CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE SECOND SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE THIRD SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE FOURTH SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE FIFTH SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE SIXTH SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE SEVENTH SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
THE LAST SCENE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
TO
FRANCIS CARR BEARD;
(FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND)
IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TIME
WHEN THE CLOSING SCENES OF THIS STORY WERE WRITTEN.
PREFACE.
The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader’s interest in
a subject which has been the theme of some of the greatest writers,
living and dead—but which has never been, and can never be, exhausted,
because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is
one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under
those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt,
which we have all known. It has been my aim to make the character of
“Magdalen,” which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even
in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this
result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all means—by
a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in Nature. This
design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great
encouragement to me (during the publication of my story in its
periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that the
object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree,
consider as an object achieved.
Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be
found grouped, in sharp contrast—contrast, for the most part, in which
I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly predominant. I
have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the
book, not only because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by
the laws of Art—but because experience has taught me (what the
experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such
moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us.
Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other
perpetually in the texture of human life.
To pass from the Characters to the Story, it will be seen that the
narrative related in these pages has been constructed on a plan which
differs from the plan followed in my last novel, and in some other of
my works published at an earlier date. The only Secret contained in
this book is revealed midway in the first volume. From that point, all
the main events of the story are purposely foreshadowed before they
take place—my present design being to rouse the reader’s interest in
following the train of circumstances by which these foreseen events are
brought about. In trying this new ground, I am not turning my back in
doubt on the ground which I have passed over already. My one object in
following a new course is to enlarge the range of my studies in the art
of writing fiction, and to vary the form in which I make my appeal to
the reader, as attractively as I can.
There is no need for me to add more to these few prefatory words than
is here written. What I might otherwise have wished to say in this
place, I have endeavored to make the book itself say for me.
_Harley Street,
November_, 1862
NO NAME.
THE FIRST SCENE.
COMBE-RAVEN, SOMERSETSHIRE.
CHAPTER I.
The hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morning.
The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire, called
Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the year was eighteen
hundred and forty-six.
No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish snoring
of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room door,
disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. Who
were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let the house reveal its
own secrets; and, one by one, as they descend the stairs from their
beds, let the sleepers disclose themselves.
As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and shook
himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was accustomed to
let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from one closed door to
another on the ground-floor; and, returning to his mat in great
perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family with a long and melancholy
howl.
Before the last notes of the dog’s remonstrance had died away, the
oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the female
servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl over her
shoulders—for the March morning was bleak; and rheumatism and the cook
were old acquaintances.
Receiving the dog’s first cordial advances with the worst possible
grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the animal out. It
was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and behind a black plantation
of firs, the rising sun rent its way upward through piles of ragged
gray cloud; heavy drops of rain fell few and far between; the March
wind shuddered round the corners of the house, and the wet trees swayed
wearily.
Seven o’clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to show
themselves in more rapid succession.
The housemaid came down—tall and slim, with the state of the spring
temperature written redly on her nose. The lady’s-maid followed—young,
smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid came next—afflicted with the
face-ache, and making no secret of her sufferings. Last of all, the
footman appeared, yawning disconsolately; the living picture of a man
who felt that he had been defrauded of his fair night’s rest.
The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the slowly
lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event, and turned at
starting on this question: Had Thomas, the footman, seen anything of
the concert at Clifton, at which his master and the two young ladies
had been present on the previous night? Yes; Thomas had heard the
concert; he had been paid for to go in at the back; it was a loud
concert; it was a hot concert; it was described at the top of the bills
as Grand; whether it was worth traveling sixteen miles to hear by
railway, with the additional hardship of going back nineteen miles by
road, at half-past one in the morning—was a question which he would
leave his master and the young ladies to decide; his own opinion, in
the meantime, being unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part
of all the female servants in succession, elicited no additional
information of any sort. Thomas could hum none of the songs, and could
describe none of the ladies’ dresses. His audience, accordingly, gave
him up in despair; and the kitchen small-talk flowed back into its
ordinary channels, until the clock struck eight and startled the
assembled servants into separating for their morning’s work.
A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half-past—and more signs of
life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next member of the family
who came downstairs was Mr. Andrew Vanstone, the master of the house.
Tall, stout, and upright—with bright blue eyes, and healthy, florid
complexion—his brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly buttoned awry;
his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking unrebuked at his heels; one
hand thrust into his waistcoat pocket, and the other smacking the
banisters cheerfully as he came downstairs humming a tune—Mr. Vanstone
showed his character on the surface of him freely to all men. An easy,
hearty, handsome, good-humored gentleman, who walked on the sunny side
of the way of life, and who asked nothing better than to meet all his
fellow-passengers in this world on the sunny side, too. Estimating him
by years, he had turned fifty. Judging him by lightness of heart,
strength of constitution, and capacity for enjoyment, he was no older
than most men who have only turned thirty.
“Thomas!” cried Mr. Vanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his thick
walking stick from the hall table. “Breakfast, this morning, at ten.
The young ladies are not likely to be down earlier after the concert
last night.—By-the-by, how did you like the concert yourself, eh? You
thought it was grand? Quite right; so it was. Nothing but crash-bang,
varied now and then by bang-crash; all the women dressed within an inch
of their lives; smothering heat, blazing gas, and no room for
anybody—yes, yes, Thomas; grand’s the word for it, and comfortable
isn’t.” With that expression of opinion, Mr. Vanstone whistled to his
vixenish terrier; flourished his stick at the hall door in cheerful
defiance of the rain; and set off through wind and weather for his
morning walk.
The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock,
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family appeared
on the stairs—Miss Garth, the governess.
No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without seeing at once
that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard featured face; her
masculine readiness and decision of movement; her obstinate honesty of
look and manner, all proclaimed her border birth and border training.
Though little more than forty years of age, her hair was quite gray;
and she wore over it the plain cap of an old woman. Neither hair nor
head-dress was out of harmony with her face—it looked older than her
years: the hard handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some
past time. The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air
of habitual authority with which she looked about her, spoke well for
her position in Mr. Vanstone’s family. This was evidently not one of
the forlorn, persecuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here
was a woman who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her
employers—a woman who looked capable of sending any parents in England
to the right-about, if they failed to rate her at her proper value.
“Breakfast at ten?” repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had answered
the bell, and had mentioned his master’s orders. “Ha! I thought what
would come of that concert last night. When people who live in the
country patronize public amusements, public amusements return the
compliment by upsetting the family afterward for days together.
_You’re_ upset, Thomas, I can see your eyes are as red as a ferret’s,
and your cravat looks as if you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a
quarter to ten—and if you don’t get better in the course of the day,
come to me, and I’ll give you a dose of physic. That’s a well-meaning
lad, if you only let him alone,” continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy,
when Thomas had retired; “but he’s not strong enough for concerts
twenty miles off. They wanted _me_ to go with them last night. Yes:
catch me!”
Nine o’clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty minutes
past the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on the stairs. At
the end of that time, two ladies appeared, descending to the
breakfast-room together—Mrs. Vanstone and her eldest daughter.
If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier period of
life, had depended solely on her native English charms of complexion
and freshness, she must have long since lost the last relics of her
fairer self. But her beauty as a young woman had passed beyond the
average national limits; and she still preserved the advantage of her
more exceptional personal gifts. Although she was now in her
forty-fourth year; although she had been tried, in bygone times, by the
premature loss of more than one of her children, and by long attacks of
illness which had followed those bereavements of former years—she still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature, once
associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of beauty,
which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now descending
the stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she could look back and
see again the reflection of her own youth. There, folded thick on the
daughter’s head, lay the massive dark hair, which, on the mother’s, was
fast turning gray. There, in the daughter’s cheek, glowed the lovely
dusky red which had faded from the mother’s to bloom again no more.
Miss Vanstone had already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she
had completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark majestic
character of her mother’s beauty, she had yet hardly inherited all its
charms. Though the shape of her face was the same, the features were
scarcely so delicate, their proportion was scarcely so true. She was
not so tall. She had the dark-brown eyes of her mother—full and soft,
with the steady luster in them which Mrs. Vanstone’s eyes had lost—and
yet there was less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in
her expression: it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain
quiet reserve, from which her mother’s face was free. If we dare to
look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of
character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often
to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission to children? In
these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous
malady, is it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely
than we are willing to admit, to the bodily gifts as well?
The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together—the first
dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders;
the second more simply attired in black, with a plain collar and cuffs,
and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the bosom of her dress. As they
crossed the hall and entered the breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full
of the all-absorbing subject of the last night’s concert.
“I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us,” she said. “You have been
so strong and so well ever since last summer—you have felt so many
years younger, as you said yourself—that I am sure the exertion would
not have been too much for you.”
“Perhaps not, my love—but it was as well to keep on the safe side.”
“Quite as well,” remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the breakfast-room
door. “Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear)—look, I say, at Norah. A
perfect wreck; a living proof of your wisdom and mine in staying at
home. The vile gas, the foul air, the late hours—what can you expect?
She’s not made of iron, and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you
needn’t deny it. I see you’ve got a headache.”
Norah’s dark, handsome face brightened into a smile—then lightly
clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.
“A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the
concert,” she said, and walked away by herself to the window.
On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a stream,
some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of a wooded,
rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which here cleft its
way through the hills that closed the prospect. A winding strip of road
was visible, at no great distance, amid the undulations of the open
ground; and along this strip the stalwart figure of Mr. Vanstone was
now easily recognizable, returning to the house from his morning walk.
He flourished his stick gayly, as he observed his eldest daughter at
the window. She nodded and waved her hand in return, very gracefully
and prettily—but with something of old-fashioned formality in her
manner, which looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed
out of harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.
The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the minute
hand had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door banged in the
bedroom regions—a clear young voice was heard singing blithely—light,
rapid footsteps pattered on the upper stairs, descended with a jump to
the landing, and pattered again, faster than ever, down the lower
flight. In another moment the youngest of Mr. Vanstone’s two daughters
(and two only surviving children) dashed into view on the dingy old
oaken stairs, with the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the
last three steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless
in the breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.
By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves still
unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone’s children presented no
recognizable resemblance to either of her parents. How had she come by
her hair? how had she come by her eyes? Even her father and mother had
asked themselves those questions, as she grew up to girlhood, and had
been sorely perplexed to answer them. Her hair was of that purely
light-brown hue, unmixed with flaxen, or yellow, or red—which is
oftener seen on the plumage of a bird than on the head of a human
being. It was soft and plentiful, and waved downward from her low
forehead in regular folds—but, to some tastes, it was dull and dead, in
its absolute want of glossiness, in its monotonous purity of plain
light color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a shade darker than
her hair, and seemed made expressly for those violet-blue eyes, which
assert their most irresistible charm when associated with a fair
complexion. But it was here exactly that the promise of her face failed
of performance in the most startling manner. The eyes, which should
have been dark, were incomprehensibly and discordantly light; they were
of that nearly colorless gray which, though little attractive in
itself, possesses the rare compensating merit of interpreting the
finest gradations of thought, the gentlest changes of feeling, the
deepest trouble of passion, with a subtle transparency of expression
which no darker eyes can rival. Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the
upper part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with
established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true
feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and
smoothness of youth—but the mouth was too large and firm, the chin too
square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion partook of the
pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair—it was of the same
soft, warm, creamy fairness all over, without a tinge of color in the
cheeks, except on occasions of unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental
disturbance. The whole countenance—so remarkable in its strongly
opposed characteristics—was rendered additionally striking by its
extraordinary mobility. The large, electric, light-gray eyes were
hardly ever in repose; all varieties of expression followed each other
over the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity which left
sober analysis far behind in the race. The girl’s exuberant vitality
asserted itself all over her, from head to foot. Her figure—taller than
her sister’s, taller than the average of woman’s height; instinct with
such a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully
graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements
of a young cat—her figure was so perfectly developed already that no
one who saw her could have supposed that she was only eighteen. She
bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty years or more—bloomed
naturally and irresistibly, in right of her matchless health and
strength. Here, in truth, lay the mainspring of this
strangely-constituted organization. Her headlong course down the house
stairs; the brisk activity of all her movements; the incessant sparkle
of expression in her face; the enticing gayety which took the hearts of
the quietest people by storm—even the reckless delight in bright colors
which showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning dress, in her
fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her smart little
shoes—all sprang alike from the same source; from the overflowing
physical health which strengthened every muscle, braced every nerve,
and set the warm young blood tingling through her veins, like the blood
of a growing child.
On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the
customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality
habitually provoked from the long-suffering household authorities. In
Miss Garth’s favorite phrase, “Magdalen was born with all the
senses—except a sense of order.”
Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange, indeed; and
yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The name had been
borne by one of Mr. Vanstone’s sisters, who had died in early youth;
and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he had called his second
daughter by it—just as he had called his eldest daughter Norah, for his
wife’s sake. Magdalen! Surely, the grand old Bible name—suggestive of a
sad and somber dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful
ideas of penitence and seclusion—had been here, as events had turned
out, inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl had
perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a
character which was out of all harmony with her own Christian name!
“Late again!” said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed her.
“Late again!” chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next.
“Well?” she went on, taking the girl’s chin familiarly in her hand,
with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the
youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess’s
favorite—“Well? and what has the concert done for _you?_ What form of
suffering has dissipation inflicted on _your_ system this morning?”
“Suffering!” repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the use of
her tongue with it. “I don’t know the meaning of the word: if there’s
anything the matter with me, I’m too well. Suffering! I’m ready for
another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and a play the day
after. Oh,” cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair and crossing her
hands rapturously on the table, “how I do like pleasure!”
“Come! that’s explicit at any rate,” said Miss Garth. “I think Pope
must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines:
“Men some to business, some to pleasure take,
But every woman is at heart a rake.”
“The deuce she is!” cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss
Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. “Well; live
and learn. If you’re all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned
topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for it
but to stop at home and darn the stockings.—Let’s have some breakfast.”
“How-d’ye-do, papa?” said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as boisterously
round the neck as if he belonged to some larger order of Newfoundland
dog, and was made to be romped with at his daughter’s convenience. “I’m
the rake Miss Garth means; and I want to go to another concert—or a
play, if you like—or a ball, if you prefer it—or anything else in the
way of amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me
in a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot. Anything will
do, as long as it doesn’t send us to bed at eleven o’clock.”
Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter’s flow of language,
like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from that quarter.
“If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next time,” said the
worthy gentleman, “I think a play will suit me better than a concert.
The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, my dear,” he continued,
addressing his wife. “More than I did, I must say. It was altogether
above my mark. They played one piece of music which lasted forty
minutes. It stopped three times, by-the-way; and we all thought it was
done each time, and clapped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on
it went again, to our great surprise and mortification, till we gave it
up in despair, and all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear!
when we had crash-bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages
by-the-way, what did they call it?”
“A symphony, papa,” replied Norah.
“Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!” added
Magdalen. “How can you say you were not amused? Have you forgotten the
yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpronounceable name? Don’t you
remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied
and courtesied, till she cheated the foolish people into crying encore?
Look here, mamma—look here, Miss Garth!”
She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a sheet of
music, held it before her in the established concert-room position, and
produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer’s grimaces and
courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that her
father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that
moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed
the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side of the
door.
“Letters, papa. I want the key,” said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with
the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.
Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy to
see where Magdalen’s unmethodical habits came from.
“I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,”
said Mr. Vanstone. “Go and look for it, my dear.”
“You really should check Magdalen,” pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing
her husband when her daughter had left the room. “Those habits of
mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which
it is positively shocking to hear.”
“Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,”
remarked Miss Garth. “She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of
younger brother of hers.”
“You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen’s high spirits—don’t you?” said the quiet
Norah, taking her father’s part and her sister’s with so little show of
resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp
enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.
“Thank you, my dear,” said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. “Thank you for a
very pretty speech. As for Magdalen,” he continued, addressing his wife
and Miss Garth, “she’s an unbroken filly. Let her caper and kick in the
paddock to her heart’s content. Time enough to break her to harness
when she gets a little older.”
The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked the
post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap. Sorting
them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the breakfast-table
with both hands full, and delivered the letters all round with the
business-like rapidity of a London postman.
“Two for Norah,” she announced, beginning with her sister. “Three for
Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa.
You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don’t you?” pursued
Magdalen, dropping the postman’s character and assuming the daughter’s.
“How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish
there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your
nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the
answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow
after all! _The Bristol Theater’s open, papa,_” she whispered, slyly
and suddenly, in her father’s ear; “I saw it in the newspaper when I
went to the library to get the key. Let’s go to-morrow night!”
While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically
sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession and
looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth his
attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, suddenly became
fixed on the post-mark of the letter.
Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could see
the post-mark as plainly as her father saw it—NEW ORLEANS.
“An American letter, papa!” she said. “Who do you know at New Orleans?”
Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the moment
Magdalen spoke those words.
Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter’s arm from
his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption. She
returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table. Her father,
with the letter in his hand, waited a little before he opened it; her
mother looking at him, the while, with an eager, expectant attention
which attracted Miss Garth’s notice, and Norah’s, as well as
Magdalen’s.
After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the letter.
His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his cheeks
fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been ashy paleness
in a less florid man; and his expression becoming saddened and
overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen, watching anxiously, saw
nothing but the change that passed over their father. Miss Garth alone
observed the effect which that change produced on the attentive
mistress of the house.
It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have anticipated.
Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A faint flush rose on
her cheeks—her eyes brightened—she stirred the tea round and round in
her cup in a restless, impatient manner which was not natural to her.
Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the first to
break the silence.
“What _is_ the matter, papa?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.
“I’m sure there must be something,” persisted Magdalen. “I’m sure there
is bad news, papa, in that American letter.”
“There is nothing in the letter that concerns _you_,” said Mr.
Vanstone.
It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received from her
father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, which would
have been irresistibly absurd under less serious circumstances.
Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, the
family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence. Mr. Vanstone’s
hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning spirits, was gone. He
absently broke off some morsels of dry toast from the rack near him,
absently finished his first cup of tea—then asked for a second, which
he left before him untouched.
“Norah,” he said, after an interval, “you needn’t wait for me.
Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.”
His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed
their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his
family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and
the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.
“What can have happened?” whispered Norah, as they closed the
breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.
“What does papa mean by being cross with Me?” exclaimed Magdalen,
chafing under a sense of her own injuries.
“May I ask—what right you had to pry into your father’s private
affairs?” retorted Miss Garth.
“Right?” repeated Magdalen. “I have no secrets from papa—what business
has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself insulted.”
“If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding your own
business,” said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, “you would be a trifle
nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of the girls in the
present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows which end of her’s
uppermost.”
The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen acknowledged
Miss Garth’s reproof by banging the door.
Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left the
breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened, went in to
clear the table—found his master and mistress seated close together in
deep consultation—and immediately went out again. Another quarter of an
hour elapsed before the breakfast-room door was opened, and the private
conference of the husband and wife came to an end.
“I hear mamma in the hall,” said Norah. “Perhaps she is coming to tell
us something.”
Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. The color
was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried tears
glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her movements were
quicker than usual.
“I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you,” she said, addressing
her daughters. “Your father and I are going to London to-morrow.”
Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment. Miss
Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah started to her
feet, and amazedly repeated the words, “Going to London!”
“Without us?” added Magdalen.
“Your father and I are going alone,” said Mrs. Vanstone. “Perhaps, for
as long as three weeks—but not longer. We are going”—she hesitated—“we
are going on important family business. Don’t hold me, Magdalen. This
is a sudden necessity—I have a great deal to do to-day—many things to
set in order before tomorrow. There, there, my love, let me go.”
She drew her arm away; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on the
forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen saw that her
mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answering any more
questions.
The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Vanstone. With the
reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in defiance of
Miss Garth’s prohibition and her sister’s remonstrances, determined to
go to the study and look for her father there. When she tried the door,
it was locked on the inside. She said, “It’s only me, papa;” and waited
for the answer. “I’m busy now, my dear,” was the answer. “Don’t disturb
me.”
Mrs. Vanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She remained
in her own room, with the female servants about her, immersed in
endless preparations for the approaching departure. The servants,
little used in that family to sudden resolutions and unexpected orders,
were awkward and confused in obeying directions. They ran from room to
room unnecessarily, and lost time and patience in jostling each other
on the stairs. If a stranger had entered the house that day, he might
have imagined that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead
of an unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded
in its ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the
morning at the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases and
passages, and in and out of doors when there were glimpses of fine
weather. Norah, whose fondness for reading had passed into a family
proverb, took up book after book from table and shelf, and laid them
down again, in despair of fixing her attention. Even Miss Garth felt
the all-pervading influence of the household disorganization, and sat
alone by the morning-room fire, with her head shaking ominously, and
her work laid aside.
“Family affairs?” thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs. Vanstone’s
vague explanatory words. “I have lived twelve years at Combe-Raven; and
these are the first family affairs which have got between the parents
and the children, in all my experience. What does it mean? Change? I
suppose I’m getting old. I don’t like change.”