Towards the close of the afternoon, a decent middle-aged woman came to the house, with a letter from Mr Merrick. She was well known to the doctor, as a trustworthy and careful person, who had nursed his own wife; and she would be assisted, from time to time, by a lady, who was a member of a religious Sisterhood in the district, and whose compassionate interest had been warmly aroused in the case. Towards eight o’clock, that evening, the doctor himself would call and see that his patient wanted for nothing.
The arrival of the nurse, and the relief of knowing that she was to be trusted, left Kirke free to think of himself. His luggage was ready packed for his contemplated journey to Suffolk, the next day. It was merely necessary to transport it from the hotel to the house in Aaron’s Buildings.
He stopped once only on his way to the hotel, to look at a toy-shop in one of the great thoroughfares. The miniature ships in the window reminded him of his nephew. ‘My little namesake will be sadly disappointed at not seeing me to-morrow,’ he thought. ‘I must make it up to the boy, by sending him something from his uncle.’ He went into the shop, and bought one of the ships. It was secured in a box, and packed and directed in his presence. He put a card on the deck of the miniature vessel before the cover of the box was nailed on, bearing this inscription:
‘A ship for the little sailor, with the big sailor’s love.’–’Children like to be written to, ma’am,’ he said, apologetically, to the woman behind the counter. ‘Send the box as soon as you can – I am anxious the boy should get it to-morrow.’
Towards the dusk of the evening, he returned with his luggage to Aaron’s Buildings. He took off his boots in the passage, and carried his trunk upstairs himself; stopping, as he passed the first floor, to make his inquiries. Mr Merrick was present to answer them.
‘She was awake and wandering,’ said the doctor, ‘a few minutes since. But we have succeeded in composing her, and she is sleeping now.’
‘Have no words escaped her, sir, which might help us to find her friends?’
Mr Merrick shook his head.
‘Weeks and weeks may pass yet,’ he said, ‘and that poor girl’s story may still be a sealed secret to all of us. We can only wait.’
So the day ended – the first of many days that were to come.
Chapter Two
The warm sunlight of July shining softly through a green blind; an open window with fresh flowers set on the sill; a strange bed, in a strange room; a giant figure of the female sex (like a dream of Mrs Wragge) towering aloft on one side of the bed, and trying to clap its hands; another woman (quickly) stopping the hands before they could make any noise; a mild expostulating voice (like a dream of Mrs Wragge again) breaking the silence in these words, ‘She knows me, ma’am, she knows me; if I mustn’t be happy, it will be the death of me!’ – such were the first sights, such were the first sounds, to which, after six weeks of oblivion, Magdalen suddenly and strangely awoke.
After a little, the sights grew dim again, and the sounds sank into silence. Sleep, the merciful, took her once more, and hushed her back to repose.
Another day – and the sights were clearer, the sounds were louder. Another – and she heard a man’s voice, through the door, asking for news from the sick-room. The voice was strange to her; it was always cautiously lowered to the same quiet tone. It inquired after her, in the morning, when she woke – at noon, when she took her refreshment – in the evening, before she dropped to sleep again. ‘Who is so anxious about me?’ That was the first thought her mind was strong enough to form: ‘Who is so anxious about me?’
More days – and she could speak to the nurse at her bedside; she could answer the questions of an elderly man, who knew far more about her than she knew about herself, and who told her he was Mr Merrick, the doctor; she could sit up in bed, supported by pillows, wondering what had happened to her, and where she was; she could feel a growing curiosity about that quiet voice, which still asked after her, morning, noon and night, on the other side of the door.
Another day’s delay – and Mr Merrick asked her if she was strong enough to see an old friend. A meek voice, behind him, articulating high in the air, said, ‘It’s only me.’ The voice was followed by the prodigious bodily apparition of Mrs Wragge, with her cap all awry, and one of her shoes in the next room. ‘Oh, look at her! look at her!’ cried Mrs Wragge, in an ecstasy, dropping on her knees at Magdalen’s bedside, with a thump that shook the house. ‘Bless her heart, she’s well enough to laugh at me already. “Cheer, boys, cheer -!” I beg your pardon, doctor, my conduct isn’t ladylike, I know. It’s my head, sir; it isn’t me. I must get vent somehow – or my head will burst!’ No coherent sentence, in answer to any sort of question put to her, could be extracted that morning from Mrs Wragge. She rose from one climax of verbal confusion to another – and finished her visit under the bed, groping inscrutably for the second shoe.
The morrow came – and Mr Merrick promised that she should see another old friend on the next day. In the evening, when the inquiring voice asked after her, as usual, and when the door was opened a few inches to give the reply, she answered faintly for herself: ‘I am better, thank you.’ There was a moment of silence – and then, just as the door was shut again, the voice sank to a whisper, and said fervently, ‘Thank God!’ Who was he? She had asked them all, and no one would tell her. Who was he?
The next day came; and she heard her door opened softly. Brisk footsteps tripped into the room; a lithe little figure advanced to the bedside. Was it a dream again? No! There he was in his own evergreen reality, with the copious flow of language pouring smoothly from his lips; with the lambent dash of humour twinkling in his parti-coloured eyes – there he was, more audacious, more persuasive, more respectable than ever, in a suit of glossy black, with a speckless white cravat, and a rampant shirt-frill – the unblushing, the invincible, unchangeable, Wragge!
‘Not a word, my dear girl!’ said the captain, seating himself comfortably at the bedside, in his old confidential way. ‘I am to do all the talking; and I think you will own, a more competent man for the purpose could not possibly have been found. I am really delighted – honestly delighted, if I may use such an apparently inappropriate word – to see you again, and to see you getting well. I have often thought of you; I have often missed you; I have often said to myself – never mind what! Clear the stage, and drop the curtain on the past. Dum vivimus, vivamus!1 Pardon the pedantry of a Latin quotation, my dear, and tell me how I look. Am I, or am I not, the picture of a prosperous man?’
Magdalen attempted to answer him. The captain’s deluge of words flowed over her again in a moment.
‘Don’t exert yourself,’ he said. ‘I’ll put all your questions for you. What have I been about? Why do I look so remarkably well off? And how in the world did I find my way to this house? My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from Moral Agriculture to Medical Agriculture. Formerly, I preyed on the public sympathy; now, I prey on the public stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach – look them both fairly in the face, when you reach the wrong side of fifty, and you will agree with me that they come to much the same thing. However that may be, here I am – incredible as it may appear – a man with an income, at last. The founders of my fortune are three in number. Their names are Aloes, Scammony and Gambage.2 In plainer words, I am now living – on a Pill. I made a little money (if you remember) by my friendly connection with you. I made a little more, by the happy decease (Requiescat in Pace) of that female relative of Mrs Wragge’s, from whom, as I told you, my wife had expectations. Very good. What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in advertisements – and purchased my drugs and my pill-boxes on credit. The result is now before you. Here I am, a Grand Financial Fact. Here I am with my clothes positively paid for; with a balance at my banker’s; with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, flourishing, popular – and all on a Pill.??
?
Magdalen smiled. The captain’s face assumed an expression of mock gravity: he looked as if there was a serious side to the question, and as if he meant to put it next.
‘It’s no laughing matter to the public, my dear,’ he said. ‘They can’t get rid of me and my Pill – they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in the whole range of human advertisement, which I am not making to the unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last new novel – there I am, inside the boards of the book. Send for the last new Song – the instant you open the leaves, I drop out of it. Take a cab – I fly in at the window, in red. Buy a box of tooth-powder at the chemist’s – I wrap it up for you, in blue. Show yourself at the theatre – I flutter down on you, in yellow. The mere titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few from last week’s issue. Proverbial Title: – “A Pill in Time, saves Nine.” Familiar Title: “Excuse me, how is your Stomach?” Patriotic Title: “Where are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman? His Hearth, his Home, and his Pill.” Title in the form of a nursery dialogue: “Mamma, I am not well.” “What is the matter, my pet?” “I want a little Pill.” Title in the form of an Historical Anecdote: “New Discovery in the Mine of English History. When the Princes were smothered in the Tower, their faithful attendant collected all the little possessions left behind them. Among the touching trifles dear to the poor boys, he found a tiny Box. It contained the Pill of the Period. Is it necessary to say, how inferior that Pill was to its Successor, which prince and peasant alike may now obtain” – Et cetera, Et cetera. The place in which my Pill is made, is an advertisement in itself. I have got one of the largest shops in London. Behind one counter (visible to the public through the lucid medium of plate-glass), are four-and-twenty young men in white aprons, making the Pill. Behind another counter, are four-and-twenty young men, in white cravats, making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the Pill, in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, by the motto of the establishment: “Down with the Doctors!” Even Mrs Wragge contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies from every complaint under the sun. Her portrait is engraved on all the wrappers, with the following inscription beneath it: “Before she took the Pill, you might have blown this patient away with a feather. Look at her now!!!” Last, not least, my dear girl, the Pill is the cause of my finding my way to this house. My department in the prodigious Enterprise already mentioned, is to scour the United Kingdom in a gig, establishing Agencies everywhere. While founding one of those Agencies, I heard of a certain friend of mine, who had lately landed in England, after a long sea voyage. I got his address in London – he was a lodger in this house. I called on him forthwith – and was stunned by the news of your illness. Such, in brief, is the history of my existing connection with British Medicine; and so it happens that you see me at the present moment, sitting in the present chair, now as ever, yours truly, Horatio Wragge.’
In these terms the captain brought his personal statement to a close. He looked more and more attentively at Magdalen, the nearer he got to the conclusion. Was there some latent importance attaching to his last words, which did not appear on the face of them? There was. His visit to the sick-room had a serious object; and that object he had now approached.
In describing the circumstances, under which he had become acquainted with Magdalen’s present position, Captain Wragge had skirted with his customary dexterity round the remote boundaries of truth. Emboldened by the absence of any public scandal in connection with Noel Vanstone’s marriage, or with the event of his death as announced in the newspaper obituary, the captain, roaming the eastern circuit, had ventured back to Aldborough, a fortnight since, to establish an agency there for the sale of his wonderful Pill. No one had recognized him but the landlady of the hotel, who at once insisted on his entering the house, and reading Kirke’s letter to her husband. The same night, Captain Wragge was in London, and was closeted with the sailor, in the second-floor room at Aaron’s Buildings.
The serious nature of the situation, the indisputable certainty that Kirke must fail in tracing Magdalen’s friends, unless he first knew who she really was, had decided the captain on disclosing part, at least, of the truth. Declining to enter into any particulars – for family reasons, which Magdalen might explain on her recovery, if she pleased – he astounded Kirke by telling him that the friendless woman whom he had rescued, and whom he had only known, up to that moment, as Miss Bygrave – was no other than the youngest daughter of Andrew Vanstone. The disclosure, on Kirke’s side, of his father’s connection with the young officer in Canada, had followed naturally, on the revelation of Magdalen’s real name. Captain Wragge had expressed his surprise, but had made no further remark at the time. A fortnight later, however, when the patient’s recovery forced the serious difficulty on the doctor, of meeting the questions which Magdalen was sure to ask, the captain’s ingenuity had come, as usual, to the rescue.
‘You can’t tell her the truth,’ he said, ‘without awakening painful recollections of her stay at Aldborough, into which I am not at liberty to enter. Don’t acknowledge, just yet, that Mr Kirke only knew her as Miss Bygrave of North Shingles, when he found her in this house. Tell her boldly that he knew who she was, and that he felt (what she must feel) that he had an hereditary right to help and protect her as his father’s son. I am, as I have already told you,’ continued the captain, sticking fast to his old assertion, ‘a distant relative of the Combe-Raven family; and, if there is nobody else at hand to help you through this difficulty, my services are freely at your disposal.’
No one else was at hand; and the emergency was a serious one. Strangers undertaking the responsibility might ignorantly jar on past recollections, which it would, perhaps, be the death of her to revive too soon. Near relatives might, by their premature appearance at the bedside, produce the same deplorable result. The alternative lay between irritating and alarming her by leaving her inquiries unanswered – or trusting Captain Wragge. In the doctor’s opinion, the second risk was the least serious risk of the two – and the captain was now seated at Magdalen’s bedside in discharge of the trust confided to him.
Would she ask the question which it had been the private object of all Captain Wragge’s preliminary talk, lightly and pleasantly to provoke? Yes: as soon as his silence gave her the opportunity, she asked it: Who was that friend of his living in the house?
‘You ought by rights to know him as well as I do,’ said the captain. ‘He is the son of one of your father’s old military friends – when your father was quartered with his regiment in Canada. Your cheeks mustn’t flush up! If they do I shall go away.’
She was astonished, but not agitated. Captain Wragge had begun by interesting her in the remote past, which she only knew by hearsay, before he ventured on the delicate ground of her own experience.
In a moment more, she advanced to her next question: What was his name?
‘Kirke,’ proceeded the captain. ‘Did you never hear of his father, Major Kirke – commanding officer of the regiment in Canada? Did you never hear that the major helped your father through a great difficulty, like the best of good fellows and good friends?’
Yes: she faintly fancied she had heard something about her father, and an officer who had once been very good to him when he was a young man. But she could not look back so long – Was Mr Kirke poor?
Even Captain Wragge’s penetration was puzzled by that question. He gave the true answer at hazard. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not poor.’
Her next inquiry showed what she had been thinking of. – If Mr Kirke was not poor, why did he come to live in that house?
‘She has caught me!’ thought the captain. ‘There is only one way out of it – I must administer another dose of truth. Mr Kirke disco
vered you here by chance,’ he proceeded aloud; ‘very ill, and not nicely attended to. Somebody was wanted to take care of you, while you were not able to take care of yourself. Why not Mr Kirke? He was the son of your father’s old friend – which is the next thing to being your old friend. Who had a better claim to send for the right doctor, and get the right nurse – when I was not here to cure you with my wonderful Pill? Gently! gently! you mustn’t take hold of my superfine black coat-sleeve in that unceremonious manner.’
He put her hand back on the bed, but she was not to be checked in that way. She persisted in asking another question. – How came Mr Kirke to know her? She had never seen him; she had never heard of him in her life.
‘Very likely,’ said Captain Wragge. ‘But you never having seen him, is no reason why he should not have seen you.’
‘When did he see me?’
The Captain corked up his doses of truth on the spot, without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Some time ago, my dear. I can’t exactly say when.’
‘Only once?’
Captain Wragge suddenly saw his way to the administration of another dose. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘only once.’
She reflected a little. The next question involved the simultaneous expression of two ideas – and the next question cost her an effort.
‘He only saw me once,’ she said; ‘and he only saw me some time ago. How came he to remember me, when he found me here?’