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. Towards 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 Bygrave – spruce, speckless and respectable as ever – appeared 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 pictures – Gems by the Old Masters – which 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 ardour 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 parlour. 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 colour; she talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gaiety 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 him – to obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt’s presence – miser 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 Zürich 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 neighbours at North Shingles.’
Noel Vanstone’s flushed cheeks 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 Zürich. 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 pictures – copies 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 few. You can do that, can’t you?’
‘Of course I can do it,’ said Noel Vanstone. ‘But I can tell you one thing – Lecount 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 Bygrave – she 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 Zürich. 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 acquaintance 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 me – which 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’s – you don’t know him, do you? – at St Crux-in-the-Marsh.’
&nb
sp; ‘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 obligations – my 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 George – I 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’s as proud as Lucifer – she likes being treated like a lady – and she pesters me every autumn to go to St Crux. What’s the matter? What are you taking out your pocket-book for?’
‘I want the admiral’s address, Mr Vanstone – for a purpose which I will explain immediately.’
With those words, Captain Wragge opened his pocket-book, 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 pocket-book again. ‘The only difficulty that stood in our way, is now cleared out of it. Patience, Mr Vanstone – patience! 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 Zürich; and if you only carry out my instructions, Mr Vanstone – as sure as you sit there, to Zürich she goes!’
Noel Vanstone’s colour 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 pocket-book – pick you up at the admiral’s – and take you on to London with me to get the licence. With that document in our possession, we shall be on our way back to Aldborough, while Mrs Lecount is on her way out to Zürich – 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 halyes. 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! Thumb – works of Art. Forefinger – cut me on the Parade. Middle finger – tired of Aldborough. Third finger – take Lecount’s advice. Little finger – off to St Crux. Nothing can be clearer – nothing 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 test – the 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 hers – the 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 Ten
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 tomorrow.’
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 on – a 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 he
r 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 pretence 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 coastguardsman 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. Towards 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 parlours, 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 tradespeople, 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 travelling carriage at the door had proved even Mr Bygrave himself to be as good as his word.