‘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 on – but I can’t get my hands like yours. I’m nicely dressed, though, aint I? I like dress; it’s a comfort to me. I’m always happy when I’m looking at my things. I say – you won’t be angry with me? – I should so like to try your bonnet on.’
Magdalen humoured 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 swear – oh, 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 captain – I 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 table – he won’t have that! Don’t move his razors – don’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 nails – he’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 receipts. 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 somebody – it’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 colour 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 numbers 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 over – oh mercy, try the cold towel again, and tell me which – the 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 melliflu ous 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 me – things 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 again – and 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 me – what 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 window – stood 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 backwards and forwards, softly. ‘No: never till the debt is paid!’ Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. ‘Still at sea, poor fellow; farther and farther 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 relations – my 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, towards 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, honour the York butter, test the freshness of a new and neighbouring egg. I offer my little all. A pauper’s meal, my dear girl – seasoned 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 still – that 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 unfavourable.”Granted, on one condition – that 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 Wragge – pull it up at heel! Pray allow me,’ he continued, offering his arm to Magdalen, and escorting her to a dirty little horsehair sofa. ‘You want repose – after your long journey, you really want repose.’ He drew his chair to the sofa, and surveyed her with a bland look of investigation – as 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 subject – the subject of my rascally self? No! no! No apologies, no protestations, pray. Don’t mince the matter on your side — and 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 superhuman. Not the vestige of a blush varied the sallow monotony of his complexion; the smile wreathed his curly lips, as pleasantly as ever; his parti-coloured 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 in – that 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, D- swind; L, E, R- 1er; 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 manner – calls great writers, scribblers – great generals, butchers – and 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 afterwards what I think of it.’
The captain cleared his throat; mentally assembled his entire army of words — horse, foot, artillery and reserves; put himself at the head; and dashed into action, to carry the moral entrenchments 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 pretence or another, of the man who has -and in nine cases out of ten, the pretence 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 you – I 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 line – do they get their crops for the asking? No! they must circumvent arid Nature, exactly as I circumvent sordid man. They must plough, 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 word – infamous! If I hadn’t confidence in the future, I should despair of humanity – but 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 defence, 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 ploughed, 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 words -purely from want of breath. ‘I put it frankly, with a dash of humour,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘I don’t shock you – do I?’ Weary and heartsick as she was – suspicious of others, doubtful of herself – the extravagant impudence of Captain Wragge’s defence of swindling, touched Magdalen’s natural sense of humour, 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 hit – a 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 fails – but 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 offences – incurable stupidity in the exercise of the
ir 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 neighbourhood. The same brief remarks 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 like – I 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 over – with 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.’