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 grey 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 again – the murderer hurling the Spud of the plough 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 towards the house, all following the same direction with the favouring set of the tide. In half an hour – perhaps in less – the 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 towards the quarter from which the vessels were drifting down on her – with 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 interval – and the second followed, with the third close after it. Another interval, longer and longer drawn out – and nothing passed. She looked at her watch. Twelve minutes; and three ships. Three.
The fourth came; slower than the rest, larger than the rest, farther 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, three – and no sixth vessel. Twenty-four; and the sixth came by. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight; and the next uneven number – the fatal Seven – glided 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 watch – looked for the last time at the sea – and 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 way – gliding till it melted dimly into shadow – gliding 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 face – the blue heaven looked down on her – and 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 Fourteen
The morning of her husband’s return to North Shingles was a morning memorable for ever 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 next, 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 feeling – with 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 ta
ble 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 tomorrow?’
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 favours for the servants. It’s flying in the face of Providence -that’s what I say. I’m only a poor servant, I know. But it’s wicked, downright wicked – and 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 waist – and 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 here – you 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, was – the 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 colour, 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 parted – without 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 goodbye.’
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 solitude – when 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 backwards and forwards 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 me – say 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 pocket-book 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 story -which 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 afterwards presented at Aid borough, 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 mean time, 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.’