When she returned to the house, Miss Garth made no attempt to conceal
her unfavorable opinion of the stranger in black. His object was, no
doubt, to obtain pecuniary assistance from Mrs. Vanstone. What the
nature of his claim on her might be seemed less intelligible—unless it
was the claim of a poor relation. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever mentioned, in
the presence of her daughters, the name of Captain Wragge? Neither of
them recollected to have heard it before. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever
referred to any poor relations who were dependent on her? On the
contrary she had mentioned of late years that she doubted having any
relations at all who were still living. And yet Captain Wragge had
plainly declared that the name on his card would recall “a family
matter” to Mrs. Vanstone’s memory. What did it mean? A false statement,
on the stranger’s part, without any intelligible reason for making it?
Or a second mystery, following close on the heels of the mysterious
journey to London?
All the probabilities seemed to point to some hidden connection between
the “family affairs” which had taken Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone so suddenly
from home and the “family matter” associated with the name of Captain
Wragge. Miss Garth’s doubts thronged back irresistibly on her mind as
she sealed her letter to Mrs. Vanstone, with the captain’s card added
by way of inclosure.
By return of post the answer arrived.
Always the earliest riser among the ladies of the house, Miss Garth was
alone in the breakfast-room when the letter was brought in. Her first
glance at its contents convinced her of the necessity of reading it
carefully through in retirement, before any embarrassing questions
could be put to her. Leaving a message with the servant requesting
Norah to make the tea that morning, she went upstairs at once to the
solitude and security of her own room.
Mrs. Vanstone’s letter extended to some length. The first part of it
referred to Captain Wragge, and entered unreservedly into all necessary
explanations relating to the man himself and to the motive which had
brought him to Combe-Raven.
It appeared from Mrs. Vanstone’s statement that her mother had been
twice married. Her mother’s first husband had been a certain Doctor
Wragge—a widower with young children; and one of those children was now
the unmilitary-looking captain, whose address was “Post-office,
Bristol.” Mrs. Wragge had left no family by her first husband; and had
afterward married Mrs. Vanstone’s father. Of that second marriage Mrs.
Vanstone herself was the only issue. She had lost both her parents
while she was still a young woman; and, in course of years, her
mother’s family connections (who were then her nearest surviving
relatives) had been one after another removed by death. She was left,
at the present writing, without a relation in the world—excepting,
perhaps, certain cousins whom she had never seen, and of whose
existence even, at the present moment, she possessed no positive
knowledge.
Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge on Mrs.
Vanstone?
None whatever. As the son of her mother’s first husband, by that
husband’s first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy could
have included him at any time in the list of Mrs. Vanstone’s most
distant relations. Well knowing this (the letter proceeded to say), he
had nevertheless persisted in forcing himself upon her as a species of
family connection: and she had weakly sanctioned the intrusion, solely
from the dread that he would otherwise introduce himself to Mr.
Vanstone’s notice, and take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone’s
generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be
annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed,
however preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been
her practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house, and
that he should not presume to make any application whatever to Mr.
Vanstone.
Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone further
explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to adopt it
through having been always accustomed, in her early days, to see the
captain living now upon one member, and now upon another, of her
mother’s family. Possessed of abilities which might have raised him to
distinction in almost any career that he could have chosen, he had
nevertheless, from his youth upward, been a disgrace to all his
relatives. He had been expelled the militia regiment in which he once
held a commission. He had tried one employment after another, and had
discreditably failed in all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest
and basest meaning of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman,
who had served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had
unexpectedly come into a little money, and whose small inheritance he
had mercilessly squandered to the last farthing. In plain terms, he was
an incorrigible scoundrel; and he had now added one more to the list of
his many misdemeanors by impudently breaking the conditions on which
Mrs. Vanstone had hitherto assisted him. She had written at once to the
address indicated on his card, in such terms and to such purpose as
would prevent him, she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the
house again. Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that
first part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.
Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs.
Vanstone’s character which Miss Garth, after many years of intimate
experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a
matter of course; receiving it all the more readily inasmuch as it
might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the
irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially
she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of
relief. Far different was the impression produced on her when she
advanced to the second half, and when she had read it to the end.
The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the journey
to London.
Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friendship
which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now felt it due
to that friendship to explain confidentially the motive which had
induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss Garth had delicately
refrained from showing it, but she must naturally have felt, and must
still be feeling, great surprise at the mystery in which their
departure had been involved; and she must doubtless have asked herself
why Mrs. Vanstone should have been associated with family affairs which
(in her independent position as to relatives) must necessarily concern
Mr. Vanstone alone.
Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable nor
necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she would at
once set all Miss Garth’s doubts at rest, so far as they related to
herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in accompanying her
husband to London was to see a certain celebrated physician, and to
consult him privately on a very delicate and anxious matter connected
with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious
matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again
become a mother.
When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a mere
delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her
last child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death
of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now
arrived—all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her
mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the
necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk,
at the same time, from alarming her daughters by summoning a London
physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the
circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was
confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to
take place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to
say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her;
but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than he
supposed, and she knew that he looked to the future with more than
ordinary doubt.
Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that they
might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. She had
felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, until those
suspicions had been confirmed—and she now recoiled, with even greater
reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any way alarmed about
her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for the present, and to
wait hopefully till the summer came. In the meantime they would all,
she trusted, be happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month,
which Mr. Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this
intimation, and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly and
confusedly, came to an end.
For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Vanstone was the
only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she had laid the
letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely on her mind a
doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the explanation which she
had just read really as satisfactory and as complete as it professed to
be? Testing it plainly by facts, surely not.
On the morning of her departure, Mrs. Vanstone had unquestionably left
the house in good spirits. At her age, and in her state of health, were
good spirits compatible with such an errand to a physician as the
errand on which she was bent? Then, again, had that letter from New
Orleans, which had necessitated Mr. Vanstone’s departure, no share in
occasioning his wife’s departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she
looked up so eagerly the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark.
Granting the avowed motive for her journey—did not her manner, on the
morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of
departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her letter
kept concealed?
If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing one.
Mrs. Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship with Miss
Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in her, on one
subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the strictest reserve
toward her on another. Naturally frank and straightforward in all her
own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from plainly pursuing her doubts to
this result: a want of loyalty toward her tried and valued friend
seemed implied in the mere dawning of it on her mind.
She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely to
attend to the passing interests of the day; and went downstairs again
to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties, this at least was
clear, Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone were coming back on the twenty-third of
the month. Who could say what new revelations might not come back with
them?