"I should say nothing," replied Captain Wragge. "I should return at once by the back way; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in the front garden as if I was taking a turn before breakfast; and I should leave her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. If she asks you whether you mean to come here today, say No. Secure a quiet life until circ.u.mstances force you to give her an answer. Then tell the plain truth--say that Mr.
Bygrave"s niece and Mrs. Lecount"s description are at variance with each other in the most important particular, and beg that the subject may not be mentioned again. There is my advice. What do you think of it?"
If Noel Vanstone could have looked into his counselor"s mind, he might have thought the captain"s advice excellently adapted to serve the captain"s interests. As long as Mrs. Lecount could be kept in ignorance of her master"s visits to North Shingles, so long she would wait until the opportunity came for trying her experiment, and so long she might be trusted not to endanger the conspiracy by any further proceedings.
Necessarily incapable of viewing Captain Wragge"s advice under this aspect, Noel Vanstone simply looked at it as offering him a temporary means of escape from an explanation with his housekeeper. He eagerly declared that the course of action suggested to him should be followed to the letter, and returned to Sea View without further delay.
On this occasion Captain Wragge"s antic.i.p.ations were in no respect falsified by Mrs. Lecount"s conduct. She had no suspicion of her master"s visit to North Shingles: she had made up her mind, if necessary, to wait patiently for his interview with Miss Bygrave until the end of the week; and she did not embarra.s.s him by any unexpected questions when he announced his intention of holding no personal communication with the Bygraves on that day. All she said was, "Don"t you feel well enough, Mr. Noel? or don"t you feel inclined?" He answered, shortly, "I don"t feel well enough"; and there the conversation ended.
The next day the proceedings of the previous morning were exactly repeated. This time Noel Vanstone went home rapturously with a keepsake in his breast-pocket; he had taken tender possession of one of Miss Bygrave"s gloves. At intervals during the day, whenever he was alone, he took out the glove and kissed it with a devotion which was almost pa.s.sionate in its fervor. The miserable little creature luxuriated in his moments of stolen happiness with a speechless and stealthy delight which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met with, in his father"s narrow circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which their lap-dogs might have rivaled him; the deepest interest he could create in them was the interest they might have felt in a new trinket or a new dress. The only women who had hitherto invited his admiration, and taken his compliments seriously had been women whose charms were on the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. For the first time in his life he had now pa.s.sed hours of happiness in the society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her afterward without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him in his own esteem.
Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change produced in his look and manner by the new feeling awakened in him was not a change which could be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the second day she pointedly asked him whether he had not made an arrangement to call on the Bygraves.
He denied it as before. "Perhaps you are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?"
persisted the housekeeper. He was at the end of his resources; he was impatient to be rid of her inquiries; he trusted to his friend at North Shingles to help him; and this time he answered Yes. "If you see the young lady," proceeded Mrs. Lecount, "don"t forget that note of mine, sir, which you have in your waistcoat-pocket." No more was said on either side, but by that night"s post the housekeeper wrote to Miss Garth. The letter merely acknowledged, with thanks, the receipt of Miss Garth"s communication, and informed her that in a few days Mrs. Lecount hoped to be in a position to write again and summon Mr. Pendril to Aldborough.
Late in the evening, when the parlor at North Shingles began to get dark, and when the captain rang the bell for candles as usual, he was surprised by hearing Magdalen"s voice in the pa.s.sage telling the servant to take the lights downstairs again. She knocked at the door immediately afterward, and glided into the obscurity of the room like a ghost.
"I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow," she said.
"My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you will not object to dispense with the candles for a few minutes."
She spoke in low, stifled tones, and felt her way noiselessly to a chair far removed from the captain in the darkest part of the room. Sitting near the window, he could just discern the dim outline of her dress, he could just hear the faint accents of her voice. For the last two days he had seen nothing of her except during their morning walk. On that afternoon he had found his wife crying in the little backroom down-stairs. She could only tell him that Magdalen had frightened her--that Magdalen was going the way again which she had gone when the letter came from China in the terrible past time at Vauxhall Walk.
"I was sorry to her that you were ill to-day, from Mrs. Wragge," said the captain, unconsciously dropping his voice almost to a whisper as he spoke.
"It doesn"t matter," she answered quietly, out of the darkness. "I am strong enough to suffer, and live. Other girls in my place would have been happier--they would have suffered, and died. It doesn"t matter; it will be all the same a hundred years hence. Is he coming again tomorrow morning at seven o"clock?"
"He is coming, if you feel no objection to it."
"I have no objection to make; I have done with objecting. But I should like to have the time altered. I don"t look my best in the early morning---I have bad nights, and I rise haggard and worn. Write him a note this evening, and tell him to come at twelve o"clock."
"Twelve is rather late, under the circ.u.mstances, for you to be seen out walking."
"I have no intention of walking. Let him be shown into the parlor--"
Her voice died away in silence before she ended the sentence.
"Yes?" said Captain Wragge.
"And leave me alone in the parlor to receive him."
"I understand," said the captain. "An admirable idea. I"ll be out of the way in the dining-room while he is here, and you can come and tell me about it when he has gone."
There was another moment of silence.
"Is there no way but telling you?" she asked, suddenly. "I can control myself while he is with me, but I can"t answer for what I may say or do afterward. Is there no other way?"
"Plenty of ways," said the captain. "Here is the first that occurs to me. Leave the blind down over the window of your room upstairs before he comes. I will go out on the beach, and wait there within sight of the house. When I see him come out again, I will look at the window. If he has said nothing, leave the blind down. If he has made you an offer, draw the blind up. The signal is simplicity itself; we can"t misunderstand each other. Look your best to-morrow! Make sure of him, my dear girl--make sure of him, if you possibly can."
He had spoken loud enough to feel certain that she had heard him, but no answering word came from her. The dead silence was only disturbed by the rustling of her dress, which told him she had risen from her chair. Her shadowy presence crossed the room again; the door shut softly; she was gone. He rang the bell hurriedly for the lights. The servant found him standing close at the window, looking less self-possessed than usual. He told her he felt a little poorly, and sent her to the cupboard for the brandy.
At a few minutes before twelve the next day Captain Wragge withdrew to his post of observation, concealing himself behind a fishing-boat drawn up on the beach. Punctually as the hour struck, he saw Noel Vanstone approach North Shingles and open the garden gate. When the house door had closed on the visitor, Captain Wragge settled himself comfortably against the side of the boat and lit his cigar.
He smoked for half an hour--for ten minutes over the half-hour, by his watch. He finished the cigar down to the last morsel of it that he could hold in his lips. Just as he had thrown away the end, the door opened again and Noel Vanstone came out.
The captain looked up instantly at Magdalen"s window. In the absorbing excitement of the moment, he counted the seconds. She might get from the parlor to her own room in less than a minute. He counted to thirty, and nothing happened. He counted to fifty, and nothing happened. He gave up counting, and left the boat impatiently, to return to the house.
As he took his first step forward he saw the signal.
The blind was drawn up.
Cautiously ascending the eminence of the beach, Captain Wragge looked toward Sea-view Cottage before he showed himself on the Parade. Noel Vanstone had reached home again; he was just entering his own door.
"If all your money was offered me to stand in your shoes," said the captain, looking after him--"rich as you are, I wouldn"t take it!"
CHAPTER VIII.
ON returning to the house, Captain Wragge received a significant message from the servant. "Mr. Noel Vanstone would call again at two o"clock that afternoon, when he hoped to have the pleasure of finding Mr.
Bygrave at home."
The captain"s first inquiry after hearing this message referred to Magdalen. "Where was Miss Bygrave?" "In her own room." "Where was Mrs.
Bygrave?" "In the back parlor." Captain Wragge turned his steps at once in the latter direction, and found his wife, for the second time, in tears. She had been sent out of Magdalen"s room for the whole day, and she was at her wits" end to know what she had done to deserve it.
Shortening her lamentations without ceremony, her husband sent her upstairs on t he spot, with instructions to knock at the door, and to inquire whether Magdalen could give five minutes" attention to a question of importance which must be settled before two o"clock.
The answer returned was in the negative. Magdalen requested that the subject on which she was asked to decide might be mentioned to her in writing. She engaged to reply in the same way, on the understanding that Mrs. Wragge, and not the servant, should be employed to deliver the note and to take back the answer.
Captain Wragge forthwith opened his paper-case and wrote these lines: "Accept my warmest congratulations on the result of your interview with Mr. N. V. He is coming again at two o"clock--no doubt to make his proposals in due form. The question to decide is, whether I shall press him or not on the subject of settlements. The considerations for your own mind are two in number. First, whether the said pressure (without at all underrating your influence over him) may not squeeze for a long time before it squeezes money out of Mr. N. V. Secondly, whether we are altogether justified--considering our present position toward a certain sharp pract.i.tioner in petticoats--in running the risk of delay. Consider these points, and let me have your decision as soon as convenient."
The answer returned to this note was written in crooked, blotted characters, strangely unlike Magdalen"s usually firm and clear handwriting. It only contained these words: "Give yourself no trouble about settlements. Leave the use to which he is to put his money for the future in my hands."
"Did you see her?" asked the captain, when his wife had delivered the answer.
"I tried," said Mrs. Wragge, with a fresh burst of tears--"but she only opened the door far enough to put out her hand. I took and gave it a little squeeze--and, oh poor soul, it felt so cold in mine!"
When Mrs. Lecount"s master made his appearance at two o"clock, he stood alarmingly in need of an anodyne application from Mrs. Lecount"s green fan. The agitation of making his avowal to Magdalen; the terror of finding himself discovered by the housekeeper; the tormenting suspicion of the hard pecuniary conditions which Magdalen"s relative and guardian might impose on him--all these emotions, stirring in conflict together, had overpowered his feebly-working heart with a trial that strained it sorely. He gasped for breath as he sat down in the parlor at North Shingles, and that ominous bluish pallor which always overspread his face in moments of agitation now made its warning appearance again.
Captain Wragge seized the brandy bottle in genuine alarm, and forced his visitor to drink a wine-gla.s.sful of the spirit before a word was said between them on either side.
Restored by the stimulant, and encouraged by the readiness with which the captain antic.i.p.ated everything that he had to say, Noel Vanstone contrived to state the serious object of his visit in tolerably plain terms. All the conventional preliminaries proper to the occasion were easily disposed of. The suitor"s family was respectable; his position in life was undeniably satisfactory; his attachment, though hasty, was evidently disinterested and sincere. All that Captain Wragge had to do was to refer to these various considerations with a happy choice of language in a voice that trembled with manly emotion, and this he did to perfection. For the first half-hour of the interview, no allusion whatever was made to the delicate and dangerous part of the subject. The captain waited until he had composed his visitor, and when that result was achieved came smoothly to the point in these terms:
"There is one little difficulty, Mr. Vanstone, which I think we have both overlooked. Your housekeeper"s recent conduct inclines me to fear that she will view the approaching change in your life with anything but a friendly eye. Probably you have not thought it necessary yet to inform her of the new tie which you propose to form?"
Noel Vanstone turned pale at the bare idea of explaining himself to Mrs.
Lecount.
"I can"t tell what I"m to do," he said, glancing aside nervously at the window, as if he expected to see the housekeeper peeping in. "I hate all awkward positions, and this is the most unpleasant position I ever was placed in. You don"t know what a terrible woman Lecount is. I"m not afraid of her; pray don"t suppose I"m afraid of her--"
At those words his fears rose in his throat, and gave him the lie direct by stopping his utterance.
"Pray don"t trouble yourself to explain," said Captain Wragge, coming to the rescue. "This is the common story, Mr. Vanstone. Here is a woman who has grown old in your service, and in your father"s service before you; a woman who has contrived, in all sorts of small, underhand ways, to presume systematically on her position for years and years past; a woman, in short, whom your inconsiderate but perfectly natural kindness has allowed to claim a right of property in you--"