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 fervour. 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 ZÜrich, 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 rivalled 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 afterwards 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 parlour 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 afterwards; 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 back room downstairs. She could only tell him that Magdalen had frightened her – that 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 happier – they 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 parlour –’
Her voice died away in silence, before she ended the sentence.
‘Yes?’ said Captain Wragge.
‘And leave me alone in the parlour 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, afterwards. 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 girl – make 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 hour –for 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 parlour 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 towards 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 Eight
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 parlour.’ 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 whe
ther 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’clock; no 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.1 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 justified – considering our present position towards a certain sharp practitioner in petticoats – in 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 squeeze – and, 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 him – all 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 parlour 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 Bygrave – thousands of pounds sterling out of my pocket!!!’ He clasped his hands in despair at the picture of pecuniary compulsion, which his fancy had conjured up – his own golden life-blood spouting from him in great jets of prodigality under the lancet of Mrs Lecount!
‘Gently, Mr Vanstone – gently! 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, explained – with an infinite number of parentheses, all referring to himself – that 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 outbreak – accompanied, as it was, by an expression in Mrs Lecount’s face which he had never seen there before -Noel 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 it – it was a plain warning to him to hasten the end.
‘I am not surprised,’ he said, gravely, ??
?to hear that you are inclining more favourably 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 unfavourable, 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 afterwards, 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 proposed – however unbecoming I may think it; however distasteful it may be to myself – would 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 achieve – to 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 trumps – I beg your pardon – which have turned out well, after all. But if you and my niece, Mr Vanstone, are to add one to the number of these cases, 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.’