He found her waiting for him in the room where the breakfast was laid.
She was walking restlessly to and fro, with her head drooping on her bosom and her hair hanging disordered over her shoulders. The moment she looked up on his entrance, the captain felt the fear which Mrs. Wragge had felt before him--the fear that her mind would be struck prostrate again, as it had been struck once already, when Frank"s letter reached her in Vauxhall Walk.
"Is he coming again to-day?" she asked, pushing away from her the chair which Captain Wragge offered, with such violence that she threw it on the floor.
"Yes," said the captain, wisely answering her in the fewest words. "He is coming at two o"clock."
"Take me away!" she exclaimed, tossing her hair back wildly from her face. "Take me away before he comes. I can"t get over the horror of marrying him while I am in this hateful place; take me somewhere where I can forget it, or I shall go mad! Give me two days" rest--two days out of sight of that horrible sea--two days out of prison in this horrible house--two days anywhere in the wide world away from Aldborough. I"ll come back with you! I"ll go through with it to the end! Only give me two days" escape from that man and everything belonging to him! Do you hear, you villain?" she cried, seizing his arm and shaking it in a frenzy of pa.s.sion; "I have been tortured enough--I can bear it no longer!"
There was but one way of quieting her, and the captain instantly took it.
"If you will try to control yourself," he said, "you shall leave Aldborough in an hour"s time."
She dropped his arm, and leaned back heavily against the wall behind her.
"I"ll try," she answered, struggling for breath, but looking at him less wildly. "You shan"t complain of me, if I can help it." She attempted confusedly to take her handkerchief from her ap.r.o.n pocket, and failed to find it. The captain took it out for her. Her eyes softened, and she drew her breath more freely as she received the handkerchief from him.
"You are a kinder man than I thought you were," she said; "I am sorry I spoke so pa.s.sionately to you just now--I am very, very sorry." The tears stole into her eyes, and she offered him her hand with the native grace and gentleness of happier days. "Be friends with me again," she said, pleadingly. "I"m only a girl, Captain Wragge--I"m only a girl!"
He took her hand in silence, patted it for a moment, and then opened the door for her to go back to her own room again. There was genuine regret in his face as he showed her that trifling attention. He was a vagabond and a cheat; he had lived a mean, shuffling, degraded life, but he was human; and she had found her way to the lost sympathies in him which not even the self-profanation of a swindler"s existence could wholly destroy. "d.a.m.n the breakfast!" he said, when the servant came in for her orders. "Go to the inn directly, and say I want a carriage and pair at the door in an hour"s time." He went out into the pa.s.sage, still chafing under a sense of mental disturbance which was new to him, and shouted to his wife more fiercely than ever--"Pack up what we want for a week"s absence, and be ready in half an hour!" Having issued those directions, he returned to the breakfast-room, and looked at the half-spread table with an impatient wonder at his disinclination to do justice to his own meal. "She has rubbed off the edge of my appet.i.te," he said to himself, with a forced laugh. "I"ll try a cigar, and a turn in the fresh air."
If he had been twenty years younger, those remedies might have failed him. But where is the man to be found whose internal policy succ.u.mbs to revolution when that man is on the wrong side of fifty? Exercise and change of place gave the captain back into the possession of himself.
He recovered the lost sense of the flavor of his cigar, and recalled his wandering attention to the question of his approaching absence from Aldborough. A few minutes" consideration satisfied his mind that Magdalen"s outbreak had forced him to take the course of all others which, on a fair review of existing emergencies, it was now most desirable to adopt.
Captain Wragge"s inquiries on the evening when he and Magdalen had drunk tea at Sea View had certainly informed him that the housekeeper"s brother possessed a modest competence; that his sister was his nearest living relative; and that there were some unscrupulous cousins on the spot who were anxious to usurp the place in his will which properly belonged to Mrs. Lecount. Here were strong motives to take the housekeeper to Zurich when the false report of her brother"s relapse reached England. But if any idea of Noel Vanstone"s true position dawned on her in the meantime, who could say whether she might not, at the eleventh hour, prefer a.s.serting her large pecuniary interest in her master, to defending her small pecuniary interest at her brother"s bedside? While that question remained undecided, the plain necessity of checking the growth of Noel Vanstone"s intimacy with the family at North Shingles did not admit of a doubt; and of all means of effecting that object, none could be less open to suspicion than the temporary removal of the household from their residence at Aldborough. Thoroughly satisfied with the soundness of this conclusion, Captain Wragge made straight for Sea-view Cottage, to apologize and explain before the carriage came and the departure took place.
Noel Vanstone was easily accessible to visitors; he was walking in the garden before breakfast. His disappointment and vexation were freely expressed when he heard the news which his friend had to communicate.
The captain"s fluent tongue, however, soon impressed on him the necessity of resignation to present circ.u.mstances. The bare hint that the "pious fraud" might fail after all, if anything happened in the ten days" interval to enlighten Mrs. Lecount, had an instant effect in making Noel Vanstone as patient and as submissive as could be wished.
"I won"t tell you where we are going, for two good reasons," said Captain Wragge, when his preliminary explanations were completed. "In the first place, I haven"t made up my mind yet; and, in the second place, if you don"t know where our destination is, Mrs. Lecount can"t worm it out of you. I have not the least doubt she is watching us at this moment from behind her window-curtain. When she asks what I wanted with you this morning, tell her I came to say good-by for a few days, finding my niece not so well again, and wishing to take her on a short visit to some friends to try change of air. If you could produce an impression on Mrs. Lecount"s mind (without overdoing it), that you are a little disappointed in me, and that you are rather inclined to doubt my heartiness in cultivating your acquaintance, you will greatly help our present object. You may depend on our return to North Shingles in four or five days at furthest. If anything strikes me in the meanwhile, the post is always at our service, and I won"t fail to write to you."
"Won"t Miss Bygrave write to me?" inquired Noel Vanstone, piteously.
"Did she know you were coming here? Did she send me no message?"
"Unpardonable on my part to have forgotten it!" cried the captain. "She sent you her love."
Noel Vanstone closed his eyes in silent ecstasy.
When he opened them again Captain Wragge had pa.s.sed through the garden gate and was on his way back to North Shingles. As soon as his own door had closed on him, Mrs. Lecount descended from the post of observation which the captain had rightly suspected her of occupying, and addressed the inquiry to her master which the captain had rightly foreseen would follow his departure. The reply she received produced but one impression on her mind. She at once set it down as a falsehood, and returned to her own window to keep watch over North Shingles more vigilantly than ever.
To her utter astonishment, after a lapse of less than half an hour she saw an empty carriage draw up at Mr. Bygrave"s door. Luggage was brought out and packed on the vehicle. Miss Bygrave appeared, and took her seat in it. She was followed into the carriage by a lady of great size and stature, whom the housekeeper conjectured to be Mrs. Bygrave. The servant came next, and stood waiting on the path. The last person to appear was Mr. Bygrave. He locked the house door, and took the key away with him to a cottage near at hand, which was the residence of the landlord of North Shingles. On his return, he nodded to the servant, who walked away by herself toward the humbler quarter of the little town, and joined the ladies in the carriage. The coachman mounted the box, and the vehicle disappeared.
Mrs. Lecount laid down the opera-gla.s.s, through which she had been closely investigating these proceedings, with a feeling of helpless perplexity which she was almost ashamed to acknowledge to herself.
The secret of Mr. Bygrave"s object in suddenly emptying his house at Aldborough of every living creature in it was an impenetrable mystery to her.
Submitting herself to circ.u.mstances with a ready resignation which Captain Wragge had not shown, on his side, in a similar situation, Mrs.
Lecount wasted neither time nor temper in unprofitable guess-work. She left the mystery to thicken or to clear, as the future might decide, and looked exclusively at the uses to which she might put the morning"s event in her own interests. Whatever might have become of the family at North Shingles, the servant was left behind, and the servant was exactly the person whose a.s.sistance might now be of vital importance to the housekeeper"s projects. Mrs. Lecount put on her bonnet, inspected the collection of loose silver in her purse, and set forth on the spot to make the servant"s acquaintance.
She went first to the cottage at which Mr. Bygrave had left the key of North Shingles, to discover the servant"s present address from the landlord. So far as this object was concerned, her errand proved successful. The landlord knew that the girl had been allowed to go home for a few days to her friends, and knew in what part of Aldborough her friends lived. But here his sources of information suddenly dried up. He knew nothing of the destination to which Mr. Bygrave and his family had betaken themselves, and he was perfectly ignorant of the number of days over which their absence might be expected to extend. All he could say was, that he had not received a notice to quit from his tenant, and that he had been requested to keep the key of the house in his possession until Mr. Bygrave returned to claim it in his own person.
Baffled, but not discouraged, Mrs. Lecount turned her steps next toward the back street of Aldborough, and astonished the servant"s relatives by conferring on them the honor of a morning call.
Easily imposed on at starting by Mrs. Lecount"s pretense of calling to engage her, under the impression that she had left Mr. Bygrave"s service, the servant did her best to answer the questions put to her.
But she knew as little as the landlord of her master"s plans. All she could say about them was, that she had not been dismissed, and that she was to await the receipt of a note recalling her when necessary to her situation at North Shingles. Not having expected to find her better informed on this part of the subject, Mrs. Lecount smoothly shifted her ground, and led the woman into talking generally of the advantages and defects of her situation in Mr. Bygrave"s family.
Profiting by the knowledge gained, in this indirect manner, of the little secrets of the household, Mrs. Lecount made two discoveries. She found out, in the first place, that the servant (having enough to do in attending to the coa.r.s.er part of the domestic work) was in no position to disclose the secrets of Miss Bygrave"s wardrobe, which were known only to the young lady herself and to her aunt. In the second place, the housekeeper ascertained that the true reason of Mrs. Bygrave"s rigid seclusion was to be found in the simple fact that she was little better than an idiot, and that her husband was probably ashamed of allowing her to be seen in public. These apparently trivial discoveries enlightened Mrs. Lecount on a very important point which had been previously involved in doubt. She was now satisfied that the likeliest way to obtaining a private investigation of Magdalen"s wardrobe lay through deluding the imbecile lady, and not through bribing the ignorant servant.
Having reached that conclusion--pregnant with coming a.s.saults on the weakly-fortified discretion of poor Mrs. Wragge--the housekeeper cautiously abstained from exhibiting herself any longer under an inquisitive aspect. She changed the conversation to local topics, waited until she was sure of leaving an excellent impression behind her, and then took her leave.
Three days pa.s.sed; and Mrs. Lecount and her master--each with their widely-different ends in view--watched with equal anxiety for the first signs of returning life in the direction of North Shingles. In that interval, no letter either from the uncle or the niece arrived for Noel Vanstone. His sincere feeling of irritation under this neglectful treatment greatly a.s.sisted the effect of those feigned doubts on the subject of his absent friends which the captain had recommended him to express in the housekeeper"s presence. He confessed his apprehensions of having been mistaken, not in Mr. Bygrave only, but even in his niece as well, with such a genuine air of annoyance that he actually contributed a new element of confusion to the existing perplexities of Mrs. Lecount.
On the morning of the fourth day Noel Vanstone met the postman in the garden; and, to his great relief, discovered among the letters delivered to him a note from Mr. Bygrave.
The date of the note was "Woodbridge," and it contained a few lines only. Mr. Bygrave mentioned that his niece was better, and that she sent her love as before. He proposed returning to Aldborough on the next day, when he would have some new considerations of a strictly private nature to present to Mr. Noel Vanstone"s mind. In the meantime he would beg Mr. Vanstone not to call at North Shingles until he received a special invitation to do so--which invitation should certainly be given on the day when the family returned. The motive of this apparently strange request should be explained to Mr. Vanstone"s perfect satisfaction when he was once more united to his friends. Until that period arrived, the strictest caution was enjoined on him in all his communications with Mrs. Lecount; and the instant destruction of Mr. Bygrave"s letter, after due perusal of it, was (if the cla.s.sical phrase might be pardoned) a _sine qua non_.
The fifth day came. Noel Vanstone (after submitting himself to the _sine qua non_, and destroying the letter) waited anxiously for results; while Mrs. Lecount, on her side, watched patiently for events. Toward three o"clock in the afternoon th e carriage appeared again at the gate of North Shingles. Mr. Bygrave got out and tripped away briskly to the landlord"s cottage for the key. He returned with the servant at his heels. Miss Bygrave left the carriage; her giant relative followed her example; the house door was opened; the trunks were taken off; the carriage disappeared, and the Bygraves were at home again!
Four o"clock struck, five o"clock, six o"clock, and nothing happened.
In half an hour more, Mr. Bygrave--spruce, speckless, and respectable as ever--appeared on the Parade, sauntering composedly in the direction of Sea View.
Instead of at once entering the house, he pa.s.sed it; stopped, as if struck by a sudden recollection; and, retracing his steps, asked for Mr.
Vanstone at the door. Mr. Vanstone came out hospitably into the pa.s.sage. Pitching his voice to a tone which could be easily heard by any listening individual through any open door in the bedroom regions, Mr.
Bygrave announced the object of his visit on the door-mat in the fewest possible words. He had been staying with a distant relative. The distant relative possessed two pictures--Gems by the Old Masters--which he was willing to dispose of, and which he had intrusted for that purpose to Mr. Bygrave"s care. If Mr. Noel Vanstone, as an amateur in such matters, wished to see the Gems, they would be visible in half an hour"s time, when Mr. Bygrave would have returned to North Shingles.
Having delivered himself of this incomprehensible announcement, the arch-conspirator laid his significant forefinger along the side of his short Roman nose, said, "Fine weather, isn"t it? Good-afternoon!" and sauntered out inscrutably to continue his walk on the Parade.
On the expiration of the half-hour Noel Vanstone presented himself at North Shingles, with the ardor of a lover burning inextinguishably in his bosom, through the superinc.u.mbent mental fog of a thoroughly bewildered man. To his inexpressible happiness, he found Magdalen alone in the parlor. Never yet had she looked so beautiful in his eyes. The rest and relief of her four days" absence from Aldborough had not failed to produce their results; she had more than recovered her composure.
Vibrating perpetually from one violent extreme to another, she had now pa.s.sed from the pa.s.sionate despair of five days since to a feverish exaltation of spirits which defied all remorse and confronted all consequences. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks were bright with color; she talked incessantly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of past days; she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing; she imitated Mrs. Lecount"s smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount"s insinuating graces of manner with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which was but the coa.r.s.e reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of former times. Noel Vanstone, who had never yet seen her as he saw her now, was enchanted; his weak head whirled with an intoxication of enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had caught the infection from hers. The half-hour during which he was alone with her pa.s.sed like five minutes to him. When that time had elapsed, and when she suddenly left him--to obey a previously-arranged summons to her aunt"s presence--miser as he was, he would have paid at that moment five golden sovereigns out of his pocket for five golden minutes more pa.s.sed in her society.
The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, and the captain walked in. He entered on the explanations which his visitor naturally expected from him with the unceremonious abruptness of a man hard pressed for time, and determined to make the most of every moment at his disposal.
"Since we last saw each other," he began, "I have been reckoning up the chances for and against us as we stand at present. The result on my own mind is this: If you are still at Aldborough when that letter from Zurich reaches Mrs. Lecount, all the pains we have taken will have been pains thrown away. If your housekeeper had fifty brothers all dying together, she would throw the whole fifty over sooner than leave you alone at Sea View while we are your neighbors at North Shingles."
Noel Vanstone"s flushed cheek turned pale with dismay. His own knowledge of Mrs. Lecount told him that this view of the case was the right one.
"If _we_ go away again," proceeded the captain, "nothing will be gained, for nothing would persuade your housekeeper, in that case, that we have not left you the means of following us. _You_ must leave Aldborough this time; and, what is more, you must go without leaving a single visible trace behind you for us to follow. If we accomplish this object in the course of the next five days, Mrs. Lecount will take the journey to Zurich. If we fail, she will be a fixture at Sea View, to a dead certainty. Don"t ask questions! I have got your instructions ready for you, and I want your closest attention to them. Your marriage with my niece depends on your not forgetting a word of what I am now going to tell you.--One question first. Have you followed my advice? Have you told Mrs. Lecount you are beginning to think yourself mistaken in me?"
"I did worse than that," replied Noel Vanstone penitently. "I committed an outrage on my own feelings. I disgraced myself by saying that I doubted Miss Bygrave!"
"Go on disgracing yourself, my dear sir! Doubt us both with all your might, and I"ll help you. One question more. Did I speak loud enough this afternoon? Did Mrs. Lecount hear me?"
"Yes. Lecount opened her door; Lecount heard you. What made you give me that message? I see no pictures here. Is this another pious fraud, Mr.
Bygrave?"
"Admirably guessed, Mr. Vanstone! You will see the object of my imaginary picture-dealing in the very next words which I am now about to address to you. When you get back to Sea View, this is what you are to say to Mrs. Lecount. Tell her that my relative"s works of Art are two worthless pictures--copies from the Old Masters, which I have tried to sell you as originals at an exorbitant price. Say you suspect me of being little better than a plausible impostor, and pity my unfortunate niece for being a.s.sociated with such a rascal as I am. There is your text to speak from. Say in many words what I have just said in a few.
You can do that, can"t you?"
"Of course I can do it," said Noel Vanstone. "But I can tell you one thing--Lecount won"t believe me."