The veteran"s eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have inevitably p.r.o.nounced sentence on himself in the usual form: "Drunk again, Mazey; drunk again."
"You young Jezebel!" said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of his face, and a frown on the other. "The next time you take to night-walking in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp eyes of yours first, and make sure there"s n.o.body else night walking in the garden outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!"
Keeping fast hold of Magdalen"s arm with one hand, he took the letter from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks, had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.
Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from that commanding position addressed Magdalen once more.
"Come and be locked up!" said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head with judicial severity. "There"ll be a court of inquiry to-morrow morning, and I"m witness--worse luck!--I"m witness. You young jade, you"ve committed burglary--that"s what you"ve done. His honor the admiral"s keys stolen; his honor the admiral"s desk ransacked; and his honor the admiral"s private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary! Come and be locked up!" He slowly recovered an upright position, with the a.s.sistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. "Who"d have thought it?" said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. "Take the outside of her, and she"s as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she"s as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what a pity!"
"Don"t hurt me!" said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up to the chair, and took her by the wrist again. "I"m frightened, Mr.
Mazey--I"m dreadfully frightened."
"Hurt you?" repeated the veteran. "I"m a deal too fond of you--and more shame for me at my age!--to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?"
Magdalen gave the promise required of her--gave it with an eager longing to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle from the bureau, but old Mazey"s cunning hand was too quick for her. "Let the candle be," said the veteran, winking in momentary forgetfulness of his responsible position. "You"re a trifle quicker on your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I don"t carry the light."
They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the way across "Freeze-your-Bones," and all the way upstairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The conditions being complied with, he resigned the light with one hand, and made a dash with the other at the key, drew it from the inside of the lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a deep grunt of relief. "There she is safe!" Magdalen heard him say, in regretful soliloquy. "As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a pity!
what a pity!"
The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left alone in her room.
Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always burning.
He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against the opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of his own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect of illimitable doubt. "I"m all abroad to-night," he mumbled to himself.
"Troubled in my mind--that"s what it is--troubled in my mind."
The old patched slippers and the veteran"s existing perplexities happened to be intimately a.s.sociated one with the other, in the relation of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service.
Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master called for them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress and completion of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler betook themselves to the village inn to drink each other"s healths at parting.
They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the night, and they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect state of intoxication on either side.
If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In plainer words, he had deserted his post.
The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram"s const.i.tutional tendency to somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever a dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep. Over and over again, old Mazey had been roused by the admiral"s attempts to push past the truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again, when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had declined to believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question whether the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the night. If by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the slippers in old Mazey"s hand pointed straight to the conclusion that followed--his master must have pa.s.sed barefoot in the cold night over the stone stairs and pa.s.sages of St. Crux. "Lord send he"s been quiet!" muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the bare contemplation of that prospect. "If his honor"s been walking to-night, it will be the death of him!"
He roused himself for the moment by main force--strong in his dog-like fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing else--and fought off the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with steadier eyes and a clearer mind. Magdalen"s precaution in returning it to its customary position presented it to him necessarily in the aspect of a bed which had never been moved from its place. He next examined the counterpane carefully. Not the faintest vestige appeared of the indentation which must have been left by footsteps pa.s.sing over it. There was the plain evidence before him--the evidence recognizable at last by his own bewildered eyes--that the admiral had never moved from his room.
"I"ll take the Pledge to-morrow!" mumbled old Mazey, in an outburst of grateful relief. The next moment the fumes of the liquor floated back insidiously over his brain; and the veteran, returning to his customary remedy, paced the pa.s.sage in zigzag as usual, and kept watch on the deck of an imaginary ship.
Soon after sunrise, Magdalen suddenly heard the grating of the key from outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and old Mazey re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his intoxication had cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. He breathed harder than ever, in a succession of low growls, and wagged his venerable head at his own delinquencies without intermission.
"How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats?" inquired the old sailor. "Has your conscience been quiet enough to let you go to sleep?"
"I have not slept," said Magdalen, drawing back from him in doubt of what he might do next. "I have no remembrance of what happened after you locked the door--I think I must have fainted. Don"t frighten me again, Mr. Mazey! I feel miserably weak and ill. What do you want?"
"I want to say something serious," replied old Mazey, with impenetrable solemnity. "It"s been on my mind to come here and make a clean breast of it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, young woman. I"m going to disgrace myself."
Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in rising alarm.
"I know my duty to his honor the admiral," proceeded old Mazey, waving his hand drearily in the direction of his master"s door. "But, try as hard as I may, I can"t find it in my heart, you young jade, to be witness against you. I liked the make of you (especially about the waist) when you first came into the house, and I can"t help liking the make of you still--though you _have_ committed burglary, and though you _are_ as crooked as Sin. I"ve cast the eyes of indulgence on fine-grown girls all my life, and it"s too late in the day to cast the eyes of severity on "em now. I"m seventy-seven, or seventy-eight, I don"t rightly know which. I"m a battered old hulk, with my seams opening, and my pumps choked, and the waters of Death powering in on me as fast as they can. I"m as miserable a sinner as you"ll meet with anywhere in these parts--Thomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he"s worse than I am, for he"s the younger of the two, and he ought to know better.
But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave with an eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl. More shame for me, you young Jezebel--more shame for me!"
The veteran"s unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him, as he concluded his harangue in these terms: the last reserves of austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the corners of his mouth. Magdalen approached him again, and tried to speak.
He solemnly motioned her back with another dreary wave of his hand.
"No carneying!" said old Mazey; "I"m bad enough already, without that.
It"s my duty to make my report to his honor the admiral, and I _will_ make it. But if you like to give the house the slip before the burglary"s reported, and the court of inquiry begins, I"ll disgrace myself by letting you go. It"s market morning at Ossory, and Dawkes will be driving the light cart over in a quarter of an hour"s time. Dawkes will take you if I ask him. I know my duty--my duty is to turn the key on you, and see Dawkes d.a.m.ned first. But I can"t find it in my heart to be hard on a fine girl like you. It"s bred in the bone, and it wunt come out of the flesh. More shame for me, I tell you again--more shame for me!"
The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took Magdalen completely by surprise. She had been far too seriously shaken by the events of the night to be capable of deciding on any subject at a moment"s notice. "You are very good to me, Mr. Mazey," she said. "May I have a minute by myself to think?"
"Yes, you may," replied the veteran, facing about forthwith and leaving the room. "They"re all alike," proceeded old Mazey, with his head still running on the s.e.x. "Whatever you offer "em, they always want something more. Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives, they"re all alike!"
Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difficulty than she had antic.i.p.ated.
If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before her--to charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken delusion, or to submit to circ.u.mstances. Though she owed to the old sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his expense--even supposing, what was in the last degree improbable, that the defense would be credited. In the second of the two cases (the case of submission to circ.u.mstances), but one result could be expected--instant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well. What object was to be gained by braving that degradation--by leaving the house publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants who had hated and distrusted her from the first? The accident which had literally s.n.a.t.c.hed the Trust from her possession when she had it in her hand was irreparable. The one apparent compensation under the disaster--in other words, the discovery that the Trust actually existed, and that George Bartram"s marriage within a given time was one of the objects contained in it--was a compensation which could only be estimated at its true value by placing it under the light of Mr. Los...o...b.."s experience. Every motive of which she was conscious was a motive which urged her to leave the house secretly while the chance was at her disposal. She looked out into the pa.s.sage, and called softly to old Mazey to come back.
"I accept your offer thankfully, Mr. Mazey," she said. "You don"t know what hard measure you dealt out to me when you took that letter from my hand. But you did your duty, and I can be grateful to you for sparing me this morning, hard as you were upon me last night. I am not such a bad girl as you think me--I am not, indeed."
Old Mazey dismissed the subject with another dreary wave of his hand.
"Let it be," said the veteran; "let it be! It makes no difference, my girl, to such an old rascal as I am. If you were fifty times worse than you are, I should let you go all the same. Put on your bonnet and shawl, and come along. I"m a disgrace to myself and a warning to others--that"s what I am. No luggage, mind! Leave all your rattle-traps behind you: to be overhauled, if necessary, at his honor the admiral"s discretion. I can be hard enough on your boxes, you young Jezebel, if I can"t be hard on you."
With these words, old Mazey led the way out of the room. "The less I see of her the better--especially about the waist," he said to himself, as he hobbled downstairs with the help of the banisters.
The cart was standing in the back yard when they reached the lower regions of the house, and Dawkes (otherwise the farm-bailiff"s man) was fastening the last buckle of the horse"s harness. The h.o.a.r-frost of the morning was still white in the shade. The sparkling points of it glistened brightly on the s.h.a.ggy coats of Brutus and Ca.s.sius, as they idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths and slowly wagging tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went out alone and used his influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid amazement, put a leather cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow-traveler. Shivering in the sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of departure were in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy bewilderment of thought, and a helpless suspension of feeling. The events of the night confused themselves hideously with the trivial circ.u.mstances pa.s.sing before her eyes in the courtyard. She started with the sudden terror of the night when old Mazey re-appeared to summon her out to the cart. She trembled with the helpless confusion of the night when the veteran cast the eyes of indulgence on her for the last time, and gave her a kiss on the cheek at parting. The next minute she felt him help her into the cart, and pat her on the back. The next, she heard him tell her in a confidential whisper that, sitting or standing, she was as straight as a poplar either way. Then there was a pause, in which nothing was said, and nothing done; and then the driver took the reins in hand and mounted to his place.
She roused herself at the parting moment and looked back. The last sight she saw at St. Crux was old Mazey wagging his head in the courtyard, with his fellow-profligates, the dogs, keeping time to him with their tails. The last words she heard were the words in which the veteran paid his farewell tribute to her charms:
"Burglary or no burglary," said old Mazey, "she"s a fine-grown girl, if ever there was a fine one yet. What a pity! what a pity!"
THE END OF THE SEVENTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
_From George Bartram to Admiral Bartram._
"London, April 3d, 1848.
"MY DEAR UNCLE--One hasty line, to inform you of a temporary obstacle, which we neither of us antic.i.p.ated when we took leave of each other at St. Crux. While I was wasting the last days of the week at the Grange, the Tyrrels must have been making their arrangements for leaving London.
I have just come from Portland Place. The house is shut up, and the family (Miss Vanstone, of course, included) left England yesterday, to pa.s.s the season in Paris.