"I remember your name," said Magdalen. "Excuse me for leaving you abruptly. I have an engagement."
She tried to pa.s.s him and walk on northward toward the railway. He instantly met the attempt by raising both hands, and displaying a pair of darned black gloves outspread in polite protest.
"Not that way," he said; "not that way, Miss Vanstone, I beg and entreat!"
"Why not?" she asked haughtily.
"Because," answered the captain, "that is the way which leads to Mr.
Huxtable"s."
In the ungovernable astonishment of hearing his reply she suddenly bent forward, and for the first time looked him close in the face.
He sustained her suspicious scrutiny with every appearance of feeling highly gratified by it. "H, U, X--Hux," said the captain, playfully turning to the old joke: "T, A--ta, Huxta; B, L, E--ble; Huxtable."
"What do you know about Mr. Huxtable?" she asked. "What do you mean by mentioning him to me?"
The captain"s curly lip took a new twist upward. He immediately replied, to the best practical purpose, by producing the handbill from his pocket.
"There is just light enough left," he said, "for young (and lovely) eyes to read by. Before I enter upon the personal statement which your flattering inquiry claims from me, pray bestow a moment"s attention on this Doc.u.ment."
She took the handbill from him. By the last gleam of twilight she read the lines which set a price on her recovery--which published the description of her in pitiless print, like the description of a strayed dog. No tender consideration had prepared her for the shock, no kind word softened it to her when it came. The vagabond, whose cunning eyes watched her eagerly while she read, knew no more that the handbill which he had stolen had only been prepared in antic.i.p.ation of the worst, and was only to be publicly used in the event of all more considerate means of tracing her being tried in vain--than she knew it. The bill dropped from her hand; her face flushed deeply. She turned away from Captain Wragge, as if all idea of his existence had pa.s.sed out of her mind.
"Oh, Norah, Norah!" she said to herself, sorrowfully. "After the letter I wrote you--after the hard struggle I had to go away! Oh, Norah, Norah!"
"How is Norah?" inquired the captain, with the utmost politeness.
She turned upon him with an angry brightness in her large gray eyes. "Is this thing shown publicly?" she asked, stamping her foot on it. "Is the mark on my neck described all over York?"
"Pray compose yourself," pleaded the persuasive Wragge. "At present I have every reason to believe that you have just perused the only copy in circulation. Allow me to pick it up."
Before he could touch the bill she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the pavement, tore it into fragments, and threw them over the wall.
"Bravo!" cried the captain. "You remind me of your poor dear mother.
The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my maternal grandfather."
"How did you come by it?" she asked, suddenly.
"My dear creature, I have just told you," remonstrated the captain. "We all come by it from my maternal grandfather."
"How did you come by that handbill?" she repeated, pa.s.sionately.
"I beg ten thousand pardons! My head was running on the family spirit.--How did I come by it? Briefly thus." Here Captain Wragge entered on his personal statement; taking his customary vocal exercise through the longest words of the English language, with the highest elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare occasion, nothing to gain by concealment, he departed from his ordinary habits, and, with the utmost amazement at the novelty of his own situation, permitted himself to tell the unmitigated truth.
The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled Captain Wragge"s antic.i.p.ations in relating it. She was not startled; she was not irritated; she showed no disposition to cast herself on his mercy, and to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the face; and all she said, when he had neatly rounded his last sentence, was--"Go on."
"Go on?" repeated the captain. "Shocked to disappoint you, I am sure; but the fact is, I have done."
"No, you have not," she rejoined; "you have left out the end of your story. The end of it is, you came here to look for me; and you mean to earn the fifty pounds reward."
Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge that for the moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward truths of all sorts far too often to be permanently disconcerted by them. Before Magdalen could pursue her advantage, the vagabond had recovered his balance: Wragge was himself again.
"Smart," said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming with his umbrella on the pavement. "Some men might take it seriously. I"m not easily offended. Try again."
Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience among people who possessed a common sense of honor, and a common responsibility of social position. She had hitherto seen nothing but the successful human product from the great manufactory of Civilization.
Here was one of the failures, and, with all her quickness, she was puzzled how to deal with it.
"Pardon me for returning to the subject," pursued the captain. "It has just occurred to my mind that you might actually have spoken in earnest.
My poor child! how can I earn the fifty pounds before the reward is offered to me? Those handbills may not be publicly posted for a week to come. Precious as you are to all your relatives (myself included), take my word for it, the lawyers who are managing this case will not pay fifty pounds for you if they can possibly help it. Are you still persuaded that my needy pockets are gaping for the money? Very good.
b.u.t.ton them up in spite of me with your own fair fingers. There is a train to London at nine forty-five to-night. Submit yourself to your friend"s wishes and go back by it."
"Never!" said Magdalen, firing at the bare suggestion, exactly as the captain had intended she should. "If my mind had not been made up before, that vile handbill would have decided me. I forgive Norah," she added, turning away and speaking to herself, "but not Mr. Pendril, and not Miss Garth."
"Quite right!" said Captain Wragge. "The family spirit. I should have done the same myself at your age. It runs in the blood. Hark! there goes the clock again--half-past seven. Miss Vanstone, pardon this seasonable abruptness! If you are to carry out your resolution--if you are to be your own mistress much longer, you must take a course of some kind before eight o"clock. You are young, you are inexperienced, you are in imminent danger. Here is a position of emergency on one side--and here am I, on the other, with an uncle"s interest in you, full of advice. Tap me."
"Suppose I choose to depend on n.o.body, and to act for myself?" said Magdalen. "What then?"
"Then," replied the captain, "you will walk straight into one of the four traps which are set to catch you in the ancient and interesting city of York. Trap the first, at Mr. Huxtable"s house; trap the second, at all the hotels; trap the third, at the railway station; trap the fourth, at the theater. That man with the handbills has had an hour at his disposal. If he has not set those four traps (with the a.s.sistance of the local solicitor) by this time, he is not the competent lawyer"s clerk I take him for. Come, come, my dear girl! if there is somebody else in the background, whose advice you prefer to mine--"
"You see that I am alone," she interposed, proudly. "If you knew me better, you would know that I depend on n.o.body but myself."
Those words decided the only doubt which now remained in the captain"s mind--the doubt whether the course was clear before him. The motive of her flight from home was evidently what the handbills a.s.sumed it to be--a reckless fancy for going on the stage. "One of two things,"
thought Wragge to himself, in his logical way. "She"s worth more than fifty pounds to me in her present situation, or she isn"t. If she is, her friends may whistle for her. If she isn"t, I have only to keep her till the bills are posted." Fortified by this simple plan of action, the captain returned to the charge, and politely placed Magdalen between the two inevitable alternatives of trusting herself to him, on the one hand, or of returning to her friends, on the other.
"I respect independence of character wherever I find it," he said, with an air of virtuous severity. "In a young and lovely relative, I more than respect--I admire it. But (excuse the bold a.s.sertion), to walk on a way of your own, you must first have a way to walk on. Under existing circ.u.mstances, where is _your_ way? Mr. Huxtable is out of the question, to begin with."
"Out of the question for to-night," said Magdalen; "but what hinders me from writing to Mr. Huxtable, and making my own private arrangements with him for to-morrow?"
"Granted with all my heart--a hit, a palpable hit. Now for my turn. To get to to-morrow (excuse the bold a.s.sertion, once more), you must first pa.s.s through to-night. Where are you to sleep?"
"Are there no hotels in York?"
"Excellent hotels for large families; excellent hotels for single gentlemen. The very worst hotels in the world for handsome young ladies who present themselves alone at the door without male escort, without a maid in attendance, and without a single article of luggage. Dark as it is, I think I could see a lady"s box, if there was anything of the sort in our immediate neighborhood."
"My box is at the cloak-room. What is to prevent my sending the ticket for it?"
"Nothing--if you want to communicate your address by means of your box--nothing whatever. Think; pray think! Do you really suppose that the people who are looking for you are such fools as not to have an eye on the cloakroom? Do you think they are such fools--when they find you don"t come to Mr. Huxtable"s at eight to-night--as not to inquire at all the hotels? Do you think a young lady of your striking appearance (even if they consented to receive you) could take up her abode at an inn without becoming the subject of universal curiosity and remark? Here is night coming on as fast as it can. Don"t let me bore you; only let me ask once more--Where are you to sleep?"
There was no answer to that question: in Magdalen"s position, there was literally no answer to it on her side. She was silent.
"Where are you to sleep?" repeated the captain. "The reply is obvious--under my roof. Mrs. Wragge will be charmed to see you. Look upon her as your aunt; pray look upon her as your aunt. The landlady is a widow, the house is close by, there are no other lodgers, and there is a bedroom to let. Can anything be more satisfactory, under all the circ.u.mstances? Pray observe, I say nothing about to-morrow--I leave to-morrow to you, and confine myself exclusively to the night. I may, or may not, command theatrical facilities, which I am in a position to offer you. Sympathy and admiration may, or may not, be strong within me, when I contemplate the dash and independence of your character. Hosts of examples of bright stars of the British drama, who have begun their apprenticeship to the stage as you are beginning yours, may, or may not, crowd on my memory. These are topics for the future. For the present, I confine myself within my strict range of duty. We are within five minutes" walk of my present address. Allow me to offer you my arm. No?
You hesitate? You distrust me? Good heavens! is it possible you can have heard anything to my disadvantage?"
"Quite possible," said Magdalen, without a moment"s flinching from the answer.
"May I inquire the particulars?" asked the captain, with the politest composure. "Don"t spare my feelings; oblige me by speaking out. In the plainest terms, now, what have you heard?"
She answered him with a woman"s desperate disregard of consequences when she is driven to bay--she answered him instantly,
"I have heard you are a Rogue."