage was achieved. She had never suffered in secret as she
suffered when the Combe-Raven money was left to her in her husband's
will. She had never felt the means taken to accomplish her end so
unutterably degrading to herself, as she felt them on the day when the
end was reached. Out of that feeling had grown the remorse which had
hurried her to seek pardon and consolation in her sister's love. Never
since it had first entered her heart, never since she had first felt it
sacred to her at her father's grave, had the Purpose to which she had
vowed herself, so nearly lost its hold on her as at this time. Never
might Norah's influence have achieved such good as on the day when that
influence was lostthe day when the fatal words were overheard at Miss
Garth'sthe day when the fatal letter from Scotland told of Mrs.
Lecount's revenge.
The harm was done; the chance was gone. Time and Hope alike had both
passed her by.
Faintly and more faintly the inner voices now pleaded with her to pause
on the downward way. The discovery which had poisoned her heart with
its first distrust of her sister; the tidings which had followed it of
her husband's death; the sting of Mrs. Lecount's triumph, felt through
all, had done their work. The remorse which had embittered her married
life was deadened now to a dull despair. It was too late to make the
atonement of confessiontoo late to lay bare to the miserable husband
the deeper secrets that had once lurked in the heart of the miserable
wife. Innocent of all thought of the hideous treachery which Mrs.
Lecount had imputed to hershe was guilty of knowing how his health was
broken when she married him; guilty of knowing, when he left her the
Combe-Raven money, that the accident of a moment, harmless to other
men, might place his life in jeopardy, and effect her release. His
death had told her thishad told her plainly what she had shrunk, in
his lifetime, from openly acknowledging to herself. From the dull
torment of that reproach; from the dreary wretchedness of doubting
everybody, even to Norah herself; from the bitter sense of her defeated
schemes; from the blank solitude of her friendless lifewhat refuge was
left? But one refuge now. She turned to the relentless Purpose which
was hurrying her to her ruin, and cried to it with the daring of her
despairDrive me on!
For days and days together she had bent her mind on the one object
which occupied it since she had received the lawyer's letter. For days
and days together she had toiled to meet the first necessity of her
positionto find a means of discovering the Secret Trust. There was no
hope, this time, of assistance from Captain Wragge. Long practice had
made the old militia-man an adept in the art of vanishing. The plow of
the moral agriculturist left no furrowsnot a trace of him was to be
found! Mr. Loscombe was too cautious to commit himself to an active
course of any kind; he passively maintained his opinions and left the
rest to his client-he desired to know nothing until the Trust was
placed in his hands. Magdalen's interests were now in Magdalen's own
sole care. Risk or no risk, what she did next she must do by herself.
The prospect had not daunted her. Alone she had calculated the chances
that might be tried. Alone she was now determined to make the attempt.
"The time has come," she said to herself, as she sat over the fire. "I
must sound Louisa first."
She collected the scattered coins in her lap, and placed them in a
little heap on the table, then rose and rang the bell. The landlady
answered it.
"Is my servant downstairs?" inquired Magdalen.
"Yes, ma'am. She is having her tea."
"When she has done, say I want her up here. Wait a moment. You will
find your money on the tablethe money I owe you for last week. Can you
find it? or would you like to have a candle?"
"It's rather dark, ma'am."
Magdalen lit a candle. "What notice must I give you," she asked, as she
put the candle on the table, "before I leave?"
"A week is the usual notice, ma'am. I hope you have no objection to
make to the house?"
"None whatever. I only ask the question, because I may be obliged to
leave these lodgings rather sooner than I anticipated. Is the money
right?"
"Quite right, ma'am. Here is your receipt."
"Thank you. Don't forget to send Louisa to me as soon as she has done
her tea."
The landlady withdrew. As soon as she was alone again, Magdalen
extinguished the candle, and drew an empty chair close to her own chair
on the hearth. This done, she resumed her former place, and waited
until Louisa appeared. There was doubt in her face as she sat looking
mechanically into the fire. "A poor chance," she thought to herself;
"but, poor as it is, a chance that I must try."
In ten minutes more, Louisa's meek knock was softly audible outside.
She was surprised, on entering the room, to find no other light in it
than the light of the fire.
"Will you have the candles, ma'am?" she inquired, respectfully.
"We will have candles if you wish for them yourself," replied Magdalen;
"not otherwise. I have something to say to you. When I have said it,
you shall decide whether we sit together in the dark or in the light."
Louisa waited near the door, and listened to those strange words in
silent astonishment.
"Come here," said Magdalen, pointing to the empty chair; "come here and
sit down."
Louisa advanced, and timidly removed the chair from its position at her
mistress's side. Magdalen instantly drew it back again. "No!" she said.
"Come closercome close by me." After a moment's hesitation, Louisa
obeyed.
"I ask you to sit near me," pursued Magdalen, "because I wish to speak
to you on equal terms. Whatever distinctions there might once have been
between us are now at an end. I am a lonely woman thrown helpless on my
own resources, without rank or place in the world. I may or may not
keep you as my friend. As mistress and maid the connection between us
must come to an end."
"Oh, ma'am, don't, don't say that!" pleaded Louisa, faintly.
Magdalen sorrowfully and steadily went on.
"When you first came to me," she resumed, "I thought I should not like
you. I have learned to like youI have learned to be grateful to you.
From first to last you have been faithful and good to me. The least I
can do in return is not to stand in the way of your future prospects."
"Don't send me away, ma'am!" said Louisa, imploringly. "If you can only
help me with a little money now and then, I'll wait for my wagesI
will, indeed."
Magdalen took her hand and went on, as sorrowfully and as steadily as
before.
"My future life is all darkness, all uncertainty," she said. "The next
step I may take may lead me to my prosperity or may lead me to my ruin.
Can I ask you to share such a prospect as this? If your future was as
uncertain as mine isif you, too, were a friendless woman thrown on the
worldmy conscience might be easy in letting you cast your lot with
mine. I might accept your attachment, for I might feel I was not
wronging you. How can I feel this in your case? You have a future to
look to. You are an excellent servant; you can get another placea far
better place than mine. You can refer to me; and if the character I
give is not considered sufficient, you can refer to the mistress you
served before me"
At the instant when that reference to the girl's last employer escaped
Magdalen's lips, Louisa snatched her hand away and started up
affrightedly from her chair. There was a moment's silence. Both
mistress and maid were equally taken by surprise.
Magdalen was the first to recover herself.
"Is it getting too dark?" she asked, significantly. "Are you going to
light the candles, after all?"
Louisa drew back into the dimmest corner of the room.
"You suspect me, ma'am!" she answered out of the darkness, in a
breathless whisper. "Who has told you? How did you find out?" She
stopped, and burst into tears. "I deserve your suspicion," she said,
struggling to compose herself. "I can't deny it to you. You have
treated me so kindly; you have made me so fond of you! Forgive me, Mrs.
VanstoneI am a wretch; I have deceived you."
"Come here and sit down by me again," said Magdalen. "Comeor I will
get up myself and bring you back."
Louisa slowly returned to her place. Dim as the fire-light was, she
seemed to fear it. She held her handkerchief over her face, and shrank
from her mistress as she seated herself again in the chair.
"You are wrong in thinking that any one has betrayed you to me," said
Magdalen. "All that I know of you is, what your own looks and ways have
told me. You have had some secret trouble weighing on your mind ever
since you have been in my service. I confess I have spoken with the
wish to find out more of you and your past life than I have found out
yetnot because I am curious, but because I have my secret troubles
too. Are you an unhappy woman, like me? If you are, I will take you
into my confidence. If you have nothing to tell meif you choose to
keep your secretI don't blame you; I only say, Let us part. I won't
ask how you have deceived me. I will only remember that you have been
an honest and faithful and competent servant while I have employed you;
and I will say as much in your favor to any new mistress you like to
send to me."
She waited for the reply. For a moment, and only for a moment, Louisa
hesitated. The girl's nature was weak, but not depraved. She was
honestly attached to her mistress; and she spoke with a courage which
Magdalen had not expected from her.
"If you send me away, ma'am," she said, "I won't take my character from
you till I have told you the truth; I won't return your kindness by
deceiving you a second time. Did my master ever tell you how he engaged
me?"
"No. I never asked him, and he never told me."
"He engaged me, ma'am, with a written character"
"Yes?"
"The character was a false one."
Magdalen drew back in amazement. The confession she heard was not the
confession she had anticipated.
"Did your mistress refuse to give you a character?" she asked. "Why?"
Louisa dropped on her knees and hid her face in her mistress's lap.
"Don't ask me!" she said. "I'm a miserable, degraded creature; I'm not
fit to be in the same room with you!" Magdalen bent over her, and
whispered a question in her ear. Louisa whispered back the one sad word
of reply.
"Has he deserted you?" asked Magdalen, after waiting a moment, and
thinking first.
"No."
"Do you love him?"
"Dearly."
The remembrance of her own loveless marriage stung Magdalen to the
quick.
"For God's sake, don't kneel to me!" she cried, passionately. "If
there is a degraded woman in this room, I am the womannot you!"
She raised the girl by main force from her knees, and put her back in
the chair. They both waited a little in silence. Keeping her hand on
Louisa's shoulder, Magdalen seated herself again, and looked with
unutterable bitterness of sorrow into the dying fire. "Oh," she
thought, "what happy women there are in the world! Wives who love their
husbands! Mothers who are not ashamed to own their children! Are you
quieter?" she asked, gently addressing Louisa once more. "Can you
answer me, if I ask you something else? Where is the child?"
"The child is out at nurse."
"Does the father help to support it?"
"He does all he can, ma'am."
"What is he? Is he in service? Is he in a trade?"
"His father is a master-carpenterhe works in his father's yard."
"If he has got work, why has he not married you?"
"It is his father's fault, ma'amnot his. His father has no pity on us.
He would be turned out of house and home if he married me."
"Can he get no work elsewhere?"
"It's hard to get good work in London, ma'am. There are so many in
Londonthey take the bread out of each other's mouths. If we had only
had the money to emigrate, he would have married me long since."
"Would he marry you if you had the money now?"
"I am sure he would, ma'am. He could get plenty of work in Australia,
and double and treble the wages he gets here. He is trying hard, and I
am trying hard, to save a little toward itI put by all I can spare
from my child. But it is so little! If we live for years to come, there
seems no hope for us. I know I have done wrong every wayI know I don't
deserve to be happy. But how could I let my child suffer?I was obliged
to go to service. My mistress was hard on me, and my health broke down
in trying to live by my needle. I would never have deceived anybody by
a false character, if there had been another chance for me. I was alone
and helpless, ma'am; and I can only ask you to forgive me."
"Ask better women than I am," said Magdalen, sadly. "I am only fit to
feel for you, and I do feel for you with all my heart. In your place I
should have gone into service with a false character, too. Say no more
of the pastyou don't know how you hurt me in speaking of it. Talk of
the future. I think I can help you, and do you no harm. I think you can
help me, and do me the greatest of all services in return. Wait, and
you shall hear what I mean. Suppose you were marriedhow much would it
cost for you and your husband to emigrate?"
Louisa mentioned the cost of a steerage passage to Australia for a man
and his wife. She spoke in low, hopeless tones. Moderate as the sum
was, it looked like unattainable wealth in her eyes.
Magdalen started in her chair, and took the girl's hand once more.
"Louisa!" she said, earnestly; "if I gave you the money, what would you
do for me in return?"
The proposal seemed to strike Louisa speechless with astonishment. She
trembled violently, and said nothing. Magdalen repeated her words.
"Oh, ma'am, do you mean it?" said the girl. "Do you really mean it?"
"Yes," replied Magdalen; "I really mean it. What would you do for me in
return?"
"Do?" repeated Louisa. "Oh what is there I would not do!" She tried
to kiss her mistress's hand; but Magdalen would not permit it. She
resolutely, almost roughly, drew her hand away.
"I am laying you under no obligation," she said. "We are serving each
otherthat is all. Sit quiet, and let me think."
For the next ten minutes there was silence in the room. At the end of
that time Magdalen took out her watch and held it close to the grate.
There was just firelight enough to show her the hour. It was close on
six o'clock.
"Are you composed enough to go downstairs and deliver a message?" she
asked, rising from her chair as she spoke to Louisa again. "It is a
very simple messageit is only to tell the boy that I want a cab as
soon as he can get me one. I must go out immediately. You shall know
why later in the evening. I have much more to say to you; but there is
no time to say it now. When I am gone, bring your work up here, and
wait for my return. I shall be back before bed-time."
Without another word of explanation, she hurriedly lit a candle and
withdrew into the bedroom to put on her bonnet and shawl.
CHAPTER II.
Between nine and ten o'clock the same evening, Louisa, waiting
anxiously, heard the long-expected knock at the house door. She ran
downstairs at once and let her mistress in.
Magdalen's face was flushed. She showed far more agitation on returning
to the house than she had shown on leaving it. "Keep your place at the
table," she said to Louisa, impatiently; "but lay aside your work. I
want you to attend carefully to what I am going to say."
Louisa obeyed. Magdalen seated herself at the opposite side of the
table, and moved the candles, so as to obtain a clear and uninterrupted
view of her servant's face.
"Have you noticed a respectable elderly woman," she began, abruptly,
"who has been here once or twice in the last fortnight to pay me a
visit?"
"Yes, ma'am; I think I let her in the second time she came. An elderly
person named Mrs. Attwood?"
"That is the person I mean. Mrs. Attwood is Mr. Loscombe's housekeeper;
not the housekeeper at his private residence, but the housekeeper at
his offices in Lincoln's Inn. I promised to go and drink tea with her
some evening this week, and I have been to-night. It is strange of me,
is it not, to be on these familiar terms with a woman in Mrs. Attwood's
situation?"
Louisa made no answer in words. Her face spoke for her: she could
hardly avoid thinking it strange.
"I had a motive for making friends with Mrs. Attwood," Magdalen went
on. "She is a widow, with a large family of daughters. Her daughters
are all in service. One of them is an under-housemaid in the service of
Admiral Bartram, at St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. I found that out from Mrs.
Attwood's master; and as soon as I arrived at the discovery, I
privately determined to make Mrs. Attwood's acquaintance. Stranger
still, is it not?"
Louisa began to look a little uneasy. Her mistress's manner was at
variance with her mistress's wordsit was plainly suggestive of
something startling to come.
"What attraction Mrs. Attwood finds in my society," Magdalen continued,
"I cannot presume to say. I can only tell you she has seen better days;
she is an educated person; and she may like my society on that account.
At any rate, she has readily met my advances toward her. What
attraction I find in this good woman, on my side, is soon told. I have
a great curiosityan unaccountable curiosity, you will thinkabout the
present course of household affairs at St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. Mrs.
Attwood's daughter is a good girl, and constantly writes to her mother.
Her mother is proud of the letters and proud of the girl, and is ready
enough to talk about her daughter and her daughter's place. That is
Mrs. Attwood's attraction to me. You understand, so far?"
YesLouisa understood. Magdalen went on. "Thanks to Mrs. Attwood and
Mrs. Attwood's daughter," she said, "I know some curious particulars
already of the household at St. Crux. Servants' tongues and servants'
lettersas I need not tell youare oftener occupied with their
masters and mistresses than their masters and mistresses suppose. The
only mistress at St. Crux is the housekeeper. But there is a
masterAdmiral Bartram. He appears to be a strange old man, whose whims
and fancies amuse his servants as well as his friends. One of his
fancies (the only one we need trouble ourselves to notice) is, that he
had men enough about him when he was living at sea, and that now he is
living on shore, he will be waited on by women-servants alone. The one
man in the house is an old sailor, who has been all his life with his
masterhe is a kind of pensioner at St. Crux, and has little or nothing
to do with the housework. The other servants, indoors, are all women;
and instead of a footman to wait on him at dinner, the admiral has a
parlor-maid. The parlor-maid now at St. Crux is engaged to be married,
and as soon as her master can suit himself she is going away. These
discoveries I made some days since. But when I saw Mrs. Attwood
to-night, she had received another letter from her daughter in the
interval, and that letter has helped me to find out something more. The
housekeeper is at her wits' end to find a new servant. Her master
insists on youth and good lookshe leaves everything else to the
housekeeperbut he will have that. All the inquiries made in the
neighborhood have failed to produce the sort of parlor-maid whom the
admiral wants. If nothing can be done in the next fortnight or three
weeks, the housekeeper will advertise in the Times, and will come to
London herself to see the applicants, and to make strict personal
inquiry into their characters."
Louisa looked at her mistress more attentively than ever. The
expression of perplexity left her face, and a shade of disappointment
appeared there in its stead. "Bear in mind what I have said," pursued
Magdalen; "and wait a minute more, while I ask you some questions.
Don't think you understand me yetI can assure you, you don't
understand me. Have you always lived in service as lady's maid?"
"No, ma'am."
"Have you ever lived as parlor-maid?"
"Only in one place, ma'am, and not for long there."
"I suppose you lived long enough to learn your duties?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What were your duties besides waiting at table?"
"I had to show visitors in."
"Yes; and what else?"
"I had the plate and the glass to look after; and the table-linen was
all under my care. I had to answer all the bells, except in the
bedrooms. There were other little odds and ends sometimes to do"
"But your regular duties were the duties you have just mentioned?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"How long ago is it since you lived in service as a parlor-maid?"
"A little better than two years, ma'am."
"I suppose you have not forgotten how to wait at table, and clean
plate, and the rest of it, in that time?"
At this question Louisa's attention, which had been wandering more and
more during the progress of Magdalen's inquiries, wandered away
altogether. Her gathering anxieties got the better of her discretion,
and even of her timidity. Instead of answering her mistress, she
suddenly and confusedly ventured on a question of her own.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," she said. "Did you mean me to offer for the
parlor-maid's place at St. Crux?"
"You?" replied Magdalen. "Certainly not! Have you forgotten what I said
to you in this room before I went out? I mean you to be married, and go
to Australia with your husband and your child. You have not waited as I
told you, to hear me explain myself. You have drawn your own
conclusions, and you have drawn them wrong. I asked a question just
now, which you have not answeredI asked if you had forgotten your
parlor-maid's duties?"
"Oh, no, ma'am!" Louisa had replied rather unwillingly thus far. She
answered readily and confidently now.
"Could you teach the duties to another servant?" asked Magdalen.
"Yes, ma'ameasily, if she was quick and attentive."
"Could you teach the duties to Me?"
Louisa started, and changed color. "You, ma'am!" she exclaimed, half in
incredulity, half in alarm.
"Yes," said Magdalen. "Could you qualify me to take the parlor-maid's
place at St. Crux?"
Plain as those words were, the bewilderment which they produced in
Louisa's mind seemed to render her incapable of comprehending her
mistress's proposal. "You, ma'am!" she repeated, vacantly.
"I shall perhaps help you to understand this extraordinary project of
mine," said Magdalen, "if I tell you plainly what the object of it is.
Do you remember what I said to you about Mr. Vanstone's will when you
came here from Scotland to join me?"
"Yes, ma'am. You told me you had been left out of the will altogether.
I'm sure my fellow-servant would never have been one of the witnesses
if she had known"
"Never mind that now. I don't blame your fellow-servantI blame nobody
but Mrs. Lecount. Let me go on with what I was saying. It is not at all
certain that Mrs. Lecount can do me the mischief which Mrs. Lecount
intended. There is a chance that my lawyer, Mr. Loscombe, may be able
to gain me what is fairly my due, in spite of the will. The chance
turns on my discovering a letter which Mr. Loscombe believes, and which
I believe, to be kept privately in Admiral Bartram's possession. I have
not the least hope of getting at that letter if I make the attempt in
my own person. Mrs. Lecount has poisoned the admiral's mind against me,
and Mr. Vanstone has given him a secret to keep from me. If I wrote to
him, he would not answer my letter. If I went to his house, the door
would be closed in my face. I must find my way into St. Crux as a
strangerI must be in a position to look about the house, unsuspectedI
must be there with plenty of time on my hands. All the circumstances
are in my favor, if I am received into the house as a servant; and as a
servant I mean to go."
"But you are a lady, ma'am," objected Louisa, in the greatest
perplexity. "The servants at St. Crux would find you out."
"I am not at all afraid of their finding me out," said Magdalen. "I
know how to disguise myself in other people's characters more cleverly
than you suppose. Leave me to face the chances of discoverythat is my
risk. Let us talk of nothing now but what concerns you. Don't decide
yet whether you will, or will not, give me the help I want. Wait, and
hear first what the help is. You are quick and clever at your needle.
Can you make me the sort of gown which it is proper for a servant to
wearand can you alter one of my best silk dresses so as to make it fit
yourself in a week's time?"
"I think I could get them done in a week, ma'am. But why am I to wear"
"Wait a little, and you will see. I shall give the landlady her week's
notice to-morrow. In the interval, while you are making the dresses, I
can be learning the parlor-maid's duties. When the house-servant here
has brought up the dinner, and when you and I are alone in the
roominstead of your waiting on me, as usual, I will wait on you. (I am
quite serious; don't interrupt me!) Whatever I can learn besides,
without hindering you, I will practice carefully at every opportunity.
When the week is over, and the dresses are done, we will leave this
place, and go into other lodgingsyou as the mistress and I as the
maid."
"I should be found out, ma'am," interposed Louisa, trembling at the
prospect before her. "I am not a lady."
"And I am," said Magdalen, bitterly. "Shall I tell you what a lady is?
A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own
importance. I shall put the gown on your back, and the sense in your
head. You speak good English; you are naturally quiet and
self-restrained; if you can only conquer your timidity, I have not the
least fear of you. There will be time enough in the new lodging for you
to practice your character, and for me to practice mine. There will be
time enough to make some more dressesanother gown for me, and your
wedding-dress (which I mean to give you) for yourself. I shall have the
newspaper sent every day. When the advertisement appears, I shall
answer itin any name I can take on the spur of the moment; in your
name, if you like to lend it to me; and when the housekeeper asks me
for my character, I shall refer her to you. She will see you in the
position of mistress, and me in the position of maidno suspicion can
possibly enter her mind, unless you put it there. If you only have the
courage to follow my instructions, and to say what I shall tell you to
say, the interview will be over in ten minutes."
"You frighten me, ma'am," said Louisa, still trembling. "You take my
breath away with surprise. Courage! Where shall I find courage?"
"Where I keep it for you," said Magdalen"in the passage-money to
Australia. Look at the new prospect which gives you a husband, and
restores you to your childand you will find your courage there."
Louisa's sad face brightened; Louisa's faint heart beat quick. A spark
of her mistress's spirit flew up into her eyes as she thought of the
golden future.
"If you accept my proposal," pursued Magdalen, "you can be asked in
church at once, if you like. I promise you the money on the day when
the advertisement appears in the newspaper. The risk of the
housekeeper's rejecting me is my risknot yours. My good looks are
sadly gone off, I know. But I think I can still hold my place against
the other servantsI think I can still look the parlor-maid whom
Admiral Bartram wants. There is nothing for you to fear in this matter;
I should not have mentioned it if there had been. The only danger is
the danger of my being discovered at St. Crux, and that falls entirely
on me. By the time I am in the admiral's house you will be married, and
the ship will be taking you to your new life."
Louisa's face, now brightening with hope, now clouding again with fear,
showed plain signs of the struggle which it cost her to decide. She
tried to gain time; she attempted confusedly to speak a few words of
gratitude; but her mistress silenced her.
"You owe me no thanks," said Magdalen. "I tell you again, we are only
helping each other. I have very little money, but it is enough for your
purpose, and I give it you freely. I have led a wretched life; I have
made others wretched about me. I can't even make you happy, except by
tempting you to a new deceit. There! there! it's not your fault. Worse
women than you are will help me, if you refuse. Decide as you like, but
don't be afraid of taking the money. If I succeed, I shall not want it.
If I fail"
She stopped, rose abruptly from her chair, and hid her face from Louisa
by walking away to the fire-place.
"If I fail," she resumed, warming her foot carelessly at the fender,
"all the money in the world will be of no use to me. Never mind
whynever mind Methink of yourself. I won't take advantage of the
confession you have made to me; I won't influence you against your
will. Do as you yourself think best. But remember one thingmy mind is
made up; nothing you can say or do will change it."
Her sudden removal from the table, the altered tones of her voice as
she spoke the last words, appeared to renew Louisa's hesitation. She
clasped her hands together in her lap, and wrung them hard. "This has
come on me very suddenly, ma'am," said the girl. "I am sorely tempted
to say Yes; and yet I am almost afraid"
"Take the night to consider it," interposed Magdalen, keeping her face
persistently turned toward the fire; "and tell me what you have decided
to do, when you come into my room to-morrow morning. I shall want no
help to-nightI can undress myself. You are not so strong as I am; you
are tired, I dare say. Don't sit up on my account. Good-night, Louisa,
and pleasant dreams!"
Her voice sank lower and lower as she spoke those kind words. She
sighed heavily, and, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece, laid her head
on it with a reckless weariness miserable to see. Louisa had not left
the room, as she supposedLouisa came softly to her side, and kissed
her hand. Magdalen started; but she made no attempt, this time, to draw
her hand away. The sense of her own horrible isolation subdued her, at
the touch of the servant's lips. Her proud heart melted; her eyes
filled with burning tears. "Don't distress me!" she said, faintly. "The
time for kindness has gone by; it only overpowers me now. Good-night!"
When the morning came, the affirmative answer which Magdalen had
anticipated was the answer given.
On that day the landlady received her week's notice to quit, and
Louisa's needle flew fast through the stitches of the parlor-maid's
dress.
THE END OF THE SIXTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril.
"Westmoreland House,
January 3d, 1848.
"Dear Mr. Pendril,
"I write, as you kindly requested, to report how Norah is going on, and
to tell you what changes I see for the better in the state of her mind
on the subject of her sister.
"I cannot say that she is becoming resigned to Magdalen's continued
silenceI know her faithful nature too well to say it. I can only tell
you that she is beginning to find relief from the heavy pressure of
sorrow and suspense in new thoughts and new hopes. I doubt if she has
yet realized this in her own mind; but I see the result, although she
is not conscious of it herself. I see her heart opening to the
consolation of another interest and another love. She has not said a
word to me on the subject, nor have I said a word to her. But as
certainly as I know that Mr. George Bartram's visits have lately grown
more and more frequent to the family at Portland Placeso certainly I
can assure you that Norah is finding a relief under her suspense, which
is not of my bringing, and a hope in the future, which I have not
taught her to feel.
"It is needless for me to say that I tell you this in the strictest
confidence. God knows whether the happy prospect which seems to me to
be just dawning will grow brighter or not as time goes on. The oftener
I see Mr. George Bartramand he has called on me more than oncethe
stronger my liking for him grows. To my poor judgment he seems to be a
gentleman in the highest and truest sense of the word. If I could live
to see Norah his wife, I should almost feel that I had lived long
enough. But who can discern the future? We have suffered so much that I
am afraid to hope.
"Have you heard anything of Magdalen? I don't know why or how it is;
but since I have known of her husband's death, my old tenderness for
her seems to cling to me more obstinately than ever.
"Always yours truly,
"HARRIET GARTH."
II.
From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth.
"Serle Street, January 4th, 1848.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"Of Mrs. Noel Vanstone herself I have heard nothing. But I have
learned, since I saw you, that the report of the position in which she
is left by the death of her husband may be depended upon as the truth.
No legacy of any kind is bequeathed to her. Her name is not once
mentioned in her husband's will.
"Knowing what we know, it is not to be concealed that this circumstance
threatens us with more embarrassment, and perhaps with more distress.
Mrs. Noel Vanstone is not the woman to submit, without a desperate
resistance, to the total overthrow of all her schemes and all her
hopes. The mere fact that nothing whatever has been heard of her since
her husband's death is suggestive to my mind of serious mischief to
come. In her situation, and with her temper, the quieter she is now,
the more inveterately I, for one, distrust her in the future. It is
impossible to say to what violent measures her present extremity may
not drive her. It is impossible to feel sure that she may not be the
cause of some public scandal this time, which may affect her innocent
sister as well as herself.
"I know you will not misinterpret the motive which has led me to write
these lines; I know you will not think that I am inconsiderate enough
to cause you unnecessary alarm. My sincere anxiety to see that happy
prospect realized to which your letter alludes has caused me to write
far less reservedly than I might otherwise have written. I strongly
urge you to use your influence, on every occasion when you can fairly
exert it, to strengthen that growing attachment, and to place it beyond
the reach of any coming disasters, while you have the opportunity of
doing so. When I tell you that the fortune of which Mrs. Noel Vanstone
has been deprived is entirely bequeathed to Admiral Bartram; and when I
add that Mr. George Bartram is generally understood to be his uncle's
heiryou will, I think, acknowledge that I am not warning you without a
cause.
"Yours most truly,
"WILLIAM PENDRIL."
III.
From Admiral Bartram to Mrs. Drake
(housekeeper at St. Crux).
"St. Crux, January 10th, 1848.
"MRS. DRAKE,
"I have received your letter from London, stating that you have found
me a new parlor-maid at last, and that the girl is ready to return with
you to St. Crux when your other errands in town allow you to come back.
"This arrangement must be altered immediately, for a reason which I am
heartily sorry to have to write.
"The illness of my niece, Mrs. Girdlestonewhich appeared to be so
slight as to alarm none of us, doctors includedhas ended fatally. I
received this morning the shocking news of her death. Her husband is
said to be quite frantic with grief. Mr. George has already gone to his
brother-in-law's, to superintend the last melancholy duties and I must
follow him before the funeral takes place. We propose to take Mr.
Girdlestone away afterward, and to try the effect on him of change of
place and new scenes. Under these sad circumstances, I may be absent
from St. Crux a month or six weeks at least; the house will be shut up,
and the new servant will not be wanted until my return.
"You will therefore tell the girl, on receiving this letter, that a
death in the family has caused a temporary change in our arrangements.
If she is willing to wait, you may safely engage her to come here in
six weeks' time; I shall be back then, if Mr. George is not. If she
refuses, pay her what compensation is right, and so have done with her.
"Yours,
"ARTHUR BARTRAM."
IV.
From Mrs. Drake to Admiral Bartram.
"January 11th.
"HONORED SIR,
"I hope to get my errands done, and to return to St. Crux to-morrow,
but write to save you anxiety, in case of delay.
"The young woman whom I have engaged (Louisa by name) is willing to
wait your time; and her present mistress, taking an interest in her
welfare, will provide for her during the interval. She understands that
she is to enter on her new service in six weeks from the present
datenamely, on the twenty-fifth of February next.
"Begging you will accept my respectful sympathy under the sad
bereavement which has befallen the family,
"I remain, honored sir, your humble servant,
"SOPHIA DRAKE."
THE SEVENTH SCENE.
ST. CRUX-IN-THE-MARSH.
CHAPTER I.
"This is where you are to sleep. Put yourself tidy, and then come down
again to my room. The admiral has returned, and you will have to begin
by waiting on him at dinner to-day."
With those words, Mrs. Drake, the housekeeper, closed the door; and the
new parlor-maid was left alone in her bed-chamber at St. Crux.
That day was the eventful twenty-fifth of February. In barely four
months from the time when Mrs. Lecount had placed her master's private
Instructions in his Executor's hands, the one combination of
circumstances against which it had been her first and foremost object
to provide was exactly the combination which had now taken place. Mr.
Noel Vanstone's widow and Admiral Bartram's Secret Trust were together
in the same house.
Thus far, events had declared themselves without an exception in
Magdalen's favor. Thus far, the path which had led her to St. Crux had
been a path without an obstacle: Louisa, whose name she had now taken,
had sailed three days since for Australia, with her husband and her
child; she was the only living creature whom Magdalen had trusted with
her secret, and she was by this time out of sight of the English land.
The girl had been careful, reliable and faithfully devoted to her
mistress's interests to the last. She had passed the ordeal of her
interview with the housekeeper, and had forgotten none of the
instructions by which she had been prepared to meet it. She had herself
proposed to turn the six weeks' delay, caused by the death in the
admiral's family, to good account, by continuing the all-important
practice of those domestic lessons, on the perfect acquirement of which
her mistress's daring stratagem depended for its success. Thanks to the
time thus gained, when Louisa's marriage was over, and the day of
parting had come, Magdalen had learned and mastered, in the nicest
detail, everything that her former servant could teach her. On the day
when she passed the doors of St. Crux she entered on her desperate
venture, strong in the ready presence of mind under emergencies which
her later life had taught her, stronger still in the trained capacity
that she possessed for the assumption of a character not her own,
strongest of all in her two months' daily familiarity with the
practical duties of the position which she had undertaken to fill.
As soon as Mrs. Drake's departure had left her alone, she unpacked her
box, and dressed herself for the evening.
She put on a lavender-colored stuff-gownhalf-mourning for Mrs.
Girdlestone; ordered for all the servants, under the admiral's
instructionsa white muslin apron, and a neat white cap and collar,
with ribbons to match the gown. In this servant's costumein the plain
gown fastening high round her neck, in the neat little white cap at the
back of her headin this simple dress, to the eyes of all men, not
linen-drapers, at once the most modest and the most alluring that a
woman can wear, the sad changes which mental suffering had wrought in
her beauty almost disappeared from view. In the evening costume of a
lady, with her bosom uncovered, with her figure armed, rather than
dressed, in unpliable silk, the admiral might have passed her by
without notice in his own drawing-room. In the evening costume of a
servant, no admirer of beauty could have looked at her once and not
have turned again to look at her for the second time.
Descending the stairs, on her way to the house-keeper's room, she
passed by the entrances to two long stone corridors, with rows of doors
opening on them; one corridor situated on the second, and one on the
first floor of the house. "Many rooms!" she thought, as she looked at
the doors. "Weary work searching here for what I have come to find!"
On reaching the ground-floor she was met by a weather-beaten old man,
who stopped and stared at her with an appearance of great interest. He
was the same old man whom Captain Wragge had seen in the backyard at
St. Crux, at work on the model of a ship. All round the neighborhood he
was known, far and wide, as "the admiral's coxswain." His name was
Mazey. Sixty years had written their story of hard work at sea, and
hard drinking on shore, on the veteran's grim and wrinkled face. Sixty
years had proved his fidelity, and had brought his battered old
carcass, at the end of the voyage, into port in his master's house.
Seeing no one else of whom she could inquire, Magdalen requested the
old man to show her the way that led to the housekeeper's room.
"I'll show you, my dear," said old Mazey, speaking in the high and
hollow voice peculiar to the deaf. "You're the new maideh? And a
fine-grown girl, too! His honor, the admiral, likes a parlor-maid with
a clean run fore and aft. You'll do, my dearyou'll do."
"You must not mind what Mr. Mazey says to you," remarked the
housekeeper, opening her door as the old sailor expressed his approval
of Magdalen in these terms. "He is privileged to talk as he pleases;
and he is very tiresome and slovenly in his habits; but he means no
harm."
With that apology for the veteran, Mrs. Drake led Magdalen first to the
pantry, and next to the linen-room, installing her, with all due
formality, in her own domestic dominions. This ceremony completed, the
new parlor-maid was taken upstairs, and was shown the dining-room,
which opened out of the corridor on the first floor. Here she was
directed to lay the cloth, and to prepare the table for one person
onlyMr. George Bartram not having returned with his uncle to St. Crux.
Mrs. Drake's sharp eyes watched Magdalen attentively as she performed
this introductory duty; and Mrs. Drake's private convictions, when the
table was spread, forced her to acknowledge, so far, that the new
servant thoroughly understood her work.
An hour later the soup-tureen was placed on the table; and Magdalen
stood alone behind the admiral's empty chair, waiting her master's
first inspection of her when he entered the dining-room.
A large bell rang in the lower regionsquick, shambling footsteps
pattered on the stone corridor outsidethe door opened suddenlyand a
tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips,
fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two
huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat in a violent hurry.
The dogs followed him, and placed themselves, with the utmost gravity
and composure, one on each side of his chair. This was Admiral Bartram,
and these were the companions of his solitary meal.
"Ay! ay! ay! here's the new parlor-maid, to be sure!" he began, looking
sharply, but not at all unkindly, at Magdalen. "What's your name, my
good girl? Louisa, is it? I shall call you Lucy, if you don't mind.
Take off the cover, my dearI'm a minute or two late to-day. Don't be
unpunctual to-morrow on that account; I am as regular as clock-work
generally. How are you after your journey? Did my spring-cart bump you
about much in bringing you from the station? Capital soup thishot as
firereminds me of the soup we used to have in the West Indies in the
year Three. Have you got your half-mourning on? Stand there, and let me
see. Ah, yes, very neat, and nice, and tidy. Poor Mrs. Girdlestone! Oh
dear, dear, dear, poor Mrs. Girdlestone! You're not afraid of dogs, are
you, Lucy? Eh? What? You like dogs? That's right! Always be kind to
dumb animals. These two dogs dine with me every day, except when
there's company. The dog with the black nose is Brutus, and the dog
with the white nose is Cassius. Did you ever hear who Brutus and
Cassius were? Ancient Romans? That's right-good girl. Mind your book
and your needle, and we'll get you a good husband one of these days.
Take away the soup, my dear, take away the soup!"
This was the man whose secret it was now the one interest of Magdalen's
life to surprise! This was the man whose name had supplanted hers in
Noel Vanstone's will!
The fish and the roast meat followed; and the admiral's talk rambled
onnow in soliloquy, now addressed to the parlor-maid, and now directed
to the dogsas familiarly and as discontentedly as ever. Magdalen
observed with some surprise that the companions of the admiral's dinner
had, thus far, received no scraps from their master's plate. The two
magnificent brutes sat squatted on their haunches, with their great
heads over the table, watching the progress of the meal, with the
profoundest attention, but apparently expecting no share in it. The
roast meat was removed, the admiral's plate was changed, and Magdalen
took the silver covers off the two made-dishes on either side of the
table. As she handed the first of the savory dishes to her master, the
dogs suddenly exhibited a breathless personal interest in the
proceedings. Brutus gluttonously watered at the mouth; and the tongue
of Cassius, protruding in unutterable expectation, smoked again between
his enormous jaws.
The admiral helped himself liberally from the dish; sent Magdalen to
the side-table to get him some bread; and, when he thought her eye was
off him, furtively tumbled the whole contents of his plate into
Brutus's mouth. Cassius whined faintly as his fortunate comrade
swallowed the savory mess at a gulp. "Hush! you fool," whispered the
admiral. "Your turn next!"
Magdalen presented the second dish. Once more the old gentleman helped
himself largelyonce more he sent her away to the side-tableonce more
he tumbled the entire contents of the plate down the dog's throat,
selecting Cassius this time, as became a considerate master and an
impartial man. When the next course followedconsisting of a plain
pudding and an unwholesome "cream"Magdalen's suspicion of the function
of the dogs at the dinner-table was confirmed. While the master took
the simple pudding, the dogs swallowed the elaborate cream. The admiral
was plainly afraid of offending his cook on the one hand, and of
offending his digestion on the otherand Brutus and Cassius were the
two trained accomplices who regularly helped him every day off the
horns of his dilemma. "Very good! very good!" said the old gentleman,
with the most transparent duplicity. "Tell the cook, my dear, a capital
cream!"
Having placed the wine and dessert on the table, Magdalen was about to
withdraw. Before she could leave the room, her master called her back.
"Stop, stop!" said the admiral; "you don't know the ways of the house
yet, Lucy. Put another wine-glass here, at my right handthe largest
you can find, my dear. I've got a third dog, who comes in at desserta
drunken old sea-dog who has followed my fortunes, afloat and ashore,
for fifty years and more. Yes, yes, that's the sort of glass we want.
You're a good girlyou're a neat, handy girl. Steady, my dear! there's
nothing to be frightened at!"
A sudden thump on the outside of the door, followed by one mighty bark
from each of the dogs, had made Magdalen start. "Come in!" shouted the
admiral. The door opened; the tails of Brutus and Cassius cheerfully
thumped the floor; and old Mazey marched straight up to the right-hand
side of his master's chair. The veteran stood there, with his legs wide
apart and his balance carefully adjusted, as if the dining-room had
been a cabin, and the house a ship pitching in a sea-way.
The admiral filled the large glass with port, filled his own glass with
claret, and raised it to his lips.
"God bless the Queen, Mazey," said the admiral.
"God bless the Queen, your honor," said old Mazey, swallowing his port,
as the dogs swallowed the made-dishes, at a gulp.
"How's the wind, Mazey?"
"West and by Noathe, your honor."
"Any report to-night, Mazey!"
"No report, your honor."
"Good-evening, Mazey."
"Good-evening, your honor."
The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and
walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves
on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat
of the fire. "For what we have received, the Lord make us truly
thankful," said the admiral. "Go downstairs, my good girl, and get your
supper. A light meal, Lucy, if you take my advicea light meal, or you
will have the nightmare. Early to bed, my dear, and early to rise,
makes a parlor-maid healthy and wealthy and wise. That's the wisdom of
your ancestorsyou mustn't laugh at it. Good-night." In those words
Magdalen was dismissed; and so her first day's experience of Admiral
Bartram came to an end.
After breakfast the next morning, the admiral's directions to the new
parlor-maid included among them one particular order which, in
Magdalen's situation, it was especially her interest to receive. In the
old gentleman's absence from home that day, on local business which
took him to Ossory, she was directed to make herself acquainted with
the whole inhabited quarter of the house, and to learn the positions of
the various rooms, so as to know where the bells called her when the
bells rang. Mrs. Drake was charged with the duty of superintending the
voyage of domestic discovery, unless she happened to be otherwise
engagedin which case any one of the inferior servants would be equally
competent to act as Magdalen's guide.
At noon the admiral left for Ossory, and Magdalen presented herself in
Mrs. Drake's room, to be shown over the house. Mrs. Drake happened to
be otherwise engaged, and referred her to the head house-maid. The head
house-maid happened on that particular morning to be in the same
condition as Mrs. Drake, and referred her to the under-house-maids. The
under-house-maids declared they were all behindhand and had not a
minute to sparethey suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had
nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better,
than he knew his A B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret
indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal.
She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that
the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among
them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. Mrs. Drake, as she had
seen for herself, was really engaged that morning over her accounts.
But of all the servants under her who had made their excuses not one
had even affected to be more occupied than usual. Their looks said
plainly, "We don't like you; and we won't show you over the house."
She found her way to old Mazey, not by the scanty directions given her,
but by the sound of the veteran's cracked and quavering voice, singing
in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal sea-song"Tom
Bowling." Just as she stopped among the rambling stone passages on the
basement story of the house, uncertain which way to turn next, she
heard the tuneless old voice in the distance, singing these lines:
"His form was of the manliest beau-u-u-uty,
His heart was ki-i-ind and soft;
Faithful below Tom did his duty,
But now he's gone alo-o-o-o-oft
But now he's go-o-o-one aloft!"
Magdalen followed in the direction of the quavering voice, and found
herself in a little room looking out on the back yard. There sat old
Mazey, with his spectacles low on his nose, and his knotty old hands
blundering over the rigging of his model ship. There were Brutus and
Cassius digesting before the fire again, and snoring as if they
thoroughly enjoyed it. There was Lord Nelson on one wall, in flaming
watercolors; and there, on the other, was a portrait of Admiral
Bartram's last flagship, in full sail on a sea of slate, with a
salmon-colored sky to complete the illusion.
"What, they won't show you over the housewon't they?" said old Mazey.
"I will, then! That head house-maid's a sour one, my dearif ever there
was a sour one yet. You're too young and good-looking to please
'emthat's what you are." He rose, took off his spectacles, and feebly
mended the fire. "She's as straight as a poplar," said old Mazey,
considering Magdalen's figure in drowsy soliloquy. "I say she's as
straight as a poplar, and his honor the admiral says so too! Come
along, my dear," he proceeded, addressing himself to Magdalen again.
"I'll teach you your Pints of the Compass first. When you know your
Pints, blow high, blow low, you'll find it plain sailing all over the
house."
He led the way to the doorstopped, and suddenly bethinking himself of
his miniature ship, went back to put his model away in an empty
cupboardled the way to the door againstopped once moreremembered
that some of the rooms were chillyand pottered about, swearing and
grumbling, and looking for his hat. Magdalen sat down patiently to wait
for him. She gratefully contrasted his treatment of her with the
treatment she had received from the women. Resist it as firmly, despise
it as proudly as we may, all studied unkindnessno matter how
contemptible it may behas a stinging power in it which reaches to the
quick. Magdalen only knew how she had felt the small malice of the
female servants, by the effect which the rough kindness of the old
sailor produced on her afterward. The dumb welcome of the dogs, when
the movements in the room had roused them from their sleep, touched her
more acutely still. Brutus pushed his mighty muzzle companionably into
her hand; and Cassius laid his friendly fore-paw on her lap. Her heart
yearned over the two creatures as she patted and caressed them. It
seemed only yesterday since she and the dogs at Combe-Raven had roamed
the garden together, and had idled away the summer mornings luxuriously
on the shady lawn.
Old Mazey found his hat at last, and they started on their exploring
expedition, with the dogs after them.
Leaving the basement story of the house, which was entirely devoted to
the servants' offices, they ascended to the first floor, and entered
the long corridor, with which Magdalen's last night's experience had
already made her acquainted. "Put your back ag'in this wall," said old
Mazey, pointing to the long wallpierced at irregular intervals with
windows looking out over a courtyard and fish-pondwhich formed the
right-hand side of the corridor, as Magdalen now stood. "Put your back
here," said the veteran, "and look straight afore you. What do you
see?""The opposite wall of the passage," said Magdalen."Ay! ay! what
else?""The doors leading into the rooms.""What else?""I see nothing
else." Old Mazey chuckled, winked, and shook his knotty forefinger at
Magdalen, impressively. "You see one of the Pints of the Compass, my
dear. When you've got your back ag'in this wall, and when you look
straight afore you, you look Noathe. If you ever get lost hereaway, put
your back ag'in the wall, look out straight afore you, and say to
yourself: 'I look Noathe!' You do that like a good girl, and you won't
lose your bearings."
After administering this preliminary dose of instruction, old Mazey
opened the first of the doors on the left-hand side of the passage. It
led into the dining-room, with which Magdalen was already familiar. The
second room was fitted up as a library; and the third, as a
morning-room. The fourth and fifth doorsboth belonging to dismantled
and uninhabited rooms, and both locked-brought them to the end of the
north wing of the house, and to the opening of a second and shorter
passage, placed at a right angle to the first. Here old Mazey, who had
divided his time pretty equally during the investigation of the rooms,
in talking of "his honor the Admiral," and whistling to the dogs,
returned with all possible expedition to the points of the compass, and
gravely directed Magdalen to repeat the ceremony of putting her back
against the wall. She attempted to shorten the proceedings, by
declaring (quite correctly) that in her present position she knew she
was looking east. "Don't you talk about the east, my dear," said old
Mazey, proceeding unmoved with his own system of instruction, "till you
know the east first. Put your back ag'in this wall, and look straight
afore you. What do you see?" The remainder of the catechism proceeded
as before. When the end was reached, Magdalen's instructor was
satisfied. He chuckled and winked at her once more. "Now you may talk
about the east, my dear," said the veteran, "for now you know it."
The east passage, after leading them on for a few yards only,
terminated in a vestibule, with a high door in it which faced them as
they advanced. The door admitted them to a large and lofty
drawing-room, decorated, like all the other apartments, with valuable
old-fashioned furniture. Leading the way across this room, Magdalen's
conductor pushed back a heavy sliding-door, opposite the door of
entrance. "Put your apron over your head," said old Mazey. "We are
coming to the Banqueting-Hall now. The floor's mortal cold, and the
damp sticks to the place like cockroaches to a collier. His honor the
admiral calls it the Arctic Passage. I've got my name for it, tooI
call it, Freeze-your-Bones."
Magdalen passed through the doorway, and found herself in the ancient
Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux.
On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in
embrasures, and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred feet
in length. On her right hand, ranged in one long row from end to end of
the opposite wall, hung a dismal collection of black, begrimed old
pictures, rotting from their frames, and representing battle-scenes by
sea and land. Below the pictures, midway down the length of the wall,
yawned a huge cavern of a fireplace, surmounted by a towering
mantel-piece of black marble. The one object of furniture (if furniture
it might be called) visible far or near in the vast emptiness of the
place, was a gaunt ancient tripod of curiously chased metal, standing
lonely in the middle of the hall, and supporting a wide circular pan,
filled deep with ashes from an extinct charcoal fire. The high ceiling,
once finely carved and gilt, was foul with dirt and cobwebs; the naked
walls at either end of the room were stained with damp; and the cold of
the marble floor struck through the narrow strip of matting laid down,
parallel with the windows, as a foot-path for passengers across the
wilderness of the room. No better name for it could have been devised
than the name which old Mazey had found. "Freeze-your-Bones" accurately
described, in three words, the Banqueting-Hall at St. Crux.
"Do you never light a fire in this dismal place?" asked Magdalen.
"It all depends on which side of Freeze-your-Bones his honor the
admiral lives," said old Mazey. "His honor likes to shift his quarters,
sometimes to one side of the house, sometimes to the other. If he lives
Noathe of Freeze-your-Boneswhich is where you've just come fromwe
don't waste our coals here. If he lives South of
Freeze-your-Boneswhich is where we are going to nextwe light the fire
in the grate and the charcoal in the pan. Every night, when we do that,
the damp gets the better of us: every morning, we turn to again, and
get the better of the damp."
With this remarkable explanation, old Mazey led the way to the lower
end of the Hall, opened more doors, and showed Magdalen through another
suite of rooms, four in number, all of moderate size, and all furnished
in much the same manner as the rooms in the northern wing. She looked
out of the windows, and saw the neglected gardens of St. Crux,
overgrown with brambles and weeds. Here and there, at no great distance
in the grounds, the smoothly curving line of one of the tidal streams
peculiar to the locality wound its way, gleaming in the sunlight,
through gaps in the brambles and trees. The more distant view ranged
over the flat eastward country beyond, speckled with its scattered
little villages; crossed and recrossed by its network of "back-waters";
and terminated abruptly by the long straight line of sea-wall which
protects the defenseless coast of Essex from invasion by the sea.
"Have we more rooms still to see?" asked Magdalen, turning from the
view of the garden, and looking about her for another door.
"No more, my dearwe've run aground here, and we may as well wear round
and put back again," said old Mazey. "There's another side of the
housedue south of you as you stand nowwhich is all tumbling about our
ears. You must go out into the garden if you want to see it; it's built
off from us by a brick bulkhead, t'other side of this wall here. The
monks lived due south of us, my dear, hundreds of years afore his honor
the admiral was born or thought of, and a fine time of it they had, as
I've heard. They sang in the church all the morning, and drank grog in
the orchard all the afternoon. They slept off their grog on the best of
feather-beds, and they fattened on the neighborhood all the year round.
Lucky beggars! lucky beggars!"
Apostrophizing the monks in these terms, and evidently regretting that
he had not lived himself in those good old times, the veteran led the
way back through the rooms. On the return passage across
"Freeze-your-Bones," Magdalen preceded him. "She's as straight as a
poplar," mumbled old Mazey to himself, hobbling along after his
youthful companion, and wagging his venerable head in cordial approval.
"I never was particular what nation they belonged to; but I always
did like 'em straight and fine grown, and I always shall like 'em
straight and fine grown, to my dying day."
"Are there more rooms to see upstairs, on the second floor?" asked
Magdalen, when they had returned to the point from which they had
started.
The naturally clear, distinct tones of her voice had hitherto reached
the old sailor's imperfect sense of hearing easily enough. Rather to
her surprise, he became stone deaf on a sudden, to her last question.
"Are you sure of your Pints of the Compass?" he inquired. "If you're
not sure, put your back ag'in the wall, and we'll go all over 'em
again, my dear, beginning with the Noathe."
Magdalen assured him that she felt quite familiar, by this time, with
all the points, the "Noathe" included; and then repeated her question
in louder tones. The veteran obstinately matched her by becoming deafer
than ever.
"Yes, my dear," he said, "you're right; it is chilly in these
passages; and unless I go back to my fire, my fire'll go outwon't it?
If you don't feel sure of your Pints of the Compass, come in to me and
I'll put you right again." He winked benevolently, whistled to the
dogs, and hobbled off. Magdalen heard him chuckle over his own success
in balking her curiosity on the subject of the second floor. "I know
how to deal with 'em!" said old Mazey to himself, in high triumph.
"Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wivesI know how
to deal with 'em!"
Left by herself, Magdalen exemplified the excellence of the old
sailor's method of treatment, in her particular case, by ascending the
stairs immediately, to make her own observations on the second floor.
The stone passage here was exactly similar, except that more doors
opened out of it, to the passage on the first floor. She opened the two
nearest doors, one after another, at a venture, and discovered that
both rooms were bed-chambers. The fear of being discovered by one of
the woman-servants in a part of the house with which she had no
concern, warned her not to push her investigations on the bedroom floor
too far at starting. She hurriedly walked down the passage to see where
it ended, discovered that it came to its termination in a lumber-room,
answering to the position of the vestibule downstairs, and retraced her
steps immediately.
On her way back she noticed an object which had previously escaped her
attention. It was a low truckle-bed, placed parallel with the wall, and
close to one of the doors on the bedroom side. In spite of its strange
and comfortless situation, the bed was apparently occupied at night by
a sleeper; the sheets were on it, and the end of a thick red
fisherman's cap peeped out from under the pillow. She ventured on
opening the door near which the bed was placed, and found herself, as
she conjectured from certain signs and tokens, in the admiral's
sleeping chamber. A moment's observation of the room was all she dared
risk, and, softly closing the door again, she returned to the kitchen
regions.
The truckle-bed, and the strange position in which it was placed, dwelt
on her mind all through the afternoon. Who could possibly sleep in it?
The remembrance of the red fisherman's cap, and the knowledge she had
already gained of Mazey's dog-like fidelity to his master, helped her
to guess that the old sailor might be the occupant of the truckle-bed.
But why, with bedrooms enough and to spare, should he occupy that cold
and comfortless situation at night? Why should he sleep on guard
outside his master's door? Was there some nocturnal danger in the house
of which the admiral was afraid? The question seemed absurd, and yet
the position of the bed forced it irresistibly on her mind.
Stimulated by her own ungovernable curiosity on this subject, Magdalen
ventured to question the housekeeper. She acknowledged having walked
from end to end of the passage on the second floor, to see if it was as
long as the passage on the first; and she mentioned having noticed with
astonishment the position of the truckle-bed. Mrs. Drake answered her
implied inquiry shortly and sharply. "I don't blame a young girl like
you," said the old lady, "for being a little curious when she first
comes into such a strange house as this. But remember, for the future,
that your business does not lie on the bedroom story. Mr. Mazey sleeps
on that bed you noticed. It is his habit at night to sleep outside his
master's door." With that meager explanation Mrs. Drake's lips closed,
and opened no more.
Later in the day Magdalen found an opportunity of applying to old Mazey
himself. She discovered the veteran in high good humor, smoking his
pipe, and warming a tin mug of ale at his own snug fire.
"Mr. Mazey," she asked, boldly, "why do you put your bed in that cold
passage?"
"What! you have been upstairs, you young jade, have you?" said old
Mazey, looking up from his mug with a leer.
Magdalen smiled and nodded. "Come! come! tell me," she said, coaxingly.
"Why do you sleep outside the admiral's door?"
"Why do you part your hair in the middle, my dear?" asked old Mazey,
with another leer.
"I suppose, because I am accustomed to do it," answered Magdalen.
"Ay! ay!" said the veteran. "That's why, is it? Well, my dear, the
reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep
outside the admiral's door. I know how to deal with 'em!" chuckled old
Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph.
"Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wivesI know how
to deal with 'em!"
Magdalen's third and last attempt at solving the mystery of the
truckle-bed was made while she was waiting on the admiral at dinner.
The old gentleman's questions gave her an opportunity of referring to
the subject, without any appearance of presumption or disrespect; but
he proved to be quite as impenetrable, in his way, as old Mazey and
Mrs. Drake had been in theirs. "It doesn't concern you, my dear," said
the admiral, bluntly. "Don't be curious. Look in your Old Testament
when you go downstairs, and see what happened in the Garden of Eden
through curiosity. Be a good girl, and don't imitate your mother Eve."
Late at night, as Magdalen passed the end of the second-floor passage,
proceeding alone on her way up to her own room, she stopped and
listened. A screen was placed at the entrance of the corridor, so as to
hide it from the view of persons passing on the stairs. The snoring she
heard on the other side of the screen encouraged her to slip round it,
and to advance a few steps. Shading the light of her candle with her
hand, she ventured close to the admiral's door, and saw, to her
surprise, that the bed had been moved since she had seen it in the
day-time, so as to stand exactly across the door, and to bar the way
entirely to any one who might attempt to enter the admiral's room.
After this discovery, old Mazey himself, snoring lustily, with the red
fisherman's cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and the blankets drawn up
to his nose, became an object of secondary importance only, by
comparison with his bed. That the veteran did actually sleep on guard
before his master's door, and that he and the admiral and the
housekeeper were in the secret of this unaccountable proceeding, was
now beyond all doubt.
"A strange end," thought Magdalen, pondering over her discovery as she
stole upstairs to her own sleeping-room"a strange end to a strange
day!"
CHAPTER II.
The first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen was, to all
appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret Trust than on the
day when she first entered on her service at St. Crux.
But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight lost.
Experience had already satisfied her on one important pointexperience
had shown that she could set the rooted distrust of the other servants
safely at defiance. Time had accustomed the women to her presence in
the house, without shaking the vague conviction which possessed them
all alike, that the newcomer was not one of themselves. All that
Magdalen could do in her own defense was to keep the instinctive female
suspicion of her confined within those purely negative limits which it
had occupied from the first, and this she accomplished.
Day after day the women watched her with the untiring vigilance of
malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a discovery
rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and
industriouslywith an ever-present remembrance of herself and her
placethe new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of rest and
relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day with old
Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night during which
she was secure from observation in the solitude of her room. Thanks to
the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each one of the servants
had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a room of her own. Alone
in the night, Magdalen might dare to be herself againmight dream of
the past, and wake from the dream, encountering no curious eyes to
notice that she was in tearsmight ponder over the future, and be
roused by no whisperings in corners, which tainted her with the
suspicion of "having something on her mind."
Satisfied, thus far, of the perfect security of her position in the
house, she profited next by a second chance in her favor, whichbefore
the fortnight was at an endrelieved her mind of all doubt on the
formidable subject of Mrs. Lecount.
Partly from the accidental gossip of the women at the table in the
servants' hall; partly from a marked paragraph in a Swiss newspaper,
which she had found one morning lying open on the admiral's
easy-chairshe gained the welcome assurance that no danger was to be
dreaded, this time, from the housekeeper's presence on the scene. Mrs.
Lecount had, as it appeared, passed a week or more at St. Crux after
the date of her master's death, and had then left England, to live on
the interest of her legacy, in honorable and prosperous retirement, in
her native place. The paragraph in the Swiss newspaper described the
fulfillment of this laudable project. Mrs. Lecount had not only
established herself at Zurich, but (wisely mindful of the uncertainty
of life) had also settled the charitable uses to which her fortune was
to be applied after her death. One half of it was to go to the founding
of a "Lecompte Scholarship" for poor students in the University of
Geneva. The other half was to be employed by the municipal authorities
of Zurich in the maintenance and education of a certain number of
orphan girls, natives of the city, who were to be trained for domestic
service in later life. The Swiss journalist adverted to these
philanthropic bequests in terms of extravagant eulogy. Zurich was
congratulated on the possession of a Paragon of public virtue; and
William Tell, in the character of benefactor to Switzerland, was
compared disadvantageously with Mrs. Lecount.
The third week began, and Magdalen was now at liberty to take her first
step forward on the way to the discovery of the Secret Trust.
She ascertained from old Mazey that it was his master's custom, during
the winter and spring months, to occupy the rooms in the north wing;
and during the summer and autumn to cross the Arctic passage of
"Freeze-your-Bones," and live in the eastward apartments which looked
out on the garden. While the Banqueting-Hall remainedowing to the
admiral's inadequate pecuniary resourcesin its damp and dismantled
state, and while the interior of St. Crux was thus comfortlessly
divided into two separate residences, no more convenient arrangement
than this could well have been devised. Now and then (as Magdalen
understood from her informant) there were days, both in winter and
summer, when the admiral became anxious about the condition of the
rooms which he was not occupying at the time, and when he insisted on
investigating the state of the furniture, the pictures, and the books
with his own eyes. On these occasions, in summer as in winter, a
blazing fire was kindled for some days previously in the large grate,
and the charcoal was lighted in the tripod-pan, to keep the
Banqueting-Hall as warm as circumstances would admit. As soon as the
old gentleman's anxieties were set at rest the rooms were shut up
again, and "Freeze-your-Bones" was once more abandoned for weeks and
weeks together to damp, desolation, and decay. The last of these
temporary migrations had taken place only a few days since; the admiral
had satisfied himself that the rooms in the east wing were none the
worse for the absence of their master, and he might now be safely
reckoned on as settled in the north wing for weeks, and perhaps, if the
season was cold, for months to come.
Trifling as they might be in themselves, these particulars were of
serious importance to Magdalen, for they helped her to fix the limits
of the field of search. Assuming that the admiral was likely to keep
all his important documents within easy reach of his own hand, she
might now feel certain that the Secret Trust was secured in one or
other of the rooms in the north wing.
In which room? That question was not easy to answer.
Of the four inhabitable rooms which were all at the admiral's disposal
during the daythat is to say, of the dining-room, the library, the
morning-room, and the drawing-room opening out of the vestibulethe
library appeared to be the apartment in which, if he had a preference,
he passed the greater part of his time. There was a table in this room,
with drawers that locked; there was a magnificent Italian cabinet, with
doors that locked; there were five cupboards under the book-cases,
every one of which locked. There were receptacles similarly secured in
the other rooms; and in all or any of these papers might be kept.
She had answered the bell, and had seen him locking and unlocking, now
in one room, now in another, but oftenest in the library. She had
noticed occasionally that his expression was fretful and impatient when
he looked round at her from an open cabinet or cupboard and gave his
orders; and she inferred that something in connection with his papers
and possessionsit might or might not be the Secret Trustirritated and
annoyed him from time to time. She had heard him more than once lock
something up in one of the rooms, come out and go into another room,
wait there a few minutes, then return to the first room with his keys
in his hand, and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This
fidgety anxiety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of
the inbred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally
active man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirementa life
drifting backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment
to steady it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it was
just as probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and
unlockings, might be attributable to the existence of some private
responsibility which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old
man's easy existence, and which tormented him with a sense of
oppression new to the experience of his later years. Either one of
these interpretations might explain his conduct as reasonably and as
probably as the other. Which was the right interpretation of the two,
it was, in Magdalen's position, impossible to say.
The one certain discovery at which she arrived was made in her first
day's observation of him. The admiral was a rigidly careful man with
his keys.
All the smaller keys he kept on a ring in the breast-pocket of his
coat. The larger he locked up together; generally, but not always, in
one of the drawers of the library table. Sometimes he left them secured
in this way at night; sometimes he took them up to the bedroom with him
in a little basket. He had no regular times for leaving them or for
taking them away with him; he had no discoverable reason for now
securing them in the library-table drawer, and now again locking them
up in some other place. The inveterate willfulness and caprice of his
proceedings in these particulars defied every effort to reduce them to
a system, and baffled all attempts at calculating on them beforehand.
The hope of gaining positive information to act on, by laying artful
snares for him which he might fall into in his talk, proved, from the
outset, to be utterly futile.
In Magdalen's situation all experiments of this sort would have been in
the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With the admiral
they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer about from one
subject to another; his habit of keeping his tongue perpetually going,
so long as there was anybody, no matter whom, within reach of the sound
of his voice; his comical want of all dignity and reserve with his
servants, promised, in appearance, much, and performed in reality
nothing. No matter how diffidently or how respectfully Magdalen might
presume on her master's example, and on her master's evident liking for
her, the old man instantly discovered the advance she was making from
her proper position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a
quaint good humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt
straightforwardness of purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory
as it may sound, Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached; he
kept the distance between himself and his servant more effectually than
if he had been the proudest man in England. The systematic reserve of a
superior toward an inferior may be occasionally overcomethe systematic
familiarity never.
Slowly the time dragged on. The fourth week came; and Magdalen had made
no new discoveries. The prospect was depressing in the last degree.
Even in the apparently hopeless event of her devising a means of
getting at the admiral's keys, she could not count on retaining
possession of them unsuspected more than a few hourshours which might
be utterly wasted through her not knowing in what direction to begin
the search. The Trust might be locked up in any one of some twenty
receptacles for papers, situated in four different rooms; and which
room was the likeliest to look in, which receptacle was the most
promising to begin with, which position among other heaps of papers the
one paper needful might be expected to occupy, was more than she could
say. Hemmed in by immeasurable uncertainties on every side; condemned,
as it were, to wander blindfold on the very brink of success, she
waited for the chance that never came, for the event that never
happened, with a patience which was sinking already into the patience
of despair.
Night after night she looked back over the vanished days, and not an
event rose on her memory to distinguish them one from the other. The
only interruptions to the weary uniformity of the life at St. Crux were
caused by the characteristic delinquencies of old Mazey and the dogs.
At certain intervals, the original wildness broke out in the natures of
Brutus and Cassius. The modest comforts of home, the savory charms of
made dishes, the decorous joy of digestions accomplished on
hearth-rugs, lost all their attractions, and the dogs ungratefully left
the house to seek dissipation and adventure in the outer world. On
these occasions the established after-dinner formula of question and
answer between old Mazey and his master varied a little in one
particular. "God bless the Queen, Mazey," and "How's the wind, Mazey?"
were followed by a new inquiry: "Where are the dogs, Mazey?" "Out on
the loose, your honor, and be damned to 'em," was the veteran's
unvarying answer. The admiral always sighed and shook his head gravely
at the news, as if Brutus and Cassius had been sons of his own, who
treated him with a want of proper filial respect. In two or three days'
time the dogs always returned, lean, dirty, and heartily ashamed of
themselves. For the whole of the next day they were invariably tied up
in disgrace. On the day after they were scrubbed clean, and were
formally re-admitted to the dining-room. There, Civilization, acting
through the subtle medium of the Saucepan, recovered its hold on them;
and the admiral's two prodigal sons, when they saw the covers removed,
watered at the mouth as copiously as ever.
Old Mazey, in his way, proved to be just as disreputably inclined on
certain occasions as the dogs. At intervals, the original wildness in
his nature broke out; he, too, lost all relish for the comforts of
home, and ungratefully left the house. He usually disappeared in the
afternoon, and returned at night as drunk as liquor could make him. He
was by many degrees too seasoned a vessel to meet with any disasters on
these occasions. His wicked old legs might take roundabout methods of
progression, but they never failed him; his wicked old eyes might see
double, but they always showed him the way home. Try as hard as they
might, the servants could never succeed in persuading him that he was
drunk; he always scorned the imputation. He even declined to admit the
idea privately into his mind, until he had first tested his condition
by an infallible criterion of his own.
It was his habit, in these cases of Bacchanalian emergency, to stagger
obstinately into his room on the ground-floor, to take the model-ship
out of the cupboard, and to try if he could proceed with the
never-to-be-completed employment of setting up the rigging. When he had
smashed the tiny spars, and snapped asunder the delicate ropesthen,
and not till then, the veteran admitted facts as they were, on the
authority of practical evidence. "Ay! ay!" he used to say
confidentially to himself, "the women are right. Drunk again,
Mazeydrunk again!" Having reached this discovery, it was his habit to
wait cunningly in the lower regions until the admiral was safe in his
room, and then to ascend in discreet list slippers to his post. Too
wary to attempt getting into the truckle-bed (which would have been
only inviting the catastrophe of a fall against his master's door), he
always walked himself sober up and down the passage. More than once
Magdalen had peeped round the screen, and had seen the old sailor
unsteadily keeping his watch, and fancying himself once more at his
duty on board ship. "This is an uncommonly lively vessel in a sea-way,"
he used to mutter under his breath, when his legs took him down the
passage in zigzag directions, or left him for the moment studying the
"Pints of the Compass" on his own system, with his back against the
wall. "A nasty night, mind you," he would maunder on, taking another
turn. "As dark as your pocket, and the wind heading us again from the
old quarter." On the next day old Mazey, like the dogs, was kept
downstairs in disgrace. On the day after, like the dogs again, he was
reinstated in his privileges; and another change was introduced in the
after-dinner formula. On entering the room, the old sailor stopped
short and made his excuses in this brief yet comprehensive form of
words, with his back against the door: "Please your honor, I'm ashamed
of myself." So the apology began and ended. "This mustn't happen again,
Mazey," the admiral used to answer. "It shan't happen again, your
honor." "Very good. Come here, and drink your glass of wine. God bless
the Queen, Mazey." The veteran tossed off his port, and the dialogue
ended as usual.
So the days passed, with no incidents more important than these to
relieve their monotony, until the end of the fourth week was at hand.
On the last day, an event happened; on the last day, the long deferred
promise of the future unexpectedly began to dawn. While Magdalen was
spreading the cloth in the dining-room, as usual, Mrs. Drake looked in,
and instructed her on this occasion, for the first time, to lay the
table for two persons. The admiral had received a letter from his
nephew. Early that evening Mr. George Bartram was expected to return to
St. Crux.
CHAPTER III.
After placing the second cover, Magdalen awaited the ringing of the
dinner-bell, with an interest and impatience which she found it no easy
task to conceal. The return of Mr. Bartram would, in all probability,
produce a change in the life of the house; and from change of any kind,
no matter how trifling, something might be hoped. The nephew might be
accessible to influences which had failed to reach the uncle. In any
case, the two would talk of their affairs over their dinner; and
through that talkproceeding day after day in her presencethe way to
discovery, now absolutely invisible, might, sooner or later, show
itself.
At last the bell rang, the door opened, and the two gentlemen entered
the room together.
Magdalen was struck, as her sister had been struck, by George Bartram's
resemblance to her fatherjudging by the portrait at Combe-Raven, which
presented the likeness of Andrew Vanstone in his younger days. The
light hair and florid complexion, the bright blue eyes and hardy
upright figure, familiar to her in the picture, were all recalled to
her memory, as the nephew followed the uncle across the room and took
his place at table. She was not prepared for this sudden revival of the
lost associations of home. Her attention wandered as she tried to
conceal its effect on her; and she made a blunder in waiting at table,
for the first time since she had entered the house.
A quaint reprimand from the admiral, half in jest, half in earnest,
gave her time to recover herself. She ventured another look at George
Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this time roused her
curiosity immediately. His face and manner plainly expressed anxiety
and preoccupation of mind. He looked oftener at his plate than at his
uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one passing inspection of the
new parlor-maid, when the admiral spoke to her) he never looked at all.
Some uncertainty was evidently troubling his thoughts; some oppression
was weighing on his natural freedom of manner. What uncertainty? what
oppression? Would any personal revelations come out, little by little,
in the course of conversation at the dinner-table?
No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and nothing in
the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conversation halted
on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and trifling private
topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, took their turn with
the small household history of St. Crux; the leaders of the revolution
which expelled Louis Philippe from the throne of France marched side by
side, in the dinner-table review, with old Mazey and the dogs. The
dessert was put on the table, the old sailor came in, drank his loyal
toast, paid his respects to "Master George," and went out again.
Magdalen followed him, on her way back to the servants' offices, having
heard nothing in the conversation of the slightest importance to the
furtherance of her own design, from the first word of it to the last.
She struggled hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They
could hardly talk again to-morrow, they could hardly talk again the
next day, of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders
yet; and time was all her own.
Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their
easy-chairs on either side of the fire; and, in Magdalen's absence,
began the very conversation which it was Magdalen's interest to hear.
"Claret, George?" said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the
table. "You look out of spirits."
"I am a little anxious, sir," replied George, leaving his glass empty,
and looking straight into the fire.
"I am glad to hear it," rejoined the admiral. "I am more than a little
anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days of
Marchand nothing done! Your time comes to an end on the third of May;
and there you sit, as if you had years still before you, to turn round
in."
George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine.
"Am I really to understand, sir," he asked, "that you are serious in
what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me
to that incomprehensible condition?"
"I don't call it incomprehensible," said the admiral, irritably.
"Don't you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionallyas you
have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a
farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a
certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your
kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might
improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not
a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence,
I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!"
"No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We don't
understand sneering in Her Majesty's Navy!"
"I mean no offense, sir. But I think it's a little hard to astonish me
by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my
experience of your characterand then, when I naturally ask for an
explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If you and
Noel came to some private arrangement together before he made his will,
why not tell me? Why set up a mystery between us, where no mystery need
be?"
"I won't have it, George!" cried the admiral, angrily drumming on the
table with the nutcrackers. "You are trying to draw me like a badger,
but I won't be drawn! I'll make any conditions I please; and I'll be
accountable to nobody for them unless I like. It's quite bad enough to
have worries and responsibilities laid on my unlucky shoulders that I
never bargained fornever mind what worries: they're not yours, they're
minewithout being questioned and cross-questioned as if I was a
witness in a box. Here's a pretty fellow!" continued the admiral,
apostrophizing his nephew in red-hot irritation, and addressing himself
to the dogs on the hearth-rug for want of a better audience. "Here's a
pretty fellow? He is asked to help himself to two uncommonly
comfortable things in their waya fortune and a wife; he is allowed six
months to get the wife in (we should have got her, in the Navy, bag and
baggage, in six days); he has a round dozen of nice girls, to my
certain knowledge, in one part of the country and another, all at his
disposal to choose from, and what does he do? He sits month after
month, with his lazy legs crossed before him; he leaves the girls to
pine on the stem, and he bothers his uncle to know the reason why! I
pity the poor unfortunate women. Men were made of flesh and blood, and
plenty of it, too, in my time. They're made of machinery now."
"I can only repeat, sir, I am sorry to have offended you," said George.
"Pooh! pooh! you needn't look at me in that languishing way if you
are," retorted the admiral. "Stick to your wine, and I'll forgive you.
Your good health, George. I'm glad to see you again at St. Crux. Look
at that plateful of sponge-cakes! The cook has sent them up in honor of
your return. We can't hurt her feelings, and we can't spoil our wine.
Here!"The admiral tossed four sponge-cakes in quick succession down
the accommodating throats of the dogs. "I am sorry, George," the old
gentleman gravely proceeded; "I am really sorry you haven't got your
eye on one of those nice girls. You don't know what a loss you're
inflicting on yourself; you don't know what trouble and mortification
you're causing me by this shilly-shally conduct of yours."
"If you would only allow me to explain myself, sir, you would view my
conduct in a totally different light. I am ready to marry to-morrow, if
the lady will have me."
"The devil you are! So you have got a lady in your eye, after all? Why
in Heaven's name couldn't you tell me so before? Never mind, I'll
forgive you everything, now I know you have laid your hand on a wife.
Fill your glass again. Here's her health in a bumper. By-the-by, who is
she?"
"I'll tell you directly, admiral. When we began this conversation, I
mentioned that I was a little anxious"
"She's not one of my round dozen of nice girlsaha, Master George, I
see that in your face already! Why are you anxious?"
"I am afraid you will disapprove of my choice, sir."
"Don't beat about the bush! How the deuce can I say whether I
disapprove or not, if you won't tell me who she is?"
"She is the eldest daughter of Andrew Vanstone, of Combe-Raven."
"Who!!!"
"Miss Vanstone, sir."
The admiral put down his glass of wine untasted.
"You're right, George," he said. "I do disapprove of your choice
strongly disapprove of it."
"Is it the misfortune of her birth, sir, that you object to?"
"God forbid! the misfortune of her birth is not her fault, poor thing.
You know as well as I do, George, what I object to."
"You object to her sister?"
"Certainly! The most liberal man alive might object to her sister, I
think."
"It's hard, sir, to make Miss Vanstone suffer for her sister's faults."
"Faults, do you call them? You have a mighty convenient memory,
George, when your own interests are concerned."
"Call them crimes if you like, sirI say again, it's hard on Miss
Vanstone. Miss Vanstone's life is pure of all reproach. From first to
last she has borne her hard lot with such patience, and sweetness, and
courage as not one woman in a thousand would have shown in her place.
Ask Miss Garth, who has known her from childhood. Ask Mrs. Tyrrel, who
blesses the day when she came into the house"
"Ask a fiddlestick's end! I beg your pardon, George, but you are enough
to try the patience of a saint. My good fellow, I don't deny Miss
Vanstone's virtues. I'll admit, if you like, she's the best woman that
ever put on a petticoat. That is not the question"
"Excuse me, admiralit is the question, if she is to be my wife."
"Hear me out, George; look at it from my point of view, as well as your
own. What did your cousin Noel do? Your cousin Noel fell a victim, poor
fellow, to one of the vilest conspiracies I ever heard of, and the
prime mover of that conspiracy was Miss Vanstone's damnable sister. She
deceived him in the most infamous manner; and as soon as she was down
for a handsome legacy in his will, she had the poison ready to take his
life. This is the truth; we know it from Mrs. Lecount, who found the
bottle locked up in her own room. If you marry Miss Vanstone, you make
this wretch your sister-in-law. She becomes a member of our family. All
the disgrace of what she has done; all the disgrace of what she may
doand the Devil, who possesses her, only knows what lengths she may go
to nextbecomes our disgrace. Good heavens, George, consider what a
position that is! Consider what pitch you touch, if you make this woman
your sister-in-law."
"You have put your side of the question, admiral," said George
resolutely; "now let me put mine. A certain impression is produced on
me by a young lady whom I meet with under very interesting
circumstances. I don't act headlong on that impression, as I might have
done if I had been some years younger; I wait, and put it to the trial.
Every time I see this young lady the impression strengthens; her beauty
grows on me, her character grows on me; when I am away from her, I am
restless and dissatisfied; when I am with her, I am the happiest man
alive. All I hear of her conduct from those who know her best more than
confirms the high opinion I have formed of her. The one drawback I can
discover is caused by a misfortune for which she is not responsiblethe
misfortune of having a sister who is utterly unworthy of her. Does this
discoveryan unpleasant discovery, I grant youdestroy all those good
qualities in Miss Vanstone for which I love and admire her? Nothing of
the sortit only makes her good qualities all the more precious to me
by contrast. If I am to have a drawback to contend withand who expects
anything else in this world?I would infinitely rather have the
drawback attached to my wife's sister than to my wife. My wife's sister
is not essential to my happiness, but my wife is. In my opinion, sir,
Mrs. Noel Vanstone has done mischief enough already. I don't see the
necessity of letting her do more mischief, by depriving me of a good
wife. Right or wrong, that is my point of view. I don't wish to trouble
you with any questions of sentiment. All I wish to say is that I am old
enough by this time to know my own mind, and that my mind is made up.
If my marriage is essential to the execution of your intentions on my
behalf, there is only one woman in the world whom I can marry, and
that woman is Miss Vanstone."
There was no resisting this plain declaration. Admiral Bartram rose
from his chair without making any reply, and walked perturbedly up and
down the room.
The situation was emphatically a serious one. Mrs. Girdlestone's death
had already produced the failure of one of the two objects contemplated
by the Secret Trust. If the third of May arrived and found George a
single man, the second (and last) of the objects would then have failed
in its turn. In little more than a fortnight, at the very latest, the
Banns must be published in Ossory church, or the time would fail for
compliance with one of the stipulations insisted on in the Trust.
Obstinate as the admiral was by nature, strongly as he felt the
objections which attached to his nephew's contemplated alliance, he
recoiled in spite of himself, as he paced the room and saw the facts on
either side immovably staring him in the face.
"Are you engaged to Miss Vanstone?" he asked, suddenly.
"No, sir," replied George. "I thought it due to your uniform kindness
to me to speak to you on the subject first."
"Much obliged, I'm sure. And you have put off speaking to me to the
last moment, just as you put off everything else. Do you think Miss
Vanstone will say yes when you ask her?"
George hesitated.
"The devil take your modesty!" shouted the admiral. "This is not a time
for modesty; this is a time for speaking out. Will she or won't she?"
"I think she will, sir."
The admiral laughed sardonically, and took another turn in the room. He
suddenly stopped, put his hands in his pockets, and stood still in a
corner, deep in thought. After an interval of a few minutes, his face
cleared a little; it brightened with the dawning of a new idea. He
walked round briskly to George's side of the fire, and laid his hand
kindly on his nephew's shoulder.
"You're wrong, George," he said; "but it is too late now to set you
right. On the sixteenth of next month the Banns must be put up in
Ossory church, or you will lose the money. Have you told Miss Vanstone
the position you stand in? Or have you put that off to the eleventh
hour, like everything else?"
"The position is so extraordinary, sir, and it might lead to so much
misapprehension of my motives, that I have felt unwilling to allude to
it. I hardly know how I can tell her of it at all."
"Try the experiment of telling her friends. Let them know it's a
question of money, and they will overcome her scruples, if you can't.
But that is not what I had to say to you. How long do you propose
stopping here this time?"
"I thought of staying a few days, and then"
"And then of going back to London and making your offer, I suppose?
Will a week give you time enough to pick your opportunity with Miss
Vanstonea week out of the fortnight or so that you have to spare?"
"I will stay here a week, admiral, with pleasure, if you wish it."
"I don't wish it. I want you to pack up your traps and be off
to-morrow."
George looked at his uncle in silent astonishment.
"You found some letters waiting for you when you got here," proceeded
the admiral. "Was one of those letters from my old friend, Sir Franklin
Brock?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was it an invitation to you to go and stay at the Grange?"
"Yes, sir."
"To go at once?"
"At once, if I could manage it."
"Very good. I want you to manage it; I want you to start for the Grange
to-morrow."
George looked back at the fire, and sighed impatiently.
"I understand you now, admiral," he said. "You are entirely mistaken in
me. My attachment to Miss Vanstone is not to be shaken in that
manner."
Admiral Bartram took his quarter-deck walk again, up and down the room.
"One good turn deserves another, George," said the old gentleman. "If I
am willing to make concessions on my side, the least you can do is to
meet me half-way, and make concessions on yours."
"I don't deny it, sir."
"Very well. Now listen to my proposal. Give me a fair hearing, Georgea
fair hearing is every man's privilege. I will be perfectly just to
begin with. I won't attempt to deny that you honestly believe Miss
Vanstone is the only woman in the world who can make you happy. I don't
question that. What I do question is, whether you really know your own
mind in this matter quite so well as you think you know it yourself.
You can't deny, George, that you have been in love with a good many
women in your time? Among the rest of them, you have been in love with
Miss Brock. No longer ago than this time last year there was a sneaking
kindness between you and that young lady, to say the least of it. And
quite right, too! Miss Brock is one of that round dozen of darlings I
mentioned over our first glass of wine."
"You are confusing an idle flirtation, sir, with a serious attachment,"
said George. "You are altogether mistakenyou are, indeed."
"Likely enough; I don't pretend to be infallibleI leave that to my
juniors. But I happen to have known you, George, since you were the
height of my old telescope; and I want to have this serious attachment
of yours put to the test. If you can satisfy me that your whole heart
and soul are as strongly set on Miss Vanstone as you suppose them to
be, I must knock under to necessity, and keep my objections to myself.
But I must be satisfied first. Go to the Grange to-morrow, and stay
there a week in Miss Brock's society. Give that charming girl a fair
chance of lighting up the old flame again if she can, and then come
back to St. Crux, and let me hear the result. If you tell me, as an
honest man, that your attachment to Miss Vanstone still remains
unshaken, you will have heard the last of my objections from that
moment. Whatever misgivings I may feel in my own mind, I will say
nothing, and do nothing, adverse to your wishes. There is my proposal.
I dare say it looks like an old man's folly, in your eyes. But the old
man won't trouble you much longer, George; and it may be a pleasant
reflection, when you have got sons of your own, to remember that you
humored him in his last days."
He came back to the fire-place as he said those words, and laid his
hand once more on his nephew's shoulder. George took the hand and
pressed it affectionately. In the tenderest and best sense of the word,
his uncle had been a father to him.
"I will do what you ask me, sir," he replied, "if you seriously wish
it. But it is only right to tell you that the experiment will be
perfectly useless. However, if you prefer my passing a week at the
Grange to my passing it here, to the Grange I will go."
"Thank you, George," said the admiral, bluntly. "I expected as much
from you, and you have not disappointed me.If Miss Brock doesn't get
us out of this mess," thought the wily old gentleman, as he resumed his
place at the table, "my nephew's weather-cock of a head has turned
steady with a vengeance!We'll consider the question settled for
to-night, George," he continued, aloud, "and call another subject.
These family anxieties don't improve the flavor of my old claret. The
bottle stands with you. What are they doing at the theaters in London?
We always patronized the theaters, in my time, in the Navy. We used to
like a good tragedy to begin with, and a hornpipe to cheer us up at the
end of the entertainment."
For the rest of the evening, the talk flowed in the ordinary channels.
Admiral Bartram only returned to the forbidden subject when he and his
nephew parted for the night.
"You won't forget to-morrow, George?"
"Certainly not, sir. I'll take the dog-cart, and drive myself over
after breakfast."
Before noon the next day Mr. George Bartram had left the house, and the
last chance in Magdalen's favor had left it with him.
CHAPTER IV.
When the servants' dinner-bell at St. Crux rang as usual on the day of
George Bartram's departure, it was remarked that the new parlor-maid's
place at table remained empty. One of the inferior servants was sent to
her room to make inquiries, and returned with the information that
"Louisa" felt a little faint, and begged that her attendance at table
might be excused for that day. Upon this, the superior authority of the
housekeeper was invoked, and Mrs. Drake went upstairs immediately to
ascertain the truth for herself. Her first look of inquiry satisfied
her that the parlor-maid's indisposition, whatever the cause of it
might be, was certainly not assumed to serve any idle or sullen purpose
of her own. She respectfully declined taking any of the remedies which
the housekeeper offered, and merely requested permission to try the
efficacy of a walk in the fresh air.
"I have been accustomed to more exercise, ma'am, than I take here," she
said. "Might I go into the garden, and try what the air will do for
me?"
"Certainly. Can you walk by yourself, or shall I send some one with
you?"
"I will go by myself, if you please, ma'am."
"Very well. Put on your bonnet and shawl, and, when you get out, keep
in the east garden. The admiral sometimes walks in the north garden,
and he might feel surprised at seeing you there. Come to my room, when
you have had air and exercise enough, and let me see how you are."
In a few minutes more Magdalen was out in the east garden. The sky was
clear and sunny; but the cold shadow of the house rested on the garden
walk and chilled the midday air. She walked toward the ruins of the old
monastery, situated on the south side of the more modern range of
buildings. Here there were lonely open spaces to breathe in freely;
here the pale March sunshine stole through the gaps of desolation and
decay, and met her invitingly with the genial promise of spring.
She ascended three or four riven stone steps, and seated herself on
some ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The place she
had chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In centuries long
gone by, the stream of human sin and human suffering had flowed, day
after day, to the confessional, over the place where she now sat. Of
all the miserable women who had trodden those old stones in the bygone
time, no more miserable creature had touched them than the woman whose
feet rested on them now.
Her hands trembled as she placed them on either side of her, to support
herself on the stone seat. She laid them on her lap; they trembled
there. She held them out, and looked at them wonderingly; they trembled
as she looked. "Like an old woman!" she said, faintly, and let them
drop again at her side.
For the first time, that morning, the cruel discovery had forced itself
on her mindthe discovery that her strength was failing her, at the
time when she had most confidently trusted to it, at the time when she
wanted it most. She had felt the surprise of Mr. Bartram's unexpected
departure, as if it had been the shock of the severest calamity that
could have befallen her. That one check to her hopesa check which at
other times would only have roused the resisting power in her to new
effortshad struck her with as suffocating a terror, had prostrated her
with as all-mastering a despair, as if she had been overwhelmed by the
crowning disaster of expulsion from St. Crux. But one warning could be
read in such a change as this. Into the space of little more than a
year she had crowded the wearing and wasting emotions of a life. The
bountiful gifts of health and strength, so prodigally heaped on her by
Nature, so long abused with impunity, were failing her at last.
She looked up at the far faint blue of the sky. She heard the joyous
singing of birds among the ivy that clothed the ruins. Oh the cold
distance of the heavens! Oh the pitiless happiness of the birds! Oh the
lonely horror of sitting there, and feeling old and weak and worn, in
the heyday of her youth! She rose with a last effort of resolution, and
tried to keep back the hysterical passion swelling at her heart by
moving and looking about her. Rapidly and more rapidly she walked to
and fro in the sunshine. The exercise helped her, through the very
fatigue that she felt from it. She forced the rising tears desperately
back to their sources; she fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched
it from its hold. Little by little her mind began to clear again: the
despairing fear of herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts.
There were reserves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted;
there was a spirit sorely wounded, but not yet subdued.
She gradually extended the limits of her walk; she gradually recovered
the exercise of her observation.
At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less
ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where the
stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time.
Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells;
wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been
used as sheds to hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux. No padlocks
guarded any of the doors. Magdalen had only to push them to let the
daylight in on the litter inside. She resolved to investigate the sheds
one after the othernot from curiosity, not with the idea of making
discoveries of any sort. Her only object was to fill up the vacant
time, and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her from returning to her
mind.
The first shed she opened contained the gardener's utensils, large and
small. The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture,
empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without
covers, and books torn from their bindings. As Magdalen turned to leave
the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it
contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled
against a fragment of china lying near it. She stooped, and discovered
that the tinkling substance was a rusty key.
She picked up the key and looked at it. She walked out into the air,
and considered a little. More old forgotten keys were probably lying
about among the lumber in the sheds. What if she collected all she
could find, and tried them, one after another, in the locks of the
cabinets and cupboards now closed against her? Was there chance enough
that any one of them might fit to justify her in venturing on the
experiment? If the locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the
furnitureif there were no protective niceties of modern invention to
contend againstthere was chance enough beyond all question. Who could
say whether the very key in her hand might not be the lost duplicate of
one of the keys on the admiral's bunch? In the dearth of all other
means of finding the way to her end, the risk was worth running. A
flash of the old spirit sparkled in her weary eyes as she turned and
re-entered the shed.
Half an hour more brought her to the limits of the time which she could
venture to allow herself in the open air. In that interval she had
searched the sheds from first to last, and had found five more keys.
"Five more chances!" she thought to herself, as she hid the keys, and
hastily returned to the house.
After first reporting herself in the housekeeper's room, she went
upstairs to remove her bonnet and shawl; taking that opportunity to
hide the keys in her bed-chamber until night came. They were crusted
thick with rust and dirt; but she dared not attempt to clean them until
bed-time secluded her from the prying eyes of the servants in the
solitude of her room.
When the dinner hour brought her, as usual, into personal contact with
the admiral, she was at once struck by a change in him. For the first
time in her experience the old gentleman was silent and depressed. He
ate less than usual, and he hardly said five words to her from the
beginning of the meal to the end. Some unwelcome subject of reflection
had evidently fixed itself on his mind, and remained there
persistently, in spite of his efforts to shake it off. At intervals
through the evening, she wondered with an ever-growing perplexity what
the subject could be.
At last the lagging hours reached their end, and bed-time came. Before
she slept that night Magdalen had cleaned the keys from all impurities,
and had oiled the wards, to help them smoothly into the locks. The last
difficulty that remained was the difficulty of choosing the time when
the experiment might be tried with the least risk of interruption and
discovery. After carefully considering the question overnight, Magdalen
could only resolve to wait and be guided by the events of the next day.
The morning came, and for the first time at St. Crux events justified
the trust she had placed in them. The morning came, and the one
remaining difficulty that perplexed her was unexpectedly smoothed away
by no less a person than the admiral himself! To the surprise of every
one in the house, he announced at breakfast that he had arranged to
start for London in an hour; that he should pass the night in town; and
that he might be expected to return to St. Crux in time for dinner on
the next day. He volunteered no further explanations to the housekeeper
or to any one else, but it was easy to see that his errand to London
was of no ordinary importance in his own estimation. He swallowed his
breakfast in a violent hurry, and he was impatiently ready for the
carriage before it came to the door.
Experience had taught Magdalen to be cautious. She waited a little,
after Admiral Bartram's departure, before she ventured on trying her
experiment with the keys. It was well she did so. Mrs. Drake took
advantage of the admiral's absence to review the condition of the
apartments on the first floor. The results of the investigation by no
means satisfied her; brooms and dusters were set to work; and the
house-maids were in and out of the rooms perpetually, as long as the
daylight lasted.
The evening passed, and still the safe opportunity for which Magdalen
was on the watch never presented itself. Bed-time came again, and found
her placed between the two alternatives of trusting to the doubtful
chances of the next morning, or of trying the keys boldly in the dead
of night. In former times she would have made her choice without
hesitation. She hesitated now; but the wreck of her old courage still
sustained her, and she determined to make the venture at night.
They kept early hours at St. Crux. If she waited in her room until
half-past eleven, she would wait long enough. At that time she stole
out on to the staircase, with the keys in her pocket, and the candle in
her hand.
On passing the entrance to the corridor on the bedroom floor, she
stopped and listened. No sound of snoring, no shuffling of infirm
footsteps was to be heard on the other side of the screen. She looked
round it distrustfully. The stone passage was a solitude, and the
truckle-bed was empty. Her own eyes had shown her old Mazey on his way
to the upper regions, more than an hour since, with a candle in his
hand. Had he taken advantage of his master's absence to enjoy the
unaccustomed luxury of sleeping in a room? As the thought occurred to
her, a sound from the further end of the corridor just caught her ear.
She softly advanced toward it, and heard through the door of the last
and remotest of the spare bed-chambers the veteran's lusty snoring in
the room inside. The discovery was startling, in more senses than one.
It deepened the impenetrable mystery of the truckle-bed; for it showed
plainly that old Mazey had no barbarous preference of his own for
passing his nights in the corridor; he occupied that strange and
comfortless sleeping-place purely and entirely on his master's account.
It was no time for dwelling on the reflections which this conclusion
might suggest. Magdalen retraced her steps along the passage, and
descended to the first floor. Passing the doors nearest to her, she
tried the library first. On the staircase and in the corridors she had
felt her heart throbbing fast with an unutterable fear; but a sense of
security returned to her when she found herself within the four walls
of the room, and when she had closed the door on the ghostly quiet
outside.
The first lock she tried was the lock of the table-drawer. None of the
keys fitted it. Her next experiment was made on the cabinet. Would the
second attempt fail, like the first?
No! One of the keys fitted; one of the keys, with a little patient
management, turned the lock. She looked in eagerly. There were open
shelves above, and one long drawer under them. The shelves were devoted
to specimens of curious minerals, neatly labeled and arranged. The
drawer was divided into compartments. Two of the compartments contained
papers. In the first, she discovered nothing but a collection of
receipted bills. In the second, she found a heap of business documents;
but the writing, yellow with age, was enough of itself to warn her that
the Trust was not there. She shut the doors of the cabinet, and, after
locking them again with some little difficulty, proceeded to try the
keys in the bookcase cupboards next, before she continued her
investigations in the other rooms.
The bookcase cupboards were unassailable, the drawers and cupboards in
all the other rooms were unassailable. One after another she tried them
patiently in regular succession. It was useless. The chance which the
cabinet in the library had offered in her favor was the first chance
and the last.
She went back to her room, seeing nothing but her own gliding shadow,
hearing nothing but her own stealthy footfall in the midnight stillness
of the house. After mechanically putting the keys away in their former
hiding-place, she looked toward her bed, and turned away from it,
shuddering. The warning remembrance of what she had suffered that
morning in the garden was vividly present to her mind. "Another chance
tried," she thought to herself, "and another chance lost! I shall break
down again if I think of it; and I shall think of it if I lie awake in
the dark." She had brought a work-box with her to St. Crux, as one of
the many little things which in her character of a servant it was
desirable to possess; and she now opened the box and applied herself
resolutely to work. Her want of dexterity with her needle assisted the
object she had in view; it obliged her to pay the closest attention to
her employment; it forced her thoughts away from the two subjects of
all others which she now dreaded mostherself and the future.
The next day, as he had arranged, the admiral returned. His visit to
London had not improved his spirits. The shadow of some unconquerable
doubt still clouded his face; his restless tongue was strangely quiet,
while Magdalen waited on him at his solitary meal. That night the
snoring resounded once more on the inner side of the screen, and old
Mazey was back again in the comfortless truckle-bed.
Three more days passedApril came. On the second of the month
returning as unexpectedly as he had departed a week beforeMr. George
Bartram re-appeared at St. Crux.
He came back early in the afternoon, and had an interview with his
uncle in the library. The interview over, he left the house again, and
was driven to the railway by the groom in time to catch the last train
to London that night. The groom noticed, on the road, that "Mr. George
seemed to be rather pleased than otherwise at leaving St. Crux." He
also remarked, on his return, that the admiral swore at him for
overdriving the horsesan indication of ill-temper, on the part of his
master, which he described as being entirely without precedent in all
his former experience. Magdalen, in her department of service, had
suffered in like manner under the old man's irritable humor: he had
been dissatisfied with everything she did in the dining-room; and he
had found fault with all the dishes, one after another, from the
mutton-broth to the toasted cheese.
The next two days passed as usual. On the third day an event happened.
In appearance, it was nothing more important than a ring at the
drawing-room bell. In reality, it was the forerunner of approaching
catastrophethe formidable herald of the end.
It was Magdalen's business to answer the bell. On reaching the
drawing-room door, she knocked as usual. There was no reply. After
again knocking, and again receiving no answer, she ventured into the
room, and was instantly met by a current of cold air flowing full on
her face. The heavy sliding door in the opposite wall was pushed back,
and the Arctic atmosphere of Freeze-your-Bones was pouring unhindered
into the empty room.
She waited near the door, doubtful what to do next; it was certainly
the drawing-room bell that had rung, and no other. She waited, looking
through the open doorway opposite, down the wilderness of the
dismantled Hall.
A little consideration satisfied her that it would be best to go
downstairs again, and wait there for a second summons from the bell. On
turning to leave the room, she happened to look back once more, and
exactly at that moment she saw the door open at the opposite extremity
of the Banqueting-Hallthe door leading into the first of the
apartments in the east wing. A tall man came out, wearing his great
coat and his hat, and rapidly approached the drawing-room. His gait
betrayed him, while he was still too far off for his features to be
seen. Before he was quite half-way across the Hall, Magdalen had
recognizedthe admiral.
He looked, not irritated only, but surprised as well, at finding his
parlor-maid waiting for him in the drawing-room, and inquired, sharply
and suspiciously, what she wanted there? Magdalen replied that she had
come there to answer the bell. His face cleared a little when he heard
the explanation. "Yes, yes; to be sure," he said. "I did ring, and then
I forgot it." He pulled the sliding door back into its place as he
spoke. "Coals," he resumed, impatiently, pointing to the empty scuttle.
"I rang for coals."
Magdalen went back to the kitchen regions. After communicating the
admiral's order to the servant whose special duty it was to attend to
the fires, she returned to the pantry, and, gently closing the door,
sat down alone to think.
It had been her impression in the drawing-roomand it was her
impression stillthat she had accidentally surprised Admiral Bartram on
a visit to the east rooms, which, for some urgent reason of his own, he
wished to keep a secret. Haunted day and night by the one dominant idea
that now possessed her, she leaped all logical difficulties at a bound,
and at once associated the suspicion of a secret proceeding on the
admiral's part with the kindred suspicion which pointed to him as the
depositary of the Secret Trust. Up to this time it had been her settled
belief that he kept all his important documents in one or other of the
suite of rooms which he happened to be occupying for the time being.
Whyshe now asked herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion
which had hitherto satisfied her mindwhy might he not lock some of
them up in the other rooms as well? The remembrance of the keys still
concealed in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the
reasonableness of this new view. With one unimportant exception, those
keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the north side
of the house. Might they not succeed with the cabinets and cupboards in
the east rooms, on which she had never tried them, or thought of trying
them, yet? If there was a chance, however small, of turning them to
better account than she had turned them thus far, it was a chance to be
tried. If there was a possibility, however remote, that the Trust might
be hidden in any one of the locked repositories in the east wing, it
was a possibility to be put to the test. When? Her own experience
answered the question. At the time when no prying eyes were open, and
no accidents were to be fearedwhen the house was quietin the dead of
night.
She knew enough of her changed self to dread the enervating influence
of delay. She determined to run the risk headlong that night.
More blunders escaped her when dinner-time came; the admiral's
criticisms on her waiting at table were sharper than ever. His hardest
words inflicted no pain on her; she scarcely heard himher mind was
dull to every sense but the sense of the coming trial. The evening
which had passed slowly to her on the night of her first experiment
with the keys passed quickly now. When bed-time came, bed-time took her
by surprise.
She waited longer on this occasion than she had waited before. The
admiral was at home; he might alter his mind and go downstairs again,
after he had gone up to his room; he might have forgotten something in
the library and might return to fetch it. Midnight struck from the
clock in the servants' hall before she ventured out of her room, with
the keys again in her pocket, with the candle again in her hand.
At the first of the stairs on which she set her foot to descend, an
all-mastering hesitation, an unintelligible shrinking from some peril
unknown, seized her on a sudden. She waited, and reasoned with herself.
She had recoiled from no sacrifices, she had yielded to no fears, in
carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admission to St.
Crux; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the outset had
been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of resolution the
starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance. "I shrank from
nothing to get here," she said to herself. "What madness possesses me
that I shrink now?"
Every pulse in her quickened at the thought, with an animating shame
that nerved her to go on. She descended the stairs, from the third
floor to the second, from the second to the first, without trusting
herself to pause again within easy reach of her own room. In another
minute, she had reached the end of the corridor, had crossed the
vestibule, and had entered the drawing-room. It was only when her grasp
was on the heavy brass handle of the sliding doorit was only at the
moment before she pushed the door backthat she waited to take breath.
The Banqueting-Hall was close on the other side of the wooden partition
against which she stood; her excited imagination felt the death-like
chill of it flowing over her already.
She pushed back the sliding door a few inchesand stopped in momentary
alarm. When the admiral had closed it in her presence that day, she had
heard no noise. When old Mazey had opened it to show her the rooms in
the east wing, she had heard no noise. Now, in the night silence, she
noticed for the first time that the door made a sounda dull, rushing
sound, like the wind.
She roused herself, and pushed it further backpushed it halfway into
the hollow chamber in the wall constructed to receive it. She advanced
boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the Banqueting-Hall face
to face.
The moon was rounding the southern side of the house. Her paling beams
streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting
light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the
pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light,
heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its
lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was
lost to view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the
long row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed up in night. But
one visible object was discernible, besides the gleaming windows and
the moon-striped floor. Midway in the last and furthest of the strips
of light, the tripod rose erect on its gaunt black legs, like a monster
called to life by the moona monster rising through the light, and
melting invisibly into the upper shadows of the Hall. Far and near, all
sound lay dead, drowned in the stagnant cold. The soothing hush of
night was awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid abysses of
silence more immeasurable still.
She stood motionless in the door-way, with straining eyes, with
straining ears. She looked for some moving thing, she listened for some
rising sound, and looked and listened in vain. A quick ceaseless
shivering ran through her from head to foot. The shivering of fear, or
the shivering of cold? The bare doubt roused her resolute will. "Now,"
she thought, advancing a step through the door-way, "or never! I'll
count the strips of moonlight three times over, and cross the Hall."
"One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two,
three, four, five."
As the final number passed her lips at the third time of counting, she
crossed the Hall. Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, one hand
holding the candle, the other mechanically grasping the folds of her
dress, she sped, ghost-like, down the length of the ghostly place. She
reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms, opened it, and ran
in. The sudden relief of attaining a refuge, the sudden entrance into a
new atmosphere, overpowered her for the moment. She had just time to
put the candle safely on a table before she dropped giddy and
breathless into the nearest chair.
Little by little she felt the rest quieting her. In a few minutes she
became conscious of the triumph of having won her way to the east
rooms. In a few minutes she was strong enough to rise from the chair,
to take the keys from her pocket, and to look round her.
The first objects of furniture in the room which attracted her
attention were an old bureau of carved oak, and a heavy buhl table with
a cabinet attached. She tried the bureau first; it looked the likeliest
receptacle for papers of the two. Three of the keys proved to be of a
size to enter the lock, but none of them would turn it. The bureau was
unassailable. She left it, and paused to trim the wick of the candle
before she tried the buhl cabinet next.
At the moment when she raised her hand to the candle, she heard the
stillness of the Banqueting-Hall shudder with the terror of a sounda
sound faint and momentary, like the distant rushing of the wind.
The sliding door in the drawing-room had moved.
Which way had it moved? Had an unknown hand pushed it back in its
socket further than she had pushed it, or pulled it to again, and
closed it? The horror of being shut out all night, by some
undiscoverable agency, from the life of the house, was stronger in her
than the horror of looking across the Banqueting-Hall. She made
desperately for the door of the room.
It had fallen to silently after her when she had come in, but it was
not closed. She pulled it open, and looked.
The sight that met her eyes rooted her, panic-stricken, to the spot.
Close to the first of the row of windows, counting from the
drawing-room, and full in the gleam of it, she saw a solitary figure.
It stood motionless, rising out of the furthest strip of moonlight on
the floor. As she looked, it suddenly disappeared. In another instant
she saw it again, in the second strip of moonlightlost it againsaw it
in the third striplost it once moreand saw it in the fourth. Moment
by moment it advanced, now mysteriously lost in the shadow, now
suddenly visible again in the light, until it reached the fifth and
nearest strip of moonlight. There it paused, and strayed aside slowly
to the middle of the Hall. It stopped at the tripod, and stood,
shivering audibly in the silence, with its hands raised over the dead
ashes, in the action of warming them at a fire. It turned back again,
moving down the path of the moonlight, stopped at the fifth window,
turned once more, and came on softly through the shadow straight to the
place where Magdalen stood.
Her voice was dumb, her will was helpless. Every sense in her but the
seeing sense was paralyzed. The seeing senseheld fast in the fetters
of its own terrorlooked unchangeably straightforward, as it had looked
from the first. There she stood in the door-way, full in the path of
the figure advancing on her through the shadow, nearer and nearer, step
by step.
It came close.
The bonds of horror that held her burst asunder when it was within
arm's-length. She started back. The light of the candle on the table
fell full on its face, and showed herAdmiral Bartram.
A long, gray dressing-gown was wrapped round him. His head was
uncovered; his feet were bare. In his left hand he carried his little
basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly, his lips whispering without
intermission, his open eyes staring straight before him with the glassy
stare of death. His eyes revealed to her the terrifying truth. He was
walking in his sleep.
The terror of seeing him as she saw him now was not the terror she had
felt when her eyes first lighted on himan apparition in the
moon-light, a specter in the ghostly Hall. This time she could struggle
against the shock; she could feel the depth of her own fear.
He passed her, and stopped in the middle of the room. Magdalen ventured
near enough to him to be within reach of his voice as he muttered to
himself. She ventured nearer still, and heard the name of her dead
husband fall distinctly from the sleep-walker's lips.
"Noel!" he said, in the low monotonous tones of a dreamer talking in
his sleep, "my good fellow, Noel, take it back again! It worries me day
and night. I don't know where it's safe; I don't know where to put it.
Take it back, Noeltake it back!"
As those words escaped him, he walked to the buhl cabinet. He sat down
in the chair placed before it, and searched in the basket among his
keys. Magdalen softly followed him, and stood behind his chair, waiting
with the candle in her hand. He found the key, and unlocked the
cabinet. Without an instant's hesitation, he drew out a drawer, the
second of a row. The one thing in the drawer was a folded letter. He
removed it, and put it down before him on the table. "Take it back,
Noel!" he repeated, mechanically; "take it back!"
Magdalen looked over his shoulder and read these lines, traced in her
husband's handwriting, at the top of the letter: To be kept in your
own possession, and to be opened by yourself only on the day of my
decease. Noel Vanstone. She saw the words plainly, with the admiral's
name and the admiral's address written under them.
The Trust within reach of her hand! The Trust traced to its
hiding-place at last!
She took one step forward, to steal round his chair and to snatch the
letter from the table. At the instant when she moved, he took it up
once more, locked the cabinet, and, rising, turned and faced her.
In the impulse of the moment, she stretched out her hand toward the
hand in which he held the letter. The yellow candle-light fell full on
him. The awful death-in-life of his facethe mystery of the sleeping
body, moving in unconscious obedience to the dreaming minddaunted her.
Her hand trembled, and dropped again at her side.
He put the key of the cabinet back in the basket, and crossed the room
to the bureau, with the basket in one hand and the letter in the other.
Magdalen set the candle on the table again, and watched him. As he had
opened the cabinet, so he now opened the bureau. Once more Magdalen
stretched out her hand, and once more she recoiled before the mystery
and the terror of his sleep. He put the letter in a drawer at the back
of the bureau, and closed the heavy oaken lid again. "Yes," he said.
"Safer there, as you say, Noelsafer there." So he spoke. So, time
after time, the words that betrayed him revealed the dead man living
and speaking again in the dream.
Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not heard the lock turn. As he
slowly moved away, walking back once more toward the middle of the
room, she tried the lid. It was locked. That discovery made, she looked
to see what he was doing next. He was leaving the room again, with the
basket of keys in his hand. When her first glance overtook him, he was
crossing the threshold of the door.
Some inscrutable fascination possessed her, some mysterious attraction
drew her after him, in spite of herself. She took up the candle and
followed him mechanically, as if she too were walking in her sleep. One
behind the other, in slow and noiseless progress, they crossed the
Banqueting-Hall. One behind the other, they passed through the
drawing-room, and along the corridor, and up the stairs. She followed
him to his own door. He went in, and shut it behind him softly. She
stopped, and looked toward the truckle-bed. It was pushed aside at the
foot, some little distance away from the bedroom door. Who had moved
it? She held the candle close and looked toward the pillow, with a
sudden curiosity and a sudden doubt.
The truckle-bed was empty.
The discovery startled her for the moment, and for the moment only.
Plain as the inferences were to be drawn from it, she never drew them.
Her mind, slowly recovering the exercise of its faculties, was still
under the influence of the earlier and the deeper impressions produced
on it. Her mind followed the admiral into his room, as her body had
followed him across the Banqueting-Hall.
Had he lain down again in his bed? Was he still asleep? She listened at
the door. Not a sound was audible in the room. She tried the door, and,
finding it not locked, softly opened it a few inches and listened
again. The rise and fall of his low, regular breathing instantly caught
her ear. He was still asleep.
She went into the room, and, shading the candle-light with her hand,
approached the bedside to look at him. The dream was past; the old
man's sleep was deep and peaceful; his lips were still; his quiet hand
was laid over the coverlet in motionless repose. He lay with his face
turned toward the right-hand side of the bed. A little table stood
there within reach of his hand. Four objects were placed on it; his
candle, his matches, his customary night drink of lemonade, and his
basket of keys.
The idea of possessing herself of his keys that night (if an
opportunity offered when the basket was not in his hand) had first
crossed her mind when she saw him go into his room. She had lost it
again for the moment, in the surprise of discovering the empty
truckle-bed. She now recovered it the instant the table attracted her
attention. It was useless to waste time in trying to choose the one key
wanted from the restthe one key was not well enough known to her to be
readily identified. She took all the keys from the table, in the basket
as they lay, and noiselessly closed the door behind her on leaving the
room.
The truckle-bed, as she passed it, obtruded itself again on her
attention, and forced her to think of it. After a moment's
consideration, she moved the foot of the bed back to its customary
position across the door. Whether he was in the house or out of it, the
veteran might return to his deserted post at any moment. If he saw the
bed moved from its usual place, he might suspect something wrong, he
might rouse his master, and the loss of the keys might be discovered.
Nothing happened as she descended the stairs, nothing happened as she
passed along the corridor; the house was as silent and as solitary as
ever. She crossed the Banqueting-Hall this time without hesitation; the
events of the night had hardened her mind against all imaginary
terrors. "Now, I have got it!" she whispered to herself, in an
irrepressible outburst of exaltation, as she entered the first of the
east rooms and put her candle on the top of the old bureau.
Even yet there was a trial in store for her patience. Some minutes
elapsedminutes that seemed hoursbefore she found the right key and
raised the lid of the bureau. At last she drew out the inner drawer! At
last she had the letter in her hand!
It had been sealed, but the seal was broken. She opened it on the spot,
to make sure that she had actually possessed herself of the Trust
before leaving the room. The end of the letter was the first part of it
she turned to. It came to its conclusion high on the third page, and it
was signed by Noel Vanstone. Below the name these lines were added in
the admiral's handwriting:
"This letter was received by me at the same time with the will of my
friend, Noel Vanstone. In the event of my death, without leaving any
other directions respecting it, I beg my nephew and my executors to
understand that I consider the requests made in this document as
absolutely binding on me.
"ARTHUR EVERARD BARTRAM."
She left those lines unread. She just noticed that they were not in
Noel Vanstone's handwriting; and, passing over them instantly, as
immaterial to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, and
transferred her attention to the opening sentences on the first page.
She read these words:
"DEAR ADMIRAL BARTRAMWhen you open my Will (in which you are named my
sole executor), you will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue
of my estateafter payment of one legacy of five thousand poundsto
yourself. It is the purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the
object is for which I have left you the fortune which is now placed in
your hands.
"I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended"
She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest, when
her attention suddenly failed her. Somethingshe was too deeply
absorbed to know whathad got between her and the letter. Was it a
sound in the Banqueting-Hall again? She looked over her shoulder at the
door behind her, and listened. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to
be seen. She returned to the letter.
The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity to read
more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a
blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at
which she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her
attention anewthey were the first words she had met with in the letter
which directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of
that discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she
made any second attempt to return to the lost place:
"If your nephew fails to comply with these conditionsthat is to say,
if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he
fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry,
within six calendar months from that timeit is my desire that he shall
not receive"
She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a
hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye,
and gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.
She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with
old Mazey.
The veteran's eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list
slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and
fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that
night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have
inevitably pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: "Drunk
again, Mazey; drunk again."
"You young Jezebel!" said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of
his face, and a frown on the other. "The next time you take to
night-walking in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp
eyes of yours first, and make sure there's nobody else night walking in
the garden outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!"
Keeping fast hold of Magdalen's arm with one hand, he took the letter
from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked
the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy
was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that
horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks,
had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled
as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.
Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a
chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without
uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied
himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from
that commanding position addressed Magdalen once more.
"Come and be locked up!" said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head
with judicial severity. "There'll be a court of inquiry to-morrow
morning, and I'm witnessworse luck!I'm witness. You young jade,
you've committed burglarythat's what you've done. His honor the
admiral's keys stolen; his honor the admiral's desk ransacked; and his
honor the admiral's private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary!
Come and be locked up!" He slowly recovered an upright position, with
the assistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the
bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. "Who'd have thought it?"
said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. "Take the outside of
her, and she's as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and
she's as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what
a pity!"
"Don't hurt me!" said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up to
the chair, and took her by the wrist again. "I'm frightened, Mr.
MazeyI'm dreadfully frightened."
"Hurt you?" repeated the veteran. "I'm a deal too fond of youand more
shame for me at my age!to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will
you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you
be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?"
Magdalen gave the promise required of hergave it with an eager longing
to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle
from the bureau, but old Mazey's cunning hand was too quick for her.
"Let the candle be," said the veteran, winking in momentary
forgetfulness of his responsible position. "You're a trifle quicker on
your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I
don't carry the light."
They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after
Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the
other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness
of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the
way across "Freeze-your-Bones," and all the way upstairs to her own
door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her
the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The
conditions being complied with, he resigned the light with one hand,
and made a dash with the other at the key, drew it from the inside of
the lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside
chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock
again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a
deep grunt of relief. "There she is safe!" Magdalen heard him say, in
regretful soliloquy. "As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a
pity! what a pity!"
The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left
alone in her room.
Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the
corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always
burning. He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against
the opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of
his own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his
great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect
of illimitable doubt. "I'm all abroad to-night," he mumbled to himself.
"Troubled in my mindthat's what it istroubled in my mind."
The old patched slippers and the veteran's existing perplexities
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the
relation of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who
had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and
who still persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his
service. Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the
village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master
called for them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress
and completion of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler
betook themselves to the village inn to drink each other's healths at
parting. They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the
night, and they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished
and perfect state of intoxication on either side.
If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night
wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey the
light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have
presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the
praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had
sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the
interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had
committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In plainer
words, he had deserted his post.
The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram's constitutional tendency to
somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept
outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to
the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to
be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever a
dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep. Over and over again, old
Mazey had been roused by the admiral's attempts to push past the
truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again,
when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had
declined to believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant
inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose
confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question
whether the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the
night. If by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the
slippers in old Mazey's hand pointed straight to the conclusion that
followedhis master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over
the stone stairs and passages of St. Crux. "Lord send he's been quiet!"
muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the
bare contemplation of that prospect. "If his honor's been walking
to-night, it will be the death of him!"
He roused himself for the moment by main forcestrong in his dog-like
fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing elseand fought off
the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with steadier eyes and a
clearer mind. Magdalen's precaution in returning it to its customary
position presented it to him necessarily in the aspect of a bed which
had never been moved from its place. He next examined the counterpane
carefully. Not the faintest vestige appeared of the indentation which
must have been left by footsteps passing over it. There was the plain
evidence before himthe evidence recognizable at last by his own
bewildered eyesthat the admiral had never moved from his room.
"I'll take the Pledge to-morrow!" mumbled old Mazey, in an outburst of
grateful relief. The next moment the fumes of the liquor floated back
insidiously over his brain; and the veteran, returning to his customary
remedy, paced the passage in zigzag as usual, and kept watch on the
deck of an imaginary ship.
Soon after sunrise, Magdalen suddenly heard the grating of the key from
outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and old Mazey
re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his intoxication had
cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. He breathed harder
than ever, in a succession of low growls, and wagged his venerable head
at his own delinquencies without intermission.
"How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats?" inquired the old
sailor. "Has your conscience been quiet enough to let you go to sleep?"
"I have not slept," said Magdalen, drawing back from him in doubt of
what he might do next. "I have no remembrance of what happened after
you locked the doorI think I must have fainted. Don't frighten me
again, Mr. Mazey! I feel miserably weak and ill. What do you want?"
"I want to say something serious," replied old Mazey, with impenetrable
solemnity. "It's been on my mind to come here and make a clean breast
of it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, young woman. I'm going
to disgrace myself."
Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in rising
alarm.
"I know my duty to his honor the admiral," proceeded old Mazey, waving
his hand drearily in the direction of his master's door. "But, try as
hard as I may, I can't find it in my heart, you young jade, to be
witness against you. I liked the make of you (especially about the
waist) when you first came into the house, and I can't help liking the
make of you stillthough you have committed burglary, and though you
are as crooked as Sin. I've cast the eyes of indulgence on fine-grown
girls all my life, and it's too late in the day to cast the eyes of
severity on 'em now. I'm seventy-seven, or seventy-eight, I don't
rightly know which. I'm a battered old hulk, with my seams opening, and
my pumps choked, and the waters of Death powering in on me as fast as
they can. I'm as miserable a sinner as you'll meet with anywhere in
these partsThomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he's worse
than I am, for he's the younger of the two, and he ought to know
better. But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave
with an eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl. More shame for me, you
young Jezebelmore shame for me!"
The veteran's unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him, as
he concluded his harangue in these terms: the last reserves of
austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the
corners of his mouth. Magdalen approached him again, and tried to
speak. He solemnly motioned her back with another dreary wave of his
hand.
"No carneying!" said old Mazey; "I'm bad enough already, without that.
It's my duty to make my report to his honor the admiral, and I will
make it. But if you like to give the house the slip before the
burglary's reported, and the court of inquiry begins, I'll disgrace
myself by letting you go. It's market morning at Ossory, and Dawkes
will be driving the light cart over in a quarter of an hour's time.
Dawkes will take you if I ask him. I know my dutymy duty is to turn
the key on you, and see Dawkes damned first. But I can't find it in my
heart to be hard on a fine girl like you. It's bred in the bone, and it
wunt come out of the flesh. More shame for me, I tell you againmore
shame for me!"
The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took Magdalen
completely by surprise. She had been far too seriously shaken by the
events of the night to be capable of deciding on any subject at a
moment's notice. "You are very good to me, Mr. Mazey," she said. "May I
have a minute by myself to think?"
"Yes, you may," replied the veteran, facing about forthwith and leaving
the room. "They're all alike," proceeded old Mazey, with his head still
running on the sex. "Whatever you offer 'em, they always want something
more. Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives,
they're all alike!"
Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difficulty
than she had anticipated.
If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before herto
charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken
delusion, or to submit to circumstances. Though she owed to the old
sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for
her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his
expenseeven supposing, what was in the last degree improbable, that
the defense would be credited. In the second of the two cases (the case
of submission to circumstances), but one result could be
expectedinstant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well. What object
was to be gained by braving that degradationby leaving the house
publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants who had hated and
distrusted her from the first? The accident which had literally
snatched the Trust from her possession when she had it in her hand was
irreparable. The one apparent compensation under the disasterin other
words, the discovery that the Trust actually existed, and that George
Bartram's marriage within a given time was one of the objects contained
in itwas a compensation which could only be estimated at its true
value by placing it under the light of Mr. Loscombe's experience. Every
motive of which she was conscious was a motive which urged her to leave
the house secretly while the chance was at her disposal. She looked out
into the passage, and called softly to old Mazey to come back.
"I accept your offer thankfully, Mr. Mazey," she said. "You don't know
what hard measure you dealt out to me when you took that letter from my
hand. But you did your duty, and I can be grateful to you for sparing
me this morning, hard as you were upon me last night. I am not such a
bad girl as you think meI am not, indeed."
Old Mazey dismissed the subject with another dreary wave of his hand.
"Let it be," said the veteran; "let it be! It makes no difference, my
girl, to such an old rascal as I am. If you were fifty times worse than
you are, I should let you go all the same. Put on your bonnet and
shawl, and come along. I'm a disgrace to myself and a warning to
othersthat's what I am. No luggage, mind! Leave all your rattle-traps
behind you: to be overhauled, if necessary, at his honor the admiral's
discretion. I can be hard enough on your boxes, you young Jezebel, if I
can't be hard on you."
With these words, old Mazey led the way out of the room. "The less I
see of her the betterespecially about the waist," he said to himself,
as he hobbled downstairs with the help of the banisters.
The cart was standing in the back yard when they reached the lower
regions of the house, and Dawkes (otherwise the farm-bailiff's man) was
fastening the last buckle of the horse's harness. The hoar-frost of the
morning was still white in the shade. The sparkling points of it
glistened brightly on the shaggy coats of Brutus and Cassius, as they
idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths and slowly wagging
tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went out alone and used his
influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid amazement, put a leather
cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow-traveler. Shivering in the
sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of
departure were in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy
bewilderment of thought, and a helpless suspension of feeling. The
events of the night confused themselves hideously with the trivial
circumstances passing before her eyes in the courtyard. She started
with the sudden terror of the night when old Mazey re-appeared to
summon her out to the cart. She trembled with the helpless confusion of
the night when the veteran cast the eyes of indulgence on her for the
last time, and gave her a kiss on the cheek at parting. The next minute
she felt him help her into the cart, and pat her on the back. The next,
she heard him tell her in a confidential whisper that, sitting or
standing, she was as straight as a poplar either way. Then there was a
pause, in which nothing was said, and nothing done; and then the driver
took the reins in hand and mounted to his place.
She roused herself at the parting moment and looked back. The last
sight she saw at St. Crux was old Mazey wagging his head in the
courtyard, with his fellow-profligates, the dogs, keeping time to him
with their tails. The last words she heard were the words in which the
veteran paid his farewell tribute to her charms:
"Burglary or no burglary," said old Mazey, "she's a fine-grown girl, if
ever there was a fine one yet. What a pity! what a pity!"
THE END OF THE SEVENTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From George Bartram to Admiral Bartram.
"London, April 3d, 1848.
"My dear uncle,
"One hasty line, to inform you of a temporary obstacle, which we
neither of us anticipated when we took leave of each other at St. Crux.
While I was wasting the last days of the week at the Grange, the
Tyrrels must have been making their arrangements for leaving London. I
have just come from Portland Place. The house is shut up, and the
family (Miss Vanstone, of course, included) left England yesterday, to
pass the season in Paris.
"Pray don't let yourself be annoyed by this little check at starting.
It is of no serious importance whatever. I have got the address at
which the Tyrrels are living, and I mean to cross the Channel after
them by the mail to-night. I shall find my opportunity in Paris just as
soon as I could have found it in London. The grass shall not grow under
my feet, I promise you. For once in my life, I will take Time as
fiercely by the forelock as if I was the most impetuous man in England;
and, rely on it, the moment I know the result, you shall know the
result, too.
"Affectionately yours,
"GEORGE BARTRAM."
II.
From George Bartram to Miss Garth.
"Paris, April 13th.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"I have just written, with a heavy heart, to my uncle, and I think I
owe it to your kind interest in me not to omit writing next to you.
"You will feel for my disappointment, I am sure, when I tell you, in
the fewest and plainest words, that Miss Vanstone has refused me.
"My vanity may have grievously misled me, but I confess I expected a
very different result. My vanity may be misleading me still; for I must
acknowledge to you privately that I think Miss Vanstone was sorry to
refuse me. The reason she gave for her decisionno doubt a sufficient
reason in her estimationdid not at the time, and does not now, seem
sufficient to me. She spoke in the sweetest and kindest manner, but
she firmly declared that 'her family misfortunes' left her no honorable
alternativebut to think of my own interests as I had not thought of
them myselfand gratefully to decline accepting my offer.
"She was so painfully agitated that I could not venture to plead my own
cause as I might otherwise have pleaded it. At the first attempt I made
to touch the personal question, she entreated me to spare her, and
abruptly left the room. I am still ignorant whether I am to interpret
the 'family misfortunes' which have set up this barrier between us, as
meaning the misfortune for which her parents alone are to blame, or the
misfortune of her having such a woman as Mrs. Noel Vanstone for her
sister. In whichever of these circumstances the obstacle lies, it is no
obstacle in my estimation. Can nothing remove it? Is there no hope?
Forgive me for asking these questions. I cannot bear up against my
bitter disappointment. Neither she, nor you, nor any one but myself,
can know how I love her.
"Ever most truly yours,
"GEORGE BARTRAM.
"P. S.I shall leave for England in a day or two, passing through
London on my way to St. Crux. There are family reasons, connected with
the hateful subject of money, which make me look forward with anything
but pleasure to my next interview with my uncle. If you address your
letter to Long's Hotel, it will be sure to reach me."
III.
From Miss Garth to George Bartram.
"Westmoreland House, April 16th.
"DEAR MR. BARTRAM,
"You only did me justice in supposing that your letter would distress
me. If you had supposed that it would make me excessively angry as
well, you would not have been far wrong. I have no patience with the
pride and perversity of the young women of the present day.
"I have heard from Norah. It is a long letter, stating the particulars
in full detail. I am now going to put all the confidence in your honor
and your discretion which I really feel. For your sake, and for
Norah's, I am going to let you know what the scruple really is which
has misled her into the pride and folly of refusing you. I am old
enough to speak out; and I can tell you, if she had only been wise
enough to let her own wishes guide her, she would have said Yesand
gladly, too.
"The original cause of all the mischief is no less a person than your
worthy uncleAdmiral Bartram.
"It seems that the admiral took it into his head (I suppose during your
absence) to go to London by himself and to satisfy some curiosity of
his own about Norah by calling in Portland Place, under pretense of
renewing his old friendship with the Tyrrels. He came at luncheon-time,
and saw Norah; and, from all I can hear, was apparently better pleased
with her than he expected or wished to be when he came into the house.
"So far, this is mere guess-work; but it is unluckily certain that he
and Mrs. Tyrrel had some talk together alone when luncheon was over.
Your name was not mentioned; but when their conversation fell on Norah,
you were in both their minds, of course. The admiral (doing her full
justice personally) declared himself smitten with pity for her hard lot
in life. The scandalous conduct of her sister must always stand (he
feared) in the way of her future advantage. Who could marry her,
without first making it a condition that she and her sister were to be
absolute strangers to each other? And even then, the objection would
remainthe serious objection to the husband's familyof being connected
by marriage with such a woman as Mrs. Noel Vanstone. It was very sad;
it was not the poor girl's fault, but it was none the less true that
her sister was her rock ahead in life. So he ran on, with no real
ill-feeling toward Norah, but with an obstinate belief in his own
prejudices which bore the aspect of ill-feeling, and which people with
more temper than judgment would be but too readily disposed to resent
accordingly.
"Unfortunately, Mrs. Tyrrel is one of those people. She is an
excellent, warm-hearted woman, with a quick temper and very little
judgment; strongly attached to Norah, and heartily interested in
Norah's welfare. From all I can learn, she first resented the
expression of the admiral's opinion, in his presence, as worldly and
selfish in the last degree; and then interpreted it, behind his back,
as a hint to discourage his nephew's visits, which was a downright
insult offered to a lady in her own house. This was foolish enough so
far; but worse folly was to come.
"As soon as your uncle was gone, Mrs. Tyrrel, most unwisely and
improperly, sent for Norah, and, repeating the conversation that had
taken place, warned her of the reception she might expect from the man
who stood toward you in the position of a father, if she accepted an
offer of marriage on your part. When I tell you that Norah's faithful
attachment to her sister still remains unshaken, and that there lies
hidden under her noble submission to the unhappy circumstances of her
life a proud susceptibility to slights of all kinds, which is deeply
seated in her natureyou will understand the true motive of the refusal
which has so naturally and so justly disappointed you. They are all
three equally to blame in this matter. Your uncle was wrong to state
his objections so roundly and inconsiderately as he did. Mrs. Tyrrel
was wrong to let her temper get the better of her, and to suppose
herself insulted where no insult was intended. And Norah was wrong to
place a scruple of pride, and a hopeless belief in her sister which no
strangers can be expected to share, above the higher claims of an
attachment which might have secured the happiness and the prosperity of
her future life.
"But the mischief has been done. The next question is, can the harm be
remedied?
"I hope and believe it can. My advice is this: Don't take No for an
answer. Give her time enough to reflect on what she has done, and to
regret it (as I believe she will regret it) in secret; trust to my
influence over her to plead your cause for you at every opportunity I
can find; wait patiently for the right moment, and ask her again. Men,
being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too
apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of
the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are
heartily sorry for it afterward.
"In the meanwhile, you must help your own interests by inducing your
uncle to alter his opinion, or at least to make the concession of
keeping his opinion to himself. Mrs. Tyrrel has rushed to the
conclusion that the harm he has done he did intentionallywhich is as
much as to say, in so many words, that he had a prophetic conviction,
when he came into the house, of what she would do when he left it. My
explanation of the matter is a much simpler one. I believe that the
knowledge of your attachment naturally aroused his curiosity to see the
object of it, and that Mrs. Tyrrel's injudicious praises of Norah
irritated his objections into openly declaring themselves. Anyway, your
course lies equally plain before you. Use your influence over your
uncle to persuade him into setting matters right again; trust my
settled resolution to see Norah your wife before six months more are
over our heads; and believe me, your friend and well-wisher,
"HARRIET GARTH."
IV.
From Mrs. Drake to George Bartram.
"St. Crux, April 17th.
"SIR,
"I direct these lines to the hotel you usually stay at in London,
hoping that you may return soon enough from foreign parts to receive my
letter without delay.
"I am sorry to say that some unpleasant events have taken place at St.
Crux since you left it, and that my honored master, the admiral, is far
from enjoying his usual good health. On both these accounts, I venture
to write to you on my own responsibility, for I think your presence is
needed in the house.
"Early in the month a most regrettable circumstance took place. Our new
parlor-maid was discovered by Mr. Mazey, at a late hour of the night
(with her master's basket of keys in her possession), prying into the
private documents kept in the east library. The girl removed herself
from the house the next morning before we were any of us astir, and she
has not been heard of since. This event has annoyed and alarmed my
master very seriously; and to make matters worse, on the day when the
girl's treacherous conduct was discovered, the admiral was seized with
the first symptoms of a severe inflammatory cold. He was not himself
aware, nor was any one else, how he had caught the chill. The doctor
was sent for, and kept the inflammation down until the day before
yesterday, when it broke out again, under circumstances which I am sure
you will be sorry to hear, as I am truly sorry to write of them.
"On the date I have just mentionedI mean the fifteenth of the monthmy
master himself informed me that he had been dreadfully disappointed by
a letter received from you, which had come in the morning from foreign
parts, and had brought him bad news. He did not tell me what the news
wasbut I have never, in all the years I have passed in the admiral's
service, seen him so distressingly upset, and so unlike himself, as he
was on that day. At night his uneasiness seemed to increase. He was in
such a state of irritation that he could not bear the sound of Mr.
Mazey's hard breathing outside his door, and he laid his positive
orders on the old man to go into one of the bedrooms for that night.
Mr. Mazey, to his own great regret, was of course obliged to obey.
"Our only means of preventing the admiral from leaving his room in his
sleep, if the fit unfortunately took him, being now removed, Mr. Mazey
and I agreed to keep watch by turns through the night, sitting, with
the door ajar, in one of the empty rooms near our master's bed-chamber.
We could think of nothing better to do than this, knowing he would not
allow us to lock him in, and not having the door key in our possession,
even if we could have ventured to secure him in his room without his
permission. I kept watch for the first two hours, and then Mr. Mazey
took my place. After having been some little time in my own room, it
occurred to me that the old man was hard of hearing, and that if his
eyes grew at all heavy in the night, his ears were not to be trusted to
warn him if anything happened. I slipped on my clothes again, and went
back to Mr. Mazey. He was neither asleep nor awakehe was between the
two. My mind misgave me, and I went on to the admiral's room. The door
was open, and the bed was empty.
"Mr. Mazey and I went downstairs instantly. We looked in all the north
rooms, one after another, and found no traces of him. I thought of the
drawing-room next, and, being the more active of the two, went first to
examine it. The moment I turned the sharp corner of the passage, I saw
my master coming toward me through the open drawing-room door, asleep
and dreaming, with his keys in his hands. The sliding door behind him
was open also; and the fear came to me then, and has remained with me
ever since, that his dream had led him through the Banqueting-Hall into
the east rooms. We abstained from waking him, and followed his steps
until he returned of his own accord to his bed-chamber. The next
morning, I grieve to say, all the bad symptoms came back; and none of
the remedies employed have succeeded in getting the better of them yet.
By the doctor's advice, we refrained from telling the admiral what had
happened. He is still under the impression that he passed the night as
usual in his own room.
"I have been careful to enter into all the particulars of this
unfortunate accident, because neither Mr. Mazey nor myself desire to
screen ourselves from blame, if blame we have deserved. We both acted
for the best, and we both beg and pray you will consider our
responsible situation, and come as soon as possible to St. Crux. Our
honored master is very hard to manage; and the doctor thinks, as we do,
that your presence is wanted in the house.
"I remain, sir, with Mr. Mazey's respects and my own, your humble
servant,
"SOPHIA DRAKE."
V.
From George Bartram to Miss Garth.
"St. Crux, April 22d.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"Pray excuse my not thanking you sooner for your kind and consoling
letter. We are in sad trouble at St. Crux. Any little irritation I
might have felt at my poor uncle's unlucky interference in Portland
Place is all forgotten in the misfortune of his serious illness. He is
suffering from internal inflammation, produced by cold; and symptoms
have shown themselves which are dangerous at his age. A physician from
London is now in the house. You shall hear more in a few days.
Meantime, believe me, with sincere gratitude,
"Yours most truly,
"GEORGE BARTRAM."
VI.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn Fields, May 6th.
"DEAR MADAM,
"I have unexpectedly received some information which is of the most
vital importance to your interests. The news of Admiral Bartram's death
has reached me this morning. He expired at his own house, on the fourth
of the present month.
"This event at once disposes of the considerations which I had
previously endeavored to impress on you, in relation to your discovery
at St. Crux. The wisest course we can now follow is to open
communications at once with the executors of the deceased gentleman;
addressing them through the medium of the admiral's legal adviser, in
the first instance.
"I have dispatched a letter this day to the solicitor in question. It
simply warns him that we have lately become aware of the existence of a
private Document, controlling the deceased gentleman in his use of the
legacy devised to him by Mr. Noel Vanstone's will. My letter assumes
that the document will be easily found among the admiral's papers; and
it mentions that I am the solicitor appointed by Mrs. Noel Vanstone to
receive communications on her behalf. My object in taking this step is
to cause a search to be instituted for the Trustin the very probable
event of the executors not having met with it yetbefore the usual
measures are adopted for the administration of the admiral's estate. We
will threaten legal proceedings, if we find that the object does not
succeed. But I anticipate no such necessity. Admiral Bartram's
executors must be men of high standing and position; and they will do
justice to you and to themselves in this matter by looking for the
Trust.
"Under these circumstances, you will naturally ask, 'What are our
prospects when the document is found?' Our prospects have a bright side
and a dark side. Let us take the bright side to begin with.
"What do we actually know?
"We know, first, that the Trust does really exist. Secondly, that there
is a provision in it relating to the marriage of Mr. George Bartram in
a given time. Thirdly, that the time (six months from the date of your
husband's death) expired on the third of this month. Fourthly, that Mr.
George Bartram (as I have found out by inquiry, in the absence of any
positive information on the subject possessed by yourself) is, at the
present moment, a single man. The conclusion naturally follows, that
the object contemplated by the Trust, in this case, is an object that
has failed.
"If no other provisions have been inserted in the documentor if, being
inserted, those other provisions should be discovered to have failed
alsoI believe it to be impossible (especially if evidence can be found
that the admiral himself considered the Trust binding on him) for the
executors to deal with your husband's fortune as legally forming part
of Admiral Bartram's estate. The legacy is expressly declared to have
been left to him, on the understanding that he applies it to certain
stated objectsand those objects have failed. What is to be done with
the money? It was not left to the admiral himself, on the testator's
own showing; and the purposes for which it was left have not been,
and cannot be, carried out. I believe (if the case here supposed really
happens) that the money must revert to the testator's estate. In that
event the Law, dealing with it as a matter of necessity, divides it
into two equal portions. One half goes to Mr. Noel Vanstone's childless
widow, and the other half is divided among Mr. Noel Vanstone's next of
kin.
"You will no doubt discover the obvious objection to the case in our
favor, as I have here put it. You will see that it depends for its
practical realization not on one contingency, but on a series of
contingencies, which must all happen exactly as we wish them to happen.
I admit the force of the objection; but I can tell you, at the same
time, that these said contingencies are by no means so improbable as
they may look on the face of them.
"We have every reason to believe that the Trust, like the Will, was
not drawn by a lawyer. That is one circumstance in our favor that is
enough of itself to cast a doubt on the soundness of all, or any, of
the remaining provisions which we may not be acquainted with. Another
chance which we may count on is to be found, as I think, in that
strange handwriting, placed under the signature on the third page of
the Letter, which you saw, but which you, unhappily, omitted to read.
All the probabilities point to those lines as written by Admiral
Bartram: and the position which they occupy is certainly consistent
with the theory that they touch the important subject of his own sense
of obligation under the Trust.
"I wish to raise no false hopes in your mind. I only desire to satisfy
you that we have a case worth trying.
"As for the dark side of the prospect, I need not enlarge on it. After
what I have already written, you will understand that the existence of
a sound provision, unknown to us, in the Trust, which has been properly
carried out by the admiralor which can be properly carried out by his
representativeswould be necessarily fatal to our hopes. The legacy
would be, in this case, devoted to the purpose or purposes contemplated
by your husbandand, from that moment, you would have no claim.
"I have only to add, that as soon as I hear from the late admiral's man
of business, you shall know the result.
"Believe me, dear madam,
"Faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
VII.
From George Bartram to Miss Garth.
"St. Crux, May 15th.
"DEAR MISS GARTH,
"I trouble you with another letter: partly to thank you for your kind
expression of sympathy with me, under the loss that I have sustained;
and partly to tell you of an extraordinary application made to my
uncle's executors, in which you and Miss Vanstone may both feel
interested, as Mrs. Noel Vanstone is directly concerned in it.
"Knowing my own ignorance of legal technicalities, I inclose a copy of
the application, instead of trying to describe it. You will notice as
suspicious, that no explanation is given of the manner in which the
alleged discovery of one of my uncle's secrets was made, by persons who
are total strangers to him.
"On being made acquainted with the circumstances, the executors at once
applied to me. I could give them no positive informationfor my uncle
never consulted me on matters of business. But I felt in honor bound to
tell them, that during the last six months of his life, the admiral had
occasionally let fall expressions of impatience in my hearing, which
led to the conclusion that he was annoyed by a private responsibility
of some kind. I also mentioned that he had imposed a very strange
condition on mea condition which, in spite of his own assurances to
the contrary, I was persuaded could not have emanated from himselfof
marrying within a given time (which time has now expired), or of not
receiving from him a certain sum of money, which I believed to be the
same in amount as the sum bequeathed to him in my cousin's will. The
executors agreed with me that these circumstances gave a color of
probability to an otherwise incredible story; and they decided that a
search should be instituted for the Secret Trust, nothing in the
slightest degree resembling this same Trust having been discovered, up
to that time, among the admiral's papers.
"The search (no trifle in such a house as this) has now been in full
progress for a week. It is superintended by both the executors, and by
my uncle's lawyer, who is personally, as well as professionally, known
to Mr. Loscombe (Mrs. Noel Vanstone's solicitor), and who has been
included in the proceedings at the express request of Mr. Loscombe
himself. Up to this time, nothing whatever has been found. Thousands
and thousands of letters have been examined, and not one of them bears
the remotest resemblance to the letter we are looking for.
"Another week will bring the search to an end. It is only at my express
request that it will be persevered with so long. But as the admiral's
generosity has made me sole heir to everything he possessed, I feel
bound to do the fullest justice to the interests of others, however
hostile to myself those interests may be.
"With this view, I have not hesitated to reveal to the lawyer a
constitutional peculiarity of my poor uncle's, which was always kept a
secret among us at his own requestI mean his tendency to somnambulism.
I mentioned that he had been discovered (by the housekeeper and his old
servant) walking in his sleep, about three weeks before his death, and
that the part of the house in which he had been seen, and the basket of
keys which he was carrying in his hand, suggested the inference that he
had come from one of the rooms in the east wing, and that he might have
opened some of the pieces of furniture in one of them. I surprised the
lawyer (who seemed to be quite ignorant of the extraordinary actions
constantly performed by somnambulists), by informing him that my uncle
could find his way about the house, lock and unlock doors, and remove
objects of all kinds from one place to another, as easily in his sleep
as in his waking hours. And I declared that, while I felt the faintest
doubt in my own mind whether he might not have been dreaming of the
Trust on the night in question, and putting the dream in action in his
sleep, I should not feel satisfied unless the rooms in the east wing
were searched again.
"It is only right to add that there is not the least foundation in fact
for this idea of mine. During the latter part of his fatal illness, my
poor uncle was quite incapable of speaking on any subject whatever.
From the time of my arrival at St. Crux, in the middle of last month,
to the time of his death, not a word dropped from him which referred in
the remotest way to the Secret Trust.
"Here then, for the present, the matter rests. If you think it right to
communicate the contents of this letter to Miss Vanstone, pray tell her
that it will not be my fault if her sister's assertion (however
preposterous it may seem to my uncle's executors) is not fairly put to
the proof.
"Believe me, dear Miss Garth,
"Always truly yours,
"GEORGE BARTRAM.
"P. S.As soon as all business matters are settled, I am going abroad
for some months, to try the relief of change of scene. The house will
be shut up, and left under the charge of Mrs. Drake. I have not
forgotten your once telling me that you should like to see St. Crux, if
you ever found yourself in this neighborhood. If you are at all likely
to be in Essex during the time when I am abroad, I have provided
against the chance of your being disappointed, by leaving instructions
with Mrs. Drake to give you, and any friends of yours, the freest
admission to the house and grounds."
VIII.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn Fields, May 24th.
"DEAR MADAM,
"After a whole fortnight's searchconducted, I am bound to admit, with
the most conscientious and unrelaxing careno such document as the
Secret Trust has been found among the papers left at St. Crux by the
late Admiral Bartram.
"Under these circumstances, the executors have decided on acting under
the only recognizable authority which they have to guide themthe
admiral's own will. This document (executed some years since) bequeaths
the whole of his estate, both real and personal (that is to say, all
the lands he possesses, and all the money he possesses, at the time of
his death), to his nephew. The will is plain, and the result is
inevitable. Your husband's fortune is lost to you from this moment. Mr.
George Bartram legally inherits it, as he legally inherits the house
and estate of St. Crux.
"I make no comment upon this extraordinary close to the proceedings.
The Trust may have been destroyed, or the Trust may be hidden in some
place of concealment inaccessible to discovery. Either way, it is, in
my opinion, impossible to found any valid legal declaration on a
knowledge of the document so fragmentary and so incomplete as the
knowledge which you possess. If other lawyers differ from me on this
point, by all means consult them. I have devoted money enough and time
enough to the unfortunate attempt to assert your interests; and my
connection with the matter must, from this moment, be considered at an
end.
"Your obedient servant,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
IX.
From Mrs. Ruddock (Lodging-house Keeper) to Mr. Loscombe.
"Park Terrace, St. John's Wood,
"June 2d.
"SIR,
"Having, by Mrs. Noel Vanstone's directions, taken letters for her to
the post, addressed to youand knowing no one else to apply toI beg to
inquire whether you are acquainted with any of her friends; for I think
it right that they should be stirred up to take some steps about her.
"Mrs. Vanstone first came to me in November last, when she and her maid
occupied my apartments. On that occasion, and again on this, she has
given me no cause to complain of her. She has behaved like a lady, and
paid me my due. I am writing, as a mother of a family, under a sense of
responsibilityI am not writing with an interested motive.
"After proper warning given, Mrs. Vanstone (who is now quite alone)
leaves me to-morrow. She has not concealed from me that her
circumstances are fallen very low, and that she cannot afford to remain
in my house. This is all she has told meI know nothing of where she is
going, or what she means to do next. But I have every reason to believe
she desires to destroy all traces by which she might be found, after
leaving this placefor I discovered her in tears yesterday, burning
letters which were doubtless letters from her friends. In looks and
conduct she has altered most shockingly in the last week. I believe
there is some dreadful trouble on her mind; and I am afraid, from what
I see of her, that she is on the eve of a serious illness. It is very
sad to see such a young woman so utterly deserted and friendless as she
is now.
"Excuse my troubling you with this letter; it is on my conscience to
write it. If you know any of her relations, please warn them that time
is not to be wasted. If they lose to-morrow, they may lose the last
chance of finding her.
"Your humble servant,
"CATHERINE RUDDOCK."
X.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Ruddock.
"Lincoln's Inn Fields, June 2d.
"MADAM,
"My only connection with Mrs. Noel Vanstone was a professional one, and
that connection is now at an end. I am not acquainted with any of her
friends; and I cannot undertake to interfere personally, either with
her present or future proceedings.
"Regretting my inability to afford you any assistance, I remain, your
obedient servant,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
THE LAST SCENE.
AARON'S BUILDINGS
CHAPTER I.
On the seventh of June, the owners of the merchantman Deliverance
received news that the ship had touched at Plymouth to land passengers,
and had then continued her homeward voyage to the Port of London. Five
days later, the vessel was in the river, and was towed into the East
India Docks.
Having transacted the business on shore for which he was personally
responsible, Captain Kirke made the necessary arrangements, by letter,
for visiting his brother-in-law's parsonage in Suffolk, on the
seventeenth of the month. As usual in such cases, he received a list of
commissions to execute for his sister on the day before he left London.
One of these commissions took him into the neighborhood of Camden Town.
He drove to his destination from the Docks; and then, dismissing the
vehicle, set forth to walk back southward, toward the New Road.
He was not well acquainted with the district; and his attention
wandered further and further away from the scene around him as he went
on. His thoughts, roused by the prospect of seeing his sister again,
had led his memory back to the night when he had parted from her,
leaving the house on foot. The spell so strangely laid on him, in that
past time, had kept its hold through all after-events. The face that
had haunted him on the lonely road had haunted him again on the lonely
sea. The woman who had followed him, as in a dream, to his sister's
door, had followed himthought of his thought, and spirit of his
spiritto the deck of his ship. Through storm and calm on the voyage
out, through storm and calm on the voyage home, she had been with him.
In the ceaseless turmoil of the London streets, she was with him now.
He knew what the first question on his lips would be, when he had seen
his sister and her boys. "I shall try to talk of something else," he
thought; "but when Lizzie and I am alone, it will come out in spite of
me."
The necessity of waiting to let a string of carts pass at a turning
before he crossed awakened him to present things. He looked about in a
momentary confusion. The street was strange to him; he had lost his
way.
The first foot passenger of whom he inquired appeared to have no time
to waste in giving information. Hurriedly directing him to cross to the
other side of the road, to turn down the first street he came to on his
right hand, and then to ask again, the stranger unceremoniously
hastened on without waiting to be thanked.
Kirke followed his directions and took the turning on his right. The
street was short and narrow, and the houses on either side were of the
poorer order. He looked up as he passed the corner to see what the name
of the place might be. It was called "Aaron's Buildings."
Low down on the side of the "Buildings" along which he was walking, a
little crowd of idlers was assembled round two cabs, both drawn up
before the door of the same house. Kirke advanced to the crowd, to ask
his way of any civil stranger among them who might not be in a hurry
this time. On approaching the cabs, he found a woman disputing with the
drivers; and heard enough to inform him that two vehicles had been sent
for by mistake, where only one was wanted.
The house door was open; and when he turned that way next, he looked
easily into the passage, over the heads of the people in front of him.
The sight that met his eyes should have been shielded in pity from the
observation of the street. He saw a slatternly girl, with a frightened
face, standing by an old chair placed in the middle of the passage, and
holding a woman on the chair, too weak and helpless to support
herselfa woman apparently in the last stage of illness, who was about
to be removed, when the dispute outside was ended, in one of the cabs.
Her head was drooping when he first saw her, and an old shawl which
covered it had fallen forward so as to hide the upper part of her face.
Before he could look away again, the girl in charge of her raised her
head and restored the shawl to its place. The action disclosed her face
to view, for an instant only, before her head drooped once more on her
bosom. In that instant he saw the woman whose beauty was the haunting
remembrance of his lifewhose image had been vivid in his mind not five
minutes since.
The shock of the double recognitionthe recognition, at the same
moment, of the face, and of the dreadful change in itstruck him
speechless and helpless. The steady presence of mind in all emergencies
which had become a habit of his life, failed him for the first time.
The poverty-stricken street, the squalid mob round the door, swam
before his eyes. He staggered back and caught at the iron railings of
the house behind him.
"Where are they taking her to?" he heard a woman ask, close at his
side.
"To the hospital, if they will have her," was the reply. "And to the
work-house, if they won't."
That horrible answer roused him. He pushed his way through the crowd
and entered the house.
The misunderstanding on the pavement had been set right, and one of the
cabs had driven off.
As he crossed the threshold of the door he confronted the people of the
house at the moment when they were moving her. The cabman who had
remained was on one side of the chair, and the woman who had been
disputing with the two drivers was on the other. They were just lifting
her, when Kirke's tall figure darkened the door.
"What are you doing with that lady?" he asked.
The cabman looked up with the insolence of his reply visible in his
eyes, before his lips could utter it. But the woman, quicker than he,
saw the suppressed agitation in Kirke's face, and dropped her hold of
the chair in an instant.
"Do you know her, sir?" asked the woman, eagerly. "Are you one of her
friends?"
"Yes," said Kirke, without hesitation.
"It's not my fault, sir," pleaded the woman, shirking under the look he
fixed on her. "I would have waited patiently till her friends found
herI would, indeed!"
Kirke made no reply. He turned, and spoke to the cabman.
"Go out," he said, "and close the door after you. I'll send you down
your money directly. What room in the house did you take her from, when
you brought her here?" he resumed, addressing himself to the woman
again.
"The first floor back, sir."
"Show me the way to it."
He stooped, and lifted Magdalen in his arms. Her head rested gently on
the sailor's breast; her eyes looked up wonderingly into the sailor's
face. She smiled, and whispered to him vacantly. Her mind had wandered
back to old days at home; and her few broken words showed that she
fancied herself a child again in her father's arms. "Poor papa!" she
said, softly. "Why do you look so sorry? Poor papa!"
The woman led the way into the back room on the first floor. It was
very small; it was miserably furnished. But the little bed was clean,
and the few things in the room were neatly kept. Kirke laid her
tenderly on the bed. She caught one of his hands in her burning
fingers. "Don't distress mamma about me," she said. "Send for Norah."
Kirke tried gently to release his hand; but she only clasped it the
more eagerly. He sat down by the bedside to wait until it pleased her
to release him. The woman stood looking at them and crying, in a corner
of the room. Kirke observed her attentively. "Speak," he said, after an
interval, in low, quiet tones. "Speak in her presence; and tell me
the truth."
With many words, with many tears, the woman spoke.
She had let her first floor to the lady a fortnight since. The lady had
paid a week's rent, and had given the name of Gray. She had been out
from morning till night, for the first three days, and had come home
again, on every occasion, with a wretchedly weary, disappointed look.
The woman of the house had suspected that she was in hiding from her
friends, under a false name; and that she had been vainly trying to
raise money, or to get some employment, on the three days when she was
out for so long, and when she looked so disappointed on coming home.
However that might be, on the fourth day she had fallen ill, with
shivering fits and hot fits, turn and turn about. On the fifth day she
was worse; and on the sixth, she was too sleepy at one time, and too
light-headed at another, to be spoken to. The chemist (who did the
doctoring in those parts) had come and looked at her, and had said he
thought it was a bad fever. He had left a "saline draught," which the
woman of the house had paid for out of her own pocket, and had
administered without effect. She had ventured on searching the only box
which the lady had brought with her; and had found nothing in it but a
few necessary articles of linenno dresses, no ornaments, not so much
as the fragment of a letter which might help in discovering her
friends. Between the risk of keeping her under these circumstances, and
the barbarity of turning a sick woman into the street, the landlady
herself had not hesitated. She would willingly have kept her tenant, on
the chance of the lady's recovery, and on the chance of her friends
turning up. But not half an hour since, her husbandwho never came near
the house, except to take her moneyhad come to rob her of her little
earnings, as usual. She had been obliged to tell him that no rent was
in hand for the first floor, and that none was likely to be in hand
until the lady recovered, or her friends found her. On hearing this, he
had mercilessly insistedwell or illthat the lady should go. There was
the hospital to take her to; and if the hospital shut its doors, there
was the workhouse to try next. If she was not out of the place in an
hour's time, he threatened to come back and take her out himself. His
wife knew but too well that he was brute enough to be as good as his
word; and no other choice had been left her but to do as she had done,
for the sake of the lady herself.
The woman told her shocking story, with every appearance of being
honestly ashamed of it. Toward the end, Kirke felt the clasp of the
burning fingers slackening round his hand. He looked back at the bed
again. Her weary eyes were closing; and, with her face still turned
toward the sailor, she was sinking into sleep.
"Is there any one in the front room?" said Kirke, in a whisper. "Come
in there; I have something to say to you."
The woman followed him through the door of communication between the
rooms.
"How much does she owe you?" he asked.
The landlady mentioned the sum. Kirke put it down before her on the
table.
"Where is your husband?" was his next question.
"Waiting at the public-house, sir, till the hour is up."
"You can take him the money or not, as you think right," said Kirke,
quietly. "I have only one thing to tell you, as far as your husband is
concerned. If you want to see every bone in his skin broken, let him
come to the house while I am in it. Stop! I have something more to say.
Do you know of any doctor in the neighborhood who can be depended on?"
"Not in our neighborhood, sir. But I know of one within half an hour's
walk of us."
"Take the cab at the door; and, if you find him at home, bring him back
in it. Say I am waiting here for his opinion on a very serious case. He
shall be well paid, and you shall be well paid. Make haste!"
The woman left the room.
Kirke sat down alone, to wait for her return. He hid his face in his
hands, and tried to realize the strange and touching situation in which
the accident of a moment had placed him.
Hidden in the squalid by-ways of London under a false name; cast,
friendless and helpless, on the mercy of strangers, by illness which
had struck her prostrate, mind and body alikeso he met her again, the
woman who had opened a new world of beauty to his mind; the woman who
had called Love to life in him by a look! What horrible misfortune had
struck her so cruelly, and struck her so low? What mysterious destiny
had guided him to the last refuge of her poverty and despair, in the
hour of her sorest need? "If it is ordered that I am to see her again,
I shall see her." Those words came back to him nowthe memorable
words that he had spoken to his sister at parting. With that thought in
his heart, he had gone where his duty called him. Months and months had
passed; thousands and thousands of miles, protracting their desolate
length on the unresting waters had rolled between them. And through the
lapse of time, and over the waste of oceansday after day, and night
after night, as the winds of heaven blew, and the good ship toiled on
before themhe had advanced nearer and nearer to the end that was
waiting for him; he had journeyed blindfold to the meeting on the
threshold of that miserable door. "What has brought me here?" he said
to himself in a whisper. "The mercy of chance? No. The mercy of God."
He waited, unregardful of the place, unconscious of the time, until the
sound of footsteps on the stairs came suddenly between him and his
thoughts. The door opened, and the doctor was shown into the room.
"Dr. Merrick," said the landlady, placing a chair for him.
"Mr. Merrick," said the visitor, smiling quietly as he took the
chair. "I am not a physicianI am a surgeon in general practice."
Physician or surgeon, there was something in his face and manner which
told Kirke at a glance that he was a man to be relied on.
After a few preliminary words on either side, Mr. Merrick sent the
landlady into the bedroom to see if his patient was awake or asleep.
The woman returned, and said she was "betwixt the two, light in the
head again, and burning hot." The doctor went at once into the bedroom,
telling the landlady to follow him, and to close the door behind her.
A weary time passed before he came back into the front room. When he
re-appeared, his face spoke for him, before any question could be
asked.
"Is it a serious illness?" said Kirke his voice sinking low, his eyes
anxiously fixed on the doctor's face.
"It is a dangerous illness," said Mr. Merrick, with an emphasis on
the word.
He drew his chair nearer to Kirke and looked at him attentively.
"May I ask you some questions which are not strictly medical?" he
inquired.
Kirke bowed.
"Can you tell me what her life has been before she came into this
house, and before she fell ill?"
"I have no means of knowing. I have just returned to England after a
long absence."
"Did you know of her coming here?"
"I only discovered it by accident."
"Has she no female relations? No mother? no sister? no one to take care
of her but yourself?"
"No oneunless I can succeed in tracing her relations. No one but
myself."
Mr. Merrick was silent. He looked at Kirke more attentively than ever.
"Strange!" thought the doctor. "He is here, in sole charge of herand
is this all he knows?"
Kirke saw the doubt in his face; and addressed himself straight to that
doubt, before another word passed between them,
"I see my position here surprises you," he said, simply. "Will you
consider it the position of a relationthe position of her brother or
her fatheruntil her friends can be found?" His voice faltered, and he
laid his hand earnestly on the doctor's arm. "I have taken this trust
on myself," he said; "and as God shall judge me, I will not be unworthy
of it!"
The poor weary head lay on his breast again, the poor fevered fingers
clasped his hand once more, as he spoke those words.
"I believe you," said the doctor, warmly. "I believe you are an honest
man.Pardon me if I have seemed to intrude myself on your confidence. I
respect your reservefrom this moment it is sacred to me. In justice to
both of us, let me say that the questions I have asked were not
prompted by mere curiosity. No common cause will account for the
illness which has laid my patient on that bed. She has suffered some
long-continued mental trial, some wearing and terrible suspenseand she
has broken down under it. It might have helped me if I could have known
what the nature of the trial was, and how long or how short a time
elapsed before she sank under it. In that hope I spoke."
"When you told me she was dangerously ill," said Kirke, "did you mean
danger to her reason or to her life?"
"To both," replied Mr. Merrick. "Her whole nervous system has given
way; all the ordinary functions of her brain are in a state of
collapse. I can give you no plainer explanation than that of the nature
of the malady. The fever which frightens the people of the house is
merely the effect. The cause is what I have told you. She may lie on
that bed for weeks to come; passing alternately, without a gleam of
consciousness, from a state of delirium to a state of repose. You must
not be alarmed if you find her sleep lasting far beyond the natural
time. That sleep is a better remedy than any I can give, and nothing
must disturb it. All our art can accomplish is to watch her, to help
her with stimulants from time to time, and to wait for what Nature will
do."
"Must she remain here? Is there no hope of our being able to remove her
to a better place?"
"No hope whatever, for the present. She has already been disturbed, as
I understand, and she is seriously the worse for it. Even if she gets
better, even if she comes to herself again, it would still be a
dangerous experiment to move her too soonthe least excitement or alarm
would be fatal to her. You must make the best of this place as it is.
The landlady has my directions; and I will send a good nurse to help
her. There is nothing more to be done. So far as her life can be said
to be in any human hands, it is as much in your hands now as in mine.
Everything depends on the care that is taken of her, under your
direction, in this house." With those farewell words he rose and
quitted the room.
Left by himself, Kirke walked to the door of communication, and,
knocking at it softly, told the landlady he wished to speak with her.
He was far more composed, far more like his own resolute self, after
his interview with the doctor, than he had been before it. A man living
in the artificial social atmosphere which this man had never breathed
would have felt painfully the worldly side of the situationits novelty
and strangeness; the serious present difficulty in which it placed him;
the numberless misinterpretations in the future to which it might lead.
Kirke never gave the situation a thought. He saw nothing but the duty
it claimed from hima duty which the doctor's farewell words had put
plainly before his mind. Everything depended on the care taken of her,
under his direction, in that house. There was his responsibility, and
he unconsciously acted under it, exactly as he would have acted in a
case of emergency with women and children on board his own ship. He
questioned the landlady in short, sharp sentences; the only change in
him was in the lowered tone of his voice, and in the anxious looks
which he cast, from time to time, at the room where she lay.
"Do you understand what the doctor has told you?"
"Yes, sir."
"The house must be kept quiet. Who lives in the house?"
"Only me and my daughter, sir; we live in the parlors. Times have gone
badly with us since Lady Day. Both the rooms above this are to let."
"I will take them both, and the two rooms down here as well. Do you
know of any active trustworthy man who can run on errands for me?"
"Yes, sir. Shall I go?"
"No; let your daughter go. You must not leave the house until the nurse
comes. Don't send the messenger up here. Men of that sort tread
heavily. I'll go down, and speak to him at the door."
He went down when the messenger came, and sent him first to purchase
pen, ink, and paper. The man's next errand dispatched him to make
inquiries for a person who could provide for deadening the sound of
passing wheels in the street by laying down tan before the house in the
usual way. This object accomplished, the messenger received two letters
to post. The first was addressed to Kirke's brother-in-law. It told
him, in few and plain words, what had happened; and left him to break
the news to his wife as he thought best. The second letter was directed
to the landlord of the Aldborough Hotel. Magdalen's assumed name at
North Shingles was the only name by which Kirke knew her; and the one
chance of tracing her relatives that he could discern was the chance of
discovering her reputed uncle and aunt by means of inquiries starting
from Aldborough.
Toward the close of the afternoon a decent middle-aged woman came to
the house, with a letter from Mr. Merrick. She was well known to the
doctor as a trustworthy and careful person, who had nursed his own
wife; and she would be assisted, from time to time, by a lady who was a
member of a religious Sisterhood in the district, and whose
compassionate interest had been warmly aroused in the case. Toward
eight o'clock that evening the doctor himself would call and see that
his patient wanted for nothing.
The arrival of the nurse, and the relief of knowing that she was to be
trusted, left Kirke free to think of himself. His luggage was ready
packed for his contemplated journey to Suffolk the next day. It was
merely necessary to transport it from the hotel to the house in Aaron's
Buildings.
He stopped once only on his way to the hotel to look at a toyshop in
one of the great thoroughfares. The miniature ships in the window
reminded him of his nephew. "My little name-sake will be sadly
disappointed at not seeing me to-morrow," he thought. "I must make it
up to the boy by sending him something from his uncle." He went into
the shop and bought one of the ships. It was secured in a box, and
packed and directed in his presence. He put a card on the deck of the
miniature vessel before the cover of the box was nailed on, bearing
this inscription: "A ship for the little sailor, with the big sailor's
love.""Children like to be written to, ma'am," he said,
apologetically, to the woman behind the counter. "Send the box as soon
as you canI am anxious the boy should get it to-morrow."
Toward the dusk of the evening he returned with his luggage to Aaron's
Buildings. He took off his boots in the passage and carried his trunk
upstairs himself; stopping, as he passed the first floor, to make his
inquiries. Mr. Merrick was present to answer them.
"She was awake and wandering," said the doctor, "a few minutes since.
But we have succeeded in composing her, and she is sleeping now."
"Have no words escaped her, sir, which might help us to find her
friends?"
Mr. Merrick shook his head.
"Weeks and weeks may pass yet," he said, "and that poor girl's story
may still be a sealed secret to all of us. We can only wait."
So the day endedthe first of many days that were to come.
CHAPTER II.
The warm sunlight of July shining softly through a green blind; an open
window with fresh flowers set on the sill; a strange bed, in a strange
room; a giant figure of the female sex (like a dream of Mrs. Wragge)
towering aloft on one side of the bed, and trying to clap its hands;
another woman (quickly) stopping the hands before they could make any
noise; a mild expostulating voice (like a dream of Mrs. Wragge again)
breaking the silence in these words, "She knows me, ma'am, she knows
me; if I mustn't be happy, it will be the death of me!"such were the
first sights, such were the first sounds, to which, after six weeks of
oblivion, Magdalen suddenly and strangely awoke.
After a little, the sights grew dim again, and the sounds sank into
silence. Sleep, the merciful, took her once more, and hushed her back
to repose.
Another dayand the sights were clearer, the sounds were louder.
Anotherand she heard a man's voice, through the door, asking for news
from the sick-room. The voice was strange to her; it was always
cautiously lowered to the same quiet tone. It inquired after her, in
the morning, when she wokeat noon, when she took her refreshmentin
the evening, before she dropped asleep again. "Who is so anxious about
me?" That was the first thought her mind was strong enough to form"Who
is so anxious about me?"
More daysand she could speak to the nurse at her bedside; she could
answer the questions of an elderly man, who knew far more about her
than she knew about herself, and who told her he was Mr. Merrick, the
doctor; she could sit up in bed, supported by pillows, wondering what
had happened to her, and where she was; she could feel a growing
curiosity about that quiet voice, which still asked after her, morning,
noon, and night, on the other side of the door.
Another day's delayand Mr. Merrick asked her if she was strong enough
to see an old friend. A meek voice, behind him, articulating high in
the air, said, "It's only me." The voice was followed by the prodigious
bodily apparition of Mrs. Wragge, with her cap all awry, and one of her
shoes in the next room. "Oh, look at her! look at her!" cried Mrs.
Wragge, in an ecstasy, dropping on her knees at Magdalen's bedside,
with a thump that shook the house. "Bless her heart, she's well enough
to laugh at me already. 'Cheer, boys, cheer!' I beg your pardon,
doctor, my conduct isn't ladylike, I know. It's my head, sir; it isn't
me. I must give vent somehow, or my head will burst!" No coherent
sentence, in answer to any sort of question put to her, could be
extracted that morning from Mrs. Wragge. She rose from one climax of
verbal confusion to anotherand finished her visit under the bed,
groping inscrutably for the second shoe.
The morrow cameand Mr. Merrick promised that she should see another
old friend on the next day. In the evening, when the inquiring voice
asked after her, as usual, and when the door was opened a few inches to
give the reply, she answered faintly for herself: "I am better, thank
you." There was a moment of silenceand then, just as the door was shut
again, the voice sank to a whisper, and said, fervently, "Thank God!"
Who was he? She had asked them all, and no one would tell her. Who was
he?
The next day came; and she heard her door opened softly. Brisk
footsteps tripped into the room; a lithe little figure advanced to the
bed-side. Was it a dream again? No! There he was in his own evergreen
reality, with the copious flow of language pouring smoothly from his
lips; with the lambent dash of humor twinkling in his party-colored
eyesthere he was, more audacious, more persuasive, more respectable
than ever, in a suit of glossy black, with a speckless white cravat,
and a rampant shirt frillthe unblushing, the invincible, unchangeable
Wragge!
"Not a word, my dear girl!" said the captain, seating himself
comfortably at the bedside, in his old confidential way. "I am to do
all the talking; and, I think you will own, a more competent man for
the purpose could not possibly have been found. I am really
delightedhonestly delighted, if I may use such an apparently
inappropriate wordto see you again, and to see you getting well. I
have often thought of you; I have often missed you; I have often said
to myselfnever mind what! Clear the stage, and drop the curtain on the
past. Dum vivimus, vivamus! Pardon the pedantry of a Latin quotation,
my dear, and tell me how I look. Am I, or am I not, the picture of a
prosperous man?"
Magdalen attempted to answer him. The captain's deluge of words flowed
over her again in a moment.
"Don't exert yourself," he said. "I'll put all your questions for you.
What have I been about? Why do I look so remarkably well off? And how
in the world did I find my way to this house? My dear girl, I have been
occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old
professional habits. I have shifted from Moral Agriculture to Medical
Agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public sympathy, now I prey on
the public stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomachlook
them both fairly in the face when you reach the wrong side of fifty,
and you will agree with me that they come to much the same thing.
However that may be, here I amincredible as it may appeara man with
an income, at last. The founders of my fortune are three in number.
Their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am
now livingon a Pill. I made a little money (if you remember) by my
friendly connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease
(Requiescat in Pace!) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge's from
whom, as I told you, my wife had expectations. Very good. What do you
think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in
advertisements, and purchased my drugs and my pill-boxes on credit. The
result is now before you. Here I am, a Grand Financial Fact. Here I am,
with my clothes positively paid for; with a balance at my banker's;
with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent,
flourishing, popularand all on a Pill."
Magdalen smiled. The captain's face assumed an expression of mock
gravity; he looked as if there was a serious side to the question, and
as if he meant to put it next.
"It's no laughing matter to the public, my dear," he said. "They can't
get rid of me and my Pill; they must take us. There is not a single
form of appeal in the whole range of human advertisement which I am not
making to the unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last new
novel, there I am, inside the boards of the book. Send for the last new
Songthe instant you open the leaves, I drop out of it. Take a cabI
fly in at the window in red. Buy a box of tooth-powder at the
chemist'sI wrap it up for you in blue. Show yourself at the theaterI
flutter down on you in yellow. The mere titles of my advertisements are
quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week's issue.
Proverbial Title: 'A Pill in time saves Nine.' Familiar Title: 'Excuse
me, how is your Stomach?' Patriotic Title: 'What are the three
characteristics of a true-born Englishman? His Hearth, his Home, and
his Pill.' Title in the form of a nursery dialogue: 'Mamma, I am not
well.' 'What is the matter, my pet?' 'I want a little Pill.' Title in
the form of a Historical Anecdote: 'New Discovery in the Mine of
English History. When the Princes were smothered in the Tower, their
faithful attendant collected all their little possessions left behind
them. Among the touching trifles dear to the poor boys, he found a tiny
Box. It contained the Pill of the Period. Is it necessary to say how
inferior that Pill was to its Successor, which prince and peasant alike
may now obtain?'Et cetera, et cetera. The place in which my Pill is
made is an advertisement in itself. I have got one of the largest shops
in London. Behind one counter (visible to the public through the lucid
medium of plate-glass) are four-and-twenty young men, in white aprons,
making the Pill. Behind another counter are four-and-twenty young men,
in white cravats, making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three
elderly accountants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing
from the Pill in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name,
portrait, and autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and
surrounded in flowing letters, by the motto of the establishment, 'Down
with the Doctors!' Even Mrs. Wragge contributes her quota to this
prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated woman whom I have cured of
indescribable agonies from every complaint under the sun. Her portrait
is engraved on all the wrappers, with the following inscription beneath
it: 'Before she took the Pill you might have blown this patient away
with a feather. Look at her now!!!' Last, not least, my dear girl, the
Pill is the cause of my finding my way to this house. My department in
the prodigious Enterprise already mentioned is to scour the United
Kingdom in a gig, establishing Agencies everywhere. While founding one
of those Agencies, I heard of a certain friend of mine, who had lately
landed in England, after a long sea-voyage. I got his address in
Londonhe was a lodger in this house. I called on him forthwith, and
was stunned by the news of your illness. Such, in brief, is the history
of my existing connection with British Medicine; and so it happens that
you see me at the present moment sitting in the present chair, now as
ever, yours truly, Horatio Wragge." In these terms the captain brought
his personal statement to a close. He looked more and more attentively
at Magdalen, the nearer he got to the conclusion. Was there some latent
importance attaching to his last words which did not appear on the face
of them? There was. His visit to the sick-room had a serious object,
and that object he had now approached.
In describing the circumstances under which he had become acquainted
with Magdalen's present position, Captain Wragge had skirted, with his
customary dexterity, round the remote boundaries of truth. Emboldened
by the absence of any public scandal in connection with Noel Vanstone's
marriage, or with the event of his death as announced in the newspaper
obituary, the captain, roaming the eastern circuit, had ventured back
to Aldborough a fortnight since, to establish an agency there for the
sale of his wonderful Pill. No one had recognized him but the landlady
of the hotel, who at once insisted on his entering the house and
reading Kirke's letter to her husband. The same night Captain Wragge
was in London, and was closeted with the sailor in the second-floor
room at Aaron's Buildings.
The serious nature of the situation, the indisputable certainty that
Kirke must fail in tracing Magdalen's friends unless he first knew who
she really was, had decided the captain on disclosing part, at least,
of the truth. Declining to enter into any particularsfor family
reasons, which Magdalen might explain on her recovery, if she
pleasedhe astounded Kirke by telling him that the friendless woman
whom he had rescued, and whom he had only known up to that moment as
Miss Bygravewas no other than the youngest daughter of Andrew
Vanstone. The disclosure, on Kirke's side, of his father's connection
with the young officer in Canada, had followed naturally on the
revelation of Magdalen's real name. Captain Wragge had expressed his
surprise, but had made no further remark at the time. A fortnight
later, however, when the patient's recovery forced the serious
difficulty on the doctor of meeting the questions which Magdalen was
sure to ask, the captain's ingenuity had come, as usual, to the rescue.
"You can't tell her the truth," he said, "without awakening painful
recollections of her stay at Aldborough, into which I am not at liberty
to enter. Don't acknowledge just yet that Mr. Kirke only knew her as
Miss Bygrave of North Shingles when he found her in this house. Tell
her boldly that he knew who she was, and that he felt (what she must
feel) that he had a hereditary right to help and protect her as his
father's son. I am, as I have already told you," continued the captain,
sticking fast to his old assertion, "a distant relative of the
Combe-Raven family; and, if there is nobody else at hand to help you
through this difficulty, my services are freely at your disposal."
No one else was at hand, and the emergency was a serious one. Strangers
undertaking the responsibility might ignorantly jar on past
recollections, which it would, perhaps, be the death of her to revive
too soon. Near relatives might, by their premature appearance at the
bedside, produce the same deplorable result. The alternative lay
between irritating and alarming her by leaving her inquiries
unanswered, or trusting Captain Wragge. In the doctor's opinion, the
second risk was the least serious risk of the twoand the captain was
now seated at Magdalen's bedside in discharge of the trust confided to
him.
Would she ask the question which it had been the private object of all
Captain Wragge's preliminary talk lightly and pleasantly to provoke?
Yes; as soon as his silence gave her the opportunity, she asked it:
"Who was that friend of his living in the house?"
"You ought by rights to know him as well as I do," said the captain.
"He is the son of one of your father's old military friends, when your
father was quartered with his regiment in Canada. Your cheeks mustn't
flush up! If they do, I shall go away."
She was astonished, but not agitated. Captain Wragge had begun by
interesting her in the remote past, which she only knew by hearsay,
before he ventured on the delicate ground of her own experience.
In a moment more she advanced to her next question: "What was his
name?"
"Kirke," proceeded the captain. "Did you never hear of his father,
Major Kirke, commanding officer of the regiment in Canada? Did you
never hear that the major helped your father through a great
difficulty, like the best of good fellows and good friends?"
Yes; she faintly fancied she had heard something about her father and
an officer who had once been very good to him when he was a young man.
But she could not look back so long. "Was Mr. Kirke poor?" Even Captain
Wragge's penetration was puzzled by that question. He gave the true
answer at hazard. "No," he said, "not poor."
Her next inquiry showed what she had been thinking of. "If Mr. Kirke
was not poor, why did he come to live in that house?"
"She has caught me!" thought the captain. "There is only one way out of
itI must administer another dose of truth. Mr. Kirke discovered you
here by chance," he proceeded, aloud, "very ill, and not nicely
attended to. Somebody was wanted to take care of you while you were not
able to take care of yourself. Why not Mr. Kirke? He was the son of
your father's old friendwhich is the next thing to being your old
friend. Who had a better claim to send for the right doctor, and get
the right nurse, when I was not here to cure you with my wonderful
Pill? Gently! gently! you mustn't take hold of my superfine black
coat-sleeve in that unceremonious manner."
He put her hand back on the bed, but she was not to be checked in that
way. She persisted in asking another question.How came Mr. Kirke to
know her? She had never seen him; she had never heard of him in her
life.
"Very likely," said Captain Wragge. "But your never having seen him
is no reason why he should not have seen you."
"When did he see me?"
The captain corked up his doses of truth on the spot without a moment's
hesitation. "Some time ago, my dear. I can't exactly say when."
"Only once?"
Captain Wragge suddenly saw his way to the administration of another
dose. "Yes," he said, "only once."
She reflected a little. The next question involved the simultaneous
expression of two ideas, and the next question cost her an effort.
"He only saw me once," she said, "and he only saw me some time ago. How
came he to remember me when he found me here?"
"Aha!" said the captain. "Now you have hit the right nail on the head
at last. You can't possibly be more surprised at his remembering you
than I am. A word of advice, my dear. When you are well enough to get
up and see Mr. Kirke, try how that sharp question of yours sounds in
his ears, and insist on his answering it himself." Slipping out of
the dilemma in that characteristically adroit manner, Captain Wragge
got briskly on his legs again and took up his hat.
"Wait!" she pleaded. "I want to ask you"
"Not another word," said the captain. "I have given you quite enough to
think of for one day. My time is up, and my gig is waiting for me. I am
off, to scour the country as usual. I am off, to cultivate the field of
public indigestion with the triple plowshare of aloes, scammony and
gamboge." He stopped and turned round at the door. "By-the-by, a
message from my unfortunate wife. If you will allow her to come and see
you again, Mrs. Wragge solemnly promises not to lose her shoe next
time. I don't believe her. What do you say? May she come?"
"Yes; whenever she likes," said Magdalen. "If I ever get well again,
may poor Mrs. Wragge come and stay with me?"
"Certainly, my dear. If you have no objection, I will provide her
beforehand with a few thousand impressions in red, blue, and yellow of
her own portrait ('You might have blown this patient away with a
feather before she took the Pill. Look at her now!'). She is sure to
drop herself about perpetually wherever she goes, and the most
gratifying results, in an advertising point of view, must inevitably
follow. Don't think me mercenaryI merely understand the age I live
in." He stopped on his way out, for the second time, and turned round
once more at the door. "You have been a remarkably good girl," he said,
"and you deserve to be rewarded for it. I'll give you a last piece of
information before I go. Have you heard anybody inquiring after you,
for the last day or two, outside your door? Ah! I see you have. A word
in your ear, my dear. That's Mr. Kirke." He tripped away from the
bedside as briskly as ever. Magdalen heard him advertising himself to
the nurse before he closed the door. "If you are ever asked about it,"
he said, in a confidential whisper, "the name is Wragge, and the Pill
is to be had in neat boxes, price thirteen pence half-penny, government
stamp included. Take a few copies of the portrait of a female patient,
whom you might have blown away with a feather before she took the Pill,
and whom you are simply requested to contemplate now. Many thanks.
Good-morning."
The door closed and Magdalen was alone again. She felt no sense of
solitude; Captain Wragge had left her with something new to think of.
Hour after hour her mind dwelt wonderingly on Mr. Kirke, until the
evening came, and she heard his voice again through the half-opened
door.
"I am very grateful," she said to him, before the nurse could answer
his inquiries"very, very grateful for all your goodness to me."
"Try to get well," he replied, kindly. "You will more than reward me,
if you try to get well."
The next morning Mr. Merrick found her impatient to leave her bed, and
be moved to the sofa in the front room. The doctor said he supposed she
wanted a change. "Yes," she replied; "I want to see Mr. Kirke." The
doctor consented to move her on the next day, but he positively forbade
the additional excitement of seeing anybody until the day after. She
attempted a remonstranceMr. Merrick was impenetrable. She tried, when
he was gone, to win the nurse by persuasionthe nurse was impenetrable,
too.
On the next day they wrapped her in shawls, and carried her in to the
sofa, and made her a little bed on it. On the table near at hand were
some flowers and a number of an illustrated paper. She immediately
asked who had put them there. The nurse (failing to notice a warning
look from the doctor) said Mr. Kirke had thought that she might like
the flowers, and that the pictures in the paper might amuse her. After
that reply, her anxiety to see Mr. Kirke became too ungovernable to be
trifled with. The doctor left the room at once to fetch him.
She looked eagerly at the opening door. Her first glance at him as he
came in raised a doubt in her mind whether she now saw that tall figure
and that open sun-burned face for the first time. But she was too weak
and too agitated to follow her recollections as far back as Aldborough.
She resigned the attempt, and only looked at him. He stopped at the
foot of the sofa and said a few cheering words. She beckoned to him to
come nearer, and offered him her wasted hand. He tenderly took it in
his, and sat down by her. They were both silent. His face told her of
the sorrow and the sympathy which his silence would fain have
concealed. She still held his handconsciously nowas persistently as
she had held it on the day when he found her. Her eyes closed, after a
vain effort to speak to him, and the tears rolled slowly over her wan
white cheeks.
The doctor signed to Kirke to wait and give her time. She recovered a
little and looked at him. "How kind you have been to me!" she murmured.
"And how little I have deserved it!"
"Hush! hush!" he said. "You don't know what a happiness it was to me to
help you."
The sound of his voice seemed to strengthen her, and to give her
courage. She lay looking at him with an eager interest, with a
gratitude which artlessly ignored all the conventional restraints that
interpose between a woman and a man. "Where did you see me," she said,
suddenly, "before you found me here?"
Kirke hesitated. Mr. Merrick came to his assistance.
"I forbid you to say a word about the past to Mr. Kirke," interposed
the doctor; "and I forbid Mr. Kirke to say a word about it to you.
You are beginning a new life to-day, and the only recollections I
sanction are recollections five minutes old."
She looked at the doctor and smiled. "I must ask him one question," she
said, and turned back again to Kirke. "Is it true that you had only
seen me once before you came to this house?"
"Quite true!" He made the reply with a sudden change of color which she
instantly detected. Her brightening eyes looked at him more earnestly
than ever, as she put her next question.
"How came you to remember me after only seeing me once?"
His hand unconsciously closed on hers, and pressed it for the first
time. He attempted to answer, and hesitated at the first word. "I have
a good memory," he said at last; and suddenly looked away from her with
a confusion so strangely unlike his customary self-possession of manner
that the doctor and the nurse both noticed it.
Every nerve in her body felt that momentary pressure of his hand, with
the exquisite susceptibility which accompanies the first faltering
advance on the way to health. She looked at his changing color, she
listened to his hesitating words, with every sensitive perception of
her sex and age quickened to seize intuitively on the truth. In the
moment when he looked away from her, she gently took her hand from him,
and turned her head aside on the pillow. "Can it be?" she thought,
with a flutter of delicious fear at her heart, with a glow of delicious
confusion burning on her cheeks. "Can it be?"
The doctor made another sign to Kirke. He understood it, and rose
immediately. The momentary discomposure in his face and manner had both
disappeared. He was satisfied in his own mind that he had successfully
kept his secret, and in the relief of feeling that conviction he had
become himself again.
"Good-by till to-morrow," he said, as he left the room.
"Good-by," she answered, softly, without looking at him.
Mr. Merrick took the chair which Kirke had resigned, and laid his hand
on her pulse. "Just what I feared," remarked the doctor; "too quick by
half."
She petulantly snatched away her wrist. "Don't!" she said, shrinking
from him. "Pray don't touch me!"
Mr. Merrick good-humoredly gave up his place to the nurse. "I'll return
in half an hour," he whispered, "and carry her back to bed. Don't let
her talk. Show her the pictures in the newspaper, and keep her quiet in
that way."
When the doctor returned, the nurse reported that the newspaper had not
been wanted. The patient's conduct had been exemplary. She had not been
at all restless, and she had never spoken a word.
The days passed, and the time grew longer and longer which the doctor
allowed her to spend in the front room. She was soon able to dispense
with the bed on the sofashe could be dressed, and could sit up,
supported by pillows, in an arm-chair. Her hours of emancipation from
the bedroom represented the great daily event of her life. They were
the hours she passed in Kirke's society.
She had a double interest in him nowher interest in the man whose
protecting care had saved her reason and her life; her interest in the
man whose heart's deepest secret she had surprised. Little by little
they grew as easy and familiar with each other as old friends; little
by little she presumed on all her privileges, and wound her way
unsuspected into the most intimate knowledge of his nature.
Her questions were endless. Everything that he could tell her of
himself and his life she drew from him delicately and insensibly: he,
the least self-conscious of mankind, became an egotist in her dexterous
hands. She found out his pride in his ship, and practiced on it without
remorse. She drew him into talking of the fine qualities of the vessel,
of the great things the vessel had done in emergencies, as he had never
in his life talked yet to any living creature on shore. She found him
out in private seafaring anxieties and unutterable seafaring
exultations which he had kept a secret from his own mate. She watched
his kindling face with a delicious sense of triumph in adding fuel to
the fire; she trapped him into forgetting all considerations of time
and place, and striking as hearty a stroke on the rickety little
lodging-house table, in the fervor of his talk, as if his hand had
descended on the solid bulwark of his ship. His confusion at the
discovery of his own forgetfulness secretly delighted her; she could
have cried with pleasure when he penitently wondered what he could
possibly have been thinking of.
At other times she drew him from dwelling on the pleasures of his life,
and led him into talking of its perilsthe perils of that jealous
mistress the sea, which had absorbed so much of his existence, which
had kept him so strangely innocent and ignorant of the world on shore.
Twice he had been shipwrecked. Times innumerable he and all with him
had been threatened with death, and had escaped their doom by the
narrowness of a hair-breadth. He was always unwilling at the outset to
speak of this dark and dreadful side of his life: it was only by
adroitly tempting him, by laying little snares for him in his talk,
that she lured him into telling her of the terrors of the great deep.
She sat listening to him with a breathless interest, looking at him
with a breathless wonder, as those fearful storiesmade doubly vivid by
the simple language in which he told themfell, one by one, from his
lips. His noble unconsciousness of his own heroismthe artless modesty
with which he described his own acts of dauntless endurance and devoted
courage, without an idea that they were anything more than plain acts
of duty to which he was bound by the vocation that he followedraised
him to a place in her estimation so hopelessly high above her that she
became uneasy and impatient until she had pulled down the idol again
which she herself had set up. It was on these occasions that she most
rigidly exacted from him all those little familiar attentions so
precious to women in their intercourse with men. "This hand," she
thought, with an exquisite delight in secretly following the idea while
he was close to her"this hand that has rescued the drowning from death
is shifting my pillows so tenderly that I hardly know when they are
moved. This hand that has seized men mad with mutiny, and driven them
back to their duty by main force, is mixing my lemonade and peeling my
fruit more delicately and more neatly than I could do it for myself.
Oh, if I could be a man, how I should like to be such a man as this!"
She never allowed her thoughts, while she was in his presence, to lead
her beyond that point. It was only when the night had separated them
that she ventured to let her mind dwell on the self-sacrificing
devotion which had so mercifully rescued her. Kirke little knew how she
thought of him, in the secrecy of her own chamber, during the quiet
hours that elapsed before she sank to sleep. No suspicion crossed his
mind of the influence which he was exerting over herof the new spirit
which he was breathing into that new life, so sensitively open to
impression in the first freshness of its recovered sense. "She has
nobody else to amuse her, poor thing," he used to think, sadly, sitting
alone in his small second-floor room. "If a rough fellow like me can
beguile the weary hours till her friends come here, she is heartily
welcome to all that I can tell her."
He was out of spirits and restless now whenever he was by himself.
Little by little he fell into a habit of taking long, lonely walks at
night, when Magdalen thought he was sleeping upstairs. Once he went
away abruptly in the day-timeon business, as he said. Something had
passed between Magdalen and himself the evening before which had led
her into telling him her age. "Twenty last birthday," he thought. "Take
twenty from forty-one. An easy sum in subtractionas easy a sum as my
little nephew could wish for." He walked to the Docks, and looked
bitterly at the shipping. "I mustn't forget how a ship is made," he
said. "It won't be long before I am back at the old work again." On
leaving the Docks he paid a visit to a brother sailora married man. In
the course of conversation he asked how much older his friend might be
than his friend's wife. There was six years' difference between them.
"I suppose that's difference enough?" said Kirke. "Yes," said his
friend; "quite enough. Are you looking out for a wife at last? Try a
seasoned woman of thirty-fivethat's your mark, Kirke, as near as I can
calculate."
The time passed smoothly and quicklythe present time, in which she
was recovering so happilythe present time, which he was beginning to
distrust already.
Early one morning Mr. Merrick surprised Kirke by a visit in his little
room on the second floor.
"I came to the conclusion yesterday," said the doctor, entering
abruptly on his business, "that our patient was strong enough to
justify us at last in running all risks, and communicating with her
friends; and I have accordingly followed the clue which that queer
fellow, Captain Wragge, put into our hands. You remember he advised us
to apply to Mr. Pendril, the lawyer? I saw Mr. Pendril two days ago,
and was referred by himnot overwillingly, as I thoughtto a lady named
Miss Garth. I heard enough from her to satisfy me that we have
exercised a wise caution in acting as we have done. It is a very, very
sad story; and I am bound to say that I, for one, make great allowances
for the poor girl downstairs. Her only relation in the world is her
elder sister. I have suggested that the sister shall write to her in
the first instance, and then, if the letter does her no harm, follow it
personally in a day or two. I have not given the address, by way of
preventing any visits from being paid here without my permission. All I
have done is to undertake to forward the letter, and I shall probably
find it at my house when I get back. Can you stop at home until I send
my man with it? There is not the least hope of my being able to bring
it myself. All you need do is to watch for an opportunity when she is
not in the front room, and to put the letter where she can see it when
she comes in. The handwriting on the address will break the news before
she opens the letter. Say nothing to her about ittake care that the
landlady is within calland leave her to herself. I know I can trust
you to follow my directions, and that is why I ask you to do us this
service. You look out of spirits this morning. Natural enough. You're
used to plenty of fresh air, captain, and you're beginning to pine in
this close place."
"May I ask a question, doctor? Is she pining in this close place,
too? When her sister comes, will her sister take her away?"
"Decidedly, if my advice is followed. She will be well enough to be
moved in a week or less. Good-day. You are certainly out of spirits,
and your hand feels feverish. Pining for the blue water, captainpining
for the blue water!" With that expression of opinion, the doctor
cheerfully went out.
In an hour the letter arrived. Kirke took it from the landlady
reluctantly, and almost roughly, without looking at it. Having
ascertained that Magdalen was still engaged at her toilet, and having
explained to the landlady the necessity of remaining within call, he
went downstairs immediately, and put the letter on the table in the
front room. Magdalen heard the sound of the familiar step on the floor.
"I shall soon be ready," she called to him, through the door.
He made no reply; he took his hat and went out. After a momentary
hesitation, he turned his face eastward, and called on the ship-owners
who employed him, at their office in Cornhill.
CHAPTER III.
Magdalen's first glance round the empty room showed her the letter on
the table. The address, as the doctor had predicted, broke the news the
moment she looked at it.
Not a word escaped her. She sat down by the table, pale and silent,
with the letter in her lap. Twice she attempted to open it, and twice
she put it back again. The bygone time was not alone in her mind as she
looked at her sister's handwriting: the fear of Kirke was there with
it. "My past life!" she thought. "What will he think of me when he
knows my past life?"
She made another effort, and broke the seal. A second letter dropped
out of the inclosure, addressed to her in a handwriting with which she
was not familiar. She put the second letter aside and read the lines
which Norah had written:
"Ventnor, Isle of Wight, August 24th.
"MY DEAREST MAGDALEN,
"When you read this letter, try to think we have only been parted since
yesterday; and dismiss from your mind (as I have dismissed from mine)
the past and all that belongs to it.
"I am strictly forbidden to agitate you, or to weary you by writing a
long letter. Is it wrong to tell you that I am the happiest woman
living? I hope not, for I can't keep the secret to myself.
"My darling, prepare yourself for the greatest surprise I have ever
caused you. I am married. It is only a week to-day since I parted with
my old nameit is only a week since I have been the happy wife of
George Bartram, of St. Crux.
"There were difficulties at first in the way of our marriage, some of
them, I am afraid, of my making. Happily for me, my husband knew from
the beginning that I really loved him: he gave me a second chance of
telling him so, after I had lost the first, and, as you see, I was wise
enough to take it. You ought to be especially interested, my love, in
this marriage, for you are the cause of it. If I had not gone to
Aldborough to search for the lost trace of youif George had not been
brought there at the same time by circumstances in which you were
concerned, my husband and I might never have met. When we look back to
our first impressions of each other, we look back to you.
"I must keep my promise not to weary you; I must bring this letter
(sorely against my will) to an end. Patience! patience! I shall see you
soon. George and I are both coming to London to take you back with us
to Ventnor. This is my husband's invitation, mind, as well as mine.
Don't suppose I married him, Magdalen, until I had taught him to think
of you as I thinkto wish with my wishes, and to hope with my hopes. I
could say so much more about this, so much more about George, if I
might only give my thoughts and my pen their own way; but I must leave
Miss Garth (at her own special request) a blank space to fill up on the
last page of this letter; and I must only add one word more before I
say good-bya word to warn you that I have another surprise in store,
which I am keeping in reserve until we meet. Don't attempt to guess
what it is. You might guess for ages, and be no nearer than you are now
to the discovery of the truth.
"Your affectionate sister,
"NORAH BARTRAM."
(Added by Miss Garth.)
"MY DEAR CHILD,
"If I had ever lost my old loving recollection of you, I should feel it
in my heart again now, when I know that it has pleased God to restore
you to us from the brink of the grave. I add these lines to your
sister's letter because I am not sure that you are quite so fit yet, as
she thinks you, to accept her proposal. She has not said a word of her
husband or herself which is not true. But Mr. Bartram is a stranger to
you; and if you think you can recover more easily and more pleasantly
to yourself under the wing of your old governess than under the
protection of your new brother-in-law, come to me first, and trust to
my reconciling Norah to the change of plans. I have secured the refusal
of a little cottage at Shanklin, near enough to your sister to allow of
your seeing each other whenever you like, and far enough away, at the
same time, to secure you the privilege, when you wish it, of being
alone. Send me one line before we meet to say Yes or No, and I will
write to Shanklin by the next post.
"Always yours affectionately,
"HARRIET GARTH"
The letter dropped from Magdalen's hand. Thoughts which had never risen
in her mind yet rose in it now.
Norah, whose courage under undeserved calamity had been the courage of
resignationNorah, who had patiently accepted her hard lot; who from
first to last had meditated no vengeance and stooped to no deceitNorah
had reached the end which all her sister's ingenuity, all her sister's
resolution, and all her sister's daring had failed to achieve. Openly
and honorably, with love on one side and love on the other, Norah had
married the man who possessed the Combe-Raven moneyand Magdalen's own
scheme to recover it had opened the way to the event which had brought
husband and wife together.
As the light of that overwhelming discovery broke on her mind, the old
strife was renewed; and Good and Evil struggled once more which should
win herbut with added forces this time; with the new spirit that had
been breathed into her new life; with the nobler sense that had grown
with the growth of her gratitude to the man who had saved her, fighting
on the better side. All the higher impulses of her nature, which had
never, from first to last, let her err with impunitywhich had tortured
her, before her marriage and after it, with the remorse that no woman
inherently heartless and inherently wicked can feelall the nobler
elements in her character, gathered their forces for the crowning
struggle and strengthened her to meet, with no unworthy shrinking, the
revelation that had opened on her view. Clearer and clearer, in the
light of its own immortal life, the truth rose before her from the
ashes of her dead passions, from the grave of her buried hopes. When
she looked at the letter againwhen she read the words once more which
told her that the recovery of the lost fortune was her sister's
triumph, not hers, she had victoriously trampled down all little
jealousies and all mean regrets; she could say in her hearts of hearts,
"Norah has deserved it!"
The day wore on. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and heedless of
the second letter which she had not opened yet, until Kirke's return.
He stopped on the landing outside, and, opening the door a little way
only, asked, without entering the room, if she wanted anything that he
could send her. She begged him to come in. His face was worn and weary;
he looked older than she had seen him look yet. "Did you put my letter
on the table for me?" she asked.
"Yes. I put it there at the doctor's request."
"I suppose the doctor told you it was from my sister? She is coming to
see me, and Miss Garth is coming to see me. They will thank you for all
your goodness to me better than I can."
"I have no claim on their thanks," he answered, sternly. "What I have
done was not done for them, but for you." He waited a little, and
looked at her. His face would have betrayed him in that look, his voice
would have betrayed him in the next words he spoke, if she had not
guessed the truth already. "When your friends come here," he resumed,
"they will take you away, I suppose, to some better place than this."
"They can take me to no place," she said, gently, "which I shall think
of as I think of the place where you found me. They can take me to no
dearer friend than the friend who saved my life."
There was a moment's silence between them.
"We have been very happy here," he went on, in lower and lower tones.
"You won't forget me when we have said good-by?"
She turned pale as the words passed his lips, and, leaving her chair,
knelt down at the table, so as to look up into his face, and to force
him to look into hers.
"Why do you talk of it?" she asked. "We are not going to say good-by,
at least not yet."
"I thought" he began.
"Yes?"
"I thought your friends were coming here"
She eagerly interrupted him. "Do you think I would go away with
anybody," she said, "even with the dearest relation I have in the
world, and leave you here, not knowing and not caring whether I ever
saw you again? Oh, you don't think that of me!" she exclaimed, with the
passionate tears springing into her eyes"I'm sure you don't think that
of me!"
"No," he said; "I never have thought, I never can think, unjustly or
unworthily of you."
Before he could add another word she left the table as suddenly as she
had approached it, and returned to her chair. He had unconsciously
replied in terms that reminded her of the hard necessity which still
remained unfulfilledthe necessity of telling him the story of the
past. Not an idea of concealing that story from his knowledge crossed
her mind. "Will he love me, when he knows the truth, as he loves me
now?" That was her only thought as she tried to approach the subject in
his presence without shrinking from it.
"Let us put my own feelings out of the question," she said. "There is a
reason for my not going away, unless I first have the assurance of
seeing you again. You have a claimthe strongest claim of any oneto
know how I came here, unknown to my friends, and how it was that you
found me fallen so low."
"I make no claim," he said, hastily. "I wish to know nothing which
distresses you to tell me."
"You have always done your duty," she rejoined, with a faint smile.
"Let me take example from you, if I can, and try to do mine."
"I am old enough to be your father," he said, bitterly. "Duty is more
easily done at my age than it is at yours."
His age was so constantly in his mind now that he fancied it must be in
her mind too. She had never given it a thought. The reference he had
just made to it did not divert her for a moment from the subject on
which she was speaking to him.
"You don't know how I value your good opinion of me," she said,
struggling resolutely to sustain her sinking courage. "How can I
deserve your kindness, how can I feel that I am worthy of your regard,
until I have opened my heart to you? Oh, don't encourage me in my own
miserable weakness! Help me to tell the truthforce me to tell it,
for my own sake if not for yours!"
He was deeply moved by the fervent sincerity of that appeal.
"You shall tell it," he said. "You are rightand I was wrong." He
waited a little, and considered. "Would it be easier to you," he asked,
with delicate consideration for her, "to write it than to tell it?"
She caught gratefully at the suggestion. "Far easier," she replied. "I
can be sure of myselfI can be sure of hiding nothing from you, if I
write it. Don't write to me on your side!" she added, suddenly, seeing
with a woman's instinctive quickness of penetration the danger of
totally renouncing her personal influence over him. "Wait till we meet,
and tell me with your own lips what you think."
"Where shall I tell it?"
"Here!" she said eagerly. "Here, where you found me helplesshere,
where you have brought me back to life, and where I have first learned
to know you. I can bear the hardest words you say to me if you will
only say them in this room. It is impossible I can be away longer than
a month; a month will be enough and more than enough. If I come back"
She stopped confusedly. "I am thinking of myself," she said, "when I
ought to be thinking of you. You have your own occupations and your own
friends. Will you decide for us? Will you say how it shall be?"
"It shall be as you wish. If you come back in a month, you will find me
here."
"Will it cause you no sacrifice of your own comfort and your own
plans?"
"It will cause me nothing," he replied, "but a journey back to the
City." He rose and took his hat. "I must go there at once," he added,
"or I shall not be in time."
"It is a promise between us?" she said, and held out her hand.
"Yes," he answered, a little sadly; "it is a promise."
Slight as it was, the shade of melancholy in his manner pained her.
Forgetting all other anxieties in the anxiety to cheer him, she gently
pressed the hand he gave her. "If that won't tell him the truth," she
thought, "nothing will."
It failed to tell him the truth; but it forced a question on his mind
which he had not ventured to ask himself before. "Is it her gratitude,
or her love; that is speaking to me?" he wondered. "If I was only a
younger man, I might almost hope it was her love." That terrible sum in
subtraction which had first presented itself on the day when she told
him her age began to trouble him again as he left the house. He took
twenty from forty-one, at intervals, all the way back to the
ship-owners' office in Cornhill.
Left by herself, Magdalen approached the table to write the line of
answer which Miss Garth requested, and gratefully to accept the
proposal that had been made to her.
The second letter which she had laid aside and forgotten was the first
object that caught her eye on changing her place. She opened it
immediately, and, not recognizing the handwriting, looked at the
signature. To her unutterable astonishment, her correspondent proved to
be no less a person thanold Mr. Clare!
The philosopher's letter dispensed with all the ordinary forms of
address, and entered on the subject without prefatory phrases of any
kind, in these uncompromising terms:
"I have more news for you of that contemptible cur, my son. Here it is
in the fewest possible words.
"I always told you, if you remember, that Frank was a Sneak. The very
first trace recovered of him, after his running away from his employers
in China, presents him in that character. Where do you think he turns
up next? He turns up, hidden behind a couple of flour barrels, on board
an English vessel bound homeward from Hong-Kong to London.
"The name of the ship was the Deliverance, and the commander was one
Captain Kirke. Instead of acting like a sensible man, and throwing
Frank overboard, Captain Kirke was fool enough to listen to his story.
He made the most of his misfortunes, you may be sure. He was half
starved; he was an Englishman lost in a strange country, without a
friend to help him; his only chance of getting home was to sneak into
the hold of an English vesseland he had sneaked in, accordingly, at
Hong-Kong, two days since. That was his story. Any other lout in
Frank's situation would have been rope's ended by any other captain.
Deserving no pity from anybody, Frank was, as a matter of course,
coddled and compassionated on the spot. The captain took him by the
hand, the crew pitied him, and the passengers patted him on the back.
He was fed, clothed, and presented with his passage home. Luck enough
so far, you will say. Nothing of the sort; nothing like luck enough for
my despicable son.
"The ship touched at the Cape of Good Hope. Among his other acts of
folly Captain Kirke took a woman passenger on board at that placenot a
young woman by any meansthe elderly widow of a rich colonist. Is it
necessary to say that she forthwith became deeply interested in Frank
and his misfortunes? Is it necessary to tell you what followed? Look
back at my son's career, and you will see that what followed was all of
a piece with what went before. He didn't deserve your poor father's
interest in himand he got it. He didn't deserve your attachmentand he
got it. He didn't deserve the best place in one of the best offices in
London; he didn't deserve an equally good chance in one of the best
mercantile houses in China; he didn't deserve food, clothing, pity, and
a free passage homeand he got them all. Last, not least, he didn't
even deserve to marry a woman old enough to be his grandmotherand he
has done it! Not five minutes since I sent his wedding-cards out to the
dust-hole, and tossed the letter that came with them into the fire. The
last piece of information which that letter contains is that he and his
wife are looking out for a house and estate to suit them. Mark my
words! Frank will get one of the best estates in England; a seat in the
House of Commons will follow as a matter of course; and one of the
legislators of this Ass-ridden country will beMY LOUT!
"If you are the sensible girl I have always taken you for, you have
long since learned to rate Frank at his true value, and the news I send
you will only confirm your contempt for him. I wish your poor father
could but have lived to see this day! Often as I have missed my old
gossip, I don't know that I ever felt the loss of him so keenly as I
felt it when Frank's wedding-cards and Frank's letter came to this
house.
"Your friend, if you ever want one,
"FRANCIS CLARE, Sen."
With one momentary disturbance of her composure, produced by the
appearance of Kirke's name in Mr. Clare's singular narrative, Magdalen
read the letter steadily through from beginning to end. The time when
it could have distressed her was gone by; the scales had long since
fallen from her eyes. Mr. Clare himself would have been satisfied if he
had seen the quiet contempt on her face as she laid aside his letter.
The only serious thought it cost her was a thought in which Kirke was
concerned. The careless manner in which he had referred in her presence
to the passengers on board his ship, without mentioning any of them by
their names, showed her that Frank must have kept silence on the
subject of the engagement once existing between them. The confession of
that vanished delusion was left for her to make, as part of the story
of the past which she had pledged herself unreservedly to reveal.
She wrote to Miss Garth, and sent the letter to the post immediately.
The next morning brought a line of rejoinder. Miss Garth had written to
secure the cottage at Shanklin, and Mr. Merrick had consented to
Magdalen's removal on the following day. Norah would be the first to
arrive at the house; and Miss Garth would follow, with a comfortable
carriage to take the invalid to the railway. Every needful arrangement
had been made for her; the effort of moving was the one effort she
would have to make.
Magdalen read the letter thankfully, but her thoughts wandered from it,
and followed Kirke on his return to the City. What was the business
which had once already taken him there in the morning? And why had the
promise exchanged between them obliged him to go to the City again, for
the second time in one day?
Was it by any chance business relating to the sea? Were his employers
tempting him to go back to his ship?
CHAPTER IV.
The first agitation of the meeting between the sisters was over; the
first vivid impressions, half pleasurable, half painful, had softened a
little, and Norah and Magdalen sat together hand in hand, each rapt in
the silent fullness of her own joy. Magdalen was the first to speak.
"You have something to tell me, Norah?"
"I have a thousand things to tell you, my love; and you have ten
thousand things to tell me.Do you mean that second surprise which I
told you of in my letter?"
"Yes. I suppose it must concern me very nearly, or you would hardly
have thought of mentioning it in your first letter?"
"It does concern you very nearly. You have heard of George's house in
Essex? You must be familiar, at least, with the name of St. Crux?What
is there to start at, my dear? I am afraid you are hardly strong enough
for any more surprises just yet?"
"Quite strong enough, Norah. I have something to say to you about St.
CruxI have a surprise, on my side, for you."
"Will you tell it me now?"
"Not now. You shall know it when we are at the seaside; you shall know
it before I accept the kindness which has invited me to your husband's
house."
"What can it be? Why not tell me at once?"
"You used often to set me the example of patience, Norah, in old times;
will you set me the example now?"
"With all my heart. Shall I return to my own story as well? Yes? Then
we will go back to it at once. I was telling you that St. Crux is
George's house, in Essex, the house he inherited from his uncle.
Knowing that Miss Garth had a curiosity to see the place, he left word
(when he went abroad after the admiral's death) that she and any
friends who came with her were to be admitted, if she happened to find
herself in the neighborhood during his absence. Miss Garth and I, and a
large party of Mr. Tyrrel's friends, found ourselves in the
neighborhood not long after George's departure. We had all been invited
to see the launch of Mr. Tyrrel's new yacht from the builder's yard at
Wivenhoe, in Essex. When the launch was over, the rest of the company
returned to Colchester to dine. Miss Garth and I contrived to get into
the same carriage together, with nobody but my two little pupils for
our companions. We gave the coachman his orders, and drove round by St.
Crux. The moment Miss Garth mentioned her name we were let in, and
shown all over the house. I don't know how to describe it to you. It is
the most bewildering place I ever saw in my life"
"Don't attempt to describe it, Norah. Go on with your story instead."
"Very well. My story takes me straight into one of the rooms at St.
Cruxa room about as long as your street hereso dreary, so dirty, and
so dreadfully cold that I shiver at the bare recollection of it. Miss
Garth was for getting out of it again as speedily as possible, and so
was I. But the housekeeper declined to let us off without first looking
at a singular piece of furniture, the only piece of furniture in the
comfortless place. She called it a tripod, I think. (There is nothing
to be alarmed at, Magdalen; I assure you there is nothing to be alarmed
at!) At any rate, it was a strange, three-legged thing, which supported
a great panful of charcoal ashes at the top. It was considered by all
good judges (the housekeeper told us) a wonderful piece of chasing in
metal; and she especially pointed out the beauty of some scroll-work
running round the inside of the pan, with Latin mottoes on it,
signifyingI forget what. I felt not the slightest interest in the
thing myself, but I looked close at the scroll-work to satisfy the
housekeeper. To confess the truth, she was rather tiresome with her
mechanically learned lecture on fine metal work; and, while she was
talking, I found myself idly stirring the soft feathery white ashes
backward and forward with my hand, pretending to listen, with my mind a
hundred miles away from her. I don't know how long or how short a time
I had been playing with the ashes, when my fingers suddenly encountered
a piece of crumpled paper hidden deep among them. When I brought it to
the surface, it proved to be a lettera long letter full of cramped,
close writing.You have anticipated my story, Magdalen, before I can
end it! You know as well as I do that the letter which my idle fingers
found was the Secret Trust. Hold out your hand, my dear. I have got
George's permission to show it to you, and there it is!"
She put the Trust into her sister's hand. Magdalen took it from her
mechanically. "You!" she said, looking at her sister with the
remembrance of all that she had vainly ventured, of all that she had
vainly suffered, at St. Crux"you have found it!"
"Yes," said Norah, gayly; "the Trust has proved no exception to the
general perversity of all lost things. Look for them, and they remain
invisible. Leave them alone, and they reveal themselves! You and your
lawyer, Magdalen, were both justified in supposing that your interest
in this discovery was an interest of no common kind. I spare you all
our consultations after I had produced the crumpled paper from the
ashes. It ended in George's lawyer being written to, and in George
himself being recalled from the Continent. Miss Garth and I both saw
him immediately on his return. He did what neither of us could dohe
solved the mystery of the Trust being hidden in the charcoal ashes.
Admiral Bartram, you must know, was all his life subject to fits of
somnambulism. He had been found walking in his sleep not long before
his deathjust at the time, too, when he was sadly troubled in his mind
on the subject of that very letter in your hand. George's idea is that
he must have fancied he was doing in his sleep what he would have died
rather than do in his waking momentsdestroying the Trust. The fire had
been lighted in the pan not long before, and he no doubt saw it still
burning in his dream. This was George's explanation of the strange
position of the letter when I discovered it. The question of what was
to be done with the letter itself came next, and was no easy question
for a woman to understand. But I determined to master it, and I did
master it, because it related to you."
"Let me try to master it, in my turn," said Magdalen. "I have a
particular reason for wishing to know as much about this letter as you
know yourself. What has it done for others, and what is it to do for
me?"
"My dear Magdalen, how strangely you look at it! how strangely you talk
of it! Worthless as it may appear, that morsel of paper gives you a
fortune."
"Is my only claim to the fortune the claim which this letter gives me?"
"Yes; the letter is your only claim. Shall I try if I can explain it in
two words? Taken by itself, the letter might, in the lawyer's opinion,
have been made a matter for dispute, though I am sure George would have
sanctioned no proceeding of that sort. Taken, however, with the
postscript which Admiral Bartram attached to it (you will see the lines
if you look under the signature on the third page), it becomes legally
binding, as well as morally binding, on the admiral's representatives.
I have exhausted my small stock of legal words, and must go on in my
own language instead of in the lawyer's. The end of the thing was
simply this. All the money went back to Mr. Noel Vanstone's estate
(another legal word! my vocabulary is richer than I thought), for one
plain reasonthat it had not been employed as Mr. Noel Vanstone
directed. If Mrs. Girdlestone had lived, or if George had married me a
few months earlier, results would have been just the other way. As it
is, half the money has been already divided between Mr. Noel Vanstone's
next of kin; which means, translated into plain English, my husband,
and his poor bedridden sisterwho took the money formally, one day, to
satisfy the lawyer, and who gave it back again generously, the next, to
satisfy herself. So much for one half of this legacy. The other half,
my dear, is all yours. How strangely events happen, Magdalen! It is
only two years since you and I were left disinherited orphansand we
are sharing our poor father's fortune between us, after all!"
"Wait a little, Norah. Our shares come to us in very different ways."
"Do they? Mine comes to me by my husband. Yours comes to you" She
stopped confusedly, and changed color. "Forgive me, my own love!" she
said, putting Magdalen's hand to her lips. "I have forgotten what I
ought to have remembered. I have thoughtlessly distressed you!"
"No!" said Magdalen; "you have encouraged me."
"Encouraged you?"
"You shall see."
With those words, she rose quietly from the sofa, and walked to the
open window. Before Norah could follow her, she had torn the Trust to
pieces, and had cast the fragments into the street.
She came back to the sofa and laid her head, with a deep sigh of
relief, on Norah's bosom. "I will owe nothing to my past life," she
said. "I have parted with it as I have parted with those torn morsels
of paper. All the thoughts and all the hopes belonging to it are put
away from me forever!"
"Magdalen, my husband will never allow you! I will never allow you
myself"
"Hush! hush! What your husband thinks right, Norah, you and I will
think right too. I will take from you what I would never have taken
if that letter had given it to me. The end I dreamed of has come.
Nothing is changed but the position I once thought we might hold toward
each other. Better as it is, my lovefar, far better as it is!"
So she made the last sacrifice of the old perversity and the old pride.
So she entered on the new and nobler life.
A month had passed. The autumn sunshine was bright even in the murky
streets, and the clocks in the neighborhood were just striking two, as
Magdalen returned alone to the house in Aaron's Buildings.
"Is he waiting for me?" she asked, anxiously, when the landlady let her
in.
He was waiting in the front room. Magdalen stole up the stairs and
knocked at the door. He called to her carelessly and absently to come
in, plainly thinking that it was only the servant who applied for
permission to enter the room.
"You hardly expected me so soon?" she said speaking on the threshold,
and pausing there to enjoy his surprise as he started to his feet and
looked at her.
The only traces of illness still visible in her face left a delicacy in
its outline which added refinement to her beauty. She was simply
dressed in muslin. Her plain straw bonnet had no other ornament than
the white ribbon with which it was sparingly trimmed. She had never
looked lovelier in her best days than she looked now, as she advanced
to the table at which he had been sitting, with a little basket of
flowers that she had brought with her from the country, and offered him
her hand.
He looked anxious and careworn when she saw him closer. She interrupted
his first inquiries and congratulations to ask if he had remained in
London since they had partedif he had not even gone away, for a few
days only, to see his friends in Suffolk? No; he had been in London
ever since. He never told her that the pretty parsonage house in
Suffolk wanted all those associations with herself in which the poor
four walls at Aaron's Buildings were so rich. He only said he had been
in London ever since.
"I wonder," she asked, looking him attentively in the face, "if you are
as happy to see me again as I am to see you?"
"Perhaps I am even happier, in my different way," he answered, with a
smile.
She took off her bonnet and scarf, and seated herself once more in her
own arm-chair. "I suppose this street is very ugly," she said; "and I
am sure nobody can deny that the house is very small. And yetand yet
it feels like coming home again. Sit there where you used to sit; tell
me about yourself. I want to know all that you have done, all that you
have thought even, while I have been away." She tried to resume the
endless succession of questions by means of which she was accustomed to
lure him into speaking of himself. But she put them far less
spontaneously, far less adroitly, than usual. Her one all-absorbing
anxiety in entering that room was not an anxiety to be trifled with.
After a quarter of an hour wasted in constrained inquiries on one side,
in reluctant replies on the other, she ventured near the dangerous
subject at last.
"Have you received the letters I wrote to you from the seaside?" she
asked, suddenly looking away from him for the first time.
"Yes," he said; "all."
"Have you read them?"
"Every one of themmany times over."
Her heart beat as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her promise
bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck
at Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in
her sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she
had done, nothing even that she had thought, had been concealed from
his knowledge. As he would have kept a pledged engagement with her, so
she had kept her pledged engagement with him. She had not faltered in
the resolution to do this; and now she faltered over the one decisive
question which she had come there to ask. Strong as the desire in her
was to know if she had lost or won him, the fear of knowing was at that
moment stronger still. She waited and trembled; she waited, and said no
more.
"May I speak to you about your letters?" he asked. "May I tell you?"
If she had looked at him as he said those few words, she would have
seen what he thought of her in his face. She would have seen, innocent
as he was in this world's knowledge, that he knew the priceless value,
the all-ennobling virtue, of a woman who speaks the truth. But she had
no courage to look at himno courage to raise her eyes from her lap.
"Not just yet," she said, faintly. "Not quite so soon after we have met
again."
She rose hurriedly from her chair, and walked to the window, turned
back again into the room, and approached the table, close to where he
was sitting. The writing materials scattered near him offered her a
pretext for changing the subject, and she seized on it directly. "Were
you writing a letter," she asked, "when I came in?"
"I was thinking about it," he replied. "It was not a letter to be
written without thinking first." He rose as he answered her to gather
the writing materials together and put them away.
"Why should I interrupt you?" she said. "Why not let me try whether I
can't help you instead? Is it a secret?"
"No, not a secret."
He hesitated as he answered her. She instantly guessed the truth.
"Is it about your ship?"
He little knew how she had been thinking in her absence from him of the
business which he believed that he had concealed from her. He little
knew that she had learned already to be jealous of his ship. "Do they
want you to return to your old life?" she went on. "Do they want you to
go back to the sea? Must you say Yes or No at once?"
"At once."
"If I had not come in when I did would you have said Yes?"
She unconsciously laid her hand on his arm, forgetting all inferior
considerations in her breathless anxiety to hear his next words. The
confession of his love was within a hair-breadth of escaping him; but
he checked the utterance of it even yet. "I don't care for myself," he
thought; "but how can I be certain of not distressing her?"
"Would you have said Yes?" she repeated.
"I was doubting," he answered"I was doubting between Yes and No."
Her hand tightened on his arm; a sudden trembling seized her in every
limb, she could bear it no longer. All her heart went out to him in her
next words:
"Were you doubting for my sake?"
"Yes," he said. "Take my confession in return for yoursI was doubting
for your sake."
She said no more; she only looked at him. In that look the truth
reached him at last. The next instant she was folded in his arms, and
was shedding delicious tears of joy, with her face hidden on his bosom.
"Do I deserve my happiness?" she murmured, asking the one question at
last. "Oh, I know how the poor narrow people who have never felt and
never suffered would answer me if I asked them what I ask you. If
they knew my story, they would forget all the provocation, and only
remember the offense; they would fasten on my sin, and pass all my
suffering by. But you are not one of them! Tell me if you have any
shadow of a misgiving! Tell me if you doubt that the one dear object of
all my life to come is to live worthy of you! I asked you to wait and
see me; I asked you, if there was any hard truth to be told, to tell it
me here with your own lips. Tell it, my love, my husband!tell it me
now!"
She looked up, still clinging to him as she clung to the hope of her
better life to come.
"Tell me the truth!" she repeated.
"With my own lips?"
"Yes!" she answered, eagerly. "Say what you think of me with your own
lips."
He stooped and kissed her.