‘Trust me to remember it,’ replied Magdalen, destroying the letter while she spoke. ‘Have you anything more to tell me?’
‘I have some information to give you,’ said Captain Wragge, ‘which may be useful, because it relates to your future security. Mind, I want to know nothing about your proceedings when to-morrow is over – we settled that when we first discussed this matter. I ask no questions, and I make no guesses. All I want to do now, is to warn you of your legal position, after your marriage; and to leave you to make what use you please of your knowledge, at your own sole discretion. I took a lawyer’s opinion on the point, when I was in London, thinking it might be useful to you.’
‘It is sure to be useful. What did the lawyer say?’
‘To put it plainly, this is what he said. If Mr Noel Vanstone ever discovers that you have knowingly married him under a false name, he can apply to the Ecclesiastical Court to have his marriage declared null and void. The issue of the application would rest with the Judges. But if he could prove that he had been intentionally deceived, the legal opinion is that his case would be a strong one.’
‘Suppose I chose to apply on my side?’ said Magdalen, eagerly. ‘What then?’
‘You might make the application,’ replied the captain. ‘But remember one thing – you would come into Court, with the acknowledgment of your own deception. I leave you to imagine what the Judges would think of that.’
‘Did the lawyer tell you anything else?’
‘One thing besides,’ said Captain Wragge. ‘Whatever the law might do with the marriage in the lifetime of both the parties to it – on the death of either one of them, no application made by the survivor would avail; and, as to the case of that survivor, the marriage would remain valid. You understand? If he dies, or if you the – and if no application has been made to the Court – he the survivor, or you the survivor, would have no power of disputing the marriage. But, in the lifetime of both of you, if he claimed to have the marriage dissolved, the chances are all in favour of his carrying his point.’
He looked at Magdalen with a furtive curiosity as he said those words. She turned her head aside, absently tying her watch-chain into a loop and untying it again; evidently thinking with the closest attention over what he had last said to her. Captain Wragge walked uneasily to the window, and looked out. The first object that caught his eye was Mr Noel Vanstone approaching from Sea-View. He returned instantly to his former place in the room, and addressed himself to Magdalen once more.
‘Here is Mr Noel Vanstone,’ he said. ‘One last caution before he comes in. Be on your guard with him about your age. He put the question to me before he got the licence. I took the shortest way out of the difficulty, and told him you were twenty-one – and he made the declaration accordingly. Never mind about me; after to-morrow, I am invisible. But, in your own interests, don’t forget, if the subject turns up, that you were of age when you married. There is nothing more. You are provided with every necessary warning that I can give you. Whatever happens in the future – remember I have done my best.’
He hurried to the door, without waiting for an answer, and went out into the garden to receive his guest.
Noel Vanstone made his appearance at the gate, solemnly carrying his bridal offering to North Shingles with both hands. The object in question was an ancient casket (one of his father’s bargains); inside the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch, set in silver (another of his father’s bargains) – bridal presents both, possessing the inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in his pocket. He shook his head portentously when the captain inquired after his health and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night; ungovernable apprehensions of Lecount’s sudden reappearance had beset him as soon as he found himself alone at Sea-View. Sea-View was redolent of Lecount: Sea-View (though built on piles, and the strongest house in England) was henceforth odious to him. He had felt this all night; he had also felt his responsibilities. There was the lady’s maid, to begin with. Now he had hired her, he began to think she wouldn’t do. She might fall sick on his hands; she might have deceived him by a false character; she and the landlady of the hotel might have been in league together. Horrible! Really horrible to think of. Then there was the other responsibility – perhaps the heaviest of the two – the responsibility of deciding where he was to go and spend his honeymoon to-morrow. He would have preferred one of his father’s empty houses. But, except at Vauxhall Walk (which he supposed would be objected to), and at Aldborough (which was of course out of the question), all the houses were let. He would put himself in Mr Bygrave’s hands. Where had Mr Bygrave spent his own honeymoon? Given the British Islands to choose from, where would Mr Bygrave pitch his tent, on a careful review of all the circumstances?
At this point, the bridegroom’s questions suddenly came to an end, and the bridegroom’s face exhibited an expression of ungovernable astonishment. His judicious friend whose advice had been at his disposal in every other emergency, suddenly turned round on him, in the emergency of the honeymoon, and flatly declined discussing the subject.
‘No!’ said the captain, as Noel Vanstone opened his lips to plead for a hearing, ‘you must really excuse me. My point of view, in this matter, is, as usual, a peculiar one. For some time past, I have been living in an atmosphere of deception, to suit your convenience. That atmosphere, my good sir, is getting close – my Moral Being requires ventilation. Settle the choice of a locality with my niece; and leave me, at my particular request, in total ignorance of the subject. Mrs Lecount is certain to come here on her return from Züich, and is certain to ask me where you are gone. You may think it strange, Mr Vanstone – but when I tell her I don’t know, I wish to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of feeling, for once in a way, that I am speaking the truth!’
With those words, he opened the sitting-room door; introduced Noel Vanstone to Magdalen’s presence; bowed himself out of the room again; and set forth alone to while away the rest of the afternoon by taking a walk. His face showed plain tokens of anxiety, and his parti-coloured eyes looked hither and thither distrustfully, as he sauntered along the shore. ‘The time hangs heavy on our hands,’ thought the captain. ‘I wish to-morrow was come and gone.’
The day passed and nothing happened; the evening and the night followed, placidly and uneventfully. Monday came, a cloudless lovely day – Monday confirmed the captain’s assertion that the marriage was a certainty. Towards ten o’clock, the clerk ascending the church steps, quoted the old proverb to the pew-opener, meeting him under the porch: ‘Happy the bride on whom the sun shines!’
In a quarter of an hour more, the wedding party was in the vestry, and the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret of the marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the morning had been enough to betray it. A small congregation, almost entirely composed of women, was scattered here and there among the pews. Kirke’s sister and her children were staying with a friend at Aldborough – and Kirke’s sister was one of the congregation.
As the wedding party entered the church, the haunting terror of Mrs Lecount spread from Noel Vanstone to the captain. For the first few minutes, the eyes of both of them looked among the women in the pews, with the same searching scrutiny; and looked away again with the same sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that look, and investigated the licence more closely than usual. The clerk began to doubt privately whether the old proverb about the bride, was a proverb to be always depended on. The female members of the congregation murmured among themselves at the inexcusable disregard of appearances implied in the bride’s dress. Kirke’s sister whispered venomously in her friend’s ear, ‘Thank God for to-day for Robert’s sake.’ Mrs Wragge cried silently, with the dread of some threatening calamity, she knew not what. The one person present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalen herself. She stood with tearless resignation in her place before the altar – stood, as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up within her.
The cle
rgyman opened the Book.
It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to Heaven were pronounced. The children of the two dead brothers – inheritors of the implacable enmity which had parted their parents – were Man and Wife.
From that moment, events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting scene. They were back at the house, while the words of the Marriage Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five minutes in-doors, the carriage drew up at the garden-gate. In a minute more, the opportunity came for which Magdalen and the captain had been on the watch – the opportunity of speaking together in private for the last time. She still preserved her icy resignation – she seemed beyond all reach now of the fear that had once, mastered her, of the remorse that had once tortured her to the soul. With a firm hand, she gave him the promised money. With a firm face, she looked her last at him. ‘I’m not to blame,’ he whispered eagerly; ‘I have only done what you asked me.’ She bowed her head – she bent it towards him kindly, and let him touch her forehead with his lips. ‘Take care!’ he said. ‘My last words are – for God’s sake take care when I’m gone!’ She turned from him with a smile, and spoke her farewell words to his wife. Mrs Wragge tried hard to face her loss bravely – the loss of the friend whose presence had fallen like light from Heaven over the dim pathway of her life. ‘You have been very good to me, my dear; I thank you kindly; I thank you with all my heart.’ She could say no more – she clung to Magdalen, in a passion of tears, as her mother might have clung to her, if her mother had lived to see that horrible day. ‘I’m frightened for you!’ cried the poor creature in a wild wailing voice. ‘Oh, my darling, I’m frightened for you!’ Magdalen desperately drew herself free – kissed her – and hurried out to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, the cry of that guileless love, shook her as nothing else had shaken her that day. It was a refuge to get to the carriage – a refuge, though the man she had married stood there waiting for her at the door.
Mrs Wragge tried to follow her into the garden. But the captain had seen Magdalen’s face as she ran out; and he steadily held his wife back in the passage. From that distance, the last farewells were exchanged. As long as the carriage was in sight, Magdalen looked back at them -she waved her handkerchief, as she turned the corner. In a moment more, the last thread which bound her to them was broken; the familiar companionship of many months was a thing of the past already!
Captain Wragge closed the house-door on the idlers who were looking in from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room, and spoke to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him.
‘She has gone her way,’ he said, ‘and in another hour we shall have gone ours. Cry your cry out – I don’t deny she’s worth crying for.’
Even then – even when the dread of Magdalen’s future was at its darkest in his mind – the ruling habit of the man’s life clung to him. Mechanically, he unlocked his despatch-box. Mechanically, he opened his Book of Accounts, and made the closing entry – the entry of his last transaction with Magdalen – in black and white. ‘By Recd from Miss Vanstone,’ wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, ‘Two hundred pounds.’
‘You won’t be angry with me?’ said Mrs Wragge, looking timidly at her husband through her tears. ‘I want a word of comfort, captain. Oh, do tell me – when shall I see her again?’
The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable word: ‘Never!’
Between eleven and twelve o’clock that night, Mrs Lecount drove into Züich.
Her brother’s house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in speechless amazement, when she opened the door, and saw who the visitor was.
‘Is my brother alive?’ asked Mrs Lecount, entering the house.
‘Alive!’ echoed the servant. ‘He has gone holiday-making into the country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air.’
The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid, and her teeth chattered in her head.
‘Send for my brother’s doctor,’ she said, as soon as she could speak.
The doctor came. She handed him a letter, before he could say a word.
‘Did you write that letter?’
He looked it over rapidly, and answered her without hesitation.
‘Certainly not!’
‘It is your handwriting.’
‘It is a forgery of my handwriting.’
She rose from the chair, with a new strength in her.
‘When does the return mail start for Paris?’ she asked.
‘In half an hour.’
‘Send instantly, and take me a place in it!’
The servant hesitated; the doctor protested. She turned a deaf ear to them both.
‘Send!’ she reiterated, ‘or I will go myself.’
They obeyed. The servant went to take the place: the doctor remained, and held a conversation with Mrs Lecount. When the half hour had passed, he helped her into her place in the mail, and charged the conductor privately to take care of his passenger.
‘She has travelled from England without stopping,’ said the doctor; ‘and she is travelling back again without rest. Be careful of her, or she will break down under the double journey.’
The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an end, Mrs Lecount was on her way back to England.
THE END OF THE FOURTH SCENE
BETWEEN THE SCENES
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST
One
From George Bartram to Noel Vanstone
‘St Crux, September 4th, 1847
‘MY DEAR NOEL,
‘Here are two plain questions at starting. In the name of all that is mysterious, what are you hiding for? And why is everything relating to your marriage kept an impenetrable secret from your oldest friends?
‘I have been to Aldborough to try if I could trace you from that place; and have come back as wise as I went. I have applied to your lawyer in London; and have been told in reply, that you have forbidden him to disclose the place of your retreat to any one, without first receiving your permission to do so. All I could prevail on him to say was, that he would forward any letter which might be sent to his care. I write accordingly – and, mind this, I expect an answer.
‘You may ask, in your ill-tempered way, what business I have to meddle with affairs of yours, which it is your pleasure to keep private. My dear Noel, there is a serious reason for our opening communications with you from this house. You don’t know what events have taken place at St Crux, since you ran away to get married; and though I detest writing letters, I must lose an hour’s shooting to-day in trying to enlighten you.
‘On the twenty-third of last month, the admiral and I were disturbed over our wine after dinner, by the announcement that a visitor had unexpectedly arrived at St Crux. Who do you think the visitor was? Mrs Lecount!
‘My uncle, with that old-fashioned bachelor gallantry of his, which pays equal respect to all wearers of petticoats, left the table directly to welcome Mrs Lecount. While I was debating whether I should follow him or not, my meditations were suddenly brought to an end by a loud call from the admiral. I ran into the morning-room – and there was your unfortunate housekeeper, on the sofa, with all the women-servants about her, more dead than alive. She had travelled from England to Zürich, and from Zürich back again to England, without stopping; and she looked, seriously and literally, at death’s door. I immediately agreed with my uncle, that the first thing to be done was to send for medical help. We despatched a groom on the spot; and at Mrs Lecount’s own request, sent all the servants, in a body, out of the room.
‘As soon as we were alone, Mrs Lecount surprised us by a singular question. She asked if you had received a letter which she had addressed to you before leaving England, at this house. When we told her that the letter had been forw
arded, under cover to your friend Mr Bygrave, by your own particular request, she turned as pale as ashes; and when we added that you had left us in company with this same Mr Bygrave, she clasped her hands and stared at us as if she had taken leave of her senses. Her next question was, “Where is Mr Noel, now?” We could only give her one reply – Mr Noel had not informed us. She looked perfectly thunder-struck at that answer. “He has gone to his ruin?” she said. “He has gone away in company with the greatest villain in England. I must find him! I tell you I must find Mr Noel! If I don’t find him at once, it will be too late. He will be married!” she burst out quite frantically. “On my honour and my oath he will be married!” The admiral, incautiously perhaps, but with the best intentions, told her you were married already. She gave a scream that made the windows ring again, and dropped back on the sofa in a fainting fit. The doctor came, in the nick of time, and soon brought her to. But she was taken ill the same night – she has grown worse and worse ever since – and the last medical report is, that the fever from which she has been suffering is in a fair way to settle on her brain.
‘Now, my dear Noel, neither my uncle nor I have any wish to intrude ourselves on your confidence. We are naturally astonished at the extraordinary mystery which hangs over you and your marriage; and we cannot be blind to the fact that your housekeeper has, apparently, some strong reason of her own for viewing Mrs Noel Vanstone with an enmity and distrust, which we are quite ready to believe that lady has done nothing to deserve. Whatever strange misunderstanding there may have been in your household, is your business (if you choose to keep it to yourself), and not ours. All we have any right to do, is to tell you what the doctor says. His patient has been delirious; he declines to answer for her life if she goes on as she is going on now; and he thinks – finding that she is perpetually talking of her master – that your presence would be useful in quieting her, if you could come here at once, and exert your influence before it is too late.