“Thank you kindly,” said Mrs. Wragge, “I want to get it into my head;

please say it again.”

Magdalen said it again.

“And then turn the frying-pan over,” repeated Mrs. Wragge, with a

sudden burst of energy. “I’ve got it now! Oh, the lots of omelettes all

frying together in my head; and all frying wrong! Much obliged, I’m

sure. You’ve put me all right again: I’m only a little tired with

talking. And then turn the frying-pan, then turn the frying-pan, then

turn the frying-pan over. It sounds like poetry, don’t it?”

Her voice sank, and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same moment

the door of the room below opened, and the captain’s mellifluous bass

notes floated upstairs, charged with the customary stimulant to his

wife’s faculties.

“Mrs. Wragge!” cried the captain. “Mrs. Wragge!”

She started to her feet at that terrible summons. “Oh, what did he tell

me to do?” she asked, distractedly. “Lots of things, and I’ve forgotten

them all!”

“Say you have done them when he asks you,” suggested Magdalen. “They

were things for me—things I don’t want. I remember all that is

necessary. My room is the front room on the third floor. Go downstairs

and say I am coming directly.”

She took up the candle and pushed Mrs. Wragge out on the landing. “Say

I am coming directly,” she whispered again—and went upstairs by herself

to the third story.

The room was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former days

Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the

servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a few minutes

alone; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that account. She locked

herself in and walked mechanically, with a woman’s first impulse in a

strange bedroom, to the rickety little table and the dingy little

looking-glass. She waited there for a moment, and then turned away with

weary contempt. “What does it matter how pale I am?” she thought to

herself. “Frank can’t see me—what does it matter now!”

She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to collect herself.

But the events of the day had worn her out. The past, when she tried to

remember it, only made her heart ache. The future, when she tried to

penetrate it, was a black void. She rose again, and stood by the

uncurtained window—stood looking out, as if there was some hidden

sympathy for her own desolation in the desolate night.

“Norah!” she said to herself, tenderly; “I wonder if Norah is thinking

of me? Oh, if I could be as patient as she is! If I could only forget

the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!”

Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the little

cage of a room backward and forward, softly. “No: never till the debt

is paid!” Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. “Still at sea, poor

fellow; further and further away from me; sailing through the day,

sailing through the night. Oh, Frank, love me!”

Her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away, made for the door,

and laughed with a desperate levity, as she unlocked it again.

“Any company is better than my own thoughts,” she burst out,

recklessly, as she left the room. “I’m forgetting my ready-made

relations—my half-witted aunt, and my uncle the rogue.” She descended

the stairs to the landing on the first floor, and paused there in

momentary hesitation. “How will it end?” she asked herself. “Where is

my blindfolded journey taking me to now? Who knows, and who cares?”

She entered the room.

Captain Wragge was presiding at the tea-tray with the air of a prince

in his own banqueting-hall. At one side of the table sat Mrs. Wragge,

watching her husband’s eye like an animal waiting to be fed. At the

other side was an empty chair, toward which the captain waved his

persuasive hand when Magdalen came in. “How do you like your room?” he

inquired; “I trust Mrs. Wragge has made herself useful? You take milk

and sugar? Try the local bread, honor the York butter, test the

freshness of a new and neighboring egg. I offer my little all. A

pauper’s meal, my dear girl—seasoned with a gentleman’s welcome.”

“Seasoned with salt, pepper, chives and parsley,” murmured Mrs. Wragge,

catching instantly at a word in connection with cookery, and harnessing

her head to the omelette for the rest of the evening.

“Sit straight at the table!” shouted the captain. “More to the left,

more still—that will do. During your absence upstairs,” he continued,

addressing himself to Magdalen, “my mind has not been unemployed. I

have been considering your position with a view exclusively to your own

benefit. If you decide on being guided to-morrow by the light of my

experience, that light is unreservedly at your service. You may

naturally say: ‘I know but little of you, captain, and that little is

unfavorable.’ Granted, on one condition—that you permit me to make

myself and my character quite familiar to you when tea is over. False

shame is foreign to my nature. You see my wife, my house, my bread, my

butter, and my eggs, all exactly as they are. See me, too, my dear

girl, while you are about it.”

When tea was over, Mrs. Wragge, at a signal from her husband, retired

to a corner of the room, with the eternal cookery-book still in her

hand. “Mince small,” she whispered, confidentially, as she passed

Magdalen. “That’s a teaser, isn’t it?”

“Down at heel again!” shouted the captain, pointing to his wife’s heavy

flat feet as they shuffled across the room. “The right shoe. Pull it up

at heel, Mrs. Wragge—pull it up at heel! Pray allow me,” he continued,

offering his arm to Magdalen, and escorting her to a dirty little

horse-hair sofa. “You want repose—after your long journey, you really

want repose.” He drew his chair to the sofa, and surveyed her with a

bland look of investigation—as if he had been her medical attendant,

with a diagnosis on his mind.

“Very pleasant! very pleasant!” said the captain, when he had seen his

guest comfortable on the sofa. “I feel quite in the bosom of my family.

Shall we return to our subject—the subject of my rascally self? No! no!

No apologies, no protestations, pray. Don’t mince the matter on your

side—and depend on me not to mince it on mine. Now come to facts; pray

come to facts. Who, and what am I? Carry your mind back to our

conversation on the Walls of this interesting City, and let us start

once more from your point of view. I am a Rogue; and, in that capacity

(as I have already pointed out), the most useful man you possibly could

have met with. Now observe! There are many varieties of Rogue; let me

tell you my variety, to begin with. I am a Swindler.”

His entire shamelessness was really super-human. Not the vestige of a

blush varied the sallow monotony of his complexion; the smile wreathed

his curly lips as pleasantly as ever his party-colored eyes twinkled at

Magdalen with the self-enjoying frankness of a naturally harmless man.

Had his wife heard him? Magdalen looked over his shoulder to the corner

of the room in which she was sitting behind him. No: the self-taught

student of cookery was absorbed in her subject. She had advanced her

imaginary omelette to the critical stage at which the butter was to be

thrown in—that vaguely-measured morsel of butter, the size of your

thumb. Mrs. Wragge sat lost in contemplation of one of her own thumbs,

and shook her head over it, as if it failed to satisfy her.

“Don’t be shocked,” proceeded the captain; “don’t be astonished.

Swindler is nothing but a word of two syllables. S, W, I, N, D—swind;

L, E, R—ler; Swindler. Definition: A moral agriculturist; a man who

cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral agriculturist,

that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, envious of my success

in my profession, calls me a Swindler. What of that? The same low tone

of mind assails men in other professions in a similar manner—calls

great writers scribblers—great generals, butchers—and so on. It

entirely depends on the point of view. Adopting your point, I announce

myself intelligibly as a Swindler. Now return the obligation, and adopt

mine. Hear what I have to say for myself, in the exercise of my

profession.—Shall I continue to put it frankly?”

“Yes,” said Magdalen; “and I’ll tell you frankly afterward what I think

of it.”

The captain cleared his throat; mentally assembled his entire army of

words—horse, foot, artillery, and reserves; put himself at the head;

and dashed into action, to carry the moral intrenchments of Society by

a general charge.

“Now observe,” he began. “Here am I, a needy object. Very good. Without

complicating the question by asking how I come to be in that condition,

I will merely inquire whether it is, or is not, the duty of a Christian

community to help the needy. If you say No, you simply shock me; and

there is an end of it; if you say Yes, then I beg to ask, Why am I to

blame for making a Christian community do its duty? You may say, Is a

careful man who has saved money bound to spend it again on a careless

stranger who has saved none? Why of course he is! And on what ground,

pray? Good heavens! on the ground that he has _got_ the money, to be

sure. All the world over, the man who has not got the thing, obtains

it, on one pretense or another, of the man who has—and, in nine cases

out of ten, the pretense is a false one. What! your pockets are full,

and my pockets are empty; and you refuse to help me? Sordid wretch! do

you think I will allow you to violate the sacred obligations of charity

in my person? I won’t allow you—I say, distinctly, I won’t allow you.

Those are my principles as a moral agriculturist. Principles which

admit of trickery? Certainly. Am I to blame if the field of human

sympathy can’t be cultivated in any other way? Consult my brother

agriculturists in the mere farming line—do they get their crops for the

asking? No! they must circumvent arid Nature exactly as I circumvent

sordid Man. They must plow, and sow, and top-dress, and bottom-dress,

and deep-drain, and surface-drain, and all the rest of it. Why am I to

be checked in the vast occupation of deep-draining mankind? Why am I to

be persecuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our

common nature? Infamous!—I can characterize it by no other

word—infamous! If I hadn’t confidence in the future, I should despair

of humanity—but I have confidence in the future. Yes! one of these days

(when I am dead and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlightenment

progresses, the abstract merits of the profession now called swindling

will be recognized. When that day comes, don’t drag me out of my grave

and give me a public funeral; don’t take advantage of my having no

voice to raise in my own defense, and insult me by a national statue.

No! do me justice on my tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly

sentence, on my epitaph. Here lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy

recognition of his species: he plowed, sowed, and reaped his

fellow-creatures; and enlightened posterity congratulates him on the

uniform excellence of his crops.”

He stopped; not from want of confidence, not from want of words—purely

from want of breath. “I put it frankly, with a dash of humor,” he said,

pleasantly. “I don’t shock you—do I?” Weary and heart-sick as she

was—suspicious of others, doubtful of herself—the extravagant impudence

of Captain Wragge’s defense of swindling touched Magdalen’s natural

sense of humor, and forced a smile to her lips. “Is the Yorkshire crop

a particularly rich one just at present?” she inquired, meeting him, in

her neatly feminine way, with his own weapons.

“A hit—a palpable hit,” said the captain, jocosely exhibiting the tails

of his threadbare shooting jacket, as a practical commentary on

Magdalen’s remark. “My dear girl, here or elsewhere, the crop never

fails—but one man can’t always gather it in. The assistance of

intelligent co-operation is, I regret to say, denied me. I have nothing

in common with the clumsy rank and file of my profession, who convict

themselves, before recorders and magistrates, of the worst of all

offenses—incurable stupidity in the exercise of their own vocation.

Such as you see me, I stand entirely alone. After years of successful

self-dependence, the penalties of celebrity are beginning to attach to

me. On my way from the North, I pause at this interesting city for the

third time; I consult my Books for the customary references to past

local experience; I find under the heading, ‘Personal position in

York,’ the initials, T. W. K., signifying Too Well Known. I refer to my

Index, and turn to the surrounding neighborhood. The same brief marks

meet my eye. ‘Leeds. T. W. K.—Scarborough. T. W. K.—Harrowgate. T. W.

K.’—and so on. What is the inevitable consequence? I suspend my

proceedings; my resources evaporate; and my fair relative finds me the

pauper gentleman whom she now sees before her.”

“Your books?” said Magdalen. “What books do you mean?”

“You shall see,” replied the captain. “Trust me, or not, as you like—I

trust _you_ implicitly. You shall see.”

With those words he retired into the back room. While he was gone,

Magdalen stole another look at Mrs. Wragge. Was she still self-isolated

from her husband’s deluge of words? Perfectly self-isolated. She had

advanced the imaginary omelette to the last stage of culinary progress;

and she was now rehearsing the final operation of turning it over—with

the palm of her hand to represent the dish, and the cookery-book to

impersonate the frying-pan. “I’ve got it,” said Mrs. Wragge, nodding

across the room at Magdalen. “First put the frying-pan on the dish, and

then tumble both of them over.”

Captain Wragge returned, carrying a neat black dispatch-box, adorned

with a bright brass lock. He produced from the box five or six plump

little books, bound in commercial calf and vellum, and each fitted

comfortably with its own little lock.

“Mind!” said the moral agriculturist, “I take no credit to myself for

this: it is my nature to be orderly, and orderly I am. I must have

everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my

commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of

Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one

of them. I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a

careless entry in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this

room—is there a chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at _me_. Am

I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless

pauper, or am I not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of

the man, my dear girl—the nature of the man!”

He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable

correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could

estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of

figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black

ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. Although

Captain Wragge’s inborn sense of order was in him—as it is in others—a

sense too inveterately mechanical to exercise any elevating moral

influence over his actions, it had produced its legitimate effect on

his habits, and had reduced his rogueries as strictly to method and

system as if they had been the commercial transactions of an honest

man.

“In appearance, my system looks complicated?” pursued the captain. “In

reality, it is simplicity itself. I merely avoid the errors of inferior

practitioners. That is to say, I never plead for myself; and I never

apply to rich people—both fatal mistakes which the inferior

practitioner perpetually commits. People with small means sometimes

have generous impulses in connection with money—rich people, _never_.

My lord, with forty thousand a year; Sir John, with property in half a

dozen counties—those are the men who never forgive the genteel beggar

for swindling them out of a sovereign; those are the men who send for

the mendicity officers; those are the men who take care of their money.

Who are the people who lose shillings and sixpences by sheer

thoughtlessness? Servants and small clerks, to whom shillings and

sixpences are of consequence. Did you ever hear of Rothschild or Baring

dropping a fourpenny-piece down a gutter-hole? Fourpence in

Rothschild’s pocket is safer than fourpence in the pocket of that woman

who is crying stale shrimps in Skeldergate at this moment. Fortified by

these sound principles, enlightened by the stores of written

information in my commercial library, I have ranged through the

population for years past, and have raised my charitable crops with the

most cheering success. Here, in book Number One, are all my Districts

mapped out, with the prevalent public feeling to appeal to in each:

Military District, Clerical District, Agricultural District; et cetera,

et cetera. Here, in Number Two, are my cases that I plead: Family of an

officer who fell at Waterloo; Wife of a poor curate stricken down by

nervous debility; Widow of a grazier in difficulties gored to death by

a mad bull; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Three, are the people

who have heard of the officer’s family, the curate’s wife, the

grazier’s widow, and the people who haven’t; the people who have said

Yes, and the people who have said No; the people to try again, the

people who want a fresh case to stir them up, the people who are

doubtful, the people to beware of; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in

Number Four, are my Adopted Handwritings of public characters; my

testimonials to my own worth and integrity; my Heartrending Statements

of the officer’s family, the curate’s wife, and the grazier’s widow,

stained with tears, blotted with emotion; et cetera, et cetera. Here,

in Numbers Five and Six, are my own personal subscriptions to local

charities, actually paid in remunerative neighborhoods, on the

principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring; also, my diary of

each day’s proceedings, my personal reflections and remarks, my

statement of existing difficulties (such as the difficulty of finding

myself T. W. K. in this interesting city); my outgivings and incomings;

wind and weather; politics and public events; fluctuations in my own

health; fluctuations in Mrs. Wragge’s head; fluctuations in our means

and meals, our payments, prospects, and principles; et cetera, et

cetera. So, my dear girl, the Swindler’s Mill goes. So you see me

exactly as I am. You knew, before I met you, that I lived on my wits.

Well! have I, or have I not, shown you that I have wits to live on?”

“I have no doubt you have done yourself full justice,” said Magdalen,

quietly.

“I am not at all exhausted,” continued the captain. “I can go on, if

necessary, for the rest of the evening.—However, if I have done myself

full justice, perhaps I may leave the remaining points in my character

to develop themselves at future opportunities. For the present, I

withdraw myself from notice. Exit Wragge. And now to business! Permit

me to inquire what effect I have produced on your own mind? Do you

still believe that the Rogue who has trusted you with all his secrets

is a Rogue who is bent on taking a mean advantage of a fair relative?”

“I will wait a little,” Magdalen rejoined, “before I answer that

question. When I came down to tea, you told me you had been employing

your mind for my benefit. May I ask how?”

“By all means,” said Captain Wragge. “You shall have the net result of

the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the present and

future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of the lawyers who

are helping them to find you. Their present proceedings are, in all

probability, assuming the following form: the lawyer’s clerk has given

you up at Mr. Huxtable’s, and has also, by this time, given you up,

after careful inquiry, at all the hotels. His last chance is that you

may send for your box to the cloak-room—you don’t send for it—and there

the clerk is to-night (thanks to Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane) at

the end of his resources. He will forthwith communicate that fact to

his employers in London; and those employers (don’t be alarmed!) will

apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable delays,

a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with those

handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here

certainly not later than the day after tomorrow—possibly earlier. If

you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable,

that spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city

before he comes (taking your departure by other means than the railway,

of course) you put him in the same predicament as the clerk—you defy

him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief abstract of your

present position. What do you think of it?”

“I think it has one defect,” said Magdalen. “It ends in nothing.”

“Pardon me,” retorted the captain. “It ends in an arrangement for your

safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of your

wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the resources of

my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, to be poured forth

immediately in the fullest detail.”

“I think I know what that word is,” replied Magdalen, looking at him

attentively.

“Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, ‘Captain Wragge,

take charge of me’—and my plans are yours from that moment.”

“I will take to-night to consider your proposal,” she said, after an

instant’s reflection. “You shall have my answer to-morrow morning.”

Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not expected the

reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a reservation on

hers.

“Why not decide at once?” he remonstrated, in his most persuasive

tones. “You have only to consider—”

“I have more to consider than you think for,” she answered. “I have

another object in view besides the object you know of.”

“May I ask—?”

“Excuse me, Captain Wragge—you may _not_ ask. Allow me to thank you for

your hospitality, and to wish you good-night. I am worn out. I want

rest.”

Once more the captain wisely adapted himself to her humor with the

ready self-control of an experienced man.

“Worn out, of course!” he said, sympathetically. “Unpardonable on my

part not to have thought of it before. We will resume our conversation

to-morrow. Permit me to give you a candle. Mrs. Wragge!”

Prostrated by mental exertion, Mrs. Wragge was pursuing the course of

the omelette in dreams. Her head was twisted one way, and her body the

other. She snored meekly. At intervals one of her hands raised itself

in the air, shook an imaginary frying-pan, and dropped again with a

faint thump on the cookery-book in her lap. At the sound of her

husband’s voice, she started to her feet, and confronted him with her

mind fast asleep, and her eyes wide open.

“Assist Miss Vanstone,” said the captain. “And the next time you forget

yourself in your chair, fall asleep straight—don’t annoy me by falling

asleep crooked.”

Mrs. Wragge opened her eyes a little wider, and looked at Magdalen in

helpless amazement.

“Is the captain breakfasting by candle-light?” she inquired, meekly.

“And haven’t I done the omelette?”

Before her husband’s corrective voice could apply a fresh stimulant,

Magdalen took her compassionately by the arm and led her out of the

room.

“Another object besides the object I know of?” repeated Captain Wragge,

when he was left by himself. “_Is_ there a gentleman in the background,

after all? Is there mischief brewing in the dark that I don’t bargain

for?”

CHAPTER III.

Toward six o’clock the next morning, the light pouring in on her face

awoke Magdalen in the bedroom in Rosemary Lane.

She started from her deep, dreamless repose of the past night with that

painful sense of bewilderment, on first waking, which is familiar to

all sleepers in strange beds. “Norah!” she called out mechanically,

when she opened her eyes. The next instant her mind roused itself, and

her senses told her the truth. She looked round the miserable room with

a loathing recognition of it. The sordid contrast which the place

presented to all that she had been accustomed to see in her own

bed-chamber—the practical abandonment, implied in its scanty furniture,

of those elegant purities of personal habit to which she had been

accustomed from her childhood—shocked that sense of bodily self-respect

in Magdalen which is a refined woman’s second nature. Contemptible as

the influence seemed, when compared with her situation at that moment,

the bare sight of the jug and basin in a corner of the room decided her

first resolution when she woke. She determined, then and there, to

leave Rosemary Lane.

How was she to leave it? With Captain Wragge, or without him?

She dressed herself, with a dainty shrinking from everything in the

room which her hands or her clothes touched in the process, and then

opened the window. The autumn air felt keen and sweet; and the little

patch of sky that she could see was warmly bright already with the new

sunlight. Distant voices of bargemen on the river, and the chirping of

birds among the weeds which topped the old city wall, were the only

sounds that broke the morning silence. She sat down by the window; and

searched her mind for the thoughts which she had lost, when weariness

overcame her on the night before.

The first subject to which she returned was the vagabond subject of

Captain Wragge.

The “moral agriculturist” had failed to remove her personal distrust of

him, cunningly as he had tried to plead against it by openly confessing

the impostures that he had practiced on others. He had raised her

opinion of his abilities; he had amused her by his humor; he had

astonished her by his assurance; but he had left her original

conviction that he was a Rogue exactly where it was when he first met

with her. If the one design then in her mind had been the design of

going on the stage, she would, at all hazards, have rejected the more

than doubtful assistance of Captain Wragge on the spot.

But the perilous journey on which she had now adventured herself had

another end in view—an end, dark and distant—an end, with pitfalls

hidden on the way to it, far other than the shallow pitfalls on the way

to the stage. In the mysterious stillness of the morning, her mind

looked on to its second and its deeper design, and the despicable

figure of the swindler rose before her in a new view.

She tried to shut him out—to feel above him and beyond him again, as

she had felt up to this time.

After a little trifling with her dress, she took from her bosom the

white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at

Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken

strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of

Frank’s hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet

of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father’s

will and her father’s letter; the last was a closely-folded packet of

bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred pounds—the produce (as

Miss Garth had rightly conjectured) of the sale of her jewelry and her

dresses, in which the servant at the boarding-school had privately

assisted her. She put back the notes at once, without a second glance

at them, and then sat looking thoughtfully at the lock of hair as it

lay on her lap. “You are better than nothing,” she said, speaking to it

with a girl’s fanciful tenderness. “I can sit and look at you

sometimes, till I almost think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling!

my darling!” Her voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair,

with a languid gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into

her bosom. A lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread

downward to her neck, as if it followed the falling hair. She closed

her eyes, and let her fair head droop softly. The world passed from

her; and, for one enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise

to the daughter of Eve.

The trivial noises in the neighboring street, gathering in number as

the morning advanced, forced her back to the hard realities of the

passing time. She raised her head with a heavy sigh, and opened her

eyes once more on the mean and miserable little room.

The extracts from the will and the letter—those last memorials of her

father, now so closely associated with the purpose which had possession

of her mind—still lay before her. The transient color faded from her

face, as she spread the little manuscript open on her lap. The extracts

from the will stood highest on the page; they were limited to those few

touching words in which the dead father begged his children’s

forgiveness for the stain on their birth, and implored them to remember

the untiring love and care by which he had striven to atone for it. The

extract from the letter to Mr. Pendril came next. She read the last

melancholy sentences aloud to herself: “For God’s sake come on the day

when you receive this—come and relieve me from the dreadful thought

that my two darling girls are at this moment unprovided for. If

anything happened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice

ended (through my miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and

Magdalen disinherited, I should not rest in my grave!” Under these

lines again, and close at the bottom of the page, was written the

terrible commentary on that letter which had fallen from Mr. Pendril’s

lips: “Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children, and the law

leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.”

Helpless when those words were spoken—helpless still, after all that

she had resolved, after all that she had sacrificed. The assertion of

her natural rights and her sister’s, sanctioned by the direct

expression of her father’s last wishes; the recall of Frank from China;

the justification of her desertion of Norah—all hung on her desperate

purpose of recovering the lost inheritance, at any risk, from the man

who had beggared and insulted his brother’s children. And that man was

still a shadow to her! So little did she know of him that she was even

ignorant at that moment of his place of abode.

She rose and paced the room with the noiseless, negligent grace of a

wild creature of the forest in its cage. “How can I reach him in the

dark?” she said to herself. “How can I find out—?” She stopped

suddenly. Before the question had shaped itself to an end in her

thoughts, Captain Wragge was back in her mind again.

A man well used to working in the dark; a man with endless resources of

audacity and cunning; a man who would hesitate at no mean employment

that could be offered to him, if it was employment that filled his

pockets—was this the instrument for which, in its present need, her

hand was waiting? Two of the necessities to be met, before she could

take a single step in advance, were plainly present to her—the

necessity of knowing more of her father’s brother than she knew now;

and the necessity of throwing him off his guard by concealing herself

personally during the process of inquiry. Resolutely self-dependent as

she was, the inevitable spy’s work at the outset must be work delegated

to another. In her position, was there any ready human creature within

reach but the vagabond downstairs? Not one. She thought of it

anxiously, she thought of it long. Not one! There the choice was,

steadily confronting her: the choice of taking the Rogue, or of turning

her back on the Purpose.

She paused in the middle of the room. “What can he do at his worst?”

she said to herself. “Cheat me. Well! if my money governs him for me,

what then? Let him have my money!” She returned mechanically to her

place by the window. A moment more decided her. A moment more, and she

took the first fatal step downward-she determined to face the risk, and

try Captain Wragge.

At nine o’clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen’s door, and informed

her (with the captain’s kind compliments) that breakfast was ready.

She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown holland

wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The

ex-waitress at Darch’s Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation

of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled

yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little black spots.

“There it is!” said Mrs. Wragge. “Omelette with herbs. The landlady

helped me. And that’s what we’ve made of it. Don’t you ask the captain

for any when he comes in—don’t, there’s a good soul. It isn’t nice. We

had some accidents with it. It’s been under the grate. It’s been

spilled on the stairs. It’s scalded the landlady’s youngest boy—he went

and sat on it. Bless you, it isn’t half as nice as it looks! Don’t you

ask for any. Perhaps he won’t notice if you say nothing about it. What

do you think of my wrapper? I should so like to have a white one. Have

you got a white one? How is it trimmed? Do tell me!”

The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on

her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious

for the promised expression of Magdalen’s decision to pay his customary

attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he

dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling

her that she had his full permission to “give it to the dogs.”

“How does my little proposal look by daylight?” he asked, placing

chairs for Magdalen and himself. “Which is it to be: ‘Captain Wragge,

take charge of me?’ or, ‘Captain Wragge, good-morning?’”

“You shall hear directly,” replied Magdalen. “I have something to say

first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view

besides the object of earning my living on the stage—”

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Captain Wragge. “Did you say, earning

your living?”

“Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions

to gain our daily bread.”

“What!!!” cried the captain, starting to his feet. “The daughters of my

wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their own

living? Impossible—wildly, extravagantly impossible!” He sat down

again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury

on him.

“You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,” she

said, quietly. “I will tell you what has happened before I go any

further.” She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find,

and with as few details as possible.

Captain Wragge’s profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one

distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer’s

offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended

instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied

until that moment.

“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you are entirely deprived of

present resources?”

“I have sold my jewelry and my dresses,” said Magdalen, impatient of

his mean harping on the pecuniary string. “If my want of experience

keeps me back in a theater, I can afford to wait till the stage can

afford to pay me.”

Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and necklaces,

the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune,

at—say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds

Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation

of this judicious man.

“Just so,” he said, in his most business-like manner. “There is not the

least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theater, if you

possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance.”

“I must accept more assistance than you have already offered—or none,”

said Magdalen. “I have more serious difficulties before me than the

difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the

stage.”

“You don’t say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!”

She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.

“There are certain inquiries,” she said, “which I am interested in

making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of

the person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I

wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my

being seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much

greater importance than the service you offered last night.”

Captain Wragge’s vagabond face became gravely and deeply attentive.

“May I ask,” he said, “what the nature of the inquiries is likely to

be?”

Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael Vanstone’s

name in informing the captain of the loss of her inheritance. She must

inevitably mention it to him again if she employed his services. He

would doubtless discover it for himself, by a plain process of

inference, before she said many words more, frame them as carefully as

she might. Under these circumstances, was there any intelligible reason

for shrinking from direct reference to Michael Vanstone? No

intelligible reason—and yet she shrank.

“For instance,” pursued Captain Wragge, “are they inquiries about a man

or a woman; inquiries about an enemy or a friend—?”

“An enemy,” she answered, quickly.

Her reply might still have kept the captain in the dark—but her eyes

enlightened him. “Michael Vanstone!” thought the wary Wragge. “She

looks dangerous; I’ll feel my way a little further.”

“With regard, now, to the person who is the object of these inquiries,”

he resumed. “Are you thoroughly clear in your own mind about what you

want to know?”

“Perfectly clear,” replied Magdalen. “I want to know where he lives, to

begin with.”

“Yes. And after that?”

“I want to know about his habits; about who the people are whom he

associates with; about what he does with his money—” She considered a

little. “And one thing more,” she said; “I want to know whether there

is any woman about his house—a relation, or a housekeeper—who has an

influence over him.”

“Harmless enough, so far,” said the captain. “What next?”

“Nothing. The rest is my secret.”

The clouds on Captain Wragge’s countenance began to clear away again.

He reverted, with his customary precision, to his customary choice of

alternatives. “These inquiries of hers,” he thought, “mean one of two

things—Mischief, or Money! If it’s Mischief, I’ll slip through her

fingers. If it’s Money, I’ll make myself useful, with a view to the

future.”

Magdalen’s vigilant eyes watched the progress of his reflections

suspiciously. “Captain Wragge,” she said, “if you want time to

consider, say so plainly.”

“I don’t want a moment,” replied the captain. “Place your departure

from York, your dramatic career, and your private inquiries under my

care. Here I am, unreservedly at your disposal. Say the word—do you

take me?”

Her heart beat fast; her lips turned dry—but she said the word.

“I do.”

There was a pause. Magdalen sat silent, struggling with the vague dread

of the future which had been roused in her mind by her own reply.

Captain Wragge, on his side, was apparently absorbed in the

consideration of a new set of alternatives. His hands descended into

his empty pockets, and prophetically tested their capacity as

receptacles for gold and silver. The brightness of the precious metals

was in his face, the smoothness of the precious metals was in his

voice, as he provided himself with a new supply of words, and resumed

the conversation.

“The next question,” he said, “is the question of time. Do these

confidential investigations of ours require immediate attention—or can

they wait?”

“For the present, they can wait,” replied Magdalen. “I wish to secure

my freedom from all interference on the part of my friends before the

inquiries are made.”

“Very good. The first step toward accomplishing that object is to beat

our retreat—excuse a professional metaphor from a military man—to beat

our retreat from York to-morrow. I see my way plainly so far; but I am

all abroad, as we used to say in the militia, about my marching orders

afterward. The next direction we take ought to be chosen with an eye to

advancing your dramatic views. I am all ready, when I know what your

views are. How came you to think of the theater at all? I see the

sacred fire burning in you; tell me, who lit it?”

Magdalen could only answer him in one way. She could only look back at

the days that were gone forever, and tell him the story of her first

step toward the stage at Evergreen Lodge. Captain Wragge listened with

his usual politeness; but he evidently derived no satisfactory

impression from what he heard. Audiences of friends were audiences whom

he privately declined to trust; and the opinion of the stage-manager

was the opinion of a man who spoke with his fee in his pocket and his

eye on a future engagement.

“Interesting, deeply interesting,” he said, when Magdalen had done.

“But not conclusive to a practical man. A specimen of your abilities is

necessary to enlighten me. I have been on the stage myself; the comedy

of the Rivals is familiar to me from beginning to end. A sample is all

I want, if you have not forgotten the words—a sample of ‘Lucy,’ and a

sample of ‘Julia.’”

“I have not forgotten the words,” said Magdalen, sorrowfully; “and I

have the little books with me in which my dialogue was written out. I

have never parted with them; they remind me of a time—” Her lip

trembled, and a pang of the heart-ache silenced her.

“Nervous,” remarked the captain, indulgently. “Not at all a bad sign.

The greatest actresses on the stage are nervous. Follow their example,

and get over it. Where are the parts? Oh, here they are! Very nicely

written, and remarkably clean. I’ll give you the cues—it will all be

over (as the dentists say) in no time. Take the back drawing-room for

the stage, and take me for the audience. Tingle goes the bell; up runs

the curtain; order in the gallery, silence in the pit—enter Lucy!”

She tried hard to control herself; she forced back the sorrow—the

innocent, natural, human sorrow for the absent and the dead—pleading

hard with her for the tears that she refused. Resolutely, with cold,

clinched hands, she tried to begin. As the first familiar words passed

her lips, Frank came back to her from the sea, and the face of her dead

father looked at her with the smile of happy old times. The voices of

her mother and her sister talked gently in the fragrant country

stillness, and the garden-walks at Combe-Raven opened once more on her

view. With a faint, wailing cry, she dropped into a chair; her head

fell forward on the table, and she burst passionately into tears.

Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment. She shuddered as he came

near her, and waved him back vehemently with her hand. “Leave me!” she

said; “leave me a minute by myself!” The compliant Wragge retired to

the front room; looked out of the window; and whistled under his

breath. “The family spirit again!” he said. “Complicated by hysterics.”

After waiting a minute or two he returned to make inquiries.

“Is there anything I can offer you?” he asked. “Cold water? burned

feathers? smelling salts? medical assistance? Shall I summon Mrs.

Wragge? Shall we put it off till to-morrow?”

She started up, wild and flushed, with a desperate self-command in her

face, with an angry resolution in her manner.

“No!” she said. “I must harden myself—and I will! Sit down again and

see me act.”

“Bravo!” cried the captain. “Dash at it, my beauty—and it’s done!”

She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herself—with a raised voice,

and a glow like fever in her cheeks. All the artless, girlish charm of

the performance in happier and better days was gone. The native

dramatic capacity that was in her came, hard and bold, to the surface,

stripped of every softening allurement which had once adorned it. She

would have saddened and disappointed a man with any delicacy of

feeling. She absolutely electrified Captain Wragge. He forgot his

politeness, he forgot his long words. The essential spirit of the man’s

whole vagabond life burst out of him irresistibly in his first

exclamation. “Who the devil would have thought it? She _can_ act, after

all!” The instant the words escaped his lips he recovered himself, and

glided off into his ordinary colloquial channels. Magdalen stopped him

in the middle of his first compliment. “No,” she said; “I have forced

the truth out of you for once. I want no more.”

“Pardon me,” replied the incorrigible Wragge. “You want a little

instruction; and I am the man to give it you.”

With that answer, he placed a chair for her, and proceeded to explain

himself.

She sat down in silence. A sullen indifference began to show itself in

her manner; her cheeks turned pale again; and her eyes looked wearily

vacant at the wall before her. Captain Wragge noticed these signs of

heart-sickness and discontent with herself, after the effort she had

made, and saw the importance of rousing her by speaking, for once,

plainly and directly to the point. She had set a new value on herself

in his mercenary eyes. She had suggested to him a speculation in her

youth, her beauty, and her marked ability for the stage, which had

never entered his mind until he saw her act. The old militia-man was

quick at his shifts. He and his plans had both turned right about

together when Magdalen sat down to hear what he had to say.

“Mr. Huxtable’s opinion is my opinion,” he began. “You are a born

actress. But you must be trained before you can do anything on the

stage. I am disengaged—I am competent—I have trained others—I can train

you. Don’t trust my word: trust my eye to my own interests. I’ll make

it my interest to take pains with you, and to be quick about it. You

shall pay me for my instructions from your profits on the stage. Half

your salary for the first year; a third of your salary for the second

year; and half the sum you clear by your first benefit in a London

theater. What do you say to that? Have I made it my interest to push

you, or have I not?”

So far as appearances went, and so far as the stage went, it was plain

that he had linked his interests and Magdalen’s together. She briefly

told him so, and waited to hear more.

“A month or six weeks’ study,” continued the captain, “will give me a

reasonable idea of what you can do best. All ability runs in grooves;

and your groove remains to be found. We can’t find it here—for we can’t

keep you a close prisoner for weeks together in Rosemary Lane. A quiet

country place, secure from all interference and interruption, is the

place we want for a month certain. Trust my knowledge of Yorkshire, and

consider the place found. I see no difficulties anywhere, except the

difficulty of beating our retreat to-morrow.”

“I thought your arrangements were made last night?” said Magdalen.

“Quite right,” rejoined the captain. “They were made last night; and

here they are. We can’t leave by railway, because the lawyer’s clerk is

sure to be on the lookout for you at the York terminus. Very good; we

take to the road instead, and leave in our own carriage. Where the

deuce do we get it? We get it from the landlady’s brother, who has a

horse and chaise which he lets out for hire. That chaise comes to the

end of Rosemary Lane at an early hour to-morrow morning. I take my wife

and my niece out to show them the beauties of the neighborhood. We have

a picnic hamper with us, which marks our purpose in the public eye. You

disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet, and veil of Mrs. Wragge’s; we

turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip for the

day—you and I on the front seat, Mrs. Wragge and the hamper behind.

Good again. Once on the highroad, what do we do? Drive to the first

station beyond York, northward, southward, or eastward, as may be

hereafter determined. No lawyer’s clerk is waiting for you there. You

and Mrs. Wragge get out—first opening the hamper at a convenient

opportunity. Instead of containing chickens and Champagne, it contains

a carpet-bag, with the things you want for the night. You take your

tickets for a place previously determined on, and I take the chaise

back to York. Arrived once more in this house, I collect the luggage

left behind, and send for the woman downstairs. ‘Ladies so charmed with

such and such a place (wrong place of course), that they have

determined to stop there. Pray accept the customary week’s rent, in

place of a week’s warning. Good day.’ Is the clerk looking for me at

the York terminus? Not he. I take my ticket under his very nose; I

follow you with the luggage along your line of railway—and where is the

trace left of your departure? Nowhere. The fairy has vanished; and the

legal authorities are left in the lurch.”

“Why do you talk of difficulties?” asked Magdalen. “The difficulties

seem to be provided for.”

“All but ONE,” said Captain Wragge, with an ominous emphasis on the

last word. “The Grand Difficulty of humanity from the cradle to the

grave—Money.” He slowly winked his green eye; sighed with deep feeling;

and buried his insolvent hands in his unproductive pockets.

“What is the money wanted for?” inquired Magdalen.

“To pay my bills,” replied the captain, with a touching simplicity.

“Pray understand! I never was—and never shall be—personally desirous of

paying a single farthing to any human creature on the habitable globe.

I am speaking in your interest, not in mine.”

“My interest?”

“Certainly. You can’t get safely away from York to-morrow without the

chaise. And I can’t get the chaise without money. The landlady’s

brother will lend it if he sees his sister’s bill receipted, and if he

gets his day’s hire beforehand—not otherwise. Allow me to put the

transaction in a business light. We have agreed that I am to be

remunerated for my course of dramatic instruction out of your future

earnings on the stage. Very good. I merely draw on my future prospects;

and you, on whom those prospects depend, are naturally my banker. For

mere argument’s sake, estimate my share in your first year’s salary at

the totally inadequate value of a hundred pounds. Halve that sum;

quarter that sum—”

“How much do you want?” said Magdalen, impatiently.

Captain Wragge was sorely tempted to take the Reward at the top of the

handbills as his basis of calculation. But he felt the vast future

importance of present moderation; and actually wanting some twelve or

thirteen pounds, he merely doubled the amount, and said,

“Five-and-twenty.”

Magdalen took the little bag from her bosom, and gave him the money,

with a contemptuous wonder at the number of words which he had wasted

on her for the purpose of cheating on so small a scale. In the old days

at Combe-Raven, five-and-twenty pounds flowed from a stroke of her

father’s pen into the hands of any one in the house who chose to ask

for it.

Captain Wragge’s eyes dwelt on the little bag as the eyes of lovers

dwell on their mistresses. “Happy bag!” he murmured, as she put it back

in her bosom. He rose; dived into a corner of the room; produced his

neat dispatch-box; and solemnly unlocked it on the table between

Magdalen and himself.

“The nature of the man, my dear girl—the nature of the man,” he said,

opening one of his plump little books bound in calf and vellum. “A

transaction has taken place between us. I must have it down in black

and white.” He opened the book at a blank page, and wrote at the top,

in a fine mercantile hand: “_Miss Vanstone, the Younger: In account

with Horatio Wragge, late of the Royal Militia. D_r.—_C_r. _Sept._

24_th_, 1846. _D_r_.: To estimated value of H. Wragge’s interest in

Miss V.‘s first year’s salary—say_ £ 200. _C_r. _By paid on account_, £

25.” Having completed the entry—and having also shown, by doubling his

original estimate on the Debtor side, that Magdalen’s easy compliance

with his demand on her had not been thrown away on him—the captain

pressed his blotting-paper over the wet ink, and put away the book with

the air of a man who had done a virtuous action, and who was above

boasting about it.

“Excuse me for leaving you abruptly,” he said. “Time is of importance;

I must make sure of the chaise. If Mrs. Wragge comes in, tell her

nothing—she is not sharp enough to be trusted. If she presumes to ask

questions, extinguish her immediately. You have only to be loud. Pray

take my authority into your own hands, and be as loud with Mrs. Wragge

as I am!” He snatched up his tall hat, bowed, smiled, and tripped out

of the room.

Sensible of little else but of the relief of being alone; feeling no

more distinct impression than the vague sense of some serious change

having taken place in herself and her position, Magdalen let the events

of the morning come and go like shadows on her mind, and waited wearily

for what the day might bring forth. After the lapse of some time, the

door opened softly. The giant figure of Mrs. Wragge stalked into the

room, and stopped opposite Magdalen in solemn astonishment.

“Where are your Things?” asked Mrs. Wragge, with a burst of

incontrollable anxiety. “I’ve been upstairs looking in your drawers.

Where are your night-gowns and night-caps? and your petticoats and

stockings? and your hair-pins and bear’s grease, and all the rest of

it?”

“My luggage is left at the railway station,” said Magdalen.

Mrs. Wragge’s moon-face brightened dimly. The ineradicable female

instinct of Curiosity tried to sparkle in her faded blue eyes—flickered

piteously—and died out.

“How much luggage?” she asked, confidentially. “The captain’s gone out.

Let’s go and get it!”

“Mrs. Wragge!” cried a terrible voice at the door.

For the first time in Magdalen’s experience, Mrs. Wragge was deaf to

the customary stimulant. She actually ventured on a feeble remonstrance

in the presence of her husband.

“Oh, do let her have her Things!” pleaded Mrs. Wragge. “Oh, poor soul,

do let her have her Things!”

The captain’s inexorable forefinger pointed to a corner of the

room—dropped slowly as his wife retired before it—and suddenly stopped

at the region of her shoes.

“Do I hear a clapping on the floor!” exclaimed Captain Wragge, with an

expression of horror. “Yes; I do. Down at heel again! The left shoe

this time. Pull it up, Mrs. Wragge! pull it up!—The chaise will be here

to-morrow morning at nine o’clock,” he continued, addressing Magdalen.

“We can’t possibly venture on claiming your box. There is note-paper.

Write down a list of the necessaries you want. I will take it myself to

the shop, pay the bill for you, and bring back the parcel. We must

sacrifice the box—we must, indeed.”

While her husband was addressing Magdalen, Mrs. Wragge had stolen out

again from her corner, and had ventured near enough to the captain to

hear the words “shop” and “parcel.” She clapped her great hands

together in ungovernable excitement, and lost all control over herself

immediately.

“Oh, if it’s shopping, let me do it!” cried Mrs. Wragge. “She’s going

out to buy her Things! Oh, let me go with her—please let me go with

her!”

“Sit down!” shouted the captain. “Straight! more to the right—more

still. Stop where you are!”

Mrs. Wragge crossed her helpless hands on her lap, and melted meekly

into tears.

“I do so like shopping,” pleaded the poor creature; “and I get so

little of it now!”

Magdalen completed her list; and Captain Wragge at once left the room

with it. “Don’t let my wife bore you,” he said, pleasantly, as he went

out. “Cut her short, poor soul—cut her short!”

“Don’t cry,” said Magdalen, trying to comfort Mrs. Wragge by patting

her on the shoulder. “When the parcel comes back you shall open it.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said Mrs. Wragge, meekly, drying her eyes; “thank

you kindly. Don’t notice my handkerchief, please. It’s such a very

little one! I had a nice lot of them once, with lace borders. They’re

all gone now. Never mind! It will comfort me to unpack your Things.

You’re very good to me. I like you. I say—you won’t be angry, will you?

Give us a kiss.”

Magdalen stooped over her with the frank grace and gentleness of past

days, and touched her faded cheek. “Let me do something harmless!” she

thought, with a pang at her heart—“oh let me do something innocent and

kind for the sake of old times!”

She felt her eyes moistening, and silently turned away.

That night no rest came to her. That night the roused forces of Good

and Evil fought their terrible fight for her soul—and left the strife

between them still in suspense when morning came. As the clock of York

Minster struck nine, she followed Mrs. Wragge to the chaise, and took

her seat by the captain’s side. In a quarter of an hour more York was

in the distance, and the highroad lay bright and open before them in

the morning sunlight.

BETWEEN THE SCENES.

CHRONICLE OF EVENTS: PRESERVED IN CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S DESPATCH BOX.

I.

Chronicle for October, 1846.

I have retired into the bosom of my family. We are residing in the

secluded village of Ruswarp, on the banks of the Esk, about two miles

inland from Whitby. Our lodgings are comfortable, and we possess the

additional blessing of a tidy landlady. Mrs. Wragge and Miss Vanstone

preceded me here, in accordance with the plan I laid down for effecting

our retreat from York. On the next day I followed them alone, with the

luggage. On leaving the terminus, I had the satisfaction of seeing the

lawyer’s clerk in close confabulation with the detective officer whose

advent I had prophesied. I left him in peaceable possession of the city

of York, and the whole surrounding neighborhood. He has returned the

compliment, and has left us in peaceable possession of the valley of

the Esk, thirty miles away from him.

Remarkable results have followed my first efforts at the cultivation of

Miss Vanstone’s dramatic abilities.

I have discovered that she possesses extraordinary talent as a mimic.

She has the flexible face, the manageable voice, and the dramatic knack

which fit a woman for character-parts and disguises on the stage. All

she now wants is teaching and practice, to make her sure of her own

resources. The experience of her, thus gained, has revived an idea in

my mind which originally occurred to me at one of the “At Homes” of the

late inimitable Charles Mathews, comedian. I was in the Wine Trade at

the time, I remember. We imitated the Vintage-processes of Nature in a

back-kitchen at Brompton, and produced a dinner-sherry, pale and

curious, tonic in character, round in the mouth, a favorite with the

Court of Spain, at nineteen-and-sixpence a dozen, bottles

included—_Vide_ Prospectus of the period. The profits of myself and

partners were small; we were in advance of the tastes of the age, and

in debt to the bottle merchant. Being at my wits’ end for want of

money, and seeing what audiences Mathews drew, the idea occurred to me

of starting an imitation of the great Imitator himself, in the shape of

an “At Home,” given by a woman. The one trifling obstacle in the way

was the difficulty of finding the woman. From that time to this, I have

hitherto failed to overcome it. I have conquered it at last; I have

found the woman now. Miss Vanstone possesses youth and beauty as well

as talent. Train her in the art of dramatic disguise; provide her with

appropriate dresses for different characters; develop her

accomplishments in singing and playing; give her plenty of smart talk

addressed to the audience; advertise her as a Young Lady at Home;

astonish the public by a dramatic entertainment which depends from

first to last on that young lady’s own sole exertions; commit the

entire management of the thing to my care—and what follows as a

necessary con sequence? Fame for my fair relative, and a fortune for

myself.

I put these considerations, as frankly as usual, to Miss Vanstone;

offering to write the Entertainment, to manage all the business, and to

share the profits. I did not forget to strengthen my case by informing

her of the jealousies she would encounter, and the obstacles she would

meet, if she went on the stage. And I wound up by a neat reference to

the private inquiries which she is interested in making, and to the

personal independence which she is desirous of securing before she acts

on her information. “If you go on the stage,” I said, “your services

will be bought by a manager, and he may insist on his claims just at

the time when you want to get free from him. If, on the contrary, you

adopt my views, you will be your own mistress and your own manager, and

you can settle your course just as you like.” This last consideration

appeared to strike her. She took a day to consider it; and, when the

day was over, gave her consent.

I had the whole transaction down in black and white immediately. Our

arrangement is eminently satisfactory, except in one particular. She

shows a morbid distrust of writing her name at the bottom of any

document which I present to her, and roundly declares she will sign

nothing. As long as it is her interest to provide herself with

pecuniary resources for the future, she verbally engages to go on. When

it ceases to be her interest, she plainly threatens to leave off at a

week’s notice. A difficult girl to deal with; she has found out her own

value to me already. One comfort is, I have the cooking of the

accounts; and my fair relative shall not fill her pockets too suddenly

if I can help it.

My exertions in training Miss Vanstone for the coming experiment have

been varied by the writing of two anonymous letters in that young

lady’s interests. Finding her too fidgety about arranging matters with

her friends to pay proper attention to my instructions, I wrote

anonymously to the lawyer who is conducting the inquiry after her,

recommending him, in a friendly way, to give it up. The letter was

inclosed to a friend of mine in London, with instructions to post it at

Charing Cross. A week later I sent a second letter, through the same

channel, requesting the lawyer to inform me, in writing, whether he and

his clients had or had not decided on taking my advice. I directed him,

with jocose reference to the collision of interests between us, to

address his letter: “Tit for Tat, Post-office, West Strand.”

In a few days the answer arrived—privately forwarded, of course, to

Post-office, Whitby, by arrangement with my friend in London.

The lawyer’s reply was short and surly: “SIR—If my advice had been

followed, you and your anonymous letter would both be treated with the

contempt which they deserve. But the wishes of Miss Magdalen Vanstone’s

eldest sister have claims on my consideration which I cannot dispute;

and at her entreaty I inform you that all further proceedings on my

part are withdrawn—on the express understanding that this concession is

to open facilities for written communication, at least, between the two

sisters. A letter from the elder Miss Vanstone is inclosed in this. If

I don’t hear in a week’s time that it has been received, I shall place

the matter once more in the hands of the police.—WILLIAM PENDRIL.” A

sour man, this William Pendril. I can only say of him what an eminent

nobleman once said of his sulky servant—“I wouldn’t have such a temper

as that fellow has got for any earthly consideration that could be

offered me!”

As a matter of course, I looked into the letter which the lawyer

inclosed, before delivering it. Miss Vanstone, the elder, described

herself as distracted at not hearing from her sister; as suited with a

governess’s situation in a private family; as going into the situation

in a week’s time; and as longing for a letter to comfort her, before

she faced the trial of undertaking her new duties. After closing the

envelope again, I accompanied the delivery of the letter to Miss

Vanstone, the younger, by a word of caution. “Are you more sure of your

own courage now,” I said, “than you were when I met you?” She was ready

with her answer. “Captain Wragge, when you met me on the Walls of York

I had not gone too far to go back. I have gone too far now.”

If she really feels this—and I think she does—her corresponding with

her sister can do no harm. She wrote at great length the same day;

cried profusely over her own epistolary composition; and was remarkably

ill-tempered and snappish toward me, when we met in the evening. She

wants experience, poor girl—she sadly wants experience of the world.

How consoling to know that I am just the man to give it her!

II.

Chronicle for November.

We are established at Derby. The Entertainment is written; and the

rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are provided for,

but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone’s resources

stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants; including

piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making of the

necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Entertainment are

beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatrical friend of mine

here, whom I had hoped to interest in our undertaking, proves,

unhappily, to be at a crisis in his career. The field of human

sympathy, out of which I might have raised the needful pecuniary crop,

is closed to me from want of time to cultivate it. I see no other

resource left—if we are to be ready by Christmas—than to try one of the

local music-sellers in this town, who is said to be a speculating man.

A private rehearsal at these lodgings, and a bargain which will fill

the pockets of a grasping stranger—such are the sacrifices which dire

necessity imposes on me at starting. Well! there is only one

consolation: I’ll cheat the music-seller.

III.

Chronicle for December. First Fortnight.

The music-seller extorts my unwilling respect. He is one of the very

few human beings I have met with in the course of my life who is not to

be cheated. He has taken a masterly advantage of our helplessness; and

has imposed terms on us, for performances at Derby and Nottingham, with

such a business-like disregard of all interests but his own that—fond

as I am of putting things down in black and white—I really cannot

prevail upon myself to record the bargain. It is needless to say, I

have yielded with my best grace; sharing with my fair relative the

wretched pecuniary prospects offered to us. Our turn will come. In the

meantime, I cordially regret not having known the local music-seller in

early life.

Personally speaking, I have no cause to complain of Miss Vanstone. We

have arranged that she shall regularly forward her address (at the

post-office) to her friends, as we move about from place to place.

Besides communicating in this way with her sister, she also reports

herself to a certain Mr. Clare, residing in Somersetshire, who is to

forward all letters exchanged between herself and his son. Careful

inquiry has informed me that this latter individual is now in China.

Having suspected from the first that there was a gentleman in the

background, it is highly satisfactory to know that he recedes into the

remote perspective of Asia. Long may he remain there!

The trifling responsibility of finding a name for our talented Magdalen

to perform under has been cast on my shoulders. She feels no interest

whatever in this part of the subject. “Give me any name you like,” she

said; “I have as much right to one as to another. Make it yourself.” I

have readily consented to gratify her wishes. The resources of my

commercial library include a list of useful names to assume; and we can

choose one at five minutes’ notice, when the admirable man of business

who now oppresses us is ready to issue his advertisements. On this

point my mind is easy enough: all my anxieties center in the fair

performer. I have not the least doubt she will do wonders if she is

only left to herself on the first night. But if the day’s post is

mischievous enough to upset her by a letter from her sister, I tremble

for the consequences.

IV.

Chronicle for December. Second Fortnight.

My gifted relative has made her first appearance in public, and has

laid the foundation of our future fortunes.

On the first night the attendance was larger than I had ventured to

hope. The novelty of an evening’s entertainment, conducted from

beginning to end by the unaided exertions of a young lady (see

advertisement), roused the public curiosity, and the seats were

moderately well filled. As good luck would have it, no letter addressed

to Miss Vanstone came that day. She was in full possession of herself

until she got the first dress on and heard the bell ring for the music.

At that critical moment she suddenly broke down. I found her alone in

the waiting-room, sobbing, and talking like a child. “Oh, poor papa!

poor papa! Oh, my God, if he saw me now!” My experience in such matters

at once informed me that it was a case of sal-volatile, accompanied by

sound advice. We strung her up in no time to concert pitch; set her

eyes in a blaze; and made her out-blush her own rouge. The curtain rose

when we had got her at a red heat. She dashed at it exactly as she

dashed at it in the back drawing-room at Rosemary Lane. Her personal

appearance settled the question of her reception before she opened her

lips. She rushed full gallop through her changes of character, her

songs, and her dialogue; making mistakes by the dozen, and never

stopping to set them right; carrying the people along with her in a

perfect whirlwind, and never waiting for the applause. The whole thing

was over twenty minutes sooner than the time we had calculated on. She

carried it through to the end, and fainted on the waiting-room sofa a

minute after the curtain was down. The music-seller having taken leave

of his senses from sheer astonishment, and I having no evening costume

to appear in, we sent the doctor to make the necessary apology to the

public, who were calling for her till the place rang again. I prompted

our medical orator with a neat speech from behind the curtain; and I

never heard such applause, from such a comparatively small audience,

before in my life. I felt the tribute—I felt it deeply. Fourteen years

ago I scraped together the wretched means of existence in this very

town by reading the newspaper (with explanatory comments) to the

company at a public-house. And now here I am at the top of the tree.

It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the

music-seller on the spot. He called the next morning, no doubt with a

liberal proposal for extending the engagement beyond Derby and

Nottingham. My niece was described as not well enough to see him; and,

when he asked for me, he was told I was not up. I happened to be at

that moment engaged in putting the case pathetically to our gifted

Magdalen. Her answer was in the highest degree satisfactory. She would

permanently engage herself to nobody—least of all to a man who had

taken sordid advantage of her position and mine. She would be her own

mistress, and share the profits with me, while she wanted money, and

while it suited her to go on. So far so good. But the reason she added

next, for her flattering preference of myself, was less to my taste.

“The music-seller is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries,”

she said. “You are the man.” I don’t like her steadily remembering

those inquiries, in the first bewilderment of her success. It looks ill

for the future; it looks infernally ill for the future.

V.

Chronicle for January, 1847.

She has shown the cloven foot already. I begin to be a little afraid of

her.

On the conclusion of the Nottingham engagement (the results of which

more than equaled the results at Derby), I proposed taking the

entertainment next—now we had got it into our own hands—to Newark. Miss

Vanstone raised no objection until we came to the question of time,

when she amazed me by stipulating for a week’s delay before we appeared

in public again.

“For what possible purpose?” I asked.

“For the purpose of making the inquiries which I mentioned to you at

York,” she answered.

I instantly enlarged on the danger of delay, putting all the

considerations before her in every imaginable form. She remained

perfectly immovable. I tried to shake her on the question of expenses.

She answered by handing me over her share of the proceeds at Derby and

Nottingham—and there were my expenses paid, at the rate of nearly two

guineas a day. I wonder who first picked out a mule as the type of

obstinacy? How little knowledge that man must have had of women!

There was no help for it. I took down my instructions in black and

white, as usual. My first exertions were to be directed to the

discovery of Mr. Michael Vanstone’s address: I was also expected to

find out how long he was likely to live there, and whether he had sold

Combe-Raven or not. My next inquiries were to inform me of his ordinary

habits of life; of what he did with his money; of who his intimate

friends were; and of the sort of terms on which his son, Mr. Noel

Vanstone, was now living with him. Lastly, the investigations were to

end in discovering whether there was any female relative, or any woman

exercising domestic authority in the house, who was known to have an

influence over either father or son.

If my long practice in cultivating the field of human sympathy had not

accustomed me to private investigations into the affairs of other

people, I might have found some of these queries rather difficult to

deal with in the course of a week. As it was, I gave myself all the

benefit of my own experience, and brought the answers back to

Nottingham in a day less than the given time. Here they are, in regular

order, for convenience of future reference:

(1.) Mr. Michael Vanstone is now residing at German Place, Brighton,

and likely to remain there, as he finds the air suits him. He reached

London from Switzerland in September last; and sold the Combe-Raven

property immediately on his arrival.

(2.) His ordinary habits of life are secret and retired; he seldom

visits, or receives company. Part of his money is supposed to be in the

Funds, and part laid out in railway investments, which have survived

the panic of eighteen hundred and forty-six, and are rapidly rising in

value. He is said to be a bold speculator. Since his arrival in England

he has invested, with great judgment, in house property. He has some

houses in remote parts of London, and some houses in certain

watering-places on the east coast, which are shown to be advancing in

public repute. In all these cases he is reported to have made

remarkably good bargains.

(3.) It is not easy to discover who his intimate friends are. Two names

only have been ascertained. The first is Admiral Bartram; supposed to

have been under friendly obligations, in past years, to Mr. Michael

Vanstone. The second is Mr. George Bartram, nephew of the Admiral, and

now staying on a short visit in the house at German Place. Mr. George

Bartram is the son of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s sister, also

deceased. He is therefore a cousin of Mr. Noel Vanstone’s. This

last—viz., Mr. Noel Vanstone—is in delicate health, and is living on

excellent terms with his father in German Place.

(4.) There is no female relative in Mr. Michael Vanstone’s family

circle. But there is a housekeeper who has lived in his service ever

since his wife’s death, and who has acquired a strong influence over

both father and son. She is a native of Switzerland, elderly, and a

widow. Her name is Mrs. Lecount.

On placing these particulars in Miss Vanstone’s hands, she made no

remark, except to thank me. I endeavored to invite her confidence. No

results; nothing but a renewal of civility, and a sudden shifting to

the subject of the Entertainment. Very good. If she won’t give me the

information I want, the conclusion is obvious—I must help myself.

Business considerations claim the remainder of this page. Let me return

to business.

———————————————————————————

Financial Statement. | Third Week in January.

———————————————————————————

Place Visited. | Performances.

Newark. | Two.

———————————————————————————

Net Receipts. | Net Receipts.

In black and white. | Actually Realized.

£ 25 | £ 32 10s.

————————————————————————————

Apparent Division | Actual Division

of Profits. | of Profits.

Miss V.......£ 12 10 | Miss V.......£ 12 10

Self.........£ 12 10 | Self.........£ 20 00

———————————————————————————

Private Surplus on the Week,

Or say,

Self-presented Testimonial.

£ 7 10s.

———————————————————————————

Audited, | Passed correct,

H. WRAGGE. | H. WRAGGE

———————————————————————————

The next stronghold of British sympathy which we take by storm is

Sheffield. We open the first week in February.

VI.

Chronicle for February.

Practice has now given my fair relative the confidence which I

predicted would come with time. Her knack of disguising her own

identity in the impersonation of different characters so completely

staggers her audiences that the same people come twice over to find out

how she does it. It is the amiable defect of the English public never

to know when they have had enough of a good thing. They actually try to

encore one of her characters—an old north-country lady; modeled on that

honored preceptress in the late Mr. Vanstone’s family to whom I

presented myself at Combe-Raven. This particular performance fairly

amazes the people. I don’t wonder at it. Such an extraordinary

assumption of age by a girl of nineteen has never been seen in public

before, in the whole course of my theatrical experience.

I find myself writing in a lower tone than usual; I miss my own dash of

humor. The fact is, I am depressed about the future. In the very height

of our prosperity my perverse pupil sticks to her trumpery family

quarrel. I feel myself at the mercy of the first whim in the Vanstone

direction which may come into her head—I, the architect of her

fortunes. Too bad; upon my soul, too bad.

She has acted already on the inquiries which she forced me to make for

her. She has written two letters to Mr. Michael Vanstone.

To the first letter no answer came. To the second a reply was received.

Her infernal cleverness put an obstacle I had not expected in the way

of my intercepting it. Later in the day, after she had herself opened

and read the answer, I laid another trap for her. It just succeeded,

and no more. I had half a minute to look into the envelope in her

absence. It contained nothing but her own letter returned. She is not

the girl to put up quietly with such an insult as this. Mischief will

come of it—Mischief to Michael Vanstone—which is of no earthly

consequence: mischief to Me—which is a truly serious matter.

VII.

Chronicle for March.

After performing at Sheffield and Manchester, we have moved to

Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster. Another change in this weathercock

of a girl. She has written no more letters to Michael Vanstone; and she

has become as anxious to make money as I am myself. We are realizing

large profits, and we are worked to death. I don’t like this change in

her: she has a purpose to answer, or she would not show such

extraordinary eagerness to fill her purse. Nothing I can do—no cooking

of accounts; no self-presented testimonials—can keep that purse empty.

The success of the Entertainment, and her own sharpness in looking

after her interests, literally force me into a course of comparative

honesty. She puts into her pocket more than a third of the profits, in

defiance of my most arduous exertions to prevent her. And this at my

age! this after my long and successful career as a moral agriculturist!

Marks of admiration are very little things; but they express my

feelings, and I put them in freely.

VIII.

Chronicle for April and May.

We have visited seven more large towns, and are now at Birmingham.

Consulting my books, I find that Miss Vanstone has realized by the

Entertainment, up to this time, the enormous sum of nearly four hundred

pounds. It is quite possible that my own profits may reach one or two

miserable hundred more. But I was the architect of her fortunes—the

publisher, so to speak, of her book—and, if anything, I am underpaid.

I made the above discovery on the twenty-ninth of the month—anniversary

of the Restoration of my royal predecessor in the field of human

sympathies, Charles the Second. I had barely finished locking up my

dispatch-box, when the ungrateful girl, whose reputation I have made,

came into the room and told me in so many words that the business

connection between us was for the present at an end.

I attempt no description of my own sensations: I merely record facts.

She informed me, with an appearance of perfect composure, that she

needed rest, and that she had “new objects in view.” She might possibly

want me to assist those objects; and she might possibly return to the

Entertainment. In either case it would be enough if we exchanged

addresses, at which we could write to each other in case of need.

Having no desire to leave me too abruptly, she would remain the next

day (which was Sunday); and would take her departure on Monday morning.

Such was her explanation, in so many words.

Remonstrance, as I knew by experience, would be thrown away. Authority

I had none to exert. My one sensible course to take in this emergency

was to find out which way my own interests pointed, and to go that way

without a moment’s unnecessary hesitation.

A very little reflection has since convinced me that she has a

deep-laid scheme against Michael Vanstone in view. She is young,

handsome, clever, and unscrupulous; she has made money to live on, and

has time at her disposal to find out the weak side of an old man; and

she is going to attack Mr. Michael Vanstone unawares with the

legitimate weapons of her sex. Is she likely to want me for such a

purpose as this? Doubtful. Is she merely anxious to get rid of me on

easy terms? Probable. Am I the sort of man to be treated in this way by

my own pupil? Decidedly not: I am the man to see my way through a neat

succession of alternatives; and here they are:

First alternative: To announce my compliance with her proposal; to

exchange addresses with her; and then to keep my eye privately on all

her future movements. Second alternative: to express fond anxiety in a

paternal capacity; and to threaten giving the alarm to her sister and

the lawyer, if she persists in her design. Third alternative: to turn

the information I already possess to the best account, by making it a

marketable commodity between Mr. Michael Vanstone and myself. At

present I incline toward the last of these three courses. But my

decision is far too important to be hurried. To-day is only the

twenty-ninth. I will suspend my Chronicle of Events until Monday.

May 31st.—My alternatives and her plans are both overthrown together.

The newspaper came in, as usual, after breakfast. I looked it over, and

discovered this memorable entry among the obituary announcements of the

day:

“On the 29th inst., at Brighton, Michael Vanstone, Esq., formerly of

Zurich, aged 77.”

Miss Vanstone was present in the room when I read those two startling

lines. Her bonnet was on; her boxes were packed; she was waiting

impatiently until it was time to go to the train. I handed the paper to

her, without a word on my side. Without a word on hers, she looked

where I pointed, and read the news of Michael Vanstone’s death.

The paper dropped out of her hand, and she suddenly pulled down her

veil. I caught one glance at her face before she hid it from me. The

effect on my mind was startling in the extreme. To put it with my

customary dash of humor—her face informed me that the most sensible

action which Michael Vanstone, Esq., formerly of Zurich, had ever

achieved in his life was the action he performed at Brighton on the

29th instant.

Finding the dead silence in the room singularly unpleasant under

existing circumstances, I thought I would make a remark. My regard for

my own interests supplied me with a subject. I mentioned the

Entertainment.

“After what has happened,” I said, “I presume we go on with our

performances as usual?”

“No,” she answered, behind the veil. “We go on with my inquiries.”

“Inquiries after a dead man?”

“Inquiries after the dead man’s son.”

“Mr. Noel Vanstone?”

“Yes; Mr. Noel Vanstone.”

Not having a veil to put down over my own face, I stooped and picked up

the newspaper. Her devilish determination quite upset me for the

moment. I actually had to steady myself before I could speak to her

again.

“Are the new inquiries as harmless as the old ones?” I asked.

“Quite as harmless.”

“What am I expected to find out?”

“I wish to know whether Mr. Noel Vanstone remains at Brighton after the

funeral.”

“And if not?”

“If not, I shall want to know his new address wherever it may be.”

“Yes. And what next?”

“I wish you to find out next if all the father’s money goes to the

son.”

I began to see her drift. The word money relieved me; I felt quite on

my own ground again.

“Anything more?” I asked.

“Only one thing more,” she answered. “Make sure, if you please, whether

Mrs. Lecount, the housekeeper, remains or not in Mr. Noel Vanstone’s

service.”

Her voice altered a little as she mentioned Mrs. Lecount’s name; she is

evidently sharp enough to distrust the housekeeper already.

“My expenses are to be paid as usual?” I said.

“As usual.”

“When am I expected to leave for Brighton?”

“As soon as you can.”

She rose, and left the room. After a momentary doubt, I decided on

executing the new commission. The more private inquiries I conduct for

my fair relative the harder she will find it to get rid of hers truly,

Horatio Wragge.

There is nothing to prevent my starting for Brighton to-morrow. So

to-morrow I go. If Mr. Noel Vanstone succeeds to his father’s property,

he is the only human being possessed of pecuniary blessings who fails

to inspire me with a feeling of unmitigated envy.

IX.

Chronicle for June.

9th.—I returned yesterday with my information. Here it is, privately

noted down for convenience of future reference:

Mr. Noel Vanstone has left Brighton, and has removed, for the purpose

of transacting business in London, to one of his late father’s empty

houses in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. This singularly mean selection of a

place of residence on the part of a gentleman of fortune looks as if

Mr. N. V. and his money were not easily parted.

Mr. Noel Vanstone has stepped into his father’s shoes under the

following circumstances: Mr. Michael Vanstone appears to have died,

curiously enough, as Mr. Andrew Vanstone died—intestate. With this

difference, however, in the two cases, that the younger brother left an

informal will, and the elder brother left no will at all. The hardest

men have their weaknesses; and Mr. Michael Vanstone’s weakness seems to

have been an insurmountable horror of contemplating the event of his

own death. His son, his housekeeper, and his lawyer, had all three

tried over and over again to get him to make a will; and had never

shaken his obstinate resolution to put off performing the only business

duty he was ever known to neglect. Two doctors attended him in his last

illness; warned him that he was too old a man to hope to get over it;

and warned him in vain. He announced his own positive determination not

to die. His last words in this world (as I succeeded in discovering

from the nurse who assisted Mrs. Lecount) were: “I’m getting better

every minute; send for the fly directly and take me out for a drive.”

The same night Death proved to be the more obstinate of the two; and

left his son (and only child) to take the property in due course of

law. Nobody doubts that the result would have been the same if a will

had been made. The father and son had every confidence in each other,

and were known to have always lived together on the most friendly

terms.

Mrs. Lecount remains with Mr. Noel Vanstone, in the same housekeeping

capacity which she filled with his father, and has accompanied him to

the new residence in Vauxhall Walk. She is acknowledged on all hands to

have been a sufferer by the turn events have taken. If Mr. Michael

Vanstone had made his will, there is no doubt she would have received a

handsome legacy. She is now left dependent on Mr. Noel Vanstone’s sense

of gratitude; and she is not at all likely, I should imagine, to let

that sense fall asleep for want of a little timely jogging. Whether my

fair relative’s future intentions in this quarter point toward Mischief

or Money, is more than I can yet say. In either case, I venture to

predict that she will find an awkward obstacle in Mrs. Lecount.

So much for my information to the present date. The manner in which it

was received by Miss Vanstone showed the most ungrateful distrust of

me. She confided nothing to my private ear but the expression of her

best thanks. A sharp girl—a devilish sharp girl. But there is such a

thing as bowling a man out once too often; especially when the name of

that man happens to be Wragge.

Not a word more about the Entertainment; not a word more about moving

from our present quarters. Very good. My right hand lays my left hand a

wager. Ten to one, on her opening communications with the son as she

opened them with the father. Ten to one, on her writing to Noel

Vanstone before the month is out.

21st.—She has written by to-day’s post. A long letter, apparently—for

she put two stamps on the envelope. (Private memorandum, addressed to

myself. Wait for the answer.)

22d, 23d, 24th.—(Private memorandum continued. Wait for the answer.)

25th.—The answer has come. As an ex-military man, I have naturally

employed stratagem to get at it. The success which rewards all genuine

perseverance has rewarded me—and I have got at it accordingly.

The letter is written, not by Mr. Noel Vanstone, but by Mrs. Lecount.

She takes the highest moral ground, in a tone of spiteful politeness.

Mr. Noel Vanstone’s delicate health and recent bereavement prevent him

from writing himself. Any more letters from Miss Vanstone will be

returned unopened. Any personal application will produce an immediate

appeal to the protection of the law. Mr. Noel Vanstone, having been

expressly cautioned against Miss Magdalen Vanstone by his late lamented

father, has not yet forgotten his father’s advice. Considers it a

reflection cast on the memory of the best of men, to suppose that his

course of action toward the Misses Vanstone can be other than the

course of action which his father pursued. This is what he has himself

instructed Mrs. Lecount to say. She has endeavored to express herself

in the most conciliatory language she could select; she had tried to

avoid giving unnecessary pain, by addressing Miss Vanstone (as a matter

of courtesy) by the family name; and she trusts these concessions,

which speak for themselves, will not be thrown away.—Such is the

substance of the letter, and so it ends.

I draw two conclusions from this little document. First—that it will

lead to serious results. Secondly—that Mrs. Lecount, with all her

politeness, is a dangerous woman to deal with. I wish I saw my way safe

before me. I don’t see it yet.

29th.—Miss Vanstone has abandoned my protection; and the whole

lucrative future of the dramatic entertainment has abandoned me with

her. I am swindled—I, the last man under heaven who could possibly have

expected to write in those disgraceful terms of myself—I AM SWINDLED!

Let me chronicle the events. They exhibit me, for the time being, in a

sadly helpless point of view. But the nature of the man prevails: I

must have the events down in black and white.

The announcement of her approaching departure was intimated to me

yesterday. After another civil speech about the information I had

procured at Brighton, she hinted that there was a necessity for pushing

our inquiries a little further. I immediately offered to undertake

them, as before. “No,” she said; “they are not in your way this time.

They are inquiries relating to a woman; and I mean to make them

myself!” Feeling privately convinced that this new resolution pointed

straight at Mrs. Lecount, I tried a few innocent questions on the

subject. She quietly declined to answer them. I asked next when she

proposed to leave. She would leave on the twenty-eighth. For what

destination? London. For long? Probably not. By herself? No. With me?

No. With whom then? With Mrs. Wragge, if I had no objection. Good

heavens! for what possible purpose? For the purpose of getting a

respectable lodging, which she could hardly expect to accomplish unless

she was accompanied by an elderly female friend. And was I, in the

capacity of elderly male friend, to be left out of the business

altogether? Impossible to say at present. Was I not even to forward any

letters which might come for her at our present address? No: she would

make the arrangement herself at the post-office; and she would ask me,

at the same time, for an address, at which I could receive a letter

from her, in case of necessity for future communication. Further

inquiries, after this last answer, could lead to nothing but waste of

time. I saved time by putting no more questions.

It was clear to me that our present position toward each other was what

our position had been previously to the event of Michael Vanstone’s

death. I returned, as before, to my choice of alternatives. Which way

did my private interests point? Toward trusting the chance of her

wanting me again? Toward threatening her with the interference of her

relatives and friends? Or toward making the information which I

possessed a marketable commodity between the wealthy branch of the

family and myself? The last of the three was the alternative I had

chosen in the case of the father. I chose it once more in the case of

the son.

The train started for London nearly four hours since, and took her away

in it, accompanied by Mrs. Wragge.

My wife is too great a fool, poor soul, to be actively valuable in the

present emergency; but she will be passively useful in keeping up Miss

Vanstone’s connection with me—and, in consideration of that

circumstance, I consent to brush my own trousers, shave my own chin,

and submit to the other inconveniences of waiting on myself for a

limited period. Any faint glimmerings of sense which Mrs. Wragge may

have formerly possessed appear to have now finally taken their leave of

her. On receiving permission to go to London, she favored us

immediately with two inquiries. Might she do some shopping? and might

she leave the cookery-book behind her? Miss Vanstone said Yes to one

question, and I said Yes to the other—and from that moment, Mrs. Wragge

has existed in a state of perpetual laughter. I am still hoarse with

vainly repeated applications of vocal stimulant; and I left her in the

railway carriage, to my inexpressible disgust, with _both_ shoes down

at heel.

Under ordinary circumstances these absurd particulars would not have

dwelt on my memory. But, as matters actually stand, my unfortunate

wife’s imbecility may, in her present position, lead to consequences

which we none of us foresee. She is nothing more or less than a

grown-up child; and I can plainly detect that Miss Vanstone trusts her,

as she would not have trusted a sharper woman, on that very account. I

know children, little and big, rather better than my fair relative

does; and I say—beware of all forms of human innocence, when it happens

to be your interest to keep a secret to yourself.

Let me return to business. Here I am, at two o’clock on a fine summer’s

afternoon, left entirely alone, to consider the safest means of

approaching Mr. Noel Vanstone on my own account. My private suspicions

of his miserly character produce no discouraging effect on me. I have

extracted cheering pecuniary results in my time from people quite as

fond of their money as he can be. The real difficulty to contend with

is the obstacle of Mrs. Lecount. If I am not mistaken, this lady merits

a little serious consideration on my part. I will close my chronicle

for to-day, and give Mrs. Lecount her due.

Three o’clock.—I open these pages again to record a discovery which has

taken me entirely by surprise.

After completing the last entry, a circumstance revived in my memory

which I had noticed on escorting the ladies this morning to the

railway. I then remarked that Miss Vanstone had only taken one of her

three boxes with her—and it now occurred to me that a private

investigation of the luggage she had left behind might possibly be

attended with beneficial results. Having, at certain periods of my life

been in the habit of cultivating friendly terms with strange locks, I

found no difficulty in establishing myself on a familiar footing with

Miss Vanstone’s boxes. One of the two presented nothing to interest me.

The other—devoted to the preservation of the costumes, articles of

toilet, and other properties used in the dramatic Entertainment—proved

to be better worth examining: for it led me straight to the discovery

of one of its owner’s secrets.

I found all the dresses in the box complete—with one remarkable

exception. That exception was the dress of the old north-country lady;

the character which I have already mentioned as the best of all my

pupil’s disguises, and as modeled in voice and manner on her old

governess, Miss Garth. The wig; the eyebrows; the bonnet and veil; the

cloak, padded inside to disfigure her back and shoulders; the paints

and cosmetics used to age her face and alter her complexion—were all

gone. Nothing but the gown remained; a gaudily-flowered silk, useful

enough for dramatic purposes, but too extravagant in color and pattern

to bear inspection by daylight. The other parts of the dress are

sufficiently quiet to pass muster; the bonnet and veil are only

old-fashioned, and the cloak is of a sober gray color. But one plain

inference can be drawn from such a discovery as this. As certainly as I

sit here, she is going to open the campaign against Noel Vanstone and

Mrs. Lecount in a character which neither of those two persons can have

any possible reason for suspecting at the outset—the character of Miss

Garth.

What course am I to take under these circumstances? Having got her

secret, what am I to do with it? These are awkward considerations; I am

rather puzzled how to deal with them.

It is something more than the mere fact of her choosing to disguise

herself to forward her own private ends that causes my present

perplexity. Hundreds of girls take fancies for disguising themselves;

and hundreds of instances of it are related year after year in the

public journals. But my ex-pupil is not to be confounded for one moment

with the average adventuress of the newspapers. She is capable of going

a long way beyond the limit of dressing herself like a man, and

imitating a man’s voice and manner. She has a natural gift for assuming

characters which I have never seen equaled by a woman; and she has

performed in public until she has felt her own power, and trained her

talent for disguising herself to the highest pitch. A girl who takes

the sharpest people unawares by using such a capacity as this to help

her own objects in private life, and who sharpens that capacity by a

determination to fight her way to her own purpose, which has beaten

down everything before it, up to this time—is a girl who tries an

experiment in deception, new enough and dangerous enough to lead, one

way or the other, to very serious results. This is my conviction,

founded on a large experience in the art of imposing on my

fellow-creatures. I say of my fair relative’s enterprise what I never

said or thought of it till I introduced myself to the inside of her

box. The chances for and against her winning the fight for her lost

fortune are now so evenly balanced that I cannot for the life of me see

on which side the scale inclines. All I can discern is, that it will,

to a dead certainty, turn one way or the other on the day when she

passes Noel Vanstone’s doors in disguise.

Which way do my interests point now? Upon my honor, I don’t know.

Five o’clock.—I have effected a masterly compromise; I have decided on

turning myself into a Jack-on-both-sides.

By to-day’s post I have dispatched to London an anonymous letter for

Mr. Noel Vanstone. It will be forwarded to its destination by the same

means which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr. Pendril; and it will

reach Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, by the afternoon of to-morrow at the

latest.

The letter is short, and to the purpose. It warns Mr. Noel Vanstone, in

the most alarming language, that he is destined to become the victim of

a conspiracy; and that the prime mover of it is a young lady who has

already held written communication with his father and himself. It

offers him the information necessary to secure his own safety, on

condition that he makes it worth the writer’s while to run the serious

personal risk which such a disclosure will entail on him. And it ends

by stipulating that the answer shall be advertised in the _Times_;

shall be addressed to “An Unknown Friend”; and shall state plainly what

remuneration Mr. Noel Vanstone offers for the priceless service which

it is proposed to render him.

Unless some unexpected complication occurs, this letter places me

exactly in the position which it is my present interest to occupy. If

the advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered is large

enough to justify me in going over to the camp of the enemy, over I go.

If no advertisement appears, or if Mr. Noel Vanstone rates my

invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I remain, biding my

time till my fair relative wants me, or till I make her want me, which

comes to the same thing. If the anonymous letter falls by any accident

into her hands, she will find disparaging allusions in it to myself,

purposely introduced to suggest that the writer must be one of the

persons whom I addressed while conducting her inquiries. If Mrs.

Lecount takes the business in hand and lays a trap for me—I decline her

tempting invitation by becoming totally ignorant of the whole affair

the instant any second person appears in it. Let the end come as it

may, here I am ready to profit by it: here I am, facing both ways, with

perfect ease and security—a moral agriculturist, with his eye on two

crops at once, and his swindler’s sickle ready for any emergency.

For the next week to come, the newspaper will be more interesting to me

than ever. I wonder which side I shall eventually belong to?

THE THIRD SCENE.

VAUXHALL WALK, LAMBETH.

CHAPTER I.

The old Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, on the southern bank of the

Thames—with its Bishop’s Walk and Garden, and its terrace fronting the

river—is an architectural relic of the London of former times, precious

to all lovers of the picturesque, in the utilitarian London of the

present day. Southward of this venerable structure lies the street

labyrinth of Lambeth; and nearly midway, in that part of the maze of

houses which is placed nearest to the river, runs the dingy double row

of buildings now, as in former days, known by the name of Vauxhall

Walk.

The network of dismal streets stretching over the surrounding

neighborhood contains a population for the most part of the poorer

order. In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle

with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers

its forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday

night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight. Miserable women,

whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers’ shops in such London

localities as these, with relics of the men’s wages saved from the

public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the

meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously, as

the fingers of their richer sisters touch a precious stone. In this

district, as in other districts remote from the wealthy quarters of the

metropolis, the hideous London vagabond—with the filth of the street

outmatched in his speech, with the mud of the street outdirtied in his

clothes—lounges, lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the

gin-shop door; the public disgrace of his country, the unheeded warning

of social troubles that are yet to come. Here, the loud self-assertion

of Modern Progress—which has reformed so much in manners, and altered

so little in men—meets the flat contradiction that scatters its

pretensions to the winds. Here, while the national prosperity feasts,

like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is

the Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his glory

is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.

Situated in such a neighborhood as this, Vauxhall Walk gains by

comparison, and establishes claims to respectability which no impartial

observation can fail to recognize. A large proportion of the Walk is

still composed of private houses. In the scattered situations where

shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the crowds of more

populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public

consumer besieged by loud invitations to “buy.” Bird-fanciers have

sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and

canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs,

bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may

want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same

repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas which

illuminates London, tracks its parent source to Works established in

this locality. Here the followers of John Wesley have set up a temple,

built before the period of Methodist conversion to the principles of

architectural religion. And here—most striking object of all—on the

site where thousands of lights once sparkled; where sweet sounds of

music made night tuneful till morning dawned; where the beauty and

fashion of London feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a

century—spreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish;

the deserted dead body of Vauxhall Gardens mouldering in the open air.

On the same day when Captain Wragge completed the last entry in his

Chronicle of Events, a woman appeared at the window of one of the

houses in Vauxhall Walk, and removed from the glass a printed paper

which had been wafered to it announcing that Apartments were to be let.

The apartments consisted of two rooms on the first floor. They had just

been taken for a week certain by two ladies who had paid in

advance—those two ladies being Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge.

As soon as the mistress of the house had left the room, Magdalen walked

to the window, and cautiously looked out from it at the row of

buildings opposite. They were of superior pretensions in size and

appearance to the other houses in the Walk: the date at which they had

been erected was inscribed on one of them, and was stated to be the

year 1759. They stood back from the pavement, separated from it by

little strips of garden-ground. This peculiarity of position, added to

the breadth of the roadway interposing between them and the smaller

houses opposite, made it impossible for Magdalen to see the numbers on

the doors, or to observe more of any one who might come to the windows

than the bare general outline of dress and figure. Nevertheless, there

she stood, anxiously fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly

opposite to her—the house she had looked for before entering the

lodgings; the house inhabited at that moment by Noel Vanstone and Mrs.

Lecount.

After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or more,

she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect which her

behavior might have produced on her traveling companion.

Not the slightest cause appeared for any apprehension in that quarter.

Mrs. Wragge was seated at the table absorbed in the arrangement of a

series of smart circulars and tempting price-lists, issued by

advertising trades-people, and flung in at the cab-windows as they left

the London terminus. “I’ve often heard tell of light reading,” said

Mrs. Wragge, restlessly shifting the positions of the circulars as a

child restlessly shifts the position of a new set of toys. “Here’s

light reading, printed in pretty colors. Here’s all the Things I’m

going to buy when I’m out shopping to-morrow. Lend us a pencil,

please—you won’t be angry, will you? I do so want to mark ’em off.” She

looked up at Magdalen, chuckled joyfully over her own altered

circumstances, and beat her great hands on the table in irrepressible

delight. “No cookery-book!” cried Mrs. Wragge. “No Buzzing in my head!

no captain to shave to-morrow! I’m all down at heel; my cap’s on one

side; and nobody bawls at me. My heart alive, here _is_ a holiday and

no mistake!” Her hands began to drum on the table louder than ever,

until Magdalen quieted them by presenting her with a pencil. Mrs.

Wragge instantly recovered her dignity, squared her elbows on the

table, and plunged into imaginary shopping for the rest of the evening.

Magdalen returned to the window. She took a chair, seated herself

behind the curtain, and steadily fixed her eyes once more on the house

opposite.

The blinds were down over the windows of the first floor and the

second. The window of the room on the ground-floor was uncovered and

partly open, but no living creature came near it. Doors opened, and

people came and went, in the houses on either side; children by the

dozen poured out on the pavement to play, and invaded the little strips

of garden-ground to recover lost balls and shuttlecocks; streams of

people passed backward and forward perpetually; heavy wagons piled high

with goods lumbered along the road on their way to, or their way from,

the railway station near; all the daily life of the district stirred

with its ceaseless activity in every direction but one. The hours

passed—and there was the house opposite still shut up, still void of

any signs of human existence inside or out. The one object which had

decided Magdalen on personally venturing herself in Vauxhall Walk—the

object of studying the looks, manners and habits of Mrs. Lecount and

her master from a post of observation known only to herself—was thus

far utterly defeated. After three hours’ watching at the window, she

had not even discovered enough to show her that the house was inhabited

at all.

Shortly after six o’clock, the landlady disturbed Mrs. Wragge’s studies

by spreading the cloth for dinner. Magdalen placed herself at the table

in a position which still enabled her to command the view from the

window. Nothing happened. The dinner came to an end; Mrs. Wragge

(lulled by the narcotic influence of annotating circulars, and eating

and drinking with an appetite sharpened by the captain’s absence)

withdrew to an arm-chair, and fell asleep in an attitude which would

have caused her husband the acutest mental suffering; seven o’clock

struck; the shadows of the summer evening lengthened stealthily on the

gray pavement and the brown house-walls—and still the closed door

opposite remained shut; still the one window open showed nothing but

the black blank of the room inside, lifeless and changeless as if that

room had been a tomb.

Mrs. Wragge’s meek snoring deepened in tone; the evening wore on

drearily; it was close on eight o’clock—when an event happened at last.

The street door opposite opened for the first time, and a woman

appeared on the threshold.

Was the woman Mrs. Lecount? No. As she came nearer, her dress showed

her to be a servant. She had a large door-key in her hand, and was

evidently going out to perform an errand. Roused partly by curiosity,

partly by the impulse of the moment, which urged her impetuous nature

into action after the passive endurance of many hours past, Magdalen

snatched up her bonnet, and determined to follow the servant to her

destination, wherever it might be.

The woman led her to the great thoroughfare of shops close at hand,

called Lambeth Walk. After proceeding some little distance, and looking

about her with the hesitation of a person not well acquainted with the

neighborhood, the servant crossed the road and entered a stationer’s

shop. Magdalen crossed the road after her and followed her in.

The inevitable delay in entering the shop under these circumstances

made Magdalen too late to hear what the woman asked for. The first

words spoken, however, by the man behind the counter reached her ears,

and informed her that the servant’s object was to buy a railway guide.

“Do you mean a Guide for this month or a Guide for July?” asked the

shopman, addressing his customer.

“Master didn’t tell me which,” answered the woman. “All I know is, he’s

going into the country the day after to-morrow.”

“The day after to-morrow is the first of July,” said the shopman. “The

Guide your master wants is the Guide for the new month. It won’t be

published till to-morrow.”

Engaging to call again on the next day, the servant left the shop, and

took the way that led back to Vauxhall Walk.

Magdalen purchased the first trifle she saw on the counter, and hastily

returned in the same direction. The discovery she had just made was of

very serious importance to her; and she felt the necessity of acting on

it with as little delay as possible.

On entering the front room at the lodgings she found Mrs. Wragge just

awake, lost in drowsy bewilderment, with her cap fallen off on her

shoulders, and with one of her shoes missing altogether. Magdalen

endeavored to persuade her that she was tired after her journey, and

that her wisest proceeding would be to go to bed. Mrs. Wragge was

perfectly willing to profit by this suggestion, provided she could find

her shoe first. In looking for the shoe, she unfortunately discovered

the circulars, put by on a side-table, and forthwith recovered her

recollection of the earlier proceedings of the evening.

“Give us the pencil,” said Mrs. Wragge, shuffling the circulars in a

violent hurry. “I can’t go to bed yet—I haven’t half done marking down

the things I want. Let’s see; where did I leave off? _Try Finch’s

feeding-bottle for Infants._ No! there’s a cross against that: the

cross means I don’t want it. _Comfort in the Field. Buckler’s

Indestructible Hunting-breeches._ Oh dear, dear! I’ve lost the place.

No, I haven’t. Here it is; here’s my mark against it. _Elegant Cashmere

Robes; strictly Oriental, very grand; reduced to one pound

nineteen-and-sixpence. Be in time. Only three left._ Only three! Oh, do

lend us the money, and let’s go and get one!”

“Not to-night,” said Magdalen. “Suppose you go to bed now, and finish

the circulars tomorrow? I will put them by the bedside for you, and you

can go on with them as soon as you wake the first thing in the

morning.”

This suggestion met with Mrs. Wragge’s immediate approval. Magdalen

took her into the next room and put her to bed like a child—with her

toys by her side. The room was so narrow, and the bed was so small; and

Mrs. Wragge, arrayed in the white apparel proper for the occasion, with

her moon-face framed round by a spacious halo of night-cap, looked so

hugely and disproportionately large, that Magdalen, anxious as she was,

could not repress a smile on taking leave of her traveling companion

for the night.

“Aha!” cried Mrs. Wragge, cheerfully; “we’ll have that Cashmere Robe

to-morrow. Come here! I want to whisper something to you. Just you look

at me—I’m going to sleep crooked, and the captain’s not here to bawl at

me!”

The front room at the lodgings contained a sofa-bedstead which the

landlady arranged betimes for the night. This done, and the candles

brought in, Magdalen was left alone to shape the future course as her

own thoughts counseled her.

The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that evening

at the stationer’s shop led plainly to the conclusion that one day more

would bring Noel Vanstone’s present term of residence in Vauxhall Walk

to an end. Her first cautious resolution to pass many days together in

unsuspected observation of the house opposite before she ventured

herself inside was entirely frustrated by the turn events had taken.

She was placed in the dilemma of running all risks headlong on the next

day, or of pausing for a future opportunity which might never occur.

There was no middle course open to her. Until she had seen Noel

Vanstone with her own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to

fear from Mrs. Lecount—until she had achieved this double object, with

the needful precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the

dark—not a step could she advance toward the accomplishment of the

purpose which had brought her to London.

One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one after

another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her mind—and

still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and doubted, with a

hesitation new to her in her experience of herself. At last she crossed

the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief of unlocking her trunk

and taking from it the few things that she wanted for the night.

Captain Wragge’s suspicions had not misled him. There, hidden between

two dresses, were the articles of costume which he had missed from her

box at Birmingham. She turned them over one by one, to satisfy herself

that nothing she wanted had been forgotten, and returned once more to

her post of observation by the window.

The house opposite was dark down to the parlor. There the blind,

previously raised, was now drawn over the window: the light burning

behind it showed her for the first time that the room was inhabited.

Her eyes brightened, and her color rose as she looked at it.

“There he is!” she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper. “There he

lives on our money, in the house that his father’s warning has closed

against me!” She dropped the blind which she had raised to look out,

returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray wig which was part of

her dramatic costume in the character of the North-country lady. The

wig had been crumpled in packing; she put it on and went to the

toilet-table to comb it out. “His father has warned him against

Magdalen Vanstone,” she said, repeating the passage in Mrs. Lecount’s

letter, and laughing bitterly, as she looked at herself in the glass.

“I wonder whether his father has warned him against Miss Garth?

To-morrow is sooner than I bargained for. No matter: to-morrow shall

show.”

CHAPTER II.

The early morning, when Magdalen rose and looked out, was cloudy and

overcast. But as time advanced to the breakfast hour the threatening of

rain passed away; and she was free to provide, without hinderance from

the weather, for the first necessity of the day—the necessity of

securing the absence of her traveling companion from the house.

Mrs. Wragge was dressed, armed at all points with her collection of

circulars, and eager to be away by ten o’clock. At an earlier hour

Magdalen had provided for her being properly taken care of by the

landlady’s eldest daughter—a quiet, well-conducted girl, whose interest

in the shopping expedition was readily secured by a little present of

money for the purchase, on her own account, of a parasol and a muslin

dress. Shortly after ten o’clock Magdalen dismissed Mrs. Wragge and her

attendant in a cab. She then joined the landlady—who was occupied in

setting the rooms in order upstairs—with the object of ascertaining, by

a little well-timed gossip, what the daily habits might be of the

inmates of the house.

She discovered that there were no other lodgers but Mrs. Wragge and

herself. The landlady’s husband was away all day, employed at a railway

station. Her second daughter was charged with the care of the kitchen

in the elder sister’s absence. The younger children were at school, and

would be back at one o’clock to dinner. The landlady herself “got up

fine linen for ladies,” and expected to be occupied over her work all

that morning in a little room built out at the back of the premises.

Thus there was every facility for Magdalen’s leaving the house in

disguise, and leaving it unobserved, provided she went out before the

children came back to dinner at one o’clock.

By eleven o’clock the apartments were set in order, and the landlady

had retired to pursue her own employments. Magdalen softly locked the

door of her room, drew the blind over the window, and entered at once

on her preparations for the perilous experiment of the day.

The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to

be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her

character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully

alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for

the amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to

deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress

which she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material

called “alpaca”), of a dark-brown color, with a neat pattern of little

star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom

of this dress was the only milliner’s ornament which it presented—an

ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to

an elderly lady. The disguise of her head and face was the next object

of her attention. She fitted and arranged the gray wig with the

dexterity which constant practice had given her; fixed the false

eyebrows (made rather large, and of hair darker than the wig) carefully

in their position with the gum she had with her for the purpose, and

stained her face with the customary stage materials, so as to change

the transparent fairness of her complexion to the dull, faintly opaque

color of a woman in ill health. The lines and markings of age followed

next; and here the first obstacles presented themselves. The art which

succeeded by gas-light failed by day: the difficulty of hiding the

plainly artificial nature of the marks was almost insuperable. She

turned to her trunk; took from it two veils; and putting on her

old-fashioned bonnet, tried the effect of them in succession. One of

the veils (of black lace) was too thick to be worn over the face at

that summer season without exciting remark. The other, of plain net,

allowed her features to be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to

permit the safe introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was

accustomed to use in performing the character) on the forehead and at

the sides of the mouth. But the obstacle thus set aside only opened the

way to a new difficulty—the difficulty of keeping her veil down while

she was speaking to other persons, without any obvious reason for doing

so. An instant’s consideration, and a chance look at her little china

palette of stage colors, suggested to her ready invention the

production of a visible excuse for wearing her veil. She deliberately

disfigured herself by artificially reddening the insides of her eyelids

so as to produce an appearance of inflammation which no human creature

but a doctor—and that doctor at close quarters—could have detected as

false. She sprang to her feet and looked triumphantly at the hideous

transformation of herself reflected in the glass. Who could think it

strange now if she wore her veil down, and if she begged Mrs. Lecount’s

permission to sit with her back to the light?