The post-master 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 post-master. A bright idea struck him. He took out his pocket-book, 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 pretence whatever.’
‘Granted, with all my heart,’ persisted the captain. ‘I don’t want to touch it – I 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 post-master 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 post-master’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 post-master, keeping the letter in his own hand.
“ ‘Noel Vanstone, Esquire” ’, replied the captain, ‘ “Admiral Bar-tram’s, St Crux-in-the-Marsh” ’.
‘Ossory, Essex,’ chimed in the post-master, 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 into 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 master -therefore Mrs Lecount was on her way to Zürich!
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 hour so as to reach the railway in time for the second train running to London – with 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 licence 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 door – come down to me directly.’ His next proceeding was to taken some half-dozen envelopes out of the case, and to direct them all alike to the following address: ‘Thomas By grave, 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 grey 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, fear – all-mastering fear – had 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 him – for she moved a little in the chair, and slowly shook her head.
‘You planned this marriage of your own free will,’ pursued the captain, with the furtive look and the faltering voice of a man ill at ease. ‘It was your own idea – not mine. I won’t have the responsibility laid on my shoulders – no! 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 paralysing 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 herself – a faint tinge of colour stole over her white cheeks – she 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.
‘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 travelling-bag. ‘Miss Bygrave is not well,’ he said. ‘Tell your mistress to go to her in the parlour.’
He stepped into the chaise, and started on the first stage of the journey to St Crux.
Chapter Twelve
Towards 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 sky – the 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 curves – rivers 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, farther 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 neighbourhood, and no sound was heard but the hoarse barking of a house-dog from an invisible court-yard.
‘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 enclosure 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 eager; absorbed in anxiety for news from Aid borough. Captain Wragge opened the carriage-door, seized his out-stretched 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 feelings – there 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 Zürich?’
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 Zürich?’
‘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 travellers 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 travelling 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 last – he followed nobody; he took the lead!
The forenoon of the next day was devoted to obtaining the licence -the 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 place, whom the landlady had engaged to summon to the hotel – while Captain Wragge turned his steps, ‘on business personal to himself, towards 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 Aid borough 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 d
eclined 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, enclosed in one of the envelopes which the captain had addressed to himself. He received it (by previous arrangement with the waiter) in his bedroom – read it with the closest attention – and put it away carefully in his pocket-book. The letter was ominous of serious events to come, when the housekeeper returned to England; and it was due to Magdalen – who was the person threatened – to place the warning of danger in her own possession.
Later in the day, the fourth candidate appeared for the maid’s situation – a 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 jeweller’s shop after another, that he and the captain, and the new lady’s-maid (who travelled 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.